Lately, I have been increasingly concerned about the attitudes of many American Christians on the genocide in Gaza and the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. I see Israelis, Palestinians, Jews and Muslims grappling with their grief, fear and moral responsibilities. Yet, I notice many Western Christians silently abdicating their ethical duty to intervene when our government and institutions support the relentless bombing of Gaza that has led to the deaths of more than 20,000 Palestinians, of which about 70% are women and children.
An interview with Canadian Jewish activist and intellectual Naomi Klein about her new book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World provided me with language to articulate what I have observed in the 2023 Israel/Palestine conflict and over my life as an artist, activist and public theologian:
“[Doppelgänger politics] is about ways in which we double ourselves and other people double us, both as individuals and collectives. A double could be the way you create an online avatar of yourself to represent you to the world, which is a kind of a partitioning of the self, a performing of the self, which often includes an act of projection of the unwanted self onto the double, and a kind of abject double.”
Klein went on to reflect on the Jewish Currents’ podcast about our fascination with doppelgängers, which are found in literature, film and popular culture. This phenomenon is not new — psychologists Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were also drawn to the doppelgänger and the “shadow self.” Klein noted how doppelgängers show up in politics. For instance, Zionism, support for a Jewish nation that evolved into support for the State of Israel, is an ideological doppelgänger of the European nationalism that targeted and othered Jewish people, she argues. Now Zionism “projects everything it cannot bear to see about itself onto the Palestinian other.”
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.“ (John 3:14-15)
Our Christian life centers around the spiritual discipline of bringing to the light that which is hidden (John 3:19-21), of looking shame, fear and anguish full in the face before God and each other. The cross is the site where we see all the worst things of humanity: scapegoating, empire, violence and sin. Yet, like the bronze snake Moses lifted in the wilderness, Jesus’s work on the cross also has the power to save us, if we are willing to behold it.
In Numbers 21, the Israelites are wandering in the desert and speak against God and Moses. In response, God sends venomous attacking snakes. The Israelites repent, and the Lord says to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live” (Numbers 21:8). Now, if a snake bites one of God’s people, that person just needs to look at the bronze serpent to live.
The poison and the shame that runs through our veins will only be healed when we acknowledge that which torments us — the symbol of our faithlessness and disobedience. This is confession; this is the cross; this is the Eucharist; and this is an essential part of our repentance.
We are unable to confess until we slow down, consider and reflect on the reality of our sins – individual and collective – because our human nature would rather avoid, ignore or compartmentalize. We are all so afraid of others seeing our whole hearts, good and bad, that we project our sins and shame onto others. We would rather, in the words of Klein, split or “double” ourselves. We are afraid we will shatter if we acknowledge our sin, but it is our refusal to address it that will destroy us.
We are afraid we will shatter if we acknowledge our sin, but it is our refusal to address it that will destroy us.
If American Christians slowed down enough to consider our complicity in the genocides of Jewish and Palestinian people, what would we realize about ourselves?
In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “The West committed the Holocaust against the Jews in Europe, while the Palestinians are still paying a historic price for it.” As our Palestinian Christian siblings have said in their open letter to Western church leaders and theologians: we are entrenched in a double standard that has gravely hurt our Christian witness and distorted our moral judgement.
I have seen my Jewish and Palestinian friends berated this winter with painful and dehumanizing antisemitic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric and violence. The largest group of people with enormous uncritical political and economic support for the State of Israel in the United States is Christians. For example, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States, has over 10 million members. Using data from the 2020 Pew Research Center survey, Hebrew University demographer Sergio DellaPergola estimates the “core” Jewish population in the United States to be slightly more than 6 million. By these numbers, there are more Christian Zionists than there are Jewish people in America.
Where is the condemnation for Christians and our complicity in the Israel/Palestine war?
To me, our unwillingness to call for a ceasefire and an “everyone for everyone” hostage swap is rooted in the partitioning of the self that Klein so poignantly explained. To stop the violence, we need to look at the bronze snake. We need to look at ourselves honestly, confess and repent. What are the fundamental myths we believe about Jews? Arabs? Nationalism? Safety? What do they say about our own sins?
We need to look at the bronze snake. We need to look at ourselves honestly, confess and repent.
Following this line of thought, our Western Christian antisemitic tropes – whether it be about legalistic Pharisees or that of a violent bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament – are projections of our refusal to parse our Christianity’s violence and legalism. “White genocide” or “Replacement theory” conspiracies are projected fears that newer immigrants will do what White people did to Indigenous communities. Americans who chanted “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville in 2017 harkened to the supersessionist beliefs of European Christians who did claim to have replaced Jews as God’s chosen people — and did so to justify their support of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. Islamophobic anxieties about “sharia law” are projected fears that someone else is going to do what many Christians have been trying to do — establish theonomy in the United States.
These fundamental myths reveal more about American Christianity than those we see as “the other.” They are the projections of our own fears and failures. They are our doppelgängers.
Many American faith leaders and politicians, such as President Joe Biden at his White House Hannukah party on December 11, say the only way to guarantee Jewish safety is to support the State of Israel. What does that say about us? Are we trying to bring our own version of heaven to earth using swords instead of plowshares? Are we relying upon our human wisdom rather than the peace of God that surpasses understanding?
These fundamental myths reveal more about American Christianity than those we see as “the other.”
When we say that the only way to guarantee Jewish safety is to support the State of Israel – even as that state executes collective punishment on the 2.4 million people of Gaza – we support the logic of Christian nationalism that Christians will never be safe without the existence of a Christian state. Perhaps it is for this reason that many Christian nationalists are vocal supporters of the State of Israel. It is not because they believe in the preciousness of Jewish life and the right to Jewish safety, but because they believe that a country built on their values and their interpretation of Scripture will bring salvation.
This earthly doppelgänger kingdom is a citizenship that I renounce and one I commit my life to undoing.
As a queer, Taiwanese American, and Christian woman, I know that nationalism will not save us, whether it be White, Chinese, Christian or Jewish. I have known what it is like to be the “other” who is blamed for the downfall of America or Christianity. And I believe this violence is precisely what Jesus lived, died and came back to life to end. Jesus, our bronze snake, has the power to transform our poisonous guilt into a new life for oppressors and oppressed alike. We must look at the cross to find the liberation that comes through lament, confession, repentance, repair and solidarity.
Jesus, our bronze snake, has the power to transform our poisonous guilt into a new life for oppressors and oppressed alike.
If we ask others to lay down their arms and choose peace, we must do the same. We must reflect and repent, unlearn and divest. We cannot ask things of Israelis, Palestinians, Jews and Muslims that we, American Christians, are not willing to do ourselves.
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