The Holy Land – Recollection, Hope and Reality

Earlier this week, quite unplanned, I found myself sitting opposite Jeremy Bowen on a train. Mindful of Bowen’s long and distinguished record as the BBC’s Middle East correspondent I was itching to engage him in conversation about the current round of hostilities in the Holy Land. However, he was busy with his phone and I had plenty of emails to answer, so I waited until we were nearing the end of the journey to strike up a conversation. He’d just collected a deserved honorary doctorate from Nottingham Trent University, and was enjoying a brief respite from covering the latest bloody clashes between Israel and Hamas. He will be back soon enough to report on a tragedy that seems interminable. As we spoke I recollected my own first-hand encounter with that tragedy, when I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority back in March 2005 as part of an ecumenical team that included my then colleague Don Horrocks, with whom I had worked closely over the previous eight years in the Theology and Public Affairs department of the Evangelical Alliance. I also recalled an unprecedented and highly challenging conference I had organised for EA two years before that, which brought together a broad spectrum of Christian organisations representing a diverse range of positions on modern Israel and its role in the purposes of God. In the last few days since that brief unscheduled conversation with Jeremy Bowen, I have gone back over my notes and papers from the 2005 trip and the conference which preceded it, and have been struck again by the fact that while the finer details have changed, the same basic, underlying issues persist.

Christian and Evangelical Divisions

If Christians are deeply divided on the Holy Land, Evangelical Christians are more divided than most. In nearly a decade at the Evangelical Alliance, I helped steer it through a number of controversies which seriously threatened its unity — from debates on homosexuality to the nature of hell, from the Toronto Blessing to prosperity teaching, from penal substitutionary atonement to identificational repentance. Yet of all the conferences and ‘summit meetings’ I organised to broach such vexed questions, the tensest and most volatile was that day meeting in June 2003 on how Christians should regard the state of Israel, and on how they should understand the condition of the Palestinian people in relation to it. The atmosphere was uneasy, fragile, disconcerting. Many polarised positions were simply reiterated, many deep-seated doctrinal divisions rehearsed. Yet it did at least manage to model an active and measured dialogue between parties who had long criticised each other in print but who had rarely, if ever, met under the same roof. I no longer work for the Alliance, but given more recent developments in the Middle East, it might be time for a follow-up conference along the same lines…

Far from entailing abstract theological concerns, the Israel-Palestinian problem comprises urgent, life-and-death realities: suicide bombings, house demolitions and rocket attacks. For years the Middle East has commanded considerable time, energy and resourcing from the administrations of the USA, Britain, Russia, the European Union, the United Nations and others. When I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2005, international involvement in the so-called ‘Road Map to Peace’, and in the Israeli government’s ‘Disengagement Plan’ to withdraw Jewish settlers from Gaza, were underlining that what goes on there affects the whole world. The latest armed exchanges across the Israel/Gaza frontier only reinforce that point. They also amplify a message that has become ever louder and clearer since 9/11 and the second Iraq War – that religion and politics are inextricably, and often intractably, linked. As Jeremy Bowen stressed when we spoke, the notion that they can be disentangled is both peculiarly western and relatively new in terms of world history. As in most politico-religious disputes there are various shades of opinion, but Evangelicals basically split into two camps on the Holy Land: ‘Christian Zionism’ and ‘Supercessionism’.

Christian Zionism

In keeping with many Orthodox Jews, Christian Zionists maintain that God’s biblical covenants with elect Israel hold good today in respect of the ‘promised land’. The precise borders of this ‘Biblical Israel’ may be debatable, but Christian Zionists insist that it is the duty of believers to back the modern state of Israel in its control of the territory it gained at its inception in 1948 and in its subsequent conflicts with surrounding Arab states. In particular, they support retention of the key areas occupied by Israel in the pivotal 1967 war: East Jerusalem, ‘Judea-Samaria’ (more widely termed the ‘West Bank’), and the Gaza strip. Admittedly, while most Christian Zionists are Evangelical, not all Jewish Zionists are theologically motivated. Zionism began in the Nineteenth Century as a response to successive anti-Semitic pogroms dating from the early medieval period, and many of its founding figures promoted the idea of a ‘safe homeland’ on secular humanitarian grounds rather than from scriptural conviction. The most influential of these, Theodore Herzl, even contemplated a re-gathering of Jews in East Africa rather than the Middle East. However, when the state of Israel was founded in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, secular and religious Zionist aspirations had effectively converged on the area defined in 2 Chronicles 9:26 as ‘west of the Jordan’ and south ‘to the border with Egypt’. When this territorial vision was largely realised in 1967, the UN condemned Israel for its ‘land grab’, and for its eviction of those who had lived on that land for centuries—the Muslim and Christian peoples known collectively as Palestinians. Christian Zionists have joined conservative Jews in rejecting such criticism from the international community on the grounds that biblical prophecy cannot be trumped by secular resolutions.

