Well before Theodore Herzl founded political Zionism and published The Jewish State, Christian Zionists in the United States and England were already seeking to direct and influence the foreign policy of both nations in service to a religious obsession end times prophecy<\/em><\/h4>\nWhitney Webb
\nMintPress News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Jewish Question<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n\nThe largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a\u00a0total membership<\/a>\u00a0of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community.<\/p>\nMembers of this organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), met in Washington on Monday, attracting thousands of attendees and featuring speeches from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. CUFI\u2019s leader, controversial evangelical preacher John Hagee, has met with President Donald Trump several times and was recently part of an exclusive White House meeting in March on the administration\u2019s upcoming \u201cpeace plan\u201d for Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/russia-insider.com\/sites\/insider\/files\/styles\/w726xauto\/public\/main\/2019-Jul-15\/ap_080406042921_edited.jpg?itok=oix7t6NF\")
<\/figure>\nSupport Russia Insider – Go Ad-Free!<\/a><\/div>\nCUFI is but one of many organizations throughout American history that have promoted the state of Israel and Zionism on the grounds that a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and necessary for Jesus Christ to return to Earth \u2014 an event Christians often refer to as \u201cthe Second Coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
While organizations like CUFI and its predecessors have long seen the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the later Israeli victory and conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, there is one prophecy that this sect of evangelical Christians believes is the only thing standing between them and the Second Coming. There are estimated to be\u00a0more than 20 million<\/a>\u00a0of these Christians, often referred to as Christian Zionists, in the United States and they are a key voting bloc and source of political donations for the Republican Party.<\/p>\nSupport Russia Insider – Go Ad-Free!<\/a><\/div>\nAs was explored in previous installments of this series, these Christian Zionists, much like religious Zionist extremists in Israel, believe that the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock must be replaced with a Third Jewish Temple in order to usher in the end times.<\/p>\n
These two groups of different faiths, since the 19th century, have repeatedly formed an opportunistic alliance in order to ensure the fulfillment of their respective prophecies, despite the fact that members of the other faith are rarely if ever on the same page in their interpretations of what occurs after the temple\u2019s construction.<\/p>\n
This alliance, based on a mutual obsession with hastening the coming of the Apocalypse, continues to this day and now, more than at any other time in history, these groups have reached the heights of power in both Israel and the United States.\u00a0Parts I<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0II<\/a>\u00a0of this exclusive series explored how this branch of religious Zionism has come to dominate the current right-wing government of Israel and has led Israel\u2019s current government to take definitive steps towards the destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque and the imminent construction of a Third Temple.<\/p>\nNow this installment (Part III) will show how this movement\u2019s Christian counterpart in the United States, Christian Zionism, has likewise become a dominant force in American politics, particularly following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, where this apocalyptic vision is a major driver behind his administration\u2019s Middle East policy.<\/p>\n
Yet, this fire-and-brimstone vision of the end times has long been a guide for prominent figures in American history and the American elite, even predating Zionism\u2019s founding as a political movement. Thus, Christian Zionism\u2019s influence on Trump administration policy is merely the latest of a long list of examples where prophecy and politics have mixed in American history, often with world-altering results.<\/p>\n
Support Russia Insider – Go Ad-Free!<\/a><\/div>\nPuritans, Prophecy and Palestine<\/h2>\n
Accounts of the role of European and North American Christians in the creation of the state of Israel often begin with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but the efforts of certain Christian groups in England and the United States to create a Jewish state in Palestine actually date back centuries earlier and significantly predate Zionism\u2019s official founding by Theodore Herzl.<\/p>\n
Among the first advocates for the physical immigration of European Jews to Palestine were the Puritans, an offshoot of Christian Protestantism that emerged in the late 16th century and became influential in England and, later, in the American colonies. Influential Puritans devoted considerable interest to the role of Jews in eschatology, or end-times theology, with many \u2014 such as\u00a0John Owen<\/a>, a 17th-century theologian, member of parliament, and administrator at Oxford \u2014 believing that the physical return of Jews to Palestine was necessary for the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.<\/p>\nWhile the Puritan roots of what would later become known as Christian Zionism are often overlooked in modern accounts of where and why American evangelical support for Israel began, its adherents still clearly acknowledge its legacy. For instance, on Monday at the CUFI conference, Pompeo, himself a Christian Zionist known for his obsession with the end times,\u00a0told the group<\/a>\u00a0the following:<\/p>\nChristian support in America for Zion \u2014 for a Jewish homeland \u2014 runs back to the early Puritan settlers, and it has endured for centuries. Indeed, our second president [John Adams], a couple years back, said\u2026 \u2018I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Support Russia Insider – Go Ad-Free!<\/a><\/div>\nThese Puritan beliefs, which persist today and have only grown in popularity, became more entrenched in England and colonial America with time, especially among the monied political class, and led to a variety of interpretations regarding exactly what the Bible says about the end times. Among the most influential was the development of Christian \u201cdispensationalism,\u201d an interpretive framework that uses the Bible to divide history into different periods of \u201cdispensations\u201d and sees the Bible\u2019s prophetic references to \u201cIsrael\u201d as signifying an ethnically Jewish nation established in Palestine.<\/p>\n
![\"Charles](\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/3663879838_edited_edited-e1562946403681.jpg\")
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Charles Russell\u2019s visual interpretation of Darby\u2019s \u2018dispensations\u2019 circa 1886<\/em><\/p>\nDispensationalism was largely developed by English-Irish preacher John Nelson Darby, who believed that the God-ordained fates of Israel and the Christian church were completely separate, with the latter to be physically removed from the Earth by God prior to a foretold period of earthly suffering known as the Tribulation.<\/p>\n
In Darby\u2019s view, the Tribulation would begin following the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This belief in the physical removal of Christians from the Earth prior to the Tribulation, widely known as \u201cthe rapture,\u201d\u00a0was invented by<\/a>\u00a0Darby in the 1820s and its lack of scriptural support has been widely noted by theologians of various denominations as well as biblical scholars. However, it is important to point that there are differences among dispensationalist Christians as to whether the rapture will occur before, during or after the Tribulation period.<\/p>\nSupport Russia Insider – Go Ad-Free!<\/a><\/div>\nYet, despite its relatively short existence as an idea and lack of support in the Bible, the rapture was enthusiastically adopted by some churches in England and the United States, particularly the latter. This was largely thanks to the work of highly controversial theologian Cyrus Scofield.<\/p>\n
Notably, Darby\u2019s brand of Christian eschatology coincides with\u00a0similar developments in Jewish eschatology<\/a>, namely the ideas of\u00a0Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Kalisher<\/a>\u00a0and the creation of a new branch of Jewish messianism that believed that Jews must proactively work to hasten the coming of their messiah by immigrating to Israel and building a Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Darby\u2019s beliefs, and those he inspired promoted something similar in the sense that Christians could hasten the coming of the rapture and the Tribulation by promoting the immigration of Jews to Israel as well as the construction of a Third Jewish Temple.<\/p>\nChristian Zionists pave the way for Theodore Herzl<\/h2>\n
Darby traveled to North America and several other countries to popularize his ideas, meeting several influential pastors throughout the English speaking world, including James Brookes, the future mentor of Cyrus Scofield. His travels and the spread of his written works popularized his eschatological views among certain circles of American and English Christians during the religious revival of the 19th century. Darby\u2019s beliefs were particularly attractive to the elite of both countries, with some English noblemen\u00a0placing newspaper advertisements<\/a>\u00a0urging Jews to immigrate to Palestine as early as the 1840s.<\/p>\nAnother prominent figure influenced by Darby\u2019s end-times doctrine was the American preacher Charles Taze Russell, whose church later gave rise to several different churches, including the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. Decades before the founding of modern political Zionism, Russell began preaching \u2014 not just to Christians, but to Jews in the United States and elsewhere \u2014 about the need for mass Jewish immigration to Palestine.<\/p>\n
