Why I am not a Christian: Part 2

Thanks to my dedicated evangelical stalker for inspiring me to finish the second half of my series on leaving the church. You’re the best, John Eric Spieker. There’s nothing like three years of hate thinly disguised as pleas for the salvation of my eternal soul to spur the writing mood.

This is a difficult subject to write about. I had no epiphany, there is no major event in my life that destined me for what most of my classmates surely consider to be apostasy. My evangelical pedigree is impeccable: I am descended from French Huguenots who fled Catholic persecution to live in Calvin’s Geneva. I was homeschooled with textbooks published by Bob Jones University and Pensacola Christian College; I have never had a lesson in evolutionary theory in my life. I attended Awana, Sunday School and youth group. I asked to be sent to Christian high school, and I later became the first member of my family to attend a Christian university. I even considered a career as a theologian. But despite this–despite the small groups, the hours of prayer, the Bible memorization–I fell by the wayside, and here I am still. I have irrevocably chosen a path that is not the one that was set out for me.

My intention in writing about such a personal decision has been motivated by my irritation at the notion that Christians who become atheists, or agnostics, or God forbid, members of other religions, do so purely for emotional reasons. Emotion is part of it, true. Faith is a deeply personal thing and the role of emotion is inseparable from any discussion on the subject. I did have a strong emotional reaction to the treatment of women and GLBT people in the church; I still do. But there are Christians who reject these prejudices as unBiblical, and I’m proud to call many of them my friends. The prevalence of these prejudices is not why I left.  And though the treatment I received from people who called themselves my brothers and sisters in Christ caused and still causes me great pain, that is not why I left either. I left because I no longer believed that the Bible is divinely inspired. I do not believe Jesus was divine, I’m not even convinced he existed. I think it is absurd to insist that the world was created in seven days when all scientific evidence points to the opposite conclusion. I do not believe in miracles, I do not believe in the power of prayer, and I do not believe that the question of God’s existence is in any way relevant to my daily life. I arrived at these opinions after several years of careful consideration and therefore I do not hold them lightly. Sincerely religious people do not discard their entire belief system for superficial reasons. It’s time the church recognized that.

I don’t think I lost my faith. Faith is a necessary aspect of the human condition. We are social beings. We can’t survive without placing at least a little faith in our fellow humans. We have faith in ourselves, too, and this is exactly how it should be. I left my religious beliefs behind because I wanted my life to be just that: my life. No more waiting on divine guidance, no more anxiety over my interpretation of God’s will. If I make a mistake, I want it to be my mistake. If I do something worthy, I want to be able to acknowledge that there is something worthy in me, and in all people, and it is not divine in nature. It is deeply human.

There are nights when I miss religion. I miss the simplicity of those beliefs. It’s difficult to surrender the idea that there is a purpose to our lives and an omniscient, benevolent spirit who presides over it all. But I can’t live a lie. Even when I’m tempted to return to my days as Bible memorization champ and repeat “Lord, I believe, forgive thou my unbelief,” until I believe it all again, I can’t bring myself to do it. I won’t lie to myself. I won’t go back to years of misery and depression and doubt. They’re just words. Pretty words. But words only. They do not dictate my fate.

So that’s it, really. That is why I am not a Christian. The truth of it is less interesting and more complicated than people like Spieker believe.  It’s easy to call a stranger an apostate. It takes courage to wonder why they became one.

 

the secret thoughts of a guinea pig

My name is Sarah, and I’m mentally ill. Those two statements seem to be the only two statements that every mental health professional I’ve seen in the past eight years have managed to establish with any sort of veracity. In those eight years, I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorders of various types, obsessive-compulsive disorder, trichotillomania, seasonal affective disorder, major depression, generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic disorder. I have been prescribed Zoloft, Depakote, Wellbutrin, Luvox, Trileptal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Lamictal. I have endured years of blood tests, gained weight, lost hair and survived a grand mal seizure due to the side effects of my medications.

I am only 23 years old.

