Tony Deik
As a Palestinian and participant of the Lausanne Fourth Congress, Tony Deik offers his perspective on the event.
Ve a la página 2 para el texto en español
Around a month has passed since the global gathering of Lausanne IV in Incheon, South Korea. As one of four Palestinian participants, I was encouraged to publish a Palestinian Christian perspective on Ruth Padilla DeBorst’s plenary presentation—the only one dedicated to justice. In her talk, Padilla DeBorst briefly addressed Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, causing Lausanne’s leadership to issue an apology to all the conference participants. This incident shocked many of us, prompting me to question whether Lausanne IV was truly a space for meaningful dialogue or simply a mobilization event designed to energize those who share a specific missiological vision—such as the goal, stated by one speaker, of preventing 4,000 people per hour from going to hell by hastening the Great Commission’s completion by 2033.
Sadly, instead of seeking a Palestinian Christian perspective on Padilla DeBorst’s speech, several influential Western Christian media outlets have refused to publish my article: one editor immediately dismissed the idea, mentioning the Zionist editorial stance of their magazine; another expressed concern that my perspective might put some people off; and a third rejected my article as untimely, even though I submitted it promptly after the congress. Despite the reluctance in mainstream Christian media to listen to Palestinian voices, I offer here my thoughts on Padilla DeBorst’s talk. My aim is to provide context and expand upon the significance of her remarks about Palestine.
A seasoned Latin American theologian, Padilla DeBorst spoke prophetically to the more than 5,000 Christian leaders representing more than 200 countries:
What makes God’s people such are not superficial expressions of religious piety, “Christianese” jargon, worship jingles, or colonialist theologies that justify and finance oppression under the guise of some dispensational eschatology.
Ruth Padilla DeBorst
There is no room for indifference toward all who are suffering the scourge of war and violence the world round, the uprooted and beleaguered people of Gaza, the hostages held by both Israel and Hamas and their families, the threatened Palestinians in their own territories, all who are mourning the loss of loved ones. Their pain is our pain if we are God’s people.
Ironically, those lines that upset some people at Lausanne IV were what made me value and appreciate Padilla DeBorst’s speech the most. In what follows, I will share two main reasons why I felt that way. I will do this, first, by situating Padilla DeBorst’s words in the wider context of the Palestine-Israel conflict, and second, I will discuss evangelical involvement in Israel’s wars against the Palestinians. For a more detailed discussion of some of the theological issues addressed here, readers may check my plenary talk at Christ at the Checkpoint 2024: Missiology After Gaza: Christian Zionism, God’s Image, and the Gospel.
Padilla DeBorst’s words in context: settler-colonialism, apartheid, and “administrative detention”
The Palestine-Israel conflict is one of the longest-running in modern history. However, it is not a conflict between equals, but a settler-colonial struggle between oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European Jews sought to mirror the settler-colonial paradigm that their “Christian” compatriots had followed in the Americas and Oceania. These European Jews began a movement known as Zionism, spearheaded by Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist. The goal of Zionism was to address Europe’s entrenched antisemitism by establishing what Herzl called der Judenstaat (the Jewish State). With the support of western powers, the Zionist movement began promoting and facilitating the mass immigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine. These Jews did not come to live among us as immigrants. Instead, they came to establish an ethnostate—an ethnically exclusive Judenstaat—on a land inhabited by other people, the Palestinians.
How did the Zionist settlers achieve this? Not with flowers and balloons, but on Palestinian blood and bones—which is typically the case in settler-colonial endeavors. As part of the establishment of Israel in 1948—viewed by many evangelicals as “a sign of God’s faithfulness”—Zionist militias committed no less than 30 documented massacres against Palestinians, destroyed 530 Palestinian villages, and expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes (nearly 90% of the population of what eventually became the state of Israel). The result was conquering 78% of historical Palestine. For us Palestinians, these atrocities are our Nakba (catastrophe), but renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé aptly demonstrates how they were part of an intentional plan: “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”
Tragically, the Palestinian Nakba did not stop in 1948 but has continued ever since. Israel is a country with no well-defined borders; it is a settler-colonial state with a policy of “maximum land, minimum Palestinians.”
In Gaza, Israel has weaponized the deplorable events of October 7th to implement this policy—hence the ongoing disproportionate genocidal war on Gaza, which, at the time of writing, claimed the lives of more than 42,800 Palestinians, including 16,765 children. Dreadfully, one prominent dispensational theologian who was present at Lausanne IV recently described Israel’s policy of disproportionate wars as “understandable.”
In the West Bank, Israel implements the policy of “maximum land, minimum Palestinians” using a brutal system of settler-colonial apartheid, which facilitates the continuous grab of land and the expansion of Israeli settlements. Already, 60% of Palestinian land in the West Bank (the so-called Area C) is confiscated by Israel. At a personal level, my family and I currently live in forced exile due to Israel’s apartheid policies (you can hear our story here).
Of course, I wish Padilla DeBorst’s presentation had covered all of this. But she was given only 15 minutes to address the entire topic of justice! What she accomplished, however, is exemplary: she highlighted the plights not only of “the uprooted and beleaguered people of Gaza” but also of “the hostages held by Israel.” This latter point caused an uproar in some circles; I was told that a group of Germans were about to leave the hall when Padilla DeBorst mentioned “hostages held by Israel.” How dare she claim that Israel—“the only democracy in the Middle East”—would hold Palestinian hostages!
