Gaza today is reminiscent of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, when the Red Army stood back and allowed the Nazis to massacre the Polish Home Army- today Israel’s “allies” mouth calls for “restraint” while they arm the bombing and slaughter. The UK shares in this with £300 million of parts manufactured in Scotland for US…
Author: The Meeting Place
First Thursday March 7th 2024
Summary of the discussion In October 1893 the Chicago Evening Post journalist Finley Peter Dunne, in his weekly column, quoted his fictional Mr. Dooley that, “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. We might say the same of the Church. But we have to recognise that people who…
First Thursday February 1st
Summary of Discussion The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem (combined since 2017 with Kairos Palestine) works for human rights, justice and equality for Palestinians (see its website https://www.sabeel-kairos.org.uk/category/about-us/about-sabeel-kairos/). After nearly twenty years’ work in Galilee, Naim Ateek came St George’s Cathedral in 1985, and when the Intifada broke out two years later, people…
Munther Isaac
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church: Jesus under the Rubble February 18, 2024- Munther Isaac Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58:6) Sisters and brothers It has been more than more than 130 days since…
January 2024 First Thursday
First Thursday- summary of the discussion Gaza and Ukraine are still top of the international news. They reminded us of the title of Bishop James Jones’ report on the Hillsborough disaster: “The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power”. Here in the UK the electoral cycle is beginning to dominate everything, with politicians seemingly afraid to speak…
First Thursday November 2nd 2023
This is more of a reflection on our discussion than a summary, which would be far too long. Is it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to find a solution for how to live together? The 1948 United Nations “settlement” which set up a two-state partition of Palestine (despite warnings that this would cause continuing conflict)…
Open letter from Palestinian Christians
A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians 20 October 2023 “Learn to do right; seek justice; defend the oppressed” (Isa 1:17). We, at the undersigned Palestinian Christian institutions and grassroots movements, grieve and lament the renewed cycle of violence in our land. As we were about…
PALESTINE AND ISRAEL
In the Hebrew Scriptures there are two (at least) contrasting images of what Israel could be. The first is in chapter 23 of the Book of Exodus: I will send swarms of hornets in front of you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them…
First Thursday October 5th 2023
In his book “Value(s): Building a Better World for all” (published by William Collin in 2021, and in paperback in 2022), Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, argues that “the embrace of markets and their ‘subjective’ valuations has led to a society that has been robbed of its capacity to express…
First Thursday September 7th 2023
The collapse of the Soviet system in 1990 created a vacuum filled with illusions of Western “victory”. “Liberal democracy” (with free-market capitalism) was now “the only game in town”. The Russian economy was re-organised under Yegor Gaidar (and western “support”), with drastic consequences, including oligarchs buying up formerly state-owned industries. But the present century has…