PAUL FINDLEY They Dare to Speak Out 9

9
Paving the Way fnr the Messiah
Dwight Campbell, the youthful clerk of Shelby County, Illinois, sat quietly through the meeting in a Shelbyville restautant. It was fall 1982, the campaign season in Illinois, and during the session I discussed for­eign policy issues with a group of constituents. Only when the gather­ing had begun to break up did Campbell call me aside to voice his deep concern over remarks I had made criticizing Israeli policy in Lebanon.
He identified himself as a Christian and, speaking very earnestly and without hostility, warned me that my approach to the Middle East was wrong from a political standpoint and, more important, was in con­flict with God's plan. He concluded with a heartfelt injunction: "I would not advocate anything to interfere with the destiny of Israel as set forth in the Bible."
The urgency in his voice was striking. It seemed clear that this pub­lic official, who was well respected in his community, was not compelled to support Israel by external pressure. Nor was he motivated by a desire
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for professional or social advancement. As with many evangelical Chris­tians, his support came from deep conviction.
Americans like Dwight Campbell comprise a natural constituency for Israel and add enormous strength to the manipulations of the Israeli lobby. Democratic Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, chairman of the Mid­dle East Subcommittee, hears similar comments when he visits his district in rural Indiana. At town meetings, which Hamilton conducts, con­stituents frequently speak up. Identifying themselves as Christians, they urge that he support Israels needs completely and without reservation.1
Many U.S. Christians, both conservative and mainline, support Israel because of shared cultural and political values and in response to the horror of the Holocaust.2 Many conservatives feel, as did the young official in Shelbyville, that the creation of Israel in 1948 came in ful­fillment of biblical prophecy, and that the Jewish state will continue to play a central role in the divine plan.
Religious affiliation also tends to influence members of the main­stream denominations, particularly Protestants, toward a pro-Israeli stance. An exclusive focus on biblical tradition causes many Christians to see the Middle East as a reflection of events portrayed in the Bible: twentieth century Israelis become biblical Israelites, Palestinians become Philistines, and so on, in a dangerous, albeit usually unconscious, chain of historical misassociation. The distinction between Jewish settlers on the occupied West Bank and the Hebrew nation that conquered the land of Canaan under Moses and Joshua becomes obscured.
Virtually all Christians approach the Middle East with at least a sub­tle affinity to Israel and an inclination to oppose or mistrust any sugges­tion that questions Israeli policy. The lobby has drawn widely upon this support in pressing its national programs. More important, fresh perspec­tives that challenge shibboleths and established prejudices regarding the Middle East are often denounced by both the lobby and many of its Chris­tian allies as politically extremist, anti-Semitic, or even anti-Christian.
The religious convictions of many Americans have made them sus­ceptible to the appeals of the Israeli lobby, with the result that free speech concerning the Middle East and U.S. policy in the region is frequently restricted before it begins. The combination of religious tradition and overt lobby activity tends to confine legitimate discussion within artifi­cially narrow bounds.
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Conservative Christians Rally to the Cause
Fundamentalist and evangelical groups have been active in this cam­paign to narrow the bounds of free speech. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robert­son proselytize tirelessly for ever-increasing U.S. backing of Israel, citing scriptural passages as the basis for their arguments. As the membership of conservative Protestant churches and organizations has expanded over the last decade, this "Christian Zionist" approach to the Middle East has been espoused from an increasing variety of "pulpits": local churches, the broadcast media, and even the halls of Congress.
Senator Roger W. Jepsen, a first-term legislator from Iowa, told the 1981 annual policy conference of AIPAC that one of the reasons for his "spirited and unfailing support" for Israel was his Christian faith. He declared that "Christians, particularly Evangelical Christians, have been among Israels best friends since its rebirth in 1948." That view is hardly unique, even among members of Congress, but his statement on this occasion aptly expressed the near-mystical identification some Chris­tians feel toward Israel:
I believe one of the reasons America has been blessed over the years is because we have been hospitable to those Jews who have sought a home in this country. We have been blessed because we have come to Israel's defense regularly, and we have been blessed because we have recognized Israel's right to the land. . . .3
Jepsen cited his fundamentalist views in explaining his early oppo­sition to the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia, but he credited divine inter­vention as the reason he switched his position the day before the Senate voted on the proposal.4 On election day, November 6, 1984, Iowans— spurred by the Israel lobby—did their own switching, rejecting Jepsen's bid for a second term.
Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority and a personal friend of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, has been described by The Econ­omist of London as "the silk-voiced ayatollah of Christian revivalism." Acclaimed in a Conservative Digest annual poll as the most admired con­servative outside of Congress (with President Reagan the runner-up), Falwell embodies the growing Christian-Zionist connection.5 He has declared: "I don't think America could turn its back on the people of
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Israel and survive. God deals with nations in relation to how those nations deal with the Jews." He has testified before congressional com­mittees in favor of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Falwell is perhaps the best known of the pro-Israel fundamentalist spokesmen, but he is by no means the only one.
In the summer of 1983, Mike Evans Ministries of Bedford, Texas, broadcast an hour-long television special called Israel, Americas Key to Survival. Evangelist Evans used the program to describe the "crucial" role played by Israel in the political—and spiritual—fate of the United States. Since the show was presented as religious programming, it was given free broadcast time on local television stations in at least twenty-five states. It was also broadcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network cable system. Yet the message of the program was by no means entirely spiritual.
Interspersing scripture quotations with interviews of public and mil­itary figures and other evangelists, including Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, and Jimmy Swaggart, Evans made a number of political asser­tions about Israel. These included the wild contention that, if Israel gave up control of the West Bank and other territories occupied after the 1967 war, the destruction of Israel and the United States would follow. Evans also implied that Israel was a special victim of Soviet pressure in the form of "international terrorism," which, were it not for Israel, would be brought to bear directly against the United States and Latin America.
Evans concluded the broadcast with a climactic appeal for Chris­tians to come to the support of "Americas best friend in that part of the world" by signing a "Proclamation of Blessing for Israel." Stating that "God distinctly told me to produce this television special pertaining to the nation of Israel," Evans argued that the proclamation was particularly important since "war is coming, and we must let our president and Prime Minister Begin know how we, as Americans, feel about Israel." He pre­sented the proclamation to both Prime Minister Shamir and U.S. Pres­ident Ronald Reagan, then proceeded to congratulate his supporters: "You never thought you would be having such an effect upon the two most powerful leaders in rhe entire world! But, yes, you are!"6
Still, Evans was dissatisfied with Reagan's response. In an August 1984 fund-raising appeal, Evans blamed the United States for Israel's
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economic woes: "Because of America's encouraging Israel to give up the Sinai and its oil [they lost, he said, $1.7 billion] and because of Israel's assistance to America through defense of the Middle East, Israel is on the verge of economic collapse." He said Reagan was "hesitant" to "alleviate Israel's great pressures."
The Evans theme linking America's survival to Israel was echoed in a full-page ad for the National Political Action Committee, a pro-Israel fund-raising organization, in the December 18, 1983, New York Times. It proclaimed that "Israel's survival is vital to our own," and "faith in Israel strengthens America."
Radio and television broadcasts by Jim Bakker, Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, and others routinely proclaim the sanc­tity of Israel through scriptural quotation, usually from the Old Testa­ment, and then reinforce it with political and strategic arguments supplied by the broadcaster.
The arguments find a considerable audience. Most estimates place the number of Evangelical Christians in the United States in the neigh­borhood of thirty million. Jerry Falwell's "Old Time Gospel Hour" is aired on 392 television stations and nearly 500 radio stations each week. Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin described Falwell as "the man who represents twenty million American Christians."
