A few weeks ago the New York Times found it newsworthy that a group of black ministers spoke out in opposition to US/Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Not all US Christians are pro-right wing Zionism! Yes, it’s worth noticing.
The problem is how such reporting is symptomatic. First let’s be clear: as a rough generalization, US church people probably divide—by political party, FOX vs. NPR as news source, and generation—about the same as the rest of the populace over Israel/Palestine. People who skew older and/or rightward on a Christian spectrum tend to be pro-Zionist while hogging a lot of bandwidth, but on the ground this is largely balanced on the liberal side. Some of the mainline denominations that have had a long-term missionary presence in Israel/Palestine have a strong track record of support for Palestinians.
An impressive group of US ecumenical leaders—including many top leaders of large denominations and organizations—has been on record since the very beginning of this war with statements at least as a strong as the more recent one from the black clergy. Here are some representative examples, first from the United Church of Christ, then from a broad ecumenical cohort, then the main Lutheran denomination. It would be easy to multiply these and find more pointed critiques from activist subgroups with these church networks. Here’s a stronger, more international, example.
If such statements have been covered in the news, I missed it, and I would have noticed if they had been trumpeted. “Naturally” this was ignored because conventional wisdom has been steady for decades—mainline denominations are declining unto death. Accordingly, hardly any Christians besides “normal” ones—conservative evangelicals—matter, although with some exceptions for moderate evangelicals, plus black churches (only every other day, since on off days they dissolve into “the evangelical”), plus, slightly off to the side, Roman Catholics who are also treated largely as conservative. That’s despite Pope Francis standing left of most Democrats on most issues and occasionally being deemed newsworthy for demanding a ceasefire. (As I’ve been working on this post, the top liberal Catholic journal, Commonweal, posted this editorial.) But white liberal Protestants “as we all know” are nearly irrelevant.
In fact, all of these groups matter: moderate white evangelicals, black church people, liberal Catholics, plus the mainline churches (except insofar as they, too, get lost in “the evangelical” every other day, for example if certain Presbyterians respond to pollsters in ways that get them lumped there.) Their cumulative demographic footprint far outweighs the hardcore Christian right and is at least least twenty times larger than a Jewish footprint. These groups especially matter in swing states, where they are at the heart of the swings. I have written about this many times, and don’t want to bog down there now.
Today I want to complain about another symptomatic problem. I want to say to liberal Protestants that, in large part, it is also their own fault that people don’t take them seriously!
Sources of Paralysis
I first looked up the above statements calling for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians—which I knew I could find—because my minister in East Tennessee, leader of one of the most left-trending and activist Christian churches in town, was dismayingly slow and timid about speaking out on this issue. In the first crucial weeks in October and November he barely even called for a ceasefire, making do mainly with “let’s pray for both sides” rhetoric. This was not because he was ignoring the crisis or unsympathetic to a ceasefire. Mainly he hesitated as he came up against a line that Jewish opinion leaders have been trying to enforce. According to this line of thought, if you say pretty much anything critical about Israeli polices, supposedly this is anti-Semitic. Of course this is not exactly news, since everyone saw a high-profile version of it in the Congressional ambush of the college presidents. However, in church contexts this has an extra layer. Any criticism is said to echo in alarmingly traumatic ways, deepening ruts in long legacies of Jewish suffering at the hands of Christians. All this will contribute to a huge upsurge in U.S. anti-Semitism that is supposedly happening now. I have no doubt that he was sincerely worried about this.
There’s a problem, though. Of course we know that Christian anti-Semitism has been a grave problem, historically and still today. (Let’s not forget, the center of this is on the right—for example, the “fine people” endorsed by Trump who chanted “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville.) However, we don’t know whether there really has been a major upsurge of anti-Semitic incidents in the US. This is claimed incessantly, and it is plausible, but we don’t know how serious it has been, much less how close its weight comes to the severe harassment and sometimes violence against US Palestinians. Many assertions about rising anti-Semitism count all forms of protest against Israel as anti-Semitic. (This important analysis gives much-needed texture—for example, it shows how a key study counted twenty-three times more “pro-Palestinian rallies” than “physical assaults” as evidence for a supposed 360% rise in “incidents.”) At one stroke this functions as an apology for extreme atrocities in Gaza and trivializes the meaning of anti-Semitism.
