(RNS) — As a religious extremism researcher in the Middle East, I have been alarmed by the dynamics since Oct. 7 both in the region, but also, with growing concern, in my own backyard.
The Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza and the West Bank, launched with a fervor perhaps unmatched in modern history, is radicalizing a whole new generation of Israelis and Palestinians and, along with it, many in the West. And that radicalization is bearing the fruit of extremism, not just among Hamas militants or Zionist settlers but also in the Christian church.
Radicalization happens as individuals and groups ratchet toward more extreme and hostile positions. Symptoms include increasingly strident rhetoric, broadening lanes of permissible action and demonization of the other in conflict.
Experts agree that extremists and even terrorists are inherently rational, normal people responding to external events out of strong beliefs and passions. Mutual radicalization happens as groups inflame each other through dehumanizing rhetoric and revenge narratives. Then through us/them posturing and the urgent alarm bells of apocalyptic, existential threat, members of these groups shift toward ever more extreme positions calling for violence.
Radicalization dynamics are at work all around us, from Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East to American culture wars between the left and right. Senior Research Fellow J.M. Berger’s diagnostic statement is jarring: “If you think only the ‘other guys’ can produce extremists, then you might be one yourself.”
A Hamas cleric called for the annihilation of Jews from the land, calling them “filthy animals, apes and pigs.” An Israeli official called Hamas “human animals,” and Netanyahu likened Israel’s military campaign to a fulfillment of prophecy, citing the divine command to “not spare the Amalekites.” Leaders propagate these social contagions through bestializing words, giving implicit permission to their followers to act.
Israeli soldiers stand next to the bodies of Israelis killed by Hamas militants in kibbutz Kfar Aza on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
And act they have; thousands are now dead from Kfar Aza and Gaza to the West Bank, Haifa and Lebanon.
U.S. conservatives have also invoked Holy War. Sen. Lindsay Graham said, “We’re in a religious war here. I am with Israel … Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”
Extreme tactics and rhetoric force a binary choice: choose a side, there is only one right cause.
Leading Christians have also followed the pattern. Many, including John Hagee and Greg Laurie, have said this war will usher in the end times. Wayne J. Edwards, a pastor in Georgia, wrote, “It’s obvious that Israel’s enemies do not recognize that God has given the land to the Jews.” Peter Leithart suggested it was time to “dust off imprecatory Psalms” and “ask Jesus to pursue justice … purge (the Amalekites) from under heaven” and to smash the “nations like pottery.”
Florida state Rep. Michelle Salzman, who is active in faith-based initiatives, called for the killing of “all of them” in response to a colleague’s lament asking “how many (dead Palestinians) will be enough?” during floor debate.
Evangelical Jim Fletcher, a member of the executive committee for the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI) and director of Prophecy Matters, called Hamas the latest in the “pantheon of barbarians” and cited Isaiah 49 as prophetic about their end: “I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood …”
The most common Christian response I hear is an appeal to self-defense or Just-War. But, as Lebanese theologian Elie Haddad recently lamented: “I don’t know the context where just war theology was formed, but I live where it is implemented … and it is anything but just.”
The church is radicalizing on a dangerous trajectory. Eschatological debates and end-times fascination in part fuel zero-sum scenarios of mutually desired destruction. Islamists, Zionists and conservative evangelicals are strange extremist bedfellows indeed.
Some Christians see all Palestinians and Arabs as a keffiyeh-wearing monolith and paint anyone who criticizes Israel as part of the antisemitic global left. They forget that the Arabs are co-descendants of Shem and sons of Abraham. Others see everything through the narrative of oppressed and oppressor, colonized and colonizer, good and evil. They forget that humans and human systems are complicated jumbles of motives, history and evil. It is rarely simple.
Jesus called his followers to be peacemakers, to love their neighbors and enemies, to employ an alternative to the radicalized partisanship of the day. They were to be an embodiment of human flourishing, of shalom.
Western Christians are concerned about many things in the Middle East, but the work of peacemaking seems very far down the list.
(Scott Gustafson is the Ambassador Warren Clark Fellow for Churches for Middle East Peace. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
