Great. This is an oral history interview with Reverend Mark Davidson of Chapel Hill, North Carolina Church of the Reconciliation. Did I get that right or did I messed that up?

That's it.

My name is David Staniunas. I'm records archivist at the Presbyterian Historical Society. Thank you, Mark, for joining me. We're here to talk about your congregation's history of social witness and specifically the activism the congregation engaged in surrounding Palestinian liberation. So let's just start with you know, you joined. You took the pastorate at Church of the Rec in 1998, is that right?

That's correct, yes.

Great. What was kind of the lay of the land inside that congregation? You know, at that point.

Yeah. I was really drawn to the history of the Church of Reconciliation when I read the ministry information form. It just spoke to me and just rang out in so many ways. The fact that the church, this would have been 1998, really formed in 1966. So essentially it had already over 30 years of establishing itself as a progressive congregation, pushing the envelope on a number of of social issues, really starting with being founded as an intentional community of racial reconciliation in the Deep South in the sixties. I mean, right there. The church was saying this is the kind of life and the kind of witness we want to embody and to live into. And they were active in the st century Central America sanctuary type issues during the eighties, then in the late eighties, started studying and discerning what they might want to do around LGBTQ, full inclusion in the life of the church and working toward LGBTQ ordination as well. And that they they just after years of discussion and discernment, they decided in 1993, I believe it was to declare themselves a More Light congregation. And in that respect, again, showing this kind of cutting edge aspect of the church's life. They were the only More Light church in between Washington and Atlanta for for many, many years. And so, yeah, they were stocked with veteran activists, people with a really mature understanding of what it meant to live out of one's faith and make a difference in the world in terms of public witness. So I was just very drawn to a congregation that that shared that passion with me.

So when you joined church, the Rec had already extended social witness committee. We were some of the main actors in that group.

Yeah, I mean, they had what had been called for years, the mission council and then became the Peace and Justice Committee and then under the umbrella of the Peace and Justice Committee were several support groups. There was an Africa support group, a Guatemala support group. And then we formed this group called the Salaam Shalom Committee, which was also a support group, and that was committed to a just and lasting peace in Israel Palestine. And I think it's important to remember that, you know, that that the churches did a really did involve this this commitment to peace and social justice. On the other hand, when they lived try to live into that before the formation of the Salaam Shalom Committee, there was kind of a repeated logjam that happened in the committee because we had a retired religious studies professor named Bill Peck. Dear friend of mine is recently passed on to the beautiful eternities. But this guy and his wife had been in in Europe after the liberation of the camps and had been involved in refugee work with with with Jewish refugees in in post-World War two Europe. So very deeply impacted by the Holocaust and by the suffering of the Jewish people and personally involved in trying to alleviate that. So every time the issue of Palestine came up in the Justice and Peace Committee, bill was could be counted on for a very strong statement in favor of Israel. But there were other voices in the committee, and these were folks that were talking about Palestinian rights, talking about the occupation, talking about the disproportionate suffering, the huge power imbalance, you know, and wanted the church to to be able to address some of the injustices going on, especially from the Palestinian perspective. And it was just an impasse. I mean, these were the guy that one of the lead voices for the Palestinian thing was West Hare, who had been the regional director for the War on Poverty in Richmond for years, a veteran peace and social justice, economic justice activist and used to wear the Free Palestine T-shirts all around the church and, you know, deeply committed to Palestinian rights and Palestinian justice. And so you had two sort of forces of nature meeting each other every time these issues came up and really not getting anywhere. We formed the Salaam Shalom Committee as a just as a way of saying we'll be focused on these issues, try to find new space for for new witness or new new kinds of action that might come out of that. That group formed in about 2008, I think I'm not sure exactly, but late 2000 and began to meet monthly. And Drew, we had about 13 people in the committee, which for a small church like the REC, that's pretty significant. And that was a very meaningful time. Rich discussions back and forth. We had African-American members who felt a deep commitment to Palestinian justice, and we had folks from the Africa Support Group. And, you know, it was it was a broad representation within the life of the church that was working on these issues. Yeah.

And so kind of your first step was to undertake programing specific to the rec and kind of like build awareness and understanding. What were some of those programs you ran?

