For decades, global debate on Christianity and Israel has been shaped largely by voices emanating from North America and Western Europe, creating the impression that Christian thought on the issue is unified and overwhelmingly supportive of Israeli state policies.
Political speeches, media commentary, and even diplomatic language often invoke “the Christian position” as though it were a settled theological inheritance rather than a contested modern construction.
This assumption has acquired the force of common sense: to be Christian, in this view, is to stand instinctively with Israel, to read the modern Jewish state as a fulfillment of biblical promise, and to treat opposition to its policies as, at best, moral confusion and, at worst, hostility towards God’s design.
Yet, beneath this surface lies a deep and widening rift within Christianity itself. It is not primarily a rift between denominations, nor a dispute about ritual or ecclesiastical authority. It is a struggle over how scripture is read, how history is interpreted, and how faith relates to power.
At the centre of this struggle stand the Eastern churches and Palestinian liberation theologians, whose traditions directly challenge the theological architecture that sustains Christian Zionism and, by extension, the religious legitimation of the Israeli occupation.
This confrontation is not merely about Palestine. It raises a more fundamental question about what Christianity represents in the modern world. Is it a faith that sanctifies political projects by clothing them in sacred language? Or is it a moral tradition that measures every political order against the demands of justice, human dignity, and compassion?
The answers to these questions shape not only Christian attitudes towards Israel and Palestine, but also Christianity’s credibility as a moral voice in global affairs.
Christian Zionism is often described as support for Israel rooted in biblical belief. This description, however, understates its scope. Christian Zionism is not simply a political preference expressed in religious language. It is a comprehensive worldview that fuses selective biblical interpretation with modern nationalist ideology. It treats the creation and expansion of the state of Israel as the literal fulfillment of divine prophecy and frames resistance to these developments as resistance to God’s will.
Within this worldview, contemporary geopolitics are transformed into sacred inevitabilities. Military victories become signs of divine favour. Territorial expansion becomes confirmation of biblical promise. Palestinian dispossession becomes tragic, but theologically acceptable. Suffering is absorbed into a cosmic narrative in which history is moving inexorably towards a predetermined end.
This way of reading scripture did not emerge from the ancient Christian encounter with the Holy Land, nor from the lived traditions of Churches rooted in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, or Constantinople. Its modern form crystallised in 19th-century Britain and later in the United States, shaped by Protestant revivalism, millenarian expectations, and imperial self-confidence.
Biblical prophecy was increasingly read through the lens of Western expansion. The return of Jews to Palestine became intertwined with the belief that Anglo-Saxon powers were instruments of divine history.
In the 20th century, this fusion of theology and geopolitics intensified. The trauma of the Holocaust, Israel’s emergence as a strategic Western ally, and the ideological climate of the Cold War created fertile ground for a religious narrative that framed Israeli statehood not merely as a political event, but as sacred fulfillment. Over time, this narrative migrated from church pulpits into television studios, campaign platforms, and policy circles.
In the US in particular, Christian Zionism evolved into something more than a theological position. It became a cultural identity. Support for Israel was recast as proof of biblical fidelity, moral clarity, and national virtue. Political leaders learned to speak its language fluently. Presidential candidates sought endorsements from evangelical figures who could mobilise millions of voters. Foreign policy increasingly adopted moralised, quasi-biblical tones.
From the perspective of the Eastern churches, this development represented not simply a difference of opinion, but a theological rupture. It relocated Christianity’s moral centre away from the teachings of Jesus towards a selective reading of ancient Israelite history, stripped of prophetic critique and detached from the ethical trajectory of the Gospels.
The figure of Christ as a suffering servant, a challenger of power, and a companion of the marginalised was quietly displaced by a triumphant narrative of divinely sanctioned sovereignty.
EASTERN CHRISTIANITY: Eastern Christianity approaches scripture from a markedly different horizon.
Shaped by centuries of life under successive empires, the Eastern churches developed theological traditions that privilege moral discernment over prophetic calculation and ethical responsibility over historical determinism. The Bible, in this understanding, is not a predictive roadmap of future political events but a moral narrative that calls humanity to justice, humility, and compassion.
Land is meaningful in Eastern Christian theology, but it is never detached from the people who inhabit it. Holiness is inseparable from righteousness. Sacred space is not an abstraction. It is bound to human life. Any interpretation that sanctifies domination, exclusion, or collective punishment is therefore understood not as faithfulness, but as distortion.
Palestinian liberation theology emerges from within this Eastern Christian moral universe. It is not a theoretical import or an academic fashion. It is a theology born from lived experience. Its central question is not abstract. It is painfully concrete: how does one speak of a loving God in a land where homes are demolished, families fragmented, and entire communities forced into permanent insecurity? How does one preach the Gospel when scripture itself is invoked to legitimise injustice?
