Episcopal Press and News

Middle East Council Releases Pentecost Prayer for Peace

Episcopal News Service. May 24, 1990 [90142R]

The Middle East Council of Churches released a second prayer for peace in the Holy Land, intended to be read in churches on Pentecost, June 3. It follows a Palm Sunday prayer that caused considerable controversy for stirring what some said were anti-Israeli sentiments. The Pentecost prayer says: "Along with all the others with whom we live, with all nations and peoples, we would enter a new time, a time of transformation, when hatred is replaced by love, violence by dialogue, condemnation by forgiveness, self-centeredness by sharing." Jewish critics of the Palm Sunday prayer did not object to the Pentecost prayer, saying it had none of the political overtones of the first prayer and did not contain what some perceived as Christian triumphalism.