In May of last year, the devout Catholic Senator J.D. Vance spoke out about the plight of Christians in Iraq and elsewhere, victims of American interventionism abroad. “Traditional neoconservative foreign policy keeps on leading to the genocide of Christians,” he stated. It is telling that as Vice President, Mr. Vance sings a different tune about America’s Middle Eastern involvement. The United States should provide weapons to Israel, whose recent war has been devastating for Christians in Lebanon and Palestine, so that the Israelis can “prosecute this war the way they see fit.” Whereas Vance once at least partially measured the success of American policy in the Middle East by its contribution to the welfare of Middle Eastern Christians, he now thinks it of paramount importance only that Americans don’t drop the bombs ourselves. Vance’s shift is symptomatic of a broader pattern on the American right, dating back decades, one which uses Middle Eastern Christians as props in political debates but fails to take their plight seriously.
The devastation of Christian communities in the Middle East as a result of American policy is undeniable. Since America’s invasion of Iraq, the Christian population of Iraq plunged from 1.5 million to 150,000, according to a State Department report. The brutal Syrian civil war, in which the United States was involved indirectly, has decimated Christians there, causing nearly two-thirds to flee. Israel’s recent war, and American support for it, has continued this pattern. It has harmed and destroyed Christian communities in Palestine and Lebanon, some of the remaining places Middle Eastern Christians—the oldest Christian communities in the world—practice their religion in relative peace and security.
It is hard to know exactly how many Christians Israel, America’s closest ally in the region and a recipient of tens of billions of dollars in American military aid, has killed. But from the beginning of its war in response to Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, Israel’s own attacks on Christians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon have been well-documented. A selection of illustrative examples: Early in the war, an Israeli sniper killed a mother and her daughter and shot seven others inside Holy Family Parish. IDF tanks destroyed its convent, which housed over fifty disabled people. Pope Francis was an advocate for this church, calling its priest and parishioners nightly, no doubt contributing to its protection. In October 2023, Israel bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius, killing eighteen. Prior to this war, Gaza Baptist Church, the only Protestant church in Gaza, was destroyed by Israeli bombs in 2008, and its pastor and congregation fled. Earlier this month, the Israeli military bombed the last fully functional hospital in the Gaza Strip, the historic al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, damaging a genetics laboratory, the emergency department, and the adjoining St. Philip’s Chapel. Once run by the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the hospital is now administered by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem. It is the only Christian hospital in the Gaza Strip.
In its war in Lebanon last year, Israel bombed St. George Melkite Catholic Church, killing eight, and launched a separate airstrike destroying the home of its priest. This marks the third time in fifty years that Israel has bombed St. George. This past fall, Israel bombed the majority-Christian town of Aitou, killing twenty-one. By December of last year, Israel had razed the Maronite village of al-Qaouzah. In November 2024, Israeli soldiers broke into a church in the village of Deir Mimas and filmed themselves mocking Christian marriage liturgies.
Christians have also suffered significant strain in the West Bank, often at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers, and deteriorating conditions there exacerbate sectarian tensions. The West Bank is home to ancient Christian churches and monasteries, including the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the famed Mar Saba, the Greek Orthodox monastery at which John of Damascus wrote his theological masterworks. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir recently stated that he supports annexing the entire West Bank this year. Some have suggested (perhaps sincerely, perhaps not) that Israeli rule of the West Bank would be better for Christians than Palestinian rule, but the IDF has been known to conduct raids on churches in the West Bank, one as recently as last year, and Israeli settlers have been targeting Christians in the West Bank for years.
In addition to attacks which have destroyed or otherwise harmed Christian churches and villages in Palestine and Lebanon, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are confirmed dead, and tens of thousands more are rotting under rubble. In Lebanon, Israel has killed thousands all across the country, and in the West Bank, hundreds. No doubt, Christians were among them. Israel designed a new AI system to identify targets in Gaza, deliberately selecting non-military targets and permitting twenty civilian deaths per militant—families shredded to kill one man. Israel calls the system habsora, “the Gospel.”
It is hard to explain widespread conservative American Christian support—Protestant and Catholic—for the mass slaughter of civilians and deliberate targeting of their fellow Christians. Many are no doubt convinced Christian Zionists; others want to protect Israel and its Jewish population or defend the only “democracy in the region”; still others stalwartly maintain that “human shields” are the reason for mass civilian casualties. But these explanations fall apart. The defense of Israel’s Jewish population does not require targeting churches, Hamas’ undeniable evil cannot account for supporting settlers as they destroy Christian communities in the West Bank, and democracies should not be built on bodies buried under city blocks leveled by two-thousand-pound bombs—bombs American military officials have stated the U.S. would not drop in areas populated by civilians.
