Israel, Palestine and Lausanne IV
Thursday, 10 October 2024
| Gordon Preece
Ethos Director Gordon Preece has been a leader in Lausanne’s Workplace Movement/Network since 2003 and an active participant and speaker at each of those events. His writings on the tensions between justice and evangelism, replicated between work and faith, are in chapters 6 and 18 respectively in the recently launched D. Cronshaw, S. Taylor and M. Kappelhoff eds, Transforming Work: Missiological Perspectives for the Church in the World (Brill, 2024). Below are his comments on a controversy surrounding the recent Lausanne Gathering in Seoul.
On Tuesday 1st October I heard the Lausanne Congress IV’s social justice night’s three excellent addresses by eminent evangelical scholars: Chris Wright’s typically balanced address on mission and justice, Katharine Hayhoe‘s challenging address on climate change and Ruth Padilla DeBorst's also excellent but more controversial address regarding contemporary challenges to social justice, especially the chronic Israel-Palestinian and other Middle Eastern conflicts. To me, Padilla DeBorst's address seemed carefully balanced, acknowledging suffering, hostages and deaths on both sides from 7th October 2023, and the hostage situation in Gaza for many years but especially over the last year. But this was insufficient for Jewish Christian and sympathetic groups of particular persuasions. Their pressure led to a paternalistic written public apology from the conference convenor for a lack of proper proofing of Padilla’s address beforehand. This set off various reactions, including that from Sojourners president Adam Russell Taylor, and a gracious written clarification of her intentions from Padilla deBorst.
Tragically, a decision was made to scrap the normal half-hour discussion by table groups. The one I led, like most, was very multicultural with four continents represented, a great strength of Lausanne’s. On such momentous topics, we were silenced. A long, repetitive and unrelated ‘worship’ music time stole the moment for critical discussion, for about half an hour picking up the celebratory 50th anniversary tone. But Scripture is saturated in challenges to seek God’s reign, such as Matthew 6 and its justice as an essential aspect of worship, cf Micah 6:8, Matthew 6:33 and Romans 12:1-2. And the Great Commission, which dominated the program, includes ‘teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you’ – including the Sermon on the Mount and its challenge to seek reconciliation and love enemies, and Matthew 25:31-46 pronouncing judgment on those not recognising and responding to Jesus in the face of the poor, imprisoned, naked etc., not just missionaries.
This recent episode at Lausanne reminded me of a similar paternalistic and interpretative incident Lausanne III in Cape Town in 2010. Padilla DeBorst's exegesis of Ephesians 2 in terms of justice and reconciliation, challenging principalities and powers, was followed by conservative evangelical John Piper. Piper proceeded (partly ignoring his assigned Ephesians 3) to ride roughshod over her presentation, by re-exegeting chapter 2 in terms of the Devil and eternal hellfire. Piper was not at Lausanne IV, but both episodes, and the clumsy way they were handled, shows the difficulty of reconciling the large Lausanne movement on some key issues that an overly quick, relatively undiscussed apology and Lausanne Statement have not helped.
These issues were apparent in Lausanne I in 1974 and in its covenant, especially the tension between points 5 and 6 regarding the relative priority of evangelism and social justice, or vertical and horizontal reconciliation. But to move forward the movement needs to continue to discuss the hard issues, as the racial reconciliation group and its visit to Palestine and Israel among other hotspots did in its great Lausanne Occasional Paper 51 on Reconciliation as the Mission of God, before the Pattaya meeting in 2004.
Concerning Israel and Palestine, the Paper says:
The populations are severely distanced from one another. Cultural, social, economic and political differences are all factors in this distance. Palestinian Arabs are oriented towards a more rural, traditional Middle Eastern lifestyle, whereas today’s Israelis are heavily influenced by the Western urban experience. Language is another factor. Ethnically, however, Jews and Palestinians are closely related. Recent genetic testing has shown that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are genetically closer to each other than either group is to any other ethnic group.
The overwhelming majority of Israelis are Jews who see their attachment to the historical land of Israel rooted in the patriarchal narratives of the Bible. Most Messianic Jews hold to this understanding.
Palestinian Christians claim their spiritual heritage from the time of the early church, but history shows that Islam swept the Middle East in the 8th century causing most Christians in the Middle East to become Muslims. Today there are viable congregations of Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews who live in the midst of the majority Muslim and Jewish populations. These groups are numerically small. In total, Arab Christians of all kinds constitute about 3% of the population of Israel/Palestine. Messianic Jews constitute approximately 0.1% of the Jewish population of Israel.
Historically, Christian mission has focused on one group to the exclusion of the other. The effect of this singular focus has not been helpful to the parties in conflict. In the Israeli/Palestinian spiritual arena, theology has played a major role. Regarding the place of Israel, supercessionism has been the dominant theology of the Palestinian church and Liberation Theology is strong in some sectors. In the Israeli sector, most Messianic Jews identify with dispensationalism and affiliate with the Christian Zionist agenda.
In contrast to the Messianic Jewish community which is entirely evangelical, Palestinian Christians are denominationally quite diverse. Anglicans, Lutherans, Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and other traditional Eastern Orthodox denominations make up a large portion of the Palestinian Christian community. These groups tend to relate to international denominational and ecumenical bodies. In so doing they frequently adopt a liberal agenda that focuses on issues of human rights at the expense of an evangelistic mandate for all. For them, the most prominent issue is justice. Reconciliation between the communities of faith on both sides of the conflict is not a priority.
The Messianic community sees concerns for truth (meaning their own understanding of biblical teaching regarding the place of Israel) as primary. This focus often precludes any motivation for reconciliation with Palestinian Christians who interpret scriptures about Israel differently.
The Paper then goes on to present a case study – an encouraging story of reconciliation activities between Palestinian Evangelical and the Messianic Jewish initiated by Musalaha, a ministry of reconciliation founded in 1990. This has led to the formation of relationships between individuals and even congregations ‘that have endured through times of accelerated conflict and violence’. You can read the full account in the Paper under ‘Activities’ by Lisa Loden, a Messianic Jew who is Managing Director of the Caspari Center for Biblical and Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, and who is on the advisory board for Musalaha.
Image credit: A close up of a bunch of bullet shells Marek Studzinski at Unsplash.