WASHINGTON (ABP) — As hostilities in Lebanon and Israel continue, an Arab Baptist professor called on American evangelicals to look at the situation through Lebanese eyes.
Martin Accad of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut is a Lebanese Baptist seminary dean who is stranded in the United States. Accad had been a visiting lecturer at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., when hostilities broke out in Lebanon, stranding him in the United States.
During his time in the states, Accad has written a series of guest editorials for the online version of Christianity Today magazine asking American evangelicals to question their often-uncritical support for Israel's actions.
Accad criticized “the murderous aggression of Israeli armed forces.” But he also rebuked “self-centered Hezbollah, which has done the inadmissible of taking a unilateral war decision without consulting the Lebanese government of which it is part, never giving a second thought to the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Lebanese who will perish as a result of its selfish decision.”
The column was a response to an earlier opinion piece by David Gushee, a Christian ethics professor at Baptist-related Union University in Jackson, Tenn.
Accad voiced some of his strongest criticism for American evangelical and political leaders who hold an eschatological view that dictates unconditional support for Israel.
“I think that some pseudo-biblically motivated Christians with decision power, who believe 'that apocalyptic destruction is a precursor to global salvation,' are presently working toward provoking a Middle Eastern conflict of regional significance in order finally to settle accounts with Hezbollah- and Hamas-supporting Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine, who have committed the crime, as Gushee put it, of making their hatred for Israel 'crystal clear.'”
Gushee responded in an open letter to Accad published the next day.
“My sympathy for Israel — which is indeed deep, a mix of all kinds of factors, some rational, some emotional — does not extend to support for what has clearly become a massive and disproportionate military offensive,” he said. “And when I read about Hezbollah, and Hamas, and Syria, and Iran, and the growing sophistication of the weapons being fired at Israel, and the emergent pro-Iran Iraq, and the tangled web of ties and dark plans that connect Israel's enemies, I sense a coming conflagration.”
Accad, in turn, responded July 25, saying Gushee's response, as well as dozens of others he had received from American evangelicals, had given him some hope.
“If so many in the church in the U.S. actually care enough to listen and respond to a Middle Eastern Arab Christian cry, then perhaps there is enough hope, will and faith in this church to lean over the wounded 'enemy' in the Middle East so that the universal church can address injustice and somehow bring to a halt this deliberate targeting of faith communities,” he wrote.
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Read more:
Original David Gushee column in Christianity Today Online