And recently, I decided I wanted a definitive answer to the riddle of my brain. I have lived most of my adolescence and young adulthood with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and I have never considered that diagnosis to be truly accurate. But if I’m really going to be honest with myself, and with my fellow psychiatric guinea pigs, it’s because I didn’t want to be bipolar. And who would? Aside from a few hipsters I doubt anyone sees bipolar disorder as an exciting indication of intelligence and creativity. It’s a scary thing. Bipolar disorder kills people. It destroys lives. It’s difficult to be around–that I know as well as anyone. I have been deeply wounded by individuals with bipolar disorder. My grandmother had it, and her emotional abuse of my mother and grandfather reached legendary proportions in our family. I was sexually assaulted by a man with bipolar disorder. Most recently, I had my character attacked and my job threatened by a woman with bipolar disorder who irrationally believed I was a danger to children. And throughout those experiences I have wanted to distance myself from the label. I wanted this despite my early efforts to educate my family and my peers about the illness. My diagnosis, combined with my concurrent encounters with sexism, developed my interest in social justice because for the first time in my life I understood what it was like to be insulted and degraded because of the way I’d been born.

So it was disturbing to analyze my motives for asking for a psychiatric reevaluation and discover how much prejudice I’d internalized. Of course I know amazing people with bipolar disorder and other psychiatric diagnoses. Of course there is a distinction between illness and character. Yet I’ve found myself in the position of convincing myself of a truth that I used to take for granted. I’ve completed my screening now and the two psychologists I regularly visit don’t agree with the results. According to one, I’m a mix of major depression, anxiety and PTSD. The other agrees with the PTSD (courtesy of the aforementioned sexual assault) but maintains that I’m bipolar. And I’m here in the middle, just like I’ve been for the past eight years.

I know I get depressed. That I get anxious, and that my self esteem is unusually precarious. That’s really all I know anymore. But I have finally accepted that I am a person apart from all of this, and I refuse to let my perceptions of myself or of mental illness in general be colored by prejudice. The therapy hasn’t been completely useless. It’s a relief to finally get treatment for the fears and anxiety that are related to my post-traumatic stress. I cry a lot more these days, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think it means that I finally believe my emotions are actually worth feeling.

The purpose of this post is not to overshare, nor is it an effort to portray myself as more interesting than I actually am. It’s to acknowledge the degree that prejudice affects each of us, regardless of our identities. It’s to protest the over-medication and misdiagnoses of mental health consumers, and a plea for mental health professionals to remember that intelligence and creativity are not mental disorders. Finally, it’s a statement of truth: there is nothing wrong with my brain. It may work differently than yours, but it works, trust me. It does just fine. And, probably, so does yours.

 

Why I Am Not a Christian, Part One: Because I Don’t Have a Penis

This post is the reason my blog hasn’t been updated in months. It’s such a complicated, sensitive subject that I didn’t dare attempt it until I felt I could do it the justice it deserves. I’ve also struggled with deep-rooted bitterness toward the faith of my formative years, and I did not want that bitterness to decide the tone of this post. The traumatizing experiences I had as an intellectually inquisitive young Christian are absolutely integral to my decision to leave the church. But they were not deciding factors, and I cannot over-emphasize exactly how weary I am of the stereotype that prodigal sons and daughters like myself left because of an emotional reaction to the very real problems of hate, hypocrisy and politicization that plague American Christianity. It’s patronizing. Ultimately, I left because I simply don’t believe the doctrines of the Christian church. But that is a decision that has been looming in my life for years, and the process of reaching that decision is what I want to discuss here.

It’s a process that began early, due to one of the most basic aspects of being human: gender. I’m female. That’s how my gender was assigned at birth and it’s how I continue to identify myself. Specifically, I’m a feminist sort of female. And please, check your stereotypes at the door. When  I write that I am a feminist, I do not do so while clutching the severed testicles of the latest male to fall victim to my misandrist ways. When I write that I am a feminist I mean that I was a little girl who used to tell everyone that her favorite books of the Bible were Ruth and Esther because they were the only books in the Bible named for women. I write it from my memories of being an adolescent girl left cold by the relentless lectures on female modesty, purity and submission that have been lobbed in my direction before I even owned a training bra. I cried about puberty. I dreaded it. I remember lying awake at night and begging God to slow the process, even just for a year, and who could blame me? If you’ve been told your entire life that you represent a potential stumbling block to every man who sees you, that it is your responsibility to pay minute attention to your dress and your body so that you in no way offend men, who wouldn’t dread the onset of adolescence? The roots of my feminism are, therefore, clearly emotional.  I am furious that I was indoctrinated by evangelical Christianity to feel such shame over my own body. I resent that I was raised not only with a lack of agency, but also with the belief that I should not expect it.

