I have recently attended and participated in several online seminars that thankfully included Palestinian Christians from the West Bank.
These brothers and sisters in Christ were offering their observations and feelings about the ongoing war against their people in Gaza (and the West Bank; yes the war has expanded beyond Gaza).
I am grateful for such opportunities because, when witnessing such horrendous tragedy, it is vital that we hear the voices of those who are actually enduring the suffering. We must listen to the words of the persecuted, the victims, those who are experiencing abuse, those who weep and mourn, those for whom imminent death is a real possibility.
Their voices are essential to understanding any conflict.
At the same time, I feel the need to humbly express a note of reservation about one theme that I see threading its way throughout the several webinars I have seen. Several Palestinian speakers have referred to the special spiritual connection that Palestinians typically feel toward their land.
I have noted two written instances hinting at such “blood and soil” sentiments below. (The second example was written on a PowerPoint slide without a reference):
We affirm that every citizen must be ready to defend his or her life, liberty and land (Kairos Palestine Document, para. 4.2.5)
Our land is meant to be a witness to God’s love manifested on the cross for all the people of the earth…
If I am misunderstanding the meaning of these oral and written references, then I invite correction. If a Palestinian believer can address my misunderstanding, please do.
Otherwise, I must voice my concerns.
For I fear that two errors are waiting to pounce on those believers who hold such convictions about their spiritual connection to the land of Palestine:
First, political Zionism (which is the basis of the Israeli state) is founded upon just such a purportedly psychic, spiritual, even ontological connection between the Jewish people, on the one hand, and the land of Israel, on the other.
This imagined, age-old people/land connection lays the cornerstone to their conviction that the land belongs exclusively to the Jews. For the land and the people are eternally bound together, according to political Zionism.
In this way, political Zionism reveals its roots in European blood and soil ethnic nationalism, the 19th century, Romantic philosophical belief that “the soul” of a national people-group was intertwined with the geography and landscape from which they trace their origin. So the Scots are bound to the land of Scotland; the Welsh are bound to Wales; etc.
This blood and soil ideology was the basis for Adolf Hitler’s Aryan doctrine and his horrific efforts to purify German territory of all non-Aryans/Germans. The parallels with Israel’s current work to “Judaize” the West Bank (and Gaza?), replacing Palestinians with Jewish settlers, are crystal clear to anyone who knows this history.
Nazism and political Zionism are kissin’ cousins.
Therefore, I cannot see the usefulness of the church of Jesus Christ adopting the language of blood and soil ethnic nationalism as its own.
Second, the New Testament clearly teaches God’s people that this world is not our home. No matter the warm memories created by lovely times of togetherness at hearth and home in our native vale, followers of Jesus Christ have no homeland in this fallen world. Rather, we are “aliens and strangers in this world” (Heb. 11:13, 16; 1 Pet. 1:1; 2:11).
Therefore, there is no spiritual obligation for Christians to defend their land. Nor did Jesus ever appoint the “holy land” to be a witness to God’s grace. This is a secularization of both the gospel and the meaning of our citizenship in the kingdom of God.
Yes, we must resist and condemn injustice.
When people are beaten and murdered, their homes demolished, families displaced and land stolen, then the prophets call us to protest, to cry out for justice, even to non-violently resist the oppressor. But this happens because injustice is sin. Oppression is wickedness.
Imputing imaginary spiritual qualities to one’s homeland is neither the answer nor a proper motivation to resist oppression because it is not biblical. And the history of its application shows damning results.
Zionist ethnic nationalism cannot be defeated by Palestinian ethnic nationalism. Nor do Christians have any business allying themselves with the toxic ideology of blood and soil, ethnic nationalism.
That is the error of Jewish-Christian Zionism, where Jews who say they follow Jesus compromise their allegiance to God’s kingdom – a global, multi-ethnic, international kingdom – by taking up the secular, ungodly standards and constraints of Zionist blood and soil nationalism.
Therefore, I ask my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ to reconsider their current flirtations with blood and soil, ethnic nationalism as they justly resist Zionist efforts to rob them of what is theirs.
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