THE INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN EMBASSY, JERUSALEM
AND RENEWALIST ZIONISM:
EMERGING JEWISH-CHRISTIAN ETHNONATIONALISM
A dissertation submitted to The Graduate Division of Religion
Drew University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree,
Doctor of Philosophy
Matthew C. Westbrook
Drew University
Madison, New Jersey
May 2014
ABSTRACT
The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem
And Renewalist Zionism:
Emerging Jewish-Christian Ethnonationalism
Ph.D. Dissertation by
Matthew C. Westbrook
The Graduate Division of Religion
Drew University
May 2014
This study names and examines the Renewalist (Pentecostal-charismatic-neocharismatic) strain of Christian Zionism using the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, as
a primary lens into this global movement. The major finding in this dissertation is the
contemporary emergence of a Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism, suggesting changes to the way
nationalism is manifest in a global age, changes to certain segments of Christianity, and the
emergence of a distinctive global political and religious culture centered around the existence of
the state of Israel.
Scholars of Christian Zionism have long associated the Christian Zionism with the 19th
century, largely American theological movement known as premillennial dispensationalism. This
association is erroneous in that it does not recognize earlier and different sources of Christian
Zionism, nor does it recognize alternate, contemporary forms of the movement. Such
undifferentiating associations have consequences for scholarly approaches to understandings
related to the socio-political activities of Christian Zionism globally, the history of Christian
Zionism, millennialist Christianity, and the Christian appropriation of the state of Israel and
Jewish religion, culture, and even persons. Using the ICEJ as a primary example of Renewalist
Zionism, this dissertation examines the ways this Christian Zionism manifests in other historical
and contemporaneous forms of Renewalist Christianity. This work includes ethnography of the
ICEJ’s annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration held in Jerusalem, Israel and attended by
thousands of Christians annually. A further ethnography of the ICEJ-USA’s constructed
pilgrimage and tour to Israel explores the expressions and practices of Renewalist Zionism on the
ground in Israel. The ways that charismatic authority is constructed, the interplay of text,
contemporary political realities, and Renewalist spirituality, and the role of global Christian
media are also examined in detail. Furthermore, using the sociological theories of cultural
globalization and social memory, Christian Zionism is theorized as a subjective ground for truth
for its adherents in a relativizing, global age characterized by transnational flows and local,
socio-political particularizations.
CONTENTS
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………….... 1
2. RECENT SCHOLARLY TREATMENT OF CHRISTIAN ZIONISM
BY HISTORIANS AND SCHOLARS OF RELIGION: AN ASSESSMENT…… 36
3. RENEWALIST ZIONISM: THE ICEJ AND
THE NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION (NAR)……………………………… 86
4. THEO-POLITICAL PILGRIMMAGES:
2011 ICEJ FEAST OF TABERNACLES TOUR…………………………………123
5. SUPERNATURAL/MATERIAL BIBLE EXTENSIONS,
BIBLICAL ‘PROOFS,’ AND THE CONSTRUCTION
OF CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY………………………………………………146
6. 2011 ICEJ FEAST OF TABERNACLE CONFERENCE:
EMERGING JEWISH-CHRISTIAN ETHNONATIONALISM………………….177
7. RENEWALIST ZIONISM, MESSIANIC JEWS,
AND TELEVISION MEDIA……………………………………………………...211
8. GLOBALIZATION, RENEWALISM, AND RENEWALIST ZIONISM:
PROBLEMS OF IDENTITY AND CERTAINTY………………………………..240
9. SOCIAL MEMORY, ELECTION AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE
IN RENEWALIST ZIONISM…………………………………………………….275
10. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………312
WORKS CITED..…………………………………………………………………………325
The desires of interpreters are good because without them the world and the text are tacitly
declared to be impossible; perhaps they are, but we must live as if the case were otherwise.
Frank Kermode. 1979. The Genesis of Secrecy: On the interpretation of narrative, The
Charles Eliot Norton lectures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 126.
Anyone wishing to measure the religious temperature of our world must take a hard look at
Pentecostalism. The future of Christianity itself and the encounter between Christianity and other
faiths is deeply affected by it.
Anderson, Allan. 2004. An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global charismatic
Christianity. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 280.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Great works, in quality or merely in scope, are produced by great effort. Great effort
often comes in the plural. Such was the case with this dissertation.
The lion’s share of effort for this degree and this work was borne by my family, who
endured financial hardship, a father and husband’s time away from his duties, sometimes poor
living conditions, unreasonable debt, and emotional stresses innumerable. Thank you, Grace,
Brendan and Eva, from the bottom of my heart for your sacrifices, your love, and your pride in
me.
To my mentor, Laurel Kearns, who made time for our personal selves as well as our
professional selves, through these many (9) long years. Without your encouragement, sage
advice, direction, and keen eye for detail and gaps in thinking, this work would be but a shell of
itself. Thank you to Wyatt Evans for putting the importance of social memory front-and-center in
the study of history and social life. Your long pauses in your lectures remind me of the
importance of thinking deeply about a subject and following one’s sparks of imagination to
fruitful conclusions. To Terry Todd, thank you for always pointing to the “varieties of ‘Jesus’
experiences” present in Christianity, and for your enthusiastic reading of my dissertation.
To the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, I offer my thanks for your hospitality
and generosity in celebrating my birthday on the tour. I would like to offer special thanks to
former ICEJ-staffer Michael Hines, for his friendship and understanding on the tour. I would like
to thank my fellow tourists who exuded love for one another on the tour, particularly in looking
after one another. Thank you for your conversations, suggestions for further reading or listening,
and for being good sports when I spilled food or drink on you.
To the library staff at Portland State University I offer my thanks for your inter-library
loan services, which I used extensively over seven years. Thank you to my co-workers at Oregon
Volunteers who encouraged me greatly, pushed me toward my desired career (and away from
them), and endured my long time away for field research. I am also grateful to John Pattison for
his many hours of conversation—fruitful agonistic discourse—leading to ideas and to their
sharpening over the years. And thanks to my remaining father figure, Warren Staley, for your
willingness to talk about your dispensationalist background and to assist with research projects.
Thank you to the late Otto Maduro for teaching in such detail and depth that make the
lessons impossible to forget. Rest in peace, friend.
In loving memory of Brenda Jane Herron Westbrook
Chapter 1
Introduction
As we exited the bus at Qasr el Yahud (“Castle of the Jews”) located in the West Bank,1
the sound of music could be heard from a pronaos, or open-sided portico near the Jordan river,
where our group was to experience the rite of baptism at the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism.
After changing into baptismal robes, our group approached the portico on the way to the river.
The music was coming from a group of Filipino Christians who were praying in tongues and
singing contemporary, Pentecostal-style worship songs, identifiable to our group but sung in
Filipino. Two men strummed guitars; an elderly man in a wheel-chair sang nearby; several
women with headscarves waved various flags. One of the flags was a modified Israeli flag that
included the star of David but added an image of a key just below it; the meaning and
significance of the key were not obvious, but reminded me of Christian Zionists through the
centuries who have pointed to Israel as the key to interpreting the winding down of history.
These were clearly Pentecostal Christian Zionists. Our group sang, in English, with the Filipino
group for a while then made their way down the steps to the newly renovated baptismal site.
The river is not wide; an adult could easily throw a stone to the opposite bank. On the
Jordanian side, situated in the shadows of the ruins of the ancient monasteries, was a baptismal
site for Jordanian Christians, just as beautiful as the one where we were standing. Jordanians
were being baptized in the river as our group made its way into the water, both groups
serenaded by the Filipinos singing in the pronaos. Other groups, comprised of many different
ethnicities and nationalities, made their way into and out of the river, participating in the
1
This site was closed to tourists by the Jordanian government shortly after the 1967 war, but re-opened and
refurbished by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism in 2010. Gitit Ginat, “Take me to the River,” Haaretz, January 14,
2010.
1
2
baptismal scene and ritual. Michael Hines, the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem
(ICEJ) USA communications director was standing near me, taking in the scene. “This must be
the most peaceful border in existence between Jordan and Israel (sic),” Michael stated to me as
I videoed the surroundings.
Israeli soldiers, fully armed, strolled nearby, occasionally taking out their mobile devices
and recording the baptisms. It appears that they were just as amazed as Michael and I at the
scene.
***
Understanding this scene, and the complex world of Renewalist Zionism portrayed in it,
is part of the task of this dissertation. To do so involves understanding the now global nature of
Renewalist practice, networks, (to some extent) theology, and even consumption. It also involves
understanding the vastly changed attitudes toward Israel and the Jewish people that drives
Renewalist theology and political conviction.
In December of 1999, the government of Israel, with the Jewish Agency, the Jewish
Federations of North America and various donors, partnered with the Taglit-Birthright Israel
foundation to design a program to provide free, 10-day “discovery” trips for Jewish young
people from around the globe to visit Israel and strengthen Jewish identity for a new generation.
In the intervening years the program claims to have brought over 350,000 young Jews to Israel
as part of their program.2
In 2013, Uzi Landau, the Israeli Tourism Minister, indicated his desire to “create a
program modeled after Taglit-Birthright Israel trips for young Evangelical Christians,” to be
“Our achievements,” Taglit-Birthright Israel, accessed 3/26/14,
http://www.birthrightisrael.com/TaglitBirthrightIsraelStory/Pages/Our-Achievements.aspx.
2
3
funded by Christian philanthropists.3 His statement follows a nearly 10-year effort by
charismatic minister Robert Stearns, Executive Director of the Christian Zionist Eagles’ Wings
ministry to establish an Israeli-subsidized, Christian version of the Taglit-Birthright program
designed to bring young Christians to Israel to establish their “spiritual claim” to the land and
people.4 Stearns had initially suggested that the burden for the funding of such a program could
be born equally by churches, his ministry, and the Israeli government. But such a cost proved to
be too politically burdensome for the Israeli government in a time of government cutbacks, even
among supporters of more contact with Evangelicals within the Ministry of Tourism.5 Stearns
pressed on with his idea, establishing the Israel Experience College Scholarship Program,
eventually calling it the “Christian Birthright” program.6 The program seeks to develop a “strong
re-identification of the Jewish roots” of the Christian faith in their students, as well as develop
understandings of historical Christian anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, modern Zionism, and to be
able to “articulate the reality of the current Palestinian situation along with the Radical Islamic
agenda as pertaining to the Judeo-Christian world population.”7 Mobilizing students on
scholarship to be advocates for Israel on their home campuses and eventually in the broader
society is identified as the primary long-term goal of the program. The program now partners
with many U.S.-based colleges and universities, including evangelical universities such as Oral
Roberts University, Azusa Pacific, The Kings College, Wheaton College and others.8 Stearns’
JNS News Service, “Israel wants Christians to Fund Non-Jewish ‘Birthright’ Program,” TheJewishPress.com,
September 8th, 2013.
4
Daphna Berman, “Christians want a Birthright Program, too,” Haaretz, June 18, 2004. Stearns is a former
employee of the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem (ICEJ).
5
Berman, “Christians want a birthright program, too.”
6
The Israel Experience website credits The Jerusalem Post for first naming it a “Christian Birthright” program;
“About,” http://www.israelexperience.com/?q=node/1. The program began bringing Christian students to Israel on
scholarship in 2003, but did not appear to develop the identity of the organization as a “birthright” program until the
association with the Taglit-Birthright program by The Jerusalem Post.
7
Israel Experience website, ibid.
8
In 2011, the organization listed $385,008 in “temporarily restricted funds” on their IRS form 990 designated for
scholarships for students in this program.
3
4
program is but one example of a phenomenon that comprises a major finding in this dissertation:
an emerging Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism within what is now global Christian Zionism.
Since the 1980s, Christian Zionism, which I define broadly as Christian theological or
ethical justification for the state of Israel as a home for the Jewish people, has been a topic of
interest among the public and scholars alike. Much of that interest has been channeled into an
examination of the historical roots of the millennialist version of that phenomenon, often located
by interested parties within the 19th century English theological movement known as
premillennial dispensationalism. Dispensationalism emphasizes escape by the Christian faithful
from a degrading world and put the Jews (largely as victims) at the center of the theological
construct known as the “tribulation,” understood as an ultimately violent seven year period just
prior to the return of Jesus. This dissertation challenges the characterization of millennialist
Christian Zionism as rooted in dispensationalism, either historically or contemporaneously, and
suggests that there are (at least) two strains of millennialist Christian Zionism—and likely more.
Yet there are a relatively few central and interrelated convictions that seem to accompany
most of the modern, dominant strains of Christian Zionism and that differentiate them from, and
often set them in opposition to, other forms of Christianity. For the purposes of this dissertation I
focus, with previous scholarship, on the dominant, millennialist strain of Christian Zionism, the
antecedent to all other forms. I define this millennialist strain as political conviction derived from
Restorationist theological belief in the continuing role of "Israel" in the redemptive plan of God
which necessarily results in a temporally re-formed and re-embodied national Israel with
Jerusalem as its capital. Broadly, four inter-related convictions shape this stream of Christian
Zionism. First, the conviction that the return of Jews to historic Israel is prophesied in the
Christian Bible is paramount. Second, that this “restoration” is intimately connected to the return
5
of the Messiah (i.e. millennialism). Third, that the Jews remain “God’s chosen people.” Last, the
idea that “blessing Jews,” often (but not exclusively) expressed through political action on what
is believed to be their behalf, curries divine favor for believers and its correlate, that “cursing”
Jews and/or Israel brings divine wrath is also a widespread characteristic of Christian Zionist
conviction, particularly in its contemporary forms. This latter theological mechanism—blessing
and cursing—is a powerful form of theodicy within the movement, as I will demonstrate. It
should be noted here that it is possible to identify a, perhaps the, cornerstone of (pre-) Christian
Zionist conviction that can be traced back almost 440 years: the idea of a prophesied Jewish
return to Palestine (Wagner 2002). The other attributes, however, including the political
advocacy which has become popularly associated with the movement, do not appear in a
substantive manner until the beginning of the 19th century, first in Northern Europe and England,
in the millennialist fervor present in the aftermath of the French Revolution (Lewis 2010). This
latter characteristic seems to serve as the central concern of academics and journalists who
explore the movement apparently to discern the ways Christian Zionism may traverse boundaries
of separation of church and state, understood as excluding political advocacy for “religious”
reasons.
Beyond these core convictions there exists among Christian Zionists a wide variety of
views about how the “end” is to be accomplished, how support for Israel is to be carried out,
what events must precede the end, as well as significantly different attitudes about the condition
of the world prior to the accomplishment of the end. These views, represented in varying strains
of Christian Zionism, have social implications that vary widely and which are only likely
partially derived or sustained by theological commitments. One of the central findings from the
present study, for example, is that there is today a manifestation of a highly unusual
6
phenomenon, particularly when compared to historical Christianity, of an emerging, reciprocated
Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism, with profound implications for Christianity, Judaism, and the
relationship of global Christianity to the Jewish state.
Scholar of religion Hillary Kaell, who has studied expressions of Christian support for
Israel and Christian pilgrimage to Israel, describes an emerging “theological impulse” within
conservative Christianity that seeks to “recover what is believed to be the pure biblical origins of
the faith” through interaction with and appropriation of Jewish theology, culture and tradition
and resulting from “destabilizing shifts within American Christianity over the past 40 years,”
possibly attributable to a “sense of rootlessness” in American Christianity (2013). In this
dissertation I further these observations in three ways: first, I apply the theoretical concept of
ethnonationalism to the changes in Christianity related to Judaism that she observes; second, I
analyze the ways that this ethnonationalism emerges bilaterally between certain Christians and
some Jews and Israelis; third, I place the phenomenon in a wider, global context rather than
limiting it to changes in American Christianity.
Definitions
It is largely because of the various interests in the phenomenon that there is no consensus
among scholars on exactly what Christian Zionism is or how it should be classified. It seems
fairly uncontroversial to state that the reasons one brings to the table in choosing to write about
Christian Zionism inform how one defines it sometimes indicating, if only vaguely, one’s
perception of the phenomenon. In other words, if one is convinced Christian Zionism is mere
religious fanaticism one may choose to classify it as a manifestation of global fundamentalism; if
one believes it is an apocalyptic movement one may see it as one of many modern millennial
7
cults, etc.9 However, quick categorization and dismissal can obscure important differences.
Definitions are also shaped by assumptions as to the first historical appearance of the
phenomenon. For instance, is it possible to use the term “Christian Zionism” as applied to
phenomena occurring prior to the advent of Jewish Zionism? If the avoidance of anachronism is
prioritized, what should manifestations of Christian interest in Jewish restoration to Palestine and
the Jewish role in eschatology prior to Theodore Herzl be called? This is ultimately an honest but
unsettled issue and scholars have been unable to find consensus.
Understandably, some scholars tie Christian Zionism closely to Jewish Zionism (Sizer
2006). Others insist that it is a phenomenon rooted in Christian fundamentalism (Wagner 1995).
Still others insist that the driving force is an apocalyptic mindset, and characterize it accordingly
(Clark 2007). Others add to apocalypticism a concern about theocratic tendencies within the
movement (Halsell 1986, 2003). Some Christian Zionist leaders, such as the former director of
the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem (ICEJ), Malcolm Hedding, prefer the term
“Biblical Zionism,” for reasons that shall be discussed. However, most of these definitions tend
to oversimplify a complicated movement and miss important complexities within it. (It should
also be noted here that Israel/Palestine is a foil for any number of global concerns—terrorism,
anti-Semitism, human rights, anti-colonialism—which contributes to its present capacity to
generate social passions across continents and races, within global institutions, across religions
and among the religious and irreligious, and across social classes. Definitions of Christian
Zionism often seem to reflect these passions.)
9
The lack of attention to detail in regards to these and associated groups, resulting in poor reporting and scholarship,
has also been noted Stockton (1987) and by religion scholar Anthea Butler:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5026/beyond_alarmism_and_denial_in_the_dominionism_de
bate, accessed 8/12/12.
8
More careful scholarship recognizes the interpenetration of motivations present among
adherents of Christian Zionism. For instance, Spector defines it as “Christians whose faith, often
in concert with other convictions, emotions, and experiences, leads them to support the modern
state of Israel as the Jewish homeland” (2008, 3). For Spector, Christian Zionism began in 1948
when the “modern state of Israel” was born. Lewis (2010) also offers a nuanced definition but
within a longer historical horizon: “the belief that the Jewish people were destined by God to
have a national homeland in Palestine and that Christians were obliged to use means to enable
this to take place” (5). Lewis’ definition does a great deal of work by extending the conviction
into the past, before Jewish Zionism, farther into Protestant history—for him, beginning in early
19th century England. Further, his definition does not preclude a multitude of motivations in
service of Christian support for Jewish “restoration” to Palestine, which allows a bypassing of
the current media and trade-book trend of pigeon-holing Christian Zionists as little more than
fanatics seeking to bring about the end of the world, that is, the description of Christian Zionists
as the toxic “Dispensationalists.” The movement is more complex and multi-faceted than such
simplistic notions, incorporating new ideas about nationhood, responses to (and manifestations
of) globalization and secularization, inter-religious conflict and inter-religious dialogue, the
production of religious experience, it even has mystical applications believed to bring
“blessings” to Christian Zionists or explain the “curses” endured by others. Further, it is also a
phenomenon contributing in specific circumstances to the bridging of racial, national and ethnic
divides among its adherents (although not often with outside groups, such as Muslims in general
and Palestinians in particular), a finding which should prompt scholars to reflect on the moral
ambiguity that is often more present in social movements than we sometimes allow in our
assessments. Lewis’ definition allows for the incorporation of all of these phenomena even if
9
they are not present—or even implied—in his own, historically-focused work. The definition
offered at the beginning of this chapter is a modification of Lewis’ definition.
To this should be added the observation that Christian Zionism, as with Protestantism
generally, appears to be a form of Christian Restorationism, that is, those historic Christian
movements—Anabaptists, Puritans, Adventists, etc.—who posit a model of declension for
church history for which it is believed their movements rectify by “returning to” the original,
uncontaminated form of Christianity in the first century. Not at all coincidentally, restorationism
is a defining feature of Renewalism as well (Blumhofer 1993, introduction; Wacker 2001, 71).
But restoration is more than just a reversal of perceived social (especially moral) or religious
declension: it may also refer to attempts at re-establishing a sacred trajectory for history
understood to have been altered by the wrong choices of social ancestors and the reestablishment of social (i.e. the celebration of holidays) or spiritual (supernatural-based)
practices deemed “lost” to history but found in the Bible. Restoration in this sense often refers to
matters of ultimate redemption found typically in millennialist projects, and this is the dominant
form of restorationism found in Renewalism today.
Recognizing that there exists varying levels of importance assigned to human agency in
the unfolding of Christian Zionist ideology assists in accounting for the observed leeway noted
within varying streams of Christian Zionism as to how much of Palestine should “count” toward
fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan. This should not preclude the observation that Jerusalem,
perceived as the eternal dwelling of God, is and appears to have always been central to the
movement, if sometimes only implicit. In contemporary Christian Zionism, Jerusalem as an
undivided and eternal possession of the Jewish people is everywhere and always non-negotiable,
a characteristic of the movement not without considerable political consequences.
10
If a consensus definition of Christian Zionism is hard to come by among scholars, this is
doubly so for the slippery term “Evangelicalism,” the global Christian stream overlapping with
Renewalist Christianity. The issue of defining evangelicalism10 is a difficult, complex and even
tendentious task, which has vexed scholars at least since the 1970s.11 Rather than suggest my
own definition I will instead resort, perhaps disappointingly, to a mere sketch of what I see as the
historical lineage. For the purposes of this dissertation, Evangelicalism will be conceptualized
(but not defined) as a link in the chain of Christian self-understanding from 18th century
Methodism, characterized by, in John Wesley’s description, “a heart strangely warmed,” and
18th century German Pietism, which embraced a similar “theology of the heart.” This
conceptualization will be critical for this study when it is realized that, for these 18th century
traditions, such emphases on the “heart” were more than affective or experiential. For instance,
for German Pietists Ludwig von Zinzendorf and the Moravians, the heart referred to the deepest
place of a person, the seat of personality (Atwood 2004, 43ff). And, critically, from the heart
comes “feeling” (German: gehfül), which Atwood suggests is “the heart’s way of knowing”
(emphasis mine), a deeply Romanticist-influenced epistemology, and one significantly present in
Renewalist self-understanding and theology. The highly influential and politically connected 19th
century Christian Zionist, the Earl of Shaftesbury, wrote in his diary in 1871:
Revelation is addressed to the heart and not to the intellect; [God] cares greatly for man's
heart. Two mites of faith and love are of infinitely higher value to Him than a whole
To add to the confusion, the Lutheran church in Germany has, since Luther, been referred to as “evangelical,” but
is a different movement than what has been normally described as the British-U.S. form (or simply “Englishspeaking” evangelicalism). But one cannot retain even this descriptor; evangelicalism, largely by way of Renewalist
streams of Christianity that are considered evangelical, is spreading wildly through the globe in no small part
through contemporary US-based Christian media and missions boards, significantly still with U.S. flavor and control
over messaging (Wuthnow 2009).
11
Two sources are helpful for clarifying the issues involved: the entry for “evangelicalism” in the online
Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, edited by William Swatos (http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/evan.htm, accessed
8/7/2012) and the recent discussion and recommendations from Hackett and Lindsay (2008), though a clear
definition has still not reached, and may not ever reach, the status of scholarly consensus.
10
11
treasury of thought and knowledge. Satan reigns in the intellect; God in the heart of man.
(as quoted in Tuchman 1984, 182)
Similarly, Joseph Prince, a contemporary Renewalist Zionist and pastor of New Creation Church
in Singapore, a megachurch with over 24,000 members, frequently appears on Trinity
Broadcasting Network (TBN), arguably the largest Christian media empire in the world.
Teaching on location from the new TBN studios in Jerusalem, Prince noted that specific details
of his teaching on the priestly garments in the Torah were derived from the (extra-biblical)
Jewish Talmud, not the text of the Torah (i.e. the “Old Testament”) itself. Then he added: “but
[the teaching] bears witness with my spirit,” and, therefore, it was true.12 This is an example of
the knowledge-of-the-heart in action, a process of legitimation central particularly to the
Renewalist stream of Evangelicalism and which, exercised as charismatic authority, often
bridges the gap when more narrow forms of biblicism (i.e. citations directly from sacred text) are
not available.
Definitions for other key terms will be given when they appear later in this work.
Renewalist Christianity and Renewalist Zionism
The term “Renewalist” originated within the academic study of Pentecostalism and likely
gained traction as a descriptor when it was used in the World Christian Encyclopedia in 2005.
There it was employed to describe under a single umbrella term the various forms of global
Pentecostalism. The term was then used by the Pew Forum in 2006 in a ten-country study on
Pentecostalisms globally entitled “Spirit and Power: a 10-country survey of Pentecostals,” to
describe, in the words of Pew Director Luis Lugo, this “diverse and dynamic branch” of
Christianity (Pew Forum 2006, 1). The term Renewalist has since been appropriated by other
See “Behind the Scenes,” Trinity Broadcasting Network, original air date 1/8/13, accessed 2/18/13,
http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Behind%20the%20Scenes/ec/Y0Z2E4ODrs2SCwjH5IM7-oVeTA2WKWN_.
12
12
scholars (Newberg 2008; Butler 2012),13 journalists,14 and insiders to the movement (Johnson
2009; Synan 2011b), and is used throughout this dissertation.
Despite their differences, Renewalists share a number of common characteristics.
According to Burgess and Van der Maas (2002),
Participants in this renewal share exuberant worship, an emphasis on subjective religious
experience and spiritual gifts, claims of supernatural miracles, signs, and wonders—
including a language of experiential spirituality rather than of theology—and mystical
‘life in the Spirit’ by which they daily live out the will of God. (xvii)
The emphasis on the experience of the Christian God within the movement rather than a more
theological-rationalist approach to the faith (Althouse 2003, 39) de-westernizes the movement, at
least to some extent, allowing it to cross cultural boundaries with relative ease, even if the
historical antecedents of the movement within German Pietism and Anglo-American Methodism
are still emphasized by some scholars (Hefner 2013, 13; Dayton 1987). The major strands of
Renewalism can be divided into three “waves,” beginning with the Pentecostal movement’s
thrust into the public eye at the fin de siècle mainly in the U.S., potentially influenced by
“religious outlooks and practices initiated in West Africa” (Wacker 2001, 3).15 Rejected by most
of establishment Christianity at its inception (Burgess and Van der Maas 2002, xix), the more
sectarian Pentecostal movement of the first wave shortly formed its own denominations and
13
The Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative at the University of Southern California also adopts this term.
See “Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative,” accessed 4/23/12, http://crcc.usc.edu/initiatives/pcri/.
14
See “On Religion: Pentecostalism causes tension in some mainstream churches,” Terry Mattingly, Scripps
Howard News Service, accessed 8/17/13,
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2006/oct/21/religion_pentecostalism_causes_tension_some_mainst/?print=1.
15
Most of the scholarship on the origins of the Pentecostal movement has been written by westerners for westerners,
who date the origins to either the Azusa Street revival in 1906 or Topeka, Kansas in 1901. However, there is good
reason to believe that this is a heavily ethnocentric retelling of the history (Newberg 2008, 7-8; Anderson 2004, 2325). As the editors of The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, Burgess and
Van der Maas, put it, “[m]ore recent scholarship has demonstrated convincingly that pentecostal outpourings
occurred in other parts of the world—notably Africa, England, Finland, Russia, India, and Latin America—well
before the 20th century” (2002, xvii). They report that up to 900,000 Africans in local, independent churches
characterized by “spiritual experiences” that were “pentecostal in nature” may have existed by the beginning of the
20th century (xx), at the start of the Azusa revival. How these non-Western movements may relate to the antecedents
of modern Pentecostalism located within German Pietism and Anglo-American Methodism (if at all) remains an
underdeveloped area within scholarship on Renewalism.
13
spread rapidly around the globe. Pentecostals were strongly supportive of Jewish return to
Palestine from the beginning, with the Azusa Street Revival (1906) establishing a Pentecostal
mission in Palestine, remarkably, in 1908 (Newberg 2008, 1).
The second wave has been characterized by the emergence of the non-sectarian
“Charismatics.” This wave began around 1960 with Pentecostal-like experiences erupting within
established denominations. Many trace the beginnings of this wave to the experiences of an
Episcopal rector in southern California named Dennis Bennett. The movement quickly spread
through the 1960s and 1970s into every major branch of Christianity (Burgess and Van der Maas
2002). Burgess and Van der Maas state of Charismatics that “they have typically been more
overtly supernaturalistic and culture-affirming in their perspective on the Christian life than
classical Pentecostals” (xix).
The last wave, the neo-charismatic movement, began roughly around 1980 and is
comprised of those Christians who share many of the features of Pentecostals and Charismatics
but cannot be classified within the first two waves (Synan 2011b, 16-7). They are largely present
in independent, indigenous groups and, besides the common emphasis on the supernatural and
gifts of the spirit, are widely variant in culture and practice, often merging Renewalist practices
with local customs and spiritualities (Burgess and Van der Maas 2002, xx). They are incredibly
savvy in relation to new media. One distinguishing feature of neo-Charismatics is the reemergence of an emphasis on the offices of the New Testament, specifically the prophet and the
apostle (Blumhofer 1993, 3).
Together, these three waves comprise global Renewalism. The total number of
Renewalists globally is staggering. As of 2010, total world Renewalists are liberally estimated at
614 million (Synan 2011b, 17) and, using figures from 2011, estimated at 584 million
14
conservatively (Lugo 2011, 17).16 Importantly for this study, Renewalists have been shown to be
more supportive of Israel (rather than the Palestinians) than any other segment of Christianity in
nearly all of the countries surveyed in the Pew Forum’s “Spirit and Power” study (Pew Forum
2006, 71-2, 207). The study found that “sympathy toward Israel, common among evangelical
Christians in the United States, is generally more common among Pentecostals than nonRenewalist Christians around the world, even in countries with no direct political stake in the
conflict in the Middle East” (61). As one of the researchers on Pew’s “Spirit and Power” study,
Timothy Shah, provocatively put it in a panel discussion on the study: “Does the international
Israeli lobby speak in tongues? The answer is yes.”17 The ICEJ is a Christian Zionist political
advocacy organization based in Jerusalem and is a major subject of this dissertation. The ICEJ,
deeply embedded in the Renewalist movement, seems to function across all three waves fairly
seamlessly, with significant movement toward the third wave discernable under the leadership of
recently hired Executive Director Jurgen Buhler.18
In contradistinction to Christian Zionism understood as coterminous with
dispensationalist theology, the alternative strain of Christian Zionism that I examine in this
dissertation I call Renewalist Zionism. The term may be used to differentiate Christian Zionist
streams; for instance in chapter 2, I seek to differentiate Renewalist Zionism from what might be
called Dispensationalist Zionism. Other forms of Christian Zionism may yet be identified by
16
Synan uses the figures from The Atlas of Global Christianity, 2010 edition, by Todd Johnson and Kenneth R.
Ross, which is published by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological
Seminary. This estimate numbers third wave Renewalists (313 million) at more than the first two waves combined
(ninety-four million and 206 million, respectively). This number and the aggregate number of Renewalists globally,
comprising around 27% of the estimated 2.184 billion Christians world-wide (Lugo 2011), indicate an enormous
shift in world Christianity has and is occurring in the last century, accelerating in the last twenty-five years. Global
Christianity is rapidly becoming more supernaturalistically-inclined.
17
Timothy Shah, “Pentecostalism and Politics,” YouTube video, 1:37:12, panel discussion on the 2006 Pew Forum
study “Spirit and Power” given at the University of Southern California, posted by “USCCollege,” October 16,
2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx7Pvt1bdrM.
18
Buhler became the ICEJ’s Executive Director in the summer of 2011. See chapter 3.
15
scholars; for instance, the political advocacy of the American Christian Palestine Committee, a
liberal Christian Zionist organization founded in the mid-20th century could be classified as
another distinct form of Christian Zionism.19 My argument is that paying attention to
differentiation of Christian Zionist streams brings scholarly clarity to the phenomenon, allowing
for comparison and the analysis of the various forms of social action emerging from the varying
streams.
A central task in this dissertation is to attempt to differentiate a Renewalist Zionism
stream from within Christian Zionism historically and contemporaneously, examining practices,
local and global social structures, as well as beliefs and ideologies that are characteristic of the
Renewalist movement. As will be seen in chapters 3 through 7, Renewalist practices are
significantly different in character—and often in outcomes—from the fundamentalism practiced
in American Evangelicalism since the late 19th century. It should not be surprising, therefore, to
find that Renewalist support for the state of Israel would take a (sometimes radically) different
shape from the Zionism of fundamentalism and the premillennial dispensationalism that
characterized it (Marsden 2006). As a means to accomplishing this differentiating project, my
research is conducted primarily through an examination of the ICEJ, one of the largest and most
globally manifested Christian Zionist organizations in the world. Because of their enormous
influence within Christian Zionism and within Israel over the past thirty-three years, the ICEJ
represents the heart of global Christian Zionism. In addition to their significant work related to
Jewish immigration to Israel, the ICEJ is a major player in the production of Christian Zionist
teachings and ideology. Through examination of the ICEJ’s theology, practices, and the
communities it reaches it is clear that the organization is an exemplar of what I am calling
Paul Merkley (2001) briefly names the Zionism practiced by these and other related Christians “Protestant Liberal
Pro-Zionism” (161).
19
16
Renewalist Zionism. Using ethnographic material obtained on a conference/tour to Israel with
the ICEJ and several years of examining their publications, videography, and other online
material, I will demonstrate how one major and distinguishable strain of Christian Zionism
constructs its views and support of Israel in theology, media, social memory, eschatology (study
of the “last things”), moral discourses, and, does it under the challenges and opportunities of
globalization. The ICEJ conference and tour were held in conjunction with, and in celebration of,
the annual Jewish holiday known as the Feast of Tabernacles and annually attended by Christian
supporters of Israel from all over the world.
Brief Background to the ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles
The Christian celebration of the Feast in Israel and the tour are sponsored annually by the
ICEJ; the year of my participation (2011) was the 32nd annual celebration. The research purpose
of the trip was twofold: 1) to see how a Renewalist Zionist group constructs its messaging using
the Bible and its own constructions of the past and, 2) to focus on the Jerusalem Feast of
Tabernacles celebration, which has (to my knowledge) not been directly observed and analyzed
in its entirety by scholars of religion.20 The Feast of Tabernacles celebration coincides with the
Jewish holiday by the same name and takes its name from what in Hebrew is known as Sukkot
(alt: Succoth), one of the three “great” Jewish feasts, along with the feasts of Shavuot and
Pesach. The Christian church historically has generally had a special place for each of the latter
two feasts within its own tradition:21 Pesach, or Passover, is associated with the death and
20
For partial observations of the Feast see Clark (2007) and the intro in Newberg (2008).
For a time after the Reformation celebration of these holidays was considered, particularly by Puritan populations,
to be a “popish” activity that should be avoided. (Christmas was often associated with the Feast of Tabernacles in an
alternative dating system for the event.) For example, consider the 17th century argument of Englishman Samuel
Mather, older brother of American colonist and Puritan minister Increase Mather (1705):
The Lord then appointed the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Passover and Pentecost: But for us to keep these
Feasts now, under the Names of Christmas, Easter, or Whitsuntide [Britain’s name for Pentecost], or the
like, as the Pope hath taught us to do, it is a far greater Sin then (sic) People do imagine; the retaining of
21
17
resurrection of Jesus and Shavuot is better known in the Christian world as the celebration of
Pentecost, which, with the major exception of Reformed theological circles is understood to be
the birthday of the Christian Church occurring after Jesus’ ascension (cf. the Book of Acts,
chapter 2). According to Susan Michael, the Executive Director of the US branch of the ICEJ
who accompanied my group on the last few days of our tour, the Christian Feast of Tabernacles
event in Israel emerged as an idea from Christians buoyed by (relative) increasing ease (and
decreasing costs) of travel in the 1970s,22 who began to feel a compulsion to explore the Jewish
sources of their faith after visiting the state of Israel, some of them even moving to Israel (Susan
among them). A “Hebrew Roots” movement emerged among these Christians, motivated by
several impulses. First among them was a desire to re-examine the theological connections
between the Jewish and Christian covenants. Second, these Christians wanted to increase social
contact with Jewish Israelis, achieved in part by providing social services to immigrating Jews. A
third feature of the Hebrew Roots movement can be seen in the Christian ritual appropriation of
Jewish symbols, rites, and ritual artifacts, including the Hebrew language. Lastly, Hebrew Roots
Christians wanted to be physically being present in the land understood to be covenanted
eternally to Jews through divine promises made to Abraham in the book of Genesis. According
to ICEJ co-founders Merv and Merla Watson, the group felt impressed to fulfill what they
believed to be a divine command based in Isaiah 40:1 to “comfort ye, comfort ye my people,”
such legal Shadows being an implicite denyal of the Truth of the Gospel; but, Men consider not the
meaning of their own Actions. [emphases his, 150]
22
Historical barriers to travel to Israel, according to Shoaval (2000), were the “relatively great distances from the
countries of origin, coupled with problems of security and the lack of a suitable infrastructure for tourism when
visitors arrived” (254). The latter two problems were particularly acute for tourists to Israel, and security, to some
extent, still is. The current (at least perceived) security instability makes it possible for other, “middle forms” of
Christian Zionist “Holy Land” consumption to emerge, a topic which will be taken up in chapter 7. Shoaval also
points to the development of a global tourism industry and infrastructure in the 20 th century which has contributed to
tourism to Israel.
18
which they understood as Jews and, in particular, Jewish Israelis.23 It was out of this loose
association of South African, Canadian, American, Dutch, German and British Christians living
in Israel that, in the late 1970s, there emerged a belief that the failure of the historic Christian
Church to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles was a theological mistake. In Susan’s words, “a
revelation [arose] of the importance and significance” of the Feast of Tabernacles and of the
need for Christians to be actively observing all three of the great Jewish feasts, infused with what
they understood to be more Jewish interpretations. To them, this meant that Christians could no
longer neglect Sukkot. They were determined to celebrate Sukkot as a Jewish-inspired Christian
feast and to influence the rest of the Christian world in this regard. Further, according to Susan,
this group of believers felt that it was prophesied in scripture that “the nations” would annually
celebrate this feast after Jesus’ return. The ICEJ often cites the following passage from the book
of Zechariah as justification for this practice:
And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against
Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to
keep the Feast of Tabernacles. (Zechariah 14:16)24
The distinctive contribution of the ICEJ to the feast celebration—made possible in no small part
by advances in media and travel technology—is the idea that (at least) a celebration should be
held by Christians annually in Jerusalem. The first ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles, held in 1980,
drew about “1,300 individuals from 30 nations,” according to Timothy King, a participant in the
first celebration and Financial Officer for the ICEJ (King 2004). Today it has become the largest
single tourist event in Israel, drawing crowds of up to six or seven thousand for the 6-day
celebration, according to ICEJ figures—almost 8,000 in 2008.25
23
Personal interview with the author, May, 2013.
All Bible quotations are from the New King James Version unless otherwise noted.
25
Parsons, David. “Feast Draws Record Crowd,” Word From Jerusalem, November, 2008, p. 1.
24
19
Susan, who considers herself a Bible teacher, exudes calmness and confidence. In 1980,
at the time of the ICEJ’s founding, she was just beginning work on a Master’s Degree in JudeoChristian Studies at the American Institute for Holy Land Studies in Israel founded by G.
Douglas Young (Merkley 2001, 163 ff.; Hanson 1979).26 She now runs the ICEJ-USA branch
from its headquarters in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where the organization had fairly recently
relocated from Washington, DC. She insisted publicly and, to me privately, that their celebration
of the feast is not understood as a “fulfillment” of prophecy, even if former Israel Chief Rabbi
Shlomo Goren has made this explicit connection with the presence of the ICEJ (Merkley 2001,
174).27 Malcolm Hedding, the former Executive Director of the ICEJ in Jerusalem, told Feast
attendees in 2006 that the ICEJ has been used by God to “revive the ancient Biblical tradition of
the nations coming up to Jerusalem to keep [the] Feast of Joy” (Hines and King 2006). As we
strolled through the Old City conversing, Susan Michael told me that participation in the feast
was “practice” for Jesus’ return, when it would then be celebrated annually under his reign.
There exists a pragmatic and theological need within Christian Zionism, only now beginning to
emerge in force, to play down connection to perceived instances of present and future prophecy
The Institute is also known as the Jerusalem University College. According to the College’s website, the College
is “an extension campus in Jerusalem for approximately 85 regionally or professionally accredited Christian
universities, colleges and seminaries located throughout the world. JUC is also an independent graduate degree
granting institution of higher education in Israel. Founded in 1957 as a graduate institution, the school now provides
both graduate and undergraduate students the opportunity to study the Christian Scriptures in the context of the land
where the events occurred as well as the languages, social and political culture, religions and historical relationships
of the Middle East.” http://www.juc.edu/index.html, accessed 2/26/13. As of 2/27/13 the college reports that 16,000
students from JCU-affiliated higher education institutions have participated in JCU programs in Israel. Oral Roberts
University (ORU), a Pentecostal university affiliated with the Assemblies of God, is a member institution of the JCU
and is the alma mater of Susan.
27
As did our Israeli tour guide, Kenny, who stated to us that he was assuming we had “come when you did, in
fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah, that all the nations would come to Jerusalem and share the covenant meal
of the Lord.” Several of my co-pilgrim-tourists nodded in approval at this statement. Accuracy in theology, even the
supposed “dispensationalist” theology ascribed to Christian Zionists such as those on my tour, is consistently
upstaged by a visceral and affective response, both to Israel and the Jewish people, and to the perception that God is
actively working in, through and for all (Christian and Jewish) parties, including the pilgrims. Stated succinctly,
plausibility for Christian Zionist claims lies beyond the ability of those claims to abide by the specifics of,
particularly predictive and eschatological, theological systems. This interpretation is to go farther than Smith (2010,
72) who states: “It is more likely that popular support for Israel resonates with significant elements within American
history and identity rather than in any particular configuration of Christian doctrine.”
26
20
fulfillment, given that language about prophecy does not have currency in the public sphere
where political advocacy is conducted. Christian Zionists are beginning to realize that effective
advocacy for Israel cannot find its root in the fulfillment of prophecy.28 But within the
movement, it should be noted, the theme of the revival of the past as a harbinger of
eschatological fulfillment is still a powerful motivator. The millennialism infusing most of the
movement is summed up vividly in the words of the ICEJ’s International Director, Juha Ketola
of Finland,
One of our eyes should then be constantly looking on Israel, on Jerusalem and on the
Jewish people worldwide – for their good, for their blessing and for their protection! And
we should actively take part in God’s doings and dealings with her. And the other eye
should be on the nations – for their good, blessing and protection! That is, we should be
driving with two horses but standing in one chariot! Because these horses are running
parallel, going in the same direction and both are part of that larger redemptive process
which ends with the return of the King and the restoration of justice on the earth—and He
will be the same King over both horses!29
The decision to found the ICEJ was made in an important political context in Israel at the
time. The organization was founded in the same month and year as their first celebration of the
Feast of Tabernacles in 1980, in response to events that previous summer in Israeli politics,
specifically the passage of the “Jerusalem Law,” also known as the “Basic Law.” Pressured by
hardline conservatives, the Knesset passed the law affirming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in
the face of negotiations on Palestinian autonomy in the territories between Israel (Menachem
Begin) and Egypt (Anwar Sadat), spearheaded by the U.S. president Jimmy Carter (Bar-Siman-
See the special 2012 issue of Ministry Today (Digital) (month unknown), edited by Eagle’s Wings founder Robert
Stearns, dedicated to outlining “The New Zionism” emerging in Christianity that emphasizes not only the Christian
basis of support as “an essential biblical principle,” but support for Israel by Christians advocated on humanitarian
grounds, as “a universal moral imperative” (18). The magazine is published by Strang Publications, a major
Renewalist publishing group. Digital edition accessed 7/9/13,
http://strang.imirus.com/Mpowered/book/vmtnz12/i1/p24.
29
Ketola, Juha. “Two Horses, One Chariot: The global mission of the ICEJ,” Word From Jerusalem, July, 2013, p.
5.
28
21
Tov 1994, 201-2; Wasserstein 2008, 245).30 Though it appeared to have more geo-political
implications than legal—it was an election year in the United States and the Republican
candidate, Ronald Reagan, was a staunch Israel supporter with a largely Israeli-supporting
evangelical base—the law, spearheaded by a group within the
extreme Israeli Right, was aimed at thwarting the peace process
and sought to “reassert” Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
This was despite the fact that the east portion of the city had been
more or less effectively annexed after the Six Day War of 1967
(Wasserstein 2008, 211; Sachar 2007, 874). The law was
essentially a poison-pill bill, with few members of the Knesset
Figure 1. Teddy Kollek, then-mayor of
Jerusalem, addressing a gathering at the
opening of the ICEJ in 1980. Kollek gave
the vacated Chilean embassy to the ICEJ
to serve as its headquarters. (Photo
courtesy of ICEJ, http://int.icej.org.)
seemingly able to absorb the political consequences of voting against a law that affirmed the
centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people. Passed during the ninth Knesset—the first with a
majority, Begin-led, right-wing Likud—the law begins succinctly: “Jerusalem, complete and
united, is the capital of Israel.”31 Reaction from the Arab world was swift, threatening oil
embargoes (Merkley 2001, 170). Further, the actions of the Knesset drew the ire of the UN,
which passed Security Council Resolution 478 condemning the declaration on Jerusalem as a
30
See Wasserstein (2008), 239-250 and Sachar (2007), 873-875. Wasserstein notes the wariness of the Likud at
being seen as weak on Jerusalem relative to the extreme Right in the Knesset, as well as concern over the new
friendship between the PLO and the nascent Khomeini regime in Iran and Iranian interest in exploring “ways to
liberate the city of Jerusalem from Israeli occupation” (2008, 241).
31
See “Basic Law-Jerusalem-Capital of Israel,”
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1980_1989/Basic%20Law-%20Jerusalem-%20Capital%20of%20Israel,
accessed 6/5/12. It is important to note that the territorial position of Likud was more moderate than the “Revisionist
program of Vladamir Jabotinsky” which called for expansion of Israel into Jordan (Peretz 1977, 258). Likud’s
position was that the east-west boundaries of Israel were from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea. Jerusalem,
therefore, was not an overreach, at least within the Likud platform. Evangelicals in the United States concurred, and
said so in a full-page ad the New York Times in 1977: “…we, along with most evangelicals, understand the Jewish
homeland generally to include the territory west of the Jordan River” (Merkley 2001, 167-8). However, according to
the Knesset itself, the Likud under Begin was aggressively pursuing on-the-ground establishment of its more
moderate policy: “during the term of the ninth Knesset the Jewish settlement movement in Judea, Samaria and the
Gaza Strip was accelerated: a permanent settlement was set up at Elon Moreh, Beit Hadassah in Hebron was settled
and the number of Jews in the territories rose to about 8,300. In this period an attempt was made by Jews to
assassinate several mayors of Arab towns in the territories.” From “Main Events and Issues within the ninth
Knesset,” http://www.knesset.gov.il/history/eng/eng_hist9.htm, accessed 6/5/12.
22
violation of international law and called on “those States that have established diplomatic
missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City.”32 Only 13 countries had
embassies in Jerusalem at the time—the others were in Tel Aviv—and all of them complied with
the Resolution.33
For the Christians who founded the ICEJ, Jerusalem, under complete Jewish control
alone, was to eventually be the “spiritual capital of the entire world” and the location from which
all nations would receive divine rule, encompassing both judgment and blessing.34 God’s
presence was seen to have eternal residence in Jerusalem, according to their reading of the
scriptures, and Jewish control of the city meant that divine, temporal rule of the city—and the
world—was not far from culmination. For Christian Zionists, historical memory and unfolding
eschatology find their apex of concern in a united, Jewish-controlled Jerusalem. It was in this
context of unfulfilled desire that U.N. Resolution 478 was felt by these Christians to be in
opposition to the divine purpose for history and for Israel.
32
Passed August 20, 1980, 14 to 0 (US abstaining). Text of the law can be found in the UN archives:
http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/DDE590C6FF232007852560DF0065FDDB, accessed, 6/5/12. Jerusalem,
initially in 1947 and again in 1949 after the Israeli war of independence, had been declared by the UN to be an
internationalized zone: UN resolution 303 (IV) states the General Assembly’s “intention that Jerusalem should be
placed under a permanent international regime, which should envisage appropriate guarantees for the protection of
the Holy Places, both within and outside Jerusalem, and to confirm specifically the following provisions of General
Assembly Resolution 181 (II): (1) the City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special
international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations” (Laqueur and Rubin 2008, 86).
33
Godsell, Geoffry. Christian Science Monitor, August 18, 1980,
http://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0818/081841.html, accessed 2/20/13. Sachar (2007, 875) reports 11, but this
number appears erroneous. The Netherlands was the only European country remaining in Jerusalem prior to the
passage of the Jerusalem law; the other countries were central and South American. Costa Rica and El Salvador
returned to Jerusalem in 1984, but both moved back to Tel Aviv in 2006 after the Israeli-Lebanon war. The ICEJ
remains the only “embassy” in Jerusalem.
34
It should be noted here that this is also the exact view of the Jewish religious nationalists who, with the ICEJ, seek
the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. See Shany Littman, “Following the dream of a Third Temple in
Jerusalem,” October 4, 2012, accessed October 5, 2012. This sort of ideological “mirroring” has been noted by some
careful scholars (Spector 2008; Taub 2010) and journalists (Gorenberg 2000) and will be important to the analysis in
the pages that follow.
23
In response, the ICEJ was born as a “Christian embassy,” “founded in 1980 as an act of
comfort and solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people in their claim to Jerusalem.”35 Their
mission was explicit: both mobilizing and conducting Christian political advocacy and education
“on behalf” of Israel, from Jerusalem. Christian tourism to Israel with an advocacy slant, such as
was evidenced in the opening anecdote, has also become important to the ICEJ. In their first
year, according to their internal history, the ICEJ had a staff of 30 drawn from 10 countries and
had received $400,000 from Christians globally. The ICEJ recognizes that “embassy” is a bit
presumptive on their part but, in their words, “while the ICEJ is not a political or accredited
diplomatic embassy, …it represents millions of Bible believing Christians worldwide who stand
in solidarity with the people of Israel.”36 According to Paul Merkley (2001), an historian and
Christian Zionist with deep connections to the ICEJ,
The “Embassy” announced [at its founding] that it would represent what it said was the
vast majority of Christian people who wished to see their governments represented in the
Israeli capital. The organization would stand with the Jews in affirming what God had
said about Israel’s right to rule in Jerusalem. (171)
He further identifies the founding of the ICEJ as possibly the most important outcome for Israel
relative to the passage of the Jerusalem law. Because of the subsequent development of
relationships between the work of the ICEJ and various Israeli state apparatuses (the Knesset,
Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Immigration) and non-governmental groups (the Jewish
Agency, the World Jewish Congress, to name just a few), there is merit to this claim.
See “About us,” accessed 6/5/12, http://int.icej.org/about/about-us. “Comfort” is very broadly defined, as I will
show.
36
See “About us,” accessed 6/5/12, http://int.icej.org/about/about-us.
35
24
The Jerusalem Post has suggested that it was the celebrations begun by the ICEJ in 1980
that have contributed to what is now a world-wide celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles held in
various countries, particularly by those who
cannot make the trip to Jerusalem.37 The ICEJ,
then, can be seen as a catalyst for the expansion
of the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles by
Christians globally as well as introducing their
own unique, Jerusalem-based Feast celebration
and tour offerings.38 Further, the ICEJ-
Figure 2: ICEJ Logo resembling a "succa," or
"tabernacle" of olive branches covering the earth.
(Photo courtesy of ICEJ, http://int.icej.org.)
sponsored tour is more than simply another
form of tourism of Christian holy sites. As Merkley put it, for the ICEJ “Christian tourists must
be aware that they are visiting Israel” (Merkley 2001, emphasis his, 172); “Holy Land” is not an
adequate descriptor of Israel in the worldview of the ICEJ. This is consistent with my own visit,
as I will show. Today, the ICEJ describes its mission as one to both Israel (their embassy in
Jerusalem) and to the nations (their branches). “We, as a ministry, are like a funnel… [used] to
Kasey Bar. “Feasting around the World,” The Jerusalem Post, February 20, 2009,
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=156473.
38
Tours are offered via the “embassies” located within home countries, usually from Western nations—i.e. ICEJUSA tour, ICEJ-Ireland tour, etc.—and are add-ons to participation in the Feast event (conference and worship held
in the Jerusalem Convention Center). Presumably, given that Christian Zionism can be found in abundance in a wide
range of countries, these tours are largely Western because of the relative wealth of Western nations, which makes it
easier for a sufficient cadre of wealthy supporters to emerge to form a feasible tour group. Overall, the Central
Bureau of Statistics in Israel reports that, in 2011, over 80% of the 3.1 million tourists to Israel were from either
Europe (62.5% of total visitors) or North America (21.7% of total); http://www1.cbs.gov.il/www/tourism_q/t03.pdf,
accessed 7/16/12. In 2006, for instance, tours were sponsored by (at least) the following national ICEJ embassies:
the United States, Britain, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. In recent years, ICEJ tours
have emerged from various South American countries such as Brazil and Bolivia. The ICEJ reports that despite this
English-speaking (and probably white) dominance within the tours, “less than one pilgrim in four [for the Feast
Conference, excluding tours] was from an English-speaking nation” in that year (Hines and King 2006). The
conclusion, then, is that depending on the definition of “English-speaking nation,” participants in the Feast (but not
the tours) are normally quite diverse racially and ethnically. This certainly was also true of the 2011 Feast which I
attended.
37
25
channel support and help from the nations into the lives of individual citizens of Israel,”39 Juha
Ketola states, adding that their ministry to the nations involves bringing the millennialist
message of Israel to peoples around the globe, teaching them the faithfulness of God to his
people(s).
Studying Christian Zionism in Historical and Religious Context(s)
In this dissertation I argue that specific theological systems such as premillennial
dispensationalism, specific forms of millennialism, the presence of Christian apocalypticism,
even specific definitions of “Jews” or “Israel” (both the land and the biblical ethne) are not
coterminous with Christian Zionism as a whole. Such basic elements as who counts as a Jewish
person, for instance, may find significantly different expressions in various forms of Christian
Zionism. Therefore, Christian Zionism is a long-developing and complex phenomenon that
requires careful delineation and study in its various iterations and contexts. This insight allows
for a focus on factors other than the presence of a specific and well-defined theological system as
the source of cause-and-effect historically. Different Christian Zionist streams, from versions
both historical and contemporaneous, take various positions on theological issues, each with their
own (often significant) social effects. The variance in beliefs and intricacies/complexities of the
theological systems used to legitimate Christian Zionist convictions are indeed wide and
complex, a point which has proved daunting if not prohibitive to scholars seeking to study the
phenomenon.40 This is necessarily so given several countervailing factors. First, the nature of
modern Christian Zionist belief, grounded as it so often is in biblical prophecy, makes it subject
to a reconciliation of prophecy as identified and interpreted by individuals and various groups
See “Our response to the work of the Lord of the Harvest,” Word From Jerusalem – Israel and the Church
(Episode 3), accessed 2/24/14, http://int.icej.org/content/word-jerusalem-israel-and-church-episode-3.
40
The Christian Zionism seminar at the American Academy of Religion (2010-present) has struggled even to find a
consensus definition of Christian Zionism.
39
26
within the vicissitudes of unfolding history. Matching current events with prophecy fulfillment
has, not surprisingly, proven to be a messy and uneven endeavor. Second, the activity and
opinions of a people group (the global Jewish community) cannot be effectively controlled by
Christian Zionists and made to conform to theological programs. Third, the expansion of
Christian Zionism to other cultures outside of the United States creates problems of consistency
and unity in interpretation as biblical interpretation enters different historical milieux. Fourth,
intra-Christian theological challenges and polemics have shaped and continue to shape Christian
Zionist convictions. Fifth, changing ethical mores—specifically but not exclusively represented
by challenges from post-holocaust theology—condemn certain previous expressions of Christian
theology as anti-Semitic, often requiring significant alterations of inherited theological traditions.
Lastly, new archaeological findings and challenges from biblical scholarship often require a
response from Christian Zionists to maintain, shape, or strengthen the plausibility of Christian
Zionist conviction and expression. In other words, interpretations of the past, present and future
come to bear decisively, each in their own way, on the shape and content of Christian Zionist
convictions generally, and the responses of the subgroup of Christian Zionists I am calling
Renewalist Zionists to these social impingements can be seen throughout my examination. In the
course of social, political and theological expression, Christian Zionists make historical claims
and Christian Zionist plausibility structures are built on the maintenance and reconciliation of
these claims with what can be effectively argued and defended within the nexus of the various
streams (essentially niche markets) of the movement and the social contexts which they inhabit.
Thus, various strands of Christian Zionism have needed to incorporate mechanisms for
reconciling social, political and theological positions that prove contrary to core convictions.
Traditional out-grouping mechanisms are one method; the assigning of alternative interpretations
27
of data to the (nefarious or ignorant) agendas of outsiders is common. Attribution to demonic
forces and/or spiritual blindness or conspiracies is another common mechanism, especially
among Renewalists. Further, the co-option and adaptation of opponent’s positions, and even
shaming mechanisms, particularly around the moral issues of the Holocaust, are among the other
present and highly effective methods employed. There are also built-in theological mechanisms
that allow for internal flexibility in ideology, namely esotericism in the form of secret knowledge
locked away until revealed in the “end times,” which all millennialist Christian Zionist streams
identify as our own day (with varying degrees of imminence).41 The fact that the world outside
of the movement does not seem to value or affirm this knowledge—in particular, rejecting the
divine-revelatory nature of its form—also has specific handling within the ideological system.
For millennialist Christian Zionists the end times are characterized by a “turning away” from
(“biblical”) truth in the form of open rejection and a corresponding embrace of error, particularly
by those nations previously identified as Western and, therefore, Christian and by non-“Biblebelieving” denominations and Christians. The reality of social disconfirmation then is turned into
an asset for validation of the belief system, which in turn generates plausibility for the ideology.
Therefore, it is important to recognize that direct attacks on Christian Zionism, particularly from
parties Christian Zionists identify as enemies—such as secularists, Muslims, academics, liberals,
and certain denominations that subscribe to what they call “replacement theology”—generally
result in deepened conviction for its core beliefs.42
In calling Christian Zionism an “ideology” I am relying on the definition of the term provided by sociologists of
religion Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner: “Ideological systems provide what Max Scheler called redemptive
knowledge (Heilswissen)—that is, knowledge that not only provides intellectual understanding but also provides
existential hope and moral guidance” (Berger and Kellner 1981, 144).
42
This is only in general terms, it should be emphasized. Some Christian Zionists, particularly among young adults,
can be convinced to abandon their convictions—a fact recognized by Christian Zionists themselves, who have
responded with intensive apologetic and outreach efforts on American higher education campuses, a favorite arena
of anti-Zionist and Palestinian advocacy as well.
41
28
Literature, Methods, Definitions and Study Outline
With all of these things in mind it should be clear that careful and accurate descriptions of
similar and dis-similar traits and the contexts in which they emerge are needed for a sufficient
understanding of the ideological infrastructure of Christian Zionism, as well as intentional efforts
by scholars to differentiate Christian Zionist streams from one another. It will also be of value to
investigate the ways in which “knowledge” is constructed within particular Christian Zionist
streams—in the case of this dissertation, the Renewalist stream of Christian Zionism. Studies of
this kind are particularly important because of the tremendous growth rate of Pentecostalism
globally and the media reach of globally-produced and consumed Christian mass television,
radio and internet media. The largest of the media-producing Christian organizations are also
deeply Christian Zionist, such as the American-based television networks DayStar and Trinity
Broadcasting Network (TBN), which will be explored more fully in chapter seven.
It is also clear that Christian Zionism is a major sub-topic du jour within studies of
millennialism and religious “fundamentalism” among scholars since the 1990s. There are two
underlying and related themes that likely drive much of the interest in Christian Zionism. First,
Christian Zionism in its various manifestations is very much an historical anomaly considering
centuries of Christian anti-Semitism (Flannery 1985), as the modern movement at all times
professes to promote the interests of the Jewish community and the state of Israel. Second,
religious conservatives, who are statistically associated with Christian Zionism (Stockton 1987;
Pew Forum 2006), are often thought by many—not least by those in the Jewish community—to
have unsavory eschatology and political convictions, if not anti-Semitic leanings (Mittleman,
Johnson, and Isserman 2007).43 Trying to make sense of the historical appearance of Christian
43
Green (in Mittleman, Johnson, and Isserman 2007) reviews polling data indicating that Evangelical Protestants
(which form, depending on how one defines them, the dominant group from which Christian Zionists are drawn)
29
Zionism while attempting to assess both the sincerity of overtures by Christian Zionists to form
political, cultural, economic, and religious alliances with Jews and Israelis, as well as identify
(and speculate on) any ulterior motives is a difficult and significant task.44
Overview of the Study and Research Methods
Several chapters of this dissertation will feature the rich primary data collected on my
tour to Israel with the ICEJ and other American and Canadian tourists. The trip included
attendance at the ICEJ 2011 Feast of Tabernacles. My ethnographic focus was on exploring uses
of the past (both biblical and extra-biblical extensions to the Christian scriptures), the
construction of a shared Jewish-Christian nationality (during the tour, the conference, and a
parade) through processes of social memory, the construction of charismatic authority and issues
of identity and authenticity, and Renewalist Zionism under global conditions and local contexts.
Chapter 2 explores the current literature on Christian Zionism and challenges the dominant
narrative associating Christian Zionism with the premillennial dispensationalist movement of the
19th century in the United States. Chapter 3 explores an alternative historical narrative of what I
have named Renewalist Zionism, and examines the emerging institutions, theologies, and global
influence of Renewalist Zionists. Chapter 4 begins a review of the Renewalist Zionist
convictions of the ICEJ through ethnography on their 2011 Feast of Tabernacles tour and
conference. Chapter 5 looks at the ways that the Renewalist concepts of the supernatural, the
importance of “proofs,” and the nature and construction of charismatic authority converge in
Renewalist encounter with the state of Israel through the 2011 ICEJ tour of Israel. Chapter 6
proposes the idea of an emerging, shared Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism that contributes
demonstrate dramatically improving attitudes toward Jews over the last 30 years. How one defines “anti-Semitism”
is also a very contested project, open to interpretation.
44
The economic interests involved in the phenomenon are deeply underreported in the literature and will be
addressed, if still ultimately unsatisfactorily, later in the study.
30
powerfully to a distinct form of Christian Zionism with important social and political
implications. Chapter 7 explores how two of the largest Christian television networks in the
world, both Renewalist and both based in the United States, construct Israel along
ethnonationalistic lines for their own purposes—and how the Israeli state cooperates, indeed
encourages these constructions, for their own purposes. Chapter 8 is an attempt to understand
Christian Zionism through cultural globalization theories, emphasizing the concepts of globality
and relativization as drivers of both global and local particularities, particularly in relation to
identity and continuity with the past. Chapter 9, on social memory, examines the way that the
ICEJ revisions and recasts the history of Jewish/Christian relations and the doctrine of “election”
in order to buttress a theology that emphasizes their joint futures in the end of days. It should be
noted that social memory has become incredibly valuable—if not indispensable—to social
groups and movements under changing global conditions. By social memory I mean the study of
the way that social groups creatively use interpretations of the past to make sense of the present,
to guide decision-making and interpretations of current social phenomena, and to shape beliefs
about the future. It also includes analysis of the rules of remembering: what should be
remembered by the group, what goes unnoticed or is discarded from memory, even socially
established rewards and punishments for remembering and/or forgetting, and most importantly
for this dissertation, how the past can be understood socio-temporally to be a pattern for the
divine present and future. Other important aspects of social memory include the way in which
memories are controlled and contested—culturally, socially, legally—as well as turned into
commodities for consumption. The commodification of memory might be one of the more
important social phenomenon of our times, yet remains relatively understudied.
31
Studies of religion which, in the tradition of Max Weber, utilize an interpretive
(verstehen, or understanding) approach must be willing to put in the many, many hours of
observation—participatory and consumptive—required to approach understanding. This is
particularly the case with Christian Zionism because it is a global movement that spans
numerous Christian traditions, takes local flavor where it appears, and has morphed in important
ways through the centuries. Space, time and materiality, the raw materials of social contexts, do
matter and to capture snapshots of their manifestations for comparative purposes requires
attention to subtleties and nuances. My own research into Christian Zionism more generally and
Renewalist versions specifically spans nearly five years of dedicated, full-time research. In
addition to data collection in Israel, I have spent time in synagogues, churches, and on campuses
around the states of Oregon and Washington (even a church in California) whenever possible,
attending regional Christian Zionist events and protests of Christian Zionists—many events that
do not even make appearances in this dissertation. I have watched more hours of Christian
television (on two networks) than I could possibly count, meticulously documenting the
appropriation of Israel by Christian media personalities whenever they appeared.
Much of my primary data was collected on my trip to Israel with the ICEJ-USA (the U.S.
branch of the ICEJ based in Murfreesboro, TN) from October 9-19, 2011. My researcher role on
this trip was as a participant observer. I conducted extensive videography on the trip, which
comprised most of my field data on the ICEJ specifically. Others also did some filming, though
significantly less in volume than my own. I did not disclose my identity to participants or to the
ICEJ staff prior to the trip, but was committed to fully and honestly providing answers about my
person and intentions to anyone who asked as the trip progressed. Beginning with day two of the
trip Michael Hines, communications director for the ICEJ-USA, and his wife Bonnie, did ask
32
about my reasons for attending (I stood out as a relatively young male travelling alone), and I
disclosed to them my purposes for coming on the trip at that time in great detail. Others became
aware of my purposes through similar casual conversation, or through disclosure by ICEJ staff
over the course of the next week. By the end of the trip nearly every person—staff and
participants—knew who I was, some specifics about my personal life, and why I was on the
trip.45 Most people upon learning of my intentions were curious—perhaps a little surprised—but
open to sharing their stories, feelings, and experiences nevertheless.46 What other anthropologists
have said of charismatics—that they are “used to the idea of representing themselves to
themselves, as well as to potentially convertible and/or hostile others”—applies to those
participants represented on the following pages (Coleman 2002, 81). There was some reticence
by ICEJ staff, particularly ICEJ-USA Executive Director Susan Michael, who (according to
Michael Hines), when she learned of my identity, was concerned that my videography would
turn into a documentary exposé. I assured Michael that the videos were in no way intended for
nefarious purposes or public consumption. Upon our return to the States I did privately share,
upon request, a selection of videos with tour participants eager to take advantage of my extensive
video cache.
I treat the tour as a public event. Registration for the tour and conference was open to the
public with no restrictions. Most of our devotionals and prayer times were held in open-air
locations, as tourists and tour-industry workers buzzed around us. All written exchanges with
ICEJ-staff or fellow-pilgrims are treated as private and are not included in my data-set. All
interpersonal conversations with ICEJ-staff while on the tour are treated as public given their
45
It was not clear to me that either our tour guide or our ICEJ tour planner were made aware of my presence
specifically as a researcher.
46
As an indication of their openness to me, the staff and participants initiated a surprise celebration of my birthday,
which fell on the last day of our trip.
33
status as public figures on a public tour. One-on-one conversations with fellow-pilgrims are not
included as data. Many conversations with staff and fellow-pilgrims were held over a common
meal (8-10 persons at a time), and these conversations are included as data stripped of
identifying information. These personal representations often take the traditional form of
testimonies, frequently structured as (often emotional) conversions to understandings of the
Jewish people as beloved by God and central to God’s purposes for the world. Direct quotations
from the testimonies and public prayers of my fellow-pilgrims are used when identifying
information is not an issue.
One of the most important ingredients in a quality academic study of religion is a high
degree of reflexivity by the scholar (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Reflexivity is an antidote to
positivism in the study of social phenomenon, a helpful practice particularly when religion is
concerned. A proper reflexive posture will include an awareness by the scholar of relevant
personal biographical details which bear on the relationship of the object of study: why the
scholar has chosen this topic; the scholar’s background (if any) with the tradition or movement
being studied; and an openness to detail the scholar’s current position in all forms vis-à-vis the
tradition under study. “Intellectual honesty, I am certain,” says ethnographer of religion Lynn
Davidman, “comes from honesty with and about oneself” (2002, 25).
I am influenced in my scholarship by more phenomenologically-oriented sociologists and
theorists, among them Max Weber, Peter Berger, and Roland Robertson. I am pushed in my
phenomenology by the works of Pierre Bourdieu. At times, I find the work of socialpsychologists particularly helpful in understanding the social world, especially in the study of
social life and morality.
34
As an academic I occupy a precarious place vis-à-vis many interested parties to this
subject: as this dissertation will show, public institutions of higher learning are a contentious spot
for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among students, campus groups, faculty, and in the classroom.
It is the responsibility of the academic to explore these relations with a critical eye, which I will
attempt to do in the pages that follow. Complete sociological analysis of Christian Zionism must
take into account the “academy” as a player in the social conflict described on these pages (cf.
Coleman 2002). Reflexivity vis-à-vis the objectified academy, then, requires that I disclose my
position as a Christian believer. The academy, as a social institution with often strongly
secularizing tendencies, increasingly does not hesitate to assert its right to institutionalize its
family of ideologies in its methods of research and teaching. Failure to acknowledge this point
has direct bearing on the interpretation of data in regards to the main object of this dissertation,
Christian Zionism in its varying streams, which forms much of its identity over-and-against the
academy. Stated clearly, major segments of the academy are actively, vocally, and physically
engaged, through representation on campuses across the nation, in social conflict with Christian
Zionism. Given my status as a Christian believer, at times I was able to fully participate in the
activities of my fellow-pilgrims, particularly around those common Christian rituals that we
shared: prayer, communion, Bible reading. At other times, usually those where my own personal
convictions presented barriers to participation, I remained silent and still while taking in the
situation. I have no reason to believe that anyone could distinguish my times of authentic
participation from my times of voluntary restraint.
It is important to state my biographical socialization as I understand it. I am the son of a
(deceased) Protestant pastor. I was raised independent fundamentalist with Southern Baptist
influences. Most of my life was spent in rural, conservative Northern California. Near the end of
35
my father’s life he and our church had become charismatic, leaning towards joining the
Renewalist “denomination,” the Vineyard. We were heavily influenced for a time by the
charismatic happenings of the 1990s, including what has been called the “Toronto blessing”
(Paloma 2002), which has had a major impact on third wave Renewalism. Because of these
experiences I am positioned well to understand the meanings, actions, re-actions, concerns,
hopes and blemishes of the Renewalist movement and the Renewalist experience. I hold a
Master’s degree in theology from Fuller Seminary. Today, I remain a Christian and belong to
and am active in a Mennonite church, a denomination that is largely pro-Palestinian. One of our
historians (Kraus 1958) has written extensively and critically on premillennial dispensationalism
which was, for a time, the backbone of Christian Zionism in the United States. On a personal
level, I believe in the prevention, wherever possible, of self-fulfilling prophecies particularly at
the collective level and of the warring and violent variety. I am committed to peacemaking as a
Christian discipline. I am influenced most strongly by (but do not hold convictions identical
with) the writings of N. T. Wright in my theology, a scholar who also does significant work on
recovering the Jewish meaning of the Christian gospel, but who is a critic of Christian Zionism. I
am “spirit-filled” as Renewalists would understand this term. It is my conviction that, because of
the strange ubiquity and irrational character of anti-Semitism, Jews must retain selfdetermination in the modern world, which was legally granted by United Nations Resolution 181
on November 29, 1947.
Chapter 2
Recent Scholarly Treatment of Christian Zionism by Historians and Scholars of Religion:
An assessment
“The tragedy in the West is that many people have the feeling that if they agree that Israel has a
place in prophecy that they have ‘got it.’ But we want to say to them through this embassy is that
it is not enough for you to agree with the program point of God concerning Israel. God wants
you to flow with him by Holy Spirit-led action through concerned prayer into the actions of God
with the prophetic plan of God. Whether that is economic or planting trees or coming here to
support Israel, the Bible says ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,’ not ‘Agree, agree to
dispensationalist charts concerning Israel.” – Jan Willem van der Hoeven, ICEJ spokesman1
Before proceeding into an examination of Renewalist Zionism and the ICEJ in in the next
chapter, an assessment of a selection of recent scholarly literature on Christian Zionism more
broadly is in order. How is Christian Zionism treated by historians and scholars of religion
today? After briefly examining the appearance of the term “Christian Zionism” in popular
culture, my focus in the remainder of this chapter will be on the connection made by the majority
of historians and scholars of religion between Christian Zionism and the 19th-20th century
theological movement known as “dispensational premillennialism,” a connection which is
ubiquitous in the scholarly literature but deeply problematic. I will argue that this connection is
misleading as to both the beginnings of “Christian Zionism” and its various present
manifestations. Scholars producing studies of Christian Zionism that rely on histories overemphasizing the dispensational premillennialist connection are adversely affected primarily
because such an emphasis tends to reify Christian Zionism as a single “thing” in time and space,
“Praise the Lord” program, Trinity Broadcasting Network, June 4, 1985. The quote from the former ICEJ
spokesman was taken from a retrospective clip played by host and TBN president Paul Crouch, from TBN’s
coverage of the ICEJ’s opening in 1980. Crouch was present on site in Jerusalem conducting interviews for the
grand opening. In 1996, at an address delivered to the third world Christian Zionist Congress (the third congress’
emphasis was on “Islamic fundamentalism”) put on by the ICEJ, van der Hoeven, clearly aiming at
dispensationalists, suggested that Christian Zionists do more than “reading books on prophecy and waiting for our
self-centered raptures, but [rather] get into the act” (van der Hoeven 1996, 139). His suggestion for “getting into the
act” was through “prayer and praise,” and by battling demonic forces, particularly those presented by “the threat of
Islam which has presented the Gospel from being preached openly” (138). “We do not need bombs,” he would say,
limiting the Christian’s weapons to spiritual means.
1
36
37
influencing in the present the global political definition of the situation in the Middle East in a
monolithic and predictable manner. Such reification hinders understanding far more than it
enlightens, and encourages readings of Christian Zionism in its Renewalist and other forms that
miss important theological, social, and political characteristics that those forms may manifest.2
This, in turn, does not allow for an accurate assessment of Christian Zionism in its
particularizing and universalistic manifestations as a global, millennialist movement with
political consequences that appear to vary by its manifestations in time and space in significant—
sometimes subtle, sometimes overt—ways. One of those ways, which I will explore below, is in
variances in Christian doctrine in regards to the kingdom of God and the shape of Christian
social practice that results. Anthropologist James Bielo (2011), describing the importance of the
doctrine of the kingdom to evangelicals of various stripes, says that
Kingdom theologies are foundational in Christian culture because they offer models of
time and subjectivity, and because they promote forms of thought and action that reflect
the relative presence or absence of hope. (140)
Of importance to this chapter is the development of “kingdom-now” theologies in Renewalist
Zionism, and the contrast with the complete projection of the kingdom into a future, millennial
reign by dispensationalism. “Kingdom-now” describes those theologies that advocate for a
present manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth, prior to the end of the age. They can
appear in various intensities, from partial (as in “now-but-not-yet” theologies) to full
inauguration in the present age (as in Christian Dominionism). Kingdom-now theologies
permeate Renewalist Zionism (and other theologies) and profoundly affect the direction, tone,
content and political activity and advocacy for Israel present within it. Thus, a differentiation
between various forms of Christian Zionism, particularly a distinction between dispensationalist
2
It should be mentioned that this is an argument made by many Christian Zionists themselves, not least the ICEJ.
See the working paper “Swords into Ploughshares” written by the ICEJ’s David Parsons (Unknown year).
38
and Renewalist forms, is overdue. Towards this end, I review how the story of Christian Zionism
has been told by scholars, demonstrating how a lack of distinction between various forms of
Christian Zionism has hindered analysis of the phenomenon both historically and
contemporaneously. In the next chapter, I examine more fully the possibility of describing both
an alternative history and contemporary analysis of Christian Zionism from a Renewalist
perspective.
“Christian Zionism” in contemporary culture
Perhaps not surprisingly, the term “Christian Zionism” is of recent vintage. Nahum
Sokolow used the term in his history of Zionism (1919), but it did not enter into popular
Figure 3. The term "Christian Zionism" as found in sampling of 100 years of books and publications in
English. Source: Google Ngram.
discourse at that time (Ehle 1977, 339). As evidenced in Figure 3,3 the term emerged
concurrently with the rise of the “Religious Right” in the United States around 1980, with a
3
Figure provided by Google ngram. An overview of Google ngram can be found in Michel, et al (2011). Developed
in consultation with an interdisciplinary group of scholars, the ngram relies on subsets of Google’s searchable
database of millions of books—the latter now at 1/7th of all of books printed since the invention of the printing press.
The size of the database allows the extraction of a representative sample which can be used to identify cultural
trends. The modification represented within the ngram search below—Zionism=>Christian:eng_2012—is translated
as follows: “Christian” as a modifier of Zionism, searching all publications in the database published in English
39
particularly heavy spike in usage after 2000. Neither of those dates is terribly surprising: Jerry
Falwell’s Moral Majority included support for Israel as a major platform of the movement and
the scholarly attention given to the rise of the Moral Majority gave name to this support (Clark
2007, 187; Falwell 1980). The steady rise in usage of the term as the millennium approached can
be attributed to the inherent millennialism within the largest segments of the movement
manifested powerfully in the popularity of the Left Behind series of novels by LaHaye and
Jenkins in the 1990s. According to some scholars, the spike at the turn of the millennium
illustrates the crucial role that Christian Zionism plays in popular conservative Christian
responses to militant Islam, particularly after September 11, 2001, in addition to the
concern/excitement with the election of an evangelical president in George W. Bush (Yoon
2010, 668). Viewing the data in this manner allows us to capture both the introduction and
development of a distinct terminology and its usage by adherents and critics; i.e. the presence of
the term “Christian Zionism” in popular discourse. This does not, however, mean that the
phenomenon of Christian Zionism as defined in this dissertation is easily overlaid onto Figure 3,
as though it were of recent vintage. In fact, as will be argued in this chapter, much of what we
call Christian Zionism today—particularly Christian belief in a prophesied Jewish return to
Palestine—is over four centuries old.4
Christian Zionism in the scholarly literature
from any country using the date range 1908-2008. The “Y” axis represents the percent of all publications within the
sample that contain the search term.
4
For cautions in interpreting ngram data within the new field of “culturnomics,” see
http://www.culturomics.org/Resources/A-users-guide-to-culturomics, accessed 6/15/13. There are important
linguistic limitations to consider when using the tool, such as the overuse of etymologies, semantic changes, the
polysemic nature of words, etc. For instance, many Christian Zionists today prefer the term “Biblical Zionism” to
“Christian Zionism,” and this effect would not be captured in Figure 1.
40
There are a number of terms relating to phenomena critical to understanding Christian
Zionism that require definition before proceeding, and in the following section I offer a
definition of terms appearing throughout the remainder of this work. But before proceeding, it
should be noted that the attempt to decipher, systematize, categorize and classify the various
systems of the theological doctrines in the Christian millennialist tradition is a dizzying and
frustrating exercise, so much so that one author titles his attempt at such analysis The Millennial
Maze: Sorting out Evangelical options (Grenz 1992). Many times, proponents of various
positions themselves are not aware of the true differences between competing positions. Further,
the desire of Christian conservatives to present themselves as the representative and true
vanguard of the faith in opposition to their common enemies (such as traditions influenced by
theological liberalism in the United States) lends itself to acerbic caricatures and deep
infighting.5 Sweetnam’s observation—that the word “simple” and “dispensationalism” do not
comport well in the same sentence (2011, 217)—can be applied with ease to attempts to traverse
the various eschatological positions more generally. Furthermore, these difficulties are related in
no small way to the shortcomings I find in my assessment of the literature on Christian Zionism.
Because my purpose in this chapter is to show the inadequacy of what I am calling the standard
account of Christian Zionist origins—its weaknesses, blind spots, and often simple
inaccuracies—my efforts in this chapter will necessarily be critical. The next chapter will
examine alternate pathways to Christian Zionism from Renewalist streams through a focus on
the teachings, practices and networks of the ICEJ and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
Finally, this discussion relates to only some Christian millennialism. For example, the Jehovah’s
Mangum’s (2007) work on the dispensational (premillennial) and covenantal (amillennial) battles among
conservative evangelicals in the early-mid 20th century is an excellent example of this tendency and is valuable even
as a general guide to the various positions and their historical iterations among evangelicals and fundamentalists.
