Christian Zionism

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Nearly 400 people attended the sold-out “Breakfast to Honor Israel” during the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Convention in Grapevine, Texas, this week, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) reported.

The NRB is a global network of evangelical communicators. The convention, which took place at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, reportedly drew a crowd of almost 6,000 Christian attendees.

CAM, an international network of 850 groups dedicated to combating antisemitism, has been represented at the NRB conventions for the last six years as part of its efforts to foster evangelical Christian support for global antisemitism initiatives.

The global initiative co-sponsored the breakfast alongside the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service.

The breakfast was hosted with the purpose of expressing solidarity with Israel and the international Jewish community amid the conflict and global tide of antisemitism that arose in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.

In a recent article (“Birthright for Evangelicals,” January 30), Dov Maimon cited data in his report, co-authored with Dr. Shlomo Fischer for the Jewish People Policy Institute, about a recent drop in young Evangelical support for Israel.

“Some younger Evangelicals, shaped by cultural and academic environments, are increasingly critical of Israel, the JPPI study warns,” he wrote. “This shift is a wake-up call. Israel risks losing a vital ally in its battle for legitimacy and support in the global arena and must respond with resolute creativity.”

Maimon said that as Israel has a “targeted outreach” in the form of Birthright – a program that connects Jews in the Diaspora to Israel – it should do so with Christians.

Maimon is right to call for a Christian Birthright.

However, what he may not know is that there are multiple organizations already at work building one – Christians United for Israel, Passages, and Eagles’ Wings.

Evangelical Christians who voted for US President Donald Trump are pressuring him to allow Israel to gain full control over the West Bank based on the covenant God made with the Jews, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The Times reported that prominent evangelical allies of Trump are campaigning by making appearances in Israel, petitioning the White House, and building support in Congress.

“I literally feel God is giving Israel a blank check,” said Pastor Mario Bramnick, the president of the Latino Coalition for Israel. He visited Jerusalem on Tuesday with other key conservative Evangelicals to publicly advocate for Israel's seizure of Judea and Samaria.

The group of Christian Zionists believes that Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank would foster other biblical promises, such as an apocalypse that brings about the second coming of Jesus Christ, the Times reported.

“We Christians are calling on our beloved President Trump and his team to aggressively remove all barriers to Israel’s sovereignty over all the land, including Judea and Samaria,” said Terri Copeland Pearsons, a pastor and president of Texas Bible College, last Thursday at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs.

Preaching the 'biblical truth' about Israel
At the convention, organizers pushed a resolution that condemns “all efforts” to pressure Israel to relinquish West Bank territory. It was sponsored by the American Christian Leaders for Israel, which is self-described as a network of thousands of Christian leaders who preach the “biblical truth” and are steadfast supporters of Israel. Organizers of the event said that they would promptly show the resolution to Trump.

Addditionally, days before American Christian Leaders for Israel announced the resolution, Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) sent a letter to the US president with five other members of her congressional "Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus”. It called on his administration to “recognize Israel’s right” to declare sovereignty over the territory, saying that doing so would be integral to defending “the Judeo-Christian heritage on which our nation was founded

On January 14, 1947, Fraser Wilkins of the State Department’s Near East Division sent a secret memorandum to State Department officials. Wilkins was the desk officer for Palestinian affairs at the time, and he detailed seven “factors” upon which United States policy vis-a-vis the British Mandate entity was based.

Among them, he wrote: “continued uncertainty and uncertainty regarding the Palestine question... is distressing to Christians everywhere because the Christian interest... tends to become submerged in an Arab-Jewish controversy.”

Some 78 years later, the new US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a Baptist pastor, visited the Shiloh archaeological site (rediscovered by American Edward Robinson, the “father of Biblical geography” back in 1838), spoke personal words of spiritual meaning, and met with the leaders of the Yesha (Judea and Samaria Council), representing the over half a million Jews residing in the areas of the former Mandate not yet under full Israeli sovereignty. A new era, following on from the first Donald Trump presidential administration and the ambassadorship of David M. Friedman, is beginning.

