Reflections on “Christian Zionism and Religious, Political and Economic Fundmentalisms: A Palestinian-Latin American Conversation”
Christian Zionism and Religious, Political and Economic Fundmentalisms: A Palestinian-Latin American Conversation
Report - November 5, 2022
by Joe Roos
As the evangelical community in Latin America has exploded over the past years, so has the Christian Zionist movement rapidly grown there. The embrace of Christian Zionism in Latin America threatens to be as damaging to the marginalized communities there as it has been damaging to the people of Palestine by the expressions of Christian Zionism in the United States.
This conference in Santiago, Chile was called for Palestinians and Latin Americans to reflect on the current situation they both experience and to develop common strategies for response. Specifically, the 65 conference participants will focus on the role played by Evangelicals, neo-Pentecostals and Christian Zionists in maintaining current systems of political, economic and social exclusion of marginalized peoples in Palestine and Latin America.
The conference is multi-disciplinary in nature, bringing together academics, community and religious leaders, activists, journalists, and ecumenical organizations, mostly from Latin America and Palestine.
The conference’s opening ceremony was given by members of a native Chilean tribe, the Mapuche. Machi Marcelina Antil Ruppalan, the tribe’s spiritual leader, led us through a sacred blessing ceremony to open our conversation together. She reminded us that they, too, were victims of settler colonialism and that the land on which we were meeting was their land long before the Spainish conquest.
Mitri Raheb, Palestinian author, professor, pastor and activist, in the name of the Palestinian people, expressed gratitude for the welcoming ceremony and added that “at the end of the day, the issue confronting all of us is settler colonialism.” Raheb stated emphatically that “Christian Zionism is no longer just a serious problem in the United States, but in Latin America as well.”
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Palestinian activist, author and professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, moderated the initial section, “Global Apartheid and Systems of Exclusion.”
Our first speaker, Allan Boesak, South African pastor and anti-apartheid activist, spoke to us virtually from South Africa.
Boesak observed that when people from South Africa visit Palestine, “they come away shocked at the depth of apartheid in Palestine.” He bemoaned the ongoing travesty in Palestine of forced removal, destruction of property and the overall message that the people of Palestine don’t matter at all.
But his central message was “apartheid exists in many places around the world in various forms, where the poor are always the victims of economic exclusion…Global apartheid is the central issue we must face.”
Varsen Aghabekian, Palestinian Armenian activist and author, named Christian Zionism for what it is: a systemic problem and a structural reality. Tracing the history of the beginnings of the theft of Palestinian land, from the Balfour Declaration and the Nakba to rapidly expanding Jewish settlements and increasingly oppressive measures, he showed how deeply embedded the structures of apartheid are and how Christian Zionism enables structural apartheid.
Our second session of the day, “Analysis of the Geopolitical Situation: Trends and Divergences in Latin America and Palestine, was also moderated by Shalhoub-Kevorkian.
Alvaro Ramis, author and postgraduate coordinator of social sciences at the Academy of Christian Humanism University in Chile, bluntly stated that “Christian Zionism is an anti-democratic and colonialist system that denies human rights. Contemporary Christian Zionism celebrates colonialism…and is an illiberal system” that refuses to acknowledge minorities with the intent of never becoming a majority, in the process denying their human rights.
In Latin America, he continued, “what is happening in Palestine is just a preview of what will happen here.” The dynamics, Ramis concluded, is that minorities can never hope to become a majority, their only possible way out.
