Christian Zionism
21 Dec 2023, 9:34 am
I think that's an oversimplified view. It seems to me that lobbying by various large private organizations of American people, both Jewish and Christian, is a much bigger factor here than any purely rational geopolitical interest of the U.S. government.
I agree. In fact, I'd say that America's support for Israel serves virtually no American geopolitical interests at all. I believe Richard Nixon and General David Petraeus (among others) have said something similar in the past.
I know that while Britain still had an empire, some of its statesmen imagined they could use a 'friendly' Jewish state to promote British interests in the region, but they never got the chance to test that theory out.
However, the idea that in this day and age America is somehow 'using' Israel just doesn't stack up. All America's support for Israel has given to America is a whole load of new enemies among states who were once friendly (or at least neutral) towards her. Israel has never even officially supported America in any of America's Middle East wars in return for all of the billions America gives her in aid.
(And the Christian Zionist orgs have the biggest role, since they are much bigger than the Jewish orgs, indeed much bigger than the total number of Jews in the U.S.A., Zionist or otherwise.)
I disagree on this. Assessing the extent of political power is not just a matter of performing a headcount, even in a so-called democracy. It's the Jewish Zionist lobby that has more organizational power than the Christian Zionist one, through the likes of AIPAC etc.
At the very least, it seems very unlikely that the Christian Zionist lobby would get their way on Israel in the absence of Jewish Zionist lobby when you consider that conservative Christians have been consistently defeated on other policies they care about. (1962: prayer remove from public schools - 1969: no-fault divorce introduced in California and then spread throughout the US - 1973: Roe vs Wade was passed, notwithstanding the fact that it eventually got overturned some 49 years later - 2003: homosexuality legalized in all 50 states.)
However, I agree that Christian Zionism is important, and certainly deserves discussing. And yes it does seem to be a strangely American phenomenon. (Christian Zionism was once influential in Britain, but seems to have virtually disappeared from Britain now.)
21 Dec 2023, 1:06 pm
I disagree on this. Assessing the extent of political power is not just a matter of performing a headcount, even in a so-called democracy. It's the Jewish Zionist lobby that has more organizational power than the Christian Zionist one, through the likes of AIPAC etc.
At the very least, it seems very unlikely that the Christian Zionist lobby would get their way on Israel in the absence of Jewish Zionist lobby when you consider that conservative Christians have been consistently defeated on other policies they care about. (1962: prayer remove from public schools - 1969: no-fault divorce introduced in California and then spread throughout the US - 1973: Roe vs Wade was passed, notwithstanding the fact that it eventually got overturned some 49 years later - 2003: homosexuality legalized in all 50 states.)
I would say that the Christian Zionist movement plus the Jewish Zionist movement, together, are much more powerful than either one alone could be.
And, while Christian Zionists (including organized ones) are much more numerous than Jewish Zionists, the latter are driven by stronger emotions, for obvious reasons, hence are likely to contribute larger amounts of money per capita to their respective orgs. But Christian Zionists too are far from ragtag in terms of organization and monetary contributions.
I would also describe both Jewish and Christian Zionism as "movements," not just "lobbies," although, for both, lobbying groups are an essential part of the movement. Both Christian and Jewish Zionism include both lobby groups and various other kinds of groups as well, which add to the movement's overall organizational clout.
Also, Christian Zionism has become much more organized during the past few decades than it was in the past. Previously, Christian Zionism was just one part of a larger evangelical Christian religious right wing agenda, whereas now there are vast organizations, such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI), devoted specifically to Christian Zionism.
As a result, our government's support for Israel has gotten more and more staunch over the past few decades.
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21 Dec 2023, 11:30 pm
Curious to learn more about the history of premillenial dispensationalism (the specific eschatology that gave rise to Christian Zionism), I just now read Dispensational Premillennialism: The Dispensationalist Era: "How a once-mocked idea began its domination of the evangelical world," by Timothy Weber, Christianity Today, 1999.
The author, Tim Weber, "is dean of Northern Baptist Seminary in Lombard, Illinois. He is author of Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1982 (University of Chicago, 1999)."
