Sam Goldman (assistant professor of political science at George Washington University) lectured at Providence’s national security conference on Nov. 3, 2018.

Well, thank you, Mark, for your gracious introduction and to Providence Magazine and the IRD for their invitation. And most of all, thank you to you in the audience for devoting a few minutes on a Saturday morning to me and to the other speakers, but particularly to me because I’ll begin with a confession and request for your indulgence.

The talk that I’m going to give this morning is not my usual stump speech. Yes, no doubt, you know when you publish a book, you put together a standard book talk that you can then deliver ad infinitum to any audience at any time. And I have such a talk. But that’s not the one that I’m going to give you for two reasons.

The first, quite simply, is that I’ve grown bored of my standard book talk and I don’t think that I can bear to deliver it one more time. And the second reason is that I suspect that this is an audience sympathetic to my central arguments about Christian Zionism. And just as I cannot bear to bore myself, I can’t bear to appear here without offering some provocation. And for that reason, I’m going to emphasize a little bit more in this talk some of the dangers and challenges of Christian Zionism rather than its advantages.

When I speak before academic audiences, most of the people listening to me are predisposed against Christian Zionism, particularly the form of Christian Zionism with which they believe themselves to be familiar. Here, I suspect that the opposite is true.

So let me begin by offering a brief and unavoidably arbitrary definition of Christian Zionism, and this is important to do just to make sure that you understand what I am talking about. I am well aware that this definition is controversial, and it may be that in the discussion period you’d like to challenge my definition or ask why I define Christian Zionism in precisely this way. But for the moment, I ask that you merely accept the description I’m about to give.

So, in my book God’s Country, I define Christian Zionism as the idea that Christians have a religious responsibility to support, defend, protect, encourage, or virtually any other verb you might care to insert the establishment of a Jewish state in some portion of the biblical Holy Land. Those of you who are listening attentively will note the significance of the phrase “in some portion.” I don’t think that Christian Zionism requires any commitment to a specific vision of where the borders of the State of Israel should be.

In the book, and in my standard talk, I make two major arguments about Christian Zionism as so defined. The first, following the lead of Jerry McDermott and other scholars, some associated with Providence, is that Christian Zionism is much older than many people realize. In some ways, one could argue it extends back to the Gospels and the early church, but practically, it extends back to the Reformation, particularly to Calvinist strands. This revival of interest in the Hebrew Bible encouraged a reevaluation of prophetic references to Israel, Zion, Jerusalem, and a Jewish return to the promised land. Theologians in the Calvinist tradition insisted these references must have geographic and political significance, thus forming Christian Zionism.

The second argument, more controversial, shifts to Christian Zionism’s function in American political culture. I argue that beyond theological justifications, there’s a symbolic intertwining of a Jewish return to the promised land with American national identity. Vice President Mike Pence’s speech in Israel exemplifies this, where he parallels the story of Israel with America’s own narrative of freedom and providence. This symbolic use of Christian Zionism in American discourse doesn’t necessarily make historical claims but uses myths or stories to frame national identity and purpose.

In the book, I describe Christian Zionism as offering Americans a way to place themselves in sacred history and geography, despite not directly appearing in biblical prophecy. This American form of Christian Zionism allows believers to see their nation as subject to divine providence, intertwined with the fate of the Jewish people. It’s a narrative that doesn’t assert historical fact but shapes how Americans understand their role in the world through mythological and symbolic means. This nuanced understanding helps explain the enduring appeal and controversy surrounding Christian Zionism in American public discourse.

Jewish state in some portion of the biblical Holy Land. Those of you who are listening attentively will note the significance of the phrase “in some portion.” I don’t think that Christian Zionism requires any commitment to a specific vision of where the borders of the State of Israel should be. In the book, and in my standard talk, I make two major arguments about Christian Zionism as so defined.

The first, following the lead of Jerry McDermott and other scholars, some associated with Providence, is that Christian Zionism is much older than many people realize. In some ways, one could argue it extends back to the Gospels and the early church, but practically, it extends back to the Reformation, particularly to Calvinist strands. This revival of interest in the Hebrew Bible encouraged a reevaluation of prophetic references to Israel, Zion, Jerusalem, and a Jewish return to the promised land. Theologians in the Calvinist tradition insisted these references must have geographic and political significance, thus forming Christian Zionism.