Nor is the American style of evangelistic programming confined to U.S. shores. Its pro-Israeli message is now broadcast from the Middle East itself. The High Adventure Holyland Broadcasting Network of George Otis has maintained the Voice of Hope radio station in south­ern Lebanon since the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978. He describes it as an effort "to bring the Word of God to an area that has not had the Word of God in many centuries." Otis named his broadcast ministry after his personal conviction that "Jesus [is] high adventure"; but over the past several years the station has been actively involved in adven­ture of a more secular sort.
The late Major Saad Haddad, the Lebanese commander of the Israeli-backed militia that controlled southern Lebanon prior to the Israeli inva­sion in 1982, frequently used the Voice of Hope to broadcast his military objectives, including threats against civilians. Evangelist Otis, overlook­ing grim aspects of Haddad's rule, described Haddad as a "born-again" Christian who was a "good spiritual leader" to the people of southern
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Lebanon. The U.S. State Department confirms that Haddad often car­ried out threats to shell civilian areas, including the city of Sidon, "with­out previous warning." Haddad rationalized these attacks as reprisals against the Lebanese government fot not meeting his demands for salary payment. (The Lebanese government ceased paying the salaries of Had-dad's forces after he was dishonorably discharged from the Lebanese army.)
In the spring of 1980, Haddad forces used five U.S.-built Sherman tanks in an attack on a Boy Scout Jamboree near the city of Tyre, killing sixteen boys. Haddad's gunners also shot down a Norwegian medevac helicopter that arrived to help the wounded. The scout gathering, which was sponsored by the Christian Maronite Church, was just beyond the limits of "Free Lebanon," or "Haddadland," the area controlled by Had-dad's Israeli-backed army. Haddad announced at the time that such attacks would continue until the Lebanese government provided more electricity to this area and recognized Haddad schools.
In the late 1970s, with the support of both Israel and the remain­ing Christian forces in the south, High Adventure Ministries established the Star of Hope television station in southern Lebanon. Otis himself described the Israeli support as "a miracle": "Did you ever think we would see the day when the Jews would push us for a Christian station?"7 Yet since the television station assured more effective communication with the public—for military and other purposes—Israeli approval seemed more the product of sound strategic thinking than of divine intervention. Like the Voice of Hope before it, the new Star of Hope was financed through tax-deductible contributions of money and equipment from donors in North America.
In 1982, Star of Hope was presented to Pat Robertson's Christian Btoadcasting Network as a gift. Robertson upgraded the facility and renamed it Middle East Television (METV). The Christian separatist World Lebanese Association—which is affiliated with AIPAC—describes METV as "generally sympathetic to the Christian Maronites of the region and to Israel." It adds that, for years, METV was accused of links to Israel and the now-defunct Israel-allied Christian militia, the South Lebanese Army (SLA).8
Through endeavors such as METV, American evangelical broad-casring supported the Israeli government indirectly by emphasizing the
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moral and religious commitment to the Jewish state that many Ameri­cans already feel, and directly by broadcasting in the Middle East mes­sages that promote the military objectives of Israel and its Lebanese allies.
Jerry Falwell periodically conducts tours of Israel for born-again Christians. Although Falwell is careful to avoid the appearance of money flowing from Israel to the Moral Majority, former Israeli Prime Minis­ter Menachem Begin demonstrated his commitment by arranging for a jet plane to be sold to Falwell's organization at a substantial discount.
Besides Falwell's, there are many other Christian groups offering Israel their support. In eastern Colorado, more than ten churches coor­dinate an annual "Istael Recognition Day" involving films, lectures, cul­tural exhibits, and sermons reaching more than 25,000 parishioners. The National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI) holds an annual conference in Washington that is attended by more than 200 del­egates representing Christian groups from all over the United States. As Dr. Franklin H. Littell, president of NCLCI, has noted, "Concern for Israel's survival and well-being [is] the only issue that some of the orga­nizations evei cooperated on."9
Other publicized events have included an October 1982 "Solidarity for Israel Sabbath" at Washington's Beth Shalom Orthodox Synagogue, in which evangelical leaders and local rabbis joined to "build bridges" and coordinate their efforts in behalf of Israel, and the "National Prayer Breakfast in Honor of Israel," which has become an annual event in the nation's capital.
The third such breakfast conference, given February 1, 1984, attracted more than 500 supporters of Israel, most of them Christians. The setting was brightly decorated with Israeli flags and symbols, includ­ing apples bearing Star of David stickers. The printed program for the affair boasted an imptessive list of political and evangelical leaders, including Edwin Meese III (who was unable to attend, it was announced, because of his just-announced nomination as attorney general); Meir Rosenne, Israeli ambassador to the United States; and representatives from the National Religious Broadcasters and other conservative Protes­tant groups. Congressman Mark Siljander of Michigan, a member of the Middle Easr Subcommittee, delivered a stirring reaffirmation of evangelical solidarity with Istael: "It's not that we are anti-Arab. We seek peace in God's plan."
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The breakfasts were coordinated by the Religious Roundtable, a group that describes itself as "a national organization dedicated to reli­gious revival and moral purpose in America," yet maintains as one of its primary purposes the advancement of the Israeli cause. Edward E. Mc-Ateer, president of the group, was known in the Washington area as a partisan speaker and editorial writer on behalf of Israel. He used the religious format of his organization to back such political stands as closer U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation, restriction of U.S. arms sales to Arab states, and transfer of the United States embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In 1984 McAteer was an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate in Tennessee.
Writing in the Washington Post on January 2, 1984, McAteer sup­ported the Israeli intervention in Lebanon, likening opponents of the invasion to "the premed student who proposed removing only half a cancerous growth [the PLO] because of the blood generated by surgery." Considering the fact that the invasion led to staggering civilian casual­ties, this crusading knight of the Religious Roundtable certainly cannot be accused of fear of blood.
Perhaps inspired by Mike Evans Ministries, the prayer breakfast committee created its own "Proclamation of Blessing" for Israel. Issued in the name of "Americas 50-million-plus Bible-believing Christians," it included a curious mixture of religious, political, and military points: a call for "strategic cooperation" with Israel is followed by an appeal to "the God of Israel, Who through the Jewish people, gave to the world of Scriptures, our Savior, Salvation, and Spiritual blessings"; scriptural selections affirming the divine right of the Jews to the Holy Land, fol­lowed by language rejecting the "dual loyalty" charges against American Jewish supporters of Israel; and a call for the transfer of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, accompanied by an exhortation that "the Scripturally-delin-eated boundaries of the Holy Land never be compromised by the shift­ing sands of political and economic expediency."
Cooperation between Jewish and conservative Protestant groups has an important impact in the political sphere. In a 1983 Jerusalem press conference, Jerry Falwell declared that "The day is coming when no can­didate will be elected in the United States who is not pro-Israel."10 Although the Moral Majority has not had 100 percent success in putting its favorites in power, many candidates for high office, regardless of their
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own religious inclinations, now often feel compelled to address the issues that are on the evangelical political agenda.
Many conservative Christians see a theological basis for this sup­port, as they ascribe to Israel a prominent role in the interpretation of Christian doctrine. On the one hand, it is maintained that Israel deserves Christian support because it exists as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Old Testament passages are most often quoted in defense of this view. On the other hand, many Christians back Israel because they believe that the Jewish people remain, as they were in biblical times, the chosen people of God. The same advocate will often cite both arguments. The prophecy argument is held by the most conservative fundamentalist groups, such as the Moral Majority, and has received more public atten­tion, but the covenantal view is probably held by a larger segment of Americas 40 million conservative Christians."