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Last edited by Mona Pereth on 22 Dec 2023, 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
22 Dec 2023, 12:34 am
Yesterday, YouTube's algorithm led me to a video in which a Muslim man interviewed an American evangelical Christian pastor who opposes Christian Zionism. The pastor was talking about how disturbed he is about what has been happening to Palestinians in Gaza recently, and about how he has been praying for Palestinian children every night.
So far, he sounded to me like someone whose heart was in the right place.
But then, I heard the pastor's name: Rick Wiles.
He is someone I've read about in the past as being a religious right wing extremist. When I looked into his beliefs further, it turned out that Rick Wiles is a conspiracy nut who believes in the "Israeli false flag" theory of what happened on 9/11.
It gets worse. According to Wikipedia:
Also, when criticizing Christian Zionism in the video I was watching, he gave an extremely oversimplified, distorted history thereof, making it sound as if nobody in America ever heard of premillennial dispensationalism before the Scofield Reference Bible, whose success Rick Wiles attributed solely to favors from a rich Jewish Zionist lawyer friend of Cyrus I. Scofield.
That's not an accurate history, at all. See the article linked in my previous post.
In general, Rick Wiles seems to be a big believer in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. He even deemed it relevant to allege that Cyrus I. Scofield's rich Jewish lawyer friend had some kind of connection with the Federal Reserve, which has long been a big bugaboo of John Birch Society-style conspiracy nuts.
Anyhow, poking around the YouTube channel of the Muslim who interviewed him, I also found some other rather unsavory stuff, including an interview with a well-known "Manosphere" figure. For that and other reasons, I'm not linking to any of this particular Muslim guy's videos.
I really hope that Christian Zionism will lose its hold over American evangelical Christians. But, at the same time, I hope it will NOT be replaced by the beliefs of folks like Rick Wiles. That would be really awful.
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22 Dec 2023, 4:50 pm
Grand conspiracy ideology -- and conspiracy theories more generally -- seem to be very widespread among evangelical Christians these days, especially among religious right wing leaders and activists.
As we have seen, grand conspiracy ideology is embraced both by some of the main leaders of Christian Zionism, such as John Hagee, and by some of their all-too-few opponents.
Alas, some of the all-too-few opponents of Christian Zionism, such as Rick Wiles, advocate classic anti-Jewish conspiracy claims. On the other hand, some of the leading Christian Zionists advocate essentially the same grand conspiracy ideology, but with Satanists, Pagans, and occultists substituted (almost -- not completely) for Jews.
Fortunately, some evangelical Christians are pushing back. Here is a list of resources by evangelical Christians who oppose the conspiracy theory trend:
- Eviscerating History: Conspiracy Theories and their Consequences, The Pneuma Review: Journal of Ministry Resources and Theology for Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministries & Leaders, May 1, 2023. (Updated version of an earlier article, The Sinfulness and Destructiveness of Conspiracy Theories, June 29, 2015. Adapted from the book America in Danger, Left and Right: Biblical Analysis, Actions, and Intercessions for the Current Crisis by William L De Arteaga, 2022)
- Christians Are Not Immune to Conspiracy Theories by Joe Carter, Gospel Coalition, May 8, 2020
- Christianity’s End-Times Conspiracy Theories by Jonathan Zdziarski, January 1, 2022.
- The False Faith of Conspiracy Theories by William McCall, Adventist Today, 26 May 2020.
- What Should Christians Do With Conspiracy Theories? by Daniel Darling , Fathom Mag
- “Whatsoever Is True”: Reflecting on the Growth of Conspiracy Theories Among Christians by Dan Darling, 9Marks Journal
- Christians & Conspiracy Theories: A Call to Repentance and Repentance from Conspiracy Theories: Frequently Asked Questions, Additional Points, and Links, on a website called Acts 17:11 Bible Studies
- We Can Reach Conspiracy Theorists for Christ. Here’s How: "God rescued me from a conspiracy theory and terrorism, and he can save others as well," by Thomas Tarrants, Christianity Today, July 1, 2021. (The author is a former Klansman and has written the book Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love.)
