Palestinian evangelicals and global evangelicalism

Thesis

The major concern of this thesis lies in the role of power in the negotiation of evangelical ‘orthodoxy’ in theology and practice within global evangelicalism. To investigate this question, I examine how the minority of Palestinian evangelicals in Israel-Palestine make sense of both their belonging to a ‘global’ evangelical faith community, as well as to the Israeli State, which the majority of evangelicals support uncritically. Palestinian evangelicals are an anomaly in a context in which many dispensationalist and Christian Zionist evangelicals understand the State of Israel as being divinely ordained for the ‘Jewish people’. The data which this thesis draws on was collected over nine months of immersive ethnographic fieldwork in Israel-Palestine, with a focus on Nazareth (between 2015 and 2016), as well as two years of textual research. The analysis focuses on the dynamics of encounters across difference (physical, and in media and text) between Palestinian evangelicals and predominantly North American and European evangelical visitors in Israel-Palestine, paying attention to processes of adaptation, mimicry, representation, curation, and resistance. The thesis explores the diverse subject-making of Palestinian evangelicals in light of dominant theological ideas and practices concerning Israel, as well as the context of Israel-Palestine itself. It examines how dominant evangelical theologies of Israel are curated and performed, for example in a living history museum of the first century, and the role of Palestinian evangelicals in these performances. It further explores how dominant theologies are resisted as cultural hegemony. Considering ‘Israel’ as both evangelical imagination as well as everyday reality for Palestinian evangelicals, the thesis discusses how the dimensions of ‘local’ and ‘global’ are imagined, co-produced, and circulated within global evangelicalism. Finally, the thesis demonstrates the unequal access to shaping ‘global’ evangelicalism between differently resourced evangelicals.

Authors: Rose, L

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-ke11ajryk
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Tourism; Hillsong; Ethnography of Encounter; Palestinian Christianity; Pilgrimage; Middle Eastern Christianity; Evangelicalism; Christian Zionism; short term mission; ethnographic portraits; Christianity; Israel-Palestine; Global Christianity; Religion; Middle East; Power; Ethnography; Talal Asad; Arab Israeli; Globalisation; Theologically engaged Anthropology; Religious Networks; Transnational Religion; Nazareth
• Subjects: Social and Cultural Anthropology