…it is enough to say, and that with the utmost firmness, that while there is occasion for believers to differ about civil matters like domestic or foreign politics, there is no sense in which the Christian faith requires us to support the present movement for Palestinian Arab statehood.  Those who suggest otherwise distort the faith and make it political, temporal, and partial; and Christ’s kingdom is not of this world (Jn. 18:36), and he refused to be a temporal judge (Lk. 12:13-15)  and despises partiality (Rom. 2:11).

“One who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him,” Proverbs 18:17 tells us. A recent letter from one Jack Nassar, a resident of the city of Ramallah, invites examination, for he has made an emotional plea that those of us in the Reformed churches not forget the plight of believers who live in Gaza and the disputed territory between Israel and Jordan. His opening questions are leading, for he asks:

What happens when the land that cradled Christianity vanishes from the conscience of the global Church? What does it mean when believers who trace their faith to Pentecost are erased—not only by violence, but by theological neglect?

This rather presumes that “the land that cradled Christianity” has in fact vanished from the Church’s conscience “by theological neglect,” and forgets that all professing believers “trace their faith to Pentecost.” When Nassar subsequently states that “I write to you, my Reformed brethren, not to accuse, but to awaken,” well might we think that the tone and form of his words do not come across in that manner—for such is the effect of all rhetorical questions.

His subsequent words are blunt, for he asks: “Do you know we exist?” and proceeds to lament that “the Christian presence in the Holy Land,” which “predates your nations, your denominations, even your creeds” is “vanishing before your eyes—not by accident, but under the weight of military occupation, systemic dispossession, and the silence of a Western Church that too often looks away.”

There is much presupposition there, too much to fully respond to here, but it must be noted that we do not regard the lands in view as “the Holy Land,” as the “the earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof” (Ps. 24:1), such that all nations are by right the inheritance of God and his Messiah, and will in due time acknowledge him (Rev. 11:15). Or, as a letter by some of our prominent men puts it, “The entitlement of any one ethnic or religious group to territory in the Middle East called the ‘Holy Land’ cannot be supported by Scripture.”

For Christians to be forced out of said territory by others, whether Jews, Muslims, secularists, heretics, or other professing Christians, would be bad for the persecuted, surely, but would not represent any special calamity that is any worse than when God’s people are driven forth from any other place. It would not be a defilement of a holy land, and scripture leads us to conclude that there have been and may yet be in future occasions in which God will not only allow such a thing to happen, but actually command it. Christ himself told his disciples, “Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” when the abomination of desolation should appear (Matt. 24:15-16), which was fulfilled at least partly by the flight from those lands during the Jewish rebellion of AD 66-73. Indeed, Christ had only recently established his church at Pentecost among both Jew and Arab at Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-11) when he allowed persecution to scatter many of them (8:1-4).

As for Nassar’s reasons, it is strange that he is eager to blame the Israeli occupation and settlements for people being driven out, but raises not a word about the many other things which have driven professing believers from many of the lands of the Middle East, including Gaza and the disputed territory along the Jordan River. The Christian population of most Arab-majority territories has fallen immensely in the last century or so. Is that primarily attributable to Israel, or rather to independence from European and Ottoman dominance and the rise of aggressive Islamic nationalism as represented by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas?

Let us grant that Israelis are prone to dislike and mistreat Christians; still, it is about the only Middle Eastern nation in which the Christian population is holding steady or increasing. And may I ask in return: would he rather be left dealing with Hamas, ISIS, or many others of like ilk than Israel? Is persecution less evil when it comes from a Muslim, or from a fellow Arab rather than a Jew? Because as things stand, I cannot doubt that the groups which hold such sway with the Arabs in many of these places are apt to do more to persecute and destroy or drive out the professing Christian population than Israel and the Jews.

Elsewhere he makes statements that elude a clear meaning. He says that “some reduce the Holy Land to a political abstraction, conflating biblical Israel with a modern secular state.” Granting that some do indeed conflate modern Israel with scriptural Israel, one will find that error more with other traditions (esp. those involving dispensational doctrine) than with us.[1] And it is hard to see where that entails “reduc[ing] the Holy Land to a political abstraction”; if anything, such a view involves still regarding the territory in view as “the Holy Land” and not just “a political abstraction.” Or again, Nassar utters a sort of poem, saying:

But friends, the Gospel is not a political project.
Nor is it a nationalist manifesto.
The Cross is not a flagpole.
And God’s covenant is not a real estate deed.

This does not comport with what he says elsewhere. Later he says “let your sermons on justice include the occupied and colonized,” and he takes it for granted that Palestine is a sovereign state – he lists it as his place of residence in his byline – that is the scene of “military occupation” that entails “oppression,” “unwarranted killings,” “the sin of forces [sic] separation,” “injustice,”  and “daily humiliation,” and “that denies us the most basic human rights.”

If I follow, “the Gospel is not a political project” or “nationalist manifesto” when those that profess it wish to support Israel’s nationhood or her political right to exist. That is, after all, being misled “by the pernicious influence of Zionist ideology,” as Nassar has elsewhere written. But of course it is entirely different when it is a question of so-called Palestinian Arab nationhood and politics. Then it is incumbent upon us to be fully supportive, and to, as Nassar subsequently puts it:

Let your sermons on justice include the occupied and colonized.
Let your prayers for the persecuted name the Palestinians.

