By MARK TOOLEY, FRONTPAGEMAG—
Recently “Christianity Today,” the prominent evangelical journal, spotlighted the “Top 5 Books on Israel & Palestine,” as asserted by Gary Burge, a professor at Chicago-area evangelical Wheaton College, one of evangelical America’s most prestigious schools.
Burge is a crusader for trying to shift evangelicals away from their typically pro-Israel stance. All five books naturally tout a pro-Palestinian perspective to varying degrees. E vidently a book offering the Jewish experience did not merit attention.
The first book Burge touted was “Blood Brothers” by Elias Chacour, the Melkite Greek Catholic Church Archbishop of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth and All Galilee. As Burge recounts, Chacour recalls his life story as a Palestinian cleric, confronting the “thorny problem of struggle and reconciliation in Galilee.”
Another book is “I Am a Palestinian Christian,” by Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, whom Burge describes as “one of the leading Christian intellectuals in the Palestinian church.” A third book “On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend” by Timothy Weber, explains “why America and its evangelical communities are so ardently pro-Israel.” A fourth book is “Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel,” by Dan Rabinowitz and Khawla Abu-Baker, who are sociologists, “one Israeli and one Palestinian, tell their personal stories growing up near each other in Haifa.” The final book, “Whose Promised Land?: The Continuing Crisis over Israel and Palestine” by Colin Chapman is perhaps somewhat more impartial. As Burge describes, it is a “poignant and compelling history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, told by a British Christian scholar who now resides in Cambridge,” who was for “many years a professor in Beirut and, thanks to his fluency in Arabic, can see this struggle from the inside unlike many others.”
Burge’s book selection for Christianity Today asserts his overall narrative of Israel as an imperialist intrusion on indigenous Palestinians, for which America and especially America’s pro-Israel evangelicals are especially culpable. By telling stories of victimhood by Palestinians, especially the tiny Christian minority, Burge hopes to influence evangelicals towards neutrality or, better yet, pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Ostensibly this new stance will deliver oppressed Palestinians from their imperialist overlords, who will accede to Palestinian demands thanks to U.S. pressure. The assumption is that initial Palestinian political victories will actually help Palestinians, especially its Christians. What is the basis for this assumption? It’s not clear. Where in the Middle East currently are Christian minority groups living safely under pluralistic democracy?
Burge and fellow Evangelical Left anti-Israel crusaders of course assume that Israeli intransigence is the primary blockage to peace. But what if Israel unilaterally withdrew to its pre-1967 borders, abandoned Jerusalem, and allowed an unlimited right of return for all Palestinians claiming descent from original Palestinian residents in what is now Israel? Would these unilateral concessions completely appease most Palestinians and create mutual concord? Or would they not likelier feed thirsts for even greater victory, to include the eradication of Israel as a Jewish nation?
Contrary to the anti-Israel narrative that Burge prefers, if the actual obstacle to peace is Palestinian refusal to accept the permanent reality of Jewish Israel, then what Burge et al advocate only fuels greater strife and suffering for Palestinians. In reality, peace is only attainable if most Palestinians firmly accept Israel’s permanence and settle for a Palestinian state based in the West Bank, not dreams of a greater, and Jewish-free, Palestine.
The Burge/Evangelical Left narrative on Israel/Palestine also unquestioningly accepts the public pronouncements of a handful of Palestinian Christian clerics and activists without admitting these besieged Christians have little choice to say anything else.
Their survival requires constantly burnishing their Palestinian nationalist credentials. It’s interesting that the Evangelical Left, so critical of American nationalism, and of Israeli nationalism, makes such easy cause with Palestinian nationalism.
Burge serves on the board of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, an ongoing campaign to neutralize pro-Israel evangelicals. This group met at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in November 2012, featuring anti-Israel speakers like Church of England priest Stephen Sizer. Burge was also prominent in the 2010 film “With God on Our Side,” which targeted evangelical audiences, and which aimed to caricature Christian Zionists as end-times zealots indifferent to Palestinian suffering.
If Burge and anti-Israel Evangelicals, ostensibly so concerned about Palestinian Christians, actually got their way, the result almost certainly would be even greater suffering for all Palestinians. Israel is sufficiently strong militarily and economically that it will persevere. Any hope for Palestinians requires acceptance of mutual co-existence.
But intentionally or not, the anti-Israel Evangelical Left urges policies that would inflame unrealizable Palestinian hopes for eradicating Israel but actually only ensure their own continued marginalization.
The “Christianity Today” anti-Israel book suggestions from Burge superficially offer empathy for Palestinians. But like most leftist political naiveté, the policies to which they point are foolish for all.
Mark Tooley is President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.theird.org) and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century.
Mark,
We appreciate the article. However after reading your article, we did not see where you are offering any solutions or ways to counter to these anti- Israel zealots. Please offer some ways to counter act Burge and these misled so called evangelicals. Thank you
In Christ,
Eric and Nancy Smith
Shalom,
In contrast to what Gary Burge and Christianity Today are propagating, here is our experience in Israel.
