For the modem critical historian ancient Israel does not represent, as a people, anything unique when compared to contemporary nations of the first two millennia before Christ. Its beginnings, its growth, as well as its period of statehood find many parallels. Many scholars and believers have consequently tried to locate the uniqueness of ancient Israel in the concept of covenant. In the Bible, they say, it is not that the reality of the people is there first and then a covenant comes to qualify their relationship with their God. Rather, the covenant comes first, creating and informing Israel's peoplehood.

As appealing as this approach might be, it has been thoroughly weakened by recent discoveries. Many peoples in those remote times considered themselves as having been placed in the realm of history by a deity and consequently viewed their beginnings, history, faith and fate in an intimate relationship with that deity.

What does in fact appear to be unique in ancient Israel is the mystery related to its deity's personality and understanding of its name. So it is not the experience of ancient Israel as such that is important -- let alone normative -- because there are ups and downs, rights and wrongs, good and bad, in every experience. What is important is what happens in that specific community around Yahweh. The Bible is much less Israel-centered than Yahweh-centered: Yahweh is the subject, Israel the object.

In every major dealing of Yahweh's we find two important aspects -- judgment and salvation. The first usually entails a cut within Israel itself, a discarding of one part of it. The second often ends with the inclusion outsiders into the community of Israel. If we consider these as two faces of the same coin, this means that the Israel of God has never been a monolithic whole. Both biblical data and modem criticism show us that the basic core of the Israel of God was integrated through faith into a covenant with Yahweh. This is precisely what made Israel Israel. Moreover, these continued experiences with God (including their aspect of judgment-salvation) are heading ultimately towards the inclusion of all believers in Yahweh into a covenantal relationship with him. For example, during the period of the monarchy it is the southern kingdom of Judah which has been integrated through faith into the covenant, which continued the historical line of the Israel of God, while the northern tribes -- Israel par excellence! -- fell out of Israel's basic trunk.

Or consider Ezekiel 20. God refuses to be consulted by the people who came to inquire whether he would be dealing with them the same way as before. He makes it clear that it was not up to them to decide what the same way was. Over and over he reminds the elders through the prophet about past history. Then he says, "I mean to make you pass under my crook and I will bring a few of you back. I will sort out the rebels who have rebelled against me. I intend to bring them out of the country where they are staying, but they shall not enter the land of Israel ... For on my holy mountain, on the high mountain of Israel ... is where the whole House of Israel worship me" (v. 37, 38, 40). Note two things: (1) This was a kind of negative exodus (I will bring them out, but they shall not return ...), not like the first one; (2) however, since Yahweh is still the subject the outcome is the same: the whole house of Israel without exception.

Amos 9:7 goes so far as to state that if Yahweh is no more central, the Exodus from Egypt is like any other exodus.

When Israel itself tried to view its past history retrospectively it saw things in the same way: of Abraham and Lot the former remains; Ishmael is set aside while Isaac is kept; Esau is discarded while Jacob becomes Israel; among the twelve tribes Judah is the chosen. Again and again Israel is shown as being in relationship with Yahweh, the one who is not qualified by any name or put in any kind of cage or frame -- not even by his own people; the one who is always free to show the people how he will deal with them. And this brings us to the fulfillment of the word of this Yahweh in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus there has never been a new Israel either in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, there has always been a renewed Israel.

All this shows that the covenant is important only through its acceptance. There is nothing magical about it, and chosenness is not an indelible mark in the Bible. Moreover, the inclusion of outsiders into the community of Israel should remind us that renewing Israel has the connotation of creating Israel: the people of God are those who are saved by God. Concepts such as nationhood or statehood, which may be central to the idea of peoplehood at the level of human understanding, are not basic to the understanding of the peoplehood of the Israel of God. This comes out very clearly in the First Book of Samuel and later in the prophetic books.

To say that the covenant is not magical at all and chosenness not an indelible mark is to say that the people of God is open at both ends: one can enter into it as well as drop out of it. The continuous existence of the Israel of God is thus a miracle of Yahweh: in spite of everything (see Ezek 20:33-38) he manages to keep the basic truth. Who remains in the covenant can always be debatable, but that there is only one Israel of God is biblically undebatable. Those Western Christians who would compromise and hold two parallel entities -- the Church and the Jews -- as being two faces of the Israel of God are on very dangerous ground. Are they really trying to accept Yahweh as he wants to be or are they trying to build up a God who would appease their conscience? And at the price of how much bloodshed in the Eastern Mediterranean?

