On April 9, 2024, a group of Christian leaders and theologians from across the Global North and South, issued the following response. I am honored to join this statement of confession, repentance and solidarity. It does not aim to repent on behalf of “the Western church.” Rather, this response was issued on our own behalf.

Since April 9, the State of Israel and the U.S. have erased more than 1000 Palestinian images of God. 1000 more were injured. This brings the current total killed, maimed or missing under the rubble to nearly 119,000.

We invite you to read this response and consider how your story intersects with the story of Christian thought formation concerning Israel/Palestine. If you find resonance with this letter, please join us in confession, repentance, and solidarity by writing your own confessions, repentance and pledges of solidarity in the RLC social media comments. – Shane

Beloved followers of Jesus Christ in Palestine, Israel, and the Palestinian Diaspora,

As we write, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 33,000 images of God, including more than 13,800 children and 8,400 women. Nearly 76,000 people have been maimed and more than 8,000 are still missing under the rubble. Thus, nearly 117,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, maimed, or buried under rubble since October 7, 2023. On that day, 1,139 Israeli images of God were killed and a further 130 Israelis are still held hostage by Hamas inside Gaza, at least 34 of whom are presumed dead. In the West Bank, 457 images of God have been killed. Every life is equally precious in the sight of God. We are broken by this destruction of lives, families, and communities.

Six months after Netanyahu ordered a blockade on all food, water, and electricity going into Gaza, 100% of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza now face starvation, with half of the population (1.1 million) on the brink of forced famine, which experts predict will hit the population by May. We are broken by this destruction of lives, families, and communities.

The International Court of Justice has ruled Israel’s acts a plausible genocide. In addition, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights recently reported: “There are reasonable grounds to believe the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.”

In this context, we, the undersigned, followers of Jesus from around the world, reflect on your letter with profound sorrow and grief. We are distressed by the loss of innocent lives, now ten times greater than at your initial writing. We are aware of the regional and global significance of what is occurring in Palestine and Israel, especially from your vantage point and from the perspective of human rights and humanitarian law. We acknowledge that complicity in this war is found not only in the West but in the Church around the globe.

While we cannot represent the “Western Church” today, we humbly receive and affirm your call for Western Christian leaders and theologians to repent of our biased disregard towards Palestinians and your unjust and devastating suffering as well as of all theological articulations that promote or justify it.

We hear your cry that we must see, hear, value, and trust your witness to the brutal suffering imposed by the State of Israel and strongly enabled by the military support of Western Countries led by the United States of America.

Collectively, we confess that at various points in our Christian journey, we have been influenced by, actively supported, and/or helped promote Zionist theologies.

We confess that we have failed to recognize the ways we have operated according to the logics of white supremacy; accepting the false narrative that Palestinian and Arab people are our inherent enemies.

We confess we have valued Palestinian and Arab lives less than others.

We confess that we have equated the State of Israel with the Israel of the Old Testament.

We confess that we have been afraid. Fearful of what others may say or think if we speak up, fearful of consequences to us – without thinking too deeply of the costs that you have paid.

We confess that we have let the sense of being so dwarfed by the powers of Israel/Palestine, the pervasive influence in America of dispensational eschatology, and the elephant of American militarism, that we have chosen silence rather than courage.

We confess that we have accepted the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands.

We confess that we have failed to speak up for a just settlement that allows all to live in peace and security.

We confess that we have done far too little to counter the dominant theology that supports the Israeli occupation and violence against those made in the image of God.

We confess that all too often particular theological perspectives have fueled blind support for the State of Israel and its actions. We recognize and accept Israel’s existence as a nation-state. Theologically, however, we do not believe that the modern state of Israel is the same as ancient Israel portrayed in Scripture, nor do we envision the modern state as a harbinger of Christ’s return. We reject all theological perspectives that promote Christian Zionism and justify Israel’s oppressive policies and practices towards Palestinians.

We repent. Repentance is a process. For some of us, this repentance journey began decades ago. For others, the journey began six months ago. Regardless of when our journey began, we commit ourselves today to sit together for mutual learning and dialogue, debate, and rigorous examination of biblical, theological, and political issues. We long for our assumptions and biases to be exposed, for teachability and deep love, in order to act out of deeper/ more faithful convictions. We want to learn and to listen to you, so you might help us be freed from our silence, paralysis, and unrecognized prejudice. As we all do our work in varied lands and contexts, we hold in common the reality of the love, mercy, and justice of God in Jesus Christ that is with us now and always.

We repent of our feeble advocacy, ignorance, and/or silence about this war, and about the underlying oppression of Palestinians. This leads us to humble dependence on God’s mercy. In the light of the suffering, resurrected Lord who laid down his life to defeat all the powers of death, vengeance, hostility, and oppression and rose again so that we can live reconciled to God and each other, we repent of all theologies and practical support that justifies oppression, hostility, vengeance, erasure, and death in the name of Christ.

We stand in solidarity with, and in compassion for, all who are suffering the death of loved ones, the daily violence and brutal injustices, and the oppressive forces that are erasing hope. Many of us have expressed our solidarity with such statements as that from INFEMIT, from the Archdiocese of South Africa, from Churches for Middle East Peace and from the global Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage, but we here now express our further solidarity.

We call for an immediate and sustained ceasefire, the unconditional end to the genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and an end to Israeli Occupation. We support a solution that leads to the restoration of political and social rights, self-governance, and the right of all Palestinians to self-determination.

Finally, sisters and brothers, we recognize that you have stood –and continue to stand– as faithful and courageous followers of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, amidst the long and daily horror of Gaza and the West Bank since Nakba, and even more intensively since October 2023. Though we have been inadequate in our solidarity with you, we now join you in faith and hope in the God who is seeking to remake our narratives for the thriving of all peoples in Palestine and Israel and beyond, and for the well-being of the entire creation. With you, we plead: Lord, have mercy on us!

With Love and Respect,
(in alphabetical order)

Rev. René August
Theologian and Priest,
Anglican Church of Southern Africa

Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes
Pastor

Dr. Michael Barram
Professor of Theology & Religious Studies (Biblical Studies)
Saint Mary’s College of California

Rev. Dr. Gary M. Burge
Theologian, Author, Educator
Emeritus Professor New Testament, Wheaton College

Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon
Executive Director
Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP)

Shane Claiborne
Author and Activist
Executive Director, Red Letter Christians

Rev. Dr. David M. Crump
Emeritus Professor of New Testament, Calvin University

Seblewengel Daniel PhD
Theologian and part-time Lecturer at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology

Dr. Bruce N. Fisk
Professor of New Testament, Westmont College (ret.)

Dr. Paul Bendor-Samuel
Physician and Mission Theologian

Dr. Ruth Padilla DeBorst
Theologian, Associate Professor at Western Theological Seminary
Coordinator, International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation (INFEMIT)

Lisa Sharon Harper
Theologian, Writer, Speaker
President and Founder, FreedomRoad.us

Amanda Kaminski, PhD
Assistant Professor of Theology
Texas Lutheran University, Seguin, Texas

Rev. Dr. Mark Labberton
Theologian, Pastor, Educator, and Author

Prof. Dr. Habil. Marcel Måcelaru,
Professor, Aurel Vlaicu University
Arad, Romania

Rev. Michael A. Mata
Educator

Jarrod McKenna
Nonviolent Social Change Educator,
Pastor and Theologian

Rt. Rev. Dr. David Zac Niringiye
Theologian, Author, and Bishop in the Church of Uganda (Anglican)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah
Munger Professor of Evangelism
Fuller Theological Seminary

Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra
Author, Lecturer, and former Secretary for
Dialogue and Social Engagement for the
International Fellowship of Evangelical Students

Lisa Rodriguez-Watson
National Director, Missio Alliance

Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil
Speaker, Author, & Professor of Reconciliation Studies
Associate Pastor of Preaching & Reconciliation

Dr. Jer Swigart
Executive Director, Global Immersion

Nikki Toyama-Szeto
Executive Director
Christians for Social Action

Rev. Dr. Al Tizon
Lead Pastor, Grace Fellowship
San Francisco.

Rev. Dr. J. Ross Wagner
Theologian, Author, and Educator

Veena O’Sullivan
International Activist, Speaker

(Attributions are solely for identification purposes and do not necessarily represent the position of the institutions.)

TRANSCRIPT:

We got into good trouble on Good Friday.  Twenty-five people were arrested for a nonviolent direct action at the headquarters of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons contractor, where the weapons being used in Gaza are made.  

Hundreds of other joined in the action during Holy Week as members of the Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage walked over 20 miles, roughly the length of Gaza, from the Liberty Bell to Lockheed Martin.

Here’s why we did it. 

The event was part of a global movement with similar walks happening in over 200 cities around the world, in every continent including Antarctica. 

Our message is simple.  End the genocide – we need a permanent lasting ceasefire, now.  Let in the aid – collective punishment and forced starvation are evil and morally indefensible.  Release all the hostages.  And stop sending weapons and funds to Israel, weapons like those made at Lockheed Martin.  

On October 7, some 1200 precious lives were lost, every one of them a sacred child of God, made in the image of God.  The world stood with Israel against the merciless slaughter and terror of October 7.  And we must not hesitate to stand against antisemitism today.

But in the days since October 7, we have watched the State of Israel pour out its wrath on the people of Gaza, killing around 200 a day, one child every 10 minutes.  Often using the Bible as a weapon to justify their revenge.  

Two wrongs don’t make a right… that’s what my momma taught me.  

In the past 170 days since October 7, over 32,000 people have been killed… 15,000 of them are children.  And over 74,000 people have been injured.  

Thousands are missing under the rubble.  We are watching a genocide, ethnic cleansing – livestreamed on social media, and most of our leaders are silent or even complicit.  As Palestinian pastor, Rev. Munther Isaac has said, “Gaza is become the moral compass of the world.”  

To speak out against the violence of October 7th does not make you anti-Palestinian.  It makes you decent, human, moral, and compassionate.  To speak out against the violence since October 7th is not to be antisemitic or pro-Hamas… it is to be decent, human, moral, compassionate.  

One of the central convictions of Christianity is that there is a God who is near to the suffering, to the poor, the widows and orphans, and to all those who are victims of violence.  Jesus left all the comfort of Heaven to be born as a brown-skinned, Palestinian, Jewish baby, born as a refugee during a genocide under King Herod… born homeless in a manger, from a town called Nazareth where people said nothing good could come… arrested, terrorized, tortured and executed on a cross.  On Good Friday, Christians around the world remember in a special way that Christ is God’s act of solidarity, as he endured the most horrific violence on the cross, and subverted it with love, forgiveness, and an empty tomb.  It is Christ who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God.” It is Christ who rebuked his own disciples when they wanted to call down “fire from heaven” on the people of Samaria. And it is Christ, who scolded Peter when he resorted to violence, saying to Peter, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword… put the sword away.”  

In the Easter story, Pontius Pilate washes his hands as Christ is being killed, attempting to wash the blood off his hands and pretend he was not responsible.  So that was part of our message at Lockheed Martin on Good Friday. Our lead banner read: “Lockheed Martin, YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.”

Ironically, Lockheed Martin covered up the large signs at their main entrance with large blue tarps and duct tape, making the point even stronger.  They literally tried to hide any evidence of their corporate logo as we gathered.   

You can’t make this stuff up. 

We made a banner with the numbers on it: “Over 32,000 killed.  Over 13,000 children killed.  Over 74,000 injured.”  And we all added our handprints in red paint, even little Eli added his for the babies in Gaza.  

Many folks left the paint on their hands as a reminder that the genocide in Gaza is not just being done by Israel.  It is being done with funds from the United States and weapons made in the United States, by companies like Lockheed Martin.  

The US gives Israel $4 Billion a year.  And Lockheed Martin makes billions more from weapons sales, with contracts that did not begin after October 7 but have a decades old history.  Since the 1970s, Lockheed Martin has provided the F-16s and more recently the F-35 fighter jets used in Gaza.  In 5 years, Lockheed sent 102 F-16s and 50 F-35s.  They also make the M-270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, and the Hellfire missiles that have killed so many people.  In the recent assault in response to October 7th, the US and Israel agreed on a new weapons package (two months into the genocide) to supply even more F-35 and F-15 jets as well as Apache helicopters.  So yes, Lockheed Martin has blood on its hands. They have made a killing off killing.  They have turned war into a billion-dollar business enterprise.  The old saying is correct: “If you want to stop war, figure out who is profiting from it.”  

That’s why we gathered at Lockheed Martin on Good Friday.  Even in the days since our vigil, we have seen even more unimaginable violence in the destruction of the Al-Shifa hospital and the Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria… using weapons made by Lockheed Martin. 

As many fellow Christians bless the bombs falling on Gaza, weapons made at Lockheed Martin… we say NO, not in our name, and not in the name of our Savior.  As many Christians try to defend the violence of Israel being done in planes made by Lockheed Martin, we are calling for a ceasefire, and an end to the violence in the name of Christ, the Prince of Peace.