The second argument, more controversial, shifts to Christian Zionism’s function in American political culture. I argue that beyond theological justifications, there’s a symbolic intertwining of a Jewish return to the promised land with American national identity. Vice President Mike Pence’s speech in Israel exemplifies this, where he parallels the story of Israel with America’s own narrative of freedom and providence. This symbolic use of Christian Zionism in American discourse doesn’t necessarily make historical claims but uses myths or stories to frame national identity and purpose.

Although he is as well-known an Evangelical Christian, Pence avoids making any explicitly theological arguments in this speech. And that, of course, is good politics, not just to a Vice President speaking in Israel but also in this country where the theological premises are widely disputed, even among believers. Instead, Pence alludes to the story of the Exodus and return of the people of Israel and suggests that it has a parallel in the story of America. And I think the word “story” is actually significant here.

We know, of course, that politicians don’t write their own speeches, and I don’t know how intentional precisely this language is, but Pence does not make a really historical claim here. He talks about the way Americans have understood the history of their country and the role in the world. As I’ve said, the stories that they’ve told about it, and the word “story” is, as happens, a literal translation of the Greek word myth with which we are all familiar and which we tend to associate with falsity or untruth.

I think in colloquial English, to call something a myth is to suggest that it isn’t true and to juxtapose that claim with fact. But that wasn’t the original understanding of the term myth, and it’s in this sense that I speak of Christian Zionism as involving myths about the people of Israel and in its American instantiation about the American people. These are stories that we use to make sense of our experience and to relate our experience as individuals, in some cases, or as political communities, as nations and peoples to others.

And to call them stories does not mean that they are false and should be juxtaposed with the hard truth. Rather, it’s to suggest that when we tell these stories, when we frame our experience by these myths, we are doing something different than making factual historical claims. And that’s the really striking thing about the function of Christian Zionism in American political culture, that it operates on a mythological level that allows Americans to believe that their people too are subject to Providence and have a role to play in a divine plan.

But by reference to the purpose and role of another people, namely the Jewish people. And in the book, I borrow a pair of terms to describe how this works. I talk about Christian Zionism as offering a way for Americans to place themselves in sacred history and sacred geography. Sacred history is a story or myth about the course of human affairs, how they began and where they might be going. Sacred geography is a way of understanding the structure and division of the world.

And of course, as we know, the United States and its territory does not appear directly in either the Hebrew Bible or the Gospels. Some people have found suggestions or intimations of its presence, but I think it’s necessary to admit that these intimations are very attenuated. So Americans face this problem. If they are inclined to believe that their people must have some purpose, they have to find a way of placing it that doesn’t require making it the direct object of prophecy.

And what I argue in the book is that a form of Christian Zionism, a specifically American form of Christian Zionism, has allowed Americans to do that. Adding to the core idea that Christians have a religious responsibility to support or promote or protect or encourage the establishment of a Jewish state in some portion of the biblical promised land, adding to that the idea that American Christians have a special responsibility or special role in the accomplishment of this task.

And again, I think that’s exactly what Vice President Pence was saying when he delivered this speech in Jerusalem nearly a year ago now. When I get to this point in my talks, and sometimes I stop there after having developed each of the two arguments I mentioned at greater length, I’m inevitably faced with the question of whether this is good or bad. And my instinct as an academic is always to avoid such questions and say, “I’m not telling you whether this is good or bad, that’s for you to determine.

I’m merely describing and analyzing a historical and political phenomenon.” But I don’t mind admitting to you that that’s a bit of a weasel response. It’s perfectly fair for members of my reading or speaking audiences to ask whether I think all of this is a good or a bad thing. But in order to do that, I find that it’s necessary to meet a question about the merits of Christian Zionism with a different question, and specifically, in what I take to be good Jewish fashion, with a joke.