Yeah, we we drew heavily from denominational resources. There was this cradle of faith program that talked about the the various forms of witness in in Arab countries all around the Middle East. That ones not particularly political, didn't particularly focus in on Israel-Palestine, but tried to give the broad cultural and historical context of the church's presence in the Middle East. The history of that, that witness. We went through that entire thing. We had a congregational dinner. Several of the members of the Salaam Shalom Committee introduced the different churches, the church in Iraq, the church in Syria, the church in Egypt, all of that broad cultural context, very well attended. People were interested in new information for a lot of folks. We also did the Steadfast Hope study, which was the Israel Palestine Mission Network, one of the mission networks of the peace would say. Really fine study and several weeks in adult education delving into these issues. Also well-attended. So yeah, we those were two of the major ones. But we also had the parish associate from our church. Rebecca Reyes was part of the the denominational study that was chaired by my colleague and friend Ron Shive, which was the breaking down the walls building bridges study that was done for the nomination in 2007. I think Rebecca was part of that. She brought a PowerPoint back of all the experiences. So some congregations I think really are pretty thin in terms of the awareness and the knowledge of these issues. It's it's a little little more depth than what they might get from, you know, cable news or something like that and get very lightly covered in the cable news. Not true about this church. I mean, they really the depth of knowledge and awareness of these issues was already fairly considerable because of the activists in the church. But then the work that we did over several years really deepened and broadened their knowledge on that. I should also say, in addition to denominational resources, we also were a kind of a regular stop from lecturers and experts in the field who would come through North Carolina and we would make these available for clergy. We'd have clergy breakfast, clergy dinners and listen to, you know, international experts in this area, Jewish, Muslim. So several Palestinian Christians came through. We had Fahad Abu Akerele, who was one of our our moderators, has spoken at the church. Stephen Sizer, an expert on the Christian Zionism Anglican priest from England, has been to our church. Let's see several others anyway. But it was fairly common for our church to be one of the places in North Carolina that hosted several of these tours. So and that's a reflection of my my personal passion in this area, but also was warmly welcomed by the church as a really good thing for us to do to make our church available for public gatherings of activists and people who are curious about the issue. To come to a place like Church of Reconciliation, hear a great speaker, have a meal, have conversation about the issue. So yeah, there was a long period, I'd say maybe, you know, six or seven years where, you know, if you looked at the calendar, there was something going on almost every month, whether it was an outside speaker or, you know, certainly the monthly meetings and some some gatherings that embraced the entire congregation.

Yeah. And so, I mean, after after six or seven years of. Congregation meetings and local meetings and being one of the whistle stops on different occasions.

That's right.

That's right. After six or seven years of that, I mean, the last time we talked, you kind of mentioned the phrase like moving from concern into action. Yeah. And so, I mean, after seven years of that, was there like a crux moment that functioned that way for you, or did the the body itself kind of declare itself ready for action?

