Nigel Willis
The church’s provincial resolution in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is intended to help shape moral opinion within the Anglican communion, but is neither binding on the membership nor represents the views of everyone.
I read the article on the Daily Friend website concerning the recent resolution passed by the Provincial Synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa on the state of Israel.
I am an ordained non-stipendiary priest in the Anglican church, licensed to celebrate the mass and preach at St George’s church in Parktown, Johannesburg.
The resolution has caused me considerable distress and embarrassment. I have also had several parishioners at St George’s writing to me to express their dismay. I am disturbed that the resolution was apparently adopted unanimously by the Provincial Synod.
I think it may be helpful to clarify the position in stating that a provincial resolution like this, although it helps to shape moral opinion within the Anglican communion, is neither binding on the membership nor represents the views of us all.
This is implicitly acknowledged by the fact that the provincial resolution calls on every diocese to adopt a similar resolution. Within the Anglican communion, what matters hugely are the stances taken by a bishop within a particular diocese.
I happen to know several of the dramatis personae in the provincial synod. I wish to assure you that it is most unlikely that the resolution was driven by anti-Semitism. The problem is that there is a pervasive view among so many intellectuals both within and without South Africa that the resolution of the conflict in the Middle East will take place in much the same way as apartheid was ended in South Africa and for much the same reasons.
This is fallacious. In South Africa, at least by the end of the 1980s, there was across-the-board recognition that Christianity and apartheid were incompatible. There is no similar congealing theology when it comes to the troubles in the Middle East.
The resolution is astonishing for its naïveté and its ambiguity. For example, there are many pro-Palestinians who claim that the mere existence of the modern state of Israel is an ‘unlawful occupation of Palestine’. Does the resolution bring the existence of the state of Israel itself into question or does it not? There should not have been room for any misunderstanding on that issue in a resolution of such importance.
The resolution also does not recognise that the Palestinian cause has hardly been unblemished in its righteousness. The tensions in the Middle East are not a straightforward ‘morality play’, as apartheid was widely understood to be.
I confess that I can see no resolution of Palestinian and Israeli tension within my lifetime. The reason is that the antipathy and distrust run so deep. The best that Christians can do is to pray about it and to insist in both prayer and public utterances that there should be no violence, that the shared humanity of us all should be recognised, and that adversaries should be encouraged to talk to one another so that the cause of peace may prevail in the end.
I think I should point out that Anglican theology today is not ‘supersessionist’. Quite the contrary is true. The Harvard School of Divinity leads the way. I have even preached a sermon on the point. The whole question of religious pluralism has received much attention within the worldwide Anglican communion since the end of the Second World War. We now recognise that the best theological explanation for religious pluralism is that different religions learn from one another. We also recognise that, when it comes to ‘doing’ religion, most people do best what they know best.
In other words, although there will be exceptions, we accept that most people adhere to the religious tradition into which they were born and raised – and there is nothing very wrong with that.
I shall be taking up the matter of the resolution within my own parish and diocese, pursuing the correct channels. In my experience, the Anglican church in Johannesburg has always been keenly sensitive to any whiff of anti-Semitism and is hugely proud of the contribution of the Jewish community, especially in the struggle against apartheid.
I stress that those who are not Anglicans should know this resolution neither represents Anglicans nor binds them, and that Anglican resolutions on the Middle East in the future (if there are any) be treated with very much greater care.
Nigel Willis is an ordained non-stipendiary priest in the Anglican church in Johannesburg. He submitted this piece in response to the article ‘Does the Anglican Church really support BDS on Israel’, published on the Daily Friend on 15 October.