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Have you heard of Sumud (formerly Peace Not Walls)? Share about this new initiative from the ELCA for justice in Palestine and Israel. Stay connected by LIKING and FOLLOWING us on Facebook (ELCA Sumud) and Instagram (@ELCASumud).
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… I blogged about it HERE in February, when I first heard of it, under a title/headline that read “‘Sumud’: The political gets personal — and spiritual — with a Lutheran social justice program in Palestine.” Sumud is a new initiative, and very much a work in progress. So some of the links are out of date, but it explains how Debi and I visited Israel and the occupied territories in 2012 under the aegis of Peace Not Walls, an earlier iteration of the ELCA initiative. xxxx
invite ELCA members to
2:25come and see and then to go and tell so
ELCA’s 1989 Social message on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Social message on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: Adopted by the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, April 16, 1989 https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Messages/Israeli-Palestinian-Conflict
The social message on “The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict” was adopted in 1989 and its description of the situation at that time and its specific resolutions for action are dated, yet it continues to provide a basic faith-based orientation to issues of the conflict. This orientation is grounded in our trust in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, who brings peace and desires justice for all. The message calls for confession of Lutheran involvement in past wrongs against the Jewish people, continued prayer and solidarity with all who suffer, the end of human rights abuses against Palestinians in the Israeli occupation, and the need for lengthy, sustained negotiations toward a just and lasting peace. https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Messages/Israeli-Palestinian-Conflict
A PDF file of the 1989 statement sets this framework:
The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA) views the present Israeli/Palestinian conflict with increasing
concern and anguish. We are acutely aware of our sinful complicity
as Lutherans in the past, especially in the face of atrocities previously
committed against the Jewish people. This confession of prophetic
failure in the past cannot lead us into silence now, however. We must
speak about the human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories today,
especially amid the rapidly changing developments in the Middle East.
Our faith calls us to stand with all who suffer, whatever their religious
conviction or cultural identity.
And this bill of particulars, which still holds today to one degree or another:
Our most immediate and urgent concern is for the cessation of human
rights abuses against the Palestinians because of the Israeli occupation.
These abuses include detentions without trial, the closing of schools, denial
of access to health care, deportations, and the use of live ammunition and
plastic bullets in response to non-life-threatening situations.This brutal conflict has taken hundreds of Palestinian lives and caused
untold suffering. It has also divided the citizens of Israel as well as the
worldwide Jewish community, many of whom are concerned that a
continuation of the conflict will only further erode Israel’s democratic
institutions and undermine Jewish prophetic values, which are our
Christian legacy as well.
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Welcome to Sumud: for justice in Palestine and Israel
We are church for the sake of the world. Sumud is the ELCA Churches response to occupation and injustice in Palestine and Israel.
In Jesus Christ all of life — every act of service, in every daily calling, in every corner of life — flows freely from a living, daring confidence in God’s grace.
Freed by the transformative life of Christ, the ELCA is committed to accompaniment, advocacy and awareness-raising with our partners in the Holy Land and in the United States. For the past two decades that work was organized through the ELCA Peace Not Walls campaign. In October 2023 the ELCA announced that, following an in-depth review by ELCA staff and leadership from the Palestinian Lutheran church, Peace Not Walls would be renamed and reconfigured as a new initiative, Sumud: For Justice in Palestine and Israel.
Sumud is an Arabic word meaning “steadfastness.” The term is widely used by Palestinian theologians and others to signify Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people. That resistance takes the form of nonviolent advocacy for political change as well as “resistance through existence,” embodied in education, social work, the arts and one’s relationships with the land and community.
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ELCJHL’s Wikipedia profile has this history, beginning with a joint Anglicam-Lutheran initiative in the 1840. Bringing it up to the present:
After the Second World War the World Lutheran Federation (WLF) took care of the remnants of the German-initiated Evangelical missions, combining Lutheran, Calvinist and united Protestant efforts. Due to the influence of the WLF the Lutheran aspect prevailed.[8] In 1947, the Lutheran mission was granted autonomy from the Protestant Church in Germany and in 1959 was recognised as an autonomous religious community by King Hussein of Jordan. The church was then officially named the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan (ELCJ). The ELCJ had by then grown beyond Jerusalem and had set up congregations in Ramallah and Amman to serve Lutheran Palestinians who were refugees of the Arab–Israeli conflict.[1]
In 1974, the ELCJ joined the WLF and in 1979 the first Palestinian bishop, Daoud Haddad, was elected to lead the church. In 2005, the Synod of the ELCJ decided to rename the church to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land to more accurately reflect the work and ministry of the church that spans Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.[1]
And the church has this overview on its website at https://www.elcjhl.org/:
Congregations of the ELCJHL are located in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Ramallah, and in Amman, Jordan. The latter two congregations were initially established to serve refugees from the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, especially Lutheran families who were driven from their homes in Lydda, Ramle, and Jaffa. The ELCJHL can properly be called a church of refugees and is grateful for the efforts of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) toward Palestinian refugees since 1950.