Christians -- the Israel of God -- believe that in Jesus of Nazareth a great cataclysm took place which was, in a sense, the end judgment-salvation of God on the level of history. It is only such an understanding of Jesus Christ which can explain the phenomenon of the biblical canon.

Since Yahweh is the ultimate reality and the basic subject of theology, and since he is a moving and dynamic reality, we must be careful if we speak of the "theology of the land." For theology of the land or theology of the covenant or theology of the church are all merely different aspects of the one theology whose topic is Yahweh.

In order to understand the place of land in the Bible we have to view it against the background of the two thousand years before Christ. In the Eastern Mediterranean area there were a number of groups of people moving around, looking for a settlement. Ancient Israel was no exception. This is clear from the fact that the issue of the promised land is dealt with specifically and intensively in the first seven books of the Old Testament, which cover the period of the settlement in Canaan, but in the following books there is either nothing about the land or only a discussion of how the people ought to behave in it.

Moreover, the stress on the importance of the land as it emerges in the Bible was developed in the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries before Christ when the people thought that God would never forsake the land. The land, they said, was Yahweh's gift to Abraham and his posterity, and he will stick to his promises and gifts. That line of reasoning was, of course, an effort to bind God to a human way of thinking, which is often the expression of human wishes. Then came Deuteronomy to remind the people that the possession of the land was conditional: the land had been given, not taken. It is always a gift of God, which means that it is God who is important in the whole issue. The land was only meant to be a threshold to what was more important: Jerusalem and the Temple where the glory of Yahweh abides.

Thus the land and its importance was a specific stage at a particular time in God's plan. The movement of that plan went on. This explains why, in spite of all the parallelism drawn in the Bible itself between the Exodus and the return from Babylon, the latter was different from the former. One way in which it differed is that the realization of the ultimate goal of this second exodus did not begin with the land, then center on Jerusalem, and finally culminate in the Temple. Rather, as we can see in Ezra-Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah, it began with the Temple, then extended to Jerusalem, then expanded to the rest of the "land-earth." Because of this centrifugal movement the land is no more delineated. The new horizon is the whole earth.

The second experience (return from the exile) was not parallel to the first (exodus). Those who force such a parallelism show their willingness to impose their views and their own experience with God on his subsequent dealings with us. Luke grasped the intention of the movement here in his two-volume book in a marvelous way: everything was centered in Jerusalem, and Jesus Christ performed his exodus in Jerusalem -- not out of Jerusalem (Lk 9:31). When Jesus/Yahweh had done his last specific deed, the movement went from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

If Yahweh is the Lord of history, then there is a movement in the Bible: the last line is not at the same level as the first one. It is simple heresy to reverse the movement of God's work by reminding him that if he still wants us to recognize him as our God then he ought to do exactly the same things he did in the past. Yahweh is the God of history, and we are no longer living in Abraham's time, or Moses' time, or Joshua's time. We are living in the time of the lordship of Jesus Christ. This biblical premise must never be overshadowed.

In Jesus of Nazareth we find this kind of criticism of the Jews of the first century. He reminded them that we cannot lock God even in his past experiences, that he is always ahead in realizing what he means to realize. And Christians believe that the end-realization happened in Jesus Christ. Thus, what is taking place after Christ is not a history like that of the biblical revelation which culminated in Jesus. And the basis for this is the Christian belief that not only the Lord Jesus coming in glory, but also Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, is the eschatological being. (If some Western Christians do not feel at home with this view, we should face the fact that this is a point of disagreement between Eastern and Western Christians.)

Failing to understand this is what has brought unheard-of horrors in Western Christendom. The Nazi holocaust was not the first such horror -- and seems not to be the last, if we have eyes to see the extermination of Palestinian individuals, Palestinian peoplehood, and even Palestinian existence as such. We know that in the Old West as well as in the New West horrible evil has been perpetrated due to the false premise that God's history is repetitive. The Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants were the holy people, while the American Indians were the Canaanites who were to be ousted from the promised land.

What puzzles us Middle Eastern Christians is that Western Christians, who say at least that they consider Western Christendom largely responsible for the Nazi holocaust and go on backing -- very often unconditionally -- the actual state of Israel, still want to convince us that they are not imposing any theology on us and that we are free to have our standpoint concerning biblical interpretation. How can they say so when they are repenting on our ground over a deed which happened on theirs -- all this based on a premise we reject? This is a rare combination of both theological and political imperialism.

