Estimates of the number of evangelical or “born-again” Protestants in the United States vary widely, with most falling somewhere between 40 and 80 million. Making a precise estimate is complicated by disagreement about what qualifies one for membership in these categories. Whatever the exact count, their numbers are so large that no presidential candidate can avoid taking their views seriously: “U.S. evangelicals, many of whom proudly refer to themselves as Christian Zionists, are clearly on the upswing. According to the Pew Research Center, evangelical Protestants accounted for 23 percent of the entire American electorate, or nearly one out of every four voters, in the recent [2004] election.”3 The percentages of affirmative responses to the Gallup Poll question “Would you describe yourself as a 'born-again' or evangelical Christian?” were 44% in 2001, 46% in 2002, and 42% in 2003.4
It may seem surprising that so many “conservative” Protestants are Christian Zionists, when premillennial dispensationalism is only one of a multitude of Protestant traditions. Part of the explanation is that there has evolved a generic evangelicalism of Protestants who find more in common with evangelicals of other Protestant traditions than with “liberals” in their own. For example, I was raised within the evangelical wing of the Wesleyan, Methodist tradition, which regards the majority of United Methodists as apostates. But the books I was encouraged to read included more from outside than within the tradition of John Wesley. “Brand loyalty” is small and diminishing among evangelicals. Many search for pastors, churches, books, magazines, radio and television programs that seem to be biblical and meet their needs, with little concern for distinctions among the many subdivisions of Protestant theology. This has enabled Christian Zionist ideas to spread to tens of millions of evangelicals who are not premillennial dispensationalists.
Even in the absence of direct influence on the U.S. Government, Christian Zionists exert influence by their voting power. Their numbers are large and they overwhelmingly support Israel in its relations with its neighbors. According to The Washington Post, “In an online survey of U.S. evangelicals after [the March 2004] attack on Sheik Ahmed Yassin, 89 percent of the 1,630 respondents supported the killing of the Hamas leader – compared with the 61 percent of Israelis who supported the attack in a survey by the newspaper Maariv.”1 But there is also evidence of more direct influence.
On September 20, 2001, nine days after the al-Qaeda attacks, neoconservative William Kristol of the Project for the New American Century sent a letter to President Bush, calling for the inclusion of Iraq in the war against terrorism: “It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” The letter is signed by several dozen neoconservatives, but also by Christian Zionist Gary Bauer. The inclusion of a leader of several evangelical organizations appears to have been a signal that more than his one vote was behind a policy of military action against Iraq.
Christian Zionist organizations also conduct letter-writing campaigns to communicate their views to our Government: “When Israel invaded the West Bank in April 2002 following the Passover bombings, President Bush urged Ariel Sharon to withdraw from Jenin. Christian Zionists mobilized an email campaign that produced 100,000 letters for Washington. And it worked. Bush never said another word.”1 Other grassroots-level activities by Christian Zionists on behalf of Israel include “spending millions on everything from armored school buses for Israeli children to halogen lights for the army's emergency-rescue service. There are email chains, prayer ministries and grassroots efforts to get the word out that the U.S. must stand united with its ally in the war on terror.”2
According to The Washington Post, “The White House held a private briefing for 141 evangelical Christian leaders March 27 [2003] to discuss the Iraq war and other subjects.”3 President Bush himself is, of course, an evangelical Protestant. His stances on issues such as embryonic stem-cell research and “homosexual marriage” suggest that he is serious about acting in a manner consistent with his theological beliefs. Unfortunately, he has chosen a theological tradition that values Christian Zionist thinking more than just-war theory.
Perhaps the most outspoken evangelical Christian Zionist in our government is House Majority Leader DeLay, who calls himself “an Israeli at heart.”4 In July 2003 he told an audience in Jerusalem: “Brothers and sisters of Israel, be not afraid. The American people stand with you, and so does our President.” Aryeh Eldad, a member of the National Union Party, said afterwards, “Until I heard him speak, I thought I was farthest to the right in the Knesset.”5 DeLay strongly supported the invasion of Iraq, and it is reasonable to assume that he used his position to influence other congressmen to do so as well.
In April 2003 DeLay delivered the keynote address at a Stand for Israel rally:
Something extraordinary is happening on the other side of the world. Hundreds of thousands of trained and dedicated volunteers, an army of virtue, are liberating a nation. Mile by mile, a blood-thirsty dictator's grip on a noble people slips. Town by town, Iraqi families realize what the smiling men in camouflage uniforms have won for them. And day by day, children awaken, for the first morning of their lives, to G-d's freedom. This is the meaning of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends ….
Americans have defended our freedom for more than 200 years. Israelis have done the same for more than 50. We are opposed by many of the same enemies, who use many of the same tactics. Israel's fight is our fight: against terror, and for humanity ….
