A little entertainment to tide you over

I really don't have time to write anything right now because I am pressed for time, trying to finish up many projects before I leave the West Bank, but here is a little video to enjoy while you eagerly await my next post.

This is our PSE group's dabkeh performance at our closing ceremony for the program. It was a ton of fun to rehearse and perform, especially with my friend Said as our instructor.

a poem

little girl

all dressed up

with no place to go.

you’re smiling at us

and I don’t understand why

you choose to show that emotion

in this place of all places—surrounded

by memories of death and a feeling of being

trapped

in poverty and injustice

barricading you in—a Wall whose harsh, raw concrete

glares down at you and tells you that you are nothing.

but it does not reflect your spirit, somehow intact within.

if God has any mercy, may God somehow leave that

gentle innocence untouched and untarnished by the

ugly reality forced upon you.

PSE Updates - Session 2, Weeks 1 & 2

I'm still pretty busy. I wanted to wait to put up these weekly updates because I worry that as soon as I make a new post, people may miss what is below the top post. (Please check below to make sure you don't miss a post!)

Also, I've added quite a few new photos, so be sure to check those out by clicking on the slideshow at the right.

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PSE Mid-Session Update

The second week of Palestine Summer Encounter Session 2 has now concluded, and the month seems to be moving very quickly! Despite only knowing each other for a few weeks, this has been a very tight-knit group, and it has been difficult to watch a few participants leave Bethlehem early and travel on to other summer commitments. Those who remain, however, have much to keep them occupied as they continue learning and exploring the life in the West Bank.

This week participants enjoyed a guest lecture with George Rishmawi, Executive Director of The Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People, who spoke on the nonviolent actions of the First Intifada. Additionally, two final Comparative Religions classes on Islam were given, helping to equip participants with a greater understanding of the culture by learning about its principal religion.

For a special cultural night, the PSE participants, along with members of the current Holy Land Trust Home-Rebuilding campaign and HLT and PNN employees, enjoyed a barbeque together at Osh Grab park in Beit Sahour. The barbeque was preceded by a competitive football match, pitting the PSE participants against the HLT/PNN employees. Although it was a tough struggle, the PSErs went down in the match, losing 3-6.

To wrap up the week, the group took a trip to the northern region of the West Bank, visiting Tulkarem district. First was a visit and discussion with the Governor of Tulkarem, which was covered by local news media. This was followed by a tour of parts of the district experiencing an especially difficult impact from Occupation. Participants visited the village of Baqa where residents of the East and West sides of the village can no longer visit each other because of the Apartheid Wall running through the middle of the community, separating families from each other and strangling the economy. The group also visited a site with numerous demolished homes deemed a security threat to the path of the Wall and viewed the toxic Israeli chemical factory placed in the district which has a raised the cancer level of the Palestinian area to the highest anywhere in Israel. After the visit to Tulkarem, the group headed to Jenin where they had the great opportunity to witness a performance by the Al-Harah theatre company from Beit Jala, which has been making a tour with their contact-dance drama Face-hook?! The show, centering around the problems that Palestinian youth face in their society, was performed in the Freedom Theater of the Jenin Refugee Camp, and it was especially meaningful for PSE participants to witness their own Debkah instructor, Said Zarzar, as one of the performers. After the theatre performance, the group briefly spoke with one of the residents of the Camp and then headed back to Bethlehem after a very long and impactful day of exploring the situation in the West Bank.

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Session 2 Week 1 Complete

The first week of a busy Second Session of Palestine Summer Encounter is now complete.

The new participants of Session Two gathered at the Holy Land Trust office Tuesday morning to meet the leaders of the Bethlehem-Area NGOs they will be working with for the coming month or two months. This session, new participants will be serving with numerous organizations: helping run kids’ camps, supervising in childcare, doing administrative work, and providing maintenance support.

New curricula for the second session began with two Comparative Religions courses in Judaism and Islam. These courses are aimed at helping participants gain a better grasp of the cultural and political implications of these important religions on the region. In addition to religion courses and Arabic classes, the participants enjoyed an engaging lecture from Mahmoud Zahwareh, the Director of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in the Bethlehem Area Villages. Mr. Zahwareh shared about the situation in the area villages and his committee’s extensive work in nonviolent resistance. In addition, he invited the PSE participants to join in the resistance by attending the weekly nonviolent protest at al-Ma’sara, an invitation which a number of the participants were glad to accept.

