Advocacy is Working Together

Tuesday May 24, 2011

Today was Lobby Day for Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP). Interestingly enough, it was also the day of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and AIPAC’s lobby day. (In case there is any confusion, Netanyahu is the Prime Minister of Israel and AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israeli lobby.) So, it was a busy day on the Hill and certainly a good one to be discussing a very challenging but relevant issue!

Along with my fellow Washingtonians, I visited four offices today: Congressman Jim McDermott, Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, Senator Patty Murray and Senator Maria Cantwell. At each office we were met by staffers who gave generously of their limited time and listened attently to the issues we raised. Some were more familiar with the issue than others. Some were feisty, some were eager to learn. But all were kind and warm. I felt heard and as though I spoke for an issue that was important to them, even though it can be quite divisive.

As Christians, we value the Holy Land as sacred, as a place where God appeared to us and taught us to live as people of faith. In living out this faith, we are called to promote peace, justice, and human dignity for all people. For us at the CMEP conference, the title of which was “For the Peace of Jerusalem,” this means calling for a resolution to the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Following this call could not come at a more crucial or appropriate time. We are fortunate to have a President who has recently made this a priority once again. Hopefully his call to both sides will help steer them back to the negotiating table so they can embark on reaching a mutually agreeable and equitable resolution.

This is something we pressed upon our members of Congress – support the Obama Administration’s efforts and lead the way in brokering an agreement. We also urged them not to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority. On May 4, Hamas and Fatah agreed to pursue a coalition. We do not yet know what this coalition will look like or what the implications will be for the conflict. We do know that Fatah has endorsed non-violence and recognizes Israel’s right to exist. If Hamas has chosen to align itself with such a group, perhaps this indicates broader progress towards peace. But we will have to wait and see. Until then, we must continue to support our Palestinian brothers and sisters just as we continue to support our Israeli brothers and sisters.

Finally, we have seen Christians emigrating from the region in droves as their political and economic opportunities dwindle. Some face restrictions on their freedoms of movement and residency. One such Christian is the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Bishop Dawali, whose residency visa for the city of Jerusalem has been revoked, which prevents him from tending his flock. We hope our leaders will listen to their stories and recognize their plight and do whatever they can to encourage a peaceful solution so that all the faithful may visit our shared Holy Land.

This was quite an eye opening experience and I expect to reflect on it more than once in the coming days. The title of this post comes from a handwritten note I noticed in the Office of Government Relations for the Episcopal Church. It said "Advocacy is: raising awareness, education, sharing our stories, working together." I think the final point is the most important. Advocacy is all of these things but I emphasize the last point because, as Archbishop Chacour has said, "together, we are stronger than the storm."

Please keep our leaders in your prayers, as well as our Muslim, Jewish, and Christian brothers and sisters across the Middle East in this time of great violence but also great hope. Together, we are stronger than the storm.

Op Ed from Bonnie Anderson

This op ed by Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies after her recent advocacy visit to Capitol Hill speaks volumes to the task put before me for tomorrow. She went to advocate for women and the poor and ended up discussing the budget. I will be visiting Capitol Hill to advocate, witness, testify on behalf of the Middle East peace process as a person of faith. It will be a challenge for me but I hope to have a positive impact on the discussion and bring the issue to the forefront of my representatives' attention.

Below, please find selected excerpts from Bonnie's op ed which I found especially poignant and which I will be taking with me for my own visit to the Hill.

We have a significant moral priority as Episcopalians, as Christians, to bear witness on behalf of the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalized. The baptismal promise to strive for justice and peace among all people makes the choice between cutting programs for the poor and elderly or raising taxes an easy one[...]

I think that what the Episcopal Church and other faith-based organizations bring is moral courage. We reinforce the notion that it is essential to speak up with passion and commitment for all of those neighbors whom we, as followers of Jesus, promise to love as deeply as we love ourselves. [...]

I saw a lot of people with heart in those Capitol Hill offices, but they need encouragement. I met people who are bringing all that they are, and giving everything they've got, to the task at hand. They need to see the rest of us doing the same. The soul of America is at stake in this budget. The people of God need to speak up, now[...]

Right now, a big dose of God's wonder is just what Capitol Hill needs, and our prayers and voices can help deliver it.

