Saturday 14 November
VOX magazine is LIVE today at this important conference in Belfast - bringing you a summary of what is said by key speakers throughout the day.
Testimony - Charlotte Marshall
Charlotte has spent 20 years working on Palestinian human rights.
I’m going to share i a really personal story as an evangelical and charismatic Christian in solidarity with Palestinian Christians. During my first week at university, almost everyone I met was a Christian. Following an Alpha course, I gave my live to Christ and joined a large evangelical, charismatic church. It had amazing teaching and a strong focus on how we as should live out our faith practically. At that stage i, I was completely unaware of what was happening in Palestine. It was never mentioned in our church.
When I left uni, I volunteered with Christian Aid. My supervisor had just returned from a trip to Palestine. Learning about Palestine through stories and through engaging in development work lit a flame inside me about the injustice that was happening.
I wondered why this was never discussed in church. I would hear comments like, “It’s complicated. We need to be balanced. It’s too political.”
As a 23 year old, I began wrestling with my love for the church, my faith in Jesus and my love for Palestine. Visiting Bethlehem with my husband, we stayed with a Christian family - my first experience of the amazing Palestinian hospitality. Twenty years later and I go back to Bethlehem every year I can. I have encountered so many Palestinian Christians living out their faith in such desperately difficult circumstances.
When the genocide in Gaza began in 2023, I believed that this would be devastating but short lived. I had been to Gaza previously and saw the devastation of so-called “mowing the lawn”. I saw people rebuilding the same homes that had been destroyed before. But the genocide turned my world upside down. It rocked my faith in God. It obliterated my faith in humanity and my faith in the church. Many people were praying but it wasn’t followed up with action.
As I struggled with my faith, I noticed that the only people who weren’t struggling were the Palestinian Christians who were more steadfast in their faith in Christ than ever before.
As one said, “Jesus is not some distant deity… he is in the rubble, in the suffering and in the pain.”
Our mandate should be solidarity. 1 Corinthians 12 says we are the body of Christ. If one part suffers, every part suffers. Palestinian suffering should be our suffering. It is not about having all the theological answers. Unity in the body of Christ means we must open our eyes to that suffering.
Prayer for the Morning
By Audette Fulbright Fulson
Did you rise this morning, broken and hung over
with weariness and pain and rage tattered from waving too long in a brutal wind?
Get up, child. Pull your bones upright gather your skin and muscle into a patch of sun.
Draw breath deep into your lungs; you will need it for another day calls to you.
I know you ache. I know you wish the work were done
and you with everyone you have ever loved were on a distant shore safe, and unafraid.
But remember this, tired as you are: you are not alone.
Here and here and here also there are others weeping and rising and gathering their courage.
You belong to them and they to you and together, we will break through
and bend the arc of justice all the way down into our lives.
The God we worship, the ethics we practice:
a Palestinian Christian call to repentance
with Tony Diek
It has been 78 years since the Zionist war on Palestine began, which has culminated in the vicious genocide in Gaza. Since the so-called cease fire took place, over 1,000 Palestinians have died.
It is the world’s leading human rights organisations that have named this a genocide.
A famous theologian once said Christians should hold the Bible in one hand a newspaper in the other. In other words, Christians should engage seriously with the world around them. But I beg to differ. Let’s be honest. Which newspaper? I would suggest reading the Bible in one hand and the reports from human rights organisations in the other.
The question is not whether or not there is a genocide in Gaza but how we should respond to it.
This all began in 1948 (not 7 October). 750,000 Palestinians were displaced and over 500 villages and towns destroyed. As Palestinian Christians we have the added suffering of knowing that if it weren’t for theology of Christians in the West the ethnic cleansing of Palestine would not have occurred. As Palestinian Chrisitans we are still shocked by the waves of Christian Zionism that emerged at the beginning of the genocide.
We expected Zionist organisations to stand with Israel. But it was painful to see respected churches across the spectrum, actively participating in the legitimatisation of the war.
In the face of all of it, we could not be silent while the gospel of Jesus Christ was being abused. We could not stand by watching. We decided to issue a call to repentance, addressed to western church leaders and theologians because ordinary Christians are victims of false teaching. Our statement was issued on 28 October and subsequently amplified. We thank the Lord for all the people who have come alongside us.
Our call to western theologians is to discard Israel-centred theology and return to the theology that centres God’s goodness and justice towards all people. The early church did not fully understand that the gospel included the Gentiles. The first evangelistic sermons to the Gentiles does not occur until Acts 10. Without this moment we would not have this precious gospel. This moment in the house of Cornelius also tells another conversion that of Peter. Peter had to confess that he finally understood that God shows no partiality. It was a turning from this ethnocentric theology towards the declaration that God doesn’t have favourites. God is not racist. It was a return to the right understanding of God. He is not tribal. The call of repentance was requisite to proclaiming God’s love to the world.