In the Orthodox understanding -- which we believe is the biblical one -- the church is not a separate entity which stands vis-à-vis the world or even in the world. Both church and world are two faces of the same reality, which is the creation. The world is the first creation; the church is the new one. That is, both the world and the church are the work of God, both are his non-begotten children created through the power of his one-begotten Word. Thus both are equally dear to and cherished by his heart.

But church and world are radically different faces of the same reality. While the world is the sinful and not yet redeemed creation, and thus not according to God's heart, the church is that part of creation which has responded to and accepted willingly salvation by and in Jesus Christ, and thus is according to God's heart. The difference is not in God's approach to each, but in their dissimilar responses to the same loving care and concern. The church that lives according to the heart of God knows that his will is that the whole creation be saved; however, that church also knows that God's love does not impose on men's freedom but "works out" his salvation in them.

That is why Orthodox theology considers the world neither an object for the church to dominate nor an inanimate scene for its self-realization. On the contrary, Orthodoxy has taken the world very earnestly as it really is: the church's sole partner in the struggle for the salvation of humanity. And to take the world in earnest means to consider its ways-its inherent psychological and sociological laws, its inner motivations and strifes-as expressions (imperfect, of course, due to Adam's sin) of the creation which God found very good.

Now one of the world's basic data is the fact that to be human means to be social. But "society" is not an abstract entity which can be extended to the infinite. For a specific person society is the immediate geographical, historical, and cultural surrounding which shapes one in one's essential features. Not that an individual's immediate surroundings form an hermetically closed unit, but the larger influences to which one is exposed are usually mediated and screened through one's close surrounding. The basic unit of society is the city, where a specific culture usually comes to its most obvious and articulate expressions.

This is why Orthodoxy has consistently taken the New Testament expression "the church of God in such and such a place" to be a basic truth at the core of sound ecclesiology. There is no such thing as an ethereal church of God at large, but the same church of God taking different shades and colors according to its various dwelling places on this earth. As to the oneness of the church, it is a delusion to think that either a centralized administration or a pseudo-theological justification of actual chaos can realize it. The church is one because the Holy Spirit is one. And it is precisely this colorful Holy Spirit who is responsible for the various shades the church takes in its different earthly dwellings, thus making it a richly vested and beautifully adorned bride to the great joy and glory of the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yet, to say that the church of God is dwelling in Corinth, for instance, does not mean that it has been hurled there prefabricated, as a totally foreign body. What it does mean is that some Corinthians have been caught up in the movement towards the salvation of the whole city. In other words, the specific part of its vestment which the church has put on in Corinth is as definitely the work of the Holy Spirit as it is worked out of "Corinthian material."

Our conclusion is that since there is definitely no church where there are no human beings, since there is no such thing as a general human being but only persons rooted in specific societies, since the most concentrated expression of a given society is the city, we cannot possibly speak of the spiritual well-being of a community without dealing first with the being itself of that community. We cannot possibly speak of the church of God in Corinth if there is no Corinth.

Hence, every city is for its Orthodox citizens the last stronghold of' the church. Why? Simply because in our eyes, if our city fades away, the church of God in this city disappears. In the Orthodox understanding, to be a citizen of the heavenly city means to develop a hypersensibility to one's earthly city, because it is precisely in it that one is given to experience the kingdom of God. For this reason the saint, who has let himself or herself be completely in the hands of the head of the church, is able to feel the impact of every city's fall or distortion as being his or her own.

It is only against this broad perspective that the Christian Orthodox approach to the question of Jerusalem can be presented. In the first place, the fundamental reality is that Jerusalem is a city. This statement is perhaps so obvious that everyone takes it for granted without pointing out its ultimate consequences. In what follows I will concentrate on two major characteristics of every city-and hence of Jerusalem-which I think are relevant to our discussion.

1. A city is inconceivable without a surrounding land. There is an essential and vital interrelationship between these two realities at the economic, social, political, cultural, and historical levels. No matter what image we may use to express this -- heart and body, brain and body, focus' and orbit -- the fact remains that a given city and the country in which it lies form an indivisible entity. For this reason we Orthodox consider it false and unjust to single out the question of Jerusalem from the whole issue of Palestine. Such an approach would arise only in the minds of tourists, pilgrims, or aggressors, from whom Jerusalem is just a scene for their self-satisfaction.

2. The entity city/country is basically qualified by its actual inhabitants. It is up to them alone to decide the fate of their land. Let me make this more precise:
   1. When we call Geneva an international city, we do not mean that the Genevans are no longer the sole policymakers of their city. The internationalization of Geneva is both willed and sponsored by the Genevois, and in no way imposed by others. In this sense, Jerusalem should remain to its inhabitants whatever they may decide.

