Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance

Fri, 11 July 2003

Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance by 
Donald Wagner

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi- 
bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=216

NOTE: Donald Wagner is director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at 
North Park University in Chicago and director of Evangelicals for Middle 
East Understanding. This article appeared in The Christian Century, 
November 4, 1998, pp. 1020-1026. Copyright by The Christian Century 
Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscription 
information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This article prepared 
for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington this past 
January, his initial meeting was not with President Clinton but with Jerry 
Falwell and more than 1,000 fundamentalist Christians. The crowd saluted 
the prime minister as "the Ronald Reagan of Israel," and Falwell pledged to 
contact more than 200,000 evangelical pastors, asking them to "tell 
President Clinton to refrain from putting pressure on Israel" to comply 
with the Oslo accords.

The meeting between Netanyahu and Falwell illustrates a remarkable 
political and theological convergence. The link between Israelis Likud 
government and the U.S. Religious Right was established by Natanyahu's 
mentor, Menachem Begin, during the Carter and Reagan administrations. 
However, the roots of evangelical support for Israel lie in the long 
tradition of Christian thinking about the millennium.

In Luke's account of the ascension, the disciples ask Jesus, "Lord, is this 
the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?" The question 
illustrates the early church's fascination with Israel and its prophetic 
role at the end of history--a fascination that continues to this day. 
Reflections on the end times draw on the Book of Daniel, Zechariah 9-14, 
Ezekiel 38-39 and various apocryphal books, as well as Matthew 24, the 
early Pauline letters (1 Thess. 4:16-17; 5:1-11) and the Book of 
Revelation.

An early version of Christian eschatology, called "historic 
premillennialism," held that Jesus would return and establish his 
millennial kingdom after the world had been evangelized. However, by the 
18th century another model of eschatology emerged in England that 
emphasized the role of a reconstituted Israel in the end times. This 
eschatology was rooted in three streams of British Christianity: the piety 
of English Puritanism; the view that Britain was the "new Israel," a theme 
that dates back at least to the seventh century and the Venerable Bede; and 
a hermeneutic that interpreted biblical prophetic texts as having a 
literal, future fulfillment. Among the forerunners of this movement was Sir 
Henry Finch, a prominent lawyer and member of Parliament. In 1621, Finch 
wrote a treatise in which he called upon the British people and its 
government to support Jewish settlement in Palestine in order to fulfill 
biblical prophecy.

As the year 1800 approached, several premillennial theologies emerged as a 
result of the insecurity surrounding the American and French revolutions. 
Among them were various utopian movements and the Millerites (a group that 
later became Seventh-day Adventists). During this period John Nelson Darby 
(1800-82), a renegade Anglican priest from Ireland, popularized and 
systematized eschatological themes while simultaneously developing a new 
school of thought which has been called "futurist premillennialism."

During 60 years of unceasing travel and preaching across the European 
continent and North America, Darby converted a generation of evangelical 
clergy and laity to his views. Darby held that biblical prophecies and much 
of scripture must be interpreted according to a literal and predictive 
hermeneutic. He believed that the true church will be removed from history 
through an event called the "rapture" (I Thess. 4:16-17; 5:1-11), and the 
nation Israel will be restored as God's primary instrument in history.

According to Darby, Christians must interpret history in light of seven 
epochs or "dispensations," each of which reflects a particular manner in 
which God deals with humanity. For example, we currently live under the 
dispensation of "Grace," whereby people are judged according to their 
personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This hermeneutical method is 
called dispensationalism.

According to the dispensational model, a time of turmoil lies ahead, but 
believers will be "raptured" away before it begins. This period of 
tribulation will culminate in the final battle at Armageddon, a valley 
northwest of Jerusalem. As evangelical historian Timothy Weber points out, 
for premillennialists "the historical process is a never-ending battle 
between good and evil, whose course God has already conceded to the Devil.. 
. . History's only hope lies in its own destruction."

