Abstract
The apologetics of pro-slavery, pro-segregation Christians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were identical to the methods of biblical interpretation used by Dispensationalist Christian Zionists today. The ideology’s specific rules of ‘literal interpretation’ and ‘antecedent theology’ led both groups to similar conclusions about slavery and racial segregation, on the one hand, and Jewish privilege and Palestinian displacement, on the other. Abolitionist efforts to promote a Christ–like hermeneutic rooted in Christian morality points the way forward to correcting modern theologies, such as Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, that continue to sanction human oppression.
Current debates over the teaching of Critical Race Theory in America’s public schools remind us that conversations about race have always been tense and fractious in the United States, which makes it all the more significant that Yale law professor James Q. Whitman should draw our attention to a time and place where the most retrograde proponents of America’s racist3 heritage found enthusiastic applause: Nazi Germany. Professor Whitman’s 2017 book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, offers one disturbing example after another demonstrating the solid historical foundation of his book’s provocative thesis: ‘In the early twentieth century the United States was not just a country with racism. It was the leading racist jurisdiction – so much so that even Nazi Germany looked to America for inspiration’ (Whitman 2017: 138).
Inspiration is not the same as verbatim copying, of course. Even though American immigration laws did help to inspire the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws segregating Jews from the German (mythical) Aryan race, Hitler’s plans for the Final Solution were a Nazi innovation all their own. In this regard, Professor Whitman’s research provides further lessons about the cross-pollination of history’s social, political, and religious influences, their subtleties and nuance, whether direct or indirect. This, too, is an important component of understanding the many streams of influence, including that of the Christian church, shaping a nation’s cultural development — a skill that every educational system ought to be concerned about developing in its students. No citizen can pretend to be culturally literate without it.
These patterns of cultural influence and cross–pollination are often less direct than the channeling of American race law into Nazi Germany. More often,ideological influence shows itselfin the absorption, consciously or unconsciously, of an all-pervasive ethos or a mindset, of common behaviors and ways of thinking that are simply taken for granted as the way things are supposed to be. With this background in mind, I intend to demonstrate that the biblical arguments and rationales deployed in nineteenth and twentieth century debates defending slavery and segregation are similar, and in many cases identical, to the biblical interpretations used by pro-Israel advocates of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism. My purpose is not to show that the Dispensationalist formulators of American Christian Zionism were necessarily racist or pro-slavery, though in some cases thatwas certainly true. My goal, rather, is to show that, sharing in the same intellectual and cultural currents, both groups have depended on similar methods of biblical interpretation for similar purposes.The ways in which Dispensationalist Christian Zionism’s Bible-reading commonly justifies Israel’s marginalisation and outright oppression of the Palestinian people today are reminiscent of the central role played by racist Bible readings in justifying slavery and the fight against integration in the nineteenth and twentieth century American south.
A majority of American evangelicals have a failed track record in these fields of humanitarian conscience. For, just as many southern evangelicals have historically been the primary opponents fighting against black equality,4 that same conservative wing of the Christian church has expanded its influence throughout the twentieth and twenty–first centuries as it consistently absolves Israel of any criminality in its ongoing mistreatment of Palestinians.5 While Bible-reading of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism may not aim at Palestinian disenfranchisement as its primary theological or sociological objective, unlike the evangelical use of scripture to defend slavery and segregation, sanctioning the oppression of fellow human beings is, nonetheless, a unifying, immoral outcome for both schools of thought.
Both anti–black racism and Dispensationalist Christian Zionismshare a commitment to the elevation of one racial–ethnic group over others. For pro–slavery, pro–segregation evangelicals, the white race was chosen by God to hold a superior position of authority over the black and brown-skinned people of the world. For the evangelicals of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, the Jewish people have been chosen by God as his special nation who are given a unique mission to perform in the history of salvation.6This common interest in maintaining boundaries of human separation led both groups to focus on identical biblical texts thought useful for establishing the divine imperative of national or racial segregation.
