04 Pentecostals and Peace in Israel/Palestine

Eric N. Newberg, ,

The Arab-Zionist conflict in Israel/Palestine is a missing issue in the contemporary discourse of renewal studies.[1] While the mass media offer daily reports and commentary, and the academy accumulates a wealth of specialized scholarly monographs on the question of Israel/Palestine, the scholars, academic societies, and peer-reviewed journals engaged in renewal studies have largely neglected this topic.[2] Pentecostal and charismatic biblical scholars have given close attention to the prodigious pneumatic manifestations marking the birth of the church in Jerusalem two thousand years ago.[3] However, Pentecostal and charismatic historians and theologians have not given similar attention to more recent developments in Jerusalem. In fact, scholarly reflection on the historical and theological realities of Israel/Palestine from a renewal perspective is virtually nonexistent.[4] It is hoped that this paper will break new ground in addressing the question of what the Spirit has to say concerning peace in the Holy Land.

The time is right to address the issue of peace in Israel/Palestine from a renewal perspective because of significant developments in renewal theology. A new paradigm of pneumatology has emerged which is conducive to addressing the issue of peace in Israel/Palestine. The contours of this emergent paradigm were manifested in 1991 at the International Charismatic Consultation on World Evangelization in Brighton, England. During this conference a forum was convened to reflect theologically on aspects of the charismatic movement. The published papers from this forum clearly reflect a common concern that Pentecostal and charismatic theologians should address issues of social justice to a greater extent.[5] In his paper, "The Spirit Gives Life," Jurgen Moltmann called for a new paradigm of pneumatology which moves beyond a parochial outlook and reflects on the activity of the Holy Spirit throughout the earth. He posed a crucial question: "Where are the gifts of the ‘charismatic movement’—where are the gifts of the ‘charismatics’ in the everyday life of the world, in the Peace Movement, in the liberation movements, in the ecological movement?"[6] Miroslav Volf, in the same vein, concluded his response to Moltmann by averring, "Only those who are truly concerned for the victims of economic, political, racial or sexual oppression can genuinely worship God. Without action in the world, the adoration of God is empty and hypocritical, and degenerates into irresponsible and godless quietism."[7] Subsequent addresses and responses by Pentecostal and charismatic presenters harmonized with the chords struck by Moltmann and Volf.[8]

Since Brighton ’91 renewal theologians have been reflecting deeply on the societal and cosmic dimensions of renewal. Frank Macchia is representative of this trend. He deals with the concerns raised at the Brighton Forum in two articles, "The Tongues of Pentecost" and "Justification Through New Creation." In the former article he describes how the Roman Catholic/Pentecostal ecumenical dialogue is reordering renewal theology’s outlook on the world. He resonates with Karl Rahner’s admonition that we should pay less attention to doctrinal differences and concentrate on the urgent needs facing humanity in the immediate future. He approvingly quotes Avery Dulles:

In desperate circumstances it can seem almost obscene for Christians to seek communion with God in ornate, incense-filled sanctuaries. It is widely felt that catholicity cannot be viable in our time unless it includes the entire redemptive plan of God, extending to the whole of humanity and even to the inanimate material world.[9]

He affirms the conviction of Yves Congar that the fundamental questions for dialogue come from the world and that we must attend equally to the problems of unbelief and the crises involved in social oppression and inhumanity. "Not just the unbeliever but the nonhuman in the midst of social oppression must be the focus."[10] In the latter article, Macchia adeptly uses a number of New Testament texts to document the work of the Holy Spirit "at the very basis of justification." Specifically, he shows (from Romans 4. 25, 8.11, 15-16, 22, 1 Timothy 3. 16 and Hebrews 9. 14) that the Holy Spirit was at work in the resurrection of Christ, availing for our justification and inaugurating redemptive justice for us and all of creation. He takes the position that sanctification is integral to God’s fundamental acts of redemptive justice and suggests that "sanctification is the means by which the Spirit achieves justification in the person of Christ and then, through Christ in all of creation."[11] Justification cannot be confined to the life of the believer. Its scope is cosmic and universal. It has far reaching ethical implications that must be worked out in the social order as the church resists racism, sexism and any form of oppression. The mission of the church consists in proclaiming the gospel of God’s redemptive justice through Jesus Christ and by the Spirit, and in seeking to be agents of new life who incarnate the gospel message as a reconciled community.

