Part 5, Hearing Christian Voices from Palestine

Perhaps the clearest interview I have heard with Munther Isaac was released last week on the Theology in the Raw podcast. Like Isaac, Preston Sprinkle is also a biblical scholar committed to nonviolence, and he did a great job with the interview, including questions that represent the common views of many American evangelical Christians––such as: How do Palestinian Christians feel about Hamas? Didn’t the people of Gaza elect Hamas, and therefore they share in the responsibility? Isn’t Hamas using human shields, making civilian deaths inevitable?

If you have not yet read or listened to other resources from Palestinian Christians, this interview is a great introduction.

Part 4 (On Christmas Day), Hearing Christian Voices from Palestine

“O little town of Bethlehem…”
"O come, all ye faithful…O come ye to Bethlehem…”

These lines from Christmas hymns have landed differently with me when I have sung them in church this year. If I were to go to Bethlehem today, Christmas Day 2023, I would not find the quaint, sentimental Christmas that I have had associated with these lyrics most previous years. Bethlehem is quiet, but because its Christian leaders canceled the usual public Christmas celebrations.

Instead of that, what I would hope to find in Bethlehem would be my Christian brothers and sisters whose words I have been paying attention to in the past few years, and thanks to technology, even though I can’t travel there now, I can still hear what they are saying. Three significant examples from two Christian scholars, both born, raised, and currently living and working in Bethlehem, from the past few days:

From Dr. Mitri Raheb: “Christmas: Then and Now”:

“I was born across the street from where Jesus was born . . . . Growing up as a child in Bethlehem was special . . . . Very special were the plays that were put together at school where we had to memorize passages from the Christmas story about the holy family, about the shepherds and the magi, and about King Herod and Augustus Caesar.  It was a beautiful and uncluttered celebration.

Later in life, during my years of study in Germany, I witnessed how Christmas became more and more commercialized. The festivities there, with large-scale Christmas markets, Christmas carols played in malls, and Christmas trees sold at city squares. In this context, the Christmas story seemed more like a fairy tale, based in a very different climate than the one I know. Indeed, all these new, Northern European elements seemed vaguely alien to someone who knew the original story so well. It was all about Santa, the reindeer, the snow, the jingle bells, and the goodies. I must confess that all of this has its charm. Our children, too, now love Santa.  

But Christmas can be hard in Palestine. After twelve wars in my lifetime, we are not always up for all the festivities. At times, we have no choice but to cancel Christmas. Now is such a moment, with the war on Gaza making everyday life so hard for our people. The churches in the Holy Land decided to cancel all Christmas festivities, and so did the city council of Bethlehem. For some children, it is disappointing. They might ask: what is Christmas without the glamour, without the tree, and without the gifts? 

These questions are not always easy to answer, but as a theologian, it has given me an opportunity to look at the Christmas story all over again, through a Palestinian lens. Once again, I feel close to the conditions that Bethlehem knew at the time of the Nativity. Indeed, the more I study the similarities, the more deeply I feel the story. [Read the rest here.]

And in two messages at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, Dr. Munther Isaac:

First, in a brief English summary for visitors of his Christmas Eve sermon (starting at about 45:30):

“How can we rejoice in such circumstances? How can we rejoice when our people are going through a genocide and ethnic cleansing? Maybe we can if we can rediscover the…true meaning of Christmas:

To begin with, Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us, God coming near us, God being with us precisely in our weakness and fear. Emmanuel tells us ‘fear not,’ so Christmas is actually for those who are afraid, and I think of those in Gaza who are very fearful, but can hear today this message, ‘fear not.’

Second, Christmas is the Word of God. The Christmas message is that God did not remain silent.

What we cannot understand as Palestinians, what we are appalled with, is the silence of the world over the genocide in Gaza, the justification of the killing of our children, we are appalled by this silence. I say to those who are silent, ‘shame on you.’

But God was not silent. God sent his Word, and his Word was Jesus. In him we have hope. His Word was Jesus, and Jesus’s Word is life, is hope.

Thirdly, Christmas is this manger. As we search for Jesus, let us remember where he is to be found. He is found on our side of the wall. In a cave, among a family that became refugees. First, that family was displaced, and then they survived a children’s massacre, and then they became refugees. How relevant huh, for us? This is where Jesus is to be found. And so people shouldn’t be shocked when Jesus was placed on rubble. Because I repeat, if Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble with the people in Gaza.