Supercessionism

By contrast, Supercessionists argue that the territorial manifestation of Israel has been superseded, or replaced, by the ‘new covenant’ predicted in Jeremiah 31:31-4, and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This covenant, they argue, is realised in the hearts of Jewish and Gentile Christians all over the world, and should no longer be associated with a particular race, land mass or temple. Indeed, on the basis of Hebrews 8:13, they maintain that it has rendered land-specific aspirations obsolete. Also known as ‘replacement theology’, this outlook holds that the Church has taken over the role of Old Testament Israel. Since this Church is a worldwide body, partisan support for the modern state of Israel qua Israel is deemed to be unjustified. Indeed, citing the human rights abuses levelled against Israel by the UN and others, Supercessionists typically accuse Christian Zionists of letting misguided eschatological commitments override basic moral precepts, such as are taught in the Sermon on the Mount—and, for that matter, in the Law and the Prophets. In fact, they stress that prophets like Micah saw Israel’s possession of land as subject to moral and spiritual criteria which she did not always meet, and whose neglect resulted her forfeiting that land (2:4-5). In response, Christian Zionists contend that Supercessionism has often gone hand-in-hand with anti-Semitism, that it unduly spiritualises God’s covenant promises, that God’s land-pledges to Israel are never in fact revoked, and that at various points in the New Testament (e.g. Matthew 24, Romans 9-11) the Jews maintain a distinct role in God’s purposes.

Recollections of 2005

On my trip to the Holy Land in 2005 the schedule was largely geared to inspecting Christian Aid-supported relief work among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but balance was provided by meetings with representatives of the Church’s Ministry among the Jewish People and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. We also had discussions with joint Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations, and with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Included on our itinerary were exposure to YMCA rehabilitation and educative programmes in Bethlehem for those disabled by the conflict, to the work of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Ramallah and the West Bank, to the refugee support programme of the Culture and Free Thought Association, and to the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees near the Egyptian border in Gaza. We were privileged to meet many Palestinian Christians, including the Christian bishops and Patriarch in Jerusalem, and a gathering of the committee of the Near East Council of Churches in Gaza City. While in Gaza, we also visited medical clinics and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

The entire 2005 visitation team, especially those who had not previously visited the Palestinian territories, were shocked by what we saw and heard. Even the never-ending stream of media reporting could not have prepared us for what we encountered. We unquestionably witnessed intense suffering on both sides. However, there was a discernible humanitarian disaster mounting in Gaza and the West Bank. With the Palestinian birth rate set to outstrip the population of Israel by 2030, it seemed impossible to see how the confinement of Palestinians within enclaves behind walls could ever pretend to offer Israel lasting peace or security. Few people on either side left us with any sense of optimism for the future. Rather, we encountered either entrenched antagonism or a general air of resignation to the ongoing conflict. Cynicism greeted mention of ‘road maps’ and so-called Israeli ‘disengagement’ – a cynicism which has since sadly been borne out by the rise of Hamas in Gaza and by Israeli retaliation against Hamas’s relentless, barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli towns and cities. Our group returned home then with an overwhelming desire that core gospel ethics should not be obscured by entrenched political, racial, geographical or eschatological dogma; that desire remains, but its realisation seems even farther off now than it did then.

