In a three-page statement issued late Tuesday, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick defended recent church votes that one prominent Jewish group called "hostile and aggressive."
"I encourage Presbyterians to maintain their relationships with people of other faiths, with sensitivity to the fragility of trust in the present climate of violence and terror," said Kirkpatrick, the church's highest elected official.
Church headquarters in Louisville, Ky., has been "inundated" with hundreds of angry phone calls and e-mails from Jews who protested votes on Jewish evangelism and the Israeli-Jewish conflict during the church's recent General Assembly in Richmond, Va. Delegates narrowly voted -- 260-233 -- to maintain funding for churches, including one in suburban Philadelphia, that are geared toward Jewish converts to Christianity.
The Philadelphia congregation, Avodat Yisrael, received $260,000 from various church agencies and has been called offensive by Jews for its use of Jewish ritual music and sacred objects such as Torah scrolls and menorahs in Christian worship.
Delegates also voted 431-62 to study whether the church should divest from companies doing business in Israel. The last time the church altered its portfolio in protest of a foreign country was in the 1980s against South Africa.
Recent articles in the Jewish press had reported that the church approved a blanket divestment. Rather, a decision will not be made until next March when a committee reports back with recommendations to church leaders.
In a separate 471-34 vote, delegates said the controversial Israeli security wall "ghettoizes the Palestinians and forces them onto what can only be called reservations," the church said.
In his statement, Kirkpatrick refused to apologize for any of the votes. Kirkpatrick said the votes on Israel were taken "as part of a larger commitment of the PC(USA) to human rights and social justice all around the world. It should be noted that the (church) is not singling out Israel and Palestine alone for observation and critique."
Funding decisions are handled by local bodies called presbyteries, and church leaders trust the projects that receive money have been vetted and are appropriate, he said.
B'nai B'rith International, in a statement issued Tuesday, said the "hostile and aggressive" votes "shattered 50 years of interfaith dialogue" between Jews and Presbyterians. The group said talks must be suspended until church leaders "recant."
Joel Kaplan, president of the international humanitarian group, demanded an apology for the "absolutely horrifying" statements by the Presbyterians that he said ignored the ongoing terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. "I think the Presbyterian Church on this issue totally departed from anything real, rational or fair, and has in a great way debased itself and its reputation," Kaplan said in an interview.
Last week, the Anti-Defamation League said "targeting Jews for conversion to Christianity is an insult to the Jewish people."
The Rev. Jay Rock, the church's interfaith affairs director, acknowledged that relations with Jewish groups have hit near rock-bottom. "Its certainly a very tense point, but I don't think it's going to break the relationship," Rock said. "At least we don't have any intention of doing that on our side."
Rock pointed out, however, that a 1987 statement that discouraged targeting Jews for evangelism because they "are already in a covenantal relationship with God" remains unchanged. Because national-level funding was preserved, more local bodies could still request money for messianic congregations. "But frankly, given the amount of outcry there's been, I don't think very many presbyteries would want to walk into such a hornet's nest," Rock said.
The church's coordinator of Middle East affairs, the Rev. Victor Makari, acknowledged that the three separate votes could be viewed as hostile to Jews, but insisted they were not. "If we must generalize, they might perceive the one action about the particular congregation in Philadelphia and the rumored action on divestment to be a collaborative campaign against the Jews, but that's not the case," Makari said in an interview.
The Rev. Susan Andrews, who ended her term as moderator at the Richmond assembly, said the church needs to "rethink" how it funds evangelism so as not to offend Jews. Andrews' church in Bethesda, Md., shares space with a Jewish congregation. "I do not believe the Presbyterian Church is backing off in any way, shape or form from its historic relationship with American Jews," she said, "and we continue to respect and understand that the Jewish people are already in covenant with God."