It's a really good question. I don't know if I can pinpoint one particular cross moment, to use your nice phrase there, but I think it was a kind of a general evolution. I mean, the more knowledge they gained, the greater the frustration that the situation seemed unchanging and even sometimes got worse, as in one of the the periodic assaults against the Gazan in Gaza from from Israel. So they I think I would say the greater the knowledge, the more of the frustration built up and the more the question kept coming up, what are we going to do about this? Are there things we can do using our resources, our faith, our knowledge and awareness of the issue? And this is a prayerful group to I mean, we always would pray for the Palestinian people and the the Israeli people. I mean, our whole mission was to find peace that would sustain both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. We tended to use the Palestinian perspective as our entry point into the issue, because that's where the deepest and most pervasive suffering and injustice was. But it was to involve a just peace for all. And, you know, how can we use our faith? How can we use our knowledge and our awareness, our passion for for justice in this issue to somehow make a difference, bring other people with us. And so I think there was a desire to kind of get out of our own little process as meaningful as it had been. So we began to look around and several of us were members of the U.S. campaign to end the Israeli occupation, which has since changed its name. And it's now the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. But when it was still to end the occupation, several of us had private membership, several of the members of the Salaam Shalom Committee. And so they heard that the U.S. campaign was doing a bus ad campaign in major cities all over this all over the country. And the the bus had basically had Saleem Shalom, who was a Palestinian, who'd had his home demolished by Israeli forces over 45 times and rebuilt by the leftist Israeli Jews who were aghast that this was being done in their name. And they showed up to help rebuild his his home plus internationals from all over the mostly from Europe, but also from Australia and Japan and South Africa, people coming to Israel, Palestine helping Jeff Halper, who was the head of the Israeli Campaign Against Home Demolitions. And so the poster shows Saleem with his grandson and Jeff Halper with his granddaughter, and the two of them are fast friends, having rebuilt his home now over 40 times. And the they the the logo for this really brightly colored, eye catching, well-designed bus ad was join us to build justice and equality. And then in bold letters and U.S. military aid to Israel. In other words, both of them were convinced that that as long as over three and a half at that point, probably 3.5, it's now almost it's over 4 billion every year was sustaining the occupation was was keeping the status quo and even deepening it. More losses of land, more more killing. And so the idea was if we're going to get the boot off our neck, we've got to start by getting the US military aid out of the picture because it's holding things in place. We knew that that was probably going to be controversial and so we called them and said, Can we change that part of the the bus ad to say something that we believe strongly in justice and equality for all, but maybe not focus so much on the military aid. And both Jeff and Salim says this this question has come up before from others, not only from you. And we are adamant that our name and our image will not be used in this campaign unless it includes ending U.S. military aid to Israel. And and there was a kind of a realism about that in it when we talked to them, because they said unless we insist on that, unless we include that demand in this campaign, we're just inviting the perpetuation of the status quo. We have to go deep to the root of what's causing all this to stay where it is. So we we prayed about that. We thought about that. We discussed it. We went back and forth. And in the end, we decided we were going to be in solidarity with Jeff and Salim. And the the the broader significance of what they were saying so that we settled on partnering with the U.S. campaign and its bus at the campaign, which, as I said, was in New York and Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta and Chapel Hill. Yesterday, Chapel Hill, Carrboro had an amazing transit department which offered these bus ads to local groups and other churches, had had them up there as sort of, you know, promotions, please come to our church. And they'd have a catchy little bus ad. And there were also businesses that used it. And it was a a thing to have a bus ad in the Chapel Hill Carbo Busses, which, by the way, were free. So a lot of people get on the busses and they're exposed to the the advertising and hear this. The idea was. Boy, that's a lot of eyeballs to, you know, if you could get a contract for any length of time. We got a contract to put those bus ads in the busses for busses for one year for $700. So in terms of our idea of making a witness, getting the word out, we thought this is just magic. We expected there would be some resistance and push back, but we also thought it could spark a public conversation, which it certainly did.

Yeah. So just to circle back a little bit, what what timeframe are we talking about where the church was thinking about joining the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights? And then when did the bus ads launch?

Yeah, we started that whole discernment process doing the research in, I'd say early 2012, like maybe around the same time a year, February in 2012. Lots of meetings, lots of discernment, lots of discussion, good research. We also reached out to some other community organizations that were like minded on this issue, and we formed a coalition with them. We we talked with Jewish friends and colleagues. We, you know, we did our homework. I mean, we really looked into it. We talked we did the research with the town transit company. And and when we thought this might be a thing, we might go ahead and do it. We brought it to the session. And I think that happened probably April, April or May of 2012. So as a couple of months of discernment, research, study, discussion and then a proposal and at that point we had a design, sort of a draft design of the of the the bus ad and we presented it to the session and it was coming through the Salaam Shalom Committee. But I was heavily involved with the group as well. So when it came to session, we had ample time on the budget around the agenda to to work on it. It didn't have any budgetary impacts for the church. We had the $700 in our budget for us for Salaam Shalom. The only question was, is this something that the session will approve? Because it was definitely a public witness. It definitely involved the church's name. We were part of this coalition, so they studied it and discussed it back and forth for four months. And at the end of that process, we had a unanimous vote, except for one abstention, not a not a no vote, but an abstention from a retired State Department diplomat who said, I'm in favor of this. This is right. I've seen what the suffering of the Palestinian people. My only hesitation is I think that the the the pushback will be intense. And so I'm not sure those of us in the State Department always felt like we weren't prepared for how how intense the pushback was. And so I'm not sure we are either. But I wasn't opposed to it. He just said, I'm going to abstain. So with that, we we made copies of the bus ad and brought them to the church the following Sunday, gave an introduction to what it is and what we're about and showed the the the bus ad and and people were delighted. People loved it. You know, they thought it was great as an extension of something that we've been talking about for years. And we had a little picture outside on and they were in one of the pictures maybe 20 people there, broad representation of our folks, the members of the LGBT community, the African-American members, all young male, female. I mean, it was a pretty broad cache of people and a number of people from the from the Salaam Shalom Committee, but also just members of the congregation and everybody delighted and ready to see what would happen. That would have been August of 2012.