So let me, before telling this joke, I just have to ask you in the audience if you’ve heard of the comedian Henny Youngman. He was once very famous but may not be remembered by the younger members of the audience. A few do? Okay. So Henny Youngman was known as the King of the one-liners and he told a lot of jokes about his wife, who must have been an incredibly tolerant woman to permit him to use her as the basis of his act for a 50-year career.

The most famous of these jokes is “Take my wife, please!” But another one of Henny Youngman’s jokes about his wife is that someone would say, “Hey, honey, how’s your wife?” And he would say, “Compared to what?” And I’ve come to believe that this is not only very good comedy but is also a profound insight in questions of politics. Because when we are faced with political phenomena and institutions, it’s not always relevant whether they are good or bad themselves, because we are not in a position to choose in the nature of human things between one option that we might prefer absolutely compared to another that we absolutely reject.

It more often happens that we are faced with two or a greater number of unsatisfying options, and we have to pick the one that is least bad. So I’ve come to adapt Henny Youngman’s joke “How’s your wife?” to the question that I’ve posed about Christian Zionism. Is Christian Zionism or American Christian Zionism good or bad? I then ask, well, compared to what? And the answer that I suggest is that compared to the absence of Christian Zionism, this is a good thing.

And if you want to imagine what that absence might look at, it’s helpful to turn to continental Europe where Christian Zionism has never existed to any significant degree. There are at different times and places outgrowths or expressions or fusions of Christian Zionist sentiment, but they never really took root. Or perhaps even more appropriately, to Britain, to the UK, which has a long and deep Christian Zionist tradition. And for I think obvious reasons, the American Christian Zionist tradition was an offshoot or branch of the British Christian Zionist tradition.

In the book, I write at length about the Puritans of New England who made use of many of these ideas and who were themselves educated in an existing English and Scottish Puritan tradition. But where Christian Zionism has virtually disappeared, it has been in decline since World War I, but I think since World War II, has almost vanished. So it’s not an exact parallel, but it’s a relatively close one. And if we compare the United States with its vibrant Christian Zionist traditions to Britain, which had such traditions but where they have died out, I think as an American, a Jew, and a supporter of the State of Israel, it is clearly better to have Christian Zionism than not to have it.

And that’s really the best evaluation that I can give. There are criticisms that I could offer of Christian Zionism, especially in its more popular forms, and you may ask about them. I’m happy to discuss them. But on the whole, I am glad of its presence. Now, this is the part of the talk to which I imagine that you are relatively sympathetic. And I see a few nodding heads, which I’m vain enough to take as indications of agreement, let me now turn to the more provocative or controversial part of the talk, which is simply to offer a reminder that even though it is better to have Christian Zionism than not to have it, that does not mean that it doesn’t also carry dangers. And it’s on these dangers that I want to focus in the remainder of my talk.

Now, critics of Christian Zionism tend to argue that the problem is that belief that the people and land of Israel have a special role in God’s plans encourages a kind of idealization or even fetishization. You often see this sort of commentary in the media. They will say that well, the problem with Christian Zionists, who are usually associated with Evangelicals (one of the arguments in the book that I haven’t raised is that this is not a specifically Evangelical perspective or tradition; it’s actually much broader than that), but Evangelicals will be identified and it’s said well, they believe that Christians or America should write a blank check to Israel.

The well-known slogan “standing with Israel” means that the State of Israel can do whatever it wants without regard to geopolitical considerations, human rights considerations, or other objections. And I think that that is certainly a danger, but it doesn’t quite capture the risk involved in Christian Zionism, which is not just the idealization or fetishization of Jews or Israel, but rather a division of Jews into two categories: the good Jews who do their religiously appropriate or divinely appointed responsibilities, whether by going to Israel and wearing kippahs and carrying M16s or whatever version, and the bad Jews who stay at home in America, drinking coffee and eating bagels and reading The New Yorker, and do not stand with Israel as they are expected to do.

And I think that this is a more pernicious tendency than mere idealization because what it does is divide Jews around the world, and in practice, particularly American and Israeli Jews (these are increasingly the only countries in the world that have really significant Jewish populations), dividing these into two opposed groups and pitting them against each other. And that, I think, is contrary not only to the theological arguments that have been advanced in favor of Christian Zionism — that Christians have a special responsibility to maintain good and supportive relations with Jews — but also historically, too often and too much of what we retrospectively call anti-Semitism is based not on a universal rejection or criticism of Jews, but rather a distinction between the good Jews and the bad Jews.