When we rely on might and strength, Jesus is under the rubble.
When we justify, and explain, and rationalize the killing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.
He’s at home under the rubble, with the displaced and the marginalized.

And this child becomes our hope. We see him in every child pulled from under the rubble. And while the world continues to refuse the children of Gaza, Jesus says, ‘Whatever you have done to them, you have done to me.’ . . . I see the holy family in every displaced family, and while the world negotiates what to do with the people of Gaza, Jesus shares their fate. This manger is our resilience.

And, finally, I say, Christmas is our hope in the midst of difficulties, despite the difficulties. If we truly believe that God was not silent, if we truly believe that he is in us and with us, we can rejoice. And if you don’t believe me, allow me to read for you the words of Shadi. Shadi is a Christian in the church in Gaza. He wrote these words just two days ago:

‘Days pass with unimaginable weight. We feel fear, anxiety, we’re insecure––in circumstances that are above normal, circumstances that no human being can bear. The whole world is celebrating Christmas, and lighting Christmas trees, and we too are celebrating Christmas but in difficult and horrifying circumstances. Nevertheless, we have the joy of Christmas in our hearts. . . . Lord Jesus, as we remember your birth, it is a memory of joy, love, and salvation. Yet we live in pain and anguish. We pray that your birth, your Christmas might be a feast of peace where we celebrate joy to our people, to our land. And so we will celebrate Christmas despite the difficulty of our situation. Despite the fear, despite the horror that reminds me of the fear and horror of the Christmas narrative. Lord Jesus, shine your light upon us. Bring light to our lives through love, and peace, and comfort to those who are wounded––peace, oh child of Bethlehem, to our people that needs peace. Amen.”

And also, in the memorable and impactful message from his Dec. 23 sermon of lament, mentioned and linked in the previous post, with a transcript posted here:

“We are angry… 
We are broken… 
This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful. 
20,000 killed. Thousands under the rubble still. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. A genocide.

. . .

‘Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven and consume them?, they said of us.

. . .

We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear: Silence is complicity, and empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action — are all under the banner of complicity. So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was hell on earth before October 7th. 

If you are not appalled by what is happening; if you are not shaken to your core – there is something wrong with your humanity. If we, as Christians, are not outraged by this genocide, by the weaponizing of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and compromising the credibility of the Gospel! 

. . .

This is Christmas today in Palestine and this is the Christmas message. It is not about Santa, trees, gifts, lights… etc. My goodness, how we twisted the meaning of Christmas. How we have commercialized Christmas. I was in the USA last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights, all the commercial goods. I couldn’t help but think:
They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their land.
They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land. 

Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today. It is a gospel message, a true and authentic Christmas message, about the God who did not stay silent, but said his word, and his Word is Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized. He is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness. 

This manger is our message to the world today – and it is simply this: this genocide must stop NOW. Let us repeat to the world: STOP this Genocide NOW. 

This is our call. This is our plea. This is our prayer. Hear oh God. Amen.

Part 2, Hearing Christian Voices from Palestine

I got into PhD work to study spiritual formation, not politics. In particular, I wanted to explore the roots of my Methodist evangelical approach to spiritual formation and how that approach has come more recently to intersect often with contemplative Christian tradition. So, the periods I end up studying often include the 1730s-1850s (since that is when Methodism grew at an unbelievable rate), 1930s-1940s (since Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work at the underground Finkenwalde Seminary is a similar combination of evangelical and contemplative to what I’m studying), 1960s (since Vatican II and Thomas Merton were both influential in Catholics and Protestants having more influence on one another), and the 1980s-1990s (since that’s when the spiritual formation movement took off).

Even though my subject has always been spiritual formation, there were major political events during each of those periods: the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and South Africa’s struggle to end apartheid. The questions of spiritual formation and politics inevitably overlap.

When I study any of these periods, I’m always left with the same question in different circumstances: how did so much of the Christian Church get it so wrong? How did so many Christians go along with the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic? How did so many Christian churches go along with the Nazis in Germany? How did so many Christians in the U. S. go along with Jim Crow laws and racial segregation? How did so many Christian leaders in South Africa go along with the apartheid system?

