This panel, featuring speakers Greg Khalil, James Zogby, and Melani McAlister, examined the multiple intersections and convergences of political ideologies and religious beliefs and their implications for US policies in Isreal/Palestine.
This event took place on October 26, 2021.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: The Christian Right and the Shaping of American Policies in Israel-Palestine. October 26, 2021.
DIANE MOORE: Hello, everyone. I'm Diane Moore, and I'm the Faculty Director of Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School. On behalf of my colleagues, Hilary Rantisi, Atalia Omer, Reem Atassi, Navi Harden, and our friends at the Project on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, I want to warmly welcome you all to the Christian Right and Shaping of American Policies in Palestine-Israel.
This webinar is part of the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative webinar series, and is co-sponsored by the Project on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. I want to acknowledge that I am broadcasting from my home on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts and Wampanoag tribes. The Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative is a program of religion and public life, whose mission is to enhance the public understanding of religion in service of just peace.
In all our work, we centralize an analysis of how structural injustices thwart human and planetary flourishing. And how a more capacious and complex understanding of religion, can yield fresh insights into contemporary challenges and opportunities for just peace building. The primary case study we're focusing on for the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative is Palestine-Israel.
Our aim is to stretch the scholarly discourse around religion and the practices of peacebuilding and examine the decolonial potentialities of art, religion, and identity transformation. Our fall series in the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, focuses on the themes of religious terminologies and secular nationalism and political violence on decolonial sites of practice and theory in Israel-Palestine, and on political emancipatory theologies from a comparative perspective.
Today's webinar examines the political ideologies and religious beliefs of the Christian right in the United States, and their role in influencing policies in Palestine-Israel. We are incredibly honored to have with us today 3 guests who can speak authentically and eloquently about these critical questions. And I'm going to ask them to come on screen now, as I introduce them.
Gregory Khalil is the co-founder and President of Telos, a Washington DC-based nonprofit, that equips American leaders and their communities to better engage seemingly, intractable conflicts. Much of Telos' work is centered on the role of faith leaders with an emphasis on evangelical Christians and culture shapers in America's relationship to Israel-Palestine, and the broader Middle East. Greg is also a founding member and chair of the Board of Directors of Narrative 4, a global nonprofit that seeks to use story and media to cultivate empathy across divides. Greg is a lawyer and also an adjunct Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he often co-teaches a course called, Covering Religion. He's a former fellow of our Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, as well. It's wonderful to have him back for this conversation. Thank you, Greg.
Professor Melani Mc Alister is Director of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of American Studies and International Affairs at George Washington University. Her research focuses on the multiple global visions produced by and for Americans. She explores the ways in which cultural and political history intersect, and on the role of religion and culture in shaping US interests in other parts of the world. Specifically, she studies nationalism and transnationalism, cultural theory, religion and culture, the rhetoric of foreign policy, and cultural and media history, including television, film, print, and digital. In 2018, Doctor Mc Alister published, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders-- A Global History of American Evangelicals, which explores how US evangelical Christians, white and people of color, have constructed their understandings of, and relationships with, people in the Middle East and Africa. I highly recommend this book. Wonderful to have you with us, Melanie. Thank you for being here.
And Doctor James Zogby is the President and co-founder of the Arab American Institute, a Washington DC organization which serves as a political and policy research arm of the Arab-American community. He is also director of Zogby Research Services, a firm that has conducted groundbreaking surveys across the Middle East. In September of 2013, President Obama appointed Dr. Zogby to serve on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and he was reappointed to that commission in 2015. In 2000, 2008, and 2016, he served as advisor to the Gore, Obama, and Sanders Presidential campaigns, and currently serves as chair of the Democratic National Committee's Ethnic Council, an umbrella organization of Democratic party leaders of European and Mediterranean descent. Welcome, Jim. Wonderful to have you with us. Thank you for joining.
So Greg, the first question is going to you. Can you briefly sketch for us the theology underlying the Christian right's support of Israel annexation as policies, and how your work is navigated it over time? Also, if you could offer your insights regarding why this issue matters to publics beyond the Christian Right and those concerned with Israel-Palestine.
GREGORY KHALIL: Sure. Diane, thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be part of this panel, particularly with Melanie and Jim and looking forward to learning a lot from them. Let me start with the second part of your question, the why this conversation is important. That's one that we skip over. I come from a Palestinian Christian background, and so I've been connected to this issue for many years. I formally advise the Palestinian leadership on negotiations. And one aspect that gets some attention, recently, is the way that America's relationship to the Middle East sounds and complicates things for those of us who value fundamental human rights for everyone, for all Palestinians and all Israelis.
One of the things that we overlook though, is that this is the Holy Land and some of the constituencies that care the most, and will care, are faith communities, and particularly Christians. Historically with this conflict for example, for those of you who are familiar with the history of this conflict, Balfour, Lord Balfour of the Balfour Declaration, which is kind of synonymous with the birth of the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and many tellings of the story, Sykes of the Sykes-Picot agreement, many of these historic figures, were also people of faith, and specifically evangelical Christians, who had a certain theological outlook.