But it works. It paralyzes the mainline Protestant voice. This confirms the bias that they are irrelevant because they are wishy-washy.
On some issues, on some days, I cut mainline churches slack for their cautious instincts. For better and for worse, it is part and parcel of these churches being spaces with a potential—realized potential often enough to be non-trivial despite inconsistency—for “swing state” dialogue and persuasion as opposed to siloed polarization. Also, there are commendable parts of Christian-Jewish dialogue and cooperation that risk unraveling in this moment. Let’s not overplay this latter worry, since many of such dialogues are now “interfaith” with a strong Jewish/Christian/Muslim aspect. This means that anything interfaith dialoguers say will alienate someone, whether Zionists, Muslims, anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinian Christians, half of all other US Christians, plus anyone who thinks least-common denominator waffling is not adequate for the current crisis. Still, keeping dialogues afloat, yeah that matters too.
But cutting slack is not where I want to focus today.
Early in the U.S./Israeli attacks, the leading journalistic voice of ecumenical Christians, the Christian Century, could have amplified the ecumenical statements, as well as Francis’s voice, and significantly influenced ministers like mine. It could have helped put the Biden Administration on notice, somewhat as voters have been doing recently in places like Michigan, that key constituents who matter a great deal for the balance of power in swing states are not willing to be silent about the atrocities and do not think the smallish steps that centrist Democrats have started to take are anywhere near enough. (In fact, some such people are rethinking their loyalties to both Biden and wishy-washy liberal churches.) Instead the journal published a statement that essentially hid behind a rock. It reflected, oh so cautiously, on some of the gaps between how Jewish and Palestinian people tend to frame the issues—both sides feel vulnerable and oppressed, so if we need to choose between aiding an underdog David (with God on his side!) or an evil Goliath, they both have a “story” to explain why they are David. It’s complicated and we should weigh both stories more or less equally.
I’ve been in contexts where this sort of balancing act, calling for respectful listening on both sides in search of constructive solutions, can move key people a step forward. So I might have cut the Century slack, pondering the work its contribution could do on a case by case basis— if not for its glaring failure to demand an immediate cease-fire while weighing the relative merits of its two stories. It is a deal-breaker to leave out such a basic point, which is the bare minimum to get to first base.
Above this bedrock flaw was non-seriousness about addressing the problems. Granted, calling for any solutions would have been tricky for the Century's goals. The editor would have needed to introduce a third story about the highly disproportionate role of Israeli/US policies in creating the weaknesses their article wrung its hands about, the idea that Israel has “no one to negotiate with”—other than Hamas presented as an obvious non-starter. This walking on eggshells approach was the clearest place where bias showed through the surface efforts at balance. Close behind that was the huge dog not barking—that the US is heavily funding the violence.
Rethink or Double Down?
As the carnage has been grinding on—including with intentionally imposed mass starvation along with the murders and mass-scale decimation of homes, hospitals, schools, and water supplies—my minister has begun to speak out more forcefully. However, the Century has doubled down with a piece called “Ten Ways Christians Can Criticize Israel That Aren’t Antisemitic.” Here again, the ideas aren’t all bad, especially if we imagine floating them within a divided congregation in a swing state. There are ten proposals which, as the authors instruct, would be “permissible” for Christians to voice alongside like-minded Jews. If pursued seriously, some of these might move us some small way forward—and none would get their advocates accused, by these authors at least, of being anti-Semitic. Here one’s mileage may vary. As discussed here, the Vatican’s careful interfaith diplomacy was called out as anti-Semitic simply for noting that “Israel’s right to self-defense, which has been invoked to justify this operation, must be proportional, and with thirty thousand dead it certainly isn’t.”
