25 June 2008

Barack Obama's Biblical Literalism

"Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?

Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles."

Barack Obama's (June 28, 2008) homily on following levitical injunctions literally mockingly suggests that some might believe that in order to be obedient, they must live under the law. (Orthodox Jews follow the injunctions about Kashrut, but that's another matter entirely.)
However, some Christian, Muslim and Jewish literalists do make that mistake: not distinguishing between dispensations--that is, the specific, limited historical contexts in which specific revelations were given. Blinded by historical amnesia fostered by societies in too much of a hurry to understand their pasts, some believers, and their opponents, read sacred texts ahistorically. What is commanded at Sinai, or in Medina, only makes sense, they think, if the believer obeys literally, without regard for the subsequent development of revelation or law.

In Mr. Obama's case, his characterization of belief in the Bible was designed to show the dangers of using the bible, or religion, as a guide for life. Religion, viewed this way, is atavistic; a digression from the social progress that to him characterizes the movement of history. However, he is right that such literalism is a danger posed by Scripture: without careful interpretation, the Bible can be easily misused.

Good scriptural exegesis is possible only if properly guided. Good hermeneutics is based on the recognition that what God commanded under certain historic conditions applied only to those specific conditions. Those conditions no longer exist, and therefore must be understood for the principles that they can give us to our particular circumstances. Thus, the majority of Jewish people reject the horrific idea that the Palestinians, like the Canaanites, should be annihilated. Rather, they understand that in this dispensation, in the final analysis, Israel must adhere to international law. Most Muslims do not believe that they personally must wage jihad against non-Muslims, but, based upon the historical experience of Islamic polities, recognize the principle of religious pluralism. Christians now oppose slavery, because they recognize that although it was socially acceptable in the past, it was always a moral transgression against humanity. We are no longer under the law: we can eat shellfish if we choose.

Yet we must never mock sacred scripture, even if it is not our own, but especially if it is. Playing fast and loose with religions and their faithful shows a fundamental lack of respect for our neighbors and our Maker. Polemics are fraught with danger when essentialist interpretations are deployed against cultures and peoples. Careful higher criticism, based on philology and history, literary analysis, and all the other tools available to scholars seeking to understand texts, is still the best way to interpret religious texts.

28 March 2008

Democracy and the Middle East

Many Muslims and Arabs have suffered terribly from bad government, and we have suffered because of it. Many think that bad government results from Islam. Rather, bad government results from the lack of accountability to a nation’s citizenry—and if that citizenry has been deceived and misled by bad ideas parading as “modernization” or "tradition" or "anti-West" it will not demand its freedom. A passive populace endures bad government. And bad government invites outside intervention, either because it is threatening, or because it is weak.

Just as no man is an island, no land is an island, not in this age of global interconnectivity. Where Huntington saw a clash of civilizations, others have seen the difficult process of the integration of the Muslim world, painful at times, into the international system. The Muslim world has been caught in this process for the past century, and is as subject to historical contingencies and context just as any other people. Only now is Dar al-Islam, the Realm of Islam, assuming responsibility for its political mistakes by necessity, as its ruinous modern history has become increasingly clear to its more informed, and connected, populace.

We are all bound in a web of interconnections, ranging from economic relations, political interests, cultural sensibilities, religious, ethnic identities, historical patterns, philosophical inclinations, social tastes, architectural aesthetics, literary traditions: these webs are aspects of all civilizations. In the far distant past, when civilizations were fairly isolated from one another, they developed certain characteristics that allow historians to identify them on the basis of their religion, politics and socioeconomic structures, art and architecture, language and literature. However, since before the Age of Discovery, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution and the Modern Age , formerly singular civilizations have been drawn together by increasingly close ties. Change over time is slow. Glacial changes are incremental, but at times, we can look back and see radical discontinuity. Now is such a time.