   2. Some cities have been so influential historically that people from other cities feel a mental, spiritual, or cultural kinship with them-Athens, Rome, or Paris, for example. This does not mean, however, that those who feel this kinship share in the making of the policies of those cities. Athens belongs to the Athenians, and the sole responsibility for Rome is in the hands of the Romans. If the Greeks decide to build a high-rise on the Acropolis and the Italians to bulldoze the Colosseum, lovers of art and ancient history from elsewhere could do no more than to express their concern and try to change those decisions. They would have no right to interfere directly. Similarly, any kind of decision about Jerusalem and Palestine should be ultimately in the hands of their inhabitants.

   3. This same point applies to the religious realm. When we say that Rome is Catholic, we do not mean that the Catholic Church at large has made it so, but that the Catholics of Rome have moulded throughout history the features of that city. I am not suggesting that Catholicism outside Rome was not able to influence it, but if such a thing did take place, it was through the mediation of the Romans.

      Furthermore, to say that Rome is Catholic does not mean that the Catholics of the world and only they are the decision-makers for the Italian capital. How ridiculous to suppose that a Danish Lutheran converted to Catholicism would share in deciding Rome's future but a citizen of Rome converted to Protestantism could have nothing to say.

      Applied to our case, this means that, at least in its Christian features, Jerusalem is not a Christian city in an unqualified sense, but an Eastern Orthodox one. It is Eastern Orthodoxy which has shaped the Christian face of Jerusalem, and it is irrelevant to stress the presence of Anglicans, Protestants, Catholics, and Melkites in Palestine, because proselytism and an aggressive Vatican policy to dismantle the Eastern Orthodox Churches have not as yet been able to influence the basic Eastern Orthodox color of that city.

   4. Still, to be in complete accord with Orthodox ecclesiology we must stress a further point: the fact that some Russian Orthodox live in Athens does not stop it from being Greek and the fact that some Arab Orthodox live in Bucharest does not stop it from being Rumanian. In our case, this would mean that in its Eastern Orthodox features Jerusalem is not an Orthodox city in a general sense, but a Palestinian Orthodox one. It is Palestinian Orthodoxy which has shaped the Christian face of Jerusalem, and stressing the presence of a Russian monastery or a Rumanian Chapel or even a Greek hierarchy (which is, by the way, obviously anachronistic) is of no use since, according to Orthodox ecclesiology, the people are the bearer of the faith.

Now that we have clarified how the Christian Orthodox perspective works out when applied to Jerusalem let us try to move on. By stating that Jerusalem is basically a city we do not mean that it is "any city." To be sure, no city is "any city" and no country is "any country": Paris is Paris and Italy is Italy, and as such each offers its own and unique contribution to what makes our complex human reality. In the same way, Jerusalem is Jerusalem and Palestine is Palestine.

In digging further into their own background the Orthodox citizens of Jerusalem discover that the unique contribution of their city and their land lies in the holiness of them: Jerusalem is the Holy City and Palestine is the Holy Land. In fear and trembling we realize the weight of such a responsibility, knowing that holiness is God's attribute; still in humility and obedience we accept the fact that the same Holy God has anointed in a unique way Jerusalem and Palestine. In a way the Palestinian Orthodox have no choice, since even our own flesh and blood are products of that land: its dust, its climate, its air, its food, its water-which centuries ago produced the flesh and blood of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.

However, following the spirit of Orthodox ecclesiology the Palestinian Orthodox do not monopolize Jerusalem and Palestine, since these are at the same time the city and land of the non-Orthodox living there and sharing them. Together they will work for the being and well-being of their common city Jerusalem, while striving to keep its holy color.

But it is precisely in this earnestness that the Palestinian Orthodox makes a great discovery; his or her fellow citizens, mostly Muslims and Jews, though from two different perspectives, also view Jerusalem as the Holy City! Unique blend indeed! Where else do three different groups of citizens, starting from three different viewpoints, envision the specificity of their city in its beating the qualification of God himself? Perhaps only in heaven. And if that is so, then this explains why Jerusalem is in a way the threshold of heaven.

Unique blend indeed! The three main religions of the citizens of Jerusalem not only are monotheistic, but also believe in the same God, the God of Abraham. Moreover, in all of them Abraham is the type of the faithful whose whole life has been a ceaseless obedience to the will of God. After all, is not God's will on earth and for the earth the main issue in all three religions?

