The Armenian quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City is facing its biggest crisis in a long time. A Jewish businessman with connections to the radical settler movement is poised to develop a quarter of the neighbourhood’s territory, with plans to build a luxury hotel. If this goes ahead, it will significantly change part of Jerusalem’s Old City and hasten the demographic shift towards the city’s Jewish population which has been happening for some years.

The Armenian quarter actually makes up one-sixth of the Old City (the other quarters being the Muslim, the Christian, and the Jewish) and the Armenian presence in Jerusalem dates back to the 4th century. Together with the neighbouring Christian quarter, it is a stronghold for the city’s small Christian minority. The threat of a takeover of parts of the quarter by Jewish settlers is widely seen as altering the demographic status quo to favour Israel’s interests.

Jerusalem: Armenian Christians fight controversial land deal | BBC News Video

In 2021, the Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem, Nourhan Manougian, agreed a 98-year lease over part of the Armenian quarter with the developers. The agreement covers a significant area that today includes a parking lot, buildings belonging to the office of the Armenian church leader – known as the patriarchate – and the homes of five Armenian families.

News of the deal prompted strong protests among the neighbourhood’s Armenians last year. Such was the depth of feeling that in October, the patriarch and the other church leaders felt compelled to cancel the agreement. This led to violent confrontations between settlers and local Armenians.

After a few quiet weeks, fighting broke out again at the end of December when more than 30 men armed with stones and clubs reportedly attacked the Armenians who had been guarding the area for several weeks.

The dispute has now gone to court. The question is whether the lease agreement is valid or whether the unilateral termination makes the agreement void. The patriarchate has engaged lawyers – local and from Armenia and the US – who will present its case that the agreement was not entered into properly because of irregularities in the contract.

Changing East Jerusalem’s demography

This is not a single incident. Since the 1967 six-day War, when the whole of Jerusalem came under Israeli control, there has been a concerted effort to change the demography in the traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.

In many places the authorities are evicting the Arab families who have lived there for decades with the explanation that they lack documents that they own the house. Then a Jewish family moves in.

This change of the demography of East Jerusalem happens through evictions, demolitions and buildings restrictions. This is also happening in Jerusalem’s iconic and touristic Old City.

Almost 20 years ago, there was a minor scandal when it emerged that the Greek Orthodox patriarchate, a large property owner, had entered into a long lease agreement with a Jewish settler organisation regarding two historic hotels.

Now we have a similar incident concerning the Armenian patriarchate. Selling or renting out property to Jewish settlers for a long time is viewed extremely negatively by the Palestinians, who have long fought against illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas.

East Jerusalem is of vital importance to the Palestinians. In proposed plans for a two-state solution, it is the intended capital of a future Palestinian state. Decisively changing the demography there is therefore a priority goal for some in Israel – including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who doesn’t want a two-state solution.

Hierarchical institutions

This conflict also underlines an old problem with the Jerusalem’s Christian churches – namely the gap between the leadership and the people. Old churches are by nature hierarchical and the leaders at the top rule supremely. In Jerusalem there is an additional problem in that the church leaders are not always drawn from the local population.

The largest Christian denomination in the Holy Land is the Greek Orthodox Church. Its members are largely Arabs, but the patriarch and the other leading prelates are Greeks.

Nourhan Manougian, the current and 97th Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem, was born in Syria to an Armenian family. The Armenian patriarchate has been accused of corruption and illegitimate sale of property in the past, long before the current crisis.

If the Armenians lose this battle and the settler movement is able to gain control of such a key site, it will harm a vulnerable small minority. And the settler campaign to colonise East Jerusalem under Jewish control will have achieved yet another victory.

Svante Lundgren, Researcher, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pope Francis said at his evening Mass on Christmas Eve, “Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world.”

In Bethlehem itself, where Pastor Isaac preaches, the city elders canceled the Christmas parade and other festivities in commemoration of the shivering Palestinians a few miles away whose stomachs are being gnawed at by hunger and whose throats are raspy with thirst. Bethlehem is a town of some 25,000 in the Palestinian West Bank occupied militarily by Israeli troops. About 11,000 of its residents are Palestinian Christians, descendants of the Near Eastern pagans and Jews living under Roman rule who embraced the message of Jesus of Nazareth in his lifetime and after.

Bethlehem’s population is not being bombed from the sky the way the Palestinians of Gaza are, but they also suffer from Israeli occupation. According to a 2020 poll 80% of Palestinian Christians worry about being attacked by militant Israeli squatters, 83% worry that these colonizers will drive them from their homes, and 70% are concerned that the Israeli government will simply annex their land. Fully 62% of Palestinian Christians believe that the ultimate goal of the Israeli government is to expel Christians from their homeland. A good 14% have actually lost land to the Israelis, and 42% have to regularly go through Israeli security checkpoints, which have carved the West Bank up into cantons and make it difficult to get to hospital.

Aljazeera English: “‘No joy in our hearts’: Bethlehem’s Christians face heartbreak at Christmas ”

Although there are only about 800 Palestinian Christians in Gaza, they have suffered from Israeli bombardment, sniping attacks, and razing of civilian infrastructure. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem revealed in a letter last week that an Israeli army sniper “murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza”. It said that besieged mother and daughter Nahida and Samar “were shot and killed as they walked to the Sister’s Convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety”.

They were among hundreds of Christians taking refuge in the Parish. The church had given the GPS coordinates of church properties in Gaza to the Israeli government in hopes they would be spared, but local Palestinians say that church building has been shelled by Israeli armor.

Pope Francis responded at that time, lamenting of the Israeli campaign against Gaza that “unarmed civilians are the targets of bombings and gunfire.” He condemned the assualt at the compound of the Catholic parish, “where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities, and nuns . . . A mother, Mrs. Nahida Khalil Anton, and her daughter, Samar Kamal Anton, were killed, and others were wounded by the shooters while they were going to the bathroom,” he announced.

The Pope continued, “Some say, ‘This is terrorism. This is war.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism . . . That is why the Scripture affirms that ‘God stops wars… breaks the bow, splinters the spear’ (Psalm 46:10). Let us pray to the Lord for peace.”

The Israeli army denied the charges and got in a snit about a “blood libel.” But when you are the 17th most powerful military in the world and you genocide 20,000 civilians in 11 weeks, there isn’t any libel involved. It is just blood.

Israelis with a conscience, such as activist Orly Noy, the chairman of the human rights organization, B’Tselem, in contrast called desperately for a ceasefire. This issue isn’t about Judaism or Islam or Christianity, since there are people from each of those traditions who are on opposite sides of it.

As for Lutheran Pastor Munther Isaac, on Friday he preached a sermon, “Christ in the Rubble.”

He cited the enormity of the death toll, including of thousands of children, and said that as in the case of South African Apartheid the theology of the state has been wielded against the helpless. Not even that some Palestinians are Christians has evoked sympathy in European and American Christians. “This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it is the color of our skin. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of the political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. As they said, if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant” then so be it! We are not humans in their eyes. (But in God’s eyes… no one can tell us we are not!).”

He implicitly referred to US Evangelicals, many of whom have enthusiastically cheered on the Israeli army’s genocidal (my word) actions.

“I feel sorry for you. We will be ok. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we will recover. We will rise and stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far the biggest blow we have received in a long time.

But again, for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this?”

No, I don’t think this campaign’s supporters ever will regain their souls, which they have sold for the thirty silver coins of conformism, militarism, cowardice and Islamophobia.

Pastor Isaac went on:

“In our pain, anguish, and lament, we have searched for God, and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus became the victim of the very same violence of the Empire. He was tortured. Crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain – My God, where are you?

In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.

And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is to be found not on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. In a cave, with a simple family. Vulnerable. Barely, and miraculously surviving a massacre. Among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is found.”

So he inspired me to a digital painting. I’ll leave you with it.

“Gaza Guernica 19: Nativity,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream/ Dreamland v.3, PS Express, IbisPaint, 2023.

Verses 19:17-35:

And once remote from them, she hid behind a screen. Then we sent to her our spirit, who took the shape of a well-formed man.
She said, “I take refuge in the All-Merciful from you, if you are pious.”
He said, “I am but an angel of your lord, come to bestow on you a son without blemish.”
She said, “Will I have a son, when no mortal has touched me, and I was not rebellious?”
He said, “So it is.” He said, “Your Lord says, it is easy for me. We will make him a sign for the people and a mercy from us. The matter has already been decreed.”
So she bore him, and withdrew with him to a remote place.
And the pangs of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, “I wish I had died before now, and had been forgotten in oblivion.”
But he called to her from beneath her, saying, “Do not be sad. For your Lord has made a stream run beneath you.”
So shake the trunk of the palm tree toward you, and ripe, fresh dates will fall to you. So eat and drink and be comforted. If you see any human being, say, “I have taken a vow to the All-Merciful to fast, and will speak to no one today.”

Many of these details are from material circulating in the late antique Christian community that also reached the Prophet Muhammad. In the Qur’an Jesus is depicted as in a line of God’s prophets, including Moses, Solomon, David, and others, a line that went on to include the Prophet Muhammad as of the early 600s CE.

