Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? Paul S. Boyer, Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? by Stephen Sizer. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2005. 298 pp. $29.00. No one who follows events in the Middle East can fail to be aware of the involvement of so-called Christian Zionists in the politics of the region. These are evangelical Protestants whose reading of Bible prophecy convinces them that God has a distinct end-time plan for the Jews—a plan whose fulfillment [End Page 160] is integral to Christ's second coming and thousand-year Millennial reign. According to this interpretive system, known as premillennial dispensationalism, as the End approaches, Israel will expand to incorporate the lands God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their seed, from the Euphrates to "the river of Egypt." The Jews will also take over Jerusalem's Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple on the site now occupied by two sacred Islamic shrines. Stephen Sizer, an evangelical Anglican clergyman, offers a history and critique of this version of Christian Zionism. His book may seem heavy going in places for readers not immersed in this belief system, but it does illuminate prophetic beliefs that shape the attitudes of millions of evangelical Protestants worldwide, and especially in the United States, toward Israel, the Palestinians, and Islam. (These End-Time beliefs also influence believers' view of the United Nations, the global economy, and U.S. mass culture—but that is another story.) Sizer begins by tracing the British origins of dispensationalism and its Zionist component. This belief system is usually credited to John Darby, a founder of the Plymouth Brethren, an English dissenting sect. Sizer, however, stresses the role of such now-obscure figures as Edward Irving, a Scottish preacher popular in London in the 1820s, and Henry Drummond, a banker and politician with an interest in Bible prophecy. He traces the influence of these beliefs on later British leaders, including David Lloyd George, the prime minister who oversaw the issuance of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, calling for "a National Home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Readers interested in the evolution of American attitudes toward Israel will welcome Sizer's discussion of dispensationalism's migration to the United States through John Darby's evangelistic tours and the preaching and writings of James H. Brookes, Arno C. Gaebelein, Cyrus Scofield, and other late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century figures. Sizer notes the importance of the wealthy Chicago real-estate developer William Blackstone, a committed dispensationalist and early Zionist. Visiting Jewish agricultural colonies in Palestine in 1888–89, Blackstone saw them as exciting portents of Christ's imminent return. In 1891, five years before Theodor Herzl's Zionist manifesto Der Judenstaat, Blackstone drafted a "Memorial" calling for a Jewish state in Palestine, "according to God's distribution of nations," as a response to Czarist pogroms. He secured signatures from J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, the Chief Justice of the United States, and some 400 other government and business leaders. With reason, Louis D. Brandeis later praised Blackstone as "the Father of Zionism." Sizer's chapter on dispensationalism's political implications is particularly timely. Popular writers and televangelists like Hal Lindsey, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, and James Hagee, together with politicians [End Page 161] who share their beliefs (or seek the votes of those who do), have been outspoken supporters of Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza, as a step toward the prophesied expansion to the biblical boundaries, and of all Jerusalem and Temple Mount—essential to the rebuilding of the Temple. These Christian Zionists reject Palestinian political or territorial claims; denigrate the Palestinian people in language that Sizer finds disturbingly analogous to Nazi stereotypes of the Jews; and, in their prophecy-fueled worldview, demonize Islam as vile and sinister. Such figures, reinforced by a network of like-minded organizations, writes Sizer, constitute "probably the most powerful lobby in the United States today, influencing not only American foreign policy but also the chances of a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict" (p. 105). Sizer only passingly mentions the darker side of the dispensationalist version...