Christian Zionist theology holds that Israel must gather all the Jews of the world, enlarge its territory, destroy Muslim holy places, and ethnically cleanse “the holy land” of all non-Jews. A majority of evangelical Christians in the United States believe that support for such actions by Israel will help hasten the the return of Christ and the desired end of the world. While a large number of theologians consider it heresy, many Christians hold this far-right ideology without realizing its implications.

Christian Zionism is a political and theological ideology that misuses Christian texts to support the modern nation-state of Israel out of the belief that Israel has a cosmic purpose in bringing about the “End Times” which will culminate in the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world.

Christian Zionists make up the largest US voting bloc supporting Israel’s most heinous practices. Christian Zionist lobbies like CUFI leverage their political power to ensure the US gives moral and political cover to Israeli colonization, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

History

The history of Christian Zionism is deeply tied to certain strands of fundamentalist Christianity, particularly those tied historically (and presently) to imperialism and white supremacy. Christian Zionist theology is deeply tied to empire, originating at the height of British colonial expansion.

Dating back to the late-18th and early-19th centuries, Christian Zionism actually predates Jewish Zionism. Decades before Theodor Herzl founded Zionism (1897) as a secular nationalist movement among European Jews, British Christian leaders had already fixated upon the idea that “Jews should move to Palestine.”

First appearing within puritan and later pietist circles, such "restorationist" ideas would gain significant traction among those Scottish Presbyterians who came to exert significant influence over British colonial policy (the infamous Lord Balfour most prominent among them).

Informed by their theology, they falsely portrayed the land as empty and awaiting Jewish return.

Meanwhile, it was the speculative 19th-century dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby, popularized by the then-ubiquitous Scofield Reference Bible, which truly helped disseminate such views within the American context. Even among those who had never in-fact met a Jew, let alone travel to the Holy Land, Jewish rule in Palestine came to be seen as a prerequisite for the return of Christ.

By the early 20th century leading politicians in Britain, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Lord Arthur Balfour, were deeply influenced by Christian Zionism. They and others supported the fledgling Jewish Zionist movement, helping it to expand and gain influence in Britain.

This support would culminate in the Balfour Declaration, which granted Zionism international recognition and is still used as justification for the Zionist takeover of Palestine despite its origins in the context of British imperial ambition and WWI realpolitik.

When leading American evangelists saw how these ideas influenced audiences, Christian Zionism became a key (albeit not universal) tenet of the Christian Fundamentalist movement of the early 1900s. To this day, political support for Israel remains a major tenet within Christian Fundamentalist communities.

After working hard for the establishment of a Zionist state within historic Palestine, as based upon a misguided reading of biblical prophecy, Israel’s creation in 1948 and eventual conquest of Jerusalem in 1967 came to be seen then as the fulfillment and therefore proof of such beliefs. It is, quite literally, the definition of “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

A number of organizations promote Christian Zionist goals. They give money to Israeli settlements, perpetuate anti-Muslim hatred, slander those who speak up for Palestinian rights, and have incredible lobbying power with the US government. The largest of these organizations, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), report a following of eight million members; this is more than ten times the size of the significantly more well-known and infamous lobby group AIPAC. 

Established in 2006, CUFI has long held strong connections within conservative politics. Its founder John Hagee was described by George W. Bush’s Press Secretary as being “able to quickly get someone on the phone at the White House.”

As CUFI has grown into a massive and influential political machine in recent years, conservative Christians have been successful at translating their Christian Zionist beliefs to policy. While CUFI has long held political sway with past administrations, it found a champion in Donald Trump (as well as those who would seek to take up his mantle).

CUFI has celebrated playing a role in some of Trump’s most hawkish and repressive policies, such as the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the ironically named “Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism," the annexation of the Golan Heights, cutting humanitarian funding to Palestinians, and hostility with Iran.

While many have criticized organizations like AIPAC for promoting harmful US policies toward Palestinians, AIPAC’s size and influence pales in comparison to CUFI. CUFI has quietly become the largest organization in the United States driving support for Israel’s colonization and military occupation of Palestine, including the imprisonment of Palestinian children; the bombing of homes, schools, and hospitals in Gaza; massacring peaceful protestors; and the confiscation of Palestinian land. CUFI has cemented its place as a religio-nationalist organization that openly drives U.S. imperialism and the ongoing colonization of Palestine, all in the name of Christianity.

CUFI has received direct funding from the Israeli government in order to carry out activities promoting Christian Zionism, within North America and around the world, and lobbying for anti-Palestinian policies.

