Quotable

America’s mainline Protestant churches are…turning their political policy-making over to fringe leftists whose deepest instinct is to blame America and pummel Israel....The latest disgrace is the Presbyterian Church’s…ending [its] investment in multinational companies that the church believes [cause] the sufferings of the Palestinian people [by dealing with Israel]….Apparently they cast a stern moral glance around the world, look for possible abuses in China, North Korea, and Iran, and seeing [none]…focus once again on Israel….The United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), plus the reliably leftist National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches [during] 2000 to 2003 [issued] 197 human-rights criticisms…37 percent were aimed at Israel and 32 percent at the United States….The fixation on Israel left little time and inclination…to notice the most dangerous violations of human rights around the world. Not one nation bordering Israel was criticized by a single mainline church….No criticisms at all were leveled at China, Libya, Syria, or North Korea.

America is [seen] as a malignant force in the world, while Israel is seen as nothing more than a dangerous colonial implant of the West…. Anti-Americanism is an old story in the mainline church bureaucracies. During the 1970s and 1980s, these churches generally ignored human-rights abuses in the Soviet Union and focused instead on the United States as the primary source of abuse….

   John Leo, U.S. News & World Report, 10/18/04, p 81.