Through Darby's influence, premillennial dispensationalism became a 
dominant method of biblical interpretation and influenced a generation of 
evangelical leaders, including Dwight L. Moody. Perhaps the most 
influential instrument of dispensational thinking was the Scofield Bible 
(1909) which included a commentary that interpreted prophetic texts 
according to a premillennial hermeneutic. Another early Darby disciple, 
William E. Blackstone, brought dispensationalism to millions of Americans 
through his best seller Jesus Is Coming (1882). Blackstone organized the 
first Zionist lobbying effort in the U.S. in 1891 when he enlisted J. P. 
Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Charles B. Scribner and other financiers to 
underwrite a massive newspaper campaign requesting President Benjamin 
Harrison to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Similar efforts were under way in England, led by the social reformer Lord 
Shaftesbury, who, like Blackstone, was so taken with Darby's eschatology 
that he translated it into a political agenda. These seeds of the Christian 
Zionist movement preceded Jewish Zionism by several years. Loni Shaftesbury 
is also credited with coining an early version of the slogan adopted by 
Jewish Zionist fathers Max Nordau and Theodor Herzl: "A land of no people 
for a people with no land." Both Lord Arthur Balfour, author of the famous 
1917 Balfour Declaration, and Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the two 
most powerful men in British foreign policy at the close of World War I, 
were raised in dispensationalist churches and were publicly committed to 
the Zionist agenda for "biblical" and colonialist reasons.

The establishment of Israel in 1948 gave dispensationalism new momentum. 
The restoration of a Jewish nation was taken as a sign that the clock of 
biblical prophecy was ticking and we were rapidly approaching the final 
events leading to the return of Jesus. During the cold war, 
dispensationalists readily interpreted the Soviet Union and its allies as 
the Antichrist. Passages such as Ezekiel 38-39 were read as predictions of 
an impending Soviet attack on Israel. A ten-member confederation--often 
interpreted as the European Union--was expected to join the Soviet Union in 
this attack.

When Israel captured Jerusalem in the 1967 war; dispensationalists were 
certain that the end was near. L. Nelson Bell, Billy Graham's father-in-law 
and editor of Christianity Today, wrote in July 1967: "That for the first 
time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of 
the Jews gives the student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the 
accuracy and validity of the Bible."

By the early 1970s numerous books, films and television specials publicized 
the premillennial dispensationalist perspective. Hal Lindsay made a virtual 
industry out of his book The Late Great Planet Earth: it sold more than 25 
million copies and led to two films, as well as a consulting business with 
a clientele that has included several members of Congress, the Pentagon, 
and Ronald Reagan.

In the mid 1970s at least five trends converged that accelerated the rise 
of Christian Zionism. First, evangelical and charismatic movements became 
the fastest-growing branch of North American Christianity. Mainline 
Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church were declining both 
in budgets and attendance.

The election of Jimmy Carter; a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher; to 
the presidency in 1976 increased the visibility and legitimacy of the once- 
marginalized evangelical movement. Time magazine declared 1976 "the year of 
the evangelical." Still, the mainstream media seemed confused by the 
various traditions and polarities within the complex evangelical movement, 
failing to distinguish between the diverse political and theological voices 
clamoring to claim the term "evangelical" for their particular viewpoint.

Israel's occupation of Arab lands after 1967 created tension between many 
Jewish organizations and the mainline Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and 
Catholic communities. Many Jewish organizations, particularly lobbying 
groups such as the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), 
turned to the growing evangelical community for support. As Rabbi Marc 
Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee stated, "The evangelical 
community is the largest and fastest-growing bloc of pro-Jewish sentiment 
in this country." AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) added staff to 
focus on relationships with evangelicals and fundamentalists. The Israeli 
ministry of tourism eyed evangelicals as a major new market for Holy Land 
tours and thus a source of revenue.

The fourth factor that stimulated the emerging evangelical Christian 
Zionist movement's political agenda was the election of Menachem Begin as 
Israel's prime minister in May 1977. Prior to Begin's election, Israeli 
politics had been dominated by the secular Labor Party. Begin's Likud Party 
was dominated by hard-line military figures such as Raphael Eitan and Ariel 
Sharon, and supported by the increasingly powerful settler movement and by 
small Orthodox religious parties. Likud constituencies used the biblical 
names "Judea and Samaria" for the West Bank and employed a religious 
argument to justify Israel's confiscation of Arab land for settlements: 
since God gave the land exclusively to Jews, they have a divine right to 
settle anywhere in Eretz Israel. Evangelicals welcomed the Likud leaders 
and endorsed their political and religious agendas.

