Christian Zionism
can be defined as Christian support for the Zionist cause — the return of the Jewish people to its biblical homeland in Israel. It is a belief among some
Christians that the return of Jews to Israel is in
line with a biblical prophecy, and is necessary for Jesus to
return to Earth as its king. These Christians are partly
motivated by the writings of the Bible and the words
of the prophets. However, they are also driven to support
Israel because they wish to “repay the debt of
gratitude to the Jewish people for providing Christ
and the other fundamentals of their faith,” and
to support a political ally, according
to David Brog, author Standing With Israel: Why
Christians Support the Jewish State.
Christian Zionists interpret both
the Torah and
the New
Testament as prophetic texts
that describe future events of how the world will
one day end with the return of Jesus from Heaven to
rule on Earth. Israel and its people are central to
their vision. They interpret passages from the books
of Ezekiel, Daniel,
and Isaiah as foreshadowing the coming Christian era.
The New Testament Book
of Revelation is read by many
Christians as a prophetic text of how the world will
be in the End Times.
Christian support for Israel
is not a recent development. Its politcal
roots reach as far back to the 1880s, when
a man named William Hechler formed a committee
of Christian Zionists to help move Russian Jewish
refugees to Palestine after a series of pogroms.
In 1884, Hechler wrote a pamphlet called “The
Restoration of Jews to Palestine According
to the Prophets.” A few years later,
he befriended Theodor
Herzl after reading Herzl’s
book The
Jewish State, and joined Herzl to
drum up support for Zionism.
Hechler even arranged a meeting between Herzl
and Kaiser Wilhelm II to discuss Herzl’s
proposal to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.
The two men remained close friends up until
Herzl’s death in 1904.
An important milestone in
the history of Christian Zionism occurred
in 1979, almost a century after William Hechler
approached Herzl and
offered to mobilize Christian support for
a Jewish state: the founding of the Moral
Majority. Founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell,
the Moral Majority was an organization made
up of conservative Christian political action
committees that succeeded in mobilizing
like-minded individuals to register and vote
for conservative candidates. With nearly
six million members, it became
a powerful voting
bloc during the 1980s and was credited for
giving Ronald
Reagan the winning edge in the 1980
elections. One of the Moral Majority’s four
founding principles was “support
for Israel and Jewish people everywhere.”
In 1980, Falwell,
who ran a television ministry that reached
millions of viewers, said of Israel: “I
firmly believe God has
blessed America because America has blessed
the Jew. If this nation wants her fields
to remain white with grain, her scientific
achievements to remain notable, and her freedom
to remain intact, America must continue to
stand with Israel.” Falwell
disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989, but
conservative Christians have remained vocal
supporters of Israel though they lacked a
strong formal structure for pro-Israel political
action.
Christian Zionists,
through their volunteer work, political support,
and financial assistance to Israel and Jewish
causes, have shown that they are stalwart
friends of Israel. They have donated large
sums of money to support Israel, including
to charities that pay the costs of bringing Jews
from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia to Israel. For example, Pastor John Hagee
has raised more than $4.7 million for the
United Jewish Communities. Pat Robertson’s
Christian Broadcasting Network has donated
hundreds of thousands of dollars to help
poor Jews across the world move to Israel.
When
Israel’s
tourism industry was at a low point between
2000 and 2003 due to the Palestinian
War and terrorism,
Christian tourists visited Israel in numbers
that were sometimes greater than that of
the Jewish community. Televangelists such
as Pat Robertson and Benny Hinn visited Israel
during this period and used their
broadcasts to tell
their millions of viewers it was safe to
visit Israel. Another pro-Israel group, the
Christians’ Israel
Public Action Campaign, sponsored four missions
to Israel. Christians also helped the Israeli
tourism industry and economy from home by
attending “Shop
Israel” days
where Israeli merchants would come to America
and sell their products.
Despite their support for
Israel, many Jews however, are uncomfortable
with Christian Zionists. This discomfort
is fed by Christian
anti-Semitism, Christian replacement
theology, evangelical proselytizing, and
and disagreements over domestic and political
issues.
Dispensationalist Christianity,
an interpretive or narrative framework for
understanding the overall flow of the Bible,
teaches that Christianity did not replace Judaism,
but that it restored lost elements of it.
The dispensationalist view of the Bible is
that the Old
Testament is foreshadowing
for what will occur in the New
Testament and, at the
end, Jesus returns
to reign on Earth after an epic battle between
good and evil. Israel plays a central role
in the dispensationalist view of the end
of the world. The establishment
of Israel in 1948 was seen as a milestone
to many dispensationalists on the path toward
Jesus’ return.
In their minds, now that the Jews again had
regained their homeland, all Jews were able
to return to Israel, just as had been prophesied
in the Bible. As described in the Book
of Revelation, there is an epic battle
that will take place in Israel after it is
reestablished — Armaggedon — in
which it is prophesied that good will finally
triumph over evil. However, in the process,
two-thirds of the Jews in Israel die and
the other third are converted to Christianity.