And that's important to name because we can draw a line from these folks in Great Britain all the way through the Trump administration with Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Vice President, Mike Pence, and we might want to go into some of this later, but why is that significant? The basic punch line here is that there is no path to a sustainable and just peace, whatever form that might take, in the Holy Land without accounting for many of these communities, bypassing them, engaging them getting other folks to help get into the real difficult work of peace building that centers fundamental human rights.
So the first part of your question about theology, is very connected to that because theology is simply a religious worldview. How do we understand scriptures? How do we understand what God's larger plan is for humanity and for us? Worldview, whether religious or not, it shapes all of our behavior and our interventions in this world, whether we care to admit it or not. Debatable premise, but we can say something about that.
So I'll be very brief on the theology because I know we've got these other great commentators here. The short answer is there are actually several different Christian Zionist theologies in America today. Historically, going back to Britain, as I mentioned, there's something called dispensationalism, big word. All it means is there was a John Darby, a British theologian, who really codified the foundational ideas of Christian Zionism. And dispensationalism divided the Bible into certain dispensation, or periods of time, to understand God's evolving plan from the beginning until end times. And in that plan, Israel played a central role. Israel, as God's chosen people, and the covenant that God made with Abraham in the Old Testament, was seen as extending to the modern day, to the Jewish people today.
So there was this conflation, even before the state of Israel was born in 1948, with these Old Testament realities and events. So dispensationalism, basically, said that the end times, for the end times and Jesus to return, some things would have to happen, including the Jewish people returning, quote unquote, to the land of Israel. At which time, the Armageddon would happen, all but 144,000 Jews, under some telling of the story, would be slaughtered, the remaining 12,000 for 12 tribes of would convert, Jesus would return, this real fire and brimstone thing. And that was the real foundation of dispensationalism.
That took some hold with the establishment of Israel in 1948, which many Christians interpreted as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. But since then, in particular in the state, there's been a differentiation. So Christian Zionism, some folks don't put much emphasis on the end times philosophy anymore. But pretty much all Christian Zionists, who are motivated by a theological worldview, will say that one, Israel holds a special place in God's plan. Two, the Jewish people are God's chosen people. Three, modern Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and then they'll cite Genesis 12,3 which says, "God said to Abraham, 'I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.'"
So they see this duty, this religious duty, to help bless Israel, and the Jewish people, and also not be cursed. , Politically that's manifest into one of the most consequential movements in America today. Tens of millions of Americans identify as Christian Zionists, definitely not all evangelical Christians, and definitely not all Christians, we can say more about that later. But they support Israel in this hardcore pro-Israel form, including the annexation policies that you mentioned, in a way that includes tens of millions, hundreds of millions of a year, plus a lot of the political support that we see that has increasingly been codified within conservative Republican circles.
DIANE MOORE: Well, thanks. Thanks so much, Greg. I mean, you've just you've just consolidated a really rich and important set of narratives, I think, that define our current moment in really eloquent ways. One thing I just want to highlight that you represented that's really so important here, is that it's easy to paint evangelical Christianity in one broad stroke, which you clearly are not doing, but I just want to underscore that critical distinction. And even among Christian Zionists, there are different strands of thought relevant to how people come to the policy and theological conclusions that they do. But those, I completely agree with those three overarching foundations that you cite that articulate people's motivations currently, and the way is playing itself out in public policy. So thank you. Thanks so much for that.
Jim, I'm going to turn to you now. Based on your vast and incredibly long experience in the policy world, and intimate familiarity with the shaping of American foreign policies in the MENA region and vis-a-vis Palestine-Israel, how would you characterize the influence? How would you characterize the influence of the Christian right over time? And how has this influence manifested?
JAMES ZOGBY: Well, I'm going to combine a couple of different worlds I live in. One, obviously, is the doctoral work, I did in religion, and the other is the political work I do all the time, and then the work I do as a pollster, and make the observation that we have to look at levels. There certainly are the Hagees of the world, and the Pat Robertsons of the world, and the Falwells of the world who have projected a view, not just of the Middle East, but of politics in general, and mobilize the base around that.
And then there's the base that they have. I dare say that most of the base of a Pat Robertson, had no idea at all about the end of times. And frankly, would say, Oh I don't give a shit about that. I'm in-- it just, It wasn't an issue. It's not something they knew about, cared about, and actually it would scare the heck out of them. If you'd say, you're in a movement here that wants to see the end of the world come real quick, right, and Israel is going to say-- they don't know anything about. Robertson would go on about it on his show, but the reason why people listen had nothing to do with the theology that he projected. There were other issues there.
The Robertson movement in '88, which eventually took over about a third of the Republican Party, was based on cultural issues, domestic cultural issues, that grew into, and took different forms. I mean there is the Christian right, but there's also the Gingrich right, which both coalesced around the Trump right, that is a manifestation of largely white, largely middle aged, middle class folks from communities that have been dislocated, economically, and socially, and culturally. I mean, these are folks who turn on TV and say, I can't let my kids watch that. That's not, I don't, I don't know what to do with this. The world is changing, they don't know what to do with it. In 2008, they woke up and, and in literally, overnight, unemployment doubled. Homes, one out of every five home was in foreclosure, pensions lost 30, 40%, and they were completely lost in the middle of all of this.