What Padilla DeBorst did, however, reflects prophetic courage. She underscored the forgotten plight of Palestinians held under Israel’s notorious system of “administrative detention,” which is well-documented even by Israeli human rights organizations, like B’tselem. Under Israel’s apartheid system in the West Bank, the Israeli military can arrest any Palestinian without charges or trial—a policy that does not equally apply to Jewish settlers living in the same area. When I was studying at Birzeit University in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers stormed my apartment one night, with no reason whatsoever, pointing their rifles at me. I was lucky enough not to get arrested or shot at, but several of my friends ended up in Israeli “administrative detention” for prolonged periods. In April 2024, Israeli soldiers kidnapped Palestinian Anglican Christian Layan Nasir at gunpoint from her home in the West Bank, leaving her parents in the dark about her whereabouts. Around the same period, Israel arrested and horrifically mistreated esteemed Palestinian Christian scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian. She was confined to spaces tainted with urine and infested with cockroaches, endured yelling and intimidation, and was deprived of sleep, all while being denied access to her essential medications.
Evangelicals are part of the war against the Palestinians
Padilla DeBorst’s emphasis on the suffering and oppression of the Palestinians is crucial not only because the Palestinian predicament outlined above has often been neglected by evangelicals, but perhaps more importantly because many evangelicals have tragically played an active role in Israel’s wars against the Palestinians by providing Israel spiritual, theological, and practical support.
(1) Spiritually, many evangelicals pray for Israel to conquer and defeat its enemies. I first encountered such prayers when I worked as a missionary with a western mission agency, and I continue to encounter them in evangelical circles, the last of which is Lausanne IV! To our grief and distress, someone posted on the prayer wall of the congress: “Pray for Israel: let them conquer their enemies.” This, for me, is a genocidal prayer that stands in stark opposition to the Gospel of Christ, for “conquering the Palestinians” in Israeli military dogma equates to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as my grandfather and his family witnessed in 1948, and as we are witnessing today in the genocidal war on Gaza. Of course, no apology was issued by Lausanne’s leadership for this horrifying, un-Christian prayer.
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| The Zionist prayer posted on the prayer wall of Lausanne IV |
(2) Theologically, according to Pew Research (May 2022), 70% of white evangelicals in the U.S. believe that “God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people.” This belief is a core tenet of dispensational Christian Zionism which Padilla DeBorst critiqued in her plenary talk. However, the fact that this belief is widespread in the U.S. does not mean that the issue is only found there. Wherever I reside, including in the Philippines, the U.K., and Bolivia, I encounter Christian Zionism. We currently live in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and the Pentecostal church next to our home displays no Christian symbols, but, instead, a large Israeli flag! The situation is not better in Africa, as demonstrated in a book edited by Cynthia Holder Rich. A key reason behind the spread of Christian Zionism in the Majority World is the influence of missionaries who hold dispensational beliefs.
In the words of Palestinian theologian Mitri Raheb, claims such as “God gave the land to Israel” and “Israel has a divine right to the land” are part of the “software” that enables the Israeli war machine. This “software” is not only incompatible with the Gospel but is a grave distortion of God’s character and of the good news of Jesus. Christian Zionism, as I explained in my recent talk at Christ at the Checkpoint, depicts God not as just or good but as a tribal, racist deity who shows favoritism to a particular nation or race over others, including the giving of land inhabited by other people. This is certainly not the God whom we worship in Christ, who is righteous and good and “does not show favoritism” (Acts 10:34 NIV).
(3) Practically, one of the primary emphases of evangelicalism is “activism,” as argued by David Bebbington. Therefore, it is quite expected that Zionist evangelicals, who pray for the defeat of Israel’s enemies and who believe that Israel has a divine right to historical Palestine, would act upon their theological and spiritual convictions. For example, a lady once told me how “the Holy Spirit” led her to contact the Israeli embassy in her country to organize a big conference in support of Israel. This is not a lone case. Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is a U.S.-based dispensationalist coalition of 10 million members, dedicated to supporting Israel spiritually, theologically, and politically. A cursory examination of CUFI’s website would give ample examples of the type of material support that these evangelicals extend to Israel, including political lobbying, financial donations, and sponsoring political trips to Israel to “transform pastors from spiritual pilgrims into passionate Zionists.” Other distinguishing features of CUFI is their support of Israeli settlements, opposing Palestinian rights, and favoring sending more weapons to Israel.
In a nutshell, Christian Zionism is antithetical to the Gospel and has no place whatsoever in the righteous and holy Bride of Christ: the light of the world and the salt of the earth. If Lausanne is serious about its goal to “declare and display Christ,” prophetic voices such as Padilla DeBorst’s should be further amplified, not silenced or maligned. Further, the issue of Christian Zionism should have been properly addressed in Lausanne’s State of the Great Commission report, in the congress itself, and in the Seoul Statement, for the state of the Great Commission is inextricably intertwined with the state of the Church. How can we declare and display Christ while holding a theology that severely distorts God’s character? What gospel are we proclaiming to the world? Peter and the early church had to rid themselves of their ethnocentric theology before preaching the good news of Jesus to the nations (Acts 10:33–36). Surely, then, we must abandon a racist, colonialist theology that justifies death and destruction if we are serious about proclaiming and displaying the genuine Gospel of Christ.
Similar resources
Read or watch Ruth Padilla DeBorst’s full presentation from the Congress
Read an article by Sojourners on the conversation that surrounded this presentation at the Congress here
INFEMIT’s Response to Lausanne’s State of the Great Commission Report
Read The Gaza Call
Riad KASSIS
“I myself believe that Zionism, both political and Christian, is incompatible with biblical faith.” (John Stott).
Tony and INFEMIT, thank you for an excellent article that brings facts of and passion for justice to our world.