Israel and Gaza:
Mark Tooley and Carrie Prejean Boller
Mark Tooley is a Christian writer whose work I read with pleasure and interest. His commentary on main-line Protestant churches and Methodism have been especially good and informative. Because of recent interactions involving Carrie Prejean Boller, a Catholic social influencer, Tooley has stepped in to referee or comment on ‘post-liberal Catholicism & Anti Zionism’ – which is a mouthful. I’m always cautious and a little dismayed with the phrase ‘post-liberal’ – I never quite know what is meant, but infer it usually isn’t good. It’s surprising to me that Tooley used the phrase – generally, he knows what he means and expresses himself clearly. But Tooley always has my attention, so off I went into his op-ed column.
Identifying Carrie Prejean Boller as a social influencer is a little more clear – I think I understand that. Her writings appear on the internet where she influences people and she has a following. I would think all writing is ‘social influencing,’ but I get it – this is the internet and there is a special relationship that develops in instantaneous electronic media. One might ask for a moment, is this really different than Martin Luther’s works coming out on the recently invented printing press in the 16th century? Or Thomas Paine’s pamphlet coming out to ‘socially influence’ a group of American colonies irritated at their king? Anyway, Boller was chosen to be on the U.S. Religious Liberty Commission, and used her position to carry on at length about Israel and Palestine and was accused of ‘hijacking the hearing.’ The issues here are deep and difficult; enormous deaths have resulted in Israel and Gaza from the sequence of events that began with a gratuitous and murderous attack on October 7, 2023. Boller asserted that her vehemently anti-Zionist views arose as fundamental to her Christian and Catholic belief. Boller tweeted that she would “continue to stand against Zionist supremacy in America. I’m a proud Catholic. I, in no way will be forced to embrace Zionism as a fulfillment of biblical prophesy.” Candace Owens, another important social influencer, tweeted that “Carrie [Boller] didn’t hijack anything. You [the Commission] hosted a performative Zionist hearing meant to neuter the Christian faith. Carrie spoke truth, as a Catholic, and Christian, the Truth cannot be defeated.”
Okay, the conflict has been identified. I am not a dispensationalist. My eschatology is post-millennial, and was developed from Reformed theological sources, which are critical of dispensationalism. (Their point: Jesus isn’t going to get power or a position based on a future calendar event in or out of Israel because he already has all authority and all power – you can’t get more than ‘all.’) Indeed, I was so impressed and persuaded by these writers that I reviewed and revised my general feelings about Calvin and Calvinism, which had been fairly negative, in so far as they conflicted with 16th-century Lutheran thought, which is the intellectual path through which I came to faith. But here we were, its 2025, and some fights you can’t walk away from. More than that, I’m half-Jewish, on my father’s side, although he was absolutely not interested in Judaism or any religious faith. But we’re being put to the test now – ‘Are you Zionist?’ Or are you ‘an Anti-Zionist?’ Are you anti-Semitic? Or do you stand with the Jewish people? This conflict is being put to us in either-or terms, (are-you-with-us-or-against-us?!). It’s confrontational and intended so to be.
Tooley’s conclusion though, is disappointing. The problems here are real and hard. His criticisms of Boller and Owens are easy – in fact, his criticisms are rather ‘liberal’ – can’t we just all hold hands and hope for a tranquil world in which the lion will lie down at the lamb?’ One can disagree vigorously with Boller and Owens, but that is not a particularly serious or useful response unless there are some reasons to assert about why they are wrong. Pulling apart Zionism and being Jewish, or anti-Jewish, is going to require more work than that. People are getting shot and killed every day in Gaza and the West Bank of Israel. If there is a war on, that’s not unusual. If there’s not a war going on, that’s criminal. Is there a war on, or is there not? And can Zionism really be pulled apart from Judaism? This is the flip side of the question – ‘can the Palestinian people really be pulled apart from Hamas?’
