American Christian Zionism and Israeli-Palestinian Relations

By Robert Flynn

Introduction

Driven by the election, discussion regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has focused on state actions and the perceived ability of political leaders in the United States to bring about a resolution. Now that the U.S. election is decided, and with hostilities continuing, it is crucial to broaden and deepen the discussion by examining how non-state actors have impacted the situation. Particular consideration must be given to American Christian Zionists, whose doctrines about God’s final judgement drive their engagement. As 63 percent of American evangelicals believe “we are living in end times”, such beliefs dampen efforts to resolve the conflict.

Belief Systems

Belief systems are central to the human experience as we encounter and seek to understand the world. After surviving Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankl described this basic drive to understand one’s purpose and to craft a sense of reality, pointing out, amidst descriptions of the Holocaust, that life’s obstacles often lead to an abdication of the search. In his work Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl challenges us to ascertain how to live in constructive and peaceful coexistence while facing uncertainty, pain, and relativism. 

One way of answering the call is found in religion, to which many turn when faced with adversity or change. Some beleaguered believers turn to the fundamentals of their faith to preserve their identity in the face of change and struggle. They seek texts such as the Bible and interpret it—or more often a portion of it—literally, citing its inerrancy in absolute terms while vilifying those who disagree and proselytizing to others. They sometimes encircle themselves exclusively with chosen allies, creating boundaries through language, dress, symbols, and behavior, applying litmus tests to identify and embrace those who stand with them and to eschew interlopers. A linear method of reading history—seeing the past as a drama that moves toward a contrived end point—results in an attempted return to an ostensible golden age. With a flair for the dramatic, they and their charismatic leaders create dire narratives that protect their identity by providing them exclusivity while also giving them meaning and purpose. 

Societal stress and uncertainty push some people to react defensively and drive them to seek to remake the world around them. Certain about what “should be,” they counter threatening forces by using communications technologies such as televised megachurch services to spark and sustain their reactionary movement. They tailor education to ensure the flow of new recruits, create new social formations to voice their anger, and use modern economics to gain resources and power. They might be driven by faith, envy of those in power, or animosity toward those seemingly responsible for bringing change, so fearing irrelevance, they may express their grievances through communal reassertion of religious identity. As a chosen group, they see themselves as righteous in their ends and thus enabled to use any means. 

These self-claimed theologians seek to realize their religious purpose by politicizing their beliefs, while politicians sacralize their politics. Emilio Gentile describes the result as America’s “civil religion.” Karl Mannheim describes the tactic as creating ideologies, or “wish-images,” “myths,” and “fictions.” In an attempt to explain an uncertain world, a group’s collective unconscious obscures social reality both to itself and to others. The danger, Mannheim cautions, is that such groups can “in their thinking become so intensively interest-bound that they are simply unable to see facts that undermine their sense of domination.” 

Christian Zionism

Christian Zionism is a movement within Protestant fundamentalism that sees the existence of the State of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and thus deserving of American support. Its doctrinal underpinnings arose in the nineteenth century from premillennial dispensational theologies introduced to the United States from the British Isles. The premillennial dogma is based on the premise that Jesus will return to Earth after a cataclysmic worsening of social conditions, including the rise of the Antichrist. Dispensationalism reads history as a performance played out through a series of seven dispensations, epochs serving as a theatrical program guiding the faithful. Christian Zionism holds that we are in the latter stages of the play, facing the imminent final act when Jesus, in an act termed “the rapture,” takes believers “up in the clouds…to meet the Lord in the air.” Belief in Jesus as the Messiah is the ultimate litmus test as nonbelievers will be “cast into the lake of fire, while the saved will live forever with Christ.” Eschewing much of Christ’s peaceful and love-centric messages in favor of Old Testament retribution, we have a doctrine of power and confrontation, with God gentle and uplifting to some yet caustic and judgmental to others. 

Jews play a key, albeit ancillary, role, sparking the End Times by rebuilding the Jewish temple. The Antichrist will establish his dominion—a “new world order”—from the third temple, which will be rebuilt on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, notably now home to the Islamic Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. In this eschatological performance, Jews would be invited to convert, although “two-thirds will be struck down and perish.” In the celestial drama, understood as a Manichean battle of good versus evil, those of Jewish faith are lumped together with Muslims and other nonbelievers—othered and denied redemption.

