[Peace-discuss] The Christian Passion for Zionism

[David Green]

The Evangelical-Israeli Connection 
Scripture Inspires Many Christians to Support Zionism
Politically, Financially 
By Bill Broadway, Washington Post Staff Writer.
Saturday, March 27, 2004; Page B09



http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28376-2004Mar26?language

The much-publicized controversy over Mel Gibson's "The
Passion of the Christ" might give the impression that
Jews and evangelical Christians have little in common,
theologically or otherwise. Nothing could be further
from the truth.

While some evangelical and Jewish leaders sparred
publicly for months over the film's depiction of
Jesus's last hours, especially its potential to incite
anti-Semitism, thousands of evangelicals were donating
millions of dollars to support the state of Israel and
its people. And Jews, most notably the Israeli
government, welcomed their contributions.

"We get 2,000 to 2,500 pieces of mail a day, most of
them with checks," said Yechiel Eckstein, president of
the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews,
founded 21 years ago to foster better relations
between the two religions. Since then, Eckstein, an
Orthodox rabbi, has broadened the organization's
mission and in the last decade has collected more than
$100 million in financial support for Israel. Last
year, the fellowship contributed $20 million from a
donor base of 365,000 individuals and groups, most --
if not all -- of them evangelical Christians, Eckstein
said. About half of the money was used to help Jews
relocate to Israel from different parts of the world;
the remainder provided food, medical care and other
assistance to poor and elderly Jews in Israel, the
former Soviet Union and other countries.

On Monday, the fellowship announced a campaign to
raise $7.2 million to provide security for the 1,000
highest-risk public bus routes in Israel, including
bomb-detection devices and equipment for screening
passengers and baggage, and sent a $2 million check to
begin the process.

The fellowship, the largest and one of the oldest
evangelical organizations providing support for
Israel, has been joined in recent years by at least a
half-dozen others with such names as Bridges for
Peace, Christians for Israel, International Christian
Embassy Jerusalem and Chosen People Ministries.
Although no one tracks all evangelical contributions
to Israel, Eckstein believes the figure could exceed
$25 million annually.

Evangelical support for Israel dates to the 19th
century, when Christian Zionists called for the return
of Jewish exiles to Palestine to fulfill biblical
prophecies. If the creation of the state of Israel in
1948 seemed the answer to the Christian Zionists'
prayers -- not to mention those of the Jewish people
-- the extraordinary victory of Israel in the 1967
Six-Day War seemed to them a sure sign of divine will.

Evangelical leaders such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell
began lobbying for greater political support of Israel
from the U.S. government and urging financial support
from the rapidly growing evangelical movement. And the
relationship between evangelical leaders and the
Israeli government began to flower, slowly at first
because many Israeli leaders hesitated to accept money
from people who might want to convert them.

The 1977 election of Likud Party leader Menachem Begin
as prime minister marked a new era in
evangelical-Israeli relations. Begin was so pleased
with Falwell's pro-Israel activities that in 1979 he
gave the evangelical leader a Lear jet.

Today, the connection is even stronger. Likud Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon has met with evangelical leaders
on numerous occasions, most recently in Jerusalem last
month to ask their help in countering a rise in
anti-Semitic incidents in Europe and other parts of
the world.

In January, the Israeli parliament created a Christian
Allies Caucus to coordinate activities with its
Christian friends. About the same time, former Soviet
dissident Natan Sharansky, Israeli minister to the
Diaspora and for Jerusalem affairs, met with
evangelical leaders at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis to
thank them for their "steadfast support for the state
of Israel."

Those in attendance included John Hagee, pastor of the
17,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio;
Adrian Rogers, past president of the Southern Baptist
Convention; and Edward E. McAteer, friend of President
Bush and chairman of the Religious Roundtable, a
coalition of religious, military and civic leaders
committed to infusing Christian principles in public
policy.

On Feb. 15, Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon
honored Pat Robertson at the National Association of
Broadcasters Convention in Charlotte. He praised
Robertson's leadership of a movement that has "saved
Israel's tourism from bankruptcy" by promoting
pilgrimages to the Holy Land despite U.S. government
travel warnings after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks and renewed hostilities between Israelis and
Palestinians.

Elon, who estimated that 400,000 evangelicals traveled
to Israel last year and contributed millions of
dollars to its economy, is scheduled to address a
conference tomorrow at Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada,
Colo., a Denver suburb. Each year, the church
contributes $100,000 to welfare projects in Israel,
with most of the money going to a center for children
with disabilities in the West Bank settlement of
Ariel.

Faith Bible Chapel's association with Ariel is one of
numerous partnerships promoted by Christian Friends
for Israeli Communities, founded in 1995 after Israel
transferred territories to the Palestinian Authority
as a result of the Oslo Accords.

Sondra Oster Baras, an Orthodox Jew from Cleveland who
heads the group's Israeli office, said the
organization funds programs in one-third of the 150 or
so Jewish settlements in Gaza and on the West Bank.

