Conference Makes Case for Christian Support for Jewish Israel

on April 21, 2015

Institute on Religion and Democracy Press Release
April 21, 2015
Contact: Jeff Walton office: 202-682-4131, cell: 202-413-5639, e-mail: jwalton@TheIRD.org

“Contrary to common critique, Christian Zionism is not a modern political movement, popularized by Left Behind fiction — it dates to the early Church Fathers.”
-IRD President Mark Tooley

Washington, DC— As Iran’s regime strives for nuclear weapons, the Middle East is engulfed in strife, and as Christians in the region are killed by ISIS, democratic Israel remains an island of law and stability where persons of all faiths are safe, according to speakers at a recent gathering examining Christian support for Zionism.

Scholars at “People of the Land: a Twenty-First Century Case for Christian Zionism” argued that it is time for a new form of Christian Zionism based not on End Times scenarios but rooted in intellectual traditions of ecumenical Christianity.

The April 17 gathering at Georgetown University came as an increasing number of elites among Evangelicals, traditionally Israel’s strongest friends, are turning against Israel.

IRD President Mark Tooley commented:

“Too few Christians and Americans today know the deeply biblical and ecumenical intellectual traditions affirming a modern Jewish Israel. We hope our new 21st-century Christian Zionism, rooted in the venerable past, will open an exciting new chapter in Christian friendship with Jews and with Israel.

“This conference was historic because it made a theological case that is substantively different from the various cases that have been made for Christian Zionism by traditional ‘dispensationalists’ who focus on the End Times.

“Jews need and deserve a homeland in Israel. Not to displace others, but to accept and develop what the family of nations—the UN—gave them in 1948, as well as to fulfill a special history of continual presence going back at least three thousand years.

“Support for this return of God’s people to the land is eroding globally. It is surrounded by regimes bent on its destruction. Mainline Protestants have withdrawn their support. The Evangelical Left is now withdrawing support, using the same faulty arguments. It is a time for Christians, not just Jews, to make a case for the people and the land.

“Some of our speakers made prudential arguments—political and legal and moral for Israel. But chiefly they made a new theological argument for the 21st century that the people of Israel continue to be significant for the history of redemption, and that the land of Israel, which is at the heart of the covenantal promises, remains critical to God’s providential purposes.”

Conference talks will be made available on the IRD website at www.TheIRD.org by the end of the week. Academic papers from the event will be published in an upcoming book from InterVarsity Press.

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  1. Comment by Brian Paul on April 24, 2015 at 1:21 pm

    Your opening quote is disputed by the Christian Zionists at Pre-Trib Research Center (maybe they are wrong, I don’t know, but your quote is at least debatable).

    Why do you ignore Paul’s letters? God clarifies true Israel in Paul’s writings. Christina Zionism is an egregious error. Christ calls himself the true vine. You’re kicking against the goads.

  2. Comment by Mark Brooks on April 26, 2015 at 4:07 pm

    To the contrary, Christian Zionism is just a term for Those Who Believe God. Paul’s letters, and the whole of scripture, affirm that God’s unconditional promises to the physical seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be kept. And because God keeps His promises to the sons of Israel, we may trust that He will keep His promises to us.

    The return of the Jews to Israel is manifest proof of God’s mastery of human history. In an age that denies Him, it proves that He is still here and still in control.

    The egregious error likes with the imperial cults who choose to misidentify the Kingdom with themselves. Those who read the scriptures plainly know better.

  3. Comment by Brian Paul on April 26, 2015 at 5:24 pm

    Mark, Paul in Romans and Galatians interprets the promises to Abraham as being fulfilled in Christ; to those who have faith. Christ is the true Zion.

  4. Comment by Mark Brooks on April 26, 2015 at 9:31 pm

    Now I understand. You are a preterist who interprets some parts of the bible allegorically, and some of literally, but never in context, and always teleologically. Interesting. You won’t come to know the truth that way. I encourage you to read the scriptures plainly. If you do, then you will know the truth.

  5. Comment by Mark Brooks on April 26, 2015 at 4:15 pm

    ““This conference was historic because it made a theological case that is substantively different from the various cases that have been made for Christian Zionism by traditional ‘dispensationalists’ who focus on the End Times.”

    I am glad to see support for Israel and the right of the sons of Israel to the land of Israel, as has been clearly manifested in our present time by their actual return. To do this is to believe God, and to acknowledge His hand in this work.

    However, this article goes wrong by misrepresenting the basis for the traditional belief in the return of the children of Israel to the land God set apart for His purposes. That has always been based upon God’s known character as revealed in scripture and the unconditional nature of His promises. The right of the children of Israel to return to the land of Israel in God’s timing, after He allowed their expulsion because they rejected Him when he came to be their Messiah, cannot be denied if one reads the scriptures plainly. It is that, not eschatological scenarios, that is the basis for traditional Christian Zionism. It always has been.

    God reserved that land for the sons of Israel because He made an unconditional promise to their fathers that He shall keep, because God does not change. Let’s not misrepresent the true state of affairs in the name of ecumenism. That is a false basis to proceed on.

    That being said, there are many reasons to support the right of the sons of Israel to the land of Israel even for those who insist on confusing the Church with the Kingdom. It is perhaps best to focus on those.

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