Key points in theology, history, and politics

by Rev. J. Mark Davidson, Executive Director of Voices for Justice in Palestine

Theology

• Christian Zionism is the misguided belief that the modern state of Israel is the Israel of the Hebrew Bible.
• God’s promises to the Israelites thousands of years ago are considered by Christian Zionists to be eternal, and so bear directly on present-day politics.
• Christian Zionists believe the Jews are “God’s Chosen People.” They have special rights and privileges that others do not have.
• Historic Palestine is not Palestine, it is what they call “the biblical land of Israel.” It belongs to the Jewish people exclusively. It doesn’t matter that the history of the Palestinians, the indigenous people of Palestine, goes back to the Canaanite times 12,000 B.C. Christian Zionists ignore that Palestinians have the closest documented genetic similarities with the early indigenous Canaanites. Christian Zionists overlook that the Palestinians rightly claim the most long-standing and most recent presence in this land. Christian Zionists cherry-pick a few selected Hebrew scriptures which refer to divine promises of the land, such as Genesis stories about Abraham. And they invest these claims with absolute divine authority for all time.
• Their method of biblical interpretation rips these ancient writings out of their historical, literary, and cultural context and transposes them straight into contemporary 21 st century politics as unquestionable divine edicts.
• Christian Zionists are obsessed with end-of-the-world theologies and focus heavily on 2 of the 66 books in the Bible – Daniel in the Hebrew Scriptures and Revelation in the New Testament.
• They teach the “Rapture”….basically that Christ will “rapture” all the saved Christians from the earth into heaven to spare them from the terrible events that will unfold for 7 years before Christ returns to rule for 1,000 years.
• They long for the Second Coming of Christ, but believe it can only happen if certain things happen in history first:

• Then, and only then, Christ will return, and the Jews must convert and accept Christ as the Messiah – or be annihilated if they refuse (it is difficult to imagine a more antisemitic message).
• Like Jewish Zionists who were not content to “wait for the Messiah,” and took matters into their own hands, Christian Zionists concocted a theology that laid out a plan for “forcing God’s hand,” accelerating the timetable of history according to their own desires.

Inserted in this bizarre scenario are multiple images of apocalyptic battles between the forces of good and evil – “the children of light and the children of darkness.” The current Zionist leaders in Israel, notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have cynically made repeated use of this biblical language, casting the Israeli Army as the children of light and Hamas, and by extension, every Palestinian, as the children of darkness. This kind of language and imagery plays well among Christian Zionists, and among elected officials in Congress who consider Christian Zionists and Christian nationalist evangelicals to be part of their political base. 

Christian Zionism is built on a theology called “dispensationalism,” the view that salvation history is divided up into segments or dispensations supposedly decreed by God in holy writ. However, these are not biblical teachings. They are, instead, novel teachings developed in the early 1800s by several evangelical preachers and Bible teachers, who offered dispensationalism as a kind of key to unlock the secret meaning of the Scriptures, a code for deciphering history. John Nelson Darby was a prominent exponent of dispensationalism, and influenced well-connected American evangelicals Dwight Moody of the Moody Bible Institute and Cyrus Scofield of the Scofield Bible. Dispensationalists believe the Old Testament should be interpreted literally, especially those passages that have divine promises in them. This theology held a certain attraction for those who liked their religion simple and straightforward, requiring little from them but blind belief. 

Stephen Sizer puts it well: “Christian Zionism is an exclusive theology that focuses on the Jews in the land rather than an inclusive theology that centers on Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Christian Zionism provides a theological endorsement for apartheid and human rights abuses, rather than a theology of justice, peace, and reconciliation which lies at the heart of the New Covenant.” 

Christian Zionism turns God into a God of violent apocalyptic battles, not the God of Jubilee that Jesus proclaimed, who aims to set the oppressed free, to preach good news to the poor, to establish a social order based on mishpat and sedaqah – justice and righteousness – not just for a chosen few, but for everyone.

Progressive Christians have denounced Christian Zionism as a dangerous heresy. Those of us who align ourselves with progressive Christianity (the Social Gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch (late 19th c./early 20th c.) to the present) have a huge responsibility to be well-informed about Christian Zionism, to expose its false teachings, and dissociate themselves from it. It needs to be seen as a discredited and dangerous set of ideas and teachings. Unless progressive Christians differentiate themselves from Christian Zionism, a great many of our fellow citizens will assume that Christian Zionism speaks for all Christians.

History

Its roots go back to the early 1800s in the British Isles, almost a century before the rise of Jewish nationalism in Europe, the development of political Zionism as an ideology, Theodore Herzl and the notion of a Jewish state (1890s).