Dr. Dewey Beegle of Wesley Theological Seminary commented on the differing views of Israel held by American Christians in his 1978 book, Prophecy and Prediction: "All Christian groups claim to have the truth, but obviously some of these views cannot be true, because they contradict other intepretations which can be verified."
Like many biblical scholars, Beegle has concluded that the scriptural basis that pro-Zionist Christians often cite for the establishment of mod­ern Israel does not withstand close scrutiny. The issue, however, is not whether the scholarship of Beegle or that of the Moral Majority is the more sound, but the importance of open debate of such difficult issues. Here again, the experience of a published author is revealing. Because his book dealt with the controversial issue of modern Israel and its relations to biblical tradition, many publishers, even those who had handled pre­vious works by this scholar, declined to publish it. One of these told him bluntly: "Your early chapters on the biblical matters of prophecy and prediction are well done. The only chapter that seriously disturbs us is 'Modern Israel Past and Present.'" Beegle was informed that his views on Israel, which accept the legitimacy of the modern Jewish state—albeit not on biblical grounds—would be "bound to infuriate" many readers.
Yet the fact that a book or a point of view is controversial is not, at least in the United States, usually grounds for rejection. Dr. Beegle viewed Christians and Jews who disagree with him in this way: "We know that these people think alike and feel alike and are going to help
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each other. It's perfectly natural. All I'm saying is we ought to have just as much right on the other side to speak out openly and put the infor­mation out there."12 His book finally was published by Pryor Pettengill, a small firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Many Christians who are neither fundamentalist nor evangelical are also inclined to accept the supposed counsel of prophecy as justification for Israel's dominant role in the Middle East. One former American pres­ident appeals to be among their number. President Reagan, in his Octo­ber 1983 telephone conversation with AIPAC executive director Thomas A. Dine, turned a discussion of Lebanon's present-day problems into a discourse on biblical prophecy:
I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon and I find myself wondering if . . . we're the gen­eration that's going to see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of those prophecies lately but, believe me, they certainly describe the times we're going through.13
Reagan's views are not unprecedented, even in the Oval Office. His views reflect the wide credence given to biblical prophecy—and its use to justify Israel's existence. George W. Bush, despire his membership in the mainline Methodist Church, has identified himself as born-again.
A Puzzling Paradox
Recognizing Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy implicates the Christian-—and, even more so, the Jew—in several paradoxes. First, con­servative millennialist Protestants have traditionally sought to convert Jews to Christianity, and relations between the two groups have often been less than cordial. Jews instinctively mistrusted Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter because, as Jewish author Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht writes, "In Jewish history, when fundamentalists came, Cossacks were not far behind."14
Ironically, the Christian groups most likely to accept a biblical basis for supporting Israel are also those most likely to feel the necessity of Jewish conversion to Christianity, an extremely sensitive issue to Israelis. Dan Rossing, director of the Department for Christian Communities in the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs, states the problem succinctly:
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the evangelical "theological scheme clearly implies that Jews have to become Christians—clearly not today, but some day."15
Many evangelical organizations carry on missionary activities in the Middle East, particularly in Israel, that are strongly opposed by many Israelis. The evangelists openly proselytize, seeing conversion of the Jews as another precursor of the times that the "recreation" of Israel in 1948 is said to foretell.
The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, an organization that works to foster support for Israel in twenty nations, is one of a num­ber of evangelical organizations that have come under fire recently for missionary activity inside Israel. The "embassy" was opened in Jerusalem in October 1980 as a gesture of "international Christian support" for the controversial transfer of the Israeli capital to that city from Tel Aviv.16
Despite expressing political support for the state of Israel, the Inter­national Christian Embassy devoted some of its efforts to the conversion of Jews to Christianity, an act that made the organization controversial in the eyes of many Israelis. In Israel, Orthodox Jews have been active in pressing for legislation banning foreign missionaries and in organiz­ing opposition against them.17 Despite the monetary support and good­will brought to Israel by these organizations, they are widely regarded as Trojan horses. There have even been physical attacks on their members.
The dilemma faced by the Israeli government in dealing with Chris­tian groups such as the International Christian Embassy is essentially the same as that faced by American Jewish groups in forming their rela­tions with conservative Christian groups in the United States.18 While spokesmen within Israel, such as Rabbi Moshe Berliner, decry the inher­ent threat to Judaism posed by proselytizing fundamentalists—"Are we so gullible as to take any hand extended to us in friendship?"—the Israeli government under both Begin and Shamir offered an emphatic reply: "Israel will not turn aside a hand stretched out in support of Israel's just cause."19
In November 1980 Jerry Falwell was awarded a medal in recogni­tion of his steadfast support of Israel. The award came at a New York dinner marking the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky and was made at the behest of Prime Minister Begin. Opposirion to the presentation was intense.20 Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress objected to "the way
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[Falwell] conducts his activities and the manner in which he uses reli­gion." In Israel, the Jerusalem Post quoted Alexander M. Schindler, for­mer chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as saying that it was "madness and suicide if Jews honor for their support of Israel right-wing evangelists who constitute a dan­ger to the Jews of the United States."21
What Schindler meant was illustrated by a remark that Falwell had made at a Sunday service in his own Liberty Baptist Church in Lynch­burg, Virginia. He declared that God did not "hear Jewish prayers." He later expressed regret over this remark, but for many Jews, it con­firmed their suspicion that Falwell was more interested in their con­version than in the security of Israel. His protestation that "the Jewish people in America and Israel and all over the world have no dearer friend than Jerry Falwell" has not made Jewish leaders forget his fun­damentalist religious bias against Judaism, yet they openly continue to cultivate the support of American evangelicals in backing Israel. The paradox is striking.
New View from Mainline Churches
The pro-Israel alliance between American Jews and conservative Protes­tants emerged at a time of friction between the Jewish community and the mainstream American Christian community. That friction increased with the widespread objection among Christians to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978.
In September 1981 United Methodist Bishop James Armstrong issued a letter to Indiana United Methodist ministers in which he sharply criticized the "Falwell gospel" and the "Moral Majority mentality." He pointedly observed that:
Israel was seen as God's "chosen people" in a servant sense. Israel was not given license to exploit other people. God plays no favorites.22
Christian concern over events in the Middle East, particularly the suffering of Palestinian refugees, has been a source of tension between Jewish and Christian groups for some time. Although traditional efforts toward ecumenical cooperation between American Judaism and the mainline churches continue—as is reflected in the establishment by the
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American Jewish Congress of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Rela­tions—larger denominations have, since the early 1980s, begun to view the Middle East in a new light.23
The mainline churches focus more and more on the need to respect the human rights of the Palestinian refugees, as reflected in a series of church policy statements that show more sympathy for the plight of these refugees than many Jewish groups find acceptable.24 The United States Catholic Conference, United Presbyterian Church, United Methodist Church, American Baptist Churches, United Church of Christ, and others have called for mutual recognition of the Israeli and Palestinian right to self-determination, Palestinian participation in peace negotiations, and Israel's withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 war. Several of the churches have identified the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.25
As the Reverend Charles Angell, S.A., associate director of Graymoor Ecumenical Institute, observed, for the American churches to commit themselves to such an "evident clash between their position and that of the state of Israel abroad and the majority of the American Jewish organiza­tions at home" represents a break with the past. He feels that the "funda­mental shift" occurred after the 1973 war, when Christians responded sympathetically to appeals from the Arab side for a peaceful settlement.