Most Israelis are supportive of the of the ‘security wall’ that was being built when I visited the region nine years ago, and that is now one of the starkest symbols of division between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours. Back in 2005 I and my companions had dinner with David Pileggi, an Italian American working with the Churches’ Ministry among the Jewish People. He had lived in Jerusalem most of his adult life, having studied at the Hebrew University there as the only Christian in a class of Jews. He explained that every day, his and his wife’s children travelled to school on a bus route which had been subject to suicide bombing. More than once, they had found themselves frantic with worry that the children had been killed. The security wall had reduced such attacks by two-thirds, they said. If we were in their shoes, would we not support its construction, for all the hostility it symbolised and provoked? Like many Israelis then and now, the Pileggis had thought deeply about their country’s situation, and were not afraid to criticise its harsher actions towards the Palestinians. But they also made the point that they were free to level such criticism, whereas many Muslims in surrounding Arab states were not similarly at liberty to protest against their leaders.

All the Palestinians we met in 2005 – Muslim and Christian alike – felt deeply oppressed. Though none we spoke to overtly justified suicide bombing, some suggested that it represented the desperation of a people for whom there seemed no other solution. A similar suggestion was made last week by the Liberal Democrat MP David Ward in relation to Hamas rockets. He was rightly condemned for his appalling remarks. Yet the contrast between prosperous, fertile, westernised Israel and the wretched poverty of Gaza and the West Bank was stark then, and is starker now. We met many Palestinian Christians who had not seen members of their families living elsewhere in the region for years. Bethlehem resembled a ghost town. Close to economic collapse following its virtual encirclement by the wall, visitors to it were either unable to travel or unwilling to face the traumas of getting through checkpoints. In response, Israel emphasised that necessary exclusion zones were being violated. It also warned that tunnels were being dug beneath the Israel-Gaza border to transport weaponry for attacks on Israeli positions and settlements. That warning, of course, was true, and the tunnels in question have been at the centre of the latest iteration of military conflict. However, back then we saw hundreds of Palestinian homes bulldozed or dynamited by the Israeli army, with many refugees living in the ruins for want of any alternative accommodation. There also seemed little excuse for the Israel’s razing of greenhouses on arable land, other than that they were visible from Jewish settlements, and that Israel wished deliberately to undermine Palestinian economic sustainability. True, it made good on its promise to withdraw from Gaza soon afterwards, but in doing so it was well aware that such economic sustainability would, if anything, recede further beyond the horizon.

Our visit to the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 2005 proved interesting, not least for its spokeswoman’s frank admission that Israel was acting as an occupying power, that human rights were being abused, and that massive injustice and potential humanitarian disaster were involved. However, all this was explained by the fact that Israel was in a state of war. Given this position, it seemed hard to accept her later assurance that the security wall was a ‘temporary measure’, especially when we had seen for ourselves just how massive and permanent it looked. Our scepticism then has, of course, been vindicated by the persistence and extension of the wall. Then again, the stunning design and sophistication of the Israeli government buildings brought home the extraordinary achievements of the Jewish people in developing a First World democracy so soon after 1948, not least in the face of such fierce hostility from neighbouring Muslim regimes. Indeed, the contrast between our visit there and our trip to the Palestinian Legislative Authority HQ in Ramallah was stark. Despite considerable international support and funding, the PLA was still struggling to establish itself as a credible governmental body. In its meagre parliamentary chamber, in its iconography, and in the minds of its officials, the figure of Yasser Arafat still loomed large. He was revered as the ‘Father of the Nation’, but as his own countrymen at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights later attested, he had left a legacy of corruption and factionalism which his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, would find it hard to dismantle. As we later drove through the streets of Gaza City, the varied uniforms of the eight or nine different security forces which Arafat had sponsored at his whim presented a vivid symbol of how far the PLA still had to go. The demise of the PLA’s and Abbas’ power since, and the corresponding rise of Hamas, has proved this prognosis right.