Christian Zionist theology is heavily rooted in a particular type of popular apocalyptic eschatology, a field of reflection about the end of human history and the manner in which it comes about. Within this framework, the creation of Israel as a state is viewed as a fulfilment of biblical prophecy, marking an important signpost before the return of Jesus. For many Christians, this moment is intimately connected with blissful concepts like the end of all suffering, earth being restored to its original perfection, and eternal comfort.

Christian Zionist theology, however, holds that before this future can come about Israel must gather together all the Jews of the world, enlarge its territory, destroy the Muslim holy places, and ethnically cleanse “the holy land” of all non-Jews. As it currently stands (though fortunately the number is decreasing rapidly), a majority of evangelical Christians in the United States believe that support for such actions will hasten the desired end of the world. This particular belief is fairly recent in Christian history, only coming into popular belief in the 1800s through the writings of John Darby and others described above. Christian Zionism is a far-right ideology to which most Christian denominations do not ascribe. Yet popular evangelists have sold this ideology widely. It’s popularity is due in large part to the second tenet of the ideology . . . economics.

The second part of Christian Zionism is as deeply pragmatic and concerned about life on this earth as the first part is esoteric and concerned about a life to come. Motivated by economic connections to a prosperous Israeli state, Christian Zionism holds fast to a misreading of Genesis 12:3, where God says to Abram “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” In their interpretation, the modern state of Israel becomes the “you” referred to in the verse. This falsely conflates the biblical Hebrews (an oft-marginalized and oppressed people) with modern Israel (a colonial nation state that is marginalizing and oppressing the Palestinian people). Drawing on principles taken from the prosperity gospel, which is a misguided belief that God will reward people with financial and material success, Christian Zionism states that one’s experience of blessing is predicated upon on one’s support for the state of Israel.

The promise of economic gain has been used by Christian Zionist missionaries to promote this ideology within traditionally marginalized communities, as well as export it to countries of the “global south.” Exploiting the promise of prosperity, organizations have been established to ensure that Christians around the world continually support Israel, both monetarily and politically. The largest and most powerful of these organizations, as mentioned, is CUFI. While Christian Zionism contains many theological elements, it is ultimately an ideology built upon greed and power. The theology acts as a smoke screen for the hateful ideology which lies beneath. 

Recently, Palestinian theologian Mitri Raheb has proposed redefining Christian Zionism as: “a Christian lobby that supports the Jewish settler colonialism of Palestinian land by using biblical/theological constructs within a [problematic] metanarrative . . .” Doing so, Raheb emphasizes not “what people believe but what they do based on that belief.” In this way, Christian Zionism is viewed not as the sole province of the fundamentalist, but it applies to multiple theological traditions, each contributing in their own way to indigenous dispossession and the settler-colonial conquest of Palestine.

Central to the Zionist project from its inception has been the violent imposition of a false construction of reality (“a land without a people,” for instance) over the top of the lived, historically authentic Palestinian experience—an act of indigenous erasure and epistemological genocide. Western theologians, in their failure to deconstruct key Zionist assumptions about “the promised land” and “the people of God,” merely provide ideological cover for Palestinian dispossession. Raheb directly challenges the ideological reconstruction by Western theologians of what is ultimately an imagined, decontextualized “Holy Land” divorced from both historical and present-day realities. Western theologians, he argues, too often “write as if Palestine were an ancient land that exists in a vacuum; they strip it of its sociopolitical context—of its real people—and they rarely think about how this theology has and is being used to enhance settler colonialism.”

A related concept in liberal mainline circles, and equally as destructive, is what Jewish theologian Marc Ellis refers to as the “Interfaith Ecumenical Deal.” In an attempt to atone for horrors of Christian antisemitism and bring healing between Christians and Jews, an extremely important endeavor, a critical mistake was made.

According to Ellis:

“Christians supported Israel as repentance for anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Then as Israel became more controversial with their abuse of Palestinians, Christians remained silent. Non-support and, worse, criticism of Israeli policies, was seen by the Jewish dialoguers as backtracking to anti-Semitism. That’s where the dialogue became a deal: Silence on the Christian side brings no criticism of anti-Semitism from the Jewish side.”

So, Palestinians unjustly continue to pay the price for the historic evils of western bigotry, as western Christians are exempted from their historic responsibility for such evil or of the need to truly look within and excise those destructive beliefs and practices which result in or seek to justify acts of extreme violence (as witnessed now in Gaza).