Policies on Israel/Palestine

of the Presbyterian Church (USA)

Policies approved up to and including 223rd GA, 2018.

Human Rights

• Called for the use of diplomatic tools by the government of the United States to bring Israel into full compliance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by granting full equality to its citizens who are Palestinian, by “changing its laws, policies, and practices that favor its Jewish citizens and discriminate against its Christian and Muslim citizens and other ethnic minorities.”  2018
• Affirmed Nonviolent Means of Resistance Against Human Oppression.  2016
• Passed the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy report entitled: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace.  2016
• Advocated for the Safety and Well-being of…

Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialism

April 3, 2018 — Louisville, KY

The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) [IPMN] is pleased to announce the publication of Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialism, a new book contextualizing the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people within other global justice struggles, available from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) bookstore.

With a foreword by Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the book is grounded in international law and brings Palestine into focus through a lens of intersectionality.

Walter Brueggemann of Columbia Theological Seminary has praised the book, saying “[this] wake-up call alerts us to the reality that Palestinians are real people who have real human needs and real political legitimacy, who live under an oppressive system of colonial occupying exploitation. This important book summons us to a new…

The purpose of the seminars is to struggle with and to address the serious theological problems which arise when the traditions of a religious community and its way of reading the scriptures assert that its members are somehow chosen, set apart, called or covenanted to be in a unique and specially privileged relationship with God to the exclusion of all others. These assertions have profoundly affected the self understanding, the relationships to those outside the religious community and the attitudes and values of many within the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions across the centuries. And, secular nation-states, like the USA, Israel, and others sometimes make similar claims of divine election.  

It is one thing to affirm that every man, woman and child on earth is created in the image and likeness of God, is infinitely loved by God and therefore is of infinite value. It is quite another to claim that belonging to one or another of these religious or national communities…