Today, the ELCJHL operates four K-12 schools in Ramallah, Beit Jala, Bethlehem and Beit Sahour. Each year, the ELCJHL schools serve more than 3,000 students. The ELCJHL also has four additional ministries; the Gender Justice Ministry, the office of which is housed in the main offices of the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem, the Environmental Education Center located on the Talitha Kumi campus in Beit Jala, the Diaconal Ministry, which is housed in the offices of Beit Ibrahim, and our Youth Ministry.
Located on Muristan Road in the “Resurrection Neighborhood,” the Bishop’s offices of the ELCJHL, housed in the Church of the Redeemer, are only a stone’s throw from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The ELCJHL remains a strong Christian presence in these demanding times, providing leadership in ecumenical efforts and offering both spiritual and social services to meet the daily needs of the people.
The ELCJHL has been a member of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) since 1974 and maintains a “companion” or partner relation with many other churches worldwide. It is a member of the Middle East Council of Churches and was accepted into the World Council of Churches in 2013. The ELCJHL is active in ecumenical affairs and interreligious dialogue locally, regionally, and globally.
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Turkish newspaper on sumud
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Fadi Zatari, “Palestinian culture of Sumud,” Daily Sabah, Istanbul, April 4, 2018 https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2018/04/04/palestinian-culture-of-sumud.
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A comparable event [to the Nakba] occurred in 1967, known as “Naksa” or setback in English. Naksa also had a damaging effect, where not only the Palestinians lost new parts of their lands – the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem – but also parts of other Arab countries came under direct Israeli occupation, such as Sinai and the Golan Heights. Strictly speaking, Nakba and Naksa taught the Palestinians a few deep and difficult lessons, among which they learned that leaving Palestinians lands is not a viable alternative for the future.
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Furthermore, the conception of Sumud emphasizes the protection of the Palestinian identity, culture, tradition and custom to maintain their homeland as well as the continuation of the struggle against the Israeli occupation on Palestinians lands. This demonstrates how Sumud became a unique Palestinian national concept that contains different aspects of resistance and self‑preservation against Israeli oppression and harassment. Thus, while the term can be translated literally into English as steadfastness, a more accurate explanation is staying strong in all possible ways; even in the face of Israeli unfairness and injustice and to maintain the self and the land.
As a typical method of colonial powers, the Israeli regime tries to make Palestinian people feel that they are weak, alone, isolated and not capable of struggling or even standing up against them. However, Sumud as a practical ethical term aims to resist and challenge Israeli attempts to deconstruct the minds and hearts of Palestinians. Meaning, Sumud as a way of resistance focuses to preserve the self in the present to open up new horizons, perspectives and hopes in the future for self-determination, liberty and equality.
Both resistance and Sumud, in Palestinians culture, are to some extent analogous. Still resistance is more related to military activities against the Israeli occupation; however, Sumud is the structure and framework in which these military as well as non-military activities are organized. Moreover, Sumud has psychological aspects of being determined and confidence not to lose again so that Nakba and Naksa do not repeat again. Furthermore, Sumud is a style of life and ethical responsibility, in which individual sacrifices himself tirelessly. In other words, Sumud is to give up what you love and in the meantime to embrace patience for coming pain, this is all for the sake of the homeland as well as for others.
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Fadi Zatari, research associate at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University.
