Christian Zionism

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President Donald Trump’s staggering victory on Tuesday left many asking themselves what drove many Americans to support the former president at the polls.

But in Israel, posters congratulating Trump had been printed and were already adorning buildings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

In a conversation with The Media Line’s Felice Friedson, former Trump adviser Mike Evans stands out as a pioneer of Christian Zionism.

Evans, who led the banner movement in the Jewish State, said that Trump’s views on Israel played a decisive role.

“Every Bible-believer in America believes that Israel is the Bible land,” Evans said. He cited chapter 12 of Genesis, in which God tells Abraham he will “bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee.”

“They were very worried. They knew Donald Trump would bless Israel, and they weren’t convinced that Kamala Harris would,” he said.

Evans, who is the founder of the Friends of Zion Heritage Center, which also houses the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, has devoted his career to evangelical Christian support for Israel.

He said that the war in Israel will likely come to a close by the time Trump takes office.

Trump has no desire to be a wartime president,” he said.

“He was adamantly against the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, and he was adamantly against the Ukraine war. So, I think that President Trump is basically sending a signal to the state of Israel, to [Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu, even though he’s not president right now, to get everything completed by January 20.”

Netanyahu can finish the war by January, seeing as both Hezbollah and Hamas have been significantly weakened,” Evans said. But in order to do so, he continued, Israel will have to confront Iran.

“Israel cannot strike the nuclear reactors. I wrote three books on this,” Evans noted. “Number one, they’re hardened. Number two, they don’t even have the armaments that would destroy them completely. And unless they use low-yield nuclear, which they’ll not do, these are high-population cities.”

What Israel can do, he said, is collapse Iran’s economy by striking the country’s oil refineries and ports. “They’ll have no more money to fund Hamas, fund Hezbollah, or even make their own ballistic missiles against the state of Israel,” he noted.

If Israel wants to accomplish that before Trump takes office, time is short. But Evans said that Israel is “100%” ready to do so.

“Israel has the cyber ability. They have the technology. They can knock it out,” he said.
Once Iran is bankrupt, the Iranian people will rise up against their leaders, Evans predicted.

“Remember, the Shah was overthrown by an oil strike. You collapse, you bankrupt Iran, you've got 85 million people. Who are really upset about the living hell they've gone through and their country being hijacked.”

“Eighty-five percent of the population, which is 85 million, despise the mullahs,” he said. “They can overthrow those mullahs. The mullahs will not have money to even fund terror within their own country.”

Since Trump was elected, Iran has experienced an economic shockwave, Evans said, noting that Iranians have been drinking alcohol and throwing parties since the election despite official bans.
“They are going against the mullahs, and the mullahs can’t do anything because there’s too many of them,” he said.

“The window is open now. I believe Donald Trump will be extremely happy if Israel bankrupts Iran. Remember, this is the president who had the strongest sanctions,” Evans said. “If he bankrupts Iran and knocks them out, it’s going to be wonderful.”

More difficult than taking out Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, Evans said, is the matter of bringing the hostages back home.

“I don’t believe for a second that Hamas has any intention of negotiating a resolution to this crisis using the hostages,” he said.

Trump's Iran plans can bring peace
Evans said that eliminating the Iranian threat would allow Trump to facilitate peace between Israel and the Sunni world.

Peace with Saudi Arabia is achievable within a year and would be the “jewel of the Abraham Accords,” the normalization deals between Israel and four Arab countries achieved during Trump’s first term.

Making peace between Israel and the Sunni world would be “a game changer for Israel,” he said.
In such a world, Iran would no longer pose a threat to Israel, funding would dry up for Palestinian terrorism, and an international coalition would emerge that could temporarily rule Gaza, he said.

He noted that Saudi Arabia, which has been mentioned as a potential player in postwar Gaza, has “zero tolerance” for antisemitism.

“When I met with the crown prince, I found him astonishingly pro-Israel,” Evans said. “More pro-Israel than most Jewish people in America.”

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even told Evans that his own mother was a Jew, he reported.

When asked about the continued plights of the UAE during the war, Evans noted that Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, also “can't say enough nice things about Israel.”

The positive relationship between Israel and the UAE is evident in Emirates Air and Fly Dubai’s continued service to Israel throughout the war.

Evans said that the Palestinian people have been exploited by Iran. “I believe that the Palestinians have been used as cannon fodder by the Persians who don’t want to die killing Jews.
They want other people to die for them. So, they’ve gamed these people. They’ve gamed them in Lebanon.

They gamed them here in Gaza. But all that’s going to stop. And when it stops, there’s an opportunity to reform, rebuild, reeducate,” he said.

What led to October 7?
He said that the October 7 attack was not a result of the Palestinians’ desire for a state but rather the “radical Islamic ideology” that Palestinians have been exposed to.

“You can’t take people that believe in their hearts that Jews invented the diseases of the world, the wars of the world, and the deceit of Satan and expect them to be reeducated in a short process. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take patience,” Evans said. He noted that some “bad actors” will not be willing to be reeducated and will have to “get out of there.”

Eventually, peace can be achieved, but “it’s certainly not going to happen in a peace summit that is going to talk about land,” Evans said. “They still want to kill Jews.”

Evans described Netanyahu as “the most brilliant man on the planet.” “The only advice that I have for him is the advice that I’ve told him many times in the past: Put all of your faith in God and seek his strength and wisdom and power,” he said.

With God’s help, Evans said, Netanyahu might go down in history as “the 21st century Winston Churchill.”

Political differences, especially regarding Trump, mark some of the starkest differences between Jews in Israel and Jews in America.

Evans suggested that American Jewish support for the Democratic party could be explained in part by the sense among American Jews that promoting tolerance might protect them from antisemitism.

He described the current relationship between Jewish and Christian Zionists as at an all-time high.

During Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s initial courtship of the Christian Zionist movement, many Israeli Jews were suspicious of Christians’ motives.

“As the years went by, they started seeing [Christian Zionists] do good deeds and make sacrifices. And they thought, wow, they really care about us. And it’s not a hidden agenda. They really do care about us. And so this day is a brand-new day,” he said.

“The State of Israel now knows something about Christians. They know what a real Christian is,” he said. “And Mother Teresa said to me, real Christians can’t kill Jews. They have to love Jews. Because Jesus was Jewish. And love is not something you say. It’s something you do.”

It’s hard to question Evan’s love of the Jewish State. He jokingly recounted telling his wife that there was another woman in his life.

“She said, who? What?” he laughed. “I said, yes, her name is Israel. I’ve been with her over 200 times since we got married. … So, Israel is the love of my life, and I have to be with her always.”

Pete Hegseth wears his Christian pride on his sleeve — literally, and sometimes in Hebrew.

The Minnesota National Guard veteran, Fox News personality and now nominee for U.S. secretary of defense has a slew of religiously inspired tattoos that have drawn attention as Hegseth’s public vetting for a senior position in President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet has begun.

Hegseth, 44, has a litany of ink that points to his military service and penchant for patriotism, including the U.S. Constitution’s famous opening phrase “We the People,” a “Join, or Die” snake from the American Revolution, an American flag with an AR-15 rifle and a patch of his regiment, the 187th Infantry.

Other tattoos are religious in nature — and raising eyebrows over their potential implications for an official with responsibility for national security.

Hegseth’s tattoos, political views and religious affiliation and background are consistent with an extreme strain of Christian nationalism, according to Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies. Specifically, he appears to be belong to a fringe denomination known as Reformed Reconstructionism, which believes in applying biblical Christian law to society, exclusively male leadership, and actively preparing the world for the prophesied return of Jesus.

