The Arab_Israeli Conflict

by Jonathan Rynhold

  82 This sentence was originally part of a speech Hagee gave to the Israeli Knesset. But ultimately he refrained from saying it, though it remained in the written version. See Lily Galili, “Rapture – or Raptor,” Haaretz, November 11, 2005.

  83 Nathan Guttman, “Getting Tight with the Bible Belt,” Haaretz, February 16, 2005; Lily Galili, ‘National Union Tries to Rally American Right vs. Road Map,” Haaretz, April 25, 2003; Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 217.

  84 Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, 168–177.

  85 “Christians Differ over ‘Road Map,’” Associated Press, July 25, 2003; Danielle Haas, “U.S. Christians Find Cause to Aid Israel/Evangelicals Financing Immigrants, Settlements,” Chronicle Foreign Service, July 10, 2002; Aaron Hecht, “The Ariel-Evangelical Special Connection,” Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, August 2007, 28–31; Ann Lordo, “Israeli Settlers Find Staunch Friends in Christians,” Baltimore Sun, July 27, 1997; “About Us,” International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, http://int.icej.org/about/about-us; “Life in the Settlements,” Word from Jerusalem, May 2002, p7; International Christian Embassy, “Bulletproof Bus for Efrat” appeal, Word from Jerusalem, May 2002; Bridges for Peace, “New Life on the Farm,” Dispatch from Jerusalem, January 2000, 5.

  86 Sheera Frenkel, “American Christian Funding Flows to Jewish Settlers,” NPR, June 12, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105310088.

  87 Jim Rutenberg, Mike Mcintire, and Ethan Bronner, “Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank,” New York Times, July 5, 2010.

  88 Sinai, “When Money Speaks Louder Than the Word.”

  89 Interview with Prof Gerald McDermott, March 30, 2011.

  90 Quoted in Weber, “American Evangelicals and Israel: A Complicated Alliance,” 141–157.

  91 Ibid. Other leading evangelicals who take a moderate approach include Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Craig Blaising, executive vice president and provost at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. See Craig A. Blaising, “The Church and the Present State of Israel: A Progressive Dispensational View,” Moore to the Point, May 1, 2002, http://cdn1.russellmoore.com/documents/russellmoore/israel-church.pdf; Michael Foust, ‘Mohler: Christians Should Support Israel, Yet Hold It Accountable,” Baptist Press, April 25, 2002, http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=13230; “Prayer Is the Only Solution to Middle East Crisis,” Come and See, May 9, 2002, http://www.comeandsee.com/view.php?sid=299.

  92 Interview with Prof Gerald McDermott, March 30, 2011; see also the comments of Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in the Charlotte Observer, October 16, 2000.

  93 Tom Strode, “Land: Evangelical Majority Supports Israel’s Gaza Withdrawal,” Baptist Press, September 26, 2005.

  94 Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 47, 167; Brog, Standing with Israel, p.162; Clark, Allies for Armageddon, 237–238.

  95 Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 175.

  96 Ibid., 174.

  97 Dexter Van Zile, “Mainline Churches Embrace Gary Burge’s Harmful Mythology,” CAMERA: Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, September 11, 2007, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1371.

