Evangelicals and Islamists in Common Cause

According to prominent journalist Melanie Phillips left-wing Christians are joining sides with humanists and Islamists to attack fellow-Christians in a common anti-Israel / pro-Islamist cause.

It is difficult to believe in the sense of being perhaps uncomfortable to accept, that the Spirit of God may be speaking as much through the modern media as it is through the church. Certainly a recent article by Melanie Phillips reveals that the columnist has been given some remarkable insights into the ‘inner sanctum’ of a major Christian issue which is either unrecognised or alternatively widely ignored within the church.

In her article entitled 'Beware The New Axis of Evangelicals and Islamists' the journalist writes of the growing synergy between radical Muslims and left-wing ‘evangelicals’ around the pro-Palestinian cause. (And the term ‘pro-Palestinian’ has become a de facto synonym for ‘anti-Israel’; the 'default option' of the first persuasion is to join the camp of the latter.)

The piece makes mention of: ‘Revd Stephen Sizer, vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water [who] appeared at an anti-Israel meeting with an Islamist called Ismail Patel.’
In reference to the meeting Phillips writes: ‘Sizer’s participation, however, must be seen in the context of a disturbing realignment in the services of the forces of darkness against the free world: the emergence of an axis between a body of evangelicals, the hard left, the Islamists — and the far right.’

‘So why should Christians betray another Christian to radical Islamists?’

Phillips saw the aim of the meeting as discrediting and stifling those Christians who warn against the Islamisation of Britain; and the article highlights the attacks upon Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo who is a Muslim convert, Anglican clergyman, authority on Islam and Director of the Barnabus Fund which supports persecuted Christians worldwide.

The Spectator piece refers to ‘Fulcrum, an evangelical group’ whose web site carried a derogatory review by journalist Ben White of Sookhdeo’s scholarship, writings and the latter’s most recent book ‘Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam’.

With reference to Fulcrum’s support for White’s attack on Sookhdeo, Phillips poses the question: ‘So why should Christians betray another Christian to radical Islamists?’
(And letters of claim and counter-claim have passed between the Barnabus Fund and Fulcrum.)

The columnist observed: ‘There has long been a notable crossover between the Left and the Islamists, who bury their considerable differences because of their all-consuming hatred of Israel and the West — and in which they find an echo in neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. ‘But what’s new in this explosive mix is the presence of Christian evangelicals. ‘What is extraordinary, moreover, is the targeting by Christian missionaries’ and asks: ‘Why are such evangelicals trying to destroy people who are defending Christianity against Islamist aggression?’

Theological confusion

The very sad answer of course is that much of the Christian church and many in the ‘evangelical’ wing are theologically disinclined to accept that God has particular end-time purposes for the Jewish people and ‘His’ land. And it is in this context and regarding Israel that Sizer and others find themselves on common ground with secular humanism and radical Islam.

‘It would seem that the church is truly supping with the devil and setting the stage for a repeat of an ancient tragedy.’

‘It is horrifying’, Phillips writes, ‘that so many in the church should be preaching against the victims of Jew-hatred and Islamist violence and seeking to accommodate those who stand for the persecution of Christians, the destruction of western and Christian values and the genocide of the Jews.’
And with reference to the European church’s indifference to the Holocaust concluded: ‘It would seem that the church is truly supping with the devil and setting the stage for a repeat of an ancient tragedy.’


End notes:
Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer has taken up the ‘Replacement Theology’ (Supercessionism) baton from Colin Chapman and has had one of his recent books on the subject endorsed by John Stott. However many other highly-respected Bible teachers such as the late Derek Prince and David Pawson take a contrary view based on the unconditional covenants made by God with Abraham (Gen.17:8, Ps.105:8-11). A view contained in a letter to the Church of Scotland General Assembly by one of the Kirk’s senior ministers.