As Rabbi Kalisher had done a\u00a0few decades prior<\/a>, Russell\u00a0penned a letter<\/a>\u00a0in 1891 to a wealthy member of the Rothschild banking family, Edmond de Rothschild, as well as Maurice von Hirsch, a wealthy German financier, about his plan for the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Russell\u00a0described his plan<\/a>\u00a0as follows:<\/p>\nMy suggestion is that the wealthy Hebrews purchase from Turkey, at a fair valuation, all of her property interest in these lands: i.e., all of the Government lands (lands not held by private owners), under the provision that Syria and Palestine shall be constituted a free state.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The same plan was to resurface a few years later in arguably the most influential Zionist book of all time, Theodore Herzl\u2019s\u00a0The Jewish State<\/em>, which was published in 1896.<\/p>\n![\"Charles](\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/2843118320_edited.jpg\")
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Russell addresses an audience of American Jews in New York in 1910. Photo | Public Domain<\/em><\/p>\nSupport Russia Insider – Go Ad-Free!<\/a><\/div>\nIt is unknown whether Rothschild or Hirsch was influenced at all by Russell\u2019s letter, though Russell\u2019s ideas did have a lasting impact on some prominent American Jews and American Christians with regard to his promotion of Jewish immigration to Palestine.<\/p>\n
The same year that Russell wrote his letter to de Rothschild and von Hirsch, another influential dispensationalist preacher wrote another document that is often overlooked in exploring the role of American Christians in the development and popularization of Zionism. William E. Blackstone, an American preacher who was greatly influenced by Darby and other dispensationalists of the era, had spent decades promoting with great fervor the immigration of Jews to Palestine as a means of fulfilling Biblical prophecy.<\/p>\n
The culmination of Blackstone\u2019s efforts came in the form of the Blackstone Memorial,\u00a0a petition<\/a>that pleaded that then-President of the United States Benjamin Harrison and his secretary of state, James Blaine, take action \u201cin favor of the restoration of Palestine to the Jews.\u201d The largely forgotten petition asked Harrison and Blaine to use their influence to \u201csecure the holding at an early date, of an international conference to consider the condition of the Israelites and their claims to Palestine as their ancient home, and to promote, in all other just and proper ways, the alleviation of their suffering condition.\u201d<\/p>\nAs with Russell\u2019s letter to de Rothschild and von Hirsch, it is unknown exactly how influential the Blackstone Memorial was in influencing the views or policies of Harrison or Blaine. However, the Blackstone Memorial petition is highly significant because of its signatories, which included the most influential and wealthiest Americans of the era, the majority of whom were Christians.<\/p>\n
Signatories<\/a>\u00a0of the Blackstone Memorial included J.D. Rockefeller, the country\u2019s first billionaire; J.P. Morgan, the wealthy banker; William McKinley, future president of the United States; Thomas Brackett Reed, then speaker of the House; Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the mayors of New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago; the editors of the\u00a0Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/em>, among others; and numerous other members of Congress, as well as influential businessmen and clergymen. Though some rabbis were included as signatories, the petition\u2019s content\u00a0was opposed<\/a>\u00a0by most American Jewish communities. In other words, the primary goal of Zionism, before it even became a movement, was widely supported by the American Christian elite, but opposed by American Jews.<\/p>\nThe Blackstone Memorial would later attract the attention of Louis Brandeis, one of the most prominent American Jewish Zionists, who would\u00a0later refer to<\/a>\u00a0Blackstone as the real \u201cfounding father of Zionism,\u201d according to Brandeis\u2019 close friend Nathan Straus. Brandeis would eventually succeed in convincing an elderly Blackstone to petition then-President Woodrow Wilson with a second Blackstone Memorial in 1916 that was presented in private to Wilson nearly a year later.<\/p>\nInstead of gathering signatures from prominent members of America\u2019s elite class, Blackstone this time focused on shoring up support from Protestant organizations, namely the Presbyterian Church, in keeping with Wilson\u2019s Presbyterian faith. According to historian Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, this change in focus\u00a0had been<\/a>\u00a0Brandeis\u2019, not Blackstone\u2019s, idea.<\/p>\nAlison Weir, author of\u00a0Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel<\/em><\/a>, described Brandeis as \u201cone of the most influential\u201d American Zionists and a key figure in the efforts to push Wilson to support the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine, of which Blackstone\u2019s second petition was part. However, Weir asserted that Blackstone\u2019s second petition was secondary to a so-called \u201cgentleman\u2019s agreement\u201d\u00a0whereby<\/a>\u00a0English officials promised to support a Jewish state in Palestine if American Zionists, led by Brandeis, were able to secure the United States\u2019 entry into World War I.<\/p>\nWilson ultimately supported Blackstone\u2019s new document, which was never presented publicly to the president, but privately by Rabbi Stephen Wise. This second Blackstone Memorial was a key component of the Brandeis-led campaign that eventually guaranteed American support \u2014 i.e., private support \u2014 for the Balfour Declaration, which established British intentions to support a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine. Notably, the Balfour Declaration is named for the then-English Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour,\u00a0himself a Christian dispensationalist<\/a>, though Weir told\u00a0MintPress<\/em>\u00a0that Balfour was more likely influenced by political imperatives than religious motives. The only person in the British cabinet to oppose the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member, Edwin Montagu.<\/p>\nThe Balfour Declaration was addressed to a member of the Rothschild banking family, Lionel Walter Rothschild, the last in a series of letters written to members of the Rothschild family urging them to use their wealth and political influence to favor the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine: from Rabbi Kalisher, who wrote to Baron Amschel Rothschild in 1836; to Charles Taze Russell, who wrote to Edmond de Rothschild in 1891; and finally to the Balfour Declaration, written to Lionel Walter Rothschild in 1917.<\/p>\n
Weir told\u00a0MintPress<\/em>\u00a0that the Rothschilds figure so prominently in these early efforts to establish a Jewish state in Palestine owing to \u201ctheir wealth and the power that goes with it,\u201d making them very sought after by those who felt that a Jewish state could be formed in Palestine by the purchase of the territory by wealthy European Jews, as both Kalisher and Russell had proposed. However, the Balfour Declaration was addressed to the Rothschilds because, at that time, members of the Rothschild family, Edmond de Rothschild in particular, had become among the strongest supporters of the Zionist cause.<\/p>\nThough the declaration carries his name, it is unclear whether Balfour himself actually authored the document. Some historians \u2014 such as Michael Rubinstein, former president of the Jewish Historical Society of England \u2014\u00a0have made the case<\/a>\u00a0that the declaration itself was written by Leopold Amery, then-political secretary of England\u2019s War Cabinet and a Zionist who, despite his commitment to the Zionist cause, obfuscated his Jewish roots for much of his career for reasons that are still the source of speculation.<\/p>\nAs shown by the Balfour Declaration and the lobbying efforts that led to its creation, support for what would soon become known as Zionism among the nobility of England and the United States was already formidable before Herzl even began work on\u00a0The Jewish State.<\/em>\u00a0It is worth considering that the power and influence of this religiously-motivated class of Christian elites had an influence on Herzl and his ideas, particularly given the fact that dispensationalist Christians had been promoting a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at a time when\u00a0the idea was unpopular<\/a>\u00a0among many prominent Jews in Europe and the United States.<\/p>\nFurthermore, the role of Christian Zionists, as they would later become known, continued well after Herzl began his Zionist activities, and resulted in many of the most influential acts that led to the establishment of the State of Israel, including the Balfour Declaration.<\/p>\n
Notably, Herzl\u2019s own success in promoting his views following the publication of\u00a0The Jewish State<\/em>\u00a0was largely due to English dispensationalist pastor William Hechler. Hechler, while serving as chaplain at the British Embassy in Vienna,\u00a0forged an alliance<\/a>\u00a0and later close friendship with Herzl and was critical to negotiating meetings between Herzl and prominent members of the German government, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, which lent necessary political legitimacy to Herzl\u2019s Zionist movement.<\/p>\nA largely overlooked figure in the rise of Zionism, Hechler is mentioned in Herzl\u2019s diary more than any other person and passionately felt that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would bring about the end times. Hechler is also known to have been extremely interested in the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount,\u00a0having devoted<\/a>\u00a0considerable time to creating models of that Temple, some of which he prominently displayed in his office and showed to Herzl with great enthusiasm during their first meeting.<\/p>\n![\"Kaiser](\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/18359f_ab2a4c7af897470aaf5e8147c6647997_mv2_d_2048_3072_s_2_edited.jpg\")
