If I told you, "You should never question your pastor or priest," how would you respond?
If I told you, "You should never question your president or prime minister," what would you say?
If I told you, "You should never question authority or the use of violence by authority," would you buy it?
I hope you would balk.
It's troubling then, when those in spiritual or political authority react when someone questions the actions of the state of Israel with the charge of anti-semitism ... and especially so when those raising objections include Israeli Jews and former IDF veterans. So often, the immediate response is that they are self-hating Jews. And why? For questioning their own government's domestic policy?
But what's especially strange is that Christians (not Jews) in another nation (not Israel), would hold an ideology that says, 'How dare you question Israel!' To fail to question anyone about anything creates the very conditions to which our Jewish sages have warned, 'Never again!'
Yet our own Canadian party leaders have rushed to assert unquestioning support of Israel's policies, politicizing their support, seemingly to position themselves for the sake of their political careers, as if this amounted to 'support.' To be clear, 'questioning' is not 'anti-' anything ... it's actually the most important part of processing Israel's long-term peace and security.
Fear not -- Ron Dart's collection of essays does not question Israel. It faithfully examines and questions the phenomenon of Canada Christian Zionism.
After a brief orientation in his Introduction, Dart proceeds with the historical roots of Canadian Christian Zionism in the chapter entitled, 'Dawn of the Dilemma,' as far back as Henry Wentworth Monk in the 1870's-80's, and long before the existence of the State of Israel or the Jewish holocaust.
He then moves on to critically examine four major CCZ arenas:
- Canadian academics and Christian Zionism,
- Biblical Exegesis and Christian Zionism,
- The Conservative Party and Christian Zionism, and
- Populist Evangelicals and Christian Zionism.
Ron's research is, as usual, top-notch ... he demonstrates his usual familiarity with the main voices and their backroom compadres. He expertly connects the dots and synthesizes the arc of Canadian Christian Zionism.
After the main bulk of the text, Prof Dart includes some more specific studies in a series of appendix articles, focusing particularly on the authentic prophetic tradition, birthed in Judaism:
- "George Grant and Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite"
- "Martin Buber, Zionism and the Prophetic"
- "Jesus, the Beatitudes and the Prophetic"
- "The Jewish Prophetic Tradition, then and now"
- "Irving Layton: Zionism and the USA"
Finally, Ron also invited some of the core Clarion contributors to offer their own responses. It's to Ron's credit that he makes space for these varying opinions, since they don't precisely echo his own position. The book closes out with afterword articles by:
- Brad Jersak, "My history with Israel"
- Andrew P. Klager, "Shifting Loyalties: Abandoning apocalyptic determinism in favour of compassion for Palestinians."
- Wayne Northey, "Christian Zionism."
- Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, "Christian Zionism: An Eschatology Cult."
This book is short but dense with information that's interesting and important, whether the reader is a Christian Zionist or Palestinian activist. For those ready to ask questions and be questioned in an era where certain questions seem illegal, this book is for you.
To order a copy of the book at this point, email a request directly to Synaxis Press. synaxis@new-ostrog.org
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