In 1789, the French Revolution marked such a change. Secularization led to the intentional development of a political ideology designed to apply universally to all peoples. The deism of the French Enlightenment led to the instrumentalization of human beings for the service of the state. The revolutionary mantra spread across the world: liberty, brotherhood, equality! Nations were reawakened so that they could shake off the old and to struggle for freedom, but utopian ideas proved tragically deceptive.

Beyond Continental Europe, many, who identified themselves as liberals, were disturbed by the bloodlust of the revolution, and at the reactionary responses of the absolutist monarchies to the ideas of democracy. The Founders of the United States of America sought to address the threats they perceived to human freedom: tyranny, so they designed a system of checks and balances so that no individual could impose his will on the many; an established church, so that no authority could limit or control individual relationships with God; instability, so they established a system of laws which aimed at protecting the life and property of its citizens. The government of the United States of America was thus founded upon a healthy respect for man’s depraved nature as well as upon his dignity. They honored the importance of each person’s individual relationship to God by ensuring that that relationship had to be radically separate from the political sphere. The French had based their system on the idea of man’s goodness, while the Americans based their system on the idea of the freedom of the individual.
In Europe, the death of God led to the deification of the nation, and romantic nationalism led to the convergence blood and steel. Totalitarian governments emerged from the wreckage of the First World War in Europe as relentless homogenizers that swallowed up liberalism throughout Europe. The romantic ideal of national self-determination was buried along with Czechoslovakia when German panzers rolled into the Sudetenland.
Out of the ashes was reborn a worldwide struggle for human freedom, a struggle which had been cruelly aborted in the Arab world even as it was beginning its own rebirth.

People living in the Arab and Muslim world have never enjoyed political rights in the modern sense of the word, except as they have experienced as citizens of democracies outside of the Middle East and Central Asia. They remain subject to governments that claim authority based upon ideologies of one kind or another. Some Muslim states trace their lineage to European revolutionary and fascist ideologies, and some to Islamist ideology. Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt have embraced secular paths, but both have strong authoritarian tendencies in tension with the democratization of their societies. Jordan, some of the Gulf States, and Morocco have reforming monarchies that have embraced constitutionalism, but have not yet developed truly participatory civil society. The Palestinian stalemate between secularists and Islamists continues to trap them as pawns in the Arab struggle over integration into the international system. Security fears crush freedom throughout the region...and these fears are primarily not of external threats, but internal ones.

Dissenters of all kinds are endangered by lawless men: without the rule of law, there can be no freedom of expression. The subjects of dictatorships cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments the way that citizens of democracies can. All this to say that until there are democratic governments in the Middle East whose citizens are free to hold their governments accountable for protecting their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, there will be no political stability, economic prosperity, or happiness for the rest of us.

"A Common Word Between Us"

In “A Common Word” Muslim clerics wrote about the importance of the love of God and the love of neighbor in Islam and Christianity. The acknowledgement of the “Other” as human beings was a remarkable effort by moderate Muslims to repudiate the teachings of Osama bin Laden and his ilk that all non-Muslims are idolators who must be destroyed. The 138 affirmed that God is One, and that there is no other god beside Him. Many Christians say, “But Allah is not God!” and many Muslims reply, “And God is not Allah!” Worshipping any god besides the Creator of the Universe is the greatest sin, all believers agree. Yet we disagree on revelation, as God has ordained in this Age of the Nations. All the theology in the world cannot reveal that which is perceived only through a glass darkly by His creatures. Each of us must decide for ourselves how much power we want to allow God to have over our lives. Is He limited in any way? He can do anything He pleases. He is the Sovereign, Our Creator. We cannot judge another’s heart, and we are accountable only to God. In good faith, we must agree that God is Allah, and Allah is God, and that the God of Israel is the God of Muhammad, just as Muhammad taught his followers. All responsibility for misleading one another about who God by our deeds is ours alone. How the Lord God must weep at His children’s eagerness to condemn one another before His throne. Let us humbly affirm our humanity by recognizing His image in our neighbors’ eyes, and like Isaac said to Esau, "For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably." Genesis 34:10.

