'God loves Gaza': US Christians gather in rare display of solidarity with Palestine

It’s the early afternoon of 11 September in the small midwestern American town of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, some 24 miles west of downtown Chicago. At Parkview Community Church, at least 550 people have gathered inside the main auditorium to pray. 

The musicians on stage have everyone up on their feet. They are all singing a Palestinian hymn together.

“Yarabba ssalami, im la’ qulubuna salam”: Oh God of peace, fill our hearts with peace.

Many have Palestinian keffiyehs draped across their shoulders, but few here are Palestinian at all. They are white, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Arab - Christians of all denominations who denounce the loud, mainstream Christian Zionism that permeates US society and now openly dictates government policy, both domestic and foreign. 

This is day one of the inaugural Church at the Crossroads conference, designed to heed the call from Christians who want a space that can be an antithesis to, among others, the annual Christians United For Israel (Cufi) conference, which draws thousands of people whose religious priority is the defence of Israel, as they believe that only in protecting it will the second coming of Jesus Christ materialise. 

“That's a misreading of Scripture,” Ben Norquist, one of the event’s organisers who identifies as an evangelical, told Middle East Eye.

Cufi boasts 10 million members. 

Today at Parkview, 800 people have registered to attend in person and virtually. Forty-five percent of them are evangelicals, Daniel Bannoura, the man who conceptualised the event, told the crowd. 

The evangelical community in the US is typically so pro-Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with its leaders before he does Jewish Americans.

“I find myself at deep odds with a lot of the rest of the evangelical church on Palestine,” Norquist said. “Every human is made in the image of God. So for me personally, my evangelical values draw me to… the full humanity and rights of Palestinians.”

Sandra Maria Van Opstal, the executive director of the faith-based activism group Chasing Justice, told MEE that Christian Zionists have a far greater platform in the US for a reason that is emblematic of many of the social problems that plague the country: “Voices on the margins are always last to be heard.” 

Van Opstal is a second-generation Latina and also identifies as an evangelical. 

“I see a generation of young leaders, particularly Black and brown leaders, people of colour, who saw right away that [Israel’s genocide in Gaza] was not right,” she said. “We come from communities that are usually not centred in churches… we don't have huge auditoriums with 2000 people, but that doesn't mean we aren't as many in the streets”. 

‘The church is complicit’

Inside the gymnasium, vendors - several on behalf of Christian peace organisations - are selling Palestine-branded merchandise, from T-shirts to mugs to books.

The Red Letter Christians booth is handing out big stickers that say, “God loves Gaza”. 

But Christian Zionists - most notably the current US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, have long espoused that God takes one side: the side of Israel. 

“The way of empire claims that God is on our side, as if [they] alone have exclusive access and rights to God,” famed Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac told the crowd. 

“Do you know what the biggest problem with Christian Zionism is? You cannot find Jesus in it”.

Isaac’s appearance on stage prompted a rapturous standing ovation. His sermons denouncing the Israeli occupation, siege, and genocide posted online have been far more vigorous than those of most theologians on this issue, and he is undoubtedly the most recognisable Palestinian Christian still living in the occupied West Bank. 

His book, Christ in the Rubble, arose from two muted Christmases in Christ’s birthplace of Palestinian-governed and Israeli-occupied Bethlehem, where the community cannot celebrate while Gaza’s churches lie in ruins, and their family members in the enclave are being shot or dug up from collapsed homes. 

More than 64,000 Palestinians have now been killed since the war on Gaza erupted after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. Many scholars believe that the figure is a gross undercount. 

“Despite the overwhelming evidence, this genocide continues to be supported, justified, and even denied by some in the church,” Isaac said in his remarks at Parkview Community Church on Thursday.

“The church is complicit,” he added, to shouts of “yes!” from the audience. 

“Christian Zionism presents a tribal, violent, exclusionary God, let's call it for what it is,” he continued. “It has replaced Jesus with a secular, genocidal state”. 

The way of Christ, he insisted, “is not about fear”.