Posted on 08/28/2019 8:31:47 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Evangelical Christianity remains one of the few topics about which it remains permissible, and possibly even praiseworthy, for a Jewish liberal to know nothing. Take evangelical attitudes toward Israel. Almost every time the subject comes up, someone will explain that Christian Zionism conceals, under a cloak of philo-Semitism, a nefarious agenda. Christian Zionists support Israel, supposedly, to hasten the end-times, when, as Bible professor Candida Moss writes, “Jews must convert or die.” Political scientist Elizabeth Oldmixon explains that evangelicals are part of “movement in Christianity that’s as old as Christianity itself,” and want to hasten “a millennium in the future,” in which “the Jews, will convert” or be damned.
This narrative is very popular with liberal and leftist Jews. Benjamin Koatz writes of Christians United For Israel’s “esoteric anti-Semitism” and that Christian Zionists believe Jews “will be prodded into conversion by the horrors of anti-Semitism… [or] God will inspire revelation in our hearts at the last moment, allowing us to proceed willingly into rapture.” The same logic underlies Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb’s article, “Anti-Semitism Behind the Christian Zionist Lobby.”
Liberals, and especially liberal Jews, enjoy this story, which allows us to score points against our more conservative co-religionists. The only trouble is that it isn’t true. […]
Christian Zionism isn’t age-old; its founders were innovating, largely in response to the Holocaust. Christian Zionists do not secretly want to convert Jews; in fact many argue vociferously against missionizing, flirting with the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy in the process. Nor is the movement fundamentally apocalyptic: end-time prophecies motivate some believers, but by no means the majority. Finally, Christian Zionism isn’t even entirely Christian, since it began with interfaith dialogue and was carefully cultivated by the Israeli government. …
(Excerpt) Read more at forward.com ...
Isn’t it enough that we believe in the same God, and that Jews have owned that land longer than anyone else claiming it, and therefore have a right to it?
I NEVER thought of Christian Zionism in such dark terms.
But I know almost nothing about them or how the majority thinks.
Anyone who does care to elucidate?
That’s my 25 cent word of the week :)
Ping.
This is a common conspiracy theory about Christian Zionism among liberal Jews, and of course liberals at large (who would include antisemites).
Kinda remarkable that this rebuttal appears in the Forward, which is itself socialistic.
Perhaps Christian Zionism is less about Jews and more about Protestants refuting the Replacement Theology of the Catholic Church.
In Christian terms, the whole idea of having some kind of special relationship with a country or people whose defining characteristic for two thousand years has been their rejection of Jesus Christ is bizarre, to say the least.
Gotcha.
Yeah I never heard of it described this way before.
I thought Christian Zionists believed Israelis to be the chosen people and Israel to be a fulfillment that the Jews would have their own land again.
And I might be way off on this.
I’m not well read on this topic.
This article is all over the map, especially with respect to John Hagee. The man does not preach the “prosperity gospel”. He does have a heavy emphasis on his eschatological views, which revolve around Israel. Any sense of blessing of a nation or individual by being kindly disposed toward Israel reflects back to God’s original covenant with Abraham, including “I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee.”
Secondly, no serious proponent of dispensational eschatology would ever teach that any of our tenets can ever do anything to hasten or retard the apocalypse. Nor would he ever overlook the fact that God has His own special end-times agenda vis a vis Israel which none of us can affect one way or the other.
No, you’re not way off.
The liberal Jews and the other liberals are who are way off.
Gotcha.
The rejection was prophesied, and the writings of Paul make it clear that this is a means of their salvation.
Having read the article, it appears that the Israelis don’t understand much how little authority and how small the followings preachers in the United States generally have.
They try to look a a smattering of megachurch pastors and authors whose appeal sells to secular audiences enough to get them on bestsellers lists, and then assume that those sources which have already been prescreened to appeal to secular culture somewhat represent the bulk of Christians.
As "bizarre" as the biblical command that the Good News is to be proclaimed "to the Jew first."
Rejection or no rejection, the command stands.
I agree that the article is scatter-brained even if it makes a couple valid points. It is from the socialist Forward, after all.
Evangelical support for the nation of Israel is well beyond a smattering.
Well worth reading by Zionist Jews and Zionist Christians.
Then the other things don’t matter? Being God’s chosen people, being given that land by God himself, all the prophets and the Bible, that Jesus was Jewish, or that Christianity itself is only a branch of the original tree of Judaism, albeit one they generally reject? There’s no cultural connection from all that?
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