And so, you know, you mentioned one of your members of session being on the being a State Department official formerly and thinking about the potential blowback. And you know what? So, I mean, you had partners in coalition with you. I mean, a Jewish Voice for Peace or Students for Justice in Palestine, something like that at USC.

Well, they were not official members of the coalition, but they were privately supportive. And several of those members had been part of, you know, sort of focus groups that we had put together and gave us their input. I think for that this was a the Jewish Voice for Peace group was just forming in the area. They were feeling like they needed to sort of carve out their own space and put their own stamp on things before being part of broader coalitions. And so it was it was a sort of a cautionary tone they took toward publicly affiliating with us, but privately said, we're with you on this and we want to be supportive. So.

Yeah, okay. Okay. And so what was the the community response and what kind of blowback did you get?

Well, it was it was fascinating. I mean, almost immediately when the the bus ads were up and the busses were running and it was that the start of the fall semester at University of North Carolina, students were packing into the busses and and the there's a little sort of sound off thing on the town council of the transit board where people could make reaction to things. And it was everything. I mean, there were people, you know, many of them Jewish, but not entirely who were offended and and criticized it and said, what is this doing? And it's it's hurtful to me personally, I don't want this as well as people who were incredibly enthusiastic and supportive of that said, wow, what a what a fantastic image. We love the picture of the two grandfathers with their grandkids. We love the message. How nice to see something that really brings thoughts to mind instead of just commercial advertise. We got Nazis. So it was a good bit of positive. There was some negative for sure. I responded to as many of the negatives as I could on that site. And interestingly enough, one of the conservative members of the town council, Republican and kind of a business guy not particularly interested in these kind of things had always been really disturbed by polarization and divisive rhetoric and made a point of contacting me. I didn't know him. He didn't know me but contacting me and say, I really appreciate the civil tone you're using in engaging with folks that have criticism on me on this issue. And I'd like to invite you to come to town council and and speak to us about this witness. So I was able through that connection and several others that I had to, you know, post several op eds in the local paper. Letters to the editor. I wasn't alone in that. There were a lot of people that weighed in. And so initially the pushback was individual. But then within about two weeks, there was organized pushback. The the the town has a kind of a a drag sort of a student drag area with lots of businesses that the students frequent. And it turns out that several of those businesses were owned by prominent Jewish families. And they had a closed door meeting with the mayor and they were furious with the city for allowing this, which they viewed to be offensive to the Jewish community. And they demanded that they be pulled down. And we didn't even know that this had happened, except that a member of the council tipped us off that this was going on behind the scenes. And that particular person was a little offended by that process, thought this is a public matter. The see at the town, it entered into a con a contract with a local church. There ought to be something like due process or conversation. It shouldn't just be, you know, deep sixed from behind the scenes. So they they said, let's let's put this on the agenda and invite Reverend Davidson to come talk about the coalition's work in posting it and and open the floor to any other voices in the community. And so, you know, there were also there was a rich discussion back and forth. I will say that one of the rabbis of the conservative synagogue over in in Durham did come, and he was quite angry about it. And he essentially called me an anti-Semite from the from the diocese there. And they had a protocol where I wasn't really having already spoken, I wasn't able to come back up and reply in any way. So it sort of hung in the air there for a while that this was an anti-Semitic. Attack against the Jewish community. And then a Jewish lawyer who I didn't know who was working for a progressive organization in town, moved to the the mike and said, hello. I introduced herself and she said, I'm I'm a lawyer working in economic justice in the area. And I want to say something about this charge of anti-Semitism. She said, I'm Jewish myself, proud of her family history, which included Holocaust deaths. And she said, while I personally disagree with the message of the that I do think Israel requires continued robust military aid. Although I personally disagree, this ad falls well within the bounds of acceptable discourse on this issue. And should not be taken down. And I just wanted to go over and throw my arms around her because that that is exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to spark a conversation. And and and, of course, there are some things that that can only be said by. In this issue. By. By Jews and by Palestinians who are the most personally affected by it. And to have a Jewish American liberal progressive in many ways, but not so not so much on this issue, was still able to say this. This needs to. This needs to stay up. And we. I will say briefly, I think I mentioned this to you when we talked earlier, but she she and I struck up a friendship which is continued to this day. We're always shooting back and forth with each other on email. It's very friendly, very collegial, very respectful. And after a couple of these meetings where there was a lot of vitriol directed toward me and toward our church, she said, I'd like to take you out to lunch. And so we went to lunch. And afterwards over, I sort of instinctively reached for the check and had a great conversation, and she pushed my hand away and she said, This is mine. She said, My people called you an anti-Semite. At least that can do is buy your lunch. And, you know, so there were some wonderful connections and deepening of connections that happened because of this witness. And I won't deny that there was a lot that was really painful and difficult. But yeah, some some really beautiful things came out of it as well.

