Christian Zionism Is Not Christian, Jesuit Institute Commentary Argues

Humanitarian organisations warned in March that Israel’s closure of the borders to aid would lead to an impending human-made famine in Gaza. The author writes that five months later, images of skeletal and listless children are heartbreaking, and says that looking at them makes them think of their own child.

The author says that, even when there is little they can personally do, they feel they must keep looking, and that the images move them to prayer for mercy. The author describes being disheartened and angered by conversations with some Christians who seem unable to respond with empathy to the suffering. A common thread, the author says, is that many of these Christians will not say that Israel has exceeded the parameters of just warfare. They argue that Christians should side with Israel, and that failing to do so is antisemitism, which the author notes is linked by these speakers to the world’s collective guilt over the Holocaust. From this, the author says, they conclude that Israel must be allowed to do anything to defend itself.

The author describes this pro-Zionist position as resting on a religious reading of biblical texts, which the author calls distorted. According to the author, this reading holds that Israel is the Promised Land of the Torah and the Old Testament, given to the Israelites in perpetuity, and that the complete restoration of this territory is tied to the religious hope of the coming of the Messiah. The author argues that Christian Zionism has accepted the claim that political dominance of the “Bible Lands” is a divine battle rather than a human struggle for power and territory. The author contrasts this with Jesus’ statement that his Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), and writes that the eternal Jerusalem Christians hope for is not a physical place but life in God’s presence.

The author writes that Jesus preached love, forgiveness and non-violence, often in opposition to the nationalistic fervour of groups such as the Zealots and Sicarii, who sought to overthrow Roman rule by armed resistance. The author cites the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which a legal scholar’s question about who counts as a neighbour is answered with a story that includes an enemy of the Jews of Jesus’ time. Applying this today, the author says the starving Palestinians are neighbours and that Christians are called to stand in solidarity with them. The author presents joining the worldwide movement calling for an end to what the author describes as deliberate food warfare in Gaza as an act of love and neighbourliness, as the Gospel calls believers to care for the hungry (Matthew 25:35).

The author argues that political leaders have used Christian fears to build support for a conflict that, in another context, Christians would call on the world to end as genocide. The author contends that beneath the political argument lies deep-seated Islamophobia, reflected in the claim, the author says some Christians make, that Christians must stand with Israel to defend Christendom against a global takeover by Islam. The author describes this as an old argument, noting that Christian Crusaders in the Middle Ages used similar justifications to pillage Jerusalem in the name of defending Christ. The author writes that the bloodshed committed in the name of Christians is among the dark chapters in Christian history, and notes that Pope John Paul II sought forgiveness for it in 2000.

The author states that Christians do not defend their faith through violence and that peace and love are their only calls. The author writes that Christianity will not be weakened by perceived external enemies, Muslim or otherwise, and argues that Christians are more likely to lose people through sanctimonious judgment, bigotry and lack of compassion than through persecution. The author says that if Christians act out of hatred and fear, people will turn away because they do not practise what they preach, while authentic living may draw others to the faith. The author concludes that a Zionist philosophy has no place in Christianity.

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