Later in the week, the participants had a great cultural evening learning to prepare the traditional Palestinian dishes of falafel, hummus, and Arabic salad. The staff of Afteem Restaurant welcomed the PSE participants into their facility for the evening, which was full of laughter and good food as the participants learned what goes into making these staples of the Palestinian diet. While enjoying the fruits of their labor, participants also got to enjoy listening to cultural music—the oud accompanied by the singing of a few traditional songs.

To wrap up the first week, the group took a trip to Hebron to explore the unique political situation of the contentious city where violent, ideological settlers live right in the middle of the large, conservative Palestinian population. Meetings with the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee and with Christian Peacemaker Teams in the city provided insight into the difficulties of life created by the presence of the settlers and soldiers there. Additionally, after being detained at a flying checkpoint and escorted by an Israeli Defense Force jeep to the village of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills (due to Shabbat security concerns), the group met with Christian Peacemaker Teams and Operation Dove team members along with one village leader of nonviolent resistance in the small community, which has faced continual harassment from settlers of the nearby Ma’on settlement.

This has been a very busy week with lots of information for the participants to take in. The situation has already begun to seem overwhelming to them at times, but in their presence and work here, the PSE participants are providing hope that comes with international solidarity and support of the Palestinians in their struggle for justice.

Finding Hope

I have much to say—too much in fact—and much more than I know anyone is going to take the time to read. So much is always happening and so many thoughts are always running through my mind that I would like to express here, but writing to people who are thousands of miles away is a very limited format. Let me give just a couple of quick highlights that have not been mentioned elsewhere in my blog yet and some of you may be wondering about if you have been paying attention to the pictures in the slideshow at the right.

-- I was interviewed by Al-Jazeera back on June 6. The occasion for this was that a crew from Al-Jazeera is doing a short profile on Marwan Farajeh, the Village Coordinator of Holy Land Trust. A group of the PSE participants went along with Marwan and the camera crew to the Wall around Bethlehem to write some messages about justice and peace. Say what you want about being used or brainwashed by the Arabs, but this is an activity which many of us would have or already have engaged in on our own, and the opportunity to share our viewpoints on the situation in the West Bank with an international television audience was something that is not only very cool but exactly the type of exposure we are looking for (and more than we could ever have hoped for!) in sharing our messages about the realities of the conflict. The interview was short, and I was asked basically just about my feelings about Israel building the [Apartheid] Wall. (Whatever clips they decide to air will only be on Al-Jazeera and not on Al-Jazeera International, so they will be dubbed in Arabic and there will likely not be a chance to get to see this piece, unfortunately.)

-- A short while after I arrived this summer, I met the conductor of the Bethlehem Bible College Choir who is friends with some of my friends from work last year. Ironically, I had seen him before when the choir visited Bluffton a few years ago and performed in Chapel. One of my other international friends here, a young Scottish lass, mentioned to me that she had been practicing with the choir, which I thought sounded really cool, so I joined as well. I practiced for about a month with them, and as a result I got to perform in two concerts with them. We performed in the Bethlehem Peace Center and at the Bethlehem Bible College graduation ceremony jointly with the Lee University Symphonic Band which was here for a tour. (A very odd mix of people and ideologies to be sure.) This was a very different and new experience compared with my years of Western choral music, but it was a great opportunity, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

I guess that’s all the updating I’ll do for now since this blog is going to get way too long.

It’s actually been 25 days since I wrote a new blog. I have posted some since then with the press releases I write for the HLT website, and I have added some new photos, but all in all, this has been neglected some because I have been very busy. In fact, I just worked for 20 straight days, and today is my day off. Despite the fact that I have today off, I’ve been doing work because when e-mails and calls come in that are labeled “URGENT,” despite my tiredness, I am not going to ignore them. I’ll admit that I am tired, but it’s only because of the volume of work I have been doing (probably coupled with the heat)—not because of the nature of what I am doing. In fact, this summer has been absolutely wonderful in the sense of finding a niche with something that I absolutely love doing. I don’t mind the long days spent with participants because I enjoy the work so much—organizing things, educating people, and building relationships.

Though I know what I am doing is good, it is difficult sometimes to feel like it is really providing any hope at all in the midst of the very dark situation I keep on realizing that this place is in. Part of my job is to set up and accompany participants on many meetings during which we hear of so many saddening threats and mistreatments of people’s basic rights and ways that Israel continually erects obstacle after obstacle to peace. Sometimes it is difficult to see that any hope is really coming out of my being here, and as you can imagine, that takes its toll on my energy as well—feeling hopeless and useless.

