Covenant Brothers

COVENANT
BROTHERS

Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations

Daniel G. Hummel

Copyright © 2019 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-0-8122-5140-1

Introduction

ON THE SUNNY AFTERNOON of March 18, 1960, at the single checkpoint connecting the two halves of the city of Jerusalem, the world’s most famous Christian evangelist entered the state of Israel for the first time. Passing over the Allenby Bridge, through Mandelbaum Gate and the no-man’s land between Israel and Jordan, Billy Graham drew a barrage of flashbulbs in the opulent lobby of the King David Hotel.¹ Impatient reporters jumped to the most controversial topic of Graham’s visit, asking about his evangelistic intentions while in the country. Graham hoped to assuage Jewish concerns: “I have not come to proselytize”—using the term for aggressive efforts to convert Jews to Christianity—“It was your people who proselytized us, for every Book of the Bible—except one—was written by a Jew.”²

The consummate evangelist, communicator of the gospel to millions, pledged that he would not evangelize while in Israel. During his three-day visit, Graham restated his innocence, hoping to placate the Israeli government which had prepared for violent anti-Christian protests.³ “Jesus himself was a Jew,” Graham stressed in one of his sermons in Nazareth, while to a packed YMCA in West Jerusalem he clarified, “It was the Roman soldiers who crucified [Jesus], not the Jewish people as some say.”⁴ But reporters remained skeptical. After touring the country and meeting with Foreign Minister Golda Meir, who gave him a Bible inscribed with “a true friend of Israel,” Graham once again faced the media. “I want to thank you for proselytizing me, a Gentile who has committed his life to a Jew who was born in this country and reared up here in Nazareth,” he reiterated.⁵

Graham’s 1960 trip is one episode in the vast annals of evangelical encounters with Israel since 1948. Though rarely retold by historians, it sets the stage for a new understanding of the origins of the evangelical Christian Zionist movement, the organized political and religious effort by conservative Protestants to support the state of Israel.⁶ In recent years, Christian Zionists hardly need an introduction. Evangelical politicians in the twenty-first century frequently articulate their calling to “cherish Israel.”⁷ Prominent evangelical leaders, including John Hagee, Robert Jeffress, and Franklin Graham are self-described Christian Zionists.⁸ Recent U.S. diplomatic moves in the Middle East—relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem chief among them—have been credited to the domestic influence of Christian Zionists.⁹

For the reporters swarming Graham, and those who now cover Christian Zionism, two explanations of the curious evangelical fascination with the state of Israel have predominated, each grounded in supposedly fixed evangelical attitudes toward the Jewish people. In 1960, Graham roused suspicion that he wanted to convert Jews; since then, observers have focused on the evangelical desire to hasten the End Times.¹⁰ Among other teachings, the version of theology that many Christian Zionists espouse includes a sudden rapture of all true believers; a religious escape hatch, critics claim, from the consequences of sowing geopolitical chaos. These pro-Israel evangelicals go on to describe the history-ending Battle of Armageddon, where, according to Hal Lindsey, “so many people will be slaughtered in the conflict that blood will stand to the horses’ bridles for a total distance of 200 miles northward and southward of Jerusalem.”¹¹ The apparent anticipation, even glee—not to mention sales—that these scenarios generate have disturbed and fascinated observers for decades.

Lindsey the doomsayer and Graham the evangelist represent the common archetypes of Christian Zionist motivations.¹² Unfortunately, both have obscured as much as they have illuminated the shape, growth, and staying power of evangelical Christian Zionism. Relying too heavily on apocalyptic and evangelistic explanations has reduced the depiction of evangelicals to mere vessels, filled with only strange theological beliefs.¹³ Likewise, it has reduced Jews to little more than practitioners of realpolitik. Instead, Covenant Brothers posits that the evangelical political movement to support Israel is a product of advocacy, organizing, and cooperation beginning after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and advancing significantly in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The recency of organized Christian Zionism suggests that it is not an obvious consequence of evangelical theology, nor is cooperation between evangelicals and Jews a natural political arrangement.

Reconstructing the rise of Christian Zionism as a movement fixes attention on the sea change in the ways most evangelicals—and certainly most politically active Christian Zionists—have elevated relationships between “evangelicals” and “Israel” as embodying “Jewish-Christian relations”—and linked these relations to a range of theological arguments, political positions, and historical judgments. “If a line has to be drawn, draw the line around both Christians and Jews,” pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, told an AIPAC Summit in 2007. “We are united. We are indivisible. We are bound together by the Torah. The roots of Christianity are Jewish. We are spiritual brothers.”¹⁴ “Brotherhood”—a term with a largely theological resonance for Christian Zionists—has become the dominant cultural and political paradigm within the movement. Christian Zionist advocates of brotherhood seek to address, and suppress, the historical evangelical yearning to convert Jews or watch the world descend into fiery judgment.¹⁵

Observers of Christian Zionism have frequently emphasized the longstanding incompatibility of evangelical Christians and Jews, each understood as bounded groups with conflicting loyalties, beliefs, and values.¹⁶ Without discounting the very real differences between the communities, it is important to interrogate the limits of the dichotomies strewn across the shared history of Judaism and Christianity—particular versus universal, law versus grace, old versus new—and foreground the times when historical actors, for various reasons, sought to resituate and reimagine Jewish-Christian relations. Such an approach to Christian Zionism should fix attention on the cultural and institutional engagements that subvert deeply rooted collective differences as well as the forces that have reinforced them.¹⁷

For the political organizers of Christian Zionism, theology and politics fused in new and unexpected ways after 1948. In its most activist circles today, Christian Zionism is less about apocalyptic theology or evangelism than it is a range of political, historical, and theological arguments in favor of the state of Israel based on mutual and covenantal solidarity. In recent years, a type of nation-based prosperity theology, promising material blessings to those who bless Israel, has played a prominent role. In earlier decades, atonement for Christian anti-Judaism and Israel’s strategic importance in the Cold War proved decisive. By turning attention to the origins of evangelical calls for religious and political activism, and to the institutions that now make up the movement, the scope and importance of Christian Zionism come into better focus.

Indeed, Graham’s 1960 utterances in Israel studiously avoided both evangelistic and apocalyptic references. His admiration for Jesus “as a Jew” was an attempt to bridge the chasms dividing Jews and Christians. Graham believed that his theology, and his status as world-famous evangelist, made the reconciling of Jewish-Christian relations his special task. An entire generation of evangelicals after World War II followed suit and embraced political support for Israel as a reconciliation project. Postwar missionaries, theologians, and pastors—known as well as unknown—joined Graham in laying the groundwork for reforming evangelicalism’s relationship to Jews and embedding pro-Israel politics in evangelical identity.¹⁸ Defining itself against the antisemitic and apocalyptic fundamentalism of its predecessors, this generation still shared many beliefs—and much baggage—with fundamentalism.¹⁹ But it was out of postwar evangelicalism that there emerged a theologically oriented interreligious movement promoting social and political action on an international scale, binding evangelicals, American Jews, and the state of Israel into a close—many claimed, covenantal—partnership.

Reconciliation

If the prevalent understanding of evangelical Christian Zionism has attributed the movement to ulterior evangelistic and apocalyptic motives, a far different interpretation has predominated among Christian Zionists. Seeking to sanction and, in many cases, paper over the theological and historical incommensurability of evangelical Christian and Jewish cooperation, insiders of the movement have emphasized the “Judeo-Christian” essence of Zionism. Some have invoked Protestant Reformers and church fathers as historical precedents, while others have celebrated the exceptional history of Western civilization and the natural affinity between the United States and Israel.²⁰ This reading of the movement fails on multiple levels to grapple with the unacknowledged conciliations, sleights of hand, and partial histories that have driven evangelicals and Jews together. The movement’s own histories have so far failed to provide critical distance from Israeli state interests or acknowledge the rapid changes in theology it has brought about.

These histories, along with the slew of new scholarly research, do reveal that at the institutional level, the evangelical Christian Zionist movement is built on three pillars of recent origin: interreligious encounter, support by the government of Israel and by American Jewish allies, and changing evangelical attitudes toward political mobilization. Together, these pillars go a long way to explaining how Christian Zionist activism emerged, how a core group of leaders came to embrace a program of activism, and how a broader institutional movement formed. The rise of the Christian Zionist movement required strategic leadership, theological reform, interreligious cooperation, political mobilization, and state-to-state diplomacy. The thrust of the movement today is captured in how all of these factors have been inflected by a particular Christian Zionist reading of Genesis 12:3, when God tells Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”²¹ Read by Christian Zionists, this verse presents Abraham’s physical descendants, the nation of Israel, as the mediator of God’s blessings to humanity.²² The verse outlines the covenantal language (reaffirmed in Genesis 15 and forward) that is the basis for modern Jewish-evangelical political cooperation. From informing the names of organizations, to the language of interreligious dialogue, to the substance of political arguments, Genesis 12:3 is the organizing principle of the modern Christian Zionist movement.

Genesis 12:3 shapes how Christian Zionists understand their relationship not only to Israel but also to the rest of the Bible. Romans 9–11, part of the letter written by the apostle Paul to the church in Rome, is perhaps the most cited passage in modern Jewish-Christian dialogue.²³ Christian Zionists interpret the passage in light of God’s declarations in Genesis. In Romans 11, Paul uses “roots,” “olive shoots,” and “branches” to describe the relationship between Jews and Christians. “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root,” Paul writes to his Christian audience, “do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you” (Romans 11:17–18). The implications of Paul’s writings are clear to Christian Zionists: the two faiths—the two covenanted peoples of Israel and the church—have a shared root, a shared faith, a shared fate.

Thus Christian Zionism is conceived of by evangelicals as a joint Jewish-Christian project. Indeed, at each stage of its development, the Christian Zionist movement has been shaped by the strategic interventions of Jews, in both Israel and the United States. The cast of characters is large, from Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, longtime director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, to Israeli officials staffing the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to prime ministers and other cabinet officials. In more recent years, Orthodox rabbis, including Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and Shlomo Riskin, rabbi in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, have forged deep ties with Christian Zionists and expounded upon a shared covenantal theology. Taken together, these Jewish allies of Christian Zionism have convinced a segment of evangelicalism to revise and reform its attitudes and beliefs about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.

The movement for a grand reconciliation to overcome millennia of Jewish-Christian alienation should be seen both for what it has bound together and for what it has pulled apart. Scholars have contested the nature of reconciliation for centuries and applied the term to dozens of religious, ethnic, and national conflicts, from North-South reconciliation after the American Civil War to the postapartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Reconciliation is complex, requiring a confrontation of past differences, a language—often based less in fact than in memory—that overcomes divisions, and a constructed framework to cooperate on common goals.²⁴ In short, reconciliation is not merely a positive attempt to compromise and concede with a former enemy for the greater good. In its post–Civil War American variety, for example, sectional reconciliation solidified Northern white acceptance of Jim Crow for the sake of reunifying the country.²⁵ Reconciliation’s instrumentality consistently challenges the authenticity of the ideals and compromises that its participants espouse. Jewish-evangelical reconciliation was embraced as a means toward cooperation. As such, its theological and intellectual backdrop has been replete with secret maneuvers and inconsistencies. This is, perhaps, the only way forward for any reconciliation with grand ambitions, encompassing deeply antithetical communities across multiple continents. But amid the instrumentalism there exist observable transformations and tangible political results. This reconciliation is a mix of pragmatism and idealism, animating evangelical support for the state of Israel and evangelical and Israeli encounters more broadly.

Understanding Christian Zionism as reconciliation does not absolve the movement from critique. On the contrary, it fixes attention on the nature and limits of reconciliation that have shaped the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Israelis and evangelicals constructed an understanding of the history of Jewish-Christian relations to justify evangelical support for Israel. They cast Palestine as an exclusively Jewish homeland based on arguments crafted to foster exclusive Jewish-Christian understanding. Israelis and evangelicals promoted a bleak history of pre-1948 Jewish-Christian relations—often overly bleak—that required distinctly Christian reparations after the Holocaust. After 1967, a particular strand of Jewish Zionism was presented to evangelicals as the “Jewish self-understanding” of Israel. Graham’s own fraught opinions of Jews, caught on the White House tapes with President Richard Nixon in 1972, exposed some limits of this reconciliation.²⁶ Yet these same evangelicals—Graham included—also constrained and, in some cases, disavowed Jewish missions for the sake of reconciliation, an unprecedented development in the history of American evangelicalism. In these ways and others, reconciliation between Jews and evangelicals was haphazardly constructed and often relied on thinly sourced understandings of the past.

The process of selective remembering and forgetting—the process of reconciliation itself—has led to other deleterious consequences. Jewish-evangelical reconciliation has effectively ignored or forgotten entire dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has sidelined Palestinian Christians, whose sharp criticisms of evangelical theology, Israeli policies, and Jewish settlement activity have fallen on deaf ears even as they have been articulated in Christian terms.²⁷ Jewish-evangelical reconciliation has also thrived on a shared loathing of Islam—not just in its most violent extremes but as a belief system incompatible with Judeo-Christian values.²⁸ This has translated into a Christian Zionist identification with Israeli interests and a widespread rejection of the concept of Palestinian statehood. Finally, Jewish-evangelical reconciliation has fostered awkward and often distorted understandings of the other community. Christian Zionism has gravitated toward the Israeli right-wing and Orthodox Jewish leaders, regarding other Jewish voices critical of Israel as deviant or inauthentic. Similarly, the Israeli insistence that Christians adhere to a specific theology of Israel has effectively lumped the vast majority of Christians as hostile to Jewish interests.

Studying the origins of the evangelical Christian Zionist movement turns the focus toward evangelical activists and the institutions they built, the Israeli government ministries that supported Christian Zionism, and the pro-Israel lobby and American Jewish defense organizations that became key allies.²⁹ This triangular relationship—international and interreligious in scope—created new categories of belonging and demolished longheld assumptions. It fostered processes of forgetting, remembering, and constructing that were deeply enmeshed in modern American, Israeli, and international history. The resulting alliance ascended to political influence but also radically reoriented and, in many cases, obscured the past realities of Jewish-Christian relations.

Precursors

Reconstructing the history of the Christian Zionist movement may shift attention from the evangelistic and apocalyptic dimensions of American evangelicalism, but it does not diminish the role of restorationist theology—the teaching that God’s covenant with the Jewish people guarantees that once again Israel will rule in its divinely granted lands. Restorationism emerged in the sixteenth century in Europe, but for most American evangelicals the most resonant teaching was a version named premillennial dispensationalism, a nineteenth-century creation.³⁰ Dispensationalism dates to the writings of the Anglo-Irish clergyman John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), who first published his teachings in the 1830s.³¹ An Anglican dissenter and founder of the Plymouth Brethren movement, Darby toured the United States beginning in 1862, amid the American Civil War. Dispensational theology would not be systematized until later generations, but Darby’s teachings found a following among Americans, especially conservative evangelicals and later fundamentalist partisans in the twentieth century.³²

Restorationist teachings were part of Darby’s larger theological vision. The irrepressible writer, whose collected works numbered some thirty-four volumes upon his death, divided all of history into seven dispensations. The resurrection of Jesus inaugurated the fifth dispensation, but this period was irregular. In previous dispensations, God had worked through his covenanted people, the nation of Israel. With Israel’s rejection of Jesus, God’s plans were put on hold. The church, a separate covenanted community, instead received God’s favor. But even today God’s plan for world redemption still revolves around the Jewish people; the church dispensation comprises a “parenthesis” in the prophetic time line. When the church has fulfilled its role (primarily through missions), it will be suddenly raptured from the earth and God will resume his original plan with Israel to establish a millennial kingdom. Premillennialism—the expectation that Jesus will return before he establishes this kingdom—informs how dispensationalists understand the final act of the drama. After the rapture and a tribulation of seven years, which will include massive levels of human and spiritual destruction, Jesus will vanquish the enemy at Armageddon and install his throne in Jerusalem.

Integral to this division of history is a second distinctive teaching: a dualism between God’s two covenanted peoples, Israel and the church. This dualism permeated Darby’s entire view of history. “The church and the people of Israel are each respectively the centres of the heavenly glory and of the earthly glory,” he wrote in 1839, “each of them has a sphere which is proper to itself, and in which all things are subordinate to it.”³³ The church’s destiny was heaven-bound, and Israel the key to God’s earthly plans. So pervasive was Darby’s dualism that he envisioned separate eternal states for Israel and the church. Later dispensationalists revised Darby’s teachings into an “anthropological dualism” that emphasized the shared human destiny amid separate roles for Israel and the church.³⁴ Most dispensationalists retained Darby’s less controversial conviction, flowing from his dualism, that the entirety of the prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible were prophecies about Israel, never about the church.

Darby’s dualism, more than his dispensations or prophetic time line, has been definitive for evangelical Christian Zionism. His teaching was a monumental departure from the vast majority of Christian traditions that emphasized that the “New Israel” of the church had superseded the ancient Israel of the Bible. This view had been propagated for millennia. Indeed, it comprised one of the strongest Christian polemics against Jews.³⁵ Where the covenantal and prophetic text specified borders or deliverance from Israel’s historical enemies, most Christians read these passages allegorically or “spiritually” as applying to Christians. Darby rejected this move, following earlier restorationists in emphasizing a “literal” fulfillment for the Jewish people—an extension of his dualistic conviction that Jews were God’s chosen people for earth.

With the rise of racial antisemitism and the Holocaust in the twentieth century, the teaching that the Jews had been replaced by the non-Jewish “New Israel” came under new scrutiny. It gained academic attention as “supersessionism” or, in common Christian Zionist parlance, “replacement theology.”³⁶ By the 1950s, no one wanted to be labeled a supersessionist. Dispensationalists were in luck: they could claim the high ground as the moral landscape shifted but could also maintain that they were doing nothing more than interpreting the Bible the same way the generation before them had. Dispensationalists continued to view Judaism as an incomplete religion, and Jews as spiritually condemned. And yet Israel remained central to God’s plans; God wasn’t finished with the Jewish people.

Darby himself was staunchly opposed to political organizing in support of Zionism, which only deepens the problem of reconstructing the origins of a political movement involving lobbying, grassroots activism, and international coordination. Why did the movement not emerge until the mid-twentieth century? Any explanation must acknowledge attempts to organize before 1948.³⁷ William E. Blackstone (1841–1935), author of the dispensationalist tract Jesus Is Coming! (1878) and the “Blackstone Memorial” (1891), was heralded as the “father of Zionism” by none other than Louis Brandeis, the great champion of American Jewish Zionism.³⁸ He remains a key touchpoint for historians of Christian Zionism. An evangelist and a successful businessman, Blackstone traveled to Palestine in 1888 and became convinced that Zionism offered the only safety for Jews suffering under antisemitic regimes in Europe, especially Russia. In 1891, Blackstone presented President Benjamin Harrison with a petition signed by more than four hundred American businessmen, lawyers, politicians, and clergy urging American support for Jewish resettlement in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. The Blackstone Memorial has been hailed as both a defining document in Christian Zionism and a window into the widespread consensus among Americans for supporting Jewish migration to Palestine.³⁹

But at the same time as Blackstone won fame for his memorial, he was undermining his own ability to mobilize Christians and Jews toward a shared political goal. In 1888, Blackstone cofounded the Chicago Hebrew Mission (later, Hebrew Christian Mission), targeting Jews for conversion in the largest Midwest metropolis.⁴⁰ He saw his memorial and mission as inseparable. Blackstone’s commitment to both Zionism and missions made him an episodic ally to the Zionist movement, such as in 1916 when Brandeis revived the Blackstone Memorial to present to President Woodrow Wilson.⁴¹ But Blackstone’s missions work alienated Jews and limited his influence with Zionists. For all of Blackstone’s personal dedication to Zionism, his political work evaporated after his death in 1935.⁴² He left no grassroots organization of Christian support. Blackstone’s legacy was slightly greater in Israel, where the Herzl Museum displays the “Blackstone Bible” gifted to Theodor Herzl with prophecy passages highlighted in red.⁴³

Blackstone was emblematic of Christian Zionists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Individuals played noteworthy roles in the Zionist movement but saw no need to institutionalize their support. Not until Great Britain gained the Mandate of Palestine (1920–1948) as a spoil of World War I did traces of an American movement emerge. Liberal Protestants dominated political organizing in the following years, founding the American Palestine Committee (1941) and the Christian Council on Palestine (1942), both of which merged under the American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC) in 1946. Movement leaders Henry Atkinson, member of the Church Peace Union; Carl Hermann Voss, a Unitarian minister and executive secretary of the ACPC; and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr urged Christians to support Zionism on humanitarian, ethical, and moral grounds. But the liberal leadership of Christian Zionism, writes historian Paul Merkley, agreed with Jewish Zionists that “fundamentalists”—that is, dispensationalists—“were without political significance.”⁴⁴ The fundamentalist movement further circumscribed the influence of dispensationalists between the world wars. While fundamentalists created new institutions to propagate their faith, their appeals to biblical prophecy and support of Jewish missions—both well within the mainstream of American Protestantism earlier in the nineteenth century—fell out of favor with elite opinion.⁴⁵

Dispensationalists did not entirely disappear from the political story of Zionism, publishing articles, preaching sermons, and speculating on prophetic time lines. They were ecstatic on May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state of Israel. Louis Talbot, the president of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, a leading dispensationalist school, hailed the day as “the greatest event, from a prophetic standpoint, that has taken place within the last one hundred years, perhaps even since 70 CE, when Jerusalem was destroyed.”⁴⁶ But Talbot’s words did not lead to political action. His declaration was uttered to reinforce dispensational confidence that the Bible remained authoritative and relevant. Indeed, under fundamentalism, prophetic energy tended to be directed inward, toward the community of believers to shore up faith in the inerrancy of the Bible. The call to political support for Israel and reconciliation with the Jewish people—so central to many liberal Protestants in the same moment—remained anathema to most dispensationalists.

The Movement

Events after 1948 began to transform the way dispensationalists understood their relationship to what had been until then a purely theological nation of Israel. It was a transformation that initially only a few participated in or noticed. It was only in the 1960s that most American evangelicals began to grapple with the potential theological implications of the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. It happened first at the geographical and intellectual peripheries of evangelical Christianity—including the Middle East and in areas of life including missions, religious education, and biblical studies—that the reality of Jewish genocide and the new state became immediately tangible. It was in these areas that evangelical theology began to reanimate Jewish-Christian relations and develop a sense of political obligation toward Israel.

The Israeli state that came into being in 1948 was decisive in transforming evangelical attitudes. Led by secular Zionists with little knowledge of Christianity and even less familiarity with American Protestantism, the state initially focused on dissipating political and Christian theological hostility to the very concept of a Jewish state.⁴⁷ Specialized knowledge of American Protestantism was scarce in the Ministry of Religious Affairs (overseeing domestic religious communities), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (diplomatic relations with foreign religious representatives), the Ministry of the Interior (overseeing visas), and the Ministry of Tourism. The early years of Israeli statehood saw officials learning the basic demographic facts about Christianity and the potential political and diplomatic benefits of American Christian support.⁴⁸ Yet these decisive first contacts between evangelicals and the state of Israel in the late 1940s and 1950s set precedents that later Christian Zionists took for granted.

Outside actors—the government of Israel chief among them—have been constitutive to creating modern evangelical Christian Zionism and, by extension, modern conservative evangelical politics. Judged not only by the disproportionate support evangelicals give Israel in polls, but also by the vast academic, cultural, pastoral, and popular efforts to reimagine Jewish-evangelical relations since 1948, the lines connecting evangelicalism and contemporary Christian Zionism are thick and wide. By the twenty-first century, to be a conservative evangelical was as much about supporting the state of Israel as it was about opposing abortion, voting Republican, or reviving a Christian America.⁴⁹ International developments and interreligious relations have played as decisive a role in shaping modern evangelical identity, as much as in shaping theological doctrines and beliefs.⁵⁰

The transformation within American evangelicalism was premised on a new call to action. Christian Zionists directed evangelicals to “support,” “love,” “comfort,” “defend,” and “stand with” Israel as sacred duties. These verbs themselves are imprecise and often rooted in biblical metaphors, but they often reflected common social-movement tactics: single-issue organizations, meetings, petitions, op-eds, voting, rallies, and occasional protests. Other actions were unique to Christian Zionists, or took on distinctive meaning: Holy Land tourism, prayer “for the peace of Jerusalem,” donating money to the state or to Jewish humanitarian causes, reforming or restating theological doctrines to encourage cooperation, undertaking interreligious dialogue, and, in more limited cases, adopting Jewish symbols and language for Christian worship.⁵¹

These activities highlight the broader evangelical fascination with Israel that has coincided with the rise of Christian Zionism. Recent polling indicates that about half of American evangelicals (52 percent) agree that “Israel is important for fulfilling biblical prophecy.”⁵² Less prominently reported is that a full 80 percent of evangelicals agree that “God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants was for all time” and almost two-thirds (63 percent) agreed that “the Bible says God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.” These numbers are revealing in the broad support Israel enjoys among evangelicals outside strictly prophecy beliefs. They are less helpful, however, in understanding the subset of evangelicals who are Christian Zionists, who are markedly invested in Israel and Jewish-evangelical relations. According to polling, for example, 97 percent of evangelicals have not visited Israel. While no reliable data exists on Christian Zionist tourism rates, a far larger number of activists, organizational leaders, and proponents of Jewish-evangelical relations have visited Israel. Disentangling evangelical attitudes toward Israel with—and Christian Zionist motives for—active political support is crucial to explaining how Christian Zionism exists in relation to evangelicalism and how it became instrumental in American and Israeli politics.

As a political movement, Christian Zionism was also deeply shaped by post–World War II public diplomacy. Evangelicals, like other Americans, internalized the importance of foreign opinion and the image of their country as it assumed global responsibilities.⁵³ Justifying U.S. alignment with Israel in terms of national interest, morality, and ideology helped evangelicals fashion a distinct approach to internationalism after World War II that recognized global interdependence and interconnectedness, promoted international engagement, sacralized the U.S.-Israeli relationship, and assumed the predominance of the United States and its values.⁵⁴ Postwar evangelicals shaped political debates over U.S. relations in the Middle East and advanced pro-Israel arguments in both religious and secular terms.⁵⁵

More potent even than Israel’s place in American public diplomacy was American evangelicals’ changing position within Israeli public diplomacy.⁵⁶ The improvement of Israel’s international image and search for international support—hasbara—has been evaluated by Israeli observers as having “no parallel in any other country in the world.”⁵⁷ While the public debate in Israel over explaining its actions to the international community may be unique, the Israeli government’s concern with creating allies in foreign lands is a common feature of modern diplomacy.⁵⁸ But Israel’s unique role in evangelical thinking, its religious and sacred assets on the ground, and its successful hasbara efforts directed at Christian Zionists all point to the deep intersection between Jewish-evangelical and U.S.-Israeli relations. Christian Zionism helped to define Israel for American audiences and the American public for the Israeli government.

The infrastructure of Christian Zionism—its organizing ideas, institutions, and personnel—are the fruits of a stunningly successful interreligious relationship between evangelical Christians and Jews centered on shared support for the state of Israel. As a movement premised on theological reform and political activism, Christian Zionism is inherently unstable and subject to constant power struggles. Yet its most ardent activists and leaders have built an international network—and more than a network, a set of institutions and centers of influence—that rivals other single-issue lobbies or interreligious ventures in U.S. politics. While apocalyptic and evangelistic explanations supply rough answers to why evangelicals take an interest in Israel, they fall short of explaining the genesis of joint activism or the many interreligious manifestations of the movement since the 1940s.

Searching for this genesis leads to the earliest evangelical encounters with the state of Israel. Within the borders of the state, Billy Graham was forced to articulate his views on Jewish-Christian relations. It is where the first part of this story, “Roots, 1948–1967,” unfolds as postwar evangelicals confront the problems of missions, Jewish-Christian religious antagonism, and the lack of historical precedents for Jewish-evangelical cooperation. By the eve of the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967, the constituent institutional and theological components existed, though they were disaggregated and underdeveloped. The second part of the story, “Shoots, 1967–1976,” tells how evangelicals, American Jews, and the Israeli state became deeply entangled as the Christian Zionist movement took shape. By 1976, in Newsweek’s “Year of the Evangelical,” the movement had failed to broadly mobilize but had successfully navigated institutional and theological barriers to cooperate with the state of Israel. The final part, “Branches, 1976–2018,” traces how different political iterations of Christian Zionism emerged as influential movements affecting U.S., Israeli, and international politics. Evolutions toward conservative and right-wing coalitions, as well as the influx of Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, were unforeseen developments. And yet the continuity of reconciliation has underwritten the movement’s coherence and continuing political success.

Billy Graham was well aware of the misperceptions and realities of evangelical support for Israel in his first public meeting with American Jewish leaders in 1969. To the skeptical audience he explained that his “love for Israel” was based on two Christian insights. One was his theological commitment to a Jewish state. “No combination of powers will dislodge Israel because God is with them,” he told the roomful of listeners at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) headquarters in New York City. The second teaching was historical. According to one observer, Graham acknowledged that “all Christians are guilty as far as Jewish experience was concerned” and asked “forgiveness of the Jewish community as a Christian.” Jews in the room responded enthusiastically.⁵⁹ “This did not appear to be the same Billy Graham on TV or Madison Square Garden,” reported Jewish observer Ron Kronish. “Those of us who were fortunate to talk with him informally came away with an impression of a powerful, yet extremely sensitive, human being, who expressed an unusual love for Israel and the Jewish people.” Graham was not a “raving fundamentalist” but someone Jews could work with.⁶⁰

Graham, of course, reminded his audience of his last well-received performance in Israel. He recalled that in 1960 he “went to Israel not to proselytize but to visit the Holy Places and talk to people”—to begin the process of reconciliation. Hoping to show his Jewish audience that he was a new type of evangelical with a new attitude toward the state of Israel, Graham employed a language, a style, and a politics devised not on the spur of the moment but debated, contested, and argued over by evangelicals since the state of Israel had come into existence. This historical genealogy of reconciliation and pro-Israel politics remains the key to understanding and explaining the rise of the modern evangelical Christian Zionist movement.

PART I
ROOTS, 1948–1967

CHAPTER 1

From Mission to Witness

DURING HIS VISIT TO Israel in 1960, Billy Graham employed a translator—a fellow Southern Baptist who had lived in Jerusalem since 1945. His name was Robert Lisle Lindsey.¹ The two had met the year before at Graham’s home in Montreat, North Carolina, where Lindsey first broached the topic of a visit to Israel. Fluent in Hebrew and familiar to Israeli officials, Lindsey explained the basic theological concepts that Graham later referenced in his interviews and sermons in Israel. An Oklahoma-born Baptist, Lindsey had far more experience responding to charges of proselytizing the Jewish people. He was no less than a commissioned missionary of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board who had moved to Palestine to share the message of the “Yeshua Hamashiach” (Jesus the Messiah) to Jews and Arabs alike.

Lindsey’s history in Palestine dated to 1939, when he visited as a twenty-one-year-old graduate of the University of Oklahoma. Led by famed dispensationalist David L. Cooper, the Bible study tour Lindsey joined was one of only a few granted permission by British authorities amid the Arab revolt (1936–1939). Cooper’s tours were ninety-day excursions with more nights spent on rocky desert ground than on the beaches of the Mediterranean. The expeditions could have been mistaken for a seminary boot camp, mixing historical and archaeological knowledge as Cooper retraced the steps of the Israelites and Jesus. He overlaid the sightseeing with an analysis of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy taking place across the land.² After the tour ended, Lindsey decided to stay in Palestine for another year, take classes at the Hebrew University, and room with one of the only Hebrew Christian families in Jerusalem. By the time he finally left for the United States in June 1940, he had become proficient in Hebrew and Arabic. He later joked that he looked and sounded indistinguishable from a sabra, a Jew born in Palestine.³

When Lindsey returned to Palestine in 1945, he was one of the first American evangelicals to confront the problem of Jewish missions in a Jewish society.⁴ Lindsey and his Southern Baptist colleagues arriving between 1948 and 1955 initially expected to spearhead a spiritual revival. In a century of mass religious movements, they anticipated a work of the Holy Spirit among God’s chosen people. But the missionaries immediately confronted local opposition and increasing self-doubt. In an act that revealed his changing priorities, Lindsey replaced the sign above his West Jerusalem chapel that read “Baptist Mission” with one that read “Baptist House.” “Mission [misimah]” had a military connotation, while “missionary [matif]” conjured images of Christian coercion and Jewish resistance.

Time in Jerusalem prompted Lindsey to ask how, and if, Jewish missions could survive in a society where the continuity of the Jewish people was an overriding priority. By the early 1950s, he and his colleagues decided to rebrand their mission as one of Christian “witness,” developing a new theology that accommodated Israeli society and confronted some of the problems of Jewish-Christian relations in the light of the Holocaust. Lindsey’s post-1945 writings in particular showed how deeply the Holocaust, as understood from within Israeli society, influenced his thinking—and how the initial impulse for Jewish-Christian reconciliation emerged from a most unexpected source of Christian missionary writings.⁵

Lindsey’s thinking had profound implications for evangelical Christian Zionism, introducing into evangelical theological currents a novel approach to Jewish-Christian relations. Unwilling to question the evangelistic mission of Christianity or to categorize the New Testament and Christian faith as anti-Jewish—both criticisms advanced by liberal and ecumenical Protestants in the same years—Lindsey focused on the lamentable past of Jewish-Christian relations and offered new theological categories. Adapting to Israeli society and personal exposure to the plight of European Jews prompted missionaries to develop language that took seriously Jewish identity, racial antisemitism and the Holocaust, and the long history of Christian anti-Judaism. This project, which missionaries called “witness,” made evangelicals familiar with the concepts of interreligious reconciliation that later fueled a sense of political obligation to Israel.

Tracing Christian Zionism to the writings of missionaries from 1948 through 1966 may at first appear counterintuitive. Not only have Jewish missions remained one of the most controversial issues in modern Christian Zionism, but those missionaries lived far from the centers of American evangelicalism. Moreover, those who moved to Israel were outliers, rejecting key elements of dispensational theology and enjoying advanced language skills, education, and familiarity with modern Jewish thought.⁶ Yet it is precisely because of their geographical distance and experiences that missionaries created a new way of thinking about Jewish-Christian relations for a generation of postwar American evangelicals. As the first evangelicals to grapple with the religious and theological meaning of the Holocaust and Israeli statehood—and to do it in Israel—the small missionary community, anchored in Jerusalem and Nazareth, working among Jews and Arabs, created a new language of reconciliation that would travel far beyond its original purpose.

The Problem of Missions

When Robert Lindsey returned to Palestine as a missionary with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board in 1945, he found Jewish-Arab tensions had worsened during his absence. The ability of British authorities to maintain social order was tenuous as Arabs, Jews, and British overlords vied for political control. The calamity of the Holocaust and rising nationalist aspirations of peoples under colonial rule were a daunting backdrop to missions work. But missionaries continued to pour into Palestine from dozens of denominations and countries, crowding into the neighborhoods of West Jerusalem, the cities of Nazareth and Bethlehem, and the port towns of Jaffa and Haifa.

Lindsey’s generation of Southern Baptist missionaries, arriving in Israel between 1948 and 1955, created a new ethos that merged spiritual, material, and political goals in the service of Jesus’ commission to “go and make disciples of all nations.”⁷ Postwar American missionaries were one of the largest generations in history with almost 30,000 stationed around the globe by 1960, two-thirds claiming sponsorship by conservative Protestant churches or organizations.⁸ While evangelicals had long prioritized spiritual conversion over social reform, they became more interested in the social and political life of the societies in which they worked in these postwar decades. Decolonization, rising nationalism, and a new scientific approach to missions informed by anthropology and sociology contributed to the growing evangelical emphasis on social and political, as well as spiritual, knowledge.⁹ This was one area where postwar evangelicals consciously claimed separation from fundamentalists, who remained unreformed in their practice of missions.¹⁰

In Israel the missionaries needed all the help they could get. Christians traditionally enjoyed demographic and institutional advantages wherever they encountered Jewish communities. In medieval Europe, segregated Jewish communities had been marked by suspicion and faced pressure to convert to Christianity. The rise of racial antisemitism only compounded Jewish suffering. But in the new state of Israel the situation was reversed, with Christians representing only a small minority of citizens. The Christians that did live in the state—mostly Arab Orthodox Christians—numbered around thirty-thousand after the 1949 armistice and comprised less than 5 percent of the population.¹¹ Protestants from North America and Europe numbered in the low hundreds; Jews and Arabs mostly ignored the few Southern Baptists in their midst.

When Southern Baptist missionaries disembarked on the Mediterranean’s eastern edge, they entered a society hostile to the individualistic, entrepreneurial Southern Baptist religion of the Bible Belt. The dislocation of indigenous Arab Christians after 1948 revealed not only the effects of war, expulsion, and influx of Jewish refugees; it also laid bare the sectarian identities that had governed Palestine’s social relations before Israeli statehood.¹² Conversion from one religion to another was rare and legally impermissible under the legal system inherited from the Ottoman and British Empires. As the bedrock of Ottoman religious policy, millets (religious courts) were given authority to oversee religious and social laws, offering minority religious communities within the empire a semblance of local autonomy and a stake in the regime’s stability. Millets shaped Istanbul’s response to a vastly diverse religious population by assuming a static conception of religious identity—a person was born a Muslim, Christian, or Jew and remained so for life. This system remained in place through British and Israeli transfers and presented missionaries with one of the most intractable barriers to conversion.¹³

The first Baptist missionary, Shukri Musa, was baptized in Dallas by the famed Southern Baptist preacher George W. Truett in 1909. A native of Safed, a village overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Musa returned home in 1911 and established the first Southern Baptist church in Palestine.¹⁴ Counting fewer than a thousand members, with missionary personnel hovering around a dozen, Southern Baptists worked at the margins of Palestinian society and the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community. Wartime recalls of all Southern Baptist missionaries in the Middle East decimated the Palestine mission from 1939 through 1945.

The struggle between Jews and Arabs in Palestine turned Christian attention to the Middle East after World War II. More than fifteen thousand Christian missionaries and foreign workers were counted in Israel in 1949.¹⁵ Missionary interest stemmed from prophetic energy around the “regathering” of the Jewish people, expectations of a mass Jewish conversion, expanding financial support from American donors, and a humanitarian desire to help the survivors of the Holocaust. This desire was piqued by personal encounters with European Jewish refugees, many of whom were disembarking in Haifa or Tel Aviv in the early 1950s.¹⁶ Though far smaller than Japan or Western Europe—two popular fields of missions work—Israel’s per capita missionary presence outstripped that of any other country in the world.¹⁷ Southern Baptists sent a dozen families to Israel in the two decades after 1945 and counted twenty-five missionaries in 1966, the denomination’s largest national presence in the Middle East.¹⁸ Missionary influence multiplied through interdenominational cooperation, especially with Mennonites, Brethren, Nazarenes, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance headquartered in Jerusalem.¹⁹ Hebrew Christian missions agencies in Jerusalem, which operated separately, included the International Hebrew Christian Alliance and the American Board of Missions to the Jews.

Though representing the largest foreign Protestant presence in the country, Southern Baptists were unable to gain a local following. In the state’s first twenty years, the total number of Jewish converts to Christianity in Israel was probably fewer than three hundred, and even such a low count is likely too generous.²⁰ The number of Jewish converts to the Baptist faith was a fraction of this number, perhaps only a handful in the first dozen years. Southern Baptists found more success among Arabs in the Galilee region, but even this growth fell below expectations. “Up to this time there has been no great progress toward winning the Jew to Christ,” wrote Dwight Baker, who arrived in Israel in 1950, to the Foreign Mission Board two years later, “although one attempt after another has been made. . . . The harvest reaped by zealous young missionaries who came to serve among these people was frustration and disappointment.”²¹ The rare Jewish convert often chose to keep his or her new religion a secret for fear of reprisal from family and friends. With no tangible gains, missionaries administered small churches made up of expatriate Christian workers. Those years, recalled another missionary, were full of “desperate needs, frustrated hopes, and pathetic groping for the will of God.”²²

The arrangement between the Israeli government and the Chief Rabbinate—between “state and synagogue”—presented more legal and political challenges, especially as antimissionary organizations lobbied the Israeli government to evict foreign Christians.²³ In the eyes of Israelis, missionaries were opportunistic and concerned only with generating conversions from the most vulnerable classes—outcasts, unassimilated immigrants, and children. In many cases, Israeli opinion was well founded. “They were hungry people pleading for bread,” remarked one visiting American missionary upon touring a poor refugee settlement outside Haifa. “But these people wanted the Living Bread [of Jesus].”²⁴ The indifference that these examples of Christian missions displayed toward the physical needs of Jewish immigrants won few converts.

Cultural isolation forced the Southern Baptists to adapt. Their need to explain low conversion numbers to perturbed American sponsors led them to theorize new social, psychological, and theological explanations for Israel’s exceptional resistance to the gospel. The state was still reeling from independence and ongoing conflict, experiencing a massive influx of immigrants, and confronting the Holocaust and continuing Arab hostility.²⁵ Israelis were in no condition to be proselytized. This diagnosis recast not just the missionary but the Christian’s role in Jewish society.

Witness Zionism

In mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism, to provide a Christian “witness” meant to proclaim the gospel in the hopes that listeners would be moved toward a decision for Christ. For many missionaries, witnessing also included service to the poor and reforming cultural practices to reflect Western values, though often justified as means to sharing the gospel.²⁶ As missionaries struggled to find followers, witness began to fuse with the political Zionist ethos of the new state. Baker recalled the changing attitude as a recognition that Christians “have hurt the Jews long enough. Now, the smallest thing we could do . . . [would be] to help them rebuild this country now that they’ve come back.”²⁷ The language revealed a new priority: to pursue institutional and social integration in Israel under the banner of witness. A Christian witness would be educated in the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and in modern Jewish history. A Christian witness would reject old missionary techniques, abandon stale Christian attitudes, and embrace the strictures and values of Israeli society.

Missionaries did not abandon their hope for a mass Jewish conversion to Christianity. Much like reform-oriented Catholics at Vatican II, Southern Baptists still expected the conversion of the Jews to be fulfilled in the fullness of time.²⁸ The Baptists never relinquished their core claim to the gospel’s universality, but Christian witness in Israel lessened the priority of conversion. A witness theology prioritized interreligious reconciliation that could advance missionary “authority,” or belonging, in Israeli society. When Southern Baptists gained authentic social belonging in Israel, they surmised, Israelis would welcome an honest religious dialogue. In that free context—reminiscent of the ideals of American religious freedom—Jews could encounter the Christian message anew. This refashioned missionary theology, which allowed perhaps centuries for the proper corrections to Jewish-Christian relations, offered an entirely new ethos to Baptist work in Israel.

The conviction that Israel presented a special case drew Lindsey, Baker, and other missionaries away from the prevailing “church growth” paradigm then popular among evangelical missionaries. First conceived by Donald McGavran in his 1955 book The Bridges of God, church growth quickly became the dominant model of foreign missions in American evangelicalism. Church growth relied on utilizing data and common techniques to evangelize and convert entire “people groups.”²⁹ McGavran drew insights from anthropology and emphasized missionary success through quantitative metrics of conversion and expansion. “Church growth” strategies were touted as modern and gospel-centered; a synthesis of technology, data, anthropology, and the Bible. But establishing a Christian witness, Lindsey explained, was the bedrock of the “evangelical endeavor in Israel” and an effort to be judged by entirely different metrics.

Thus, the missionaries in Israel had a complicated relationship to church growth. On the one hand, they adopted the anthropological insights of the new science of missions and embraced a cultural pluralism that recognized that every individual understood the Bible through a worldview. They sought to promote indigenous Christian leaders and to defer to local customs. Baptists, like church growth evangelicals, emphasized “adaptability,” “movement,” “invention,” and “initiative.”³⁰ On the other hand, however, church growth had its shortcomings. Lindsey rejected the data-driven approach that measured success in terms of converts and financial growth. The new witness theology prioritized the less qualitative measures of cultural influence and “authority,” gained through integration—a strategy resigned to the dim prospects for numerical growth in Israel.

The Baptist strategy to gain cultural influence and authority was developed in reaction to the situation in Israel. Lindsey warned his fellow missionaries that Christians would only be accepted in Israeli society if they were seen as Zionists. “Authority is achieved only when the witnessing appears to be consistent with the elemental aims for security and significance entertained by the general community,” he explained in 1961. Missionaries in Israel needed to integrate into Israeli society and “absorb large quantities of the local culture and life of the larger community without, however, losing [their] distinctiveness.” He dismissed as “artificial” the tried-and-true methods of “public evangelism, such as distribution of literature calling on people to ‘repent’ and ‘believe the gospel,’ or evangelistic street meetings or services in rented halls. All these might work and easily serve as ‘Oth’ [‘distinct’] in many languages. They fail here.”³¹ As an official report in 1957 by the Baptist Convention in Israel explained, “We cannot base our work on the immediate hope that a Billy Sunday or Billy Graham evangelism will change the face of Israel.”³²

Christian witness also beckoned a new narrative of Christian belonging in Jewish society. Lindsey turned to a novel source: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the textual remnants of a radical Jewish sect dated to 220 BCE–70 CE discovered in caves overlooking the Dead Sea in 1947. The Scrolls provided the largest collection of extant biblical material from first-century Palestine, the religious and cultural milieu of early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.³³ The stewards of the Scrolls, the extinct Qumran community, had been religious dissenters. Railing against corruption and legalism, anticipating a messianic figure, and living in physical separation from Jewish ritual life in Jerusalem, the Qumran community was deeply Jewish but also was rejected by most Jews in Palestine. Lindsey believed the Scrolls had the potential to reorient Christianity’s place in Israeli society. He saw in the Qumran community the Southern Baptist experience in Israel. The missionaries named their monthly digest after the Qumran sect, “Hayahad,” which translated to “the gathered community.” “We stand for the things the name ‘hayahad’ demands,” Lindsey declared in an early issue, “the steady, disciplined growth of local congregations bent on learning to live and worship together the God of Israel and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and banded together voluntarily for mutual witness to the salvation of men everywhere.”³⁴ This characterization undoubtedly described the ideology of the Baptist community and not that of the ancient Qumran sect.

The Scrolls revealed the diversity of Jewish sects in the first century—Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, Essenes, and Christians. Christian and Jewish scholarship in the 1950s also emphasized the varieties of Jewish sectarianism.³⁵ Each sect “thought of [itself] and of the larger body as somehow related to Abraham,” Lindsey explained. Early Christians, like other Jewish sects, had a claim to the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish tradition. By the second century, Rabbinic Judaism was able “to emphasize the religio-ethnic unity of all Jews to the exclusion of heretical Jewishness based on any but the rabbinic [form] of the faith of Israel.”³⁶ But if hard-and-fast borders between Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity were the result of mere power politics, then Christianity remained one of many expressions of Judaism. This understanding of Jewish-Christian relations had “far-reaching and practical results,” Lindsey assured his fellow Christians.³⁷

This interpretation of Christianity’s inherent Jewishness, however, challenged the reigning definition of Judaism in Israel. As Lindsey explained, “The Dead Sea communities were important because they revealed a type of Judaism other than Pharisaic which has indigenous roots in this land.”³⁸ Paul Swarr, a Mennonite missionary writing in Hayahad Digest, agreed: “The Dead Sea sect and the New Testament believers both . . . developed as fringe daughter movements of the parent Judaism.”³⁹ Remarkably, some Israeli scholars supported the missionaries’ basic interpretation. By the early 1960s, Hebrew University professors David Flusser and Shemaryahu Talmon published findings on the Scrolls that emphasized the Jewish context of early Christianity, revising earlier scholarship that privileged Hellenistic thought. In a sign of the interreligious significance of these historical claims, Flusser and Talmon also began to represent the Israeli perspective in meetings with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Vatican.⁴⁰

Flusser read fluently in more than a dozen languages and specialized in premodern Jewish-Christian relations. During his education at the University of Prague in the 1930s, he met a Christian pastor and became interested in Jesus and the relationship of early Christianity to Judaism. He and Lindsey met in Jerusalem and struck up a close intellectual partnership that would span more than four decades. Lindsey promoted an unconventional theory that Jesus taught and spoke in Hebrew.⁴¹ If Jesus taught—and the gospel of Mark was originally penned—in Hebrew, Judaism and Christianity had even closer religio-cultural roots in his estimation. In addition to finding Lindsey’s argument intriguing, Flusser saw an academic avenue to help combat Christian anti-Judaism.

The willingness of Jewish scholars to collaborate with Christians propelled the Jewish discovery of Jesus and the evangelical discovery of a Jewish Jesus. While Flusser recovered an ethical and mystical Jesus who fit firmly into rabbinic teachings of the first century, Lindsey compared the gospels to surrounding rabbinic literature. There remained an irreducible theological barrier between Christians and Jews about the nature of Jesus, among other key points of belief, but in the trenches of textual study and interpretation there was common cause.

The new thinking justified the missionary community’s embrace of witness and more open identification with the state of Israel. Flagship missionary projects like the Baptist Village and orphanage in Petah Tikvah were cast as attempts “to share in the pioneer life of a new country [which] has unquestionably aided Baptists in Israel to obtain a better name.”⁴² Milton Murphey, the Baptist Village’s director, glowingly reported that his work “symbolizes the determination of this Christian Community to play a constructive role . . . in the New State.”⁴³ The Baptist Convention in Israel reiterated this approach in its constitution, with one of its chief aims the “social and cultural integration of individuals of all backgrounds and of all religions into a family of loyal Israeli citizens.”⁴⁴ Through the 1950s, Baptists helped found the United Christian Council in Israel (UCCI), an umbrella organization representing foreign Christian interests to the Israeli government. Southern Baptists advised the Israeli government on Holy Land tourism, coordinated official visits with Baptist groups from around the globe, and introduced to the Israeli government influential Southern Baptist leaders, including W. A. Criswell, the pastor of the largest church in America, First Baptist Church in Dallas.⁴⁵

These efforts, which would be copied by later Christian Zionists, were far from normal missionary outreach work. The way missionaries conceptualized Jewish conversion made this clear. As Lindsey explained, to be a witness to Jews in Israel required a transformation in the message that missionaries carried with them. “We only adulterate [the Gospel] when we argue that Judaism and Zionism is doomed, that [Jewish] identity before the world can never be eradicated, that there is no alternative except conversion for them as a people.” The Christian witness in Israel demanded a humility and recognition that missionaries could neither speed nor frustrate the plans of God. “Do we really know what God is going to do for them in the future,” Lindsey asked, desperate to break the evangelical fixation on conversion. “Is it up to us to hold out premiums to them in case they turn to Christ? We leave that to God. Otherwise we confuse the witness and erect walls of separation which Christ has broken down.” The rethinking of missions was fueled by a desire to integrate into Israeli society and advance Zionism; to leave the agency of spiritual transformation in the hands of God and, in the interim, create “bridges of understanding . . . bridges of friendship and vital rapport.”⁴⁶ “We remained as Christians,” Dwight Baker recalled later, “but not as missionaries.”⁴⁷

The Theology of Witness

Missionary writings ranged widely in the 1950s and engaged with diverse Christian arguments about Judaism and Israel, including the works of nonevangelical theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and Emil Brunner. In Jerusalem, the missionaries conversed with an international group of Christians, including Canon Peter Schneider, an evangelical-leaning Anglican minister in Jerusalem; Marcel-Jacques Dubois, a French Dominican priest and professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University; and Bruno Hussar, the Arab Catholic founder of House of Isaiah, a Jewish-Catholic interfaith study center in Jerusalem.⁴⁸ Missionaries sparred with Israelis, including professors at the Hebrew University David Flusser, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, and Shemaryahu Talmon. “I know of no other spot on the globe,” Lindsey said of Jerusalem in 1961, “where the search is carried on so incessantly, so penetratingly, so desperately, for identification, for finding the meaning of existence, for more satisfyingly adequate ideology.”⁴⁹ Expanding his institutional affiliations outside normal evangelical boundaries, Lindsey advised the World Council of Churches on Jewish-Christian relations.⁵⁰

Missionaries drew inspiration from the growing literature on Jewish-Christian dialogue.⁵¹ The Baptists in Israel, located far from the centers of American evangelicalism, were freer than those in America to retool strands of interreligious thinking to their situation. Missionaries came to see that Christians had failed to acknowledge their theological debt to Judaism and failed to repent for the historical mistreatment of Jews.⁵² “When the Church had the power and influence over [Jews] to do the most to court their favor it did the worst,” Lindsey lamented. “It is tragic for history that Jews should have been more miserable under Christian princes than their ancestors were under any Pharaohs.”⁵³ Centuries of prejudice had hardened Jewish opinion, argued a close collaborator, Mennonite missionary Roy Kreider, who blamed “the psychology of suppressed minorities” for anti-Christian sentiment among Israelis.⁵⁴ The Jewish person’s “experiences among those who are non-Jews does not dispose him favorably to seek their society and contempt. . . . Frequently in history, as he recalls, discussions between Christian and rabbi resulted in the death of the rabbi.”⁵⁵ These missionary thoughts aligned with liberal theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s conviction that Christian support for Zionism would serve as “a partial expiation” for past Christian anti-Judaism.⁵⁶

Agreeing with this interreligious literature, the missionaries explained Christian anti-Judaism by blaming supersessionism, the traditional teaching that the church replaced the Jewish people as the “New Israel” after the refusal of Jews to recognize Jesus as the prophesied messiah.⁵⁷ For most of church history, Christians taught a continuity between the Israel of the Hebrew Bible and the church of the New Testament, a view that severed God’s favor from the Jews in the first century.⁵⁸ This “teaching of contempt” both relegated the Jewish people to stateless wandering as punishment and legitimated the triumphal rise of Christianity in its place. The church’s self-identity as the new Israel and its view of Judaism as an obsolete “rejected branch” formed a core part of Christian identity.

By the 1950s, many Christian theologians had turned their attention to supersessionism. Seeing the Holocaust as a Christian moral and political failure, a generation of “post-Holocaust” theologians indicted church fathers, Protestant reformers, and even the New Testament for laying the groundwork for genocide.⁵⁹ According to Methodist minister Franklin Littell, who founded the first Holocaust studies program in America at Temple University, the future of Christianity hinged on rejecting supersessionism. This included Jewish missions, which exemplified the attitude of superiority that Christian supersessionism assumed. Reinhold Niebuhr, the most well-known American Protestant writer on Jewish-Christian relations in the 1950s, famously pronounced that discontinuing Jewish missions was necessary for Jewish-Christian relations to improve. The Jews had “a stubborn will to live . . . as a peculiar people, both ethnically and religiously.” This “problem,” from the Christian’s perspective, Niebuhr wrote, “can be solved only if the Christian and Gentile majority accepts this fact and ceases to practice tolerance provisionally in the hope that it will encourage assimilation ethnically and conversion religiously.”⁶⁰ Christian arguments for Jews to convert worked against the mandate that Jews continue as a separate people.

Baptist missionaries rejected the final conclusions of this thinking, even as they were convinced that traditional language and teachings had to be reformed. Lindsey abandoned the idea of permanent Jewish or Christian chosenness as a people. “The Bible’s view of election,” Lindsey argued in 1960, “does not emphasize the salvation of the chosen vehicle [i.e., Israel or the church], but the purpose of that vehicle. The purpose is not the exclusion but the inclusion of others.”⁶¹ This interpretation had been ignored, he lamented, causing lasting harm to both communities. Lindsey chastised Jews and Christians for believing their communities represented the pinnacle of God’s plans. In confronting supersessionism, Lindsey focused his ire on his own tradition, urging evangelicals in the United States to rethink their theology. Geographical distance, exposure to other Christian and Jewish thought, and pressure to integrate into Israeli society all pushed Lindsey in this direction.

Underscoring his departure from American evangelical thought, Lindsey rejected dispensationalism. The distinction between “Israel” and the “church” governed dispensationalist theology; the prophetic expectation of Israel’s regathering was the bedrock of much evangelical interest to convert the Jewish people.⁶² Lindsey and his associates in Israel rejected this theology. Though reared in dispensationalism, Lindsey abandoned it during his time at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS).⁶³ By 1960, Lindsey wrote that dispensationalist fascination with Israel “leads to an Oedipus complex in which the Jews are the mother.”⁶⁴ Southern Baptist Milton Murphey shared a similar view, recalling that life in Israel made him less amenable to dispensationalism. More pertinent was “seeing how Jews have suffered in Europe and so forth . . . as we come into contact with people that have lost families, lost their whole families in concentration camps.”⁶⁵ Mennonite missionaries were even less beholden to dispensationalism.⁶⁶

Instead, Lindsey interpreted the covenants between God and humanity in relation to his circumstances in Israel. “The church of God stands with its feet in Jewish Holy History,” Lindsey explained. Like dispensationalists, Lindsey argued that Jews were at the center of God’s plans for world redemption. But all Jews and Christians—devout or skeptical, observant or not—were by merit of their background participants in Holy History. Explaining the history, Lindsey wrote, “The New Testament conflict [between Jews and Christians] is a Jewish family quarrel complicated by large numbers of Gentiles flocking to become Jews who find in Jesus Christ the simplest and most meaningful gate to that reality.” Instead of Judaism and Christianity, Lindsey preferred the terms “Pharisaism” and “Messianism” to describe the two dominant Jewish sects that emerged in the second century. Pharisaism (Rabbinic Judaism) and Messianism (Christianity) had common historical roots. Both movements could trace themselves to ancient Israelite religion, meaning that “within holy history all Christians are Jewish, though not all Jews are Christians.”⁶⁷

Lindsey thus attempted to recast the terms of Jewish-Christian relations. “Obviously the [church] cannot send missionaries to the Jews. Missionaries go to the Gentiles,” he argued. A Christian was not a gentile, but a “grafted in” member of Judaism. The Christian should treat the Jew as he would a fellow Christian—“Judeo-Christendom” should not be confused with the “gentile” world.⁶⁸ The “grafting in” motif, based on Paul’s discourse in Romans 9–11, was central to Lindsey’s theology. Paul described Christians as “a wild olive shoot” that has “been grafted in among the others and now share[s] in the nourishing sap from the olive root,” that is, the root of Israel. Describing Christianity as a branch of Judaism would be a basic tenet for later Christian Zionists, a teaching Lindsey pioneered in the American evangelical context.⁶⁹ As branches grafted onto the original root of Israel, Christians were joined to the existing covenantal community with God. God did not starve the roots of the olive tree.

Lindsey’s views would have been consigned to the margins of American evangelical thinking had it not been for the World Congress on Evangelism, a monumental meeting of evangelical leaders from around the world in Berlin in October 1966. Organized by Billy Graham for the ten-year anniversary of Christianity Today’s first issue, the Berlin Congress hosted 1,200 delegates, including theologians, pastors, and missionaries.⁷⁰ Coming just a year after the conclusion of the Vatican II Council, which signaled the Catholic church’s more open embrace of dialogue with other religions, evangelicals in Berlin were under pressure to clarify their own views. Catholics had passed the widely read Nostra Aetate statement, which rejected the ancient church charge of deicide on the Jewish people and condemned racial antisemitism. Furthermore, ecumenical Protestants had recently denounced antisemitism in the World Council of Churches.⁷¹ Many evangelicals, including the delegates from Israel, Lindsey and Baker, hoped the Berlin Congress could do the same.

At the conference, the delegates from Israel endorsed a witness agenda. Baker elaborated on “the Christian witness in Israel” in the Congress’s report on Judaism, avoiding traditional missionary topics of evangelization tactics or conversion numbers (which would have been unremarkable in any case), instead calling for evangelicals to “reshape the image of Christianity that is in great disrepute” among Jews, to bridge “the gulf between Christians and Jews . . . on the person-to-person level,” and to accept “the call to servant ministry” because for almost two thousand years “this land has largely been denied such a witness.”⁷² Baker attached to his speech a statement, “The Jews and Christian Evangelism,” a document that closely followed Lindsey’s thinking.⁷³ Remarkably, it was the only position on Jewish-Christian relations published by the Berlin Congress. For observers, Lindsey’s understanding of Jewish-Christian relations and the religious kinship of Judeo-Christendom was the evangelical position of record, making way for its penetration into broader American evangelical circles.

Lindsey’s theology was also evident in the keynote speech of the Berlin Congress by Billy Graham. “Too many devout Jews feel that Christianity is hostile to them,” Graham said. “Let’s say to the Jews of the world, ‘We ask your forgiveness for the sins of our fathers; we love you; we thank you for giving us our Bible; and we take pride in the fact that Jesus Christ was born of a Jewish woman.’ ” The lone Jewish observer at the Congress, Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, an interfaith leader in the National Conference of Christians and Jews, was ecstatic. Gilbert had supported the Southern Baptists in Israel for years, writing in 1963, “By their devotion to the Holy Land [they] reawakened my prayerful dream that the day may yet come when the Law will speak forth from Zion in new glory.”⁷⁴ Based on Graham’s statement that Jews carried “the light of Old Testament revelation,” Gilbert pronounced that “it should be possible now for a significant dialogue to begin between believing Jews and Evangelicals.”⁷⁵

Christian witness, as it traveled from Jerusalem to Berlin into the highest echelons of postwar evangelicalism, prefigured the orientation of the later Christian Zionist movement. Southern Baptist missionaries did not abandon their hope for Jewish conversion, but their experiences in Israel made them aware of the social, cultural, and religious barriers to any spiritual advance. Christian witness transformed the relationship between Christianity and Judaism by acknowledging the political and demographic reality of a Jewish majority in Israel. The theology of witness provided language for new interreligious encounters and an impetus for a political Christian Zionism.

The Limits of Witness

Even as missionaries recast their image in Israel and abroad, they criticized Israeli society. Viewing Israel as a Western society, they expected a familiar American degree of tolerance and openness to Christian missionaries. These unmet expectations disappointed missionaries and cast a harsh light on Israeli society in the United States, where “religious liberty” was a hallmark issue of the early Cold War.⁷⁶ The critical approach to Christian anti-Judaism and rejection of supersessionism became part of later Christian Zionist thinking and activism. But so too did the demand for more Christian access and expectations that it conform to American norms.⁷⁷ Witness Zionism was a double-edged sword, offering an entryway for a new cooperative Jewish-evangelical relationship but also highlighting challenges to Israel’s public image and erecting early barriers to public diplomacy.

As outsiders in Israel, the missionaries wore their Zionism openly and were unmistakable supporters of a Jewish state in Palestine. But this support was qualified by calls for expanded, American-style religious liberty. Christians should insist, wrote Dwight Baker in 1963, that “the idea of religious liberty which allows for free choice in matters pertaining to conscience be fully operative” in Israel.⁷⁸ The United Christian Council in Israel (UCCI) had committed to “repudiate the use of any form of inducements to encourage Jewish people to become even nominal Christians.” Instead, witness had become a project to “serve a useful function in the State and to be accepted,” the evangelistic dimension of which “can be no more than an offer to share which may be accepted or rejected.”⁷⁹ While the government, which upheld the basic strictures of the Ottoman millet system, recognized indigenous Christian sects that established their own religious courts, foreign Protestant denominations fell under the purview of the Chief Rabbinate. Southern Baptists worked within strict limits on building construction, religious education, personal status rights, and visa permits for foreign workers.⁸⁰

The demand for religious liberty clashed with the Israeli government’s priority of “religious peace.” As defined by government officials, religious peace prioritized interreligious stability and community cohesion over individual conscience. In response to charges by Orthodox Jews in 1960 that missionaries were targeting poor neighborhoods and children, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, a scholar of comparative religion at the Hebrew University and secretary of the Committee of Inter-Faith Understanding in Israel, sent an open letter to the UCCI demanding a public “suspension of missionary activities of all kinds.” Even though he acknowledged that the Orthodox charges were overblown, Werblowsky worried that the mere suspicion of missionary activity “constitutes . . . a very real danger to cordial Jewish-Christian relations.” Religious peace forced Christians to decide if irreparable damage to their image was worth the conversion of a few Jews. In later governmental meetings with UCCI representatives Werblowsky warned, “[Christians] must know whether they want brotherly relations based on mutual understanding between the Jewish people and Christianity, or whether they want converts.” Missionaries objected, only crystallizing Werblowsky’s position. “The Jew is the majority in Israel. When practices of discrimination [based on religion] are brought to my notice I deplore such cases and try to alter them. However, I welcome such discrimination from a theological point of view.” Religious liberty as conceived by missionaries and religious peace as conceived by Israelis could not coexist.⁸¹

Missionaries argued for the “disestablishment and dissolution of community barriers,” but they did so in terms that reinforced their witness goals. “Our [Israel’s] rebirth must . . . carry with it the great spiritual values bequeathed by the fathers of our faith, from the God of Abraham,” Baptist minister Joseph Alkahe explained. “This would be the real reward of the state released to rise to its rightful spiritual heritage.”⁸² Disestablishment also made sense politically. “Experience shows that religious liberty, far from undermining the unity of the state, is the nursing mother of democracy.”⁸³ Baker summarized his efforts to achieve “the coveted goal of national unity” in the sloganeering language: “a free synagogue, a free mosque, and a free church within a free state.”⁸⁴ Legal discrimination, he warned, “will inevitably widen instead of narrow the gap toward this much coveted ‘organic wholeness’ ” of modern democracies.⁸⁵ Missionaries demanded the Chief Rabbinate, whose official status in Israeli life, they argued, violated Israel’s Declaration of Independence, guarantee to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” They cast their demands as a positive contribution to Israel’s developing society, “a unique opportunity to render signal service to a whole nation” in the cause of religious liberty.⁸⁶

Ensuring religious liberty in Israel also dominated early coverage of the new state in American evangelical outlets. While American Jews began to organize and lobby on behalf of Israel in the early 1950s, the question of religious liberty stunted evangelical interest.⁸⁷ In the early Cold War, evangelical concern for religious liberty translated into demands for stronger legal protections and guarantees from the U.S. government, wherever a threat was detected.⁸⁸ By appealing to the Cold War’s stark dichotomy between free and closed societies, evangelicals linked religious liberty in disparate parts of the globe—from behind the Iron Curtain to Catholic-dominated countries to new Middle East states—into a single issue. In the process, they tended to flatten local details in favor of a global definition of religious liberty that was universal and universally applicable.

No periodical was more decisive in shaping American evangelical attitudes than Christianity Today, which inaugurated its first issue in 1956 with a circulation of more than 200,000. In preparation for Christianity Today’s launch, its first editor, Carl F. H. Henry, wanted firsthand reporting from Israel, a place “upon which the eyes of the evangelical world are turned.”⁸⁹ Henry found Donn C. Odell, a missionary-turned-student who attended the Hebrew University in 1955. By the following year, Odell had dissociated himself from missionary work, absorbing the witness ideology that was gaining hold. He called for a “simple, loving witness for Christ . . . with no connection to foreign missions” or “union with foreign protestants [sic].”⁹⁰ In his resignation letter to the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society, Odell questioned the very legitimacy of Jewish missions, citing threats to Israel and concerns about Jewish social cohesion. Odell reported that in Israel “much of our mail has been opened and we have reason to believe that we are suspect because of our connection to a foreign mission society.” But in a committed effort to take his new attitude to its logical conclusion, Odell defended such measures, including physical surveillance, as “necessary and justified.”

Odell happily took up press credentials as a reporter for Christianity Today, a job that provided him official status in Israel. After submitting his first story, Odell and his family took a short vacation to Greece over the holiday break of 1956. On the return trip to Jerusalem, they were unable to renew their visas. Henry quickly lodged a protest with the Israeli Embassy and the U.S. State Department, and just as hastily published selections of Odell’s confidential resignation report in Christianity Today, including the detail that “The [Israeli] Post Office keeps a file on every Christian in Israel who is suspected of missionary activity.”⁹¹ Henry left out Odell’s endorsement of these measures.

Beside himself, Odell wrote to Henry that it was the State Department, and not the Israeli Embassy, that had fumbled his visa. He turned to writing a letter of protest to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, charging that Christianity Today published “erroneous information.” Moreover, “As a Christian, I would like to state that many of the charges of discrimination brought by mission groups against Israel are either grossly over-stated or are not based upon fact,” especially given the “very difficult years of social adjustment” facing the state.⁹² Odell wrote to Henry of being devastated by the “disastrous effects of your December 24th article. Great numbers of people have been hurt and irreparable damage has been done among a host of friends we made in Israel.” Odell charged: “This blow fell upon Israel when her back was already to the wall,” a reference to the ongoing Suez Crisis consuming Israel.⁹³ Christianity Today did not print Odell’s corrections and his name did not appear in its pages again. The mishandling of Odell began a pattern of American evangelical suspicion of Israeli treatment.

Evangelical periodicals in Israel’s early decades struggled to keep correspondents in the country. They often turned to U.S.-based theologians, partly out of the overriding religious and prophetic interest in the Middle East and partly out of necessity.⁹⁴ By the early 1960s, Christianity Today’s treatment of Israel was almost uniformly focused on a critical view of religious liberty in the country.⁹⁵ No single story received more attention than the case of Brother Daniel (Oswald Rufeisen), a Polish-born Jew who converted to Catholicism during World War II to avoid Nazi genocide.⁹⁶ Escaping state-sanctioned antisemitism in the Soviet bloc’s Polish People’s Republic, Brother Daniel immigrated to the Carmelite monastery in Haifa under the Law of Return. But in 1962, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the government’s decision to deny Brother Daniel’s request for preferential access to citizenship, ruling that his conversion negated his legal Jewish identity. Brother Daniel eventually became a naturalized Israeli citizen, but the damage to Israel’s image was done.

Israel’s own shifting policies toward foreign Christians further imperiled its image. The state’s attempt to maintain a status quo arrangement based on pre-1948 representation ran afoul of both Christian missionaries and internal Jewish critics. Missionaries chafed at the restrictions imposed on them. Indeed, ad hoc measures to control the flow of people and materials provoked local and sometimes international criticism. In its first decade, the government attempted to limit Bible shipments, gain oversight and place limits on imported film and photography equipment, and scrutinize and sometimes refuse import licenses to missionaries.⁹⁷ Baptists complained about the state’s unwillingness to grant permission for automobiles or permission to install telephone lines in their buildings.⁹⁸

Though missionary criticisms shaped American opinion, Israelis pressured the government to do more. “It is obvious that public opinion here is not altogether sympathetic” to a policy of tolerating missionaries, official Saul Colbi wrote to a concerned Canadian Zionist organization representative, “especially if one keep in mind that since the establishment of the State of Israel hundreds of missionaries have started work, particularly among the new immigrants whose material position leave much to be desired.”⁹⁹

The antimissionary movement, comprised of mostly Orthodox Jews who regarded Christians as predatory, pressured the government to monitor or ban foreign missionaries. One effort founded in the early 1950s, Keren Yaldenu (“Our Children’s Fund”), was supported by women’s organizations across Israel to “save Jewish children from the non-Jewish education system.” The group lobbied the Israeli government to curtail missionary activity; its members sporadically damaged Christian property.¹⁰⁰ The deputy minister of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Zerach Warhaftig, supported the group from inside the government, writing to potential donors in 1954 that the organization “has already succeeded in rescuing over 1000 Jewish children, and placing [sic] them in Jewish institutions” away from the corrupting influence of Christian educators.¹⁰¹

Israel Ben-Zeev, an antimissionary activist especially concerned about the new joint Jewish-Christian settlement of Nes Ammim, summed up a prevailing sentiment when he wrote that foreign Christians “fill [our] hearts with deep anxiety for the fate of Israel’s faith, and with great concern for Israel’s future on the soil of the Patriarchs.”¹⁰² While most Israelis simply ignored missionaries, antimissionary activists held influence with the Chief Rabbinate and the National Religious Party, which controlled the Ministry of Interior and eventually the Ministry of Religious Affairs.¹⁰³ The secular ministries, including the Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office, continued to promote a more accommodating approach. The Knesset, subject to popular pressures, passed laws in the early 1960s to protect minors from proselytization.¹⁰⁴

Foreign detractors of the state’s policies also urged the government to consider foreign opinion. The New York–based antimissionary National Council of Young Israel warned the Foreign Ministry to protect Israeli children from predatory missionaries. “No international covenant or political consideration should prevent the passage of legislation protecting Jewish children from these Missions,” the director, Samson Weiss demanded. “Such legislation would in no way contradict the freedom of religion and religious worship, not the freedom of speech.”¹⁰⁵ Christians critical of the government were equally demanding. One Bible distributor hinted, upon word of the government’s consignment of his printed material, that “a news release through religious channels of this action . . . could seriously divert our desired sympathy [for Israel] to a most questioning attitude throughout the United States.”¹⁰⁶

Amid conflicting demands on Israel, missionaries argued for a new approach. Baker wrote in early 1967 that Christian witness would create “a Christianity which confesses its sins and seeks to atone for its past failures and guilt.”¹⁰⁷ The missionary presence in Israel exposed the narrowness of ground shared by evangelicals and Israelis. But they had created a new way of thinking nonetheless, with the potential for gaining more common ground in the future.

CHAPTER 2

Judeo-Christianity

IN 1953, THE MOST decorated living archaeologist, William Foxwell Albright (1891–1971), set foot in the state of Israel for the first time, though it was far from his first time in Palestine.¹ As a leader in the academic subfield of biblical archaeology, Albright had directed the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem for fifteen years until he moved back to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in 1936. His archaeological campaigns in what became the state of Israel were legendary, as were his reflections on the broader significance of biblical archaeology. Albright was a proud Zionist and saw himself as a pioneering reformer of Jewish-Christian relations. These two interests consistently overlapped, as in his short essay “The Judeo-Christian View of Man,” published in 1954, where he glowed that he “recently visited Israel for the first time in eighteen years”—a Freudian slip that projected the state back into the Mandate period.² As on his 1954 visit to the Protestant Trinity College in Dublin, which enjoyed good relations with the Catholic government of Ireland, Albright saw in Israel “religious freedom in a land where intolerance has often flourished in the past.” As a “shining [example] of man’s humanity to man,” Israel symbolized to Albright the “Judeo-Christian” tradition at the root of Western civilization. Never wandering far from his first love, Albright grounded his observations in the fresh insights that archaeological research was daily producing.

In the 1950s, Judeo-Christianity—the tri-faith heritage of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism—was a popular explanation for not just Western civilization but also American exceptionalism.³ Judeo-Christianity became for many Americans a core identity read into the Bible and projected into the world. Albright was one loud voice pronouncing Judeo-Christianity as the key ingredient to freedom and democracy; as the principal anti-materialist bulwark against communism. Judeo-Christianity was captured in the popular National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) motto, “the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man”—a phrase Albright cited as central to the “common beliefs between Jews and Christians.”⁴ Most who invoked the slogan were celebrating a shared, if vague, belief in one God, from whom flowed the moral and ethical values as articulated in the Hebrew Bible.⁵ The obvious religiosity of Judeo-Christianity gave it special verve in the Cold War, pitting Judeo-Christian values against atheistic communism and secularism.

Yet within the wide American embrace of Judeo-Christianity, differences over the concept deepened throughout the 1950s. Albright believed not only that the shared Jewish-Christian tradition bequeathed morality and monotheism on later generations but also that Judeo-Christianity signaled much more than a tri-faith civil religious architecture: It delineated a divine covenantal relationship that underscored the basis for American cultural and material—indeed, any human—progress; the Judeo-Christian tradition was nothing less than the history of God’s divinely covenanted people, through whom God promised to redeem the world.

While sharing many outward similarities with Judeo-Christianity’s largely civil religious invocations in postwar American culture, this covenantal Judeo-Christianity was far more exclusivist and theologically circumscribed. Judeo-Christianity’s proponents in the 1920s and 1930s were those like the National Conference of Christians and Jews: liberal Protestants and Reform Jews who emphasized right conduct, pluralism, and American exceptionalism as an extension of the liberal project to adapt the Bible to modern society. Evangelicals, however, resorted to Judeo-Christianity to rearticulate a key fundamentalist concern: the decline of biblical authority in American life. Evangelicals appropriated “Judeo-Christianity” or “Hebrew-Christian values” to affirm not merely a civic posture of tri-faith pluralism but an American indebtedness for the Bible’s authority, especially the Bible as interpreted by evangelicals themselves.⁶ Albright’s biblical archaeology mirrors this more conservative Judeo-Christian concept. Consequently, a covenant-oriented understanding of Judeo-Christianity helped organize much of evangelical political thought since the mid-twentieth century and remains central to the Christian Zionist movement.⁷

The evangelical understanding of Judeo-Christianity, underscored intellectually by the field of biblical archaeology, formed new attitudes toward Jews and Israel in the 1940s and 1950s. Judeo-Christianity was an entry point for many evangelicals to grapple with the meaning of modern Israel and to redefine Jewish-Christian relations in the light of a new understanding of Christian indebtedness to Jewish history. As a result, these evangelicals came to denounce antisemitism as un-Christian and un-American. They celebrated not just biblical history but modern Jewish history and located the state of Israel in God’s covenantal plans alongside the United States.

The academic field of biblical archaeology, largely founded and led by Albright until his death in 1971, comprised one of the most influential yet understudied sources of Judeo-Christian thought and Jewish-evangelical rapprochement in the twentieth century. Emerging as a response to biblical criticism, biblical archaeology attempted to validate the narrative of the Bible through a material analysis of the past. The golden age of biblical archaeology from 1930 through 1960 bolstered evangelical convictions that Judeo-Christianity was both theologically and historically true. Moreover, the fusion of academic and conservative religious training that Albright embodied became a model for later Christian Zionists. Ultimately, the Judeo-Christian assumptions underlying evangelical Christian Zionism—formed in the decade and a half after World War II—had a profound effect on how evangelicals understood their relationship to Israel and Israel’s relationship to the United States.

Biblical Authority and Biblical Archaeology

The new evangelical movement in the United States headed by Billy Graham regarded biblical authority—the Bible’s influence over human conduct and its accuracy as a record of historical and scientific knowledge—as the modern era’s most pressing issue. Perhaps no work better captured evangelical priorities than theologian Wilbur Smith’s manifesto, Therefore, Stand: A Plea for a Vigorous Apologetic in the Present Crisis of Evangelical Christianity (1945). As Smith’s subtitle evoked, an acute cultural and epistemological emergency had appeared in an era of increasing scientific and academic skepticism of the Bible.⁸ The fulfillment of prophecy was one type of evidence dispensationalists used to prove the veracity of the Bible. Biblical archaeology was another method, less divisive and more widely embraced, that gained momentum in the 1940s. In affirming the Bible’s historical narrative, evangelicals believed they could make the case for its supreme authority in all matters.

Archaeology’s utility to evangelicals has been less obvious to later observers because it did not directly address the preeminent threat to biblical authority in this period, Darwinian evolution. But just as menacing as Darwin’s theory of evolution was to the Bible’s credibility were textual attacks on the reliability of the Bible’s historical narrative. Over the course of the nineteenth century, findings in the new fields of archaeology, textual criticism, and Near Eastern studies raised doubts about the Bible’s version of Israelite history. For liberal Protestants, Christianity’s core ethical message remained unharmed by the erosion of the Bible’s historical accuracy.⁹ But for fundamentalists and evangelicals, biblical authority rested on the complete reliability of scripture—the absolute truth of every proposition and fact, including the historical record. This “inerrancy” of scripture depended on the veracity of the Bible’s historical narrative and its buttressing through modern archaeological findings.¹⁰

No single figure more influenced the quest for biblical authority or the introduction of Judeo-Christianity to evangelicals than the longtime professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University, the godfather of the field of biblical archaeology, William Foxwell Albright. He was copiously cited by evangelicals, assigned in seminaries, and idolized, and his influence extended beyond his immediate academic audience of fellow archaeologists. His imprint on evangelicalism is less acknowledged perhaps because he never claimed to be part of the evangelical movement, though he often referred to his own religious persuasion as “evangelical” or “orthodox.”¹¹

His upbringing and intellectual journey were, in any case, well within evangelical norms. Born in 1891 to Methodist missionaries in Chile, Albright was raised with an unquestioning allegiance to the Bible’s authority in all matters spiritual, historical, and practical. He grew increasingly skeptical of its reliability, however, during his education at Johns Hopkins University. The reigning theory of biblical authorship, pioneered by German scholar Julius Wellhausen, had radically undermined traditional assumptions about the composition and accuracy of the Bible.¹² Wellhausen’s formulation of a “documentary hypothesis” posited competing interested parties responsible for the redaction of the Torah, a process that took place centuries after the lifetime of the traditional author, Moses. For Christians concerned about the Bible’s reliability and coherence, Well-hausen’s ideas were deeply unsettling. Albright worked for most of his adult life to undermine and counter this school of interpretation. “The theory of Wellhausen will not bear the test of archaeological examination,” Albright asserted confidently in his first book, Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (1932).¹³

After graduating with a PhD in Oriental studies, Albright began his auspicious career by directing the American School for Oriental Research in Jerusalem on and off until 1936. His major archaeological campaigns took place in the ancient Israelite settlements of Gibeah (north of Jerusalem) and Tell Beit Mirsim (near Mt. Hebron).¹⁴ His time in Palestine gave him new appreciation for the reliability of the Old Testament, which comprised some 70 percent of the Christian Bible. “During these fifteen years,” Albright recalled in an autobiographical essay, “my initially rather skeptical attitude toward the accuracy of Israelite historical tradition had suffered repeated jolts as discovery after discovery confirmed the historicity of details which might reasonably have been considered legendary.”¹⁵

For Albright, historicity did not equate to the fundamentalist hard line of inerrancy. On issues including evolution, Albright acknowledged mainstream scientific and academic findings, even as he maintained that modern knowledge did not undermine biblical authority. Albright’s initial project was more academic: he hoped his research would reinspire widespread scholarly confidence in the Bible as a record of history. This project was similar enough to conservative efforts that Albright received training and disproportionate funding from fundamentalists in his early years. M. G. Kyle, a noted conservative archaeologist and contributor to The Fundamentals, was an advocate of archaeological research and instrumental to Albright’s professional development. Along with A. T. Clay and G. F. Wright, two other conservative archaeologists, Kyle funded Albright’s expeditions in Palestine and became a staunch supporter of the American School until his death in 1933.¹⁶ Albright was able to attract conservative religious support for his goal of “increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history” without subscribing to other fundamentalist demands.¹⁷ Much like the British author C. S. Lewis, who also adapted to many of the scientific findings of the day, Albright’s unwavering allegiance to biblical authority appealed to fundamentalists and evangelicals. And his writings, like Lewis’s, were popular even outside academic and religious circles.¹⁸

Albright’s conviction that the Bible was reliable and authoritative on historical grounds led to two key conclusions: the Bible’s authority was inextricable from Jewish history, and the New Testament was equally a part of the Hebrew biblical world. These conclusions suggested a Judeo-Christian tradition, from Abraham to the Israelite conquest of Canaan to the spread of Christianity. But unlike other invocations of Judeo-Christianity, Albright’s historical definition denoted a narrow religious and theological category; a unit of analysis that had roots in God’s biblical covenants to Abraham. Albright made certain to articulate his arguments in academic terms removed from fundamentalist appeals to biblical inerrancy, but in many respects Albright remained tethered to traditional Protestant theology.¹⁹ His magnum opus, From Stone Age to Christianity, first published in 1940 and substantially revised over the next twenty years, articulated the significance of biblical archaeology in the case for biblical authority. Here Albright’s quest to ground Christianity in the Hebrew Bible reached fruition; for successive generations of evangelical scholars, Albright’s interpretation shaped attitudes toward Judaism. The new generation of evangelical New Testament scholars—F. F. Bruce, William La Sor, and George Eldon Ladd—provided an academic edifice for a Judeo-Christian framework erected by Albright.²⁰ As later Christian Zionists appropriated these ideas, they had already become the stuff of popular—and often academic—evangelicalism, as well.

From Stone Age to Christianity argued for the historicity of the figure of Moses and for his monotheism—“Mosaism”—as the root of early Christianity. The story of “biblical theism” from Moses to Jesus was not one of replacement or conflict but of fusion. “The non-Jewish streams which flowed through Judaism into nascent Christianity,” Albright wrote in reference to the New Testament, “were transfigured by the Cross and given a spiritual depth which was to transform the world.”²¹ He concluded From Stone Age to Christianity with a seamless weaving of Jewish and Christian calls to revival: “We need a reawakening of faith, in the God of the majestic theophany on Mount Sinai, in the God of Elijah’s vision at Horeb, in the God of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia, in the God of the Agony at Gethsemane.”²² The flourish not only conflated Jewish and Christian events, but implied an unbroken line of revelation stretching from Sinai, through Calvary, to the present.

Albright openly acknowledged his Christian perspective and affirmed the superiority of Jesus’ teachings. But unlike most conservative Protestants in the 1940s, he did not position Judaism in opposition to Christianity.²³ He promoted a pluralistic approach to Judaism, bringing rabbis and early Christians like Paul into parity. “We may, for practical purposes,” he wrote in 1964, “treat Christianity and rabbinic Judaism as offshoots of the same spiritual root, which developed many of their specific ideas in conscious opposition but retained the same basic faith.”²⁴ Albright’s “Judeo-Christian tradition” in fact featured a “self-critical [dialectic] to which Western conscience owes its persistent revivals of sensitivity” rooted in the Bible. Scripture captured the complete lineage of God’s covenanted people. Albright acknowledged that his Judeo-Christian tradition was never the major sensibility in Western culture but a vital movement that was supernaturally blessed and protected by God.

It is in these narrow terms that Albright, and growing numbers of evangelicals, saw their own legacy. Though celebrating aspects of tri-faith America, they baptized Judeo-Christianity in the stream of conservative Protestant theology. True Judeo-Christians were not only stewards of Western values and progress in general but also members of a covenanted community connected by adherence to biblical authority and committed to the worship of God. Western values, human dignity, and individualism were consequences of Judeo-Christian influence, but the identity itself belonged to a more select community of followers. Much like the Qumran sect, which scholars treated both as Jewish and as sectarian in claiming the mantle of true Judaism, so too were Judeo-Christians both bearers of Western civilization and exclusive protagonists in “holy history” as defined by God’s covenants.

Over the 1940s, Albright integrated new archaeological findings, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, into his Judeo-Christian framework. In 1948, Albright famously introduced the Scrolls to Americans as “the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.”²⁵ He explained in a later edition of From Stone Age to Christianity the profound influence the findings had on solidifying a Judeo-Christian genealogy. “I now lay more stress on the continuity of the Old and New Testaments, and on the indissoluble bond between pre-Christian Judaism and early Christianity than ever before, thanks largely to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” he wrote, concluding, “the New Testament becomes more Jewish than we had thought—as truly Jewish as the Old Testament is Israelite.”²⁶

Though advancing a conservative understanding of the Bible, Albright was propelled into academic stardom. He was a rare scholarly voice supporting American evangelicalism’s most sensitive issue of defending biblical authority. Less concerned about missions than about the cultural and moral vitality of Judeo-Christian civilization, Albright drew striking parallels to the Southern Baptists in Israel. Both were rooted in historical and archaeological knowledge gained from the land of Palestine, both drew on ideas and encounters with Jews, and both recast Jewish-Christian relations for the modern era. At the same time, neither was, at its core, a political argument for Christian Zionism, nor an eschatological scheme derived from dispensational theology. Both created spiritual solidarity between Jews and Christians that would accumulate political significance for later evangelicals.

Judeo-Christian Theology

Though Albright was no dispensationalist, his biblical archaeology empowered American evangelicals to connect a scientific defense of biblical authority with the dispensational practice of reading prophetic passages in the Bible “literally” and drawing cosmic links between the fates of Christians and Jews. The theological interconnections between “Israel” and the “church” were introduced to most evangelicals through the popular Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909 by Oxford University Press.²⁷ Cyrus I. Scofield was innovative for inserting commentaries to biblical passages at the bottom of each page, elevating the footnotes to a status just less than the scripture itself. In Scofield’s reading of the Bible, God had divided humanity into three theological categories: the church, Israel, and the nations. Scofield and his like-minded readers defined themselves as members of the true church, the spiritual body of Christ. The Jewish people, or Israel, comprised the second grouping of humanity, defined as the physical descendants of Abraham who were the recipients of God’s covenants. The “nations” encompassed all secular governments, from ancient Babylon to the United States, and played a secondary role in the biblical drama, usually as antagonists to Israel and the church. Together, these three categories encompassed all of humanity and human history, in broad strokes aligning the church and Israel against the intrigues of the nations.²⁸ The Bible essentially told the drama of God’s Judeo-Christian covenants to fulfill the ultimate goals of human redemption. This dispensationalist framework gave meaning to every passage of the Bible as a piece in this grand narrative; any factual inaccuracy or misstatement, however small, threatened the entire structure.

For most evangelicals who held to some version of Scofield’s categories and took comfort in Albright’s arguments for biblical authority, Judeo-Christianity provided a rationale for engaging with Jews on terms other than merely missions or prophetic fulfillment. In evangelical theologian Carl Henry’s guarded words, evangelicals could show Jews that both Judaism and Christianity shared “a common glory . . . the revealed religion of redemptive love.”²⁹ Henry, while critical of dispensationalism, remained beholden to dispensational categories such as the church, Israel, and the nations.

Evangelical Judeo-Christianity, like its civil religious counterpart, also allowed for interaction and mutual cultural exchange. Evangelicals, like other Americans, promoted the annual “Brotherhood Week” and other interfaith gatherings of the early postwar years. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) hosted its first Jewish speaker, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee, in 1963.³⁰ Evangelical organizations like the NAE rapidly expanded their representation in tri-faith institutions such as the U.S. military chaplaincy, seeking to join mainstream American religious life and also causing friction in demanding that overly liberal versions of tri-faith religion actually undermined religious liberty.³¹ But the postwar Scofield-Albright fusion allowed evangelicals to acknowledge their faith’s Jewish roots dating to the first century. Evangelicals were already partial to returning Christianity to its purer, New Testament form. That form, evangelicals increasingly diagnosed, was deeply Jewish.

These new attitudes made it into missionary pamphlets, as well. One Southern Baptist tract from 1955 recounted American Jewish military service in the Revolutionary War and Civil War as proof that Jews “had tremendous share in making our American institutions.” It also condemned theological anti-Judaism, explaining “the cross on which Jesus of Nazareth hung was a Roman cross.”³² Programs such as “Jewish Fellowship Week”—an excuse for Southern Baptists to invite Jews for a night of (non-conversionary) social events—were coupled with literature urging lay Baptists to “set aside stereotypes” and “get to know your Jewish neighbors.”³³ Judeo-Christianity did not abolish age-old attitudes toward Jews, but it did revise the language and parameters for social interaction, channeling evangelical energies into more pluralistic settings.

This was also reflected in the new approach to Jewish missions spearheaded by Billy Graham before his trip to Israel in 1960. Unlike fundamentalists and dispensationalists before him, and counter to the Jewish mission agencies then in ascendancy, Graham refused to single out Jews in his evangelism. Before his 1957 New York City crusade, Graham explained to the media that with new converts his organization would honor requests to be connected to the religious tradition of their choice. “We’ll send them to their own churches—Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. . . . The rest will be up to God,” he told reporters.³⁴ This gesture to tri-faith America did not make him immune from Jewish suspicion that winning Jews for Christ remained a priority. Indeed, in practice Graham’s organization sent converts from the 1957 crusade to congregations compatible with evangelical teachings.³⁵ However, the public gesture by Graham, and his restraint from targeting Jews for conversion, signaled a shifting center of gravity in evangelical Jewish missions.

American popular culture also played a part in reinforcing the narrower covenantal Judeo-Christianity that celebrated right-believing Jews and Christians, often symbolized by the states and histories of Israel and the United States. Popular biblical epics, from The Ten Commandments (1956) to Ben Hur (1959), depicted Jews as the first monotheists and the chosen people, forbearers of Western values including freedom and the rule of law. The U.S.-based Jewish author Sholem Asch, who Michelle Mart describes as “the most popular writer who championed Judeo-Christian culture” in the 1950s, also Christianized Judaism by invoking Jesus’ words and Christian themes to make sense of Jewish history.³⁶ At the same time, depictions of Israelis and Israel conformed to American values. Depictions of Zionists as pioneers, immigrants, and freedom fighters made them heroes to American audiences.

The Israeli government encouraged Americans to interpret modern Israel in Judeo-Christian terms that also aligned with evangelical ideas.³⁷ Collaboration between the Prime Minister’s Office, Foreign Ministry, and consulates in the United States helped the Israeli government present Israel in terms compatible with both popular and evangelical Judeo-Christianity. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion cultivated the image of an Old Testament prophet with his encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and his speeches laced with scriptural references appealing to Jews and to Christians. The state’s earliest tourism literature linked modern Israel to images of the Bible. As an official guidebook from 1950 suggested, “The childhood memories of everyone who has read the Bible—memories called up by such familiar names as Jerusalem, the River Jordan, Nazareth—will find a living echo here [in Israel].”³⁸ Though mass evangelical tourism to Israel lay in the future, the popular image of the Holy Land created an indissoluble Jewish link with the city of Jerusalem and the land of the Bible. The state’s early hasbara (public diplomacy) advanced a similar narrative that, while catering to a much broader panorama of Judeo-Christian thought, also shaped the direction of evangelical thinking.

The Politics of Judeo-Christianity

Though Albright’s Judeo-Christianity certainly implied a positive attitude toward Zionism, he never admitted that his arguments were motivated by politics. Albright, like American evangelicals, was confident that a plain, evidence-based interpretation of the Bible validated his view of the world. Supporters couched Albright’s biblical archaeology, and Scofield’s dispensationalism, in common-sense terms that lacked ideological self-awareness. Albright’s own activism on behalf of Zionism betrayed the political motivations of his work. He spoke to Zionist groups and joined the American Christian Palestine Committee in the 1940s, and he visited Israel numerous times before his death in 1971. On his last visit, in 1969, the Israeli government honored him as the first non-Jew to receive “Worthy of Jerusalem” status, awarded for his contributions to the city.³⁹ Albright’s views, he always insisted, were derived from a simple weighing of the biblical, historical, and political evidence. Yet it was clear that Judeo-Christianity was anything but neutral.

The most salient political issue for Americans after World War II was the Cold War, which threw into stark contrast Judeo-Christianity and its ideological rival communism.⁴⁰ Evangelicals helped build the anticommunist ideology of the Cold War, offering a theologically informed defense of American democracy and critique of communism. Worried about communism in the churches, evangelicals, like fundamentalists, ascribed hostile motives to liberal clergy and especially organizations such as the World Council of Churches. Some of the most ardent anticommunists of the early Cold War—radio preachers Carl McIntire and Fred Schwarz—were also some of the most popular fundamentalist speakers.⁴¹ In the light of the Chinese revolution and the Korean War, conservative evangelicals warned even more vociferously against accommodation with global communism.

Albright’s writings deftly captured evangelical sensibilities in the early Cold War and the state of Israel’s position in their concerns. He argued for a united Judeo-Christian front that would do battle against communism wherever it reared its head, especially in the citadel of religious freedom and biblical history: the West. “There are indeed fundamental differences between Judaism and Christianity, but the similarities far outweigh the contrasts,” he explained. “We must approach both faiths at the highest common level of intellectual and spiritual life, not (like many religious liberals) at what amounts to the lowest level.” The highest common level that Albright could discern was an evidence-based acknowledgment of the historicity of the Hebrew Bible, the book which Albright declared to be “the center of history.” In facing communism, Judeo-Christianity’s “deadliest foe since the end of pagan Rome,” there was only one recourse: “we must return again to the Bible and draw new strength from the sources of Judeo-Christian faith.”⁴²

Albright’s slight against “religious liberals” revealed his theological conservatism and the line of division that found him in company with evangelicals. Rather than celebrate a common Judeo-Christian brotherhood, Albright’s Judeo-Christianity divided Americans into good and bad religious camps, prefiguring divisions that would become widespread among evangelicals in later decades. Albright made distinctions within the West between the religious traditionalists and the liberal modernists who accommodated secular thought. The struggle for Judeo-Christianity was not only against its “deadliest foe” of communism but also against “Western secularists” and what Albright called “Eastern pantheism, which threatens to sweep away theistic faith as it is reinterpreted by neo-Gnostic religious thinkers of the contemporary West.”⁴³ An extreme example of Albright’s conviction was the outsized role he believed the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey played in the Chinese communist revolution of 1949. Dewey’s secular concepts “spread like wildfire among Chinese intellectuals, many of whom also became prominent in the Communist party,” he claimed.⁴⁴ Albright’s editor wrote to fellow archeologist G. Ernest Wright that Albright “just is not a good analyst of thinkers as foreign to him as Dewey . . . he will not try to understand Dewey’s frame of reference.” These private comments were riddled with sarcasm: “Note my great victory: I got Albright to slightly alter his charge that Dewey was primarily responsible for the Communist revolution under Mao.”⁴⁵ For evangelicals, as much as for Albright, secularists undermined Judeo-Christian solidarity and sowed chaos around the world.

Evangelicals embraced Judeo-Christianity to rail against contemporary American culture, which they, like Albright, saw threatened by liberalism and secularism. American Christianity was withering, evangelicals argued, starved by the American people’s biblical illiteracy and uprooted by the Western drift from biblical authority. Theologian Carl Henry, who toured Israel and Jordan in 1953, used the occasion to express his “shock” when he contrasted the “Judeo-Christian” tradition with “the sad level on which the ‘American heritage’ is defined.”⁴⁶ Most Americans claimed personal freedom and consumerism as the defining features of “the American way,” he lamented, rather than a renewed sense of “the Judeo-Christian heritage—with its implications for the whole structure of modern life and thought.”⁴⁷ Modern Judeo-Christian societies had to base their collective knowledge on biblical authority. He concluded that without a biblical foundation rooted in supernatural revelation, Judeo-Christianity would not survive.

The evangelical concern about society’s religious foundations dated to the nineteenth century, amid the new Darwinian science and waves of European immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.⁴⁸ After World War II, evangelicals began to articulate their fear of cultural decline in new, less narrow but still sectarian terms—as the loss of Judeo-Christian vitality. Harold Ockenga, a postwar evangelical leader, warned in 1947, “When we divorce the Hebrew-Christian tradition from our civilization, then we have reached the eventide of the West.”⁴⁹ Ockenga’s “Hebrew-Christian” descriptor was a nod not just to values but to the theological content of the Bible, which he worried was slipping away from American culture. Even as evangelicals supported new public displays of religiosity in the 1950s—the government stamping “In God We Trust” on money and placing “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance—they detected changes that threatened America’s traditional religious makeup.⁵⁰ Evangelicals coupled the Supreme Court’s rulings circumscribing prayer and Bible reading in public with John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 as the first Catholic president as signs of deleterious decline.⁵¹ The restructuring of American religion along new social and political lines was deeply entwined with the appeal of Judeo-Christianity.⁵²

Israel played an outsized role in the historical imaginations of biblical archaeologists and their evangelical readers. Followers of Albright understood Judeo-Christianity as a marker of cultural continuity, a lineage bound by covenant to God with homogeneous and rigid boundaries, from ancient times to the present. In the field of archaeology, this played out in academic debates over the cultural influence of Canaanites on Israelite religion.⁵³ An archaeologist outside Albright’s sphere, the liberal Protestant Millar Burrows, built his scholarly career on proving the interconnection between Canaanite and Israelite society. In 1949, Burrows resigned from the presidency of Albright’s American School of Oriental Research to publish a book on the Palestinian refugee crisis, Palestine Is Our Business, with his argument on behalf of Palestinian Arabs developed from the heterogeneity he observed in ancient group interactions.⁵⁴

For Israeli popularizers of biblical archaeology, such as Yigael Yadin, who was Albright’s close ally, the cultural continuity of ancient and modern Israel was integral to establishing Jewish ties to the land. Yadin was the Israel Defense Force’s second chief of staff before he became an archaeologist and then instrumental in Israel’s acquisition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yadin did not hide his nationalist motivations or conclusions. “It is as if these manuscripts [the Dead Sea Scrolls] had been waiting in caves for two thousand years, ever since the destruction of Israel’s independence, until the people of Israel had returned to their home and regained their freedom,” he wrote in 1957.⁵⁵ And more than just an advancement in biblical archaeology, the ruins of Masada—a Herodian fortress near the Dead Sea where tradition placed almost one thousand Jewish martyrs to Roman rule in the year 79—where Yadin conducted a dig, conjured “a symbol of courage, a monument to our great national figures, heroes who chose death over a life of physical and moral serfdom.”⁵⁶ While Albright sought to “prove the Bible” through archaeological discoveries, Yadin promoted Israel’s historical ties to the land through biblical archaeology.

U.S.-Israel diplomatic relations in the early 1960s reinforced the role of the two countries as defenders of Judeo-Christian civilization. The Eisenhower years were a low point, stemming from the U.S. administration’s attempt to win over Arab states and Israel’s own collusion with Great Britain and France in the Suez War in 1956. With the new Kennedy administration, however, the United States and Israel were increasingly aligned. Israel had become deeply tied to American financial, economic, and military aid. The 1962 sale of Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Israel signaled the end of the long-standing American embargo on weapons sales to the Middle East.⁵⁷ The Kennedy administration had responded to Israel’s claims that it was facing a serious imbalance of forces against Soviet-supplied Arab states. A desire for Israeli-Arab parity committed the United States to further engagement in the region and further scrutiny of Soviet support for Arab states. For evangelicals, seeing the Cold War and Middle East developments through the lens of Judeo-Christianity, these diplomatic initiatives were an affirmation of the special relationship between the United States and Israel.

Underscoring evangelical Judeo-Christianity was the empirical knowledge gleaned from biblical archaeology, which had declared in modern terms the reliability of the Bible and its continuing authority as a source of knowledge. Even American civil religion did not capture the depth of what evangelicals saw at stake. Judeo-Christianity cast a cosmic struggle that brought the biblical story line into the Cold War. And through this biblical lens, Judeo-Christianity stood alone, opposed by atheistic communism, secularist betrayers of the tradition, and unremitting hatred directed toward the most potent symbol of the historical reality of Judeo-Christianity: the state of Israel.

Dissenting Voices

For evangelicals invested in older understandings of Christianity’s relationship to Judaism, Judeo-Christianity troublingly blurred the lines. The civic impetus behind much of the Judeo-Christian popularity worried nonevangelicals, as well. Though the sociologist Will Herberg popularized the view that “not to identify oneself and be identified as either a Protestant, a Catholic, or a Jew is somehow not to be American,” he was deeply critical of the sacralization of the “American Way of Life” that undergirded Judeo-Christian civic religion.⁵⁸ The celebration of American middle-class values, individualism, and freedom that Judeo-Christianity promoted had become “a strong and pervasive idolatrous element” and co-opted religious faith, Herberg wrote in his seminal Protestant-Catholic-Jew (1955). Americans had shed theology for a “faith in faith” with few teachings that emphasized the transcendence of God, the “nothingness of man,” or the need for redemption.

Similar criticisms within the evangelical community went even further to reject the notion of a cooperative Hebrew- or Judeo-Christian identity.⁵⁹ These attacks did little to undermine evangelical confidence in a Judeo-Christian tradition at the time, but they did illustrate the extent to which Judeo-Christianity transformed traditional evangelical attitudes toward Jews. Jakób Jocz, a Jewish missionary and Hebrew Christian theologian, typified this countercurrent in evangelical thought, emphasizing conflict, rather than cooperation, between “Church and Synagogue.”⁶⁰ Jocz’s example highlights the fading away of traditional evangelistic approaches to Jews after 1948 and the emergence of a new cooperative spirit undergirded by Judeo-Christianity. Jocz was part of a vocal minority worried that solidarity and support for Israel would replace the evangelistic zeal that had typified evangelical Christianity.

A second-generation Hebrew Christian, Jakób Jocz was born in 1906 to Jewish Lithuanian parents who joined the Anglican Church as adult converts. Though targets of antisemitism during World War I, the Jocz family remained in their native land. After the war, Jakób joined his father as an itinerant evangelist to rural Yiddish communities in Poland, a vocation he pursued along with education in Germany and England. Jakób barely escaped Poland in 1939; his father and relatives died at the hands of the Gestapo. Joining his wife and child in Britain, Jocz continued to evangelize to Jews through the International Hebrew Christian Alliance, eventually becoming its president in 1957. In 1960, he accepted the chair of systematic theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto, where he taught and wrote until his death in 1983. Though he rarely visited the United States, his theological works influenced American evangelicals. Jocz’s fluency in German allowed him to introduce English readers to Karl Barth’s theology, but Jocz always interpreted Barth through his low church Anglicanism.⁶¹ Jocz’s unabashed self-identification as a Jew and a Christian, and as an authority on Judaism and Jewish practice, increased his appeal.

As a self-described Hebrew Christian, Jocz ostensibly embodied the Judeo-Christian identity that developed after World War II. However, he saw himself as a mediator between two theologically incommensurate communities. In later years, he would reflect that he was “a Jewish Christian, standing between the Jewish people and the Church, belonging to both . . . and . . . owing a debt to both.”⁶² In his first major work, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ (1949), Jocz emphasized the “separate existence” of Judaism and Christianity, observing, “Only in opposition to each other do they [Jews and Christians] learn the truth about each other.”⁶³ This tension stood in contrast to the thrust of Judeo-Christianity. Not only did the early Church define itself in opposition to Rabbinic Judaism, Jocz argued, but the rabbis reciprocated with their rejection of Christianity. Drawing on the same biblical scholarship that other Christians used to support Judeo-Christianity, Jocz focused on the social history of first-century Judaism and the “end of Hebrew Christianity” in the third century, illustrating how Jews had “only two alternatives” after the destruction of the Jewish temple in the year 70: “back to the synagogue, which entailed a denial of Jesus the Messiah, or fellowship with the Gentile Church, which meant denial of the Jewish national heritage.”⁶⁴ Either decision had lasting effects. Even in the twentieth century, the claims of Jesus haunted Judaism.

Jocz saw little truth in the popular claim, embedded in Judeo-Christianity, that Jews and Christians worshiped “the same God.” He reiterated the New Testament mandate “to preach the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles.” In sketching “the Judeo-Christian encounter,” Jocz went so far as to announce, “If [the church] has no Gospel for the Jew, it has no Gospel for the world.”⁶⁵ The Christo-centricity of Jocz’s approach dissolved any sense of a constructive Judeo-Christian tradition. “Church and Synagogue face each other,” Jocz concluded, “between them stands Jesus Christ.”⁶⁶ In a reversal of the Judeo-Christian argument for the strength of Jewish-Christian cooperation, Jocz maintained that what united Christians and Jews was nothing more than a common tradition of sin. “In our common humanity, in our common failure, in our common faithlessness to God the Jew and the Christian, though standing apart, yet stand together.”⁶⁷ Not surprisingly, this formula failed to galvanize many Christians and Jews to celebrate their shared heritage.

If Americans from Dwight Eisenhower to William Albright appealed to Christians to protect a shared Judeo-Christian heritage, Jocz stood as an unsettling juxtaposition embodied first and foremost in his own synthesis of Jewish and Christian identity. Jocz gave only tepid approval to Zionism, cautioning in 1948 (in one of his few explicitly political pieces) that while a state in Palestine would rightly aid Jewish physical security, Zionism itself could not enhance Judaism’s spiritual development.⁶⁸ That could happen only through personal acceptance of Jesus. As Arthur Cohen observed in reviewing The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, Jocz’s theology excluded him from the immediate postwar interfaith scene. “If Jocz’s position triumphs, the Jew can meet Christ only in the church”—a prospect with little appeal to Jews and, increasingly, to many Protestants, including evangelicals beginning to question the tactics of Jewish missions.⁶⁹

As his fellow evangelicals identified with Israel and celebrated their Judeo-Christian heritage, Jocz continued to claim a following among evangelicals. His magnum opus, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz (1981), distinguished the state of Israel from Judaism. Jocz threw in his lot with the “increasing number of Jewish writers [who] object to making Zionism the quintessence of Jewish faith.”⁷⁰ Rather than endorsing a diasporic Judaism, he argued, “Jesus is our peace . . . so that we [Jews and Christians] may grow together into a ‘holy temple’ to the glory of God the Father.”⁷¹ In taking seriously the theological differences between rabbinic Judaism and evangelical Christianity, Jocz severed the essential linkage of Judeo-Christianity and offered the rudimentary arguments for a critical evangelical approach to Christian Zionism. He drew a stark Jewish-Christian binary that exposed the incomplete arguments of the Judeo-Christian concept. Like Jocz, other Hebrew Christians would insist that Jewish converts to Christianity fulfilled Judaism but also stood apart from non-Jewish Christianity. Jocz’s insistence on the fundamental antagonism between the missions of church and synagogue was never completely resolved by Judeo-Christian thinkers, who often equivocated, ignored, or bracketed, in the service of reconciliaition, the central question of missions.

Through his critiques, Jocz highlights the theological distance many evangelicals traveled in the years after 1948, who adopted and promoted Judeo-Christianity and claimed it as traditional, conservative, and orthodox theology to bolster biblical authority. Jocz’s denunciation of Judeo-Christianity highlights its novelty in the 1950s. As consequential as the term itself were its prescriptions: to denounce Christianity’s historical treatment of Jews, abandon supersessionist language, celebrate Christianity’s Jewish roots, and support the state of Israel. Evangelicals of all stripes emphasized Israel as a global symbol for “Judeo-Christendom.” Those evangelicals holding to dispensational categories regarded Israel as a pillar of the divine economy and an extension of the politics to protect America from communism and secularism. For millions of evangelicals, Judeo-Christianity fueled interest in Israel beyond strictly cultural or political considerations, laying the groundwork for a realignment of Christian Zionism around Judeo-Christian identity.

Even an evangelical like Carl Henry, who opposed the pluralization of religious truth entailed in civic Judeo-Christianity, had to bow to its pervasive influence. In 1961, Henry joined a group of evangelical magazine editors on a tour of Israel, where he met with Israeli officials, Hebrew Christians, and Baptist missionaries. The editors published a statement upon their return, revealing how central Judeo-Christianity had become to evangelical discourse about Judaism and Israel. The statement affirmed that “the people of Israel are in God’s plan” and asserted a “Christian commitment to unconditional love for the Jewish people everywhere.”⁷² It asked, “Do not Jew and Christian share in the same spiritual heritage and in the same entrusted responsibility in the pagan world?” providing a natural division of the world for evangelicals influenced by dispensationalism. The editors concluded, “The promise, the Person, the power, and the fulfillment of redemptive love remain exclusively unique to biblical religion.”⁷³ That “biblical religion” was no longer the sole provenance of evangelical Christians, who needed to rediscover “the Hebrew ancestry and preparation for the Christian faith” through “Hebrew-Christian dialogue” and the maintenance of “Judaeo-Christian ethics.”

Judeo-Christianity thus advanced a distinct understanding of particular biblical passages that appealed to a growing segment of action-oriented dispensationalists. Above all, the covenantal language of Genesis 12:3, a passage that commanded all people to “bless” Israel, fell on dispensationalist ears as a political mandate. Speaking of Abraham’s descendants, God promised, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Read in the dispensational style, this passage presented the nation of Israel as the mediator of God’s blessings to humanity. Here resided an explanation for why some nations rose and others fell based on the Bible. By supporting Israel, evangelicals receive God’s blessings; through diplomatic and military support, the United States would curry God’s favor. Here was a distinctly evangelical fusion of Judeo-Christian thought and dispensationalist theology that implicitly called Christians to action. Postwar dispensationalists invoked the economy of blessings as a divine mandate and, in the 1950s, produced their first modern Christian Zionist activist: G. Douglas Young.

CHAPTER 3

Errand to the Holy Land

IT WAS NOT SO much his time in Israel as the days he spent in Arab countries that fanned the Zionism of forty-six-year-old G. Douglas Young. Working as a guide for an evangelical Holy Land tour in April 1956, Young was struck, he later recalled, by “the effect of the one-sided view of current history imparted to pilgrims outside of Israel.” Believing that effective Arab propaganda predisposed Christians to be prejudiced against Israel, Young “reacted negatively to the biased presentation of history” he found among tour guides. Young’s concern only deepened when the U.S. government denounced Israel’s role in the Suez Crisis later that year. The “lop-sided impression” of the region absorbed by tourists “was inimical to the truth and to the best interests of Israel.”¹ The situation spurred Young to establish a graduate school in Jerusalem, the Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies, to provide students and clergy with a far friendlier understanding of Israel and its significance for Christians. Later renamed the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, Young’s project became the most important institutional catalyst for the evangelical Christian Zionist movement.

Young’s institute drew more than a passing resemblance to Albright’s American School of Oriental Research.² Following Albright’s interests, Young claimed to be founding an educational center “where special work on Bible geography and archaeology can increase appreciation of Biblical background.”³ Students earned credit at archaeological dig sites, while Young campaigned around Mt. Zion for new discoveries. Famed Harvard archaeologist (and Albright protégé) G. Ernest Wright guest-lectured at Young’s institute, and Israeli archaeologists Johanan Aharoni and Moshe Kochavi taught classes to its international student body. In short, the cultural currency of biblical archaeology in the 1950s was vital to the creation of Young’s institute. The overt pro-Israel politics that Young attached to his efforts distinguished the institute from a purely academic enterprise and proved an effective fusion of reconciliationist impulses, Judeo-Christian thinking, biblical archaeological knowledge, and Zionism.

As a conservative evangelical, Young regarded it as “incomprehensible” that fellow Christians should fail to recognize the new state of Israel “in view of what . . . the prophetic Scriptures had to say about Israel’s future.” Young insisted on “a careful reading of the Word of God” that would make clear that “current events in the Middle East seem to fulfill the prophecies of the Bible when those passages are taken in a direct sense.”⁴ A plain, literal reading of key passages predicted the regathering of the Jewish people in their homeland. It was liberal Christians who offered “spiritualized” and “allegorical” interpretations of scripture that misrepresented God’s promises and undermined Israel’s legitimacy. The sin of “spiritualizing” biblical prophecy—of interpreting biblical references to Israel in figurative terms—had afflicted a broad swath of organized Christianity, according to Young, and laid the groundwork for the long tradition of Christian anti-Judaism. Though he rarely defined himself in theological terms, Young followed a modified dispensationalism. For Young, this theology was a tool that illuminated a consistent view of prophetic passages and clarified how God remained committed to his chosen people through biblical covenants.

By founding the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, Young embarked on a decades-long project to convert “Bible-believing Christians” to a new way of thinking about their faith that broke with his fundamentalist upbringing. “By their fruit you shall know them,” Jesus taught in Matthew 7:16. Young was sorely disappointed with the fruits of fundamentalists on the issue of Israel. “Some who are interested in prophecy have no time to help the people of prophecy,” he complained. “One can only hope that every Christian who loves the prophetic word will be ready and willing to pray and work for the people of that land.”⁵ For many fundamentalists, Young’s infusion of humanitarian and political arguments made him look suspiciously like a liberal. His concern for worldly matters smacked of modernism, but he ignored such criticisms and channeled a new concern for social and political engagement toward Israel.

The institute, located in West Jerusalem before moving to a location adjacent to the Old City on Mt. Zion in early 1967, was a fitting location for this work. Young wanted to engage directly with Israelis, to create a fledgling cultural and political partnership without the blemishes of Jewish missions or Christian anti-Judaism. Between the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Arab-Israeli War in 1967, Young brought his institute in line with the political exigencies of the Israeli government and adapted his educational mission to its needs. Thus, he argued for Israel’s humanitarian and cultural value, as well as for its theological significance. He tied these concerns into the overarching frameworks of the Cold War, Judeo-Christian values, and Christian witness theology. By institutionalizing his views, he helped shape American evangelical engagement with Israel for the rest of the century.

Exodus from Fundamentalism

George Douglas Young (who preferred “Doug”) did not serve in World War II, but the destruction of European Jewry shaped the rest of his life. His interest in Zionism awakened in the 1940s by events in Europe. Prior to World War II, Young understood the Jewish people only in terms bound up in the stories of the Israelites that he heard as a child. Born to Canadian missionaries in Korea in 1910, Young never seriously contemplated a life outside the church. At the outset of the war, in 1939, he was a twenty-nine-year-old pastor of a small storefront Presbyterian church in Philadelphia, where he spent the first half of the war. He and his wife Georgina (who preferred “Snook”) kept abreast of the war’s progress through newspapers and radio. By 1942, both Young’s country of birth and his country of residency were fully committed to an Allied victory. Despite being at the age of military service, he decided against joining the war effort. Instead, he took a job as the principal of a Christian school in Nova Scotia.

Young applied his wartime energies to the ministry. At the same time, he began to assume personal culpability for the “silence of the Churches” in the face of the Holocaust—sharing the feelings of Reinhold Niebuhr, expressed even before the war, of a “sense of shame” of Christian indifference to Jewish suffering.⁶ The full scope of the genocide was unclear to Young, as it was for most Americans, until after the war, but when he came to understand the brutality that confessing Christians had inflicted on the Jews of Europe, he was convinced that the church shared in the blame.⁷ As he learned “what had indeed happened,” his biographer recounts, he “would be appalled to recognize that through all of the dastardly period of the Holocaust hardly a voice from the church outside of Europe, and not too much in Europe, was raised in protest.”⁸ Young had the chance, Sunday after Sunday, to speak out against genocide, but he had failed. Writing of the tragic story of the MS St. Louis, which carried 908 Jewish refugees from Europe in 1939 and was denied entry into the United States, he later lamented that “we turned them back and forced them across the ocean again to their deaths in the concentration camps of Germany.”⁹ He grew convinced that in his own way he had contributed to the destruction of God’s chosen people.

As a born and raised fundamentalist, Young believed in the central tenets of biblical inerrancy and dispensational theology. These included the theological distinction between Israel and the church that so animated his later political work. Seeing the covenants of the Old Testament still active, Young rejected supersessionism. A plain or literal reading of prophetic passages made clear to him God’s plans to revive the nation of Israel in its ancient land. In his theological training at the conservative Westminster Theological Seminary (the product of a conservative schism from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1929) and Faith Theological Seminary (the product of a further schism in 1936), Young transformed his rejection of supersessionism into an interest in Jewish history.¹⁰ He undertook PhD work on the ancient Near East at a Jewish studies graduate school, Dropsie College, which he would complete in 1948. While off the beaten path for fundamentalists, Dropsie appealed to Young with its singular focus on Jewish history and the opportunity to work with Cyrus Gordon, an Albright acolyte.

Prophetic expectation was never Young’s primary concern. He embraced the more encompassing anthropological distinction between Israel and the church as “God’s Chosen People.” Using well-worn biblical metaphors, he called Israel God’s “Wife,” and the Church God’s “Bride.” In Young’s understanding, the Bible essentially told the story of God’s estrangement and ultimate reconciliation with Israel. Through the present “church age,” the original covenants between God and Israel remained in place. In the future, Israel would “be used as a group . . . in the spiritual ministry of God” as a culmination of God’s plans.¹¹ The bride and the wife would finally join as one with the “Bridegroom” of Christ. To illustrate the shared fates of Israel and the church, Young pointed to God’s covenant with Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3). In Young’s reading, the church’s ability to bless the children of Abraham influenced the blessings that God would bestow upon the church. When the two parties worked together, they produced a positive transformation. Their cooperation and final joining was the agent through which God would redeem the world.

Young tweaked his theology to better accommodate the intimate social, religious, and political relationship between Israel and the church that this entailed. Though it was never the primary feature in his thought, the question of the Jewish conversion to Christianity was a serious issue that Young was forced to address. In his dense and unpublished theological notes, Young maintained that Jews would eventually convert to Christianity but only after the rapture of the church.¹² This view, which included a second rapture event for the converted Jewish people, was conducive to Young’s support for Zionism. It placed the conversion of Israel in the hands of God, and out of the hands of Christians. This slight change allowed Young to dismiss Jewish missions as unnecessary and counterproductive to the real mandate imposed on Christians in the present age to reconcile with Jews as the two chosen peoples of God. Young’s rapture views also negated the more gruesome prophecy passages that would, under classic dispensational teachings, befall Israel, including the destruction of two-thirds of Jews “in the whole land” and the conversion of the remnants based on Zechariah 13:8–9.¹³ By positing a second rapture, Young’s scheme was more prophetically humane toward the Jewish people.

These nuances prefigured Young’s willingness to join the political fray. By the late 1940s, Young struggled to find a suitable political outlet in the volatile world of fundamentalism. As a teacher at the National Bible Institute in Ringwood, New Jersey, Young chafed under the “rancorous contention and questioning of the faith of all who disagreed” with the school’s founder, principal, and national right-wing firebrand, Carl McIntire.¹⁴ Finally fed up, Young left McIntire’s fundamentalist circle in 1952. It was not only McIntire’s fitful leadership but also his dogmatic separatism and refusal to cooperate with non-fundamentalists that alienated Young.

Leaving McIntire’s fold inaugurated Young’s exodus from fundamentalism. He gradually rejected separatism and embraced an interreligious vision of Israel and the church working together. Estranged from McIntire, Young found himself at Northwestern Bible College, a school founded by fundamentalist William Bell Riley in St. Paul, Minnesota, suffering from a legacy of the preacher’s vociferous racial antisemitism.¹⁵ Through the 1930s, Riley had preached from his pulpit at the First Baptist Church in Minneapolis of a global Jewish conspiracy that conformed to his reading of biblical prophecy. Riley died in 1948 and his handpicked successor, a young Billy Graham, soon skyrocketed to international fame. Graham’s long absences from the school did little to repair the reputation of Northwestern within the Twin Cities’ Jewish community. That task fell to Richard Elvee, Northwestern’s third president, who sought to rebrand the college as a positive influence in the St. Paul area. It was in Elvee that Young found a partner to develop his interreligious ideas.

By 1954, Young, Elvee, and Sam Scheiner, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota, had created a mandatory “human relations seminar” for Northwestern freshmen to become acquainted with local African American and Jewish communities.¹⁶ Nationally, many universities and seminaries began to promote interfaith and interracial programs in this period, but Northwestern was notable for its fundamentalist roots and recent past of aggressive antisemitism. The cultural and political boundaries separating fundamentalism and postwar evangelicalism were as important as any theology. This was evident in Young’s prioritization of education and human relations and in his enthusiasm for working with local Jewish defense organizations. Though Young’s theology remained essentially fundamentalist, the political theology he developed propelled him toward postwar evangelicalism.¹⁷ By 1956, Young also served as the local representative of the American Christian Palestine Committee at the behest of Scheiner and other Jewish leaders in Minneapolis.

Young found not only an outlet for social and educational activism in the Twin Cities but also a new church membership. During his time at Northwestern, Young began to attend the Central Evangelical Free Church in downtown Minneapolis. The church was a member of a new denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA), with a “doctrinal stance,” wrote his biographer, that “appealed to Doug Young. Its tradition held to the belief that God has a special future for the nation of Israel.”¹⁸ Founded in 1950 with the merger of the Swedish Evangelical Free Church and the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Free Church Association, the EFCA typified the Americanization of ethnic denominations after World War II. Based in the Midwest, the denomination emphasized its “free” (nonstate) and church structure and theological conservatism, both adapted to the new evangelicalism after World War II. To be evangelical gave national purpose to small and post-ethnic denominations, and to a post-fundamentalist like Young.

The evangelicalism of the 1950s was, like Young, an outgrowth and critique of fundamentalism. Led by Graham, Carl Henry, and other “new evangelicals,” postwar leaders claimed to more fully engage American society and culture without abandoning biblical authority. Evangelicals defined themselves as much by what they weren’t—riven with the controversy and dissension that fundamentalism’s militant leaders, such as McIntire and Riley, thrived upon—as much as by what they were. The new evangelicalism saw its mission to gain intellectual credibility—something fundamentalism sorely lacked—through cooperation and a quest for cultural legitimacy. Evangelicals established the National Association of Evangelicals, founded in 1942 for the express purpose of facilitating “united evangelical action.”¹⁹ Young himself joined the new Evangelical Theological Society and the American Scientific Affiliation, organizations of evangelical scholars professing an interest in the intersection of Christian faith and academia. Joining the EFCA meant joining an expression of the postwar evangelical movement that emphasized cooperation toward shared social and religious goals.²⁰ Though only a theological stone’s throw from fundamentalism, Young transitioned to a different religious and institutional subculture—one that gave him a mandate to realize his political convictions and more readily embrace interreligious cooperation.

Entering the Holy Land

Young’s exodus from fundamentalism was most visible in his institutional migration from the orbit of Carl McIntire to that of Billy Graham’s new evangelicalism. It was as an evangelical that he embarked on his tour to Israel in 1956 and advanced his idea for an “inter-denominational, inter-faith” graduate school in Jerusalem.²¹ From the founding of the Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies, the school imbibed the ethos of postwar evangelicalism, reveling in new findings in biblical archaeology, promoting front and center its interreligious support, and instructing its students to be not only ambassadors for Christ but also “ambassadors for Israel.”²²

Upon returning from his tour to the Holy Land in 1956, Young witnessed a low point in U.S.-Israel relations. In response to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal, which was vital to British and French shipping, Israel, followed by the European powers, invaded the Sinai Peninsula in late October 1956.²³ A secret plan by the three governments called for Great Britain and France to intervene as disinterested mediators, in the process securing Western control over the canal. While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) achieved its military aims, Israel’s political position stood on a razor’s edge. With a presidential election looming, President Eisenhower had not been informed of the plan, which he would have rejected anyway. When he found out, he was livid and led international efforts to reverse its outcome. Britain and France folded quickly, but Israel, which sought security guarantees before vacating the Sinai Peninsula, remained at loggerheads with the United States until March 1957, when it finally acceded to U.S. pressure. The episode revealed an American administration concerned about Arab opinion as much as about Israeli interests. To Young, it laid bare the chasm of understanding between American and Israeli leaders. It surely did not pass Young’s notice that one of the architects of the U.S. policy toward Israel, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was a fixture of the liberal Protestant establishment—a fellow Christian who “spiritualized” any prophetic references to Israel.

In the aftermath of the war, Young gained the support of local Jewish allies in Minneapolis and funding from a circle of interested evangelical donors. He contacted Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, relying on Jewish leaders to make inroads with a governmental ministry that had no interest in accommodating or no capacity to accommodate American Christians. But in his correspondence with Saul Colbi, the director of church affairs, Young made his case for why a school served the needs of Israel. “So many American tourists are returning [to the United States] with a lop-sided view,” Young explained, “because they spend, on these pilgrimages, so much time in the Arab countries. . . . It quite amazes me how many of the returning clergymen have been twisted by the propaganda and evidence of never having heard much of the other side of the story.” Young offered to construct a counter-narrative to combat the pro-Arab bias. “If we can get [Christian clergy] to stop off in Israel for a time, or better still, to live with the people for a few months . . . a significant contribution can be made.”²⁴ The government agreed. In June 1957, Young received permission to organize in the old offices of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a missionary organization whose work among Palestine’s Arab population had been decimated in 1948.²⁵ The alliance’s local director, M. G. Griebenow, provided a rent-free building on Rehov Ha-Navi’im (Street of the Prophets) in West Jerusalem.

In a prescient move, Young decided that his institute would have a special focus on the field of biblical archaeology, drawing interest from scholars of the Hebrew Bible and Israelis molding a national past for their new state. The educational tilt toward archaeology implied a commitment to Jewish-Christian engagement through biblical scholarship and teaching. The institute focused on academics, though the school itself showed a dispensational identity that gave cohesion to the curriculum. Richard Mitchell, a staff member, defined the institute’s purpose as “establishing a greater understanding between American Christians and citizens of Israel; acquiring a valuable experience in the field of human relations, not only between Christian and Jew, but also between other differing groups in Israel and neighboring countries.” Time in Israel exposed evangelical students to the reality “that others could hold to a differing faith and have good reason for it.”²⁶

By positioning the institute as a site of cultural exchange and public diplomacy as well as an educational institution, Young bridged interreligious and theological interests with a political agenda. He envisioned training “the students and young men who will soon be occupying places of influence as pastors of churches in the United States” who “will have new ideas, new points of view replacing older stereotypes, with a consequent betterment of relations between our communities and nations.”²⁷ The institute was remarkable because it resembled nonevangelical efforts to bring together Jewish and Christian scholars in the hopes that face-to-face collaboration would produce new insights and bolster religious pluralism. Young advanced these goals explicitly for the sake of improving Israel’s image among American Christians and tied the interreligious project to public diplomacy. He did so while remaining squarely in the institutional center of American evangelicalism, appealing to a mostly dispensational constituency and funding network.

Young’s ability to center the institute in Israel increased its visibility. Writing in 1958, the Israeli scholar and government adviser R. J. Zwi Werblowsky suggested that Israel was the place where “communication [between Jews and Christians] may be established sooner and with a better chance of success than elsewhere.”²⁸ For Werblowsky, the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel gave new urgency for common ground between Jews and Christians.²⁹ The Holocaust revealed the troubling past of Christian anti-Judaism; the state of Israel provoked questions about the theological significance of the Jewish people. These two events had also redirected Christian efforts toward an existential encounter with Jews that could only take place in a Jewish society. Jewish identification with the new state of Israel was beyond debate, a reality that Christians could not theologize away. Christian arguments that questioned the legitimacy of Israel on theological grounds or recourses to supersessionism were examples of the “triumphant assertions” that had dogged Christian attitudes in the past.³⁰

Young, who hosted Werblowsky as a lecturer at the institute, agreed that Jerusalem was the new center of Jewish-Christian relations. But launching an international graduate school was no simple matter; it required funding, institutional backing, and navigating diplomatic hurdles. To his evangelical supporters, Young’s conservative theology gave him cover to pursue a more radical reconciliation agenda. His ability to frame Christian support for Israel in Judeo-Christian terms appealed to fundamentalists and evangelicals who were increasingly using biblical inerrancy as a litmus test for membership.³¹ But the novelty of Young’s effort also interested new patrons. Arnold T. Olson, president of the Evangelical Free Church of America, promised Young institutional support and a job at the denomination’s seminary, Trinity Theological Seminary (later, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) in Deerfield, Illinois. This connection gave Young a crucial institutional lifeline. He joined Trinity in 1958 as dean of Old Testament studies with split responsibilities in Jerusalem, administering the institute from offices in nearby Evanston, Illinois, and an administrative staff in Israel. As an EFCA-sponsored organization, the institute relied on its denominational affiliation to provide administrative help, students, and funding in its early years.

The institute’s initial donor list captured the connections Young had built with patrons from both the fundamentalist and the evangelical worlds. The institute’s financial backers included evangelical businessmen who also supported the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, World Vision, and other parachurch organizations. Major donors included Herbert J. Taylor, a Chicago-based businessman, and Ted Engstrom, the executive vice president of World Vision International.³² As a beneficiary of the EFCA’s expanding institutional connections, the institute could tap into a large pool of resources to stay solvent. The list of affiliated schools, which sent students to the institute for advanced education, revealed abiding financial and institutional support from fundamentalists as well, including Dallas Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, and other tastemakers in fundamentalist higher education. Along with evangelical seminaries, including Fuller Theological Seminary and Gordon College, the institute enjoyed a vast network of supporters and students.

Even with wide institutional support, money remained tight during the first decade. Young and his staff often budgeted month to month to stay afloat in Israel’s unpredictable economy, which could experience rapid inflation.³³ Much of Young’s correspondence from this early period involved pleas to American donors for financial support. Even in these solicitations, the pressures of appealing to a broad base of Christians were evident. Interested donors, Young promised, would receive “a list of informative books on the history of Palestine and the history of Israel and the Jewish people . . . helpful information on the practices and religion of the Jewish people.” He wanted to “help Christians to better understand their Jewish neighbors, and give them the kind of information necessary to provide a mutual basis for conversation so necessary if better relations and mutual understanding are to be established.”³⁴ He remained focused on practical opportunities for political and social engagement that showed Israelis the benefit of an evangelical presence in their midst.

Institute and State

As Young quickly learned, building an institution in Israel was arduous; the path toward acceptance among Israelis was riddled with cultural differences and misunderstandings. Yet it was through this process that Young refined his message to attract fellow Christians and gain the trust of the Israeli government. The institute became the center for pro-Israel evangelicals in the early 1960s and a direct link to Israel for its dozens of affiliated schools and seminaries. It was a conduit in the other direction, as well, as an outlet for Israeli officials to understand American evangelicalism and to craft a strategy for public diplomacy to this constituency.

Even with his successes, Young and his institute were situated at the geographical edge of American evangelical influence abroad. Young was beholden to foreign laws, norms, and expectations, and he was forced repeatedly to justify his location in Israel to a skeptical local population and to curious Americans. This early crucible of political, religious, and cultural engagement would profoundly shape Young’s Zionism, and the concerns of later Israel-based Christian Zionists.

More than any other issue, Israeli suspicion that the institute was a secret missionary operation dominated early state interactions. The Ministry of Religious Affairs, which oversaw domestic religious activity, was especially concerned. Young’s identification with evangelicalism stoked suspicions among Israeli officials, even those who had come to tolerate Baptist missionaries. Dominated by the Mizrachi (later, National Religious) Party, the Ministry of Religious Affairs took a skeptical attitude toward all Christians in Israel, often working in conjunction with the Ministry of Interior, which granted visas, to curb American Christian presence in the country.³⁵ These ministries, not tasked with public diplomacy, had less regard for the potential diplomatic upside of courting friendly American evangelicals. Young’s need to appease these ministries shaped the institute’s language and curriculum by mollifying officials while remaining relevant to American patrons and students.

The international dimension to Young’s network of donors and students also brought him to the attention of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which had a mandate to improve Israel’s image and connections abroad. Young explicitly framed his work in terms of cultural and public diplomacy, while the Foreign Ministry saw in him a well-connected American with an intriguing educational project. As fledgling bureaucracies, Israeli ministries had ill-defined spheres of authority, especially when dealing with an entity like Young’s institute. Encompassing both American and Israeli interests, educational, religious, and diplomatic missions, the institute and its early interactions with the state foreshadowed the linkages that Christian Zionism would develop with the government of Israel in later decades.

Jockeying between the religious and foreign branches of the Israeli government meant that the institute was sensitive to competing sets of bureaucratic interests. Anson Rainey, a biblical geographer who worked at the institute in the early 1960s, was attuned to the political tensions. Rainey first visited Israel in 1960 and began teaching there in 1962. At that point, he was well acquainted with Israeli suspicions of his motives, which he insisted were solely academic. Writing to Young, Rainey confided, “I am not sure whether I will state [on my visa application] my sources of income other than ‘a private source.’ I will not be engaged in ‘missionary activity.’ . . . But, as you well know, [Religious Ministry official] Colbi may have another viewpoint.” The pressure for institute workers to prove they were not engaged in missionary activity was sometimes overbearing. “I don’t intend to break any laws or agreements which we have with the government,” Rainey assured Young, “On the other hand, there is no need of letting them [the Ministry] think that we can take needless harassment.”³⁶

Rainey did not simply lament the situation; he wanted to use it to the institute’s advantage: “Believe me we have to be wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. [Fourteen] months in the country taught me the hard facts of Israel,” he explained to Young, who was removed from day-to-day administration in 1962 while still teaching in Illinois.³⁷ Rainey suggested that the institute respond by leveraging bureaucratic divisions. “As a matter of policy,” he advised, “I would suggest the Institute begin to strengthen our contacts with the Foreign Ministry in every way possible.” He noted that the Foreign Ministry was under Mapai leadership, while the Religious Ministry was under the control of the Mizrachi Party. Rainey suggested giving the Foreign Ministry more visibility, including photo ops with students and Mapai officials. In the spring of 1962, Young passed the “problems we have faced in the public relations area in Israel” off to the Jerusalem director of the institute, George Kelms.³⁸ By this time, Rainey and Kelms were headed toward a bitter falling out over personal matters that would result in both leaving the institute by the next year, prompting Young to move to Israel permanently in 1963.³⁹

Even before moving to Israel, Young denounced Jewish missions work in Israel, a necessary step to win government support. More sharply than the Baptist missionaries, Young disavowed evangelistic goals of any kind. Targeting Jews for conversion had reaped few rewards in the past, and the history of Jewish evangelization was a barrier to better interreligious relations. “Tragically, some Christians will not support anything unless it is a direct effort to enforce Christianity upon others,” Young wrote. “These are days in which the Christian church has a unique opportunity to dissociate itself from the ‘Christian’ persecution of the Jewish people down the centuries.”⁴⁰ The Israeli government outlined strict regulations about religious activity for institute workers and students, and by any measure Young followed these regulations, often with more enthusiasm than the government.⁴¹ In place of evangelism, Young offered his own Christian witness to Jews through educational and political action in service of Israel.

Although he was forced to deal with administrative and financial challenges, Young preferred to work on the institute’s student programs, which embodied his vision of academic and interreligious exchange. In its early years, the institute’s capacity was limited, allowing for fifteen to forty students to attend each semester. Young’s curriculum emphasized Jewish-Christian solidarity and shared religious history, as well as the value of Israeli scholarship in Christian biblical studies. Classes were held only three days a week to facilitate “study, visiting, sightseeing, and worship” and to engage with modern Israeli society. Students were encouraged to visit a local synagogue, work on their Modern Hebrew, and explore the diverse neighborhoods surrounding the school, from the ultra-Orthodox Mea She’arim to the French and Italian enclaves. This strategy, according to Young, gave “American clergymen, theological professors and students” long enough time “to feel the tempo and temper of development there [in Israel].” Students were expected to return home with better qualifications “to help others to see Israel in her true biblical, historical, and political setting in the Middle East and in the world.”⁴²

Because of limited resources, many courses were administered in conjunction with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This cooperation, at first a practical necessity, became crucial for the institute’s integration into Israel’s educational and cultural landscape. “Israel’s intellectuals,” one employee wrote, “have the chance to see what a concerned Biblical Christianity is—an opportunity almost completely absent previously.”⁴³ Israeli scholars including Werblowsky and David Flusser, both professors at the Hebrew University and proponents of Jewish-Christian dialogue, taught annual classes.⁴⁴ Chaim Wardi, the councilor for Christian affairs in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and Yona Malachy, a deputy director in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, also taught regularly. Israeli archaeologists employed students at their digs. Students were required to take courses on modern Israeli society and “The History of the Jews in the Diaspora,” which were sometimes taught by visiting scholars or, later, by Bernard Resnikoff, the American Jewish Committee’s representative in Israel.

As part of its efforts, the institute invited prominent American evangelicals for extended stays to teach in Israel. Young’s selections pointed to his rising prominence in postwar evangelicalism. The institute hosted Jared F. Gerig, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who spent six months in Jerusalem in 1964.⁴⁵ Gerig’s comments about his experience ornamented marketing material for years. Other visiting scholars included theologian Dwight Pentecost, Old Testament scholar William La Sor, and the Christian apologist Edwin Yamauchi. American Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee and Hebrew Union College, contributed their own visiting lecturers. At the same time, Young raised funds in the United States and Europe among seminaries and liberal arts colleges. These efforts paid off. After ten years, in 1967, the institute could count more than forty associated schools.

This rapid expansion also challenged the institute. Student enrollment expanded. The rising visibility of the institute and Young’s increasing credibility with Israelis were significant. Young had managed to embed a Christian institution into Israeli society with solid backing from the Foreign Ministry. However, with the increased attention came the need to more concretely define the vision of Christian Zionism that Young propagated in a crowded dispensational marketplace.

The Variety of Dispensational Zionism

In the mid-1960s, the Zionism that Young hoped would spur Christians into action had to compete for the attention of American evangelicals. Many were amenable to Young’s call to action, whether in the new reconciliation language of missionaries or the ideology of Judeo-Christianity. Indeed, Young’s own thinking—from his rejection of missions to his focus on biblical archaeology—illustrated how indebted he was to these trends. Yet Young had something other evangelicals did not: the support of Israeli scholars and officials who saw in him a model for Christian support. Building on the confluence of evangelical thinking about Jewish-Christian relations and his close Israeli connections, Young argued that his broadly defined brand of dispensational Zionism was the most viable mobilizer of evangelical support for the state of Israel.

Young had to contend with the scholastic tradition of dispensationalism—the reigning school of thought in dispensational seminaries after World War II. The schools that produced the leading dispensational pastors and theologians of the postwar generation—Dallas Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, and Talbot Theological Seminary—inculcated a prophetic interest in Israel removed from the details of contemporary Middle East politics.⁴⁶ While Young valued dispensationalism for its clear position on a future for the Jewish people, dispensational theologians saw themselves chiefly as fighting an ongoing struggle with liberal Protestantism. The state of Israel and its citizens represented evidence in the defense of their faith; Israel was empirical proof that dispensational readings of prophecy were accurate and predictive.⁴⁷ But no dispensational theologians had met with Israeli officials in the first two decades of statehood. They were a political nonentity. The president of Dallas Theological Seminary, John Walvoord, published Israel in Prophecy (1962) while his colleague, Charles Ryrie, completed the definitive dispensational text, Dispensationalism Today (1965), which mentioned “national Israel” and “natural Israel” more than one hundred times.⁴⁸ The most successful dispensational text in history, the Scofield Reference Bible, was revised in 1967 and reflected new interest in “national Israel” in its notes.⁴⁹

Yet for all this theological production, dispensational theologians remained uninterested in the particulars of Israeli society or U.S. Middle East policy. While Young agreed with the theology, his concern was with its political implications—the obligations that the church owed the state of Israel. Young’s focus was markedly more political than that of scholastic theologians: God’s faithfulness to Israel in spite of the church’s persecution was an indictment of supersessionism and a sign that God wanted Christians to support the Jewish people. While dispensational theologians used their theology to define themselves against competing positions, Young outlined the Christian duties to Israel and Jewish-Christian relations.

As difficult as waking dispensationalists from their theological malaise appeared, the Zionism that Young propagated had an even more contentious relationship with Jewish missions organizations. This small but highly visible community was deeply influenced by dispensationalism. Two of the largest mission agencies, the American Board of Missions to the Jews and the International Hebrew Christian Alliance, saw their work in the light of the Jewish “regathering” in Palestine.⁵⁰ The mere existence of missions work held eschatological significance.⁵¹ Hebrew Christian missionaries, who considered themselves both Jews and followers of Jesus, looked expectantly for the mass conversion of the Jewish people to occur as a sign of Christ’s return.

From Young’s perspective, Jewish missions divided dispensational attention, hurt Christian credibility, and wasted energy on efforts that undermined Israel’s national interest. Saul Colbi spoke for many officials in the government when he observed in 1965 that “missionary groups compose a major threat to the unity of Jewish identity in Israel.”⁵² Young agreed, writing that evangelical missionaries “say that the restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine could be, for the Jews, a good thing. But they would not feel it worthy of support unless Christians could use the support as a means of direct conversion of Jews to Christianity.” Instead of helping Jews, these attempts at “direct conversion,” Young chided, fueled the “persecution of the Jewish people down through the centuries.”⁵³ He explained, “Israel [is] not opposed to our type of Christian, per se, but only toward those who had, from their point of view, no useful contribution to make toward the development of the state.”⁵⁴ If Christians were to become valuable allies to Israel, they had to drop efforts to convert Jews. In the early 1960s, few evangelicals were willing to go so far. Southern Baptists had bracketed the question of conversion for the purposes of integration. Young advanced this line of thinking to a complete and public disavowal of Jewish missions.

A third dispensational alternative to Young’s Zionism came from Pentecostals. Compared to later decades, Pentecostals shared little institutional overlap with evangelicals in the 1950s, either in the United States or in Israel. Disagreement over practices of “gifts of the Spirit,” including speaking in tongues (glossolalia), was only one of the many dividing lines.⁵⁵ But Young knew that the history of American Christian presence in Israel had often included Pentecostals. The longtime Canadian missionary William L. Hull was the most obvious example. A follower of Pentecostal minister Aimee Semple McPherson, Hull moved to Israel in 1936 to found Zion Apostolic Mission in Jerusalem. While remaining a missionary, Hull enjoyed broad acceptance among Jews after encouraging the Canadian member of the United Nations Security Council and Palestine Rights Committee to support the partition of Palestine in 1947. Hull later published a glowing history of the Zionist movement, The Fall and Rise of Israel (1954), that characterized David Ben-Gurion as a modern Moses.⁵⁶ In 1962, Hull acted as the chaplain to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official tried and executed by Israel for his role in the Holocaust. Hull was a Christian whom Young could emulate in his early years. After retiring to his native land in 1963, Hull traveled throughout North America and Europe speaking on behalf of Israel—an activity that Young later undertook as well.

Hull’s political prominence was rare in the checkered relationship between Pentecostals and Israel. After retiring, Hull left his ministry in Israel to evangelist Paul Kopp, who shared a dispensational-inspired eschatology infused with the traditional Pentecostal emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Part of a network of healers and evangelists, Kopp operated under the expectation that a mass Jewish conversion to Christianity in Israel was imminent. He funded evangelistic literature in Israel as part of a campaign to put “A Messiah Witness [a Jewish convert to Christianity] in every home in Israel.”⁵⁷ Both Kopp and his fellow healing revivalist, Gordon Lindsay (not to be confused with Robert Lindsey) taught that the imminent rapture of believers applied only to “first fruits,” Christians who led particularly “Spirit-centered” lives.⁵⁸ These preachers saw their work in Israel in revivalist terms. Like the other alternatives to Young, Pentecostals were at odds with his political priorities.

In contrast to the competing dispensational interests in Israel, Young courted the state and the American evangelical establishment from his Jerusalem offices. His prospects dramatically improved in early 1967, when he relocated to the abandoned Bishop Gobat School, owned by the Church of England, a stone’s throw from the Old City wall on Mt. Zion. Young moved just months before the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967 redrew the boundaries of Jerusalem. The lease on the property, which allowed the institute to expand its student enrollment, was helped along by Israeli government officials eager to elevate Young’s profile (the current director of the Christian desk in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Chaim Wardi, was a lecturer at the institute).⁵⁹ Young’s institutional connections and American support attracted cultural and intellectual leaders from evangelical and interreligious circles. These helped the institute establish itself as a center of interreligious activity in Jerusalem.

Young broke with prevailing dispensational attitudes when he called for “Bible-based” activism to aid the Jewish people as an end in itself. “Are you helping the new nation of Israel?” he asked his supporters. “Are you helping them in material and physical ways? Are you expressing real friendship always? Are you accepting them as you would your own or are you still treating them much the same as the Christian church has done down through the centuries?”⁶⁰ A faith built on the proper understanding of the Jewish people was the only way to construct a healthy Christian Zionism, he insisted to fellow dispensationalists.

As curious as Young’s institute appeared, his view was catching hold in broader evangelical circles. As a nexus for bringing together the roots of evangelical Christian Zionism, Young drew upon and promoted a new interpretation of Jewish-Christian relations based on the experience of missionaries in Israel, a Judeo-Christianity that supplied historical and geopolitical rationale for cooperation, and a Christian witness that emphasized practical and political action focused on advancing Israeli interests. On the eve of the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967, this nascent effort was situated at the intersection of Jewish-Christian and American-Israeli interests, poised to reshape Christian engagement with Israel across the United States.

PART II
SHOOTS, 1967–1976

CHAPTER 4

Common Ground

IN JULY 1967, YONA MALACHY, the deputy director of the Christian Desk in Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, embarked on a tour of America’s premiere Protestant seminaries and colleges.¹ Over a span of three months, he darkened the doors of Harvard and Yale divinity schools, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. But he also visited Dallas Theological Seminary, Biola College, and Wheaton College. These outposts of conservative Protestantism were less familiar than were the hallowed halls of Harvard to the Paris-trained Israeli scholar of American religion, even as they were his primary reason for visiting America. Meeting “American fundamentalists”—Malachy’s catchall term for conservative Protestants unaffiliated with mainline Protestantism—had drawn new interest from the Israeli government.

Malachy’s trip took on new urgency in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967. Responding to an Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran, Israel launched a preemptive strike on the morning of June 5 that decimated Egyptian and Jordanian air forces. During the next six days, the Israel Defense Forces cut through Arab armies and took the Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights.² Soldiers prayed at the Western Wall, Egyptian tanks smoldered in the desert, and the one-eyed military hero Moshe Dayan dominated American media. Jews around the world felt relieved to have avoided a “second Holocaust.” The Arab world remembered June 5 as Yawm An-naksa, “The Day of Setback,” a sentiment shared by a growing chorus of international critics.

With its growing dependence on U.S. diplomacy and financial aid, the Israeli government searched for supportive Christians who endorsed its decision to annex East Jerusalem and occupy conquered territories. The very terms of Israeli public diplomacy changed as the government defended its postwar actions to an increasingly critical international community. As a result of the war and its political fallout, the Israeli government, evangelicals, and American Jewish defense organizations worked to create an evangelical pro-Israel movement that would advance Israeli national interests in the American public and apply electoral pressure in support of Israeli policies. Evangelicals, stretching across the American heartland, were moving closer to the center of Israeli public diplomacy. Evidence that domestic pressure had helped soften American policy toward Israel before the war confirmed that evangelicals were too important to ignore.

The Israeli government wanted only a specific type of Christian ally, however, which Malachy was instrumental in identifying in the months following the June 1967 war. Ideal Christians would possess theologies that helped legitimate (or not delegitimize) a Jewish state. They would have clear and graspable connections between theological beliefs and political action. They would talk about Israel in a way resembling Israeli understandings of the state’s significance to Jewish peoplehood. After 1967, such Christian Zionists converged with American Jewish leaders and Israelis on a vocabulary of shared interests, using theological reform to transform Israel’s standing among evangelicals and to insert interreligious relations into the center of U.S.-Israeli relations.

American Judaism Pivots

Almost immediately after the fighting ended, Jews worried that Israel’s overwhelming military victory had achieved less than the sum of its parts. “The 1967 war, with its quick and decisive victory,” Rabbi Jacob Neusner later reflected, “seemed to cost much less than it did.”³ The IDF had brought physical security to Israel, but at what cost? A new status quo fulfilled a deep longing among some to possess its ancestral lands, but Israel’s occupation would prove burdensome and controversial. The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under occupation did not enjoy the rights of Israeli citizens, and neither was the land, outside of the annexed East Jerusalem, incorporated into the state. The war had recast the Arab-Israeli conflict, but it had solved few of its long-standing issues.⁴

American Jews reacted to the war with both euphoria and despair.⁵ They rallied around Israel beginning in the second week of May 1967, giving more than $100 million to the Israel Emergency Fund of the United Jewish Appeal.⁶ The tense weeks before the war included blustery speeches by Egyptian and Syrian leaders, which raised fears of a “second Holocaust.” Norman Podhoretz, the editor of the Jewish magazine Commentary, recalled the newfound sense of connection to the people of Israel. “If Israel were destroyed and its Jewish inhabitants pushed, as the Arabs were so vociferously promising, into the sea, the Jews of America would be next.”⁷ This sense of dread helped spur a new identification with Israel. “As soon as the Arab armies began to mass on the borders of Israel,” wrote Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, “the mood of the American Jewish community underwent an abrupt, radical, and possibly permanent change.”⁸

American Jewish enthusiasm helped forge the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel.⁹ Two organizations in particular defined American Jewish interests: the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (President’s Conference) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). These organizations, first established in the 1950s, formed the core of a “pro-Israel lobby,” a coalition of organizations, groups, and individuals seeking to influence U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.¹⁰ In the years after 1967, these organizations led the push in Congress for more financial and military aid to Israel. They were largely successful, both through the government’s expanded aid and shared intelligence cooperation and Congress’s willingness to defend Israeli autonomy in the face of presidential efforts to forge a comprehensive peace.

The later successes of the pro-Israel lobby have hidden the extent to which the cultural and religious foundations of U.S.-Israel relations were unsettled by Israel’s victory in 1967. Based on mixed Christian responses to the war, American Jews grew anxious over the basis of American support for Israel. This preoccupation shifted significant American Jewish organizational attention toward interreligious relations. Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, the director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), was a pivotal voice. The AJC itself was considered the “dean of American Jewish organizations” and was deeply invested in both American Jewish support for Israel and Jewish-Christian dialogue. The organization placed representatives in both the President’s Conference and AIPAC, but the narrow political mandates of both groups left swaths of interreligious territory unattended.

Most pressing to American Jews like Tanenbaum was understanding how and why their existing liberal Protestant and Catholic dialogue partners had so quickly become some of Israel’s harshest postwar critics. In a late 1967 report, the AJC lamented that “public statements from Christian institutional bodies were noticeably rare” in support of Israel.¹¹ The survey included the ecumenical and Catholic bodies engaged in high-profile Jewish-Christian dialogue before the war, especially the National Council of Churches, National Conference of Catholics and Bishops, and World Council of Churches.¹² The “silence of the churches,” as the supposed indifference of Christians toward the fate of Israel was termed by prominent Jewish observers, was disheartening in the light of polls showing overwhelming American support for Israel.¹³ International bodies like the World Council of Churches, which included Middle East Christian members and a diverse array of global representatives in communist countries, were incapable of coming to a consensus.¹⁴ Jews who had expended energy on dialogue before the war were left with little evidence of their efforts.

Criticism of Israel by the same Protestants who also championed Jewish-Christian rapprochement reversed Jewish hopes for dialogue. The war had indeed revealed the limits of theological and social discussion to affect politics. Rabbi Balfour Brickner wrote of his own creeping doubts about dialogue after 1967: “The spectacle of nearly total absence of visible support for the State of Israel during her hour of need” made him wonder if “there was any real substance to this matter of interfaith relations.” As the director of the Commission on Interfaith Activities of Reform Judaism for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Brickner had invested years in dialogue. His support flagged as the war exposed “how badly we have failed to use the present openness between faiths.”

In a move that became a pattern among American Jewish organizational leaders, Brickner did not reject dialogue outright. Recent survey findings, especially Charles Glock and Rodney Stark’s 1966 study Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism, had hypothesized a causal relationship between religious beliefs and antisemitism.¹⁵ With such a tight association between theology and politics, Jews could not abandon dialogue. Instead, Brickner led the call for clearer, and more explicitly political, goals.¹⁶ “We have mistakenly assumed that Jews and Christians understood the basic differences that distinguish us from one another,” he lamented.”¹⁷ The explanation of Jewish ties to “Jewish peoplehood,” which Brickner admitted that even he was skeptical of just months before, moved to the center of post-1967 dialogue.

Brickner’s was not the only Jewish voice demanding that Christians acknowledge Israel’s new centrality to Jewish identity. Marc Tanenbaum defined the role of dialogue as “helping overcome Christian ignorance or misunderstanding of Jewish peoplehood (k’lal yisroel, the sacred congregation of Israel) and the symbolic meaning of Israel and Jerusalem to Judaism and the Jewish people.”¹⁸ So, too, did Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who claimed “The State of Israel . . . is necessary for the continuity of Judaism and Jews.”¹⁹ The more conservative Rabbi Seymour Siegel argued that attachment to the state of Israel “is a reconfirmation of the Jewish desire to express Jewishness not only under conditions of exile, but also in a situation of independence. The land and the promise [of God] have always gone hand in hand.”²⁰

This pivot toward a language of peoplehood among American Jewish religious leaders was bolstered by Israeli efforts to court American Christian support. Before the war, Israel’s negotiations with Christian institutions, writes historian Uri Bialer, had amounted to “two decades of tortuous political ties [which] . . . had brought Israel almost nothing but frustration.”²¹ The war clarified what Israelis had insisted from the start: the state of Israel was vital to Jewish identity. Yona Malachy defined “Judaism as [it] understands itself” as “the tripartite union of religion-people-land”—a definition implying Judaism’s fulfillment only in Israel.²² “To deny Israel’s right to live its corporate life as a nation is to deny its right to exist,” Israeli scholar R. J. Zvi Werblowsky warned a Christian gathering. “Israel’s life is bound up with its land, the ‘land of Zion and Jerusalem.’ ”²³

Jewish proponents of continuing the dialogue made clear that it could not proceed as before the June 1967 war. “The recognition of the tie between the Jewish people and their country must become the central theme of any future dialogue between Christianity and Jewry,” he warned.²⁴ For Uriel Tal, an Israeli academic and adviser to the government, the crisis of 1967 had started “the beginning of a new era in the intellectual and religious development of Judaism in the state of Israel.” Tal appealed to “Christians who wish to come to terms with the facts of Jewish—and Israeli—survival.”²⁵ Jewish leaders in both the United States and Israel articulated the outlines of a new Jewish self-understanding as the new framework for dialogue.

Other mid-level Israeli officials and advisers promoted this novel approach to interreligious relations. Yigael Ilsar and his successor, Michael Pragai, emphasized Jewish self-understanding as successive directors of Ecclesiastical Affairs for the Foreign Ministry (1966–1974). A cadre of scholars at the Hebrew University—R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, David Flusser, Shemaryahu Talmon, and Uriel Tal—advised the Israeli government on interreligious relations. Their roles increased with the continuing deficit of interreligious expertise in the government. As official delegates to Jewish-Christian meetings—“secret service men,” in the words of Talmon—it was the job of Israeli scholars to change minds through interreligious research.²⁶

The new demands for a more accommodating Christian attitude reached to the top of the Israeli government. Speaking to an audience of distinguished academics in honor of the archaeologist Nelson Glueck in 1970, Prime Minister Golda Meir recalled long theological arguments with her mother over the essence of Jewish identity. “I wanted very much to explain to her that everything ultimately comes from nature, that there is science and that science has laws.” Looking back, Meir recognized that such a view had limits at “the unexplainable, the ultimately unknowable.” Not only did “spirit” animate Jewish history, she explained, but the spirit was tied to the land. “The bond with this land is not just a spiritual bond” but “is rooted in the soil, in the simplest and most physical sense of the word.” Meir’s theologizing gave justification for Jewish demands that Christians accept a Jewish self-understanding to any future dialogue.²⁷

The Israeli government and the AJC converged on this message in the late 1960s. Michael Pragai, the Foreign Ministry’s director of ecclesiastical affairs, was particularly enthusiastic about its diplomatic possibilities. Beginning in 1970, he pushed for “institutionalization of Israeli representation” in future interreligious conferences, “both in terms of selecting the representative and providing instructions and funding.”²⁸ In addition to helping fund interreligious conferences in Israel, the Foreign Ministry managed to make Israeli scholars a permanent fixture in the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), a group formed after the war, with representatives of the five largest Jewish organizations with the aim of “interpreting Israel to the Christian community.”²⁹ The AJC (a founding member of the IJCIC), also expanded its efforts toward dialogue to “enhance, not abandon, the dialogue process in which we pioneered,” in the words of Philip E. Hoffman, the chairman of AJC’s Executive Board.³⁰

This convergence represented a major development in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. For the first time, the Israeli government began a programmatic outreach to Christian supporters of its policies. Defining the new Jewish self-understanding in terms of peoplehood and land helped build consensus around the political obligations of Jew and Christian alike. The claim that there existed an “inextricable interrelationship between empirical, or even political, reality and the land’s religious significance” drove American Jewish support for Israel, the Israeli government’s expanding interest in dialogue, and, in a development not wholly grasped by Jewish leaders at the time, an entirely new demographic of Christians.³¹

Evangelical Awakening

In the late 1960s, Jewish-Christian relations began to shift in response to the new Jewish self-understanding and perceived failures of dialogue. But not all was lost. “The generalization that ‘the Christians by and large were silent’ must be qualified by the documented evidence,” argued Tanenbaum in 1968.”³² He could point to a full-page ad on the eve of the war in the New York Times signed by Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King Jr., among others, calling on “our fellow Americans of all persuasions and groupings and on the [Johnson] administration to support the independence, integrity, and freedom of Israel.”³³ Individual endorsements did not make up for the apparent lack of institutional support, but Tanenbaum was convinced that “the dialogue process has helped Christian leadership to overcome the ancient myths and stereotypes about deicide[,] proselytizing, and the permanent worth and value of Judaism.”³⁴ The war had “put a severe strain on Jewish-Christian relations,” he admitted, but the solution was to refocus efforts, not abandon them.³⁵

Indeed, the war progressively shifted Jewish attention away from mainstream Protestant institutions and toward conservative evangelicals who had thus far been absent from the organized Jewish-Christian dialogue. Their lower profile helped evangelicals escape the charge of “silence” directed at “the Churches” after the 1967 war. The most publicized reactions to the war from fundamentalists and evangelicals celebrated the apparent fulfillment of biblical prophecy.³⁶ In a leading postwar editorial for Christianity Today, editor L. Nelson Bell exclaimed, “Did this just happen? One cannot help thinking that in all of this God was working out his own purposes, far above and beyond the capabilities of men or nations!”³⁷ On the campus of Biola College, which Yona Malachy visited on his American tour in 1967, the faculty celebrated “biblical prophecies relating to the fulfilment of Israel’s destiny” and “God’s eternal love for Israel [which] is abundantly delineated in the Holy Scriptures.”³⁸ When the AJC surveyed evangelical responses to the war, it included the example of Harold Sala, a young Pentecostal faith healer and radio broadcaster, who proclaimed after the war on Alaskan radio waves, “What has just taken place is consistent with what the Bible says will occur in the end of time preceding the second coming of Christ.”³⁹ Though hardly a high-profile representative, Sala indicated an ignored yet vast Christian community.

Understanding these new voices was at the heart of Malachy’s study tour to America. Steeped in the study of fundamentalism and the sparse record of pre-1967 American fundamentalist engagement with Israel, Malachy was circumspect about the tangible political influence of the new voices. “The Dispensationalists,” he observed, referring to the prophetically oriented evangelicals and fundamentalists, “treat Israel as a phenomenon possessing important prophetic significance. However, they find it difficult to regard the State of Israel, its policies and its development, as a tangible, literal fulfillment of the prophecies.” The distance between theology and political activism informed Malachy’s conclusions, which were not optimistic: “ ‘philo-Semitic’ and ‘Zionist’ belief now has a strictly eschatological significance,” he concluded, “and its sole mission is intensive evangelization among the Jewish people.” Though numbering in the millions and more politically engaged each day, dispensationalists seemed to Malachy to have little interest in political Zionist activism.⁴⁰

There were agents of change, however, who balanced prophetic zeal with political acumen. Consonant with Malachy’s conclusions, the “dispensationalists” most interested in political activism were, like G. Douglas Young, post-fundamentalist and reformed in their views on Jewish missions. Indeed, Young emerged from the war as a minor folk hero. On its new property straddling the line between East and West Jerusalem, Young’s institute sat in the war’s crossfire. During the fighting, Young and his students refused to evacuate and they supported the war effort, driving ambulances, serving meals to soldiers, and praying for Israel’s survival. The walls of the school became pockmarked with bullet holes, which were left unrepaired as a testament to fighting around the Old City. Young’s profile in Israel reached new heights; his institute was a manifestation of the interreligious relationship that took Jewish identity with the land as its starting point. Young exclaimed that his new campus “could not possibly be more central to both halves of the city.”⁴¹

Young and his institute became, in the eyes of the Israeli government, the new archetype of Christian support. Speaking in 1972, Malachy lamented that most Christian institutions in Israel had remained “in a sort of enclosed ghetto and have little or no contact with the Israel reality.” Israel needed “institutions where Christian clergy, students, and lay members live and study, not cloistered, but in an open atmosphere, with the desire to achieve a new understanding of Judaism.” There was only “one particular exception” to the sad state of affairs in Israel: “an American evangelical institution” headed by G. Douglas Young.⁴²

Malachy was not merely selecting a local example in Jerusalem to make his point. His words placed Young at the vanguard of Christian interpretations of Jewish self-understanding. “It is interesting to note that for historical reasons no American Liberal Church operates in Israel,” he said in a speech to an international group of Christian clergy. “Perhaps one of the reasons for the anti-Israel trend on the part of Protestant Liberal Churches in America lies in the fact that they have not been represented in the Holy Land for the past 100 years. It is therefore strange that the American Institute of Holyland [sic] Studies, a body of Evangelical Christians, should be the first group to try to establish a true understanding between Jews and Christians.”⁴³

Other Israeli officials also praised Young as an interreligious pioneer. Pinchas Lapide, a veteran Israeli diplomat to the Vatican and adviser to Prime Minister Golda Meir, highlighted the institute in 1968.⁴⁴ The head of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Zerach Warhaftig, told institute board member Arnold T. Olson on a visit to Israel in 1969, “The Israelis will never forget the faith that G. Douglas Young and his board members showed not only in God but in the future of Israel when they chose to move to Mount Zion within sight of and range of Jordanian guns [in March 1967].” Another official told Olson, “Evangelicals must get behind G. Douglas Young since he is doing the most effective work on Christian-Jewish relations that is done by anyone in the state of Israel.” Citing a conversation with R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, Olson recounted that “it is in this complete breakdown of confidence in the liberal community that Dr. Young and the Institute are being looked upon with new interest” among Israelis.⁴⁵

Young’s prominence paved the way for his expanded role in interreligious dialogue. In May 1968, he became secretary of the Jerusalem Rainbow Group, an ecumenical Jewish-Christian gathering that included the most notable religious scholars in the city.⁴⁶ In a sign of the new theological situation after the war, the Rainbow Group declared that Christians did not need to accept every detail of what “Jewish writers and thinkers claim regarding the Jewish reality conceived as a bond of Land, People, and Religion,” but Christians should “be on their guard not to dismiss out of hand this aspect of Jewish self-understanding.”⁴⁷ Young could not agree more. He also joined the new Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity and in 1971 offered to house the organization’s offices at his new campus. He joined the Israel Pilgrimage Committee, the AJC’s Christian Tourism Committee, and the advisory board for the Israel Interfaith Committee. The war had catapulted Young into the top echelon of Christian allies of Israel and gave him new influence among American evangelicals and in the broader interreligious dialogue scene.

