Christian Zionism Research Articles

Daniel G. Hummel. Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations.

In the heyday of the Moral Majority, one of many grassroots organizations representing US Christian Zionists called itself “Goyim for Israel” (178)—it’s something of a shame that the group’s moniker didn’t catch on in the public consciousness as it illustrates the central dilemma of this movement: What’s particularly “Christian” or “Zionist” about Christian Zionism? Daniel G. Hummel’s new book Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations takes the reader back in time to the 1948 “roots” of the Christian relationship with Israel, following the “shoots and branches” of this history over the past five decades, both domestically and globally, as a transnational movement that has blossomed into a force to be reckoned with across the world. At the heart of Hummel’s argument is the religiopolitics of “reconciliation” between Christians and Jews, a “dialectic between religious belief and political action” (237)—dispelling popular mythology about the end times rapture and the fire...

From discursive resistance to new genealogies: rethinking Israelite identities in Africa through the case of Nuer Christian Zionists

AbstractScholars have commonly interpreted the emergence of claims of Israelite descent among African peoples as attempts of marginalized communities to construct empowering identities by drawing on biblical narratives. This article tries to make sense of such claims from a more emic perspective, not as an instrumental counter-discourse but as a genuine attempt to grapple with the nature of ethnic membership and the place of certain communities in relation to biblical genealogies, time and space. The article explores the claims of Nuer members of several Evangelical Zionist churches operating in western Ethiopia and South Sudan that the Nuer are among the ‘lost tribes’ of Israel. It demonstrates how Nuer Zionists have reinterpreted Nuer identity, known for its permeability and constructivist nature, in light of contemporary premillennialist Zionist notions of history and peoplehood, which emphasize ethnic fixity and focus on lineages, exclusive bloodlines and biological descent. The article offers a new perspective on Israelite identities in Africa and on the influence of born-again Christianity on the construction of ethnic identities.

The Old and the New Israel: The Cultural Origins of the Special Relationship

Abstract Understandings of the new American nation as a “Second Israel,” and a prevalent political discourse devoted to the narratives of the Old Testament, were a distinct trait of the early United States. Indeed, the images and narratives of the Old Testament were as common in the formative decades of the United States, in the words of the great historian Perry Miller, as “the air that the people breathed.” This attachment to the Old Testament, and the fact that American nationalism and twentieth century Zionism crystalized around the biblical history of the Israelites, bears considerably on the relationship of the two nations. The “special” bond between the modern countries, which is commonly understood in terms of pragmatism, interests, and shared ideologies, thus rests on a deep cultural connection. The American public’s consistent backing of the State of Israel (one that far surpasses the constituency of evangelical Christian Zionists), which politically translates into a robust, lasting and bi-partisan support that defies the arithmetic of appeals to Jewish voters (or donors) seems puzzling at times. It becomes more intelligible in light of the centuries-long tradition of American public speech describing the nation as a new incarnation of biblical Israel. This usable biblical past, which continues to influence American culture in meaningful ways, adds an important dimension for our understanding of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel.

Christian Zionists And Jewish settlers: the challenging and maintenance of religious boundaries

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between Evangelical Christian Zionists and West Bank Jewish settlers and its implications to the Jewish-Christian boundary. Significant contact with Christian Zionists has sparked a fierce debate among rabbinical leaders in the settlements, with some working to radically redefine the Christian-Jewish boundary and others attempting to maintain it in its traditional form. Thus, while some view the shifting of boundaries as a mark of the messianic era, others perceive it as a serious threat that must be opposed. Based on fieldwork conducted among rabbis and Christian Zionist volunteers, we attempt to demonstrate the ways in which Jewish theology is negotiated regarding the definition of monotheism, approaches to Christian missionary motives and the involvement of non-Jews in the Zionist project. Such negotiation of religious boundaries reflects the larger story of religion in the global age, a time in which boundaries are challenged and borderland identities abound.