God's will! This is at last the key word. Misunderstood, it has proved to generate unheard-of acts of intolerance in the history of the three monotheisms right until this very day. And Jerusalem, the city of peace, has unfortunately often been the trigger to such barbaric acts against human dignity and freedom. Holding the banner of God's will we all-Jews, Christians, and Muslims-have been eager to implement our own exclusive view of God's will, which amounts very often to imposing our own will.

To state this does not mean that, in my view, all of the three approaches to the understanding of God's will are after all equally valid or invalid. On the contrary, I firmly believe that it is the Christian perspective in its Orthodox connotation which is the true one. But I would go on to contend that on the personal level the understanding and implementation of the Christian approach to the issue of God's will on earth can be more purified and better articulated through the serious challenges offered by the two other perspectives. My wish and prayer is that our Jewish and Muslim partners in Jerusalem and Palestine would have the same kind of pathos in dealing with the burning issue of God's will for all of us.

In this regard the Christian Orthodox hope for Jerusalem and Palestine is that they will continue to be the place where Jew, Christian, and Muslim will, through a continual mutual challenge, purify their personal understanding and implementation of God's will on earth from all selfish human residues, so that their land be indeed holy, their city indeed the city of peace, and both the prototype of any threshold to heaven, as they have always been. Our hope will settle for nothing less than that.

Painful Lessons

Nicholas P. Wolterstorff

For many years I have had the feeling that we North American Christians have simply closed our eyes to the injustices which have been and are being wreaked on the Palestinians. But this feeling of mine was always relatively uninformed. The conference in LaGrange helped to change that.

I knew that the United States along with the other Western powers was instrumental in evicting the Palestinians from their ancestral homelands in 1948. But I did not realize the extent to which this eviction continues today on the West Bank, as the Israelis -- without offering any compensation whatever -- evict Palestinians from land which they have owned for generations in order to establish Jewish settlements.

I had heard reports of the torture of Palestinians by Israelis. But I had not realized that a US State Department officer has confirmed in detail a rather large number of such allegations of torture. Nor had I ever listened to someone who has actually experienced arbitrary arrest and torture by the Israelis. And neither had I fully realized the extent to which the American media dramatize incidents of Palestinian violence while downplaying the ferocity of Israeli retaliation and initiation.

One incident connected with the conference infuriated me. Mr Zuhdi Tarazi is connected with the Palestine Liberation Organization mission to the United Nations. The request was made that he, a Palestinian Christian, be allowed to address us American Christians on the issues involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That request was denied. Mr Tarazi was allowed to attend the conference, but he was not allowed to say anything in any meeting of the conference. He could talk to us over coffee, but he couldn't get up in front of all of us and speak his piece.

I found such a decision silly and intolerable. What benefit is served by such a transparent charade? The formal allegiances and diplomatic policies of my government lead it to refuse to allow a Christian from a foreign land to speak ... I am a brother in Christ with Mr Tarazi. That is more important to me than my being an American and his being a member of a foreign organization that my government happens not to like. Perhaps if I heard Mr Tarazi speak I would conclude that his strategies are ones I cannot support; perhaps I would conclude the opposite. I don't know. But I find it outrageous that I was not even allowed to hear him. Such governmental decisions do not merit obedience.

I have often spoken in the pages of the Journal about the injustices which result from the commitment of the Afrikaners in South Africa to ethnicity as a condition for enjoying the full rights of citizenship. I was struck during this conference on Palestinian rights that there are strong parallels between South Africa and Israel on this matter: in Israel, too, being of the proper ethnic group is a condition for enjoying the full rights of citizenship. In both countries I do not see how a just and peaceful permanent solution can ever be found until this unholy alliance between ethnicity and citizenship is broken.

One of the regrettable but almost inevitable results of making such comments as I have, or as those in the declaration, or as Father Tarazi makes in his article, is the immediate charge of anti-Semitism. The Jewish people have suffered so terribly throughout history and in the twentieth century that they -- along with many of the rest of us -- are extremely sensitive to even the appearance of anti-Jewish prejudice. But the Palestinians also have rights. They too are a suffering people. And if for a time one cannot defend the rights of the Palestinians without being accused of anti-Semitism, then this is a cross that Christians must bear.

We are entitled to bear it, though, only if we have done everything possible to root out of our souls whatever traces there may be of hatred for the race from whom came forth the Son of Man.

