Why Evangelical Support for Israel is Waning

The recent Christ at the Checkpoint Conference has a number
of evangelical groups concerned about waning support for the nation of Israel
among Evangelicals (see here
and here ). David Brog of Christians United for Israel
even wonders whether
the end of evangelical support for Israel has come .

While there is no doubt a push for greater recognition of
Palestinian Christians among certain evangelical groups, a key issue that has yet to be addressed is the role of dispensationalism and its view of the End.
When John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, is a prominent
advocate of a rapture theology, one can be sure dispensationalism is in the
background. There is a theological issue at stake in this debate, and Evangelicals who want greater support for
Israel ignore it at their peril.

Placing the theological foundation of any support for Israel
within a dispensational framework is problematic because it weds the issue to a
highly debated and controversial theological position. In brief, dispensationalism
maintains a clear distinction between Israel and the church although
Progressive Dispensationalism sees both as part of the one people of God. God
has not forsaken his covenant with the natural descendants of Abraham. The
consummation of Christian salvation history will begin with a secret rapture of
the church, the point of which is for God to fulfill his plan for Israel.
Historical events such as the foundation of the modern state of Israel are
viewed as prophetic clues to the approaching of the end.

As understood by John Hagee, Christian Zionism is framed in
terms of end-time prophecy. In addition, Hagee weds together
biblical texts about blessing Israel to a prosperity message, saying that doing the
former will bring the latter. He also suggests that any deviation in support
for the state of Israel will lead to divine judgment. Again, this is shaky
terrain.

No Reformed person worth their salt theologically would go
near dispensationalism or prosperity theology although a “Calvinist” occupying
the space between theological worlds might. Even within Pentecostal circles
rapture theology is not universally embraced. Premillennialism, the belief that
at his second coming Jesus will set up an earthly kingdom is fairly standard,
but there is room for divergence on a secret rapture of the church.

The point is that the future of evangelical support for
Israel cannot rest upon a theological foundation that divides many Evangelicals
from one another. It would not surprise me to discover that there is a
correlation between waning support for Israel and a rejection of the rapture
theology behind dispensationalism.

What Evangelicals have yet to do is develop an Evangelical theology
of Judaism, to slightly alter a title from Robert Jenson’s essay in Jews and Christans: People of God. Evangelical
Protestants find themselves currently in a strange place historically in which they
have reversed the question so central to that first church council recorded in
Acts 15. Just as those first Christians were concerned about the status of the
Gentiles in the plan of God, so Evangelicals must be concerned about the status
of the Jews in the plan of God. It is, indeed, a strange place to be: to see as
foreign what was once so natural to Christianity that the question need not be
asked, and to see as natural what was once so foreign that it felt to the first
followers of Jesus as though the full weight of the ages was upon them.

Such a theology is necessary for evangelical
self-understanding, especially a renewed dialogue over the
End. It might begin in an evangelical engagement with Dabru
Emet (“Speak the Truth”), a Jewish statement about Christians and
Christianity so important and extending such hospitality that it cannot be
ignored. I have yet to discover any significant evangelical dialogue with this
text although Catholics, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants have engaged it since its
publication in 2000.

What would such an Evangelical theology of Judaism look like?

First, as with Dabru
Emet, it would view the question of the State of Israel as a species of the
broader question about Judaism as a whole. Here is where John Hagee’s
insistence that any replacement theology must be rejected as unbiblical bears
fruit because it signals an evangelical call for an end to supersessionism. As David
Novak has noted, Christian and Jewish theologians engaged in this dialogue
begin with a renunciation of supersessionism on both sides. For Reformed theology,
this will mean a re-thinking of its approach to covenantal theology, or, at
least, that of some Reformed thinkers.

Second, there is a certain structure to Dabru Emet in which the first four statements are theological and the
final four statements draw out historical and practical implications. An evangelical
exception to this structure would be to place the sixth statement about the
complete reconciliation between Jews and Christians awaiting final redemption
immediately after the first statement about worshipping the same God. This is
because the shared hope of an eschatological reconciliation provides the
counter to an affirmation that the God of Israel is the God of Jesus Christ.

By placing the two statements in succession, the claim of
complete reconciliation becomes a more robust theological commitment. As Richard
John Neuhaus suggested, the people of God “has no plural,” a claim that
cannot simply be viewed in terms of Judaism being the root of Christianity, but
that both Christianity and Judaism “participate in the story of the one God of
Israel.” This truth must be viewed from the perspective of the End as well as the
history of salvation.

This dual perspective must control the dialogue between Jews
and Christians, including Palestinian Christians. It is a failure to examine
the theological issue of Judaism that plagues the current evangelical division
over the state of Israel. Palestinian Christians cannot escape such a question
even if political circumstances tempt them to try.

Indeed, one may wonder whether Christianity might provide
the terrain in which Palestinians who claim Christ and Jews who claim the God
of Israel might discover a different way of understanding the other. If nothing
else, in taking the initial steps toward a Jewish perspective on Christianity, Dabru Emet offers Evangelicals an
opportunity to place any discussion of the state of Israel on a more firm
theological foundation. Let us hope, however, that it may also do more than
that.