Christian Zionist religiouscapes in Brazil: Understanding Judaizing practices and Zionist inclinations in Brazilian Charismatic Evangelicalism

The increasing appropriation by Charismatic Evangelicals of Jewish narratives, rituals, and even Zionist anxieties is now evident in many parts of the globe. Drawing on two cases, one based on a Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal church and another based on an ethnographic investigation of a ‘Judaizing Evangelical’ community in Brazil this study interrogates to what extent we can comprehend this emerging tendency within Brazilian Charismatic Evangelicalism as a result of the spread of Anglo-American Christian Zionism. The article contends that while there are significant overlaps between Anglo-American Christian Zionism and the Zionist and Judaizing tendencies within Brazilian Charismatic Evangelicalism, it is reductionist to comprehend the Brazilian case exclusively through Anglo-American frameworks. Given the particularities of the Brazilian Charismatic evangelical context, the article points to the unique ways in which Christian Zionist tendencies are being ‘glocalized’ in this country.

God’s just Gaza war: futurity foreclosed through evangelical apocalypse as orthogonal promise of Eretz Israel

ABSTRACT After the evacuation of the Gush Katif settlement and intensifying with the 2008–2009 Israeli War on Gaza, the border town of Sderot and its surrounding landscape became, for American Christian Zionists, a pilgrimage landscape and therefore a sacred space as it was performed as an event site portending the apocalypse. Christian Zionists interpreted the war and the landscape it took place on as a mise-en-scène of hope: the hollowing out of Gaza in anticipation of Christ’s return. Christian Zionists read the future as history. To explain this, I employ Philip K. Dick’s conceptualization of ‘orthogonal time’. Time and space merge as always already existing prophetic kairos time manifests itself in prophetic space. Watching Operation Cast Lead from pilgrimage landscapes overlooking the Gaza Strip, I conducted a yearlong ethnography before/during/after the 2008/09 war on Gaza with American Christian Zionists. They justified the war through colonial imaginings of terra nullius in three ways: 1) by denying that Palestinians exist as a legitimate national identity; 2) by denying the Palestinians’ ability to reason; and 3) prophetic inevitability. Gaza is therefore interpreted as God’s land and the demise of Gazans – present and future – is not only anticipated and preempted, but will have (already) happened.

British Project in Palestine: Colonial “National Home”

Mandatory Palestine proved to be a unique example of an attempt to create a “national home” within the framework of the colonial system. The present article aims to analyse the combination of the national and the colonial in the implementation of the “home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, as well as the role of cultural-religious narratives in the mindset of both the British administrators and the Zionist settlers. The research is based on British official documents and archive materials, as well as on the memoirs of Jewish settlers in Eretz Yisrael, some of which are introduced into the Russian academic circulation for the first time. Many British politicians viewed the return of the Jews to their historical homeland as a specific noble mission, which fit both into the framework of “Christian Zionism” and the notion of the civilizing nature of imperial colonialism. Palestine, along with its religious and cultural significance, was at the same time playing a thoroughly practical strategic role, and in that sense served as a highly convenient “foothold”. The British politicians and administrators perceived the Zionists as loyal agents of European colonial influence in the Middle East region. Based on the conducted research, the author reached the following conclusions. Even before ethnic confrontation in mandate Palestine intensified, some representatives of the British Empire anticipated that the Jews would not be a loyal minority, always ready to act in the Empire’s interests to the full extent. The main finding of the research is that despite the superficial similarity between the outlooks of the European Zionists and the official representatives of the British Empire, their perceptions of Palestine and their aims and purposes there were fundamentally different. On the one hand, the notions of the leaders of the Zionist movement about Eretz Yisrael were indeed in many respects close to the positions of British politicians and administrators. Jewish nationalism emerged under the influence of European ideas and concepts, and even orientalism influenced it to a certain degree. On the other hand, the Zionists perceived the Europeans as situational allies, therefore their interests coincided only in the short-term perspective. The idea of the national revival of the people of Israel in its historical homeland played a key role for them. This laid the foundation of the new Jewish identity, which also included multiple elements of religious traditions and legal bases of Judaism.