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Herzl gives Kaiser Wilhelm II a tour of an early Jewish settlement near Jaffa, Palestine in 1898. Photo | Israel GPO<\/em><\/p>\nThe Hechler-Herzl alliance is one early example of how Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists each used the motivations of the other for political gain despite the fact that Christian Zionists often hold anti-Semitic views and secular Zionists, as well as religious Zionists, do not hold Christianity in high regard. This opportunism on the parts of both Christian and Jewish Zionists has been a key feature in the rise of Zionism, particularly in the United States, and the case of Cyrus Scofield, the man more responsible than any for popularizing Christian Zionism among American evangelicals, offers another important example.<\/p>\n
The surprising story of Cyrus Scofield<\/h2>\n
There is perhaps no other book that has been more influential in the dissemination of Christian Zionism in the United States than the\u00a0Scofield Reference Bible<\/em>, a version of the King James Bible whose annotations were written by Cyrus Scofield. Scofield \u2014 who had no formal theological training, though he later claimed to have a D.D. (doctor of divinity degree) \u2014\u00a0originally worked<\/a>\u00a0as a lawyer and political operative in the state of Kansas and eventually became the district attorney of that state.<\/p>\nSoon after his appointment to the position, he was forced to resign as a result of\u00a0numerous allegations<\/a>\u00a0of corruption, including bribery, forging signatures on banknotes and stealing political donations from then-Senator of Kansas James Ingalls. During this time, Scofield abandoned his wife and two daughters, an action since blamed on the burgeoning scandals he was facing as well as his self-admitted heavy drinking habits.<\/p>\nAmid this backdrop, Scofield is said to have become an evangelical around the year 1879 and soon became associated with prominent dispensationalist preachers of the era, including Dwight Moody and James Brookes. Local papers at the time, such as the\u00a0Atchison Patriot<\/em>, regarded Scofield\u2019s conversion and career change with great skepticism,\u00a0referring to Scofield<\/a>\u00a0as the \u201clate lawyer, politician and shyster generally\u201d who had disgraced himself by committing \u201cmany malicious acts.\u201d<\/p>\nScofield went on to pastor relatively small churches, moving from Kansas to Dallas, Texas, and later Massachusetts. Yet, despite his lack of renown and\u00a0 his troubled history, by 1901 Scofield had managed to gain entrance to an exclusive men\u2019s club in New York, the Lotos Club, whose members at the time included steel magnate and multi-millionaire\u00a0Andrew Carnegie<\/a>,\u00a0members of the Vanderbilt family<\/a>, and famous American writer Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain.<\/p>\n![\"Scofield](\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Screenshot-298_edited.jpg\")
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Pastor Scofield, center, with the Deacons of the First Congregational Church of Dallas, circa 1880s<\/em><\/p>\nScofield\u2019s membership in this exclusive club \u2014 as well as the club\u2019s patronage of his activities, which granted him lodging and financing to produce what would become the\u00a0Scofield Reference Bible \u2014\u00a0<\/em>has been the subject of considerable speculation. Indeed, many have noted that the presence of a fundamentalist, dispensationalist small-town preacher with a disgraced political past in a club stuffed with some of the country\u2019s most elite academics, writers and robber barons just doesn\u2019t add up.<\/p>\nJoseph M. Canfield, in his book\u00a0The Incredible Scofield and his Book<\/em><\/a>, asserted that \u201cthe admission of Scofield to the Lotus Club, which could not have been sought by Scofield, strengthens the suspicion that has cropped up before, that someone was directing the career of C.I. Scofield.\u201d<\/p>\nCanfield puts forth the theory in his book that the person \u201cdirecting\u201d Scofield\u2019s career was connected to New York lawyer and Zionist activist Samuel Untermeyer, who was on the club\u2019s executive committee and was a close associate of Louis Brandeis and\u00a0influential<\/a>\u00a0in the administration of Woodrow Wilson. He then notes that Scofield\u2019s annotated bible was later \u201cmost helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer\u2019s pet projects \u2014 the Zionist Movement.\u201d<\/p>\nOther scholars, such as David Lutz, have been\u00a0more explicit<\/a>\u00a0than Canfield in linking Untermeyer\u2019s Zionist activism to his role in financially backing Scofield and his work on his annotated Bible. Ultimately, like the Blackstone Memorial before it, the Lotos Club\u2019s patronage of Scofield\u2019s work again reveals the interest of the American elite of the era, Christian and Jewish alike, in promoting Christian Zionism.<\/p>\nUntermeyer and the Lotos Club notably also funded Scofield\u2019s numerous travels to Europe, including one fateful trip to England where Scofield met with Henry Frowde, publisher of Oxford University Press. Frowde was taken with Scofield\u2019s work, largely owing to the fact that Frowde was\u00a0a member<\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cExclusive Brethren,\u201d a religious group founded by John Nelson Darby, the father of dispensationalism. Oxford University Press subsequently published the\u00a0Scofield Reference Bible\u00a0<\/em>in 1909. Twenty years after its publication, it became\u00a0the first-ever Oxford publication<\/a>\u00a0to generate over a million dollars in sales.<\/p>\nScofield\u2019s\u00a0Bible\u00a0<\/em>became spectacularly popular among American fundamentalists soon after its publication, partly because it was the first annotated bible that sought to interpret the text for the reader as well as because it became the central text of several influential seminaries that were set up after its 1909 publication. Among Scofield\u2019s many annotations are claims that have since become central to Christian Zionism, such as Scofield\u2019s annotation of\u00a0Genesis\u00a0<\/em>12:3 that those who curse Israel (interpreted by Christian Zionists to mean the state of Israel since its founding in 1948) will be cursed by God and those that bless Israel will similarly be blessed.<\/p>\nModern Christian Zionists, like Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), have frequently cited this interpretation that originated with Scofield in defending extreme pro-Israel stances. For instance, Hagee made\u00a0the following statement<\/a>\u00a0in 2014:<\/p>\nYou have to go back to basics, with the fact that in Genesis (chapter 1), God created the world and made a very solemn promise (brought in Gen. 12:3), \u2018I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.\u2019 From that moment on, every nation that ever blessed Israel has been blessed by God. And every nation that has ever persecuted the Jewish people, God crushed. And so He will continue.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Falwell and Likud: a friendship or something else?<\/h2>\n
Despite the widespread dissemination of the Scofield Reference Bible and its popularization among American evangelical churches and seminaries, the public influence of dispensationalist eschatology and Christian Zionism on American politics was relatively limited for much of the 20th century. However, the private influence of Christian dispensationalists was nonetheless present, as seen through the role of\u00a0dispensationalist preacher<\/a>\u00a0and Third Temple advocate Billy Graham and\u00a0his close relationships<\/a>\u00a0to several presidents including Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.<\/p>\nThen the political power of dispensationalist theology dramatically moved from the private quarters of the halls of power into the mainstream American political discourse with the founding of the Moral Majority by evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell in 1979.<\/p>\n
In the early 1970s, Falwell\u2019s growing ministry was bringing in millions of dollars annually, especially his nationally broadcast program \u201cThe Old Time Gospel Hour,\u201d which ran on several major cable networks at the time. Despite \u2014 or perhaps because of \u2014 the spike in donations, Falwell\u00a0was soon targeted<\/a>\u00a0by the federal government, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for \u201cfraud and deceit\u201d and \u201cgross insolvency\u201d in the financial management of his ministry, particularly the ministry\u2019s sale of $6.6 million in church bonds. The SEC lawsuit was eventually settled when a group of businessmen in Lynchburg, Virginia \u2014 where Falwell\u2019s ministry was based \u2014 took over the ministry\u2019s finances for the next several years, until 1977. Falwell blamed his ministry\u2019s financial problems on his \u201cfinancial ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Jerry](\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Screenshot-297_edited.jpg\")
