The Weaponized Theology of Evangelicalism
Religions of Empire Are Only Interested in Conquest
Religious fundamentalists belonging to the three main Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are busy creaming their pants right about now. Although they are not directly involved in the violence taking place in Israel and Palestine, nowhere is this more evident than with White evangelicals in the United States. As explained in my opening post a couple weeks ago, this is the self-fulfilling End Times prophecy bullshit that they’ve been trying to engineer and implement for decades. And since all of the fighting, death, destruction, and genocide will take place well away from North America, most of them simply do not care about the actual people involved. Their eyes are focused on what they believe to be the imminent Second Coming of Christ, which they are trying to bring about by supporting and praying for genocide.
Based on what I learned about Jesus in evangelicalism, Catholicism, and later branching out on my own spiritual quest, I highly doubt that he would be very pleased with White evangelicals for cheerleading the genocide of an entire nation, most of whom are children, in order to set him up as some kind of military dictatorship strongman governing the entire world with an iron fist. In the Gospel of John, Jesus actually slips away and hides from a crowd that wants to make him king of Israel by force. (John 6:15) His followers misunderstood him then, and American evangelicals misunderstand him now. It shouldn’t be surprising though. Evangelical theology in general, but particularly regarding the End Times, is a total authoritarian bloodbath. Worse than Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale. Worse than the Holocaust. Worse than the Inquisition. Worse than either of the past two world wars. Worse than the Crusades. Worse than the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE. And they are celebrating it. Looking forward to it. Gunning for it.
As a case study into this worldview, I’ve taken a couple of recent social media posts made by one of the pastors from my high school days over 20 years ago. This is someone I actually know in real life. I intend to write a full post about him and his pastoral style at a later date, but he was - and apparently still is - an excessively toxic and abusive individual. I personally experienced gaslighting, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, manipulation, and anxiety because of this youth pastor between the ages of 15 and 16. Thankfully he moved on from the church I attended after my first year in its high school youth group.
He posted this to his public Facebook page about a week after the initial Hamas attack in southern Israel.
First of all, don’t watch the recommended video. It’s from Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church (Seattle) infamy. My high school pastor was something akin to his protégé or mentee, and Mark Driscoll himself was the chapel speaker during my high school summer camp in 1998. (I was only 15 at the time and a Very Practicing Evangelical, but I got really bad vibes from him from the start.) Driscoll is probably where my former pastor learned a bunch of his abusive techniques to manipulate and control teenagers.
Second, Hamas does not translate to ‘violence.’ I had to look this up because I don’t speak Arabic, but this assertion sounded sketchy to me. HAMAS is an acronym for ‘Harakah al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah’ which translates to ‘Islamic Resistance Movement.’ The acronym HAMAS translates to ‘zeal’ or ‘strength’ or ‘bravery.’ Not ‘violence.’ They might have some similarities in certain situations, but violence and zeal are not synonyms.
Third, the Israel-Palestine struggle is most definitely a political struggle. It always has been. Religion has been papered over it - by both far-right Jewish Israelis and fundamentalist Muslims from the wider Middle East - but it is not at its heart a religious struggle. From the Nakba in 1948 to today, it is an exceedingly simple situation to understand. Not to solve obviously, but to understand. There is no ‘unfolding spiritual war’ or epic prophecies being fulfilled. Maybe some self-fulfilling prophecies, but that’s about it.
Lastly, using the term ‘final solution’ in a post about Israel, Jews, and anti-Semitism is inadvisable at best. I could be generous and assume that he doesn’t know the historical implication of this term. But I doubt it. Over one thousand Israelis were murdered during a terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on 07 October. As revenge, Israel is now carrying out a full-blown genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Violence is also rising in the West Bank between Palestinians and illegal Israeli settlers. And this evangelical pastor decides to throw around the term ‘final solution’ so cavalierly while watching murder, war, and genocide unfold, safely ensconced in some American cookie-cutter neighborhood and reposting videos from some tacky American megachurch. It’s repugnant.
But it gets worse.
Not to be outdone by the commentary glorifying a final solution, he added this monstrosity claiming that Muslims want to “proclaim that their God Allah is Lord. They are awaiting their Messiah to come to force the whole world into submission to Allah. It’s a religion of forceful violence.”
All Abrahamic religions worship the same deity. Allah is literally just the Arabic word for God. Palestinian Christians - who speak Arabic as well - use the exact same word. But a lot of evangelicals have convinced themselves that Islam’s Allah is actually Satan or some other demonic entity. I’ve read and heard this idea countless times from White American evangelicals. But if they had actually read any of the Qur’an or learned anything authentic about Islam, then they would know that this belief is neither historically nor theologically accurate.
Muslims also believe that Jesus is the Messiah, although not that he’s divine as Christians do. So when he mentions “their messiah,” it’s literally his messiah too. If you read much of anything about evangelical End Times prophecy and dispensationalism, you would know that it ends with the entire world being forced to submit to Jesus. Forced. Not chosen, not wanted, not desired.
“… so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11)
This passage is very much interpreted and proclaimed as a threat within White evangelical Christianity. Evangelicalism has so intertwined itself with American empire, militarism, and a winner-take-all mentality that it has turned its already militant theology and colonizing spirituality into a scourge upon the Earth and its inhabitants. Especially those who are currently suffering a brutal genocide in Gaza at the hands of a violent Zionist state and at the whims of Christian Zionists in the US. We are witnessing religious-backed ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the West, that self-described moral conscience of the world, is not only silent, but in full support. It is appalling.
