Two years ago, in a news briefing, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) was among the first to sound the alarm that Evangelical Christians had launched an organized effort to abandon their long-held Biblical commitment to Israel: “Just when the annual ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ campaign will be hitting college campuses across North America this week, Palestinian Christians are hosting a five-day conference in Bethlehem which is expected to convey many of the same messages and aims of seeking to delegitimize Israel. What makes this “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference unusual is that it is largely an initiative of Christians from the Evangelical movement, whose ranks traditionally have held favorable views on Israel.”
Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) is a biennial conference event held at Bethlehem Bible College in Bethlehem, Israel. In this, its fourth year, roughly 600 Christian pastors and leaders from a variety of nations will gather around the theme “The Gospel in the Face of Religious Extremism.”
Bethlehem Bible College is the host and sponsor. NGO Monitor said of the 2014 conference the CATC “seeks to advance the Palestinian nationalist agenda within Evangelical Christian churches, while simultaneously reviving theological anti-Semitic themes such as replacement theology.”
Replacement theology governs the Bethlehem College’s pro-Palestinian sympathies. It is a theology rooted in ancient Christianity. It falsely affirms that Christianity has replaced Judaism and Israel in God’s economy. The Christian Church is considered the “New Israel” or “the Israel of God.” For two thousand years, this theological stance has commonly misconstrued Bible narratives to defame Israel and the Jews.