It was a diverse, interfaith gathering with people of all faiths as well as some folks who aren’t religious at all but are compelled by their conscience to stand against the violence in Gaza.  We had dozens of children of all ages. 

I’m guessing my little baby, Elijah, was one of the youngest at 12 weeks old, but he sure wasn’t alone.

There were babies in strollers and kids playing tag.  There were teenagers sitting on the Lockheed Martin wall with their feet dangling off next to a sign that read “Let Gaza Live.”  One of the kids held a homemade banner that read, “US Bombs Kill Children.”  

Another woman had a cardboard sign that read: “Pastor for Peace.”  Another read “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”  

The young and young at heart put a rhythm to our call for ceasefire, as they beat on large drums together.

One of the shirts we made for the Good Friday vigil has an iconic image of Jesus with his mother holding His face, next to a recent image of a mother in Gaza holding the face of her child.  

On the back, the shirt has the words of Jesus from Matthew 25: “Whatsoever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.” 

A reminder that what we do to the children in Gaza we do to Christ.  As we force them to starve, we are doing it to Christ.  As we refuse to allow in clean water, it is Christ who goes thirsty.  As doctors are forced to amputate without anesthesia using cell phones as flashlights, we are doing that to Christ.  Lord, have mercy on us.  

ALSO SEE Good Trouble on Good Friday – Red Letter Christians

We held a sacred procession reminiscent of the many liturgical “Stations of the Cross” services I’ve attended over the years.  But this one was different – it was taking liturgy into the streets.  Protest done right can be a form of worship.  So, we carried the signs and banners, and slowly made our way to the main entrance of Lockheed Martin. 

We carried professionally printed posters with large photograph mages of the devastation from the bombing, and the shattered lives… each one branded with “Made In the USA.”  

And we carried six large black signs with the names of the children, a reminder that they are not just numbers.

Every one of them has a name, a precious child made in the image of God.  We carried thousands of those names onto the property of Lockheed Martin… an act that was part religious ceremony, part street theater, part public lament.  

As we crossed over the blue line that designates where the public property ends and the private property of Lockheed Martin begins, we were given a warning that we were trespassing and could face arrest.

The folks with the names of the children laid down on the ground, a profoundly moving posture in the rich tradition of “die-ins”.

Others of us began to sing.  Several participants unrolled yellow “Crime Scene Do Not Enter” tape and roped off the entrance, calling it what it is – the scene of a crime, a war crime. 

On the other side of the boundary, we laid several dozen red roses.  One after another, kids and adults brought those flowers over the blue line and laid them on the names of the children – it was all so powerful and moving. 

A Good Friday liturgy of lament.  A prophetic Easter message that death will not get the last word.  You can’t kill love. Love will rise again. 

As the police began arresting us, we sang hymns and freedom songs – “Down by the Riverside” and “We Shall Overcome” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Lockheed Martin, Turn me ‘Round.”  And we said the “Lord’s Prayer” which had a new ring to it as we said the part about forgiving us “our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” as we were arrested for trespassing.  

Just before we began the procession onto Lockheed Martin, I had reminded the group of these words of Martin Luther King (whose assassination we remember on the anniversary this week), as he said this: “There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way. Or when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed.”  

There is a fire raging in Gaza, and we need brigades of ambulance drivers who will ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.  That’s why we were willing to go to jail.  

Dr. King reflected on how he was initially troubled to go to jail – but then he looked at history and saw what good company he had.  Indeed, all the way back to Jesus on that first Good Friday.  And Christians have been making good trouble ever since, stirring up holy mischief and challenging the systems that crush other people.  So, it was an honor to go to jail on Good Friday.  As John Lewis once said, when we get into good trouble we can smile in our mugshot because we know that we are on the right side of history.  

Without a doubt, our children and grandchildren will ask us what we did to try to stop the genocide in Gaza.  I am trying hard to be able to honestly answer them – everything we could, including going to jail.  In fact, I’ll tell my little boy Eli – it was your first protest.  And I know it will not be his last.

On the citation we were given, we have been charged with Disorderly Conduct, and underneath the charge is a section called “Nature of Offense” and they wrote the police officers wrote this in that section: “Defendant created a physically offensive condition by an act which served no legitimate purpose”. 

There was something offensive happening that day, but it was not our prayerful protest.  The thing that is offensive to God is making a profit off the mass destruction of human lives.  What was offensive was not those who laid down with roses on their bodies at the main gate of Lockheed, but it is the mangled bodies from Lockheed’s weapons that lay in the street and under the rubble in Gaza.  That is offensive to God.  

There was a crime committed at 230 Mall Blvd, but it was not prayerfully putting our bodies in the way of the flow of weapons of mass destruction.

As we taped off the entrance to Lockheed, we made it plain — the real crime scene is happening inside the headquarters of Lockheed Martin.  

We will not build a better world by killing other people’s children.  It’s time to get in the way of the business of war.  I am proud of the good trouble we got into on Good Friday, as we went to jail with Jesus.  

Too many lives have been lost.  It is time for us to turn up the volume for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.  And for many of us, we do this holy work in the name of our executed and risen Savior… that brown-skinned Palestinian refugee from Nazareth… Jesus the Christ.  

Here are a few highlights from our event at The Riverside Church this past weekend, on the anniversary of Dr. King’s historic speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” We had 27 faith leaders read portions of King’s original speech, including his daughter, Rev. Dr. Bernice King. I’ll also highlight a few of King’s quotes from the speech below (along with who read them) … but you really should watch the recording of the whole evening if you missed it. It was epic.

We kicked off the evening with a gathering of about 40 clergy and leaders from around the country, and spent some time reflecting together, listening to what the Spirit is doing among us, especially as we remember King’s words in 1967 and his assassination a year later.

Bishop Herbert Daughtry shared with his daughter Bishop Leah Daughtry. He was there in 1967 when Dr. King delivered the original sermon. He shared about how powerful it is to be together on the 55th anniversary. He also shared about how courageous and unpopular it was when King first delivered it.

Here’s the backdrop… One year ago, Red Letter Christians hosted a virtual reading of “Beyond Vietnam.” Afterwards we said, “What if we did it in person next year?”

Then we said, “What if we did it AT RIVERSIDE?”

Then we said, “What if Rev. Bernice King would join us?”

And here we are…

Because Dr. King names the many of the manifestations of violence calls us to comprehensively confront violence and the conditions that lead to violence, we made those connections throughout the night. The stations of the cross on the altar are painted by men on death row. It is also Lent, a powerful reminder that Jesus subverted all our systems of violence on the cross.

“We were taking the Black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so, we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.”

–MLK read by Lisa Sharon Harper

“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”

–MLK read by Carlos Rodriguez The Happy Givers NPO

“We were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

‘O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath —

America will be!'”

–MLK quoting Langston Hughes, read by Rev. Todd Yeary (RLC Board Chair)

“Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men — for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?”

–MLK read by Cece Jones-Davis

“They must see Americans as strange liberators.”

–MLK read by Rev. Dr. Shakeema North

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

— MLK read by Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis

“On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

–MLK read by Rev. Sharon Risher

“These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” …Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

–MLK read by Jemar Tisby

“This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, or nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing — embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.”

–MLK read by Phillip Joubert from Common Hymnal

“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”

–MLK read by Stephen Green

“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

— MLK read by Leslie Callahan

“Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.

If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

— MLK read by Rev. Bernice King

The last section was read by Rev. Bernice King, and we all said the final words together… “justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I knew the spoken words of King would be powerful, and they were. But what was also remarkable was feeling a fresh sense of worship, and hope, even revival stirring up among us. Some talented musicians led us in singing– Common Hymnal, Aaron Niequist, and Brian Courtney Wilson…a healthy reminder that this work does not rest on us alone…we are conspiring with God in this revolution of love.

As we challenge to the toxic versions of Christianity, we’ve got to also be ready for God to do a new thing among us. And as I looked out over this audience of faith leaders, bishops, pastors, organizers, elders, activists, authors, historians, and theologians last night I was filled with hope. I AM filled with hope.

We got this. Last night Rev. Bernice King closed us out with an invitation to come back to Jesus. She reminded us that her dad, and mom, were doing their best to reflect Jesus to the world.

We are up against some fierce principalities and powers – the triplet evils of racism, materialism, and militarism are as alive and well as they were 55 years ago. But the love of God is the strongest force in the world. Nothing is more powerful than God’s love.

It was a gift to team up with my brother Michael McBride and the spiritual force known as Rev. Traci Blackmon. There were dozens of groups that worked together to pull it off, including all the fine folks at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and at The King Center. Grateful for Rev. Livingston and The Riverside Church for hosting us.

Thanks be to God.

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Those are the words of Dr. King in 1967, in his historic speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” delivered at Riverside Church in New York City.

This past weekend dozens of faith leaders gathered at Riverside, putting our voices together to read King’s words on this 55^th anniversary of the speech. The group that gathered at Riverside for the event — a collaborative effort, sponsored by Red Letter Christians, LIVEFREE, the United Church of Christ, the Black Church Action Fund and the Quincy Institute — included bishops, authors, pastors, activists from around the country and Dr. King’s daughter, the Rev. Dr. Bernice King. Also participating was Bishop Herbert Daughtry, who was present when King delivered the speech in 1967.

Over the course of the evening, we were reminded multiple times how controversial and how courageous the words were … and are. Many of King’s peers deserted him for taking a stand against the war. His board turned against him, except one board member, the Rev. Otis Moss II. In the speech itself, Dr. King mentions all those who question his judgment in speaking out against the war in Vietnam and connecting it to all the other issues of his day. He was increasingly unpopular, and it should not be missed that he was assassinated exactly one year after the Riverside address, to the day.

So what’s so controversial about it?

Well, for starters, Dr. King refers to America as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He names America’s “triplets of evil” as racism, extreme materialism and militarism. He calls out the hypocrisy of telling young people “in the ghettoes” that violence will not solve their problems while condoning our government when it resorts to violence. He names the sad irony that we are sending Black kids to fight for liberties thousands of miles away that we haven’t even been able to guarantee them here at home. And yet, just as the speech is filled with hard-to-hear truth, it is also full of hope.

Many folks appreciate the sanitized King and would prefer the “I Have a Dream” speech. You don’t see many monuments with quotes from the Riverside sermon. Bishop Daughtry noted that he doesn’t think a single quote on the King memorial in D.C. comes from this iconic speech.

Before we write off King’s assessment of the U.S. as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, dismissing it as extreme or exaggerated, consider this:

Of the 196 countries in the world, only nine of them have nuclear weapons. And 93% of the nuclear weapons of the world are owned by only two countries — the U.S. and Russia. We are the only country that has ever used them, and we did it twice in one week, killing hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We now have bombs 100 times more lethal than the Hiroshima bomb. And the U.S. arsenal has the capacity of over 100,000 Hiroshima bombs. We have the biggest stockpile, and we have the largest military budget in the history of the world. The Pentagon spends more in 3 seconds than the average American makes in a year, reminding us of King’s words at Riverside: We are approaching a spiritual death.

It is easy for us to be critical of Russia’s violence in Ukraine right now, and we should be. The Riverside speech, however, invites us to get the log out of our own country’s eye.

There are many who speak of “American exceptionalism” — and by that they are referring to America being a beacon for freedom and democracy, the last best hope on earth, God’s anointed messianic force for good. This is a notion King continually challenged with increasing passion all the way to his death. In fact, the sermon King was writing when he was killed, that he never got to preach, was entitled: “Why America Might Go to Hell.”

It’s not hard to see why King’s words were hard to hear and why he was opposed by so many, even by former friends and board members.

But truth sets us free. There is another version of American exceptionalism. We are exceptional in our embrace of violence. Using violence to try to get rid of violence. Among all the world’s nations, we are one of only a handful of countries that continues to practice capital punishment. When it comes to the number of executions, we are always in the top 10, and often in the top five.

SIGN: RED LETTER CHRISTIAN PLEDGE 

America is exceptional in our infatuation with guns. With only 5% of the world’s population, we own nearly half of the world’s civilian-owned guns. There are five times more gun dealers in the U.S. than McDonald’s restaurants. We produce about 9.5 million guns a year, 26,000 guns a day, one gun every three seconds. We have an exceptional problem when it comes to violence. Just as there are companies making millions of dollars off gun sales, we also have corporations like Lockheed Martin that are profiting from war. Over 150 countries have had arms contracts with U.S. companies. After 9/11, the U.S. went to war with Afghanistan and Iraq, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia is still our biggest buyer of weapons, using them to destroy so many lives in Yemen. Dr. King saw all of these connections in his own time, and that is why he had to “break the silence.”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword” — those are the words of Jesus, Dr. King’s inspiration and savior, and we have proved those words to be true again and again and again.