And these folks that were preaching at them, were giving them a message of entitlement. And Israel fit into that in a weird way because Israel was strong. These are, I call them, anti-semites for Israel because they are. Because of their overall cultural orientation, they're not favorable toward Jews, domestically. And Trump, as you saw in Trump's messaging, there was a lot of that. That was very incendiary about Jews. I like Jews to handle my money because they know how to do it. We talked about the little Jewish guy leaning over his accountants and stuff. But at the same time, Israel was strong and stood up against Muslims, stood up against the threat, the other that was challenging us.
And so, I think that the leadership of the Christian right, separate from the base, saw this opportunity to build their movement around a broad range of issues, initially wasn't Israel, but had to do with domestic stuff, everything from abortion to gays, to, what do you call it, I forget the term that one uses about,
DIANE MOORE: Transgender?
JAMES ZOGBY: Dog whistles. Dog whistles about racism, and about economic entitlement. And at the point where Israel becomes a factor, it fit into the schema of the us versus them, cultural mold that they created. But again, I think that the theology never was an issue for most people. It wasn't something they knew or cared about. And one evidence that I find in that is that if we look at the polling as it's evolving in the country, as the demographics of the country are reflecting different views on the Middle East, I mean, people have argued that there was a partisan split in the Middle East, it's really not partisan. It's demographic. It's young people, people of color, educated women in one corner, and then largely white, middle class, middle aged folks over here, the born again versus the not born again.
It's interesting when you look at that, that among evangelicals, the same holds true. Young evangelicals have very different views than older evangelicals. Black evangelicals, very different than white evangelicals. Sure there are some in each camp, but overall, the trend line among those who identify as born-again or as evangelical, is to move more toward their demographic cohort than their religious view cohort.
And I think that's, just on that cultural side, I would say that. The influence they have has become substantial because they have wedded themselves in the Republican Party. They have brought money, they've brought votes. People don't vote Israel, necessarily, but they vote for what their religious leadership, quote unquote, their political, in this case, cultural leadership quote will say to vote for. And they've become a stalwart component. About 40-plus% of the Republican Party base right now is identified as born-again.
And I mean, yes, there will be those who will get ecstatic over the embassy in Jerusalem. But for the most part, those aren't the issues I think that motivate people on the Evangelical right. That's not the issue. It's not as big an issue as abortion or gay rights, and even those issues, I dare say, are not ultimate-- you know abortion is an issue for the religious right, until they get somebody pregnant you need to get an abortion. Gay rights are an issue on the evangelical right until their child comes out as gay, or their best friend or neighbor comes out as gay. I mean, there is that sense that this is a theological sort of overlay that covers a deeper cultural sense of dislocation that needs to be addressed primarily. That's the issue.
So I don't get into theological debates with folks. I look at where the culture is, and what are they saying to me when they say, God this or that. It's the same as when you're growing up, and somebody would say, God damn, and it's like what he's really saying is, I'm angry. This just a way of saying I'm angry. It's kind of the same thing in this world, too. I peel off the overlay, and I look at what's under it, and what are they saying.
They want tough guys to beat up Muslims. They want, they want somebody that they can count on as strong, like the Superman that fights against the bad guys. And they follow their leaders, who represent to them, a range of issues that they feel strongly about, more strongly, I dare say, than Israel. But they'll be with them on that, too, as long as it's serving that broader purpose. I hope that made some sense.
DIANE MOORE: It absolutely did. And I've got a few comments I'd love to make. I'll just make two, briefly. First of all, I really appreciate your challenge to the notion that these become theological, as both the theological beliefs are somehow discrete and overriding from other embedded social cultural historic experiences. So religion, like all of these frameworks and worldviews, are always embedded. It's always intersecting with these other questions. And it's also permeable and malleable.
I was just reminded 100 years ago in my own doctoral research, I was doing work on the History of Protestant Christian statements on reproductive rights and abortion. And the Southern Baptists in the 1970s, who are now ardent opponents of abortion, actually passed many resolutions in the early '70s and early '80s that supported the moral legitimacy of abortion under certain circumstances. And then in 2001, those were shifted dramatically. So again, not to make any commentary about what's right or wrong in that arena, but just to say these are really permeable and malleable, And then are influenced by a whole host of cultural and social, historical factors. So thanks so much for that overview and those insights.
And Melanie, to you here. You, most recently, you wrote about a campaign focused on persecuted Christians in the world as a form of evangelical internationalism. How can we understand Christian evangelicalism globally and intergenerationally? And why might this matter to the broader conversation today about the role of the Christian right and shaping policies in Palestine-Israel and the broader MENA or SWANA region? Further, and in light of your recent article on evangelical internationalism, how can we understand why the plight of Christian Palestinians, especially, is exempt from the broader focus on Christian persecution in the MENA region?
