Sojourners Magazine Opinion Piece Distorts Facts about Christian Zionism (original) (raw)

Introduction

In his article, “Christian Zionism Helped Bring the Right Together. Now, It’s Driving It Apart,” published in the Christian magazine Sojourners on April 22, 2026, opinion writer Rubin McClain:

Distorting Christian Zionism

Mischaracterizing Christian Zionist Beliefs as Based on Exclusivism and Violence

McClain suggests that Christian Zionism is “a political theology that is based on exclusivism and violence.” Similarly, he suggests that the “outcome [of Christian Zionism] is extremism and violence.” However, many Christian Zionists have shown political pragmatism in expressing an openness to Israeli territorial compromise to achieve a peaceful outcome to the conflict if doing so would not imperil the security of the State of Israel. As Stony Brook University Professor Stephen Spector notes:

The claim that all Christian Zionists adamantly demand that Israel keep every inch of its biblical territory is vastly overstated […] Many born-again Christians have only a very vague notion of Israel’s role in the final days, and even among evangelical elites, there is remarkable diversity and nuance in their beliefs. That, in turn, allows flexibility about the principle of land-for-peace. Indeed, though it flies in the face of the common stereotype, 52% of evangelical leaders are in favor of a Palestinian state on land that God promised to Abraham, as long as it doesn’t threaten Israel! That may surprise people who fear born-again Christians’ obduracy on the question of covenant land. But the explanation, says the University of Akron’s John Green, is simple: They want to see peace in the Middle East (Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, pp. 161-162).

While McClain claims that a Christian Zionist interpretation of Genesis 15 regarding a divine promise of land represents a “decontextualized reading of God’s promise to Abraham,” he fails to explain why he thinks this is so or to provide any alternative understanding of the biblical passage while maintaining that a Christian Zionist “theological framework treats Jews as a means to an end.” Since McClain suggests he would prefer a more “contextualized” understanding of God’s promise to Abraham, it is worth turning to another biblical passage highlighted by Christian Zionists in which God’s promise of land to Abraham and his descendants also appears: namely, Genesis 12. Fuller Theological Seminary Assistant Professor of Bible and Mission Collin Cornell points out that reading Genesis 12 in the context of the Priestly Blessing found later in Scripture indicates Abraham and his descendants are treated as ends and not means:

[R]eading Genesis 12 toward the Priestly Blessing means emphasizing its internal profile, […] its ultimacy. The Priestly Blessing is for Israelites, squarely on their behalf and not for any others. The promise to Abraham should be read in this way[,] too. It addresses Abraham and his descendants. They are the intended recipients of divine favor and protection. They are not instruments or channels. They are ends and not means (God Draws Near: Rethinking the Biblical Theology of Mission, p. 116).

Cornell further notes that reading Genesis 12 in the context of Psalm 72 likewise indicates that Abraham and his descendants are treated as ends and not means:

Like Genesis 12, Psalm 72 projects its blessing into far lands. The blessing of God affects the farthest geographic and national realms. Psalm 72 also shares in common with Genesis 12 a concern for the name or reputation of its central figure, and the psalm includes a promise of land. Above all, Psalm 72 shows how the promise to Abraham can be internal or ultimate, intended for Abraham and his descendants and not for any others beyond them (Ibid., p. 121).

McClain describes Christian Zionists as adopting a theological framework that views Jews as playing an instrumental role in the Second Coming of Jesus, a view with which he seems to disagree, but McClain omits that it is Jesus himself as depicted in the New Testament who appears to indicate that his return is conditional on the action of Jewish Jerusalem in stating: “I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Luke 13:35). The Princeton Theological Seminary New Testament scholar Dale Allison has indicated that understanding this biblical text as indicating that the date of the redemption is contingent on Israel’s behavior is a valid interpretation:

“Until you say” can be understood to signal a conditional sentence. The text then means not, when the Messiah comes, his people will bless him, but rather, when his people bless him, the Messiah will come. In other words, the date of the redemption is contingent upon Israel’s acceptance of the person and work of Jesus (“Matt. 23:39 = Luke 13:35b as a Conditional Prophecy,” p. 77).

Similarly, McClain fails to mention that the Catechism of the Catholic Church suggests that Israel will play an instrumental role in the Second Coming of Jesus:

674 The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel”, for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus.568 St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.”569 St. Paul echoes him: “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?”570 The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles”,571 will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, in which “God may be all in all”.572

While McClain suspects that Tucker Carlson’s and Candace Owens’ critiques of Israel have been in service of “their own political goals,” McClain omits analyses that see Israel’s Christian detractors similarly using the Jewish State for their own expiatory purposes. The Middle East Forum’s and CAMERA’s Dexter Van Zile has argued that for such detractors of the State of Israel, “assailing the legitimacy of the Jewish state” often functions as “a bastardized form of substitutionary atonement.” According to Van Zile,

This is common behavior among progressive Christians in the United States. All too often, Israel serves as the ram in the thicket upon which privileged pacifists project their guilt for belonging to a civilization they regard as the dominant—if not unique—source of suffering in the world in the modern era. These Christians thrust Israel into the fire of moral judgment in their stead. For them, Israel replaces Jesus Christ as the sacrificial lamb of atonement.

McClain also omits that an important passage from Paul’s epistles frequently highlighted by Christian Zionists emphasizes that activity among Gentiles is a means by which God’s end of regaining Israel’s devotion is achieved: “[S]alvation has come to the gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous […] Inasmuch as I am an apostle to the gentiles, I celebrate my ministry in order to make my own people jealous and thus save some of them” (Romans 11:11, 13-14). In explaining the instrumental role Paul envisions Gentiles playing in this passage, Cornell observes:

The scenario that Paul envisions is, in the words of one scholar, an amorous “game of jealousy.” “The lover pursues the beloved, the beloved is resistant, and so the lover turns to someone else to provoke the beloved to jealousy. Just so, God pursues Israel the beloved (agapētoi, 11:28). All day long[,] God stretched out the divine hands to ‘a disobedient and contrary people’ (Rom[.] 10:21). But Israel remained largely ‘resistant’ (Rom[.] 11:25), and so God opened the covenant to gentiles in order to provoke Israel’s jealousy (Rom[.] 11:11).” If we try to map Paul’s discourse with the binary concepts of means and end, or instrumental and ultimate, it seems that Israel here occupies the far, preferred side. Israel remains God’s first love. Outreach to gentiles is a means to God’s end of regaining Israel’s devotion (God Draws Near, p. 176).

While McClain creates the impression that all Christian Zionists support Israel because they believe the Jewish State plays an instrumental role in a divine plan, survey research conducted by the scholars of Christian Zionism Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin found that “[t]he strongest predictor” of support for Israel “was whether respondents believed Israel’s response after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks was justified.” As Inbari and Bumin explain, “many Christians are […] beginning with a moral judgment about terrorism, self-defense and the obligations of a country that has been attacked.” McClain fails to explicitly identify these specific factors as motivators of Christian support for Israel.

Maligning All Christian Zionists as Ignoring or Condoning the Killing of Palestinians

In his article, McClain states: “Christian Zionism […] ignores or condones the killing of Palestinians.” This assertion is particularly strange given that McClain earlier in his piece acknowledges that the Christian Zionist U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee recognized “many Christians were victims and that thousands of children had been killed” during the war, suggesting Huckabee acknowledges such suffering is unfortunate. To McClain’s seeming consternation, though, Huckabee, as McClain notes, “places the blame for civilian deaths on Hamas.” To view Huckabee’s attribution of culpability for Palestinian deaths to Hamas as indicating that Christian Zionists ignore or condone the killing of Palestinians is to distort Huckabee’s Christian Zionist commitments and Christian Zionism more broadly while overlooking Huckabee’s condemnation of the Hamas use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice that has led to the very loss of Palestinian lives McClain laments. McClain mentions that organizations, like B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, have “raise[d] the alarm about Israel’s human rights violations,” but neglects to mention these organizations’ anti-Israel bias and history of propagating falsehoods.

Propagating the Canard All Christian Zionists Believe in an Eschatological Slaughter of Jews

McClain suggests that Christian Zionism anticipates an eschatological slaughter of Jews: “In this [modern Christian Zionist apocalyptic] scheme, only a third of the total population survives as a remnant, while two-thirds perish, based on a decontextualized understanding of Zechariah 13:8-9.” However, the historian of religion Paul Charles Merkley has called the accusation that Christian Zionist motivations include an eschatological slaughter of Jews a “canard” given that no major Christian Zionist organization subscribes to this view (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, p. 188).

In falsely suggesting that apocalyptic frameworks are essential to all forms of Christian Zionism, McClain omits that many Christian Zionists believe that one can reject dispensational, millenarian beliefs while also affirming a belief in Israel’s continuing role in divine providence and the connection of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland. For example, a volume on the “New Christian Zionism” featuring Catholic, Mainline, Evangelical, Aramean, and Messianic figures and edited by the Anglican theologian and Reformed Episcopal Seminary and Jerusalem Seminary Distinguished Professor of Anglican Studies Gerald R. McDermott explains:

The Christian Zionism that this book proposes is not connected to the dispensationalism [that puts Israel and the church on two different tracks, neither of which runs at the same time and is attached to an elaborate schedule of end-time events dominated by the great tribulation and a rapture of the church that leaves Jews and the rest of the world behind]. It looks to a long history of Christian Zionists who lived long before the rise of dispensationalism and to other thinkers in the last two centuries who have had nothing to do with dispensationalism—theologians such as Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Robert Jenson and the Catholic Old Testament scholar Gary Anderson, as well as President Harry Truman (The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel & the Land, p. 11).

The historian of religion and expert on Christian Zionism Daniel G. Hummel has also noted that eschatology is less central to the most activist circles of Christian Zionism: “In its most activist circles today, Christian Zionism is less about apocalyptic theology or evangelism than it is a range of political, historical, and theological arguments in favor of the State of Israel based on mutual and covenantal solidarity” (Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations, p. 3). Similarly, the University of Florida Hamilton School Associate Professor of Humanities and expert on Christian Zionism Samuel Goldman has argued that a recognition that God’s relationship with the Jewish people endures, not biblical prophecy interpretation, constitutes the core of Christian Zionism:

Rather than Daniel’s seventieth week or Isaiah’s foretelling of the restoration of Jerusalem, the core idea of Christian Zionism is that God’s relationship with the Jewish people [the covenant] was not severed with the advent of Christ. What many Christian Zionists hope to do is to return that idea to the centrality that they believe it deserves (God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America, p. 175).

An empirical indication that eschatology plays less of a role in motivating young evangelical advocates of Christian Zionism is found in survey data analyzed by Inbari and Bumin showing a “relative decline of premillennialism” among this demographic (Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Public Opinion on Israel, p. 163). Inbari and Bumin observed that 20% of young evangelical Christian Zionists “gave political, historical, or foreign policy justifications” (Ibid., p. 152) for such support, not eschatological reasons. Moreover, among the 59% of young evangelicals supporting Israel who provided “religious arguments” for their support for the Jewish State, the top three arguments provided did not explicitly reference the eschatological beliefs to which McClain alludes. In fact, Inbari and Bumin found:

[E]schatological statements which require that the support for Israel is followed up by deliberate action by the believers (e.g., rebuilding the Third Temple, or expecting Jews to convert to Christianity with Jesus’ Second Coming) came last on a long list of motivations for supporting Israel (Ibid., p. 175).

In explaining the significance of this finding, Inbari and Bumin note: “This means that warmer eschatological expectations [that require that the support for Israel is followed up by deliberate action by the believers] […] do not play a significant role in the motivations of the contemporary evangelical audience” (Ibid.). Meanwhile, McClain completely ignores how the Hamas charter operationalizes a messianic vision whose realization hinges on Muslims eliminating Jews. In explaining how an apocalyptic hadith is used in the Hamas charter, the German political scientist and historian as well as former Hebrew University Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism External Research Associate Matthias Küntzel observes: “According to antisemitism expert Yehoshafat Harkabi, this is a call for an ‘eschatological ‘final solution.’’ The resurrection and salvation of the Muslims is made dependent on a prior massacre of Jews” (Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II, p. 40).

Inaccurately Suggesting All Christian Zionists Oppose Critiquing the State of Israel

In his article, McClain claims: “[F]or Christian Zionists, every critique of Israel is antisemitic,” suggesting that all Christian Zionists succumb to idolatry by refusing to recognize that some critiques of Israel are not antisemitic: “Christian Zionism acts as a religious justification for uncritical support of a modern nation-state, and even elevates the reverence for the state to the point of idolatry.” In contradistinction to what McClain suggests, there are Christian Zionists for whom Christian Zionism has not functioned “as a religious justification for uncritical support” of the State of Israel. To provide just a few examples: A number of Christian Zionists have been critical of Israeli leaders who aimed to cede territory acquired during the 1967 Six-Day War (e.g., Pat Robertson) (Evangelicals and Israel, p. 150), of Orthodox and non-Orthodox members of the Israeli Knesset who in the mid-1990s promoted a first-round proposal to outlaw missionary activity in Israel that ultimately was not passed (An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews, p. 195), and of Israeli police initially preventing the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Palm Sunday mass before Israeli authorities eventually permitted him to do so (e.g., U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Senator Ted Cruz). Examples like these illustrate that while Christian Zionists have been generally supportive of the State of Israel, they have demonstrated a willingness to criticize Israeli decisions when they have felt doing so was warranted.

Casting All Christian Zionists as Antisemitic

While McClain casts all Christian Zionists as antisemitic, many Christian Zionists have indicated they are motivated by a desire to combat antisemitism. The historian of Christian Zionism Donald M. Lewis has observed that the theme of esteem of Jews found in the writings of Puritan writers is frequently attested among contemporary Christian Zionists:

Rejecting the medieval “teaching of contempt” toward the Jews as “Christ killers,” Puritans advanced a “teaching of esteem” rather than of contempt toward the Jews […] Jews were to be celebrated for their many accomplishments and the great gifts they had given to the world. This emphasis on esteeming the Jews and celebrating the ways in which they have been a blessing to the nations runs through Puritan writings and resurfaces often in nineteenth-century British evangelical writings, and is often repeated in twenty-first-century Christian Zionist circles (A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century, pp. 67-68).

Similarly, Lewis has noted that the theme of love of Jews evident in Puritan writings is also often found in Christian Zionist writings: “Christians were taught to love the Jews rather than to despise them. Repeatedly, the Puritans castigated the medieval Catholic treatment of the Jews, a theme that runs down the centuries in Christian Zionists writings” (Ibid., p. 68). The scholar of Christian Zionism Faydra L. Shapiro has also emphasized this theme of love among contemporary Christian Zionists in explaining how “Christian Zionism is equally about demonstrating solidarity with God’s chosen people in God’s promised land, by loving whom God loves, and providing them with material, emotional, spiritual, and political support” (Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border, p. 9).

Lewis has also highlighted how British evangelicals who sought to facilitate the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland were especially concerned about fighting the mistreatment of Jews and were the most interested of any group of English Gentiles in protecting Jews from their enemies:

The Victorian evangelical interest in the Jews was not […] only concerned with efforts […] to enable them to return to Palestine. Individuals like Shaftesbury and those closely associated with him—such as Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna and Edward Bickersteth—and organizations like the LSJ and the Evangelical Alliance were deeply concerned to combat the mistreatment of Jews and to engage in political lobbying on their behalf. It was British evangelicals, more than any other group of English Gentiles, who were most concerned to seek the protection of Jews from those hostile to them (A Short History of Christian Zionism, p. 115).

In addition, Lewis points out that the British Anglican minister James Parkes, who began to campaign against antisemitism in the 1920s, significantly influenced mainline Protestant Christian Zionist leadership in the second half of the twentieth century (Ibid., p. 212).

McClain briefly mentions how John Hagee, the founder of the Christian Zionist organization Christians United for Israel, views the current war as playing a role in divine providence, but completely omits how Hagee’s concern about antisemitism as manifested by the Iranian regime and growing knowledge about the Holocaust significantly influenced how Hagee thinks about Jews and Israel as evidenced in Hagee’s autobiographical accounts (God’s Country, p. 151). While proximity to and growing awareness about the Holocaust have influenced the decision of baby boomer Christian Zionists to support Israel, a study of American public opinion toward Israel by Amnon Cavari and Guy Freedman suggests that a distance from the Holocaust and changing life experiences of younger Americans have contributed to a generational divide regarding attitudes toward Israel (American Public Opinion toward Israel: From Consensus to Divide, pp. 102-107).

Uncritically Promoting Palestinian Liberation Theology as an Alternative to Christian Zionism

McClain identifies Palestinian liberation theology as a preferred alternative to Christian Zionism, but neglects to mention how Palestinian liberation theologians have frequently denied the validity of contemporary Judaism, any connection between contemporary Jews and their biblical forebears, and Jewish rights to the Land of Israel. As Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, the former Academic Director of The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Israel, has observed:

[T]hroughout my interactions with Palestinian Christian religious officials and my reading of their theologies, […] [t]he Palestinian Christian theologies that I encounter are invariably pre-Second Vatican Council forms. That is, they are hard supersessionisms that deny the validity of Judaism today, reject any connection between the covenanted Jews of the Bible and today’s Jews, and deny any de jure Jewish rights to The Land […] This is true for Palestinian liberation theology as well as non-liberation theologies (Catholic-Jewish Engagements on Israel: Holy Land, Political Territory, or Theological Promise?, pp. 171-172).