Members of the Jewish community have largely received the state­ments of the mainline churches as threats to their religious rights. Despite more than forty official statements by Protestant and Catholic organi­zations in the past two decades condemning anti-Semitism as unchris­tian, Christian officials who assert the right of all peoples—not just Israelis—to territorial security and a decent standard of living are accused by the Israeli lobby of anti-Semitism.26
Christian churches have been accused of "self-delusion" in opposing both anti-Semitism and, at the same time, Israeli government policies that restrict or violate the human rights of Palestinian refugees.27 Even confirmed humanitarian and pacifist groups such as the Quakers have been branded anti-Semitic for urging greater restraint and mutual under­standing upon all of the contending parties of the Middle East. Journalist Ernest Volkmann even sought to pin the anti-Semite label on the Rev­erend William Howard, president of the National Council of Churches (NCC), for his criticism of the June 1981 Israeli air strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.28
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The paradox thus becomes compounded: mainline Christians who accept the legitimacy of the Jewish faith but question some policies of the Jewish state are branded anti-Semitic, while evangelical Christians who back Israel but doubt the theological validity of Judaism are welcome as allies. The experience of the NCC is instructive. An NCC insider describes the relationship between the council and the American Jewish community as "the longest case record of Jewish influence, even more than in government." For many years, no one in the Jewish community had serious complaints about the council. Whenever disagreement arose, the Jewish leadership demanded—and usually received—prompt action. As a former NCC official described it, Jewish leaders would come "en masse with the heads of departments of about half a dozen different Jewish agencies and then really lay it out. They felt that they had a spe­cial right to get direct input to the council leadership."
The Committee on Christian—Jewish Relations, long a part of the council hierarchy, gave special attention to fostering cooperation and understanding between Christians and Jews in the United States. In addition, Inter-Faith, a division of the NCC devoted to humanitarian programs, was, despite its ecumenical title, for several years composed solely of Jewish and Christian groups.
The Committee on Christian-Jewish Relations has traditionally been known to share whatever information or new council materials it con­sidered important with the American Jewish Committee. This practice was troubling to some council officials, as the committee is not a religious body; although it maintains a religious affairs department, it is mainly a lobbying organization. Jewish organizations of a primarily religious nature, such as the Synagogue Council of America, are not so closely involved in the workings of the council. But because top-level adminis­trators at the NCC are understandably sensitive about the charge of being anti-Israel or insensitive to Jewish concerns in any council actions or publications, the oversight of NCC activities and literature by the American Jewish Committee has been accepted as standard procedure— up to the point of accepting long cririques of proposed materials
A representative of one of the largest Protestant denominations observed that the American Jewish Committee had "much more effect" on the content of NCC study materials than his office, even though his denomination accounted for the purchase and distribution of three-quarters of these publications.
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After several years of mounting Jewish criticism—during which the council had debated, but failed to adopt, a number of resolutions on the suffering of Palestinian refugees—the NCC decided in December 1979 to issue a Middle East policy statement. As Allan Solomonow, a frequent commentator on religion, put it, "... because of sttong Jewish criticism it became apparent that the NCC, which up to that point did not have a clear stand on the Middle East, had to have one." Solomonow also said, "[The consensus was that] the only way to limit criticism was to say exactly what you feel about these issues." But the Middle East policy statement that ultimately appeared was nevertheless unacceptable to many American Jewish groups.
Declaring that "the role of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. is to seek with others peace, justice, and reconcili­ation throughout the Middle East," the controversial final section of the statement included a call for control of arms transfers to the Middle East and an appeal for "reciprocal recognition of the right of self-determina­tion" by the government of Israel and the PLO.
The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which had not pre­sented its views in open forum, quickly denounced the statement as "a naive misreading of the contending forces and issues in the Arab—Israeli conflict which can have mischievous consequences."
Pro-Israel writers and commentators seized upon the policy state­ment as an example of growing anti-Semitism within the NCC—despite the clear emphasis of the text on secure peace for all peoples and denun­ciation of violent acts on every side. Journalist Ernest Volkmann, in his book A Legacy of Hate: Anti-Semitism in America, somehow managed to cite the policy statement as the prime example of "an indifference to American Jews that has occasionally strayed into outright anti-Semitism." The Campaign to Discredit Israel, the "enemies list" assembled by AIPAC, goes to the length of claiming that "some segments of the National Coun­cil of Churches" are tools of a "systematic effort" to attack Israel's image in the United States. A high-ranking NCC official at the time summed up the matter this way: "For years, no one in the Jewish community had any serious complaints about the National Council; and then, when they started to have political decisions that ran afoul of conventional pro-Israeli opinion, all of a sudden it became anti-Semitic and suspect."
Critics do not like to note, however, that the policy statement rec­ognized rhe right of Israel to exist as a "sovereign Jewish state" rather than
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as a "sovereign state," as some on the panel preferred. Butler identified this as "one of the most hotly debated phrases in the policy statement," because some members of the drafting committee refused to vote for the completed document unless it specified the Jewish identity of Israel. The document also explicitly reaffirmed the long and continuing close relationship between the Jewish community and the National Council of Churches.
In April 2002 a delegation of the council, whose general secretary was former Representative Robert Edgar (D-PA), toured the Middle East. Upon its return it issued a statement urging an end to Israel's occu­pation of the West Bank and Gaza, the establishment of a viable Pales­tinian state, and "the sharing of Jerusalem by the two peoples and three faiths."29
God's Empire Striking Back?
As interest in the Middle East and humanitarian concern for the Pales­tinian refugees becomes more widespread among Americans of all reli­gious persuasions, many Jewish groups and their pro-Israel allies are more adamant in rejecting open discussion as a means to broader public under­standing. Under such pressures, even activist religious groups that are involved in campaigning for social justice and world peace often grow timid when the Middle East becomes a topic of discussion.
In October 1983 the Sacramento Religious Community for Peace (SRCP), a group that works to foster ecumenical cooperation in support of peace and social issues, organized a major symposium, titled "Faith, War, and Peace in the Nuclear Age," at the Sacramento Convention Cen­ter. A large number of religious organizations, including the Sacramento Jewish Relations Council, cosponsored the symposium under the aus­pices of the SRCP. In early September, as publicity for the symposium was being arranged, the Sacramento Peace Center (SPC), another well-established local activist group, asked that a flier publicizing its memo­rial service for victims of the refugee camp massacres in Lebanon be included in the SRCP mailings for the symposium. Since it is routine for peace organizations in the area to cooperate in this way, Peggy Briggs, codirector of the SPC, was shocked to be informed that the flier would not be included in the promotional mailing.30
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The SRCP told Briggs that the Sacramento Jewish Community Rela­tions Council—the strongest local Jewish group and a major participant in SRCP activities—had made it known that if the flier appeared in the mailing, Jewish participation in the symposium would be withdrawn. This would have meant not only diminished support from the large local Jewish community, but also the loss of a rabbi who was scheduled as one of the keynote speakers.
