Church Leaders Abroad Face Pushback for Supporting Israel Blindly, Trip Aims To Educate Deeply

Solidarity trip helps define advocacy efforts for Christian supporters of Israel

[Jerusalem] After an intense day visiting sites of carnage and destruction from the Oct. 7 Hamas infiltration, Micah Wood—in Israel for a solidarity trip with other evangelical pastors—was still processing how he would convey these scenes to his congregation in Manchester, England.

“On a cultural level, the UK does not stand with Israel,” Wood told The Media Line. “That may be an extreme statement, but there is a natural bend in the UK psyche to think Israel has done something wrong, something to deserve this, something justifiable that warrants being attacked.”

This collective sentiment and the virulent anti-Israel response to the Israel-Hamas war has forced Wood, both as a pastor and a father, “to tackle difficult questions all the time. It has been a very difficult situation to navigate,” he said.

Wood’s 14-year-old son also experienced “intense bullying” for his support of Israel at a UK high school. And then, when Wood’s church, The Ramp, gathered to pray for Israel shortly after Oct. 7, Wood said, “I didn’t expect that the first full hour would turn into a Q&A session because people didn’t know how to think about Israel. They didn’t know how to engage in prayer for Israel.”

Oct. 7 was a wake-up call for Christians who support the Jewish state, Wood stated.

“This war is exposing the fact that we have neglected to think deeply about Israel,” he added.

While evangelicals have become some of Israel’s most ardent supporters, the response to Israel’s war in Gaza has driven a wedge even between Christians. Church leaders visiting Israel this week said the need for a deeper understanding of the theological reasons for supporting Israel and the Jewish people has become glaringly obvious since Oct. 7 in the face of polarizing protests.

Christian pastors visiting with Eagles’ Wing Israel to express solidarity. (Dudu Koren)

Bishop Robert Stearns, leader of Eagles’ Wings and the Israel Christian Nexus, has made Christian support of Israel one of the vanguards of his Buffalo, New York-based ministry and is the reason he scrambled to get this solidarity trip for 15 pastors from America, Canada, and the UK organized in a few short weeks.

Christian pastors on solidarity trip to Israel with Eagles’ Wings visits Western Wall. (Dudu Koren)

The group of influential church leaders—who represent thousands of congregants and even more on social media—visited Kfar Aza, one of the hardest-hit kibbutzim during the massacre, and met with families of victims. The participants heard briefings from government officials, including Jerusalem’s former Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi, and Danny Danon, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. They also met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Christian pastors on solidarity trip to Israel with Eagles’ Wings visits Kfar Aza. (Dudu Koren)

“It is a requirement, if someone is going to be a person of principled influence, that they take the time and educate themselves on this place and this reality and this conflict,” Stearns told The Media Line.

When asked why he organized this trip, he countered with, “The question should be, how could we not organize this trip?”

“Israel is in crisis, and we have to stand with our friends. Actually, beyond that, Israel is not in crisis—the world is in crisis because it is threatened by radical Islam,” he said. “We see in world capitals an all-out assault on basic human freedoms and basic human virtues and basic human rights by radical Islam, and the world has to wake up.”

One of the group’s pastors, Mark Cooper of Life Foursquare Church in Decatur, Illinois, observed that reformation theology (the belief that Christians replace references to Jews and Israel in the Bible) is creeping into traditionally pro-Israel churches. According to Cooper, that needs to be curbed through visits to Israel and by emphasizing the connection between the Old and New Testament. In addition, more emphasis must be placed on Jesus’ own connection to the Torah, which he quoted frequently in the Gospels, Cooper explained.

Bishop Robert Stearns with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. (Dudu Koren)

“As goes pastors, so goes the congregations. If you have pastors that are only preaching this way or that way, the thoughts about Israel within the church are going to be difficult,” Cooper said. “And then you have American media, and you have American higher education, all of those things which are rabid [anti-Israel].”

Still processing the visit to Kfar Aza, Shawn Gabie, pastor of Kingdom Culture in Ottawa, Canada, said this firsthand view of the atrocities is important in helping to confront a global blind spot when it comes to Israel.

“A lot of the world is blind to what really is going on. I think the news media at large has really been a biased filter, and I don’t think that people who don’t have a connection on the ground can see through that,” he told The Media Line.

Gabie said that Christians need to clarify their position toward Israel and the Jewish community.

“They are being fed rhetoric that is inaccurate in motivation; it’s agenda-driven, often one-sided, and it’s causing delusion in so many people, especially in North America,” he added.

Stearns, who leads several tours a year to Israel, has not been deterred by the war. He refuses to cancel upcoming tours, as many other groups have, and is planning to bring more delegations of Christian influencers to Israel in the coming months.

Bishop Robert Stearns lights a Hanukkah candle during solidarity trip to Israel. (Dudu Koren)

He insists that Israel supporters develop an “educated, articulate perspective on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because the issues that surround this are not local geographic issues, they are truly universal issues.”

The theme of “oppressed vs. oppressor” extends to other polarizing cultural issues in the West, including gender rights and Black Lives Matter, which “are somehow being tied up into one package” along with the Free Palestine movement, Stearns noted.

“Coming here to Israel forces you to take a far more in-depth look and really understand the reality,” he concluded