Even the Palestinian Lutheran clergyman Munther Banayout Isaac to whose article McClain hyperlinks has noted how Palestinian liberation theology has involved misreadings and rejection of aspects of the Old Testament, leading theologians to declare that proponents of this theological framework effectively subscribe to a heretical belief system:

I believe Palestinian Christians have become Marcionites both in practice and belief. Whether it is a Palestinian liberation theology or a spiritualization of the OT, the church has fallen prey to misreading or rejecting parts of the OT. This phenomenon is not limited to Palestinian Christians but is also apparent within other Arab Christian communities. Dutch theologian Bernard Reitsma quotes Arab theologians who speak about a “practical type of Marcionitism in the churches in the Middle East,” and “a great Marcionite revival in [the] East today” (The Land Cries Out: Theology of the Land in the Israeli-Palestinian Context, pp. 218-219).

Thus, an uncritical embrace of Palestinian liberation theology poses its own problems in terms of Christian theology, biblical interpretation, historical understanding, and Jewish-Christian relations.

Misrepresenting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism

In his article, McClain suggests that he agrees with Lara Friedman, the president of the left-wing organization Foundation for Middle East Peace, in faulting the Working Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) for “conflat[ing] antisemitism with criticism of Israel.” He indicates that he thinks the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism definition of antisemitism is better than the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism in that the former “clarifies how critiquing the state of Israel and standing up for the dignity of Palestinians do not constitute antisemitism,” adding that “not every critique of Israel should be treated as an antisemitic attack.”

However, the language of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism explicitly contradicts McClain’s suggestion that it considers every critique of Israel an antisemitic attack in stating that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitism.” McClain’s suggestion that the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism “clarifies how critiquing the state of Israel […] _do_[_es_] not constitute antisemitism” is also inaccurate, as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism details categories of criticism of Israel it considers antisemitic. While McClain readily acknowledges rising antisemitism, he only singles out individuals on the American political right as having been “shaped” by antisemitism and having made antisemitic comments, omitting any mention of antisemitism on the American political left.

While McClain expresses concern about the legal weaponization of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, he neglects to mention that the definition was not intended to be used for this purpose. As the Chair of the Alliance for Academic Freedom and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences Cary Nelson has observed: “the Definition’s eleven examples [were not] intended to be a blueprint for speech codes or legal action” (Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles, p. 212).

Questionably Describing Tucker Carlson as “Deeply Conservative”

McClain describes Tucker Carlson as “deeply conservative” and “generally adher[ing] to conservative principles.” However, Carlson’s own statements render this conclusion dubious. For example, Carlson has stated: “I’m not much of an economic conservative, and I’m not conservative at all on foreign policy.” In addition, he has praised policy positions adopted by decidedly non-conservative members of the federal government, like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Falsely Suggesting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is Not Bipartisan

In his article, McClain falsely suggests the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is not bipartisan by singling out AIPAC’s ouster of progressive candidates as a focus of an AIPAC strategy without mentioning the group’s bipartisan nature: “AIPAC exists to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and has recently implemented a strategy that focuses on ousting progressive candidates in favor of those aligned with its positions.” AIPAC has supported both Republican and Democratic candidates, including those who in the past have self-identified as “progressive.” For example, AIPAC has provided financial support to Representative Ritchie Torres, who joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus upon joining Congress. Although Torres eventually left the body given its hostility to Israel, he clarified that his departure did not represent a change in his own progressive beliefs but rather an indictment of the radicalized progressive movement: “I didn’t leave the progressive movement; the progressive movement left me.” In addition, McClain omits that AIPAC has opposed not only anti-Israel candidates and politicians who have self-identified as progressives, but also anti-Israel Republican ones. By failing to provide this important information about AIPAC, McClain misleads readers into falsely believing that AIPAC is not bipartisan.

Conclusion

As the above analysis has shown, McClain’s article distorts Christian Zionism by inaccurately describing Christian Zionist beliefs as based on exclusivism and violence, maligning all Christian Zionists as ignoring or condoning the killing of Palestinians, inaccurately suggesting that all Christian Zionists oppose critiquing the Jewish State, spreading the canard that all Christian Zionists believe in an eschatological slaughter of Jews, and casting all Christian Zionists as antisemitic. In addition, the article uncritically promotes Palestinian liberation theology as an alternative to Christian Zionism. Moreover, the article misrepresents the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Furthermore, the article questionably describes Carlson as “deeply conservative” and falsely suggests AIPAC is not bipartisan. McClain is entitled to his opinions, but he should not distort facts in sharing those opinions with readers.

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