  98 This is based on my own survey of all the articles on the conflict published in the magazine from 1993 to 2010. For examples of such articles, see Donald Neff, “Peace in Palestine,” Christianity Today, October 4, 1993, 15; Jonathan Miles, “You Can’t Get There from Here,” Christianity Today, May 20, 1996, 66–67; Peri Stone, “Persecution Propaganda?” Christianity Today, July 13, 1998, 14–15; Calvin Shenk, “Jerusalem As Jesus Views It,” Christianity Today, October 5, 1998, 44–46; Timothy Morgan, “Jerusalem’s Living Stones,” Christianity Today, May 20, 1996, 58–68; “Security versus Equality,” Christianity Today, May 20, 1996, 60; Stan Guthrie, “Palestine’s Christians Persist Despite Pressures,” Christianity Today, October 1, 2001, 30; Elaine Ruth Fletcher, “Holy Land Roadblocks,” Christianity Today, April 23, 2001, 22; Elaine Ruth Fletcher, “Between the Temple Mount and a Hard Place,” Christianity Today, December 4, 2000, 66–68; Jonathan Kuttab, “The Peace Regress,” Christianity Today, January 8, 2001, 66–70; Clarence H. Wagner Jr., “Between a Rock and a Holy Site,” Christianity Today, February 5, 2001, 62–63; Jeremy Weber, “God in Gaza: Reconciliation Work Goes On Despite Worst Violence since 1967,” Christianity Today, February 10, 2009, 13; Stan Guthrie, “Crackdown Hits Churches; Mideast Christians Torn over Tough Israeli Tactics at Churches,” Christianity Today, May 21, 2002; “Roadblocks and Voting Blocs.”

  99 Yehiel Poupko, “Pro-Israel vs. Pro-Palestine: A Rabbi Hopes for a Better Conversation,” Christianity Today, February 2008, 74; “Leveling the Investment Field: Why Has It Been So Hard for Organizations to Treat Israel Like Any Other State?” Christianity Today, August 2006; Kathleen Rutledge, “Assault on the Jewish People: New Presbyterian Policy on Israel Raise Hackles,” Christianity Today, December 2004, 18; “What It Means to Love Israel: Beware Giving the Nation Too Much Theological Meaning and the Jews Too Little,” Christianity Today, September 2007; Mark Harlan, “A Middle Way in the Middle East: A Third Theological Path through the Israeli-Palestinian Thicket,” Christianity Today, April 1, 2003, 84; Trammel Madison, “Jesus and the Land,” Christianity Today, May 2010, 62.

  100 Weber, “American Evangelicals and Israel.”

  101 Shindler, “Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists”; Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, 178–179; Irvine H. Anderson, Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005), 114–115.

  102 Kyle M. Smith, A Congruence of Interests: Christian Zionism And U.S. Policy toward Israel, 1977–1998 (paper submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts, 2006).

  103 Jonathan Rynhold, “Behind the Rhetoric: President Bush and U.S. Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” American Diplomacy 10, no. 4 (2005): 1–23, http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2005/1012/rynh/rynhold_rhetoric.html.

  104 Laurie Goldstein, “Evangelicals for Israel,” New York Times, January 21, 1998.

  105 Smith, A Congruence of Interests.

  106 Elizabeth A. Oldmixon, Beth A. Rosenson, and Kenneth D. Wald, “Conflict over Israel: Religion, Race, Party, and Ideology in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1997–2002,” Terrorism and Political Violence 17, no. 3 (2005): 407–426; Beth A. Rosenson, Elizabeth A. Oldmixon, and Kenneth D. Wald, “U.S. Senators’ Support for Israel Examined through Sponsorship/Cosponsorship Decisions, 1993–2002: The Influence of Elite and Constituent Factors,” Foreign Policy Analysis 5, no. 1 (2009): 73–91.

  107 Lou Marano, “Christians Rally for Israel in Washington,” United Press International, October 13, 2002.

  108 Rosenson et al., “Conflict over Israel.”

  109 See, for example, Karen Armstrong, “Bush’s Fondness for Fundamentalism is Courting Disaster,” Guardian (London), July 31, 2006; Esther Kaplan, With God on Their Side (New York: New Press, 2004), 30; Deanne Stillman, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” Nation, June 3, 2002.

  110 “Address of U.S. President George Bush to the Knesset,” The Knesset, May 15, 2008, http://www.knesset.gov.il/description/eng/doc/speech_bush_2008_eng.htm.

  111 D. Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 51–52; Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 206–209; David Aikman, A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2004), 122–126.

