Fox News recently interviewed Robert Jeffress, one of president Trump’s spiritual advisors, about his upcoming prayer at Monday’s opening of the new American embassy in Jerusalem. Pastor Jeffress was as giddy as a school girl who had just been asked out on her first date.
Listen to the interview below:
As a dyed-in-the-wool Dispensationalist, he naturally piled a heavy load of theological freight onto America’s endorsement of Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel. First, this is evidence of God’s providential hand in history. Second, it confirms that Israel’s creation in the 1948-49 war was God’s own doing. Third, it establishes that, for the past 3,000 years, Jerusalem has always been Israel’s capital city. Fourth, it also “blows apart the myth that the Jews stole this land from the Palestinians 70 years ago.”
Anyone who understands the basics of logical argument, or is capable of simple clear-headedness, will easily see through the foolishness (not to mention the immorality) of Jeffress’s claims. They are a tangle of irrational statements called non sequiturs and petitio principii – which are just fancy ways of saying that Jeffress isn’t talking sense. (Where in the world did he get his doctorate?)
Either his conclusions have no relationship to the preceding argument (non sequiturs) or he simply assumes the truth of what he says and repeats it as an “obvious” conclusion (petitio principii). Clearly, such muddle-headedness doesn’t bother Donald Trump or Jeffress’s congregation in Dallas, Texas.
There is, however, a more important issue that disturbs me a great deal. It is the blatant immorality embedded in statement #4 above. That is, I am deeply offended by Jeffress’s pompous, ignorant dismissal of Palestinian suffering over the past 70 years.
Jeffress’s attitude – in fact, the common-place attitude of all American Christian Zionists – is an example of what I call Collaborator Christianity.
Collaborator Christianity talks the talk of Christian faith, but its attention has moved away from Jesus to be refocused onto the idolatrous image of nationalistic patriotism. Collaborator Christianity rewrites the good news of Jesus Christ in order to elevate a gospel of ethnic exceptionalism where God’s hand is best seen in the victorious elevation of a master race, class, or people group.
Christian history is copiously smeared with ugly, “I-can’t-believe-it” eras of Collaborator Christianity. For only a few examples, think of:
The Crusades when popes and bishops blessed Christian armies in their hellacious mission to slaughter Muslims (and any Jews who got in their way).
The Inquisition when church officials tortured innocent men and women with sublimely obscene creativity and then executed them simply because they had expressed themselves in ways that fell outside of the cultural norms.
The Conquistadors when Spanish galleons, loaded with soldiers, horses, weapons and priests, landed in the new world searching for riches, territorial expansion made more palatable by its pretense of missionary work. Typically, the “men of God” were more than happy to help enslave the natives or to bless the impending genocide should the subhuman pagans prove uncooperative.
The German Christian Church which eagerly applauded Adolf Hitler as God’s anointed leader, sent to restore the fortunes of a German empire, ready,
willing and able to fulfill its mission as God’s chosen nation.
Western Christian Zionism which sees God’s own hand in Israel’s brutal, war-time creation of nearly 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948-49 and 1967. Christian Zionism typically assumes that Israel can do no wrong, while Palestinians remain genetically predisposed to terrorism.
Christian Zionists contribute tens of millions of dollars to Israel, funding immigration, new (illegal) settlements and other forms of expansionism (for examples see here, here, here and here). Whereas, the Palestinian Christian church is ignored or slandered as historically unorthodox.
As Palestinians, the Christian population suffers the same injustices as their Muslim neighbors, oppressed by the same military occupation. Yet, the average evangelical tourist finds more excitement in visiting an Israeli synagogue than in searching out and worshiping with Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ.
Over the past six weeks, somewhere between 40 to 60 unarmed protesters 
have been shot and killed in Gaza, while 4,000 to 6,000 have been seriously injured (most due to Israeli gun fire) in the weekly Land Day marches. There has not been a single, serious injury, much less a fatality, on the Israeli side of the fence!
Yet, Robert Jeffress (and others like him) has the audacity publicly to betray the Lord Jesus – the Lord who told us to love our enemies and to situate ourselves among the poor and the refugees – by ignoring the vast levels of Palestinian suffering created by his beloved nation, Israel, while enjoying lavish, sumptuous diplomatic dinner parties at Jerusalem’s new American embassy.
We are surrounded on all sides by outrageous demonstrations of Collaborator Christianity. Tragically, twenty-first century America is not unique. The human penchant for depravity, both within and without the church, is never ending, and it knows no historic, national, religious, cultural or ethnic boundaries.
Brothers and sisters —
Remember the Crusades.
Remember the Inquisition.
Remember the German Christian Church.
Remember American evangelicalism’s ignorant indifference to Palestinian suffering as their pastors bow and scrape, offering sacrifices of money and adulation before the idols of Israeli political Zionism.