Paul Finkelman explains that ‘the largest single body of proslavery literature is based on the religious defenses of slavery’ (Finkelman 2003: 26). And every religious defense of slavery depended, whether explicitly or implicitly, upon an ostensibly biblical rationale. The chief cornerstone to this biblical defense became the story of Noah’s curse against his grandson Canaan in Genesis 9: 24–26.7 The argument involved two points. First, the curse against Ham’s son, Canaan, condemned him and his descendants to slavery (verses 25–27). Second, according to ancient tradition, Ham’s descendants would populate the African continent and be cursed with black skin (Finkelman 2003: 12–24). However anachronistic such readings may sound to modern ears, the resonance of these interpretive traditions can long outlive their heyday, especially when they are preserved within a homogenous, religious subculture. For pro–slavery Christians, the lesson of Genesis 9 was clear: ‘God decreed slavery’ (Finkelman 2003: 124). But long after slavery’s abolition, the message remained clear to southern evangelicals. For instance, Hawkins quotes messenger8 Arthur Hay of New Mexico who rose to condemn the Supreme Court’s decision on school integration at the 1954 Southern Baptist Convention. Hay reminds his fellow Baptists of what the majority already believed, that ‘Negros are descendants of Ham’s [and] we whites must keep our blood pure’ (Hawkins 2021: 21).
The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 was seen to build upon the founding story of slavery and racial segregation in Genesis 9. At Babel, God judged disobedient humanity for their united effort at constructing a ziggurat tower ‘reaching to the heavens’. God’s condemnation of Babel’s idolatry took the form of fragmenting the human race into separate nations, each set on its own national trajectory with its own divinely ordained purpose’ (Dupont 2013: 60). These divinely ordained national boundaries became the ideological bedrock for evangelicalism’s longstanding commitment to racial segregation. Thus, Genesis 11 was the cardinal text for justifying the belief that ‘God was a segregationist’ who not only ordained slavery but condemned any-and-all ‘mixing’ of the races (Hawkins 2021: 67; Haynes 2002: 18).
A major problem with this interpretation of Genesis 11, however, is the fact that it begs the question of divine intent. Given the references to multiple languages and nations throughout Genesis 10, but particularly in verses 4, 20, 31–32, it appears that Genesis 10–11 is an interwoven complex seemingly presenting events in reverse order: God’s judgment and punishment occur in chapter 11, but the consequences of that punishment are described in chapter 10. Both chapters are descriptive rather than prescriptive. In other words, God’s judgment of linguistic confusion, followed by the development of multiple, national people groups, is simply the author’s description of what happened after Babel was destroyed. At no point does the author claim that God confused the peoples’ languages in order tocreate a diversity of new nations, nor does the text say that God desired the development of multiple new nations, or that he judged this development to be ‘good’. The relevance of these observations will become more apparent when we come to notice the ways in which interpretations Dispensationalist Christian Zionism applaud the importance of both individual nations and the diversity of their nationalisms.
In any case, similar lessons in nationalism and racial separation were drawn from New Testament texts, as well. For instance, Acts 17:26 became a favorite among segregationist Christians, for as it explained, ‘From one man he [God] made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands’. Here was a new covenant affirmation of the permanent, national — racial separations established at Babel (Dupont 2013: 83; Hawkins 2021: 53).Galatians 3:28 was used to make a similar point; the apostle Paul wrote, ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’.Paul’s affirmation of spiritual unity within the community of faith became a guarantee that the ethnic, racial separation between nations — represented by the continuing distinction between Jews from Gentiles — was established by God and are, therefore, as inviolable as the difference between male and female (Dupont 2013: 83; Hawkins 2021: 53–54). When Clarendon Baptist Church in Alcolu, South Carolina, passed its congregational resolution condemning racial integration in 1957, God’s providential plan for permanently separate and distinct nations played a prominent role in justifying their decision (quoted in Hawkins 2021: 45):
We believe that integration is contrary to God’s purposes for the races, because: (1) God made men different races and ordained the basic differences between races; (2) Race has a purpose in the Divine plan, each race having a unique purpose and distinctive mission in God’s plan; (3) God means for people of different races to maintain their race purity and racial indentity (sic) and seek the highest development of their racial group. God has determined ‘the boundaries of their habitation’. (Last part of Acts 17:26)
Ethnic, racial separation is a deeply ingrained feature of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism. To modify the Clarendon Baptist church resolution cited above only slightly, the ideology of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism remains committed to the notion that ‘race has a purpose in the divine plan, each race, but especially the Jewish race, having a unique purpose and distinctive mission’. Although the lessons of Genesis 9 and 11 do not figure as prominently in the teachings of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism as they did in pro–slavery, pro–segregation arguments, at least Genesis 9 continued to have a foundational role in inscribing racial separation into the ideology of American evangelicalism.