That is the real American exceptionalism — we are exceptional in our addiction to violence.

In addition to this month being the anniversary of the Riverside speech and of King’s death, it is also the anniversary of the most ambitious and horrific bombings in history. In 2003, the U.S. and coalition forces launched the “shock and awe” bombing campaign, dropping more than 900 bombs a day on Iraq, killing thousands upon thousands of people. More recently, in 2016, when Barack Obama was president, we dropped 26,000 bombs, an average of three bombs per hour.

Our military spending is not a partisan issue. Obama raised Bush’s military budget. Trump raised Obama’s budget. Biden raised Trump’s budget. What would King say to that? Probably exactly what he said in 1967: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching a spiritual death.”

We have work to do to continue to “break the silence.” As our world is increasingly plagued by violence — not just in Ukraine but also in the streets of America — we must continue King’s legacy of nonviolence. We, too, must keep breaking the silence.

This piece first appeared at Religious News Services.

Here’s why we did it. 

The event was part of a global movement with similar walks happening in over 200 cities around the world, in every continent including Antarctica.  Our message is simple.  End the genocide – we need a permanent lasting ceasefire, now.  Let in the aid – collective punishment and forced starvation are evil and morally indefensible.  Release all the hostages.  And stop sending weapons and funds to Israel, weapons like those made at Lockheed Martin.  

On October 7, some 1200 precious lives were lost, every one of them a sacred child of God, made in the image of God.  The world stood with Israel against the merciless slaughter and terror of October 7.  And we must not hesitate to stand against anti-semitism today.

But in the days since October 7, we have watched the State of Israel pour out its wrath on the people of Gaza, killing around 200 a day, one child every 10 minutes.  Often using the Bible as a weapon to justify their revenge.  

Two wrongs don’t make a right… that’s what my momma taught me.  

In the past 170 days since October 7, over 32,000 people have been killed… 15,000 of them are children.  And over 74,000 people have been injured.  Thousands are missing under the rubble.  We are watching a genocide, ethnic cleansing – livestreamed on social media, and most of our leaders are silent or even complicit.  As Palestinian pastor, Munther Isaac has said, “Gaza has become the moral compass of the world.”  

To speak out against the violence of October 7th does not make you anti-Palestinian.  It makes you decent, human, moral, and compassionate.  To speak out against the violence since October 7th is not to be antisemitic or pro-Hamas… it is to be decent, human, moral, compassionate.  

One of the central convictions of Christianity is that there is a God who is near to the suffering, to the poor, the widows and orphans, and to all those who are victims of violence.  Jesus left all the comfort of Heaven to be born as a brown-skinned, Palestinian, Jewish baby, born as a refugee during a genocide under King Herod… born homeless in a manger, from a town called Nazareth where people said nothing good could come… arrested, terrorized, tortured and executed on a cross.  On Good Friday, Christians around the world remember in a special way that Christ is God’s act of solidarity, as he endured the most horrific violence on the cross, and subverted it with love, forgiveness, and an empty tomb.  It is Christ who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God. It is Christ who rebuked his own disciples when they wanted to call down “fire from heaven” on the people of Samaria. And it is Christ, who scolded Peter when he resorted to violence, saying to Peter, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword… put the sword away.”  

In the Easter story, Pontius Pilate washes his hands as Christ is being killed, attempting to wash the blood off his hands and pretend he was not responsible.  So that was part of our message at Lockheed Martin on Good Friday. Our lead banner read:  Lockheed Martin, YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.” 

Ironically, Lockheed Martin covered up the large signs at their main entrance with large blue tarps and duct tape, making the point even stronger.  They literally tried to hide any evidence of their corporate logo as we gathered.   You can’t make this stuff up. 

We also made a banner with the numbers on it: “Over 32,000 killed.  Over 13,000 children killed.  Over 74,000 injured.”  And we all added our handprints in red paint, even little Eli added his for the babies in Gaza.  Many folks left the paint on their hands as a reminder that the genocide in Gaza is not just being done by Israel.  It is being done with funds from the United States and weapons made in the United States, by companies like Lockheed Martin.  

The US gives Israel $4 Billion a year.  And Lockheed Martin makes billions more from weapons sales, with contracts that did not begin after October 7 but have a decades old history.  Since the 1970s, Lockheed Martin has provided the F-16s and more recently the F-35 fighter jets used in Gaza.  In 5 years, Lockheed sent 102 F-16s and 50 F-35s.  They also make the M-270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, and the Hellfire missiles that have killed so many people.  In the recent assault in response to October 7th, the US and Israel agreed on a new weapons package (two months into the genocide) to supply even more F-35 and F-15 jets as well as Apache helicopters.  So yes, Lockheed Martin has blood on its hands. They have made a killing off killing.  They have turned war into a billion-dollar business enterprise.  The old saying is correct: “If you want to stop war, figure out who is profiting from it.”  

That’s why we gathered at Lockheed Martin on Good Friday.  As many fellow Christians bless the bombs falling on Gaza, weapons made at Lockheed Martin… we say NO, not in our name, and not in the name of our Savior.  As many Christians try to defend the violence of Israel being done in planes made by Lockheed Martin, we are calling for a ceasefire, and an end to the violence in the name of Christ, the Prince of Peace.

To be clear, it was a diverse, interfaith gathering – with people of all faiths and folks who aren’t religious at all but are compelled by their conscience to stand against the violence in Gaza.  We had dozens of children of all ages.  I’m guessing my little baby, Elijah, was one of the youngest at 12 weeks old.  One of them held a homemade banner that read, “US Bombs Kill Children.”  The young and young at heart put a rhythm to our call for ceasefire, as they beat on large drums together.  

And we carried the signs and banners.  We had posters with large images of the devastation from the bombing, and the shattered lives… each one branded with “Made In the USA.”  And we carried six large black signs with the names of the children, a reminder that they are not just numbers.  Every one of them has a name, a precious child made in the image of God.  We carried thousands of those names onto the property of Lockheed Martin… an act that was part religious ceremony, part street theater, part public lament.  

As we crossed over the blue line that designates where the public property ends and the private property of Lockheed Martin begins, we were given a warning that we were trespassing and could face arrest.  The folks with the names of the children laid down on the ground, a profoundly moving posture in the rich tradition of “die-ins.”  Others of us began to sing.  Several participants unrolled yellow “Crime Scene Do Not Enter” tape and roped off the entrance, calling it what it is – the scene of a crime, a war crime. On the other side of the boundary we laid several dozen red roses.  One after another, kids and adults brought those flowers over the blue line and laid them on the names of the children – it was all so powerful and moving.  

As the police began arresting us, we sang hymns and freedom songs – “Down by the Riverside” and “We Shall Overcome” … and “Ain’t Gonna Let Lockheed Martin, Turn me ‘Round.”  And we said the “Lord’s Prayer” which had a new ring to it as we said the part about forgiving us “our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” as we were arrested for trespassing.  

As we began the procession onto Lockheed Martin, I reminded the group of these words of Martin Luther King (whose assassination we remember on the anniversary this week), as he said this: “There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way. Or when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed.”  

There is a fire raging in Gaza, and we need brigades of ambulance drivers who will ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.  That’s why we were willing to go to jail.  

And it was also Dr. King who reflected on how he was initially troubled to go to jail – but then he looked at history and saw what good company he had.  Indeed, all the way back to Jesus on that first Good Friday.  And Christians have been making good trouble ever since, stirring up holy mischief and challenging the systems that crush other people.  So, it was an honor to go to jail on Good Friday.  As John Lewis once said, when we get into good trouble we can smile in our mugshot because we know that we are on the right side of history.  

Without a doubt, our children and grandchildren will ask us what we did to try to stop the genocide in Gaza.  I am trying hard to be able to honestly answer them – everything we could, including going to jail.  In fact, I’ll tell my little boy Eli – it was your first protest.  And I know it will not be his last.

On the citation we were given, we have been charged with Disorderly Conduct, and underneath the charge is a section called “Nature of Offense” and they wrote that the police officers wrote this in that section: “Defendant created a physically offensive condition by an act which served no legitimate purpose”. 

There was a crime committed at 230 Mall Blvd, but it was not prayerfully putting our bodies in the way of the flow of weapons of mass destruction.  The crime was happening inside the headquarters of Lockheed Martin.  And that was the act that was “offensive” to God and to all of us who care about life.  

We will not build a better world by killing other people’s children.  It’s time to get in the way of the business of war.  And for many of us, we do this holy work in the name of our Savior… that brown-skinned Palestinian refugee from Nazareth… Jesus the Christ.  

Violence is always evil, no matter what flag it’s wrapped up in. 

Let us continue to work for peace… and do all we can to interrupt the war… and grieve every life lost… and commit ourselves to building a world where every person is sacred.

From Rethinking Life….

The Christian movement started on the margins with a small group of renegade Jews who were a peculiar little sect within the vast terrain of the Roman Empire. By AD 100, there were roughly 7,500 Christians, which is smaller than many of our megachurches today. A generation later, in AD 150, there were 40,000. But that was still only .07 percent of the population—not even a tenth of one percent of the empire. One hundred years after Christ was here in the flesh, there was roughly one Christian for every 1,430 people in the Roman world.

Then this little revolution began to spread beyond the periphery and to all sectors of society. Check this out. Historians estimate that between AD 100 and 300, the Christian movement grew from roughly 7,500 people to a whooping 6.3 million. By AD 300, Christians were 10 percent of the empire’s population—one person in every ten was now a Christian. But with the growth came complexity, and it is at this point that Emperor Constantine entered the picture.

Constantine’s reign is seen as a turning point for Christianity because it’s when Christianity the Roman Empire. Given the persecution Christians had long endured, this might seem to have been a miraculous deliverance, and it many ways it was. However, the so-called “Constantinian shift” was also when the first cracks began to appear in the early Christians’ ethic of life. Once they were in power, Christians went from being the persecuted to being the persecutors. They stopped loving their enemies and started killing them. They exchanged the cross for a sword.

Many scholars rightfully point out that Constantine was a symbol of something bigger happening in the culture, that he was the effect rather than the cause. Just as many of us point out that Donald Trump revealed America more than he changed America, perhaps the same can be said of Constantine. However, Constantine did crystalize some things that forever changed what it meant to be a Christian. But before we get to that, it’s important to understand more of the context that led up to Constantine’s reign and how it shaped the early church.

Constantine’s Backstory

Constantine came to power in the wake of horrific persecution of the church. To be sure, killing Christians had been a Roman pastime going all the way back to AD 33, but things had only gotten worse since. Historians point out that emperors such as Nero, who reigned in the generation after Jesus (AD 54–68), turned sadistic execution into a form of entertainment. There are reports of Christians being dressed in animal furs to be killed by dogs. They were crucified, even crucified upside down. Their bodies were often disfigured and contorted for the sake of the dark appetites. According to the Roman historian Tacitus (ca. AD 56–120), Nero turned his own garden into a killing field, setting bodies on fire and using them as human torches.

Then there was the persecution under Domitian, who reigned from AD 81–96. Domitian is the emperor who exiled John, the author of Revelation, to the island of Patmos. Persecution continued under Decius, who ruled from AD 249–251. Finally, there were the brutal, barbaric reigns of Diocletian from AD 284–305, and Galerius from AD 305–311, right before Constantine.

Most historians consider this era prior to Constantine to be the worst persecution Christianity had ever seen. Church buildings and property were destroyed. There were raids on churches in which sacred texts and relics were burned. Some Christians were demoted from places of honor if they would not renounce their faith. Some had their legal rights taken away, and others were forced into slavery if they refused to burn incense to Caesar (a loyalty test) or to recant their commitment to Christ. Under Diocletian, many were murdered during what historians call the “wholesale slaughter” of Christians. So, this is when Constantine entered the scene—following the terrible reigns of terror under Diocletian and his son-in-law Galerius.

Constantine was the son of Constantius Chlorus, a lower-ranking emperor who ruled in the West (Britain, Gaul, and Spain) during the bloody reign of Diocletian. Although his father Constantius was not a Christian, he was quite tolerant of Christians and did not carry out vicious orders and persecutions. When Constantine became emperor after Constantius’s death in 306, he took his dad’s tolerance of Christians to a new level. And his devotion to the faith, even though some question its sincerity, became personal.

It’s important to note that Constantine’s ascension to the throne wasn’t as simple as his father passing him a baton. The region historically had four regional emperors rather than one. When Diocletian stepped down in 305, there was a struggle to gain control of the empire as rival regional leaders fought for the throne. It wasn’t until 312 that Constantine won the decisive Battle of Milvian Bridge that ended the civil war and secured his place on the throne. But this is what’s so significant about that legendary battle against another aspiring emperor named Maxentius, especially with regard to our conversation about the sacredness of life. Prior to the battle, Constantine is said to have had a vision of the cross coming down from the sky in heavenly glory to bless him in the battle. Here’s an account of the vision, written by an historian named Eusebius:

About the time of the midday sun, when day was just turning, he said he saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said, “By this conquer.”