But chiefly what I mean when I write that I am a feminist is that I believe it is an intellectually untenable position to insist that either sex is meant to submit to the other. I also believe it’s theologically untenable. I think that complementarianism is an oppressive philosophy that survives due to pervasive gender prejudice. I was an egalitarian Christian, and I still believe that egalitarianism is the most accurate interpretation of the Bible. But I do owe complementarian theology something, and it’s this: it is the reason I began to question my faith. Clearly since I later held egalitarian views it’s not the reason I rejected that faith altogether. It merely showed me that organized religion has some serious drawbacks if the equality of the sexes is even a matter for debate.

I could elaborate this for days. I could describe the countless times I felt inferior because the way I express my female gender didn’t match the role set out for me by my religion, or that while I respect women who freely choose to become housewives and stay at home mothers, neither is a job that I ever wanted no matter how many times somebody told me about Proverbs 31. But really, what I’d love people to understand is that the experience of being a woman in American Christianity propelled me toward the process of leaving the church completely. It shouldn’t be remarkable when a woman chooses to have a career. There should be no sermons on the appropriate roles of women. There shouldn’t be a book in the world that actually posits that women were created by God to long for fairy-tale princesshood and rescue (from what exactly, I want to know) at the hands of strong silent types on white chargers. The fact that these things exist, and are promoted by so many religious figures, reflect the deeply damaging consequences of organized religion as they pertain to female-identified people.  It’s a herd mentality, and those are potentially very dangerous–like when the herd decides it’s against your civil rights as a citizen in a democratic society.

In that spirit, the next installment of this series is going to cover the politicization of Christianity.

 

Kudos, Rebecca Watson.

Yes, I’m weighing in on this debacle. You might be familiar with Skepchick founder Rebecca Watson’s account of the misadventures of Elevator Man, either from her own blog, Pharyngula, or one of the numerous feminist blogs that have called attention to the sexist responses she’s faced from the skeptic community. If you’re not, here’s a summary: Watson gave a talk at a skeptic’s conference, and explicitly stated during the talk that she dislikes being propositioned by men as it makes her uncomfortable. And that she wished to go to bed, soon, and alone, that same night. She said these things only for a male conference attendee to ask her back to his room for coffee, at 4 am, while alone in an elevator with her.

There are clearly some problems with Elevator Man’s behavior. Or at least, they should be clear, yet a large portion of the skeptical community does not see it. Count Richard Dawkins among Watson’s detractors. In a splendidly nonsensical comment on Pharyngula, Dawkins posted the following: “Dear Muslima: Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and … yawn … don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with. Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so…”

I’m sorry, what? Let’s ignore, very briefly, the asinine assumption that all Muslim women are oppressed, and that Islam is inherently misogynistic. Let us reflect upon the fact that according to Dawkins, Watson’s brief anecdote somehow trivializes the suffering of every oppressed woman in the world. For a man so deeply dedicated to rational dialogue, this reliance upon false equivalency evidences a lack of regard and respect for the experiences of women within his movement. Rebecca Watson did not refer to Elevator Man as a rapist, or even an attempted rapist. She stated that the situation made her uncomfortable. The feminist blogosphere has done an excellent job of explaining this and the problematic elements of Dawkins’ posts. I don’t need to repeat their fine work.

I do want to take the time to explain that though I am a skeptic,  and my inclination toward skepticism is what ultimately drove me away from my devotion to the Christian faith, I do not believe that any religion is inherently violent and I have done enough work for and with Muslim women activists  to recognize that Islam is only as oppressive as it is interpreted to be. People are violent.  And I’ll agree that participation in organized religion seems to fuel the human tendency toward social division. That is why I choose not to participate in religion. I also don’t think it makes any sense, which is where my skepticism comes in, but! Religious women are hardly universally oppressed. Don’t victimize them. They are not props for you to base an argument on, and to treat them in such a manner deprives their experiences of legitimacy. It alienates them from the progressive movement, which I’ve covered before in a piece for Feministing. Right now, Dawkins is just as guilty as any religious leader can be of creating division where there should be rational dialogue.