- A Guide to Loving Your Conspiracy Theorist: On the Low Anthropology and Grace of Talking Across the Divide, by Brian J., Mockingbird, January 13, 2021.
- On the blog of A.W. Workman: (1) Conspiracy Theories Are Bunk, (2) Human Creativity and Conspiracy Theory, and (3) Blame It On the Masons
- How should we respond to conspiracy theories? on the website of Colin Glen Christian Fellowship, an independent Christian Fellowship in West Belfast
- Conspiracy Theories—A Christian Answer on a website called What do Christians Believe?
- Christians, Don’t Waste Your Life on Conspiracy Theories by Aaron Shafovaloff, November 5, 2016
- Are conspiracy theories biblical?: "A well-concocted rumor can circulate for many years and do considerable damage. Let us think of the hoax whereby Christians of the first centuries worshiped a God with a donkey's head." By Pier Francesco Abortivi. 26 JANUARY 2021
Of the resources listed above, the first one, from The Pneuma Review: Journal of Ministry Resources and Theology for Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministries & Leaders, is one of the most significant. I am under the impression that Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are one of the branches of Christianity where grand conspiracy ideology is most endemic.
Note that I personally do not endorse most of the political views expressed on the pages listed above, which tend to be rather right-wing-leaning. However, because I see grand conspiracy ideology as one of the most dangerous facets of the Christian religious right wing, I am glad to see some evangelical Christians speaking out against it.
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23 Dec 2023, 6:22 am
Fortunately there do exist some (though, alas, apparently not very many) American evangelical Christians who embrace neither Christian Zionism nor anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.
One of these is Gary M. Burge, who is now Professor of New Testament and Dean of the Faculty at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI (USA).
Below is an excerpt from his article Why I’m Not a Christian Zionist:
[...]
After I finished seminary and more graduate school in Europe, I settled into my career as a professor and along with a colleague began teaching the historical geography of Israel in Israel. This meant hiking and bussing all over the country with about 30 college students, explaining the geography, and retelling the biblical stories at the right locations.
[...]
When the first Palestinian uprising broke out in 1987 I wondered what all the fuss was about. [...] The conflicts accelerated in the late 1980s and into the 1990s and they became troublesome to us and our academic tour program.
By accident I met a young Palestinian guy in his 20s whose father was a pastor in Ramallah and this started all of my problems. First, how could anybody be Palestinian and Christian? And second, how could anyone say that this uprising was legitimate?
I then met his father and he invited me to send my group of students home after this trip, change my ticket, and stay in Ramallah while it was under occupation. I did. We spent long nights talking about theology and sneaking out after curfew to watch what was happening on the ground. And here is the truest thing I can say: You can’t understand a story of occupation and oppression or the violence it requires unless you’ve seen it up close — or made friends with those who live it.
This Arab pastor told me that even though I thought I had been to the Holy Land a dozen times, I had only been there once. I had been on the “tourist trail” and never gone astray. He was right. This tourist trail kept people from seeing behind the scenes in order to protect the Israeli tourism industry. But now I had peeked behind that curtain. And there was no going back.
I asked to meet other pastors. And this led to a network of friendships. And more experiences in the second uprising of 2000. I wrote a book about this in 2003 (Whose Land? Whose Promise?) and while it became a best seller my momentary fame evaporated quickly: I foolishly thought my evangelical friends would like to learn what was going on. They did not. By then I was a tenured professor at evangelical Wheaton College, still taking students to “Israel/Palestine” and feeling the growing resentment of my evangelical world. Which culminated in a formal letter from the college that prohibited me from taking any of our students to a Palestinian theology conference because “it was dangerous.” It would be “upsetting.” Some might need counseling afterward. Actually, it was inconvenient for Wheaton’s constituency.