Democracy, Freedom, and American Mideast Policies

I am an American citizen. I am everlastingly thankful to God that He led my grandparents to immigrate to this country—my mother’s parents from the Pale of Settlement following the infamous Kishinev pogrom of 1903, and my father’s parents from Nazi Germany in 1939. They realized that they literally would not be permitted to live where absolutist, totalitarian governments did not recognize them as citizens—human beings with inherent rights and dignity.

All Americans, no matter their gender, race and creed, are equal under the law. No tyrant rules here, one who we could blame for pursuing policies with which we disagree. Our liberty comes with a cost, and that is shouldering our responsibilities and duties as citizens. While we cannot all serve in the armed forces, we must serve as members of the electorate. An informed citizenry is the only guarantee of keeping government officials accountable and of keeping our own personal liberty.

Our secular government represents us, for good or for ill. Some people of faith condemn the actions of our government, thinking that our nation should have a Christian government. That is tragic. Our country emerged as a nation because the established church was anathema to the many who dissented from the repressive policies of state churches throughout history. Persecuted for their faith, they fled to America and forged a new kind of government over centuries of conflict and strife. We enjoy the freedom of religion because we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—where happiness means not material bliss, but spiritual and legal independence.


Our democratic values matter not only domestically, but internationally, and our foreign policies should represent the interests of our nation’s citizenry. As citizens of a democratic country, we have to assume responsibility for the actions of our government, which acts in our name, because that is the meaning of democracy. Although we may not agree with their policies and actions, we cannot simply blame our elected officials and dissociate ourselves from our government. We must hold these officials responsible for their actions, and we must participate in policymaking through our involvement as citizens.

Our nation has undeniably brought harm to innocents—not just Iraqis, but Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, and others—through bad foreign policies that have led to a failure of diplomacy. Yet it has also done great good. Good or bad, we must recognize that those officials who are elected to high office—the president and the legislature—represent us and bear the heavy burden of making decisions under complicated, difficult, and terrifying circumstances. Whether or not we voted for them, we need to pray for them, thanking God that we are not the ones who have to make the hard decisions. We owe them the respect due to them--their work is not easy and their burden is great. And, ultimately, they will be judged for their actions, by history and by their maker.

We must face our own history and the consequences of the evil that have shaped the international state system of which we are a part and for which we too, will be judged.

25 March 2008

Why I signed the "Christian Response" to the "Common Word Between Us"

An Unpublished Response to Richard John Neuhaus, Public Square Comment “Islam and Christianity: Changing the Subject” First Things (February 2008)

March 28, 2008

I am one of the signatories of the “Christian Response to a Common Word Spoken Between Us” whose name was published in the New York Times of November 13, 2007. While I admit that the letter was rather effusive, reflecting Arabic style, but I did not read it as “supine.” Rather, as a Jewish follower of Yeshua HaMashiach, and as a scholar of Islamic history teaching Middle Eastern Studies at a major evangelical Christian university, two particular passages of the “Christian Response” resonated for me. The letter expresses two ideas that Jews would like to hear acknowledged by Christians and Muslims, as often as possible: an acknowledgment of our shared pasts, and our responsibility as citizens and believers for the acts committed by our countries and people of our faiths throughout history. Although accepting individual responsibility for acts we have not done personally is ethically complex, acknowledging the sinfulness of humanity over the centuries is fundamental to improving human relations in humility as we face the future.


The first passage reads:

“A Common Word Between Us and You (sic) identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ’s call to love God and neighbor was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of Israel embodied in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18).”

The core ideas here, that God created us, that He called upon us to worship and serve Him, and to treat one another with dignity and respect, is one that is too easily dismissed by those who want to focus on our differences.