The tradition of Persian and Mughal miniature painting — of painting leaves intended to go into manuscript books for the libraries of kings or very wealthy notables — flowered in the 1200s and after, in Iran, Central Asia, India and what is now Turkey. It was influenced by Chinese techniques that came in through the Mongol conquests and the Silk Road and sometimes the people depicted look a little Chinese.

In 1519-1687, the Qutb-Shahi dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Golconda, named after their initial capital, a city near Hyderabad in South India. From 1591 Hyderabad itself became the capital. That city today is the capital of Telengana State and is the fourth-most-populous city in the Indian Republic. The dynasty was founded by an adventurer from Hamadan in Iran, who was a Shiite, and so the kingdom had Shiism for its state religion, even though most of its subjects were Hindus and most of its Muslim subjects were Sunnis. In its later decades it became a vassal of the Mughals based up north, and ultimately was absorbed into the Mughal Empire.

During the 1600s in particular there was a lot of contact with European maritime empires and merchants, who brought books and paintings from Europe, and so the Renaissance tradition of depicting the Nativity had an impact on court artists. But these paintings were commissioned by Muslim rulers for Muslim court purposes, as their own celebration of Jesus, whom they considered, as did all Muslims, one of their prophets.

The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian has a spectacular miniature painting from Golconda, dated to about 1630, of the adoration of the baby Jesus.



Jesus and Mary are both shown with golden halos. Joseph is also there but without a halo.

One of the adorers is, (extremely) anachronistically, a 17th-century European merchant in boots, almost certainly Dutch. He also seems to have brought gold vessels, and he has in his hand what looks to me like fine cloth, dyed purple. Indigo dye was one of India’s trading major commodities. More on all that later.

There are three winged angels, two hovering above and one on the ground in front of the manger. One of the angels above is holding what looks to me like a crown. Since the Muslim tradition doesn’t know about the Gospel language regarding the messiah being the king of the Jews, my guess is that this motif was borrowed from a European artist. Also, gold was one of the gifts traditionally thought by Christians to be brought to the Christ child by one of the 3 magi.

The other angel has a bow. In South India, the crown and the bow were royal symbols. So I think the angels are depicted as exalting Jesus in the way royalty was exalted. These symbols raise the possibility that the royal treatment given here to baby Jesus is not Christian in origin but Hindu Indian. After all, the beloved god Ram was a king. For these Indian artists, who did not know the Bible, the symbols may not be an assertion that he was royalty, only that he deserved the sort of glorification that kings received.

Although in the West of the Muslim world Arab artists were reluctant to depict holy figures, this Indian artist has no problem with it. Most did not, and they painted Muhammad, as well. Mary is shown wearing hijab but with her face visible, and Joseph and Jesus also have their faces depicted.

Shiite Islam puts special emphasis on piety centering on the family of the Prophet, including Muhammad’s son-in-law and first cousin, Ali, Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah, and the two sons of Ali and Fatimah, Hasan and Husayn. Although Sunni courts also produced nativity paintings, it could be that this form of Christian piety especially appealed to the Shiite rulers of Golconda.



As for the Dutch merchant or factor, Sanu Kainikara explains,

“In 1627, the Dutch had a disagreement with the Governor of Golconda, under whose jurisdiction the region fell, regarding the grant of a ‘farming’ permit for Masulipatam (Macchilipatanam). They withdrew to Pulicat and blockaded Masulipatam from the sea. The Qutb Shah dismissed his governor and invited the Dutch to return to Masulipatam. The reason for the Qutb Shahi sultan’s action was that the Dutch possessed a preponderance of naval strength that was able to threaten an adversary from the sea without exposing themselves to any significant danger—a capability that no other European power in India could lay claim to at that time.”

“The Dutch trade from Masulipatam amounted to Rupees 600,000 per year throughout most of the 17th century. In 1660, the Dutch opened a factory in Golconda, whose chief merchant also doubled as the ambassador to the Qutb Shahi king.”

One of the key commodities traded from Golconda to the Netherlands and later to Britain was diamonds.


Map of Hyderabad state, c. 1730, H/t Wikipedia, UM Clement Library .

So that Dutch merchant was almost certainly in Hyderabad seeking diamonds. But maybe also indigo dye and textiles, which he is shown in turn offering to baby Jesus.

And the court painter, having been commissioned by the king to do a nativity scene, obligingly incorporated the trader into the painting, a common practice. It is unlikely that the painting was commissioned by the foreigner– it stayed in India until a British officer purchased it. It just shows that the Prophet Jesus (`Isa in Arabic) had acquired another connotation in the Renaissance period, being associated with the expanding maritime trade empires of the Christian Europeans. The Dutch had just displaced the Portuguese, who can be seen in earlier miniatures.

The painting is a reminder that Christmas is not parochial — not northern European, as it is often conceived in the US, but a global commemoration of a global event. Not only do Muslims celebrate Jesus as a holy figure, but many Hindus also respect him (and more used to before the rise of Hindutva, Hindu nationalism). And Jews who live alongside Christians often have Christmas trees, even if they can’t go along with Christian beliefs about Jesus, who after all was born and bred a Jew. Christmas should be for celebrating rebirth and renewal and hope, in a world that desperately needs all three, for Christians and for everyone.

Exploring the Qur’an and the Bible with Gabriel Said Reynolds: “Juan Cole: Infidel or Pagan? Understanding Kufr (كفر) in the Qur’an | Muhammad the Prophet of Peace ”

Juan Cole, here. This is what I wrote on the subject at IC when my article first appeared:

My new article is out in The Journal of the American Oriental Society about the meaning of the root k-f-r in the Qur’an, the Muslim scripture. We’ve all grown up hearing about the Qur’an’s condemnation of “infidels” or “unbelievers,” but I think that this is for the most part a mistranslation. I argue that the root does not mean “infidel” but “pagan” or “polytheist” (and I think with the connotation of hostile, impious and morally corrupt pagan). In fact, I think the Arabic may be a translation of the Latin paganus. The latter had connotations of “hick” or “rustic” but also of “polytheist” and the same is true in Qur’anic Arabic.

Juan Cole, “Infidel or Paganus? The Polysemy of kafara in the Quran,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 140, 3:(2020): 615-635:

I also find that the noun kāfir is never applied in the Qur’an to Jews and Christians in an unmodified way. The noun implies “pagan” or “scoundrel” or “ingrate.”

The Qur’an considers Jews and Christians to be monotheists or submitters to the one God (muslimun). This is the antonym of “pagan.” In The Cow 2:62, the Qur’an promises paradise to righteous Jews, Christians and other monotheists alongside the followers of Muhammad.

I write in the article, “A key attribute of the [pagan] kāfir, as we have seen, is that such a person is damned to hell. Dominion 67:6 reads: “And for those who denied (kafarū bi-) their Lord, there awaits the torment of hell, and a wretched destination!” In contrast, in speaking of Jews and Christians we find in The Spider 29: “Debate the scriptural communities only in the best of ways, except for those who do wrong. Say ‘We believe in the revelation sent down to us, and the revelation sent down to you; our God and your God is one, and to him we have submitted’.””

It is common in the contemporary Muslim world to refer to all non-Muslims as kuffār or unbelievers, but I believe this is contrary to the usage of the Qur’an itself.

I think virtually all Qur’an translations err in consistently translating kafir as “infidel” or “unbeliever” or “disbeliever,” since this rendering implies a larger group than just pagans.

I made some of these arguments very briefly in my book on the Prophet Muhammad, but since it is a rip-roaring historical narrative I could not stop and do word philosophy at length:

In the article, I also explore how the verb kafara can be used of anybody. It means to commit impiety, blasphemy, immorality, etc. It is like the verb “to sin.” Monotheists can commit impiety as a one-off or occasional act, but that does not cause them to be characterized as among the group of pagans or kafirun. Even Muhammad’s own followers can commit this sin, as I explain:

“The verb kafara, however, is more fluid and is sometime applied to monotheists. The Family of Imran 3:167 complains about those of Muḥammad’s believers who declined to go out to defend the city (later commentators say the verse concerned the battle of Uḥud in 625): “They were told, ‘Come, fight in the path of God, or at least take a defensive position’. They replied, ‘If we knew how to fight, we would have followed you’. That day, they were closer to kufr than to faith, inasmuch as they said with their lips what was not in their hearts. God knows best what they are concealing.” The deverbal noun kufr here clearly means hypocrisy or dishonesty rather than disbelief.

Here are a few excerpts from the article, which I have modified slightly in an attempt to make them a bit more readable. The original is technical and written for specialists, but I think the findings are accessible and very important. Obviously, scholars should consult the full text for footnotes and for the larger argument about how the noun and verb could diverge from one another (and there really are two distinct verbs, only one of which means “to disbelieve” in a straightforward and consistent way).