One abiding memory we brought home with us in 2005 was the plaintive cry of Palestinian Christians everywhere throughout Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank, that we should tell their Christian brothers and sisters in the West about their struggles and challenges. Without exception, they maintained that they and their fellow Palestinians were being deprived of their historic land, liberty and sustenance. Of course, their fellow believers in Messianic Jewish and Christian Zionist congregations in Israel and elsewhere firmly disagreed. No doubt we did not see the full picture. Having said this, beneath all the resentment, fear and despair, it was possible to detect a genuine desire for peace in those we met—an honest hope that Palestinians and Israelis might live harmoniously together. Indeed, as well realising that we needed to grapple in greater depth with the theological issues, we were left with a commitment to pray more earnestly for the ‘peace of Jerusalem’, and to explore more urgently what we could we do to help bring that peace nearer to reality. That commitment remains, but events since then have made peace seem yet more distant and more elusive.

Hope and Reality

As Jeremy Bowen and I got off our train, I asked him whether he had found it hard to step away from the Holy Land when it was once again so emphatically leading the news. Yes, he said, but the conflict was continuous, and would be there sure enough when he went back. As I bade him farewell, I resolved to go on praying, hoping and working for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But I was also reminded of the prophet Jeremiah’s sober critique of those who too readily cry “peace, peace” when peace is, in fact, far off.

This article first appeared on David Hilborn's blog Theoculture and is reproduced here with permission.

4 thoughts on “The Holy Land – Recollection, Hope and Reality”

  1. Repetitively we hear read and write on the past current and possible future conflicts of our world. We continually analyse what is happening , what has happened and what might happen. There are always the same responses there is the one who is currently experiencing the conflict first hand either through living there working there or having family directly affected, then there is the periphery people connected in some way which affects them but not directly. Then there are those who do not think they are affected at all but often they discover a while down the line that actually it does affect them. There are the issues of the human state and emotion, the guilt of not being able to do what needs to be done, the frustration of being able to do something only to have it blocked or undone in some way. We discussed studied and pray for all the persecuted . In all this perspective , gets lost . The world is like a massive group of relationships where people balance each other out into leaders and followers the rebels who don’t quite fit anywhere. Belonging is the double edged sword of he human race. For we are called to places we do not belong in, it appears to blow our minds. We clear them on a peaceful mountain or literally by the side of still waters. We realize that we have lost perspective. Perspective is the foundation of how we react or respond to the place we find ourselves in currently. It concerns me that so dreadful is some of the things going on in our world, so distorted , that it is impossible to belong. It is impossible other than in isolation to find peace, but isolation does not create fellowship or community and without those we cannot gain perspective. In the last couple of decades “the holy land” is the ground we stand upon to worship that is our hope and reality. We are one world Jerusalem and Palestine are part of that world .The hope fades it has faded, YET we know don’t we that these things have happened before and they have ended, it is no consolation to the people suffering at the time, none what so ever though a difference can be made because it is humanity, there is no reason why some are saved and some are not because it is humanity, but that is the very reason that there can be Hope because humanity changes God does not. God is not just a fanciful thought but a motivator of all that is good not because it is comfortable but because being uncomfortable is what motivates us all to change things. God stirs within us. It seems strange to know that the hope of things to come is simply about future peace and that it is as possible as it is impossible. It is also as individual as it is group led. Perspective is an internal process , it seems all very philosophical but that is our hope That we will internalize all the characteristics which will enable us to work towards peace keeping things in perspective .Peace is far off But working towards it is very close to us as for some to be part of us, Even in the most dreadful of circumstance Peace comes if only for a moment it does come and life is a string of moments.

  2. I admire Dr Hillborn’s attempt at a balanced perspective, but I agree with Mr Uffman that his characterisation of all those who oppose Christian Zionism as ‘supercessionist’ (sic, the word is actually ‘supersessionist’) is rather simplistic. I regard Christian Zionism as theologically flawed but certainly would not use the word ‘supersessionist’ to describe my position, because of its pejorative associations nowadays. I prefer Professor Gary Burge’s notion of ‘fulfilment theology’ whereby, far from being excluded from God’s plans, or replaced in God’s affections, the Jewish people are at the front of the queue (because the Messiah was Jewish) when it comes to the invitation to believe in Jesus who is the fulfilment of all OT promises (Galatians 3:15-29).

