Interreligious Peace Convocation

By the Reverend L. Humphrey Walz

The US Interreligious Committee for Peace is sponsoring another National Convocation for Peace in the Middle East March 8-9 in Washington, DC. Participation is open to all people interested in hearing prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, joining workshops on local and national cooperation for better US policy, and talking with appropriate US legislators.

Like last year's similar Jan. 27-28 event, it will center around the organization's official rallying statement adopted in mid-June 1987 and promptly endorsed by over 1,000 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders. Among other things, it called "upon our own US government to ... promote negotiations for a just peace based on ... Israel's right to secure borders and peace with her neighbors ... the Palestinian people's right of self-determination ... (and) an international conference involving all parties."

The promotional brochure notes the frustrating, complicating fact that "all three religions are used by some to perpetuate hatred and violence." Still, to the 45-member interfaith board of directors, this is simply an added incentive to "work for peace (as) a moral imperative of our common Abrahamic faith."

"The significance of this effort is that we might create the moral space, and in some sense 'pressure' in this country, that is needed for the US to provide a catalyst for peace in the Middle East," notes Fr. J. Bryan Hehir of the US Catholic Conference. "We believe," explains Imam W. Deen Mohammad of Chicago, "the religious community should come forward and speak as a strong voice for peace in the Middle East." To which their fellow board member Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Dartmouth professor of religion, adds: "in pursuing peace in the Middle East, the president of the US would represent American opinion, which is overwhelmingly in support of both the existence of Israel and justice for the Palestinians."

Ronald J. Young, executive director, sees in recent developments a glimmer of "evidence that there may be a greater opportunity for negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians than ever." And, he observes, "there are clear dangers for all peoples in the region and the whole world if there is no peace. The need for a positive US role ... (is now) ... being openly debated ... However, most leaders are nervous to say or do anything without some assurance of public support." It is this that the convocation aims to elicit.

Young's 194-page, $8.95, 1987 Missed Opportunities for Peace was published by the American Friends Service Committee, 1510 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102. He and his wife Carol Jensen gathered the documentation for the book while serving the AFSC in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. For convocation program details and registration forms, write US Interreligious Committee, Greene & Westview, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19119. Events will center around Washington Cathedral and the Omni Shoreharn Hotel.

Prophecy, Zionism, and the State of Israel

As you read and hear more and more of the plans, principles, and programs of the newly invigorated "religious" parties in Israel, do you begin to feel a call to try to rehabilitate some of the good old words—like religion, Jewish, covenant, Biblical, prophet, and holy—that they have helped bring into disrepute?

If so, you will welcome the availability again of Rabbi Elmer Berger's 19-page booklet, Prophecy, Zionism, and the State of Israel. Just republished in its seventh edition, its solid faith, documented sources, and clear reasoning are still as fresh, challenging, and pertinent as when it was delivered as a lecture at the University of Leyden, Holland, some 21 years ago.

For Berger the heart of Jewishness has been, and should be, a religious, covenantal commitment to obey a sovereign, righteous God. This faith the ancient Biblical prophets proclaimed to a people as human as we, confronting circumstances and choices morally, ethically, and spiritually akin to our own. Their messages to a single folk long ago and far away thus become equally applicable to everyone here and now.

"in the prophetic sense," he told his original Dutch audience, "there is nothing more Jewish about the state of Israel's armies, or its international diplomacies, or its internal problems, or its treatment of its Arab minority or its Oriental Jewish majority than there is anything Jewish about comparable policies of your country or mine.

"Conversely, when, for instance the Prophet Micah denounces the 'rulers of the house of Israel that abhor justice and pervert all equity, that build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity... (3:9f.), it is appropriate for us to ponder the relevance of his words beyond the times and places he actually addressed, including our own.

"The Holy Land can only become truly holy-can, in fact, only survive the Prophet Jeremiah told its people (7:50, 'if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor, if you oppress not the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt."' For Berger, the thought is equally pertinent to the character and survival of humanity in a jet-propelled, nuclear age.

As its title suggests, his mini opus deals concretely with a wide range of Middle Eastern and global issues. Copies may be secured free from American Jewish Alternative to Zionism, 501 5th Ave., Suite 2015, New York, NY 10017. For use in the discussions you may be moved thereby to stimulate, I suggest you request more than one copy and enclose a thank you check with your order.

Incentives to Muslim-Christian Dialogue

A long introductory editorial by Lawrence Boadt explains the decision to focus the entire November/December 1988 issue of New Catholic World on "Muslim-Christian dialogue." "One of the best-kept secrets in the United States," he reminds us, "has been the rapid rise in the number of practicing Muslims. Islam is now the fastest-growing religious group in the country, and over a thousand mosques and Islamic centers serve its believers. But it still receives little or no attention in our religious journals, popular newspapers, or ecumenical planning."

The Middle East, the birthplace of Islam, he observes, has regrettably also been the source of much misunderstanding of that faith, due to coverage of "the political and ethnic struggles of Arab and Jew. The breakup of the European mandate over the Arab lands after World War 11, and the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, gave rise to enormous turmoil in the Middle East. We have tended to identify Islam negatively with policies of Arab governments that differ from our own ... To continue this view would eventually lead to virulent prejudice against Muslims that would be as tragic as the anti-Semitism that has permeated Western societies. The eight articles that follow do much to dispel those distortions and misunderstandings. Engagingly presented by Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim authorities, they give historical, cultural, geographical, and psychological perspectives on similarities to be embraced and differences to be bridged by candid, friendly exchanges between Christian and Muslim. Individual copies at $1.75 each may be ordered from the Paulist Press, 997 MacArthur Blvd., Mahwah, NJ 07430

The Reverend L. Humphrey Walz D.D., retired associate executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast, is active in denominational and ecumenical peacemaking movements.