See especially his concluding chapter for developments later in the 20 th century.
5
41
Witnesses (whose founder, Charles Taze Russell, was an exponent of Jewish Restoration)6 and
The Latter Day Saints (the return of Jews to Israel was a component of early Mormon
premillennialism),7 just to name two, have their own versions of millennialism and may or may
not be represented in the definitions below. Liberal Christian theologies also are not likely to be
represented by the schemata, below, nor do I make the attempt; the relevancy or irrelevancy to
liberal theologies will need to be discerned by others.8 The definitions provided below should not
be understood as provincial to theology; the differences in millennialism identified have very
different social outcomes, operating with varied social “time maps” and intensities of feeling.
The configurations of these millennialist movements into varying traditions can be seen as a
form of sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel’s (2003, 4) “mnemonic traditions.” These traditions
employ varying mental filters by which ideas about the past are structured and, I suggest, in the
case of eschatological movements, ideas about the future as well (cf. Sturm 2010). Various
streams of Christian Zionism will have different “logics” by which new social data is processed,
transformed, or assimilated into the existing narrative. This is a relevant insight into
millennialism more generally, where differing logics create contrasting streams of social activity
See Horowitz (1986) for Russell’s views on Jewish restoration. The Jehovah’s Witnesses did not continue with this
belief.
7
Underwood (1993, 29-30) documents the importance of Jewish restoration in Latter Day Saints (LDS) eschatology.
There, as in many Protestant speculations over several centuries, the American Indians were also Jews and, in later
years, LDS members would see themselves as having literal Jewish blood, a fascinating but not exact equivalency to
the identification of Christian Zionists with Jews that will be explored in subsequent chapters and that I identify as a
form of ethnonationalism. It is not an exact equivalent because living, contemporary Jews were not the object of the
felt connection.
8
Liberal theologies are often still informed by post-millennialism or amillennialism, even if liberal forms of
millennialism have been largely secularized in the form of civilizational or scientific progress. There are also liberal
apocalyptic groups, (the Environmental Liberation Front, etc.) with millennialist messages stressing imminence of
catastrophe (as justified as that imminence may be). Landes (2011, Part IV) reminds us that secular millennialism
has been an important part of secular history—Bolshevism, the French Revolution, Marxism, Nazism, etc.—even if
those forms of millennialism display their own range of defining characteristics. A fruitful future study might
involve exploring liberal Christian responses to conservative millennialist groups such as Christian Zionism in its
conservative forms, which display an alarmism and imminence that rivals the caricatures they seek to expose. Such a
study would build on one of Landes’ working hypotheses that “emotional drives that underlie perfectionist social
thinking, whether secular or religious, whether modernist or polytheist or a-theist, share important dynamics” (2011,
xvii). Landes emphasizes that these emotions are worthy of attention by scholars not least because they shape the
social movements seeking social perfection that emerge from them.
6
42
(or inactivity) through the identification of enemies/friends, challenges/opportunities,
dangers/safe havens, and a general understanding (expectation) of what should come “next” on
the historical docket.
Various terms in Christian theology require definition before proceeding. Historian and
millennialist scholar Richard Landes provides a helpful description of eschatology as that which
“anticipates a complete end to history, to the saeculum” (2011, 18). Eschatology would be any
set of ideas, systems, or speculations about the end of history and its meanings. In conjunction
with eschatology is the related but not coterminous concept of apocalyptic. I follow Landes
descriptive view of apocalyptic, which emphasizes the timing of the millennial age to come,
crystallizing through “two related issues: a sense [of] imminence about the great upheaval and
the scenario whereby we go from this evil and corrupt world to the redeemed” (18, emphasis
his). We may note that both conditions, qualified by the conjunction “and,” inform his view of
apocalyptic.
Landes (2011) emphasizes that apocalyptic and eschatology apply to both religious and
secular millennial movements, and visions of these types promote the growth of dualistic modes
of thought. Expressions of eschatology vary among annihilationist (secular)—such as nuclear or
environmental destruction—or redemptive (religious) forms—rewards and punishments in a last
judgment (19).
Millennialism has been identified as a defining feature of the majority of Christian
Zionist groups, again depending on how one defines “Christian Zionism.”9 Landes defines
millennialism as “…the belief that at some point in the future the world that we live in will be
9
One of the most thorough treatments on the 19 th century American millennial streams which eventually informed
American Christian Zionist ideology is Sandeen (2008, 5n3), who follows historian Ernest Tuveson (1968, 33-4) in
using the term “millenarianism” to refer to premillennialists and reserving the term millennialism for
postmillennialists. This categorization has not caught on in the literature and I do not follow it here.
43
radically transformed into one of perfection—of peace, justice, fellowship, and plenty” (2011,
20, emphasis his). In Christian theology (from which the word is derived, Landes 2011, 20-1) the
term millennialism, usually appended, refers generally to a period of 1,000 years relating to the
reign of Christ or his viceroys at the end of the age (Ladd and Clouse 1977, 8). Crawford
Gribben, a scholar of early evangelical millennialism, is right to suggest that within Christian
theology the millennium’s “specific characteristics vary according to the interpreter, and [views
on the millennium can] be used as a trope for a wide and sometimes contradictory range of
political, cultural, and religious presuppositions” (2009, 173). Gribben’s qualification nicely
supplements the broader definition of Landes.
One of several forms of millennialism in Protestant theology, premillennialism refers to a
range of beliefs generally anticipating the return of Jesus prior (“pre-”) to the establishment of
the physical—this is key—messianic reign of 1,000 years on earth (Grenz 1992, 25).10 The view,
therefore, necessarily promotes a typically radical discontinuity with the present age. “The
millennium will reveal to the world as we now know it the glory and power of Christ’s [visible]
reign,” as Ladd, a premillennialist theologian, tells us (1977, 39).
In modern form there are two dominant categories of premillennialism generally
acknowledged, each producing significantly different social outcomes, with a theology pivoting
on a distinction between the objects of the events preceding the millennial reign and the
millennium itself. Historic premillennialism (synonymous with covenantal premillennialism11)
advocates the church as the primary subject of both the tribulation (generally everything between
Revelation chapters 4-22; see Ehle 1976, 228) and the millennium (Grenz 1992, 26, 129ff).
Historic premillennialism teaches that the church will endure the period of tribulation prior to the
10
Whalen (1996, 257n60) notes that chialism is a synonym for premillennialism in the modern era (eighteenth
century onward).
11
See Sizer (2006, 267).
44
return of Jesus (Grenz 1992, 129, 182ff). In this scheme the church is spiritual Israel and has
inherited its covenant promises; the kingdom of God is partially inaugurated in the present—
“now-but-not-yet”—and will be fully inaugurated at the second coming.
The other major stream of premillennialism, premillennial dispensationalism (sometimes
shortened to dispensationalism),12 insists on a strict separation of the “church” and “Israel”
(Williams 2003, 8), and sees the object of the prophecies concerning the tribulation and the
millennium (Revelation 4-22) as the Jewish people (Grenz 1992, 26). Dispensations function as
periods of time in which God is thought to deal with humans according to religious logic
intrinsic to the dispensation: the Torah (Jewish religious law), for instance, is the operative
religious logic by which the Jewish people were held to account during the time of its
functioning, according to this system. The operative religious logic in any dispensation forms the
basis of the divine judgment applied to it. Once a dispensation ends the religious logic ends with
it (Arrington 2002; cf. Kraus 1958, 61-63).13 As an example, dispensationalism often posited that
the Mosaic dispensation was replaced by the age of grace/age of the church, which has been
operating since some specified point during the New Testament period (the resurrection,
ascension, or birth of the church at Pentecost are cited by varying dispensationalist factions as
the specified moment of age-transition). According to Michael Williams, a historian of the
movement, the distinction between Israel and the church for John Nelson Darby (1800-1882),
founder of both the Plymouth Brethren movement and premillennial dispensationalism, was a
metaphysical distinction, not just a chronological one (2003, 8-9).14 Williams argues that this
Premillennial dispensationalism is often shortened to “dispensationalism” for short and dispensationalism will be
used forthwith.
13
From the dispensationalist Scofield Bible, Cyrus Scofield states: “A dispensation is a period of time during which
man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God” (2007, 5, emphasis his).
14
Williams elaborates: “Israel was understood as the earthly people of God while the church was conceived of as a
heavenly people. As such, the two never mix or touch, and one cannot be confused with the other. They are always
12
45
was also the case for two of the most important popularizers of dispensationalism in the early
20th century, Louis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, and C. I. Scofield,
editor of the very popular Scofield Reference Bible. Such a hard distinction between the Jewish
people and the church, yet with retention of divine plans for each separate group, has resulted in
the accusation that dispensationalism often espouses a dual covenant theology: one covenant for
the salvation of the church, one covenant for the salvation of the Jews (Shapiro 2011).15
As the current dispensation concludes, so the argument goes, a transitional period of
seven years is seen to precede the millennial age and is called the ‘tribulation;’ it is the time of a
single personage of world renown known as the anti-christ.16 Sometime during this seven year
period (usually but not always identified with its inauguration) is the “rapture of the church.” The
term has become powerfully associated with dispensationalism, and according to some of
dispensationalism’s most influential exponents, relates more to ecclesiology—the nature of the
church, which is seen to operate always separately from Israel—than eschatology—what
qualitatively distinct peoples. The word Israel cannot be applied to the New Testament church, and the church is not
found in the pages of the Old Testament. The two are discrete, separate peoples in the plan and purpose of God. This
metaphysical distinction controls how one is to properly read the Scriptures (Scofield called it rightly dividing the
Word of Truth), and constitutes the one indispensable tenet of classical dispensationalist theology, for it is the
central tenet from which classical dispensationalism sprang and the one tenet that makes proponents of the system
dispensationalists” (9, emphasis mine). As the early influential dispensationalist and founder of Dallas Theological
Seminary Louis Sperry Chafer would put it, “The Jewish nation is the center of all things related to the earth…”
(quoted in Rausch 1979, 323, emphasis mine). The importance of this observation will become apparent as we
examine the ethnonationalism strongly present within Renewalist Christian Zionism.
15
It is difficult to deny that some dispensationalists do, in fact, teach dual covenant theology. John Hagee, who is
largely a dispensationalist and the founder of Christians United for Israel, experienced some controversy after his
publication of In Defense of Israel (2007), where it seems quite clear, both to me and to his detractors, that he
espoused dual covenant theology, particularly in chapter 10 of the first edition. “The message of the gospel was
from Israel, not to Israel!,” he claims (134); “There are two Israels in Scripture. One is a physical Israel, with a
physical people, a physical Jerusalem, and physical borders…. There is also a spiritual Israel, with a spiritual people
and a spiritual New Jerusalem. Spiritual Israel (the church) may have the blessings of physical Israel, but it does not
replace physical Israel in the economy of God….These two Israels will merge together not one day sooner than the
moment when the Messiah literally comes to the physical city of Jerusalem” (146-7). Hagee was forced to rework
chapter 10 of this book in a hastily issued second edition because of the maelstrom it engendered in the missionminded evangelical community. Copies of the original version are selling for more than 250% of the second edition.
See Shapiro (2011, 466-70) and Smith (2010, 40-2) for coverage of the controversy.
16
Both Darby and Blackstone believed that Jewish return to Palestine would occur after the rapture of the church
(Moorhead 2008, 49-51).
46
happens during the “end of days” (Sheppard 1984, 6). It is the mechanism by which the
distinction between the ages (and the integrity of the dispensationalist system of interpretation) is
maintained (Smith 2010, 248-9). Often called the “secret rapture,” the concept refers to an
interpretation of I Thessalonians 4:17: “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up
together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the
Lord.”17 Christ will gather the saints, dead and alive, in an event—“secret” in Darby, so that no
one would know where those who had been raptured had gone (Sandeen 2008, 62-4)—that
would remove the church and the dead saints from the earth announcing the advent of the sevenyear tribulation.18 The rapture seems to function as a sort of purity device that keeps the plans of
Israel and the church distinct, preventing the “Judaization” of the church: Jews are God’s earthly
people and God’s plans for them are related to earthly matters; the church is God’s spiritual
people and God’s plans for them are related to heavenly matters.19 The imminence of the rapture
was greatly stressed, given that it was next on the prophetic docket, as we have seen (Sweetnam
2010, 207; Grenz 1992, 98-9).20 It is an “at any-moment” rapture, and the prophecies expected to
follow it are close behind. After the church is removed Jesus returns to set up his millennial
King James Version, Scofield Reference Bible (2007). The note on “caught up” reads: “Not church saints only,
but all bodies of the saved, of whatever dispensation, are included in the first resurrection, as here described, but it is
peculiarly the ‘blessed hope’ of the Church.”
18
All of the elements described, taken together, constitute the “rapture” in the most prominent stream of
dispensationalist thought. Amillennialists and others hold to a belief in the “rapture,” but see it in a very different
way not connected to a seven-year period (Ladd and Clouse 1977, 183). This second position is not well known in
popular discourse. It is the dispensationalist tie to the inauguration of the tribulation that gives critics room to charge
dispensationalism with “escapism:” everything happens once true believers are gone. It should also be noted that the
tribulation was, for Darby, that period when Jews would receive chastisement for their antichrist spirit, which Darby
associated with Jewish rejection of Jesus. It was a time of purging, of judgment, in preparation for their embrace of
their messiah and place in the messianic reign. In Darby’s thought, the tribulation was a period when the great error
of the centuries—the rejection of Jesus by “the Jews”—could be rectified and Jews could finally receive the
fulfillment of promises of election and prominence of place among the nations given to them in their scriptures. See
his commentaries on Colossians to Revelation (Darby 1877).
19
Pentecostal scholar Gerald Sheppard (1984) suggests that classic dispensationalists rejected terms like “spiritual
Israel,” or “new Israel” as applied to the church precisely because of their “Judaizing” implications (6-7).
20
Grenz further notes that among dispensationalists, even from the beginning, the timing of the rapture—before, in
the middle of, or at the end of the tribulation—has been a source of contention, though the pre-tribulational rapture
has been the dominant view (99).
17
47
kingdom on earth in Jerusalem, with the Jewish people (at that time) believing in him as Messiah
and as subjects of the millennial reign.
The projection of the final prophecies of Revelation into the (immediate) future has been
labeled “futurist” and is a major distinctive of dispensationalism. Progressive dispensationalist
Craig Blaising states the matter succinctly when he says, “Dispensationalism is a futurist
premillennialism. Its very reception in late nineteenth-century American Christianity was due in
no small part to its distinction from the date-setting tendencies of historicist premillennialism”
(1992, 13).21 Dispensationalism was “futuristic” in that it had, since Darby, relegated all
prophecy fulfillment to after the rapture of the church (see below). “There is no event between
me and heaven,” Darby would say (as quoted in Moorhead 2008, 25).22 Few premillennial
dispensationalist at the time of Darby were (theoretically) to consider the possibility of being
present for the fulfillment of the prophecies they were studying, because the “prophetic clock”
would not begin to tick again until the long church age, which was not prophesied in the Bible
and thus was an unannounced “parenthesis” in God’s plan, had come to an end in the rapture
(Boyer 1992, 88). Futurism burst onto the scene in the anxiety-laden years after the French
Revolution and, in the 19th century, it gradually replaced historicist premillennialism,23 which
Blaising reiterates in a later publication: “Dispensationalism precluded historicism by its separation of spiritual
churchly and Jewish earthly eschatologies” (Blaising et al. 1999, 191). Interestingly, relegating the prophecies of
Revelation to a future fulfillment was a technique of Catholic thinkers during the Reformation era. Toon notes that
Jesuit theologian Francis Ribera embraced this view in the 16th century as a means of deflecting historicist
accusations that the Pope was the antichrist. Ribera’s futurist writings influenced Thomas Brightman, one of the
earliest exponents of a Jewish return to Palestine ("The Latter Day Glory," Toon and Capp 1970, 27).
22
This is echoed by his later interpreter, William Blackstone (1908, 80).
23
The “historicists” are essentially equivalent with historic premillennialism. Historicists looked for the continued
and ongoing fulfillment of prophecies across the span of church history and were characterized by date-setting
tendencies. Grenz (1992) is worth quoting in full here on this complicated topic:
Lying historically between the apparent preterism of the second-century fathers and the futurism of
contemporary advocates is a third alternative—the historicist approach—that predominated after the
Reformation. In keeping with the Protestant conviction that the pope was the antichrist mentioned in
the Bible, Reformation premillennialists interpreted the Apocalypse as a prophecy of the central
events of church history. Historicists also viewed the 1,260 days referred to in Daniel as years of
21
48
saw the span of church history and, importantly, contemporary developments, as ground for
fulfillment of biblical prophecy, particularly in polemics against the Catholic church (Lewis
2010, 43, 91).
Because dispensationalism is so often identified as the ideological core of Christian
Zionism, understanding exactly what it is—and what it is not—is crucial for shedding light on
the nature of contemporary Christian Zionism. However, getting to a scholarly definition of
dispensationalism is no easy task. Mark Williams (2003), a scholar of American
dispensationalism, has suggested that “A rising progressivist movement within dispensationalist
circles has subjected so much of the tradition to revision that any definition of current
dispensationalism is impossible to come by” (7-8). Definitions of dispensationalism which
precede even the current manifestation also suffer from a lack of definitional clarity, a situation
which has been recognized by Sweetnam (2010). After noting that, as a stand-alone theological
system, dispensationalism has received little scholarly treatment,24 Sweetnam attempts to
construct such a definition of dispensationalism in order to facilitate consistent scholarly
analysis. Seeking to do for “dispensationalism” what Bebbington’s (1989, 2-17) emphasis-based
quadrilateral definition of evangelicalism did for scholars of conservative Christianity,
Sweetnam begins by reflecting on changes within the movement itself, noting that
dispensationalists have, themselves, identified at least three, consecutive schools of thought
within American dispensationalism: classic dispensationalism, revised dispensationalism, and
progressive dispensationalism (2010, 197-8).25 While Sweetnam does not provide definitive
church history. In the late nineteenth century, however, a broad shift materialized among
premillennialists away from the historicist and toward the futurist position. (145)
24
In addition to the few treatments cited by Sweetnam (192n2)—Boyer (1992), Weber (1987), Sandeen (2008),
Williams (2003), and Marsden (2006)—the work of Kraus (1958) was an early treatment and remains invaluable,
particularly as to the state and character of dispensationalism in the mid-20th century.
25
A better categorization is found in a history of the movement written by progressive dispensationalists Bock,
Kaiser and Blaising (1992, 379): Niagara premillennialism (pre-Sofieldian dispensationalism), Scofieldism,
49
dates for each of these schools, they can be summarized as follows: classic dispensationalism
can be measured from Darby (around the 1830s), through Blackstone and Scofield
(approximately 1880-1920), to the establishment of the state of Israel and the decade of its
aftermath (later 1940s-1950s); revised dispensationalism followed in the 1950s-1960s, associated
with Charles Ryrie, Louis Sperry Chafer, and Dwight Pentecost; progressive dispensationalism
arrived definitively, according to one account, on November 20, 1986 during a conference on
dispensationalism (Couch 1996, 96), appearing as a theological system in earnest in consecutive
years through publications by progressive dispensationalist scholars Blaising and Bock (1992;
1993) and a concurrent publication from Saucy (1993), also a progressive dispensationalist.
Major changes are occurring among theologians teaching at institutions that have historically
been strongly associated with classic/revised American dispensationalism, including Dallas
Theological Seminary (Darrell Bock), Talbot Seminary (Robert Saucy) and Southwestern Baptist
Theological Seminary (Craig Blaising), and I examine these changes and their significance,
below.
Having prefaced an attempt at definition for the first two phases of dispensationalism
with a review of these important changes in the third phase, I now turn to Sweetnam’s definition,
quoting in full (2010, emphases mine):
…[T]here are five recognisable stresses that mark Dispensationalism:
1. A commitment to Evangelical doctrine.
2. A commitment to a literal Biblical hermeneutic.
essentialist dispensationalism (corresponding to revised dispensationalism in Sweetnam), and post-essentialist, or
progressive dispensationalism. Sweetnam gets his categorizations from Blaising and Bock’s final periodization
found in Progressive Dispensationalism (1993). In some of my analysis I rely on the scholarship of progressive
dispensationalists, who show far less dogmatism and defensiveness and higher levels of scholarly work than other
dispensationalists, in that they make heavy use of non-partisan historical studies in formulating the history of their
own movement. I have learned much from them and, in particular, from their interpretations and synthesis of much
of the scholarship I cite in this chapter. For just a few examples, see Bock and Blaising (1992), Blaising (1993),
Saucy (1986, 1993) and especially Blaising (1999).
50
3. A recognition of distinction in manifestations of Divine dealing with mankind, which
insists on the uniqueness and importance of both Israel and the Church in the Divine
plan [i.e. dispensations].26
4. An expectation of the imminent return of Christ in the Rapture.
5. An emphasis on apocalyptic and millennial expectation.
None of these markers is exclusive to Dispensationalism, and none on its own constitutes
Dispensationalism. Taken together they give us a definition of Dispensationalism that is both
robust and useful, that provides us with a baseline for determining Dispensational identity,
and that focuses on external effects as well as on theological presuppositions. (198)
For the purposes of this chapter, I accept Sweetnam’s definition in full as he has represented it,
with one exception: “futurism” has been a distinctive of dispensationalism in the first two
iterations, and Blaising and Bock (1992, 14-5n3) insist that it is distinctive of all systems worthy
of the dispensationalist name. Further bolstering this argument, Boyer suggests that the futurism
in Darby’s system may have contributed to its reception in the United States after the Civil War
precisely because it was so very different from the spectacularly failed historicist millennialism
of the Millerites (1992, 88), which still hung over the popular mind as a religious anathema. It
may also be possible that the rise of secular historicism in the United States during this period
may have contributed indirectly to the reception of an eschatology that bracketed out divine
intervention in this age in favor of an acceptance of divine influence breaking in at the beginning
of a new, radically different age.27 This represents a weakness in the connection between
Sweetnam’s markers 3-5: it is futurism which binds these markers into a distinctive whole in the
26
Saucy, a progressive dispensationalist theologian, says: “The most crucial distinction to traditional
[classical/revised] dispensationalism is that between Israel and the Church. Ryrie focuses the issue clearly when he
says, ‘The essence of dispensationalism, then, is the distinction between Israel and the Church.’ This distinction is so
sharp that the Church is precluded from any present relationship to the Messianic kingdom promises” (Saucy 1986,
162). His point is crucial when we consider issues in chapters 3 and 5, particularly when we assess the emerging
ethnonationalism within Christian Zionism. This phenomenon may be one of the chief markers of difference
between dispensationalist and other approaches to Christian Zionism.
27
Further circumstantial evidence supporting this insight exists in that secular historicism—historical cause and
effect absent supernatural influences, sacred time becoming secular time—was already dominant among Europeans
for nearly one hundred years prior to its influence in the United States, perhaps because of the success of the U.S.
revolution (which was seen to affirm sacred notions of present history) and the failures of the French revolution and
its byproducts (which was understood to challenge such notions); see Ross (1984, 911-12). I am indebted to C.
Wyatt Evans for this insight.
51
dispensationalist system. A fully futurist approach recognizes that dispensations do not overlap:
the church age (dispensation) ends in failure, the seven years of tribulation begin with the
rapture,28 and then the millennium inaugurates the next age. God’s heavenly/spiritual people (the
church) are removed so that God’s earthly people (the Jews) can receive their as-of-yet
unfulfilled promises, including restoration to Palestine—a view which was derived from a
“literal” reading of the scriptures but losing a significant measure of plausibility after the
establishment of Israel in 1948.29 Blaising (1999, 159ff) describes this as the essentialist (that is,
classical/revised) dispensationalist revision of the premillennialist iteration of the “spiritual
vision model” prominent since Augustine. He notes that Augustine’s spiritual vision model is the
one that is largely consistent with the first two phases of dispensationalism in that it retains a
millennial dualism that pushes the realization of the kingdom of God into the earthly millennium
(associated with the Jewish people) and the kingdom of Heaven is the expression of the heavenly
millennium (associated with the converted saints) (1999, 186). On the place of the kingdom in
the dispensationalist system, Marsden (2006) states with great clarity:
28
With an emphasis on the continuity of this realm and the next in the form of new heavens and a new earth and a
partially inaugurated kingdom in which believers can participate now, progressive dispensationalism seems to have
jettisoned the rapture as an unnecessary feature of their new theology. See Blaising and Bock (1993, 264), where
they simply reinterpret what has been traditionally known as the rapture (an event prior to the second coming) and
associate it directly with the second coming. The “rapture”—maybe the most distinctive feature of Darby’s system
as it is known popularly and as it is represented in the standard account—has not been retained in the new system
because it is unnecessary: the church will be present with Israel to receive the (imminently arriving) Messiah.
29
Blackstone emphasized this. When defining the tribulation on a chart detailing future events, Blackstone says:
“Period of unequaled tribulation to the world, during which—the church having been taken out—God begins to deal
with Israel again, and will restore them to their own land” (1908, 48-50). Gribben (2009) agrees with the difficulties
facing dispensationalism after the founding of Israel: “…the claim that 1948 [Israel’s founding] was a fulfillment of
prophecy profoundly undermined the coherence of dispensational ideas” (9). Dispensationalist scholars began to
jettison or severely alter the distinction between permanent heavenly and earthly states, one for the church and one
for Israel, dating from just after Israel’s founding, finally abandoning “classical dispensationalism’s systemic
dualism for a holistic approach” beginning in the 1980s (i.e. progressive dispensationalism) (Blaising and Bock
1993, 31-2; Blaising et al. 1999, 185-186). This was a critical development for the trajectory of change within
Christian Zionism that I outline in this dissertation, even if popular understandings of dispensationalism saw the
events of Israel’s founding as lending plausibility to the dispensationalist system, as some scholars suggest (Watt
1991, 160), and with which I concur. It would take time for popular understandings to catch up with the difficulties
in the internal logic of dispensationalism brought on by Israel’s founding and the (‘unregenerated’) spiritual state of
the Jewish people at its founding.
52
Christ’s kingdom, far from being realized in this age or in the natural development of
humanity, lay wholly in the future, was totally supernatural in origin, and discontinuous
with the history of this era. This was a point on which the new dispensational
premillennialism differed from older forms of premillennialism. For the
dispensationalists the prophecies concerning the kingdom referred wholly to the future.
This present era, the “church age,” therefore could not be dignified as a time of the
advance of God’s kingdom. (51; cf. Blaising and Bock 1993, 30-31)
Without this dualistic futurism a baseline definition of dispensationalism that incorporates the
first two phases of the movement is incomplete. My claim is that in the first two phases of
dispensationalism, Sweetnam’s markers three through five are interdependent and coherent when
united by futurism; this is not so for progressive dispensationalism for reasons discussed above.
So Sweetnam’s fifth marker should be modified as follows: “An emphasis on futurist
apocalyptic and millennial expectation.” With this modification in hand, Sweetnam’s outline is
used best to describe dispensationalism as expressed in the first two “waves,” its classical and
revised forms. The definition provides a model for measuring what counts as dispensationalism
against theological and theo-political systems that either claim to be or are accused of being
dispensationalist. It will also allow us to observe significant changes and modifications within a
dominant, American theological system and to differentiate movements that do not fit the
definition. This latter achievement will be accomplished in part in the remainder of this section
by applying this definition to assessments of Christian Zionism by scholars of the movement.
Before continuing with my discussion on the first two waves of dispensationalism, it is
important to comment on the contributions of progressive dispensationalism. Sweetnam argues
that revised dispensationalism was largely a “massaging of theological detail” from the inherited
classical dispensationalism (2010, 194), though Mangum’s (2007) account suggests much more
profound implications were begun in these revisions. Further, because, in his words, progressive
dispensationalism is a “system in development,” and its “eschatological teaching remain[s]
53
inchoate,” Sweetnam is unable to provide a definition of dispensationalism which will reliably
incorporate progressive dispensationalism; he does, however, call it a “significant alteration” to
previous forms of dispensationalism (2010, 194; Williams calls it a "genuine rethinking of the
tradition," 2003, 12). Although a complete assessment cannot be provided here as this would be
beyond the scope of this work, Sweetnam may understate the scope of the changes. The 1970s
and 1980s produced significant dialogue between conservative evangelical millennialist options
in the U.S., particularly covenantal amillennialism and dispensationalism, which resulted in the
concession of a number of major points between both parties, which would make it nearly
impossible for progressive dispensationalism to meet the definition of dispensationalism
provided here. Poythress (1994), a covenantal theologian, tracks many major and significant
changes in modern dispensationalism. His assessment of the rapport reached through dialogue
and changes in theology between the two positions is highly instructive: “provided we are able
to treat the question of Israel’s relative distinctiveness in the millennium as a minor problem, no
substantial areas of disagreement remain” (Poythress 1994, 56). My reading of several major
works by progressive dispensationalists (Blaising and Bock 1993; Blaising et al. 1999; Bock and
Blaising 1992) suggests that Poythress is largely correct: Israel—with an emphasis on its Jewish
character—and its importance to an appearing kingdom breaking into our own time, is the issue
around which progressive dispensationalism finds its distinctive content. Whereas Kraus found
that “the distinctly dispensational addition” to the doctrine of the restoration of the Jews by the
most prominent early dispensationalists was that the Kingdom of God was to be entirely
associated with the Jews and pushed wholly into the future (1958, 85-87), progressive
dispensationalists have made a significant change in the doctrine of the kingdom. In late-classic
and revised dispensationalism, as seen in Ryrie (2007, 110-11) and Walvoord (2011, 347) the
54
kingdom of God was never to be associated with the Church age, but only an inner, spiritual
“kingdom of heaven.” However, progressive dispensationalists appear to be moving closer to a
form of what is called “realized eschatology,” which simply means that the Kingdom of God and
the benefits which flow from it are associated or “realized,” at least in part, within the present
age (Blaising and Bock 1993, 39-56, and especially chapters 7 & 8).30 This view is also held by
other eschatological schools: the kingdom of God was realized at least in part before the end of
the age in historic premillennialism, fully arriving before the end for postmillennialism.31 As a
logical and critical outcome of a realized eschatology combined with Christian Zionism, the
kingdom incorporates the church and the (believing) Jewish people—the two, eternal chosen
peoples of God (Mangum 2007, 207; Blaising and Bock 1993, 295-7). These views, representing
major revisions in the character and content of American dispensationalism (and covenant
theology, with which it has been in sustained dialogue), have been taught for over twenty years
now in the traditionally dispensationalist seminaries employing Bock, Blaising and Saucy,
among others (Mangum 2007, 17-8n67; Blaising and Bock 1993, 52). As I will show, various
intensities of realized eschatology combined with Christian Zionism are also associated with
some of the largest Pentecostal seminaries in the world, such as Oral Roberts University, and
form the backbone of Renewalist Zionism, as I will show in the next chapter. These changes
reveal with clarity the importance of Israel in and of itself in Christian Zionist thinking over the
centuries, not logically or necessarily connected to any particular eschatological schemata.
30
Notably, leading progressive dispensationalists seek to reverse other influences of historicism within their
movement by re-emphasizing the future nature of the rule of the Antichrist and of the Tribulation, in an attempt to
avoid any publicly embarrassing repetition of the Millerites and to distance themselves from popular
dispensationalist/historicist hybrids such as Hal Lindsey (Blaising and Bock 1993, 292-4).
31
For classic treatments of the historic premillennialist position, see Ladd (1959) especially chapter 3, and Bright
(1953) especially chapter 8. See Bock and Blaising (1993, 39) on Ladd’s (widely unacknowledged) influence on
dispensationalism. For classic treatments of the postmillennialist position, see Rauschenbusch (1978), especially
chapter 8.
55
Returning to Sweetnam’s definition, his comment that none of the five markers is
exclusive, or original, to dispensationalism should be highlighted as each of these elements has
existed in other theological milieus. For instance, a theological system as different as
Augustine’s amillennialism, for instance, used six dispensations to divide divine time (Levering
2013, 149). Dividing divine time is common in Christian theological history and the division of
time into ages is also present even in secular history; the name “dispensationalism,” therefore, is
a significant misnomer. Until 1936, the term “dispensationalism” was a derogatory one and no
dispensationalist embraced it (Mangum 2007, 199), many simply referring to themselves as
“premillennialists.” Biblical literalism was a basic component of the hermeneutics of the
Reformation at its earliest stages (Harrison 1998, 107ff). Even Luther could argue for the “literal,
real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, along with Catholics; Calvinists, however, rejected such
an interpretation (Hillerbrand 2007, 150). Nor did the doctrine of the rapture originate with
Darby, though it is a concept with an elusive birth. Something very close to the doctrine of the
rapture was preached by both Cotton and Increase Mather, and both taught its imminence (Kyle
1998, 78-79). There are even some serious questions as to whether the (re-)appearance of the
doctrine of the rapture in the 19th century can be attributed to Darby at all (Patterson and Walker
1999). So when Sandeen says that the “secret rapture” was “the distinctive element in Darby’s
eschatology” (2008, 87), we must emphasize the modification “secret” over “rapture” as
Darby’s, and even the modification was dropped by some of Darby’s early American
popularizers, namely the influential William Blackstone (Moorhead 2008, 53), but retained by
others, such as in the more recent Left Behind series (Gribben 2009). Also important is that the
expectation of imminence in prophecy fulfillment is most certainly not a distinctive of Darby but
was deeply embedded in the prevailing winds of prophetic speculation in England at the time,
56
and which had arisen in the aftermath of the French Revolution, particularly in light of the work
of the very influential British Evangelical and Baptist, James Bicheno (Lewis 2010, 42-44). And,
of course, apocalyptic and millennial expectations appear throughout Christian history. 32 Lastly,
all of the components we have identified as constitutive of dispensationalism have antecedents in
Christian history; none of them are distinctive to Darby (Boyer 1992, 88).
Each of the forms of millennialism have been characterized in the literature by general
guiding principles or methods particular to each and constitutive of the ethos that shapes the time
maps structuring the readings of social time particular to each. For instance, the emphasis in
postmillennialism on the continuation of the present and future ages has led many to describe it
as characterized by an ethos of optimism; pessimism has been generally associated with
premillennialism.33 Some scholars associate the pessimism of premillennialism with social
separatism (Gribben 2006; Yoon 2010, 147; Moorhead 2008, 230), some note a “blend of
passivity and activism” (Weber 2004, 53), though still others note that this is more stereotype
than descriptive (Underwood 1993, 6; Blaising et al. 1999, 74-5). These widely varying ethe, in
turn, significantly inform the interpretation of prophecies. The identification of unfulfilled
prophecies were/are important to both of the competing premillennialist systems largely because
they provided information about the immediate future. Both provided information about the
present as well. The association of ethe with millennialist theology does not always hold,
however. The career of English divine Thomas Goodwin may be offered as a case of optimistic
32
See chapter 3 of Landes (2011) for a spirited and, in my opinion, successful attempt to bring the study of
millennial movements back into the writing of history. Popkin (1992, 91-119) attempts to recover
“millenarianism”—what I mean by millennialist thinking—as a driving force of 17th century elite culture, addressing
epistemological questions for many prominent thinkers.
33
Historian Norman Kraus (1958), writing during the height of the influence of Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr,
would say dispensationalist pessimism was “more akin to what would be called realism today” (64).
57
premillennialism (Toon and Capp 1970, 62-65);34 a modified form of optimism defines the
premillennialism of the Renewalists associated with the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR),
which will be explored in the next chapter.
But the optimism and pessimism polarities tend to be deployed polemically in favor or
against a perspective (respectively) depending on the view held by the speaker.35 Others have
found a more substantive connection between amalgams of premillennialism and pessimism and
postmillennialist optimistic theologies, suggesting that the emergence of the latter in the 17th
century, replacing the premillennialism of the 16th century, allowed for the emergence of the idea
of “progress” in English thought (Escobar 2004; Tuveson 1968, 39).36 Still others have embraced
the premillennialism/pessimism and postmillennialism/optimism polarity and have identified the
weltanschauung of amillennialism as “realism” (Grenz 1992, 1857ff).
Emphasizing continuity between the present age and the age to come, postmillennialism
advocates the advance of Christ’s kingdom, defined as the world gradually Christianized through
the efforts of the church (Grenz 1992, 25; Ladd and Clouse 1977, 120-121), a kingdom that may
or may not involve a physical return of Christ at the apex of this triumph (Tuveson 1968, 34). In
this scenario, the millennium is “a golden age of righteousness and peace” culminating in a
messianic (re-)appearance when the world is sufficiently transformed (Ladd and Clouse 1977,
34
Though, at least in part because of this optimism, Tuveson (1968, 33) classifies Goodwin among the
postmillennialists.
35
See Poythress (1994), accessed 6/30/13, http://www.frame-poythress.org/ebooks/understandingdispensationalists/. The reference is from chapter four of this link.
36
Escobar argues that “The difference between placing the Second Advent after the millennium and placing it
before reveals…a radical shift in the conception of history from sixteenth- to seventeenth-century English thinkers: a
move from an understanding of history as tradition and precedent to an understanding of history as novelty and
progress” (2). Still others place the emergence of postmillennial thought and the foundation of progress as an aspect
of modernity in the teachings of Joachim of Fiore, the twelfth century Cistercian monk in Italy (Esposito, Fasching,
and Lewis 2008, 71). Such views are refreshing counters to the sloppy use of terms relating to this matter. For
instance, Gribben, when analyzing the “dispensationalism” in one of the incredibly popular Christian apocalyptic
Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, unhelpfully says: “The novel’s dispensationalism is ultimately
figured, like millennialism more generally, as a reaction against progress” (2006, 122, emphasis mine). On the
miscasting of these novels as dispensationalism and the unfortunate caricatures of categories of millennial thought,
see Sweetnam (2006) and Underwood (1993). I note that Sweetnam’s article is in the same volume as Gribben’s.
58
123). The beginning of the millennium is not likely to be discerned easily as it requires a long
period of the triumph of the church, a period without the setbacks and vicissitudes of history
marring its story (Ladd and Clouse 1977, 133). Postmillennialism was dominant among
Protestants in the United States in the 18th century until about the Civil War, was deeply
influential in the Social Gospel movement, then retreated to a marginal existence in subsets of
liberal theology after World War I (Grenz 1992, 185-8).
Neither premillennialism nor postmillennialism was the dominant form of millennialism
in early and medieval Christian history. Present in the early church fathers and dominant for over
1,000 years since Augustine, amillennialism emerged as an antidote to millennialist fervor
(Landes 2011, 6ff). Amillennialism argued against a temporal-based 1,000 years in favor of
allegorical interpretations of the millennium which vary widely but generally refer to the reign of
Christ in various realms and spheres (Grenz 1992, 25). Amillennialism is understood as an
“inaugurated eschatology” in that most of the kingdom of God is understood to be exercised
through the church on earth, or in the souls of believers. In Christian history, the social effect of
this interpretation was, obviously, to discredit chiliastic thought; once hegemony was achieved,
apocalyptic chiliasm was a threat to order and established religious castes (Pieterse 1991, 78).
The most common interpretation of the effects of the millennium within amillennialism is that
Satan is bound so that the church may evangelize effectively (Ladd and Clouse 1977, 164). Some
prefer the term “realized millennialism” in that the millennium is not an earthly but a heavenly
one, where dead saints rule with Christ from heaven in the present (155, 169). Amillennialism
historically has been strongly associated with Catholic eschatology and what has come to be
called “replacement theology,” in that the church has replaced Israel in the divine scheme and
has inherited Israel’s prophetic promises, though it also characterizes much of “Christian
59
realism,” such as in the works of 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (Grenz 1992, 18990).
These eschatologies represent significant cleavages within Christianity historically, and
they continue to do so today. They also inform the structuration of the Christian communities
that hold them; as Richard Kyle, in his book The Last Days are Here Again: a History of the
End Times, says that the differences between the systems “go well beyond the timing of Christ’s
return. They touch upon attitudes toward life, the way in which Scripture is interpreted, the
number of resurrections, and the nature of the millennium itself” (1998, 20). These eschatologies
represent varying time maps that not only point to substantive differences in theology, but
structure social action, especially activism, in significant ways. Properly identifying these
systems is, therefore, an important task if one is to understand the social implications of any
particular Christian eschatology, and it is to an examination of the literature on Christian
Zionism and the eschatological system attributed to it that I now turn.
The ‘Standard Account’ within scholarship on Christian Zionism
After presenting a clear definition of dispensationalism and the range of scholarly work
on forms of millennialism, it will now be helpful to provide what I will call the “standard
account” of Christian Zionism given by scholars who seek to understand the nature of the
phenomenon both in relation to its historical emergence and its contemporary manifestation. It
should be acknowledged at the outset that Christian Zionism and the (usually accompanying)
phenomenon of prophetic speculation and the systems of prophecy interpretation that result from
it are incredibly complex, with clear demarcations between systems and consistent application by
60
adherents difficult to discern.37 Humans are far more pragmatic than complex ideological
systems allow. Further, these systems themselves tend to be opaque and unwieldy in their details
when it comes to application related to social action. Riesebrodt (2010, 81) has noted that most
religious adherents are not aware of the complex details of the formal theological systems which
undergird their practices; within Christian Zionism, this has been most evident in American
Pentecostalism, which was not originally dispensationalist (Sheppard 1984, 375-410; Newberg
2008) but came to embrace dispensationalism from the 1930s to the 1980s by the assessment of
one scholar (Oliverio 2012, 113),38 and is in the process of disengaging from dispensationalism
in our day. As Gannon (2012), both a historian and an adherent of Renewalist Zionism, notes:
Dispensationalism, with its bleak assessment concerning the coming failure of the Church
Age, and Pentecostalism, with its inherent upbeat enthusiasm for Church restoration to its
Book of Acts victorious origins, are incompatible at their cores. Yet dispensationalism
did have an immense impact on Pentecostalism. Not until the latter third of the 20th
century did many recognize the opposing nature of these two systems. Until then, many
Pentecostals freely used the Scofield Reference Bible and taught Bible college courses
advocating dispensationalism “with [a Pentecostalist] edge” (47).
Scholarly analysis which focuses on religious ideological systems can suffer from an overreliance on formal doctrines and a misapplication of systems to movements, which I argue is the
case for Christian Zionism. A more helpful approach may be to recognize theological systems as
expressions of inner convictions; these convictions find “homes” in theological systems when
37
Lewis (2010, 335) cautions against focusing only on prophecy speculation as an impetus for 19 th century
Evangelical contributions to the development of Christian Zionism, arguing persuasively that Jewish missions—
particularly those spearheaded by Jewish converts to Christianity—were a “major factor” in the development of
Christian Zionism. Toon (1970, 41, 115, 139) reminds us that postmillennial speculation often included Jewish
conversion prior to the second coming as a necessary step in the divine plan; premillennial speculation has generally
been more pessimistic about Jewish conversion, assigning it to after the return of Jesus, from Joseph Mede in the
17th century (Toon and Capp 1970, 61), to Blackstone in the late 19th and early 20th century (Blackstone 1908, 164;
Moorhead 2008, 229). Therefore, while Lewis is certainly correct and his insight is an important one, it should be
cautioned that these missions were, and are currently, often motivated by a millennialist impulse: positive Jewish
response to the Christian gospel is considered a “means-based” sign of the end of the age and the return of Jesus.
This impulse often manifests as prophecy-based, specifically around Matthew 24; more on this in the next chapter.
38
Oliverio further limits the dispensational influence to the “predominately white and Baptistic realm of the
[Pentecostal denomination] A/G [Assemblies of God] and not in the Holiness or African-American wings of
American Pentecostalism” (116).
61
and if they are deemed necessary to the individual or religious community for the purposes of
legitimating these inner convictions and organized or systematized to a more or lesser degree
depending on social factors related to the individual and/or religious community and their social
“others.” Such an approach accounts well for the wide-ranging expressions in Christian
eschatology, makes room for “switching” and “borrowing” in regards to the adherence to and/or
use of religious ideological systems, and refocuses the scholar on more basic convictions—as I
will argue in later chapters, particularly moral convictions.39 Eschatological systems can be of
assistance in identifying these basic convictions, but they should not, in turn, be rigidly used to
predict, define, or be employed as the “true expression” of those who are believed to be
adherents of such systems based on superficial, observable traits or beliefs. Otherwise, the
resulting analyses tend to assume strict adherence to a well-developed eschatological system—in
the case of Christian Zionism, this system has tended to be premillennial dispensationalism.
Scholars then rely on this categorization or association, what I am calling a “standard account,”
to erroneously analyze modern Christian Zionist practice. While it is reasonable to allow
historians a measure of generalization when describing a phenomenon with common
characteristics, if the generalization obscures too much or encourages misapplication and
misidentification, much can be lost.
A preferable method of studying such phenomenon is to posit, a la Max Weber, the
existence of an ideal type, from which actual manifestations can be compared and contrasted.
But such a conceptual move has not been deployed by historians of Christian Zionism, as far as I
am aware, as they are usually more focused on describing the characteristics of particular
In this focus on moral convictions I follow sociologist David Martin’s Durkheimian-influenced exhortation that
“the drama of human beings in society is inherently moral, having to do with the frames and motives of action, and
their relationship to the right, the appropriate, and the orderly. All attempts to drain the moral aspect out of the
sociological level of scientific activity simply reduce the power to understand” (1997, 50).
39
62
movements or historical and/or contemporary figures, which then get generalized
inappropriately. In other words, no research has posited an ideal type of Christian Zionism from
which iterations of the movement can be contrasted and compared. Such an exercise could prove
fruitful were it to be undertaken. Examining several instances of the misapplication of
dispensationalism to Christian Zionism more generally can be a fruitful exercise, and I will
alternate between scholarly works that use the standard account as an introduction to other,
related work, and those scholars who misapply dispensationalism to Christian Zionism in works
focused on explaining Christian Zionism. The standard account often obscures questions of
analyses particular to sociologists, not least of which is how the phenomenon can be
comparatively assessed, not only historically but contemporaneously, and how it mutates or
manifests in other social contexts, under what conditions, and why.
An example of the standard account as it has emerged within scholarship not directly
related to Christian Zionist historiography can demonstrate the problems the standard account
creates in assessments of scholars of movements where Christian Zionism may be present. When
SOAS University of London professor of Religious Studies Paul Gifford wants to tell us
something of the presence of Christian Zionism within African Pentecostal contexts, he uses the
standard account to paint with a broad brush, producing a monolithic movement which a) is
“obviously rooted in modern American history,” b) “stems from the dispensationalism of John
Nelson Darby,” c) and which is fully identified in its modern forms (even in Africa) with
Darby’s theological system—dispensationalism (Gifford 2001, 74-5). This last misnomer is
doubly damaging, suggesting that Christian Zionism in its modern expression is
dispensationalist-derived and that dispensationalism still manifests exclusively in forms inherited
from Darby. In this portrait and from the view of critics such as Gifford, Darby (an Irishman)
63
introduced into the uniquely fertile post-Civil War United States a highly successful apocalyptic
theology which has grown, unimpeded, like a virus within the body politik, and which now
spreads globally. These three claims—rooted in American history, deriving from Darby, and in
current form is an expression of his teachings—together typify what I call the standard account,
and can be found in similar forms in a number of attempts at explaining Christian Zionism, such
as in Wagner (1995), Sizer (2005, 2006), Kiracofe (2009), Halsell (1986, 2003) and others.40
Further, the assumptions are not inconsequential for the interpretation of the phenomenon at
hand, in Gifford’s case, Christian Zionism as present in African Pentecostalism. The critique that
follows, then, has less to do with an assessment of the dispensationalist system—a system which
undoubtedly provided a significant share (or, likely more accurately, was a significant
expression) of support for Israel among conservative Christians in the United States in the 20th
century41—and more to do with the essentialization of Christian Zionism as a necessary
outgrowth and ideological progeny of Darby’s dispensationalist system.
Review of recent scholarly treatments of Christian Zionism
In what follows I review several major works published within the last twenty years that
attempt to explain conservative Christian support for the state of Israel, for the purpose of
Darbyite dispensationalists seem to be the only actors at the temple mount in Israel in Gorenberg’s (2000)
account, for instance.
41
In his entry in the Encyclopedia of Religion in America, Boyer (2010) tantalizingly states of dispensationalism:
“Popularized by televangelists, megachurch pastors, and the mass media beginning in the 1970s, dispensationalism
gained a wide following.” Though his application of the term “Dispensationalism” to the phenomenon he wishes to
name (a “scheme of prophetic interpretation…[which] influenced evangelical and fundamentalist view of world
affairs and public policy issues”) is problematic for reasons I discuss below. The timing of its popularization—the
1970s— undergirds the reasoning which lay at the base of the public attention to Christian Zionism we have noted
beginning in the 1980s: political apocalypticism. Elsewhere, in a review of Stephen Sizer’s book on Christian
Zionism and following Sizer’s analysis, Boyer completely equates Christian Zionism with dispensationalism, saying
“No one who follows events in the Middle East can fail to be aware of the involvement of so-called Christian
Zionists in the politics of the region. These are evangelical Protestants whose reading of Bible prophecy convinces
them that God has a distinct end-time plan for the Jews—a plan whose fulfillment is integral to Christ's second
coming and thousand-year Millennial reign. According to this interpretive system, known as premillennial
dispensationalism…” (2007, 160).
40
64
assessing the role dispensationalism is assigned by each author in the construction of what they
name Christian Zionism. I will exclude influential books that include assessments of Christian
Zionism, its sources, and present manifestations but do so from a theological perspective, such as
Stephen Sizer (2006) and Donald Wagner (1995), despite the fact that these two authors may
have contributed more to the spread of the standard account than any other authors.42 I do so
because with theological interests at play, these works have proven too polemical and rely too
much on overgeneralizations and mischaracterizations to be reliable. To address my specific
concerns with these authors would simply take up too much space. It should be reiterated that
how one chooses to define Christian Zionism often is a derivative of one’s view of it.43 After a
review of these works I will suggest reasons for why the replication of the standard account is
misleading, why it is perpetuated, and why replication of the account negatively bears on
scholarly treatment of the issue, particularly our capacity to interpret its effects and assess its
activity.
Stephen Spector
There is much to commend in Stephen Spector’s work, Evangelicals and Israel: The
story of American Christian Zionism. Spector is Jewish and a professor of English, thus coming
Regarding his book Sizer states “The purpose of this book has been to make a case for a covenantalist approach to
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by focusing on and critiquing its antithesis, namely dispensational Christian Zionism”
(261). Notably and erroneously, Sizer classifies the ICEJ as “political dispensational” (101-2, 105, 143, 256), and
Wagner does much the same: “Virtually all of [the ICEJ’s] leaders subscribed to the futurised premillennial
dispensationalist eschatology and continue to be in general agreement with classic futurist dispensationalist
teachings” (1995, 100). Sizer’s main critique seems to be theological (a rebuke to dual-covenant theology) with
concerns for the reputation of Christianity world-wide and with peace in Israel/Palestine.
43
I agree with Stockton (1987, 244) when he writes: “It is easy for someone outside the evangelical tradition to
misunderstand Christian Zionism. Its roots lie deep in cultural assumptions not easily comprehended by an outsider.
But putting aside misunderstandings, it appears that those who are hostile to conservative Christianity sometimes
use exaggerated misinterpretations of the doctrine to defame and discredit those who come from that tradition.”
However, in the review that follows my critique is not that modern accounts of Christian Zionism are too polemic in
nature, though a number of them are, just as a number of them are uncritically accepting; rather, my critique is that
they are too often inaccurate in their sourcing and, in the last section of this chapter, that modern accounts of
Christian Zionism are too uninformed about the nature of millennial movements. To reiterate, my working definition
of Christian Zionism is political conviction derived from Restorationist theological belief in the continuing role of
"Israel" in the redemptive plan of God which necessarily results in a temporally re-formed and re-embodied
national Israel with Jerusalem as its capital.
42
65
at the topic from a different perspective and field. He seeks to explore the relationship of religion
and politics inherent in Christian Zionism. He provides a wide survey of current Christian
Zionist manifestations and his treatment is sensitive, critical without being acerbic, and covers
many of the dominant themes currently influential in Christian Zionism but missed or
underappreciated in other accounts. Especially important is that Spector (2008) makes explicit
that Christian Zionism in its current form need not be dispensationalist:
Many evangelicals do embrace…dispensational expectations, but, according to the best
estimate, the vast majority do not….Rather, Christian Zionists testify by their words and
actions to a complex set of convictions and motivations that impel them to bless, support,
and sometimes even love Israel and the Jewish people. 44 (23)
As far as it is an accessible work, broad in its scope and nuanced in interpretation, Spector’s may
be considered the best semi-ethnographic account of contemporary Christian Zionism published
to-date. He is usually quite careful in his application of the term dispensationalist, and without
the definition provided by Sweetnam used in this chapter, that is no small accomplishment given
Spector’s outsider status. Further, Spector’s access to leading Christian Zionist thinkers for direct
interviews is unprecedented, which likely accounts for his sensitivity in the application of
theological labels. In many ways, Spector’s book is a welcome antidote to other’s hyperascription of dispensationalist convictions undergirding Christian Zionism.
While Spector does provide a decent summation of eschatological thought and
restorationist history in his initial chapter, he still feels compelled to lay most of Christian Zionist
support in the United States (at least in his historical retelling) at the feet of Darby, while
acknowledging that Darby’s ideas were not new and citing Mather’s views on Israel. After
While I think Spector’s estimation is likely correct, the pollsters he interviewed on the question indicate that it
would be impossible to measure the prevalence of “premillennial dispensationalism” in the broader American
culture with an acceptable level of accuracy. Pollster John Green did speculate that while 2006 data showed 48% of
the estimated sixty-six million white evangelicals in the U.S. held to a broadly premillennialist view of eschatology,
dispensationalists only likely total about five million individuals (Spector 2008, 188).
44
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listening to several individuals praying aloud at a conference in support of Israel, Spector (2008)
states:
[A man’s] declaration that we are in the last days, however, and his allusion to Christ’s
coming on the clouds, were straight out of end-times theology. The woman…called for
building the third Temple and establishing Israel in biblical borders….She was
expressing a powerful theological strain in Christian Zionism, a view of divine history
that was developed less than 200 years ago. It has the awkward name “premillennial
dispensationalism. (13)
Though neither the millennial speculation about Israel’s restoration nor the rebuilding of the
temple are sourced from Darby, such is the power of the standard account, even for a scholar
who is otherwise careful to differentiate Christian Zionist streams.45 The urge to locate such
expressions of faith to a single source is too tempting; more tellingly, it is Timothy Weber’s
book Allies for Armageddon (reviewed below) that is cited for a number of Spector’s claims
regarding dispensationalists. Reifying Darby is not without its costs: Spector attributes to Darby
the view that “Arabs will move the Dome of the Rock from the Temple Mount to a new
Babylon” (14). It appears he took this assertion from Gorenberg (2000, 35), whom he cites but
who was summarizing the plot of the Left Behind novels, published in the 1990s. I find no such
claim in Darby, who refrains from spectacular speculation outside of what he can deduce from
his own readings of scripture. The uniqueness of Darby’s contributions is overemphasized in this
first chapter, even if they are downplayed in subsequent ones. However, Spector’s understanding
of Christian Zionism and premillennialism as sourced from dispensationalism leads him to
claim—I think erroneously—that “[t]he idea that prophecy is being fulfilled today is, of course,
at the heart of dispensationalism” (172). As I have shown, Darby expected only one prophecy to
In Spector’s description, the man’s reference to “coming on the clouds” may have a relationship to
dispensationalism as it is likely a reference to the rapture, but the rebuilding of the temple can be found in a number
of strains of Christian Zionism.
45
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be fulfilled in his lifetime—the rapture.46 The temptation to move beyond this was evident in the
works of dispensationalists such as Blackstone, who though he refrained from date-setting,
preferred to identify general “signs” of a general social and global nature which could point to
the (expected or actual) fulfillment of prophecy,47 making room for his own activism to speed up
these signs, beginning in 1887 (Moorhead 2008, 137ff, Smith 2010) and culminating with the
Blackstone memorial.48 Other prominent dispensationalists such as Arno Gaebelein rejected
active Christian support of the emerging secular Zionist movement (Moorhead 2008, 88n253),
more closely following Darby’s script: “Zionism, we wish to say, is not the divinely promised
restoration of Israel. That restoration is brought about by the personal, visible and glorious
coming of the Son of Man. If Zionism succeeds, and no doubt it will, it will be a partial return of
the Jews in unbelief to their land” (Gaebelein 1905, 200-01). As Smith (2010) has observed:
…popular American Christian support for the State of Israel is not grounded in popular
adherence to dispensational doctrine. In the same way, the political involvement
constitutive to contemporary Christian Zionism contradicts Darby’s political philosophy.
(259)
46
While this was true in theory, the reality is that, on occasion, Darby did attempt to make reference to prophesied
events in relation to contemporary events to his times. But these were rare (Yoon 2010, 50).
47
As the Zionist movement made progress the urge to associate it with prophecy fulfillment, rather than just merely
signs, was too great. In a subsequent edition of Jesus is Coming, published 30 years after the first, Blackstone (1908)
would write: “Zeph. 2:1, 2. Could this prophecy be more literally fulfilled than by this present Zionist movement”
(177). He comes very close in this passage to date-setting, by associating the meeting of the first Zionist congress
with a period exactly 1260 years after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem—1260 is derived from the book of Daniel
and was central to the historicist speculations of the 17 th century in England. Yet Blackstone would still assert that a
literal reading of the text demonstrated that Israel would not (actually) be restored until after the rapture (1908, 118),
a fact not even mentioned by those who claim to have reviewed early dispensationalist thought such as Ariel (2013).
48
Moorhead calls the Memorial “one of the most glaring lacunas in the history of emerging evangelical
fundamentalism” (2008, 147). Predating by five years (1891 vs. 1896) Theodor Herzl’s manifesto which was widely
seen to be the launch of the modern Jewish Zionist movement, Blackstone’s Memorial was his proposed solution to
the “Jewish question” in light of recent pogroms in Russia: the world should help with their immigration to
Palestine. A petition to the American government, it was signed by a large number of American dignitaries and
government officials, among them JP Morgan, John Rockefeller, Chief justice of the Supreme Court Melville Fuller,
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives TB Reed, the Archbishop of Baltimore (Gibbons), the mayors of both
New York City and Philadelphia, future president of the United States McKinley and editors and publishers of
nearly 100 newspapers and periodicals (Moorhead 2008, 151). Moorhead states of these signatories that “most…had
no allegiance to Blackstone’s eschatological views, but were simply responding to a humanitarian crisis.”
68
This is the recurring irony: those that moved beyond Darby, such as Blackstone, were the
greatest contributors to the development of Christian Zionism. The eschatological program of
Darby needed to be overcome in an ideologically coherent fashion for activism to justifiably
proceed within Christian Zionism, a fact not lost on the ICEJ nor, I would argue, on progressive
dispensationalists.
Another important issue with Spector’s book is his weak theorization of his findings.
There is a shift occurring in Christian Zionist thinking and Spector’s data is indispensable in
assisting to map out the new terrain, even if his own reading of the phenomenon is not theorized
well. Spector makes the following claim: “One conclusion I reached again and again in this
research was that for evangelicals, politics almost always comport with faith” (2008, ix). I take
this to be a rudimentary form of theorization: beliefs shape action. Perhaps expecting more
robust theorization is too much from someone outside of the field of religious studies or the
social sciences, but Spector’s insistence (which repeats throughout the book) that belief and
politics are highly correlated should be problematized. For Spector, this finding seems to mean
that he finds no ulterior, hidden motives in the activities of evangelicals and finds a reliable
means of prediction related to social action within their professions of belief; he takes their
claims at face value, even if he makes room for some motivations for which they, themselves
might not have awareness (180). Riesebrodt (2010) has problematized the use of “subjectively
intended meaning of actions” as an acceptance by the scholar of “ex post facto reflection, i.e. of a
subsequent effort of rationalization” as if the reflection were the initial motivation for action
(83). Social and religious meaning, in other words, is often the “cart” which is mistakenly put
before the “horse” of social and religious action. Not only are religious practitioners often
unaware of the theological complexities of the systems by which they may define themselves,
69
but humans generally are often unaware of the motivations that underlie social action, including
religious action. We are more intuitive actors, not cognitive ones, and cognition enters as
justification for social action is needed for the self and for participation in social groups.49 The
prioritization of religious systems as a causal mechanism for religious behavior is problematic
for these and other reasons.
Spector’s work is probably the most comprehensive and sensitive study of Christian
Zionism published to-date. His work would benefit from exploring various streams of Christian
Zionism that do not find a home in premillennial dispensationalism, and by considering factors
beyond adherence to theological systems as a primary root of Christian support for Israel.
Timothy Weber
A highly representative treatment of the standard account on “Christian Zionism” can be
taken from an influential work published in 2004 by historian Timothy Weber, an evangelical
historian, whose major work on Christian Zionism is entitled On the Road to Armageddon: How
Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend, and published by Baker Press, indicating his audience
49
Riesebrodt (2010) further states:
It is generally acknowledged that many of our actions proceed in an unreflective way, and anyone who
observes him- or herself knows this is true. We are not constantly accounting to ourselves for our action,
nor are we constantly reflecting on its meaning. Instead, we often act intuitively on the basis of learned
behaviors, the internalized expectations of others, habits, conventions, or incorporated experiential
knowledge. We also change our opinions from time to time and believe today something that we will
consider nonsense a day, a month, or a year later. We interact with others on the basis of a certain trust, as,
for example, the assumption when we are driving a car that other drivers are familiar with traffic laws. All
this (sic) points to the problematic character of subjective explanations of religious action. (82-3)
Recent studies in moral intuition theory by social psychologists also confirm and expand on the idea that
rationalization follows intuition/emotion, and that this is the primary flow of cognition and moral reasoning (Haidt
2012). Since apocalyptic rhetoric presents itself as the final solution to anomie (McGuire 2002, 34-50), such rhetoric
is infused with moral lament through history and across cultures and religions (O'Leary 1994, 5). How moral
decisions are made, then, should be important to scholars studying millennialist movements, since these movements
should be seen as an act of moral protest. Changes in theological systems can be monitored as signals for changes in
the form and content of the protest as well as for the solutions proposed by the systems themselves. This will be
explored more in the following chapters.
70
is conservative Christians.50 In his introduction, Weber offers support for the relevance of his
study based on quantitative data from a survey by Time Magazine (Gibbs 2002) that indicates
that “over one-third of those Americans who support Israel report that they do so because they
believe the Bible teaches that Jews must possess their own country in the Holy Land before Jesus
can return. This book is about them” (2004, 11). In the next sentence of the next paragraph, he
adds “[D]ispensationalists…are the subject of this book.” Therefore, in his introduction Weber
equates “dispensationalists” with Christian supporters of Israel; no distinction between the terms
is proffered, and readers are led to believe that the account of dispensationalism he is to shortly
provide will inform them about the shape, character, and beliefs of Christian Zionism in our day.
Throughout his book, Weber suggests that Christian support for the state of Israel derives from
19th century premillennial dispensationalism expressed in modern evangelicalism, essentially just
as it did for Gifford, above.
Besides this category error, Weber does not fully recognize the efforts of Christian
advocates of Jewish restoration in the 19th century that were not premillennial dispensationalists.
In particular, Weber does not mention at all the very influential William Hechler, who was
chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna and was invaluable in gaining traction for the Zionist
cause through his personal relationship with Theodor Herzl (Goldman 2009, 102ff; Ehle 1977,
346ff).51 Hechler was deeply inspired by biblical prophecy in his convictions, often sending his
prophetic calculations and speculations to Herzl as a biblical apologetic for Herzl’s movement.
Nearly completely absent also is Lawrence Oliphant, a British diplomat who devoted his entire
Weber’s work in this book and in his dissertation (1987) is consistently cited in subsequent literature on Christian
Zionism. Weber has appeared with PBS host Bill Moyers to discuss his book and Sarah Schmidt, writing in Jewish
Political Studies Review, suggested that his work was “perhaps the definitive survey on the subject” (2007, 191).
Weber has a wealth of primary material available to scholars of (American) Christian Zionism, despite my critique
of his underlying assumptions and the outcome largely generated by these assumptions in his analysis.
51
Hechler was so influential in the earliest manifestations of Christian Zionism proper (late 19 th century) that his
absence in Weber’s work speaks volumes about the kind of literature (i.e. narrowly dispensationalist) informing his
work.
50
71
life to the restoration of Jews to Palestine, apparently inspired by the teachings of the fiery
preacher, prophecy expert, and lightening rod of the church in London, Edward Irving (Goldman
2009, 45ff). Oliphant worked tirelessly to establish a Jewish colony in Palestine just east of the
Jordan River, but Weber provides a one sentence mention only (158). And most telling of all is
the two sentence mention of the Earl of Shaftesbury, whose long and distinguished career in the
British government afforded him a central place to advocate for his deeply Christian Zionist
convictions. Compounding the unfortunate effect of these nearly complete omissions is that
Weber attributes Shaftesbury’s Christian Zionism to “his dispensational prophetic views,” yet
each of these men was Christian Zionist without any definitive signs of dispensationalism among
the religious convictions animating their activism.52
Weber, like other scholars (Forbes and Kilde 2004, 63-4), also assigns the label
dispensationalism to Hal Lindsey, whose work is characterized by the date-setting tendencies
characteristic of historicism (Lindsey and Carlson 1970; Sweetnam 2011);53 yet we have already
52
In the case of Oliphant, his connection to Irving (via his father) may tempt scholars to associate him with either
the early prophetic conferences (Albury in particular) in England in which Irving was influential and out of which
premillennial dispensationalism emerged through Darby, or, more radically, to view Irving, himself, as the true
father of premillennialist dispensationalism (Patterson and Walker 1999). But this would be to assume too much of
Oliphant’s Christianity, which was decidedly unorthodox, mystical, anti-institutional and frequently associated with
radical communes (Goldman 2009, 47ff). Oliphant fails the “Evangelical” test of dispensationalism. Conviction
about the Jewish return to Palestine for Oliphant, then, would be not associated with dispensationalist thought in any
substantive manner. The cases of Hechler and Shaftesbury are likely even more clear-cut. Lewis (2010, 318) places
Shaftesbury squarely in the historicist premillennialism camp. Hechler, though more eclectic in his beliefs, held
clearly historicist premillennial views (Ehle 1977, 355ff), though he may have attended a church within the Irvingite
movement in London for a time (Clark 2007, 99). Neither man made mention of the “rapture.” Clark’s (2007, 104)
assumptions about Hechler’s ties to dispensationalism do not necessarily follow from the evidence she gives: the
deployment of dispensations to understand biblical time, the return to Israel by Jews in unbelief (Lewis 2010, 32
notes that 17th century Puritans varied on whether return was to be after conversion or before), and that a tribulation
was to befall the Jews on their return (Ehle 1977, 336 notes that Cotton Mather also held this view). Hechler
believed that we were entering “Israel’s messianic age,” and, because of this, it was no longer necessary for Jews to
convert to Christianity. Such a conception of the dispensation he lived in would be foreign to dispensationalists, and
in his understanding of Jewish salvation Hechler, too, fails the evangelical test (Lewis 2010, 330-31). However, it is
noted that a tribulation period where the object of suffering is the Jewish people does appear to be dominant in the
futurism of dispensationalist circles and is found in very few other locations, save Cotton Mather. It was not
considered to be a distinctive feature of dispensationalism by Sweetnam, as we have noted; further work could
illuminate this connection, potentially identifying it as a distinctive feature of dispensationalist theology.
53
Sweetnam (2011) goes so far as to question Lindsey’s commitment to evangelicalism as respected historians of
evangelicalism, such as David Bebbington, have defined it.
72
seen that dispensationalism is defined in a constitutive way by a futurist approach to prophecy.54
The inclusion of Lindsey in an examination of Christian Zionism is important: eighteen million
people bought Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth (in English) in the 1970s, which had,
by 1993, made his book the best-selling non-fiction book of the decade, only behind the Bible
(Sweetnam 2011, 219). Yet also important is an accurate assessment of the basis of Lindsey’s
Christian Zionism. Misidentifications such as these are symptomatic of a larger problem: the
treatment of the very politically active, “semiotically aroused,”55 Christian Zionism as
dispensationalist.56 Of this Christian Zionist activism, which was deeply embedded in other
issues important to the Religious Right, Weber states:
Of course, such sudden political involvement raised a number of questions: Why would
dispensationalists feel compelled to make things better when they knew they had to get
worse before Jesus returned? Why declare culture war if signs of cultural decay were
expected in the end times? Why organize politically when they knew from Bible
prophecy that such efforts were doomed to failure? (Weber 2004, 199)
This is not an unimportant question. But the “most obvious” answer to Weber is that
dispensationalists were more than the sum of their millennialist convictions, and their activism
was “not logically connected to their prophetic beliefs” (199), i.e. they were not acting
illogically, but acting through the logic of their other identities as citizens. Timothy Weber cites
surveys made of Moral Majority members in two states which “showed how dispensationalists
justified political action” while living in a society perceived as experiencing moral declension
54
Futurism could be found as early as 1585 in the writings of the Catholic theologican Ribera. Its function in his
writings was to counter the historicist claim that the pope was the antichrist (Ehle 1977, 230). Other scholars have
noted Lindsey’s non-dispensationalist approach (Sweetnam 2006, 180).
55
Landes uses the term to describe those groups which have moved into apocalyptic time: “everything quickens,
enlivens, coheres…everything has meaning, patterns. The smallest incident can have immense importance and open
the way to an entirely new vision of the world, one in which forces unseen by other mortals operate” (2011, 14).
56
In an interview with Bill Moyers and Rabbi Michael Learner in 2007, Weber portrays significant portions of
American evangelicalism as sympathetic to Israel for its place in biblical history (i.e. it is the Holy Land), but labels
those evangelicals who support Israel for specific theological and prophecy-based reasons as dispensationalist. See
October 5, 2007 edition of the “Bill Moyers Journal,” transcript accessed 3/2/12,
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/transcript5.html.
73
(200). (It should be noted that the survey is a comparison of Moral Majority members and
“premillennialists;” Weber interposes conservative American Christians and dispensationalists in
this passage.) The study, published in 1991, showed that, when confronted with the cognitive
discrepancy between their theological convictions and their political action, respondents showed
an “apparent paradox: Pre-millennialist theology leads to beliefs in the futility of social action
and in the greater importance of evangelism, but it does not substantially reduce political
activism” (Wilcox, Sharon, and Jelen 1991, 251).
Weber took from this that “fighting Satan” became justification in itself, and also added,
based on Lindsey’s arguments, that “American dispensationalists…knew that America was
going to decline, but they did not want it to happen when they were still present to suffer the
consequences” (200). The focus in the study on both rational actors and behavior that does not fit
their “premillennialist doctrine” resulted in cognitive dissonance. Although Wilcox, Sharon, and
Jelen (1990, 254) offer that those surveyed might, indeed, choose to change their premillennialist
convictions in light of the dissonance, the assumption of the study—the rational actor who
proceeds from cognition to action—remains. This leads the authors to conclude that
premillennialists are “reluctant warriors”—the title of their study. Such an assessment is not
without merit, but has their initial question—“How can we account for a movement of political
reform among those whose doctrine implies that such reform is doomed to historical defeat?”
(246)—really been addressed? Or have they only observed the legitimations by which believers
make sense of their commitments from sources other than those made on cognitive/rational
bases? Landes calls this the “deception of a categorical approach [which] tries to define a
movement by a single set of beliefs” (2011, 35); the disappointment and excitement that are
organically present in the lifecycle of millennialist movements leads to constant improvisation
74
with unintended consequences (68). Weber tells us that most (mid-to-late-20th century)
dispensationalists had believed the end would have come within “one generation” of the
founding of Israel in 1948, based on a reading of Matthew 24:34.57 Some had interpreted the
concept of generation (derived from their reading of the Bible’s use of the term in the Old
Testament) as between forty and seventy years; one date-setting author provided “88 reasons the
rapture will be in 1988” (Whisenant 1988). Widely popular author Hal Lindsey also embraced
this schema, without actually settling on a date (O'Leary 1994, 151). The failure of the end to
materialize led many, particularly of the younger generation who believed the imminent
preaching of their elders, to reconsider the theological systems of their parents
(dispensationalism), but not their support for the state of Israel and the continued movement of
diaspora Jews to the country, which was too massive in its existence to otherwise explain away.58
We will see how adaptations in millennialist thought within Christian Zionism continue to occur
in the next chapter, including those changes inspired for very different reasons than the failure of
apocalyptic anticipations.
There may be a further error embedded within this approach to analyzing Christian
Zionism through the lens of the standard account. Both the authors of the study that Timothy
Weber cites and Weber himself seem to assume, or at least expect, a causal relationship between
Matthew 24:30-35: “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth
will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will
send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the
heavens to the other. Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out,
you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the
door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and
earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (emphasis added)
58
One powerful example of this was when Matthew Crouch, son of Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) founder
Paul Crouch (and now heir to the reins of the network), confronted his father, and indirectly Hal Lindsey who was
present, about tendencies among those in their dispensationalist circles to date-set. Their confidence in the end
appearing in the 1980s, Matthew and his spouse Laurie suggested, led them to marry in 1985 so they could have the
experience prior to the end of the age in 1988. Paul tried to give a defense of dispensationalism (by name), which he
described as having “fallen on hard times lately,” but conceded they had made many mistakes; Matthew was
insistent on directly challenging the dispensationalist system, though his knowledge of the systems details were not
apparent. TBN broadcast of “Praise the Lord,” August 20, 2009.
57
75
the theological program and support for the state of Israel, the latter as an emergent property of
the former. If so, it is possible that they have confused a mere expression of support for the state
of Israel with its source(s). This is magnified when we consider that support for the state of Israel
from a theological perspective has now transcended historically highly salient religious
boundaries. The partnerships of Glen Beck, a Mormon, and John Hagee, a fundamentalist
Protestant and a self-identified dispensationalist, in joint appearances on Beck’s television
program and in Jerusalem itself, as well as an appearance speaking from Hagee’s own pulpit
during a celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in October, 2011, signal a deeper identification
for the state of Israel than could be contained within historic religious boundaries, much less
those boundaries expected to be provided by eschatological programs.59 It appears the authors
have posited dispensationalism as a robust social structure and have left little room for human
agency, except in the form of the resolution of cognitive dissonance; they have assigned a direct
and unproblematic causal influence to the eschatological program that are unwarranted and
unsupported by the evidence they seek to explain.
Furthermore, even though Christian Zionism received attention beginning concurrently
with the rise of the Religious Right and may have intensified and grown as a movement
beginning in the 1970s, positing a strong correlation between Christian Zionism and the
Religious Right, as we saw with Weber, above, may be misleading. An empirical study by
Stockton (1987) in the late 1980s, building on previous studies, suggested that “Christian
Zionism is a cultural theme that cuts across cultural groupings” (246). Stockton would conclude
that “Christian Zionism—while associated in certain peripheral ways with the New Religious
59
This mirrors a larger phenomenon emerging in the 2008 U.S. election, where evangelicals were debating the
potentiality that they would be voting for a Mormon, Mitt Romney, for president were he to gain the Republican
nomination for president. Evangelicals solidified their support for Romney when he gained the nomination in 2012.
“John Hagee - Glenn Beck - Bible Prophecies Part 1 of 7,” YouTube video, 6:19, broadcast segment from the Glen
Beck show, original broadcast October 12, 2007, posted by “giramino,” October 16, 2007,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOsYSwNrlBo&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL01834E3E617E51F5.
76
Right—deviates in major respects from that movement….it transcends [its evangelical] origins
and has support in all religious, ideological, and political strata” (1987, 248, 251).60 Therefore,
though Christian Zionism is undeniably a political theology, it is neither the sole property of a
single political ideology nor a single religious tradition, which is suggestive for my assessment
of the role of an ideological system such as dispensationalism in the prevalence of modern
Christian Zionism. That Christian support for Israel would be propagated across such varied
religious, ideological and political groupings by way of a detailed system of biblical
interpretation (dispensationalism) does not seem plausible.
Weber (2004) discusses the role of the ICEJ in modern Christian Zionism in several
places in his book. On one occasion, he even suggests that the ICEJ was founded by
“dispensationalists and charismatics” (216),61 though he provides no alternate narrative for
Christian Zionism rooted in anything but dispensationalism in his work. In one of his discussions
(261), Weber explicitly labels the ICEJ’s first spokesman, Jan Willem van der Hoeven (quoted at
the head of this chapter), a dispensationalist. The association of the ICEJ with dispensationalists
is predictably present but erroneous.
We can conclude, therefore, that despite some very helpful primary data and a large
overview of Christian Zionism on the American scene (especially its political activities), Weber
uses the term “dispensationalism” in a way that is unhelpful for evaluating Christian support for
the state of Israel, the focus of his book. His brush strokes are too broad by a significant amount
so that they do not retain sufficient consistency with the first two waves of dispensationalism, not
to mention subsequent changes since the 1980s. He also does not distinguish between varying
60
See treatment of more recent and supporting quantitative data in Smith (2010, 62ff).
In my interview with ICEJ co-founders Merv and Merla Watson (who are Canadian), they indicated to me that
though they, themselves were dispensationalist (at the time of the founding—they are not dispensationalists now),
the ICEJ leadership was based in covenantal theology. Personal interview with Merv and Merla Watson, May, 2013.
61
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Christian Zionist streams. Furthermore, though Weber’s book is commendable as an overview of
dispensationalist-derived Christian Zionism, his account does not seem to contribute
satisfactorily to understanding the motivations behind the activism of Christian Zionists. Weber
also attributes (if only implicitly) “evangelical” support for Israel to dispensationalism and does
not mention the many previous iterations for belief in the restoration of the Jews among
American Puritans. His is a “single-source” argument in regards to Christian Zionism: it is
derived whole-cloth from Darby dispensationalism, and this error, with similar effects, is
repeated in other recent accounts (Aldrovandi 2011; Kiracofe 2009).
Crawford Gribben
When Gribben, a historian, begins his book Writing the Rapture: Prophecy fiction in
Evangelical America, he starts with his version of the standard account, but is (initially) more
careful to provide information on significant changes within the movement. He rightly informs
us that the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 had a profound (and likely inevitable)
effect on dispensationalist orthodoxy, precisely because of the futurism inherent within classic
dispensationalism.62 Surely the establishment of Israel, it was reasoned, was predicted in the
Bible; ergo, all prophecy is no longer “future.” The futurism of dispensationalism (if not other
distinctives of the system) gave way to another round of Protestant historicism (Yoon 2010,
415),63 resulting in Gribben’s (2009) conclusion that the “coherence of dispensational ideas”
62
This realization should make apparent a deep contradiction with the association of Christian Zionism with
dispensationalism: any understanding of Christian Zionism must necessarily involve political advocacy or activism
toward Zionist ends. Without a connection to such advocacy or activism the term “Christian Zionism” borders on
the nonsensical. Yet once one incorporates political advocacy or activism from a millennialist basis one has already
moved into a radical historicist frame of viewing biblical prophecy in which the fulfillment of prophecy is tied to
one’s active participation. Futurism has, by necessity, been evacuated at that point. As is evident throughout this
dissertation, this is exactly the trajectory present in the development of dispensationalist theology from Darby to
today.
63
This is observed by progressive dispensationalists regarding the state of dispensationalism, even among some
theologians, in the 1970s and 1980s (Blaising and Bock 1993, 20).
78
were “profoundly affected” (9). These changes in the system continued throughout the 20th
century, causing Gribben to further conclude that “dispensationalism is an evolving system of
faith within the constantly evolving fundamentalist and neo-evangelical cultures” (9). The
observation of inevitable changes is a helpful one, and often missing from other accounts of
Christian Zionism. Yet Gribben does not attempt to elucidate either the distinctive content which
might remain in the system, the historical effects that might have accompanied those changes (by
whatever combination of cause or effect), or, more importantly, offer even the most basic
suggestion at the presence of another possible stream of Christian Zionism outside of
dispensationalism. He insists, more or less, that “dispensationalism” still applies to the
phenomenon he is studying. Furthermore, he chides popular discourses which see evangelicalism
as a “homogenous movement” (2009, 8-9), a criticism shared by this author. It is after reviewing
these important tenets of his introduction to prophecy fiction, then, that it is greatly puzzling to
find the claims found in the partial paragraph, below:
It was during the 1970s that evangelicals came in from the cold. During that decade, it
was estimated, eight million Americans were “firmly committed” to dispensational
premillennialism.64 More recently, it has been suggested, there are perhaps between
twenty-five and thirty million evangelical supporters of Israel,65 and Pat Robertson and
the late Jerry Falwell, two of the more outspoken premillennial leaders, have claimed the
support of a television audience of one hundred million. These millions of
dispensationalists and their sympathizers are not restricted to a social or political
underclass. Evangelical millennialism resonates within the political arena. (2009, 10)
After providing us with helpful caveats in the previous pages about the breadth and diversity of
potential changes in dispensationalism, in a single paragraph Gribben seems to conflate the eight
64
Gribben cites Wilson (1991, 12) for this figure.
