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View Full Version : Presbyterians meet with Hezbollah. jew talk show host has a hissy


Starr
12-03-2005, 07:51 AM
(AgapePress) - A Jewish theologian and media conservative says leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) defame Christianity by blurring God's moral standard, and that Westerners who subscribe to terrorist lies deserve only contempt.

A delegation of the PC(USA) recently traveled to Lebanon and met with leaders of Hezbollah, a militant Shiite political party based in that country. Hezbollah, which in Arabic means "Party of God," maintains an active militia called the "Islamic Resistance" and has been designated by the U.S. and other Western nations as a terrorist organization.

The delegation sponsored by the PC(USA)'s Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) met with members of Hezbollah at a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on October 17. Since that meeting, comments attributed to delegation members in the international press have garnered widespread censure, including a firestorm of condemnations from within the denomination and from the wider religious community as well.

During their meeting with Hezbollah, the Presbyterian delegates reportedly criticized Israel for having erected a security barrier to protect its citizens from Palestinian homicide bombings and other terrorist attacks.(just being good liberals) And one delegation member, recently retired Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Ronald Stone, was quoted in the press as saying, as an elder of the church, he found relations and conversations with Islamic leaders "a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders."
Some PC(USA) leaders have tried to distance the denomination from the actions and expressed attitudes of the ACSWP delegation. Three top denomination officials issued a statement last week disavowing the actions of the delegates and saying neither their comments nor their visit with Hezbollah "reflect the official position of the Presbyterian Church (USA) on peace in the Middle East."

That disavowal notwithstanding, some observers believe the delegation's words and deeds are quite consistent with their denomination's liberal political leanings. Conservative radio talk-show host Dennis Prager says given the moral confusion that dominates the PC(USA), he is not at all surprised by the pro-terrorist sympathies expressed by the delegation's actions.

Prager, who is also a Jewish theologian, says the PC(USA) gives a bad name to God and Christianity by claiming biblical authority for moral inversion. "On all matters, including those not pertaining to Israel," he asserts, "these folks are on the left. They are leftists with a cross, indistinguishable from Michael Moore -- except that Michael Moore doesn't wear a cross and doesn't speak in terms of Jesus Christ."

The radio commentator says it is nothing short of "sickening" to see the PC(USA) single out a humane and democratic country like Israel for economic strangulation and not decry its Arab neighbors that murder in the name of "God," commit egregious human rights abuses, and seek the destruction of the Jewish State.(how dare they not bow down and lick kike ass and sing the praises of brave little Israel like the good goyim)

Prager says many liberal Presbyterians in America have bought into Goebbels-like propaganda and swallowed the "big lie" that Israel is an Apartheid state. For this reason, he remarks, "I have actually greater contempt for the person in the Western world who is sympathetic to Hezbollah than for Hezbollah. People in Hezbollah grew up in a hate-filled world of lies, but the people in the West, like that elder, grew up where truth is told and they prefer to believe lies."(it seems to be nearly impossible for a jew to speak without using the word "hate" I guess it is because they, themselves, are so "hate" filled)

The theology expert and talk-show host feels "coherent" Christians need to distance themselves from the PC(USA) because it is, he contends, a morally sick denomination. Prager says he considers the leftist leadership in that denomination to be the moral relativists of present day society.

headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/afa/292004e.asp

Jimbo Gomez
12-03-2005, 10:58 AM
A Jewish theologian and media conservative says leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) defame Christianity

Hey, perhaps us Christians should start defining their religion too now.

Lenny
12-03-2005, 12:52 PM
Prager is basically right about the Presbyterian Church USA being on the liberal side. Or more precisely about that church's leadership being on the liberal side, the laypeople are probably best defined as mainly moderates, with conservatives and liberals thrown in here and there, more the former than the latter

But Prager's anger is clearly not with the Presbyterians' "liberal" positions on this or that, but with their anti-Israel positions. So he is just another con-man :argue:

Petr
12-03-2005, 03:30 PM
Prager is basically right about the Presbyterian Church USA being on the liberal side.

Yes, but he couldn't care less about that. However, like a skilled manipulator he and his ilk are, they are going to try to channel the anger that conservative Christians naturally feel towards such apostates towards their anti-Israel position.

They are trying to form this equation in the public mind: "anti-Israel Christians = theological liberalism". This would make all traditional Christians their allies by default!

A similar meme they are relentlessly pushing on public mind is "anti-Americanism equals anti-Semitism," thus making all American patriots their allies by default.

Jews are not allmighty movers-and-shakers, but they are mighty skilled manipulators, specialized in landing on the winning side in conflicts.


Petr

Lenny
12-04-2005, 04:47 AM
they are going to try to channel the anger that conservative Christians naturally feel towards such apostates towards their anti-Israel position.I agree with you on the Jewish issue, but on the issue of the PC-USA let me say this:

"Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater" (as they say), the Presbyterian Church USA membership is best defined as moderate not liberal, the leadership is the one that is liberal. For this reason, the church as a whole cannot be considered ultra-liberal or "apostate". Also a major issue here is that there is no church that the more "conservative" members could join instead if they wish to remain Presbyterians--I'm not aware of any other major Presbyterian church in the US besides this one--so the conservatives remain members of that church. Just because they are members of a "liberal-leaning" church does not mean they themselves are "liberal-leaning" with regard to Christian doctrine, the great majority are not.

The same thing applies to the Lutheran churches in the US. I have heard you criticize the ELCA before, ELCA being the "most liberal" of the three major Lutheran churches in the US. The ELCA was only formed in 1988 as a consolidation of numerous smaller Lutheran churches across the country, and many millions of conservative and moderate US Lutherans suddenly found themselves in the ELCA, they themselves were not as liberal as the church leadership became in the 90s, but they remained in the church anyway, not because they endorsed 100% of everything the ELCA leadership said and did, but because that is where they found themselves and they did not want to desert their local congregation/pastor, but also because the LCMS and WELS churches are not very widely distributed, so sometimes the only local Lutheran church is ELCA, and even when there is an LCMS or WELS church in town, the ELCA church(es) are likely to be far more convenient because there are so many more of them

Kodos
12-04-2005, 07:15 AM
Starr you know they are meeting with Islamic terrorists??? Doesn't that deserve criticism???

Starr
12-04-2005, 07:32 AM
Anymore than the fools who blindly support Jews and Israel? I guess they never bother to even do something as simple as check out the ADL website once in a while where they would find articles such as this:

Religion in America’s Public Square: Are We Crossing the Line?

www.adl.org

And I always find it funny when Dennis Prager tries to play the good "moral" conservative, since I remember his short lived television show where he seemed to have a bit of an obsession with naked women and porn. Which is, of course, very shocking considering he is a jew.:222: