The Historical Origins of Christian Zionism

 

An analysis of the historical development of Christianity in the Holy Land and of the impact of Western Christianity in particular is beyond the scope of this research. Others however have done so comprehensively. The wider historical development of non-Jewish Zionism, and especially its early origins in Puritanism and Millenarianism have also already been ably researched by others. Critics of Christian Zionism have traced the movement as far back to the Montanist controversy in the 2nd Century, to the Protestant Reformation, to the Jewish mystical Kabbalist and in particular the Revivalist, Millennialist and Apocalyptic writings which were popular in 19th century Europe and America. Proponents insist however, that Christian Zionism is consistent with the teachings of both Old and New Testaments which is the source of their motivation. This chapter is limited to an assessment of specific historical events and theological developments which appear to have contributed to the contemporary movement of Western Fundamentalist Christian Zionism.

It must be acknowledged that the theological interpretation of recent historical events, especially since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, is made exceedingly complex and controversial since two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, each claim the same land, endowing the same locations with different place names and religious significance, while at the same time promoting rival and contradictory histories about the same events. It is consequently hard for Christians to remain neutral and not take sides, especially when visiting the Holy Land as tourists or pilgrims. As Bowman points out,

Most tourists, in accord with the Israel Ministry of Tourism, call the land 'Israel', but in United Nations terminology the land is 'Israel and the Occupied Territories'. This variance in nomenclature reflects a deeper issue of identity; Israel and the area it occupied in the 1967 'Six Day War' constitute a deeply, and violently, divided country.

The founding of the State of Israel in 1948, was clearly regarded by most Zionists, whether Christian or Jewish, as signalling the end of a 2000 year exile and as the return to their promised homeland in fulfilment of biblical prophecy and Divine mandate. Palestinians however, regard this traumatic experience as having resulted in the violation of their fundamental human rights to exist autonomously in the land of their birth and forefathers. Since 1948 each community has disputed the grounds under which the other may remain.

Examples of these contested and contradictory histories include those of Palumbo, Antonius and Said who give a Palestinian view point, and Tuchman and Peters who offer alternative perspectives, the latter, overtly Zionist. Peters' thesis, for example, is that Arab population growth in late nineteenth century Palestine was the result of immigration from other Arab countries undermining their historical claim to the land. This kind of assertion has been disputed by other historians including the Israeli, Yehoshue Porath. Another historian claims Peters' work to be propaganda based on 'spurious scholarship.' The tension is focused on the mutually exclusive claims over Jerusalem. Little has changed since Cragg wrote,

Jerusalem...is still bitterly the symbol of confronting defiance and dismay, its centrality to both parties ensuring that the obdurate loyalties it commands continue to forbid the peace to which its name is dedicated. All visions of a federal constitution, a mutual destiny, a bi-communal possession, have thus far been fruitless. The city remains the indivisible, inalienable Jewish symbol Zionism cannot allow itself to share, except in the free access of tourism and the tolerance of religious devotion. It is, therefore, a painful sign of irreconcilability-and steadily more so as the years pass.

2.1 The Origins of Western Christian Interest in the Holy Land

Western Christian interest in the Holy Land is closely associated with the birth, demise and subsequent resurgence of the pilgrimage movement. The word 'pilgrimage' comes from the Latin peregrinus which means a foreigner or traveller, and describes a journey to some place regarded as holy, undertaken for a religious purpose and in the hope of receiving spiritual or material blessing.

In both Islamic and Hebrew traditions, pilgrimage is regarded as a religious obligation imposed on the entire faith community and taught in their sacred scriptures. For the Christian however there is no such emphasis or requirement. Jesus taught instead that the sacred is located not in a place but in the body of the believer, and worship is something to be offered to God anywhere and everywhere (John 4:21-23).

In the earliest days of the Christian Church therefore, there does not appear to have been any perceived benefit from undertaking a pilgrimage. But the desire to visit the scenes associated with the birth, life and death of Jesus grew partly from natural interest and partly through the influence of superstitious beliefs the Church inherited from the surrounding pagan religions. Initially the idea of pilgrimage was seen as something voluntary and optional.

Vigorous opposition to the growing popularity of pilgrimages for superstitious reasons can be found in a number of the Church Fathers. Jerome (345-413), in common with most Protestant pilgrims today, regarded pilgrimages to Palestine as an essential way of gaining a greater understanding of the Bible, just as a visit to a foreign country might enhance the appreciation of its literature. '...so we also understand the Scriptures better when we have seen Judea with our own eyes...'

However, Augustine (354-430), John Chrysostom (344-407) and especially Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) recognised the dangers of locating the sacred at particular shrines. Consequently they actively discouraged Christians from undertaking pilgrimages to Palestine. Zander quotes for instance, Augustine and John Chrysostom, 'God is indeed everywhere, and he who created all things is not contained or shut in by any one place.' 'The task is not to cross the sea, nor to undertake a lengthy pilgrimage....both when we come to church and when we stay at home, let us earnestly call on God.'

Despite this concerted attempt to check the growth of pilgrimages, and dampen speculation that they were a means to salvation, the idea of meritorious value in a journey to the Holy Land caught the popular imagination. Few of these early pilgrims appear to have shared Jerome's concern to study the geographical and historical context of the Bible. Instead they were drawn by the mysterious association with the incarnation, and with the miracles of Jesus in particular.

Empress Helena's visit to Palestine toward the end of the fourth century ensured that a pilgrimage to the Holy Land became a fashionable as well as a religious duty. Despite the costs, hazards and arduous nature of such a journey, pilgrims increasingly travelled to the Holy Land to do penance, to obtain redemption from serious crimes, and to secure relics for their churches. In a desire to create greater unity within his empire, Constantine did much to encourage pilgrimages by building large churches in Jerusalem and Bethlehem which became foci for devotion and worship. Eusebius for example, claimed divine inspiration was behind Constantine's desire to make the Church of the Resurrection 'a centre of attraction and venerable to all.' Centuries later, fermenting millennial expectations and belief in the imminent return of Christ to Jerusalem was another powerful incentive for visiting the Holy Land. The growing passion for relics of dead martyrs provided another motivation, in part fuelled by commercial interest and the exploitation of a gullible populace by an increasingly hierarchical, authoritarian, and corrupt Church. Centuries before, Augustine had castigated this practice clearly emerging even in his day, '...the base commercialisation...the many hypocrites in the garb of monks, who go through the provinces...Some sell the relics of martyrs or so-called martyrs.'

Increasingly the shrines of saints came to be seen as, 'a potentially active source of spiritual energy.' A visit to those sites associated with the life and miracles of Jesus Christ became therefore the ultimate pilgrimage, and those in Jerusalem of greatest appeal. A Russian abbot named Daniel who visited Jerusalem in 1106-7 spoke of his joy at visiting the sites 'which Christ our God pressed with his feet.'

2.2 The Middle Ages and the Impact of the Crusades

By the 13th century the penitential pilgrimage had become fully institutionalised in a religious system in which good works were esteemed more highly than ascetic practices. Several historians examine in detail the lasting impact of the Crusades and trace the devastating consequences of the 'sacralising' of Mediaeval European military designs on the Holy Land.

The attempt to liberate the Holy Land from Moslem control was seen by many as a sacred endeavour and even as a form of pilgrimage. When Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095 he gave several reasons for this 'holy pilgrimage'.

....each of high moral value, first to defend Constantinople and by doing so heal the schism between East and West; second, to be a repentant act of faith that would culminate in the moral reformation and total renewal of Christendom; third, it was to be a mass pilgrimage of believers united in the expectation of the imminent return of Christ.

How far this aspiration was shared by the Crusaders themselves is debatable. Zander seriously questions whether the Crusades ever really had anything to do with 'defending' the Church. Robert the Monk, commenting on Pope Urban's mobilisation speech, gave much more provocative reasons.

Let the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord our saviour which is possessed by unclean nations, especially incite you, and the Holy Places which are now treated with ignominy and irreverently polluted with their filthiness....Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves....This royal city, therefore, situated at the centre of the world, is now held captive by his enemies, and is in subjection to those who do not know God, to the worship of the heathens.

For over a century, Bishops, clerics and Kings repeated the call 'to avenge the injury which had been inflicted upon Christ.' This explains how some Christians came to regard the land, rather presumptuously, as their exclusive inheritance being the 'true' Israel. The theological justification for the Crusades went through significant and progressive stages. To begin with the motivation was simply to liberate the Holy Land as a means of achieving salvation and of hastening the apocalypse. Having conquered and settled the land and created Christian kingdoms, when Jerusalem was once again threatened by infidels, it was an opportunity for sacrifice. After Jerusalem was lost, the Muslim presence was seen as an insult to God, and the later Crusades were justified to avenge the injury to God. Toward the end of the Crusading era the Crusaders saw themselves as the successors of Israel; their duty to claim Christ's patrimony and inheritance.

Such religious arrogance and the consequent extermination of the inhabitants of Palestine by the European Crusaders unleashed a spiral of barbaric savagery between Jew, Christian and Muslim alike which has fermented for a thousand years, each side locked in what Armstrong calls 'a murderous triangle of hatred and intolerance...' Cragg draws some important conclusions about the effect of the Crusades and their religious imprimatur on the Arab psyche.

The Western, Latin Rome saw the Christian East in terms of judicial dominance and ecclesiastical power....The Crusades became an enduring symbol of malignancy as well as heroism, of open imperialism and private piety...They left noble piles of architecture on the eastern landscape but seared the eastern soul. They gave Arab Muslims through every succeeding century a warrant of memory to hold against Christian Arabs as, by association, liable to pseudo-Arabness or worse. What the crusaders did to the eastern psyche, long outlived their tenure.... The image of them is one no century since has been able to exorcise.

2.3 The Reformation and Protestant Attitudes to the Holy Land

'All pilgrimages should be stopped' wrote Martin Luther. Luther and other leading Reformers condemned pilgrimages because they were seen as evidence of a Church which had relapsed into Judaistic legalism and pagan superstition. Pilgrimages encouraged heresies and abuses inherent in such practices as indulgences, relics, and veneration. Luther warned that, 'The simple and superstitious are beguiled......true Christian pilgrimage is not to Rome or Compostella, but to the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Gospels.'

In England, Wycliffe also spoke out against the veneration of relics and saints, a practice integral to pilgrimages, since he claimed they perpetuated, '....a culpable blindness, an immoderate and covetous worshipping of relics cause the people to fall into gross error.....the practice itself is a pharisaical one.'

The Lollards who were the successors of Wycliffe, equally and unequivocally condemned indulgences, image worship and the veneration of relics associated with pilgrimages. In a tract entitled The Lanterne of Light dated 1409, they argue,

...true pilgrimage is done in six manners...We are pilgrims from the moment of birth on the way to the heavenly city; we are pilgrims when we go to church, when we visit the poor and distribute arms, studying holy writ and then going to proclaim it is another manner of pilgrimage...; the sixth pilgrimage is that upon which we enter at death 'to bliss or pain'....there is no other pilgrimage that may please God...

Pilgrimages continued to be conducted however, by the Latin, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox and Coptic Christian communities, who invariably stayed with members of their own faith community. The leaders of the newly emerging Protestant sects and denominations such as Huss, Calvin and Luther, who had no personal contact with the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land, dissuaded their members from undertaking pilgrimages to a region untouched by the Reformation. It was not until the 19th Century and the combination of colonialism, missionary endeavour, archaeological exploration and more advanced forms of transportation, that interest in visiting the religious sites in Palestine became popular among Protestants. However, the legacy of the Reformation expressed in a repugnance for Catholic and Orthodox ritual and liturgy still pervades much Protestant pilgrimage.

2.4 The 19th Century Resurgence of Western Christian Interest in Palestine

In the 19th Century there was a considerable thawing in Protestant attitudes toward the idea of missionary outreach as well as pilgrimages to the holy sites. This had as much to do with changing attitudes toward the Jews. as it did with a growing interest in the Holy Land and things Oriental. This was part religious, part political and largely due to a succession of archaeological discoveries in the Near East, military adventurism and the growing number of travelogues which fired the imagination. The relationship between 19th Century Christian Zionism and British Colonialism will be considered separately, later in this chapter (see 2.7).

One of the most popular travelogues was Dean Stanley's Sinai and Palestine which went through four editions within a year of its publication in 1856. Other authors included William M. Thackeray, Gertrude Bell, Robert Byron, Robert Graves, Alexander Kinglake, Rudyard Kipling, T.E. Lawrence, Freya Stark, and William M. Thomson. However, the most influential English writer among early Arabists was Charles Montague Doughty, an Oxford Don. Like many other European travellers,

Lawrence, throughout his sojourn in the Middle East, was under the spell of 'Travels in Arabia Deserta', a twelve-hundred page account of a two-year odyssey, between 1876 and 1878...This tome, which took Doughty a decade to write is so powerful and all-engrossing in its effect and so completely defines the Arabs and the Middle East desert that the book's influence on Arabists thought cannot be exaggerated. Travels in Arabia Deserta makes Doughty, truly, Britain's first and greatest Arabist...Doughty's book started a literary and psychological movement among Westerners drawn to the Arabs...

Between 1800 and 1875, approximately 2,000 authors wrote about the Holy Land, and by the 1830's a visit to the Near East formed part of the grand tour taken by most young European gentlemen. The majority of pilgrims continued to be Armenian and Greek while Protestant pilgrims, who tended to be Evangelical, increasingly became uncomfortable with, and vocal about, the unfamiliar style of worship they found. In particular they found the emphasis on relics and the denominational rivalry present at the traditional holy places in Bethlehem and Jerusalem reprehensible. Alexander Kinglake, who wrote his travelogue in 1835, noted this tension.

Many Protestants are wont to treat these traditions contemptuously, and those who distinguish themselves from their brethren by the appellation of 'Bible Christians' are almost fierce in their denunciation of these supposed errors.

Pliny Fisk & William Thomson, among the earliest 19th century American missionaries to the Middle East were shocked on their arrival in Jerusalem,

...to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the other Holy Places guarded by a dirty and superstitious rabble of Greeks and Byzantinized Arabs, all kissing icons and burning incense amid gold-leaf finery, scandalised these well-bred and puritanical New Englanders. In the eyes of the missionaries, it was the Oriental Christians-the Greek Orthodox, the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, and others-who had truly usurped the Holy Land, by emphasizing the hypnotic mechanics of liturgy over the Word of God. The Protestant missionary animus toward these strange eastern rite churches...was never to dissipate.

Another Beirut missionary, Margaret McGilvary, made similar derogatory comments in the 1920's,

The Oriental Church is the canker at the heart of Christianity, and inasmuch as it is the chief point of contact with Islam, it behooves the Christian world to renovate the system which so unworthily represents its cause in the Near East.

Harriet Martineau, another writer, referred to the services at the Holy Sepulchre as '...mummeries done in the name of Christianity....idolatrous nonsense...' It was this dissatisfaction with the Eastern Churches' monopoly on the traditional sites and a repugnance for their garish shrines which fuelled interest among Evangelicals in such ventures as the archaeological work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the alleged discovery of the true Calvary in 1883 by General Gordon and the subsequent funding by public subscription of the Garden Tomb Association.

Protestant pilgrims, while not wishing to appear superstitious or overly emotional, were nevertheless often moved by their first sight of Jerusalem. Robert Curzon described what happened in his party.

Everyone was silent for a while, absorbed in the deepest contemplation. It was curious to observe the different effect which our approach to Jerusalem had upon the various persons who composed our party. A Christian pilgrim, who had joined us on the road, fell down upon his knees and kissed the holy ground, two others embraced each other, and congratulated themselves that they had lived to see Jerusalem. As for us Franks, we sat bolt upright on our horses, and stared and said nothing, whilst around us the more natural children of the East wept for joy, and, as in the army of the Crusaders, the word Jerusalem! Jerusalem! was repeated from mouth to mouth; but we, who consider ourselves civilised and superior beings, repressed our emotions; we were above showing that we participated in the feelings of our barbarous companions.

Curzon's account also reveals the condescending prejudice commonly felt by Europeans toward Orientals, a related issue which will be developed later (2.9). While the theological reservations of the Reformers were quietly forgotten in the growing fascination with things Oriental, the real breakthrough in the rise of popular pilgrimage came as a result of innovations in transportation.

In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened, coincidentally the same year Thomas Cook led his first tour group to Jerusalem, made up of 16 ladies, 33 gentlemen, and two assistants. By the end of the 19th Century, his company had arranged for 12,000 pilgrims to visit the Holy Land. It is not an exaggeration to say that Thomas Cook probably did more than any other person to facilitate and shape the re-emergence of Protestant attitudes to the Holy Land. His reputation as an organiser of pilgrimages grew after he was invited in 1882 to arrange the visit by Prince Edward, later Edward VII, and his son Prince George, later King George V. In 1872 Cook wrote the following analysis of his new enterprise.

The educational and social results of these four years of Eastern travel have been most encouraging. A new incentive to scriptural investigation has been created and fostered; 'The Land and the Book' have been brought into familiar juxtaposition, and their analogies have been better comprehended; and under the general influence of sacred scenes and repeated sites of biblical events, inquiring and believing spirits have held sweet counsel with each other.

In 1891 Cook's influence was further enhanced by the publication of Cook's Tourist Handbook for Palestine and Syria. This was designed to be read on horseback or by tent light and contained all the essential scriptural references associated with each location visited thereby reinforcing the educational nature and biblical basis of his pilgrimages. Cook also pioneered what he termed, 'Biblical Educational and General Tours' designed especially for clergy, Sunday school teachers and 'others engaged in promoting scriptural education.'

Cook's tours were notable in that they combined visits not only to the Holy Places and excavations, but also to Protestant missions, hospitals and schools. This was an innovative and radical idea when compared with most contemporary itineraries. In the port of Jaffa for instance, which Cook used as his base in Palestine, he donated the sum of £500 to build the Tabeetha mission school for Arab girls, later to come under the auspices of the Church of Scotland. It is probably the only school in the world to have been founded with the proceeds of tourism and pilgrimages.

It is possible to gain some idea of the influence Thomas Cook must have had on pilgrimages to the Holy Land in the fact that by 1898 his company was the largest employer of labour in Egypt. Cook's tours proved popular for a number of other significant reasons which have a bearing not only on the development of Western pilgrimages in the 20th Century, but also, ironically, on the decline in contact between pilgrims and the indigenous Christian communities. Although there was little difference in price between Cook's tours and those of his competitors, middle-class Protestant clientele from America and Europe were attracted to Cook's tours because they wanted the type of pilgrimage, and above all, the kind of services he alone offered. For example, payments were made in advance obviating the need for pilgrims to carry large sums of money, and thereby risk robbery. Cook also hand-picked and employed the 'dragomen' or local agents who in effect became his sub-contractors. Those who were unwilling to co-operate soon went out of business. In May 1874 they complained in a letter to the Times that Cook had destroyed their livelihood and the local economy, commandeering all the horses, while insisting on bringing all his food, tents and supplies from England.

The established dragomen were put out of business almost immediately. In May 1874 they complained bitterly in a letter to the London Times that their living had been taken by Cook. They argued that Cook's prices were higher than theirs, that the whole price had to be paid in advance, that Cook commandeered all the horses in the region, and that his agents did not provide fresh local food for their clients but preserves brought from England. But this was exactly the point. Cook's tourists did not want local guides who might raise the stated price at will and whose patter reproduced what they regarded as 'pious frauds'. They were attracted to the portable accommodation which was preferable to convent rooms or verminous khans. Instead of suspect Oriental food, Cook's tourists had English ham and Yorkshire bacon, pickles, potted salmon and Liverpool sardines. Boatmen were engaged, under a Cook's flag, to row out to the tourists on the deck of the ship and, relieve them of Arab rabble, and conduct them through Custom house annoyances.

Because Cook's middle class pilgrims were not used to riding horseback, in 1874 Cook contracted the German Templars to transport his tour groups from Jaffa to Jerusalem in their rather primitive stage coaches, further distancing pilgrims from any personal contact with the local Christians. Whether these were an improvement on the horse is questionable, but they were an early prototype for the modern air conditioned coach.

Tensions over the provision and competence of local guides, the quality of local hotels and food, the suitability of transportation and general fear of the indigenous population are not new, nor the product of the Intifada or Israeli security measures. These frictions and prejudices so often present among contemporary pilgrims were clearly evident in the 19th Century. They epitomise the inability or unwillingness of Europeans generally, when abroad, to identify with indigenous peoples and in the Middle East, with the Arab Palestinian community in particular.

2.5 Prophetic and Revivalist Adventism and the Jews

Bring in Albion & Ariel; The Puritan Hope (Murray) and Bible and the Sword (Tuchman)

It does not appear coincidental that there has been a cumulative correlation between Christian Zionism and millennialist speculation during the decades prior to the end of each century, especially since the 1590's. The frequency of military and apocalyptic terminology in the titles of popular books written by Christian Zionists since the 1980's would suggest a similar connection.

The first decades of the nineteenth century saw an increasing dissatisfaction with the oversimplified Gospel of the earlier evangelical movement. The quest for a more experimental faith and a fuller biblical exegesis led to greater emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology , and prophecy.

Theological sociologist Dr Andrew Walker has described this as PMT or Pre-millennial tension. 'We're counting up to the year 2000 and there's a strong apocalyptical anxiety.'

The revival during the 1790-1800 period was a direct result of the turmoil Europeans felt in the wake of the French and American revolutions coupled with the approach of a new century. The British, like Europeans on the continent, began to feel that their world was falling apart. People turned away from new secular philosophy and political answers and embraced a more fundamentalist form of Christian teachings that included a revived form of prophetic interpretations of the Bible. In this troubled and uncertain climate, Christian Zionism began to take root.

n.b. check for duplication with chapter on Irving and Darby. Summarise here their contribution and indicate how their views will be amplified else where.

The rise in popularity of premillennialism in the nineteenth century, and the 'revolution' in prophetic and apocalyptic thought can be attributed to the Scot, Edward Irving, regarded by others as the fore-runner of the pentecostal and charismatic movements. Having accepted a call to pastor the Church of Scotland congregation in Hatton Garden, Iriving soon became a popular if controversial speaker. Consequently he was invited to preach at the annual service of the London Missionary Society in 1824, and a year later to the Continental Society. His address on that occasion was entitled, 'Babylon and Infidelity Foredoomed',

...in it Irving advanced the assertion that the Church, far from being on the threshold of a new era of blessing, was about to enter a 'series of thick-coming judgments and fearful perplexities' preparatory to Christ's advent and reign.

According to his biographer, Irving published the address acknowledging his indebtedness to Hatley Frere, an influential premillennialist. A year later in 1826 Irving was introduced to the views of Manuel Lacunza a Spanish Jesuit who wrote a book under the pseudonym of Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, allegedly a converted Jew, entitled, 'The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty'. Lacunza interpreted all but the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation as describing apocalyptic events about to happen. Irving was so excited by Lacunza's speculations, he mastered Spanish in order to translate and publish the work in English. Irving added a 203 page preface to the translation in which he presented with great conviction his own prophetic speculations about the end of the world, predicting, the apostasy of Christendom, then subsequently the restoration of the Jews and finally the imminent return of Christ.

When the Lord shall have finished the taking of witness against the Gentiles...he will begin to prepare another ark of testimony...and to that end will turn his Holy Spirit unto his ancient people, the Jews, and bring them unto those days of refreshing... This outpouring of the Spirit is known in Scripture by 'the latter rain'.

Irving came to have a profound influence over Henry Drummond, a politician, banker and writer who opened his home at Albury Park, Surrey, to Irving, M'Neile, Way, and those of like mind, keen to study prophecy. (n.b. see work on Drummond, Irving and Darby)

The first decades of the nineteenth century saw an increasing dissatisfaction with the oversimplified Gospel of the earlier evangelical movement. The quest for a more experimental faith and a fuller biblical exegesis led to greater emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology , and prophecy. These subjects were of major interest to such orthodox churchmen as Haldane Stewart, Hugh MacNeil, and William Marsh, who together with Edward Irving and many others attended at Henry Drummond's invitation the Conferences for Biblical Study at Albury Park, Surrey, in 1826.

The influence of Christian Zionism within Anglican Evangelical circles was boosted by the support of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), who in later life was consumed with a passion for the conversion of Jews, looking for 'a full and imminent restoration of God's chosen people'

Whilst Way and others evangelized on the Continent, Simeon at home acted as a kind of one-man general staff, preaching for the Society, recruiting workers, spreading propaganda, collecting funds, advising on overall strategy. He did so with even more than his usual sense of urgency. He lived to see the work prosper remarkably. An annual income of £7,000 in 1815 was doubled by 1836. Episcopal patronage was bestowed on the Society...In that progress Charles Simeon had no small part.

With a growing interest in millennial speculations other writers published similar treaties. M'Neile, looking back in 1866, in the preface to his new edition, acknowledged how, a generation earlier, such views were somerthing of a novelty by what he terms 'anti-restorationists'.

When these lectures were first published in 1830, the subject was comparatively new to the Church in this country. It had no place in the battle-field of the Reformation. It had not been discussed by any of the theological lights of the last century. It was just beginning to be ventilated in consequence of the labours of Mr. Louis Way and Mr. Hawtrey; and more especially in consequence of the writings of Mr. Faber, and the zealous advocacy of Mr. Simeon.

Dominick M'causland was another who, in 1859, published a work entitled, 'The Latter Days of Jerusalem and Rome as Revealed in the Apocalypse.' Another prolific writer was Benjamin Willis Newton, a Brethren colleague of John Nelson Darby, whose books were reprinted several times between the 1850's and 1900's.

Newton appears to have been something of a nineteenth century Hal Lindsey, interpreting the contemporary European political scene in the light of prophecy. He saw, for example, great significance in the fact that one of the Rothschild's was allegedly negotiating with the Sultan for the construction of a railway from Constantinople to Baghdad. He believed this to be one of many signs of the impending merger of the revived Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire, a 'Roman world, from England to the Euphrates' centred on Rome. Writing in 1859, Newton comments at length on the theological significance of geo-political developments in Europe,

The interests of France, Great Britain and Austria are more and more felt to be identical as respects the aggression of Russia; and this feeling Spain, Italy and Greece, will soon thoroughly share...

Following this logic, his colourful predictive map of the ten kingdoms making up this revived Roman Empire, published in 1863, comprised the then most influential countries surrounding the Mediterranean, namely, France, Spain, Northern Italy, the Neopolitan States, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Syria and Egypt, together with the British Isles. Allowing himself a degree of latitude with regard to the timing of these events, Newton asserted in 1879,

Whether it may be long and deadly; or whether the way of the Western Roman nations may be smoothed so as for the resuscitation of the East under their guardianship to be quietly and speedily effected, it is impossible for us to say.

In the forward to 'Babylon: Its Future History and Doom with remarks on the Future of Egypt and Other Eastern Countries', (3rd Edition) published in 1890, Newton could still insist, 'On Israel, and on Western Europe chiefly will rest the responsibility of causing the revived Eastern Branch of the Roman World to be what it is to be.' Just as some contemporary apocalyptic writers fear the rise of New Age inter-faith religious unity as a sign of the coming Antichrist, so Newton was predicting the same at the end of the 19th Century.

The result of the late war with Russia has been to bring the Turkish dominions into recognised political connection with Western Europe...The ancient outline of the Roman Empire will again appear...At bottom, Mohommedanism, what is it but a sect of Christianity? When the Papists, and the Greek church and Judaism, and Mohommedanism, and Anglicanism, shall re-echo this sentiment, and when it shall become governmentally adopted by the nations of the Roman world, we shall soon see the 'Ephah' and 'wickedness', its inmate, established in the land of Shinar.

In America, following the frequent visits of John Nelson Darby from 1862 onwards, his dispensational views about the Church and Israel had a profound influence over leading evangelicals like D.L. Moody, William E. Blackstone and C.I. Scofield

In 1887, William E. Blackstone, who wrote the book, Jesus is Coming, helped to found the Chicago Hebrew Mission, later to become the American Messianic Fellowship. In 1890, he headed the first conference between Jews and Christians in Chicago. The following year in 1890 he lobbied the US President Harrison with a memorial endorsed by 413 Jewish and Christian leaders calling for an international conference on the Jews and Palestine, an event commemorated in Israel in 1965 with a memorial and a forest dedicated in his name.

2.6 British Colonialism and the Restoration of Jews to Zion

It is difficult if not impossible to separate the political aspects of 19th Century British foreign policy towards Palestine from the theological presuppositions of some of her political leaders, notably Lord Shaftesbury and the Clapham Sect, and later Lord Balfour.

A Jewish homeland in Palestine had been anticipated by R. Joseph ben Caspi in the thirteenth century, and advocated by the Puritan clergyman Thomas Brightman, as early as 1585, and by Sir Henry Finch M.P. in 1615. Other scholars and intellectuals who espoused the idea of the return of the Jews to Israel included John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Rousseau although it was really not until the 19th century that premillennial dispensationalism became systematised as a discrete theological tradition known as 'restorationism' in which a link was drawn between biblical prophecy and the creation of a modern Jewish state.

Key advocates of Christian Zionism included the Rev. Louis Way, who directed the London Jews Society from 1809, and who forcefully articulated Christian Zionist views some ninety years before the World Zionist Congress. Leading figures in British society who were sympathetic to restorationism included the Duke of Kent, Bishop Manning, the Earl of Shaftesbury and Gladstone, and that the writings of a number of significant literary figures also reflected a sympathy for restorationism. These included George Elliot, William Blake, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Walter Scott and Robert Browning.

John Newton Darby (1800-82) who founded the Plymouth Brethren was probably the most significant individual in the growing fundamentalist Christian Zionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic. In America the Bible and Prophecy Conference movement brought thousands into contact with Darby's novel teaching about the rapture and restoration of the Jews to Zion in the kingdom dispensation.

Lord Shaftesbury was himself 'convinced of Darby's teachings', and subsequently campaigned, amongst other things, for a Jewish restoration and homeland in Palestine. In 1838, for example, Shaftesbury persuaded Palmerston to appoint the fellow restorationist William Young as the first British vice-consul in Jerusalem. He wrote in his diary,

What a wonderful event it is! The ancient City of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations; and England is the first of the gentile kingdoms that ceases to 'tread her down'.

A year later in 1839, Shaftesbury wrote a thirty page article for the Quarterly Review, entitled 'State and Restauration (sic) of the Jews.' In it Shaftesbury predicted a new era for the Jews, whom he regarded still as God's chosen people, soon to be restored to the land of Israel. Shaftesbury insisted, '...the Jews must be encouraged to return in yet greater numbers and become once more the husbandman of Judea and Galilee.'

Conveniently, Shaftesbury argued for a greater British presence in Palestine both on religious as well as political grounds, advocating both that assistance be given for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine and also for the founding of an Anglican bishopric and cathedral in Jerusalem. This he saw as the means by which God would continue to bless England as apparently promised in Genesis 12:3.

Demonstrating keen political insight, Shaftesbury saw three distinct advantages for England in this plan, (1) England would outpace France in the colonial competition to control the Near East; (2) England would be insured a direct land passage to India, the 'jewel' of the British Empire; (3) vast commercial markets would be opened for British economic interests. It was not a mere coincidence that these political goals matched those of the British Foreign office concerning the Near East.

Tuchman quotes correspondence from Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, to the British ambassador in Constantinople dated 11 August 1840, on the mutual benefit to both Turkey and Britain of allowing Jews to return to Palestine. At the time it was British policy to support the Turkish Empire and avoid its disintegration. Ironically, in contrast to today, the restoration of the Jews was seen, at that time, as an important means of sustaining the Turkish and Moslem domination of the Middle East. Palmerston wrote,

There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe, a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine...It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and to settle in Palestine because the wealth which they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan's dominions; and the Jewish people, would be a check upon any future evil designs of Mehemet Ali or his successor...I have to instruct Your Excellency strongly to recommend [the Turkish government] to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine.

Days after Palmerston sent his letter, a lead article in the Times dated 17 August 1840, called for a plan 'to plant the Jewish people in the land of their fathers' claiming such a plan was under 'serious political consideration' and commending the efforts of Lord Ashley, later Lord Shaftesbury, as the author of the plan which it argued was 'practical and statesmanlike.' Tuchman claims the article 'created a sensation.'

Fuelling speculation about an imminent restoration, on 4 November of the same year, Shaftesbury took out a paid advertisement in the Times to give greater visibility to his vision. The advertisement included the following,

RESTORATION OF THE JEWS, A memorandum has been addressed to the Protestant monarchs of Europe on the subject of the restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Palestine. The document in question, dictated by a peculiar conjunction of affairs in the East, and other striking 'signs of the times,' reverts to the original covenant which secures that land to the descendants of Abraham.

Wagner summarises Shaftesbury's influence on the rise of Christian Zionism in these terms,

One cannot overstate the influence of Lord Shaftesbury on the British political elite, church leaders, and the average Christian layperson. His efforts and religious-political thought may have set the tone for England's colonial approach to the Near East and in particular the 'holy' land during the next one hundred years. He singlehandedly translated the theological positions of Brightman, Henry Finch, and John nelson Darby into a political strategy. His high political connections, matched by his uncanny instincts, combined to advance the Christian Zionist vision.

Like Moses, Shaftesbury did not live to see his promised land realised, however, through his lobbying, writings and public speaking he did more than any other British politician to inspire a generation of Calebs and Joshuas to translate his religious vision into a political reality.

In addition to influencing British colonial perceptions of the Near East, Shaftesbury also predisposed the next generation of British Conservative politicians favourably toward the World Zionist movement, which led eventually to British support of the Jewish state.

What is not generally known is that Shaftesbury was probably responsible for inspiring Israel Zangwell and Theodore Hertzl to coin the myth, 'A land of no people for a people with no land.' It is likely that they borrowed the idea from Shaftesbury, who, a generation earlier in the 1840's cast the idea, 'A country without a nation for a nation without a country.'

In 1865, James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem and another leading restorationist, established the Palestine Exploration Fund for the purpose of encouraging scientific exploration, archaeological research and the mapping of the Holy Land.

One of those to take up the Zionist mantle of Shaftesbury was another influential M.P. and evangelical Christian, F. Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888). In 1880 Oliphant published a book entitled The Land of Gilead, in which he reiterated the Zionist case. Oliphant's contribution included urging the British Parliament to assist the restoration of Jews to Palestine from Russia and Eastern Europe, and advocating that the indigenous Palestinians be moved onto reservations along the lines of the native Indians in North America.

By 1897 when the First World Zionist Congress met in Basle, Switzerland, Jewish leaders in favour of a Zionist state had sympathetic support from senior British political figures. The founder of the Red Cross, the Swiss Christian philanthropist, Henri Dunant, was the first Gentile to be called a 'Christian Zionist' by Theodor Herzl, and one of only a handful to be invited to the Congress.

Finally, and probably most significantly of all, Lord Arthur Balfour who pioneered the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which gave the Jews the promise of a homeland, was himself also a premillennialist and Christian Zionist. From 1905, for example, Chaim Weitzmann, then a professor of chemistry at Manchester University, began to have regular meetings with Lord Arthur James Balfour to discuss the implementation of that goal. Balfour had been brought up in an evangelical home and was, according to Wagner,

...predisposed to the Zionist positions solely on the basis of his limited understanding of the Bible. He subscribed to a simple, layperson's version of the premillennial dispensational theology.

Following a meeting with Weitzmann on 9 January 1906, Balfour wrote to his wife saying that he could see, 'no political difficulty about obtaining Palestine, only economic ones.' Weitzmann convinced Balfour that none of the other Jewish homeland 'solutions' such as Uganda or Argentina were tenable, and according to his niece, shortly before his death, Balfour remarked that,

...the Jewish form of patriotism was unique....Their love of their country refused to be satisfied by the Uganda scheme. It was Weizmann's absolute refusal even to look at it that impressed me.

The British Colonialist presence in the Middle East, at the beginning of the 20th Century included both those sympathetic to Zionism like Balfour and others who for a variety of reasons had become 'Arabists.' Kaplan terms them, 'sand-mad Britons' and includes Sir Richard Francis Burton, Charles Doughty, T.E. Lawrence ('of Arabia'), Harry 'Abdullah' Philby, Wilfred Theisiger, and Gertrude Bell. Ultimately, both British Zionists and Arabists were committed to the same end - a strong British presence in the Middle East. Kaplan draws however, an important distinction between British and American Arabists in the late 19th Century and early 20th.

It was the advantages of power and privilege that imperialism offered that allowed these British men and women to work out their personalities and fantasies upon such an exotic stage. Their myriad eccentricities notwithstanding, men such as Lawrence and women such as Gertrude Bell were in Araby as British government agents, and thus it was the mechanics of imperial power that primarily concerned them...While British Arabists were imperialists, American Arabists were originally-and therefore, most significantly-missionaries. Mission work defines the American Arabist, much as imperialism defines the British Arabist...The British sought to dominate, to acquire a culture and a terrain as one acquires a rare and beautiful book. But Americans...sought something more tantalising. They sought to change this terrain, to improve upon it, using their own model. They manifested a psychology that grew out of the American Revolution.

In 1916, Thomas Edward Lawrence, at 27 and an Arabic scholar, had been assigned to British military intelligence in Cairo, to sail to Jidda to seek an alliance with Sherif Hussein with the purpose of ending the unpopular pro-German Turkish occupation of the Middle East, while at the same time guarding the sea route to British India. Although Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom became one of the most popular 20th Century works on the Middle East in the English language, his official status was always that of a political intelligence officer, who in the end did deliver the Arabs to Great Britain.

Lawrence thought as an imperialist. He favoured the Balfour Declaration and the Zionist enterprise as a means to keep the French out of Palestine and perhaps out of the rest of Syria. He championed ill-fated negotiations between the Sherif of Mecca's son, the Emir Feisal, and Chaim Weizmann (whom Lawrence genuinely admired). Lawrence's prejudices were imperially motivated. He loathed Turks and Frenchmen, and he respected Jews, 'the sooner the Jews farm it [Palestine] the better,' wrote Lawrence in a letter home. In Severn Pillars of Wisdom, he notes that 'only in...the everlasting miracle of Jewry, had distant Semites kept some of their identity and force' in the greater world.

'Clientitis' was a necessary fact of Middle Eastern politics in an era when autonomous Arab states did not officially exist and when there was no formal means by which local for tribal chiefs could express their views or aspirations other than through sympathetic British officers whose 'career fortunes rose and fell in direct proportion to those of the particular tribesmen they were attached to.'

Prior to 1918, it was the belief of the Colonial Office, and practically all the local expatriate Arabists that when the Turks had been defeated, the direct descendants of Mohammed, the Hashemite family of the Sherif of Mecca were the only tribe with sufficient religious and political prestige to rule with any stability in Arabia.

Lawrence, in particular, was a person overly influenced by setting. Among Arabs in the desert, he became pro-Arab; in Whitehall he was pro-Empire; with Chaim Weizmann he felt himself an avid Zionist. Thus to read the wartime missives of Lawrence, Miss Bell, and others-where, for instance, on one occasion Arab nationalism is proscribed, while on another Iraqi and Syrian self-rule is cheered on-is to find oneself in a muddle. And a muddle is what the British, with assistance from the French, made of the post-Ottoman Middle East.

On 2nd November, 1917, Lord Balfour, then British Foreign Secretary made public the 'following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet.'

His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

What the Balfour Declaration left unclear was the meaning of a 'national home'. Was this synonymous with sovereignty or statehood and if so what were to be the borders? In all of Palestine or just a portion? What was to be the status of Jerusalem? Furthermore, while it stated that 'the civil and religious rights of the existing population' were to be safeguarded and the territory was designated 'Palestine', there was no reference to Palestinians. 'They were an actual, but awkward non-identity'. It was Balfour's opinion that 'the present inhabitants' need not be consulted, either before or after. That 90% of the population of Palestine were Palestinian Arabs of whom around 20% were Christian seemed irrelevant to the politicians and Zionists who had another agenda. So the awkward questions were left unanswered and it is these ambiguities which have plagued Middle East peace negotiations and divided Christians ever since. According to Wagner,

This single declaration gave the Zionist movement its first political legitimacy in history and created a platform for its leaders to accelerate colonization of Palestine.

In a speech made at the London Opera House celebration of the Balfour Declaration on 2nd December 1917, Lord Robert Cecil claimed that it marked not the birth of a nation but,

...the rebirth of a nation...I believe it will have far-flung influence on the history of the world and consequences than none can foresee on the future history of the human race.

A week later, on the 9th December 1917, British troops occupied Jerusalem, 'and the Holy City passed into Christian hands for the first time since the rule of Frederick II as King of Jerusalem.' Her future, 'now lay with the Western powers and was to all intents and purposes bound up with the question of harmonising their interests in Palestine as a whole.'

General Edmund Allenby however, broke with more than military custom when he walked into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate in order to identify with Jesus Christ, two days later on December 11th 1917. In a speech given later that day Allenby indicated something of his own respect, and his administration's intentions regarding the toleration and protection of the religious rights of the indigenous population.

Since your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of mankind, and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions for many centuries, therefore do I make known to you that every sacred building, monument, holy spot, traditional shrine, endowment, pious request, or customary place of prayer, of whatsoever form of the three religions, will be maintained and protected according to the existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faith they are sacred.

It was clearly Allenby's desire to maintain good relations with both Arabs and Jews. Ironically it was actually the Mandate officials who encouraged the early development of indigenous Arab churches, especially among the Anglicans, and fixed the rights and responsibilities of the various denominations with regard to the sacred shrines. However, Anglo-French diplomacy and strategic self interest concerning the possession of territory gained from the Turks led to duplicity over the Balfour Declaration, and partisan support for the Jews.

The League of Nations mandate was a double blow to the Arabs because it not only denied them their promised independence, despite their having assisted in the overthrow of Ottoman rule, but endorsed a Jewish national homeland on what had once been Arab soil. In 1917 when Allied forces overran Damascus, helped by Lawrence's Arab guerrillas, the British and French divided their spoils of what had formerly been the Ottoman territory of Syria into six different zones.

A sliver of northern Syria was amalgamated into a new Turkish state that Mustafa Lemal Ataturk was beginning to carve out of the rump of the old Ottoman Sultanate. Southern Syria was split into two new British territories, a mandate in Palestine (which the British promised twice over, to the Jews and to the Arabs) and a kingdom in Transjordan ruled by one of Lawrence's World War I allies, Abdullah, the brother of Feisal and the son of the Sherif of Mecca. Eastern Syria became part of British Iraq. The French got the hole in the map that was left, which they in turn subdivided by proclaiming an enlarged Lebanese state, known as Grand Liban, in order to strengthen their friends, the Maronite Christians, who would now have a large Sunni Moslem population under their thumb. Meanwhile, Lawrence's World War I comrade-in-arms Feisal the son of the Sherif of Mecca, required a reward for his services; so the British set him up as the king of Syria in 1920. His kingdom lasted a hundred days until the French forced him out. Lawrence and company then proceeded to dump Feisal on Iraq, where his Hashemites from western Arabia enjoyed no local support.

David Lloyd-George, who became Prime Minister in 1916 shared similar views to those of Shaftesbury, Oliphant and Balfour, although his form of Christian Zionism was, according to Wagner, more 'ardent'. Lloyd-George was brought up by an uncle, Richard George who was also a lay preacher in a millenarian Baptist church. Lloyd George later described his strict evangelical education,

'I was brought up in a school where there was taught far more about the history of the Jews than the history of my own land.'

Christopher Sykes, the son of Sir Mark Sykes who co-authored the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 which dismembered the Ottoman Empire between Britain, France and Russia, was also one of Lloyd-George's biographers. Sykes wrote that prior to the Paris Peace Accords, signed in 1919, various advisors had tried unsuccessfully to brief Lloyd-George on the issues relating to the Palestine settlement but that he was not able to grasp the issues,

...largely because he could not move beyond the Christian Zionist worldview of his youth. When briefed repeatedly on the contemporary geography of Palestine, Lloyd-George insisted on reciting from his memory of childhood Sunday school lessons the biblical cities and lands of bible times, some of which no longer existed.

Thus, Balfour and Lloyd-George, probably two of the most influential British political leaders of the First World War years, were basically committed to Christian Zionism. Their support for the World Zionist Movement was a direct result of their evangelical upbringing. These views,

...facilitated the British colonial predisposition toward Zionist interests and the disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people following World War I.

It was inevitable that there would be an Arab backlash and consequently Britain placed severe restrictions on Jewish emigration right up to the declaration of independence in 1948 thereby inciting antipathy and terrorist attacks from both sides. The 1936 Peel Commission which had recommended the partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs stated,

The partition of Palestine is subject to the overriding necessity of keeping the sanctity of Jerusalem and Bethlehem inviolate and of ensuring free and safe access to them for all the world. That is 'a sacred trust of civilisation', a trust on behalf not merely of the peoples of Palestine but of multitudes in other lands to whom these places, one or both, are Holy Places...

The professed reason given then for the partition of Palestine was the maintenance of free access for Western pilgrims rather than with settling any territorial rights or providing safeguards for the indigenous communities. Sir Walter Shaw of the British Colonial Office made a more realistic and perceptive appraisal of the situation,

To the Arabs it must appear improbable that such competitors (Jews) will in years to come be content to share the country with them. These fears have been intensified by the more extreme statements of Zionist policy and the Arabs have come to see in the Jewish immigrant not only a menace to their livelihood but a possible overlord of the future.

The indigenous Christians are now living with the consequences.

2.7 Anglican Israel and the Influence of Episcopal Church in Palestine

In the 19th Century, coinciding with world-wide Western missionary endeavours, improvements in transportation, and paralleling European Colonial expansion in this strategic staging post to Africa and Asia, there was a renewed interest in Palestine among the major Protestant denominations. At the beginning of the 19th Century the only representatives of Western Christianity to be found in Jerusalem had been the Franciscans and only the Orthodox and Armenian traditions were resident in significant numbers. From the mid 19th Century, Protestant denominations began to found their own churches, not so much from a separatist spirit but because of the animosity and ostracism of the Eastern traditions. Their reformed theology, emphasis on personal conversion and lay leadership were anathema to Eastern Orthodoxy.

This ecclesiastical fragmentation coincided with increasing inroads from Western Europe into the politics, economy, and culture of the Ottoman caliphate and of those parts of it which enjoyed varying degrees of independence. After the arousal that accompanied Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, the Western scramble for influence, and competition to wield it, quickened in the apparent, or actual, deterioration of Ottoman imperial competence in the nineteenth century.

The Church Missionary Society (CMS) was among the earliest to show an interest from 1821, but it was the London Jews Society (LJS) who established the first permanent mission station in 1831. Their aim was the conversion of Jews to Protestant Christianity. The British Consul was also the first to be appointed in Jerusalem in 1838, and the Anglican church, Christ Church, was dedicated in 1845.

A Protestant bishopric under joint British and Prussian auspices had been founded in 1841. Solomon Alexander, the first bishop and a former Jewish rabbi did not survive long in the post and was succeeded by Samuel Gobat, a Swiss Lutheran. The arrangement with Germany then lapsed and the bishopric became solely Anglican in 1881. Initially Alexander and Gobat co-operated with the Eastern Churches, concentrating on the circulation of the Scriptures and opening what were termed 'Bible schools'.

As Eastern Christians bought the Bibles and sought help in reading them, teachers were supplied and more schools opened. The first two CMS missionaries arrived for this purpose in 1851 and were based in Jerusalem and Nablus. The local leadership of the Eastern Churches felt threatened and excommunicated those who read the Scriptures offered by the Anglicans.

Consequently Bishop Gobat felt compelled to protect them and from the 1860's small Anglican congregations based on a loose parish structure and led by Palestinian clergy were formed in Jerusalem, Nazareth, Jaffa, Haifa, and Salt. The transition from a colonialist Anglican church dominated by expatriates to a Palestinian Anglican church was a significant but slow process which is still continuing. According to Bishop Rennie MacInnes, writing in 1925,

The work of the CMS in all its missions is to train those who join her in the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, with the ultimate object of aiding in the establishment of a self-supporting, self-governing and self-extending system.

The self-governing Palestine Church Council, also known as the Episcopal Evangelical Church in the Holy Land was officially established in Jaffa in 1905. By then it already included twenty Palestinian clergy serving in Jaffa, Kefr Yasif, Bir Zeit, Ramleh, Shefaamr, Nablus, Acco, Salt, Nazareth and Jerusalem. However, it was not until 1958 that the first Palestinian Bishop was appointed.

For all their will to autonomy, the local recruits to Protestant mission were beholden in various ways to its Western sources, beneficiaries of its educational investments and conditioned by the vicissitudes of external politics.

However far this process of assimilation has come and still needs to go, is a matter of healthy debate within the Diocese. Unfortunately this commitment has sadly been misunderstood and maligned by many, especially by Christian and Jewish Zionists.

Crombie's partisan history of the Anglican Church in the Holy Land, in keeping with the provocative title 'For the Love of Zion', is an example of this. While its sub-title Christian Witness and the Restoration of Israel, makes an assumption as to what Christian witness should lead to or support, Crombie never clarifies his geographical definition of Zion and therefore where this 'restoration' is to take place. Throughout the book however, he is patently unsympathetic to the present indigenous Anglican leadership, and the claim of the Palestinians, supported by the UN, to the Occupied Territories. The final chapter of his book is entitled 'The antithesis of Alexander - a PLO Bishop'. The book, not surprisingly, has aroused a good deal of criticism among leading Palestinian Anglicans.

I found reading it that it was written by a person who really harbours resentment against the Arabs and against Palestinian Christians... it reflects his prejudice, his resentment, his deep dislike of the local Christians as if they really have nothing to say. Anything that Jews do somehow is always put in the right light and anything Arabs would do is somehow always judged as being wrong.....why doesn't he see the presence of so many Zionist Bishops and clergy, those are OK but once you have any person who loves the land God has chosen to give him, an indigenous Palestinian, that's taboo.

The same kind of Zionist prejudice from a Jewish perspective can be seen in the views of Teddy Kolleck the mayor of Jerusalem. In 1992 he criticised the leadership of the Church of England for allowing the Diocese in Jerusalem 'to fall into the hands of the Arabs.'

The termination of the British Mandate in 1948 further accelerated the transition from expatriate to Palestinian control of Anglican mission schools, hospitals and other church assets. The elevation of the Anglican episcopate in Jerusalem to the status of an archbishopric in 1957 and its renaming as the 'Episcopal Church in the Middle East' was another important step in this process of naturalisation.

2.8 American Arabists and Changing American Attitudes to Israel

Robert Kaplan in The Arabists, traces how a small but powerful elite of families and friends came to dominate America's relations with the Middle East for over a century, and in particular their perceptions of Jews and Arabs. Known as 'Arabists,' they had gone 'ethnic' immersing themselves in Arab life and culture and enjoying privileged access to the ruling Arab families. They served as educators, military attaches and diplomats, perpetuating both the Western romance with Arabia while at the same time playing a seminal role in the growth of Arab nationalism.

They were descended from the first Americans to travel to what became Lebanon and Syria, the missionaries, scholars and explorers, an extension of the ruling WASP of 19th Century America, but without the imperialist and colonialist agenda which drove much of European interest in the area. These men and women dominated American policy and shaped American perception of the Arab world until World War II. From the late 1940's, coinciding with the birth of the State of Israel, a significant change occurred in the US diplomatic corps, which reflected the country's new ethic and social diversity. Kaplan describes the impact of this change within the State Department, particularly marked since the 1970's, showing how the rise of Irish Catholics, Jews and Harvard experts within the diplomatic service loosened the grip of Arabists on Middle East diplomacy, and upon American attitudes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the early part of the 20th Century American perceptions were very different. For the grown children of those missionary families, returning to Lebanon as Foreign Service officers and educationalists,

Syria constituted much more than a home. It was almost a transplanted version of New England itself, a glorified tableau of Ivy League Brahmins, each with a foothold in the Lebanese mountains, a magical kingdom of Protestant families brimming with a spirit of adventure, rectitude, and religious idealism, where the twentieth century would not fully arrive until 1948. When it came, it came with a vengeance.

In the Middle Ages the term 'Arabist' referred to a physician who studied Arab medicine. In the 19th Century it was also used of a student of Arab culture or language. From 1948 and the founding of the state of Israel the term Arabist quickly became a pejorative term for anti-Semitism. In the words of Richard Murphy, a former ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia, the term 'Arabist' came to describe,

'he who intellectually sleeps with Arabs,' someone, that is, assumed to be politically naive, elitist, and too deferential to exotic cultures. The word almost presumes guilt. The very syllables resonate with sympathy and possession-of and with the Arabs-in a way that a word like Sinologist does not.

Early American missionaries to Lebanon and Syria included Bill Stoltzfus, Arthur & Ray Close, Talcott Seelye, David Zimmerman, and David & Grace Dodge.

In marked contrast to the conduct of European colonials....imperialism and commercial exploitation were entirely missing from the baggage carried by the missionaries in Lebanon. Nor did the Americans even present a threat to the local religious culture, as the missionary colonies in India, China, Burma and Siam would. For if truth be told, compared with the missionaries in the Far East, who won over significant numbers of Chinese to Protestant Christianity, the American missionaries in the Middle East were complete failures. The intractability of Islam quickly forced them to give up any hope of converting souls to Christ...It would be only as purveyors of Western education that the Americans in Lebanon were to succeed. And for that the local Arabs would learn to love them.

The American Great Awakening fired enthusiasm for missionary work abroad and in the Middle East, a friendly agreement reached in the 1870's between three American denominations saw the Congregationalists take responsibility for Turkey, the Presbyterians for Egypt, Syria and Iran and the Dutch Reformed Church for the Arabian Gulf.

One could even date the beginning of the American Arabist tradition to 1827, when Eli Smith, the Connecticut Yankee from Yale, struck out from the relative safety of a nascent mission community in Beirut for the surrounding mountains, to live for several months with the Moslem and Druze villagers, studying their language.

What made the contribution of American missionaries to the education of Arabs distinctive was their commitment to do so, at least initially, in Arabic. They wanted to convert from within in partnership rather than as Colonialists from the outside. Unlike the Jesuits who ran the French Catholic Schools, and who consequently attracted Arab families who wanted their children to receive a Western education, the American missionaries tried to avoid creating an elite who in the end would be divorced from their own culture. How far they succeeded is questionable. Hourani regards the ethos of such foreign academic institutions as causing 'social and psychological displacement' for Arab children learning a curriculum essentially 'alien' to their own.

In The Arab Awakening, the standard treaties on Arab nationalism, George Antonius, an Arab Christian, offers a more positive assessment.

The educational activities of the American missionaries in that early period had, among many virtues, one outstanding merit, they gave the pride of place to Arabic....In that, they were the pioneers...the intellectual effervescence which marked the first stirrings of the Arab revival owes most to their labours.

Daniel Bliss and David Dodge founded the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut in 1866, and while acknowledging the failure of previous American missionaries to convert Jews and Moslems or even the Eastern Orthodox, was nevertheless committed to teaching Arabs 'the Protestant values of democracy, hard work, and free intellectual enquiry.' The College actively encouraged discussion and free thinking on matters such as politics providing a fertile seed bed to Arab nationalism.

Despite the 'truncation' of Syria by British and French imperialism, Dodge, was still optimistic for the realisation of Arab nationalism, and under his leadership, the teaching staff, unlike the French Jesuit College, became internationalist, including many Arabs, Americans and Europeans.

AUB...became the heart of an Arab nationalist awakening... a world for whom the State of Israel was a provocative remnant of British colonialism, just as Maronite-dominated Lebanon was a remnant of French colonialism...AUB became, in a political-cultural sense, more influential that either the British or French governments in the Middle East; a startling achievement considering that the American government had recently retreated from the region and had no presence to speak of.

But the dream of cultivating the inverse of colonialism was shattered by the outbreak of World War I when the traumatic effects of European geo-political power struggles and colonial rivalries spilled over into the Holy Land. The vision of the American missionaries for a 'a borderless Arab nationalism' in which Syria followed the model of the United States becoming a liberal democracy was not shared beyond the majority Sunni Moslems, least of all by the Maronites, Druze, Greek Orthodox, Jews or Armenians living in uneasy co-existence.

During the First World War, besides the relief work of the Syrian Protestant College, the American missionaries in Syria, received the enormous sum of sixteen million dollars from churches in the United States for their work in feeding and clothing poor Arabs.

But while the British and French were drawing lines on the map and switching rulers around like chess pieces, the American Protestants were suffering alongside the victims of famine and massacre, which were the mundane consequences of World War I. While Britons like Lawrence, Philby and Miss Bell were falling in love with Arabs, the missionaries were learning-more than they ever had before-what it actually felt like to be like an Arab....in the hospices and soup kitchens of World War I Syria, far from the tents of kings and the power centers of London...

In 1919, aware that the British and French were undermining his goal of self-determination in Syria, Woodrow Wilson sent Charles Crane, a wealthy American Arabist as head of the King-Crane Commission to investigate the wishes of the indigenous people. Reservations expressed by Arab leaders and expatriate Americans led Cranes Commission to recommend the abandonment of American support for a Jewish homeland, that further Jewish immigration be severely restricted and America or Britain govern Palestine.

While Crane went on to help finance the first explorations for oil in Saudi Arabia and the Yemen, his admiration for Hitler's Germany 'the real political bulwark of Christian culture', and of Stalin's anti-Jewish purges in Soviet Russia, led his biographer to describe his later life as dominated by,

...a most pronounced prejudice...his unbridled dislike of Jews.' Crane 'tried...to persuade ...President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to shun the counsels of Felix Frankfurter and to avoid appointing other Jews to government posts.' Crane 'envisioned a world-wide attempt on the part of the Jews to stamp out all religious life and felt that only a coalition of Moslems and Roman Catholics would be strong enough to defeat such designs.' In 1933 Crane actually proposed to Haj Amin Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, that the Mufti open talks with the Vatican to plan an anti-Jewish campaign.

It is significant that The Arab Awakening by George Antonius was funded by and dedicated 'To Charles R. Crane, aptly nicknamed Harun al-Rashid affectionately.'

The reasoning behind opposition by American missionaries to the founding of the state of Israel is a complex one. In 1948, weeks before the founding of the State of Israel, Bayard Dodge retired from AUB for Princeton in New Jersey. In April he wrote a watershed article in Readers Digest entitled, 'Must There Be War in the Middle East?'

This six-thousand-word article, while forgotten and obscure, is the definitive statement of American Arabists on the birth of Israel. Though he cautioned, 'Not all Jews are Zionist and not all Zionists are extremists,' for Dodge the Zionist movement was a tragedy of which little good could come. Dodge was not anti-Semitic....Dodge's argument against Zionism rests, not on the politics of the movement, but on the Arabs' opposition to it, which in Dodge's view made the Zionist program unrealistic and therefore dangerous. Years and decades of strife would, Dodge knew, follow the birth of the Jewish state. As a result, wrote Dodge, 'All the work done by our philanthropic non-profit American agencies in the Arab world-Our Near East Foundation, our missions, our YMCA and YWCA, our Boston Jesuit college in Baghdad, our colleges in Cairo, Beirut, Damascus-would be threatened with complete frustration and collapse...so would our oil concessions,' a scenario that Dodge said would help Communist Russia. Dodge then quoted a fellow 'American Middle East expert' as saying that 'they [the Russians] intend to get many thousands of Russian Communist Jews into the Palestinian Jewish State.' Though Dodge made passing reference to the Holocaust (barely three years old at the time he wrote the article), he appeared oblivious to its psychological and historical ramifications upon the European Jewish refugees in Palestine. While admitting that the Arabs would never countenance a Jewish state, Dodge nevertheless exhorted Jews to lay down their arms and talk to the Arabs. The article ends with a quote from the Bible, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.' Dodge did not seem aware that the death-camp-haunted Jews of Palestine read the Old Testament with different eyes from those of a Protestant missionary.

Kaplan argues that Dodge's views were representative of the wider expatriate and missionary community of Beirut who believed the US, British and Russians morally and politically wrong to railroad the partition of Palestine through the United Nations. Richard Crossman, the MP who was a member of the Anglo-American team investigating the Palestine crisis in 1947, observed that the American Protestant missionaries, 'challenged the Zionist case with all the arguments of the most violently pro-Arab British Middle Eastern officials.' Based on the perceptions of Bill Stoltzfus, who during his diplomatic career had been US Ambassador to six Arab countries, Yemen, Bahrain, the Y.A.E, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait, Kaplan concludes,

..the American community on Lebanon was almost, to a man, psychologically opposed to the State of Israel. But very few went over the line into anti-Semitism.

Furthermore, President Harry Truman's foreign policy advisers were opposed to the proposal to recognise the state of Israel which they saw as a threat to maintaining good relations with the strategic oil-rich Arab nations, at the very time America was engaged in a race to thwart Soviet hegemony. In his memoirs Truman claims his State Department specialists were opposed to the idea of a Jewish state because they either wanted to appease the Arabs or because they were anti-Semitic, a charge many disputed claiming Truman was playing domestic politics, more concerned for the growing influence of American Jews than the advice of his Foreign Service professionals.

Sympathy for the Arabs and Palestinians in particular, continued among American Foreign Service officials working in the Middle East. Wat Cleverius, an Arabist, was transferred from Saudi Arabia to Tel Aviv in 1969, as economic officer, was responsible for US charities working among Palestinians, including CARE, Catholic Relief and Lutheran World Service, following the annexation of the West Bank by Israel. Looking back over three years work he wrote,

By the time I left Israel in 1972, I had begun to witness enormous corruption on the part of the Israeli civil-military establishment on the West Bank, in the form of humiliations, physical intimidation, and petty bribes that Arabs had to pay Israeli officials. Old Arab men were made to kiss the asses of donkeys in front of their families. Once the Likud came to power in 1977, they really promoted the head crunchers. They put the toughest and poorest Iraqi Jews and other Sephardim [Oriental Jews] in the West Bank, in order to really beat up the Arabs.

American Foreign policy under Presidents like Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson tended to favour maintaining the status quo in the Middle East combining,

...emotional sympathy toward Israel-albeit in varying degrees-friendship toward the Arabs, and, most important of all, a desire to avoid conflict.

The Six-Day War was bad news for Arabists. 'Israel was strengthened, Arab states were humiliated, and US embassies in Arab countries were closed, forcing many an Arabist to switch careers.' The seismic effect of the Six-Day war changed more than the borders of Israel. Her perceived US strategic value in the Middle East coincided with Richard Nixon's election as President. Critical of the State Department and FSO's, Nixon believed,

...an astonishing number of them have no obvious dedication to America. ..and evinced 'an expatriate attitude.' Even worse in Nixon's eyes, FSO's were the kind of people likely to be Democrats. Nixon was also a cold warrior who saw the Middle East, not in its own terms, but in terms of the world-wide struggle against the Soviets...now irrevocably in bed with the Arabs, making Israel a valuable Cold War asset.

Nixon chose Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Germany, to head the National Security Council. According to Kaplan,

While previous administrations sought to avoid conflict in the Middle East, Nixon and Kissinger saw the imminent threat of confrontation as a series of opportunities for rearranging the pieces of the Arab-Israeli puzzle more to America's liking....with American Jews proud and energised as a result of Israel's war victory, Nixon saw Middle East negotiations as a loser in domestic political terms...In other words and put crudely, the relationship between the American president and the American Jewish community now loomed larger than the relationship between Arabists and their personal connections in the Levant.

Arabists like Andrew Killgore, for example, who gave 25 years to serving in the US Foreign Service in many Arab countries, found himself, in 1974, when he expected to be named ambassador to Bahrain, exiled to the embassy in New Zealand. 'I thought that...I'd never get a good job [in the Arab world], because the Zionists, in my view, had it in for me at that time.' Regarding Kissinger, Killgore, who in 1977 became US ambassador to Qatar, was even more outspoken,

Henry, of course, was just a fifth columnist, as far as I am concerned. He was working for the Israeli's...Henry's real objective was to get out of the Middle East the Arabists that the Zionists didn't like. Because Henry was not so crypto-he just was Zionist.

Following his retirement in 1980, Killgore went on to publish The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, in which in 1987 and 1988 he made the following provocative statements,

It is wrong and perverse for fanatical elements within the two and a half percent of our population who are Jewish to hold Congress hostage...America must regard the Israeli progression from penetration to direction of U.S. foreign policy as the work of a master criminal.

1970 saw a coup attempt against the pro-Western government in Jordan by the PLFP and Syria, which, in the eyes of the U.S., would have only benefited the Soviets.

Nixon and Kissinger faced a stark realization, only Israel could save the king of Jordan and preserve the balance of power in the region. The threat of Israeli military intervention caused the Syrians to retreat, allowing King Hussein to crush the Palestinian guerrillas in what came to be known as the Black September War.

The U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship was born amid the ashes of the failed fedayeen revolt. In the three years leading up to the 1970 Jordan crisis, annual U.S. military aid to Israel averaged under $47 million. In the three years succeeding the crisis, the annual aid averaged over $384 million.

The influence of AUB on the post-war Arab world can be measured by the fact that at the Charter meeting of the United Nations in 1945, AUB graduates outnumbered those of any other university on the world. By the late 1960s, the faculty were pro-Palestinian, anti-Nixon and antiwar, and drew parallels between American imperialism in Vietnam and Israel.

David Dodge, acting president of AUB and the great-grandson of its founder Daniel Bliss, was ironically the first American to be taken hostage in Lebanon following Israel's invasion in 1981. On being released a year later, Dodge gave the following explanation for his abduction,

We condoned Israel's invasion of Lebanon and my kidnapping was in part due to the actions of Israel and U.S. support of Israel. Yes, I feel more strongly than ever that American policies in the Middle East are not even-handed enough.

Another American missionary taken hostage in 1984, Ben Weir and his wife Carol were highly critical of American policy in the Middle East. Weir was a lecturer at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, an ecumenical Seminary committed to training Protestants for ministry in the Arab world. Without the kind of government backing available to AUB, NESTB was even more dependent on and integrated within the indigenous Moslem Arab culture. Kaplan argues, 'The Weirs represented the extreme evolutionary offshoot of the American missionary adventure in Lebanon...' David Long, an American State Department Arabist, was responsible for liaising with the Weir family in the negotiations to get Weir released. He wrote later,

The Weirs treated me and the State Department as the enemies, even though we were their government, trying to help get Ben Weir released...Carol Weir and her church group had this holier-than-thou attitude toward the U.S. government. They didn't even want the CIA to debrief him when he was released, even though the debriefing could have helped other hostages. To them, the CIA and the Israelis-not the kidnappers were the enemy.

In any country, changes in foreign policy will invariably reflect, to some degree, changes in domestic perceptions of the world. Kaplan explains how in the 1970s and 1980s, in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, a gulf emerged between the experiences of the American expatriate missionary-diplomatic community living in the Middle East and American public opinion back home.

The historic relationship between a group of privileged Americans and the educated stratum of Arabs in Greater Syria was just not something that an increasingly ethnic and middle-class society in the United States was even aware of or to which it could easily relate. Regarding Israel, while those like Dodge, Seelye and Mrs. Weir were in a unique position to witness the very worst aspects of the Israeli national character, Americans at home could identify with positive aspects of Israeli life more easily than they could with anything going on in the Arab world, especially in blood-spattered Lebanon. For all its faults and crude tactics, even AIPAC was psychologically closer to mainstream America than the AUB crowd was.

America's desire to be 'even-handed' is typified by the continued presence of an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate in East Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem consulate is the most controversial U.S. diplomatic mission in the Middle East, if not in the world. It represents the Arabist frontline against the pro-Israel section of the State Department, as represented by the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, forty-five minutes away with no crossing points in between.

The consulate building in Arab East Jerusalem was a rebuke to the State of Israel. It was, to all intents and purposes, an American embassy located on territory controlled by the Israeli government. But the consulate did not recognise the Israeli government in Jerusalem, nor did it primarily deal with Israelis, its main purpose was to deal with Arabs in Jerusalem and the West Bank under Israeli military rule. Because the United States did not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the consulate tried to insist that when the U.S. ambassador to Israel visited Jerusalem from Tel Aviv he should not fly the American flag on the hood of his limousine. Jerusalem was the consulate's turf, not the embassy's. The consulate in East Jerusalem, a graceful old stone building near the mediaeval Arab souk, was Araby, while the embassy, situated on a noisy and garish street in the heart of Jewish Tel Aviv, clearly was not. A war raged between the two installations.

Ironically, pro-Zionist Senator Bob Dole has recently introduced legislation to the American Senate which requires the US Embassy to be rebuilt in Jerusalem by 31 May 1999, and authorising $100 million for 'preliminary' spending in the next 3 years. On 24th October 1995 he stated,

Israel's capital is not on the table in the peace process, and moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem does nothing to prejudice the outcome of any future negotiations.

Marshall Wiley, was a US diplomat in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel from the early 1950s. In 1981, then the US ambassador to Oman, he resigned from the US Foreign Service because he opposed the aggressive support for the State of Israel given by the incoming Reagan administration. This was his outspoken assessment of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Among the things I remember are the old Arab villages from the pre-1948 era that the Israeli's had bulldozed....The previous conquerors didn't displace the population the way the Israelis displaced the Palestinians. There was some resentment on my part toward Israel, because the viewpoint I had gotten in Israel was exposed as false when seen from the Arab side. The Palestinians lived in miserable conditions. Israeli colonialism is, in my view, worse than that of the [Ottoman] Turks.

In what was becoming an increasingly pro-Israel administration, in 1989 Wiley went further arguing,

Israel is only about 2 percent of the [Middle East] population, and because of their support for that 2 percent, we're willing to alienate the goodwill of the other 98 percent, which have most of the land area and most of the resources, which, I think, in terms of our national interest, is a mistake.

