Seminary says group unwittingly met Hezbollah leader in Lebanon

San Francisco Theological Seminary has issued a statement saying the seminary group that met with Hezbollah on June 1, 2004, did so without knowing that such a meeting would occur and that the students and leaders felt uncomfortable in the presence of a Hezbollah representative and reporters from Mideast media.

The statement was unsigned, but Phil Butin, president of the seminary, told The Layman Online that he wrote most of it after interviewing a number of students to find out what happened.

Butin also said he talked with Charles Marks, the seminary's chaplain and leader, along with his wife Amal Marks, about the incident. "I asked Charles directly, 'If you had known that they would be present at the prison [where the seminary met a Hezbollah representative], would you have gone?' He said, "No."

Marks was not on campus Thursday. He was in Louisville, Ky., to be with his wife, an employee of the PCUSA, on a health matter.

The seminary statement said students were concerned about their welfare. "Understanding the volatility of the region, safety of the SFTS traveling group of thirteen was of the utmost concern," the statement said. "The group found itself in a potentially difficult situation during a tour of a historic detention center in early June. While hearing a presentation on the background of the prison, it became clear to the group that they were unexpectedly in the presence of a Hizbullah representative and the media. The SFTS group sought to be courteous to all present in order to ensure their safety. These efforts were misrepresented in subsequent Middle Eastern news reports."

"Current attempts to link the Seminary, its students, faculty, or members of the SFTS traveling party, to specific political causes are unfounded and inconsistent with the mission of the institution," the seminary statement added. "San Francisco Theological Seminary is a theological and educational institution that repudiates all use of terrorism for any reason."

The statement said arrangements for the trip to southern Lebanon were made by the Middle East Council of Churches and that "the San Francisco Theological Seminary group knew only that it would be taking a bus trip to Southern Lebanon. While under way, they were told that they would stop for lunch and a tour at the former Israeli detention center in Khiam. Upon arriving, they were surprised to find news reporters and photographers, as well as a group of about 100 Muslim clerics having lunch. They were disconcerted to be addressed by, and photographed with, a person a subsequent news article identified as a Hizbullah 'commander.'"

The Middle East Council of Churches is an ecumenical organization with which the World Ministries Division of the PCUSA works closely.

The seminary statement added, "The SFTS group had no prior knowledge of this person [Hezbollah's Sheikh Nabil Qaouk], nor of the address. Comments quoted in a subsequent news article misrepresented the efforts by an SFTS student and a faculty member to be hospitable and gracious. Two other people quoted in the news article were not in any way affiliated with SFTS."

The statement said, "This misrepresentation, and indeed the entire incident, appears to have been an attempt to exploit the SFTS group for propaganda purposes. The trip was entirely educational in nature, structured to give SFTS students broad and balanced exposure, primarily to Christian, but also to Muslim and Jewish perspectives, on the complicated situation in the Middle East."

It sounds to me like SFTS of PCUSA is practising a little CYA. As William Briskey writes in a letter to the editor in response to this Layman column:

Taking the response of the San Francisco Theological Seminary at face value, that their tour group did not know in advance that they were to meet with Hezbollah on June 1, 2004, that they had no intention of being part of Hezbollah's propaganda efforts and that they posed for pictures only because they feared for their safety, why did it take them until now to say so?

Assuming I had not refused to pose with Hezbollah regardless of threats upon my safety, you can be sure I would be protesting from the housetops, and denouncing those who had compromised my integrity as soon as I reached civilization. Apparently no one in the group felt that was necessary.

Indeed.

Their support (in decades past) for Angela Davis, the Re-Imagining God conference, and other such things was probably unwitting too. Right. I'm sure. Yeah, that's the ticket.....

This is off-topic of the thread subject, but your mention of Angela Davis prompted me to refresh my knowlege about her. According to internet sources she knew the little girls killed in the Birmingham church.

Without drawing any comparisons whatsoever (and I mean whatsoever), I wonder if Dr. Davis and Dr. Rice have ever met.

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