I have returned to Israel/Palestine and about a half dozen Arab countries many times over the years. I have tried to read widely and thoughtfully and discovered that the views of Israel – the theological views promoted by Christian Zionism — are ill-informed and simply not biblical (see my analysis of this in Jesus and the Land). But worse, they are dangerous. I became convinced that there was a severe moral flaw in my evangelical church’s commitments. We were promoting harm and not representing the gospel or the love and truth of Christ in this part of the world. Our zeal for prophecy, our excitement about Israel and our hope in end times had blinded us. In a word, Christian Zionism had betrayed us.
Below is a video in which Dr. Gary M. Burge is a guest of "Bible Answer Man" Hank Hanegraaff:
Palestine, Christian Zionists & Ethnic Cleansing
Hank Hanegraaff runs the Christian Research Institute (a website devoted to Christian theology plus a lot of critique of heretical "cults" such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons).
Here is a "Bible Answer Man" podcast in which Hank Hanegraaff hosts Dr. Gary M Burge: Erased from Space and Consciousness with Dr. Gary Burge, and Q&A. They discuss the book Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948 by Noga Kadman, reviewed here.
Dr. Burge believes that the only good longterm solution to the Israel/Palestine problem is a single binational state in which everyone has equal rights.
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26 Dec 2023, 5:56 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGK-suxAMo
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27 Dec 2023, 8:26 pm
Not all American Christians are Zionists, and even some of the Zionists are bothered by the intensity and scale of Israel's attacks on Gaza. The following article talks about the various positions of different Christian churches.
According to ‘It’s impossible to celebrate’: Gaza war opens fissures among US Christians by Isabeau Doucet, Guardian (UK), Sun 24 Dec 2023:
The United States is home to the world’s largest population of Christians – a diverse faith group profoundly divided along denominational and political lines. These divisions are on stark display when it comes to the war in holy land.
Shortly after Hamas’s 7 October attacks on southern Israel, some 90 pastors and other leaders signed an “Evangelical Statement in Support of Israel” condemning Hamas.
“In keeping with Christian Just War tradition, we also affirm the legitimacy of Israel’s right to respond against those who have initiated these attacks,” the letter read. Among its signatories was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who represents the largest evangelical Protestant group in the US with about 13 million members.
A very different letter was sent to President Joe Biden on 9 November from Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) and 30 American Christian leaders, calling for the administration to “support an immediate ceasefire, de-escalation, and restraint by all involved”. It was signed by representatives of the Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, United, Lutheran and Orthodox churches, among others.
Evangelical Protestants, who lean more Republican, account for about 24% of the adult US population, according to 2021 Pew Research Center research. Catholics account for 21%, and non-evangelical or “mainline” Protestants, who lean more moderate or liberal, account for about 16%. In terms of support for the Israeli government, 68% of white evangelicals express a very or somewhat favorable view, while only 50% of Catholics and 51% of white non-evangelical Protestants feel that way, according to 2022 Pew polls.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which has nearly 4 million congregants, denounced both Hamas and Israel’s retaliation, but said that the “power exerted against all Palestinian people – through the occupation, the expansion of settlements and the escalating violence – must be called out as a root cause of what we are witnessing”.
But even supporters of Israel are concerned about the mounting death toll in Gaza.
Earlier this month, two women were shot dead by Israeli snipers while taking refuge inside a church in Gaza, and seven others were wounded.
Most of the Christians left in Gaza – some 800-1,000 of them – have been sheltering in two churches. Pope Francis condemned the killings and suggested Israel was using “terrorism” tactics across the strip.
[...]
More progressive denominations have taken a much firmer stance against Israel’s military campaign.
Susan Wilder, a minister at the Grace Presbyterian church in Springfield, Virginia, joined an international delegation of Christian leaders spending Christmas in Bethlehem in solidarity with the Palestinians. She worries about US complicity in the war: “We haven’t been a good friend to Israel in really calling them to halt these atrocities that’s essentially genocide on display for all the world to see.”
The Presbyterian Church (USA), representing 1.1 million members, voted in the summer of 2022 to declare Israel an apartheid state. They previously called for US aid to Israel to be conditional on compliance with US law and voted to boycott settlement products and divest from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
This Christmas, Wilder’s church will conduct a “prayer of mourning and solidarity” with a Christian congregation in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus. They have had a partnership with the Palestinian congregation for the past 16 years, but “this is the worst the situation has ever been for them”, said Wilder referring to the death toll in besieged Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank.