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Jerry Falwell travels with his son Jonathan, right, aboard his private jet in 2004. Todd Hunley | Thomas Road Baptist Church<\/em><\/p>\nOne year after his ministry appeared to be on a better financial footing, Falwell received an invitation to visit the state of Israel and was personally invited on the all-expenses-paid trip by Menachem Begin, then the prime minister of Israel and leader of the Likud Party. The trip would mark the beginning of a long friendship and close relationship between Falwell and Begin and, more broadly, a relationship between American evangelical leaders and Israel\u2019s Likud Party. As Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0in his book\u00a0The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount<\/em>, the Begin administration \u201cwas the first to tap evangelical enthusiasm for Israel and turn it into political and economic support.\u201d<\/p>\nSoon after returning from Israel, Falwell\u2019s finances\u00a0again came under federal scrutiny<\/a>\u00a0after a federal investigation found that Falwell had transferred the health insurance policies of his employees to an unlicensed shell company with just $128 in assets and hundreds of thousands in dollars in unpaid claims. Just as Falwell\u2019s financial troubles began to mount yet again, he received a generous gift from none other than Begin in the form of\u00a0a private Learjet valued at $4 million<\/a>. Shortly thereafter, Falwell went on to found the Moral Majority organization, \u201cafter consultations with theologians and political strategists<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Moral Majority is widely credited with turning the Christian evangelical right into\u00a0a major political force<\/a>\u00a0in the United States, promoting extremely pro-Israel policies, increased defense spending, a Reaganite approach to the challenges of the Cold War, as well as conservative domestic policies. Falwell frequently utilized his gift from Begin in traveling and promoting the new organization, as well as himself as a major public figure.<\/p>\nThe Moral Majority marks a clear turning point in the Israel-U.S. evangelical relationship, as it made fervent support for Israel an area of major importance to evangelical voters and also led many evangelical voters to pay closer attention to events going on in the Middle East. Yet, given Falwell\u2019s strong promotion of Christian Zionism, many evangelicals who became increasingly politically active following the organization\u2019s founding not only supported Israel\u2019s policies of the era but also supported many of the future ambitions of Begin and the Likud Party. This support\u00a0was solidified<\/a>\u00a0by the beginning of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism\u2019s ongoing practice of offering U.S. evangelical leaders free \u201cfamiliarization\u201d tours to Israel in the early 1980s.<\/p>\nBegin\u2019s vision of \u201cGreater Israel\u201d \u2014 the complete annexation of Palestine as well as large parts of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt by Israel \u2014 was also shared and promoted by Falwell. In 1983, Falwell\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cBegin will quickly tell you, \u2018We don\u2019t have all the land yet we\u2019re going to have,\u2019\u201d and further predicted that Israel would never relinquish control over the occupied West Bank because Begin was determined to keep the land \u201cwhich has been delivered to them (the Israelis).\u201d<\/p>\nFalwell\u00a0framed<\/a>\u00a0Begin\u2019s expansionist ambitions as a religious belief in \u201cthe inerrancy of the Old Testament,\u201d a sentiment Falwell shared. Falwell also pushed for a U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and felt that construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount was necessary to usher in the end times and the second coming of Christ.<\/p>\nAs Falwell helped turn Christian Zionism into a major political force in the United States, he also made himself a key political figure in the Reagan era and an important go-between for U.S.-Israel relations. In 1981 Begin informed Falwell of his plans to bomb an Iraqi nuclear facility\u00a0before<\/a>\u00a0he informed the Reagan administration with the hopes that Falwell would \u201cexplain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.\u201d According to Canadian academic David S. New, Begin\u00a0told Falwell<\/a>\u00a0during that phone call: \u201cGet to work for me.\u201d<\/p>\nIn addition, Falwell frequently met with Begin, whom he later called a personal friend, and these meetings\u00a0often overlapped<\/a>\u00a0with Begin\u2019s official meetings with Reagan. A year later, Begin gave Falwell Israel\u2019s Jabotinsky award, making Falwell the first non-Jew to receive the honor for his advocacy on behalf of Israel and, more specifically, Likud policies and ambitions.<\/p>\nThough the Moral Majority officially shuttered its doors in 1989, its political legacy persisted long after, as did Falwell\u2019s political clout. Indeed, following Begin\u2019s model, Benjamin Netanyahu, during his first term as prime minister, also made a habit of visiting Falwell, meeting with the controversial pastor even before he met with political officials in his visits to Washington.<\/p>\n
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Netanyahu, left, meets Falwell at a hotel in Washington, Jan. 19, 1998. Greg Gibson | AP<\/em><\/p>\nDuring one trip to D.C. in 1998, Netanyahu\u2019s first visit was to an event co-hosted by Falwell, where the pastor praised Netanyahu as \u201cthe Ronald Reagan of Israel.\u201d\u00a0The New York Times<\/em><\/a>described the purpose of Netanyahu\u2019s U.S. visit not as a visit aimed at meeting with government officials, but rather one intended \u201cto shore up his base of traditional support in the United States. Conservative Christian groups have long been ardent supporters of Israel because of its religious importance to Christianity.\u201d<\/p>\nHowever, this relationship between Christian Zionists like Falwell and prominent right-wing Israeli politicians has not been without its controversy, especially given that pro-Israel evangelicals like Falwell have a history of making anti-semitic statements.<\/p>\n
For example, during a 1999 sermon, Falwell discussed his interpretation of end-times prophecy, widely shared by Christian Zionist evangelicals, that the Second Coming would follow not just the creation of the state of Israel but the construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, from which a figure known to Christians as the \u201cAntichrist\u201d would reign. In responding to his own rhetorical question as to whether the Antichrist is \u201calive and well today,\u201d Falwell stated that \u201cProbably because when he appears during the tribulation period he will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ. Of course, he\u2019ll be Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Falwell\u2019s comments were\u00a0immediately condemned<\/a>\u00a0by a variety of Jewish groups, including the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Rabbi Leon Klenicki, then-director of interfaith affairs for the ADL, noted that Falwell\u2019s view is a \u201ccommon theological position\u201d among American evangelicals and that Falwell was \u201can influential voice among evangelical and charismatic Christians\u201d who \u201conly supports Israel for his own Christological ends.\u201d \u201cHe sees us only as the ones who prepare the coming of Jesus,\u201d Klenicki\u00a0stated\u00a0<\/a>at the time. \u201cIt is a great disappointment after more than 30 years of dialogue; he\u2019s still in the Middle Ages.\u201d<\/p>\nAnother prominent dispensationalist with great political and literary influence is Hal Lindsey, the author and co-author of several books, including the popular\u00a0Left Behind<\/em>\u00a0book series. Lindsey\u2019s work greatly influenced many prominent U.S. politicians like Ronald Reagan, who was so moved by Lindsey\u2019s books that\u00a0he invited<\/a>\u00a0Lindsey to address a National Security Council meeting on nuclear war plans and helped make Lindsey an influential consultant with several members of Congress and the Pentagon.<\/p>\nAs noted by\u00a0Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg<\/a>, Lindsey sees Jews as serving \u201ctwo central roles\u201d in Christian dispensationalist eschatology:<\/p>\n[T]he first \u2014 despite his insistence of love for Jews \u2014 is the classic one of Christian anti-Jewish polemic: They are \u2018the Jewish people who crucified Jesus\u2019 and the archetype of those who ignore the truth of prophecy. The second role is to fulfill prophecy despite themselves.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Gorenberg further notes that Lindsey believes that Jews have fulfilled two of the three crucial prophecies that will usher in the end times, with the first being the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the second being the Israeli conquest and occupation of Jerusalem after the Six Day War in 1967.\u00a0According to Lindsey<\/a>: \u201cThere remains but one more event to completely set the stage for Israel\u2019s part in the last great act of her historical drama. That is to rebuild the ancient Temple\u2026\u201d<\/p>\nAs Falwell\u2019s and Lindsey\u2019s comments reveal, the eschatological views of dispensationalism frequently perceive the Jewish people as little more than pawns that must fulfill certain requirements \u2014 e.g., establishing the state of Israel, conquering Jerusalem, building a Third Temple \u2014 in order to hasten the salvation and \u201crapture\u201d of evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, Jews in Israel who do not convert to Christianity are expected to die horrible deaths, though some Christian Zionists in recent years, as will be seen shortly, have sought to adjust this still common theological position.<\/p>\n
Despite the anti-semitic motivations underlying evangelical support for the state of Israel and the Likud-supported vision of \u201cGreater Israel,\u201d the politically active Christian Zionist movement that Falwell helped create translated into a strong support base for Israel and right-wing Likud policy that has made it crucial to prominent Israeli politicians.<\/p>\n
