The ugly underbelly of religious nationalism

As I write this afternoon, we are in the third day of a pause in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gazan territory, with reports that the pause will be extended two more days because of the exchange between hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.  Here in the US, both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are on the rise.  Just two days ago, three Palestinian students were shot by a white man in Vermont, and this tugs at my heart because all three men were alumni of the Ramallah Friends School, which is a ministry of the Ramallah Friends Meeting, part of Friends United Meeting, the branch of Quakers which I served in ministry with for nearly three decades,

I have a dear friend who is a chaplain in California who has shared with me the fears her Jewish friends have expressed to her.  As we dialogued, we agreed there is plenty of pain and fear and mistrust on all sides of this.

I have spoken up for the people of Gaza because of my Quaker connections mentioned above, and have been very critical of the government of Israel.  I have nothing at all against the people of Israel.  I have been there twice.  I know people and have friends in both Israel and in Palestinian territory.  But I am very critical of the government of Israel.  Since the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948--an event I do not see as fulfillment of biblical prophecy--Israel has taken around 65% of what was intended to be Palestine as the UN resolution creating the modern state of Israel was intended to create two states.  Life for the Palestinians has become basically unsustainable because of the seizure of land and the building of settlements.  "From the River to the Sea" is heard by Israelis as a call for the destruction of Israel, but if you ask people who know and work with the Palestinians it is a cry for freedom.  I am struck  by the irony that it is considered offensive if Palestinians want the whole land,  but evidently it is just fine if Israel does.

And before anyone says "but God gave the land to Israel" I have two points I would love to have you consider.

1. If you take the whole Bible literally (and I do not) you have to acknowledge that those promises had conditions attached to them. And God communicated expectations about how Israel was to treat others.  Specifically I am thinking of Moses' instructions about how people who were not of Israel were to be treated in Israel, "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt." (Exodus 22:21 NRSV)  I am not sure those conditions have been well fulfilled.  In short--I do not identify the modern state of Israel with biblical Israel, but if they are the same, they have some work to do.
2. I think we also need to remember the Bible only gives us the Israelite side of the story.  The Qur'an says, Surah 5:21, “O my people, enter the Holy Land which Allah has assigned to you and do not turn back (from fighting in Allah’s cause ) for then you will be returned as losers.”  Both make claims to the land, and neither Holy Book, as I understand it, considers any competing claim valid.  On purely logical grounds there is no way to say one is correct and the other is in error.  You can lay claim to special revelation, as both sides do, but philosophically there is no way to legitimate one claim and disallow the competing claim.  All theological claims which rely on the revelation of those making the claim necessarily involve circular reasoning.

I have this meme I have shown my students which illustrates this well.

OK, so when I am told I am anti-Semitic because I oppose the bombing campaign in Gaza, here is where my mind goes, in several points.

First, I think there is some disingenuity in how the term "anti-Semite" is thrown around.  It is a phrase which, I believe has been co-opted to mean anti-Jewish, even though the term originally was intended to include all people groups from that part of the world. The term "Semite" is originally a biblical reference to the descendants of Noah's son Shem, and includes other peoples who settled in the vicinity.  Technically, historically, being anti-Palestinian would be a form of anti-Semitism also.  It is really after the awful tragedy of the Holocaust that the focus of the term narrowed.

Second, I do not think that it makes sense to consider criticism of the political entity and policies of Israel as anti-Semitic.  After 9/11, I remember President George W. Bush saying America's beef was not with Islam.  I give him credit for that, but the American people did not necessarily agree, and we saw a spike in Islamophobia.  I do not approve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but that does not mean I am anti-Russian.  I think the way the term is used conflates where distinctions need to be made.  It is infantile of us to not be able to distinguish people from the policies of their leaders.

Third, I do not believe ANY religious or ethno-state is a good idea.  I do not care whether it is Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Once you have a religious or ethno-state, people who are not of the preferred religion or ethnicity will begin to lose civil and human rights. My Baptist and Quaker roots cause me to highly value the separation of church and state. For those who insist that separation of church and state are not in the US Constitution, I reply that while those words are not there, the concept of separation of church and state certainly is!

Recently a Republican congresswoman said the church should be over the state.  Here is a problem with that:  WHICH CHURCH?  Do you want the Catholic Church in charge?  Methodists?   Baptists?   Unitarians?  Once you tie a nation's government to a religious structure, the denial of basic civil rights and human rights to those considered "out-groups" is inevitable.

In that sense, I think the idea of a Christian state should offend us as much as the idea behind "The Islamic State" does, and the same goes for a Jewish state.  When Speaker Mike Johnson wants to base US law on the Bible, there is not only the problem of whose interpretation of the Bible, but also the striking similarity of such an approach to the idea of Sharia law.

For this reason, I am not a supporter of a two-state solution.  I want to see a single, pluralistic, secular state in the Holy Land, which is neither a Jewish state nor a Palestinian one, and where neither Judaism, Islam or Christianity gets any kind of preferred treatment.  I believe there is no other way to uphold civil and human rights than to keep governments secular.

Now, this denial of freedoms can happen anywhere.  I got fired as a Quaker pastor because I opposed the war in Afghanistan after 9/11.  I also was criticized for 30 years for my refusal to sing patriotic hymns in worship and my disapproval of national flags in worship spaces.  But here's the deal.  Once you start down that road, there is no difference in the moral quality of it no matter what the country.  Requiring Americans to be patriotic undermines itself.  It is like when you were a kid and you were forced to hug great aunt Millie when you did not want to.  Just like saying "I love you" to a person means nothing if it is coerced, so does saying you love a country--if that is not voluntary, it means nothing!

I believe Christian Nationalism, Zionism, and Islamic fundamentalism are dangerous and ugly cousins, the way Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are cousins.  No form of fundamentalism is a moral thing.  And we need to realize this.  I think Benjamin Netanyahu, Mike Johnson, and the Ayatollahs are cut from the same immoral cloth.  Whoever we are, if we see ourselves as THE CHOSEN PEOPLE,  there is a danger of bigotry which is almost impossible to avoid.  The ugly underbelly of white Christian nationalism is white supremacy.  The ugly underbelly of Zionism is the kind of idea which sees Israel as specially privileged.  The ugly underbelly of Islamic fundamentalism is Sharia law, and seeing others as infidels, even though the Qur'an itself says Muslims should honor all "people of the book." 

I think that when people call you anti-Semitic for criticizing the policies of Israel, that is itself a form of racism, just like the racism of white Christian nationalism.  No nation, no people, have the market cornered on any kind of bigotry.  I think this is part of what Jesus was talking about when he said we need to see the log in our own eye before removing the speck from someone else's.  Whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other, these are wise words to heed.