Watson’s experience called for just that sort of dialogue. It has not occurred. Instead, we’ve got Dawkins and his impressively solid denial of male privilege at Pharyngula. We’ve got Stef McGraw at Uni Freethinkers offering a willful misreading of Watson’s original video post.  And then we’ve got her co-blogger, Trevor Boeckmann, issuing a “Fuck you” to Watson for calling Stef out at a small gathering for that misreading. Evidently, it’s acceptable to criticize Watson for being somehow anti-sex in a blog post available to anyone with access to the internet, but responding to that criticism in public is Not Done. Best yet, Boeckmann argues that Watson misused her position as a speaker by discussing the reaction she’s received to her post rather than using her time to focus on other activist issues, like gay marriage and reproductive rights.

GLBT equality and reproductive justice are absolutely important issues. I agree that they merit passionate support and activism. But they are part of a broader discourse about the human condition. We support civil rights for GLBT and non-binary people and defend the bodily autonomy of female-bodied people because we believe that members of these communities deserve a level of respect that they do not receive socially and a degree of equality that they are not granted legally. If we concern ourselves with equality and respect, we should also concern ourselves with the dominance of male privilege and its negative consequences for the dominated. And it is a manifestation of privilege to proposition a woman in an elevator at 4 am directly after she has explained her express desire to go to bed that night alone. Elevator Guy was not entitled to an opportunity to change her mind. He did have a responsibility to respect her wishes. And it is deeply problematic for the skeptical community to behave as if Rebecca Watson did other oppressed classes a disservice by focusing on the ways her peers have responded to her concern for her safety.

It is part of the same fight. It is disingenuous to separate causes like reproductive justice and GLBT equality from the need to address male privilege and the injustices that force women to display caution in certain situations. So I support Rebecca Watson. I support her primarily as another woman who has received countless warnings about stranger danger, and can empathize with the discomfort and concern caused by this man’s behavior. It is not a difficult thing to understand, which is why I’m so disappointed that a community that prides itself on its intellectual caliber still remains so deeply in thrall to sexism.

 

A brief note from my parents

Dear friends,

We are so grateful for your response to our daughter Sarah’s request for help furthering her academic future. As many of you know, medical costs and mounting student loan debt have us committed to a point beyond which we cannot go. Your generosity is truly an answer to prayer.

Many many thanks and Blessings to you all!!

Gene and Melody Jones

 

And from me: thank you again, everyone.

 

Update

So, wow. The response to my previous post has been so much larger than I’d originally hoped, and I am so grateful. As of today (6/25/2011) I am $37. 36 over my stated need. If you donated today/late yesterday and would like a little money back since I met my goal, let me know. If not, any extra money people choose to give will be directed toward basic living expenses when I arrive in London. I’ll need a cheap cell phone, for example, and food. It’s up to the donors. Hopefully my search for a second job will be successful soon!

My parents are in the process of writing a note to thank everyone who’s helped me out. Thanks to your generosity, I’ll be the first person in my mom’s family to grad school–and as far as I know, I’ll be the first woman to do so in my dad’s. It’s a big deal for all of us. Thank you again. And in September, look for updates about school!

 

Help an aspiring student (or two)

And yes, I am one of those students.

I have been accepted to Goldsmiths, University of London for an MA in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy. It’s a wonderful program and I’m so excited to have the opportunity to attend. Unfortunately, getting there costs more money than I earn as a substitute preschool teacher. Thanks to an ever-mounting pile of medical bills due to a diagnosis of hereditary spherocytosis (among other factors) I’m ineligible for a credit card or a private loan. Fortunately, I qualify for student loans, and since I missed the deadlines for scholarships, that will be how I pay for my education. But I also need to apply for my student visa and purchase a plane ticket.

So far, I have saved $301. It doesn’t sound like much. But every spare bit of change I have is going into my savings, and it still won’t be enough. Total cost of plane ticket and visa so far: $878. I make about $700 a month. And I’m looking for a second job, but nothing’s come through yet.