The most important piece of literature in this regard has been the Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909, consisting of the King James Version of the Biblical text accompanied by commentary and notes by C. I. Scofield. The Scofield Bible, as it came to be known, has certainly done more than any other publication to reify and disseminate the convictions of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism throughout the world. A central feature of this belief system is the separation, both religiously as well as physically, of the Jewish people from the rest of humanity. In Dispensationalist thought, a future event called the Rapture will literally segregate Christians from Jews as all living Christians are supernaturally translated into heaven. This separation will then lead to a seven-year period known as the Tribulation where the Jews will be purified as God’s chosen people on this earth. The Rapture demonstrates that God’s plan for universal redemption requires ‘cosmic segregation’ (Grimes 2016: 219).
This religious vision of human separation would fit naturally within Scofield’s mental framework of racial segregation. Even though he was originally from Michigan, Scofield had volunteered to fight with the Confederate army while visiting relatives in Tennessee (Canfield 1988: 20–24). Lying about his age, Scofield enlisted in the 7th Regiment of the Tennessee Infantry on 20 May 1861 in order to defend the institution of slavery. His convictions on white superiority and racial separation appear to have remained unchanged throughout his life. Speaking to a 1904 state Convention of Confederate veterans in Dallas, Texas, Scofield’s outline notes contain the following line declaring his ongoing commitment to white supremacy:‘right superior race to bear white man’s burden of an inferior race in its own way’ (Canfield 1988: 230).
It is not surprising then to discover that Scofield’s commentary on Genesis 9: 24–25 repeats the long–standing evangelical appeal to this passage as a pro–slavery, segregationist proof–text. Scofield’s one sentence note simply says’, a prophetic declaration is made that from Ham will descend an inferior and servile posterity’.9 Neither should it be surprising to observe the similarities between the racist influences in Scofield’s background, his Dispensational theology, and the doctrine of the Rapture promoted in his reference Bible. However, as Nathaniel P. Grimes has noted in his study exploring the ideological connection between the Rapture and anti-black racism, ‘The logic of white supremacy worked to create a world in which toxic beliefs could prosper without requiring believers to work through troubling presuppositions’ (Grimes 2016: 221). The crucial presupposition (whether recognised or not) behind the evangelical defense of slavery, segregation, Dispensationalism, and the Rapture is the redemptive necessity of racial separation. God’s plan for human salvation required the segregation of different people groups one from another.
Contemporary advocates of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism make similar appeals to Acts 17:26 and Galatians 3:28 for similar purposes today. Michael Vlach, argues that Acts 17:26 endorses the salvation–historical significance of distinct nations directed byseparate, divinely ordained destinies; a vision thought to originate in Genesis 11. He further implies God’s hearty endorsement of the various nationalistic ideologies emanating from the world’s diverse nationalities, sanctioned as they are by such interpretations of scripture.10 Granted, the nationalism of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism’s emphasis today has more to do with God’s approval of nationalism than with overt racism, but nationalism can plant its own destructive seeds, as we will see below.
Similarly, the maintenance of ethnic–racial separation continues to be emphasised in contemporary readings of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism of Galatians 3:28, applying the same logic used bypro–slavery and pro–segregation interpreters from the past. In explaining this biblical text, Craig Blaising argues, ‘Clearly, Paul did not mean by ‘neither male nor female’ (Gal. 3:28 NASB) that sexual identity was obliterated by conversion’.11 Consequently, since God has maintained distinct sexual identities for humanity, Blaising concludes that the Israeli nation-state, together with all Jews everywhere, must also remain distinct ‘as an ethnic, national reality’, redemptively segregated by God from the rest of humanity (even as they are spiritually united with Gentiles in Christ). David Rudolf reaches the same conclusion, arguing that the apostle Paul’s preservation of the Jew–Gentile distinction reveals that ‘he accepts, and even insists on retaining, the differences as ethnic–identity markers … ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile’ [Galatians 3:28] is not about erasure of differences but revalorisation of differences’ (emphasis mine) (Rudolf 2016:182). The echoes of an inappropriately prescriptive understanding of Genesis 10–11 can be heard resonating in the background as an Old Testament prelude to such interpretations that commend the ‘biblical’ values of nationalism.