The denomination has an affinity for the Crusades, the military campaign waged during the Middle Ages by European Christians to rid Muslims from the Holy Land, as described in the Old and New Testaments.

One of Hegseth’s most prominent tattoos is a large Jerusalem cross on his chest, a symbol featuring a large cross potent with smaller Greek crosses in each of its four quadrants. The symbol was used in the Crusades and represented the Kingdom of Jerusalem that the Crusaders established.

Crusader symbols have also grown popular on the far-right, which sees the imagery as a nod to an era of European Christian wars against Muslims and Jews. The shooter who committed the 2019 New Zealand mosque massacre had adopted symbols of the Crusades, and a crusader symbol also appeared at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol as well as at the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Hegseth has said his tattoo kept him away from President Joe Biden’s inauguration just two weeks after Jan. 6.

“I was in the National Guard during the inauguration of Joe Biden, so I served under Bush, served under Obama, served under Trump, and now was going to guard the inauguration because I was in the D.C. guard,” he told Fox in June. “Ultimately, members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have, which is a religious tattoo. It’s a Jerusalem cross. Everybody can look it up, but it was used as a premise to revoke my orders to guard the inauguration.”

Hegseth also has “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it,” tattooed on his bicep. The phrase was used as a rallying cry for the First Crusade in 1096. It is also the closing sentence of Hegseth’s 2020 book, titled “American Crusade.”

The slogan has also been used by members of far-right, white supremacist and Christian nationalist groups. The perpetrator of the 2023 Allen, Texas, mall shooting had it tattooed alongside neo-Nazi tattoos, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which said elsewhere that the phrase had been “adopted by some white supremacists.”

Hegseth also has a cross and sword tattooed on his arm, which he says represents a New Testament verse. The verse, Matthew 10:34, reads, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

He later added “Yeshua,” or Jesus in Hebrew, under the sword. Hegseth told the site Media Ink in a 2020 interview that the tattoo was Jesus’ Hebrew name, which he mistakenly said was “Yehweh,” a Biblical spelling of God’s name. He told Media Ink that he got the tattoo while in Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace, which is located in the present-day West Bank, where he was reporting for Fox Nation.

“Israel, Christianity and my faith are things I care deeply about,” Hegseth told Media Ink.

Hegseth opposes the two-state solution and supports exclusive Israeli sovereignty in the Holy Land. He has also said the idea of rebuilding the biblical Temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is a “miracle” that could happen in our lifetimes. The First and Second Temples stood on a site where the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine, now stands.

Hegseth expressed these views in a 2018 speech delivered in Jerusalem at a conference organized by the right-wing Israel National News, also known as Arutz Sheva.

The speech laid out a vision of a world beset by a growing darkness that can only be saved by the United States, Israel and fellow “free people” from other countries.

He criticized the Obama administration’s record on Iran and said Trump is providing the right leadership on the issue while calling Europe “a museum soon to be drowned out by radical Islam and Islamism.”

He said that seeing the reality on the ground and talking to Israelis revealed the irrelevance of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I take a solemn responsibility in coming here and learning from Joe and from others about the truth on the ground and then going back to America and fighting the fake news about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab Israeli peace process, the so-called two-state solution that still drips off the lips of the intelligentsia in America today, when if you walk the ground today, you understand there is no such thing as the outcome of a two-state solution. There is one state.”

He concluded his speech by drawing a line from the historical milestones of Israeli history to a vision of the building of the Third Temple.

Visiting the Western Wall, he said, “got me thinking about another miracle that I hope all of you don’t see too far away, because 1917 was a miracle, 1948 was a miracle, 1967 was a miracle, 2017, the Declaration of Jerusalem as the capital was a miracle. And there’s no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible.

“I don’t know how it would happen. You don’t know how it would happen. But I know that it could happen.”

The Kids Guide to Israel, one of Mike Huckabee’s children’s books from a company he co-founded, tells a simplified story of courageous Jews standing up against Arabs and antisemites to found a country that is “central to the world’s destiny and salvation.” Palestinians exist only as antagonists.

The 20-page pamphlet offers a stark distillation of Huckabee’s Christian Zionist worldview, which has been under scrutiny since President-elect Donald Trump selected him as ambassador to Israel earlier this month. It was published by eSpired, the “faith-based” education company that Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, co-founded.

The book, which is undated but references the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks, seamlessly integrates religious justifications for supporting Israel with political reasons, a mainstay of Huckabee’s approach to the Middle East and a hint of how he might conduct himself as ambassador if confirmed by the Senate.

Huckabee, who would be the first non-Jewish U.S. ambassador to Israel since 2011, is a Baptist minister and ally of the Israeli settler movement who said during a visit to Israel following the Oct. 7 attack that “evangelicals stand with Israel.”

The guide echoes that sentiment, tracing Israel’s lineage to the establishment of God’s Biblical covenant with Abraham, although it’s not framed as an overtly religious publication. The melding of a conservative Christian sensibility with secular history and politics is a staple of eSpired, which has published dozens of other guides, including fawning accounts of Trump, Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis, and others on “fake news,” “fighting indoctrination” and “why capitalism rocks.”

Mixing Christianity with history
The 74, an online news outlet covering education, found that the Texas Education Agency hired eSpired to provide Bible-related content for its controversial Bluebonnet curriculum, which has been criticized for emphasizing Christianity over other religions.

Some of the illustrations included in Bluebonnet materials appear to have come directly from books in the “Kids Guide” series published by eSpired.

The Israel guide offers an abbreviated, and occasionally incorrect, summary of the state’s creation and modern history. The history of Jewish persecution is emphasized, while Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are omitted and no explanation — save for antisemitism — is offered when the book references the country’s opponents and critics.

Its timeline of Jewish history runs from the covenant with Abraham in 1800 BCE until Israel declared independence in 1948, with just a handful of detours; it mentions only two events in the nearly 2,000 years between the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and Theodor Herzl publishing his Zionist manifesto in 1896.

Descriptions of Israel’s modern history are sometimes jumbled. A section on “the intifadas” says that, after terrorist attacks in 2000, “again, Israel tried to negotiate” by signing the 1993 Oslo Accords.

And as much as the uncredited author appears to like Jews, that affinity is not always discerning. Under the banner of “why Israel matters to the world” one bullet point ticks off a series of Jewish — but not Israeli — scientists. “Not to mention the biblical figures of Moses, Noah, and Jesus. All were Jews.”

To underscore this last point, the page features clip art illustrations of the trio. Except: Noah wasn’t Jewish. Judaism’s concept of “Noahide laws” refers specifically to the commandments that non-Jews should also follow.

The company’s Israel booklet is a little vague on geography. The map featured on its cover shows Gaza, the West Bank and Golan Heights shaded in a different color, but it never mentions any of those regions by name. It refers to “various groups living in Palestine” during the brief section on the Oslo accords.

Arabs portrayed as the enemy
Arabs and Palestinians only appear as Israel’s enemies, or the recipients of its benevolence. Readers learn that “anti-Israel Arabs” tried to block Israel’s founding and that “just one day after Israel was created, Arab nations began a series of attacks that have continued through to today.”

“Palestinian leaders want Israel destroyed and the Jewish people gone,” according to the guide’s final spread.

This portrayal is consistent with Huckabee’s beliefs, as he told Fox News last year, “Hamas does not represent a civilized people. They represent barbarians who, in cold blood, murdered Israelis.”