So I’m asking for help.  My family can’t contribute due to medical bills, so it’s up to me to raise the funds to continue my education. And I would prefer not to ask for help. I’ve avoided it for a while. But my education is very important to me, and this program fills a significant gap in my international studies background. Furthermore, without an MA, I’ll be unable to move very far in the international nonprofit world. My current situation leaves me with few other options.

If you can help me out, click the donate button located on the bottom of this page. And because I’m not the only student in this situation, please consider checking out this website: http://dinagoestooxford.wordpress.com/. Unlike me, she’s ineligible for any sort of student aid and needs even more help than I do.

You can direct any further questions about the program, my career aspirations or my current work with activists to the contact info I provided in the About Me page, or in the comments. And thank you for reading.

Update: Thanks to some incredibly generous people I have been able to raise $211. That puts my total savings at $508–which means I’m only $44 away from my plane ticket, and $370 away from paying for both the ticket and the visa. My parents also send their thanks. My student loan payments have started coming due and won’t be deferred due to grad school until October. This help means I’m able to send them some extra money so they can actually make the payments. They are so relieved, and so am I. Thank you again.

 

Safe spaces for men: necessary or not?

The litany of abuses hurled at feminist blogs by Men’s Rights Activists are probably familiar to anyone who spends any amount of time in the blogosphere. And for the most part, the accusations are bullshit. The claims that most rape accusations are false, that women are more abusive than men, or that feminism is somehow out to curtail men’s rights out of misandrist motivations drown out actually relevant points about men’s custody rights and lack of shelters or support for male victims of abuse. Ozymandias has a really great post on those points and the overall relevance of men’s rights  to the feminist movement here, and it led me to this question: where are the safe spaces for men?  So many feminist blogs identify themselves as “safe spaces,” though my blog is not one of them, but where are similar spaces for male-identified people?

I’ve heard the argument that the entire world is a “safe space” for men, but I don’t necessarily believe that’s true. That argument ignores men who are survivors, men who are seriously questioning the version of masculinity laid out for them by a patriarchal system, men who are transitioning, or find themselves elsewhere on the non-binary spectrum. It ignores men who are victims of emotional and physical abuse, and men who feel that their body types don’t quite measure to the ideal standard. There is a need for the sort of space that acknowledges these concerns and provides  an environment where questions can be asked, experiences shared and solutions devised.

Men do enjoy privilege due to their gender. Since I come from a Christian fundamentalist background in the Bible Belt, and attended a religious university, I can assure you that I have not been “indoctrinated” with feminism the way so many MRAs have claimed. The existence of male privilege has always been evident to me, as a woman in a religion that denied me leadership due to my sex, living in the American South with a long-held interest in politics and public affairs. These three spheres are male-dominated and that fact is well documented. I really see no need to defend that here. But men can absolutely face oppression in ways that do not necessarily relate to their sex, and the feminist movement cannot truly identify itself as progressive unless it acknowledges that fact. I’m not certain if the answer is more feminism, or an equivalent men’s movement (and not the sort that has manifested itself on the Spearhead), or a broader turn toward egalitarianism.

But I’d like to see safe spaces for men. I’d like to see more feminists call for the establishment of these spaces. And I have criticisms of the concept of “safe spaces;” they’re inherently exclusionary and so have limited use, in my opinion, but their most vital contribution is the provision of a place where it is acceptable to question the conventional roles that are expected of each of us. I’d take the men’s rights movement, as it exists, much more seriously if they showed a serious interest in creating such a space. Trolling a blog isn’t activism, and it doesn’t actually improve your situation a bit.

 

The real story behind Columbus’ lack of Walk for Choice

I’d avoided writing this post out a desire to avoid further conflict, but since misinformation is being spread about the reason Columbus will not host a May Walk for Choice, I have decided to share the story in order to put that misinformation to rest. I do not expect anyone to accept my story as absolute truth, but I will back it up to the best of my ability and ask only that concerned readers consider it as they form their own opinions. So to begin: No, Columbus will not host a Walk for Choice event this month. Yes, one had been planned. You may have seen it on Facebook. Yes, an event will still take place on the same day, but it will occur under a different name and is not associated with the national Walk for Choice. This is why.

