Why do our fundies like their fundies?

July 20, 2006 8:25 AM

Is there some reason that christians support Israel? I was browsing the Rapture Ready message boards, and while I realize they are a bit of a fringe, they seem to be fanatically pro-israel (see this signature), and that sentiment seems to be echoed amongst many other christians I know. I would have figured christians to be mildy anti-israel, as it's inhabitants sort of shunned their prophet/savior. What gives?
posted by phrontist to religion & philosophy (40 comments total)

Probably because a lot of doomsday prophecies say something about Jesus coming back shortly after Israel becomes a state again.
posted by borkingchikapa at 8:26 AM on July 20, 2006

It's all about the rapture as far as I can tell. I work with fundamentalists and a couple of them are positively gleeful. They're interpreting what's happening in the Middle East as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy in John's revalations and maybe the book of Daniel. They believe that there's a check list of things that happened before they're raptured and Israel's present activities are one of them.
posted by substrate at 8:28 AM on July 20, 2006

The establishment--and continuation--of the State of Israel is essential to set the stage for the imminent return of Jesus.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:32 AM on July 20, 2006

Links to relevant bible passages would be appreciated. How commonly held is this interpretation of current events?

(I'm going to school deep in the bible belt soon and I'm mildly afraid some news event will trigger strong reactions amongst the faithful. I'd like to at least understand where they're coming from, worldview-wise.)
posted by phrontist at 8:33 AM on July 20, 2006

CunningLinguist: That looks like exactly what I'm after.
posted by phrontist at 8:34 AM on July 20, 2006

More here.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:35 AM on July 20, 2006

phrontist, if you hear anything about the birth of a red calf while you're down there, head for the hills.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:36 AM on July 20, 2006

The Bible says nothing about rebuilding the actual, physical Temple.

The NT references to the temple of stone only refer to its destruction (Matt. 24:1-2) never its reconstruction. It is highly significant that "Jesus never gives any hint that there will be a physical replacement for this Temple. There is no suggestion, either in the Apocalyptic Discourse or elsewhere, that this destruction will be but a preliminary stage in some glorious 'restoration' of the Temple."
posted by grabbingsand at 8:41 AM on July 20, 2006

I just found this which may be helpful. It's a speech by (ugh) Pat Robertson called Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel.
From the speech:

"You must realize that the God who spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai is our God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are our spiritual Patriarchs. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are our prophets. King David, a man after God's own heart, is our hero. The Holy City of Jerusalem is our spiritual capital. And the continuation of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land is a further bulwark to us that the God of the Bible exists and that His Word is true."

posted by jdl at 8:42 AM on July 20, 2006

It's basically due to the belief that the return of the Jews to Israel signals the impending return of Christ. A recent LA Times article discussing this issue summarises it pretty well:

Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown — as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament — is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Since they believe Israel has a divine mandate, they naturally side with Israel's security policies (and other policies that it calls security policies, too).
posted by robcorr at 8:43 AM on July 20, 2006

But aren't the Jews dammed for not accepting Jesus?
posted by phrontist at 8:45 AM on July 20, 2006

And furthermore, why are some jews interested in "rebuilding the temple", if the temple is for jesus, who they don't believe has had a "first coming" yet...
posted by phrontist at 8:49 AM on July 20, 2006

HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.

- Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress," 1621–1678

It was a widely held belief in Marvell's time that Judgment Day would bring about a kind of cosmic mass conversion for God's Chosen. I'd be surprised if that line of thinking didn't still prevail.

(And will someone please stop me before I click on another damned Rapture Ready link? The whole place just turns my Methodist-raised stomach.)
posted by grabbingsand at 8:51 AM on July 20, 2006

The temple would not be for Jesus, but presumably for the Messiah, and has nothing to do with the idea of Christian Rapture - except the whole End of Days thing.

Will someone fix the mispelled tag? It's "judaism" not "Judiasm."
posted by canine epigram at 8:54 AM on July 20, 2006

To clarify my last post - that's the traditional orthodox Jewish view.
posted by canine epigram at 8:57 AM on July 20, 2006

But aren't the Jews dammed for not accepting Jesus?

They can convert and be saved, which is what the loony fundamentalists are hoping will eventually happen. In the meantime, they're necessary for the fulfilment of the Prophecies. If people start talking to you about all this nonsense at your new school, smile and either 1) listen or 2) change the subject, depending on how much you want to learn about their crazed worldview versus how much it drives you around the bend to listen to it.
posted by languagehat at 9:07 AM on July 20, 2006

I think it is primarily political; there is a practical alliance between pro-Israel Jewish conservatives and Christian conservatives: they share certain agendas and their mutual support is (in my opinion) purely pragmatic. It is true that many conservative Christians appear to basically gloss over the theological conflict inherent in this alliance: the fact that from most orthodox Christian perspectives non-converted Jews face the same divine condemnation as all unbelievers is simply not addressed.
posted by nanojath at 9:12 AM on July 20, 2006

First, the Bible promises blessings for those who bless Israel, and curses to those that do not. That's for starters.

Eventually many Jews will indeed accept that Jesus is their promised Messiah. A lot of the Bible (NT) has to do with the fact that gentiles can actually be saved and not just Jews. Before, we goyim were considered out of the covenant and unclean. Now everybody is invited to join the party.

Christianity is nothing more or less than an extention of Judaism, and their God is our God.
posted by konolia at 9:15 AM on July 20, 2006

Equally beware of falling for the traditional Metafilter trap of assuming that all christians = crazy US evangelical types. I would consider myself a christian (in a quiet sort of Church of England way) and was very much on the side of the Palestinians (until they elected Hamas...)
posted by prentiz at 9:16 AM on July 20, 2006

Oh, and we are commanded in Scripture to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. (So much for those who think we wanna hurry up with that Armageddon business.)
posted by konolia at 9:17 AM on July 20, 2006

How commonly held is this interpretation of current events?

I dug up this Vanity Fair article via Google:

According to a Time/CNN poll from 2002, 59 percent of Americans believe the events in the book of Revelation will take place. There are as many as 70 million Evangelicals in the U.S.—about 25 percent of the population—attending more than 200,000 evangelical churches. Most of these churches are run by pastors who belong to conservative political organizations that make sure their flocks vote as a hard-right Republican bloc.

Lots of other good info there, too.
posted by tippiedog at 9:19 AM on July 20, 2006

By the way, I find that number, 59%, to be unbelievably large--and I live in Texas (Austin, to be fair).
posted by tippiedog at 9:20 AM on July 20, 2006

Another Christian who does not blindly side with Israel.
posted by Atreides at 9:27 AM on July 20, 2006

Well, aside from the fact that Christian is a pretty broad term that includes people of all ideological points of view?

I would say that the rapture view is probably a minority. Some other reasons include:

1: The good political ally theory. Israel as a state with a large population of exiles from Fascist and Communist regimes is consided to be a friendly stand-out in the region.

2: Cultural identification. Israeli Jews are considered to be more Western than Muslims in the area.

3: Reparations. Many believe that the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish homeland is the right thing to do given the anti-semetic atrocities of the 20th century.

Among mainstream Christians there is a view that one shouldn't be quick to judge who will be saved and who will be damned. (This interpretation is highlighted allegorically by C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle.)
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:32 AM on July 20, 2006

>>> (So much for those who think we wanna hurry up with that Armageddon business.)

You need to visit (carefully) the Rapture Ready boards. There is a prevailing belief in their flock that peace in Israel is exactly the first Big Sign of impending Apocalypse. Their citation is Ezezial 38:14, though the reading doesn't seem to support that line.
posted by grabbingsand at 9:33 AM on July 20, 2006

As alluded to in other comments: the New Testament refers to followers of Christ as being "grafted in" to the lineage of Israel. (Google it, I am lazy.) Meaning that all the promises of blessings made to Israel become promises to those "grafted in" as well. Christians accept Jews as God's "chosen people" and therefore Christians become "chosen" as well through their acceptance of Christ. Who was a Jew, by the way.
posted by The Deej at 9:46 AM on July 20, 2006

A lot of the Bible (NT) has to do with the fact that gentiles can actually be saved and not just Jews. Before, we goyim were considered out of the covenant and unclean. Now everybody is invited to join the party.

Christianity is nothing more or less than an extention of Judaism, and their God is our God.

I grew up a good Catholic, so I understand the first point (although I don't believe Jews consider themselves "saved"), but your second point seems to directly contradict it. Judaism (like Hinduism) is an ethnic/cultural religion, and Christianity (like Islam or Buddhism) is universalizing--that is to say (like you did), anyone can join; holiness isn't an inherited gift, but an absolute choice. That is a radical re-engineering and a major reason why I can't understand describing Christianity as "nothing more...than an extension of Judaism."
posted by kittyprecious at 9:51 AM on July 20, 2006

A189Nut there is a belief that religion in America hasn't been associated with the state as it has been in Europe (see Treaty of Westphilia and the Hundred Years War -- religion and the state became synonymous and Europeans have seen the destructiveness of religion, or at least remember it more than their American counterparts). Simply we have more of a freedom of choice of religion, capitlistic religion you can call it.

Also I remember distinctly there being a passage about no man knowing when the end of the world would come or warning against being able to tell what will happen in the future. Doesn't this supercede the belief of everyone trying to guess the end of the world? I am having a hard time googling this.
posted by geoff. at 11:10 AM on July 20, 2006

You're probably thinking of Matthew 24:36. "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only." Of course, Jesus had also just said "Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place."

I figure if you can rationalize away how long dead that generation is, then rationalizing away how you can know something that Jesus said only God did has got to be pretty easy.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 11:45 AM on July 20, 2006

I agree with Kirk. The rapture view is a minority issue.

However, the Biblical view is not.

We (as Christians) are watching events unfold that have been mentioned countless times throughout the Bible. Now, wether you're a Christian or not, you have to admit that it's pretty dang interesting to read something for years only to watch it unfold before you.

The difference is, this directly affects us so far as our beliefs are concerned. This just adds to the hype.

PS - Not to be the MeFi nag, but please capitalize 'Christian' in the future as it is refering to a name... not a pratice.
posted by bamassippi at 11:50 AM on July 20, 2006

geoff - from here:

God will come for his Church suddenly at a time when we least expect it. For this reason, He instructs us to be ready, always prepared, and on guard for his coming. As those around us turn their backs on God, worshipping themselves, other gods, or false prophets instead, we should be looking up. We should have our spiritual lives in order, so that we might escape what is to come. Especially as we are now witnessing the beginnings of birth pains, God reminds us that we need to be in prayer constantly so that we will not be led down the other path and miss His coming.

Luke 21:34-36 "Be on guard, that your heart may not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon the face of the earth. But keep on the alert at all times, praying in order that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man."

God felt it was so important for us to be alert and watchful for his coming that he reminded us several times to be ready.

Matthew 24:42 "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming."

Matthew 24:44 "For the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

Matthew 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."

Matthew 25:13 "Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour."

It is to our benefit that God didn't tell us the hour of His coming. It encourages us to live righteously as Christ may return any time, and it encourages believers to work diligently for the souls of friends, family and the lost of this world. It reminds us that we have much work to do and may not have much time to do it. If there was ever a time to be an example, share your faith, and make sure that everyone you know has heard the name Jesus, it is now.

[I don't vouch for the site's interpretation (or anyone else's, for that matter), but it seems to be what you're looking for as far as the scripture goes. IANAC]
posted by zoinks at 11:51 AM on July 20, 2006

Also I remember distinctly there being a passage about no man knowing when the end of the world would come or warning against being able to tell what will happen in the future. Doesn't this supercede the belief of everyone trying to guess the end of the world?

There is a passage in Matthew 24:36 that says "No one knows the day, or the hour, not even the angels in heaven, [nor the Son], only the Father". (Some versions leave out the "nor the Son" part.) Many biblical scholars take this to mean that no one knew at the time it was written, but because it says "no one knows" and not "no one will know" or "no one can know", etc., it does not preclude someone figuring it out at some point in the future.

That said, the folks who believe in the rapture think that there's a very specific set of circumstances that need to happen in Israel to set the stage for the return of Jesus (as many people in this thread have already said). They think they have the end figured out - not necessarily the exact time, but the things leading up to that time. They support Israel because Israel is very important to their predictions.

On preview: Someone got to Matthew 24:36 first! Foiled again!
posted by bedhead at 11:53 AM on July 20, 2006

I love this -- assuming they are right, everyone dedicated to doing their part to bring about Judgement Day (via war, conquest, horrendously un-Christian acts) will be the ones to be judged poorly. It's the most ridiculously self-fulfilling prophecy -- erect the Anti-Christ and then Jesus will come to smite us! Woohoo!

Or, maybe the whole point is that if Jesus has to come back to bitchslap the world, the world has failed to heed his message and learn from his death. Personally, even if I play along, I can't help seeing Bush and his fundy followers as the bona-fide anti-Christ.
posted by Embryo at 12:07 PM on July 20, 2006

The intersection of fundies and Zionism is something I got to see firsthand growing up in an evangelical baptist church.

Yes, as many have said before, the fundamentalists see Israel as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and as a precursor to the Rapture.

However, the love of Israel goes considerably beyond that. Israel overall was considered proof of God's existence and proof that Jews are truly the chosen people. For example, in sermons about God always keeping his promises, we'd not only get the stories of Jewish victories from the Bible, but the pastor would even take recent military history and give it a mystical spin. We'd hear tales about Egyptian tank columns being wiped out by an outnumbered Israeli army battalion which suffered no casualties in the attack. We'd be told of Israeli tanks advancing with the Arab shells bouncing harmlessly off of the armor, due to the power of God's hand.

The fact Israel was so successful militarily and economically compared to their hapless Arab neighbors was a sign that God was real and strong and real strong and always kept his promises, and that any nation which attacked the Jews would suffer the consequences.

So anything Israel did was a-ok and groups like the Palestinians were considered evil and people in my church kept wondering why the Palestinians just didn't grow up and realize that God was in control and God loved the Jews more than them and they, the Palestinians, should just accept that the Jews were taking the land promised by God and so the Palestinians should just give up as they were now doing Satan's work.

Since I grew up during the tail end of the Cold War, all of this mythology involved the Soviets in some way as well. Since, post 6-day War, the Soviets were cultivating Arab allies, their antipathy towards Israel was considered evidence that they were the Gog and Magog of Revelations and that they would eventually invade, only to be defeated at Megiddo. It was a real shame that Gorbachev turned out to be a relatively nice guy as that ended a fairly neat and tidy eschatological system.

The end result of this belief system created a rather curious anti-anti-semetism. An entire race and nation were now relegated to being a religious talisman. And since no Jew could be harmed without dire consequences from God, this led to blanket condemnations of anything even remotely anti-semetic. If you asked anyone in my former faith about the salvation of the Jews, you'd probably be told that, yes, Jews were going to hell unless they accepted Christ. But, in practice, I don't think many really believed that. The unspoken belief was that Jews would end up in heaven even without Christian salvation and many prominent Jews were described in my church as being strong with God. For example, my pastor had a brief meeting with PM Begin in 1982 and came back to report that Begin was a man of God and was doing the right thing by invading Lebanon.

So fundamentalists saw Israel's continued existence as means to an end but they also grew to love the country because they thought God loved Israel more than any other place, more than even the United States (which is apparently number 2 on God's list of favorite places) and that God's blessings on America were largely due to the unwavering support the US gave Israel. If God's blessings can be bought by sending 4 billion per year to the chosen people, then that was money well spent.

There's other reasons for the love too. Many evangelicals saw in Israel an echo of American pioneers and the remarkable Israeli success in building a first world nation out of a blasted sandbox reflected an American sense of hard work and manifest destiny. These people tended to overlook the socialist roots of Zionism.
posted by pandaharma at 12:18 PM on July 20, 2006 [3 favorites]

Other Christians that might not support Israel would be the Palestinian ones, along with Arab Christians in general (though the Maronites are, as far as I know, an exception, though some consider themselves to have a Phoenician/French identity, and their alliance with Israel in the Lebanon Civil War was based heavily on maintaining their position in Lebanese society and government).

(And further, most Palestinian, and indeed most Arab, Christians are not Evangelical, being Orthodox of some variety).
posted by Gnatcho at 12:40 PM on July 20, 2006

Judaism (like Hinduism) is an ethnic/cultural religion

I don't think this is entirely correct.
posted by cellphone at 2:50 PM on July 20, 2006

Lots more info at the Challenging Christian Zionism site, by a group of evangelical pastors, et al, who are disturbed at the growing influence of Christian Zionism on U.S. politics. I posted about it here in January.
posted by mediareport at 10:01 PM on July 20, 2006

Modern American Evangelicalism has its basis in Dispensationalism, which in extremely simplified terms sees God's relationship to humanity as a series of "dispensations," or ways God deals with man. The first dispensation, for instance, was "innocence" (before the fall of Adam and Eve); another is the dispensation of Mosaic law (the ten commandments, the laws and rules in Deuteronomy, etc) from Moses to Christ. We currently live in the dispensation of grace. The final dispensation is that of the Millenium, essentially the final act after the rapture and the second coming, but before the final end of time as we know it.

One of the attractions of Dispensationalism is that it reconciles what appear to be contradictory theologies in the Old and New Testaments. And Dispensationalists do tend to be very pro-Israel. They see Israel and the Church as being two different sets of God's children that have distinct purposes and destinies, that Mosaic Law and grace are mutually exclusive (interesting, since evangelicals tend to use the Law in their arguments against homosexuality), that the dispensation of grace wasn't foreseen by the Old Testament prophets (whose Messiah was a physical savior, not a spiritual one) and that the Rapture will precede a seven year tribulation, which itself precedes the Second Coming.

Not all modern Protestant Christians are Dispensational, though most, if not all, evangelical and "fundamentalist" churches and denominations are...and these churches make up the majority of Protestant American churches.

Those mainstream Protestants that don't go for Dispensationalism are generally "reformed" churches (some Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, some Methodists and Baptists), who subscribe to Covenant Theology. There are essentially two convenants by which God has dealt with humans...the Convenant of Works, which started with the fall of Adam, and the Covenant of Grace, which started with God's promises to Abraham and continues with the New Covenant established by Christ at the Last Supper.

(These are all gross simplifications, and a lot of stuff has been left out; the Wikipedia articles cited are generally good introductions to both systems of theology, and errors or misinterpretations in this posting are mine.)

I'm a Presbyterian Christian of the reformed variety and don't put a lot of stock in the Dispensationalist view of things. We tend not to spend much energy in worrying about the end times. I like to think it's because we're more concerned about our relationship to Christ and to our fellow human beings in the here and now.
posted by lhauser at 11:13 PM on July 20, 2006

Gershon Gorenberg's book, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount talks about this phenomenon directly.

His thesis is essentially that many Evangelicals see Jews as players in a messianic script that's been predicted in scripture - one that's playing out in recognizable world events.

This is understandably an issue for quite a few Jews in Israel and abroad. The Evangelicals, currently a major political force in the United States, are giving their unreserved and unqualified support to Israel, which feels that most of the world doesn't understand the unique issues it faces. But those same Evangelicals also believe that when the Rapture comes, any and all Jews who don't accept Jesus Christ will be annihilated.

So the question is whether or not Israel needs that kind of support. At this stage in the game, Israel's solidly answered in the affirmative. They're heavily courting Christian tourists who come, spend their money, and give Israelis the kind of ego boost they haven't felt since Israel was the plucky little country that fought off five Arab armies.

It's also a mistake to think that this is just a fundie-to-fundie connection. On the contrary, most religious Jews in Israel don't have any contact, and indeed don't relate at all to Evangelical Christians, who they approach vary warily, if at all.

Keep in mind that most Jews don't look at Christianity as an extension of their own religion. Not by a long shot. So, the interesting question is: have Israelis been manipulating Evangelicals?
posted by awenner at 11:18 AM on July 24, 2006

The Evangelicals, currently a major political force in the United States, are giving their unreserved and unqualified support to Israel...

That should FUNDAMENTALISTS, not EVANGELICALS. Just like Chrisitians, Evangelicals exist on a spectrum of political ideology. Even the term "evangelical" can refer to "non-Catholic but Christian", simply "Christian", or a member of a denomination that emphasizes personal conversion and the authority of the Bible. See the Evangelical Left.

The university associated with the Evangelical Covenant Church sponsors the Center for Middle Eastern Studies which emphasizes understanding and reconciliation with the Jewish and Muslim communities. The Center leans pro-Palestinian and the unviersity tends towards an emphasis on social justice issues. For more on evangelicals who are politically left and emphasize social justice, see Sojurners and others.
posted by jeanmari at 9:01 PM on November 5, 2006