In the past Pentecostals have not wrestled with the issue of social justice on a large scale.[12] In part this is due to a longstanding preoccupation with polemical issues. Mark Stibbe has argued that charismatic renewal theology must move beyond what he asserts is the introspective, sectarian orientation of classical Pentecostal theology and broaden its purview to explore the renewal movement’s "much broader, societal effect as well."[13] His thesis is that the purpose of God’s seasons of spiritual awakening is not only spiritual renewal but also cultural and cosmic transformation. Drawing upon Moltmann’s proposals in Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, Stibbe laments that most pneumatological studies produced by renewal theologians have prolonged the traditional Pentecostal preoccupation with the ecclesiological significance of baptism of the Holy Spirit, tongues, healing, and prophecy, neglecting the societal and cosmic dimensions of the work of the Holy Spirit. To chart the course forward, Stibbe appeals to Moltmann’s vexation over the "flight from politics and ecology of the Spirit in the world today." Moltmann writes, "Faced with the ‘end of nature,’ the churches will either discover the cosmic significance of Christ and the Spirit, or they will share the guilt for the annihilation of God’s earthly creation."[14] Echoing Moltmann, I would submit that in view of the threat of cataclysmic war in the Middle East region and beyond, renewal theology can either offer a pneumatological perspective on peace in Israel/Palestine or share the guilt for not doing what is within its power to contribute to the forces working toward, as opposed to against, peace. To avert the prospect of future disaster, Moltmann lays a foundation for pneumatology to address the issues of ecology and politics. As the premise of his theology of life, he states, "The eternal life of the Spirit of God is not a life different from this life here and now;[15] it is the power which transforms this life here and now." Concerning politics he proposes that God’s Spirit pervades all things, not just the Christian church, and especially the suffering of the oppressed. In the context of injustice the sighs and groans of the Spirit can be heard in the laments of the oppressed. That is to say, the cry for liberation is the cry of the Holy Spirit.[16]

All of this leads one to wonder what signs and groans of the Spirit are emanating from Israel/Palestine. One of the functions of the Holy Spirit is, according to the Gospel of John, "to convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment" (John 16:8). If I may be so bold, might I suggest that the Spirit has something to say to the churches through the academy with regard to the questionable contribution Pentecostals have made to peace in the land of Palestine? If so, what is the nature of that contribution, and how might its deficiencies be redressed?

From the early days of their movement, Pentecostals—having absorbed fundamentalism’s Biblicism and fascination with the fulfillment of bible prophecy—strongly sympathized with the Zionist Movement. A pro-Zionist perspective is consistently articulated in Pentecostal periodicals from 1908 to 1948. And this showed no signs of abating after 1948. In response to the so called Six Day War of 1967, for instance, the Pentecostal Evangel of the American Assemblies of God published three articles that demonstrate the ongoing currency of Pentecostal Zionism. The first of these articles was published on July 30, 1967. "Two Million Signs of the Times" was written by Pentecostal evangelist Harry J. Steil. The theme of this article is drawn from a favorite text of Pentecostal Zionists, Jesus’ brief parable of the fig tree in Luke 21:29-31: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you will know that the kingdom of God is near." Steil examines four "shoots" of the "fig tree", speaking metaphorically of Israel. First, the "numerical shoot" of the fig tree is the resilient growth of the worldwide Jewish population in spite of its decimation by the "Hitlerian slaughter." Before the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust the total Jewish population of the world was 16 million; in 1967 it had recovered to over 13 million. "This constitutes a very healthy ‘shoot’ on the fig tree. Second, the "territorial shoot" is the liberation of Palestine from the "blood Turk" and the establishment of a national home for the Jews of the world. Steil states, "There are today in Palestine over two million Jews. Here are two million signs of the times. Quite a healthy shoot!" Third, the "political shoot" is symbolized by Israel’s national flag displaying the Star of David, which is "the ensign of a nation that has come back from the dead to take its place at the council tables of the world. ‘Behold the fig tree and all the trees’—having equal status, equal rights, equal voice among them. A very healthy shoot." Fourth, the "financial shoot" is the return on billions of dollars invested in the nation of Israel. Even though many statesmen said that Israel could not survive, the "financial shoot" has "sprung up out of the stump of the fig tree" and "is amazingly sturdy!" Steil then asks, "But how does all this talk about Israel concern us? We are not Jews." He takes his answer out the script of the discourse of Pentecostal Zionism: "No, but our Saviour was a Jew. He was born as a Jew, He died as a Jew, and He will return to earth as the Messiah of the Jews to deliver them from all their troubles. And when He returns, He will reign over all the earth as King of Kings and Lord of Lords." Steil gets to the bottom line, the nearness of the second coming of Christ, concluding, "Therefore, when we see this ‘shooting forth’ from the fig tree, we should be warned that His return is very near (Read Luke 21)."[17]