The earliest Christians were a minority and vulnerable to persecution but even they had to discard ethno-centric theology for the sake of the gospel. If we are to proclaim and embody God’s love to the world, we must return to a Jesus-centred theology that proclaims God’s goodness to all people.
Let me be clear, Israel exists on the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages and at the expense of Palestinian lives. No one has a right to kill. How can the expulsion of 750,000 people and the destruction of over 500 villages in 1948 be right? Israel has the right to exist but the question is how? Acknowledge that Israel is built on Palestinian blood and ruined villages is the first step towards lasting peace. There can be no genuine peace without truth.
Christian Zionism stands in continuity with pagan ethics. The logic of “might makes right” is the logic of the Roman empire. In Plato’s writings, he explains, “Creatures as do nations, that right and justice has been determined as the superior person dominating the inferior person...” Is the defence of a powerful empire that has relentlessly expanded its territory more reflective of Christ-like ethics or pagan ethics?
Christian ethics is embodied in the life and teaching of Jesus, “Love God and love your neighbour as yourself”… especially your neighbour who was beaten on the side of the road.
You cannot separate the God one worships from the ethics we practice. Let us turn away from every depiction of God as tribal and exclusionary.
Let us cling to Jesus, so that we may become more like him and embody his way in a broken world!
Prophecy, Peace and Justice: Some Theological Pointers
with theologian Dr. Elaine Storkey
I was there in the General Synod of the Church of England when we were closing our eyes and ears of the pleading of the Palestinian Christians and listening to the Jewish cause. We did not give the same weight to the Palestinian voice.
I remember visiting Israel many years ago. Our job was to engage with the Jewish theologians but it brought up more questions than answers for me. There was no single united theological voice about Israel. In fact, the theology about Israel was largely produced by people coming over from America.
In terms of the Jewish communities themselves, the only arguments made that the land was theirs was by people who were ignorant of theology. We visited the settlements and we heard that people had been evicted. “God gave us this land,” we were told. They were brutal. There was no end to what they would do. We came away looking at one another saying, “Wouldn’t it be awful if this expanded and got worse and spread?” And we now know the story since then.
Prophecy – “The right to land in Israel”. We have to recognise that this theology is purported to be biblical. It is important to look at how it doesn’t match up. This idea is based on God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis.
Throughout the prophets we see mentions of the people being gathered, brought back and settled) – Isaiah 11:12 (gathering the exiles) Isaiah 14: 1-2 (settle them in their own land. Ezekiel (taking them out of the nations, bringing them back, re-building of the temple)
However, Israel failed to keep the covenant again and again. The book of Judges is a roller coaster of disobedience and forgiveness. There are many misleading interpretations pointing to 1948 as a fulfilment of the “end times.” It is the idea that a modern political entity enjoys a special and uncritical “preferential place in God’s economy”
It is important to remember that Jesus was a first-century Palestinian Jew!
The Servant Prophecies in Isaiah point to Jesus and in the New Testament we gain a wonderful understanding of the Jesus as a the “new Israel”. Where Israel failed to obey God, Jesus was faithful. Christian Zionism is a distorted view of the fulfilment of prophesy which is in fact fulfilled in Jesus.
Peace - the idea that fighting is justified and that somehow leads to peace.
The carnage of bombing has never been so intense and destructive. It is an abuse of power. And whose bombs are doing this? The bombs come over from Europe and the USA. We pray for peace but we don’t worry if nations are taking up the sword. We are as complicit in the UK as anywhere else. We spend money on guns, bombs and defence and we take funding away from the vulnerable. There is only one thing a bomb can do – kill and destroy.
Peace is God’s way. The scriptures are saturated with pleas for peace. Peace seeking, peace bringing and peace making has been entrusted to the church of Jesus Christ.
What are we doing about it? It is our responsibility to produce peace in Palestine.
Justice – throughout the scriptures, justice is a central theme. No favouritism. Care for the widow and the orphans. No misuse of power. Justice for the poor. No corruption
Justice is at the centre of God’s hear and it is embodied in the person of Christ.
Whatever value-system we hold and live out in our own lives and understanding. No one can justify what has been happening in Gaza over the last years. The carnage, brutality and suffering marks a turning point in the level of atrocity that human beings are willing to inflict on other precious human lives.
The continuation of this evil, leaves deep scars across humanity.
The voice of a teenager
Mira Mobarak from Lebanon is just 14 years old. She shared her powerful story (moving many in the audience to tears).
Never again to injustice. Never again to destruction and never again to genocide. And then the Ukraine war happened. “Never again” became a popular slogan one more time. The naïve child I was, felt the world had finally become better and more humane.
That was until my home was attacked and “never again” was forgotten. I was no longer a child. I grew decades within seconds. Watching my childhood being stripped away in front of my eyes, will remain etched in my soul.
The world in its injustice, cruelty and hypocrisy became apparent. Every day and night was filled with terror and the sounds of destruction. Suddenly my home and haven became a shelter for displaced family. I had to share my home with 15 other family members. I could see the stress and pain on everyone’s face as they were trying to grasp the new reality. None of them knew if they would even have a home to return to.