About 2,000 donors make contributions "in the low
hundreds of thousands of dollars" annually for medical
equipment, school computers, playgrounds and
subsistence for unemployed families, Baras said.
Christian Friends also assists thousands of Christian
tourists, helping them plan trips to biblical sites on
bullet-proof buses.

"These are deeply religious people who read the Bible,
take it literally and enjoy seeing the Bible coming
alive," Baras said by phone from the northern West
Bank (Samarian) settlement of Karnei Shomron. "They
are very connected to prophecy and understand events
happening today in fulfillment of prophecy."

Baras said none of the Christian support organizations
she knows in Israel allow donors or workers to
evangelize -- despite the fact that those who come are
the most ardent believers in end-time prophecies
predicating the second coming of Jesus on the return
of Jews to Israel.

Because of their massive and increasing support for
Israel, many evangelicals were confused by Jewish
concerns that "The Passion" would provoke violent acts
of anti-Semitism.

"The churches in the past have helped to foster an
image of Jews as the sole enemies of Christ, which has
contributed to anti-Semitism in the secular world,"
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of
Evangelicals, said in a statement last month at the
Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum in Los Angeles. "We are
proud that in the last 50 years, churches have done
much to change these attitudes, and to loudly proclaim
a message of love and tolerance."

Jews appreciate such religious sensitivity, but they
also are well aware that Christian proclamations of
love include a hope that Jews eventually will accept
Jesus as the Messiah, said David A. Harris, executive
director of the American Jewish Committee. On the
other hand, Jews accept financial and political
support from evangelicals because evangelicals are
about the only friends Israel has left, he and other
leaders said.

On such issues as civil rights, prayer in schools and
abortion, American Jews have found solidarity with
mainline Protestants, including Lutherans,
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and members
of the United Church of Christ. But many Protestants
have parted ways with Jews on Israeli policies,
pressing for Palestinian rights, calling for
withdrawal of settlements from the West Bank and Gaza
and condemning retaliatory attacks after suicide
bombings.

Evangelicals, meanwhile, have been very supportive of
Israel's policies, especially military actions against
radical Palestinian groups. In an online survey of
U.S. evangelicals after Monday's 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.

Eckstein, whose organization conducted the informal
survey of evangelicals, said most people who
contribute to the International Fellowship of
Christians and Jews do so for religious reasons but
also want to show their political solidarity with
Israel. They oppose any withdrawal of Jewish settlers
and "are very distrustful of Palestinians, of [Yasser]
Arafat. They would make good Likudniks," he said.

Most Jewish leaders don't ignore the religious reasons
many evangelicals support Israel. But they prefer not
to dwell on theological differences, wanting to avoid
the kind of heated arguments that erupted over
Gibson's film.

"Many Jews and many Israelis are very open-eyed about
the driving religious philosophy of the evangelicals
and why they want Israel to exist," said Harris, whose
organization helped start Christian-Jewish dialogues a
half-century ago. But Jews are practical, he said.
"The end of time may come tomorrow, but Israel hangs
in the balance today."

Abraham Foxman, national director of the
Anti-Defamation League and a primary Gibson antagonist
in the "Passion" debate, agreed with Harris. "Israel
is fighting for security, isolated in a hypocritical
world," he said. "It's no time to say [to
evangelicals], 'You're not a perfect friend.' "

[Sidebar to above article] Backing Israel for
Different Reasons

Most evangelical Christians support the state of
Israel, but not always for the same reasons.

The strongest proponents, including religious
broadcaster Pat Robertson and House Majority Leader
Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), believe in premillennial
dispensationalism, a prophetic doctrine that is
dramatized in the "Left Behind" novels and includes
such events as the Rapture, the Battle of Armageddon,
the Second Coming of Jesus and a mass conversion of
Jews.

Most dispensationalists are also Zionists, believing
that the return of Jews to their homeland sets the
stage for this end-time scenario. Christian Zionists
supported the 1948 establishment of Israel and oppose
peace proposals that would cede land to the
Palestinians or call for the withdrawal of Jewish
settlers from the West Bank and Gaza.

Christian Zionists believe that modern-day Israel
fulfills God's promise to Jacob in Genesis 35: "The
land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you,
and I will give this land to your descendants after
you." They also believe the modern gathering of Jews
has created the New Israel and New Jerusalem foretold
in the Prophets and in the Book of Revelation.

Other evangelicals reject that idea, saying that the
promise of the land was fulfilled in the days of
Solomon and that the church -- universal Christianity
-- constitutes the New Israel. Proponents of this
position, called replacement theology, emphasize God's
covenant with humanity rather than the importance of
the land.

Estimates of the U.S. evangelical population vary
widely, from 50 million to more than 100 million, with
the higher figures including evangelicals in mainline
Protestant and African American churches. Evangelical
leaders and scholars say there are far more believers
in replacement theology than there are Christian
Zionists.

"Not all evangelicals agree [on theology], nor are all
pro-Israel positions alike," said Richard Cizik, vice
president for government affairs for the National
Association of Evangelicals. Whatever their views,
evangelicals "are and will remain the staunchest
supporters of Israel," he said. 


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