UCC Contemplates Relations with Jews and Mideast

By Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

When the biennial General Synod of the United Church of Christ (UCC) convenes on June 27 in Norfolk, VA, its delegates will be faced with many challenges to apply their historic faith to current pressing issues and situations. Concerned participants there will have occasion, if they should feel it necessary, further to clarify some of the Middle Eastern confusion—and to ease some of the consequent pain—persistently emanating from what some regard as a high-minded, well-intentioned, but divergently understood resolution passed at the 1987 General Synod.

Introduced there by the autonomous UCC Jewish-Christian Dialogue, its concluding paragraph "calls upon all local congregations and regional judicatories ... actively to engage in dialogue with the Jewish community in order to establish relationships of trust and to participate in a joint witness against all injustice in our local communities and in the world."

No present-day religious, national or ethnic injustices anywhere were singled out for exceptional emphasis in this all-inclusive appeal for united, compassionate fair play. Nor were any excluded, though many non-Jewish Middle Easterners did feel rejected when, through the worldwide media coverage or otherwise, they learned that the resolution's key sentence affirmed "that God's covenant with the Jewish people ... remains in full force, inasmuch as 'the gifts and the promise of God are irrevocable' (Rom. 11: 29)."

Questions About "Covenants"

Apparently the drafters had chiefly wanted to make sure that Jews did not perceive their document's earlier reference to the "covenant (with God) affirmed and embodied in Jesus" as religiously condescending toward Judaism. However, in both instances they ignored the warning of Andover Newton Theological School professors against using the emotionally charged, diversely interpreted term "covenant" "without first clarifying (its) meaning ... in the resolution. "The multiple possible interpretations of that word and its variant overtones are suggested by the fact the volumes I and V of The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (IDB) devote 39 columns to them. Not surprisingly, many news readers and viewers understood the resolution's wording as endorsing the most widely popularized claim: that God's "covenanted gift" of significant stretches of the Middle East to Abraham's descendants (Genesis 15:18; 17:8) assigned the related real estate rights and territorial sovereignty to all Jews-and only Jews—forever.

The "religious" political parties in Israel take this assumption as a divine sanction for appropriating non-Jewish property in areas conquered by the Israeli Defense Force. The Kakh (or Kach) and Tehiyah parties go on to assert that it condones forcibly extending the country's boundaries broadly enough to permit the world's entire Jewish population to move in. The Gush Emunim settlers' movement sees it as God's will to eject all non-Jewish residents to achieve this end. Premillenarian Christians support comparable views, though in the added belief that such developments are a precondition for the return of Jesus to destroy all unsaved sinners, including any unconverted Jews.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Begin (a close colleague to President Reagan's premillenarian adviser, televangelist Jerry Falwell) specifically asserted his divine Jewish right to annex all of Jordan. Sixty-five percent of Jordan's population already consists of Palestinian refugees displaced by Israeli occupation. Hence the Jordanian Embassy in Washington, upon hearing of the UCC resolution's wording, frantically called the UCC office for Church in Society to ask if and why the denomination had reversed its commitment to justice for these people. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Arabs in the Middle East Council of Churches were distressed by the seeming concession to nationalist Zionist ideology. Some Muslims saw in it a possible revival of the Western Crusader mentality that concocted religious justifications for devastating and subjugating Palestine.

Calling for Clarification

For these and other reasons, a nine member Theological Panel on Jewish Christian Relations was appointed "to study and interpret the resolution. " Selected to represent a broad sampling of the UCC theological spectrum, in consultation with Dr. Michael Wyschogrod, a Zionist nationalist Jew, and Dr. Yvonne Haddad, a Protestant Arab American, it sought grassroots reactions at hearings in Berkeley, Boston and Columbus, Ohio. Its resulting page-and-a-half report is now being, circulated for denomination-wide review.

Officially called simply a "Message," it is far from smug. "As a Panel we are very diverse in background and perspective, " it declares. "Understanding came hard, and agreements were modest. The grace of accord does not come cheap. " Professor Haddad, in fact, "disassociates herself from this message, considering it 'biblically, theologically and dogmatically in error."'