Jesus then returns to Earth to rule for 1,000
years as king.
Although these Christians
do hope for a Messianic age, the majority of them do
not wish for the deaths of thousands of Jews during
Armageddon. Dispensationalist Christians believe that
the Jewish people, not Christians, are the ones who
were promised Israel in the Bible. In their view, Christianity
did not come into existence to replace Judaism, but
to restore it. This view has surpassed replacement
theology as the dominant form of Christian thought
regarding Israel in America today. Jews who are suspicious
of Christian Zionist motives are usually unaware that
many Christian supporters of Israel have abandoned
replacement theology.
Aside from anti-Semitism and Christian
replacement theology, many Jews are wary of the fact
that many evangelical Christians simply want to convert
them to Christianity or speed up the Second Coming
of Christ. David Brog refutes this claim:
“Evangelicals who support Israel
most certainly do want to convert people. Evangelicals
who don’t support Israel also want to convert
people. The mission of sharing the ‘good news’ of
Jesus Christ is central to being an evangelical. But
it is important to note that this is not about converting
just the Jews — Christians want to share their
faith with Hindus, Muslims,
Buddhists and their Christian friends and neighbors
who have yet to be born again. The important question
is this: Is evangelical support for Israel merely a
tool in the effort to convert the Jews? Is this merely
some scheme to soften the Jews up so that they can
better sell Jesus to them? And the answer to this question
is absolutely not. If anything, the opposite it true.
Christian Zionists
say Jews have
no reason to distrust their motives for
supporting Israel because they do not believe
they can speed up the Second Coming of
Christ. In the Gospel
of Matthew, it is written
that Jesus said about his return, “But
of that day and hour no one knows, not
even the angels of heaven, but My Father
only.”
Pastor John Hagee, a longtime
supporter of Israel, based at the Cornerstone
Church in San Antonio, Texas,
heads Christians United for Israel (CUFI),
a pro-Israel group established in 2006.
Hagee has denounced replacement theology,
and says of Israel: “We believe in
the promise of Genesis
12:3 regarding the Jewish people and
the nation of Israel. We believe that this
is an eternal covenant between God and
the seed of Abraham to
which God is faithful.” Evangelical
leader Pat Robertson echoed this statement
while on his tour of Israel during the Israel-Hizbullah
war,
saying, “The Jews are God’s
chosen people. Israel is a special nation
that has a special place in God’s
heart. He will defend this nation. So Evangelical
Christians stand with Israel. That is one
of the reasons I am here.”
Pastor Hagee claims that
he and other Christian Zionists support
Israel because they owe a debt of gratitude
to the Jewish people, and not because they
want Jews to convert to Christianity. The
Jewish people gave the world Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob,
and the prophets,
of whom there were “not a Baptist
in the bunch...The Jewish people do not
need Christianity to explain their existence.
But Christians cannot explain our existence
without Judaism. The roots of Christianity
are Jewish.”
Jews are also uncomfortable
with Christian Zionists because most have
few other common political interests besides
their support for Israel. The majority
of American Jews are politically and socially
liberal. Christian Zionists are on the
whole politically conservative Republicans
who, for example, oppose abortion and gay marriage,
and support prayer in public
schools. Most Jews are particularly
concerned over what they see as the Christian
Right’s efforts to weaken the
separation between church and state. The
Anti-Defamation League’s
director, Abe Foxman, has been particularly
outspoken and has said that if the domestic
agenda of the Christian Right ever materializes,
it will turn American Jews into “second-class
citizens in our own country.”
Christian Zionists are
also more conservative on Israel than many
Jews. They favor Israel maintaining all
of its settlements in
the West
Bank,
and were opposed to the Israeli disengagement from
the Gaza
Strip. Some
prominent Christian Zionists have been highly
critical of Israeli government policy of
giving over parts of Israel to the Palestinian
people. Christian Zionists, like followers
of the Israeli Right, believe that Israel
should never cede any section of Israel to
the Palestinians because Israel was given
to the Jews by God. After former Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon implemented the
disengagement plan from the Gaza
Strip and then fell
ill a few months later, Pat Robertson claimed
that his illness was divine retribution for
giving up part of biblical Israel. When asked
about Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert’s convergence
plan to evacuate settlements in
the West
Bank, Robertson said, “It’s
an absolute disaster...I
don't think the holy God is going to be happy
about someone giving up his land.”
Conservative Christians,
in general, are viewed as particularly
influential with the Bush Administration
and Republican Congress, and
Christian Zionists are consequently viewed
as also having greater access to decisionmakers.
It is not clear, however, that pro-Israel
Christians have exerted decisive influence
on any significant decisions and their
clout is expected to decline if Democrats
regain the White House and/or the majority
in Congress.