“Emergent Church” guru Brian
McLaren is a key figure on the
Evangelical Left who is trying
shift Evangelicals, who are
America’s most pro-Israel
demographic,
into a more neutralist stance.
Currently, he is leading a
delegation through Israel and
“Palestine”
to
broadcast the sins of Israeli
oppression against Palestinians
by “listening, learning,
thinking, observing,
reflecting.” His blog is
providing daily updates of his
discoveries, all of which
confirm his previously often
declared bias against Israel.
McLaren, of course, used to be a
more traditional, conservative
Evangelical. So his emergence
into the Evangelical Left in
recent years,
including the requisite
negativity towards Israel, is
part of an ongoing spiritual
rebirth into which he invites
his fellow Evangelicals.
Of course, McLaren insists that
he is not anti-Israel, and
certainly not anti-Jewish. He
simply wants
to
liberate both Palestinians and
Jews from the enslaving mindset
of the “occupation” that holds
both peoples captive.
Of course, though McLaren wants
to liberate everybody from their
various spiritual/political
blindness, he implies that
most or
all of the spiritual confusion
comes from Jewish Israel and its
Christian supporters. He
is very concerned about Israeli
“razor wire and segregation
walls,” as
part of the “ugliness of
occupation.” But he is
not as interested in the
Palestinian and Islamist terror
that generate Israel’s
defenses.
Revealingly, McLaren learned
that Palestinians do not want a
“two-state solution” but instead
desire to
“live in peace with Israelis”
and want “Jews, Muslims, and
Christians to learn to live
together as neighbors.”
In other words, the Palestinians
want the
eradication of Jewish Israel and
the creation of a new
Palestinian and Islamic
dominated state where,
purportedly, Jews and Christians
also could live, at least for a
time. McLaren finds this
discovery to be very “powerful”
and encouraging.