Though now a footnote in most accounts of Christian Zionism, Young’s activity on behalf of Israel in these years has been nearly unrivaled in the annals of the movement since.⁴⁸ From 1967 through 1973, Young spoke as many as 200 times a month throughout Europe and North America, often under the auspices of Israel’s Ministry of Tourism.⁴⁹ In a two-month span in 1972, he logged more than 36,000 miles of travel, visited more than two dozen schools and seminaries, and toured Canada as a representative for the organization N³ Fighters Against Racial Hatred, also receiving that organization’s “Humanitarian of the Year” award.⁵⁰ In his talks, he targeted “anti-Israel bias” among the “church and press,” by which he meant mainline Protestant churches and mainstream press outlets. Churches, synagogues, rotary clubs, and college campuses welcomed him, often in tandem with a rabbi or local Jewish leader. His tireless schedule produced offbeat events, including “travel shows” featuring the popular Israeli folk song duo Hedva and David. Young would, one flyer in Houston promised, give his “unusual insights into Near Eastern affairs, historical and Biblical research, and progress in inter-faith relations,” before a concert of Jewish folk songs.⁵¹ Young also published editorials in the Jerusalem Post and evangelical magazines, including Eternity and Christianity Today.⁵² He advised the Foreign Ministry on vetting American evangelical leaders following the war, an activity that brought more prominent evangelicals into Israel’s orbit.⁵³

Sensitive to the priorities of Israel’s public diplomacy, Young couched his work in the language of Jewish self-understanding. The solution to Jewish-Christian relations “had to involve person-to-person interchange over a long period of time and only in Israel could it be done effectively, in the land of the Jews itself,” he argued.⁵⁴ He cited with approval Malachy’s assessment that before the war “the Christian-Jewish dialogue was based on a lot of bluff . . . Christians in the U.S. did not, nor do they, understand the Jews’ self-understanding of themselves and their interest in the land of Israel.” By educating students in Israel, Young hoped to teach the new Jewish self-understanding to the next generation of evangelicals. More than half of the institute’s lecturers, he happily cited, were Israeli scholars or government officials. The institute provided “a real basis and opportunity for [a student’s] own self-re-evaluation and for his coming to grips with the problem of the Jew’s self-evaluation and his interest in the land.”⁵⁵ Young’s efforts, he was proud to say, were at the forefront of postwar dialogue and reconciliation.

“The Burden and Concern of Billy Graham”

Support among students and evangelicals in Israel was one thing; sparking a transformation among American evangelical leaders was another. The task was too large for Israeli officials alone and required coordination with American Jewish partners, especially the American Jewish Committee with its investment in interreligious relations. Beginning immediately after the war, the Israeli government and the AJC approached American evangelical leaders. Tanenbaum observed that evangelicals were part of the group of Christians who understood “the threat” in 1967 “to the survival of the Jewish people of Israel with whom they identified in forthright and unambiguous ways.”⁵⁶ The shift in attention was rapid. “Before the six-day war,” Tanenbaum told the New York Times in 1970, “about 85 percent of the American Jewish Committee’s interfaith efforts had been directed to Catholics, and most of the remainder to Protestants. About 40 percent of the committee’s efforts this year [are] going to Evangelical Protestants.”⁵⁷

The AJC had cautiously approached Billy Graham for years. A few low-level meetings took place, but the prospect of a public gathering did not gain momentum until after the 1967 war.⁵⁸ In February 1968, Gerald Strober, a Presbyterian minister and adviser to the AJC on Christian affairs, met with Graham’s assistants to float the possibility of an official meeting.⁵⁹ Over the next four months, they planned a ninety-minute gathering with dozens of Jewish leaders in New York City to coincide with the first Baptist–Jewish Scholar’s Conference. Graham was not only the most visible evangelical in the United States but also a Southern Baptist who urged his denomination to engage with Jewish organizations. When they met in June, issues ranged from “Israel and the Middle East” to “Christian teaching and anti-Semitism” to “Proselytism, Conversion, Theology of the people of God.”⁶⁰ The scope highlighted vast differences between the two communities.

At this first meeting, Graham drew attention to the distinctly Jewish contributions to the Bible, noting two recent developments in evangelical theology: the new importance placed on the Old Testament for understanding the New Testament, and the revolution in Jesus studies that had brought new attention to his Jewish background. Reiterating his publicized comments from 1960, Graham recalled the roots of Christianity in Judaism. He also “mentioned his positive feeling for the State of Israel” and that “his daughter and son-in-law have committed their lives to Israel and will be working on a Moshav [farming community]” in the coming year. These personal ties to Israel impressed Tanenbaum, who offered the services of the recently relocated AJC office in Jerusalem to Graham’s daughter. Finally, Graham explained that God’s covenant with the Jewish people had not been superseded. He was no specialist on these issues, but Graham had absorbed enough to understand how significant this language was for Jewish-evangelical reconciliation.

Graham also elaborated on his political connections with Israeli and American leaders, recounting a recent “two-hour meeting with Golda Meir” and mentioning his constant private conversations with President Richard Nixon, who was “extremely sympathetic” to Israel. Throughout 1969 and 1970, Nixon’s attitude toward Israel was cool. The president garnered only 17 percent of the Jewish vote in the 1968 election and it was reported that he explicitly advised his policy staff to ignore domestic political factors when developing policy.⁶¹ It was in these years, however, that Graham was in his most active period as an adviser and confidant to Nixon. Meir, as part of the new effort to court evangelical support, sought to leverage Graham’s closeness to Nixon. At a low point in U.S.-Israeli diplomacy in March 1970, as the Nixon administration was reviewing a sale of jets to Israel, Meir called on Graham “to help us at this time, for I know how much you care for the land and people of Israel.” Telling Graham that Nixon was “your friend,” Meir saw in the preacher an approachable mediator with the president.⁶²

Americans would come to learn that Nixon and Graham shared antisemitic comments in the Oval Office—a striking contrast to Graham’s performance in New York City. The conversations captured on the White House tapes in 1972 revealed how Nixon (and, by silence or affirmation, Graham) regarded Israeli Jews such as Meir as “the best Jews,” who were pragmatic and “tough” in contrast to America’s “leftwing” Jewish community.⁶³ These conversations, and Graham’s role in them, were part of a complex picture of evangelical interreligious views. Graham’s dissonance between his public and private expressions revealed the narrow basis on which Jewish-evangelical reconciliation advanced in the 1960s: shared support for the state of Israel. The chasm between the evangelical community in Israel and American evangelical leadership was more than one of geography or national culture. Graham embodied the limited influence of the dialogue-oriented concepts in their early years of popularity.

Graham’s political star was rising, however, and these private utterances remained hidden. According to Lowell Streiker and Gerald Strober, who, as close observers of American religion and politics, predicted the rise of a new conservative majority in 1972, Graham was a representative for “31,000,000 conservative Protestants in America” and “Middle America.”⁶⁴ Graham, they wrote, “today stands in the closest proximity to the Presidency, to the majority of the nation’s Protestants, and to the great center of America’s social and political life.”⁶⁵ Confident in Nixon’s reelection, Streiker and Strober urged readers to see Graham as the spiritual leader of America’s “silent majority,” personifying the “mood of Middle America” as skeptical of big government and rapid changes to American society. But Graham was also “ahead of his constituency” on domestic issues that mattered to American Jews, especially race relations and bipartisanship (Graham was “friends with two Democrat presidents” before Nixon).⁶⁶ The combination of evangelical beliefs and moderate politics could bridge the gap between American Jews and evangelicals.

Graham highlighted Israel the next year with the release of His Land (1970), a documentary-musical produced by his own World Wide Pictures and filmed in Israel. A year into its running, hundreds of thousands of viewers had watched the film and more than ten thousand copies of its interreligious study guide, produced by the AJC, had been distributed.⁶⁷ The film was positively received in evangelical communities for its mix of biblical, historical, prophetic, and musical inspirations. The colorful, crisp footage of Israeli landscapes—from rocky Jerusalem hills to green horizons of the Galilee—provided a backdrop to the documentary, billed as “A musical journey to the soul of a nation.”⁶⁸ Cliff Barrows, a longtime musician for Billy Graham’s crusades, and Cliff Richard, the British rock-and-roll singer, co-hosted the film. While Barrows narrated the saga of Judeo-Christian history, Richard sang, including the titular song “His Land,” with the chorus:

Yes it is his land, all of it is
He stepped it off and marked it there
To be his earthly thoroughfare
And he blessed it with his hand
And as it blooms before our eyes
Just like an Eden paradise
The world will understand, this is his land

Between musical numbers, Barrows and Richard discussed the fulfillment of prophecies, gave glowing reviews of national life in Israel, and wondered at the natural beauty of the land. Even though the film was based on dispensational theology, the theme of Israel’s role in the End Times remained muted.⁶⁹ The film’s director, Jim Collier, explained its purpose: “If God would use any part of this picture as a gesture of love from a Christian to a Jew, it will be more than worthwhile.”⁷⁰ Barrows wrote that a signal goal of the film was to “tell the Jewish community across America and in other parts of the world how much they mean to us Christians, and how grateful we are for the heritage they have given us, and how important they are in the development and fulfillment of our Christian faith.” He cited Marc Tanenbaum and the AJC as particularly receptive to His Land’s message as an expression of “the burden and concern of Billy Graham” for interreligious reconciliation.⁷¹

His Land was released to the public at the same moment that the AJC leadership was searching for a post-1967 “interpretation of Israel to non-Jewish communities.”⁷² In February 1970, Strober, who had seen the film upon its release, suggested plans for a “special screening” intended for “a representative group of leadership individuals representing both the national and local [New York] Protestant communities” to be “coordinated by the AJC in cooperation with the Billy Graham organization.”⁷³ These showings generated good press. The New York Times reported on widespread “ecumenic praise,” citing Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, and Jewish leaders who gave positive reviews.⁷⁴ In response to questions about the film’s theological assumptions, Strober redirected attention to its virtues, assuring concerned Jews that “the film treats Jews in a most moving humane manner. . . . rather than misusing Jews, the film evidences a warm concern for Jewish life and values and as such contributes to Christian-Jewish understanding.”⁷⁵ The AJC’s study guide emphasized “Prophecy, the Bible, and You,” but it also offered a list of suggested readings by Marc Tanenbaum, G. Douglas Young, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, among other mainstays of the interreligious world.⁷⁶

So enthused was the AJC for the film that it organized showings for Jewish audiences. Strober did not have to convince Marc Tanenbaum, who had endorsed the film as “dramatic, warmly sympathetic . . . a moving documentary which communicates the humanity and living reality of the Jewish people, their struggles and achievements in Israel.”⁷⁷ Likewise, Israeli ambassador to the United States Yitzhak Rabin praised the film’s message of “love for the land of Israel and its people and the deep historic ties of the people of Israel and the land of the Bible.”⁷⁸ Christianity Today reported that Golda Meir, who attended a private screening in Jerusalem, “was visibly moved.” After the film, she “said quietly: ‘so many thanks for picturing our land as it is. I’ve never seen it so beautiful.’ ”⁷⁹ Through 1970–1971, the AJC encouraged synagogues to rent shortened versions of the film—fifty-four-minute cuts that removed the final personal appeal for viewers to place their faith in Jesus. Unlike the rest of the film, this “proselytizing” section ran against interreligious themes. World Wide Pictures, Graham’s distributor, encouraged the shortened version and produced reels for circulation, which were shown by Keren haYesod (United Israel Appeal) and the Jewish Agency office in Jerusalem.⁸⁰

Even in the face of criticism by Christian and Jewish detractors, His Land’s ability to spur interest among evangelicals, and curiosity from American Jews, signaled Graham’s potential for improving Jewish-evangelical relations.⁸¹ Already in 1969, he had received the Torch of Liberty Plaque from the Anti-Defamation League. In 1971, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the longtime promoter of moral monotheism and civic Judeo-Christianity, bestowed on Graham its International Brotherhood Award. Graham’s entrance into the interreligious scene was a coup for the AJC and Tanenbaum, who had banked much of their post-1967 efforts on finding new Christian allies. Graham himself would play a pivotal role in the coming decade and bring in his wake a cadre of enthusiastic leaders.

Israel and Evangelical Internationalism

Over the late 1960s, the interreligious relationship pioneered by G. Douglas Young, and extending to Graham and the AJC, reached other influential evangelicals as well. Arnold T. Olson, the longtime president of the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) and an early supporter of Young, was one of these figures. As the longest serving president of the Minneapolis-based EFCA, Olson oversaw the denomination’s expansion into more than twenty countries and its U.S. membership increase from 20,000 to 100,000.⁸²

Olson also helped promote Graham’s vision of a postwar evangelical internationalism, a biblically informed argument to extend American influence abroad, often through the partnership of state power, nongovernmental organizations, and informal religious networks.⁸³ “Ladies and gentlemen,” Graham belted out over the airwaves in 1952, “we have more than an idea, we have a person; we have a living leader; we have a way of life to offer the entire world.”⁸⁴ Through Graham’s sprawling network of institutions, ministries, and allied denominations, this international vision for American evangelicalism theologized the rise of America as a global power.⁸⁵ Evangelical internationalists shared views with other internationalists—pondering how best to exert American power and conduct the Cold War, promoting international cooperation, especially between non-communist countries, and supporting religious liberty.⁸⁶

It is in this vein that Olson crucially shaped evangelical attitudes toward Jews and Israel. In April 1967, just weeks before the outbreak of the June 1967 war, Olson traveled to Israel for the first time to visit Young’s institute. Young facilitated meetings with Israeli officials and introduced Olson to the Foreign Ministry. Olson recounted the trip in Inside Jerusalem: City of Destiny (1968), a travelogue and religio-political survey of Israel. The book became popular in evangelical circles and conveyed a sympathetic portrayal of Israeli society and a Christian account of the tense weeks leading up to the war.

Inside Jerusalem made the case for Israel’s importance to the Middle East, the Cold War, and American foreign policy. “One cannot localize this conflict,” Olson warned, “for war or peace in Jerusalem has its global repercussions.” Olson contrasted Israel’s tenuous alliance with the United States (subject to the whims of democratic elections) with the tight Arab-Soviet bloc. Arab recognition of Israel, “a solution to the Arab refugee problem with both sides involved in the negotiations,” and a “hands-off policy” by the United States and the Soviet Union for military support in the region all seemed out of reach because of Arab-Soviet intransigence. The “pro-Arab” position, he argued, was further than ever from recognizing Israel, and the increased Soviet supply of military aid to Egypt and Syria “forces other powers to assist Israel.”⁸⁷ Olson’s analysis gave way to a theological conclusion: “Peace, according to the Scriptures, will come to Jerusalem and thus to the world, only with the coming of the Prince of Peace.”⁸⁸

Indeed, the interreligious discourse Olson encountered in Jerusalem deeply informed his account. He pondered the meaning of the land of Israel, downplayed eschatology in his own “love” of the Jewish people, and met with Israeli scholars and government officials. “The time has come for Evangelicals to make an agonizing, honest and objective reappraisal of missionary methods, and even the motives of missionary work among the Jews,” he observed at one point.⁸⁹ In place of a traditional view, he offered the advice of “one of the leading scholars in the field of the history of Christianity” in Israel (most likely Israeli historian David Flusser) who answered that “Osmosis” was the key to evangelical-Jewish communication. “What did the devout Jewish scholar mean?” Olson asked his reader. “Did he imply the wall between the Jew and the Christian is porous? Did he mean that communication is a two-way process? Did he mean that we should listen as well as witness? Did he mean there is a place where Jew and Gentile can meet?” Olson slyly offered these possibilities but left the questions open, concluding that “the answer is as close as the nearest Bible.”⁹⁰ Reporting to the Foreign Ministry on Olson’s second visit in 1969, Young boasted that he had “furthered [Olson’s] education” and assured the Foreign Ministry that Olson had “a good understanding and attitude” about the Arab-Israeli conflict.⁹¹

As president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) from 1968 through 1970, Olson moved Israel closer to the center of evangelical institutional concerns. An architect of the merger of the Swedish and Norwegian-Danish Free Churches twenty years earlier, Olson always championed shared postwar evangelical ideals—shedding immigrant and fundamentalist particularities, fighting communism, promoting internationalism—as quintessentially American. After 1967, Israel was another unifying issue—at least Olson hoped it would be when he pushed the NAE to adopt its first statement on the Middle East. Though distilled by the interests of member denominations, the 1970 statement expressed the core evangelical internationalist commitment to bring the Bible to bear on international issues, acknowledging “the rights of all nations in the Middle East, both Israeli and Arab, to exist as sovereign nations from the perspective of biblical and historical positions.”⁹² If less than a ringing endorsement for a pro-Israel orientation, the statement signaled the state’s place in shaping the NAE’s understanding of evangelical international responsibilities.

Evangelical internationalism also reached the Southern Baptist Convention, where a mobilizing conservative wing incorporated Israel into its agenda. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the largest church in America, First Baptist Church in Dallas, and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from 1968 through 1970, spearheaded outreach to Israel after 1967.⁹³ A religious and social conservative born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas, Criswell had thundered for decades from his lectern about the prophetic significance of Israel. “God says, not one time, God says many times,” Criswell preached on June 11, 1967, “that the consummation of the age will find its denouement in Palestine . . . around the tiny state of Israel.”⁹⁴ Criswell fused this prophetic fascination with meeting Israeli political leaders and sponsoring civic-religious projects, from an annual “Jewish Fellowship Week” with Dallas-area synagogues to touring and speeches in Jerusalem.⁹⁵

After 1967, Criswell added to his prophetic interest his firsthand experience of the state’s industrial and military power, understanding the U.S.-Israeli relationship as a key to both countries’ success. On a visit in October 1968—part of an Israeli program suggested by Robert Lindsey to send Southern Baptist ministers to Israel—Criswell met with Saul Colbi of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, who gave him “comprehensive information on the situation of the Christian communities in Israel and especially about the Baptists.”⁹⁶ A longtime financial supporter of Lindsey, Criswell was eager to expand relations between the SBC and the Israeli government. Over the coming months, the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Tourism brainstormed how to “bring a real statement of political weight” from Criswell’s visit. The idea of a “Baptist Forest” sponsored by funds from Criswell soon took hold.⁹⁷ Israel’s goal, wrote Yaakov Hess, the consulate general in Houston, should be “to bring all possible concretization of the current wave of positive attitudes in the Baptist Church in this region [the South].”⁹⁸

This strategy, spearheaded by the consulate, was evidence of a new Israeli public diplomacy effort targeting American evangelicals. “The feeling [in the Houston Consulate] is now that [the strategy] should be done on two levels,” Hess wrote to his superiors. “First, by establishing goodwill among Baptist friends of Israel. Second, by a public statement at the Southern Baptists conference held in New Orleans in June next year.”⁹⁹ Symbolic gestures and public statements proliferated. In June 1969, the Israeli government sent Yitzhak Rabin to speak at the 112th meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Not afraid to join the fray of American politics, Rabin cultivated relationships with constituencies who benefited Israel, especially those who supported Nixon.¹⁰⁰ Rabin offered the SBC a “Proclamation” by Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir, announcing a new “World Baptist Forest” to be planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) near Nazareth. The practice of donating money to the JNF was common among American Jews, but now a flood of money came from conservative Christian groups.

The project was a minor gesture, but it held significance for Criswell and the Israeli government as a sign of American evangelical solidarity with Israel. After delivering Meir’s proclamation, Rabin joined the Southern Baptist leaders for a reception in his honor. Lee Porter, the vice president of the convention, thanked the avowedly secular Rabin for sharing in the Baptists’ “fellowship” and promised that Israel’s generous work with the Baptist Forest “will mean much to the future relationship between our two people.”¹⁰¹ The stakes were clear to the new consulate general in Houston, Benjamin Bonney, who explained the Israeli government’s understanding at one critical juncture: “It must be understood that the Baptists are willing to be courted by Israel and respond beautifully . . . politically and human relations wise.”¹⁰² Through public displays of Jewish-evangelical solidarity, Bonney believed, the Baptists could be brought into the world of pro-Israel politics.

Criswell was the tip of the spear of Southern Baptist engagement with Jews and Israel after 1967. While Israel courted Criswell, the AJC deepened its ties with Southern Baptist seminaries—key influencers in Tanenbaum’s understanding of evangelical politics. In the late 1960s, the convention remained theologically moderate, balancing liberal- and conservative-leaning factions; Criswell’s presidency was the most recent win for conservatives.¹⁰³ Remarkably, both sides of the divide embraced programs of interreligious cooperation with Jews. If it was not a project like Criswell’s Baptist Forest, then it was dialogue sessions between Jewish and moderate Baptist theologians.¹⁰⁴ Will Kramer, a professor of Jewish culture at San Fernando Valley State College who attended a 1969 meeting, recounted that “Christians and Jews alike became comrades in the shared community of Israel and Christendom.”¹⁰⁵ Extending this strategy, in December 1970 the AJC cosponsored a “Dialog of the Evangelical Theological Society with representatives from the Jewish community,” led by Tanenbaum at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.¹⁰⁶

The first Southern Baptist condemnations of racial antisemitism also emerged in this period. In 1970, North Carolina’s state convention approved a statement drafted by Elmo Scoggin, a veteran of Baptist missions work in Israel who spoke fluent Hebrew. By 1972, the statement made its way to the general Southern Baptist Convention, which voted that it was “opposed to any and all forms of anti-Semitism; that it declares anti-Semitism unchristian; that we messengers to the Convention pledge ourselves to combat anti-Semitism in every honorable, Christian way.”¹⁰⁷ The statement was hailed by Solomon Bernards, the ADL’s director of interreligious cooperation, as “another milestone in Christian-Jewish relations.”¹⁰⁸

Typifying the new embrace of interreligious cooperation, the evangelical magazine Eternity’s August 1967 issue featured G. Douglas Young on “Lessons We Can Learn from Judaism.”¹⁰⁹ Young predicted a Christian “awakening all over the world, a desire to see the values that God enabled Jews to perpetuate, the values He intends to keep on using.” From his vantage point in Jerusalem, Young observed, “While this may not yet be clear to most conservative Protestants in the United States, it is inescapable to those who live in Israel.”¹¹⁰ This outside perspective—viewing the United States from Jerusalem—both advanced and was advanced by the evangelical internationalist spirit of the 1960s.

Hardening Boundaries

Even as Jewish-evangelical relations softened after 1967, other boundaries began to harden.¹¹¹ The bonds of sympathy, belonging, and understanding that were created also brought to the foreground the limitations of the new dialogue and a shared opposition to Muslim inclusion. Amid Middle East and community tensions, how far did the post-1967 circle of acceptance extend? With Jews and evangelicals offering gestures of reconciliation, and with the advance of Israeli interests into theological discussions, the question of belonging gained inescapable political stakes.

For American Jews and evangelicals, the boundaries extended only to those that adopted an Israel-centered Jewish self-understanding. As the AJC’s Judith Banki observed in 1968, “Disagreement between Christians and Jews on specific solutions to the Middle East problem is not the heart of the matter.” More central was “whether support of Israel’s survival—the survival of the population as well as the juridical state—constituted a clear-cut moral commitment.”¹¹² The question had political valences, but Banki, like Tanenbaum, believed there was a fundamental theological and moral dimension that would shape politics. The realignment of dialogue favored a new type of evangelical engagement with Israel, but it also led to a hardening of differences with other Christians and Muslims.

A few mainline Protestant and Catholic liberal Christian Zionists continued to stand within the circle of acceptability. Franklin Littell and interfaith power couple A. Roy and Alice Eckardt, disciples of Reinhold Niebuhr and critics of Christian supersessionism, made their allegiance to Israel well known after the war. Writing in the liberal Christianity Century, the Eckardts contrasted Israel’s “yearning for peace” with “the Arab world [which] is caught between the drive to avenge what it sees as the injustices of more than a generation and the desire to uphold the classic moral norm of live-and-let-live.”¹¹³ Perceiving a wide gap between lay Protestant support for Israel and more circumspect clergy, Littell founded the grassroots organization Christians Concerned for Israel in 1970, which also appealed to pro-Israel evangelicals like G. Douglas Young and Arnold Olson, two early members.¹¹⁴ With help from the AJC and Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Littell promoted a liberal Christian Zionism that merged Christian reflections on the meaning of the Holocaust with a call for the United States to intervene on behalf of Israel.¹¹⁵ Catholic supporters of Israel spoke in similar terms. Monsigneur John M. Oesterreicher (a Jewish convert) and Rose Thering, both at Seton Hall University’s Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies, supplied theological arguments for Israel and represented the church’s theological reformist wing at Vatican II. These mainline Protestants and Catholic leaders supported a unified Jerusalem under Israeli control and a land-for-peace formula, paying deference to Israeli-defined interests and policies.¹¹⁶ They comprised what Tanenbaum called the “theological vanguard” of Christian thinking, even as they were criticized within their own communities.¹¹⁷

Political developments after the war worked against the expansion of Jewish interreligious relations past these few liberal Christians and new evangelical partners. Notably, the post-1967 dialogue included no Arab Christians. The Arab League’s Khartoum Resolution in September 1967 that rejected any negotiation or acknowledgment of Israel short-circuited any possibility of religious dialogue. The Israeli government helped deepen the divide by annexing East Jerusalem in July 1967. In the disputed territories, Arab Christian leaders refused to meet with Jewish or Israeli representatives. “With the Arab Christians a dialogue is impossible for many reasons,” remarked Werblowsky when asked about the lack of Arabs in the Jerusalem Rainbow Group.¹¹⁸ The problems included widely divergent politics, theologies, and few Arab Christian volunteers. Father Elias Chacour, an Israeli Arab priest in Galilee who did join official dialogue efforts, saw things differently. He placed blame on “the European Christians” who “have fallen in love with the myth of Israel—not the real State of Israel.”¹¹⁹ The “religion-people-land” formula for interreligious cooperation was untenable to Christians who did not subscribe to the theological underpinning that justified a Jewish state in Palestine.

After 1967, American Jews and Israelis cast further doubt on the possibility of Arab participation, promoting a conspiracy theory that Arab states were conducting a massive propaganda campaign to undermine Christian support for Israel. “One of the most insidious developments which threaten to undermine much of the progress which has been made in Jewish-Christian relations,” Tanenbaum warned the New York chapter of the AJC in 1969, “is a covert, unprecedented campaign on the part of foreign Arab propagandists to penetrate the entire institutional systems of the American Catholic and Protestant churches with propaganda that is not only blatantly anti-Israel and anti-Zionist but also, in many cases, virulently anti-Semitic.” Tanenbaum saw a “systematic, comprehensive, well-financed strategy” that was headquartered in Lebanon and stretched to Arab information agencies across Europe and the United States. It reached into “world and national interdenominational bodies in Christendom, individual denominations, church leaders, especially in the overseas missions fields and foreign affairs commissions, mass media and Christian official publications.”¹²⁰ Uriel Tal, upon reading a transcript of Tanenbaum’s speech, praised it as uncovering “one of the most significant aspects in the historical development of contemporary inter religious relations.” Proponents of dialogue “at the Hebrew University, the Israel Interfaith Committee and the Rainbow Group (not to speak of the Foreign office) were all likewise impressed” with Tanenbaum’s analysis.¹²¹

With the boundaries of acceptance cutting through Christian communities, it was no surprise that the entirety of the Muslim world was also excluded. This was not solely the fault of Israel or its partisans. The unwillingness of Muslim clerics to meet with Jewish and Christian leaders had already quashed any real possibility for dialogue. But the new situation left even less room to maneuver. Many Jews and Christians interpreted the Arab-Israeli conflict “not simply as a clash of nationalisms,” in the words of one Christian participant, but as a dispute with a fundamentally “cultural-religious character” pitting Jews and Christians against Muslims.¹²² Judeo-Christian language unified Jewish and Christian attitudes and drew stark lines separating Islam, further reinforcing the sense of inevitable conflict with the Muslim world.

Because of the intimate linkage between Judeo-Christian identity and the state of Israel, anti-Zionism carried religious significance for Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel. Yona Malachy warned that after 1967, “Anti-Semitism, out of fashion since 1945, took on a new form in the guise of anti-Zionism and hostility to Israel.”¹²³ Those in agreement pointed to anti-Zionist statements by Arab state leaders, anti-Israel communist propaganda, and a buoying Islamic antisemitism.¹²⁴ Sayyid Qutb, the Islamist activist and theorist, wrote disparagingly of Jews before he was executed by the Egyptian state in 1966. His writings presaged a growing antisemitic and anti-Zionist fixation as a feature of radical Islamic politics.¹²⁵ The spread of Wahhabi Islamic teachings through support by Saudi Arabian charities, buttressed by oil revenues, further entrenched these views.¹²⁶ Still, into the 1970s the specter of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism remained on the margins of Jewish-evangelical reconciliation.

With each area of concern—supersessionism, anti-Zionism, racial antisemitism, a clash of religions—the boundaries of the Jewish-Christian dialogue hardened, and with them the outlines of Israeli public diplomacy. In addition to the positive adoption of shared views on Israel’s significance, those inside the circle could find solidarity in their distrust of Arab leaders, Palestinians, and Islam. Ultimately, there were decisive winners and losers in the realignment of American Christianity toward Israel after 1967. Evangelicals sympathetic to the new Jewish self-understanding of Israel found themselves at the intersection of Israel’s public diplomacy and Jewish-Christian dialogue. In just a few short years, evangelicals, American Jewish organizations, and the Israeli government had forged a new language and politics. Apocalyptic energy fueled some evangelicals, but so too did the new logic of Jewish-Christian relations that reified Jewish historical claims to the land and cast Christians as covenantal partners in the pursuit of Israeli security. These arguments reached the highest echelons of evangelical leadership in the years after the June 1967 war.

CHAPTER 5

Sightseeing Is Believing

WHEN ROY W. GUSTAFSON, self-proclaimed “expert on Bible prophecy and the Middle East,” landed at Lod Airport in January 1970 as the head of a Holy Land tour group, he set foot in Israel for the thirty-ninth time.¹ Over the next decade, Gustafson led fifty more Holy Land tours and spoke to audiences across North America and Europe. But the trip in early 1970 was special. In appreciation for his tourism work, the government awarded Gustafson the Israel Government Tourism Office’s “Terra Sancta Award.” Later that same year, he received the “Jerusalem Medallion” from the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek.² The public recognition pointed to Gustafson’s role in increasing the profile of the Holy Land among evangelicals. Gustafson’s own outspoken support of the state of Israel, both before and after the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967, proved to Israelis and Christian Zionists alike that tourism, properly conducted to advance Israeli interests, had great potential.

Born in 1917 in North Easton, Massachusetts, Gustafson attended the fundamentalist Florida Bible Institute, befriending his classmate, Billy Graham, who would hire him in 1958. The New Englander became a surrogate father to Graham’s eldest son, Franklin, who in 1974 had a conversion experience on a rooftop in Jerusalem with Gustafson at his side.³ Under the auspices of Graham’s ministry, Gustafson became a regular fixture on the crusade circuit. With no special training in the Middle East, his knowledge came from firsthand experience and dispensational theology. Held together, these sources worked together in a miraculous way, Gustafson insisted, to strengthen the bond between Christians and the land that birthed their faith. “For most of my life as a believer, I had taken much of what I read in my Bible as matter of fact, or by simple faith,” he recalled. Leading tours—“riding, climbing, walking, and crisscrossing the Bible lands”—brought the Bible into focus. “To move up close, and even on occasion to hold some things in your hands, is to look at these same truths [of the Bible] through a microscope. The sights, sounds, smells, and feelings are all so important.”⁴ A bespectacled, jovial, and senior associate near the top of Graham’s ministry, Gustafson was a leading figure in the effort to introduce evangelicals to the Holy Land after 1967, to more intimately bind “Bible-believing Christians” to the modern state of Israel.⁵

Gustafson was part of a network of Christian Zionist organizers, tour promoters, guides, and advertisers who worked with the Israeli government after 1967 to expand evangelical interest in Israel through Holy Land tourism.⁶ This effort was built on an assumption that cultural diplomacy—travel to Israel—provided an avenue toward political mobilization.⁷ A part of Israel’s hasbara outlook, cultural diplomacy depended on a less direct and more subtle adoption of Israeli political ideas through cross-cultural experiences.⁸ Both the state and Christian advisers scrambled to capitalize on the rush of tourists after the June 1967 war. The marketing, literature, and routes of evangelical Holy Land tourism were shaped by Gustafson’s tagline: “In His Land Seeing Is Believing.” The expansion of tourism after the war signaled an unprecedented opportunity to bridge the cultural and political chasm between Israel and American evangelicals; to lay the groundwork for a politically organized Christian Zionist movement.

Christian Zionists like Roy Gustafson and G. Douglas Young ran headlong into the complex relationship between politics and tourism. Tourism as cultural diplomacy has often failed to produce the desired results. In Israel the problem was exacerbated by the religious motives of many Christian tourists.⁹ Unlike other countries, such as Great Britain or Japan, where the government shepherded tourists to national historical sites, Israel provided access to a sacred Christian landscape. Christians were drawn there for a variety of religious, political, cultural, and personal reasons.¹⁰ Stoking evangelical interest in Holy Land tourism, and connecting tourism to a political agenda, was complicated, even as the Israeli government now controlled the key sites of interest.

This challenge defined the cooperative relationship between Israel’s Ministry of Tourism and Christian Zionists in the late 1960s. The Ministry of Tourism relied on the expertise of Christian Zionist advisers and the industry of evangelical tour organizers, guides, marketers, and hospitality providers. The ministry acted as a gatekeeper, promoting familiar evangelical leaders and sidelining those who fell outside its political goals. Longtime evangelical allies helped marketing firms and government ministries develop strategies for Holy Land tourism, creating the Christian Zionist pitches to evangelical tourists: Israel as the homeland of Judaism and Christianity; the modern state of Israel as a sacred expression of biblical prophecy; Israel as a unique site of interreligious reconciliation. In marketing material, in religious tracts, and in guiding the tours themselves, Christian Zionists embarked on a mass education of evangelicals through tourism.

By the early 1970s, it was clear to the Israeli government and Christian advisers that tourism messaging would not in itself spark mass political change. The political meanings that tourists took from their experiences were unpredictable. This was nowhere more apparent than at the Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy in June 1971, the largest Christian Zionist gathering in Israel to that point. A brainchild of evangelical tour promoters and G. Douglas Young, the Jerusalem conference was meant to facilitate an evangelical political and theological consensus as the basis for Christian Zionist political action. The event combined Holy Land tourism with a quintessential evangelical gathering: the prophecy conference. Yet even in the event’s planning stages, it was clear there would be no evangelical consensus.

Instead of teaching tourists to become Christian Zionists, Holy Land tourism in the crucial years of 1967–1971 gave visitors a reservoir of experiences that could be constructed and reconstructed into a variety of political or nonpolitical applications. From the promise to “walk where Jesus walked” to identifying Israeli neighborhoods and government buildings as sacred sites in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, emotional and spiritual appeals were embedded in post-1967 evangelical tourism literature. Yet for all its variety, Holy Land tourism became the bedrock of a Christian Zionist subculture and supplied leaders with the words, images, and metaphors to make sentimental appeals for support. The legacy of Holy Land tourism would continue to define the Christian Zionist movement long after the early 1970s. Its fusion of emotional, religious, and political themes expanded Christian Zionism’s appeal, providing for a popular movement of evangelical Christians to share in a common experience. As the Christian Zionist movement expanded in the 1970s, one of its engines of growth was Holy Land tourism.

Israeli Outposts

Since the eighteenth century, romantic images of Jerusalem and biblical sites have flourished in American popular culture.¹¹ In the early twentieth century, firsthand accounts of Zionist settlement, Arab-Jewish violence, and life in the new state of Israel continued to flow from the pens of travelers, missionaries, and humanitarian workers. Yet only with the advent of commercial air travel and the rapid increase in middle-class income after World War II did most Americans entertain the prospect of touring the Holy Land.¹²

Israel’s official statistics bear out increasing tourist interest after 1948. In that first year of record-keeping, fewer than 5,000 visitors entered war-torn Israel. But by 1963, more than 200,000 visitors a year were traveling to Israel, making tourism a major sector of the state’s economy.¹³ Tourism was both a numbers game and a prime opportunity to shape foreign opinion of Israel. Early Zionist organizers in Palestine knew this and promoted political and ideological goals through constructed travel experiences.¹⁴ But in contrast to the disaggregated efforts of Zionist tourism in the 1920s and 1930s, Israeli statehood in 1948 provided centralized planning for Holy Land tourism to forward the new state’s economic and diplomatic interests.

Attracting Christian tourists was only a secondary concern for the new state. That most Christian holy sites were located in Transjordan (changed to Jordan in 1949), which controlled Jerusalem’s Old City and Bethlehem from 1948 through 1967, dampened Israeli expectations. Early official Israeli publications about holy sites show a clear deferral over Christian matters to local religious leaders.¹⁵ Israel provided access to a limited number of Christian holy sites on its side of the Green Line, but the state rarely marketed or contracted with local communities to boost tourism in those areas. The Ministry of Tourism classified Christians as “pilgrims [tsalianim]”—travelers with religious motivations—to distinguish them from “tourists [tayarim],” which included leisure and other commercial travel. As designated pilgrims, Christian groups were encouraged to travel the land with their own tour guides, stay in Christian accommodations, and visit sites related to their traditions, away from the paths of Jewish tours and Zionist youth groups, the two largest contingents of early statehood tourists.

By the late 1950s, however, Christians from Western Europe and the United States composed the second-largest demographic of tourists to Israel. In these years, Catholics dominated the numbers because of their infrastructure and institutional connections. Protestant study tours, prophecy tours, and religious conferences also found their way to Israel, but they varied widely in size and length of time in country. Baptist groups intermittently visited Israel, such as in 1955, when more than 1,500 clergy arrived as a leg of the Baptist World Alliance Conference in London.¹⁶ In 1961, Jerusalem hosted the Sixth World Pentecostal Conference, attracting over 1,000 Pentecostals.¹⁷ These large gatherings, though aiding Israel’s tourism sector with a surge of activity, stretched the industry to its limits without providing a consistent market.¹⁸ Rising transportation and tourism standards through the 1960s, however, made the prospect of more reliable American evangelical tourism possible with the cost of an average Holy Land tour dropping from 30 to 11 percent of an average American middle-class annual salary, from 1955 through 1965.¹⁹

To capitalize on the new accessibility of Holy Land tourism to Southern Baptists in particular, the Israel Government Tourist Office (IGTO), an official arm of the Ministry of Tourism, opened an office in Atlanta in 1965—its first foray into the Bible Belt. With offices in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the IGTO established an Atlanta branch to coordinate tourism and public relations in eleven Baptist-heavy states, stretching from North Carolina to Texas.²⁰ Among the new office’s top priorities was to attract, in the words of its first director, Amnon Gil-Ad, the “highly religious lower income bracket level” of the South that could now afford to travel to Israel.²¹ The Southern Baptist missionary presence in Israel was the only notable existing point of contact for Israel; for most Baptists, the Holy Land remained an obscure and exotic destination.

In Atlanta, Gil-Ad and the IGTO began by making inroads with local religious leaders, especially pastors. The IGTO prioritized Baptist ministers who could organize groups to lead without direct Israeli involvement. “It has been proven that there is no need to bother with the masses as long as we have Ministers who are willing to work and lead groups,” Gil-Ad wrote to his superiors in Jerusalem.²² Cultivating friendly clergymen would become a preferred strategy for the Ministry of Tourism and Israel’s public diplomacy in the United States writ large.

Existing missionary contacts in Israel played a critical role in the government’s initial outreach to the South.²³ Even before the IGTO expanded to Atlanta, the Israeli government turned to Baptist missionaries for advice. “We are already being asked by the Ministry of Religion to consider what we can do to bring thousands of evangelicals and Baptists to Israel in 1958,” the mission’s annual report glowed.²⁴ A year later, Mennonite missionaries Roy Kreider and Paul Swarr founded Sharon Tours, a Christian tourism agency backed by Israeli businessmen. “We envisioned pilgrimage tours to biblical sites, highlights in church history, and of the living church in the Land today,” recalled Kreider.²⁵ The management board consisted of six Christian organizational members and two local investors. Sharon Tours soon became a model for Christian tour agencies in Israel.

Southern Baptist missionary Robert Lindsey, who was in Wake Forest, North Carolina, on furlough in 1966, appeared on the Atlanta office’s radar because he was a well-connected Southern Baptist and a known quantity: “an American with experience, interest and love for Israel.”²⁶ By April 1966, Lindsey and the Ministry of Tourism hashed out an extensive plan for increasing Southern Baptist tourism to Israel. Lindsey developed an organization, the Bible Lands Study Association, with the purpose “of promoting large-scale tourism to the Old City and Israel.”²⁷ With benchmarks of “two or three thousand Baptist pilgrims per year” by 1970, Lindsey imagined the association helping Israel’s image in the United States and “actively involving Baptist pastors and lay people in the life of the churches in Israel.”²⁸ From August to November 1966, Lindsey traveled to Georgia, Missouri, and his home state of Oklahoma to promote tourism among Baptist congregations. The new association organized tour groups beginning with Lindsey’s hometown First Baptist Church of Norman, Oklahoma. By May 1967, Gil-Ad and Lindsey had sent more than 11,000 pamphlets and brochures to Southern Baptist ministers.²⁹ Among others, they attracted W. A. Criswell, who led a large group from his First Baptist Church in Dallas.

The June 1967 war appeared to solve Israel’s need to stimulate tourism to Israel. Though the government’s decision in July 1967 to annex East Jerusalem drew the ire of the international community, tourism rose from 400,000 visitors in 1968 to more than 1,000,000 a decade later, with American evangelicals the fastest growing Christian demographic.³⁰ The war also shifted the IGTO’s strategy for stimulating tourism in the regional and denominational market of Southern Baptists to the larger market of “evangelicals [ha-evanglistim].” The umbrella term began to appear more frequently in government analysis, grouping Southern Baptists with other conservative Protestants and nondenominational churches. The shift was the harbinger of a conceptual change in the Israeli government’s attitude toward American supporters. Israeli observers understood Southern Baptists and (more directly) evangelical supporters like Billy Graham, G. Douglas Young, and Arnold Olson working within a larger parachurch, interdenominational community of “evangelicalism.” The IGTO, like American news outlets and pollsters, increasingly interpreted “evangelicalism” as a community comparable to mainline Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.³¹

The Israeli shift to “evangelicals” after 1967 was first visible in the Ministry of Tourism, but it soon permeated other government thinking as well. A new “three year plan” by the IGTO and Ministry of Tourism’s North American headquarters in New York City relied on extensive market research from the American public relations firm Allerton, Berman, & Dean (AB&D)—polling that informed the government’s broader understanding of Americans. “The major part of Israel tourism,” the report explained, “is currently fed by Jews who are emotionally involved with the destination and evangelical Christians who are attracted to the Land of Jesus.” Because of simmering violence in the Middle East, these were the only dependable demographics after the June 1967 war.³² Grappling with this shift, the Ministry of Tourism redoubled its efforts to understand the motives behind evangelical interest in the Holy Land.

The IGTO reported on “20,000,000 Evangelical Protestants in the U.S.” who were waiting to be galvanized. These Americans were “so involved with the life of Jesus that given free choice they would prefer to visit Jerusalem then [sic] visit Rome or Paris.”³³ This number—similar to the one cited by the AJC’s Gerald Strober two years later as the number of followers of Billy Graham—magnified the potential influence of the evangelical market. Facts on the ground lent credence to that number. Evangelicals passing through Israel had increased to 20,000 in 1970, the first year the category was divided from “Protestants” in government documents. The IGTO estimated that by 1974 it could attract at least 60,000 evangelicals per year.³⁴

The political potential of evangelical Holy Land tourism was immense. In the words of Anglican Canon Peter Schneider, an adviser to the Israeli government and friend of G. Douglas Young, Israel was located geographically and metaphorically at “the nerve ends of the Jewish-Christian relationship.”³⁵ Unifying the evangelical world on a pro-Israel agenda was ambitious, but the rapid advances in Holy Land tourism after 1967 looked promising. Young wanted a political movement to “strengthen the ties between Israel and evangelicals around the world as well as serve as an inspiration [sic] rallying point for Christians from the West.”³⁶ Tourism, he gambled in the summer of 1971, was the quickest route to his goal.

“A Historic Opportunity”

The Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy, held June 15–18, 1971, was the culmination of Israeli and Christian Zionist efforts to expand Holy Land tourism beginning in the early 1960s. As a gathering of almost 1,500 evangelical tourists, many attending as part of larger travel packages, the conference relied on the infrastructure, marketing, and organizational resources of the expanded Holy Land tourism industry. They met in June 1971 in Jerusalem’s largest conference center, Binyanei Ha’uma, for what one of its organizers, Carl Henry, claimed was “the largest Christian gathering in the Holy Land since the state of Israel was founded in 1948.”³⁷ Before and after the gathering, these evangelicals embarked on Holy Land tours, offering a visible testament to the new American interest in the region. G. Douglas Young, who hosted the main events, described it as the “first conference of its kind since the Jerusalem conference of A.D. 50 described in [the book of] Acts.”³⁸ Tributes to its historic nature aside, the conference was notable with evangelical attendees from more than thirty countries and five continents. The Israeli government hoped to attract “Protestants of many varieties,” but it targeted the “Bible Belt of America [HaGorat Ketvey HaKodesh shel Artsot HaBrit],” as the Foreign Ministry described the South and Southwest regions of the United States.³⁹ For four days, evangelicals swarmed Jerusalem’s Christian holy sites, enriched Israel’s tourism industry, and drew international attention as a new constituency interested in Middle East politics.

Planning for the conference began a year earlier, when an evangelical marketer and tourism promoter, Gaylord Briley, approached Young with the idea of a conference to boost evangelical tourism to Israel and to rally “premillennialist support for Israel.”⁴⁰ Briley’s sense of economic and political opportunity exemplified the approach of Holy Land tourism since 1967. Young and Briley saw eye-to-eye on the potential for a conference. Ideally, it would combine financial and ideological interests and serve as a turning point for evangelicals to display in political terms their love for Israel.⁴¹ Briley and Young believed tourism was an important step toward politicizing evangelicals, and the conference served as an attractive rally for ministers and their congregations to visit Israel, many for the first time.

As an event chiefly orchestrated by Young, the conference carried with it grand expectations. Young and his allies hoped to achieve some sort of consensus out of the conference to form a grassroots evangelical pro-Israel organization. In pitching the gathering, Young argued that there was “a need for an effective united testimony concerning the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of the age” that facilitated “Israel’s importance to Christianity [to] be expressed with a united voice.”⁴² The practice of large, consensus-building prophecy conferences had deep roots in American evangelicalism. Since the nineteenth century, evangelicals and fundamentalists had hosted prophecy conferences to seek agreement on biblical interpretation and its application in areas of evangelization, church leadership, and politics. After 1967, the allure of this time-honored tradition increased with the prospect of meeting in Jerusalem, the undisputed capital of prophetic speculation. So excited was Wilbur Smith, one of the slated speakers in 1971, that he held out hope its impact would be the most significant “since the great conference at Moody Bible Institute, in the spring of 1914”—an event Smith attended as a twenty-year-old, and which featured many leaders of the fundamentalist movement gathered on the eve of the outbreak of World War I.⁴³

But neither Briley nor Young held enough gravitas to organize an event on the scale they wanted. Briley, the consummate entrepreneur, sought to “careful[ly] seat the placement for [the conference] into competent, better known hands.”⁴⁴ He approached Carl Henry, one of the most prominent evangelical theologians in the United States, whom Briley contacted after convincing W. A. Criswell, then president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Harold Ockenga, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, to lend their names to the calling committee. Briley remained more interested in the publicity and tourism aspects of the conference and did not seem to grasp the problems of splitting responsibility between Young, the activist in Jerusalem, and Henry, the theologian in Chicago. Yet Henry’s willingness to join was hard to pass up. His name recognition and close ties to Billy Graham bolstered the possibility that the conference could be “the biggest in Israel’s history to date.”⁴⁵

Conference planning began in April 1970 by two committees: an American committee with more resources to attract speakers and attendees, and an Israeli committee made up of evangelicals in Israel and Israeli government officials to carry out the practical tasks of organization. Henry led the American committee while Young headed the Israeli committee. As a sign of things to come, they immediately disagreed over the titular topic of the conference: prophecy. Henry did not believe the state of Israel or the Jewish people had a unique role to play in the prophetic time line aside from mass conversion to Christianity. In this, he represented evangelicals who had rejected all or parts of dispensational theology since the 1940s. Henry opposed arguments based on prophecy and Young’s favorite notion that Christians owed Jews a historical debt for past injustices. Fundamentally, Henry wanted evangelical energy surrounding prophecy poured into missions. He disliked the tendency of dispensationalists to focus on Israel at the expense of evangelical unity and global missions.⁴⁶

It soon became evident that Henry had agreed to help organize the conference not out of enthusiasm but out of a growing dread that evangelicals would be too closely associated with apocalyptic prophecy belief if the conference was left in the hands of dispensationalists. He had grave doubts about Briley, writing privately that the entrepreneur represented “a group of eager-beaver evangelical promoters of tour travel” who, on their own, would likely organize a conference “tragic for the Evangelical witness, for the Church in the modern world, and for Christian-Jewish relations, no less than for Christian-Arab relations.” The conference, Henry worried, would amount to “a parochial eschatological sideshow reflective of one narrow segment” of theology, by which he meant dispensationalism.⁴⁷ Writing to Wilbur Smith, Henry worried that all of evangelicalism would be perceived through the lens of “a parochial intramural Biola mood,” a jab at the prophecy-centric evangelicalism represented by the dispensational Biola College.⁴⁸ Now that he was involved, Henry believed he could steer a potential disaster into more productive straits and provide “some organized and competent prophetic exposition on the edge of the vast American tourism of the Holy Land.”⁴⁹

Henry wanted an apolitical conference program as a “public forum for examination of the biblical view of last things”; a program skewed toward theological exchange.⁵⁰ He sought some of the most respected evangelical leaders of the day, most of whom, like himself, had left the dispensational fold. He envisioned worldwide evangelical representation, including speakers from North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Arab world. However, a string of speaker rejections in the summer of 1970, due mostly to reticence about the theme of the conference, circumscribed his grandiose vision. The final list of presenters was scaled back, but Henry could still confidently write that he had constructed “a top-flight program . . . with nationally and internationally known participants.”⁵¹ He managed to sign on speakers from the entire spectrum of evangelicalism—from British theologian John Stott to the African American street evangelist Tom Skinner. He included a few dispensational theologians in the spirit of an open “public forum,” but he invited more than a dozen like-minded evangelicals as speakers. For Henry, this guaranteed theological diversity and respectability. Young, who applauded the lineup because of its star power, hoped the full weight of evangelicalism, if unified in support of Israel, would spark political engagement.

Practical concerns, however, set Young and Henry against each other again. The optics of the conference were especially worrying to both organizers, though for different reasons. Sharing his views with a colleague, Henry explained that even if Jewish migration to Palestine fulfilled prophecy it was not “tied to the existence of Israel as a national entity, far less with the nation in its present political and geographic commitments.”⁵² His worries compounded when Billy Graham refused to attend. The public relations cost of appearing at a prophecy conference seems to have been too steep for Graham, who was wary of intense theological debates over prophecy that were shaping up among the participants. Briley, who also pursued Graham, complained, “[Graham’s] staff has thrown a protective cordon around him and is trying to deflect him from participating.”⁵³ Henry also continued to hear rumors that Graham believed the conference was a money grab, but Graham insisted that his schedule was too full with an evangelistic crusade in Chicago.⁵⁴ Henry initially changed the dates of the conference to conform to Graham’s schedule, but to no avail. Henry suspected that the potential conflation of politics and theology at the conference was simply too daunting for many potential speakers, including Graham.⁵⁵

Henry was right to worry about the conference’s political tone, which was actually a selling point for Young. While Graham declined to attend, Young’s committee in Israel arranged for a prominent Israeli statesperson to address the conference. When Young excitedly wrote that he believed David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, would be available, Henry responded coolly. When Henry later found out that the plans included introducing Ben-Gurion with Israel’s national anthem, he worried, “It makes a one-and-one identification between the prophecy conference and the identity of Israel as a nation that it seems we aren’t called to make.”⁵⁶ Young could hardly understand. He believed the lack of a “prominent [Israeli] government figure” would be “a very grave public relations and social blunder.”⁵⁷ He urged Henry: “Stop this business of being fearful of the political relationships between the two sides of the city [of Jerusalem],” a reference to a concern, as Henry wrote in his memoirs, that the conference would be perceived as a statement of evangelical support for a unified Jerusalem that “would be offensive to some and so to be avoided at all cost.”⁵⁸ In the end, Young won out and Ben-Gurion gave an opening-night speech.

The two committees also argued over the conference’s program, indicating how even the smallest details of tourism carried political meaning. Young organized a mass meeting at Yad Vashem Memorial to show solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust, a parade up the Mount of Olives that began at the easternmost Lion’s Gate of the Old City, and a visit to the institute’s new campus on Mount Zion.⁵⁹ This circuit mirrored the emerging norm for Holy Land tourism after 1967, and reinforced the ideological themes coalescing in the Christian Zionist movement.

Disagreement arose again when Young cautioned against Henry’s suggestion to pair Jewish and Christian speakers on conference panels to enrich the exchange of ideas. Young feared that by putting Jewish and Christian speakers in direct dialogue with each other the conference would evoke a “missionising tendency.”⁶⁰ The sight of an evangelical trying to convince a Jew on an issue of Christian theology struck Young as highly explosive. Instead, he urged that some panels feature only Jewish speakers. He conveyed to the American committee the “very, very strong feeling on the part of our committee that it would be a public relations disaster” to feature panels with both Jews and Christians.⁶¹ Henry worried that panels featuring only Jewish speakers would “bequeath Israelis an opportunity, if they wish it, to simply tell Christians what attitude they ought to hold politically re[garding] the state of Israel and its problems.”⁶² Henry won this argument, which stifled the willingness of Israeli speakers to attend.

As conference attendees landed in Israel in early June 1971, with many embarking on Holy Land tours before the scheduled events, the stage was set for a showdown featuring two contrasting evangelical impulses and two separate visions for Jewish-evangelical relations. Henry’s tacit support for the state of Israel remained basically unreformed since his editorship at Christianity Today had begun fifteen years before. He was comfortable with a Jewish state in Palestine, but his Zionism was riddled with caveats. Missionary outreach to Israelis, religious liberty in Israel, and a concern to appear politically neutral animated Henry and much of the evangelical establishment in 1971. However, Young promoted a Christian Zionism fine-tuned with input from the Israeli government, born of more than a decade of residency in Jerusalem and underwritten by a theological justification for Jewish-Christian rapprochement. Evangelicals and the Israeli government had begun to work closely through Holy Land tourism, but the spectacle of a divisive prophecy conference threatened to sink the political mobilization of American evangelicals before it could really begin.

“A Subdued Confusion”

When the conference finally began on June 15, 1971, it featured a dizzying array of views on Israel. Dallas Theological Seminary president John F. Walvoord and Talbot Theological Seminary president Charles Feinberg represented the scholastically inclined dispensationalism that revered Israel but eschewed political programs. Reformed theologians, represented by Edmund Clowney, the president of Westminster Theological Seminary, and Herman Ridderbos, a Dutch Reformed New Testament scholar from the Netherlands, stood on the opposite end of the conservative theological spectrum and believed support for Israel was counterproductive to evangelism. Young, Arnold Olson, and Reverend Alexander Wastchel, a Hebrew Christian in Israel, believed political support for Israel was most important. Hebrew University’s R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, the lone Israeli Jewish speaker, supported Young’s project, though he was most concerned about conveying the centrality of the land to Jewish peoplehood. And Henry was part of a group of establishment evangelical leaders, including Harold Ockenga and Merrill Tenney, dean at Wheaton College, who feared the conference would descend into a pro-Israel rally.

There were many other evangelical viewpoints represented by the twenty-one speakers and hundreds of attendees. Nearly a third came from non-American or Pentecostal traditions, ranging from Scottish theologian James M. Houston to Im-Chaba Bandang Wati, a prominent Burmese evangelical and president of the World Evangelical Fellowship, to the television evangelist Rex Humbard, who arrived with 144 visitors on a privately chartered jet. Their fascination with Israel remained aloof from the intense skirmishes among North American evangelicals. Just a few short years later, in 1974, the World Conference on the Holy Spirit took place in the same massive conference center in West Jerusalem and featured a prominent cast of Pentecostal leaders, including Kathryn Kuhlman, David du Plessis, Corrie ten Boom, and Pat Robertson. The cooperation between the nascent Christian Zionist movement and Pentecostal Christians which would come to define the 1980s and beyond was barely evident in 1971.

Henry and Young let their long-standing differences air in the open during their own presentations. Though apparently crowded out of much of his speaking time by Young and the “unexpectedly introduced . . . surprise speaker Professor R. J. Zwi Werblowsky,” Henry pleaded in his written remarks for evangelicals to channel their excitement for prophecy into evangelism—the “awesome global mandate . . . [to] witness to the risen One ‘in Jerusalem . . . and unto the uttermost parts.’ ”⁶³ The efforts of the church to evangelize mattered even more since “the coming judgment of our race is at hand.” To those who deciphered prophecies, Henry begged them to turn their attention to other issues. To those who regarded moral and material support for Israel as an extension of their faith, Henry urged that they instead fund missions.

Young disagreed, of course, and turned his focus to the historical injustices Christians had committed against the Jewish people. He railed against the church’s continued “anti-Semitic attitudes to our day. . . . The long historic record of the church and the Gentile world has not helped us here in Israel.” The overriding insight of the June 1967 war was the error of the church in teaching that it had superseded the Jews in the eyes of God. This belief had historically forced Jews in every European country to choose “one of the three options”: conversion, flight, or death. Raising the banner for fellow evangelicals to reject supersessionism, Young adopted the traditional Jewish interpretation of scripture. “I am saying that since Jews are Jews and not Christians they can hardly be expected to sublimate [biblical] passages in such a way that they refer to an Israel that is not Israel but is in reality the church.” More explicitly, Young wondered if “perhaps the Jewish understanding is right and Israel is Israel, and not the church.”⁶⁴

Werblowsky’s speech supported the thrust of Young’s message, which is one reason why Young considered it “a highlight of the conference.”⁶⁵ Werblowsky articulated the Foreign Ministry’s strategy of rallying evangelicals around a simple reconciliation program of the Jewish claim to the land of Israel. Speaking on the Jewish understanding of prophecy, he acknowledged its importance in the tradition but clarified that “to experience reality with a biblical resonance is not quite the same as reading events in terms of the literal fulfillment of texts.” The Jewish people took a more existential meaning; the text “illuminates our past as well as our future in the sense of imbuing us with very specific historical awareness, a sense of destiny and vocation, and the certainty of a future beyond all suffering and tragedy of which Jewish history has been so full even in the present generation.” The prophetic claim to the land was not “legal . . . to be recognized by courts of law” but was expressed as an “unshakable conviction that this bond . . . was the deepest reality of [Jewish] history.” The role for Christians, he explained, was to integrate the Jewish insistence that “the State of Israel, that is, the life of the Jewish people as a body politic in the land which it had never ceased to consider its own, is not a vain thing newly invented but a fulfillment that constitutes a further link in a unique historical chain.”⁶⁶ Only from this basis could the “millennial hopes” of Christian and Jew together be realized.

Evangelical camaraderie made an appearance in the less polarizing moments of the conference. Concerts by Jerome Hines, Anita Bryant, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra alleviated tensions. The finale came with an interdenominational communion service on the Mount of Olives served in olive wood cups with bread baked by Arab Christians in Bethlehem. These experiences formed the bedrock of the conference’s reporting and reception in religious outlets, from Christianity Today to the EFCA’s denominational Evangelical Beacon. “Yes, we walked where Jesus walked. We studied prophecy where Jesus gave the greatest prophecy regarding His return,” remarked the Seventh-Day Adventist Southern Asia Tidings. “Guess where I have been living and where I am as I write these lines!” exclaimed Roy A. Thompson of the Evangelical Beacon. The experience of being in the land of the Bible overwhelmed theological divisions, if only briefly in the moments of religious presence.

To salvage the event’s political significance, Young tried a final end-run around Henry. On the conference’s last day, Young, Arnold Olson, and four other evangelical speakers released a statement in support of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem. The statement was ostensibly separate from the conference, but, to Young’s benefit, the two were linked in the American press, including in the New York Times and the Washington Post.⁶⁷ The group declared, “The unity of Jerusalem [under Israeli control] must be preserved at all costs” and praised Israel for its stewardship of Christian holy sites.⁶⁸ Israel’s Foreign Ministry cabled consulates in the United States to “immediately make all effort to distribute [the statement] text to U.S. media.”⁶⁹

This final act did not redeem the conference in the eyes of its organizers, though outside observers were less interested in the deep divisions it exposed.⁷⁰ Henry offered a stale recounting in his memoirs.⁷¹ Young regretted the lack of consensus and the minimal Israeli representation.⁷² The two would suffer a bitter falling out in the ensuing months, largely stemming from their differences over the Arab-Israeli conflict.⁷³ Arnold Olson judged privately, “The conference seemed to have more low spots than high spots.”⁷⁴ In a cable to its New York Consulate, Israel’s Foreign Ministry judged, “Though [there] have been problems, [the] conference [is] likely to be positive.” This evaluation paled in comparison to the potential the Foreign Ministry had envisioned months earlier.⁷⁵ Indeed, the evangelical declaration on Jerusalem, insomuch as it would not have materialized had the conference not taken place, seems to have been the chief legacy for the Foreign Ministry. Marc Tanenbaum, writing for the American Jewish Committee, used the proclamation as an example of the “growing number of prestigious and representative Christian leaders” opposed to Jerusalem’s internationalization.⁷⁶

The conference left a more significant legacy as a moment of transition in evangelical attitudes toward Israel. It failed to unite support and revealed deep divisions in the evangelical understandings of Israel. The conference’s execution was muddled, producing a “subdued confusion,” according to Baptist observer Dwight Baker, which failed to solve the major hurdles facing united Christian Zionist activity.⁷⁷ Organized and marketed as a gathering of like-minded evangelicals, the conference instead aired opposing beliefs. Young’s project to generate theological consensus and political momentum had come up short; so too had the central aim of evangelical Holy Land tourism. Young and Olson had to abandon plans for a pro-Israel organization that they expected to materialize from the conference.⁷⁸ In all, while proving that evangelicals were willing to travel to Israel in large numbers, the conference had failed in its chief aim.

Marketing the Land of the Bible

Even with the ambiguous legacy of the 1971 conference, the Israeli government continued to invest in evangelical Holy Land tourism. As Israeli tour guide Eldad Brin wrote years later, the Israelis viewed visitors as “potential agents, won-over carriers who can propagate desired political messages upon returning to their countries and communities.” A strategy to politicize tourism flowed from this conviction. “Political ‘messages’ are thus ‘implanted,’ sometimes bluntly, at other times rather subtly, in various places they are liable to comes across during their visit.”⁷⁹ Writing in 2006, Brin was describing a well-established governmental strategy, one that targeted evangelicals in the years after 1967.

Politicized tourism was vital for Christian Zionists, as well, who looked to generate grassroots political mobilization. There were no evangelical political action committees, grassroots organizations, or lobby groups dedicated to pro-Israel political support in 1970. When evangelicals did want to voice political views, they resorted to individual or local church declarations. A few enthusiasts sent personal checks to the Israeli government and published tracts, but these efforts hardly amounted to influence.⁸⁰ For Christian Zionists like Young and Olson, who wanted collective action, Holy Land tourism continued to offer a potentially popular link between evangelical faith, modern Israel, and their political goals.

Numbering in the millions, evangelicals were too diffuse for stock political messaging. Evangelical tourism developed through overlapping church networks, family-owned tour agencies, and sundry tour packages, often precluding tourists from returning home with similar experiences, let alone shared political commitments.⁸¹ Recognizing this complexity, the Ministry of Tourism and Christian Zionist advisers marketed the Holy Land to encourage biblical understandings of the land of Israel.⁸² Their central motif was Israel as the land of the Bible. Organizers tapped into evangelical fascination with Jesus and portrayed tourism to Israel as “walking where Jesus walked.” This New Testament–inflected Holy Land combined themes of biblical history and the spiritual legacy of the land. Any political gains from evangelical visitors would have to grapple with, and filter through, the towering association between Jesus and the land of Israel.

While Protestants at least on paper rejected the idea of relics and holy sites, the geography of Israel still held special reverence for evangelicals.⁸³ Tourism literature portrayed the Holy Land as set apart and worthy of special attention. As one Southern Baptist described: “Here, on this tiny bit of earth crust God was in Christ, walking, teaching, dwelling among us and making his full revelation known to man. . . . As you visit the actual sites of historical events, the Bible comes alive.”⁸⁴ Speaking in Jerusalem to Israeli tourism officials, Roy Kreider, then head of the United Christian Council in Israel, explained, “Bible-oriented, pilgrimage-minded Protestants” traveled to the Holy Land “for an enriched personal religious experience.” Norm Lytle, a Baptist worker, assured Israelis, “Baptists who come to this country, they come for an experience. They come to experience something of the spiritual heritage, they come to experience new truth, they come for these things which can only be experienced [here].”⁸⁵

New Testament–themed tourism supported the evangelical penchant to combine travel with devotional religion, including scripture reading, prayer, worship, and personal reflection.⁸⁶ For earlier generations of evangelicals, the “walk” with Jesus was metaphorical, emphasizing daily prayer and personal piety. But with Holy Land tourism, evangelicals could take an actual stroll in the footsteps of Jesus. In Roy Gustafson’s stock presentation to tour groups before landing at Lod Airport, he admitted that in fact the contemporary streets of Jerusalem’s Old City were now “thirty to sixty feet above where He walked.” But this short distance did not take away from the spiritual rejuvenation of being so close to historical sites. “Before we have finished our pilgrimage, you will find yourself reading a ‘new Bible,’ ” he promised. “You will have a new appreciation of that land where the prophets preached, the psalmist sang, where the apostles were called, trained, and sent out into the world.”⁸⁷

Attracting American evangelicals was a process of trial and error, requiring extensive collaboration between the Israeli government and Christian Zionists. When the Ministry of Tourism first marketed to Christians, it did not have a strong grasp of the centrality of Jesus to evangelical interest in the Holy Land. An IGTO advertisement in Christianity Today’s first issue in October 1956 revealed Israel’s ignorance of evangelical interests. Though marketing Israel as the “Land of the Bible” under a small photograph of the city of Tiberias, the ad’s larger and more conspicuous image featured an illustration of a woman in biblical-era clothing carrying a small jug on her head. Promising “Biblical cities among Modern Mediterranean beach resorts” emphasized leisure, not religious experience.⁸⁸ Most evangelicals thought of Holy Land tourism in terms of devotion, hoping at least in part to enrich their Christian identity. This missing component to Israeli marketing revealed the government’s limited understanding in an era before Christian Zionist collaboration.

By the late 1960s, the Ministry of Tourism had developed a more sophisticated approach to the evangelical market. Immediately following June 1967, the IGTO and El Al airlines funded a $40,000 advertising campaign to help restore its tourism industry.⁸⁹ As a later advertisement in the fundamentalist periodical Moody Monthly attested, the IGTO had updated its messaging. A full-page photograph of the Church of Beatitudes—the traditional site of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee—sat beneath text comparing a trip to Israel to “leafing through the pages of a living Bible.” Biblical sites were important, but active engagement with the words of the Bible was even more critical: “Page by page and town by town you will relive the biblical epics,” the ad promised. “You’ll follow the words of Jesus and His disciples ‘through the cities and the villages, teaching and journeying’ (Luke 13:22).”⁹⁰

Israel could market a complete biblical landscape to Christians only after June 1967, when the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Old City in Jerusalem, among other key Christian sites, came under its control. As early as June 19, little more than a week after the end of hostilities, the Ministry of Tourism’s Pilgrimage Department developed new itineraries for Christian holy sites in the occupied territories.⁹¹ New additions around Jerusalem included the Old City, Mount of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane, Church of the Nativity, and the Fields of the Shepherds. In the West Bank, Mount Quarantania (Mount of Temptation) and the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism, Qasr el Yahud, were often on the itinerary. By July 1967, Americans had full access to Jerusalem’s holy sites.⁹² While one prewar pamphlet promised Christian pilgrims that during Christmas and Easter “the Government spares no effort to facilitate the passage into and out of Jordan” to visit sacred sites, the Ministry of Tourism’s revisions to the same pamphlet in late 1967 were able to promise much more.⁹³ “Christians may follow in the footsteps of Jesus, from Bethlehem, his birthplace, to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, where he spent his youth and preached, and finally to the Room of the Last Supper . . . [and] the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”⁹⁴

Post-1967 strategies reflected the advanced Israeli understanding of evangelicals. In 1970, Allerton, Berman, & Dean provided the Ministry of Tourism with a 200-page report recommending television and radio marketing strategies, college campus marketing, and religious marketing to evangelicals and fundamentalists in the United States. This “Recommendation for Co-op Fundamentalist Christian Program” included breakdowns of media markets in twelve Midwestern and Southern states, reaching almost eighteen million radio listeners and television viewers.⁹⁵ An attached “radio and print program” offered the Ministry of Tourism sample ads, illustrating Jesus-centric, experiential themes and promising: “Your faith is strengthened knowing He walked the several pathways. See the pages of the New Testament come alive as you pray by Jacob’s Well and sing hymns with your fellow travelers at the sea of Galilee.” Ads promised “a beautiful peace that envelopes [sic] the air” and described the “warmth and sincerity of the people, the sun-drenched countryside,” promoting an authentic encounter with the Bible.⁹⁶

Tourist maps cemented the land’s biblical significance. Meron Benvenisti, one of the geographers employed by the state and, later, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, participated in Israel’s practice of renaming locations in Israel and the West Bank from Arabic to Hebrew biblical titles (e.g., the Arabic “Bassa” to the Hebrew “Shlomi”).⁹⁷ This policy, well under way by 1967, also facilitated an evangelical sense of familiarity with the land. Maps of evangelical tour routes replaced modern designations like the West Bank with the biblical “Judea and Samaria.” Roy Gustafson’s tour narration included the remark that just ten miles from the Old City lay the Arab Israeli village of Abu-Ghosh. “But we remember this village by its Biblical name: Kiriath-jearim,” he informed Christian visitors.⁹⁸ Hebrew names effectively bypassed the epochs of non-Jewish settlement in these areas, instead cementing the prominence of biblical events and Jewish claims. The point for tourism promoters was to recover biblical-era sites; to reconstruct the events of the Bible in the modern day with the intervening centuries only a footnote.

In marketing Israel as the land of the Bible, ads from AB&D avoided overt political references. Politics could stymie interest in travel. Apolitical marketing was preferable not because of any conflict between tourism and politics, but because Holy Land tourism itself constituted a political act and would expose tourists to pro-Israel messages and images. AB&D urged the Ministry of Tourism to highlight “the merits and benefits of traveling to Israel—not the merits of Israel.” Political arguments centering on land disputes and violence made for unappealing copy. “The general sympathy with which most Americans regard Israel’s cause has been a factor in our favor,” AB&D concluded, “but our major concern, from the marketing point of view, must still be to convince the traveler that visiting Israel is as safe as visiting Philadelphia—perhaps safer.”⁹⁹ The real ideological learning, they stressed, would happen once evangelicals were visiting the sites of the Bible.

Once in Israel, however, tourists were barraged with political arguments—many Holy Land tourism promoters openly stated their political goals. The Israel Pilgrimage Committee held as its mission, “to create conditions which enable the Christian pilgrim and visitor who arrives in Israel individually or as a member of a group to come into closer contact with the citizens of the country and to be made aware of its achievements and problems.”¹⁰⁰ The Israel Interfaith Committee, a nongovernmental body focused on small-scale tours for religious leaders, was described by its secretary, Reuven Surkis, as “attempting to influence Christian leaders on Israel’s position vis-à-vis the Christian world and vice versa” through tourism. This project of “deeper understanding” would reinforce for Christians the Jewish identity of the land.¹⁰¹

In the years immediately following the June 1967 war, thousands of evangelicals retraced the steps of Jesus in Israeli-controlled land. The Ministry of Tourism combined regional and religious appeals with an overarching marketing strategy that boiled down to the AB&D tagline: “Come visit Israel; you’ll love it.” Experiences both spiritual and material awaited the Christian pilgrim. The tagline “can take many forms,” AB&D explained, “one which we are now working out is aimed at the Jewish and fundamentalist Christian segments of the market who have always said they intended to visit Israel. These people know, or think they know, what Israel offers them. We’re prepared to tell them that everything they’ve always dreamed of is waiting for them in Israel—and more, much more, than they had ever imagined.”¹⁰²

A Sacred Landscape

Translating Holy Land tourism into pro-Israel political mobilization—a goal shared by the Israeli government and Christian Zionists—required not just marketing tourism to evangelicals but also shaping the tours themselves. The political meaning of Holy Land tour experiences remained unpredictable and unclear. Evangelicals hailing from the Bible Belt began their tours with the same supportive attitude toward Israel as most other Americans.¹⁰³ The positive themes embedded in tourist advertising, and the experience of tours themselves, only reinforced their attitudes. Tours studiously avoided Arab neighborhoods, Muslim sites (outside of the unavoidable Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock areas on the Temple Mount), and only slowly incorporated visits to the West Bank (outside of Bethlehem), where more politically oriented tours would visit Israeli settlements.¹⁰⁴

By arguing that modern Israel itself was somehow sacred, a divine testament to God’s faithfulness, organizers drew out their most explicit political implications of tourism. Evangelical tour guides in the late 1960s promoted modern Israel’s sacredness by appealing to two Christian arguments: the covenantal and prophetic significance of the state that incorporated the narrative of a “regathered” Israel, and the state as a modern testament to God’s promises and the everlasting covenant of land with Abraham. Both arguments aligned with dispensational and reconciliation themes. Gustafson’s description of modern Israel as a “4-Fold Miracle” made sacred the recent history of the Zionist movement as a fulfillment of prophecy.¹⁰⁵ Gustafson, like other guides, enumerated the “language miracle” of a revived Hebrew tongue, the “sociological miracle” of Jewish migration to Palestine, the “miracle of agriculture and industry” that underpinned Israeli society, and the “military miracle” of 1967. In each case, observing Israeli society was akin to observing the hand of God. Tourists were encouraged to see Israeli society—cities, infrastructure, and military—as sacred as the paths that Jesus walked.

Prophecy played a key role in sacralizing the modern state, though one that could quickly get out of hand. Gustafson invoked prophecy in general terms, referencing passages such as the “dry bones” imagery of Ezekiel 37 to celebrate the regathering of God’s chosen people. More volatile were apocalypse-oriented tour guides who focused on passages in Daniel and Revelation to make the case that the bloody end of history would soon take place in Israel. No person was more successful at this apocalyptic tourism than Hal Lindsey, who rocketed to fame with his best-selling prophecy tract, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970). In that book, which Lindsey essentially reenacted in the large Holy Land tours he led throughout the 1970s, the eschatology of dispensationalism was translated into a stylish and experiential idiom.¹⁰⁶ Honing his approach as a college evangelist, Lindsey offered a grand narrative of the near future: the Antichrist would subjugate most of the world’s population and eventually betray Israel, divine plagues and disasters would ravage humanity, and Jesus would return to defeat the Antichrist and establish his new kingdom in Jerusalem. Though these events were disclosed behind difficult biblical language, Lindsey assured his tours that the setting for these events was quite clear. The fields of Armageddon, located southeast of Haifa near the ancient Tel Megiddo, was one of Lindsey’s favorite destinations. His fascination with military technology gave him a futuristic edge that mixed biblical and scientific language. Lindsey’s dispensationalism included an infamously flexible prophetic time line that could be updated to the headlines.¹⁰⁷

Of course, Lindsey was not the first or last evangelical to explore such a schema for the future, nor to enhance its appeal through Holy Land tourism.¹⁰⁸ Roy Gustafson, Arnold Olson, and G. Douglas Young shared the same basic prophetic beliefs as Lindsey, though their studious avoidance of detail dulled their apocalyptic edge. Increasing tourism by Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, however, including by many dispensationalists, saw Israel’s fate as causally linked to their own spiritual revivals taking place around the globe. The India-born British Pentecostal evangelist Derek Prince, whose military service in North Africa and Palestine during World War II (and subsequent adoption of eight Arab children) fueled his lifelong fascination with Israel, saw the unification of Jerusalem and the “outbreak” of charismatic Christian revival across the globe as connected signs of Christ’s imminent return.¹⁰⁹ These biblical and spiritual details convinced many evangelical tourists of the sacredness of the state of Israel.

But on the ground, Lindsey and Prince’s apocalyptic language proved politically toxic, limiting their role in the state-sponsored Holy Land tourism industry and the nascent Christian Zionist movement. Lindsey speculated on future violence against Jews as punishment from God, writing that “Jesus Christ predicted an event which would trigger a time of unparalleled catastrophe for the Jewish nation shortly before His second coming.”¹¹⁰ He also fixated on the building of a “third temple” on the site of the Dome of the Rock, a topic of such concern for the Foreign Ministry that its officials called Christians who spoke about it “ ‘friends’ (so-called) that do a disservice” who predict “the Jews will remove the Dome of the Rock, every stone of it, and will build the Temple” to help usher in the End Times.¹¹¹ Alluding to Lindsey and other apocalyptic evangelicals, including Michael Dennis Rohan, the Australian Christian fundamentalist who set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969, the Foreign Ministry wanted to harness the energy of Holy Land tourism but avoid its excesses.¹¹² The state preferred to work with Christian Zionists whose pragmatism overrode apocalyptic speculation.

The evangelical sacralization of Israel also supported the Ministry of Tourism’s efforts to diversify tour itineraries. Post-1967 tours spent time in Tel Aviv and Haifa and at the historical sites of Masada and Caesarea.¹¹³ Indeed, much of His Land, which praised Israel as a fulfillment of prophecy, featured less traditional sites, including the Negev Desert and Haifa. The Ministry of Tourism based its push for wider geographical itineraries on “emphasis in the Evangelical Press [sic] of the ‘Miracle of Israel,’ and an emphasis on the ‘prophetic’ quality of contemporary Israel.”¹¹⁴ By “assisting” these trends, the government encouraged evangelicals to regard all sites within the post-1967 boundaries as part of the state. Through tours of Israeli markets, neighborhoods, and state memorials like Yad Vashem, evangelicals learned to treat modern Israeli sites as complementary to biblical locations.¹¹⁵ With increasing visits to West Bank settlements and travel through the Green Line, evangelicals experienced an Israel that included the occupied territories. By the early 1970s, tours combined biblical and contemporary sites, paving the way for the politicization of the biblical and the sacralization of the contemporary.

Another aspect of Israel’s appeal was its often-cited stewardship of free access to sacred sites. With Israel’s control over Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sites, its decision to protect, in the words of the minister of religious affairs, “full freedom of religious worship to adherents of all faiths, whether Israel[i] citizens or pilgrims coming to worship at their Holy Places,” was the cornerstone of Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and countered calls for the internationalization of Jerusalem.¹¹⁶ Evangelical tourists experienced perhaps the freest access to holy sites, reinforcing their approval of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, including the Old City. Christian sites, including the Garden Tomb (an alternate location for Jesus’ burial and resurrection outside the Old City walls and east of the Green Line) and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher fell under Israeli control and soon headlined Christian tourism itineraries. Already in July 1967, Abbie Ben Ari, the IGTO’s North American director, observed Christians “being organized by church groups throughout North America, on the assurance from the Israeli Government that it would guarantee free access to tourists of all religions to the religious shrines of the Holy Land.”¹¹⁷

There was no greater champion of Israel’s stewardship of sacred sites than Jerusalem’s mayor, Teddy Kollek, who advocated increased American Christian tourism to Israel. Writing in a Holy Land guidebook in 1970, Kollek articulated the Israeli view celebrating that, after June 1967, “not only Jerusalem, but the entire Holy Land had again become one under Israel [sic] authority.” Since the war, Kollek had proudly claimed, “For the first time ever, this freedom [of access] is absolute, and each faith is responsible for its own holy places.”¹¹⁸

American evangelical leaders agreed with Kollek, marking a significant break with Israel’s prior image as an inhibitor of religious freedom. W. R. White, the president emeritus of Baylor University, claimed that Israel had “proved to be superior custodians of the city and its sacred places.”¹¹⁹ Arnold Olson, talking to reporters in 1971, likewise claimed, “The Israeli government had been ‘open’ in its rule of Jerusalem” and administration of holy sites.¹²⁰ The declaration released after the Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy made a similar assertion that “all people are free to worship in their place of choice, unlike the situation that pertained during the period 1948–1967.”¹²¹ The difficulties faced by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf and the newly formed Higher Islamic Board in East Jerusalem contradicted this full-throated endorsement by Israel’s supporters.¹²² Nevertheless, evangelicals could point to the Temple Mount, Western Wall, and Church of the Holy Sepulcher—administered by separate Muslim, Jewish, and Christian authorities—as a working arrangement orchestrated by the Israeli government.

Evangelicals became integral to promoting Israel’s image through Holy Land tourism. The Israel Pilgrimage Committee, formed in 1967 to advise the new Pilgrimage Department in the Ministry of Tourism, included G. Douglas Young and a representative from the United Christian Council in Israel.¹²³ Young and Anson Rainey, the longtime professor of geography at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, were two of the four Christians on the Study Committee for the Improvement of Services to the Christian Pilgrim.¹²⁴ Young and Robert Lindsey also advised the American Jewish Committee on its “Visitors to Israel” program, which hosted mixed Jewish-Christian tour groups.¹²⁵ These institutional efforts allowed Christian Zionists to regularly collaborate with the Ministry of Tourism in shaping evangelical tourism.

As the network of evangelical support for Israel expanded, so too did the number of evangelical advisers. Wayne Buck, a Southern Baptist who moved to Israel in 1973, consulted “in the area of helping them [the Israeli government] understand what the Christian pilgrim is looking for when he comes to Israel.”¹²⁶ Israeli-owned tour agencies, encouraged by the Ministry of Tourism to expand into the Christian market, needed evangelical advice. Buck was one of dozens of evangelical consultants who promoted Jewish-Christian reconciliation as part of the Holy Land tour experience, organizing “panel discussions for mixed [tour] groups where you have Jewish and Christian [tourists] and there needs to be some dialogue there especially when they get to Israel.”¹²⁷ Voices like Buck’s were instrumental to shifting Israel’s approach to evangelicals.

In the five years after the June 1967 war, Holy Land tourism became integral to the growth of evangelical Christian Zionism. Though Young, Gustafson, and the Ministry of Tourism failed to impart their particular political ideas to most evangelical visitors, the thousands who undertook structured Holy Land tours did not leave empty-handed. They carried the seeds of an experiential Zionism, forming the bedrock of future pro-Israel politics. Through the structured experience of the land of the Bible, evangelicals were told that they intertwined with the destiny of modern Israel; both were deeply bound to God through his covenants. By traveling to the Holy Land, evangelicals incorporated more comprehensively the post-1967 state into their own Judeo-Christian identity.

Indeed, by the twenty-first century, with evangelical Holy Land tourism an even larger share of Israel’s tourism industry and public diplomacy, the consequences of this experiential Christian Zionism were everywhere visible, perhaps nowhere more than with the guide to more than thirty “Israel Experience” tours since the 1980s, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee. On his many tours, amid visits to Jewish sites such as Masada, where his groups fittingly sang the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” Huckabee greeted his mostly evangelical tour groups as they emerged from Ben Gurion Airport with a hearty “Welcome home.”¹²⁸ The shared spiritual ownership of the land of the Bible provided a powerful basis for cooperation between evangelicals and the state of Israel.

Yet it is also true that efforts by Young in the 1970s, like Huckabee in the 2010s, had no direct or obvious political outlet. The failure to politically mobilize and organize evangelicals through tourism after 1967 had long-term effects for Israeli public diplomacy and the development of the Christian Zionist movement. As the 1971 Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy made abundantly clear, evangelicals remained deeply divided over the theological meaning of Israel and the political responsibilities owed to ensuring its security. While evangelicals, like most Americans, responded favorably to Israel in polls, the lack of “material and physical” support for Israel, in Young’s abiding words calling for evangelical mobilization, only drew more attention to the gap between beliefs and actions.

CHAPTER 6

Reconciliation

ARNOLD T. OLSON’S LANDING at Ben Gurion Airport in April 1973 was more business than pleasure. The purpose of his hastily scheduled trip, as the official Israeli escort waiting for him made clear, was to save an ailing Jewish-evangelical relationship. Reports of the persecution of foreign Christians at the hands of antimissionary groups had spilled onto the pages of American newspapers.¹ New legislation in the Knesset banning foreign missionaries sparked American outcries, including open letters to President Richard Nixon and evangelical commitments to increase evangelism in Israel. Olson, a prominent Christian Zionist, was there to see the situation for himself with a weeklong fact-finding mission organized by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Israeli government. He would then report his conclusions to the annual meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) that would gather in Portland, Oregon just two weeks later.

Olson eventually met with more than twenty government officials, including ministers, the attorney general, members of Israel’s Supreme Court, and the Chief Rabbinate. In Olson’s recollection, “The meetings were leisurely and frank. No question was refused. Many conversations were over a cup of tea and a number held in private homes.”² Before the trip, Olson had published a list of his concerns, including the perception that Israelis were inattentive to evangelical issues.³ But as a longtime supporter of Israel, Olson was not seeking to embarrass the government, nor is it likely that the Foreign Ministry would have organized the trip had Olson’s verdict been in doubt. Armed with Israeli assurances, Olson led a special session at the NAE meeting to quell an effort to officially denounce Israel.⁴

Olson’s short mission to Israel illustrated the accomplishments and the fragility of evangelical Christian Zionism in April 1973. The nascent network of pro-Israel support had performed under stress. Confronting mounting criticism of Israel in the evangelical community, Olson maintained the delicate gains in the “growing understanding between the evangelicals and the Jewish community in America,” as he described in his report. Yet the need for Olson’s report betrayed the widespread evangelical unease with the state of Israel after the June 1967 war. The Holy Land remained, for many evangelicals, a mission field and site of curtailed religious freedom. Extracting the theological and political meaning of the state was complicated and contentious, and the issue of missions continued to plague relations.

The years following the June 1967 war, originally brimming with optimism for grassroots mobilization, were marked instead by a string of interreligious disputes and misadventures that lasted through 1976. The nascent evangelical Christian Zionist movement relied on the intervention of Olson and other allies to survive in those years. Centered mostly on the question of Jewish missions, Jewish-evangelical relations remained mired in misunderstanding, hindering the growth of cooperative political efforts.

The years of strained relations are important to understanding the eventual process of political mobilization later in the decade. A full-fledged political alliance between evangelicals, American Jews, and Israel would have appeared unlikely in the early 1970s. It is only in retrospect that journalists, historians, and participants recognize a “match made in heaven” between evangelicals and the state of Israel.⁵ While fraying interreligious relations scuttled attempts at political cooperation between evangelicals, American Jews, and Israel from 1971 through 1973, the next Arab-Israeli war, in October 1973, proved to be a turning point. When Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a surprise attack on Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, the IDF was thrown on the defensive, recovering only a week later. With the help of a massive American airlift of supplies, Israel and the Arab states came to a cease-fire. Billy Graham, according to rumors at the time and later recollections, had been decisive in lobbying President Nixon for aid.⁶ Two wars with two similar Christian responses made a pattern.

After the October 1973 war, Jewish-evangelical relations gathered new momentum through a string of institutional, theological, and political coups, beginning with the first official Jewish-evangelical dialogue conference in 1975. The historic gathering evidenced a shifting evangelical identity: more politically savvy and concerned with influencing U.S.-Israeli relations. With growing evangelical interest in Israel, postwar evangelical Christian Zionists reached the height of their influence in the years 1973–1976. Their ideas, advanced through new interreligious efforts, helped Christian Zionism coalesce into a movement and emerge as a key part of American evangelical identity.

The Politics of Missions

The future of evangelical relations with the state of Israel did not look so promising in the wake of the Jerusalem conference in June 1971—the ambiguous results of which cast cooperation into a two-year nadir. After helping to pen the supportive declaration by conference participants, Olson tried to circulate the statement to a wider circle of evangelical leaders. “We are hoping that out of this might come an attempt in our country to set up an ad hoc committee to secure additional signatures,” Olson wrote to Sam Scheiner, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota, in July 1971.⁷ Israel’s Chicago consulate confirmed to the Foreign Ministry that Olson “gave [the Declaration] wide circulation among Christian circles in our [Midwest] region.”⁸ At the same time, G. Douglas Young hoped that the conference would help launch a new grassroots group to rival the new mainline Protestant organization, Christians Concerned for Israel, led by Franklin Littell. Yet this hope, like Olson’s, failed to materialize. The fractious image of American evangelicalism in Jerusalem was no mirage. Evangelicals remained deeply divided by theology, region, and denomination.

To make matters worse, the chronic problem of Jewish missions resurfaced in Israel. Early in 1972, Louis Kaplan, an evangelist from Phoenix, Arizona, sent more than a dozen Hebrew Christians (calling themselves Messianic Jews) to Israel.⁹ In the following months, Kaplan’s missionaries became the focus of public concern as they proselytized on street corners and handed out literature, though by all accounts the number of actual converts was small, possibly zero. Nevertheless, the brazen evangelistic techniques, abandoned by Baptists and other missionaries decades before, provoked outcry for targeting Israeli youth and tourists. By early 1973, more than 13,000 Israelis, mostly Orthodox Jews, signed a petition for outlawing all missionary activity in Israel.¹⁰

Tensions escalated when an outburst of antimissionary violence rocked the small Christian community in Jerusalem. In February 1973, members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a right-wing Zionist organization founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City, burned two Hebrew Christian buildings and bombed the car of a Hebrew Christian publisher.¹¹ Kahane denied responsibility but also suggested that Hebrew Christians could expect more violence to come. “If you lose a Jew in Auschwitz or thru [sic] conversion,” Kahane said during a hunger strike against missionaries at the Western Wall, “it’s still a lost soul to our people.”¹² The JDL’s threats were credible as it had carried out violent attacks against Soviet and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) targets in New York City. After emigrating to Israel in 1971 and founding the far right Kach party, Kahane focused his attention on missionaries and Hebrew Christians.

The Israeli government, while condemning the violence and arresting Kahane for numerous infractions, was divided in its response. Vestiges of the millet system that treated religious identities as immutable and foundational to social organization remained visible. The Chief Rabbinate and members of the National Religious Party (NRP) mulled over new restrictions on proselytization that rankled American observers, with one unnamed official informing the Chicago Tribune that the Knesset might pass legislation “banning the work of some 1,000 missionaries now active in Israel.”¹³ Other officials, including Minister of Justice Jackov Shapiro, assured local Christians and the international press that no new restrictions would be forthcoming. But according to NRP officials, Hebrew Christians, whom Israelis and other Jews did not consider Jewish, were abusing the Law of Return to enter the country, claiming special status as Jews to smuggle in their Christian message. At stake was the definition of Jewish identity. Zerach Warhaftig, the minister of religious affairs, argued that “the Law of Return, even in its present form, excludes by implication a Jew who believes in Jesus. Such a person is, by definition, not a believing Jew in any accepted sense.”¹⁴

As news spread to American outlets, evangelicals criticized the Israeli government as lacking vigilance in pursuing the antimissionary arsonists. Stories ran of the violence, social ostracism that dogged Hebrew Christians, and threats against evangelicals. While Christian Zionists dismissed the violence as an aberration, other evangelicals saw larger forces at work. Dr. Arthur Glasser of the Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Global Missions released a widely read open letter to President Nixon, urging the U.S. government, in an upcoming visit by Prime Minister Golda Meir, to press Israel to uphold “true religious freedom,” by which Glasser meant American norms. “A man should be free to propagate his faith as well as free to change his religious allegiance. We reject Israel’s systematic attempt to control the conscience of all who live within her borders.” Glasser’s thinking extended to suggesting that Nixon push for the internationalization of Jerusalem “to guarantee freedom of religion in its truest sense.”¹⁵ Though Nixon did not heed Glasser’s advice when he met with Meir, the letter echoed calls by the Vatican to remove Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. At the World Bible Conference held in the Galilee region in early March 1973, a majority of the 350 attendees urged the U.S. government to reduce aid to countries that restricted religious liberty—an unsubtle jab at their host country.¹⁶

This chain of events prompted Olson, then past president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), president of the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA), and vice president of the American Bible Society, to undertake his fact-finding mission. Olson’s institutional appointments conveyed his influence in the American evangelical community, yet just as important were his allies in Israel. One of G. Douglas Young’s earliest supporters, Olson had developed numerous “Israeli connections,” as he referred to his Jewish friends, who helped him advance Jewish-evangelical reconciliation at the NAE and EFCA. Olson treasured his premillennial upbringing, which gave him hope for “the chosen people, the chosen land, and the promises to both.” As a military chaplain in World War II, he visited concentration camps and later met Holocaust survivors on his first visit to Israel in 1967.¹⁷ The connections blossomed at his denomination’s headquarters in Minneapolis, where Olson was friendly with local Jewish leaders. His connections to Israel multiplied as his status in the evangelical world rose. By the end of his NAE presidency in 1970, Olson was known in Jewish circles as, in the words of AJC adviser Gerald Strober, “one of the world’s most Important [sic] Evangelical leaders and a staunch friend of Israel.”¹⁸ The Israeli Foreign Ministry agreed, describing him as “one of the most prominent central figures in the evangelical sector in the United States.”¹⁹ In addition to Olson’s theological and political convictions, his reputation was shaped by the EFCA’s choice to forgo missionary efforts targeting Jews or Arabs. While denominations with missionaries in Arab countries might be reluctant to voice support for Israel and missionaries in Israel would offend Jewish sensibilities, Olson noted that he “had no such problem and the liaison [with Jewish leaders in America and Israel] continued after my two years as head of the NAE.”²⁰

Olson emerged in 1973 as the crisis manager to save the progress evangelicals had made with the state of Israel. American evangelicals concerned about religious liberty in Israel were undermining a central Christian Zionist argument that Israel was in fact an open society for Christians, as evidenced by its stewardship of Christian and Muslim holy sites. Writing to Simcha Dinitz, political adviser to Golda Meir and newly appointed ambassador to the United States in early March 1973, Marc Tanenbaum urged the Israeli government to use Olson to defuse tensions. “In a frank and friendly talk,” Tanenbaum assured Dinitz, “[Olson] expressed to me his deep concern over a growing misunderstanding among many Evangelicals with whom he has met recently over reports of the proposed legislation outlawing in a sweeping way all missionary activity in Israel.” Olson had denounced the tactics of “fringe missionary groups” that targeted specific Jews, such as children, for conversion, and he had also questioned the purpose of Jewish missions in his 1968 book, Jerusalem: City of Destiny. With a successful trip to Israel, Tanenbaum was confident Olson “would come back with evidence that would enable him to give a positive interpretation to the millions of Evangelicals in this country,” especially those meeting at the annual NAE conference in May.²¹

As an elder statesman of American evangelicalism, Olson managed to get a prime speaking slot on the meeting’s second day. He wanted to quell rising unrest through a fifteen-page report that vindicated the Israeli government from charges that it was changing its missionary policy. “There is no threat as far as the government is concerned,” Olson assured the meeting, “although some aggressive missionary activity causes annoyance to some sections of the Jewish community.” Evidence for the euphemistic “annoyances” were the acts of violence by antimissionary activists. Olson dismissed these groups as poorly funded and supported by only the most extreme elements in Israeli society. Responding to evangelicals who demanded more expansive religious liberty protections, he concluded, “I feel confident that the government of Israel is strongly committed to the safeguarding of the principles of religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all legitimate Church agencies in Israel.” The boundaries of legitimacy excluded, in Olson’s mind, those “aggressive” missionary agencies and tactics that had long since fallen out of favor in Israel. Olson concluded his presentation with a pointed observation meant to dissuade evangelicals from intensifying their missionary efforts in Israel: “The Jews did not come [to their homeland] after an absence of centuries during which they were engaged in an endless struggle to keep their identity, traditions, culture, and religion only to abandon it on their return to the land nor did they return to humiliate Jesus.”²² Jewish continuity, it seemed, was an evangelical priority, too.

Through 1973, it appeared that Olson’s speech had its intended effect. Though tensions remained high over Hebrew Christian missionaries and though legislation severely limiting missionary activity was once again introduced in the Knesset in 1977, for the time being American evangelicals resisted more declarations critical of Israel.²³ Two months after he presented his report, Olson wrote to the Foreign Ministry, “I have been looking in vain for any criticism of Israel’s treatment or alleged mistreatment of Christians since my report got out to the various news services. I feel the silence on this subject is due in part to the correction of the false impressions that were given during that critical period.”²⁴ Likewise, the AJC and the Foreign Ministry were pleased with Olson’s performance.²⁵

The politics of missions in Israel did not disappear in 1973, but Olson had helped usher in a new trust in Israeli law that had been missing. Olson’s deference to Israeli authorities, supporting their assurances and distinguishing between the actions of antimissionary radicals and public enforcement, gave new footing to Christian Zionists. Dating to the first evangelicals under Israeli law, the tensions between liberty to follow any faith, which was uncontroversial, and liberty to propagate and change faith had dampened evangelical views of Israel. Olson represented a new détente between evangelicals and the Israeli government that, indeed, propagating Christianity in Israel and seeking to convert Israeli Jews were beyond the bounds of propriety. Olson, Young, and other Christian Zionists retained a de jure commitment to the gospel’s applicability to all peoples, Jew and gentile. But they rejected the historical focus on Jewish missions and embraced the arguments by Tanenbaum, Yona Malachy, and others that Israel’s essential fabric was Jewish; that conversions constituted a social risk and threat to Israeli interests.

That Olson could quell rumors of an official NAE denunciation of Israel in 1973 was cause for celebration among Christian Zionists and evidence of the movement’s vitality. The connection between Christian Zionists, the AJC, and the Israeli state was further illustrated in the work Olson’s report performed at the Southern Baptist Convention. In addition to blunting an anti-Israel statement in the NAE, Olson reported to Tanenbaum in the summer of 1973 that he believed his report “put out the fire” at the convention, which was mulling its own critical statement (the convention was not a member of the NAE). “There was a move to condemn Israel for its alleged mistreatment of missionaries and Christians of Jewish extraction,” Olson noted. “I received a list of names and addresses of prominent leaders from the American Jewish Committee and my report was mailed to these various key people in the Southern Baptist Convention group prior to the [annual] convention.”²⁶ Remarkably, the AJC was more familiar with who to contact in the Southern Baptist Convention than was Olson.

Announcing the Israeli government’s innocence was a tactical victory that proved the importance of Christian Zionist leaders to maintaining Jewish-evangelical relations, but Olson’s report also side-stepped the core issues of Hebrew Christians and Jewish missions. In the very same months that Israel came under scrutiny, evangelicals were conducting one of their most aggressive missionary efforts in the United States and putting additional pressure on American Jews. Olson had stopped an international public relations disaster from careening into a full breakdown between evangelicals and Israel, but the underlying problem of Jewish missions remained.

The Crisis of Key 73

While the politics of missions and religious liberty in Israel simmered, they boiled over in the United States. The outrage that evangelicals expressed at Israeli treatment of Hebrew Christians was part of a larger struggle over Jewish missions that included Key 73, one of American evangelicalism’s most ambitious evangelistic campaigns after World War II. Billed as a national effort to “Call the Continent to Christ in 1973,” Key 73 was a year-long push by church leaders to generate grassroots energy to Christianize America. The effort garnered official support from more than 150 denominations and Christian organizations, including some mainline Protestant denominations and Catholic dioceses.²⁷ None was more central to the effort, or its eventual difficulties, than the coordinating committee based out of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Graham, torn between his roles as evangelist and proponent of reconciliation, helped to start, deepen, and ultimately offer a solution to the crisis that emerged from Key 73. His response, which delved below the surface of Key 73 to the issue of Jewish missions, provided Christian Zionists a lifeline to escape the increasingly untenable conflict between their political objectives and their commitment to the universal appeal of the gospel.

The controversy surrounding Key 73 was only one aspect of what made the rare display of American Christian ecumenism much less than organizers had initially hoped for. At the local level, Key 73 programs managed to distribute millions of pamphlets and bible tracts, form “bible cells” (study groups), prayer groups, and organize food drives and other social projects.²⁸ But as a national campaign, Key 73 suffered from poor organization, poor messaging, and a lack of funding. It evinced, in the words of one critic, an awkward combination of nineteenth-century revivalism and twentieth-century media blitzes, “an idea whose time had truly passed” before it even began.²⁹

Supporters and critics alike admitted that the campaign had shortcomings, but one of Key 73’s most disastrous messaging choices was its approach to American Jews. In the campaign’s official handbook, Jews won the dubious distinction of being the only ethnic or religious community explicitly targeted for evangelization.³⁰ Key 73 participants included Jewish missions organizations such as the Hebrew Christian Alliance and the new organization Jews for Jesus (also preferring to call themselves Messianic Jews).³¹ Founded by Moishe Rosen in San Francisco in 1973 as an independent offshoot of the American Board of Missions to the Jews, Jews for Jesus mixed the culture and lively style of the Jesus Movement with traditional evangelical theology. Most worrying to American Jews, Jews for Jesus rejected the notion that Judaism, as practiced by Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews, was a viable faith after the ministry of Jesus. “Jesus made me Kosher,” Rosen quipped in one of his many pamphlets.³² With aggressive evangelistic tactics, Jews for Jesus became a bitter adversary of American Jewish defense organizations, even as both cited Israel as an integral part of Jewish identity. The interreligious departments of the AJC and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) interpreted Key 73’s efforts of “Sharing Messiah with Jewish People”—another slogan of the campaign—and cooperation with Hebrew Christian groups as harmful to Jewish-Christian reconciliation and possibly antisemitic.

American Jewish leaders, especially those like Marc Tanenbaum who had toiled for years to improve relations with evangelicals, did not hide their disdain for Key 73. A statement from the AJC’s National Executive Council in December 1972, anticipating the official launch of Key 73, condemned “those missionary groups which specifically aim at the conversion of Jews to Christianity.” In portraying Jews as “incomplete” in their Judaism, or as “fulfilled” in their conversion to Christianity, Key 73 literature, the AJC argued, stooped to “missionary approaches . . . frequently based on a false, stereotyped and caricatured image of Judaism . . . which is a moral offense against the dignity and the honor of the Jewish people.”³³ The Anti-Defamation League’s director of interreligious affairs, Solomon Bernards, lashed out at Hebrew Christian missionaries in the pages of the Christian Century (which did not participate in Key 73), comparing their tactics to those of the earliest Christians who, in his view, deceptively used biblical texts to misleadingly “prove” that Hebrew scriptures had predicted the coming of Jesus. Bernards also connected this Hebrew Christian approach to the pressures Jews faced under Nazi rule, concluding that missionaries’ “principal weapon is the proof text, and their favorite ploy is to vilify present-day Judaism as a willfully distorted product of rabbinic Judaism.”³⁴ The strained comparison to Nazis conveyed the level of American Jewish disdain for Hebrew Christians and Jewish missions.

American Jewish organizations were fearful not only of Key 73 missionary tactics but also of the campaign’s conflation of Americanism and Christianity encapsulated in another slogan: “Raising an Overarching Christian Canopy” over North America. The fear of Christian values imposed on religious minorities was deeply embedded in American Jewish experience and exposed the divisions between evangelicals and Jews.³⁵ Tanenbaum equated Key 73’s civic agenda to a return to America’s “Christian Evangelical Empire,” which had reigned in the nineteenth century.³⁶ The evangelical exaltation of “Judeo-Christian values,” it appeared, had only been a new name for traditional Protestant supremacy. A “Christian nation” that “perceives Jews as ‘incomplete’ and ‘unfulfilled’ may make for a traditional Jewish ghetto,” Tanenbaum wrote, “but it will not make for the support of a pluralism in which Jews continue to be full partners, free to be themselves religiously, culturally, socially, economically, and politically.”³⁷ For Tanenbaum, the domestic political differences between Jews and evangelicals had to be balanced with support for Israel. During 1972–1973, it appeared that the fragile interreligious connections made in the late 1960s might be severed because of these differences. Jewish reactions crested with statements urging communities to organize against Key 73, protect Jewish youth, and leverage evangelical contacts to reverse calls for Jews to get under the “Christian Canopy.”³⁸

Wanting to salvage Jewish-evangelical goodwill, Tanenbaum held out hope that Key 73 “could well become an historic turning point in relations between evangelical Christians and Jews of the magnitude of Vatican II, provided it was used as an opportunity to clarify Christian recognition of Jews and Judaism as valid sources of truth rather than as objects of conversion.”³⁹ The opportunity hinged on evangelicals like Billy Graham, whose personal relationship with Tanenbaum had deepened since their first meeting, rejecting past attitudes toward Jewish evangelism. In an attempt to dissociate Graham from Key 73, Tanenbaum distinguished between evangelicals who followed “literalist, fundamentalist readings of the Bible” and those evangelicals who “have been educated and sensitized about Jewish concerns over the Christian sources of anti-Semitism.”⁴⁰ While Key 73 ostensibly favored the fundamentalists, Tanenbaum believed it could turn with the intervention of the moderates, including Christian Zionists, who prioritized pluralism over missions.

True to Tanenbaum’s expectations, Graham played a key role in bridging the rifts that had opened between evangelical and Jewish leaders. He caused a stir in February 1973 when, after hours of consultation with Tanenbaum and Gerald Strober at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, he released a public statement clarifying his views on Key 73 and Jewish missions.⁴¹ As Strober reported to Tanenbaum about one of these conversations, Jewish relations “is the only issue in which [Graham] plays an advocate’s role with his friends. He concluded [the conversation] by saying as a Christian he owed everything to the Jewish people.”⁴² In his press release, Graham affirmed his evangelistic concern “for all men” but denounced “gimmicks, coercion, and intimidation,” and he condemned “overbearing witness to seek conversions” as “zeal without knowledge,” a reference to Proverbs 19:2.⁴³ This language closely mirrored that of Jewish warnings against Key 73. With concern for Jewish-Christian relations, Graham’s statement addressed the theological relationship between the two faiths. “Along with most Evangelical Christians,” Graham explained, “I believe God has always had a special relationship with the Jewish people, as St. Paul suggests in the book of Romans. In light of that I have never felt called to direct my evangelistic efforts to Jews or any other particular group.”⁴⁴ Graham’s reasoning was theologically unclear. But the opacity increased the potency of the statement, providing a wide license for evangelicals to reject Jewish missions and cooperate with Jews on other matters.

Tanenbaum was enthusiastic about Graham’s statement. The process of counseling Graham had stimulated Tanenbaum’s hopes for broad-based evangelical reform. “I cannot begin to find words adequate to express my deep personal pleasure of the several conversations we have had the past few days,” he wrote to Graham the day after the press release. “I came away from our conversation persuaded that you have the capacity to make a historic contribution to the clarification of relationships between Christians and Jews in our century.”⁴⁵ While Graham’s theological reasoning was loose, Tanenbaum praised him for “the words which you shared with us about God’s Covenant with Israel and your attitude toward missions-to-the-Jews.” Tanenbaum elaborated publicly on Graham’s theological evolution, writing in the Jewish Post & Opinion, “He told me several times . . . [about] the basis of his developing Biblical and theological studies that ‘God’s Covenant with the Jewish people is eternal, forever’ and not subject to recall or substitution by Christianity.”⁴⁶

With Graham’s shifting position, Tanenbaum detected a new alignment among Christians over the theological significance of Judaism and the purpose of Jewish missions. He grouped Graham’s views with other “new theologies of Judaism, the Jewish people, and of Israel” gaining credence among post-Holocaust Christian theologians who disavowed the need for Jews to convert to Christianity.⁴⁷ “Christian leaders, including Evangelical leaders, have a valid theological alternative,” Tanenbaum claimed, “namely, that the Covenant of Sinai is permanent, and that Christianity must see itself not in terms of substitution, but rather in terms of being a complementary Covenant to the Covenant of Israel.” This “dual covenant” theology flatly contradicted Graham’s core evangelical beliefs of the universality of the gospel. Graham’s position came so close to the “new theology,” however, that he was forced to deny to curious reporters that he had adopted a dual-covenant approach.⁴⁸

This theological confusion was a boon to Tanenbaum and a sign of Key 73’s silver lining. Tanenbaum’s reputation in the Jewish community hinged on showing that theological change in Christian leaders was possible. While organizations like the AJC embraced dialogue as an avenue for protecting Jewish interests, other organizations and Orthodox leaders rejected any engagement with Christians, let alone evangelicals. Though Key 73 signaled an enduring evangelical commitment to missions, Tanenbaum argued that the “positive results” accrued in its midst were “unquestionably the fruit of years of Jewish-Christian dialogue.”⁴⁹ That gains toward reconciliation were saved; that relations did not entirely break down; that Graham came to a position far more hospitable to American Jews in March than he had held in January—these accomplishments pointed to progress. The promise of theological reform was an article of faith for Tanenbaum and other Jews committed to dialogue. Tanenbaum had advocated for Jewish involvement in Vatican II, which helped produce a historic change in Catholic doctrine. He held out the same hope for Graham, whose “contribution to helping millions of evangelical Christians reconceptualize their proselytizing attitudes toward Jewry,” he predicted, “will be as significant as Vatican Council II’s declaration has been in helping improve the attitudes and behavior of Catholics toward Jews and Judaism.”⁵⁰

For as much as Billy Graham’s voice mattered to American evangelicals—and in 1973 his voice remained preeminent—the decentralized nature of evangelicalism limited his reach. Though he was the closest thing to an evangelical “pope,” Graham held no direct institutional sway over American evangelicalism. “Billy Graham speaks for himself and his own organization,” Olson wrote to Tanenbaum after Graham’s statement became public, “and while we appreciate so much his forthrightness in all these matters, it isn’t always accepted by the church groups as representing their positions since he’s not answerable to any of them.”⁵¹ For an institutionalist like Olson, whose collaboration with the AJC and Israeli government was taking place at the same time, Graham’s words shifted the rhetorical and even theological balance in evangelical culture, but the real work would be hashed out in evangelical institutions. Ultimately, the two-pronged approach, though uncoordinated by Christian Zionists themselves, proved most successful. The AJC, whose funding and capacity had expanded to juggle multiple efforts toward evangelicals, was instrumental to fashioning this nascent Christian Zionist network in 1972 and 1973.

The first half of 1973 had thrown two crises to the forefront of Jewish-evangelical relations, both centered on evangelical missionaries and Jewish responses. Though the situations differed in Israel and the United States, both required the intervention of evangelical leaders to reach partial, if incomplete, resolutions. Olson’s defense of Israeli policy and Graham’s denunciation of Jewish missions did not simply restate evangelical positions in softer language but christened new themes of interreligious reconciliation. The turn toward reconciliation coincided with another war in the Middle East. News of stunning Israeli losses reported on October 6, 1973, crystalized the importance of evangelicals to the Israeli government and brought to the surface a new evangelical realization of the centrality of the state of Israel to its own identity.

Battle Lines Old and New

As air raid sirens pierced the hallowed silence of Yom Kippur, neither Israel nor evangelicals saw the war as the beginning of a new era of reconciliation. Israel had been thrust into an immediate state of emergency, while the immediate evangelical response was a sudden rise in apocalyptic speculation that exacerbated the divisions between apocalyptic and politically minded evangelicals. But as Israel suffered yet another existential crisis, the government’s search for American allies became more pressing. As American evangelicalism sorted itself into competing interpretations of Israel’s theological significance, Christian Zionists soon found themselves brokering a resurgence of popular apocalyptic fascination with Israel.

During the October 1973 war, Christian Zionists once again supported the IDF. The American Institute of Holy Land Studies organized visitations to wounded Israeli soldiers and participated in blood drives, while the Southern Baptists in Nazareth repurposed their buses and organized lifts for soldiers and the wounded.⁵² G. Douglas Young penned a lengthy defense of Israel in the Jerusalem Post, where he criticized mainline Protestant organizations for failing to acknowledge the threat to Israel. “On a world wide scale,” he exclaimed, evidencing the stresses of living through the war, “efforts are being made in the 1970’s against Israel analogous to the efforts by Germany in the 1930’s, and by Poland and Russia later. The handwriting on the wall is clear. Why are men silent?”⁵³ In fact, however, while umbrella organizations including the World Council of Churches denounced the violence without assigning blame, regional and local mainline statements largely sided with Israel.⁵⁴ Young’s insistence on the blanket “silence” of other Christians was meant to improve the image of evangelicals at the expense of mainline Protestants and Catholics, recalling the passivity of European Christians to the Holocaust. Urging supporters to donate to the United Jewish Appeal, Young hoped the war would solidify the prominence of evangelicals in Israeli estimations of American Christians.

Christian Zionists were part of a larger Christian response in Israel that included Catholic nurses, Mormon blood donors, and Arab Christian volunteers for Israeli military service. Young joined a group of Christian leaders, including members of the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity (housed on the grounds of the American Institute of Holy Land Studies) and Roy Kreider, president of the evangelical-led United Christian Council in Israel (UCCI), in signing a statement condemning the Egyptian-Syrian offensive and highlighting “the refusal of the Arab states to recognize the basic right of the Jewish people.” Even the UCCI, which sought neutrality, described the surprise attack as one that “offends all religious feelings and human sensibilities.”⁵⁵ The prominence in Israel of evangelicals like Young, Kreider, and the evangelical-leaning Dutch Calvinist Coos Schoenveld, the director of the fraternity, was hard to miss.

American evangelical responses to the war highlighted less visible Christian Zionist advances since 1967. Perhaps most significant, Billy Graham lobbied President Nixon during the war on behalf of Israel, urging an American airlift of supplies. On October 28, according to Tanenbaum, Graham told Nixon over the phone that the “majority of Evangelicals were strongly supportive of Israel.” Within twenty-four hours, Tanenbaum wrote years later in a treatment of the event, “U.S. planes are bound for Israel with shipments of missiles.”⁵⁶ Still other evangelicals joined the cause. First Baptist Church in Dallas under W. A. Criswell—still “the largest in Christendom” according to the AJC—advertised in the Dallas Morning Star urging Christians to write to their representatives in Congress and make donations to the Jewish Welfare Federation. “Support Israel,” the ad commanded in large, bold letters, “Christians are urged to support Israel now.”⁵⁷ B. Elmo Scoggin, the one-time missionary in Jerusalem and architect of the convention’s 1972 denunciation of racial antisemitism, sent open letters to President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urging a speedy supply drop for Israel. Olson called the attack “immoral, irrational and irresponsible” that “lends further credence to Israel’s need for defensible borders.”⁵⁸ Most of the evangelical quotes the AJC gathered were directly connected to the Christian Zionist network.

These voices gave evidence to the reconciliation themes animating Christian Zionist support, but they comprised only one level of evangelical interest after the war. The more popular response was fascination with the prophetic dimensions to the war and placing Middle East geopolitics in the apocalyptic time line. For the AJC and Christian Zionists, this fascination was equally promising and perilous. It could be channeled into productive political expressions of support for Israel, or it could lead to a political quietism or, just as unwelcomingly, to a radicalization of evangelicals to bring about the rapture. More than even the June 1967 war, the October 1973 war propelled prophecy speculation into the mainstream of American culture. Hal Lindsey’s best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) had featured the Middle East prominently, but Lindsey’s lively style and youth-oriented message had done little more than summarize dispensational theology. A weightier voice was Lindsey’s old Dallas Theological Seminary teacher (and seminary president) John Walvoord, who published Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis (1974), with fresh analysis of the prophetic significance of the October 1973 war. (Not to be outdone, Lindsey published his fourth prophecy book in five years in 1975, There’s a New World Coming). Bringing a staid analysis of world events, Walvoord analyzed the Middle East within the context of the energy crisis brought about by the Arab oil embargo and the Cold War. “For the first time in centuries,” Walvoord wrote, “the Middle East became a major component in every international consideration.”⁵⁹ The threat to Israel of the October 1973 war made it clear that, prophetically, “The hour of the glorious kingdom has not yet arrived.” Skepticism of the Bible made some Christians write off prophecy completely, Walvoord warned, “and others have been too eager to claim fulfillment of prophecy in the current situation.”⁶⁰ The proper approach, he explained, was a painstaking analysis of biblical texts and geopolitical events, correlating passages in Daniel, Matthew, and Revelation with Soviet intrigue, the European Common Market, and the Islamic world.

Walvoord’s best-selling book helped spawn a cottage industry of prophecy tracts after the war that solidified the popular embrace of prophecy in American culture. George Otis’s The Ghost of Hagar (1974), which described miracles that took place during the conflict, and Chuck Smith’s What the World Is Coming To (1977) were two of the more prominent works that took the war into prophetic consideration. Though dispensationalism suffered increasing academic scrutiny in evangelical seminaries—George Eldon Ladd’s highly influential The Presence of the Future (1974) offered a robust evangelical alternative to dispensationalism—its popular appeal was unmatched. Hundreds of articles analyzing prophecy in the Middle East flooded Christian periodicals. An increasingly common fixture of American popular culture in the 1970s, dispensationalism—especially the concept of the rapture—cropped up in the new wave of Christian music (Larry Norman’s “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”), fiction (Fredrick A. Tatford’s The Clock Strikes [1971]), and film (Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth was made into a documentary in 1978, narrated by Orson Welles).⁶¹

Prophecy benefited from the burgeoning “futurist” craze that predicted imminent and dramatic ruptures in American society. Most futurists employed social scientific knowledge, but the line between futurology and eschatology was not always clear. Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1970), and Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) were some of the most-discussed works, though all three failed to come close to the almost ten million copies that Late Great Planet Earth sold in the decade (Future Shock was closest, selling six million).⁶² The popular thirst for “prevision” was born of the tumult of the 1960s and the forces eroding postwar American power abroad. The new environmentalism and ongoing anxiety over nuclear war emphasized the fragility of contemporary society. More Americans reported belief in an active spiritual realm in the 1970s, giving dispensationalists and prophecy experts a built-in platform to expound on its nature.⁶³

Ultimately, however, prophecy experts remained at the margins of the Christian Zionist movement. Many authors were self-made and institutionally unaffiliated, creating brands built on personal reputations. They could sell thousands of books, but their platforms were dominated by personalities and idiosyncratic politics, and they included support for Israel as only a secondary issue. Take, for example, Hal Lindsey, who led tours to Israel and even met with Israeli leaders. His capacity to articulate Israeli interests and create a network of Christian Zionist supporters was severely limited, as was his willingness to work with existing Christian Zionist leaders. Another prophecy expert, John Walvoord, led Dallas Theological Seminary, but his emphasis on the Middle East was part of his more pressing issue to prove the veracity of the Bible. Neither Lindsey nor Walvoord, the two towering dispensational prophecy writers in the 1970s, struck up a personal relationship with Israeli officials or worked closely with existing evangelical Christian Zionists. They helped popularize dispensational language that overlapped with Christian Zionism, but their goals were ultimately to sell more books and train more students.

If dispensationalism was the filter through which many evangelicals interpreted the October 1973 war, a more critical attitude toward Israel found voice among established evangelical institutions. A self-described evenhandedness toward the Middle East in magazines such as Christianity Today revealed the continuing fractures in American evangelicalism. Writing during the second week of the October 1973 war, Christianity Today editorialized that by its “unwillingness to let go of any substantial part of its Six-Day acquisitions,” Israel “left behind the seeds of another conflict.” While ascribing a fuzzy prophetic significance to the war, Christianity Today also warned that Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was also a part of God’s plans. “That something is prophesied does not necessarily legitimate the means by which the prophecy is fulfilled,” the magazine explained. These qualifications short-circuited the connection between prophecy belief and pro-Israel attitudes that dispensationalists took for granted. Instead, evangelical criticism highlighted the problematic connection between theology and political activism. More radical critiques of Israeli policies by the nascent evangelical left in its flagship magazine the Post-American (later Sojourners) and by groups such as Evangelicals for McGovern advanced a new critical approach by some evangelicals that regarded U.S.-Israeli relations as a troublingly prominent example of American imperialism.⁶⁴

Ultimately, evangelical responses to the October 1973 war revealed the extent to which the theological meaning of Israel remained contested within the community. Young and Olson had taken their arguments to Israel and back, creating a political Christian Zionism that fused witness theology, archaeology, and dispensationalism into an active pro-Israel politics. Other evangelicals like Carl Henry saw the same social and cultural responsibility in light of American evangelicalism. An overemphasis on Israel, prophecy, or the Middle East warped the evangelical presence in American society and created an uncritical attitude toward Israel that stunted missions, he and other establishment evangelicals argued. Still others, along with dispensational fundamentalists, transformed prophecy interest in Israel not into political activism but into their own theological and commercial ventures. Regardless, the October 1973 war and the popularity of dispensationalism directed community interest and energy toward Christian Zionists—an advantage they pressed for the rest of the decade.

Reconciliation and Dialogue

Though G. Douglas Young feared for the survival of Israel in October 1973, the war was a professional boon. Not one to conserve energy, he pressed the Christian Zionist case on all fronts. With regular tours through Europe and North America, he often spent more than half of each year away from Jerusalem. By 1975, he managed to expand his institute’s list of associated schools to more than sixty, with more than 350 annual students (for mostly short three- to six-week terms) and a growing bench of affiliated Christian and Jewish professors.⁶⁵ Young traveled through the overlapping networks of his own Evangelical Free Church of America, the institute’s associated schools, Billy Graham’s associated ministries, and sympathetic outsiders, both Jewish and Christian.

Young gathered enough attention in this period to coin the modern usage of the label “Christian Zionist.” By the 1970s, observers critical of the ideology were using the term to describe those who had distorted their priorities from more properly Christian concerns. “I have been accused of being a Zionist, a Christian Zionist, by some of my co-religionists in Israel,” Young explained in an interview in 1976. “I would like to take this means of thanking them for this compliment. In spite of being a Christian, my Jewish friends in Israel and elsewhere have labeled me a Christian Zionist, and for this, I want to thank them, too, and to let them know what a warm feeling this gives me.”⁶⁶ The war clarified a trend that Young had observed a few years earlier, in which “Jews and Evangelical Christians (Biblically oriented) are beginning to recognize how much more we have in common with each other than some Christians.”⁶⁷ The realignment had brought the issue of Zionism to the forefront of evangelical concern and was becoming a distinctive persuasion within emerging movements of politically active evangelicals.

Both the AJC and G. Douglas Young entered the post-1973 period with plans to expand their influence in the United States. The AJC’s Interreligious Affairs Department approached Young as the “pivot point” for a new strategy of “increasing support for Israel among evangelical leaders and diffusing this as widely as possible through the evangelical community.”⁶⁸ The proposal was written by the AJC’s newest hire, Julius Briller, an Israeli American previously living in Jerusalem who had admired Young from across town. Briller joined the AJC because in that same year, Gerald Strober left his post after declaring his “intention to return to the Jewish community.” Born as a Jew but ordained as a Presbyterian minister, Strober had spent the past five years working with evangelicals while suffering personal turmoil. “It would be an act of gross hypocrisy,” he claimed, “for someone of my background to talk of the vital need for Jewish continuity while retaining a personal non-Jewish identification.”⁶⁹ Briller, his replacement, previously spent four and a half years as a staff writer for the Ministry of Tourism and director of public relations for an Israeli hospital. After taking over responsibilities from Strober, Briller reached out to Young “in order to develop Jewish-Christian dialogue and present the case for Israel on the campuses of evangelical colleges, seminaries and schools of theology.”⁷⁰ Taking a different approach than Strober, whose legacy was connecting Billy Graham to American Jews, Briller focused on evangelical theologians, seminaries, and churches to promote theological change as a step toward political mobilization.

Briller’s analysis of American evangelicalism in 1974 was instructive. Turning away from “evangelical ‘superstars,’ ” Briller saw “less obvious” opportunities in “industry and government” for growth, including the rising popularity of politician-led prayer groups and a spate of “born again” public figures. The Jewish community needed people like Young, Briller claimed in an internal memo, because Jews still knew so little about the geographical regions with the strongest evangelical presence. The evangelical “power base,” he wrote, “reaches far into Middle America; hence it is terra virtually incognita to the organized Jewish community with its historic urban, minorities and liberal coalition.” The once-assumed “natural” relationship between liberal Protestants and Jews was a bust. Not only were liberals adopting “liberationalist” theology that regarded Israel as an oppressor nation, but their numbers were declining. “Since World War II,” he wrote, “the greatest increment in church membership and church income has been that of the evangelical denominations.”⁷¹

Young agreed. The centerpiece of their new joint effort would be the first formal Jewish-evangelical dialogue, modeled on Jewish-Catholic efforts but geared to the concerns and the decentralized structure of evangelicalism. Young and the AJC organized a theological gathering for the following year, what Marc Tanenbaum hailed as “a genuine turning point in Evangelical-Jewish relations.”⁷² This “first conference on Jewish-evangelical Relations” was held in December 1975 under the auspices of the AJC and Young’s institute. Nine speakers from each community met at the AJC’s headquarters in New York City. The conference was meant to reset the evangelical agenda, capitalize on the growing interest in Israel, and routinize an engagement of theologians and institutional leaders on both sides.

The list of speakers revealed an entirely different assemblage of characters than Young’s last effort in 1971. Young was the only speaker at both events (though Arnold Olson, who spoke in Jerusalem, also attended in New York). Of the thirty evangelical scholars considered, all had been affiliated with the American Institute of Holy Land Studies at one time.⁷³ The speakers assumed a “future for the Jewish people,” but instead of debating prophecy they celebrated a shared “feeling of reverence for the Hebrew Bible and its majestic teachings”—a conference that would lay out, Briller explained, “a program defined for future dialogue and cooperation between us [Jews and evangelicals]” where “many of [the speakers] consequently share with their Jewish counterparts an extensive knowledge of, and a sense of closeness to Eretz Israel.”⁷⁴

A young evangelical scholar, Marvin R. Wilson, professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, emerged as a new voice for interreligious reconciliation. Wilson was initially introduced to Young during a Holy Land tour in the early 1970s. Young and Wilson shared an educational lineage through the Albright school as students of Cyrus H. Gordon, the Jewish scholar of ancient languages and Near Eastern history who advised Young at Dropsie College in the 1940s and Wilson at Brandeis University a decade later. By the time Wilson helped organize the AJC conference, he was an academic leader of evangelical outreach to American Jews. By 1979, he would become the first professor with an endowed chair at Gordon-Conwell and his most important work, Our Father Abraham (1989), became one of the pivotal texts for later Jewish-evangelical relations.⁷⁵

The 1975 conference headlined institutional leaders in postwar evangelicalism, including the president of the NAE, Paul E. Toms, and Billy Graham’s son-in-law, Leighton Ford. Toms spoke on the social responsibility of evangelicals to the poor while Ford reiterated Graham’s views denouncing “the neurotic approach that would select out Jews alone as some uniquely needy objects for conversion.”⁷⁶ These speakers rejected the apocalyptic theology in vogue among other sectors of evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Ford assured his Jewish listeners: “If sometimes it seems to you that evangelical Christians look on Israel chiefly as a key piece in their prophetic jigsaw puzzle, let me affirm that our caring isn’t that shallow.”⁷⁷ His concern was shared by Wilson, who dismissed cynicism toward evangelical support for Israel. “Unfortunately,” Wilson lamented, “such provocative comments by and large but beg the question [sic] and contribute little to the opening up of the already clogged channels of meaningful dialogue.”⁷⁸

Evangelical speakers concentrated on the bonds between Jews and Christians, evidencing the ongoing appeal of reconciliationist themes. Pre-rabbinic Jewish thought was a growing field of study, leading Wilson to claim, “Evangelicals cannot fully understand the nature of their lives as Christians until they first understand the nature of Israel.”⁷⁹ Ford noted “a sense of puzzlement and loss that we do not appreciate fully the Jewish roots of our faiths. Christians have sometimes, it seems, reduced the Bible to our New Testament.”⁸⁰ Young, who never tired of castigating fellow Christians for failing to engage Jews, gave his well-worn call for a new theology. “Some Christians have never forgotten the erroneous theological conclusion the church in its earliest days drew from the Jewish loss of sovereignty in AD 135,” Young chided as he condemned the belief that “the Jewish people have been replaced by the church as the ‘Israel of God.’ ”⁸¹

The conference was foremost about evangelicals clarifying their views. The purpose, wrote Marc Tanenbaum and Marvin Wilson, was “to start a process of unlearning the bad teaching about each other . . . to mobilize the best resources of scholarship in both communities to share systematically what we have in common and what binds us together.”⁸² Evangelicals bore the brunt of calls for “unlearning” and “mobilizing.” Young’s withering criticism of his own tradition set the tone. Evangelicals came to New York City in an introspective mood, intent on leaving with a clearer understanding of their own faith commitments. Novel theological language, new biblical insights, and recent archaeological finds made clear that evangelicals had distance to close between their beliefs and their desired friendship with Jews.

Evangelical soul-searching resembled themes of post-Holocaust Protestant and Catholic theology, which argued that the Shoah permanently altered Christianity.⁸³ Though evangelicals rejected the view that the basic Christian message had changed after the Holocaust, they admitted that both the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel had revealed need for clarification in traditional Christian teachings. The Jewish background of the New Testament, the Jewishness of Jesus, and the meaning of the land to Judaism had relevance for evangelicals, too. Unwilling to reevaluate the authority of the New Testament or drastically reformulate core Christian teachings—what post-Holocaust theologians did—evangelicals rejected racial antisemitism as un-Christian and turned to shared love for Israel to improve interreligious relations. In claiming that Christianity and antisemitism were incompatible, these evangelicals concluded that anyone professing antisemitic views was not truly Christian.

While post-Holocaust theologians regarded nearly all existing Christian theology as mired in anti-Judaism, evangelicals were more circumscribed. Their concern for embodying a New Testament Christianity led to calls for improving faulty interpretations, rather than laying blame on a faulty biblical text. Young insisted that the derogatory references to “the Jews” in the Gospel of John should instead be rendered “Jewish authorities,” thereby limiting the biblical text’s reference to a class instead of a people.⁸⁴ Interpretive errors, like other evangelical revisions, protected them from charges of liberalizing their views. They cloaked themselves, as the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century had, in the project of recovering the original and authentic Christian faith. They utilized the specialized linguistic and historical knowledge gleaned from midcentury archaeologists and academics to correct what they saw as past errors of interpretation.

Jewish participants encouraged these changes in evangelical theology. Among those in attendance in 1975 were two new interlocutors with evangelical scholars: Michael Wyschogrod, Orthodox Jewish professor of philosophy at Baruch College, and Rabbi A. James Rudin, Tanenbaum’s eventual successor as director of the Department of Interreligious Affairs of the AJC. Both nudged for evangelical reform. Wyschogrod highlighted “shared contact” between the two communities through the Bible as the Word of God. He also highlighted disagreements. Wyschogrod was especially concerned with a follow-up film to Graham’s His Land (1970). The Hiding Place (1975) told the story of Corrie ten Boom, whose family was active in the Dutch underground and hid Jewish refugees during World War II.⁸⁵ “The film never connects Jewish suffering with the fact that God elected this people precisely because they are more precious to him than all other families of the earth,” Wyschogrod complained.⁸⁶ He worried that “the makers of the film were to some degree aware of the election of Israel . . . but not to the degree required.”⁸⁷

Pressing for “a general consensus” to emerge from the conference, Rudin merged advances in dialogue with political Zionism. “Both faith groups must continue to express positive support for and solidarity with the people and the State of Israel to insure her survival and security,” he wrote, also demanding that “Jews and Judaism can not be seen only as ancient Biblical categories.” In a joint statement authored by Rudin, the evangelical participants committed to “eradicate all traces of the infamous and murderous ‘Christ killer’ (deicide) charge” and urged seminaries to interpret potential anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament “in positive and theologically authentic terms.” Participants also agreed on a political program of “human rights and social justice,” including support for Soviet Jewry. Other areas of concern revealed evangelicals committed to a wide range of social reforms. The conference highlighted “gun control, world hunger, pollution control, ethics in government and business, and the like” as the most pressing areas of mutual concern.⁸⁸ This list of concerns represented a broad range of postwar evangelical persuasions, reflecting far more breadth than merely dispensationalist or fundamentalist views, neither of which was prominent at the meeting in any case.

Never had so many evangelical leaders acknowledged the need to reform the language, if not the underlying theology, of their understanding of Jews and Israel. As a second dialogue in 1980 and a third in 1984 attested, the evangelicals gathered in New York City created a routinized engagement with Jewish counterparts. Forming the core of a new brand of evangelical thinking, prioritizing interreligious engagement and support for Israel, Young, Olson, Ford, and Wilson crafted their postwar Christian Zionism to avoid the poles of apocalypticism and quietism.

Reconciliation and Politics

Christian Zionist responses to the emerging Israeli problems of terrorism, the PLO, and an eroding international status were the testing grounds for the real-world success of interreligious dialogue and Jewish-evangelical rapprochement. The rise of terrorism had grabbed headlines in the aftermath of the June 1967 war, especially commercial airplane hijackings and the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.⁸⁹ American media coverage slammed the PLO and its leader, Yasser Arafat, even as Arab states recognized the PLO in 1974 as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians. The organization claimed responsibility for a string of violent acts near the Israel-Lebanon border that same year. Israeli reprisals completed a cycle of violence that escalated throughout the decade. In a December 1974 Harris poll, Americans expressed only 14 percent support for Palestinians.⁹⁰ Coming after Yasser Arafat’s 1974 appearance before the UN General Assembly, in which he specifically appealed to the American public in the names of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson “to give its support to our heroic and fighting people,” the numbers were particularly bleak, signaling a shifting understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict for Americans that associated Palestinian nationalism with terrorism and cast Israel on the front lines of a jihadist threat.⁹¹

American and Israeli outrage toward Arafat’s invitation to the United Nations was quick in coming, fueled by entrenched Israeli and American skepticism of the international body. The Presidents’ Conference organized one of the largest rallies in New York City history the week before Arafat’s speech.⁹² With more than 100,000 people jammed into Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and the surrounding streets, the crowd heard denunciations of Arafat and the United Nations from the mayor of New York City, former Israeli ministers Abba Eban and Moshe Dayan, and pro-Israel U.S. senators Jacob Javits (R-NY) and Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA). Roy Wilkins, the executive director of the NAACP spoke, as did Lane Kirkland, the secretary treasurer of the American Federation of Labor. These political and organizational representatives were joined by two religious leaders. The first was Sister Rose Thering, a professor at Seton Hall University and an advocate for Jewish-Catholic dialogue who represented the reformist wing in the Catholic church that promoted a new approach to Judeo-Christian relations.⁹³

The single Protestant speaker at the New York City rally was Arnold Olson, selected because, wrote one evangelical periodical, he “has enjoyed very friendly relationships with the Israeli government and with Jewish leaders in both the United States and Israel.”⁹⁴ In Olson’s recollection, he initially demurred when the rally organizers reached out to him. “You don’t need me,” he explained after being told the slate of speakers. The organizers responded, “But we need an evangelical”—a response that was “sweet music” to Olson’s ears. “The slow process of getting through to Jewish leaders that the National Council of Churches did not speak for the entire Protestant community was showing signs of progress.”⁹⁵ Olson used the opportunity to condemn terrorism as “immoral no matter where it takes place, how it is carried out, or by whom it is done.”⁹⁶ He laid out a moral argument against political killings, which he selectively depicted as those conducted by non-state actors, and warned that terrorism was particularly destructive because it thrived on intensifying hatreds. He took to task the PLO and Arab states for failing to accommodate refugees and highlighted the lopsided contribution the United States made to UN relief programs. These themes, which gained Olson a new reservoir of Jewish goodwill, helped establish him as one of the most valuable advocates for American Christian hasbara.

Concern among American Jews and Christian Zionists for Israel’s international standing reached fever pitch the following year as the UN General Assembly took up a new measure, Resolution 3379, defining Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”⁹⁷ Americans and Israelis saw the resolution as nothing more than an attempt to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. Though U.S. Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog campaigned against the resolution, it passed 72–35 (with 32 abstentions), supported overwhelmingly by the communist bloc and Arab states.⁹⁸ Buoyed by the lowest American public approval rating of the United Nations in the organization’s thirty-year existence, Moynihan charged in the vote’s aftermath that “the United Nations is about to make anti-Semitism international law.”⁹⁹ He declared that the United States “does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act. . . . A great evil has been loosed upon the world.”¹⁰⁰

Echoing Moynihan’s rhetoric, Arnold Olson articulated the Christian Zionist opposition to Resolution 3379 to a national audience. Though traveling in late 1975, Olson responded to his local Minneapolis branch of the ADL request for comment. “The resolution is another one of a long list of attempts to destroy the State of Israel by the very organization which helped bring it into being,” he lamented.¹⁰¹ Olson’s letter was featured in AJC assessments of Christian reactions to the resolution.¹⁰² It mirrored the language of Moynihan, who also had combined support for Israel with allegations that the United Nations was corrupt. Olson argued, “Zionism is no different than other twentieth-century struggles for the recognition of a national identity and self-determination by a people.”¹⁰³ Evangelicals, like most Americans, sided with Olson’s interpretation of the UN resolution.¹⁰⁴

Jews and evangelicals interpreted international criticism of Israel as part of a “new antisemitism” masquerading as anti-Zionism. Jewish and Christian Zionists claimed to have identified a new ideology taking hold not just among Arab populations but among all types of critics of Israel after 1967 who rejected Jewish statehood and propagated conspiracy theories of global Zionist power. Over the next seven years, wrote the ADL’s Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein in The New Anti-Semitism (1974), both the “totalitarian left” and the “radical right,” including “pro-Arab” figures in the United States, had adopted a new antisemitic ideology. “Is the post–World War II honeymoon with the Jews over?” they asked on the book’s first page. Lamenting that the memory of the Holocaust was evaporating, the authors argued that Israel was the lynchpin of the new antisemitism. “At the heart of the new anti-Semitism,” they concluded, was “a widespread incapacity or unwillingness to comprehend the necessity of the existence of Israel to Jewish safety and survival throughout the world.”¹⁰⁵ Incapacity and unwillingness—if the description of the new antisemitism conveyed something less than an active assault on Israel, it revealed the centrality of Jewish self-understanding in the aftermath of the June 1967 war to Jewish concerns in the 1970s.

While popularizing the new antisemitism, Forster and Epstein were certainly not its creators. Marc Tanenbaum, Yona Malachy, and Norman Podhoretz, leading his magazine, Commentary, into publishing prominent and repeated articles of support for Israel, were all concerned Jewish observers of international relations and had raised similar alarms in recent years.¹⁰⁶ Observing developments from Israel, Malachy pinpointed the 1967 war as when “anti-semitism, out of fashion since 1945, took on a new form in the guise of anti-Zionism and hostility to Israel.” He qualified his observation by denying “that anybody critical of the State of Israel is an anti-Semite.” Yet, he quickly followed, “There is no doubt, and it has been proven by Christian scholars, that a great deal of the current anti-Zionist ideology is a new form of anti-Semitism.”¹⁰⁷ Concern over the new antisemitism reached Israel’s top policy makers. In 1972 Foreign Minister Abba Eban employed the label in the American Jewish Congress’s Congress Bi-Weekly, where he warned, “Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism.”¹⁰⁸

Christian Zionists endorsed Jewish concerns. In 1969, Young lamented Christians who “actually encourage the Arab anti-Jewish crusade” by mixing anti-Judaism with anti-Zionism. Young also harped on the political ramifications of supersessionism, warning polemically, “Don’t forget those who see the Church as the New Israel and must, in principle, oppose the Jewish state. They even theologically square with the Holocaust.”¹⁰⁹ Olson, too, denounced anti-Zionism, writing in 1973 that “the Arabs, the community of nations, and the church are all guilty of making Israel’s survival during these 25 years more difficult—yet there is the miracle of survival.”¹¹⁰ Evangelicals were joined by pro-Israel mainline Protestant Franklin Littell, who, in his book The Crucifixion of the Jews (1975), declared, “The new code word for Antisemitism is Anti-Zionism, whether the slogan is uttered by Communists, Arab League propagandists, adherents of the ‘New Left,’ or liberal Protestants.”¹¹¹ This Christian identification of the new antisemitism argued that antipathy for Israel was based on a hatred of Judaism and the Jewish people rooted in supersessionist theology. The new antisemitism helped Christian Zionists make sense of international opposition to Israel while avoiding detailed debate on the effects of Israeli policies.

In the same years, the plight of Soviet Jewry also brought evangelicals and Jews together. Olson’s membership in the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry gained him further international attention. Working closely with Jewish defense organizations, Olson also provided evangelical institutional support for the Jackson-Vanik Amendment (1972). Sponsored by Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA) and Representative Charles Vanik (D-OH), the amendment to a trade act with the Soviet Union tied U.S. trade policy to the treatment of Jews and human rights violations. Not only did this amendment undermine the Nixon administration’s strategy of détente, but it recast the issue of religious liberty in terms that allied Jews and evangelicals.¹¹² As an early “neoconservative” who supported increased military spending and rejected détente with the Soviet Union (drawing support from an important segment of American Jews, as well), Jackson also prefigured an ideological realignment that would push neoconservatives and evangelicals together into the Republican party by the end of the decade.¹¹³

Marked by crises in Jewish-evangelical relations and Israeli security, the mid-1970s witnessed the struggle of Christian Zionism to influence the American evangelical establishment. It succeeded by allying with the American Jewish community and the Israeli government in a project of religious and political reconciliation. Christian Zionist leaders pioneered the political and religious tools—fact-finding missions, public statements, dialogue conferences—instrumental to political mobilization. By leveraging interreligious networks, reconciliation theology, and strategic public interventions, Christian Zionists stood in 1976—Newsweek’s “Year of the Evangelical”—at the precipice of national influence within a rapidly politicizing American evangelicalism.

PART III
BRANCHES, 1976–2018

CHAPTER 7

Christian Right Zionism

ON THE LAST DAY of Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s visit to Washington, D.C,. in September 1981, he hosted a group of Christian leaders led by the fundamentalist pastor, television preacher, and political organizer Jerry Falwell. What was scheduled as a thirty-minute slot with “Rev. Jerry Falwell and other religious leaders” turned out to be an hour-long meeting with both U.S. senators, the governor of Falwell’s home state of Virginia, and a dozen leaders from his grassroots political organization, the Moral Majority.¹ Begin recounted that in the meeting, “All proclaimed . . . to the city and the world that they are friends of Israel. They are sincere and devoted. We are very grateful to them. They have proved it.” Falwell agreed with Begin, “There is a special relationship with Christians and Jews that is very dear to me”—a theme, Falwell noted, that aligned with his reading of the Bible. In his own plain style, the Baptist preacher told reporters that the historical record proved that “God deals with nations as they deal with Israel. . . . If we could get Adolf Hitler out of hell for 30 seconds, he’d say ‘Amen!’ to that.”²

In the span of just a few years, Begin and Falwell had become the new faces of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and architects of the Christian Zionist movement. While Begin’s Likud party electoral victory in 1977 signaled the first transfer of party power in Israel’s thirty-year history and the first time sustained attention was given to Christian public diplomacy by an Israeli prime minister, the ascendance of Falwell to the mantle of public leadership for America’s “Bible-believing Christians” was more subtle, though no less tectonic. The relationship between evangelical leaders like Billy Graham and Christian right leaders like Falwell was complicated by their shared history.³ Preaching total separatism in the 1950s, fundamentalists had denounced Graham’s willingness to work with liberal Protestants and Catholics to evangelize and influence American culture. Conversely, less than a decade later Falwell denounced any Christian involvement in public affairs that did not lead to winning souls.⁴ Yet by the mid-1970s, Falwell was singing a different tune, embracing conservatives of all religious backgrounds who worried about the decline of traditional values.⁵ Institutionally and temperamentally opposed, Graham and Falwell had a cordial but distant relationship.⁶ While Graham sought the transformation of American society through spiritual revival, Falwell engaged in a sharper militant confrontation with the “secular humanism” that he saw overtaking American society.⁷

The formative figures of the Christian Zionist movement had been unabashedly evangelicals in the mold of Graham. They prioritized theological reform, interreligious reconciliation, and evangelical internationalism. They worked with Israeli officials to marginalize apocalyptic preachers and missionaries—some of the same fundamentalists that now advanced the Christian right. They prided themselves on sophisticated theology that incorporated the nuances of biblical language, advances in academic archaeology, and the norms of interreligious dialogue. They often compared themselves favorably to fundamentalists who remained, they claimed, mired in anti-Judaism and reactionary politics.⁸

By 1981, the situation had changed drastically. Falwell led the new guard of Christian Zionists, but the transformation reached deeper than a change in leadership.⁹ Uninhibited by denominational loyalties and buoyed by financial windfalls, the Christian right reshaped almost every facet of Christian Zionism. In 1976, a well-connected cadre of evangelicals was steering the relationship with American Jews and Israel, but in less than a decade Christian Zionism under the Christian right became part of the grassroots conservative movement and a fixture of the Republican party. At its most extreme, Christian right Zionism unleashed radical and even violent measures of support. The new right-wing vanguard made the movement both more powerful and less stable.

Begin and his Likud party, winning its first election in 1977, also accelerated the changing face of Christian Zionism.¹⁰ Begin’s Revisionist Zionism and resolve for Jewish sovereignty over the West Bank, which he insisted be called by its biblical names “Judea and Samaria,” was detested by labor Zionists and dismayed American Jews. Yet Revisionist Zionism was preferable to the more secular Labor Zionism for many evangelicals and fundamentalists who appreciated its militarism, social conservatism, and more frequent references to biblical and religious imagery. Together, the Israeli and Christian right aided each other and provided crucial support in times of distress, encouraging both an alarm for encroaching right-wing politics and harder-edged support for Israel among American Jewish leaders and lobbyists. Unlike the previous era of Christian Zionism defined by labor Zionist governments and postwar evangelicals, ideological continuity undergirded the Israeli-Christian right relationship.

Over the course of 1976–1984, Christian right Zionism had become an integral part of the political dimension to America’s “special relationship” with Israel, sometimes called the pro-Israel lobby. Aiming to speak for American Jews and evangelicals, the lobby was never as commanding as observers feared or as supporters hoped, but it left a profound mark.¹¹ In less than a decade, Christian Zionism transformed into a cause of the Christian right and into a far more politically organized movement. A deep continuity underlay the transition—even with the Christian right’s freighted domestic agenda (in the view of more liberal American Jews in particular) and entanglement in GOP politics it remained animated by the goal of reconciliation and committed to the security of Israel. Amid Israel’s continued and often deepening diplomatic isolation, the state had found a loyal ally in the Christian Zionists.

Evangelical Vacuum

In the presidential election year of 1976, Christian Zionists and American Jews had only the slightest sense of the shifting power structure in American evangelicalism. With the election of moderate Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter as the country’s first “born again” president, the future of evangelical politics appeared equally moderate. Carter had won 49 percent of the “born again” vote in 1976, a substantial gain over the paltry 16 percent garnered by George McGovern four years earlier.¹² Writing in 1977 to Morris Abram, president of the American Jewish Committee, Marc Tanenbaum predicted that the election heralded “the rise of Jimmy Carters at every level of our national life in the years ahead.”¹³ In a debriefing on evangelical voters, Tanenbaum focused on the rise of the Sunbelt economy and the prominence of church life in the region, but he did not say a word on the politically right-wing fundamentalists that would dominate AJC concerns two years later.¹⁴ For Tanenbaum, as for many American Jews and evangelicals, the distinctions between evangelicals and fundamentalists remained important and descriptive of the religious landscape. Carter appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be a moderate postwar evangelical—and the future of evangelical political activism. Fundamentalists and “rightwing evangelicals,” including many leaders of the Christian right in just a few short years, were categorized by the AJC as radicals that would need to be blunted through engagement with more moderate elements. “With respect to Fundamentalists,” one AJC staffer wrote Tanenbaum in 1980, “[we] will pursue the counteractive strategies . . . e.g. systematic contacts with emerging leaders in the Evangelical movement, moderates close to the Reagan campaign, and allies in the Catholic and mainline Protestant communities.”¹⁵

As late as 1978, the New York Times reported on the “Evangelical Christian Movement Being Reshaped by Radical Wing,” by which it meant a radical left wing, promoting “the values and themes once associated with the youth counterculture of the 1960s” including “the quest for social justice and the desire for greater personal flexibility in moral and biblical matters.”¹⁶ Billy Graham began to speak critically about American consumerism in similar terms.¹⁷ The Christian Zionist movement, born and raised in Graham’s orbit, was not immune to calls for social and theological reform. Its connections to interreligious dialogue and opposition to racial antisemitism made its appeal, at least in the mid-1970s, appear broad enough to encompass the new mood.

At the center of change was Arnold T. Olson and his denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America. The denomination’s seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, trained leaders of the emerging “evangelical left,” including Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourner’s Community and editor of the Post-American (later Sojourners).¹⁸ Trinity’s dean, Kenneth Kantzer, who was also the editor of Christianity Today from 1978 through 1982, expressed measured sympathy for the student criticisms of evangelicalism, as did Trinity professor David Larsen, who warned the EFCA’s 1978 annual meeting, “The values of North America’s materialistic, hedonistic culture are seeping into our thinking like color into tie-dye.”¹⁹ On the issue of Israel, the evangelical left identified with Palestinians—especially Arab Christians—as an oppressed people. They helped revive non-dispensational “theologies of the land” that taught that God was unconcerned with specific territorial holdings after the sacrificial atonement of Christ made a new covenant with all humankind.²⁰ In 1980, the upstart presidential candidacy of John Anderson, a lifelong EFCA member who criticized fellow evangelicals for not focusing enough on “unemployment, poverty, and hunger,” showed the appeal of the evangelical left’s combination of conservative theology and progressive politics.²¹

Olson had a complicated relationship with this new thinking. Hardly a budding leftist, he opposed conservative efforts to persuade evangelicals to vote for congressional candidates based on their religion.²² Olson joined Marc Tanenbaum and two other Christian leaders in 1976 to publicly denounce “using religion to create a broadly ‘radical right’ political movement” in a press conference in New York City.²³ As “the evangelical in the group,” Olson fielded the majority of questions and insisted that “in a pluralistic society a candidate should not be put to a religious test but should be chosen on the basis of who is best qualified irrespective of race, religion, sex, or political affiliation.”²⁴ Like his denouncement of covert missionaries and doomsayers in the Christian Zionist movement, he rejected efforts to elect a “Christian Congress.” At the same time, as an elder statesman of the movement, Olson saw it as his duty to bridge the politics of young and old, left and right—to hold a vital center most visibly represented by Billy Graham. His vision of evangelicalism conflicted with both the emerging Christian right and the evangelical left.

Olson’s overriding concern was to maintain a wide coalition of Christian support for Israel. He advanced an ecumenical approach embodied in the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI), founded in 1978, which had its origins in Franklin Littell’s mainline Protestant organization, Christians Concerned for Israel. As the first vice president of NCLCI, Olson worked with mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and evangelicals to articulate a Zionism that extended beyond sectarian concerns. Speaking at a rally protesting the United Nations in 1978, Olson explained that “as a Christian I share with the Jewish people two things—the Book and the expectation. There is just one point of disagreement and that is the identity of the Messiah. However, that disagreement in no way weakens my dedication to the survival of the State of Israel.”²⁵ The book—the Old Testament—and the expectation—a coming millennial age—strategically flattened the many theological and cultural differences between Christians and Jews. Olson hoped to appeal to people across the religious and political spectrums in the service of Israel.

The NCLCI failed, however, to blunt the rising criticisms of Israel on the evangelical left or to halt the advance of the Christian right into the movement. By 1980, the NCLCI was led by Isaac Rottenberg, recently a minister in the Reformed Church of America expelled for criticizing the “anti-Israel bias” of the National Council of Churches.²⁶ Rottenberg, like Olson, situated his attitudes toward Israel between the Protestant left and evangelical right. Under Rottenberg, the NCLCI counted both conservative and liberal members with a singular focus on “God’s covenant with Israel.”²⁷ The organization was averse to the conservative rhetoric of the Christian right, but its declarations also failed to charm the left. With a shrinking middle ground, the organization was limited to combating criticism of Israel among mainline Protestants and Catholics.

Unlike Olson, Billy Graham took a strategic retreat from pro-Israel politics altogether over the second half of the 1970s. In the wake of the Watergate scandal’s unceremonious conclusion in 1974 with Richard Nixon’s resignation from office, Graham had lowered his political profile and seemed to publicly moderate his views. Speaking to the flagship magazine of the evangelical left, Sojourners, in 1979, Graham announced “a change of heart” and new concern for nuclear proliferation—a bellwether issue indicating more political differences between Graham and the emerging Christian right.²⁸ Graham disagreed with conservatives on nuclear proliferation; criticized their reliance on right-wing donors; and warned, from personal experience, of the pitfalls of identifying “the Kingdom of God with the American way of life.” He summarized: “It would be unfortunate if people got the impression all evangelists belong to that group [Moral Majority]. The majority do not. I don’t wish to be identified with them.”²⁹ By the time Graham had uttered these words, the Moral Majority had come to define evangelical politics for many Americans, on Israel and other issues.

Graham’s centrality to Jewish-evangelical relations persisted, however, through the 1970s. He contended again with evangelical enthusiasm for Jewish missions after the International Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 and began to reflect the skepticism that other postwar evangelical leaders had shown toward the state of Israel, from critical coverage of Israeli domestic politics to a concern for unsightly apocalypticism in the Christian Zionist movement’s ranks. Graham never embraced the more radical critiques of the evangelical left, but he also did not defend Christian Zionists against charges of excessive support for Israel.

Still, in October 1977 Graham received the AJC’s National Interreligious Award, a recognition largely orchestrated by Tanenbaum to celebrate “the greatest friend of the Jewish people and the state of Israel in the entire Christian world in the twentieth century.” Tanenbaum credited “most of the advances in Jewish-Christian relations in the past quarter century” to the evangelist.³⁰ But the award also exposed growing fissures between Graham and Tanenbaum. The first draft of Graham’s acceptance speech, which highlighted the sins of Christian anti-Judaism, mentioned Israel only once in a brief passage on the need to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” and the prophetic hope that Israel, Egypt, and Syria would one day “live together in permanent peace.”³¹ Tanenbaum had hoped for a statement endorsing evangelical support for Israel. He wrote back to Graham with two large suggested inserts, one explaining Israel’s centrality to evangelical Christians and the other condemning PLO terrorism. Graham resisted, preferring to dedicate his talk to race relations and religious liberty. He ultimately modified his speech to include support for Israel’s right to exist, but he did not incorporate most of Tanenbaum’s suggestions.³² Though Graham and Tanenbaum remained friends, Graham was drifting to the margins of the pro-Israel scene and fading from its institutional center.

The ascendance of the Likud party further diminished the standing of postwar evangelicals, both in the United States and in Israel. Wanting to leverage Christian support pragmatically, Menachem Begin appealed directly to U.S. religious leaders, especially those with the most political influence. As the Christian right advanced a platform of laissez-faire economics, anticommunism, cultural conservatism, and support for Israel, it also created dozens of single-issue advocacy groups and individual political action committees (PACs). New campaign finance laws in the wake of Watergate put strict limits on individual financial contributions to candidates but were more relaxed with PACs.³³ Riding on the influence of PACs and closer partisan ties to the Republican party, the Christian right signaled the future direction of American evangelical political activism.³⁴ Its leaders promoted conservative politics through church sermons and religious newsletters, which formed the base of national Christian right organizations like the Moral Majority and the Religious Roundtable. Begin, aware of the domestic influence of these groups, preferred to work with their leaders. This new strategy prioritized new national and political organizations like the Moral Majority. With institutional autonomy, media empires, and megachurch ministries, Christian right leaders appeared to be the bright future of Christian Zionism as well.

Israel under Begin reassessed the view that postwar evangelicals were the best Christian partners to create organized Christian support in America.³⁵ In 1979, conservative Southern Baptists wrestled control of many of the denomination’s leadership positions (called by opponents a “Fundamentalist Takeover”), replacing longtime moderates and placing Southern Baptist institutions squarely on the side of theological and political conservatism.³⁶ Israel’s long-standing relationship with Southern Baptists led the Likud government to embrace the convention’s new conservative leadership. Israeli officials reached out to the new conservative presidents, including Adrian Rogers (1979–1980), Bailey Smith (1980–1982), and James Draper (1982–1984). W. A. Criswell, the longtime supporter of Baptists in Israel and “father” of the conservative resurgence in the convention, continued to promote support for Israel. The convention’s conservatism in the age of Ronald Reagan also sidelined moderate voices, including the theologically aberrant Baptist missionaries in Israel who fell awry of the new leadership. Dozens of media stories on the denominational infighting collected by the Foreign Ministry spoke to Israel’s conviction that conservative Southern Baptist leaders were vital political players in the 1980s.

No single event signaled the decline of the evangelical Christian Zionist movement, however, more than the death of G. Douglas Young. In his final years, he had almost single-handedly steered the ship of evangelical Christian Zionism. The Graham-orbit movement still held together in November 1977, when Young and Olson took out a full-page ad in newspapers across the country with the headline “Evangelicals’ Concern for Israel.”³⁷ Coinciding with Camp David peace negotiations, the ad warned of Soviet involvement in the Middle East and criticized the Carter administration for the “erosion of American governmental support for Israel,” concluding: “The time has come for Evangelical Christians to affirm their belief in biblical prophecy and Israel’s Divine Right to the Land by speaking out now.”³⁸ Almost half of the cosigners were directly connected to the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, while other familiar names included W. A. Criswell, B. Elmo Scoggin, and leaders from the National Association of Evangelicals. The popular musician Pat Boone, who sang about Jewish history and modern Israel, also lent his support. This evangelical coalition, cultivated by Young and the Israeli government since the 1950s, was on its last legs. Even as Young continued to campaign for Israel under the auspices of a new organization, Bridges for Peace, the forces pulling apart postwar evangelicalism—and consolidating the Christian right—outmatched his efforts.

At seventy-one years old, in the spring of 1980, Young’s failing body gave way. After a months-long speaking tour of the United States and Canada, he returned to his home in Motza, a neighborhood on the western edge of Jerusalem. There, while surveying financial plans for his new organization, he suffered a heart attack and died.³⁹ By a special vote of the Knesset, Young was buried on Mt. Zion, in the Protestant cemetery adjacent to his institute and overlooking the Valley of Hinnom.⁴⁰ He was eulogized by Robert Lindsey; Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem; and Zwi Harry Hurwitz, the prime minister’s adviser on foreign information. Young’s passing concluded a thirty-year era for Christian Zionism rooted in postwar evangelicalism, born in Jerusalem, spurred by the June 1967 war, and underwritten by a reconciliation agenda. With the absences of Olson and Graham, the eclipse of moderate Baptists, and the death of Young, the political legacy of the evangelical relationship with the state of Israel passed grudgingly out of the hands of its founding generation.

Menachem Begin and Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell, who led the Christian right for much of the 1980s, was neither born nor raised in the bosom of postwar evangelicalism. His lifelong home was Lynchburg, Virginia, an emerging middle-class town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Falwell was born in 1933 to a pious mother and an alcoholic father. Uninterested in religion, he had a conversion experience during his sophomore year at Virginia Tech that changed his life’s trajectory. Moving to the unaccredited Baptist Bible College in Missouri, the seminary for the Bible Baptist Fellowship International, Falwell joined a theologically conservative, independent denomination with roots in the fundamentalist movement. In 1956, he returned to Lynchburg and founded Thomas Road Baptist Church. His congregation grew from thirty-five to more than ten thousand in the 1970s, adding a school, a university, social service ministries, and a fleet of buses to transport congregants from the surrounding countryside.⁴¹ A pioneer of the televised “electronic church,” Falwell also hosted The Old-Time Gospel Hour, a show mixing preaching and music.⁴² The program directed millions of dollars and viewers to Falwell’s ministries.

From his pulpit, Falwell preached a fundamentalist, dispensational Christianity.⁴³ Though he denounced liberalizing social movements, including the civil rights movement as a distraction from missions, Falwell became increasingly interested in politics in the 1970s. The Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision on abortion in Roe v. Wade and the decision by the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of segregated and fundamentalist Bob Jones University in 1974 propelled Falwell and many other independent Baptists into political activism. By 1976, Falwell was itching for a national platform to organize conservative Americans from all backgrounds to combat the secular humanism he saw eroding the foundations of American society. In that year, he criticized Jimmy Carter on air, marking the first time he weighed in on a national candidate. He celebrated the bicentennial with a series of “I Love America” rallies in state capitals that featured patriotic music, preaching, and a lament for the secular drift.

Between 1976 and 1979, when he emerged as the leader of the Christian right, Falwell became deeply invested in the state of Israel, as well. There is little evidence that he held anything but a theological interest in Israel before then. In the same vein as other Christian right Zionists, Falwell warmed to the issue after a Holy Land tour in 1970.⁴⁴ By 1978, Falwell was citing the negative side of Genesis 12:3—“I will curse those who curse you”—to warn that America’s decline—even its existence—hinged on Israel’s survival. In broad strokes, Falwell’s prophetic warnings linked the essential purpose of the United States with America’s treatment of the Jewish people. “God has raised up America in these last days for the cause of world evangelization and for the protection of his people, the Jews,” he explained. “I don’t think America has any other right or reason for existence other than those two purposes.”⁴⁵ The consequences for straying from these missions were found in the prophet’s warning (e.g., Zechariah 12:3) and the psalmist’s lament (e.g., Psalm 135:7). In God’s covenantal arrangements, according to Falwell, failing to protect Israel was an existential threat to America.

Though basing his support for Israel on the Bible’s commands, Falwell also tracked developments in the Middle East. Unlike Graham or Olson, who opined on current events when asked to by Jewish leaders, Falwell fashioned himself a peacemaker and undertook numerous Middle East “policy tours” to meet Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Begin, and other leaders in the region, often sponsored and paid for by the Israeli government.⁴⁶ Concern with the PLO, terrorism, international isolation, and unwarranted U.S. pressure on Israel in the Camp David negotiations led Falwell ever deeper into U.S.-Middle East diplomacy debates during the Carter years. By the time he founded the Moral Majority in 1979, he elevated “a strong national defense” and “support for Israel” as the organization’s two foreign-policy positions.⁴⁷ In his “95 Theses for the 1980s,” which he sent to every member of Congress in the lead up to the 1980 election, he concluded with five statements “Concerning the Nation of Israel,” demanding the state’s right to exist with its post-1967 boundaries “based upon theological, historical, human, and political rights.”⁴⁸

Falwell’s fame and influence gave him unprecedented access to Israeli leaders. Menachem Begin’s own reasons for courting Falwell were continuous with Israel’s long-standing public diplomacy, but the close relationship also signaled the changing priorities of the Israeli government. In a world beset by antagonists from all sides, Begin explained, “if a man or group outstretch his hand and say ‘I am a friend of Israel,’ I will say ‘Israel has very strong enemies and needs strong friends.’ ”⁴⁹ Begin’s alliance-making was bolstered by Foreign Ministry reports that considered evangelicals a vital electoral force in American politics. American Jewish concerns over the political sway of the Christian right confirmed to Israelis Falwell’s growing influence. Begin and his advisers—including his English speechwriter Yehuda Avner; advisers Shmuel Katz and Zwi Harry Hurwitz, and Ze’ev Chafets, director of Israel’s government press office—were convinced of the importance of the new Christian right.

“What we don’t know,” Chafets told a reporter in 1981, “is what effect [fundamentalist support] will have on Reagan, who clearly benefited in his election from the Christian Right. Will they become a pressure and will they affect policy? Those are the questions.”⁵⁰ Capturing the political energy of the Christian right was a job for Israeli public diplomacy, or hasbara.⁵¹ Convinced that the normalization of Israel was ultimately impossible, the Likud party was especially invested in battling for Israel’s image abroad. Shmuel Katz, tasked by Begin to find American hasbara partners, was drawn to “the deep sympathy that fundamentalist Christians have for Israel [which] should be mustered in the most effective manner and on the largest scale possible.”⁵² The decision by Begin and Katz to court Christian right leaders like Falwell pushed the center of Christian Zionist gravity even farther away from Israel and postwar evangelicalism. The Christian right was clearly the future of Christian Zionism. Just as evangelicals advised the Ministry of Tourism in the 1970s, Christian right leaders relayed the talking points of hasbara to rank-and-file parishioners a decade later.⁵³

Under Begin, Christian Zionists became a key piece of Israel’s diplomatic relationship with the United States. After meeting with Falwell in 1978, Begin made a series of high-profile gestures that cemented the preacher’s place as Israel’s preferred Christian Zionist. In November 1980, he made Falwell the first non-Jew to receive the Jabotinsky Award. The award was named for Begin’s intellectual mentor, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, whose Revisionist Zionism was an inspiration for Likud and the leading ideological rival to labor Zionism, drawing Israel’s preferred borders around the West Bank. Both revisionist and religious Zionists referred to the West Bank by its biblical names, “Judea and Samaria,” a practice Falwell praised as the “Biblical view of the Promised Land.”⁵⁴ Begin and Falwell saw no future in which a land-for-peace agreement would include the West Bank.

Falwell’s reception of the Jabotinsky Award, which was referenced constantly in media descriptions of his close relationship to Begin, disturbed American Jewish and Israeli onlookers, many of whom detested both Jabotinsky and Falwell. But the award also sent a clear signal that Falwell was the leader of American Christian support for Israel and, in Begin’s estimation, writing Falwell after the ceremony, a singularly “eloquent” spokesman “on behalf of Israel’s just cause.”⁵⁵ Falwell himself used the award to bolster his credentials, explaining that he received it “in recognition of my many years of service to Israel and to the Jewish people everywhere.”⁵⁶

More significant to Begin was Falwell’s instrumental value in the aftermath of Israel’s surprise bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981—an act that garnered international condemnation, including from the Reagan administration.⁵⁷ Testing the Christian right’s ability to relay the Israeli point of view, Begin called Falwell in the early morning hours after the bombing and explained his reasons for the strike, including his decision to proceed only after “a 7-year-old child hugged his leg in the street.” Falwell told a crowd of more than four thousand in Cincinnati what Begin had asked him to convey: “Dr. Falwell, I wish you’d communicate that to the American people, to the Christian public. We’re not warmongers. We’re trying to save our little children from annihilation.” After assuring Begin of his support, including a fresh reference that “God deals with nations in relation to how they deal with Israel,” Falwell told the prime minister of his pride that American-made F-16s flew the mission into Iraq. “In my opinion, you must have put it right down the smokestack.”⁵⁸ In his own public statement, Falwell described Begin’s actions as “courageous and decisive,” helping to deter “a second holocaust on the Jewish people.”⁵⁹

Begin’s public investments in Falwell paid off almost immediately. The Christian right leader helped pull the GOP’s conservative coalition toward Israel-friendly policies—on the Iraqi reactor, in the West Bank, and in a deteriorating Lebanon—which often unsettled the Reagan administration’s own positions. Even when the Christian right’s pressure did not tip the scales, such as in the contentious sale of AWACS surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia in 1981 (then the largest foreign arms sale in U.S. history), pro-Israel lobby groups and Christian Zionists created such upheaval that the deal only passed the Senate by a margin of 52 to 48.⁶⁰ Falwell consistently voiced Israel’s official positions against plans for a Palestinian state in the West Bank (a position that would not be officially adopted by Israel until the Oslo Accords in 1993) and visited the West Bank, celebrating the accomplishments of settlers as fulfilling God’s plans.⁶¹ He later decried the Reagan administration’s decision to open dialogue with the PLO and panned liberal Protestant organizations who criticized Israel.

Falwell’s support was not only rhetorical. By 1982, the Moral Majority regularly sent tour groups to Israel, some numbering close to a thousand people. These tours offered sightseeing, political stops, and access to high-end consumer products, including offers on Israeli furs, jewelry, and diamonds.⁶² In 1983, Falwell and more than six hundred Moral Majority members listened to Defense Minister Moshe Arens in Jerusalem; Arens had met Falwell the previous year as Israeli Ambassador to the United States. Arens used the occasion to criticize the Reagan administration’s new peace initiative.⁶³ The event, with Falwell’s trademark political deftness, was scheduled less than a week before Arens and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir were scheduled to visit Washington, D.C.

Perhaps no aspect of Falwell’s support was more valuable to Begin than his steadfast defense of Israel in the 1982 Lebanon War. The ill-fated war damaged Israel’s international standing and contributed to the prime minister’s resignation the following year. In the lead up, Yasser Arafat and the PLO had managed to create a virtual state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon, taking advantage of a weak central government and competing Christian, Muslim, and Druze militias. PLO raids into northern Israel were part of a cycle of violence in the 1970s that persisted through an ineffectual ceasefire. In June 1982, after Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom was almost assassinated by what Begin suspected were PLO agents, Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon and surrounded the PLO in West Beirut. Israel’s plan to sign a peace treaty with the Lebanese Christian presidentelect Bashir Gemayel were dashed when he was assassinated. In an act of revenge, members of Gemayel’s Phalange party massacred more than eight hundred Palestinian and Lebanese Shiite civilians in the Beirut neighborhood of Sabra and the refugee camp of Shatila.⁶⁴ The Israeli government’s own investigation concluded that Israeli forces allowed the massacre to take place, with the minister of defense, Ariel Sharon, bearing personal responsibility.⁶⁵ With plans for stabilizing the Israel-Lebanon border in ruins and increasing political condemnation, including massive protests by the Israeli public and criticism from American Jewish organizations, Begin evacuated and signed a peace treaty.⁶⁶ Sharon resigned as defense minister (though remained in office as a minister without portfolio) and Begin resigned by the end of the summer 1983.

Christian Zionists supported Israel’s intervention into Lebanon as a strike against the PLO and a humanitarian action in the cause of a beleaguered Lebanese Christian minority. G. Douglas Young had emphasized as early as 1978, in the light of an earlier Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, the issue of religious liberty driving evangelical interest in the conflict. Young cast the Israeli government’s regional actions in evangelical terms, pitting Israeli Jews and Lebanese Christians against the Muslim-led PLO.⁶⁷ The Israeli government’s long-standing strategy of forging alliances with religious minorities in the Middle East—from Ben-Gurion’s “diplomacy of the periphery” that looked to neighboring non-Arab states, to Begin’s 1978 statement to President Carter that “in light of what it experienced in the Holocaust, the Jewish people cannot stand by in silence when minorities are being mistreated”—inflamed evangelical concerns for Christian minority communities.⁶⁸ In the new language of human rights, American evangelicals were calling for governments around the world to protect, in the words of the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, “the freedom to practice and propagate religion in accordance with the will of God.” Cast in this language, a Judeo-Christian alliance against Muslim enemies emerged in evangelical thinking even before the Iranian Revolution in 1979 thrust radical Islam to the center of American politics.⁶⁹

Falwell understood Israel’s 1982 actions in these terms sympathetic to Israel. After a conversation with Begin “during the heat of the siege of Beirut,” Falwell organized a trip of some fifty clergy to visit the battlefield to see the situation for themselves.⁷⁰ Upon their return, Falwell assured reporters that, contrary to the media reports of indiscriminate violence, Israelis “were, in fact, with surgical precision caring for the welfare of the private citizens.” But, he complained, the media was unreceptive to alternate portrayals of Israel’s actions. Reacting to the Sabra and Shatila massacres, Falwell called them a “mistake” but judged that Israel’s role was unintentional. He preferred to rally “every Christian in America” to “spend extra time and effort at rebuilding Israel’s image in this country”—to carry forth hasbara.⁷¹ Displaying such a thorough loyalty to the official Israeli line, Falwell, within a matter of a few short years, had seized the mantel of Christian Zionist activism and proven his worth to the Israeli government.

The Value of Israel

The Begin-Falwell alliance came to Israel’s aid in times of crisis and also provided crucial support to the Christian right in its most frenzied period of activity. For all his pro-Israel actions, Falwell could never shake the charge of antisemitism by skeptical American Jews, nor could the Moral Majority avoid charges of racism. Growing up in Virginia, Falwell inherited a cultural antisemitism that he acknowledged was difficult to shake. “As a boy I never heard of Jews,” he wrote in 1988. “If he was a Jew he was always a ‘damn’ Jew.”⁷² In adulthood, Falwell had purged the most offensive remnants of this cultural prejudice. The decades’ long evangelical movement to reform Christian language and theology helped him, but the national spotlight also caught his gaffes.⁷³ By 1981, Falwell was routinely grouped into the new global fundamentalist “peddlers of coercion,” which included Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran, by pundits and Jewish defense organizations.⁷⁴ The Moral Majority, too, found itself compared to religious fundamentalist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ku Klux Klan.⁷⁵

Falwell’s vulnerability to charges of antisemitism was exposed in the spotlight of the 1980 presidential campaign. In late August, Ronald Reagan appeared at a “National Affairs Briefing” in Dallas, Texas, organized by the Religious Roundtable, one of the leading organizations of the Christian right. Falwell and other Christian right leaders were in attendance, including Bailey Smith, the Southern Baptist Convention’s president. Smith, a young pastor and evangelist in Oklahoma, had hesitated in accepting the invitation to speak. He agreed, he later explained, in order “to know what was going on,” but at the time he was uneasy with the Christian right’s blurring of the traditional Baptist separation of church and state. In Dallas, referencing the perfunctory role of prayer to sanctify political rallies, Smith demanded that his fellow Christians insist on the centrality of Jesus over American life. “It is interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray and a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray,” Smith said. “With all due respect to those dear people, my friend God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew, for how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says, ‘Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah’?”⁷⁶ In a supreme irony, when his last line was reported in national media outlets, Smith’s attack on the Moral Majority instead identified him with the organization. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, cited Smith as symptomatic of the “chilling power of the radical right.”⁷⁷ Marc Tanenbaum, the reigning American Jewish defender of Jewish-evangelical relations, called Smith’s comments an example of “invincible ignorance” and distinguished Smith from the more agreeable evangelicals he met at dialogue conferences.⁷⁸ “Where does it say in the Bible that God does not hear the prayer of a Jew? . . . It was the Jews who brought him [the son of God] to flesh. . . . Jesus was a Jew! Did God hear him?” asked veteran Baptist missionary B. Elmo Scoggin.⁷⁹ Reagan was forced to clarify that he was “quite sure those prayers are heard [by God].”⁸⁰

Though some Baptists came to Smith’s defense, he quickly retracted his statement and met with Nathan Perlmutter, the director of the ADL. Perlmutter was convinced that a pragmatic alliance with the Christian right was paramount to securing U.S. support for Israel. With the help of the ADL’s staff, including the national co-director of interreligious affairs, Yechiel Eckstein, Smith and a group of Southern Baptist leaders traveled to Israel on the invitation of Prime Minister Begin in 1981.⁸¹ By the end of his own high-profile Holy Land tour, Smith had proposed a new Baptist center in Jerusalem and announced, “No one is more pro-Israel than I am,” which he endeavored to prove during the rest of his presidency.⁸²

Falwell’s unfamiliarity with Jewish-evangelical dialogue and his absence from Christian Zionist activism for most of the 1970s made him unequipped to publicly navigate such a delicate issue. At first, he reiterated Smith’s sentiments when questioned by reporters. When he joked the following week at a fundraiser that a Jew “can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose,” it did not help his cause.⁸³ On Meet the Press, Falwell made the awkward distinction between God “hearing” and “answering” prayers. God “heard” all prayers, but he only answered those from “every redeemed gentile or Jew.”⁸⁴ Still fumbling, Falwell met with Marc Tanenbaum in New York City and announced in a new statement that “God hears the cry of any sincere person who calls on Him.” “I gathered that this was the first time he’d had that kind of discussion with a rabbi,” Tanenbaum observed.⁸⁵ The imbroglio kept alive the suspicion by even the most sympathetic supporters of the Christian right that under the surface they retained unshakable anti-Jewish attitudes.

Falwell’s close relationship with Israel was vital to countering the charges of antisemitism and retaining the political vitality of the Moral Majority. In 1981, the organization launched an expensive ad campaign to combat criticism and “dispel some of the misinformation and misimpressions about us.”⁸⁶ Advertisements appeared in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal listing the group’s support for Israel and “Jewish people everywhere” as evidence of its opposition to antisemitism. Cal Thomas, a spokesperson for the Moral Majority and Falwell’s speechwriter, responded to attacks by challenging critics “to provide one accurate quote from Dr. Falwell that is either racist or anti-Semitic. We are one of the most pro-Semitic organizations in the country.” He added, “And I have letters attacking us as Jew-lovers to prove it.”⁸⁷ The organization’s pamphlets stated, “No anti-Semitic influence is allowed in Moral Majority Inc.”⁸⁸ In an environment of increasing attention on religious pluralism, Falwell’s close connection to Israeli leadership was key evidence that the charges of antisemitism, as one American Jewish Congress spokesperson said, were “a gross error.”⁸⁹

Begin and Falwell forged their special relationship through pragmatic calculations and shared values, but they also remained embedded in the Christian Zionist movement’s historical arguments and emphases. Begin’s courting of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism and Tanenbaum’s late intervention with Falwell pointed to the deep institutional roots of Jewish engagement. Falwell’s own observation that it was over the last “twenty years” that “Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, at a very rapid pace, have been ‘converting’ to support for Israel,” acknowledged the movement’s turn toward reconciliation.⁹⁰ The two leaders, unlike their Labor Zionist and evangelical forebearers, combined the rhetoric of reconciliation and religious liberty with the pressures of domestic politics into a mutually beneficial and ideologically coherent relationship.

Politicized Dialogue

Because of the Christian right’s spotty interreligious credentials, American Jews continued to prefer to work with postwar evangelicals into the 1980s. The 1975 dialogue conference spurred a second meeting hosted by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Christianity Today in 1980, and a third at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1984.⁹¹ These were cosponsored by the American Jewish Committee and were intended to show continuity with previous efforts.⁹² They featured familiar evangelical faces, but they also extended the reach of interreligious discussions to evangelical media leaders, such as Kenneth Kantzer, editor of Christianity Today, and Harold O. J. Brown, theologian of the evangelical prolife movement.⁹³ Tanenbaum and his successor, A. James Rudin, continued to promote Jewish participation.⁹⁴ To draw contrasts with the Christian right, these evangelicals committed to religious pluralism and the separation of church and state.

Two attendees of the 1980 conference, Doug Shearer and Doug Krieger, were businessmen based on the West coast who had become concerned about Israel. Appalled that year by “local Northern California manifestations of anti-Semitism among evangelicals themselves and the continued and growing isolation of Israel within the world community,” Shearer, a professional painter, and Krieger, a hot tub salesman, founded TAV Evangelical Ministries (named after the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet) to “embrace Jewish/Evangelical dialogue and more visible support of Israel.”⁹⁵ After a protest in Portland, Oregon, by a neo-Nazi group calling themselves the Christian Socialist White People’s Liberation Army, Shearer and Krieger sponsored a series of dialogues in the Northwest region in 1981, stretching from Vancouver to San Francisco.⁹⁶ Modeled on the dialogues in 1975 and 1980, the joint AJC-TAV gatherings featured equal numbers of evangelicals and Jews. At a Portland meeting in June, close to thirty clergy, seminary presidents, rabbis, and organizational leaders heard from Tanenbaum and Joe Aldrich, president of the nearby Multnomah School of the Bible. Aldrich, a nationally recognized evangelical author, gave an address “punctuated by deep emotion,” Shearer reported, “clearly an expression of the intense commitment many evangelicals have for what they consider ‘the apple of God’s eye’ (the Jewish people).”⁹⁷ At a meeting in Sacramento, California, the Jewish missions threatened to derail the discussion. “When that issue arose,” Krieger reported, “we all concurred that the revelation of the end-time Messiah would be such a glorious event that both of us would be beside ourselves in worship and praise that He has come.”⁹⁸ By sidestepping theological differences to focus on “survival issues,” both communities maintained the focus on Israel.

Unlike earlier dialogues, TAV’s events were meant to stimulate grassroots activism. “Our concern here at TAV,” Shearer wrote to Tanenbaum, “is that we move support for Jews and Israel from the level of ‘leadership discussion’ and ‘theological consensus’ to the ‘streets,’ to the ‘rank and file.’ ”⁹⁹ The voluminous correspondence from TAV to the AJC and Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1981–1982 included reports on the state of American evangelicalism, the Christian right, and the potential for grassroots mobilization.¹⁰⁰ The TAV cofounders described multiple approaches to “support for both Diasporic Jews and the national Jewish homeland, Israel,” refining the AJC’s earlier categories.¹⁰¹ “Liberals,” represented by the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, were the remaining ecumenical Christian Zionists. “Conservatives” headed by Jerry Falwell were dependably Zionist but “decidedly right on things.” A third approach was represented by the “large number of uncommitted evangelicals whose theology is favorable . . . [but] for various reasons, is of little practical service”—the majority of evangelicals who remained politically disengaged from Christian Zionism.

TAV fashioned a “Group of 10” committee that combined Christian right and “liberal” representatives with pastors and scholars connected to interreligious dialogue. The Group of 10 had a defined agenda: “opposition to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and conversely: Evangelical support for Israel and reassurance of our love for the Jews of the Diaspora.”¹⁰² While theological dialogue helped build relationships, it also facilitated action. “It’s good to have evangelical lay people around all the theologians to keep things a bit earthy,” Shearer wrote. The group coordinated press events and “media exposure,” circulated educational materials to churches and seminaries, and funded ads and mass mailings. TAV organized rallies in front of Israeli embassies in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and kept a database of government contacts for lobbying efforts.¹⁰³ These activities helped expand TAV’s network of Christian contacts, which was used “in compiling a list of Evangelical Christians who will constitute an ‘alarm circuit’ designed to react vigorously against any manifestation of antisemitism or anti-zionism [sic].”¹⁰⁴

TAV’s blizzard of activity between 1981 and 1983 was little more than a blip in the long history of the Christian Zionist movement, but it revealed the promise and limits of dialogue as a source of political action. The list of TAV’s events spanned theological discussions and public protests. Though headquartered in Sacramento, TAV co-hosted an interreligious “Solidarity Sabbath” in 1982 with Rabbi Joshua Haberman of Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C., and submitted position papers to the White House.¹⁰⁵ TAV was profiled in the Washington Post and Christianity Today and authored declarations of evangelical support for Israel, which were signed by dozens of evangelical leaders.¹⁰⁶

TAV’s close relationship with the American Jewish Committee was indicative of its roots in dialogue. But its attempt to capture the energy of the Christian right was quickly being copied by other evangelicals and fundamentalists. By 1983, Israel’s Foreign Ministry tallied more than fifty active “pro-Israel Christian groups in the USA,” a quarter of which could be traced to dialogue participants.¹⁰⁷ In another Foreign Ministry list of more than a hundred friendly Christian leaders, connections to the dialogue were also common.¹⁰⁸ The Mid West Christian Committee for Israel was led by Bob and Lewis Blewitt, participants in the 1980 interreligious conference and a couple of “progressive, intelligent, and very good friends of Billy Graham,” in the words of Shearer, who “realize the problems within American evangelicalism and will help direct a more moderate course among us.”¹⁰⁹ The Shalom Fellowship, headquartered in Keene, New Hampshire, was founded by Group of 10 consultant Frank Eiklor, a close friend of Marvin Wilson. The American Forum for Jewish-Christian Cooperation was founded by Rabbi David Z. Ben-Ami in 1980; Doug Krieger joined him as co-director in 1983.¹¹⁰

These dialogue-inspired groups were joined by a flood of new Christian right Zionist organizations. The names revealed the influence of interreligious themes permeating across the evangelical spectrum: Genesis 12:3 Committee, Goyim for Israel, Lovers of Israel, Christians for Israel, Evangelicals United for Israel, Evangelicals United for Zion.¹¹¹ Already in 1978, David Allen Lewis, an Assemblies of God minister and founder of Springfield, Missouri-based Christians United for Israel, had dreams of an “umbrella” organization to corral the scattered grassroots energy. The resurrection of Olson’s 1970 idea for a unified evangelical voice was even more quixotic a decade later, however. Not even Lewis had a complete list beyond the “20 or 30 groups” he knew of personally.¹¹² He suggested to a curious researcher that the foremost authority was the Israeli consulate, especially Michael Pragai of the Foreign Ministry. “His list will be helpful but it is not complete,” Lewis warned. “No one seems to have a complete list, as new groups are starting everywhere.” Christian Zionists were often put into contact with the Israeli government through introductory letters and media advertisements. The new groups—from the California Christian Committee for Israel, to Iowans for Israel, to Peace for Israel (of Pembroke Pines, Florida)—represented the Christian right as it was channeled into the longstanding conduits of Jewish-Christian cooperation.¹¹³

The Pro-Israel Lobby

For American Jewish supporters of Israel, the year 1977 signaled the end of a decade-long “golden age” of consensus since the June 1967 war.¹¹⁴ The consensus began to crack with the victory of Menachem Begin’s Likud party in 1977. For Israel’s first thirty years, American Jews aligned with Israel’s founding generation, supporting the dominant Labor party and its leaders. Begin’s Revisionist Zionism forced American Jews to confront a widening chasm between Israeli and American Jewish values. With the 1982 Lebanon War, the edifice of American Jewish consensus crumbled further. Israeli actions in Lebanon exacerbated a growing political divide among American Jews. The American branch of the Israel-based peace organization Peace Now (Shalom Achshav) emerged after the war as a small but vocal counter to organized Jewish support for Israel. Later in the decade, with the onset of the First Intifada (1987–1991), the divide grew.¹¹⁵ Though still a minority view within American Judaism, groups like Americans for Peace Now challenged the claims of established organizations to represent a united Jewish community.

Even as the American Jewish love affair with Israel waned, the Jewish defense organizations, Presidents’ Conference, and AIPAC solidified their position in Washington, D.C., coordinating their efforts and gaining both fame and infamy as a powerful lobby interest.¹¹⁶ By the 1982 midterm elections in the United States, pro-Israel PACs contributed more than $1.5 million toward House and Senate races. In the presidential election year of 1984, that amount doubled. PACs like the Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs contributed to Democratic candidates, but most PACs were bipartisan.¹¹⁷ In the election’s aftermath, pro-Israel PACs took credit for high-profile Senate wins in key state races.¹¹⁸

Though its acronym implied otherwise, AIPAC was not a political action committee. In the words of its director, Tom Dine, AIPAC was an “information gathering group,” which did not itself contribute money to candidates. But AIPAC’s endorsements often decided where PAC money went. In the aftermath of the 1984 election, Dine told an audience of Jewish organizers that “Jewish money” had played a decisive role in making “the most pro-Israel congress in history.”¹¹⁹ Dine’s braggadocio was self-serving, and, like Falwell’s claims about the Christian right in the 1980 elections, exaggerated. But the influence of AIPAC attracted increasing money to Capitol Hill and more scrutiny of its role in U.S. policy making.¹²⁰

Responding to the same forces roiling the American Jewish community, the lobby included partisans both more hawkish and dovish than official Israeli policy. While initially loyal to labor Zionism, the Presidents’ Conference’s new leader, Malcolm Hoenlein, an Orthodox Jew, recast the organization, in the 1980s, as a supporter of Likud policies. At AIPAC, Dine was himself a committed labor supporter.¹²¹ But a succession of AIPAC presidents in the 1980s were conservative Republicans and supported Likud policies. Unable to unify even within its ranks, the lobby’s leadership, like American Jews more broadly, suffered internal dissension and criticisms from left-wing critics and right-wing nationalists.

In the early 1980s, Christian Zionists did not play an active role in the mostly Jewish pro-Israel lobby. The only pro-Israel Christian PAC, the Christian Israel Public Affairs Committee (CIPAC), was not founded until 1989 by Richard Hellman, an environmental lawyer and adviser to the Israeli government. CIPAC’s limited activities were overshadowed by both AIPAC’s larger budget and the Christian right’s political sway.¹²² Christian Zionist groups were mostly decentralized and lacked the fund-raising capacity of their Jewish peers. Christian right leaders read conservative journals, relied on analysis produced by conservative think tanks, and shared with the GOP many of the basic assumptions about the Cold War.¹²³ They sided instinctually with official Israeli positions and did not much care for the differences between competing Zionist ideologies so long as the Israeli government protected Jewish settlements and insisted on Israel’s right to control a unified Jerusalem.

Over the early 1980s, however, the pro-Israel lobby accepted Christian Zionist support as a necessary compromise. AIPAC researcher Lenny Davis explained, “Sure, these guys [in the Christian right] give me the heebiejeebies. But until I see Jesus coming over the hill, I’m in favor of all the friends Israel can get.” The ADL and AJC still issued warnings about the Christian right’s domestic agenda, but the lobby compartmentalized these critiques. “Let the defense organizations worry about domestic issues,” Davis concluded, signaling a shift in Christian Zionist engagement away from the ADL and AJC and toward the pro-Israel lobby.¹²⁴ This division of Jewish concern actually overestimated the defense organizations’ willingness to break relations with the Christian right over domestic issues. As Nathan Perlmutter, the director of the ADL, wrote in 1982, “Jews can live with all the domestic priorities of the Christian Right on which liberal Jews differ so radically, because none of these concerns is as important as Israel.”¹²⁵ Coming from the head of the largest defense organization, Perlmutter’s position revealed the centrality of Israel for American Jewish organizations.

Even as AIPAC and the defense organizations made a truce with the Christian right, conservative Jews laid the groundwork for a broader rapprochement with the Christian right. Neoconservatives—once affiliated with the Democratic party but now part of Reagan’s coalition—proposed an ideologically conservative Jewish-Christian alliance.¹²⁶ The flagship neo-conservative journal Commentary had tacitly accepted the rise of the Christian right as a political force in the Republican party.¹²⁷ The “godfather” of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, concluded in 1984 that the theology behind Christian Zionism was harmless to Jewish interests. “Why would it be a problem for us? It is their theology, but it is our Israel,” he wrote on the eve of Reagan’s landslide reelection. On the surface, Kristol reiterated an argument for expediency, but his call for Jews to work with Christian Zionists also endorsed “the quest for a religious identity” as a response to “a moral and spiritual crisis as well as a crisis in Western secular-liberal thought.” The Christian right had retained its religious and cultural distinctiveness and carved out a prominent place in national politics. Why couldn’t Jews do the same? Though few in number, neoconservatives in the Jewish community, like Kristol and Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, indicated a willingness to separate the wheat from the chaff of the Christian right. New conservative Jewish efforts to promote U.S.-Israel relations, including the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, both founded in 1985, created institutional settings for conservative Christians and Jews to work together.

Shared values and connections helped to integrate Christian Zionism into the Christian right, and the Christian right into the conservative movement. As Falwell observed in 1985, “The conservative church that at one time was anything but committed to Zionism and to Jewish people” had transformed dramatically. It now evidenced “coming towards a commitment to the Abrahamic covenant, coming towards a humanitarian commitment to the State of Israel, an historical commitment.” “Some ten years ago,” he explained, “we began meeting in conservative Christian circles about how may we express our commitment to Israel. We have been going for years to the land, taking pilgrimages, but how may we express our commitment? And we began speaking publicly, we began inquiring with various lobbying groups that were interested in the land and in the State of Israel. We began offering our talents, and offering what head count we might have for purposes of political persuasion.”¹²⁸

Falwell notwithstanding, no figure better captured the ideological and institutional fusion of the early 1980s than Yechiel Eckstein, the ADL’s co-director of interreligious affairs from 1978 through 1983. Born in New York City, Eckstein grew up in Ottawa and attended Yeshiva University before becoming an Orthodox rabbi. During his studies, he encountered the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel on Jewish-Christian dialogue, which ran counter to the skeptical position of his own Modern Orthodox tradition. Unwilling to abandon Orthodox Judaism, Eckstein eventually found a home in the ADL’s office of interreligious affairs, based in Chicago. There he quickly recognized the rising influence of evangelicals. In 1979, he organized a small interreligious conference at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and began speaking at evangelical churches in the Midwest.¹²⁹

By 1981, Eckstein had positioned the ADL as the leading Jewish defense organization for advancing Jewish-evangelical relations. The American Jewish Committee had led the effort for more than a decade, but Marc Tanenbaum’s retirement in 1982 and the more cautious approach of his successor, A. James Rudin, signaled a permanent change. Rudin would lead the department until 2000 and would continue to advance interreligious dialogue on the model that had worked so well in the 1970s, but he would not brook arrangements with the Christian right. His eventual 2005 admonishment, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us, warned of a “specter of Americans kneeling in submission to a particular interpretation of a religion that has become an ideology.”¹³⁰ Eckstein found less concern in the Christian right; like Kristol, he admired the assertion of religious identity that fueled its support for Israel.

Eckstein’s ambition was clear when he and Nathan Perlmutter met with a group of evangelical leaders early in the Reagan era in September 1981. Hoping to “establish lines of communication,” Eckstein met with heads of the National Religious Broadcasters and the National Association of Evangelicals. In a four-hour meeting in New York City, the discussion ranged from evangelical complaints about “the perception of the public which tended to confuse all Evangelicals with the Moral Majority” to Jewish inquiries on “how [we can] concretize the vast Evangelical support for Israel into political categories.” Both groups committed to denounce antisemitism. While insisting that preaching their faith was integral to their identity, evangelical leaders also explained that they “strongly object to the [missionary] methods which have been used in the past or to duplicitous behavior.”¹³¹ The meeting produced immediate results. Eckstein spoke at the Christian right’s annual National Prayer Breakfast in Honor of Israel in 1982 and began to frequent Christian Zionist gatherings as a Jewish representative.¹³²

Eckstein was chafing, however, under the ADL’s leadership. His evangelical acquaintances included businessmen and philanthropists who wanted to expand their support for Israel. One “financially prominent” supermarket executive approached Eckstein after a Memphis prayer breakfast, hoping to donate money to Israel only to express “his disappointment with B’nai B’rith [the ADL’s founding organization] in that it is reluctant to engage in such matters.” Eckstein also complained about a failure to approve meetings “between key national Evangelical and Jewish leaders” later in the year.¹³³ Turning down an offer to head the national interreligious office in New York City, Eckstein left the ADL in 1983 to form his own organization, the Holyland Fellowship of Christians and Jews, renamed in 1991 the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). Eckstein raised funds among conservative Jews and evangelical Christians for social service projects in Israel, eventually developing one of the largest nongovernment resettlement programs for Soviet Jews. With the IFCJ’s launch, Eckstein also published a report for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Understanding Evangelicals: A Guide for the Jewish Community, and a trade book targeted to evangelicals, What You Should Know About Jews and Judaism.¹³⁴ Eckstein traveled to hundreds of evangelical churches, often speaking from the pulpit about Israel. He organized Holy Land tours for Christian broadcasters, appeared on religious television programs, and hosted his own show, Ask the Rabbi, on Christian talk radio.¹³⁵

Eckstein captured some of the most distinctive aspects of the new relationship between Christian Zionists and Jews in the era of the Christian right. In its early years, the IFCJ received 65 percent of its funding from Jewish donors and 35 percent from evangelicals, relying disproportionately on conservative Jewish philanthropists and Christian right leaders. One of the IFCJ’s first donors was Robert Asher, former president of AIPAC and a GOP fund-raiser.¹³⁶ Eckstein’s own politics leaned conservative, though he sought to strike out “moderate” positions on abortion and public education after he founded a Washington, D.C., office in 1994.¹³⁷ He also took a moderate position on Jewish missions. While most Jewish leaders urged evangelicals to cease all efforts to convert Jews to Christianity, Eckstein settled on a formula similar to Billy Graham’s, supporting “the right of Christians to honestly share their faith convictions with others, provided that this sharing is done in a spirit of mutual respect.”¹³⁸ Eckstein’s views created friction with other Orthodox Jews, but the IFCJ’s financial success was undeniable.¹³⁹ By 1997, the IFCJ was raising $12 million annually. In 2015, the number had ballooned to $132 million.¹⁴⁰ More than half of the money went to programs in Israel, with another quarter to global Jewish humanitarian causes.¹⁴¹

As it grew into one of the largest organizations to attract Christian Zionist money, the IFCJ remained connected to the pro-Israel lobby. It maintained an office in Washington, D.C., and worked with lobby officials on fund-raising, policy, and event planning. But by combining the organizational power and funding of the lobby with conservative politics, the IFCJ generated support from Christian Zionists where AIPAC’s engagement remained episodic and pragmatic. Eckstein’s Orthodox credentials, Chicago-based headquarters, and willingness to speak in churches gave him an advantage over the largely coastal and secular leadership of AIPAC. More to the point, Eckstein was convinced that Christian Zionists were integral to U.S.-Israeli relations, a conviction stemming from his own religious background, time in the Midwest, and firsthand knowledge of the Christian right’s fund-raising potential.

Though the IFCJ capitalized on the conservative ideology underpinning the Christian right, Christian right Zionism remained indebted to earlier generations of evangelical efforts. In many ways, the Christian right fulfilled the postwar Christian Zionist goal to move from an elite effort to a popular and grassroots movement. However, the Christian right had its own priorities. The leadership was drawn from a different stock—from fundamentalist pastors and political operators of the Sunbelt. In diplomatic crises, especially the 1982 Lebanon War, the investment by Israel in Christian Zionism paid off. For a brief period in the 1980s, Falwell came to represent the “50 million” Christians for whom he claimed to speak. But his reign was short lived. Even at its political apex the Christian right, and Christian right Zionism, was headed toward disarray.

CHAPTER 8

Spirit-Centered Zionism

AS JOHN HAGEE, the sixty-seven-year-old Texas pastor ambled to the large podium in front of more than 5,000 attendees at AIPAC’s 2007 D.C. Policy Summit, he “was well aware,” he later wrote, “that most of the largely Jewish audience disagreed with me on many political issues. But on the issues of the need to support Israel and recognition of the dangerous situation in the Middle East today, we were in total agreement.”¹ Hagee had come to Washington, D.C., to announce the establishment of a new Christian Zionist organization under an old name: Christians United for Israel (CUFI). David Allen Lewis’s old group went defunct in the late 1990s, but the name still carried weight. Hagee, a megachurch pastor in San Antonio, Texas, was a small-time player in the Christian right, but on the issue of Israel he showed a singular focus. Since his first Holy Land tour in 1978, he had come to see Israel as his “spiritual home.”² In 1981, just days before Falwell met with Begin in Washington, D.C., Hagee had organized an interreligious “Night to Honor Israel” to stand in solidarity with Israel’s bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor. He annualized the event and spread it to cities around the country—an early sign of his organizing prowess.

In 2007, as the first Christian invited to headline an AIPAC gathering, Hagee spoke as an emissary of “50 million Christians,” invoking the same number of Americans Falwell had more than two decades earlier, “who consider the Jewish people the apple of God’s eye, who see you as the chosen people, a cherished people, and a covenant people with an eternal covenant that will stand forever.” Hagee bellowed with a thick Texas drawl, “The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened!”³ The crowd responded with cheers and applause. Though ostensibly a Southern minister-activist in the mold of Falwell, Hagee had crucial attributes the Independent Baptist did not: Hagee was a Pentecostal Christian and a prosperity gospel preacher. These would come to define Christian Zionism after the first decline of Christian right Zionism in the late 1980s.

Distinguished by practicing the “gifts of the Spirit,” including speaking in tongues (glossolalia) and faith healing, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is active in the world, performing miracles, changing lives, and waging spiritual warfare in the same manner as recorded in the Book of Acts. These Holy Spirit–centered movements have comprised the fastest-growing form of Christianity for more than fifty years.⁴ Like postwar evangelicals and fundamentalists, Spirit-centered Christians hold a prominent eschatological dimension to their faith. Interpreting the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as the “latter rain” of Joel 2:23, Spirit-centered Christians believe it is the abundance, rather than the scarcity, of spiritual power in the modern era that heralds the coming of Jesus.⁵ While early Pentecostals drew heavily from dispensational theology, Spirit-centered Christians today are more diverse, with many opposed to dispensationalism.

Spirit-centered Christians transformed Christian Zionism and now decisively lead the movement. They advanced a distinctive theological program that gave new shape to contemporary Christian Zionist activism. Since the 1980s, Spirit-centered Zionists have prioritized God’s promise in Genesis 12:3 to “bless those who bless” Israel. Merging Pentecostal theology with the prosperity gospel, Spirit-centered Zionists have linked their own diverse individual and national interests to the state of Israel. They have expanded and built upon the theology of God’s covenants and placed them at the center of Christian Zionism. “Israel is the gateway to God’s blessing in the Bible,” Hagee told a reporter in 2017, citing “Genesis 12: ‘I will bless those who bless you.’ ”⁶ By “comforting” Israel in accordance with the terms of God’s covenants and commands, Spirit-centered Zionists teach that Christians can enjoy material and national prosperity today.⁷

Spirit-centered Zionists aided in the dismantling of the Falwell-led Christian right’s grip on the movement and then reconstituted American Christian support for Israel under their own leadership. After the decline of Falwell’s Moral Majority in 1986, the televangelist Pat Robertson blazed a Spirit-centered trail to the center of Christian Zionist activism that later activists like Hagee followed. Both the radicalization and consolidation of the Christian Zionist movement in recent decades signals the shift of Christian Zionism in American politics toward an open embrace of conservative and right-wing allies in both the United States and Israel. The first truly national, single-issue Christian Zionist organization in the United States, Christians United for Israel, was founded by Hagee, a Pentecostal in the mold of Robertson with a global television ministry. With Hagee, the American Christian Zionist movement came under the aegis of Spirit-centered Christians.⁸

Spirit-centered Zionists amplified key arguments and themes of Jewish-evangelical relations and augmented their own theological emphases to the longer tradition of interreligious reconciliation. Seeking more intimate connections with Jewish thought and practice, many Spirit-centered Zionists have adopted outward signs of Jewish religion and forged relationships with flesh-and-blood rabbis receptive to Christian support for Israel. Seeking more political influence to fulfill the mandate of Genesis 12:3 to bless Israel, Spirit-centered Zionists have achieved significant political clout in Washington, D.C., culminating in unprecedented access to the White House under the Trump administration. Spirit-centered Zionists have foregrounded the rejection of “replacement theology” and embraced identification with Israel as markers of “Bible-believing” Christians. These longstanding goals date to the earliest organizing efforts by evangelicals and Israelis in the 1950s. As a sign of Israel’s success in its public diplomacy to American evangelicals, Spirit-centered Zionism evinces both a culmination and a transformation of the Christian Zionist movement in the twenty-first century.

Radical Christian Zionists

As the Christian right came to dominate the Christian Zionist movement in the 1980s, radical activists in the United States and Israel created a milieu of extremism, violence, and factionalism that would hound Christian Zionism. Though not the exclusive purveyors of radicalization, Spirit-centered Christians led the way and forged ties with Israeli religious nationalists, West Bank settlers, and Orthodox rabbis that today make up the most engaged Jewish advocates of cooperation with evangelicals. For Christian Zionist leaders and Israeli officials, the struggle between political activism and democratic politics, on the one hand, and the energy of radicalism, on the other, posed a serious challenge. The volatility of radical Christian Zionism undermined the official alliance between the Israeli government and the Christian Zionist movement in the 1980s and beyond. With the rise of the Christian right, policing the boundaries of the movement became nearly impossible.

The wars in 1967 and 1973 also sparked religious upheaval in Israel, especially among Orthodox religious Zionists who saw the beginnings of a messianic age.⁹ For centuries, Orthodox Judaism emphasized political passivity; it would only be through the mysterious and supernatural workings of God that the messiah would come to restore the Jews to their promised land. After the Holocaust and establishment of Israel by mostly secular Jews, this view fell out of favor (except for the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi) as religious Zionism took hold, fusing nationalism with biblical and theological teachings.¹⁰ There was a strong eschatological component, the belief that the state of Israel’s secular founding would give way to a religious revival and that Orthodox Jews would play a leading role in the redemption of the land. Israel’s capture of the West Bank in 1967 transformed many Orthodox Jews (especially youth and rabbis) from passive anti-Zionists to aggressive proponents of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories. It was the issue of settlement more than any other that united the disparate religious Zionists into a coherent wing of Israeli politics.

Israeli settlers moved into the West Bank almost immediately after hostilities ended in 1967, but in the aftermath of the October 1973 war it was religious Zionists who formed Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) who made “facts on the ground” and became the backbone of the settler movement. Their activity was aimed not only to fulfill their understanding of redemption but also to undermine the land-for-peace formula endorsed by the United States, the Israeli government, and the international community.¹¹ The Gush Emunim gave religious fervency to the settler movement and undergirded its growing influence.¹² With the election of Likud in 1977, which drew the support of religious Zionists for its aggressive settlement policy, the number of settlers increased dramatically.¹³ In the West Bank, the number of settlers under Begin’s watch increased from 3,200 to more than 22,000 by the end of 1983. By 2008, the West Bank contained almost 300,000 settlers and East Jerusalem, still defined under international law as occupied territory, contained more than 180,000 Israelis.¹⁴

Relations between right-wing activists in Israel and the Israeli government were ofen tenuous. Yeshiva (Orthodox seminary) students took to the streets of Jerusalem to protest Christian missionaries, the transfer of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and the Israeli government’s own lax observance of the Sabbath.¹⁵ The bombastic founder of the Jewish Defense League, Meir Kahane, won a seat in the Knesset in 1984. The radical wing’s relationship to the pro-Israel lobby in the United States was even more strained. AIPAC and the Presidents’ Conference preferred to work with Israeli officials and they viewed extra-governmental religious violence as threats to Israel’s public image. The radical wing’s unabashed religiosity and identification with settlement expansion also alienated many American Jews. American Jewish leaders did not view the Arab-Israeli conflict as a fundamentally theological confrontation, nor did they view the settlement of the West Bank as a messianic harbinger.

American Zionists with radical, and more specific, agendas entered the void. Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI) was founded in 1970 as an American counterpart to the Land of Israel Movement, which mixed labor and revisionist Zionists who insisted that Israel had legitimate claim over the occupied territories. AFSI, founded by Herbert Zweibon, self-professed disciple of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, was an entirely Jewish organization, but in the 1980s it also targeted the Christian right by organizing tours to introduce Christian Zionists and Jewish settlers, including an American tour for the secretary general of Gush Emunim in 1985.¹⁶ A later group, the Wichita, Kansas–based Voices United for Israel (later, Unity Coalition for Israel), institutionalized right-wing interreligious cooperation by forming a shared Jewish-Christian board in 1991. Initially featuring Jewish leaders, including Yechiel Eckstein and ADL executive director Abe Foxman, the board later shed these “moderates” who watched the group follow its founder, Esther Levens, supporting settlement expansion and openly identifying with the Likud party.¹⁷

When these right-wing Zionist groups still did not satisfy, Christian Zionists created their own organizations. The rapid dissolution of TAV Evangelical Ministries illustrated this process toward radicalization. By the end of 1983, both cofounders—Doug Shearer and Doug Krieger—became dissatisfied working within the confines of the interreligious dialogue. Doug Shearer left TAV to lead a local church in Oregon, which he would pastor for more than thirty years while authoring prophecy tracts that analyzed current events.¹⁸ Doug Krieger pushed aside his earlier qualms about the Christian right and became the executive director of the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Honor of Israel and co-director of the American Forum for Jewish-Christian Cooperation. By 1985, however, even the Christian right was too limiting for Krieger’s evolving views. He became fixated on advancing the widespread Christian Zionist expectation of a “Third Temple” to be built on the Temple Mount (Arabic: Haram al-Sharif) in fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Finding little receptivity in the pro-Israel lobby or Christian Zionist leadership, Krieger cofounded the Jerusalem Temple Foundation to pressure the Israeli government to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Krieger’s partners were oil magnate Terry Risenhoover and Stanley Goldfoot, the South Africa–born founder of Times of Israel (Goldfoot was also involved in a similar Orthodox Jewish organization, Faithful of the Temple Mount). The Jerusalem Temple Foundation managed to raise funds, some from the Christian right, though hard numbers were never available. Goldfoot was convinced that Israel required sovereignty over the Temple Mount area, which aligned with the basic dispensational belief that a rebuilt temple would be erected before Jesus returned. Unfortunately for Krieger and Goldfoot, Risenhoover helped fund his political causes by selling fraudulent oil exploration leases for public lands in Alaska. His telemarketing scam was discovered by federal investigators and he was sentenced to four years in prison in 1987.¹⁹

Even so, the Jerusalem Temple Foundation was an indicator that radical Christian Zionists had gravitated toward Temple Mount projects, an issue that the Israeli government regarded as particularly problematic. Basing their views on dispensational theology, these Christian Zionists believed Jerusalem would be the seat of authority for the coming millennial kingdom; after Jesus’ return, the city would project its power globally and demand tribute from gentile nations. Adherents were fascinated with Orthodox Judaism and its continuities with the religious practices of the Israelites. Most radical Christian Zionists funded Orthodox Jewish preparations for the future temple and argued for “religious liberty” on the Temple Mount.²⁰ By 1990, Pentecostal cattle breeder Clyde Lott from Canton, Mississippi, had partnered with the Temple Institute, founded by Orthodox rabbi Yisrael Ariel, to produce a spotless red heifer, a necessary part of the temple purification rituals as defined in the book of Numbers.²¹ The Temple Institute, which opened a visitor center overlooking the Western Wall, displayed materials reconstructed to biblical specifications. Gershon Salomon, founder of the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement, and Stanley Goldfoot toured evangelical churches in the United States and hosted evangelical tour groups in Israel, discussing the Temple Mount in terms of Jewish-Christian cooperation and religious liberty.

In these efforts, radical Christian and Jewish Zionists circumvented the traditional lines of authority erected by the Christian Zionist movement and the Israeli government. Changing the status of the Temple Mount, which was anathema to official Israeli policy, undermined the strategic alliance between the Christian right and Israel. Christian Zionist activists like Krieger and Lott, and Jewish counterparts like Salomon and Goldfoot, became the focus of journalistic and academic attention, but they were visible precisely because they were too radical for the established movement.

Radicalism was also fueled by a new wave of prophecy speculation in the mid-1980s. Stalwarts like Hal Lindsey, who continued to predict a coming great war with the Soviet Union, were joined by Christian right activists who combined their prophecy speculation with activism. David Allen Lewis, then executive director of the National Christian Leadership Council Israel, wrote in 1983 that “Israel’s actions [in Lebanon], far beyond being a strike against terrorism, actually prevented the Russian takeover of the oil rich Middle East and/or the dreaded third world war.”²² Lewis derived his interpretation from Ezekiel 38, which prophesied an invasion of Israel by “Gog, of the Land of Magog”—a figure dispensationalists had concluded was the final leader of Russia. As a movement insider, Lewis exhibited the rare ability to channel political activism and prophecy speculation toward political lobbying. For Lindsey and other prophecy experts—Jack Van Impe, Chuck Smith, and Edgar C. Whisenant (author of 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 )—Israel was the subject of intense speculation and discussion, but political organizing was either nonexistent or directed to radical organizations focused on the Temple Mount.

The same was true for the televangelists who peppered their sermons with Christian Zionist themes. Israel emerged as a key device in evangelical prophecy sermons in the 1980s, but the interest was largely to prove the accuracy of the Bible. Popular televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, for example, preferred the grandeur of speculative prophecy. The Louisiana-born television preacher was typical in his praise of Israel. “This tiny country of some three million Jews has stood against 100 thousand [sic] Arabs—and miracle after miracle has occurred as they have their backs to the wall,” he said in his sermon-turned-pamphlet The Battle of Armageddon.²³ But Swaggart’s interpretation of prophecy evinced a fatalism about the final conflagration. Because there was no mention of the United States in biblical prophecy, Swaggart concluded, “The United States cannot or will not help in this hour [of a final battle].” Jews in Israel “will wail like babies screaming in pain. They will beg; they will plead. They will cry for the Messiah to come.” A greatly depleted Jewish population would finally recognize Jesus as the Messiah in their darkest hour. This was hardly the material to inspire interreligious cooperation; Swaggart’s chief interest in Israel, which included donating to the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, was theological.²⁴

Swaggart’s prophetic time line and Falwell’s politics were, of course, intertwined. The type of Christian Zionist interest exhibited by Christian right leaders often differed only in emphasis. Even as Christian Zionist leaders downplayed apocalyptic language, underlying dispensational tropes animated activists. The legacy of interreligious dialogue and Genesis 12:3 thinking did influence the organized Christian right to channel prophetic speculation and to curb radical causes. Yet Israel’s place in prophecy continued to supply energy for the movement.

The Christian right also had problems of its own, separate from radical Christian Zionism: its rapidly diminishing moral authority in the late-1980s. Swaggart marked the fall in early 1988 as a scandal involving trysts with a prostitute destroyed his funding network and led to his defrocking by the Assemblies of God.²⁵ His revelations came on the heels of sex and financial scandals involving Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, hosts of the popular PTL Club talk show. The fall of Swaggart and the Bakkers wracked the Christian right, especially as Falwell assumed leadership of PTL in 1988 to save the media empire. The fiasco that ensued, which included Falwell evacuating his role in PTL a year later, led observers to wonder if the Christian right would be exiled to the political wilderness by the end of the decade. Falwell’s political influence declined after 1986, when he stepped down as head of a financially emaciated Moral Majority. Marking an even more substantial blow to Christian right cohesiveness, the end of the Cold War signaled the decline of the fervent anticommunism that fueled prophecy analysis and much of the movement’s existential urgency.

Christian Right Redux

The decline in Falwell’s fortunes, however, was a boon to those conservative Christians waiting for an opportunity for national prominence. Spirit-centered Christians—not just Pentecostals but charismatic Christians in other traditions who practice the gifts of the Spirit—had been building political momentum throughout the 1980s. Falwell’s rival for Christian right leadership, Pat Robertson, a charismatic Southern Baptist televangelist, launched a presidential campaign in 1988. Robertson, who embodied a fusion of Southern and Spirit-centered values, was also a staunch Zionist emblematic of the theological experimentalism and reconciliation impulses on the ascendancy in Christian Zionism. But the line of Spirit-centered Christianity to Christian Zionism was not straight.

Spirit-centered Christians, regarding the power of the Holy Spirit as the chief manifestation of God’s presence, often interpreted the fulfillment of prophecy in deeply personal ways that hindered rather than stimulated Zionist activism. Robertson, the leading charismatic Christian in America throughout the 1980s and 1990s, saw events in the Middle East in terms of his own ministry. “We broke ground for the new [television] station on June 5, 1967—the same day the Jews went to war with Arabs at the beginning of the Six Day War in Israel,” he recalled in his autobiography. “Somehow I knew the future of CBN [Christian Broadcast Network] was intertwined with the destiny of Israel.”²⁶ The Jewish people loomed large in Robertson’s thinking, but this did not initially lead him to Christian Zionist activism. Instead, it reinforced his choice to join Christian broadcasting. Similarly, Spirit-centered Christians looked to Israel for validation, comfort, and support for their beliefs, but they did not necessarily embrace a Zionist agenda until the collapse of evangelical leadership in the late 1970s.

The large proportion of Messianic Jews in Spirit-centered Christianity also posed a barrier to political cooperation with Israel. By the 1970s, the Messianic Jewish movement was increasingly Spirit-centered, with some of its leaders becoming prominent voices in the Pentecostal media.²⁷ Louis Kaplan, founder of the missionary effort Jewish Voice, television host and journalist Mike Evans, and talk show host Sid Roth were prominent Messianic Jews who were openly committed to Jewish missions. They were also staunch supporters of Israel and tied their Jewish identity to Zionism. Mike Evans, a young American journalist in the late 1970s, is a case in point. Evans became a Messianic Jew as a teenager and became fascinated with Israel and the Middle East. He eventually befriended Menachem Begin and went on to write dozens of books about Israel, prophecy, and the history of Christian Zionism.²⁸ He also founded the Jerusalem Prayer Team and the Christian Zionism Heritage Center in Jerusalem. A political conservative convinced that Western civilization hinged on U.S. support for Israel, Evans became a regular contact for Israeli (mostly Likud) politicians. He was also a divisive figure in dialogue circles. According to Evans, Begin embraced his dual identity—“He’d say, ‘You’re a Jew, but you’re a Christian.’ ”²⁹ But Evans symbolized the threat of conversion to the antimissionary activists who protested his events and organizations.³⁰ Messianic Jews’ precarious status in Israel and among American Jews (both regarding them as non-Jewish) blunted interreligious cooperation and the inclination for Spirit-centered Christians to work with Israel.

However, Spirit-centered Zionism was innovative not only for its modification of dispensational teachings but also for its interest in spiritual warfare.³¹ The Middle East in particular, as the future site of the millennial kingdom, was spiritual terrain divided between God’s domain and the “principalities and powers” of darkness (Ephesians 6:12). The gifts of the Spirit were weapons in the spiritual war against Satan and his evil forces. Prayer, missions, and tithing; prophesying, rebuking, and other miraculous powers—these contributed to the spiritual war raging across the globe. Some early Pentecostals, such as David Wesley Myland, tracked spiritual movements in the physical world. Myland documented the increasing rainfall in Jerusalem from 1861 through 1907 to prove his case that God was preparing the land for Jewish settlement (this measurement also enthralled the early Christian Zionist William Blackstone). Others, like William Hull, evangelized to Jews in Palestine in an effort to fulfill prophecy. Later Pentecostals like Robertson turned to political organizing. His efforts to reclaim the national Christian right Zionist success would, however, prove insufficient. For the next twenty years, unity eluded American Christian Zionists. Robertson did accomplish one thing: solidifying the ascendancy of Spirit-centered Christians on the Christian right and the Christian Zionist movement.

It was not all Robertson’s fault that the Christian right languished on the national stage. With the decline of the Moral Majority, old problems resurfaced. Political differences and numerical decline sparked reflections on the part of American Jewish leaders toward the bargain they had made with the Christian right. The death of the Anti-Defamation League’s longtime director Nathan Perlmutter in 1987 signaled the passing of one of the American Jewish establishment’s key supporters of a pragmatic alliance with the Christian right. The ADL’s next director, Abe Foxman, echoed a rising sense among the Jewish establishment that the Christian right was a threat to American pluralism. When in 1989 more than a dozen evangelical leaders signed a declaration calling for renewed efforts to expand Jewish missions, the relationship reached a new low. The Willowbank Declaration lamented “confusion among Christians about the need for, and the propriety of, endeavors to share faith in Jesus Christ with Jewish people” and denounced “a new theology . . . which holds that God’s covenant with Israel through Abraham establishes all Jews in God’s favor for all times, and makes faith in Jesus Christ for salvation needless.”³² Yechiel Eckstein, in a response to Christianity Today, wrote that he was “terribly disheartened.”³³ Though it rankled those in both communities who wished to deepen Jewish-evangelical relations, the declaration revealed the success of Christian Zionism in evangelical circles.

By the end of the 1980s, the face of a weakened Christian right was no longer Jerry Falwell but his longtime rival and fellow Virginian, Pat Robertson. The son of a Dixiecrat U.S. senator, Robertson attended Washington and Lee University and earned a law degree from Yale University in 1955 before his spiritual conversion and decision to enter the ministry. He at first felt called to become a missionary in Israel but soon decided that his talents lay in media and television broadcasting.³⁴ Ordained as a Southern Baptist, Robertson developed an esoteric charismatic theology, soon joining with decidedly un-Baptist revivalists and faith healers beginning to capitalize on the medium of television. In 1960, at the age of thirty, Robertson founded the Christian Broadcast Network in Portsmouth, Virginia. He began to host a new talk show in 1966, The 700 Club, which launched the network into astronomical profitability. Though originally focused on religious themes and the work of the Holy Spirit, The 700 Club became a sounding board for Robertson’s disappointment with America’s political and moral leadership. By the late 1970s, with his disgust for fellow Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter palpable, Robertson called for a national religious revival based on conservative values.³⁵

Robertson’s charismatic practices and rivalry with Falwell stunted his influence during the years of the Moral Majority. On the issue of Israel, Robertson could boast of his television and radio assets in Lebanon, acquired to beam his gospel message behind the Iron Curtain and across the Middle East, but he had few direct contacts in the Israeli government.³⁶ Operation Blessing, a humanitarian organization funded by CBN, began to support social service ministries in Israel only in the 1990s. As an influential figure on the Christian right, Robertson managed to attract the attention of Yechiel Eckstein and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, appearing with the rabbi at the “First Day of Christian and Jewish Solidarity with Israel” in 1984.³⁷ He remained a secondary personality in the Christian Zionist movement, however, with a penchant to misspeak and promote Jewish missions, and without the clear political upside of Falwell.

Robertson’s profile began to rise a few years later, in 1986, as he prepared for an improbable presidential run. After almost two years of campaigning, Robertson placed second in the Iowa caucuses to incumbent vice president George H. W. Bush. His campaign flagged, failing to gain the support even of fellow Christian right leaders.³⁸ The experience made clear, however, the importance of grassroots political organizing. In 1989, Robertson founded the Christian Coalition, a spiritual successor to the Moral Majority. Headed by the young conservative activist Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition improved on the Moral Majority’s formula by organizing local chapters and modeling a more traditional national organization. Robertson became the public face of the Christian Coalition and Reed its strategist. By 1992, the coalition could claim more than two hundred local chapters and support from the Republican National Convention.³⁹ It appeared in the early 1990s that Robertson had gained the momentum that Falwell had lost. Yet even more than Falwell, Robertson was dogged by his inability to embrace fully the program of interreligious reconciliation.

Fragmentation

The Christian Coalition’s crowning achievement in 1994—helping to elect the first Republican majority in the House since 1952—generated a fresh wave of American Jewish concern about the Christian right. As its name implied, the Christian Coalition ostensibly drew on an even smaller religious electorate than the Moral Majority. Robertson’s religious programming explicitly targeted Jews for conversion, which set him apart from more guarded preachers like Falwell but squarely in the mainstream of Spirit-centered television ministries. More alarming, Robertson’s 1991 bestseller, A New World Order, warned of a centuries-old global conspiracy that involved “European bankers” and Freemasons. In his review for the New York Review of Books, Michael Lind noted how each stage of Robertson’s global conspiracy involved a Jew as “a key figure.” Robertson recounted how in Frankfurt, 1,782 “Jews were for the first time admitted to the order of Freemasons”; how Moses Hess, a political radical, was instrumental in the rise of international communism; how “Jewish bankers” sought to destroy nineteenth-century America by buying up land. Robertson protested the charge of antisemitism, pointing to his support for Israel, but Jewish defense organizations were unconvinced.⁴⁰

The AJC and American Jewish Congress responded to Robertson with broadsides against the Christian right. However, it was the Anti-Defamation League’s comprehensive report, The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America (1994), that threatened to permanently alienate the two communities.⁴¹ Produced after failed private meetings between the ADL and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1991 and 1992, the book-length report argued that Robertson and the Christian right had no interest in protecting the separation of church and state.⁴² The ADL scoured the public utterances of Christian right leaders, especially Robertson, to paint the image of an unhinged and antidemocratic movement. In the foreword, Abe Foxman warned that Christian right leaders “bring to cultural disagreements a rhetoric of fear, suspicion, even hatred,” which pushed American society “down the road to the ‘Christian nationalism’ trumpeted by these prophets of rage.”⁴³ Stopping short of calling the Christian right antisemitic, the report urged Jewish opposition to the movement that was now inextricable from Robertson and the Christian Coalition.

Responses to the ADL’s report highlighted divisions over Jewish attitudes toward the Christian right. Later, in 1994, a group of seventy-five Jewish leaders took out an ad in the New York Times calling “fellow Jews to reject this study” as misguided and a caricature of the Christian right. In addition to Irving Kristol’s signature, the group featured Jewish Republicans and neoconservatives, including Dennis Prager, David Horowitz, and Eliot A. Cohen—all of whom would defend the Christian right in later years, as well.⁴⁴ Norman Podhoretz of Commentary argued that Robertson’s support for Israel outweighed his offenses.⁴⁵ The Christian Coalition had received the brunt of the ADL’s criticism and published a forty-page response, claiming “numerous factual errors.” The NAE, whose membership overlapped with the Christian Coalition but was less partisan, conveyed to the ADL its displeasure with The Religious Right. Its criticisms ran from the ADL’s “discrimination in singling out” evangelicals to the report’s overuse of “opprobrious adjectives (e.g., ‘virulent’).”⁴⁶

Watching the disaster unfold was Yechiel Eckstein. The success of his organization, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, depended on Jewish-evangelical cooperation. In the wake of the public row, he organized a meeting for more than thirty representatives—from Foxman to Robertson, Reed, and Falwell—at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. After five hours and a kosher lunch, both sides emerged with “a truce, but not quite a treaty,” as the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported.⁴⁷ “We came to this table with our baggage, with our historical pain, with our anxieties,” Eckstein told reporters. “The meeting was held against a background of 2,000 years of fratricide.”⁴⁸ Robertson and Foxman gave the meeting high marks, signaling a momentary rapprochement between the American Jewish establishment and the Christian right. Eckstein founded the “Evangelical-Jewish Leadership Conference,” which met bi-annually and included Howard Kohr, the executive director of AIPAC, and Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Presidents’ Conference. While the ADL continued to hammer the Christian right on school prayer and its views on homosexuality, the criticisms were less comprehensive and less focused on Robertson. They became more qualified and Foxman’s attitude toward Robertson softened. By the early twenty-first century, Foxman praised Christian Zionist support as “overwhelming, consistent, and unconditional.”⁴⁹

With the help of Eckstein, Robertson had managed to salvage a record of incoherent and controversial positions into a learning experience that reinforced the Christian right’s centrality to Christian Zionism. Ralph Reed tried to capitalize on the momentum to expand the Christian Coalition’s appeal. In 1995, he spoke to Jewish audiences, telling one crowd, “I want you to know that as a Christian Community that we will continue to stand with the nation of Israel, with the Israeli people, and with Jews all over the world in praying for and working for peace in that troubled region.”⁵⁰ Just a few years earlier he had looked forward to “a country once again governed by Christians . . . and Christian values.” Now Reed emphasized the “Judeo-Christian” values of “children, Israel, and religious tolerance”—the three issues he identified as overlapping Jewish and evangelical concerns.⁵¹

Jewish-evangelical relations continued to struggle, however. In 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a “Resolution on Jewish Evangelism” that called for the denomination to “direct our energies and resources toward the proclamation of the gospel to the Jewish people.”⁵² A. James Rudin, speaking for the AJC, denounced the resolution as “a great setback,” while Rabbi Leon Klinecki, speaking for the ADL, wondered instead if there should be “a mission to Christians, because it was in Christian Europe that the Holocaust occurred.”⁵³ In 1998, a massive (largely Spirit-centered) Christian Zionist rally in Orlando, Florida, was boycotted by Eckstein and the Israeli government because of the prominent role of Messianic Jews on the program.⁵⁴ The following year, Falwell told a meeting of evangelicals concerned about the new millennium that the Antichrist was probably alive and would be “male and Jewish.” Defending himself, Falwell explained that Jesus’ Jewish background gave Christians special insight. “If he is going to be the counterfeit Christ, he has to be Jewish,” Falwell reasoned.⁵⁵ The theology of reconciliation and revisions to older, less Jewish depictions of Jesus had penetrated evangelical thinking—perhaps too deeply. Jewish leaders immediately demanded an apology, and Falwell quickly obliged.

Politically, Christian Zionism dithered under Robertson’s Christian right, splitting over Yitzhak Rabin’s attempt to reach a peace agreement on the basis of a two-state solution. In response to the Oslo Accords in 1993, Christians were divided over the land-for-peace formula. Reed and the Christian Coalition, primarily concerned with improving the Christian right’s image in American politics, remained officially neutral on the peace process and deferred to AIPAC and Jewish defense organizations. Even so, when Reed wrote to House majority leader Newt Gingrich in 1995 that he believed Jerusalem should remain undivided and under Israeli control, the Rabin government rescinded an invitation to visit Israel.⁵⁶

The Israeli radical right reached a crisis point with the mass murder of twenty-nine Palestinians by Baruch Goldstein (a member of the Jewish Defense League) in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994 and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a yeshiva student in November 1995.⁵⁷ Though widely condemned in Jewish and Christian media, some segments of the right found ways to explain the violence in covenantal terms. Robertson claimed that Rabin’s death was an act of God to prevent Israel from ceding its homeland.⁵⁸ More tactful Christian Zionist critics, such as the younger Pentecostal pastor John Hagee, described Rabin’s peace efforts as a “fanatical pursuit for peace” that had circumvented Israeli democratic procedures. Hagee, claiming to speak for Knesset members, Israeli journalists, and settlers who had been ignored by the government, emphasized the PLO’s illegitimacy and the moral and strategic disaster of negotiating the removal of Israeli settlements.⁵⁹

The lack of an institutional center to the Christian Zionist movement in the 1990s reduced it to outbursts of support for Israel. Christian right leaders attended a series of rallies in support of Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited the United States during his 1996–1999 term as prime minister. A Likud revisionist in the mold of Begin, Netanyahu responded to terrorist attacks in Israel by reemphasizing Israeli security concerns, slowing the peace process, and expanding settlement building.⁶⁰ Key to Netanyahu’s understanding of the world was his ideological commitment to Israel as one front in a global struggle between the West and the Islamic world. Arab-Israeli peace was a small, and not the most significant, issue in the clash of civilizations. This view naturally coincided with Christian Zionist invocations of Judeo-Christian solidarity, but it also made Netanyahu attuned to the long history of Christian support for Zionism. In his key ideological text, written in 1993 as he assumed leadership of the Likud party, Netanyahu extolled the history of supportive clergy “antedat[ing] the modern Zionist movement by at least half a century.”⁶¹ By the twenty-first century, Netanyahu could ingratiate himself with Christian audiences by observing with sincerity, “I don’t believe the Jewish State and Modern Zionism would have been possible without Christian Zionism.”⁶²

Netanyahu’s ideology, as much as his skepticism of the peace process, appealed to Christian Zionists. Netanyahu was first acquainted with Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, and other Christian right Zionists in the 1980s as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. As prime minister, he created a group of tourism advisers, the Israel Christian Advocacy Council, consisting entirely of Christian right leaders.⁶³ Reacting to a December 1996 New York Times ad by Churches for Middle East Peace that called for a “Jerusalem shared between 2 peoples . . . and 3 faiths,” the Advocacy Council responded with its own ad four months later. “Christians for a United Jerusalem” claimed that its signatories represented “100 million Christians” who supported exclusive Israeli control of the city. John Hagee, still a small player on the Christian right, directed messages of support to his office in San Antonio, Texas, which would be forwarded to President Bill Clinton.⁶⁴

During Netanyahu’s first term, Christian right leaders responded to Israeli requests for newspaper ads, interviews, and discussions on their television programs. They raised issues related to support for Israel, including reports of Palestinian Christian persecution under the PLO, the threat of Islamic terrorism, and increased U.S. financial and military support to Israel. But the Christian right’s internal divisions, Likud’s electoral loss in 1999, and flagging American optimism for the peace process hampered the movement. Radical organizations capitalized on grassroots energy, such as the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, founded in 1995 by Ted Beckett, a charismatic Christian businessman from Colorado Springs. Established under the advice of West Bank settlers “as a Christian response to the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993,” Beckett’s outfit funded settlement activity even when the Israeli government ceased aid in accordance with the Oslo process.⁶⁵ Troubled by the prospect of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Beckett created the organization to “stand with the people of Judea and Samaria”—the Jewish settlers.⁶⁶

This type of open partisanship and identification with the radical right in Israel was anathema to an organization like the Christian Coalition, searching for leverage in a divided political landscape. In any case, like the Moral Majority before it, the Christian Coalition fell from the center of Christian Zionism as quickly as it had arrived. With Reed’s departure in 1997 and Robertson’s resignation in 2001, it lost its luster and made far less a mark on the election of George W. Bush in 2000 than observers had expected a handful of years earlier.⁶⁷ The era of multi-issue Christian right national organizations—the era of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition—had proved too rigid, aimless, and disorganized for the Christian Zionist movement to flourish.

Consolidation

By 2006, the fragmentation of Christian Zionism in the United States had become the backdrop for the rise of the movement’s first nationwide grassroots organization, Christians United for Israel. Its architect was John Hagee, a megachurch pastor in San Antonio. Born and raised in southeast Texas, Hagee was descended from a long line of Methodist preachers steeped in dispensationalism. When Hagee was eight years old, his father told him that the day Israel declared its independence was “the most important day of the twentieth century. God’s promise to bring the Jewish people back to Israel is being fulfilled before our eyes.”⁶⁸ Hagee admitted that dispensationalism was “drilled into me from an early age,” but it took more than thirty years after 1948 to translate his beliefs into political action. In the meantime, Hagee completed his theological training at Southwestern Assemblies of God University and founded his first church in 1966. After a scandal that led to his resignation in 1975, he founded the nondenominational Church on Castle Hills (later, Cornerstone Church), which soon grew into a megachurch complex with thousands of weekly attendees.

Hagee’s natural talents, ties to Texas, and friendships with major evangelical leaders, including W. A. Criswell, helped his second church thrive. Hagee preached a politically conservative Christianity that combined a Pentecostal emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit with the teachings of the prosperity gospel, promising God’s followers wealth and happiness in return for faith. Christian Zionists before Hagee—early postwar Pentecostal evangelists Gordon Lindsay and Oral Roberts, and, later, Christian right Zionists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—had combined this basic theme of God’s blessing those who blessed Israel into their rationale for support. But Falwell rejected prosperity gospel teachings as “bad doctrine” and regarded it as crass materialism.⁶⁹ Hagee, more than any Christian Zionist before him, bound prosperity theology and Genesis 12:3 together and placed them at the center of his thinking about Israel.⁷⁰

Visiting Israel with his second wife, Diana, in 1978, Hagee had an awakening: “We went as tourists but came home as Zionists.” Hagee ordered “$150 of books” in Jerusalem and during the remainder of the trip he read Catholic priest Edward Flannery’s The Anguish of the Jews (1965) and Jewish philosopher Dagobert Runes’s The War Against the Jew (1968), both documenting the church’s history of anti-Judaism and indicting it for the rise of racial antisemitism. These books, he recounted, “became the intellectual foundation of my life’s work from that moment forward.” By the time he was once again flying over the Atlantic, Hagee was “jotting down notes on what I could do to bring Christians and Jews together—without starting a riot.”⁷¹

Hagee focused first on repairing local Jewish-Christian ties, developing friendships with San Antonio rabbis, and publicizing his newfound passion for Israel. His big opportunity came in June 1981, after he read news reports speculating that the United States might “abandon” Israel after it bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor.⁷² Just days before Falwell met with Begin in Washington, D.C., Hagee organized an interreligious “Night to Honor Israel” at his San Antonio church. No mere worship service, the event was a blend of American and Israeli nationalism. A color guard presented both national flags while the crowd sang the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Hatikva,” Israel’s national anthem. After a welcome message from the Israeli Consulate General in Houston, speeches by Hagee and local Jewish leaders challenged the largely Christian audience “to achieve genuine unity between the Christian and Jewish communities” through a shared concern for Israel.⁷³ Jews needed Christians to “speak up” against a hostile media environment and the U.S. State Department. Interspersed between speeches were slots for “U.S. Patriotic and Israeli music” and an offering collection for the Israel Emergency Fund, which sent $10,000 to Israeli hospitals. Pamphlets promised a “non-conversionary program designed solely to help Israel and the Jewish people” and included references to Genesis 12:3, Psalm 122:6 (“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem”), and Zechariah 2:8 (“He who touches you, touches the apple of God’s eye”).⁷⁴

Hagee annualized “A Night to Honor Israel” and by 1982 like-minded churches participated in Fort Worth, Houston, and Tulsa. By the next year, events in cities throughout the country—and in Israel—attracted Christians, rabbis, and Israeli officials who found in Hagee a partner dedicated to denouncing past Christian attitudes and raising money. Hagee was unrelenting toward his fellow Christians and demanded they revise their attitudes and theology. “Christianity, for several centuries, has done nothing to Judaism but bring bigotry, old-fashioned redneck prejudice, and misinformation,” he roared at a Houston audience in 1982. He raised support for Israel to a tenet of “Bible-believing Christianity,” warning, “It’s just not possible for a man to read the scriptures carefully and call himself a Christian and have negative feelings about Jews.”⁷⁵

“A Night to Honor Israel” was Hagee’s ticket to the wider world of Christian Zionism. Saul Silverman, the Jewish national director of the events, praised the Israeli government for being “beautifully related” to Hagee by sending diplomats and lending official support. Hagee also befriended a diverse set of rabbis, from Reform rabbi Ron Kronish, founder of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, to Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg of the Congregation Rodfei Sholom, an Orthodox synagogue in San Antonio, who would become Hagee’s most vocal supporter and a bridge for Pentecostal contacts with Orthodox Jews.⁷⁶ A frequent speaker at early events was Hagee’s high school football coach, Herman Goldberg, “a very moral man” who typified for the Pentecostal preacher the best of Judeo-Christian values.⁷⁷

By 1987, when Hagee christened a new auditorium and renamed his congregation Cornerstone Church, the Christian right was in the throes of national scandals. Though working in the mold of disgraced televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Hagee continued to build appreciation in the Jewish community with his annual pro-Israel events and the resources provided by John Hagee Ministries’ television, radio, and publishing ventures. At the same time, he spoke at Pentecostal gatherings and conservative political rallies, hammering home a mix of prosperity teachings and warnings that God’s judgment was coming to a decadent America.⁷⁸ He published a trilogy of prophecy books in the 1990s—The Beginning of the End (1996), Final Dawn over Jerusalem (1998), and From Daniel to Doomsday: The Countdown Has Begun (1999)—which landed him on the New York Times Best Sellers list. In the same mold as Hal Lindsey and Pat Robertson before him, Hagee used prophecy to warn Americans that God would soon be sending his judgment on a secularizing America. Hagee mentioned Israel frequently, but he had not yet folded prosperity theology into his Christian Zionist activism. By the time Hagee began to attract national attention, evangelicals in the mold of Billy Graham and Arnold T. Olson (who died in 2002) were at the margins of Christian Zionist activism. Christian right activists, many of whom shared Hagee’s politics but recoiled from his prosperity or prophecy teachings, were in no position to challenge someone who spoke against “replacement theology” and antisemitism and had the backing of rabbis and politicians, from Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry to Benjamin Netanyahu and Senator Joseph Lieberman.⁷⁹

By the early 2000s, Hagee was part of a distinctly Spirit-centered wing in the Christian right along with Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church; CBN executive Michael Little; and Bishop Keith A. Butler, founder of Word of Faith Christian Center in Michigan. Each developed an understanding of Israel’s role in prophecy that included elements of dispensationalism, Latter Rain theology, the prosperity gospel, and “Spirit-empowered” readings of scripture unique to each preacher. These leaders united around a program to unleash God’s blessings by fulfilling the covenantal commands of scripture. With individual and national keys to success, as decoded from the Bible, the American people and the church would find unprecedented material and spiritual flourishing. This Spirit-centered, prosperity-oriented understanding was evident in Hagee’s own turn to prosperity books: Mastering Your Money (2003), The Seven Secrets: Unlocking Genuine Greatness (2004), a study bible titled God’s Keys to Personal Success (2004), and Life Lessons to Live By: 52 Weeks of God’s Keys to Personal Success (2005).⁸⁰ Rod Parsley, who became popular through his longrunning talk show, also promoted prosperous living, including in Ancient Wells, Living Water (2003) and, in his call for conservative political activism, Silent No More (2005), which argued for the government to remove regulations to increase economic prosperity.

Hagee defined more precisely than any other preacher the calculus of blessing—the measurable balance of God’s material, physical, and financial blessings that followers would accrue through prayer and right living—that was at work in Christian support for Israel. The economy of blessings of Genesis 12:1–3 was, he elaborated in his annotated study bible, “the one purpose of God for humans into which all of God’s programs and works fit.” As it was delivered to Abraham, so too does the covenant today “[provide] for blessings in three areas” of national, personal, and universal interests.⁸¹ Hagee approached the Abrahamic covenant, and the duties it entailed, from the calculus of the prosperity gospel, arguing that support for Israel was crucial for the United States and individual Americans to accrue God’s favor. “God is going to judge us on how we treat Israel and the Jewish people,” Hagee warned in a sermon series on Israel. “Are you listening, Washington? Are you listening, Senators? Are you listening, Congressmen? There’s a God who’s watching you! Pay Attention!” In broad historical strokes Hagee tracked the rise and fall of nations in relation to “God’s Mandate to Bless Israel.”⁸² “You want to know why the death angel went through Egypt? It’s because of the abuse of the Jewish people by Pharaoh,” he called from his pulpit at Cornerstone Church. “You want to know what happened to the Babylonians? You want to know what happened to the Romans? You want to know what happened to the Greeks? You want to know what happened to the Ottoman Empire that all came [sic] and tried to crush the Jews? They are dust in the history of humanity.”⁸³ Conversely, the early church, he insisted, found success in relation to its treatment of the Jewish people. “Several combined scriptures verify that prosperity (Genesis 12:3; Psalms 122:6), divine healing (Luke 7:1–5), and salvation and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10) came first to Gentiles who blessed the Jewish people and the nation of Israel in a practical manner,” he wrote in 2007.⁸⁴

Combining prophecy and prosperity, Hagee expanded his influence over a fractured Christian right Zionism and extended his appeal to a vast Spirit-centered constituency. Hagee speculated about the prophetic significance of current events, but his political activism operated with all of the transactional logic of the Genesis 12:3 mandate. This was no vague or generalized promise for good things to happen to those who were good to Israel. It was instead a well-defined process to win God’s favor. Writing in his study bible, Hagee explained, “God’s policy of anti-Semitism is established beyond all doubt in these verses [Genesis 12:1–3]. He has promised to pour out His blessings on those who bless the Jewish people and Israel, and He has promised to curse those who are anti-Semitic.” Hagee culled the Bible and history for case studies: Laban, who employed the patriarch Jacob and declared “the LORD has blessed me for your sake” (Genesis 30:27); Joseph, whose captivity in Egypt allowed “the Gentile world [to be] spared from starvation because of one Jewish slave who became prime minister [sic]”; George Washington, who accepted funds from Jewish banker Haym Salomon and turned the tide of the Revolutionary War.⁸⁵ It was up to Christians to prompt God’s blessings, and the Bible explained the process clearly.

A National Movement

Hagee and the Spirit-centered wing of the Christian right led the meeting of more than four hundred Christian leaders at Cornerstone Church in February 2006. They gathered to establish their new organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI). “I set forth two unbendable ground rules,” Hagee recounted of CUFI’s founding: “Members had to agree to set aside both theological and political agendas; and needed to focus on a single issue—support for Israel.” The goal was “to demonstrate Christian support for the State of Israel, and in so doing, to make the necessity of such support apparent to our local, state, and national officials.”⁸⁶ With an annual Washington, D.C., Summit Meeting that included lobbying on Capitol Hill, CUFI established itself as one of the most influential pro-Israel lobby organizations with more than a million members by 2012 and four million by 2018.⁸⁷ CUFI pressured Congress to resist the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement; to defund the Palestinian Authority; to raise congressional awareness of threats to Israel, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran; and to promote Israel along hasbara lines. In 2017, CUFI hosted the new vice president, Mike Pence, at its annual meeting and lobbied the Trump administration to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Hagee’s Spirit-centered colleagues—Parsley, Little, Butler, Happy Caldwell of Victory Television Network, and Mac Hammond of Living Word Christian Center in Minneapolis—made up the majority of CUFI’s executive committee. Republican strategist David Brog (the lone Jewish member of the committee) assumed the role of executive director. At the 2006 meeting, Jerry Falwell (also on the executive committee), Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, represented CUFI’s links to an earlier Christian right dominated by evangelicals and fundamentalists. Falwell’s death the next year prompted his son, Jonathan, to take his place. By 2018, the younger Falwell was the only executive board member not heading a Spirit-centered organization.⁸⁸

Hagee’s theology and Spirit-centered allies would have struck evangelical Christian Zionists of an earlier era as alien. He certainly had his evangelical detractors. Critics targeted his disavowal of Jewish missions, his prosperity and prophecy teachings, and his implicit rejection of a two-state solution. These came to a head for evangelicals in 2006 when the Jerusalem Post reported that Hagee and Jerry Falwell had decided to teach a “dual covenant” theology that Jews held a special covenant with God offering them salvation outside of Jesus. Falwell immediately issued a disavowal, claiming, “I have been on record all 54 years of my ministry as being opposed to ‘dual covenant theology.’ ” Hagee was less decisive. The following year, he further raised the ire of evangelicals in his justification for CUFI, in his In Defense of Israel (2007), where he argued, “The Jews did not reject Jesus as Messiah; it was Jesus who rejected the Jewish desire for him to be their Messiah”—seemingly leading the way for Jews to be saved through their own covenant with God.⁸⁹ Even fellow Christian Zionists, such as Wayne Hilsden, pastor of King of Kings Church in Jerusalem, charged that Hagee had “forsaken the exclusivity of the gospel.” Not intentionally, Hilsden surmised, but by failing to offer a “gospel presentation,” Falwell, Hagee, and other Christian Zionists had given the impression that Jews presented a special case. Indeed, Hagee and Falwell had publicly disavowed their involvement in Jewish missions decades before. That they adhered to Christianity’s exclusivity flew in the face of their covenantal rhetoric. Hilsden’s critique echoed Messianic Jewish leaders and missions agencies, prompting Hagee to eventually revise his book’s language, though not CUFI’s position rejecting missions.

While Hagee blurred the line between Judaism and Christianity, he put in bold the stark Judeo-Christian divisions between Judaism and Christianity on one side, and Islam on the other. Especially after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Christian Zionists raised their level of alarm, fixing attention on al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and, most recently, the Islamic State. Though these groups represented extreme Islamist traditions, Christian Zionists often relied on them to define the stakes of a broader clash between Judeo-Christian and Islamic civilizations. For Erick Stakelbeck, an anchor on TBN and host of CUFI’s weekly show, The Watchmen, this meant that Islam “is an all-encompassing ideological system that is destined to achieve global domination.” A self-proclaimed “terrorism expert,” Stakelbeck reported on Muslim enemies of Israel in the Middle East, and, more recently, on Muslim Americans, who he claims could be “the jihadist next door.” What is at stake for Stakelbeck “is not only our country but also Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, which, despite its flaws, has been a gift from God and a gift to the world overall.”⁹⁰ For many Christian Zionists, the values of Judeo-Christianity (including American values) are incompatible with Islam. While many Christian Zionists acknowledge that jihadi violence is the purview of only a small number of Muslims, they remain convinced that the “clash of civilizations” is not only real but also the most pressing geopolitical development since the end of the Cold War.⁹¹

Much of the Christian Zionist fervor in the 2000s became focused on Iran. CUFI itself was founded in 2006 at a time of heightened U.S. concern over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Hagee then described Iran as not only a radical enemy of Judeo-Christianity and Israel but also as deeply antisemitic. “Today it is firmly entrenched in the minds of the new Iranian leadership and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” Hagee wrote in 2007, “that the Jews are not just satisfied with having their own nation, but they are essentially scheming to take over the world.” This paranoia, which includes Iranian leadership denying the Holocaust and calling to eradicate Israel, means Iran is not a rational actor. Wasting no opportunity to implicate Christian supersessionism, Hagee reminded Christians that “if [Iran’s antisemitism] sounds familiar, it is. It is no different than the teachings of the Christian church prior to the Holocaust.”⁹² In 2015, in the midst of debate over the Iran nuclear deal framework, CUFI and other Christian Zionist groups mobilized, in close conjunction with the Israeli government and pro-Israel lobby groups, to amass popular resistance to the deal.⁹³ That the Obama administration ultimately signed the deal illustrated the domestic political limits of Christian Zionists. However, Christian Zionist unity with official Israeli policies, and increasing American Jewish divisions over Israel, pointed to the growing importance of the Christian Zionist movement for Israeli public diplomacy. Christian Zionists cheered as loud as anyone when President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.⁹⁴

As Hagee’s profile rose with CUFI, he became the target for Americans who saw Christian Zionism as detrimental to the peace process.⁹⁵ Criticisms leveled by rabbis, journalists, and politicians in both Israel and the United States were blunted by Hagee’s growing list of Jewish supporters, however, from hometown ally Aryeh Scheinberg to CUFI executive director David Brog to Shlomo Riskin, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi living in the West Bank, who was himself rethinking the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity by arguing that Christians had a role to play in inaugurating Israel’s messianic age.⁹⁶ Hagee and CUFI were entrenched so firmly in Christian Zionist and Jewish circles that he weathered criticism from both inside and outside the evangelical fold. CUFI has refused requests to divulge financial information, but Hagee’s “A Night to Honor Israel” events brought in more than $80 million between 1981 and 2013.⁹⁷ Historically, CUFI’s annual awards to Israeli humanitarian and settlement projects have fluctuated between $2 and $8 million per year.⁹⁸ While generating a fraction of the budget of AIPAC, Hagee and CUFI became the preferred pro-Israel lobby group in the Trump administration and prominent source of evangelical identification with the White House.⁹⁹

Shlomo Riskin, one of Hagee’s staunchest Jewish supporters, has signaled a willingness from a growing segment of Orthodox Jews to encourage Christian Zionist support. Originally the rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan, Riskin helped found the West Bank settlement of Efrat in 1983, seven miles south of Jerusalem.¹⁰⁰ Though committed to redeeming the land through settlement, Riskin made his name as a liberal-leaning Orthodox rabbi in New York City, promoting the ordination of women and loosening the requirements for conversion to Judaism. In the West Bank, he gained a reputation for outreach to neighboring Palestinian communities and defending the government’s land-for-peace formula. His views, including his interest in closer Orthodox Jewish-Christian cooperation, were received coolly by other rabbis. Working independently, he created the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Efrat in 2008 to promote Jewish-Christian dialogue.¹⁰¹

Riskin’s efforts encouraged Christian Zionist activism and expanded dialogue. In 2015, twenty-six rabbis published a joint statement under the auspices of Riskin’s center calling for a “new era” of interreligious relation, encouraging Jews to accept “the hand offered to us by our Christian brothers and sisters.” The statement appealed to Spirit-centered Christian Zionists, characterizing Christianity as a “willed divine outcome and gift to the nations” and describing “a common covenantal mission to perfect the world under the sovereignty of the Almighty.” The rabbis echoed Hagee’s message that “Jews and Christians have more in common than what divides us,” including Judeo-Christian ethics, monotheism, and the belief in “ultimate world peace.”¹⁰² The statement was signed by more than fifty additional rabbis after it was released. Riskin also urged Jews to transform their attitudes toward Christians—the mirror of Christian Zionist efforts to revise evangelical attitudes toward Jews. “We must cease seeing all gentiles as the evil-incarnate descendants of Amalek [biblical enemies of Israel],” Riskin wrote in 2012, “and begin to recognize gentiles as potential friends who wish to be inspired by divine teachings, as was the biblical Jethro [Moses’s father-in-law].”¹⁰³ Along with other Orthodox rabbis engaged in Jewish-Christian dialogue, including Likud Knesset member Yehuda Glick, theologian Eugene Korn, and Yechiel Eckstein, Riskin began an invigorated Orthodox embrace of Christian Zionist allies.

Since the 2000s, Orthodox Jews have met with receptive Spirit-centered Christians to advance interreligious reconciliation. No theologian has been more influential than Brad H. Young (no relation to G. Douglas Young). A native Oklahoman, Young attended Oral Roberts University (ORU) as an undergraduate and spent a year at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies in 1973–1974, where he witnessed the October 1973 war. After completing his studies, he became a student of David Flusser’s and was mentored by Robert Lindsey. He eventually returned to ORU as professor of Judaic-Christian studies and has appeared with Jewish leaders, including Yechiel Eckstein and Shlomo Riskin. Following the scholarship of Flusser and Lindsey, Young’s work emphasizes the Jewish background of the New Testament. From Jesus the Jewish Theologian (1995) to Meet the Rabbis: Rabbinic Thought and the Teachings of Jesus (2010), Young argues for a shared Judeo-Christian tradition and the need for the church to re-Judaize its understanding of Jesus. His organization, the Gospel Research Foundation, promotes the “scholarly exploration and spiritual restoration of the Jewish roots of Christian faith.”¹⁰⁴ The political implications of this work are cited by Eckstein and others, while Young serves on the advisory board of Bridges for Peace. In 2018, the director of Riskin’s center, David Nekrutman, became the first Orthodox Jew to earn a graduate degree from Oral Roberts University. His concentration in Judaic-Christian studies was overseen by Dr. Young.¹⁰⁵

By the 2010s, Christian Zionism was unmistakably dominated by Spiritled leaders. The movement was willing to warn and promise in far more detail than its predecessors. Its national scope under the aegis of Hagee and its laser-focus on lobbying and hasbara helped Christians United for Israel emerge, in the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu, as “a vital part of Israel’s national security.”¹⁰⁶ Alongside arguments about democracy, terrorism, and U.S. national interests, CUFI’s mission advanced a nation-based warning, built on God’s command in Genesis 12:3, shaped John Hagee’s call for the United States and Christians to support Israel. “Where are the nations that have persecuted the Jewish people?” he asked incredulously in a sermon on Israel. “Where are that goose-stepping lunatic, Adolf Hitler, and his Nazi hordes? All are historic [sic] footnotes!”¹⁰⁷ This prophetic warning to the United States was only half of Hagee’s pitch, however. Spirit-centered Christian Zionism also fused Genesis 12:3 with the most appealing elements of prosperity theology, creating a covenantal link between Christians and Israel that was both communal and individual. Unacknowledged by Hagee was how far he had led the evangelical Christian Zionist movement into Spirit-centered Christianity. “How many of you would like to have God’s unending favor and blessing? You’d like just to live under the spout where the glory comes out all the time?” Hagee asked his congregation in San Antonio in 2016. “God says I will bless those who bless you and you start in the book of Genesis and work your way through. . . . What you do to Israel, God will do to you. . . . When Gentiles do something to bless Israel, the Lord will bless you exceedingly, abundantly, above all you can expect or imagine.”¹⁰⁸

CHAPTER 9

Global Christian Zionism

JUST A FEW HOURS after thirty-four-year-old Malcolm Hedding fled his home in South Africa in 1986, he landed at Ben Gurion Airport. The white, British-born, Assemblies of God minister was an anti-apartheid preacher who maintained he was doing nothing more than “living out my conscience.” When one of his congregants at his Durban congregation, a “longhaired hippie, wearing sandals, dirty jeans and T-shirt” named Trevor revealed that he was an undercover agent for the Bureau of State Security, Hedding left with his family to join a church in Jerusalem founded by Canadian Pentecostals. There, he focused the same righteous indignation he had leveled at apartheid on “replacement theologies” that created hierarchies between Jews and Christians. “I came to realize just how deviant the various replacement theologies can be, and the evil they birth,” he later explained. “I was living in an environment that said: ‘We are the people of God, the new Israel. We, the Christians, are living among pagans, these dirty people, and we have to keep ourselves separate.’ ”¹ Rejecting supersessionism, which he saw as another form of apartheid, Hedding joined the organized Christian Zionist movement in Jerusalem. He found his way to the old Chilean embassy building, abandoned in 1980, and became the chaplain for its new occupants, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which he would lead from 2000 through 2011.

The story of the ICEJ, now the largest and most influential Christian Zionist organization in the world, took place outside the United States and was largely independent of American Christian Zionists. The ICEJ’s leaders, beginning with Dutch minister Jan Willem van der Hoeven (1980–2000) and continuing to Hedding’s successor, German minister and physicist Jürgen Bühler (2011–), were Europeans.² By the time Hedding took over, the ICEJ’s membership was predominantly made up of non-American charismatic and Pentecostal Christians. And by the time Hedding handed the reins of the ICEJ to Bühler in 2011, the organization stood at the forefront of a global Christian Zionist movement deeply embedded in Spirit-centered Christianity networks of Africa, Latin America, and Asia.³ The ICEJ had become a steward of Jewish-evangelical relations and an heir to Israel’s public diplomacy with the Christian world.

The rise of global Christianity has diversified the Christian Zionist movement, expanding to millions of non-Americans who have less regard for the norms and vagaries of its historically North American lineage. While the United States remains the key ally for Israel, Christian Zionism has increasingly centered on Jerusalem and advanced through global parachurch activism. Transnational networks of Pentecostal ministries have leveraged digital communications to produce international flows of information, organizations, and campaigns on behalf of Israel. Expert at building parachurch organizations and networks, Spirit-centered Christians have in many cases created innovative structures and media outreach efforts to increase their support.⁴ The rise of a global movement of Christian support for Israel has elevated organizations like the ICEJ, which has offices in over a hundred countries.⁵

Geographical diversity has led to an era of unprecedented transnational Christian Zionist cooperation. The common Spirit-centered background of both the ICEJ and American-based organizations like Christians United for Israel has reshaped Israeli public diplomacy and recast the future of Christian Zionism as a global Spirit-centered cause. The explosion of Christian Zionism across the globe’s Spirit-centered populations has also engendered a growing chorus of opposition. Christian Zionism and its critics in the twenty-first century have aligned themselves in a global confrontation that spells a long and contentious struggle for the meaning of Jews and Israel in broadly evangelical Christianity. For all its novelty, however, this most expansive branch of contemporary Christian Zionism remains deeply rooted in the animating concern of midcentury evangelical Christian Zionists: Jewish-Christian reconciliation. The new movements of reconciliation, visible both in their diversity and in still-deeper connectivity, point to a dynamic future for the movement.

“Bible-Believing Christians”

Global Christian Zionism, like Christian right Zionism, can be traced to the boundless organizing efforts of G. Douglas Young. Historical and theological differences between Pentecostals, charismatics, evangelicals, and fundamentalists have tended to obscure a broader affinity for understanding the state of Israel as prophetically significant—a commonality Young detected from his vantage in Jerusalem.⁶ Deeply shaped by dispensational theology, Pentecostals were fascinated by Israel since their origins in the early twentieth century. Many early Pentecostals, like fundamentalists, regarded the Zionist movement as a sign of God’s impending return. The “Latter Rain,” teaching “parallel restorations” of God’s two chosen peoples, Israel and the Church, was one dominant view that fueled an optimistic End Times scenario of widespread spiritual renewal in the church. This optimism helped fuel the missions work that spread Pentecostalism around the globe in a matter of years.⁷

By the time he had reached the height of his influence in the 1970s, G. Douglas Young came to believe that Spirit-centered Christians drawn from all nations were the future of Christian Zionism.⁸ Soon after the Jewish-evangelical dialogue conference in December 1975, Young turned toward broadening Christian support to a grand alliance of evangelical, fundamentalist, and Spirit-centered Christians in support of Israel. The umbrella term of “Bible-believing Christians” encapsulated the theological spectrum Young saw ripe for mobiliziation. He urged all Bible-believing Christians “not to be interested in Biblical prophecy in the abstract and to treat Israel as if it were an ‘it’ in the divine scheme of things only.” Jews are “human beings,” he pleaded. “They are people, they’re a nation.” Israel needed support. “There should be some line of action that [Bible-believing Christians] should pursue with their congressmen, their senators, their governors, their presidents, or whatever they have, in the home countries from which they come,” he told an Israeli reporter.⁹

In 1976, Young began plans for a “congress” in the mold of the historic Zionist assemblies of Theodor Herzl, gathered to articulate Bible-believing Christian political support for Israel. Young’s early partner was Israel Carmona, a Cuban American missionary and professor of history at Biola College. Together they became the principal organizers of the International Congress for the Peace of Jerusalem.¹⁰ Carmona attended Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, the epicenter of the Jesus People movement and the driving force behind the Calvary Chapel association of churches, a leading charismatic movement in the 1970s.¹¹ Calvary Chapel’s founding pastor, Chuck Smith, who was ordained in the International Church of Foursquare Gospel, combined dispensational and charismatic theology with the teachings of controversial Pentecostal prophet Lonnie Frisbee. Smith himself was a frequent Holy Land tour guide with a special interest in prophecy fulfillment.¹² As a bridge to the Pentecostal community, Carmona—and Smith—helped Young extend his outreach to the world of American Pentecostalism.

In pitching the congress to the Israeli government, Young and Carmona appealed to the growing political vigor of Bible-believing Christians around the globe in the 1970s. “The Evangelicals are extremely pro-Israel in their sentiments,” they explained to the Prime Minister’s Office.¹³ Here, as in other communication, “evangelical” denoted all conservative Protestants and was synonymous with “Bible-believing Christians.” In the terminology of pollster George Gallup, who popularized the label in the American context, “evangelical” applied to any person who claimed to have had a “born again” experience. The theological walls that separated evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals remained operative in many churches, but they were crumbling in popular and political culture. So too were the inhibitions against social and political cooperation, which were brought about by the combined efforts of activists (like Young) and outsiders like Gallup who conceptualized a Christian movement united by solidarity on issues such as Israel.¹⁴ “This sentiment [for Israel] stems from [evangelical] religious beliefs, and—in this Congress—will also take some political form,” Young promised. He celebrated the congress as “the first of its kind held in Israel to be openly politically oriented in favour of Israel.” The organizers assured the government that they were “well aware of the possible theological problems that could arise in a Congress of this type, and have undertaken to forbid—in writing—to all participants, any sort of activity that may in any way be considered in a negative light by even the most religious of Jews.” Forbidding attendees from any missionary activity or commentary critical of Israel, Young and Carmona portrayed themselves “and the institutions which stand behind them” as “amongst the most respected people in the heart-land of ‘Middle America’ and amongst Israel’s most fervent supporters at the grass-roots level, besides being—in their important positions in the Church hierarchy—opinion molders.”¹⁵

The congress, held from January 31 through February 2, 1978, was a huge success. To an audience of more than eight hundred ministers and officials, Young declared the new prime minister Menachem Begin, in attendance, a fellow “believer” and celebrated God’s everlasting covenant of Jewish possession of the land promised to “our father Abraham.”¹⁶ In his own speech, Begin reiterated his biblical view of Israel. “I am accused of basing our claim to the land of Israel on the scriptures. I plead guilty and I don’t apologize,” he said to applause.¹⁷ The last day of programming took place at the summit of Masada, with the closing session under a banner that read in all capitals: “MASADA SHALL NOT FALL AGAIN.” The congress concluded by founding a new body, International Christians for Israel, which reflected Young’s priorities. The new organization installed a Spirit-centered majority on its leadership board. With Young as the chair and Chuck Smith on the board, International Christians for Israel might have been mistaken for just another American Christian Zionist organization in the emerging Christian right. But half of the leaders resided outside the United States and included Spirit-centered ministers Claude Duvernoy of France, Per Faye Hansen of Norway, and Basil Jacobs of South Africa.

The national and theological diversity of International Christians for Israel reflected the growing vitality of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity in Europe and English-speaking countries in the 1970s. Neocharismatic revivals had begun to sweep across Northern and Central Europe, sparking prophetic interest in Israel from countries that historically had no Christian Zionist presence.¹⁸ Motivated not only by their faith but by the cultural and political effort to revive Christianity in an increasingly post-Christian cosmopolitan culture, European Christian Zionists quickly embedded Middle East politics into Jewish-Christian and intra-European arguments.¹⁹ As in the United States, Christian Zionism was not only a religious or foreign-policy commitment but also an issue linked to culture and politics. International Christians for Israel, one of the first international Christian Zionist organizations, was part of a new generation riding the wave of European Pentecostal and charismatic growth.

Another organization founded by Young in 1976, Bridges for Peace, encapsulated the move from American- to internationally focused Christian Zionism. Created to organize evangelicals in the United States and Israel, Bridges for Peace was headquartered in Jerusalem and grew rapidly in the late 1970s.²⁰ Upon Young’s death in 1980, the organization came under the leadership of Clarence H. Wagner, an MBA graduate from Oral Roberts University who changed Bridges for Peace’s focus to develop social services for Israelis and to broaden the organization’s appeal beyond the United States. By the end of the 1980s, Bridges for Peace administered Israel’s largest food bank.²¹ With a flood of new Russian immigrants after the Cold War ended, it created programs that allowed Christian Zionists around the world to financially “adopt” immigrant families, offering basic services including medical care and home repair. Amid this work, Bridges for Peace explicitly disavowed missions. Under its third CEO, Rebecca Brimmer (daughter of Assemblies of God minister David Allen Lewis), Bridges for Peace expanded into more than forty countries and became thoroughly integrated into charismatic networks.²² Along with Christian Action for Israel (South Africa), Ruf zur Versöhnung (“Call to Reconciliation,” Germany), Christians for Israel (Netherlands), and the Carmel Institute (Finland), among many other European-based organizations, Bridges for Peace offered an international outlet for Spirit-centered Zionist activism.²³

The rise of Spirit-centered Christianity also reached the heart of the evangelical community in Israel in the 1970s and portended broader demographic shifts in Christian interest. In 1972, the veteran Baptist missionary Robert Lindsey observed an exorcism at the home of an Arab woman in Jerusalem. He heard a demonic voice accuse him in Hebrew “You are a Jew!” to which he replied, “I believe in Jesus!” Lindsey rebuked the demon as he experienced glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, for the first time.²⁴ His subsequent charismatic turn at his Jerusalem church drew the attention of Southern Baptist officials in Richmond, Virginia who sent a review team to Israel. They eventually left Lindsey in place—a testament to his standing in the denomination—which provided a permanent space for charismatic practices in the community in Israel. At the Second World Conference on the Holy Spirit in 1974, held in the same Jerusalem venue that hosted Young’s prophecy conference in 1971, Lindsey offered to introduce healing revivalist Kathryn Kuhlman to a mixed audience of more than six thousand Christians and Israelis.²⁵ Kuhlman refused, citing, among other things, the limitations that translating her speech into Hebrew would pose on the movement of the Holy Spirit. But Lindsey had nevertheless moved squarely into Spirit-centered circles and provided a conduit for other charismatic Americans to find their way to Israel.²⁶

A prodigious beginning to global Spirit-centered Zionism was overshadowed in the same years by the meteoric rise of the Christian right and the dominant influence of the Falwell-Begin relationship on setting the Christian Zionist agenda. But Spirit-centered Zionists saw Jerusalem as their spiritual capital, and their movement as the dawn of a global, Bible-believing wave foreshadowing the prophetic hope of “every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,” a throne located in Jerusalem (Revelation 7:9).²⁷ This vision differed from that of American Zionists, who remained focused on U.S.-Israeli relations. The differences were often subtle, but the unexpected emergence of a new branch of the movement had ramifications for Israeli public diplomacy and the center of gravity of Christian Zionism.

European Leadership

The International Congress for the Peace of Jerusalem spurred European Christians to embrace Spirit-centered Zionism. Jan Willem van der Hoeven, a Dutch activist in attendance in 1978, helped found the Almond Branch Association, a group of mostly charismatic leaders in Jerusalem responding “to God’s call to render practical service to Israel” that formed in 1979.²⁸ Other early members were ex-patriots of Canada, South Africa, Great Britain, and Australia. These English-speaking Pentecostal and charismatic Christians were evidence of a growing international network. The Almond Branch Association organized its first public event to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in 1979, an act born out of the desire to appeal to Israelis and to adopt Jewish religious practices in a Christian context. The celebration was a success, and the following year attracted more than one thousand attendees from twenty-three countries.

These Spirit-centered activists soon found an opportunity to endear themselves to the Israeli government. In 1980, the Knesset passed the “Jerusalem Law” declaring the city “the undivided, eternal capital of the State of Israel.”²⁹ A mostly symbolic gesture, the law reasserted Israel’s claim over East Jerusalem. It also prompted the Netherlands and a dozen Latin American states, including Chile, to move their embassies from Jerusalem in protest. The Almond Branch Association responded by planning a new Christian Zionist organization to be inaugurated alongside the second annual celebration, which it sponsored as its own event under the title “Feast of Tabernacles.” The new International Christian Embassy claimed to represent the Christian world in Israel. In September 1980, after “fellowship with the Jewish people” and copious “prayer, song, and sacred dance,” a rapt crowd cheered Teddy Kollek, the mayor of Jerusalem, and Haim Landau, the minister of transportation, who lent the embassy official Israeli recognition. Calling September 30, 1980, “a great day for Jerusalem,” Kollek praised the gathering as the true representation of global opinion. “They, after all, represent only governments,” Kollek remarked of the states that moved their embassies. “You represent the people.” With van der Hoeven as its first spokesman, the International Christian Embassy’s headquarters in Jerusalem (ICEJ) appealed to Christians who “desired some avenue of representation and expression since their concerns about Israel often were not communicated by their own governments.”³⁰ Though initially depending on American financial support, the ICEJ quickly expanded, with branches in more than forty countries by the end of the 1980s.

The Zionism preached by van der Hoeven and the ICEJ was distinct from that of the Christian right, revealing the influence of Spirit-centered Christianity on the movement as it took root primarily outside of American circles.³¹ The operating theology of the ICEJ regarded the establishment of Israel as prophetically significant. However, the ICEJ rejected the dispensational inflections that accompanied the Christian right, including doctrines such as a sudden rapture of the church and a bloody “second Holocaust” scenario of mass Jewish deaths identified by dispensationalists as the prophesied “time of trouble for Jacob” (Jeremiah 30:7). Christian right leaders often downplayed these teachings, especially in mixed religious company, but the ICEJ denounced them entirely. Proponents of Spirit-centered Zionism, such as Malcolm Hedding, preferred the label “Biblical Zionist” to emphasize the Hebrew biblical roots of their beliefs. Hedding urged Christians to show “unconditional love” to the Jewish people; to undertake a “ministry of comfort” to alleviate Jewish suffering; to understand the “importance of dialogue.”³² On this basis, Christian Zionists could “harmonize our walk with our talk” and be a corrective to centuries of Christian anti-Judaism.

Ultimately, Hedding and other Spirit-centered Zionists regarded their support of Israel as based on the covenants of God to Abraham. In its documents, the ICEJ traced its theology through European restorationists, including Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, and Indian-born Pentecostal revivalist Derek Prince. This restorationist genealogy regarded the state of Israel as a miracle for the faithfulness it revealed in God’s covenantal commitments. Zechariah 14:16 offered a vision in which Israel’s enemies “will go up [to Jerusalem] year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty.” The millennial image evoked themes of unity centered on Jerusalem and was the impetus for the Feast of Tabernacles celebration. Christians fulfilling this vision advanced God’s plans for world redemption through honoring his covenants with the Jewish people.

The starkest difference between the ICEJ and the Christian right Zionism then in ascendance in the United States was its invocation of spiritual warfare. The ICEJ identified Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 as a supernatural confrontation, calling on Christians in the wake of the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the Israel-backed Christian president-elect, to engage in “warfare in prayer” to take down the “satanic principality” in Lebanon.³³ Jim Jackson, the ICEJ’s U.S. director, urged Christians to undertake “intercessory prayer,” a staple of spiritual warfare methods. “Israel and the Jewish people will gain favor with the U.S. government, the church, and non-Christians as more and more people begin to pray,” he explained.³⁴ As the president of Christian Believers United, a charismatic group that organized conferences for healing evangelists around the world, Jackson was already a grizzled veteran of spiritual warfare.

Though differing in emphasis, the ICEJ relied on the interreligious language that also underpinned Christian right Zionism. Van der Hoeven, Hedding, and others grounded their political activism in the understanding that Jews and Christians were covenantal allies who would redeem the world, in distinctly Christian eschatological terms, by working together. The ICEJ’s literature emphasized the historical anti-Judaism of the church—a theme especially resonant with European Christians. In one theological tract outlining Biblical Zionism, little more than two paragraphs were dedicated to prophetic scripture.³⁵ Analysis focused on the “biblical basis” for political action, explained as “Our debt to Israel,” including odes to the Jewishness of Jesus and “the historical basis” of Christian support. The ICEJ enumerated the “record of Christian Anti-Semitism” and “Historical Examples of What Happened to Persons and Nations Who Sinned Against God’s People Israel.” A time line from the ancient Pharaohs to Haman, the adviser to Persian king Xerxes who plotted the destruction of the Jews in the book of Esther, made the point: from Pharaoh to Hitler, leaders ultimately destroyed their nations by persecuting the Jewish people.

In the early 1980s, the Arab world and Islam emerged as primary foes in the ICEJ’s spiritual war. Theological tracts described Muhammed as a false prophet and prioritized Islamic anti-Zionism over the USSR as the chief threat to Israel. Efforts by pan-Arabists such as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muammar Gadhafi to unite Arabs through anti-Israel rhetoric were signs of Satan’s fingerprint on the modern Middle East. Though vital for the functioning of modern society, oil had become a “power and principality” that “enslaves and deceives the Arab multitudes” and “threatens the destruction of the state of Israel.” Arab oil influence caused Western governments to falter in developing a clearheaded understanding of the Jewish people’s covenant with God. “The powerful weapon of oil,” the ICEJ emphasized, “needs to be dealt with in intercessory prayer.”³⁶ Rising dictators Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran—at war for most of the 1980s—were two such self-proclaimed Islamic leaders with ill designs for Israel. With the rise of Hezbollah and Hamas, hostile organizations in close proximity to Israel, the religious significance of the regional conflict only increased. As the ICEJ expanded into countries wracked by Muslim-Christian sectarianism, including Kenya, Nigeria, and India, concern over the satanic power of Islam increased among the organization’s rank-and-file.³⁷

The growth of the ICEJ over the 1980s was reflected in the expansion of the annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration. The ICEJ’s annual celebration ballooned to more than five thousand attendees in 1984.³⁸ By the 1990s, the number of countries represented increased to seventy-five, with only a fraction of the attendees being from the United States.³⁹ In 1992, the Jerusalem Post reported that every hotel within thirty-five kilometers of the event was at capacity, a trend that continued each year. The attendees “will be 6,000 more ambassadors for Israel,” boasted the ICEJ’s treasurer, Tim King, who sold his insurance business in Montreal to attend the Institute of Holy Land Studies (the “American” dropped in the early 1980s to reflect the global student body).⁴⁰ In addition to charismatic worship, preaching, intercessory prayer sessions, and a parade through West Jerusalem, the ICEJ offered information and advice, including panels on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli society, and the efforts undertaken by the ICEJ to settle Jewish immigrants. Panels veered away from overtly political topics to include charismatic Christian lifestyle advice on “Foundations on Victorious Christian Living” and a workshop on “Israeli Guest Night” with primers on how to converse respectfully in an interreligious setting.⁴¹

By 1985, when it organized the first International Christian Zionist Conference, the ICEJ represented a rising tide of global Christian Zionism helmed by European leaders. Held in the same hall in Basel, Switzerland, that hosted Theodor Herzl and the First Zionist Congress in 1897, a group of more than five hundred Pentecostal and evangelical Christians from five continents gathered to “comfort” Israel and express support for its policies.⁴² Jewish speakers, including representatives from the American Jewish Committee and the Zionist Organization of America encouraged the crowd. Harry Hurwitz, still an adviser to the Israeli government, and Shmuel Katz, past adviser to Menachem Begin, also spoke. The mood was festive and the notes of Judeo-Christian solidarity strong until the final moments, when a British evangelist “introduced a missionizing note into the proceedings that Jewish guests, in particular, found offensive.”⁴³ The closing faux pas exposed the differences still separating Spirit-centered Christians and Israelis, but it did little to dampen the momentum of “Bible-based” activism within the ranks of Spirit-centered Christianity.

In the following decades, until the founding of the American-led Christians United for Israel in 2006, European Christian Zionists would often lead the charge in articulating Christian support for Israel. The ICEJ filled the vacuum of American leadership in the 1990s and advanced Christian Zionist identification with the Israeli right. At the height of the Oslo peace negotiations in 1994 and 1995, the ICEJ identified with the religious nationalist settlers, largely in response to the prospect of Israel relinquishing the West Bank as part of the peace process.⁴⁴ The ICEJ preferred Likud over Labor policies, but in many instances found even the governing right too timid. Responding to the Hebron Agreement of 1997, which set the terms for a partial removal of Israeli forces from the West Bank city of Hebron, the ICEJ and van der Hoeven clarified that their support was less for a party or for Prime Minister Netanyahu and more for Israeli borders that aligned with their theology. “Our support for Israel and the Jewish people is based not on Likud policy or Labor policy—but on our understanding of God’s Word,” van der Hoeven warned.⁴⁵ His parting with the ICEJ three years later signaled a growing recognition by the organization that van der Hoeven’s rhetoric found sympathy only among Israel’s most radical nationalists and Christian Zionism’s most extreme voices.⁴⁶

By the twenty-first century, the ICEJ and its European leadership had distinguished itself from American Christian Zionists and, with its headquarters being in Jerusalem, in many cases became the de facto Christian voice in Israeli public diplomacy. Though it had a presence in the United States, the ICEJ’s lack of a strong American infrastructure limited its influence on U.S.-Israeli diplomacy and American politics. The future of Christian Zionism, however, appeared increasingly global.

A Global Movement

What most attendees at the 1985 Zionist Conference knew, but which most Americans ignored, was that the massive demographic shift in global Christianity that signaled the future for Christian Zionism lay outside the boundaries of the United States and Europe. In 1900, two-thirds of all Christians resided in Europe and North America, but a hundred years later that had dropped to only one-quarter.⁴⁷ Spirit-centered Christians today claim more than 500 million adherents, most of whom live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.⁴⁸ New Pentecostal, charismatic, neo-charismatic, and independent movements sparked a seismic shift in Christianity’s center of gravity. Between 1970 and 2005, Spirit-centered Christianity grew from 4 percent to 28 percent of the population in Latin America and from 2 percent to 12 percent in Africa. In South Korea and the Philippines, charismatic and Pentecostal Christians increased to more than 15 percent of the population.⁴⁹

The growth of Spirit-centered Christianity not only is a remarkable development in the history of Christianity but also has begun to revolutionize Christian Zionism. Demographic trends have led to hundreds of thousands of non-American adherents who now shape the movement’s theology and politics. For Spirit-centered Zionists in developing countries, the calculus of blessing is a driving force for political action: Genesis 12:3 guarantees that blessings flow to those nations who bless Israel. Kenneth Meshoe, an Assemblies of God minister in South Africa, has directly translated prosperity theology into a national calculus of blessing. The president of the African Christian Democratic Party and a board member of ICEJ-Republic of South Africa, Meshoe cites Genesis 12:3 to explain that in South Africa, “We believe that countries that are blessing Israel in return [have] a blessing that comes from God.”⁵⁰ Meshoe’s evidence includes technologies that have been “gifted by God” to his country through Israel’s scientists, entrepreneurs, and innovators, including water drip irrigation and desalination, which South Africa vitally needs. “I believe God’s plan is for Israel to bless the nations of the world,” Meshoe concludes. Conversely, for Meshoe the neighboring country of Zambia is a cautionary tale of the curses that flow from failing to bless Israel. In 2013, Meshoe recounted how Zambia’s economy thrived after independence in 1964. But it began to suffer through decades of instability and economic depression after breaking off relations with Israel in the wake of the October 1973 war.⁵¹ Meshoe bases his opposition to describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and combating Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) efforts on these views.

In fellow South African Malcolm Hedding’s formulation, “Biblical Zionism” recognizes that “from [Israel] to the world God has given wonderful covenants by which the world can be saved”—a truly global conception of Christian Zionism that sheds American exceptionalism language for a focus on the redemptive power of Jerusalem. In Hedding’s teachings, God’s work to all peoples hinges on his relationship with the Jewish people and the divine economy of blessings and curses centered on Israel. The British theologian David Pawson uses his own country as a cautionary example of the “curses” God bestows on those who fail to bless Israel. Insisting that Genesis 12:3 “is still in effect,” Pawson describes his “embarrassment” for Britain’s failure “to secure a homeland in [the Jews’] ancestral territory.” He concludes, “In just a few years, after 1947, the British empire had disintegrated . . . rapidly reduced to a handful of seaports and tiny islands. Another coincidence? Or was God saying: ‘If you can’t look after my people, you can’t look after any’?”⁵²

Many critics of Christian Zionism continue to regard the ICEJ and Spirit-centered Zionists as little more than extensions of the Christian right in America.⁵³ In fact, Spirit-centered Zionists, like Spirit-centered Christians more generally, have consciously distanced themselves from their American roots.⁵⁴ At the 2012 Feast of Tabernacles celebration, ICEJ executive director Jürgen Bühler delivered a blistering denunciation of Christians “who say the Lord wants to continue to judge the Jewish people and to expect another Holocaust.” This oblique reference to dispensational teaching indicates how much of the Spirit-centered Zionist leadership rejects direct American influence. “God brought the Jewish people back to His land not to destroy them but to save them,” Bühler insisted, contrasting the supposed pessimism of dispensationalism with the optimism of the ICEJ’s Spirit-centered Zionism.⁵⁵ The historical influence of dispensational eschatology on Christian Zionism is rejected by Bühler and other global leaders in favor of a prosperity-oriented theology centered on Genesis 12:3 and God’s command to “comfort my people” (Isaiah 40:1).⁵⁶

This Spirit-centered theology animates a new generation of Christian Zionists, such as Renê Terra Nova, currently the ICEJ’s branch director for Brazil.⁵⁷ Born into a Catholic family, Terra Nova converted to Pentecostal Christianity at the age of twenty and attended the Baptist Theological Seminary of North Brazil. In 1990, he founded First Baptist Church of the Restoration in Manaus along with his flagship organization, the International Ministry of Restoration. Terra Nova emphasizes “family restoration,” a concept flexible enough to relate to Brazilians’ personal families and healing God’s family of Jews and Christians. Terra Nova takes as a sacred duty his ministry’s “work in spreading love for Israel and the true root of our faith: Jerusalem.”⁵⁸ His connection to Jerusalem through the massive “caravan” tour groups he leads underpins his emphasis on the prosperity gospel. Through “showing the way to Jerusalem,” Terra Nova claims that he has “raised the spiritual level of the people, showing that poverty, misery, and ruin are stigmata of the past and that the great truth is prosperity: a right of every child of God.” He leads a network of more than six million followers with church branches throughout central and northern Brazil.⁵⁹

Terra Nova typifies the Spirit-centered Zionism that has grown across the globe since 1980. His main activities on behalf of Israel include speaking at Christian Zionist events, generating tourism, and making sure Brazilian politicians know about his Christian Zionist following.⁶⁰ More subtly, Terra Nova has followed the ICEJ’s rejection of Jewish missions and embraced language that describes Jews and Christians as covenantal partners pursuing the blessings of Genesis 12:3 for the redemption of the world. This is often referred to as gaining a “biblical understanding of the Jewish people” as understood through Judeo-Christian reconciliation and God’s promise to bless and protect those who work toward fulfilling covenantal obligations.

Terra Nova’s status as a pastor with a massive following in Brazil is crucial to the work of the ICEJ and Israel’s diplomatic interests. Brazil is with the majority of developing countries who have historically criticized Israel for its occupation of the West Bank. Though less critical than other countries, Brazil has often sided against Israel in international disputes.⁶¹ In venues like the United Nations, Brazil has supported resolutions denouncing Israeli policies, including voting in favor of the “Zionism Is Racism” resolution in 1975. But in recent years Brazilian Christian Zionists have worked to reverse Brazil’s position. Terra Nova reported on these efforts at the Feast of Tabernacles 2016 celebration, where he gave an opening-night speech on a stage overlooking the Ein Gedi oasis.⁶² A 2016 UNESCO resolution on Jerusalem raised the ire of Christian Zionists when it defined the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) as a “Muslim Holy Site” without reference to Judaism. Brazil voted in the resolution’s favor, but, as Terra Nova was happy to report, the government decided to abstain on a second vote—a notable reversal that Christian Zionists hoped would begin to transform the country’s foreign-policy status quo.⁶³ It was no less than an “answer to prayer” for Terra Nova; the result of vigilant spiritual warfare, organizing, and political lobbying by Brazilian Christian Zionists.

Adding to Terra Nova’s optimism, the rise of rightwing Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro in 2017, who has received the backing of much of Brazil’s Pentecostal leadership (including Terra Nova) and is a supporter of Israel, offers a glimpse into the potential of Spirit-centered Christian Zionist influence on national and international politics. In a display that generated controversy in September 2018, Terra Nova administered a mass baptism in the Jordan River to a group of Brazilian tourists before leading a chant in support of Bolsonaro. The display was promoted by Terra Nova on social media: “Today, the 27 states of Brazil represented by apostles, performed a prophetic act in the Jordan in Israel. #WeAreBolsonaro.”⁶⁴ Bolsonaro’s pro-Israel credentials are routinely cited by Pentecostal leaders as one of his most appealing foreign policy attributes.

Terra Nova’s massive following is notable in Brazil, but it is not unique. Some of the largest and most successful networks of Spirit-centered ministries mix prosperity teachings, Christian Zionism, and national politics. Chris Oyakhilome, the Nigerian-born founder of the international denomination Christ Embassy Church, has urged his more than 13 million members to support Israel as “a matter of solidarity.” Sandor Nemeth, a Hungarian pastor and influential Pentecostal minister, leads Faith Church, one of the largest congregations in Europe, and has made Christian Zionism a pillar of his ministry. Mojmir Kallus, the founder of the ICEJ-Czech Republic branch, was a charismatic Vineyard church pastor and translator for revivalists before joining the ICEJ leadership team in 2017. One of Kallus’s clients, German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, has held massive revivals throughout Africa and is a frequent speaker at the ICEJ.⁶⁵

These Spirit-centered Zionists have begun to more directly influence international relations. The Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in late 2017 has helped mark the shifting lines of Christian Zionist influence. When the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the United States, two of the nine countries that sided with the United States were Honduras and Guatemala, both containing some of the largest-growing Pentecostal populations in Latin America.⁶⁶ Guatemala’s president Jimmy Morales, himself a Pentecostal, is a longtime supporter of Israel who also followed the United States in relocating Guatemala’s embassy to Jerusalem in May 2018. Though decisions by countries such as Guatemala and Honduras to break with international opinion are not a response only to Christian Zionists, the correlations point to more expansive Christian Zionist influence in Latin American and African states in the future. Among the countries that abstained from the UN vote were Argentina, the Philippines, and Uganda—each also experiencing rapid Pentecostal growth.

This global activity has attracted the attention of the Israeli government, which recognizes the role that Spirit-centered Zionists play in Israel’s present and future public diplomacy. In 2004, right-wing Knesset members founded the Israel Christian Allies Caucus to coordinate with Christians in the midst of the Second Intifada. An American branch, Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, formed in 2006 and counted twenty House members in 2016; Mike Pence, a congressman and governor from Indiana before becoming vice president in 2017, is a past co-chair. Seeing the organization’s potential, Benny Elon, a member of the right-wing National Union party and past minister of tourism, founded the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF) to centralize Israeli coordination of Christian political support.⁶⁷ A decade later, the IAF had caucuses in thirty-five countries.⁶⁸ Meeting each year under the auspices of the Jerusalem Chairman’s Conference—a joint event with the ICEJ and World Zionist Conference—these leaders strategize with the Israeli government. Though from diverse backgrounds, a shared Spirit-centered emphasis on God’s covenantal promises unites the Christian members. Many representatives are the first lines of contact for the Israeli government when combating local or national efforts to sanction or boycott Israel.

The Israel Allies Foundation is a window into how global Christian Zionist efforts have translated into advancing Israeli public diplomacy. The foundation also reveals the continuing influence of American evangelicalism on the language and formulations of the global movement. A “Declaration of Purpose and Solidarity,” signed in 2008 by the International Israel Allies Caucus Foundation, is awash in reconciliation language. Drawing on dialogue formulas, the caucus affirms “the historic and spiritual significance of the Land of Israel and the City of Jerusalem to the Jewish People,” “the persecution and suffering of the Jewish people throughout the ages,” and the centrality of the Ten Commandments to “Western civilization.” Israel, portrayed as a beacon of “freedom, democracy, and justice,” is the embodiment of the Judeo-Christian tradition. At the same time, the Foundation applies these values to Israel’s specific policy goals, committing its members to defining Jerusalem as “the undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish People.” It denounces “international pressure” applied to Israel “to negotiate and make concessions with those sworn to its destruction” and calls out Iran as a threat. Coming from varied theological and national backgrounds, Christian Zionists have a template to shape their own arguments for these positions.

In less formal settings, the IAF supports the covenantal language that celebrates “prophecy being fulfilled today in Israel,” in the words of its president Josh Reinstein. A native of Dallas and Toronto, Reinstein pursued Spirit-centered outreach through Christian broadcasting. He created Israel Now News, a popular weekly news television show that airs on Christian channels, including Daystar TV and GOD TV.⁶⁹ Reinstein’s message is a distillation of concepts and language first introduced into Jewish-evangelical circles decades earlier.⁷⁰ In Reinstein’s view, any political or religious tradition not accounting for the massive success of modern Israel is bankrupt. This includes secularists, Christians who hold to “replacement theology,” and Muslims. Moreover, Israel’s success as a Jewish state, beacon of technological and agricultural advancement, and military powerhouse are testaments to God’s continuing covenant with the Jewish people. This realization demands a clear set of actions by Christians. “First, pray for the peace of Jerusalem”—a spiritual warfare action that emphasizes the shared scriptures of the Hebrew Bible. Second, “Go to Israel and stand with Israel” through tourism. Finally, Reinstein calls for Christians to “make your voice heard” by organizing against the BDS movement in their home countries.

Even with its emphasis on international growth, the Christian Zionist movement’s local activity has increased dramatically in the twenty-first century. In North America, CUFI claims to host more than forty pro-Israel events each month and donates millions of dollars annually to Israeli medical, humanitarian, and political projects, including in the West Bank. The ICEJ provides millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to Israel each year, focusing on Holocaust survivors and Jewish immigrants. Each of its branches coordinates tour groups to Israel, local rallies, prayer events, and fund-raising drives. In the last twenty years, Bridges for Peace has quadrupled its annual income to $9 million and invested in eight national offices, including Japan, which donates more than $2 million per year in supplies to Israel in the form of trucks, bomb shelters, and computers.⁷¹ New organizations like HaYovel (“The Jubilee”), founded by Spirit-centered Christians Tommy and Sherri Waller in 2005, provide Christian Zionists with opportunities to volunteer on West Bank settlement farms as part of a process of interreligious reconciliation and worldwide redemption.⁷² In conjunction with the lobbying and political networking by organization leaders, Spirit-centered Zionism has become a force for local, national, and international politics.

Like the transformations wrought by the Christian right and Spirit-centered Christians in earlier decades, the globalization of Christian Zionism has profoundly reshaped the movement in the twenty-first century. The rising profile of Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in the United States, Europe, and the Global South has redefined the movement’s aims, reach, and influence. Now dominated by Spirit-centered Christians, it reflects nation-based prosperity teachings and the blessing theology of Genesis 12:3. The transition to Spirit-centered Christian leaders has been rapid—from CUFI to the ICEJ, Bridges for Peace, and Christian Friends of Israel to the settler-focused Christian Friends of Israeli Communities and HaYovel, to the global branches of the Israel Allies Foundation. At the same time, the rise of Orthodox Jewish supporters of Christian Zionism has reoriented the movement further away from American concerns.

Today, Christian Zionists support Likud policies and West Bank settlements. On diplomatic issues, the Israeli government can expect that its most ardent and energetic international supporters will be Christian Zionists. United by a common conception of “Judeo-Christian values” and hatred of Islamic extremism, Christian Zionism today evinces elements both of its American past and its global present and future. A mix of Christian guilt and witness infuses the movement’s language, as it did with evangelicals in the 1950s and 1960s. A similar tension between prophecy and covenant—between the past and the future—are embedded in the thinking of Malcolm Hedding, as they were with G. Douglas Young and are with John Hagee. Denouncing the church’s past remains a bedrock of Christian Zionist rhetoric. At the same time, the influx of new voices, disaggregation of leadership, and infusion of the prosperity gospel have decisively shifted the movement’s focus and appeal.

Resistance

The flurry of Christian Zionist growth in recent decades has attracted a global following. It has also generated a global reaction, starting within the evangelical fold. Criticism of dispensational theology has existed since the beginning of the Christian Zionist movement (and before) by Christians concerned about the theology’s validity, mixture of politics and religion, and changing relationship between Jews and Christians. From the writings of Jakób Jocz to the increasing alienation from Christian Zionism by Billy Graham to critiques of Christian Zionist leaders by the evangelical left, fellow Christians have leveled a mix of theological, political, and ethical challenges to the movement, both in the United States and abroad.

The convergence of Christian Zionism and the Christian right, along with the growth of Spirit-centered Zionism, have attracted a wide range of critics. Homegrown American evangelical opponents reject the claim that God’s covenants with Abraham entail a divine mandate for the Jewish people to exercise sovereignty over their biblically apportioned land. For theologians such as Gary Burge, professor of New Testament studies at Calvin College, the problem extends beyond the particularity of Israel. There is a fundamental theological proposition at stake that highlights the different claims of Judaism and Christianity. “To think a Christian way about land and promise is to think differently than does Judaism,” Burge argues. “In short, the New Testament changes the spiritual geography of God’s people. The kingdom of God is tied neither to an ethnicity nor to a place.”⁷³ Labeled a “replacement theologian” by Christian Zionists, Burge insists that the theological innovations of Christian Zionism in land, covenant, and mission theology are a threat to core Christian teachings. In this view, Burge is supported by Christian theologians from most nonevangelical traditions and plenty from within American evangelicalism.

Indeed, Burge is among a slew of Christian writers, theologians, and pastors who identify Christian Zionism as a theological problem that leads to ethical and moral failings. Writing in the mid-1990s, Donald Wagner, a Presbyterian minister, urged that “Christians need to be agents of prophetic critique and of eventual healing and salvation of this misguided [Christian Zionist] movement.”⁷⁴ Wagner’s mix of theological and moral criticism was taken up by other American pastors and leaders in the 1980s and 1990s, including Hank Hanegraaff, host of the radio show The Bible Answer Man, and popular evangelical author Philip Yancey.⁷⁵ Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical magazine, has developed a consistent critique of Christian Zionism since the 1990s.⁷⁶ Other recent voices including theologian Gerald McDermott have attempted to construct an alternative evangelical Christian Zionism that rejects dispensationalism and provides space to criticize specific Israeli policies while retaining the covenant emphasis and broadly pro-Israel orientation.⁷⁷ Critics of the apocalyptic valences of the movement also emerged in Britain and include evangelist John Stott, theologian Colin Chapman, and the more controversial Stephen Sizer.⁷⁸

The American evangelical left has also rejected Christian Zionism. Public voices such as those of Jim Wallis and Richard Muow have been consistent critics dating to the 1970s. They have organized statements, including a July 2007 open letter to George W. Bush, signed by forty evangelical leaders to “correct a serious misperception that all American evangelicals are opposed to a two-state solution and creation of a new Palestinian state that includes the vast majority of the West Bank.” The statement reinterpreted Genesis 12:3, arguing that “blessing and loving people (including Jews and the present State of Israel) does not mean withholding criticism when it is warranted.”⁷⁹ This sentiment has grown in recent years among moderate evangelical leaders, from megachurch co-founder Lynne Hybels, who claims to be “pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian at the same time,” to Jimmy Carter, who has written a number of books denouncing Israeli policy since his presidency, including his controversial 2006 best-seller, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.⁸⁰

Translating this criticism into institutional power has been difficult. Wagner’s national directorship of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the 1980s, an organization of left-wing pastors, human rights groups, and political organizations, has not been replicated by other critics. Christian bodies, such as the World Council of Churches, have been critical of both Christian Zionism and Israeli policy for decades, but their influence on the Christian right and Spirit-centered Christians has been limited. Wagner and a fellow pastor, Ray Bakke, founded Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding in 1986 to connect American evangelicals with Middle East Christians.⁸¹ The organization has received support from some mainstream evangelical institutions, including World Vision, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and Young Life. Alternate Holy Land tours that expose travelers to Palestinian life and culture to highlight the conditions of occupation in the West Bank have also expanded. Some tours have created connections between American and Palestinian pastors and congregations.⁸² Overall, however, the scale of these efforts has paled in comparison to the global growth of Christian Zionism.

Mirroring the same globalization visible within the movement, the most powerful critics of Christian Zionism in recent decades have come not from the American fold, but internationally, especially from the Palestinian Christian community.⁸³ In response to the demographic decline of Christians in the West Bank (from 9 percent to 2 percent in recent decades), discrimination from both Israeli and Palestinian authorities, and the Christian Zionist movement’s purposeful avoidance, Palestinian Christians have globalized their efforts to change the theological terms on which American evangelicals evaluate the Palestine-Israel conflict. One longtime leader has been Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian and Anglican priest who eventually became the pastor of St. George Church in East Jerusalem. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ateek was one of the indigenous leaders of the United Christian Council in Israel, the umbrella organization that was founded in 1956 through the cooperation of American and European mission agencies. After seminary education in the United States, Ateek developed a strong critique of Christian Zionism from the vantage point of liberation theology, becoming best known for his work, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (1989).⁸⁴ In 1993, Ateek and fellow Palestinian Christians founded Sabeel (Arabic: “the way”), an “ecumenical liberation theology center” promoting “a Palestinian version of liberation theology” with chapters in ten English-speaking and Western European countries, along with offices in Jerusalem and Nazareth.⁸⁵ Alongside other outreach efforts, including the student-focused Holy Land Trust, Sabeel and its chapters have opposed the growth of Christian Zionism through publications and conferences and promoted the BDS movement and alternate tours to Israel and the occupied territories.⁸⁶

Perhaps the most formidable challenge to Christian Zionism from Palestinian Christian circles has centered on the Bethlehem Bible College. Founded in 1979 under Israeli military occupation, the school emerged as a crucial center for evangelical Palestinian thought. A young generation of theologians, including Salim Munayer, Munther Isaac, and Mitri Raheb, have also developed the city of Bethlehem (including Bethlehem Bible College) into a center for anti–Christian Zionist organizing. Since 2010, the college has hosted biennial “Christ at the Checkpoint” conferences that bring together pastors and organizers from around the English-speaking world who reject Christian Zionism. Christ at the Checkpoint specifically opposes “worldviews that promote divine national entitlement or exceptionalism [which] do not promote the values of the Kingdom of God because they place nationalism above Jesus.”⁸⁷ The conference has highlighted the plight of Palestinian Christians and sought dialogue with Messianic Jews, both to modest success.

Ultimately, the resources, media reach, and numerical advantages for Christian Zionists far outpace the resistance that has arisen in the last two decades. The downward trend of interest in Christian Zionism by young American evangelicals indicates a potential shift in the prospects of the Christian Zionist movement in the United States. New tourism efforts targeting evangelical university students, based on similar American Jewish efforts, have popped up since 2013 in an attempt to win back young evangelicals.⁸⁸ CUFI sponsors university chapters to combat the BDS movement on campuses across the United States and Europe. Regardless of the success of these efforts, however, the growth of Spirit-centered Zionism across the globe has so far outpaced losses.⁸⁹ The prospects for a coalition of resistance, including the evangelical left and Palestinian Christians, not to mention American Jews and Israelis who also oppose Christian Zionism, remains daunting.

Epilogue

I LEARNED OF THE International Christian Embassy’s Feast of Tabernacles celebration just a few weeks before its annual gathering in September 2012. Too timid to commit to the hours-long opening-night dinner on the coast of the Dead Sea, I decided my feast would begin the following morning, at a communion service hosted at the Garden Tomb, the alternate site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection popular among Protestants. Armed with little more than my background reading and two months in Jerusalem, I didn’t know what to expect. The recurring image in my mind was one offered by Frank Schaeffer, the disillusioned son of Christian right leader Francis Schaeffer, who had recently written of the alliance between evangelicals and American Jews. At one mid-1980s New York City gathering, he recalled in his florid prose, stood “the cream of the New York neoconservative Zionist intellectuals and a passel of mink-draped, diamond-crusted Southern Baptist Texans asking everyone if they had a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ.’ ”¹ Almost six thousand miles from New York, on the cusp of the Garden Tomb, I did not expect to see any New York neoconservatives, but I could almost hear a chorus of southern drawls talking about Jesus.

In fact, I encountered very few Southern Baptists at the 2012 feast. Jürgen Bühler, the German Pentecostal director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, introduced the preacher for the Garden Tomb communion service: Reverend Mosy Madugba, the Nigerian-born pastor who commands the Ministry Prayer Network, which extends to more than seventy countries. I appeared to be alone among the thousands in attendance who was unfamiliar with Madugba. And his sermon was hardly the stuff of Southern Baptist preaching. The overriding motif, tailored to the location, was resurrection. Madugba was not interested in resurrection metaphors or advice for good living, as many American preachers apply the theme. He was not even primarily concerned about the resurrection of Jesus. Madugba wanted to talk about the most recent person he had personally resurrected from the dead. When a mother at one of his revivals fell ill and died, Madugba ventured to the hospital to see her body. He was sure she had died “on the wrong day,” he joked to a laughing audience that included at least a hundred Nigerians dressed in their nation’s official green and white. Upon visiting the corpse, Madugba began to sing a song to God. The power of the Holy Spirit overtook the room. The woman’s body, once stiff with rigor mortis, regained life and arose to join Madugba in finishing the song. This, he shouted in front of the Garden Tomb, was the power of resurrection, the power of the Holy Spirit. Gesturing to the stone rolled away, he yelled, “There was no stopping the Messiah! The Keys of the Kingdom were snatched from the Devil right here.”

I spent the next three days wandering around the 2012 feast events, wondering where all the Southern Baptists (or any Americans) had gone. As I later found, compared to their relatively small representation (Americans accounted for about 1 in 5 of the 5,000 attendees), Americans occupied a slightly larger portion of the speaking stage, with a little more than one-third of speakers from the United States. Only a couple were Baptists of any kind—most were Pentecostal or charismatic and many had spent decades living outside the United States. The American roots of the Christian Zionist movement were still visible if you knew where to look. But that sliver of familiarity was not the main story of the 2012 feast.

In addition to the demographic surprise, I struggled to understand the connection between a sermon like Madugba’s and the fervent pro-Israel politics throughout the week. Another speaker at the Garden Tomb referenced Isaiah 62 and the “watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem,” a common Christian Zionist refrain that G. Douglas Young would have recognized. But Madugba was the first of many speakers to explain matter-of-factly the realities of “spiritual warfare” and God’s desire for attendees to be blessed—materially, spiritually, and physically—by their time in Israel and by their support for the state of Israel. Renê Terra Nova, speaking later the same day, promised attendees that within the next ninety days “you’ll have a harvest you never dreamed of” as God’s reward for supporting Israel, by which he meant a personal, familial, or national blessing. Jerry Falwell, for all his fits of prophecy speculation, invocations of Genesis 12:3, and certitude, never gave a ninety-day guarantee.

Just as striking was the Israeli presence at the 2012 feast. At the first evening’s opening event, in the large International Convention Center (Binyanei Ha’uma), Rabbi Shlomo Riskin railed against Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as agents of Satan. He looked onto the audience to declare these Christian Zionists his “covenant brothers.” Israeli politician Benny Elon, the one-time minister of tourism and founder of the Israel Allies Foundation, spoke at the feast the following night and celebrated the bonds between Israel and Christian Zionists. “This is kinship!” he declared with outstretched arms and a flood of emotion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared via video, and he struck the same tone, celebrating Christians who showed “unwavering support” to Israel and who “stand against the current today” in international politics.

I now had more questions than answers. Was the history of Christian Zionism an American story? As the focus of this book indicates, a drastic shift away from American actors was not my response. But there were many smaller decisions that the experience prompted, perhaps the largest being that whatever form the history took, it would need to account for the contemporary shape and look of the movement. A second decision was to center the story not on the United States, or even on the international space of U.S.-Israeli relations, but on Israel itself, where it seemed the roots of the Christian Zionist movement were firmly planted, where the entanglements between Jews and Christians grew thickest, and where the two major branches of the movement over the past forty years—American Christian right Zionism and global Spirit-centered Zionism—have anchored their work. A third decision was to insist that the story of Christian Zionism say something about the nature of American evangelicalism since World War II and about the promises and perils that the new evangelicalism brought with it and the legacies it has left behind.

What does the Christian Zionist movement tell us about modern American evangelicalism? First, that its history cannot be told without significant attention to the tensions, rivalries, and alliances forged within American Protestantism and extending to transnational and international stakeholders: not just the divisions between conservative and liberal Protestants—between fundamentalists and modernists—but between evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals; between missionaries on the periphery and theologians in established seminaries; between evangelicals and Jews; between evangelicals and Israelis. An approach that minimizes to insignificance the differences between Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell or that ignores the strategic interventions of outside actors or that lumps evangelicals into mere political categories will have difficulty explaining how and why Christian Zionism emerged when it did, and why other political arrangements, including the small but vibrant anti-Christian Zionist community, remained at a disadvantage.

Second, the Christian Zionist movement is a window into the process of evangelical globalization, of what historian Brian Stanley has called the “global diffusion of evangelicalism” in the twentieth century.² Even as Christian Zionism has expanded across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the movement today remains deeply indebted to American history. The pervasive role of American theologians, activists, and money still lingers. But the link forged between Zionism and Pentecostalism, often infused with prosperity teachings, is more and more a creature of global Christianity. Yes, its roots, too, lie in the revivalist circuits of the American Midwest and the sawdust trails of the South; John Hagee, the leading Christian Zionist in the United States, is a prosperity gospel evangelist from central Texas. But Christian Zionism has also gone global: its theology less bound to dispensationalism, its politics beyond U.S.-Israel relations, its demographics more diverse. Like evangelicalism, Christian Zionism’s transformation is complex yet rapid; overt yet, for most American observers, hard to grasp.

And third, the Christian Zionist movement is exposing the complex ways religion and politics intersect in the modernity inhabited by evangelicalism. Christian Zionists were never “pre-political,” only acting on their religious convictions. Conversely, Jews were never purely pragmatic, regarding Christians solely as political assets. Rather, for Christians, Israelis, and American Jews, the allure of Christian Zionism has been multilayered, changing over time. The prospects of cooperation spurred Israelis and American evangelicals toward political power. It offered evangelicals an avenue to express feelings of guilt and shame in the light of Christian anti-Judaism and racial antisemitism and to express hope in a God-ordained future. Christian Zionism offered a template for interreligious reconciliation, constructed through an imagined past of Jewish-Christian compatibility, a Judeo-Christian history that pitted Jews and Christians against the enemies of God, and a shared future based on the conviction that the United States and Israel were the last best hope for humankind. There is no way to separate these arguments or to reduce Christian Zionism to apocalypticism or pragmatism or exceptionalism or realpolitik. The dialectic between religious belief and political action formed the very core of Christian Zionism after 1948.

The most useful metaphor to capture the development and core aims of the modern Christian Zionist movement, I have concluded, is reconciliation. Not an idealistic reconciliation of radical concession and change, but a reconciliation of historical antipathies redirected toward cooperation—yes, full of half-compromises, backtracking, novelties in language, and defensive maneuvers, but producing through pressures, power struggles, alliances, and argument some observable transformations and political results. This less lofty understanding of reconciliation nevertheless captures the mix of pragmatism and idealism that animates evangelical support for the state of Israel, and evangelical existence more broadly.

The reconciliation between Jews and Christians since the 1940s is encapsulated in an event like the Feast of Tabernacles. The selective remembering and forgetting are emblazoned in the festival practices, from Christians blowing shofars to Jewish speakers invoking covenant brotherhood. Today, as Israeli sociologist Faydra Shapiro observes, there is a transnational Christian flow of resources into the state of Israel; reparations, perhaps, for centuries of Jewish persecution at the hands of Christians.³ Christian Zionists yearn to see Israel as Jews do, to learn Hebrew, and to befriend members of God’s covenanted people. They also yearn to see Jews recognize Jesus as their Lord, but this once-guiding principle can be—has been—marginalized for the sake of political cooperation. The dark underside of reconciliation appears in the erasure of concern for Arab Christians in Israel and the fate of Palestinians in the occupied territories. It appears in the identification of the state of Israel with God’s covenanted community and Christian Zionist identification with Israeli state interests.

Understanding Christian Zionism as reconciliation tells us more about American evangelicalism, more about Israel and its efforts at public diplomacy, more about Jewish-Christian relations, and more about American commitments abroad. It tells us how Christian Zionists understand the past and the future, how Israeli diplomacy has influenced the Christian Zionist movement, and how crucial Christian Zionism will be for the state of Israel’s future interests. It tells us about the growing polarization of support for Israel among the American public and about the future of the pro-Israel lobby, with its now overwhelmingly Christian membership. Reconciliation highlights the decisive reading of Genesis 12:3 at the center of modern Christian Zionism, and the overriding motif—not of rapture or fire—but of covenant solidarity. The guilt of past silence, pleas for Christians to act on behalf of Israel, hope of covenantal fulfillment in the future—these emotive calls to action, as much as theological doctrines or political positions, as much as hatred and fear, have been the engines of the Christian Zionist movement.

Whatever the future of Christian Zionism, its leaders, its supporters, and its opponents will have to reckon with the emotional power of reconciliation, the theological allure of prosperity and covenant, and the realities of a diverse yet fervent movement deeply embedded in the strategic outlook of Israel that now spans the globe.

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American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio

DBA

David Z. Ben-Ami Papers

MHT

Marc H. Tanenbaum Collection

Begin Heritage Center, Jerusalem, Israel

BHC

Menachem Begin Center Historical Material

Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Illinois

CT

Records of Christianity Today

HJT

Herbert J. Taylor Papers

LWE

Records of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization

NRB

Records of National Religious Broadcasters

RWG

Roy W. Gustafson Papers

Gleason A. Archer Archives, Trinity International University, Deerfield, Illinois

CFH

Carl F. H. Henry Papers

WMS

Wilbur M. Smith Papers

Harvard Divinity School Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

GEW

George Ernest Wright Papers

Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

ICJ

Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Oral History Division

Israel State Archives, Jerusalem, Israel

MFA

Records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—Record Group 130

MOT

Records of the Ministry of Tourism—Record Group 61

MRA

Records of the Ministry of Religious Affairs—Record Group 98

PMO

Records of the Prime Minister’s Office—Record Group 43

Jerusalem University College, Jerusalem, Israel

GDY

G. Douglas Young Collection

JUC

Jerusalem University College Institutional Records

Liberty University Archives and Special Collections, Lynchburg, Virginia

FAL

Falwell Family Papers

FMR

Falwell Ministries Records

MOR

Moral Majority Records

Narkis Street Congregation, Jerusalem, Israel

BCI

Records of the Baptist Convention in Israel

NSC

Narkis Street Congregation Historical Material

Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda, California

NPC

National Security Council Files—Presidential Correspondence, 1969–1974

Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee

FMB

Foreign Mission Board—Historical Files

HMB

Home Mission Board—Executive Office Files

IMB

International Mission Board—Solomon Database

(http://archives.imb.org/solomon.asp)

Wheaton College Archives and Special Collections, Wheaton, Illinois

NAE

National Association of Evangelicals Records

NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

AM

Atlantic Monthly

CB

Congress Bi-Weekly

CC

Christian Century

CL

Christian Life

CM

Commentary

CNI

Christian News from Israel

CT

Christianity Today

EB

Evangelical Beacon

ET

Eternity

HD

Hayahad Digest

JNS

Jewish News Service

JP

Jerusalem Post

JPO

Jewish Post & Opinion

JTA

Jewish Telegraph Agency Bulletin

KB

King’s Business

LAT

Los Angeles Times

MM

Moody Monthly

NW

Newsweek

NYT

New York Times

TM

Time magazine

UEA

United Evangelical Action

WP

Washington Post

WSJ

Wall Street Journal

NOTES

Introduction

1. Tom McMahan, Safari for Souls with Billy Graham in Africa (Columbia, SC: State-Record Company, 1960), 88.

2. “Billy Graham ‘To See Holy Places, Preach, But Not to Proselytize,’ ” JP, March 19, 1960, 3. Many evangelicals considered the apostle Luke to be non-Jewish.

3. “Visit by Graham Worrying Israel,” NYT, March 17, 1960, 5.

4. “Audiences Cool to Graham in Jerusalem and Nazareth,” JP, March 21, 1960, 3.

5. David Aikman, Billy Graham: His Life and Influence (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 104–106.

6. For the purposes of concision, “evangelical” in the following pages will refer to white, English-speaking evangelicals unless otherwise noted. There is a long history of “evangelical” erroneously denoting only white evangelicals, thereby misrepresenting the diverse racial, ethnic, and language groups that claim a part of the evangelical heritage. In later chapters that trace the global scope of Christian Zionism, I highlight some of this dynamism. However, throughout much of the twentieth century the leaders of self-defined evangelical churches, seminaries, and organizations were overwhelmingly white, and their particular construction of what “evangelical” meant are the most relevant to understanding the origins of the Christian Zionist movement. Institutionally, the Christian Zionist movement has direct lineage in postwar white evangelicalism, especially the social and religious networks stemming from Billy Graham’s ministries. On understanding evangelicalism in these network terms, see Michael Hamilton, “The Interdenominational Evangelicalism of D. L. Moody and the Problem of Fundamentalism,” in American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History, ed. Darren Dochuk, Thomas Kidd, and Kurt Peterson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 230–280.

7. These include Mike Pence, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz. Pence, quoted in “Full transcript of speech by US Vice President Mike Pence at AIPAC,” Times of Israel, May 27, 2017, timesofisrael.com/full-transcript-of-speech-by-us-vice-president-mike-pence-at-aipac/.

8. See David D. Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth Dias, and David M. Halbfinger, “Israel and Evangelicals: New U.S. Embassy Signals a Growing Alliance,” NYT, May 18, 2018, nytimes.com/2018/05/19/world/middleeast/netanyahu-evangelicals-embassy.html.

9. Célia Belin, “Trump’s Jerusalem Decision Is a Victory for Evangelical Politics,” Brookings (blog), December 15, 2017, brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/12/15/trumps-jerusalem-decision-is-a-victory-for-evangelical-politics/. This has led, in 2018, to opinions that the pro-Israel lobby is now under the aegis of Christian Zionists, displacing longtime Jewish leadership. See, for example, Jane Eisner, “Trump Has Handed the Israel Lobby to Evangelicals. That’s Terrifying,” Forward, January 15, 2018, forward.com/opinion/392156/trump-has-handed-the-israel-lobby-to-evangelicals-thats-terrifying/.

10. Historical scholarship on Christian Zionism has grown dramatically in recent years. For accounts situating American evangelicals in prophecy (and often dispensationalist) traditions, see Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018); Robert O. Smith, More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Caitlin Carenen, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of the Promised Land (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); and Timothy Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005). Most influential has been the work by Yaakov Ariel, including An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews (New York: New York University Press, 2013) and On Behalf of Israel: American Fundamentalist Attitudes Toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865–1945 (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1991).

11. Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970), 154. For overviews of American prophecy culture, see Matthew Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), and Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1994).

12. These archetypes date to early coverage of evangelical Christian Zionism. See Kenneth Woodward and Rachel Mark, “Christians for Israel,” NW, November 28, 1977, 126, and John Dart, “Israel Finds Born-Again Friends in U.S.,” LAT, June 11, 1978, A3. At the same time, the first scholarly works appeared, tracing the roots of Christian Zionism to the rise of dispensationalism. See David A. Rausch, Zionism Within Early American Fundamentalism, 1878–1918: A Convergence of Two Traditions (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1978), and Timothy Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925 (Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press, 1983).

13. This representational emphasis has often been the approach of cultural historians. See Angela M. Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Michelle Mart, Eye on Israel: How America Came to View the Jewish State as an Ally (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006); Irvine Anderson, Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land, America, and Israel, 1917–2002 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005); Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More.

14. John Hagee, speech at AIPAC D.C. Policy Summit, March 11, 2007, vimeo.com/24438713.

15. For other examples of the sibling language, see the 2006 “Letter of Repentance,” signed by an international list of Christian Zionists, which asks Jews: “May G-d grant you the ability to forgive us so that may we be brothers and sisters again”; and the theological framework of the influential evangelical theologian Marvin R. Wilson in Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1989). This motif is embraced not only by Christians. For Jewish invocations of the familial motif, see David Brog, Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2006), which concludes by claiming evangelicals and Israelis are “blood brothers”; and the 2015 Orthodox rabbinical statement that urges Jews to accept “the hand offered to us by our Christian brothers and sisters” (“Orthodox Rabbinic Statement on Christianity,” December 3, 2015, cjcuc.org/2015/12/03/orthodox-rabbinic-statement-on-christianity/).

16. The exception is the recent work of anthropologists and ethnologists, who have done groundbreaking fieldwork on contemporary Christian Zionism. See, for example, Faydra L. Shapiro, Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border (New York: Cascade Books, 2015); Matthew Westbrook, “The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, and Renewalist Zionism: Emerging Jewish-Christian Ethnonationalism” (PhD diss., Drew University, 2014); and Sean Durbin, Righteous Gentiles: Religion, Identity, and Myth in John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

17. These insights come from disparate studies on interreligious relations in other contexts: Ethan B. Katz, The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Shapiro, Christian Zionism; Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (New York: Knopf, 2005); Judith Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek?: Constructing Early Christianity (New York: T & T Clark, 2002); and David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

18. On the origins of Jewish-evangelical dialogue, see Yaakov Ariel, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue, ed. Catherine Cornille (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013), 205–223; Ethan Felson, “On the Road: The Jewish Community Relations with Evangelical Christians,” in Uneasy Allies?: Evangelical and Jewish Relations, ed. Alan Mittleman, Byron Johnson, and Nancy Isserman (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 85–102; and Lawrence Grossman, “The Organized Jewish Community and Evangelical America: A Brief History,” in Mittleman, Johnson, and Isserman, Uneasy Allies?, 49–72.

19. Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 7–13. See, for example, the views of fundamentalists William Dudley Pelley, Gerald L. K. Smith, and Gerald B. Winrod. One interpretation of modern conservative evangelicalism is to emphasize its similarities to right-wing fundamentalism. In addition to Ribuffo, see Sutton, American Apocalypse, and, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, Rick Perlstein, “I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong,” New York Times Magazine, April 11, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html.

20. Insider histories are numerous and of widely varying quality. For the most erudite friendly history, see Paul C. Merkley, Those That Bless You I Will Bless: Christian Zionism in Historical Perspective (Brantford, Ontario: Mantua Books, 2011). For a comprehensive and celebratory account, see Michael Evans, History of Christian Zionism, vols. 1 and 2 (Phoenix, AZ: TimeWorthy Books, 2013). For a defense of the “Judeo-Christian idea” that evokes the shared history most Christian Zionists assume, see David Brog, In Defense of Faith: The Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity (New York: Encounter Books, 2010). For an Israeli endorsement, see Zev Chafets, A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man’s Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008). Merkley (an evangelical), Evans (a Messianic Jew), Brog (an American Jew and executive director of Christians United for Israel), and Chafets (an Israeli) have all been proponents of the movement for decades.

21. For all biblical quotations, I use the New International Version (NIV), which most evangelicals adopted as their preferred translation in the 1970s.

22. On the role of biblical interpretation on political positioning, see, for example, F. Michael Perko, “Contemporary American Christian Attitudes to Israel Based on the Scriptures,” Israel Studies 8, no. 2 (2003): 1–17.

23. The centrality of Romans 9–11 in reforming Catholic church teachings is a key theme in John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). For evangelical Christian Zionists, this passage counters racial antisemitic claims and works alongside prophetic, gospel, and epistle passages to form the basis of restorationist theology. On the grafting motif, see Shapiro, Christian Zionism, 70–98.

24. Nicos Trimikliniotis, “Sociology of Reconciliation: Learning from Comparing Violent Conflicts and Reconciliation Processes,” Current Sociology 61, no. 2 (2013): 244–264.

25. See Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), and Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).

26. Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter, The Nixon Tapes: 1971–1972 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 359–360. For a discussion of the Graham-Nixon exchanges, see Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 192–203.

27. See Gary M. Burge, Whose Land? Whose Promise?: What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2013), and Naim Ateek, Cedar Duaybis, and Maurine Tobin, eds., Challenging Christian Zionism: Theology, Politics and the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Melisende, 2005). Other critical appraisals include Clifford Attick Kiracofe, Dark Crusade: Christian Zionism and US Foreign Policy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009); Stephen R. Sizer, Christian Zionism: Road-Map to Armageddon? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005); Donald Wagner, Anxious for Armageddon: A Call to Partnership for Middle Eastern and Western Christians (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1995); and Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1986).

28. See, especially, Grayson R. Robertson, “The Influence of Dispensationalist Theology on Evangelical Perceptions of Muslims Post-9/11” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2011).

29. Only a few studies of Christian Zionism use archival or Hebrew-language sources located in Israel. For exceptions, see Jason M. Olson, “The Impact of the Six-Day War on Jewish-Protestant Relations” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2016); Carenen, Fervent Embrace; and Yaakov Ariel, “Evangelists in a Strange Land: American Missionaries in Israel, 1948–1967,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 14 (1998): 195–213.

30. On the varied and influential strands of pre-nineteenth-century Protestant restorationism, see, especially, Goldman, God’s Country; Smith, More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation; and Clark, Allies for Armageddon.

31. For an overview of dispensational teachings, see Weber, On the Road to Armageddon, 19–44. The historical theology approach of Craig A. Blaising and Darrell L. Bock is illuminating in Progressive Dispensationalism (Wheaton, IL: BridgePoint Academic, 1993), 9–56. On Darby’s life and teachings, see Max S. Weremchuk, John Nelson Darby: A Biography (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1993).

32. Systematization was itself an attempt to adapt dispensational teachings to modern thought. See Brendan Pietsch, Dispensational Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

33. John Nelson Darby, “The Purpose of God,” Collected Works, vol. 2, Prophetic No. 1, 267.

34. Blaising and Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism, 23. See also Ronald M. Henzel, Darby, Dualism, and the Decline of Dispensationalism (Tucson, AZ: Fenestra Books, 2003), 151–190.

35. See David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014). For an interpretation that emphasizes anti-supersessionist Christian teachings before and outside of twentieth-century evangelicalism, see Goldman, God’s Country.

36. For a historical survey of supersessionism, see Edward Kessler, An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 170–190.

37. Here I am focusing on the American case, but it is important to acknowledge Anglo-Christian Zionism. See Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the role of restorationism in British policy making, see Anderson, Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy, 53–74. The classic study is Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour (New York: Ballantine, 1984).

38. Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 21.

39. Smith, More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation, 167–168; Ariel, An Unusual Relationship, 86–90. Goldman, God’s Country, 67–68 argues that the memorial’s support reveals how Christian Zionist ideals were already embedded in American political culture in 1891.

40. Jonathan David Moorhead, “Jesus Is Coming: The Life and Work of William E. Blackstone (1841–1935)” (PhD diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 2008), 226–303. The terms “Hebrew Christian” and “Messianic Jew” denote the same phenomenon: Jews who believe Jesus is the foretold Messiah of the Hebrew Bible. To varying levels, Hebrew Christians and Messianic Jews retain the practices of Judaism or adopt the practices of various Christian traditions. While the terms are fraught with meaning for adherents, in general “Hebrew Christian” remained the dominant terminology until the 1960s, when “Messianic Judaism” grew more popular under the influence of the organization Jews for Jesus.

41. Yaakov Ariel, “William Blackstone and the Petition of 1916: A Neglected Chapter in the History of Christian Zionism in America,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 7 (1991), 68–85.

42. Moorhead, “Jesus Is Coming,” 222; Paul Merkley, The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891–1948 (New York: Routledge, 1998), 70–72. I. L. Kenen, the founder of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), also highlighted Blackstone’s quick descent into obscurity. See “Blackstone—Forgotten American Zionist Tradition,” JP, March 4, 1966, 10.

43. Merkley, The Politics of Christian Zionism, 60.

44. Ibid., 116. See also Carenen, Fervent Embrace, 114–122.

45. Fundamentalists did not abandon politics altogether, though their presence was less impactful on the “vital center” consensus of the early postwar decades. On their continuing interest in politics, see Darren Grem, The Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Sutton, American Apocalypse; Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010); and Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). On fundamentalist and later evangelical “parallel institutions,” see Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

46. Talbot, quoted in Dwight Wilson, Armageddon Now!: The Premillenarian Response to Russia and Israel Since 1917 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1977), 132.

47. In its earlier years, the Israeli government was especially concerned with the Vatican, which demanded the internationalization of Jerusalem. See Seth J. Frantzman and Ruth Kark, “The Catholic Church in Palestine/Israel: Real Estate in Terra Sancta,” Middle Eastern Studies 50, no. 3 (2014): 370–396; and Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948–1967 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).

48. See, for example, the government-funded research project by Chaim Wardi, Christians in Israel: A Survey (Jerusalem: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1950).

49. Polling is plentiful showing the exceptional identification with Israel among evangelicals. See, for example, “American Evangelicals and Israel,” Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, April 15, 2005, pewforum.org/2005/04/15/american-evangelicals-and-israel/, which shows evangelicals outpaced only by Jews in their level of support (64 percent agree that the United States should support Israel over Palestinians, 18 percent disagree, and 18 percent have no opinion—the national sample: 35 percent, 27 percent, and 38 percent, respectively).

50. The classic theological definition of evangelicalism is credited to David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2–17, as missions, biblicism, crucicentrism, and conversionism.

51. Evangelical celebration of Jewish history and fascination with Jewish practice has increased dramatically in recent decades. See Joseph Williams, “The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism,” Church History 84, no. 1 (March 2015): 159–194; Sean Durbin, “ ‘For Such a Time as This’: Reading (and Becoming) Esther with Christians United for Israel,” Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 2, no. 1 (2012): 65–90; and Faydra L. Shapiro, “The Messiah and Rabbi Jesus: Policing the Jewish-Christian Border in Christian Zionism,” Culture and Religion 12, no. 4 (2011): 463–477.

52. See “Evangelical Attitudes Toward Israel Research Study: Evangelical Attitudes Towards Israel and the Peace Process,” LifeWay Research, December 2017, http://lifewayresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Evangelical-Attitudes-Toward-Israel-Research-Study-Report.pdf. LifeWay Research is part of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is important to note that the sponsor for this polling was Chosen People Ministries and author Joel C. Rosenberg. Both are mainstays in the Messianic Jewish community. For differing interpretations of the data, see Philip Bump, “Half of Evangelicals Support Israel Because They Believe It Is Important for Fulfilling End-Times Prophecy,” WP, May 14, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/half-of-evangelicals-support-israel-because-they-believe-it-is-important-for-fulfilling-end-times-prophecy/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9e8b39eefc20; and Mark Tooley, “Israel’s 70th and Christian Zionism,” National Review, May 25, 2018, www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/christian-zionism-dispensationalism-not-the-key/.

53. See Justin Hart, Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2–4. See also Jason Parker, Hearts, Minds, Voices: US Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Formation of the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Kenneth A. Osgood and Brian C. Etheridge, eds., The United States and Public Diplomacy: New Directions in Cultural and International History (Boston: Nijhoff, 2010).

54. See Andrew Preston, “Evangelical Internationalism: A Conservative Worldview for the Age of Globalization,” in The Right Side of the Sixties, ed. Laura Jane Gifford and Daniel K. Williams (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 221–240. See also Timothy D. Padgett, Swords and Plowshares: American Evangelicals on War, 1937–1973 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), and David Settje, Faith and War: How Christians Debated the Cold and Vietnam Wars (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 98–103.

55. The extent to which specifically Christian Zionist or American Jewish influence (often labeled the “Jewish lobby” or “Israel lobby”) has shaped U.S. policy is contested. For arguments that Christian Zionists in particular have exercised significant influence on U.S. foreign policy, see John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 132–139; and Rammy Haija, “The Armageddon Lobby: Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the Shaping of US Policy Towards Israel-Palestine,” Holy Land Studies 5, no. 1 (May 2006): 75–95. For Christian Zionism as emblematic of a broader American discourse favorable toward pro-Israel policies, see Jonathan Rynhold, The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 95–115; and Walter Russell Mead, “The New Israel and the Old: Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 4 (July 2008): 28–46.

56. On the role of hasbara in early Israeli diplomacy, see Peter L. Hahn, “The View from Jerusalem: Revelations About U.S. Diplomacy from the Archives of Israel,” Diplomatic History 22, no. 4 (1998): 509–532. On the 1960s–1970s, see Jonathan Cummings, Israel’s Public Diplomacy: The Problems of Hasbara, 1966–1975 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); and Kenny Kolander, “Walking Out of Step: U.S.-Israel Relations and the Peace Process, 1967–1975” (PhD diss., West Virginia University, 2016), 195–233.

57. Yehezkel Dror, quoted in Jonathan Cummings, “ ‘Muddling Through’ Hasbara: Israeli Government Communications Policy, 1966–1975” (PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science, 2012), 1.