And I’ve quoted Vice President Pence favorably at the beginning of my talk, but there are also indications of this kind of invidious distinction from the administration. Several people have pointed out on the internet that at the President’s arrival at the funeral of the eleven victims of the massacre in Pittsburgh, the first person whom he greeted was the Israeli ambassador to the United States, not the leader of the Tree of Life congregation or another representative of the American Jewish community.

And I doubt very much that the President makes his own decisions in these regards, but somebody in the administration responsible for the choreography of his appearances thought that it was important for him to extend his sympathies first to the right kind of Jews — to the good Jews, namely Israelis who are on the whole more supportive of his administration than our American Jews — rather than to a representative of the American Jewish community, which remains overwhelmingly critical of President Trump.

So, I found that striking and rather unsettling. But it must be said that if there is a danger of an invidious distinction between good and bad Jews in Christian Zionism, there is also a danger of a similar distinction in Christian anti-Zionism. I have in mind the criticism, if not outright opposition, to the State of Israel that has become common in many of the erstwhile mainline denominations.

And what’s interesting here is that it’s a parallel distinction. The categories are different now: it is the American Jews who are critical of the State of Israel or even Israelis themselves who are critics of their government, who are the good ones, and the bad Jews are those who support President Trump or the Israelis who support Prime Minister Netanyahu or who choose to live in settlements in the occupied territories.

And what I’ve become increasingly interested in, and as I said, this is not my usual stump speech, so I’m thinking out loud in your presence and you can tell me whether I’ve suggested anything of value, is not the difference between these perspectives but rather their similarity. They are based on a similar instinct, which is that the right activity of Jews and the proper order of the State of Israel and its role among the nations of the world is dependent on Christian theological presuppositions.

And the presuppositions, of course, vary as to the political conclusions. But either way, the consequence, unintended I think in most cases, is to subordinate Jews and Israel and Jewish experience to Christian concepts and needs. So what then to do? You might have borne with me up to this point and wondered now if I’m going to conclude that the problem with Christian Zionism is the Christian part, right? Inevitably, if Christians are making these arguments or engaging in political activity on the basis of their Christian belief, they are going to import or impose a Christian frame.

And I’ve just suggested that that is a problem, and yet I remain convinced by the Henny Youngman question that it is better to have Christian Zionism despite its dangers and defects than it is not to have it. So I’ll conclude merely with a warning, or if that seems presumptuous because I’m in no position of authority that would justify me in offering warnings to anyone, then a sympathetic suggestion: to be aware of the tendency, which is probably inherent in any Christian perspective on politics and on Israel or the Middle East in particular, whether pro-Israel or anti-Israel, Zionists or non-Zionists, to be aware of the tendency to reduce Jews and Israel to actors in a play that has already been written for them or as the bearers of concepts and responsibilities that Jews do not themselves recognize.

But at the same time, it’s important not to forget Jews and Israel entirely, to consider and resist the temptation to reduce Jews and Israel to tokens in a Christian game, but also to resist the temptation to say, “Well, we have nothing to do with these people, and they will do their own thing.” For good or ill, it’s of no concern to us. That, it seems to me, is a danger.

The previous talk included a friendly criticism of Reinhold Niebuhr, or at least of the tributes to Niebuhr that people associated with Providence are inclined to give. I’m always skeptical of heroes, and Niebuhr does not have all of the answers. But I do want to suggest, and I write about this at greater length in the book, that Niebuhr, of all the major Christian writers on this topic, was most aware of these two risks and was most sensitive in his attempts to sustain his sincere and religiously grounded support for Zionism and the State of Israel without either reducing Jews to religious tokens or, as I say, ignoring them.

So, I’ll conclude with a suggestion that I think is in the spirit of the event, which is that everyone should read more Niebuhr. And if you find that too challenging, you can read my book, which includes a topic on that subject. Thank you very much, and I think there is time for questions.