For instance,\u00a0significantly more<\/a>\u00a0American Christians (55 percent) than American Jews (40 percent) believe that God gave Israel to the Jews while that sentiment is shared\u00a0by only 19 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Israeli Christians. In addition, with regards to the Trump administration\u2019s pro-Israel policies,\u00a0only 15 percent<\/a>\u00a0of evangelical Christians believe that President Trump favors Israel too strongly while 42 percent of American Jews hold the view that Trump is biased in favor of Israel.<\/p>\nIn a video recorded in the early 2000s \u2014 later broadcast on Israeli TV \u2014\u00a0 Netanyahu, speaking to a family of Jewish settlers, described the mass support among Americans, particularly evangelicals, for Israel as \u201cabsurd,\u201d saying:<\/p>\n
America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. They won\u2019t get in our way; 80 percent of the Americans supprt us. It\u2019s absurd.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a\u00a0total membership<\/a>\u00a0of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community.<\/p>\n Members of this organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), met in Washington on Monday, attracting thousands of attendees and featuring speeches from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. CUFI\u2019s leader, controversial evangelical preacher John Hagee, has met with President Donald Trump several times and was recently part of an exclusive White House meeting in March on the administration\u2019s upcoming \u201cpeace plan\u201d for Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n CUFI is but one of many organizations throughout American history that have promoted the state of Israel and Zionism on the grounds that a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and necessary for Jesus Christ to return to Earth \u2014 an event Christians often refer to as \u201cthe Second Coming.\u201d<\/p>\n While organizations like CUFI and its predecessors have long seen the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the later Israeli victory and conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, there is one prophecy that this sect of evangelical Christians believes is the only thing standing between them and the Second Coming. There are estimated to be\u00a0more than 20 million<\/a>\u00a0of these Christians, often referred to as Christian Zionists, in the United States and they are a key voting bloc and source of political donations for the Republican Party.<\/p>\n As was explored in previous installments of this series, these Christian Zionists, much like religious Zionist extremists in Israel, believe that the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock must be replaced with a Third Jewish Temple in order to usher in the end times.<\/p>\n These two groups of different faiths, since the 19th century, have repeatedly formed an opportunistic alliance in order to ensure the fulfillment of their respective prophecies, despite the fact that members of the other faith are rarely if ever on the same page in their interpretations of what occurs after the temple\u2019s construction.<\/p>\n This alliance, based on a mutual obsession with hastening the coming of the Apocalypse, continues to this day and now, more than at any other time in history, these groups have reached the heights of power in both Israel and the United States.\u00a0Parts I<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0II<\/a>\u00a0of this exclusive series explored how this branch of religious Zionism has come to dominate the current right-wing government of Israel and has led Israel\u2019s current government to take definitive steps towards the destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque and the imminent construction of a Third Temple.<\/p>\n Now this installment (Part III) will show how this movement\u2019s Christian counterpart in the United States, Christian Zionism, has likewise become a dominant force in American politics, particularly following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, where this apocalyptic vision is a major driver behind his administration\u2019s Middle East policy.<\/p>\n Yet, this fire-and-brimstone vision of the end times has long been a guide for prominent figures in American history and the American elite, even predating Zionism\u2019s founding as a political movement. Thus, Christian Zionism\u2019s influence on Trump administration policy is merely the latest of a long list of examples where prophecy and politics have mixed in American history, often with world-altering results.<\/p>\n Accounts of the role of European and North American Christians in the creation of the state of Israel often begin with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but the efforts of certain Christian groups in England and the United States to create a Jewish state in Palestine actually date back centuries earlier and significantly predate Zionism\u2019s official founding by Theodore Herzl.<\/p>\n Among the first advocates for the physical immigration of European Jews to Palestine were the Puritans, an offshoot of Christian Protestantism that emerged in the late 16th century and became influential in England and, later, in the American colonies. Influential Puritans devoted considerable interest to the role of Jews in eschatology, or end-times theology, with many \u2014 such as\u00a0John Owen<\/a>, a 17th-century theologian, member of parliament, and administrator at Oxford \u2014 believing that the physical return of Jews to Palestine was necessary for the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.<\/p>\n While the Puritan roots of what would later become known as Christian Zionism are often overlooked in modern accounts of where and why American evangelical support for Israel began, its adherents still clearly acknowledge its legacy. For instance, on Monday at the CUFI conference, Pompeo, himself a Christian Zionist known for his obsession with the end times,\u00a0told the group<\/a>\u00a0the following:<\/p>\n Christian support in America for Zion \u2014 for a Jewish homeland \u2014 runs back to the early Puritan settlers, and it has endured for centuries. Indeed, our second president [John Adams], a couple years back, said\u2026 \u2018I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These Puritan beliefs, which persist today and have only grown in popularity, became more entrenched in England and colonial America with time, especially among the monied political class, and led to a variety of interpretations regarding exactly what the Bible says about the end times. Among the most influential was the development of Christian \u201cdispensationalism,\u201d an interpretive framework that uses the Bible to divide history into different periods of \u201cdispensations\u201d and sees the Bible\u2019s prophetic references to \u201cIsrael\u201d as signifying an ethnically Jewish nation established in Palestine.<\/p>\n Charles Russell\u2019s visual interpretation of Darby\u2019s \u2018dispensations\u2019 circa 1886<\/em><\/p>\n Dispensationalism was largely developed by English-Irish preacher John Nelson Darby, who believed that the God-ordained fates of Israel and the Christian church were completely separate, with the latter to be physically removed from the Earth by God prior to a foretold period of earthly suffering known as the Tribulation.<\/p>\n In Darby\u2019s view, the Tribulation would begin following the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This belief in the physical removal of Christians from the Earth prior to the Tribulation, widely known as \u201cthe rapture,\u201d\u00a0was invented by<\/a>\u00a0Darby in the 1820s and its lack of scriptural support has been widely noted by theologians of various denominations as well as biblical scholars. However, it is important to point that there are differences among dispensationalist Christians as to whether the rapture will occur before, during or after the Tribulation period.<\/p>\n Yet, despite its relatively short existence as an idea and lack of support in the Bible, the rapture was enthusiastically adopted by some churches in England and the United States, particularly the latter. This was largely thanks to the work of highly controversial theologian Cyrus Scofield.<\/p>\n Notably, Darby\u2019s brand of Christian eschatology coincides with\u00a0similar developments in Jewish eschatology<\/a>, namely the ideas of\u00a0Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Kalisher<\/a>\u00a0and the creation of a new branch of Jewish messianism that believed that Jews must proactively work to hasten the coming of their messiah by immigrating to Israel and building a Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Darby\u2019s beliefs, and those he inspired promoted something similar in the sense that Christians could hasten the coming of the rapture and the Tribulation by promoting the immigration of Jews to Israel as well as the construction of a Third Jewish Temple.<\/p>\n Darby traveled to North America and several other countries to popularize his ideas, meeting several influential pastors throughout the English speaking world, including James Brookes, the future mentor of Cyrus Scofield. His travels and the spread of his written works popularized his eschatological views among certain circles of American and English Christians during the religious revival of the 19th century. Darby\u2019s beliefs were particularly attractive to the elite of both countries, with some English noblemen\u00a0placing newspaper advertisements<\/a>\u00a0urging Jews to immigrate to Palestine as early as the 1840s.<\/p>\n Another prominent figure influenced by Darby\u2019s end-times doctrine was the American preacher Charles Taze Russell, whose church later gave rise to several different churches, including the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. Decades before the founding of modern political Zionism, Russell began preaching \u2014 not just to Christians, but to Jews in the United States and elsewhere \u2014 about the need for mass Jewish immigration to Palestine.<\/p>\n As Rabbi Kalisher had done a\u00a0few decades prior<\/a>, Russell\u00a0penned a letter<\/a>\u00a0in 1891 to a wealthy member of the Rothschild banking family, Edmond de Rothschild, as well as Maurice von Hirsch, a wealthy German financier, about his plan for the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Russell\u00a0described his plan<\/a>\u00a0as follows:<\/p>\n My suggestion is that the wealthy Hebrews purchase from Turkey, at a fair valuation, all of her property interest in these lands: i.e., all of the Government lands (lands not held by private owners), under the provision that Syria and Palestine shall be constituted a free state.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The same plan was to resurface a few years later in arguably the most influential Zionist book of all time, Theodore Herzl\u2019s\u00a0The Jewish State<\/em>, which was published in 1896.<\/p>\n Russell addresses an audience of American Jews in New York in 1910. Photo | Public Domain<\/em><\/p>\n It is unknown whether Rothschild or Hirsch was influenced at all by Russell\u2019s letter, though Russell\u2019s ideas did have a lasting impact on some prominent American Jews and American Christians with regard to his promotion of Jewish immigration to Palestine.<\/p>\n The same year that Russell wrote his letter to de Rothschild and von Hirsch, another influential dispensationalist preacher wrote another document that is often overlooked in exploring the role of American Christians in the development and popularization of Zionism. William E. Blackstone, an American preacher who was greatly influenced by Darby and other dispensationalists of the era, had spent decades promoting with great fervor the immigration of Jews to Palestine as a means of fulfilling Biblical prophecy.<\/p>\n The culmination of Blackstone\u2019s efforts came in the form of the Blackstone Memorial,\u00a0a petition<\/a>that pleaded that then-President of the United States Benjamin Harrison and his secretary of state, James Blaine, take action \u201cin favor of the restoration of Palestine to the Jews.\u201d The largely forgotten petition asked Harrison and Blaine to use their influence to \u201csecure the holding at an early date, of an international conference to consider the condition of the Israelites and their claims to Palestine as their ancient home, and to promote, in all other just and proper ways, the alleviation of their suffering condition.\u201d<\/p>\n As with Russell\u2019s letter to de Rothschild and von Hirsch, it is unknown exactly how influential the Blackstone Memorial was in influencing the views or policies of Harrison or Blaine. However, the Blackstone Memorial petition is highly significant because of its signatories, which included the most influential and wealthiest Americans of the era, the majority of whom were Christians.<\/p>\n Signatories<\/a>\u00a0of the Blackstone Memorial included J.D. Rockefeller, the country\u2019s first billionaire; J.P. Morgan, the wealthy banker; William McKinley, future president of the United States; Thomas Brackett Reed, then speaker of the House; Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the mayors of New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago; the editors of the\u00a0Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/em>, among others; and numerous other members of Congress, as well as influential businessmen and clergymen. Though some rabbis were included as signatories, the petition\u2019s content\u00a0was opposed<\/a>\u00a0by most American Jewish communities. In other words, the primary goal of Zionism, before it even became a movement, was widely supported by the American Christian elite, but opposed by American Jews.<\/p>\n The Blackstone Memorial would later attract the attention of Louis Brandeis, one of the most prominent American Jewish Zionists, who would\u00a0later refer to<\/a>\u00a0Blackstone as the real \u201cfounding father of Zionism,\u201d according to Brandeis\u2019 close friend Nathan Straus. Brandeis would eventually succeed in convincing an elderly Blackstone to petition then-President Woodrow Wilson with a second Blackstone Memorial in 1916 that was presented in private to Wilson nearly a year later.<\/p>\n Instead of gathering signatures from prominent members of America\u2019s elite class, Blackstone this time focused on shoring up support from Protestant organizations, namely the Presbyterian Church, in keeping with Wilson\u2019s Presbyterian faith. According to historian Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, this change in focus\u00a0had been<\/a>\u00a0Brandeis\u2019, not Blackstone\u2019s, idea.<\/p>\n Alison Weir, author of\u00a0Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel<\/em><\/a>, described Brandeis as \u201cone of the most influential\u201d American Zionists and a key figure in the efforts to push Wilson to support the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine, of which Blackstone\u2019s second petition was part. However, Weir asserted that Blackstone\u2019s second petition was secondary to a so-called \u201cgentleman\u2019s agreement\u201d\u00a0whereby<\/a>\u00a0English officials promised to support a Jewish state in Palestine if American Zionists, led by Brandeis, were able to secure the United States\u2019 entry into World War I.<\/p>\n Wilson ultimately supported Blackstone\u2019s new document, which was never presented publicly to the president, but privately by Rabbi Stephen Wise. This second Blackstone Memorial was a key component of the Brandeis-led campaign that eventually guaranteed American support \u2014 i.e., private support \u2014 for the Balfour Declaration, which established British intentions to support a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine. Notably, the Balfour Declaration is named for the then-English Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour,\u00a0himself a Christian dispensationalist<\/a>, though Weir told\u00a0MintPress<\/em>\u00a0that Balfour was more likely influenced by political imperatives than religious motives. The only person in the British cabinet to oppose the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member, Edwin Montagu.<\/p>\n The Balfour Declaration was addressed to a member of the Rothschild banking family, Lionel Walter Rothschild, the last in a series of letters written to members of the Rothschild family urging them to use their wealth and political influence to favor the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine: from Rabbi Kalisher, who wrote to Baron Amschel Rothschild in 1836; to Charles Taze Russell, who wrote to Edmond de Rothschild in 1891; and finally to the Balfour Declaration, written to Lionel Walter Rothschild in 1917.<\/p>\n Weir told\u00a0MintPress<\/em>\u00a0that the Rothschilds figure so prominently in these early efforts to establish a Jewish state in Palestine owing to \u201ctheir wealth and the power that goes with it,\u201d making them very sought after by those who felt that a Jewish state could be formed in Palestine by the purchase of the territory by wealthy European Jews, as both Kalisher and Russell had proposed. However, the Balfour Declaration was addressed to the Rothschilds because, at that time, members of the Rothschild family, Edmond de Rothschild in particular, had become among the strongest supporters of the Zionist cause.<\/p>\n Though the declaration carries his name, it is unclear whether Balfour himself actually authored the document. Some historians \u2014 such as Michael Rubinstein, former president of the Jewish Historical Society of England \u2014\u00a0have made the case<\/a>\u00a0that the declaration itself was written by Leopold Amery, then-political secretary of England\u2019s War Cabinet and a Zionist who, despite his commitment to the Zionist cause, obfuscated his Jewish roots for much of his career for reasons that are still the source of speculation.<\/p>\n As shown by the Balfour Declaration and the lobbying efforts that led to its creation, support for what would soon become known as Zionism among the nobility of England and the United States was already formidable before Herzl even began work on\u00a0The Jewish State.<\/em>\u00a0It is worth considering that the power and influence of this religiously-motivated class of Christian elites had an influence on Herzl and his ideas, particularly given the fact that dispensationalist Christians had been promoting a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at a time when\u00a0the idea was unpopular<\/a>\u00a0among many prominent Jews in Europe and the United States.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the role of Christian Zionists, as they would later become known, continued well after Herzl began his Zionist activities, and resulted in many of the most influential acts that led to the establishment of the State of Israel, including the Balfour Declaration.<\/p>\n Notably, Herzl\u2019s own success in promoting his views following the publication of\u00a0The Jewish State<\/em>\u00a0was largely due to English dispensationalist pastor William Hechler. Hechler, while serving as chaplain at the British Embassy in Vienna,\u00a0forged an alliance<\/a>\u00a0and later close friendship with Herzl and was critical to negotiating meetings between Herzl and prominent members of the German government, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, which lent necessary political legitimacy to Herzl\u2019s Zionist movement.<\/p>\n A largely overlooked figure in the rise of Zionism, Hechler is mentioned in Herzl\u2019s diary more than any other person and passionately felt that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would bring about the end times. Hechler is also known to have been extremely interested in the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount,\u00a0having devoted<\/a>\u00a0considerable time to creating models of that Temple, some of which he prominently displayed in his office and showed to Herzl with great enthusiasm during their first meeting.<\/p>\n Herzl gives Kaiser Wilhelm II a tour of an early Jewish settlement near Jaffa, Palestine in 1898. Photo | Israel GPO<\/em><\/p>\n The Hechler-Herzl alliance is one early example of how Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists each used the motivations of the other for political gain despite the fact that Christian Zionists often hold anti-Semitic views and secular Zionists, as well as religious Zionists, do not hold Christianity in high regard. This opportunism on the parts of both Christian and Jewish Zionists has been a key feature in the rise of Zionism, particularly in the United States, and the case of Cyrus Scofield, the man more responsible than any for popularizing Christian Zionism among American evangelicals, offers another important example.<\/p>\n There is perhaps no other book that has been more influential in the dissemination of Christian Zionism in the United States than the\u00a0Scofield Reference Bible<\/em>, a version of the King James Bible whose annotations were written by Cyrus Scofield. Scofield \u2014 who had no formal theological training, though he later claimed to have a D.D. (doctor of divinity degree) \u2014\u00a0originally worked<\/a>\u00a0as a lawyer and political operative in the state of Kansas and eventually became the district attorney of that state.<\/p>\n Soon after his appointment to the position, he was forced to resign as a result of\u00a0numerous allegations<\/a>\u00a0of corruption, including bribery, forging signatures on banknotes and stealing political donations from then-Senator of Kansas James Ingalls. During this time, Scofield abandoned his wife and two daughters, an action since blamed on the burgeoning scandals he was facing as well as his self-admitted heavy drinking habits.<\/p>\n Amid this backdrop, Scofield is said to have become an evangelical around the year 1879 and soon became associated with prominent dispensationalist preachers of the era, including Dwight Moody and James Brookes. Local papers at the time, such as the\u00a0Atchison Patriot<\/em>, regarded Scofield\u2019s conversion and career change with great skepticism,\u00a0referring to Scofield<\/a>\u00a0as the \u201clate lawyer, politician and shyster generally\u201d who had disgraced himself by committing \u201cmany malicious acts.\u201d<\/p>\n Scofield went on to pastor relatively small churches, moving from Kansas to Dallas, Texas, and later Massachusetts. Yet, despite his lack of renown and\u00a0 his troubled history, by 1901 Scofield had managed to gain entrance to an exclusive men\u2019s club in New York, the Lotos Club, whose members at the time included steel magnate and multi-millionaire\u00a0Andrew Carnegie<\/a>,\u00a0members of the Vanderbilt family<\/a>, and famous American writer Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain.<\/p>\n Pastor Scofield, center, with the Deacons of the First Congregational Church of Dallas, circa 1880s<\/em><\/p>\n Scofield\u2019s membership in this exclusive club \u2014 as well as the club\u2019s patronage of his activities, which granted him lodging and financing to produce what would become the\u00a0Scofield Reference Bible \u2014\u00a0<\/em>has been the subject of considerable speculation. Indeed, many have noted that the presence of a fundamentalist, dispensationalist small-town preacher with a disgraced political past in a club stuffed with some of the country\u2019s most elite academics, writers and robber barons just doesn\u2019t add up.<\/p>\n Joseph M. Canfield, in his book\u00a0The Incredible Scofield and his Book<\/em><\/a>, asserted that \u201cthe admission of Scofield to the Lotus Club, which could not have been sought by Scofield, strengthens the suspicion that has cropped up before, that someone was directing the career of C.I. Scofield.\u201d<\/p>\n Canfield puts forth the theory in his book that the person \u201cdirecting\u201d Scofield\u2019s career was connected to New York lawyer and Zionist activist Samuel Untermeyer, who was on the club\u2019s executive committee and was a close associate of Louis Brandeis and\u00a0influential<\/a>\u00a0in the administration of Woodrow Wilson. He then notes that Scofield\u2019s annotated bible was later \u201cmost helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer\u2019s pet projects \u2014 the Zionist Movement.\u201d<\/p>\n Other scholars, such as David Lutz, have been\u00a0more explicit<\/a>\u00a0than Canfield in linking Untermeyer\u2019s Zionist activism to his role in financially backing Scofield and his work on his annotated Bible. Ultimately, like the Blackstone Memorial before it, the Lotos Club\u2019s patronage of Scofield\u2019s work again reveals the interest of the American elite of the era, Christian and Jewish alike, in promoting Christian Zionism.<\/p>\n Untermeyer and the Lotos Club notably also funded Scofield\u2019s numerous travels to Europe, including one fateful trip to England where Scofield met with Henry Frowde, publisher of Oxford University Press. Frowde was taken with Scofield\u2019s work, largely owing to the fact that Frowde was\u00a0a member<\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cExclusive Brethren,\u201d a religious group founded by John Nelson Darby, the father of dispensationalism. Oxford University Press subsequently published the\u00a0Scofield Reference Bible\u00a0<\/em>in 1909. Twenty years after its publication, it became\u00a0the first-ever Oxford publication<\/a>\u00a0to generate over a million dollars in sales.<\/p>\n Scofield\u2019s\u00a0Bible\u00a0<\/em>became spectacularly popular among American fundamentalists soon after its publication, partly because it was the first annotated bible that sought to interpret the text for the reader as well as because it became the central text of several influential seminaries that were set up after its 1909 publication. Among Scofield\u2019s many annotations are claims that have since become central to Christian Zionism, such as Scofield\u2019s annotation of\u00a0Genesis\u00a0<\/em>12:3 that those who curse Israel (interpreted by Christian Zionists to mean the state of Israel since its founding in 1948) will be cursed by God and those that bless Israel will similarly be blessed.<\/p>\n Modern Christian Zionists, like Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), have frequently cited this interpretation that originated with Scofield in defending extreme pro-Israel stances. For instance, Hagee made\u00a0the following statement<\/a>\u00a0in 2014:<\/p>\n You have to go back to basics, with the fact that in Genesis (chapter 1), God created the world and made a very solemn promise (brought in Gen. 12:3), \u2018I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.\u2019 From that moment on, every nation that ever blessed Israel has been blessed by God. And every nation that has ever persecuted the Jewish people, God crushed. And so He will continue.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Despite the widespread dissemination of the Scofield Reference Bible and its popularization among American evangelical churches and seminaries, the public influence of dispensationalist eschatology and Christian Zionism on American politics was relatively limited for much of the 20th century. However, the private influence of Christian dispensationalists was nonetheless present, as seen through the role of\u00a0dispensationalist preacher<\/a>\u00a0and Third Temple advocate Billy Graham and\u00a0his close relationships<\/a>\u00a0to several presidents including Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n Then the political power of dispensationalist theology dramatically moved from the private quarters of the halls of power into the mainstream American political discourse with the founding of the Moral Majority by evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell in 1979.<\/p>\n In the early 1970s, Falwell\u2019s growing ministry was bringing in millions of dollars annually, especially his nationally broadcast program \u201cThe Old Time Gospel Hour,\u201d which ran on several major cable networks at the time. Despite \u2014 or perhaps because of \u2014 the spike in donations, Falwell\u00a0was soon targeted<\/a>\u00a0by the federal government, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for \u201cfraud and deceit\u201d and \u201cgross insolvency\u201d in the financial management of his ministry, particularly the ministry\u2019s sale of $6.6 million in church bonds. The SEC lawsuit was eventually settled when a group of businessmen in Lynchburg, Virginia \u2014 where Falwell\u2019s ministry was based \u2014 took over the ministry\u2019s finances for the next several years, until 1977. Falwell blamed his ministry\u2019s financial problems on his \u201cfinancial ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n Jerry Falwell travels with his son Jonathan, right, aboard his private jet in 2004. Todd Hunley | Thomas Road Baptist Church<\/em><\/p>\n One year after his ministry appeared to be on a better financial footing, Falwell received an invitation to visit the state of Israel and was personally invited on the all-expenses-paid trip by Menachem Begin, then the prime minister of Israel and leader of the Likud Party. The trip would mark the beginning of a long friendship and close relationship between Falwell and Begin and, more broadly, a relationship between American evangelical leaders and Israel\u2019s Likud Party. As Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0in his book\u00a0The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount<\/em>, the Begin administration \u201cwas the first to tap evangelical enthusiasm for Israel and turn it into political and economic support.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon after returning from Israel, Falwell\u2019s finances\u00a0again came under federal scrutiny<\/a>\u00a0after a federal investigation found that Falwell had transferred the health insurance policies of his employees to an unlicensed shell company with just $128 in assets and hundreds of thousands in dollars in unpaid claims. Just as Falwell\u2019s financial troubles began to mount yet again, he received a generous gift from none other than Begin in the form of\u00a0a private Learjet valued at $4 million<\/a>. Shortly thereafter, Falwell went on to found the Moral Majority organization, \u201cafter consultations with theologians and political strategists<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The Moral Majority is widely credited with turning the Christian evangelical right into\u00a0a major political force<\/a>\u00a0in the United States, promoting extremely pro-Israel policies, increased defense spending, a Reaganite approach to the challenges of the Cold War, as well as conservative domestic policies. Falwell frequently utilized his gift from Begin in traveling and promoting the new organization, as well as himself as a major public figure.