US-Israel relationship
Despite cynical views concerning the intentions of Evangelical Christians on the one hand and antisemitic views of Zionist “control” over Washington on the other, the United States has for over 200 years been pro-Zionist, even in the face of State Department animus. This is the basis for the US-Israel relationship.

Writing to Mordechai Manuel Noah in 1819 regarding his proto-Zionist scheme at Niagara River’s Grand Island, president John Adams declared, “I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites... marching with them into Judea and making a conquest of that country and restoring your nation to the dominion of it. For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.” John Quincy Adams, also writing to Noah, was adamant that he believed in the “rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation.”

Abraham Lincoln in 1863 met Canadian Christian Zionist Henry Wentworth Monk and expressed his identification with the hope that Jews be emancipated “by restoring them to their national home in Palestine.” Lincoln added that this was “a noble dream and one shared by many Americans.”

An official American diplomatic presence began in 1844 when a consulate opened inside Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate. It relocated in 1912 to the city’s Agron Street, where, during 1966-1967, I frequently visited its library during my participation in the Zionist Youth Movement Leadership Institute. The early consuls-general included several pro-Zionists.

Warder Cresson, who, despite his appointment as the first American consul being rescinded after only eight days, managed to remain in Jerusalem during the years 1844-1848, said that “The day of the return of the Jews is at hand, and the glorification of the restored Jerusalem.” He later converted to Judaism.

An unfortunate incident occurred in 1858 as a result of an attack by Arabs. One man was murdered and two women were raped. Known as the “Outrage at Jaffa,” Arab thieves had set upon an American Christian family who had come to the Holy Land as part of the American Agricultural Mission. Mary Dickson, a rape victim, was John Steinbeck’s great aunt.

Woodrow Wilson fully agreed with Balfour Declaration
Much later, then-US president Woodrow Wilson overcame State Department opposition to Zionism. After meeting with Louis Brandeis and Stephen Wise in May and June 1917, Wilson expressed his full support for Britain’s “protectorate” rule over Palestine en route to its becoming the Jewish national home. On October 16, he gave his full agreement to the text of the proposed Balfour Declaration.

Another foundation of America’s pro-Zionist attitude was the American-British Convention signed with Great Britain on December 3, 1924. How important that treaty was can be gleaned from another State Department memorandum, this one by Mr. J. Rives Childs of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs and sent on March 8, 1939.

Childs reacted to a dispatch of November 25, 1938, from the United States consul general in Jerusalem regarding a conference of American Jews in the country, held to consider the protection of the rights and interests of American citizens in Mandate Palestine under that convention. The winds of a volte-face by England were whirling about, and they eventually produced the May 1939 White Paper in which England reneged on the idea of a Jewish national home.

Childs reported that at the conference, Nathan Kaplan, president of the American-Jewish Association in Palestine, declared: “The Americans in Palestine have a right to expect that the undertaking be honored in full and that the American Government take the appropriate steps in this direction.” Kaplan had immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1927.

Immediately understanding the situation, Childs conveyed that American Jews residing in Palestine would be stressing that the convention permitted America the right “to withhold its assent to any change in the mandate which may impair the obligations assumed by Great Britain under the Balfour Declaration.”

Childs was of the opinion that “If the mandate is terminated, we have the right to be consulted with respect to the conditions under which the territory is subsequently to be administered.” That legal aspect came into play in 1946 when Jordan requested to become a member of the United Nations.

Dean Acheson, acting US secretary of state, sent a “secret, urgent” note to the president on July 11, 1946, following the suggestion by senator Francis Myers, at the urging of the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation, that the US should take no action recognizing Trans-Jordan as separate or independent state. Furthermore, the US representative at the UN should be instructed to seek postponement of international determination of the status of the Trans-Jordan area until the future status of Palestine as a whole would be determined.

After discussions at the 1947 Pentagon Conference, the US advised Great Britain that it was withholding recognition of Transjordan pending a decision on the Palestine question by the UN. Temporarily, until the Jewish national home came into being, Transjordan’s membership was stymied.