Gribben cites Sizer (2006, 23) who, in turn, cites the estimate of journalist Grace Halsell (2003, 50) for this figure.
Gribben also cites the same page of Sizer for the viewer estimate of Falwell and Robertson. Halsell was notorious in
her two books (1986, 2003) for equating dispensationalism with Christian Zionism, and on the page cited the
estimate is not hers, but Dale Crowley Jr.’s, who is a fundamentalist radio evangelist and an outspoken critic of
Christian Zionism. His estimates and analysis on the page cited are obvious gross oversimplifications on several
fronts, and he equates support for Israel with dispensationalism. It should be noted that estimates provided (thirdhand) by guesses from a conservative radio host and vocal opponent of Christian Zionism are not adequate for
scholarly use.
65
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million “firmly committed” of dispensational premillennialism in the 1970s with the twenty-five
to thirty million “evangelical supporters of Israel” (an estimate from 2003) and up to 100 million
television viewers of Christian Zionist advocates, all of whom he describes as “millions of
dispensationalists and their sympathizers” who, in turn, he implies, represent politically active
single “evangelical millennialism.” In the same paragraph, though not quoted here, he interposes
the terms “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” as modifiers of millennialism, again undermining
his earlier careful admonition to not lump everyone together. The reader could easily emerge
with a picture of 100 million politically active dispensationalists-types who represent a single,
apparently homogenous evangelical/fundamentalist millennialism—quite an amalgamation! This
kind of move, conflating differences into one very large, monolithic block can be a scare tactic
move. Further, nowhere in this description of what is supposed to be the primary wing of
Christianity theologically and politically committed to the state of Israel, it should be noted, do
we find room for an organization like the ICEJ or any other non-dispensationalist groups, much
less those who might have been part of the modifications of dispensationalism over the last
century (modifications that still are unnamed).
The error suggesting that dispensationalism and Christian Zionism are coterminous
movements is not uncommon in the literature as this review of the literature has shown; it is an
error that allows for easy caricature. Usually building on previous literature, groups and their
activities can be forced by scholars and other critics into systems of categorization that no longer
apply (groups that simply act differently than they had before) or that have been revamped in
significant ways or even abandoned and replaced. As a comparison, Viswanathan (1998, xv) in
Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief argues that “there is little doubt that words
like ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ have lost their descriptive value and function instead as signposts to
80
given attitudes” (xv). Here, I make the same argument for dispensationalism, which has become
little more than a signpost for referring to a Jewish-and land-focused apocalypticism within
Christianity—and this uncritical application is very much misguided because it assumes the
apocalypticism retains characteristics of the ideological system associated erroneously with it.
Why the Standard Account is Perpetuated
There are at least three recurring errors in analysis—both popular and scholarly—that
contribute to the perpetuation of the standard account. The first is the willingness of scholars,
depending on their discipline, to allow dispensationalist theologians, often scholars at traditional
(i.e. from the classic and revised waves) dispensationalist seminaries, or public religious figures
(such as Falwell) to speak for the movement as a whole. Theologians, particularly if they have a
stated identity as traditional dispensationalists, have a vested interest in the defense of the
system, both in its integrity and in its influence. Therefore, when Yoon (2010, 674), a scholar of
Christian Zionism fails in his UCLA dissertation to distinguish various forms of Christian
Zionism except as “mutations” of dispensationalism, allows a dispensationalist theologian from
Baptist Bible College & Seminary, Michael Stallard, to provide a defense of the theology posing
as a defense of Christian Zionism more generally, the results are both predictable and
misleading.66 In Yoon’s (2010) summary, Stallard, as a dispensationalist, responds to critics who
accuse Christian Zionists of wanting to, in Stallard’s words, “help prophecy along by influencing
American policy to lead to war and conflict in the Middle East,” as follows:
Stallard points out that such accusations completely miss the important dispensationalist
doctrine of the pre-tribulational rapture of the Church: the notion that the genuine
Christians will be lifted to the heavens to be with Christ before what is known as the
great tribulation begins. (673)
The school’s statement of belief can be found on their website, accessed 6/21/13,
http://www.bbc.edu/confession.asp. It is thoroughly classically dispensationalist in doctrine.
66
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In other words, because classic, Darby-derived dispensationalism does not allow for overlap in
the divine plans for the church and for Israel separated by the cataclysmic event of the rapture of
the church, ergo modern Christian Zionism cannot possibly be seeking to accomplish anything
politically in regards to a dispensation that properly belongs to Israel. Besides, Stallard (2006,
17) argues (and Yoon notes, 674-5), God is sovereign and makes history happen; humans do not
decide the fates of peoples and nations and their activities can neither speed up nor prevent what
has already been foreordained in Bible prophecy, a common refrain for dispensationalist
prophecy advocates when confronted with such claims. The logic of the system, mediated by a
scholar with a vested interest in both its integrity and in taking credit for its influence as the
Christian ideological support for Israel, is allowed to speak for the experience, beliefs, practices
and activities of Christian Zionists writ large.67 The founder of Christians United for Israel,
pastor John Hagee, who identifies as a dispensationalist, has made the same claims in response to
the same charges. The standard account has engraved the platform used to respond to accusations
of foreign policy meddling by Christian Zionists with the name of premillennial
dispensationalism, and this primacy of place obscures other strains of Christian Zionism and
non-classic forms of dispensationalism from public view and analysis, as well as obscures
political activity.68 This is a reductionism that this dissertation seeks to redress.
As Ingersoll (2002) observes, “…the institutions and the people in power (who are likely to be disproportionately
represented among those interviewed and influential over all who are interviewed) have a vested interest in keeping
the conflicts [present in systems we are observing] under wraps” (170). She names this the problem of “univocality.”
Yoon rejects Stallard’s defense, but provides no insight, likely because no insight is to be gained from within his
presentation of the problem.
68
I do not wish to detract from Yoon’s mammoth and quite overall helpful work. At 734 pages, Yoon’s unpublished
dissertation tracks in some detail what he calls “transmutations” (415) in dispensationalism from Darby’s era to the
present. Having said this, I think he makes several errors: to present “the highly literalist hermeneutic” of Darby as
“a watershed change from Augustinian allegorical hermeneutic[s]” (p. x), suggesting that Darby’s “Israel-oriented
eschatology” which retained the place of Jews in prophecy was “novel” (p. x), identifying Darby’s system as “highly
innovative and malleable” (169, 661), and finally, that Darby’s suggesting that “a number of signs were necessary
preliminaries to the advent of Christ” was “path-breaking” (p. x)—these are all contentions are not warranted by the
evidence, in my opinion.
67
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A second error which frequently appears is the assumption within the standard account
that there is a single thing called “dispensationalism.” Lamenting the focus of historical accounts
on classic dispensationalism as it related to early American fundamentalism, Blaising and Bock
(1992), writing from within the tradition, put the issue succinctly:
[Such studies have] left some with the impression that dispensationalism is equivalent to
Scofieldism, fundamentalism, and separatism. The story of dispensationalism [should
include] its form before and especially after Scofieldism, …an intense preoccupation with
hermeneutics (which has brought changes in the tradition), and an oftentimes ambiguous
and reluctant relationship with a label that continues to have its own polemical history. It
is the story of a theological tradition that is currently reexamining itself in a process of
self-definition… . (15-6)
Scholars must not only acknowledge the changes within dispensationalism since its birth; they
must provide an account of these changes beyond (but perhaps supplemented by) what has been
provided by scholars within the movement.
The third and by far the most significant error that perpetuates the standard account is the
overreliance on a history of ideas approach in the study of Christian Zionism. Millennialism has
become a disfavored route to epistemological certainty in the modern world, even if, as we have
seen, it was not so in the 17th century. Its appearance in modern times serves as an
embarrassment to elites within countries that perceive themselves as modern but yet are host to
significant millennialist outbursts. Charles Taylor (2006) expresses the sentiment well, even as
he goes on to challenge it as over-simplistic and misguided:
For those who see secularism as part of modernity, and modernity as fundamentally
progress, the last few decades have been painful and bewildering. Powerful political
mobilizations that appear to center on religion seem to betoken a return of what had
already been safely relegated to the past. Religion seemed to be wreaking a terrible
revenge for its previous marginalization, not only in the world at large but even in the
most powerful Western liberal democracy, the United States. Liberals spoke darkly of a
relapse into the medieval, into irrationality. (281)
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Even if Taylor does not mention millennialism by name, it is not hard to imagine that the picture
he paints includes recent millennialist outbreaks. “Christian Zionism,” as far as and in those
instances where the term millennialist applies, became an important term beginning in the 1980s,
as we have seen. A history of ideas approach to Christian Zionism led cultural elites to name a
phenomenon in such a way that allowed it to have an identifiable origin, and locating it within
the 19th century (as in the standard account) allowed it to be separated like a black sheep from
2,000 years of Christian orthodoxy, a technique that is not necessitated by a history-of-ideas
approach but which is accommodated easily enough by it. Having identified the origins of
dispensationalism, painting all Christian millennialist outbursts relating to Israel with its broad
brush then allowed the phenomenon to be contained within a single-sourced movement—and
this was not just an advantage for critics of Christian Zionism but for traditional
dispensationalists as well. Studies of the phenomenon tend to come from a perspective which
seeks, as one scholar put it, to “understand how familiar people think strangely” (Davidson 1977,
ix).
Lastly, the absence of a clear, scholarly definition of Christian Zionism has profoundly
affected the ability of scholars to concretely identify the phenomenon studied, and this in turn
has greatly inhibited comparison and analysis.
Conclusion
My attempt in this chapter is to present an assessment of recent scholarship on Christian
Zionism in light of the pervasive influence of the standard account of Christian Zionism that
incorrectly identifies it as coterminous with the theological movement known as premillennial
dispensationalism. With a focus only on the application of the standard account of Christian
Zionist origins to evangelicalism, I have not even attempted to show how Christian Zionism (as I
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have defined it here) can be found in non-evangelical wings of Christianity, some of which are
covered in Goldman’s Zeal For Zion (2009). The major weakness of the standard account is that
it does not take into consideration the different types of social action which may be present
within Christian Zionism, or the social conditions that may inspire one group to embrace
Christian Zionism over another. Instead, the standard account encourages quick association
between expressions of Christian Zionism and the caricature of 19th century dispensationalism.
Recent scholarship has arisen to challenge the standard account. Donald Lewis’ The
Origins of Christian Zionism (2010) is a case in point. Lewis’ attention to all of the sources of
Christian Zionist thought and activity leads him to (rightly) recognize the importance of Jewish
converts to evangelicalism as a catalyst for the movement in the 19th century before the birth of
dispensationalism, in addition to changes within Protestant theology after Calvin and Luther (5).
Lewis entire account cites Darby in only three places (two of these in footnotes), demonstrating
that Christian Zionism from its origins has been a complex phenomenon informed by many
theological streams and social changes. Two other contributions, one from Falk (2006), a
sociologist and apologist for Christian Zionism, and one from Clark (2007), a journalist and
critic of Christian Zionism, have much to offer in countering the standard account, though each
can be acerbic in their characterizations and occasionally uncritical (particularly with Falk) in the
presentation of their data. Historian Robert O. Smith (2010) has also directly challenged the
sourcing of Christian Zionism within dispensationalism and, though his theoretical contribution
to the appeal of Christian Zionism as sourced within American identity may be problematic in
that it does not help with understanding global expressions of the movement, the careful
attention to historical detail on the origins of Christian Zionism puts his work among those recent
contributions that enlighten the field of Christian Zionist studies, rather than detract from it.
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Approaches that do not treat Christian Zionism as a monolithic phenomenon in regard to
its public expression but focus instead on specific streams have the most to offer scholars,
particularly those who are concerned with the identification of apocalyptic groups, those
concerned with identifying hindrances to peacemaking efforts, historians of Christianity
concerned with identifying social and theological changes, etc. I suggest that Christian Zionism
should not be seen to be coterminous with any single theological movement. Even if streams may
have inevitable overlap, differences are important, particularly when it comes to the social
structure of theologies and the social pressures (particularly globalization) that inform them, as I
will attempt to demonstrate in the following chapters. Throughout this dissertation I will argue
that one major stream of Christian Zionism comes from Renewalist (Pentecostal, charismatic,
neo-charismatic) sources, and that this stream has differing social and theological outcomes from
dispensationalist Christian Zionism. I name that stream Renewalist Zionism and my efforts in the
next chapter will be to contribute to an understanding of two interconnected streams of
Renewalist Zionism found in the ICEJ and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
Chapter 3
Renewalist Zionism:
The ICEJ and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)
We have literal Israel returning to their land…. This together with the spiritual latter rain falling
upon God's spiritual Israel today, betokens in a remarkable way that the closing days of the
Dispensation are upon us.
–D. Wesley Myland early Pentecostal leader (as quoted in Dayton 1985, 129)
Apostle Umar Mulinde is the pastor of a charismatic church outside of the city of
Kampala in Uganda, which by 2013 had grown to about 1,000 people. Many, according to his
account, were Muslim converts. On Christmas Eve of 2011, Mulinde was leaving his church
when he was attacked by Islamists who threw acid in face, shouting “Allu Ahkbar!” The acid
destroyed his right eye and permanently scarred half of his face, and part of his chest and hand.
The ICEJ, using funds from their social aid division, paid for Mulinde’s spouse and son to visit
him in Israel while Sheba Medical Center in Israel treated his wounds. His story, and how it was
(widely) told by Christian Zionist organizations, serves well as a microcosm of Renewalist
Zionism.1
ICEJ was quick to tell Mulinde’s story, first in April of 2012 on their recurring segment
“The ICEJ Report” shown on Israel Now News (both shown weekly on the second largest
Christian Television network, DayStar), and then in their flagship publication, Word From
Jerusalem in July of 2012.2 Pat Robertson, a leading Renewalist media personality and Christian
Zionist, told Mulinde’s story several times over the next 12 months on his flagship station,
Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). ICEJ explains the significance of Mulinde’s story,
Netanyahu, Daphne and Lela Gilbert, “An about-face,” The Jerusalem Post Magazine, May 10, 2012, accessed
6/12/13, http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/An-about-face.
2
“Pastor Mulinde: ICEJ assists recovering Ugandan Pastor in Israel,” Word From Jerusalem, July, 2012, p. 7.
1
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beyond what might be identified as the obvious concern of a Christian audience with persecution
(particularly from fundamentalist segments of Islam) of fellow Christians throughout the world:
So far, Sheba Medical Center has waived the enormous medical bills that have piled up
for Pastor Mulinde’s care, treating him as if he were an Israeli victim of terror. The
reason is that he is a Muslim convert to Christianity who was attacked by Islamic
militants for sharing his faith and for teaching his followers to love Israel.3 (emphasis
mine)
The first sentence comports with the ICEJ’s role to promote Israel to its readers; the second
sentence reveals three, interconnected themes that are consistently found in contemporary
Renewalist Christian Zionism: a) the concern with Islamist violence against Christians, but also,
in potential and actualized form for Americans, against the “Judeo-Christian” West; b) the
promotion of Christian Zionism as a central component of Renewalist theology; and c) the body
of Mulinde, particularly as a convert from Islam, as a site for Israel-focused, Renewalist political
advocacy.
In this chapter, I continue the task of differentiating Christian Zionist streams begun in
chapter 2. Towards this end, in the discussion below I seek to explore the contours of alternate
expressions of Christian Zionism from within the Renewalist stream, to examine the
weltanschauung of the ICEJ in order to see how Renewalist Christian Zionism is embodied in an
organization dedicated to Christian Zionist expression, and to compare the ICEJ to the New
Apostolic Reformation (NAR), an additional Renewalist stream of Christian Zionism that may
be undergoing some convergence with the ICEJ. Before proceeding, it should be noted that
Renewalist Christian Zionism is in a state of flux, emerging as it is from under the shadow of
dispensationalism, from which many Renewalist Christians found a relatively unstable home
during the early-and-mid twentieth century as a number of scholars of Pentecostalism note
(Dayton 1987, 145; Oliverio 2012, 112-16; Sheppard 1984). Renewalist Christian Zionists,
3
Ibid.
88
particularly those who reject dispensationalism, are beginning to take their place in positions of
power in large Christian educational institutions, and they bring with them criticisms of inherited
theology involving Israel, particularly dispensationalism. First and foremost among these
educational institutions is Oral Roberts University, whose influence in the modern expression of
Renewalist Christian Zionism is quite significant. More will be said on this below. But the
struggle for eschatology continues as the shift away from dispensationalism (Arrington 2002,
585) manifests itself and a new generation of (particularly but not exclusively Renewalist)
theological reflection emerges, particularly in the U.S., the lone country in which the
dispensationalist system has historically found favor in significant numbers.4 I will attempt to
elaborate on my assertion in the previous chapter that eschatological systems are often best
understood as expressions of existing inner convictions, particularly in their nascent phases as
emerging systems, and will attempt to demonstrate this assertion by tracking the changes in
Renewalist eschatology, particularly in relation to Christian Zionism.5
Latter Rain as the Core of the Renewalist Weltanschauung
There is a single recurring theme that seems to have given shape to much of Renewalist
theology, including eschatology and self-identity, and still serves as a source of creativity and
rethinking in Renewalist theology today: the idea of the “Latter Rain.” In Renewalist discourse
the Latter Rain is a concept from the Bible originally referring to rain patterns in Israel, but
eventually used in the New Testament in James 5:7-8 to make a spiritual point:
4
The claim of global dispensationalist influence (or lack of influence) cannot be substantiated quantitatively as it
does not appear such a global survey has been conducted nor could easily be accomplished. Instead, I rely on reports
from Christian Zionists with global reach, such as the ICEJ, who make such claims, though this is not ideal.
5
A full accounting of the ICEJ’s theology will not be provided; those wishing to explore the covenantal
premillennialism of the ICEJ can consult their publications on the issue, which differentiate clearly their system
from the dispensationalist system (Parsons Unknown year; Hedding 1978, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2004d, 2004e).
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Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for
the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter
rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
Once the concept is understood spiritually, it is then used by exponents to demonstrate spiritual
truths in Old Testament contexts where it may have still been referring to restored patterns of
rainfall, such as Joel 2:23, and in other New Testament passages, such as Acts 2, where Joel’s
prophecies are applied by Peter to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit noted there —a seminal
passage for Renewalists, who also apply the passage to their own experiences. The Latter Rain,
then, is understood as a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit just preceding the end of the age
evidenced by supernatural signs and resulting in a great spiritual harvest of people.
The Latter Rain functions like a metanarrative for Renewalist self-understanding and
combines the experience of Pentecostals6 with restorationist impulses inherited from the Puritans
and a millennialism that existed in an “uneasy relationship” with the dispensationalist milieu in
which Pentecostalism was born (Sheppard 1984), though the first Pentecostal teachings and selfunderstandings were not derived from dispensationalism (Arrington 2002; Dayton 1987, 146-7).
The exact origin of the doctrine that the end of days would be accompanied by an outpouring of
the Holy Spirit is unknown, but scholars speculate that it may have been influenced by West
African sources in addition to other home-grown movements, such as the “Latter Day” Saints
(Wacker 2001, 3, 255-6). The doctrine is in deep tension with early Reformation theology and
dispensationalism because a central conclusion of both movements is that much of the
In his analysis of early Pentecostal hermeneutics, Archer states that there was a “dialogical interaction between
Pentecostal experience and the Scripture” that, for some Pentecostals, was a “very important part of the interpretive
process” (2004, 106). The unique aspect of this hermeneutic is not that experience is relevant to or bears on
interpretation, but, rather, that it is expressly and explicitly so. This insight stands in contradistinction to traditional
modes of Protestant biblicism, relying heavily as it does on sola scriptura principles. It is the Bible breaking into
history rather than just having historical relevance.
6
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experiences and the social structure of earliest Christianity has disappeared: the “charismata”7
have ceased as have the key offices of the early church, such as prophets and apostles, after the
generation of the first apostles (Arrington 2002; Ruthven 2008).8 These charismata and offices
were seen by dispensationalists as the manifestation of a logic and Christian practice belonging
to a prior dispensation (Blumhofer 1993, 107), and their doctrine to this effect is called
“cessationism.” Nevertheless, the Latter Rain became a deeply influential doctrine within early
Pentecostalism (95). Historian of Pentecostalism Eric Newberg (2008) has called the “Latter
Rain” doctrine
a grand scheme for organizing the interpretation of the Pentecostal movement; it
constructed and upheld Pentecostal identity, and it gave coherence and meaning to the
Pentecostal view of history. The Latter Rain Discourse also served as a hermeneutical
stance from which Pentecostals utilized the Bible as an ideological text that legitimated
their movement. (409)
Other historians have suggested similar importance. Historian Donald Dayton (1987) has
suggested the doctrine “provided a key missing premise in the logic of Pentecostalism…[and]
gave the movement a sense of having a key role in the approaching climax of history as the
means by which God was preparing the ‘bride,’ the church, to meet her Lord” (27-8).
The Latter Rain concept, exemplified by the quote from early Pentecostal leader D.
Wesley Myland at the beginning of this chapter, is best understood as the formal expression of a
sense that God is breaking into the historical order with signs, often experienced in the body, that
are indisputably of divine origin—the charismata accompanying the experience of baptism in the
Holy Spirit and (often but not always including) the return of the Jews to Palestine. These signs
7
This theological term is a transliteration of the Koine Greek word, in plural form, for divine favor, or grace
(charis), and refers to the gifts of the Spirit, such as glossolalia, supernatural acts such as healing, etc.
8
Ruthven (2008, 3) notes that “cessationism,” which he defines as “the position which holds that miracles or
‘extraordinary’ charismata were terminated at or near the end of the apostolic age,” has been a source of conflict in
various waves of Christian and even Jewish history. It was at issue in some conflicts between the early Protestant
Reformers and the Catholic church, during Enlightenment debates on the supernatural, and between the Pentecostalcharismatic movement and more fundamentalist (and dispensationalist) segments of Christianity.
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and experiences are understood to testify to the approaching end of the age, the close of history,
as the church is perfected (Archer 2004, 108), filled out through evangelism empowered by
charismata, and/or unified by the spread of the Renewalist movement throughout the church
(Synan 1997, 291-294). (In the classical dispensationalist system the Latter Rain ideology of the
Pentecostals is also a logical—not just doctrinal—impossibility in that the former made no room
for fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in the church.)9 Sometimes a “literal,” additional
reference was made to the actual rainfall in Palestine, being restored to meteorological patterns
found in the scriptures, thus preparing both Palestine and the church to be life-giving forces for
God’s two peoples (Myland 1973; cf. Archer 2004, 103ff). It is in the later expressions,
particularly contemporary ones more influenced by both sociological and theological changes
(especially the influence of kingdom-now theology), that observed success in evangelism is
added as a sign of the Latter Rain.10
Protestant Models of Self-sign Identification: The Reformation as Eschatological Sign
Historian Ernest Tuveson, in his influential work Redeemer Nation (1968), provides an
account of the shift occurring in eschatology after the Reformation that I offer as a paradigm for
the functioning of the Latter Rain discourse and its impact on Renewalist eschatology over the
Archer has observed that early Pentecostals made use of dispensationalist terminology but “did not interpret
according to the Fundamentalists’ dispensational rules” (2004, 108). Among the dispensationalist rules broken,
Archer concludes, include the acceptance of charismata, as already discussed, but also, intriguingly, a general
understanding that God continued to interact with humanity in much the same way as was recorded in the Old
Testament. This is one of the more striking themes especially in third-wave Renewalism. The perception of
continuity between the world of the Bible and the world in which Pentecostals inhabit is also named as the likely
source for Renewalist Zionism by Timothy Shah (2006), one of the authors of the Pew Study cited in the
Introduction.
10
Pentecostal historian Vinson Synan (2001) offers what may be most common expression of this sense in
contemporary times when he says: “The…scriptures…speak of apostasy and a revival of evil in the last days [as
well as] a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit which will far outstrip the work of Satan in the world. While many
Christians are huddled in a corner waiting for Jesus to come, millions more are experiencing the greatest spiritual
renewal the church has known since the days of the apostles. The Bible teaches that both revivals will take place at
the same time, but with grace gaining the ascendancy” (5-6). His subtle jab at dispensationalists “huddled in a corner
waiting” is an expression of dissatisfaction with the limitations of the dispensationalist system for the Pentecostal
movement, an increasingly common expression among Pentecostal leaders.
9
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last century. Tuveson argues that the Reformers, needing to logically account for their movement
vis-à-vis the “apostate” Catholic church, turned to the book of Revelation (17). Overturning
Augustine’s allegorical reading of the millennium in John the Revelator’s vision, a number of
Protestants in the 17th century saw the book of Revelation as a discourse on the history of the
church and employed historicist readings of the prophecies in the book to discern successive but
chronologically and temporally limited waves of dominance from evil powers (the Catholic
church was identified with Babylon in the vision). In this reckoning, the history targeted for
demonization began with the institutionalization of the papacy and proceeded, using the “endtime” prophet Daniel’s “1260 days” interpreted as years (called the “year-day” theory), until the
Reformation when it could be discerned that “the true Church was restored” in the work of the
Reformers (18).11 The perception of a momentous change in the Christian religion embodied in
the interpreting community was written into the biblical text by way of prophetic interpretation,
subsequently shaping the perception and identification of subsequent relevant social “facts”
through speculative prophecy, a phenomenon repeated often in the history of Christian
millennialist outbreaks, including in our own time. Legitimization for the position of the 17th
century reformers was discerned historically as well as morally from the text of the Bible, and
Tuveson describes this propaganda as having an “immense effect,” in that it pervaded Protestant
preaching with a new “philosophy of history that seemed to make them partners with God in the
redemption of the world” (18). (In the last chapter I note that the idea of the restoration of the
Jews emerged in nascent Protestant thought during this period among some of the very
postmillennialists Tuveson identifies.)
11
Depending on the dating of the start of the papacy, adding 1260 years would put the date of the end of the age to
around the mid-17th century. For instance, if one was an early 17 th century millennialist, one could see the merging
of empire and Christianity as the source of corruption in the church, and counting from Constantine’s edict in 380
CE, add 1260 years, and surmise that the end of the age would occur around 1640 CE.
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Tuveson (1968, 18) argues that, in time, the very occurrence of the Reformation nurtured
a growing sense of optimism about the future, and the impetus for further reform and a continued
purging of influences of “Babylon” (the Catholic church), again derived from their reading of
Revelation and the sense of the defeat of evil present in the narrative that Tuveson seems to
suggest is intrinsic to John’s vision. Christian success against this evil and, indeed, all social and
political ills deriving from it began to be seen as potentially inevitable in the course of prophecy
fulfillment (19): “Not simple ignorance, historical disaster, or the expected folly and vice of
imperfect men, but a diabolical scheme to prevent Christianity from having its effect, has caused
all our woe,” Tuveson summarizes (23). It became possible to see the fulfillment of John’s vision
in Revelation 11: “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his
Christ” (8). From this, Tuveson argues (25), would emerge the postmillennialist optimism and
eschatology that so pervaded early American theology and self-identity, as the kingdom of God
would be understood to be (eventually) established on earth.
Therefore, the use of eschatological theology to justify the existence of a movement and,
eventually, as a legitimation of social action in the form of an in-breaking kingdom of God is a
helpful foil for understanding the concept of the Latter Rain in Renewalist discourse as it has
developed over the last century. But the idea of the Latter Rain as a key eschatological concept,
particularly within those forms of eschatology giving place to the restoration of the Jews, does
not begin with the emergence of the first wave of the Renewalist movement—Pentecostalism—
which is the normal historical association by scholars (Dayton 1987, 26-28; Gannon 2012, 21;
Newberg 2008, 389; Wacker 2001, 3). Instead, that idea emerges in the same context—and
among the same people—of the emergence of the early 19th century fervent concern with
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prophecy and the restoration of the Jews.12 Specifically, the London Jews Society is an important
catalyst of an early idea about the Latter Rain as a prophetic sign.
Three Examples of Latter Rain Ideology
Lewis Way and the London Jews’ Society
The London Jews Society13 (LJS) was founded in 1809 in order to focus an existing sense
of missionary expectancy—influenced strongly by German Pietism and the works of Philip
Jakob Spener in this regard (Lewis 2010, 50)—on the “relieving of the temporal distresses of the
Jews, and the promotion of their spiritual welfare” (Baring 1817, vii). Spener had suggested that
the conversion of the Jews had not succeeded because of the antisemitism present in the history
of the church and, according to historian of Christian Zionism Donald Lewis, Spener
“[s]ignificantly, even crucially,… linked improvement in the life of the church with Jewish
conversion,” additionally linking the very future of Protestantism with this accomplishment
(Lewis 2010, 52). Spener advocated human “means” to accomplish this feat: a revisiting of
Jewish traditions and active relieving of poor social conditions among them in European society
in order to generate empathy with the Jewish people (52-3) and to “restore” the Jews “to the
Christian image of an original Jewish identity” (53), which was conceived as in equilibrium with
Wacker’s (2001) claim that “the origins of the latter rain concept lay in dispensational premillennialism” is not
substantiated by him with evidence, but is accompanied by a note that the latter rain doctrine was embedded in the
Pentecostal’s “third and by far most important modification of the dispensational scheme [which] entailed a
dramatic re-conception of the [dispensational notion] of the period running from the Day of Pentecost to the present”
(254). Wacker correctly notes that the dispensationalist conception of this period, called the “Great parenthesis” in
God’s plan for Israel was as an “interruption” of this plan; the Pentecostal modification exemplified in the latter rain
ideology made the same period the “fulfillment of the divine plan for history, particularly in its beginning and ending
periods” (254, both emphases his). That makes the latter rain ideology a contradiction in dispensational thought, not
a derivative of it, either logically or (it can be shown) historically, particularly in light of the consequences of such
ideology, as I will demonstrate.
13
The LJS was originally and cumbersomely named the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the
Jews. It still operates today as the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ); accessed 9/5/13,
http://www.cmj.org.uk/about.
12
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nature and early Jewish traditions.14 The LJS would not only be influenced by these major
themes in their response to the political tumult of the late 18th century, but would incorporate the
idea of the restoration of the Jews to the land and, with other English Restorationists, contribute
this doctrine back to the German Pietists (54). Crucially the LJS would, like other English
missionary societies of the time, rely on German Pietists to staff their missionary endeavors (556), especially German Jewish converts. Indeed, the “inventor” of the LJS (57), Joseph Frey, was
a German Jewish convert. Echoing Paul’s admonition in Romans 1:16 that the gospel was “to the
Jew first, then the Gentile” (50), and drawing from Jesus’ statement in John 4:22 that “salvation
is from the Jews,” the LJS, under its chief financier Lewis Way, thus established its mission and
self-understanding theologically and punctuated the execution of its tasks with Jewish
evangelists. These evangelists assisted the Gentiles in the society with a better understanding of
Jewish culture, traditions, and the Bible itself, as well introducing arguments based on the Jewish
Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism and teaching from the middle ages, and the development
of Hebrew-Christian apologetics (Harvey 2009, 103, 116-7).15 It seems clear that figures like
Frey, assisted by organizations like the LJS, were forerunners of the modern Messianic Jewish
movement, path-breaking in their emphasis on a distinctly Jewish interpretation of the scriptures,
especially of biblical prophecy. (The role of Messianic Jews in modern Renewalist Zionism will
be explored more fully in chapter 7.)
In 1821 Way wrote The Latter Rain; with Observations on the Importance of General
Prayer, for the Special Outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Similar to fellow restorationist and
14
Lewis (2010, 53); quote is from Clark (1995, 28).
That the LJS was imbibing deeply from the knowledge of Jews and converted Jews regarding Christianity can be
seen from their reliance on “learned Jews” in the translation of the New Testament into Hebrew (Baring 1817, v).
Some in the LJS were convinced in the long-term efficacy of using Jewish converts to teach Jewish children the
Mosaic law—since many, according to observers, were “ignorant” of even the basic tenets of Judaism—in addition
to Christian teachings. Using this method, it was supposed, even if few converted (as was suspected), the instruction
in Judaism would “prove a seed” for future conversion and prevent prejudice against Christian missionaries (Baring
1817, 38-9).
15
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contemporary James Haldane Stewart’s work, Thoughts on the Importance of Special Prayer for
the General Outpouring of the Holy Spirit published in the same year, Way espoused a dim
future of existing evangelical activism and mission, likely deriving from contact by Haldane and
Way with the 1814 reveil (Fr: revival or awakening) in the Swiss Reformed Church in
Switzerland and France (Bonney and Trim 2007, 209). (The reveil had as its major concern
displeasure at the condition of the state church and a desire for sectarian separation in order to
facilitate restorationist forms of renewal.)16 In this espousal, Way demonstrates the social
pessimism traditionally accompanying the premillennialism that was his formal conviction
(Sandeen 2008, 12; Lewis 2010, 74). According to a contemporary review of Way’s work in The
Christian Observer,17 such calls for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the missionmandate of the church were growing at that time (1821, 605).18 But Way’s (1821) solution was
quite specific: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—the Latter Rain, as he understood it—was
intended first to the Jew (xxiv), which would, in its accomplishment, effect the conversion of the
rest of the Gentile nations to Christianity:
The time of the latter rain has been ascertained to be the time of harvest, and the time of
harvest has been shewn to be the period of the restoration of Israel, and may be distinctly
proved to be also the period of the second advent, or manifestation of Christ to his
ancient people. (xviii, emphasis his)
Salvation, particularly in the form of fulfillment of prophecies concerning the conversion of the
peoples of the earth in the last days was to be mediated through Jews, who would be restored to
16
This sentiment was duplicated in the complaints of the English premillennialists of this time who were deeply
concerned about growing Catholic influence in the public sector of English society, specifically among the
Tractarians, a movement of Anglo-Catholics. As Lewis (2010) puts it: “the adoption of philosemitic views by many
British evangelicals was part of an effort at identity construction undertaken by Calvinist evangelicals in the wake of
the French Revolution and the tumultuous events of the 1820s, which sought to respond both to the resurgence of
Roman Catholicism and the emergence of Anglo-Catholicism” (335).
17
According to Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical, The Christian Observer was a popular periodical and
the chief periodical for mainline evangelicals (usually activist and postmillennialist), who were known by the name
“Claphamites;” accessed 9/5/13, http://www.sciper.org/browse/CO_desc.html.
18
Lewis attributes this concern to postmillennial Scottish Calvinism and German Pietism (2010, 97).
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Palestine, then converted through a special outpouring.19 All Christian missionary focus, Way
argues, should be on this pattern—the Jewish people as mediators of God’s presence and
salvation—so as not to be rendered futile and ineffective by way of conflict with the scriptures
(11, 15, 31, 40, 54). Way comments, “of that period, when a renewed preaching of the Gospel
shall take place in all parts of the world, of which the conversion of the Jews will perhaps be the
first effect” (xvii, emphasis his). Some influential supporters of the LJS, such as financier Henry
Drummond, insisted that the very existence of the LJS (and other societies appearing
contemporaneously with it in Britain) was a sign of the end of days (Smith 1981, 280). Way
recommended that Christians set aside the Jewish Sabbath (one day before the Christian
Sabbath) to pray for this outpouring (Lewis 2010, 17). Citing Zechariah 12:10, Way argued that
an outpouring of the Spirit on the Jewish people would turn them to their Messiah (48).20 It was
Way’s friend and partner at the LJS, Edward Bickersteth, has been described by historian Donald Lewis as “one
of the early architects of evangelicalism’s global expansion” (2010, 122). Bickersteth held views on Jewish
restoration and conversion that were nearly indistinguishable from Way’s (cf. Bickersteth 1841, Discourse X; Lewis
2010, 62-3). Significantly, Bickersteth called the “political” restoration of the Jews the “preparatory” restoration
(Lewis 2010, 52). Neither, however, advocated for the continuation of the charismata or offices; rather, the Holy
Spirit functioned as the supplier of “graces…suited to this duty [of evangelism],” and as one who seemed to sharpen
the senses for the work of the kingdom. No doubt Bickersteth had the heresy trial of fellow London minister and
former LJS friend Edward Irving in mind when he cautioned his readers that he was not leading them, in his
teaching on the Holy Spirit, to understand “that we may now receive or expect those extraordinary gifts of the Spirit
which enabled the early Christians to pray in a foreign tongue, or suggested every particular word or expression.” It
was his desire to make this clarification for the purpose of “preventing mistakes” (1836, 45-6). Irving’s church had
one of the earliest modern documented outbreaks of biblical charismata, which scandalized his denomination
(Presbyterian) and many of the Christians in London (Murray 1990, 193-6). But Bickersteth often sounded like
modern Renewalists: “While it is clear from various promises, that the kingdom of Christ shall universally prevail, it
is no less manifest that there are DIFFICULTIES WHICH ONLY A DIVINE POWER CAN OVERCOME.” He
would call for “contending with principalities and powers, with rulers of the darkness of this world, and with
spiritual wickedness in high places” by prayer and “divine aid,” rhetoric nearly identical to modern Renewalist
discourse (1836, 195, all emphases his).
20
The verse is significant to the rest of my examination in this chapter, and I reproduce it here: “And I will pour on
the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on
Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one
grieves for a firstborn.” “…[O]n the inhabitants of Jerusalem” is a significant phrase: Way infers from this passage
that the restoration of the Jews precedes their salvation (52). In an 1824 poem Way, making use of a latter rain
metaphor, would write:
“When all around was dry! The latter rain
shall like the former on his people pour’d
Refresh the house of David! Bringing down
The grace of supplication upon them
19
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not the arguments about Jewish restoration, the conversion of the nations (Jews and Gentiles), or
the expectation of an outpouring of the Spirit to accomplish these ends that was of concern to the
reviewers of Way’s work in The Christian Observer and in The Christian Guardian (1821),21
since the reviewers agreed with all of these assertions. Rather, it was the particularization of
Jewish mediation as a replacement for the universalization of salvation already dominant in
mainstream evangelicalism that drew their criticism. Way’s insistence of the order of this
accomplishment—from Jews go blessings to the Gentiles—negated much of their existing work:
“To assert, however, that such will be the exact order in which this work of mercy will proceed,
would be altogether inconsistent with that spirit of humility with which we ought to speak of
what is not clearly revealed” (The Christian Guardian 1821, 496).22
The conversionary aspect to this mediatory plan was distinctive of historic
premillennialists such as Way and particularly the Anglican minister and Oxford scholar George
Stanley Faber who first wrote about the importance of Jewish conversion for Gentile conversion
(Lewis 2010, 45-7). This conviction was not found among dispensationalists, however, who did
conduct evangelization to Jews but only so as to keep them, like everyone else, from dying in
unbelief (318).23 Such particularizing of Jews to the primary mediation of salvation was not
Who look upon their former pierced one
The once despis’d, rejected Nazarene,
The man of sorrows! Sorrow then on them
Shall seize, and pierce their hearts, and they shall mourn
And be in bitterness as one that wails,
E’en as a mother for her firstborn son!” (1824, 58)
He would go on to describe in this passage the blessings that would then flow to the world from this occurrence.
21
The Christian Guardian was the official publication of the Church of England.
22
At the end of this review the reviewer could affirm Way’s work by saying that “he is engaged in behalf of that
nation of whom it is written, “BLESSED IS HE THAT BLESSETH THEE,” which is a reference to the Genesis
12:3 passage so critical to modern Christian Zionism. But in so doing the author does not assign more than a general
blessing to be taken from this passage for Gentiles who bless Jews; therefore, Way’s particularizations make
primary what the Claphamite evangelicals saw as available but peripheral.
23
Lewis notes that dispensationalists held that Jews, as a nation, would ultimately embrace the Messiah when he
appeared at his second coming (318), a view that has gotten them into trouble with those—particularly Messianic
Jews—accusing them of dual-covenant theology and failing to prioritize the evangelization of Jews.
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uncommon in the LJS during this period and appears to have only grown in the subsequent years
(Lewis 2010, 62-4, 120-1). Way would go so far as to personally appear before the Tsar in
Russia in 1817 and to the European heads of state attending a conference of Aix-la-Chapelle to
argue for Jewish emancipation and the creation of a Jewish homeland (Smith 1981, 280). The
influence of this shift to Jewish mediation among millennialists of various stripes after and
around the French Revolution was to have lasting significance, particularly upon Jewish
Christians. In a 1903 meeting of the first Hebrew-Christian Conference in the U.S. the Reverend
Leopold Cohn would insist “The Gospel is the ‘power of God unto salvation.’ But how is that
power to be realized? ‘To the Jew first, and also to the Greek’ is the divine direction. Neglect this
direction, and the sacred battery will not work” (1903, 53).
As the example of Lewis Way shows, the Latter Rain doctrine in the LJS was focused on
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Jews who, in turn, would have a mediatory function relative
to salvation. A different but related conception would appear in early Pentecostalism.
D. Wesley Myland
The expected outpouring of the Spirit seen in Way and like-minded evangelicals of the
early 19th century would find its permanent public expression in the Pentecostal movement of the
early 20th century. Early on, Pentecostals understood their movement as an outpouring of the
Spirit intended to rejuvenate the church until the second coming (Dayton 1987, 27), which
helped to bolster their self-confidence given the abundant rejection of and scorn for their
movement from fundamentalist and evangelical quarters in the early years (Blumhofer 1993,
105-8). Understanding the purposes of the latter rain in the history of biblical Israel as one of
facilitating the “harvest”—just as Way did, above—Pentecostals would use the doctrine to
legitimate their movement and the charismata that accompanied—even defined it. This
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legitimation was necessary given the perceived dearth of external, bodily charismata such as
glossolalia from church history since the apostolic age (Dayton 1987, 28). Using the doctrine of
the latter rain Pentecostals would claim that charismata, appearing in their time and restored as in
the age of the apostles, was fulfillment of scripture which foretold that such signs would reappear
at the end of the age. Much like the reformers chronicled by Tuveson and discussed above,
Pentecostals would write their movement into scripture and find in it permanent significance for
church history.
But Pentecostals such as Myland would “triangulate” their movement with an additional
legitimating sign: the stirrings of the restoration of Israel to Palestine (Gannon 2012, chapter 2).
This restoration was also foretold to commence during the end of the age and was beginning to
rumble in their own day: “Today Israel is a great credential to the supernaturalness of prophecy,
a living witness in the earth,” Myland would state in 1910 (as quoted in Dayton 1985, 123).
Myland’s work does bear the marks of dispensationalism: his positing of the latter rain comes in
dual forms: the “spiritual” elect, the Gentile church and the physical/ “literal” elect, the Jews.24
But, echoing the strained dispensationalism of other Pentecostal writers, Myland insists that the
“coming together” of these two forms of the latter rain is a sure sign that “the closing days of the
Dispensation are upon us” (Dayton 1985, 129). He goes on to exhort “It is coming! It is near!
When the latter rain is on it is very near. Why? Because the latter rain is to ripen the spiritual
crop, the Bride, as well as ripen the fruit of the land, and ripen God’s literal people” (140,
emphasis his).
Myland also promotes Darby’s doctrine of the secret rapture (Dayton 1985, 132), pushes the conversion of the
Jews to the second advent (132-3), and makes no mention of the latter rain as facilitating success in evangelism (the
“reaping of the harvest”) as seen in Way. For Myland the latter rain was for purification of the church and as a sign
of the end of the age.
24
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Other Pentecostal leaders, such as William MacArthur, espoused theologies that more
closely resembled Lewis Way’s. MacArthur’s theology was largely historical premillennialist
(date-setting) and he insisted that the outpouring experienced by Pentecostals was a sign that
Pentecost was about to be renewed on the Jewish people in Israel, and that this event would
facilitate world evangelization (Gannon 2012, 45). Other influential Pentecostals, such as Meyer
Pearlman and B. Ralph M. Riggs, would adopt portions of dispensationalist teaching but reject
outright the dispensationalist claims of a strict separation between Israel and the church
(Althouse 2003, 38; Sheppard 1984, 12-13; cf. Anderson 2004, 29-30). Thus, some Pentecostals
could maintain a consistent theology that did not also insist on the denial of the core of their very
movement or a congenital distinction between the Jewish people and the church, as
dispensationalism did.
But for Myland and many Pentecostals influenced by dispensationalism, which was
gaining in influence at this time through the popular Niagara prophecy conferences at the end of
the 19th century (Marsden 2006, 46), Jews and Christians were quite distinct peoples. Yet both
operated as different expressions of the same sign of the end of the age: the latter rain. Both
peoples were justified by their central places in eschatological prophecies exemplified by the
early Pentecostal Latter Rain doctrine. Therefore, both Way and Myland related the Latter Rain
doctrine to the Jewish people and to their restoration to Palestine, but in different ways.
Significantly, while Way insisted the outpouring was to go first to the Jews, Myland reserved the
outpouring of the Spirit for non-Jews until the closing of the dispensation of the church.
Latter Rain Renewal: George Warnock and the New Order of the Latter Rain (NOLR)
In 1948 in Saskatchewan, Canada, at a small orphanage and school, a group of sectarian
Pentecostals experienced a powerful renewal that would deeply shape the charismatic movement
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that would follow (Riss 2002; Faupel 2010). The sense of empowerment that resulted from these
experiences, claims of healings and exorcisms, as well as “prophetic words” given by some of
the students during the intense experiences were to prompt a revisiting of the scriptures (Riss
2002, 831; Faupel 2010). With a post-denominational emphasis—brothers George and Ern
Hawtin, along with George Warnock, believed that mainstream Pentecostal denominations had
become stale by mid-century25—the renewal strongly emphasized an end-times outpouring of the
Holy Spirit and, critically, the laying on of hands for the impartation of the charismata, rather
than the “tarrying for the Holy Spirit” that characterized the previous iteration of the Latter Rain
(Riss 2002, 830). The necessity of the reappearance of the “offices” of the early church26 was
stressed more than in the early Pentecostal movement (Hocken 2009, 43). The New Order of the
Latter Rain (NOLR), as the movement would be called by its detractors, insisted that all of the
offices were to be operative in the present age and this view has dramatically shaped the face of
global Renewalists, particularly of the third wave (Blumhofer 1993, 203-219, esp 211-17).
Additional teachings included a stress on the “foundational truths” of Hebrew 6:1-2,27 and the
The major Pentecostal denominations by this time had undergone what Max Weber described as the “routinization
of charisma” (Paloma 2005, 45), and had found an official home in mainstream evangelicalism as a member of the
National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1943 (Blumhofer 1993, 189). As a result of this the movement in
Saskatchewan and the Assemblies of God shared a mutual disdain and the latter formally renounced the mid-century
“New Order of the Latter Rain” (as it was to be called) as a result. The Latter Rain movement responded by calling
for independent churches operating in the gifts and offices of the Spirit; see Blumhofer (1993, 204-11).
26
A recurring reference to the “foundational ministries of Ephesians 4:11” could be found within the movement
(Riss 2002). The verse reads: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and
some pastors and teachers…”. The church already had the last three offices, but Reformation teaching had stressed
the disappearance of the first two as part of the doctrine of cessation.
27
The verses read: “Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to
perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine
of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” The emphasis within the
movement seems to be a desire to move into the “new things” available in the end of the age, as the church reaches
its full capacity for supernatural ministry (Blumhofer 1993, 213). Here is evidence of the restoration of “sacred
trajectories” mentioned in chapter 1.
25
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“manifest sons of God” teaching of Romans 8:18-25.28 A quote by J. Preston Eby in Riss (2002)
provides a concise summation of the movement’s self-understanding:
[The coming outpouring of the Holy Spirit] which shall finally bring the FULLNESS, a
company of overcoming sons of God who have come to the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ to actually dethrone Satan, casting him out of the heavenlies, and
finally binding him in the earthlies, bringing the hope of deliverance and life to all the
families of the earth. This…great work of the Spirit shall usher a people into full
redemption—free from the curse, sin, sickness, death and carnality. (emphasis Eby’s)
The stress here is on immanent, this-worldly deliverance from evil, resonating more with the
immanent activism of postmillennialism than with other forms of eschatology, though clearly
teaching a form of historicism (finding previous, if partial fulfillments of biblical prophecy in
history). As Holvast (2008), a professor of Professor of Missions and Missiology at the Faculté
de Théologie Évangélique de Boma (Congo DRC), puts the conviction of the movement: “By
way of divine apostolic and prophetic power the kingdom could be made reality on earth” (163),
though Jesus would return to assume headship of the victorious church.
Critically, movement leader George Warnock would introduce the teaching of the Feast
of Tabernacles as an important “unfulfilled” feast at the end of the age (Warnock [1951], chapter
1). For him, the Feast of Tabernacles was a feast of harvest and both the “former” and the “latter
rains” would be given in their fullness in order to facilitate the fulfillment and growth of the
harvest promised in this feast (chapter 10). For Warnock, the harvest was to be of the “fruit” of
the church: a manifestation of power on the plane of human existence (i.e. within this age) that
Blumhofer notes the several individuals who were teaching on the “manifest sons of God” prior to 1948
(Blumhofer 1993, 208-9). Particularly important in this passage is verse 19, which reads: “For the earnest
expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.” An alternative translation to revealing
uses the term “overcoming sons of God.” This passage was used by the movement to teach that it was possible for
some who had received the fullness of the Holy Spirit to experience immanent immortality. For others, the passage
simply meant that there would be Christians operating in a previously unknown expression of power, conducive to
conditions in the end of the age and effective for the purposes of that age. In one of those moments that provide a
scholar with a feeling of elation, I discovered that the Oxford University Bodleian Library’s original edition of
Lewis Way’s previously cited book of poetry Palingenesia has a handwritten dedication on the first page. The book
was dedicated to a Mrs. Howard Galton from Lewis Way’s widow, Drusilla Way, who had punctuated her
dedication with a reference to this very passage (“Romans VIII. 18-25”).
28
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would occur within Christians “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (chapter
12). Warnock would also directly refute dispensationalist conceptions of the rapture when he
would affirm a concept of the rapture conflated with the Second Coming, but stress that the
“Church is being robbed of her glory in not knowing that there is rapture for her even now” in
that it does not embrace the manifest sons of God teaching that stresses that there will be those,
in the last days, “who shall appropriate even here and now their heritage…in the Spirit, and
conquer over all opposing forces of World, Flesh, and Devil” (chapter 14). The kingdom comes,
Warnock noted, not by waiting but through the “hearts of God’s people” and what remains is for
them to walk fully in that reality (chapter 14). As with previous versions of Christian eschatology
there would be a “great Tribulation,” but the objects of the tribulation would be “descending in
wrath upon the ungodly, but in great power and blessing upon the overcomer” (chapter 12),
though believers will also suffer persecution (chapter 7). In this way, Warnock could make room
for a victorious church through evidences of “signs and wonders” (supernatural demonstrations)
in the midst of a declining and decaying world—the “realization of restoration,” as intellectual
historian Hutchinson would describe it (2010, 266). Others would add later that tribulation in the
form of religious persecution is to be the lot of Christians as the kingdom is established (Faupel
2010, 255). Jesus would appear first, through the bodies of the saints, before appearing in the
second coming and prophets and apostles were required to achieve the “pattern of perfection”
before the Lord’s return (Warnock [1951], chapter 7). “There must arise a group of overcomers
who shall conquer and become absolutely victorious over all the opposing forces of the world,
the flesh, and the Devil—before this dispensation draws to a close,” he insists, using his common
triumvirate of enemies of the church (chapter 11).Warnock scoffs at what he calls “orthodox
theology” that “forbids us to take Old Testament type and prophecy and apply them to the
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Church”—a not-so-subtle jab at the dominant dispensational view during his day (chapter 1).
Little is made by Warnock of the future of the Jews, though he does comment that “they have not
been cast off” and describes their future restoration as a revival “beyond words to express” and
declining to elaborate on how this might be accomplished (chapter 1).29 But it is clear anyway
that Warnock’s purpose in this book lies in another place—the renewal of the Christian church
according to the restoration and expansion of the powers and rule of the church in the last days—
as was the movement’s purpose as a whole (Faupel 2010, 245). Notably, his teaching does not
contain any a priori exceptions to Christian Zionism and would be available for adaptation by his
successors who wished to affirm Christian Zionist convictions.
What can be seen from these three uses of Latter Rain ideology is that each saw a great
harvest at the end of the age and each saw that age as imminent. For Way, the Latter Rain would
pour out on the Jews and world evangelism would be completed precipitating the return of Jesus.
For Myland and the early Pentecostals influenced by dispensationalism, the Latter Rain had a
spiritual and a “literal” 30 (material) fulfillment: Jews would return to Israel receiving the
abundance and blessings of physical rainfall secure in their homeland, and the church would
receive the spiritual outpouring of the Holy Spirit towards its own perfection prior to the end of
the age. For the third iteration of the Latter Rain, a fully immanent eschatology—“kingdom
now”—would be taught, resulting in supernatural manifestations leading the church to a
victorious future prior to the return of Jesus. Each of the iterations also had some purpose for a
29
Warnock does use language that is also employed by anti-Christian Zionists in their arguments, usually regarding
the church as the inheritor of Israel’s promises, for instance, calling the church the “true Israel” in chapter 1. But,
notably, Warnock refuses to take that further step of removing the Jews from their place in the divine economy.
30
Emphasis on “literal” interpretations may be less present in Renewalist circles because of a) the presence of
charisma in establishing authority (see chapter 5) and b) a desire to remove ones’ self or tradition from cultural
labeling as a “fundamentalist.” There are also evidences within the practice of reading the text among Renewalist
groups that suggest literalism may not serve as an apt descriptor—if it ever was so. This distanciation from
fundamentalism and an unclear theory of language and biblical authority has been noted by scholars studying
Renewalist biblicism; see Bialecki (2009).
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restored Israel but with different emphases: the strongest emphasis surely was Lewis Way’s,
which saw the kingdom mediated through restored Israel; the weakest was Warnock’s view
which did not elaborate on a Jewish future but made room for their place at the end of the age.
Most importantly, each of the iterations saw the Holy Spirit, through the activity of their own
movement, as the fulfillment (potentially, in Way) of the divine purposes leading to the end of
the age, particularly through evangelism conceived as the expansion of the kingdom of God.
Importantly, the pessimism regarding the condition of the world at the end of the age is
moderated incrementally but steadily through each of the iterations, until, arriving with the
NOLR, we find a fully-overcoming church. The critical differences, then, between these Latter
Rain ideologies and dispensationalism is that room is explicitly made in the former for the
activity of the church in bringing about the end of the age, combined with an increasing
optimism about the future of the church in the world (cf. Sheppard 1984, 9). From my
observations, these sentiments in contemporary form generate an enormous amount of selfconfidence among Renewalists, particularly the third wave (neo-charismatics) and especially
among those associated with what has been called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
Latter Rain, the NAR and the Neo-Charismatic Movement
The effects of the NOLR were immediate, spreading to several continents within a year
and developing a global outreach within three years (Faupel 2010, 242-5), obviously aided by
advances in the availability of travel and communications. Riis argues that the movement had
become “a vital part of the charismatic renewal in the 1960s and 1970s” (2002, 832). Continuing
the schismatic character of its original adherents, the movement found expression in independent
charismatic churches. Eventually, the movement found a somewhat identifiable expression in the
New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), though the influence of the NOLR diffused even more
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widely (Hutchinson 2010), particularly in the independent-minded third wave (Althouse 2003,
53). The neo-charismatic expression leading to the emergence of the NAR specifically has its
roots at Fuller Seminary, an influential evangelical seminary based in Pasadena, CA. There, the
supernatural-emphasized teachings of pastor and eventual founder of the neo-charismatic
Vineyard churches John Wimber, along with Fuller faculty and missiological anthropologist
Charles Kraft in the 1980s and 1990s and the church growth and spiritual warfare teachings of
Peter Wagner (also at Fuller in the 1990s) found expression (Coleman 2007, 23; Hocken 2009,
43ff; Synan 2011a, 16). These individuals were part of what historian George Marsden called (in
1987) an “anomaly in terms of fundamentalist-progressive disputes” (Marsden 1995, 92). In
retrospect provided by an additional twenty-five years, it is easier to see the happenings in the
1980s at Fuller as the permanent imprint of the neo-charismatics on evangelicalism. Kraft and
Wimber taught controversial but popular (with charismatics particularly) courses at Fuller that
were experience-based involving the supernatural: healings, instruction on defeating evil spirits,
the laying on of hands—all consistent with the neo-charismatic emphases on the renewal of the
charismata (Marsden 1995, 292-5), but expressing specific variances in practice. Practices such
as “spiritual mapping” were popular, in line with NOLR teachings: it was believed that demonic
influences over regions (cities, etc.) could be overcome through targeted “spiritual warfare,” or
prayer for release of demonic power and opportunity for the Spirit (Holvast 2008). It was
Wagner who would eventually coin the term “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR) to describe
the convictions of these independent-minded, supernaturally focused Renewalist leaders that had
emerged with great influence since the 1970s. He would describe the movement in this way in
the online version of the Renewalist publication Charisma Magazine in 2011:
It will surprise some to know that the NAR embraces the largest non-Catholic segment of
world Christianity. It is also the fastest growing segment, the only segment of
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Christianity currently growing faster than the world population and faster than Islam.
Christianity is booming now in the Global South which includes sub-Saharan Africa,
Latin America, and large parts of Asia. Most of the new churches in the Global South,
even including many which belong to denominations, would comfortably fit the NAR
template.31
The NAR is not an official movement of any denominational body and does not have an official
organizational arm. Instead, Wagner is trying to put a name to the neo-charismatics that
emphasized what he sees as central to the movement: 1) “apostolic” Christianity, which in his
deployment means Christianity as practiced by the early church (restorationism); and 2)
“reformation,” describing the impact, from his perspective, that the movement was making on
global Christianity across denominational boundaries.32 But to this he adds some distinctive
teachings that could describe a segment of the wider neo-charismatic movement which we can
call the NAR, but cannot be seen as foundational or even known to the wider, global neocharismatic movement. These teachings, called “The Seven Mountains,” align closely with the
teachings of Warnock’s book as outlined above and are the most distinctive markers of the NAR
movement as a whole vis-à-vis Renewalism generally. Wagner has identified a number of social
spheres where the kingdom should have influence that he calls “Seven Mountains: Religion,
Family, Education, Government, Media, Arts & Entertainment, and Business.” These spheres are
influenced by individual, prominent NAR proponents operating within them “so that they can
use their influence to create an environment in which the blessings and prosperity of the
Peter Wagner. “The New Apostolic Reformation is not a cult,” Charisma News, 8/24/11,
http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/31851-the-new-apostolic-reformation-is-not-a-cult.
32
In the entry for “neo-charismatics” in the New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic
Movements (Burgess and Van der Maas 2002), editor and author Stanley Burgess says that the NAR is a subset of
the neocharismatics (928). Wagner’s entry for the NAR (930) attempts to trace the roots of the NAR to three
sources: African Independent churches (which often incorporate the term “apostolic” in their church names and are
largely charismatic), the Chinese House Church movement, and the “Latin American grass-roots churches”—all
church movements which dominate their respective continents and countries and are characterized by individual,
“apostolic” leaders rather than leadership deriving from groups.
31
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Kingdom of God can permeate all areas of society.”33 NAR teachers do not often advocate that
these individuals must be the primary leaders in these spheres; rather, they are relationally and
physically proximate enough to the primary leaders to be able to pass on the blessings of the
kingdom, as they understand it. (Often this “blessing” is simply passed on through what is
understood to be influence on routine affairs within the sphere through godly leadership, godly
counsel, or often even through the simple presence of a believer within a sphere, as though the
believer were “leaking” the blessings of the Spirit to those around them.) Thus, the NAR’s social
dominionism tends to originate “from below,” and there are some churches affiliated with the
NAR (all independent megachurches) that still retain varying degrees of culture-warrior
mentality (Rick Joyner’s Morningstar Ministries could be considered one of them, located in
South Carolina),34 though a number of other prominent U.S. churches and leaders within the
movement lack this characteristic, such as Bill Johnson’s Bethel church in Redding, CA,
(generally speaking) Mike Bickle’s International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City, MO,
as well as Wagner himself, based in Colorado Springs, CO.35 The NAR and the neo-charismatics
Wagner, “The New Apostolic Reformation is not a cult,” ibid.
By “culture warrior,” I mean those conservative evangelicals who wish to propound their moral views through
direct political action and legal establishment, predominately within democratic systems. Though the NAR in the
United States certainly shares most of the conservative moral convictions of Renewalists globally, the latter as
documented by the Pew study of Renewalists (2006) particularly relative to “homosexuality” and abortion, their
approach, rather than have their side “win” through the passing of legislation is focused more on the winning of
souls through supernatural demonstration and encounter. This strategy is likely not shared by the larger Renewalist
movement, however (Daniels 2011). The NAR is also more focused on the alleviation of poverty, more open to
acknowledging human caused climate change, and other progressive justice issues, and less prone to support
military violence than other conservative Christians, I have observed. Therefore, scholars should heed the voice of
religious studies scholar Anthea Butler (also a Fuller Seminary alumnus from the time of Peter Wagner’s term
there), who, though a critic of the NAR, encourages scholars to not “focus too hard on the NAR rhetoric without
contextualizing it: how people actually live and experience these movements.” See “Beyond Alarmism and Denial
in the Dominionism Debate,” Religion Dispatches Magazine online version, accessed 9/14/13,
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5026/beyond_alarmism_and_denial_in_the_dominionism_de
bate.
35
Wagner’s interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross in 2011 is instructive in this regard (accessed
3/23/13, http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=140946482). The teachings of the NAR,
particularly the seven mountain teachings on dominionism, get translated across cultures in different ways, it should
be noted. So while some NAR churches might largely withdraw from culture warrior mentalities at home, those
teachings are expressed differently in places like Uganda, where NAR seven-mountain teachings have been
33
34
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have made some attempts at formal organization: the International Coalition of Apostolic
Leaders (ICAL) (formerly called the International Coalition of Apostles) advocate for much of
the NOLR teaching and is one of the most prominent structures coming out of the recent wave.36
These churches, and many others popping up continually, have established a number of
educational institutions relating to training in the supernatural. One of the more prominent is at
Bethel—the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry—which as of the 2012/13 school year had
over 1800 students.37 Bickle’s IHOP also has an associated university (IHOPU) with four
schools (ministry, music, media and missions), including subdivisions for Korean and Chinese
students, all designed to carry out their mandate to “equip and send out believers who love Jesus
and others wholeheartedly to preach the Word, heal the sick, serve the poor, plant churches, lead
worship, start houses of prayer, and proclaim the return of Jesus.”38 IHOP also maintains
worship and prayer meetings that have met continuously through nights, weekends, and holidays
for over a decade, broadcast continuously over the internet by GOD TV,39 and forming the core
connected directly with draconian anti-GLBT direct political action and legislation, as documented by the New York
Times. See “Gospel of Intolerance: US Evangelicals Finance Uganda’s Antigay legislation,” Ross Williams, January
22, 2013, accessed 9/11/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/opinion/gospel-of-intolerance.html?smid=twshare&_r=0 and “Christian Leaders Criticize Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” Adrienne S. Gaines, Charisma
Magazine, accessed 9/11/13, http://www.charismamag.com/site-archives/570-news/featured-news/8278charismatic-leaders-criticize-uganda-anti-homosexuality-bill. Some of this re-translation, likely not intended by the
NAR churches, may be due to the independent nature of the movement which lacks sufficient denominational
controls and infrastructure.
36
Wagner is the former presiding apostle of the ICA, now ICAL. According to its website, the ICAL “was
conceived in Singapore in 1999 by a group of international apostles. The group discussed how God could use the
combined efforts of global apostolic leadership to advance the Kingdom of God more effectively.” The mission of
the ICAL is “to connect apostles’ wisdom and resources in order that each member can function more strategically,
combine their efforts globally, and effectively accelerate the advancement of the Kingdom of God into every sphere
of society.” Members are not listed by name, though they number more than 400 (as of 2013) and membership is
restricted: “membership is attained only by official invitation from the Convening Apostle…[and members will be
those] who have been ministering through this gift for a period of time.” They have an annual meeting in Dallas,
though regional and international summits are also periodically convened by “ambassador apostles.” See
http://www.coalitionofapostles.com/about-ical/. Sometime in 2014 the group changed its name to the International
Coalition of Apostolic Leaders (ICAL).
37
See the BSSM website, accessed 9/12/13, http://www.ibethel.org/bethel-school-of-supernatural-ministry.
38
See the “About IHOPU” page, accessed 9/12/13, http://www.ihopkc.org/ihopu/about/.
39
See “The Prayer Room,” accessed 2/19/14, http://www.god.tv/prayer_room.
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of IHOP’s “House of Prayer” identity.40 A rapidly growing number of churches based on the
IHOP model and incorporating “House of Prayer” into their names are emerging globally, some
incorporating their own schools of supernatural ministry.
These schools should not be considered part of what sociologist of religion Christian
Smith (1998, 67-69) labeled the “sheltered enclave” model that sociologists of the late 20th
century used to describe the attempt of fundamentalists to maintain their worldview often by
creating “parallel institutions” (Sandeen 1970). Parallel institutions were theorized as necessary
for the purpose of shielding adherents from the corrosive cognitive influences of modernity on
religious belief (Hunter 1983, 56-60) by replicating secular social structures and imbuing them
with fundamentalist orthodoxy. Such models do not capture the nature, purpose, or function of
these schools, however. Rather, they are innovative in their incorporation of experience,
collective worship, and missions into a package designed to facilitate global mission and spiritual
action, rather than political action—a package that is simply not available anywhere else.
Renewalists, especially neo-charismatics, are, generally speaking, more culture affirming than
American fundamentalists. Students are trained to “listen to the Spirit” regarding potential
supernatural encounters and then approach individuals on the street to perform acts of healing,
give words of encouragement or divine knowledge, offer prayer, and invite others into the
experience of God. It is in this way that students are taught to seek change in their cities, rather
than through political channels. Furthermore, the schools are deeply connected to the churches
that established them and these, in turn, become centers of global Christian renewal. The schools
contribute to the growth of the churches in this way, and the hybridized organization that
New York Times coverage of Bickle’s IHOP that details the supernatural focus of its prayer and worship activities
for effecting change, as well as Bickle’s reluctance to get involved in direct political action, though some associates
still do so. Erik Eckholm, “Where worship never pauses,” New York Times, July 9, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/us/10prayer.html.
40
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emerges blurs the line between church, educational institution, mission agency, conference
center, and media empire. Bethel and IHOP have globally influential charismatic worship teams,
and each has spawned worship bands with their own record labels and renewal ministries, such
as Jesus Culture, Hillsong United, and Forerunner Music. Other neo-charismatic churches on the
fringes of the NAR are also duplicating these organizational models with similar influence
around the world, such as the globally-influential Hillsong Church and Hillsong United music
label based in Australia (Flory and Sargeant 2013, 302). These bands tour the world and perform
to filled stadiums and mega-churches.
The importance of worship to the neo-charismatic movement cannot be overstated
(Miller 2013, 15ff), as it generates the closely related phenomena of a powerful millennialism
and experience of God’s presence. As an example, one of the more popular songs in the neocharismatic movement is called, appropriately for the purposes in this chapter, “Let it Rain”:
Let it rain, let it rain.
Open the floodgates of Heaven.
I feel the rains of your Love,
I feel the winds of your Spirit .
And now the heartbeat of heaven,
Let us hear (x2)
Let it rain,
Let it rain.
Open the flood gates of heaven,
We wanna see You
Show us Your glory
We wanna know You
Let it rain
In observing performances of the song, it is clear that what is being asked for is not the
experience of God’s presence, but more of the experience of God’s presence, in intensity of
experience, in the imbuing of power in ministry, in supernatural encounter. What is desired is not
the Latter Rain, itself; participants—who are also consumers, importantly—seem aware that they
113
are already in this phase of divine history. What the song expresses is a desire for more rain, a
deluge, particularly in the accomplishment of mission and the further establishment of the
kingdom of God. Therefore, what creates the powerful presence of millennialism in the
movement is not the sense of rapid cultural decline, as was the case with the futurist
premillennialists of the previous generations. Millennialist expectation can be instead attributed
to a simple equation: to experience the closeness of God pentecostally is to feel God coming
close millennially. Bill Johnson of Bethel captures this sentiment perfectly when telling of a
recent speaking engagement in Taiwan in which he felt a powerful presence of the Spirit. In retelling the event and what he sensed in Taiwan, Johnson said his message to his congregation
was “Jesus is here, but he is coming. He’s here, but there is more of him on the way.”41 The
experience generates a derivative sense that the full, bodily presence of Jesus is not far in time.
In my research, churches associated with the NAR are, to varying degrees of intensity,
Christian Zionist. However, their Christian Zionism is quite distinct from other forms—
especially dispensationalism—documented in the literature. In summary, the NAR combines
elements of all three iterations of the Latter Rain examined above to arrive at a Christian Zionism
that affirms the continuing role of Israel as a nation (like Myland), but sees the end arriving with
a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit among the Jewish people leading to their conversion
(similar to Way), and retaining the primacy of the current outpouring and the restoration of a
sacred trajectory and church expansion understood to have been initiated by first century
Christians (similar to Warnock’s views). “Restorationism,” however, may not be an adequate
descriptor to capture the defining characteristics of the newest forms of Renewalism. Asher
“Bill Johnson Sermons – Becoming Glorious – February 10, 2013,” YouTube video, 55:14, sermon delivered at
Bethel church on February 10, 2013, posted by “rkjlesother,” February 27, 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF_hjPzMAm0.
41
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Intrater, a Messianic Jewish42 pastor living in Israel, in a sermon delivered at IHOP, says that the
restoration charismatic Messianic Jewish believers living in Israel should be accompanied by a
social and spiritual restoration characterized as follows:
…whatever happened in the book of Acts—that’s what we want…. [Acts] is a handbook
for how to act as the body of Messiah; in fact, there isn’t any other handbook. Whatever
we are thinking about doing, if it is not based on this pattern, it is based on a nonscriptural pattern…. [Acts] is a plan, a pattern, for us to act upon, to fulfill, to renew the
way [the disciples] did it back then [and that is] the way we want to do it right now….
For Messianic Jews [living] in Israel, it’s not just the universal, spiritual principles [of
Acts], but it also is the specific, particular principles of where and how [the disciples]
lived….We are saying that we want to do exactly what they did: in the same place, on
the same days, in the same people, in the same way…43
Intrater’s vision of the life of Messianic Jews, particularly those living in Israel, does not seem to
be served well by the word restorationism. Instead, Intrater is advocating what may be described
as a form of high-context mimicry. When set as it was in his larger speech within a discussion of
millennialism, this mimicry is designed to re-create the conditions and the supernatural means
under and by which the first expansion of the Christian church (especially among Jews) was
understood to have been achieved. The influx of physicality, materiality, social and spiritual
practice into this type of restorationism create a multiplex of inputs designed more to re-create
than to re-contextualize. This way of approaching the scriptures is well-suited to the sensibilities
of modern Renewalism, as I will show throughout this work. But such mimicry takes time;
therefore, they also see their movement as a sign that the end of the age is very close, but not
any-moment, i.e. they are not futurist dispensationalists and, therefore, see some prophecies yet
to be fulfilled and personally witnessed.
Messianic Jews are those Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. They eschew the word “Christian” as a
self-descriptor primarily because of its association with non-Jewish Christianity, thereby assisting in evangelization
efforts within the Jewish community. Messianic Jews are radically altering the face of Christian Zionism in our day
as their numbers grow; see chapter 7.
43
“Revival in the End Times Full,” YouTube video, 1:06:04, sermon by Asher Intrater given at the International
House of Prayer in Kansas City, MO, unknown date, posted by “ReviveIsraelTV,” February 7, 2013,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpmb4qNROTw.
42
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Mike Bickle’s approach to Israel at IHOP can be taken as a representative example of
Israel’s place within the NAR mindset. Bickle has established what he calls the “Israel Mandate”
for his church:
Our mission is to mobilize intercessors in the Church to pray for Israel, and to stand with
and encourage Messianic [Jewish] believers in Israel.
The International House of Prayer is committed to seeing the nation of Israel walking in
their full destiny at the end of the age. Our primary role is to pray for and partner with
Messianic Jews who are living in Israel. The operation and visitation of the Spirit in
Israel is a vital part of releasing the great end-time harvest among the nations (Ezek.
36:23–36). However, this full release will only come as a result of a body of believers
who are committed to a life of night-and-day prayer and fasting.44
All of the elements of the Latter Rain discourse over the three iterations are seen here: an
emphasis on the importance of Israel as a nation as a sign of the end times (Myland), on
evangelism to Jews—and, subsequently, the nations—dependent on an outpouring of the Spirit
(Way), and a sense that it is the mission of Spirit-empowered believers to overcome obstacles to
establishing the kingdom by supernatural means (Warnock). Support for—and the influence of—
Messianic Jews can be seen throughout NAR churches, which host Messianic Jews with
regularity as they provide teaching on the Bible, especially prophecy, from a Messianic Jewish
perspective.
An additional wing of the neo-charismatic movement is also organizing globally through
the efforts of Oral Roberts University (ORU), based in Tulsa, OK. ORU already has a great deal
of influence within global Renewalist Christian Zionism; many of the most prominent figures
have degrees from ORU and have been influenced by the teachings of Oral Roberts, whom some
have called the “trailblazer” of the charismatic movement (Mathew and Alexander 2011, 317). It
was Roberts who caught the attention of the Israeli government in 1967 as a representative of
Pentecostalism who could provide support for Israel among Renewalists (Gannon 2012, 124).
44
See “Israel Mandate,” accessed 9/12/13, http://www.ihopkc.org/israelmandate/.
116
The university has also done its part. In Sweden, mega-church pastor (Livets Ord/Word of Life
church) and Renewalist Zionist leader Ulf Ekman has established an ORU extension site in
Uppsala (Livets Ord Theological Seminary). Ekman has been involved in aliyah (Jewish
immigration to Israel) for European Jews for several decades. Trained at Ekman’s school, Mats
Ola Ishoel is the Pastor of a mega-church (Moscow Word of Life Church, founded by Ekman) in
Moscow, Russia and holds large rallies in support for Israel in the city.45 The African American
outreach coordinator for Christians United for Israel, Michael Stevens, is an ORU graduate, as is
Susan Michael, the ICEJ-USA director. ORU has also established a Center for Israel and Middle
East Studies and the former president of ORU Mark Rutland has been given a “Defender of
Israel” award by the Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign (CIPAC).46 But the most
significant development from ORU may be the establishment of Empowered21 (E21) in 2008 by
ORU’s current president, Billy Wilson, who has openly disavowed dispensationalism in favor of
a more “pentecostal hermeneutic.”47
The purpose of Empowered21 is global and bold. According to its website,
Empowered21 was established to “help shape the future of the Global Spirit-empowered
movement throughout the world by focusing on crucial issues facing the movement and
connecting generations for intergenerational blessing and impartation.”48 The vision of the group
is even more audacious: “That every person on earth would have an authentic encounter with
See “Israeli and Jewish delegations reach out to Russian Christians,” anonymous author, The Algemeiner, May
29, 2013, accessed 9/12/13, http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/05/29/israeli-and-jewish-delegations-reach-out-torussian-christians/.
46
See “Oral Roberts University President Mark Rutland Receives Defender of Israel Award,” no date (Rutland was
president from 2009-2013), accessed 9/12/13,
http://www.oru.edu/news/oru_news/20120913_oral_roberts_university_president_mark_rutland_receives_defender_
of_israel_award.php.
47
Wilson believes that the Pentecostal movement has matured over the last 100 years in that “our head has caught
up with our heart…in the development of a Pentecostal hermeneutic.” He explicitly disavows the dispensationalist
reading of the Pentecostal experience. “Empowered 21 Conference Coming to Canada – Billy Wilson – 1/2,”
YouTube video, 7:35, Jim Cantelon interview of Billy Wilson, posted by “100huntley,” March 7, 2011, accessed
9/12/13, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFVj3zCULyU.
48 See “Mission Statement,” accessed 9/12/13, http://empowered21.com/about/global-vision-statements/.
45
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Jesus Christ through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit…by Pentecost 2033.”49 This
statement recalls the same boldness of spirit present in the postmillennialists of the 18th century,
reviewed above, who saw themselves and their activism as bringing in the kingdom of God. E21
is served by a Global Council of over 60 Renewalist leaders from around the world, from
countries including Nigeria, South Africa, Malawi, Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, Canada,
Australia, Sweden, Lebanon, Germany, Argentina, the U.K., Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea,
Hungary, Indonesia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, India, and Israel. There are heads of major
Renewalist denominations on the council, including Charles Blake of the Church of God in
Christ (an African American Renewalist denomination), Glenn Burris, Jr. of the International
Church of the Foursquare Gospel, John Glass of the U.K.-based Elim Pentecostal Church, Opoku
Onyinah the Chairman of the Church of Pentecost (Ghana) with branches in 84 nations, and
George Wood, the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, with an estimated 60
million worldwide members (Synan 2011a, 21). Catholics and Protestant Renewalists are
represented; Renewalist media moguls such as Stephen Strang, publisher of Charisma Magazine
(the flagship Renewalist publication based in the U.S.), as well as representatives from Trinity
Broadcasting Network, the largest Christian television network in the world. Neo-charismatics
are represented by the senior pastors of very large churches—some of the largest churches in the
world—including Hillsong church of Australia, Yoido Full Gospel Church (South Korea, the
largest church in the world with over 800,000 members),50 Faith Church (Hungary), Gateway
49 See “Vision Statement,” accessed 9/12/13, http://empowered21.com/about/vision-statement/. 2033 would
conceivably be the 2,000th anniversary of Pentecost, which represents the seminal moment for Renewalist churches
in Christian history as recorded in the Bible in Acts 2.
50
See “For God and Country,” October 15, 2011, The Economist, accessed 9/12/13,
http://www.economist.com/node/21532340.
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Church in the United States (Texas), The Redeemed Christian Church of God (Nigeria),51 and
Word of Life Church/Livets Ord (Sweden), among others. Also represented on the council is the
NAR, with Bill Johnson.
E21 holds regional meetings beginning in 2010 in Tulsa, the home of ORU, where
10,000 people were in attendance. Another regional event, E21 Asia, was held in October of
2011 in Jakarta, with 14,000 in attendance from 49 countries.52 There are regional cabinets
representing nearly all portions of the globe. Meetings have not been short on social justice
issues, such as issues of peacemaking, poverty, and the trafficking of humans, even issues
deemed controversial within the movement itself, such as justice for Palestinians. At a meeting
cosponsored by E21 in 2012, this issue was addressed and Christian Palestinians were able to
give their perspective.53 The willingness to tackle such issues would appear to be a sea-change
from dispensationalist forms of Christian Zionism. But the truly big event is scheduled for 2015:
E21’s Global Congress to be held in Jerusalem, Israel. “God is calling us back to celebrate
Pentecost from the city of Pentecost,” the promotional video exhorts, and they intend for it to be
“the largest Christian gathering in Jerusalem in modern history.”54 Wilson has promised that the
Jerusalem event will have a single day of service to the West-bank city of Bethlehem, called
“Hope for the Holy Land,” where all participants (up to 10,000) will be asked to serve “Jew and
Arab alike” through a day of volunteerism. Further, Wilson has said the “host committee” for the
51
Newsweek named the pastor of this church, E.A. Adeboye, as one of their fifty most powerful people in the world.
Lisa Miller, “The NEWSWEEK 50: E.A. Adeboye,” Newsweek.com, December 19, 2008 (updated March 13,
2010), accessed 2/2/14, http://www.newsweek.com/newsweek-50-e-adeboye-83039.
52
See the account from Robert Crosby, professor of Practical Theology at Southeastern University. Robert Crosby,
“What might we do together? Charismatic and Pentecostal influencers converge,”
http://www.patheos.com/Evangelical/What-Might-We-Do-Together-Robert-Crosby-05-25-2012.
