JUST AND LASTING PEACE IN PALESTINE

A Philippine Solidarity Conference

2010 NOVEMBER 25-26 | QUEZON CITY

BIBLICO-THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION

Of Kingdoms and Empires

By REV. EVERETT MENDOZA, D. Theol.

2010 NOVEMBER 25

Introduction: The use of sacred texts in political discourse needs to be accompanied with extreme caution. There is always the danger of misappropriating the text or overextending its meaning in pursuit of a political agenda. It must be also admitted though that beneath every theological statement is an ideological bent, conscious or unconscious. In the final analysis, a theological interpretation of the political will be considered authentic and truthful to the extent that it is true and loyal to the historic and communal confession of the faith-community to which the text belongs and for whom the interpretation is done.

In addition, Christian interpreters seek in political texts points of contact and dialogue. Let me introduce two specific texts, one from the Bible and another from Karl Marx. Luke 4:18 says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” (The passage is a direct quote from Isaiah 61:1.) The other is from Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: “Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation.”

The two texts refer to a common project, the liberation of the poor and the oppressed. This is arguably a point of contact between those who proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and all who seek the liberation of humanity’s poor and oppressed. An interpretation of a Christian text is authentic and truthful to the extent that it serves the cause of liberation. This point is especially pertinent to the choice of the biblical text for the present task.

I

The following biblical passage is an account from the history of ancient Judah (used to be the southern portion of the United Kingdom of Israel), particularly the reign of King Uzziah from 783-742 BCE. (Read 2 Chronicles 26:3-20.) The account consists of two parts: his conquest of neighboring lands early in his reign and his affliction of leprosy late in his life.

Uzziah invaded and established settlements among the Philistines and the Arabs. He built fortifications and walls around Jerusalem and had many people working on his fields and vineyards in the hills and fertile lands. He kept a well-trained army numbering 307,500 and provided them with fields, spears, helmets, coats of armor, bows and slingstones. In Jerusalem he made machines to shoot arrows and large stones. Among the neighboring kings, he became powerful.

The historian then made this comment: King Uzziah owed his military success to God but when Uzziah became powerful pride overcame him, which led to his downfall. Buoyed by his military successes, the king himself burned incense at the temple. The priests took offense and declared that for usurping a priestly prerogative God afflicted him with leprosy. He was severely and permanently chastised for having violated a religious practice. From then on he was banished from the royal courts while his son took over as regent. King Uzziah was buried in a separate grave not amongst the kings before and after him.

The editorial comments came from the pen of court historians and edited into their proper form by a circle of priests exiled in Babylon centuries later. For the priestly chroniclers and redactors, the successful annexation of other lands to the kingdom was a demonstration of God’s favor to the king. This is consistent with the royal theologies of ancient Near Eastern countries which regarded a king’s military successes as blessings from God. Military conquest was considered part of a king’s mandate from God—that according to the priests.

There was, however, an alternative reading of Israel’s history. It came from a prophet who was a contemporary of King Uzziah. His name was Amos. He announced the Lord’s judgment on Israel’s neighboring kingdoms for their cruel conquest of neighboring peoples: “because [they] took captives of whole communities and sold them” (Amos 1:6); “because [they] ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to extend [their] borders” (Amos 1:13). But he reserved his more ferocious anger for the kingdoms of Judah and Israel for oppressing their own people. It’s worth noting that Amos didn’t condemn the two kingdoms for their own expansionist adventurism. It appears that, for all his vitriolic attacks against the ruling royal families, Amos also adopted the theology of legitimate colonization. In fact, the other kingdoms were judged not necessarily for having invaded and annexed other lands but for having been violently cruel to their captives. Meaning to say, it’s all right to invade other nations so long as the captives are treated kindly.

But this kind of theology is contrary to the Hebrew people’s historic faith, the faith that emerged from the Exodus and Mt. Sinai experience. Theirs was a unique God of slaves and captives, not a God of conquering kings and emperors. However, the biblical records about the settlement of Canaan by the escaped slaves picture a violent occupation and the decimation of the native populations. But this has to be read with literary reservation. The O.T. books that contain stories of the so-called Conquest of Canaan were written during the period of Israel’s monarchy and redacted during the Exile in Babylon. The history of a violent conquest of Canaan might have actually depicted current military campaigns in order to justify a state policy of conquest and plunder. Hence, by showing that since God has given Israel the land by destroying the original inhabitants a policy of colonizing its neighbors now has divine mandate and blessing. This is recorded in ancient Israel’s history, thus:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites… and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy (Deut. 7:1-2).

This is nothing more than wartime propaganda which has hardly any historical support. Considering materials from new archeological and sociological studies, the preferred reading of current biblical scholars (for example, Normal Gottwald’s Tribes of Yahweh) is rather of a slow and extended period of assimilation with the local peasant inhabitants in the hilly regions of Canaan who were themselves oppressed by the native kings and landed aristocracy. Inasmuch as they shared a similar history of poverty and oppression, they bonded together to emancipate themselves and in time carved out a new nation. Eventually, however, some former slaves and poor peasants became more prosperous and powerful than the others and made the new nation into a kingdom and installed themselves as princes and kings. Then there emerged a corps of priests and scholars who rewrote history to serve as propaganda. Texts of domination in the Scriptures, like the texts of terror discovered by feminists, originated from this period.