The answer offered by Palestinian theologians is uncompromising. Any theology that legitimises oppression is false, regardless of how many biblical passages it cites. This is not a rejection of scripture but a reclamation of it. The Bible cannot be severed from its ethical core. The God of the prophetic tradition is not a tribal deity distributing territory but a God who sides with the oppressed, hears the cry of the enslaved, and judges societies by their treatment of the vulnerable.
This position confronts Christian Zionism at its foundation. Where Christian Zionism defines chosenness as permanent political entitlement, Palestinian liberation theology understands it as an ethical vocation. Where Christian Zionism absolutises the state, Palestinian theology subjects every political entity to moral accountability. Where Christian Zionism treats Palestinian suffering as the unfortunate cost of a divine plan, Palestinian theology regards that suffering as a theological scandal demanding resistance rather than rationalisation.
The strength of this challenge lies in moral coherence rather than rhetorical militancy. Palestinian liberation theology does not call for the destruction of Israel, nor does it deny Jewish historical trauma. It explicitly rejects antisemitism and acknowledges the catastrophic weight of the Holocaust. What it refuses to accept is the transformation of one people’s historical suffering into a permanent license to dispossess another. Memory, in this theology, must generate solidarity rather than supremacy.
Eastern churches across the region, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant alike, have increasingly echoed this perspective. Their pastoral letters and theological statements consistently reframe the conflict as a question of justice and rights rather than a clash of religions.
This convergence found a powerful expression in the Kairos Palestine document issued in 2009 by Palestinian Christian leaders. Kairos Palestine did not ask for sympathy. It issued a moral summons. It named occupation as sin. It named theological justifications of occupation as heresy. It called churches worldwide to move beyond abstract declarations towards concrete solidarity grounded in nonviolence, international law, and ethical accountability.
The restrained, theological tone of Kairos Palestine unsettled many Western Churches accustomed to treating the Holy Land as symbolic geography rather than living society. For some, it was a long-overdue corrective. For others, it appeared as a threat to deeply held eschatological convictions.
Yet, its lasting importance lies in the space it opened: a space in which Eastern Christian voices could no longer be dismissed as marginal.
EASTERN ENGAGEMENT: This engagement unfolds under starkly unequal conditions.
Christian Zionism operates within a vast ecosystem of media platforms, megachurch networks, lobbying organisations, and donor infrastructures, particularly in the US. It shapes electoral politics and foreign-policy debates with remarkable effectiveness. The Eastern Churches possess no comparable machinery. Their influence rests almost entirely on moral persuasion.
Rather than attempting to compete on the terrain of power, the Eastern Churches confront Christian Zionism at the level of meaning. Their objective is not to defeat it as a political movement but to expose it as a theological distortion. This is necessarily a long-term project.
The struggle between Eastern Christianity and Christian Zionism does not unfold in the abstract. It is shaped, intensified, and repeatedly exposed by concrete historical moments in which theology collides with human suffering.
Few moments have laid bare this collision more starkly than the successive wars on Gaza. Images of widespread destruction, mass displacement, and civilian casualties circulate globally with relentless force, confronting Churches everywhere with an unavoidable moral test. For many Christians, especially the younger generations, the gap between Christian Zionist rhetoric and observable reality has become impossible to ignore. Language that frames devastation as divinely ordained no longer sounds pious; it sounds callous. Silence from institutions that once claimed moral leadership is noticed and remembered.
For the Eastern churches, Gaza represents a theological rupture. It exposes, with tragic clarity, what happens when theology is severed from ethics. Ideas long debated in academic journals suddenly reveal their real-world consequences. When scripture is treated as a predictive code rather than a moral summons, entire populations can be rendered theologically invisible. Suffering becomes background noise in a story about prophecy. Human beings disappear behind symbols.
Eastern Christian leaders have responded with language that is noticeably more direct than in previous decades. The careful diplomatic phrasing that once characterised many church statements is giving way to vocabulary that names injustice without hedging. This shift does not reflect newfound radicalism. It reflects accumulated moral exhaustion. Decades of appeals, dialogues, and expressions of concern have failed to alter the structural reality of occupation. At a certain point, restraint itself begins to resemble complicity.
Yet, even as their language sharpens, the Eastern churches remain committed to nonviolence as both ethic and strategy. They reject armed struggle as a theological solution. Their resistance is rooted in witness, advocacy, and moral appeal. This position places them in an uncomfortable space. Some Palestinians view it as insufficiently confrontational. Some Western allies view it as excessively political. The Eastern churches accept this discomfort as the cost of refusing to collapse into the logic of power on either side.
This commitment to nonviolence is not passive. It is grounded in a theological conviction that the means used to pursue justice cannot be detached from the justice sought. Violence may force outcomes. It cannot create moral legitimacy. For Eastern Christianity, the credibility of any political project is inseparable from the methods through which it is pursued.