A South African’s 10,080 minutes in Palesstine
An article by Michael Oliphant, a South African Ecumenical Accompanier based in Bethlehem, 10080 MINUTES IN PARADISE – THE RIDE TO AGADIR AND OTHER STORIES, South African Council of Churches, March 28, 2007
Oliphant, xxx, was in Palestine as part of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel of the World Council of Churches
It is dusk when we reach Tayibeh. We are to sleep at a home for the elderly which is jointly run by the Latin, Melkite and Lutheran communities in the village. We have supper and then we begin the ‘retreat’. The address deals with two key Islamic fundamentals, Tawhid and shirk. Tawhid expresses the oneness of God and by extension the unity of the real and its counterpart shirk that expresses fragmentation – the opposite of what God is and what reality and people end up becoming. The retreat is an opportunity to gather all of these strands into one coherent whole – all the aspects of our lives so that we too may be integrated – just as God is one integrated whole.
Around midnight we retire ahead of an eight am start for breakfast. Then we depart for the Latin Church in Tayibeh. We too are to be included in the service by the parish priest who graciously invites us to participate with other visiting clergy who are there for the Tayibeh October Beer Festival -which is held in September of course. He asks Michael to concelebrate the Eucharist and to do a prayer intention and for a young person to pray a peace prayer with the International Peace Day in mind. Dima, a young Palestinian woman reads this prayer for peace and Michael prays a blessing on Palestinians, Israelis, the wall, the children and the gunners and their guns and then concelebrates with a group of Roman Catholics from Europe and Australia and me from Africa always breaking the rules. It is truly a blessed and great ecumenical moment. In the midst of this news reaches us that the church in Tulkarem has been destroyed. And we are all concerned that the great strides that have been made in interfaith relations might, at the very least, be compromised.
I spend the next two days in Jerusalem and return on Tuesday to Bethlehem. On Monday however, I find myself in a strange lecture convened by a peace group called Peace Now. The lecture is given by the editor of Haaretz which is the only sensible paper in Israel. He is a sensible man too and clearly understands the issues and the breadth of the injustice. It is in Hebrew and they have kindly given us an interpreter. It is strange in that the meeting is made up of elderly Jews or more accurately Israeli’s. This is an important fact. Not all Israelis support the Israeli state and its methods, its wars and its obsession with separation and division. There are a sizeable body of academics and others, notably women who have taken up the cause of a just Israel. It was inspiring and good to witness and I have met many of them and work alongside them. Machsom Watch monitor the checkpoints, Women in Black demonstrate every Friday at midday and get spat at and have abuse hurled at them. We are particularly close to Tay’yush which means togetherness and work alongside them in the villages. They coordinate legal interventions and support people on the ground. One cannot make sweeping statements about Israelis or Jews aside from the fact that the one does not equal the other. I know and have met some good people here too.
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At this point I want to introduce an important word in the Palestinian lexicon: Sumud. It is important in that it describes the Palestinian spirit or geist. Regardless of the situation, Sumud kicks in and regulates the response to the threat or danger and humanity kicks in and lifts the communal spirit and makes coping possible – coping at all costs. This has the effect of presenting a deception that all is okay. More importantly it also engenders sharing widely amongst family members: better to have 20 families sharing 3000 shekels than 19 families going hungry. You would instantly recognize this as ubuntu. It is the Palestinian people’s greatest blessing and greatest curse. I have known about the Israeli and western withholding of funds to the PA, but I have never seen the evidence on the ground. Today in this meeting for the first time I hear of the hardships families are experiencing because Hamas won the election [in Gaza]. So as you look from the outside in, everything is fine, yet it is not and has not been – apart from everything else – for seven months. And here is the rub: they have all continued to work in spite of that. ‘We dance as we weep’. The casual visitor is just not privy to the deep pain; the immense difficulties.
Later that night we would go on to the Alternative Information Centre in Beit Sahour and tonight instead of the usual format of a speaker, we have music, traditional instruments, traditional songs, but with a new found zestiness and a baseline to die for. And in the audience, mostly women, all dressed and made up enjoying an evening of cultural intercourse. All of the difficulties subsumed for a moment, and beauty reigns. Sumud kicks in. People are living here! This is paradise and I have had 10080 minutes of it. God is good!
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Links and Citations
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_in_Jordan_and_the_Holy_Land
Michael Oliphant, “10080 Minutes in Paradise — The Ride to Agadir and Other Stories,” EAPPI [Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel] Report, South African Council of Churches, News, March 28, 2007 https://web.archive.org/web/20080328234304/http://www.sacc.org.za/news07/oliphant.html
Social message on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: Adopted by the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, April 16, 1989 https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Messages/Israeli-Palestinian-Conflict.
Ordinary Time 