In deconstructing the texts from sacred scriptures, an interpreter will have to delve into the social dynamics of Israel from the point when it achieved kingdomhood. The God of Exodus promised the Hebrew slaves and Canaanite peasants nationhood, not necessarily kingdomhood. In fact, there is evidence from within ancient Israel’s biblical records that the critical and decisive shift from tribal democracy to a full-blown kingdom was taken as a radical departure from the Exodus faith. In the First Book of Samuel chapter 8, there is an account of a confrontation between Samuel, the last tribal leader, and the elders who demanded for a king in order to become like the other nations. This angered Samuel but God told him to relent to the people, saying:

Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king…. But warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do…. He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants…. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day” (vv. 7 ff).

The seeds of domestic oppression and colonialism were planted the moment Israel became a kingdom. Domestic oppression and colonialism are inherent in kingdomhood. That is, it is in the nature of monarchy to exploit and oppress its own people, and to covet the lands of other people. The social dynamics of a kingdom eventually requires the extension of its borders and the enslavement of other peoples. The Land of Promise that awaited the slave and oppressed people was a promise for a nation of liberated slaves, not a kingdom ruled by a privileged class and therefore without imperial ambitions.

This would mean that the project of national liberation should be pursued alongside the project of social transformation. In the contemporary Philippine context, it is not enough to be anti-imperialist without being anti-feudal and anti-fascist as well. For, in this land U.S. imperialism thrives on the basis of a feudalistic economy and in collaboration with a fascist and corrupt government. There is a triumvirate of evil that has to be overthrown together in order to achieve both national liberation and social transformation.

II

At the epicenter of conflicts threatening world peace today is the continuing colonization of the Palestinian people by the United States and its proxy the modern state of Israel. The Middle East theatre is a vital cog in the American imperial machine that seeks continuing domination of the whole world well into the future. Records show that the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian soil has been declared illegal by the international community and yet continues unabated owing exclusively to the material, financial, political, diplomatic and military support of the U.S. government. The dismemberment of Palestinian territories and Israeli military control of Palestinian population appear to be a permanent fixture of the global strategy to maintain and prolong the American empire. Israeli forces have also used excessive, illegal and inhuman means to suppress the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people. According to Amnesty International, “Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes.”

Any solution proffered by the United States government will have to be consistent with its imperial objectives in the region. This is why the U.S. can ignore or defy international mandates with unbelievable irrationality, unfairness and impunity. Simply stated, it cannot give support to the just demands of Palestinians against the Israeli government because a free, independent, self-reliant and prosperous Palestinian state would undermine its hegemony in the region. For now, the agenda of an empire and that of a kingdom are in convergence. But even the fate of Israel is totally contingent on whatever shift of strategy may be required to preserve the empire.

Victory in the Palestinian struggle will deal a major blow to U.S. imperialism not only in the region but also globally. The Palestinian struggle, therefore, represents the struggle of all freedom-loving peoples against the sole hegemon in the world today, U.S. imperialism. This hegemon has all the economic, political and military means to impose its will on the rest of the world. But in truth, the power of empires to dominate has no independent reality. It is able to dominate to the extent that other nations are also governed the way the empire governs its own people: empires rise and live amongst kingdom-nations. U.S. imperialism is a historical development of capitalist society and continues to subsist on global capitalism. The great forces against U.S. imperialism will come from the ranks of nations and people who struggle for justice and social change in their own lands.

Today, there are signs of cracks on the edifice of the American empire right there at home. The financial and industrial downturn of the American economy has revealed the deepening fissures separating the very rich in America and the growing number of poor Americans. And the just-concluded mid-term elections showed whose side the American government—not just the present but dating back to the 1980s—is working for. From among the intellectuals there is a growing realization of the real and actual demise of democracy in America and the rise of plutocracy, government by the very rich that comprises a very tiny fraction of the population. Government solutions to the economic crisis is not about saving and creating jobs, providing social services especially to the vulnerable sectors, protecting the environment and laying the technological foundations for the future; it’s all about preserving an economic monopoly led by America’s elite. The hub of the American economy is a war industry controlled by a military-corporate combine responsible for making the Middle East literally a massive power keg. It is dawning upon the American people that they are the ones paying the cost of America’s wars and the diversion of economic and technological resources to the production of war materiel in terms of a diminished quality of life, disappearing social services, degraded infrastructures, a threatened environment and a less educated young population.

The rulers of the kingdom that is America are totally morally bankrupt. The situation is dire and calls for the American people to take matters in their own hands—a rebellion! A rebellion is brewing right there in the heartland of the American empire, and a highway is being built to connect the struggles of the nations to the homes and streets and factories of America.

Conclusion: In the time of King Uzziah, royal theology gave divine approval to the king’s drive to conquer other lands. Today, it continues to be invoked by establishment theologians and church leaders in endorsing warmongering particularly against individuals, organizations and nations tagged as enemies of the “Christian” empire. Royal theology is not of faith but a religious ideology of kingdoms and empires. The gospel of Jesus Christ is more than a sigh of the oppressed but good news that is delivered to the poor. It unites oppressed peoples across national, racial, cultural and religious borders and calls them to throw off the double yokes of social injustice and imperialist domination.

Rev. Dr. Everett Mendoza is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, and former professor of systematic theology and pastoral care at the Silliman University Divinity School in Dumaguete City, Philippines. His essays and lectures are published on the blog site, Everett Writes. Rev. Mendoza delivered this theological reflection at the conference on “Just and Lasting Peace in Palestine” held on November 25-26, 2010 in Quezon City, Philippines.

Related page:

• Philippine conference launches interfaith forum for Palestine (2010.12.07)