Strikingly, the right-wing American journalist, media personality, and Episcopalian Tucker Carlson has emerged as one of the staunchest American defenders of Middle Eastern Christians on the right or the left. But his vocal support makes the silence of so many others all the more deafening. As American bombs have fallen on churches and American bulldozers have razed homes in Gaza and the West Bank, why haven’t more Christians spoken out?
I suspect the instincts of many are more basic—and baser. Our implicit commitments belie our stated positions, but every now and then someone musters up the courage to say, in part and haltingly, what others leave unstated: Israel is an outpost of “Western Civilization.” And because it is “civilized,” Israel is like us. The enemies of civilization are, by definition, barbarians. It is telling in this connection that Mr. Vance now publicly states Israel’s status as a “dynamic and technologically advanced” country (on a “per capita basis”) is a relevant consideration in our alliance. A politically conservative American Christian might object that, owing to the Christian character of the West, to support the values and dominance of Western civilization just is to support Christian values. Putting to one side theoretical discussions of “the West” and the extent of its Christian character, it is nevertheless patently obvious that the civilizational interests of the West, at least as interpreted by many in the United States, do conflict in many cases with the good of Christians elsewhere. In such cases, politically and religiously conservative Americans and their churches tend to side with the West.
Consider: the Trump administration has repeatedly targeted Middle Eastern Christian refugees for deportation. In his first term, Trump targeted the Iraqi Christian community in Michigan, even though he won the large majority of Iraqi-American votes there during his first presidential run. As I wrote for Mere Orthodoxy in 2021, “in a wicked irony, Trump…began deporting Iraqi Christians in unprecedented numbers until he belatedly realized that this was bad politics.” More recently, the Trump administration has announced it will “terminate humanitarian parole” for Afghan nationals, including hundreds of Christians, forcibly returning them to Afghanistan. Likewise, American Christians not infrequently support the civilizational priorities of the West at the expense of Middle Eastern Christians. When Israel bombed al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, the Episcopalian Church's presiding bishop made a statement rededicating the Episcopal Church to the care of Palestinian civilians and the work of peace, but at the time of writing no prominent clergy in the more conservative Anglican Church in North America has done so. Even the more measured statements from conservative denominations suggest that Christians have a vested interest in the civilizational project of “the West.” In 2024, while acknowledging the ancient presence of Middle Eastern Christians, then-Archbishop of ACNA, Foley Beach, characterized the war between Israel and its enemies as a “battle of good versus evil that has been waged against Israel and its supporters in the West.”
This pattern is repeated, often with less reserve, across the conservative ecclesial landscape. Despite Israel’s targeting of their Baptist brethren in Gaza and the subsequent death of Baptist Christianity there, high-profile Southern Baptists have repeatedly characterized their support for Israel as being for the sake of Western civilization. Evangelicals in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon have called for repentance and assistance from their Western counterparts, but to little avail. The pattern is familiar: when Middle Eastern Christians remain steadfast in the face of Islamist terrorism, their historic witness is celebrated. When they protest the destruction of churches by Israeli bombs, they are morally confused, like “battered wives.”
Thankfully, Christians outside of the United States have proven more consistent. In addition to the faithful public witness, prayers, and calls for peace from Middle Eastern churches of all denominations, Pope Francis became a ceaseless advocate for Middle Eastern Christians. In his final Easter address, delivered the day before his death, he expressed his “closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people” and mentioned specifically “the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction…” He then urged the faithful to “pray for the Christian communities in Lebanon and in Syria…I urge the whole Church to keep the Christians of the beloved Middle East in its thoughts and prayers."
In October, I had the opportunity to worship at a parish of the Evangelical Church of Egypt (Synod of the Nile) in one of Cairo’s older neighborhoods. Its building has stood since its establishment in 1954 by my great-grandfather, Rev. Faheem Guirgis, and the church now seeks to build housing for the elderly and disabled on an adjoining property. During the congregational prayers, I noticed a parishioner prayed for civilians in Lebanon. Deeply moved, I mentioned this later to another Egyptian minister and theologian: “I haven’t heard a single prayer for Palestinian or Lebanese civilians in evangelical churches in America.” He looked at me, waiting for me to compose myself, and smiled kindly: “Here,” he said, “we pray for Palestine and Lebanon.”
It is a deep irony that conservative American Christians, who pride themselves on public identification with Christ and Christian values in a world hostile to his gospel, have abandoned the Church of Christ in Syria, in Palestine, and in Lebanon. How quickly have recent champions of the ordo amoris forgotten that Christians are called to “do good especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10). We have exchanged the birthright of the gospel for the lentils of Western civilization. God speaks to us when he proclaims by the mouth of his prophet, “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.” Perhaps, if God is merciful to American Christians, after the martyrs under the altar have cried out for judgment, the rubble we have made will fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.