And yet, the world was filled with silence and the victims were accused of being the aggressors.
How could people support and defend this? I never signed up to this. I wanted to live a normal childhood. My brothers and I should not live having to worry about our lives and our parents lives. The constant bombing became our norm. Numbness and sorrow overtook my mind and body. My parents put on a strong front. They tried to shield us from the horror around us until we could no longer pretend. This war hit us in our own home.
Imagine a young woman standing peacefully in her kitchen, conversing with her toddler playing at her feet as she cooks. There is a persistent sound, “Beep, beep, beep.” She grabs the source of the irrating noise. She brings it closer to her face. Within seconds there is an explosion; her hands and face are gone. Blood splatters over the floor and ceiling. Her child is still there having witnessed something no child should ever see.
She is rushed to the hospital asking for her baby until she loses consciousness, She is unable to survive. She is gone at the age of 27 leaving behind a two year old son and an eight month old daughter. She was my aunt . The aunt who I loved unconditionally. She was like a sister to me. I longed to hear her stories from her nursing job at the hospital.
Her name means “giving” in Arabic. But then she was gone and we had to face the reality. She lived, loved and sacrificed, leaving two very young children orphaned. “Never again” did not include me, my people, my country and my aunt. Her story did not make the western media. Her death was never acknowledged.
And yet the attack was mentioned proudly in media outlets by those who ordered it. The same individuals whose job is to ensure peace and safety remained silent. The western world did not notice the innocent lives lost that day. They believed the false narratives. My aunt is a testament to their failure to truly implement justice and equality.
The world has forgotten about Palestinian children’s right to exist. Our right to a carefree and happy childhood. My aunt had the right to live, grow old and watch her offspring become adults. How did one country earn the right to grow and thrive on the death of millions?
I stand here in front of you as proof that people around the world have failed us and “never again” was not meant for everyone. I’m not angry or full of hate but filled with pain and disappointment at those who failed us and justified killing my aunt. Why is my life less valuable than yours and your children’s?
How and why is this justified? Are we less human than everyone else? Why are my people and the Palestinian people sentenced to a life of suffering misery and chaos? Is this truly what God wants?
I would like to leave you all with one question: if I am killed tomorrow by Israel, will you justify my death too?
A plea from Lebanon
Mira’s father Mohammed Mobarak shares the pain at seeing Christians ignoring the suffering of his people.
I come from a Muslim background however, at a young age, I was sent to a Christian boys’ school. Coming from a Muslim background, I had already been told about Jesus as a prophet. But I had never been told about the full image of Jesus Christ. I remember listening to the stories of Jesus and I was mesmerised. I fell in love with the message. I learnt that Christianity was about love, forgiveness and turning the other cheek.
I thought if people followed his path, the world would be filled with peace, love and mercy. But as I grew older what I saw broke my heart and tested my beliefs. I struggled to understand how the same church that talked about love and mercy in the face of suffering, could support the actions of Israel. I began to ask, “Where is Jesus in all of this? Where is his love, mercy and compassion?”
Tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese lives have been lost while many people have remained silent, turning a blind eye. There is a global silence. South Lebanon has been demolished. Hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes and families have lost everything they spent generations building. Churches that date to the first century have been destroyed. Even the house of God has not been given mercy. These are our homes and our children’s homes, our churches, our olive trees - livelihoods of entire families are stolen and burnt.
Among those who are suffering are your brothers and sisters in Christ. People who God created. People who pray to the same God. Do their lives not matter as much as the Western Chrisitans? What hurts me even more is that churches in Lebanon are facing pressure to remain silent about what is happening or they will lose financial report.
One church lost its financial support from the west when they shelter displaced families. It was punished because it offered food and shelter and showed love.
What have we become if feeding the hungry ad sheltering the homeless can be treated as if it was a crime?
Another tragedy is for believers who come from a Muslim background. They who found their faith in Jesus despite rejection from their own families and being shunned by their communities. And yet now when they speak against the suffering in Lebanon or Palestine, they face the same rejection from the Christian community that once welcomed them.
As someone who has lost his young sister, who was killed in front of her two year old, I ask, How can Christians reject those who speak out? Where is the love that was promised? Where is the welcoming church? Where is Jesus in all of this? My friends, something has gone terribly wrong. I have chosen to use my voice to speak out about the suffering and injustice because this is what Jesus teaches us to do.
Speaking against the actions of the Israeli government is neither antisemitic nor an attack on the Jewish people.
My concern is that no innocent lives should be taken away by oppression or violence. No government’s agenda should be placed above people’s lives. One nations suffering does not justify killing an entire people who had nothing to do with it.
If Jesus came today, who would he stand with? The poor and suffering who are being killed or the empires perpetrating these heinous acts? How could Jesus’ return be connected with death and injustice?
I ask you: Break the silence. Look past the political agenda and see the human blood spilled on the ground. Teach your congregations to stand with the suffering people of Lebanon and Palestine.