AT NRO's Corner Andrew McCarthy writes:

Delegates of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) are gathered at their annual convention in Orlando, where they are scheduled to vote Saturday on a resolution attacking Israel, which, among other items, condemns the Israeli security fence. CAMERA corrects some of the ECLA’s egregiously inaccurate claims (published in The Lutheran) here.

Interesting note: the United Nations is extremely worried about a terrorist attack against its Manhattan headquarters. So what is it doing? Why ... it is building a security fence.

No word yet on the attendant human rights violations. But something must be done about this outrage. I know this personally. My own human rights were violated only a few weeks ago. The congestion caused by construction of the UN's wall – er, I mean, fence – forced me to wait (you should sit down for this) NEARLY 15 MINUTES to enter the FDR drive.

As a native New Yorker, I felt humiliated and degraded by the occupation at Turtle Bay. I have implored a coalition of concerned NGOs, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to petition the International Court of Justice. It is my hope that the justices – especially those contributed to the ICJ by such bastions of human rights as China, Russia, Sierra Leone, Egypt and Jordan – will rectify this naked land grab. What makes the UN think it can expand its perimeter and snarl traffic like this just because Islamic militants – I’m sorry, I mean freedom fighters engaged in legitimate self-defense – might otherwise blow the place to Kingdom Come?

Is it too late for all good Lutherans to come to the aid of their Church?

JOHN responds: As a member of the ELCA, I'm afraid it is too late, at least on this issue. Most if not all of the mainstream Protestant denominations were taken over by the Left, at the national and international levels, a long time ago. The ELCA takes consistently liberal positions on issues of all kinds; the saving grace, generally speaking, is that hardly anyone knows or cares. The national organization has little to do with the congregations, where the actual life of the church takes place.

As for the fence, the ELCA went on record opposing it and blaming it for violence in the region some time ago. The current resolution, which may have been voted on by now, has already been approved by the Lutheran World Federation and the National Council of Churches.

You can find the resolution now being voted on by the ELCA Assembly here; it goes on for pages in the impenetrably bureaucratic style that church committees tend to use--I think Luther's Theses were a bit pithier--but this is some of the key language:

This Churchwide Strategy for ELCA Engagement in Israel and Palestine... describes the fragile hope for a just and peaceful solution that is growing in the region following the recent Palestinian elections. It also expresses a sense of urgency, calling for strong and concerted action so that: 1) the possibility of secure, contiguous, and viable Israeli and Palestinian states is not eroded by the placement of the separation wall and Israeli settlements in the occupied territories; 2) the witness and diaconic work of the indigenous churches in Israel and Palestine continues; and 3) the future of humanitarian ministries in Jerusalem and the West Bank—in particular those in which the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America participates through the Lutheran World Federation—are not jeopardized by a proposed change in Israeli tax policy.

No mention of Palestinian terrorism as a threat to the "possibility of secure, contiguous, and viable Israeli and Palestinian states." Sad, but typical of the leadership of mainline Protestant churches.

UPDATE: It's official. The ELCA Assembly adopted the "Peace Not Walls" resolution by a 668-269 vote. No wonder American Jews and Israelis increasingly see evangelical Christians as the group least prone to anti-Semitism. One might have thought that, if Christian doctrine is unequivocally opposed to anything, it is mass murder. Sadly, in the mainstream Protestant denominations, that is not the case.