“By this conquer.” In other words, kill in the name of Jesus.

Some question the credibility of the vision since it wasn’t until ten years later and two years after Constantine died that we have any account of it. It’s also important to note that the account we do have was written not by Constantine but by Eusebius, whom Constantine, as he died, had appointed a bishop. Eusebius had previously written his classic Ecclesiastical History, published ten years into Constantine’s reign, and he makes no mention of Constantine’s vision in that work, which seems like a significant oversight.

Could Constantine’s vision of the cross be imperial revisionist history? Totally possible, but it almost doesn’t even matter—it became Roman legend, and eventually church legend. In the centuries that followed, this same theology is invoked and the cross continued to be used as a symbol for battle and license for all sorts of atrocities. The cross, which had been such a powerful symbol of love and grace and redemption, would eventually be used in the Crusades and by colonizers doing the most unChristlike things imaginable.

Constantine was not a Christian when he became emperor in AD 306. In fact, he wasn’t even baptized until just before he died. But one of his first acts after winning the Battle of Milvian Bridge and killing Maxentius was signing the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed religious tolerance throughout the Roman Empire. No doubt, the relatively peaceful reign of Constantine that followed, while providing temporarily relief from persecution, was a massive shift for Christians.

As the church entered this new season of peace, it faced a whole new set of challenges and tensions, many of which were consequences of centuries of persecution. One of those tensions was that some Christians had begun to make compromises with the empire. To avoid becoming literal fodder for the empire’s fires, they essentially denied their faith with their fingers crossed behind their backs. They burned a little incense to Caesar to avoid being burned alive. As one ancient proverb aptly put it, they would bow before the emperor—and fart. They paid only enough homage to avoid getting killed.

It’s understandable, right? To be a Christian at the time of Constantine meant you and everyone you knew had, for generations, lost friends and family members to the brutal persecution of the Roman Empire—the same empire that had killed your Messiah. It’s hard enough to gather the faith and courage to die for Jesus, but harder still to sustain that fervor decade after decade and century after century while the empire is killing you, your kids, your parents, and the poor and vulnerable everywhere. So, if you had the option to make a small compromise in exchange for your life, it probably seemed like a worthwhile trade. And the temptation to acquire or align yourself with power and resources to stop the oppression would be hard to resist. It was one of the temptations Satan posed to Jesus in the desert. And it is a temptation we face in America today. So, that should give us some grace for the early Christians who, just a few hundred years in, made some regrettable, even if understandable, compromises.

Even so, not all of them compromised. Some felt more convicted than ever, believing that a willingness to die for Christ was the ultimate test of true discipleship. Persecution had only stiffened their spines and solidified their resolve. And herein lies one of the most significant crossroads of the early church. Those who refused to compromise excommunicated many of those who did, including leaders, for making concessions and assimilating within the empire. The early Christians knew they could not serve two masters. There was a choice to be made—would they serve Jesus or Caesar ? Excommunication has a bad vibe for many of us today, but the early Christians saw it as preserving the radical call of Christ and not compromising the cost of discipleship. There was no room for “cheap grace,” as Deitrich Bonhoeffer would call it centuries later, before he himself was martyred.

There’s an old saying we often hear in social movements today, “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” And while that was true of many of the early followers of Jesus who were poor or otherwise disenfranchised, it had become less unilaterally true a few centuries later. By this time, many new converts had a whole lot to lose. They wanted to hold onto their possessions and even stay in careers that earlier generations had deemed incompatible with Christian discipleship. Could you be a politician, much less the leader of the Roman Empire, and still be a follower of Christ? I think you see the source of the tension, which is one we still face today.

Constantine’s Impact

There is a lot we could say about Constantine and the evident contradictions in his faith and his leadership, but there is no denying that he radically parted ways with previous emperors and initiated welcome reforms. The reforms he instituted throughout society and the church were significant, and still leave a mark to this day—for better and for worse. In addition to proclaiming religious tolerance, he banned the gladiatorial games. He made it harder to kill babies by banning the Roman practice called “exposure.” He also banned the branding of criminals, which was done on the face.

Constantine explicitly acknowledged that human beings are made in the image of God. He funded the mission of the church, rebuilt church buildings, and reproduced copies of the Bible. He established the Sunday as a Sabbath day and ordered that the holy days of the Christian calendar be recognized. He even provided tax exemption for clergy and church property. I suppose he could be credited with setting up the first 501(c)(3) tax exemptions for the church, for better or worse.

He also ended the practice of crucifixion. Unfortunately, he didn’t end capital punishment, just execution by crucifixion. In fact, he ended up killing his own wife and son, so let there be no mistake—I’m not trying to defend him. I just want to be honest about the complexities and contradictions of a man many Christians today recognize as a saint, especially regarding the sanctity of life. Certainly, there are questions to be raised about his motives for all of these reforms, whether they came from an authentic respect for the Christian faith, political pragmatism, or some messy combo of both.

While scholars may debate how much Constantine himself actually changed the church, one thing is clear—the church was changing and the reign of Constantine certainly was a manifestation of that change. And Constantine took an active role not only in initiating social reforms, but also in shaping and solidifying the theology of the church.

By the time Constantine came to power, there were serious divisions in the church, many of which stemmed from the rapid growth of Christianity and its proximity to the power and wealth of Rome. Christians under Constantine began asking questions we still ask today. Does God want Christians to use worldly power to transform the world? Should Christians impose their values on others? Can Christians be political without losing their souls? Other contentious issues were more theological, such as disagreement about the full divinity and humanity of Christ and the nature of the Trinity.

In an effort to create unity and restore peace, Constantine tried to bring church leaders together. He hosted a summit of bishops in 314 at Arles in southern Gaul. And in 325, he convened one of the most significant ecumenical councils in the history of Christianity, the Council of Nicea. There, he brought together bishops and church leaders in an attempt to resolve differences and establish some norms and procedures within the church.

The rapidly growing church needed clarity about the structures of leadership as well as what church discipline looked like with heretics and lapsed Christians. What were the dignity standards for clergy? What did real repentance look like, and could someone be reinstated after they fell from grace? There were also questions about organizational structure and liturgical practice. One of the most pressing of issues before the Nicean council was how to understand the relationship between God and Jesus. The council produced the Nicene Creed, a defining statement of belief, which is still recited today, 1,700 years later, by Christians all over the world.

While the councils addressed various heresies and defined orthodox belief in the Nicene Creed, the message of Christianity itself did not change much. What did change, however, was how Christians lived out the message of Jesus in the world. The early church was called “The Way” and was known for its countercultural way of living. However, over the centuries and in response to persecution, Christianity gradually became primarily a way of believing rather than a way of living. During the era of Constantine and in the years that followed, much more energy was spent on defining how Christians are to think rather than how Christians are to live. The theological conversations progressively move from the heart to the head, focusing more on doctrines and less on actions.

From Christianity’s earliest days, friends and foes alike had described how radically different Christians were. Jesus had said that the world would know we are Christians by our love, and that is exactly what happened in those first few centuries. The onlooking world marveled that Christians fed the pagan poor as well as their own. They turned enemies into friends and loved even those who hated them. They would rather die than kill. Sadly, however, it was not these ways of living that were codified during the councils Constantine convened. What was debated and crystallized were doctrinal beliefs. To be clear, some very important clarifications were needed. And yet, you can’t help but wonder what might happened if it hadn’t been just doctrine that was set into stone, but also an ethic of life, lifestyle commitments, and a strong stance against violence.

What if the creed millions of Christians still recite every Sunday in worship also stated a commitment to life and affirmed the dignity of every person—the imago dei? Maybe it’s time to write a few new creeds today.

Historically, Christianity has always affirmed “orthodoxy,” meaning “right belief,” from which we get doctrine. But it has also held orthodoxy together with “orthopraxis,” meaning “right practice” or right living. Like the two blades of scissors or the two paddles of a rowboat, orthodoxy and orthopraxis go together.

Faith without works is dead (James 2:14–26). They will know we are Christians by our love (John 13:35). We can’t say that we love God and ignore our neighbor in need (1 John 3:16-17). Even as we look at Jesus, we do not see him teaching doctrines and theology alone, but also teaching us and showing us how to live.

Jesus put flesh on doctrine by literally becoming the Word made flesh (John 1:14). Jesus was not just inviting people to sign a doctrinal statement, he was inviting people to join a revolution—and still is. But that’s what began to give way during Constantine—the revolutionary, counter-cultural way of life of early Christianity.

Some point out, and rightly so, the irony that Constantine wasn’t even a baptized Christian as he oversaw these historic gatherings. Many contend that his primary interests were political more than they were religious—a divided church meant a divided empire and a weaker base. Perhaps he did have a deathbed conversion and got baptized before he died, as many believe. But in all those years before his death, he was quite a paradox, and ultimately did much damage to our understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

A tree is known by its fruit, as Jesus said. In the end, if Christianity was more than just a political endorsement for Constantine, it is hard to see how that really translated into his own life. In fact, the year after he hosted the Council of Nicaea, he killed his own son Crispus. And a month or so later, he killed his wife Fausta by having her basically boiled to death in hot water. Not very befitting of any man of God, if I might be so pretentious to say. And yet, to this day, Constantine is recognized by many Christians as a saint. The Orthodox Church calls him “isapostolos”—equal to the apostles. And that itself, is part of the problem.

What had fundamentally changed was the church’s proximity to power, and now the church faced decisions about how to use its power. Specifically, should it use the power of the state to enforce the doctrines of the church? And by “enforce,” it’s important to know that the church now had the authority not just to excommunicate heretics, but to actually kill them.

It was also during Constantine’s reign that we begin to see the seeds of Christian colonization, which we’ll dig into in chapter 8. The words of Constantine’s vision, “By this conquer,” will echo throughout the ages to conquistadors and colonizers, providing holy cover for unholy missions.

The reign of Constantine is where we recognize the first cracks in the steadfast commitment to life that characterized the early Jesus movement. It’s also when we begin to see what compromised Christian faith can look like, more generally speaking. I guess some would call it the evolution of Christianity. I would call it the dissolution. Some would call it progress. I would call it digress, especially when it comes to how we value life.

The Post-Constantine Era

By AD 350, just over a decade after the death of Constantine, there were 33 million Christians in the Roman Empire. They were now more than half the Roman population—56 percent. The number of Christians outnumbered the number of non-Christians for the first time. Let that sink in. In a mere seventy years, Christianity went from being a persecuted revolutionary movement to an accepted minority religion, and then to the established religion of the entire Roman Empire.

While Constantine had made Christianity the majority religion in the empire, it would be the next emperor, Theodosius (AD 379–395), who would make it the official religion of the Roman Empire. Theodosius was the emperor who began to aggressively “Christianize” the empire. He used his power to ban both unorthodox Christians and pagans. He destroyed pagan temples and incited mob violence alongside the violence wielded by the state. At one point, undoubtedly provoked and emboldened by the emperor, the archbishop of Alexandria rounded up a group of monks to destroy the serapeum, one of the shrines to the Egyptian god Serapis. And Theodosius congratulated the Christians who tore it down. This was his decree:

It is our will that all the peoples who are ruled by . . . our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans. . . We command that those persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of Catholic Christians. . . . The rest, however, whom we adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, . . . and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of our own initiative, which we shall assume in accordance with divine judgement.

Obviously, that didn’t go over well with many people, namely the formerly pagan majority that was now quickly become a minority both in numbers and in access to power. At one point, there were riots and Theodosius was absolutely brutal, slaughtering thousands of men, women, and children. On another occasion, he killed 7,000 people in three hours. Theodosius was so relentlessly violent that he was temporarily excommunicated by one of the bishops of the church, Bishop Ambrose of Milan. He was not permitted to take the Eucharist because he had betrayed Christ by spilling blood. You may recall the statement of the third-century bishop Cyprian, that the hand that takes the Eucharist should not be “sullied by the blood-stained sword!”

Shortly after the rule of Theodosius, fifteen years later to be precise, the Roman Empire collapsed, sacked by Visigoths in 410 AD. For the first time in 800 years, Rome was unable to defend itself from outside invasion. The Roman Empire fell, but the church lived on.

Other emperors would come and go. Some, such as Justinian in AD 527, considered themselves to be what historian Susan Wise Bauer describes as “the representative of Christ on earth.” As a Byzantine emperor and professing Christian, he began the ambitious mission known as “renovation imperii,” or “the restoration of the empire.” In service of his cause, Justinian slaughtered 30,000 people in one week to put down what came to be called the Nika Riots in Constantinople. It is unclear if he saw himself representing God or the state—or both—as he killed these men, women, and children. It was hard to know where the emperor’s reign ended and God’s kingdom began. The marriage of church and state had begun.