Ralph Riggs, a former General Superintendent of the American Assemblies of God, authored an article entitled, "Who Is the Rightful Owner of Palestine?" To his credit, Riggs mentions that during the War of 1948 "700,000 Arabs fled from Palestine." His reason for doing so is not to empathize with the Arabs but rather to assert that the Jewish people are the rightful owners of Palestine. He bases his argument on the biblical covenant with Abraham, "a sevenfold covenant that God would give Palestine to the Jews forever." Against this backdrop, Riggs offers a pro-Zionist narrative of the War of 1948 and subsequent Arab-Israeli skirmishes. He writes, "Intense hatred smoldered through the following years, and in October 1956 war broke out again. Once more the Jews were victorious. In 100 hours they swept across the Sinai desert to the Suez Canal." Like Carmichael, Riggs strives to justify Israeli military victories on the basis of biblical prophecy. He states, "When God gave the promise to Abraham that the seed of Isaac would inherit Palestine, He also said that He would prosper the seed of Ishmael, his other son, and make of him 12 princes or nations (Genesis 17:20; and 25:16)." Riggs argues that this prophecy was fulfilled on June 5, 1967 when "exactly 12 Ishmaelite nations were at war with Israel! Count them: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. This time only 84 hours sufficed for Israel to conquer the Arab nations who outnumbered them 20 to 1." From this Riggs concludes, "This surely looks like a confirmation that God has given Palestine to the Jews."[18]

The third article was authored by Albert Hoy, who throws down the Christian Zionist gauntlet: "Whether we accept Israel’s success as an act of God or not, there can be no contradiction of the Biblical assurance that the Lord’s national people are foreordained to defeat any plan to expel them from the land of the their fathers." Hoy looks back to biblical prophecy, arguing that Jeremiah and Ezekiel predicted that toward the end of the times of the Gentiles, Israel will dwell securely in her own land. "Since she attained statehood on May 15, 1948, after 25 ominous centuries in the role of a world wanderer, she has been attacked again and again by her Arab neighbors. Always, however, she had not only repelled these attacks, but has strengthened her territorial position." According to Hoy, two facts are painstakingly clear: "Israel is in Palestine to stay, and the truth of the Bible is as applicable today as ever it was." Hoy insists that Israel’s present position bears testimony to the steady unfolding of the divine revelation and he argues that a survey of the biblical prophecies of the return of Israel to her own land shows that "there is no mention whatever of a dual tenure of Jerusalem by Jews and Arabs." Hoy recognizes that although Jerusalem was occupied by the Israelis at the time of the cease-fire, the territorial claims of the victors were yet to be resolved. "The outcome will be awaited with profound interest by Christians everywhere. If the Israelis retain possession of the city, the veracity of the Bible can be further urged upon those who doubt it." Like Carmichael some twenty years earlier, and hosts of other Christian Zionist authors, Hoy sees further evidences of the confirmation of prophecy in "Israel’s amazing ventures" in soil fertilization and agricultural experimentation. He closes with the typical ruminations on the story line of premillennial eschatology. Jesus had stated in the plainest terms that when Israel regained complete jurisdiction over the city of Jerusalem, the times of the Gentiles would come to their conclusion and the time of his second coming would be near. Hoy is certain that the 1967 war was a sign that "these are the days in which believers are to look for the coming of the Lord."[19]

Each of the above articles was representative of the historic Pentecostal tendency towards affinity with Zionism. The affinity of Pentecostal and charismatic Christians for Zionism is further confirmed by the results of a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Life, entitled "Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals."[20] On October 6, 2006, Timothy Shah, Pew senior fellow in religious and world affairs, presented a paper on "Pentecostal Zionism," based the findings of the Pew survey, at the Spirit in the World Conference at the University of Southern California.[21] While it is well known that white evangelicals in the U.S. are more pro-Israel than any other American religious group other than Jews, the Pew data shows that among evangelicals, "renewalists," i.e., Pentecostals and charismatics, are the most likely to espouse pro-Israel attitudes. Further, the Pew study found that renewalists in Asia, Africa, and Latin America display a greater pro-Israel tendency than other evangelicals.[22] The currency of the pro-Israel leanings of Pentecostals and charismatics is also substantiated by the Pew Charitable Trust survey. The survey found that sympathy toward Israel among Pentecostals and charismatics is common even in countries with no direct political stake in the conflict in the Middle East. This would indicate that the motivating factor is more likely to be religious rather than nationalistic. It is noteworthy that the countries which registered a stronger sympathy with Israel among Pentecostals and charismatics—Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and South Korea—were represented in the parade which is discussed above.[23] This affinity can indeed be credited with promoting philosemitism. However, it must also be credited with a glaring disavowal of the Arab point of view. The Pentecostal periodicals only told half of the story with regard to the War of 1948 and subsequent Arab-Israeli skirmishes. While celebrating the triumph the Jewish state, the Arab side of the story was virtually neglected. It is strange, in view of the fact that Pentecostal missionaries in Palestine attracted most of their converts from Arab Christian population, how little attention was paid to the impact of the war on the Arab Christians, Pentecostal and otherwise. Bits of information seep out, such as Riggs’ acknowledgement that 700,000 Arabs, including Palestinian Christians (some of whom were Pentecostals), were made homeless by the war. Nevertheless, this information received no elaboration in articles published in Pentecostal periodicals in 1948 and 1949. Almost nothing is made of the suffering endured by Arab Pentecostal community in Jerusalem. Any expression of sympathy and concern for the Arab Pentecostals in the Palestinian cannot be found in these articles published in the Pentecostal Evangel. The only reasonable explanation for this oversight is (at least a passive) bias against Arabs resulting from a self-interested concern with eschatological signs. This is arguably a blind spot among Pentecostals. Like other Christian Zionists, while there is some evidence of Arabophilism among British Pentecostals) American Pentecostal Zionists disregarded the rights of the Arabs of Palestine. But more than that, they effectively rendered their former Arab clients ‘non-persons’ by neglecting to account for their whereabouts and to inquire into their well-being.

