Tuesday, February 25, 2014

So Now Mixing Religion & Politics Is ... Okay?


He is

the head of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives and associate professor of Christian Ethics and director of the National Capital Semester for Seminarians (NCSS) at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. His research interests include ethics and international affairs, the public implications of religious belief, and the intersection of religion and politics. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School with a Doctorate of Theology in Religion and Society, Casey has written on the ethics of the war in Iraq as well the role of religion in American presidential politics. 

He has been in my "neighborhood".   And he

visited Bishop Munib Younan and the Lay Preachers Academy on Friday, February 14th, to discuss the peace process and the role of the Lutheran church in peace.  Mr. Casey met Bishop Munib Younan in Jerusalem and asked Bishop Younan to speak on how the church sees its role as peacemakers in the Middle East.

Mr. Casey then traveled to AbrahamsHerberge in Beit Jala to speak with the members of the Lay Preachers Academy and ask for their candid opinions on the peace process and to ask how Palestinian Christians view themselves and their community.  Mr. Casey spent 90 minutes listening to the Lutheran Christian voices of Palestine on their concerns about the current peace talks and their hopes for the future.

I haven't heard him visiting a Jewish community in Judea and Samaria.

Which is odd.

Why?

Well, besides the obvious?

Because if his job is based on faith, why were Jews not visited?  After all, are not we usually accused, pejoratively, of mixing religion and politics?

Oh, that Bishop?



His political agenda is:-


it is my strong hope that these discussions result in a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including a shared Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the end of Israeli occupation, including settlements, according to international law.

There go the Jews.

And then gets nasty:

 It continues to be my vision that Palestinians will one day see the image of God in their Israeli neighbors 

"One day"?  We have no such image now?  The Arabs are blind?  Or they blind themselves to the reality?  Victims of their own propaganda and incitement campaigns?

I learn from here that he has signed the Kairos Document (#204) which declares

the occupation of Palestinian land as a sin against God and humanity

The document also suggests we Jews have a lesser right to this land:

2.3.2 Our presence in this land, as Christian and Muslim Palestinians, is not accidental but rather deeply rooted in the history and geography of this land, resonant with the connectedness of any other people to the land it lives in. It was an injustice when we were driven out. The West sought to make amends for what Jews had endured in the countries of Europe, but it made amends on our account and in our land. They tried to correct an injustice and the result was a new injustice.

It is as if only anti-Semitism is our justification; we have no national ethos.

So, is this Kerry's new ally, his political ally?

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And EOZ updates with new, powerful info.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That new info:

"The West sought to make amends for what Jews had endured in the countries of Europe, but it made amends on our account and in our land"

this sentence contains two lies:
1-- that only Europeans were guilty in the Holocaust, disregarding the mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini and his entourage of Palestinian Arabs who spent the war years in Europe aiding in and encouraging the Shoah, and the massacres of Jews in Arab lands in the Nazi period, as the farhud in Bagdad.

2-- that the land has always belonged to Arabs or "palestinians" in the character of "our land"