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Thanks to the information flow from Palestine/Israel, Americans have been introduced to the Nakba, walls erected within more walls, administrative detention, house demolitions, check points, to name only a few results of Israel’s military Occupation.

by James M Wall

The editorial comment below is reprinted from the Christian Century magazine of November 23, 1977. 

At the time the editorial appeared, I was the editor of the Century. This was the week’s lead editorial.   In 1977, I had been editor for five years, a position I held until 1999.

President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated in January, 1977. Menachem Begin was head of the Likud Party, which won a majority in the Knesset elections held  on May 17, 1977. Menachem Begin became Prime Minister in June, 1977.

At the time this editorial appeared, the new American President had come to the United Nations to meet with the new Israeli Prime Minister. 

I was at the meeting in an editorial capacity. 

The picture was presented to me by the Israeli Counsel’s office. It shows this American editor waiting his turn to interview the Prime Minister.

I am reprinting this editorial 35 years after it first appeared. It was published under the title, “Israel and the Evangelicals”.  As you read this essay from 1977, remember, this editor  had made two earlier trips to the region (I would, in time, make 20 trips there). 

Since my first trip in 1973, I was aware that Menachem Begin represented  the extreme right-wing political perspective in Israel. Liberal Israeli Jews assured me the election of Begin was an unfortunate break in the Labor Party control of Israeli politics.

This too, they were certain, would pass.

The editorial appears exactly as written in 1977. It is my hope that readers will return to 1977, when a liberal ecumenical publication editor still believed that Prime Ministers of Israel meant what they said when they said it.   

“by James M. Wall, Christian Century magazine (November 23, 1977):

A recent full-page advertisement appearing in major US newspapers argues for support of the State of Israel and voices concern over “the recent direction of American foreign policy” in the Middle East.

The signers of the statement “are particularly troubled by the erosion of American governmental support for Israel evident” in the U.S. decision to include the USSR  in planning for the Geneva talks.

Israel has many supporters in this country, and ads of this sort are frequently carried in major newspapers. But this one is different. It comes from persons describing themselves as “evangelical Christians,” including W. A. Criswell (picture below), pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas; entertainer Pat Boone; Harold Lindsell, present editor of Christianity Today; Kenneth Kantzer, editor-elect of that journal; Hudson Armerding, a past president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and Arnold Olson, coordinator and president emeritus of the Evangelical Free Church of America.

This overt evangelical support for Israel aligns a branch of American Protestantism that traditionally has frowned upon religious involvement in political matters with the traditionally liberal U.S. Jewish community.

These ads and this evangelical involvement in a complex political issue are a welcome addition to the dialogue, an indication that prominent evangelical Christians believe that the Christian faith has a word to say regarding secular decision-making.

The newspaper ads — under the heading “Evangelicals’ Concern for Israel” — oppose the joint US-USSR statement on the Geneva Conference. The ads assert that “most evangelicals understand the Jewish homeland generally to include the territory west of the Jordan River,” and oppose the creation of “another nation or political entity” within the historic Jewish homeland.

Since so many evangelicals have traditionally resisted involvement in secular politics — most notably in recent years during the Vietnam war and in the civil rights struggle — it is a reassuring sign to see this development in the Middle East discussion.

While we do not think the solutions to the three points raised in the ad are as simple as those proposed, we are encouraged that prominent evangelicals are joining the discussion, acknowledging that religious people have something to say to secular decision-makers.

The approach taken in the advertisement, however, is not a positive contribution to the discussion. The statement makes a strong case for evangelical empathy with the State of Israel, linking the Old and New Testament traditions, and reminding the public that the people of Israel have a very special place in Christian thought.

But the signers overlook an important difference between evangelical empathy evoked by the biblical tradition and the assertion of a specific territorial claim based on religious Scriptures. The use of religious validation to settle secular conflicts is a misuse of religion and a disservice to politics.

Ours is a multireligious world, filled with a rich variety of tribal, institutional and national beliefs, all yearning toward an understanding of ultimacy. Israel, surrounded by Arab nations that interpret Scripture in quite a different fashion from Jews or Christians, would lean on the weakest possible support if its claim to its 1967 border were to rest even partially on Scripture.

The Israeli Labor Party, which governed Israel from its beginning as a state in 1949 until Prime Minister Menachem Begin, took power in June, had avoided cultivating the kind of American evangelical support expressed in the recent newspaper ads because it knew that to engage in religious arguments over national boundaries would be self-defeating.

While Mr. Begin, on the other hand, has been more willing to employ biblical history to validate Israel’s borders, even his government hints at a willingness to negotiate within modern political realities.

Mr. Begin wants peace in the Middle East, and he wants security for his nation. Those are goals shared by most Americans.

There is strong indication that these goals are also increasingly shared by most Arab leaders, many of whom have been sending signals to the Carter administration that Israel’s right to exist is a foregone conclusion and that negotiations should be conducted with that fact of history in mind.

Even as Begin stakes out his strong beginning position of biblical sanction for Israel’s borders, it is reasonable to assume that his quest for peace and security will lead him finally to accept an agreement that involves borders determined on the basis of secular considerations.

Along with many others who talked to Mr. Begin during his highly successful U.S. trip this past summer, I noted the gleam of the politician in his eye when he said that while he would not permit the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to be represented at Geneva, Israel would not be “checking credentials” of Arabs who come from other countries.