The United States is the world's defender of freedom, and Israel is one of our greatest allies. We won't allow anyone to reward terrorists and terrorist acts; least of all nations and organizations who appeased Saddam Hussein and who continue to appease Yasser Arafat. This struggle is one of good versus evil; nations and organizations who fail to distinguish between the two disqualify themselves from input on this matter.1
Another factor in evangelical influence on our government is the Council for National Policy, which was founded by Christian Zionist Tim LaHaye in 1981, with the assistance of several wealthy individuals. It was intended to be a counterweight to the secular Council on Foreign Relations and to plan the strategy of the “Religious Right.” Although some of its several hundred members are Catholics, most are evangelical Protestants. Its thrice-yearly meetings are closed to all but a few non-members. Its stance on many issues is consistent with Catholic doctrine. It is harshly criticized by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is an indication that it is doing good work. But, because most of its members are evangelicals, it advocates Christian Zionism.
The Council for National Policy not only plans strategies for shaping policy, but also has contributed tens of millions of dollars to members of Congress. Many of its members hold high positions. Other persons in positions of influence are invited to speak to its members. Texas Governor Bush addressed the Council in 1999 to solicit support for his presidential election campaign. Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld attended a meeting of the Council shortly after the invasion of Iraq. Several Bush administration and campaign officials attended a meeting in New York in August 2004, shortly before the Republican Party convention, at which Senate Majority Leader Frist received the Council's Thomas Jefferson award. According to The New York Times, former Under Secretary of State Bolton, a leading neoconservative, spoke about plans for Iran at that meeting.2 Because of the Council for National Policy's some-what stealthy manner of conducting business, it is difficult to document the magnitude of its influence on the decision to attack Iraq. But it is certain that it has influence on the Republican Party and that its membership includes leading Christian Zionists.
All in all, Christian Zionists have an aggressive view of their ability (or at least p
otential) to influence affairs in Washington. As detailed by a substantial piece on Christian Zionism in Mother Jones:
Richard Hellman, a former GOP Senate staffer and born-again Pentecostal, hopes to organize at least 7 million followers as members of his lobbying group, Christians' Israel Public Action Campaign. “Someone once referred to us as AIPAC's little echo,” Hellman says with a laugh. “Maybe we'll turn out to be the echo that roared.”1
Christian Zionists and Israeli Strategy
American Christian Zionists not only influence the U.S. government, but also have close relationships with the Israeli government and Likud party. When the Carter administration pursued a Middle East policy that was less unfavorable to the Palestinians than Likud wished, the Likud party made a strategic shift away from the Democratic Party and toward “conservative” Protestants. (Around the same time, some of the leading American neoconservatives switched their allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party.) Yona Malachy's American Fundamentalism and Israel: The Relation of Fundamentalist Churches to Zionism and the State of Israel, published by the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1978, discussed how Israel could make strategic use of American fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. Likud began developing relationships with selected American Christian Zionist leaders. Menachem Begin's government gave Jerry Falwell a Lear jet for use in his work on Israel's behalf in 1979, and honored him with its Jabotinsky Award for Zionist excellence in 1981.2 In return, Christian Zionist organizations have donated tens of millions of dollars to promote immigration of Jews to Israel and expansion of Jewish settlements.3
When Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, Begin called Falwell first, then President Reagan. According to the Executive Intelligence Review:
In September 1982, when then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon sent tanks into Lebanon and orchestrated the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, Begin arranged for Falwell to lead a delegation of American Christian evangelicals to the front line. [Harry Zvi] Hurwitz, Begin's liaison to the Christian Zionists, defended the decision as necessary to offset the “bad propaganda” that the massacres had generated in the United States and Europe.1
Falwell promised an American Jewish audience in 1985 that he would “mobilize 70 million conservative Christians for Israel and against anti-Semitism.” And Ralph Reed reports meeting with Likud Prime Minister Shamir, while he was director of the Christian Coalition:
Evangelicals remain some of the strongest supporters of Israel. I saw this first-hand during a trip to the Holy Land in early 1993 as the Israeli government and the PLO completed negotiations on a peace treaty. I met with former Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir and expressed my concerns about the peace process and the need to protect Israeli citizens from terrorist attacks. “You are not the problem,” replied Shamir. “You are among our strongest supporters. Whatever problems we have now are caused by Israelis, not Americans.”2
The close relationships between American evangelical Protestants and Likud continued during the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu:
Since then all subsequent Likud Prime Ministers have carefully strengthened ties to American evangelicals. In 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu created the Israel Christian Advocacy Council and flew 17 Christian leaders to Israel, where they signed a pledge that “America never, never desert Israel.” And in December 2000, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a leading hawk in the Bush administration, spoke to thousands of supporters of Israel at an April rally.3
Additionally, as reported by the Christian Century:
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington [in January 1998], his initial meeting was not with President Clinton but with Jerry Falwell and more than 1,000 fundamentalist Christians. The crowd saluted the Prime Minister as “the Ronald Reagan of Israel,” and Falwell pledged to contact more than 200,000 evangelical pastors, asking them to “tell President Clinton to refrain from putting pressure on Israel” to comply with the Oslo accords.1
More recently, Prime Minister Sharon “addressed a group of 1,500 Christian Zionists who had traveled to Jerusalem, saying, 'We regard you to be one of our best friends in the world.'”2
Given the influence of conservative Christians, it is no surprise that the Israeli Embassy has an “Office of Interreligious Affairs” that hosts monthly briefings for evangelicals, welcomes church bus tours, and organizes breakfasts.