Despite this, “Arabs are granted full civil rights under Israel law, which forbids discrimination of any kind,” the guide states, and it is “one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women can vote, own property, and serve in the government.”

Yet “the media and other antisemitic people side with Israel’s sworn enemies and paint Israel’s peaceful Zionist ideal as aggression.”

Its section on the Holocaust, which features the illustration of a doe-eyed Jewish boy wearing a yellow Star of David, is fairly tame compared to Huckabee’s comments on the genocide. He once compared the removal of Jewish settlers in Gaza to the Holocaust and Israeli soldiers who removed them to Nazis.

Some 2,000 pro-Israel protesters gathered outside Amsterdam’s city hall on Thursday night after Mayor Femke Halsema nixed the originally planned rally in the capital’s Dam Square, reportedly concerned that the site could not be properly secured.

The central Dam Square is where pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations have taken place with greater frequency over the last few weeks following the violent attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters on November 7 — though with far fewer attendees than Thursday evening’s pro-Israel crowd.

“This is how ‘never again’ becomes ‘yet again,’ by taking rights away from Jews bit by bit,” said Jewish former politician Rob Oudkerk. “‘Yet again’ is Mayor Halsema, who bans us from Dam Square.”

Several speakers bitterly complained of what they called Halsema’s unwillingness to protect Jews in the heart of the city.

Led by Christians For Israel, some 20 Protestant and Jewish organizations at first rejected the security triangle’s decision to prohibit pro-Israel demonstrators from gathering at Dam Square, but finally agreed on the alternative location.

Small groups of counter-protesters — not more than a few dozen — were kept away from the largely Christian crowd that had come to the Dutch capital mainly from small and mid-sized towns in what is known as Holland’s Bible belt. There they were joined by Jewish citizens from Amsterdam and other sympathizers.

“My savior [Jesus Christ] was a Jew, the apostles were Jews, the Bible is a Jewish book. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are deeply anti-Christian,” said Protestant minister Klaas-Jelle Kaptein, from the island fishing town of Urk.

I am here to support Jewish people, they are the nation of God,” David said, adding one message for the citizens of Israel’s neighbor states: “Love, not hate!”

The most emotional speech of the night came from Holocaust survivor Deborah Maarsen-Laufer. Born in February 1942, she was the youngest survivor of the Ravensbrück Nazi concentration camp.

“Borrie,” as Maarsen is affectionately known in the Dutch Jewish community, referred to the three minutes of speaking time the organizers had given her.

“A lot can happen in three minutes. Three minutes were enough for the Nazis to take my parents, my sisters and me from our house 80 years ago. On October 7, three minutes were enough to turn a place where young people danced into hell. And three minutes were also enough for youths on scooters to hunt for Jews in our Mokum,” she said, using the traditional nickname for Amsterdam that has roots in the Hebrew word “makom,” meaning place.

“In these historic antisemitic times in which part of the people assume a passive-aggressive attitude [to Jews] or looks away, it is priceless that another part refuses to do so and shows its unreserved affection,” Lenny Kuhr, the Dutch Jewish winner of the 1969 Eurovision contest, told The Times of Israel.

A group of some 15 keffiyeh-wearing and mostly masked counter-protesters yelled “Zionism down” from the other side of the River Amstel that gives the Dutch capital its name, trying to reach the protest by claiming to police officers that they were part of it “as vehement opponents of antisemitism.”

Police, some on horseback, quickly surrounded and later dispersed the group, as they did with other small anti-Israel groups and individuals at the beginning of the demonstration. Halsema had banned a larger counter-protest after far left and Muslim youths attacked pro-Israeli Christians at a commemoration of the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel.

Groups of Muslim youths were not seen at the site of the protest, however, and confrontations between far-left counter-protesters and police remained mostly nonviolent. The pro-Israel crowd was largely well-behaved, and hundreds thanked policemen as they left for the busses that waited in Amsterdam’s outskirts to take them back to their towns.

As two men wearing Israeli flags left the square in front of the Stopera, one told The Times of Israel he was a refugee from Aleppo, Syria. David, born Dawud, said he converted to Christianity after arriving in the Netherlands in 2014.

“I am here to support Jewish people, they are the nation of God,” David said, adding one message for the citizens of Israel’s neighbor states: “Love, not hate!”

“The best friends that Israel has are the Bible-believing Christians,” claims Ed McAteer of the Christian “right” think tank the Religious Roundtable. [1] While the New York Times and much of the secular press have characterized the alliance of the Christian “right” with such pro-Israel lobby organizations as AIPAC as a “new development,” a casual review reveals that this marriage has been in the making for well over 30 years. Ed McAteer was a major player in campaigns that brought the Moral Majority and leading Christian televangelists like Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell into an alliance with AIPAC in the 1970s. However, in order to understand these so-called “strange bedfellows,” it is important to look back at the theological and political components of what is best called Christian Zionism, a movement within fundamentalist Christian theology that has grown into a formidable support base for pro-Israel interests in the United States. Interestingly, Christian Zionism actually predates Jewish political Zionism and has at times played a significant role in preparing the ground for the growth and impact of Jewish Zionism.

Britain and Zion

The British have a long-term fascination with the idea of “Israel” and the concept of God’s “Chosen People.” As far back as the seventh century, one of the first known British literary works, the Epistle of Gildas, saw the British people as the new Israel. The early English historian, the Venerable Bede (673-735), saw Britain as the new promised land and interpreted the attacks by the Danes and Norsemen with imagery borrowed from the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible. Through succeeding centuries, the fascination with Israel, prophecy and the chosen people would resurface in such literary giants as Chaucer, Milton, Bunyan, Coleridge and many others.

As early as 1585, there was discussion of England supporting the return of the Jews to Palestine in order to fulfill Biblical prophecy. [2] But an early nineteenth-century figure, the Anglican Rev. Louis Way, might be considered the founder of what is today called the Christian Zionist movement. In 1809 he assumed leadership of the struggling missionary group, the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews, and dedicated his efforts to gain mainstream acceptance for the project. Within a short time he gained a wide readership of his journal, The Jewish Expositor, and counted many clergy, academics and such literary figures as Samuel Taylor Coleridge among his subscribers.

Three major components marked Way’s missionary society and his journal. First, he believed that Jewish “restoration” in Palestine would be necessary as a historical and political process in order to fulfill the prophetic texts. Second, Christians must be educated to interpret the prophetic signs that pointed to the end of history so they could benefit from the analysis but also be enlisted in the cause of Jewish “restoration.” Way taught that once the Jews were restored to Palestine a series of prophetic events would be set in motion, or as some put it, “the clock of Biblical prophecy would be ticking again.” Third, the restoration of the Jews in Palestine would be one of the final steps necessary for the return of Jesus to earth. With the Jews “back in the Holy Land,” Way believed they would convert to Christianity during the difficult days prior to the Second Coming of Christ, or be converted immediately after his return. Way believed all English people, including the political elite, clergy, and academics, must bring their resources together in order to facilitate these goals.