53
Other justice issues addressed were “Gender justice” and “creationism in Pentecostal thought.” See Crosby,
“What might we do together?,” ibid.
54
“Jerusalem 2015,” Vimeo video, 1:13, promotional video published by E21 Global Congress, 2013, accessed
9/12/13, http://vimeo.com/56912844.
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event is made up of “Messianic believers, expatriate believers and pastors, Arab believers and
Palestinian believers all working together, in unity, in the land [in preparation for this event].”55
It is clear that Renewalists are coalescing into a form of infrastructure able to greatly
increase the networking capacity of the movement, facilitating the exchange of news, challenges,
strategies, etc., at a very rapid rate, using both the E21 network and the ICAL. These structures
and many others like them may, in fact, contribute to the formation of a truly global identity for
the Renewalist movement. How will Christian support for Israel fit into the Renewalist
movement going forward given these developments? The answer has already been suggested,
above, but several details remain. First, it should be noted that the ICEJ has a strong presence in
both of these networks. The current ICEJ executive director, Jurgen Buhler, is a member of the
ICA (now ICAL) as of November 2012.56 Buhler is also a member of the council of E21, as is
the ICEJ Board of Directors chairperson and Pentecostal European Fellowship chairperson,
Ingolf Ellssel. Pastor Wayne Hilsden of the King of Kings Fellowship in Jerusalem, where many
of the ICEJ staff in Israel have found their home church (indeed, the ICEJ’s Jurgen Buhler serves
on the board of the church), is also on the E21 council.57 Further cementing the relationship
between E21 and the ICEJ is the fact that prior to his appointment as ORU’s president, Billy
Wilson was the Executive Officer for the large centennial celebration of the 1906 Azusa Street
revival (marking the modern Pentecostal movement). This celebration attracted tens of thousands
of people, gathered from countries around the globe. The centennial had an “Israel track,” and
“Jerusalem 2015 Press Conference,” YouTube video, 25:14, press conference for Jerusalem 2015 with ORU
President Billy Wilson, ORU Press official Jerry Burton, Israel Tourism Commissioner for North and South
America Haim Gutin, and ORU Executive Vice President of University Advancement Ossie Mills, posted by “Oral
Roberts University,” February 28, 2014, accessed 3/18/14, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3xfHhIc6jA.
56
See “ICEJ Director joins ICA,” July 17, 2012, accessed 9/12/13,
http://www.oslochurch.org/article/article/131281.
57
See “Leadership,” Empowered21 Global Council, accessed 9/12/13, http://empowered21.com/about/leadership/.
55
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Wilson gave leadership of that track to the ICEJ.58 Israel’s consul general, Ehud Danoch, was
also a featured speaker at the centennial and the Israeli Ministry of Tourism had a strong
presence.59 It was from this Renewalist celebration that the E21 was first conceptualized among
the leaders present.60 It is therefore no surprise that the ICEJ is assisting with the on-the-ground
organization of the E21 Global Congress in Jerusalem in 2015,61 and Wilson spoke at the ICEJ’s
2013 Feast of Tabernacles celebration in September, 2013. Israel is a strong focus of the
emerging Renewalist global infrastructure.
Conclusion
I have attempted to situate the ICEJ within a Renewalist stream of Christian Zionism that
dates to just before the advent of dispensationalism, although connected to those individuals,
such as Lewis Way, who were themselves significantly implicated in the premillennialist revival
in England that gave rise to modern Christian Zionism and, eventually, the dispensationalist
movement. In examining the Latter Rain ideology so central to the Renewalist movement I have
attempted to show that concern with the evangelism of the world, including the evangelization of
Jews, aided by an “outpouring of the Holy Spirit” symbolized through the Latter Rain metaphor,
has given rise to distinct expressions of Christian support for the state of Israel, expressions I
have named Renewalist Zionism. Though occasionally overlapping with dispensationalism,
existing for a time in an “uneasy relationship” with the movement, Renewalist thought has nearly
shed its dispensationalist connections in favor of a more “homegrown” understanding of
Christian experience and practice that largely retains—if not encourages—support for the state of
See “Azusa Street Centennial Celebration,” anonymous, undated, accessed 9/12/13, http://int.icej.org/news/azusastreet-centennial-celebration.
59
See “Pentecostal Revival Embraces Israel,” Tom Tugend, Jewishjournal.com, accessed 9/12/13,
http://www.jewishjournal.com/community_briefs/article/pentecostal_revival_embraces_israel_20060505.
60
See Crosby, http://www.patheos.com/Evangelical/What-Might-We-Do-Together-Robert-Crosby-05-25-2012.
61
See “Embassy Hosts Dr. Billy Wilson,” anonymous, April 2013, Word From Jerusalem, p. 19.
58
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Israel, but in ways that are quite different from dispensationalist expressions, as will be further
evidenced in subsequent chapters.
On my tour to Israel with the ICEJ, I mentioned to Michael Hines, the ICEJ-USA
Communications Director, that it seemed as though Christian Zionists tended to be Pentecostal.
His reply was telling: “You don’t have to be, but it helps.” It appears his statement does not give
the full picture, but does contain a core of truth. Understanding the ICEJ as embedded in the
Renewalist movement provides the clarity required for distinguishing between strains of
Christian support for Israel and the movements in which they are embedded.62 Statements such
as the following from ICEJ Executive Director Jurgen Buhler can then be seen to be indicative of
a distinct Renewalist form of Christian Zionism with social implications differing dramatically
from dispensationalist Zionism:
Pentecost was the beginning of a harvest season which is still going on to this day. The
signs of the times suggest that we are in the midst of possibly the last great season of
harvest. Israel is being restored while unprecedented numbers of people are entering the
Kingdom of God all around the world. The question is: Are we laborers in God’s harvest
fields or are we mere bystanders and observers of the harvest? Let us join ranks because
the “fields are white for harvest.” Soon, we will cover the greatest harvest festival of all,
which is Sukkot or Tabernacles. It has great significance for the times in which we live.63
At the 2012 Feast of Tabernacles, Buhler would insist that the outpouring of the Spirit on the
Jewish people is the “next thing to expect in Israel,” precisely because the precondition—the
physical return of the Jews—has, in large measure, been accomplished. However, the full
restoration, to include an embrace of their Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus), has yet to be evidenced. As
the ICEJ sees it, the “spirit of grace and supplication” as we saw above with Lewis Way, is next
62
The battle between dispensationalists and other streams of eschatology, including Renewalist forms, has recently
turned heated. In his recent commentary on Revelation, former ICEJ Executive Director Malcolm Hedding, who
continues to write on behalf of the ICEJ, strongly suggests that dispensationalist interpretations of Revelation which
cede most of its contents as applicable only to Jews and not the church put dispensationalists in eternal danger. (He
does not use the term “dispensationalist,” but it is clear that dispensationalist interpretations of Revelation are his
target.) See Hedding (2013, 20-1).
63
See “Seasons of Harvest, Part II: Shavuot” Jurgen Buhler, May 30, 2013, accessed 9/12/13,
http://int.icej.org/news/devotions/seasons-harvest.
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on the docket for Israel. Buhler lists successes in Renewalist evangelism as evidences of his
worldview: in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, and in Iran, “where one of the greatest
revivals in a Muslim country is occurring…; Iran will be a different country in ten years because
the church of Jesus Christ is taking over in Iran.” He went on to tell the crowd that “the same
thing will happen to Israel shortly.”64
It is only now that we can understand the significance of Pastor Mulinde, profiled at the
beginning of this chapter. The ICEJ, as does much of the Renewalist movement generally,
considers fundamentalist Islam to be a threat—against the “Judeo-Christian West,” but also
largely as a source of Christian persecution leading to the end of days, particularly when
Renewalists align with Israel. They believe that their own Christian witness, empowered by the
Holy Spirit, will be victorious primarily through the processes of conversion and through the
demonstration of healings and other supernatural encounters. Mulinde told a Christian
Broadcasting Network interviewer that “loving Muslims” was the way to respond to Islamic
fundamentalism, and for him this was best expressed through evangelism: “If we take the gospel
to them, at whatever the cost, we are loving them.”65 As a former Muslim, an evangelist to
Muslims, and a Christian who loves Israel and has experienced religious persecution, Mulinde is
an embodiment of the Renewalist weltanschauung.
64
Remarks were made at the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem on 10/1/12. He specifically and resoundingly goes
on to deny the dispensationalist teaching that Israel was restored in order to experience a great tribulation slaughter.
His vision and message are about the spread of Renewalist Christianity throughout the Middle East, leading to
possibilities for peace and the spiritual and physical salvation of the region, including the eventual fulfillment of
biblical prophecies of blessing to a number of Arab states.
65
“Pastor Umar Mulinde on CBN,” YouTube video, 7:24, interview segment from an undated broadcast of Christian
Broadcasting Network, posted by “APostle Mulinde,” August 12, 2013, accessed 9/12/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq6R0m5SCSg.
Chapter 4
Theo-political pilgrimages: 2011 ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles Tour
Background Information on the Tour and Ethnographic Research Process
In the twenty-year period beginning with the demise of the U.S.S.R in 1991 to 2011 over
one million Jews immigrated to Israel, many of them from the former communist country. The
International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem (ICEJ) directly assisted over 110,000 of these
immigrants in making their journey. Sponsoring the flights of immigrating Jews in their
“Ezekiel” program, various branches of the ICEJ, calling themselves “fishers,”1 began to fly
Christians seeking to visit Israel together with these immigrating Jews. Over forty-two million
dollars have been spent by the ICEJ in their program for aliyah, or Jewish immigration to Israel.2
The ICEJ also works with the Israeli Ministry of Tourism to promote Israel to Christians
throughout the world. To get a closer look at the work of the ICEJ, I chose to visit Israel during
their signature event—the Feast of Tabernacles celebration—which brings thousands of
Christian Zionists to Israel annually during the fall season. Therefore, the organization’s tour
represents a specifically Christian Zionist tour. (My assumption was that the ICEJ would have
more direct appeal to committed Christian Zionists, an assumption that proved to be correct,
1
The reference is taken from Jeremiah 16:14-16:
“However, the days are coming,” declares the Lord,
when it will no longer be said,
‘As surely as the Lord lives,
who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’
but it will be said,
‘As surely as the Lord lives,
who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north
and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’
For I will restore them to the land I gave their ancestors.
“But now I will send for many fishermen,” declares the Lord,
“and they will catch them.
After that I will send for many hunters,
and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill
and from the crevices of the rocks.
2
See “ICEJ Aliyah: Our work to bring the Jewish people home,” accessed 8/8/13, http://int.icej.org/news/specialreports/icej-aliyah.
123
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rather than just a more common evangelical tour organized and executed by a minister, ministry,
or Christian organization and on which Christian Zionists are only potentially going to
participate.)3 Furthermore, where the ICEJ appears in the existing literature on Christian
Zionism, it is often misclassified as premillennial dispensationalist. My observations on the tour,
and research into ICEJ lead me to disagree with this classification and further lead to my work in
distinguishing a distinct Renewalist form of Christian Zionism seen in the previous two chapters.
In this chapter I add to my thesis by providing an accounting of what the ICEJ does, as well as
the stated reasons and theological justifications for its work.
This chapter will introduce to the reader the character of, and characters on, my tour as
well as outline my research approach. In my review of the literature on Christian tourism to
Israel below the reader is encouraged to compare and contrast the ICEJ’s specifically Christian
Zionist tour with Christian visits to Israel more generally.
Ethnographic and Theoretical Considerations
Scholars in sociology who focus on lived religion (Ammerman 2007; McGuire 2008;
Orsi 2005) emphasize the intersubjectivity of religious experience and religious construction,
rather than focusing merely on institutional leaders and published religious tomes. The
intersubjective nature of religious experience is particularly apparent on a religious pilgrimage,
Belhassen (2007, 43) overstates when he says “Christian Zionist thinking provides the motive for and shapes the
itinerary of evangelical pilgrimages to Israel.” While Belhassen’s group was Evangelical and Christian Zionist, as
Kaell (2010) shows in her examination of a Catholic and Evangelical tour, not all evangelicals are Christian Zionists
and, therefore, “Christian Zionist thinking” does not serve as the motivation for initiating a pilgrimage to Israel for
these individuals. Some of Belhassen’s own data may confirm this view: he reports that some of the participants on
the “humanitarian tour” that he observed were reluctant to define themselves as “pilgrims,” downplaying the more
explicitly religious aspect of the trip in favor of the more humanitarian component (49-50). Yet all of the
participants were evangelicals and the organizers, themselves, were clearly Christian Zionists. One other
dissertation, Sturm (2010), was published just prior to my trip but brought to my knowledge only after my
dissertation research was complete. It also focused significantly on the ICEJ and the Feast of Tabernacles, but only
on the mini-tours offered in conjunction with the conference, mentioned below.
3
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such as our tour.4 Although the sites are selected by tour staff, they are experienced by pilgrims,
often for the first time, in the specific context that a structured tour provides. Moving from site to
site, co-pilgrims on my tour would publicly address the group, offering commentary, biblical
interpretation, and “words from the Lord” for the group, including prophesying—i.e. speech
believed to be from God directed to another—over the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.
Our tour experience was also constructed in conversation, either through formal questioning or
informal conversation between the staff members of the tour company, the ICEJ and the
pilgrims. Questioning, prodding, offering interpretations of sites and encounters to one another
constitute the very substance of the constructed pilgrim experience. As Feldman successfully
argues for political pilgrimages,5 “meaning is negotiated between foreign Christians and locals
through a sophisticated dialogue of religion and politics” (Feldman 2011, 65). Given the various
social positions (ethnicities, ages, religions/secularities) of the staff and pilgrims on the bus and
the staff at certain sites, these constructions were rich, indeed. Paying attention to these
interactions, particularly for the ethnographic portion of this dissertation, yields a more complex
world than the pronouncements of Christian Zionist organizations and leaders, themselves,
convey. This approach also allows for the formation of a set of data which can be compared and
contrasted to the pronouncements of Christian Zionist organizations.
Feldman (2007) discusses the differences in deployment of language about religious “tourists” or “pilgrims”
concluding that the classification of individuals or groups into the two categories relies on “a classification
developed for the allocation and development of financial and structural resources” (355-6). She notes that this is
particularly true on travels to Israel, where these classifications, deployed by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism,
distinguish between Orthodox and Catholic (“true pilgrims”) and pro-Zionist fundamentalists (“religious tourists”).
Furthermore, she offers that this structuration is derived from orientalist modes of classification, East vs. West, and
may be biased in favor of the religious and political aims of the Catholic church (356). Here, for the purposes of my
trip, I use “pilgrims” descriptively for individuals and “tour” to name the event itself.
5
The connected concept of pilgrimage will also be used throughout as there have been important theoretical insights
on pilgrimages helpful to our work here. Of pilgrimages generally Feldman (2011, 66) states: “…pilgrimage is a
form of political power that partitions space in ways that make it possible for non-critical thought to accept the
resultant reality at face value—at least for the faithful of a particular religious group.”
4
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The focus on religious practice and intersubjectivity relieves the researcher of any a
priori demands for logical consistency from data;6 McGuire instead points us to “practical
coherence: [lived religion] needs to make sense in one’s everyday life, and it needs to be
effective, to ‘work,’ in the sense of accomplishing some desired end” (2008, 15). It follows that
beliefs may not, in the end, a la Weber, be predictive of religious outcomes—and vice-versa.
Instead, religious experience is birthed out of the fullness of everyday existence, the vicissitudes
of history, and the intersubjectivity of parties intersecting with the tour—but notably, not
generally those parties who have been largely excluded from the tour, namely, Palestinians.
Religious experience, of course, is not the only reality being constructed on the tour. The
construction of everyday reality flows through and around what is eventually determined to be
the specifically religious experience. It is in the construction of everyday reality—or what Berger
and Luckmann (1966) called paramount reality—that the significance of evangelical media, as
well as the “parallel institutionalism” first noted among Protestant conservatism some 40 years
ago (Hunter 1983; Sandeen 1970), becomes evident. Parallel institutions for evangelicalism—
including educational institutions from homeschool organizations to liberal arts colleges, from
news channels to entertainment choices in film and television, dating services, and generally
those evangelical institutions promoting themselves as alternatives to mainstream, “secular”
institutions—provide the infrastructure needed to construct alternate realities and to maintain the
reality promoted by the worldview as it exists in a given time and space. This phenomenon, of
course, could apply to the construction of any alternate reality, including “secular” ones. The
construction of alternate realities, or plausibility structures using Berger and Luckmann’s (1966,
This can only be of benefit to the researcher of Protestant conservatism, for as Moore (1994, 250) states: “Anyone
who has studied the logic of strict predestination as it affected the work ethic of seventeenth-century Puritans knows
that trying to find logical connections between theology and behavior is risky business.” The same can be said for
the academic study of Christian millennialism.
6
127
153) language, in turn, contributes to the construction of realities deemed outside of the alternate
reality. In evangelical Christianity, historically, the function of secularity within the
religious/secular binary has been ever-present, particularly as it is seen, understood and
experienced by religious adherents, themselves.7 It should be noted that this process is operative
also among the antagonists of evangelical Christianity, creating a mutually reinforcing dynamic
not always evident or noted in studies of Christian Zionism. The tour should be seen in this light:
an opportunity to both create and experience religious, Renewalist reality—even reality as
such—intersubjectively, and in opposition to a form of secularity that denies the particularities
affirmed by the Renewalist worldview, especially the ethnic particularities of the Jewish people.
What is shared by such groups, and which constitutes the worldview of the Renewalist
Zionism studied here, is a specific view of history and scripture. This view is named by Engberg
(2011) in his attempt to study the interaction of Christian Zionists and Christian Zionist ideology,
as the “fundamentalist view of history and scripture:”
[T]heir reality is ruled by divine forces; history is to them a narrative of divine
omnipotence, not the erring unpredictability of selective interpretation, and, 2. Their
worldview is intra-textual; all reality’s essentials can be understood by a “plain” reading
of their Holy Book. (68)
Setting aside the complex question of “fundamentalisms,” Engberg’s description of this
particular view of history and scripture is helpful for understanding the basic Christian Zionist
worldview—a view that appears avant la lettre relative to Christian Zionist ideology but which
forms the basis for the ideology. Engeberg rightly identifies this worldview as underscoring
7
The ICEJ itself, recalling the founding narratives from chapter 1, could be understood as a type of parallel
institution: patterned in numerous ways after the structure of the United Nations, in direct opposition to its policies
on Israel in the 1970s, and representing a Christian constituency, the ICEJ certainly operates as a parallel institution.
One crucial difference remains, however: the ICEJ does not seek to operate as a sheltered enclave for a religious
worldview, but a political advocacy organization designed to provide a voice where it was believed no options were
available for their particular convictions, and to win adherents to its worldview. It is outward, not inward, focused.
Therefore, it is a parallel institution without the theoretical baggage of the old secularization paradigm suggested by
some sociologists of religion, who often seemed to have the separatism, sectarianism, and pessimism of American
fundamentalists in mind as they constructed their theories.
128
modern conservative Christian Zionism, and his use of quotes around “plain” reading is a
necessary qualifier to the typically deployed but accepted scholarly nomenclature of biblical
“literalism,” which cannot be explored here but is problematic because it uncritically accepts
adherents claims regarding textual engagement (Smith 2011).8 Modern Renewalist Zionism is
infused with the supernatural—which is to go a step further than Engberg’s description of
Christian Zionism generally—and governed by a “plain sense” reading of the biblical text.
General Tour Information
As you enter the main concourse of the newest terminal (Terminal 3, opened in 2004) in
the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, there is a very large map of Israel on the wall. On it is no
hint of the internationally-recognized political boundaries of Israel; instead, Israel is presented as
Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, with a “united” Jerusalem as its capital. In
the open waiting area of the airport, near the food courts, one is greeted by the gaze of a bust of
David Ben Gurion and a scale-model of Jerusalem from the second temple period (first century
CE), just prior to its destruction and as it would have appeared at the time of Jesus. The exhibit is
a “model of a model”: this scaled version, measuring about 3’ x 3’, is actually an advertisement
for The Israel Museum, which houses the Shrine of the Book, other ancient manuscripts, and the
much larger version of this scaled model of the ancient city. Airport patrons are encouraged in
Hebrew, English, Spanish and French to visit this site. This display works to construct a
particular notion of Israel in the mind of visitors; for visitors from the U.S., such notions have
been constructed by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism even at “home.” In addition to
advertisements on Christian television the Ministry has been a regular attender at the annual
Briefly, sociologist of religion Christian Smith (2011, 16ff) successfully demonstrates that the “literalism” at the
core of modern conservative biblicism in practice (i.e. empirically) produces “pervasive interpretive pluralism,”
which makes any claims to a single, “literal” meaning an impossibility.
8
129
American National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention. It has had a focused outreach to
evangelicals since the mid-1970s (Kaell 2010, 180). Therefore, notions of Israel are not limited
to prepackaged ideologies constructed by believers at “home:” Israel participates and invests in
its own construction in highly significant ways. The Israeli Ministry of Tourism is well aware of
their many and varied constituencies and, unsurprisingly, develops the cultural presentation of
the state in ways that encourage visitations and maximize visitor expectations. Although this is
probably a prosaic observation, tours to Israel are as much an economic enterprise as they are
ideological and economic interests should be frequently considered in scholarly examinations of
Christian tours to Israel (but cannot be explored in-depth here because of space considerations).
Christian Zionism is big business, on a global scale. It is the intersection of these constructions9–
between Christian Zionists, their ideological opponents in Israel and abroad, Israeli state
apparatuses, and private enterprise—that proves to be the most interesting and most complete
analytical approach to the topic.10 As Gottdiener (2000) reminds us, “there is no consumption of
space without a corresponding and prior production of space” (265). Examining the contributions
of the ICEJ and the tour company to the production of space on a Christian Zionist tour,
therefore, will be fruitful. The tour in which I participated was from October 9-19, 2011, which
overlapped the Jewish feast Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), scheduled according to the Jewish
calendar for sundown October 12 to sundown October 19. The reason for this timing will be
explored below. The basic structure of the tour, with tour sites and their significance is detailed
in Table 1, and a map detailing the tour route can be found in Figure 4.
9
To this should be added the perspective of local Israelis, who often are more willing than most Jewish religious
Zionists and their Christian Zionist sympathizers to consider the forfeiture of settlements as a means to peace and
Arab Christians, as we will see below. See Sturm (2010, 252-8) for a particularly poignant encounter between an
Israeli settler willing to give up settlements for peace and an ICEJ tour group providing him with a check to fund the
construction of a bomb shelter.
10
Nowhere is this clearer than in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which began in 2005 as a way
for ideological Palestinian sympathizers, religious and secular, to pressure Israel into compliance with international
law. See http://www.bdsmovement.net/.
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Table 1: 2011 ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles Tour schedule, with visited sites and general comment
on significance to participants, as interpreted by the researcher. Listings in italics are located
within disputed border regions (i.e. Golan Heights, West Bank). “N.T.” and “O.T.” refers to the
New Testament and Old Testament, respectively. Capital letters correspond with locations on the
map.
Date, 2011
Destination
October 9
Ben Gurion Airport, Tel
Aviv to Tiberius
(Galilee)
Tiberius to Golan
Heights & return
October 10
October 11
From Tiberius to Dead
Sea
October 12
Dead Sea
October 13
Dead Sea to Jerusalem
October 14
Jerusalem to Ein Gedi
October 15
Jerusalem
October 16
Jerusalem
Site: significance (Figure 4 map location in
parenthesis)
Sea of Galilee with boat tour: N.T. significance (B)
Viewing of “Jesus boat” & its museum: general
significance (B)
Ruins of Dan: O.T. significance (C)
Caesarea Philippi: N.T. significance (C-D)
Israeli Border with Syria & Lebanon, U.N. outpost &
viewing of Israeli film on the Yom Kippur War (1973):
Political significance (D)
Capernum: N.T. Significance (E)
Mt. of Beatitudes: N.T. significance (E-F)
Nazareth: N.T. Significance (F)
The Dead Sea: O.T. & N.T. significance (G)
Masada (First century CE fortress ruins): Jewish and
Israeli nationalist significance (H)
Ein Gedi: O.T. significance (I)
Qumran: Biblical significance (Dead Sea scrolls) (J)
Jordan river (Qasr El Yahud-baptismal): O.T. & N.T.
significance (K)
Mt. of Olives: O.T. & N.T. significance (L)
Garden of Gethsemane: N.T. significance (L)
Opening night of Feast of Tabernacles Conference
Elah Valley: O.T. significance
Dead Sea shore at Ein Gedi—Feast Conference (I)
Garden Tomb (Evangelical site): N.T. significance (L)
Church of St. Anne (Roman Catholic site): N.T.
significance (L)
Pools of Bethesda: N.T. significance (L)
Via Dolorosa: N.T. significance (L)
Christian Quarter of Old City: Political significance
(L)
Feast Conference
David’s city (film of ancient city): O.T. & N.T.
significance (L)
Davidson Archaeological Park: O.T. & N.T.
significance (L)
Western Wall/Kotel: O.T. & N.T. significance (L)
Jewish Quarter of Old City: Political significance (L)
Feast Conference
131
October 17
October 18
October 19
Jerusalem
Free Day
Feast Conference—ISRAELI NIGHT
Jerusalem
Large scale model of Old City: O.T. & N.T.
significance, political significance (L)
Shrine of the Book: Biblical significance (L)
City Menorah: Jewish significance (L)
FEAST MARCH THROUGH JERUSALEM
STREETS
Feast Conference conclusion
Jerusalem to Ben Gurion Mt. Carmel: O.T. significance (M)
Airport (A), Tel Aviv
Jezreel Valley/Megiddo: O.T. & N.T. significance (N)
Caesarea by the sea: N.T. significance (O)
Figure 4. ICEJ 2011 Feast of Tabernacles Tour stops, in order of visit. Letters
reference sites listed in Table 1. Map from Google Maps.
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Sar-El Tours
The tour was run by an Israeli company called Sar-El Tours, which describes itself as
“one of the leading travel agencies which caters to the evangelical Christian community.”11 It is
owned by Samuel Smadja, a Messianic Jew (i.e. a Jewish believer in Jesus who retains Jewish
practices),12 who is also a pastor of a Messianic Jewish congregation in Israel. Our itinerary was
only loosely related to the listed sample itineraries on their website.13 Sar-El Tours, as I
confirmed with our tour guide, was the tour company of choice for noted evangelical and former
U.S. Vice-Presidential candidate (2008) Sarah Palin’s visit to Israel.14 Sar El’s “valued
customer” webpage is a “who’s-who” list of prominent evangelical leaders: from mega-church
pastors such as Jerry Falwell, Chuck Swindoll, Jack Hayford, Joel Olsteen, and Chuck Smith, to
media moguls such as the late Paul Crouch (Trinity Broadcasting Network), Pat Robertson
(Christian Broadcasting Network), and Glenn Beck, to political figures such as former governors
Mike Huckabee (AR) and Sonny Perdue (GA). Sar-El Tours provided the ICEJ with a tour which
not only gave pilgrims the history of biblical sites, but also incorporated the history of Jewish
restoration to the land and Gentile participation in that restoration, as well as the political
situation surrounding the modern state (nearly exclusively from the Israeli perspective) into the
tour narrative. Sites of major twentieth century battles of the Israeli War of Independence, the
conquest/“re-unification” of Jerusalem, and other modern battles are seamlessly integrated into
the agenda of “walking where Jesus walked.”15 It should be remembered that to state it in this
11
See http://www.sareltours.com/about-us/, accessed 3/6/13.
See Ariel (2000, chapter 20; 2006) for an overview of Messianic Judaism.
13
See http://www.sareltours.com/tour-to-holy-land/sample-itineraries/, accessed 3/9/13. The “walking by His side”
tour was the closest to ours: http://www.sareltours.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Walking-by-his-side.pdf.
14
Palin’s home church, Wasila Assembly of God, is Pentecostal.
15
Fleischer (2000) does make mention that sites “valued as part of Israel’s modern history” are often included on
Protestant tours (but not on Catholic tours), but he does not elaborate. My guess is that these sites would include
those like Masada, which consists of fortress ruins on top of a nearly unscalable mountain, with access provided
12
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way—as if there was a natural, objective difference between the types of sites—is ultimately to
fail to recognize that Jewish restoration to the land, Gentile participation in it, and the unfolding
political situation is part of the biblical narrative for Renewalist Christian Zionists.16 As the
former Executive Director of the ICEJ Malcolm Hedding puts it, “We are not living in postbiblical times, but in fact in biblical times. The drama of the ages is still playing itself out”
(2004b, 32-3).
Pilgrim demographics
On the bus there were 30 pilgrims, including myself, three to five ICEJ staff at any given
time, and two Sar-El Tours staff (a driver and a tour guide). I estimated the average age of the
non-staff tour participants to be about 60 years old, ranging from about 48-84. I found myself
joining with the other younger members of the group in assisting the older members through
difficult terrain and was occasionally appointed by our guide (because of my relatively young
age [37] and gender, presumably) to bring up the rear of our walking group so as to ensure that
no one was left behind or became lost, particularly as we walked the streets of Jerusalem. Other
scholars have noted that the arduous nature of these tours brings to the fore physical ailments and
bodily discomfort—each with no particular religious value such as might be found on Catholic
pilgrimages, though this physicality often has a social value in that it encourages group
participants to look out for one another (Kaell 2010, 30-31). This was certainly the case on my
primarily by electric tram, and a large group of outlet stores at its base catering to tourists and selling products made
in Israel; the Israeli cosmetics manufacturer Ahava has an outlet there (in 2011), for instance. Sites relating to
modern Israeli battles, such as the Yom Kippur memorial, had very little in the way of tourist infrastructure—a
single fruit vendor selling out of his truck—and are not likely frequented by Protestants generally.
16
In his examination of an evangelical tour with a significant Christian Zionist presence, Belhassen (2007, 62) notes
that “…pilgrims explicitly eschewed any connection between their experiences in Israel and politics. Their travel,
they believed, was an expression of religious belief and duty, not of politics.” During my visit, explicit references to
politics—the current political situation and whether it favored or hindered the interests of Israel—pervaded both the
ICEJ tour and conference, and not just from tour leaders and organizers. During group prayer times, prayers for
changes in the American, Israeli and global political situation were pervasive, with explicit references to political
leaders, particularly U.S. President Obama. Belhassen is right to observe that overt references to “politics” in
relationship to pilgrim activities are likely the wrong (“profane”) way to frame the subject within the Christian
Zionist worldview. Such statements “…would be, rather, statements of faith” (63).
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trip. Additionally, the liminality that accompanies pilgrimages contributes to a sense of
community through collective ritual participation and other “intimate moments” on the tour, such
as baptisms in the Jordan or collective prayers in certain spots, as Belhassen notes in his work on
fundamentalist Christian pilgrimmages (2007, 12). Belhassen, however, insists that the idea of
liminality alone as a binding force, common in scholarly literature on travel, should be amended
to include formation of a communal sense due directly to a) an assumption by the traveler that
one is travelling with like-minded religious pilgrims who share your beliefs, and b) pre-trip and
post-trip planning and debriefing meetings. Our tour and my own experience complicates this
view somewhat; the pilgrims on this tour did not come together for the first time until the trip, so
did not have a chance to bond in the planning stage. Unlike assumptions in other literature on
tours to Israel/Palestine, this was not a congregational tour and most participants are not likely to
have significant conversations—if any—beyond the short term immediately following the trip.
This general lack of local connections makes the connections that are apparent more interesting
to the scholar, shedding light on larger ideological, theological, inter-ethnic and transnational
connections. In this regard, ICEJ-sponsored tours, originating as they do in host-countries
through local “embassies,” and ending in a multi-national celebration and conference, present a
unique configuration for participation in Israel/Palestine tourism.
Also complicating Belhassen’s modification of liminality is my own experience as
researcher on the tour. My identity was not disclosed at the beginning of the tour but, rather,
slowly over the course of the tour on an individual or very small group basis (i.e. typically over a
meal). Upon learning of my purpose on the trip, many received this knowledge hesitantly and
were apparently confused as to the nature and purpose of my work. Some dealt with this
confusion by verbally dismissing it as a factor in our collective identity: “It’s all God in the
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end,” Madeline, a spiritual leader of a group of women on the tour, said upon learning of my
research and background. Yet, importantly, no one avoided me upon learning of my identity and
purpose on the tour. Everyone did learn, in the process of disclosing my identity, that I was a
Mennonite, generally considered outside of the evangelical tradition, which was a curiosity to
most except Susan Michael, ICEJ USA Director who, in conversation with me, dismissed core
Mennonite convictions of non-violence as “not a very practical idea for governments.” Further, I
did not participate in some rituals, such as the Jordan baptism, prayers at the Syrian border,
group sharing of personal stories, but did participate in others, such as the Christian ritual of
Communion at the Garden Tomb. Yet, the last day of the tour happened to be my birthday and
once one of the travelers learned of this fact it was soon to be group knowledge. The last meal
we shared ended up as a birthday celebration for me with the entire group, including ICEJ and
Sar-El staff, singing to me over our meal. My own experience as—generally speaking—an
ideological outsider and my non-participation in most of the group rituals created a personal
sense of liminality vis-à-vis the group. That it did not express itself through non-inclusion in the
group suggests that there is something to be said for collective liminality in-and-of itself as a
primary factor in the generation of a sense of community that appears on modern pilgrimagetours. I suspect this is in no small part due to the nature of international group travel: riding on a
bus for countless hours listening to the same narration, encountering the same travel difficulties,
the daily sharing of meals, and having a tour guide who deliberately manufactures such
camaraderie. Lienesch (1993, 43) has described American religious conservatives as, themselves,
occupying (in self-perception) a liminal space relative to the larger “society” in which they live,
in their attempts to live “in and not of the world;” it is not inconceivable to suggest that Israel
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can function like a religious ancestral “home” for Christian Zionists in this regard, also
generating a sense of community and identity, as I explore later on.
Consistent with previous research, fully two-thirds of the thirty participants on my tour
were women.17 Twelve participants were travelling as married couples, leaving fourteen women
and four men, including myself, travelling without spouses.18 All of the pilgrims were white. I
would learn that about five or six of the women were travelling together as the result of an
impulsive group decision made at a women’s retreat led by Madeline, who was essentially
functioning as a spiritual leader for this tour sub-group. Five pilgrims (including two married
couples) were Canadian; the rest were Americans, two from the midwest, four from the west,
two from the northeast, and the remainder—sixteen—were from the American South.
Pilgrim backgrounds and biographical sketches
For the sake of clarity, table 2 contains brief biographical sketches of some of the
recurring figures in my examination in the pages to follow, including pilgrims and staff. (Since
the staff members are public figures, their real names are included here; the names of tour
participants are fictional.)
Table 2. Key tour participants and brief bio-sketches.
Michael and Bonni
Hines – ICEJ USA
17
Michael is the ICEJ-designated “spiritual leader” of our tour.
Michael is in his early thirties, British, and a self-described former
“left-wing” political staffer in the House of Commons and in the
National Assembly for Wales, where he was the spokesman and
speechwriter for the Deputy First Minister in the late 1990s. He
says he previously had a “great hostility toward [Israel] and toward
this people [the Jews].” He now lives in Mufreesboro, TN, and
works from the ICEJ USA Headquarters there as the Media
Director. Bonni, also in her early thirties and an American, is not
Kaell (2010, 20) notes that Israeli statistics and her historical research in post-World War II Holy Land travel
indicate that 65-85% of tourists to “The Holy Land” are female, and the “average pilgrim [traveler] is a woman in
her 60’s,” which, she further states, is similar to the average church-going Christian.
18
I did not systematically query participants as to their marital status.
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officially an employee of the ICEJ, though she does sometimes
write for their flagship publication. According to Michael, she had a
significant influence on Michael’s spiritual transformation,
including his current support for Israel. The Hines lived for five
years in Israel beginning shortly after the Second Intifada (2000),
working for the ICEJ International offices. They have four children,
all born during their time in Jerusalem.
Nancy Fager – ICEJ
USA
Nancy is the Administrator of the ICEJ USA and a “jill-of-alltrades” veteran of the organization. She was the tour organizer and
another staffer told me privately that Nancy handles just about
everything for the organization, including unidentified tasks which
are on a “need-to-know basis only”—tasks to which this staffer was
not privy and “did not want to” be privy.
Kenny & Munir – Sar
El Tours
Kenny is our Israeli tour guide. He is in his 50s, was born in
Louisiana and attended a Catholic school before immigrating to
Israel, where he was a “kibbutznik.” He is self-described as a
secular Jew and indicates that he is a vocal and adamant advocate to
other Jews about the political value of Evangelical support for
Israel. He refers to himself as “your uncle Kenny”19 in his folksy
tour narratives and he is very comfortable moving and speaking in
the theological and social world of evangelicalism, including
sensitive concepts about Jesus as Messiah. At times his evangelical
“accent” is so familiar he sounds like an evangelical himself.
Munir is our bus driver. In his late forties, Munir is an Arab Israeli
born-again Evangelical living in Nazareth and a supporter of Israel.
Pastors David and
Jenny
David and Jenny are in their late forties and pastors of a large,
multi-site evangelical church in Virginia. David’s parents attended a
1982 Feast of Tabernacles celebration with the ICEJ and it was the
Feast celebration that led him to choose the ICEJ tour. Pastor David
Kenny’s self-description as “uncle Kenny” can have meaning beyond a simple folksy reference designed to put
travelers at ease. As a representative of the Jewish people, Kenny’s description as an “uncle” can also be seen as a
reference to the position of the Jewish people to Christianity. For Christian Zionists, Christians are “grafted in” to
the olive tree that is the Jewish people—a reference to Romans 11 that is extremely common in Christian Zionist
literature and discourse. The current Executive Director of the ICEJ has gone so far as to describe the Jewish people
as the “fathers of Christianity,” and their “coming together in our day” is a fulfillment of prophecies in Malachi 4:56 which describe a “turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers.” The verse is
the last sentence of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, he notes. The verse finishes with the phrase: “so that I
will not come and strike the land with a curse.” “Dr. Jurgen Buehler (ICEJ) at KCAC “Night to Honor our Christian
Allies,” YouTube video, 7:47, segment of Knesset Christian Allies Caucus award ceremony January 17, 2012,
posted by “KCACTV,” accessed 4/30/13, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQQUYxNYj0. Rabbi Shlomo
Riskin, the founding chief rabbi (Modern Orthodox) of the Israeli settlement of Efrat in the West Bank, has
described Judaism and Christianity as the “mother-child religions,” which, in our day, “have come together after
close to 2,000 years of enmity;” “Israel, Int’l Christian Embassy Jerusalem,” YouTube video, 8:28, film short
produced and written by Karen Lustgarten, posted by “Karen Lustgarten,” March 31, 2009, accessed 4/30/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju3UyFKqYNQ.
19
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and his wife Jenny functioned as additional spiritual leaders of the
group, commissioned as such by the ICEJ before the trip began.
They are the only active pastors on the tour and have ten children.
David regularly led devotions on the tour.
Sarah and Greg
From California, Sarah and Greg are friendly and gentle. They
attend a Christian and Missionary Alliance church
(charismatic/evangelical). (Serendipitously, I have personal
familiarity with this church, but not with Sarah and Greg.) They
operate a very successful farm and investment property business.
Sarah, a lapsed Catholic, indicated she has a “great-great-greatgreat grandmother who had something to do with Israel (sic).” This
revelation of what she called her “Jewish roots” fueled her desire to
come to Israel.
Dale
The oldest of the tour participants at 84, Dale is from Kentucky and
a lapsed Catholic, now a “born again” Episcopalian. Dale is a Free
Mason20 and wears the ring proudly: “The ‘G’ [on the insignia]
stands for God!’ he tells me. He describes himself as a “liberal
conservative,” passionate both in his opposition to Obama and
support for Israel. His wife passed away one year before the trip.
Jim & Sally
Jim and Sally “became [born again] Christians” during the
charismatic movement in the late 1970s, when the movement
spread through their Episcopal church. They participated in local
Feast of Tabernacles celebrations in Florida when Jim was getting
his (unaccredited) PhD in theology; they now reside in Tennessee.
Jim’s dissertation was on the “unbiblical” modern embrace by the
Christian church of the social category of “adolescence.” They
indicate that they were influenced by the “Hebrew Roots”
movement while living in Florida in the 1990s. Jean is a legal
secretary who “works with many Jewish lawyers” and she has what
she describes as “brokenness [i.e. a deep spiritual burden] for them”
regarding their lack of embrace of Christianity, and she bakes
Jewish goods on Jewish holidays for the office to share in order to
start conversations about faith, when possible. Jim and Sally came
specifically for the Feast of Tabernacles.
Madeline & her
followers
At 81 years of age, Madeline is the most charismatic person on the
trip. She lead a cadre of five or six women whom she recruited from
her “Women’s seminars” back home in Arkansas, coming
specifically on this tour to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles—
20
Free Masonry has, since the early 20th century, been positively associated with Jews and Judaism after decades of
antisemitism from within its ranks. Conspiracy-minded critics of the Jewish community—no less than the Third
Reich—have often associated Free Masonry with Judaism in their conspiracies. The infamous Protocols of the
Elders of Zion also made this connection. See Katz (1967) for the history of this relationship.
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“practice for the end times”—which has been part of her Bible
teaching for “some years” now. Madeline is Assemblies of God and
epitomizes the Renewalist movement in her boisterous preaching
charisma as well as in the emphasis she places on the Spirit and the
“experience of the Bible and what it says” in the “seeing and
touching” of daily living.21 For Madeline, she and all of the
pilgrims, whether they know it or not, are “partaking in God’s plan
for His people” and serving as “witnesses,” rather than mere
tourists.
Frank & Laura
Frank and Laura are Canadians who have been attending the ICEJ
Feast of Tabernacles for most of the last 30 years. In their seventies,
they are members of an Assemblies of God church. Because of their
veteran status on ICEJ tours they were asked to lead devotionals at
a few of our sites.
Chris
Chris is in his early fifties, never married, and attends a charismatic
church in Arizona. He is a prophecy buff who reads prophecy
books, studies biblical prophecy, and watches prophecy shows on
Christian television. He chose this tour because it was the only one
he could find which coincided with the Feast.
Evelyn & Daniel
Evelyn and Daniel are Americans who were not originally part of
our tour but joined us on the last three days, overlapping with the
conference, which they attended. (They are not numbered among
the 30 pilgrims mentioned so far.) They are classic premillennial
dispensationalists—the only ones on the tour. Evelyn has a PhD in
education. They are non-charismatic and describe themselves as
fundamentalist. They are members of the Church of Christ and their
theology puts them at odds with their denomination in its current
form. Daniel is proud of the Restorationist tradition (StoneCampbell inspired) of his denomination, but “disappointed in their
stray from premillennialism in the 1930s.” Evelyn and Daniel have
been married for 60 years.
Palestinian presence on our tour
Arabs and Palestinians were inconspicuous—which is not to say hidden—on our tour.
Our encounters with them were largely limited to the service staff at our hotels, and mention of
Madeline’s statement here, while on a visit to Israel, is suggestive of a comment made by St. Cyril, Bishop of
Jerusalem (ca. 313-386), a saint venerated among Palestinian Christians. Speaking from and making reference to
Jerusalem, Cyril said, “…one can never weary of hearing concerning our crowned Lord, and least of all in this most
holy Golgotha. For while others only hear, we have sight and touch too” (1845, 154). Madeline would say on the
last day of our tour that “we can go back and say the Bible is real; we have seen the land.”
21
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Palestinians by Kenny and by ICEJ staff was mostly limited to their role in the struggle for the
land and the difficult political situation in Israel; Palestinians were generally limited to the role
of antagonists in Israel’s story.22 Arabs were usually mentioned in the context of the struggle
with Islam. These findings are consistent with previous research that has shown a conservative
evangelical exclusion of the Palestinian narrative, including the voice of Palestinian Christians,
while on Christian tours to Israel (Feldman 2007; Belhassen and Santos 2006). There were two
exceptions: the first was our bus driver, Munir, who is an Arab Renewalist Zionist. He
enthusiastically worshipped along with our group of pilgrims on the bus during long rides when
worship music replaced the commentary of our guide, Kenny. Another exception was our guide
at Nazareth Village, a twenty-something Arab Evangelical Israeli who I will call A’mer.
A’mer told the group that his identity as an Arab Evangelical Israeli is as a “minority of a
minority of a minority,23 [making me] only airport security’s favorite, where I always get the
‘special treatment.’” He was on temporary assignment at Nazareth Village, a
22
This is not consistently the case on Evangelical tours to Israel, not even for those that are driven largely by
Christian Zionist ideology. Belhassen’s group, though largely Christian Zionist, was a humanitarian endeavor,
bringing supplies and goods to needy folks living in Israel, primarily Jews. But the organizers for that trip did
arrange for the group to hear presentations from a Christian organization that worked with procuring treatment for
Palestinian children in Israeli hospitals, and some of the group felt moved to assist with the project (Belhassen 2007,
63). Some of these also returned from their trip with what they described as a fuller understanding of “the
complexity of the situation” (65). On the lack of mention of Palestinians on our tour, one major exception was when
Michael Hines, trying to explain the social position of Palestinians in Israeli society, likened their situation to
African Americans in the larger US society, suggesting that problems remain for Palestinians, but not radically
different from the situation of minorities in other countries. He did not address the issue of Palestinians living in the
territories, which are not considered a part of Israeli society and, therefore, are denied the rights of that society.
Inclusion of the territories in Israeli society reveals that as of October of 2012, Israeli Jews would be a minority in
Israel. Akiva Eldar, “The Jewish Majority is History,” Haaretz, October 16, 2012, accessed 10/16/12,
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/the-jewish-majority-is-history.premium-1.470233. The ICEJ’s social fund
(ICEJ AID) does provide social assistance for Palestinian communities, but based proportionately on official
statistics regarding Jewish/non-Jewish populations within internationally recognized borders only. This non-Jewish
aid calculates to twenty percent of the ICEJ social fund, corresponding with the population of non-Jews within these
smaller borders. See “Vision: The purpose of ICEJ AID,” accessed 5/1/13, http://int.icej.org/vision.) This calculation
is made despite the fact that the ICEJ strongly considers the boundaries of Israel proper to include the occupied
territories.
23
He elaborates: “As an Arab, I am a minority. Christians are not Arab’s favorites, so I am a minority. And I am
Evangelical, which is a minority among Arab Christians.” Less than two percent of Palestinians are Christian and
most of those are Orthodox (Kaell 2010, 202).
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historical/archaeological amalgam for tourists that combines an archaeological site with the reenactment of first century culture in Israel based on modern research.24 Nazareth is the
hometown of Jesus, so Nazareth Village employs local carpenters to dress up in first century
outfits and, using first century tools, they provide living demonstrations of what are understood
to be first century construction techniques. There is a small, reconstructed first century
synagogue on the premises and after A’mer finished his prepared speech on what it might have
been like to deliver and hear a sermon in such a synagogue, he was willing to talk informally
with our group. After explaining his social standing in Israeli society, one of the women in
Madeline’s group mentioned to him that she thought he and American prosperity gospel
television preacher Benny Hinn had a lot in common.25 A’mer laughed dejectedly, and
mentioned his displeasure at Hinn for his public scandals, then moved the group to a new
destination.
In a private conversation while the rest of the group perused the Nazareth Village gift
shop, A’mer and I explored the complicated relationship of Arab Christians with Christian
Zionists. A’mer did not see himself as a Christian Zionist, commenting on “the many stories that
my father has told me...” before cutting himself off mid-sentence. In a statement of counterbelief and disbelief, A’mer offered that he “believe[s] in God's justice” and that he believes God
“doesn't want to destroy any people group.” He clearly had different views of the relationship of
Christians to Israel and Jews, arguing that for Christians supporting Israel was fine, but after
material needs were met then evangelization should be made a priority; nothing should go
beyond this to be faithful to the gospel. He suggested that in his reading of biblical history,
24
On the historical significance of Arabs serving as authentic images of the Holy Land in the Christian imagination,
see Kaell (2010), 60-63. A’mer, however, breaks the mold she describes there because of his unique social position.
25
Hinn is Palestinian by birth, a very polarizing figure, and a strong supporter of Israel. Though raised Eastern
Orthodox, as a teenager he became a Pentecostal Christian at a preaching revival meeting in the late 1960s held by
Merv and Merla Watson, key founders of the ICEJ. (Personal interview with Merv and Merla Watson, May, 2013.)
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whenever Israel was exiled from their land it was because they were “unfaithful to the covenant.”
In his opinion, modern Israelis are not at all faithful to the covenant, an obvious allusion to the
sequestered existence of orthodox Jews in Israeli society relative to the largely secular
establishment. He expressed frustration that evangelization efforts were not left to local
Christians and that local Christians26 were rarely provided financial support by American
Christians, the latter who were more likely in his mind to send money to Israelis than their fellow
believers. He then provided a personal example. He works with youth at his church and
specifically wants to go into youth ministry after getting a graduate degree from a local Bible
college. Yet, much to his consternation, there are “almost no resources for youth or youth leaders
in Arabic, such as from Youth Specialties [a large evangelical organization based in California
which provides youth ministry resources], or online.” His argument was that no one in the US
was paying any attention—culturally, spiritually, materially—to even the ministry needs of Arab
Christians.27 A’mer’s frustration was palpable and he expressed the frustration of many Arab
Christians (who are not Christian Zionists) living in Israel/Palestine, as noted by others who have
studied Christian Zionism (Wagner 1995).
A’mer’s situation is a reminder of the animosities and resentments between several
factions of Christians in this region (our pilgrims, Messianic Jews, and Arab Christians, just to
name a few with direct relevance to this study), a conflict rooted in theological differences
certainly, but also driven significantly by ethnic considerations. The intersection of identities and
the apparent salience of ethnic over religious identity are striking, and serve as a reminder that
In hindsight, I would have asked A’mer if, by “local Christians” he was referring to local Arab evangelical
Christians. Though rarely mentioned in the literature, one reason that Evangelicals might not acknowledge local,
Arab Christians is that most of them are Orthodox, a tradition seen by evangelicals as basically outside of the
Christian faith. This basic ideological commitment may be more salient in the ideology than the fact that local
Orthodox believers are anti-Christian Zionist/pro-Palestinian.
27
I have personally attended a lecture by a Fuller Seminary graduate and Evangelical pastor in Gaza who made
much the same argument.
26
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geographical space in this region is severely contested, even among those within the same faith.
The manner in which geographical space is produced, therefore, has direct significance on the
narratives that emerge from encounters with those spaces (Sturm 2010).
Therefore, it is important to document how the ICEJ produces sites of relevance on their
tours, so that future tours and tours from other groups can be compared and contrasted. In this
way, the consumption of space can serve as a window into the theological and political
ideologies present in various moments in time. Because organizations and tour companies often
work with people “on the ground” at particular sites, tracking the sites over time can mark shifts
in or the presence of major commitments, and may serve to identify ideological networks and the
potential distribution of resources, as is evidenced, for instance, in the visits to ICEJ-placed
bomb shelters in Jewish border communities vulnerable to rocket fire from Gaza. Based on a
review of literature of Christian Zionist and Evangelical tours to Israel, it is clear that there were
a number of sites normally present on Evangelical tours to Israel/Palestine that were not present
on our tour but were offered as “add-on” sites to participants for an extra fee. The list of add-on
sites also included sites not normally present on Evangelical tours to Israel/Palestine, according
to my reading of the existing literature. Although I did not visit them, these extra sites selected
by the ICEJ are worth mentioning here because of the unique contribution made to Christian
Zionist ideology by the organization expressed through the selection of sites for pilgrims. The
sites and quotations within the descriptions are taken from ICEJ conference materials:
Tour of the pre-1967 “Green Line.” From my observations, Evangelical tours usually
do not often even mention the Green Line—established by the 1949 Armistice—much
less make a point of touring the line. However, for a tour with an explicitly political
agenda—defense and support of Israel—this offering is unique but not surprising. The
description specifically mentions the then upcoming vote in the U.N. on Palestinian
statehood. The tour includes “briefings from Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokespersons
and visits to Jewish settlements along the pre-’67 lines” in order to demonstrate the
“indefensible” nature of these borders for Israel, should they be forced to return to them.
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Tour of Flashpoints in Jerusalem. As the center of their personal and theological
imaginations, the importance of Jerusalem and its happenings for Christian Zionists
cannot be overstated. A tour of Jerusalem flashpoints helps the ICEJ to counter
international media narratives28 about these sites by “providing…the background needed
to understand why many Israelis want to restore and maintain a Jewish presence there.”
Tour to Sderot/Gaza border area. Concerned with demonstrating the suffering of
Israelis from rocket fire, the tour visited the Sderot and Ashkelon areas and was designed
to take advantage of proximity to Hamas-controlled Gaza. It is also an opportunity to
witness the ICEJ’s efforts at protecting Israelis on the ground, as pilgrims visit bomb
shelters directly funded by the ICEJ AID program in consultation with local officials.
For the ICEJ, holy sites are not just those restricted to the efforts of saints living in a
distant past but are made holy, in the present, by the efforts of Christian hands fulfilling
their biblical calling. Participants on our tour were encouraged to bring supplies (new
clothes, unopened toiletries) from the U.S. for the ICEJ AID program as “another way
you can be a blessing to Israel.”
Tour of Haifa Home for Holocaust Survivors. The ICEJ, through their ICEJ AID
program, purchased this facility and given the abundance of their promotion of the site to
constituents they are very proud of it. One hundred Holocaust survivors live in this
assisted-living complex which, in partnership with another local charity, includes free
food and medical care. But beyond serving in this capacity the complex also serves as a
site to be visited by Christian pilgrims, with survivors serving as living relics on their
tour stop. “This tour provides you with an up-close and personal look at Christian
compassion in action. Meet Holocaust survivors who have come to appreciate the
friendship and love of Christians like never before.”29
Special Tour of Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem is the internationally-known Israeli
Holocaust museum. It has a close and continuing partnership with the ICEJ since 2006.
The museum has a booth annually at the ICEJ conference and the ICEJ offers this
“tailored” tour, which “educates Christians worldwide about the Holocaust and its
universal lessons.” The ICEJ established a partnership with the museum in 2006 called
“Christian Friends of Yad Vashem” to “raise awareness about the Holocaust and its
universal lessons for today for Christian communities around the world.” Additionally,
the ICEJ hosts an annual Christian leadership seminar to train Christian pastors and
Moore (1994, ch. 9) documents the reaction of American Christian conservatives when “they awakened in the
1950s furious at the way religious liberals had used their influence in the national media to suppress their voices”
(244) and how that displeasure was translated into conservative Christian media. Much of what is occurring with the
Jerusalem-based ICEJ regarding dissatisfaction with international media can be seen largely as a globalization of
this displeasure—as well as possibly suggesting a globalization of a particular journalistic culture as well. The
consistent claim by the ICEJ that Israel is not treated fairly by international media has driven the displeasure in this
instance. Conservative religious global media empires are emerging from this and other religious conservative
reactions to perceived bias in international media, with the ICEJ itself providing some of the alternative media
reporting on Israel. This topic will be discussed further in chapter 7.
29
It can sometimes seem that everything in or touching the land of Israel has become or can be turned into a tourist
attraction. Feldman (2011, 64) documents the way that the separation wall, erected by Israel beginning in 2002 in
the aftermath of the second Intifada has become a tourist attraction, presumably for individuals identifying with
issues of justice for Palestinians. In both instances here—the separation wall and the Haifa House for Holocaust
survivors—sides concerned with their own, community-defined senses of social justice use the symbols of their
righteous indignation as tourist stops. To call this “social justice tourism” is certainly not far-fetched.
28
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teachers about the Holocaust at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust
Studies.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have sought to give an overview of my research approach and the
structure of the ICEJ 2011 Feast of Tabernacles tour that is a primary subject of this dissertation.
The ICEJ and tour companies like Sar-El engage in the production of geographical space,
production that includes and excludes various inhabitants and bisects the identities of the various
groups and interest groups living in the area and the region, including those serving our tour, as
the case of A’mer demonstrates. The ICEJ’s role as a major player within Renewalist Zionism
and Christian Zionism more generally is without parallel and in subsequent chapters I hope to
outline the ways in which Renewalist Zionism, as seen in this dissertation largely from within the
work of the ICEJ, is markedly different from the premillennial dispensationalism of previous
generations. However, as the frustration of A’mer has shown, ethnic Arabs living in and around
Israel, even Christian Arabs, are still marginalized not only in Israeli society and by the Israeli
state but also within and by the theology of Christian Zionism, even in its Renewalist form.
Chapter 5
Supernatural/Material Bible Extensions, Biblical “Proofs,”
and the Construction of Charismatic Authority
Throughout the tour our guide Kenny was careful to place the sites on our stops within a
self-constructed “veracity” scale. Providing a letter-grade to the more controversial sites—
ranging from A, “we are very confident, from tradition, archaeology and history, that this site is
as claimed,” to lower letters indicating less confidence in sites. (His due diligence in this regard
actually did provide a few sites that he labeled with a “B” rating, such as the traditional site of
the Sermon on the Mount.) But combined with this scale, Kenny indicated what he thought
evangelicals “really cared about: events, rather than sites.” This is not an unreasonable
assumption, given the iconoclasm present in the history of Protestant Christianity; Markus
(1994) reminds us that Christianity usually derives the “holiness” of a site from the significance
of a past event attached to it, not from the site itself. But this is not the case with Christian
Zionism, which in all of its modern forms generally treats Israel as sacred land. Its physicality,
combined with a belief that God continues to value, even own, the land is what drives Christian
Zionist belief. Even apart from Christian Zionist theology, Renewalist Zionists consistently
interpret and experience the sacredness of sites beyond their historical importance, even beyond
direct biblical-historical importance. For Renewalist Zionists modern Israel and its modern
history are seen as supernatural proof of the veracity of the Bible and of the faithful character of
God. Such sites may also be conducive to a reproduction of supernatural occurrences and
experiences—the previously mentioned high-context mimicry form of Renewalist
restorationism.
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147
The “Reappearance” of the (Biblical) Supernatural
Standing a few hundred feet from the site, Kenny had just finished his explanation of the
ancient synagogue in Capernaum and Peter’s mother-in-law’s house while our group sat in the
shade for a devotional. Frank and Laura were leading, and Laura opened her Bible ready to read.
Frank reviewed his notes, thanked Kenny for his explanation, and began his own lesson on
Capernaum. Frank wanted to emphasize that Jesus demonstrated his authority in Capernaum
(Mark 1) and that his authority came by supernatural means. “We know Jesus performed
miracles, he also taught his disciples and the people, too" Frank said, almost as an aside. “Jesus
is in control of everything, even in our lives. Many sick came to him and Jesus healed them all.”
After Laura reads the passage, Frank weaves their own story into the biblical story, telling of
Laura’s healing from cancer, his son-in-law’s healing of cancer, and their daughter’s future
healing of multiple sclerosis (“we continue to believe for it”). This is in line with previous
research showing the tendency for evangelicals to pattern autobiographical accounts on biblical
narratives (Engberg 2011, 69; Lienesch 1993). These healings, he suggests, came because he had
brought each of these family members to Israel prior to the onset of these diseases. “You can see
the progression here,” Frank asserted confidently, “each of [my kids] were baptized in the river
Jordan… No one can know the good life without Jesus.” Frank has woven traditional evangelical
narratives—Jesus as healer, performer of the miraculous, hearer of prayers—into the fabric of
the land using the scriptural text and the ruins that surrounded us as justification for his belief.
Through high-context mimicry, Frank was convinced of the replication of these healings in the
same place that the scriptures indicated such supernatural occurrences had first appeared. In her
study of evangelical and Catholic pilgrims, Kaell (2010, 92ff) indicates that the pilgrims she
observed demonstrated an ambivalence to healing on site in the Holy Land. Yet the pilgrims on
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the ICEJ tour spoke of supernatural occurrences (such as healing, but by no means limited to it)
as expected, as part of the normal fabric of life in Israel. These sites were holy not simply
because of the events which had taken place there in the past, but were sites of potential or actual
re-actualization of the stories, reverberations of the original story in the present time for Frank,
precisely because of the personal visitation of his family members. For Frank and Laura, not
only was their story woven into the scripture passage, but both were woven into the land, the
product of which was a potential re-manifestation of supernatural occurrence. Frank and Laura’s
demonstration is by no means an isolated incident within Renewalist Zionist practices. Nor is the
belief limited to the recurrence of healing as supernatural demonstration.
The word “supernatural” was an oft repeated word throughout our journey. Paul
Alexander, a scholar of religion and ethics who is both a scholar and practitioner of
Pentecostalism, says that “Pentecostalism affirms [the] belief in the divine and miraculous and
specializes in it” (2009, 16). Playing to Renewalist sympathies, Sar-El tours constructed our trip
to emphasize narratives of the supernatural. One of our stops was in the Golan Heights (see
Table 1 & Figure 1, above) where we were shown a film in Hebrew with subtitles on the
miraculous deliverance of Israeli soldiers during the Yom Kippur war. The film emphasized
impossible deliverances for Israel—the exposure of a field of landmines in a sandstorm, the
surrender of a platoon of Arab soldiers to only three Israeli soldiers, etc.—which could only be
interpreted as miraculous. Afterwards, we were taken to a memorial of the Yom Kippur war in
the Golan Heights, consisting of a few acres dotted by hollowed Syrian tanks left in the field
from the war, left in part to demonstrate how far the Syrians had advanced during the conflict.
Mature trees on the site, planted as memorials after the 1973 war, surrounded baby saplings
planted in memoriam of casualties from the 2006 war. The memorial has a large plaque with a
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poem that, according to Kenny, was written by a survivor of the Yom Kippur war in both
Hebrew and English. At the bottom of the plaque is a notation stating:
Pastor George and Cheryl Morrison and the congregation of Faith Bible Chapel in
Arvada, Colorado, dedicate this plaque to the men and women who fought and died in the
valley of Tears during the Yom Kippur War.
The Morrison’s are on the board of John Hagee’s Christian’s United For Israel, the largest U.S.based Christian Zionist advocacy organization founded in 2006. As we stood at the memorial
and Kenny described the ultimate repulsion of advancing Syrian troops (despite heavy Israeli
losses), he ended with a paraphrase of a quote from David Ben-Gurion, the secular-atheist and
first prime minister of Israel: “If you don’t believe in miracles in Israel, then you aren’t a
realist.” Michael would repeat this quote as we sat at the Syrian border in the Golan Heights,
citing as examples of miracles in Israel the Israeli victories in the War of Independence (1948),
the Six-Day War (1967), the Yom Kippur war (1973) and later adding other conflicts to the list
of miraculous deliverances, such as the conflict with Lebanon in 2006. Michael would explain
that during the 2006 war many rockets were launched for days into northern Israel, but with few
casualties, which he described as a “miracle.” Yet he complained that “the international media
talked about the rockets as if they were no big deal. It’s one of the struggles that Israel has with
the media: when a miracle happens, everyone thinks nothing happened!” Indeed, as Kenny
retold the history of Israel’s wars since 1948 he remarked, “God was up in the heavens, pulling
the string making all of these miracles happen.”
What should be emphasized about the sites and the artifacts related to the Yom Kippur
war—modern war memorials to fallen Jewish soldiers punctuated with tanks, trees and plaques,
the border in Syria—is that these have been selected as meaningful for presentation by Sar El
Tours and ICEJ staff to the constituency of the ICEJ. Sites of modern Israeli warfare and
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memorials to Israeli/Jewish persons are sites of memory for Christian Zionists who not only
actively consume the sites on tours, but help to construct and fund the sites. What is more, when
the full Renewalist worldview is considered, it becomes clear that such battles are understood to
be biblical battles in that they are seen as fulfillment of generalized biblical predictions about
Israel regarding the issues facing the “restored nation” in the last days, particularly in regard to
persecution from Islamic countries.1 More specifically, it is believed that these miraculous
deliveries from enemies, coupled with increasing signs of the supernatural in the last days (latter
rain), suggest the rousing of a slumbering God, ready to perfect creation and set all of God’s
enemies under God’s feet, with direct and crucial (not incidental) participation from the saints.
This is the heart of the Renewalist Zionism metanarrative. At our prayer time at the Syrian
border, as other tourists walked by, Madeline would pray:
Even though your people had to be dispersed…you had a covenant and you are a
covenant-keeping God. And you said that one day they would return and now they are
here! And we feel the awesomeness of what you would have us to do: now it is our turn
‘until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled’ (sic)2…. I believe that every one of us has been
divinely assigned for such a time as this.3 We are here for more than a tour. We are here
for more than to look upon the [historical sites]. We are here to plant seeds of faith that
your kingdom will come and your will will be done on this earth! We pray for miracles.
We have been hearing of the miracles you have done for Israel; do these miracles now,
among us, in us, through us!
On our tour it was expected that God had, was, and would interject in human affairs—not
uncommon for the Renewalist worldview emphasizing as it does the restoration of the full
movement of God in history as they read and interpret that history and its trajectory in their Bible
(Blumhofer 1993, see especially chapter 9). Wacker (2001) names this restorationist impulse in
Pentecostalism “primitivism,” which he describes as a
Sturm’s (2010) findings are similar. For instance, see p. 267.
Reference is to Luke 21:24: “And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations.
And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
3
“…[F]or such a time as this…” is a phrase from Esther 4:14 and was spoken to Queen Esther as a statement that
her placement in the king’s house, as a Jew, was fortuitous given the threats from the plans of ethnic cleansing
devised by Haman against the Jewish people.
1
2
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determination to return to first things, original things, fundamental things…. [The term
connotes] not so much an upward reach for transcendence as a downward or even
backward quest for the infinitely pure and powerful fount of being itself. (12)4
Wacker further explains that Pentecostals combine this primitivism with a strong strand of
pragmatism that also informs their activism (13). Primitivism seeks to restore “apostolic”
Christianity (i.e. that Christianity practiced by the apostles) by identifying and discarding the
accretions and “errors” (i.e. wrong turns, accumulation of traditions, evil deeds such as the
crusades or Jewish persecution, etc.) within 2,000 years of church history and sometimes
theology. The renewal of “spectacular spiritual manifestations” in our time, according to a
certain strand of Pentecostal primitivism called the “Latter Rain” (discussed in chapter 3) is a
sign of the impending close of the age and a warning to the nations of the world to repent while
they are still able (Ware 2002). My suggestion that the introduction of sacred trajectories as an
aspect of the restorationism of Pentecostal practices should complicate Wacker’s description of
what he calls primitivism, and I would challenge his re-direction of the reader from an
understanding of (at least modern) Renewalism as an “upward reach for transcendence.” The
primitivism he describes, when combined with an understanding of the re-establishment of a
sacred trajectory, allows us to affirm and understand both the primitivistic impulses he ascribes
and a powerful reach for transcendence in the present. That transcendence is expected in the
present precisely because it was first established in the Bible and there established as normative
for the Christian life. God’s great acts recorded in biblical history, repeated as a sign of the
coming end of the age, are the mechanism by which a sense of anticipation is created, of building
momentum towards the end of the age. Every sovereign act of God—whether in the form of
Ware (2002, 1019, 1021) notes that the idea of “restoration” which animates Christian primitivism was present in
the Protestant Reformation, and is “implicit and common to all of Protestantism, [though] much more influential in
some groups than in others….[P]entecostalism is certainly one of the most notable and successful restorationist
movements in modern Christianity.”
4
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prophecy fulfillment, miraculous intervention to deliver from sickness, disease or danger, the reappearance of supernatural manifestations and spiritual gifts such as glossolalia (i.e. speaking in
tongues)—all contribute to generating a sense of nearness with regard to the end of the age and
the establishment of God’s reign on earth.5 The ICEJ has described its own work at various times
as a restoration, a supernatural manifestation, and a warning to the nations (for example, see
Parsons Unknown year). The “rebirth” of the modern state of Israel—which the ICEJ’s Malcolm
Hedding (2004a) calls the restoration of “God’s vehicle for world redemption”—is as powerful a
sign in this regard as any of the others.6 He goes on to declare: “She [Israel] has gone home for
the last time, to bring in the kingdom of God for the whole world” (2004e, 36).
This type of restoration differs from the “religious replication” described by Coleen
McDannell (1995, 160ff) in her work on material Christianity. There, religious replication of
religious shrines across locales, so important in Catholic culture, allows for the “assembling [of]
a material world to mark off a sacred domain as ordered and meaningful.” She finds that the
reproduction is not reduced in its sacred power relative to the original. For comparison purposes,
this may be described as low-context mimicry, particularly in terms of the context of “place.”
For modern Christian Zionists there could be no other location for Israel.7 Jerusalem cannot be
anywhere but where it is believed the Bible—and tradition, and archaeology, and history—have
located it: as I heard many times on my trip, Jerusalem is “God’s city,” “the place of God’s
dwelling” “where God has put [God’s] name.” Kaell (2010, 188) notes that when it comes to the
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last days is often seen as a prelude to the “conversion” of the Jews. For
only one example, see ICEJ Executive Director Jurgen Buehler’s commentary “Israel and the Spirit of God,”
accessed 8/10/12, http://feast.icej.org/news/commentary/israel-and-spirit-god?.
6
Hedding adds (2004e, 31): “The restoration of Israel in our time is a herald of the coming dispensation, if you will,
of the Feast of Tabernacles. It is the preparation for this great day when the Son of David will set up His throne and
rule over the nations with a rod of iron. This is why Israel is so important, and the reason why we stand with her and
pray for her…. [W]e are like the people of Issachar who understand the times and know what God is doing in Israel
(I Chronicles 12:32).”
7
Though the boundaries for what would constitute Israel have not often been clear or consistent. See Masalha
(2006, 32ff).
5
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construction of religious presence, through the generations Protestants8 have commonly used the
term “symbolic” to construct and describe “God-in-places.” For Protestants through history,
iconoclasm has been a means to ward off idolatry, and symbolism has been the means to
establish the presence of God in opposition to the material. This is not a replicated pattern for
much of Renewalist Zionism. The land itself is a conduit for supernatural encounter precisely
because of its proximity to the divine concern. Repeated several times on my trip and in ICEJ
literature is the claim that God’s very residence is said to be in Jerusalem and that Israel is the
“apple of His eye.” Yet, Israel-as-supernatural-conduit seems to be more of a lay practice rather
than a formal teaching of Christian Zionist leaders, who speak of Israel as a conduit for world
redemption more generally (Hedding 2004a).9 For Christian Zionists, restoration of Jews to
Israel is God’s doing and each step in the movement is, in itself, evidence of God’s supernatural
intervention in history.
Images of the Past and the Veracity of Biblical “Proofs:”
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Besides “supernatural,” another word that appeared with high frequency on our tour was
the word “proof.” Looking to history, fulfilled prophecy is one of the more popular methods of
establishing the proofs of Christian Zionism (Feldman 2007, 367; Shapiro 2008, 311) and—as
Christian Zionists make the association—the veracity of the biblical text, even the existence of
God. Michael Hines incorporated all of these elements in a night devotional, the topic of which
was centered not on a biblical text but on the meaning of the fortress ruins of Masada to Israelis:
“There is no greater living proof of the existence of God than his faithfulness to this people. And
8
To provide a historical example, Quere (1985) describes the process by which Luther gradually changed his
theology and opinion, after attacks by Zwingli, regarding the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist which was
“simply and literally…the distribution of the body of Christ” (56) to a more symbolic presence in his later writings.
9
Having said this, lay practices that identify Israel as a conduit for personal experiences of the supernatural are
likely strongly influenced by the pervasive message of the prosperity gospel teachers, who make Israel a central part
of their message. See chapter 7 for an analysis of the prosperity gospel and its use of Israel in Christian television.
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if he has been faithful this far, will he leave them and not fulfill all that he has promised them [in
the Bible]?” Another form of proof embraced by Renewalist Zionists through their more
historicist premillennialism is more risky, but has been extremely fruitful as a generator of often
extremely popular Christian Zionist texts: the reading of current events as proof of the nearness
of a prophesied biblical future.10 This is a pervasive practice in Christian Zionist films and
popular literature.11 Twentieth-century Christian Zionists often included antisemitism as a
“proof;” Frederick R. Erdman said it succinctly in the February, 1934 issue of Moody Monthly:
“Antisemitism proves the supernatural character of the Bible.” Satan is seen to hate that which
God loves, in this case the Jewish people; therefore, a basic cosmological dualism found in such
worldviews is affirmed. Christian Zionists often point to the biblical story of Esther, the young
Jewish woman and wife of Persian King Xerxes I. In the story Esther saved the Jewish people
from an ethnic cleansing plot by Haman, a political adviser to the king. Antisemitism, Christian
Zionists note, is as old as the Bible and has been a real and dangerous presence in Christianity
since the early church fathers. Real or perceived increases in antisemitism also function as proof
of the end times. As Susan Michael would put it in a mass email,
Antisemitism is the world’s early warning system and acts as a “canary in the mineshaft”
warning us that a Pandora’s box of death and destruction is about to be opened and it will
not end with the Jews. In 2012 the world experienced a 30% increase in antisemitic
incidents. Are we heeding the alarm?12
It should be noted that although Christian Zionists see antisemitism as proof of the coming end
of the age, this does not mean that they embrace it or see it in a positive way. Indeed, as has been
10
See Gribben (2009), whose work is now the standard on prophecy fiction writing in the U.S., especially chapter 4.
However, his insistence on maintaining the label “dispensationalism” to describe modern Christian Zionism is
problematic for reasons I have outlined in the previous chapter. He does rightly note, as do other scholars (Lienesch
1993, 227), that even dispensationalists are often prone to historicist thinking.
11
Tim LaHaye’s wildly popular series, Left Behind, uses current events in a fictional narrative. See also Hal Lindsey
in his movie (based on his book) The Late Great Planet Earth (Amram 2003).
12
Susan Michael, ICEJ-USA email in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 8, 2013. “The alarm” for Susan
is meant not only to signify the times we are in, but to call Christians to stand up against antisemitism.
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mentioned above, the ICEJ in particular has an extensive outreach and training program (mainly
awareness campaigns)13 for churches in regards to combatting antisemitism, focused usually on
Muslim sources of antisemitism, but also significantly on Christian and secular sources.
Archaeology as restorationist sign
An additional form of “proof” of the Christian Zionist worldview is archaeology.
Sturm(2010), a political geographer focused on geopolitics, cautions that “we should not be
surprised that territory, landscape, and nature are utilized for religious proof….The Bible finds
many of it (sic) metaphors in ‘facts on the ground’” (97). Scholarly attention to the selection and
appropriation of these “metaphors,” as well as a comparison of this subset to selections and
appropriations present in earlier forms of Christian Zionism can be a fruitful exercise, as can a
comparison to research from scholars who have done work on other evangelical tours. For
instance, not all Christians on tour in the Holy Land find material religious proofs to be of the
same significance as Christian Zionists. Kaell (2010, 252) notes that on her tour with Roman
Catholics and Evangelicals, spiritual transformation was the “proof” of extraordinary encounter,
rather than healing or miraculous artifacts as proof of the veracity of the faith as a whole. It is
therefore important to explore the ways that, in the words of Feldman (2007, 367), “the Bible
becomes an embodied text.” On our tour one archaeological discovery captured the imagination
13
An example of ICEJ efforts on the antisemitism front indicates that the act of remembering is central to their
contributions. In May of 2013, in their flagship publication Word From Jerusalem, Jurgen Buhler of the ICEJ
commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day by relaying a conversation he had with a resident of the ICEJ
holocaust survivors’ home: “One lady residing at our home for Holocaust survivors in Haifa recently shared with
me her biggest concern. “What will happen when we all have died?” she asked. “Will anybody believe that it all
happened?” I assured her that this is one of the core callings of the ministry of the Christian Embassy. Our
partnership with Yad Vashem is a powerful tool against forgetfulness. Every year, we bring Pastors from all over the
world to Jerusalem for a week-long conference to learn not only the lessons from the Holocaust but also what can be
done so that history will not repeat itself again” (emphasis mine). See “Letter from the Director,” Jurgen Buhler,
Word From Jerusalem, May, 2013, p. 2.
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of our group, and their reaction to this artifact is striking when compared to studies of other Holy
Land pilgrims.
The Jesus Boat
The “Jesus Boat,” as it is now popularly called, is a genuine first-century archaeological
find from the mud of the Sea of Galilee.14 (It has an alternative name: The Sea of Galilee Boat.)
In the Bible Jesus is said to have walked on water in a storm, approaching a boat housing his
fearful disciples [Matthew 14:22-33]. In evangelical circles, it is often understood as a historical
occurrence but receives relevance as an allegory about increasing one’s faith. In contrast
Renewalists, particularly of the third-wave, often interpret the passage as an example of what is
possible when faith is enacted. Discovered in 1986 by a pair of brothers who were fishing in the
region the boat was recovered, restored, and placed on display in a museum on the shores of the
Galilee. Groups visit the Jesus Boat museum by crossing the Galilee on a tour boat, which often
includes evangelical-style worship music and sometimes a small devotional. Our group followed
this pattern. The name “Jesus Boat” is a marketing decision used to fully draw out the
possibilities of the archaeological find, though no association has been made or probably could
be made with Jesus himself or his disciples. However, Kenny did not quash a maximalist
interpretation. “Is it one of the boats owned by Jesus’ disciples? This is certainly a possibility,”
was his narrative framing choice. Such a frame—suggesting the maximum interpretation
desirable for the constituency served on the tour while presenting other alternative possibilities—
allows the pilgrim to affirm what he or she wants to believe, while also allowing the tour guide
to retain a measure of integrity and plausible deniability if accused as a propagandist. The
14
The presentation of the boat inside its showroom walls is more scientific than religious, including information on
carbon dating, historical records and other archaeological proofs. I have no reason to doubt its authenticity as a first
century artifact. It is promoted by the owners of the museum as a “modern miracle” both on their website and in
other areas of the museum. It is also promoted heavily in various consumer iterations in the gift shop.
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pilgrim may be satisfied that they have received “all” of the information when more than one
possibility is suggested, while retaining the freedom to decide the ultimate truth (often from the
proposed alternatives) of the site visited. Each of the pilgrims in our group listened intently to
Kenny and seemed genuinely excited about the possibilities. A short film was played about the
discovery of the boat, including a singular moment when the restored boat was filmed “setting
sail for the first time in 2,000 years” before finding its final resting place in the museum. When
the boat was shown touching again the surface of the sea, our group erupted in applause and
cheers. It was as if not just the boat but the time period itself was reborn in their day, in the land
of Israel, a supernatural act of God rather than the actions of two brothers or archaeologists,
echoing their similar responses to the reconstituted Jewish nation, which lay in slumber for
almost the same period of time. My group emerged from the boat showroom and proceeded to
the gift shop where they engaged with enthusiasm a large collection of Judaica (i.e. objects
embodying Jewish culture) for sale: shofars (ram’s
horns), jewelry, menorahs, calendars, kippahs (Jewish
male head-covering), a surprising amount of Christian
crosses and Christmas items, and a number of items (tshirts, jewelry, banners) displaying a fusion of Jewish
and Christian symbols (see Figure 1 for an example).
Figure 5. Kippah for sale at Jesusboat.com.
Symbol is a combination of a menorah, a
Star of David, and a fish, the latter widely
understood as a Christian symbol. Courtesy
Jesus Boat, www.jesusboat.com.
The many items displaying this symbol are listed on
the stores’ website under “Messianic Gifts,” with a telling description: “Great Messianic gifts
for anyone who lives by the Jewish Roots of their faith.”15
A contrast with Kaell’s experience on her tour with Catholics and Evangelicals
illuminates the uniqueness of my group’s response to the boat. For Kaell (2010, 168), her
15
See http://www.jesusboat.com/messianic-gifts, accessed 11/9/13.
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group’s visit to the Jesus Boat also included only a narrative of positive association of the boat
with Jesus from their guide, who asked her group to “picture Jesus sailing with his apostles.”
Yet, in her words, “The group…seemed unimpressed and filed out as soon as the guide stopped
talking, even though she urged us to stay and look around” (170). For Kaell’s group, the spiritual
experience was found only in the riding on a tour-designed Galilean boat on the way to the
museum, with Evangelical worship music accompaniment and a sermonette by their spiritual
guide. It was this experience—the more direct and familiar spiritual experience—that was the
highlight for her group. It is clear, then, that our groups had very different experiences of the
same artifact, despite the fact her group was majority evangelical Protestant and mine was nearly
entirely so (save one charismatic Catholic).