This is a clear invitation which permits Arab participants to provide PLO representation through some face-saving procedural device. In short, Begin, despite his rhetoric, appears nonetheless to be a sensitive political leader who wants peace and security for Israel.

Ironically, then, Israel’s prime minister is being harmed rather than helped by this employing of biblical proof-texts on the part of Christian evangelicals to answer political questions in the Middle East.

The Christian faith, as communicated through tradition, Scripture and history, is a proper foundation for approaching all contemporary secular issues. However, the Bible is not a document that sets forth an international game plan.

Rather, as viewed from a Christian perspective, it embodies the faith of a people, who began with Abraham in their quest for God and who believe that they find God in Jesus Christ. We share with the deepest possible empathy the feeling the people of Israel have for the land they now occupy between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

President Jimmy Carter, who learned his Middle East geography in a Southern Baptist Sunday school class, shares that empathy. But as President of the United States, and as a world leader, he dares not utilize religious texts for pluralistic secular solutions.

The American Jewish community is understandably anxious over the welfare of Israel. But its present campaign — through the so-called Jewish lobby — to influence Congress and the president to settle into a rigidly pro-Israel position before the convening of the Geneva Conference will, in the long run, be contrary to the best interests of both the State of Israel and American Jews.

The number of evangelical Christians who have empathy for Israel is large, but the number who would want to see political differences settled via biblical citations is relatively small. There is, therefore, no long-range political advantage to be gained by an effort to wrap Israel’s security in a blanket of evangelical biblical literalism.

With a Southern Baptist layman as president, the American Jewish community has a better friend in the White House than it apparently realizes. U.S. supporters of Israel generally assume that the State Department “tilts” toward a pro-Arab bias.

This is a familiar charge, often leveled at the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

There is truth in these allegations, in part because Middle East experience among Christians and among State Department staff members has involved exposure to Arab as well as to the current Israeli nation.

But the understandable anxiety of American Jews over the future of Israel — especially when they hear of rocket attacks by terrorists against villages in northern Israel (and of Israel’s massive retaliation) — should not lead American Jews to think that unceasing pressure against the president, the Congress and public opinion in this country represents the best means of ensuring Israel’s future security.

Only a negotiated settlement involving all parties in the Middle East will produce the peace we seek. American Jews are going to argue their case in every possible forum of decision-making.

But we would caution them to remember the important distinction between the strong empathy Christians feel with Israel and the realistic awareness that political decision-making must be shaped by political and not religious guidelines.

Biblical prophecy anticipates a future of hope for humankind; it does not, however, provide an atlas for establishing the geographical boundaries of the countries that seek that hope.”

Jump forward 35 years to March, 2012:

Thanks to the information flow from Palestine/Israel, Americans have been introduced to the Nakba, walls erected within more walls, administrative detention, house demolitions, check points, to name only a few results of Israel’s military Occupation.

Israeli settlements built illegally in the West Bank, housed 10,000 Jewish settlers in 1977. In 2012 that total now approaches 500,000 settlers.

In 2012, Israel’s hasbara (propaganda) operation reaches deep into American society, shaping the perspective of media and political leaders where money determines allegiance.

Hasbara has even reached deep into American religious communities, where it is not money that talks, but the ever-reliable religious sense of guilt (the Holocaust) plus the deep commitment to inter-faith dialogue between Jews and Christians, a dialogue that extends neither to Muslims nor liberal Jews.

This spring and summer there will be national governing conferences in which United Methodists and Presbyterians will debate what position those official church bodies will vote on whether or not church investments should be used to support Israel’s Occupation.

The United Methodist Church General Board of Pensions sends me a check each month to reward me for the service I rendered to that church as a clergyman pastor and editor.

That Board has just voted to continue using my pension investment funds in three American corporations that support the Israeli Occupation.

The General Board of Pensions does not, under church law, invest in corporations that profit from the sale of either tobacco or alcohol products. But it has thus far refused to remove from its portfolios, any of its investments in the Occupation.

Such is the power of the Israeli hasbara, and such is the influence of a profit-minded General Board of Pensions, which chose the principle of profits over the principle of the prophets.

This summer, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church will meet in solemn and prayerful assembly in Tampa, Florida to determine how it wants the Church to proceed in this matter.

How the UMC delegates vote will determine the success or failure of Israel’s hasbara campaign, and the degree to which the delegates agree with its General Board of Pensions that its fiduciary responsibility demands that it choose profits over prophets.

Will the UMC Board of Pensions prevail and get the backing of the General Conference? Which side will prevail?

Will delegates vote for a prophetic perspective over that of a profit perspective? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, following a short hiatus, the next posting of Wall Writings will be uploaded on the first weekend of April. 

The 1977 editorial above is from the Christian Century. It is copyrighted, © 1977 by the Christian Century and reprinted by permission of the Christian Century Foundation. www.christiancentury.org.

Editing: Debbie Menon

James M. Wall is currently a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine. He has made more than 20 trips to that region as a journalist, during which he covered such events as Anwar Sadat’s 1977 trip to Jerusalem, and the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. He has interviewed, and written about, journalists, religious leaders, political leaders and private citizens in the region. Jim served for two years on active duty in the US Air Force, and three additional years in the USAF (inactive) reserve. His website: Wall Writings

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