The most influential of the Christian Zionists would come in the generation that followed Way. The Rev. John Nelson Darby, a renegade Irish Anglican priest, mobilized international support behind the views articulated by Rev. Way, and added several of his own features, including the doctrine of the “Rapture” whereby “born-again Christians” would be literally removed from history and translated instantly to heaven prior to Jesus’ return to earth. Darby also placed a restored Israel at the center of his theology, claiming that an actual nation of Israel would become the central instrument of God to fulfill the last days of history as we know it. Prior to Darby’s articulation of these views, they had remained on the fringe of Christian doctrine and had no place in Christian orthodoxy, be it Roman Catholic, Protestant or Eastern Orthodox. During his 60-year career, Darby spread the views that today form the central tenets of Christian Zionism and the premillennialist dispensational theology. [3]

“A Country with No People”

One of the significant British social reformers to be influenced by the theology of Way and Darby was Lord Shaftesbury. A conservative evangelical Christian, Shaftesbury was credited with changing England’s child labor laws and advocated several concerns of London’s poorer classes. He was also an advocate of premillennial dispensationalism, including Jewish restoration in Palestine, arguing in the distinguished literary journal the Quarterly Review that “the Jews must be encouraged to return (to Palestine) in yet greater numbers and become once more the husbandman of Judea and Galilee.” On November 4, 1840, Shaftesbury took out a paid advertisement in the Times that gave broad visibility to his project to recover Palestine for the “descendants of Abraham,” a category in which the Palestinian majority, both Christian and Muslim, did not fall.

Shaftesbury was the first to articulate the Zionist theme “a land without a people for a people without a land.” [4] The phrase appeared in the Quarterly Review article mentioned above in the following form: “a people with no country for a country with no people.” It has yet to be demonstrated convincingly that Max Nordau and Theodor Herzl took their famous “land of no people” phrase from Shaftesbury but the coincidence is striking indeed.

Later, it was the politician Lord Arthur Balfour who would advance the cause of Zionism in negotiations with Chaim Weizmann and others. Balfour was a thoroughgoing evangelical Christian who was influenced by the Christian Zionist doctrines. His openness to the Zionist agenda of Herzl was prepared by his Sunday School faith which crystallized his predisposition to the Zionist’s arguments, a case put forth by Balfour’s biographer and niece, Blanche Dugdale.

Even more grounded in Christian Zionist doctrines was the prime minister during the critical World War I years, David Lloyd George, who admitted that he knew the biblical map of ancient Israel better than he knew the map of England. Lloyd George was so wedded to the prophetic Biblical views of Zion that his political advisors became frustrated in briefing him prior to negotiating the Treaty of Versailles following World War I. Both Balfour and Lloyd George were wedded to creating a land bridge from the Mediterranean to India for the British Empire. Nevertheless, their commitment to the Zionist project played a significant role in their unquestioning support of Herzl and Weizmann’s project. Balfour’s famous speech of 1919 makes the point:

For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country…. The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.[5]

Balfour’s phrases: “rooted in age-long traditions” and “future hopes” are perhaps grounded in his British imperial vision but they were also buttressed by his understanding of Bible prophecy, which undergirded his manifest destiny.

Falwell’s Forefathers

In the US, the views of John Nelson Darby had become the dominant method of interpreting the Bible in conservative Christian circles. Among those directly influenced by Darby were the popular Chicago-based evangelist Dwight Moody (founder of the Moody Bible Institute, which still advances a Christian Zionist theology), C. I. Scofield and William Blackstone. Scofield had the biggest influence, through a version of the Bible whose footnotes and outline interpreted major texts according to a Christian Zionist theology. Blackstone was a lay evangelist from the Chicago area who published Jesus Is Coming in 1878, arguing that people should convert to Christianity prior to the imminent return of Jesus. The volume was translated into 42 languages and is considered the first bestseller in the premillennial dispensationalist school of thought.

A little-known fact is that Blackstone is credited with organizing the first pro-Zionist lobby effort in the US. It occurred six years before Herzl convened the first World Zionist Congress in 1897, when Blackstone enlisted major newspapers from the Atlantic to the Mississippi to run editorials urging President Benjamin Harrison to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Blackstone secured 413 prominent signatures in his campaign including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, financiers John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, and publisher Charles Scribner, as well as several members of Congress. [6] While the dream was not realized, it planted a seed in the broad evangelical Protestant movement that would bear fruit some 50 years later.

Rewinding the Biblical Prophecy Clock

For most evangelical Christians in the US, the birth of modern Israel in 1948 was viewed as a fulfillment of certain prophetic Biblical texts. The previously small and marginal school of Biblical interpretation called “premillennialism” suddenly began to assert itself within the larger evangelical community. Two political developments in the late 1940s combined to galvanize both fundamentalist Christians and the conservative political forces in the US. The first was the establishment of Israel in 1948, but the second was the perceived Communist threat and the Cold War. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians understood that near the end of history, an evil world empire under the “Anti-Christ” would emerge according to key texts in the books of Daniel and Revelation. Additionally, the Old Testament prophetic chapters found in Ezekiel 37-38 were interpreted so as to predicate a Soviet attack on Israel in alliance with a world empire led by the Anti-Christ. Again, Israel was at the center of this future prophetic scenario, thus providing both political and theological rationale for Western Christians to give maximal support to the Jewish state.

When Israel captured Jerusalem and the West Bank (along with the Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights) in 1967, fundamentalists sensed confirmation that history had entered the latter days. L. Nelson Bell, father-in-law of evangelist Billy Graham and editor of the most influential evangelical journal Christianity Today, wrote in a July 1967 editorial: “That for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now in the hands of the Jews gives the students of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.” The premillennialist approach grew and gained further respect as a flurry of books and radio evangelists, Billy Graham included, advanced these interpretations to a larger audience.

In the early 1970s, these views were popularized by the publication of Hal Lindsay’s The Late, Great Planet Earth, which has sold over 25 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books in history. Lindsay’s message was a jazzed-up version of the pre-millennialist scenario, predicting that the world would end by the late 1980s. Lindsay developed a consulting business that included several members of Congress, the CIA, Israeli generals, the Pentagon and a rising Republican governor of California named Ronald Reagan.

Coming Out

With the arrival of the bicentennial in 1976 there were five trends converging in the US religious and political landscape. All were pointing toward increased US support of Israel and a higher profile for the newly influential religious right. First, the fundamentalist wing of the broader evangelical Christian movement had become the fastest-growing sector of American Christianity. Mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic branches were caught in a steady decline of members, budgets and missions that would last for more than two decades. Second, an evangelical from the Bible Belt was elected president. Time named 1976 as “the year of the evangelical.”

The third development concerned Israel and the growth of its support networks in the US. Following the 1967 war, Israel gained an increased portion of the US foreign and military assistance packages, becoming the “western pillar” of the US strategic alliance against Soviet incursion into the Middle East, with Iran under the Shah holding up the eastern pillar. Soon the Khomeini revolution and the hostage crisis would move Israel into the dominant role as the major US strategic ally. It was during this period that AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbies began to increase their power and influence on US foreign and domestic policy. These organizations took note of the natural affinity that fundamentalist Christians had with Israel. With Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations showing some limited support for Palestinian human rights and supporting UN Resolutions 242 and 338 as a basis for a political settlement, the pro-Israel groups began to forge deeper alliances with the conservative Christians. Marc Tannenbaum of the American Jewish Committee stated it< well: “The evangelical community is the largest and fastest growing block of pro-Jewish sentiment in this country.” [7] AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League hired staff to court the Christian right and expand and influence the new alliance. The Israel Tourism Bureau discovered a literal gold mine as the Bible Belt and fundamentalist churches became prime markets for Christian tours of Israel, whose participants seldom met any indigenous Palestinian Christians.

