(RNS) — House Speaker Mike Johnson made an unprecedented visit in early August to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where he planted trees alongside settlers and was quoted saying that “the mountains of Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people by right.” He also visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem and declared, “Our prayer is that America will always stand with Israel and that we will — we pray for the preservation and the peace of Jerusalem. That’s what Scripture tells us to do. It’s a matter of faith for us and a commitment that we have.”
Yet in all his time in the land, Johnson never once entered a Christian church in Bethlehem, Nazareth or Jerusalem. He sidelined the very Christian communities who have kept the faith alive in the Holy Land for 2,000 years. For the most powerful evangelical politician in America, the Christians of the land of Jesus were invisible.
A few weeks later, Sen. Chris Van Hollen visited the Holy Land, and the contrast could not be sharper. Johnson’s trip made Christians invisible; Van Hollen chose to see them. He traveled to Taybeh, the last all-Christian town in the West Bank, where settlers had just attacked a fifth-century church and torched it. He called the violence what it was and demanded accountability. Then he went further, visiting the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza and releasing a video warning of the starvation facing 2 million Palestinians cut off from food and basic supplies. Where Johnson staged Scripture as theater, Van Hollen treated suffering as reality.
For Palestinian Christians, Speaker Johnson’s omission reenacted one of Jesus’ sharpest indictments of empty religion. He was the priest who would not stop, the Levite who would not see — men who knew Scripture and claimed moral authority yet ignored the wounded on the road. That is what Johnson’s visit looked like. He came to the land of Jesus with cameras rolling, prayed at the Wall, planted trees in settlements, quoted verses about blessing and then deliberately skipped the Christian communities. He staged faith for the world to see, but in doing so exposed the emptiness of a Judeo-Christian value that blesses settlers. He refused to see the church still worshipping in the land of its birth.
Some will argue that Jesus himself lived under Roman occupation and did not spend his ministry denouncing Caesar. True, but he consistently centered the marginalized, warned against straining gnats while swallowing camels, and broke down the wall of hostility between peoples. He wept over Jerusalem, not because he wanted more empires to rule it, but because its religious and political leaders “did not recognize the things that make for peace.” To invoke his name while ignoring the people who still carry his witness in Bethlehem and Jerusalem is not Christianity, it is complicity with power.
This is not about being anti-Israel or pro-Palestine; it is about being pro-truth, pro-justice and pro-gospel. Jews have the right to live in peace and security. Palestinians — Christian and Muslim alike — have the right to dignity and self-determination. When American officials use the Bible to sanctify domination, they undermine both and corrupt the very faith they claim to uphold. If your theology can find Shiloh but not Bethlehem, if your faith can rename land but not recognize the believers who still worship there, if your politics can bless settlers but not comfort the wounded, then it is no longer good news but a justification for power.
To Speaker Mike Johnson, we say: Christian Palestinians are not invisible. Our community is present, still praying, still hoping, still serving. You may not see us, but God does. And that should give any Christian in public office pause. Come and see — not as a politician chasing photo ops, but as a brother in Christ willing to listen. Sit with the mothers who light candles where Jesus was born, the children who sing worship songs under occupation, the families who gather for Communion in the ruins of Gaza’s churches. Look us in the eye and you will see that we are not a footnote to prophecy or an obstacle to policy. We are your family in Christ.
Fares Abraham. (Courtesy photo)
Because, in the end, this is not about maps or monuments. It is about people created in God’s image. It is about whether Christian leaders in America will keep blessing empires while ignoring the body of Christ, or whether they will finally recognize what Jesus himself said: “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” That is the test of faithfulness. And by that test, Speaker Johnson failed.
(Fares Abraham is the founder of Levant Ministries and leads other ministries across the Middle East to strengthen gospel witness and promote peace. He is on Instagram @faresabraham. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)