And then I’m faced with the accompanying questions: Where would I have been in any of those circumstances? It’s arrogant to assume that I would have done differently than the majority did, which enabled the wrongs to be done. However, those who did differently than the majority were also there, and their stories are inspiring. What contributed to their spiritual formation and helped them become the people who would not go along with the religiously-affiliated wrong? I like to hope that I would have stood up and been a voice pointing in a good direction––and to hope that I might have even done so with some clarity, even if many of my neighbors couldn’t/wouldn’t understand me.

The present circumstances in Israel and Palestine feel to me like they bring the same questions––but now the questions deal with history we see unfolding in front of us rather than in the past we are reading about. This is why I continue to feel that it is an essential point of integrity for me to highlight the voices of Palestinian Christians. As I said previously, a primary voice among them for me is Dr. Munther Isaac, in whom I hear a similar perspective as I have studied in the past from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thomas Merton.

Therefore, I continue to highlight Dr. Isaac’s voice as he urgently calls for a ceasefire, for everyone to learn to love their neighbor, and for Christians around the world to examine and reject dangerous pseudo-Christian perspectives like this from an American pastor.

Reminiscent of King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and Merton’s “Letters to a White Liberal,” Isaac’s plea right now is not as much directed toward Christians who espouse beliefs like that of the pastor in the clip above, but toward those of us who want to think of ourselves as more balanced and compassionate toward everyone involved. I’d like to highlight two of his recent comments:

In one of Dr. Isaac’s recent sermons to his congregation in Bethlehem, he said (via a social media post he titled, “Silence is complicity”):

This is how some understand being “spiritual.” They want to appear “spiritual.” They lament the deaths of innocent civilians. They call for respect for the laws of war. They pray for peace. But they do not take clear positions so that they don’t get themselves in trouble. By the way––these are the people we will see after the war, the first to show up for relief efforts. They are silent during genocide and war while praying for peace. Then, after the catastrophe, they give money for relief efforts to appear as good people who do good works, but during the genocide, they were silent.”

On another note just as challenging, in a podcast interview last week (at a little past 40 minutes), he said,

“In twenty or twenty-five years––while it will be too late––you will be apologizing [to] us for not calling out the apartheid realities of Israel, again, pretending to be self-righteous… “ahh, yes, we should have listened to those Palestinians,” and I tell them, “we will not allow you to do this. We told you. You cannot pretend you did not know.” And nowadays when information is available, social media is available, our voice is out there. It’s a decision that people will make: Who do you listen––do you search for voices on the ground? Or are you just fine, comfortable with a narrative that suits you, and suits your desires and interests?”

[By the way, terms like apartheid, genocide, war crimes, and others get used often and muddled in the process, but they have specific criteria and definitions. See this clip for a helpful exploration of the terms from an Israeli-American historian and professor of holocaust and genocide studies.]

To me, Isaac’s words are heavy in a familiar way.
Desmond Tutu’s words were loving and heavy.
MLK’s words were loving and heavy.
Merton’s words were loving and heavy.
Howard Thurman’s words were loving and heavy.
Bonhoeffer’s words were loving and heavy.
Frederick Douglass’s words were loving and heavy.

I want to be certain that my spiritual formation is more reflective of theirs than of the evangelical pastor (above) from my own culture who says that Israel should turn Gaza into a parking lot––and thinks that he has the support of the Bible––and of Jesus of Nazareth!––in such spiritually malformed words and attitude.

Hearing Christian Voices from Palestine

Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, Academic Dean at Bethlehem Bible College and Pastor of Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.

Two years ago, my PhD supervisor introduced me to the work of Dr. Munther Isaac, a biblical scholar and pastor from Bethlehem. Prior to my assignments (reading Isaac’s The Other Side of the Wall and listening to a sermon he preached on the book of Daniel), I was ignorant of the existence of Palestinian Christians and the conditions in which they live. In the years since, I have continued to pay attention to his work through Bethlehem Bible College and its Christ at the Checkpoint Conference.