Helen Feely, codirector of the SRCP, further informed the SPC that no literature prepared by the SPC Middle East task force could be dis­played during the proceedings. In discussing the matter later, Feely was emphatic: "The Middle East task force has absolutely inflamed the Jew­ish community here, because they do not uphold the fight of Israel to exist. That material is just inflammatory."31
Greg Degiere, head of the SPC Middle East task force, protested that his group did recognize Israel's right to exist.32 He pointed out that the SPC called for an end to war in the Middle East, respect for the human rights of all persons in the region, and mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. The prohibition on discussion of the Mid­dle East, along with the restriction on the center's right to distribute information, was accepted, however, as the cost of Jewish participation in the symposium. Lester Frazen, the rabbi who served as a keynote speaker and thus helped provoke the issue, had unusual credentials for a showdown over free speech. He had boldly asserted his own First Amendment right at the outset of the 1982 Israeli march into Lebanon. He was among the leaders of a Sacramento march, which consisted mainly of fundamentalist Christians, who expressed their joyous sup­port for the invasion with a banner proclaiming: "God's empire is strik­ing back!" Yet Frazen and his backers denied the Sacramento Peace Center the right to memorialize the victims of that invasion or to call for a negotiated end to killing on both sides.
In light of this background, it is not surprising that, although the official title of the gathering was "Faith, War, and Peace in the Nuclear Age," the agenda failed to address conflicts in the Middle East, the region many observers believed to be the most likely center of nuclear con­frontation. As Joseph Gerson, peace secretary for the American Friends Service Committee in New England observed, "The Middle East has been the most consistently dangerous nuclear trigger. Presidents Truman,
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Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon all threatened to use nuclear weapons there. . . ."33
The Uproar over Palm Sunday
Despite Jewish-fundamentalist cooperation and the pressures brought to bear against those who publicly advocated negotiation and reconciliation in the Middle East, a few religious leaders had the courage to speak out. Foremost among them was the Very Reverend Francis B. Sayre, who took the occasion of Palm Sunday, 1972, to raise a number of questions to which American Christians are still debating the answers.
Throughout his twenty-seven years as dean of the National Cathe­dral in Washington, the hearty and dramatic Sayre took controversial stands on a wide variety of public policy issues. In the early fifties he fired some of the first salvos in the campaign to discredit McCarthyism. Declaring the Wisconsin senator s followers "the frightened and credu­lous collaborators of a servile brand of patriotism" brought Sayre a tor­rent of hate mail, but the possibility of criticism never caused him to shy away from speaking out on issues that stirred his conscience. He worked as an early advocate of civil rights for blacks, and in the sixties and sev­enties he stood in the forefront of opposition to the Vietnam War.
Sayre was the grandson of Woodrow Wilson, and his father had been a diplomat, law professor, and eminent Episcopalian layman. Sayre continued the family tradition of leadership, relishing his position as leader of the cathedrals influential congregation. Offered a government post by the newly installed Kennedy administration in 1960, his reply was swift: "No thanks. I already have the best job in Washington."34
He once described his role as dean of the cathedral as a "liaison between church and state" and as a platform for "moral guidance" for government leaders. He explained his activism with characteristic candor: "Whoever is appointed dean of a cathedral has in his hand a marvelous instrument, and he's a coward if he doesn't use it."35
On Palm Sunday, 1972, Sayre used his prestigious pulpit to deliver a sermon that was perhaps the most powerful—and was certainly one of the most controversial—of his career.36 He spoke on Jerusalem, identi­fying the ancient city as a symbol of both the purest yearnings and the darkest anger of the human heart. Historically, he proclaimed, both
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extremes were embodied in events of the single week between Jesus' tri­umphal entry into the city and His crucifixion:
Amidst the pageantry and exultation of Palm Sunday, Jerusalem was the emblem of all mans dreams: a king that will someday come to loose us from every bondage; dream of peace that shall conquer every violence; holi­ness of heaven driving out the dross of earth.
But just as Jerusalem symbolized "man's yearning for the transcen-dently good," so did it demonstrate his capacity for "hateful evil":
Her golden domes are also known as "the Place of the Skull." . .. Jerusalem, in all the pain of her history, remains the sign of our utmost reproach: the zenith of our hope undone by the wanton meanness of men who will not share it with their fellows but choose to kill rather than be overruled by God.
Having recognized Jerusalem as a portrayal of "the terrible ambiva­lence of the human race about truth, about himself, about God," Sayre spoke compassionately about the meaning of Jerusalem for the people now living in Israel:
Surely one can sympathize with the loving hope of that little state, which aspires to be the symbol, nay more: the embodiment of a holy peoplehood. For her, Jerusalem is the ancient capital; the city of the temple that housed the sacred Ark of the Covenant. To achieve a government there is . . . the fulfillment of a cherished prayer tempered in suffering, newly answered upon the prowess of her young men and the skill of her generals. Around the world Hosannah has echoed as Jewish armies surged across the open scar that used to divide Arab Jerusalem from the Israeli sector.
Yet Sayre s sermon was fired by a troubled sense that since the mil­itary victory of 1967, five years before, something had gone terribly wrong. By 1972 Jerusalem was completely under Israeli control. But, to Sayre, mankind's moral tragedy had been reenacted in Israel's treatment of the city's Arab population. As he saw it, the dream had been tar­nished:
Now oppressed become oppressors. Arabs are deported; Arabs are impris­oned without charge; Arabs are deprived of the patrimony of their lands and
5 They Dare to Speak Out
homes; their relatives may not come to settle in Jerusalem; they have nei­ther voice nor happiness in the city that, after all, is the capital of their reli­gious devotion too!
Addressing the moral consequences of the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, Sayre quoted Dr. Israel Shahak—a Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camp at Belsen, a professor at Hebrew University, and a dissenter from Israeli policy—who branded the annexation "an immoral and unjust act," and called for recognition that "the present sit­uation of one community oppressing the other will poison us all, and us Jews first of all."
Sayre explained that Israel's treatment of the Arabs mirrored "that fatal flaw in the human breast that forever leaps to the acclaim of God, only to turn the next instant to the suborning of His will for ours."
He was not the only Washington clergyman to express a theme crit­ical of Israel that day.37 Dr. Edward Elson, pastor of the National Pres­byterian Church and chaplain of the U.S. Senate, chided "those Christians who justify Israel's actions in Jerusalem on the basis that they are the fulfillment of prophecy." And the Armenian Orthodox legate to Washington, Bishop Papken, called on Israel to recognize that "Jerusalem belongs to all men."
But because of his reputation and eminent position in American reli­gion, Sayre was singled out to bear the brunt of the criticism. Rabbi Joshua O. Haberman of the Washington Hebrew Congregation reported to Sayre that the sermon was "so distressing to the Israeli government that there had even been a cabinet meeting on the subject—what to do about this minister who had been friendly always to the Jews but who was so misguided." The response was not long in coming. Two leaders of the Washington Jewish Community Council issued a statement denouncing all three sermons and taking particular exception to the address of Sayre. Drs. Harvey H. Ammerman and Isaac Frank said that Jews, Christians, and Muslims "freely mingle in the reunited city and live and carry on their work in peace." They characterized the Sayre sermon as "an outrageous slander."
The Washington Post called Sayre's sermon "an intemperate denunci­ation of current Israeli policy in Jerusalem."38 Washington Post editors objected to Sayre's assertion that "even as [Israelis] praise their God for the smile of forrune, they begin almost simultaneously to put Him to
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death." They found the statement "painfully close to a very old, very familiar line of the worst bigotry."