Although great progress has been made in recent years, many Jews, Muslims, and Christians still know remarkably little about one another’s beliefs. The fundamental importance of the Hebrew Scriptures to all three religions is not widely known or accepted at the popular level. Today, Islamic anti-Semitism and anti-Christianism are fueling the attacks on Israel and the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. At the same time, some Christian apologists claim that Allah is the “moon god,” a pernicious idea that is making its way increasingly into mainstream evangelical culture. By neglecting to understand the historical development of all three religions, important bridges between them are being sundered at the popular level, where hate finds a ready medium. While it is extremely important to understand the sharp differences between the three religions, it is equally important to understand their commonalities as well.

After centuries of rejection by Christians, the connection between the Christians and Jews has been transformed by the rejection of the teachings of contempt and supercessionism that denied the roots of Christianity in Jewish culture. Although many Christians, surprisingly, remain unaware of their problematic connection to the powerful anti-Semitic strands in the history of the Church, they must understand that they are often associated with Jewish suffering. Perhaps evangelicals prefer to see anti-semitism as an aberration, but it is an historical fact that should not be dismissed as of no concern to the contemporary Church.

Among Muslims, a type of the Marcion heresy that threatened the Early Church has taken root among salafis who reject the historicity of Muslim origins and their connection to the religious texts and teachings of Judaism and Christianity. Ahistoricism in Islam has legitimized the rejection of continuity—and connection—among the three monotheistic religious traditions, a rejection that lies at the heart of the difference between radical and moderate Islam. The majority understanding of Jews and Christians as Peoples of the Book along with the Muslims, has been rejected in favor of associating them with pagans and heretics, as taught in the Hanbali tradition.

The doctrine of the “uncreated Koran” has made the rejection of the Arab, pre-Islamic past as a period of darkness unworthy of study has become increasingly important, preventing Muslims from engaging in “higher criticism” to better understand the teachings of Muhammad. As in the West in the early modern period, Muslims fear that subjecting the Koran to historical examination will lead to disbelief. This fear has prevented Muslims from seeing the continuities—and differences—between their scriptures and the Bible. Such studies are still in their infancy, despite centuries of Islamic tradition based upon grammatical and syntactical studies of the Koran as well as “Orientalist” scholarship, efforts which the Muslim public finds extremely suspicious. Nevertheless, the spread of Wahhabism, which teaches a literalist interpretation of the Koran, has led to renewed interest in Koranic Studies worldwide and may lead to a deeper and fuller appreciation of the influence of Jewish and Christian ideas in Arabia and the development of Islamic civilization.

The other idea that Jews and Muslims would like to hear Christians is stated in this way:

“Before we ‘shake your hand’ in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.” The letter continues; “...[W]e want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades [ Jews would like to see “The Inquisition, Pogroms, and the Holocaust” inserted there, along with “the Crusades”] and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the "war on terror") many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors.”

While the historic record is complex, today’s Christians must understand that they are associated in non-Christian minds that the savagery of the pogroms along the Rhine and the slaughter of innocent Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims by the Crusaders remains at the center of Muslim sensibilities. In the War on Terror, the U.S. did not have to leave the infamous Abu Ghraib detention center standing. Scholar Kanan Makiya and filmmaker Michael Wood helped Americans understand the brutality of Saddam Hussein in the ‘80s and '90s: the first thing we ought to have done when we arrived in Baghdad was to tear down that infamous symbol of Saddam’s tyranny. Instead, we are forever saddled with the images of Americans as brutalizers in a war that is being fought in the name of freedom, and in which our sons and daughters are still laying down their lives.

While Christians today may forget that at one time Christianity was the “state church” in the Middle East, Muslims and Jews have not. Muslims see the United States as a Christian country, one of a long line of regimes that have sought to impose their power by homogenizing the faiths and cultures of the Middle East and Central Asia in the name of stability. While the United States is totally different from the medieval Christian and Islamic empires that ruled the Middle East, as outsiders we are pegged as aggressors, and our support of Saddam in the ‘80s, his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran, our preservation of his rule through the ‘90s which led to genocidal policies against the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq, and which also deployed economic sanctions against the common people rather than Saddam’s Baathist supporters, led undeniably to great suffering. Can we not acknowledge our sins in allowing Saddam to rule for so long, despite his crimes against humanity, before 9/11? Is it not a sin that we failed adequately to defend our own nation against attack?

