GREEN LAKE, Wis. (ABP) — A Lebanese Baptist minister critical of American evangelical Protestants' overwhelming support for Israel will address an American Baptist Churches missions conference Aug. 4.
Martin Accad's address to participants at the ABCUSA International Ministries world missions conference will come just days after a prominent Southern Baptist critic of Islam reportedly said the current struggle in which the radical Lebanese group Hezbollah is engaged “is a war against the God of Israel.”
Accad, dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, was finishing a guest-teaching stint at Fuller Theological Seminary near Los Angeles when hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces broke out July 12. He has been unable to return home because Israeli attacks have damaged the nation's only airport and effectively halted all travel to and from Lebanon.
Since then Accad, in a series of opinion pieces on the website of Christianity Today magazine, has lambasted Christians in the United States who support Israel's foreign policy uncritically for theological reasons.
“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…of making their hatred for Israel 'crystal clear,'” he wrote in one opinion piece.
Reid Trulson, ABC International Ministries area director for Europe and the Middle East, said the lecture will give American Baptists a chance to understand the situation better.
“We need to hear the voice of respected Christian leaders from the Middle East, such as Dr. Accad, who can give us insight we may not generally find in the secular U.S. media,” Trulson said, according to the American Baptist News Service.
He will also hold what the news service described as “an extensive question-and-answer period” following his address. The conference will take place at the ABC's Green Lake Conference Center in Wisconsin.
Accad's speech will occur less than a week after Ergun Caner attempted to cast the Israel-Lebanon conflict in theological terms during a sermon at a Virginia Baptist church.
Caner, dean of Liberty Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Va., preached on the war during July 30 services at Lynchburg's Thomas Road Baptist Church. Television preacher Jerry Falwell founded the congregation, Caner's seminary and the university associated with it. Caner is a former professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
Preaching from Revelation 5, Caner — who was raised Sunni Muslim in Turkey but became a prominent critic of Islam after converting to Christianity — said Christians had a theological duty to support Israel.
“I stand now and proclaim that evangelical Christianity, if we are silent in our defense of Israel, we are as bad as those who persecute them,” he said, according to EthicsDaily.com, the website of the Baptist Center for Ethics. “Because someone must stand and say it is biblically right, it is ethically right, it is ethnically right. And the silence of evangelicalism in the midst of this war is killing me.”
This is not a war against Israel,” he continued. “This is a war against the God of Israel. And I will not apologize for standing with our kinsmen according to the flesh.”
Baptist leaders in Europe, the United States and Canada have all called on President Bush's administration to push Israel harder to end its attacks. The war has, as of Aug. 2, killed hundreds of Lebanese — the vast majority civilians — and displaced more than 700,000. Accad's seminary and its sister institution, the Beirut Baptist School, are housing hundreds of refugees from Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon.
In a July 23 letter, a group of North American and European Baptist leaders called for an immediate cease-fire. “As Baptists, who believe the whole Bible, we know that Jesus calls us to peacemaking,” the letter said. “We know that praying for peace and witnessing to the state are things that make for peace.”
Signers of the letter — which was initiated by the Baptist Center for Ethics — included the heads of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, the Baptist General Association of Virginia, Canadian Baptist Ministries and the European Baptist Federation. The heads of the American Baptist Churches and the Alliance of Baptists have also separately called for an immediate cease-fire.
Meanwhile, a July 31 update newsletter from leaders of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary said that workers from Hungarian Baptist Aid were helping the displaced families staying at the schools, and that their efforts were drawing attention throughout Lebanon.
“The HBAid team set up its clinic in the Beirut Baptist School's playground where they've been examining and treating patients for the last two days. Effective tomorrow the team will start examining at BBS displaced people from nearby schools and centers,” the update said. ” Praise God more people are increasingly aware of the ministry of the Beirut Baptist School. This morning two major daily newspapers that sell over a 100,000 copies/day (in addition to their online viewers) covered the services of the Hungarian Baptist Aid team at BBS.”
-30-