Palestinian Evangelicals Call Western Church to Repentance, Criticized in Return
Middle East Christians assert their rejection of violence as they relate frustration with lack of Western recognition of the reality of occupation and the collateral damage of bombing campaigns.
Image: Ali Jadallah / Anadolu / Getty Images
Search and rescue efforts in the historical Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church after an [Israeli] airstrike in Gaza.
Since the outbreak of war after unprecedented terror attacks on [Israel] by Hamas, Middle Eastern churches, councils, and leaders have expressed their outrage over the killing of thousands of innocent civilians.
Many Arab Christian groups have issued public statements. Most emphasized the Christian call to be peacemakers. Several have been criticized for what some see as calls not specifically addressing the suffering of civilian Jews targeted for death by terrorists.
Originating from Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon—with most prompted by the tragic bombing of the Anglican hospital in Gaza—the public statements range in focus and intensity. Some assert the international community overlooks the context of occupation by the [Israeli] state; others remind the global church of the continued Christian presence in the land.
CT studied texts from nine Arab and four Western organizations, most of evangelical conviction, and queried the perspective of an [Israeli] Messianic Jew and a Lebanese Armenian evangelical. The review found that few Middle Eastern statements have named Hamas as the perpetrator of terrorism, while many specifically criticize [Israel] itself.
One of the most recent statements is from Musalaha, which names both.
The Jerusalem-based reconciliation ministry works with [Israelis] and Palestinians from diverse religious backgrounds using biblical principles to engage the issues that divide them in pursuit of peace. After two weeks painfully watching the widespread carnage, its public statement centered on “lament” and called for a reconciling response.
“We lament people who, in the name of justice, have allowed rage to perpetuate the cycle of dehumanization and excuse bloodshed; as seen with Hamas’ attacks and the [Israeli] army’s response,” stated Musalaha. “We invite both Palestinians and [Israelis] to see the dignity and humanity of the other by non-violently co-resisting together for a better future.”
The region’s most representative Christian body, however, was bluntly specific about the suffering it asserts the Jewish nation-state is imposing on Gaza.
“What the Palestinian people are exposed to in Gaza is not a military reaction to a military action,” stated the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), “but rather a genocide and ethnic cleansing, targeting the detainees of the largest prison in human history—and with premeditation.”
Its statement, the starkest of the nine Arab ones surveyed, called the war a “war of extermination,” and called for “all honorable people” to intervene.
Dr. Michel Abs, Secretary General of the MECC, told CT he recognized that what he calls “the Zionist entity” was attacked and responded—and that it should have stopped there.
The MECC focused on denouncing [Israel] for cutting off water in the densely populated coastal strip, the destruction of medical infrastructure, and the collateral deaths of defenseless citizens. It called to stop the aggression, to lift the siege of Gaza, and to hold what Abs called “the occupying forces” accountable.
Member churches in the MECC include Catholic, Orthodox, and many Protestant denominations—most of which are called “Evangelical,” per local usage. Yet while “mainline” differences known in the American Christian landscape are not as distinct in the Arab world, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) incorporates bodies not represented in the MECC.
“We are generally in agreement [with the MECC statement], without necessarily adhering to each word,” said Dr. Paul Haidostian, Acting President of the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East, a reformed Church of pietistic expression and not a WEA affiliate, President of Haigazian University, and MECC President for the Evangelical Family. “But are there elements of extermination in the current war? I would think yes.”
Jack Sara, General Secretary of the regional Middle East and North Africa evangelical alliance, helped craft the official WEA response to the “Holy Land conflict.” But he agreed with the MECC statement as well.
“With thousands of Palestinians dying nonstop, it clearly describes the facts on the ground,” he said. “If anything, it falls short in beseeching the world to intervene.”
Analysts have noted that Hamas embeds itself in civilian areas, and that the [Israel] Defense Forces (IDF) often issues warnings before striking residential structures. In preparation of an anticipated ground invasion, the IDF called on noncombatants to evacuate northern Gaza; Hamas told them to remain in place.
The United Nations, however, has stated that Gaza already represents a humanitarian catastrophe with more than 6,500 killed and a million displaced as of October 26, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry. Responding to Hamas terrorism and the deaths of 1,400 citizens, mostly civilians, [Israel’s] dilemma is stark, as the urban warfare necessary to pursue terrorist leaders in Gaza will further deteriorate local conditions and increasingly inflame much global opinion.