An angry letter to the editor published in the the Washington Post dis­missed Sayre's sermon as "nonfactual garbage":
This churchman illustrates well the typical liberal gentile bleeding-heart attitude to the Jews—we'll commiserate with you as long as you're depen­dent on our goodwill for your survival, and we'll weep for you when you are slaughtered every few years by our coreligionists—but Lordy, don't you start winning and controlling your own destiny! The hell with them, I say.3'
Several such letters appeared in the Washington press in the weeks after Palm Sunday, yet few challenged Sayre's central contention that Israeli policy did not grant equal treatment to Arabs and Jews living in Jerusalem. The situation in Jerusalem was a matter of fact, subject to relatively easy refutation—or confirmation—through inquiry. Yet Sayre's critics, in the manner of the Post editors, largely confined their attacks to the tone and lack of "temperance" in his sermon. Sayre received wide­spread criticism, not for being wrong, but for being a forthright critic of unjust Israeli policies and therefore, in the eyes of some critics, anti-Semitic. Despite his long career of humanitarian activism, partisans of Israel sought to discredit Sayre himself since they could not discredit his arguments. Writer Ernest Volkmann charged that Sayre demonstrated "mindless pro-Arabism [that] had undone many years of patient effort to improve relations between Christians and Jews."40
David A. Clarke of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference wrote to defend Sayre: "I do view with some distrust the emotional rebuttals that follow any question of the propriety of Israeli conduct."41 He likened such emotionalism to the initial reaction against those who first challenged long-established concepts of racial superiority. Referring to U.S. policy in the Middle East, he expressed gratitude "that one of such intellectual integrity as Dean Sayre has given a differing view so that our perspective will nor be one-dimensional."
But influential Chtistians remained divided in their reaction to the speech. Some shared Sayre's troubled disapproval of Israeli policy in the Holy City. Others continued to invoke the specter of anti-Semitism.
The Reverend Carl Mclntire, an outspoken Protestant fundamen­talist, took exception to Sayre's sermon in a letter published in the
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Washington Star. He and Sayre had clashed previously, when Mclntire had sought to disrupt a rally against the Vietnam War at the Washington Cathedral and Sayre had personally ushered him away from the gather­ing. "The liberals represented by the dean have long since departed from the historic Christian view concerning Israel and Jerusalem," proclaimed Mclntire. Describing the 1967 war as "a thrilling example of how to deal with aggressors and the forces backed by Communism," he invoked scrip­tural justification for Israeli possession of conquered territory:
It is for those of us who believe the Bible to be the Word of God [to] come now to the assistance of our Jewish neighbors. What God has given them they are entitled to possess, and none of the land that they have won should be bartered away.42
Some mainline clergymen joined in the fundamentalist outcry over the Palm Sunday sermon. Two leaders of the Council of Churches of Greater Washington issued a public statement declaring it "distressing and perplexing that men of goodwill should choose the start of this holy week for both Christians and Jews to make pronouncements that would inevitably be construed as anti-Judaic."43
Two Catholic clergymen—an official of the secretariat for Catho­lic-Jewish Relations and a director of the United States Catholic Con­ference—joined in an attempt to discredit Sayre. First they questioned the propriety of Sayre's quoting Israel Shahak, a dissident, to substanti­ate his charges of Israeli injustice in Jerusalem: "Is it not too close to the old anti-Semitic stratagem of using passages from the Hebrew prophets in order to scold Jews?"44 More significant, they asserted that they had "failed to find any evidence of Israeli oppression" during a recent trip to Jerusalem.
Yet an article in Christianity Today reported a quite different reaction from the editor of the United Church Observer, an official publication of the United Church of Canada. The Reverend A. C. Forrest praised Sayre for "the courage, knowledge, and insight to speak prophetically about one of the most disturbing situations in the world today." Citing UN reports on Jerusalem, he said Sayre's charges "are kind of old stuff to anyone who's done his homework or traveled enough in the Middle East."45
Support for Sayre was voiced by Jesuit educator Joseph L. Ryan of Georgetown University.46 Explaining that he spoke in response to the
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injunction of Pope Paul VI—"If you wish peace, work for justice"— Father Ryan cited statements by the pope and by Catholic leaders in sev­eral Middle Eastern countries expressing concern about Israeli actions in Jerusalem and about the misery of Palestinian refugees. He pointed out that Israeli oppression of Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem was doc­umented by publications of the Israeli League for Human Rights and the United Nations. "There is no dearth of evidence," he wrote. "If the pub­lic raising of these cases of oppression is shocking, the reality is incom­parably more shocking."
Father Ryan reserved his strongest language for criticizing unques­tioning Christian supporters of Israeli policies:
Further, a few Catholics and Protestants propagate the insinuation that to be anti-Zionist (that is, critical of Israel) is to be anti-Semitic. In their anx­iety to wipe out racism, these spokesmen go to extremes. This insinuation, which they try to make widespread, hinders instead of helps the develop­ment of proper relations between Christians and Jews, and inhibits the free and open discussion of fundamental differences [that] for Americans as cit­izens of their country and of the world community is essential in the search for justice and peace.
Sayre remained largely detached from the tempest he had stirred on Palm Sunday. His only public action was to state through an aide that he would not retract any of his comments. Years later he acknowledged that, while he had given previous sermons on the plight of the Palestin­ian refugees, the 1972 Palm Sunday address was his first direct criticism of Israel. "Of course I realized that it would make a big splash," he said. "But if you put it more mildly, as I had [previously], it made no dent at all. So what are you going to do?"47
Prior to the controversial sermon, Sayre had enjoyed high standing with the American Jewish community. A local Jewish congregation, at Sayre's invitation, held services in the cathedral until its synagogue was built. Jews respected him for the work he had done as president of the United States Committee for Refugees. In this capacity he had worked to resettle Jews from Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. As an Episcopal min­ister in Cleveland after World War II, he had been head of the dio­cese's committee to settle refugees, many of them Jews, from Eastern Europe.
5 They Dare to Speak Out
The sermon had personal implications. Sayre and his family experi­enced a campaign of "very unpleasant direct intimidation" through let­ters and telephone calls. On a number of occasions, when his children answered the phone they were shouted at and verbally abused. The phone would ring in the middle of the night, only to be hung up as soon as a member of the Sayre family answered. "Even when I went out, I would be accosted rudely by somebody or other who would condemn me in a loud voice," he recalled. Such harassment continued for about six months, Sayre said, "even to the point where my life was threatened over the phone; so much so that I had the cathedral guards around the house for a while."
The ecumenical spirit between Sayre and community rabbis was strained again six months after the sermon. When eleven Israeli athletes wete killed at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich while being held captive by the tadical "Black September" guerrillas, Sayre shared the shock and revulsion felt around the world. Together with rabbis and other Jewish leaders in Washington, he immediately began to plan a memorial setvice in the cathedral.
Three days after the tragedy, Israeli warplanes attacked Palestinian camps in Syria and Lebanon, killing forty people.48 Sayre then told the rabbis of his intention to "make this a more general service than just for victims of Arab killing" and to memorialize the dead Palestinians as well.
Confronted with this prospect, the rabbis declined ro participate. There were, however, a number of Jews among the approximately 500 persons who attended the broadened memorial service. They heard Sayre describe the Arab guerrillas as "misguided and desperately misled" vic­tims "of all the bitterness their lives had been surrounded with since birth, bitterness born of issues left callously unresolved by any interna­tional conscience."49
He condemned the Israeli retaliation: "An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth is the rationale of that violence, by which I am desolate to think the government of Israel has sacrificed any moral position of injured innocence." The dean invoked the broader historical and humanitarian view that had marked his Palm Sunday sermon in words that might well be repeated for every victim of Middle East violence:
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I perceive that the victim of the violence that we mourn today is not only a latter-day Jew upon the blood-stained soil of Germany, nor yet the Arab prisoner of an equally violent heritage. The victim is all of us, the whole human race upon this earth.50
Despite these words, Sayre was treated as though he somehow was a preacher of extremism. His career never had quite the shine it had before he uttered his forthright words on the Middle East. Sayre went into semiretirement on Martha's Vineyard, where he served as chaplain at the local hospital but assumed no regular church responsibilities. One morning in 1983, I delayed his project for the morning—digging clams—to ask if the controversial Palm Sunday message had any effect on his career. Still robust in voice and spirit, Sayre answered without hesitation: "Yes, very definitely. I knew it would. It's not popular to speak out. I don't like to speculate about it, because no one knows what would have happened. But I think I was a dangerous commodity from then on, not to be considered for bishop or anything else."