Yeah. Just to circle back. What, So the ADD goes up in August of 12? Yeah. About, about what time was the city council hearing about the ad.

That probably from the late August to almost Christmas time, The the bus ad and the controversies related to it in the community were were again and again on the town council agenda. Oh, multiple times. Oh yeah. Multiple times. And and they tried several times to try to get it to come down and to speak against it. And and I the the key thing that happened in the in the fall was I contacted the ACLU to say it's my impression that once we've entered into a contract with the city, it can't be just arbitrarily abrupt it like this and the director of of of the ACLU local said you're absolutely right. He said this would be an infringement of your churches and your individual civil rights. And so he showed up at one of these meetings and said, well, I'm biased for Brooks. I'm from the local ACLU. And he says, come to my attention, there's an effort to break this contract and to take down the bus ads. And he said, if you do that, you are infringing on the rights, the civil rights, the free speech rights of the Church of Reconciliation. And then the individuals they're in and the members of the coalition who have put forward this thing, that the courts have been very clear that it that ads like this are a function of protected speech. And he said, if you do this, the ACLU will sue you. And immediately the tone changed for that from that point on. And even though there was still, you know, strong feeling that that among some in the community that this was an inappropriate witness, hurtful witness should be taken down. There were a great many who were relieved that they got that backing from the ACLU. I should also say that in addition to hearing from some people, you know, within the Jewish community primarily, but not exclusively, that they didn't like this witness wished we hadn't put it up. There were some very touching, very poignant letters that came to me. One, for instance, was a Lebanese-American businessman from Raleigh who had heard about it, and he wrote a personal letter and he said, you know, I thank you so much for stripping the the the the cover off the taboo here and and making space for us to have conversation about this as a as a country. He said, I grew up in Lebanon hearing the heartbreaking stories of Palestinian refugees from the Nakba. And I think most people do not have any idea of what what Palestinians have gone through and are still going through. An enclosed $100 check. And he said, I want you to keep doing this work. And that was not he was not alone in that. We must have collected over $1,000 in individual contributions that fall for our public witness. And a local civil rights activist who lived in his in in Chapel Hill his whole life, had been involved in civil rights, said he thought our witness was the most significant civil rights related witness since the 1960s. So it was it really made a big splash. And it was, you know, the sound bite media cycle was such that something, you know, grabs people's attention for maybe a 24, 36 hour period and then it goes on to the next issue. That wasn't true in this case. We had a whole fall where the papers were filled with issues about this back and forth, you know, all the different issues. I suspect it was it was a live topic in some congregations and community organizations, not just in ours. So, you know, we viewed it for all of the difficulties that came with it as a very successful public witness in that it sparked conversation and and deeper awareness of the issues. Yeah, well, what.