Evangelical–fundamentalist Bible reading has long been indebted to the epistemological principles of the Enlightenment. Nothing illustrates this commitment more clearly than its adoption of the philosophy of Scottish Common–Sense Realism with its emphasis on the literal, plain–sense interpretation of empirical evidence. Modern evangelicalism’s adherence to the basics of common–sense Realism has remained unchanged.12 Determining the ‘plain sense’ meaning of a biblical passage by reading it ‘literally’ means allowing the common–sense meanings of the words to speak simply for themselves. As Mark Noll observes, ‘Nowhere was the Enlightenment marriage more clearly illustrated than in the pervasive belief that understanding things was simple’.13 For the evangelical defenders of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation, it was enough to read the Old Testament passages thatclearly describe and regulate the practice of slavery among the ancient Israelites (such as Exodus 21: 20–32; Leviticus 25: 39–46) in order to learn that God approved of slavery.14 Divine approval was underscored by the fact that God took the time to regulate Israelite slavery while never bothering to condemn it. Similarly, since Deuteronomy 7: 3–4 commands the Israelites not to intermarry with other nations, common sense interpretation concludes that the lessons of Genesis 11 continue to obtain as God condemns miscegenation and reaffirms the importance of racial segregation (Hawkins 2016: 50). On the basis of such Old Testament texts, an anonymous essay titled ‘Slavery and the Bible’, published in 1850 in the important antebellum journal De Bow’s Review, could conclude:
To any man, who admits that the Bible is given by inspiration from God, they prove that, in buying, selling, holding and using slaves, there is no moral guilt…the holding of slaves may become criminal, by abuse of the slave, but the relation, in itself, is good and moral. (Finkelman 2003: 113)
The fact that New Testament writers had little if anything to say about these rules of slavery and segregation was explained by a related principle, we can call the ‘rule of antecedent theology’. In other words, God had already explained his attitude toward slavery and segregation in the Old Testament, so the New Testament writers assumed that God had no need to repeat himself. Since the New Testament never explicitly prohibits either slavery or segregation, God’s antecedent Old Testament approval of these practices must prevail (Hawkins 2021: 51; Morrison 1980: 23). Silence means affirmation.
Modern–day advocates of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism remain as deeply committed to the ‘common-sense’ rules of literalism and antecedent theology as their evangelical forebearers.15 In 1963 the Baptist minister Montague Cook delivered a sermon series to his congregation perpetuating the plain–sense argument that God’s Old Testament warnings to the children of Israel not to intermarry with neighboring nations proved that God was a segregationist; ‘one of the basic requirements God set up for his ‘holy’ people, and which was reaffirmed by the prophets and a thousand years of Jewish history was racial segregation’ (emphasis original) (Hawkins 2021: 49). Similarly, pastor C. R. Dickey established his New Testament arguments for segregation on the basis of antecedent theology saying, ‘New Testament writers said little or nothing about the law of segregation because it never occurred to them that Christians would question or repudiate any fundamental law in the Old Testament’ (Hawkins 2021: 51).
These same rules of common–sense interpretation are equally foundational to Christian Zionism — whether Dispensational or not — defense of the modern state of Israel as the political instantiation of God’s chosen people today and the real-world fulfilment of God’s Old Testament promises to Abraham. A tragic consequence of the evangelical apologetic for Israel’s establishment as a Zionist nation-state in 1947–1949 necessarily entails the endorsement by Dispensationalist Christian Zionism of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, something that Palestinians refer to as al–Nakba.16 Granted, the roles played by biblical apologetics in pro-slavery, segregationist arguments (both past and present) vs. the role of biblical interpretation in Dispensationalist Christian Zionism’s apologetics for Zionist Israel are somewhat different. Constructing a biblical apologetic for maintaining slavery and racial discrimination wasthe primary intent of pro–slavery, pro–segregation, evangelical Bible reading. Whereas, the line between Dispensationalist Christian Zionism Bible reading and Israel’s continuing displacement of over four million Palestinians is more in direct, it is nonetheless real.17 In the case of the pro–Zionist apologetic of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, while the primary intent was not to justify or to excuse the Palestinian refugee crisis with its disenfranchisement of millions of men, women, and children made homeless, the justification of Israel’s war crimes becomes an unavoidable, secondary result.