"I Felt I Had to Do Something"
The American religious community has seen few figures of the stature of Francis Sayre willing to speak out forcefully for peace and justice for all Middle East peoples. At the time of the Palm Sunday sermon in 1972, he was one of the most prominent spokesmen of American Christian­ity—a powerful and intellectually gifted man wielding the authority of Washington Cathedral's prestigious pulpit. Despite the price Sayre paid for his courageous stand, younger voices have emerged that express sim­ilar resolve and depth of commitment.
The Reverend Don Wagner, a Presbyterian from Chicago, has risen quickly to the forefront of those within the religious community who seek to educate the public on realities in the Middle East and to counter the religious bias that often obscures awareness of those realities. His experiences have also brought him firsthand acquaintance with the intim­idation that such efforts call forth.
Wagner first became involved in public debate over the Middle East while serving as associate pastor of a large Presbyterian church in
5 They Dare to Speak Out
Evanston, Illinois. At the time he was, in his own words, "very pro-Israel." In the wake of the first oil crisis, in 1974 the young pastor helped organize a series of speakers within the church, alternating between pro-Israeli and pro-Arab points of view. He felt the series would aid his parishioners to better understand this unprecedented event. Wagner was quite surprised when, halfway through it, he began receiving pressure to stop the series. A barrage of anonymous telephone calls threatened picketing outside the church and more severe, unspec­ified reprisals if the series continued.
Wagner did not stop. In the end, however, the series was marred by the refusal of two Jewish members of the final panel to take part. They announced a half-hour before the scheduled discussion that the presence of an Arab academic on the panel rendered the event anti-Semitic and that they consequently refused to dignify it with their presence. They implied that Wagner had deceived them about the makeup of the panel and the nature of the discussion, although the topic of the discussion and the list of participants had been publicized well in advance.
Wagner suspected that these men had been pressured by their rab­bis to quir the conference. This suspicion was reinforced later when he learned that many of the earlier telephone calls had also been from mem­bers of the local Jewish community. One of the callers even told him directly: "I am a Jew, and this kind of activity is very anti-Semitic. For a Christian to be doing this is unconscionable." This experience was an eye-opener for Wagner. He discovered, as have others who have dared to speak out and become involved, that one need not actually criticize the Jewish people or the state of Istael to be labeled anti-Semitic. Simply raising questions about Middle East issues and assuming that the answers may not all be obvious is enough to evoke the charge.
Wagner first traveled to the Middle East in 1977. He paid his own way but traveled with representatives of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC), an organization concerned with the protection of Palestinian rights. After spending time with refugees and other residents in Beirut, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, Wagner felt his long-standing sympathy for rhe displaced Palestinian refugees growing into a strong personal imperative. "I felt I had to do something," he recalled.
After his return to the United States, he learned how difficult it could be to "do something." Shortly before his departure for the Mid­
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die East, Wagner had arranged a church speaking engagement for Dr. Israel Shahak, a prominent critic of Israeli government policy. He returned to discover that the senior minister of his church had acceded to pressure from local rabbis to cancel the Shahak engagement without informing eithet him or Shahak. The senior minister explained that the local rabbis had convinced him that it would be "in the best interests of the church and Jewish relations" if the appearance of such a well-known critic of Israeli policy were canceled.
Undeterred, Wagner became increasingly active in speaking up about the Palestinian plight, offering Sunday morning prayers for the refugees, promoting more educational activities, and even bringing Palestinian Christians to his pulpit to speak. His activities led not only to a contin­uation of public criticism and pressure, but also to problems within the staff of his own church as well. One associate frequently teferred to him as "the PLO pastor," and staff friction grew as Wagner proceeded with plans for the First LaGrange Conference (LaGrange I), named for the Illinois town in which it was held in the spring of 1979.
This conference, like LaGrange II, which would follow in May 1981, was aimed at raising awareness of the Palestinian refugee situation among American church groups and leaders. Both meetings were attended by a broad ecumenical body of Christians, including Evangelical, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox. The first conference was jointly sponsored by PHRC and the Middle East task force of the Chi­cago Presbytery. The second was sponsored by PHRC and the Christian peace groups Pax Christi and Sojourners. The theme of these confer­ences was summed up in the title of LaGrange II: "Toward Biblical Foundations for a Just Peace in the Holy Land."
After a series of speakers and panels was presented, each conference issued a statement. These two documents have become a topic of debate within the American religious community. The statements stress the common humanity of Arabs, Jews, and Christians and call upon the American Christian churches to be more active in spreading information and promoting reconciliation and peace. Specifically, the churches are enjoined to "encourage dialogue with other Christians as well as Jews and others concerning the priorities of peace in the Holy Land" and to "inform and educate their people of the historical roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
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The participants in LaGrange I and II made a significant step in ecumenical cooperation for greater public understanding of the Middle East. Unfortunately, opponents of cooperation and understanding were also in attendance.
Prior to the convening of LaGrange I, the Chicago Presbytery received pressure from the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, led by associate director Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, to withdraw Presbyter­ian sponsorship of the conference. There were telephone calls, an exten­sive letter writing campaign, and, finally, meetings between Jewish leaders and members of the church hierarchy.
The elders of the church stood by Wagner, but the Jewish commu­nity promptly passed judgment on the conference. The day before the conference convened, the ADL issued a press release condemning its "anti-Semitic bias."
Efforts to discredit the conference did not end there. The slate of speakers had been planned to include the Reverend John Polakowski, a noted writer on the Holocaust and an active Zionist. On the morning of the conference Father Polakowski sent a registered letter to Wagner announcing his withdrawal from the conference. He had been fully informed as to the nature of the conference and the identity of many of the other speakers, but he denounced the conference as unfairly biased against the Israeli perspective.51 He fulfilled his own prophecy. His deci­sion to deprive the conference of his own perspective caused the Zion­ist view to be underrepresented at LaGrange I.
LaGrange II witnessed a virtual repeat of the same tactic. Rabbi Arnold Kaiman had agreed to address a section of the conference entitled "Religious People Talking from Their Perspectives." He had been invited to speak partly because of his long-standing personal friendship with Ayoub Talhami, coconvenor of the conference. Talhami had discussed the planned conference with Rabbi Kaiman in detail and sent him a draft copy of the conference flier, and, of course, the rabbi was aware of the pre­vious conference. On the day of the conference Kaiman sent a special delivery letter to Wagner, Talhami, and others announcing his withdrawal from the conference.52 The letter denounced Talhami and the convenors of the conference for having "misled" and "deceived" him. Talhami felt that the letter was intended mainly for Kaiman's congregational board, both because the chairman of that board was a coaddressee of the letter and because rhe accusations of deceit were so preposrerous.
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Whatever his reasons, Kaiman did more than refuse to speak and repudiate the conference. He provided copies of his letter to reporters so that the withdrawal of a pro-Zionist could be publicized before the con­ference could issue its statement.