The final development that accelerated the alliance between Likud and the 
Religious Right was Carter's March 1977 statement that he supported 
Palestinian human rights, including the "right to a homeland." Likud, when 
it came to power just two months later; immediately reached out to 
Christian evangelicals. Likud's strategy was simple: split evangelical and 
fundamentalist Christians from Carter's political base and rally support 
among conservative Christians for Israel's opposition to the United 
Nations' proposed Middle East Peace Conference.

Within weeks, full-page advertisements appeared in major U.S. newspapers 
stating, "The time has come for evangelical Christians to affirm their 
belief in biblical prophecy and Israel's divine right to the land." 
Targeting Soviet involvement in the UN conference, the ad went on to say: 
"We affirm as evangelicals our belief in the promised land to the Jewish 
people . . . . We would view with grave concern any effort to carve out of 
the Jewish homeland another nation or political entity."

The ad was financed and coordinated by Jerusalem's Institute for Holy Land 
Studies, an evangelical organization with a Christian Zionist orientation. 
Several leading dispensationalists signed the ad, including Kenneth Kantzer 
of Christianity Today and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, singer Pat 
Boone, and dispensationalist theologian and Dallas Theological Seminary 
president John Walvoord.

The advertising campaign was one of the first public signs of a Likud- 
evangelical alliance. A former employee of the American Jewish Committee, 
Jerry Strober, who had coordinated the campaign, made the political 
connection in a statement to Newsweek: "[The evangelicals] are Carter's 
constituency and he [had] better listen to them... The real source of 
strength the Jews have in this country is from the evangelicals."

At times the new alliance was uncomfortable for Jewish leaders. On one such 
occasion, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bailey Smith, 
stated that "God does not hear the prayers of the Jews." Within weeks, the 
AIC took Smith on a trip to Israel and corrected his views. While Christian 
Zionists and Jewish organizations agree on many points, the Christian 
Right's enthusiasm for evangelizing Jews remains an unresolved point of 
tension.

Evangelicals, major Jewish organizations and the pro-Israel lobby supported 
Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election. Carter's loss of the evangelical vote 
played a significant role in his defeat. Likud policy was aggressively 
represented by AIPAC both on Capitol Hill and within the Reagan 
administration. For example, when Israel decided to invade Lebanon in the 
spring of 1982, Begin sent Ariel Sharon, his defense minister, to 
Washington to enlist the Reagan administration's support. By late May, 
Sharon was reportedly given the green light by Secretary of State Alexander 
Haig. Within days of the June invasion, full-page ads appeared in leading 
newspapers requesting evangelical support for the invasion.

Begin developed a unique relationship with Reagan and many fundamentalist 
leaders, especially Jerry Falwell. Falwell and his Moral Majority had long 
supported Israel. In 1979, Grace Halsell reports, Israel gave Falwell a 
Lear jet and in 1981 gave him the prestigious Jabotinsky Award during an 
elaborate dinner ceremony in New York. When Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear 
plant in 1981, Begin called Falwell before he called Reagan. He requested 
that Falwell "explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing."

In March 1985, while speaking to the conservative Rabbinical Assembly in 
Miami, FaIwell pledged to "mobilize 70 million conservative Christians for 
Israel and against anti-Semitism." He also takes credit for converting 
Senator Jesse Helms (R., N.C.) into one of Israel's staunchest allies. 
Helms soon became chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Reagan administration regularly conducted briefings and seminars for 
its Christian Right supporters, briefings in which the pro-Likud lobby 
(Americans for a Safe Israel and AIPAC) participated. Among the 
approximately 150 Christian fundamentalist leaders invited to each event 
were Hal Lindsay, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Bakker; Pat Robertson and 
Tim and Bev LeHaye.

