Just to clarify, the only offciial response of the PC(USA) comes either from the General Assembly or from the Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons. It’s the Stated Clerk’s job to interpret the Church’s laws and General Assembly actions. IPMN and Presbyterian Peace Fellowship are activist groups that support the work of our Middle East mission workers and the previous actions of the GA. PFMEP is an activist group that opposes the actions of the GA and seeks to undermine the voices of our mission workers about the facts on the ground. PFMEP (whose words are more about Middle East Pacification or Platitudes than Peace) is the latest incarnation of a network of Presbyterian soft Christian Zionists. Hard Christian Zionism, the Rushdoonie kind that dreams of Apocalyptic ends through the ingathering of Jews in Israel, was declared a heresy (very un-Calvinist) for Presbyterians by the General Assembly in 2004. But the PC(USA) has many of what Stephen Zunes and Rosemary Ruether have described as Soft Christian Zionists soft in its basis in sentimentality for Sunday school images of the Holy Land and in its shallow depth of support for Israel. PFMEP tailors its message for low-information Soft Christian Zionists in the pew and works to prevent their childhood image of the Holy Land being disrupted by reality-based information about modern Israel.
Just to clarify, the only offciial response of the PC(USA) comes either from the General Assembly or from the Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons. It’s the Stated Clerk’s job to interpret the Church’s laws and General Assembly actions. IPMN and Presbyterian Peace Fellowship are activist groups that support the work of our Middle East mission workers and the previous actions of the GA. PFMEP is an activist group that opposes the actions of the GA and seeks to undermine the voices of our mission workers about the facts on the ground. PFMEP (whose words are more about Middle East Pacification or Platitudes than Peace) is the latest incarnation of a network of Presbyterian soft Christian Zionists. Hard Christian Zionism, the Rushdoonie kind that dreams of Apocalyptic ends through the ingathering of Jews in Israel, was declared a heresy (very un-Calvinist) for Presbyterians by the General Assembly in 2004. But the PC(USA) has many of what Stephen Zunes and Rosemary Ruether have described as Soft Christian Zionists soft in its basis in sentimentality for Sunday school images of the Holy Land and in its shallow depth of support for Israel. PFMEP tailors its message for low-information Soft Christian Zionists in the pew and works to prevent their childhood image of the Holy Land being disrupted by reality-based information about modern Israel.