58. For case studies on the roles of domestic pressure groups, including lobby groups, in U.S. foreign policy, see Andrew Johns and Mitch Lerner, eds., The Cold War at Home and Abroad: Domestic Politics and US Foreign Policy Since 1945 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2018); and Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “Global Visions and Parochial Politics: The Persistent Dilemma of the ‘American Century,’ ” Diplomatic History 27, no. 4 (September 2003): 423–447. On religion and American foreign relations, see Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 2012).

59. Marc Tanenbaum, draft comments, June 24, 1969, box 21, folder 1, MHT.

60. Ron Kronish to AJC, June 1969, box 21, folder 1, MHT.

Chapter 1

1. On Lindsey and Graham, see Kenneth R. Mullican Jr. and Loren C. Turnage, One Foot in Heaven: The Story of Bob Lindsey of Jerusalem (Frederick, MD: PublishAmerica, 2005), 219–226.

2. Cooper founded the Bible Research Society and published on biblical prophecy. His most extensive work was his seven-volume systematic theology “Messianic Series.” See volume 1, The God of Israel (Los Angeles: Bible Research Society, 1945).

3. Herbert Weiner, The Wild Goats of Ein Gedi: A Journal of Religious Encounters in the Holy Land (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 69; Mullican and Turnage, One Foot In Heaven, 27–31; Robert Lindsey, interview with David Klatzker, May 29, 1977, ICJ.

4. Yaakov Ariel, An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 111–125.

5. On the centrality of the Holocaust in Israeli society, see Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 2000).

6. In these peculiarities they shared characteristics with other American Protestant missionaries who also played significant roles in shaping American attitudes. See David Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), and Melani McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). American Protestant missionaries in foreign cultures were confronted with new perspectives and, to borrow Hollinger’s term, demonstrated a “boomerang effect” by importing these beliefs back into America. In relation to Palestine and Israel, while liberal Protestants advanced a new multiculturalism and, in many cases, rejected Zionism as colonialist nationalism, evangelicals tended to accommodate Jewish perspectives and support the Zionist project.

7. Matthew 28:19. On postwar evangelical missions, see Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 2012), 480–481; and Sarah E. Ruble, The Gospel of Freedom and Power: Protestant Missionaries in American Culture after World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 55–90.

8. Robert T. Coote, “The Uneven Growth of Conservative Evangelical Missions,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 6, no. 3 (July 1982): 119.

9. Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 124–147; George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1987), 237–244.

10. For the institutional distinction between evangelical and fundamentalist (or unaffiliated) missionaries, see Robert Coote, “Twentieth-Century Shifts in the North American Protestant Missionary Community,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 22, no. 4 (October 1998): 152–153. For the dual evangelistic and humanitarian focus of postwar evangelicals, see David King, “The New Internationalists: World Vision and the Revival of American Evangelical Humanitarianism, 1950–2010,” Religions 3, no. 4 (October 8, 2012): 922–949.

11. Chaim Wardi, Christians in Israel: A Survey (Jerusalem: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1950), 30–31.

12. On the wartime expulsions, see Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

13. For a Baptist evaluation of Israel’s legal system, see Dwight Baker, “Religious Liberty in Israel: A Study Covering a Period of Fifteen Years—From the Founding of the State in 1948 to 1963” (PhD diss., Columbia Theological Seminary, 1964). On the origins of Protestant missionaries in the Levant under the millet system, see Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 103–139.

14. See Dwight Baker, “Baptists Golden Jubilee: 50 Years in Palestine-Israel,” unpublished manuscript, 1961, BCI.

15. Wardi, Christians in Israel, 30–31. The 1947 numbers included British officials and military officers.

16. The missionary awareness of the Holocaust and its potential effects on Jewish-Christian relations stands in contrast to the slow realization of its magnitude by American evangelicals. See Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 103–124. For a corrective on the important role of Holocaust memorialization among American Jews before 1960, see Hasia Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love (New York: New York University Press, 2009). On the place of Holocaust memory in Israel, see Dalia Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How?: The Memory of the Holocaust and the Israeli Experience,” Israel Studies 18, no. 2 (2013): 70–85.

17. Yaakov Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880–2000 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 147; Yaakov Ariel, “Evangelists in a Strange Land: American Missionaries in Israel, 1948–1967,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 14 (1998): 210–211, n. 21. Ariel counts almost 280 evangelical missionaries and staff in Israel in the mid-1950s, when Jerusalem’s population had grown to about 180,000.

18. Velma Darbo, “Ferment in the ‘Pressure Cooker’—Israel,” The Witness, November 1966, 31–35.

19. Per Østerbye, a Protestant observer, counted more than forty active Protestant groups in the city of Jerusalem alone. See Per Østerbye, The Church in Israel: A Report on the Work and Position of the Christian Churches in Israel with Special Reference to the Protestant Churches and Communities (Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, 1970), 178–216.

20. Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People, 161.

21. Dwight Baker, “New Challenge to Israel,” Minutes of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, May 6, 1953, IMB.

22. Chandler Lanier, Can These Bones Live? An Eyewitness Account of Spiritual Renewal in Modern-Day Israel (Hagerstown, MD: Fairmont Books, 2000), 7.

23. Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People, 149–150.

24. George T. B. Davis, Sowing God’s Word in Israel Today: Personal Experiences in the Land of Israel (Philadelphia: Million Testaments Campaigns, 1953), 123.

25. See Leslie Stein, The Making of Modern Israel: 1948–1967 (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2011), 83–149; and Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 52–90.

26. See Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 49–73.

27. Dwight Baker interview, Baylor University, Institute for Oral History, 1994, transcript copy in BCI.

28. John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 217–218, 254–258.

29. Donald A. McGavran, The Bridges of God: A Study in the Strategy of Missions (New York: Friendship Press, 1955). See also Robert Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1963). On the Church Growth Movement, see McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders, 85–102.

30. Lindsey, “Improving Our Witness,” 1961, BCI. See also Worthen, Apostles of Reason, 128–132.

31. Lindsey, “Improving Our Witness.”

32. “General Report for the Annual Meeting of the Baptist Convention in Israel,” April 1957, FMB.

33. For an overview of the Dead Sea Scrolls, see James VanderKam and Peter Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 2002).

34. Robert Lindsey, “Why the Name ‘Hayahad’?,” HD, March–April 1962, 2.

35. See Géza Vermès, The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous Discovery and True Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Penguin, 2010), 213–238.

36. Robert Lindsey, “Jewish-Christian Identity,” HD, July–August 1963, 2.

37. Lindsey, “Jewish-Christian Identity,” 2.

38. Weiner, The Wild Goats of Ein Gedi, 69.

39. Paul Swarr, “Comparison of Early Christianity and the Qumran Community,” HD, July–August 1962, 8.

40. See Peter E. Janssen, Adventures in Dialogue: Impressions of 45 Years of Jewish-Christian Dialogue in the Rainbow Group of Jerusalem, Israel (Jerusalem: Lee Achim Sefarim, 2013), 57–58.

41. Robert L. Lindsey, “A Modified Two-Document Theory of the Synoptic Dependence and Interdependence,” Novum Testamentum 6, no. 4 (November 1963): 239–263. A more expansive version of the theory came in A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark (Jerusalem: Dugith Publishers, 1969). Flusser provided the introduction.

42. Milton Murphey quoted in “Interview Concerning the Baptist Center of Petah Tikvah,” HD, April 1961, 6.

43. Ibid.

44. “Constitution of the B.C.I., Revised and Adopted,” draft, 1965, BCI.

45. See Rebecca Rowden, Baptists in Israel: The Letters of Paul and Marjorie Rowden, 1952–1957 (Nashville, TN: Fields, 2010); and David Klatzker, “Israeli Civil Religion and Jewish Christian Relations: The Case of the Baptists,” in Jewish Civilizations: Essays and Studies, ed. Ronald A. Brauner, vol. 3 (Philadelphia: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 1985), 135–152.

46. Lindsey, “Improving Our Witness.”

47. Dwight Baker interview, Baylor University, Institute for Oral History, 1994, transcript copy in BCI.

48. On the ecumenical community in Israel during the mid-1960s, see Janssen, Adventures in Dialogue, 33–53.

49. Lindsey, “Improving Our Witness.”

50. Among other tasks, Lindsey, along with A. Roy Eckardt, produced a position paper on Jewish-Christian relations as part of the World Council of Churches Israel Study Group. See “Dialogue and Mission,” HD, April–June 1972, 2, 7–8.

51. See Elesha J. Coffman, The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 208–213; Caitlin Carenen, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 38–41; Matthew Hedstrom, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 142–171; and Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 41–42.

52. Several Protestant and Catholic theologians produced indictments of Christian anti-Judaism. See A. Roy Eckardt, Christianity and the Children of Israel (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1948), and Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1965).

53. Lindsey, “Improving Our Witness.”

54. Roy Kreider, Judaism Meets Christ: Guiding Principles for the Christian-Jewish Encounter (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1960), 40.

55. Kreider, Judaism Meets Christ, 45.

56. Niebuhr, quoted in Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 117.

57. The development of this teaching has often been placed at the center of the story of the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. See Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).

58. Mary Boys, “A More Faithful Portrait of Judaism: An Imperative for Christian Educators,” in Within Context: Essays on Jews and Judaism in the New Testament, ed. David P. Efroymson, Eugene Fisher, and Leon Klenicki (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 2.

59. For a survey, see Sarah K. Pinnock, “Atrocity and Ambiguity: Recent Developments in Christian Holocaust Responses,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75, no. 3 (September 2007): 499–523. Post-Holocaust Protestant theologians included A. Roy Eckardt, Franklin Littell, Jürgen Moltmann, and Paul van Buren.

60. Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Relations of Christians and Jews in Western Civilization,” in Pious and Secular America (New York: Scribner, 1958), 88.

61. Robert Lindsey, Israel in Christendom: The Problem of Jewish Identity (n.p., 1960), 282, BCI.

62. Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People, 1–13.

63. See Lindsey, Israel in Christendom, 8–9, 275–290. See also Robert Lindsey, “Salvation and the Jews,” International Review of Mission 61, no. 241 (1972): 23–24. In criticizing dispensationalism, Lindsey relied on the work of William O. Carver, professor of missions at SBTS. For Lindsey’s use of Carver, see Robert Lindsey, “The Philosophy of a Christian Approach to the Jews” (PhD diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1954), 268–270; Lindsey, Israel in Christendom, 281–283.

64. Lindsey, Israel in Christendom, 338.

65. Milton Murphey, interview with David Klatzker, November 5, 1977, ICJ.

66. On Mennonite resistance to dispensationalism, see Worthen, Apostles of Reason, 86–90.

67. Lindsey, Israel in Christendom, 337–339.

68. Ibid., 340–341.

69. Romans 11:16–24.

70. Brian Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Graham and Stott (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 69–70.

71. See W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, ed., The New Delhi Report: The Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches 1961 (New York: Association Press, 1962), 148.

72. Dwight Baker, “Israel,” in One Race, One Gospel, One Task, ed. Carl Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham, vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1967), 171–174.

73. Robert Lindsey, “The Jews and Christian Evangelism,” in Henry and Mooneyham, One Race, One Gospel, One Task, 175–177.

74. Arthur Gilbert, “Response,” in Meet the American Jew, ed. Belden Menkus (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1963), iv.

75. Arthur Gilbert, “Statement from Rabbi Arthur Gilbert,” HD, March–December 1967, 2.

76. See Jonathan P. Herzog, “From Sermon to Strategy: Religious Influence on the Formation and Implementation of US Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War,” in Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective, ed. Philip Muehlenbeck (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012), 44–64.

77. Baptist missionaries were not alone in imagining Israel as a bastion of American values. See Michelle Mart, Eye on Israel: How America Came to View the Jewish State as an Ally (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 85–140.

78. Baker, “Religious Liberty in Israel,” 431.

79. Ibid., 413.

80. Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948–1967 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 101–105. The Chief Rabbinate’s regulation of marriage and divorce prompted a campaign to regain the right to register Baptist marriages, which Southern Baptists won in 1957. See Rowden, Baptists in Israel, 335.

81. Werblowsky, quoted in Baker, “Religious Liberty in Israel,” 413–429.

82. Dwight Baker, “Religion in Israel,” New Outlook, October 1960, 64; J. A., “Religious Liberty: Its Meaning and Scope,” 2. Joseph Alkahe (“J. A.”) was a Hebrew Christian, born in Istanbul, who pastored the Baptist Village and worked as a lawyer for the Baptist Convention in Israel. Because of his Jewish background and fear of reprisal, he used the initials “J. A.” as a pseudonym.

83. J. A., “Religious Liberty,” 5.

84. Baker, “Religion in Israel,” 6.

85. Dwight Baker, “Religious Liberty and National Unity,” HD, June 1961, 3.

86. Cornell Goerner, “Report to the Board Africa, Europe, and Near East,” October 9, 1957, IMB. In 1957, Goerner was the secretary elect for the Near East Board and had recently returned from a visit to Israel.

87. See Doug Rossinow, “ ‘The Edge of the Abyss’: The Origins of the Israel Lobby, 1949–1954,” Modern American History 1, no. 1 (March 2018): 23–43.

88. Axel R. Schäfer, Piety and Public Funding: Evangelicals and the State in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 100.

89. Carl Henry to Donn Odell, March 28, 1956, box 4, folder 21, RCT.

90. Donn Odell, “An Analysis of the Current Problems in Israel,” unpublished report, July 21, 1956, 17, box 4, folder 21, RCT.

91. “Freedom in Israel,” CT, December 24, 1956, 28–29.

92. Odell to John Foster Dulles, January 21, 1957, box 4, folder 21, RCT.

93. Odell to Carl Henry, cable, February 7, 1957, box 4, folder 21, RCT.

94. The limited firsthand reporting came from missionaries. See Robert Lindsey, “If Mr. Gallup Went to Israel,” MM, May 1955, 26–28, 91; and Dwight Baker, “Israel Enacts Anti-Conversion Law,” CT, April 23, 1965, 49–50. For articles authored by theologians, see Donald Barnhouse, “Near East Pressure-Cooker,” ET, July 1956, 10–11, 45–46; and Wilbur Smith, “Israel in Her Promised Land,” CT, December 24, 1956, 7, 9.

95. See “Jewish Mobs Stone New Church in Jerusalem,” CT, July 31, 1961, 25; “Zealots in the Holy Land,” CT, October 11, 1963, 33; and “Harassment in Israel,” CT, August 27, 1965, 53.

96. Jacob Gartenhaus, “Brother Daniel’s Exclusion,” CT, March 15, 1963, 15–16; Jakób Jocz, “A Test of Tolerance,” CT, March 29, 1963, 6–11.

97. See M. S. Griebenow to Customs Office, August 12, 1954, box 5818, folder 1, MRA; S. Saiovici to Ministry of Religious Affairs, November 12, 1956, box 5818, folder 1, MRA; and Saul Colbi to British and Foreign Bible Society, November 13, 1956, box 5818, folder 1, MRA.

98. Chaim Wardi to Elmo Scoggin, n.d., box 5908, folder 15, MRA; Robert Lindsey to Ministry of Religious Affairs, September 27, 1949, box 5908, folder 15, MRA; Milton Murphey to Saul Colbi, October 26, 1955, box 5908, folder 15, MRA.

99. Saul Colbi to A. M. Friedgut, August 5, 1953, box 5818, folder 1, MRA.

100. Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People, 149–150, and Bialer, Cross on the Star of David, 112–113. See Keren Yaldenu pamphlet in box 8002, folder 15, MFA.

101. Zerach Warhaftig to Oscar Philips, June 11, 1954, box 5818, folder 1, MRA.

102. Israel Ben-Zeev, Missionary Activity in Israel (Jerusalem: World Union for the Propagation of Judaism, 1963), 20.

103. Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People, 156. On the relationship between antimissionary groups and Israeli policies, see Bialer, Cross on the Star of David, 93–120.

104. These included the Law of Legal Competency and Guardianship (1962) and the Legal Guardianship Amendment (1965). See Østerbye, The Church in Israel, 86–90.

105. Samson Weiss to Abba Eban, July 3, 1953, box 8002, folder 15, MFA.

106. Don Falkenberg to Ministry of Religious Affairs, May 1, 1956, box 5818, folder 1, MRA.

107. Dwight Baker, “The Church in Israel,” HD, January–February 1967, 6.

Chapter 2

1. Brooke Sherrard, “American Biblical Archaeologists and Zionism: The Politics of Historical Ethnography” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 2011), 85–87.

2. William Albright, “The Judeo-Christian View of Man,” in Man’s Right to Knowledge: Tradition and Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 24.

3. See Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 43–67; Wendy Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 143–148; and Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004), 118–155. Judeo-Christianity and “tri-faith” language have their roots in earlier decades. See Ronit Stahl, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); David Mislin, “One Nation, Three Faiths: World War I and the Shaping of ‘Protestant-Catholic-Jewish’ America,” Church History 84, no. 4 (December 2015): 828–862; and K. Healan Gaston, “The Genesis of America’s Judeo-Christian Moment: Secularism, Totalitarianism, and the Redefinition of Democracy” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2008).

4. On the founding of the NCCJ, see Lance Sussman, “ ‘Toward Better Understanding’: The Rise of the Interfaith Movement in America and the Role of Rabbi Isaac Landman,” American Jewish Archives 34, no. 1 (1982): 35–50.

5. Ronit Stahl terms these beliefs “moral monotheism.” See Stahl, Enlisting Faith, 17.

6. On the construction of Judeo-Christianity as a popular term, see Mark Silk, “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America,” American Quarterly 36, no. 1 (April 1984): 65–85. For a retrospective on Silk’s piece and later interpretations, see K. Healan Gaston, “Interpreting Judeo-Christianity in America,” Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 2, no. 2 (2012): 291–304.

7. See Matthew Bowman, Christian: The Politics of a Word in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), esp. 108–132. Bowman’s “Christian republicanism” depends on Judeo-Christian categories.

8. Many other evangelical and fundamentalist books of the period evinced similar themes. See F. F. Bruce, Are the New Testament Documents Reliable? (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1943); Edward J. Young, Thy Word Is Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1957); and Edward Carnell, The Case for Orthodoxy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959).

9. See Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900–1950 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 286–355.

10. On the importance of inerrancy in postwar evangelicalism, see Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 36–55; and George M. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1987), 277–290. As Worthen observes, the problem of biblical authority was a “crisis” in evangelicalism because of its ambitions to answer a “common set of questions,” to reconcile “reason and revelation” in a way that would grant the community “intellectual authority” in American culture. Fundamentalists, however, had no such designs and far less compunction to engage with skeptics. See Worthen, Apostles of Reason, 2–3.

11. Burke O. Long, Planting and Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 131–133.

12. On Wellhausen’s work, see Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Magne Saebø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 424–452.

13. William Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 1932), 129. By publishing with Revell, Albright was appealing to a largely conservative Protestant readership.

14. Albright’s academic publications drawing upon his campaigns in Palestine include “Palestine in the Earliest Historical Period,” Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society no. 15 (1935): 193–234; and “The Israelite Conquest of Canaan in Light of Archaeology,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research no. 65 (1939): 11–23.

15. William Albright, History, Archaeology, and Christian Humanism (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), 309.

16. William Albright, “In Memoriam, Melvin G. Kyle,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 51 (September 1933): 5–7. Albright also attended the fundamentalist Moody Bible Church in the summer of 1913 before entering Johns Hopkins University. See Peter Feinman, William Foxwell Albright and the Origins of Biblical Archaeology (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2004), 103–107.

17. William Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Pelican Books, 1960), 127–128. Merrill F. Unger, a popular American evangelical scholar, concluded along with Albright that “Old Testament archaeology has rediscovered whole nations, resurrected important peoples, and in a most astonishing manner filled in historical gaps, adding immeasurably to the knowledge of Biblical backgrounds.” See Merrill Unger, Archaeology and the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1954), 15.

18. On Albright’s massive popularity, see Thomas W. Davis, Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 47–94.

19. See J. A. Miles Jr., “Understanding Albright: A Revolutionary Etude,” Harvard Theological Review 69 (1976): 155–157.

20. See F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 1950); William Sanford La Sor, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Faith (Chicago: Moody Press, 1962); and George Eldon Ladd, The New Testament and Criticism (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1967).

21. William Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process, rev. ed. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1957), 23.

22. Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity, 403.

23. Albright’s major criticism of the Pharisees seems to have been their “thoroughly Hellenistic framework,” which he found alien to earlier Israelite thought. See Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity, 356.

24. Albright, History, Archaeology, and Christian Humanism, 296.

25. J. C. Trever, “The Discovery of the Scrolls,” Biblical Archaeologist 11 (September 1948), 55.

26. Ibid., 23; Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity, 3.

27. The Scofield Reference Bible was substantially updated in 1917 and revised in 1967.

28. For a single-volume summation of the dispensational view in the postwar period, see J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Finlay, OH: Dunham Publishing Company, 1958). Pentecost taught at Dallas Theological Seminary, the largest and most influential dispensationalist seminary after World War II.

29. Carl Henry, “On Christian-Jewish Understanding,” CT, November 10, 1961, 32.

30. As the new director of interreligious affairs of the American Jewish Committee, Tanenbaum thanked evangelicals for supporting Jewish protesters in the Soviet Union. “Evangelical Association Addressed by Rabbi for First Time,” JTA, April 25, 1963, 4.

31. Stahl, Enlisting Faith, 180–188.

32. Henry Alford Porter, “If I Were a Jew,” pamphlet (Baptist Home Mission Board, 1955), box 12, folder 69, HMB.

33. “Jewish Fellowship Week, April 20–26, 1953,” pamphlet (Baptist Home Mission Board, 1953), box 12, folder 69, HMB.

34. Graham, quoted in William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: Quill, 1991), 227.

35. Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 369 n.116.

36. Mart, Eye on Israel, 99–103; Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 43–83.

37. See the high-profile case of the Hollywood blockbuster Exodus (1960). See Giora Goodman, “ ‘Operation Exodus’: Israeli Government Involvement in the Production of Otto Preminger’s Film Exodus (1960),” Journal of Israeli History 33, no. 2 (July 3, 2014): 209–229; Shaul Mitelpunkt, “The Cultural Politics of US-Israeli Relations and the Rediscovery of American Empire, 1958–1986” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2013), 24–59.

38. A Tourist’s Companion to Israel: Advice and Information for Visitors (Israel: Jerusalem Post Press, 1950), 4–5.

39. Sherrard, “American Biblical Archaeologists and Zionism,” 35–88.

40. On Cold War religious culture and foreign policy, see Jonathan P. Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and T. Jeremy Gunn, Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).

41. Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 141–166; Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001), 54–64.

42. Albright, History, Archaeology, and Christian Humanism, 296–297.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., 8. Dewey lectured in China from 1919 through 1921 and generated an enthusiastic following, but followers of Dewey’s education model were often at odds with Marxist-Leninists. In 1949, Mao denounced supporters of Dewey as agents of the United States. See Zhixin Su, “A Critical Evaluation of John Dewey’s Influence on Chinese Education,” American Journal of Education 103, no. 3 (1995): 302–325.

45. Herbert Hoffman to G. Ernest Wright, June 18, 1963, box 6, folder 5, GEW.

46. Carl Henry, Glimpses of a Sacred Land (Boston: W. A. Wilde Co, 1953), 208.

47. Ibid., 209.

48. See Ferenc Szasz, The Divided Mind of Protestant America, 1880–1930 (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2002).

49. Harold Ockenga, “The Challenge to the Christian Culture of the West,” in Fuller Voices: Then and Now, ed. Russell Spittler (Pasadena, CA: Fuller Theological Seminary, 2004), 15.

50. On evangelical enthusiasm for these civil religious gestures, see Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 95–126.

51. It was soon liberal Catholics who earned the most criticism from Christianity Today. See Mark B. Chapman, “American Evangelical Attitudes Toward Catholicism: World War II to Vatican II,” U.S. Catholic Historian 33, no. 1 (2015): 25–54; and Neil J. Young, “ ‘A Saga of Sacrilege’: Evangelicals Respond to the Second Vatican Council,” in American Evangelicals and the 1960s, ed. Axel R. Schäfer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 255–279.

52. See Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

53. See Sherrard, “American Biblical Archaeologists and Zionism,” 89–109.

54. Millar Burrows, Palestine Is Our Business (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949).

55. Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 14.

56. Yigael Yadin, Masada: Herod’s Fortress and the Zealots’ Last Stand (London: Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1966), 13. Masada developed into perhaps the most substantial site for the intersection of archaeology and Zionism in Israel. See Nachman Ben-Yehuda, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

57. See Warren Bass, Support Any Friend: Kennedy’s Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3.

58. Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 257, 269. See also K. Healan Gaston, “The Cold War Romance of Religious Authenticity: Will Herberg, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Rise of the New Right,” Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (March 2013): 1133–1158.

59. Criticisms of Judeo-Christianity were numerous. See, for example, Arthur Cohen, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, and Other Dissenting Essays (New York: Schocken Books, 1971); the Orthodox Jewish criticism of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in “Confrontation,” Tradition 6, no. 2 (1964): 26. Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, editor of the Jewish Spectator, advocated Jewish dialogue with Muslims instead of Christians, citing Islam’s lack of a supersessionist theology. For a variety of Jewish perspectives, see Robert Gordis, Judaism in a Christian World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).

60. This was Jocz’s favorite dichotomy. See Jakób Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ: The Relationship Between Church and Synagogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1949).

61. For an example of Jocz’s engagement with Barth, see Jakób Jocz, The Covenant: A Theology of Human Destiny (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1968).

62. Jakób Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ: The Relationship Between Church and Synagogue, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979), 2.

63. Ibid., 10.

64. Ibid., 200.

65. Jakób Jocz, Christians and Jews: Encounter and Mission (London: S.P.C.K. Publishers, 1966), 48.

66. Ibid., 55.

67. Ibid.

68. See Arthur F. Glasser, “The Legacy of Jakób Jocz,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 17, no. 2 (April 1993): 70. By rejecting Zionism as part of a divine plan for Jews, Jocz was participating in a long-standing Christian anti-restorationist tradition. See Nabil I. Matar, “Protestantism, Palestine, and Partisan Scholarship,” Journal of Palestine Studies 18, no. 4 (July 1989): 52–70.

69. Arthur A. Cohen, “Review of The Jewish People and Jesus Christ by Jakób Jocz,” Journal of Religion 31, no. 1 (January 1951): 67.

70. Jakób Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz: A Study in the Controversy Between Church and Synagogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1981), 9.

71. Ibid., 11.

72. “Statement by Evangelical Editors,” Christianity Today, November 10, 1961, 34.

73. Carl Henry, “On Christian-Jewish Understanding,” Christianity Today, November 10, 1961, 34.

Chapter 3

1. G. Douglas Young, “The Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies,” CNI, December 1959, 31–34.

2. Both institutions were renamed in 1970. Young’s institute became the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, while the American School of Oriental Research was renamed the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research.

3. “Announcing the Israel-American Institute for Biblical Studies,” brochure, July 1957, box 5820, folder 15, MRA.

4. Ibid., 32.

5. G. Douglas Young, The Bride and the Wife: Is There a Future for Israel? (Minneapolis, MN: Free Church Publications, 1960), 91.

6. Niebuhr, quoted in Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 117.

7. Young took a cue from postwar statements by European churches, including the Lutheran church in Germany. See Helga B. Croner, Stepping Stones to Further Jewish-Christian Relations (New York: Stimulus Books, 1977). Unlike most American evangelicals, Young’s awareness of the Holocaust, and the prominence he gave to it in his thinking in the 1950s, resembled liberal Protestant thinkers, such as Reinhold Niebuhr and A. Roy Eckardt.

8. Calvin B. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew: G Douglas Young (Nyack, NY: Parson Publishing, 1979), 46–47.

9. Young, The Bride and the Wife, 58.

10. On the founding of Faith Theological Seminary, see Barry Hankins, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2008), 13–14. On the importance of eschatology as a boundary marker in interwar fundamentalism and postwar evangelicalism, see R. Todd Mangum, The Dispensational-Covenantal Rift: The Fissuring of American Evangelical Theology from 1936 to 1944 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007); and William R. Glass, Strangers in Zion: Fundamentalists in the South, 1900–1950 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001).

11. Young, The Bride and the Wife, 5–6.

12. See G. Douglas Young, “The People of God,” in Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 306–312.

13. “ ‘In the whole land,’ declares the LORD, ‘two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it. This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God’ ” (Zechariah 13:8–9).

14. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 61.

15. William Trollinger, God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 65–70.

16. Young’s cooperation with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Minnesota chapter of the Anti-Defamation League suggests his familiarity with the human relations movement. See Ariana Horn, “Paved with Good Intentions: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Human Relations’ Movement in Milwaukee” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2015); Marianne Rachel Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945–2006 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2007), 67–98.

17. Following other historians, I situate “boundary maintenance” as a constitutive principal of postwar evangelicalism. Though in many instances fundamentalist and evangelical differences were initially minor or inconsequential, evangelical identity was formed as a “middle way” between “liberal Protestantism” and “fundamentalism.” Institutional investment in these identities perpetuated and widened the differences to become consequential. See Axel R. Schäfer, Countercultural Conservatives: American Evangelicalism from the Postwar Revival to the New Christian Right (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), and Jon Stone, On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism: The Postwar Evangelical Coalition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). See also the historiographical discussion in Matthew Bowman, The Urban Pulpit: New York City and the Fate of Liberal Evangelicalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 2–12.

18. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 66.

19. Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 141–160.

20. The EFCA, more than many denominations, imbibed an ideal of cooperation and “silence” on “secondary” theological issues, such as baptism and predestination. See Arnold T. Olson, “The Significance of Silence”: The Evangelical Free Church of America (Minneapolis, MN: Free Church Press, 1981).

21. Quoted in Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 118.

22. Young, “The Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies,” 31.

23. Peter Hahn, Caught in the Middle East: U.S. Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 194–209.

24. G. Douglas Young to Saul Colbi, July 1958, box 5820, folder 15, MRA.

25. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 82–88. See also Young, The Bride and the Wife, 88–89.

26. Quoted in Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 118.

27. Young, “The Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies,” 31; G. Douglas Young to Mr. Yeager, May 13, 1964, GDY.

28. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “Some Observations on the Renewal of Dialogue Between Christians and Jews,” Hibbert Journal 56 (April 1958): 282.

29. Werblowsky was an early participant in Israeli attempts to gain diplomatic recognition from the Vatican. See Bialer, Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948–1967 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 74–76.

30. Werblowsky, “Some Observations,” 273.

31. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism, 221–244.

32. On Taylor’s role in funding postwar evangelical institutions, see Darren Grem, The Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 24–48.

33. Stein, The Making of Modern Israel, 229–231.

34. Young, The Bride and the Wife, 90.

35. On the views of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, see Bialer, Cross on the Star of David, 93–101.

36. Anson Rainey to Young, June 12, 1962, GDY.

37. Ibid. Rainey’s biblical allusion to Jesus’ warning in Matthew 10:16 (“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves”) is awkward because of its original evangelistic context.

38. Young to Rainey, letter, July 5, 1962, GDY.

39. On the falling out between Rainey and Kelms, see Rainey to Young, letter, September 2, 1963, GDY.

40. Young, The Bride and the Wife, 65–66.

41. Take the case of Vern Asleson, a student in 1962 who asked to stay in Israel past his student visa expiration to teach English at the Jerusalem YMCA. Young, fearing Asleson would engage in missions work, pressed him to leave the country. The Ministry of Religious Affairs allowed Asleson to obtain a new six-month visa in Cyprus and remain in Israel, but Young insisted he leave the country. See Young to Vern Asleson, July 7, 1962, box 5820, folder 15, MRA; Saul Colbi to Young, July 19, 1962, box 5820, folder 15, MRA.

42. Young, “The Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies,” 34.

43. Marlene Olsen, “A New School with a New View in the Holy Land,” memo, 1961, GDY.

44. On organizing lecturers, see Young to Rainey, July 24, 1962, GDY; Rainey to Young, December 11, 1965, GDY; Young to David Flusser, December 8, 1964, GDY.

45. “International News Bulletin of the AIHLS,” August 21, 1964, GDY.

46. For the most influential scholarship emerging from these and allied seminaries in the late 1950s, see J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Acadamie Books, 1958); John F. Walvoord, The Millennial Kingdom: A Basic Text in Pre-Millennial Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1959); and Alva J. McClain, The Greatness of the Kingdom: An Inductive Study of the Kingdom of God as Set Forth in the Scriptures (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1959).

47. The full institutional expression of this apologetic approach could be seen at Dallas Theological Seminary. See John D. Hannah, An Uncommon Union: Dallas Theological Seminary and American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 11–26; Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, 25th Anniversary Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 32–47.

48. John F. Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1962); Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Chicago: Moody Press, 1965).

49. Goldman, God’s Country, 157; The New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).

50. For a discussion of these organizations, see Timothy Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 112–128; Yaakov Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880–2000 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 143–149.

51. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon, 128.

52. Saul Colbi, “The Christian Mission Among the Jews in Israel—Changes and New Developments,” memo, 1965, box 6258, folder 2, MRA.

53. Young, The Bride and the Wife, 66.

54. Ibid., 87.

55. See Gerald Wayne King, “Disfellowshiped: Pentecostal Responses to Fundamentalism in the United States, 1906–1943” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2009). See also John Turner’s discussion of “sibling rivalries” in Bill Bright & Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 69–92.

56. William L. Hull, The Fall and Rise of Israel: The Story of the Jewish People During the Time of Their Dispersal and Regathering (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1954). Yaakov Ariel notes that some of Hull’s books “contained passages that could easily have been written by Zionist officials” Yaakov Ariel, “Evangelists in a Strange Land: American Missionaries in Israel, 1948–1967,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 14 (1998): 205.

57. Gordon Lindsay, “Jerusalem Update,” The Voice of Healing (July 1961), BCI.

58. Gordon Lindsay, Will the Christians Go Through the Great Tribulation? (Dallas, TX: Christ for the Nations, 1974), 11–19. This pamphlet was published for the first time in 1974 but, based on references in the text, was written at least decade earlier.

59. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 103–108.

60. Young, The Bride and the Wife, 26.

Chapter 4

1. Yona Malachy, “Travel Itinerary,” undated, folder 3561, box 5, MRA.

2. For the standard account of the war, see Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

3. Jacob Neusner, Israel in America: A Too-Comfortable Exile? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 67.

4. Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 418–586.

5. Sara Yael Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 31–42.

6. Marc Raphael, A History of the United Jewish Appeal, 1939–1982 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 77. See also Lawrence Grossman, “Transformation Through Crisis: The American Jewish Committee and the Six-Day War,” American Jewish History 86, no. 1 (1998): 27–54.

7. Norman Podhoretz, “A Certain Anxiety,” CM, August 1971, 4.

8. Arthur Hertzberg, “Israel and American Jewry,” CM, August 1967, 69. On the influence of the June 1967 war on subsequent Jewish memory of the Holocaust, see Daniel Navon, “ ‘We Are a People, One People’: How 1967 Transformed Holocaust Memory and Jewish Identity in Israel and the US,” Journal of Historical Sociology 28, no. 3 (September 2015): 342–73.

9. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), make the claim that American Jewish support has overly influenced U.S. policy. For a summary of the debate following the original article’s publication, see Michael Massing, “The Storm over the Israel Lobby,” New York Review of Books 53, no. 10 (2006). For recent counterarguments that root American support for Israel in political culture and values, see Keith Kiely, U.S. Foreign Policy Discourse and the Israel Lobby: The Clinton Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process (New York: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2017); and Jonathan Rynhold, The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

10. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby, 5.

11. Judith Banki, Christian Reactions to the Middle East Crisis: New Agenda for Interreligious Dialogue (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1967), 2–6.

12. Joshua Zeitz, “ ‘If I Am Not for Myself . . .’: The American Jewish Establishment in the Aftermath of the Six Day War,” American Jewish History 88, no. 2 (June 2000): 268.

13. Marianne Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945–2006 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2007), 146.

14. See the collection of statements: Collation of Documents and Comments on the 1967 Middle East Crisis (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Rainbow Group, 1968), 9–17. On the WCC’s efforts on international issues, see Claude Emerson Welch, “Mobilizing Morality: The World Council of Churches and Its Programme to Combat Racism, 1969–1994,” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 4 (November 2001): 863–910.

15. Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (New York: Harper, 1966). For a reassessment, see Russell Middleton, “Do Christian Beliefs Cause Anti-Semitism?,” American Sociological Review 38, no. 1 (1973): 33–52.

16. The strong link between theology and politics remains a concern for scholars. See, for example, Kalman J. Kaplan and Paul Cantz, “Israel: ‘occupier’ or ‘occupied’? The Psycho-Political Projection of Christian and Post-Christian Supersessionism,” Israel Affairs 20, no. 1 (2014): 40–61.

17. Balfour Brickner, “A Time for Candor in Interreligious Relationships,” in Collation of Documents, 93–95. See also Irving Spiegel, “Rabbis Score Christians for Silence on Mideast,” NYT, June 23, 1967, 10.

18. Marc Tanenbaum, “Israel’s Hour of Need and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” Conservative Judaism 22, no. 4 (1968): 17.

19. Arthur Hertzberg, “Zionism and the Jewish Religious Tradition,” in The Jerusalem Colloquium on Religion, Peoplehood, Nation, and Land, Jerusalem, ed. Marc H. Tanenbaum and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Jerusalem: Truman Research Institute of the Hebrew University, 1971), 184.

20. Seymour Siegel, “Election and the People of God,” in Speaking of God Today: Jews and Lutherans in Conversation, ed. Paul Opsahl and Marc Tanenbaum (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 51–52.

21. Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948–1967 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 90.

22. Yona Malachy, “New Dimensions for Christian-Jewish Confrontation in United Jerusalem,” in Discussing Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Israel Academic Committee on the Middle East, 1972), 34. The relationship between Israelis and the Jewish diaspora is one of the defining marks of modern Jewish history. See Michael Barnett, The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 147–154; Zvi Ganin, An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, 1948–1957 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005); and Yosef Gorni, The State of Israel in Jewish Public Thought: The Quest for Collective Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 54–78.

23. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “The People and the Land,” in Speaking of God Today: Jews and Lutherans in Conversation, ed. Paul D. Opsahl and Marc H. Tanenbaum (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 80.

24. Malachy, “The Christian Churches and the Six-Day War,” Weiner Library Bulletin 23, no. 2–3 (1969): 24.

25. Uriel Tal, “Jewish Self-Understanding and the Land and State of Israel,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 26, no. 4 (1971): 351–363.

26. Shemaryahu Talmon, quoted in Janssen, Adventures in Dialogue, 57.

27. Golda Meir, Untitled Speech at Jerusalem School, October 13, 1970, box 62, folder 5, MHT.

28. Michael Pragai to Foreign Ministry, memo, July 26, 1970, box 4457, folder 19, MFA.

29. Henry Siegman, memo, August 21, 1969, box 25, folder 2, MHT.

30. Philip E. Hoffman, quoted in Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong, 148.

31. Tal, “Jewish Self-Understanding and the Land and State of Israel,” 351.

32. Tanenbaum, “Israel’s Hour of Need and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” 3.

33. “The Moral Responsibility in the Middle East,” NYT, June 4, 1967, E5.

34. Tanenbaum, “Israel’s Hour of Need and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” 12. Tanenbaum could also point to another NYT ad, on July 12, arguing for Israeli control of a unified Jerusalem. See “Jerusalem Should Remain Unified,” NYT, July 12, 1967, 12.

35. Tanenbaum, “Israel’s Hour of Need and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” 1.

36. See “Dr. Carl McIntire, President of International Council of Christian Churches, Challenges World Council of Churches Central Committee’s Statement on Israel,” in Collation of Documents, 44.

37. L. Nelson Bell, “Unfolding Destiny,” CT, July 21, 1967, 28–29.

38. The Biola statement was issued in response to Malachy’s encouragement to make a public pronouncement. See “Biola Visited by Israeli Official,” Biola Chimes, September 21, 1967, 1; Arnold Ehlert to Yona Malachy, May 12, 1967, folder 3551, box 5, MRA; and “A Proclamation Concerning Israel and the Nations,” KB, June 1968, 40–41.

39. Harold Sala, quoted in Banki, Christian Reactions to the Middle East Crisis, 18.

40. Malachy no doubt relied on historian Ernest Sandeen’s argument that fundamentalism was rooted in theology instead of status anxiety. Malachy met Sandeen while touring the United States in 1967. Malachy wrote, “Most fundamentalist statements and declarations (whether positive or negative) concerning the Jews, their status and future destiny, stem from largely theological ideas.” Yona Malachy, American Fundamentalism and Israel: The Relation of Fundamentalist Churches to Zionism and the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1978), 159.

41. G. Douglas Young to Herbert J. Taylor, October 6, 1967, box 24, folder 5, HJT.

42. Malachy, “New Dimensions for Christian-Jewish Confrontation in United Jerusalem,” 35.

43. Ibid.

44. Pinchas Lapide, “Ecumenism in Jerusalem,” CC, June 26, 1968, 839–842.

45. Arnold Olson to Arthur Miller, November 19, 1969, box 4548, folder 11, MFA. Olson and Miller were both board members of the institute.

46. Janssen, Adventures in Dialogue, 194.

47. Collation of Documents, 141–142.

48. Historians only mention Young’s post-1967 activism in passing. See Timothy Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 225; Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares, 91, 156, 164; Carenen, The Fervent Embrace, 145, 158; and Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 2.

49. American Institute of Holy Land Studies to Chicago-area donors, newsletter, February 1, 1969, box 24, folder 5, HJT. For an example of Israel sponsoring Young’s talks, see “Report on Dr. G. Douglas Young’s lecturing tour in the Western States,” February 11, 1969, box 145, folder 2, MOT.

50. G. Douglas Young, funding letter, May 22, 1972, JUC.

51. “Houston Post Travel Show—Israel,” February 9, 1969, box 145, folder 1, MOT.

52. G. Douglas Young, “Lessons We Can Learn from Judaism,” ET, August 1967, 22; “At Peace in Jerusalem,” JP, December 9, 1968; “Israel: The Unbroken Line,” CT, October 6, 1978, 12–14.

53. Chicago Consulate to Pragai, January 6, 1970, box 4548, folder 11, MFA; Chicago Consulate to Pragai, May 6, 1970, box 4548, folder 1, MFA.

54. G. Douglas Young, “Effective Dialog in the Land of the Bible,” Jerusalem Post—Pilgrimage Supplement, December 1967, 11.

55. Ibid.

56. Tanenbaum, quoted in Banki, Compendium of Christian Statements and Documents Bearing on Jewish-Christian Relations (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1972), 5. Tanenbaum also included for these remarks “the Roman Catholic Church and most of its communicants.”

57. Tanenbaum, quoted in Paul L. Montgomery, “A Dialogue of Faiths at Seton Hall,” NYT, October 29, 1970, 45.

58. In 1966, the AJC sponsored an off-the-record meeting of “about a dozen” evangelicals and Jews to prepare for a future issue of Eternity on Jewish-evangelical relations. See “Prophetic Overtones in the Middle East,” ET, August 1967, 6. See also David A. Rausch, Fundamentalist-Evangelicals and Anti-Semitism (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993), 191–194.

59. Gerald Strober to Tanenbaum, February 5, 1969, box 21, folder 1, MHT.

60. Strober to Tanenbaum, “Program for the Billy Graham Meeting,” June 9, 1969, box 21, folder 1, MHT.

61. Noam Kochavi, Nixon and Israel: Forging a Conservative Partnership (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 7–9. Nixon himself was obsessed with the domestic political consequences of his foreign policy.

62. Golda Meir to Billy Graham, March 11, 1970, box 756, folder 6, NPC.

63. Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter, The Nixon Tapes: 1971–1972 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 359–360. For a discussion of Graham-Nixon and antisemitism, see Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 192–203.

64. Lowell D. Streiker and Gerald S. Strober, Religion and the New Majority: Billy Graham, Middle America, and the Politics of the 70s (New York: Association Press, 1972), 80.

65. Ibid., 39.

66. Ibid., 61.

67. Marc Tanenbaum, memo, January 14, 1971, box 22, folder 4, MHT.

68. His Land promotional poster, box 22, folder 3, MHT.

69. Historians have mentioned the film only in passing; e.g., Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 170; and Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1994), 206.

70. Dave Foster, “This Land Is ‘His Land,’ ” CT, May 8, 1970, 39.

71. Cliff Barrows, “I Walked in His Land,” CL, January 1971, 26.

72. “Introductory Remarks to His Land,” n.d., box 22, folder 4, MHT.

73. Strober to Walter Smyth, February 27, 1970, box 22, folder 2, MHT.

74. George Dugan, “Ecumenic Praise Given Graham’s Film on Israel,” NYT, June 1, 1970, 15.

75. Strober to C. Joseph Sprague, November 5, 1970, box 22, folder 3, MHT.

76. “ His Land: A Discussion Guide,” box 22, folder 2, MHT.

77. Tanenbaum, quoted in monthly letter to National Council for Christians and Jews, November 1970, box 22, folder 3, MHT.

78. Yitzhak Rabin, quoted in His Land promotional letter, September 14, 1970, box 22, folder 3, MHT.

79. Foster, “This Land Is ‘His Land,’ ” 39.

80. Tanenbaum, memo, May 29, 1970, box 22, folder 2, MHT; Tanenbaum, memo, January 14, 1971, box 22, folder 4, MHT; Strober to W. W. Simpson, January 5, 1972, box 22, folder 4, MHT.

81. For response forms from viewers, see box 22, folder 2, MHT. For criticism by the Anti-Defamation League, see Solomon Bernards to ADL Regional Offices, report, box 22, folder 3, MHT.

82. For membership numbers, see the Evangelical Free Church of America entry in the Association of Religion Data Archives, www.thearda.com/Denoms/D_1438.asp.

83. See Andrew Preston, “Evangelical Internationalism: A Conservative Worldview for the Age of Globalization,” in The Right Side of the Sixties, ed. Laura Jane Gifford and Daniel K. Williams (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 221–240; David Settje, Faith and War: How Christians Debated the Cold and Vietnam Wars (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 98–103.

84. Billy Graham, quoted in Jay Douglas Learned, “Billy Graham, American Evangelicalism, and the Cold War Clash of Messianic Visions, 1945–1962” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2012), 2.

85. On the evangelistic and anticommunist interests shaping evangelical internationalism, see Miles S. Mullin, “Postwar Evangelical Social Concern: Evangelical Identity and the Modes and Limits of Social Engagement, 1945–1960” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2009), and Lauren Turek, To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelicals, Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).

86. For example, evangelical internationalists cast light on the plight of Soviet Jews (refuseniks) hoping to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel. Graham made high-profile appeals to support Soviet Jews as a religious liberty issue. Olson became a frequent evangelical representative on interreligious committees in support of Soviet Jews, including the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry. See Wacker, America’s Pastor, 241; Arnold T. Olson, Give Me This Mountain (Minneapolis, MN: Arnold T. Olson, 1987), 187–188.

87. Arnold T. Olson, Inside Jerusalem: City of Destiny (New York: Regal Books, 1968), 216–220.

88. Ibid., 228. Olson’s deft use of a Hebrew prophet (Isaiah 9:6) instead of an explicit invocation of Jesus was a small but notable nod to the rhetorical shifts in his thinking.

89. Olson, Inside Jerusalem, 151.

90. Ibid., 167–168.

91. Young to Yitzhak Lior, June 4, 1970, box 4548, folder 1, MFA.

92. “Middle East Resolution,” 1970, www.nae.net/middle-east/.

93. For historical membership numbers, see the Southern Baptist Convention entry in the Association of Religion Data Archives, www.thearda.com/Denoms/D_1087.asp.

94. W. A. Criswell, “Israel in the Consummation of History,” June 11, 1967, transcript at www.wacriswell.com.

95. On Criswell’s Dallas-area events, see Kenneth Todd Stewart, “An Inquiry into the Determinative Evangelistic Growth Factors at the First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, under the Leadership of W. A. Criswell, 1944–1991” (PhD diss., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2008), 57–60.

96. Saul Colbi to Pragai, October 27, 1968, box 4199, folder 16, MFA; Pragai to Houston Consulate, December 13, 1968, box 4199, folder 16, MFA.

97. Criswell dedicated the forest and a Baptist Friendship House on the property. On the significance of the project from the point of view of the Baptists in Israel, see Dwight Baker, “Baptist Friendship House” and “Baptist Forest Dedication in Israel,” Baptist Review, July–August 1971, 4.

98. Yaakov Hess to Pragai, February 28, 1969, box 4199, folder 16, MFA.

99. Ibid.

100. On Rabin’s style as ambassador, see Erwin Frenkel, The Press and Politics in Israel: The Jerusalem Post from 1932 to the Present (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1993), 66–69.

101. “Proclamation to Southern Baptist Convention,” June 10, 1969, box 4199, folder 16, MFA.

102. Benjamin Bonney to Milton Wiseman, January 13, 1970, box 4588, folder 12, MFA.

103. On Criswell and the conservative takeover of the convention, see Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins, Baptists in America: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 228–230.

104. For example, the Jewish-Baptist Scholars Conference in August 1969, the People of God: Jewish-Baptist Perspectives in 1971, and the American Civil Religion Conference in October–November 1972. See the following folders from MHT for programs and/or papers from these conferences: box 15, folder 3; box 15, folder 13; box 30, folder 1; box 43, folder 16; box 45, folder 17.

105. Will Kramer to Bertram H. Gold, August 22, 1969, box 30, folder 1, MHT.

106. See the event program in box 16, folder 2, MHT.

107. Elmo Scoggin, quoted in Banki, Compendium of Christian Statements and Document, 22.

108. Solomon Bernards, quoted in “ADL Press Release,” June 14, 1972, box 5352, folder 15, MFA; Dwight Baker to Yona Malachy, June 22, 1972, box 5352, folder 15, MFA.

109. See G. Douglas Young, “Lessons We Can Learn from Judaism,” ET, August 1967, 22.

110. G. Douglas Young, “Things We Can Learn from Judaism,” ET, August 1967, 22.

111. The metaphor of a “circle of the we” is borrowed from David A. Hollinger, “How Wide the Circle of the ‘We’? American Intellectuals and the Problem of the Ethnos Since World War II,” American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (1993): 317–337. While Hollinger’s circle continues to widen, however, the boundaries of Jewish-evangelical dialogue harden.

112. Banki, Christian Reactions to the Middle East Crisis, 17.

113. A. Roy Eckardt and Alice Eckardt, “The Tragic Unity of Enemies,” CC, January 12, 1969, 76.

114. Carenen, The Fervent Embrace, 158.

115. Marc Tanenbaum to Louis Shub, June 3, 1969, box 30, folder 7, MHT.

116. See Egal Feldman, “American Protestant Theologians on the Frontiers of Christian-Jewish Relations, 1922–1982,” in Essential Papers on Jewish-Christian Relations in the United States: Imagery and Reality, ed. Naomi W. Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 307–327.

117. Tanenbaum, “Israel’s Hour of Need and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” 13–14.

118. Janssen, Adventures in Dialogue, 108.

119. Elias Chacour, quoted in Janssen, Adventures in Dialogue, 106.

120. “Statement by Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum Before the New York Chapter of AJC,” January 12, 1969, box 95, folder 3, MHT.

121. Uriel Tal to Marc Tanenbaum, February 3, 1969, box 95, folder 3, MHT.

122. W. V. Davies, “The Land in Christian Theology,” in Tanenbaum and Werblowsky, The Jerusalem Colloquium, 114.

123. Malachy, “New Dimensions for Christian-Jewish Confrontation in United Jerusalem,” 34.

124. See, for example, Meir Litvak, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), which traces the rise of antisemitism and anti-Zionism through Arab responses to the Holocaust.

125. Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 227–230.

126. Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 261–265, 274–279.

Chapter 5

1. “Profile of Roy W. Gustafson,” November 25, 1970, box 2, folder 2, RWG.

2. Roy W. Gustafson, In His Land Seeing Is Believing (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1980), back cover.

3. Franklin Graham, Rebel with a Cause (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 122–123. Graham named his first son Roy in honor of Gustafson.

4. Gustafson, In His Land Seeing Is Believing, 41.

5. For background on Gustafson I have relied on Kenny Kolander, “Roy Gustafson: Christian Ambassador for Israel,” unpublished paper.

6. See Yaniv Belhassen and Jonathan Ebel, “Tourism, Faith and Politics in the Holy Land: An Ideological Analysis of Evangelical Pilgrimage,” Current Issues in Tourism 12, no. 4 (July 2009): 359–378.

7. Eldad Brin, “Politically-Oriented Tourism in Jerusalem,” Tourist Studies 6, no. 3 (December 2006): 215–216.

8. On defining cultural diplomacy, see Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), xv; Jason C. Parker, Hearts, Minds, Voices: US Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Formation of the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 10.

9. On state ideology and tourism, see Colin M. Hall, Tourism and Politics: Policy, Power, and Place (New York: Wiley, 1994), 174–189.

10. For early Christian attitudes, see Robert Louis Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). On contemporary American pilgrims, see Hillary Kaell, Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage (New York: New York University Press, 2014).

11. For earlier eras of American Holy Land tourism, see Stephanie Stidham Rogers, Inventing the Holy Land: American Protestant Pilgrimage to Palestine, 1865–1941 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011); and Burke O. Long, Imagining the Holy Land: Maps, Models, and Fantasy Travels (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). On American understandings of the Holy Land, see Gershon Greenberg, The Holy Land in American Religious Thought, 1620–1948 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993).

12. Hillary Kaell, “Pilgrimage in the Jet Age: The Development of the American Evangelical Holy Land Travel Industry, 1948–1978,” Journal of Tourism History 2, no. 1 (April 2010): 28–30.

13. Annual Report, 1963 (Jerusalem: Israel Government Tourist Corporation, 1964), 1–10. See also Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Noam Shoval, Tourism, Religion, and Pilgrimage in Jerusalem (New York: Routledge, 2015): 111–112.

14. Kobi Cohen-Hattab, “Zionism, Tourism, and the Battle for Palestine: Tourism as a Political-Propaganda Tool,” Israel Studies 9, no. 1 (2004): 63.

15. See Bernard Casper, Religious Life (Jerusalem: Israel Digest, 1963), and Joseph Badi, Religion in Israel Today: The Relationship Between State and Religion (New York: Bookman Associates, 1959).

16. Robert Lindsey, “1,500 Baptist Visitors to Israel,” CNI, December 1955, 40–42.

17. Chaim Wardi, “The Sixth Pentecostal World Conference,” CNI, May 1961, 12–14.

18. The Ministry of Tourism complained about this phenomenon in its own reports. See Annual Report, 1963 (Jerusalem: Israel Government Tourist Corporation, 1964), 13.

19. Kaell, “Pilgrimage in the Jet Age,” 28–29. The same transformations took place in Europe slightly earlier. See Goran Gunner, “Christianity—Christian Pilgrimage to Sacred Sites in the Holy Land: A Swedish Perspective,” in Pilgrimage and Tourism to Holy Cities: Ideological and Management Perspectives, ed. Maria Lepparki and Kevin Griffin (Boston: CAB International, 2017), 43–58.

20. See M. Vedar to Abbie Benari, “Office Opening in the Southern United States,” report, July 14, 1965, box 9110, folder 3, MOT.

21. Amnon Gil-Ad, “1966/67 Working Plans,” memo, March 7, 1966, box 9110, folder 3, MOT.

22. Ibid.

23. See discussion of missionary contacts in “Promotion Campaign for Israel Government Tourist Office,” memo, April 1967, box 2142, folder 8, MOT.

24. “General Report for the Annual Meeting of the Baptist Convention in Israel,” April 1957, FMB.

25. Roy Kreider, Land of Revelation: A Reconciling Presence in Israel (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2004), 134–135.

26. Gil-Ad, “1966/67 Working Plans.”

27. Robert Lindsey, “Tentative Six-Month Budget for Bible Lands Study Association,” memo, January 10, 1967, box 9110, folder 3, MOT. On Lindsey’s terms with the Ministry of Tourism, see Gil-Ad to Abbie Benari, February 11, 1966, box 9110, folder 3, MOT.

28. Lindsey, “Tentative Six-Month Budget.”

29. Gil-Ad to A. Leuv, April 29, 1966, box 9110, folder 3, MOT.

30. Tayarut, 1973 (Jerusalem: Bureau of Statistics, 1973), 6, 32–33. See also Cohen-Hattab and Shoval, Tourism, Religion, and Pilgrimage in Jerusalem, 137. In 1972, Israel Magazine also pointed to growth in the early 1970s in the face of an overall depression in global tourism. See “19% Investment in Tourism,” Israel Magazine, December 1972, 63.

31. See Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 71–99. On the construction of the polling demographic category of evangelicalism, see D. G. Hart, Deconstructing Evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the Age of Billy Graham (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 90–95.

32. “Three Year Plan,” report, 1970, 1, box 9072, folder 13, MOT. The report also included “Youth” as an important demographic, referring to Zionist youth camps.

33. Ibid.

34. The Ministry of Tourism administered a voluntary questionnaire, including a question about religious affiliation, to every tourist entering and leaving Israel. The IGTO reports to the Ministry of Tourism on spurring evangelical tourism include “IGTO Chicago: Quarterly Report,” March 31, 1969, box 145, folder 5, MOT; “IGTO Los Angeles: Quarterly Report,” November 11, 1969, box 145, folder 2, MOT; and “IGTO: Atlanta, Three Month Report,” March 15, 1970, box 145, folder 1, MOT.

35. Peter Schneider, “The Nerve Ends of the Jewish Christian Relationship,” Jerusalem Post—Pilgrimage Supplement, December 24, 1969, 8.

36. Calvin B. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew: G. Douglas Young (Nyack, NY: Parson Publishing, 1979), 315.

37. Carl Henry, Confessions of a Theologian: An Autobiography (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1986), 335.

38. G. Douglas Young, quoted in John M. Fowler, “O.W. Editor Attends Jerusalem Conference,” Southern Asia Tidings, August 1971, 7.

39. Michael Pragai to Saul Ramati, July 26, 1970, box 4457, folder 19, MFA.

40. Gaylord Briley to Young, May 16, 1970, box 1, folder 12, WMS.

41. G. Douglas Young, The Bride and the Wife: Is There a Future for Israel? (Minneapolis: Free Church Publications, 1960), 91.

42. John Walvoord to Carl Henry, September 1, 1970, box 5, folder 5, CFH.

43. For the 1914 conference papers, see The Coming and Kingdom of Christ: A Stenographic Report of the Prophetic Bible Conference Held at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, February 24–27, 1914 (Chicago: Moody Bible Institute, 1914). See also Matthew Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 44–46.

44. Briley to Wilbur Smith, June 2, 1970, box 1, folder 12, WMS.

45. Young to Henry, October 13, 1970, box 5, folder 4, CFH.

46. Carl Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1957), 46.

47. Henry to John Winston, June 12, 1970, box 5, folder 5, CFH.

48. Henry to Wilbur Smith, May 30, 1970, box 5, folder 7, CFH.

49. Henry to C. Stacey Woods, December 10, 1970, box 5, folder 5, CFH. Henry displayed a similar reluctance with his participation in the Chicago Declaration on Social Concern in 1973, worrying about the leftward drift of the Chicago gathering. His attempts to hold a collapsing center are well-articulated in his own memoirs. See Henry, Confessions of a Theologian, 348.

50. “Ockenga, Criswell Announce Historic First: Jerusalem Prophecy Conference,” CT, November 20, 1970, 171.

51. Henry to Young, October 4, 1970, box 4, folder 5, CFH.

52. Henry to Robert Walker, October 11, 1970, box 5, folder 4, CFH.

53. Gaylord Briley to Wilbur Smith, July 30, 1970, box 1, folder 12, WMS.

54. See Henry to Billy Graham, July 24, 1970, box 5, folder 5, CFH; Young to Herbert Taylor, December 24, 1970, box 24, folder 5, HJT; T. W. Smyth to Henry, December 25, 1970, box 5, folder 4, CFH.

55. Henry to Bernard Ramm, July 27, 1970, box 5, folder 5, CFH.

56. Henry to Robert Walker, October 11, 1970, box 5, folder 3, CFH.

57. Young to Henry, October 13, 1970, box 5, folder 4, CFH.

58. Young to Henry, October 13, 1970, box 5, folder 4, CFH; Henry, Confessions of a Theologian, 335.

59. Young to Gaylord Briley, October 7, 1970, box 4457, folder 18, MFA.

60. Ibid.

61. Young to Henry, October 13, 1970, box 5, folder 4, CFH.

62. Henry to John F. Walvoord, October 26, 1970, box 5, folder 5, CFH.

63. Henry, Confessions of a Theologian, 335. It is unclear how Werblowsky’s appearance was a surprise to Henry. Young had secured Werblowsky’s participation far in advance.

64. G. Douglas Young, “Christian and Jewish Understanding of the Word ‘Israel,’ ” in Prophecy in the Making, 165–166.

65. Young quoted in Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 326.

66. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “Prophecy, the Land and the People,” in Prophecy in the Making: Messages Prepared for the Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy, ed. Carl F. H. Henry. (Carol Stream, IL: Creation House, 1971), 345–347.

67. “Evangelists Meet in the Holy Land,” NYT, June 20, 1971, 10; Yuval Elizur, “Evangelical Christians End 3-Day Meeting in Jerusalem,” WP, June 19, 1971, 11.

68. “Declaration on Jerusalem by Ad Hoc Group of Evangelical Christians,” June 17, 1971, box 4548, folder 13, MFA. The signers included Young, Olson, Harold J. Fickett Jr., John F. Walvoord, Myron F. Boyd, and John Warwick Montgomery.

69. Pragai to New York Consulate, telegram, June 17, 1971, box 4457, folder 20, MFA.

70. This is especially true of historians, who have characterized the event as a success. Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 170–171, describes the 1971 conference as “a remarkable gathering of evangelicals” that “consolidated the newly politicized interpretations of prophecy.” Timothy Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 213–214, calls the conference “an important sign” of the way Israelis and evangelicals “started building their special relationship shortly after the Six Day War” in 1967. Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 157, maintains that “simply by attending” participants validated the political agenda of Christian Zionism. See also Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1994), 188.

71. Henry, Confessions of a Theologian, 334–335.

72. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 328.

73. See Henry to Young, undated, box 5, folder 1, CFH; and Young to Henry, August 9, 1971, box 5, folder 1, CFH.

74. Olson to Wilbur Smith, August 17, 1971, box 1, folder 50, WMS.

75. Pragai to New York Consulate, telegram, June 17, 1971, box 4457, folder 20, MFA.

76. Tanenbaum relied on an article from EB, the EFCA’s official mouthpiece, for the declaration’s wording, which may explain the sole credit given to Olson in the report. See Christians Support Unified Jerusalem (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1971), 1, 13–15.

77. Dwight Baker, “Bible Prophecy in the Prophets’ City,” CT, July 16, 1971, 29.

78. Olson, writing in EB in 1969, wondered “if the time hasn’t come for evangelicals to speak forth in a mighty chorus expressing their concern for the cause of peace and justice everywhere, including the Middle East.” See Arnold T. Olson, “All Is Not Shalom in Israel,” EB, December 12, 1969, 10. For the Israeli government’s praise of Olson’s article, see Chicago Consulate to Pragai, memo, January 6, 1970, box 4548, folder 11, MFA.

79. Brin, “Politically-Oriented Tourism in Israel,” 216.

80. See, for example, the receipt of personal or congregational checks by self-identified evangelicals to the government retained in box 6766, folder 42, PMO.

81. Hillary Kaell, “Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christian Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Post-War Period” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2010), 13.

82. On the role of media in tourism marketing, see Richard Butler, “The Influence of the Media in Shaping International Tourist Patterns,” Tourism Recreation Research 15, no. 2 (1990): 46–53.

83. See Kaell, Walking Where Jesus Walked, 76–77 for a summary of challenges to this view.

84. Wayne Dehoney, An Evangelical’s Guidebook to the Holy Land (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1974), x. See also Andrew Warne, “Making a Judeo-Christian America: The Christian Right, Antisemitism, and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in the 20th Century United States” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2012), 232–319.

85. “Meeting of Tourist Operators and Christian Clergy,” transcript, April 16, 1969, box 3557, folder 18, MRA.

86. On devotional religion after World War II, see Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 53–55.

87. Roy Gustafson, notes, 1967, box 1, folder 23, RWG.

88. See CT, October 16, 1956, 12.

89. James Feron, “Tourists Crowd Jerusalem’s Holy Places,” NYT, July 9, 1967, 33.

90. See MM, January 1977, 4. The same ad also ran in CL, March 1979, 15. The verse’s implicit proselytizing verb—“teaching”—was surely not the IGTO’s intended message.

91. Haya Fischer to Saul Colbi, memo, June 19, 1967, box 3557, folder 14, MRA.

92. Feron, “Tourists Crowd Jerusalem’s Holy Places,” 33.

93. Israel Welcomes the Pilgrim (Israel Pilgrimage Committee, n.d.), MOT. This pamphlet was probably published in 1966.

94. “Introducing Israel,” memo, December 1967, box 3557, folder 15, MOT.

95. “Recommendation for Co-op Fundamentalist Christian Program,” report, December 1970, box 9072, folder 13, MOT.

96. “Creative Concept,” December 11, 1970, box 9072, folder 13, MOT.

97. Meron Benvenisti and Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), xii.

98. Roy Gustafson, notes, 1967, box 1, folder 23, RWG.

99. “An Integrated Approach to Advertising,” presentation, January 9, 1970, box 9072, folder 13, MOT.

100. Haya Fischer, “The Israel Pilgrimage Committee,” memo, 1971, box 3557, folder 20, MRA.

101. “Minutes of Christian/Israel Contacts Meeting,” March 9, 1970, box 62, folder 5, MHT.

102. “An Integrated Approach to Advertising,” presentation, January 9, 1970, box 9072, folder 13, MOT.

103. See Eytan Gilboa, American Public Opinion Toward Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), 290–293.

104. West Bank settlement visits became part of many evangelical Holy Land tours in the early 1980s. See Glenn W. Bowman, “Christian Ideology and the Image of a Holy Land: The Place of Jerusalem Pilgrimage in the Various Christianities,” in Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, ed. Michael Sallnow and John Eade (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 98–121.

105. Roy Gustafson, “The 4-Fold Miracle of Israel,” manuscript, 1973, box 2, folder 5, RWG.

106. See Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970). See also Lindsey’s tour guidebook, Prophetical Walk Through the Holy Land (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1983).

107. Mark S. Sweetnam, “Hal Lindsey and the Great Dispensational Mutation,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 23, no. 2 (July 2011): 217–235; McAlister, Epic Encounters, 165–170.

108. Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More, 1–7; McAlister, Epic Encounters, 170–178.

109. Joseph Williams, “The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 84, no. 1 (March 2015): 177–178.

110. Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth, 45.

111. Michael Pragai to Chicago Consulate, December 2, 1970, box 4457, folder 20, MFA.

112. On Rohan, see Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 107–110.

113. On the growing diversity of tourist routes in Israel, see Tayarut, 1978 (Jerusalem: Bureau of Statistics, 1978), 17–21.

114. “Three Year Plan,” report, North America, 1970, 1, box 9072, folder 13, MOT.

115. Faydra Shapiro, “To the Apple of God’s Eye: Christian Zionist Travel to Israel,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 23, no. 3 (2008): 310–311.

116. “Declaration on Holy Places by Minister of Religious Affairs,” CNI, July 1967, 12.

117. Feron, “Tourists Crowd Jerusalem’s Holy Places,” 33.

118. Teddy Kollek, Pilgrims to the Holy Land: The Story of Pilgrimage Through the Ages (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), 204.

119. W. R. White, quoted in Christians Support Unified Israel (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1971), 13.

120. Arnold T. Olson, quoted in Christians Support Unified Israel, 14.

121. “Declaration on Jerusalem by Ad Hoc Group of Evangelical Christians,” June 17, 1971, box 4548, folder 13, MFA.

122. See Michael Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem Since 1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 169–178.

123. See Haya Fischer, “The Israel Pilgrimage Committee,” memo, 1971, box 3557, folder 20, MRA. Evangelicals were not the only Christian members of the Israel Pilgrimage Committee; Catholic, Orthodox, and European Protestant representatives were also added.

124. M. Bernard Resnikoff, “Minutes of Meeting,” December 10, 1974, box 3557, folder 2, MRA.

125. M. Inge L. Gibel, “Facts About Israel,” 1975, box 3557, folder 24, MRA.

126. Wayne Buck, interview with David Klatzker, March 16, 1977, ICJ. Buck is typical of what Aron Engberg terms a “long-term pilgrim.” The tour guides, workers, and volunteers that operate the evangelicalism tourism infrastructure in Israel have emerged as a significant pro-Israel group. See Aron Engberg, “Ambassadors for the Kingdom: Evangelical Volunteers in Israel as Long-term Pilgrims,” in Lepparki and Griffin, ed., Pilgrimage and Tourism to Holy Cities, 156–168.

127. Wayne Buck, interview with David Klatzker, March 16, 1977, ICJ.

128. Mike Huckabee, quoted in William Booth, “Mike Huckabee, Tour Guide in the Holy Land,” WP, February 23, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-huckabee-tour-guide-in-the-holy-land/2015/02/22/f0395335-1716-4f7f-9ce6-5e12c781d823_story.html?utm_term=.04a4b9ad2dc4. See also Huckabee’s travel website, www.thegreatesttrip.com.

Chapter 6

1. “Warhaftig Meets Christian Clergy on Missionaries,” JP, March 5, 1973, 3; Harry Trimborn, “Texas Blonde Strikes Israeli Religious Storm,” LAT, March 11, 1973, 1; “Christians, Go Home,” CT, March 16, 1973, 38; “Israelis Alarmed by Jews for Jesus,” NYT, March 31, 1973, 11.

2. Arnold Olson, “From Israel to the National Association of Evangelicals,” report, May 2, 1973, box 96, folder 2, MHT.

3. Arnold Olson, “New Seeds of Anti-Semitism,” EB, March 6, 1973, 14–15.

4. Arnold Olson, Give Me This Mountain: An Autobiography (Minneapolis, MN: Arnold T. Olson, 1987), 182.

5. See Zev Chafets, A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man’s Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008).

6. Graham’s role in the October 1973 war was made public in 2002 by Marc Tanenbaum’s widow, Georgette Bennett, in defense of Graham after the revelation of his antisemitic remarks caught on the White House tapes. See Georgette Bennett, letter to the editor, NYT, March 18, 2002, 22.

7. Arnold Olson to Sam Scheiner, July 8, 1971, box 4548, folder 13, MFA.

8. Yitzhak Lior to Hasbara Office, Washington, D.C., July 22, 1971, box 4548, folder 13, MFA.

9. “Hot and Humorous,” CT, July 6, 1973, 51.

10. “MKs Discuss Activity of Missionary Sects,” JP, February 20, 1973, 2.

11. On the ideology of Kahane, see Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 215–233.

12. Meir Kahane, quoted in “Christian Missionary Ban Eyed in Israel,” Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1973, B17.

13. Ibid.

14. “Warhaftig to Act Against Missionaries,” JP, February 18, 1973, 3.

15. Arthur Glasser to President Nixon, open letter, February 26, 1973, box 5295, folder 16, MFA.

16. “Religious Pressure in Israel,” CT, May 11, 1973, 32.

17. Olson, Give Me This Mountain, 178.

18. Gerald Strober to Israel Consulate of New York, November 28, 1972, box 5295, folder 15, MFA.

19. “Report on Rev. Arnold T. Olson,” March 8, 1973, box 5295, folder 16, MFA.

20. Olson, Give Me This Mountain, 179.

21. Marc Tanenbaum to Simcha Dinitz, March 9, 1973, box 5295, folder 16, MFA.

22. Olson, “From Israel to the National Association of Evangelicals,” report, May 2, 1973, box 96, folder 2, MHT.

23. “Bribery and Conversion: Israel’s Antimissionary Law,” TM, January 23, 1978, 75.

24. Olson to Michael Pragai, August 22, 1973, box 5295, folder 17, MFA.

25. Pragai to Marc Tanenbaum, April 20, 1973, box 5295, folder 16, MFA.

26. Olson to Pragai, July 9, 1973, box 5295, folder 17, MFA.

27. See Yaakov Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880–2000 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 265–266; and David Rausch, Communities in Conflict: Evangelicals and Jews (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), 111–121.

28. Carl Henry, “Looking Back at Key 73: A Weathervane of American Protestantism,” Reformed Journal, November 1974, 8. Henry was a principle organizer of the Key 73 campaign.

29. Deane A. Kemper, “Another Look Back at Key 73: A Response to Carl Henry,” Reformed Journal, January 1975, 20.

30. Kemper, “Another Look Back at Key 73,” 17.

31. On the origins of Jews for Jesus, see Ruth Rosen, Called to Controversy: The Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen and the Founding of Jews for Jesus (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012).

32. Moishe Rosen, quoted in Yaakov Ariel, “Counterculture and Mission: Jews for Jesus and the Vietnam Era Missionary Campaigns, 1970–1975,” Religion and American Culture 9, no. 2 (July 1999): 238.

33. National Executive Council of the American Jewish Committee, “Statement on Evangelism and the Jews,” December 2, 1972, box 18, folder 1, MHT.

34. Solomon Bernards, “Key 73: A Jewish View,” CC, January 3, 1973, 12–14.

35. Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 36–39.

36. Tanenbaum to NJCRAC Program Plan, 1973–1974, April 20, 1973, box 96, folder 2, MHT. Tanenbaum borrowed the term from historian Martin Marty.

37. Marc Tanenbaum, “Christian Evangelism and Jewish Response: An Exchange,” CB, February 9, 1973, 27.

38. See “The Jesus Revolution: A Memorandum to the Jewish Community,” December 13, 1972, box 96, folder 2, MHT.

39. ADL, “Key 73—Calling Our Continent to Christ, Special Background Report,” January 15, 1973, box 18, folder 1, MHT.

40. Tanenbaum, “Christian Evangelism and Jewish Response,” 26.

41. “Statement by Billy Graham,” February 28, 1973, box 24, folder 1, MHT. See also Billy Graham, “Billy Graham on Key 73,” CT, March 16, 1973, 625.

42. Gerald Strober to Tanenbaum, November 5, 1973, box 24, folder 1, MHT.

43. It is less probable that Graham was referencing Paul’s chastisement of Jews in Romans 10:2, which contains the same phrase.

44. “Statement by Billy Graham,” February 28, 1973, box 24, folder 1, MHT.

45. Tanenbaum to Graham, March 1, 1973, box 24, folder 1, MHT.

46. “Billy Graham’s Statement Could Equal That of Vatican II: Rabbi Tanenbaum,” JPO, April 13, 1973, 12.

47. Tanenbaum to NJCRAC, April 20, 1973, box 96, folder 2, MHT.

48. “Press Conference for Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum,” transcript, January 23, 1973, box 18, folder 1, MHT. On Graham’s denial of dual-covenant theology, see Rabbi C. J. Teichman, “Gratitude to Billy Graham,” letter to the editor, JPO, March 30, 1973. See also Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 193–194.

49. Tanenbaum to NJCRAC, April 20, 1973, box 96, folder 2, MHT.

50. “Statement by Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum in Response to Dr. Billy Graham,” March 1, 1973, box 22, folder 7, MHT.

51. Olson to Tanenbaum, March 14, 1973, box 96, folder 2, MHT.

52. Christians in Israel and the Yom Kippur War (Jerusalem: Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity, 1974), 50–51.

53. G. Douglas Young, letter to the editor, JP, October 17, 1973, in Christians in Israel and the Yom Kippur War, 21.

54. For American Christian responses to the war, see Matthew Koo, “A Camp Divided: Protestant Reactions to the Yom Kippur War,” Yale Historical Review 4, no. 1 (Fall 2014): 27–46; Kenyon N. Griffin, John C. Martin, and Oliver Walter, “Religious Roots and Rural Americans’ Support for Israel During the October War,” Journal of Palestine Studies 6, no. 1 (October 1976): 104–114; and Judith Banki, Christian Responses to the Yom Kippur War: Implications for Christian-Jewish Relations (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1974).

55. Christians in Israel and the Yom Kippur War, 9–11.

56. Marc Tanenbaum, “Billy Graham, the Jews, and Israel: A Book Proposal,” 1984, 1–3, box 22, folder 9, MHT. Tanenbaum’s proposal never made it to manuscript form.

57. Dallas Morning News, October 20, 1973, A13.

58. Arnold Olson, quoted in Banki, Christian Responses to the Yom Kippur War, 41–45.

59. John Walvoord, Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis: What the Bible Says About the Future of the Middle East and the End of Western Civilization (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974), 54.

60. Ibid., 98.

61. On the cultural legacy of dispensationalism, see Amy Johnson Frykholm, Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

62. See Matthew Connelly, “Future Shock: The End of the World as They Knew It,” in The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective, ed. Niall Ferguson et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010), 337–350.

63. Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), 92–100.

64. See David R. Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 324 n. 4.

65. Carl Rasmussen, “Dean’s Report,” October 1975, JUC.

66. Young, quoted in “The Christian Stake in the Return to Zion,” Bridges for Peace: Israel Teaching Letter (October 2011): 7.

67. Young to Herbert Taylor, December 1, 1969, box 24, folder 5, HJT.

68. “Program Prospectus: Evangelical Christians, 1975,” January 9, 1975, www.AJCarchives.org/AJCarchive/DigitalArchive.aspx.

69. Gerald Strober, American Jews: Community in Crisis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 285.

70. Julius Briller to G. Douglas Young, October 23, 1974, www.AJCarchives.org/AJCarchive/DigitalArchive.aspx.

71. “Program Prospectus: Evangelical Christians, 1975,” January 9, 1975, www.AJCarchives.org/AJCarchive/DigitalArchive.aspx.

72. Tanenbaum to Richard Haitch, December 12, 1975, www.AJCarchives.org/AJCarchive/DigitalArchive.aspx.

73. Marvin Wilson to Julius Briller, June 25, 1975, box 96, folder 5, MHT.

74. Briller to Leighton Ford, July 2, 1975, box 96, folder 5, MHT.

75. Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1989).

76. Leighton Ford, “A Letter to Richard,” in Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation on Scripture, Theology, and History, ed. Marc Tanenbaum, Marvin Wilson, and A. James Rudin (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978), 307.

77. Ibid.

78. Marvin R. Wilson, “An Evangelical Perspective on Judaism,” in Tanenbaum, Wilson, and Rudin, Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation, 22.

79. Ibid., 13.

80. Ford, “A Letter to Richard,” 302.

81. G. Douglas Young, “Concepts of Religious Pluralism,” in Tanenbaum, Wilson, and Rudin, Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation, 282.

82. “Introduction,” in Tanenbaum, Wilson, and Rudin, Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation, xii.

83. Stephen R. Haynes, “Christian Holocaust Theology: A Critical Reassessment,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62, no. 2 (July 1, 1994): 554.

84. See, for example, G. Douglas Young, “Some Troublesome Texts, Re: ‘the Jews,’ ” in Calvin B. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew: G. Douglas Young (Nyack, NY: Parson Publishing, 1979), 313–316.

85. The film was based on the book by the same name: Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).

86. Michael Wyschogrod, “Judaism and Evangelical Christianity,” in Tanenbaum, Wilson, and Rudin, Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation, 52.

87. Ford, “A Letter to Richard,” 306.

88. A. James Rudin, “Prospectus for the Future,” in Tanenbaum, Wilson, and Rudin, Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation, 311–313.

89. Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post–Cold War Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 161–176.

90. Eytan Gilboa, American Public Opinion Toward Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), 183.

91. “Transcripts of Addresses to the U.N. Assembly by Arafat and Israeli Delegate,” NYT, November 14, 1974, 22.

92. “100,000 Rally at the U.N. Against Palestinian Voice,” NYT, November 5, 1974, 1.

93. Thering taught for many years at Seton Hall University’s Institute for Judeao-Christian Studies. See John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 189.

94. Arnold Olson, “Terrorism Is Immoral,” EB, November 26, 1974, 4.

95. Olson, Give Me This Mountain, 185–187.

96. Olson, “Terrorism Is Immoral,” 6.

97. UN General Assembly, “Resolution 3379 [Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination],” in Resolutions of the General Assembly, 30th Session, November 10, 1975, 83–84.

98. Daniel Moynihan, UN General Assembly, 2400th Plenary Meeting, November 10, 1975 (A/30/PV.2400). Official record (New York, 1975), 797.

99. For Moynihan’s popularity and the United Nations’ unpopularity, see Joe Byrns Sills, “Fever Chart of the U.N.,” Worldview Magazine, October 1, 1976, 3.

100. Moynihan, UN General Assembly, November 10, 1975, 797.

101. Olson to M. Rywreck, November 11, 1975, box 6525, folder 7, PMO.

102. Judith Banki, The UN’s Anti-Zionism Resolution: Christian Responses (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1976), 40–41.

103. Olson to M. Rywreck, November 11, 1975, box 6525, folder 7, PMO.

104. Paul Hoffman, “Moynihan’s Style in the United Nations Is Now an Open Debate,” NYT, November 21, 1975, 3.

105. Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein, The New Anti-Semitism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 324.

106. See Norman Podhoretz, Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 329–336.

107. Yona Malachy, “New Dimensions for Christian-Jewish Confrontation in United Jerusalem,” in Discussing Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Israel Academic Committee on the Middle East, 1972), 34.

108. Abba Eban, “Our Place in the Human Scheme (speech on July 31, 1972),” CB, March 30, 1973, 7.

109. Young, quoted in Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 216.

110. Arnold Olson, “Israel After 25 Years,” UEA (Spring 1973): 15.

111. Franklin Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews: The Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1975), 97.

112. Lauren Turek, “To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelicals, Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1969–1994” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2015), 78–83.

113. See Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 205–222; Noam Kochavi, Nixon and Israel: Forging a Conservative Partnership (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 49–66.

Chapter 7

1. Itinerary for Menachem Begin, September 1981, box 4349, folder 11, PMO.

2. Martin Schram, “Falwell Vows Amity with Israel,” WP, September 12, 1981, A1, A15.

3. To see the differences fundamentalists themselves identified, see the fundamentalist historian George Dollar’s The Fight for Fundamentalism: American Fundamentalism, 1973–1983 (Sarasota, FL: G. W. Dollar, 1983). See the distinction between evangelicalism and “neofundamentalism” in George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1991), 76–77.

4. See Jerry Falwell, “Ministers and Marches (1965),” in Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History with Documents, ed. Matthew Sutton (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012), 71–73.