Thankfully, in recent days, two separate things took place, which helped abate some of this negativity. The first of these was our first group meeting with the joint Sessions 1 and 2. Part of the purpose of the group meeting is to do debriefing, where we talk about what we have recently heard/experienced that has made a significant impact. This group meeting took place after a whirlwind first weekend for the new participants—as soon as they got here, we took them to Nablus and Ramallah for a number of really powerful meetings and tours which brought the current situation of the West Bank into a stark reality, and it was obvious that it really hit some of them hard. While participants shared in the meeting, over and over again, they expressed how difficult listening to all of the information over the weekend had been for them, and they told of the feeling of hope draining out of them—a feeling with which I am well acquainted. It may seem odd that this experience of listening to others describe their feelings of hopelessness inspires hope in me. The matter of the fact though, is that listening to these participants gave me a lot of hope because: for one, it affirmed that my work truly is making a difference—it made a clear impact on them, giving them much information and evoking an emotional response to the plight they witnessed in just their first weekend on the ground in Palestine; and also, I was encouraged with hope because I felt the wonderful feeling of gaining support since I now have 20 new friends who are grieving with me. Because of my affinity for pithy quotes, I just must insert two (or three or four) from Gandhi here that apply very well: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” I know that honestly am not making a huge difference here, but I also know that I am making a difference, and that may be all that I can ask of myself in this infamously huge and complicated conflict. Furthermore, Gandhi said that, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” (I ironically just found a t-shirt in Jerusalem with this printed on it.) Indeed, it is better for me to be here, working incredibly hard to make the insignificant impact that I can than it would be for me to be elsewhere, waiting for others to solve the problems. (Gandhi also said, “Hands that help are holier than lips that pray.”)

The second event which inspired hope in me occurred during one of our recent meetings with a political organization when something the speaker said struck me: Palestinians are still resisting. This was an incredibly welcome statement at the end of a long presentation about how difficult the situation is in the West Bank. This statement evokes a lot of hope in me because if there is continued resistance even now, in the face of so many obstacles and after 42 years (or 61 depending how you look at it) of Occupation, there is hope that resistance will continue. It boggles my mind to see how Palestinians have continued nonviolent acts of resistance despite this long history and ongoing struggle—there have been moments of brief “victories” like the First Intifada, but they are still entrenched in a long and arduous battle. It inspires me with much hope to realize that even as I am feeling beaten down by the conflict here, many Palestinians—who face the difficulties of Occupation much more fully than I—are still strong in their resolve to resist until justice is achieved. I will just end with one final Gandhi quote that encapsulates this discussion perfectly: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it—always.”

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As I was about to publish this, I had just one final, very hopeful, afterthought (which may seem odd to come as an afterthought and not as a forethought). God is not on Israel’s side; God is on the side of the oppressed. And “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8.31b). If you want more of an explanation, please let me begin to explain by watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83P6MD35w84 & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PvRRWlL3vU&feature=response_watch

יְהוָה, צַדִּיק יִבְחָן: וְרָשָׁע, וְאֹהֵב חָמָס--שָׂנְאָה נַפְשׁוֹ

The LORD tries the righteous, but the wicked and him who loves violence, His soul hates.

Psalm 11.5

PSE Update - Week 4 and Session 2 Beginning

Session One of Palestine Summer Encounter 2009 has concluded, and Session Two is now underway.

This past week, the group had to say tusaluu bilsalaameh (“safe travels”) to two participants from Session One who ended their journeys with PSE, but they have also been able to say ahlan w-sahlan (“welcome!”) to a great new group of participants joining for Session Two. With 11 participants continuing from the first session and 20 new participants joining them, effectively tripling the size of the group, this session is already proving to be a great opportunity to engage more internationals interested in volunteering and learning in Palestine. This session, we welcomed new participants from the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, and Canada in addition to the current participants from the U.S., Canada, Chile, and France. The excitement of welcoming the new participants was tinged with feelings of anger and sorrow, however, at the news that two incoming participants were denied entry by Israeli airport security upon their arrival in the country. This brings the total to three participants this summer to have undergone this frustrating experience; they did not ever have the chance to learn of the conflict through participating in the program, but they were confronted with it firsthand in the ordeal that each of them faced. Welcome to the injustice of the Occupation.

During a few free days in transition between Sessions One and Two, participants were able to spend extra time with their host families and do some traveling around the country on their own. While the first session participants socialized and traveled, the second session participants were busy settling in with their new host families and undergoing orientation to their summertime living, working, and studying in Palestine.

After orientation, Session Two got off to a quick start with a welcoming dinner to allow the continuing participants to get to know the incoming participants. Great fellowship was enjoyed over long tables filled with traditional Arabic salads during a dinner at The Tent Restaurant, followed by the opportunity to witness a great Debkeh performance. After the socializing, participants were whisked away for a weekend together exploring the culture and the conflict in regions of the West Bank outside of Bethlehem.

On Sunday, the group visited the city of Nablus which included a visit to the religious site of Jacob’s Well, a factory which produces the well-known Nablus olive oil soap, and an excursion into the old city to see a Turkish bath and try the renowned kanaffe dessert. After getting a cultural taste of Nablus, participants saw the harder side of the city, witnessing the incredibly difficult life of refugees in the Askar Refugee Camp.

Spending the night in Ramallah and having the opportunity to experience the nightlife of the city was an enjoyable end to the first day of the trip, and the next day was packed full of opportunities to learn more about how Occupation is affecting Palestine. The group met with a lawyer from the Addameer organization and heard of numerous egregious abuses of Palestinian prisoners by the Israeli Apartheid legal system. Following was a meeting at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah to hear about how Occupation has negatively affected education. Finally was a visit to Stop the Wall, which included a presentation which both greatly informed and distressed participants—to hear of the gravity of the current situation in Palestine and future plans to further the negative effects of Occupation.

Participants have just begun the new session, but it has already proved to be a challenging and educational experience for all of them. We look forward to the even greater ways this session will expand participants’ views of life in Palestine and motivate them as they seek to find meaningful ways to respond to all that they encounter.

Weekly Updates

Apparently I've been forgetting to update my blog with the weekly update that I write for the Holy Land Trust website. Here are short summaries of the past three weeks:

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Finishing up Week 1

The participants of the first session of Palestine Summer Encounter have had just over a week now to settle into the program—adjusting to living with families in homes in Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour, and getting a handle on the work in their volunteer placements with non-profit organizations around the Bethlehem area. Participants are currently working at supervising children’s activities, reporting on events in the West Bank, translating documents, establishing fair trade business relationships, aiding the handicapped, and helping with facility maintenance.

It was a very full week for the participants with volunteering, classes, and other events every day. Arabic classes began to aid participants in communicating in their new environment. In addition to the Arabic classes, the other curriculum for participants with courses on Nonviolence, Christian Zionism, and Theology of the Land began. The Nonviolence course is being led by Holy Land Trust Nonviolence Coordinator and Trainer, Ahmad Al’azzeh, and distinguished faculty of the Bethlehem Bible College—Reverend Alex Awad and Dr. Salim Munayer—are teaching the Christian Zionism and Theology of the Land courses, respectively. These classes have already begun to help participants understand the political climate of the Occupation better, and they look forward to learning even more as the session continues.

Participants enjoyed two distinct opportunities to engage the culture this first week: first, taking part in a Debkah training session to learn the traditional Palestinian dance, and second, a cultural night which included going on a hike, touring a museum of traditional Palestinian artifacts, and then enjoying a homemade traditional meal in the home of a family in Artas village, followed by a Debkah performance after the meal.

On Sunday, the participants were engaged in learning more about how the Occupation affects the Bethlehem area itself as they visited two of Bethlehem’s refugee camps, stopping at the Lajee Center of Aida Camp and taking in an explanation and tour from a resident of the Dheisheh Camp. Also part of the day included a tour of the Wall around Bethlehem, viewing how it cuts into the city and has stifled commerce, and a visit to two areas under threat from settlers and settlement expansion: the Greek Orthodox housing project and Osh Grab park in Beit Sahour.

The coming week is shaping up to be very full of events as well, which will provide many more opportunities for encountering Palestine: learning the language, gaining understanding of the conflict, and engaging the people.

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PSE Update - Week 2

Week two of the first session of Palestine Summer Encounter has now concluded. This was another busy week, filled with more Arabic classes, other curricula, guest speakers, and more activities.

One highlight of the week for the participants was the opportunity to have a group conversation with a Bethlehem-area leader of Fatah who was able to help participants understand the first and second Intifadas and had interesting stories to share from his own work with the resistance. Participants were also engaged by hearing the story of Dahoud Nasser as they visited the Tent of Nations, a farm south of Bethlehem surrounded by Israeli settlements on three sides, struggling because of a lop-sided legal battle to keep their land.

Recently a film crew from Al-Jazeera has been documenting the work of Holy Land Trust Area Field Coordinator, Marwan Fararjeh, and on Saturday Marwan led a group of the PSE participants to demonstrate against the Separation Wall with the painting of creative slogans. A few of the international participants were also interviewed by the Al-Jazeera reporters on their feelings about the Wall and about the situation in the West Bank.

On Sunday, participants took the opportunity to travel to scorching Jericho and were finally able to relax from the busy week with a visit to the Dead Sea.

To view additional pictures from Palestine Summer Encounter events and hear in their own words more about the week's events and how the participants are finding their experiences, visit the Palestine Summer Encounter website: www.palestinesummer.org .

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Week 3 Concludes

The third week of Palestine Summer Encounter has now concluded. This was another full week of classes, volunteer work, meetings, and travel.

One highlight of the week was a meeting with a Muslim sheikh and imam who engaged in discussion with participants’ questions about Islam, its beliefs and practices, and its role in the Conflict of the region. Another highlight for the participants was having the opportunity to travel between each other’s volunteer placement agencies where they took tours and hear about the work that other participants have been doing. Together four agencies were visited where participants have been volunteering: Talitha Kumi School’s Environmental Education Center, Beit al-Liqa (daycare and community center), al-Basma Center (an educational and work center for handicapped persons), and Finiq (a community center of Deheisheh refugee camp).

Participants experienced a whirlwind of a cultural night by experiencing what a true Palestinian party is like. Participants attended a large Bethlehem Bible College graduation party put on by some of the graduating students from the Travel and Encounter office. This was a very enjoyable occasion for everyone who was able to attend and participate in the conversation and endless dancing.

The week concluded with an overnight trip within Israel proper. Participants witnessed some traditional religious sites around Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee. Then they had the opportunity to meet with Duroob Association, learning about the situation of Arab Israelis and their struggles for equal rights within Israel. Another meeting in the Golan Heights village of Majd al-Shems was very enlightening as participants learned about the conflict between Syria and Israel and heard first-hand accounts of what Occupation looks like in the Golan.

Participants have been experiencing the difficult task of finding a balance between doing and seeing it all and finding time to process all that they are experiencing and rejuvenate with energy. Truly, there is so much to learn, and even with a month, two months, or three months, participants are realizing that the more they learn here, the more questions they have and the more learning they have yet to do as they continue to encounter Palestine.

Loyalty to which Gospel?

Not much is jdiid hoon (new here). I haven’t been working very hard on my Arabic though I throw in phrases here and there—I’ve been very busy with the program. With the participants here, my schedule is very full: work at the office in the morning, classes, meetings, and then socializing or activities in the night as well. It makes for long, but very fun and active days. This is a job that is a lot of work but a lot of fun because of what I’m doing and the people I am around all day.

Well I guess there is actually one thing new today—I am wearing a hamiis (shirt) that my host father, Hanna, made me. I don’t think I mentioned it in here (though there is a picture of him working at home in the slideshow), but he is a tailor. He made the shirt in the “Palestinian style” so it is very form fitting and short. Coupled with my new huge belt buckle, I look like I fit right in now—I just need my skin to go a few shades darker and to dye my hair black!

The results of my first poll from this blog are in. Apparently there are only six people who read this and they are all highly supportive of what I am doing! I hope all of you have noticed the new poll on the sidebar. In truth, this one is more of a device simply to make you think rather than to gauge your opinions, but it would indeed be interesting to see what people pick. (Ironically, the people who actually experience these things don’t have the luxury of picking—these things just routinely happen to them without anything they can do to avoid the situations.)

“To whom or to what are we most loyal?” This is a question that has been on my mind a lot since about the beginning of my senior year of college, and recently it has become incredibly relevant due to a personal circumstance in which I found myself. Specifically, I have been thinking on this question in terms of loyalty to nation and loyalty to Christ. There’s a whole lot of ranting that I could do here, but what would be most effective is for you to go buy, borrow, or somehow otherwise obtain a copy of Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw’s Jesus for President, and read it. And, of course, think (a lot) about your own personal loyalties as you read.

I did a lot of my own thinking while reading this book, mainly relating to the context of my home church since that is where my spiritual identity was formed and has grown for the past 17 years. Some of the results of what I thought about have been pleasing and others have been troubling.

To begin with the good: I am so grateful (and dare I say “proud”) of my church’s commitment to mission. It has always amazed me that there are so many missionaries fulfilling so many roles in so many places around the globe that are all receiving support from my church. I know that so many people start in our congregation, and end up somewhere far away or even close by where they are fulfilling the Gospel by sharing the love of Christ with others—in many different forms. It was my own experience with the people of my church sharing Christ’s love through reaching out to my family for a number of years that attracted me into the church in the first place, and my faith is now what motivates me to be out pursuing to do the same sort of thing.

In my varying endeavors, my church has shown great support for me in the financial area—one of the hardest forms of support to come by—the past two years especially, giving me a significant proportion of my funding for travelling here. When the Missions Committee approved my funding this time around, I was told that they were glad to sponsor me as the church’s “ambassador to the Palestinian people.” This is really wonderful, and it is a mission and responsibility which I gladly and whole-heartedly accept.

Yet, even with all the positive examples I can cite about my church’s loyalty to the good news of Christ, there are things that make me uncomfortable as well. This is not so much on a corporate level as it is on an individual level. I get the feeling that sometimes—sometimes consciously and sometimes without even realizing it—our loyalty gets a little muddled. Here again I pose the question: “To whom or to what are we most loyal?” But, wait a second, let me change that to simply: “To whom are we loyal?” Reconsidering the certain situation I would like to address, I don’t think the word “most” is appropriate because I don’t think our loyalty can lie in more than one place in this circumstance: to whom are we loyal?—Are we loyal to the Gospel? OR Are we loyal to a nation?

The “troubling” thing that I have observed is patriotism intermingling with faith. I feel like this has actually become an epidemic in Evangelical Christian faith in the U.S. From what I see, I have actually noticed this being much more prevalent in other places rather than my own church, but the cases where I have noticed it in my home community trouble me more since it hits so much closer to home—it is a problem with the community that I belong to, the one that has played such a vital role in my life—and therefore, if something does not seem to be right, it concerns me greatly for the welfare of the community.

I am absolutely convinced that the gospel of Christ and patriotism are insoluble loyalties. You cannot be loyal to two different things that are going in two completely opposite directions. A lot of people would (mistakenly) argue that “America is a Christian nation,” therefore seeing the two as going hand-in-hand, but I have become convinced that these two loyalties are exclusive of each other. And, flirting with patriotism while proclaiming to be sold out for the gospel is certainly cheating on Christ: is anything less than 100 percent loyalty to the gospel enough?

When my church talks about missions, it refers to them as: “Reaching out to the world with the Gospel of Christ,” not reaching out with “the gospel of an empire,” and this is certainly the correct way to view things. But, the gospel of an empire is certainly what is being proclaimed when people celebrate and support young men and women going off to war to promote our national interests around the world. This was the sort of gospel that the people in first century Palestine were used to hearing—gospels of Caesar, proclaiming the good news of victories of the Roman empire—the occupiers of that day. When the church began proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, it took the term euangelion straight from their oppressors, and turned it on its head to mean good news of the kingdom of God drawing near (Mark 1.15). (And here’s the promo for you to read Donald Kraybill’s The Upside-Down Kingdom in addition to Jesus for President.) A gospel, not of a worldly kingdom, but of God’s kingdom is the gospel that Jesus proclaimed when, not far from here in Nazareth, he read his own commissioning from the Isaiah scroll: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4.18). This is the same gospel that I am attempting to proclaim now in Palestine through my work exposing the injustice of the situation here. This is not the kind of reaching out America does—I could cite example after example after example where America has been the oppressor. The Apartheid-Separation Wall surrounding Bethlehem where I am currently residing (made possible with the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. gives to Israel) is a very stark and striking example of this, but only one tiny drop in a bucket overflowing with a history of oppressive acts and policies.

The gospel of an empire can masquerade as proclaiming freedom—something our government in particular is prone to promoting—yet, the gospel that comes with news of conquering combatants is not the same gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Christ does not come with weapons and force. It is a beautiful thing to be welcomed in; as Isaiah proclaimed: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation…” (52.7)—not those who come to conquer, to subdue, and oppress. In a day where politics and faith are increasingly mingled, I think Christians need to be especially aware of where they are placing their loyalty. It is loyalty to a nation? (Even a nation supposedly “under God.”) Or is it where it truly should lay?: 100 percent loyalty to the gospel of Christ. Christians who would proclaim the gospel of an empire rather than the gospel of Christ have certainly diverged from the path the Prince of Peace endorsed—a deeply disturbing and saddening circumstance.

(I welcome your feedback, if not in the comment section below for everyone to see, to my personal e-mail: johnmarkstratford@gmail.com)