But watching many in the United States and wider evangelical world rally behind [Israel], Sara’s Bethlehem Bible College (BBC) cosigned a Palestinian Christian statement of significant rebuke, calling “Western church leaders and theologians” to repent.
It opened by quoting the prophet Isaiah: Learn to do right; seek justice; defend the oppressed (1:17).
“Western attitudes towards Palestine–[Israel] suffer from a glaring double standard that humanizes [Israeli] Jews while insisting on dehumanizing Palestinians and whitewashing their suffering,” it stated. “With a broken heart, we hold [such leaders] accountable for their theological and political complicity.”
While grieving the “renewed cycle of violence” and condemning “all attacks on civilians,” it chided the failure of Christian leaders to mention the “wider context and root causes” of the war—including ongoing occupation and 17 years of the Gaza blockade. And three-quarters of the local population, it reminded, is descended from Palestinians displaced in the conflict that followed the 1948 establishment of [Israel], which denies their proclaimed right of return.
Sara complained that in the months prior to the war, extremist Jews and [Israeli] settlers increased attacks on local churches, spitting at priests while international Christians said little. Believers, he said, often feel that they are a “nuisance” to Western proponents of End Times theology, or else of their government’s narrative on the region.
“We are praying that the church would be the church, and not a political body that takes sides,” said Sara in a YouTube message. “It is no longer the ethnic background that matters to God—Jesus is no longer only a Jew, he is everything to everyone.”
One Messianic Jewish leader called the joint statement “reprehensible.”
Not only did the Palestinian Christians fail to denounce or mention Hamas or terrorism, stated Michael Brown, host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program, their statement repeated “libelous claims” that [Israel] intentionally bombed al-Ahli Arab hospital on October 17 as well as St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox church on October 19. (The IDF determined the hospital deaths were caused by a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad militants, while acknowledging the church deaths were caused by one of its missiles targeted at a nearby building.)
Furthermore, Brown critiqued the statement for engaging in “standard leftwing tropes” that equate settler colonialism with the return of Jews to their ancient homeland.
“We want to show solidarity as brothers and sisters in Jesus,” said Brown, who has participated in BBC’s Christ at the Checkpoint conferences. “[But] repent of this deeply flawed call to repentance so that together, we can pursue righteousness, goodness, equity, and mercy.”
The president of the Evangelical Alliance of [Israel] compared signatories to a battered wife.
“Most Middle Eastern Christians are not at liberty to speak out and condemn Islamist violence,” said Danny Kopp. “The social, and often physical, cost is just too high to contemplate.”
Instead, they stay silent, deflect, or blame others. Traumatic abuse distorts the capacity for sound moral judgment, he said. But having witnessed the “worst mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust,” Arab believers are at a critical inflection point.
“At just the moment when Christians could have offered a rare ray of light of truth,” Kopp said, “the church has largely relegated itself to a state of moral decay and irrelevance.”
Egyptian evangelicals—however evaluated—spoke out from the beginning.
The Presidency of the Protestant Churches of Egypt (PCE), a member of both the MECC and WEA, was one of the first regional bodies to issue a statement. Only one day after the Hamas massacre on October 7, it issued a nonspecific condemnation of “all forms of violence and armed conflict between Palestinians and [Israelis],” noting the attacks on innocent civilians.
A second statement, the PCE said, backed Egyptian government policy to supply humanitarian aid. But three statements next followed in quick succession, shifting the focus to [Israeli] abuses. The PCE condemned the bombing of the Gaza hospital, then rejected handling the Palestinian case with military tools. And following the attack that partially destroyed the Gaza church, it expressed “deep concern about the violence directed at residential areas, since the very beginning of the outbreak of events.”
Egypt was the first Arab nation to make a peace treaty with [Israel]. [Israel]’s criticism elsewhere may have led to a shift in certain statements.
What incensed many Arab Christians was that the hospital bombing took place on a day that the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem (PHCJ) called to devote for fasting and prayer. And two days prior, in response to [Israel]’s call to evacuate the north of Gaza, the PHCJ reflected an awareness of Jewish anger as it warned against a “new cycle of violence” that began “with an unjustifiable attack against civilians in [Israel].”
