"One particular brand of ear-scratching falsehood plaguing the church around the globe is what's commonly called "the prosperity gospel." It takes many forms and can be dressed to look very much like the biblical truth. But ultimately, it appeals to our desire for ease, wealth, for instant gratification, and for being the center of the story. It promises a crown without a cross, which is not the way of Jesus."

"As Christians, we join with our peace-loving Muslim brothers and sisters and non-Zionist Jews, to raise our voices with all the oppressed, calling for peace with justice in Palestine."

"We recognize that in the same way that we fought against apartheid in our own country, we should fight against the scourge of the Zionist state of Israel and its oppression of the people of Palestine."

It is a profound irony that as these denominations sink into the sunset through loss and numerical decline and their public influence wanes, so too difference is lost in favor of inclusion, the death knell for their churches.

The survival of the Jewish people has always been on the basis of their difference. They have lived through the slaughter of the Holocaust out of which Israel was borne. Israel will never be defeated. Not now, not ever.

"As people of faith who are distressed by the pain of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza -- and who long for security and a just peace for both Palestine and Israel -- we can no longer ignore the realities on the ground. We are opposed not to the Jewish people, but to the policies of Israelis' governments, which are becoming ever more extreme," Archbishop Thabo Makgoba wrote.