Council to consider additional Muslim-Christian presentations
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, March 22, 2005
The General Assembly Council is poised to make Christian-Muslim dialogue an ongoing program of the Presbyterian Church (USA) – an effort that has been financed in the past largely by funds raised for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.
During its meeting in Louisville, Ky., March 28-April 2, the council will consider continuing the “Interfaith Listening Project,” in which Muslim-Christian teams make presentations to meetings sponsored by presbyteries and often held on college campuses.
Some of the meetings included Christians and Muslims who had worked together. In other cases, only Christians from Muslim-dominated countries were able to make the presentations because the Muslims were denied visas.
Absent from the presentations were Jewish, and particularly Israeli, representatives, most of whom have strongly criticized the Presbyterian Church (USA) for the denomination’s steps toward divesting its funds in multinational corporations that do business with Israel.
The Interfaith Listening Project was introduced as a pilot program in 2002. Of the $111,875 budgeted for the project in 2002, $85,000 came from Presbyterians’ gifts to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, even though the program provides no disaster relief. The pilot project wound up with a deficit of $7,285.
In 2004, the budget for the Interfaith Listening Project was $136,300, with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance anteing up $100,000. (The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program made contributions of $20,000 in both years, and the rest of the budget came from the host presbyteries.)
The report does not explain how Presbyterian Disaster Assistance could be diverted to the Interfaith Listening Project. But another measure before the council is a recommendation from PDA’s executive committee that up to 20 percent of the money given for disaster assistance be “used for all administrative expenses (including costs outside its budget) in accordance with InterAction standards.”
In a budget proposal for the Interfaith Listening Project submitted by the Worldwide Ministries Division, planners have scaled down the anticipated costs to $49,200 in 2006. This time, they list no contribution from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. They do plan to try to raise $20,000 from a denominationwide “extra commitment offering.” More than 20 percent of the budget ($10,000) is earmarked for staff assistance.
The General Assembly Council will consider a report from the Worldwide Ministries Division that recommends the Interfaith Listening Project and says participants benefited from it.
The report noted that the program was “one expression of the church’s response to the needs arising out of the crisis of September 11, 2001,” when Islamic terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center skyscrapers, murdering thousands of Americans.
It was after that disaster that some leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) began to reach out to Muslims and to criticize more strongly U.S.-Israel relationships.
Vernon Broyles, then associate director of the Congregational Ministries Division, set the tone for the PCUSA’s leadership response when he offered his rationale for the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
In a column posted on the PCUSA’s Web site, Broyles said, “While it may seem politically helpful to call them [the terrorists] ‘barbaric’ in their acts against the ‘civilized’ world, it is appropriate to ask why the incineration of several thousand people in the attack on the World Trade Center was a ‘barbaric act of terrorism,’ while the incineration of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are seen as a ‘necessary act of war by a civilized nation.'”
The report to the General Assembly Council said the project “enabled Presbyterians and their ecumenical partners in many communities to gain a greater knowledge of Islam and of Christian-Muslim relationships … to deepen and expand their local dialogues … to replace stereotypes regarding Islam and Muslim life and values with accurate information …”
Furthermore, the report said, “Interfaith Listening is having positive results in strengthening ecumenical relationships.” The report declares that continuing the program “will enable Presbyterians to meet human beings of varying faiths seeking to build societies of peace and justice together, and to reflect with them on how we can effectively address issues of globalization, social and economic justice, and peace-building.”
In a related issue, the council will consider a proposal from the Presbyterian Hunger Program that the denomination become a partner in the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance. The members of the alliance commit themselves to “speak out with one voice against injustice, to confront structures of power, practices and attitudes. …”