Christians began to kill other Christians whom they considered heretics. And Christians began to kill people of other faiths, along with native peoples and pagans. Those who had been tortured and jailed became the ones who tortured and jailed others. The ones who had seen their books burned and their buildings torched became the ones who burned the books and destroyed the buildings of others. The persecuted became the persecutors. Those who had been the victims of state power now wielded that power. Those who had suffered from the military occupation now served in the military. The executed now became the executioners. After 300 years of steadfast commitment to life and standing up against death and violence in all its manifestations, Christians became the empire and exchanged the cross for a sword.

The brilliant Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard insisted that where everything is Christian nothing is Christian. In other words, we lose our essence, the distinctive, counter-cultural witness of the upside-down kingdom.

We can say that we are a Christian empire, but the question is, how much do we remind the world of Jesus? As history shows, Christian empires, if there is such a thing, usually lose their souls.

A wise man once said, “What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul?”

Excerpt from Shane Claiborne’s Rethinking Life, Zondervan Books, Published 2023, Used by permission.

Alabama has executed convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas, the first time the method of capital punishment has been used globally. Christian campaigner Shane Claiborne says the death penalty wouldn’t stand a chance in his nation, were it not for Christians.

Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted in 1989 of murdering a preacher’s wife, Elizabeth Sennett, in a killing-for-hire. According to an eyewitness, Smith thrashed violently on the gurney on Thursday evening and the execution took around 25 minutes. The UN condemned the execution as cruel but Alabama said the process had been carried out humanely.

Billy Neal Moore returned from the Vietnam War like many veterans, with all sorts of struggles, not the least of which was financial. He and an army buddy came up with a plan: easy access to a large amount of money, with very little risk. Or so they thought.

Billy had no criminal record. This was new terrain for him, but his friend assured him that nothing could go wrong. As they went to rob a house, it turned out the 72 year-old homeowner was in. As things unfolded, Fred Stapleton was killed.

Moore was haunted by what they had done. He confessed to the crime, knowing he would face the death penalty in Georgia. And he did. But as far as Moore was concerned, that was fine. If he could have pushed the button on his own execution, he would have. He was convinced he deserved death. In fact, while in prison, he tried to end his own life.

But in the midst of the long loneliness, there was an interruption.

Grace.

This interruption of grace came from the place we might least expect it – the family of the murder victim. Behind bars Billy had already had a powerful conversion experience. He even got baptised. But it was his relationship with the family of the victim that showed him what grace really is. In his words: “It was the family of the person I killed that helped me get to the point that I could forgive myself.”

WE CAN’T FORGET JESUS’ OWN ENCOUNTER WITH THE DEATH PENALTY AS HE STOPS THE EXECUTION OF THE WOMAN CAUGHT IN ADULTERY.

The family were deeply committed Christians, with a passion for life and a profound understanding of redemption. While not ignoring the evil that was done, they insisted that grace got the last word. They told Billy that because they were Christians, they believed in second chances. They told him they believed God wasn’t done with him yet, and that he had a plan for Billy’s life. They became his surrogate family, the biggest advocates for his life, and the biggest obstacles to his execution. Over two decades (and 13 different execution dates) they were relentless. Through their prayers and persistence, they even got Mother Teresa involved. Not only was his execution stopped, but in an unprecedented move, the Georgia parole board allowed him to be released from prison.

Today, Billy Neal Moore is a pastor.

Every time he preaches, he talks about grace. With a fire in his bones, he proclaims: “No one is beyond redemption.” Grace drips from his lips. Not surprisingly, Billy is also committed to ending the death penalty, which he says: “is the state carrying out revenge—nothing more, nothing less.”

I aspire to be a champion for life on every issue. I believe every person is a child of God, made in the image of God and any time a life is cut short, we lose a part of God’s image in the world.

But here’s what I’ve found with the death penalty: it has succeeded not in spite of Christians, but because of us. Literally, on this issue, we have not been the champions of life. We have been the obstacles. It’s counter-intuitive, and tragic.

When you begin to question how the death penalty has survived, you realise the disturbing answer to that question is: Christians. The death penalty would not stand a chance in America if it weren’t for Christians. 86 per cent of executions have happened in the ’Bible belt’ – the southern states where Christians are most concentrated. The Bible belt is the death belt of America.

RACE AND RESOURCES

I’ve also found that talking about the death penalty it is a gateway to all sorts of other important topics – race, economic inequity, theology, justice, mass incarceration. It’s like peeling away the layers of an onion. We can’t divorce the death penalty from our history of race, white supremacy and the residue that slavery and colonialism has left us. The states that held on to slavery the longest are the same states that hold on to the death penalty.

Executions today are happening exactly where lynchings were happening in the United States 100 years ago. In 1950, African Americans were 10 per cent of our population, but they constituted 75 per cent of executions. 70 years later, African Americans account for 13 per cent of our population but make up almost half of death row (43 per cent) and over a third of our executions (34 per cent).

IF WE BELIEVE MURDERERS ARE BEYOND REDEMPTION, WE SHOULD RIP OUT HALF THE BIBLE, BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN BY THEM

When we think of the death penalty, we like to think that we are executing the worst of the worst, but the truth is, too often we are executing the poorest of the poor and people of colour. Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t get the death penalty. Charles Manson died of natural causes in prison. Harvard-educated Ted Kaczynski is still alive. More than the atrocity of the crime, what often determines who gets executed are arbitrary things like the resources, race and where the crime was committed.

And of course, the death penalty raises the massively important question of how much we trust the State with the irreversible power of life and death. There are over 196 people who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, who have now been exonerated after proving their innocence. These are just the people we know about. How many others might there be?

If you wrongfully sentence someone to life in prison, you can free them. But you can’t bring someone back from the dead. As Sister Helen Prejean often say: sometimes the question isn’t whether someone deserves to die, but whether we deserve to kill. Especially when we have a track record of getting it wrong.

DEADLY THEOLOGY

I was one of those pro-death-penalty Christians for much of my life. I had all the Bible verses to support my case, and I wielded them well. I’ve always been passionate, even when I’m wrong! But when I started to look at those Bible verses again, I changed my mind.

Now I want to poke a few holes in the theology of death.

In ancient Old Testament law, the death penalty was permitted. But capital murder wasn’t the only death-worthy crime. There were more than 30 others, including disrespecting your parents, various forms of sexual conduct, witchcraft and even working on the Sabbath. When it comes to disciplining our youth today, not many parents are ready to kill their kids for playing with a Ouija board or talking back. No one actually wants to bring the full death penalty back as recorded in the Old Testament.

There were over 40 strict requirements for an execution, which ensured they almost never happened. The rabbis used to say that if there was more than one execution in 70 years, something was wrong. A rabbinical friend pointed out the irony that Jews did away with the death penalty a long time ago, but Christians still misuse Hebrew scriptures to justify it. He laughed as he pointed out the obvious: “And you all have Jesus to reconcile this with. That makes it even more baffling.”

Some say God is for the death penalty. But think of the story of Cain and Abel, the inaugural murder in the Bible. God doesn’t kill Cain, his life is spared. Moses killed a man in the book of Exodus but God didn’t put him to death. David killed Uriah, yet his own life was spared. Saul of Tarsus was a murderer, but Saul became Paul, and the gospel of grace went forward. If we believe murderers are beyond redemption, we should rip out half the Bible, because it was written by them.

THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS

A recent poll in the United States showed that 95 per cent of Americans think Jesus would stand against the death penalty. The problem is we have to convince the Christians to take Jesus more seriously.

Jesus is the ultimate interrupter of violence. On the cross, he took on the powers of death, absorbing all the evil, sin and violence in the world. He put death on display, not in order to glorify it but to subvert it. As Colossians says: “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (2:15) Jesus is like water poured on the electric chair, short circuiting the whole system of retribution, sacrifice and death. Love wins. Mercy triumphs over judgement.

And we can’t forget Jesus’ own encounter the death penalty as he stops the execution of the woman caught in adultery (John 7-8). At the end of that story, Jesus says to her, “Where’d they all go?” The message is clear. The only one who has any right to throw a stone had absolutely no desire to do so. The closer we get to God, the less we want to throw stones at other people.

THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS

Mary Johnson is a hero of mine. On February 12, 1993, Johnson’s only son was murdered. He was only 20 years old. Devastated and filled with rage, she was paralysed with the anguish of it all. The perpetrator was 16-year-old Oshea Israel, who eventually received a 25-year sentence for murder.

But something spectacular, one might even venture to call miraculous, happened. Mary was reading a poem entitled Two Mothers, about two angelic figures meeting in heaven. As they meet, they can tell by the stars in each other’s crowns that they were both mothers on earth. And they can also tell by their blue-tinted halos that they have both known the deep sorrow and despair of losing their sons.

As they describe their boys to each other, the one mother realises that she is talking with Mary, the blessed mother of Jesus. Mary describes the cruel death of her son and how she would have gladly died in his place. The other falls to her knees, but Mary raises her back up, kisses her cheek, wipes away her tears, and says: “Tell me the name of the son you love so”.

The other mother says: “He was Judas Iscariot. I am his mother.”

When Mary read that poem she was moved, compelled, to
meet with Oshea, the man who killed her son, and eventually his mother…and the healing began. As she first met Oshea, she laid it all out there. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. You didn’t know my son and he didn’t know you…so we need to lay down
a foundation to get to know one another.” They talked for hours.

Oshea couldn’t believe Mary could forgive him. He asked for a hug. And they did. Mary knows the power of her story, and she knows how scandalous it seems to our unforgiving world. When he left the room, she says she cried in disbelief: “I’ve just hugged the man who killed my son.” But as she got up, she felt her soul begin to heal.

Years later, in March of 2010, Oshea was released after 17 years in prison. And Mary helped throw a welcome home party. In fact, they ended up living next door to each other in Minneapolis.

I’VE JUST HUGGED THE MAN WHO KILLED MY SON

As he returned home, Oshea said he was blessed to have “two moms” who now claim each other as sisters.. Mary went on to start an organisation called From Death to Life.

When I visited Minneapolis I stayed in the house where they all met, a holy place called the St Jane House, with photos of reconciliation and healing plastered all over the walls. Mary came over for dinner and explained that they have two support groups  – the mums whose kids were killed, and the mums whose kids have killed – and both groups meet together whenever they can. They know their healing is bound up together; they need each other.

As Mary hugged me, I thought to myself with profound awe: “These same courageous arms embraced the man who killed her son.” I felt like I had been hugged by an angel, with a blue-tinted halo.

Grace gets the last word.

We all have prejudices, ways we “pre-judge” people based on anything from how they look to their religion, their culture or language, their sexuality, or the color of their skin. We are comfortable around people who are like us and we are uncomfortable around people who aren’t. Even when we work hard to be fair and unbiased, too often we treat people who aren’t like us differently than we treat people who are like us.

When our prejudice leads us to treat others unjustly, it’s called discrimination. To discriminate, we need a certain degree of power.(1) For example, the power to create a welcoming or a hostile environment, to include or exclude, to give or refuse service in a restaurant, to hire or not hire, to rent or not rent housing, to worship or not worship together. The more power we have, the more we can discriminate; and the more we discriminate, the more harm we can cause. With enough power, we can discriminate not just against individuals but entire people groups. That’s what happens when prejudice moves from the small scale to the large scale: organizations and governments paint an entire people group with a broad brush of interiority and systemize prejudice into laws and policies.

Certainly, many of us are working hard to purge ourselves of our prejudices and to learn to love as God loves, but one of the worst things we can do is ignore that our history has shaped how we see people today, sometimes in ways we may not even realize. While some prejudices are based on our experiences, others are not. Instead, they are transmitted through cultural biases, inherited directly or indirectly from others, or taught as truth. Sadly, this has happened even in the church. Over the course of history and into the present, the church has actually theologized prejudice and hatred, sometimes even to the point of supporting genocide, which is what happened in Nazi Germany.

Some historians consider anti-Semitism the original sin of Christianity because we see the roots of it from the very beginning. Following Jesus’ crucifixion, there were some who said it was the Jews rather than our own sins that killed Jesus. This anti-Jewish prejudice began to take root in Christian theology early on, but it took centuries for the power dynamic to shift in such a way that prejudice could turn into large-scale discrimination and ultimately genocide.

Hate Escalates

We need to understand how hate becomes policy because the kind of resentment that leads to genocide doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It follows a predictable pattern that begins with biased attitudes and progresses to acts of bias, discrimination, bias-motivated violence, and then genocide.(2) What’s important to note is that the seeds of genocide are first sown as biased attitudes, which include stereotypes, fear of differences, and believing negative information about others—all of which are abundantly evident in our current climate.