To Wagner, the last-minute withdrawals of Polakowski and Kaiman, each made after it was too late to schedule other pro-Israel speakers, sug­gested that these supporters of Israel were more concerned with dis-ctediting opposing points of view than with stating their own in an atmosphere of free and open debate. These withdrawals added color to subsequent ADL charges that the LaGrange conferences were "anti-Israel conferences" or "PLO gatherings," despite the balanced character of the statements that emerged from the conferences.
The most disturbing incident to emerge from LaGrange I and II, however, did not involve attempts to discredit the conferences them­selves, but were the false charges made against one of the participants.
Sister Miriam Ward, a professor of humanities at Trinity College in Vetmont and a Catholic nun, has a long record of humanitarian concern for Palestinian refugees. By her own description, her role in LaGrange II was modest. "I had doubts about whether I could justify the expense of going," she once said. Sister Miriam moderated a panel discussion and received an award for her humanitarian endeavors. Like Mr. Wag­ner, she knew from experience the price of speaking out on Palestinian questions. Her activities had also attracted hate mail and personal innu­endoes. Still, she was not prepared for the smear that resulted from her participation at LaGrange.53
Sister Miriam was singled out for a personal attack in The Jewish Week—American Examiner, a prominent New York City Jewish publica­tion. The June 21, 1981, issue gave significant coverage to a scheme to disrupt Israeli policy on the occupied West Bank—a scheme that Sister Miriam had supposedly advanced at the conference. The article claimed that she had urged that "churches finance a project with staff in the United States and field-workers in Israel and the West Bank for the pur­pose of 'spying on the Israelis.' "54 She was reported saying, "By the time the Israelis caught on to what was going on and expelled a field-worker, they [presumably Sister Miriam and her coconspirators] would have a replacement ready." The Jewish Week article added that "the proposal was accepted without dissent, and ways of obtaining church funds for it were discussed."
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The report was a complete fabrication. No one at the LaGrange con­ference had suggested such a plan, least of all Sister Miriam, and she was stunned when Wagner telephoned from Chicago to inform her of the printed allegations. She had always shunned publicity for her humani­tarian activities, and she felt intimidated and intensely alone at being singled out for attack. "I was physically ill for some time," she recalls, "and could not even discuss the matter with other members of my reli­gious community."55
After pondering how—and whether—to respond, she finally sought the advice of a prominent biblical scholar who was lecturing at Trinity College. He advised her to see an attorney about the possibility of legal action. The attorney was sympathetic and agreed to take at least pre­liminary action free of charge. After several letters from the attorney elicited no response from the newspaper, the scholar, a prominent mem­ber of the New York Jewish community, personally telephoned the edi­tor. Sister Miriam feels that it was his call that impelled the editor to act.
In January 1982—more than six months after the original charges had been asserted—a retraction was finally printed in The Jewish Week—American Examiner.% The editors admitted that, "on checking, we find that there is no basis for the quotations attributed to" Sister Miriam. They explained that the story had been "furnished by a service" and "was not covered by any staff member of The Jewish Week." In their retraction, the editors added that they were "happy to withdraw any reflection upon" Sister Miriam.
Yet, as Sister Miriam discovered, the published apology could not erase the original charge from the minds of all readers. Later the same year, a Jewish physician from New York was visiting Burlington as part of a campus program at Trinity College. In a conversation between this woman and another member of Sister Miriam's religious order, the name of the biblical scholar involved in Sister Miriam's case came up. The nun mentioned that he had recently visited Trinity at the invitation of Sister Miriam. Recognizing the name from the original Jewish Week article, the physician repeated with indignation the accusations made against Sister Miriam. She had not seen the retraction. The visitor was quickly informed rhat the charges were false. Sister Miriam cited this as an exam­ple of why she is convinced that the damage to her reputation can never
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really be undone. "It's the original thing that does the harm. I just don't want it to happen to anybody else."57
"God Will Poor Out His Wrath"
With the September 2000 onset of the Palestinian intifada—commonly translated as "uprising"—the tenuous relationship between Zionist Jews and evangelical Christians became even more sharply defined. As reports of Israeli brutality reached Americans, the Christian community divided into two main groups: those whose faith compelled them to work on behalf of Palestinians suffering under occupation, and those who sought the fulfillment of God's prophecy—a Jewish Jerusalem, and the Temple rebuilt. Regardless of the position taken, the Israeli-Palestinian issue came to the forefront of debate in Christian America.
"I don't think anything since Vietnam or apartheid has had the impact [in Christian communities] that this is having," said Stephen Swecker, editor of Zion's Herald magazine of Christian opinion. "It hits very close to the heart when you see . . . the Church of the Nativity under siege and sniper fire lighting up the site where Jesus was born."58
Despite the danger posed to Christian holy sites by Israeli occupy­ing forces, leaders of the Christian right remained staunch in their sup­port of Israel. One of them, Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition direcror, chair of Georgia's Republican Party, and a man previously crit­icized by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for a perceived lack of tolerance, now writes an op-ed piece that the ADL places in national newspaper advertisements.59
Other Jewish groups also welcome Christian support: Toward Tra­dition, headed by a rabbi, encourages American Jews to recognize "Israel's best friend"—the Christian right. Judy Hellman, in charge of the Kansas City Jewish Committee's Community Relations Board, put it best: "I think it's called pragmatism." National ADL director Abraham Foxman agreed: "Our tradition teaches us to say thank you. We don't need to do more." As long as the Christian right is unflinching in its support of Israel, and as long as that support isn't expected to be returned, Jewish Zionist groups will continue to welcome any help they can get.
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As usual, these groups take their cue from the Israeli government. At a New York pro-Israel rally, Israeli consul general Alon Pinkas said that Israelis were "very rhankful for the commitment of the Evangelical Christian community." As well they should be. Much of that commit­ment has its roots in Israeli public relations activity. Suffering a loss of tourism revenues and serious economic damage as a result of the new intifada, Israel's Ministry of Tourism hired TouchPoint Solutions, a Col­orado consulting agency, to target Christian Zionists and encourage sup­port of Israel. According to Auburn University Professor of Religious Studies Richard Penaskovic:
Part of the marketing plan involves persuading the top thirty evangelical Zionists to visit and promote Israel. Some of the top evangelical Zionists will receive expense-paid trips to the Holy Land, and the Israeli government has had strategy sessions with the Christian Coalition, headed by Pat Robertson, and other conservative Christian groups.60
Israel's efforts in garnering even more support from the Christian right took quick effect. In May 2002, fundamentalist Christians coop­erated in several pro-Israel rallies. For example, several hundred people gathered in Nashville to encourage the Tennessee legislature to pass a res­olution supporting Israel. One of the Christian sponsors, citing Old Tes­tament scripture, warned the gathering, "God will pour out his wrath among the nations because they are dividing up the land of Israel." About 2,000 attended a similar rally in Memphis.61
Despite this outspoken support, many American Jews are hesitant to fully embrace the Christian right as allies in a mutual cause. The ques­tion of true intentions comes up again and again. In a speech at a Bap­tist church, U.S. House of Representatives majority whip Tom DeLay (R-TX), a longtime Israel supporter, said, "Only Chrisrianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought. Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world—only Christianity." The comment prompted a harsh response from the National Jewish Democratic Counsel: "His exclu-sionist, fundamentalist Christian worldview ... is indicative of why the American Jewish community will always be uncomfortable with Chris­tian conservative leaders, regardless of their strong support for Israel."62