“Christ at the Checkpoint 4:

The Gospel in the Face of Religious Extremism”

– What would Christ say and do if he were to stand in front of a checkpoint today?

The conference was organised by Palestinian Christians through the Bethlehem Bible College and takes place alternate years in Bethlehem. This year there were 300 delegates from around the world, though the majority were American. There were about 20 from the UK and quite a good number of Palestinian Christians.

I must admit that I was expecting to find some of the messages from this conference difficult. Instead, I found myself chatting to mainly Americans about what it meant to be Evangelical and some said they no longer knew what it meant themselves. So I felt much more at home than expected.

There was a very good introduction to the theme on the first evening, which is really summed up by these slides:

During the morning of the first full day a lot of time was spent looking at Islam in a realistic way. It was pointed out that it is neither a violent nor peaceful religion in exactly the same way that both Judaism and Christianity are neither and both. We need to be realistic and open. The media is very selective and our judgement is based on less than 1% of the Muslim population. There are many texts that are similar between Islam and Christianity.

We looked at what creates intolerance in any religion and noted that the Holy Land has never belonged exclusively to the Jews, even as written by Jews in the Bible. – Look at the
genealogy of Jesus which includes non Jews

Democracy on its own is not enough in any country, because it can just become the tyranny of the majority. It needs a bill of rights to go with it as well as a system of accountability. The Egyptian democracy failed for that reason as it has in other places. Where the Christian West has tried to impose democracy on countries, such a tyranny has sadly often been the outcome. It was acknowledged that many of the problems in  the Middle East have been caused by Christians – Bush and Blair to name but two.

The biggest failure of Christians is to be provoked into violence. It is much tougher to restrain from violence. If you fight back you are preaching the gospel of ISIS or Boko Haram. We must not use the same weapons as the enemy. You cannot fight for humanity by dehumanizing the other. We need to bring down all the walls and build bridges instead.
A log in our own eye is what blinds us to the other and fear is such a log. We need a strategy of pre-emptive love! We cannot bomb our way to peace. etc.

OK, I know, it is a tough and some would say unrealistic message, BUT if you think that most of those at the conference were from the USA and they are studying and tackling Christian extremism in the USA, then it is all hopeful, even if it is a very long term strategy. We may not be able to reach those already in ISIS, but we can reach out to ordinary Muslims and their children and show them acceptance and love rather than prejudice and violence.

The following day we specifically studied Christian Zionism. These are two of the slides explaining Christian Zionism.

One of the important messages from the conference is that Christianity should NEVER be forced on anyone. It is inclusive and should be shared, but only as an invitation, not as a command. I liked that.

It was wonderful to have Sami Awad introduce the subject and speak on it as well as Munther Isaac who was superb.

Christian Zionism appears to go totally against Jesus’s Gospel message of love and inclusivity and has the effect of making the Palestinian Christians little more than an irritation or ignores them entirely along with the rest of the Palestinian population.
One slide asks if Jews have a divine right to inhabit Israel, which conveniently forgets that it was and still is, partly at least, Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was
mentioned, of course, and the fact that Balfour had no intention of consulting the Palestinians, but just wanted to impose the consequences of Zionism on them.

In the afternoon we went on a field trip to Jerusalem. Although I have heard much of it before and seen the various sites, I always learn something new. We were led by a member of the Israeli human rights group called Ta’aush -http://www.taayush.org/ (Israelis & Palestinians striving together to end the Israeli occupation and to achieve full civil equality through daily non-violent direct-action.) I asked about Ezra, who has been treated very badly by Israel and was told that he is recovering from a slight stroke after his time in the Israeli jail. I remember herding sheep across the South Hebron Hills with Ezra and Ta’ayush when I served as an EA. A great man and part of a brave organisation.

This was followed, the next day, by a study of Jewish extremism. Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights was one of the speakers. Another great man who has also seen the inside of too many Israeli jails.