Was I mean, what were some of the other outcomes like inside of your congregation and outside or related to Palestinian liberation after the bus that went down?

Yeah. Well, let me just say one other thing about just the trajectory of that. You know, I went to Israel Palestine on a international delegation in January of 2013, and I was gone for about two weeks. And during that time, my wife received death threats. And it was to the effect of we know you're alone with with these kids. We know your husband is away. We know where you live and really brought brought terror into our into our home. So, you know, there was some nasty stuff, some stuff that caused a great deal of anxiety and stress for our family. She did not tell me about that while I was over there because she knew I would have probably adopted the trip had come back. But I heard about it when when I came back. And it's and, you know, I got regular death threats in my email for several weeks, several months, and got to know one of the local rabbis who helped me decode some of this language. I was being called in a malachite. And it turns out the a malachite in the Old Testament are the sworn enemies of the Jewish people. And so, you know, that kind of invective, that kind of hatred coming at us because we had dared to raise these issues and I wouldn't have known necessarily all the nuances that that held for the Jewish community except through this contact with with this rabbi. And, you know, she wouldn't have known to contact me. She wouldn't have thought to contact me if she hadn't heard through the grapevine. Hey, the good reverend over there is getting a lot of hate. Let's see if we can't get behind him. And they did. So it was a very interesting. I mean, that was totally unanticipated. We had no idea there'd be those kinds of connections. And they did come up in interesting and surprising ways all the time. And then in while I was over there, the session on their own, I was so proud of them on their own, wrote a letter explaining why we wouldn't. Not take the ad down and why it was important that it stay up and while it why it was and an instance of moral courage that that it would have been easier to just avoid all the heat. Our church had been vandalized during that time. I mean, there was a lot of stuff coming at us individually and collectively. And there were people in the church that said we should issue a public apology to the Jewish community for for being for doing this hurtful and offensive public witness and and withdraw the ad. And our session made the case for why that wouldn't be the best thing to do. And we were going to continue it. And it was interesting, both the ACLU and the church itself firmly saying we've taken the stand, We're not backing away from that point on, it was quiet. It was there was really very little resistance until the ad came down in August of of C 2013.

2013.

Yeah.

So you mentioned being some of the language that you had to decode being called a malachite is actually I mean, that's tantamount to a death threat. Like if you read first Samuel. Yeah. There are. I don't have I'm not sure I have it in front of me but yeah, no. Now go attack the Malachite and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them. Put to death men and women, children, infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. So getting that. Get one more instance of the kind of threats you're receiving.

Right. Right. And you know, and it was. It was so it was it was just an education in Israel-Palestine dynamics and Jewish Christian dynamics and yeah, racial justice dynamics, because, you know, our church members had been, you know, some of them had been called and people had called them up. These were friends and neighbors, country club friends, professional colleagues. A local cardiologists in our congregation got lambasted by professional colleagues about this and said, you know, we are strongly disapproving of this and what the hell is going on at your church and how could you let something like this happen and, you know, shamed them, essentially saying, you know, you've hurt us, this is offensive and we need this thing taken down. And, you know, I think it was just astonishing to a lot of our members to suddenly face, you know, personal vitriol like that in their in their relationships, their social connections, their circles in which they ran as a lot of distress and anxiety for them. I acknowledge that. And that was really difficult. So many of them spoke out of that, saying, look, we got to pull the plug on this thing. It's just too hard. And then there were other people in the congregation that were saying, We hear that it's hard. But one couple in particular were anti-apartheid activists, retired Presbyterian minister from South Africa, Robert Folk Vane and his wife, Desiree. They were members of our church. And when people were talking about the the painful resistance and pushback that was coming their way, they said this is what it means to be the church. We shouldn't be surprised by controversy. We shouldn't be surprised by resistance or pushback, nor should we allow it to turn us around. And, you know, it was so I mean, I knew these people. I knew that they were, you know, justice minded. But but when you engage an issue like this and it comes before the congregation in a in an existential and gripping way, it's amazing the stuff that comes out. I mean, eloquence and passion and, you know, just a real commitment to the things that matter most in life. Yeah. Real kingdom that yeah, it's.

