2009 Conference of Bishops

JERUSALEM (ELCA) — For the first time North American Lutheran bishops, spouses and staff worshipped Jan. 9 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a historic religious site built on the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.

Forty-four bishops representing the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) are participating in a series of meetings Jan. 6-13 with religious, political and community leaders in Israel and the West Bank, and visiting religious sites. Their visit also focuses on support and encouragement for the ELCJHL.

Following worship, the group traveled to East Jerusalem, visited Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH), a medical facility of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) on the Mount of Olives, and learned about the LWF’s Middle East programs.

AVH has been serving the needs of Palestinian refugees since 1948, said the Rev. Mark B. Brown, an ELCA pastor and the LWF’s regional representative.

The LWF is planning at least two construction projects in the near future, Brown said. In response to a lack of recreational facilities for Palestinians, the LWF plans to develop a sports and community center on the Mount of Olives property, he said. In 2010 the LWF, the ELCJHL and the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria Foundation of the Evangelical Church in Germany plan to start construction of a housing project on the property. Plans calls for 84 units, reserved for Palestinian Christians, Brown said.

The housing project is an attempt to respond to the dwindling number of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, down from more than 31,000 in 1946 to less than 15,000 in 2000, Brown said. The housing project also attempts to preserve the concept of a “shared Jerusalem” for Christians, Jews and Muslims, he said.

“The lack of affordable housing has caused Christians to leave East Jerusalem and move to the West Bank or somewhere else,” Brown said.

<more>

• » Comments (0)

JERUSALEM (ELCA) — One man mourns a daughter, the other grieves a father.

Their losses put them on an unlikely path to friendship in an area of the world marked by Palestinian-Israeli strife.

Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, and Mazen Faraj, a Palestinian, shared their stories recently with 45 bishops from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada visiting the Holy Land Jan. 6-13 to support Christians and promote peace.

As the two men spoke, the bloodshed in Gaza continued to escalate, adding to the toll of about 7,000 lives already snuffed out by violence since 2000.

The violence “will not stop until we talk,” said Elhanan, who lives here. His 14-year-old daughter died in Jerusalem in 1997 in an attack by a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Faraj, who lives in a refugee camp in Bethlehem, said an Israeli soldier fatally shot his 62-year-old father in 2002.

The losses drove Elhanan and Faraj to find constructive ways to understand and respond to the carnage. They are members of Parents Circle – Families Forum, an organization of bereaved families promoting peace and reconciliation for all who live in the region.

At least 500 Israeli and Palestinian families are members of Parents Circle. They engage in public speaking, raising awareness and advocating for peace. Members also travel at great personal risk to donate blood for victims on either side of the conflict.

Meetings with young students are eye-opening for the teens, Faraj said. “For the Israeli students in the Israeli high school, it’s the first time in their lives (that) they meet with a Palestinian as a human being,” he said, “because most of the time, they meet with a Palestinian in the media, through the government and through the newspaper.”
<more>

• » Comments (1)

By Daniel J. Lehmann

Sunday morning took North American bishops to worship at Lutheran congregations across Jerusalem and West Bank and then into the homes or favorite restaurants of members of those congregations.

The slower pace of Sunday was welcomed by clerical leaders of the ELCA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. They’ve been in region since Jan. 6 to stress accompaniment with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, raise awareness of regional issues and boost advocacy for peace.

The official portion of the trip ends Jan. 13, although some bishops and their spouses will remain for two additional days to see the Israeli area of Galilee.

At the end of Sunday, the bishops gathered at the Shepherd Hotel in Bethlehem for a reception hosted by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Tourism.

According to Palestinian officials, the Israeli-occupied West Bank accounts for 70 percent of the religious pilgrimage sites yet visitors to the region spend 95 percent of their tourism money in Israel. More information is available at www.travelpalestine.ps.

“Many come to the Church of the Nativity” in Bethlehem to see the church and then get back on the bus to leave and “don’t buy even a bottle of water,” one official said.

On Monday the group heads for Ramallah, the de facto capital of the West Bank.

• » Comments (0)

a montage from Jan. 9-10

• » Comments (0)

By Daniel J. Lehmann

Lutheran bishops walked the crowded, littered and graffiti-strewn streets of the West Bank city of Hebron Saturday, seeing firsthand the impact of an Israeli settlement in the heart of a Palestinian city.

The modern, sleek mid-rise building in the heart of the old city of Hebron stands ringed by Israeli Defense Forces personnel and lookout posts. In the ancient streets below, shops become sparse the closer they are to the settlement of some 500 people.

Camped in the middle of 170,000 Palestinians, the complex highlights one of the biggest problems confronting the two sides: the expanding presence of Israelis in the occupied territory of the West Bank.

The trip by bishops of the ELCA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is to stress accompaniment with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, raise awareness of regional issues and boost advocacy for peace. It runs through Jan. 13.

On Saturday, shoppers jammed the streets just a few blocks for the heart of the old city. In the older section, the few shopkeepers open for business leaped from their chairs to offer scarves, jewelry, Palestinian memorabilia and handicrafts to the conspicuous out-of-towners, some of the few pedestrians on the narrow streets.

The visit to Hebron was arranged by the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel. A unit of the World Council of Churches, the group keeps track of how Israel deals with Palestinians in territories it controls.

Just past the shops the bishops toured the Abraham Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs. It houses the purported remains of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and other Old Testament figures.

