By Mark Tooley, Frontpagemag.com
Anti-Israel activists rightly see American evangelicals as key to U.S. support for Israel. That is why they are targeting evangelicals with messages of pro-Palestinian solidarity as supposedly central to Christian compassion. A new evangelical film, “With God on Our Side,” is coming out this month to rebut pro-Israel Christians and persuade them to champion the Palestinian cause.
“You’ll be told that as you travel to Israel that it’s just too dangerous to take you to some of these places,” a narrator warns ominously in the film trailer. “But that is rhetoric that is employed in order to keep you on the tourist trail. “
The film’s purpose, as its producer explains, is to take American Christians off the metaphorical tourist trail of their narrow pro-Israel stance and instead wade them into embittered Palestinian communities where supposedly they will learn the truth about the who is really to blame.
Liberal evangelist Tony Campolo hails the film as “informative,” “inspiring,” and “brilliant.” Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren gushes: “Finally! A look at what Christian Zionism teaches and more importantly, the real implications it has on the people of the Middle East.” World Vision (a major evangelical relief group) Vice President Steven Haas commends the film’s “sound theology” and calls it “one of the clearest assessments of the struggle between Palestinians and Jews, and a US Church largely unaware of their complicity in the current conflict.”
A Middle Eastern voice exclaims during the film’s trailer:
“Palestinian Christians lived here for centuries in this land. Suddenly they meet Christian groups of people who say you are obstacles to the second coming of Jesus. You need to move out to make room for the Jewish diaspora to come here.”
Here, of course, is the simplistic stereotype about pro-Israel evangelicals the film hopes to perpetuate. American evangelicals self-servingly only support Israel because a Jewish presence there is central to their bloody thirsty, apocalyptic dreams about the Second Coming. The film soothingly implores evangelicals to consider a nicer path.
“There is the path of deep compassion and mercy and justice and peace,” offers one voice in the film trailer. “Or there is the tradition of Berlin Walls being built and excluding people who are not of us.” So it’s really very simple. Support the apartheid-like, Jewish wall-builders, or stand with the persecuted Palestinians. Of course, their persecution is faulted not just on Israel, but also the United States, especially its evangelicals.
“We as evangelicals have endorsed an Israeli domestic policy that has placed over 3 million people under military occupation, creating the largest refugee population in the world,” the film trailer opines. “ Why is this defended by the Christian church? How is it we don’t see it as suffering of some people?” A Middle Eastern voice adds: “The way we hear Christian Zionism here is to accept this theology is to commit suicide as a people group.”
Here is the film’s main message to evangelicals, especially to young people. The Old Religious Right crassly imposed a pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy based on its end-times theology, creating untold suffering among largely innocent Palestinians. More thoughtful, more compassionate evangelicals will reject that heritage and instead stand with the Palestinians as the victim group most needing Christian compassion.
The new mythology that the Evangelical Left hopes to perpetuate about the Middle East is just as loaded as the politically charged theology that all pro-Israel evangelicals are alleged to have. In essence, the Evangelical Left is largely adopting the old Religious Left’s Liberation Theology view of the Middle East, in which the Palestinians are the impoverished Third World victims, while Israel and the U.S. are the imperialists. The thirst by Evangelical Left groups to leave the “tourist path” and visit with purportedly more authentic Palestinian communities is mostly a rehash of the old Religious Left’s infatuation with the Sandinista experiment in Nicaragua in the 1980’s. “Oh, you must you there and see for yourselves,” they insisted then as they insist today. “The reality is so very different from what our government and other vested interests in America will tell you.”
Supposedly, Palestinian hosts, like pro-Sandinista Nicaraguan hosts of 25 years ago, will perform like the Oracle of Delphi, clarifying reality, and blowing away the deceptive fog of Western colonialism. “I was brought up in a Christian home…and we were always taught to support Israel, and really Israel was synonymous with Israel in the Bible,” explains film producer Porter Speakman. But as he has since learned since his enlightenment, “As a Christian, a lot of our theology helps to perpetuate a lot of the human rights (abuses) and injustice that is happening.” Expecting resistance to his film, he warns: “It’s a perspective that many people don’t want others to hear.”