—–
From Juan Cole, “Infidel or Paganus? The Polysemy of kafara in the Quran,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 140, 3:(2020): 615-635:

The active participle kāfir . . . cannot be assumed necessarily to mean “rejecter of something” or “infidel.” Rather, it has a wide range of meanings that can be discerned contextually. In Iron 57:20 the broken plural refers to rustic farmers: “Know that the life of this nether world is a game, a sport, a trinket, a mutual boast among yourselves and a multiplication of your wealth and children. It resembles rain whose resultant vegetation pleases the peasants (kuffār), but then it withers and you see it yellowing into chaff.” As al-Khalīl mentioned [in his early dictionary], kafr means village, reinforcing the rural connotation of the root. It may be that a secondary meaning of polytheist or adherent of traditional religion emerged because the population in the countryside was more likely than its urban counterpart to have clung to the old gods and resisted accepting monotheism.

The root is also clearly associated in the Quran with polytheism. Al-Kāfirūn 109:1–6 opens with: “Say: kāfirūna! I do not worship what you worship. Nor are you worshipping what I worship. Nor am I worshipping what you have worshipped. Nor are you worshipping what I worship. To you your religion and to me my religion.” There is an admission that the pagans have a religion, but it is simply castigated as a false one, which makes translating kāfir as “infidel” seem odd. That the dispute was over Muḥammad’s monotheism versus Arabian polytheism is demonstrated by Ṣād 38:4–5, which says . . . “They marvel that a warner came to them from among them, and the [pagans] kāfirūna said, ‘This is a lying sorcerer. Has he made the gods into only one God? That is an astonishing thing’.” This and many other verses demonstrate that the Quran came out at least in part of a milieu where there were adherents of traditional religion . . .

The sense of “to worship the gods” for k-f-r is underlined in The Cow 2:257: “God is the patron of those who believe, bringing them out of darkness into the light. And those who kafarū, their patrons are Ṭāghūt, who bring them out of the light into darkness.” Ṭāghūt is a loan from [Ethiopian] Geʿez that means “new or alien god” or “idol,” and, interestingly, is treated as a plural in this quranic verse, corresponding to numerous patrons. Belief in polytheistic religion is not, properly speaking, disbelief but the wrong sort of belief, from the point of view of the Quran. It is not a charge of atheism. Not only are such believers committed polytheists but they are also militant: “Those who believed fight in the path of God, and the pagans (al-ladhīna kafarū) fight in the path of Ṭāghūt, so fight the associates of Satan, for the guile of Satan is feeble” (al-Nisāʾ 4:76) . . .

Elsewhere, it is admitted that they [the pagans] are believers in their own tradition; when they question the eschatological opening or grand success, the verse reads: “Say: On the Day of the Opening, the faith (īmānuhum) of those who kafarū will not benefit them, nor will they be granted a respite” (al-Sajda 32:29). Since it is allowed that they have faith, they are not unbelievers strictly speaking and translating this phrase as “the faith of the infidels will not benefit them” would be self-contradictory. While they are not accused of disbelieving, they are, however, liars and wrongdoers, dishonest and workers of evil (cf. The Women 4:167–68). As well as labeling them “wrongdoers” (sing. ẓālim), they are “morally dissolute” (fāsiqūna) for responding incorrectly to God’s proverbs (The Cow 2:26). Along the same lines, it is said of Muḥammad’s monotheistic followers: “God has caused you to love faith, rendering it beautiful in your hearts, and he has caused you to abhor impiety (kufr) and ungodly behavior (fusūq) and rebellion” (al-Ḥujurāt 49:7).

“Rebel” is one meaning of the root k-f-r. In the story of how Lucifer fell (The Cow 2:34) it is reported: “And when we said to the angels, ‘Bow down to Adam’, they prostrated them- selves, save the Devil; he refused, and grew haughty, and so he became one of the rebellious (kāfirīna).” The active participle here does not involve disbelief but disobedience. The Devil (Iblīs, Gk diabolos) is not accused of rejecting the existence or oneness of God but of refusing the divine order to bow down to the first human being. Indeed, in 2:30 the angels are depicted as arguing with God that creating Adam would lead to turmoil, and the implication is that Satan parted ways with God not because he disbelieved but because he had a positive if misguided motive -— he differed with him on the wisdom of opening Pandora’s box . . .

kufr is equated with impiety, which Grecophone Christians in their polemics against the pagans called asebeia. Likewise, in Prohibition 66:10 God had made the wives of Noah and Lot an object lesson for those who kafarū because of these women’s preference for pagan society over their husbands. The reason given in 2 Pet 2:6 for the calamity that befell the people of Sodom and Gomorrah is that they lived impious lives (asebesin), which seems roughly the meaning of kufr in Q 66:10.

BLASPHEMY

A controversial passage in The Cow 2:102 provides a further sense of the verb. The Quran condemns those in the era of Solomon who followed demons… that taught magic. It goes out of its way to underline that Solomon himself did not commit kufr, even though in late antique folk tradition he was held to be able to control sprites and demons. The demons were guilty of putting otherwise inoffensive teachings to evil purposes, turning them into black magic, so that they kafarū (A. J. Arberry translates this as “disbelieved”). Of what, however, did this act consist? It does not appear to have been a denial of anything, but rather was a blasphemous activity. The humans were eager to have the teaching of the two angels of Babylon, Hārūt and Mārūt, which they then desecrated by turning it into dark arts so as to separate spouses from one another. The demons’ instruction harmed people rather than benefited them, and turning to the occult deprived these individuals of any portion of heaven.

Hārūt and Mārūt are two of the Zoroastrian celestial spirits, Haurvatāt and Ameretāt. These emanations of the supreme deity, Ahura Mazda, symbolize wholeness and immortality. For instance, in the Younger Avesta, Yasht 19.95–96, the last days during which the world will be renovated are described thus: “Evil thought will be overcome, good thought will overcome it . . . The celestial spirits Integrity (Haurvatāt) and Immortality (Ameretāt) will defeat the demons of Hunger (Shud) and Thirst (Tarshna).” The two celestial spirits associated with nemeses among the demons symbolizing bodily human cravings like hunger and thirst may have inspired the Quran’s motif that devils misused their teachings to satisfy lust. Moreover, Ameretāt is associated with plants, fertility, and the tree of life. The Quran could be projecting into the time of Solomon a contemporary set of Zoroastrian ideas. The retrofitting of this motif to the time of the Hebrew monarch may in turn have come about because of the association in late antiquity of Solomon with mastery of the sprites or demons, which is reflected in quranic passages.

In late antique Greek Christian authors, black magic was associated with blasphemy (which originally meant slandering [God]). In his “Homily 10 on 2 Timothy,” John Chrysostom (ca. 349–407 CE) wrote, “Let us then so live that the name of God be not blasphemed (blasphēmíesthai).” Among the many examples he gave of Christians blaspheming in failing to live up to their ideals were “your auguries, your omens, your superstitious observances . . . your incantations, your magic (mageías) arts.”

What if we translated The Cow 2:101 this way?

“They followed what the demons recited over the realm of Solomon. Solomon himself was not a blasphemer, but the demons were blasphemers, teaching the people magic and what was revealed to the two archangels of Babylon, Haurvatāt and Ameretāt. But these two had been careful not to teach anyone without warning them, ‘We are a potential disturbance of faith (fitna), so do not fall into blasphemy.’ From them they learned how they might divide a man and his wife [. . .].”

Here is a condemnation of warlocks and witches who engage in what is seen as necromancy, which apparently enables those who covet married persons to cast spells to separate them from their spouses. They are instructed by demons who pervert and misuse the teachings of divinely inspired Zoroastrian angels.
Later Muslim commentators on this text are divided over its meaning. Some saw the anecdote as concerning fallen angels. Others defended the angels as having been sinless, and held that while they performed licit miracles, the demons turned their teachings to the purposes of thaumaturgy. As I read the text, the teaching of the angels itself is not being condemned here. Solomon, the verse says, bore no blame for his mastery of the spirits. The Zoroastrian celestial spirits are spoken of with reverence, called angels rather than demons, and are depicted as having been given inspiration (unzila) by God. The angels act responsibly inasmuch as they give disciples an explicit warning that learning their esoteric teachings could tempt humans, if they are not careful, to the dark side. (Zoroastrianism is listed in Pilgrimage 22:17 with the monotheistic religions and distinguished from paganism.)

The Quran shows positive attitudes throughout to Christians and The Cow 2:62 admits Christians to heaven (“Those who believed, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, and whoever has believed in God and the Last Day and performed good works, they shall have their reward with their Lord”). To underline the difference, the Quran shows God pledging to Jesus regarding future Christians in The Family of Imran 3:55: “God said, ‘Jesus, I will take you to me and will raise you to me and I will purify you of those who kafarū and will render those who follow you superior to those who kafarū until the judgment day’.” Likely it is distinguishing between the old pagan Romans, who had persecuted Jesus and his faithful, and the Christians themselves. There will always be, the Quran vows, a difference between followers of Jesus and the kāfirūn. This and other passages suggest to me that the deverbal noun kāfir is never used tout court for Jews and Christians.

[Takeaway: kafir as a noun is never used in the Qur’an to refer to Christians and Jews, only to pagans or rebels or blasphemers or the morally dissolute.]

