Oppression of Middle Eastern Christians Blamed on… Israel?

Reading the headline of a recent op-ed by respected Christian historian and Oxford Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, my initial response was one of joy. “Why Won’t the West Defend Middle Eastern Christians?” he asks, and in the liberal Daily Beast to boot. Finally, I thought, an important issue receives the attention it deserves! But one doesn’t need to read much further than the subtitle to realize how terribly the professor misfires. “Why has the suffering of the Middle Eastern Christian communities not ignited outrage and support from Western Christians? The answer has something to do with Israel and the Second Coming…”

The problem, Professor MacCulloch writes, is “a Protestant one… from Martin Luther onwards, many Protestants have eagerly been awaiting an imminent end to the world, the return of Christ in glory.” Protestants decided that in order for biblical prophecies to take place, the Jews needed to return to their biblical homeland, so they embraced Zionism. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict became “the heart of the problems in the Middle East,” which led to the death and discrimination faced by Middle Eastern Christians. Because these Christians are so obsessed with the Israel, they are distracted from the plight of Middle Eastern Christians

Or, as one comment on MacCulloch’s piece put it: “Muslims kill Christians, so who to blame?  The Jews.”

There’s so much wrong with the basic substance of Professor MacCulloch’s piece, it’s almost hard to know where to start.  The most basic and obvious problem is the manner in which the Professor conflates the West with Christianity, and then Christianity with Protestantism, and then Protestants with Evangelicals. The title of the piece promises an explanation of why “The West” won’t defend Middle Eastern Christians. By the second paragraph, he’s switched to the silence from Western Christians in particular (Christian silence, coincidentally I’m sure, is also the subject of his new book). But then we’re told it’s a Protestant issue, dating back to Luther. By the time we’ve arrived at blaming the modern Christian support of Israel, American Evangelicals are the focus. Finally, in the last sentence of the piece, MacCulloch comes full circle asking, “When will this Western silence end?”

Even if we take for granted everything Professor MacCulloch claims is true, he fails to explain why every non-Evangelical in the West is silent on the matter. Does he really expect us to believe that the citizens of France and Sweden are silent because of their desire to carry out a biblical prophecy to hasten the Second Coming? Or is far more likely that their silence comes in deference to another religious tradition, whose most extreme adherents have a history of murdering critics?

It’s absurd to claim that all or even most Christians support Israel because they believe it will play a role in end times. While the belief isn’t unheard of in Evangelical circles (Tim LaHaye and Jerry Falwell are big fans), even Evangelicals are more likely to support Israel’s right to exist for other reasons. A 2011 Pew poll found that when Evangelical leaders are asked about religious reasons they support Israel, they are more likely to cite the covenant between God and the Jewish people than biblical prophecy. It’s possible there’s some massive disconnect between what Evangelical leaders are preaching and what the average Evangelical on the street believes. But if so, MacCulloch fails to explain why at the very least Evangelical leaders aren’t speaking out about Middle Eastern Christians.

In the same Pew poll, only 34% of Evangelical leaders say they sympathize more with Israel, compared to 11% who say the Palestinians and 39% who say they sympathize equally with both. So even among the small subset of the West MacCulloch claims is obsessed with Israel, there isn’t a clear gung-ho majority. In fact, the same question posed to the American public in 2013 found 50% who say they sympathize with the Israelis, compared to 10% for the Palestinians, making Evangelicals leaders less likely to support Israel wholeheartedly.

The single most outrageous part of MacCulloch’s piece is that he specifically blames the plight of Middle Eastern Christians and the failure of the West to notice their plight on the single group most likely to care. As one Jewish blogger noted, “Apparently, American evangelical Christians who support Israel are especially blameworthy for not speaking up for their fellow Christians in the Middle East even though, as I understand it, these are exactly the Christians who are most likely to be concerned about the plight of Christians the Middle East.” Daniel Greenfield, himself an Israeli, puts it more bluntly in his rebuttal: “Conservative Evangelical Christians are about the only ones really interested in the plight of Christians in the Middle East.” The IRD has been reporting on the oppression of Middle Eastern Christians for years, thanks to the passion and dedication of our Director of our Religious Liberty Program Faith McDonnell. Having worked personally with Faith and so many other evangelical and conservative Christians who care deeply about this issue, I find Professor MacCulloch’s insinuation that they are to blame appalling and offensive.

These are my biggest and most obvious issues with MacCulloch’s piece. But there are so many issues with his piece, it would take several posts to summarize them all. Here are a few bullet points of other issues:

• Why would support for Israel on the part of Westerners preclude them from also caring about the plight of Middle Eastern Christians? Can’t they focus on both? Did Westerners tune out the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring, Benghazi, and the war in Syria because Israel wasn’t involved?
• Wouldn’t a strong support of Israel be warranted by those who care about the plight of Middle Eastern Christians, given that it’s possibly the only Middle Eastern country where they aren’t systematically oppressed?
• If an obsession with Israel keeps Westerners from caring about other Middle Eastern issues, why is the West also silent about the oppression of Christians in countries like China or Nigeria?
• Is it really the case that Middle Eastern Christians only face discrimination because of Israel? If Israel is the reason Christians face violence in the Middle East, why is there similar oppression by Islamists in Indonesia and Nigeria?
• If obsessive support for Israel keeps Christians from speaking out in support of their Middle Eastern brothers and sisters, why are virulently anti-Israel denominations also silent?
• Wouldn’t an Israel-supporter recognize the obvious rhetorical advantage in alerting the West to Islamist violence against Christians, given Israel’s own struggle against Islamic terrorism?
• MacCulloch claims that violence against Christians comes from “an extremist militant minority of Muslims, who betray their own religion by intolerance, and who make other Muslims ashamed of what is happening.” If their fellow Muslims are really so outraged, why would the West need to pressure the Middle East at all? Why is there a similar inaction and silence coming from Middle Eastern Muslims? (It is interesting to note that MacCulloch correctly recognizes that not all Muslims are radical Islamists, while failing to grasp that not all Christians are pro-Israel Evangelicals who believe in the Rapture)
• If violence against Christians in the Middle East is driven by ‘extremists’, would halting our support of Israel really placate them? Wouldn’t they find some other reason to scapegoat religious minorities?

My final question for Professor MacCulloch is this: Given the ridiculousness of your conclusion, and the numerous logical leaps and bounds it takes to get there, who’s really the one obsessed with Israel?