Loading ...American Church Support for Palestine and Israel is Schizophrenic
By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer
Major American churches, both Catholic and Protestant, have favored Palestinian peoples for decades. Namely, they support Palestinians oppressed under Israeli military occupation. That this does not mean the churches are anti-Israel. However, there is a highly driven opposing group of American evangelical pro-Israeli Christians, who are outright anti-Palestinian.
Many U.S. Churches steadfast in their support of Palestinians over decades
Certain American churches periodically take a stand on Palestinian rights. One recent campaign for such rights, labeled ‘Churches are Standing Up,’ was sponsored by a coalition of U.S. churches. It is under the banner of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. That campaign reported on ten churches that had recently united in sanctioning Israel. These ten denominations meet periodically to discuss issues of the day, among other recurring topics of faith.
The ten participating members, according to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), are the Alliance of Baptists; Church of the United Brethren in Christ; Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); Mennonite Church USA; Presbyterian Church (USA); Roman Catholic Church; Unitarian Universalist Association; United Church of Christ; United Methodist Church; and the World Communion of Reformed Churches.
High on the list of the ten churches’ concerns is Palestinian rights. One recent resolution they passed “affirmed the human rights of Palestinians, about 5 million of whom live under Israel’s military occupation today.” Besides resolutions, these churches are now materially participating in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS is designed to pressure Israel to meet its obligations in treating Palestinians fairly under the occupation, according to international law.
“More than 80 million church-going Americans belong to congregations that have endorsed sanctions to some degree against Israel for its violation of the human rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories and Jerusalem,” per WRMEA.
U.S. Churches focus on BDS to pressure Israel in the treatment of occupied Palestinians
The ten churches that support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions have selected specific U.S. firms that are in breach of that initiative. Several have specifically targeted Hewlett Packard (HP), a large American computer technology supply company. WMREA reported, “HP provides Israel with the technological tools to facilitate its oppression of the Palestinian people.” Many of the churches have divested from HP at the denominational level.
One local church, the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Connecticut, made a poignant statement about HP. It averred, “We are an HP-Free church because we long for a world without surveillance without military occupations, without fear. We choose hope.”
An initiative such as this is part of a larger regional, national and international church movement. It is best characterized by its technical, yet morally and ethically based statement of pro-Palestinian support: Screening an investment portfolio -reflects an organization’s ethical stances. The result from this stance is that recently, “35 local, regional, national, and international church bodies have taken bold actions in support of Palestinian rights!”
U.S. Christian communities are not alone in their support of Palestinian human rights. They have kept in close contact with the Palestinian Christian community. That community has been in a long struggle to right the wrongs of the occupying force. Through the Kairos Document, Palestinian churches have “called on churches to support their struggle for collective liberation, a sentiment recently echoed by the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine’s letter to the World Council of Churches.”
A related U.S. church initiative is its defense of six Palestinian nongovernmental organizations labeled by Israel as terrorists. In late 2021, a group of churches, headed by the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns and 14 other Church-based groups sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The impassioned letter goes to the heart of Israeli attempts to castigate these six organizations’ work. Such work aims to support the human and civil rights of such Palestinian groupings as children, women, and agricultural workers.
An equal and opposite reaction — American evangelical Christians fervently pro-Israel, Zionist
A Zionist-friendly group of Evangelical churches in the U.S. comprises about 20 million members. According to the earlier-cited WRMEA report, most of these churches “have taken an unconditional pro-Israel-at-any-cost stance.” Evangelical leaders are almost fanatical in their pro-Israel stance. One TV evangelist leader, in particular, John Hagee, of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, is especially vehement.
Hagee avers, “Supporting Israel is not a political issue. It is a biblical issue…the ‘Battle of Jerusalem.’” His support is overwhelming, according to a Justice News Flash Report (JNFR). He recently declared, “Whenever Jesus returns, Israel will become the dominant country in the world.” Jesus’ imminent return, Hagee says, means his followers will be saved from “this earthly world.”
This perspective leaves little room for compassion, much less tolerance, of the Palestinians. Hagee’s words, almost too difficult to quote, pronounce that “The Jews are God’s chosen people and have become the legal owners of the entire Palestine through a ‘blood alliance.’”
Fortunately, a glimmer of hope is breaking through this dismal picture. It does so in the attitudes of some younger American evangelicals. Some polls taken show a portion of a younger, 18–29-year-olds, more diverse population of evangelicals with a more sympathetic view of Palestinians. They espouse a less rigid form of Zionist theology.
One such younger evangelical, a pastor, cited by JNFR, rejects a strong Christian Zionism. Conversely, he supports a more compassionate view of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The pastor says that Christian Zionism “was flawed in theology” and did not adhere to the teachings of Jesus and the Jewish tradition. Furthermore, he suggested, “Those who take the Bible seriously cannot use the Bible as an excuse for being unfair to others.”
What is more, this same pastor talks about a “the reflexive dualism of Israelis, who are good people and Palestinians are bad people.” He warns that this view leaves out of the equation entirely the narrative of the Palestinian people. Contrasted to their parents, younger evangelicals “have a different concept of justice and fairness related to conflict from their elders.” More, younger evangelicals than just a few years ago now support the creation of a Palestinian state.
Still, it is the parents of these more idealistic, young evangelicals who control the purse. And they give heavily to the Zionist cause. Also, we shouldn’t forget that a crushing 81% of American evangelicals voted for the reelection of Trump in 2020. At least the younger generation of evangelicals is showing a shift away from strict Zionism towards a possibly more compassionate view of Palestinians.
Sources
“Churches are Standing Up,” U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, 02-03/2019
“Ten U.S. Churches Now Sanction Israel—To Some Degree, and with Caveats,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 03/04/2019
“U.S. Church Groups Defend Six Palestinian Organizations Labeled as Terrorists,” Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, 10/27/2021
“The support of young American evangelical Christians for Israel transforms the Israeli-Palestinian conflict news,” Justice News Flash Report, 6/4/2021
John Mason, PhD., who focuses on Arab culture, society, and history, is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.
Check out our Blog here!
