By: Dr. Tom Copeland – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com
Opinion: Anti-Zionism is poised to shape the future of Evangelical support for Israel.
While American Protestants have long been seen as key allies to the Jewish state of Israel, there are disturbing signs of an emerging anti-Israeli sentiment. This comes in pure political form, as when the Presbyterian Church USA recently opposed the Abraham Accords. Somewhat more quietly, the American BDS movement depends on support from academics, social justice warriors and from liberal religious communities.
Until the 1930s, there was broad American Protestant support for a future Jewish home, some of it driven by hope of proselytizing Jews, some of it by the hope that a Jewish state would bring the world closer to the return of the Messiah. Today, many conservative American Christians support Israel more on political than theological grounds: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, is a strategic partner to the United States in a hazardous region of the world, and there is a strong feeling that the Jewish people deserve a homeland of their own after the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust.
Mainline Protestants (the seven largest and oldest denominations in America) were initially in favor of Christian Zionism, but their views began to diverge shortly after 1948. They observed Israel’s expansion in the 1967 war and the condition of Palestinians in refugee camps, and during the 1970s these denominations began passing resolutions condemning Israel and arguing for Palestinian rights and statehood. The fall of apartheid in South Africa, and Israeli responses to the Second Intifada (including the construction of the security fence), solidified Mainline opposition to Israel at the turn of the new century. Despite recent protestations by the liberal World Council of Churches that it no longer supports BDS, the WCC and all of the Mainline denominations continue to move forward with BDS policies.
cont’d…