Evangélicos fundamentalistas e política: uma análise da conjuntura brasileira (2018-2019)

Este artigo reconhece que nunca se falou tanto em fundamentalismo em nosso país como agora; e que o uso ampliado do conceito poucas vezes vem associado ao espectro do protestantismo definido pela hermenêutica literal das Escrituras, como nos primórdios do movimento fundamentalista. No Brasil contemporâneo, grosso modo, fundamentalista qualifica o evangélico conservador ou reacionário, quase sempre pentecostal, e com inserção na mídia e na política. Assim, é urgente que a ação de evangélicos fundamentalistas no espaço público-político brasileiro seja compreendida pelas Ciências da Religião (em diálogo com a Teologia), uma vez que coloca em questão a democracia ao transformar interesses religiosos particulares em questões de Estado e ações de governo. O objetivo deste artigo, portanto, é avaliar como o qualificativo fundamentalista associado ao nome evangélico contribui para a compreensão da eleição de Jair Bolsonaro à presidência da República em 2018, adotando como recorte o caso da promessa de mudança da embaixada brasileira em Israel de Tel Aviv para Jerusalém. As conclusões alcançadas acerca das imbricações do assim chamado sionismo cristão (como um traço fundamentalista de setores evangélicos) com a eleição de Bolsonaro resultam de pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, cujos dados empíricos foram retirados do jornal Folha de S. Paulo.

Navigating the Biblical Mandate: Discursive Change and Adaptation in the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem

Abstract Since its inception in 1980, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) has developed into a central player in the formation of Christian Zionism globally. It is known through its high profile in Israeli society, its financial, moral and political support for the State of Israel and its controversial mix of theology and politics. This article focuses on ICEJ’s ideological and theological negotiation in relation to Israeli society. It argues that even though ICEJ’s self-understanding is based on what it claims to be “eternal, biblical mandates” and its political positions have been largely consistent over time, ICEJ’s theology, rhetoric and social positions have changed quite significantly. The article interprets this duality as a case of “flexible absolutism”, a capacity to ideologically frame diverse positions as eternal absolutes. Recognizing this tension is important in order to successfully disentangle the organization’s rhetoric from its broader ideological aims.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Peace efforts in Palestine are continuous and failing. In order to explain the failed peace attempts, experts draw different conclusions. Thomas Getman, member of a private consulting group specializing in international affairs, explains the conflict in terms of Christian Zionism, a religious doctrine prominent in the United States, and its detrimental role in the peace process. While social justice manifests itself in the cultural practices of traditional, mainstream religions, Christian Zionism ignores the rights-based approach to theology, and it perpetuates myths (Getman). Dennis Ross, the principle informant in the Israeli-Arab conflict under the Bush and Clinton administrations, blames a number of factors. He explains, “The lack of public conditioning for peace, the reluctance to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other side’s grievance and needs, the inability to confront comfortable myths, the difficulty of transforming behavior and acknowledging mistakes, the inherent challenges of getting both sides ready to move at the same time, the unwillingness to make choices, and the absence of leadership, especially among Palestinians, are all factors that have made peace difficult to achieve” (Ross 14). Ultimately, Ross says that it is “myths that prevent all sides from seeing reality and adjusting to it” (Ross 14). The failed peace efforts can be better understood by combining the two stances. Due to the stronghold Christian Zionism has held on United States politics, the Christian Zionist narrative has upheld peace talks in Israel-Palestine and disrupted the process.

Reformation and Judaism

The topic of this paper is the complex and ambivalent relationship between the Reformed Churches and Judaism, moving from a kind of Philo-Semitism to Christian Zionism and support for the State of Israel on the one hand, to missionary movements among Jews to anti-Judaism, and the contribution to the horrors of the Holocaust on the other hand. In between the two extremes stands the respect for the Old Testament and the neglect of the Apocrypha and other early Jewish writings. The initial focus of this article will be on what Martin Luther and Jean Calvin wrote about Judaism at the beginning of the Reformation over 500 years ago. Secondly, the article will deal with the influence of mission activity toward Jews and the emergence of Liberal Judaism as both scholarship and theology in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Lastly, the article will address the question of how the Holocaust and subsequent Jewish-Christian dialogue have changed the course of this relationship.

From King Cyrus to Queen Esther: Christian Zionists’ discursive construction of Donald Trump as God’s instrument

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections with the help of 81 percent of self-identified white evangelicals, liberal commentators, relying on folk-conceptions of religion that privileged concepts like morality and belief, struggled to understand how someone who seemed to lack both could garner such support. Since then scholars have provided various explanations, relating to Christian nationalism evangelical appeals to authoritarianism, and straightforward racism. This article aims to expand this discussion by analyzing the way that evangelical Christian Zionists have supported Trump by rhetorically identifying him as God’s instrument on account of his support for Israel and withdrawal of the United States from the Iran Nuclear Deal. In addition to analyzing the process by which Trump is constituted as God’s instrument, the article also demonstrates more generally how religious discourse functions as a legitimating discourse for those who seek to gain, or maintain, positions of power.