In the Medinan period, the Quran uses the verb kafara when it begins speaking of an antagonistic group from among the other monotheists: “Neither those who kafarū from among the people of the Book, nor the polytheists (mushrikūna) themselves, desire that good from your lord descend upon you” (The Cow 2:105). Some groups from among the biblical communities had allied politically with the militant pagans. A hypernym — for instance, “tree”—is lexically superordinate to hyponyms, another set of nouns or phrases under its rubric (e.g., “juniper” and “acacia”). Here the phrase “people of the Book” functions as a phrasal hypernym, which is lexically superordinate to the hyponym “Those who kafarū from among the people of the Book.” Logically speaking, the need to identify this subset of believers in the Bible as those who kafarū proves that kāfir does not ordinarily refer to Jews and Christians. That is, if all Jews and Christians were always kāfirūn, it would be redundant to identify this group “from among the people of the Book” as “those who kafarū.” Moreover, if all Jews and Christians were always kāfirūn, it would make nonsense of God’s pledge to Jesus (Āl ʿImrām 3:55) that he “will render those who follow you superior to those who kafarū until the judgment day.” Christians are not kāfirūn under ordinary circumstances, just as they are not doomed to hell under ordinary circumstances. Still, just as they can commit mortal sins and so depart from righteousness into perdition, so they can throw in with bellicose polytheists against Muḥammad and his cause, and likewise join the damned . . .

PAGANUS

It is suggestive that kāfir maps so closely onto the Latin paganus as it was used in late antiquity. Remus points to an imperial decree of 416 CE (16.10.21) that excludes from government service “those who are polluted by the profane error or crime of pagan rites, that is, gentiles (qui profano pagani ritus errore seu crimine polluntur, hoc est gentiles).” This principle was reaffirmed by Justinian (r. 527–565) in his Code (1.5.19), which body of law applied to Arabic speakers in the empire in Muḥammad’s own era. The Table 5:103 likewise denounces the pagan rites of sacrifice to idols practiced by those who kafarū and al-Jumʿa 62:2 speaks of “purifying” gentiles (ummiyūna) implying that paganism had polluted them.

The two words share a number of other meanings and connotations -— rural, polytheist, opponent, persecutor, enemy, blasphemer, potential convert, and interlocutor. K-f-r may at least in some instances be a loanshift from the Latin paganus. Whatever the etymology of the term paganus, by the late fourth century it had come to mean both “rustic” and “adherent of the old Roman religion.” It was often used satirically, to class the remaining pagan aristocracy with unlettered peasants.

Centuries of Roman rule had made Arabic speakers familiar with Latin vocabulary. The word for “path” in the phrase “straight path” of piety in the Quran, ṣirāṭ, is a loan from the Latin via strata or paved avenue.72 One route for Latin influence was the Arab mounted foederati who served as an auxiliary to the Roman army in Bostra and elsewhere, since Latin remained the language of the military. Another way Latin may have proved influential was through law, inasmuch as fourth- and fifth-century imperial decrees and even some of the sixth-century Code of Justinian were still issued in Latin as well as Greek in the sixth century.

I have argued that kāfir in the Quran for the most part does not mean “unbeliever” or “infidel.” In most of our examples, a lack of belief is not at stake. Rather, kāfir is a polysemous term that has a wide range of meanings, including “peasant,” “pagan,” “libertine,” “rebel,” and “blasphemer.” These are discernible if we look at the parallelisms, synonyms, and antonyms with which quranic verses surround this noun. I understand the impulse of translators to use “unbeliever” for kāfir, and, of course, the term sometimes does mean just that. Moreover, the condemnations of pagan belief and practice, while often made with other terms, could be seen to imply unbelief at some meta level. I argue, however, that limiting the meaning of the root so severely causes us to miss a rich set of other connotations that give us a rounder idea of the Quran’s intent…

I have suggested that the bilingual lives of many Arabic speakers in and on the fringes of the Roman empire over hundreds of years (Arabic-Aramaic and Arabic-Greek) contributed to this polysemy, through the phenomenon of the loanshift. The Latin paganus, which came to have the connotation both of “rustic” and “polytheist” in the fifth and sixth centuries, may well lie behind Iran 57:20, which refers to kuffār as peasants happy to see rain and greenery. At the same time, the quranic term is clearly also used to refer to polytheists. Ṣād 38:5 reports of the kāfirūn that they rejected the notion that the many gods could merge into only one, while The Cow 2:257 says that those who kafarū had taken the deity or idol Ṭāghūt for their patron instead of God. The Family of Imran 3:151 menaces these pagans with hellfire for having made God part of a pantheon (ashrakū). While it is not impossible that Arabic independently invented a connection between farmers and polytheists, Occam’s razor would suggest that we instead posit that Arabic was influenced by late antique Roman Christian usage, which was embedded in imperial laws applying to Arabophone citizens of the empire. In any case, far from being deniers or nihilists, the pagans are admitted to believe in their own religion (dīn) and to have faith (īmānuhum) in it. It is simply a false religion. Kafara thus has a positive valence that “to disbelieve” does not capture, even if the latter is not ultimately an incorrect characterization of the quranic view of the pagans.

Staunchly against bodily autonomy for women, Johnson supports a nationwide ban on abortion which he considers, “a holocaust.” This inexperienced, soft-spoken Ned Flanders suggested that abortion activists want to kill babies that are “half way out of the birth-canal,” and voted against Americans having access to purchase legal contraception. The most powerful Republican in Washington insisted that, if only women would bear more “able-bodied workers,” he wouldn’t be forced to cut trillions of dollars from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Hostile towards gay and transgender people, Johnson called them “dangerous” and “deviant” threats to the American way of life and defended laws that criminalized homosexual relations between consenting adults that he called “inherently unnatural.” He warned that same-sex marriage was a “dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

Last year, Johnson introduced legislation that would prohibit the use of federal funds for providing education to children under 10 that included LGBTQ topics — a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. He also is working to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.

Johnson is a virulent Christian Nationalist, an ideology modeled on Hungarian president Victor Orbán’s program of “illiberal democracy,” and defense of Christendom against Muslims, progressives, and the “LGBTQ lobby.” Johnson “pushed all kinds of hateful anti-LGBTQ bigotry while at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian Nationalist legal outfit that wants to drag this country back to the 5th century,” warns Andrew L. Seidel, civil rights attorney and author of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American. For nearly twenty years, Johnson served as senior legal counsel and spokesman for the ADF.

Designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ADF is a legal advocacy organization that not only supported “re-criminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults,” but has also defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people and contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia. Johnson and the ADF claim that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society.

Politicon: “James Carville explains everything about Mike Johnson”

The ADF, according to the New York Times, is the “largest legal force of the religious right.” They would go on to successive Supreme Court victories, most notably rolling back abortion rights in the Dobbs decision, undermining LGBTQ rights in the (purported) same-sex wedding website case 303 Creative, allowing employer-sponsored health insurance to exclude birth control, and twelve other cases related to curtailing the civil rights of women and LGBTQ people.

Johnson’s rise to the speakership is best understood in terms of the ongoing white Christian nationalist takeover of the American government through MAGA rather than, as the mainstream press suggested, the quirky, exhausted and embarrassed result of a bickering caucus. Since the rise of the Tea Party, the primary driver for both the GOP’s dysfunction and its incipient fascism is the political might of organized right-wing Christianity, successfully redeployed especially in primaries, to wrest control from establishment “Republicans in Name Only” (“RINOs”).

As the former political director of the AFL-CIO Michael Podhorzer wrote, “the political muscle provided by white Christian nationalism’s extensive church-based infrastructure in congressional districts, and its national reach through Christian broadcasting and national organizations, has turned MAGA into a ruthlessly successful RINO-hunting machine.”

Still, Johnson’s loathsome ideology and religious zealotry were not the main reasons for his elevation to the speakership — most Republicans share his repulsive worldview. Rather, the MAGA cult embraced his tireless advocacy on behalf of despotic Donald’s seditious attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Most House Republicans voted to back the Fabricator’s lies about the election; but few had worked as diligently as Johnson to foist fraudulent conspiracy theories, such as “rigged Dominion voting machines,” on Americans. A constitutional lawyer who uses the law to subvert democracy, Johnson enlisted dozens of fellow-members to support a sham Texas court case seeking to cancel the election results in battleground states.

Johnson’s role, neglected at the time, was such that the Times later called him “the most important architect” of the campaign to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results and thus overturn Trump’s defeat. Circulating his hollow rationale to the party, Johnson reminded them that Trump “anxiously awaited” their support. Proudly exhibiting a bizarre religious devotion to the Un-Christian Trump, Johnson helped plot the Jan. 6 attempted coup while calling the insurrection a “peaceful protest” and defending the Seditionist at both of his impeachment hearings.

At a time when Trump’s co-conspirators, probably including his Chief of Staff, admitted they lied about the election being stolen, House Republicans handed the reins of power to someone who showed no hesitation to help overturn American democracy. Johnson was given a powerful government position by people in the government who don’t believe in government — and installed an unrepentant election-denier leader two heartbeats away from the presidency.

