Mennonite Weekly Review

Theologian Martin Marty has said he no longer finds the terms “liberal” and “conservative” useful when describing Christians. He prefers categorizing Christians as either “mean” or “non-mean.”

Kathleen Kern, of Rochester, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

The concept resonates with me as someone who grew up in Findlay, a northwest Ohio town where fundamentalist churches had a lot of political and spiritual power.

As I got older, I found the theological climate stifling and alienating. But most of the fundamentalist Christians I knew were decent, friendly and “non-mean.”

I have written before in this column that the Palestinian city of Hebron, where I have been working with Christian Peacemaker Teams in June and July, reminds me of Findlay.

Most of the people here are conservative Muslims who have shown me and other members of the team great kindness, although some are probably praying for our conversion to Islam.

Most conservative Muslims here support the Palestinian political party Hamas, just as most of the conservative Christians in Findlay support the Republican Party. Many of the 550 employees of Hebron’s Islamic Charitable Society probably voted for Hamas.

The above paragraph basically summarizes the connection between the Islamic Charitable Society and Hamas. The ICS began in 1962, 26 years before Hamas was founded.

Yet Israel, possibly in collusion with the Fatah political party, which controls the West Bank, has decided to punish Hamas militants in Gaza by closing orphanages, schools and other institutions run by the ICS in Hebron — even though the February 2008 closure orders contain no mention of these facilities engaging in illegal activities.

In March and April the Israeli military raided the ICS central warehouse, confiscating clothing, food, equipment and other supplies for thousands of children who live in ICS orphanages and attend ICS schools. They raided ICS bakeries that provided bread for the orphanages and schools, destroying equipment they could not carry with them, and a sewing workshop below an ICS girls’ boarding school.

Because the children in the orphanages and boarding schools are staying with their extended families over the summer, CPT received an invitation to spend the nights in these ICS buildings, in hopes of deterring the Israeli military from destroying the facilities while the children are away.