One of the most significant political components in the emerging alliance was the fourth development, the unseating of the dominant Labor Party in Israel and the election of the Likud Party and Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977. Begin’s maximalist vision of accelerating exclusively Jewish settlements (begun by Labor in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights) but using Biblical categories for the process and the occupied West Bank (Judea and Samaria) found ready support among the newly politicized Moral Majority and US televangelists. Additionally, Begin defended the significant increase of settlements and Israel’s aggression against Palestinians by employing religious arguments like “God gave this land to the Jews.”

A fifth development occurred when the newly elected evangelical Southern Baptist president, Jimmy Carter, showed some limited interest in Palestinian human rights. While giving a speech in March 1977, Carter inserted into his text the phrase that Palestinians deserve “a right to their homeland.” The Israeli lobby and the Christian right shifted into a series of highly visible actions. Within weeks a series of full-page advertisements appeared in major US newspapers. The text stated in part: “The time has come for evangelical Christians to affirm their belief in biblical prophecy and Israel’s divine right to the land.” Then the theme shifted to include Cold War fears and opposition to Soviet involvement in the UN, including the call for an international conference on the question of Palestine: “We are particularly troubled by the erosion of American support for Israel evident in the joint US-USSR statement.” Then came a line that took direct aim at Carter’s statement: “We affirm as evangelicals our belief in the Promised Land to the Jewish people…. We would view with grave concern any effort to carve out of the Jewish homeland another nation or political entity.” [8] The advertisement was one of the first signs of the Likud and pro-Israel lobby’s alliance with the evangelical Christian “right,” which would prove to be an effective strategy to redirect conservative Christian support away from Carter and move them toward the Republican “right.”

Jerry Strober, a former employee of the American Jewish Committee, coordinated the campaign and told Newsweek: “[The evangelicals] are Carter’s constituency and he [had] better listen to them…. The real source of strength the Jews have in this country is from the evangelicals.”[9]

Theodor Herzl was the founder of Jewish political Zionism.

Until recently, historians have been unsure of how aware he was of Christian Zionism. Indeed, many historians assumed Herzl was completely unaware of Christian Zionism and was "reinventing wheels." Now it turns out he was indeed well aware of it, according to Known to Theodor Herzl after all: The late 19th-century American and British bids to establish a Jewish state in Palestine by Philip Earl Steele, Fathom Journal, July 2024.

Fathom Journal is a liberal Zionist publication, favoring a two-state solution.

n December 15, against all expectations, a ceremony honoring Christian soldiers took place in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), organized by Lt. Col. (Res.) Ihab Shlayan, the highest-ranking Christian officer serving Israel. Gathered at this event were Christians from multiple backgrounds—Arabic-speaking, Russian, and Eastern European—standing shoulder-to-shoulder, wearing the same uniforms and saluting the same flag. This image was more than symbolic; it was a glimpse into a future in which Israeli Christians not only acknowledge their past but actively shape their destiny in the Jewish state.

Lt. (Res.) Yousef Daw, one of the soldiers present, reflected on this transformation: “This uniform doesn’t erase who we are—it amplifies it. We’re Israeli Christians, and that truth can’t be silenced.” These words resonate with an emerging Israeli Christian Zionism rooted in a renewed understanding of faith, nation, and heritage. No longer content with identities imposed from without, Israeli Christians are charting a course defined by indigenous cultural revival, self-determination, biblical conviction, and loyalty to Israel and its liberal-democratic values.

A New Ideological Framework
Israeli Christian Zionism begins with the recognition that both Judaism and Christianity are indigenous to this land, flourishing here long before the Muslim conquests. The goal is nothing less than to restore the cultural autonomy that was lost, honoring the ancient Christian heritage that has existed alongside Judaism for millennia. In asserting this, Israeli Christians commit themselves to self-determination, rejecting foreign Christian agendas that often romanticize or politicize local believers, and shedding the yoke of Muslim-Arab domination that has too often stifled their voices.

This movement also embraces unity in diversity. Just as Jews have maintained cohesion while holding myriad religious and cultural expressions, so too will Israeli Christians celebrate their own broad denominational spectrum. From Catholic to Orthodox to Evangelical, they find strength in their differences, forging alliances built on shared faith, historical roots, and a commitment to the Jewish state. In doing so, they position themselves as active partners in Israel’s future, not as passive communities defined by others’ struggles or claims.

Underpinning this outlook is a biblical worldview, one that recognizes the eternal bond between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. From Genesis to Revelation, the scriptural narrative affirms the centrality of Israel, and Israeli Christians find meaning in being grafted into the people of Israel—spiritually through faith in the biblical promises, as described in the New Testament, and tangibly through their demonstrated loyalty, as described in the Hebrew Bible for groups like the Kenites. In this ideological framework, “Palestine” is a political fiction, and Arab nationalism a discredited narrative meant to subjugate rather than empower indigenous minorities. Instead, these Christians reject the failed constructs of Arab identity that do not reflect their heritage or interests.

Israeli Christian Zionism also emphasizes self-reliance in matters of security. Working alongside the Jewish people and other loyal minorities like the Druze, Israeli Christians accept the responsibility of defending their shared homeland. This approach is profoundly pro-Western, embracing Israel’s role as a beacon of liberal democracy in a region often hostile to religious and cultural pluralism. It signals a readiness to be fully integrated, both civically and militarily, and to help ensure Israel’s moral and strategic strength in the years ahead.

Above all, the ideology affirms a shared destiny—Christians, Jews, and other loyal minorities like the Druze joined together in building a stable, flourishing society. Rather than being outsiders looking in, Israeli Christians see themselves as co-owners of this national project.

Toward Actualization
This emerging identity is already visible, yet it faces practical hurdles. While Christian participation in the IDF is growing, official support structures remain limited. Many Christian recruits lament the absence of dedicated outreach, permanent recruitment channels, mentorship, and a more nuanced understanding of their cultural and religious backgrounds. The IDF’s occasional tendency to categorize “Arab Christians” separately from other Christian soldiers reflects lingering misconceptions. “I don’t understand why they do this,” Lt. Col. (Res.) Shlayan has said. “The IDF seems transfixed by the language we speak. All of us Christian soldiers are brothers. We love Israel and we love Jesus.” This year, there were signs of political intrigue behind the scenes, with few invitations being issued, leading to lower attendance than a previous Christmas event in 2022.

Yet these challenges are not insurmountable. They are opportunities. By investing in the integration of Christian recruits—offering culturally sensitive training, support for families, and steady lines of communication—the state and its institutions can strengthen the bonds forged at events like the December 15 ceremony. Doing so would tap into a reservoir of talent and dedication, fostering a more inclusive and resilient society. Israeli Christian Zionism is not a vague ideal; it can become a living reality when given the chance to flourish within the frameworks of Israeli civic and military life.

For Lt. Col. (Res.) Shlayan, Israeli Christians have not merely received a passive inheritance, but an active calling. By reclaiming their ancient birthright, reasserting their cultural autonomy, and forging a vibrant, self-defined identity inseparable from Israel’s well-being, they herald a new era. “Standing side by side with our Jewish and Druze brothers and sisters, we show that this land’s future belongs to all who love and protect it,” Shlayan said. The challenge and the promise now lie in ensuring these principles shape policies, relationships, and opportunities on the ground—turning vision into action, and ideology into enduring contribution.

Not all Christians welcome comparisons that lump them together with other minority communities. “We share a unique bond with the Jewish people,” said Nikon Sparta, a retired police officer from Nazareth whose children serve in the IDF. “Long before the modern State of Israel, before the British, before the Ottomans—there was the Bible. That’s the source. According to Romans 11, we Christians are the branches, and the Jewish people are the trunk. A healthy tree needs its trunk and branches working together in harmony.”

