zionism_unsettled_scan

In Volume 2, which carries the subtitle A Christian
Theology of the People Israel, van Buren's pro-Zionist
theology is stated in clear terms with clear political
implications:
I:
I
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claims clearly place Stendahl in the liberal pro-Zionist
category, and his writings and public statements
supported the Zionist agenda throughout his career.
Any reservations Stendahl may have had as a result
of his personal witnessing of the Israeli military
occupation in the West Bank during his 1994-1998
tenure as co-chair of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem
remained private.
PAUL VAN BUREN
fuul van Buren (1934-1998) was an Episcopal priest
who for over two decades taught theology at Temple
University in Philadelphia. In the 1980s he served
as an associate of the Shalom Hartman Institute in
Jerusalem. He is popularly remembered as a "Death
of God". theologian and for his advocacy of "Secular
Christianity.1I But van Buren's magnum opus was his
post-Holocaust theology, a three-volume work entitled
Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality. Here van
Buren struggles against the anti-Semitic theology of
the Christian tradition and stresses the continuity
rather than the discontinuity between Jewish and
Christian faith.
Van Buren thought that even the terms that
Christians use for the scriptures-Old Testament!
NewTestament-send a message that the new
(Christianity) has replaced the old (Judaism). To
avoid this linguistic trap, van Buren substitutes the
term "Scriptures" for Old Testament and JlApostolic
Writings" for New Testament.
God's promises to Israel include, for example,
possession of the Land. In Jesus Christ, if we are
to believe the apostle fuul, God said Yes also to
that promise. The church of Jesus Christ, therefore,
cannot coherently do other than confirm and
support the promise of the Land to the Jewish
people. It cannot twist this promise to the Jews
into a spiritualized promise to the church, for to
do so would be to witness to Jesus Christ as God's
No to this particular and by no means peripheral
promise of his .... [Ilt seems to us to be clear that
God's church cannot be itself without confirming
his choice of, covenant with, and promises to his
people Israel.15
Since van Buren was in Jerusalem during the
1980s it is reasonable to assume that he visited the
West Bank and must have seen some of the effects
of the Israeli occupation of fulestine. Evidently the
Holocaust and his dialogue with Jewish Holocaust
theologians had so touched him that we was unable
to question Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land
and the pauperization of the fulestinian people underway
during his time of residency in the country.
However, in one area-the activity of God in all
religions-he was more open than many theologians
of his time. Van Buren wrote,
One of the more difficult challenges which they
[Christians and Jews] will do well to face together
is trat of our understanding of the way in which
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has been
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Bad Arabs
The "crude, essentialized caricatures" Edward Said wrote of in his 1980 article "Islam through Western Eyes" (see page 43) are alive and
well in popular media. Is there a double standard that tolerates negabve s1ereotypes of Arabs while appropriately rejecting them as racist
when Jews, African Americans, and other groups are caricatured
,
.1
Art Malik (right) as Palestinian
terrorist Salim Abu Aziz in the
1994 movie "True Lies," starring
Arnold SChwarzenegger.
John Turturro as Fatoush "The
Phantom" Hakbarah, in the 2008
movie "You Don't Mess with the
Zohan."
Rob Schneider (in brownface) as
Salim, a Palestinian cab driver; in
"You Don't Mess with the Zohan."
Sacha Baron Cohen as Admiral
General Aladeen in the 2012 movie,
"The Dictator."
42
ZIONISM UNSETTlED