MELANI MC ALISTER: Oh thank you. Thank you for that question. It's really great to get to be here and talk about some of these issues. Yeah, I think that in my recent book, and in some articles I've written, I've focused a lot on this movement on behalf of persecuted Christians because it has become, I would argue, an overarching, emotional or affective framework that shapes how American evangelicals, and some other Christians, see their place in the world, I mean in the world, globally speaking. So that in the 60s or 70s, you might talk about sponsoring a child who was poor.
But now, if you're an American evangelical, you sponsor a Christian, a persecuted child. And the language of persecution, the idea that Christians are persecuted globally, particularly by Muslims, but not only, has become a major through line that crosses some liberal and conservative lines. It has was behind the movement for the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998. It has been central to the last two religious freedom forums that Trump and Pence held over the last couple of years of that administration. In the language-- and it shaped President Trump's immigration policy.
So the idea that Christians are suffering at the hands of persecuting others, and that American Christians who have become, American evangelical Christians, have become like other Christians actually, much more aware of themselves as part of a global community, as a minority of Christians in the world, and as part of a global community of Christians.
This is a good thing. It's good to actually recognize those connections for any of us. Americans are so famously solipsistic in this way. But that the way that connection has been framed, has been, on the one hand, sort of understanding the situation our status of Christians in other parts of the world, but on the other hand, seeing things, and this kind of comes back to one of the things that Dr. Zogby was saying, is seeing things through the lens of religion, instead of seeing the rich context in which things happen.
So American evangelicals want to understand what's going on in Turkey or Nigeria or Sudan or Iran, they often frame it as Christian-Muslim conflict, instead of seeing that there's ethnic issues, there are issues of finances, there's issues of long and troubled interesting politics, domestically. They get framed, for Americans, as good old-fashioned religious conflict that we can take the side of the good Christians against the evil others.
So this persecuted Christians movement has been incredibly powerful. It has made a huge difference in how American evangelicals narrate their relationship with other parts of the world. And you might think, as you suggest, that well if they're going to start thinking about Christians who are having a tough time, wouldn't that put them on one side of the Palestinians? I mean, after all, and for a few people, it actually has done that. There has been some more increasing recognition of Palestinian Christians, as a group of people that maybe American evangelicals need to be talking to and recognizing for some subset of American evangelicals, because those Palestinian Christians are also recognized and respected in the global arena by Christians in Nigeria or South Asia or Europe in far more greater numbers than they are in the US. And again, there's a kind of global conversation happening.
But I would also say that the reason that Palestinians have been largely ignored is that the fundamental thrust of this movement has been to highlight Muslims or Islam as the danger to Christians. And Israel and pro-Israel activists in the United States have been actively supportive of this movement for that reason. And so even though, in my book and in my work, I try to show that this is not a giant conspiracy. And that there is actually good reason to be thinking about the status of Christians or any other group of people who might be suffering and hungry and suffering from HIV/AIDS.
And that sometimes this awareness has actually forced American evangelicals to take seriously debt relief to Africa, HIV/AIDS, you know poverty, all of those things. But at the same time when they start focusing on persecution, it has been shaped largely or significantly through an anti-Muslim narrative. And that actually it has been, therefore, infused with pro-Israeli sentiment, and with the idea that Israel is the kind of ally for the US in the Middle East, vis-a-vis Muslim majority countries and in other parts of the world, too, actually.
So it's a complicated position, but I think it's important to understand. And I'll just add to this, I think it's important to understand because it is, it's both theological and it's also loose in the kind of way that, I think, Jim wanted us to see. It is a theology. It's connected to the idea that Christians will be persecuted, you will suffer for my sake, Jesus says. Christians worship a God who was killed on the cross. So the idea that Christians are persecuted has deep theological roots, but it also has a kind of loose, affectve sense that you don't have to be able to cite chapter and verse to be able to say, well we know Christians have at bad here and there, and I've seen these pictures, I know it's bad.
And it actually, it helps explain, I think, what is otherwise kind of inexplicable. Why, I mean, there are a lot of reasons why American evangelicals talk about themselves as the war on Christians, as themselves as suffering under discrimination. American evangelicals believe that they, as Christians, they are discriminated against, more fully than they believe Muslims are discriminated against in the United States.
So how do we understand that? And there are many ways, but one of them is to understand that there's this global conversation. And American Christians American evangelicals have inserted themselves into it as being part of a persecuted community. Persecuted globally, but then also, they're after us here, too.
And so I think understanding that kind of larger, affective, and political framework might help us see Israel as part of a-- a central part, but a part of a larger story about how American evangelicals are positioned, and positioning themselves internationally.
DIANE MOORE: Excellent. Really articulate and astute observation. Thank you. I think it's so interesting, because I so agree with you the way that Christians, the narrative is framed Christians versus Muslims in a broad sphere. And of course, here in the US, the persecution is against, a kind of quote, secular worldview. It's the secularism itself, which has its own complications of course, given the roots of secularism are so deeply informed by Protestant Christianity, itself.
