Thomas Jefferson said, “The wise know their weakness too well to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows.”

Our Founding Father’s were, of course, infallible in their own time.  Now, they are American demi-gods worthy of obedience and ritual veneration in the form of fireworks.   As I attempt to restrict this post to topics that I actually know something about, may Thomas Jefferson turn his shining countenance upon all of us here at State of Formation.

I, admittedly, don’t know very much about the specifics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so if you’re looking for comprehensive foreign policy recommendations, then I’m not your guy.  You’ve undoubtedly noticed, though, that religious considerations are anything but absent from the American conversation surrounding the Middle East.  GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry has stated that American Christians have a “clear directive to support Israel.”  This gets me on firmer ground.  As an aspiring American Christian minister, I’d be doing something wrong if I didn’t know a thing or two about American Christianity.

That being said, here are a few brief points of consideration as it relates to American Protestantism’s treatment of Middle Eastern foreign policy:

1) God the Nationalist?: Let’s face it, that whole sola scriptura thing can be a real nuisance, particularly when the content and basic moral logic of the Bible doesn’t support our favorite opinions.  Take Mr. Perry’s assertion as a case in point.  Scripturally, he’s right.  Sort of.  The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is, not surprisingly, on the Israelite’s side.  This is where the details get to be pesky, though.   God does not grant unquestioning support to all of Israel’s actions or policies.  War is sometimes portrayed as being within the purview of God’s providence, but, as John Howard Yoder pointed out, the martial logic of the Hebrew scriptures is that “God will fight for us.”  In The Politics of Jesus, Yoder writes that “even when Israel uses the sword, in a most fearful and destructive way, the victory is credited not to the prowess of the swordsmen or the wisdom of the generals, but to the help of YHWH.”

The prophetic tradition is even more crystal-clear in this regard.  National failures, whether realized or impending, are assumed to be the result of God’s disfavor with the Israelite’s actions.  The prophets were undoubtedly a bane to Israel’s political elites, because nowhere in the prophets’ moral universe does any consideration of national interest negate even the slightest injustice.  God, if we are to take the prophets seriously, may be pro-Israel, but he is certainly not brimming with right-wing, nationalist sentiment.

2) Ancient Power Dynamics: There is a deep, rarely discussed paradox at the heart of American Protestantism.  What do we do with the fact that Jesus, a Jewish peasant who was crucified as a political insurrectionist at the hands of an occupying empire, is now professed as personal Lord and Savior by leaders of the world’s most powerful nation?  In short, what is God’s relationship to political power?  Israel’s political situation, at least to my way of thinking, raises a similar theological question.  We ought to be aware that Israel was never a formidable economic or political power in the ancient world.  Suffice it to say that the nuclear-capable, modern nation-state of Israel finds itself in a different situation.

3) Beyond Nomenclature: The late actor Peter Ustinov once said that “terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.”  Some of my friends who are schooled in Weberian political philosophy have informed me that Peter Ustinov was wrong; that there is, in fact, a qualitative difference between state-sanctioned violence and the senseless destruction wrought by terrorist organizations.  The difference, so far as I’ve been able to tell, is that one group is a nation-state while another is not.

Terminology aside, the justification of violence is a task best left to experienced professionals, by which I mean politicians.  Christians have been charged with peacemaking–a much more demanding vocation.  Much of American Protestantism has re-written that little piece of Gospel that says “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” Our new Gospel is better rendered, “Blessed are those who would really prefer peace but have chosen to abandon it in the face of insurmountable political realities.”

The pursuit of peace is difficult, but it is a Christian imperative that cannot be abandoned.  As The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr. would’ve reminded us, “to give up on peace is to give up on God.”