American Jewish groups, no less than the Israeli government, “have increasingly accepted Christian support.” In May 2002 the Anti-Defamation League “ran an advertisement in major newspapers that reprinted an article written by Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, that was titled 'We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel.'” And in July of the same year, the Zionist Organization of America honored Pat Robertson for his work on behalf of Israel.3
As surprising as it may be to find Israeli and American Jews accepting fervent support from Bible-believing Christians, where the state of Israel is concerned they show a remarkable broad-mindedness and pragmatism. “Evangelicals have a unique role to play with this administration and in the Republican Party that Jews can't,” said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who runs an interfaith alliance. “Jews today see Israel's survival at stake, so they are more willing to put aside domestic concerns.”4 This mentality was confirmed by none other than Abe Foxman, the arch-defender of Jews from Christian (or any other) anti-Semitism. As TIME Magazine reported it,
[W]hen a people feels isolated and under attack, it will take all the friends it can get, retorts Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “I don't think it's our business to get at the heart and soul and metaphysics of people as to why they come to support Israel. Some do it for a national-interest point of view, some because of moral issues, some because of theological issues. We don't set standards or conditions for support.”5
Echoing these sentiments, Zionist Organization of America president, Morton Klein, maintains that theological differences are small details to overlook in exchange for fervent support for Israel from Christians. “I am willing to make this deal: if they continue to support Israel's prosperity, security, and survival, then if Jesus comes back in the future I will join their parade,” Klein says. “Hey, if I was wrong, no problem.”1 What's more, the Jewish concern that Christianity is somehow anti-Semitic, or that Christians harbor veiled (or otherwise) anti-Semitic sentiments, is “mostly a thing of the past” where Christian support for Israel is concerned. “You find hints of anti-Semitism among many non-Jewish groups, and a few evangelicals may have anti-Jewish feelings,” Klein reported.
But I have spoken to dozens of Christian Zionist groups and I have never encountered any anti-Semitism, and I'm a child of Holocaust survivors. Instead, I have found a great love of the Jewish people. I'm thrilled they are helping Israel and I think they are doing a great job. They are more pro-Israel and pro-Zionist than most Jews.2
Identifying specific connections between American Christian Zionists' support of the invasion of Iraq and their relationships with Israel's government and Likud party is complicated by the fact that, according to the official party line, Israel had nothing to do with this war.3 The truth is, however, that this war was part of Likud strategy to strengthen Israel's security. The grand strategy of Israeli Zionists includes both the expulsion of Palestinians and the destabilization and fragmentation of neighboring countries. The application of this strategy to Iraq is explained in a 1982 policy paper, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” by Oded Yinon, who was attached to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before
it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.1
An updated call for the destabilization of Israel's enemies, “A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the Realm,” was written for Netanyahu by (American) neoconservatives Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith (currently the outgoing under secretary of defense for policy) in 1996. According to this document, the safety of Israel required removing Saddam Hussein from power.
There exists no simple “conspiracy.” But there does exist a complex web of interrelationships between Israeli Zionists, American neoconservatives (most of whom are ethnically Jewish), and American Christian Zionists, all of whom collaborated in bringing about the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The strategy, of which the war is a part, was conceived by Israeli Zionists. The key persons in the Bush administration who planned the war were neo-conservatives. But neither of these groups could have achieved its objectives without support from tens of millions of Christian Zionist voters.
Christian Zionism and Catholic Tradition
Although it may be possible to define “Christian Zionism” in such a way that it is consistent with the Catholic Tradition, the Christian Zionism that is so popular among American Protestants is inconsistent with it. According to Sacred Tradition, which cannot contradict Sacred Scripture, the Church is the new Israel, the new people of God. Catholics find the fulfillment of God's Old Testament promises in Christ. The Old Covenant has never been revoked or abrogated, nor has it been superseded or replaced: the New Covenant is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant.2 The Old and New Covenants are properly understood, not as divided, but as a unity.1 As St. Thomas tells us, “Whatsoever is set down in the New Testament explicitly and openly as a point of faith, is contained in the Old Testament as a matter of belief, but implicitly, under a figure.”2 And in both Testaments there is one and the same Faith: “Our faith in Christ is the same as that of the fathers of old.”3 The new Catechism of the Catholic Church adds:
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