That cost of discipleship thing.

There you go. Absolutely That and, and there were people who hadn't just read the book and believed in it. They'd lived it, they'd, they'd been on the front lines of social struggles and could bring that testament to, to the rest of us. And I will, I will say some of them who just were sort of astonished that there'd be this kind of vitriol around the issue. One of them said, Did you talk to the Jewish community to see what they thought about it and whether they thought it would be okay to do this? And and, you know, one of us had said, well, we were taking our lead from an a boxer who is one of the lead activists, a Jewish-American activist in the US campaign. And she said Christians do not need to ask Jews for permission to engage their own moral imperatives. And she certainly wasn't saying so. Never mind what Jewish feelings are about anything. She is Jewish. But. But it's not as if if you feel deep passion around justice issue and your faith moves you to do something about it. It's not like, you know, any other outside force gets an automatic veto. And to have that come from from Anna was really empowering for us.

So, yeah, yeah. You mentioned the church was vandalized. When when was that and what happened?

Yeah, a lot of these things kind of blur together. It was September. About a month and a half, two months after the bus had first appeared. And we never found out who did it. One morning, Sunday morning, the. The children showed up to the education building where we teach them. And there were swastikas all over the building. And it happened during the night. And no one saw anybody and none of the neighbors saw anything. And so the you know, our our building and grounds committee sent the word out, and almost immediately they started working to to take that down. So the fewest number of children and Sunday school teachers would see that. I will say in great credit to our Sunday school teachers that it became a very teachable moment when when the children would ask about it. And that gave them an opportunity to talk about some pretty important history. And I also say that one rabbi who ended up calling me an anti-Semite, it was angry that we did this. He called me right after he'd heard that we'd been vandalized. And he said, This is terrible. I'm so sorry. I'm coming over there right away to help clean this up. You know, I mean, because of that, it's such a it was so visceral. Oh, yeah. Even though he disagreed, it was like, Man, we want that off. And you're another house of God and this is horrible. And he was right. It was horrible. As it happened, I was able to say, thank you so much. I appreciate your call and your support. I think our committees pretty well got it under control, but it means a lot that you call. So I guess there's another example, you know, something like that, something terrible. It's a sad thing in the end of the the Joseph narratives, you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good. Hmm. You know, there's all this, you know, we're still we're supposed to tear down the church by painting it with swastikas. And then out of that come these teachable moments where children's faith is deepened. Out of that comes a warm exchange with someone who was unhappy with me for making this witness, you know? I mean, it's just there were all those things happen all the time. And and I think I mentioned to you also and I'm happy to put this in, I think it's important. Another one of the rabbis who I've worked with on social justice stuff in the community, someone I felt a friendship with, called me after all this. And he said, you know, especially moved by what happened with the the vandalism. And he said, I'd like to address your congregation if you'd allow me to do that. I won't stay long, but I'd like to come at the beginning of your service and say a few words. And I said, Sure, why don't you come, John? So he came and he said, I'm not here to talk about the bus, that he was one of those people who were very happy about it. I mean, he wasn't angry, but he was like, Mark, you know, God, could we have think of thought of another way to do this, you know? But he said, I'm not here to talk about the bus. I want to talk about hate. And he talked about a story in his own life when he had been a young rabbi in a synagogue in Chicago. And somehow during the night it had been broken into and the vandals had started a fire on the bima and and might have burned the whole thing down, except that some of the high, high rise residents saw the smoke called the fire department. They put it out and the synagogue was saved. But he said, after all, we came in the next morning, we could see there was a scar left on the bima or the, you know, the altar, essentially. And so we had this. Dilemma. Do we leave it there? As a testament to what had been done to us as a reminder of the hate that exists in the world order. We repair it and then get back on the path. And he said, we decided to repair it. And he said, You've done that, too. And so get back on the path. And it was it was amazing. I mean, the whole congregation kind of rose to their feet and and gave him a standing ovation, you know, And he afterwards talked about how important that was in terms of interfaith relations. So, you know, again, a really difficult thing, but out of that, really merciful.

But yeah. Take a minute.