Reagan himself was a committed Christian Zionist. His support for Israel 
derived from both strategic political concerns and a vague 
dispensationalist perspective. He told Tom Dine, AIPAC's executive 
director; "I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and 
the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we re the 
generation that is going to see that come about." The remark was published 
by the Jerusalem Post and widely distributed by the Associated Press.

Netanyahu's 1996 defeat of Shimon Peres brought Likud back to power. During 
his years as Israel's representative at the UN, Netanyahu spoke regularly 
on the Christian Bight's "Prayer Breakfast for Israel" circuit and similar 
venues. Within a few months of his election, in conjunction with the 
Israeli ministry on tourism, he convened the Israel Christian Advocacy 
Council. Seventeen American evangelical and fundamentalist leaders were 
flown to Israel for a tour of the Holy Land and a conference at which they 
pledged support for what was essentially a Likud agenda. Included in the 
delegation were Don Argue, president of the National Association of 
Evangelicals; Brandt Gustavson, president of the National Religious 
Broadcasters (an organization that oversees approximately 90 percent of 
Christian radio and television broadcasting in North America); and Donald 
Wildmon, president of the American Family Association. The evangelical 
leaders signed a pledge expressing the hope that "America never; never 
desert Israel."

Several members of the Advisory Council backed the pro-Israel advertisement 
in the April 10, 1997, New York Times. Titled "Christians Call for a United 
Jerusalem," the ad may have been a direct response to a December 1996 Times 
ad sponsored by Churches for Middle East Peace, calling for a "Shared 
Jerusalem."

The Christian Zionist ad claimed that its signatories reach more than 
100,000 Christians weekly and called for evangelicals to support the Likud 
position on Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem. Using several familiar 
dispensationalist themes, the ad claimed: "Jerusalem has been the spiritual 
and political capital of only the Jewish people for 3,000 years." Citing 
Genesis 12:17, Leviticus 26:44-45 and Deuteronomy 7:7-8, it spoke of 
Israel's biblical claim to the land. The ad was signed by Pat Robertson of 
the Christian Broadcasting Network; Ralph Reed, then director of the 
Christian Coalition; Ed McAteer of the Religious Roundtable; and Falwell, 
among others. Voicing one of Netanyahu's themes, the ad asked that Israel 
"not be pressured to concede on issues of Jerusalem in the final status 
negotiations with the Palestinians."

Likud also turned to evangelical and fundamentalist Christians to offset 
the decline in contributions for Israel from the American Jewish community. 
In response to the increasing power of the Orthodox parties in Netanyahu's 
government and the second-class status these parties assigned to non- 
Orthodox Jews, Reformed and Conservative Jewish communities cut back their 
usual generous contributions to the Jewish National Fund and other agencies 
in the U.S. that support Israel. But the International Fellowship of 
Christians and Jews, led by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of Chicago, raised more 
than $5 million for the United Jewish Appeal, almost all of it from 
evangelicals and fundamentalists.

In a separate initiative, John Hagee, pastor of the Cornerstone Church in 
San Antonio, Texas, and a signer of the Christians for a United Jerusalem 
Statement, announced in February of this year that his church was giving 
more than $1 million to Israel. He claimed that the money would be used to 
help resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union in the West Bank and 
Jerusalem. "We feel like the coming of Soviet Jews to Israel is a 
fulfillment of biblical prophecy," Hagee stated. When asked if he realized 
that his support of Israel's Likud policies was at cross-purposes with U.S. 
government policy and possibly illegal, Hagee retorted: "I am a Bible 
scholar and a theologian and from my perspective, the law of God transcends 
the law of the United States government and the U.S. State Department."

While the U.S. and European governments in 1997 were pressing Netanyahu to 
negotiate with the Palestinians, the prime minister's public relations 
specialists developed another strategy involving the cooperation of 
Christian Zionist organizations in Jerusalem. The initial phase of this 
strategy was launched in an October 22, 1997, report on Israeli Radio (Kol 
Israel) News, a report claiming that the Palestinian National Authority 
(PA) was persecuting Christians.

