The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has expressed concern over the firing of a prominent Protestant official of the Reformed Church in America for charging the National Council of Churches (NCC) with conducting “a persistent anti-Israel propaganda campaign.”
The clergyman, Rev. Isaac A. Rottenberg, who for 10 years had served as communications director to the Reformed Church, stated that “every NCC governing board meeting has been proceeded by internal bureaucratic power plays aimed at criticizing Israel.” He added that whenever “concerns were raised in the council about anti-Semitism, the Holocaust or the emergence of neo-Nazi movements, attempts have been made to trivialize or to neutralize them…”
Rottenberg’s statement was made in a letter to a New York City newspaper, in which he questioned the fairness and objectivity of the NCC on matters relating to Jews and to Israel and called for a “loyal opposition to speak up.”
A native of The Hague, the Netherlands, Rottenberg and his wife are Christian survivors of the Holocaust. His father died in a concentration camp. Rottenberg served as chairman of the steering committee for the NCC’s Office of Christian-Jewish Relations from the inception of that office four years ago.
SELF-CRITICISM LACKING
In a telephone conversation with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Rottenberg charged that “a few people within the NCC have been determined to exploit the processes of the organization for their own propagandistic purposes.” He defined his role within the NCC as that of a “critic from within who raised questions regarding how these statements on the Middle East came about.”
Acknowledging that his dismissal arose out of a desire on the part of some NCC officials to silence him, Rottenberg said, “My great disappointment about the Council is that, with all its liberal statements, it lacks the capacity for self-criticism which is essential to true liberalism.”
Rabbi David H. Panitz, chairman of ADL’s interreligious cooperation committee, noting that Rottenberg was dismissed soon after the newspaper statement appeared, said, “We are shocked at attempts to silence an important voice of conscience and integrity within the ranks of Protestant denominational leadership.” The general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, Dr. Arie Brouwen, had maintained that Rottenberg was fired due to “recent tension.”
Panitz said that Rottenberg took the lead in questioning the continued membership of Archbishop Valerian Trifa on the NCC board of governors while the former Rumanian Iron Guard leader was the subject of deportation hearings in Federal Court. Trifa had already been charged by the ADL and other human rights organizations with involvement in war crimes and anti-Semitic activities in Rumania during World War II.
The Reformed Church in America is one of 3! Christian groups within the National Council of Churches.
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