Overall, the critiques floated as permissable are either fairly narrow—for example, calling on Benjamin Netanyahu to resign and for getting more aid into Gaza through Egypt—or fairly vague, such as “efforts to remove settlements from the West Bank” and “creat[ing] preconditions for a Palestinian state.” They come packaged in a heavy stress on contextualizing the proposals in light of Christian anti-Semitism, so that (as the authors put it) it will not turn out be “a foregone conclusion that Christians and Jews must be stuck in a relationship of predator and prey…that with regularity grows into sibling hatred and even fratricide.”
Unfortunately the 11th and 12th bare minimum criticisms needed to make this list credible as a platform for compromise are missing. Once again, it doesn’t get to first base because there is no call for a ceasefire. Also missing is a call for serious money spent immediately to begin rebuilding what has been destroyed in Gaza and addressing the desperately acute suffering. At the very least the US should contribute money on par with what it has spent (still spends today!) on funding the destruction, and I believe it should go much further than that.
Since the proposals largely try to breath life into left-for-dead visions of a two-state solution—which for decades have co-existed with steady Palestinian disempowerment—the platform sounds all too much like a conquering US general pitching a revised treaty to Lakota or Cherokee people after having broken many earlier ones. Could certain new treaties help? Might they enable certain outcomes less bad than some alternatives? Sure, that's imaginable—but not without addressing how past bad faith negotiations have functioned as cover for ongoing settler colonialism.
Speaking of settler colonialism, this is one of the many things deemed impermissible for Christians to say. Supposedly it would be anti-Semitic to notice and say out loud that Israel’s policies are mentionable as genocidal (here is a compelling and summary of the UN evidence for this charge), are part of wider colonialist patterns, and include apartheid. But this article will not make such charges go away. There is too much evidence for them. Many Jewish people of course concur, but Christians have a perfect right and responsibility to notice and say so too. Stipulating that one should not do this will not change this situation. It will make some people even more determined to speak while throwing into doubt many claims about rising “anti-Semitic incidents” if we’re stipulating that stating basic points like this adds to the tally.
To repeat: I don’t doubt that some recent incidents—and obviously also the legacies of Christian anti-Semitism—are serious. But two implications of what I’ve said are that many such incidents are really no more than commendable critiques of war crimes, and the discussion is not being framed in good faith. This trivializes the serious matter of anti-Semitism. And let’s be serious about contexts— who is the main predator and who is the prey in the current moment?
How Does It Feel?
On the day I read the Century’s second piece, I received an email from Century editors whose portfolio is sparking up “community engagement” of subscribers. They solicited responses to a prompt: “In ten words or fewer, how are you feeling about what’s happening these days in Israel, Gaza, and the surrounding region?
I doubt that these editors consciously decided to narrow the discussion to feelings. But this too was symptomatic. Far too much discourse assumes the following logic:
Israeli/US forces commit flagrant war crimes (which likely don’t even advance Jewish self-interest)
protesters on campuses and elsewhere speak out to try to stop the crimes.
major Jewish voices claim that criticism is illegitimate and makes them feel unsafe.
such feelings are treated as more important than literally genocidal physical violence—while the safety of Palestinians and/or protestors (often themselves Jewish) is bracketed.
Sadly, middle-of-the-road Christian churches, with their investment in tolerance and interfaith dialog, are easily paralyzed by such trains of thought. This is how it comes to be partly their own fault when outfits like the Times ignore them. They become guilty as charged: wishy-washy.
Here’s my response to the prompt, which I share not because it is a great poem but because it says what I want to say in conclusion.
Ten words or fewer?
How about “never again
that’s for anyone”
But how do I feel?
That it’s despicable
what we’re paying for
and I feel dirty
now simply remembering
my complacency.
It is genocide
even if supposedly
we shouldn’t say that.
And my own large rage
with relatively small cause,
might one learn from that?
Do I have six left?
Never mind feelings, just
defund genocide.
Photo credits: Thanks to Hadyn Blackwell at https://www.flickr.com/photos/haydn/48603389076/ and his creative commons license, also Juan Cole and the great people at Portside.org (please support them!) from the article linked above.