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PEACE AND FAITH: Christian Churches and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, composed of new essays, is the first collection to bring together writers from different faith communities to discuss the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement’s impact on one of the more fractious topics addressed by Christian denominations: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In so doing, it builds on interfaith projects under way for decades. Theology and politics intermingle in debates taking place in local churches, Christian NGOs, and national church meetings that define official policy. The debates revive and reframe the most basic values of Christianity and the questions church members seek to resolve: How do Christians today hew to the principles Jesus articulated? How can justice be pursued in the context of competing national narratives and historical understandings? What bearing do or should centuries of Christian violence against Jews and Muslims have on contemporary theology and ethics? Is it ethical, or even possible, to set aside millennia of Christian anti-Semitism in judging Israel’s conduct? What Christian values should be honored in pursuing Jesus’s mission of reconciliation today? How may the pursuit of truth be corrupted by passionate social witness? Can advocacy cross the line into hatred? These are among the critical questions this collection poses and attempts to address.
“[This volume] offers a wide range of studies relating to the Christian churches’ involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, set against the background of the historical relationship between Jews and Christians across the centuries. … [O]verall, Nelson and Gizzi have put together an important collection of essays that comes highly recommended by this reviewer.”
— Jonathan G. Campbell, Fathom
Michael C. Gizzi is professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University, where he teaches classes on constitutional law (criminal procedure), courts, criminal law, corrections, and introduction to criminal justice. He is coauthor of The Web of Democracy: An Introduction to American Politics and The Fourth Amendment in Flux: The Roberts Court, Crime Control, & Digital Privacy. He has published widely on search and seizure law, the war on drugs, and Supreme Court decision-making. He has been active in Presbyterians for Middle East Peace for a number of years, writing on the group’s behalf and participating in the denomination’s debates. He has researched reconciliation projects on several trips to Israel and Palestine.
Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an affiliated professor at the University of Haifa. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is a former president of the American Association of University Professors and is current chair of the Alliance for Academic Freedom. His work is the subject of an edited collection, Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University: Poetry, Politics, and the Profession. He is the author or editor of thirty-five books and has written 300 essays and reviews. Among his authored books are Manifesto of a Tenured Radical; Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left; No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom; Academic Keywords: A Devil’s Dictionary for Higher Education (with Stephen Watt); and Recommended Principles to Guide Academy-Industry Relationships (with Jennifer Washburn). His edited and coedited books include Theory in the Classroom; Higher Education Under Fire; Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture; Cultural Studies; Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War; Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis; and Anthology of Modern American Poetry.
Preface
INTRODUCTION: The Political and Theological Foundations of Christian Engagement with the Jewish State
PART ONE: THE HOLY
LAND AND THE POLITICS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF
1.
Edward
Kessler, “Christianity, Jews, and Judaism”
2.
Amy-Jill
Levine, “The Gospel and the Land Revisited: Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and
Politics”
3.
Daniel
Friedman, “American Christianity, Israel, and the US Presidency”
4.
Giovanni
Matteo Quer, “Catholic Organizations and the Delegitimization of Israel”
5.
Jonathan
Rynhold, “Evangelicals and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
6.
C.
K. Robertson, “Complexity and Contention: Four Decades of The Episcopal
Church’s Responses to the Palestine-Israel Question”
7.
Robert
A. Cathey, “Where We Live, What We Believe: Thinking Contextually with Ateek, Raheb,
and Gregerman about Israel/Palestine”
8.
David
Fox Sandmel, “The Kairos Palestine Document, Anti-Semitism, and BDS”
9.
John
Kampen, “Assessing the 2017 Mennonite Resolution on Israel/Palestine”
PART TWO: BOYCOTT
CAMPAIGNS IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH USA
10. Daniel Friedman, “Battle for The
Holy Land(s): The Evolution of American Protestant Polarization on Israel and
Palestine”
11. John Wimberly and William Harter,
“When the PCUSA Began to Mirror the Middle East”
12. Michael C. Gizzi, “Zionism Unsettled and the 2014 PCUSA
Battles over Divestment”
13. Cary Nelson, “A Critical Reading of
Zionism Unsettled, Its Antecedents,
and Its Legacy”
PART THREE: RECONCILIATION—GUIDEPOSTS
FOR THE FUTURE
14. Susan Andrews, “Spiritual Siblings
Sharing Sacred Space: A Pastor’s Reflection”
15. Michael C. Gizzi, “Reconciliation,
Shared Society, and Co-existence Efforts between Israelis and Palestinians: An
Overview”
16. Cary Nelson, “A Reconciliation
Roadmap”
APPENDIX
David Fox Sandmel, “Preface to a
Timeline: A Brief History of Anti-Semitism”
Cary Nelson, “Annotated Timeline of
Jewish/Christian Relations and the History of Anti-Judaism”
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX