Christian Zionism

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Theodore Herzl

Broadly speaking, “Christian Zionism” refers to a theologically and politically-motivated position of support for Israel. Christian Zionists, like American Jews, have a wide variety of attitudes and motivations for supporting the State of Israel.1 The evangelical-Jewish relationship has been characterized as both a “most unexpected marriage of convenience”2 and “a match made in heaven.”3 As it is most widely understood today, the term “Zionism” originated in the 19th century during the originally secular Jewish movement of Theodor Herzl that was aimed at securing a Jewish nation and refuge from wide-spread anti-Semitism.4 While the modern use of the term “Christian Zionism” came into mainstream use in the 1990s, some scholars posit that the notion of “restoration” of the Jews to Palestine as a political project was historically first advanced by Christians.5 According to Goldman, American evangelical Protestants have had a particular interest, “from the colonial period onward,” in restoring Jews to their “Promised Land,” and the idea that Christian Zionism is solely a contemporary reaction to geopolitical realities in the Middle East is a misguided notion.6

Christian Zionism today is a largely evangelical and non-denominational Christian movement. Both Biblical and geopolitical reasons inform the Christian Zionist’s particular line of support for Israel, and the movement is estimated by most scholars to have millions of Christian supporters.

One of the most important concepts within the Christian Zionist lexicon is the idea that, when read properly, the Bible refers to the Jews as God’s “Chosen People,” who receive special blessing, protection, and a covenantal relationship with God, in several different places in scripture. In Genesis 12:2 and 12:3, God blesses Abraham, saying, “I will bless you… I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.” The book of John 4:22 also relays this idea explicitly, stating that “salvation is of the Jews,” and Romans 15:27 discusses the obligation of Gentiles to aid the Jewish people with material blessings. Christian Zionists see the fruit of this chosenness in the modern-day State of Israel’s accomplishments. John Hagee’s New York Times bestselling book, In Defense of Israel, dedicates an entire section to “Our Debt to the Jewish People” and compiles a lengthy list of Israel’s scientific and cultural achievements.7 For many Christian Zionists, this notion of chosenness and the bestowal of blessings from God upon the Jewish people and upon those who ally themselves with the Jewish people represent the chief imperative to bless Israel.8 Whether or not this is interpreted as a self-serving motivation, John Hagee’s assessment that “the man or the nation that has blessed Israel has been blessed of God” harbors a clear connection to a theological understanding of world politics.9

  1. Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of the Promised Land (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 37.↩

  2. Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of the Promised Land (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 270.↩

  3. Zeʼev 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, NY: HarperCollins, 2007).↩

  4. Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon: the Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 2.↩

  5. Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “The History of a Metaphor: Christian Zionism and the Politics of Apocalypse,”Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, no. 75 (1991): 76.↩

  6. Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of the Promised Land (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 11.↩

  7. John Hagee, In Defense of Israel (Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine, 2007), 91.↩

  8. Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 23.↩

  9. John Hagee, In Defense of Israel (Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine, 2007), 111.↩

The lineage to which God’s covenant applies is relevant for many Christian Zionists that see God’s elevation of Jewish status in the Bible as a call to venerate the modern Jewish people and to help them retain their covenantal land. 

Many Christian Zionists feel that the United States has itself been blessed because it has supported Israel. Referencing civilizations both in recent and ancient history, such as the Assyrians or the Germans, that practiced anti-Semitic policies and fared poorly, Christian Zionism operates on the notion that those who curse Israel are themselves cursed, and that “if we defend Israel, God will defend America”.10 The Reverend Jerry Falwell, “the personification of American Christian Zionism,” also sums up the sentiment nicely.11 Falwell states, “God has blessed America because America has blessed the Jew… if this nation wants her fields to remain white with grain, her scientific achievements to remain notable, and her freedom to remain intact, America must continue to stand with Israel”.12 Similarly, Richard Land, an evangelical Christian and the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee, makes the point that the United States is not an overwhelmingly sinless nation, with its “neo-pagan lifestyle” and its tendency to forsake God. For Land, a Princeton graduate and a highly influential evangelical leader, the fact that America is immensely blessed even in spite of much immoral behavior serves as a vivid affirmation that “God blesses those who bless the Jews and curses those who curse them”.13

In keeping with the emphasis placed on Biblical inerrancy, groups like CUFI capitalize on the importance of divine covenant as a critical theological underpinning for the Christian Zionist philosophy. The centrality of God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which Hagee deems “the most spectacular blood covenant recorded in the Old Testament,”14 as well as the Mosaic and Davidic covenants in Exodus 19 and 2 Samuel 7, respectively, provide focal points for Christian Zionist’s theological foundations.15 Christian Zionists point to the “Royal Land Grant of Israel,” passages in Genesis in which God makes a covenant with Abraham and gives the land of Israel to him and his descendants, as eternal proof that modern-day Israel belongs to the Jewish people alone (Genesis 12:7).16 Later chapters in Genesis reveal that the covenant will pass through Abraham’s son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob followed by Joseph and Ephraim. The lineage to which God’s covenant applies is relevant for many Christian Zionists that see God’s elevation of Jewish status in the Bible as a call to venerate the modern Jewish people and to help them retain their covenantal land. Because the covenant was not made with Ishmael, Abraham’s first son, conceived by the servant Hagar, and because Ishmael is seen as the ancestor of the modern Middle Eastern Arab population, Christian Zionists pay particular heed to the idea of God’s Abrahamic covenant promising the Holy Land to the Jewish nation through Isaac, and not the Arabs or the modern-day Palestinians.17 The promise of the Holy Land is also referenced in such other chapters of the Bible as Isaiah 60, which states that the Jewish people “will possess the land forever.”


  1. John Hagee, In Defense of Israel (Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine, 2007), 6.↩

  2. Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon: the Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 144.↩

  3. Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 124.↩

  4. Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 124.↩

  5. John Hagee, In Defense of Israel (Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine, 2007), 162.↩

  6. Yaakov S. Ariel, On Behalf of Israel: American Fundamentalist Attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865-1945 (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1991), 16.↩

  7. John Hagee, In Defense of Israel (Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine, 2007), 162.↩

  8. Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 26.↩