To redress this deficit of compassion, this clear injustice, the Arab side of the story now needs to be told. To Pentecostals, as to Israelis, the War of 1948 marks the birth of the state of Israel, but to Palestinians it is known as "the Catastrophe." As the British Mandate was winding down in 1947, the United Nations produced a partition plan that would divide Palestine into a Jewish state, comprised of eastern Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Negev and the coastal plain, and an Arab state in the rest of the land. Skirmishes flared up immediately after the passage of the U.N. resolution on November 29, 1947. Palestinians were incensed that the partition gave the Zionists 54% of the land, even though they owned only 7%. As Elias Chacour explains, the partition "gave the Zionists almost all of the fertile land, including the huge, main citrus groves that accounted for most of our people’s export income… There was three times more cultivated land in this one area than the incoming, European settlers had cultivated in all of Palestine in the previous thirty years."[24] Large scale violence started in Jerusalem on December 2, 1947, when, according to Karen Armstrong,

an Arab mob streamed through the Jaffa Gate and looted the Jewish commercial center on Ben Yehuda Street. Irgun, the Zionist militia, retaliated by attacking the Arab suburbs of Katamon and Sheikh Jarrah. By March, 1948, 70 Jews and 230 Arabs had been killed in the fighting around Jerusalem.[25]

At that moment the combined armies of five Arab League states—Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon—launched a military intervention against Israel in order to prevent the loss of Palestine to the Zionist entity. On May 14, 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion called a press conference and proclaimed the existence of the state of Israel. Already, the Zionist armed forces, known as the Haganah, were undertaking the massive project of removing Palestinians from the land designated for the Jewish state. The Arab armies were eventually outmaneuvered and soundly defeated. In July of 1948, according to the truce arranged by the United Nations, Palestine was split right through the middle of Jerusalem, with West Jerusalem going to Israel and East Jerusalem to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The stark reality is that in 1948-49 the Israelis evicted 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, reduced them to refugees, and expropriated their villages, businesses and farms. The refugees either fled or were deported to the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Arab nations, mainly Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. By the end of 1949, there were 1,000,000 Palestinians registered for relief with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).[26]

After the War of 1948 the Palestinians were a dispossessed people. Only those in the Gaza enjoyed some semblance of political freedom. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan. The Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control. A significant number of the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank emigrated to the Gulf States and the West, but most remained and lived an impoverished existence in refugee camps. About 120,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in Israel. They eventually gained citizenship but were denied equal protection under the law, as well as the right to return to their homes or fair compensation for their losses. Israel fought two more major wars with neighboring Arabic states, in 1967 and 1973, resulting in the acquisition of more territory in the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula and in the creation of 300,000 more Palestinian refugees. At present the world population of Palestinians is about 4 million. About 800,000 of them are Arab citizens of Israel, 1 million live on the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli military occupation, another 1 million or so live in Jordan, approximately 450,000 live in Lebanon, and the rest live in the Gulf States, Europe, and North and South America.[27]

Naim Ateek points out that Palestinians have gone through a three-stage process in establishing their national consciousness.[28] The first stage was SHOCK (1948-55). The Palestinians—who had been assured continuity after the seemingly inevitable victory of the combined Arab armies— were stunned when Arab intervention failed and the international community gave overwhelming support to the provision of a homeland for the survivors of the Holocaust. Martial law was instituted on October 21, 1948, prohibiting Palestinians from traveling without a permit approved by the military governor of the district. The Jewish towns that had been Palestinian were completely off limits. In addition, Israel denied Palestinians legal protection by continuing the Emergency Defense Regulations of the British Mandate, allowing the Israeli military to enter Palestinian houses without a search warrant, to demolish them, and to expel Palestinians from their homes and deport them. In 1950 the Israelis enacted the Absentee Property Law, under which the army could confiscate any land that was abandoned or untended, thus facilitating the expropriation of the land of the 750,000 Palestinians who had been forced from their property. During this period 900,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, and most of them were settled on the land and in the houses of the dispossessed Palestinians.[29]

The second stage of RESIGNATION (1956-67) was characterized by realistic adjustment to the unresolved conflict. Every Palestinian was issued an identity card which classified him or her as an "Arab." The term "Palestinian" was assiduously avoided. In 1969 Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister, declared, "It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine…and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Any attempt to organize the Palestinian community was immediately repressed. News of the Palestinian catastrophe did not register on the scale of world opinion. Outside of the Arab world, the international community viewed the Palestinian problem as that of the refugees, not fully comprehending the injustices done to the Palestinians.[30]