The film interviews Ben White, an anti-Israel British journalist, Stephen Sizer, a Church of England priest and anti-Israel author who infamously has taken his message to Iran, Gary Burge, a professor at evangelical Wheaton College outside Chicago who is a critic of pro-Israel evangelicals, and Salim Munayer, a professor at Bethlehem Bible College, which markets Palestinian Liberation Theology.
“When you begin to tell the Palestinian narrative you get accused of all kinds of things including anti-Semitism, which are not at all justified,” White warns. “It’s immensely humiliating to Palestinians, saying to them they are not valid voice, a struggle over land that is about them as a people.”
Munayer pleads for more American evangelical concerns about self-image. “You need to understand how American Christians have been perceived by Middle Easterners,” he warns. “ We stand for wars, we want to be richer, we don’t care for the poor, we want only our interests, we stand for moral values that stand for our desires. We stand for power and not stand for peace.” Munayer reports that Muslims often ask him why American Christians “hate” Muslims. “Why do Christians want us to move out of our home and not stand for what is right and just,” they purportedly ask him. Does Munayer ever ask his Muslim interlocutors what compromises of self-interest they are willing to make for peace?
In a glowing review for Sojourners, former evangelical relief agency executive Tom Getman enthused about the film: “With God on Our Side signals a hope that Christian Zionists will change through the persuasive voices of progressive Christians and Jews,” while positing that “that support of Israel ‘right or wrong’ is an adopted formula of world Christian empire that actually threatens Israel’s survival.” Echoing the film, he asked: “Can the Bible be used to justify crimes against humanity? Can the kingdom of God possibly be realized by violent dispossession?”
“With God on Our Side” wants increased U.S. pressure on Israel to accommodate Palestinian demands, facilitated by reduced U.S. evangelical support for Israel. And the ultimate goal is what? A Palestinian state based on the unstable 1967 borders and ruled by Islamists like Hamas or kleptocratic secularists like Fatah? Or is it to dismantle Israel altogether in favor of a single nation, where an unrestricted “right of return” for Palestinians leads to a collapse of Jewish democracy? How are the dwindling numbers of Palestinian Christians faring under Palestinian rule now, and how would they fare under a victorious new, Islamic-dominated Palestinian state?
Mostly, the Evangelical Left would prefer not to answer these questions, instead preferring guilt trips about supposed evangelical and American imperialist sins, and fantasies about a newly liberated and Christian friendly “Palestine.” Fortunately, most evangelicals will remain un-persuaded, despite the saccharine appeal of a film like “With God on Our Side.”
“HE will seperate the sheep from the GOATS”.
…but Lord,we did this Christian movie..
“Depart from me I NEVER KNEW YOU”.
.THERE is NO PALESTINE! They are Arabs who came to Israel for Jobs,after the Zionists started to re-build,around the turn of the century.Israel NEVER tried to throw them out & is willing to have them PEACEFULLY integrate with them.ISRAELI Arabs have better lives & would rather be part of the Israeli govt’.
.Before 1948 Arabs were indsulted if you called them Palestinians..the only Pals were Jews!
.Mark Twain visited “Palestine” & said “it was deserted..That means,NO-ONE LIVED THERE!
.If they were a nation.WHO is their greatest King/leader?WHERE is their archeology?
.WHY would they call themselves a name THEY CAN’T PRONOUNCE?? They can’t say their “P’s”,they say Balestinian!Because it was named that by the ITALIANS!
.JEWISH Yeshua(Jesus) is returning to JEWISH Israel to be THE JEWISH MESSIAH/KING!