God's Country: Christian Zionism in America. By Samuel Goldman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 242 pp. $34.95 cloth.

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Antisemitism under erasure: Christian Zionist anti-globalism and the refusal of cohabitation

ABSTRACT Two narratives used by conservative evangelicals as justification for supporting Donald Trump are his support for the state of Israel and opposition to “globalists.” However, narratives of “globalism” are rooted in and often deploy the codes of antisemitism. Using conspiratorial constructions of progressive billionaire George Soros in American evangelical Christian Zionist texts as a case study, this article interrogates the relationship between hostility to “globalism” and support for Israel. It argues that rather than simply evading or reproducing antisemitism, evangelical Christian Zionist anti-globalism relies on the antisemitic figure of “the Jew” as both present and absent, structurally necessary and necessarily disavowed. The article contends that the result of this disavowal is the figure of “the Jew”—one whose antisemitic archive is placed under erasure and whose figuration facilitates a theo/geopolitical imaginary grounded on the securitization of borders and ethnocratic concepts of the nation-state over and against the possibilities of cohabitation.

America’s Road to Jerusalem: The Impact of the Six-Day War on Protestant Politics. By Jason M. Olson

One of the claims often made by contemporary Christian Zionists is that the state of Israel provides the greatest proof for the existence of God in the modern world. For Christians of this theological persuasion, the creation of Israel in 1948 and its expansion after the Six-Day War in 1967 were both proof that God’s word remains true and that he is still active in history. Although this understanding of Israel is accepted by many Christians in the United States and around the world, other varieties of Protestants, particularly those hailing from mainline denominations, explicitly reject such claims. How and why this came to be is the subject of Jason M. Olson’s new book America’s Road to Jerusalem: The Impact of the Six-Day War on Protestant Politics. Olson’s primary thesis is both ambitious and compelling. He argues that “the Six-Day War was a transformative event for both history and theology in American Protestantism” (p. xi) because it was a cultural event that helped reverse the fortunes of fundamentalists who had retreated from social life after the fundamentalist-modernist split in the aftermath of the Scopes Trial in 1925. Thus, as a consequence of Israel’s success in the Six-Day War, dispensational theology was vindicated, “disproving” modernist biblical interpretation and helping to pave the way for the cultural and political ascent of evangelicals in American life.

(Dost) Düşmanlar: Hıristiyan Siyonizminde Antisemitizm ve Anti-İslamizm

(Dost) Düşmanlar: Hıristiyan Siyonizminde Antisemitizm ve Anti-İslamizm

God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America

View correction statement:Notice of duplicate publication: God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America

God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America. By Samuel Goldman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 248p. $34.95 cloth.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

From Karm al-Khalil to Kerem Avraham: A British Settler-Colonial Outpost Near Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century

Kerem Avraham was a farm for Jewish labourers established by Christian Zionist James Finn, the influential British consul in Jerusalem, and his wife Elizabeth, in 1854. Ostensibly intended to provide relief for the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem during a famine, the farm was in fact a deeply ideological project which foreshadowed the Zionist agricultural settlements in Palestine in the later nineteenth century. This paper chronicles the farm's development, and later influence on settler-colonial theory and practice.

Postponing Armageddon? Christian Zionist and Palestinian Christian Responses to the Problem of Peace

Of all the problems of peacemaking and peacebuilding in the modern international system, none is as contentious a matter of religion and identity as that of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The weight of spiritual significance and history has caused more than one author to expound upon the way religion has uniquely marked this land. Foreign interest and interference in the allocation of privileges and ownership in the region have led one recent analyst to bemoan the plight of this "much too promised land." (Miller 2008) In a history of the conflict written long before its descent into the first and second intifadas and the expansion of the number of religious antagonists, David Smith noted that .the years after the 1967 [Arab-Israeli] war would defy a solution an spawn a new conflict between Arabs and Jews. In the tiny battleground of the West Bank — just 80 miles long and 26 miles wide — the two peoples would live together, contesting the same territory. Many on both sides would claim that it was granted to them by God... In the process, Arabs and Jews would be locked in a modern-day secular conflict, fuelled by age-old religious zealotry and bigotry. They would become prisoners of God. (Smith 1987: 4)