While the Presbyterian church’s stance, along with the United Church of Christ, may be the most robust in their criticism of Israel’s decades-long occupation, they are not alone, says Philip Farah, founder of Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace. “The majority of mainline Protestant denominations in the US have divested their pension funds from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the majority have passed resolutions calling for the boycott of products made in the illegal Israeli settlements.”
Some interesting notes about the Catholic Church in the U.S.A., and how its stance differs from that of the Pope:
There are more than 60 million Catholics in the US – Joe Biden is one of them. While the pope has repeatedly called for a ceasefire. the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has avoided using the word, opting instead for an “immediate cessation of all hostilities”, along with prayers for peace.
The USCCB has been quiet and unwilling to help mobilize the public to take the action needed to pressure political leaders, said Eli McCarthy, a professor at Georgetown University in justice and peace studies and a member of the Franciscan Action Network.
“They have also said nothing about sending weapons to Israel, much less the Pentagon budget in general,” McCarthy said. “What I think we see here is the difference between nationalism and Catholicism.”
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28 Dec 2023, 2:12 am
I recently read the following article:
- Why Everything You Think You Know About Christian Zionism Is Wrong by Raphael Magarik, Forward, August 26, 2019.
This article is a review of Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, And U.S.-Israeli Relations, by Daniel G. Hummel, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Raphael Magarik's article makes some worthwhile points, but is also incorrect (or at least oversimplified) on a number of other points, as I will explain below. It begins:
I don't remember ever seeing anyone, Jewish or Christian, ever claim that Christian Zionism is "as old as Christianity itself." Christian Zionism started in the nineteenth century.
What is "as old as Christianity itself" is the existence of groups of Christians who were preoccupied with end-times prophecies. But different such groups had different ideas as to exactly what the end times would entail.
(Googling "Elizabeth Oldmixon Christian Zionism," I find her statement here. It is unclear exactly what she is claiming to be "a movement in Christianity that’s as old as Christianity itself." Looks to me like bad editing.)
Back to Raphael Magarik's article:
Liberals, and especially liberal Jews, enjoy this story, which allows us to score points against our more conservative co-religionists. The only trouble is that it isn’t true. (Even some basic statistics can be surprising, like that “nine out of ten” American evangelicals reject end-time prophecies involving Jewish control of the Holy Land.) As Daniel G. Hummel documents in his new book, “Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations,” Christian Zionism’s history reveals that the movement is “less about apocalyptic theology or evangelism” than about “mutual and covenantal solidarity.”
While I have not yet read Daniel G. Hummel's book, I have read some of his online articles, which I will discuss in later posts.
Based on my understanding of Hummel's writings, I suspect that the referenced statistics ('“nine out of ten” American evangelicals reject end-time prophecies involving Jewish control of the Holy Land') apply to evangelical Christian pastors, but not lay evangelical Christians. Premillenial dispensationalism has indeed long since gone out of fashion in most evangelical Christian seminaries, but nevertheless was greatly popularized among lay evangelical Christians by books like The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, and later by the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye. Evangelical Christians learn their beliefs not just from their pastors, but also from televangelists, radio evangelists, and other assorted "parachurch" ministries.
Back to Raphael Magarik's article:
Christian Zionism is certainly older than the Holocaust, although feelings of collective guilt about the Holocaust did have a role in its development.
Christian Zionists vary on this issue. Some do want to convert Jews, others don't.
There is a variety of different kinds of Christian Zionists, and it is indeed true that not all are motivated by end-times prophecies. But I suspect that Raphael Magarik is underestimating how many are motivated, at least in part, by end-times prophecies.
No, it's older than Israel, and it didn't begin with interfaith dialogue. It began with the Plymouth Brethren and John Nelson Darby. (See History of Christian Zionism by Stephen Sizer.)
Its development has been influenced by interfaith dialogue, and it has been encouraged by the Israeli government for obvious reasons. But neither interfaith dialogue nor the Israeli government are its source.
