The "unreached" Palestinians and Global Evangelicalism
Among progressives, The Joshua Project is best-known for its deceased missionary John Allen Chao, an evangelical who was killed while trying to make contact with the residents of North Sentinel Island.
The project is an organization dedicated to spreading evangelical Christianity across the globe, especially in isolated areas they consider "unreached" or "frontier people groups." This includes areas in the Global South with significant non-evangelical Christian populations. The heavily Christian countries Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Philippines often make an appearance on these lists, further demonstrating the white Christian chauvinism here.
This applies to Palestine as well, despite its Christian population.
The very birthplace of Christianity is considered "unreached" because despite having Christian populations, these Christians are Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran, not primarily born-again Evangelicals. Not all evangelicals think this way, more on that later.
Country: West Bank/Gaza (The Joshua Project does not recognize the name "Palestine")
2-5% Christian, 0.1%-2% Evangelical
Country: Lebanon
31.5% Christian, 0.7% Evangelical
About 1/3 of Lebanon's population is Christian, but The Joshua Project counts less than 1% of them, as the vast majority of Lebanese Christians are not evangelicals.
In both Palestine and Lebanon, the majority of Christians are Catholic or Orthodox.
The Joshua Project's form of evangelicalism is both racist and anti-Catholic. This supremacist evangelicalism is the brand of Christianity that excuses genocide in their backing of the Zionist state, both because of its racism as well as the chauvinism that says that Catholics aren't actually Christian. In many right-wing western evangelical circles, all Catholics going to hell is a given (Orthodox lumped in here as well), so this chauvinism is not out of place. Calling the Pope the anti-Christ isn't unusual, either.
Christ at the Checkpoint: The other Evangelicals
From Section 5, "Christian Social Responsibility" and Section 6, "The Church and Evangelism"
We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression. Because men and women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, colour, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic dignity because of which he or she should be respected and served, not exploited.
The church is the community of God’s people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology.
Christians renounce unworthy methods of evangelism. Though the nature of our faith requires us to share the gospel with others, our practice is to make an open and honest statement of it, which leaves the hearers entirely free to make up their own minds about it. We wish to be sensitive to those of other faiths, and we reject any approach that seeks to force conversion on them.
A) We commit ourselves to be scrupulously ethical in all our evangelism. Our witness is to be marked by ‘gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.’ We therefore reject any form of witness that is coercive, unethical, deceptive, or disrespectful.
B) In the name of the God of love, we repent of our failure to seek friendships with people of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious backgrounds. In the spirit of Jesus, we will take initiatives to show love, goodwill and hospitality to them.
C) In the name of the God of truth, we (i) refuse to promote lies and caricatures about other faiths, and (ii) denounce and resist the racist prejudice, hatred and fear incited in popular media and political rhetoric.
D) In the name of the God of peace, we reject the path of violence and revenge in all our dealings with people of other faiths, even when violently attacked.
E) We affirm the proper place for dialogue with people of other faiths, just as Paul engaged in debate with Jews and Gentiles in the synagogue and public arenas. As a legitimate part of our Christian mission, such dialogue combines confidence in the uniqueness of Christ and in the truth of the gospel with respectful listening to others.
When cross-cultural missions is discussed, conversations often center on "unreached" peoples, but there's a sub-category of unreached peoples that demands urgent attention: the Frontier People Groups. While unreached peoples have minimal gospel presence, Frontier groups represent a crucial frontier of gospel need.
The Lausanne project has covered Palestine before, including the Christ at the Checkpoint conference run by Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac and Bethlehem Bible College. Bethlehem Bible College is also a part of this very different face of Evangelical Christianity. They are part of the World Evangelical Alliance, and also regularly engage in justice work for Palestine.
The most recent Lausanne Conference produced the Seoul Statement, which includes the following paragraph supporting Palestine:
We acknowledge with grief and shame the complicity of Christians in some of the most destructive contexts of ethnic violence and oppression, and the lamentable silence of large parts of the church when such conflicts take place. Such contexts include the history and legacy of racism and black slavery; the holocaust against Jews; apartheid; ‘ethnic cleansing’; inter-Christian sectarian violence; decimation of indigenous populations; political and ethnic violence; Palestinian suffering; caste oppression and tribal genocide.
This section names the Christian context in which many of the world's worst atrocities took place, either in Christian environments or through Christian complacency.
The Seoul Statement expands on the need for Christians to avoid religious and ethnic nationalism. It cautions against conflating Biblical peoples with modern-day communities as well as reminding evangelicals that modern nation-states cannot bring about salvation.
We echo the Cape Town Commitment in calling “for repentance for the many times Christians have been complicit in such evils by silence, apathy or presumed neutrality, or by providing defective theological justification for these.”
Much of this defective theological justification arises from a failure to distinguish between the “nations” of Scripture and modern “nation-states” and from a failure to think biblically about nationality...We affirm that every modern state is accountable to the divine demand for the just and merciful treatment of both the individuals and peoples over whom it exercises sovereignty as well as those of its neighbours.
It is critically important that Christians think clearly about biblical peoples when they (e.g. Israelites, Egyptians, Syrians) are associated by name, history, geography, or ancestry with modern nation-states (e.g. Israel, Egypt, Syria) and the peoples who live under the political sovereignty of these states (Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, Copts, Druze, Armenians, Kurds, and many more)...In the Middle East, and elsewhere, Christian leaders must work to correct theological errors that provide ideological justification for unjust violence against innocent civilians or seek to legitimise violations of international humanitarian law.
We lament that some Christians have looked to the state rather than the gospel as the key means for bringing about God’s intentions for the world. This takes an especially regrettable form when wed to nationalism—here defined as the belief that every state should have a single, national culture and no other—or ethnonationalism—which is the belief that every ethnic group should have its own state. This is a great evil in our world...Against this, we assert that no modern state is able to claim or will ever be able to claim to be the special agent of God’s saving rule.
We cannot reduce Evangelical Christianity to Christian Zionism or to anti-Palestinian racism.
Many evangelicals are justice-minded people whose practice of Christianity involves a "new birth" experience and a close relationship with Jesus. They often hold conservative opinions on topics like human sexuality, but they still hold diverse opinions on topics such as colonialism and racial justice. When I use the term "right-wing evangelical" I refer to those on the right who support Trump, Netanyahu, etc. and who are much more likely to be both racist and anti-Catholic. This is very different from the evangelical Christianity within Palestinian communities.
Life in Palestine was difficult. The Christian population was shrinking. Would this ancient Christian community in the Holy Land disappear altogether? A dream began to grow in his heart: an Evangelical, inter-denominational Bible College in Palestine, where students could study and serve in their native land.
This is why we said last year, “Christ is in the rubble,” and this year, we say, “Christ is still in the rubble.” This is His manager. Jesus finds His place with the marginalized, the tormented, the oppressed, and the displaced. We look at the Holy Family and see them in every displaced and homeless family, living in despair. In the Christmas story, God walks with them and calls them His own.
Because of the public association of evangelicalism with its more vocal right-wing groups, especially in heavily ex-Christian and anti-Christian leftist spaces, it's hard to even define the word "evangelical." It is important to be as specific as possible when discussing different evangelical groups. But know that there are many worldwide rejecting Christian Zionism and working and praying for justice in Palestine.