The third and current stage of AWAKENING (1967-) emerged in the aftermath of the Six Day War of 1967. The crushing defeat of the Arab armies demonstrated to the Palestinians that they could expect no deliverance from the Arab nations. This accelerated the development of organized Palestinian resistance. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 by the Arab League, now came to represent the Palestinian national consciousness. The original purpose of the P.L.O. was the destruction of Israel through armed struggle. Later, the P.L.O. pragmatically accepted the fact that the state of Israel was there to stay and shifted its focus to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza through international diplomacy. A minority, known as Rejectionists, refused to comply with this shift and stayed the course of terrorism. In 1974 the P.L.O. was recognized by the Arab countries as the sole representative of the Palestinian Arabs. In the same year the P.L.O. was granted observer status at the United Nations and was officially recognized by a majority of countries. It maintained diplomatic missions in all U.N. agencies and in ninety countries.[31] Naim stresses, "Many people have come to see the P.L.O. as merely a terrorist organization. But for almost all Palestinians the P.L.O. is their national liberation movement."[32] The P.L.O. established a network of cultural, educational and social welfare services. Its dominant military wing is called Fateh. The P.L.O. is governed by the Palestinian National Council, and its president was for many years Chairman Yasir Arafat. The P.L.O. has acted (except in those settings where democratically displaced by the rejectionist Hamas) as the official voice of Palestinians wherever they may be, in Israel, the Occupied Territories, the Arab States or the West .[33]

Since the early 1970’s there has been an awakened activism among the Palestinians, energized by a vigorous protest literature and inflamed by waves of guerilla warfare and two Intifadas, or "uprisings," during which the Palestinian population united in massive civil disobedience and defiance of Israel. Although the uprisings have been generated by egregious incidents of violence, they are the result of a process of conscientization, or as Ateek puts it, "Palestinianization,"[34] which was signaled by the appearance of a revisionist history, telling the story of the "Catastrophe" from a Palestinian point of view. This revisionist history started with the publication of Sabri Jiryis’s pioneering The Arabs in Israel, and was followed with Elia Zurayk’s The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism.[35] For Palestinians, these publications represented their interpretation of their own history, narrating how they were driven from their own land and continue to live in apartheid-like conditions in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Palestinian scholars would surely agree with what Miroslav Volf says in Exclusion and Embrace concerning the importance of remembering one’s history of suffering. He writes, "What we have come to know we must remember, and what we remember we must tell. ‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1Corinthinas 11: 26). Just as the memory of Christ’s death for our sins must be proclaimed, so also the memory of human suffering, caused and experienced, must be made public."[36] Mitri Raheb, speaking from the perspective of the West Bank, elucidates how most Palestinians would encapsulate their history. He writes,

Our recent history as Palestinians is a story of violence, misery, and oppression: thirty-six years of Israeli occupation, four years of uprising from 1987 to 1991, the Gulf War of 1991. During these years, we often were under house arrest because of curfews imposed on our cities. Many young Palestinians were shot, wounded, and killed. Others, including church members, were arrested and imprisoned. In spite of all that we had hope… However, during the last few years, since 2002, this hope has evaporated almost completely. Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian towns and villages. Over two million of our people were put under house arrest for months. Apache helicopters were used to fire on Palestinian neighborhoods. Many West Bank cities have been filled with the sounds of missiles and tanks bombing neighborhoods, as well as the screams of little children.[37]

As anyone can see from following the world news, so it goes as of this moment.

In the process of telling the Arab side of the story, some of the defining moments of recent Palestinian history have been sketched. Before moving on to a final assessment of the Pentecostal contribution to peace in Israel/Palestine, the obvious will be stated. The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians centers on the possession of and sovereignty over the land of Israel/Palestine. The crux of the conflict is that two peoples are vying for one land. However, there is more to it. There is a cultural impasse. Israelis and Palestinians have a vision of the other that excludes the other and leads to intractable differences in points of view. Both view their right to the land as inviolate and hence non-negotiable. As Miroslav Volf might say, the Israelis and Palestinians have viewed each other in excluding terms: their "nonrecognition" and "misrecognition" of each other has inflicted harm, acted as a form of oppression, and imprisoned each side in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being.[38] On one side, the Palestinians view the Israelis as imperialistic, racist, Western colonizers and oppressors who have expropriated their ancestral land by force and aim at their expulsion or, if necessary, their extermination. On the other side, the Israelis view the Palestinians as barbaric, shiftless, subversive and murderous terrorists whose claim to their ancestral land has been superseded by the biblical entitlement of the land to the Jews, and whose claims to Jews appear to form part of a larger oppressive ‘Arabization’ of minorities in the Middle East..

Given the history of atrocities and recriminations on both sides, each point of view is understandable and may, to a limited extent, bear some ethical merit. However, it is a matter of life and death for the Israelis and Palestinians, and also in the best interest of the collective security of the world, that they make peace and learn to coexist. As the Ruethers aptly point out, "Although neither was there as a national community before the twentieth century, both are there now. And for either party to try to deny that the other exists as a national community is an exercise in futility."[39] Herein is the urgent importance of hearing both sides of the story.