I have increased my attentiveness to Dr. Isaac’s postings on social media since the dramatic and tragic increase in violence following the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. I wholeheartedly echo his pleas for the loss of every life to be lamented, for violence from any of the respective groups toward others to be abandoned as a means toward any solution––meaning there needs to be an immediate ceasefire. Isaac’s commitment to love of neighbor and rejection of violence resonates deeply with that of two other voices I have spent a lot of time studying in the past few years: Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King, Jr., and I hear each of the three voices coming from varying but thoroughly Christian perspectives.

As I have listened, I have also had a deep desire for these Christian Palestinian voices to be heard by my fellow Christians in North America. As evidenced by the fact that I had no idea of their existence until I was introduced to them in my PhD studies in my 40s, their stories are largely invisible in the frequent news and conversations around me about their circumstances. I want to highlight their voices and allow them to describe their own experiences.

The further I have dug in, the more fascinating stories I have found. In addition to those linked above, here are a few of my favorites to date, each from a different perspective:

  • Elias Chacour: Like Munther Isaac, Chacour is a Palestinian Christian scholar and clergy, but unlike Isaac, he is an Israeli citizen. Isaac called Chacour’s Blood Brothers: The Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel a “classic and must-read by all those involved in this topic.” The book is excellent, and here is a 30-minute video summary of Chacour’s story.

  • Lisa Loden: She is an Israeli Messianic Jew whose Zionist views changed when she met a group of Palestinian Christians. She now partners with Salim Munayer (a colleague of Munther Isaac at Bethlehem Bible College) in peacemaking efforts between Palestinians and Israelis. They co-authored Through My Enemy’s Eyes: Envisioning Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine, and she has done fascinating podcast interviews here and here.

  • Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: An Israeli rabbi whose perspective changed dramatically once he began to know some of his Palestinian neighbors. He now works to help each group value the humanity of their neighbors through Roots/Judur/Shorashim. Hear an interview with him by a fellow rabbi here, an American Jew here, and an American Christian here.

Before reading Dr. Isaac’s work and beginning to explore these issues, I often dismissed the variety of opinions of North American Christians on some theological topics as things that it is okay for us to agree to disagree on. Since reading The Other Side of the Wall, however, it feels like much more of an issue of integrity for me to speak up when those differences of opinion have costs of human lives attached to them––especially when those lives are among groups that are too often invisible to the majority in my culture.

Four+ Years Later (My Academic Work So Far)

Noticing that I have not written on this blog in more than four years, I can offer an easy explanation: It was just over four years ago that I began work on my PhD in Spiritual Formation at B. H. Carroll Theological Seminary. (I’m not finished yet, but am currently writing my dissertation: The Influences of John Wesley and Thomas Merton on the Spiritual Formation Movement through the Contribution of M. Robert Mulholland, Jr.)

Therefore, it isn’t that I haven’t been writing, it’s just that the writing has been going other places:

Put Some Meaning in Your Methodism, 4: Unpacking the Method

Put Some Meaning in Your Methodism Cover Image b.jpg

1. Do no harm. This includes the obvious ways in which we might harm others (“brawling” was specifically prohibited, as were other things, including buying, having, or selling slaves), but it also meant that they would seek to be aware of and avoid any of the more subtle ways that harm and evil happen. When we do not have rhythms of resting on the Sabbath, or when we cheat on our taxes, or do things to others which we don’t want done to us, harm happens.

2. Do good. John Wesley never said one of the statements most often attributed to him, but it must have come from some early Methodist who was committed to the method. “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” Even though Wesley didn’t write those words, it seems certain that he would have been in favor of them, as the method clearly included doing good and being merciful to the bodies and souls of all others, as far as we have opportunity.

3. Practice the means of grace. The early Methodists were committed to doing the things that would give God some open space to work in them. It wasn’t an option for them to do no harm and do good but neglect practices like prayer, reading the Scriptures, and receiving the Lord’s Supper.

* Regularly answer, “How is it with your soul?” to others living this method. Central to the way that the early Methodists were committed to living this method was that they would gather each week with a group of other Methodists and answer, “How is it with your soul?” If you have trouble knowing where to begin with a question like that, perhaps it is helpful to reframe it:“How is your life with God as you are seeking to live this method?”

Just as it wasn’t an option for them to practice any one or two of the General Rules by while neglecting the others, neither was it an option for the early Methodists to live the method in isolation from one another. The only way to commit to their method was to commit to it together. 

This is part of the series, “Put Some Meaning in Your Methodism”