The organizers of the February event reported serious apprehensions about working with Raven Geary, the founder of Walk for Choice. She demanded to be added as an admin on the event page, and made changes to the page without requesting permission from the individuals actually hosting the event. She claimed to me on her Facebook wall (unless she’s now deleted her comment) that it is because it was mismanaged. I don’t believe this. The Columbus event was one of the largest in the country. In April we encountered similar issues. One of my fellow organizers stated that they were not comfortable with her management style. Raven then refused to work with anyone at all in the city of Columbus, demanded that we change the name of the event and refused a request to mediate the conflict with this particular organizer. Nor would she agree to work with anyone else in the city. The reason, she stated, is because Columbus “can’t handle being told what to do.”

Let me make this clear: The city of Columbus does not exist for Raven Geary to order around. Though saddened by her refusal to mediate, we agreed to change the event. It is not, as she has stated on her Facebook, an inability to stick with “one movement.” I remain unclear as to what this “movement” is. If it is the pro-choice movement, then it is not defined by Raven Geary. Furthermore, Ohio is facing some of the most stringent anti-choice measures in the country. Our event must be tailored to address those measures. What works in Chicago does not necessarily work in Columbus and that is why autonomy is so important. Her statements indicate a lack of respect for her fellow organizers. So does her continued effort to spread misinformation. When I called her out on her statements, she blocked me from her Facebook. Clearly, this is her right. But it is very telling that she continues to avoid substantiating her allegations, and would rather insult anyone who holds her accountable. I was told to go work for Fox News.

I have the conversation that occurred among Raven, myself and the other organizer saved to anyone who wishes to verify my side of the story. The Facebook conversation on her wall should be viewable to any of her Facebook friends, unless she has deleted it. And I am sharing this story because I am convinced there is no room for her attitude in the progressive movement. A respect for the individual and an emphasis on inclusivity should set us apart from the right. The movement defined by Raven Geary is nearly indistinguishable, save for different talking points. To other organizers: work with whoever want. But if you feel that you’re being patronized, stand up for yourself. Demand a change in leadership if you feel it would better serve the pro-choice cause. We can’t be an effective answer to the right if we don’t treat each with respect. If you’re organizing to serve your ego, get out. We don’t need that. And it’s pretty damn hard to believe otherwise when your response to criticism is to erase it.

So that’s it, really. That’s the story behind the reason Columbus is hosting a March for Reproductive Justice, and not a Walk for Choice. Please contact me here on the blog if you’d like the evidence for my claims.

 

Michael Oren is Right (Sort Of)

Michael Oren’s recent contribution to Foreign Policy magazine (“The Ultimate Ally,” May/June 2011) provides a clear and carefully worded justification for the enduring alliance between Israel and the United States. Oren’s argument contains few surprises; for the most part it’s exactly the sort of piece one would expect from the Israeli ambassador to the United States. He makes salient points regarding Israel’s tactical importance to the United States, yet his piece is not remarkable for them. They are the same points every advocate of Israel parades before a skeptical audience: Israel’s strong military presence in a hostile region, its support of US foreign policy, its thriving economy and its legacy of democratic government. Yet Oren veers into strange territory before the close of his first paragraph as he lauds Israel’s commitment to America’s “global vision,” an ideological imperative he vaguely defines as an embrace of democratic ideals. He reminds his American readers that Israel boasts streets named after Washington and Lincoln, that it hosts memorials for John F. Kennedy Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr. and owns two replicas of the Liberty Bell. Oren’s pride in these tributes to American history clearly demonstrates his disregard for Western colonialism’s impact on the region. He ignores the implications of Israel’s relationship with America for Israelis and Arabs alike in order to present a case for Israel’s commitment to democratic ideals, ideals that he believes are shared by Americans.  Gender equality, rights for GLBT citizens, and a viable justice system exemplified by former President Moshe Katsav’s recent conviction for rape are pillars of his apologetic. This shows that Oren is ignorant of the many ways these ideals aren’t truly represented by American society.

He ignores  similar failures in his own country. The rising power of the Orthodox Shas party, which does not value gender equality or GLBT rights, is of concern. It is also hard to accept his portrayal of Israel’s justice system since an equitable application of the law does not extend to the IDF’, whose tactics in the recent invasion of Gaza included documented war crimes like the use of white phosphorous. The victims of these crimes could offer a countering view to Oren’s perspective on Israeli justice. Nor is the argument even applicable to all Israeli politicians: Avigdor Lieberman of the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party continues to serve in his position as Foreign Minister despite facing charges of corruption. The double standard is continued as Oren lauds his country’s commitment to international law and states that settlements are not an impediment to peace, even though these same settlements are considered violations of international law.

