A week or so before it was published online (read it here) I was asked to sign the recent political statement titled “Our Confession of Evangelical Conviction.”
It is a political “confession” of implicitly anti-Trump, evangelical “unity” circulated in the run-up to the presidential election on November 5th.
My friend Dr. Bruce Fisk was also asked to sign this statement, but we both declined for reasons of conscience. We believed that, at best, the statement was ethically selective.
Bruce and I collated our critiques with suggestions for improvement and then sent our response to the one who asked us to sign. We included a note explaining that we would be happy to sign a revised confession if it addressed our concerns.
Our suggestions were ignored and the confession was publicized as it was originally presented to us.
Bruce and I decided that we did not have access to a significant enough platform to issue a counter-confession. So we agreed that I would publish our list of objections, concerns and emendations here at HumanityRenewed.
So here it is for all those who are interested. You may be asking, Why would anyone demure from signing a “Confession of Evangelical Conviction”?
Here’s why:
October 1, 2024
Dear drafters of the Confession of Evangelical Conviction,
Your call to non-partisan allegiance to our First Love is timely and urgent. We share your alarm when we see American Christians pledging allegiance to person and party, and deploying Scripture to sanction a political agenda that provokes division and fear. To the extent that the statement stirs all of us to love across the divide, we will be grateful.
There is however an elephant in the room. There is a genocide in the room. We are troubled that a statement warning Evangelicals against the allure of partisan politics has nothing to say about Evangelicalism’s bipartisan support for the murderous campaign that America and Israel are waging in Gaza. Hence, the following observations for your consideration.
Use of Scripture. As biblical scholars, we condemn with you the use of Scripture “to sanction a single political agenda.” To our dismay, we see fellow Evangelicals making this error when they use Scripture to defend unflinching support for Israel’s wildly disproportionate response to Hamas’ egregious attack.
Present reality. With you we worry about an American future with an autocratic narcissist as President. But fear of Donald Trump does not explain American Evangelicals broad based support for American and Israeli militarism that is claiming the lives of tens of thousands of women and children.
Peace not war. The statement calls us to make peace and foster unity within the church. Amen. It is silent, however, when it comes to Evangelical support for America’s repeated recourse to war abroad.
Amos’ vision. We echo with you the prophetic call for justice and righteousness (Amos 5:24). We share the prophet’s condemnation of those who “trample on the poor” (v.11) and “push aside the needy in the gate” (v.12). We think Amos would be zealous to oppose and condemn publicly this very behavior in the alleys and camps of Gaza.
Cultural wisdom. The statement concludes with a resolution “to uphold the truth of the Gospel in the face of political pressure and cultural shifts.” But not all such pressures and shifts are contrary to the Gospel. Some have even pointed the church in the right direction. We think the outcry against Israel’s US-funded genocide, coming from secular students, American Jews and the Uncommitted movement, is one such shift.
Prophetic critique. Israel’s Evangelical partisans acknowledge that “Israel isn’t perfect” and claim to be “willing to call out Israel when we believe it is acting wrongly.” Rarely if ever, however, do these Evangelicals name specific discriminatory laws, policies, practices, and rhetoric. The absence of prophetic criticism in the midst of Israel’s current atrocities makes evangelicals complicit in injustice and profoundly harms the cause of the Gospel.
For the cause of Middle East peace,
Bruce and David
Bruce N. Fisk, Ph.D. (Professor of New Testament, Westmont College, ret.)
David M. Crump, Ph.D. (Professor of New Testament, Calvin College, ret.)
P.S. We develop some of these points in the following recent publications.
David M. Crump, “Echoes of Slavery, Racial Segregation and Jim Crow: American Dispensationalism and Christian Zionist Bible-Reading” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 23.1 (2024): 1-17.
David M. Crump, “No, We Cannot Stand with Israel, and That Has Always Been Part of Israel’s Problem“ HumanityRenewed.com Oct 11, 2023.
David M. Crump, “Another Response to Russell Moore and His Complaint About Bothsidesism“ HumanityRenewed.com Oct 18, 2023.
David M. Crump, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People Cascade, 2021.
David M. Crump, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in Twenty-First-Century America Eerdmans, 2018.
Bruce N. Fisk “Lament is Not Enough: Evangelicals offer ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ for Gaza” Clarion Journal. Jan 24, 2024.
Bruce N. Fisk, “Genesis 12:3, Christian Zionism, and Blessing Israel” Bibliotheca Sacra (April-June, 2023), 144-63, 176-78.
Bruce N. Fisk, “Ever the Victim, Never the Aggressor: A Response to the “Evangelical Statement in Support of Israel” Clarion Journal. Nov. 30, 2023.
Bruce N. Fisk, “Praised by Faint Damnation: Why American Evangelical Responses to October 7 are Dangerous“ Red Letter Christians. Nov. 30, 2023.
Bruce N. Fisk, “The Allure of Moral Clarity in a Time of War: A Response to Russell Moore“ Clarion Journal. Oct. 13, 2023.