I’ve learned that it’s best to do what Mark truly tells me, so he’s in charge. Thank you very much for your remarks.

Q&A

Question: Jamie Johnson, formerly with Homeland Security and with the Anglican Church of North America. I’m often asked by individuals who aren’t down in the weeds of public policy and are just trying to love God and live out their life and raise their family, they have noticed within Christendom, especially within evangelicalism, that there is this very vocal, strongly passionate wing of American evangelicalism that cheers when the president moves the embassy to Jerusalem, that cheers many of the policy decisions that the State of Israel makes. And they’ve also noticed that the non-Zionist wing of American evangelicalism has a more subtle way of dismissing Israeli movements, of dismissing, we might say, the GOP pro-Israel or foreign policy positions. And they don’t know where to come down. They may be a new believer, but they want to settle this question in their own mind.

I was asked a question, and I will just pose it to you: If we as Americans can determine where our capital is, whether it’s New York or Philadelphia or Washington, DC, can’t the people of Israel decide where their capital is? And if they choose to have it in Jerusalem, what’s wrong with us acknowledging that and moving our embassy there? I think it’s a very valid point. And they’re often confused by the non-Christian Zionists within Christendom in America who say, ‘No, you’re going to anger the Arabs, you’re going to anger all of the Muslims within the Middle East.’ How would you say that Christian leaders and influencers can answer questions on the whole regarding America’s relationship with Israel and how strong it is and where it should go?

Answer: Well, thank you. That’s a great question, and I think you’ve already answered it in a way that I liked. Confronted with this question about the embassy, you said, ‘Well, if they choose to have their capital in Jerusalem, why not recognize that as we would do for another country?’ The reason I like that answer is that it places the emphasis on choice and it acknowledges that this is a political decision to be made by the Israeli government on behalf of the Israeli people, and we should respect the decision that they make for whatever reason. I think that is a mature and political answer, rather than one that would emphasize the religious significance of the city of Jerusalem. Now, of course, one may believe that, and many of the people who support the embassy decision do, but I think the most significant, the most helpful answer one could give would be to think about how to help the Israelis make their own decisions about their own destiny, rather than, as I said in my talk, sort of imposing a specific vision of what that destiny should be.

Another part of the answer, which is more difficult because, of course, people have lives to lead and the time and energy that they have for study and travel and learning may be limited, is to learn more about the modern State of Israel, which is not simply continuous with the biblical Israel with which one may be familiar from the Bible or Sunday school. And I see that Robert Nicholson has arrived in the back. The work he’s doing with the Philos Project to introduce Christians to Israel as a living society that includes different sorts of people who agree on some things and disagree on others, and has its own discontents and problems as well as advantages, is a profoundly important exercise. And as I say, not everyone can go to Israel and travel around, but there are easier ways of learning about the real experience of Jews and non-Jews in the State of Israel today that I think have to be a source of guidance in these decisions.

Question: My name is Jason Olsen. I completed my PhD at Brandeis University and have a forthcoming book, ‘America’s Road to Jerusalem: The Impact of the Six-Day War on Protestant Politics.’ I really appreciate your thoughts here. I think they’re right on, and your understanding of all this is great, and so happy for your explanations to us. So, I haven’t thought through all of what I’m about to ask you, and so I’m kind of exploring a topic with you. It just recently, just before I sent this book for publication, a preface where I pointed out that in the Jerusalem embassy dedication, Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor of First Baptist in Dallas, gave the invocation and Pastor John Hagee gave the benediction with their own kind of strands of Christian Zionism, but there was no American rabbi invited to pray. You would have thought one or the other would have had a rabbi slot, especially since there’s been so much support for this move in the American Jewish community. I just noticed that, but I haven’t thought through what that means as far as our current administration and its relationship with the State of Israel, so I hope you could write. Why don’t we have a rabbi giving a prayer there?