The notion of Jews migrating to the land of Israel en masse was a Christian idea before it was a Jewish idea. In a very real sense, there might not have been a modern state of Israel if it wasn’t for Christian Zionism.

British elites like Lord Shaftesbury, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and Foreign Secretary Sir Arthur Balfour, threw the ideological, diplomatic, and military support of the British Empire behind the Zionist idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They decided to do this for geopolitical (imperial, political, economic) interests. But their hearts and their religious beliefs were in it, too. They were raised in Christian Zionist homes that taught dispensationalist theology, and so they were very receptive when Chaim Weizmann, the head of the World Zionist Organization, proposed the idea of mass migration of the world’s Jews to Palestine. To be sure, Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists had very different reasons for proposing this mass migration. Zionists wanted to inhabit the land in order to form and maintain a Jewish state because they believed it was the only way to ensure their safety as Jews. Christian Zionists wanted Jews to inhabit the land because they believed the ingathering of the Jews in the Holy Land triggered the historical events that would lead to the Second Coming of Christ, which they cared more about than practically anything else. But the point is, the idea of Jewish mass migration to the Holy Land was already decades-old and well-established in England among Christian evangelicals as the necessary precursor to the Second Coming of Christ. Weizmann and the Jewish Zionists seized on this receptivity for their own purposes. 

Politics

Many studies on Christian Zionism focus on the history and the theology of the movement, but fail to bring out the political dimensions of Christian Zionism, which may be the most troubling and consequential. Christian Zionism is a powerful lobby influencing American (and British ) foreign policy, and intending to expand its power and influence. Christians United for Israel (CUFI) founded in 2006. It is “the largest pro-Israel {Christian Zionist} organization in the U.S. with over 10 million members, possibly more….speaking and acting with one voice in defense of Israel and the Jewish people.” CUFI “acts as a defensive shield against anti-Israel lies, boycotts, false theology, and political threats that seek to delegitimize Israel’s existence and weaken the close relationship between Israel and the United States.” CUFI sends millions to illegal, segregated, Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land. They spent $240,000 on lobbying in 2023. It fights hard for military aid to Israel with “no conditions. Evangelical and nondenominational churches all over the country have “Stand with Israel” Sundays, and fly the Israeli flag alongside the American flag in their sanctuaries. The movement is highly organized, with sophisticated, coordinated messaging. Thousands of congregations affiliated with CUFI hear sermons from their pulpits with the same talking points promulgated by Pastor John Hagee, Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, TX, and other Christian Zionist organizations. The movement is highly organized, with sophisticated, coordinated messaging. The messaging is theological and biblical, and it is political, as well. The goal is no daylight between “God’s Word in the Holy Bible and American foreign policy toward the State of Israel.” As Pastor Hagee frequently reminds his followers and his detractors, “God blesses those who bless Israel, and God curses those who curse Israel.” 

In the United States, Christian Zionism colludes with the Christian Right and White Christian Nationalism. It is a racist, exclusivist ideology that distorts the Bible into an instrument of oppression, when its true message is love, peace, and forgiveness for all.

Christian Zionists are well-connected in Washington. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, is an ardent Christian Zionist, who says if anyone wants to know what he believes, they only have to look to the Bible. Of course, he follows a highly selective reading of the Bible, relying heavily on those texts which appear to support his exclusivist politics and ignoring those texts that challenge those views. Former VP Mike Pence is a darling of CUFI, as is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And there are many more in Congress, largely from the ranks of the Republican Party. 

While much attention is appropriately given to the evangelical base that is Christian Zionist, it is also true that Protestant mainline denominations have their own version of Christian Zionism. Theirs tends to be influenced by post-Holocaust theologians who emphasized the antisemitism in Christian Europe that contributed to the Shoah. This led to an appropriate re-examination of antisemitic tropes in the New Testament, especially the Gospel of John, which led to the charge of Jews as “Christ-killers,” and Passion Plays which played up the role of the Jews in leading to Christ’s crucifixion. Pogroms happened spontaneously after Easter services. Jewish liberation theologian, Marc Ellis, coined the term, “the ecumenical deal,” by which he meant, “Jews will give Christians a pass on the Holocaust if they keep silent about Israel.” The cautious and muted criticism of Israel from liberal Protestants stems from not wanting to be charged with being antisemitic, or failing to hold up their end of the bargain in the ecumenical deal. It’s considered not a good look. In effect, the absence of criticism is read as a kind of implicit consent for what Israel does.