For these reasons, the legacy of Israel’s democracy has been tarnished far more than a casual reader would surmise from Oren’s piece. He boldly states that Israel has “never experienced interregna of nondemocratic rule,” and this is true, if only partially so. Israel can boast of fair elections. But its elected officials do not represent its occupied territories, and despite the ambassador’s claims regarding his country’s commitment to the peace process, Al Jazeera’s recent release of the “Palestine Papers” reveal Israel’s decades-long reticence to the numerous compromises set forward by the Fatah administration of the West Bank, as well its refusal to negotiate with the democratically elected government of the Gaza Strip. That reticence is demonstrated again this month as Israel announced it will not negotiate with the new Palestinian unity government since it will necessarily contain members of Hamas. This exhibits a lack of respect for the democratic process of the Palestinian people and substantially weakens Oren’s argument. So does a new loyalty oath proposed by the Israeli government, which will require new citizens to swear allegiance to an explicitly Jewish state. The concept of  a Jewish state is inherently racist and is incompatible with democracy, since it promotes one racial identity above all others and therefore undermines the free expression of cultural differences. A state that defines itself by a specific racial identity cannot truly be considered free. But Oren makes no reference to the loyalty oath in his piece.

As disturbing as these omissions are, they are topped by Oren’s inexplicable praise for Christian Zionism. The points analyzed in the above paragraphs follow a defense of Christian Zionism that extends for over four paragraphs. As Oren begins to describe the historical context of the Israeli-American relationship, he writes: “And yet, for all their urgency, the close ties between the United States and Israel are hardly new. Their roots extend further than Israel’s creation 63 years ago — rather, they took hold with the Pilgrims’ arrival in North America.” Oren continues the Pilgrim theme, and reminds readers that the Pilgrims considered themselves the founders of a “New Israel.” He is correct that this motif figures prominently in the history of colonial America, and that the Judeo-Christian influence on American culture has led to an embrace of Israel, first as a concept and later as an established state. Oren mentions Truman’s membership in the American Christian Palestine Committee, and also correctly identifies it as a Zionist organization. In its time, the Committee provided powerful lobbying on behalf of Zionist causes. It is a role filled today by organizations like Christian Action Israel, Christians United for Israel, and Christians for Israel International among others. The position finds extensive support in mainline evangelical churches. But Oren does not understand the implications of this support.

Yes, Christian Zionists are a powerful ally of Israel. But the movement has its own objective. According to the dispensationalist theology taught in most evangelical churches, Israel will be the site of Armageddon. Certain major events, like the desecration of a restored Temple, are described in the Book of Revelation and must take place in order for Christ’s Second Coming to occur. Furthermore, Revelations states that Israel must dwell securely in order for the Antichrist to arise. For Christians that believe a literal interpretation of the Bible, support for the state of Israel is necessary. But it’s not for Israel’s sake alone. Nor should Oren expect to find sympathy for Jewish beliefs among the Christian Zionists. Judaism rejects Jesus as the messiah, which is the primary tenet of Christianity. So evangelicals support Israel. But they also believe that practicing Jews are destined for hell, and that the existence of Israel is required in order for the Messiah these same practicing Jews do not worship to return. It is worth noting that this literal interpretation also teaches that Israel will be the site of a massive battle in this event and that only 144,000 Jews will ascend to heaven. It is disturbing that Israel’s ambassador to the United States is so clearly unaware of the Christian Zionist movement’s motivations.

Michael Oren’s blatant omissions, his selective interpretation of the facts and his praise for Christian Zionists obscure the legitimate points he makes regarding the economic, political and military benefits of the American alliance with Israel. However, this alliance must sustain a critical examination of its ethical ramifications for human rights and the preservation of international law. As presented by Ambassador Oren, it simply does not, and it instead raises serious questions about Oren’s judgment.  Rather than being the titular “ultimate ally,” Israel’s violations of international law and its history of war crimes call the credibility of the United States as an advocate for human rights into question.