A stifling reticence to speak out, identify, condemn, and protest against the crippling ills of social injustice infecting the American body-politic has long characterised the evangelical–fundamentalist church tradition. Thankfully, there have been exceptions to this predominant trend,18 but the damning example of the famous nineteenth–century revivalist, D. L. Moody (1837–1899), can be taken as normative. Despite Moody’s youthful abolitionist sympathies, as he grew to become the most influential revivalist in America, his racial practices served further to entrench white supremacy throughout the evangelical church. Early in his career, Moody decided that in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War unifying white churchgoers throughout the north and the south was more important than condemning slavery, resisting segregation, or exemplifying the divinely intended spiritual unity of all God’s people, black as well as white (Blum 2005: 120–124). Moody’s white nationalist pragmatism outweighed any theological concerns he may have once harbored in favor of black humanity and equality.
Moody’s fear of alienating southern whites led him to segregate his revival meetings, to downplay the social and political issues of his day, and to focus exclusively on prioritising the Christian’s inner, spiritual life. Christian piety, according to Moody, did not include efforts to overcome racial prejudice or segregation, which meant that true spirituality encouraged southern whites not only to abandon but to remain antagonistic towards Reconstruction’s goals of empowering black citizens and equalizing American society. In this way, Moody’s populist revivalism not only ignored New Testament teaching about the nature of God’s kingdom on this earth, but fueled the pernicious duo of anti–black racism and white nationalism throughout the evangelical church. The long–term social effects of evangelicalism’s exclusive, solipsistic focus on the believer’s inner, personal life continues to show itself in the evangelical–fundamentalist church to this day.
Black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells had good reason to condemn and boycott Moody’s camp meetings (Blum 2005: 142–43). Wells lamented that Moody’s acceptance of Jim Crow and his unwillingness ‘to speak out against racial injustice severely handicapped the crusade for equality’. Douglass castigated Moody with his typically incisive wit by noting, ‘Of all the forms of Negro hate in this world, save me from that one which clothes itself with the name of loving Jesus’. One hundred years later, it remained only a small step for Martin Luther King, Jr. to skewer white, evangelical pietism in his letter from the Birmingham jail: ‘In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities’ (quoted in Dupont 2013: 5). Even as the defenders of slavery and racial segregation built their first–order arguments on literalistic interpretations of scripture, an equally important long–term, second–order defense remained ever–present through ‘the silence about black suffering that billowed from their most prestigious sanctuaries’ (Dupont 2013: 4) — sanctuaries that included revival meetings, church sanctuaries, seminary classrooms, and denominational headquarters.
Dispensationalist Christian Zionism’s methods of biblical interpretation continue these evangelical traditions of promoting (white) nationalism while remaining silent on the many long–term injustices suffered by the Palestinian people, all at the hands of ‘God’s chosen nation’. As the French historian Jean–Frédéric Schaub reminds us, all nationalisms,19 but especially ethnic nationalisms, are either latently or explicitly racist; racist in the sense that ethnicity serves, either latently today or openly tomorrow, as nationalism’s animating, unifying principle. The triumph of nationalist ideology always ‘charge(s) racism with new energy’ (Schaub 2019: 28).
No political ideologies are more committed to (Jewish) ethnic nationalism than Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the contemporary political Zionism on which the state of Israel is founded. We can see contemporary applications of the long-standing biblical rationale for these endorsements as Dispensationalist Christian Zionism continues torely on the traditional biblical proof–texts used to highlight God’s establishment of nations and the nationalistic pride and ideology that accompanies them. Undoubtedly, the supposedly biblical rationale for ethnic nationalist ideology — after all, since the Bible teaches it, these ways of thinking and behaving must be approved by God — plays a sizeable role in the failure of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism openly to condemn the overt, anti-Arab racism found so prominently at the heart of Zionist Israel’s government policies.