In his first major initiative as House speaker, Johnson pushed through a bill to provide $14 billion in military assistance to Israel. Before the vote, he declared, “Israel doesn’t need a cease-fire.” However, Palestinians do. Israel’s aerial and ground offensive, ostensibly targeting Hamas infrastructure, has killed over 11,000 people while those who managed to flee Israel’s attack in northern Gaza now encounter a scarcity of food and medicine in the south. “Residents wait hours for a gallon of brackish water that makes them sick,” reported the Times of Israel. Scabies, diarrhea and respiratory infections rip through overcrowded shelters.” 

In addition, Johnson engineered the House censure of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian serving in Congress. The censure resolution is “rife with propaganda, fake history, and racism,” said Juan Cole on Informed Comment. 

In his first public appearance, the newly-elected Christian Zionist told a crowd of Jewish Republicans in Las Vegas: “We are going to stand like a rock with our friend and ally, Israel.” He boasted that his first act as speaker was passing the pro-Israel resolution in spite of “no” votes from several democrats, including Rashida Tlaib, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar. Their opposition was due to the bill’s failure to recognize Palestinian victims and call for a cease-fire. Johnson maliciously and deceitfully blamed their defiance on an “alarming trend of antisemitism” enabled by “academia and the mainstream media, and fringe government figures.”

The evangelical Christian’s rise to power is the biggest political victory for the evangelical movement to date and his connections to Israel reflect the movement’s deep ties to the Israeli far right. “God is not done with Israel,” said Johnson cryptically. He gushed that his 2020 visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount was the “fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.”

This remark references the Christian Zionist end-times belief, derived from a literal reading of the Bible, that Israel is God’s chosen nation and that its 1948 creation will lead to the Second Coming of Christ. In the real world, they rabidly support the state of Israel and its policies, especially regarding the expansion of settlements, the annexation of territories in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

In the biblical narrative, Christ will defeat Evil, or the Antichrist, in an apocalyptic battle that will take place in Israel at Har Megiddo, or Armageddon. Along with Christian believers and converts who have ascended to heaven in the Rapture, Christ will rule from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for a thousand years. Fueled by these fantasies of a cataclysmic war in the Middle East, Christian Zionists maintain that literal war is not something to be avoided, but inevitable, desired by God, and celebrated. These zealots condemn those that oppose Israeli occupation as being evil, aligned with the “Antichrist.”

The Bible becomes a script for those millennial Christians in power, like Mike Johnson — a self-fulfilling prophesy of violence and destruction that portends an apocalyptic foreign policy. In some warped minds, the current battle in Israel may be hastening the coveted dooms-day of reckoning. In a bizarre twist to the end-times prophecy, those Christian Zionists who are the most passionately pro-Israel also believe that those Jews who do not convert to Christianity will not be raptured, and if they don’t convert during the horrific cataclysm at Har Megiddo, they will be condemned to suffer eternally in the “lake of fire.”

Eager to visit the Christian holy land, Johnson traveled to Israel with his pal Gym Jordan. Jordan, who was considered an aggressive and confrontational jerk, was rejected by his party for the speakership. Yet Jordan apparently served as a spiritual mentor to Johnson, who has guest-hosted Jordan’s national radio show Washington Watch, and praised Jordan as a “great friend and leader” and “a guiding light” on his podcast Truth be Told with Mike and Kelly Johnson.

Along with their wives, Jordan and Johnson’s week-long pilgrimage was sponsored by the New York-based 12Tribes Film Foundation, a small outfit that that describes itself as “online warriors for truth about Israel and the Jewish people.” The organization’s CEO Avi Abelow — an arch-Zionist — lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat.

Johnson’s first stop on his Abelow-organized visit was to receive a briefing from the Kohelet Policy Forum, a far-right Israeli think tank that would later help cultivate the Netanyahu administration’s despised plan to weaken the country’s judiciary. The itinerary included meetings with Israeli military officials, business owners, and political leaders including Netanyahu, current Israeli U.N. envoy Gilad Erdan, and other members of the far right Likud Party.

At the Golan Heights, the pair posed and smiled in front of a sign for “Trump Heights,” the name of an Israeli settlement honoring Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Located in occupied territory claimed by Israel, it is widely considered to violate international law.

Johnson also visited the Temple Mount compound — the Palestinian Aqsa Mosque complex — alongside Abelov, a Temple Mount activist, and Yehudah Glick — an Orthodox rabbi and former Likud lawmaker, who has led the fight to change the legal status quo and permit Jewish prayer at this Palestinian national symbol, the third holiest shrine in the Muslim world, and one of the most sensitive flashpoints in the world. In 2023 during Ramadan, Israeli forces repeatedly invaded the sacred al-Aqsa Mosque, in an act of “state terrorism,” where they beat and expelled Palestinian worshipers on behalf of Jewish extremists.

This visit to Israel, led by right-wing extremists, influenced the future speaker’s views regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During a video made of the trip, Johnson declares — without traveling to Gaza or meeting with Palestinian leaders or activists — that the Palestinian and Israeli people were “working well together” and that there was a “great cohesion of the people” in the West Bank. He blamed “activists and the leftist groups” for “pushing” the narrative that there was conflict, implying that Palestinians enjoyed life under Israeli occupation.

Johnson called Netanyahu, in his first talk with a foreign leader, during which he echoed the premier’s comments that Israel’s war is one of good vs. evil and light vs. darkness. “I assured the prime minister of our own unwavering support of Israel and the people in our Congress and under my leadership, we will be there until the end, we will be there until the end of this conflict.” He opposes basic human rights for Palestinians as well as many Americans.

In an appearance with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Johnson described himself as “a Bible-believing Christian” and said that to understand his politics, one only need to “pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” This is cultish nonsense that threatens democracy.

Democracy means that the candidate ordained by God, in Johnson’s view, lost an election, so he forsook his oath to the Constitution to keep a corrupt, seditious demagogue in power. Democracy also leads to abortions and gay marriage. Under democracy, Johnson also believes that white Christians are being “replaced”— by immigrants, by Muslims, by trans kids, by drag queens, and by a whole litany of scapegoats. So, perhaps, the only way to save the U.S. and white Christians is to end democracy.

In a potentially horrifying scenario, suppose Trump loses the 2024 election but again claims he won and the GOP demands his “victory” to be certified, House speaker Johnson is positioned to do so. A devout apostle to the Pagan Coup Plotter, MAGA Mike is prepared to subvert democracy in deranged obedience to Trump and his biblical fanaticism.

End Times Christians keep looking for signs and portents

By Diane Roberts | –

( Florida Phoenix ) – Remember when a quarter of Americans thought Barack Obama might be the Antichrist?

They feared he’d impose a One World Government — as Dr. Peter Venkman says in Ghostbusters, “a disaster of biblical proportions, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together” — and trigger the apocalypse.

That didn’t happen, but End Times Christians keep looking for signs and portents, wars and rumors of wars, and, by God, the Israel-Hamas horror is right up their millenarianist alley.

Where many of us see the vicious killings by Hamas and the indiscriminate bombing by the Netanyahu government as atrocities fueled by 75 years of resentment, fear, rage, and oppression, as well as a radical Islamic refusal to accept the existence of Israel, evangelicals and the politicians beholden to them see the first quarter of the Second Coming.

Evangelicals subscribe to a self-serving vision of Israel, one in which Jews demonstrate the inerrant truth of the Bible just by living there. They believe they have to go through Jews, who must have a nation state with Jerusalem as its capital, to spark the return of Jesus.

“Last Judgment Fresco Cycle by Frederico Zuccaro and Giorgio Vasari.” Public Domain.

When he was in office, Donald Trump and his MAGA maniacs were glad to play along, upending 70 years of U.S. policy, declaring Jerusalem Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. embassy there and boasting that he did it for the evangelicals who voted for him in huge numbers.

Getting to the End of Days requires Jews to rebuild Solomon’s temple on the ruins of the first two — the original, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, and the second version, wrecked by the Romans in 70 AD.

Holy offering

But before the bulldozers toll in, they need a red cow.

No cow, no temple; no temple, no Second Coming.

The End Times can’t kick off ’till a perfectly red heifer with not one white (or black or any other color in her fur) is brought to Jerusalem.

Then the poor critter will be slain by a priest, burned on a pyre made of cedar and hyssop with a piece of scarlet thread. Her ashes will be mixed with water and used to purify the Children of Israel.

It’s unclear how many American politicians accept the literal truth of this, but waiting for, even trying to jump start, Armageddon has animated the history of Protestant white folks ever since they landed on Plymouth Rock.

Doomsday is ironed into our culture.

The Puritans colonized the northeast corner of what became the United States expressly to build themselves a New Jerusalem and welcome the Second Coming, a catastrophe they felt certain would happen any minute now.

Doomsday sects have flourished throughout American history, from the Millerites of the 19th Century to the Branch Davidians to James Watt, Ronald Reagan’s notoriously pro-pollution, anti-environment Interior secretary.

Watt figured there was no reason to save the planet when the Lord was going to show up soon and deliver a new heaven and a new earth.

So why not drive that big car and crank up that AC?

Jonesing for the End Times

According to the Pew Center, 60 percent of evangelicals think we are living in the End Times. A Texas preacher, one of Donald Trump’s pet pastors, responded to the Hamas assault on Israel by praying, “The last days are coming and are here, when you will come again, for your church and for your people.”