5. On the construction of the traditional-values movement, see Seth Dowland, Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), and Neil J. Young, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

6. See Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 245–246.

7. Daniel G. Hummel, “Revivalist Nationalism Since World War II: From ‘Wake Up, America!’ to ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” Religions 7, no. 11 (November 2016).

8. On the American Jewish establishment’s efforts to contain dissent after 1967, see Dov Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 55–90.

9. Neil Young has interpreted this change in terms of an “evangelical-fundamentalist truce” that was “brokered” by leaders in both communities. Seen from the perspective of the Christian Zionist movement, this truce had deleterious effects on the ability of evangelicals to lead the movement. By the end of the 1980s, nearly all Christian Zionist organizations were helmed by either Christian right fundamentalists or Pentecostals/charismatics. See Young, We Gather Together, 177–181.

10. For the Israeli and Christian right as parts of a global wave of market conservatism, see Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 175–226.

11. The “Israel lobby” gained attention in 2006 with the publication of John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt’s “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, March 23, 2006, and subsequent The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Largely centered on U.S policy in the Middle East during the previous five years, both works paid less attention to deeper historical dimensions. Following Dov Waxman’s lead, I avoid the term “Jewish lobby,” even when highlighting the role of Jewish leaders, because the incorporation of Christian Zionists is a key part of the lobby’s influence today. I prefer the term “pro-Israel lobby” and limit its definition to “an assortment of formal organizations that try to influence American policy toward Israel in a direction that they believe is in Israel’s interests.” A more capacious definition, as employed by Mearsheimer and Walt, merely begs the question of how Christian Zionists became crucial to its success. See Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe, 149–151, 263 n. 2, 263–264 n. 10.

12. Steven Miller, The Age of Evangelicalism: America’s Born-Again Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 48.

13. Marc Tanenbaum to Morris Abram, May 3, 1977, box 17, folder 5, MHT.

14. The AJC became concerned about “fundamentalists” (initially described as “right wing evangelicals”) in 1976 but interpreted this movement as existing on the fringe of American Protestantism. See Milton Ellerin, “Politics and Right Wing Evangelicals,” memo, October 5, 1976, box 17, folder 2, MHT.

15. Ira Silverman to AJC Staff, memo, July 7, 1980, box 40, folder 8, MHT.

16. Kenneth Briggs, “Evangelical Christian Movement Being Reshaped by Radical Wing,” NYT, July 16, 1978, 1, 14. The evangelical left gained increasing recognition with the publication of Richard Quebedeaux, The Young Evangelicals: Revolution in Orthodoxy (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). See David Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

17. See, for example, Billy Graham, The Jesus Generation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1971). On the role of Christian publishers straddling the line between postwar evangelicalism and the evangelical left, see Andrew T. Le Peau and Linda Doll, Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength: An Anecdotal History of InterVarsity Press, 1947–2007 (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 126–127.

18. See Swartz, Moral Minority, 170–184; Randall Balmer, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (New York: Basic Books, 2014), xvii, 43–44, 216 n.13; Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 248–253. The EFCA’s role in the evangelical left is especially remarkable given the conservatism of its clergy. In a 2017 survey, only 7 percent of EFCA pastors identified as Democratic (69 percent as Republican), a liberal representation above only Fundamentalist Baptists and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. See www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/12/upshot/the-politics-of-americas-religious-leaders.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0.

19. Briggs, “Evangelical Christian Movement Being Reshaped by Radical Wing,” 14.

20. The evangelical left rejected premillennialism, which its leaders diagnosed as the theology of Christian Zionism. See Wes Michaelson, “Evangelical Zionism,” Sojourners, March 1977, 3–5. The evangelical left became increasingly critical of U.S. policy toward the Middle East. See, for example, Don Luce, “Proud Persians Under a Dictator,” Sojourners, August 1978, 9–12; Danny Collum, “The Muddle with Middle East Policy,” Sojourners, February 1983, 4–5. For an overview of the evangelical left’s attitude toward Israel, see Brantley Gasaway, Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 253–257.

21. Walter Shapiro, “John Anderson: The Nice Guy Syndrome,” AM, February 1980, 4.

22. See Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 120–125, 147–172; John G. Turner, Bill Bright & Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 147–172.

23. “Religious Leaders Score Group’s Reported Effort to Elect Only Christians,” NYT, October 21, 1967, 44.

24. Arnold T. Olson, Give Me This Mountain (Minneapolis, MN: Arnold T. Olson, 1987), 191–194.

25. Olson to Tanenbaum, May 3, 1978, box 43, folder 8, MHT.

26. Isaac Rottenberg, The Turbulent Triangle: Christians-Jews-Israel? (Hawley, PA: Red Mountain Associates, 1989), 16–42.

27. Bruce Buursma, “Christian Group Leader Urges Support for Israel,” Chicago Tribune, October 23, 1982. On Rottenberg’s frustrations with evangelicals, see Rottenberg to Tanenbaum, June 28, 1982, box 19, folder 2, MHT; and Rottenberg, The Turbulent Triangle, 132–149.

28. “A Change of Heart: Billy Graham and the Nuclear Arms Race,” Sojourners, August 1979, 12–14.

29. Marguerite Michaels, “Billy Graham: America Is Not God’s Only Kingdom,” Parade, February 1, 1981, 6.

30. Tanenbaum to Billy Graham, August 9, 1977, box 21, folder 6, MHT; AJC Press Release, October 28, 1977, box 21, folder 6, MHT.

31. Billy Graham draft of speech, September 26, 1977, http://americanjewisharchives.org/media/podcasts/2008/millerAaron.pdf.

32. Aaron Miller, “The (False) Start of Jewish Evangelical Relations,” 2008, podcast recording, http://americanjewisharchives.org/catalog/Record/vtls000027625.

33. Williams, God’s Own Party, 167–171.

34. The importance of party polarization on American debates over Israel—a process advanced by the Christian right’s infusion into the GOP in the 1980s—is discussed in Amnon Cavari, “Religious Beliefs, Elite Polarization, and Public Opinion on Foreign Policy: The Partisan Gap in American Public Opinion Toward Israel,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 25, no. 1 (March 2013): 1–22.

35. On Begin’s outreach, see Colin Shindler, “Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists: A Symbiotic Relationship,” Israel Studies 5, no. 1 (2000): 153–182.

36. Thomas Kidd and Barry Hankins, Baptists in America: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 228–246; Williams, God’s Own Party, 156–158.

37. Olson, Give Me This Mountain, 229–232. The statement cost $45,000 to be published in the Washington Post, New York Times, Detroit Free Press, and Chicago Tribune.

38. “Evangelicals’ Concern for Israel,” NYT, November 1, 1977, 12.

39. Paul Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, 1948–2000 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 168.

40. “Memorial Rites Are Set for G. Douglas Young,” CH, May 24, 1980, 11.

41. On the growth and expansion of Falwell’s church, see Elmer Towns and Jerry Falwell, Church Aflame (Nashville, TN: Impact Books, 1971); Williams, God’s Own Party, 43–47; and FitzGerald, The Evangelicals, 265–290.

42. See Dirk Smillie, Falwell Inc.: Inside a Religious, Political, Educational, and Business Empire (New York: St. Martin’s, 2008), 63–86. For the rise of the electronic church and “televangelism,” see John Wigger, PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 25–60, and Jeffrey K. Hadden, Prime Time Preachers: The Rising Power of Televangelism (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1981).

43. Falwell justified leading a megachurch by claiming “a big church can be the conscience of the city.” However, it would not be until the mid-1970s that Falwell began to weigh in on national political issues. See Towns and Falwell, Church Aflame, 41.

44. See “Falwell Denies Post Story, Says Jews Need Christ for Salvation,” Baptist Press, March 2, 2006, www.bpnews.net/22767/falwell-denies-post-story-says-jews-need-christ-for-salvation.

45. “An Interview with the Lone Ranger of American Fundamentalism,” CT, September 4, 1981, 25.

46. “Falwell Confers with Middle East Leaders,” Faith Aflame, July–August 1978, 2, box 8462, folder 12, MFA. Faith Aflame was the newsletter of Thomas Road Baptist Church.

47. See “What Is the Moral Majority,” brochure, n.d., MOR, http://cdm17184.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p17184coll1/id/470/rec/12.

48. Augustus Cerillo, Salt and Light: Evangelical Political Thought in Modern America (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989), 160–165.

49. Schram, “Jerry Falwell Vows Amity with Israel,” A1.

50. “Israelis Look on U.S. Evangelical Christians as Potent Allies in Battle with Arab States,” WP, March 23, 1981, A11.

51. On the role of hasbara in the 1960s and after, see Ron Schleifer and Jessica Snapper, eds. Advocating Propaganda: Viewpoints from Israel: Social Media, Public Diplomacy, Foreign Affairs, Military Psychology and Religious Persuasion Perspectives (Chicago: Sussex Academic Press, 2014); Jonathan Cummings, Israel’s Public Diplomacy: The Problems of Hasbara, 1966–1975 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); and Kenny Kolander, “Walking Out of Step: U.S.-Israel Relations and the Peace Process, 1967–1975” (PhD diss., West Virginia University, 2016).

52. Shmuel Katz, The Hollow Peace (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post, 1981), 172.

53. The Christian right’s mastery of media was especially suited to this task. See Falwell’s pioneering use of computerized direct mail starting in 1976 in Smillie, Falwell Inc, 87–111, and William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway, 2005), 204–205.

54. “Falwell: Begin Predicts Expanded Israel,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February 6, 1983, A24 in box 19, folder 2, MHT. On the evolving Revisionist Zionist ideal borders of Israel, see Nadav Shelef, “From ‘Both Banks of the Jordan’ to the ‘Whole Land of Israel:’ Ideological Change in Revisionist Zionism,” Israel Studies 9, no. 1 (Spring, 2004): 125–148.

55. Menachem Begin to Jerry Falwell, December 19, 1980, box 8, folder 7, FAL Series 5.

56. Kenneth Briggs, “Falwell Rejects a Charge by Rabbi of Helping Anti-Semitism to Grow,” NYT, November 26, 1980, A17.

57. See “U.S. Statements on Israeli Air Strike,” June 9, 1981, box 4341, folder 3, PMO. For reactions by Christian leaders, see box 8470, folder 16, MFA.

58. Schram, “Jerry Falwell Vows Amity with Israel,” A15.

59. “Statement Released by Dr. Jerry Falwell, President, Moral Majority, Inc., on June 24, 1981,” June 24, 1981, box 4341, folder 4, PMO.

60. Steven Rosenthal, Irreconcilable Differences?: The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2001), 56–58.

61. See Gerald S. Strober, Jerry Falwell: Aflame for God (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1979), 165–166. In 1978, Falwell visited the settlement of Elon Moreh and produced a television special, explaining its significance as the traditional site where God promised Abraham, “To your descendants will I give this land” (Genesis 12:7).

62. The “Israel ’86” tour advertised “a service that, to our knowledge, no other tour has ever offered. . . . Models and representatives from Israel’s finest furriers, the largest gold jewelry factory in the Middle East, and Israel’s International Diamond Exchange will pass among the tables while you enjoy your evening meals.” See “Israel ’86,” brochure, 1986, FMR, http://cdm17184.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p17184coll9/id/1217/rec/1.

63. Edward Walsh, “Israel to Stand Pat on West Bank, Gaza; Arens Speaks to Moral Majority Delegation,” WP, November 21, 1983, A19.

64. Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 590–599. Estimates of deaths range from 700 to 800, according to the Israeli government, to more than 2,000, according to outside observers.

65. The Beirut Massacre: The Complete Kahan Commission Report (Princeton, NJ: Karz-Cohl Publishing, 1983).

66. Avi Shilon, Menachem Begin: A Life, Danielle Zilberberg and Yoram Sharett, trans. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 418–424.

67. See G. Douglas Young, “Israel: The Unbroken Link,” CT, October 6, 1978, 21–23; and Houston Consulate to Michael Pragai, June 2, 1978, box 8462, folder 13, MFA.

68. See Laurie Eisenberg, “History Revisited or Revamped? The Maronite Factor in Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon,” Israel Affairs 15, no. 4 (October 2009): 372–396; Begin, quoted in Shilon, Menachem Begin, 278. Evangelical concern for group-based religious rights in the Middle East is notable as a divergence from Americans’ usual emphasis on individual religious liberty. See Anna Su, Exporting Freedom: Religious Liberty and American Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 155–156.

69. On the importance of the Iranian Revolution to American understandings of Islam, see David Farber, Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter with Radical Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 137–180. For evangelical coverage of these events, see “Resurging Islamic Orthodoxy,” CT, May 4, 1979, 14–15; Don McCurry, “Why Are Muslims so Militant?” CT, March 21, 1980, 24–27.

70. For details on the trip and the media blitz by pastors upon returning to the United States, see David Lewis, Magog, 1982 Canceled (Harrison, AR: New Leaf Press, 1982), 89–111.

71. Linda Lloyd, “Falwell Urges Support for Israel, Believes It Had No Part in Massacres,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 11, 1983, 27; Elenore Lester, “Moral Majority Chief Voices Vigorous Support for Israel,” New York Jewish Weekly, March 16, 1984, 7.

72. Michael Winters, God’s Right Hand: How Jerry Falwell Made God a Republican and Baptized the American Right (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 100.

73. Owen Moritz, “Moral Majority—A Threat to Jews?” Daily News, December 4, 1980, 9.

74. David Bird, “Moral Majority Terms Attack by Yale President a ‘Diatribe,’ ” NYT, September 2, 1981, A16.

75. See the AJC’s report by Milton Ellerin and Alisa Keston, “The New Right: An Emerging Force on the Political Scene,” November 18, 1980, box 38, folder 15, MHT; National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, “Proposed Position Paper on Religion and Political Extremism,” January 14, 1980, box 38, folder 15, MHT.

76. A full transcript of Smith’s remarks is available in box 45, folder 14, MHT. The event was recorded, transcribed, and disseminated to the press by Milton Tobian, executive director of the North Texas Region of the AJC. See Milton Tobian to Tanenbaum, September 10, 1980, box 45, folder 13, MHT. The most enlightening analysis of this episode and its significance is April Charity Armstrong, “ ‘That’s What Makes Me a Jew and Him a Baptist’: Jews, Southern Baptists, and the American Public Square in the Era of Reagan” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2014).

77. Kenneth Briggs, “Rabbi Attacks Aims of Moral Majority,” NYT, November 23, 1980, 23.

78. “Baptist Leader Criticized for Statement About Jews,” NYT, September 18, 1980, A18; Marc Tanenbaum, “Oral History of the American Jewish Committee,” October 19, 1980, 56–57, box 91, folder 6, MHT.

79. B. Elmo Scoggin to Bailey Smith, September 17, 1980, box 45, folder 13, MHT. See also “Baptists Criticize Remark on Jew,” NYT, September 18, 1980, A13.

80. Steven Weisman, “Carter and Reagan Comments Tangle Campaigns in a Controversy Surrounding Evangelical Group,” NYT, October 10, 1980, D14.

81. James Davis, “Evangelist Narrows Gap Between Christians, Jews,” Fort-Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, September 7, 1984, in box 16, folder 12, MHT; Andrew Warne, “Making a Judeo-Christian America: The Christian Right, Antisemitism, and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in the 20th Century United States” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2012), 320–323; and Armstrong, “ ‘That’s What Makes Me a Jew and Him a Baptist,’ ” 120 n. 14. Armstrong notes that Abe Foxman, Eckstein, and Falwell all claimed to have come up with the idea of meeting with Smith.

82. Warne, “Making a Judeo-Christian America,” 322. See also, David Shipler, “Israel Is Cultivating Some Unlikely New Friends,” NYT, December 1, 1981, A2.

83. Schram, “Falwell Vows Amity with Israel,” A15.

84. Winters, God’s Right Hand, 144.

85. Marjorie Hyer, “Evangelist Reverses Positions on God’s Hearing Jews,” WP, October 11, 1980, A2. For both handwritten and typed drafts of Falwell’s statement, see “A Statement by Jerry Falwell,” n.d., box 20, folder 2, MHT.

86. Adam Clymer, “Moral Majority Starts Ad Campaign to Counter Critics,” NYT, March 26, 1981, B14.

87. Bird, “Moral Majority Terms Attack by Yale President a ‘Diatribe,’ ” A16.

88. See “What Is the Moral Majority,” brochure, n.d., MOR, http://cdm17184.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p17184coll1/id/470/rec/12.

89. Briggs, “Falwell Rejects Charge by Rabbi of Helping Anti-Semitism to Grow,” A17.

90. Merrill Simon, Jerry Falwell and the Jews (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David Publishers, 1984), 88.

91. For the collected volumes of these conferences, see Marvin Wilson, Marc Tanenbaum, and A. James Rudin, eds., Evangelicals and Jews in the Age of Pluralism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984); A. James Rudin and Marvin Wilson, eds., A Time to Speak: The Evangelical-Jewish Encounter (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1987).

92. “First Working Draft and Tentative Outline for 2nd National Conference of Evangelicals and Jews,” November 18, 1979, box 16, folder 21, MHT.

93. See Marvin Wilson, “Zionism as Theology: An Evangelical Approach,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 22, no. 1 (March 1979): 27–44; Harold O. J. Brown, “Christians and Jews—Bound Together,” CT, August 18, 1978, 16–20; David A. Rausch, Zionism within Early American Fundamentalism, 1878–1918: A Convergence of Two Traditions (New York: E. Mellen Press, 1983).

94. List of participants, box 19, folder 1, MHT.

95. Doug Krieger to Area Offices of AJC, n.d., box 17, folder 5, MHT.

96. TAV Evangelical Ministries new release, June 6, 1981, box 8470, folder 16, MFA.

97. Ibid., July 23, 1981, box 17, folder 5, MHT.

98. Ibid., May 3, 1981, box 17, folder 5, MHT. For a Jewish perspective on a meeting in Seattle, Washington, see Art Abramson to Tanenbaum, September 25, 1981, box 17, folder 5, MHT.

99. Doug Shearer to Tanenbaum, September 9, 1981, box 17, folder 5, MHT.

100. TAV Evangelical Ministries to Israeli Embassy D.C., July 27, 1981, box 8470, folder 16, MFA; Doug Krieger, “The Rest of the Story,” memo, 1981, box 8470, folder 16, MFA. See also “Report on Visit to the West Coast,” October 1982, box 8662, folder 10, MHT.

101. TAV Evangelical Ministries to AJC, n.d., box 17, folder 5, MHT.

102. TAV Evangelical Ministries to Committee of 10, n.d., box 17, folder 5, MHT.

103. Krieger to Mordecai Artzieli (Israel Consulate, San Francisco), n.d., box 17, folder 5, MHT; TAV Evangelical Ministries to Committee of 10, n.d., box 17, folder 5, MHT.

104. Shearer to Tanenbaum, September 9, 1981, box 17, folder 5, MHT.

105. Marjorie Hyer, “Evangelicals, Jews Hold Service Here,” WP, November 13, 1982, B3; “An Open Evangelical Position Paper Presented to President Ronald Reagan on Contemporary American Religious Trends and Evangelical Support for Israel,” July 1981, box 8470, folder 16, MFA.

106. Marjorie Hyer, “Fundamentalists Join Jews in Strong Support for Israel,” WP, November 13, 1982; Beth Spring, “Some Jews and Evangelicals Edge Close on Israel,” CT, December 17, 1982, 33–34; “Evangelical Christian Declaration of Support for Israel and the American Jewish Community,” June 12, 1982, box 8662, folder 9, MFA.

107. “Pro-Israel Christian Groups in the USA,” report, 1983, BHC.

108. “Evangelical Leaders Friendly to Israel,” report, 1983, BHC.

109. TAV Evangelical Ministries to AJC, n.d., box 17, folder 5, MHT.

110. “American Forum for Jewish-Christian Cooperation,” brochure, box 1, folder 2, DBA.

111. See “Pro-Israel Christian Groups in the USA,” report, 1983, BHC; Lewis, Magog, 1982 Canceled, 140–143.

112. David Lewis to Robert Schultz, July 31, 1978, box 8462, folder 14, MFA.

113. Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 151.

114. Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe, 36.

115. Rosenthal, Irreconcilable Differences?, 64–68, 93–115; Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe, 40–50.

116. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, 111–120.

117. These included the inscrutably named Washington PAC and National PAC, two of the largest bipartisan pro-Israel PACs. John Fialka and Brooks Jackson, “Pro-Israel Lobby: Jewish PACs Emerge as a Powerful Force in Election Races,” WSJ, February 26, 1985, 1; Edward Tivnan, The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 187–194.

118. These included the victories of incumbent Rudy Boschwitz (R-MN) and Paul Simon (D-IL).

119. Yoav Karni, “The Jewish Money Buys Everything,” Yedi’ot Aharonot, November 27, 1984, box 8638, folder 8, MFA.

120. See Kirk J. Beattie, Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2015); Richard Curtiss, Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Took Control of U.S. Middle East Policy (Washington, DC: American Educational Trust, 1990); and Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1985).

121. Ofira Seliktar, Divided We Stand: American Jews, Israel, and the Peace Process (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 83–84.

122. CIPAC did enjoy the support of Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 through 2001. See Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 292–293 n. 37, and Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, 182–183. Merkley dates the founding of CIPAC to 1991. CIPAC’s website states 1989 (http://cipaconline.org/about-us/).

123. See Gary Dorrien, “Evangelicals and Ironies: Theology, Politics, and Israel,” in Uneasy Allies?: Evangelical and Jewish Relations, ed. Alan Mittleman, Byron Johnson, and Nancy Isserman (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 121–122.

124. Lenny Davis, quoted in Tivnan, The Lobby, 182–183.

125. Nathan Perlmutter and Ruth Ann Perlmutter, The Real Antisemitism in America (New York: Arbor House, 1982), 57.

126. Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 208–209.

127. Nathan Abrams, Norman Podhoretz and Commentary Magazine: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons (New York: Continuum, 2009), 165–198; John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1994 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 33–62.

128. Jerry Falwell, transcript, April 26, 1985, box 20, folder 2, MHT.

129. Ze’ev Chafets, The Bridge Builder: The Life and Continuing Legacy of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (New York: Sentinel, 2015), 21–46.

130. A. James Rudin, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us (New York: Basic Books, 2009), back cover.

131. Yechiel Eckstein, “Evangelical-ADL Meeting in New York on September 3, 1981,” report, September 9, 1981, box 8470, folder 16, MFA; Eckstein to Robert Dugan, September 25, 1981, box 51, folder 8, NAE.

132. “300 Evangelicals Applaud Israel at Prayer Breakfast,” Jewish Week (D.C.), February 18, 1982, 4.

133. Eckstein to Ted Freedman, April 21, 1982, box 8662, folder 9, MFA.

134. Yechiel Eckstein, Understanding Evangelicals: A Guide for the Jewish Community (New York: National Jewish Resource Center, 1984); Yechiel Eckstein, What You Should Know About Jews and Judaism (Waco, TX: Word, Inc., 1984).

135. Chafets, The Bridge Builder, 69–80.

136. Ibid., 71–72.

137. “Center for Judeo-Christian Values in America,” draft, 1994, box 51, folder 8, NAE.

138. Eckstein, quoted from the IFCJ’s current website, www.ifcj.org/who-we-help/faqs.html.

139. Chafets, The Bridge Builder, 81–101.

140. Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution, 210; Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 234–235; Weber, On the Road to Armageddon, 227–229.

141. “2015 Annual Report,” http://digital.ifcj.org/flipping-books/annual-reports/2015/files/assets/basic-html/page-18.html. By 2015, most of the money came from evangelicals.

Chapter 8

1. John Hagee, In Defense of Israel, rev. ed. (Lake Mary, FL: Front Line, 2007), 1–2.

2. Ibid., 15.

3. John Hagee, speech at AIPAC D.C. Policy Summit, March 11, 2007, https://vimeo.com/24438713.

4. On Pentecostalism, see Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001); and Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).

5. Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 50. “Be glad, people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains because he is faithful. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before” (Joel 2:23). The King James Version, the most frequently used at the beginning of the twentieth century, translates “former and latter” instead of “autumn and spring.”

6. Mark Martin, “ ‘Biblical Timing of Absolute Precision’: John Hagee Praises Trump’s Jerusalem Decision,” CBN News, December 10, 2017, www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2017/december/biblical-timing-of-absolute-precision-john-hagee-praises-trumps-jerusalem-decision.

7. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1). This is frequently cited by Christian Zionists today as their core mission.

8. This Spirit-centered dominance is especially evident in recent ethnographic scholarship on Christian Zionism. See Sean Durbin, “ ‘For Such a Time as This’: Reading (and Becoming) Esther with Christians United for Israel,” Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 2, no. 1 (2012): 65–90; Faydra L. Shapiro, “ ‘Thank You Israel, for Supporting America’: The Transnational Flow of Christian Zionist Resources,” Identities, November 8, 2012, 1–16.; Hillary Kaell, “Age of Innocence: The Symbolic Child and Political Conflict on American Holy Land Pilgrimage,” Religion and Society 5, no. 1 (2014): 157–172.

9. Israël Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, 2nd ed. (London: Pluto, 2004), esp. 55–95.

10. Anti-Zionist Haredim remain active in Israel. See Motti Inbari, Jewish Radical Ultra-Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity, Zionism and Women’s Equality (New York Cambridge University Press, 2016).

11. On the origins of the settlement movement, see Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 (New York: Nation Books, 2007), and Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006). For a related argument on the importance of liberal American Jews to the settlement movement, see Sara Yael Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).

12. See Michael Feige, Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2009).

13. On the ideology of revisionist Zionism and the land, see Nadav Shelef, “From ‘Both Banks of the Jordan’ to the ‘Whole Land of Israel’: Ideological Change in Revisionist Zionism,” Israel Studies 9, no. 1 (2004): 125–148.

14. Ami Pedahzur, The Triumph of Israel’s Radical Right (London: Oxford University Press, 2012), 213–215.

15. See Ehud Sprinzak, “Extremism and Violence in Israel: The Crisis of Messianic Politics,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 555 (1998): 114–126.

16. Ofira Seliktar, Divided We Stand: American Jews, Israel, and the Peace Process (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 85.

17. Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 223–225; Paul Charles Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, 1948–2000 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 210–211.

18. Doug Shearer to Robert Dugan, December 13, 1982, box 51, folder 8, NAE.

19. “Man, 41, Admits Fraud in Phone Oil Lease Sales,” LAT, December 7, 1986, B3; “The Region,” LAT, April 21, 1987, C2.

20. Jan Lundqvist, The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future (Westport, CT: London: Praeger, 2008), 212. See also Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 158–169.

21. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon, 262–266.

22. David Allen Lewis, Magog, 1982 Canceled (Harrison, AR: New Leaf Press, 1982), 6.

23. Jimmy Swaggart, The Battle of Armageddon (Baton Rouge, LA: Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, 1982), 22.

24. Michael Dumper, The Politics of Sacred Space: The Old City of Jerusalem in the Middle East Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 56–57.

25. John Wigger, PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 249–256; Lawrence Wright, Sinners and Saints (New York: Knopf, 1993), 47–88.

26. Pat Robertson with Jamie Buckingham, The Autobiography of Pat Robertson: Shout It from the Housetops! (South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge Publishers, 1995), 291, 327.

27. By 1990, a survey showed that 77 percent of Messianic Jews identified as charismatic. By 2008, the number had increased to 85 percent. Joseph Williams, “The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 84, no. 01 (March 2015): 185–186, nn. 69–70.

28. See Mike Evans, Israel: America’s Key to Survival (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1981), and Mike Evans, Jerusalem D.C. (Phoenix, AZ: Bedford Books, 1984).

29. Daniel Eisenbud, “The Bridge Builder,” JP, June 15, 2012, 30. Evans claims to have been instrumental in shaping Begin’s views on Christian Zionism, lobbying for Netanyahu’s first government position in Israel’s mission to the United Nations and prophesying that Netanyahu would one day become prime minister. I have come across no outside or archival corroboration of these claims, though photographs do exist of Netanyahu and Evans together in the 1980s.

30. See, for example, Jewish Israel, www.jewishisrael.org.

31. On spiritual warfare, see Birgit Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Globalization,” in Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, ed. Allan Anderson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 113–130; Paul Alexander, Signs & Wonders: Why Pentecostalism Is the World’s Fastest-Growing Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009).

32. “The Willowbank Declaration on the Christian Gospel and the Jewish People,” April 29, 1989, box 51, folder 8, NAE. “Proselytizing Statement Angers Jews, Evangelicals Deny Anti-Semitism,” WP, June 3, 1989, D19.

33. “Response by Yechiel Eckstein to Willowbank Statement on Jewish Evangelism,” n.d., box 51, folder 8, NAE.

34. Pat Robertson with Jamie Buckingham, The Autobiography of Pat Robertson, 85–87.

35. Pat Robertson, “A Christian Action Plan for the 1980s,” in Tactics of Christian Resistance, ed. Gary North (Tyler, TX: Geneva Divinity School Press, 1983), 304–312. Article originally published in 1979.

36. David John Marley, Pat Robertson: An American Life (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 273; Robertson, The Autobiography of Pat Robertson, 328.

37. Ze’ev Chafets, The Bridge Builder: The Life and Continuing Legacy of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (New York: Sentinel, 2015), 72–73. Robertson, Falwell, and Eckstein also acted as consulting editors for the November 1984 issue of Christian Life Magazine on the theme of “The Land.” See advertisement in box 16, folder 12, MHT.

38. Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 365–375.

39. Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 228.

40. Michael Lind, “Rev. Robertson’s Grand International Conspiracy Theory,” New York Review of Books, February 2, 1995, www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/02/02/rev-robertsons-grand-international-conspiracy-theo/. On The New World Order, see FitzGerald, The Evangelicals, 398–402.

41. David Cantor, The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1994). See also Lori Forman, Political Activity on the Religious Right (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1994).

42. “Ad-hoc Meeting on Evangelical/Jewish Concerns,” program, February 1991, box 51, folder 8, NAE; “The Role of Religion in Politics: An NAE-ADL Consultation,” program, May 1992, box 51, folder 8, NAE; and Curran Tiffany to Robert Dugan, December 14, 1992, box 51, folder 8, NAE.

43. Cantor, The Religious Right, 21.

44. “Should Jews Fear the ‘Christian Right’?” NYT, February 8, 1994, A21.

45. Midge Decter, “The ADL and the Religious Right,” CM, September 1994, 45; Norman Podhoretz, “In the Matter of Pat Robertson,” CM, August 1995, 27–32.

46. Robert Dugan to Leon Klenicki, April 21, 1994, box 51, folder 8, NAE.

47. Matthew Dorf, “Truce, But Not Quite a Treaty Declared by Jewish, Christian Groups,” JTA, December 1, 1994, 2.

48. “Jews, Conservative Christians Defuse War of Words,” LAT, December 3, 1994.

49. “Evangelical-Jewish Leadership Conference,” memo, box 51, folder 8, NAE; Abraham Foxman, “Evangelical Support for Israel Is a Good Thing,” JTA, July 16, 2002.

50. Ralph Reed, quoted in Alec Foege, The Empire God Built: Inside Pat Robertson’s Media Machine (New York: Wiley, 1996), 122.

51. Williams, God’s Own Party, 229; Ralph Reed, Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (New York: Free Press, 1996), 209, 297 n. 12. Reed disputed the “Christian America” and anti-Jewish quotations attributed to him and Robertson.

52. Southern Baptist Convention, “Resolution on Jewish Evangelism,” 1996, http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/655/resolution-on-jewish-evangelism.

53. Gustav Niebuhr, “Baptists Move on Two Fronts in New Effort to Convert Jews,” NYT, June 14, 1996, A12; “Conversion Effort Threatens Ties with Evangelicals,” Forward, June 28, 1996, 1.

54. James D. Besser, “Even with No Jews Orlando Jubilee Is Messianic Win,” Baltimore Jewish Times, May 1, 1998, 50.

55. “Antichrist Is Alive, and a Male Jew, Falwell Contends,” NYT, January 16, 1999, A8; “Falwell Apologizes for Antichrist Comment,” NYT, February 13, 1999, A10.

56. Colin Shindler, “Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists: A Symbiotic Relationship,” Israel Studies 5, no. 1 (2000): 170.

57. On the Oslo process and the Israeli right, see Colin Shindler, “Likud and the Search for Eretz Israel: From the Bible to the Twenty-First Century,” Israel Affairs 8, no. 1/2 (Autumn 2001–Winter 2002): 107–110. On the response by settlers, many of whom were American Jewish immigrants, see Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop, 130–140.

58. In this argument, Robertson was supported by some Orthodox Jewish and right-wing Zionists. See Pat Robertson, “The Land of Israel,” http://patrobertson.com/askpat/bringiton021302.asp, cited in Bowler, Blessed, 222. On Orthodox rabbinic reactions to Rabin’s assassination and Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of Palestinian civilians, see Shahak and Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism and Israel, 100–110, 137–139; Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop, 194–201.

59. John Hagee, The Beginning of the End: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 9. Hagee claimed to have developed this view from discussions with Israeli reporters and Likud party members. Similar charges of the peace process circumventing Israeli democratic and political norms were leveled at Menachem Begin by his political opponents in 1977 and 1978. See Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, Israel and the Peace Process, 1977–1982: In Search of Legitimacy for Peace (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 73–74.

60. Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 267–274; Ami Pedahzur, The Triumph of Israel’s Radical Right (London: Oxford University Press, 2012), 116–149; Neill Lochery, “The Netanyahu Era: From Crisis to Crisis, 1996–99,” Israel Affairs 6, no. 3/4 (Spring/Summer 2000): 221–237.

61. Binyamin Netanyahu, A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), 17.

62. Ryan Jones, “Netanyahu: Zionism Succeeded Because of Christian Support,” Israel Today, August 30, 2012, www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/23369/Default.aspx.

63. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 135–136.

64. “Christians Call for a Shared Jerusalem,” NYT, December 21, 1996, 5; “Christians Call for a United Jerusalem,” NYT, April 18, 1997, A13.

65. www.cfoic.com/background-information/.

66. Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 201–214.

67. On the decline of the Christian Coalition, see FitzGerald, The Evangelicals, 428–432.

68. Hagee, In Defense of Israel, 11.

69. Matthew Bowman, Christian: The Politics of a Word in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 203–204.

70. On Hagee’s fusion of prosperity teachings and dispensationalism, see Bowler, Blessed, 221–222; and Amy Frykholm, “Calculated Blessings,” CC 125, no. 20 (October 7, 2008): 35–37.

71. Hagee, In Defense of Israel, 15. He also purchased John Toland’s two-volume biography of Hitler.

72. Jim Askee, “A ‘Night to Honor Israel’ Comes to Houston,” Houston Post, January 16, 1982, 10AA, box 19, folder 2, MHT.

73. “Israel: You Are Not Alone!,” brochure, July 10, 1982, box 19, folder 2, MHT.

74. “Christians, Jews Give $10,000 to Hospital,” San Antonio Express, September 11, 1981, 5-A; Saul Silverman to AJC, August 9, 1982, box 19, folder 2, MHT.

75. Silverman to AJC, August 9, 1982, box 19, folder 2, MHT; Askee, “A ‘Night to Honor Israel’ Comes to Houston.”

76. Scheinberg wrote the foreword to Hagee’s In Defense of Israel. See also John Hagee, The Battle for Jerusalem (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 85.

77. “ ‘A Night to Honor Israel’ Planned by Christian Pastor,” San Antonio Express, September 8, 1981, 1B, box 19, folder 2, MHT.

78. See, for example, Hagee’s 1994 sermon, “One Nation Under God” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo8Cou_7DlQ). The annual Dominion Camp Meeting was founded by Hagee’s Pentecostal colleague Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio.

79. Lieberman endorsed a number of Christian Zionist projects while he was a U.S. senator from Connecticut and eventually spoke at the 2012 CUFI Washington, D.C., Policy Summit. He also endorsed the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. See David Lightman and Mark Pazniokas, “Lieberman: Stance on Iraq War Making It Difficult for Independent to Be a ‘Bridge Builder,’ ” Hartford Currant, August 9, 2007, www.courant.com/politics/hc-joe-lieberman-iraq-war-08-2007-story.html; and www.ifcj.org/who-we-are/endorsements/joe-lieberman.html.

80. On the “calculus of blessing,” see Frykholm, “Calculated Blessings,” 35–37. Frykholm cites historian Kate Bowler, who has elaborated on the “calculus” metaphor: “[Believers in the prosperity gospel] don’t typically experience prosperity or the message as a random occurrence, a kind of mysterious envelope of cash in the mailbox or an unexplained healing, though many of them do report healings. But rather they learn a spiritual calculus that they use to weigh all of their actions as religious labor from singing in church to smiling at their boss at work.” See Kate Bowler, interview with Michael Cromartie, The Faith Angle Forum, May 2017, 10, https://faithangle.org/wp-content/uploads/Blessed-A-History-of-the-American-Prosperity-Gospel-Dr.-Kate-Bowler-1.pdf.

81. John Hagee, ed., Prophecy Study Bible, New King James Version: Understanding God’s Message in the Last Days (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2015), 22.

82. John Hagee, The Power of Prophetic Blessing (Brentwood, TN: Worth Publishing, 2012), 83.

83. John Hagee, “Israel: God’s Two-Minute Warning,” sermon, May 1, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK4N8cydp_o.

84. Hagee, In Defense of Israel, 115.

85. Hagee, Prophecy Study Bible, 692–693.

86. Hagee, In Defense of Israel, 46.

87. This is the self-reported number on CUFI’s website, www.cufi.org. On CUFI reaching two million members, see Jennifer Rubin, “Christian United for Israel reaches 2 million members,” WP, January 7, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/01/07/christians-united-for-israel-hits-2-million/.

88. For the current executive board, see www.cufi.org/impact/leadership/. A notable absence from the executive board was Pat Robertson. One possible reason for his exclusion was his claim that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s ultimately fatal stroke on January 4, 2006, was a sign of “God’s wrath” for unilaterally evacuating the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government publicly rebuked Robertson and cut ties on a planned Christian center to be built in the Galilee region. See “Israel: Woe unto Pat Robertson for Criticizing Sharon,” CNN.com January 12, 2006, www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/12/israel.robertson/.

89. Faydra L. Shapiro, Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border (New York: Cascade Books, 2015), 126–133; Hagee, In Defense of Israel, 145.

90. Erick Stakelbeck, The Terrorist Next Door: How the Government Is Deceiving You About the Islamist Threat (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2011), 14–15.

91. See also David Brog, In Defense of Faith: The Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity (New York: Encounter Books, 2010).

92. Hagee, In Defense of Israel, 72.

93. Jacob Kamaras, “CUFI on the Hill: Christian Zionist Group Ramps up DC Office Amid Iran Deal,” JNS, July 16, 2015, www.jns.org/latest-articles/2015/7/16/cufi-on-the-hill-christian-zionist-group-ramps-up-dc-office-amid-iran-deal.

94. Walker Robbins, “The Withdrawal from the Iran Deal Signals a New Power Player in Washington: Christian Zionists,” WP, May 8, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/05/08/the-withdrawal-from-the-iran-deal-signals-a-new-power-player-in-washington-christian-zionists/.

95. See Shapiro, Christian Zionism, 101–102; and Max Blumenthal, “Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism,” The Nation, August 14, 2006, www.thenation.com/article/birth-pangs-new-christian-zionism/.

96. Shapiro, Christian Zionism, 133–137.

97. Troy Anderson, “Where Your Israel Donation Really Goes,” Charisma News, October 22, 2013, www.charismanews.com/opinion/standing-with-israel/47005-where-your-israel-donation-really-goes.

98. Abra Foreman, “Hagee’s Fundraising Is Down—Here’s Why You Don’t Need to Worry,” Breaking Israel News, November 6, 2016, www.breakingisraelnews.com/78098/christian-fundraising-israel-decline/#/.

99. Eli Lake, “Pro-Israel Evangelicals Escape AIPAC’s Shadow,” Bloomberg, January 10, 2017, www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-10/pro-israel-evangelicals-escape-aipac-s-shadow.

100. Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop, 98–142.

101. http://cjcuc.org.

102. “Orthodox Rabbinic Statement on Christianity,” December 3, 2015, http://cjcuc.org/2015/12/03/orthodox-rabbinic-statement-on-christianity/.

103. Shlomo Riskin, “The Significance of Israel’s Return to Zion,” in Returning to Zion: Christian and Jewish Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Jenson and Eugene Korn (Kindle: Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation, 2015), kindle location 2036–39, n. 196.

104. www.bradyoung.org/index.php/about-us/mission.

105. Adam Berkowitz, “Building Bridges: Orthodox Jew Graduates Evangelical University,” Breaking News Israel, May 10, 2018, www.breakingisraelnews.com/107449/building-bridges-orthodox-jew-graduates-evangelical-university/.

106. Benjamin Netanyahu, quoted in www.cufi.org/impact/about-us/mission-and-vision/.

107. John Hagee, speech at AIPAC D.C. Policy Summit, March 11, 2007, https://vimeo.com/24438713.

108. John Hagee, “Israel: God’s Two-Minute Warning,” sermon, May 1, 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK4N8cydp_o.

Chapter 9

1. Lela Gilbert, “Still Fighting Apartheid,” Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, May 8, 2007, 13.

2. Paul Charles Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, 1948–2000 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 170–176.

3. “Spirit-centered Christians” is an umbrella term that includes Pentecostals, charismatics, neo-charismatics, and independent churches that teach and practice the gifts of the spirit. Though differing in many other aspects, Spirit-centered Christians share an affinity for working together on issues such as Christian Zionism, share a common engagement with the gifts of the Spirit, and have historical genealogical connections that justify their grouping under one term. See Douglas Jacobsen, The World’s Christians: Who They Are, Where They Are, and How They Got There (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 50–61.

4. Brad Christerson and Richard Flory, The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders Are Changing the Religious Landscape (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

5. See https://int.icej.org/.

6. On the alienation between fundamentalists and Pentecostals, see Gerald Wayne King, “Disfellowshiped: Pentecostal Responses to Fundamentalism in the United States, 1906–1943” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2009); and Russell Spittler, “Are Pentecostals and Charismatics Fundamentalists? A Review of American Uses of These Categories,” in Charismatic Christianity as Global Culture, ed. Karla Poewe (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 103–116. Matthew Sutton describes fundamentalism as “part of a single broad river that consisted of distinct but related subcurrents” that included Pentecostals and dispensationalists. See Matthew Sutton, “ ‘Between the Refrigerator and the Wildfire’: Aimee Semple McPherson, Pentecostalism, and the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” Church History 72, no. 1 (March 2003): 163.

7. See Allan Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity, Oxford Studies in World Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).

8. For the ways North American evangelicals came to regard the expansive growth of global Christianity, see Melani McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

9. Calvin Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew: G. Douglas Young (Nyack, NY: Parson Publishing, 1979), 249–251.

10. “International Congress for the Peace of Jerusalem,” press release, box 8462, folder 12, MFA.

11. Larry Eskridge, God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 70–75.

12. “Talk of the End,” CT, October 26, 1973, 59. Smith was leading a tour group in Israel at the outbreak of the October 1973 war and remained in-country during the war in anticipation of Jesus’ return.

13. David Frank to Prime Minister’s Office, July 18, 1976, box 8481, folder 9, MFA.

14. On the influence of polls in American religion during this period, see Robert Wuthnow, Inventing American Religion: Polls, Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation’s Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 95–128.

15. David Frank to Prime Minister’s Office, July 18, 1976, box 8481, folder 9, MFA.

16. Hanson, A Gentile . . . with the Heart of a Jew, 348.

17. Arnold T. Olson, Give Me This Mountain (Minneapolis, MN: Arnold T. Olson, 1987), 233.

18. On the Pentecostal and charismatic movements in Europe, see William Kay and Ann Dyer, eds., European Pentecostalism (Boston: Brill, 2011).

19. See Elvira King, The Pro-Israel Lobby in Europe: The Politics of Religion and Christian Zionism in the European Union (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 27–34.

20. Bridges for Peace distributed Dispatch from Jerusalem, a newsletter with more than 20,000 in circulation by 1980. See A Dispatch from Jerusalem (March–April 1978), box 8462, folder 13, MFA, which enumerates the goals for Bridges for Peace

21. Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, 168–170.

22. www.bridgesforpeace.com/.

23. “Evangelical Leaders Friendly to Israel,” report, 1983, BHC; Willem Hornstra, “Christian Zionism Among Evangelicals in the Federal Republic of Germany” (PhD diss., University of Wales, 2007), 49–51; Kristina Helgesson Kjellin, “Boundaries of South African Pentecostalism: The Case of the Assemblies of God,” in Global Pentecostalism: Encounters with Other Religious Traditions, ed. David Westerlund (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 37–40.

24. Kenneth R. Mullican Jr. and Loren C. Turnage, One Foot in Heaven: The Story of Bob Lindsey of Jerusalem (Frederick, MD: PublishAmerica, 2005), 183–185. Lindsey’s Arab Baptist colleague heard the demon speak in Arabic.

25. Mullican and Turnage, One Foot in Heaven, 226–228. On Lindsey’s response to charismatic revival, see 214.

26. Lindsey’s turn to charismatic practice was shared by other Baptists in Israel, including New Testament scholar David Bivin, who later became a founding member of Christian Friends of Israel in 1985. See Yaakov Ariel, “A Christian Fundamentalist Vision of the Middle East: Jan Willem van der Hoeven and the International Christian Embassy,” in Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East, ed. R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 376; Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, 200; and www.cfi.org.uk/how-we-began.html.

27. “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9).

28. See Ariel, “A Christian Fundamentalist Vision of the Middle East, 369–372; Yaakov Ariel, An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 184–192.

29. “Basic Law: Jerusalem Capital of Israel,” July 30, 1980, www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic10_eng.htm.

30. “International Christian Embassy Jerusalem,” brochure, n.d., box 19, folder 2, MHT.

31. On these distinctions, see King, The Pro-Israel Lobby in Europe, 5–6.

32. Malcolm Hedding, Understanding Israel (Oklahoma City: Zion’s Gate International, 1990), 69–75.

33. Untitled manuscript, 1983, box 8662, folder 10, MFA. On prayer as a form of spiritual warfare in service of Israel, see also Hedding, Understanding Israel, 77–137.

34. Jim Jackson, “International Christian Embassy Jerusalem Prayer Letter,” September 1982, box 8662, folder 9, MFA.

35. Untitled manuscript, 1983, box 8662, folder 10, MFA. The fifteen-page manuscript is attached to a report from the Israeli consulate general in Miami to Jerusalem on March 18, 1983.

36. Untitled manuscript, 1983, box 8662, folder 10, MFA.

37. See Metthews A. Ojo, “Pentecostal Movements, Islam and the Contest for Public Space in Northern Nigeria,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 18, no. 2 (2007): 175–188; David Westerlund, “Islam in Pentecostal Eyes: A Swedish Example,” in Westerlund, Global Pentecostalism, 193–205.

38. Joan McWhirter, “The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem,” CNI, June 1985 (special issue), 29.

39. This same distribution holds into the twenty-first century. See Matthew Westbrook, “The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem and Renewalist Zionism: Emerging Jewish-Christian Ethnonationalism” (PhD diss., Drew University, 2014), 192.

40. Arlynn Nellhaus, “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” JP, October 9, 1992, 6.

41. “Christians Voice Support,” CT, October 28, 1991, 42; David Aikman, “Christians in Zion,” American Spectator 28, no. 12 (1995): 64.

42. “Some 500 Christians to Participate in Christian Zionist Congress in Basel,” JTA, August 22, 1985, 2. For the text of the congress declaration, see “Declaration of the International Christian Zionist Leadership Congress,” August 29, 1985, box 8640, folder 10, MFA.

43. Marvin R. Wilson and Isaac C. Rottenberg, “2 Reports on the 1st International Christian Zionist Congress,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 22, no. 4 (Fall 1985): 883.

44. The ICEJ protested at Rachel’s Tomb in northern Bethlehem in 1995, for example. See Colin Shindler, “Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists: A Symbiotic Relationship,” Israel Studies 5, no. 1 (2000): 175.

45. Shindler, “Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists,” 176; Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 150.

46. Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 215. The ICEJ continued to invite West Bank settlers and sympathetic Orthodox rabbis to speak at their events, however. See David Aikman, “Brethren in the Holy Land,” Weekly Standard, November 6, 1995, www.weeklystandard.com/article/8122.

47. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 2; Jacobsen, The World’s Christians, 373.

48. Jacobsen, The World’s Christians, 370–374.

49. Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2007), www.pewforum.org/2006/10/05/overview-Pentecostalism-in-asia/.

50. Kenneth Meshoe interview with David Parsons, “Word from Jerusalem: The Calling of Israel—The Priestly Calling,” ICEJ, September 22, 2014, https://vimeo.com/106825010. See also Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 2000), 78.

51. Diane Weber Bederman, “South African Rev. Meshoe Debunks Israeli Apartheid,” Times of Israel, December 1, 2013, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-myth-of-apartheid/.

52. David Pawson, Defending Christian Zionism (Kennington, Ashford: Anchor Recordings, 2014), 115.

53. See the anti-Christian Zionist research of former Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer, who characterizes the ICEJ as “political dispensationalism” in Christian Zionism: Road-Map to Armageddon? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 127–130.

54. Westbrook, “The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem and Renewalist Zionism,” 86–90. Westbrook argues that dispensationalism and Christian Zionism are separate phenomena.

55. See Jürgen Bühler, “The Spirit of Grace and Supplication,” Word from Jerusalem, October/November 2012, 23. The published speech is paraphrased from his delivered remarks, which I heard on October 1, 2012. See also Jürgen Bühler, “Restored for Destruction?,” Word from Jerusalem, March/April 2018, 4–7.

56. For a thorough discussion, see Westbrook, “The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem and Renewalist Zionism,” 87–88.

57. For ICEJ-Brazil’s home page, see https://br.icej.org/. See also Terra Nova’s related project, City Israel (www.cityisrael.net).

58. Terra Nova’s biographical information is taken from his personal website, www.reneterranova.com.br/.

59. Christa Case Bryant, “Israel Wields Bible’s Soft Power as Far Afield as Brazil,” Christian Science Monitor, February 27, 2013, www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2013/0227/Israel-wields-Bible-s-soft-power-as-far-afield-as-Brazil.

60. See the “Israel City 2016” brochure at www.cityisrael.net/copia-fotos-city.

61. See Samuel Feldberg, “Israel and Brazil: An Emerging Power and Its Quest for Influence in the Middle East,” in Israel and the World Powers: Diplomatic Alliances and International Relations Beyond the Middle East, ed. Colin Shindler (London: I. B. Taurus, 2014), 187–200. As a predominantly Catholic nation, Brazil has followed the Vatican’s line and promoted the internationalization of Jerusalem, among other issues.

62. Aaron Hecht, “ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles Opens at Ein Gedi,” October 17, 2016, https://int.icej.org/node/229206.

63. “Brazil Regrets UN Vote Negating Israel’s Tie to Western Wall, Temple Mount,” JTA, June 13, 2016, www.jta.org/2016/06/13/news-opinion/world/brazil-regrets-unesco-vote-negating-israels-tie-to-western-wall-temple-mount.

64. Tago Chagas, “Renê Terra Nova comanda gesto pró-Bolsonaro no Jordão e termina criticado por ‘sacrilégio’ ” [Renê Terra Nova commands a pro-Bolsonaro gesture in the Jordan and ends up criticized for ‘sacrilege’], Gospel Mais, September 28, 2018, noticias.gospelmais.com.br/rene-terra-nova-criticas-gesto-bolsonaro-102946.html. Bolsonaro responded by recalling his own baptism in the same waters in 2016, when he “renewed his vows” to his faith.

65. Terra Nova, Nemeth, and Kallus spoke at the 2012 Feast of Tabernacles celebration. Biographical material was taken from the 2012 program, The Spirit of Grace and Supplication (Jerusalem: International Christian Embassy, 2012). See also, David Parsons, “Africa Opening Up to Israel,” Word from Jerusalem, U.S. ed., January 2016, 16–17; Eytan Halon, “Major Nigerian Evangelical Leader Emphasizes Christian Solidarity During Visit,” JP, May 19, 2018, www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Major-Nigerian-Evangelical-leader-emphasizes-Christian-solidarity-during-Israel-visit-557871.

66. Joshua Partlow, “Guatemala and Honduras sided with Trump on Jerusalem. Here’s Why,” WP, December 28, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/guatemala-and-honduras-sided-with-trump-on-jerusalem-heres-why/2017/12/28/7c4dfeee-eb1e-11e7-956e-baea358f9725_story.html?utm_term=.ca6e9256e7e9.

67. See http://israelallies.org/.

68. For a complete list of representatives, see www.israelallies.org/usa/member_nations/. Caucus leaders outside the United States included the minister of industry and commerce of Paraguay, Gustavo Leite, South Korean assemblywoman Cho Bae-Sook, and Filipino senator Alan Peter Cayetano.

69. Josh Reinstein, interview, Daystar TV, September 19, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOm1gmU8qbc. Israel Now News has also featured Christian Zionists, including the ICEJ, which also airs its own weekly segment, ICEJ Report. See Westbrook, “The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem and Renewalist Zionism,” 86.

70. Josh Reinstein, speech at Israel Allies Foundation Jerusalem Call, Dallas, March 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=446AnrEpU34.

71. “Bridges for Peace 2016 Year-End Summary Report,” www.bridgesforpeace.com/meet-us/financial-information/.

72. The Wallers are Pentecostal Christians who celebrate Jewish holidays, observe Jewish rituals, and refer to Jesus as “Yeshua.” They also support Messianic Jewish congregations in Israel. See Tommy Waller, “Without Love I Am Nothing,” Messianic Home, 2004, http://messianichome.com/articles/2003/v8n2/withoutloveiamnothing.htm and www.hayovel.com. In September 2017, Waller formally disavowed efforts to convert Jews. See “Tommy Waller to Fellow Christians: ‘Stop Stealing Jewish Identity,’ ” September 25, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KWYs82ls4s.

73. Gary M. Burge, Whose Land? Whose Promise?: What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians, rev. ed. (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2013), 289. The first edition was published in 1993.

74. Donald Wagner, Anxious for Armageddon: A Call to Partnership for Middle Eastern and Western Christians (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1995), 112.

75. Much of the theological debate over Christian Zionism centers on dispensationalism. See, for example, Hank Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code: Find Out What the Bible Really Says About the End Times and Why It Matters Today (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007).

76. See, for example, the October 1998 issue on the fiftieth anniversary of Israeli nationhood. The cover story emphasizes the role of dispensationalism and end-times beliefs. As in previous decades, Christianity Today has focused primarily on religious liberty issues, which has led the magazine to criticize both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. See Timothy Weber, “How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend,” CT, October 5, 1998, 39–49.

77. See Gerald R. McDermott, ed., The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016), and Gerald R. McDermott, Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently About the People and the Land (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2017). See also Dan G. Hummel, “The New Christian Zionists,” Religion & Politics, June 13, 2017, religionandpolitics.org/2017/06/13/the-new-christian-zionists/.

78. Sizer was censured by the Anglican Church in 2015 for linking to a story on social media that blamed Jews for the 9/11 attacks. John Bingham, “Church Bans 9/11 Israel Conspiracy Priest from Using Social Media,” Telegraph, February 9, 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11399986/Vicar-who-blamed-Israel-for-911-attacks-is-banned-from-writing-about-the-Middle-East.html.

79. “Letter to President Bush from Evangelical Leaders,” NYT, July 29, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/us/evangelical_letter.html?mcubz=0.

80. Lynne Hybels, “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Six Things I Believe,” December 8, 2013, www.lynnehybels.com/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-six-things-i-believe/; Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

81. http://emeu.net/about-us/our-history/.

82. See, for example, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “How Some Evangelicals are Challenging a Decades-Long Stance of Blanket Support for Israel’s Government,” WP, December 14, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/14/how-some-influential-evangelicals-are-challenging-a-decades-long-stance-of-blanket-support-for-israelsgovernment/?utm_term=.5f03fe49a8dc. These efforts have roots before the twenty-first century. See Garth Hewitt, Pilgrims and Peacemakers: Journey Through Lent Towards Jerusalem (Oxford: Bible Reading Fellowship, 1995). Hewitt is a British Christian musician and activist.

83. Here I focus only on the key anti-Christian Zionist efforts. For a broader sense of Palestinian Christian efforts, see the friendly treatment by Burge, Whose Land? Whose Promise?, 225–257.

84. Naim Ateek, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989).

85. See Friends of Sabeel North America, www.fosna.org/.

86. https://holylandtrust.org/.

87. https://christatthecheckpoint.bethbc.edu/.

88. Nathan Guttman, “Introducing Birthright Israel for Christians,” Forward, May 17, 2015, http://forward.com/news/israel/308228/birthright-isnt-only-for-jews-anymore/. The two primary organizations are Covenant Journey (www.covenantjourney.org/) and Passages (https://passagesisrael.org/).

89. On increasing concern among Christian Zionists about young evangelical interest in the movement, see Nathan Guttman, “Israel Is Losing Its Grip on Evangelical Christians,” Haaretz, March 11, 2014, www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.579182.

Epilogue

1. Frank Schaeffer, “Jesus for Jews, or Something Like That,” Huffington Post, November 22, 2010, www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/jesus-for-jews-or-somethi_b_786496.html.

2. See Brian Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Graham and Stott (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), and a growing list of studies on American evangelicalism’s global legacy, including Melani McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); David R. Swartz, From the Ends of the Earth: Evangelical Internationalism in the American Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); and David Kirkpatrick, A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

3. Faydra L. Shapiro, “ ‘Thank You Israel, for Supporting America’: The Transnational Flow of Christian Zionist Resources,” Identities, November 8, 2012, 1–16.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below

700 Club

abortion issue

Abraham

Abram, Morris

Aharoni, Johanan

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud

Albright, William Foxwell

Aldrich, Joe

Alkahe, Joseph (J. A.)

Allerton, Berman, & Dean (AB&D)

Almond Branch Association

American Board of Missions to the Jews

American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC)

American exceptionalism

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

American Forum for Jewish-Christian Cooperation

American Institute of Holy Land Studies. See also Young, G. Douglas

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

American Jewish Committee (AJC)

and evangelical allies. See also Tanenbaum, Marc H.

American Jewish Congress

American Jews

and 1967 war

and 1973 war

and Christian right

and conversion efforts

and donating money

and evangelical allies

and Messianic Jews

statehood. See also American Jewish Committee (AJC)

American Palestine Committee

American School of Oriental Research

American Scientific Affiliation

Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI)

American Way of Life

Anderson, John

Anglicanism

Anglo-Christian Zionism

anthropology

Anti-Defamation League

anti-Judaism

and anti-Zionism

and Christian atonement for

and fundamentalists

and Holocaust

antisemitism: Christian condemnation of

and fundamentalists

and interreligious dialogue

new forms of

rise of

apocalyptic theology

Arab League

Arab Orthodox Christians

Arab revolt (1936–39)

Arab-Israeli conflict

and 1956 Sinai invasion

and 1967 war

and 1973 war

and Lebanon War (1982)

and Suez Crisis

Arab-Israeli War (1967). See Arab-Israeli conflict, and 1967 war

Arafat, Yasser

archaeology. See biblical archaeology

Arens, Moshe

Argentina

Ariel, Yisrael

Asch, Sholem

Asher, Robert

Ashley-Cooper, Anthony

Asleson, Vern

Assemblies of God. See also Lewis, David Allen

Ateek, Naim

atheism

Atkinson, Henry

Australia

Avner, Yehuda

Baker, Dwight

Bakke, Ray

Bakker, Jim

Bakker, Tammy Faye

Bandang Wati, Im-Chaba

Banki, Judith

Baptist Bible College (MO)

Baptist Theological Seminary (Brazil)

Baptist-Jewish Scholar’s Conference

Barrows, Cliff

Barth, Karl

Baruch College

Bauer, Gary

Baylor University

Beckett, Ted

Begin, Menachem

Bell, Daniel

Bell, L. Nelson

Ben Ari, Abbie

Ben Hur (1959)

Ben-Ami, David Z.

Ben-Gurion, David

Benvenisti, Meron

Ben-Zeev, Israel

Bernards, Solomon

Bethlehem Bible College

Bialer, Uri

Bible Institute of Los Angeles

biblical archaeology

biblical authority/inerrancy

biblical theism

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. See also Graham, Billy

Biola College (La Mirada, CA)

Bivin, David

Blackstone Memorial. See Blackstone, William E.

Blackstone, William E.

Blewitt, Bob

Blewitt, Lewis

B’nai B’rith

Bob Jones University

Bolsonaro, Jair

Bonney, Benjamin

Bonnke, Reinhard

Boom, Corrie ten

Boone, Pat

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS movement)

Brandeis, Louis

Brandeis University

Brazil

Brickner, Balfour

Bridges for Peace

Briley, Gaylord

Briller, Julius

Brimmer, Rebecca

Brin, Eldad

Brog, David

Brown, Harold O. J.

Brownback, Sam

Bruce, F. F.

Brunner, Emil

Bryant, Anita

Buck, Wayne

Bühler, Jürgen

Burge, Gary

Burrows, Millar

Bush, George H. W.

Bush, George W.

Butler, Keith A.

Caldwell, Happy

Calvary Chapel (Costa Mesa, CA)

Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI)

Canada

Carmona, Israel

Carter, Jimmy

Catholicism

and Judeo-Christianity

and Vatican/Vatican II

Central Conference of American Rabbis

Central Evangelical Free Church (Minneapolis, MN)

Chacour, Elias

Chafets, Ze’ev

Chapman, Colin

Chicago Hebrew Mission. See Hebrew Christian Mission

Chicago Tribune

Chile

Chinese Revolution

Christ Embassy Church (denomination)

Christian and Missionary Alliance

Christian Believers United

Christian Broadcast Network (CBN)

Christian Century

Christian Coalition

Christian Council on Palestine

Christian Friends of Israeli Communities

Christian Israel Public Affairs Committee (CIPAC)

Christian witness theology

Christian Zionism: and biblical exegesis

Biblical Zionism

and brotherhood concept

Christian right

conferences

critics of

fragmentation of

and Israel defense organizations

origins of

as term

and theology of the land

Christian Zionism Heritage Center (Jerusalem)

Christianity Today

Christians Concerned for Israel

Christians United for Israel (CUFI)

Church on Castle Hills. See Cornerstone Church

Church Peace Union

church theology

and church growth

civil religion

Clay, A. T.

Clinton, Bill

Clowney, Edmund

Cohen, Arthur

Cohen, Eliot A.

Colbi, Saul

Cold War

Collier, Jim

Commentary

Committee of Inter-Faith Understanding in Israel

communism

Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

Congress Bi-Weekly

Congressional Israel Allies Caucus

Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society

conversion of Jews

Cooper, David L.

Cornerstone Church (San Antonio, TX)

Criswell, W. A.

Dallas Morning Star

Dallas Theological Seminary

Darby, John Nelson

Darwin, Charles

Davis, Lenny

Dayan, Moshe

Daystar TV

Dead Sea Scrolls

decolonization/postcolonialism

democracy

Democratic Party

Dewey, John

Dine, Tom

Dinitz, Simcha

dispensationalism: and Christian right

criticism of

and prophecy

theology of

and G. Douglas Young

Draper, James

Dropsie College (Philadelphia, PA)

dual covenant theology

Dubois, Marcel-Jaques

Dulles, John Foster

Dutch Reformism

Duvernoy, Claude

Eban, Abba

Ecclesiastical Affairs for the Foreign Ministry

Eckardt, Alice

Eckstein, Yechiel

Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity

Egypt

Ehrlich, Paul

Eichmann, Adolf

Eiklor, Frank

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

El Al (airline)

Elon, Benny

Elvee, Richard

Emunim, Gush

Engstrom, Ted

environmentalism

Epstein, Benjamin

Eternity

Evangelical Beacon

Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA)

Evangelical Theological Society

evangelicalism

early work in Israel

as term

theological identity of

Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding

Evans, Mike

evolution

Faith Church

Faith Theological Seminary (Baltimore, MD)

Faithful of the Temple Mount

Falwell, Jerry

death of

Family Research Council

Feinberg, Charles

Finland

First Baptist Church (Dallas, TX)

First Baptist Church (Minneapolis, MN)

First Baptist Church (Norman, OK)

First Baptist Church of the Restoration (Brazil)

First Zionist Congress (1897)

Flannery, Edward

Florida Bible Institute

Flusser, David

Ford, Leighton

Forster, Arnold

Foxman, Abe

France

Frisbee, Lonnie

Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA)

fundamentalism (Christian)

and biblical inerrancy

criticism of

and evangelicals

fundamentalism (Islamic)

Gadhafi, Muammar

Gallup, George

Gemayel, Bashir

genocide. See also Holocaust

Gerig, Jared F.

Germany

Gil-Ad, Amnon

Gilbert, Arthur

Gingrich, Newt

Glasser, Arthur

Glick, Yehuda

Glock, Charles

Glueck, Nelson

God TV

Goldberg, Herman

Goldfoot, Stanley

Goldstein, Baruch

Gordon, Cyrus H.

Gordon College (Wenham, MA)

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA)

Gospel Research Foundation

Graham, Billy

and biblical inerrancy

and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

and Israel outreach

and Jewish distrust of

and Jewish organizations

and theological debates

Graham, Franklin

Great Britain

Griebenow, M. G.

Guatemala

Gustafson, Roy W.

Ha’uma, Binyanei

Haberman, Joshua

Hagee, John

Hammond, Mac

Hanegraaff, Hank

Hansen, Per Faye

Harrison, Benjamin

Harvard Divinity School

hasbara

Hayahad Digest

Hebrew Christian. See Messianic Judaism/Hebrew Christian

Hebrew Christian Alliance

Hebrew Christian Mission

Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati, OH)

Hebrew University (Jerusalem)

Hebron Agreement (1997)

Hedding, Malcolm

Hedva and David

Hellman, Richard

Henry, Carl F. H.

Herberg, Will

Hertzberg, Arthur

Herzl, Theodor

Herzl Museum (Jerusalem)

Herzog, Chaim

Heschel, Abraham Joshua

Hess, Moses

Hess, Yaakov

Hiding Place, The (1975)

Hilsden, Wayne

Hines, Jerome

His Land (1970)

Hitler, Adolf

Hoenlein, Malcolm

Hoeven, Jan Willlem van der

Hoffman, Philip E.

Holocaust

Christian atonement for

preventing another

and theological reform

Holy Land tourism

alternate tours

Holy Land Trust

Holyland Fellowship of Christians and Jews. See International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

Honduras

Horowitz, David

House of Isaiah

Houston, James M.

Houston, TX

Huckabee, Mike

Hull, William L.

human rights

Humbard, Rex

Hurwitz, Zwi Harry

Hussar, Bruno

Hussein, Saddam

Hybels, Lynne

Ilsar, Yigael

Impe, Jack Van

imperialism

India

Institute of Holy Land Studies. See American Institute of Holy Land Studies

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ)

and Feast of the Tabernacles celebration

International Christians for Israel

International Church of Foursquare Gospel

International Congress for the Peace of Jerusalem

International Congress on World Evangelization

International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ)

International Hebrew Christian Alliance

International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC)

International Ministry of Restoration

Interreligious Coordinating Council (Israel)

Iran

Iranian Revolution (1979)

Iraq

Isaac, Munther

Islam

Israel: and anti-Christian activity

as chosen nation

Chief Rabbinate

Foreign Ministry

Ministry of Interior

Ministry of Justice

Ministry of Religious Affairs

Ministry of Tourism

statehood

Supreme Court

as U.S. ally

Israel Allies Foundation (IAF)

Israel Christian Advocacy Council

Israel Christian Allies Caucus

Israel Defense Force (IDF)

Israel Government Tourist Office (IGTO). See Israel, Ministry of Tourism

Israel Interfaith Committee

Israel Now News

Israel Pilgrimage Committee

Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies. See American Institute of Holy Land Studies

Jabotinsky, Ze’ev

Jabotinsky Award

Jackson-Vanik Amendment (1972)

Jackson, Henry “Scoop”

Jackson, Jim

Jacobs, Basil

Japan

Javits, Jacob

Jeffress, Robert

Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy. See prophecy, conferences

Jerusalem Post

Jerusalem Prayer Team

Jerusalem Rainbow Group

Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra

Jerusalem Temple Foundation

Jesus: Jewish background of

Jewish rejection of

as Messiah

resurrection of

Sermon on the Mount

Jesus People movement

Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota

Jewish Defense League (JDL)

Jewish identity/peoplehood

Jewish National Fund (JNF)

Jewish peoplehood. See Jewish identity/peoplehood

Jewish refugees

Jewish sects

Jewish settlement

Jewish Telegraph Agency

Jewish Voice

Jewish Welfare Federation

Jews for Jesus

Jocz, Jakób

Johns Hopkins University

Jordan

Judaism: Orthodox

Rabbinic

Reform

Judas

Judeo-Christianity

Kahane, Meir

Kallus, Mojmir

Kantzer, Kenneth

Kaplan, Louis

Katz, Shmuel

Kelms, George

Kennedy, John F.

Kenya

Keren Yaldenu

Key 73

Khomeini, Ruhollah (Ayatollah)

King of Kings Church (Jerusalem)

King, Martin Luther, Jr.

King, Tim

Kirkland, Lane

Kissinger, Henry

Klinecki, Leon

Kochavi, Moshe

Kohr, Howard

Kollek, Teddy

Kopp, Paul

Korean War

Korn, Eugene

Kramer, Will

Kreider, Roy

Krieger, Doug

Kristol, Irving

Kronish, Ron

Ku Klux Klan

Kuhlman, Kathryn

Kyle, M. G.

La Sor, William

Ladd, George Eldon

Landau, Haim

Land of Israel Movement

Lapide, Pinchas

Larsen, David

Late Great Planet Earth, The (1970)

Latter Rain theology

Lebanon

Lebanon War (see Arab-Israeli conflict, Lebanon War)

Levens, Esther

Lewis, C. S.

Lewis, David Allen

liberal/ecumenical Protestantism

and evangelicals

and Israel

and Jewish relations. See also Niebuhr, Reinhold

liberation theology

Lieberman, Joseph

Likud party (Israel). See Begin, Menachem

Lincoln, Abraham

Lind, Michael

Lindsay, Gordon

Lindsey, Hal

Lindsey, Robert Lisle

Littell, Franklin

Little, Michael

Living Word Christian Center (Brooklyn Park, MN)

Lott, Clyde

Lytle, Norm

Madugba, Mosy

mainline/mainstream Protestantism

Malachy, Yona

Mandelbaum Gate (Jerusalem)

Mao Zedong

Mart, Michelle

McDermott, Gerald

McGavran, Donald

McGovern, George

McIntire, Carl

McPherson, Aimee Semple

Meet the Press

Meir, Golda

Mennonites

Merkley, Paul

Meshoe, Kenneth

Messianic Judaism/Hebrew Christian

Methodism

millet system

Ministry Prayer Network

Minneapolis–St. Paul, MN

missions/missionaries

disavowal of

problems of

prophetic role of

reform of

Mitchell, Richard

Mizrachi Party. See National Religious Party

Moody Bible Institute (Chicago, IL)

Moody Monthly

Moral Majority

Morales, Jimmy

Moses

Moynihan, Daniel Patrick

MS St. Louis

Multnomah School of the Bible (Portland, OR)

Munayer, Salim

Muow, Richard

Murphey, Milton

Musa, Shukri

Muslim Brotherhood

Myland, David Wesley

N3 Fighters Against Racial Hatred

Nasser, Gamal Abdel

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)

National Bible Institute (Ringwood, NJ)

National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI)

National Conference of Catholics and Bishops

National Conference of Christians and Jews

National Council of Churches

National Council of Young Israel

National Interreligious Award. See American

Jewish Committee (AJC)

National Religious Broadcasters

National Religious Party

Nazarenes

Nazis. See also Holocaust

Nekrutman, David

Nemeth, Sandor

neo-Nazis

neoconservatives

Nes Ammim

Netanyahu, Benjamin

Netherlands

Neusner, Jacob

New Israel

New Left

New York Review of Books

New York Times

Newsweek

Niebuhr, Reinhold

Nigeria

Nixon, Richard

Norman, Larry

Northwestern Bible College (St. Paul, MN)

Norway

Obama, Barack

Ockenga, Harold

Odell, Donn C.

Oesterreicher, John M.

Old-Time Gospel Hour, The

Olso Peace Accords (1993)

Olson, Arnold T.

Olympic Games (1972)

Operation Blessing

Oral Roberts University (Tulsa, OK)

Otis, George

Ottoman Empire

Oyakhilome, Chris

Palestine: Mandate of

Palestine Human Rights Campaign

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

Palestine Rights Committee

Palestinian Christians

Palestinian refugees

Parsley, Rod

Paul (the Apostle)

Pawson, David

Pence, Mike

Pentecost, Dwight

Pentecostalism/Spirit-centered Christianity

Perlmutter, Nathan

Perry, Rick

Philippines

Pledge of Allegiance

Plessis, David du

Plymouth Brethren

Podhoretz, Norman

Poland

political action committees (PACs)

Porter, Lee

Post-American/Sojourners

Pragai, Michael

Prager, Dennis

premillennialism

Presbyterianism

Presidents’ Conference

Prince, Derek

Princeton University

prophecy

conferences

and dispensationalism

and evangelical belief

and Holy Land tourism

and popularization of

prosperity gospel/theology

Protestantism. See mainline/mainstream Protestantism

PTL Club

Qumran community

Qutb, Sayyid

Rabin, Yitzhak

Raheb, Mitri

Rainey, Anson

Reagan, Ronald

realpolitik

reconciliation of Christians and Jews. See also Judeo-Christianity

Reed, Ralph

Reformed Church of America

Reinstein, Josh

religious liberty

religious peace

religious right. See Christian Zionism, Christian right

Religious Roundtable

replacement/supersessionist theology

Republican Jewish Coalition

Republican Party

Resnikoff, Bernard

restorationist theology

Richard, Cliff

Ridderbos, Herman

Riley, William Bell

Risenhoover, Terry

Riskin, Shlomo

Roberts, Oral

Robertson, Pat

Roe vs. Wade (1973)

Rogers, Adrian

Rohan, Michael Dennis

Rosen, Moishe

Rosenberg, Joel C.

Roth, Sid

Rottenberg, Isaac

Roy, A.

Rudin, A. James

Rufeisen, Oswald (Brother Daniel)

Runes, Dagobert

Russia/Soviet Union

Ryrie, Charles

Sadat, Anwar

Sala, Harold

Salomon, Gershon

Salomon, Haym

San Fernando Valley State College

Saudi Arabia

Schaeffer, Francis

Schaeffer, Frank

Scheinberg, Aryeh

Scheiner, Sam

Schindler, Alexander

Schneider, Canon Peter

Schoenveld, Coos

Schwarz, Fred

Scofield Reference Bible

Scofield, Cyrus I.

Scoggin, B. Elmo

September 11 attacks

Seton Hall University

Seventh-Day Adventist

Shalom Fellowship (Keene, NH)

Shamir, Yitzhak

Shapiro, Faydra

Shapiro, Jackov

Sharon, Ariel

Shearer, Doug

Siegel, Seymour

Silverman, Saul

Six Day War (1967). See Arab-Israeli conflict

Sizer, Stephen

Skinner, Tom

Smith, Bailey

Smith, Chuck

Smith, Wilbur

Sojourners. See Post-American

South Africa

South Korea

Southern Asia Tidings

Southern Baptist: conservative turn;

Holy Land tourism

missions

Southern Baptist Convention

Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY)

Southwestern Assemblies of God University (Waxahachie, TX)

spiritual warfare

St. George Church (Jerusalem)

Stakelbeck, Erick

Stanley, Brian

Stark, Rodney

Stott, John

Streiker, Lowell

Strober, Gerald

Sunday, Billy

supersessionist theology. See replacement/supersessionist theology

Supreme Court (U.S.)

Surkis, Reuven

Swaggart, Jimmy

Swarr, Paul

Switzerland

Syria

Tal, Uriel

Talbot Theological Seminary (La Mirada, CA)

Talbot, Louis

Talmon, Shemaryahu

Tanenbaum, Marc H.

Tatford, Fredrick A.

TAV Evangelical Ministries

Taylor, Herbert J.

Temple Institute (Jerusalem)

Temple Mount (Jerusalem)

Temple University

Ten Commandments, The (1956)

Tenney, Merrill

Terra Nova, Rene

terrorism

theological reform

Thering, Rose

Thomas Road Baptist Church (Lynchburg, VA)

Thomas, Cal

Thompson, Roy A.

Times of Israel

Toffler, Alvin

Toms, Paul E.

Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, IL)

Trinity Theological Seminary. See Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, IL)

Truett, George W.

Trump, Donald

Uganda

Union of American Hebrew Congregations

Unitarianism

United Christian Council in Israel (UCCI)

United Jewish Appeal

United Nations

Unity Coalition for Israel

University of Chicago

University of Oklahoma

University of Prague

Vanik, Charles

Victory Television Network

Virginia Tech

Voices United for Israel. See Unity Coalition for Israel

Voss, Carl Hermann

Wagner, Clarence H.

Wagner, Donald

Wall Street Journal

Waller, Sherri

Waller, Tommy

Wallis, Jim

Walvoord, John

Wardi, Chaim

Warhaftig, Zerach

Washington and Lee University

Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Washington Post

Washington, George

Wastchel, Alexander

Watchmen, The

Watergate scandal

Weiss, Samson

Welles, Orson

Wellhausen, Julius

Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi

Westminster Theological Seminary (Glenside, PA)

Wheaton College

Whisenant, Edgar C.

White, W. R.

Wilkins, Roy

Willowbank Declaration

Wilson, Marvin R.

Wilson, Woodrow

Word of Faith Christian Center (Michigan)

World Bible Conference

World Conference on the Holy Spirit

World Congress on Evangelism

World Council of Churches (WCC)

World Evangelical Fellowship

World Harvest Church (Columbus, OH)

World Vision International

Wright, G. F.

Wright, George Ernest

Wycliffe College (Toronto, Canada)

Wyschogrod, Michael

Xerxes

Yadin, Yigael

Yale Divinity School

Yale University

Yamauchi, Edwin

Yancey, Philip

Yeshiva University

Yishuv

Yom Kippur War. See Arab-Israel conflict, and 1973 war

Young Life

Young, Brad H.

Young, G. Douglas

death of

Zambia

Zion Apostolic Mission

Zionism

Labor

Revisionist

Zionist Organization of America

Zweibon, Herbert

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK HAS OCCUPIED the last six years of my working life, taking unexpected shapes along the way. I am indebted to a large community for its quality and completion.

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in its historic Department of History, I owe a debt of gratitude to Jennifer-Ratner-Rosenhagen, whose enthusiasm, encouragement, and rigor are infectious. Charles Cohen and Tony Michels were valuable voices throughout the process. Thanks as well to Sean Dinces, John Hall, Ulrich Rosenhagen, John Sharpless, and Lee Wandel.

At the University of Texas–Austin, Jeremi Suri has been a vital source of advice and support.

At Colorado State University, I thank James Lindsay and Nathan Citino for their support, as well as Ruth Alexander, Robert Gudmestad, Elizabeth Bright Jones, and Jared Orsi.

Of the many colleagues both in and out of these institutions who gave valuable feedback and advice, I thank David Allen, Yaakov Ariel, April Armstrong, Jon Beltz, Renée Blackburn, Ed Blum, Mike Brenes, Caitlin Carenen, Vaneesa Cook, Amanda Demmer, David Harrisville, Ariana Horn, Cam Hutchison, Will Jones, Ben Kasten, Elizabeth Katz, Jeremy Ledger, Fred Logevall, Tim Mackie, Rivka Maizlish, Melani McAlister, James McKay, Shaul Mitelpunkt, Scott Mobley, Adam Nelson, Jason Olson, Terry Peterson, Doug Rossinow, Debbie Sharnak, Jennifer Stitt, David Swartz, Moshik Temkin, Lauren Turek, Arne Westad, John Wilsey, and Molly Worthen.

Skye Doney, David Fields, and Kevin Walters read much of this manuscript in multiple drafts. The collegiality of the two writing groups I was privileged to be a part of is owed to Brad Baranowski, Sean Bloch, Athan Biss, Eric Carlsson, Aaron Dowdall, Greg Jones-Katz, Nick Strohl, and John Suval.

Those who dedicated time to reading full drafts of the manuscript deserve special mention: Arie Dubnov, Mark Edwards, Sam Goldman, Gershon Greenberg, Kenny Kolander, Tim Padgett, Andrew Preston, Rebecca Rowden, Ronit Stahl, Matt Sutton, and Gene Zubovich.

Institutional support for this project came first from the George L. Mosse Program, which allowed me to conduct extensive research in Israel. John Tortorice was a constant source of encouragement. Further funding came from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School, and the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin–Madison. An immensely helpful book workshop was hosted by Sam Goldman and the Loeb Center for Religious Freedom at George Washington University. Further funds came from the Billy Graham Center Archives, Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

In Israel, I benefited from the conversations, hospitality, tips, advice, and lasting friendship of a number of people. I thank Gary Alley, Uri Bialer, Gemma Blech, Jordash Kiffiak and Joanna Woo, Noam Kochavi, Danny Kopp, Chuck and Liz Kopp, Homer Lanier, the Pfann family, and Amnon Ramon. To those who wished not to be listed by name, my thanks extend to them as well.

Archivists helped shape this project. I want to thank especially Katherine Graber and Bob Shuster at the Billy Graham Center Archives, Linda Fratt at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Archer Archives, Gary Alley and Rebecca Rowden for allowing me access to the Baptist Convention in Israel records and other related materials, Chuck Kopp for sharing his own collection of materials, Paul Wright at Jerusalem University College, Paul Rood and George Giacumakis at Biola University, and Bill Sumners at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. Jon Beltz made an archive detour in Israel on my behalf, a debt that I have yet to repay.

Much of the final shape of this book is a result of the advice and encouragement of Bob Lockhart. Since Bob first read the manuscript, it has grown in ways he anticipated before I did. He has been gentle in his suggestions, patient with my naiveté, and a stimulating thinking partner.

My family and friends outside the academy have been constant sources of support. Mom and Dad, Heidi, Jolynne, and Tim deserve credit for listening politely and feigning interest in obscure topics. Friends and mentors in Madison, especially those at Blackhawk Church, have helped throughout the writing of this book.

Of course, my wife knows most profoundly the debts I have accumulated. Veronica supported me and this project since before its inception. She moved across the country and around the world and learned far more about Christian Zionists than is worthwhile. To the memory of her father, David Kelley, who died in February 2012, I dedicate this book.