Impacting Israeli-Palestinian Relations

Although comprising only a small slice of the 31,102 verses of the Old and New Testaments, the prophetic texts are considered in this derivative theology to be pre-written history. Seeing prophecy realized in the military victories of the secular State of Israel, Christian Zionists—saturated with American “exceptionalism”—endeavor to bring U.S. domestic and foreign policies in line with the evangelical master plot. Through politics and finances, these actors attempt to “hasten Armageddon,” and in so doing, have negatively impacted prospects for peace. 

The effect of Christian Zionist voting was first evident after evangelicals grew disappointed with one of their own, President Jimmy Carter, who dared voice concern for the human rights of Palestinians. In the 1980 election, Christian Zionists voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan, who had publicly expressed his belief in a Battle of Armageddon. That administration, intent on changing the composition of the Republican Party, cemented a relationship that has remained solid. One particular incident illustrates how the political-religious relationship impacted Israel-Palestinian relations: in 2002, when President George W. Bush encouraged Israel to stop its military offensive in the West Bank, he was rebuffed by a barrage of emails, letters, and telephone calls from the Christian Zionist lobby, and subsequently went quiet. The political-religious alliance was set. 

Financial support also adversely impacts Israeli-Palestinian relations. Within one month of the October 7 attacks in 2023, Christians United for Israel (CUFI) raised $2.65 million using explicit rhetoric: “Support Israel right now as she fights the barbarians at her gates.” The estimated $50 million raised by American Christian Zionist organizations between 2008–2018 has supplemented the United States’ military, diplomatic, and intelligence patronage. Targeted lobbying and propaganda have influenced U.S. government funding for Israel, which stands as the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War II.

Even when they are unable to influence policy, Christian Zionists are not against subverting it. Citing biblical prophecy as his rationale, John Hagee, pastor of the San Antonio Cornerstone Church, donated $1 million to Israel in 1997 to resettle Soviet Jews. When asked about the antithesis between support of Jewish settlements and American policy, Hagee answered, “From my perspective the law of God transcends the laws of the United States government.” 

Similarly obstructing efforts at peaceful relations is the disparagement of Islam. Pat Robertson, a televangelist and 1988 Republican Presidential candidate, labelled Islam a “bloody, brutal type of religion.” Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of the Christian missionary aid organization Samaritan’s Purse, declared it “an evil and wicked religion,” and Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, a pro-life, pro-family, pro-Israel lobbying group, said “Muhammad was a terrorist.” Such combative rhetoric dissuades the constructive and creative action necessary for peaceful compromise. 

The fact is, the rhetoric is not even beneficial to Israel, nor to any religion. Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a prominent Israeli Jewish spiritual leader, acknowledged U.S. Christian Zionists’ financial largesse yet noted the underlying motivation and inherent prejudice and described it as “the world’s biggest scam,” designed to “erase Israel.” Christian Zionism’s soteriological narrative claims that salvation only comes to those who accept Christ as their Messiah, with those following the Jewish faith exploited and discarded as “mere pawns” for the sole benefit of Christians. The dissociation and denunciation that are central to this dogma derail interfaith discourse, contradict the core precepts of Christianity, and negate Judaism by eliminating any understanding of its theology as a path to salvation in its own right. 

Conclusion

Eschatological visions of End Days are not exclusive to Christian Zionism and are not the sole reasons for its support of Israel. Colonial history suggests a shared Western culture as well as similar political approaches. Yet, the prophetic notion that Israel is connected to the idea of the Second Coming remains prominent, a factor that is evident in American Christian Zionist support for current war and resettlement efforts.

The religious zeal speaks to Christian Zionists’ conviction that they have exclusive claims to religious truth, what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called “theological intolerance” and an impediment to civil relations: “You can’t possibly live at peace with people you regard as damned...we absolutely must either reform them or torment them.” Christian Zionism goes a third way, exploiting those deemed to be damned: to forward the premillennial drama, the accursed Israelis must ultimately either apostatize or be subject to God’s torment. Perpetuating such intolerance are the political elite, allies in the eschatological drama, with both groups refusing Frankl’s call to acknowledge the indecipherability of absolute truth and accept the need to find meaningful coexistence despite life’s insecurity.

Robert Flynn is a former U.S. intelligence counterterrorism officer and business consultant, now a candidate for a Master of Philosophy in International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin.

Robert earned a Master of Arts degree at the Fletcher School, a Master of Business Administration at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Arts in History at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. He has previously published in various journals including Risk Management (2017), Hospitality (2017), Handbook of Business Strategy (2006 and 1998), Journal of Alternative Investments (2005), and Measuring Business Excellence (2005).

Zionist bumper sticker in Trumpland's bible belt is by Gilbert Mercier and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.