This kind of thinking, plus Americans’ perennial Islamophobia, gives cover to the rightwing politicians hollering themselves hoarse about reducing Gaza to rubble and never mind the dead children.

The excitable senior senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, told CNN, “I don’t think there’s any way Israel can be expected to coexist or find some diplomatic off-ramp with these savages.”

Hamas must be “eradicated,” and if there are thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties, well, it’s their own fault for living in Gaza — not that Israel lets people leave Gaza.

Republican and Democratic politicians are all trying to outdo each other in assuring their voters that they stand with Israel and condemning anyone who suggests that the Netanyahu government — bellicose at the best of times — should share a least a little of the blame for the death toll.

Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib admittedly jumped the gun in blaming Israel for bombing the hospital in Gaza, and practically everybody in Washington demanded she apologize.

Tlaib is a Palestinian American: Her take on Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians is bound to be different from her Christian and Jewish colleagues.

Right now, nobody’s inclined to accept alternate points of view. When Tlaib called for a ceasefire to allow food, water, and medical supplies into Gaza, and perhaps help get the hostages out, the reaction was, if anything, worse.

Along with Ilhan Omar, the only other Muslim woman in Congress, she and her family are now regularly being threatened with violence.

Outdoing each other

Trump, Republican presidential frontrunner and cult leader, is gleefully throwing gasoline on the fire. To make up for calling Hamas “smart,” he’s now promising that when he’s reelected he’ll restore his ridiculous Muslim ban, institute “ideological screening” for immigrants, and refuse to admit refugees from Gaza.

Attempting to revive a campaign on life-support, Ron DeSantis is jumping up and down squawking “Me, too!”

Sen. Rick Scott, another towering intellect, is pitching a hissy fit over the administration’s $106 billion omnibus bill funding U.S. border security, Ukraine, Israel, and humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza.

Scott, Trump, Rubio, and DeSantis all claim to love Jesus.

Non-wingnut Christians frown on collective punishment, guilt by association, and indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatants, but End Times folks are OK with all of that, interpreting the horrific conflict between Israel and Hamas as fulfilment of biblical prophecy about a last battle on the plain of Megiddo — the site of the coming Apocalypse and also a nice national park in northern Israel.

Wholesale destruction, vicious battles, lots of dead people — that’s all part of the End Times package. Prominent Baptist minister Robert Jeffress assures Evangelicals the war in Israel is “not a human struggle; it is a spiritual struggle against the forces of darkness.”

According to Jeffress, “Satan set his sights set on Israel from the very beginning.”

You might not hear quite such theological disaster-mongering from MAGA Republicans, though Marco Rubio keeps tweeting dire Old Testament verses, like this gem from the Prophet Joel: “The day of the LORD is coming! Yes, it approaches, a day of darkness & gloom, a day of thick clouds! Like dawn spreading over the mountains, a vast & mighty army!”

Clearly the New Testament is just a little too kumbaya for him.

One problem

But there’s a problem — if you’re Jewish, that is.

Evangelicals and other Republicans proclaim their love of Israel and Judaism and “God’s Chosen People,” but they don’t like to talk the end game of the End Times.

Once the fake messiah ruling the world from the rebuilt temple gets whipped by Jesus and his angel army, the Jews are going have to convert to Christianity.

If they don’t, it’s the Lake of Fire for them. Forever.

But for now, it looks like Israel’s authoritarian-leaning, strife-ridden governing coalition — not people likely to start haunting their local Methodist church — will accept their deal with the devil.

Make nice with the Christians, reap political benefits.

There’s no way most Democratic politicians will alienate the American Jewish vote: They need it.

There’s no way most Republicans want to piss off either the Jews who support them or, more importantly, the Evangelicals who own them.

If the apocalypse comes before Benjamin Netanyahu either gets voted out or convicted of corruption, well, he can probably try and cut a deal with Jehovah and move to a nice little suburb in Gehenna.

Diane Roberts

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.

 

 Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. 

Via Florida Phoenix

( Al Shabaka ) – In recent years, much has been written about the rise of white supremacist movements in the US, their support for alt-right politics, and former President Donald Trump as their political champion. Similarly, since 2016 much has been written about the overwhelming support Trump has received from white evangelical Christians, particularly Christian Zionists. Less examined is the relationship between white supremacy and Christian Zionism, namely their overlapping ideologies and political clout. 

While the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is often cited as the preeminent Zionist lobby in the US, Christian Zionists comprise a considerably larger political bloc with unwavering support for Israel and its continued displacement of Palestinians through both the expansion of settlements and apartheid rule. Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a major US Christian Zionist organization, claims over 10 million members, and the actual number of evangelicals who espouse Christian Zionist beliefs is likely much larger. Among white evangelical Christians, who comprise 14% of the US population and who supported Trump’s 2016 and 2020 elections by a wide margin, 80% believe that the establishment of the state of Israel and the “regathering of millions of Jewish people to Israel” are fulfilments of biblical prophecy. 

Political organizing against white supremacy, Israeli apartheid, and antisemitism would do well to join forces and focus on the close relationship between white supremacy and Christian Zionism among evangelicals. In this policy brief, the authors explain the nature and history of these political bedfellows and recommend ways for civil society to counter their influence. Israel’s current far right-wing government provides a particularly opportune moment to inform both progressive as well as mainstream US evangelicals, as the government has emboldened Israel’s Jewish fundamentalists, whose anti-Palestinian agenda is both stridently anti-Muslim and anti-Christian.

Tenets of Christian Zionism

Christian Zionism can be defined by the unquestioning support for the Zionist colonial project, from the violent establishment of the Israeli regime in 1948 to continued Jewish settlement in Palestine, as part of one’s faith as a Christian. The basis for this theology dates back to 16th-century Protestant Christian interpretations of Biblical eschatology, or signs and precursors of Jesus’ return at the end of time.¹ Evangelical Christian Zionists believe that among precursors to Jesus’ return is Jewish settlement in and control of Palestine, treating modern Jews as the biblical nation of Israel whom Christians are commanded to “bless” to facilitate the Messiah’s return. Thus, Christian Zionists see support for Israel as a way to take part in biblical prophecy. Adherents to the “Prosperity Gospel”—now 17% of US Christians—also believe in personal financial gain and prosperity if one blesses Israel. 

Christian Zionists’ support for Jewish settlement in Palestine is a precursor to their own (the Church’s) salvation, not that of Jewish people; they actively seek an end of times in which Jews and other non-Christians will be destroyed while they ascend to heaven.² Their support for Jews and Israel is a superficial pretense for Christian salvation at the expense of Jews. Still, this ideological commitment aligns Christian Zionists with Israeli governments and their colonial and belligerent policies toward Palestinians, Iran, and other adversaries of the Israeli regime. Ironically, the right-wing ethnoreligious nationalists who support the present Netanyahu government have also increased their belligerence toward Christians, Palestinian and otherwise, making this alignment even more perplexing.  

Moreover, Christian Zionist views of Jewish people are characteristically antisemitic. For example, they rely on belief in a singular, internationally-connected, and powerful population of Jews, and the modern Israeli regime as the embodiment of the biblical nation that represents Jews everywhere. Such beliefs mimic the conspiratorial elements of antisemitism in Europe and blend support for Jewish settlement in Palestine with antisemitic notions of international Jewry. In so doing, Christian Zionists cynically enmesh themselves with white supremacists, who fear being “replaced” by Jews or people of color—and who feel threatened by antisemitic notions of Jewish people’s power and influence. 

Some forms of Christian Zionism, especially those that historically took root in Britain, were predicated on both Jewish conversion and Jewish settlement in and control of Palestine. These notions considered Jews in the diaspora as both a problematic and biblically crucial population to influence on the path toward the Church’s destiny of salvation. These ideas developed further in the 20th century among various denominations of Christian evangelicals, and Jewish conversion was seen as unnecessary. The Christian Zionist consensus that took hold in the US and elsewhere, especially after the 1967 war and in the 1980s, sees the modern-day Zionist colonial project as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, preceding the ascendance of Christians to heaven and the destruction of all others on earth. Even among those Christians who believe in these precursors to Armageddon but who gloss over the end-of-times scenario, the ultimate focus is on Christian salvation that requires Jewish settlement in Palestine. 

 Though many Jewish Zionist leaders acknowledge the cynical nature of an alliance with Christian Zionists, their support is ultimately welcomed as it advances the Israeli regime’s political goals and shields it from critique. One of the ways Christian Zionists accomplish this is by contributing to narratives of the regime’s vulnerability in the midst of hostile Arab and Muslim neighbors who are also depicted as characteristically inferior. These narratives invoke racist ideas of Palestinians and Muslims as backwards, violent, technologically underdeveloped, and expendable—narratives similar to those used among white supremacists. In fact, Christian evangelicals have been among the most virulent propagators of anti-Muslim racism in the US. Likewise, Christian Zionists shore up the mythology of Jewish colonization and development of Palestine in continuity with an ancient past, contributing to questionable archaeology that helps to stymie Palestinian self-determination, including Christian Palestinians’ access to cherished sites of religious significance.

