Northern African Bishops warn against using the Bible to legitimize violence

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – As Israel’s war on Hamas continues, Catholic Bishops in northern Africa have condemned the manipulation of the Bible to justify the violence.

Israel has been engaged in a campaign to annihilate Hamas after the militant organization killed approximately 1,200 Israelis in an attack on October 7, 2023, and took another 250 hostages.

The conflict has now lasted over a year, and has claimed the lives of over 45,000 people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

More than 43,000 of those killed are Palestinians.

The war has also led to widespread displacement and destruction, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the region.

In a pastoral letter read across parishes in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara which constitute the Episcopal Conference of Northern Africa, CERNA, the Church leaders said their thoughts “painfully” go to the Land where Jesus was born – a land now torn apart by conflict.

In  reference to the use of scripture on both sides to legitimize the violence, the bishops warned: “Under no circumstances can the Bible be used to legitimize the colonization and annexation of a territory belonging to a people who only want to live in law and peace. It is necessary to distinguish between peoples and their governments. The government of Israel is not the entire Israeli people. Hamas is not the entire Palestinian people.”

Sister Jane Kimathi, Director of Programs at the Pan-African Catholic Theology and Pastoral Network (PACTPAN), said the outing of the CERNA Bishops was timely.

“The bishops’ caution regarding the misuse of the Bible to justify political actions, including the colonization of one nation by another, is both insightful and timely,” she said.

“This misuse of sacred scripture carries significant historical and theological consequences, many of which continue to resonate today, particularly in the context of the Israel-Hamas conflict,” she told Crux.

Kimathi said that throughout the conflict, both sides have at various points “turned to religious justifications for their actions.”

“Certain Israeli groups have referred to Biblical claims to the land as a divine entitlement, while Hamas and other Palestinian factions have invoked religious rhetoric to legitimize their resistance,” she said.

The Kenyan religious said the manipulation of sacred texts to endorse violence and territorial control “distorts the Bible’s core messages of justice, peace, and reconciliation, fostering conflict rather than encouraging harmony.”

She said the bishops’ warning stems from an ethical framework deeply embedded in Christian tradition, one that emphasizes peace and the inherent dignity of every human being, irrespective of nationality or faith.

“Using scripture to legitimize violence and territorial disputes is directly at odds with these foundational values. Just as the Bible was misused in the past to justify colonialism and oppression, it is similarly being distorted today to perpetuate the conflict in the Holy Land,” she told Crux.

She said the call from the bishops is highly relevant because it “underscores the urgent need for a more authentic and peace-oriented interpretation of religious texts.”

Religious teachings, she argued, should inspire reconciliation, not fuel violence or territorial conquest.

Yet, the use of Scripture to justify violence and territorial expansion is not new; it has been a recurring issue throughout history, Kithani said, and this manipulation spans across religions – whether in Christianity, Islam, or other faiths.

“Core religious values have often been distorted to serve political or military agendas, leading to widespread harm,”Kithani told Crux.

Father Stan Chu Ilo is the Coordinating Servant of the Pan-African Catholic Theology and Pastoral Network (PACTPAN) and a Research Professor at the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University in Chicago.

He takes the argument even further, saying that the misuse of the Holy Scriptures have been a challenge especially for the Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

“This abuse and misuse have involved the justification of racism, colonialism, cultural genocide, dispossession of the land of people, religious persecution, nationalism, oppression of minorities,  Zionism, anti-semitism, neo-liberal capitalism, White supremacy and Manifest destiny in the United States,” Chu told Crux.

“The name of God is used in all sorts of violence and uncountable evils in the world and those of us who are truly religious and particularly for the Christian communities must literally take back our religion and our sacred texts from those who will harm others and oppress the innocent in the name of God,” he said.

He however explained that in the particular case of the Israel-Hamas war, the religious ingredients only help to worsen the extreme positions already held by the main actors – the Netanyahu government in Israel and Hamas in Palestine.

“These political actors have entrenched extreme ideologies that are seemingly irreconcilable, with each determined to destroy, eliminate, obliterate the other,” the priest told Crux.

“I believe that it is this politics of extremism and the ideologies of race, religion, nationality, and intolerance that it generates that are at the heart of the current painful situation. If we had different political actors and parties on both sides, there might be a different outcome. That is not to say that the sacred texts are not being used to reinforce these extremism, but these same sacred texts when read with a different eye of love and the desire for peace can also help the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity that have caused so many deaths and so much suffering and agony, to think differently about the current situation, and how to build a hopeful future from these ruins,” he explained.

The northern Africa bishops said they stand “consciously for peace.”

“We suffer with the victims, with all victims. We are against war, against all wars, against all violence and all acts of terrorism,” they said in their letter.

They called on the leaders of Israel and Palestine to “have the courage of humility to listen sincerely to the suffering of others, to respect one another and to reject all hatred” and to refrain from “any provocation, any desire for destruction, any spirit of revenge or domination.”