Comprehending Christian Zionism

The question of the Christian Zionism—the religious and political support of the state of Israel—is fiercely debated within theology and the church, as well as in the wider political and social arenas. Examination of the issue is, however, highly relevant and crucial, as it cuts across a wide array of constitutive features and beliefs of Christian life, from interpretation of scripture to religious and political ethics. Comprehending Christian Zionism brings together an international consortium of scholars and researchers to reflect on the network of issues and topics surrounding this critical subject; these essays are the fruit of several years of collaboration by the special working group on Christian Zionism. The volume includes essays from Christian scholars around the globe, as well as Jewish and Palestinian contributors to provide interfaith contextual dialogue. Taken together, the volume provides a lens on the history of Zionism within Christian theology from a variety of locations and perspectives and offers a constructive, multidimensional path for assessment and introspection around the meaning of Zionism to Christian faith and practice.

The issue of Christian Zionism is one that is fiercely debated within theology, the church, politics, and society. Comprehending Christian Zionism brings together an international consortium of scholars and researchers to reflect on the network of issues and topics surrounding this critical subject. The volume provides a lens on the history of Zion

Christian Zionism has received no small amount of criticism from observers who take issue with the movement's pro-Israel politics or its theology. What if we listened seriously to what Christian Zionists and Jewish partners said about Jews, Judaism, and Israel? Christian Zionism is a vibrant contemporary movement that--agree or disagree--has more than just political implications. Christian Zionism has also brought an unprecedented number of Jews and Christians into contact and dialogue, in houses of worship, community centers, rallies, and, of course, in Israel. As such, Christian Zionism is a useful case that allows us to think about contemporary Jewish-Christian relations in new ways. While some would argue that this is really "just" about pro-Israel alliance building, Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border shows how this movement significantly engages basic questions of identity and the borders between Judaism and Christianity. Christian Zionism serves as one chapter in the history of two religious communities--and the fraught relationships between them--facing together the globalized world of the twenty-first century.

How should Christians today understand the many promises and prophecies in the Old Testament about the future of Israel and its land? Are Christian Zionists justified in believing that these have been fulfilled in the return of Jews to their land since the 1880s and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948? This book discusses all the key texts about the restoration of Israel that are quoted in these debates, questioning the Christian Zionist interpretation and offering an alternative. This is followed by a detailed study of two important Old Testament texts dealing with the future of Israel, Ezekiel 33-47 and Zechariah 9-13, understanding them in their original context and exploring how they are interpreted in the New Testament. This is no theoretical, ivory-tower debate. We are dealing here with the most bitter and protracted conflict of the last 150 years; and the way we interpret the Bible has profound political consequences.

Most observers explain evangelical Christians' bedrock support for Israel as stemming from the apocalyptic belief that the Jews must return to the Holy Land as a precondition for the second coming of Christ. But the real reasons, argues Stephen Spector, are far more complicated. In Evangelicals and Israel, Spector delves deeply into the Christian Zionist movement, mining information from original interviews, web sites, publications, news reports, survey research, worship services, and interfaith conferences, to provide a surprising look at the sources of evangelical support for Israel.Israel is God's prophetic clock for many evangelicals - irrefutable proof that prophecy is true and coming to pass in our lifetime. But Spector goes beyond end-times theology to find a complex set of motivations behind Israel-evangelical relations. These include the promise of God's blessing for those who bless the Jews; gratitude to Jews for establishing the foundations of Christianity; remorse for the Church's past anti-Semitism; fear that God will judge the nations based on how they treated the Jewish people; and reliance on Israel as the West's firewall against Islamist terrorism. Spector explores many Christian Zionists' hostility toward Islam, but also uncovers an unexpected pragmatism and flexiblility concerning Israel's possession of the entire Holy Land.For evangelicals, politics frequently mixes with faith. Yet Spector argues that evangelical beliefs - though often portrayed as unifying and rigid - are in reality various and even contradictory. Spector uses George W. Bush's beliefs about the Bible as a sounding board for these issues and explores the evangelical influence on his Middle East policies. Evangelicals and Israel corrects much of the speculation about Bush's personal faith and about evangelicalism's impact on American-Middle East relations, and provides the fullest and most nuanced account to date of the motives and theology behind Christian Zionism.

Millions of American Christians see U.S. support for the State of Israel as a God-ordained responsibility. Robert O. Smith provides an in-depth look at the English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation at the heart of this popular affinity.

Christian Zionism influences global politics, especially U.S. foreign policy, and has deeply affected Jewish–Christian and Muslim–Christian relations. With a fair-minded, longitudinal study of this dynamic yet controversial movement, Donald M. Lewis traces its lineage from biblical sources through the Reformation to various movements of today.

Christian Zionism is often seen as the offspring of premillennial dispensationalism. But the authors of this work contend that the biblical and theological connections between covenant and land are nearly as close in the New Testament as in Old. Written with academic rigor, this provocative volume proposes a place for Christian Zionism in an integrated biblical vision today.

This book explores why English Christians, from the early modern period onwards, believed that their nation had a special mission to restore the Jews to Palestine. It examines English support for Jewish restoration from the Whitehall Conference in 1655 through to public debates on the Jerusalem Bishopric in 1841. Rather than claiming to replace Israel as God’s “elect nation”, England was “chosen” to have a special, but inferior, relationship with the Jews. Believing that God “blessed those who bless” the Jewish people, this national role allowed England to atone for ill-treatment of Jews, read the confusing pathways of providence, and guarantee the nation’s survival until Christ’s return. This book analyses this mode of national identity construction and its implications for understanding Christian views of Jews, the self, and “the other”. It offers a new understanding of national election, and of the relationship between apocalyptic prophecy and political action.

When Christians collude in crimes against humanity, they betray their citizenship in the kingdom of God, demonstrating that Christ’s Lordship does not rule over every area of their lives. The popular ideology known as Christian Zionism is a prime enabler of such widespread discipleship—failure in western Christianity. As the state of Israel continues to violate international law with colonial settlement in lands captured by warfare, legalized racial discrimination, and the creation of what many have called “the world’s largest open-air prison” in Gaza, Christian Zionists continue their unqualified support for Zionist Israel. Though Israel advertises itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” it is actually a rigid ethnocracy—its entire society built on the foundations of Jewish supremacy over a Palestinian underclass. History will eventually judge Christian Zionist support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians in the same way people of conscience now condemn the Christian church in the American South for its defense of slavery and hostility towards the civil rights movement. Just as the Southern Baptist church finally repudiated its pro-slavery past, so everyone genuinely devoted to Jesus Christ must repudiate both the ideology and the legacy of Christian Zionism.