In the larger picture, on this tour as on others, tour guides seem to employ a presentation
strategy that takes advantage of what social psychologists call the “confirmation bias,” in which
humans demonstrate a “tendency to seek out and interpret new evidence in ways that confirm
what [one] already think[s]” (Haidt 2012, 79). If the presented narrative conforms to what is
already “known” about the events associated with a site, then the need for subsequent seeking of
alternative possibilities—say, at home, on the internet—would be minimized. This is so because
the tour narrative, as experienced with the influence of the confirmation bias, would have already
achieved significant sedimentation and integration into the existing worldview shortly after the
visit was concluded. Haidt (2012) suggests that “People are quite good at challenging statements
made by other people, but if it’s your belief, then it’s your possession—your child, almost—and
you want to protect it, not challenge it and risk losing it” (80). My observations of the tour
confirmed Bowman’s insight into Holy Land pilgrimage: “[P]ilgrims experience little [at
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shrines] other than that which they already expect to encounter” (Bowman 1991, 121, as quoted
in Kaell 2010, 23).
I have attempted to demonstrate how, particularly for Renewalist Zionists, the land of
Israel is a material extension of the Bible itself and not merely an artifact of a biblical past which
would be of interest because of the events associated with it. The state of Israel’s “rebirth” in the
20th century is seen as the supernatural activity of a God who is now rapidly unfolding the prewritten (through prophecy) but only now emerging end of history. This unfolding, a continuation
of the events and history of biblical Israel on much of the same land is proof of the veracity of
the Bible, even the character and existence of God. The modern state of Israel and the Jewish
presence on the land is, especially for its Renewalist Zionist supporters, a critical, living
appendage of the biblical text (if not an expression of the text’s very core) that serves
simultaneously as a point of controversy to the world and an announcement of that world’s
coming conclusion.
The Dead Sea Scrolls as proof
The tour’s visit to the cave of the Dead Sea Scrolls illuminates the heightened importance
of archaeology in evangelical Christian apologetics. A basic characteristic of higher criticism
since the 19th century is an a priori dismissal of the category of the supernatural (Kuklick 1996,
190). Responding to this challenge is important to Renewalist apologetics aimed at the
establishment of the legitimacy of their faith. Often those camps seeking to oppose the strafing
effects of higher biblical criticism on belief turn to historical legitimations to establish the “truth”
of Christianity. Such has been the case in the history of the archaeology of Palestine, even within
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the ranks of the archaeologists—believing and unbelieving—themselves.16 The importance to the
religious apologetic becomes evident when the argument over the veracity of religious claims is
at issue. Even if the historical claims of a religion can be established the supernatural claims
(which also happen to be “unverifiable” by scientific means) are dismissed, though it is
acknowledged that religion is experienced from within time and space (Kuklick 1996, 24). In no
way does this deter the faithful who are not engaged in conversations with higher critics and,
though they hear of “attacks on the Bible,” they are happy to turn to historical verification and
archaeology to bolster their faith and as a means to nullify the perlocutionary effect of their
detractors’ arguments. On our tour, this was the case with the caves of Qumran, which housed
the Dead Sea Scrolls until 1947. In that year a young Arab Bedouin shepherd located several
ancient jars which housed numerous scrolls and fragments near the city of Jericho, just prior to
the establishment of the Israeli state.
As we stood at Qumran, after listening to Kenny’s history of the modern discovery of the
scrolls, Michael, by positing leading questions, proceeded to direct Kenny to an end that would
allow Michael to construct a narrative of supernatural vindication of the Bible by way of the
scrolls. And Kenny was more than happy to oblige. The dialogue is worth repeating here in order
to establish the means by which a Renewalist Zionist spiritual leader and political advocate
works in step with a secular Israeli Jewish tour guide.
Michael: So, there was a fragment from every book of the Old Testament, but was there a
complete scroll of every book of the Old Testament?
Kenny: No. [Correcting Michael, Kenny then explains in somewhat technical detail about the
compilation of the fragments of scrolls and pieces of scrolls that would eventually reveal
parts of each of thirty-seven of the thirty-eight books of the Old Testament, excluding the
book of Esther.] Only one was found which was complete [Michael nods his head in
16
See Kuklick (1996), particularly chapter 9, for the history of this struggle in archaeology in the mid-twentieth
century.
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agreement],17 and that book was the book of Isaiah [Michael mouths ‘book of Isaiah’ as
Kenny says the words]. With all the vast messianic messages which the book of Isaiah
contained (sic), some say this was not left up to chance.
As Kenny was finishing this paragraph, Pastor David swung around the outside of the semicircled crowd, reached in between several folks, tapped Michael on the back and whispered
“That was not by chance!” Kenny explains that we will be visiting the Shrine of the Book, a
museum housing the Great Isaiah Scroll and several other ancient manuscripts, later in the tour.
Notably, the large scale model of first century Jerusalem is also located at this museum: text
and place are interposed in a single shrine. Kenny notes that we will only be viewing facsimiles,
as the scroll is under lock and key in protective conditions.
Michael: And when they compared even the fragments, and they compared the original, there
was no shifting…verbatim through the generations?
Although Michael’s sentence is not coherent, the perlocutionary force of his argument is felt.
Kenny, a savvy veteran of evangelical tours, knows what is coming next and answers Michael’s
question before it is even completely formulated. Michael is asking if the Dead Sea Scrolls,
particularly the complete Great Isaiah Scroll (dating from 125 BCE),18 corresponds exactly to the
text as we have it today.
Kenny: Verbatim.
Kenny is offering what he knew that Michael wanted him to say, even if it is not exactly
accurate: that the text of the Great Isaiah Scroll was the same text, without change,19 as that in
17
The scroll is complete, in the sense that there is a single scroll containing all of the 66 books of Isaiah. Fragments
from the passages, however, have been torn away in some places. This was not mentioned. See
http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah, accessed 5/4/13.
18
On the dating of the scrolls, see http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah, accessed 12/18/12.
19
According to the Israel Museum that houses the Great Isaiah Scroll in the Shrine of the Book exhibit, “The
version of the text is generally in agreement with the Masoretic or traditional version codified in medieval codices,
such as the Aleppo Codex, but it contains many variant readings, alternative spellings, scribal errors, and
corrections,” accessed 5/4/13, http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah.
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the tour participants’ existing Bibles—which could only be presumed to be a supernatural
occurrence.
Michael, now addressing the faithful: I guess in some ways the message (sic) of Qumran…there
is a verse, you all know it: “The Lord watches over his word to perform it.”20 If [the
ancient fortress of] Masada was the place…of the last living connection of the Jewish
people with the land for 2,000 years, Qumran is the place where the last, in a sense,
enduring connection of God’s word with his people and God’s word with his land did
remain.
One of our group members, the only charismatic Catholic on the tour, pumps her fist as Michael
finishes the previous sentence.
Michael continues: For many scholars there seems to be little coincidence that it was 1947, as
the [Israeli] Declaration of Independence [is made] in 1948, is when the professor [who
was in possession of the scrolls at the time] was crossing the border into Israel, presenting
the scrolls to Israel on its birthday as a nation….
Michael suggests in this speech that not only were the Jewish people exiled from the land by the
hand of the Romans at Masada, but the Bible itself, in terms of the prophecies made concerning
the Jewish people, was exiled from the land by the same. Kenny had just explained to us that the
Romans had also annihilated the community of Essenes at Qumran, leaving behind the texts
waiting to be discovered until the promises for Israel were ripe for fulfillment. What remains
particularly relevant for the topic at hand is that Michael considered Qumran and the events that
occurred there—not in sacred time corresponding to the period of the writing of the Bible, but in
re-established, ongoing sacred time (1947)—to be speaking, to have a “message” for our group,
along with Masada. He uses the voice of “scholars” to legitimize his interpretation of the event
as supernatural (for example, “little coincidence,” echoing Kenny’s “not left up to chance”).
From my studies of the ICEJ’s published materials, Isaiah, more than any other biblical text,
retains significant importance to the construction of their worldview. With its sixty-six chapters
it is seen as a microcosm of the entire Bible (with its sixty-six books), emphasizing the story and
20
The reference is to Jeremiah 1:12.
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redemption of both Israel and humanity and containing many passages understood to be
prophecies referring to Jesus. In his narrative Michael is carefully weaving Jewish Israelis into
the pages of the Bible, using the sheepskin of an ancient scroll, reinforced through the selective
retelling of the events surrounding the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Michael continues: Established in the very foundation of the State of Israel is an appeal to the
authority of scripture, and that authority of scripture for us (sic), as believers in the word
of God. The finding of Isaiah in those caves [he points to the caves], in some respects the
most significant of all the books of the Old Testament, tracing as a microcosm the
journey of all humanity through unbelief, through judgment, through repentance, to
restoration [as well as] the journey of the Jewish people through the generations—our
journey through the generations of coming from a place of hopelessness to a place of
confidence, a place of resurrection and restoration in the plan of God. It is no coincidence
that it is the book of Isaiah which has been preserved…. The Psalmist says God’s word is
precious, it is ‘priceless,’ and there is a pricelessness to the connection of God’s word to
this land and this land to his people. And for us, as Christians, as believers in this word
[he opens the Bible he has been holding], as the inheritors of the passing down of these
books, of the word of God throughout the generations, this makes this [Qumran] a very
priceless and precious place for us, we dare claim…we are people of the Book.
Michael’s first statement here, addressed to the group, unequivocally establishes the stakes of the
restoration of Jews to Israel: the Bible’s very authority. In the Christian Zionist worldview, not
just for Renewalists, God’s word depends on the fulfillment of the prophecies identified as
surrounding the restoration of the Jewish people to Israel. All of faith hangs on this event and
now that it has (at least partially) occurred, nothing less than the veracity of the Bible is at stake.
As Sturm (2010) suggests, the partnership of the restored Jewish community with Christian
Zionism “has been a successful match because it has offered a way to read the infallibility of the
Bible on[to] the landscape” (27).
But why is this particular scroll important? While it certainly is true that this scroll
represents the oldest manuscript for a text in the Hebrew Bible surpassing the previous oldest by
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some 1,000 years, it is still a copy of the book21 of Isaiah (the original manuscript of Isaiah, as
with all of the original manuscripts of the Bible, has been lost to history). This particular copy
was made some 425 years after the last chapter of Isaiah was complete.22 New Testament
scholarship has shown that we are in possession of copies of some New Testament manuscripts,
from the book of John and Romans-Hebrews that date significantly closer to their composition
date, according to Minnen (1995) (copies composed around 200 CE, a mere 100-140 years after
their supposed origination). What makes this copy of Isaiah so special? The answer seems to be
multifaceted, but without the coherence required for a rational argument. For Renewalist Zionists
accustomed to looking for everyday supernatural signs around Israel’s restoration the Great
Isaiah Scroll is experienced as a divine gift to the faithful, preserved in caves until the end of the
age, not rationally deliberated, although at least some of the facts about the nature of this
manuscript were presented by Kenny.23
The meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, at least for some, becomes readily apparent when
examining the posted comments shortly after Google published images of the scrolls online,24
21
Isaiah is generally regarded by scholars as consisting of two (some argue three) books, written over a 150 year
period and completed around 550 BCE. See http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah, accessed 12/18/12.
22
See “The Great Isaiah Scroll,” accessed 11/9/13, http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah. This site is maintained by
the Israel Museum.
23
This is manifested on several fronts. First the age of the text seems to create excitement, its ancient-ness
contributing to an air of authenticity. Second, some basic facts of the text readily lend themselves to interpretation: it
is Jewish, it is in scroll form (conforming to biblical images of scripture reading), and the scroll appears near the
time of Israel’s establishment as a nation. Third, there are issues of historical context. Scholars did not release all of
the texts until 1991. During this forty-four year interval, a shroud of mystery as to the withholding of the text from
public view gave way to conspiracy theories which, for many years, suggested to some that there might be hidden
information in the unreleased texts that might be damaging to Christianity or Judaism (Evans 2010, 377-8). Ending
the controversy with so much of the text intact was affirming for those concerned.
24
Google published the scrolls in 2012 in partnership with the curators at the Israel Museum and the curators of the
Shrine of the Book. The project can be viewed here: accessed 5/4/13,
http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/deadseascroll.html. The Great Isaiah Scroll can be viewed here:
accessed 5/4/13, http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah.
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complete with translation, in 2012. A review of these comments25 reveals reactions falling into
five basic categories:
Scholars leaving comments
Those displaying a “fundamentalist” view of history and scripture, as Engberg
(2011, 68) has described the Christian Zionist worldview
Those who appreciate the find for its ancientness (not connected to a specific
biblicism) or express a non-specified gratitude for the availability of the text
Those who have no idea why the texts are significant or reject their significance
Jewish/Christian arguments over the non-use/use of YHWH vs. HASHEM/L_D.
(There were comments in English and in Spanish contesting this topic. My
impression is this is a spat between Jews and Messianic Jews, who have a high
regard for God’s name, YHWH, and prefer Hashem/L_d instead. Many nonJewish Christians find this to be an imposition and a “judaicizing” of the Christian
faith.)
The responses of the second category expressing a “fundamentalist” view of history and
scripture are quite revealing and consistent with our group’s experience at Qumran. Many of the
commenters thought that the scrolls, now released on the internet, were proof-positive of the
veracity of the Bible. Many viewing the scroll for the first time were either lachrymose or
spiritually overcome. As “Crystal” described when she saw the scrolls in person when they were
on tour in the US, “I felt ‘light’ or overcome—I cannot explain it.” Some considered the scroll to
be proof of God’s very existence and thought Google’s offering enabled them to “read the
scroll’s literal translation.” Yet others believed information about the scroll that had never been
claimed on the site. “Christina” said: “It is really such a blessing to even digitally see with the
naked eye the original scrolls written by prophet Isaiah by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”
What is important to discern regarding the biblicism examined here is that there is present
a strongly expressed generalized sense of relief at viewing the text, often accompanied by a
significant emotional reaction: of joy, of tears. Imagined authenticity is the path of least
resistance, and historical considerations—even their possibility—are lost in lachrymose
25
I reviewed all of the comments received, about 74 of them, as of 12/19/12, http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah.
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reflection. This can be discerned from both the online comments and from our encounter with the
images of the scroll at the Shrine of the Book—coincidentally the one shrine, perhaps the only
“shrine” that Christian Zionists seem to overwhelmingly affirm.26 Our group spent a great deal of
time reading the curator’s explanation of the texts and expressing a sense of being overwhelmed
at viewing it in our discussions over lunch. For our group, however, as Michael established,
Qumran became a holy site in our presence because of the weaving of a narrative that bound the
discovery of this text—itself proof positive of God’s word—with the establishment of the State
of Israel. Together, the Great Isaiah Scroll and the re-established state of Israel stand as a
bulwark against those who would challenge the veracity of Renewalist Zionist religio-political
claims, as well as demonstrate the continued process of merger between Israeli history and
Renewalist Zionist and Christian Zionist history, as I demonstrate in several chapters. Certain
facts about the scroll were ignored, invented, or assigned no significance by those weaving the
narrative. Among those facts ignored include that the scroll was a copy, not the original, and that
it contained not the entire text, but was an entire scroll (with small bits of text broken off) of
Isaiah. Among those facts invented include the “verbatim” representation of the Great Isaiah
Scroll when compared to the text from which contemporary biblical translations are derived; in
fact, the wide variances among English translations are not even acknowledged or considered
relevant. And among those facts ignored was that the Great Isaiah Scroll, though it may have
been brought back to Israel by the hands of an Israeli professor, was actually discovered by an
26
Visits to the Shrine of the Book are also present on the itineraries of other Christian Zionist tours, for example, the
2012 promotional material for John Hagee’s “In His Steps” tour.
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Arab Bedouin shepherd,27 continuing the inconspicuousness of Arabs within the Christian
Zionist story.
Constructing Charismatic Biblical Authority
In this section I explore the concept of charismatic biblical authority. I use “charismatic”
in both the sense deployed by sociologist Max Weber (1993, 2-3)—as in an attempt to account
for the exercise of religious authority through the manufacture of charisma in an object or
person28—and in the sense native to Renewalist theology more generally—the exercise of
charismata, or gifts of the spirit, in religious practice. These two understandings of charisma
intersect: through the history of the Pentecostal movement the exercise of religious authority
has been complicated by the theological commitment inherent in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit
that insists that the charisms (glossolalia, prophecy, deliverance from evil forces, healing gifts,
etc.) are theoretically available to all (Neitz 1987, 49); in third-wave Renewalism, however, the
charismatic offices of apostle and prophet are not theoretically available to all, but to a select
few, i.e. those who demonstrate such charismata and are affirmed by the testimony of others.
Charismatic biblical authority, as I use it in this section, refers to the way that charisma is
exercised by Renewalists in relation to the deployment of the biblical text. It is important to note
that charismatic biblical authority is highly dependent on preaching or other performances for its
27
Prior to entering Jerusalem, our group had an encounter with Israeli Bedouin who were attempting to sell us
homemade wares. The Bedouin seem to occupy a liminal position beyond their physical location as wandering
shepherds in the Christian Zionist interpretation of the ethnic strife in Israel. They have neither roles nor existence in
the narrative. Having said this, I would emphasize that such omissions from the Dead Sea Scrolls retelling are not
likely because of malicious intent, but probably due to the confirmation bias, which looks for facts which are already
“known,” often sifting out those which do not conform, and then incorporates the “new” facts into an existing
knowledge base. See discussion in this chapter, above.
28
Weber’s (1993) primary understanding of charisma, “a gift that inheres in an object or person simply by virtue of
natural endowment” (2), would apply fully to Israel within the Renewalist worldview by way of the doctrine of
divine election; see chapter 9. This “fully merited” view of charisma, as Weber described it, is less helpful when
attempting to understand the exercise of charismatic biblical authority, which employs a dynamic requiring
interaction with and deployment of the biblical record for its construction. Therefore, Weber’s non-primary form of
charisma (i.e. manufactured) is applicable here but not in other segments of Renewalist Christianity that powerfully
affirm the “fully-merited” charisma of individual prophets and apostles.
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efficacy. Central to the construction of charismatic biblical authority is what I call the
hermeneutic of anticipation, referring to the way that Renewalists legitimize their interpretations
of scripture—to themselves, to their fellow Renewalists, and to their congregations/followers.
This hermeneutic involves the triangulation of past, present and future based primarily on
“cycles” or “patterns” perceived as rules, constructed in dialectic between biblical text and
contemporary experience and, importantly, pointing to a prophesied conclusion. Michael’s
discussion of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the establishment of the state of Israel,
above, are offered as an example of this hermeneutic. The hermeneutic of anticipation is key to
establishing a subjective feeling that the resulting interpretation is “true,” and is in continuance
with the divine plan, that is, it anticipates divine fulfillment of that plan by plotting a
contemporary experience on a line from biblical history through the present to the end of the age.
Re-enactments of the biblical story in the present generate a sense of “coming together” in
regards to prophecy requirements pertaining to the consummation of history. When the Bible
repeats, God’s presence is discerned; the more repetitions that can be identified the more the
outpouring of the Spirit—the Latter Rain, as I have shown—is discerned. In this way the
hermeneutic looks both backward and forward, tying restorationism to contemporary spiritual
revival to eschatological fulfillment, re-establishing the sacred trajectory and setting the
conditions of its fulfillment. Charismatic biblical authority is exercised primarily through this
hermeneutic of anticipation, as I have defined it, and this hermeneutic is the chief mechanism by
which charismatic preachers, especially but not limited to those emphasizing prophecy, generate
interest in their sermons and teachings.29
29
A multiplicity of examples could be cited, particularly from Christian television. A currently popular example
from Christian Zionist literature is Cahn (2012), who is a Messianic Jew. His identity as a Messianic Jew is doubly
anticipatory, since the embrace of Jesus by Jews is seen as a sign of contemporary outpouring of the Spirit and the
imminence of the end of the age.
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Several additional examples of the construction of charismatic biblical authority can be
seen on the tour. Consistent with previous literature, our Protestant-based tour was designed
more around biblical scenery and landscape than holy sites (Fleischer 2000, 315; Feldman 2007,
361).30 As we stood in the primary streambed of the Elah valley, adjacent to the site believed to
be where David fought Goliath to the death using a sling and stone, Kenny explained our
position in the valley relative to what might have been the positions of the characters in the story.
Our own (Pastor) David stood atop a small boulder, loose and unstable in the creek bed, and read
the story from 1 Samuel, skipping the less dramatic parts and strongly emphasizing parts which
involved encounter, conflict, courage and defeat of enemies, resetting the drama on what was
believed to be the original stage. The creek bed has largely been emptied of its many “pocketsized” stones—though a few remain—picked over by many years of pilgrims who each have
their own reasons for bringing home one of David’s “five smooth stones.” Our group was no
different and as David read the story some stood nearby with Bibles open, following along
intently, while others roamed around Pastor David within a small radius, picking through the dirt
and weeds as they listened to the story and looked for their own perfect stones.
As Pastor David read the portion of the scripture related to David’s choosing of stones
from the creek bed he paused, held up a stone from atop the boulder he was standing on, and said
“a stone just like this,” and continued his reading:
As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to
meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the
Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face-down on the
30
Some traditionally Catholic sites, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, were visited as well as the Church of
all Nations. But many of those on the tour did not express or evidence excitement or interest in the visits to these
holy sites. Michael told me that he finds the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to be dark and uninspiring and, as a
reinforcing aside, that he considers the Catholic Church a cult. He did express appreciation to the Catholic Church,
however, for preserving the holy sites from Muslim iconoclasm through the centuries. Michael said he prefers sites
“more directly related to the land, grass and rocks,” a statement which is an easy match to the literature on the
variant experiences of pilgrimages between Protestants and Catholics (Feldman 2007, 370).
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ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword
in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
When the scripture was finished Pastor David removed the camera from his pocket where he had
been recording his own reading of the scripture (likely for use during one of his sermons back
home), turned the recording off, and handed it to Jenny, his wife. Kenny encouraged him to step
down from the unstable boulder before offering commentary and while David was repositioning
himself, someone in the crowd asked Kenny to again describe where each of the main characters
would have been placed on the hills around the valley and the surrounding region.
David, continuing with his commentary: “Isn’t that an awesome story? What a deep story about
the battles of Israel that still continue today. The armies can come with their tanks and all
their other things, but it is the power of God that prevails!”
[Fellow pilgrim Daniel interjects: “The principle is still true!” and David repeats Daniel’s
statement twice.]
David continues: “You know, this little rock here [he raises the rock from the creek bed
again]…in this stream, this is the stream where probably David would have come to get
this rock, lodged right in the forehead here [he holds the rock to his forehead]…how
about that?”
At this point, David turns the reenactment of the story from a conflict of ethnes, a struggle of
communities over land, to a more individualistic application. “I know there are people in our
group struggling with ‘Goliaths’ back home. And this is a good reminder for us that the battle is
the Lord’s! And we don’t go against those Goliaths with swords and spears, but it is the word of
the Lord.” David is suggesting a double application of the story not uncommon to conservative
evangelicalism and particularly to Pentecostal and charismatic hermeneutics of the Bible; it is an
individualistic deployment of the hermeneutic of anticipation in that it invites personal
application. Here, stories have an “original” meaning and a “personal” meaning often through—
as we saw with Daniel’s interjection—the construction of “biblical principles.” A very popular
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legitimating tool in conservative religious media, biblical principles might best be described as
patterns of biblical narrative drama that recur through sacred time as if part of a divine physics:
echoes through eternity of divine consistency and truth, usually independent of divine agency,
but dependent on the constancy of divine character. In this manner, if cycles or patterns can be
discerned then rules can be adduced and interpretations can be (subjectively) matched with
similar occurrences in daily life while simultaneously legitimated in the divine being. Such
principles, therefore, are eternally true and can be expected to be present in our own day. In the
semiotically-aroused and supernatural world of Renewalism, biblical principles can be seen as
the undergirding logic in the construction of “biblical finances,” “biblical relationships,”
“biblical child-rearing,” “biblical marriages,” etc., a potentially infinite number of applications,
depending on the skill of the interpreter and the needs of the audience. They can also be
constructed from esoteric knowledge—secret Bible codes revealed through the Holy Spirit only
now, in our day; particularly popular are those principles that relate to prophecy.31 Important to
Renewalist Zionism and Christian Zionism generally, as I have shown, is the biblical principle of
blessing or cursing Israel (see McTernan 2008; Koenig 2004, for book-length examples).
Biblical principles are the name given to the product of the triangulation that I identified as
central to the hermeneutic of anticipation. Daniel’s suggestion of a biblical principle present in
the story of the encounter of David and Goliath is a principle for “biblical living”: the
overcoming of seemingly insurmountable life obstacles through faith.
Returning to the example of Pastor David, in reviewing the video data from the tour in
retrospect it seems evident at several points that Kenny is quite informed regarding the existing
scholarly literature on Protestant and Catholic pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Allowing Pastor
David to remain atop the unsafe boulder for the reading of the scripture, but then asking him to
31
Cahn (2012) again qualifies here in this regard, but examples can be cited ad infinitum.
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step down before offering commentary, seems a direct appeal to what Kenny “knows” of tourists
and their spiritual leaders—those just like our group and like Pastor David. Feldman (2007, 361)
offers that, among Protestant spiritual leaders on tours, there is a preference for heights, for a
panoramic view, as an “expression of power” and—borrowing a term from Pierre Bourdieu to
describe the embodiment of ideologies and not just their cognitive expression—she suggests
such a preference is “part of the bodily hexis” of Protestants. Kenny seems to understand this,
often times referring to “information” provided to him about what groups like ours prefer on
tours. Scholars writing on Christian Zionism, particularly in travel and leisure studies, would do
well to consider this possibility.
While still standing in the creek bed, David asks Madeline to pray, and her prayer
demonstrates the hermeneutic of anticipation as I have described it. She begins by emphasizing
that she is standing in the very spot where a direct connection to the past can be made, and the
“things you [God] have done, the people that you have raised up.” She recounts the “boldness
and courage” of David, the exact parts of the story that Pastor David had retained and
emphasized. She thanks God for “the Jewish nation which has preserved the Bible that we have
read from today so that we can connect to all of your purpose32 for the past, the present and the
future.” She gives thanks for the ability to stand “where the stones were gathered to bring down
the enemy.” After giving thanks for the past that she has narrated to us, and from which she
draws the legitimation for the remainder of her prayer, a major transition in her prayer occurs, a
transition which delineates the moment of the construction of charismatic biblical authority:
Madeline begins to correlate the biblical battle of David and Goliath with the “battle between
good and evil, between the god of this world, Satan, and the eternal God our Father,” that exist
The singular use of “purpose” is not without accident; continuity of purpose without change is a fundamental
assumption of the Renewalist worldview.
32
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today, for her, centered around the nation of Israel and its enemies. For Madeline and likely
those listening to her prayer, she defines the sitz im leben of ancient and modern Israel as
identical: a Manichean existence where Israel is identified with the omni-benevolence of its
God and forces arising against it with the omni-malevolence of the Philistines of the biblical
story. “We pray that as you supernaturally won the battle with David and a small stone,”
Madeline would conclude her prayer, “that you will supernaturally win this battle. We stand
excited for your eternal purpose which is in the making today.”
Madeline’s prayer draws on the legitimation provided by the land to establish a biblical
principle for its recurrence “here”—in the Valley of Elah—“today” in our location in divine
time—using supernatural means as emphasized in the Renewalist worldview and in the
deployment of the hermeneutic of anticipation. In Renewalist Zionism, the identified “divine
purpose” stands ultimately unhindered by social and political complications on the ground; the
“divine purpose” only holds for those facts that it discerns to be in accordance with divine
patterns, and expects them to repeat as the culmination to world history draws to a close.
Consistent with previous literature on charismatic worldviews (Neitz 1987, 159), Manichaeism
forms the backbone of both the retelling of the biblical story and the declaration of the unfolding
story. This unfolding plan is not merely observed by those operating within the Renewalist
worldview; rather, it is expected that participation is required, in embodied “supernatural
power,” for the culmination of history to proceed. As we see in the group’s encounter with the
Valley of Elah, this is established performatively, through the recounting of the biblical narrative
and its appropriation as a divine pattern exercised in the present through prayer and the social
activities that accompany the tour (i.e. those things that “bless Israel”).
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As Madeline declares her unwavering faith toward this end on the creek bed,
incorporating those standing around her with her words and charisma, others begin to lift their
hands to “receive” the prayer, murmuring words of affirmation, thereby acknowledging its
interpretation as valid and establishing Madeline’s charismatic biblical authority.33
Another form of deployment of charismatic authority appearing on the tour is more
commercially-based. The use of Judaica to establish charismatic biblical authority over space
was a recurrent feature of our tour. An older, timid, somewhat introverted Pentecostal woman
from the southwestern U.S. whom I will call Lilly was following behind me as we wound
through a trail along the ruins at Tel Dan, the northernmost point of Israel proper. We had just
heard an explanation from Kenny that ancient Dan was the place of contact with those “outside”
the community and land of Israel, i.e. with non-Jews. As such, in the Old Testament Dan was
susceptible to various forms of idolatry evidenced by the ruins of the “high places” (cultic
temples) that were clearly present. Tel Dan also happened to be on Israel’s northeastern border
with Syria, and as we passed the cultic temple ruins and wound around the trail Lilly could no
longer restrain herself. Shedding her otherwise obvious timid disposition, Lilly pulled a shofar
(ram’s horn) out of her bag and, through the silence of our trek, blew the shofar with all of her
might directed both over the ruins and toward the Syrian border. Through high-context mimicry
she was using the shofar to “take authority” over idols and Israel’s present enemies,34 as the
33
There is a deep discomfort that can occur when a researcher analyzes the sacred moments of subjects, particularly
a researcher who shares the faith (and even much of the history) of the community in question, as I do. I wish to
emphasize that my task is to explain only the social phenomena that can be observed and interpreted, compared with
other data, and to draw implications based on a social science agenda embedded in the Enlightenment project. With
Peter Berger, my sociology is one of “methodological atheism” which does not seek to speak, when its voice is
employed, beyond what can be known within the parameters delineated here. “The gods cannot be studied
empirically, but what people “know” about them and what consequences ensue from this ‘knowledge’ is precisely
what a sociological analysis will be all about” (Berger 2011, 91-2).
34
Cimino (2005, 15) describes such prayers of charismatics offered over geographical regions, particularly within
displays of anti-Islam sentiment: “Pentecostals and charismatics come to their particular form of anti-Islam less
through theological speculation and more through experiential and emotional encounters. They discern spiritual
forces at work behind the facade of a traditional religion and geopolitical structures and seek to reconquer such
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biblical character of Joshua did when he blew shofars prior to the walls of Jericho falling to the
ground, in order to establish Israel’s certain victory over its spiritual and physical enemies.
The use of the shofar by a similarly aged participant, Sarah, sheds light on Lilly’s action.
Suggesting to our group over a communal lunch that “things in the natural can trigger things in
the supernatural,” Sarah feels Christians can “take authority” over evil forces in a similar
manner. “After all,” she added, “if Joshua can blow shofars and have walls come crashing down,
so can we.” She then recounted how, at home, when she feels any psychological or social
challenges or oppressions she simply takes out a shofar she purchased locally at home and begins
to blow. For Sarah, this performative act establishes authority over evil, as patterned (and
interpreted) off of biblical stories, and with the goal of establishing victory over such forces in
times to come. The shofar remains materially consistent with the biblical story; the walls are
figurative and personal. The blowing of the shofar is believed to trigger supernatural power, and
is seen as efficacious at warding off undesired or subjectively oppressive situations or mindsets.
Sarah elaborated further, stating that “If Jesus was born a Jew, died a Jew and is coming back a
Jew, why wouldn’t I want to be like Jesus?” Here she combines her Hebraicism with Jesus’
Jewishness (as she understands it) to establish a fuller account of the authority of Jesus, not
based on his divinity as other Pentecostals might, but based on his Jewishness. The ram’s horn is
efficacious because it is a shofar and Jesus’ people, the ancient Hebrews, appeared to use shofars
to effect supernatural victory. Sarah’s experience of modern Jewish existence and culture (in the
form of commercial shofars) is leveraged to construct and establish a contemporary charismatic
“biblical” authority.
territory through the demonstration of “signs and wonders” and other spiritual gifts.” I offer his description here as a
supplement to Wacker’s quote below to highlight what is a common undercurrent in the literature on Pentecostals
and charismatics: theology seems to be constructed on emotional and experiential foundations, disguised as
“common sense.” For researchers of the Renewalist movement, this underscores the need for focus on the processes
inherent in the formation of “common sense.”
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Conclusion
In this chapter I have attempted to show how the exercise of charismatic biblical
authority is accomplished using what I have described as the hermeneutic of anticipation, a
triangulation of an identified biblical past with contemporary events or needs (individual and/or
collective) and pointing to what is understood as a divine outcome for (again, individual and/or
collective) a prophesied future. Such exercises maintain a high degree of physicality/materiality,
form a central mechanism by which charismatic preachers generate demand for their goods, and
contribute to the development of divine principles. In this way, charismatic biblical authority is
manufactured and exercised.
I have also attempted to demonstrate the ways that “proofs” establishing biblical veracity
and the character of God are established in the course of a Renewalist Zionist tour, using a
combination of artifacts from archaeology and place, and in combination with the emergence of
the modern state. The role of the supernatural is of central importance to Renewalist Zionism,
and the perceived supernatural character of the emergence of Israel in turn plays an important
role in establishing the presence of the supernatural in the world more generally. Israel has
become, in Renewalist Zionism, proof of the supernatural par excellence.
Chapter 6
2011 ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles Conference:
Emerging Jewish-Christian Ethnonationalism
On April 20, 2012, hundreds of Kenyans turned out for Christians United for Israel’s
(CUFI) first venture into global Christian Zionism, a “Night to Honor Israel” in Nairobi,
complete with the singing of the Israeli national anthem in Hebrew.1 In the Philippines, during a
church-wide celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in October, 2008, Pastor Al Festin of Praise
Revival Center in Davaos, wearing a tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) and yarmulke (Jewish head
covering), commented: “We do not need to be united only as a church. We need to be united
with our brothers and sisters in Israel and united with all the Jews all over the world.”2 These
events and many others like it held independently or in conjunction with the non-American based
ICEJ throughout the world suggest that we can no longer rely on explanations of Christian
Zionism using sources emphasizing the United States and its historical particularities as a
foundation from which to understand the phenomenon, if such a proposition was even tenable in
the past.
In this chapter I will offer key themes from my observations while attending the ICEJ’s
2011 Feast of Tabernacles Conference, exploring the ways that the importance of Jewish bodies
and home-country nationalisms also appear in data from other sources of Renewalist Zionism.
The major finding in this chapter—indeed, in this dissertation—will be my suggestion of the
presence of an emerging Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism within the Renewalist Zionist
CUFI had, until this moment, had on-the-ground efforts only in the U.S. and a small operation in Canada. “A Night
to Honor Israel – Nairobi, Kenya,” YouTube video, 2:01, brief clip from CUFI’s Nairobi Night to Honor Israel
Event held on April 19, 2012, posted by “Yaki Lopez,” April 20, 2012, accessed 5/7/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QKqLMhKogc.
2
“Feast of Tabernacles 2008 – Praise Revival Center Part 5 - OUR LOVE FOR ISRAEL,” YouTube video, 7:36,
clip from the Praise Revival Center’s (Philippines) 14 th anniversary and Feast of Tabernacles celebration event held
on October 19, 2008, posted by “altis1214,” November 18, 2008, accessed 8/13/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Q0v8tTcQ4.
1
177
178
movement that goes well beyond previous attempts at explanations of Christian Zionism in the
literature, as outlined in Chapter 2. I also build on the literature documenting the ICEJ’s efforts at
outreach to global Christians by providing a level of detail and analysis from this conference not
found in the existing literature.
ICEJ conference
As previously mentioned, the tour included participation in the annual Feast of
Tabernacles Conference held in the International Convention Center in Jerusalem. Our
conference was attended by over five thousand Christian Zionists from over 80 nations and is the
heart of the ICEJ celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, as well as a major educational
opportunity for the organization. Seminar-style with plenary sessions, the conference opened on
October 13th and went through the evening of the 18th. A sampling of the titles of some of the
seminars taken from conference materials with descriptions (summarized by myself) is below
and a review of them can aid in understanding the unique character and goals of the ICEJ:
“Out of Nazi Darkness and into the Light of Yeshua” with speaker Werner Oder, an
Austrian born in Hitler’s hometown who grew up in a Nazi-sympathetic family but
converted to Christianity.
“While it is still day” with speaker Michael Hines, ICEJ-USA staff, speaking about the
urgency of evangelism before the return of Jesus.
Two seminars, “Jews: a light to the Gentiles” and “Gentiles: a light to the Jews,” by
David Pawson, longtime Renewalist Zionist teacher.
Documentary screening of Blessing, Curse or Coincidence? a film attempting a
theological and secular apologetic regarding the supernatural and prophetic meaning of
Jewish restoration to the land, narrated by British-Israeli Lance Lambert, a Messianic
Jew.
Three seminars by the International Christian Chamber of Commerce entitled “Assessing
the Driving Factors of World Economy Impacting the Future,” by Saku Pitkanen and “A
People Called to Kingdom Business in the Market Place,” by Fredrik Ekholm and
“Serving and Impacting the Nations with Israel’s Resources” by Dale W. Neill.
Two seminars by Allen Jackson, Pastor of World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, TN
the home church of most of the ICEJ-USA staff. Jackson is an ICEJ board member.
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A joint seminar by a Messianic Jewish Pastor and an Arab-Israeli Pastor, both
charismatic, highlighting the nature of reconciliation within the Christian faith, embodied
literally in their public embrace for conference participants.
A joint seminar by ICEJ International Media Director David Parsons and Michael
Freund, entitled “Finding the Lost Tribes.” Freund is the former Deputy Communications
Director for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who founded Shavei Israel
(Heb: “Israel Returns”), a “Jerusalem-based organization that searches for and assists the
Lost Tribes of Israel and other ‘hidden Jews’ seeking to return to Zion.”
Evening plenary speakers, including former ICEJ Executive Director Malcolm Hedding,
Apostle Rene Terra Nova of Brazil and Brazil’s ICEJ national director, Nigeria’s ICEJ
national director Rev. Mosy Madugba of Nigeria and evangelist Angus Buchan from
South Africa, all Renewalists.
An evening session officially called “Israeli night” and especially designed for Israelis
(religious or not, even Jewish or not) that involved a culturally Jewish dance performance
and music.
One of the pragmatic difficulties faced by the ICEJ in hosting a conference attended by 80
nations is the problem of language. To address this, the ICEJ, embracing its self-described status
as an embassy, has adopted the United Nation’s style of communicating to delegates from many
different countries simultaneously: concurrent, live translation into headphones for conference
attendees. The ICEJ employs translators for about 8 different, non-English languages for this
task—Norwegian, German, Russian, Thai, Chinese, Finnish, Spanish and French all had
headphone checkout stands at the conference—and the headphones were widely used. Even if
one’s particular language is not represented in the translation booths the musical/dance
performances are incredibly elaborate and comprise much of the program, so unrepresented
participants could likely find the conference a worthy experience.
The halls outside of the main auditorium are filled with booths from various Christian
Zionist ministries, universities sympathetic to the cause intending to recruit students, booths for
Messianic Jewish congregations, booksellers, leaders of charismatic ministries promoting their
merchandise, and Christian Zionist organizations promoting Jewish immigration to Israel. There
were also many booths selling a wide-range of Judaica, including rams horns (Heb: shofar),
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prayer shawls (Heb: tallit), jewelry, Israeli flags, menorahs, and Jewish clothing. Most of these
objects should be considered religious objects and not merely tourist artifacts, given the place of
Jewish culture and Israeli material objects within the Renewalist Zionist narrative. Although
Kaell (2010, 244) suggests that “[p]ilgrims see both commerce and politics as potential
interruptions in their spiritual journey,” for Renewalist Zionists, commerce and politics are at the
very heart of their spiritual journey, a journey to “bless Israel” executed within a restorationistcentered worldview, and a journey that needs and desires physical props and spiritual power.
Not unexpectedly, I found security at the conference to be extremely tight. Armed guards
and metal detectors congregated at the only open entrance to the meeting hall, leading to long
lines prior to entry. All bags were searched. The security was only slightly less intrusive here
than at the Ben-Gurion airport.
Parade of nations: the Jerusalem March
Appended to the conference, the ICEJ’s Jerusalem March is an event that, according to
Michael Hines, is actually an annual parade of Israeli labor unions and public workers and which
the ICEJ has joined (paying a fee to do so) as a way of allowing pilgrims to express their support
for Israel while symbolically representing their country of origin. Pilgrims to the Feast of
Tabernacles who participate in the march dress in quite elaborate national (or sometimes
religious) costumes and wave (usually large) national flags, all of which they have probably
brought from home, in their luggage, likely at extra expense and trouble. The expressions of
national sentiment are not secondary to participation in the parade, but the very essence and its
raison d'être. Christian Zionists believe that “blessing Israel” accrues divine blessing to
oneself—as an individual, certainly, but particularly to one’s nation, which is usually understood
in terms of the modern state. As we have seen, Genesis 12:3 is the most common verse cited to
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justify this conviction and, coincidentally, is easily the most common verse cited by Christian
Zionists more generally:
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
The “you” in the passage above is, contextually, a reference to the Jewish patriarch Abraham but
is understood to include—even primarily refer to—his physical offspring and descendants. The
“peoples on earth” are understood both as individuals and collectivities—nations—and the
modern nation is simply assumed to be the present-day referent as is, importantly, the Jewish
community the referent of Abraham’s descendants. Israel, then, would be the embodiment, the
basis of fulfillment of the covenant promises made to Abraham (as derived from other passages
but intimately connected to the one cited here). And “blessing” Israel comes in the form of
political, moral, commercial/financial and charitable support—basically any positive response to
a Jewish person or the nation of Israel (from the subjective perspective of the individual
performing the act) can be spun, by preachers or the individual, as an act of blessing. A
withholding of that support is seen as its opposite, in addition to (and rather than merely)
negative actions.
Therefore, when ICEJ pilgrims participate in the Jerusalem March they do so as active
participants in the dynamic of blessing/receipt of blessing which this verse describes but from the
perspective of their own sitz im leben, as Christian ambassadors from their own cultural and
national contexts. The costumes of the participants, who also march together as national groups,
are expressions designed not only to “bless” Jewish Israelis, but to generate divine favor for their
home nation. Some participants eschewed national expression for expressions of a more religious
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nature. This was true of at least twenty women from the Chinese delegation: these women chose
western-looking complete wedding attire for their participation in the march.3
During the march Israelis lining the streets wave and shout loudly their “thank-you’s” for
such expressions of support, and marchers hand out candies and small national flags from their
home country to the Israelis. Hand-shakes, high-fives and even the occasional hug are shared
between marchers and Israeli observers. As we pass the parade narrator each country is
introduced enthusiastically and the marchers and Israelis both cheer loudly. Walking the parade
route one can distinctly detect a mutual gaze between Israelis and marchers, though the
overwhelming sense is one of joyful admiration and attachment by both parties, based on the
shouts of love and appreciation from both parties. This was perhaps best expressed by the Mayor
of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, who had addressed the ICEJ conference that week and was the “parade
marshal” on this day. Birkat is particularly active in recruiting Christians to come to Israel and
has appeared on American-based Christian television on occasion. Standing alongside the route
of the parade the mayor jumped into the line of marchers when the ICEJ contingency passed by,
delighting our group.
We saw in a previous chapter how charismatic biblical authority was manufactured and
exercised on our tour. Yet another form of material manifestation of charismatic biblical
authority appeared in the course of the conference: flag-bearing as part of worship. At our
conference-wide, night-time, open-air gathering at Ein-Gedi, an oasis by the Dead Sea, flag
processions dominated the evening. During a worship song called “Prepare Ye the Way of the
3
These women also wore the same dresses to at least one of the plenary sessions/worship times at the conference. In
this latter instance they also brought flower bouquets with them. As Christa Case Bryant of The Christian Science
Monitor reports, Eyal Carlin, who spearheaded the establishment of a “religious desk” in the Israeli Ministry of
Tourism, says that China, with Brazil, saw the most growth in religious tourism to Israel from 2010 to 2012,
increasing 49 and 68 percent, respectively, in no small part from the outreach efforts of organizations like the ICEJ
in partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. Christa Case Bryant, “Israel wields Bible’s soft power as far
afield as Brazil,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 27, 2013, accessed 4/30/13,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2013/0227/Israel-wields-Bible-s-soft-power-as-far-afield-as-Brazil.
183
Lord,” a song consisting entirely of a repeat of the title for several minutes, a procession of flag
wavers encircled the several thousand people in the audience. Many of the flags bore images of
Jewish religious culture: a large, golden menorah, a shofar, several flags with flames,4 and
second from the front was a picture of Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, standing over a lamb. It was
the first flag in the procession, however, that gave the context to all three: the Israeli flag. It was
the only national flag present. The flag of the character of Jesus was following the Israeli flag,
and the procession of flags encircled the worship of these Renewalist Christians. As a symbol of
identity, these flags made the meaning quite clear: Jesus was an Israeli. The context of the
worship service added additional declarative meaning: as Christians, we worship an Israeli.
Here, Jesus is the embodied continuance of the story of Israel, and his return as the heir of
Israel’s King David (from whom the Messiah is understood to emerge as prophesied progeny)
will culminate in Israel’s establishment as the First Nation of this world during the millennium.
This is the ultimate expression of the hermeneutic of anticipation in the Renewalist Zionist
movement and the main branch from which charismatic biblical authority can be exercised
within the worldview. As the ICEJ’s first chief administrator, Johann Lukoff put it, “…we feel
that right now we as Christians can celebrate this feast as a kind of looking forward, a calling in
of the coming of the Lord during this time” (emphasis mine).5
Jewish bodies, Christian bodies
Arabs and Palestinians were inconspicuous, if not invisible, on our tour. Their liminality
in the ICEJ narrative was in marked contrast to contemporary Israeli prisoners of war. The day of
the parade and march corresponded with the release of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Gilad
Pentecostals are quite fond of Acts 2:3: “Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon
each of them.” This verse is in the context of the Jewish disciples receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus
prophesied would happen to them before his ascension.
5
“Praise the Lord” program, Trinity Broadcasting Network, November 11, 1982.
4
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Shalit and over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in a negotiated exchange between the warring parties,
and many marchers held “Welcome Home Gilad!” banners as they marched, sensing a religious
significance to the correspondence between their march and Shalit’s release. It appeared as
another miraculous sign that God was blessing Israel as Christians blessed Israel, yet without the
need to draw a direct causal relationship between the events. In 2010, ICEJ-USA Director Susan
Michael had rebuked the protestors of the 6th annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” held across
campuses in the US for (among other things) failing to protest Shalit’s capture and instead
focusing only on wrongs committed by Israel “as though [Israel] is the source of all evil in the
world” (2010, 4). The Norway branch of the ICEJ held a rally for Shalit in 2009 attended by an
estimated 4,000 people “which called upon the Government of Norway and the International Red
Cross to redouble their efforts to secure the release of captive IDF soldier Gilad Schalit (sic)
from Hamas and his other abductors.”6 Shalit was celebrated as a war hero by the ICEJ.
Jewish bodies—particularly their location and condition—retain a special importance in
Renewalist Zionism. The ICEJ has long been concerned with not only bringing Jewish bodies
“back” to the land of Israel after their long exile (as have a number of other Christian Zionist
organizations),7 protecting those bodies even through volunteering in non-combat roles for the
IDF (Sturm 2010, 4)8 and social service projects,9 but in identifying bodies which are Jewish but
undiscovered or unacknowledged as Jewish by Israeli officials.
See “ICEJ-Norway rally demands Oslo government seek Schalit’s release,” accessed 4/30/13,
http://int.icej.org/content/icej-norway-rally-demands-oslo-government-seek-schalit%E2%80%99s-release.
7
See Spector (2008, 115ff).
8
Others have volunteered for the IDF in more dramatic fashion. The very influential Christian Zionist G. Gordon
Young and his wife drove an ambulance during the Six-Day war and even learned to fire weapons in case it was
necessary to do so (Hanson 1979).
9
Sometimes volunteer roles in the IDF by foreign Christians include active duty, as some leaders of Christian
Zionism based in Israel have children who enlisted in the IDF, such as the ICEJ’s first chief spokesman, Jan Willem
van der Hoeven, who was also a founder of the ICEJ (Merkley 2001, 179).
6
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During the conference a seminar entitled “Lost Tribes of Israel” was dedicated to the
efforts of the ICEJ and Michael Freund, founder of Shavei Israel, an organization that “seeks to
return the last remnants of Jews worldwide to their ancient homeland” (www.shavei.org). Freund
is a former Deputy Communications Director for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (in
the 1990s) and a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. Freund had spent over ten years seeking to
verify the claims of a small group in northeastern India called the Bnei Menashe who claim to be
descendants of Jews and who want to make aliyah (Heb: ascent), that is, to immigrate to Israel.
They had written faithfully to each Israeli Prime Minister, Freund would add, since Golda Meir,
possibly even since Ben Gurion at the founding of the country. Freund lobbied the Israeli
government to identify the group as direct descendants from the tribe of Israel called Mannaseh,
exiled from Israel since the Assyrian invasion (722 BCE). Freund would eventually write:
Who says we don’t live in an age of miracles?... Despite being cut off from the rest of the
Jewish people for so many centuries, the Bnei Menashe remained dedicated to their
heritage, stubbornly cleaving to the faith of their forefathers. They observed the Sabbath
and kept kosher, celebrated the festivals, practiced the sacrificial rites and even argued a
lot among themselves, just as Jews have done since time immemorial.10
In his introduction, the ICEJ’s current Director of Communications David Parsons dedicated the
session to an apologetic refutation of the strain of Christian Zionism called “Two-house
theology.”11 This theology understands the dispersion of Jews after the Assyrian conquest to
have occurred into modern Europe, with modern Europeans identified as the descendants of
these Jews. In his rejection of this theology, Parsons also rejected the idea that the ten tribes that
were dispersed were forever “lost.” The ICEJ insists that for God to be faithful to God’s word,
the promise to Abraham given in Genesis 12:3, above, must apply to descendants from all twelve
Michael Freund. “A ‘Lost Tribe’ that is lost no more,” The Jerusalem Post, December 26, 2012,
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/A-Lost-Tribe-that-is-lost-no-more.
11
A version of this in Britain is called “British Israelism.” The United Church of God, for instance, makes “Twostick theology” an official doctrine. See their publication entitled “The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy,”
Anonymous (2007).
10
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tribes and this, in turn, logically requires that members of each tribe would remain identifiable
through history, or at least identifiable during the predetermined time of their restoration.
Parsons called this the “doctrine of the remnant,” which establishes the unbroken chain of
descent from the twelve tribes in order to establish the veracity of God’s promises in the
scriptures, as those sympathetic to this argument read them. Therefore, accepting the Bnei
Menashe’s claim to be descendants from the “lost tribes” the ICEJ, at the request of the Israeli
government and the Jewish Agency, provided the airfare for the first round of immigrants from
the group—some 270 of them. In their August 2012 issue of their flagship publication Word
from Jerusalem, the ICEJ proudly declared “Sons of Manasseh coming home!”12
Parsons also identified the Afghani Pashtuns as possibly one of the lost tribes, “enslaved
under Islam [as converts] today,” among many other small communities from Iran to Pakistan.
They are (temporarily) “lost” not just because they have been disconnected physically and
historically from the Jewish people, but because some of them are converts to Islam. In the
presence of Michael Freund, a Jew, Parsons requested that those present at the talk would pray
for missionaries to have success among these lost tribes so that they may recover their lost
identities and then, by implication, be eligible for aliyah.13
In his portion of the talk, Freund poignantly stated a significantly recurring theme of in
modern Christian Zionism, especially within Renewalist Zionism, that has been largely
unaddressed in the scholarly literature: the theme of Christian ethnic identification with Jews.
David Parsons. “Sons of Mannaseh coming home!” Word from Jerusalem, August 2012. The ICEJ estimated the
cost of the first round of return to be $300,000 and included this figure in the article as a request to readers for
financial help for the project.
13
We should not miss Parsons’ chronology here: he wishes for Christian missionaries to have success among the
Pashtuns so that they may recover their Jewish identities, presumably in the course of conversion to Christianity, and
then make aliyah to Israel. Parsons’ confidence in Pashtun prospects for aliyah after conversion are indeed telling,
given that (at least at the time Parsons spoke the words) Israel considers Jewish conversions to other faiths to be
disqualification for return under laws governing aliyah; see “Israel’s Basic Laws: The Law of Return,” accessed
2/20/14, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/Other_Law_Law_of_Return.html.
12
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He stated that as he traveled throughout Europe giving his talks on the lost tribes, he inevitably
came upon individuals—from Finland, from Holland, from many other European nations—who
would ask him whether he believed that “the Finnish people,” or, while in Holland, “the Dutch
people,” etc., are one of the lost tribes of Israel. Freund’s response makes explicit the radical
change in Christian and Jewish history that we live in: “For 2,000 years European people have
tried to kill Jews. Now they want to be Jews!”
Journalist Victoria Clark (2007, 255) mentioned a prominent white American Christian
Zionist writer named Bill Koenig who “loves Israel so much” that he wondered if he might have
“a drop of Jewish blood in him.” He and his wife took DNA tests and were “thrilled to discover
that while he was an Ashkenazi on his father’s side, she was Sephardi through a Mexican
forebear.” Messianic Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Bernis, a Christian Zionist and television host, has
stated that “some people tell me they just feel Jewish.” Bernis hosted Dr. Dell Sanchez on his
program, Jewish Voice, broadcast on the Christian TV Network DayStar, to discuss Sanchez’s
research into the “Sephardic roots among Latinos” in northern Mexico and the southern U.S.
Sanchez, a Latino, claimed that “there might be 60 million Jews who don’t know it around the
world,” citing a figure from Benjamin Netanyahu (unattributed and unsubstantiated). “Our blood
is crying out,” he insists, and people are “compelled by the spirit of God to discover” whether
they are Jewish or not—that, indeed, was his story.14 For three-hundred dollars Bernis offers to
sell his viewers a home DNA testing kit. A bit of saliva is all that is required to determine
whether a hunch that one has Jewish ancestors can be scientifically verified.
“Dell Sanchez, Jewish Voice with Jonathan Bernis – July 23, 2012” YouTuve video, 28:39, weekly broadcast of
Jewish Voice with Jonathan Bernis (http://www.jewishvoice.org), posted by “jewishvoicetoday,” July 20, 2012,
accessed July 23, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPLkFgyX5Sk.
14
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The use of DNA tests to establish social identity is not uncommon and is obviously not
restricted to use by Christians searching for Jewish ancestry.15 However, it has been criticized by
scholars as “genetic essentialism,” and its function is likely to be found in its service as a
“secular substitute for the soul” (Nordgren and Juengst 2009, 157). In their analysis of the
marketing strategies of several DNA home-testing companies, Nordgren and Juengst (2009) note
that
…the genome can perform all the philosophical functions of the soul in providing an
ontological basis for our unique identities, even up to securing a form of (admittedly
unheavenly) immortality in a cell line or DNA database. (160)
Directly addressing a felt-need to establish identity in a pluralistic context, they argue, DNA
testing is a remedy for the loss of connectedness to one’s past that allows one to re-establish
links to historical communities through what is perceived as objective evidence, despite the welldocumented social risks of dependency on genetic information to establish identity (160-1).
Some scholars, focusing on the specific social uses of DNA testing, conclude that such testing is
“about access to money and power.”16 This critique seems salient for addressing issues raised by
DNA by Christian Zionists looking for Jewish ancestry. Duster (2006, 2) states that to
understand the social issues behind DNA testing, “DNA tests for racial and ethnic ancestry
markers [must be] placed in the larger legal context of claims to legitimate or authentic
membership in groups with special rights and privileges…”. And so it is with Christian pursuit of
Jewish ancestry: within the Christian Zionist framework Jews continue to be “God’s Chosen
People,” but unlike previous theologies, such as the dominant premillennial dispensationalism of
Amy Harmon. “Seeking Ancestry in DNA Ties Uncovered by Tests,” New York Times, April 12, 2006. In May of
2012, Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a very controversial story: a professor and medical geneticist at the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York claimed that based on DNA studies Jews were a “race.” He
insisted that “the biological basis of Jewishness” was real and should be addressed. Jon Entine, “DNA links prove
Jews are a ‘race,’ says genetics expert,” May 7, 2012, http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-worldnews/dna-links-prove-jews-are-a-race-says-genetics-expert-1.428664.
16
Sociologist Troy Duster, quoted in Harmon, “Seeking Ancestry in DNA Ties Uncovered by Tests.”
15
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the early-to-mid 20th century in the United States (Weber 2004), this chosen-ness manifests itself
in our times as a theology in which Jews become physical conduits of blessings to the world and
this theology creates a radical attachment to the Jewish people and the state.
Returning to Renewalists Sanchez and Bernis, their explanation for the emergence of
curiosity about Jewish lineage is as a fulfillment of Bible prophecy, a “fulfillment of Isaiah
11:11” and “Obadiah 20”:
Isaiah 11:11-12:
It shall come to pass in that day
That the Lord shall set His hand again the second time
To recover the remnant of His people who are left,
From Assyria and Egypt,
From Pathros and Cush,
From Elam and Shinar,
From Hamath and the islands of the sea.
He will set up a banner for the nations,
And will assemble the outcasts of Israel,
And gather together the dispersed of Judah
From the four corners of the earth.
Obadiah 20:
And the captives of this host of the children of Israel
Shall possess the land of the Canaanites
As far as Zarephath.
The captives of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad
Shall possess the cities of the South [Heb: Negev].
Sanchez identifies “Sepharad” in Obadiah as Spain, connecting the history of the Spanish
Marranos (those Jews experiencing forced conversion to Christianity) with the loss of Jewish
identity for many of Spain’s Jews in the fifteenth century.17 Sanchez would conclude with his
interpretation of this phenomenon of roots-recovery: “Everything in the prophetic is set up. Now
what remains is advocating in Israel [for their return].” On our tour Sarah would tell us in her
personal introduction that she has a “great-great-great-great grandmother who had something to
17
See Flannery (1985, 136-141) for some of this history.
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do with Israel (sic).” This revelation of what she called her “Jewish roots” fueled her desire to
come to Israel.
Membership in the Jewish community allows one to feel “blessed” as a member of
God’s favored, as a member of the “elect,” as well as feeling a sense of belonging to a
community with deep historical lineage. Rather than serving as a “secular substitute for the
soul,” however, within modern Christian Zionism the Jewish body—not soul—retains primary
importance. It is not enough to identify Jewish bodies from among the nations, to discover those
Jews hidden “out there” in the mass of earth’s population; Renewalist Zionism has sweeping
within it a compulsion, a deep desire to associate itself with the Jewish people even through the
confirmation of DNA and family ancestry and this phenomenon is nowhere to be seen, at least
by this author, in classic or revised premillennial dispensationalism.
Posing a significant challenge to scholars of evangelicalism, one of the most remarkable
occurrences in Freund’s presentation was when an audience member asked him about other
potential lost tribes that his organization was investigating. Freund mentioned his work with
Ethiopian Jews who have been immigrating to Israel since the 1970s. There are now, according
to his figures, over 140,000 “Black Jews” who have made aliyah.18 But there is a smaller tribe of
Ethiopians who claim Jewish descent called the Falash Mura and their story complicates
traditional understandings of the mission of evangelicals within Renewalist Zionism. One
scholar, Racionzer (2005), describes these individuals as a subset of the Ethiopian Jewish
community who “were converted to Christianity, but mostly in the nineteenth century and often
not out of conviction but to benefit from educational opportunities or achieve a higher social or
economic status” (174). They have retained Jewish customs but were not Halachic (i.e. TorahOfficial Israeli statistics show just over 79,000 as of 2006. See “CBS, Statistical Abstract of Israel 2007,”
accessed 5/1/13, http://cbs.gov.il/shnaton58/st04_04.pdf.
18
191
practicing). In his talk Freund identified this community as one for which he has advocated under
the law of return, and who have expressed a desire to convert to Judaism as well as to undergo
aliyah. In 2011, the ICEJ received a request from the Jewish Agency to assist financially with the
“return of the last 8,700 Ethiopian Jews to Israel”—the Falash Mura. Parsons, in the lead article
in a 2011 Word from Jerusalem entitled “The Last Wave of Ethiopian Jewry: ICEJ to help speed
return of Falash Mura,”19 portrays this community as essentially Jewish with an exterior
Christian identity:
These are Jews whose ancestors were pressured to convert to Christianity about 150 years
ago for economic reasons but still sought to retain in part their Jewish identities and
traditions…. This current group of almost 9,000 Falash Mura represents the last
contingent of Ethiopian Jews who will be able to come home to Israel under the Law of
Return, thereby realising this isolated community’s ancient dream of returning to Zion
one day.
This puts the ICEJ in an incredible position—incredible for an avowedly evangelical
organization committed to Christian evangelization: in granting their financial assistance, the
ICEJ is paying for Ethiopian Christians to convert to Judaism in order to “recover” their Jewish
roots and achieve their “ancient dream.” Though the position of the ICEJ in this return is
astounding, the situation is complicated further by reports that the “sincerity of re-conversion is
much in question by the Orthodox Jewish community in Israel” (Racionzer 2005, 174-5).
Returning Falash Mura members have been accused of continuing to practice Christianity after
aliyah and their required conversion process to Judaism. While it is difficult to know whether the
ICEJ is aware of the continued practice of Christianity among the Falash Mura, it is still
remarkable that they explain their participation in the immigration of this community as one of
return, to both land and roots, and away from Christianity, without expressing the need for major
Parsons, “The Last Wave of Ethiopian Jewry: ICEJ to help speed return of Falash Mura,” Word from Jerusalem,
July, 2011, accessed 8/15/12,
http://int.icej.org/sites/default/files/en/word_jerusalem/2011/pdf/wfjjuly_intledition.pdf.
19
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explanation or qualification to the evangelical base which comprises the vast majority of their
readership.20 In the next section I attempt to account for this and related phenomenon by positing
a Jewish-Christian, Israeli-Evangelical ethnonationalism.
Toward the Construction of an Israeli-Evangelical Ethnonationalism
There is a great awakening here in Israel and around the world of the need for the 'coming
together' of Jews and Christians to keep God’s commandments. God is sending you home as
watchmen of Israel, so that His purpose will be fulfilled. – Israeli Foreign Minister Danny
Ayalon, addressing the 2011 Feast of Tabernacles Jerusalem march21
The opening ceremony of the ICEJ 2011 Conference was an “introduction of the
nations.” It is the very heart of the project of the ICEJ: to bring the nations to Jerusalem in
celebration of the coming Messianic King (the return of Jesus) and in support for the nation of
Israel as the conduit for that divine activity. A live orchestra accompanied a dance troupe as they
paraded several flags from the nations across the stage in a choreographed welcome ceremony. A
single representative from every nation present at the Feast celebration carried a candle and,
alternating from each side of the stage, proceeds to gather in the center, one by one, as their
nations are called over the loudspeaker. Many representatives are dressed in elaborate national
costumes (i.e. Canadians dressed as Mounties, etc.). Others are wearing flags. As the names of
nations are called there is a pause of a few seconds so that those in the crowd who are citizens of
each of the countries may stand and cheer loudly. The largest groups represented, I am told by
Michael, are those from Brazil followed by Finland, Germany and Taiwan. The U. S., Michael
says, is the fifth or sixth largest contingent annually. (My observations of the cheers during
introductions seem to confirm this.) The ICEJ’s Nancy Fager was the representative for the U.S.
20
It should be offered that within the evangelical weltanschauung, conversions to Christianity such as those
experienced by the Falash Mura may not be seen as authentic and, therefore, legitimate.
21
ICEJ News. “ICEJ Feast Peaks with Jerusalem March on ‘Schalit Day’,” October 19, 2011,
http://us.icej.org/news/special-reports/icej-feast-peaks-jerusalem-march-%E2%80%98schalit-day%E2%80%99.
193
“Fiji! Nigeria! Gabon! Costa Rica!,” the nations are chanted. When “Brazil” is called out, an
eruption in the crowd ensues as 1,300 (I am later told by Michael) Brazilians stand and cheer for
their country as if at a fútbol match. “Brazil! Brazil! Brazil!” the crowd chants and this continues
for a full sixty seconds. Announcement of other nations continues until, as the culmination of the
production, “Israel” is introduced by the voice the loudspeaker. A man waving a very large
Israeli flag on a pole enters, proceeds to the front of the contingent, and the entire crowd leaps to
its feet, waving either an Israeli flag or the (much smaller) flag of their own nation, cheering
wildly for nearly ninety seconds—longer and louder than any cheer for any country during the
ceremony. Eventually, the orchestra on stage carried the cheers further with its own, clearly preplanned, accompaniment. This display is repeated every year at this event. It is difficult to
imagine a contemporary and comparable scene in which large groups of people from around the
world, acting specifically as representatives of their home nations, cheer louder, longer, and with
more energy for a nation that is not their own.22 Unless, of course, the assumption that the nation
of Israel is “not their own” is entirely incorrect; it seems that for Renewalists Zionists, Israel is
their nation, and they are bound to it.
Startlingly, a number of prominent American Christian Zionists have stated publicly that
they are ready and willing to die for Israel, among them: John Hagee,23 head of Christians United
for Israel, Glen Beck (a Mormon),24 and Robert Stearns, the head of Christian Zionist Bridges for
A colleague suggested that the Catholic “Christendom” would be a fair comparison. Certainly observing the
crowd at the recent election of Pope Francis can give one this impression: a multi-national event cheering for a
single individual who binds the crowd by his charisma and office. This may be the closest comparison but it only
goes so far given the religious divide and historical animosities of the merging groups within our present subject.
This observation should not preclude a comparison study of the phenomena, which could prove to be fruitful.
23
Hagee recounts death threats he has received for his support for Israel in an interview with Glenn Beck, including
claims of actual attempts on his life (a shooter in his church) 8/21/11, accessed 5/5/13,
http://www.video.theblaze.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=18264375.
24
Glenn Beck, at his “Restoring Courage” event in August of 2011 held in Jerusalem, gave a keynote address which
called for supporters of Israel to be willing to lay down their lives for their faith. “GBTV.com Video Restoring
Courage Glenn’s Courage to Stand Keynote,” YouTube video, 46:19, keynote address at Restoring Courage event
22
194
Peace.25 I have also seen countless comments on the blogs of Christian Zionist ministries from
individuals who also state that they would “die for Israel.” Many of these same American
Christian Zionists are beginning to suggest that they would die for Israel before they would die
for the U.S., particularly given what they believe to be the degenerate state of both American
culture and the current political leadership. Is this hyperbole? It would be difficult to know for
sure outside of very specific circumstances. But the point to take away from this is that
contemporary Renewalist Zionism, as well as other segments of Christian Zionism, seem to be
moving very far from the rhetorical and emotional habitat and activist practices of early 20th
century dispensationalist Christian Zionism. Reading early leaders such as Blackstone, 26
Scofield, and Gabelein one is easily able to recognize the extreme importance placed on Jews
and Israel in their dispensational theological systems. However, their advocacy retains a level of
detachment, marked by a sense of pity for Jews under the growing, global antisemitism and a
desire to see the Jewish people placed safely in their own land for prophetic purposes only, a
marked contrast with the feast of Tabernacles scene. In dispensationalism the Jews were clearly a
separate but pitied people.
This is not surprising given the radical separation between Israel and the Church that the
system advocated (Sweetnam 2010). Israel was important to the divine plan only after Gentiles
were removed from the earth. There was no reason to co-mingle the entities. The StoneCampbell movement advocated a belief in Jewish restoration and a summary of their 19th century
held in Jerusalem, August 24, 2011, posted by “Jerusalemsaints,” June 6, 2012, accessed 5/5/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-99Wx-VmdwQ.
25
Robert Stearns: “A growing group of us is prepared to lay our lives down for Israel and the Jewish people”
(Spector 2008, 2).
26
Blackstone’s (1908) Jesus is Coming! is a representative work in this regard. It was a very popular work which
appeared in several additions (first edition 1878), sold over 350,000 copies in 25 different languages, and likely was
a major source text for the development of the Scofield Reference Bible (Kraus 1958, 33-35). In it Blackstone
popularized in slightly modified form the Darby premillennial dispensationalism taking hold in the U.S. at the time.
195
attitudes also reveals this ambivalence. Adherents watched with great anticipation the stirrings of
national sentiment among Jews and movements in Palestine, but in the end,
Judaism was for them part of both the biblical past and the prophetic future, and the
challenge was to discern how world Jewry here and now would make the connecting
links between that past and future. Most presumed, in a naively philo-Semitic spirit, that
the Jews would need help from the church…[by means of] missions to the Jews, with or
without millennial expectations (Blowers 2004, 429, emphasis his) .
This early advocacy is usually what is in mind when scholars attempt to assess whether such a
sentiment is philosemitic or anti-semitic—or, as Ariel (2005) has concluded, ultimately
ambivalent. It should be noted, however, that Ariel has based his assessment on the assumption
that modern Christian support for Israel is based on classic dispensationalist theology—yet
another instance of misclassification with resulting consequences for scholarly attention to
modern Christian Zionism. What can be said at this point is that the dispensationalist attitude
toward Jews is a far cry from the sense of ownership of the land of Israel and the well-being of
the Jewish people—to the point of self-sacrifice—that seems to be developing in Renewalist
Zionist and other Christian Zionist circles today, and in the new forms of pseudodispensationalism (such as with John Hagee, who is Pentecostal with a strong dispensationalist
flavor) that display similar convictions on this issue.
How is this ethnonationalism being accomplished? The most obvious way is through the
discourse of civilizational conflict: West vs. Islam, or the popularization of Huntington’s clash
of civilizations thesis (Huntington 1996). This thesis has been readily adopted and altered by
Christian Zionists who insist that Israel be considered part, indeed the front line of, “The West.”
“If a line must be drawn concerning Christians and Jews, the line should be drawn around both
of us because we are united,” John Hagee is fond of saying. “We are one,” he insists, “and we
196
are Zionists committed to the well-being of the state of Israel.”27 Another of the more important
ways the merger is accomplished is through the full embrace of Christian Zionists by the Israeli
political leadership and several various Israeli-based Jewish advocacy organizations. On our tour
Kenny consistently describes us as “brothers and sisters of Abraham.” Israeli Deputy Foreign
Minister Daniel Ayalon told Benny Hinn in an interview that Evangelicals are important to Israel
“because they are God’s people, they know the prophecies…They are our brothers.”28 Myles
Weiss, a messianic Jew and representative of Zola Levitt Ministries, reports of a meeting
(partially videoed) of Christians and Rabbi Benyamin Elon, Israeli Minister of Tourism, during a
formal visit to the Knesset. According to Weiss, Elon said to them “We, the Jewish people, are
the children of Abraham. And you [Christians] are the children of Abraham by faith.”29 Weiss
repeated this story on his program and emphasized to his Christian audience the connection to
Jews and Israel recognized by prominent Jews. Popular Pentecostal evangelist and Christian
Zionist Perry Stone makes a similar, but slightly different observation: “There has been a merger
between what is (sic) called Christian Zionists and the (political) leadership in Israel and so you
can see that God has merged these two together in faith.”30 Israeli Deputy Minister and MK
Ayoob Kara who is Druze, described Israel as the “front [as in at the physical frontier] of the
Christian world because we have to go in together, we have to fight together.”31 He was
addressing the Christian Allies Caucus in the Knesset, established in 2004 (see chapter 7, below),
Steven S. Woo. “Televangelist Donates $1 Million to Help Russian Jews Reach Israel,” The Spokesman-Review,
February 4, 1998, http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1998/feb/04/televangelist-donates-1-million-to-help-russian/.
28
“Benny Hinn interviews Danny Ayalon,” Jewish Israel video, 6:04, Benny Hinn interview of Israeli Deputy
Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon in November 2009, posted by “Captain Q,” December 31, 2009, accessed 5/5/13,
http://jewishisrael.ning.com/video/television-evangelist-benny-1.
29
Weiss, “Zola Levitt Presents,” 9/26/12. The program aired on the Christian television network DayStar.
30
“Prophetic Alert 2009: An Urgent Warning to America,” Voice of Evangelism online video, sermon delivered on
location in Israel (n.d.) by Perry Stone, accessed 6/8/12, http://media.voe.org/2213889.
31
“Deputy Minister and MK Ayoob Kara at KCAC ‘Night to Honor our Christian Allies’,” YouTube video, 3:57,
Ayoob Kara address to the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus delivered on January 17, 2012, posted by “KCACTV,”
February 29, 2012, accessed 5/5/13, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXLZUHbNYMs. The video indicates that
it was published by the World Jewish Congress.
27
197
which works intimately with the ICEJ and the World Jewish Congress in promoting the kind of
Jewish-Christian convergence I describe here. Christian-Jewish ethnonationalism, in other
words, has achieved at least some form of institutionalization within the Israeli political
structure. When Ayoob Kara suggests that Israel is at the “front” of the Huntington civilizational
construct they are suggesting that Arabs Muslims are on the opposite side. This is a very physical
reference even more so than a metaphorical one. Kara says this directly when he notes that
“religious fundamentalists are all around us here.” This is to operationalize the clash of
civilizations construct, while at the same time to establish the oneness of the Jewish and
Christian peoples.
This has not been lost on Israeli-based orthodox organizations devoted to protecting a
distinctive Jewish identity. Disturbed by the “Goy as Jew, Jew as Goy” tendencies, as critic
Horowitz terms it, 32 of both Evangelicals and prominent historic Jewish institutions such as the
Jewish Agency, groups such as Horowitz’s seek to warn fellow Jews that their identity is at
stake. Horowitz’s group reports a statement they attribute to Benjamin Netanyahu, but which I
have not be able to independently verify, in which the current Prime Minister is reported to have
asserted “[the evangelicals] are not just friends of Israel; they are Israel.” Many Messianic Jews
who still retain the term “rabbi” to describe their religious roles make similar statements.
Messianic Jewish Rabbi Jason Sobel runs a website called fusionglobal.org that describes its
mission as follows: “Fusion Global is reaching, equipping and uniting Jews & Gentiles by the
power of the Spirit to ignite transformation through restoring the full inheritance.”33 Sobel made
clear what he believes this inheritance is: “Anyone who is a follower of Jesus is part of the
Ellen Horowitz, “The goy as godhead,” June 10, 2007, accessed 5/5/13,
http://israelinsider.com/Views1/11501.htm. Horowitz is a relentless critic of the increasing Evangelical influence in
Israel and observes the same type of convergences between the Israeli political leadership (mostly religious
nationalists) and Evangelicals that I describe here.
33
“Welcome to FUSION Global!,” the “about” page for www.fusionglobal.org,
http://www.fusionglobal.org/#!about/vstc2=mission, accessed 8/8/13.
32
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commonwealth of Israel.”34 For those familiar with Christian theology such language is not
entirely foreign. Romans 11 talks about Gentiles “adoption” into the family of God, but when
Christian Zionists employ this language they are not leveraging metaphor to make a theological
or salvific point. To them, Israel means reconstituted Israel and the commonwealth of Israel is
the physical nation-state. And “adoption” is also a familiar term in Romans, but understood by
these Christian Zionists in the concrete rather than metaphorical sense, creating familial kinship
ties. The land of Israel belongs—without quotes—to ethnonationalistically-inclined Christian
Zionists, phenomenologically speaking, in the same manner that it belongs to diaspora Jews,
even perhaps in the same manner as it belongs to Israelis themselves.
Revisiting the tour: the Galilean boat ride
As discussed in chapter 5, our tour group participated in a Galilean boat ride just as many
tourists to Israel have done since the middle of the nineteenth century (Kaell 2010, 166n30).
Kaell (2010, 168) notes that the captains of tourist boats are trained to look for priestly collars to
determine the branch of Christianity to which the group belongs. This is important because
groups tend to hold a small worship service on the boat and the choice of music played on the
boat and provided by boat company staff is important. Evangelicals will have contemporary
worship music played by the captain over the loudspeakers, Catholics might have quieter, more
contemplative music, part of the construction of “religious presence” typical of tours. Crewmen
perform a “casting of the nets,” echoing the biblical story of Jesus’ blessing of Peter’s fishing
expedition in John 21. The Jewish folk song (and wedding anthem) Hava Nagila was played, and
our group stood (even the oldest among us) with Kenny and the boat crew to practice a
traditional Jewish dance, in concentric circles, on the deck of the boat.
34
Jason Sobel appearing on the Christian television network Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), July 25, 2012.
199
The standard boat experience also includes a flag raising ceremony (Kaell 2010, 190)
where the flag of the nation of the tour group is raised alongside an Israeli flag, which is a
particular highlight for Americans generally, Kaell notes, but not for Canadians or Europeans,
who find it uncomfortable to stand at attention facing their national flag during an anthem. As
the flag was being raised, Madeline said loudly for all to hear: “Our two flags, flying together!”
Another woman echoed “Amen! That looks good to me!” As we sang the American national
anthem, the Jewish-Israeli crew member who had ceremoniously raised the flag could be seen
singing along. The four Canadians on our tour did stand during the American anthem. But while
Kenny did acknowledge their presence as Canadians,
he wisely did not instruct the crew to raise the
Canadian flag and play the Canadian anthem. The
worship began slowly on the boat with many
participants sitting quietly and listening to the music.
Slowly, one by one, the charismatic worship style
Figure 6. Worship on the Galilean boat ride.
Photo by author.
(raising hands, lifting heads, standing) began to manifest and individuals began to move as they
stood. What was quite interesting to observe is that despite the poor view from the front of the
boat of the Galilean scenery many worshipping individuals still chose to congregate there, under
the dual flags, arms lifted and faces pointed up to the flags, as if in worship of the two together
(see figure 4). Many took photos of the flags as they waved in the Galilean breeze. The
intersection of the two national identities is bound together by the participation in Christian
worship, as clear and concise of a statement of particularly Renewalist Zionist sentiment as is to
be found.
Towards a theory of Jewish-Christian Ethnonationalism
200
What is to account for this expression of national sentiment? Do we have the tools to
describe such a situation? Are there any historical parallels from which we can draw for purposes
of comparison? These are by no means easy questions to answer, for the coming together of
members of eighty nations to express a common national sentiment complete with flags, shared
holidays, cultural markers of identity and, most importantly, a common land and “founding
people,” (for example, Jewish Israelis) is likely unparalleled.35 Any suggestion that Christian
Zionists willingness to die for Israel might be akin to the altruism of individuals, many who were
Christian, who hid Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust cannot account for the positive
statements of national sentiment I have outlined here. Some have merely noted a non-specific
“Judeo-Evangelical alliance” (Chafets 2007), but this also does not fully account for the
observations I have documented here. What is needed is a theoretical approach from within the
literature on nationalism.
Sturm (2010), having also studied the ICEJ, has attempted such an analysis using the
literature on religious nationalism. Describing the convergence of Christian Zionist and Israeli
identity as “Judeo-Evangelical nationalism,” Sturm states
through pilgrimage American Christian Zionists have come to Israel and Palestine to see
landscapes of the future, and through this process, have imagined the(ir) future as a
foreign country (xv).
His use of “Judeo-Evangelical nationalism” is in contradistinction to popular but imprecise terms
such as “Judeo-Christian tradition” or simply “Christian Zionism.” I have modified such
designations in this work to distinguish a particular form of Christian Zionism using the term
“Renewalist,” a term which is well established in the literature (Johnson 2009). It is
overwhelmingly but not exclusively Renewalist Zionism that displays the identity merging I
Sturm (2010, 33) expresses some agreement when he states “Perhaps this case…is the only diasporatic ‘religious
nationalism’ that exists, where a religious motivation leads to a splitting of love for God with a love for a ‘Jewish
nation.’”
35
201
have described here.36 Not all Renewalists adhere to Christian Zionism or to the Christian
Zionism I have described in these pages. There are a number of Renewalists who are actively
working on theological models for peace in Israel/Palestine (Newberg 2010) as well as
Evangelicals (Alexander 2012).37 But Renewalist Zionism remains the best term for identifying
what I believe is the largest segment, the fastest growing segment, and the Christian Zionist
stream with the largest global reach today.38 The leadership of the ICEJ is entirely Renewalist
and has been since its inception.39
Sturm (2010) prefaces his analysis of nationalism present within Christian Zionism by
rejecting the accomplishment of the ultimate desire of his subjects:
In the case of the Christian Zionists, they are part American and part Israeli, part
Christian and part Jewish. Christian Zionists seem to act as if they were religious
mercenaries, enlisted by God and paid with the promise of salvation. Their charge is to
defend a territory and people that they do not and cannot belong to or be a member of.
Israel acts as a second homeland to which a national and religious loyalty is attributed
(24, emphasis mine).40
This leads Sturm to classify Israel as a “secondary” homeland for these Christian Zionists (27), a
homeland that remains “theirs” only in their imagined apocalyptic future (30-31). Sturm is
interested in identifying the construction of the future rather than focusing on the perhaps low-
36
There is no existing study which quantifies the relationship of this brand of Christian Zionism and Renewalist
Christianity to date. My conclusions come from three years of continuous observation—attendance at Christian
Zionist events, significant consumption of Christian Zionist literature (Renewalist and non-Renewalist).
37
Paul Alexander is himself a Pentecostal and a scholar of Pentecostalism and an activist on Israel/Palestine social
justice issues within the movement. Allen Anderson has suggested that “an enormous transformation is now taking
place” among Pentecostals and efforts at social action (2004, 278).
38
While not all of Sturm’s research was focused on Renewalist Christian Zionism—some of his data relate to other
varieties of Christian Zionism—his observations of specific segments of Renewalist Christian Zionism form a
significant component of his dissertation.
39
Merv and Merla Watson, co-founders of the ICEJ (but no longer officially affiliated), were charismatic
dispensationalists at the ICEJ’s founding, though they were a minority among the founders in this regard). They
have since abandoned dispensationalism for something resembling the Renewalist Zionism with strong HebrewRoots influence that I have outlined in this work. (Personal interview with the author, May 2013.) Influential scholar
of Christian Zionism Yaakov Ariel has described the ICEJ as “charismatic top to bottom” (personal conversation
with the author November, 2012).
40
Sturm accompanies this paragraph with an image of a gigantic Israeli flag (estimated at 60 feet wide) passing from
hand to hand over the top of the crowd during a non-dated ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles celebration.
202
hanging fruit associated with memory studies in the construction of sacred pasts (28)—certainly
a worthy exercise on his part, yielding fruitful results. But Sturm sources this identity in
premillennial dispensationalism, a dubious association as I have shown. When scholars focus on
premillennial dispensationalism they also tend to focus on the American forms of Christian
Zionism and, in the process, assume American forms are normative for the world.41 It seems as
though the confirmation bias is also present among scholars who “see” dispensationalism even
when it is not present.
Sturm’s errors in assumptions lead him to focus on “religious nationalism,” and even
“ethno-religious nationalism” (79) based in an American identity. While surely an American
Christian Zionist identity can be discerned, based on my observations, this identity does not
represent global Christian Zionist manifestations. I also do not believe that it is necessary to
initially posit the nationalism as “religious” nationalism; although certainly religious practices
are observed as a primary feature of Christian Zionism, this is not capture the entire picture. Such
a pairing obscures more than it enlightens.
Political scientist Walker Connor has suggested that the traditional emphasis of religion
over ethnic identity in the literature on nationalism is in error and that nationalism—what he
calls for theoretical precision, ethnonationalism—is the primary factor in the construction of
us/them mentalities. I have already used the term in several places above, but a more thorough
theoretical explanation is in order. Connor sees religion and nationality as mutually reinforcing
social phenomenon, with the power of the subjectively-posited ethne as the primary boundary of
the group (1994, 46). If a group feels that it is primordially related, that is the primary factor in
determining national identity. Walker considers this to be the “basic identity” leading to
ingroup/outgroup boundary-making, rather than “overt aspects of culture,” such as “language,
41
Sturm (2010, 37) does so as well as does a recent article by Durbin (2013a).
203
religion, customs, economic inequity, or some other tangible element” (46). Connor insists that,
empirically speaking nationalism refers to the loyalty of the individual to his/her national group,
or ethne—and patriotism refers to loyalty to one’s state and its institutions; thus, in his
accounting the two terms represent distinct phenomena (196ff). For Connor nationalism is
subjective, deeply psychological, non-rational (not irrational), subconscious, and emotional, and
is best described as “the largest group that can command a person’s loyalty because of felt
kinship ties” (202). It is this bond which can command self-sacrificial loyalty from members of
the nation. So what constitutes a nation? According to Connor, “all that is irreducibly required
for the existence of a nation is that the members share an intuitive conviction of the group’s
separate [unique] origin and evolution” (202). Following Max Weber, Connor insists that such
sentiment need not, usually does not, accord with factual history and its factual accuracy is
irrelevant in any case. This is because historicity is related to rational judgments and is,
therefore, outside the phenomenon of ethnonationalism (Connor 2002).
Connor (1994) brings his analysis directly to bear on my argument here by arguing that
ethnonationalism—and not religion—is the basis of the construction of the definition of “Jew”
recognized, if only implicitly, by the Israeli state (46). In Israeli society, one can be an atheist,42
Buddhist, New Age, or affiliated with any other religion and still be “in the most thorough and
psychologically profound sense of the word, Jewish” (46).43 American Jews, who still retain
The father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, himself an atheist, was adamantly opposed to Hebrew Christians. Herzl’s
“hostility” to Jews who converted to Christianity as described by Hazony (2006) is illustrative of Connor’s thesis:
“…[D]espite this concern for the welfare of the stranger, Herzl was from his first steps as a Jewish nationalist
unwilling to accommodate Jews who had converted to Christianity, whom he considered to have betrayed not only
the Jewish faith, but the Jewish people”(emphasis in original). Herzl saw Christianity as associated with a different
ethnicity: Gentiles; therefore, conversion was an abandonment of Jewish ethnicity. Such sentiment is still common
in Israel (Shapiro 2012a, 2012b).
43
Though being a Christian Jew, commonly referred to as Hebrew Christians or more often Messianic Jew, is still a
very touchy subject, particularly for the Orthodox in Israel. See Shapiro (2010; 2012a) who analyzes the case of the
Jewish-Christian border in much the same sense as Connor does here.
42
204
strong support for Israel,44 are the perhaps the chief example of Connor’s dictum: “Cultural
assimilation need not mean psychological assimilation” (46). The Jewish example emphasizes
his point for what determines the conditions under which one becomes part of an ethne: “The
prime requisite is subjective and consists of the self-identification of people with a group—its
past, its present, and what is most important, its destiny” (4). Connor suggests that this view can
account for the rise of Islamism, which appears more sporadically and geographically rather than
by an appeal to religion, and he suggests that scholars should be looking for precisely this ethnic
pull whenever there are references by involved parties to a “clash of civilizations.”45 It is also
helpful that Connor provides a theory that insists on the separation of “patriotism” and
“nationalism” as “distinct loyalties.” For Connor (196) “[nationalism] refers to one’s national
group; [patriotism] refers to one’s state (country) and its institutions,” and these “compete for the
allegiance of the individual.” This is a key insight for understanding Renewalist Zionism,
particularly as one examines the nuances of the emerging theologies. Historian and apologist for
the movement Paul Merkley (2001) observes of the ICEJ that “[t]he rank and file of the
membership [i.e. staffers living in Israel], who remain citizens of the United States, United
Kingdom, Canada, Finland, or South Africa, are made to understand that loyalty to Israel is no
less a kind of patriotism for them” (178). In this statement one can recognize that Merkley is not
far from Connor’s understanding of ethnonationalism as a subjective, non-rational phenomenon
characterized by the “feeling” of a common descent and which provides the energies for group
44
The American Jewish community is not a monolithic or single-issue voting bloc, to be sure, but the support
remains strong. Jordana Horn. “US Jews strongly support Israel, new poll shows,” May 23, 2011,
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/US-Jews-strongly-support-Israel-new-poll-shows.
45
“Religion and Nation: Competitors or Reinforcers?,” YouTube video, 1:12:15 (quote beginning at minute 5:00),
lecture by Walker Connor delivered at the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, Middlebury College, March 1,
2006, posted by “UChannel,” September 29, 2010, accessed 11/1/11, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAYbZSdZRM, min: 5:00.
205
loyalty—trumping all other cultural products. Ethnonationalism has a phenomenological, nonrational basis and it is this phenomenon that forms ethnic ties and drives ethnic loyalties.
What this insight does for the study of Christian Zionism generally is to provide
theoretical direction for the study of its global manifestations, such as the “Night to Honor
Israel” event in Nairobi, Kenya, profiled at the beginning of this chapter. What exactly such a
theoretical understanding might do for quantitative studies of Renewalist Zionism globally, such
as in the Pew study cited above, is not at all clear, but is worth exploring. Sturm’s instincts are
correct in identifying as a “new thing” the construction of a Christian Zionist/Israeli identity,
even if his attempt to analyze it is ultimately unsatisfactory. Sturm even focuses on the
phenomenological attraction of Christian Zionism by using a definition of “nation” that is
manifest in “a group of people who feel they have a common past with a territory…” (79), but he
fails to incorporate the mutuality which Connor highlights: reciprocity allows the phenomenon
to be considered a form of nationalism rather than just a fetishization. In the case of Renewalist
Zionism, certain segments of the Israeli political and intellectual—even religious—elite have
embraced these Christians as family, as part of the in-group of Jewish society, and they are retelling the history of Israel’s national myths while incorporating Christian Zionism as an active
agent in the birth of the Israeli state.
Mutuality within Christian-Jewish Ethnonationalist Constructions
An example of the process of mutuality inherent in the construction of this
ethnonationalism is in order. As Michael Hines and I sat together for lunch on the final day of
our trip, he mentioned to me that then-Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren had
paid a visit to the ICEJ headquarters in Jerusalem a few years back in order to “pick our brains
for research on his book.” The book, New Essays on Zionism, is an anthology written “to begin a
206
discussion whose ultimate purpose is to provide the intellectual framework for…a revival” of
Jewish national sentiment (Hazony, Hazony, and Oren 2006, xi). Oren had spent some time
consulting with ICEJ Media Director David Parsons apparently on a particular figure in Israel’s
military history. Oren was writing a chapter on a British officer who helped to create the Israeli
Defense Forces [IDF] entitled: “Orde Wingate: Father of the IDF.” Oren would argue that
though Wingate was often reviled in histories of Israel for his negative traits and actions—
particularly what was described by at least one author as Wingate’s dealings “in collective
punishments, in harming innocent people, in looting, in arbitrary killing…and in unrestrained
degradation”— this was the wrong perspective on the man (401).46 This highlighted only his
negative traits, Oren complained. Oren, himself an historian, wanted to rehabilitate Wingate in
the history of Zionism47 and after justifying his use of force (401), Oren assessed Wingate’s
contributions to the cause of the Jewish state as “decisive and enduring” and Wingate as “…a
complex figure, but one deserving of respect and gratitude” (402). He noted that Wingate is
“widely regarded as the father of modern guerilla warfare” (390), and therefore was central in the
formation of the present character of the IDF. Why would Oren need to consult with the ICEJ on
this matter? Because according to the accounts of other scholars (but notably not Oren’s in his
chapter),48 Wingate was a Christian Zionist (Clark 2007, 132-5)49—advocating a particularly
46
The quote provided by Oren is from a letter to the editor of Haaretz written by Israeli historian and geographer
Dan Yahav.
47
Wingate already has a forest in Israel named after him on Mt. Gilboa. A Jewish-Israeli staffed and apparently nonreligious youth rehabilitation center located on Mt. Carmel also bears his name: Yemen Orde Youth Village
(www.yeminorde.org). At a Night to Honor Israel held in Eugene, Oregon in 2011, Christians United for Israel
(CUFI) collected donations for this organization, with checks payable to CUFI.
48
Oren makes only a brief mention of Wingate’s religious background: he was from “a strict Protestant family”
which often “attended…prayer meetings… in the morning, and devoted the rest of the day to Bible studies and other
‘improving’ pastimes” and that his father and grandfather were missionaries who “were devoted, among other
pursuits, to converting the Jews” (ellipsis in original, 393). If we had only Oren’s account, we would have no way of
knowing whether Wingate remained religious after he left his home.
49
Sachar (2007, 215) says that Wingate possessed a “deeply rooted Protestant millennialism,” and that his “biblical
mysticism transformed the young captain into a passionate adherent of the Zionist cause.” Sachar further notes that
207
militaristic form of Christian Zionism, but Christian Zionist nonetheless. On our tour Kenny
recommended that our group read more about Wingate. At the 2011 ICEJ conference I attended
Malcolm Hedding’s talk included a recovery of the memory of Wingate as a Christian Zionist
whose concrete contributions helped to shape the Israeli state. Jurgen Buhler, the current ICEJ
Executive Director, has also claimed Wingate for Christian Zionist sainthood.50 But it was only
at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Washington Summit in 2011 that Oren, speaking to
several thousand Christian Zionists, would lay claim to Wingate as a Christian Zionist:
Wingate had scarcely heard of Zionism, but he knew the Bible…by heart. He had been
raised in a pious family of Plymouth Brethren…[who] when he saw the Zionist pioneers
claiming the desert and resettling the barren hills of Galilee he remembered God’s eternal
promise to the Jews: I shall redeem you. And Wingate became a Zionist.51
To this audience, just as he had in his chapter on Wingate in New Essays On Zionism, Oren
would lay claim to Wingate as an essential builder of Israel—and he did it delicately and
carefully based on the audience he was addressing.52 To Israelis Oren made Wingate into a hero
in the contemporary revival of Zionist sentiment. To Christian Zionists Oren would note to his
audience of Americans that Wingate (who was British) is a hero because he was a Zionist who
put his conviction into action. “In every Israeli city,” he would conclude,” I can guarantee…you
will find a street named for Orde Wingate.” Oren, a fine historian,53 is here weaving heroic
founding memories for Israelis and Christian Zionists: two retellings using the same hero who
Wingate was assessed by his superiors thusly: “The interests of the Jews are more important to him than those of his
own country” (216).
50
Jurgen Buhler, “Israel and the local church (part 1),” Word From Jerusalem, March-April 2005. Also, Jurgen
Buhler, “An ancient & noble tradition,” Word From Jerusalem, May 2008. In the latter reference, Buhler groups
Wingate with William Hechler and Lord Balfour and states of the group “They were not merely friends of the Jews,
but full partners in fulfilling [God’s] eternal promises to re-gather His beloved people” (emphasis mine).
51
“’Christians have made key contributions to Israel’s survival’-Ambassador Oren at CUFI ’11 DC,” Michael Oren
address to the 2011 CUFI Washington Summit, July, 2011, posted by “DemoCast,” July 28, 2011, accessed 5/5/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NmouTKi564.
52
In recounting the story of Oren’s visit to the ICEJ, Michael would tell me that Oren wanted to know how to tell
Wingate’s story and his relationship to Christianity. In this Michael was impressed with Oren’s desire to be “careful
in his research and his wording, in particular.”
53
See Oren’s (2008) Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to Present, which has been
generally well-received.
208
himself was (perhaps only technically) from a third nation, Britain. Oren is re-creating the
founding myths of two distinct peoples54 (Israelis and Christian Zionists) by weaving the tapestry
of a collective history; here a clear ethnonationalist sentiment can be discerned. Oren is bringing
the Christian Zionists into the new Israeli national sentiment he wishes to deploy.
In his address to CUFI’s conference in 2012 Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
emphasized the “new relationship” between Christians and Jews that was emerging, based on
“common values,” and that, in turn, based on a “common heritage,” and leading to a “common
future,” comments that are heard in a new way under the bright light of Connor’s thesis.55 My
application of Connor’s concept of ethnonationalism to emerging Jewish-Christian relations
demonstrates radical changes in nationalisms under global conditions. From the evidence shown,
it is quite possible that we are witnessing the continued construction of a new ethnonational
identity: a multi-racial, multi-patriotic felt connection to a particular land in which most of the
community is not a (legal) citizen and not a resident of the object country—a single national
sentiment, the emergence of a new Great Diaspora. The remainder of this dissertation will
continue to bring evidence to bear on this thesis. For now it should be clear that though others
have done a thorough job of exploring America’s affinity for Israel and the Jews,56 what I am
describing here is a large and substantive movement to bind the loyalties of two peoples overand-against specific others and rooted in the Israeli state. Such a phenomenon would be
unprecedented in Christian Zionist history, at the very least.
The word “peoples” here is used with utmost consciousness.
“PM Netanyahu’s Speech @ ‘Christians United for Israel’ Conference 2012,” YouTube video, 18:03, keynote
address delivered by Benjamin Netanyahu at the 2012 Christians United for Israel event in Washington DC, posted
by “IsraeliPM,” March 19, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqgDKbGUdT0.
56
Many books have been written on this subject. Goldman (2004) explores the affinity of Americans for the Hebrew
language. Smith (2010) explores Christian Zionism as an expression of deep-rooted American affinity for all-things
Jewish.
54
55
209
Conclusion
As we walked the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, Madeline’s secretary Shelly walked with
her arm-in-arm and the two chatted about their experience thus far. Shelly, with great emotion,
finally burst out “I'm not sure I'm going to have any of my heart left when I get home because I
am leaving little pieces of it all over this land!” Shelly’s comment expresses the theme of this
chapter: within modern Christian Zionism there is emerging a powerful, non-rational, feltconnection to Israel that I have named a Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism. It finds its strongest
(but not only) manifestation in what I am naming Renewalist Zionism. This felt connection is
manifest as both a rival attachment vis-à-vis home countries and a strengthening of the
attachment to the same, with some Christian Zionists pledging even their lives for the Jewish
state. I will explore further this complex relationship between attachment to Israel and to home
country in chapters 8 and 9.
The desire to place and care for Jewish bodies extends to suspicion of the possession of a
Jewish body by Christian Zionists themselves. As I prepared for my interview with Merv and
Merla Watson,57 co-founders of the ICEJ, I watched several video clips of them online to get a
sense of their ministry and backgrounds. One interview was from the 1980s and had appeared on
Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. The interviewer assumed that because the
Watsons were so heavily involved in the Hebrew Roots movement, Jewish culture and worship
that they, themselves, must be Jewish. Merla replied that, in fact, she was not Jewish. As I
concluded my interview with Merla she told me that in the past few years she became suspicious
that she might, after all, be Jewish. After some research into her ancestry she discovered that her
father’s family was, indeed, Jewish. I reminded her of the interview she gave to CBN and she
replied, “Yes, I know, but I’m telling you what I have learned since then!” She noted that she
57
Personal interview with Merv and Merla Watson, May 2013.
210
was working through the Israeli immigration system in an attempt to become an Israeli citizen
under the Jewish law of return. The desire to be associated with the “chosen” people has become
a near obsession in an increasingly large segment of the Christian Zionist population and the
bond with Israel, expressed most aptly by the term ethnonationalism, appears to be growing at an
astounding rate.
Chapter 71
Renewalist Zionism, Messianic Jews, and Television Media
In 1977 Paul and Jan Crouch, founders of Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), using a
rudimentary satellite uplink, broadcast TBN’s flagship show Praise the Lord from the Mt. of
Olives in what they described as “the capital city of the world, Jerusalem.” They were the first
Christian television media to broadcast live from Israel and they duplicated the live broadcast
annually for the next three years.2 On the 1978 broadcast the Crouchs presented Michael Gidron,
representative of the Israeli Tourism Ministry, with a financial gift of $1,000 “for the
beautification of the holy sites in Israel” and a plaque shaped like the star of David
commemorating their first broadcast from Israel in 1977. The Crouchs also presented a financial
gift to Rabbi Nathan Ginsbury, a representative the Jewish National Fund and head of the
“reforestation program of Israel,” for the planting of trees so that “the land might be beautiful for
the Lord’s return.” The broadcast was strongly premillennial-dispensationalist in theology,
emphasizing the “rapture” of the church when resurrected saints would walk into the city along
the route of the camera: from the Mt. of Olives down to the eschatologically significant eastern
gate of the city walls. The one, very small but significant exception to this classic
dispensationalist message was at the end of the broadcast when Jan Crouch dug a hole in ground
and buried three stones, one for each representative of the Christian trinity: Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. She had retrieved these eventual memorials from the base of the main TBN tower at
the studios in California and carried them across the world as a symbol, in Paul Crouch’s words,
1
This chapter is a revised version of my chapter entitled Broadcasting Jesus' Return:
Televangelism and the Appropriation of Israel through Israeli-granted Broadcasting Rights
in Christian Zionism in Comparative Perspective, edited by Goran Gunner and Robert O. Smith, Fortress Press,
2014.
2
The second of three live broadcasts from April 30, 1978 can be seen on the TBN website in their archives,
accessed 4/17/13,
http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Praise%20the%20Lord/ec/tkNWtwMzqDVJDT2JoHm15o10nP527NtK.
211
212
“that joins this little land of Israel and the land of America as one—we are one in the Lord!” This
symbolic gesture of connection to the land by Renewalist Christians on a largely Renewalist
network demonstrate the connection to Israel now dominating Renewalist Zionism, but only
beginning to emerge in force in the 1970s. It is important, if not pedantic, to recognize that
global media has become critical to the development of alternative forms of religious identities,
associations and networks. As an important example global Christian television media is critical
to the formation of the ethnonationalism I have identified at the center of modern Renewalist
Zionism. The media giants Daystar and TBN provide not only the emotionally-charged
narratives but also the imagery so important to establishing the psychological, cultural and
religious connections that form the backbone of Christian-Israeli ethnonationalism. Large
advocacy organizations such as the ICEJ are assisted by Christian television networks like
Daystar in their attempts to spread their message to the furthest reaches of the globe. Therefore,
understanding the development and influence of global Christian media and the uses to which it
is put in the service of the Israeli state and as it contributes to the formation of a global
Renewalist identity is of importance to scholars studying religion in a global age. The current
flowering of Renewalist Zionism on the two largest Christian television networks—TBN and
Daystar—and the process leading to their embrace by the state of Israel are the subject of this
chapter.
Christian Zionism, Inc., Media Division
American Christian television networks have been and remain economic juggernauts and
not just through their broadcasts in the United States. For the two largest Christian television
networks, TBN and Daystar, global coverage is a reality and their influence should not be
213
overlooked, particularly as it relates to Christian Zionism. Both networks are aggressively
positioning themselves as shapers of Christian Zionist ideology.
It should be stated at the onset that nearly all of the programming of both of the largest
Christian networks shares the following characteristics: high degrees of social conservatism,
almost completely charismatic theology and worship, evangelistic in conviction, overwhelmingly
influenced by the prosperity gospel (which drives their own revenues and is the basis of their
business strategy),3 deeply Christian Zionist in message, and competitive and expansionist in
regard to their empires. (There is a relative absence of political speech on the networks,
particularly in the case of TBN, where broadcasts from the 1980s, then in service to the
Religious Right in the U.S., were distinctly more political than in contemporary broadcasts.
Though the Religious Right has declined, the relative dearth of political speech on TBN and
Daystar may have more to do with their now-global presence and messaging and generationbased dispositional changes within Evangelicalism, itself.)
Paul and Jan Crouch officially began TBN in 1973—its legal name is Trinity Christian
Center of Santa Ana, Inc., according to its IRS 990 filings—with the purchase of a single
television station in Southern California.4 Its goal was and is to “spread the gospel of Jesus
Christ to the world.”5 Nine years later in 1982, Marcus and Joni Lamb would replicate this
Generally, the prosperity gospel or “word of faith” movement advocates material and spiritual blessings for
believers who “sow seeds” of material gifts to Bible teachers or, in our case, either into Israel itself or the ministries
of those who advocate for Israel. In this chapter I leave the terms separate because of the difficulties of classification
of any single teacher appearing on the networks. The difficulties with classifying the theology of word of faith
proponents is discussed by Hladky (2011), who notes that the movement is more pragmatic-driven and less
concerned with differences in theology. See also Hocken (2009, 47ff), who traces the origins of the movement to
Pentecostals rather than charismatics.
4
From TBN’s “History of Christian TV,” http://tbnnewswire.com/tbn/history-of-christian-tv/, accessed 4/12/13.
5
This is the stated mission of the organization on their IRS 990 filings. For 2011’s filings, see:
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2011/952/844/2011-952844062-08dc34c9-9.pdf, accessed 4/12/13.
According to the 2011 filing, TBN has close to 850 million U.S. dollars in organizational assets based in the U.S.
and reported $176 million in revenue for the same year. TBN reported $1.6 million in transactions to “foreign
divisions” in the form of grants, with the largest single region receiving grants the “Middle East and North Africa”
at over $490,000. The 2011 filing was prior to their purchase of their Jerusalem studio, it should be noted.
3
214
purchase in the state of Alabama, in 1990 moving their ministry to Dallas where they are now
physically located.6 Both organizations are registered as “churches” with the IRS,7 providing
them with protection afforded to churches—but not to other non-profits—against more intrusive
government intervention by the IRS.8 TBN and Daystar are widely regarded as the two largest
Christian television media organizations in the world. Now in its 40th year (as of 2013), TBN
has, in their words, “two dozen international networks and affiliates broadcasting the good news
of Jesus Christ to every inhabited continent twenty-four hours per day—billions of souls”9 via
acquired local television stations, cable channels, high definition web-streaming of its
programming, or satellite.10 If one is Namibian and wanted to watch TBN, “Namibian TV”
carries the network. Over sixty local television stations in Romania carry TBN programming.
TBN’s Arab-language “The Healing Channel” boasts transmission to 100 million Arabs twentyfour hours per day. TBN studios in Mexico produce original Spanish-language programming on
their channel Enlace, and seventy percent of this programming originates from fourteen LatinAmerican countries.11 TBN has thirty-five domestic market areas (DMA’s) in the United States,
each of which produces local programming.12 On their website, Daystar claims their broadcasts
“[cover] the entire footprint of the world reaching over 200 countries and 680 million households
From “About Daystar Television Network,” http://www.daystar.com/about-daystar-television-network/, accessed
4/12/13.
7
For TBN, see their 2011 990 filing. Though TBN does voluntarily file 990s, as “churches,” neither organization is
required to do so. Daystar does not file a 990 and is doing business as Word of God Fellowship, Inc. based out of
Georgia, according to their website.
8
For the sensitivity of government intervention in the financial situation of churches and other religious nonprofits,
see Garber, Kent. 2008. “Investigating Televangelist Finances,” US News & World Report, February 15, 2008.
Further, the Crouchs have said that they have turned over most of their assets and estate to TBN, thereby receiving
various non-taxable but problematic benefits. Paul and Jan Crouch, letter to the editor, The Strang Report, April 2,
2013, http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/the-strang-report/17264-tbn-responds-to-steve-strang. Erik Ekholm,
“Family Battle Offers Look Inside Lavish TV Ministry,” New York Times, May 5, 2012. All of the donations
received by the ministry are not taxed under U.S. law.
9
Crouchs, letter to the editor, 2013.
10
TBN details the extensive ways in which viewers can access their programming through various medium and in
various locations around the globe here: http://www.tbn.org/watch-us/how-to-watch-tbn, accessed 9/17/13.
11
“Trinity Broadcasting Network: Faith Channels for Everyone,” TBN explanation of their global channel lineup,
undated, accessed 9/17/13, http://www.tbn.org/about/images/TBN_Networks_info.pdf.
12
Ibid.
6
215
globally.”13 When it comes to technological forms of modernity and globalization, rather than
being viewed as antagonistic as fundamentalists have traditionally been portrayed, Paul Crouch
insists that his embrace of global, modern media was all in God’s plan: “The only possible way
[to fulfill God’s command to preach the gospel to “every creature” in the end of days] would be
through technology—and God knew!”14
However, there was one local market that was nearly impenetrable for either network,
until recently. In May of 2006, on Israeli Independence Day, Daystar began a groundbreaking
endeavor: Israeli cable company HOT had agreed to allow Daystar into their basic cable
lineup.15 This decision was made in consultation with Jewish leaders and after a six-month trial
run of broadcasting Daystar’s two flagship shows—Celebration and the Joni Show. It was a
landmark decision for Israel, officially a Jewish nation; to that point, no other Christian network
had been given access to 1,000,000 Israeli households through the local infrastructure of the
cable system. How did Daystar receive permission to broadcast in Israel? In his recounting
Daystar founder Marcus Lamb said that “in 2005 leaders from Israel came to the Daystar
headquarters [in Dallas, Texas] and presented us with a license to broadcast in Israel.”16 The
curiosity, then, is which leaders from the Jewish state approached Daystar with the license and
for what reason? How did this embrace come about?
Relevant background regarding evangelization laws in Israel are important to consider
before answering these questions. Laws designed to prevent proselytization do exist in Israel but
“About Daystar Television Network,” accessed 1/8/14, http://www.daystar.com/about-daystar-televisionnetwork/.
14
Paul Crouch, “Behind the Scenes: Paul Crouch hosts a 40 year anniversary special,” 9/2/13, accessed 9/17/13,
http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Behind%20the%20Scenes/ec/dndG81ZTouho6mCzb3cPEIjTflVKi6CL. On the
show Arizona Governor Ann Brewer, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Ohio Governor John Kasich delivered
personal, recorded messages in celebration of TBN’s 40 th anniversary and praising the network’s impact on their
respective states.
15
Chaim, Ilan. 2006. "24/7 Broadcast Gives New Twist to Airwaves." The Jewish Exponent, May 18, 2006.
16
Statement from Marcus lamb from the 9/3/12 telethon broadcast on the Daystar network. The segment was airing
at 12pm PST.
13
216
they are quite weak and politically sensitive both in Israel and globally due to emerging global
notions of religious freedom. Coercive evangelization involving payment or exchange of goods
for conversion and the evangelization of minors without parental consent have been illegal since
1977.17 Getting around the laws that remain is not difficult.18 Getting around political obstacles
has also proved easy for Christian organizations—usually a promise to not evangelize is good
enough to assuage reticent Israeli public officials.19 The ICEJ has also taken this route to gain
access to the Israeli Knesset and to curry the favor of the Israeli government. An attempt to
strengthen anti-evangelization laws in 1998 after an Orthodox Rabbi complained specifically
about Messianic Jewish evangelization efforts was thwarted through pressure from evangelicals.
(It is telling that the ICEJ, which had publicly renounced evangelization of Jews, vigorously
denounced the proposed law in newspaper editorials and interviews.)20 With the help of allies in
the U.S. Congress, Evangelicals pushed for the passing of the “International Religious Freedom
Act of 1998,” which was then seen as a shot-across-the-bow to Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu concerning what would constitute acceptable policy on religious freedom for a
“Christian Churches Oppose New Anti-Missionary Law,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 4, 1978,
http://www.jta.org/1978/01/04/archive/christian-churches-oppose-a-new-anti-missionary-law.
18
Within Christianity it is largely only specific segments of evangelicalism, particularly Messianic Jews, that
attempt to get around existing laws; the Catholic Church and Mainline Christian denominations have settled on
theological or ethical reasons that discount the need for evangelization of Jews (Racionzer 2005, 177n17).
19
See Spector (2008, 113-124) for an excellent discussion on contemporary missionary efforts by Evangelicals in
Israel more generally, including discussion the role of Messianic Judaism and on the ICEJ episodes mentioned
below.
20
The ICEJ vociferously and explicitly denied missionary activity, though when pressed by Michelle Chabin of the
National Catholic Register why he would be concerned about an anti-missionary law being passed if the
organization prohibits evangelization, David Parsons of the ICEJ responded saying that it was “first and foremost”
concerned about Israel’s international reputation on religious freedom, echoing concerns expressed in the United
States and a not-so-subtle reference to the law on religious freedom then making its way through the U.S. Congress.
It certainly was an abridgement of the religious freedom of Messianic Jewish Israelis according to global standards.
But the point is moot, anyway. My primary research on tour with the ICEJ reveals that they practice a collective
form of what is called in American Evangelical circles as “friendship evangelism.” In other words, they want to
befriend Israel in part to gain their trust and to open opportunities for sharing their faith. It is important to interpret
this fact in light of the Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism discussed throughout this work, in which (certain) Jewish
Israelis and American Christians come to believe themselves to be one people. The co-embrace of Jesus as Messiah
is central to Renewalist understandings of Israel in the last days. So the ICEJ wants, essentially and in metaphor, to
“win over their “sibling in denial,” or, in some cases, to “gain their father’s affection.” The sibling and father
metaphors are both found within the movement to describe the relationship of Christians and Jews.
17
217
modern nation.21 In 2007 the Chief Rabbi in Israel called for a boycott of the ICEJ’s annual Feast
of Tabernacles celebration, which reserves one night of its program for Israelis to experience,
free of charge, an elaborate program of Jewish dance and singing produced and funded by the
ICEJ. The rabbis complained that Christian participants in the event proselytized Jews and
promoted such proselytization.22 Complaints by Orthodox Jewish Israelis usually cannot
accomplish much, given the global pressures expected of democracies to protect religious
freedom; Israel is already on the U.S. State Department’s list of nations that “persecute
Christians” due to the activities of Jewish anti-missionary groups in the country (Shapiro 2012a,
8). The Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints has also used a promise to refrain from
evangelization to get permission from the Israeli government to build their Jerusalem Center in
1986.23 The prevention of mass-evangelization efforts, such as those conducted by Christian
television, have—until Daystar—been easy for the Israeli government to hold at bay, simply by
denying broadcasting rights24 and permits for organized rallies involving open and direct public
evangelization that would draw public ire and thereby raise difficult political issues.
Furthermore, though proselytization laws have been lax in Israel, such activity has always been
considered culturally offensive. Given the overall situation it was perhaps inevitable that after a
lawsuit filed by Daystar was heard before the Israeli Supreme Court, the cable company (HOT)
caved and reinstated Daystar to their cable lineup. A second Israeli national satellite company,
YES, has also subsequently picked up the network, after which Daystar became the first
“International Religious Freedom Report 2010: Israel and the Occupied Territories,” Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor, November 17, 2010, published by the U.S. State Department, accessed 11/2/12,
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010/148825.htm. In addition to this report an overview of anti-missionary
legislation was published by “Jewish Israel,” accessed 4/17/13, http://jewishisrael.ning.com/page/legislative-issues.
22
Associated Press. “Evangelicals disturbed by rabbis’ call to Jews to shun joint Sukkot event,” September 23,
2007, http://www.haaretz.com/news/evangelicals-disturbed-by-rabbis-call-to-jews-to-shun-joint-sukkot-event1.229885. See also “International Religious Freedom Report 2010,” ibid.
23
Elliot Yager. “Jewish Ideas Daily: Do Jews have a Mormon problem?,” The Jerusalem Post, February 26, 2012.
24
Such a maneuver would obviously exclude programming transmitted by satellite, which knows no national
boundaries.
21
218
Christian broadcasting company to broadcast 24-hours per day into Israel and into 100 percent of
its cable-subscribing households.25
Daystar’s accomplishments on the ground in Israel opened new ground for Christian
media and set high the competitive bar. The precedent now set, Trinity Broadcasting Network
countered with the SHALOM channel in May of 2011—SHALOM is a Russian-language
channel targeting Jewish immigrants from Russia now living in Israel. (Notably, Christian
Zionist organizations such as the ICEJ have been helping Russian Jews immigrate to Israel since
the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991). Daystar followed with a purchase of a Jerusalem studio in
2011. In September of 2012 TBN was able to purchase its own studio in Jerusalem, adjacent to
Daystar’s, and is in negotiations to get their programming on YES.26 The two largest Christian
television networks in the world are now broadcasting both out from and into Israel. True to the
Renewalist Zionism I have described they are unabashedly evangelistic, including and even
emphasizing evangelism efforts aimed at Jews.
On its face, the access given to Daystar clearly runs against at least the spirit of existing
laws against proselytization in Israel. Politically, Daystar’s—and now TBN’s—presence on the
ground in Israel are calculated risks, risks taken within the Israeli political structure. It is
significant at this point to remember that the Christian Allies Caucus (CAC)—situated within the
Israeli Knesset and whose mission is to “strengthen the cooperation between Christian leaders
25
The thoroughly Renewalist GODTV had been broadcasting regular programming from Jerusalem since 1995, and
their broadcast headquarters were moved to Jerusalem in 2002, according to their website, but they were not
broadcasting into Israel itself through Israeli broadcast infrastructure (only satellite). The 100 percent figure comes
from an interview by charismatic prophecy guru and New Apostolic Reformation (see below) minister John Paul
Jackson with Moshe bar Zvi, Daystar Israeli representative, on Jackson’s web channel. Bar Zvi still does much work
for Daystar on the ground in Jerusalem and in promoting Daystar and their efforts in Israel to Christians. “John Paul
Presents: Episode 1 – Moshe Bar Svi,” Dreamipedia video, 34:17, John Paul Jackson interview of Moshe Bar Zvi,
February 14, 2013, http://www.streamsministries.com/video/john-paul-presents/episode-1-moshe-bar-zvi.
26
Edmund Sanders. “Daystar, TBN ready for Messiah in Jerusalem.” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2012.
219
and the State of Israel”27—was formed in 2004 and has been quite active in partnering with
Christian Zionist organizations in particular.28 The Caucus is the brainchild of its former
chairman Yuri Shtern (now deceased), a Russian-born Israeli economist, protégé of Israeli
politician and conservative hawk Avigdor Lieberman, and a Knesset member. (Shtern’s last
affiliation was with right-wing Israeli party Yisrael Beitenu.)29 Shtern, a self-proclaimed nonbeliever who also observed Jewish religious traditions, was significantly connected to the
Christian and Jewish communities in Russia, for a time considering conversion to Christianity
(Pospielovsky 1987, 306). Shtern was also quite passionate about the plight of his fellow Russian
Jews and active in assistance with Russian immigration to Israel, citing the presence of Russian
anti-semitism (to which he was personally subjected as a child) and anti-communist sentiments.30
He was assisted in establishing the Caucus by a young, Canadian-born Israeli named Joshua
Reinstein, who grew up in Dallas and whose father “was the president of the local Zionist
Organization of America chapter and was the first to institute a Night to Honor Israel with Pastor
John Hagee when Reinstein was four years old.”31 (Hagee has regular programming on Daystar
and TBN and routinely makes appearances during Daystar’s fundraising drives as an honored
guest.) “Mirror” bipartisan caucuses of allies for Israel have been established in national
From the Christian Allies Caucus website, “About us,” http://cac.org.il/site/about/. The page further states that “At
the inaugural meeting, the Caucus members pledged to assist Christian organizations with their local operations
and to acquaint fellow MK’s with the pro-Israel work of Christians around the world” (emphasis mine).
28
On the CAC website a statement on the “Roots of Judaism and Christianity in Israel” is quite explicit about CAC
values and reads as follows: “Israel is the birthplace of Christianity and Judaism and within this land lies the
testament and the truth of our shared past. As history is displayed throughout Israel’s archeological landmarks, so is
the story of our common Judeo-Christian values. The values of ethical monotheism, on which our precious systems
of morality are based, can be found in our shared roots and history in the Land of Israel.”
29
Judy Lash. “Arrivals: From Dallas to Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Post Magazine, November 29, 2006.
30
See also Joel Greenberg, “New Israelis with Ideas as Big as the Russian Sky,” The New York Times, July 26,
1996.
31
Balint, “Arrivals.”
27
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governments throughout the world beginning with the bipartisan Congressional Israel Allies
Caucus in the U.S. Congress in 2006.32
In 2005 Reinstein, along with Shtern and former Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon,
convinced John Hagee to start and lead Christians United for Israel (CUFI) (Clark 2007, 219223, 257). In addition to his ongoing activities with the Caucus, Reinstein hosts a recurring
segment on the popular Daystar show Israel Now News, called “Ask the Source.” Reinstein, with
Moshe Bar Zvi (see below), is co-creator and co-producer of Israel Now News.33 Reinstein was
recently named one of the fifty most influential Jews in the world by The Jerusalem Post, which
called him “the father of faith-based diplomacy.”34 Reinstein and Zvi also provide regular airtime
to overtly Christian Zionist organizations, such as the ICEJ, the latter which also hosts a regular
segment on Israel Now News. ICEJ senior staff members also write much of the content of the
Christian edition of Zvi’s former paper, The Jerusalem Post, for which Zvi served as president
(2004-2007).35 Reinstein, Elon, and Shtern were in Orlando in 2005 hosting the annual CAC
conference and convening with Christian Zionist leaders (Clark 2007, 223). Though likely
For current membership see list of members at “Congressional Israel Allies Caucus,”
http://www.israelallies.org/usa/member_directory/.
33
Bar Zvi mentions the role of Daystar in funding the program in the interview with John Paul Jackson, ibid.
Marcus Lamb mentions that Daystar chose to fund Israel Now News in order to counter the messaging of Al
Jazeera, globally. “Marcus Lamb presents Moshe Bar Zvi Programming Award,” YouTube video, 6:59, Daystar
founder Marcus Lamb presenting “Outstanding News Program Achievement” originally aired on Daystar, n.d.,
posted by “loveisraelcom,” August 27, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws8xBOE8_rA.
34
“Josh Reinstein – Director,” bio page for Josh Reinstin, KCAC director, accessed 4/13/13,
http://cac.org.il/site/staff_bio/josh-reinstein. The Jerusalem Post’s full statement on Reinstein, ranked 49th in the
2012 list, reads as follows: “Josh Reinstein, 34, is the father of “faith-based diplomacy,” connecting Christians to
Israel as the director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus since its inception in 2004. The KCAC, which builds
direct lines of communication and cooperation with Christian leaders around the world, has established 20 sister
caucuses across the globe, including the 50-member Congressional Israel Allies Caucus. Reinstein, who also serves
as an external adviser to the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry, believes that Christian support for
Israel is vital to its interests. As the producer and founder of Israel Now News, a half-hour TV weekly broadcast to
35 million Christians in 191 countries, Reinstein transforms Christian grassroots support into legislation.” A. Spiro,
N. Schemer, J. Sharon. “50 most influential Jews: 41-50,” The Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2012,
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/50-most-influential-Jews-41-50.
35
Jackson, “John Paul Presents.” Zvi was president of The Jerusalem Post global group from 2004 until 2007,
headquartered in New York City. In 2006 he started The Jerusalem Post, Christian Edition. He was forced out for
unspecified reasons in June of 2007, though Zvi alluded to his joint media efforts with Christians as a salient
precursor to this firing.
32
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impossible to confirm, given all of these connections it is not unreasonable to suggest that Shtern
and/or Reinstein—“leaders from Israel,” according to Lamb—may have flown to Dallas shortly
after the formation of the Christian Allies Caucus to meet with Lamb and offer him a license to
broadcast from Jerusalem—a mutually beneficial arrangement that would allow the Caucus to
provide an asset to an ally in return for their continued and adamant support for the state of Israel
and an opportunity to continue to—personally, in the case of Reinstein—build support for Israel
throughout the world, filtered through friendly Christian Zionist and Israeli voices.
After initial success Daystar’s contract was renewed the following year, but a mere
month after the renewal HOT abruptly cancelled the contract and returned the broadcasting fee.
The reversal, according to The Christian Post, was due to complaints HOT received from
viewers and because of “editorial content issues.” The major content issue seems to have
stemmed from complaints HOT received regarding programming produced by Messianic Jews,
whose message tends to target Jews for evangelization.36 For Messianic Jews and the
Evangelicals who support them, belief in Yeshua (Heb: Jesus) as the Jewish Messiah is the apex
of what it means to be a Jew (Shapiro 2012b, 657; Ariel 2000, 205ff). Messianic Jews have
become central to Renewalist messaging regarding the state of Israel, often described within the
movement and by sympathetic (Gentile) Christians as the “living stones” of the Jewish
community.37 Much of Messianic Judaism is Renewalist in practice and similar in theology to
the ICEJ, particularly in regards to eschatology, though there are significant pockets of
Joshua Kimball. “Ousted Christian TV Network Takes Case to Israeli High Court,” The Christian Post,
September 19, 2007.
37
“Living stones” is also a designation within the pro-Palestinian Christian movement for Palestinian Christians
living in the land. The desire to connect personhood to land using such a metaphor is quite evident for both parties.
As an example of the Messianic Jewish usage, see “Living Stones Television,” launched in the summer of 2013,
http://www.yeshuasharvest.org/living-stones/living-stones-television/14-content/lstv/20-living-stones-televisionmain-page. For a pro-Palestinian usage, see the tour “Living Stones Pilgrimage” offered by The Holy Land
Ecumenical Foundation, www.hcef.org/programs/lsp. The “living stones” reference is biblical, deriving from I Peter
2:4-6.
36
222
Messianic Jews sympathetic to dispensationalism (Ariel 2000, 2013). They are especially active
in regards to Jewish evangelism, seeing such activity as particularly suited to their (liminal) place
in Israeli society and in the diaspora. As Israeli Messianic Jewish Pastor Asher Intrater puts it,
“[Messianic Jews] have come back to Israel to bring Yeshua with us, to bring Yeshua out of the
exile.”38 Therefore, Reinstein’s ongoing partnership with Daystar is made all the more curious
because he has publicly declared that partnerships between the CAC and Messianic Jewish
groups are forbidden, stating “We believe [Messianic Jews] work against the interests of the
State of Israel.” The CAC website also makes this explicit: “The Caucus refuses alliances with
any group that actively pursues the conversion of Jews to Christianity.”39
The Influence of Messianic Judaism on Christian Television
Who are Messianic Jews? The Messianic Jewish movement as it currently exists
congealed and asserted itself shortly after the Six-Day War (1967) as attitudes toward Jews
among evangelicals improved (Ariel 2000, 206; Shapiro 2012a), although the nascence of the
idea could be traced to the nineteenth century and the London Jews Society (LJS), as I have
shown in chapter 3. Other scholars have also noted this change in mission strategy beginning in
the nineteenth century, giving rise to the forerunner Hebrew Christian movement (Sobel 1968;
Ariel 2006), with the first use of the term “Hebrew Christian” appearing, unsurprisingly, among
the founders of the LJS (Darby 2010, 6). “Messianic Judaism” has further roots in the Zionist
sentiments of Jewish Christians at the beginning of the 20th century (Ariel 2013, 217). According
to Ariel (2006), Messianic Judaism is comprised of Jewish converts to Christianity who believe
that they have “amalgamated Jewish identity and customs with the Christian faith” (191), and
“Living Stones TV Episode One: Asher Intrater and Brian Slater/Beth Sar Shalom,” YouTube video, 38:31, First
episode of Living Stones TV, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIaH-WWj5ic.
39
Daphna Berman, “Aliyah with a cat, a dog and Jesus,” Haaretz, June 9, 2006. See also Spector (2008, 113-24).
38
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thereby have put to bed millennia-old animosities between Jews and Christians (Ariel 2013,
217), at least theoretically and in the minds of their adherents. According to Catholic Pentecostal
historian Peter Hoecken (2009), the movement is Renewalist: “[T]he transforming factor from
Hebrew Christianity to Messianic Judaism was overwhelmingly charismatic and it was the
charismatic factor that provided new dynamism for Evangelism and growth” (100; cf. Ariel
2013, 231). Messianic Jews generally refuse to refer to themselves as converts; rather, they are
“maaminim (believers), not converts, Yehudim (Jews), not Notzrim (Christians)” (Spector 2008,
116), Messianic Jews captured the zeitgeist of the 1970s, which emphasized cultural roots and
ethnic expression (Ariel 2000, 206). The movement freely uses Jewish symbols, rituals,
calendars, and other cultural materials—though, as Shapiro (2012b, 652) notes, to sometimes
widely varying degrees—combined with an evangelical Biblicism and commitment to
conservative values, theology, and, not insignificantly, strong support for the state of Israel
(Ariel 2000, 198; Shapiro 2012a, 4). As of 2000, the movement was larger than
Reconstructionist Judaism (Ariel 2000, 191), and, in observing current patterns within Christian
Zionism there is little reason to doubt that the movement’s growth phase continues unabated
today (Hocken 2009, 101; Ariel 2013, 230). Shapiro’s (2012a) description of Messianic Judaism
is informative:
Messianic Judaism differs from mainstream Christianity in its use of Hebrew
terminology, attention to biblical feasts and holy days, prominent displays of Jewish
symbols, and the use of Jewish liturgical forms and practices. (5)
Messianic Jews see themselves as a reappearance of the Jewish church in Christian history and
this reappearance of a believing Jewish community serving as an eschatological sign for
charismatics within the movement (Hocken 2009, 101).40 This self-interpretation is similar, even
Hocken incorrectly identifies Robert Stearns of the Renewalist Zionist Eagles’ Wings as a Messianic Jew. He is
not. See “Is Robert Stearns Jewish?,” accessed from the Eagles’ Wings website 9/19/13,
40
224
connected, to the Latter Rain ideology among Pentecostals explored in chapter 3, given the
strong presence of Renewalists within the Messianic Jewish movement.
Such Jewish inroads into Christian theology and practice have not been received without
controversy with many reluctant or antagonistic Christians invoking the apostle Paul’s warning
against “Judaizing” in the book of Galatians to resist the efforts of Messianic Jews (Rausch
1983). Some evangelical missionaries were concerned that the arrival of Messianic Judaism
could jeopardize the gains made in Evangelical-Jewish dialogue (Ariel 2013, 221). In fact, Merv
and Merla Watson, co-founders of the ICEJ, told me that the ICEJ did not allow Messianic Jews
on their board of directors because they wanted to establish a place in Israel for Jews and
Christians to dialogue. They also mentioned that early collaboration with Messianic Jews would
have surely been seen as an embrace of Jewish evangelism and, in Merla’s words, would have
had the ICEJ founders “shipped out of the country within the week.”41 Reticence to affiliate with
Messianic Jews is rapidly declining within the thinking of the ICEJ and Messianic Judaism has
only grown in influence and in acceptance among evangelicals, though the ICEJ must still
consider the political implications of publicly embracing Messianic Jews. The growth of the
movement in Israel proper—from a few hundred to an estimated 15,000 in 2010 (Ariel 2013,
236)—might contribute to some of the easing of political tensions. All of Shapiro’s
characteristics of the movement mentioned above appear in abundance on both the Daystar and
TBN networks, whether the programming is hosted by a Messianic Jew or not. (It should be
noted that all Gentile-produced, Messianic Jewish-influenced programming that I have observed
in three years of significant programming observation is produced by charismatics, without
exception. Some of this programming is largely dispensationalist such as John Hagee and Perry
http://www.eagleswings.to/aboutus/faqs/general#FAQLink37. Neither is Merv Watson a Messianic Jew, contrary to
Hocken, and Merla Watson has only recently discovered her Jewish roots, as I discussed in chapter 6.
41
Personal interview with the author, May 2013.
225
Stone, some associated with the stream of Renewalist Zionism described in previous chapters,
such as Sid Roth and Jonathan Bernis, both of the latter Messianic Jews.)42
Messianic Judaism is now the “central arm of the movement to evangelize Jews in
America” according to Ariel (2000, 230), but with the arrival of evangelical broadcasting efforts
within Israel itself in the last few years and the deep influence of Messianic Judaism on much of
the programming of these media empires, an argument can be made that Messianic Judaism is
now an important arm of the global movement to evangelize Jews. They are also likely the
primary and most influential (and well-positioned) promulgators of Jewish-Christian
ethnonationalism. Prominent Messianic Jews are members of the International Coalition of
Apostles (discussed in chapter 3),43 such as Dan Juster, co-founder of the influential Christian
Zionist and non-dispensationalist (Harvey 2009, 240-4) Messianic Jewish Organization Tikkun
International. Juster, Israeli Pastor and Messianic Jew Asher Intrater, and public Messianic Jew
Michael Brown (also non-dispensationalist), speak regularly in churches affiliated with the New
Apostolic Reformation (NAR) about Israel, the end of days, and Jewish evangelism as a key to
the end of days. Merla Watson described her view of the situation to me: “in these last days,
Christian Gentiles are becoming more Jewish, Jews will accept the Messiah, and the
42
Some examples of programming by Messianic Jews and Gentiles influenced by Messianic Judaism on either
network would include regular programming by Perry Stone, John Hagee, Larry and Tiz Huch, Sid Roth, Michael
Youssef, Jonathan Bernis, Zola Levitt Ministries, the ICEJ, Jentezen Franklin, Mike Murdoch, Benny Hinn, Jesse
Duplantis, Reinhard Bonnke, and both sets of founders of the networks. This partial list does not include special
programming influenced by Messianic Judaism nor, for that matter, non-charismatic and dispensationalist-minded
Christian Zionists such as Charles Stanley, Jack Van Impe and others. The segment most influenced by Messianic
Judaism, however, is probably the semi-annual, two-week fundraising telethons—a telling finding as to the place of
Messianic Judaism within contemporary Christian televangelism. Daystar actively promotes the Messianic Jewish
angle. A thirty-second promo on their network for Messianic Jewish programming appeared as follows: “Christians
and Jews, together in a single faith, joining people, culture and ideas. Explore, examine and learn with the best
teachers of our time… . A messianic message for today's generation, only on Daystar!” [emphasis mine].
Promotional spot captured by Jewish Israel, accessed 4/17/13, http://jewishisrael.ning.com/video/daystar-messianicjudaism.
43
An archive of a list of ICA (now ICAL) members from 2008 includes Juster. See “International Coalition of
Apostles: Membership Directory, December 2008,” accessed 9/29/13,
http://web.archive.org/web/20090206082019/http://apostlesnet.net/pdf/ICA-Short-Directory.pdf
226
convergence will be the ‘one new man.’ The Old Testament laws are for us today—feasts,
sabbath, etc., and this teaching needs to be and is being promoted in the church now more than
ever.”44
TBN founder Paul Crouch states the role of his media empire in promoting Messianic
Judaism in unabashed terms:
The main thing we want to do is help sponsor what we call Messianic Jews, or Jews that
have received Jesus Christ as their Messiah…. We want to do some Hebrew language
programs to reach out to Jews and entice them to read the word of God and become what
we call a completed Jew.45
The term “completed Jew” can be traced to Britain’s first Jewish-heritage Prime Minister,
Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli was a Christian who used the term “completed Jew” in selfdescription to those who wondered if he was a “converted Jew” and to others who asked him if
he would chair a meeting of an unnamed society dedicated to the “conversion” of the Jews. He
rejected the offer as well as the term converted, insisting that “completed Jew” was all that a Jew
could become in the recognition of Jesus as Messiah: “It was [Disraeli’s] opinion that to apply
the term ‘conversion’ to a Jew embracing Christianity is a misnomer” (Pigou 1898, 171-2).
Another observer described Disraeli’s “completed Judaism” in terms that echo the themes of
Renewalist Zionism explored in chapter 3: “[Disraeli] believed…that the Jewish people have a
great future, in which all their sufferings and degradation shall be more than compensated, and
that, not as the conquering opponents, but as the leaders of Christianity” (Dulcken 1880, 292).
As one scholar has commented on Disraeli’s views, “…for Disraeli, the Jewish people are protoChristians and the Christians are completed Jews” (Glassman 2003, 57). This belief animates the
Messianic Judaism of our day (Shapiro 2012a, 5), and is embraced by Messianic Jewish
44
45
Personal interview with the author, May 2013.
Sanders, “Daystar, TBN ready for Messiah in Jerusalem.”
227
television personalities such as Sid Roth and others.46 It is therefore not surprising that in the
very first broadcast from Jerusalem in TBN’s new studios, Paul Crouch would note “growth of
Messianic congregations [in Israel] like you can’t believe,” before exclaiming: “We are living
out Bible prophecy! Does that soak in to you? I’m a part!”47
Establishing Presence in Israel
The goals of the two networks, then, are parallel. Physically speaking, so are their Jerusalem
studios. Daystar and TBN are in adjacent buildings just to the southeast of Mt. Zion, with
Figure 7. Location of TBN and Daystar Studios and measurement (in feet) to Mt. Moriah, provided by Google
Maps®.
balconies facing north. This is important because those balconies offer incredible views of Mt.
Moriah, known in Christian circles as the Temple Mount, in Jewish circles as the Kotel, and to
Muslims as “The Dome of the Rock” and the Al Aqsa mosque. To the east is the Mt. of Olives—
also visible from the balconies and particularly important to Christians and Jews as the site of the
“Kathryn Kuhlman I Believe in Miracles 34 Washington Businessman Sid Roth,” YouTube video, 26:19, Kathryn
Kuhlman interview with Sid Roth 1972, posted by “word3out,” February 18, 2011 accessed 9/19/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etqm9rZSpqU. Roth would later host his own very popular show broadcast on
both Daystar and TBN called “It’s Supernatural! With Sid Roth.”
47
Paul, Matthew and Laurie Crouch, “Behind the Scenes,” airing October 15, 2012 (rebroadcast), accessed 1/8/14,
http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Networks/sublib/TBN/ec/lxcjA3NjrSAitpgz3MkM88Er4VYJtr03.
46
228
appearance (or re-appearance, if you are Christian) of the Messiah. Much like the ICEJ hopes
Jesus will return during the Feast of Tabernacles, the two networks hope Jesus will return during
one of their live broadcasts and promote this possibility to their viewers.48 Competition for the
best views, therefore, is fierce. The L.A. Times has documented one episode: Daystar attempted
to obstruct the view of Mt. Zion from the TBN balcony by hanging—apparently permanently—a
Daystar banner in the TBN camera line.49
The buildings themselves are located on the 1949 Armistice lines that originally divided
Jerusalem between East and West, between Arab and Jewish populations.50 That line became
largely symbolic and political after the Six-Day war in 1967 and the Jerusalem Law passed in
1980 by the Knesset, which united the city under Israeli jurisdiction (discussed in chapter 1). But
the Crouchs have made a big deal out of the location of their Jerusalem station, saying that TBN
now “owns rock, physical dirt,” on the line drawn by Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general who
marched on the city in the 1967 war. Instead of the usual practice of leasing Israeli soil to outside
organizations Israel, according to TBN, chose to sell them the land outright. Sam Smadja, owner
of the influential touring company Sar El Tours that caters to Evangelicals (see chapter 4),
himself a Renewalist Messianic Jew who teaches Christians how to witness to Jews,51 played a
48
This deviates from classic dispensational premillennialism in that in the classic and revised forms of the theology
these networks are not likely to broadcast Jesus return to the Mt. of Olives because they will have already been
“raptured,” or removed to heaven before Jesus sets foot on the mountain. Such an encounter would be possible, it
should be noted, in progressive dispensationalism.
49
Edmund Sanders. “Live from the Holy Land…our rival’s logo!,” LA Times Blog: World Now, October 2, 2012,
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/10/live-from-the-holy-landour-rivals-logo.html.
50
This was mentioned in a positive manner by Matthew and Paul Crouch during their first broadcast from the studio
on September 17, 2012 on their “Behind the Scenes” show. (Only a rebroadcast on October 15, 2012 is currently
available at the TBN website.) Though the addresses for the Jerusalem studios for both TBN and Daystar are not
available, through painstaking use of online tools Google Earth ® and Google Street View ® I was able to positively
identify the location of the TBN and Daystar studios just south of Mt. Moriah, 3800 ft from the southwest corner of
the Kotel (Western Wailing Wall), the base of the “Temple Mount.” As the figure above demonstrates they are,
indeed, located on the 1949 Armistice lines.
51
Samuel Smadja, “Obstacles Of The Jewish Mind In Accepting Jesus As Messiah,” broadcast by Calvary Chapel
of Ft. Lauderdale on their website, http://media.calvaryftl.org/player/?fn=G5578.
229
significant role in helping TBN to purchase the property, according to the Paul Crouch.52 As Paul
Crouch’s son, Matthew, said on the first day of broadcasting from the studio: “The symbolic,
prophetic gesture of having this [studio] be the line of demarcation—not figuratively, but
literally—between the Arab and the Jew…what is Christ? What is grace? What is the message of
the gospel if it isn’t for the Jew first and then the Gentile?” Again demonstrating the high-context
mimicry associated with Renewalist Christianity, Paul Crouch would prove no exception when
he exclaimed “The gospel is going out again from Jerusalem to the world!” Messianic Jews serve
as evangelists to the world from Jerusalem: it is nothing short of the fulfillment of Lewis Way’s
vision of the end of days as I demonstrated in Chapter 3, except with the addition of charismata
and a strong emphasis on miracles.
How do Daystar and TBN put their new studios to use? The networks’ presence in
Jerusalem has given them quite a bit of versatility on several fronts, but particularly in the area of
fundraising. During its semi-annual fundraising drives, Daystar consistently and strategically
cuts-away to live shots from its balcony in Jerusalem, as a means to stir emotion in their viewers
and to prompt giving. Direct financial appeals sandwich the visual. What about the shot stirs
emotions? Paul and Matthew Crouch’s comments provide clues to the emotional appeal. Most
obviously, the networks know their viewers are eagerly anticipating the end of the age; i.e. they
are millennialist. For viewers awaiting the Messiah, there is comfort and an intuited correctness
in having live shots of the Temple Mount53 on demand with those shots provided through the
Smadja was a guest on TBN’s “Behind the Scenes” program on September 18, 2012, to celebrate the achievement
and his involvement was mentioned on the broadcast. (Only rebroadcast of October 16, 2012, is currently available.)
53
Despite the claim of some that it was only with the advent of premillennialism in the early 19 th century that the
rebuilding of the Temple was a concern of Christian theology (Sizer 2006, 173-4; Ariel 2013, 203), the rebuilding of
the temple in Jerusalem was advocated by such 18th century English luminaries as William Whiston (Karp and
Sutcliffe 2011, 104), John Hildrop (Hildrop 1711, 155-6), Robert Boyle (Worthington 1769, 447), no less than John
and Charles Wesley (Seiss, Newton, and Duffield 1863, 143-4), and even Christopher Columbus (Popkin and
Weiner 1994, 4). Ariel (2013, 203) provides a general (no page number) citation from Cohn (1970) for his claim, but
52
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medium of Christian television, taken through a camera in service to Christian ends and refined
by Christian producers. The mechanism of delivery—Christian television—makes all of the
difference in this regard. (If Protestants, by the fault of history, do not have control of many holy
sites within the land, they nevertheless have improvised in this instance by controlling the
construction and distribution of a message about those sites to the masses.)
The studios are also a place to discuss biblical archaeology and to take viewers on a tour
of archaeological sites and to conduct interviews with Jewish archaeologists—some reputable,
some with intentions on establishing the “Jewishness” of Palestinian-owned land. Paul Crouch
marveled at excavations on the site believed to be the Tabernacle of David. He provided chapter
and verse to justify prophetic fulfillment, citing Amos 9:
“On that day I will raise up
The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down,
And repair its damages;
I will raise up its ruins,
And rebuild it as in the days of old;
“That’s happening right now. The Tabernacle of David, they found it, it’s right over there,” he
gestures over his shoulder from their balcony overlooking Mt. Zion. “This is happening as we
speak!” The next day’s broadcast featured Paul visiting with an archaeological team onsite,
talking about these ruins and thereby making Paul, himself, an active participant in his
interpretation of this prophecy. He continued, quoting again from Amos:
“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord,
“When the plowman shall overtake the reaper,
And the treader of grapes him who sows seed;
The mountains shall drip with sweet wine,
And all the hills shall flow with it.”
Cohn actually places the belief concerning the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem in “official Catholic teaching”
since at least the Crusades, where it was claimed the rebuilding would be conducted by a Jewish anti-Christ (77-8).
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It is clear from the broadcast that Paul very much believed himself to be part of this verse,
applying it metaphorically to his ministry’s evangelization efforts rather than literally to the
Jewish people. “The harvest is coming in so fast,” he again gestures over Jerusalem, “that we are
catching up to the people planting seed and we are coming up right behind them with the harvest
and are overtaking them!”54
The new studios are a victory on several other fronts. Importantly, they give the networks
the access to potential Jewish converts—or, using their own logic and terms, to potential Jewish
believers in Yeshua. This access is significant because of the centrality of mass Jewish
conversion in Renewalist Zionist eschatology. Signs of Jewish conversions or openness to
Christianity do and will continue to create a rush of expectancy around the world particularly
among Renewalist Zionists.55 In turn, this expectancy generates a certainty of conviction about
apocalyptic and eschatological expectations that become, and will continue to be, a mountain of
intransigence for national and international policymakers.
Daystar and TBN’s theology is shaped significantly by their encounter with modern
Israelis, the latter who, unsurprisingly, have some concerns with classic forms of
dispensationalism that prophesy their slaughter on the very land in which they now reside, which
these critics associate with Christian Zionism generally. The long history of Christian antisemitism also looms significantly in the background of this encounter. With Jewish Israeli56 and
Jewish Diaspora reticence, particularly in the United States, still largely shaped by an
See “Behind the Scenes,” rebroadcast airing October 15, 2012, accessed 1/8/14,
http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Networks/sublib/TBN/ec/lxcjA3NjrSAitpgz3MkM88Er4VYJtr03.
55
This message has been explicit in large Christian Zionist organizations such as the ICEJ who have regular
programming on Daystar, despite the former’s public disavowal of Jewish evangelism and the latter’s open embrace
of it.
56
The one exception to this statement may be the Orthodox Jews who are often quite keen on details when studying
their Christian supporters. This is especially true of organizations such as “Jewish Israel”
(http://jewishisrael.ning.com/) designed to “preserve” Jewish identity by rooting out boundary-crossers, particularly
Messianic Jews.
54
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understanding of Christian Zionism congenitally associated with classic dispensationalism,
Israelis often resist a form of Christian eschatology that is often not in play when dealing with
Renewalist Christians, as I demonstrated in chapters 2 and 3. It is certain that the overall failure
of American and British scholars writing on Christian Zionism to correctly categorize and
explain various strands of Christian Zionism to their reading public has played and is playing no
small part in this continued misconception. Renewalist Zionists, as we have seen, often espouse a
theology that sees Israel as the “winner” in the end of days—not subject to slaughter but also not
without significant social and political travails—and this winning entails an embrace of Jewish
embrace of Yeshua as Messiah.
Daystar and TBN’s theology, belief, and practices are additionally and significantly
shaped by the growing influence of Messianic Jews and the desire of Christians to “recapture”
the Jewishness of their faith. A powerful driver of the Messianic Jewish movement is the One
New Man theology,57 mentioned by Merla Watson above. This theology sees a coming-together
of Jews and Christians in the last days, an echo that we heard in Crouch’s statement at the
beginning of this chapter quoted from his 1978 broadcast from Jerusalem. Messianic Jews such
as Sid Roth, Jonathan Bernis, Asher Intrater, Michael Brown, Dan Juster, as well as the Daystar
network itself embrace this theology completely. This “coming together” can and does find
satisfaction (in the mind of adherents) primarily in Jewish conversion (or belief in Yeshua), but
also secondarily in Christian partnership with Israeli Jews on other fronts: in the struggle against
radical Islam; in the prevention of anti-semitism; in business dealings such as oil drilling,
Christian tourism, joint chambers of commerce, and media production benefitting both parties;
The theology is based on Ephesians 2:14-16, which reads: “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both [Jew
and Gentile] one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that
is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the
two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby
putting to death the enmity” (emphasis mine).
57
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and, as is more commonly known, partnership in political advocacy, as for the (continued
expansion of the) Israeli state. Each of these partnerships is often interpreted as a “coming
together” that fulfills End Times prophecies. It is a theology powered by its own self-fulfilling
prophecies which, in the context of our present subject—the Daystar and TBN networks,
produces a fount of legitimation for political advocacy and, needless to say, substantial network
revenues.
Renewalist Zionism and the “Prosperity Gospel”
Giving money is the most important way to fulfill the prophecies concerning the coming
together of Jews and Christians in the end of days, or so the networks repeat often during their
fundraising drives. The theology of TBN and Daystar is massively influenced by the so-called
prosperity gospel, or “word of faith movement.”58 For viewers, participating in the work of God
to bring Jews and Christians together is most easily accomplished through giving, and giving
unlocks the doors of the heavenly storehouse in proportion to the sacrifice made by the giver.
These are not subtle appeals but are direct and unambiguous. As a kind of theological marketing
strategy the appeals target those viewers most likely to give: those with the highest social,
financial and personal needs.
One Israeli entrepreneur in particular has formed a strategic partnership with Daystar and
Christian Zionists on the ground in Israel: Moshe Bar Zvi, of whom we have made passing
mention, above. Zvi is a former executive of Motorola and of Levi Strauss, and, until June of
2007, the President and CEO of The Jerusalem Post. His first investment in a Christian and
Jewish partnership was the launch of The Jerusalem Post, Christian Edition in 2006, in
collaboration with the ICEJ. After leaving the Jerusalem Post, Zvi launched Israel Now News, a
58
See Schultz (1991, 133ff), though overall his work is quite dated.
234
broadcast designed to provide “objective news from Israel” regarding events important to Israel
and presumably to the Christian audience to which it is tailored. Israel Now News airs on the
Daystar network and Zvi makes regular appearances on both the news show and Daystar’s
telethons.
To demonstrate the budding partnership further an example is in order. In September of
2012, Zvi, an observant Jew, appeared during the Daystar fundraising drive. He presented a
prayer book from a Polish rabbi to the president of Daystar, Marcus Lamb. The Rabbi was killed
in the Shoah we are told and the book, dated April, 1939, along with the Rabbi’s prayer shawl
(Heb.: tallit), was presented to Renewalist pastor Larry Tuch who used it to cover his head while
laying hands on and praying for blessing over the day’s pledges. The scenes are often emotional:
on Daystar, Marcus Lamb is known for his lachrymose appeals and this day is no exception.
Daystar and Zvi appear to be leveraging the memory of the suffering of the Jewish people during
the Shoah, the newfound Christian guilt regarding anti-semitism, and the interest in all-things
Jewish found in their world-wide audience, to accumulate religious capital59 for the network.
This capital, in turn, is understood to be capable of conversion into material and spiritual
blessings for both the network and the viewers. After Pastor Tuch’s prayer the producers cut to a
shot of the sun rising over Jerusalem and the song “The Holy City” plays majestically in the
background as Daystar founder Marcus Lamb asks for pledges.
Israel and images of Israel are a cash cow for Christian Zionist media. TBN, under the
leadership of Jan Crouch, bought a 15-acre theme park called “The Holy Land Experience” in
2007 in Orlando that “re-enacts” biblical scenes, including the crucifixion, set in models of first
59
The concept of symbolic capital as I use it here derives from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argued
for the fundamental unity of all of social life, including its material and symbolic components (Swartz 1996).
“Religious capital,” Bourdieu notes, “is objectively adjusted to the principles of a political vision of the social
world—and to them only” (1991, 22).
235
century Jerusalem and peppered with opportunities to buy Judaica and Christian media. In
addition to its 40 exhibits it has a 2,000-person auditorium that hosts weekly-church services.
Many exhibits duplicate modern Israeli sites seen on my tour: the Jesus Boat, a “Scriptorium,” a
scale-model of Jerusalem larger than the one in Israel described in chapter 5, a Church of All
Nations Prayer Garden, Dead Sea caves, and the Garden Tomb,60 making the Holy Land
Experience a direct competitor with the state of Israel. Perhaps this explains why Daystar and not
TBN—the latter the largest Christian television network—was approached by “political leaders
from Israel” to be the first to have access to Israeli television-viewing households.
Christian Television and Dispensationalism
The networks themselves now have both an inroad to changing “facts on the ground”
concerning Jewish conversion in Israel and the means by which to promote gains—real,
exaggerated, or perceived. Eschatological anticipation is carefully cultivated and shaped by a
theology that invites the viewers to participate in the events that immediately precede the second
coming, as seen in only one of many examples with Paul Crouch, above, and the many pleas on
both networks to donate in order to “be part of Bible prophecy.” Participatory prophecy
fulfillment is not a feature of the previously dominant form of Christian Zionism in the U.S.—
dispensationalism. I have shown in chapter 2 that more careful scholars have noted that
dispensationalism is incredibly problematic to define and even those considered major exponents
of dispensationalism in the last 40 years may not, themselves, be dispensationalist at all
(Sweetnam 2010)—at least not anymore. Certainly the ICEJ rejects dispensationalism outright
“Holy Land Experience Park Map,” from The Holy Land Experience website, accessed 9/29/13,
http://www.holylandexperience.com/hle_park_map.pdf.
60
236
and generally does not use key dispensationalist terms such as “rapture” in their literature; 61 yet
the ICEJ plays an important part in promoting Christian Zionism on the Daystar network in
particular. The ICEJ also claims to reject prophecy as a basis for support for Israel altogether.62
More American-grown groups, such as the third-wave New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), also
reject dispensationalism instead advocating a more victorious, hands-on theology.63 “What we
believe about the end times greatly influences how we approach the work of the kingdom,” NAR
pastor Mike Bickle states, as he advocates for an “apostolic premillennialism” and a victorious
church in the present. His theology strongly supporting Israel, Bickle adds, “We should be wildeyed realists... our labors matter, because there’s continuity between this age and the age to
come.”64 Renewalism, combined with the influence of Messianic Judaism and closer contact
between Christians and Jews in the last 30 years, has reshaped classic premillennial
dispensationalism into a swashbuckling Christian Zionism that offers a more immanent
eschatology and invites political, economic, religious and social participation by adherents.
When combined with the theology of the word of faith movement, which emphasizes specifically
monetary blessings to adherents in return for sowing blessings on Israel, Renewalist Zionism is a
potent force, particularly economically, and TBN and Daystar have capitalized on and helped to
construct this message.
61
A review of nine years of the ICEJ flagship publication, Word from Jerusalem, does not reveal a single instance of
the use of the term “rapture.” In an important theological piece the ICEJ redefines the word “rapture” while rejecting
dispensationalist meanings (Parsons Unknown year, 42).
62
There are reasons to question this claim but a move away from prophecy and in favor of more memory-driven
support (historic and spiritual ties between the faiths) is real, though not complete by any means and may never be
complete.
63
C. Peter Wagner, interview by Terri Gross, October 3, 2011, transcript,
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=140946482. NPR original interview recording “A
leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation,” http://www.npr.org/2011/10/03/140946482/apostolic-leaderweighs-religions-role-in-politics.
64
Bickle, another influential leader within the NAR, teaches against dispensationalist theology explicitly. See his
teaching “Historic Premillennialism and the Victorious Church,” delivered on 6/4/11, accessed 4/17/13,
http://mikebickle.org/resources/resource/3070.
237
It should not be surprising that support for the state of Israel has undergone significant
mutations from the classic dispensationalist view—in fact, it would be quite shocking if such
theology and advocacy had remained static after so many years and after such significant social
changes (globalization, technological advances, interreligious dialogue and contact, etc.) and
historical events (the Shoah, the Six-Day War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of global
terrorism, etc.). It is also clear that the ethos of classic dispensationalism—dominated as it was
by a largely passive approach to prophecy fulfillment, which generally held that it was enough to
merely watch what was happening in the world in order to understand what God was doing—has
been jettisoned in favor of a more hands-on approach to prophecy fulfillment. Direct appeals to
participate in prophecy fulfillment dominate every form of Renewalist Zionism mentioned to
date, in no small part due to underlying Pentecostal theological convictions. Much of
conservative Christianity has largely cast off its asceticism in favor of a world-embracing,
victorious-minded theology—this whether in the form of modified (progressive)
dispensationalism,65 the prosperity gospel, or the more radical New Apostolic Reformation.
Kenneth Copeland, a popular prosperity gospel teacher, has cleverly called such inherited forms
of ‘hands-off’ theology “religious correctness,” which, like political correctness, must be
jettisoned by true believers in favor of access to truth and victory. This is conservative
Christianity in a modern modality: progressive in its triumphalism in regards to human
achievement, sometimes arrogant in regards to those who do not share its convictions, and
technocratic in regards to achieving its ends. The movement trumpets the reconstitution of Israel
in the land of the Bible as nothing short of proof of the existence of God.
Conclusion
65
See Bock, Kaiser and Blaising (1992). Progressive dispensationalism also advocates for a more immanent
eschatology (Mangum 2007, 18n67).
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In this chapter I have shown the role that Christian television media plays in the
advancement of Christian support for Israel and how Renewalist Zionism appears to be the
approach dominating much of the two largest networks, TBN and Daystar. I have also attempted
to show how interested parties within the Israeli state have formed strategic partnerships with
these organizations, not only to spread the message of Christian Zionism to the masses, but to
allow the Christian message to be spread within Israel itself. Israel has granted permanent
legitimacy to these networks by selling them land and granting them broadcasting rights into
Israel. This relationship and the media opportunities made possible by the establishment of these
networks on the ground in Israel, with important views of Mt. Moriah, only contribute to the
growing Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism within Renewalist Zionism in particular. Scholar of
nationalism Anthony Smith (2003a) describes the situation well when he observes, “Mass
electronic communications and digital technology bind people, and peoples, together in ways
that are wholly unprecedented, and that make the old national loyalties seem naive and even
bizarre” (1). There is a great desire among Renewalist Christians in particular to reconnect with
the Jewishness of Christianity and to watch, with their own (Christian) eyes, for the return of
Jesus. As Michael Gerbitz, founder of United With Israel, has put it: “Israel sells itself.”66
Daystar has claimed a global reach of 2 billion viewers. TBN beams its programs by
satellite in many languages (including a dedicated Arabic channel) into nearly the entire planet.
They are truly global media empires, networking conservative Christians of many backgrounds,
but especially Renewalist Christians, with support for Israel and the need for Christians and Jews
to come together in the last days as the central, driving message. This “coming together” takes
the form of a dual conversion, a mutual embrace: Jewish acceptance of Jesus as Messiah, and
66
Israel Now News, March 4, 2012 broadcast on Daystar, episode 18. United with Israel is a Jewish organization;
see “About us,” accessed 1/10/14, http://unitedwithisrael.org/about-us/.
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Christian appropriation of all things (religiously and politically) Jewish, ancient and modern.
Here, the histories of both the Jewish people and of Christians are retold in a manner that
encourages an embrace of Christians by Jews and Jews by Christians among the viewing
audience. The future of the Jewish people is imagined and embodied by the ubiquitous presence
of Messianic Jews in the programming of the networks. Sudden access to so many Israeli
households, politically and prophetically significant privately-owned studio locations, and
sustained efforts toward Jewish evangelization within Israel, seem likely to have led to a gold
rush for Christian television. Given the placement of this messaging within semi-annual
fundraising drives, contemporary viewers appear to find great personal, social and eschatological
meaning in a Christian message mediated through Jewish theology, culture and the Israeli state.
Given the global reach of the networks and, as reported in the 2006 Pew study “Spirit and
Power” cited in chapter 1, the dominance of Christian Zionism among Pentecostals globally, the
Israeli government’s granting of permits and land to both Daystar and TBN are sure to have an
enormous and sustained impact on the shape of global Christian Zionism for years to come. The
effects, though they cannot yet be measured, are clearly worth monitoring.
Chapter 8
Globalization, Renewalism, and Renewalist Zionism:
Problems of identity and certainty
In chapters 8 and 9 I seek to examine Renewalist Zionism using sociological theories of
cultural globalization and social memory in order to understand how changes to the way that
social identities are formed, resulting primarily from globalization processes, have created the
ideal conditions for Christian Zionism to flourish. Globalization in its cultural form can be
defined as “a relational concept to explain the increasing cultural contact that has reduced
distances in space and time and brought civilizations and communities into closer degrees of
interaction” (Kalu 2008, 6). Christian Zionism responds to changes wrought by globalization in a
manner common to other social movements that must deal with, as sociologist Hervieu-Léger
puts it, “changes to the mode of believing” (2000, 93). As Roland Robertson, another sociologist,
observes, these changes emerge from the “concrete structuration of the world as a whole”
(1992a, 53). Christian Zionists establish global identity through claims to a constructed past that
uses the contemporary state of Israel and the Jewish people as raw materials. I argue that
globality, or the “consciousness of the (problem of) the world as a single place” (Robertson
1992a, 132; Robertson and Scholte 2007, 424-6), and the processes of relativization that result
from globalization create conditions amenable to the type of identity formation observed in
Renewalist Zionism and Renewalist Christianity in general. In this accounting, the “why” of the
Renewalist appeal is not reducible to the cognitive contents of its formal teachings or as a
perceived entry-way into the global capitalist system. Instead, I offer that Renewalist Zionism
provides adherents with both a subjective and objective ground for faith—an identity that is
difficult to relativize.
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241
In this chapter I review the cultural globalization theories within the phenomenologybased traditions of Peter Berger and Roland Robertson. Along the way I will explore the
dynamics by which Renewalist Zionism propagates itself under the conditions, restraints,
opportunities and challenges of globalization. My goal is to demonstrate: a) how cultural
globalization has changed the way that collective identity is experienced, constructed and held,
and b) how these changes can be shown to have played a significant historical role in the
development of Christian Zionism. This is important for an examination of how Renewalist
Zionism has been structured by these changes and has made its own, unique contributions to
collective identity for some Christians across the globe, resulting in the conclusion that
Renewalist Zionism, under conditions of globalization, is an example of restructured and
reformed religious culture par excellance.