The attack which happened on October 7, 2023 by Hamas/Palestine/Gaza/the Palestinians/a group of Jihadists (who is identified as the perpetrator is the very argument in question) was a surprise attack characteristic of war. The propaganda war began the next day, and it is intense. It’s this propaganda war that really concerns Tooley – he wrote that there was a “growing influence” of anti-Israel postliberal Catholics and Protestants. It’s not clear that theirs is really an argument over land. The theological dispute over whether the Church has acquired all the promises made to ancient Israel is old. The doctrine that the Church has replaced Israel as the ‘new Israel’ has been called Supersessionism – the Church supersedes ancient Israel and inherits its promises and status before God. It’s a deep and serious debate with theologically learned people on both sides. But maybe we are not arguing about something that deep – maybe we are just arguing over the land itself.
In the Bible, in the Book of Acts, chapter 13, the Apostle Paul is recorded as making a speech in a synagogue in Antioch. Paul was engaged by the synagogue leadership to speak if he had a message of encouragement.
The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers and made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt. With mighty power he led them out of that country and endured their conduct (or cared for them) for forty years in the desert. He overthrew seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to the people as their inheritance. Acts: 13:17-19.
Paul of course knew the doctrine implied by Supersessionism. In his Letter to the Galatians he wrote:
Neither circumcision [the sign of Judaism] or uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. Gal: 6:15-16.
Paul’s most serious and extended discussion of the Christian doctrine of election takes place in the context of a discussion about the Jews generally (the entirety of chapter 9 of his Letter to the Romans). So if we decide we can’t solve the larger issues implied by Supersessionism, how about the lesser issues – who gets to control the land? Zionism is about more than controlling land. Zionism is a nationalist, political and ideological movement. Tooley complained that Boller and Owens were conflating Zionism with Jews and Jewishness generally, and that was being conflated with Zionist control, and that Boller and Owens were further conflating all that with the Evangelical doctrine of Dispensationalism. One of the reasons Tooley’s response is not particularly forceful is that he winds up trying to defend Catholics and “many Catholic statements affirming fraternity with Jews.” But Catholics are their own best spokesmen. If Boller and Owens are wrong about their characterizations of Catholic theological or political opinion, there are other people better situated to issue the corrective – that famous Villanova grad, Pope Leo XIV, comes to mind.
I am in a prayer group with some people who are highly supportive of Israel generally. But not everyone in my prayer group is wild about Donald Trump or his approach to anything, including foreign policy. So let’s start throwing things away, out of our decision-making mix. Whatever Donald Trump is or is not, this controversy over theology and this armed conflict on and over the land predates him by a lot. Supersessionism as a doctrine is too deep and serious and intellectual to be a ready guide to this debate. I want to take deep theology out of the mix right now. We’re not going to solve Supersessionism or divine predestination and election here. I don’t think debating the merits of Dispensationalism helps either, although clearly that is influencing many people within the American evangelical Protestant church. At the risk of missing the importance of people and political leaders, I want to take Netanyahu out of the discussion. He certainly is central to all this, but only up to a point. The First Intifada (Palestinian uprising) was in 1987-1993. The Second Intifada was in 2000-2005 – neither Trump or Netanyahu were leading their respective nations at the time of either. We could drag in the name Ariel Sharon or Yasser Arafat, but that’s not helpful either. Whatever roadmap for peace ended or coincided with either Intifada didn’t work. When all the roadmaps to peace fail over a period of many years, there is a problem which cannot be solved by changing leaders. In the early 1970’s, when I was living in San Francisco, a Jewish friend of mine pointed out that a local convenience store (we would buy sodas there after playing basketball) was owned & operated by Palestinians, who had pictures posted behind the cash register of submachine gun-armed Palestinian militants.
Somebody Gets the Land
Wars end when one side or the other gives up. The most realistic answer is to acknowledge that the language and viewpoints of Boller and Owens aren’t going away, and Hamas isn’t going away and anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel aren’t going away and they can’t be neatly categorized or subdivided – but somebody gets the land. Israel gets the land. If Hamas doesn’t give up, I guess they’ll keep shooting, and Israel will respond with firepower at the ratio of 100 to 1. Neither political leaders, or even the tragedy of civilian deaths and body counts, is going to change something fundamental and possessory. Israel gets the land. Whatever happens after that is the subject of debate and one hopes, God’s mercy and Christian charitable intervention. But our Civil War didn’t end until the South really gave up. World War II ended when Germany and Japan really gave up.
