From Loving One Another To Hating The Other

Despite the best efforts of George Whitfield, the Methodist Church was always an Arminian church, that is, one short on faith and long on morality. Nevertheless, during the English industrial revolution, a time of unprecedented change, when the rural was replaced by the urban, the commons were taken by the powerful, and the poor were subjected to industrial discipline, Methodism was one of the pillars of the new civilisation, turning necessity into a virtue, preventing people from sinking into despair with its strict ethical living. Today, though the buildings still stand, the textile industry of the north of England has vanished and the descendants of the poor sit at home in a comfort unimaginable to their forefathers, and the old Methodist chapels are turned into warehouses or apartments.
But a remnant of the church of the Wesleys lives on, dominated now, like all the old dissenting churches, not by manual workers, but by middle management pen pushers.
The church that was once a refuge of sanity and love amidst death, suffering and unimaginable squalor, that kept alive its adherents through service and mutual aid, has turned from loving one another to hating the Other.
Here is a report from the Jerusalem Post from October 2013:
'The British Methodist Church, with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), is distributing a questionaire calling for a boycott of Israel.
This is a significant step against Israel. It extends their 2010 partial boycott of 'settlement' products. Now they are hitting all of Israel.
This institution, professing love, truth and justice, now pursues hate and hypocrisy, while peace talks are being conducted between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Strange timing. If 'occupation' is the issue, why aren't they boycotting other countries practicing occupation? Turkey displaced 400,000 Cypriots and occupies Northern Cyprus, China occupies Tibet and Morocco occupies Western Sahara. Not a peep from the Methodists. It's only Israel they beat up on, with the Palestinians as their poster child........
More puzzling is members of the Methodist branch of the Christian religion siding with an entity that hates and abuses Christians. Bethlehem, perhaps the most holy place in Christendom, that when Israel was established, the Christian population was in excess of 70%, under Jordanian and Palestinian control their population has fallen to 15%.
Christians have fled both the West Bank and Gaza. They are now less than 1.7% of the total Palestinian population. If you are a Palestinian Christian, you move to Israel. Just ask the Christian population of East Jerusalem if they prefer to be Israeli or Palestinian.'