Americans are the most influential facilitators of Palestinian oppression, and, given American history and our the espoused ideas of freedom and justice for all, this must stop. The solution is antiracism. Racism impacts people by denying them land, autonomy, self-determination, dignity and funds. And so antiracism would address all of these, culminating in reparations and the liberation of Palestine. Racial justice models and their application are failing in the US and Palestine is because we are thinking that for Palestinians to get rights they need a state first. Civil rights protections regardless of their international standing.

Human rights trump citizen rights and should shape how we conceive of citizen rights.

In her book Red Pedagogy, Sandy Grande argues that, “the dire need for practical community-based research [is needed, but] the global encroachment on Indigenous lands, resources, cultures, and communities points to the equally urgent need to develop transcendent theories of decolonization and to build broad-based coalitions.” That’s what Christian Minus Christianity aims to facilitate.

Reading time: 5 mintues.

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Americans prioritize people in our own moral community, and since World War II we have referred to ourselves as a Judeo-Christian nation. However, the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan engage this human failing directly, calling upon us to transcend it.

True religion breaks down the walls of closed community, instructing us by example to move beyond its borders. When Jesus died there was no “Christian religion.” The disciples weren’t called Christian until in Antioch (see Acts). At the time they were all Jews. 

Race, an ideology, within a capitalist framework, functions to maintain power of wealthy white people. While racial distinctions vary from community to community and nation to nation, concepts of race vary from region to region and are socially salient and imposed on people, who then will self-describe in this way (the book Race in Translation, addresses how, for example, a person described as Black in the United States may not be seen in those terms nor describe themselves as such, in Brazil). 

The power dynamics, both implicit and explicit, inherent in racial, as opposed to ethnic, affiliation, emerged as a result of colonialism and capitalism, making race a historical construct.

Colonialism–the practice of seizing political control over a region, occupying it with settlers, and gaining economic superiority–was a mechanized process facilitated by racial (psuedo)science that led to people seeing non-Europeans as subhuman. Wealthy white landowners and politicians classified Black people as 3/5 of a person. This was gradual, occurring as capitalism deepened. To feel moral about slavery, through legislation and (mis)use of the Christian Bible, white slaveholders dehumanized slaves, ultimately coming to see them as property and not human at all (for more on this see Willie James Jennings’ The Christian Imagination). For the first time in the history of the world, one’s social standing was exclusively the result of race–a new concept–and one’s enslavement was heritable. This tied into economics and capitalism, and the enslaved were seen as property (“chattel”).

This imposed permanent social damnation had spiritual undertones that frequently became overt through lynchings and other atrocities that were normalized up through the 30s and 40s in the American South.

We now see prisoners in similar damned terms, and former felons are treated as irredeemable in society, unable to be hired, and deprived of the ability to vote. This structural injustice leads to disproportionately poor outcomes for Black and Brown peoples, who are more likely to be persecuted by the law even though all demographics commit crimes at equal rates. A slavery consciousness continues to dominate the American psyche.

Skirting of federal law, the US kills people from “terrorist” countries and persecutes Arabs and Muslims here. This mirrors the reckless bombing and murder of Arabs in the Middle East independent of International Law. Thus the most dehumanized people in the world, from the American political imagination, are Arabs and, specifically, Palestinians. 

Colonialism was enabled by racism, through ideologies forced onto a people. The oppressed assimilate into the dominant society’s projection of inferiority onto minorities. These ideologies are frequently secular but invariably solidify under the influence of religion, as in the case of white Christian supremacy and Christian Zionism in the United States, Jewish Zionism in Israel, and the caste system in India.

The genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans were obscene practices that are no longer morally or legally permitted. As Americans, however, we are now funding, equipping, and standing by as the genocide of the Indigenous Palestinian population of Gaza continues. Just as the enslaved were considered 3/5 of a person, so we have somehow made it seem acceptable that tens of thousands Palestinians have died compared to 1200 Israelis. We must reckon with the original sins of our nation: the enslavement of African Americans (which has morphed into the prison-industrial complex) and the genociding of the Native Americans and the theft of their land (which has morphed into the genocide of Palestinians and the theft of their lands, including in the West Bank).

Christians for a Free Palestine is a progressive Christian ethics book dedicated to cultivating Christlikeness, and it does not shrink back from advocating social responsibility nor deny the need for structural change and queer inclusion in the church. Palestine is the foundation and the icing on the cake, but it promotes individual and interpersonal thriving as well.

The book begins with a discussion of what the author terms justicia-responsibility and is grounded in principles of not judging, patience, hope, receptivity, and more. Each chapter ends with a “going deeper” section, featuring topics such as colonialism, evangelical social witness, autonomy and rights for the seriously mentally ill, and critiques of the so-called “just war” tradition, among others.

All royalties are donated automatically to Bethlehem Bible College’s Institute of Peace and Justice. Buy on Amazon or download the free copy.

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“A unique book important not only for Christians but for anyone who cares about social justice, liberation, and for a free Palestine. Erin Grimm’s focus on human flourishing and healing in the context of Israeli settler colonialism, occupation and an ongoing trauma is an important approach to understand the human story within the unfolding genocide in Gaza today.”

–Rev. Prof. Mitri Raheb, president of Dar al-Kalima and author of Decolonizing Palestine and Faith in the Face of Empire