Red and Gold from the Syriac-Aramean Flag, representing the ancient Semitic roots of Christianity.

Gold and White from the Vatican City Flag, representing the Catholic Church

White and Blue from the Greek (Orthodox) Flag, the cross in the corner originally representing the Orthodox Church.

The Triangle was taken directly from the Protestant Flag, representing mainline Christianity.

The (messy) image in the center right is actually of St George and the Dragon, St George being a Orthodox Saint and believed to be the first Roman military officer to proclaim and share the Christian faith, for which he was martyred in 303CE under orders by Diocletian.

it is already the flag of the christian community in israel lol its everywhere in the galilee region

Lily Dayton is an Israeli Christian who lives in Haifa. She writes about Christianity’s role in shaping modern Israel, placing special emphasis on the experiences of patriotic Christian Zionists. Her work highlights the community’s ongoing integration, growth, and evolving identity within Israel’s diverse religious landscape.

Not all Christians welcome comparisons that lump them together with other minority communities. “We share a unique bond with the Jewish people,” said Nikon Sparta, a retired police officer from Nazareth whose children serve in the IDF. “Long before the modern State of Israel, before the British, before the Ottomans—there was the Bible. That’s the source. According to Romans 11, we Christians are the branches, and the Jewish people are the trunk. A healthy tree needs its trunk and branches working together in harmony.”

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, American evangelicals have been especially vocal in backing Israel. Last week, 90 prominent pastors and other leaders issued “An Evangelical Statement in Support for Israel.” Citing “just war” tradition, the statement affirmed “Israel’s right and duty to defend itself against further attack.” Evangelical leaders around the country have expressed sympathy, as The New York Times reported, “for a country to which many of them feel intense spiritual, cultural and political connections.”

But evangelicals’ support isn’t simply driven by a theology that compels them to love the Holy Land, detached from its convulsive domestic and global political implications. For many “Christians Zionists,” and particularly for popular evangelists with significant clout within the Republican Party, their support for Israel is rooted in its role in the supposed end times: Jesus’ return to Earth, a bloody final battle at Armageddon, and Jesus ruling the world from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In this scenario, war is not something to be avoided, but something inevitable, desired by God, and celebratory.

What happens to the Jews and Palestinians is, to put it very mildly, collateral damage. Christian Zionists are anticipating, and hoping for a war to end all wars, and a resulting Christian world that they claim will vanquish evil and bring peace. Only those who accept Jesus as their savior will benefit from these events that Christian Zionists claim the Bible predicts will happen. Nonbelievers — including Jews and Muslims — will not survive them.

John Hagee, the controversial Texas televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel, an influential Christian Zionist advocacy group, long has been one of the most visible and powerful proponents of this ideology. On Oct. 15, Hagee preached at Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia, a megachurch pastored by televangelist Jentezen Franklin. Speaking in front of a cartoonish mural that purported to depict the events in the Book of Revelation, Hagee maintained that the epic showdown at Armageddon, or the Mount of Meggido in Israel, will be “the most bloody battle ever recorded in the history of the world.” He claimed the Bible prophesied that for armies that “come against Israel” from China, Russia or Iran, “God is going to wipe them out.” After that, he predicted, “there will be 1,000 years of perfect peace, no presidential elections, no fake news, none of all of this nonsense.” Instead, there will be “one king, and one leader, Jesus Christ the Son of God. One law, it will be his law.”

Hagee was hardly alone in preaching about Israel’s role in the end-times in the wake of the outbreak of the war. The Trinity Broadcasting Network, a major hub for Christian Zionist televangelism, broadcast several programs discussing the war as part of end-times prophecy. Popular preacher Greg Laurie told congregants that the recent events were a “super-sign” that the “prophetic clock ticking is the regathering of the nation Israel into their homeland.”

At the heart of Christian Zionism is not a love for Israel but rather Christian nationalism. Christian Zionists maintain that the Book of Genesis says that God will bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse it. They insist that if America, as a country, does not “bless” Israel (that is, offer its government its unconditional support), God will curse America. Conveniently, those who Christian Zionists claim are insufficiently supportive of Israel are usually Democrats. In his recent sermon, Hagee baselessly accused President Biden of “treason,” without specifying why. He also urged his audience to “vote for someone who at least loves America” and to “blame Biden for their [sic] corrupt betrayal of America and the American people.”

For Christian Zionists, the steady rightward shift of the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s successive returns to office is not a cause for alarm — for Israel’s democracy or for the fate of the Palestinians — but a positive development. In this interpretation, settlers’ further control of the occupied West Bank, which they call by its biblical names Judea and Samaria, is a fulfillment of God’s plan for a Jewish return to Israel — one of a sequence of biblical prophecies that culminates in the Second Coming. White evangelicals “are the religious group most likely to express a very or somewhat favorable view of the Israeli government (68%),” according to a 2022 Pew Research Center poll.

When Trump moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, even he admitted that most Americans, including Jewish Americans, opposed the decision. But Trump made the move for his evangelical supporters, who were ecstatic. Hagee claimed he had helped convince Trump by telling him at a White House dinner that Jesus is coming back to Jerusalem to “set up His throne on the Temple Mount where He will sit and rule for a thousand years of perfect peace.” The televangelist, who described the day as “nothing short of a divine miracle,” gave the benediction at the dedication ceremony.

Hamas’ unprecedented and horrific slaughter of Israeli civilians, including children, played directly into Christian Zionists’ singular conception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In their minds, there is little or no distinction between Hamas terrorists and ordinary Palestinians who have been living under the Israeli blockade of Gaza or its brutal occupation of the West Bank. On the American right, even innocent Palestinians displaced by the war are the enemy. This week, the Heritage Foundation called for the United States to reject any refugees from Gaza because “the Palestinian population has no interest in assimilating into American culture and governance, or in expressing loyalty to America or American allies.”

There is some evidence, fortunately, that younger evangelicals are less entranced with Israel’s role in end-times theology than their parents or grandparents. But for now, this crucial portion of the Republican electorate remains entrenched in the Christian Zionist mythology.

Around the time he was preparing to release his new book earlier this year, David Friedman, the former US ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, was approached by an advocacy group that focuses on fostering support for Israel among Christians.

The group, known as Israel365, asked Friedman to support a slate of candidates in next year’s election for the World Zionist Congress, a longstanding yet obscure organization that gives Jews around the world direct influence over Israel’s governance.

Established by Theodor Herzl in 1897, the Congress and its representatives from Jewish communities around the world allocate $1 billion to Jewish causes every year and oversee Israel’s so-called national institutions, including the World Zionist Organization, which carries out the Congress’s vision; the Jewish Agency, which plays a central role in Jewish immigration to Israel; and the Jewish National Fund, which owns 13% of Israeli land.

Coming at a pivotal moment in Israeli history, the upcoming election is widely viewed as an important contest in the battle for the country’s uncertain future, with new slates forming on both the left and, in the case of the group that approached Friedman, on the right.

Friedman agreed to the group’s request to use the title of his book, “One Jewish State,” as the name of the slate, signifying their shared support for strengthening Israeli control over the West Bank and their opposition to the two-state solution.

But last week, after the slate had gathered enough signatures to make the ballot, Friedman took to social media to address the “confusion” that made some people think he was involved in the slate.