The Holocaust in Nazi Germany followed this pattern of hate. It didn’t spring up overnight. There were social conditions, policies, and, yes, theology, that made Hitler’s Germany fertile ground for genocide. Holocaust scholar and Christian ethicist David Gushee traces the long history of anti-Semitism as evidenced in anti-Jewish laws over the centuries. Take a look.

• Prohibition of intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and Christians (306)
• Jews and Christians not permitted to eat together (306)
• Jews not allowed to hold public office (535)
• Jews not allowed to employ Christian servants (538)
• The Talmud and other Jewish books burned (681)
• Jews obliged to pay taxes to support the church (1078)
• Jews not permitted to be plaintiffs or witnesses against Christians (1179)
• Jewish clothes marked with special badges (1215)
• Construction of new synagogues prohibited (1222)
• Compulsory ghettos mandated (1267)
• Adoption of Judaism by a Christian banned (1310)
• Jews not permitted to obtain academic degrees (1434) (3)

One of the striking things the list demonstrates is how persistently these laws appear across the centuries. Hate is a resilient thing. It’s also important to note that such laws are rarely one-offs but reflect deeper hostilities and prejudice that can eventually manifest themselves in full-blown violence. Sometimes policy violence is the precursor to physical violence. It’s like a warning light on the dashboard of a car: it signals trouble ahead. It was the same with Black codes or Jim Crow laws in the US, and it has many other expressions across time and around the world.(4)  We can all think of people who face discrimination today. That’s why a pursuit of equality and justice in policies is a way not only of affirming human life and dignity but also of nipping hatred in the bud.

We’re going to take a closer look at anti-Semitism in the church because it is one of the earliest cracks in our foundation when it comes to affirming the sacredness of every person, and it is a crack that persists to this day. Understanding our history of anti-Semitism can also help us think critically about other forms of discrimination, help us combat it in other forms, and keep us from repeating the mistakes of history. The devil may be a liar, but he often keeps telling the same lies over and over, just in new ways.

A Brief History of Anti-Semitism in the Church

Christians have had a complicated relationship with our Jewish cousins pretty much from the beginning, ever since folks 2,200 years ago started proclaiming that the long-awaited Messiah had come to us as a Jewish carpenter from Galilee. As much as some folks might prefer to believe otherwise, it’s impossible to erase Jesus’ Jewishness. He went to synagogue. He observed Passover. He knew the law, and he knew when to break it. He expanded his followers’ imagination and blew their minds by showing how big God’s dream for the world is, and how big God’s grace is—for the Jewish people, but also for non-Jewish people.

Remember, as more and more non-Jews became recipients of grace, one of the debates in the early church was what it meant for a gentile to become a Christian. Did they need to become Jewish in order to become Christian—for instance, did they need to get circumcised and eat kosher? What about when someone converted, such as a centurion in the Roman army? This was a question Peter really wrestled with (Acts 10), and much of the tension in the early church formed around how Christians related to Jews. You can see why it was a legitimate question, and the early church did a pretty great job navigating these waters, for at least a few centuries.

Then came the Constantinian shift. Anti-Jewish sentiment certainly existed in the Christian community before Constantine, but, as we have seen, what changed was proximity to power. Before Constantine, Christians didn’t have the power to overtly discriminate against Jews or anyone else in any systematic way. But that changed once Christianity became the majority religion and then the official religion of the empire.

Over time, we developed some toxic ways of twisting Scripture that fueled anti-Semitism. Some Christian leaders blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, rather than rightfully seeing all of humanity—including Romans officials, Jewish religious leaders, and the sins of you and me—as being responsible for Christ’s death. We were all culpable. Many Christians, then and now, interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem and all the lives that were lost as God’s judgment on the Jews for rejecting Jesus, the Messiah. In support of their view, they referred to verses such as this one from the apostle Paul: “You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone” (1 Thess. 2:14–15). Some now saw “the Jews” as the culprit and made them a scapegoat.

While many Christians clung to their ancestors in the faith, including the ancient prophets and sacred texts, they rejected their Jewish roots and origins. It became known as supersessionism—the idea that the Jewish story ended with the birth of Christ and the church has superseded Israel as God’s chosen people. There is even an entire theology known as adversus Judaeos, meaning “against the Jews.” This theology can be traced all the way back to the fourth century and is especially evident in the teachings of John Chrysostom (ca. AD 347–407), who is sometimes referred to as the “golden mouthed,” which is what chrysostom means in Greek but was also a reference to how eloquent his sermons were. However, his writings reveal a not so golden theology of contempt that portrayed Jews as heretics, blasphemers, and prophet killers. As we attempt to be honest about some of these iconic church thinkers, many of whom are now revered as saints, it is helpful to see that someone can be brilliant on some things and still be blind on others. Some of the things Chrysostom said were gold, and others were fool’s gold.

Chrysostom called Jews dogs, goats, and pigs. He characterized them as fat and lazy drunkards, and called their synagogues “haunts of demons.” He called them “assassins of Christ,” held them responsible for the crucifixion, and considered them guilty of “deicide”: they were God-killers.(5) More subtle anti-Jewish themes also can be seen in several writings of other early Christians, including Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Origen.

Dangerous Words

It is vitally important for Christians, and for everyone who believes in life, to stand against hatred in all its forms. And a good place to start is with our rhetoric. As we’ve seen in history, we sow deadly seeds the moment we use or even tolerate dehumanizing language, such as calling any group of people cockroaches, dogs, or vermin. Not too long ago, there was a president of the United States whose rhetoric and policies sowed many of those dangerous seeds on a global scale. He referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists and murderers.” He referred to entire countries as “shitholes.” Those are dangerous words, the kind of words that led to a surge in hate crimes and acts of overt racism.(6) All the while, he insisted that he did not have “a racist bone” in his body.(7) Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Words have consequences, whether they’re spoken by a school bully, a politician, or a preacher. We can all be interrupters of hateful and dangerous words by standing against language that tears people down and denies the image of God in them. One way we can do that is simply to ask the speaker, “Don’t you think they are made in the image of God, just like you are?”

Fast-forward to the sixteenth century and the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther began with some sympathy and compassion for Jewish people, speaking against the anti-Semitism of the Roman Catholic Church. He even wrote an essay in 1523 titled “That Jesus Was a Jew,” in which he condemned the fact that the church had “dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings.”(8) He was clearly right to condemn that. However, just twenty years later in 1543, he published “The Jews and Their Lies,” a sixty-five-thousand-word manifesto calling for a litany of horrors, including the destruction of synagogues, Jewish schools, and homes.(9) I cringe as I type his words: “We are at fault in not slaying them.”(10) He called them a “whoring people” with a law that “must be accounted as filth.”

Ugh.

It’s not hard to see how his hateful rhetoric ultimately provided a theological foundation for the outright slaughter of Jews under the Nazis. From its earliest days, the Nazi regime used Luther’s writing to fuel their movement. Martin Sasse, a Lutheran bishop in the German state of Thuringia, is just one example. Following Kristallnacht, two days of Nazi-incited mob violence that is now seen as the beginning of the systematic destruction of Jews,(11) Bishop Sasse wrote and distributed a pamphlet titled Martin Luther on the Jews: Away with Them! In it, he defended and justified the mass slaughter that would soon unfold.(12)

Some who defend Luther are quick to point out that he was old and starting to lose it as he wrote his anti-Semitic work. But that defense skirts the fact that he was nevertheless capable of having Jews expelled from Saxony and other areas of Germany in 1537, just six years before writing his anti-Semitic manifesto. And he didn’t die until 1546, three years after writing those sickening words. I wish I could say that there was universal outrage when he published his remarks, but that would be a stretch. Although Christians did eventually condemn Luther’s words, it took centuries.

Unfortunately, anti-Semitism in the church didn’t end with Luther. In 1555, on the other side of the Reformation and a decade after Luther died, Pope Paul IV issued a papal bull removing the rights of Jews. And it wasn’t until Vatican II in 1965 that the Roman Catholic Church formally rejected its doctrinal anti-Semitism.

In the case of Nazi Germany, it’s important to acknowledge that some Christians were part of the resistance and many of those ended up being killed alongside their Jewish neighbors. We’ll consider their example next. However, it would be hard to imagine Hitler coming to power without the twisted theology and moral defense of the church. He did it all with a Bible in his hand, even likening himself to Jesus. He said that just as Jesus cleansed the temple of the Jews, he, Hitler, was cleansing the world of Jews.(13)

All you have to do is twist the cross to get a swastika.

The Genocide in Rwanda

For some of us, the Holocaust might feel like distant history even though we are just a generation or two removed from it. We might be tempted to think we would never allow something like that to happen now. That’s why it’s important to remember that another atrocity of history took place in Rwanda in 1994. We need to remember this history so we don’t repeat it.

At the time of the genocide, Rwanda had one of the highest concentrations of Christians of any country in Africa, and really of nearly any country in the world. Some estimate that up to 90 percent of the population was Christian, at least nominally. It does raise the question of how one of the worst atrocities of our generation happened when nine out of ten people involved were Christians.

In his brilliant book Mirror to the Church, Ugandan theologian and priest Emmanuel Katangole shows exactly how it happened. Certainly, there were demonic forces at work, but there was also a propaganda machine. In a country comprised of approximately 85 percent Hutus and 14 percent Tutsis, Tutsis were routinely dehumanized. There was also a complex historical backdrop of inequality that led to the propaganda and the narrative of hatred that became so deadly. Among other things, the Tutsis were called cockroaches and their lives equated with bugs, just waiting to be crushed.

The Rwandan genocide claimed some 800,000 lives in 100 days.(14) About 10,000 people were killed each day, mostly by machetes, in one of the most sickening events in my lifetime. I can remember it—I was in my first year of college. Years later, I got to visit Rwanda. Almost everywhere we went there were memorials, markers indicating mass graves, and in some places even the bones of those who died were left in place so we dare not forget.

On one of the monuments I visited were the words, “If you had known me, you would not have killed me.” It is a powerful quote, a reminder that it is harder to kill people when you know them. But it is also a complicated quote because many of the people in Rwanda did know the people they killed. Many of them slaughtered their neighbors.

It was the same with slavery and lynching in the United States. Theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman spoke poignantly about this, naming the fact that proximity alone didn’t guarantee compassion and respect. Black folks and white folks were living in proximity to each other even as Black folks were abused, tortured, raped, and sold on street corners. White folks did not really see Black folks, certainly not in an I-Thou kind of way.

Being a Christian, perhaps also just being a decent human being, means having more than just new ideas. It means having new eyes. Lots of smart people throughout history have also been racist. They had big ideas, but they did not have the “eyes to see,” as Jesus said (Matt. 13:16). When we say, “I see you,” we are affirming not just that we are looking at someone but that we notice them, feel with them, and stand in solidarity with them.

It’s easy for us to look back at this horrific event with disbelief or even a sense of moral superiority, thinking, “We would never do that,” or, “We would never let that happen again.” And yet I bet that’s what every generation says as it looks back on the horrors of the past. Nearly every new generation has its own genocide, and, as we will soon see, the twentieth century was the bloodiest century in the history of the world. We must never take progress for granted. And it is worth noting that this genocide happened primarily with knives. How much more damage could have been done with nuclear bombs and weapons of mass destruction?

Faithful Resisters

When it comes to anti-Semitism, we can grieve the failures of the church even as we celebrate its faithfulness. In Nazi Germany, heroes such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and members of the Confessing Church movement stood against hatred and fascism, and it cost many of them their lives. There were also many underground movements of subversive love and hospitality, and courageous individuals who risked their lives to save Jewish lives.

Certainly, one of the most well-known Christian resisters was Corrie ten Boom, daughter of a Dutch watchmaker, who rescued hundreds of Jewish people before she and her family were arrested and sent to concentration camps. After surviving the war, she wrote a book about her story in which she recounts a conversation with a pastor who had come to her father’s watch shop for a repair. Hoping to enlist the pastor’s help, she went to another room and came back with a little baby who, with his mother, needed to be rescued. The pastor leaned over and looked at the baby, initially moved as anyone would be. But then he pulled back. “We could lose our lives for that Jewish child!” he said. Corrie’s father overheard the comment, took the child in his arms, and then said to the pastor, “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”(15) Courage is contagious. And so is fear.

There were also courageous youth movements that resisted Hitler’s theology and policies. The White Rose was a youth movement sparked by a few dozen university students whose faith and idealism inspired them to act. At the center of the group were two siblings, Hans and Sophie Scholl. Hans was twenty-four and Sophie was twenty-one. They illegally printed and distributed hundreds of leaflets, doing all they could to counter the narrative of hatred. They were convicted of treason, sentenced to death, and beheaded on February 22, 1943, just four days after their arrest.

Other Christians, such as Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector who refused to fight for the Nazi regime, met a similar fate for their courageous witness.(16) That’s what faithful Christianity—good religion—looks like. Their courage and faithfulness can inspire us today as we stand up for life and resist the forces of death and hatred.

