Church at the Crossroads highlights story of Palestinian Christians

Last month, pastors, theologians, thought leaders and Christians gathered in Chicago for a rare and urgent assembly.

The event, called Church at the Crossroads, was led by Palestinian Christians and drew together voices across evangelical, Mainline, Catholic and ecumenical traditions. Its premise was stark: The church stands at a defining moment.

As violence escalates in Israel and Palestine (and as some Christians continue to use Scripture to justify war, occupation or silence), the church faces a searing question that will mark its witness for generations: “What kind of church will we be in the face of genocide?”

Over the course of the three-day conference, 800 attendees (in-person and online) heard from a robust line-up of speakers that included Jemar Tisby, Lisa Sharon Harper, Anton Deik, Fares Abraham, Shane Claiborne, Lamma Mansour, Brian Zahnd, Ruth Padilla DeBorst and Munther Isaac.

“This is one of those pivotal moments in time,” organizer and Palestinian American Daniel Bannura said at the opening session. “We are at the crossroads. … Gaza has become what Pastor Munther Isaac calls ‘the moral compass of the world. How we respond to Gaza is a direct testimony to whether we take Christ seriously.”

Since the gathering, a ceasefire has been agreed to by Israel and Hamas. Gaza, finally, is silent. But the questions raised during Church at the Crossroads remain urgent.

In fact, now is the time to lean into them more deeply.

A long cry from Palestinian Christians

For years, long before the events of the last two years, Palestinian Christians have called on the global church to stand with them in the face of occupation and empire. That call framed the gathering.

“The conference came as a response to the call made by Palestinian Christians who have been asking their siblings in the West, and especially in the U.S., to take a clear stand about what’s happening in Palestine and Israel,” Bannura noted.

Lamma Mansour, a young Palestinian theologian, spoke plainly about the wounds carried into the room. “We’ve pleaded with the international community, with politicians, with diplomats and with the global body of Christ to stop this senseless killing, but to no avail. For us as Palestinian Christians, what has been most wounding is the response of our many siblings in Christ.”

Witness to injustice

Speakers recounted not only current suffering but also the long history of displacement known to very few Americans. Palestinian theologian Anton Deik reminded the audience of the Nakba of 1948, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes.

“The Zionists committed no fewer than 30 massacres, destroyed more than 530 Palestinian villages and towns, and forcibly displaced 750,000 Palestinians, almost 90% of those living in what eventually became the state of Israel,” he said.

For Deik, this was not abstract history. His own grandfather fled their family home in Galilee, never able to return. When he finally visited 20 years later, the house was occupied by another family.

“This is, in a nutshell, the story of my family,” Deik said. “And anyone who knows what befell the Palestinians in 1948 will know this is a typical Nakba story. The story of horrifying massacres, war crimes, expulsion, and land and property theft.”

The testimonies underscored that Palestinians (Christian and Muslim alike) have endured, and continue to endure, bombardment, starvation and erasure.

Theology as a weapon

A recurring theme of the gathering was the way theology has been used to excuse and even baptize Palestinian suffering. Deik named it a “theological scandal” that many Western theologians, from Karl Barth to Pope Benedict, hailed the founding of the state of Israel as a sign of God’s faithfulness.

“Celebrating the state of Israel as God’s chosen people,” he argued, “is a celebration of the Palestinian Nakba.”

Other speakers at the gathering highlighted how militarism and empire have seeped into American Christian imagination.

Preston Sprinkle, a conservative evangelical scholar, described growing up in the American culture where being Christian meant being “pro-life, pro-war, pro-military, pro-death penalty, pro-guns and pro-Israel. It’s a package deal. If you deviate in any one part, you are no longer conservative. You might not be a Christian.”

Rereading Scripture, he said, led him to a stark conclusion: “Nonviolence is the Christian way, and militarism is a tool of the empire.”

“If your version of justice requires you to massacre women, children and civilians, then your sense of justice is immoral.”

American Christian mouths are quick to call the situation “complex” and “tricky,” but Sprinkle says: “I don’t see any complexity. If your version of justice requires you to massacre women, children and civilians, then your sense of justice is immoral. That is a noncontroversial statement. And I’m saying this as a Bible-believing, nonliberal, card-carrying evangelical Christian who went to John MacArthur’s Christian college and seminary.”

A declaration of solidarity

The gathering culminated in a Declaration, drafted with Palestinian Christian leadership, that sought to name both complicity and responsibility. To date, more than 2,300 people have publicly added their names.

The Red Candle Campaign, unveiled at the same time, offered a concrete symbol of solidarity: lighting red candles during Advent as a sign of commitment to Palestinian human rights.

Gregory Khalil, co-founder of Telos and from a Palestinian Christian family in Beit Sahour, explained its significance: by signing the Declaration and lighting the candle, we signify we stand firmly and publicly with Palestinians in their urgent struggle for life, and we “stand against the brutal weaponization of faith, which decimates so many lives and somehow even sanctifies evils like apartheid and genocide.”

Ruth Padilla DeBorst, a Latin American theologian whose comments advocating for the Palestinian people at last year’s Lausanne gathering prompted an immediate apology from its director, reminded listeners the Declaration is a call to ongoing discipleship:

“We are called today to remember, to listen, to repent and to act in compassionate love in accordance with God’s own character. To be true to our identity, those who with fear and trembling dare identify as God’s people must step up and step out, unmasking any religious justification for oppression, naming, lamenting and seeking justice.”

A narrow way forward

Throughout the event, the refrain returned to Jesus and the Cross as the narrow way of peace, sacrifice and enemy love. Participants were urged to educate, agitate and organize; to support students, congregations and families who refuse to be silent; and to take action that resists both empire and indifference.

Sandra Maria van Opstal, a Latina pastor from Chicago, reminded us: “Fear and violence and chaos are weapons of empire. But faith and love, peace and hope are the ways of the kingdom.”

Church at the Crossroads was not a comfortable conference. Nor was it meant to be. It was, as Bannura said, a place to “listen, to learn, to engage and to think seriously what needs to be done next.” The stakes were framed not only in political terms but in profoundly theological ones: the integrity of the gospel, the witness of the church and the lives of a people long crying out for solidarity.

 

Lauren Cibene is a doubtful-yet-hopeful Jesus person writing through the messy middle of faith, hope and humanity. Her debut memoir, Tiger in a Lifeboat, about trauma recovery and faith deconstruction set against the backdrop of time spent in India is out now.