In excluding the Palestinian Arab side of the story Pentecostal Zionists were excluding the personhood of the Palestinian other. Telling the truth about history sometimes entails speaking a word of prophetic witness that exposes injustice in the light of critical analysis. The legacy of fundamentalist Zionism has a dark side. By espousing a bias against Palestinian Arabs and Muslims, Pentecostals made a deleterious contribution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although unintended, the discourse of Pentecostal Zionism has contributed to the forces working against peace between the Arabs and Jews in Israel/Palestine. It would be an overstatement to say that Pentecostal Zionists have inflicted harm, acted as accessories of oppression, and reduced the Jews and Arabs of Palestine to a false and distorted mode of being. Surely, though, it is fair to say that Pentecostals did not contribute to the peaceful coexistence of the peoples of Palestine.

To explore the theological roots of the injustice discussed above, we will offer a brief critique of the place of dispensationalism in the eschatology of early Pentecostalism. A number of early Pentecostals uncritically accepted the dispensational system formulated by John Nelson Darby and popularized by Cyrus I. Scofield.[40] The editors of several Pentecostal periodicals promoted the Scofield Reference Bible, even after it became apparent that the interpretive stance of its study notes was opposed to the distinctive Pentecostal emphasis on Spirit baptism with the accompaniment of speaking in tongues. To be fair, it should be granted that dispensationalism provided early Pentecostals with a philosophy of history with which to support the claim that their movement signified the final chapter in human history prior to the second coming of Christ.[41] Faced with denunciation and ridicule, early Pentecostals may have viewed dispensationalism as providing a tactical advantage, whereby they could turn the weapons of their evangelical critics against them. Moreover, premillennial dispensationalism was combined in the charismatic theology of Edward Irving as early as the 1820s: Catholic Apostolics would remain influential in pro-Israel circles long after their charismatic practice and public visibility had faded. Nonetheless, there are two reasons why the author views this theological development as a wrong turn.

The first reason is that dispensationalism is theologically inconsistent with the central features of Pentecostal theology. The inconsistency centers on the claim of Pentecostals that their movement constitutes the fulfillment of the prophecy of the "latter rain" in Joel 2: 23, 28, from which the Pentecost of Acts 2 is seen as the early rain and the Pentecostal Revival as the latter rain. In opposition to this claim, classical dispensationalism was anchored to the assumption that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit did not continue after the apostolic age. According to Darby, a great parenthesis occurred in church history in the early second century, marking the termination of the gifts of the Spirit bestowed on the Day of Pentecost. Since dispensationalists believed that God himself had abolished those supernatural gifts, most of them regarded their purported reappearance in the twentieth century as a matter of human delusion at best, and Satanic counterfeit at worst. Hence, there was an inherent inconsistency between the basic tenets of dispensational and Pentecostal theology.[42]

There is a second reason, more germane to this article, for the author’s belief that the Pentecostal appropriation of dispensationalism was ill-informed. To reiterate the argument of this article, Pentecostal eschatology was embedded with an ideological slant that privileged Zionism and discriminated against the Arab Christians of Palestine. According to Ray Gannon, "Pentecostals viewed the restoration of Zion as the fulfillment of prophecy."[43] They almost universally included the return of the Jews to Palestine in their lists of the signs of the Second Coming of Christ.[44] As was the case with dispensationalists in general, early Pentecostals viewed the return of the Jews to Palestine as the hinge that would open the door for the final redemption of the "kingdom age". It was commonplace for Pentecostals to speak of the Jew as "God’s timepiece" and to watch current events closely for happenings with the Jewish people that might be construed as a signs that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent. They interpreted the increasing immigration of Jews to Palestine and the establishment of agricultural colonies as proof that the remnant was coming back, just as promised by the Old Testament prophets. This popular theme in Pentecostal preaching received prominent coverage in Pentecostal publications.[45]

The Pentecostal appropriation of dispensationalism (or, more accurately, the Pentecostal emergence from dispensational circles) carried with it an image of Israel/Palestine that was slanted towards a pro-Zionist ideological agenda. For instance, Jerusalem figured largely in the eschatological discourse of early Pentecostalism. Pentecostals understood certain select biblical passages to predict a fixed sequence of historical events that would culminate during the last days in the city of Jerusalem with the Jewish people converting to Jesus as their Messiah. This eschatological scenario colored Pentecostals’ interpretations of current events transpiring in Palestine in the first part of the twentieth century. By and large, Pentecostals believed that the immigration of Jewish people to Palestine was a sign of the imminence of the second coming of Christ and a signal that very soon a chain reaction would be activated leading to the War of Armageddon and the establishment of Christ’s Millennial Kingdom in Palestine.

In retrospect, it is evident that image and reality parted company in Pentecostal eschatology. Assuredly, what the early Pentecostals predicted did not happen. Furthermore, Pentecostals have left a legacy that is an obstacle to peace in Israel/Palestine. By elevating the role of the Jews in their eschatological scenario, Pentecostals blocked from their field of vision the rights of other peoples, Arab Muslims and Christians, who made up the overwhelming majority of the population of Palestine.[46] As a result, the Pentecostal image of Jerusalem amounted to a representation of Jerusalem as seen through the eyes of dispensational Christian Zionism rather than an accurate picture of Jerusalem as it was, the homeland of indigenous Eastern Christians who since the Day of Pentecost have maintained a continuous presence in the Holy Land.

To conclude, in favoring the Zionist project and asserting the legitimacy of the state of Israel on the basis of biblical prophecy, Pentecostals disregarded the Arab right of self determination and nationhood. In telling the story of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Pentecostals flatly ignored the Arab side of the story. In so doing they have turned their backs on the very Arab Christians, including Pentecostals in Israel/Palestine, with whom they could partner in the peacemaking process. In so doing, they have contributed to the forces working against peace in Israel/Palestine.

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Notes:

  1. The idea of "renewal studies" is an elusive concept, just as the term "renewal" is imprecise. The term "renewal studies" could pertain to any number of movements concerned with the renewal of this or that. For the sake of this paper, the term "renewal" will be delimited to the Pentecostal-charismatic-neo-charismatic movements. When we refer to the renewal movement, we are not referring to other Christian renewal movements, such as the Pietist, Evangelical, and Holiness movements. The distinguishing characteristic of the Pentecostal-charismatic-neo-charismatic renewal movement is a special emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Pentecostal-charismatic-neo-charismatic renewal movement places a high premium on the practice of the spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, healing and exorcism.
  2. Only two scholars of the renewal movement have dealt with the question of Israel/Palestine. One is Peter Hocken in The Glory and the Shame: Reflections on the 20th Century Outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Surrey, UK: Eagle, 1994), 133-166 and in The Spirit of Unity: How the Renewal is Breaking Down Barriers between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics (Cambridge: Grove Books Limited, 2001), 14-20. The other is Raymond Gannon, "The Shifting Romance with Israel: American Pentecostal Ideology of Zionism and the Jewish State," (Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2003).
  3. See the bibliography on "New Testament Pneumatology, 1983-1993" in Mark W. G. Stibbe, "The Theology of Renewal and the Renewal of Theology," Journal of Pentecostal Theology 3 (1993): 83-90.
  4. Pentecostals and charismatics are prominently represented in the pro-Israel movement. For popular publications by authors affiliated with the renewal movement, see Don Finto, Your People Shall Be My People: How Israel, the Jews and the Christian Church Will Come Together in the Last Days (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 2001); Malcolm Hedding, Understanding Israel (Oklahoma City: Zion’s Gate International, 1990); David Allen Lewis, Can Israel Survive in a Hostile Environment? (Green Forest, Ariz.: New Leaf Press, 1994); and Don Schwarz, Identity Crisis: Israel and the Church (Enumclaw, Wash.: Wine Press Publishing, 2004).
  5. Harold D. Hunter and Peter D. Hocken, eds., All Together in One Place: Theological Papers from the Brighton Conference on World Evangelization (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 11-12.
  6. Jurgen Moltmann, "The Spirit Gives Life: Spirituality and Vitality," in Ibid, 28.
  7. Miroslav Volf, "A Rhythm of Adoration and Action," in Ibid, 45.
  8. See Juan Sepulveda, "Pentecostalism and Liberation Theology: Two Manifestations of the Work of the Holy Spirit for the Renewal of the Church," Karla Poewe-Hesham and Irving Hexham, "Charismatic Churches and Apartheid in Africa," and Cheryl Bridges-Johns, "Pentecostal Spirituality and the Conscientization of Women," in Ibid, 51-64, 73-83, 153-165.
  9. Frank D. Macchia, "The Tongues of Pentecost: A Pentecostal Perspective on the Promise and Challenge of Pentecostal/Roman Catholic Dialogue," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 35:1 (Winter 1998): 17.
  10. Macchia, "Tongues of Pentecost," 17.
  11. Frank D. Macchia, "Justification Through New Creation: The Holy Spirit and the Doctrine by Which the Church Stands or Falls," Theology Today 58:2 (July 2001): 214.
  12. Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002), 184-186.
  13. Mark W. G. Stibbe "The Theology of Renewal and the Renewal of Theology." Journal of Pentecostal Theology 3 (1993): 81.
  14. Jurgen Moltmann, Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (London: SCM Press, 1992), 10.
  15. Jurgen Moltmann, "Pentecost and the Theology of Life," in Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge (eds. Jurgen Moltmann and Karl-Josef Kuschel; London: SCM Press, 1996), 130.
  16. Stibbe, "The Theology of Renewal and the Renewal of Theology," 82.
  17. Harry J. Steil, "Two Million Signs of the Time," Pentecostal Evangel (July 30, 1967): 2-4.
  18. Ralph M. Riggs, "Who Is the Rightful Owner of Palestine?", Pentecostal Evangel (July 30, 1967): 7.
