A special relationship

The relationship between Jews and Christians has often been a fraught one. For too much of our history, Christians have treated Jews uncharitably, and sometimes persecuted them. Largely because of that history, the alliance between Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists has been difficult for many to understand. Walter Russell Mead’s new book, The Arc of a Covenant (Knopf, 2022), reveals many of the forces that attract Christians to the Jewish state.

Christian Zionism originates in the Reformation. Mead points out that as English believers read the Bible in their own language for the first time, they saw Jewish kings and prophets depicted in a way that was different from the common anti-Semitic stereotypes of the time. In the Bible they discovered not only the Jewish past but what they saw as its future too. Many New England Puritans agreed with Increase Mather, who preached that the Bible foretold that Jews would in time “recover the Possession of their Promised Land.”

By the late 1800s, the belief in a future Jewish state had become conventional wisdom in large parts of the country. In 1891, William E. Blackstone, a Chicago evangelist and author, brought to President Benjamin Harrison a petition for American diplomatic support for a Jewish state in Ottoman-ruled Palestine. Businessmen such as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cyrus McCormick signed the “Blackstone Memorial,” as did the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House, and religious leaders across the country.

Mead spends a good portion of the book debunking conventional wisdom and conspiracy theories about the founding of Israel. Before the Holocaust, most prominent American Jews agreed with Rabbi Emil Hirsch that “we, the modern Jews, say that we do not wish to be restored to Palestine. … The country wherein we live is our Palestine.” However, as they saw the mass murder of European Jews and America’s unwillingness to let in refugees, many American Jews concluded that their co-religionists needed their own home to defend themselves.

Christian Zionists leapt to support them. John Stanley Grauel, an American Methodist, helped smuggle Jewish refugees into Palestine, and future Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said that Grauel’s testimony played an important role in pushing the UN toward partition and a Jewish state in Palestine.

For the first several decades of Israel’s existence, American liberals were the most prominent supporters of Israel. Later on, evangelicals like Billy Graham became fervent advocates for Israel and worked hard to overcome the Christian-Jewish divide.

Mead notes that Israel’s existence “strikes many people as a concrete demonstration of the essential truths of the Christian religion.” Archaeological expeditions, meanwhile, have uncovered evidence of Biblical sites and ­figures that are also powerful proofs of the truths of the Bible.

These examples helped create an evangelical revival in the 20th century. “It is less that Israel is strong in American politics because of evangelical support,” Mead argues, “than that the existence of Israel helped evangelical religion become a major force in American life.” Mead has noticed this dynamic in most countries that have enjoyed an evangelical explosion, and I have seen it myself in my work on Christianity and Near East issues.

Christian Zionism is one of the most important forces that created the U.S.-Israel alliance, but it is not the only one. Christians who do not see a special spiritual role for national Israel today also have reason to support the Jewish state, and Mead covers the region’s importance for American national security. This book reveals how the close U.S.-Israel relationship came to be and the dynamics that will drive its future.

—Robert Nicholson is president and executive director of the Philos Project