A Blog from David Crump
Today in episode four Rob Dalrymple interviews Saleem Anfous. Saleem is a Palestinian Christian who lives near Bethlehem in the West Bank. He works as a tourguide and describes what it is like to live under Israeli military occupation.
Notice how Saleem is not filled with hopelessness or despair. He is realistic. But his hope is in Jesus Christ.
Tonight Dr. Rob Dalrymple interviews another good friend of mine, Dr. Bruce Fisk. They discuss a wide range of issues, including the founding of modern Israel, the history of Hamas, and Christian Zionist beliefs in Israel’s “favored nation” status with God.
Check it out. It will be well worth your time.
My previous post discussing Israel’s war against Gaza mentions the ways in which personal political commitments to nationalism and/or patriotism may deform or undercut a person’s faithfulness to the kingdom of God.
I discuss a variety of ways in which modern politics can distort or even
destroy Christian witness as modern political commitments choke out our willingness to adhere to the ethics of Jesus in my book, I Pledge Allegiance.
It just so happens that today I was also reading a good book by Rob Hewell titled Worship Beyond Nationalism: Practicing the Reign of God.
Hewell’s analysis of the subtle but deadly threats posed by nationalism, particularly Christian nationalism, to faithful witness are highly relevant to a proper understanding of Christian Zionism.
My Zionist brothers and sisters insist that their loyalty to Israel is rooted entirely in scripture.
As I mention briefly in my previous post, I am convinced that it also reflects a prior more fundamental commitment to a nationalistic ideology. Zionists are Israeli nationalists, even though they may be citizens of another country.
Israeli nationalism rides the train of American nationalism very easily.
Below I have reproduced a brief excerpt from Mr. Hewell’s book that I believe makes my point:
Nationalism ought to be seen as a sectarian heresy in conflict with tthe universality of the Christian gospel and God’s construction of a new people from all peoples and nations, and whose allegiance is to the kingdom of God. . .
Because the ultimate commitments of worldly nation-states are not the gospel itself, a nation-state’s agenda will never clearly be consonant with the agenda to which the church is called, namely missio Dei. . . A failure of the church to allow its radical nature to shine on this one count will likely lead to additional compromises.
The church in America lives in the shadow of tthe legacy of empire, triumphalism, and nationalism. . . The inclusion of this nation’s story [whether the Unites States or Israel] in the worship gatherings of Christ’s followers allows what can be interpreted as an alien narrative to influence the life of the church. The demands of nationalism will always ultimately conflict with the gospel of God in Christ, creating an identity crisis for the church. . . Such a crisis will arise because of an understanding or interpretation of Christianity determined by . . . membership in a population or community, other than the church, that becomes critical for the church’s self-understanding. . .
When the church allows nationalistic influences within its worship [or its theology!]. . . it allows the nation-state a hand in shaping the church’s identity. Once nationalism has become an element of the church’s identity, the church also becomes vulnerable to that nation’s partisan politics. . . . Under the influence of nationalism, the church’s ability to prophetically critique the state is limited if not completely abandoned. (emphasis mine)
Such nationalistic compromise is exactly what I believe has happened to my Christian Zionist friends who now refuse to criticize, much less condemn, Israel’s egregious proliferation of war crimes in its bombings of the Palestinian people in Gaza — and its ‘crack-down’ against the people of the West Bank.
The Christian’s commitment to the kingdom of God is always first and foremost for obedient disciples of Jesus Christ.
For some time now I have particiated in an informal discussion group consisting of a mix of Christian Zionists and non-Zionists, such as myself.
The group is largely composed of academics from around the world. We meet by Zoom calls one per month to talk across the theological chasm that separates us on the question of modern Israel and Palestine.
Christian Zionists believe that Israel remains God’s chosen nation; that occupation of the land is an essential precondition to the return of Christ; and that political loyalty to Israel is a necessary value for faithful Christians to uphold.
I, and my fellow non-Zionists, do not believe these things. Jesus is free to return at any time, and Israel has nothing to do with when or how that can happen.
As you can imagine, we have strong disagreements. But the group’s reason for being is to exercise and to model civil, loving discourse among brothers and sisters in Christ who have strong theological disagreements with each other.
As you can imagine, the outbreak of Israel’s war against Gaza has turned up the heat considerably within the group. We recently had a lengthy email exchange debating the horrific events that have erupted, beginning with the dastardly Hamas attack on October 7.
To briefly explain my own position on this war, I have reproduced below my
final contribution to that debate. (For a fuller picture of why I think the way I do, please read my book, Like Birds in a Cage.)
I share this email with you, my subscribers, in order to illustrate and to explain what I believe is the proper Christian response to the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza today:
In the course of our conversation, several folks have asked the (rhetorical?) question, “What else is Israel supposed to do to root out Hamas?” The implication being that Israel’s current actions in Gaza are necessary and unavoidable – what else could Israel do?
Allow me to suggest that the question reveals a lack of imagination. At the risk of offending some, I will go further and suggest that the question reveals a deficiency of Christian discipleship. The calculations of Realpolitik are tangential, if not irrelevant, to the moral requirements of citizenship in God’s kingdom. The basic problem, I believe, is that the pro-Zionist conscience is truncated and distorted by its loyalty to a secular nation-state. Thus, the demands of loyalty to Zionist, nationalistic ideology is allowed to stifle both imagination and discipleship. This is a failure to fully inhabit our intended citizenship in God’s peaceable kingdom.
The two factions of our group are separated by seemingly irreconcilable differences, differences that we cannot, or at least, do not, talk about. These differences lead us to vastly different opinions and commitments concerning the current bloodshed, among both Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
My theological commitments lead me to believe that the history of American imperialism makes us very comfortable taking the colonizer’s side in anti-colonial conflicts. I believe that implied belief in Israeli exceptionalism and Palestinian/Hamas barbarism subtly runs throughout our conversation.
As many others have said, there is no military solution to this so-called conflict. Zionist dreams of “replacing Hamas” with something or someone else continue to ignore the root causes of this violence. The only lasting solution will be political, that is a just, humane ending of Israel’s military occupation and all that goes with it. Currently, Israel is an apartheid state. Those who are discriminated against will always resist their oppressors. It’s human nature. No amount of carpet bombing will beat the impulse for freedom and equality out of Palestinian hearts and minds.
I hope that sharing this statement with you may be of some interest and/or help to those wrestling with the moral questions raised by both Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza and the Hamas attack against Israel.
If you have questions or comments, please send them to me. I will respond to everything.
The Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the Executive Director of the organization, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), an organization with which I am involved.
She is also a friend of mine. (By the way, Mae has two doctorates.)
In fact, we were both recently in Phoenix, AZ attending the same conference sponsored by the Netword of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME). I am a member of the NEME leadership committee.
Today, Rob and Mae discuss the political dimensions of the current war against Gaza. Mae’s work keeps her heavily involved in a great deal of lobbying and activism in Washington, D.C.
There is a lot of vital information here about what is happening right now in Israel, Palestine, and the USA. Check it out.