How good it is to raise hell sometimes

Sunday May 22, 2011

Today was our first full day of the conference. We attended church at the National Cathedral where the themes of the readings were acting as living stones to build the church together. Dean Sam Lloyd’s sermon spoke to the challenge of the rise of religion worldwide and the divisiveness that sometimes accompanies it. What an apropos lesson! The beautiful service was followed by a tour (my third since moving here last summer – the main characteristics of Gothic architecture are still 1) pointed arches, 2) ribbed vaulting and 3) flying buttresses) and lunch at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, Cactus Cantina. Oddly enough, I ran into a colleague who has been working with m to re-blog my posts here to a foreign policy blog we both contribute to. After the events of my afternoon and evening, I am now incredibly jealous that he is leaving for Israel on Wednesday. But I am getting ahead of myself.

We received a true crash course in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a number of sources, including Alex Baumgarten, Director of Government Relations for the Episcopal Church and the international policy analyst in charge of the Middle East portfolio. Alex, along with Mary Getz of the Office of Government Relations (OGR), went over a history of the Episcopal Church’s (TEC) involvement in the issue via legislation. I hope to post a brief summary of the facts of the case in a later post, but suffice it to say our legislation has typically been reactionary, due in large part to the fact that our governing body only meets every three years, but has focused a lot on encouraging a negotiated settlement which respects the human rights of both parties. I will be learning more about the details of the position tomorrow before I participate in Lobby Day on Tuesday. The real star of today’s show was our opening plenary in the evening.

Our guest speaker was Archbishop Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Arab Christian living in Israel. He himself admits up front that this is a very complicated and contradictory identity, but points out with characteristically loving insight that “behind the contradiction is a hope waiting to thrive”. There are 150,000 Christian Arabs living in Israel, which constitutes about 25% of Christian Palestinians. The other 75% are refugees or have emigrated elsewhere. The last important statistic he mentioned is that only 9-10% of those living in Bethlehem are Christian. This being primarily a struggle between Jewish Israelis and Muslim Palestinians, the Christian Arabs tend to get lost in the shuffle and have a difficult time expressing their identity in such an environment. Many have chosen to leave.

But Archbishop Chacour, ordained in the Greek Melkite Catholic Church in 1965, has begun a revolutionary ministry there. He built a school in a small village called Ibillin. At one time education spanned pre-school through university level but it now only extends to the high school level. In this school, Christian children go to school with Jews and Muslims; none are turned away. And they have a 90% pass rate for standardized tests. In Israeli public schools, Jews have a pass rate of around 70% while Arabs of a pass rate of around 50%. So, the ministry has been incredibly successful and has bridged cultures in a way unparalleled in the region. But the most important lessons I drew from the Archbishop were less about his education ministry and more about his approach to the peace process.

Archbishop Chacour encourages Christians and Americans to support Jews and Israel as fully as we are called. The problem comes when friendship with the Jews means implicit enmity towards the Palestinians. Likewise he welcomes our friendship and support, but if it means hating the Jews, he says he has no use for our friendship. He begs for friendship and solidarity for both sides so they may not learn how to live together, but to “remember how we used to live together, and put the last 60 years in parentheses.” As he is fond of saying “together, we are stronger than the storm.” For American Christians, this means getting our hands dirty in the name of peace and justice. Especially with such a polarizing issue, this can be frightening. But, as Chacour went on to say, “how good it is to raise hell sometimes, not against one side, but for the benefit of both sides.”

Promises

By the recommendation of a friend who has studied the region for quite some time, I just watched a documentary called Promises to prepare for the Churches for Middle East Peace conference. It follows several Israeli and Palestinian children between 1997 and 2000 and gets their opinions on the conflict, the "other" and the future. They are amazing kids with striking opinions, some of whom are deeply religious and some of whom are decidedly secular. Some moderate, some extreme. It also shows the realities of check points and the deep divisions between the various parts of the country.

One scene struck a particular chord with me. An Arab grandson is going through land deeds with his grandmother. Many of the deeds are very old, dating back to 1931, 1942. She then shows him the huge, iron key she said was to their house previously. She keeps it, I assumed, for the day when they can return to the land they feel is rightfully theirs. I find this interesting because when I visited Toldedo, Spain, our tour guide told of a Jewish family who was forced out of the country during the Inquisition in 1492. They too took the huge, iron key to their house with them in the hopes they might return. On the 500th anniversary of that event, 1992, they were invited back by the government of Spain. They brought their key, went to their home - which still had the original door, 500 years later - unlocked it and crossed the threshold, finally. I tell this story partly because I find it touching, but also as a sort of prayer that all parties may find such resolution to this incredibly challenging and deeply personal issue.