The widely held identification of all Arabs as the descendants of Abraham’s son Ishmael also encourages a hostile mindset that imagines Palestinians as inherently antisemitic. The central text for this Christian prejudice is Genesis 16:12 (NIV): ‘He [Ishmael] will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers’. The 1967 revision of Scofield’s notes has played a significant role in spreading this anti–Arab prejudice throughout the evangelical church. Commenting on the appearance of Ishmael’s name in Genesis 16:11, Scofield’s note says,20
Ishmael, the child of Sarai’s and Abram’s lapse into unbelief, was the progenitor of the Arabs, the traditional enemies of the Jewish people. Moreover Mohammed, the founder of Islam, whose adherents form Christianity’s most difficult missionary problem, came from the line of Ishmael.
We should not underestimate the sweeping, long–lasting influence of Scofield’s erroneous commentary within the evangelical–fundamentalist church community of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism. Nor should we overlook the similarity between this bit of racist commentary — imagining that all Arabs are inherently hostile to all Jews because of their misbegotten heritage — and Scofield’s racist note on Genesis 9: 24–27 (discussed earlier) justifying slavery. To cite only two popular examples, David Larson, former theology professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, draws the identical Dispensationalist Christian Zionism lesson from Genesis 16 when he writes, ‘The conflict between Ishmael and Isaac has lived on through their descendants, the Arabs and the Jews’ (Larson 1995: 153). This prevalent Western, Orientalist prejudice (see Said 1978) against the aggressive ‘backwardness’ of Arab culture shines brightly in the 2011 work by best-selling author Hal Lindsey titled The Everlasting Hatred.21 Once again, the author of the breakout publishing sensation, The Late, Great Planet Earth, interprets world history — but especially the incessant hostilities he sees occurring throughout the Middle East — in light of Christian scripture, the text of Genesis 16:12 in particular, as interpreted through a thick Orientalist lens of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism.
The parallels between Dispensationalist Christian Zionism’s prejudicial, racist application of Genesis 16:12 to all Arab peoples and the racist application of Genesis 11: 24–27 to all people of color are readily apparent. Believing, therefore, that they have a biblical mandate for anti–Arab prejudice, expecting nothing more from them but eternal, irrational hostility against the Jews, the incipient racism of the popular ideology of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism makes turning a blind eye to Palestinian suffering a natural response. There certainly is no reason to reconsider this response or to feel guilty over it. Not only can Israeli war crimes be silently ignored, but a ham-fisted, literalistic, ahistorical reading of Genesis 16:12 makes it all the easier to demonise Palestinians as nothing but terrorists who have only themselves to blame for whatever atrocities righteous Israel may inflict upon them — always, of course, while acting in self-defense.
Reevaluating Biblical Interpretation in Light of Inhumane Social Consequences Perhaps, observing the ways early abolitionists and their desegregationist descendants interpreted scripture may offer some help for addressing the continued stalemate over positive vs. negative views on Bible-reading of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism within the evangelical–fundamentalist community today. Some abolitionist writers worked to deconstruct the specific details of the literalistic pro–slavery, pro–segregation interpretations that harnessed Old and New Testament texts to the cause of slave–holding and discriminatory Christianity. But it seems that the standard methods of textual dueling were less influential than an alternative, thematic approach to interpretation that was employed more broadly. Abolitionist arguments frequently appealed to the ‘overall spirit of scripture’ (Booth 2018: 162) to scripture’s ‘interior spirit’ and its ‘humanitarian principles’,22 tending ‘to elevate the moral kernel of faith’23 over and above textual details read literally or otherwise.
Abolitionists were adamant. The real divide separating all racist and nationalistic readings of scripture from abolitionist and desegregationist readings was neither epistemological nor exegetical but ethical (Hawks 2016: 323; also Dupont 2013: 48). The most important question became: what ethical behaviors, which way of living, brought a person more closely into conformity with the life and teaching of Jesus? When viewed from this perspective, the internecine evangelical debate over anti–black racism could be deconstructed and revealed for the power struggle that it really was. The defenders of slavery and segregation were marshalling ‘biblical’ evidence to defend and maintain white power and privilege within the anti–black status quo.