An Arab bus driver took a group of us to his family home near Akko for a few hours. In the compound were a Mercedes Benz and a BMW. The living quarters were upstairs. After some Arab coffee, the driver said he wanted us to know the truth about the Arab Palestinians regarding Israel and to tell it to all Americans and everyone else that we could…all of them want to be part of Israel!!! They want nothing to do with any Arab Palestinian leadership!!! They know what Israel is and they know what Arab leadership is as they can see it all over the Middle East as well as Gaza and the PA. In their eyes, Israel is heaven compared to anything under Arab leadership. He and others cannot say this openly or they would be dead by morning!!! So he brought us to his secure family compound to tell us.
Arabs, Palestinian leadership, whether ardent Muslim or not, create a climate of fear, threats, beatings and assassinations in order to control their subjects. People like Burge talk to the militants, not to the common people privately and in secret. He and Christianity Today are promoting lies, false, twisted propaganda. They will bear their judgment by doing so. God is not mocked – what you sow, you will reap. God promised that He would BLESS those who bless Israel and the Jews, and that he would CURSE those who despise Israel and the Jews.
I hope to wish Blessings on you…………..
Roger Walkwitz
Gary Burge is a presbyterian PC(USA). He has been indoctrinated by Replacement Theology [aka Covenant Theology/Liberation Theology like Palestinian Liberation Theology ala Naim Ateek’s Sabeel Inst. teachings]. This theology is error. Simply put, replacement theology teachings leads to ‘love jesus, but to hate the jew’, conveniently forgetting that the jesus whom they are taught to love lived a very Torah-revealed jewish cultural lifestyle. Which He proclaimed He had not come to do away with, but to fulfill it. Replacement Theology leads to anti-semitism — the demonization of jews, the delegitimization of jews and the applyiing of double standards when it comes to dealing with the jews (Sharansky, 2004).
Burge does not do as his Savior asks, to ‘keep my commandments’. Burge appears to be a christian ‘in name only’. He is a man who thinks that he can rewrite scripture to suit his interpretations. He conveniently ignores what the G-d of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob caused to be recorded by the prophets — that all that is written in Scripture will come to pass. Reread the chronicle of Ahab for confirmation. All that is written will come to pass. Burge ignores scriptures which don’t promote his peculiarly invented, non-scriptural religion of ‘social justice’.
Wheaton College administrators need to investigate Burge’s ‘theology’. How many young men and women are going to naively buy into the error Burge propagates? On Judgement Day, how will each and every person who allowed Burge tenure at Wheaton answer to their Lord about all those who were lead astray because those who hire did not properly ‘vet’ the theology of Burge?
Replacement Theology is error — it teaches that the G-d of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob is finished with the jews, and that the church has replaced the jews as the chosen children of Israel. Romans 11:25ff however, doesn’t say that at all. The question to ask Burge is, as a gentile grafted onto the original root (the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), what nurtures his spiritual growth if he’s a branch that has chopped itself away from the original root? That grafted-on wild gentile branch will whither away and die!
Who is it, Paul writes, has hardened the hearts of the jews until the time of the gentiles is fulfilled? What is the purpose, does Paul write, that this hardening of the hearts of the jews happened? And what about verse 26, which then states that “all Israel will be saved”? Who is Gary Burge to rewrite scriptural truths to favor the propaganda needs of a persecuted group of arab christians whose very lives are at stake if they say anything other than the muslim hatred of the jews? Burge and his friends are peace-breakers. Paul writes in Romans 12 that we are to run from such as these, for they take sides and divide the brethren.
And how is it that Burge and his buddies, fellow replacement theologists such as Stephen Sizer, were allowed to use the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton to plot and plan the next Israel bashing Christ At The Checkpoints conference? To think all that Billy Graham stood for, and then to have what is named after him be desecrated by replacement theologists planning their next attack upon the jews, individually and collectively as in the State of Israel?
Didn’t the christian world do enough harm by going along with Hitler during WWII? Writing grovelling letters to Hitler about how they were looking forward to his coming into power in the early ’30’s? Now the christians are going to do it again? Through the auspices of men like Gary Burge, a professor from Wheaton College, AND Steven Sizer, an Anglican cleric who is currently under investigation by the Anglican church; and people like Tony Campolo, and Lynn Hybels, who travelled to Bethlehem Bible College, in Bethlehem of Judea, to participate in the CCP Conference in previous years — speaking against the jews, standing in solidarity with the arabs squatting in judea and samaria, against the jews and the jewish state. Obadiah 1:15 notes that “The day is near when I, the LORD, will judge the gentiles! As you have done to Israel, so it will be done to you. All your evil deeds will fall back on your own heads.”
Wise men would be careful not to poke G-d in the eye!
As a graduate and former chaplain of Wheaton it grieves no end to see the doctrinal direction Wheaton is going. I have contacted Wheaton’s President about Burge’s heresy, but at this point Burge has the President’s support. Sad indeed!
Jim Hutchens
Amein, Moll!
I have a copy of “Blood Brothers” here beside my monitor. When I began to read it I thought I had never heard that from any trusted source. I questioned myself and also thought, “Well, I have never lived there, perhaps he is being truthful.” Then I saw what Chacour did with twisting Scripture and knew he was a dishonest vessel. I have annotated my copy of this book with many questions and refutings of his numerous myths. Chacour’s repeated contradictions of his own story render his dialogue less than credible. Somehow he linked “The Diary of Anne Frank” and Anne’s situation with the possibiltiy that this “could well have been that of many Palestinian girls as well (207).” Israels are not Nazis and do not exterminate Arabs in death camps. Shame on Chacour!