Of course none of the signatories to the letter would want to become subjects of an Islamist regime, as some critics of the letter speciously have suggested we’d prefer! As an American who has long accepted the necessity of warfare in the Middle East as the lesser of evils in the last resort, I have found the failures of our foreign policy and intelligent establishments shocking and incredible. Like many other Americans, I hope that the final word is not out, and that one day we will learn the full truth about all of the disinformation that we have endured since the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait.

For the full text of “A Common Word Between Us” and the Christian Response, see: http://www.yale.edu/faith/

23 March 2008

A Response to Richard John Neuhaus, Public Square Comment “Islam and Christianity: Changing the Subject” First Things (February 2008)

March 28, 2008

I am one of the signatories of the “Christian Response to a Common Word Spoken Between Us” whose name was published in the New York Times of November 13, 2007. While I admit that the letter was rather effusive, reflecting Arabic style, I did not read it as “supine.” Rather, as a Jewish follower of Yeshua HaMashiach, and as a scholar of Islamic history teaching Middle Eastern Studies at a major evangelical Christian university, two particular passages resonated for me: an acknowledgment of our shared pasts, and our responsibility as citizens and believers for the acts committed by our country and people of our faith throughout history. Although accepting individual responsibility for things we have not done personally is ethically complex, acknowledging the sinfulness of humanity over the centuries is fundamental to improving human relations in humility as we face the future.

The first passage reads:

“A Common Word Between Us and You (sic) identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ’s call to love God and neighbor was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of Israel embodied in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18).”

The core idea here, that God created us, calling upon us to worship and serve Him by treating one another with dignity and respect, is one that is too easily dismissed by those who want to focus on our differences.

Although great progress has been made in recent years, many Jews, Muslims, and Christians still know remarkably little about one another’s beliefs. The fundamental importance of the Hebrew Scriptures to all three religions is not widely known or accepted at the popular level. Today, Islamic anti-Semitism and anti-Christianism are fueling attacks on Israel and the Christians in the Muslim world. In response, Christian apologists are claiming that Allah is the “moon god” of a pagan religion--a pernicious idea that is making its way increasingly into mainstream evangelical culture. By neglecting the historical development of all three religions, important bridges between them are being sundered at the popular level, where hate finds a ready medium. While it is extremely important to understand the sharp differences between them, it is equally important to understand their commonalities as well.

After centuries of rejection by Christians, the connection between the Christians and Jews has been transformed by the rejection of the teachings of contempt and supercessionism that denied the roots of Christianity in Jewish culture. Although many Christians surprisingly are unaware of their problematic connection to the powerful anti-Semitic strands in the history of the Church, they must understand that non-Christians associate them with Jewish suffering. Perhaps evangelicals prefer to see anti-semitism as an aberration, it is an historical fact that cannot be dismissed as of no concern to the contemporary Church.

Among Muslims, the Marcion heresy that threatened the Early Church has taken root among salafis who reject the historicity of Muslim origins and their connection to the religious texts and teachings of Judaism and Christianity. Ahistoricism in Islam has legitimized the rejection of continuity—and connection—among the three monotheistic religious traditions, a rejection that lies at the heart of the difference between radical and moderate Islam. The majority understanding of Jews and Christians as Peoples of the Book along with the Muslims, has been rejected in favor associating them with pagans and heretics, as taught in the Hanbali tradition. The doctrine of the “uncreated Koran” has made the rejection of the Arab, pre-Islamic past as a period of darkness unworthy of study increasingly important, preventing Muslims from engaging in “higher criticism” to better understand the teachings of Muhammad. As in the West in the early modern period, Muslims fear that subjecting the Koran to historical examination will lead to disbelief. This fear has prevented Muslims from seeing the continuities—and differences—between their scriptures and the Bible. Such studies are still in their infancy, despite centuries of Islamic tradition based upon grammatical and syntactical studies of the Koran as well as “Orientalist” scholarship. The spread of Wahhabism, which teaches a literalist interpretation of the Koran, has led to renewed interest in Koranic Studies worldwide and may lead to a deeper and fuller appreciation of the influence of Jewish and Christian ideas in Arabia and the development of Islamic civilization.

