after finishing at the hospital in tel aviv one sunday afternoon i decided to take the bus up to jerusalem to check out the 5pm service at king of kings church in the heart of jerusalem. this church is the largest english speaking american-style evangelical church in israel, and is well known as the standard-bearer of evangelical christian zionism here. every week there are groups of american christian tourists visiting the church, “in the land” to “stand with israel.” a huge, plush auditorium in the basement of a shopping center and great audio-visual set-up. they have the contemporary evangelical consumer worship experience nailed – i quite enjoyed that part of it! great people, and they really do love Jesus which i believe is ultimately what is most important. as soon as the worship time ended however, politics came up and things inevitably started going downhill. the pastor couldn’t seem to help himself from raving about canadian prime minister stephen harper and how he is one of the only remaining world leaders defending israel, and how G-d is going to bless canada for standing for israel. ugh. he also raved about their prayer tower on the 14th floor where one can go and look out over ramallah (in the palestinian west bank) and pray that the “land would not be divided.” this church also regularly hosts conferences where church groups flown in from america listen to wacked-out end-times doomsday fiction authors like joel rosenburg float his weird eschatological fantasies about the impending destruction of the world as obvious “fulfillment of biblical prophecy.” if you can’t tell i’m a little skeptical of the scene.
don’t get me wrong, these are great people and i do believe that the vast majority are truly seeking to follow G-d. for most eschatology isn’t their exclusive spiritual focus. but it breaks my heart when christians in israel and who support israel preoccupy themselves with hypothetical future scenarios, while ignoring – or indeed more commonly extolling – the grave injustices that the government of israel flagrantly promotes – ie. the never-ending occupation of the palestinian territories and the refusal of many of the most basic human rights to the palestinians. i wouldn’t want to assume anything about anyone else’s Jesus, but the Jesus i follow is all about peace and loving our neighbors. He told us to love our enemies, not wall them in. i’ll even go out on a limb and say that the Jesus i follow, if he came to the middle east right now instead of 2000 years ago, might just identify as more palestinian than israeli. not to say that there is no significance in the fact that Jesus was a jew. but i believe that God intentionally made his appearance on earth as an underdog, and as part of a group of people living under occupation. also a fact that over 90% of the local christians here are arab palestinians, so we should really get some solidarity going.
to round out my quintessential middle-american-in-israel day, i cracked open a budweiser on the bus home and listened to some lady antebellum. one day was enough for me of this sub-culture; too bad it is not going away anytime soon.
