The Gaza Call: An Open Letter to Christian Leaders, Churches, and Theologians in the West

Dear Fellow Disciples of Jesus,

We are a community of Christians from around the world who are writing to you with heavy hearts. From our countries, we are watching with horror as a crisis has unfolded in Palestine/Israel. Since October 7, 2023, more than 1,200 Israeli Jews and more than 37,000 Palestinian Gazans have been killed. In the West Bank, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including many women and children. We condemn all of it. And yet, we see again and again how Christian leaders, theologians, institutions, and churches around the world have not only failed to call out their governments, which support Israel’s military, but also have been incapable of calling Israel out for what is clearly the utter devastation of Gaza and the dramatic loss of life there. Followers of Jesus in Palestine, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice have identified Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank as ethnic cleansing and a plausible genocide. The Pope named Israel’s assault on Gaza as “terrorism.” We are appealing to you, imploring you to ask how God sees this litany of destruction and death, and what Christ requires of you.

As we enter the 9th month of this nightmare, Israel has dropped an estimated 75,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, the most densely populated strip of land in the world. Gaza has been so thoroughly bombed that Gazans have no place to go that is safe. The civilian death toll is staggering; the list of wounded is hard to imagine. All international relief agencies are predicting imminent massive loss of life due to famine and disease. John Elder, a career diplomat with UNICEF has described the violence to children in detail.  “I’ve never seen the sheer number of children with wounds of war… it’s shrapnel, and it’s often ripping through a body. It’s burns, horrendous burns, on children and broken bones.” Physicians from around the world are traumatized simply by caring for the wounded there. Why is our tolerance to this massive maiming and killing so high. 

The unfolding massacre we are witnessing in Gaza is like nothing we’ve seen or imagined: Israel has not even refrained from targeting Christian churches. When Israel bombed St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza, many Christians died. Evangelical families packed into the Gaza Baptist church, expecting a similar fate. One of the teens used WhatsApp to tell a friend, “We have no food and we are out of water. This is my church – and if I must die, I will die here.” Two Christian women, an elderly woman and her daughter, were shot by an Israeli sniper outside Holy Family Catholic Church one morning in December, just for walking out of the front door. Israeli tanks fired directly on the Mother of Teresa Charity nearby, filled with 54 disabled guests. Seven more Christians were then shot on the church’s grounds. We cannot and should not ignore these stories (reported by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem). We need to take the painful step of looking at the faces of the dead. This is not “collateral damage;” this is intentional and it is outrageous.  We cannot help but be profoundly disturbed.

We are deeply grieved.  But, something else troubles us, as well.  

Throughout the world we know that this war is being funded by the United States and resourced by its armories. The bombs dropped on Gaza are from the United States of America. The jets dropping them are from the U.S.. The U.S. has not only shipped record numbers of bombs to Israel, but has defended Israel within the United Nations Security Council, offering diplomatic cover for Israel to act with impunity. Recently, President Biden said that a full attack on Rafah–a city packed with 1.5 million tent-dwelling refugees–would cross his “red line.” Israel bombed anyway and the Biden Administration declared the carnage did not cross the president’s “red line.” Still, the church has largely remained silent.

And so we ask: Why is there silence? Where is the resounding voice of the Western church in all of this? Thousands of Christians, rather than calling for the killing to stop, clamored to the capital’s National Mall in November 2023 and, at the prompting of politicians and pastors, chanted “No Ceasefire!” This crowd of some 100,000 included Christian Zionists who called for more bombing, more killing, and more horror. San Antonio pastor, Rev. John Hagee, announced to the crowd that any Palestinian/Israeli peace deal would be the work of the Antichrist. We watched this scene around the world and were aghast. Further, other streams of the Western church remained silent, failing to condemn this heresy. This confirmed to us that the Western church–more directly, the American church–had lost its moral compass and had no clear vision for what Jesus wants for this world. 

Simply put: We cannot imagine Jesus chanting “No Ceasefire” as babies are pulled from the Gaza rubble.

We recognize that the militants within Hamas and the groups aligned with it must be stopped and brought to justice within the International courts. We also agree with the Pope in his belief that Israel is inflicting a terror of its own. We believe the State of Israel, too, must be brought to justice within the international courts. Countless innocents are being targeted and killed with seeming impunity. So we pointedly ask: Where are the pastors, theologians, prophets, and academics in our churches and institutions who dare to speak truth to power during this genocide? We’ve seen this before. In 1940s Germany, in 1960s Jim Crow South, in 1994 Rwanda Christians were afraid to speak up in times of war and genocide. We celebrate the courage of Bonhoeffer and Niemöller, but the truth is that silence and fear have been our usual response. 