Two days later the Jerusalem Post published an article charging that, 
according to a new Israeli government report, "the few Christians remaining 
in PA-controlled areas are subjected to brutal and relentless persecution." 
The report alleged that "'Christian cemeteries have been destroyed, 
monasteries have had their telephone lines cut, and there have been break- 
ins to convents.'" Moreover; the Palestinian Authority "has taken control 
of the churches and is pressuring Christian leaders to serve as mouthpieces 
for Yasser Arafat and opponents of Israel"

A month later; Congressman J. C. Watts (R., Okla.) reiterated these charges 
in the Washington Times, blaming Arafat and the PA for the Christian exodus 
from the Holy Land and calling into question the $307 million in grants the 
U.S. has given the PA.

Palestinian Christian leaders were quick to respond. Said Bethlehem mayor 
Hanna Nasser, a Christian: "Our churches have complete freedom, and I've 
never heard that they've been under pressure." Mitri Raheb, pastor of 
Bethlehem's Lutheran church, challenged the Israeli report as pure 
propaganda. He noted that while Bethlehem was under Israeli occupation, his 
house had been robbed and his car stolen twice; but "there have been no 
robberies since the Palestinian Authority has taken over. On the contrary, 
there is a greater sense of security now than there was under occupation."

Last May, Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding and Open Doors 
International sent a 14-member team to the Holy Land to investigate the 
allegations of persecution. The delegation interviewed more than 60 
spokespersons in Israel and the Palestinian territories, including a number 
of Christian leaders; Uri Mor, director of the Israeli Ministry of 
Religious Affairs in the Department of Christian Communities; and several 
Christian Zionist leaders.

The delegation concluded that though there were isolated incidents of 
discrimination and increased tension between Christian and Muslim 
communities in certain areas, there were no cases that could be 
characterized as persecution in the territories under the Palestinian 
Authority. Four converts from Islam to Christianity had experienced 
pressure from their families and communities. One or two who had criminal 
backgrounds had been pressured by the PA. But in neither case could the 
context and reasons for the pressure be construed as persecution. 
Furthermore, though some Christian Palestinians are concerned that if 
Islamic law (Shari'a) becomes the law of the Palestinian areas, the 
religious freedom of Christians maybe restricted in the future, no evidence 
of this development is present.

The investigative team found "disturbing indications of political 
motivations behind [the] recent publicity about Christian persecution." The 
team learned that a Christian Zionist group, the International Christian 
Embassy--Jerusalem, had cooperated with the office of David Bar-llan, 
Netanyahu's chief spokesman, in exaggerating accounts of Christian 
persecution and circulating them to the international press. A staff member 
of the U. S. consulate in Jerusalem interviewed Mor; the Israeli religious 
affairs official, who stated that the report was intended to be an internal 
document, but Bar-llan's office leaked it to the Christian and secular 
media.

Asked why the prime minister's office would do such a thing, Mor noted that 
Bar-llan uses such information as his "bread and butter" in the Israeli 
propaganda war against the PA. Clearly, there was no attempt by either the 
Israeli government or the Christian Embassy to note the criminal status of 
some claiming to be persecuted, or to distinguish between persecution and 
understandable pressure from families or communities opposing a member's 
conversion to another faith.

It is true that Palestinian Christians are leaving the Holy Land. But it is 
not because of Muslim persecution. They are leaving because of the 
brutality of Israeli occupation and because Israel's resistance to 
negotiating a just peace with the Palestinians makes them despair about the 
future.

At this juncture, it appears that the hardline Likud position has the 
backing of both houses of Congress, the major Jewish lobbies, and the 
Christian Right. President Clinton and those who advocate the Israeli Labor 
Party peace formula, or the Oslo Accords, have little leverage with Likud. 
Palestinian Christians and their supporters fear that the Christian Right's 
alliance with Likud may in the end serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy, 
heightening tensions in the region and leading to a new round of conflict 
in the Holy Land, which the Christian Zionists will readily interpret as 
"the final battle." ------------------
--
Michael Pugliese