If Raphael Magarik thinks Hummel thinks this is the very beginning of Christian Zionism, then Magarik is misunderstanding Hummel.
More surprisingly, some missionaries found themselves doubting the morality of their efforts. They “sparred with” Jewish academics in Jerusalem, and had their eyes opened to the long history of Christian anti-Semitism, the Jewish background to the Gospels, and the importance of Zionism in Israeli Jewish life. Some began to argue for a shift from converting to what they called “witnessing”: this meant downplaying conversion, embracing Zionism, and honoring Jewish history and culture. American evangelicals like Robert Lindsey started making a point of Jesus’s speaking Hebrew, for instance, and urged their peers to forgo missions. This shift was highly controversial. So, as Hummel documents, Carl Henry, the editor of Christianity Today and mid-century evangelical leaders, warred with Donn Odell, his pro-Israel correspondent in Jerusalem, over how to cover Israeli anti-missionary measures. Odell called for “simple, loving witness for Christ… with no connection to foreign missions” and attempted to enlist U.S. support for Israel during the Suez Crisis. But Henry ignored geopolitics and focused his magazine’s coverage, Hummel writes, on “a critical view of religious liberty in the country.” This split was to play out frequently over the coming decades.
On the fringes, “witnessing” even affirmed the religious validity of Judaism. Invented by the Anglo-Irish theologian John Nelson Darby, the theology of covenantal dualism posited “separate eternal states for Israel and the church” — that is, that Jews could be saved without becoming Christians.
Magarik finally gets around to mentioning Darby, but apparently doesn't realize how long ago Darby lived???
As Magarik admits, this dualism never became mainstream. There are still plenty of other Christian Zionists who believe that Jews, despite being "God's chosen people" and thus entitled to the land of Israel, must accept Jesus as their Messiah in order to go to heaven.
Particularly after 1967, Israel targeted American evangelicals for tourism, with the Ministry of Tourism and El Al Airlines producing pamphlets promising that visitors could “relive the biblical epics.” This influence shaped the direction of the movement. Despite the apocalypticist Hal Lindsey’s massive reach in the United States, the Israeli government preferred Christian Zionists motivated by pragmatism and philo-Semitism, and they effectively marginalized Lindsey’s presence in the tour industry. . In the United States, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum advised Billy Graham and other Christian leaders on how to speak and write about Israel. He was not always successful, but sometimes he wrote the words they preached. Liberal cavils about Christian Zionism’s anti-Semitism often miss that the movement has been in significant part created and shaped by Jews.
The movement has certainly been influenced by Jews and by the Israeli government, but it's a great exaggeration to say that it was "created by" Jews.
Liberal Jews today judge Christian Zionism by these right-wing leaders, like Falwell, who notoriously declared that the anti-Christ would have to be Jewish, and Pastor John Hagee, who has implicitly blamed the Holocaust on its Jewish victims. But even here, centering covert anti-Semitism misses the most interesting stories. Although Hagee is best known for his end-time prophecies, Hummel shows his success has far more to do with his championing of the prosperity gospel. Give to Israel, he preaches, and you will become rich. The Christian Right is far more motivated by capitalist ideology like Hagee’s and by the ideology of a Judeo-Christian civilizational alliance against Muslims than it is by wilder, apocalyptic prophecies.
Yes, many Christian Zionists are motivated, at least in part, by the belief that they must "bless Israel" in order to be "blessed" themselves.
Indeed the center of evangelical Christianity, more generally, has shifted to the global South.
Not surprising, alas. Various fascist leaders around the world have harnessed some forms of evangelical Christianity.
Yep.
I think I see what Magarik is trying to get at here. It is true, for example, that right wing Jewish and Christian Zionists collaborated in whipping up Islamophobia in the U.S.A. after 9/11.
I think Magarik's argument is correct up to a point, but he oversimplifies it.
He concludes by saying, to left-leaning Jewish Zionists:
(I myself had an evangelical Christian upbringing, but gave up Christianity at the age of 15.)