“To clarify, I am NOT affiliated with any slate or candidates seeking election and I have not authorized anyone to speak on my behalf,” Friedman wrote.

He concluded, using the Israeli government’s preferred term for the West Bank, “I believe that the World Zionist Congress should support the Jewish communities located in Judea and Samaria and I support the slates which share this view.”

Friedman’s post brought into public view an internal controversy, which has been marked by allegations that the slate had engaged in a bait-and-switch by using Friedman’s name to advance a hidden Christian agenda. Israel365, which denies the allegations, recently filed paperwork to change the slate’s name to Israel365 Action.

The controversy, which caused dozens of people to leave the slate, comes amid anxiety about Christian influence in an election that’s supposed to involve Jews only. With Israel’s government increasingly drawing its most reliable support Stateside from US evangelicals, and with religious identity increasingly fluid, those who are tuned in early to the World Zionist Congress election say they fear non-Jews could cast ballots or otherwise shape the results in contravention of the election’s by-laws.

Such concerns have even prompted a change to the process for determining voter eligibility.

In the past, voters have had to state that they were Jewish and Zionist, criteria that exclude, for example, the tens of millions of Americans who identify as Christian Zionists. Now, voters will have to affirm that they are Zionist, Jewish, and that they “do not subscribe to another religion.”

Herbert Block, the executive director of the American Zionist Movement, which administers the election online in the United States, said the change was not prompted by the allegations against One Jewish State, but by a general desire to protect the integrity of the vote from people who may identify as Jews but should not be counted as such.

“Some members of our elections committee expressed concerns about Messianic Jews, or Jews for Jesus, or others voting,” Block said.

The coming election is shaping up to be hotly contested. At the deadline last month, nine new slates had gathered the requisite 800 signatures to register to run, on top of the 14 slates that have already existed since at least the last election in 2020. About 125,000 American Jews voted in 2020, out of the millions of American Jewish adults.

“There’s particular interest in the election — American Jews are more engaged with things related to Israel and Zionism, especially since the October 7 attack,” Block said.

The slates represent different demographic groups, with variation by religious, ideological, and ethnic affiliation, but two major camps have emerged. On the left are those that support the two-state solution and a pluralistic Israel, and on the right are slates that want to bolster Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and emphasize the country’s Jewish identity. Most of the new slates belong to the latter group..

Both sides are treating next year’s contest as a critical referendum on the soul of Israel, and they are battling over what’s seen as the biggest prize of the election: the American Jewish vote, which decides about one-third of the representatives in the Congress. (The other two-thirds are split between Israel, whose representation is predetermined according to the proportion of seats each party holds in the country’s parliament, and the rest of the world, which is difficult to fight over because of how widely Jewish communities are dispersed.)

Surveys show that American Jews favor the two-state solution and pluralism in Israel, but the question is, which side will turn out to vote in greater numbers?

The screening of voters is based on the honor system, with each voter asserting their eligibility. But Block said his group does spot checks and looks for patterns that could indicate cheating. He said he doesn’t expect to face a problem of ineligible voters.

Even if the eligibility change is just a precaution, it reflects a growing fluidity in religious identity in the United States, where a fifth of people now attend houses of worship that don’t match their stated religious affiliation.

Even more to the point, the number of people in the United States who say they are Jewish but are not considered as such by conventional standards is significant. The Pew Research Center in 2020 estimated that 1.4 million American adults who identify as Jewish do not have a Jewish parent and do not consider Judaism their religion, perhaps because they are married to a Jew or because they are Christians who associate Jesus with Judaism. That’s in addition to 200,000 people who say they practice Judaism and another religion.

Then there are those who are religiously invested in Israel’s future but are not Jewish at all: evangelicals. They are the target constituency of Israel365, the nonprofit running the slate formerly named for David Friedman’s book.

A former candidate for the slate, Tilly Feldman, is among the most outspoken critics of Israel365, which she has accused of being a “Christian slate.” She said so on social media in response to Friedman’s post on X, joining another former candidate, Seth Leitman, who also called it a “Christian slate.” Leitman, an environmental activist from suburban New York, wrote, “Folks, we got grifted off this amazing man’s vision.”

Several others made similar points in off-the-record interviews with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Feldman, an activist for right-wing and pro-Israel groups in Los Angeles, told JTA she was thrilled to join an effort that appeared to be backed by Friedman. A video posted by Israel365 in July is titled, “Ambassador David Friedman endorses the One Jewish State party in the World Zionist Congress.”

What Friedman said in the 46-second clip can be interpreted in more than one way. He said he was flattered the slate chose to name itself after his book and cast the decision as an endorsement of his own efforts to start a movement. He then said, “I endorse their efforts.”

Feldman and others say the slate used clips like this to trick them into thinking Friedman had a formal role, and she complained to the AZM.

“I am writing to express my serious concerns regarding the slate One Jewish State and their misrepresentation of who they are and what they stand for,” Feldman wrote in the complaint, which she shared with JTA. “When I initially signed up, I believed, as did hundreds of others, that this slate was being led by ambassador David Friedman. This belief was central to their campaign and was a key reason so many delegates joined.”

She also urged people to defect from the slate. Dozens of people suddenly emailed AZM to withdraw their signatures, according to Block. (Even with the defections, Block said, the slate had more than enough signatures to register.)

In an email to JTA, Rabbi Tuly Weisz, the founder of Israel365, rejected the allegation and said the slate’s leadership had never misstated its relationship with Friedman.

“Since the war broke out, we have been working closely with him on behalf of Judea and Samaria,” Weisz wrote. “In the summer, we discussed with Ambassador Friedman calling our party ‘One Jewish State’ which at the time seemed like a great idea since his book was coming out a few weeks later, and he enthusiastically endorsed our slate. In the subsequent weeks, there was some confusion since his book and our movement were separate entities, so we decided to change our name to Israel365 Action.”

With the name change has come a shift in the slate’s platform. In the platform submitted to election officials months ago, the language hews closely to the principles found in Friedman’s “One Jewish State” book. But the slate’s new website contains additional language with a focus on the relationship between Israel and its Christian allies.

“Israel365 Action will direct resources towards engaging and educating the younger generation of Christians, thus ensuring that strong Christian support for Israel will continue into the future,” the website says.

Feldman said she would never have supported the slate to begin with if that were its platform.

“This is completely contrary to what many of us signed up for,” she wrote in her complaint. “It has left me, and others, feeling deceived and disillusioned by their lack of transparency and honesty.”

In his email, Weisz said that Israel365’s work with Christians is longstanding and well-known and that it was not concealed during the effort to gather signatures. He also said that the group, which counts many Christian followers, has taken care to communicate that only Jews are allowed to vote.

Election officials do not plan on taking action in response to the complaints.

I found an article which helps put this "Israeli Christian Zionism" into historical context: Onward, Christian Soldiers by Jonathan Cook, 05/13/2014, on the website of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

It's a very long article, which I won't quote here, at least for now. Maybe I'll summarize or quote parts of it later.

Anti-Israel activists and anti-Zionist Jews protested a Little Rock Hanukkah candle lighting attended by ex-Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on Wednesday night, according to Chabad Lubavitch and activist groups.

Progressive Jewish group Taste of Olam Haba and Little Rock Peace for Palestine, according to their Instagram accounts, disrupted the lighting of a Lubavitch of Arkansas public Hanukkiah because of the involvement of Huckabee, who is set to become US ambassador to Israel.

