Over 3000 “Christian Zionist” leaders affiliated with American Christian Leaders for Israel (ACLI), a project of the extremist International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ), recently issued a deeply immoral statement calling on President Trump to declare Israeli sovereignty over the entirety of the Holy Land. That statement can be accessed here. Trump is expected to make an announcement on the topic of annexation within the coming weeks, if not days. The ACLI statement is wholly inconsistent with the God witnessed to in the pages of scripture and with our moral and ethical obligations as followers of Jesus and the Biblical prophets. We must publicly renounce such efforts and make it clear that those affiliated with ACLI do not speak on behalf of Christians or Christianity. Moreover, we must categorically reject any thinly-disguised plan to annex Palestinian land and engage in continued violence against innocent civilians in the occupied West Bank, in Gaza, and beyond. For this reason, a diverse coalition of Christian voices committed to just peace in and beyond the Holy Land have come together to proclaim the statement below. |
Christian Leaders, Activists, and Persons of Conscience Stand against Forced Displacement and Reaffirm the Inalienable Palestinian Right to a Life of Freedom and Dignity in their Ancestral Homeland
We the undersigned have dedicated ourselves to defending the Bible from false interpretations, most especially from those calling for the persecution, exploitation, and elimination of entire people groups. We have seen tragic examples of this over the centuries, for which we must not only repent but also must actively prevent from ever happening again.
Such is the case for an erroneous, distorted Biblical interpretation that calls for, and actively encourages, the forced removal of Palestinians. “Christian Zionism,” as it is commonly known, is a heretical theology that encourages the violent uprooting of families and entire communities from the lands and properties on which they have lived, worked, and cultivated for generations.
Calls to expand the borders of modern Israel and forcibly remove the Indigenous population represent a profound misreading of the Biblical witness, a rejection of the Gospel message, and the erasure of thousands of years of Palestinian history and culture.
To us, such a policy is profoundly unchristian, the very antithesis of what it means to follow Jesus, an Indigenous Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. Indeed, we believe that Jesus and the Hebrew Prophets would be vehemently opposed to such destructive acts.
We stand in fellowship with the Palestinian Christian communities of the Holy Land, and we honor their witness when they warn us that the world’s oldest, continuous Christian community is in danger of extinction. Our siblings in Christ are under direct threat from the Israeli authorities and radical settlers who seek their removal and elimination.
As Christians, however, we stand together with all Palestinian communities struggling against ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure, and genocide: Muslim (Sunni, Shia, Druze, etc.), Christian (Arab, Armenian, Syriac/Aramaic, etc.), Jewish (Indigenous Palestinian Jews, alongside African, Samaritan, messianic, and many others who stand in opposition to ethnic cleansing and genocide), as well as non-religious and other religious minorities comprising the remarkable historic diversity of Palestine. A mosaic of different faiths and ethnic communities have lived in the Holy Land for centuries, and the attempt to erase any of them or make exclusive claims for one, at the expense of all others, is a crime against God and all humankind.
We condemn the demand that the occupied West Bank be referred to as Judea and Samaria. Doing so is an act of philosophical erasure that will then be used as justification to forcibly displace innocent people from their ancestral homes.
Let it be declared that:
The undersigned signatories reaffirm the Palestinian people’s inalienable right—affirmed by theology, history, and international law—to a life of freedom and dignity in their homeland. We reject all efforts—from the United States, Israel, and others—to dispossess the Palestinian people. Peace will come only when all peoples of the Holy Land today—Palestinian and Israeli, Christian, Jew, Muslim, people of all faiths and none—live together in a shared land. We reject ethnic cleansing. We reject the supremacy of one people over another. And, as Christians, we categorically reject the misuse of the Bible to justify acts that betray the core of our faith and the ministry of Jesus.
