Instead of acting as bridge builders, mainline churches are increasingly, unreservedly embracing one side in the Middle East's most enduring conflict.

The Seattle-Puget Sound area, in particular, is a place where our loudest religious voices seem always to be saying that Israel is wrong.

Nationally, last summer, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. passed a resolution at General Assembly adopting a policy of "selective divestment" from companies supporting what it deems wrongful Israeli actions.

The church mandated that a special body look at its $7 billion investment portfolio and make recommendations on which, if any companies, it ought to divest from.

In September, the Anglican Peace and Justice Network concluded a Middle East visit with a statement criticizing Israel, but saying not a word about terrorist acts by such groups as Islamic Jihad or Hamas.

The network followed up its visit -- which included a session with Yasser Arafat, but none with Israeli officials -- by requesting that Anglicans worldwide inaugurate a discussion on disinvestment.

The Socially Responsible Investment committee of the Episcopal Church, in the United States, is asking the church's Executive Council to spend a year "investigating what corporate actions might be appropriate with companies that contribute to the ongoing occupation."

An eloquent voice has been raised against the anti-Israel slant. It belongs to the Rt. Rev. Edward Little, the Episcopal bishop of northern Indiana. Little is, on his mother's side, a descendent of Lithuanian Jews. He lost kinfolk in the Holocaust.

"Traditionally, Anglicans believe in nuance and balance," Little said in an interview. "When it comes to the Middle East, that nuance and balance is gone. Our utterly one-sided view of the Middle East is one of deep, deep hostility to Israel. As a Christian of Jewish descent, it all sounds awfully familiar. ... It feels like a new version of ancient hostility toward the Jewish people."

In a recent article for The Living Church, Little recalled being exposed to an undercurrent of hostility to Jews as a boy after his family moved from New York City to Fairfield County in Connecticut.

"To my shame, I remained silent," he wrote. "Now, 50 years later, I meet that same genteel and sophisticated anti-Semitism -- in the church which I am privileged to serve as a bishop. Its form has changed. Gone, on the whole, are ethnic stereotypes. ...

"Indeed, we give lip service to Jewish-Christian dialogue. Our hostility has morphed. Today it wraps itself in the mantle of 'peace and justice.' It claims to side with the oppressed."

The bishop cites resolutions of his church's General Convention, articles in Episcopal Life newspaper and pronouncements from the Episcopal Church Center in New York.

Vehement denials of prejudice are sure to come from activists in the "Palestinian Concerns" movement.

Yet, at times, one gets the feeling they are enablers rather than activists. Over coffee in Madison Park, two longtime acquaintances -- a retired bishop and a University of Washington academic -- decried the bold 2000 peace plan put forward by President Clinton and Israeli Premier Ehud Barak.

Clinton and Barak proposed returning virtually all of the occupied West Bank to form a Palestinian state. Arafat turned them down in a classic failure of nerve.

But in Madison Park, the Clinton-Barak plan was likened to Bantustans -- tiny "independent" states created by the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1970s.

On Sept. 10, 2001 -- a day before you-know-what -- the mail brought my copy of the Episcopal diocesan newspaper. It contained an article by Bishop Vincent Warner denouncing Israeli military actions. "Under international law," wrote the bishop, the Palestinians were entitled to resist "with force."

What law? What statutes? What kind of force, used against whom? Did the definition include the force of a bomb blast against the bodies of elderly Holocaust survivors attending a Seder supper in Haifa?

No answers were given. The bishop did seem to alter course, later in the article, with an eloquent appeal for an end to violence.

American public opinion is a major battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

"I think it's paramount: We are not going to see a change in American policy without a change in American public opinion," Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in Seattle yesterday. He described the divestiture drive as "very, very important."

A powerful case can be made against Israel's wall. At the same time, hundreds of innocent Israelis have died in homicide bombings.

One of Seattle's wisest visitors of the past year was Dr. Judea Pearl, father of the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by al-Qaida terrorists in Pakistan. Pearl is a tire- less advocate of interfaith dialogue. But he has posed a blunt challenge to Islamic religious leaders:

"They ought to proclaim terrorist acts to be a sin. Sin is punishable by God: You go to hell."

As an Episcopal layman, I would call on my church and our next diocesan convention to make just such a declaration. If sponsors of the next anti-Israel resolution don't like it, tough!

When the American Jewish Committee meets here with Presbyterian leaders Dec. 15 -- to reopen lines of communication -- both parties ought to take up Dr. Pearl's challenge.

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