If you are a commissioner to the 221st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), you may receive mail-outs and brochures from various organizations. But you should not be getting calls to your personal/home phones. And if you get a call and they argue with you about how you are going to vote that is truly unacceptable. It could be classified as harassment. This is what has been happening to at least some commissioners and they should feel free to report it to GA officials.
Several commissioners have received personal phone calls from Jewish Voices for Peace about the Presbyterian vote on divestment. Some callers have engaged commissioners in an argument making them defend their views. They are a small Jewish group who are part of the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions movement. They wish for commissioners to vote yes on divestment. But it does not matter, for or against, no organization or person has the right to engage commissioners in their home or personal life.
One commissioner received first a voice mail and then an e-mail leading him to believe that his name had been googled. The e-mail came via Trude Bennett, of the Department of Maternal and Child Health, UNC Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (The information was at the end of the e-mail.)
Read more at http://naminghisgrace.blogspot.com/2014/06/pc-usa-general-assembly-commissioners.html
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The anti-Israel movement within PC(USA) – I would go as far as to call it anti-Semitic – is the other reason I give for wanting to leave. This is not the first time this agenda has been raised, and it will no doubt come up again and and again.
Israel is the one ally we have in the Middle East.
I think I will refer to PC(USA) as “the Church of Louisville”.
I find it interesting that while this phoning and emailing is decried as wrong, it was not wrong last week to publish a “voting guide” for commissioners on other topics. It is my understanding that all commissioners are to vote their heart, based on the movement of the Holy Spirit. That is certainly what my grandfather did when his committee voted to give $10,000 to the Angela Davis Defense Fund. When I asked him why, he replied that while he personally thought she was guilty, he wanted her to have the best defense possible so that there would be no appeals.