Under such circumstances, a consensus had to be deferred on various pertinent but controversial matters. These include the various meanings of "covenant, " the identification of Abraham's 20th-century "descendants, " and Western Christians' "special responsibility" to atone for injustices to both Arabs and Jews by working "for a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli issue that assures the human rights and dignity of both peoples. "

The "Message" uses the term "Covenant" 14 times with at least three meanings, none of them defined. Also it understates the Bible's spiritual, ethical and moral overtones in all covenant-related references. Perhaps concerned and informed delegates will introduce at Norfolk a fuller recognition of the covenantal obligations that go along with associated privileges and status.

Biblically, the promises to Abraham and his descendants were inseparable from the challenge to them to become a blessing to "all the families of the earth" and "all the nations" (Genesis 12:2f, 22:18). The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible further emphasizes that God's later covenant (including the Ten Commandments) with Moses and the Israelites at Sinai marked "a development of utmost importance in the history of religion, for it placed moral obligations above political and economic interests in the scale of religious values. " Nor should Christians forget, when they meditate upon the cup at Communion, that the new covenant-to which the cup summons worshippers centers in the forgiveness and reconciliation for which Jesus Christ laid down His life (cf. Luke 22:20 RSV footnote).

The "Seed" of Abraham

The Panel presumably had some such considerations in mind when it referred to "the brokenness" of the "relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims who live in the Holy Land. " This condition, accentuated by the Palestinians' uprising against Israeli "dispossession ... from their homes and denial of human rights," the Panel notes, "focuses for us the theological question of the role of all Abraham's descendants according to the promises of God in the outworking of God's purposes. " That's a pretty all-inclusive call, whose appeal can become even more comprehensive if the General Synod chooses to incorporate some specifies like the following:

Jews think of themselves as from the lineage of Judah, one of the twelve sons of Abraham's grandson, Jacob, also known as Israel. Jacob's line, including Judah, was destined to multiply "as the sand of the sea which cannot be numbered, " spreading "like the dust of the earth" in all directions with the charge, like Abraham's, to bring blessings to all the world (Gen. 32:12; 28:14; cf. 22:17f.; 26:4). Jacob's sons' families expanded into 12 tribes which united, c. 1040 BC, into the Kingdom of Israel.

Judah, taking Benjamin with it, split off in c. 937 so, unlike the other tribes, was not scattered and assimilated by the Assyrian invasion and deportation of 722 (which inadvertently made the "Abrahamic blood" become almost universal). After the exile in Babylon, a goodly number of Judahites (later to be called Jews) stayed there. Others returned to their homes in what was to become the Roman province of Judea, while still others, as noted in the Acts of the Apostles, settled and built their synagogues throughout the Roman Empire. All of them understood themselves to be Abraham's children, united in the Law (Torah) of Moses' covenant. So did their converts, including the Khazars, whose entire medieval kingdom (in what is now the Soviet Union) adopted Judaism as its official faith.

According to the Islamic tradition, Arabs physically (and all Muslims spiritually) are also the seed of Abraham, but by Ishmael, his only child at the time he confirmed God's profferred covenant with the rite of circumcision (Gen. 17:26).

In the Christian New Testament, John the Baptist, Jesus and St. Paul defined the family of Abraham in terms not of bloodline but of linkage by character and conduct in a faith comparable to his (Matthew 3:9; John 8:39; Romans 4:13-16; Galatians 3:7).

Thus, though some biblical scholars, both Jewish and Gentile, see Abraham as a symbolic rather than historic character, he is very real, almost contemporary, to hundreds of millions of believers. With him are emotionally intertwined their personal and corporate identities, behavioral norms, moral standards, feelings of security or vulnerability, declarations of faith, and institutional loyalties and justifications. Throughout the ages, when any of these cherished heritages have been threatened, constituents of those faiths have been as ready to fight for them as were allied soldiers and sailors in World War I to fight to "make the world safe" for the democracy they wholeheartedly believed in. The UCC will fortify its vigorous international peacemaking stance if its "Message" is amplified to include sensitivity to the dangers and opportunities inherent in these related yet rival traditions.