In chapter 9, I will suggest how the challenges of identity construction under conditions
of globalization are answered by the ICEJ’s Renewalist Zionism through processes of collective,
or social memory (Zerubavel 1996; Olick and Robbins 1998) that locates Israel, as one historian
has noted, as a “signifier of stability” that serves for Christian Zionists as a stable social and
theological marker for the construction of religious identities (Durbin 2013b, 514). In this way
and by this route, Christian Zionists can “understand themselves ‘in history,’ in order to stabilize
memory and animate that history” (Durbin 2013b, 514; cf. Johnson 2000, 248) in a global
context.
Chapters 8 and 9, therefore, are an attempt to place contemporary Renewalist Zionism
within a theoretical framework that makes sense of its potential cultural reception from a
sociological perspective using sociological theories of globalization and social memory. My goal
in these two chapters is use sociological theory to identify changes in the way that collective
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identity is constructed, expressed, and legitimated in order to account for the phenomena
expressed in the ICEJ and Renewalist Zionism that I have documented in the previous chapters. I
argue that as cultural globalization accelerates, as the challenges to consciousness and the ability
to form and create identities become acute, Christian embrace of Israel becomes a powerful (but
by no means inevitable) response, even a (subjectively-experienced) antidote to the problems
inherent in identity construction and epistemological certainty under conditions wrought by
globalization and post modernity. This explanation, however, should not be seen as the sole
“cause” of Christian Zionism on a global scale; rather, specific issues surrounding identity
formulation, construction, and repair are based, at least in part, on the contingencies and
complexities of local social and political situations, as I will demonstrate with the case of the
ICEJ in Bolivia at the end of this chapter.
Globalization Theory
Particularly in the sphere of religion, globalization has created historically unprecedented
and ongoing contact between different social groups and their worldviews, beliefs and value
systems; these, in turn, have created challenges in relation to identity formation and
epistemological certainty. Scholars of cultural globalization have developed a number of terms to
define these challenges and changes from a phenomenological perspective, which focuses on the
structures of consciousness. As Campbell (2007) argues, “changes in thinking that occur as a
result of global interdependence are every bit as important as other factors affected by it, such as
political or economic ones” (282).
The first relevant term for my purposes here is the concept of globality. I argue that
Christian Zionism in general and Renewalist Zionism in particular should necessarily, from a
social science perspective, be understood through a “focus on the production and reproduction of
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‘the world’ as the most salient plausibility structure of our time” (Robertson 1992b, 53). “The
world,” as a phenomenological concept, sets relatively firm boundaries for the production of
social life. As sociologist Bryan Turner states, “the very idea of the world-as-a-single place
implies some constraint” (1992, 318).1 This lack of indeterminacy in the boundaries of the world
has resulted in a change in the very nature of the human condition, according to sociologist
Ulrich Beck (2009). He states that
the situation of every nation, every people, every religion, every class and every
individual is also the result and cause of the human situation….[H]enceforth concern
about the whole has become a task. It is not optional…(19)
This a powerfully salient issue for expansionist religions such as Christianity and Islam—and
including those worldviews and ideologies committed to global cosmopolitanism—in that once
the boundaries of “the world” are known, the visions of “the world” within these traditions take
on a perfunctory concretization (with an eye toward territory) that produces salient outcomes that
were not possible in a world with major parts unknown, not known well, or perceived even to be
unknowable just several hundred years ago. As Beckford (2003) states, “religion is an ideal
medium for focusing attention on ideas of globality because religious ideologists are active in
constructing its meanings” (108). For example, the accounting for total world population leads
Renewalists and other religious conservatives to take the next step of estimating their own share
of religious adherents, as I discussed in chapter 1—a mundane, but important change in thinking
prevalent in the prophetic conferences (Marsden 2006, 68-71) and healing conferences (Curtis
2011) held at the end of the 19th century in the United States, each dominated by conceptions of
“the world” in their deliberations. Now, discussions of “the world” within Christian discourses
There are a few notable exceptions, such as those cultural activities and movements related to ‘alien’ life. Virtual
reality is also a powerful exception. Yet the globe, as a known and limited space, is surely of the greatest concern for
the majority of social life today. Even supernatural spirits find their home on the earth, for the most part, within
religious cosmologies. Robertson’s (1992a) insistence that scholars “consider the ways in which the world ‘moved’
from being merely ‘in itself’ to the problem or the possibility of its being ‘for itself’” (55) is, in my opinion, an
alternative description for the delimiting process resulting from globality in relation to the production of social life.
1
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are even more available to be considered for purposes of calculation, gain or decline, as the
marketplace of religious ideas and religious adherence/non-adherence becomes circumscribed.
Contemporary evangelistic focus on the so-called 10/40 missions window (Wagner, Peters, and
Wilson 2010) that, in the 1990s, circumscribed the area between the 10th and 40th parallels as
containing the “least evangelized” peoples in the world are an example of this phenomenon, as
well as the more recent discussions of a “40/70” window that includes much of (now secular)
Europe and Russia targeted for evangelization and deliverance from “religious spirits” (Holvast
2008; Wagner et al. 2000) by the same third wave Renewalists. Evangelization efforts target
those “unreached” parts of the known world much as a corporation would target certain
populations for opportunities to increase market share. Such capabilities assist in defining a field
of religious competition with the boundaries of the “whole world” now known, with religious
populations tracked, and competition and conflict appearing on borders of religious frontiers.
Certainly the ICEJ tracks these conflicts—in Egypt between Coptic Christians and the Muslim
Brotherhood, in Nigeria with the Islamic terror group Boko Haram and Nigerian Christians (and
moderate Muslims), and in Uganda between Muslims and Christians as I demonstrated in chapter
3 with the case of pastor Umar Mulinde—as target markets within their theological worldview
for the advance of the Kingdom of God.
Importantly, changes resulting from globality have also assisted with the tracking of
diaspora Jews and their return to Israel, conversion to Christianity, and/or their subjection to
antisemitism as we have seen in previous chapters, specifically with the ICEJ and Messianic
Judaism, but which can be seen in other Christian Zionist branches and in Jewish organizations
like the Jewish Agency. One explicit demonstration of this phenomenon, sustained by global
processes, is the manner in which Howard Flower, the longtime Aliyah Director of the ICEJ, and
245
his team went about recruiting Russian Jews for possible aliyah after the dissolution of the
U.S.S.R. Flower and his team located individuals with “phonetically Jewish” names, as listed in
initially physical and then digitized phone books, collected the names, and turned them over to
the Jewish Agency, which then conducted cold-calls for aliyah recruits.2 The social and religious
conditions of Jews become important to the development and subsequent unfolding of the
theology of Renewalist Zionists; as discussed in chapter 3, increases in anti-semitism are seen to
be markers for satanic influence.
Though likely best conceived as structurally independent and operationalized at different
rates and potencies in different times and locations (Campbell 2005, 28), territorial, religious,
ethnic and moral boundaries become porous under conditions of globalization and one
response—by no means the only response—has been competition for space and legitimacy under
conditions of greatly-increased contact within the closed system of “the world.” Exclusivist
identities, instantiated in global social movements, often based in moral visions of the world, and
crossing traditional boundaries of nation, language and ethnicity appear to now be the norm.
Sometimes these movements create new, global but exclusivist institutions such as the ICEJ;
sometimes they operate through existing global institutions, such as the global vision operating
through the United Nations which, perhaps not coincidentally, has been decidedly hostile to
Israel since its decision to recognize Israel as a state in 1947 (Laqueur 2008). Robertson (2009)
puts the situation succinctly:
We now live in a time when ‘the clash’ of different conceptions of the world as a whole
amounts to nothing less than a profound contest concerning what may be called the
‘definition’ of the global situation—something like a global civil religion—or, as an
Orwellian nightmare, a global theocracy. The latter is, indeed, what some contemporary
2
The approach worked both in Russia and in Germany, but not the United States, according to Flower. See Howard
Flower, “Net Fishing: Twenty years of bringing God’s people home,” March 29, 2011, accessed 5/1/13,
http://us.icej.org/news/special-reports/net-fishing.
246
political religious movements seem to desire. National and civilizational assertions of the
latter are in intense rivalry, bordering on nuclear war. (458, emphasis his)
Even if one does not ascribe worst-case political scenarios to all political religious movements
(as I would not for the ICEJ, which does not seek violent overthrow of secular regimes in the
course of establishing a religious theocracy), his point is clear: conceptions of the world “as a
whole” lead to the emergence of global definitions of the situation, and these, comprising
important parts of global culture, are not without significant consequence. In the case of
Renewalist Zionism these conceptions are transposable, transportable, deeply embedded in
globalization processes, and represent a “global definition of the situation” with significant
market share, as my review of the quantitative data in chapter 1 demonstrates. In this sense,
Renewalist Zionism is a global culture par excellance.
Globality and relativization
A major component of globality, understood from within the perspective of the sociology
of knowledge, is called “relativization.” Relativization is the process whereby one’s own reality
or the reality assumed by one’s group is “relativized” by the presence and impingement of
competing realities, then necessarily seen as one reality among many, rather than reality as such
(cf. Campbell 2005, 4ff). It is not enough that alternative traditions be present to consciousness;
the “other” traditions must impinge on the perception of one’s own tradition in a way that often
generates an active response (Campbell 2005, 52; Berger 1979, 2010). Within sociological
theory relativization is intended to convey the decreasing holding power of particular systems of
thought and belief for individuals and collectivities when these systems are impinged upon by
coherent alternatives through processes of pluralization (Robertson 1992a, 131; Esposito,
Fasching, and Lewis 2008, 5), leaving individuals with what Peter Berger called the condition of
haeresis, or being forced to choose between competing systems (Berger 1979; Berger and
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Zijderveld 2009). Cultural relativization is often accompanied by religious revivals, new
religious movements, and religious instability (i.e. the fragmenting of traditions). It often
includes outbreaks of nativism or xenophobia and in some cases turns to cultural nostalgia and
the appearance of “back-to-nature” movements, or military oriented movements of
nationalism/patriotism (Campbell 2005, 82).3 Campbell (2005) further connects it with increases
in psychological disorders; “public panics and paranoias;” the degrading of master narratives,
such as found in what has come to be called postmodernity; periods of heightened emotionalism;
and the “undermining and renegotiation of moral consensus” (80-3). In short, globalization
produces conditions of fluidity in relation to identity (Beyer 1994, 8), conditions probably
captured best by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s apt phrase “liquid modernity” (2000). Not even
secular millennial notions are exempt with the utopian vision of modern history crumbling under
the weight of relativization processes (Casanova 2001, 418-9). Sociologist Peter Beyer has also
noted that globalization “brings with it the relativization of particularistic identities along with
the relativization and marginalization of religion as a mode of social communication” (Beyer
1994, 4). That such a condition is conducive to the establishment of a global marketplace of
ideas and competing worldviews—not least among them religious systems—is fairly obvious, as
the example of the Christian broadcasters in the previous chapter and in other scholarly works
(Hunt 2000) demonstrate. However, the establishment of such a marketplace—at least as seen
through Renewalism—is not reducible to inherited Protestant-ethic analyses that focus on the
functional relationship between religion and the capitalist system (Hefner 2013, 24; Martin 1990,
3
One could add transnational paramilitary movements, such as Al Qaida or related organizations, to this list.
248
ch. 11).4 In the last analysis, conversion to Renewalism is about, as Hefner (2013) states,
“individual and local rebirth—ethical subject formation, not structural reform” (9).
The outcomes generated by relativization are also transforming for collectivities at the
societal level. Hervieu-Léger (2000) describes the effects on collective identity thusly: “the
affirmation of the autonomous individual, the advance of rationalization breaking up the ‘sacred
canopies,’ and the process of institutional differentiation denote the end of societies based on
memory” (127; cf. Nora 1989). Detraditionalization, understood as the disintegration of
“organized culture—[the] sustained voices of moral and aesthetic authority serving to
differentiate values, to distinguish between what is important and what is not, to facilitate
coherent, purposeful identities, life-plans or habits of the heart” (Heelas, Lash, and Morris 1996,
5), forces individuals and groups to assemble their own identities—and to hold them, presenting
such identities to the self and to others in a coherent narrative.5 As “societies based on memory”
(Hervieu-Léger 2000, 127) disappear because of relativization processes, the resulting identity
vacuum is filled in various ways. One common response within established religions has been
religious fundamentalism (Christiano, Swatos, and Kivisto 2002, 255-69; Robertson 1989;
Berger 2010), or the reassertion of particularistic and/or nationalistic identities with religious
legitimations. The loss of singular moral direction within these movements should not be
underestimated. Fundamentalist responses, as a type of mono-perceptual focus on boundarySociologist David Martin (2013) suggests that “Pentecostalism is a natural denizen of deregulated religious
markets; its expansion benefits from, and reinforces, whatever pressure may already exist for deregulation” (42).
Sociologist Stephen Hunt (2000) adds, “the way in which the broad neo-Pentecostalism movement has developed in
the West is indicative of the tendency towards the supply and demand of contemporary religion in general” (337).
5
I bypass here the discussions of secularization, present long within—even endemic to—the field of sociology of
religion and the study of social change and modernity since Durkheim and Weber that dominated into the 1980s and
1990s. These perspectives saw many of the processes discussed here as signaling the decline of religion
(secularization) in the face of advancing “modernity” and this debate has not totally subsided. The explosion of
Renewalism globally in all its forms has played more than a small part in calling into question this narrative. See
Hunt (2010) and Berger (1999) on this. If secularization is considered mainly in forms not related to decline in
religious adherence, that is, an affirmation of secularization as societal differentiation of spheres (Gorski 2000;
Tschannen 1991), then the forces of pluralization are not a hindrance to religious vitality (Warner 1993; Smith and
Emerson 1998), though neither are they necessarily a cause of religious vitality (Chaves and Gorski 2001).
4
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drawing within assertive claims to particular identities, seems to result, at least in part, from
emotional reactions to the experience of moral ambiguity or—due to the role played by global
media—moral hypocrisy at the collective level (Stahl 2007).6 The assertion of particularistic
identity can then be understood, in part, as a type of moral disambiguation, a clarifying of what is
“true” and what is “right” in the world in the face of relativization processes that directly
undermine such assertions.
Sociologists Smith and Emerson (1998) have demonstrated that religious subcultures,
though they must now constantly compete with alternative worldviews and belief systems, can
actually gain in religious strength if they “unite both clear cultural distinction and intense social
engagement” under pluralistic conditions (90). They call this a “subcultural identity theory of
religious strength” where, essentially, the sacred canopies of past societies (Berger 1990) become
sacred umbrellas under processes of detraditionalization (Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994, 100104; Heelas, Lash, and Morris 1996), differentiation, and pluralization resulting in what HervieuLeger (2000) terms “the differentiation of total social memory into a plurality of specialized
circles of memory” (127). And while it is likely that relativization processes produce, at least in
some quarters, anomie7 or meaninglessness as a byproduct of chaos-inducing structural changes
related to inherited forms of identity establishment, for others relativization processes
prompt a hopeful search for new religious fellowship and inspirited techniques for
subjective reformation…[allowing some to] declare their independence and affirm their
6
Stahl (2007, 347) shows how the observation by Osama bin Laden of moral hypocrisy within U.S. foreign policy
was a major component of bin Laden’s complaint against the U.S. The ability to monitor “back stage” behavior and
activity due to global media versus the “front stage” hagiography provided in self-definitions of collective identity
fuel this resentment. Though I am unable to explore it here, this dynamic between front and backstage behavior may
shed light on how conservative Christians, not least Christian Zionists, talk about Islam as a “militant” versus
“peaceful” religion.
7
The term is Durkheim’s and was related to social structure rather than psychological responses (Barbalet 2006;
Durkheim and Lukes 1982, see introduction by Lukes, p. 21). However, Robert Merton developed Durkheim’s
concept to include social structure as the source of the psychological experience of anomie (Barbalet 2006; Merton
1968), a development in the concept that is helpful for my analysis here.
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dignity and power through the adoption of a more emotive, participatory, and personally
accessible variety of Christianity. (Hefner 2013, 6)
This type of Christianity, of course, is found (at least) in Renewalism and was the subject of
Hefner’s description. Religious experience, accessibility, agency and empowerment are all
features of Renewalist Christianity that contribute to its appeal, as recent works on global
Renewalist Christianity demonstrate (Anderson 2004; Brown 2011b; Coleman 2007; Peterson,
Vásquez, and Williams 2001). Therefore, religious “thriving” is possible under conditions of
relativization, but these processes result in greater reflexivity and such reflexivity results in
changes in how religion is manifested. Rather than necessarily causing loss of religious
adherence (secularization) or resulting in the homogenization or “McDonaldization” (Ritzer
2000; Robertson 2000) of global culture, the effects of globalization are best described as
structural changes in the mode of believing, as Hervieu-Leger (2000) states: “the contemporary
fragmentation of space, time and institutions entails the fragmentation of memory which the
speed of social and cultural change destroys almost as soon as it is produced” (129).
Sociologists have suggested the concept of “multiple modernities” to demonstrate that the
Western path into “modern society” and “modernization” is not the only path, but particular to
the Western historical and cultural context from which it emerged. This concept opens new
avenues to understanding global culture, as societies “modernize” on their own terms and out of
their own contexts (Hefner 1998; Eisenstadt 2002, 2003; Berger and Huntington 2002; Berger,
Davie, and Fokas 2008, chapter 4). Taking the concept further, David Martin (2013) has
suggested that Pentecostalism itself is an alternate avenue to modernity, bypassing the nation and
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“whatever is the adjacent and relatively stabilized socioreligious hierarchy” (47).8 At the societal
level then, relativization creates problems for national identity. As Robertson (2007) explains,
As the world becomes increasingly compressed, with particular regard to nation-states, so
do national histories come increasingly into conflict with each other and the trend
towards presenting such histories as being rooted in the distant past grows more intense.
(14, n2)
States become more interconnected and, in the process, become more “constrained to ‘declare’
what they stand for, their historical significance, indeed their raison d'être” (Robertson 2006,
381). The intensity to root identity in the distant past has been observed by other
phenomenologically oriented sociologists. In one poignant example, Zerubavel (2003) has found
a “mnemonic syncretism” among the calendars (temporal universal) of global national societies
(temporal particular). Of the 191 national calendars he examined, nearly all used a bimodal
commemorative scheme in which holidays (often religious) were constructed around “highly
memorable sacred peaks sporadically protruding from wide, commemoratively barren valleys of
virtually unmarked, profane time” (2003, 31-33). These peaks congregated around the very
distant past (within a few hundred years before/after BCE/CE) or in the recent past (within the
last two-hundred years). “Modernity” may have multiple entry routes, but structural similarities
do appear and are in the process of emerging still. Zerubavel found that the global community of
nations, in other words, has a form of self-commemoration that is structured to systematically
ignore the period between Western Classical Antiquity and the Modern Era, to declare relevance
anchored in both the distant past and modern history.9 Anchoring national identity in antiquity
Martin elaborates: “Pentecostalism spearheads the modern efflorescence of the transnational voluntary group,
depending on protective borders around the believers rather than on territorial borders. It often lacks a sense of
locality and place, and lies at the other end of the spectrum from territorial churches conferring membership by
ethnic birthright” (39).
9
The affinity with the ad fontes principle of Renaissance humanism and its sister concept sola scriptura from the
Protestant Reformation (McGrath 2004, 43-44) should not be missed. Both arose during the same historical period
and geographical location, and both appealed to the same historical (as in calendrical) periods as do the nations in
Zerubavel’s findings.
8
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has value in relation to identity formation, so it seems. The compatibility of such structuration
with the dramatic rise (but not birth) of Christian Zionism beginning in the late 19th century and
accelerating dramatically in late modernity should not be missed: in Renewalist Zionism the
echoes of the “former” (antiquity) and the “latter rains” (modern) demonstrate their vitality in
collective identity formation (see chapter 3). Historian Robert Smith (2010) observes that U.S.
Christian Zionists may support Israel because of an established American meta-narrative
recognizing Israel as a co-chosen people. But Renewalist Zionism adds, at least, a transnational,
global-culture twist in that adherents root a common, transnational identity in what is essentially,
for them, the capital city of Christianity—Jerusalem—and the material source from which their
identity—past, present and future—finds permanent ground. In this manner, a type of theological
democratic space is opened so that all nations are judged by a single criterion: their relations to
“the only nation founded by God.” For the ICEJ, Israel itself is not spared from right alignment:
As a nation, Israel remains in rebellion against Jesus of Nazareth and this factor has more
to do with her present struggle than we are prepared to admit! (Matt. 23:37-39) (Luke
19:41-44) Jesus is a Jewish Messiah and the only way of salvation. (Acts 4:11-12)10
As seen in the convictions expressed in the ICEJ’s Feast of Tabernacles celebration, all nations
have a responsibility to respond to the gospel in the Renewalist Zionist worldview; all nations
besides Israel have a duty to respond to God’s activity in the establishment of Israel. Returning
to the role of Jerusalem, a crude but apt comparison is to identify Jerusalem as functioning for
“Position Statements: The ICEJ’s core beliefs,” accessed 11/1/13, http://int.icej.org/about/position-statements. A
unique position among Christian Zionists is observed in the quote directly preceding this one: “It is thus not biblical
to suggest in any way that the Abrahamic Covenant has been abolished or reconstructed and equally, it is not
biblical to assert that the Jewish people can live on all the land promised to them without reference to their spiritual
condition. It is at this point that many Christian Zionists fail and that many of those opposing Christian Zionism
fail!” Tellingly, the ICEJ finds the Abrahamic Covenant (the covenant establishing the Jews as a distinct people) at
the root of the Christian faith (Hedding 2004b). In my observations, few Christian Zionist organizations make
explicit the spiritual condition of Israel and her “right to domicile” in Palestine, as the ICEJ puts it. And it is clear
from this position statement that “spiritual condition” is not just “belief in Jesus,” but involves a constructed concept
of justice that includes “care for all people,” to include work “for the poor, the brokenhearted, the voiceless and the
weak of this world” (see “Restoration” section of the position statement).
10
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Renewalists Zionists much in the same way that Mecca functions for Muslims and the Vatican
has historically functioned for Catholics, though the emergence of Israel and Jewish Jerusalem
simultaneously complicates and invigorates this example in a number of ways, particularly after
the alteration of Jewish-Catholic relations in Vatican II (Kaell 2010, chapter 3; Goldman 2009,
chapter 4). Contributions to the construction of a transnational identity are assisted greatly by the
establishment of a de-facto spiritual capital, even if that spiritual capital awaits the fullness of its
revelation in time.
Because subcultural identity theory presumes identity within a nationalistic context—the
title of Smith and Emerson’s book is American Evangelicalism—subcultural identity theory is
limited when considering religion in global manifestations. Smith and Emerson do not consider
globalization within their investigation. Therefore, the power of global networks is not
considered in the processes of identity construction. Global Renewalist Christianity requires that
we acknowledge the structuring of identity through transnational networks (Coleman 2007;
Miller, Sargeant, and Flory 2013, 22-3), such as the International Coalition of Apostles,
Empower21, and the international exchange of Renewalist preachers and worship teams/bands,
and the global consumption and exchange of Renewalist media as I have already documented. Of
course the ICEJ must, itself, be included as an exemplar of a transnational Renewalist network,
which has been described by political geographers as “an attempt to create something anew – a
geopolitical actor to not just represent, but constitute, Christian Zionism on a global scale”
(McConnell, Moreau, and Dittmer 2012, 810, emphasis theirs).
The formation of transnational organizations that facilitate a global consciousness,
specifically the rise of a global Renewalist consciousness, is a powerful response to the
relativization of national identities, particularly when they are contested at home. Nowhere is this
254
more evident than at the ICEJ’s annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration where 80 nations are
told by the ICEJ’s Executive Director Jurgen Buhler that they, together, are the fulfillment of
prophecies that expect a global harvest of persons immediately prior to the return of Jesus, and
these flocking to Jerusalem to celebrate the coming king. Where national memory fragments, the
potential for global identities emerge; yet national identities do not disappear, but are reaffirmed
in highly intentional ways, such as the liturgical affirmation provided to national identity in the
ICEJ’s parade of nations, discussed previously. One of the recurring themes in Renewalist
Zionist literature, also seen on my trip, was the emphasis that “God deals with individuals and
nations,” and, occasionally, cities as well.11 National identity retains an importance in the
Renewalist Zionist worldview, particularly in relation to Israel. Each of these entities has a
responsibility to “bless” Israel and to obtain benefits from “blessings” or “curses” for harming
Israel. Judgment will be executed by God accordingly through Jesus, God’s magistrate, in the
end of days. Whole books in the Christian Zionist genre are dedicated to retelling national
histories based on the relationship of a particular nation to Israel at very specific points in history
(see Cahn 2012; Koenig 2004; McTernan 2008, just to list a few). The parade of nations should
be seen in this light: as an event for individuals who, in ritual form, are staking a claim for their
nation in relation to Israel even if (maybe especially if) their nations—particularly leaders, who
are seen as representing the spiritual condition of the nation—are otherwise hostile or not in
proper relationship to the Israeli state.12 Here, the “sacred umbrellas” of Smith and Emerson are
See Juha Ketola, ICEJ International Director, “Isaiah 62 Prayer Campaign: February 2013 Prayer Letter.” Ketola
makes the relationship explicit in the same letter: “Pray for the leader of your own nation by his/her name.
Depending on how your nation relates to Israel, it can attract either a blessing or a curse upon your country. So pray
that your leader will recognise this so your nation will be saved from harm’s way.”
12
The new Executive Director of the ICEJ, Jurgen Buhler, has recently taught that the church should consider that
God has put difficult leaders in place in order to “refine” the church in preparation for the assumption of rule of the
church with Jesus. Rather than focusing energy on opposing these leaders, the church should rather recognize that
these rulers, though they may be unjust, have been placed in positions of authority to further the purposes of God in
11
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now seen in Renewalist Zionism to be the reformed and reconstituted national identities, taking
their place under the sacred canopy that is global Renewalist consciousness. Carrying that
metaphor further, for Renewalist Zionists the stem of that umbrella is planted firmly in the
materiality of Jerusalem, made accessible in the extreme by travel, media, artifact or symbolic
replication (i.e. the Holy Land Experience or models of Jerusalem) to all Christians who find
comfort in its presence both as a place of eschatological fulfillment and as a place of sacred
ground for faith. It is here that we find stark application of Robertson’s observation that
“globalization is both challenging the existence of the nation-state as the major ‘container’ of
human beings and strengthening it” (2009, 457 emphasis his).
In this way analysis of religious competition can benefit from taking a global perspective.
Chaves and Gorksi (2001) cautioned that when assessing religious competition, two
“qualitatively different types” should be recognized: those “settings” (they did not explicitly
specify the term further) where religious membership was voluntary and those where religious
membership is “more like modern citizenship” (278). They suggested that the latter is where
conflict (political, social, cultural) would appear as religion would be “intertwined” with such
categories, resulting in religious competition engaged in “struggles over cultural, political, and
territorial influence and power” (278). The former, they suggest, is generally the case in the
modern West, but the latter characterized the Reformation period. Unsaid in their suggestion but
quite clear from the context was the modern nation-state as the container for identity and the
ground for the posited market dynamic. But to draw the distinctions this way fails to account for
the dynamics of Renewalist Zionism as just discussed: Renewalist Zionists often have social
conflict at “home” in the nation-state even though both Renewalist Zionism at home and
this way. See Jurgen Buhler, “Daniel’s Vision of Darkness and Light,” message delivered at the 2011 Feast of
Tabernacles conference in Jerusalem.
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Renewalism more generally are voluntaristic, and even though Renewalist Zionism is bound up
in identity construction on a global level around the state of Israel (its issues) and by way of the
state of Israel (its existence). It seems clear that the dynamic at play here—the assessment of
national well-being by way of the home nation’s relationship to the modern Israeli state and the
contributions of the home nation to the resolution of Israel’s political and economic challenges
and spiritual well-being—seriously complicates the two essentially ideal types of religious
competition posited by Chaves and Gorski. The religious and cultural markets cross fluidly
through national boundaries, creating both a global culture and a global religious movement.
There are also changes in the manner in which beliefs are held at the individual level that
invite consideration. At the individual level, Renewalist Christianity facilitates religious thriving
by rooting identity in emotionally-charged religious experience and divine encounter, which is
subjectively difficult to relativize (cf. Holvast 2008, 185-6, where NAR scholars make this very
case). Such movement to religious experience as authority also follows the contours of
detraditionalization more generally, as it “involves a shift of authority: from ‘without’ to
‘within’” (Heelas, Lash, and Morris 1996) as well as an observed increase in the rise of interest
in supernaturalism generally in the U.S. (Campbell 2005, chapter 6). Individuals “know” what
has happened to them through the experience of their lives—religious experience or otherwise,
but especially in emotional encounters (Mo si 2009, esp. ch. 1)—in a way that is different than
knowing based on rational, cognitive-theological truth claims, such as those privileged by the
majority of Protestantism (particularly Calvinism) since the Reformation (Robinson 2011;
Weber, Baehr, and Wells 2002).13 On these grounds rational-ethical fundamentalism saw early
For an overview of debates on the role of religious experience in the study of religion, see Ann Taves’ work,
Religious Experience Reconsidered:A building block approach to the study of religion and other special things
(2009), especially chapter 1 (cf. Martin, McCutcheon, and Smith 2012; McCutcheon 2010). In my observation of
Renewalists, religion as a “thing” (Taves uses the sociological term sui generis) from which religious experience is
13
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Pentecostalism as a threat, not just because it violated cessationist teachings of the church since
the Reformation, but also because ecstatic experience was a way of knowing, the seemingly
preferred means of experiencing God’s grace, which “undermine[d] the claim that only the
Anglo-Saxon middle class’s way of life represent[ed] a sign of election” (Riesebrodt and Reneau
1998, 45-6). The Renewalist form of knowing makes “feeling, even more than seeing” the basis
of “believing” (Brown 2011a, 363), and may be privileged precisely for its perceived stability, as
well as because of the nature of the act: subjectively experienced direct encounter with God in
which constitutive Renewalist experiences such as healing are understood as God’s love for the
individual (362).
Relying on religious experience to establish religious certainty may also be advantageous
because of the reductions in religious reflexivity provided by subjectively-experienced direct
encounter (Campbell 2005, 145-6). Further, Coleman suggests that “strong experiences can be
taken to refer metonymically to God in ways that go beyond specific expressions of language”
(2007, 68). Robbins also observes cultural plasticity in Renewalist “openness to local spiritual
languages allow[ing Pentecostal/charismatic] dualism to operate differently and mean different
things in different places” (2004, 129), making Renewalist epistemology potentially and
powerfully transportable and transposable among cultures. Pentecostal experience apparently
creates an opportunity for a distinctive Renewalist contribution to Christianity; what is there
derived does not comport well with Renewalist Christianity as practiced. From within a Renewalist perspective,
experiencing God plays a near antithesis to the experience of “religion,” and the “sacred” is highly shape-shifting
and displaying a liquidity that makes it quite difficult to contain in categories normally associated with religious
activity. This is precisely because the sacred seems to flow from the “non-materiality” of emotion-based divine
encounter into the material world. The phenomenon of “power encounters” common in third-wave Renewalism,
where spirit-filled Christians expect to have supernatural-based encounters with dark forces as a process of kingdom
advancement are one example of this, where the spirit flows into the world and overcomes darkness, creating sacred
encounter. The reader should recall my co-pilgrim Madeline who prayed for a re-enactment of the power of the
Spirit in Israel as was first displayed in Christianity in her reading of the New Testament as the means to fulfill
Israel’s sacred calling. Israel’s “potential” as a landing spot for the Spirit in the last days constructs Israel’s sacred
character as much as Israel’s “past” value as a repertoire of sites related to biblical stories. “National Israel is
destined to become spiritual Israel,” proclaims the ICEJ’s major theological position paper (Parsons Unknown year,
38-9).
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affirmed as central is quite compatible with what one sociologist has associated with antirationalist postmodern sensibilities of the third-wave (Hunt 2010). Renewalist Zionists on
pilgrimage to Israel bring with them these expectations of religious experience, and Renewalist
worship during the ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles allows pilgrims to experience God’s presence in
some imagined semblance to the pattern expected at the culmination of history, a vision derived
from their eschatology. Biblical sites are less revered for their place in biblical narrative history
and more as sites of divine intervention, potentialities for repeat divine performances (high
context mimicry), as I noted in various chapters, especially chapter 5.
Robertson’s theoretical model of Globality, Relativization and Identity
Processes of relativization resulting from globalization have been accelerating as
globalization accelerates. Periods of intense globalization have also corresponded to important
developments in Christian Zionism. Though not more than a correlation can be suggested here, a
brief review of Robertson’s model of globalization can help to focus the discussion as a means of
tracking the development of Christian Zionism, including its Renewalist form, over the past few
centuries. To reiterate, the chief aspect of cultural globalization that forms my focus here is an
intransitive process that is observed in the effects on consciousness resulting from conditions of
globality and the pluralization of worldviews, the outcome of which is relativization. Processes
of relativization place individuals in a precarious situation: as sociologist of religion Peter
Berger has put it, conditions resulting from relativism shift individuals “from fate to choice”
regarding their identities (Berger 1979; Berger and Zijderveld 2009). A theoretical model
sensitive to the emergence of globality is required to account for the history of globalization and
cultural change as well as the method and structure of its development. Robertson’s “minimal
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phase” model of globalization (1992a, 58-60; 2007, 9-10) will assist with the former, to which I
now turn.
Robertson observes six phases14 in the “temporal-historical” world-trajectory of
globalization up to the present.15 The “Germinal Phase” occurred in Europe from the earlyfifteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries and important developments included the expansion of
the Catholic church, growth of the nation-state, attention and development of concepts of
humanity and the self, slow spread of a common (Gregorian) calendar, and the developments in
the sciences of heliocentrism and geography.
The “Incipient Phase,” again mainly in Europe, lasted from the mid-eighteenth century to
the 1870s, with its chief characteristics including a crystallization of the nation-state as a unitary
body with concurrent developments in international relations and the concretization of the
development concomitant ideas of the “citizen” and “human/humanity.” Correlatively, this
period was the “incipient phase” for Christian Zionism, especially after the French Revolution in
England, as discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Additionally, the first World’s Fair (1851) and other
international gatherings arose during this time, as did developing systems of law and
transnational regulation and conceptions of “other,” non-European societies and their relation to
international society.
The third phase corresponds to the rise of a “crisis of memory” identified by certain
social memory theorists (to be discussed in the next chapter). Robertson calls this the “Take-off
Phase” of globalization, beginning in the 1870s and lasting until the 1920s. This seminal phase
14
Robertson added a seventh (millennial) phase explicitly to the earlier (1992) discussion in 2007. In another
publication between 1992 and 2007, Robertson identifies a “global animus” or “premodern global sensitivities,”
which date all the way back to the 4th century Greeks, demonstrating that “forms of ‘global consciousness’ and
‘globality’ are not developments solely confined to modernity, as has often been thought’ (Robertson and Inglis
2004, 40). The following discussion on the minimal phase model is taken from these 1992 and 2007 sources without
further reference, but with the 2004 source in mind.
15
See Campbell (2005, 78-9; 2007) for extensive elaboration on Robertson’s first six phases.
260
involved the crystallization of Robertson’s global field (see below), early concern with
“modernity” and the issues and problems it generated, rapid advances in communication,
restrictions on immigration, inclusion of non-European states in the international society,
international developments in the concept of humanity, the rise of the ecumenical movement in
religion, the rise of the Olympics and international prizes, the first World War and the nearly
completed global adoption of a single calendar. One historian of Christianity has suggested that
due to the mass missions movements beginning in Europe and the U.S., combined with
significant European migration—all potential carriers of relativization processes—the period
1870-1925 is the period most responsible for shaping modern Christianity (Kalu 2008, 6).
Robertson’s Take-Off phase can also be conceived as the “take-off phase” of Christian Zionism,
especially in the United States, where prophetic conferences and a (somewhat modified)
dispensationalist message were eagerly received. Whereas U.S. culture in the first half of the
nineteenth century was largely evangelical and “evangelicals lived in a society whose basic
ideals and structures were congruent with their own religious experience, and the two reinforced
one another” (Moorhead 1984, 531), this state of affairs was beginning to crack in the second
half of the century. (Largely) dispensationalist premillennialism combined with the nascent
fundamentalist movement would eventually serve as a weapon in the struggle for denominations
and for academic institutions, as Protestantism wrestled with displacement from its hegemonic
cultural and social positions. Robertson (1992a) identifies the general rise of “wilful (sic)
nostalgia” during this phase, a phase that “witnessed the flowering of the urge to invent
traditions” (155).16 “The beginning of the end,” in the words of Christian Smith, was
Perhaps the “flowering of the urge to invent traditions” that dominated the late 19 th and early 20th centuries made
it easy for scholars to associate the invention of Christian Zionism with the presence of premillennial
dispensationalism. As I have shown in chapter 3, that connection should be avoided. However, the broad reception
16
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…somewhere about 1870. The following five decades saw the Protestant establishment
routed from social power, its cultural authority greatly diminished, and its institutional
influence greatly reduced…Religious views came quickly to be defined as largely
irrelevant to, not as unified with, true scientific knowledge. By the 1890s, Christian higher
education was being definitively supplanted by an education revolution championing a
fundamentally secular model of higher education and inquiry…[These two changes]
effectively exclude[ed] religion from the core institutions of socially legitimate knowledge
production and distribution. (2003b, 26-27; cf. Robertson 1992a, 147-52)
The reactions were not overnight; Bruce Kuklick (1996) suggests that the “burgeoning study of
the ancient world” that occurred during this time was often fueled by a desire to affirm biblical
truth using the accumulating capital of the natural sciences (120-1).17 The academy was in full
Orientalist mode with 50 years of experience by the end of the century (21).18 The same year
Christian Zionist William Blackstone published his book Jesus is Coming (1878), German
scholar Julius Wellhausen published his influential work Prolegomena to the History of Israel,
the latter which challenged typical readings of Genesis and the role of Moses in their
compilation.19 For a time, archaeology of Palestine in particular did some exculpatory work in
the academy to stem the tide20 of the cultural-establishment erosions induced by higher criticism
and Darwinian evolutionary theory, each of which disrupted inherited confidences in sources of
of such a message—its “flowering,” in this case—can be traced to this period, but even more extensive flowering in
the late 20th century.
17
This is an example of what Giddens (2000) has described as the effect of the reflexivity produced by
globalization: the “end of tradition” and the demise of the “traditional way,” which meant “defending traditional
activities through their own ritual and symbolism—defending tradition through its internal claims to truth” (43). Cf.
Giddens (1991, 38) where he is less careful in his analysis regarding the presence of tradition in modern life,
relegating it to “tradition in sham clothing” because it is tradition requiring justification in the presence of the more
powerful modern reflexivity. His association of religion with tradition, almost as synonyms or the former as a subset
of the latter, becomes problematic in these earlier works because of this romanticized treatment of tradition, as it did
for other sociologists since the 1960s (cf. Berger 1990).
18
Kuklick (1996, 19-24) documents the rise of Orientalist-focused studies beginning in the 1840s with the founding
of the American Oriental Society (AOS), and their spread among American universities by the end of the century.
The AOS had deeply influenced the later American Palestine Exploration Societies in the 1870s.
19
For a discussion on Wellhausen and the influence of this work in the U.S., see Kuklick (1996, 22).
20
I must sidestep any possible errors in philosophical assumptions about the nature of the truth of any particular
religion in the employment of scientific means for apologetic ends. Cf. Kuklick, 189ff for a discussion on this. That
learned individuals could, at the time, make such unquestioning assumptions should suggest that more than just the
truth of any particular belief was at stake: the status and legitimacy of knowledge, the control of established
institutions, the breakup of an integrated worldview and, more fundamentally, the identity of a nation or even
‘civilization,’ all originally perceived as sourced by religion, were the central concerns.
262
social and cultural authority. As an example, archaeological fascination with Palestine found
expression in an archaeology-informed, nearly full-scale model of Jerusalem that was part of the
1904 St. Louis World’s Fair; President Teddy Roosevelt anticipated the exhibit would “secure
prominence to the religious side of the world’s development” (Long 2003, chapter 2, quote from
p. 51). (It is clear from Long’s chapter that Roosevelt’s use of the word “religious” was
synonymous with the word “Christian,” typical of the social gospel progressivism and
postmillennialism of the day.)
The fourth phase Robertson calls the “Struggle-for-Hegemony” phase, dating from the
mid-1920s to the mid-1960s and included the Second World War, use of the atomic bomb, the
establishment of the U.N., the emergence of the Cold War, and the “crystallization of the Third
World.” The Holocaust focused much of the world on the idea of “humanity,” and Protestant
(including and especially mainline Protestant) concern for Jews after the war was critical for the
establishment of the Israeli state (Carenen 2010). The fifth (“Uncertainty”) phase spanned the
late 1960s until the turn of the millennium and included a marked rise in globality, in no small
part due to the moon landing in 1969. Relativization processes were powerful during this period:
the end of the Cold War (and concepts of the “end of history”), the rise of human rights
discourse, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and rapid expansion of global capitalism
and international institutions marked this phase, as did another dramatic period of advancement
in global communication (global media) and travel. This phase is also marked by increases in
physical contact by disparate cultural groupings resulting from immigration with accompanying
socio-cultural issues for nation-states; the pluralization of worldviews resulting from massmedia; global civil-rights discourse; and sharp increases in concern with the concept of humanity
as a byproduct of genocides, as well as the first U.N. Earth Summit in Rio and Kyoto
263
international climate treaty. The rise of the public concern with “Christian Zionism” also arose
during this phase (see chapter 2).
The seventh and last phase Robertson marks sharply from 9/11/01 to the present and he
calls this the “Millennial” phase characterized by a dramatic rise in “apocalyptic eschatological”
discourse, which had been developing at the end of the previous phase (Robertson 2007).
Discourses of nuclear annihilation, additional world-war(s), divinely-inspired (“premillennial”)
ends to the world, global eco-catastrophe, and more optimistic “postmillennial” dispositions
focused on progressive discourses (Robertson 2009) etc., all focused on the idea of the end of the
world, the potential demise of humanity itself, “terrorism” as a global problem, or the ultimate
triumph of science and “rationality.” The end is near, but the exact nature of that end is defined
in dramatically different ways, described by Robertson and Chirico as “global telic concern”
(1985, 28; Campbell 2005). Global consciousness mixes with nationalist particularities, often
resulting in social conflict (Robertson 2009), with Robertson arguing that such conditions and
the conflict that results have shaped global consciousness into this new, millennial phase of
globalization (2007). Apocalypticism and the intense emotions expressed through it have now
become a central component of global culture (Robertson 2007; 2009, 458), with threats that
have real (Wuthnow 2010) or imagined bases, and secular and/or religious ideological origins
and responses (Landes 2011).21 Candy Gunther Brown observes that “globalization
characteristically heightens the threat of disease, thereby fueling the growth of religious
movements such as Pentecostalism that are centrally concerned with healing” (2011c, 6) even in
areas “where biomedical science is the most sophisticated, convenient, and affordable” (7).
Global environmental degradation in the form of pollution must be considered a likely causal
It should be noted that Robertson’s usage of the terms “millennial” and “apocalyptic” are enumerated in his work
to incorporate all forms of millennialism—particularly pre- and post-millennialism—as defined in this work, and
therefore encompass pessimistic and optimistic dispositions often associated with each.
21
264
factor in the rise of this threat, raising interesting scholarly questions about environmental issues
and the practice of global Renewalism.
Together, these phases, especially beginning in the third phase and intensifying in each
additional phase, involve the simultaneous relativization of previous forms of identity, their reconstruction in a particular structural mode, and the declaration and development of new forms
of identity, resulting in a “global human condition,” or, conceptualized analytically, a “global
field” (figure 1, below, taken from Robertson 1992a, 27):
Figure 8. Robertson’s relativization paradigm, “Globalization as a Problem.”
The four points on Robertson’s global field—each relatively autonomous but highly
interdependent (Robertson 1991, 281)—marks the four reference points comprising globality, or
the various ways in which globalization exists and has proceeded historically in the social
265
shrinking of the world and in the development of global consciousness. It is the interaction of
these four major points—the generation of relativizations and processes of detraditionalization—
that lead directly to the development of memory as a problem for the social sciences and for
religion, as I will discuss in the next chapter. As Robertson comments, “the world as a whole is,
in a sense, a world of reflexive interlocutors” (1992a, 31), and this reflexivity makes identity
precarious in that it must be constructed and held by individuals and collectivities, rather than the
reverse.22 Anthony Giddens (2000) has called this “tradition defended in a non-traditional way;”
in other words, “Traditions will continue to be sustained in so far as they can effectively be
justified—not in terms of their own internal rituals, but as compared to other traditions or ways
of doing things” (45).
Universalization and Particularization in the construction of religio-cultural systems
As globality and the developing global culture proceed, structural changes in the modes
of constructing identity at each of the four points of globality can be seen to obtain increasingly
homogenous forms, though not homogenous content; for instance, nations appeal to the universal
concepts of national sovereignty and self-direction to instantiate particular polities and cultural
distinctions. The commonalities and differences in the emergence of global calendars discussed
by Zerubavel, above, is another example. This emergence of homogenous forms but not content
does not prevent the fact that “shared bas[es] of identity presentation” often conflict dramatically
22
See also Thomas (2007) who takes up this theme in his discussion on the role of secular rationalism as religion
and implicated in global religious conflict. Though beyond the scope of this dissertation, Thomas’ placement of
secular culture within the system of global conflict is both apt and probably necessary, given the prevalence of
secular institutions (particularly the academy) as interlocutors within the discourses of various strains of Christian
Zionism. Christians United For Israel, for instance, has put significant resources, including three staff persons, into
training U.S. college students to be advocates for Israel on college campuses, including quite sophisticated training
materials and fully-funded trips to Israel, where “future leaders” can put a material face to the connection they
already experience. See “CUFI On Campus: Chapter Development Handbook,” Summer 2011. As of May, 2013,
CUFI had “over 100 recognized chapters and a presence on 220 campuses across America”; see “An Urgent Letter
from a CUFI on Campus Leader,” May 14, 2013, subscriber email.
266
(Robertson 1992a, 99). Indeed, there is an increasingly global expectation, generated through
global processes, that an identity—especially but not only a religious one—should be declared
(Spickard 2007, 234; Robertson 1992a, 175). Pertaining to religion, the mode has been largely
derived from Christian modes of identity formation, such as stated beliefs and practices and
particular belongings, as to a gathered religious community such as a church (Beyer 2006, 2007).
This is also implied in Hervieu-Leger’s (2000) observation that the mode of believing in modern
religion has the unique aspect of appeal to a chain of memory—a form especially prevalent in the
so-called ‘historic’ (“Abrahamic”) religions. In this we have arrived at Robertson’s famous
dictum of the universalization of the particular and the particularization of the universal
(Robertson 1992a). There is increasingly a global expectation that ways of doing identity will
have a universal, recognizable form, but will be appropriated in a (virtually) unlimited manner in
order to establish distinction and obtain difference, as a means of creating the “other”—in short,
to establish identity (102). Therefore, nationalism (or the particularization of states) emerges
only in conjunction and mutual interpenetration with the development of an international system
of relations (103). Nations complete their self-identity by filling in their particular national
celebrations around this universal form in obviously structured patterns. Even regionally specific
ethno-geographic identifications, such as “Asian,” “African,” “Latino,” “European,” “Arab,”
implying they are “other,” occupy increasingly important space in global-cultural
particularizations (Beyer 2006, 26). Additionally, “humanity” has come to remember the
Holocaust as a special, universal moral event around which other particular holocausts
(genocides) can be compared and contrasted (Alexander 2004b). Immigrants arriving to the
United States find themselves consistently asked to identify their religion (their particularity) as a
process of being incorporated into their new nation (the universal). These immigrants respond by
267
becoming more acquainted with the religion of their homeland, even becoming more ‘religious’
than they were before they arrived, thus establishing their particularity and affirming religion as
an increasingly universal mode of particularity—now beyond the nation-state. These immigrants,
in turn, display their new religiosity and religious forms to their original, “home” communities
(Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000; Levitt 2007; Beyer 1999, 292).23 Thus “the global expresses itself
only as local and the local expresses itself in global terms” (Beyer 2006, 24). Robertson employs
the term glocalization to describe sociologically this interpenetration of the global and the local
(see Robertson 2009, 462 for the most recent usage). For pre-existing cultural systems—
especially, but not only, for religion—this does not mean a negation of the past, but, historically
speaking, a new instance of re-creation and a re-affirmation of at least certain elements of these
previous cultural systems, varying with time and location under the longue durée of global
conditions and including anti-global sentiment (Beyer 1998; Lechner 1995). Put simply,
relativization easily becomes revitalization.
Application: the case of Bolivia’s Minestero Bautista International
The activities of the ICEJ in Bolivia are a case in point. Minestero Bautista International
(MBI) is a third-wave Renewalist mega-church high in the Andes mountains in Santa Cruz,
Bolivia. According to the church’s retelling of its history24 it was originally planted by Brazilian
missionaries on behalf of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board of Brazil in 1947, but
had little growth until around 1999 when the leadership adopted a “cell church” program called
G12,25 modeled after David Yongii Cho’s Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea. (Yoido
23
Religion, in this instance, also gets (re-)bound up with the particularity of ethnicity.
See “History of MBI,” accessed 11/3/13, http://www.mbi12.com/historia-del-mbi/.
25
The number “12” in the G12 program stands for the number of leaders responsible for cell groups, and mimicking
the number of the original disciples in the New Testament. In MBI these leaders, hierarchically under the senior
pastor, are alternatively called “pastors,” “apostles,” and “macro-cell leaders” (“Líder Macrocélula”) and there is a
24
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Full Gospel Church, as previously discussed, is Renewalist and the largest church in the world.)
Now at 9,000 members, MBI experienced significant growth essentially after becoming
charismatic and adopting a cell-structure. Though inspired by Cho’s church the program was
created by Cesar Castellanos, head pastor of the International Charismatic Mission Church in
Bogotá, Columbia, which has a reported 200,000 members in 45,000 cell groups—all in
Bogotá.26 Castellanos’ church and model is typical of third wave Renewalism in that it relies
more on transnational networks than denominational affiliation (Hocken 2009, 38). As Hocken
explains, “what really distinguishes the new church groupings from established denominations is
their relatedness to an unelected charismatic leader-for-life” (38), a situation that appears to
apply to MBI under the leadership of Apostle Alberto Magno de Salas. De Salas also happens to
be the National Branch Director, Bolivia for the ICEJ.
In December of 2012, De Salas was able to gather 15,000 individuals in the Santa Cruz
Real Coliseum where their weekly services are held in order to meet with an ICEJ delegation
during the celebration of Hanukah. (Since 1999, the church holds Shabbat services every Friday
evening for the congregation, which de Salas reports is the most attended weekly service.27 In a
video of the ICEJ event, de Salas is seen wearing a Jewish kippah, or skullcap, and a star of
David on his tie.)28 According to the ICEJ,29 the church brings a significant delegation (estimated
at 200) every year to the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, a trip that became a theological
range of men and women in the leadership among these twelve. See “Pastors of our church,” accessed 11/3/13,
http://www.mbi12.com/pastores/.
26
See the G12 website, “What is G12,” accessed 11/3/13, http://www.g12media.tv/en/g12/26-what-is-g12.
27
See “30 Years of the Feast,” Shalle’ McDonald and Taylor Innes, World from Jerusalem, November, 2009, p. 5.
28
De Salas describes his church as “being open to understanding” the vision he had of his church supporting Israel.
The ICEJ ceremony in Bolivia was rich in Jewish symbolism, including multiple shofars and talits. In a commentary
on the ceremony, ICEJ director Jurgen Buhler calls the Bolivian experience “symptomatic of what the Holy Spirit is
doing in many places around the world: not only that large crowds of people are being swept into the kingdom of
God, but we see also that the Holy Spirit is linking up the revived church with what God is doing here in the land of
Israel.” See “ICEJ Report: Reaching Bolivia with the message of Israel’s restoration,” May 1, 2013, accessed
11/4/13, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xZ60mF8nvc.
29
See “Celebrating Hanukkah in Bolivia,” Word From Jerusalem, January/February 2013, page 25.
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conviction for de Salas at the same time of his exposure to the G12 model.30 MBI also takes up a
weekly offering on behalf of Israel that is given to the ICEJ and eighteen local churches
participate in that offering.31 Giving to Israel through the ICEJ, according to De Salas, is what
makes his “church and community” prosper.32 De Salas describes the value of the Jerusalem
Feast celebration to his congregation by suggesting that pilgrims are “enabled by the Holy Spirit
to see and understand the time of the Visitation of God on our Earth.”33 He also expresses the
value of the guided tours in the overcoming of “Roman concepts [which have] robbed us of our
first inheritance/heritage” (my translation).34 De Salas extols the value of “comforting” Israel
through “love,” “intercession” (prayer), “respect,” and “all our offerings” in that such activities
bring blessings on the “Bolivian nation,” particularly Bolivia’s “reputation and image”
(“sanando la reputación y la imagen de Bolivia”). He ends his sermon by quoting from a passage
popular with Renewalists, found in James 5:7-8:
Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for
the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter
rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
(NKJV, emphasis mine)
We see in his deployment of the James passage some very familiar themes: the early and latter
rains, coupled with an expectation of both “fruit” and the second coming of Jesus. MBI is
See bios for Alberto and Gladys de Salas. The bios claim that both are formally “Apostles of revival,”
http://www.mbi12.com/apostoles-mbi12/. It is not clear which organization provided the designation.
31
“30 Years of the Feast,” p. 5
32
“30 Years of the Feast,” p. 5
33
See “Pastoral Message – A DIFFERENT HARVEST!,” sermon delivered August 25, 2013, accessed 11/3/13,
http://www.mbi12.com/audio-items/mensaje-pastoral-una-cosecha-diferente-25-de-agosto/.
34
The full passage is as follows: “Esta semana tenemos la alegría de tener con nosotros a nuestro guía en Israel por
varios años: Felix Lev Ari y su esposa Lilach. Estamos experimentando una Cosecha Diferente como lo declaramos
en el título de nuestra pastoral. Por varios años Felix ha sido nuestro “Moreh” (nombre dado a los guías turísticos en
Israel y que significa: indicador de caminos) y nos ha ayudado en mucho a comprender el Israel físico y material.
Pero, en esta labor nos ha dado pistas para comprender más aún el Israel espiritual ya plantarnos en la Visión de
Israel que nos ha liberado de muchos conceptos romanos y que nos robaba la bendición de nuestra herencia
primera.” See “Pastoral Message – A DIFFERENT HARVEST!,” sermon delivered August 25, 2013, accessed
11/3/13, http://www.mbi12.com/audio-items/mensaje-pastoral-una-cosecha-diferente-25-de-agosto/. The word
“herencia” is also a biological term in Spanish used to describe genetic heredity, according to Collins Spanish
Dictionary, 1st desktop edition, s.v. “herencia.”
30
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saturated with Renewalist Zionist rhetoric and is part of the third wave of Renewalist
Christianity, though for only 14 years. In its role as housing the national branch of the ICEJ it is
able to attract thousands of people in support of Israel and to take a significant delegation every
year to the Feast of Tabernacles, even in a country as poor as Bolivia.35
The national context of Bolivia also illuminates the challenges of identity formation that
have been the subject of this chapter. In 2006, Evo Morales, a cocoa-farmer of Aymara36
descent, was elected president of Bolivia. According to anthropologist Nancy Postero (2007),
Morales was the first indigenous leader of the country in 500 years. Like the recently elected
president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, Morales chose to campaign on his indigenous roots (9) and
to incorporate indigenous (Tiwanaku) ritual, dress and speech into his inaugural festivities, held
at ruins of the Tiwanaku Empire (300-1000 CE), an important pre-Incan civilization. Postero
states that “the Tiwanaku ceremony was a public declaration that Morales was in fact bringing
his indigenous customs and values to the presidency” (2). Postero describes that in the cultural
context of Bolivia (and even among the international community), the event was perceived as
rich with cultural symbolism and meaning, including what might be described as “millennial”
meaning (3). Inherited notions of time in traditional Andean culture are cyclical; Postero reports
that many Bolivians viewed Morales election as a pachakuti, or a ritual of change. Citing the
work of historian Leon Campbell, Postero notes that the term is deeply religious, signifying a
cataclysmic break—one of many in cyclical time—with the established, unjust order, led by
viceroys of the Andean creator God (3). This concept is embedded in a cultural matrix with
35
Further work should be done on the Bolivian experience with the Feast of Tabernacles. Specifically, what is the
nature of funding for the annual pilgrimage for such a large delegation of individuals? How do parishioners raise
funds for the trip? Are the pilgrims comprised of only the more wealthy individuals of the church? Furthermore,
does MBI receive financial benefits from the ICEJ in the former’s capacity as a “national branch?” The nature of the
ICEJ’s finances—where money comes from and where it goes—appears to be tightly guarded.
36
The Aymara are an indigenous people located in Bolivia, Peru and Chile, mainly located in the Andean
mountains.
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messianic components: Bolivian mythology holds that the Incan people (who came after the
Tiwanaku people) would function in the role of the agents of the creator God and overturn
colonial rule while re-establishing an Andean self-rule utopia (9ff). It was from this matrix that
Morales drew his legitimacy, declaring “the end of resistance and the beginning of a new
millennium,” which he stated would involve a form of cultural and, perhaps religious
restorationism in a return to the “customs and values of Andean cultures,” in Postero’s phrasing
(3). Postero’s work on Morales’ election and the cultural myths and memories used to legitimate
his presidency is invaluable in its own right as a study in the processes, selection and
implementation of a socio-political memory and the complications and opportunities wrought by
globalization in these processes. In the case of Bolivia, we find credence for Robertson’s claim
that “globalization in and of itself entails and accelerates the promotion of traditional culture”
(2000, 58). However, I return my focus to MBI, where Morales’ election and the manner in
which it was carried out was not well-received. Reporting on their visit to de Salas in Bolivia, the
ICEJ notes that their Bolivian branch, under de Salas leadership, is prospering despite the fact
that Bolivia “is one of the poorest [countries] in the world and…[despite being] currently led by
a president who is trying to bring back ancient Inca religions.”37 MBI shares with Morales a deep
concern for the poverty of the people of Bolivia. But MBI contests the identity of the nation,
along with the paths to be taken to overcome poverty, and this contestation shapes the conflict
that MBI experiences with Morales’ regime. While Morales draws on Andean indigenous
cultural memory, de Salas and the ICEJ draw on what is understood by them to be the indigenous
cultural memory of Christianity: the Jewish people. Under the impact of globality and
relativization, Morales uses Tiwanakan symbols and rights to legitimate the identity of his nation
so as to distance his nation from colonialist history. Morales draws on what he understands to be
37
See “Celebrating Hanukkah in Bolivia,” p. 25.
272
the roots of his people in order to establish legitimacy for his leadership and then to lead them
into an Andean messianic and millennial future. In contrast, the video montage of MBI’s 2012
trip to the Feast of Tabernacles shows nearly the
entire Bolivian delegation wearing uniforms
designed in the colors of the Bolivian flag with an
inscription: “Bolivia stands with Israel” (see Figure
1).38 During my first visit to the MBI webpage, an
Orthodox Jewish song (significantly, not a Messianic
Jewish song) played in the background, in Hebrew
(translation provided):39
And even though he may tarry,
Nonetheless I will wait for him
I will wait every day for him to come. (x2)
I believe,
I believe with complete faith
in the coming of the Messiah, I believe. (x2)
Intensifying the issues related to national identity
Figure 9. Bolivian delegation to the 2012 Feast of
Tabernacles (top), Alberto and Gladys Salas De
Oliveira at the 2012 Feast (bottom). Photo stills
taken from MBI12BOLIVIA YouTube upload
cited in footnote 37, courtesy YouTube.com.
between the Renewalist Zionism of MBI and the indigenous vision of Morales are religious
issues, particularly related to the supernatural. Andean conceptions of the divine are rejected by
MBI and, through processes common to global Renewalism (Robbins 2004, 2010), are accepted
as real precisely in order to subject them to demonization. In one sermon, De Salas instructs his
congregation to “cry for our nation” and to “purify” their homes of pagan idols and other cultic
“MBI12 Bolivia – Viaje a Israel,” YouTube video, 5:14, video short produced by MBI12 of the church’s 2012
Feast of Tabernacles visit, posted by “MBI12BOLIVIA,” August 20, 2013, accessed 11/4/13,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCv3oWn3PJ4.
39
English translation provided by http://www.hebrewsongs.com/?song=moshiach, accessed 11/4/13. In our time in
the Old City, the pilgrims on my trip stopped to watch in fascination a gathering of Orthodox Jews singing and
dancing to this very song during the Sukkot holiday. The song has since been removed from the MBI website,
suggesting that it was there just for the Sukkot holiday, which is when I first found the site.
38
273
materials, “magic stars” (“estrellas mágicas”) as well as “world music and books on witchcraft
and humanistic literature (self-help books)” (“música del mundo y los libros de brujería,
literatura humanista [materiales de autoayuda] y similares”). Indigenous and secular materials
are understood to be not just evil, but a threat to the nation and the home. Morales’ identification
with his indigenous roots also causes him to find solidarity with those who seem to be the global
exemplar of indigenous people: the Palestinians. In 2009, Morales broke diplomatic ties with
Israel and called on the International Criminal Court to bring charges of genocide against Israeli
leaders in response to the Israeli invasion of Gaza.40 Israel/Palestine becomes instantiated as a
type of palimpsest for identity struggle within the community of nations, functioning under
conditions of globality as a universal to the particular of national identity formation. Alignment
with or distancing from Israel seems to hold particular potency in regards to the subjective
experience of identity on a global level. Obviously, Morales’ stated affiliation with the
Palestinian people is diametrically opposed to the position of MBI and the ICEJ, which considers
such isolation from Israel not just a religious affront, but an endangerment to national well-being.
“God deals with nations, not just with people,” I was repeatedly told on my tour with the ICEJ.
For MBI, aligning one’s nation with Israel prepares the nation for favorable divine judgment at
the consummation of the age.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have examined the challenges and opportunities to identity presented by
globality and the related process of relativization of identities at the four points on Robertson’s
identity model. Rather than signaling the impossibility of identity formation, relativization
processes have altered the structure and methods of identity construction and religious belief.
“Bolivia breaks diplomatic ties with Israel,” YouTube video, 0:56, news segment from CCTV (China, n.d.),
posted by “cctvupload,” January 14, 2009, accessed 11/4/13, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAdKNR6cbZU.
40
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Using the case of the ICEJ in Bolivia, I have examined the disparate entry routes to global
culture taken by the Bolivian Renewalist church and ICEJ representative MBI and the
indigenous-cultural project of Bolivian president Evo Morales—both millennial projects and
which represent scenarios that appear to be duplicated in a number of other countries, but which
cannot be explored here.41 For Evo Morales, “indigenous” is a constructed project, an amalgam
of Bolivian and regional cultural and religious history used to declare identity both at home and
to the international community. For MBI, “indigenous” means Israel, ancient and modern,
constructed, selected and appropriated, and support for Israel is bound up with a millennial
struggle against dark forces, secular and religious. MBI uses their support for Israel to enter
global Renewalist culture, particularly through the ICEJ but also through transnationalist
Renewalist networks (G12). I have shown that in the case of Renewalist Zionism the route to
Christian support for Israel with the most staying power, the most cultural potency, and the most
significant geo-political implications runs not through processes of Westernization or a neocolonialist project, but through processes of identity construction and maintenance—namely
ethnonationalistic identification with Israel. The alignment with/distancing from Israel is seen by
both MBI and Morales to be part of a millennial future, and suggests that future research into
identity processes in a global setting related to Israel, for or against, may be fruitful for studies in
cultural globalization.
41
David Martin (2010, 358) alludes to the role of Pentecostal support for Israel as important in their conflict with the
Sandanistas in Nicaragua, as just one additional example. The case of relativization of English identity among some
Christians in the face of Catholic emancipation there in the 1830s is another (Lewis 2010), as well as the embrace of
Christian Zionism in the nationalistic project of Pentecostal and former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba (with
important local differences in this last case) (Gifford 2001).
Chapter 9
Social Memory, Election, and the Jewish People in Renewalist Zionism
When we stand here with the Jewish people we are not standing according to lines on a map, or
according to borders, or according to political parties, or according to particular definitions of
Israel or the future dividing or not dividing of the land. We stand with the faithfulness of God.
We do not stand on the prophecies of the Bible, we stand on the promises of the Bible. They are
solid and they can be relied on, because if God is faithful to them, he can be faithful to you. And
that's how I know that I can put my trust in him, because I see that he is faithful to this people,
even in times and in places where they do not recognize or acknowledge him.
—Michael Hines, ICEJ-USA Media Director1
As awful as the Holocaust was, Hitler did not think up anything really new… We [Christians]
had already laid the foundation. We had already demonized and dehumanized the Jewish
people… Christianity did not cause the Holocaust, but [the Holocaust] could not have happened
without that ugly foundation which we had laid.
–Susan Michael, ICEJ-USA Executive Director2
In this chapter I explore the importance of social memory in Christian Zionism generally
and Renewalist Zionism in particular. The importance of social memory for the ICEJ involves
their particular construction of the Jewish people in the process of creating their own identity.
The ICEJ employs a reconstruction of Jewish-Christian history as told within inherited Christian
theology (pre-World War II) and a selective, Renewalist-inspired retelling of this history as a
means of constructing a joint identity with Jews and with Israel. By focusing on the ways that
this social memory is constructed and the forms that these visions of the past take in ICEJ
teachings and in dialogue with Israeli national memories, I seek to highlight the ways that the
ICEJ positions and presents itself to the state of Israel, to its constituency, and how the
organization ultimately fashions its own identity and practices. Even the seemingly pedantic
process of identifying precisely who counts as a Jew—politically, socially, theologically—takes
on a high level of significance not only in Renewalist Zionism, or even just in Christian Zionism,
but in Christian theology more generally and even in the constructions of the Jewish people by
1
2
The quote is taken from a devotional provided to our group by Michael Hines after our visit to Masada.
Quote from Susan Michael (2008), disc 2.
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opponents or critics of the state of Israel. Central to the definition of the situation for Christian
Zionism generally, and Renewalist Zionism in particular, is the Christian view of “the Jew,”
suggested by the two quotes at the start of this chapter. Definitions of the Jewish people have
attained global significance in their varied constructions in relation to Christian support for the
Jewish state.
The importance of social memory in Christian Zionism
In the previous chapter I explored the consequences of globalization processes for
identity construction, emphasizing the pluralization of worldviews that resulted in the creative
mining of the past and its deployment in social conflict in the process of identity construction.
The speed of cultural change under global conditions makes identity problematic, but individuals
and groups are not left without recourse. Identities can be constructed and actively held, and
require continuous maintenance, effort, and ideological resources (Misztal 2004, 74). Under such
circumstances memory is transformed “from the master narrative of nations to the episodic
narrative of groups” (Misztal 2003, 18). As Pierre Nora (1989) has suggested:
The atomization of a general memory into a private one has given the obligation to
remember a power of internal coercion. It gives everyone the necessity to remember and
to protect the trappings of identity; when memory is no longer everywhere, it will not be
anywhere unless one takes the responsibility to recapture it through individual means.
(16)
If one does not share the pessimism in Nora’s understanding of the situation, one might add to
the end of his paragraph “or the instantiation of such memories through struggle in political
(often religio-political) projects,” as was the case with the Bolivian church MBI and the political
project of Evo Morales in the last chapter.
The Jewish people have proven successful in resisting the imperialization of historical
consciousness: Yerushalmi, expressing astonishment at the “resistance or indifference of certain
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Jewish circles to modern Jewish historical scholarship,” insists that the “single most sustained
Jewish intellectual effort in modern times [Jewish historiography]…has impinged so little upon
modern Jewish thinking and perception generally” (1996, 96). Further, the Jewish people have,
so far, successfully negotiated (initially through self-determination in response to antisemitism,
but ultimately by way of the horrors of the Holocaust) a path to resisting differentiation
processes inherent in modern secularism that require states to be non-theologically or nonethnically justified (Casanova 1994). Israel, therefore, makes for an attractive option to Christian
Zionists who support the establishment of states “based” on the God of the Bible, as they
understand this God and particularly since Israel is (subjectively) the only modern nation with
correspondence to the Israel of the Bible.3 Israel, then, resists global trends toward the
destabilization of national identity (Misztal 2010, 26) while providing a bulwark for Christian
Zionists against the intrusions of historical consciousness into the narrative singularity implicit in
the presentation and consumption of the Christian Bible. In other words, because Israel exists
and is presumed to be established by divine fiat the Bible is seen to be affirmed in the
continuance of the story of Israel in the contemporary age. The oft-told autobiography of the
Renewalist movement itself (i.e. Latter Rain) parallels this dynamic, continuing the supernatural
project of the first Jewish Christians in modern times. Dead stories are more susceptible to
deconstruction or structural changes in identity legitimation than living ones.
3
Christian Zionists have made this correspondence a bit easier by altering the biblical text itself. Paul Crouch often
used The Living Bible as the Bible of choice on his programs. For example, Paul Crouch, “Behind the Scenes,”
February 14, 2013,
http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Behind%20the%20Scenes/ec/RsM2FkOTojaWRngGlYXfwqlcE1okF-ss. First
published in 1971, The Living Bible altered the usual term for the children of Israel—Israelites—to a form more
amenable to the perceived realities of contemporary times—Israelis (see Exodus 12:34 for an example). The
temporal bridge from the biblical Hebrews to the modern Israeli citizen was accomplished through a simple change
in the biblical text. Published by Tyndale, The Living Bible has been extremely popular. As of 2011, it had sold
forty million copies, according to Christianbook.com. Notably, The New Living Translation retains the old wording
(Israelites), though the original The Living Bible is still in publication (Christianbook.com, accessed 12/12/13,
http://www.christianbook.com/living-Bible-tutone-brown-imitation-leather/9781414358550/pd/358550).
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The rise of scholarship on social memory has coincided with “increasing disenchantment
with nationalism and nationalist projects” (Ho Tai 2001, 915; cf. Beckford 2003, 106-7). As
scholar of nationalism Anthony Smith (2003a) puts it, “Mass electronic communications and
digital technology bind people, and peoples, together in ways that are wholly unprecedented, and
that make the old national loyalties seem naive and even bizarre” (1). The several effects of the
“information revolution” and advances in the availability and affordability of travel on
globalization processes have not only created a sense of globality, but have shrunk physical
distances, thereby “subverting and altering notions of home and exile” (Esposito and Watson
2000, 81). It has also brought close the experience of distant others, thereby creating a sense of
“sped up time,” and has “stimulated a reimagining of the communities to which individuals feel
an attachment” (81). In a global age, these are the primary structural changes to identity-making
processes—including religious identity—changes that require subsequent alteration to the
processes of legitimating social action as well as the identification of new and more powerful
forms of legitimation. Social memory as a legitimating process, already central to processes of
identity construction (Eyerman 2004, 160), has proven to be one significant response (HervieuLéger 1999, 2000), and a reconstitution and reconfiguration of transnational identities is a
primary outcome.4 In this dissertation I have identified an emerging ethnonationalism as a
narrative among (at least) Renewalist Zionists with Israel as the national “home” of this
emerging population, legitimated by identity-reconfiguration processes provided primarily by
acts of social memory.
Social memory theorists often tell a very similar story to globalization theorists relative to
the analysis of changes in identity formation over the last 200 years. Whitehead, a scholar of
4
This observation need not preclude the reality, as Jedlowski (2001, 36) has suggested, that social memory can be
used to challenge existing and preferred identities of groups. In fact, such an observation only strengthens the claim
of the importance and potency of social memory to contemporary identity construction.
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social memory, has identified the period in the West after the French Revolution as one
precipitating a “prolonged late-modern ‘memory crisis’” (2009, 85). Following Richard
Terdiman’s analysis in Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (1993), Whitehead
suggests the Revolution resulted in the “advent of a particularly intense preoccupation with the
functioning of memory” where memory now appears “at once lost and overly present” (85). In
chapter 3, I placed the advent of modern Christian Zionism, in at least its pre-Renewalist and
dispensationalist forms, concurrent with this period and under the same historical influences.
Furthermore, Whitehead follows Susanah Radstone’s insight in Memory and Methodology
(2000) in suggesting that the late 20th century appears to be an intensification of 19th century
processes related to the functioning of social memory (Whitehead 2009, 85). Scholars of social
memory from various disciplines have suggested that this intensification can be understood as a
“memory boom” (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Levy 2011, 3; Whitehead 2009, 3; Blight 2009),
or, alternatively, an “obsession with memory” (Misztal 2003, 2). Major changes within Christian
Zionism, particularly in relation to the Christian appropriation of Jewish culture (the “Hebrew
Roots” movement) examined in various places in this dissertation, have developed rapidly and
widely during this same period of memory surfeit. Social memory scholars have argued,
however, that it is not only the rapid change in media and communication that have contributed
to this shift; rather, “changes in modes of social organization, including changes in the practice
of power, influence the nature of mnemonic practices” have made powerful contributions as well
(Misztal 2003, 25). As I showed in chapter 7, Mistzal further argues that social memory becomes
more removed from inherited sources of power while increasingly subject to the formative
processes of media technology and social and cultural interconnectedness, while Whitehead
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(2009) argues that “recent technologies, patterns of migrations, and political shifts” of the recent
memory boom have important antecedents in changes wrought after the French Revolution (8).
The emerging scholarly consensus appears to be that whatever social, political, legal and
cultural changes have occurred in the last two centuries in relation to the construction of social
identities have been deeply impacted by processes of globalization and that these changes have at
least some structural permanency given the intensification of pluralization processes sustained in
particular by global media. Further it is clear that a major, but not the only, response to those
“changes in the mode of believing” examined in the last chapter is to appeal to a constructed past
for legitimacy.
The competing ethnicity-based identities of Bolivian President Evo Morales and Pastor
Alberto Magno de Salas in Bolivia discussed in the last chapter are a poignant example of these
changes in the structuration and deployment of social memory under the changing conditions
described by memory theorists. In my interview with Merv Watson, co-founder of the ICEJ, he
made a point to suggest that, in his view and as he reads the social landscape, the declension of
nationalism in modern times as a stable option for identity formation has resulted in a “famine of
meaning,”5 but the state of Israel, he insists, provides an answer to this. It seems that because
Israel connects so well with an ancient text it has legitimacy, roots, and substance. In
sociological terms, the modern nation of Israel is a reliable plausibility structure (Berger and
Luckmann 1966) for identity construction because of its perceived continuity with an ancient
past. “People are looking for an authority for existence and meaning in their lives” Merv insists,
and he suggests that Christians are moving towards the nation of Israel, the Jewish people and
Merv Watson’s words here sound similar to the description of cultural trauma described by Eyerman (2001, 2004)
and Alexander (2004a, 2004b, 2004c). Eyerman (2004) states that cultural trauma “refers to a dramatic loss of
identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric, affecting a group of people who have achieved some degree of
cohesion” (160). This definition is very close to describing the effects of relativization processes already discussed.
5
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Jewish culture to find their own roots as Christians.6 For Merv, it is not just the failure of
nationalisms that is concerning; if Israel fails, so does Christianity: “[Christians] want to see
Israel succeed because the promises to [Christians] will be in question if the promises to Israel
don't actually come about.” He also suggests concomitant movement towards embrace of
Christianity within Judaism, as Jewish scholars wrestle with the person of Jesus. He mentioned
the work of the late historian David Flusser of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has
been identified as one of a number of Jewish scholars who have conducted work largely
favorable to establishing Jesus as legitimately Jewish over the last century, according to religious
studies scholar Pauline Kollontai (2004, 200).7 Furthermore, “the daily fulfillment of prophecy
[regarding Israel] raises excitement,” as Merv describes it, suggestive of an emotional connection
to Israel as its story is told in the media. Merv further suggests that Israel functions as a sort of
controlling and sifting mechanism for modern social life, with its “information exploding out of
control.”8 A zeitgeist characterized by “everything shifting radically,” as Merv identifies it,9 is
what makes Israel in its concreteness, and the Jewish people in their abiding presence, so
attractive to certain segments of contemporary Christianity. It would appear that Israel provides a
direct and potent answer to the challenges of relativization wrought by globalization. References
to Israel as a type of compass providing divine direction to history or a sundial indicating the
Echoed in Merv’s sentiments are the words of Charles Taylor (2007), describing the late modern condition and the
spiritual quest for meaning that, in his words, “…often springs from a profound dissatisfaction with a life encased
entirely in the immanent order. The sense is that this life is empty, flat, devoid of higher purpose” (506).
7
The ICEJ has reviewed or referred to several of Dr. Flusser’s works over the years. For an example, see ICEJ
Media Director David Parson’s review of the republication of Flusser’s influential book Jesus (1997) in 1997.
Review entitled “Who do you say that I am?: 1997 Book Review of ‘Jesus’ by Prof. David Flusser,” accessed
12/10/13, http://us.icej.org/news/commentary/who-do-you-say-i-am. The ICEJ also cites Flusser extensively in one
of their main intellectual responses to their critics (Parsons).
8
Personal interview with author, May 2013.
9
Compare to the words of the London Jews Society’s (LJS) Edward Bickersteth, who saw the French Revolution
and then the second revolution in 1830 as signs that indicated “every thing is shaking and moving,” which he used to
justify the mission of the LSJ to restore and evangelize the Jewish people in order to speed the return of Christ
(quoted in Lewis 2010, 121). Bickersteth considered evangelization to the Jews important because they, in turn,
would help finish the evangelization of the world. According to Lewis, Bickersteth was personally “one of the early
architects of evangelicalism’s global expansion” (2010, 122).
6
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location of divine time are innumerable in Christian Zionist literature since the early stirrings of
the Jewish Zionist movement (cf. Blackstone 1908, 179). To Christian Zionists, Israel represents
a counter to the trends of modern social existence: seen as established by God, the national
project of the Jewish state is bound to stand. “Kill the Jew and you kill God and his purpose in
the world,” declared Malcolm Hedding, former Executive Director of the ICEJ (quoted in
Spector 2008, 90-1). However, such readings of the situation very much depend on the positing
of particular Christian views of “the Jew” and (now) the Israeli state, and the details of these
image constructions are as important as their existence.
Stephen Haynes and the Witness People Myth
James Fentress (1992) has suggested the importance of myths in and of themselves in
examining ethno-histories: “Myths, genealogies, folks-tales, etc., are nothing but genres in
which social memory is retained and transmitted” (81). Myths surrounding the Jewish people
have been prevalent in, even central to, Christian history. Stephen Haynes, professor of religious
studies, begins his important book Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination
(1995) with a succinct and poignant claim: “…even a cursory survey of texts that have
influenced Western culture reveals that Jewish existence, Jewish exile and dispersion and Jewish
stereotypes bear great symbolic weight in our collective traditions” (1). Though his is not a study
of Christian Zionism, in making this statement Haynes provides a broader horizon than is usually
adopted for studies of Christian Zionism: views relating to the continued existence of the Jewish
people within Christian Zionism find their place in a much broader and deeper universe of
cultural and religious symbolism, particularly within Christianity and Western culture more
generally. Haynes explores the historical construction and deployment of Christian images of
Jews, allowing scholars to see the way that the Jewish people—and now, the state of Israel—
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function as “fundamental symbols in the divine alphabet” (6) and thereby occupy “a deep
structure in the Christian imagination” (7). A review of his structuralist and semiotics-inspired
argument (8-10) will frame the remainder of my analysis in which I explore the ways in which
Renewalist Zionism concretizes a particular image of the Jewish people through processes of
social memory.
