“Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses.” - Audre Lorde
Last week, Lindsay and I traveled back to Washington DC to hook up with Interfaith Action for Palestine, a coalition that includes Christians for a Free Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Rabbis For Ceasefire, Mennonite Action and many other orgs. I joined two dozen Jews and Christians in a nonviolent civil disobedient disruption of the annual Christians United For Israel (CUFI) conference. CUFI is a 10-million-member organization of conservative Christians who come together “to speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to biblical issues.” CUFI claims to support Israel in the name of protecting Jewish people. However, dig a little deeper into its theology, and you can clearly see that they use Jewish people as pawns with the ultimate goal of getting them to convert to its supremacist version of Christianity.
Christian Zionists, like members of CUFI, believe that Israel and the US have favored nation status in the eyes of God. They pledge allegiance to Israel and the US no matter how much violence and destruction their policies inflict on other people. They oppose Palestinian rights, support illegal Israeli settlements, and lobby to send more bombs to Israel. They promote these positions by conflating biblical Israel with the modern state of Israel (Gen 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.”) and by claiming war and violence in the Middle East are signs that Jesus is coming back soon!
Christian Zionism is not only a heresy. It is white supremacy. It is built on the European settler-colonial ideology rooted in a human hierarchy of value that justifies land theft and ethnic cleansing. It is the kind of violent and destructive brand of American Christianity that Frederick Douglass described in his own context as “the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”
Christian Zionism is not only racist, it is antisemitic too. It was invented in the 19th century to prod Jewish people – in Europe and the US – to immigrate to the promised land of Palestine, a region where dark-skinned Palestinians had been living for generations. These white Christians invented a theology that ridded their land of Jewish people and at the same time, established a colonial outpost in the Middle-East to pursue their own economic and political interests.
This history is vital – especially since Christian Zionists confront anyone who supports Palestinian liberation by calling them “antisemites.” The name-calling is their only comeback. Because their platform contradicts biblical scholarship, international law, moral logic and the agape Love of Jesus. The sad, spiritual reality is that, today, Christian Zionists have a gigantic pro-genocide millstone hanging around their necks.
CUFI was founded by John Hagee, a Texas pastor who claimed that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans in 2005 as punishment for hosting an LGBTQ+ event and that “God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land.” He has referred to the Catholic Church as “the great whore” from the book of Revelation and a “false cult system.” He also claims that Muslims have a “mandate to kill Christians and Jews.” He urged Trump to move the US embassy to Jerusalem (because it fulfilled end times prophecy). After October 7, he told members of his congregation that “America should roll up its sleeves and knock the living daylights out of Iran.”
The impulse, for a lot of people, is to laugh off this lunacy. However, Hagee is not just a fringe Christian cartoon character. He is a white Christian nationalist pastor with a lot of power. Hagee was on stage with Republican and Democratic congressional leadership at the March for Israel five weeks after October 7. He was given a platform because his organization funds their campaigns.
Hagee was at the mic when our first group of disrupters sent the message that his pro-Israel lobby is blatantly antisemitic. Our four Jewish comrades stood on their seats and shouted.
Jews are not your pawns! Jews are not your pawns! Jews are not your pawns!
Security guards ushered them out. After “order” was restored, the next group disrupted a few minutes later. The four pastors had a message.
Bad theology kills! Bad theology kills! Bad theology kills!
We were up next. In that moment, Hagee told the crowd that there would probably be another interruption, and when it comes, they will need to get in our faces and scream “Israel lives!” at the top of their lungs. Hagee proclaimed that they are in a fight between good and evil - and that he loves a good fight. He said something like, “We have antisemites in our midst.” Then he called down divine wrath upon the enemies of Israel (us).
I sat there trying to breathe out my escalating anxiety. But I was not alone. To my left were two Latinx Christians who, like me, grew up in an evangelical brand of Zionism and eventually followed Jesus out of it. To my right was a young Catholic woman who recently graduated from an Ivy League institution. A few minutes later, we stood up on our chairs speaking in tongues.
Alto al genocido! Alto al genocido! Alto al genocido!
Security guards came in quick and hard. They yanked my two Latinx comrades to the ground. Another one grabbed me and threw me off the chair. I flew head-first into chairs strewn on the floor. After I hit the ground awkwardly, I remember feeling relieved that I did not break my arm. He jerked me up and jostled me up the aisle, trying to break my wrist along the way. All of a sudden, I was the villain in a Christian Zionist pro wrestling match. The crowd was chanting “Israel lives” at the top of their lungs. The wrath of their god was definitely coming down upon us.