So this is a really interesting set of questions. The only other thing I was going to add and ask if you would agree with this, Melanie, is that, in my own teaching, I think the other reason why Palestinian Christians are not on the radar for people around persecuted Christians, aside from the fact that it would then, it wouldn't fall into the Christian versus Muslim narrative, is that so many people are so unaware, literally, that Palestinian Christians exist. That there's an invisible way that they are just not recognized. So my students, astoundingly, who actually have training, I teach graduate students. So they're not just coming right out of high school, many are just surprised to learn that there are Palestinian Christians.
MELANI MC ALISTER: Yeah, and I think that this speaks to both, again, this kind of general problem of American education. But something I wanted to mention, which is another form of kind of soft Christian Zionism, is through Holy Land tourism, which we were talking about earlier. And so many Americans go to the Holy Land. And they go through these tours that are primarily, very pro-Israel in their orientation, if they meet any Palestinians, it's in highly compromised and limited ways. And they come back with the sense of, Israel is great. Israel is great. They invented hummus, apparently. They have wonderful food. They are nice to us, and they're protecting the Holy Land. And we get to go see all these places that are important to us.
And so they tell a story that wipes Palestinians off of the map through these tours, even when it's not some big rah-rah you apocalyptic end times story. It's, I took several Holy Land tours as part of the research for Kingdom of God, and the stories are just like, here we are, Israeli guide telling people, Here we are, taking care of the land. See how beautiful it's blooming. See the wonderful Christian churches that I know all about as your guide and respect. And this is what Israel is to you. So again, there's all sorts of ways. And then even if you don't go on the tour, if somebody comes back and talks about it, from the church. And so it becomes a kind of commonsense knowledge that Israel is friendly, and Palestinians are invisible.
DIANE MOORE: Yeah, great. Good, really good points, thank you. Thank you. Just to move along, Jim I'm going to come back to you. What are some of the patterns of convergences between Jewish settler labrys and Christian Zionists in pressuring policy making, vis-a-vis Israel and Palestine? And where do you see disruptions to their rhetoric, to their rhetorical and semiotic hold on the American discourse? For example, perhaps you can introduce recent shifts in Congress by the Squad, et cetera. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
JAMES ZOGBY: Let me make a couple of points to Melanie. I served on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and lived through this every single day, the point you're talking about. And I brought, at one point, the patriarch of Jerusalem to meet with the commission because he had a couple of little requests. It was the wall that was going through the Cremisan Vineyard. It was the fact that priests, when they would come in, had to choose between, they had to get a visa either to go to the West Bank or to Israel proper. They couldn't do both. And then there was the family unification issue in Jerusalem. My God, my commissioner colleagues started with him on, why aren't you using your position to speak to Hamas and tell them to stop with the rockets? Why are you singling out Israel for criticism? And that was how damned indecent they were with him.
They not only have blinders on, but it sort of got them, almost viscerally, upset that they were being challenged by a Christian about Christians in an area where they had already figured, out this is where we are on this one. And you're right. It's a convergence of this persecution mindset and the anti-Muslim mindset, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, which become conflated in their mindset, and anything that threatens it, threatens to unravel the whole fabric that is making sense to them at this point.
And I found in that case, I found Trump interesting because when you talk about persecution, this was an entire movement based on grievance. It started with Nixon, and it was the Blacks were out to get us, and they get everything we don't get anything. And then it grew into every aspect of cultural, social, political, and economic dislocation, had somebody, or some group, identifiable group that was the cause of it. And and it manifested itself in this political movement. And what the religious right does is sprinkle Holy water on this mindset. And give it, a sort of, elevates it in terms of its rhetoric, but it's the same ugly, ugly content.
How does it play out in Congress? These aren't the smartest, they're not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, these guys, in Congress. It's one thing I've kind of learned along the way, is that, never give them credit where they don't deserve it, as sort of thinking people. They act reflexively in many instances. It's what's going to get me elected, what's going to keep me going here, where's the money coming from, who's going to cause trouble for me?
And if you're a Republican, there are a number of issues you're not touching with a 10 foot pole because you know where the money comes from, and you know where the votes come from, and you know who's going to give you a hard time. And so as that movement grew, and became rather, I wouldn't say totalitarian, but quite authoritarian in the way that it maintains control over groupthink, there are articles of faith, if you will, that are not articles of faith in that I believe them deeply and I mold my life, but I mold my political career around them because it ain't safe to mess with them once I'm there, and if I want to stay there. And Israel is one of them.
And some of these guys couldn't find some of the issues we talk about, they couldn't find the places on a map. But it didn't matter. As Melanie said, it's us and them. And if it was Muslim and Arab, then it was like it was them, and let's go with us. And yeah, the Palestinian Christian, Greg, is uncomfortable. I remember I brought an Anglican priest in '78 when I was running the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign, to meet with religious news reporters, or a number of different, from the AP and the Washington Post, those who covered religion. And the first question he got was from the AP guy who said, "Now you're an Arab Christian, that's interesting. When did your people convert?"
And that was sort of the mindset. Back then it was ignorance. Now it's not ignorance, so much as it's willed ignorance. I don't want to know. It doesn't help me to know. Why are you bringing these people to see me? It just unsettles things. I don't need to know this.