I cannot help but see the same dynamic at work today in the enthusiastic defense by Dispensationalist Christian Zionism of Zionist Israel, a nation–state founded on the ethnic–nationalist principles of racial separation, Jewish supremacy, and Palestinian marginalisation. Furthermore, it is also surely more than coincidental that the ideology of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism flourishes most robustly in the more theologically conservative, evangelical wings of the Christian church. Conservative clinging to ethnic–racial power and privilege — extraordinarily un–Christ-like behaviour — remains at the heart of both anti–integration arguments as well as zealous polemics of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism. Whether it is voiced as outrage over Critical Race Theory at a local school board meeting or as a sincere pledge always to support Israel at a Bible conference of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, the corrupt underbelly remains the same — defend white privilege and the power of one ethnic, racial group over another.24
Michael Cartwright reminds evangelical Bible readers about the immense importance of reading the Bible against ourselves in his essay, ‘Wrestling with Scripture: Can Euro–American Christians and African–American Christians Learn to Read Scripture Together?’ (Okholm 1997: 74). The Bible ought to be a dangerous book for any imperfect person to study. When read as God’s word spoken into a fallen world, scripture will always be disruptive, always ready to displace our corrupt shibboleths, no matter how popular or deeply ingrained they may be. Asking ourselves how the quality of Jesus’ life and the content of his ethical teaching evaluates our racial, ethnic, or nationalistic prejudices is an unavoidable task for anyone claiming to be a Christian. Submitting our personal prejudices and asking for our blind–spots to be revealed to the Holy Spirit’s scrutiny is the risky but essential business of Christian discipleship. Conformity to the Spirit’s new configuration of moral living becomes non–negotiable.
Proper Bible reading requires ethical judgment. Without an understanding of consistent moral standards, intrinsic to scripture itself when taken as a whole, equally applicable to every interpretive result, destructive misreadings may appear every bit as plausible as humane readings.25 Ideally, such ethical reading will occur within a community of faith deliberately focused on collectively becoming the social embodiment of biblical teaching. In such an environment the Christian disciple will experience a crucial dimension of the so–called Hermeneutical Spiral. The more closely a disciple comes to resembling Jesus of Nazareth, the more open to ethical renovation he or she will become. And the more moral renovation experienced, the more conformed becomes the disciple to the likeness of Jesus. A Christocentric focus will be all–encompassing, measuring every moral quandary against the rule of Jesus Christ. Although this standard will not resolve every disagreement, it will eliminate the more egregiously un–Christlike suggestions, many of which have insinuated themselves among God’s people throughout history. How might history have been changed if every potential, Christian slave–owner had prayed, sincerely searched himself, surrendered to the Holy Spirit, and then said honestly to himself, ‘I cannot reject The Other’s humanity. So, given that all people are created as the image of God; given that Christ died on the cross for all people; given that Jesus tells me to love my neighbors, including my enemies, with a sacrificial love; is it possible for me to enslave, to own as property, to exploit or abuse, another human being?’
How differently might the histories of western imperialism and colonialism look today if this type of personal, spiritual discipline had been ingrained throughout the Christian church and expected of all its leaders, whether monk or magistrate, priest or potentate?
Similarly, how much more quickly might the suffering of the Palestinian people be relieved in the dawning of real equity and justice throughout the Holy Land if every defender of the ideology of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism would stop and prayerfully ask themselves similar questions about all the people living in Israel and Palestine? Charles Cosgrove is correct when he summarises the (Augustinian, Reformed) essentials of biblical ethics and discipleship when he writes:
Any interpretation of Scripture is wrong that separates or sets in opposition love for God and love for fellow human beings, including both love expressed in individual relations and in human community (social justice). No interpretation is correct that leads to or supports contempt for any individual or groups of persons either within or outside of the church. (Cosgrove 2002: 161)
Although the prevalence and influence of pro–segregation Bible reading has waned over time, the damaging influences of the Bible-reading of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism have not. It is long–past time for members Bible’s reading of the Christian church to prioritise biblical ethics and personal conformity to the life of Jesus over and above devotion to Jewish ethnic nationalism with its inherently racist undertow.
2 Dr Crump is also a former pastor in the Christian Reformed Church and former staff–worker with Inter–Varsity Christian Fellowship. He is the author of a number of books, including Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People (Cascade, 2022), I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018), Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture: Reading the Bible Critically in Faith (Eerdmans, 2013), and Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer (Baker, 2006). He has also published numerous journal articles and has been a featured speaker at various conferences, seminars, and retreats.