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Last edited by Mona Pereth on 28 Dec 2023, 4:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
28 Dec 2023, 4:00 am
Above, I commented on a review of Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, And U.S.-Israeli Relations, by Daniel G. Hummel, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Below are some articles by Daniel G. Hummel, an evangelical Christian theologian who has studied the history of Christian Zionism:
- The Little-Known History of Evangelicals’ Changing Israel Views, Christianity Today, October 2023. (Observes that evangelical Christians today have a wide variety of views about Israel/Palestine, ranging from strongly pro-Israel to strongly pro-Palestinian, with the pro-Israel faction being much bigger and stronger.)
- Israel’s Current Crisis Exposes Christian Zionism’s Contradictory Ideals: "Evangelical supporters of the country, who have long taken sides in the country’s politics, are neutral about the recent political unrest," New Lines, July 27, 2023
- Left Behind: What does it profit a theological tradition to gain Hollywood but lose its soul?, Current, May 1, 2023
- When the Best Bible-Reading Tool Made Bible Reading Worse, Christianity Today, December 2022
- Christian Zionism: It’s one of the most successful, and in some ways unlikely, interfaith movements in the modern world - aeon, 26 September 2018
- The New Christian Zionism, First Things, June 2017. (Observes that Christian Zionism is no longer just an American thing or even just a Western thing. There are now growing numbers of Christian Zionists among Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians in the global South.)
See also the following reviews of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation by Daniel G. Hummel:
- Review by Kenneth J. Stewart, thelemios (The Gospel Coalition)
- The End of Dispensationalism by Joel Looper, in First Things, June 2023
And here is a more complete list of Daniel Hummel's writings.
See also:
- The Surprising Staying Power of Dispensationalism: "As a school of theology, it’s in decline. As a cultural and political force, it’s more influential than ever," by Bonnie Kristian, Christianity Today, August 8, 2023.
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28 Dec 2023, 9:33 am
The title of that video (produced by Al Jazeera) is "Why do evangelical Christians support Israel?"
That title should have been, "Why do many evangelical Christians support Israel?" An obvious exception is the interviewee himself, Jonathan Kuttab, who is introduced as being, among other things, "on the board of Bethlehem Bible College" -- an evangelical Christian college in Bethlehem, Palestine.
Jonathan Kuttab is also an international human rights lawyer, and an advocate of nonviolent resistance, e.g. BDS. He was a co-founder of a Palestinian human rights group, Al Haq, which the Israeli government has designated -- apparently falsely, as far as I can tell -- as a "terrorist" organization. See:
- United Nations press release, UN experts condemn Israel’s designation of Palestinian human rights defenders as terrorist organisations, 25 October 2021
- Six Palestinian rights groups labeled as terrorist orgs by Kevin Zeller, November 8, 2021
- Al-Haq Co-Founder on Israel’s Designation of Group as “Terrorist Organization”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 23, 2021
- An Update on Israel’s Terrorist Designation for Palestinian Civil Society Organizations by Jonathan Kuttab, Aug 3, 2022
- Important Update: Nonviolence International Stands in Solidarity with Al-Haq by David Hart, August 5, 2022
Jonathan Kuttab is also the author of a book, Beyond the Two-State Solution, which has the following synopsis:
(Request to all: Please don't use this thread to debate two-state vs. one-state solutions. I'll be starting a separate thread about that issue later today. Or feel free to start such a thread yourself.)
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28 Dec 2023, 9:48 pm
Looking at the Wikipedia article on Christian Zionism, I see that it is older than John Nelson Darby. Christian Zionism, also known as "restorationism," isn't "millenia" old (as was erroneously claimed by a writer I quoted in an earlier post), but it does go all the way back to the Puritans, about 400 years ago.
Darby's innovation was the theological framework known as dispensationalism, which was subsequently used in the Scofield Reference Bible, which helped to popularize Christian Zionism in the U.S.A.
Anyhow, there are many varieties of Christian Zionism. Not all of them are apocalyptic.