  19. Albert L. Hoy, "Israel’s Answer to the Critics," Pentecostal Evangel (July 30, 1967): 8-9.
  20. "Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals," (Washington, D.C.: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2006). The ten countries surveyed are Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States.
  21. See the conference website at http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/pentecostalism, accessed December 10, 2007.
  22. "Spirit and Power," 56, 67.
  23. "Spirit and Power," 67.
  24. Elias Chacour, Blood Brothers: The Unforgettable Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1984), 46.
  25. Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem, 386.
  26. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether, The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 103.
  27. Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 115.
  28. Naim Stifan Ateek, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989), 33.
  29. Ibid, 33-36.
  30. Ibid, 36-38.
  31. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (London: Verso, 1988), 33.
  32. Ateek, Justice and Only Justice, 39.
  33. Ibid, 38-44.
  34. Ibid, 43.
  35. Said and Hitchens, Blaming the Victims, 3.
  36. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), 235.
  37. Mitri Raheb, Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 150.
  38. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 19.
  39. Ruether and Ruether, Wrath of Jonah, xxi.
  40. Dispensationalism is so named because it generally divides history into a series of seven ages or dispensations. In each dispensation God offers prosperity to his people in return for obedience, or judgment in return for disobedience. Darby postulated that there were two divine plans revealed in Scripture. One plan was for the Jews, God’s earthly people. The other plan was for Christian Church, God’s heavenly people. God’s plan for the Jews was revealed through a series of covenants with the nation of Israel, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah. But when the Jews rejected Jesus, interrupting the divine plan, God postponed the kingdom and temporarily removed His hand of blessing from the Jews. From that time on God’s redemptive plan for the Jews was put on hold and would not be resumed until the Second Coming of Christ. Darby believed that the Jews were being punished by being persecuted throughout the world and that the biblical prophecies relating to the Jews would not be completely fulfilled until an indeterminate future time during the Millennium. In the meantime, God implemented the second plan by creating a new chosen people, formed mainly of Gentiles, who made up the Church. According to Darby, the return of Christ would be delayed until the gospel is preached to every tribe, every people, and every nation in the world. Clarence B Bass, Backgrounds to Dispensationalism: Its Historical Genesis and Ecclesiastical Implications (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 55; Peter E. Prosser, Dispensationalist Eschatology and Its Influence on American and Religious Movements (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 255-258.
  41. Peter Althouse, Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Coverstion with Jurgen Moltmann (London: T & T Clark International, 2003), 17-19, 41-44; Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture and Community (London: T & T Clark International, 2004), 52-57; Gerald T. Sheppard, "Pentecostals and the Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism: The Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship," Pneuma 6, 2 (Fall 1984): 9. Grant Wacker, "Playing for Keeps: The Primitivist Impulse in Early Pentecostalism," in The American Quest for the Primitive Church, (ed. Richard T. Hughes; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 197, 205-206.
  42. Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 145; Frank D. Macchia, "Pentecostal Theology" in New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements (ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 1138; Samuel Solivan, The Spirit, Pathos and Liberation: Toward an Hispanic Pentecostal Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 43), 33.
  43. Raymond L. Gannon, "The Shifting Romance with Israel: American Pentecostal Ideology of Zionism and the Jewish State," Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, 2003, 164. See J. S. Jones, "Further Facts About Palestine," The Elim Evangel and Foursquare Revivalist 10, 22 (September 29, 1929): 339-341.
  44. Alexander Boddy, "Seven Signs of His Coming," Confidence (December 1910): 291-3; S. A. Jamieson, "The Second Coming of Christ," Weekly Evangel (February 26, 1916): 6-7; William Pocock, "Present-Day Signs of the End," Trust (January-February 1926): 16, 20; A. E. Stuernagel, "Signs of the Approaching End of the Age," Latter Rain Evangel (May 1927): 4-8; H. Pierson King, "Signs of the Coming of Our Lord," Trust (October 1915): 12-20; Arthur S. Booth-Clibborn, "The Goal of Prophetic Scripture," Trust (December 1918): 11-14; Arthur W. Frodsham, "The Return of the Lord: The Signs of the Times," Pentecostal Evangel (February 18, 1922): 6-7; Percy G. Parker, "Christ is Coming Soon! An Outstanding Sign," The Elim Evangel and Foursquare Revivalist 9, 19 (December 1, 1928): 313-315.
  45. See Eric N. Newberg, "The Pentecostal Mission in Palestine, 1908-1948: A Post-Colonial Assessment," Ph.D. dissertation, Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 2008. UMI ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: http://gradworks.umi.com/33/05/3305402.html
  46. Said Aburish, The Forgotten Faithful: The Christians of the Holy Land (London: Quartet Books, 1993), 3.