The LaGrange Declaration

May 1979

As believers committed to Christ and his kingdom, we challenge the popular assumptions about biblical interpretation and the presuppositions of political loyalty held so widely by fellow Christians in their attitudes toward the conflict in the Middle East.

We address this urgent call to the church of Jesus Christ to hear and heed those voices crying out as bruised reeds for justice in the land where our Lord walked, taught, was crucified, and rose from the dead. We have closed our hearts to these voices, and isolated ourselves even from the pleading of fellow Christians who continue to live in that land.

We are anguished by the fact that countless Christians believe that the Bible gives to the modern State of Israel a divine right to lands inhabited by Palestinian people, and divine sanction to the State of Israel's policy of territorial acquisition. We believe such an understanding must be judged in the light of the whole of biblical revelation affirming that in the revelation of Jesus Christ, God's covenants find their completion. Therefore, we plead for all Christians to construct a vision of peace in the holy land which rests on the biblical injunctions to correct oppression and seek justice for all peoples.

Forthrightly, we declare our conviction that in the process of establishing the State of Israel, a deep injustice was done to the Palestinian people, confiscating their land and driving many into exile and even death. We are further grieved by the ongoing deprivation of basic civil rights to those Arabs who live today in the State of Israel.

Moreover, for thirteen years, large portions of the holy land and its people, including the West Bank of the Jordan River, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, have suffered under foreign military occupation, even as in our Lord's time. Land is seized from its inhabitants. Water for farming is rationed and restricted. Schools and universities are closed by the Israeli military authorities. And 100,000 people have been arrested in large part for speaking their convictions. Of these, some have been subjected to brutal torture, described by the US Consulate in Jerusalem as "systematic" and documented beyond any question.

We confess our silence, our indifference, our hardheartedness, and our cowardice, all too often, in the face of these dehumanizing realities.

Earnestly, we pray for a new anointing of the Spirit in our hearts, creating us into a more faithful people used to break every yoke of oppression and let the broken victims go free.

We extend our hearts to our Jewish brothers and sisters, common sons and daughters of Abraham. Like us in the United States, their corporate national spirit is being corroded by the weight of the government of the State of Israel's reliance on rampant militaristic policies and actions. We would pray for them, and with them, for a vision of security rooted in expanding channels of trust rather than escalating arsenals of armed might.

Historically and today, the State of Israel's territorial ambitions have been justified as security needs. Through the decades, this has instigated a cycle of violence and counterviolence that still continues, engulfing all sides, and leaving none unblemished from the spilling of innocent blood. We pray with the Psalmist for every bow to be broken and every spear to be snapped.

Too many of us have been lulled into the shallow hope that peace can be built in the Middle East through the US supply of more weapons, with the continued military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and while basic human and political rights of the Palestinian people are denied. We call on Christ's followers to repent from their complicity -- through either their indifference or their uncritical embrace of US policies -- in the continuing cycle of Middle Eastern violence, accelerated by our tax dollars and our government's political decisions.

The Arab people and their land have been plundered for centuries by Western Christendom. We acknowledge and confess a continuing legacy of prejudice, evidenced today, toward Arab people, both Christian and Moslem.

We repudiate with equal and uncompromising fervor the enduring prejudice toward the Jewish people still present this day in our society and in our churches (those churches include, ironically, many of those churches with staunchly pro-Israeli biases, drawn from their versions of biblical interpretation).

Overcoming these divisions and hatreds, we affirm, as God's revelation declares, our common humanity with all.

We believe that any biblical hope for peace and security for all peoples in the Middle East must encompass some form of restitution for past wrongs. Life, peoplehood, and land are all God's gifts. These gifts enjoyed by the Jewish people in the Holy Land have been denied to the Palestinian people. Therefore, we yearn and we call for the building of a peace that includes the clear expression of political self-determination and justice for the Palestinian people. This includes leadership of their own choosing, and a sovereign state. Our firm conviction is that through asserting these rights, the way can be opened for Jews in Israel and Palestinian people to find peace and true security in that land.

We pledge ourselves, and we invite others, to an urgent devotion to see God's purpose of peace, justice, and reconciliation realized in this land. In that spirit, we call upon all Christians to join with us in reexamining assumptions regarding biblical revelation and views of the conflict in the Middle East; we commit ourselves and our resources to active and ongoing dialogue with other Christians on these questions; and, we pray that the Body of Christ will extend its life as a humble, sacrificial and unswerving servant of peace/salaam/shalom in the land where God sent his Son to live among us.