In the years since the Holocaust, the work of faithful resisters has continued through courageous and noble endeavors to heal the wounds and repair the cracks in our ethic of life. While such resistance may not be like resisting the Nazi regime, it does show us other versions of courage and repair. Sometimes faithful resistance can be as simple as building a new relationship, one in which we speak truth to one another in love and try to heal some of the wounds of history.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner tells a powerful story of a healing friendship with an Episcopal priest that began about forty-five years ago. The two men had decided to meet once a month for a meal together so they could share about their faith and deepen mutual understanding. Eventually, they decided to share their thoughts about Jesus, which they first wrote out and then read to one another as they ate. These are some of the words Rabbi Kushner wrote to his Episcopal friend:

I am wary of Jesus. Not because of anything he taught or even because of anything his disciples taught about him. . . .

I am wary of Jesus because of history and what so many of those who said they believed in him have done to my people. Christianity, you could say, has ruined Jesus for me. Somehow through the ages the suffering Jesus has become confused with the suffering of the Jewish people, my people. That is the key to my problem with him. His death has even become causally linked with some denial on my part. And this in turn has been used as a justification for my suffering.

In this way Jesus means for me not the one who suffered for the world’s sins but the one on account of whom I must suffer.(17)

Rabbi Kushner then relayed what happened next. He looked up at his Episcopal friend, whose face was “ashen.” “I winced,” he said, “fearing that I had crossed some line, that with my smug bluntness I had injured my new friend.” But then the priest responded with a tearful whisper, “Please forgive me, forgive us. It could not have been Jesus those Christians served.” Rabbi Kushner described it as a transformative moment. Their conversation continued.

“Your religion,” I said, “wants you to care about me that much?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Don’t you see, I must continuously seek to find God in every person. Jesus is only the beginning. You, Larry, are easy. But the ultimate goal is to find my Lord within everyone—even people I like a lot less than you, even people I dislike, even ones I despise.”

And then it dawned on me: So that’s what it means to say that God can take the form of a human being.(18)

To heal some of the wounds of the past, we need that kind of honest cross-faith dialogue today, that sort of deep mutual understanding and trust.

These are a few glimpses of what courage in the face of hate can look like. Resistance has many different forms. Sometimes it looks like risking our lives and sometimes it looks like building a friendship with someone who is different from us. I guess the real question is, What does courage in the face of hate look like for us today?

Love Overcomes

I have had several wonderful opportunities over the years to visit Israel and Palestine. It is an incredible thing to walk the land that Jesus and our Jewish ancestors walked. One of the people I spend a lot of time with when I am in Israel and the West Bank is my friend Sami Awad. Sami comes from a long line of Palestinian Christians who are also advocates for peace and champions of life. On one of my first visits, Sami told me his story as we walked along the Israeli West Bank wall that separates Israel and Palestine.(19)

Growing up in Palestine, he had seen so much hatred that he knew it was a dead end. I guess you could say, as Dr. King put it, Sami had “seen too much hate to hate,” and he chose love because hate is too heavy of a burden. As an adult, he ended up taking a pilgrimage to Germany to study and, more important, to experience the history of what his Jewish neighbors suffered in the Holocaust. He visited concentration camps, a Holocaust museum, and memorials. His heart ached because of what was done to them. The experience gave him new eyes. It enabled him to grieve and to be outraged about what has happened to the Jews over the centuries, and especially in the Holocaust.

Sami’s grief and compassion for his Jewish neighbors doesn’t prevent him from also being grieved by and outraged at what the state of Israel is doing to his neighbors in the West Bank and Gaza, but it does change what he sees. “I used to look at the wall and see hatred,” he said. “Now I look at the wall and I see fear.” That understanding doesn’t justify the injustices he witnesses every day, but it does help him understand the fear behind the wall. It is love that fuels his desire for the wall to come down and for both Jews and Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, and all people, to be honored equally as beautiful and made in the image of God.

Sami’s willingness to see and love his enemies—to affirm their humanity—makes me want to advocate for those on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It makes me want to be pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace. It makes me want to advocate that schools and healthcare in Gaza should be as good as schools and healthcare in Jerusalem. And just as we can see throughout history why it is important to say “Jewish lives matter,” the injustice and violence in Israel and Palestine should also compel all of us to say with equal conviction, “Palestinian lives matter.” We cannot be quiet when someone is hurting our brothers and sisters, no matter what language they speak, what religion they practice, or what side of the wall they live on.

Believing and living out a consistent ethic of life always leads to compassion rather than hate. I got to witness a beautiful example of that several years ago following an act of hate that could have been explosive. Amid rising anti-Muslim tensions in our city and around the country in 2015, someone dumped the head of a pig in front of a mosque in Philadelphia, a gross display of hatred against Muslims, for whom pork is forbidden. But what happened next is where the light of life shines.

Leaders from multiple faith traditions, including many Christian and Jewish communities, gathered outside the mosque as our Muslim neighbors went to prayer, to stand in solidarity with them and as an expression of love.

A couple of years after the incident at the mosque, there was another act of hatred in our state. Someone went into a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia and defaced the tombs, vandalizing them with symbols of hate. In an immediate act of solidarity and love, the Muslim community in Philly started a campaign that ultimately raised thousands and thousands of dollars to repair the Jewish cemetery.

We need more of that kind of love. The kind of love that repairs the cracks in our foundation for life. The kind of love that affirms the dignity of every person—and not only affirms it but also celebrates it. The kind of love that heals the violence of hatred. The kind of love that refuses to be enemies. While it is true that we have theologized hate over the centuries, the answer to hateful theology is not no theology but a theology of love. For God is love.

I am convinced that love and fear are enemies. They cannot coexist. And while the biblical promise is true that “perfect love casts out fear,” fear also has the power to cast out love. They are like opposing magnets. Too often, it is fear rather than love that motivates us in both our personal lives and in our local and national policies. We are driven by fear of scarcity, fear of being replaced by immigrants, fear of people who are different from us. So the question we need to grapple with is this: What might it look like for us to be driven by love rather than fear? What does love require?

(1) My friend Jemar Tisby puts it plainly: “Racism is prejudice plus power.” Jemar Tisby (@jemartisby). Instagram, May 31, 2022, www.instagram.com/p/CeOTKGtOn_8/.

(2) “Pyramid of Hate,” Anti-Defamation League, 2018, https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/pyramid-of-hate-web-english_1.pdf

(3) David P. Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World’s Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 207–8.

(4) Lest we think anti-Semitism is on its way out, we need only look to recent events to see how alive the fires of hatred still are. When white supremacists with tiki torches marched in Charlottesville during the Unite the Right rally in 2017, one of their chants was, “Jews will not replace us.” Just a year later in my home state of Pennsylvania, a man armed with multiple guns, including an AR-15, entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire during their morning Shabbat service. He killed eleven people and wounded six. A subsequent review of his social media posts found them full of anti-Semitic hatred and conspiracy theories as well as photos of his guns.

(5)  John Chrysostom, “Homily 1,” Against the Jews, Tertullian Project, www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm. St. John Chrysostom, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 72, trans. Paul W. Harkins (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1979), 39.

(6) Ayal Feinberg, Regina Branton, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, “Counties That Hosted a 2016 Trump Rally Saw a 226 Percent Increase in Hate Crimes,” Washington Post, March 22, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rhetoric-does-inspire-more-hate-crimes/.

(7)  I particularly like how many people pointed out that it was not his bones that were racist but his heart, his words, his actions, and his policies.

(8) Eric W. Gritsch, “Was Luther Anti-Semitic?” Christianity Today, May/June 2022, www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-39/was-luther-anti-semitic.html.

(9) Michael Coren, “The Reformation at 500: Grappling with Martin Luther’s Anti-Semitic Legacy,” Maclean’s, October 25, 2017, www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-reformation-at-500-grappling-with-martin-luthers-anti-semitic-legacy/.

(10) Martin Luther, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 47, ed. Franklin Sherman (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 267.

(11) According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools were destroyed; 91 Jews were murdered; and 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. “Kristallnacht was a turning point in the history of the Third Reich, marking the shift from antisemitic rhetoric and legislation to the violent, aggressive anti-Jewish measures that would culminate with the Holocaust.” “Kristallnacht,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, undated, www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/kristallnacht.

(12) Coren, “The Reformation at 500.”

(13) Hitler makes this connection in Mein Kampf, but he avoids using the name of Jesus, referring to him only as “the Founder of Christianity.” Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, [1925], 1971), 254. He makes the Temple comparison on p. 307.

(14) “Rwanda Genocide: 100 Days of Slaughter,” BBC, April 4, 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506.

(15) Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, 35th anniv. ed. (1971; Grand Rapids: Chosen, 1984), 115.

(16)  My coauthors and I celebrate also sorts of courageous champions of life in our book, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. I also recommend the wonderful work of my friend Robert Ellsberg in his books Blessed Among Us and All Saints. We need new heroes.

(17) Lawrence Kushner, “My Lunch with Jesus,” in Jesus through Jewish Eyes: Rabbis and Scholars Engage an Ancient Brother in a New Conversation, ed, Beatrice Bruteau (New York: Orbis, 2001), 120.

(18) Kushner, “My Lunch with Jesus,” 121.

(19)  Israel has erected one of the largest separation walls ever built, and one many consider the most sophisticated apartheid system the world has ever seen. Approximately 441 miles in length, it separates Israel from Palestine and makes life exceedingly difficult for Palestinians. It is important to remember the historic backdrop of centuries of anti-Semitism that have contributed to Israel’s actions in the West Bank. While it doesn’t justify their actions, it does help us understand them. It is not uncommon for groups who have been oppressed to become oppressors, especially as they gain access to power. It is the story of our faith as Christians, and of other faiths as well. The corrupting influence of power is a part of the human story, and no religion is immune to it.

To see the images from this chapter in the book, Rethinking Life, see Shane’s post on Instagram.

TONY: I was on a radio show in New Zealand with a Christian Zionist who believes that Christ cannot return until the Jews are in sole possession of the Holy Land. I remember saying, “Wait a minute! Do you realize that the land that was promised to Abraham reaches from the Euphrates to the Nile? That’s what you read it in the book of Genesis. I mean, we’re not talking only about what we now call the state of Israel, or even the land occupied by Palestinians. It’s all the land from the Euphrates to the Nile. That includes a good chunk of Jordan, all of Lebanon, a good part of Egypt, and a good chunk of Syria. All of these lands would have to be cleared of non-Jews according to your beliefs, and only Jews would be allowed to live on that land. What do you propose should be done with all the people who live in that land right now?”

He said, “Well, they will have to leave, and if they won’t go voluntarily they must be forced to leave. And if they won’t budge, they will have to be killed.”

Shocked, and disbelieving what I had just heard, I asked, “Are you talking about genocide?”

His response was: “Well, didn’t God ordain genocide when the Jews went into the Holy Land the first time? Were the Jews not ordered to kill every man, woman and child, along with every animal? Were they not called upon to exercise genocide back then? The God who ordered genocide back when Joshua invaded the Holy Land is the same God we have today.”

I had to tell this Christian that my understanding of God as revealed in Jesus Christ trumps whatever was thought about God back there in Old Testament days. I do not believe that the God who is revealed in Jesus is a God who wills genocide. “If you and I hold opposite positions on this,” I told him, “I am not sure we worship the same God.”

Two things to be said about this. First, when Christian Zionists believe that Christ cannot return until the Jews are in sole possession of the Holy Land, they make Paul into a mistaken man. Paul said that every Christian, at every moment of every day from his time on, should live in the expectancy of the immediate return of Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:1–11). If Paul was right, then let it be said to anyone reading this book that, before you finish this paragraph, a trumpet could sound and Christ could return, whether or not the Jews are sole possessors of the Holy Land. To deny that is to deny what Scripture teaches.

Almost two thousand years ago, Jesus said to his disciples, “This generation shall not pass away till all these things are fulfilled” (Matthew 24:34). Was Jesus lying? His words led those in the early church to fix their attention on Saint John. He was the last surviving disciple, so folks figured the second coming of Christ would have to occur before he died. The early Christians lived with the expectation that Christ’s return was in the immediate future. There isn’t a theologian or a biblical scholar who I know of who will debate the fact that the early church, following the resurrection of Christ, expected Jesus to return at any moment. Are the Christian Zionists then saying, “Oh, those early Christians were wrong. They were mistaken because it’s already been more than two thousand years and Christ hasn’t returned”? Are they suggesting that Jesus was misleading his disciples, and that Paul made a mistake when he challenged the church to live in the expectancy of a Christ who could return at any moment? To think that way, I say, is blasphemy.

The Scriptures talk about the eschaton (the conclusion of history) when Christ returns. Christians shouldn’t talk as though the earth will end by being burnt up by fire. The Bible tells us that there will be a new heaven and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:1).

