Edgework

In light of a flourishing Zionism in many evangelical churches in North America, the Presbyterian Church of the USA published a 74-page congregational study guide in January, 2014 entitled, “Zionism Unsettled”. I found this document helpful in an attempt to construct an alternative lens through which to look at the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza today. I am convinced, along with the writers of this study guide, that Zionism needs to be “unsettled” in our midst.

It comes as a surprise to many evangelicals that the beginnings of the Zionist movement emerged from non-religious sources. Beginning in the late 19th century, Zionism’s early leaders were all secular Jews intent on finding a homeland especially for persecuted Jews in Russia. As Ilan Pappe observes, “The secular Jews who founded the Zionist movement wanted both to secularize Jewish life and to see the Bible as a justification for colonizing Palestine. In other words, they did not believe in God but he nonetheless promised them Palestine” (45).

When Menachem Begin went to Palestine in 1942, he quickly became head of the Revisionist Paramilitary Irgun. “During the period 1937-1948, ‘Irgun’ operatives  carried out bombings, shootings, kidnappings, assassinations, and massacres of unarmed civilians. In demonstrating that terrorism can be an effective strategy for forcing political change, the ‘Irgun’ inspired political terror movements elsewhere around the world” (19).

It was in the aftermath of the Irgun victory in 1948 that many evangelicals began to get on board the Zionist movement in large numbers. The theological underpinnings for such a move was built on a system of end-time biblical teachings known as Dispensationalism – pioneered by J. Nelson Darby in the 19th century and popularized with the publication of the popular Scofield’s Reference Bible in 1909. By mid-twentieth century, then, dispensationalists adopted a Christian version of Zionism claiming that “the catalyst of the end of time was the reestablishment of the secular state of Israel…Israel’s various military victories in 1967 and 1973 were confirmations of a divine hand on Israel’s future” (45).

While many evangelicals have rejected the basic tenets of Dispensationalism, tens of thousands of conservative evangelicals – especially in the American South as well as in many pockets around the world – follow the contemporary developments in Israel with the conviction that prophesy is being fulfilled.

But Dispensationalism comes with a number of problematic theological convictions that need to be addressed.

One of the key assertions of dispensationalists that needs challenging, says Gary Purge, is the claim that God’s promises of land to Abraham in Genesis 12, 15, and 17 are valid today. He writes: “To think in Christian terms about land and promises is to think differently than Judaism thinks. In short, the New Testament changes the spiritual geography of God’s people. The Kingdom of God is tied neither to an ethnicity nor to a place. Because the early Christians understood this truth, they carried their missionary efforts to the entire world…The point is this: many evangelical theologians are not convinced that the promises to Abraham, much less those to Moses, are still theologically significant today. The work of Christ is definitive. There is one covenant. And it is with Christ” (46).

On this point, Brian McLaren argues that, even if one were to take the Bible as a literal, timeless and non-contextual legal constitution, one must take note that the promises in the Old Testament are always conditional. One of the main conditions of the promise of blessing for Israel is that it must defend the cause of the fatherless and widow and love the foreigners living in their midst. Leviticus 19:33 mandates that they must “love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” As a matter of fact, most of Deuteronomy 28 is a frightening read about how God will curse Israel if they do not live up to such conditions. McLaren writes, “The same God who promised the descendants of Abraham the land of Israel also promised that they would not enjoy that inheritance if they mistreated the aliens, strangers, foreigners and others among them. One promise can’t be taken to the exclusion of the other.”

Another contention of dispensationalism is that any criticism of Israel is not only anti-semitic but also against God’s will. Does Genesis 12: 2-3 not state clearly that God blesses those who bless Israel and curses those who curse Israel? Assuming, of course, that this applies to present day Israel, dispensationalists declare that it is the Christian’s duty to stand with Israel no matter what it does. Marc Ellis suggests that such unconditional support for Israel may be a form of repentance for the long history of Christian anti-Semitism and especially the Holocaust. He claims there is a mutual understanding that if Christians don’t criticize Israel they will not be charged with anti-Semitism by the Israelis.

For me, one of the strongest arguments against Christian Zionism lies in the writings of Paul in the New Testament. In the latter part of the 20th century, an influential biblical theologian, Kristor Stehdahl, began to insist that we must read the Book of Romans, not primarily as a discussion of ‘justification by faith’. but as Paul’s attempt to help the emerging church of the first century understand that because of Jesus’ life and witness, God was now growing the people of God into one ‘tree.’ In Ephesian he would declare specifically that the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles was broken down in Christ.

In “A New Kind of Christianity,” Brian McLaren says it this way: “Romans aimed to address a practical question in the early Christian movement: How could Jews and Gentiles, in all their untamed diversity, come and remain together as peers in the Kingdom of God without having first and second class Christians” (144)?

There is much more to be said on this subject, but for now I am satisfied that I am not being anti-Semitic, nor am I calling down God’s curse on myself, when I speak out about the horrors present-day Israelis inflict on Palestinians.