  112 “Christian Coalition of America Opposes Creation of a Palestinian State,” press release, Christian Coalition of America, June 18, 2002, http://www.cc.org/becomeinformed/pressreleases061802.html (accessed September 27, 2005; no longer available).

  113 George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010), 409–410.

  114 Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 249–253.

  115 Rynhold, “Behind the Rhe
toric.”

  116 Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 229–239.

  117 Ibid., 223–227.

  118 Rynhold, “Behind the Rhetoric.”

  119 Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 236.

  120 Ibid., 218.

  121 Melissa Radler, “U.S. Christians Call for ‘Biblical Road Map,’” Jerusalem Post, May 1, 2003.

  122 “Christians Differ over ‘Road Map,’” Associated Press, July 25, 2003.

  123 Gil Hoffman, “Elon Takes U.S. Heartland Anti-Disengagement Tour,” Jerusalem Post, September 9, 2004.

  124 Personal communication between the author and Ayalon.

  125 Chafets, Match Made in Heaven, 67. See similar comments in Brog, Standing with Israel, 196; Simon, Falwell and the Jews, 63, 82.

  126 Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 173.

  127 Yechiel Eckstein resigned from the board of Voices United for Israel because of its partisan pro-Likud posture. Sinai, “When Money Speaks Louder Than the Word.”

  128 John Hagee, “Why Christian Zionists Really Support Israel,” Jewish Daily Forward, May 21, 2010.

  129 Lawrence Grossman, “The Organized Jewish Community and Evangelical America,” in Mittleman, Johnson, and Isserman, eds., Uneasy Allies? 49–72.

  130 Clark, Allies for Armageddon, 249.

  131 Green, “Evangelical Protestants and Jews,” in Mittleman, Johnson, and Isserman, eds., Uneasy Allies?

  132 Ethan Felson, “On the Road: The Jewish Community Relations Encounter with Evangelical Christians,” in Alan Mittleman, Byron Johnson, and Nancy Isserman, eds., Uneasy Allies? 91–92.

  133 Abraham Foxman, “Evangelical Support for Israel Is a Good Thing,” JTA, July 16, 2002.

  134 Carl Schrag, “American Jews and Evangelical Christians: Anatomy of a Changing Relationship” Jewish Political Studies Review 17, no. 1–2 (2005).

  135 Shmuel Rosner, “Allying with Christian Zionists Is Bad for Israel,” Haaretz, April 3, 2008.

  136 In 2004, 30 percent of Americans defined themselves on the religious Left, 24 percent on the religious Right. The hard-core of each camp made up 12–15 percent of the electorate. See Lyman A. Kellstedt et al., “A Gentle Stream or a ‘River Glorious’? The Religious Left in the 2004 Election,” in David E. Campbell, ed., A Matter of Faith: Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 232–256; John Green and Steven Waldman, “The Twelve Tribes of American Politics,” Beliefnet, October 2004, http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Politics/2004/10/The-Twelve-Tribes-Of-American-Politics.aspx.

  5. The Mainline Protestant church and anti-Zionism

  1 Presbyterian Church USA, http://www.pcusa.org/worldwide/israelpalestine/israelpalestineresolution.htm (no longer available).

  2 On the characteristics of the mainline and the differences with evangelicals, see Kenneth D. Wald and Alison Calhoun-Brown, Religion and Politics in the United States, 5th ed. (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 30.

  3 “Religious Landscape Survey, Report 1: Religious Affiliation,” Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project, http://religions.pewforum.org/reports; Eileen Lindner, ed., Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, 2006 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 9–14.

  4 2004 NEP Exit Poll cited in Robert Jones and Daniel Cox, “Clergy Voices: Findings from the 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey” (Washington, DC: Public Religion Research, 2009).

  5 Lester Kurtz and Kelly Goran Fulton, “Love Your Enemies? Protestants and United States Foreign Policy,” in Robert Wuthnow and John Evans, eds., The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 364.

