Gradye Parsons
Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE – The Reverend Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), has signed on to the following statement welcoming the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and calling for renewed negotiations for a two-state solution in the land.
As leaders of American Jewish, Christian, and Muslim national religious organizations, united in the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East (NILI), we welcome the ceasefire agreement of Israel and Hamas, and the negotiations to make it permanent. We were appalled by the kidnappings and murders of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers. We believe the loss of even one human life is a tragedy that grieves God. In the recent weeks of war between Hamas and Israel, we mourn the innocent civilians killed. We offer our prayers as well for the wounded and for the families of all the victims of violence.
This tragic escalation of violence demonstrates once again that there is no such thing as a stable status-quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ideas being promoted in some circles for returning to the previous status quo or managing the conflict are dangerous. Acknowledging the recent failed negotiations, we call on Israeli and Palestinian political leaders to renew negotiations to achieve a two-state peace agreement, the only realistic resolution of the conflict in which both people can live in peace, security, and mutual recognition. The crucial choice leaders on both sides face now is between negotiating a two-state peace agreement with a new sense of urgency or condemning Palestinian and Israeli children and youth to continued conflict — more violence, more suffering, and more deaths.
Read more at http://www.pcusa.org/news/2014/8/14/clerk-welcoming-ceasefire/
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Mr. Parsons routinely puts out statements like this calling for peace and justice in troubled places around the world. There’s nothing wrong with that. Peace and justice are important themes in the Bible and serious Christians should engage those issues in the world around us. But wouldn’t Mr. Parsons have more credibility if he also spoke out against the harsh, un-Christlike way some of his own presbyteries are treating churches departing the PC(USA)? Maybe he and his staff in Louisville could meditate on Jesus’ teaching about the plank and speck in Matthew 7.
Let’s see: Thousands dead and tens of thousands homeless. Some congregations who feel they have been mistreated because they could not walk away with all of the property they had previously agreed they were holding in trust for the PC(USA). Sounds pretty much equivalent and equally deserving of attention.
Mr. Parsons is calling for negotiations. Since it might be impossible for Isreal to negotiate with Hamas terrorists, I suggest Mr. Parsons offer his services to help with that.
What a tragedy….the day the PCUSA hired this radical individual. He is the downfall of the PCUSA and one day people will look back and realize staff is staff…..the Presbyterian system is not the current top down system of the PCUSA. This man was forced to take down Zionism unsettled after the CNN offense on the PCUSA position of being anti-Israeli. People at the top need to step down when they have led the church down a path of dissolution. Sad that we have allowed this man who believes the Bible is written by men and should just be one of many guides to even have any voice in our church.
I’ve exchanged views with Southeast on this website before. His analysis never holds up very well which I suspect is the reason he’s not willing to use his name. Nothing in my comment, Southeast, suggested equivalence between death and destruction in the Middle East and tensions between presbyteries and churches leaving the PC(USA). But Mr. Parsons leads a rapidly shrinking denomination made up of barely one-half of one percent of the U.S. population. His views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict have zero influence on anyone. My point, obvious to everyone except Southeast, was that if Mr. Parsons is going to opine on conflict in the Middle East on which he has zero influence, he should be willing to speak out against harsh treatment of departing churches by presbyteries, an issue on which his views would have enormous constructive influence.
The stated clerk of the PCUSA signs on to a letter along with others from catholic, protestant, and orthodox groups of various sizes. Along with the president of Reform Judaism, a dozen other rabbis from various organizations, and a variety of imams and others from Islamic organizations, and you feel compelled to pipe in with your usual triviality about congregations who to one degree or another were partly held to their agreements. The PCUSA, while not the largest group associated with the signers of this letter, is far from the smallest. And of course, the PCUSA much, much larger than of the splinter Presbyterian groups.
A radical individual, as evidenced by his signing a joint letter with an editor from Christianity Today, a dozen other Catholic, protestant, and orthodox groups, the president of Reform Judaism and a dozen other Rabbis, and a few Islamic leaders. Oh, my.
“because they could not walk away with all of the property they had previously agreed they were holding in trust for the PC(USA)”
Southeast,
Where on God’s green earth did you see the signed trust documents saying this? BTW, louisville does’nt count.
You speak dismissively, Southeast, of the “splinter Presbyterian groups.” But someone as smart as you should recognize that it’s just a matter of time before the PC(USA) is the “splinter group” on the far left wing fringe of Presbyterianism while non-PC(USA) Presbyterians (EPC, PCA, ECO) sit astride the broad middle of the theological spectrum vacated by the PC(USA).
Ceasefire???? For whom??? Apostates in the pcusa want Israel to give back lands Israel which was given by God to Abraham, Gen. 12 known as the Abrahamic Covenant, so the issue of land for peace does not hold. Let the Philistines understand what God has done through HIS Word which they reject, and surrender the land given to Israel.
So Peace in our time???? NO, there will never be peace among the Israelites and the ancient Philistines, someone has to surrender, and Israel is urged to surrender by the unregenerate peoples of the Middle East something that will not happen. No peace now or ever until the Prince of Peace will one day set up HIS Kingdom forever while the unregenerate will be thrown in the Lake of Fire, Revelation chapters 20 and 21.
His day is coming, and I trust one day he will accept Christ as Lord and Savior.