It is a pleasure to be here to discuss Christian extremism. In my home country of the United States, the only extremism openly discussed is associated with Muslims and Islam. Everyone else—especially armed white men shooting Indian engineers in Kansas bars or occupying US Federal facilities—are either mentally ill or defending American ideals. Muslims, however, need to be banned from and potentially removed from the country.
Extremism is a subjective category with no clear definition. The Oxford English Dictionary helpfully defines an “extremist” as “a person who holds extreme political or religious views, especially one who advocates illegal, violent, or other extreme action.” Merriam-Webster is no better, defining “extremism” as “the quality or state of being extreme.” In its special definition of “English Language Learners,” Merriam-Webster says “extremism” is “belief in and support for ideas that are very far from what most people consider correct or reasonable.”
We learn from these definitions the tautology that an extremist is one who is extreme. More specifically, we hear that extremism is associated with radicalism and violence. In other words, designating something as “extremist” is a pejorative way to ensure that some ideas are beyond the pale, outside what “most people consider correct or reasonable.” Any idea outside the norm is potentially extremist. The designation, then, is a way to police the boundaries of thinkable thought while stigmatizing any form of resistance to the presumably legitimate violence of the dominant collective. I wonder, then, how we can talk about extremism if we can’t say objectively what the word even means, much less build a conference theme around it?
In the absence of clarity, I offer this working definition: Extremism is political action devoted solely to the implementation of its ideology rather than to the wellbeing of human communities. Religious extremism, it follows, is when such political action is informed, validated, and sanctioned by religious commitments.
Since it is singularly committed to ideological purity (even if the content of ideology can vary), extremism resists interaction with contrary ideals. The introduction of religious commitments further limits the possibility of reasoned critique. Religious claims resist critique because they draw on proprietary sources of knowledge and truth. Therefore, the most effective critique of a religiously-sanctioned ideology—extremist or not—is from within that religious tradition itself. Any discussion of Christian extremism, therefore, immediately invokes a notion of intra-Christian responsibility. It is much easier to externalize and ridicule than it is to take responsibility. And the first step toward taking responsibility is to seek understanding.
My approach to Christian extremism is intimately bound up with the sweep of my academic project: for close to 20 years I have dwelled on the question of why American Christians act the way we act in relation to Israel and Palestine. This is a self-critical project, because I am one of those American Christians. The ideas informing American relation to this geography—Christian Zionism chief among them—are part of my formative culture. As a result, I seek to understand rather than ridicule or simply dismiss. In this, I hope to challenge the Christian extremism permeating my home country, inflicting violence and pain on much of the rest of the world.
In what follows, I will share some of the results of my research on Christian Zionism and discuss what we can do to challenge its continued primacy in western churches.
Christian Zionism has very little to do with the so-called Rapture Theology of premillennial dispensationalism developed in the late 1800s. It is, instead, the outgrowth of English Protestant biblical interpretation in the 1500s and 1600s, when Protestants faced the dual threats of Roman Catholic and Ottoman imperial power. The resulting anti-Catholic and anti-Islamic theology imagined Jews to be allies in an apocalyptic drama. These ideas bolstered an English Puritan sense of special mission and, thus, superiority. When these ideas were transferred to English colonies in the New World, they soon informed the deepest undercurrents of American identity and mission.
When this tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation informed political action, the result was Christian Zionism. The first documented example of Christian Zionism is in 1649, when two English subjects living in Amsterdam suggest to English authorities that the English civil wars would end if “this Nation of England, with the Inhabitants of the Netherlands, shall be the first and readiest to transport Izraells Sons & Daughters in their Ships to the land promised to their forefathers.”
Several characteristics of Christian Zionism emerge through historical comparison. First, Christian Zionism constructs Muslims and Jews for its own theological and political purposes. Moreover, its anti-Catholic and anti-Islamic foundations conspire against any relationship between western and eastern Christians, especially those who claim it is possible to live with Muslim neighbors.
