The Jerusalem Post & Liberal Protestants…

Once again, a mainline Protestant Church is threatening to punish Israel for its purported policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. This time, it is the Presbyterians’ turn.

Toward the end of its General Assembly taking place between June 30 and July 7, the Presbyterian Church (USA) will vote on a motion calling to divest from companies whose products are supposedly used “in violations of Palestinian human rights.”

Why are the mainline Protestant churches so susceptible to Israel-bashing? Unlike more fundamentalist Protestants, mainline denominations tend to have a less literal reading of the Gospel. Theology is more malleable and, as Walter Russell Mead put it in a 2006 essay in Foreign Policy titled “God’s Country,” liberal Protestants tend to “evanesce into secularism.”

They may be environmentalists belonging to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace or human rights activists involved with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Their sincere desire to pursue justice might be motivated by faith but implementation often puts them under the sway of organizations with rabidly anti-Zionist or even anti-American agendas.

An interesting assessment of liberal Protestantism from the Jerusalem Post.