Thank you. Yeah. Merciful and beautiful things came out of that. That struggle and those difficulties. And. So what else?

I. I think we're closing in on. Yes. On something resembling the end. You've already given us so many amazing anecdotes and words of witness. I really wonder. Like. So where did that leave Church of the wreck on this issue going forward? I mean, the world keeps turning, you know, by 2014, there's renewed assaults on Gaza, and those are practically biennial or annual at this point. So where's Church of the Wreck now?

Well, you know, I retired in 2019 and, you know, I took on a position as the executive director of the Voices for Justice in Palestine, which is a local group that has carried on that work. It's Jews, Muslims and Christians, people of goodwill working on this issue. So most of my energy on this issue is is part of that. Voices for Justice in Palestine. And, you know, we've we've got regular political engagement with congressional representatives. We've got educational forums, media, a persistent media presence. Letters to the editor, op ads, those kind of things. So, you know, a full court press to try to keep this issue alive. And we've got an interfaith and statewide board. I will say one of the great things about COVID and many horrible, tragic things, but one of the great things is more stuff working online. So we used to have a board that was just limited to the triangle, and now we have a statewide board. All our meetings are on Zoom, so we've got people from the mountains up near Asheville and Charlotte and Greensboro, all part of our board. So it's deepened our our statewide footprint. Anyway, let's see, you're asking me about where's the rec now? I mean, the reality is that there's still people at the church who care deeply about this issue. And I did hear that coming up two weeks from or a week from this coming Sunday will have they're going to have a group that uses members from the Voices for Justice in Palestine. Speaker Bureau three people have just been back from Palestine. One, a Palestinian himself who has family in the West Bank, and the other one is our intern, who's a young recent graduate from Florida State who went with eyewitness Palestine, had a very moving, transformational experience. And then Ron Shive, who I mentioned earlier, was the head of the or the moderator of the denominational study and regularly takes groups to Israel Palestine. So all of them will be presenting their stories at the Church of Reconciliation a week from Sunday. So, yes, that work continues. It is also true that many of the most active members of that church were already in their seventies when we were doing this work. And so they're aging and less energy still as much passion as ever, but less energy for for the work. So, you know, it's that perennial challenge of reaching out to young people. I mean, our our Presbyterian churches have a lot of gray hairs in them and that our church is no exception to that. So, yeah, I mean, the the work is still continuing, I'd say less intensely than it once did, but it's still there.

Excellent. Mark, any any final thoughts on this whole chapter in your church's life and in your life, in the denomination's life?

Well, I will say that I was so proud of this group of people moving from a limited awareness of an issue to doing the things that we as reformed Christians do very well, which is to study and to discuss and to, you know, understand issues. We did that. We invoked that Presbyterian gift and did a lot of good study. We listened to experts and studied it theologically and sociologically in the whole thing. So we went from limited awareness to deepened awareness to concern. I mean, we're it was touching our hearts that people wanted to really be in solidarity with the with the suffering in the Middle East, especially the Palestinian suffering. And then very often that's as far as it goes in most churches, in my experience, You know, I mean, we've I had a professor used to say people think they've dealt with an issue because they've talked about it. And and there's nothing wrong with talking. We should do it. We should study it, you know. But at some point. A lot of that just peters out. In most churches. They go on to the next issue or people can't get organized to do the action. Step this group of people and I'll take some credit for helping them do it but but it came ultimately from them and they were the ones that sustained it took that crucial step toward action. And and and then all the things that come from acting on your faith. It isn't just the right belief. It's right action. It isn't just, you know, Doc say it's it's praxis. You know, it's it's what we do when we're living this out. What is that? What happens to us when we start to live it out, you know? What kinds of pushbacks do we get? What does that teach us? What are the teachable moments that emerge from taking the risk to act on our faith? And so for me, it'll always be a great lesson in in practicing our faith and trying to put it into into into action and much other things could be said about it. But I think that's the thing that it stays with me.

Yeah. Pushing the lever to go from. To go from discernment into action. Yeah. Yeah. Mark, I want to thank you very much for your time and we'll have more following up to do. I wish you well.

Thank you. I really appreciate the invitation, David and I look forward to to. Collaborating with you in the future. Awesome.