The Jerusalem Christian leaders still did not denounce or mention Hamas, but this statement varied the language from their first reaction the day of the terrorist atrocities. With [Israel] still reeling from the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, the PHCJ had advocated against any harm to “both Palestinian and [Israeli] civilians.”
[Israel]’s envoy to the Vatican was outraged by the “immoral linguistic ambiguity.”
Do Jordan’s evangelicals merit the same reply?
On October 14, the Jordanian Evangelical Alliance (JEC), a member of the WEA but not the MECC, issued a statement to endorse the PHCJ invitation to prayer. But reflecting the will of its five-church constituency, the JEC general assembly voted to avoid specific mention of either [Israel] or Hamas.
A strong minority wanted to name [Israel].
Hamas, said Nabeeh Abbassi, president of the Jordanian Baptist Convention, a JEC member denomination, is viewed as a “liberator” by many Palestinians in Jordan, who make up a significant but contested percentage of the kingdom’s population. Wishing not to be viewed as against this sentiment, the evangelical alliance chose to “not go into politics” and instead focus on a common humanity.
The JEC statement condemned the current “cycle of violence and counterviolence,” though it specified “aggression against the Palestinian people.” Nonetheless, the Sermon of the Mount calls believers be peacemakers, with dialogue and negotiation the necessary means to end an ongoing but unnamed [Israeli] policy of settlement expansion.
“Violence begets violence,” the JEC stated, “occupation creates resistance, and siege results in explosion.”
This sentence is explanation, Abbassi explained, not justification.
“The one who started the trouble is Hamas,” he continued. “[Israel] has the right to defend itself. But then did much worse.”
Abbassi believes too many Western Christians support [Israel] from a faulty application of theology. A dispensationalist himself, the Jordanian pastor said that it is not the job of believers to hurry along God’s eschatological timetable.
He referenced Acts 1:6–8, in which the disciples asked the resurrected Jesus if he would then restore the kingdom to [Israel]. Abbassi pointed to Jesus’ refusal to answer the question, instead calling the believers to be his witnesses.
“If we want to help God, this is what we should do,” Abbassi said. “Not to take sides, but to love both, and share the gospel with all.”
But following what he said was a “brutal raid” on the Anglican hospital, Abbassi said his convention felt compelled to issue a statement of its own, and was later grieved by the strike at the Greek Orthodox church. It blamed an [Israeli]“war machine” policy that targets Muslims and Christians alike, without differentiating between civilians and military personnel.
“Hamas is a group, [Israel] is a state,” Abbassi said. “Hamas is expected to do anything, but I expect [Israel] to do the right thing.”
The Jordanian denominational statement, he said, came from a rare moment of local appreciation. Nearly all Jordanian media called the Gaza hospital “Baptist,” reflecting the popular sentiment established during its administrative identity in the 1967 war.
It was a moment to “show our heart” to the average Jordanian—Abbassi gave three TV interviews after the wake—as well as local Christian agreement with a government policy that defends Palestinian rights while maintaining peace with [Israel], with King Abdullah’s Hashemite kingdom as the historic custodian of Muslim and Christian religious sites in Jerusalem.
Lebanese evangelicals had varying objectives.
“Some wanted a statement to show the government, some to show the Muslims,” said Joseph Kassab, president of the Supreme Council of the Evangelical Community in Syria and Lebanon. “But I wanted it simply to reflect our faith and theology.”
Encouraged by several local leaders to speak out after the hospital explosion, the Lebanese document referenced the “eye for eye” ethic repudiated by Jesus but present, Kassab said, among Jews and Muslims. According to such logic, the statement argued, Hamas’s terrorism might merit equal response, but not double. However [Israel], he said, has upped it ten times in scale.
While deterrence through disproportionate response is part of basic [Israeli] military strategy, Kassab believes Christians should have a different metric.
“You cannot work for peace and reconciliation,” he said, “and give your unconditional support to anyone.”
Instead, in seeking to focus on the need for a just solution for the overall [Israeli]–Palestinian conflict, the Lebanese statement did not name either [Israel] or Hamas as adversaries…
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