Israel, the Church, and Cultural Witness

January 4, 2024

 

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.”

C. S. Lewis.

 

We all like to think of ourselves as courageous. Church leaders today are quick to disparage earlier generations of Christians, who in their opinion failed to stand with the oppressed, be they the victims of slavery, racial segregation, or the Nazi genocidal regime. If only they had been there, they would not have looked the other way. While rear-view courage may be sincere and noble, is it of any real value?

 

There is nothing like the harsh glare of reality to test anyone’s claim to moral superiority.

 

Case in point. On October 7, Israel was the victim of a vicious attack by Hamas. 1200 civilians murdered, 240 hostages taken back to Gaza, women, children, many of them raped, mutilated, and desecrated, 40 babies murdered, several beheaded. Not since the holocaust have so many Jews died in one day.

 

Even before Israel retaliated, thousands had taken to the streets of major cities throughout the world to support Hamas, calling for the liberation of Palestine and the destruction of Israel: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

 

It became clear that these protests had little to do with the sober negotiation of territorial boundaries. Something much more sinister was and is still going on. Hamas’s self-proclaimed objective remains the killing of every Jew in Israel. Whether the pro-Palestinian protestors realize it or not, they are, de facto, also calling for the destruction of Israel and the persecution of Jews wherever they may be found.

 

What we are witnessing is the reemergence of antisemitism on a global scale, Nazism on steroids, as award-winning historian Andrew Roberts demonstrates in a recent article. The protests don’t only target the nation of Israel. They are intended to intimidate Jewish people everywhere. To quote a Jewish lady I talked to a few days after the Hamas invasion: “I can’t even go to Sobeys without feeling I have a target on my back!”

 

The current conflict is a matter of life and death for the Jews in Israel and for the Jews around the world. Only an Ivy League university student could fail to see the harbingers of the darkness that engulfed Germany from 1933 to 1945.

 

For the most part, Canadian evangelical churches have avoided being in the public eye when it comes to addressing the culture wars the West is experiencing.

 

But as antisemitism rears its ugly head once again, perhaps the time has come for those who severely judge the church of the past to ask themselves whether they may not also be “looking the other way.”

 

This question is primarily addressed to evangelical churches. Mainline protestant and other left-leaning churches have, for decades, shown little restraint when it comes to expressing public support for one cause or another, most notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which unfortunately they only and always view through a neo-Marxian oppressed/oppressors lens.

 

The reflection I propose comes from someone who identifies with the evangelical movement. It is not meant as a rebuke but as a friendly encouragement to reconsider how we ought to respond to the most seminal issues of our time.

 

If the present tsunami of antisemitism is not sufficient to trigger such a self-examination, what will? One might argue that if the yearly termination of 100,000 unborn babies is not sufficiently arresting to deserve a mention on a church website, it may in fact be too much to expect October 7 and its aftermath to register on the ecclesiastical radar. The severity of the current situation demands, however, that churches carefully reconsider the nature of their public witness. 

 

The reasons for this visceral impulse to stay on the sidelines turn out to be quite reasonable. Here is a sample of the most common ones.

 

1. Pastors would rather not exacerbate the ideological tensions already latent among members, particularly so in this post-covid recovery period.

 

2. The desire to reach their neighbours with the good news of the gospel plays a major part in the Swiss-like neutrality churches often exhibit. They hope that by not taking a public stand, they will avoid offending potential converts and future members.

 

3. Pastors not infrequently justify their reluctance to lead their church into the public square by observing that individual church members are free to get involved in the broader political process.

 

4. There is, of course, the rarely expressed but real fear that taking a stand on an issue that inconveniently skirts the political sphere may be interpreted as partisan and lead to a review of the church’s charitable status.  

 

5. Another factor is a chronic lack of resources. Being conversant with the issues and educating the congregation require time and energy, commodities that are often in short supply.

 

6. The concern over being associated with the American Christian Right constitutes another reason for remaining below the political radar. In left-leaning churches, the fear of “sending the wrong signal” in this respect is so palpable that they will spare no effort to avoid taking a stand on any issue that might be interpreted as supporting a conservative position.

 

To borrow an apt metaphor from our national sport, these may all well be good reasons for not jumping on the ice too hastily. And to be fair, this sober posture has probably spared the church a black eye on more than one occasion.

 

While there is something to be said for being cautious, are there not situations where caution and her half-sister, silence, could reasonably be interpreted as indifference, acquiescence, or approval?

 

Are there not instances where being neutral may just look like to an outside observer as “looking the other way”? Is it conceivable that what seems prudent today will be viewed by future generations as cowardly?

 

Considering the existential ramifications of October 7, it may well be the trigger evangelicals need to initiate this urgent conversation.

           

Pierre Gilbert Ph.D.

Associate Professor Emeritus

Canadian Mennonite University