Christian Zionism mixes politics and prophecy to galvanize support for Israel. But the chemistry may be changing.
“Seventy Million Christians Urge President Bush to Approve Loan Guarantees for Israel.”
So read the headline of a full-page advertisement in the January 27 Washington Times. Under it, 33 Christian leaders urged Bush to act on $10 billion of U.S. loan guarantees to help settle Soviet Jews in Israel. First on their list of reasons: “We deeply believe in the Biblical, prophetic vision of the ingathering of exiles to Israel, a miracle we are now seeing fulfilled.”
For evangelicals, perhaps no issue twines politics and religion more tightly than the past, present, and future of Israel. Since its establishment in 1948, this tiny nation has been at the center of heated international debate. But more important, its creation signaled for many Christians the beginning of the end times. “ ‘I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel.… I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land which I have given them,’ says the LORD your God” (Amos 9:14–15).
In the past 20 years, 25 million copies of The Late, Great Planet Earth have popularized the view that modern Israel is a fulfillment of ancient prophecy. In the eyes of many believers, Israel’s battlefield victories and national prosperity are nothing short of the miraculous work of God. And today, as Jews from the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and “the ends of the earth” pour into Israel, some see the stage being set for God’s final act in history.
But do 70 million Christians—virtually every “born-again” believer in the U.S—really support unconditional loan guarantees for Israel? The sentiment, if not the number, measures the zeal of Christian Zionism.
Built on literal interpretation of scriptural prophecies and promises, Christian Zionism considers its support of Israel the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse” (Gen. 12:3). And Christian Zionists not only bless Abraham’s descendents, they see all the nations of the world, including the U.S., under obligation to do likewise.
“History records that God deals with nations according to how they deal with Israel,” says Ed McAteer, organizer of an annual prayer breakfast in support of Israel and other Religious Right causes. “One of the reasons America has been blessed over the years is because we have stood with Israel.”
McAteer is joined in his enthusiastic backing of Israel by dozens of other Christian groups. Bridges for Peace, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Friends of Jerusalem, Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign, and many others contribute millions of dollars’ worth of aid and services to Israel each year. They promote and sponsor tours to the Holy Land that bring thousands of Christian pilgrims to the area. The most extreme among them advocate rebuilding the Jewish temple on its ancient site, currently occupied by Islam’s Dome of the Rock, and restoring Israel to its boundaries under David and Solomon. And together they form an influential bloc of political support for Israel in the U.S., a constituency regularly courted by top Israeli officials.
But the Zionist mix of politics and theology, especially when applied to an area as explosive as the Middle East, is making some evangelicals increasingly uncomfortable. While still strongly supportive of Israel’s right to exist, they are reluctant to equate loan guarantees with blessings, and to turn aside questions of alleged Israeli human-rights violations as curses.
This ambivalence has blurred what was once a more homogeneous “evangelical view” of Israel. And at the same time, it has prompted Christian Zionists to raise their voices even louder.
Friends Of Israel
Christian Zionism dates back to before the formation of modern Israel (see “The Path to Zion,” p. 49). But the dynamics of the current situation mostly took shape after the 1967 war, in which Israel captured territories in the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights. Land became the pre-eminent issue. For the most part, the Jews lost the support of the National Council of Churches, which grew increasingly critical of Israel and identified more closely with Palestinian positions. With some unease, Israelis discovered conservative Christians emerging as their new allies in the U.S.
Support for Israel formed a key plank in the platform of the Religious Right as it gained political power during the 1980s. Jerry Falwell personified the agenda, promoting almost unqualified endorsement of Israeli policies and actions based on biblical mandates. In 1980, Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin presented Falwell the Jabotinsky Award for service to the cause of Israel.
During that time, many new groups sprang up, and older groups were revitalized, joining a network of pro-Israel efforts. Drawing strength especially from fundamentalist and charismatic/Pentecostal camps, the cause of Christian Zionism found a highly visible platform in religious broadcasting. For years, McAteer’s prayer breakfast for Israel was held in congjuction with the National Religious Broadcasters’ annual convention in Washington, D.C. (More I than 1,500 Christians are expected to attend later this month, when the prayer breakfast will be held for the first time in Jerusalem. Its program reads like a who’s-who of TV preachers, ministry leaders, and conservative politicians, as well as Israeli officials.)