Second, Christian Zionism is an imperial theology. In 1649, English and Dutch ships were not being built for pleasure cruises; these were ships of war and commerce, the tools of empire. In the theology of John Hagee today, imperial strength is necessary for preserving the theological fact of the State of Israel which, of course, functions as a satrap (regional governor) for American and European imperial interests in the Middle East. Contemporary Christian Zionists can be understood as court theologians serving the interests of corporate and military masters by providing religious sanction for state violence.
Given the pervasive cultural consensus of Christian Zionism and its underlying theologies, Anglo-American Christians tend to encounter this land as a projection of their own imaginations. The people associated with this land—both Jews and Palestinians—are commonly filtered through a literarily constructed imaginary of Anglo-American biblical interpretation. The end result of this process is the creation of theopolitical systems seeking to implement ideologies grounded, first and foremost, in ethno-religious triumphalism, namely the global hegemony of White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Jews, through an Anglo-American tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation, are conscripted to play a part in a Christian drama of global redemption. As a result, Christian Zionism works hand-in-hand with white possessive settler colonialism.
If Christian extremism is political action informed, validated, and sanctioned by Christian commitments devoted solely to the pure implementation of its ideology rather than to the wellbeing of human communities, Christian Zionism certainly fits the definition.
There are, however, problems with addressing Christian Zionism through the discourses of extremism. While there is no doubt Christian Zionism, in the Oxford English Dictionary definition of extremism, “advocates illegal, violent, or other extreme action” by both the United States and the State of Israel (especially in validating settler violence), one cannot say, at least regarding the United States, that Christian Zionism is “very far from what most people consider correct or reasonable.”
Christian Zionism, rather, is found at the root of American identity and culture. The resulting cultural consensus helps reinforce western disregard for the wellbeing of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in what many call the Holy Land. Moreover, the notion of extremism often denotes disorderly, barbarian violence; Christian Zionists, on the other hand, promote theologies as civilized and sophisticated as the structural violence, drones, and cruise missiles of the imperial interests they serve.
When progressive or liberationist Christians describe Christian Zionism as extremist, they risk thinking of the movement as marginal or as somehow illegitimate. This assessment potentially minimizes the ongoing dangers of the movement as well as the sense of Christian responsibility it demands.
The first step for treating an illness is to seek a proper diagnosis, determining the etiology of the disease. What has caused this disease to come into being? If something is wrong, we must first stop merely recoiling from it and condemning it. Simply saying cancer is a horrible, bad thing doesn’t get us anywhere toward treating it. The first step is seeking to understand. In physical illnesses as well as theopolitical maladies, this means diving deep in history and seeking comparative cases. In the midst of a pandemic, medical scientists have two primary tasks: develop an antidote to cure the disease or an inoculation to help prevent infection. In response to the many forms of religious extremism, including Christian Zionism, afflicting our world today, religious communities, including churches, have a responsibility to explore both tracks of action.
So if discussing Christian extremism invokes a notion of intra-Christian responsibility, what shall we do? How can Christian Zionism be effectively challenged as a form of Christian extremism? The panels of the past few days have made it clear that the antidote to extremism is not more extremism—state-sponsored or otherwise. Within each religious community, extremism must instead be counteracted with “robust moderation,” a concept I helped develop with Bishop Munib Younan in his role as President of the Lutheran World Federation. Robust moderation is neither soft nor weak; it isn’t based in simplistic wishes papering over the real challenges and divisions within communities. It instead promotes a vision for living together peaceably, recognizing the legitimacy of difference and seeking the good of the neighbor.
For those of us from countries far away from Nazareth and Zababde, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Netanya and Sderot—but where the Christian extremism of Christian Zionism seeks its own purposes through the violence of empire—our responsibility is not merely to condemn but to shape a different vision seeking not the theopolitical interests of western Christian empire, but the wellbeing of all the peoples of God in Israel and Palestine and around the world.
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This is a speech I delivered last night at a conference gathered in Nazareth. It draws from a good deal of practical reflection, as well as my research on Christian Zionism, contained in my book More Desired than our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (Oxford, 2013). The good response to this presentation indicates yet again that I may need to develop a more accessible (not-a-dissertation) resource on the topic. After I finished the dissertation, graduated with the PhD, and edited the book for publication, I thought I was done with the topic. Evidently not.
An Okie Abroad 