<\/p>\n The Moral Majority marks a clear turning point in the Israel-U.S. evangelical relationship, as it made fervent support for Israel an area of major importance to evangelical voters and also led many evangelical voters to pay closer attention to events going on in the Middle East. Yet, given Falwell\u2019s strong promotion of Christian Zionism, many evangelicals who became increasingly politically active following the organization\u2019s founding not only supported Israel\u2019s policies of the era but also supported many of the future ambitions of Begin and the Likud Party. This support\u00a0was solidified<\/a>\u00a0by the beginning of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism\u2019s ongoing practice of offering U.S. evangelical leaders free \u201cfamiliarization\u201d tours to Israel in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n Begin\u2019s vision of \u201cGreater Israel\u201d \u2014 the complete annexation of Palestine as well as large parts of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt by Israel \u2014 was also shared and promoted by Falwell. In 1983, Falwell\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cBegin will quickly tell you, \u2018We don\u2019t have all the land yet we\u2019re going to have,\u2019\u201d and further predicted that Israel would never relinquish control over the occupied West Bank because Begin was determined to keep the land \u201cwhich has been delivered to them (the Israelis).\u201d<\/p>\n Falwell\u00a0framed<\/a>\u00a0Begin\u2019s expansionist ambitions as a religious belief in \u201cthe inerrancy of the Old Testament,\u201d a sentiment Falwell shared. Falwell also pushed for a U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and felt that construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount was necessary to usher in the end times and the second coming of Christ.<\/p>\n As Falwell helped turn Christian Zionism into a major political force in the United States, he also made himself a key political figure in the Reagan era and an important go-between for U.S.-Israel relations. In 1981 Begin informed Falwell of his plans to bomb an Iraqi nuclear facility\u00a0before<\/a>\u00a0he informed the Reagan administration with the hopes that Falwell would \u201cexplain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.\u201d According to Canadian academic David S. New, Begin\u00a0told Falwell<\/a>\u00a0during that phone call: \u201cGet to work for me.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, Falwell frequently met with Begin, whom he later called a personal friend, and these meetings\u00a0often overlapped<\/a>\u00a0with Begin\u2019s official meetings with Reagan. A year later, Begin gave Falwell Israel\u2019s Jabotinsky award, making Falwell the first non-Jew to receive the honor for his advocacy on behalf of Israel and, more specifically, Likud policies and ambitions.<\/p>\n Though the Moral Majority officially shuttered its doors in 1989, its political legacy persisted long after, as did Falwell\u2019s political clout. Indeed, following Begin\u2019s model, Benjamin Netanyahu, during his first term as prime minister, also made a habit of visiting Falwell, meeting with the controversial pastor even before he met with political officials in his visits to Washington.<\/p>\n Netanyahu, left, meets Falwell at a hotel in Washington, Jan. 19, 1998. Greg Gibson | AP<\/em><\/p>\n During one trip to D.C. in 1998, Netanyahu\u2019s first visit was to an event co-hosted by Falwell, where the pastor praised Netanyahu as \u201cthe Ronald Reagan of Israel.\u201d\u00a0The New York Times<\/em><\/a>described the purpose of Netanyahu\u2019s U.S. visit not as a visit aimed at meeting with government officials, but rather one intended \u201cto shore up his base of traditional support in the United States. Conservative Christian groups have long been ardent supporters of Israel because of its religious importance to Christianity.\u201d<\/p>\n However, this relationship between Christian Zionists like Falwell and prominent right-wing Israeli politicians has not been without its controversy, especially given that pro-Israel evangelicals like Falwell have a history of making anti-semitic statements.<\/p>\n For example, during a 1999 sermon, Falwell discussed his interpretation of end-times prophecy, widely shared by Christian Zionist evangelicals, that the Second Coming would follow not just the creation of the state of Israel but the construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, from which a figure known to Christians as the \u201cAntichrist\u201d would reign. In responding to his own rhetorical question as to whether the Antichrist is \u201calive and well today,\u201d Falwell stated that \u201cProbably because when he appears during the tribulation period he will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ. Of course, he\u2019ll be Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n Falwell\u2019s comments were\u00a0immediately condemned<\/a>\u00a0by a variety of Jewish groups, including the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Rabbi Leon Klenicki, then-director of interfaith affairs for the ADL, noted that Falwell\u2019s view is a \u201ccommon theological position\u201d among American evangelicals and that Falwell was \u201can influential voice among evangelical and charismatic Christians\u201d who \u201conly supports Israel for his own Christological ends.\u201d \u201cHe sees us only as the ones who prepare the coming of Jesus,\u201d Klenicki\u00a0stated\u00a0<\/a>at the time. \u201cIt is a great disappointment after more than 30 years of dialogue; he\u2019s still in the Middle Ages.\u201d<\/p>\n Another prominent dispensationalist with great political and literary influence is Hal Lindsey, the author and co-author of several books, including the popular\u00a0Left Behind<\/em>\u00a0book series. Lindsey\u2019s work greatly influenced many prominent U.S. politicians like Ronald Reagan, who was so moved by Lindsey\u2019s books that\u00a0he invited<\/a>\u00a0Lindsey to address a National Security Council meeting on nuclear war plans and helped make Lindsey an influential consultant with several members of Congress and the Pentagon.<\/p>\n As noted by\u00a0Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg<\/a>, Lindsey sees Jews as serving \u201ctwo central roles\u201d in Christian dispensationalist eschatology:<\/p>\n [T]he first \u2014 despite his insistence of love for Jews \u2014 is the classic one of Christian anti-Jewish polemic: They are \u2018the Jewish people who crucified Jesus\u2019 and the archetype of those who ignore the truth of prophecy. The second role is to fulfill prophecy despite themselves.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Gorenberg further notes that Lindsey believes that Jews have fulfilled two of the three crucial prophecies that will usher in the end times, with the first being the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the second being the Israeli conquest and occupation of Jerusalem after the Six Day War in 1967.\u00a0According to Lindsey<\/a>: \u201cThere remains but one more event to completely set the stage for Israel\u2019s part in the last great act of her historical drama. That is to rebuild the ancient Temple\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n As Falwell\u2019s and Lindsey\u2019s comments reveal, the eschatological views of dispensationalism frequently perceive the Jewish people as little more than pawns that must fulfill certain requirements \u2014 e.g., establishing the state of Israel, conquering Jerusalem, building a Third Temple \u2014 in order to hasten the salvation and \u201crapture\u201d of evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, Jews in Israel who do not convert to Christianity are expected to die horrible deaths, though some Christian Zionists in recent years, as will be seen shortly, have sought to adjust this still common theological position.<\/p>\n Despite the anti-semitic motivations underlying evangelical support for the state of Israel and the Likud-supported vision of \u201cGreater Israel,\u201d the politically active Christian Zionist movement that Falwell helped create translated into a strong support base for Israel and right-wing Likud policy that has made it crucial to prominent Israeli politicians.<\/p>\n For instance,\u00a0significantly more<\/a>\u00a0American Christians (55 percent) than American Jews (40 percent) believe that God gave Israel to the Jews while that sentiment is shared\u00a0by only 19 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Israeli Christians. In addition, with regards to the Trump administration\u2019s pro-Israel policies,\u00a0only 15 percent<\/a>\u00a0of evangelical Christians believe that President Trump favors Israel too strongly while 42 percent of American Jews hold the view that Trump is biased in favor of Israel.<\/p>\n In a video recorded in the early 2000s \u2014 later broadcast on Israeli TV \u2014\u00a0 Netanyahu, speaking to a family of Jewish settlers, described the mass support among Americans, particularly evangelicals, for Israel as \u201cabsurd,\u201d saying:<\/p>\n America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. They won\u2019t get in our way; 80 percent of the Americans supprt us. It\u2019s absurd.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\nPuritans, Prophecy and Palestine<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\nChristian Zionists pave the way for Theodore Herzl<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe surprising story of Cyrus Scofield<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\nFalwell and Likud: a friendship or something else?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n