Christian Zionism

Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border

Shapiro

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498280174
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Christian Zionism has received no small amount of criticism from observers who take issue with the movement's pro-Israel politics or its theology. What if we listened seriously to what Christian Zionists and Jewish partners said about Jews, Judaism, and Israel? Christian Zionism is a vibrant contemporary movement that--agree or disagree--has more than just political implications. Christian Zionism has also brought an unprecedented number of Jews and Christians into contact and dialogue, in houses of worship, community centers, rallies, and, of course, in Israel. As such, Christian Zionism is a useful case that allows us to think about contemporary Jewish-Christian relations in new ways. While some would argue that this is really "just" about pro-Israel alliance building, Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border shows how this movement significantly engages basic questions of identity and the borders between Judaism and Christianity. Christian Zionism serves as one chapter in the history of two religious communities--and the fraught relationships between them--facing together the globalized world of the twenty-first century.

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Introduction

My mother insists my fascination with enthusiastic Christianity began when I was a little girl. One day the Salvation Army band was playing at the local mall, and that did it. She had to drag me away. I myself remember, years later, being mesmerized, with equal parts fear and desire, by a hellfire and brimstone tent revival we stumbled upon during a family road trip through the Southern states. It was exotic, it was passionate, and it was close to home. On this same family trip I was deemed old enough to stay up late to watch a documentary about the 1978 murder-suicide of some 900 followers of the Peoples’ Temple. I was fascinated by these public displays of religious intensity, so utterly unlike the tepid Judaism of my upbringing.

Later, stumbling through a youthful period of leftist activism, that childhood fascination turned to disgust. I was deeply concerned about the role of the evangelical vote in the rise of conservative power in the Reagan years. Those were also the years of some high-profile televangelist scandals, when Jimmy Swaggart was in deep trouble and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker lost their ministry. I sported a “I never kissed Jim Bakker” button on my Che Guevara shirt. My interest in these powerful and public displays of religion continued, although now viewed in a rather more negative light. No doubt it was this very interest in conservative religion that pushed me into religious studies in the first place, ultimately to gain the tools needed to analyze some of those robust religious settings and movements.

Over time I became disenchanted with progressive politics and re-enchanted with conservative religion, but this time in a more personal way. My own “born-again” experience took place over several years and had nothing at all to do with Jesus. I slowly abandoned the practices of my liberal Jewish upbringing in favor of a “Torah-observant” Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. The label is ba’al teshuvah—one who has repented of her previous life and set out on a new path. Years later, I would look like any other Orthodox Jewish woman, a kerchief on covering my long hair, surrounded by a gaggle of small children.

Reality was rather more complex, of course. I was (am) also an academic and a social scientist. I embarked on a research project that took me to religious places few Jews were comfortable, chasing after Christian Zionists. My Jewish friends either didn’t understand one way (“did you say Christian Scientists?”) or the other (“why would a nice Jewish girl want to spend time in a church?”). When my then five-year-old daughter took a crucifix—given to me by a friend doing research in New Mexico and left on the front porch in a box rather than brought into the house—with her to Jewish summer camp, I had some serious explaining to do. Indeed there were periods when I was in church more often than I was in synagogue.

In the preface to his book Borderlines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Daniel Boyarin writes that there are some Jews who are simply “drawn,” for various reasons, to Christianity. I count myself among them. I find myself, like Boyarin and others, aware that this is somewhat of a strange position for an “Orthodox” Jew to be in, and one that requires a clear statement concerning my own location. So—for the record—I am not a believer in Jesus as the Messiah or as divine in any sense. I am not a Messianic Jew, a Jewish believer, or a Jew for Jesus. I am reminded of a statement by David Brog, a Jew working in the awkward Jewish-Christian contact zone at a major Christian Zionist organization. He spoke in 2009 at a Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Night to Honor Israel in Colorado Springs. Coming from a familiar place of discomfort and desire not to be misunderstood, David stood up in front of a roomful of evangelical supporters of Israel and referred to himself as nothing other than “a Jewish Jew for Judaism.” Despite a lifetime of interest in things Christian, I stand in a similar place.

How This Book Is Different

This is certainly not the first book written about Christian Zionism. The subject has already received no small amount of attention from scholars and more popular writers alike. Most observers of Christian Zionism are people who care intensely about the Middle East, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. With its potent combination of religion and politics, Christian Zionism is a difficult topic for people to approach dispassionately because its implications are so serious.

