Newsletter:
Vol. 4. Iss. 1
21 February 2003
Toward a Reconsideration of
Christian Zionism
Peter J. Miano
Very few topics generate fervent debate, arouse passions and evoke confusion like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is because, as Ken White puts it in his contribution to this newsletter, it veers into volatile areas. Personal faith, interpretation of scripture, personal loyalties, moral convictions and deeply held political opinions overlap and collide in a confused sea of facts, perceptions, images and realities. Notwithstanding the treacherous emotional waters, conscientious American Christians have no choice but to attempt to navigate them, because our churches and our government are both deeply complicit in the sadness and suffering of the people of Israel and Palestine. What’s more, our churches and our government can make positive contributions to resolution of the conflict for the benefit of all parties involved—provided, that is, that the dimensions of the conflict and our complicity in it are properly understood. This last condition is not always satisfied even by passionate, long time activists. Activists and novices alike badly misunderstand Christian Zionism.
Recently and with greater and greater frequency, Christians have begun to focus on the phenomenon called Christian Zionism. Unfortunately, the discussion is still in its early stages and attention tends to focus only on certain aspects of Christian Zionism. Specifically, Christian Zionism is usually reduced to fundamentalist Christian Zionism and the much broader phenomenon of mainstream, liberal Christian Zionism is almost entirely ignored. It is always easier to see other people’s problems. Mark Twain once said, “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” But Jesus says, “First take the log out of your own eye so that you can see to take the spec out of your brother’s eye.”
As long as Zionism is considered to be the domain of Christian fundamentalists, then mainstream, liberal Christians do not have to do much more than point the incriminating finger in another direction. Zionism, however, is not only primarily a Christian phenomenon, as opposed to the misconception that it is primarily a Jewish phenomenon, it is fundamentally and primarily a mainstream, liberal Christian phenomenon. Until we adequately understand this aspect of Zionism, however, we have not begun to appreciate how pervasive Zionism really is.
Historically considered, before there were Jewish Zionists, there were Christian Zionists. Today, Christian Zionists outnumber Jewish Zionists at least 100 to 1. Fundamentalist Christians are indeed zealous advocates of a particular strain of Christian Zionism. They see the establishment of the State of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the ingathering of the Jewish people as a necessary step along the way in God’s plan of salvation. In this view, a covenanted promise in a covenanted book to a covenanted people is being actualized in modern day Israel. Fundamentalist Christian Zionism is easy to define, isolate and critique, because its primary characteristics are biblical literalism and naïve historical interpretation.
Still, mainstream, liberal Christian Zionists overwhelmingly outnumber fundamentalist Christian Zionists. They wield more political influence and generate more financial support for the Zionist enterprise than fundamentalist Christian Zionists do. Mainstream Christian Zionism, however, is hard to detect. It does not depend on biblical literalism. On the contrary, its proponents are usually theologically savvy, sensitive, conscientious Christians. Zionist activists began to pay attention to this constituency as early as the 1920’s. By the 1930’s American Zionist activists such as Julian W. Mack, chairman of the Zionist Organization of America, were actively promoting Zionism among liberal Christians. The agenda was to exploit the genuine Christian interest in promoting good relations between Christians and Jews for the purpose of advancing the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. To this day, Christian-Jewish dialogue groups, comprised not of fundamentalist Christians, but of mainstream, liberal Christians and their Jewish counterparts, either actively promote sympathy with the Zionist agenda or demure from any discussion of the Israel-Palestine issue whatsoever. Frequently, so-called “Christian-Jewish dialogue” avoids issues of justice and peace in Israel-Palestine. It is a virtual “no-fly zone” in many Christian-Jewish dialogue circles.
My contention is that the avoidance of this issue of Israel and the Palestinians is a primary characteristic of mainstream, liberal Christian Zionism. I will develop this contention further in the next issue of this newsletter.
Obviously, any attempt to criticize Christian-Jewish dialogue must avoid criticism of the genuine and noble motivations of the Christians and Jews who engage in it. At the same time, however, the absence of candid, honest discussion of the moral issues of justice and peace in Israel-Palestine among many who participate in Christian-Jewish dialogue is symptomatic of a deficiency in the dialogue itself and allows the dialogue to be exploited to promote sympathy exclusively with the Zionist enterprise. Dialogue without honesty betrays a low level of trust between the partners to the dialogue. In fact much of what passes for Christian-Jewish dialogue is plagued with dogmatic avoidance of truth telling in the arena of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
