During the first two weeks of August, Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, toured across the United States, speaking strongly on the crisis facing the Palestinian people and urging Christians in the US to take action.
On August 14, Rev. Isaac gave an address at the historic Riverside Church in New York City entitled “Silence Is complicity,” addressing the consequences of silence from US churches and the role of Christian Zionism in supporting the ongoing apartheid and genocide in the West Bank and Gaza. Abigail Abysalh Metzger, a member of the Pax Christi International UN team and coordinator of the Pax Christi USA Palestine solidarity working group, speaks at the 1:57:10 mark.
Watch the address here:
The tour was sponsored by FOSNA, the Friends of Sabeel North America, which is part of an international, grassroots movement of activists, advocates, academics, individuals of conscience, clergy and lay leaders, and students who are committed to liberation, justice, and peace in the Holy Land. Sabeel is the movement for Palestinian liberation theology.
Pax Christi New Jersey, led by Kathy O’Leary, a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace, was also an active co-sponsor of Rev. Isaac’s tour.
Firstly, thanks to Kathy O’Leary of
PCNJ and Abigail Abysalh Metzger of PCUSA Palestine solidarity group for making possible the riveting, totally non-politically correct presentation by Rev. Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor from Bethlehem. After his talk my colleagues and I were stunned into silence by his fearlessness to call out both our politicians and church leaders who either support the genocide of Palestinians or who refuse to unequivocally condemn it. Regarding our politicians, after listening to Rev. Isaac, we could not help bringing to mind the grotesque rant by President Biden the other night at the Democratic National Convention, an obscene coronation of war criminals, where he hypocritically and theatrically screamed “this war must end” while a few days earlier he sent another billion to the apartheid regime of Israel. As for the Church, our Church, it is clear that either our bishops are trembling at being labeled anti-Semitic or, worse yet, they are part of the corrupt military-industrial complex.
David-Ross Gerling, PhD