Many Christian tour groups to Israel and Palestine never seriously engage with the fact that there is a dispute about the land and its governance. They visit the holy sites, shop a while, and get out. Many group participants are led to believe that the way things are now is how they ought to be. They assume that the political arrangements, including the occupation of the West Bank, is decreed by Scripture. The fact is, the entire Middle East as we know it know is a modern construction. As a good friend put it to me recently, "Modern nation-states throughout the Middle East were born in a political context in which 'countries' as we know them were just emerging, stifled somewhat by the colonialism of the Europeans after World War 1, and the Ottomans before that. Europe initiated the idea of 'countries' at the treaty of Westfalia in the 1600's as a response to interminable warfare. It took to the middle of the 20th century for that model to cover the whole world." Christian understandings of the land of Israel, and its relationship to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have actually been rather diverse. Of course one can read entire books on the subject (and I will post a bibliography some day soon). A good place to start is the article by Gerald McDermott, "The Land: Evangelicals and Israel." The title of the article is slightly misleading, in that McDermott surveys more than "evangelical" approaches. CLICK HERE to read the article.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
The Land: Evangelicals and Israel
Many Christian tour groups to Israel and Palestine never seriously engage with the fact that there is a dispute about the land and its governance. They visit the holy sites, shop a while, and get out. Many group participants are led to believe that the way things are now is how they ought to be. They assume that the political arrangements, including the occupation of the West Bank, is decreed by Scripture. The fact is, the entire Middle East as we know it know is a modern construction. As a good friend put it to me recently, "Modern nation-states throughout the Middle East were born in a political context in which 'countries' as we know them were just emerging, stifled somewhat by the colonialism of the Europeans after World War 1, and the Ottomans before that. Europe initiated the idea of 'countries' at the treaty of Westfalia in the 1600's as a response to interminable warfare. It took to the middle of the 20th century for that model to cover the whole world." Christian understandings of the land of Israel, and its relationship to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have actually been rather diverse. Of course one can read entire books on the subject (and I will post a bibliography some day soon). A good place to start is the article by Gerald McDermott, "The Land: Evangelicals and Israel." The title of the article is slightly misleading, in that McDermott surveys more than "evangelical" approaches. CLICK HERE to read the article.
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