A much-needed ethical handbook
by Tom Getman

It is a time in the partially holy land when individual brutish criminal acts and mob violence seem to be determining the future. Into this present reality, Donald E. Wagner has provided a much-needed and long overdue service to the Body of Christ, and the wider faith community, with Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000. This extraordinarily comprehensive compendium of critical historical data – as well as of long-scattered, stifled, obscured or even censored materials – is particularly auspicious. It is a moment when concerned people are beginning to understand the crimes that have been perpetrated against the Palestinian community for half a century. This has been inflicted by a government of a people who should have a deep understanding and hatred for domination through occupation and apartheid.

Wagner’s contribution is a much-needed ethical handbook. It is a readable combination of professional knowledge, personal experience, teaching skill and love for all the people of the Middle East. Theologians, development and advocacy activists, as well as laypeople struggling to understand the fairly straightforward issues of occupation obscured by media silence and effective propaganda, will use this tool with appreciation. The busy reader who will return to the book again and again will find particularly helpful the technique of the summary of highlights and critical data at the end of each chapter.

As I write this review, despite protestations of a "ceasefire," excessive use of force, tank shelling and brutal siege blockades continue the violence of military domination in Palestinian towns and villages – mostly out of sight of reporters. The terrible Tel Aviv suicide bombing has taken the lives of 20 young Russian immigrants to Israel. Citizens in both Israel and Palestine are sick at heart about how violence and vengeance leads to more and more mindless heavy-handed reaction.

Wagner’s Dying in the Land of Promise is invaluable in providing a framework with which to understand how hopelessness leads to desperate measures. The combination of injustice unacknowledged and ethnically based colonialism, along with a mix of bad theology, is tragic – and seems to be leading to mob rule. The chapter on the "Foundations of Injustice" especially drives the reader to serious reflection and intercession. Wagner’s compelling style increases the desire to avoid the mistakes of the past by driving back the nightmare of the present. The book helps us to face the possible legacy of a horrific future without responsible participation. May grace and mercy abound to reverse the precursor decisions rooted in less than adequate biblical interpretation by the likes of turn-of-the-20th-century Lord Arthur Balfour, Lord William Shaftsbury and indeed Winston Churchill. These dispensational Christians supported the lie of a "land with no people for a people with no land," in spite of the appeals of anti-Zionist Jews such as Asher Ginzberg who wisely counseled, "Those who settle in Palestine must above all seek to win the friendship of the Palestinians, by approaching them courteously and with respect." How different things could have been. How different they might be if people in power began to act as good neighbors instead of cruel conquerors.

Dying in the Land of Promise raises the possibilities of brighter futures by outlining several hopeful scenarios, including the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theological Center’s "Document on Principles of a Just Peace."

But a main theme that leaps from these pages is the essential need for people who embrace Scripture to focus on the far-reaching nature of decisions by single influential persons in times of crisis and change. If just principles are not adhered to, great heartache, pain and further injustice will follow. Whatever is hidden in the dark will inevitably come into the light, as Israeli "new historians" such as Benny Morris are proving.

Dying in the Land of Promise sets the record straight with factual historical and compelling anecdotal evidence from Wagner’s wide experience in the Holy Land. Surely detractors will find enough minor contradictory details to attack the author and seek to discredit the book. Unfortunately the volume was so important it was rushed to print before a number of distracting typos were corrected and critical edits finished. But it should be stated that there is minimal inconsistency and emotional histrionics, which those of us who live in the region sometimes are tempted to use, to undermine the credence of this landmark publication. It will be a controversial book because it dares to be truthful. May I advise that you rush out and buy it before it is banned, discredited or removed from libraries. It will be a guidebook you will return to again and again. l

Tom Getman is director of WorldVision’s Middle East office in Jerusalem.

Editor's Note: This book may be hard to find but can be obtained directly from the author at dwagner@northpark.edu or go through the WRMEA web site.