While some groups have concentrated on lobbying for Israel-friendly U.S. policy, others have gone to work in Israel. More than 400,000 Soviet Jews have emigrated to Israel since 1989, and as many as a million are expected in the next five years. Their arrival has not only raised the eschatological expectations of many Christian groups but also given them a new means of service. They have chartered planes and boats, provided prefabricated housing units, and supplied food, | clothing, household goods, | job training, and education g for the new arrivals.
One of the most active—and controversial—organizations to emerge is the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ). From its beginning in 1980, the embassy has stood as a symbol of solidarity with Israel. At that time, all other foreign embassies moved out of Jersualem, in accord with a United Nations resolution protesting Israel’s claim on East Jerusalem. But the ICEJ moved in, affirming Israel’s right to all of the city as its unified capital.
With a staff of about 50 and an operating budget of about $80,000 per month, the ICEJ coordinates programs that include social services, publishing, and conferences. It sponsors a celebration during the annual Feast of Tabernacles, which draws several thousand Christians each October to march and show their support of Israel. Last year the ICEJ received an award from the Knesset Speaker’s Quality of Life Fund for its activities, a first for a Christian organization in Israel.
To critics, however, the ICEJ represents the spirit of political nationalism far more than the spirit of Christ. Indeed, embassy officials are vehement in their support of ruling Likud party policies and are quick to label criticism of Israel as anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. They have defended their work against ultraorthodox Jewish complaints by stating that “no one can point to a single Jewish person converted to Christianity as a result of our efforts.”
But embassy spokesman Jan Willem van Der Hoeven says ICEJ’s work is breaking down barriers between Christians and Jews by demonstrating love without ulterior motives. His commitment to what he says is a biblical vision for Israel is deep. And he is not at all apologetic for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He points to the vast land holdings of the Arab nations and blames their unwillingness to welcome Palestinians as the root of current problems. Deportation, he says, is “the most humane way” for Israel to deal with “terrorists” and “rebels” in the so-called occupied territories. “Seventy percent of the Palestinians rejoiced as the SCUDS fell,” he says. “They have no legitimate claim to this land.”
Sacralized State
Some of the harshest criticism of the ICEJ, and Christian Zionism in general, has come from the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), which represents 17 Christian denominations in the region, covering almost all of the 14 million Christians there. In 1986 the MECC executive committee condemned what it called “the misuses of the Bible and the abuse of religious sentiments in an attempt to sacralize the creation of a state and legitimate the policies of a government.” It urged other churches around the world to join in “a categorical rejection of the ‘Christian Zionist’ phenomenon, as representing a heretical interpretation of Holy Scripture.”
In the past five years or so, Christian Zionism has come under increasing scrutiny from evangelical quarters as well, on both theological and ethical grounds. “The equation in which biblical Israel becomes the modern State of Israel is just not consistent,” says Don Wagner of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding (EMEU). In Christian Zionism, Wagner sees an emphasis on secular Jewish nationalism, as well as a hostility to Arabs and Palestinians. Both, he says, are incompatible with Christ’s message.
EMEU represents a small, but growing voice among evangelicals. Founded in 1986 at a meeting hosted by John Stott of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, its mailing list numbers over 1,000. Ray Bakke, chairman of EMEU, says he sees the attitude toward Zionism shifting among evangelicals. “That doesn’t mean [they] have become anti-Jew, or even anti-State of Israel,” he says. “I think there is a growing awareness that the Likud party is intransigent.… The oppression inflicted upon Palestinians in the name of some theological rationale is just intolerable.”
A recent poll of CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers gives one indication that evangelical views toward Israel are changing. While 46 percent of CT readers surveyed indicated they have not changed their attitude toward Israel in the past decade, 39 percent said their stance was now “more critical” than before. Twelve percent said they have “become more accepting.”
An overwhelming majority, 88 percent, believe “Christians should hold the State of Israel to the same standards of justice and human rights in its international and internal affairs as any other nation.” A strong majority also agreed that “the State of Israel holds a special and unique role in the future of God’s kingdom.” But CT readers were less sure (24 percent) that “the biblical mandate is for Christians to support the State of Israel.” And one out of five said, “The State of Israel has no legitimate claim on territories occupied in the 1967 war (Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, West Bank).”
There appear to be several reasons behind the changes. The spread of information about the plight of Palestinians, including Arab Christians, has raised questions and criticism in the West about Israel’s human-rights policies. News media coverage of the intifada, the Palestinian protest now into its fourth year, has played a major role in educating Christians, says EMEU’s Wagner. But he also points to increased efforts by Palestinian Christians, aided by EMEU and others, to build relationships with religious leaders in the West.