    Dr Hilborn is careful not to state where he himself stands on his self-styled Zionist-supersessionist spectrum. But his choice of language in places hints at his position. I note in particular his references to the ‘Palestinian Authority’ rather than to Palestine. It is as if Israel is a nation whose people have rights, but Palestine is not. He also mentions the ‘security wall’ which even in Hebrew is described as the ‘separation barrier’ and is, together with the illegal settlements which it has effectively annexed, perhaps the most egregious violation of Palestinian rights today. And he takes it as a given at the beginning of his article that the State of Israel has a special ‘role in the purposes of God’. Given Dr Hilborn’s reputation as a Biblical scholar, I should be very pleased to have his guidance on which verses in Scripture reveal God’s special plan for a man-made state, established in 1948 but only through the dispossession of another nation who already occupied the land, and where nearly half of the Jewish population describe themselves as secular, non-practising, Jews.

  3. We need to separate two questions. How should Christians regard Jews and how should Christians regard Israel.

    I believe that Christians should believe that Jews are children of promise. God is still faithful to his promises to Abraham and Moses etc. Jews are blessed by covenant membership. If we accept that King David had what we term “a personal relationship with God” we should accept that this is still available on the basis of their scriptures which we also accept. We have to be honest and say we believe that they failed to recognise their Messiah. However Jesus came to fulfil God’s promises to Israel not to negate them.

    The state of Israel presents two problems, the existence of Israel and the extent of Israel. The existence of Israel rests on the acceptance of the 1947 UN partition plan by Israel and the declaration of the independence of Israel when the British Mandate expired in 1948. The plan was not accepted by Palestinians or neighbouring Arab nations. This state was immediately attacked. The 1949 boarders are simply armistice lines, where the fighting stopped.The 1967 war was instigated by Arab nations land gained by Israel because this failed.Before we discuss the extent of Israel, we need to establish the right of Israel to exist. This may seem obvious to Westerners but many of Israel’s neighbours believe it should not exist at all. In this situation Israel has no option but to defend itself from missile and terrorist attacks

  4. Interesting perspective. I found Dr. Hilborn’s article fascinating, educational, and inspiring to prayer.

    That said, I wondered about his dichotomy of Christian Zionist and Supercessionist. I don’t fit either of those and I know many American Christians who would not describe themselves with those categories. Perhaps this is a regional difference. I would like to think there is at least a third category: those who neither see the contemporary nation-state of Israel as the heirs to the land west of the Jordan and South to Egypt nor see the Jews as superseded by The Church.

    Like the majority of Americans, I have a strong sympathy for the nation-state of Israel and expect my government to look at her in much the way we do our other closest allies. But in no way is that affinity driven by a belief that the nation-state has continuity with the biblical Israel such that the citizens uniquely embody and inherit the promises made to Abraham, Jacob, David, and Jeremiah. I don’t associate the citizens of Israel with greater moral authority or agency than Jewish communities who live in other lands, such as my Jewish friends in the USA. Rather, I look upon them with strong affinity for the same reason I look upon all Jews with affinity – I acknowledge a shared vocation. Jews and Christians together constitute Israel, with our being grafted into the new Covenant (Romans 11). Both Jews and Christians are called to live in such a way that our common life teaches the world what it does not know about itself.

    By analogy, I as a Christian feel a strong affinity for Jews everywhere in much the same way that I as an American feel a strong affinity for all the peoples who once constituted the British Empire, recognizing that we are part of the same story, the same family, and are each called to pursue our shared vocation in our distinctive historical contexts. My support for the nation-state, Israel, is not because I see her claims as biblically warranted at all, but, beyond my Christian affinity for all Jews, because she is a nation-state, created out of the mess of Europe after WWII, who was granted legal rights to her land by the United Nations. I therefore assign her the same legal rights and responsibilities that I assign any nation-state. In no way is she re-constituted biblical Israel, in my view. That said, as a close ally created out of that mess, we are rightfully committed to her survival as a nation-state, in much the same way we are committed to our cousins in Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and Europe.

    I perceive that many fellow American Christians view Israel as I’ve described her. So Dr. Hilborn’s blog is interesting and inspiring, but I don’t think his dichotomous categories adequately capture the way American Christians, at least, view Israel.

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