He ends this with the suggestion that we will be in a hard place at the Day of Judgment if we do not do such things:

Because one day, you may be asked:
“When my Church suffered in the land of Christ, where were you?”

This is called having unjust weights, and it is an abomination to the Lord (Prov. 11:1), which means that Nassar needs to repent, else he incur God’s wrath. On his view, Israel doesn’t have the right to defend or propagate itself by military might, nor to annex territory or deal with the inhabitants as might be necessary to provide for its security and the safety of its people. It’s just a fount of all manner of wickedness and a colony that exists on land unjustly taken from others, which means that those others are justified in acting to hold or regain the land in view. Their rights to said land are eternal and “inalienable” (as some put it), hence it is everyone’s Christian duty to stand up for justice and plead for their case against the wicked Zionists who have poisoned us into supporting Israel.

If it be doubted that I am fairly representing him, consider that elsewhere he has accused Israel of genocide (“A Christian call to confront the silence of the Gaza genocide,” Baptist News Global) and of “ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population — a violent act Christians have a moral obligation to condemn, not celebrate.” Curious, given that Hamas actually is genocidal against Israel, and that both it and other groups have actually attempted it by murdering Israelis (both Jew and Arab), and many non-Israeli Arabs and others in terrorist actions in the Intifadas, and at many other times. Granting that he speaks of the need for “nonviolent resistance,” it is clear whom he considers to be the guilty party in all the troubles of that portion of the Levant between the Mediterranean and the Jordan.

And on that account he has been doing the digital rounds to drum up support for his cause. He has written several articles at the liberal Baptist News Global, which have had a curiously different tone and choice of wording than his letter here at the Aquila Report. He has made overtures to the Mormons over at Wayfare, even quoting some of their non-canonical books—he actually quotes the phrase “perfect love casts out all fear” from their book of Moroni 8:16, rather than from 1 John 4:18. That invites some suspicion, as if he is a member of an Eastern communion, as appears to be the case from his writing, he ought to know that Mormons are utter heretics on the basis of the doctrine of the Eastern church. But I suppose one must never let matters of eternal life and death that have been upheld for 2,000 years get in the way of building a little political solidarity in the things of this life.

His attempt to speak our own language fails. He says “Calvin’s Institutes denounced the ‘shameful cowardice’ of those who ignore persecution.” Maybe I’m missing something, but that phrase doesn’t appear in my version of the Institutes, and comes rather from Calvin’s commentary on Titus 3:10-15, where it has a different meaning entirely (some “who would willingly take no part in strifes of words are sometimes drawn by shame into controversy, because they think that it would be shameful cowardice to quit the field”).

That and his apparent belief that we are dispensational in some way make me think that he doesn’t understand us, and is only trying to appear to do so to help his obvious purpose of building support for his political case. Couple that with his going abroad through the web to all manner of groups that are normally at odds and his overlooking the grave, longstanding differences between them, and I do not hesitate to confess that I have serious doubts about whether he is in fact who he claims to be. In my experience the Arab Easterners are very fierce in their disapproval of all of those whom he makes overtures to, and his language here vastly differs from the disdain which one normally finds with them for heretics, Western liberals, and Protestants.

What I don’t doubt is that what he has written here is a particularly audacious bit of propaganda. He says things like “not slogans, but substance,” which is an awfully insubstantial slogan, and “not political statements, but theological courage,” all while making a political case for Palestinian Arab nationhood and accusing those who don’t agree of “silence” and “neglect” and, in one case, “idolatry.” (And elsewhere, of complicity in genocide and being duped by the vile Zionists.)

It would require another article to elucidate the scriptural problems with his suppositions, but for now it is enough to say, and that with the utmost firmness, that while there is occasion for believers to differ about civil matters like domestic or foreign politics, there is no sense in which the Christian faith requires us to support the present movement for Palestinian Arab statehood.[2] Those who suggest otherwise distort the faith and make it political, temporal, and partial; and Christ’s kingdom is not of this world (Jn. 18:36), and he refused to be a temporal judge (Lk. 12:13-15)[3] and despises partiality (Rom. 2:11). That this occurs while accusing those that differ of compromising the faith with politics does not commend Nassar’s case, and rather stirs up strife than promotes peace. Beware, reader, lest Nassar and his like mislead you as to what Christ requires.

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] Hence that letter I linked earlier condemns “bad Christian theology” that “is today attributing to secular Israel a divine mandate to conquer and hold Palestine.”

[2] I would say the same of Zionism, and of many other political movements. A case might be made that the only nation a believer is obligated to support is his own, provided that does not interfere with his citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.

[3] If Christ, the only righteous and wise man, yet refused to judge temporal cases concerning material possessions in the incident recounted here, may we who are sinful not refuse to judge between differing parties in a foreign land? How much more ought we to be humble and not presume – as almost the entire rest of the world has, for decades – to decide between Jew and Arab in the Levant, instead busying ourselves with our own affairs and those of Christ’s kingdom!