Isaiah 65 describes this world in wonderful terms. It says that when that great day comes, that everyone will have a decent house to live in. Isaiah tells us that everyone will have a job and that everyone will get the fair pay for his or her labors. That means that there won’t be children in Thailand producing sneakers and being paid only a dollar a day, so that we can buy those sneakers at bargain prices at Walmart and Target.

Children will no longer die in infancy, and old people will live out their long lives in health and wellbeing. That’s a vision of the eschaton that is “good news.” It is a vision of the future that challenges me to work toward those ends in the here and now.

SHANE: One of the clearest signs of hope I’ve seen happened in the West Bank this year; I got to visit a family who are new heroes of mine, the Nassar family. They put a name and a face on the conflict. They are Palestinian Christians who have lived simple lives off the land for generations, until recently. Israeli settlements have been built all around them, and the Israeli government tried to take their land. Unlike most families who lived in communal handshake agreements on land deals, they actually have deeds going back over a hundred years that prove they own their land, which made things tricky for the Israeli government.

As the Nassar family continued living on their land, a new strategy evolved—harassment. Olive trees were uprooted. Piles of boulders were dumped on the road leading to their home, so they couldn’t get any vehicles in and out. Even though they owned the land, they were refused permits for electricity and water. So, they went off the grid and used solar and rainwater collection. When they were refused building structure permits for their home, they started building underground, which is where I got to visit them.

It is one of the most inspirational stories of persistent love and Christ-driven nonviolence I have ever seen. At the front of their property is a sign that reads, “We refuse to be enemies.” After their olive trees were uprooted, a Jewish group caught wind of it and came and helped them replant them all. One story after another of reconciliation. One final attempt was made to buy them out, and the Israeli government offered them a blank check, telling them to name the price, however many millions of dollars they want for their land. But the Nassar family said, “No, there is no price.” They continue to live there and have gotten to know their neighbors. At one point they invited one of the Israeli settlers do dinner. When she came into their house, she started weeping, and said, “You have no water, and we have swimming pools. Something is wrong.” And when asked how they retain hope in the midst of such injustice, they simply say, “Jesus” with a big smile. (4)

Chapter 22. On the Middle East
4. Here’s where you can learn more about the Nassar family: http://www.tentofnations.org. And here are some powerful videos from our last visit: http://vimeo.com/37434264, http://vimeo.com/37416952, and

TONY: To call Israel and Palestine “the Holy Land” is a misnomer when what goes on there is so unholy. Evangelical Christians in this country do not realize that there used to be a large Christian community among the Palestinians that has been dramatically diminished. Many Christians have left Palestine because constraints and difficulties imposed on them by the Israeli government made their lives in Palestine more than they could handle. The Palestinian city of Bethlehem was 80 percent Christian twenty-five years ago. Today it’s down to 15 percent Christian. (1)

Thousands and thousands of Palestinian Christians have fled Bethlehem because they could no longer live freely in the city in which they had grown up. For them, Bethlehem became an occupied city. The harassment and the difficulty that goes with getting in and out of Bethlehem through Israeli checkpoints is just one of the things that makes life there unbearable for them.

Resolutions of the United Nations calling for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands have been regularly ignored by the Israeli government. This is significant because the state of Israel would not exist if the UN had not created the Israeli nation with a resolution in 1947. Israelis want UN resolutions that guarantee the continued existence of the Israeli state, but they do not want to obey UN resolutions that call for the just return of occupied territory to the Palestinians. The UN policy is that when any war ends, no nation has the right to keep any land they have occupied during the war as a result of military conquests.

When President Obama said he wanted the borders of Israel and Palestine to be re-established as they were in 1967 prior to the Six- Day War, he was declaring only what is legal and right according to international law. Nevertheless, the president’s proposal caused an uproar across this country. There were protests from the leaders of both political parties. Members of Congress knew that the American Evangelical Zionists, who number in the millions, would be on their backs if there was even a hint of asking Israel to give up any land it had taken from the Palestinians prior to 1967.

It should be noted that President Obama did not demand that Israel go back to the borders established by the UN in 1947. He was compromising by saying that the borders should be as they were in 1967, but that was not acceptable to Christian Zionists. When the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, told the US Congress that Israel would never return to the borders of 1967, he was given a standing ovation. Those politicians knew right well what Evangelical Zionists, as well as a significant number of Christians in mainline denominations, were expecting of them. Therefore, in spite of what they knew were Israel’s violations of rulings from the World Court and the UN, they affirmed the Israeli prime minister. The Israeli government has established hundreds of illegal settlements on Palestinian land, yet because of the political pressure exerted by Christian Zionists, most of those in Congress are unwilling to raise their voices in opposition. More than 300,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. (2)

SHANE: With three bodyguards for every Israeli settler.

TONY: In addition to that, Israelis have built roads from Israel proper to each of these settlements. Israelis have constructed fences and walls along these roads so that Palestinian people cannot travel freely, even to visit relatives who live as little as a hundred yards away on the other side of the road, without going through a checkpoint into Israel proper and coming back on the other side of these walled roads.

Not long ago I spoke at a conference at the Bethlehem Bible College and had the opportunity to talk with Palestinian Christians whose homes had been leveled by Israeli bulldozers in order to make room for these illegal settlements. In several cases, these houses were on land that had been in their families for generations. This is, quite simply, the robbery of land and the illegal destruction of private property, yet the painful reality is that American Christians seldom ask what kind of justice this is.

SHANE: While in Palestine, the team I was traveling with visited a settlement to hear their perspective. Essentially, one of the settlers said, “God gave us this land. Anyone who has a problem with that needs to take it up with God.” He was kind enough to take questions, so I asked him what it said about the character of God if God seems to care more about folks on one side of the wall than folks on the other.

I told him that the God that I know is a God that heard the cry of the Israelites in their captivity, when they were slaves, and continues to hear the cry of the suffering. And I started to mention Jesus, but he stopped me and said, “I’m not a Christian.” But the golden rule to “love your neighbors as yourself” is not just a New Testament rule (Leviticus 19:18). It’s a rule of the Torah too. And when our theology gets in the way of loving our neighbors, it is time to rethink our theology.

TONY: What’s interesting about this theology is that many evangelical Christians point to Genesis 12 and 18 and say, “See, this land was promised to the seed of Abraham.” A Muslim Palestinian pointed out to me that while the Jews are the seed of Abraham, the Arabs are also the seed of Abraham. Abraham had a son named Isaac with his wife Sarah and another son named Ishmael whose mother was Hagar. Jews are the descendents of Isaac, and Muslims are the descendents of Ishmael, but both are the seeds of Abraham.

Ishmael is acknowledged as Abraham’s son and Ishmael’s descen- dents are cited as descents of Abraham (Genesis 25:12–17). Both were his seed, as would be their children and all who would be born into their two families for generations to come.

I realize that there are other Scripture passages suggesting that only the Jews are entitled to this land, because the Bible also says that the children of Jacob should inherit the Holy Land. But Scripture makes it is clear that Jacob could not fulfill the prophecies of the restoration of Israel without reconciling with his brother Esau. Certainly Jesus declares that if there is a problem of alienation with a brother, that reconciliation must take place before there can be any kind of worship of God (Matthew 5:23). In our day, we are given an ongoing ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18), and to that end we must work to bring Jews and Arabs together with justice for both groups.

The future of the Jewish people will be primarily in relationship with Jesus Christ; Scripture says that all people become one in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:23). The future of Gentiles and their salvation is in Jesus Christ, and the salvation of the Jews is also in Jesus Christ. Through Christ, we all become part of the same family of faith. God wants for the Jewish people what he wants for the Palestinian people. As Christians we become one with the Jews, and together we become the new Israel (Romans 9:25ff, 10:10–13). Nevertheless, I still think the Jews will have a special place in the “end times,” according to God’s plans, but I am still trying to figure out what that place will be.

SHANE: Do you have some suggestions of real concrete possibilities? Obviously, as outsiders, it’s not our place to pre- scribe all the answers, but we both know tons of folks on the ground, and you’ve been actively involved in these negotiations for decades. Any thoughts on a way forward that might help solve the problems of the Jews and the Palestinians?

TONY: There are two dominant issues that keep peace from being established in the Middle East. First, there’s the problem of the Palestinian refugees who are living in the Gaza Strip on the West Bank. They want what they call “the right of return.” In the midst of the two wars in 1948 and 1967, many Palestinians fled to the West Bank and to the Gaza Strip when the Israeli army moved in and took over their land. Palestinian villages and their vineyards were taken away from them. One of the Palestinian demands is the right to go back and live on the land that was once theirs and to repossess the homes that they believe were illegally taken from them.

The Israeli government reasonably says, “We can’t let the Palestinians return. Not now! Over the last fifty years they have reproduced at such a high birth rate that if they return to that land that is now within the borders of Israel, they would outnumber the Jews and, hence, they could vote the state of Israel out of existence.” For the Israelis this is a real and understandable concern.

The second major barrier to peace is that the Palestinians in the Gaza strip and the West bank demand that the illegal Jewish settle- ments be dismantled and the Israeli settlers be sent back to where they came from. But the present Israeli government is unwilling to give back any of that land. The Israelis are not about to dismantle the extensive housing they have built on that land, nor are they willing to drive the more than 300,000 Jews who live in those houses out of their homes.

SHANE: Just give the Palestinians back the keys to their houses, right? Or maybe the keys to the settlements?

TONY: Here is a proposal that was drawn up by the political science department of Princeton University; it is called the “Condominium Solution.” (3)

First, it states that there should be a two-state solution. It is proposed that Israel should have a state with safe and secure borders; and that Palestine should also have a state with safe and secure borders. Additionally, each state should have a fully recognized government. Both of these nations would have capitals in Jerusalem. There is a section of Jerusalem, now referred to as East Jerusalem, which belongs to the Palestinians, and this section of the city should be set aside as the capital for this new Palestinian state. The Israelis would have the rest of Jerusalem for their capital.

Second, all people who are of Jewish descent would be required to be citizens of the state of Israel, regardless of where they live. Whether these Jews live in Israel proper, the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip, those of Jewish descent would be have to be citizens of the state of Israel.

On the other hand, every person of Arab descent would have to become a citizen of the new state of Palestine. That means that the Arabs who live within the legal borders of Israel and who have Israeli citizenship would have to give up their Israeli citizenship and become citizens of the Palestinian state. This would be hard for Arabs who are presently Israeli citizens, since they have enjoyed many benefits by being Israeli citizens.

Third, and most important, both Jews and Arabs could live anywhere they wanted in the Holy Land. It means that the Arabs could return to land in Israel proper and the Jews could continue to live in the settlements. Since Jews and Arabs would be mixed up together living side by side, Hamas would probably have to give up lobbing rockets into Israeli territory because by doing so they would be just as likely to kill their own people as their “enemies.” There would be Palestinians living alongside Jews within Israel and Jews in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank living alongside Arab peoples.

Only Jews would be allowed to vote in Israeli elections, so the Israeli government would not have to worry that Palestinians living within Israel proper could vote the state of Israel out of existence. That would be the case even if Palestinians outnumbered Jews within the borders of Israel. Palestinians would only be able to vote in Palestinian elections, and Jews could only be allowed to vote in the Jewish election no matter where Jews and Palestinians lived.

Of course, the United States would have to put up a lot of money for Palestinians to buy back land and buildings that the Israelis have developed in wonderful ways over the last half century, but that would cost a lot less money than we’re now spending to make the Israeli army the fourth strongest in the world and also to underwrite the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Better still, the United Nations ought to carry some of this financial burden since it created the problem in the first place.

When I presented this plan to both officials in the Israeli government and to elected Palestinian officials, I got the sense that they saw the plan as workable. If we are called to be agents of reconciliation, we cannot simply allow the hardened positions that differing Christian groups have established in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to remain in place. As Red Letter Christians, we have a calling to come up with proposals that offer both these groups a way to live together in peace.

SHANE: Another reason the United States is so deeply invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the biblical issue of the end times. The word eschatology means the study of eschaton, or the end times. This is the backdrop of much of the conflict in Israel-Palestine. In fact, Israel is the biggest recipient of US foreign aid. It can feel like we are stocking up weapons and preparing for the apocalypse.

It’s interesting because in one sense folks are saying, “We love the Jews. God bless Israel.” But then if you press them, the same folks will say, “But if you don’t become a Christian, then you’re going to go to hell.”

To be continued tomorrow…

Chapter 22. On the Middle East
1. An interview with Alex Awad, Dean of Students, Bethlehem Bible
College, March 8, 2012 [[publication details? personal interview?]].
2. Central Intelligence Agency, “The Middle East: West Bank,” in The
World Factbook, March 21, 2012, CIA Website. https://www.cia.gov/
library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html.
3. Russell Nieli, “The Marriage of a One-State and Two-State Solution,”
Tikkum, July/August 2009, 33.