Christian nationalism is on the move—even here in British Columbia, Canada.

It’s Rosh Hashanah afternoon. Tashlich time. I’m in a Park in downtown Coquitlam with about 30 members of the Burquest Jewish Community. Our ritual flows a bit freely. Members come late, strangers wander by to watch, it’s all good. 

We sing, we dance, we talk. And then we toss into the water things we’d like to disappear from the world. Antisemitism, Hate, War, Xenophobia. One older woman, a Russian-Israeli immigrant, cries as we toss away war. Let’s call her Irma. Irma is desperate for peace in her communities. So, her tears flow even as she dances.

About halfway through the ritual, a middle aged woman joins us. Others greet her, so I assume they know her. She waves her phone in my face. “There’s your Isaiah,” she says. And points to some prophetic verses about the ingathering of the exiles. I think it’s a little odd. but I want to be inclusive. So I invite her to read the verses to the group.

Well that is a mistake.

After the last circle dance, she comes up to me again. This time, she is complaining about the weekly pro-Palestine rallies at Coquitlam City Hall. She says, “When will those Muslim people realize that Jews and Christians practice the true religion, the one God wants?” 

And I reply, “God loves all people.”

“You know,” she says, “in my tradition, sometimes we each receive a private prayer language from God. We call it speaking in tongues. May I share something of what I received with you?”

“Okay,” I say, though it’s obvious I don’t mean it.

She says—and I am not making this up—some creative syllables that sound very much like:

“La ilaha illallah, bismillah ir rahman ir rahim.”

This is a mashup of the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith, and the beginning of Sura al-Fatiha, the opening words of the Qur’an.

Then she says, “The guy fixing the wall in Starbucks said it’s Aramaic.”

“Well,” I say, “I can’t quite make out the words, but it sounds like Arabic to me.”

“It’s not Arabic,” she says.

“It’s not Aramaic,” I say.

By now she’s tried to bond with me three times—over scripture, theology, and language. But she has failed each time.

So she looks around for someone more vulnerable. She walks over to Irma. “I’m so sorry you’re crying,” she says. “May I share with you some words of prayer?”

“No,” I say. But then Irma says, “Okay.”

The Christian missionary—can I call her that now? The missionary says, “In our tradition we pray, ‘God, please bring your true Messiah to make peace between the nations’.”

“No,” I say again. “You’ve crossed a line. Do not feed us words of prayer.”

Then she says—I am not making this up either—“I was praying for your Messiah, not for ours.”

I give her the death look, and she leaves.

There was really no point in discussing theology. What would I say? 

“Look, I know you love the state of Israel. But you confuse it with the biblical people Israel. And you think that modern Jews aren’t the true heirs of God’s promises to biblical Israel. You believe, in fact, that Christians are the true heirs. In a twisted way, you believe that Christians are the real Jews, and you can’t wait for us to fade away. You want us misguided atavistic Jews to gather in the land because you believe it will trigger Armageddon. And in the course of that brutal war, we Jews will all convert or be killed. And finally the world will be ready for 1,000 years of Christ’s reign.”

What would she do if I said that? Probably pull out her phone’s Bible app again, and show me some more verses.

And then what would I do? Go all scholarly on her and say, “Your millennialist, dispensationalist, rapture-based theology is not actually Biblical. It’s not even in the book of Revelation. Actually Irish preacher John Nelson Darby came up with it in 1830, trying to harmonize contradictory Bible verses about the end times. But these verses were all written by different authors in different times and different political situations in different eras who meant very different things. But some wealthy British government officials liked it, and it became the basis for British support for Zionism. A wealthy American publisher liked it, too, because it resonated with his vision for a purified Christian America. So he wove it into a new biblical commentary, and spread it far and wide.”

But I won’t say that. Because, for her, this isn’t an intellectual matter. It’s an emotional one. Her beliefs are shaped by a politics of scarcity, fear, and resentment. As she sees it, COVID restrictions trampled on the religious freedom to gather in big groups. We don’t say Merry Christmas any more, so Christians are silenced. The Islamic empire sends its noisy representatives to implement Sharia law under a charade of diversity.

For her, the only solution is Christian Nationalism. In North America now. And eventually, in the blessed end times, in Israel, too. And then everywhere around the world.