And I think that that's pretty much where it is. Where Bernie and the squad and folks who are challenging on the progressive side, they're making it uncomfortable because they are challenging this fabric on the Democratic side. It's not a challenge on the Republican side at all. The control that the groupthink has on that side is pretty complete, I mean, to the point where it doesn't matter if I look out, and I see the sun shining and Democrats say the sun's shining, they're going to say, no it's not, it's going to rain. They can't, they won't let them pass the budget, they won't let them get appointments approved, they're just going to stop the country because they don't want Joe Biden re-elected.
On the Republican side, on the Democratic side, rather, the groupthink is already unraveling, and it's unraveling because the demography of the Democratic Party is becoming more complex. Blacks think differently about issues than older, middle class whites do in the Democratic coalition. You've got a range of issues, and Bernie gave voice to some of that and the Squad gives voice to some of it.
Look at the Squad, I mean you have an African Muslim, you have a Palestinian, Arab Muslim, you have a Puerto Rican, you have an African-American from St Louis, you've got an African-American from Westchester County. I mean you've got this people of color coalition coming together that reflects the demographic views of their components of the country.
Bernie was different, in that regard, because he tapped into that. I might say, late to the game, because I know I've known Bernie for a while, and this wasn't an issue for him before he ran for President. But when he ran for President and saw that it resonated well, it was like he grew with the issue. He realized, this is one that works. My base wants this. And I think that as the Democratic Party moves on this, we're not going to see the same movement on the Republican side at all. Rather, what we'll see is a shrinking of the Republican base, as younger people drift over, in other words, the Republican hold over the ideology is solid, and they run it, Republicans are carnivores and Democrats get eaten alive.
Republicans will leave. Younger people will leave. People of color will leave. Republican women will leave. They will not tolerate this know anti-gay, anti-woman, anti people of color agenda. The base will shrink. But the hold that this cohort of, everything from neoconservative right, religious conservative right, and the big industrial money guys who are funding a lot of this stuff, that hold will remain solid. I don't see that breaking up on that side at all. And if you're a Republican member of Congress who wants to keep their money and the support that they'll give, you'll continue to stay on board with them.
DIANE MOORE: Well, that's a very sobering picture you're drawing there. Although, I'd be interested, this feeds really beautifully into the question for you, Greg, if I can come back to you. If you can share with us from your extensive work with multiple publics of evangelicals, about how and where shifts in narratives occur, and why.
GREGORY KHALIL: Well let me just start with where Jim left off, which I think is fundamental on this issue. Culture, very much, is upstream from politics. And members of Congress are followers 95% of the time. They're following what their constituencies and their funders want them to do. And there's no rationale that's politically viable for a Republican member of Congress to shift a vote, much less, to even listen to another perspective on this issue right now.
I think what's interesting about the Squad, and listening to you, Jim, on the Squad, is now with Bernie, for example, he saw that there was a political rationale. Work, over decades by Progressive activists, not just overnight, and Jim is one of the key figures here, is what enabled there to be this shift in progressive culture, and now for there to be within the Democratic Party, not the entirety of the Democratic Party, a shift on this issue, which is significant and probably lasting, and probably headed in this direction. And that's what's going to need to happen.
What I would say though, is that for there to be a sustainable shift in the US relationship to Israel-Palestine and the broader Middle East, it can't just be a movement within my tribe. I'm a proud Progressive. It's got to be something larger. And for that to be sustainable, we've got to figure out how to build culture and constituency. That's where these evangelicals come in, and Christians come in who are not a monolith. That's one thing, if you walk away from this call with one point, just as your community is not a monolith, neither are Christians, neither are evangelicals, neither are Christian Zionists, as I was indicating earlier, there's a variety of worldviews there that motivate folks, and while we don't need to get into conversations about theology, this is an important entry point for somebody who has a religious view on the world.
And so where I've seen shifts over the years, have been with inviting people into conversation. Melanie I was so glad that you brought in the point of pilgrimage and how that has been used to build this movement. It's also been used within progressive Christian circles. So you see progressive Christian circles who had missions on the ground, and saw these certain realities and then started inviting their churches over. And many Christians felt, rightly so, after the Holocaust, a huge sense of complicity for two millennia of anti-Semitism, much of which is rationalized or sanctified after the fact with certain Christian theologies, as we know.
And so many of the mainline churches used pilgrimage as a view to encounter the realities on the ground. And that helped build a different movement in these areas. So what we've seen with evangelicals is that there's folks, Christians United for Israel, 10 million members they claim. [INAUDIBLE] proudly Christian Zionist organization talks about the blessings and the end times prophecy. That's not the majority of Christian Zionists. Many of those folks are very hard to reach. But most people just kind of receive this thing, like it's a package. It's an identity package. Today, evangelical as we know, is a moving target and much, it's moving much more rapidly since the rise of Trumpism. And now there's a lot of people who are opting out, increasingly Black and brown evangelicals of that label. And a lot of people opting in, folks who don't even know what it means from a faith-based perspective.