The other idea that Jews and Muslims would like to hear Christians is stated in this way:

“Before we ‘shake your hand’ in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.” The letter continues; “...[W]e want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades [we Jews would like to see “The Inquisition, Pogroms, and the Holocaust” inserted there, along with “the Crusades”] and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the "war on terror") many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors.”

While the historic record is complex, today’s Christians must understand that they are associated in non-Christian minds with the savagery of the pogroms along the Rhine and the slaughter of innocent Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims by the Crusaders. Violent anti-Semitism is a part of the history of the Church, and, like it or not, Christians today must grapple with this fact. In the War on Terror, the U.S. did not have to leave the infamous Abu Ghraib detention center standing when we entered Baghdad. Scholar Kanan Makiya and filmmaker Michael Wood helped Americans understand the brutality of Saddam Hussein in the ‘80s: the first thing we ought to have done when we arrived in Baghdad was to tear down that infamous symbol of Saddam’s tyranny. Instead, we are forever saddled with the images of Americans as brutalizers in a war that was devoted to freedom, and for which our sons and daughters are still laying down their lives.

While Christians today may forget that at one time Christianity was the “state church” in the Middle East, Muslims and Jews have not. Muslims see the United States as a Christian country, one of a long line of regimes that have sought to impose and homogenize faith and culture in their region in the name of their religion. None of us today would want to become subjects of such regimes, as some critics of the letter speciously have suggested we’d prefer! While the United States in totally different from the medieval Christian and Islamic empires that ruled the Middle East, as outsiders we are pegged as aggressors, and our support of Saddam, his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran, our preservation of his rule through the 90s which led to genocidal policies against the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq, and which also resulted in economic sanctions affecting the common people rather than Saddam’s Baathist supporters, led undeniably to great suffering. Can we not acknowledge our sins in allowing Saddam to rule for so long, despite his crimes against humanity, before 9/11? Is it not a sin that we failed adequately to defend our own nation against attack?

As an American who has long accepted the necessity of warfare in the Middle East as the lesser of evils in the last resort, the failures of our foreign policy and intelligent communities have been shocking and incredible. Like many other Americans, I hope that the final word is not out, and that one day we will learn the full truth about all of the disinformation that we have endured since the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait.

Therefore, the letterwriters’ decision to put quotation marks around the phrase “War on Terror” didn’t strike me as important enough not to sign it. It did not mean that each person who signed the letter opposed the war. As citizens of a democratic country, we have to assume responsibility for the actions of our government, which acts in our name. Our nation has brought harm to innocents—not just Iraqis, but Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, and others—through bad foreign policies that have led to a failure of diplomacy to resolve the many conflicts in the Middle East, at great human cost. Those officials who are elected to high office—the president and the legislature—represent us and bear the heavy burden of making decisions in complicated, difficult, and sometimes terrifying circumstances. Whether or not we voted for them, we need to pray for them, thanking God that we are not the ones who have to make the hard decisions. The least we can do is accept our part of the responsibility for these actions.

Therefore, as Christians, and as citizens of the United States, we must strive to strengthen and protect good governments by engaging in peacemaking efforts, grounded in strength and wisdom on all levels, rooted in the values, ethics, and beliefs that have sustained civilization. To do this, we must face our own history and the consequences of the evils that have shaped the international state system of which we are a part and for which we will be judged.

For the full text of “A Common Word Between Us” and the Evangelical Response, see: http://www.yale.edu/faith/

21 March 2008

Evangelicals and Israel

“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.”