Satan(which is HEBREW for advesary..it is NOT his name!)is USING these people.We need to REALLY LOVE them & set them free from this hate before G-d’s wrath is poured out on this earth for POKING him in the eye!..oh sorry,we have a “more tolerant” way of saying that..for touching “the apple of His eye”.Doesn’t that sound “nicer”?
These people need to read their History books (including their Bibles) This is not about Christians, Jews, Muslims and Arabs. It is about the unfolding of Biblical prophecy which cannot be averted by man. Israel will remain the chosen nation of YHVH (Yahuah) whether we in the west like it or not. Regardless of the political persuasions and ambitions of any other nation or group, Israel will be restored to the land that Yahuah promised them! No other outcome is possible, the living Word of God confirms it.
All manipulative politicians and closeted anti-Semite groups are about to get a massive wake up call when the unseen “Spirit” driving the restoration of Israel will say “Enough is Enough”
There is a growing number of us that do not fit into any of the political or “Religious” groups alluded to in this article but we do know the “Truth” and we ALL need to pray for the people in Israel, Jews or not. God’s will WILL be done, end of story and if you want to know what it is, read your History books and your Bibles.
Blessings
EVANGELICALS HAVE AS MUCH SURE FOOTING AS ANY NON COMMANDMENT BELIEVER DOES. SINCE THEY DON’T BELIEVE IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 1ST. JOHN 2.4 CALL’S THEM LIAR’S AND THEY SPEAK NOT THE TRUTH.SO DOES ISAIAH 8.20 SINCE THEY ADHERE TO THE EDICT’S OF CONSTANTINE 321 A.D. WHO STARTED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH .WHAT PEOPLE DEFEND IS WHAT THEY UPHOLD. PEOPLE SHOULD LEARN THEIR HISTORY…………
These are not “progressive” Christians, but Christians belonging to apostate churches which deny the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture. Gary Burge, for example, belongs to the PCUSA, an apostate church. As a Presbyterian and a former member of a PCUSA church, I know what I am talking about. But what does the PCUSA church share in common with other churches that are not apostate? Augustinian, Replacement, Supercessionist Theology! I just left a PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) church because I found myself at odds with the pastor over this theology, a theology which lays the foundation for removing Israel’s “Holy Land” and “chosen” status so it can be attacked on secular terms as an “apartheid” state. It’s time to call this theology what it truly is: spiritual genocide. It accomplishes in heaven what Hitler could not accomplish on earth: it obliterates an entire nation of people from God’s redemptive economy. This theology is prevalent in Catholic, Anglican, and Reformed traditions. As Christians, we need to confront and combat this evil in the church.
I’m saddened by the fact that evangelical Christians could be so easily duped into an “hating our older brother” and antisemitism. Paul warns sternly in the Book of Hebrews that we should not reject our older brother, the Jews, because someday they may take our place and we are rejected as a result of God’s Judgment for doing so when God enlightens them. Through the Jews we have God’s Word, our faith. If we reject them God’s Word predicts throughout the Bible that God’s Judgment will fall on us. I have lived a number of years in the Islamic World and that severe judgment is very clear to see there. I don’t mean to say that the Jews should take care for human rights, especially the plight of Palestinian Christians there. But on the other hand, I remember stories of how Nasser brutally drove the Jews out of Egypt in the 50’s, for example. Can you build a synagogue in an Islamic country or Saudia Arabia? Yet there is tremendous religious freedom in Israel and the West Bank and mosques are being built here regularly. Palestianians are much better off under Israeli “occupation” than they are in Islamic countries around them. So the real war isn’t about “human rights”. It’s about Islam’s inability to enslave the people of Palestine in the same ways as they are in other countries nearby. Israel is the only democracy and successful, and that’s a thorn in Islam’s eye which fills them with rage. And western evangelicals and the media all too easily buy the one-sided story Islamic radicals put out. It’s a petulant whining about Israel while they actively oppress their own people, using suppression of the press and intimidation of minorities of other faiths to do so.