Church and state
Sunday October 31, 2004 To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing. If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website. For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com. It’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating’s “SeemslikeGod” page.
U.S. too committed to Israel to be objective
Years ago, with tongue only slightly in cheek, Canadian writer Silver Donald Cameron devised “Ten Commandments for Dealing with Governments.” Unfortunately, I can only remember the first: “Whatever a government denies, it is already planning to do.”
Cameron added a corollary: “And the more vigorously it denies anything, the more certain it is to do it.”
I remember those maxims because they seem to contain truths that apply right across the human spectrum.
Whenever someone asserts, “I’m very sensitive to people’s feelings,” I can usually assume that the speaker is blissfully unaware of both my feelings and her own.
When a job applicant professes a preference for collaborative leadership, I can almost count on that person playing lone wolf.
Separation of church and state
Nations are not exempt from self-deception. For example, the U.S. formally proclaims the separation of church and state, despite one of the highest patterns of church attendance in the industrialized world. An estimated 45 per cent of the population attend weekly.
By contrast, England has an official national church. The Queen is nominally head of the Anglican Church. But only about 20 per cent of Britons worship weekly.
Germany has even lower attendance, at around 14 per cent. Yet in Germany, the weekly offering is collected, not by the churches, but by the government as a tax.
But back to the United States. Despite its official separation of church and state, few countries outside of Islamic strongholds such as Iran and Pakistan have so closely integrated church and state.
The U.S. also brands itself as champion of the free market economy. Canadian cattle producers and lumber manufacturers, who have suffered border closures and prohibitive duties, would more likely consider the U.S. a fortress of protectionism.
When a church takes an independent stand
The two issues – religion and economics – came together last summer, when the Presbyterian Church (USA) dared to differ from official U.S. policy on Israel. At its General Assembly, the church voted 431 to 62 to “initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel…”
Although the church used a similar wording 20 years earlier, in opposing apartheid in South Africa, the church’s senior executive Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick carefully explained, “The two situations are distinct… The assembly’s action calls for a selective divestment, and not a blanket economic boycott, keeping before us our interest in Israel’s economic and social well-being where these do not inflict suffering on Palestinian or Israeli people.
Kirkpatrick also noted, “The Presbyterian Church has consistently supported the existence of Israel within legitimate and secure borders.”
But 14 members of U.S. Congress wrote the Presbyterian Church: “We are terribly distressed about the resolution adopted at the 216th3”> General Assembly…
“We disagree with your characterization of the conflict as ‘rooted in Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories.’… We believe strongly that the efforts of the Church to divest from companies doing business in Israel — thus penalizing Israel for acting in self-defense — are irresponsible, counterproductive, and morally bankrupt…
“The resolution’s blatant disregard… for the safety and security of the only democracy in the Middle East, leads us to only one conclusion: the Presbyterian Church has knowingly gone on record calling for jeopardizing the existence of the State of Israel.”
They concluded, “We urge you in the strongest possible terms to rescind your resolution.”
One-sided perspective
Now, if church and state are truly separate, a church should have complete liberty to invest as it chooses – whether or not those investments have political implications. Theoretically, in a free market, anyone can invest in anything, including Bre-X shares or cabbage-patch-doll futures.
Kirkpatrick replied, on behalf of the Presbyterian Church, that he was equally “distressed by the failure of the U.S. Congress to seek a peaceful resolution to this conflict that would both protect the right of Israel to live in peace with secure borders and the rights of the Palestinians to statehood and an end of the occupation of their territory. Perhaps if the U.S. Congress had been more forthright in seeking such a solution for Israel and Palestine, it would not have been necessary for our General Assembly to take this action…
“While Congress has passed repeated statements against the Palestinian Authority, it has never passed a resolution condemning the continuous illegal construction of settlements in the West Bank. There has been nothing done by Congress to pressure Israel to adhere to international law. Rather, Israel has been encouraged by Congress to violate international law. The recent passage of House Resolution 713, which condemns the International Court of Justice and supports a wall that is in blatant violation of international law, is one case in point…
“The current wall ghettoizes the Palestinians and forces them onto what can only be called reservations. A just and lasting peace will only be achieved when BOTH people are able to live within secure borders. A wall imposed by Israel on the Palestinians while maintaining the right to invade at anytime does not advance that goal.”
Betrayal of avowed principles
I quote all this in some detail because, in case there’s any doubt, on this issue my sympathies lie with the church. A government has a right and a responsibility to regulate corporations and businesses. But no government should determine where its citizens – and its charities—may or may not invest their money. If they choose to be stupid, or to make a political statement, that’s their business.
As David McKane wrote in the most recent issue of The United Church Observer, “Separation of church and state… meant that the government would not… control religious bodies. It was intended to protect the citizen’s religious liberty from powerful government, not the government from religious bodies.”
When a group of government representatives, officially or otherwise, try to meddle in church investment policies, they deny their own claim to represent both the free market economy and the separation of church and state.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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