When we got outside, the cops ordered us to leave the conference center grounds and never come back. We walked across the street to a large patch of grass where Interfaith Action for Palestine was setting up a service summoning Something Else to end everything CUFI supports: the genocide, the occupation of Palestinian territories, the violent apartheid policies of Israel and the ludicrous theology that justifies it all. Before rabbis, imams and pastors came to the mic, I gathered with a group of about a dozen dear friends from Detroit and elsewhere. While I shared my experience with them, I started crying. It was crucial for me, in that moment, to get words and hugs from that beloved community.
Lindsay asked me later about my tears. I was responding to the terrorizing atmosphere inside the conference center - a whole culture created by the wrath of a lesser god who rejects love and liberation. That’s a lot to grieve. My tears were also metabolizing the trauma of the hatred and violence targeting my body. This was new for me. I catch all sorts of shade on social media. I’ve been ghosted and gaslit by old friends and colleagues for my theological and political convictions. I’ve been arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience. But I’ve never had “the authorities” come at me physically like that while well-dressed white people scream vitriol inches from my face. For generations, the bodies of my ancestors have been protected and served by this terror unleashed on others. On Monday, we disrupted the flow of that imperial force.
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Before the action, I meditated on the old Gospel text where Jesus travels to the capital city of Jerusalem, and when he sees it, he weeps because the city does not recognize “the things that make for peace.” In Hebrew, peace is “shalom,” which is more than just the absence of violence. Shalom actively promotes collective liberation. The assurance that all God’s children will be protected and provided for — no matter what we look like, where we were born, who we love, or how we worship. Jesus wept because Jerusalem counterfeited shalom. It substituted a human hierarchy of value for the health and harmony of the whole community.
Right after Jesus wept over Jerusalem, the text says that he entered the temple and disrupted business as usual. He drove out those who were turning the house of prayer into a den of robbers. Jesus was a dark-skinned Palestinian Jewish rabbi who recruited others to join a militant nonviolent revolution he called “the reign of God.” He was shaped by Hebrew prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel who proclaimed that shalom has nothing to do with staying civil or steering clear of conflict in an aggressively unjust and violent world. The Hebrew prophets proclaimed a peace that disrupts injustice and oppression head on.
Christians for a Free Palestine and its allies disrupted the CUFI conference to draw attention to the spiritual, theological and financial forces that counterfeit American Christianity and colonize the world. In the name of God and Christ, these white nationalists confuse darkness with light and call good “evil” and evil “good.” I participated in this action because I believe that, in this imperial context, this is precisely the kind of ritual and practice that a Love supreme compels people of faith and conscience to organize. I participated in this disciplined, nonviolent disruption because I am committed to the way of Jesus - and I believe that this is kind of thing that Jesus would do today.
After he wept for Jerusalem, Jesus disrupted the den of robbers. I’ve wept, on and off, for nine months. I’ve wept watching videos of dying and dismembered children. I’ve wept at teach-ins and vigils and city council meetings as Palestinians bear witness to what the Zionists have done to their relatives. In the midst of all this weeping, I’ve tried to use my platform as one small outlet to disrupt the destructive narratives built on lies and mythology. I came to DC because my cries were calling me to a confrontation with the counterfeit that’s both more dramatic and more communal. Something Else knew I needed to act with these folks to help me metabolize the grief.
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The authorities turn to violence when all their other methods are no longer effective in keeping people complacent. A Love supreme that connects the dots and tells the truth is a huge threat to the unjust and oppressive status quo. This is why ruling elites had to break the body of Jesus. Because he broke rank with the ways they spun the old sacred stories to sustain their power.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lamented that those with privilege too often pursue what he called a negative peace. This counterfeit shalom is geared towards the absence of tension - which perpetuates the unjust and oppressive status quo. The shalom of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets was a positive peace, which always prioritizes the presence of justice. Jesus taught his disciples to deny themselves, take up the cross and follow his lead. It was one of his ways of saying that when we choose justice, we will be confronted with some serious tension from privileged and powerful people.
Dr. King, writing from a jail cell in 1963 after organizing a dramatic disruption on the streets of Birmingham, described it like this:
We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.