Christian Zionism and US Policy Toward the Israeli Regime 

Evangelical Christian Zionists fervently supported the Trump administration—with some in top positions, such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo–implementing what was essentially the Christian Zionist playbook during the administration’s four-year term. Yet this was not the first US administration or other political leadership that took direction from the “Armageddon Lobby.” 

Christian Zionism’s political influence in the US became pronounced in the 1980s, when the annual Zionist conference of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem first began. Major figures included the late Jerry Falwell, a conservative Baptist pastor and televangelist, and the late Pat Robertson, also a religious broadcaster and Southern Baptist minister as well as one-time Republican presidential candidate and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).³ Under President Ronald Reagan, Falwell’s and Robertson’s influences were clear: Not only did Reagan advocate for military strength in the US to prepare for the battle of Armageddon, but both he and Attorney General Edwin Meese reportedly prayed for Armageddon to come.⁴ 

Though many Jewish Zionist leaders acknowledge the cynical nature of an alliance with Christian Zionists, their support is ultimately welcomed as it advances the Israeli regime’s political goals and shields it from critique Click To Tweet

Falwell established a group known as the Moral Majority in 1979, a political organizing body for evangelicalism that mobilized thousands of churches and millions of registered voters as “the Christian Right.” By 2003, the Moral Majority represented the largest voting bloc within the Republican Party and was a major social movement with direct ties to the Israeli government, Falwell having been honored by Menachem Begin himself in 1979.

An affiliate of the Moral Majority, the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI), led a successful campaign to repeal UN Resolution 3379, which stated that Zionism was a form of racism while also declaring opposition to all forms of racism. Pro-Israel lobbies in the US, including the likes of the World Jewish Congress and AIPAC, pressed US officials to oppose the resolution immediately following its passage in 1975. However, it is arguably only when the Christian Zionist lobby began its concerted campaign from 1985 to 1990 that US elected officials responded. In 1990, the House of Representatives passed HR 457, calling on the UN to repeal the resolution; it was syndicated and passed thereafter in the Senate with unanimous support and signed by President George H. W. Bush. The UN overturned the resolution the following year in a rare redaction.

During the later George W. Bush administration, Christian Zionist figures like Falwell continued to hold sway on issues of US foreign policy in the Middle East, supporting Israeli settlement expansion and opposing overtures toward peace or Palestinian statehood. For example, in June 2003, Bush backpedaled on pressure to move forward with the Middle East Quartet-sponsored “roadmap for peace” that purportedly aimed to establish a Palestinian state. When the US was meant to act as a third-party mediator at a meeting between Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and newly-appointed Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas, a Christian Zionist organization known as the Apostolic Congress sent more than 50,000 postcards to the White House opposing the roadmap, and the administration subsequently delayed action until after the 2004 elections.⁵  

Today, the largest pro-Israel advocacy group in the US is CUFI. Other notable organizations that either represent or are financially supported by Christian Zionists include the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. University campus-based affiliates include Passages, a Christian Zionist tour group, and the Campus Maccabees or Maccabee Task Force, a multi-million dollar effort opposing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement with direct financial support from CUFI and right-wing Zionists.

The culmination of decades of growing Christian Zionist political influence was a 2016 White House whose alignment with the far right among both Zionists and white supremacists was seamless. In addition to Pence and Pompeo, Trump appointed Steve Bannon as chief strategist. Bannon, who declared himself a Christian Zionist, also called his news site, Breitbart, “the platform for the alt-right” and was celebrated by white nationalists. David Friedman, US Ambassador to Israel under Trump and a known funder and supporter of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, also enjoyed ties to Christian Zionist leadership. 

The result was an administration that opposed international consensus on illegal settlements in the West Bank; moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, declaring it Israel’s “eternal capital”; made an unprecedented diplomatic visit to a settlement funded by Christian Zionists; reneged on the Iran nuclear deal in favor of a more aggressive and pro-Israel stance against Iran; signed enormous military arms deals with Saudi Arabia and advanced normalization between Israel and the Gulf; withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council citing “anti-Israel bias;” and did away with any regard for Palestinian demands and self-determination in the so-called “Deal of the Century.” Trump left office having solidified US support for right-wing religious ethnonationalism in Israel and for the illegal settlement enterprise; unsurprisingly, annexation of Palestinian land also increased during his term. 

The administration also supported US federal agencies’ aggression toward Palestinian activism at home: The Department of Education under Betsy DeVos sought to punish Palestinian student activists for critique of Israel,⁶ and the State Department similarly accepted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, stifling criticism of Israel. The Biden administration has not reversed these actions, and this continued indifference or tacit endorsement of Trump’s legacy dangerously ignores the links between the Christian Zionist agenda and white supremacy, flying in the face of what the administration declares to be its policy of anti-racism.

White Supremacy and Christian Zionism 

The ties between Christian Zionism and white supremacy date back to the early European Christian Zionists.⁷ Though British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour’s 1917 declaration that his government would support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine might on the surface appear to have been benevolent toward Jews, it was, in fact, steeped in white supremacy and antisemitism. Indeed, Balfour’s support of Zionism originated in a desire to stem Jewish immigration to Britain. He wrote, for instance, in his 1919 introduction to Nahum Sokolow’s History of Zionism that the Zionist movement would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.” 

It should therefore come as no surprise that while contemporary white supremacists declare a desire for Jews to leave “white societies” for Israel, they also proclaim admiration for Zionism and its manifestation in the Israeli state. Richard Spencer, a leader of the “alt-right” movement in the US, which espouses a white ethnostate, has called himself a “white Zionist.” Relatedly, those who display Confederate flags may pair them with Israeli flags, and Israeli flags are often on display at right-wing rallies, including on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Washington, DC, capitol. 

It should come as no surprise that while contemporary white supremacists declare a desire for Jews to leave ‘white societies’ for Israel, they also proclaim admiration for Zionism and its manifestation in the Israeli state Click To Tweet

Though Spencer is not a religious person, his and other white supremacists’ desire for a white ethnostate is steeped in Christianity through a call for their fellow whites to be conscious not only of their white identity but also of their shared Christian heritage—a heritage that itself has white supremacist roots. To be sure, analysts and activists such as Mae Elise Cannon and Graylan Hagler have pointed out that Christian nationalism, white supremacy, Zionism, and Christian Zionism make cozy bedfellows. This was as true in Balfour’s time as it is today. The scholar Robert O. Smith has found, for instance, through an analysis of US polling data since the mid-1980s that support for Israel is “predicated…by a combination of religious traditionalism, belief in American exceptionalism, and whiteness.” 

It is perhaps the notion of exceptionalism that best articulates and links these dangerous ideologies. Cannon notes that “Both Christian nationalism and Christian Zionists espouse an ideology of exceptionalism…Exceptionalists inhabit binary, exclusionary worlds,” and Hagler writes in an essay on white supremacy and Christian Zionism that “[a]ll forms of supremacy are exceptionalist.” The idea that one group is superior to another and deserves certain rights at the expense of “outsider” groups—whether white and Christian versus Jewish, Black, Muslim, and otherwise in the case of the Richard Spencers in the US, or white and Jewish versus Palestinian in the case of Christian Zionism, Zionism, and Israel—is one that begets violence and oppression. 

Evangelical Opportunities 

It is important to emphasize the diversity among evangelicals: Not all evangelicals are Christian Zionists. In fact, there are a number of individuals and institutions that work against the ideology in the interest of Palestinian rights, such as Cannon of the DC-based Churches for Middle East Peace, the Christ at the Checkpoint initiative at Bethlehem Bible College, and Sojourners magazine, which emerged from an evangelical divinity school in Illinois in the 1970s. Further, non-white evangelicals tend to be less biased in their views toward Israel and the Palestinian struggle. That said, as noted above, the majority of evangelicals express Christian Zionist beliefs. 

However, recent polling suggests that support for Israel among younger evangelicals is decreasing. A 2021 survey reports that support among this group dropped from 75 percent to 34 percent between 2018 and 2021, in contrast to more steady support among older evangelicals. Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland has also conducted polling on this issue since 2015; his research demonstrates a similar trend and that the gap between the age groups had already widened appreciably by 2018. 

Further, white evangelicals–particularly young white evangelicals–have been turning away from evangelicalism, or are reluctant to be labeled as such. This is in part a rejection of Trump’s policies and rhetoric so bolstered by the bloc. While this inclination has resulted in some young white people leaving organized religion more broadly, others are desirous of a different type of experience, one that fosters community and social transformation. 

Gary Burge, Professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently spoke with author Kirk about this burgeoning group and the churches they are flocking to: “Young people don’t feel the church is addressing what is most heartfelt to them, which are issues like racial equality, poverty alleviation, and the environment.” 

The task for activists for Palestinian rights will be to educate and bring alienated social justice-oriented evangelicals together to work against Israeli settler colonialism, theocracy, and apartheid Click To Tweet

New churches that brand themselves as “not your parents’ church” are attracting these youth Burge describes one such establishment in Grand Rapids that was founded in 2017 and started with 30 or 40 people. Today, around 900 people are members. “The minister has a PhD in sociology, a fantastic beard, a motorcycle with a sidecar, keen insight into how churches grow, and an infectious passion that shows up in every sermon,” Burge says. “And he has limited interest in evangelical culture. His audience is what he calls post-church.” According to Burge, non-traditional churches like this one are expanding nationwide, and he sees evangelicalism reinventing itself in this mold in the coming century. 

