What is Christian Zionism? Is it, as figures like Tucker Carlson claim, a relatively recent development in America’s cultural history, or does a general support for the Jewish state have a longer history in America? The answer partly depends on how “Christian Zionism” is defined, but in this conversation, Sam Goldman explains to host James Patterson why support for Jewish political aspirations is part of a long tradition of Christian philosemitism that reaches back even to America’s colonial period.

Related Links

“Tucker Carlson Is Wrong About Christian Zionism,” Compact, Samuel Goldman
God’s Country by Samuel Goldman
Tri-Faith America by Kevin Schultz

Transcript

James Patterson (00:06 ):

Welcome to the Law & Liberty Podcast. I’m your host, James Patterson. Law & Liberty is an online magazine featuring serious commentary on law, policy, books, and culture, and formed by a commitment to a society of free and responsible people living under the rule of law. Law & Liberty and this podcast are published by Liberty Fund.

Hello and welcome to the Law & Liberty Podcast. My name is James Patterson, contributing editor to Law & Liberty and associate professor of public affairs at the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee. With me, again, is my friend, Dr. Samuel Goldman. He is associate professor of humanities at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. And today we’re going to be talking about both a newly-in-paperback book of his called God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America. As well as an article he wrote once again for Compact, “Tucker Carlson is Wrong about Christian Zionism.” And this has all been inspired by some of the contretemps of the moment over some of these issues. So we’ll get into those, but also some of the intellectual background that people may not know. Dr. Goldman, welcome to the Law & Liberty Podcast.

Sam Goldman (01:37 ):

Always a pleasure to speak, Dr. Patterson.

James Patterson (01:42 ):

I always feel a little guilty about being informal on these podcasts, so I’m going by honorifics at least at first. Now, before we started recording, we were just talking about how many people have offered commentary on Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes. And your comment was never before in your life have you felt so middle aged. I feel the same way! So we are not going to talk about the ins and outs of all that business. We’re going to be talking about what was motivating them to talk, and that’s this idea of Christian nationalism. I mean Christian Zionism, excuse me, not Christian nationalism. Totally different show. So what is Christian Zionism and what does Tucker Carlson get wrong about it?

Sam Goldman (02:28 ):

So Christian Zionism is one of these annoying terms that can be defined in different ways. And one of the frustrating things about the discussion that I entered with my Compact piece and carried on in social media and elsewhere is that people sort of mean different things by “Christian Zionism” and unless you can settle on one definition, it’s hard to have a productive discussion. So I’ll give you two definitions. One is the one that I think Carlson had in mind, which is common and which I think is wrong or at least only partial. And then I’ll give you my correct definition, which is the one that I advance in my book. So one way of understanding Christian Zionism is as the affection of modern Christians, mostly evangelical Protestants, for the current state of Israel, and usually that is associated with a set of eschatological beliefs that involve the return of the Jews to the Biblical Promised Land, the establishment of a state there, increasing turmoil in the region and the world,

(03:49 ):

and finally a sort of apocalyptic narrative in which Christ returns to rule in person. That’s a definition that has been common for at least 40 years, and I think it’s probably the one that Carlson has in mind, although it’s not clear that everyone whom he mentioned, George W. Bush among others, is a Christian Zionist in that sense. But my contention in the article and the book is that that’s really just too narrow. I would say that Christian Zionism should be defined as something like the idea that God has a continuing concern for the people and land of Israel, that that concern is reflected perhaps imperfectly or mysteriously in the modern Zionist movement and the state of Israel, and because Christians profess to worship and serve the God of Israel, they have some responsibility for supporting or promoting those goals. That is a much broader definition of what it means to be a Christian Zionist.

(05:09 ):

And it’s also one that extends back a lot deeper in history. So Carlson in that show and on other episodes has suggested that Christian Zionism can be derived from the nineteenth century Anglo Irish theologian, John Nelson Darby. I think it really goes quite a long way farther back, really back to the Protestant Reformation. And what I suggest in my book is that this idea was brought to what became the United States by the Puritans. It became a recurring feature of American political and religious life. It was never uncontroversial or unanimously accepted; I wouldn’t suggest that for a moment. But it was a popular and fairly normal idea really throughout both the history of the republic and colonial history. So when people like Carlson said as he did in the interview with Fuentes, that this is a brain virus that’s somehow taken over the Republican party in America as a result of Darby or the so-called Scofield Bible, which included notes that were influenced by Darby’s ideas, I just don’t think that’s true. Christian Zionism in a broad sense is an old and powerful feature of American thought. And when we talk about its influence and value, I think we should approach it on those terms.

James Patterson (06:58 ):

During a now leaked video from the Heritage Foundation meeting over some of the fallout from their involvement with Tucker Carlson, one of the participants said that they regarded Christian Zionism as a heresy and they associated this with being either Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. We’re not going to speculate what they mean by that, but there is a kind of odd proximity of Protestantism to Christian Zionism that you don’t find in Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Why is it that Protestantism is so much friendlier to this way of thinking?

Sam Goldman (07:44 ):

So Protestantism emerges in part out of the idea that scripture is the ultimate authority for Christians. You know better than I do, as a Catholic, that it’s more complicated than that, and there’s a whole range of arguments, but one of the central ideas in what becomes Protestantism is that if you want to know what God wants, you have to go back to the Bible and you have to read it yourself. Which doesn’t mean that everyone’s interpretation is equally valid; particularly early forms of Protestantism had strong interpretive and theological authorities that were supposed to guide people. But you’re supposed to, you know, you read the book and you see what it says. So what happens if you do that?

James Patterson (08:28 ):

I have never read the Bible before, Sam,

Sam Goldman (08:31 ):

Well, I’ve seen on Twitter accusations that this is true of all Catholics. So I leave that for others to judge. So you pick up the Bible and what do you find? Well, first of all, you find that it has these two parts: if you are a Christian an Old and New Testament, or for Jews the Hebrew Bible and the other stuff, and then you have to answer the question of what these things have to do with each other. And one of the innovations of Protestant theologians was to say, well, look, when you read the Old Testament as it was for them, you see that it is replete with references to Israel, to the people and land of Israel. And some of those references they suggested are pre-figurations of the Church. They’re metaphors for the community of believers that would be fulfilled in Christ.

(09:40 ):

But some of them are references to what was called the seed of Abraham, the descendants of Abraham, and to the Biblical Promised Land. And from this turn to scripture and to the Old Testament, which for them was of equal authority to the New Testament, there developed a sense that God was not finished with the people or land of Israel. And through reading, especially some of the prophecies that occur later in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, many Protestants expected that one day in the fullness of time, God would bring together the scattered Jews of the world, would restore them to residence in at least some portion of the Biblical Promised Land, and would set up some kind of political community there. And all of this was vague and argument by way of implication, if not insinuation, but you can see in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries something that looks like a precursor to Zionism emerging not among Jews and not in Eastern and Central Europe, but rather among English speaking Protestants in Britain and then in what would become the United States.