Another crucial dimension of this struggle unfolds beyond the traditional centres of Western Christianity. Churches in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia, many shaped by histories of colonial subjugation, racial hierarchy, and economic extraction, often recognise in Palestinian narratives echoes of their own experiences. The language of land loss, imposed borders, and externally enforced political orders resonates deeply. In these contexts, Palestinian liberation theology is rarely perceived as radical. It is perceived as familiar.
This resonance has produced a quiet but meaningful realignment within global Christianity. Ecumenical encounters between Middle Eastern Christians and the churches of the Global South increasingly revolve around shared memory: memory of how religion was once used to legitimise empire, and memory of how it was later reclaimed as a resource for resistance. Solidarity emerges not through ideological slogans, but through recognition.
These connections rarely attract major media attention. They lack the spectacle of megachurch rallies or high-profile political endorsements. Yet, they may prove more durable. They shape seminaries, clergy formation, and grassroots church culture in ways that slowly reconfigure how future generations interpret scripture.
MEDIA SYSTEMS: Media asymmetry remains one of the most significant obstacles facing Eastern Christian and Palestinian theological voices.
Christian Zionism operates within a highly developed communications ecosystem. Satellite television networks, social-media platforms, bestselling books, and large-scale conferences amplify its message with extraordinary reach. Its narratives are emotionally charged, visually dramatic, and framed in simple binaries: good versus evil, God’s people versus God’s enemies, prophecy versus rebellion.
The Eastern churches and Palestinian theologians operate in a radically different media environment. The discourse of Eastern churches is slower, more reflective, less easily condensed into slogans. It speaks of structures, history, ethics, and human complexity. In a digital culture optimised for speed and outrage, such language struggles for visibility.
This asymmetry creates a distorted public landscape in which Christian Zionism appears more representative of Christianity than it actually is. Correcting this distortion is one of the unspoken goals of Eastern Christian engagement. The aim is not to dominate the conversation, but to insist on presence within it.
The Roman Catholic tradition has provided an important parallel stream of critique that reinforces this presence. Since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, Catholic social teaching has emphasised that human dignity, the common good, and the rights of peoples stand above national or ideological projects. Papal statements on the Holy Land consistently stress the protection of civilians, reject collective punishment, and affirm political solutions grounded in international law.
While Catholic discourse differs in tone from Palestinian liberation theology, the convergence is unmistakable. Both reject the sacralisation of any state. Both resist transforming biblical promise into political entitlement. Both insist that peace cannot be built on permanent inequality.
Together, these currents expose Christian Zionism’s isolation from the mainstream of historic Christian theology, even as it retains disproportionate political influence. The contradiction is striking. A theology that sits at the margins of Christian tradition occupies a central place in contemporary Western political culture.
The long-term arena of this struggle is being formed. It is in seminaries, catechism classes, Bible study groups, and preaching that the future of Christian interpretation is being shaped. Seminaries that teach scripture as moral narrative rather than prophetic code form clergy who resist theological militarism. Churches that emphasise human dignity over nationalist allegiance cultivate congregations less susceptible to absolutist rhetoric. Pilgrimages that expose visitors to Palestinian Christian life complicate inherited assumptions.
None of this guarantees political transformation. But it preserves something arguably more fundamental: the possibility that Christianity remains capable of self-correction.
This possibility matters far beyond ecclesiastical boundaries. In a world where religious language continues to influence conflicts, elections, and identity politics, the difference between a theology of power and a theology of conscience is not academic. It is existential. The former sanctifies domination. The latter interrogates it.
For the societies of the Middle East, this debate also disrupts a pervasive stereotype: that Christianity is intrinsically aligned with Western political interests. Eastern Christian voices demonstrate that Christianity contains within itself traditions of resistance, critique, and solidarity with the oppressed. Christianity in the region is not an imported appendage of Western culture. It is an indigenous tradition with its own intellectual depth and moral agency.
This recognition opens a space for more honest interfaith engagement. Muslims and Christians in the region can encounter one another not as representatives of hostile civilisations, but as communities wrestling with parallel challenges: how to prevent faith from becoming an instrument of domination, and how to preserve its capacity to speak truth to power.
Ultimately, the confrontation between Eastern Christianity and Christian Zionism is a struggle over narrative ownership. Who gets to define what Christianity means in the 21st century? Those who align faith with military supremacy and territorial entitlement? Or those who insist that faith’s credibility rests on fidelity to justice?
The answer remains unsettled. But the persistence of this struggle signals that Christianity is not finished as a moral tradition. It still contains voices unwilling to bless the powerful simply because they are powerful. It still carries memories of a crucified Messiah who stood with the condemned rather than with the rulers. It still holds resources for naming suffering without spiritualising it away.
Whether these voices grow stronger or fade further into the margins will shape not only Christian identity, but the moral texture of global politics in the decades ahead.
This article is based on a paper titled “How Palestinian Liberation Theology Confronts a False Narrative: The Position of the Eastern Churches towards Christian Zionism,” published by the Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies (ECSS).
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 February, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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