And so the opportunity here is that there's so much differentiation with these communities. When you give someone a chance, like for example, on a trip or through a conversation or whatever, there's a variety of different vehicles to actually hold a mirror to what they think may be their theology, which often is not very well formed, or just some notion that they received that, Oh, Israel is special among the nations, and then to hold it with some things that they also really deeply believe, such as the teachings of Jesus. That those things often don't match up.
Evangelicalism, specifically, I think there's been a huge gap. So there's something called discipleship in Christianity, which is the idea of learning to become a follower of Jesus. And among evangelical churches, this idea of peacemaking or peace building, which is prevalent in a really robust fashion throughout the New Testament, through the Christian portion of the Bible with Jesus, has just been totally absent. Evangelicalism has primarily focused on this personal relationship with God or Jesus, and then going out and evangelizing or spreading the faith. And there isn't this robust idea of peacemaking discipleship, which means engaging the other, whether it's the Jewish other, the Muslim other, the other from a different sexual or gender identity, there isn't this idea for engaging the other apart from this purpose of evangelizing, getting them to believe Jesus. That's really sort of robustly formed within many evangelical circles.
And I found that actually this is really quite significant because if you don't have that software there, you can empathize with anyone. You can sympathize. You can see, oh the plight of these people is terrible, but maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe it's not connected to me. Whereas, if you have this software and the sense of implication, that really motivates people to go on a deeper journey. And we see this. Jim was talking about the generational divides. Young evangelicals, this research is coming out that's pretty consistent, is there's a real shift on Israel happening. 69% in 2018, defined as pro-Israel, and only pro-Israel, this robust firm down to 34% this year, earlier. And that's just one poll, but there's a number of polling that shows this data.
Last point I want to make here, Diane, and sorry for going off on so long. This is really an important subject. The fact of the matter is that younger evangelicals and the shifts on Israel, I think, don't have a lot to do with Israel, specifically. It has more to do with a deeper questioning of what it means to be a person of the Christian faith in this world, inheriting this fact that now evangelical is synonymous with Trumpism and Republicanism, which many folks reject. And so I think there's real opportunity here to build diverse, consequential, multi-faith, multi partisan movements. We have not yet capitalized on organizing this shifts into something new. But I think that's the key next step if we want to see a meaningful shift in both American culture and ultimately, politics on this issue.
DIANE MOORE: I love that. There's so many strands from all, both of these comments I'd love to pick up on. Let me just emphasize that, I think exactly, what you were just talking about Greg, about the religious study circles to be Biblical hermeneutics, the hermeneutic, how do you read the Bible. And this is what I am experiencing in terms of working with younger evangelical Christians, is that they're hermeneutic is shifting to a larger kind of peace building frame or justice frame, rooted again in a very particular interpretation of especially, the Gospels, but not exclusively.
So I just think there's, exactly, lots of shifting foci here, that is both playing out in the data as well as, I think, that confirm these demographic shifts, that you and Jim have been highlighting. Yeah Jim, I'm going to, I actually want to turn it over to Melanie because we're almost out of time. And I want to make sure to get this important second question into you Melanie, so apologies. Our time is too darn short, I'll tell you.
But so much, Melanie, of your immense intellectual contributions focused on the multiple ways in which religion and culture shape the American imaginations and interests in the world. For example, you've written influentially about American Orientalism, as well as and, relatedly, evangelical Christians. Can you speak about the specifics of recent policy decisions regarding the relocation of the embassy to Jerusalem, the cutting of aid to Anwar under Trump, the Abraham, quote Peace or Normalization Accords, et cetera, and how your scholarly research on religion and the shaping of political interventions can help us more complexly interpret the causal forces of white, Christian evangelicals in the US to shape these policies.
MELANI MC ALISTER: Ooh that's a big question.
DIANE MOORE: But then three minutes to answer it, too, so.
MELANI MC ALISTER: Right and I know there are so many questions in the lineup, too, and so I, I want to kind of cheat just a little bit, I looked at some of the questions of it's OK, and answer. To follow up on what's been being said about the complexity, there are two questions I noticed. One was about Jimmy Carter, and one was about liberal Christians. And they both kind of ask, who are these people who are sort of seeming to speak up sometimes and yet not other times for Palestinians, and what is their position?
So I want to mention two things about this because I think it's really worth being concrete about. So Jimmy Carter, for example, and I want to get too inside baseball, but he does represent the liberal wing of the southern Baptist convention, which was actually a thing, at some point in the late 1970s, through the 1970s, until the very specific, organized right wing takeover of the southern Baptist convention, which happened once, and has recently tried to happen again. But there remains more and more of a split, even among the most reliably Republican of evangelical, white, evangelical constituencies. Now remember, southern Baptist include Black churches. There are a number of Black churches in the southern Baptist convention, but certainly predominantly white.
So Carter represented, and represents, a range of people who used to fit comfortably in the southern Baptist convention, and now fit much less comfortably. And that is a kind of forerunner of what Greg was talking about with a split, not just demographically in terms of age, but also in terms of race. Evangelicals in the US, no matter how you define them, are a multiracial community. And the fact that white evangelicals have largely more conservative politics than evangelicals of color, doesn't change the fact that, I mean it actually highlights, the fact that you can be evangelical and liberal on a lot of different issues, including Israel.