3 The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of various ‘scientific’ theories explaining the existence of different ‘races’ within the human family, some superior to others. Even though these theories have long since been discredited – there is only one human race – the popular language of race/racist/racism has persisted. For our purposes, the different ‘race’ cognates used in this paper will concern the identification of a recognisable people group frequently viewed as somehow innately, immutably inferior to others. The word ethnic, as in ‘ethnic nationalism’, on the other hand, refers to a people group self-identified as sharing a common (often mythical) history, heritage, language, religion, customs, or territory.
4 Hawkins (2021: 8), among others, ably establishes this thesis, thoroughly documenting ‘Christianity’s centrality to southern white resistance to civil rights’.
5 For abundant evidence, see Crump (2021).
6 Whether Jewishness should be described as a religious or an ethnic identity remains a hotly contested issue.
7 Dupont (2013: 5–6); Finkelman (2003: 27); Haynes (2002: 6–7).
8 Messenger is the term used in Southern Baptist parlance to designate a representative or delegate sent by a local congregation to deliberate on its behalf.
9 Scofield (1917). This comment appears in the 1917 edition; the original notes from the 1909 edition having disappeared. The note remained in successive editions until 1967 when it was changed to say, ‘A prophetic declaration is made that descendants of Canaan, one of Ham’s sons, will be servants to their brethren’.
10 Vlach (2010: 169–70); also see Horner (2007: 336).
11 Blaising (2016: 88); also see (Blaising 2018: 97); Saucy (1993: 49–50).
12 See Marsden (1980:14–16, 55–62, 112–16); Crump (2021:108).
13 Noll 2006: 19–20; also see Cartwright (1997: 100).
14 Booth (2018: 160–163); Dupont (2013: 211, 232–35); Hawks (2016: 324); Morrison (1980: 16); Mullin (1983: 211–12); Noll (2006: 3).
15 For discussion with examples, see Crump (2021: 16–17, 94–97, 107, 105, 109–10, 118).
16 Al–Nakba is Arabic for The Catastrophe; see for instance, Masalha (1992); Pappé (2006).
17 During the 1947–1949 war, Israel ethnically cleansed approximately three–quarters of a million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom have never been allowed to return to their homes. Today over four million Palestinians remain second–class citizens either living under military occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, or as a segregated population in Israel proper.
18 See Wirt (1968); Dayton (1988); Sider (2012); Tyrrell (2013); Gasaway (2014); Swartz (2014); Lempke (2017).
19 Nation refers to a community of people who believe they are ancestrally, culturally related. Nationalism designates identification with, loyalty to, and the valorisation of one’s nation. Ethnic nationalism (technically, a redundancy) identifies the greatness of the nation with the elevation of a specific ethnic group, whereas civic nationalism ties the nation’s greatness to its civic laws and the principles contained in its founding documents; see Connor 1994: xi.
20 Scofield (1967: 25). Was this note added in 1967 to provide a Biblical rationale for Israel’s ongoing conflicts with its Arab neighbors?
21 Lindsay (2011: 86–87) appeals to several Old Testament passages in order to explain ‘the Arab’s warring nature’ regularly on display in the world today. Such anti–Arab racism pervades Lindsay’s book.
22 Noll (2006: 4, 40–41, 44–45, 49, 65–66, 74).
23 Mullin, ‘Biblical Critics and the Battle Over Slavery’, 211. Advocates for slavery and segregation accused their opponents of using a ‘spiritualising’ method of interpretation that failed to take biblical authority seriously, an accusation that writers of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism continue to make against their opponents today; see, Crump (2021: 98–99). Another corollary that continues to obtain between the advocates of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and pro–slavery, segregationist, and anti–Critical Race Theory spokespersons today is a strong relationship with both theological and political conservatism. Dupont (2013: 53) shows that the more theologically conservative a group was the more devoted they were to racial segregation.
24 Israel was founded by white, European Ashkenazi Jews who generally held the same racial prejudices as their white, European contemporaries; for a discussion of Israel’s structural racism against Sephardic, Oriental, Arab Jews as well as the indigenous Palestinians, see Crump (2021:28, 57–58n15, 61,n25, 167, 170, n18).
25 See chapter 5, ‘The Rule of Moral-Theological Adjudication’, in Cosgrove (2002: 154–80).
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