Choosing Discord and Rejection

The United Church of Canada is in the process of its 41st General Council, taking place in Ottawa.  Meeting once every three years, this is the occasion used to elect a new church moderator, and at the same time discuss issues of importance to the church in adopting new policies and directions for the following three years.  There are several central issues confronting Canada's largest protestant denomination at this Council.

One of them represents the United Church's publicly stated stance on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline based on objections from First Nations, from environmentalists and over concerns relating to the welfare of wildlife as well.  There will be emphatic opposition from the United Church with respect to the Gateway pipeline in line with a proposal from the British Columbia Native Ministries Council.

This is but one of 130 proposals that Church commissioners are discussing.  And while there was strenuous debate, in the end, a clear majority opinion won out.  "We are united in our belief that this project and others like it will do a disproportionate amount of direct harm to the life-sustaining air, food and water that we all share on Earth", reads the accepted proposal.

The Church Council is also entertaining the serious issue of gossip and the harm it potentially does in slandering the reputations of those whom it targets.  Speaking ill of others, and relating stories whose import can be the destruction of a good name and the following of disrepute, whether or not there is any truth to the gossip is seen as destructive of the social fabric and unworthy of a free, fair and just society.

That said, the United Church has invested itself in adopting rumours and malicious charges against the State of Israel in its relations with Palestinians.  After deliberation and the knowledge that a large proportion of its own members are outraged at the issue being discussed, wishing to have nothing to do with a church that has edged away from teaching religion and opted instead to become overtly political, choosing 'sides' in a far-off conflict that is being one-sidedly interpreted, the Council made the leap.

It was decided that the proposal that would see the United Church apologize to the Palestinians for ever suggesting that it called for recognition of Israel's Jewish character be accepted.  The United Church of Canada additionally stood by the proposal whose purpose it is to single out Israeli communities for boycott.  While this decision may make many within the church feel that they have accomplished God's work, what they have accomplished is a severing of ties with the Jewish community within Canada.

The interfaith dialogue that has graced relations between the largest Protestant body in Canada and the Jewish community has been recklessly and with deliberation, destroyed.  That fellow Christians in the Middle East can find safety only in one country, democratic Israel, while they are being attacked, their churches burned, elsewhere within Arab countries and the Palestinian territories seems to matter little to the United Church.

Singling out the State of Israel for censure and committing to attempting to impose a harmful economic cost to what is a social-religious-political-historical issue of serious dysfunction between two opposing sides, two value systems, and two religions seems irrelevant to the great minds of the United Church who have led their congregations into this situation.

"In adopting this position, the United Church has rejected the path of balance, and has chosen to explicitly ally itself with those who formally reject the two-State solution and who deny the historical right of the Jewish people to a homeland.  In so doing, they have damaged the church's standing amongst Canadians and have profoundly compromised the UCC's ability to play any constructive role in making a positive impact for peace."  David Koschitzky, Chair of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs