Christian Zionism 
Christians
have had an important part in supporting the Jewish people's restoration to
"Zion." Within the millenarian tradition the conviction that the Jews
would return to Palestine became an important dogma. As premillennialism gained
ground during the nineteenth century, forming the core of the early
fundamentalist movement, adherents not only believed that the Jewish people
would return, but also vocally supported the right of the Jews to be restored
to their former homeland. Even before Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat
fundamentalist-evangelical William E. Blackstone advocated the reestablishment
of a Jewish state and circulated a petition urging the United States to return
the land of Palestine to the Jewish people. The Blackstone Petition of 1891 was
signed by 413 outstanding Christian and Jewish leaders and through the State
Department was distributed to the principal nations of the world. During World
War I, Blackstone urged a new petition on Woodrow Wilson, and in 1918 he was invited
to address a Zionist mass meeting in Los Angeles.
Other
Christians, such as Herzl's close friend William H. Hechler, worked diligently
to promote political Zionism as the ultimate solution to the Jewish question. Hechler
tried to encourage heads of state (including the Turkish sultan who controlled
Palestine) to support Herzl's proposals, and he accompanied Herzl to Palestine
in 1898 to meet with the kaiser. The active support of such Christian Zionists
in many countries influenced political action, and even the Balfour Declaration
of 1917 was the product of religious as well as political activity. Individual
Christian Zionists came from a broad spectrum of theological traditions. Even
liberal Protestantism, which has historically opposed Zionism, contributed
clergymen through organizations such as the Christian Council of Palestine
during World War II.
Nevertheless,
because of their premillennial eschatology fundamentalist evangelicals have
been particularly supportive of the restoration of the Jewish people to Israel
and of Israel itself in the twentieth century. In his periodical Our Hope, Arno
C. Gaebelein advocated from 1894 to 1945 that the Jewish people would not only
return to Palestine, but that they had an inherent right to that land as well.
When Israel became a state in 1948, some Christians viewed it as a miracle of
God. In the 1960s liberal Protestantism called for the
"internationalization" of the city of Jerusalem, but the
fundamentalist evangelical declared that the Bible gave it to the Jewish
people. After the 1967 Six-Day War the National Council of Churches denounced
Israel's annexation of the old city of Jerusalem. In contrast, fundamentalist
evangelicals rejoiced and insisted that God had seen to it that the Jewish
people had come out on top in spite of world oppression and obstacle.
Such
unequivocable Christian Zionism has not gone without attack. It has been
criticized even within evangelicalism as an erroneous political philosophy
based on a spurious interpretation of the Bible which dictates that modern
Palestine is the Jew's own special piece of real estate. These critics argue
that Christian Zionism totally ignores the rights of the Palestinian Arab
people and that the Jews forfeited their title to the Promised Land through
unfaithfulness long ago.