While support for Israel is not common in the new churches Burge describes, neither is support for Palestinians, as the parishioners are more concerned with domestic issues such as gun control and racism. In a recent interview Jonathan Brenneman, a Palestinian-American activist told Kirk that he agrees that former evangelicals or current evangelicals interested in social justice may not have Palestine “at the top of their list,” but notes they are willing to challenge Christian Zionist ideas. Such a position presents an important opportunity to counter Christian Zionist influence.

Policy Recommendations 

With younger evangelicals moving away from robust support for Israel, there is an opportunity for both short and long-term change. This could take the form of diverse groups working together against the Israeli right, including in regard to Palestinian liberation. The task for activists for Palestinian rights will be to educate and bring alienated social justice-oriented evangelicals together to work against Israeli settler colonialism, theocracy, and apartheid. 

• Civil society organizations that support Palestinian rights should conduct outreach among young evangelicals and evangelicals of color to make connections between them and progressive groups, such as those advocating for Black Lives Matter, Indigenous rights, and police accountability. This outreach must necessarily stress the ties between Christian Zionism, white supremacy, ethnonationalism, and antisemitism, creating understanding and subsequent opportunity for these groups to work together for Palestinian rights as well as other progressive, anti-racist causes. 
• Once this larger network is in place, civil society groups should make contact with their national and local governments–such as the Biden administration’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships–among other outreach, to influence mainstream churches and organizations with messaging that calls attention to problematic ties between Christian Zionism and ethnonationalism.
• Civil society organizations should educate progressive and mainstream Christians about the growing Israeli right-wing religious fascist animosity toward Christians and its relationship to ethnonationalism and apartheid more broadly. 
• Alternative pilgrimage and ethical tourism to Palestine for Christians—such as Friends of Sabeel Witness Trips or Eyewitness Palestine delegations—must be encouraged. They can play an important role in opposing Christian Zionist narratives and re-orienting young evangelicals who may identify with anti-racist movements and who wish to avoid complicity in Palestinian displacement. 

1. Stephen Sizer, Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2021).
2. Sizer, Christian Zionism.
3. Sizer, Christian Zionism.
4. Dugger, Ronnie. “Does Reagan Expect a Nuclear Armageddon?” Washington Post. April 18 1984.
5. See also Perlstein’s account of Apostolic Congress lobbying and influence.
6. However, the Department of Education under the Biden Administration has rejected the IHRA definition of antisemitism
7. Sizer. Christian Zionism.

Haaretz reports that a former spokesman for Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, Wadie Abu Nassar, is saying that Pope Francis is “furious” over the attacks.

The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 notes that Israeli authorities subsequently arrested five Ultra-Orthodox caught spitting toward Christians or the doors of Christian churches in Jerusalem. Jerusalem police chief Kobi Shabtai vowed to crack down on any demonstration of bigotry. The Palestinian-Israeli journalists at Arab 48 called the spitting an act of “racism.” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who allowed extremists and racists into his cabinet, condemned the spitting, insisting that Israel welcomed pilgrims of all religions.

In another article, Arab 48 wrote, “Activists circulated statements issued by the Israeli Minister of National Security, the extremist Itamar Ben Gvir, in which he said, ‘There is an ancient Jewish custom, to spit when you pass near a monastery or a priest. You can agree with that or not, but why would we turn spitting on Christians into a crime?’” He did however say that the practice deserved “every condemnation” and called on people to “stop slandering Israel” in this way.

The article also quoted Elisha Yered, a militant Israeli squatter who is under house arrest on suspicion of murdering a Palestinian last August, as saying, “A good time to point out that spitting near priests or churches is an ancient Jewish custom . . . Perhaps under the influence of Western culture we have forgotten to some extent what Christianity is, but I believe that the millions of Jews who, while in exile, suffered through the Crusades, the tortures of the Inquisition, blood libel and mass violence will never forget.” Yered is the former spokesman for a member of the Israeli parliament who belongs to Ben-Gvir’s fascist “Jewish Power” party.

Al Jazeera English: “Occupied East Jerusalem: Outrage over ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at Christians”

Arab 48 reported that the World Council of Churches in Jerusalem condemned the “persecution” of Christians by extremist Israeli groups and the failure of the Israeli security forces to do anything about it.

Coordinator for the WCC Jerusalem Bureau, Youssef Daher, told the Anadolu Agency, it said, that both individual Christians and Christianity as a religion face persecution in Israel, and that some government ministers actively encourage it, while Israeli police ignore it.

He said, “the issue is related to the Israeli government and the police and authorities’ neglect of the issue, because if the police had done their role, church property would not have been attacked and Christians would not have been attacked by spitting.” He said that the video of the spitting attacks last Monday showed Israeli police and security personnel present at the scene, but that they failed to intervene. He added, “There is a Jewish Israeli persecution, encouraged either by police negligence or by statements made by Israeli cabinet ministers.”

He said that the churches “submitted many complaints to the Israeli police in recent months, supported by videotapes, but to no avail.” He said, “We recorded about 12-13 attacks on church property. As for spitting, it continues and increases as we watch it repeat. There are one or two incidents weekly.” Daher alleged that what is happening is “hatred of Christianity,” and added, “In the past months, churches issued about 12 statements, the last two of which called for international protection, but no one took action.”

Hasson went on to interview experts in Jewish history who explained that a small minority of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, who were a persecuted minority, would spit toward churches when passing them at night and there was no one around. Hasson’s interviewees point out that it is a very different thing demonstratively to spit in broad daylight at Christian minorities living under Israeli rule.

The contemporary Ultra-Orthodox or Haredim who engage in this practice base it on the ruling, endorsed by Maimonides, that Christianity is a form of idolatry and that Jewish believers should underline this abomination with expressions of contempt. Some hold that Jewish law decrees death for idolatry.

( Michigan Advance ) – You may be among the 35% of Americans who have never heard the term “white Christian nationalism.” But of those citizens who are knowledgeable of the concept, it carries a decidedly negative view. The belief is becoming more and more important to understand as cultural diversity, racism, immigration issues, political divisiveness and political candidate pandering is before us.

What is white Christian nationalism? Generally – according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – it “refers to a political ideology and identity that fuses white supremacy, Christianity and American nationalism, and whose proponents claim that the United States is a `Christian Nation.’”

Research conducted by the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute  with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution as well as a poll sponsored by Southern Poverty Law Center/Tulchin have the same conclusion: The white Christian nationalism movement is a growing threat to America’s democracy.

The far-right antigovernment and religious rights movement of the 1990s is getting stronger and stronger and will play a major role in the 2024 local, county, state and federal elections.

During the Nov. 21-Dec. 14, 2022 time period, 6,212 Americans were asked by PRRI/BI for their reply to these five statements: 1) the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation, 2) U.S. laws should be based on Christian values, 3) if the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore, 4) being Christian is an important part of being truly American and 5) God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

Answers across all five questions were found to be highly correlated (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.92) with a margin of error of +/- 1.6% at the 95% level of confidence.  This is a take-it-to-the-bank research endeavor.

Fifty-four percent of the GOP faithful are adherents of Christian nationalism vs. 23% of independents and 15% of Democrats.

Thom Hartmann: “The Hidden Roots Of White Supremacy Revealed w/ Robert P. Jones”

The PRRI/BI research notes five core attitudes are often associated with Christian nationalist beliefs: anti-Black, anti-Semitic (Jewish), anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and patriarchal adherence of traditional gender roles (for example, the husband is head of the household).”

Furthermore, research revealed “Christian nationalism beliefs are strongly correlated with support for QAnon, an extremist movement of the political right,” whose tenets include:

The Southern Poverty Law Center offers a summary of the movement that should be a wake-up call to Americans: “White Christian nationalism is a key ideology that inspired the failed Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection and fueled multiple failed political campaigns in 2022 . . . however, white Christian nationalism remains a persistent and growing threat to U.S. democracy.”

Any person with a modicum of intelligence knows European colonists immigrated to America to escape religious persecution, expand their economic opportunities and live in a country where there was separation of church and state. Followers of the white Christian nationalism movement want to contradict the principles and norms of democracy and make America an authoritarian country.

Adherents of white Christian nationalism are the drivers of antidemocratic conspiracy theories and election denialism and possibly book banning, LGBTQIA denigration, “sanitized” black history curriculum, anti-female reproductive rights, gerrymandering and attacking diversity, equity and inclusion.

Currently, there are 14 Republicans and three Democrats wanting to win the Nov. 5, 2024, presidential election. Hundreds of candidates will be seeking local, county, state and federal offices of power. Citizens must be vigilant.

This column first appeared in the Advance‘s sister outlet, the Daily Montanan.

 

Steve Corbin

Steve Corbin is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at University of Northern Iowa.

Michigan Advance

Republished under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.