Covenant and Land

The "Message" still does include the ethnically limited statement that "Biblical formulations of God's Covenant with the Jewish people include the promise of land * ' ' However, with the modern Middle East in mind, it hastens to editorialize: "God's concrete gift of land to one people is a symbol of God's grace in giving the earth to all people. The fulfillment of the promise of land is tied to the people's faithfulness and the doing of justice in the land."

Two factors in the Abrahamic stories the UCC, like other denominations, has overlooked:

1) Though that patriarch had accepted a gift of land, " he did not understand this as grounds for claiming title to any given piece of Palestinian real estate. He bargained and paid for the parcel he wanted to own (Gen. 23:4, 16).

2) Genesis 14 tells how "Abram the Hebrew" supplied 318 "trained men" to help the regional kings, including the King of Salem (Jerusalem?) defend themselves against invaders. Although puzzling archaeologically, it does make one thing clear: he was not fighting to gain sovereignty for himself or for any select segment of his descendants.

The Holocaust and the State of Israel

In the Panelists' "Message," the above considerations were prefaced by its Affirmation 1, which leads off with tone-setting references to two crucial events of the 1940s: the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jewry, and the formation in Asia of the State of Israel. This combination has struck some, especially in the Middle East, as uncomfortably close to the "Holocaust Theology" which peaked between 1967 and 1987 and continues to be vigorously influential.

That "theology," variously expressed, generally interprets World War II as basically a Nazi-Jewish encounter in which the world's Goyini (Gentiles, non-Jews) either collaborated with the Nazis or stood by and let Hitler's relentless pogroms and Jewish genocide forge ahead unimpeded. This is presented as evidence that only in a country which they themselves control can Jews be safe from the selective violence to which Goyirn are inherently prone. Palestinians are not only Goyim but are physically in the way of achieving world Jewry's security and must be dealt with accordingly. Goyim can only atone for their anti-Jewish record by backing whatever government may currently be in charge in Israel.

Elements underlying this Jew-scaring, Goyim-bashing scenario have been publicly repudiated by knowledgeable, respected persons. President Bush's 1990 letter to the US Holocaust Memorial Council referred inclusively to the "sheer enormity of the evil that befell six million Jews and millions of other innocent men, women and children ... killed as a result of the Nazis' racist ideology. " (Emphasis mine.) Perhaps on a future occasion he will add details of how more than 44 million non-Jews died in World War II sieges, concentration camps, underground resistance, general onslaught and Allied military rescue operations.

Meanwhile, conscientious Jewish writers in the tradition of Hannah Arendt, Ben Hecht and Lenni Brenner (in Eichmann in Jerusalem, Perfidy and Zionism in the Age of the Dictators) have been giving insights into the all-pervasiveness of inhumanity. Among their revelations has been the deal between Zionists and Nazis to deliver trainloads of non-resisting Jews to the Nazi ovens in return for allowing the Zionists to send the brightest and sturdiest Jewish youth to Palestine for " nation-building."

Recognizing Each Other's Hopes and Suffering

Palestinians and Jews who recognize each other's suffering, hopes, anxieties and problems empathetically are also facing the inseparability of their respective destinies. Jewish theologian Marc H. Ellis and Palestinian pastor Naim Ateek have stimulated parallel and interlocking efforts in that direction. (Cf. Ateek's Justice and Only Justice and Ellis's Beyond Innocence and Redemption, subtitled Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power; Creating a Moral Future for the Jewish People.)

Incorporating the above and other considerations into a consensus will not be easy for the General Synod this summer. In the interim, the UCC Board of Homeland Ministries (475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115) has devoted the latest 100-page issue of its New Conversations magazine to the work of, and comments on, the Theological Panel. It covers perceptions and perspectives beyond the scope of this essay.

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.