On Sunday, the group was to split up to attend worship in the various churches of the ELCJHL and spend time with members afterward.

• » Comments (1)

JERUSALEM (ELCA) — Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) met Jan. 8 with Israeli government and religious officials as part of a pilgrimage to the Middle East. The bishops also toured the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem and laid a wreath.

Forty-five bishops representing both churches are participating in a series of meetings Jan. 6-13 with religious, political and community leaders in Israel and the West Bank. The visit, focused on supporting the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, is the North American Lutheran bishops’ annual academy for theological reflection and study.

The Lutheran bishops met with the two chief rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Yona Metzger and Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who spoke about the current fighting in Gaza.

For nearly eight years Israelis living near Gaza have been subject to periodic rocket attacks on their homes, launched by Hamas from Gaza, Metzger said. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but it has the right to self-defense if Israeli lives are threatened, he said.

“When you return to your countries, please be ambassadors to our feelings,” Metzger said to the Lutheran bishops. “We don’t want war. We don’t want to kill innocent people. We want only to defend ourselves.”

The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop, told the rabbis that the bishops opposed the escalating violence. “I hope you hear — it didn’t sound like you have — our rejection of any violence perpetrated upon the people of Israel — the violence of suicide bombers, Hamas rockets, or rockets from the north today,” Hanson said.

The rabbis feel “deep distress” for the loss of innocent lives in the Gaza conflict, Amar said. To help explain the large number of civilian casualties, the rabbis said authorities showed them maps and photos of where they believe rockets have been fired from Gaza. Earlier in the day, a rocket launched from Lebanon into Israel was determined to be an isolated incident. < more >

• » Comments (5)

By Daniel J. Lehmann

The sometime raucous Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was, well, a quiet church Friday morning except for the spirited singing as Lutheran bishops from the U.S. and Canada held a communion service in a small chapel.

Thanks to the Roman Catholic Franciscans, leaders from the ELCA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada filled a chapel the religious order controls a few steps from what some considered to be the tomb of Jesus.

The closed door to the main part of the church might have helped. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is run by a handful of Christian denominations that in some instances see themselves in competition for the site. Shoving matches occur occasionally, and the keys to the building are held by a Muslim family.

The 8 a.m. service found the normally bustling church virtually empty and the service went off without a hitch. Celebrants kept their vestments inconspicuous as they entered and left the chapel, so as not to draw attention from the other Christian sects.

A young Franciscan priest did come in through a back door to observe a portion of the eucharist, joining the bishops, spouses and staff singing “Dona nobis pacem.”

The group left immediately afterward for Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives. The Lutheran World Federation-owned facility sits atop the mount from where bishops could see a police observation balloon and helicopters scan the Old City of Jerusalem.

Security was tight on Friday as some Muslim leaders called for demonstrations following Friday prayers in opposition to the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip. The group encountered no trouble reaching the hospital, or later when it was taken by bus to Bethlehem, which sits in the West Bank territory and on the opposite side of Israeli’s controversial separation wall.

At the Mount of Olives, bishops were updated on the hospital’s evolution into a specialties facility, particularly oncology. The 46-acre site will also be home to an $8.4 million housing project for Palestinian Christians once zoning approval is received from the Israeli government. Funding has been all but secured.

In Bethlehem, some bishops crossed back into the Israeli portion of Jerusalem and participated in Shabbat services at two synagogues and meals with member families.

The trip is to stress accompaniment with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, raise awareness of regional issues and boost advocacy for peace. It runs through Jan. 13.

• » Comments (0)

By Daniel J. Lehmann

Rockets fired into northern Israel Thursday wrecked plans by ELCA bishops and others to meet with some Israeli officials in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Still, bishops of the ELCA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada pressed on with their visit, laying a wreath at the Israeli memorial to Holocaust victims and conferring with the Jewish state’s two chief rabbis.

The rocket attack in the early hours of Thursday threw the day off course. Several high-ranking Israeli leaders, including the president and foreign minister, canceled their time with the bishop. As events settled down, private consultations with the ministers of the Interior and Tourism were held as planned.

After being given a special tour of the Yad Vashem memorial, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson of the ELCA, National Bishop Susan C. Johnson of the ELCIC and Bishop Munib A. Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and Holy Land placed the flowers at the memorial for the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II.

From there they held an abbreviated meeting with Israel’s top rabbis, Yona Metzger of the Ashkenazi and Shlomo Amar of the Sephardi branches of Judaism. Both rabbis devoted much of their address to explaining Israel’s incursion into the Gaza strip as necessary to stop rocket attacks on civilians in the southern portion of the country. They mourned civilian deaths in Gaza, but said military leaders showed them evidence Hamas fighters were positioned in schools and other public institutions.

Hanson stressed the two North American church’s “rejection of violence.” He said the current conduct of the campaign by Israel raised just war theory questions, especially “proportionality and killing of innocents.”

“If we can’t have this kind of exchange,” Hanson said, “. . . then fanatics will win.”

Johnson urged the rabbis to “stay at the table” in discussions with other faiths over moral and ethical issues arising from the violence. She promised “our prayers for you at this very difficult time and our pledge of accompaniment.”

Neither rabbi responded. They left immediately for another meeting.

The trip is to stress accompaniment with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, raise awareness of regional issues and boost advocacy for peace. It runs through Jan. 13.

• » Comments (3)

a montage from January 6-8

• » Comments (0)