What explains the fervent support among many American Christians for Israel’s assault on Gaza’s Palestinians? Dying children cry beneath the rubble; doctors testify to atrocities; journalists and medics face sniper fire; experts cry genocide; Jewish Americans decry Israel’s ethnic cleansing; protesting college students jeopardize their careers. Yet millions of Americans who profess allegiance to Jesus continue defending the desolation of Gaza, or refuse to speak against it. 

In the essays collected in Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza, you will read stories and hear cries from Christians—American, Latin American, Jewish, Palestinian—who have spent years listening, laboring, and praying for a durable, equitable peace between Palestinians and their Jewish neighbors. Their perspectives have formed over years in the land, through lingering encounters, hard conversations, and troubling personal experiences. 

Disagree with them if you must, but first hear them out, and consider why so many of Israel’s Christian partisans have confused a love for the Jewish people with a defense of the devastation Israel has unleashed since October 7, 2023. It may be too late to save Gaza’s millions from starvation, amputation, displacement, and death. Is it too late to repent of our complicity? Too late to save our own souls? How should we be Christian after the desolation of Gaza?

Ross Wagner, associate professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, contributed to and co-edited the book. Specializing in Paul’s letters and in Septuagint studies, Professor Wagner seeks to contribute to the recovery of theological exegesis through careful investigation of the ways scriptural interpretation shaped early Jewish and Christian communities. His current research aims to show that theological reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ life has, from the very beginning, required Christian interpreters to wrestle with the textual and linguistic plurality of the scriptures in their witness to God’s actions in Jesus the Messiah.

Other chapter contributors include Mercy Aiken, Yousef Kamal AlKhouri, Daniel Bannoura, Donald D. Binder, Gary M. Burge, David M. Crump, Rob Dalrymple, Anton Deik, Bruce N. Fisk, Suzanne Watts Henderson, Lisa Loden, Lamma Mansour, Amy Yoder McGloughlin, Benjamin Norquist, and Ruth Padilla DeBorst.