Answer: Well, I mean, I think what you’re describing is a consequence of a phenomenon that somebody, not me, so I take no credit for this term, has called the de-Judaization of Americanism. What’s meant by that is that rather than American Jews serving as mediators between the United States government and Gentile Americans and the State of Israel, the middleman is increasingly being cut out of the equation, and the contacts are being conducted directly between American Christians, often of a more conservative evangelical bent, and Israeli governments. That’s how you get Jeffress and Hagee delivering prayers rather than an American rabbi. That’s how, in the anecdote that I just related, that’s why you get the president shaking Ambassador Dermer’s hand at the Tree of Life synagogue before he met with the president of the synagogue or its rabbi or a representative of its congregation.

Sentimentally, I think that’s very bad because I belong to the overwhelming majority of American Jews who are not Orthodox and who are broadly supportive of Israel but do have concerns about the recent direction of its politics. And I don’t like the idea that I am irrelevant now and have no role to play. On the other hand, I appreciate the political wisdom and what I think many Israelis would say, and also their allies and supporters, especially among Orthodox American Jews, is that, look, liberal American Jewry is demographically finished. And it may take a long time for it to disappear, but the combination of secularization as relatively liberal American Jews lose interest in religion altogether and intermarriage, which we know tends to diminish Jewish identity, means that in 25 or 50 or 75 years, there won’t be any liberal Jews left.

So, why, speaking now for the Israelis, why should we wait around for that to happen when we can deal directly with groups and institutions that are more likely to support us? And as I say, sentimentally, I don’t like that at all, but my sense of real politique suggests that’s actually a wise strategy, or at least one that I find very difficult to refute. So, I haven’t answered your question, but I think I’ve described the dilemma in which I find myself, which is not so interesting because it’s my dilemma personally, but I think that’s the basic dilemma of the American Jewish community and the organized Zionist or pro-Israel movement in America right now. It seems to be increasingly irrelevant, both to Christian Zionists here in the United States and to governments in Israel.

Question: Hey, Sam. I’m Josh Caetano, grad student at Yale. I really appreciate you coming here to talk. I actually was on the first fellows leadership and sea trip, and I worked here at Providence. And I hope my question doesn’t put them to shame, but I perhaps am one of the few people here who have more questions than plaudits for Christian Zionism. And I appreciate your attempt to be provocative, but for me, it wasn’t provocative enough because, for me, the provocation comes not from the political story of it, but more from the mythology of it, the story that your book talks about. Because I think what I grapple with, I study Christian ethics, is that you can’t have Exodus and liberation without the conquest narratives.

It’s a huge part of the books, it’s not the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy that are, but with Joshua, Joshua judges, and you make the connection to the Christian founding. And I love the founding, but I also recognize that the founders use this narrative in the conquest. You know, it was a conquest narrative. Cotton Mather famously said, ‘Let’s kill all the Amalekites.’ And my worry is that’s not it. It’s more that this narrative is used as a mythology, and that this seems, that it believes it can be replicated in the land of Zion right now. I wonder what comments your book has on that particular segment of the narrative? Because you do say, like, “a portion of the land,” and it seems to me that you’re sort of hedging there against a true logical conclusion of what the story would suggest.

Answer: So I say “a portion of the land” just because there’s disagreement about how precisely the map should look within the five hundred or so years that I very briskly cover in the book. I’m trying to allow for a certain amount of flexibility and one point of contention, not only among Christians but between Christians and Jews historically, has been the significance of the occupied territories or the West Bank or Judea and Samaria, whatever terms you prefer. As Mr. Olsen knows very well, having written a book about it, historically Christians have been much more concerned with Jerusalem, partly because of its special prophetic significance, than with the other bits and pieces of the promised land that are alluded to in the Bible or are historically important to Jews but don’t have quite the same importance. I’m trying to allow for those debates.

As for your real question, yes, of course, this is a conquest narrative, and you mention Mather. You know, I can go one better. Timothy Dwight, who later became president of Yale, wrote an epic poem – epic not only in its style and content but also in its length. It’s incredibly long, called “The Conquest of Canaan,” which is a very thinly veiled allegory of George Washington and the conquest and liberation of British North America, which became the United States. Comparisons between Washington and Joshua were extremely common in the period of the early republic. So that’s true, but where maybe we disagree is that I don’t think we can do without myths. I mean, I don’t think it’s possible to extract this mythological or storytelling dimension from politics, not just for Americans but for everyone. This is how we understand ourselves as members of a community, as members of a nation or people, and I think some of the later speakers will address that. And that means that attempts to extract the myth from our interpretation of our own experience are like trying to disembowel yourself. You can’t pull out your own guts.