A less complete history of Christian Zionism can be found in Rev. Sizer Reveals Christian Zionism Preceded Jewish Zionism, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 14, 2018. This one starts with Napoleon Bonaparte, who was the first head of a powerful European state to announce an intention to create a Jewish state in Palestine.
(By the way, the "London Jewish Society" referred to in Sizer's article was apparently NOT a Jewish group, but another name for the "London Jews Society," a.k.a. the "London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews," an Anglican Christian org that aimed both to convert Jews to Christianity and to "encourage the physical restoration of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel - the Land of Israel." See Wikipedia article on Church's Ministry Among Jewish People -- the current name of that org.)
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08 Jan 2024, 2:24 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FjI7d2TBrA
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May you be blessed by YHWH and his Asherah
12 Jan 2024, 10:40 am
Here is a Publisher's Weekly review of the book Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, the People, the Bible by Mitri Raheb:
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13 Jan 2024, 12:37 am
Wondering about the Roman Catholic Church's position on Zionism, I dug up the following:
- Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: NOSTRA AETATE: Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI, on October 28, 1965.
- Wikipedia article on Religious anti-Zionism, including a section on Catholic anti-Zionism, which was the official position of the Catholic Church until the 1960's.
- The Vatican, American Catholics and the Struggle for Palestine, 1917-1958: A Study of Cold War Roman Catholic Transnationalism by Adriano E. Ciani, 2011, Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository.
- Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1985 Revision.
- The New Catholic Zionism by Gavin D’Costa, Mosaic, September 9, 2019. (The author is professor of Catholic theology at the University of Bristol (UK). He advises the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in Vatican City. His latest book, Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after the Second Vatican Council, is forthcoming later this year from Oxford University Press.)
- The Church and Minimalist Catholic Zionism? by Gavin D'Costa, October 2019.
- Catholic Zionism: The Jewish state is a sign of God's fidelity by Gavin D’Costa, First Things, January 2020.
- The emergence of Catholic Zionism (1948-2005): an examination of the theological position implicitly or explicitly held by the authoritative Magisterium of the Catholic Church vis-à-vis Zionism between 1948 and 2005 by Alex J Bellew, master's thesis in religion and philosophy, University of Bristol, 2021.
- The Vatican and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Diocesan News, Catholic Diocese of Raleigh (North Carolina), October 12, 2023.
- The Catholic Church, the Jewish People, and the Current Gaza War by Tzvi Novick, Church Life Journal (A Journal of the McGrath Institute for Church Life), November 28, 2023.
I'll summarize and comment later, after I've read this stuff (or as much of it as I can).
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13 Jan 2024, 9:25 pm
Brief summary of above articles:
Several of these articles claim that, since the end of World War II and even more so since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's, there has been a gradual evolution of Catholic doctrine in regard to its attitude toward Jews and Judaism. It is claimed that there has been a gradual evolution away from "supercessionism" or "replacement theology," which is the idea that the "Old Covenant" (with Jews and Israel) became null and void when the vast majority of Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah, and was replaced by a "New Covenant" with the Christian Church. Catholic doctrine is alleged to be evolving toward a dual-covenant theology, in which both "covenants" are deemed to be valid.
However, when I looked into this further, it appeared that any move by the Catholic Church toward dual-covenant theology has been halted, at least for now. According to the Wikipedia article on Dual-covenant theology, the 2006 edition of the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults contained the following paragraph endorsing dual-covenant theology:
However, according to that same Wikipedia page:
See also:
- Did Vatican II Change the Doctrine of Supersessionism? by Rory Fox, Catholic Stand, 7 January 2023.
- The Heresy of Dual-Covenant Theology by Brother André Marie, Catholicism.org, Jan 28, 2008.
Be that as it may: Catholic theologian Gavin D’Costa, a strong proponent of dual-covenant theology, argues also that God's promises to Abraham about the land of Israel are still valid. And, on that basis, he advocates a form of Zionism.
But he also says that the rights and well-being of
Palestinians are important too. He appears to advocate a two-state solution.
Be that as it may: Gavin D’Costa has also written the following review of three books about Christian Zionism: A New Zionism, First Things, June 2018.
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