Outside of academic scholarship, most popular discussions of Christian Zionism are titillating treatments that are primarily interested in showcasing Christian Zionism as a dangerous political and religious phenomenon. The ideological agenda is often palpable and the condescension is ill-concealed, focusing its aim in some cases at the Christianity and others at the Zionism. No doubt Christian Zionism is at once too Christian and too Zionist for some observers. Christian Zionism and its adherents have been described as “alarming” and “trigger happy,”1 driven by fear and looking for an “escape into a disaster-movie scenario with a happy Rapture ending for good born-again guys.”2 There is often talk of dark alliances, formed between “militant Jewish leaders and Christian dispensationalists” seeking “political power and worldly possession . . . one group of people physically taking sole possession of a land holy to three faiths.”3

These kinds of books, regularly alluding to the end times in their titles, are eager to revile Christian Zionism, and regale readers with allegations of the movement’s dodgy antecedents and hostile implications more than with any kind of dispassionate analysis. This tendency is not new, and flows out of “the work of liberal theologians, political scientists and journalists who in the 1980s sought to unmask what they suspected was a secret and insidious alliance between the State of Israel and the ‘Religious Right’ . . . [where] special censure is generally reserved for what they call the fundamentalist ‘cult of Israel’ and its Armageddon theology.”4 Combine exotic “fundamentalism” with the whiff of right-wing international conspiracy, topped off with the frisson of approaching end times, and one has the makings of a sensational story. The impression given is one of rampant and uncritical support for Israel among Armageddon-lustful evangelicals, who profess their love of Jews while eagerly awaiting their terrible suffering in the tribulation to come.

In contrast, scholarly interest in conservative Christians and Israel has been focused mainly on either theology or history. Yet the ideological agenda in many cases infuses the scholarship. Theological treatments are most often examinations of the complex theological system alleged to underpin Christian Zionism, known as premillennial dispensationalism. These works are mostly efforts to portray Christian Zionism as resting on a shoddy theological foundation, which then serves as the basis for a thinly veiled political critique of Zionism. Historical examinations can similarly be driven by a contemporary agenda, particularly in efforts to show how “traditional” or “innovative” ideas about the restoration of the Jews to the land of Israel might be. Yet several excellent, objective historical analyses of this phenomenon and closely related issues do exist, most notably in the work of Yaakov Ariel, Shalom Goldman, and Robert Smith. But far fewer are studies of contemporary Christian Zionism as a lived practice for millions of Christians around the world today.

More serious studies of Christian Zionism to date have focused tightly on analyzing a movement with political implications, which is no doubt a critically important part of the picture. But Christian Zionism is not just about politics or even Israel. It is also, significantly, about Jews and Christians. This work approaches Christian Zionism as a religious phenomenon, although I use the word religious with caution. I am not interested in the underlying theology that might drive Christian Zionism, even though this might be a “religious” issue of interest to some readers. I argue here that Christian Zionism is far more than a political phenomenon with religious motivations. Rather it is also very much a religio-social problem, one chapter in a story about religious groups with a long history and the fraught relationships between them in the globalized world of the twenty-first century.

In a place where religion and politics are inextricable, there has been a tendency to focus on the latter. The religious aspects of Christian Zionism have largely gone unnoticed by previous treatments, for several reasons. First, liberal or secular observers often tend to downplay the role of religion generally, and the urgent implications it can have for participants. Second, it is precisely the religious dimensions of the Christian Zionist-Jewish Israel alliance that are the most laden with both nuance and tension, in a way that encourages participants—particularly Jews—to self-consciously choose to “leave religious issues at the door,” and to highlight political alliances in their place. Finally, the religious aspects of this relationship are difficult for most observers to make sense of, as people are most often committed to and/or knowledgeable about either Judaism or Christianity, but rarely both.

My interest is not in explaining away Christian Zionism, as if it is some kind of problem or condition that requires a diagnosis, or words of warning. Instead, this work aims to offer a fuller understanding, through an additional lens, of some of the broader issues and implications of Christian Zionism. While I am not a Christian, I do indeed have a horse in this race: I am a Zionist, living in Israel. I am also a passionate Orthodox Jew with academic training in New Testament studies and Jewish-Christian relations. I am also a person that is deeply concerned about and interested in the religious, financial, and political alliances that are being made between the State of Israel, Jews, and Christians today. As an informed observer, I consider myself to be a cautious friend to this world of Christian Zionism and I would encourage all Jews to embrace a similar commitment to caution and information. It was that desire to come to a clearer understanding of the actors in this playing field that motivated my research. I loved writing it, because of the people I met along the way.

What Is Christian Zionism?

The term evangelical is rooted in the Greek term evangelion, which means “good news.” Translated to godspel in Latin, the term is the source of the word gospel. But there is no simple definition of what constitutes an evangelical. It is safe to assert that evangelical Christians generally share a belief in a few theological essentials that include the authority of the Bibl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface: On Borders (a True Story)
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: by Brad H. Young
• 1: Introduction
• 2: Fieldwork in the Jewish-Christian Zone: Three Scenes
• 3: Standing with Israel: Religion and Politics
• 4: Ambivalent Love: Christian Zionists on Jews and Judaism
• 5: Jewish and Christian Responses to Christian Zionism
• 6: I Walk the Line: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border
• 7: Mapping the No-Man’s Zone
• 8: Conclusion: Riffing off Torah
• Bibliography