And, so we beg the church to re-examine the many calls that we hear simply to stand with Israel.  We also need to stand with the desperate, beleaguered people of Gaza and the West Bank. They also are victims of this present darkness. They, too, are made in the image of God. We call Western Christians, Israel’s most visible ally in the Western world, to refuse to reduce Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to mere collateral damage in a supposed Holy War, and to recognize that indiscriminate killing will not make Jewish people in Israel, nor around the world, safe. 

The biggest buyer of American military hardware is Israel. Yet the US positions itself as the global champion of human rights and democracy. This hypocrisy hobbles the international legal order; making us all far less safe. Jewish people in Israel and throughout the diaspora are less safe because the instruments of international accountability, developed to ensure their safety, will no longer be there when needed. Likewise, efforts to promote human rights in the rest of the world are being undermined by these double standards. 

What Christian leaders say matters.  When we champion swords and spears over plowshares and pruning hooks, we betray Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Perhaps it is time for us to revisit some prized ideas that have circulated in many churches.

• Is it true, for example, that the modern secular State of Israel is the same as the Israel of the Old Testament? Does not every OT covenant require religious faithfulness and righteousness?  
• Did Jesus not announce the Kingdom of God in which all its members, Jews and Gentiles embracing Messiah Jesus, are to live out the new covenant that the Scriptures promised? Is this not our mandate and identity?
• Among the many promises in the OT to God’s people, why have we failed to see how Jesus fulfilled these promises, reshaped them, and offered them to all who believe in him without partiality?
• Have we forgotten the words of the prophets that justice and fairness to all people is the measure of what it means to live as God desires? Israel has lived from its inception in 1948 as a nation centered on racial privilege. Almost half of the population of greater Israel is Palestinian. And yet they commonly experience hostility, daily systemic and structural oppression, violence, and discrimination rather than the fairness and justice commanded in the scriptures.
• Is it not time to seriously question the moral and theological assumptions of Christian Zionism? Christian Zionism argues for a theologically justified ethnic nationalism in modern Israel. It sustains that the Holy Land belongs entirely and exclusively to the Jews, due to their race and history. Arab Christians can trace their history back to the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:11) and today are among the Palestinians who live in this land. This privileging of Israeli Jews has led to violence: the theft of Palestinian land, the expulsion of Palestinian families, and even murder–all in the name of God. How do we make sense of this?
• Some Christian scholars today wonder why Christian Zionism has taken “center stage” in so many of our churches. This view makes the promises to Abraham central and ongoing, using them to justify a secular Jewish state. But, this centering sidelines Christ’s covenant, demoting him, and forgetting that every covenant promise must be seen through the Messiah and his work. How do we reconcile this?  
• Raising these questions is not antisemitic. We raise these questions as part of our work  of faithful discernment. First and foremost our faith is rooted in Jesus and his “welcome” to all nations and tribes.

Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) The world needs a witness of the peaceable kingdom of God. Our bleeding world needs courageous Christian leaders who will challenge the warring demagogues whose voices are dominating our media and subverting the Gospel of Christ. We are the church, citizens of the kingdom of God. We follow Jesus. That means we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison (Matthew 25). Surely, that includes the vulnerable Israeli hostages, 2.3 million displaced and starving Gazans, and the 2.9 million Palestinians under constant threat in the West Bank. 

Let us both pray for peace in Israel and Palestine and act by addressing those in power, by speaking in our congregations, by proclaiming that the slaughter of innocents is not the way of Jesus and that there can be no durable peace without justice and dignity for all the people in Palestine and Israel.

With Love and Respect, 
(in alphabetical order) 

Rev. Dr. Gary M. Burge 
Theologian, Educator, Author, Pastor 

Dr. Paul Bendor-Samuel 
Physician and Mission Theologian 

Dr. Ruth Padilla DeBorst 
Theologian, Associate Professor at Western Theological Seminary 
Coordinator, International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation (INFEMIT) 

Lisa Sharon Harper 
Theologian, Writer, Speaker, Pastor, Educator, and Author 
President and Founder, FreedomRoad.us 

Rev. Dr. Mark Labberton 
Theologian, Pastor, Educator, and Author 

Rt. Rev. Dr. David Zac Niringiye 
Theologian, Author, and Bishop in the Church of Uganda (Anglican) 

Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra 
Author, Lecturer, and former Secretary for 
Dialogue and Social Engagement for the 
International Fellowship of Evangelical Students 

(Attributions are solely for identification purposes and do not necessarily represent the position of the institutions.) 

Also see: Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians (October 20, 2023) and Response to: A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians (April 2024). 

Originally posted on Peace Catalyst. If you wish to sign your name in support of this response, feel free to do so in the comments below or at Change.org.