There are large groups of people involved. How we characterize them and their rights is the subject of the propaganda war. Israelis and Israeli rights, Palestinians and Palestinian rights, whether characterized by Hamas, European intellectual thought and diplomacy, American evangelical thinkers, Donald’s Trump emissaries and interventions, or characterized by Boller and Owens or Tucker Carlson – are all in irreconcilable conflict. Whether anyone agrees or accepts the characterization of an adversary is beyond the power of commentators to suppress or modify. Tooley’s fond hopes don’t change anything and he can no more police speech than can the New York Times. The only way there’s going to be peace (meaning, an end to shooting) is when one side or the other gives up. You don’t have to be a dispensationalist to grasp that Israel isn’t going to give up. That will be equally true when Netanyahu is no longer in office and Trump is no longer in office, and entire political administrations in both countries have turned over multiple times. The names and the intellectual controversy and verbal sniping and re-characterizations of history and political spin (and assertions that one’s position is because one is Catholic, or Jewish, or Muslim) may continue until the cows come home. The Palestinians, who did not object to 400 years of Turkish rule under the Ottoman Empire which controlled Palestine, may complain bitterly and even justly, but it will not change anything. The shooting war will continue until one side or the other gives up. To say so bluntly sounds harsh, but it needs to be said until the conflict really ends and the problems of a displaced people are really confronted.
Boller and Owens should not be silenced and they are not necessarily pointing to a nastier world – Tooley is missing the point. Boller and Owens are complaining bitterly about the consequences of the conflict, including the tragic deaths of many civilians, and that is speech we should have the intestinal fortitude to hear. Agree or disagree, people are allowed to, even encouraged to, say what the moral law is. Even notorious(?) anti-semitic and anti-Protestant figures (referenced by Tooley without him giving a name) get to express an opinion about moral law. I weary of all people, even people I generally like and agree with, like Tooley, making the fundamental criticism of anyone’s speech based on the idea that they have prejudicial ideas toward this group or that, and hence, cannot comment usefully on moral law.
For all I know, Candace Owens is relentless in her pursuit of influence, but I’m not sure and she’s allowed to speak anyway. When it comes to Boller, who gave up a position in 2009 based on her opposition to gay marriage, I definitely suspect that however idiosyncratic she may be, she is sincere and not speaking out purely ‘for profit.’ There is some irony in Tooley making these kinds of criticisms of Boller and Owens – in the divisive conflict within the Methodist Church, so often commented on by Tooley, it is the accusation and reproaches of Tooley’s adversaries that he should be more accepting of homosexuality and transgenderism generally, and that if he fails to manifest that acceptance, he is engaged in promoting a ‘nastier world in which religion becomes larges a self-defensive tribe constantly warring.’ Maybe that’s the ‘bad’ reason he opposed so relentlessly the gay marriage and acceptance movement within Methodism, or maybe the reason was he had and retains sincere, personal beliefs based on his reading of scripture (which is rather vehement on the point).
Anyway, two cheers for Boller and Owens, not because I agree, but because I don’t. Let’s hear from them and Tucker Carlson too and if we don’t agree, let’s say why without throwing around more pejorative names with the obvious implication that canceling them is the right way to deal with the debate. Over seventy thousand people have died in this October 7 war – we all ought to be commenting about that, whether or not anyone’s feelings are hurt. Essentially, Tooley’s approach is to call Boller and Owens and their intellectual allies names, like anti-Semitic. He ought to know better. There are more serious moral problems than that, which have to be heard. Even if Israel gets the land (including the West Bank) and ends the conflict with a complete overwhelming military victory and gets called all sorts of names – and we all grow up and confront the problems of a displaced people, who are not going to solve their problems with gratuitous, surprise massacres.