Part One: Christian Zionism and Christian Arabism

To the American public, even before 9/11, the Arabs, with their supposed unlimited oil wealth and unfamiliar religion, are seen alternately as darlings or devils. On the other side, Israel and the Jews, seemingly besieged by genocidal regimes on all sides aimed at their destruction, are viewed as either victims or aggressors. Rarely do the public pronouncements of religious leaders of any persuasion help to clarify Middle Eastern politics for the American public. To foreign audiences, who do not understand denominational religions in the United States, pious but simplistic half-truths uttered by American clerics create profound fear and anger, mockery and disgust.

It is an undeniable political fact that “Evangelicals” have become a critical political factor in American elections. For that reason, the opinions and beliefs of those identifying themselves in that category have now become important to politicians and candidates running for office. Since the emergence of the Moral Majority in the ‘80s, the Israel-Arab conflict has increasingly become an unavoidable political issue for churchgoers. The history of the conflict has gone through many stages, and the thinking of liberal and conservative Christians in the United States has been affected by what has happened in the Middle East over the years.

The historic division between Christians for and against Israel has consolidated into two camps—so called “Christian Zionists” and those I prefer to call “Christian Arabists.” The politicization of the conflict in American politics has led to a booming multimedia industry designed to influence American policy in the Middle East. With an unlimited market, much material has been produced to fuel the debate, but remarkably little of it helps those who want to understand the conflict.

Even among academics, the dispute between Christian Zionists and Christian Arabists over the Arab-Israeli conflict is not as well understood as the vigorous Jewish debate over Zionism over the past century. However, their disputations have garnered a great deal of attention in the media and on the pulpit, with political consequences for Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states.

It is important at this time to put the issue of Israel for Evangelicals in context. For moderate Evangelicals, the bitter mutual recriminations of both camps against one another have been confusing, distasteful, and harmful, resulting in the extreme polarization of the broader Christian community about proper U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Christian Zionists, sympathetic to the Jews as God’s Chosen People, have lobbied for pro-Israeli policies, while Christian Arabists, sympathetic to the historic Arab Christians in the Islamic Middle East and universal human rights, including the right of self-determination--have lobbied for the Palestinians. Following the Holocaust, Christians have eschewed anti-Semitism in the Church, and have feared the disappearance of Christians in the Middle East under the pressures of the Arab-Israel conflict. Against the background of the growth of secular nationalism in the twentieth century, Muslims, Jews and Christians in the U.S. and the Middle East had hoped that religious differences could be pacified through political liberalism and nationalism. By supporting Arab Nationalism, and later, specifically Palestinian Nationalism, Christians have sought to preserve common ground for Christians and Muslims against the twinned threats of political Islam and Western interventionism. With the end of the Cold War, Arab nationalism failed, and liberal democracy failed to take hold in the authoritarian Islamic world, reviving and fueling latent religious fundamentalism in both Israel and in the Muslim world. It is remarkable that although Jews and Christians, including Christian Arabists and Christian Zionists, and Muslims recognize the dangers of resurgent political Islam--the great Other whose growing strength threatens to engulf the entire region--their responses to this threat have been quite different and utterly flawed.

To Christian Zionists, Israel represents a society possessing affinities to the values to American democracy. Moreover, they perceive Israel as a strategic bulwark against the instabilities of the Middle Eastern state system. Combined with their faith in the literal truth revealed in the bible, fascination with biblical history and revulsion for anti-Semitism following the Holocaust, premillennial dispensationalist theology has, for Christian Zionists, framed the narrative of what God is doing in history. Yet now Christian Zionism has become the straw man of those who oppose Zionism, the national movement of the Jewish people. The foolish proclamations of Hagee, Falwell, and Robertson have disgraced the noble humanitarian impulses of Christian Zionism, allowing Israel's enemies to focus their attention on evangelicals rather than on themselves for the deplorable state of the Palestinians and the Arab world.

