An Unexpected Alliance: Christian Zionism and its Historical Significance

Abstract

In 1840, the leader of the evangelical party in Britain, Lord Ashley Cooper, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, petitioned the British foreign minister, requesting that Britain initiate the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.1 Fifty years later, an American evangelist, William Blackstone, organized a petition to the president of the United States, urging him to convene an international conference that would decide to grant Palestine to the Jews. Shaftesbury and Blackstone, whose attempts to create a Jewish state in Palestine antedated the rise of political Zionism, were among the more well-known proto-Zionists in the English-speaking world. A large number of clergymen, writers, businessmen, and politicians supported, and at times labored actively for, the restoration of the Jews to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state. Motivated by a biblical messianic faith and the belief that a Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel was a necessary stage in the preparation of the way for the return of Jesus of Nazareth to earth, Christian Zionists have, at times, been more enthusiastic than Jews over the prospect of a Jewish state. When Jews launched the Zionist movement, Christian protagonists offered support. Christian political backing accompanied the birth of the State of Israel and its history ever since, gaining special momentum after the Six-Day War in 1967.