This week, we disrupted in order to draw attention to the terror and violence of this terrible theology. We got exactly what we came for. We chronicled Christian Zionists saying and doing shit that Jesus would never sign off on. We wanted this to go viral – so more people will wake up to the influence of this theological absurdity, but even more importantly, to the way this absurd theology justifies aggression and violence aimed to anyone who does not fit into their toxic masculine white heterosexual Judeo-Christian mold.
Jesus and Dr. King represent Something Else. An authority animated by love, compassion, justice, truth and humility – instead of a supremacist “law and order” backed by lies, threats, violence, aggression and intimidation. Jesus and King channeled their grief into a whole lifestyle of disrupting law and order – and ruling elites executed them for it. This way is not just a mercenary affair. Because the more we grieve and disrupt supremacy stories, the more we are freed up to become Something Else. This practice is political. It is also a path to spiritual liberation.
I am convinced that grief-and-disruption is more a daily ritual, than one big viral spectacle. It is about breaking rank with the ordinary, taken-for-granted rhythms, habits, narratives, newsfeeds, practices, allegiances and assumptions that hide supremacy in plain sight - and repress our sorrow at the same time.
Audre Lorde wrote that this spiritual and political revolution is built on becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses.
Jesus compared this practically mundane mindset and skill-set to tiny, non-shiny things that have the power to grow Something Else.
Yeast. A mustard seed. A grain of wheat. One lost coin.
Lorde and Jesus taught that this path is only effective when we are part of a collective. This is precisely what Civil Rights veteran Marian Wright Edelman told us a few years ago in Atlanta at the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination. She compared the American empire to a dog - and she exhorted us to be the biting fleas on the belly of this old tired beast. The more we bite, the more the dog has to focus its time and energy on scratching us – which strips it of its capacity to terrorize the neighborhood. The more fleas the merrier. All we have to do is start biting. With a few others. Wherever we find ourselves.
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Watch John Oliver’s thirty-minute special on Israel/Palestine, released just a few days ago. FF to 21:00 to see his coverage of John Hagee and the white Christian nationalists who connect their pro-Israel position to the end times.
If you are interested in learning more about Christian Zionism and how to confront it in your context, check-out FOSNA’s concise and accessible toolkit.
The new issue of Hammer and Hope just came out. If you aren’t familiar, it really is a brilliant resource.
This week, the IDF murder of Palestinian journalist Ismail al Ghoul really got me.
The Interfaith Action for Palestine really was Something Else. Here is the summary of all the actions that IAP sent out a few days after the gathering.
Monday morning, the opening of CUFI’s summit was delayed significantly by our interfaith choir singing songs of freedom and peace for Palestine for nearly an hour.
People attending CUFI’s pre-lobbying Q&A were confronted by us questioning why CUFI supports genocide.
When John Hagee, the antisemitic founder of CUFI finally got up to speak, he was interrupted five different times by IAP activists who powerfully declared truths like, “God loves Gaza”, “Alto al genocidio” (stop the genocide), and “Jews are not your pawns” before conference attendees and security aggressively removed them. Hagee was visually flustered for the remainder of his speech.
Outside the conference center, hundreds of people joined us for an Interfaith Worship Service.
While attendees were milling about the hotel lobby during lunch, a banner reading “Free Palestine” was unfurled from an overlooking balcony.
In the evening, attendees of the CUFI gala couldn’t even enjoy the sunset without seeking our group of banner wielding kayakers, led by JVP-Metro DC, reminding them that “CUFI Kills.”
At the end of Monday one of CUFI’s private security guards, who had earlier brutalized our friends, was seen looking at the kayakers’ “CUFI Kills” banner in the sunset, and rubbing his head in exasperation.
And that was just Day 1!
7. CUFI planned to send hundreds of right-wing Christians to Capitol Hill in order to motivate Congress members to continue supporting Israel’s US-funded genocide of Gaza. Interfaith clergy and supporters blocked their route to the Capitol, delaying their buses for an hour, and throwing their well-orchestrated plans into chaos.
8. As the buses finally unloaded at the Capitol, they were greeted by more Interfaith Action for Palestine participants holding an interfaith rally, praying for peace.
9. The meetings that CUFI lobbyists were able to have were interrupted by a march through the Hart Senate building led by Mennonite Action — a powerful conclusion to their 140-mile march to DC.
10. Politicians who met with CUFI, like Sen. Rick Scott, were bird-dogged by IAP participants trained by IfNotNow.
