Growing up in the Ghanaian evangelical church, one of the things that short-circuited my child mind was the church’s position on Israel. I went to Action Chapel, which has hosted pilgrimages to Israel for members, touring occupied territories in the name of Christ. The church preached that Israel has a right to destroy Palestinians (implied to be Muslims) because God had given them that right. The church preached that Palestinians were not entitled to the lands they had lived on for generations. Some Europeans who were God’s chosen people, were allowed to displace them because their holy book, which was our holy book, claimed the land to be theirs. The violence of this colonial perspective preached from the pulpit did not make sense to me.
Underlying the message of justified settler-colonialism was the charismatic eschatological desire for rapture, the end of the world, and the second coming of Christ. The message from the pulpit was that so long as Israel was at war, the second coming of Christ would not happen. The end of the war with Palestine, in which Israel defeated Palestinians and took over their lands, would herald the rapture and Christ’s coming. Thus, the church supported violence against Palestinian people, favored Israeli settler-colonialism, and celebrated heightened destruction by the Israeli state. These instances brought the world closer to the second coming of Christ via “the restoration of the Jews in Palestine” as they termed it.
Twinned flags of Ghana and Israel
This past weekend, I have been distraught by the reporting about the escalation of Israeli state violence in the occupied territories, which are presented as justified. Yet somehow Palestinian self-defense is not. But I was not surprised to see Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs release a statement in support of this violence. In the statement, they called on “the Israeli government to exercise restraint in response to Hamas’ attacks.” When I first read the statement, I thought about how the Ghanaian government is involved in its own forms of settler-colonialism against the Ghanaian people. From the displacement of Ga folk in Tema in the 1950s to the displacement of Akuapem and Kwahu people to build the Akosombo Dam and the ongoing state-supported destruction of indigenous lands across the country. But then I was also quickly reminded of the religious underpinnings of this position. Ghana is a not just a Christian nation, but a Charismatic/Evangelical Christian Nation. And Charismatic Christianity is committed to the destruction of Palestinian peoples for eschatological reasons. Outside of this worldview, most people are not thinking about the second coming of Christ and how it is fuels war and destruction. Yet it drives and justifies much of what we are told to understand about the ongoing violence in Palestine. When you consider why you think Israel is entitled to Palestinian lands by any means necessary, it’s worth considering the how evangelical Christian ideologies shape these beliefs.