By the way, it turned out I was wrong about the reason the grandmother kept that key. Their house had long ago been blow up and their village destroyed. The land lies beyond a checkpoint through which they cannot pass. The key is now a symbol of what they lost and what they wish to rebuild.

Despite tragedies like the lost village, there was much hope in the film. I was thrilled when two of the featured Israeli children spent an afternoon visiting two of the featured Palestinian children in the refugee camp where they lived. They played soccer, taught each other songs, and ate a meal together. Most exciting to me was when they played a clapping game with which I myself was familiar. It was taught to me by two Palestinian Christian girls many years ago when they visited the summer camp I attended and later worked at. It was exciting to see that what we called the "tom tom tom" game was used to bridge cultural divides in Israel as well as Idaho.

What this narrative has shown me is that this is an incredibly emotional issue. From what little I saw, there are those who are blinded by passion and those who are paralyzed by apathy. As I continue my research before the conference and as I listen and pray on what I learn there, I will be interested to see if I continue to see those patterns. I look forward to learning about what it is like for those who are engaged in the process and what they think the future holds.

Introduction

This weekend I am taking part in a leadership conference for young adults through the church regarding the Middle East peace process. It is a pilot program called the Episcopal Leadership Institute for Young adults. They will be giving us policy advocacy training and we will be listening to policy makers and activists speak at the Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) conference on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and then on Tuesday we will be lobbying our senators and representatives on the issue. I am hoping very much to gain skills but also make contacts in the field, in case I decide to go into liaison work or advocacy work.

Why might I go into that line of work? I am a graduate student at the American University in Washington, DC studying US Foreign Policy. My area of focus is Latin America, but my interests are diverse. They include democracy and human rights, intergovernmental organizations, and conflict resolution and reconciliation. As a person of faith, my beliefs inform my education and my career goals. As an Episcopalian, I value seeking the “via media” or middle way, pursuing social justice and listening with my heart. The peace process is an emotional issue that marries my passion for policy and my grounding in faith in a unique and incredibly challenging manner. I am both terrified and thrilled to be engaging in the discussion, learning from those who know more than I do and educating those who formulate US policy.

As part of my responsibilities as a member of this pilot group, I will be blogging about the event throughout the institute, hopefully including pictures. I will also give a presentation to various young adult and peace-process oriented groups the next time I'm in my home diocese of Spokane, most likely in December. Those of you in the Diocese of Spokane should keep an eye out in the coming weeks for articles from me in the Inland Episcopal and on the diocesan and cathedral websites!

In the days preceding the conference, I will be reading narratives and histories and viewing documentaries to get a feeling for what the situation is like on the ground. This is something about which I will certainly be informing myself. But I will also be praying about it. My background is not in the Middle East peace process. I know it is a deeply emotional issue with ancient roots so I have much to learn.

The title of this blog references a lecture I attended at the 2010 National Vergers Conference. Vergers have many responsibilities. With respect to the church service, they help plan and execute the liturgy by preparing communion before the service, leading processions, escorting lectors to and from the lectern, assisting with traffic flow and anything else required to conduct a worship service. The motto of the Vergers Guild is “service in worship, worship through service.” They carry a characteristic staff called a verge, which now is symbolic but once served to beat the peasants away from the bishop when he celebrated mass. President Teddy Roosevelt subscribed to a foreign policy ideology known as the “big stick theory,” which came from the phrase “walk (or speak) softly but carry a big stick.” It effectively meant that the US should engage in diplomacy but should always be prepared to utilize force to achieve foreign policy goals. Vergers carry big sticks, but that doesn’t mean force should be part of the equation. We should carry big sticks because the “stick”, the verge, is the symbol of our role, but we must do so with love. Through love we can get to know the “other” and obtain a solution that benefits both parties… right? Hopefully this experience will help answer this question, and others.

Please feel free to spread the blog link around to young adults, members of the Diocese of Spokane, or anyone interested in the peace process. I hope I find this to be a rewarding experience and that I can bring what I learn back to the diocese so that others with a passion for the peace process or policy advocacy can benefit from what I learn!