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As President Bush prepared for last week's Aqaba summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Newsweek reported on a "very mixed marriage" closely watching the Holy Land peace process. The June 2 article said that an unlikely alliance between Jews and conservative Christians supporting Israel could spell trouble for Bush's reelection.

"The administration won't be able to lean hard on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon without being attacked by two blocs it cares very much about as the 2004 election approaches," wrote Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper. Noting scriptural ties to Israel and implying opposition to a Palestinian state, the article said that evangelicals may become "an unmovable obstacle to Bush's road map."

Could evangelicals politically challenge Bush over Israel? The Washington Times reported on a conference where an attendee called Bush's plan "a Satanic road map." A London professor recently praised Bush in The Guardian for resisting the pressure of 45 million evangelical voters and persuading Sharon into accepting the peace plan. The Australian Financial Review called Bush's peace plan a gamble that has incensed the Christian Right.

News reports have also recently focused on a letter signed by 24 evangelical leaders sent to Bush last month that said, "It would be morally reprehensible for the United States to be evenhanded between democratic Israel, a reliable friend and ally that shares our values, and the terrorist-infested Palestinian infrastructure."

The organizer of the letter, Gary Bauer, president of American Values, told CT that signatories supported Israel for various religious and political reasons. While some of those who signed the letter have publicly opposed a Palestinian state, that objection is not included in the letter. Instead, it said that while the road map is well-intentioned, some of its requirements are already being undermined by partner countries.

"I signed the letter, but I don't think it said what Newsweek implied it said," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "The letter does not say the Palestinians should not be given a state. It said Israel shouldn't be forced to make any concessions [in forming a Palestinian state] that it believes would hurt its national security. Since Sharon has said he's willing to acknowledge a Palestinian state, it is clear he doesn't feel its existence would compromise Israel. If, for instance, Israel were asked to push ahead without a comprehensive peace agreement with Syria, evangelicals would balk at that. The Bush administration would not be in any trouble with evangelicals unless it was demonstratively pushing concessions that compromised the Israeli right to live in peace within secure borders."

Some evangelical leaders bristle at news reports that imply evangelicals are of like mind when looking at Israel. "Evangelicalism is not monolithic," said Robert Seiple, president and founder of the Institute for Global Engagement. "As we have demonstrated on numbers of occasions, such as when another group of us wrote to Bush last summer asking for a more evenhanded approach to the peace process, there are some major gaps in the evangelical spectrum. It simply does not work for us to be in a one-size-fits-all category."

John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, told CT that typical evangelicals in the pew are not well versed in the Israeli-Palestinian debate. "Most American evangelicals do not have particularly sophisticated views of the Middle East," he said. "On a lot of questions, you will get the 'I don't know' answer. It is very foreign to their experience."

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47