Walking on the Pages of the Word of God pdf

Walking on the Pages of the Word of God – Self, Land, and Text Among Evangelical Volunteers in Jerusalem By Aron Engberg

WALKING ON THE PAGES OF THE WORD OF GOD

Book’s Introduction

Jerusalem, October 10th 2011, Thursday, 19:30

It is a special night in Binyenei HaUma, the International Convention Center in western Jerusalem. There is great excitement in the air as multi- coloured spotlights slice through the hall accompanied by a massive soundscape of catchy Evangelical praise music. On stage, the songs are performed by a highly professional 25- piece orchestra and choir, while the 6,000- strong Evangelical audience contributes to the atmosphere by singing the lyrics projected onto three huge television screens that flank the stage.

It is the early stages of fieldwork and I have chosen a spot up on the higher balcony with my audio recorder and notebook, looking down in fascination at the gathered Evangelicals that are here for the opening night of the Feast of Tabernacles 2011.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Israel— light of the Nations”: a title which, according to the accompanying booklet, speaks to the “enormous blessings which emanated from the people of Israel out to the gentiles” and the debt of gratitude that gentiles owe the Jewish people.1

From the stage, Jürgen Bühler, the newly appointed executive director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (icej), announces, “Salvation came from Israel”.

The steady flow of praise music is interrupted as the flags of all the represented countries are paraded, each accompanied by a cheer from a section of the audience as their own national symbol appears on stage. In my notebook I reach a total of 80- something different flags, from all continents, before a major roar from the gathered Christians erupts as the Degel Yisra’el enters the stage.

As the band resumes playing and the crowd of Evangelicals stretches their hands towards the heavens in praise I, slightly bewildered by the performance, reflect upon what brings all these Christians from so many countries together here, and what occasions this massive show of solidarity and support.

A dance company in traditional-looking Jewish clothing whirls over the stage in a performance that symbolically connects the founding of the state in 1948 with themes centered on restoration and rebirth.

It is a professionally choreographed and highly entertaining spectacle, more resembling a gala event or the Eurovision Song Contest than any charismatic service that I have ever had the chance to visit before. It is a powerful manifestation of the energy and momentum of an emerging global Christian movement.

As I leave the event, I am unable to find a taxi driver willing to take me all the way from the convention centre in West Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives in the eastern part of town where I rent a room at the Augusta Victoria.

Instead, the driver drops me off by the Damascus gate and leaves me to walk the last kilometres up the hill by the northern side of the Old Town wall, the valley of Al- Sawana, and through the Arab neighbourhoods that climb the slope of the Mount of Olives. As I stroll through the more- or- less silent Jerusalem quarters the sense of wonder still has not left me and I return to my previous musings: What is it about Israel that invokes such strong religious emotions?

What is it that makes thousands of Evangelicals travel here to express their solidarity with a state, its culture, and its politics, a state to which they do not belong?

Empirically speaking, there is something enchanting about Israel.

Throughout the centuries, the land has occupied an important place in the religious imaginaries not only of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but also of Bahá’ís, Samaritans, Rastafaris, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, African Hebrew Israelites, and many other groups. The land is profoundly intertwined in the religious narratives of several of the world’s major religions, both as a holy location that God selected as His special dwelling place, and as the locus of the final judgement and the eschatological endgame.

These imaginaries have also been enacted in cult and ritual, remembered in testimonies, and praised in liturgies and hymns.

In some of these, the “Holy Land” continues to represent a place of particular and unique divine presence.

Periodically, Israel has also been a frequent destination for pilgrims from different religious orientations undertaking journeys that were sometimes recorded in text and often in turn became embedded in the cultic use of the land through narrative representation.

Historically, however, the land was more often imagined than visited and, outside its borders, often became a mental representation rather than an actual place where people lived and worked.

In Christianity, the actual territory to some extent became detached from religious imaginaries and the role it served in religious discourses and practices; the myth often eclipsed the facts (Bowman 1991b).

The place also has a considerable history of intermittent religious strife during which religious imaginaries have been translated into a wish for political- territorial control: visible, for instance, in the history of the crusades, as well as in some aspects of the contemporary conflict.

The long religious history of the land is still evident in Jerusalem to the con-temporary visitor, not only in the architecture left by different rulers and peo-ples, but in the multitude of religious, ethnic, and cultural identities that still