  6 Wuthnow and Evans, The Quiet Hand of God, 11–13; “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Beliefs and Practices: Diverse and Politically Relevant,” Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, June 2008, http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf.

  7 Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza, “A Great Divide? Religion and Political Change in U.S. National Elections, 1972–2000,” Sociological Quarterly 45, no. 3 (2004): 421–450.

  8 Laura R. Olson, “Whither the Religious Left? Religiopolitical Progressivism in Twenty-First-Century America,” in J. Matthew Wilson, ed., From Pews to Polling Places: Faith and Politics in the American Religious Mosaic (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007), 53–80.

  9 Dieter T. Hessel, ed., The Church’s Public Role: Retrospect and Prospect (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 21–38. On Liberation theology see Christopher Rowland, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

  10 Quoted in James Reichley, Religion in American Public Life (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985), 266.

  11 Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox, “Clergy Voices: Findings from the 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey,” Public Religion Research, March 2009, http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/2008-Mainline-Protestant-Clergy-Voices-Survey-Report.pdf.

  12 Reichley, Religion in American Public Life, 245–255, 341.

  13 Jones and Cox, “Clergy Voices.”

  14 Pew Forum’s “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (June 2008) draws primarily on a new nationwide survey conducted from May 8 to August 13, 2007. See also “Trends in Party Identification of Religious Groups,” Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project, February 2, 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/02/02/trends-in-party-identification-of-religious-groups-affiliation/; John C. Green, “Religion and the 2004 Election: A Pre-Election Analysis,” Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, http://www.pewforum.org/files/2004/09/green-full1.pdf.

  15 James Guth, “The Bush Administration, American Religious Politics, and Middle East Policy: The Evidence from National Surveys” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, September 2–5, 2004). In 2007, around 60 percent of white mainliners remained supportive of using preemptive force against terrorism, about the national average; see “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” (June 2008).

  16 “Ideological Gaps over Israel on Both Sides of Atlantic,” Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, January 29, 2009, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1097/america-europe-ideological-gaps-over-israel; America’s Place in The World 2009, December 2009, Pew Research Center For the People & the Press http://people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/569.pdf; “Modest Backing for Israel in Gaza Crisis,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, January 13, 2009, http://www.people-press.org/2009/01/13/modest-backing-for-israel-in-gaza-crisis/1/.

  17 “Ideological Gaps over Israel on Both Sides of Atlantic”; “Modest Backing For Israel in Gaza Crisis.”

  18 Guth and Kenan, “Religious Factors and American Public Support for Israel: 1992–2008.”

  19 “Goal of Libyan Operation Less Clear to Public: Top Middle East Priority: Preventing Terrorism,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, April 5, 2011, http://www.people-press.org/2011/04/05/goal-of-libyan-operation-less-clear-to-public.

  20 “Public Takes Strong Stance Against Iran’s Nuclear Program,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, February 15, 2012, http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/02-15-12%20Foreign%20Policy%20release.pdf.

  21 Presbyterian Church (USA) Research Services office, based on a November 2004 survey of 3,000 ministers, elders, members and specialized clergy known as the Presbyterian Panel. See Van Marter, “Poll: Most PC(USA) Members Unaware of GA Divestment Action.”

  22 Data from the National Survey of Religion and Politics – see James Guth and William Kenan Jr., “Religious Factors and American Public Support for Israel: 1992–2008” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Seattle, WA, September 1–4, 2011); John C. Green, “The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes: A Baseline for 2004,” University of Akron, Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, , https://www.uakron.edu/bliss/research/archives/2004/Rel
igious_Landscape_2004.pdf.

  23 Jones and Cox, “Clergy Voices.”

  24 Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002).

  25 R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).

  26 Hertzel Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1973), 170, 175.

  27 Ibid., 178.

  28 Christian Century, May 3, 1933, 582–584, quoted in Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State, 37.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Not including Sunday schools and theological centers. Robert Kaplan, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (New York: Free Press, 1993), 18, 40.