To lend overall shape to his analysis, Haynes (1995) deploys the term “witness-people
myth” to describe the “complex of beliefs and assumptions” informing Christian thinking around
the Jewish people (7). He then offers several “principles of witness-people thinking” within the
Christian imagination (12). The first, perhaps obvious principle is that “Jews are an important
sign” in Christian theology, without exception, since Christianity’s inception (12-3). Within the
witness-people myth, as his second principle explicates, “Jews are an ambivalent sign;” for
example, Christian thinkers have often placed value on the Jewish inheritance even while
rejecting living Jews (13). The third principle argues that the specific nature of the sign provided
by the Jewish people fluctuates significantly across time and historical and social context, so that
it can appear in “theological, legal, historical, or homiletical discourse(s),” even across cultures
(13).10 Haynes argues additionally, in a fourth principle, that witness-people mythologies are
“insidiously dangerous.” Though relatively distinct from modern anti-semitism, witness-people
thinking, Haynes claims, can “continue to perpetuate mythical notions about Jews that are
pernicious” unless overtly checked by Christians (13-4). Elaborating on this, his fifth principle is
10
For instance, see the study by Goodman and Miyazawa on the symbolic role of the Jews in Japanese culture
during the 20th century, where they document how some Japanese Christian thinkers during World War II saw the
support of Jews emanating from “the holiness churches” within “Anglo American Christianity” as a “Jew-Zionist
plot to take over the world” (2000, quotes from 118-9). Interestingly, the holiness teachings in Japan concerning the
Jews, as documented by the authors, included ethnonationalistic tendencies that saw the Japanese people as
descended from the Jews combined with the conviction that “Japan’s salvation would come through the redemption
of the Jewish people” (120). The Holiness Movement was a direct ancestor (with overlap) of the Pentecostal
movement of the 20th century; see Dayton (1987) and Synan (1997) and chapter 3 in this dissertation for overviews
of that history.
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that though anti-Judaism and modern anti-semitism are interconnected but distinct; his intention
here is to correct an overemphasis among some scholars to equate the two phenomena. He
argues, with others, that Jews survived and fared better than expected in the Middle Ages
because of “the desire of Christians at some level that it should have been so” (14). His last
principle follows from the previous: “the witness-people myth places a positive value on Jewish
survival,” which is dependent on a direct association of the Hebrews in the biblical narrative with
contemporary Jews by those deploying the myth in their times and places (14-5).
Post-Holocaust Jewish and Christian theologians across the political spectrum within
these traditions have done significant rethinking of the sources of anti-Judaism from within the
Christian tradition and the contributions made by these teachings to modern anti-semitism.11
Drawing at least partially from this work, Haynes (1995) highlights several channels of witnesspeople thinking in historical Christian theology, two of which I suggest are directly related to
Renewalist Zionism and applicable to the data I have explored in the preceding chapters: the
“teaching of contempt” (16) and “supersessionism and triumphalism” (17). Haynes attributes the
most important analysis of the teaching of contempt to the Jewish French historian Jules Isaac.
This teaching is the conglomeration of three basic, historical-theological claims: the Jewish
diaspora, related in some way to the birth of Christianity, is a result of divine punishment; at the
birth of Christianity, Judaism was in a fully “degenerate state;” and lastly, that “the Jews” are
11
It is important to add here that Haynes (1995, 183) finds that Jewish thinkers, modern and historical, have
contributed material directly (i.e. in dialogue with Christianity) or indirectly to the witness-people myth. We have
seen conclusively in previous chapters that modern Israeli politicians have contributed in this regard, and that
mindfully. There, this witness function is often directed to more purely nationalist or ethno-civilizational terms, with
Jews representing both the vanguard of democracy in the Middle East and the furthest outpost of Western
civilization, or an extension of the United States, itself, in some rare and extreme cases. For example, in a Night to
Honor Israel (Portland, OR, February, 2013), a joint Jewish-Christian event sponsored by Christians United for
Israel (CUFI), Israel’s Consulate General in San Francisco, Anthony David, made sure to mention that Israel was the
“only country in the Middle East with a memorial to September 11, 2001, two exact replicas of the Liberty Bell, a
memorial to [US President] John F. Kennedy, and a day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.” The association of Israel
with the United States in this manner is significantly more characteristic of CUFI than of the ICEJ, as CUFI is
largely a nationalistic organization and the ICEJ is more globally-minded and globally-networked.
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responsible for the death of Christ, i.e. the Christian charge of Jewish deicide (16). Haynes
criticizes Isaac for failing to prioritize the first teaching, which Haynes considers more basic and
constitutive of the myth, and because Isaac, Haynes insists, is “insufficiently dialectical” in that
he does not recognize how the myth also helped in Jewish preservation in predominately
Christian lands in the diaspora (16). Nevertheless, Isaac’s basic claims have been influential in
post-Holocaust theology and scholarship, particularly in relation to Jewish-Christian relations
emerging from the second Vatican council from 1962-1965 (Korn 2012, 204; Smith 2010, 252).
Dr. Petra Heldt, director for the Ecumenical Theological Research Foundation in Israel, has
written favorably on behalf of the ICEJ about the contributions of Isaac to Jewish-Christian
relations.12
The second of Haynes’ (1995) channels of witness-people thinking in historical Christian
theology, important for my analysis, is the supersessionism/triumphalist stream. These connected
terms, despite Haynes’ claim (in 1995) that they are in wide use (17), have been largely replaced
in popular discourse since the 1980s by the respective synonyms “replacement theology” and
“fulfillment theology.” Fulfillment theology, or Christian triumphalism, is the term applied to
Christian teachings that universalize the Jewish covenant to (potentially) all people.
Replacement, or supersessionist, theology is any theology that holds that Jewish covenants were
“replaced” or “superseded” by the Christian New Covenant inaugurated by Christ. None other
than John Locke (1801) demonstrated this latter brand of theology perfectly:
If the nation of the Jews had owned and received Jesus the Messiah, they had continued
on as the people of God; but after that they had nationally rejected him, and refused to
have him rule over them, and put him to death, and so have revolted from their
allegiance, and withdrawn themselves from the kingdom of God, which he had now put
into the hands of his Son, they were no longer the people of God; and, therefore, all those
Petra Heldt. “Seelisberg: Exposing anti-semitic teachings in the church: the life’s work of Jules Isaac,” published
on the ICEJ-Germany website, February 27, 2013, accessed 12/6/13, http://de.icej.org/news/specialreports/seelisberg-offenlegen-antisemitischer-lehren-der-kirche (in German).
12
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of the Jewish nation, who, after that, would return to their allegiance, had need of
reconciliation, to be re-admitted into the kingdom of God, as part of his people, who were
now received into peace and covenant with him, upon other terms, and under other laws,
than being the posterity of Jacob, or observers of the law of Moses. (emphases mine, 42122)
Locke’s statement here emphasizes the importance of the concept of election as the people of
God to the basic claim of replacement theology. The importance of election to the establishment
of peoplehood—the status of the Jewish people qua chosen people—is definitively altered in
replacement theology: as Locke puts it, Jews may be readmitted “upon other terms, under other
laws,” but their ancestral lineage as a people is no longer valid before God. For Locke, and for
supersessionist/replacement theology more generally, the Christian church “replaces” the Jewish
people as the people of God, the chosen people, and this is accomplished through an abrogation
of Israel’s divine election, and a complete severance of the Jewish people from divine favor.
This is not merely a theological construct as Haynes claims,13 but instead is a type of
religio-ethnic one where nationalisms, ethnically rooted, result in what has been described as the
“sacralization of memory” (Misztal 2004, 67). Elaine Pagels (2013) has called the process of
Gentile Christians claiming to be the inheritors of Israel’s election “the greatest identity theft of
all time” (65). The effect of replacement theology is to deny the Jewish people the ultimate
theological legitimation provided by their scriptures for their peoplehood and to pave the way for
their deployment as a negative memory in the establishment of Christian election. Some scholars
of Christian Zionism, such as Shapiro (2012b), have claimed that replacement theology has
largely receded; there no longer exists many (Western) Christians, after the Holocaust, who hold
such views (649). Shapiro cites denominational statements under post-Holocaust influences to
bolster this claim, and I believe her assessment is largely correct when applied to (Western)
“Today the terms ‘supersessionism’ and ‘triumphalism’ are invoked routinely to suggest traditional Christian
appraisals of the Jewish people’s theological status” (Haynes 1995, 17, emphasis mine).
13
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Christian theology. Yet Robert Smith (2010) has noted that no less than John Nelson Darby,
founder of dispensationalism, taught a qualitative distinction between Israel and the Church,
leading to a serious “rupture in Jewish-Christian relations this side of the eschaton” (254).
Therefore, while Darby advocated for Israel’s continuing election, it was an inferior election:
the church was the spiritual and therefore greater of the peoples; Jews were the physical people
of God but inferior because of their material-only status, having been fully degraded religiously
(253). In this emphasis Darby’s theology, Smith further notes, displayed much of the teaching of
contempt noted by Jules Isaac (252-3). Such dispensational constructs, then, can conceal a type
of neo-replacement theology that may still hold sway among some populations; indeed, at least
some early dispensational leaders were prone to embracing negative Jewish stereotypes and antisemitic tropes and myths (Weber 1987). The memory of the Jewish people in the Christian
imagination, then—particularly how it is used to construct the identity of the Christian church—
is of profound importance to Jewish-Christian relations and to the treatment of the Jewish people
by Christians or those living under the influences of Christian mythologies. These constructions
are also central to Christian Zionist ideologies, as I will further demonstrate.
Haynes (1995) defines the term “triumphalism,” or fulfillment theology, as “those who
claim that in Christ the Jews’ covenant with God was universalized—that is, opened to any Jew
or Gentile who enters the new community of believers” (17). Haynes seems to connect the term
supersessionism with the term triumphalism in that, in his view, both positions remove the
particularity of the covenant from the Jewish people qua Jews and place it in the hands of others.
The effect of triumphalist thinking is clear, if indirect, given his assumptions: textual
legitimation as an elect nation is removed from Israel and placed within Christian narratives
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justifying the church as the new elect. (Replacement theology denies the possibility of a
rejuvenation of the elect status of Jews; triumphalism affirms this possibility explicitly.)
Haynes identifies Augustine as the creator of the first complete (“definitive”) expression
of the witness people myth (1995, 28). For Augustine (4th century), Judaism had declined and the
Jewish people dispersed as a result of divine punishment for the killing of Jesus and because of
idolatry (28-9). His theology, providing the classic statement of “replacement theology,” gave
legitimation to the Christian church, then in a state of rising fortunes in the Roman Empire, by
pointing to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies of judgment against the Jews. Further,
Jewish presence provided assistance to Christian evangelists who could point to Jewish people in
the diaspora when witnessing to “the heathens” as proof of the fulfillment of these prophecies
and, by extension, the veracity of the Christian faith (30-1). But as Haynes notes, this passive
witness-bearing function crucially required that Jews “remain alive,” but demoted to “slave
librarians” for the church, carrying the church’s scriptures and history (31-2). Augustine also left
room for an ultimate purpose for the Jewish people, Haynes notes, in that some New Testament
prophecies (specifically those in Romans 11) suggested the Jewish people would be converted
prior to the end of the age (32-3). Augustine’s was a classic formulation of the teaching of
contempt toward the Jewish people, an accounting for their continuing—now inferior—existence
that would influence (but not cause) later attempts to exterminate them in the Middle Ages,
sometimes in popular uprisings (when, notably, priests and bishops would work to shelter Jews
from the violence of the masses) or by the Crusaders (33-9).14 In the 12th century, Bernard of
14
Importantly, Haynes qualifies our understanding of this period from the perspective of the witness-people myth:
“[T]wo facts have been obscured by analysis of the terrible suffering of the Jews during this period. First, the
‘theological view of the Jew’ per se should not be blamed for the pogroms associated with the Crusades. Also
implicated is a state of societal crisis—precipitated in this case by rapid social change within and perceived threats
from without Christian Europe—which encouraged people, educated an peasant alike, to think of the ‘enemy within’
as somehow to blame for the unsettling state of things” (37). His analysis comports relatively well with Susan
Michael’s understanding of Christian contributions to anti-semitism, as evidenced in the quote at the beginning of
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Clairvaux would call the Jewish people “the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always
of what our Lord suffered” while advocating nearly identical arguments to Augustine (quote on
38).
In the 13th century, policies of material and physical exclusion emerged from theologies
of contempt, coming specifically from successive popes beginning with pope Innocent III. Here,
Haynes identifies the “badge decrees” creating “tangible evidence of Jewish inferiority” and
creating social markers of exclusion even (and especially) for those Jews that had attained
positions of social authority over Christians (1995, 39). Importantly, Innocent III also overtly
removed the “protector” function of the Christian church, though his successors often drew from
the earlier tradition (40). This period has been identified by scholars as marking a shift in JewishChristian relations, moving from mere teachings of contempt to dehumanization and exclusion
(42; cf. Karp and Sutcliffe 2011). During this period, eliminating Jewish presence in
Christendom may have been part of a larger effort to brand the Judaism of the day as a “heretical
perversion of the Old Testament” (Haynes 1995, 43). It was not enough that the Jewish people
had “lost” their election; here they would also lose their place in biblical history, an erasure of
then-contemporary Jews from even functioning as symbolic material for use in sourcing of the
Christian past that had, until then, served as a policy “designed to keep them alive—but in
misery” (Laqueur 2008, 3). This was also the period of early nationalism and resurgences of
millennialism through the writings of Joachim of Fiore (Haynes 1995, 44; Esposito, Fasching,
and Lewis 2008). The racialization of Jews began in the fifteenth century with the re-conquest of
this chapter. Yet it is quite clear that new “enemies within” have been identified in our time among conservative
Christian communities: Muslims and secular humanists/humanism appears frequently as identified enemies in the
literature I have read, though it should be stated that the latter is more consistently identified (particularly as a source
of moral pluralism) as an enemy source than the former.
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Spain by Christians (Laqueur 2008); together, these events represent a “temporary suspension”
of the witness-people myth (Haynes 1995, 45).
According to Haynes (1995) the Reformation provided a significant turning point in
Christian-Jewish relations largely in the form of “restorationist” thinking, which is not
coextensive with but includes all of Christian Zionist thought by definition. Much of this I have
covered in a partial history of Christian Zionism in chapter 2, but the following three
characteristics of the age, as provided by Haynes, should be mentioned here. Haynes notes that
millennialism, a shift in hopes for Jewish conversion, and the idea that the Jewish people would
be “restored” to Palestine (a type of restorationism) were characteristic of the myth-making shift
during this period (51). Haynes concludes with this analysis of the Reformation period: “…this
period saw a Christian transformation of witness-people thinking which highlighted its positive
elements and diminished its emphasis on Jewish degradation and suffering” (55).
Modern and secular versions of the witness-people myth are also covered by Haynes
(1995), versions that involve portraying Judaism as “a crude superstition” and “an eternally
perverse race,” notions leading Enlightenment figures to classify Jews as those who had
delivered Christianity to the world (55-6), thereby incurring the wrath of those Enlightenment
figures (such as Voltaire) who considered Christianity “an object of enlightened disdain and
hostility” (55). According to Haynes, however, in this narrative Jews lose their eschatological
significance and those wielding political power now had no need of the preservationist impulse
which was present in most of Christian history (58).15 The result is that the “mysteriousness” of
the Jew becomes associated with the societal chaos induced by rapid social and economic
15
Haynes notion that in these versions Jews lose eschatological significance should probably be challenged. The coappearance of discourses favoring Palestinians (over and against the Israeli state) may be animated by millennialist
or utopian thinking more than has been acknowledged by scholars to-date, as the case of Bolivia in the last chapter
indicates.
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changes. Under the influences of globalization, these forces are present continuously as a feature
of contemporary life.16 For much of modern Christianity, especially for those sympathetic to
Christian Zionism, the Jew is a sign and a proof of God’s existence and Jewish survival as a
people a modern “miracle,” particularly after the Shoah (59).17
In summary, the value of Haynes’ (1995) theory lies in his placing the mythologizing of
the Jewish people and Judaism within a memory-making cultural framework that crosses
traditions within Christianity and traverses even into secular and Enlightenment mythmaking.
This suggests that Christian Zionism, in its various restorationist varieties, is not alone in its use
of the Jewish people as a basis for identity legitimation.18 Witness-people mythmaking traverses
cultures, and seems to go where Christianity—and secularism—goes, making continued analysis
of witness-people mythmaking by definition a (now) global and contested phenomenon.
However, there is room for a critique of Haynes’ work.
Critique of Haynes’ Witness-People Thesis
For all of its value in highlighting cultural uses of the Jewish people and the state of
Israel, Haynes’ (1995) theory suffers from a congenital flaw which does not detract from his
overall argument, but does obscure some of its import. Haynes makes a critical mistake in his
If one searches the term “Jew” using the Google search engine (in 2013), at the bottom of the page is a link to an
“explanation” provided by Google (www.google.com/explanation.html). On this page Google states
If you recently used Google to search for the word ‘Jew,’ you may have seen results that were very
disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed
by Google. We’d like to explain why you’re seeing these results when you conduct this search.
Google goes on to describe how the word “Jew” appears more frequently in anti-semitic contexts and “Jewish”
appears more when used by Jewish organizations, at least until Joseph Lieberman’s appearance on the Democratic
vice-presidential ticket in 2000, when the term “Jew” was apparently receiving a bit of rehabilitation. Thus, Google,
wanting to distance itself from anti-semitic content, felt it necessary to explain to the public why so many antisemitic sites appeared for the term “Jew” when using their search engine.
17
One might argue that it was not until after the Six-Day war in 1967 that such enthusiastic myth-making was taken
up by major American denominations, none of which were publicly pro-Zionist at the founding of Israel, according
to Burton (1964, 214) .
18
Further elaboration on secular and modern uses of the Jewish people in mythmaking can be found in Laqueur
(2008), chapters 4-10.
16
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identification of the core issues related to supersessionist (replacement theology) selfunderstandings. In his initial assessment—I did not reproduce his errors in my introduction of his
analysis of supersessionism, above—Haynes claims that the term “is appended to any theology
which implies that the Mosaic covenant was abrogated with the coming of Christ” (17). The
Mosaic covenant, which referred to the giving of the Jewish law (Heb.: halakha), was abrogated
at least in part in New Testament teachings and in almost all Christian theology through the
centuries by the new covenant initiated by Jesus. Few Christians are halachic, or kosher, as a
result. However, Mosaic covenant is not the covenant that established the “elect” status of the
Jewish people in the Jewish scriptures; rather, that covenant was the Abrahamic covenant
beginning in Genesis 12 (Smith 2003a, 52ff). This is not a mere mistake in assessment of
Christian theology, but has significant social implications. For the study of ethnicity and
mythmaking the concept of “election” is central to the (“traditional”) ideal of Jewish
peoplehood.19 Because Haynes does not provide a clear analysis of the importance of election
(i.e. “chosen-people”), he fails to incorporate its importance in his overall analysis concerning
changes within witness-people mythmaking over time. The doctrine of election—its initial
abrogation and eventual reassignment by Christians over time to the Jewish people—is central to
grasping the import of changes in theology to treatment of Jews in Christian history.
When Haynes (1995) states of Luther that he “severely weakens (if he does not sever
altogether) the assumption underlying witness-people theology that the original elect people of
God and contemporary Jews belong to one and the same people” (49), he misreads Luther’s
contribution to the myth. Rather, using the examples from Luther that Haynes provides it can be
shown that Luther merely contributes a new twist on the witness-people myth inherited from
19
For a scholarly discussion of the different types of divine covenants relative to the establishment of peoplehood,
including the various Jewish covenants, see Smith (2003a, 50ff).
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Augustine. As mentioned above, Haynes claimed that Augustine was the creator of the first
complete expression of the witness-people myth (28). Yet Augustine’s (1894) own words make
the importance of election clear in his witness-people mythmaking:
For if we hold with a firm heart the grace of God which hath been given us, we are Israel,
the seed of Abraham: unto us the Apostle saith, “Therefore are ye the seed of
Abraham.”…[ellipsis in quote] Let therefore no Christian consider himself alien to the
name of Israel. For we are joined in the corner stone with those among the Jews who
believed, among whom we find the Apostles chief. Hence our Lord in another passage
saith, “and other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring that there
may be one fold and one Shepherd.” The Christian people then is rather Israel, and the
same is preferably the house of Jacob; for Israel and Jacob are the same. But that
multitude of Jews, which was deservedly reprobated for its perfidy, for the pleasures of
the flesh sold their birthright, so that they belonged not to Jacob, but rather to Esau. For
ye know that was said with this hidden meaning, ‘That the elder shall serve the younger.’
(550, emphases mine)
Augustine is arguing here that, just like Esau, the non-believing Jewish people of his day had
“sold their birthright” (it was Jacob who retained the status of ‘elect’ in the Jewish scriptures),
which the church then inherited, similar to the sentiments expressed in the quote from Locke,
above. Election and the covenant that established it are not only coeval concepts, they have often
been conceived as congenitally related. For Augustine, election had passed from the Jews to the
church—thus, Judaism was “superseded,” or “replaced” by the (largely) Gentile church as the
elect of God— “The Christian people then is rather Israel.” God no longer “chose” the Jewish
people; God now chooses “us”—this is Augustine’s assertion. The covenant with God is
abrogated and the Jewish people remain as “witnesses” to this abrogation.
Conceptually, doctrines of election have incredible social and cultural power through
their conference of surety of faith and practice to those communities for whom the doctrine has
salience; the claim to be “God’s chosen” has been a significant feature of the mythologies of
ethnic communities across cultures (Smith 2003a, 67ff; 2009, 93-4; Greenfeld 1992; cf. Cherry
1998, for discussion of the American version of election). In social theory Max Weber (2002)
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made the doctrine of election central to his analysis of diaspora Calvinism, its theology of
predestination (a doctrine of election), the testing of this election among the faithful
(Bewährung), and its powerful influence on the generation of Puritan morality and ethical
conduct.
The doctrine of election in “replacement” or “supersessionist theology” is the great
identity theft referred to by Elaine Pagels, above, a theological and social move that set the
ground for the church to consider itself the New Israel, a term first coined by Justin Martyr (160
CE) (Ehle 1977, 22). Flannery notes the importance of election—to be the chosen people of
God—in the theological rivalry between Judaism and Christianity over the centuries, including
the early church fathers (Flannery 1985, 48-9, 288-9). Yet, far from undermining the
“protective” features of the witness-people mythology, a negation of Jewish election by
Augustine was likely conducive to such protection; securing the existence of the immediate
antecedent to one’s own claim to election can serve to bolster one’s claim to superiority by
providing at-hand evidence through the presence of the previously elected, and of the
“degradation” of both the people and their faith—a degradation often structurally imposed by the
new “chosen.” Supersessionist theology is legitimation for establishing the structural (theological
and social) liminality of the Jewish people.20 Therefore, as mentioned above, though Haynes
indicates that Augustine does argue for Jewish degradation as a witness, Haynes fails to
recognize the import of the doctrine of election in the process of constructing this social memory
of the Jewish people and Judaism. When Haynes discusses the efforts of Holocaust theologians
to wrestle with antisemitism in the Christian faith, though he does note the discussions of
20
It might also be said that, concerning Jewish residency in Christian lands, supersessionist theology provided the
legitimation to complete the “double estrangement” of the experience of diaspora for the Jewish people: the original
separation from homeland and the historical marginalization in the lands to which the Jewish people were dispersed
(Ang 2011, 83).
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election by these theologians and thinkers in reviewing their work, Haynes does not recognize
that their discussions of election are attempts to acknowledge the “great identity theft”
perpetuated by the Christian church lasting for over 1500 years (1995, 136), and to recognize its
contributions to the development of Christian (and secular) anti-semitism. Instead, Haynes
focuses on the “theological” import of arguments about the means of salvation, whether
contemporary Jews are descendants of biblical Hebrews in modern theological thought, and the
fact that such doctrines continue to portray Jews mythologically (136). Haynes could have
strengthened his argument by showing how the doctrine of election, its abrogation or
reaffirmation by Christians, and the use of that doctrine of election by Christians in selfdescription have been intimately woven in Christian social history, even the history of the West
itself. In other words, in defining Jews, Christians are also defining themselves—and not just
theologically but also, crucially, politically, morally and socially.
The import of such an argument can be made clear. By the time of Luther21 and the
Reformation, particularly in Calvinistic circles, the idea that Jews had retained and not abrogated
their election (and the contention that this was a grave mistake of the Catholic church) entered
Christian theology after a very long absence, and forms the core conviction of restorationist
theology (Lewis 2010, 14-5). Doctrines of election were also central to emerging notions of
nationalism in the nineteenth century, even important to emergence of the very word
“nationalism” (Smith 2003a, 48), and likely remain ideological underpinnings for active notions
Therefore, contrary to Haynes’ (1995, 49) claim regarding Luther, Luther’s contribution was not to reverse course
regarding the doctrine of election, but to slightly soften the inherited version. Haynes’ own citations of Luther show
that he was suggesting election remained with “Jews” but that there were “two classes”: one with its antecedent in
Moses, the other serving the emperor (dating, importantly, from the time of Pilate—and, by extension, the crucified
Jesus). None of the “Mosaic” Jews survived, for Luther, rendering the same effect as the Augustinian abrogation of
Jewish election. Likely because the Jews of Luther’s day had no connection to the Jewish people of the Abrahamic
covenant in Luther’s mind, Luther failed to incorporate a theology of protection for them, as Haynes shows.
Tellingly, Luther made the Jewish people a compass for the devil’s activities in undermining the church (Haynes
1995, 50), a clear statement that the Jewish people were not chosen by God but in perpetual opposition to God. In
this straightforward demonization Luther likely has more in common with Pope Innocent III than with Augustine.
21
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of “sovereign peoples as the elect” in modern democracies (Smith 2009, 76-7). Further, these
doctrines may “comprise the most influential element in myth-and-memory today” (Smith 2009,
91). The return to the Old Testament that was such a prominent feature of the Calvinist wing of
the Reformation revived the doctrine of election as a viable myth and spurned the growth of the
first nationalism in England (Greenfeld 1992, 52; Smith 1998, 141), as well as simultaneously
contributing to the restoration of the Jewish people to their place of election in Protestant
thought, as seen in chapters 2 and 3.
But why would Protestant England, and eventually Protestant America, create a
theological justification to re-establish the Jewish people as an “elect nation” while
simultaneously self-mythologizing to the same end? As Lewis (2010, 48) notes, one way to
conceive of this paradox is to see that the mythology became bound up with ideas of the
degradation of the Jewish people so that the Protestants saw themselves (in particular, their
Protestant nations)22 as the “restorers” of “Israel according to the flesh,” which included not only
physical but spiritual restoration as well. This certainly was the view of early 19th century
Christian Zionist forerunners such as Lewis Way (1821, 40-4). Further, Lewis (2010) notes,
though subjectively theologically superior, the cultural (but not political) marginality of the
evangelical Anglicans in England who first supported the Jews allowed them to identify with the
marginality of the Jewish people (334-5; Bar-Yosef 2003, 24)—two elect peoples with glorious
futures awaiting. Other scholars have suggested that the embrace of the continued election of the
Jews by Calvinists appears to be related to the development of a distinct Reformation
22
This is indicated by the prevalence of Protestant narratives invocating the biblical figure of the Persian king Cyrus
(for instance, see the book of Ezra), who assisted the Jewish people after the Babylonian exile in re-establishing
their homeland. As an example, Harry Truman, in his role leading the United States to recognize Israel as a
reestablished nation, described himself as Cyrus for his efforts (Goldman 2009, 27). See also historian and Christian
Zionist Paul Merkley’s American Presidents, Religion and Israel: The heirs of Cyrus (2004). The Earl of
Shaftesbury often invoked the figure of Cyrus when advocating for England’s role in Jewish restoration (Lewis
2010, 185).
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historiography and concern in those circles over the threats of Islam (Ottomans) and the Catholic
church, both with then-existing interests in the Holy Land (Smith 2010, 83-95). In addition to
these suggestions, I would add that there was a relatively insurmountable cognitive mountain for
Protestants, once the Old Testament was seen to be valid and authoritative scripture, that needed
to be theologically scaled: the idea that God could “retract” promises—embedded in covenantal
election and declared to be eternally valid—from one people and give them to another. We see
the resolution of this problem playing out in the statement from Michael Hines at the beginning
of this chapter when he argues that divine faithfulness to Israel is the guarantee of divine
faithfulness to Christians, an argument also made by Merv Watson, above. In an interview
conducted by NAR pastor Rick Joyner with Scott Volk, a Messianic Jew, Volk puts the matter
succinctly:23
Volk: If Israel can be wiped out, God is a liar. If God is a liar then we can throw the Word of
God out the window.
Joyner: And throw our salvation out…everything.
In my readings of Christian Zionist literature over several centuries, this logic—that if divine
promises to Jews can be negated, even if in application to the church, then promises to the
church can be divinely negated in the same manner—is quite common. A lack of theological
accounting for the “unconditional” promises to Israel as understood through their readings of the
Old Testament seems to leave too much uncertainty for comfort inherent in the divine-human
relationship, as well as being problematic for Christian theodicy. For Calvinists, as voracious
readers of the Old Testament, under such conditions the church—and the Jewish people—would
then be left with either a pernicious God or an impotent one in that God would not be able to
Rick Joyner interviews Scott Volk on Morningstar.com. “Israel’s prophetic destiny,” November 23, 2012,
accessed 11/27/12, http://www.morningstartv.com/prophetic-perspective-current-events/israel%E2%80%99sprophetic-destiny.
23
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bring about that which was declared to be divine intention: Israel, united as people and land.24
Solving the problem of the “recovery” of the election of the Jewish people became paramount,
and may have contributed directly to the conviction that if the Jewish people were still “the elect
of God,” then the promises made to them in Old Testament scriptures did not pass to the church
but remained salient, if unfulfilled—and this was bound to be rectified in time. The conviction
regarding the continued “election” of Israel in the Calvinist wing of Protestantism, then, was
paramount to the emergence of Christian Zionism.
Types of communities of election: Anthony Smith
Anthony Smith, eminent scholar of nationalism and ethnicity, has done much to assist in
understanding the role of myths of national election in the establishment of peoplehood and
identity. In his work Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism (2009), Smith offers two historical
variants of the election myth in history: the covenantal and the missionary (93). Covenantal
election, for which the Hebrew version is the prototype,25 involves the perceived selection of a
people by the deity in order to follow moral and ritual commands, to be a sacred people set apart
from the profane world. Missionary election myths are derived from the covenantal type, Smith
argues, but are based in vocation: such peoples were to “be a bulwark of orthodoxy, to convert
24
Manuel Lacunza, an 18th century Jesuit Chilean/Italian priest whose work The Coming of Messiah in Glory and
Majesty was translated by English preacher Edward Irving in the 19th century, made a nearly identical argument
(Lacunza and Irving 1827, 27). See also John Hagee (2007, 164) and Hedding (1978, 29; 2004b, 25-8). Such logic
can also be found in the writings of Increase Mather (quoted in Ehle 1977, 109):
It is not possible that so much as one elect soul should miss of salvation, though all the deceivers on earth,
and all the devils of hell should do their utmost to destroy such a soul, Matth. 24:24 John 17:12. Sure then
it cannot be that an elect Nation should miss of salvation. Whence was it that some few of Israel were saved
in the Apostles days, and not others as well as they? This was the reason, because some belonged to
election, which others did, not, Rom. 11:7. And this is one reason which the Apostle giveth in this Chapter,
verse 28, to prove that a time will come when all Israel shall be saved, viz. because of election.
25
Smith says variants of the covenantal election myth were influential among “Armenians, Ethiopians, Puritan
English, Scots and Dutch, Ulster Scots, American colonists, Swiss city-states, and Afrikaners” (93). He also covers
myths among these peoples in detail in Smith (2003a).
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the heathen and infidel, to expand the borders of the righteous kingdom, even to conquer the
whole world for the one, true God” (93).26 The efficacy of these myths, Smith argues,
…lies in their ability to link the community to its history and destiny, and to bind it to its
God and its ‘fate’—a quality that is especially marked in monotheistic traditions, where
the ethnie or nation is seen as the carrier of sacred ‘truths.’ (94)
Evangelicalism has been consistently characterized by a missionary election impulse, as has been
the case for the various strands of Renewalism. Examining how these two types of myths of
election play out in Christian Zionist definitions of the Jewish people proves enlightening.
Definitions of Jews and Jewish Election in Christian Zionist Discourse: CUFI and the ICEJ
Both Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and the ICEJ have found it necessary to define
the Jewish people as a matter of course for organizational purposes and in their teaching
publications. In his book In Defense of Israel (2007), CUFI founder John Hagee first introduces
the reader to the various forms in which a person might be considered Jewish, forms which he
attributes to “modern-day Orthodox Jews” (49): born of a Jewish mother, belief in God and the
Torah (essentially Jewish by religion), cultural tradition (maintaining customs and traditions,
which he associates with American Reformed Jews), personal choice/conversion to Judaism
(undifferentiated by Hagee from Jewish by religion), and ethnicity (ancestry of both parents
Jewish, 49-50). He rejects these various definitions, finding them not biblically-based and the
resulting ambiguity emerging from these many varied definitions a source of “confusion and
controversy.” Using Romans 9-11—which he insists is a textual codicil, or ‘stand-alone
segment’ of the book—Hagee chooses the route of divine election:
Smith says variants of this myth informed the self-narratives of “[m]ost of the kingdoms of medieval Christian
Europe from Ireland and Scotland to Poland and Russia, not to mention the Arab tribes converted to Islam” and,
after the Reformation, became even more prominent among Catholics and Protestants alike, eventually undergoing
transmutation into secular narratives after the French and American Revolutions (93-4).
26
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…Israel is a matter of election rather than birth (Romans 9:6-13). Not all of those called
“children of Abraham” (natural descendants) are actually his ‘seed’ as demonstrated in
Genesis 21:12, which states, ‘In Isaac your seed shall be called.’
Hagee goes on to argue that only Isaac, from which Jewish ancestry is theologically traced, is the
“seed,” the “spiritual child,” as opposed to Ishmael,27 who is merely the “physical descendent of
Abraham” (51). Ishmael was a product of human strength in conception; Isaac was “a
supernatural act of God.” He concludes with a remarkable statement:
In Romans 9:8, Paul shifts from ‘children of the flesh’ (Abraham) to ‘children of God.’
The shift is subtle but significant. If Abraham’s spiritual seed comes through God’s
promise and power, the Jewish people are not simply Abraham’s seed but quite literally
God’s children. (51, emphasis his)
Hagee reconstructs the spiritual/physical, church/Jewish binary inherited from Augustine and
present even in dispensationalism that had made the Jewish people the “physical” people of God
and the church the “spiritual” people of God, applying it now to differentiate Abraham’s sons.
Emphasizing the concept of election, however, Hagee goes further than his predecessors by
making the Jewish people divine progeny. He does not bother to indicate how one might be able
to discern a Jewish person in daily life; he merely ups the theological ante by making Jewish
election flow from divine emanation into Jewish bodies. This interpretation of the Jewish past
does not reflect the many and varied Jewish self-interpretations, to say the least (Laqueur 2003).
Hagee’s argument appears to be racial with supernatural legitimation at root, anchored in a
covenantal form of election.
The ICEJ’s definition of a Jewish person is equally remarkable and deeply ambivalent. At
one point a novel, functional definition of a Jew is employed: “A Jew is a Gentile who has been
brought into a peculiar relationship with God for the purpose of world redemption” (Hedding
2004a, 23). Hedding mentions this definition as important to combat the other-worldliness
In his later definition of “The Arabs,” Hagee (2007) does not associate Arabs with Ishmael, which is a fairly
common construction. He rightly includes Christians and Jews among the Arab people. (56-7)
27
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typically ascribed to Jews which he sees as the basis of anti-semitism—essentially, “Jews are
normal people like you and I”—a clear refutation of the teaching of contempt. Remarkably,
Hedding re-imagines Abraham as a Gentile:
The fact is that the Word of God teaches that [Abraham] was just a Gentile who was
brought into this peculiar relationship with God in order to bring millions of men and
women home to the city of God. That is who he is. …[T]he Apostle Paul ma[de] this
point: that Abraham is the father of the Gentiles. Why? Because God called him when he
was a Gentile. He is also the father of the Jews because he was later circumcised. (23)
This redefinition of Abraham as a Gentile allows Hedding to reclaim Paul’s arguments about
“Abraham’s seed” from replacement theology, which tended to identify Abraham’s seed as
“spiritual” in opposition to material/physical, without resorting to allegorizing Israel as the
church. Abraham is a Gentile who is called, that is, has received vocational, or missionary
election. While Hagee’s was a form of Anthony Smith’s covenantal election, Hedding’s is
clearly a form of evangelicalized missionary election. In Hagee, the Jewish people are divine
children; with Hedding, the Jewish people are mundane, ordinary…but “called.” Hedding
continues,
Who is Abraham? He is a Jew. Who is Abraham? He is a Gentile. First and foremost he
was a Gentile brought into this peculiar relationship with God for the sake of world
redemption. So he will be the natural foundation upon which God’s redemptive plan in
time will be built and in the end, this will bring millions of men, women, and children
from all over the world home. (24)
For Hedding, Israel and the Jewish people are the “vehicle of world redemption,” fulfilled in part
by the Jewish people having given the world the Bible and Jesus (2004d, 5, 18). Israel is a
“means to an end” the “platform that brings [the Kingdom of God] into reality” (2004e, 33, 28,
30). It is a full redemption yet unrealized, but coming in the establishment of the “Davidic
covenant,” or the final object of the Abrahamic covenant, which is fulfilled with the
establishment of Jesus as (physical) king over Israel at the second advent (Hedding 2004b, 29ff).
302
The church with its “New Covenant” has been “grafted in” (concepts derived from Romans 11)
to the Abrahamic covenant, the latter “the most important covenant in the Bible” and the
covenant in which “we [Christians] stand as God’s children” (2004b, 10-11, 20). Importantly,
this means that the ICEJ roots Christian identity in the same covenant that establishes the Jewish
people (Abrahamic) and roots the completed, ultimate Jewish identity in the fulfillment of its
own covenants (the New Covenant and the Davidic Covenant).28
Hedding argues that the Jews were guilty of killing “Jesus” but not “Christ;” that is, they
did not know that Jesus was the Messiah and cannot, therefore, be guilty of deicide (Hedding
2004a, 39-43). The Jewish people merely “fulfilled the very thing that God wanted from them,
the death of Jesus” (43).29 In this construction, Hedding eliminates any potential ascription of
guilt for the Jewish people under the charge of deicide.
Somewhat surprisingly, Hedding employs the traditional concept of a spiritual and a
physical (he uses the term “natural,” 33) people of God (2004d, 30-6). The church, the “true
Israel or the true family of God” (31), has received the covenantal election that the Jewish people
were assigned, but temporarily lost. “[A] true Jew,” then, “is one who has been circumcised by
the Spirit of God, been regenerated and born again” (31), leaving contemporary unconverted
Jewish people as temporarily removed from their divine purposes, but ultimately destined to
fulfill “the historical mission bequeathed to them in the Abrahamic covenant” (34), to be the
28
The ICEJ has established here the theological legitimations for the ethnonationalism that I have documented
throughout this dissertation; Hedding describes Israel and the church as “belong[ing] to the same family” and
“enjoy[ing] the same name and privileges” (Hedding 1978, 59). “Myths of origins,” Anthony Smith (2003a)
instructs, “whether of the genealogical or the territorial-political kind, are usually regarded by the members [of the
mythic community] and by many analysts as key elements in the definition of ethnic communities. Not only have
they often played a vital role in differentiating and separating particular ethnies from close neigbours (sic) and/or
competitors; it is in such myths that ethnies locate their founding charter and raison d’etre” (173). As I have done,
Smith invokes Walker Connor’s emphasis on the “mass psychological bond based on a belief in ancestral
relationship” to describe the basis for the establishment of the “nation of nationalist dreams [which] demands action
based on collective purposes and excites the emotions of those who share a common history and culture” (22).
29
In context, Hedding likely meant that God wanted the death of Christ and simply misspoke.
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“vehicle of redemption” to the world. Hedding seems to be arguing that in fulfilling their
historical purpose (missional election applied to the ethne) the Jewish people, restored to their
land, will reclaim their rightful place in the divine economy as the first people of covenantal
election: “Israel will dwell securely in the land when she is recovered physically and spiritually”
(2004c, 23; 2004d). Hedding continues the conditional form of missional election Anthony
Smith (2003a, 50) described by arguing that “the privilege of living in the land is dependent on
their reconciled relationship with their God” (Hedding 2004c, 10), even if ownership of the land
is permanently theirs (9). This built-in contingency was never a feature of dispensationalism, a
fact that can be appreciated by noting that Hedding calls Israel “God’s test tube nation…[S]he is
where His Word and His promises are proved” (13) rather than a more dispensational metaphor
for Israel as a timepiece (sundial, etc.). Yet this apparent contingent return is repeatedly
countered by ICEJ arguments that use prophecy to indicate the most recent return would be the
final establishment, an argument made because—and this is key—the ICEJ believes a move of
the Holy Spirit that will bring the Jewish people to faith in Jesus is inevitable (35-6), the “trigger
mechanism for the return of Jesus” (Hedding 2004a, 48).30 Therefore, for the ICEJ and according
“[A]ll of the scriptures teach us that God is not going to bring Israel back to the land of promise and leave her an
unsaved or a secular people. That is not His purpose. He is bringing them back in order to reconcile them to
Himself. That will have to be through a process of correction” (Hedding 2004c, 31). It should be noted that the
problem of reconciling the Jewish people to Jesus is a recurrent feature of Christian Zionism. Dispensationalism—
and John Hagee with CUFI—argue that this will happen when Jesus returns and the Jewish people recognize their
Messiah in person; among historical dispensationalists who leverage this argument see, for example, the conference
proceedings of the Philadelphia Prophetic Conference of 1918 (1918, 12, 227-8, 255, 268). The ICEJ flips this logic
and makes Jewish conversion the necessary condition for the second coming, a feature found in Pietist-influenced,
pre-dispensationalist Christian Zionism such as that present in the London Jews Society of the early 19 th century
(Lewis 2010, 60), and characteristic of many segments of Messianic Judaism; see chapter 3. For a conversion
account of a major Christian figure from this dispensationalist view of Jewish conversion to the position of the ICEJ
I describe here, see influential Christian Zionist pastor Jack Hayford (2011, 25ff). However, unlike the arguments of
the LJS’s Lewis Way (1821; cf.The Christian Guardian 1821, 495) who believed an outpouring of the Holy Spirit
leading to world evangelism would flow from Jewish conversion to Gentiles, Jewish conversion in Hedding’s
accounting is conditional upon the completion of Gentile evangelism (cf. Hedding 1978, 9-10). Hedding makes it
explicit that he believes the “Arab world” is the object of the next “great visitation of God’s power and Spirit,” the
Arabs representing “the last people group…that has not enjoyed a major visitation from heaven” (2004c, 48). In this
construction the ICEJ has created a tension between the sequential fulfillment of Gentile evangelism and the
“spiritual recovery” of the Jewish people through Christian conversion; one never knows when the former is
30
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to their reading of the meaning of Israel’s re-establishment, the Jewish people (qua Jewish
people) remain the people of God but in an un-regenerated state, almost as if existing in or in the
process of emerging from a type of theological cocoon, a condition that will soon be remedied or
completed through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as I argued in chapter 3.
Because of the close association of the missional and coventantal election in the ICEJ
understanding of the Jewish people, both the vocation and the ontological existence of the Jewish
people have extreme importance in their theology. In terms of ontology, the Jewish people are
still the first-people in the divine program and “mediators” of the covenants of the Bible
(Hedding 2004b) even by their existence; seemingly contradicting earlier arguments, Hedding
argues that they are Jews through their “natural identity” (Hedding 2004d, 31). It is the “Word of
God” that is “mainly responsible for the Jewishness of Jews. As long as the Word of the Living
God remains ignored, the Jew will forever struggle to come to terms with his identity,” claims
Hedding, who baldly asserts that “The truth is [the Jewish people] feel Jewish but have no idea
of what gives this feeling meaning or substance” (1978, 137).
Jewish ontology works its way out in ICEJ teachings in a remarkable manner. As I
listened to an online devotional given in person by Susan Michael, ICEJ-USA Executive
Director, to the staff of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), she began to teach about
how the nations of the world would be judged according to their treatment of (restored) Israel.
complete and the latter is ready to begin, or even if these processes can/cannot overlap. Therefore, as discussed in
chapter 7, though the ICEJ and other Christian Zionist organizations may disavow Jewish evangelism—both CUFI
and the ICEJ have done so—the emphasis on Jewish conversion in the ICEJ’s eschatological teachings should be
noted as significant; “To bring the King back,” Hedding states (1978), “means to first bring His people back from
dispersion and unbelief” (22). I consider an emphasis on Jewish conversion pre-parousia to be a distinctive feature
within modern Christian theology of what I am calling Renewalist Zionism. On the “correction” mentioned by
Hedding, he later identifies this correction as temporary loss of some of the land of Israel (2004c, 33-5, 41-3, though
Christians should never be partner to this loss, 45) and the affliction from neighboring peoples (36) and not an
Armageddon-like event; see also Jurgen Buehler, “The Spirit of Grace and Supplication,” October 18, 2012,
accessed 12/15/13, http://int.icej.org/news/special-reports/spirit-grace-and-supplication. The ICEJ displays far more
immanence in prophecy interpretation than dispensationalism and leave room for criticism of Israel as a
consequence, as well as criticism of those Christians who do not recognize Israel’s capacity to make “the same
mistakes, problems, and events that other nations and peoples make” (Hedding 2004c, 36).
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“To the nations that hate [Israel], [its restoration] is a banner, a warning of judgment. God has regathered his people; nations, you had better watch out and you had better get in line.”31 Her
statement emphasizes the importance of national alignment with Israel that was seen in the
Renewalist dispute with Bolivian President Evo Morales in the last chapter. Susan Michael
legitimizes this interpretation by referencing Joel 3 and, in an interpretation I had never
encountered before, by referencing a passage from Matthew 25:
Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and
feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and
take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and
come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you,
inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
This is a passage long used in the Christian tradition to encourage general acts of charity to the
unfortunate, wherever they may be found. But here Susan takes a historically quite novel
direction in her interpretation by emphasizing the “My brethren” part of the verse: Jesus’
brethren are Jews. Susan exclaims: “Jesus is Jewish! If you hate the Jewish people, if you are
anti-semitic, you hate Jesus!” Susan is not content to apply judgment to nations based on their
treatment of Jews and of Israel, as she understood the passage. Going further, Susan offers: “I
want to propose that Israel is also becoming a fault-line for the Christian world.” (This is likely a
veiled reference to the ICEJ’s longstanding opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement making its way through a number of mainline denominations in an attempt to put
economic pressure on Israel relative to the Palestinian population of the territories.)32 Here,
Susan makes Israel a fault-line for divine judgment, not only internationally but straight through
31
See Susan Michael, untitled and undated talk, devotional given to Christian Broadcasting Network staff, accessed
10/5/11, http://event.cbn.com/pray-for-israel-2011/?EventID=120859&. From the context, the talk appears to have
been given during or just after Rosh Hashanah (late September), 2011, just prior to my trip to Israel with Susan.
32
See “BDS Movement: Freedom, Justice, Equality,” accessed 12/15/13, http://www.bdsmovement.net/.
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the heart of the church, legitimating such convictions with the Matthew 25 passage (cf. Hedding
1978, 51-2).
Susan Michael’s reading of Matthew 25 is a novel interpretation that appears infrequently
in history, but seems to appear frequently today. Notably, one of the few occurrences before
World War II appears in a 1912 edition of the Latter Rain Evangel (Winter 1912, 4), an early
Pentecostal publication. I also discovered the teaching among the Christadelphians, a small,
American and English restorationist sect established in the 19th century (Laing 1874, 135), and a
group highly influenced by the 19th century prophecy writers discussed in chapter 3,33 but which
does not believe in the restoration of the gifts of the spirit in contemporary times. However, most
interestingly, the earliest recorded instance of such an interpretation I have traced to a published
sermon by the London Jews Society (LJS) written by Edward Cooper (1819), rector of Hamstall
Ridware and Yoxall, Staffordshire and first cousin to Jane Austen:34
After the lapse of nearly eighteen centuries since the desolation of Judaea Can it be too
early at the expiration of so many ages to exhibit to [the Jewish people] a juster specimen
of real Christianity, and at length so shew them, that the religion of Jesus is indeed a
religion of love? Have we forgotten that original promise of the Almighty to Abraham,
‘Them that bless thee, I will bless?’ Have we forgotten that significant declaration of our
Savior to his disciples, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me? (13, emphasis his)
In Cooper’s argument, writing for the LJS, we find the message and approach of the ICEJ in its
basic form: “Christianly” treatment of the Jewish people in order to receive both blessing and
reward for such treatment. Here is also evident, for an organization committed to Jewish
On the last claim, see Christadelphian William Norrie’s (1906) retelling of history important to the
Christadelphians in the 19th century; Norrie mentions Laing as a member of the Christadelphians (37). Edward
Irving, Lewis Way and other prophetic figures associated with the Pietistic strand of historic premillennialism of the
early 19th century covered in chapters 2 and 3 are hagiographized by Norrie.
34
On Cooper’s relationship to Austen, see “Jane Austen’s Staffordshire Cousin: Edward Cooper and His Circle,” by
Gaye King, written for the Jane Austen Society of North America, accessed 12/15/13,
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number15/king.htm.
33
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conversion (the LJS), the practice of love toward the Jewish people in place of the damaging
“teaching of contempt” in prior church ages (cf. Hedding 1978, 70-4).
Haynes and the ICEJ’s witness-people myth
Returning to the ICEJ’s witness-people mythology, what continuities or changes can be
seen relative to Haynes’ (1995) typologies? From my examination it can be said that the ICEJ
rejects replacement theology, provides legitimations that protect the Jewish people from charges
of deicide, and has developed a type of covenantal theology that, somewhat complexly, reserves
a place of honor for the Jewish people, the root of the Christian faith for whom the final purposes
of God will be established. In the teaching of the ICEJ the Jewish people remain an important but
ambivalent sign: they are the carriers of God’s redemptive purposes, but they lie in unbelief and,
therefore, are (temporarily) misaligned with the final fulfillment of those purposes. The ICEJ is
certain of how this story of Israel’s unbelief will end, even if some of the details of its
accomplishment remain untold. “The truth is,” Hedding (1978) claims,35 “Israel’s unbelief is the
only hindrance to world peace. Only prayer will tear down this ‘barrier’ and pave the way for
Jesus’ second coming” (88). To this is bound the conviction that Israel’s election has been passed
to the church, the latter who appear as caretakers of Israel’s portion of that election until the
Jewish people can resume their rightful place through belief in Jesus as Messiah. For the ICEJ,
Israel’s election has not been abrogated but lay dormant, waiting for consummation. For the
ICEJ, protection of the Jewish people through the combatting of anti-semitism (as they define it)
and the survival of the Jewish state in some form are of utmost importance.
35
It should be noted that this 1978 work was not an official publication of the ICEJ nor was Hedding officially
affiliated with the organization at that time. Hedding’s 1978 publication, however, though it often lacks tack and
nuance, does not seem to differ ideologically from his later publications.
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The ICEJ’s version of the witness-people myth is also the mythology that legitimates, if
only implicitly, an ethnonationalistic conception of the relationship of Jews and Christians in
modern times. The ICEJ holds the Jewish people as a type of pater familias of the Christian
church. Hedding (1978, 92) puts it bluntly: “…we should have in our hearts a feeling of
belonging to Israel—or, if you like, a ‘beneath the ground’ feeling of belonging…a natural
feeling of affinity.” Such a construction can, at times, be carried to an extreme: “…there comes
a time in every family when the sons have to lay down their lives for their father in order to care
for and protect him,” says Hedding (1978, 65), identifying the church as the “son” and Israel as
the “father” and suggesting that Israel has already laid down enough lives through (biblical)
history in order to bring salvation to the church. In this manner the ICEJ assists, through their
constructions of the past, in the establishment of an identity rooted in place and memory—an
antidote to conditions of globalization that erode collective identities and the social memories
that establish them.
Conclusion
Anthony Smith (2003a) has suggested that “fear” resulting from the significant and
ongoing changes wrought by globalization and which problematize identity formation are what
“drives men and women back to the comforting warmth of language and ‘ethnicity’” (2). He also
suggests that
Perhaps, after all, nations, far from ceasing to possess meaning and relevance in a global
epoch, take on new meanings and a different, but equally powerful, relevance? And
perhaps this is because they are felt and seen to contain cultural resources from which
new meanings and relevance can he fashioned for a new age? (2)
These are suggestions that make a great deal of sense in understanding the emergence of
Christian Zionism and the prevalence of (especially) Renewalist forms of Zionism globally.
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Theories of social memory and of globalization, as examined in this chapter and in chapter 8,
help to elucidate these processes, their causes, and sustaining power.
Stephen Haynes has provided a means by which interested parties can understand the
Christian myth-making processes inherent in Christian Zionism in a more expansive and helpful
context, both historically and within contemporary Christian traditions—even through
examinations of secular witness-people mythologies. The ICEJ’s distinctive contribution to
witness-people myth-making, which I have used in this chapter as an example of Renewalist
Zionism more generally, differs significantly from other forms, including other Christian Zionist
forms, by placing an emphasis on both Jewish restoration and Jewish conversion in the
fulfillment of the divine program. This basic fact may, indeed, be a type of the “triumphalism”
that Haynes has identified; Haynes’ interpretation of triumphalism essentially removed election
(by way of universalization) from the Jewish people and the ICEJ’s construction does appear to
do that, but only temporarily.
The discussion in this chapter should be of interest, in particular, to the Jewish diaspora
and Jewish Israelis. Many Jewish people have been quite wary—and rightfully so—of Christian
Zionism because, as they understood it only in dispensationalist terms, large numbers of Jewish
people were predicted to die in the conflagration known as Armageddon. Famous interpreters of
Dispensationalist Zionism, such as John Hagee, seemed to push prophecies about Armageddon
into advocacy for it: Hagee has been quick to call for the bombing of Iran, for instance, as a
preliminary step in initiating the final wind-down of history (2006), an action sure to draw
violence to Israel. Further, Jewish conversion, dispensationalists tended to believe, would only
happen in any substantive form when Jesus returned and the (remaining) Jewish people saw him
with their own eyes as he (finally) supernaturally established the Kingdom of God on earth. The
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ICEJ and Renewalist Zionism reverse both of these positions. They emphasize the current nature
of the Kingdom of God currently in process of establishment on earth, and supported by
supernatural signs and the movement of the Spirit. Furthermore, their teachings contribute
directly to (but may not cause) a sense among Christians that the Jewish people and the state of
Israel are family and homeland, respectively, for (Spirit-filled) Christian people. “Every bornagain believer should recognize and declare the nation Israel as his fatherland,” declares Gerald
Derstine (1993, 60, emphasis his), Mennonite charismatic and former ICEJ-USA director.
Whether this position is better or worse for the Jewish people will be up to the Jewish
community to decide, but it is both necessary and prudent to establish these facts rather than
relying on caricatures and misunderstandings as they largely exist in the current literature.
In a teaching series called Discerning the Times, Susan Michael provides us with an act
of social memory that demonstrates well a number of concepts around social memory that I have
emphasized in this chapter and in this dissertation generally. Beginning with a retelling of
modern Jewish Zionism as it “officially” began at the first Zionist congress in Basel,
Switzerland, in 1897, Susan (Michael 2008) says:
…at the very same time [as that first Zionist congress], here in the United States the very
first drops of the Holy Spirit were beginning to fall. By 1905 (sic) the Azusa Street
Revival was birthed, and there has been an outpouring of the Holy Spirit since then. In
1948 when Israel was born, what did we have? We had huge tent revivals going on and
huge healing crusades. In 1967 when Israel regained control over Jerusalem again, what
happened? The Holy Spirit hit the denominational churches and we had the charismatic
movement birthed. At a time when God was gathering his people back into the land,
birthing and establishing them, He was birthing a revival of Bible-based Christianity at
the same time. He is raising us up for such a time as this.
The imagery Susan uses here merges the destinies of two peoples in the process of spiritual
renewal: the Christian church and the Jewish people. Here, the language of “birth/born” may be
significant; it suggests that in Susan’s collective representation of this past, both peoples were
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dead prior to the invigoration of the Spirit at the fin de siècle. Their destinies and their origins are
intertwined. Juha Ketola, the ICEJ’s International Director, employs the imagery of “two horses,
one chariot”36 to describe essentially the same image Susan offers here: the divine purpose is the
chariot, and the (Spirit-filled) church and Israel are the horses. “God’s plans concerning the
Church and Israel will lead to the very same glorious end result—the return of His beloved Son
to rule over this world!,” Ketola exclaims to his readers. For the ICEJ, what remains in the
completion of this telling of Christian history is the “spiritual recovery” of Israel, when the two
peoples will become “one new man” (cf. chapters 6 and 7), a single ethne, presided over by the
messiah-king returned to Israel. This version of the witness-people myth and of Christian history
suggests Jan Assmann’s (2006) description of cultural memory as “complex, pluralistic, and
labyrinthine; it encompasses a quantity of bonding memories and group identities that differ in
time and place and draws its dynamism from these tensions and contradictions” (29). The
reorganization of Christian history into a component of Jewish history and destiny serves well
Renewalist attempts to counter the eroding effects of contemporary globalization processes.
36
Juha Ketola. “Two Horses One Chariot: The global mission of the ICEJ,” Word From Jerusalem, July, 2013, 4-5.
Chapter 10
Conclusion: Renewalist Zionism as a Stream of Christian Zionism
It is all about restoration! – Malcolm Hedding1
The academic study of Christian Zionism has suffered from an over-reliance on
premillennial dispensationalism in retellings of the roots of the phenomenon. In part, this is due
to scholarly attention to only American sources of Christian Zionism dating from after the Civil
War. It also results from a failure to define and then compare Dispensationalist Zionism to the
data observed. This error has resulted in the carrying-forward of assumptions based in the
theology and philosophical presuppositions of dispensationalism into contemporary analysis of
the phenomenon. As a result, most scholars have neglected sources of Christian Zionism that
predate dispensational premillennialism and the inability to distinguish Christian Zionism not
manifesting as dispensationalism. Differentiation of these streams is important because they
potentially carry very different assumptions and ideological convictions, leading to very different
practices and cultural, social and political outcomes. Two recent scholarly works—one by
Donald Lewis (2010) and the other by Robert O. Smith (2010)—have made contributions toward
the correction of various components of this error in the sourcing of millennialist Christian
Zionism from dispensationalism. Lewis successfully attempts to provide an accounting of
Christian Zionist thought in the post-Revolutionary period that does not rely on premillennial
dispensationalism. Smith provides a retelling of American Christian Zionism as a phenomenon
bound up with American national identity processes and also not derived from the spread of the
ideology of dispensationalism. This dissertation has attempted to add to such scholarly revisions
by calling for a differentiation of streams of Christian Zionism, both historical and
1
Malcolm Hedding (2013, 129).
312
313
contemporary, in order to identify and account for the varying social and political manifestations
observed within at least one, newly-named stream: Renewalist Zionism.
From the beginning, initiated by the Pentecostal tradition congealing at the end of the 19th
century in the United States and Britain, Renewalist Zionists understood their movement as part
of a divinely initiated dual sign. The (re-)emergence of Christian charismata (i.e. gifts of the
spirit) into the public eye, along with the advancing Zionist movement, signaled to even the
earliest Renewalist Christians the coming end of the age. Though premillennial
dispensationalism remained the dominant theological discourse during the early years of
Pentecostalism in the U.S., visions of this co-election were conjoined by Renewalists with
dispensationalist eschatology, the latter which had followed the majority of Protestantism since
the Reformation by holding no place for the revival of Renewalist teachings and experiences of
the charismata. It was an “uneasy relationship,” as Sheppard (1984) described it. The resulting
early Pentecostal theology was, therefore, characterized by significant dissonance in these
competing theological concepts. Early Pentecostals rejected dispensationalist arguments about
the cessation of gifts, namely speaking in tongues (“glossolalia”). Later Renewalists, feeding off
of the confidence derived from their growing numbers globally, insisted (and continue to insist)
that revision of the inherited conservative eschatology be completed. This latest, fast-growing
iteration of Renewalism insists that the offices of apostle and prophet be recovered from
theological memory for application to our age and more appropriate eschatologies established to
reflect these conditions. No consensus in eschatology has yet emerged, though momentum
against dispensationalism is nearing a crescendo.
Concurrent with this Renewalist revision of the inherited theology was the further
development and embrace of Jewish culture and a mining of various streams of Judaism that had
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begun with the development of philosemitic tendencies arriving with the Protestant Reformation
and embraced in earnest in the global vision of Christian evangelism deriving initially from the
London Jews Society (LJS). As a somewhat surprising forerunner of Renewalist eschatology, the
LJS was established in England among mainly conservative Anglicans in the early 19th century
during a period of general millennialist anticipation characterized by a belief that a move of the
Holy Spirit would bring about the completion of global evangelism. This millennialism was met
with the Pietistic-inspired, Jewish-centered vision of the LJS, which incorporated into this
theology a doctrine of Jewish restoration to Palestine. Jewish converts to Christianity working
for the LJS helped to advance a sense of openness to Jewish culture, religious literature, and an
understanding of Jewish sensibilities vis-à-vis Christianity’s historic role as oppressor of the
Jewish people and as a potentially effective method of Jewish evangelism or at least creating
Christian goodwill among the Jewish people. Importantly, the LJS was also responsible for an
early articulation of the doctrine of the Latter Rain. This doctrine would be the lynchpin for a
distinct form of Renewalist Zionism and was articulated by major LJS leaders and speakers,
though Victorian sensibilities precluded acceptance of the revival of Christian the charismata
(i.e. spiritual gifts) at that time, even if the charismata did appear among then-contemporary LJS
supporters, such as the popular but ultimately disgraced preacher Edward Irving. Nevertheless,
the articulation of the Latter Rain Doctrine by the LJS indicated the importance of a restored and
rejuvenated Jewish community for the health and well-being of the (end-time) Christian church
and the fulfillment of the vocational election of each party on the earth.
Pentecostals would subsequently develop the Latter Rain ideology in stages—as
examined in this dissertation through the theology of D. Wesley Myland, the New Order of the
Latter Rain movement of the 1950s, and third wave Renewalism today—with each successive
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stage marked by a clear implicit or explicit distancing from previously dominant
dispensationalist eschatology. The early Protestant philosophy of history that made Christians a
partner in the redemption of the world became increasingly bound with the redemption of Israel.
This was achieved slowly, through exposure to Jewish converts, a wrestling with problems of
permanent election, theodicy, and the meaning of the Kingdom of God in Protestant theology,
exploration of Jewish texts (especially the Jewish kabbalah), and Jewish/Christian dialogue after
the Holocaust. Such changes were further prompted by increasing access to the land of Israel,
Israel’s establishment as a state, and advances in biblical archaeology. Renewalist Zionism as we
have it today is characterized by an emphasis on divine immanence lacking in much of
dispensationalist theological history, a strong sense of the supernatural as a means to bring about
the Kingdom of God, and a felt sense that the fate of Israel and the fate of Christianity on earth
are irrevocably bound together. Renewalist Christians write themselves into the prophetic
scriptures as central actors in fulfilling end-times prophecies, thereby prescribing social action
deemed critical to the culmination of divine history.
By naming Renewalist Zionism as a particular stream of Christian Zionism, I attempt to
show how various social outcomes and processes are manifested between the different streams.
For Renewalist Zionism foremost among these characteristics is an emerging ethnonationalism
between some segments of Judaism, some Jews and certain factions within the political strata of
the state of Israel and (largely but not exclusively) Renewalist Christianity that creates a special
affinity between the groups that has the substance and dynamic of a single ethnic community, at
least to the Christians and Jews involved. By examining the case of the International Christian
Embassy, Jerusalem (ICEJ), I have shown how Renewalist Zionism propagates itself globally
and instantiates Renewalist Zionism within a global network of Renewalist Christians seeking to
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“redeem their nations” through the securing of divine blessing as a byproduct of alignment with
the state of Israel, conceived through Renewalist Zionist theology. The ethnographic portion of
this dissertation showed in detail how the symbolic ownership by Christians of the land of Israel
is accomplished in the development of intricate narratives that find supernatural continuance in
the current state of Israel and the biblical story. The story of the Bible continues, unabated, in the
establishment of the state of Israel, and home nations must take this fact into account lest they be
found on the wrong side of Judgment Day.
In this manner, global Renewalist Zionist communities are at once deeply and dually
nationalistic: they are advocates of alternate, Renewalist-inspired nationalisms at home and
profoundly (subjectively and, in some cases, even institutionally) conjoined with the state of
Israel and its national project. Israel is both redeemer nation and the ground for the construction
of alternative, Renewalist inspired nationalisms at “home.” In this way, the relativization of
national distinctions brought on by the perceived homogenizing effects of globalization as
understood from within the Renewalist worldview reproduce in Renewalist Zionism the
phenomenon of the universalization of the particular and the particularization of the universal
described by more careful globalization theorists, as seen in chapter 9. The construction of
alternative social memories helps to ground these new nationalisms in the overall Renewalist
eschatology and worldview. Smith’s (2010) thesis that American Christian Zionists support
Israel because American national identity is irrevocably bound with Israel as a chosen nation so
that “protecting the typological referent of the State of Israel” becomes paramount (307) is
interesting and somewhat enlightening. However, it fails to account for the replication of
support for the state of Israel in the largely disparate nationalisms of widely varying global
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constituencies and the uniting of these constituencies into a global movement, mainly outside of
the reach of American national narratives.
As I have attempted to show, the ethnonationalism emerging as the center of Renewalist
Zionism is experienced as an antidote to the challenges to identity posed by relativization
processes brought on through globalization. Without implying over-causation, it can be said that
as globalization proceeded, so did the formation of a new Jewish-Christian identity, largely but
not exclusively among Renewalists and even eventually embraced by some religious Jews and
Israelis, particularly Israeli political figures. These latter individuals have contributed directly to
the forging of new, common-bond social memories, legitimating a shared past and uniting
towards a common future and opposed by common enemies—namely secularism and militant
Islam.
In the Renewalist expression, often cloaked for political reasons, this Jewish-Christian
bond is informed by kingdom-now theologies of various intensities that propound a joint
vocational election to the bringing of the kingdom of God on earth while, importantly,
weakening (in an increasing number of cases, jettisoning) the idea of the rapture of the saints as
traditionally understood. The eschatology of third wave Renewalists in particular describes
believers as participants in some way in end-time events with Israel. As Renewalism moves
beyond dispensationalism and into the dominant apocalyptic ethos of our age as identified by
Roland Robertson and described in chapters 8 and 9, the idea that Christians will not be around
for the unpleasantries at the end of the age (via the traditional notion of the rapture of the
Church) dissolves as Renewalists prepare to embrace both struggle and the great victories to
come as judgment is directed at God’s enemies. The now-dominant Renewalist witness-people
myth insists that though retaining a type of dormant election, the Jewish people have yet to fulfill
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their ultimate purposes and, therefore, Jewish conversion is a necessary precondition to the
return of Jesus, the Latter Rain before the harvest, all symbolized in discourses surrounding the
biblical Feast of Tabernacles. Together, Renewalists and the (eventually Messianic) Jewish
people will face the onslaught of evil until Jesus returns, manifesting in various ways in different
third wave theologies, always supernaturally victorious against the forces of evil, yet sometimes
also as victims of severe persecution.
Theological tensions such as these that are currently present in Renewalist Zionism,
combined with its emphasis on divine immanence and an understanding of Israel as the divinely
ordained continuation of the biblical story, allow it to be less dogmatic regarding how the story
proceeds. Some contingencies about timing and process are even embraced: Israel may lose
land, Malcolm Hedding has argued. Recognizing and differentiating historical streams of
Christian Zionism allows us to avoid mistakes in analysis that attribute specific beliefs of one
stream to Christian Zionism as a whole. In his dissertation Robert Smith (2010) argued, against a
de-differentiated Christian Zionism that in context assumes dispensationalism at its core, that
“contemporary Christian Zionism is concerned less with flesh-and-blood Jews than with
preserving its own Christian theopolitical hope” (307). Rather than assuming a monolithic
Christian Zionism, Smith would be assisted by differentiating streams of Christian Zionism so as
to better gauge the potentiality for violence, incitement to violence, and the salience of claims to
eschatological differentiation of peoples (Jews and Christians) and how these realities may pose
short- and long-term threats to social order, particularly to all peoples in and around Jerusalem.
While the drumbeat among many conservative Christians, including dispensationalists such as
John Hagee, advocates overtly for violence within a clash of civilizations construct (the West
versus Islam in particular), the ICEJ has consistently refuted such violence, even developing
319
theologies that argue against it.2 Further, sentiments among Renewalists globally have varied
widely by country with regard to support for the West’s “war on terror,” according to the Pew
Forum’s study “Spirit and Power,” cited throughout this dissertation (Pew Forum 2006).3
Having said that, it should be noted that the ICEJ consistently—though quietly and
typically avoiding specifics that could be politically charged—has argued in their theology that
before the end of days the third Jewish temple must be rebuilt at the site of the previous two. Of
course, the Islamic Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque currently reside in that location.
In 2013 the ICEJ’s Malcolm Hedding (formerly its Executive Director, 2000-2011) published
Understanding Revelation: Preparing Believers for Their Coming King (2013). In it, Hedding
provides the most thorough accounting of how he believes the anticipated conversion of the Jews
just prior to the return of Jesus takes place: through the rebuilding of the temple. Hedding
teaches that in order for the “two witnesses” of the book of Revelation (identified as Moses and
Elijah) to appear, a temple must be built so that their prophesied roles may be fulfilled as they
“appear in the Temple, at the altar of sacrifice…to serve as a visual illustration of the once for all
finished work of Jesus on the cross” (134). The existing Islamic buildings would be destroyed
(“come down,” 131). This event, Hedding insists, is what will bring about the “spiritual
restoration” of Israel and release the Holy Spirit on the populace and thereby bring about the
“work of restoration” that finally (re-)unites the Jewish people and the Church into a single
2
David Parsons of the ICEJ identifies Iran—not Islam in general—as a threat and points to the invasion of Iraq as a
mistake. “[S]omething lured [the West] into a fight in Iraq that dragged on way too long and handcuffed the West in
dealing with the more serious menace in Tehran. I believe that something was what the Bible describes as seducing
or deceiving spirits, which we are told will operate on a global scale in the ‘last days’ (2 Thessalonians 2; 2 Timothy
2:13). The West must defend our freedoms, but we are being slowly seduced into an endless war with Islam. It is a
spirit that wants to destroy Israel but will never succeed. Yet it will seek to drain our resolve and stir up excuses for
demonizing Israel and the West. It also seeks to provoke us into a massive military response that would result in the
deaths of multitudes of Muslims. And that perhaps is what the devil wants most of all” (19). See David Parsons,
“Stymied in Syria,” Word From Jerusalem, July 2013, 18-19.
3
The study noted that Renewalists tended to show little difference on this question from the general populations in
their country, with Nigeria the one notable exception, with Pentecostals there showing a significant increase in
support for the war on terror relative to the general population (72).
320
community to “rule and reign with Christ over the nations” (132-3). As the ICEJ’s David Parsons
has stated, “there are not separate fates for the Church and for Israel, but instead one fold, the
‘Israel of God,’ all ‘sons of Abraham’ and only one ‘coming of the Lord,’” (42). The emerging
ethnonationalism observed throughout this dissertation would then be finalized, preparing the
way for the reign of Jesus. It should be noted that in popular forms of dispensationalism the
temple was rebuilt as part of the antichrist’s agenda, after the church has been raptured, and the
degraded Jewish people would initially receive him with gratitude for it, forming an alliance with
him (Weber 2004, 250-1). But for Hedding (2013), though the peace established by the antichrist
will enable the rebuilding of the temple, this will be done by God’s sovereignty to “purify the
Church, and reveal Jesus to Israel” (152). Although the rebuilding of the temple seems “totally
outside of the realm of human possibility,” it will be accomplished by “the Spirit of God,”
Hedding claims (130).4
In this dissertation I have explored the teachings and practices of the ICEJ as an ideal
type of this emerging Renewalist Zionism. What I have attempted to show is that the single
largest Christian Zionist alternative to premillennial dispensationalism has the following primary
characteristics: Renewalist Zionist eschatology as examined in the ICEJ a) begins with the
Weber (2004) notes that it was because of “impatience over the lack of progress concerning the [rebuilding of the]
temple” that led the ICEJ’s first Executive Director, Willem van der Hoeven, to leave the organization (261-2). Van
der Hoeven had planned a radical staging on the top of Mt. Moriah (the “temple mount”) by Feast of Tabernacles
participants in 1990 that, speculatively speaking, was apparently too political for the ICEJ’s board, perhaps because
of Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek’s resistance to the idea. Van der Hoeven’s new organization, the International
Christian Zionist Center, demonstrates far more militancy than subsequent ICEJ leadership regarding Christian
participation in efforts to rebuild the temple. Further evidence about the reluctance of the ICEJ to direct involvement
comes from David Parsons, who says that Christians “should not be running ahead of [the Jewish people]” in
building the temple, insisting that the Jewish people will attend to the rebuilding of the temple “when they are ready
to do so.” Aware of potential Muslim reaction to efforts by Christians on the site, Parsons further cautions that “we
understand that this must be approached as a holy thing which cannot be forced, and we must never provoke the
shedding of blood over it.” See “Golden Secrets: The quest for lost Temple treasures,” October 2006, accessed
2/24/12, http://int.icej.org/news/commentary/golden-secrets.
4
321
premise that the church is derived from biblical Israel and will merge completely with the
(converted) Jewish people at the end of the age; b) does not take the church out of the world in
the lead up to the end of the age, but has the church standing with Israel against named enemies
(secularists and Islam); and c) is characterized by a Renewalist distinctive in the accomplishment
of the first two: radical supernaturalism through the deployment of Christian charismata
(spiritual gifts). Each of these traits is incompatible with premillennial dispensationalism and
should lead scholars to reflect on the possibilities for alternative social and political outcomes as
the geo-political and cultural situation unfolds. Renewalist Zionism, largely because of the
success of Renewalism globally, is a confident movement and it is organizing quickly. It
assumes an ownership of the land of Israel not seen with the same intensity or in the same
manifestation as in dispensationalism. Renewalist Zionism weds itself to the land through a
process of the supernaturalization of Jewish history; Israel is perceived as the land of the
supernatural and, therefore, as a continuation of the biblical story, particularly as the locus and
source of continued divine intervention, as seen in chapter 5. A hermeneutic of anticipation
assists in the establishment of charismatic authority and enlivens such narratives, at the
individual and collective levels, by triangulating a biblical past with contemporary events or
needs and pointing to a divine outcome or the realization of a divinely prophesied future (sacred
trajectory). Here, Israel becomes proof, in the first order, of the existence of the supernatural in
the modern world.
In 2011 the ICEJ underwent a major reorganization in terms of its “branches,” taking
more of a centralized approach to messaging and leadership, according to my discussions with
the ICEJ’s Michael Hines. Whereas my visits to various ICEJ website branches in 2010 yielded
very disparate messages—one encounter with a West African branch’s website included
322
traditional anti-semitic tropes regarding Jews and money—now the ICEJ branches have a much
more streamlined and centralized message that still allows for some messaging particularity
about local activities on behalf of Jews. Furthermore, the ICEJ’s leadership, as I demonstrated in
chapter 3, has done much to integrate itself with a concurrent attempt to organize the global
Renewalist movement as a whole, through the leadership of Oral Roberts University and the
International Coalition of Apostles. The ICEJ has also made significant moves to spread its
message on Christian television, as noted in chapter 7, and Christian television (nearly entirely
Renewalist) has made significant moves to integrate itself into Israeli media and Jerusalem itself.
According to the ICEJ’s Juha Ketola, the ICEJ will be focusing its near and long-term efforts on
reaching Christians in the United States.5 This strategic move appears to be an attempt to counter
not only the messaging of pseudo-dispensationalist organizations such as the U.S.-based
Christians United for Israel, but the anti-Zionist messaging gaining strength on U.S. campuses. It
appears that the ICEJ’s influence, as well as Renewalist Zionism more generally, is on the rise.
My attempt in this dissertation to differentiate a Renewalist stream of Christian Zionism
provides merely a first pass at a necessary step in the study of Christian Zionism as differentiated
streams. As such, significant research remains, not only in the identification and differentiation
of other streams, but in the exploration of the contours of Renewalist Zionism in greater detail as
they emerge in various national contexts. Associating Christian Zionism with American
religiosity and peculiarities is no longer a tenable research assumption. More ethnographic work
is needed, as well as quantitative work that includes mechanisms for differentiating Renewalist
Zionism from the assumptions of wrongly sourced Christian Zionism. Scholars should recognize,
for instance, that survey questions employing the term “rapture” may be multivalent and not
Estera Wieja, “Restoring Truth to the Church,” interview with Juha Ketola, January 29, 2014,
http://us.icej.org/news/special-reports/restoring-truth-church.
5
323
indicative of dispensationalism, as the term is often popularly associated. A second area of
needed research is on the Christian sources of opposition to Christian Zionism and the global
movement to provide a Christian voice to criticisms of Israel, Palestinian issues, and the
situations facing the ancient Christian communities particularly in the occupied territories.
United by organizations such as Kairos Palestine, studies on how these organizations
conceptualize the Israel/Palestine question, what kinds of social memories are formed to
legitimize positions, the type of political and social outcomes that are present, and the
identification of witness-people mythologies within these narratives are also sorely needed. Such
studies could contribute valuable insights into global religious mobilization as well as perform
important comparative functions that contribute to further research on Christian Zionism and
social memory. Finally, the relationship between the emergence of the idea of the Jewish return
to Palestine and the Jewish kabbalah is much needed, with acknowledgment of the influences of
kabbalah largely confined to passing references in the existing scholarship on Christian Zionism.
Even today the ICEJ cites kabbalah-inspired Jewish commentaries in support of their positions.6
A final word
It is important to recognize that scholars, often associated with secularist ideologies, play
a part in Renewalist theology, as they are nearly always associated with the “spirit of the
antichrist.” As such, attacks on Christian Zionism (and even Christianity in general) can and are
often interpreted as manifestations of the antichrist spirit on earth, and therefore directly
contribute to the accomplishment of the eschatological scheme itself. Whereas in
dispensationalism, the advance of secular ideologies meant that the rapture was soon
6
See Parsons (Unknown year, 42n106), which cites the Jewish Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, an expert on the Jewish
kabbalah, in his commentaries in The Handbook of Jewish Thought (1992). A brief review of some of Kaplan’s
commentaries reveals striking similarities with many of the ICEJ’s positions, with modifications from Kaplan’s
positions largely confined to the revelation of Jesus as Messiah.
324
approaching, in the more kingdom-now eschatologies that reject dispensationalism, advancing
secularism and militant Islam means that Christians should brace themselves for the terrible
events to be directed at Israel and the church (sometimes at only Islam and secularists). The
preparation to be made by Christians, as indicated in their literature, includes preparations for
martyrdom—see, for instance, Hedding (2013, 92-103, 122) who argues that the Great
Tribulation will bring beheading for Christians and the following event, Armageddon, will bring
death for God’s enemies in judgment. Speaking apocalyptically about Christians, Christian
Zionism or Israel—often conducted on campuses where many of the children of these Christians
sit—only adds fuel to the fires that burn in a “millennial age,” as Roland Robertson described it
(2007). Gibbon’s warning—that “during many ages the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to
its own accomplishment” (1862, 143)—is highly relevant today. Interactions between secularminded groups, mainline Christians and those evangelical Christians with an eschatological bent
are arenas of cultural conflict and should be treated in scholarship as such in their varied
manifestations. Scholars should “write themselves” into the literature in this regard. Therefore,
scholars of religion, as I have tried to show, can assist greatly with helping the wider scholarly
community understand—comparatively and in ethnographic detail—the contours of these
worldviews, the motivations and symbols that enliven these narratives, and scholars’ own roles
in arenas of cultural conflict. In other words, more reflexivity is needed.
There is something to be said for taking care not to poke the millennialist lion, wherever
it may exist, even if it remains necessary to speak, with wisdom, about potential geopolitical
dangers, socially oppressive structures, and all of the moral issues that surround the state of
Israel and the religions that find meaning, negative or positive, in its existence.
325
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350
VITA
Full Name: Matthew C. Westbrook
Place and date of birth: Statesboro, GA October 19, 1973
Parents Names: William B. and Brenda Jane (Herron) Westbrook
Educational Institutions:
School
Place
Degree
Date
Secondary:
Quincy Jr.-Sr. H.S.
Quincy, CA
General Diploma
1992
Collegiate:
Humboldt State University
Arcata, CA
BS Business Adm.
1997
Graduate:
Fuller Theological Seminary
Drew University
Drew University
Pasadena, CA
Madison, NJ
Madison, NJ
MA Theology
M.Phil. Rel. & Soc.
2002
2011