“Christian Zionists and their agenda have no place in our Jewish communities and in our government. As Mike Huckabee, the [US President-Elect Donald] Trump appointee as future Israeli ambassador, addressed our city, we stood united in rejecting his message of division.

Instead, we spoke for unity, justice, and equality for all people between the river and the sea,” the two activist groups said on social media.

“Christian philosemitism is antisemitism. Only loving Jews that support your right-wing end-times theology is not loving Jews.”

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:47 What is the Pre-Tribulation Rapture?
05:52 How Popular is the Pre-tribulation Rapture?
09:26 Denominations Covered
09:50 Pentecostalism
12:16 Oneness Pentecostalism
13:06 Baptists
16:01 Plymouth Brethren
17:22 Local Churches
18:12 Irvingian
18:50 Nondenominational Evangelical
20:15 Pietist
20:53 Charismatic
21:56 Messianic
22:37 Denominations where the pre-trib rapture is less common
22:51 Methodist & Holiness
24:28 Quakers
25:28 Anabaptists
27:28 Congregationalist
27:52 United
28:35 Denominations that oppose the pre-trib rapture
28:48 Presbyterian and Reformed
31:54 Lutheran
34:00 Restoration Movement
34:38 Moravians
35:00 Anglicans, Catholics, Old Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox
35:15 Unitarians
35:36 Binitarians
36:08 Adventists
36:54 Latter-day Saints
37:07 Conclusion

Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense last week was a clear win for Israeli hawks and their American supporters — one that should alarm every American Jew.

Yes, the former Fox News host and National Guardsman has gone on the record saying he opposes a two-state solution and approves of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Those are policies that the anything-goes pro-Israel crowd — Jewish and otherwise — should theoretically welcome.

But since the senators at Hegseth’s hearing did not press him further, he did not explain the specific source of his rightwing Zionism: his church, a small congregation outside Nashville. Its teachings dovetail with Christian Reconstructionism, a little-known evangelical movement with big dreams of establishing a theocratic Christian government. And if you, like me, are one of the 73% of Americans who think religion should not dictate government policies, Hegseth’s beliefs are a good example of why that separation is so essential.

Christian Reconstructionists believe that God’s law, in particular the legal mandates of the Hebrew Bible, should govern society. Their goal is a theocracy in which believers rule, and sinners, as well as non-believers, can be put to death. At its inception in the late 1950s, Reconstructionism was tied to Calvinism, but dominion theology — the notion that Christians should govern nations according to Biblical law — has been embraced by a wide range of evangelicals.

Hegseth says he began leaning into his Christian faith in 2018 and, a few years later, decided his seven children needed a “classical Christian education.” A classical Christian education is important to many white, right-wing evangelicals. which is why they steer clear of public schools.

R.J. Rushdooney, Reconstructionism’s founder, asserted that the family, not the government, should oversee the instruction of children. An early proponent of homeschooling, Rushdoony supported Christian schools which taught Biblical values such as creationism and male headship, the belief that wives should be subordinate to their husbands.

So, in 2022, Hegseth’s family moved from New Jersey, settling outside Nashville. There, Hegseth discovered Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a congregation aligned with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Like other CREC churches, Pilgrim Hill adheres to Reconstructionist principles and supports an extreme version of Christian nationalism.

Douglas Wilson, the Moscow, Idaho pastor who co-founded CREC in 1998, has propounded a number of extreme views, including banning non-Christian religions from the public square. According to Wilson, “The public spaces belong to Christ.”

And in a series of 2024 Pilgrim Hill podcasts unearthed last week by the Guardian Hegseth affirmed his adherence to Wilson’s teachings.

“We want our nation to be a Christian nation because we want all the nations to be Christian nations,” he said says he began leaning into his Christian faith in 2018 and, a few years later, decided his seven children needed a “classical Christian education.” A classical Christian education is important to many white, right-wing evangelicals. which is why they steer clear of public schools.

R.J. Rushdooney, Reconstructionism’s founder, asserted that the family, not the government, should oversee the instruction of children. An early proponent of homeschooling, Rushdoony supported Christian schools which taught Biblical values such as creationism and male headship, the belief that wives should be subordinate to their husbands.

Among the teachings of the Reconstructionist movement is “sphere sovereignty,” the idea that God is over all things, and that separate spheres — family, church, government — are distinct and self-contained realms under God’s authority. If the sphere of government exists under divine authority, several concerning questions arise: How will that theology shape the agenda of the new defense secretary — who sports a tattoo of the Jerusalem Cross, a symbol of the medieval Crusades against Muslims?

Will Hegseth, following church teachings, remove women from combat and dismiss LGBTQ+ people from the military? Will non-Christian service members face discrimination?

For Jews, Hegseth’s beliefs raise a whole host of separate issues, including the Department of Defense’s stance toward Israel. Hegseth, who hosted a three-part podcast series, “Battle in the Holy Land: Israel at War” in late 2023, has already shown his allegiance to a staunch Christian Zionist view. He called for rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem — a move that evangelicals see as a prelude to the Second Coming, and which many analysts have warned could spark a massive war.

And he’ll find an ally in the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee: the former governor of Arkansas, a Christian nationalist and a Christian Zionist. In 2008, Huckabee declared, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” Nine years later, he added “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria.”

Jewish Zionists have had a long, if somewhat problematic, relationship with Christian Zionists, who see the Israeli state as the first step toward the Second Coming. They’ve been able to accept an alliance because the evangelical contingent has mostly stayed in the pulpits and pews. With Hegseth bringing these beliefs to the Pentagon, and Huckabee advancing his own version of them, they will have a very different proximity to power.

For Jews, that proximity must necessarily be uneasy. In a Christian nation, members of other faiths are second-class citizens — even when those in power appear to be advancing their interests. With Hegseth’s particularly aggressive theology so close to the presidency, there’s no telling what other, and more unwelcome, changes could come next.

Evangelical Christian Zionist leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore condemned conservative commentator Tucker Carlson after images surfaced over the weekend showing him posing with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk at the White House.

“Tucker Carlson’s antisemitism does not reflect the values of the Trump administration,” said Cardoza-Moore on Monday, adding that Carlson “is the slightly savvier mentor of Candace Owens, peddling a new woke-right, fake-Christian form of Jew-hatred.”

Cardoza-Moore, host of the syndicated television show Focus on Israel, which reaches billions of viewers globally, said she had been “inundated with calls from concerned Jews and Christians” following the images of Carlson wearing an oversized MAGA hat alongside Trump and Musk.

“We, the people, elected President Trump with an overwhelming majority and with a mandate to stand with Israel and our Jewish brethren against the rise of antisemitism, anti-Israelism, and anti-Zionism,” she said.

“Under the Biden administration, his policies incited violence against our Jewish communities on higher-ed and K-12 campuses, in synagogues, and places of worship. Our 47th president is without any doubt Israel’s greatest friend in the White House ever, but Tucker Carlson’s antisemitism is appalling.

Accused of amplifying antisemitism
Cardoza-Moore further accused Carlson of using his platform to amplify antisemitic voices. “Following the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, Tucker has chosen to platform Holocaust revisionists, Jew-haters, and fake Christian leaders on the Palestinian Authority payroll,” she said. “He peddles conspiracy theories against God’s Chosen and libels the Israel Defense Forces by falsely claiming they deliberately target civilians.”

Concluding her remarks, Cardoza-Moore directly appealed against Carlson’s presence in Trump’s political circles. “Tucker Carlson should not be allowed anywhere near the White House,” she declared.