Christian Zionism, Antisemitism & Christian Realism

The recent religious debate between Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson over Israel reveals wider currents in American Christian opinion.

Carlson has become less friendly if not hostile to Israel. Cruz recalled that he had learned in Sunday school that those who bless Israel will be blessed, based on the divine promise to Abraham, prompting a skeptical Carlson to ask how he defines “Israel.”

Cruz’s stance aligns with but does not depend on Christian Dispensationalism, a British originated 19^th century theological perspective stressing Israel’s role in the final days before Christ’s return, central to the Left Behind novels and movies. Dispensationalism became especially popular after World War II when the creation of modern Israel seemed to many American Christians to confirm biblical prophecy. During the 1970s through the early 2000s evangelicals like Pat Robertson (speaking through his television network) interpreted modern events through a prophetic Dispensationalist lens. Dispensationalism helped create several generations of Christian Zionists who prioritized support for Israel in their personal spirituality and politics.

But Dispensationalism has been declining in recent years, with younger evangelicals less prone to it and consequently more indifferent towards Israel politically. What will fill the vacuum as it recedes?

Of course, Dispensationalism is not gone. Many evangelicals, especially if older, still subscribe to it. Charismatics and Pentecostals are still very influenced by it.

And the view that Cruz expressed about a permanent divine blessing for friends of Israel stands on its own, not necessarily needing Dispensationalism.

But Dispensationalism for much of 80 years has been a key if not exclusive pillar in American Christian support for Israel. Now what?

Tucker’s perspective evinces an emerging less friendly if not hostile Christian view of Israel. Many on the postliberal New Right are highly averse to U.S. overseas alliances and other involvements, including U.S. support for Israel. They are especially hostile to U.S. military actions in the Middle East, having seen the Iraq War and other actions as calamitous. They want America to focus on itself. Some are critical of U.S. strikes on Iran, which were at Israel’s behest from their perspective, and leading inexorably to wider entanglements.

Many self-identified Christian Nationalists have this view, especially if they are not charismatic or Pentecostal. Hyper Calvinists who want a “Christian America” enacted through a confessional state claim Jews no longer have any role in God’s plans except as targets for evangelization. They see no spiritual imperative to support Israel. Some, in their aversion to Christian Zionism, are even borderline if not overtly antisemitic.

The author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, which is the chief serious book arguing for a Christian confessional state, recently tweeted: “2% of the population demand 100% of the wars.”  Obviously, Stephen Wolfe was blaming American Jews for America’s overseas conflicts.

Supportively retweeting Wolfe was another hyper Calvinist confessional state advocate and social media influencer, Joel Webbon, who explained his perspective:

Politically speaking, I believe Israel has had a devastatingly negative influence on America. I do not want our children to fight their wars, and I do not want them lobbying in our politics or having an outsized influence on our culture.

And:

Religiously speaking, I believe that Judaism is “anti-Christ.” I believe it is a pernicious evil. I fully recognize that many Jews are secular, and do not practice Judaism. However, just as many Americans today do not profess to be Christian, American was profoundly shaped by Christian thought and Christian values. Likewise, Israel has been deeply shaped by a religion that has as its foundation, a complete rejection of Christ.

Webbon goes on:

This is why Liberalism, at least in its modern form (20th Century Liberalism) is largely (although certainly not entirely) a Jewish project. The “engine” of Liberalism is Egalitarianism. The quest to flatten all natural distinctions (men and women, individuals, and even nations). I believe Liberalism, especially modern Liberalism, is arguably the single biggest threat to the world (particularly America) and the Church today. And I believe Israel is one of the most adamant proponents and defenders of Liberalism.

Finally:

I want to see America break ties with Israel in terms of geopolitics. I do not believe they are our ally.

Webbon convened his annual “Right Response” conference in April, featuring U.S. based British cleric Calvin Robinson, another prominent postliberal internet personality, who has been tweeting similarly about Israel, such as:

Name a prominent politician on the Right who puts their nation first before Israel. Before the Zionists get upset, I am not saying Israel has no “right” to exist. I am just trying to figure out if any other nation does, too. Where are the real patriots?

Robinson also thanked Tucker Carlson for ostensibly, in his talk with Cruz, “killing” Christian Dispensationalism. And he commended Webbon for rebutting that modern Israel is related to ancient biblical Israel, in which Webbon cited Carlson and Candance Owens, another online personality who is deeply anti-Israel.

Both Robinson and Webbon tweeted an artificial intelligence generated video of Donald Trump in which Trump declares that the “old covenant” fell with the 70AD destruction of the Jewish Temple, with the church now fully inheriting the mantle of God’s care, saying, “We no longer need to prop up the old Israel and give them all our money. Meanwhile they kill thousands of people.”

Such views by internet Christian personalities like Wolfe, Webbon and Robinson, amplified by Carlson and Owens, are likely to expand, as the old Christian Dispensationalism recedes. Alternative pro-Israel Christian perspectives need to rebut their perspective. One option is Reinhold Niebuhr, the 20^th century Protestant architect of Christian Realism who became a Zionist amid the Holocaust. His realist perspective stressed fallen human nature guided not just by self-interest but often resentment and malevolence. He thought the long-persecuted Jews needed their own homeland because the “the bigotry of majority groups toward minority groups that affront the majority by diverging from the dominant type is a perennial aspect of man’s collective life. The force of it may be mitigated, but it cannot be wholly eliminated.”

In 1956 Niebuhr wrote: “The state of Israel is, whatever its limitations, a heartening adventure in nationhood. … Whatever our political or religious positions may be, it is not possible to withhold admiration, sympathy, and respect for such an achievement.” Niebuhr avoided specific theological arguments for modern Israel. He instead argued that Jews needed and deserved their own country, whose success would be a model for other nations. Such practical moral arguments, based only broadly on Christian ethics and justice, may not suffice for other Christians.

Relying on God’s promise to Abraham that those who bless his descendants will be blessed may be more satisfying spiritually to many. Even critics who deny this promise applies to modern Israel cannot doubt that countries where Jews live safely thrive far better than nations that persecute Jews. Nations and ideologies that torment Jews are intrinsically hostile to the highest aspirations of human dignity and justice. God cannot bless such injustice, surely all Christians can agree.