Statement on Palestine & Israel

November 10, 2023

In response to the ongoing violence in Gaza, we the pastoral staff offer the following affirmations and invite everyone at Sanctuary to join us in prayer and advocacy. We also invite further conversation around any of these difficult topics. 

  1. We decry the ongoing violence and destruction being perpetrated by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Gaza, and we advocate for an end to the violence.

  2. We lament the displacement, sequestration, and oppression of Palestinians perpetrated for the past 75+ years.

  3. We lament and repent from the ways in which Christianity and the United States have supported violence against Gaza and Palestinians.

  4. We advocate for the restoration of full political and human rights for all Palestinian people. 

In addition, we recognize that our Jewish neighbors have lived with historical antisemitism, and with an increase in recent years of acts of antisemitic violence. As a result, we also make the following affirmations: 

  1. We decry the violence perpetrated against Israel by Hamas on October 7th. 

  2. We acknowledge and continue to grieve the horror of the Holocaust and the ongoing presence of anti-Jewish violence around the world. 

  3. We lament and repent from the ways that Christianity has perpetuated anti-Jewish violence. 

  4. We advocate for the healing and safety of all Jewish people, especially those suffering violence or antisemitism.

And finally a word about statements like this: while important, they are unavoidably biased, cross-sectional, and incomplete. This statement can in no way be satisfying to everyone, much less anyone. Many who read this, beyond whatever help it provides, will find inclusions or omissions that they would wish were different. But this statement is not the end of our thoughts, but the beginning. It opens rather than closes our conversations. God alone carries within God’s being the totality of our human experience, which we can only aspire to inhabit and express more fully as we are able.

Please join us in prayer and advocacy for a just and sustainable peace that affords equity, quality of life, freedom, and flourishing for all. 

- Adey, Tom, & David