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Church Group Vows Renewed Mideast Effort

Episcopal News Service. March 17, 1988 [88048]

NEW YORK (DPS, March 17) -- A team of Episcopalians led by the wife of the Presiding Bishop has returned from the Diocese of Jerusalem determined to bring the strengths of the Church -- including its special offerings -- to the support of the suffering population of the region.

Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning asked the group -- which consisted of five Episcopalians and two members of the Church of England -- to make the trip after consultation with the Episcopal Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt. Rev. Samir Kafity, and with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Patti Browning, who had accompanied the Presiding Bishop on his official visit to the Middle East 14 months ago, said she was anxious to return to renew her support for the ministry of the Arab Christian women whom she had met last year and her personal friendship with Najet Kafity who will join her husband at the General Convention this summer in Detroit.

The team spent 10 days in the diocese, much of it in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank where the diocese runs the schools, homes, and hospitals that are the core of its ministry. They talked with pastors, medical personnel, teachers, students, witnesses, and victims of what has come to be called by the Palestinians "The Uprising." They were given photographs taken in the hospitals of some of the victims and their wounds and a set of affidavits of testimony by victims and witnesses.

Although much of this material will be available to human rights and government officials, little of it appears in the report which, instead, concentrates on a six-part pledge of action that will be laid before Episcopal Church and Church of England members and will call for short- and long-term financial support for the diocese, stepped up political action for a settlement, and education into the enormously complex issues that create the middle eastern fabric.

"Much of what we witnessed and were told confirms and extends the story we see on television news and read in the papers and journals," said one team member. "The reporters and photographers are not getting into the hospitals and so can only show the street fighting, not the effects of the horrible wounds, wounds often inflicted by weapons meant to kill rather than meant for simple crowd control. The victims are the children who are carrying on this crusade and the very old, who can't dodge it. We will continue to witness for those victims in the appropriate circles, but we all felt that our immediate task would be to harness the energy of the Churches to accomplish what can be done quickly."

A large element of these proposals is support for the continuing compassionate ministries of the Church and the themes of compassion and service echo throughout the report.

"As we have listened, we have learned that while Christians are a tiny minority among the Palestinians, they share with all Palestinians a deep sense of solidarity in their struggle for justice and peace," the report notes. "These Christians through their service demonstrate a powerful love which embraces Muslims and Jews. Although our visit was primarily to the Episcopal Church, we have been fully aware that many Jews, both inside and outside Israel, feel the agony of the present crisis and long for a just and lasting peace among all peoples in the area."

Specifically, the Episcopal Church will expand its commitment to the hospitals in Gaza and Nablus where the diocese is able to provide medical treatment for 20,000 people a year and will encourage vigorous use by parishes of the Good Friday Offering which supports the ministries of the diocese and the rest of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East.

In addition, the panel agreed to push for renewed efforts in support of groups and nations that are working for a just settlement -- which by definition must include affirmation of both the state of Israel and the rights of Palestinians to determination. The report lifted up the resolution passed by the Anglican Consultative Council last spring as a basis for discussion and movement.

Directly related to these elements is the section of the report that spells out the potential for the Anglican Communion in the affairs of the Middle East. Although a small church even among the native Christians, the Anglican Communion has a historic relationship to all the people and faiths of the region as caregiver and educator. Palestinians, Christian or Muslim, prefer to be treated at the Anglican hospitals and even the King of Jordan was educated in an Anglican school. In addition, the Church, which enjoys strong local ecumenical relations, was the first of the western Christian churches to choose indigenous leadership. In the last 15 months, both the Lutheran Church and the Latin Rite (Roman Catholic) Church have chosen native Christians as primates.

It was the sense of compassion and service that the visitors brought back with them -- a sense embodied by the reflections of Patti Browning.

She explained that she had first become interested in the Holy Land when she and her husband were on furlough from their mission in 1962. The relationship was renewed last year and she told of retracing many of the steps of last year's visit. "Except that this year, the schools which were thriving had been closed since December and the teachers were busy assembling material they carried to each student for home study. Seeing that struggle in all those schools was heartbreaking, but there was one incident... we were in St. Luke's hospital in Nablus, and we could hear the shooting and demonstrations going on down the hillside. One Palestinian woman had just, within the hour, given birth, and she held up her swaddled baby to show me, and she was just beaming. I asked the baby's name and was told, through the translator that the child would be called "peace."

That incident is a clear example of what Kafity calls the effects of the ministry of service and it was that ministry that Bishop Peter Lee of Virginia touched on when he preached at St. George's Cathedral during the visit. "Ours is a community that must be open, willing to risk, vulnerable, because our posture is obedient and hopeful, watching and waiting for what God is doing, and demonstrating that obedience by serving others in vulnerable love. We see that image in the Church in Jerusalem. Christians look. Christians serve."

Resolution 25, Palestine/Israel Anglican Consultative Council

THAT this Council:

(a) affirms the importance of the Church in the exercise of its prophetic role by standing on the side of the oppressed in their struggle for justice, and by promoting justice, peace and reconciliation for all peoples in the region;

(b) affirms the existence of the State of Israel and its right to recognized and secure borders, as well as the civic and human rights of all those who live within its borders;

(c) rejects the interpretation of Holy Scripture which affirms the special place of the present State of Israel in the light of biblical prophecy, finds it detrimental to peace and justice, and damaging to Jews, Christians and Muslims;

(d) calls attention to the injustice done to the Palestinians in consequence of the creation of the State of Israel, and therefore affirms the right of the Palestinians to determination, including consideration of the possibility of establishment of their own state;

(e) supports the convening of an international conference over Palestine/Israel under the auspices of the UN and based on all the UN resolutions in relation to this conflict, to which all parties of the conflict be invited including the PLO;

(f) commits itself to continued prayer for Israelis and Palestinians, for Muslim, Jew and Christian, for the achievement of justice, peace and reconciliation for all.

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