Last Thursday, JCRC Director Diane Fisher spent the day in Sacramento at the California-Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. She joined regional JCRC directors from Sacramento and the Peninsula in lobbying clergy and lay people to vote against two resolutions that threaten local Jewish-Methodist relations. Unfortunately, both resolutions passed.
One resolution proposed that regional Methodist congregations divest from Israeli companies, and the other resolution endorsed the Amman Call, which is a 2007 resolution from the World Council of Churches that among other points supports a full Palestinian Right of Return. The latter resolution was neutralized by an amendment that states that solutions to the Palestinian and Jewish refugee issues should be left up to the parties in the conflict.
These votes were puzzling because the national Methodist conference last year defeated similar resolutions. While the local region may not actually have the authority to act on these votes, the symbolic act is in some ways more hurtful to Jewish-Methodist relations. The JCRCs are meeting with friends in the Methodist community to determine an appropriate response.
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