Jerusalem Declaration

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The Jerusalem Declaration of May 18, 2003 was sponsored by the Family Federation for World Peace under the leadership of Sun Myung Moon.

According to Frank Kaufmann, it was not easy to find an acceptable wording.

The trickiest part was that all people from both sides of the reconciliation effort would have to repent publicly for their past failures as stewards of God's providence and covenant. Somehow the Jews too would be asked to repent. The likelihood of achieving this was the part which seemed as remote as a distant star. We could not find our way around the simple and unbearable fact is that for 2000 years the Jews have been tortured, killed, and hideously persecuted in the name of Jesus. How on earth could they be asked to repent for anything remotely connected to the single dominant source of their unspeakable suffering for millennia. [1]

Here is the entire text of the declaration:

In a spirit of understanding, harmony and reconciliation, believers from both families of Judaism and Christianity wish to repent for the dark parts of our past, and seek a bright future together, caring for the plight of all who suffer and long for a better world.

We have come to recognize that leaders and members of our respective communities have sinned in terrible ways against God, and against one another. We seek forgiveness from God, and from one another.

Assembled in the Holy City of Jerusalem, in the land where God chose His covenant people and sent His prophets to purify our faith and lead us in paths of righteousness, on this 18th day of May, 2003, for the sake of God and a world of peace and love for all God’s children we join together with one heart and voice to declare:

1. Each of our traditions has experienced the path of suffering and persecution, together with God, for the sake of our respective faiths, often suffering unspeakable horrors at the hands of evil oppressors.

2. We too have fallen into ways abhorrent to God, sometimes becoming actors on the side of evil, even persecuting and killing others. For these times we truly repent and beg forgiveness from God and from one another. We wish to cleanse our lives and all future history from the moments when we have not loved innocent people whom God loves.

3. We wish to bring to a close the long history of suffering and evil, and work together with the prophets, saints, sages, and founders of our religions, who are now united in the spiritual world, to usher in an age of peace and good will.

4. We Christian believers have celebrated what was actually the moment of God’s greatest sorrow by glorifying the execution, which ended Jesus’ physical life, shattered the dream and promise of the prophets, and blocked the coming of God’s Kingdom for 2000 years. During this time we have too many times failed to embody the love of Jesus, and instead perpetrated a history of Anti-Semitism. For this we truly repent.

5. We Jews, chosen by God as a people, wish to open our hearts to God to see ancient events with His eyes, and liberate ourselves once and for all from the burden of Jesus’ crucifixion. This simple and innocent Jewish young man Yeshua, whom God loved and in whom He placed His hopes and dreams, was betrayed by the rich and powerful among his own people, who for the sake of their status and comfort turned him over to executioners of hateful foreign powers. For this we truly repent.

6. On this day of May 18, 2003, in the Holy Land of Israel, united in love, we Christians and Jews pledge to receive your endless grace and forgiveness, even as we forgive and reconcile with one another, and devote ourselves anew to your living will. We affirm the courageous and sacrificial work of Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon to bring our families of faith together. We will make one family of God with the Blessing of True Parents, establish our own ideal families according to your eternal teaching, and create a new world of justice, peace, and true love.

(Note: documents of this sort are freely reproducible, although technically not "public domain")