Against the background of the massacre of Jews in Russia, Armenians and Syriac Christians and the displacement of thousands of Greek Orthodox Christians and Muslims in the wake of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, nineteenth century American missionary efforts among Jews, Christians, and Muslims overlapped with the humanitarian, liberal age of secularization worldwide. Arab nationalism, centered upon the modernization of the Arabic language, became the means by which Palestinian Jews, Muslims, and Christians initially sought to create new identities as former subjects of the Ottoman Empire. In short order various Western political ideologies streamed into Arab Nationalism, paralleling the development of political Zionism in the period 1890-1948.

Jewish and Christian support for the establishment of Israel was almost universal only after World War II: when the Arabs were linked in the popular mind with the Turks. The alliance of the Palestinian Arab Muslim Brotherhood with the Nazis during the Second World War did nothing to change that impression, nor did the fact of Soviet patronage of the Arab socialist liberation movements during the Cold War.

The perception of Israel as a defenseless refuge threatened by hate-filled Muslims changed in 1967, when the Arabs were trounced in the Six Day War. That victory created in the popular mind in America a feeling of pride at the vitality of the reborn Jewish nation. However, in the years following that victory, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza put large numbers of Palestinian Christians and Muslims under Israeli military rule. As the injustices suffered by the Palestinians began to be known, relationships between American Christians involved in educational and humanitarian organizations with Arab Christians led to a more nuanced understanding of the historical complexities of the Arab-Israel conflict and the draconian Israeli policies relating to the Arabs and their heritage in Palestine.

Sympathy for the sufferings of the Palestinians soon evolved into antipathy for Israel, particularly among newly politicized Evangelicals, many of them from Fundamentalist, premillennialist backgrounds. Those with experience in the Middle East, particularly those who had studied in the great Protestant colleges established in the Middle East in the nineteenth century, like the American Universities of Beirut and Cairo, where they were exposed to the ideologies of Arab and Palestinian Nationalism which had attracted many Arab Christians in the Middle East, and soon identified with secular national movements in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine.

Rather than dealing with the real issues of just government facing the Islamic world, Christian Arabists and Christian Zionists have attacked one another, seeking to justify their political positions theologically. The result has been that they have limited their relevance to resolving the real humanitarian, geostrategic and political challenges facing Americans, Israelis, Arabs, and the rest of the world in the Middle East. The current battle between Christian Arabists and Christian Zionists is really about Evangelical power in the American political system, not achieving a just and fair political settlement for the Palestinians and Israelis. The issue is votes, Christian Zionists joining Jews in lobbying for Israel in the United States. The truth is that just as Jewish Americans are not united in their support for Israel’s policies, as anyone familiar with Jewish life in the U.S. can attest, neither are the so-called Christian Zionists. Indeed, Christian Zionists are viewed with a considerable degree of suspicion by Jewish Zionists, who fear Christian evangelism. Thoughtful Evangelicals, especially those who are informed adherents to premillennial dispensationalism as a matter of theological doctrine, are chastened politically by their negative view of human nature and their suspicions about idea of human progress—political or cultural—and any scheme to manipulate prophecy by becoming politically involved in the historic struggle over Jewish and Palestinian self-determination.

Tarred by the press as extremists, the beliefs of premillennial dispensationalist evangelicals are seen as particularly pernicious by anti-Zionist Christians because they claim to be a part of the evangelical movement, a movement that many of its leaders wish to understand as a righteous movement for social justice, universal morality, and political engagement on behalf of the poor and oppressed. While it is unfortunately true that some Christian Zionists see things in terms of black and white, there are many more, among them seminarians, college and university professors and students, professionals, and writers who hold much more balanced and constrained views of Israel in this age, the Dispensation of the Nations, that has lasted from Pentecost and will end with the Rapture.

The very mention of the Apocalypse is frightening to many Christians, and of course, foolishness to non-Christians, who scorn literal interpretations of biblical literature. Many Jews and Christians over the millennia have chosen to understand the future judgment of the world allegorically at best or as dangerous folly at worst. Dispensationalists, however, like Jewish and Muslim literalists, accept these biblical teachings as trustworthy warnings, with thanks that the Almighty continues to restrain His wrath until the terrible day when He will
judge the nations.