Indoctrination at the ELCA National Youth Gathering

The ELCA is doing its best to raise up the denomination’s youth in their own image.  For years, the ELCA has gone out of its way to undermine Israel and those who support it.  (see here) At the 2012 ELCA National Youth Gathering we see the most recent examples:

The ELCA’s official website posted pictures taken at the youth gathering of a Palestine exhibit.  One part of the exhibit asked the youth to write how they felt after viewing the information contained in the exhibit.  Here are some of the statements they wrote: “erase hate,” “keep fighting,” “outraged this happens,” “we are free, so why can’t they be,” “free Palestine.” (see here)

The Palestine exhibit also had an area for youth to write their congressmen to complain about Israel. (see here)

Of course, Bishop Mark Hanson had to get into the fray, filling the youth full of Palestinian propaganda saying:

“And then in my mind I went to that wall, that huge wall that separates Israelis from Palestinians.  A wall that for Israelis means security from violence but for Palestinians it, we have Palestinians’ youths that have been with us and they’ve been  in the convention center and they have been talking to us about what that wall means for Palestinian people.  It’s a wall of occupation, it’s a wall of separation.  It separates Palestinians from each other and from their olive groves.  There is no chance, as long as that wall continues, for Palestinians to have a land in which to be citizens.  And I knew we’re a church that committed to working for a just two state solution between Palestinians and Israelis.  That’s who we are.”  (see here - Sunday video)

We also have this gem from the Wednesday night keynote speaker, Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber:

“This is a God whose loving desire to be known overflowed the heavens and became manifest in the rapidly dividing cells inside the womb of an insignificant peasant girl in first century Palestine.” (see here - Wednesday video)

Israel was not called “Palestine” in the days Jesus was born.  Using the term Palestine “is specifically employed to avoid the use of the name Israel, and must be considered an anti-Israel term. . .In the New Testament, the term Palestine is never used.” says Thomas S. McCall, Th.D

God Himself calls the land, “Israel,” “saying, ‘Arise, take the young Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young Child’s life are dead.’ Then he arose, took the young Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel.”

Thomas S. McCall tells us, “. . .the term Palestine is the cornerstone of the propaganda war against Israel and the Jewish people,” and “It appears that Bible-believing Christians have either knowingly or unwittingly followed the world, pagans and haters of Israel in calling Israel by the anti-Israel term Palestine.”  (see here)

The youth of the ELCA are being set up by their leadership (in more ways than one).  It seems clear to me that this is a case of indoctrination.