And so if we only talk about white evangelicals, we miss the opportunity to see that it is quite possible to have evangelical theology straight up, soup to nuts, and still be supportive of, or invested in, or at least critical of the mainstream, support of the Palestinians, or at least critical of the mainstream narrative about Israel.
Another person mentioned that a lot of liberal churches are pretty, have not signed on to BDS. Some have, which is pretty striking, but many haven't. And then again, there's a kind of diversity among the so-called ecumenical, or liberal churches in how comfortable people feel actually taking a pro-Palestinian stance. And I'm reminded of a position that, something was said about apartheid in South Africa. In 1968, after the World Council of Churches made a decision to start funding anti-apartheid organizations, including the African National Congress, and this was highly controversial. It lost the World Council a lot of money and a lot of people, but they had a principal position.
And I remember someone who was commenting on it at the time said, "The World Council has moved from expressions of sympathy to expressions of solidarity, something they have rarely been willing to risk." And so the move to think about the fact that there is a solidarity component, that Bernie became aware of, that exist among some evangelicals, some liberal Christians, some people who are not Christian at all, and that is not entirely new, I was working on Peloton solidarity work in the 80s, when I was only four, but that work matters. And to recognize that is possible across religious lines, that you, I, personally, don't care what anybody believes about whether I'm going to hell or not, I do care whether what they think about how social justice works in the world.
And the fact that you can have somebody be aligned with that, no matter what their theology, I think, is really important. And that's why talking about people of color when we talk about evangelicals, helps us see that, and not just pushing it aside.
DIANE MOORE: Really important and thank you. And I appreciate, also, you grabbing some of those questions. And I want to apologize that our time is so short. But I want to also just raise maybe one more for the consideration of potentially the whole panel. It's Julia [INAUDIBLE]. The question for all panelists, I'm not exactly sure how to frame this, but I'm interested in the best ways we can talk about the inherent anti-Semitism embedded in Christian Zionism.
And I just want to qualify that with what Melanie just said, also part of the other question. It's not it's not only evangelicals that there are Christian Zionists on the political spectrum that range. But how can we get at this inherent anti-Semitic piece. And do any of you have suggestions to respond to that important question?
GREGORY KHALIL: I can jump in here. I think this is a place that a lot of work needs to be done. And I just have to mention that I'm, perhaps, not the person to answer this question. Perhaps that person is not on this call. I'm obviously Palestinian-American from a Christian background. Yet what we see with many of the groups, and one of the things that Telos does, is we do take many evangelical leaders in non-pandemic times on these trips to Palestine-Israel to encounter the people, and to do it through a lens of holding that mirror up to, what do I say I believe, versus what are the consequences of what I believe, or how my community is mobilizing its resources.
And like all people, we all have bias. Many of the folks that we bring have bias. With Christianity, specifically, there's a lot of bias inherent. And it's, in fact, sort of a heretical Jewish sect. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. And the history of anti-Semitism goes quite deep within Christian experience.
So the question of how to combat this, one, I think one of the first steps here, and this is the first step in so much work that's overlooked, is getting people to recognize there's a problem. And getting them to see that their communities have been, or are complicit. It's wonderful to humanize Palestinians. One way that evangelical, anti-Semitism rears its ugly head is through this idea of file of Semitism, which still instrumentalizes the Jewish people, and makes them into this one dimensional sort of caricature.
I think getting people to see an experience that is fundamental. With evangelicals, specifically, I know we've touched on Islamophobia, which is really important, I think, to link here. I was speaking with Brian Zahnd, who's a prominent evangelical writer, a few months ago on research for an article that I was writing. And he noted that many, American evangelicals consciously wanted to combat anti-Semitism once post-holocaust, post World War II. But the problem was that they replaced one scapegoat, the Jewish scapegoat, with another, the Muslim scapegoat. And I thought that was really insightful here.
So part of the key place to get, and it's really tough, but I think it's on all of these issues connected to systemic injustice that are sustained by these biases, is getting communities to actually see and acknowledge that there's an issue there that they're complicit in. How we do that, I think that's a big question, but a lot of it does come back to forming these relationships and amplifying different voices and stories in strategic, accessible ways.
DIANE MOORE: Absolutely, Greg, so just a lot a lot of the movement that we've seen, both the rise of a particular form of Christian evangelicals and that's in ascendancy now, as well as the challenges to it, are all rooted in grassroots kinds of efforts, that are long term and long visions. And I want to thank all of you on the panel, for your critical, long standing work on these important questions to help us wrestle with the complexities of this region, with a the hope for a more just future that we can all appreciate and help contribute to.
Thank you all. Wonderful to have you with us. Thank all of our guests who joined us. We're so grateful for this conversation. And once again, we will have this recording posted, and hope that we continue to have these conversations as we move forward. Thank you everyone. Thank you.
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SPEAKER 2: Copyright 2021. President Fellows of Harvard College.
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