A second, related reason is the increased concern among evangelicals for peace and justice issues in general. Once left to mainline churches in favor of an emphasis on evangelism, social concerns have been added to the evangelical agenda in recent years. As a result, Palestinian problems have found a wider hearing.
In recent months, the rhetoric surrounding Christian support for Israel has grown louder. Mainline church leaders have opposed the loan guarantees. Conservative Christians have backed them. What seems to be lost, as with so many issues involving the region, is a middle ground.
“Christians are looking for a way of sorting out the issues for a more nuanced point of view,” says Marvin Wilson, Ockenga Professor of Biblical Studies at Gordon College and author of Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith.
“The number-one obstacle to peace is nationalism, because so often it insists on the denial of the other guy,” Wilson says. “A biblical view can’t be anti-Arab and pro-Israel, or anti-Israel and pro-Arab. God’s heart is where justice is.” He faults evangelicals for looking for a quick fix, whether in theological or political terms.
The Path To Zion
On May 14, 1948, the modern State of Israel proclaimed its independence. For many Christians, the date marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of God’s dealings with his people. But the idea of a restored nation of Israel had been preached in churches for a century or more before the political reality came to pass.
The return of the Jews to a homeland in Palestine was a theme heard in prophetic conferences in England in the early 1800s. Its first great push came from John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren movement. His teaching, which grew popular in the 1830s, explained that God worked through two different peoples, Israel and the church, with two different purposes. His premillennial view, which included an emphasis on the rapture of the church, set the return of the Jews as a fixed point on the prophetic time line.
The growing premillennial movement took hold in the U.S. with the convening of the First International Prophetic Conference, held in New York City in October 1878. It was followed eight years later by a second conference in Chicago. D. L. Moody, the leading evangelist of the day, spread the premillennial expectation of the restoration of Israel. The Scofield Bible, published in 1909, further established the dispensational view of a literal homeland for the Jews.
At about the same time, Christian views of Jewish restoration formed their first ties with politics. In 1891, Methodist layman William Blackstone drafted a petition urging President Benjamin Harrison to convene an international conference “to consider the condition of the Israelites and their claims to Palestine as their ancient home.” What became known as the Blackstone Petition was eventually signed by more than 400 Christian and Jewish leaders, including a U.S. Supreme Court chief justice, several congressmen, and business leaders such as J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. Blackstone’s efforts actually began before those of Jewish political Zionist Theodore Herzl, who strongly influenced the 1948 founding of Israel.
Christian Zionism reached the peak of its political influence in the Balfour Declaration. Arthur James Balfour, former prime minister of England and foreign secretary, used his political weight to push a British proposal for a Jewish I homeland. Together with Blackstone and other Zionists in the U.S., he influenced President Woodrow Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised the Jews a homeland after World War I.
World War II and the Holocaust drew further support for a new Jewish nation. Under the direction of Carl Hermann Voss, the Christian Council on Palestine grew steadily during the early 1940s. In 1946 it joined with another group to form the American Christian Palestine Committee, which attracted theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich as members.
Less than two years later, by a 33-to-13 vote, the United Nations passed a resolution supporting the creation of the State of Israel.
Shifting Foundations
A third reason for changing attitudes—one that may signal deeper-seated movement in evangelicalism—is a shift in theological foundations. For years, dispensational theology, with its differentiation of God’s program for the church and for Israel, shaped conservative evangelical views. Its literal interpretation of prophecy, promoted by the Scofield Bible and scholars from Dallas Theological Seminary, marked the restoration of Israel as the starting point for many other end-times prophecies, culminating in Christ’s return.
But some say the influence of traditional dispensationalism has declined in the past decade. Others, like Darrell Bock, professor of New Testament at Dallas, say it is entering a new phase. He sees it going through a period of self-assessment. A new, “progressive dispensationalism” is emerging, one that is less “land-centered” and “future-centered” than past versions.
Still, such discussion is only now beginning in academic circles. A strong “echo of dispensationalism” remains in evangelicalism at large, as one scholar puts it, while support for Israel is as solid as ever from fundamentalist and Pentecostal camps. Many Christian Zionist groups report that donations continue to increase. And leaders like McAteer are confident that they represent “the Bible-believing Christian view of Israel,” the one that will eventually carry the day.
As Jerry Falwell has said, in five years, there will be “virtually unanimous” support for Israel among evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. But Falwell made that prediction in a 1984 interview. And like many prophecies about Israel, his appears to remain open to interpretation.
By Ken Sidey.
