The largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States has voted overwhelmingly to recognize Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide and to divest from Palantir Technologies and General Electric Aerospace over their ties to Israel’s military and intelligence services. A measure approved Tuesday by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) also calls on church members to boycott Israeli products and to lobby Congress for an arms embargo against Israel. This is the Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu Akel, a Palestinian American and former moderator of the Presbyterian Church who survived the 1948 “Nakba,” or mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s founding.
Rev. Fahed Abu Akel: “We have been silent on the destruction of most of the schools, universities, hospitals, mosques and churches — you know, one church was Orthodox, Catholic and also Baptist — all of which were done with our American-made weapons and dollars. Siblings in Christ, in the name of the living Christ, we cannot be silent on this matter any longer.”
We were Methodists, but the Presby church was closer, so we went there. I couldn’t tell the difference, but I’m sure there are those that would knife fight to the death over that blasphemy.
I also had a girlfriend who was Lutheran, and I went there a few times, and it was more of the same. I was disappointed, somehow I expected something more exotic.
It seems to me there are a bunch of more or less generic Christian-Lite religions, and you can take your pick.
That was all back when I was a teenager, I stopped wasting any time in a church after that. As a musician, I have collected a bunch of hymnals from different branches, mostly for scholarly reference. There is a lot of overlap, but also a lot of hymns unique to each branch. They only cost about $5 on eBay.