So what then can we do? Do we have to take everything to its logical conclusion? No, I don’t think that follows. And I don’t think it follows because one of the features of this dimension of myth that I’m describing is that it’s not a matter of strict logic. It’s not a mathematical formula. So we have these characters, we have these stories, we have this language, and we have a set of resonances and attunements. It’s our job as storytellers and interpreters to emphasize the elements that seem most relevant and important and morally satisfying, and to find ways not to deny but to minimize the other parts which are more disturbing.

That’s not an attempt for which it seems to me that you can ever give a recipe or formula, which is unsatisfying and challenging but doesn’t make the task of telling and reinterpreting the stories any less necessary. And I would just observe, if I may offer one other suggestion as a Jew, if not a particularly Orthodox one, to a Christian audience: this is an activity in which Jews have a great deal of experience. A lot of Jewish ritual and liturgy is about telling and retelling the stories in different ways and opening them up to interpretation. I think that’s really the best that we can do because the hope for a purely interest-based politics is in vain. We can’t get out of these stories, but also the hope for a fully and entirely theologically consistent politics is also in vain because the world just doesn’t work that way.

So your questions are good ones, and the challenges are real, but I’ll recur again to the great political theologian, Henny Youngman: compared to what? How else could we approach these questions that would be more satisfying on the whole? And I may be that we disagree on. I don’t think trying to remove the biblical and theological elements from consideration would lead to better outcomes on the whole, even if it might be better in a specific case. Sure, so Christian Zionism and Jewish-Christian relations have overcome a couple of issues. One, obviously, Christians who believe in salvation through Christ overcame that to build relationships with Jews and become very pro-Israel.

But also, those who formed political alliances with the largely, sometimes Democratic-leaning American Jewish community. So there’s another jump that American Christian Zionists have done. Can Christian Zionists, also, if their desire is to love the Jewish people and not just try to be in a relationship that seeks blessing, they could also jump over the idea of building relationships with Jews who also don’t support Israel and keeping their reasons that the Bible has commanded me to love these people.

Question: Hello, my question is this: last summer, I had the opportunity to do some advocacy in Washington, D.C., with CUFI (Christians United for Israel), and it really opened up my eyes. I was able to be on Capitol Hill and we talked about the issues right there on the banks, and we talked about some of the Palestinian refugee issues that are currently at the United Nations. And as I was speaking to my representative, I was standing on behalf of Israel, predominantly through prayer, and then I felt like I was putting some action to that. So I guess my question to you is: how can I love? The fact that you shared your heart and I received insight today about how Jews may feel irrelevant here in America, how do you see that we can build that relationship both as Christians and as Jewish Americans, to where we can have a united front and we can actually move forward in true relationship? We may not always agree or even understand, right?

Answer: So let me try to answer both questions at the same time, or at least connect my answers. One theme of Christian Zionism, particularly in its more recent evangelical varieties, has been this theme of loving Jews. Yet, there’s something a little bit unsettling about that. Imagine just walking up to someone you don’t know and saying, “Guess what? I love you.” They would be disturbed and might even think you’re crazy. So I don’t dispute in the slightest, and I’m grateful for the sincerity of many Christians’ good feelings and well wishes to Jews. But it’s disturbing to be the object of love from someone you don’t know.

So I think one thing that might be helpful is for Christians to get to know Jews better, and maybe start with American Jews who are, after all, their fellow neighbors and fellow citizens, rather than moving immediately to Israel. In Monopoly, you know, you get the card that says “Go,” and it says, “Go directly to Go, collect $200.” I think that’s perhaps a temptation for Christians who want to love or support Jews in Israel to go directly to the source and do what they can for Israelis. Maybe take the longer route. Maybe go all the way around the board and start with the Jews who are close, who are familiar, before proceeding to those who are more distant.