Ironically it was Moshe Dayan, the hero of Israel's Six-Day War, who recognised the value of American Arabists to Israeli security when he said, '..the more friends and influence America has in the Arab world [and elsewhere], the more secure Israel will be.'

2.9 Orientalism and European Cultural Imperialism

Western Christians have,  for many generations, appeared to share with the Jews not only a cultural antipathy toward Palestinians in particular but also pejorative political assumptions about Arabs generally. Edward Said claims this prejudice, or 'Orientalism' is representative of a peculiarly European way of dealing with foreigners. In his book, Orientalism, he eloquently demystifies romantic European notions of the Orient, exposing the reality and intensity of European hostility and cultural imperialism toward the East in which the strengths of the West are magnified and contrasted with the supposed weaknesses of the Orient.

Such bias and contrived generalisations have had the effect of polarising West from East, limiting the 'human encounter between different cultures, traditions and societies.' At its most mundane it surfaces in views and phrases that highlight the fact that Arabs are different from Europeans, whether in skin colour, dietary preferences or personal habits. At a more profound level Orientalism has also had a profound and lasting impact upon American and European foreign policy.

Kinglake, in his unorthodox and frank impressions of the Middle East, Eothen, first published in 1844, contains an early example of Orientalism.

A man coming freshly from Europe is at first proof against the nonsense with which he is assailed; but often it happens that after a little while the social atmosphere of Asia will begin to infect him, and, if he has been unaccustomed to the cunning of fence by which reason prepares the means of guarding herself against fallacy, he will yield himself at last to the faith of those around him; and this he will do by sympathy, it would seem, rather than from conviction.

Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written nearly a century later, contains 'perhaps the most famous Arabist analysis of the Arab mind, considered brilliant by some and racist by others.'

In the very outset, at the first meeting with them, was found a universal clearness or hardness of belief, almost mathematical in its limitation, and repellent in its unsympathetic form...They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white, who saw the world always in contour. They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questionings...They were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice...they never compromised, they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity...They steered their course between the idols of the tribe and the cave.

Said offers more recent evidence from an essay by Dr Henry Kissinger entitled 'Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy'. In it Kissinger relies on what linguists refer to as 'binary opposition', in which, like Orientalists, he divides the world into two halves, the developed post-Newtonian and the developing pre-Newtonian world.

And like Orientalism's distinction Kissinger's was not value-free, despite the apparent neutrality of his tone. Thus such words as 'prophetic,' 'accurate,' 'internal,' 'empirical reality,' and 'order' are scattered throughout his description, and they characterise either attractive, familiar, desirable virtues or menacing, peculiar, disorderly defects. Both the traditional Orientalist...and Kissinger conceive of the difference between cultures, first, as creating a battle front that separates them, and second, as inviting the West to control, contain, and otherwise govern (through superior knowledge and accommodating power) the Other.

Said gives further examples of 'respectable' Orientalism in the writings of Harold Glidden, an advisor on American foreign policy to the United States Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research, whose views were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in February 1972.

...it is a notable fact that while the Arab value system demands absolute solidarity within the group, it at the same time encourages among its members a kind of rivalry that is destructive of that very solidarity; in Arab society only 'success counts' and 'the end justifies the means'; Arabs live 'naturally' in a world 'characterised by anxiety expressed in generalised suspicion and distrust, which has been labelled free-floating hostility'; 'the art of subterfuge is highly developed in Arab life, as well as in Islam itself'; the Arab need for vengeance overrides everything, otherwise the Arab would feel 'ego-destroying' shame. Therefore, if 'Westerners consider peace to be high on the scale of values' and if 'we have a highly developed consciousness of the value of time,' this is not true of Arabs. 'In fact,' we are told, 'in Arab tribal society, strife, not peace, was the normal state of affairs because raiding was one of the two main supports of the economy.'

Probably the most disastrous recent example of Orientalist attitudes determining foreign policy decisions would be the failure of the United States and the Western Alliance to take seriously Saddam Hussein's expansionist intentions. April Glaspie, the US ambassador to Iraq, and significantly the first woman ambassador in the Middle East, made two fundamental errors, prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait which are inherent flaws common to Arabists, and yet ironically at the same time are typical of Western Orientalists.

..first, what was required in this situation was not so much tough talk as straight talk. She was not straight with Saddam. Whatever may have been Washington's official position at the time, an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was going to result in some sort of strong U.S. response-common sense would tell you that-and she failed to point this out to him. Second, here was an area specialist who completely misjudged the overall situation, as Gertrude Bell had misjudged it with King Feisal and as the missionaries had repeatedly misjudged it with the Sunni Arab nationalists, all misjudgements that stemmed from the hubris that allowed Westerners to think that they could modify the behaviour of another culture and shape it in their own perfect image. Saddam could be moderated if only he had the right incentives, like nonlethal military equipment...

In April 1991, April Glaspie appeared in public for the first time following the invasion of Kuwait, to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Sydney Blumenthal of the New Republic notes that she appeared 'without makeup or jewellery; her long grey hair was pulled back and her dress absolutely plain. Her puritan austerity suggested virtue.' Indeed, she looked every inch the missionary.'

For the Orientalist the West is seen as liberal, peaceful, rational and capable of embracing 'real' values whereas the Oriental is not. Kenneth Cragg who has lived in the Middle East for many years, and has closely identified with the Arab culture, both Moslem and Christian, concurs with Said's criticism of Orientalism, for its 'crude stereotype imaging of the East', and for being,

....a gross form of Western superiority complex, expressed in a literature and a scholarship that imposed its own false portrayal on the East and refused to care sensitively for the East's own evaluation of itself. By distortion it had its own way with its eastern versions and made these the instrument of control and, indeed, of denigration....19th and 20th century Western Orientalism is thus found uniformly culpable, and a conniver with misrepresentation.

This indictment of the West falls as much upon the Church as it does upon politicians since it has contributed to the divisions among Protestant Christians in places like Jerusalem where Hebrew-Messianic believers and Zionist Christians gravitate toward Christ Church, Palestinians and their supporters to St George's, while pietistic Evangelicals invariably end up at the Garden Tomb. Each community tends to worship in isolation, attracting their own following in varying proportions from among pilgrims. Edward Said, although himself a nominal Anglican, crystallises the issue at a more profound level.

I consider Orientalism's failure to have been a human as much as an intellectual one; for in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own, Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see it as human experience.

Eber concedes that it is perhaps inevitable that we find it hard to cope with the 'foreign' because of the weight of our emotional 'baggage' carried when travelling abroad, since we cannot avoid 'refining and redefining ourselves, confirming and reconfirming our individual and collective identities' in the light of this encounter. Nevertheless it is, she argues, '....only by examining and becoming aware of our own internal voice-overs and editing processes can we bring into sharper focus the images that we see.' Similarly Cragg calls unambiguously for 'imaginative, uninhibited and uninhibiting sympathy between Arab and Western Christians'

These are however lone voices and there remains a pervasive and arrogant racism implicit in much that goes under the name of Christian pilgrimage since the presence of a Palestinian Church is ignored or denigrated, and their continued existence threatened. This is the result not only of historical processes, but is also compounded by theological controversies concerning the Holy Land, the rights of its citizens and future in God's purposes.

2.10 The 20th Century Revival of Fundamentalist Christian Zionism

In the latter part of the 19th Century, J.N. Darby's dispensationalist views had a profound effect on evangelicalism in the United States. Among those who came under his influence were Dwight L. Moody, C. I Scofield and William E. Blackstone. Moody went on to found the Moody Bible Institute, Scofield to produce his annotated Scofield Reference Bible, and Blackstone to publish a best-selling book entitled 'Jesus is Coming' in which they asserted Zionism to be the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. In the early 20th Century, however, dispensationalism, now virtually synonymous with fundamentalism, became preoccupied with refuting the threat of theological liberalism, so that the interest in Zionism appears to have waned.

During the 1940's both prior to and after the founding of the state of Israel, liberal Protestant Christians such as Reinhold Niebuhr were the principle allies of Israel. However with the annexation of the West Bank in 1967, Liberal Protestants and organisations such as the World Council of Churches increasingly distanced themselves from Zionism, while at the same time fundamentalism grew both in political power and identification with Israel.

In a detailed history of the rise of twentieth century American right-wing fundamentalism prior to 1970, entitled 'The Politics of Doomsday', Erling Jorstad traces the anti-modernist, anti-communist and anti-foreign agenda of the movement. There is significantly, however, no reference to Israel. Similarly, George Marsden's historical overview of the rise of fundamentalism and evangelicalism in America between 1870-1930, shows that despite some evidence of anti-Semitism, there was little interest in contemporary Israel. The 1967 Six Day War and its aftermath appears to mark a watershed in Evangelical Christian interest in Israel and Zionism. For example, Jerry Falwell did not begin to speak about modern-day Israel until after Israel's 1967 military victory.

Falwell changed completely. He entered into politics and became an avid supporter of the Zionist State...the stunning Israeli victory made a big impact not only on Falwell, but on a lot of Americans...Remember that in 1967, the United States was mired in the Vietnam war. Many felt a sense of defeat, helplessness and discouragement. As Americans we were made acutely aware of our own diminished authority, of no longer being able to police the world or perhaps even our own neighbourhoods...Many Americans, including Falwell, turned worshipful glances toward Israel, which they viewed as militarily strong and invincible. They gave their unstinting approval to the Israeli take-over of Arab lands because they perceived this conquest as power and righteousness...Macho or muscular Christians such as Falwell credited Israeli General Moshe Dayan with this victory over Arab forces and termed him the Miracle Man of the Age, and the Pentagon invited him to Vietnam and tell us how to win the war.

The combination of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the capture of Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, and the defeat on both occasions of the combined Arab armies, increasingly came to be seen as significant fulfilment's of biblical prophecy by a new generation of American and European dispensational premillennialists.

Coincidentally and very significantly, the New Scofield Reference Bible, a revision of the 1917 version, edited by Dr. E. Schuyler English and a team of dispensationalists including John F. Walvoord, was published in 1967 which, given its timing, must have fuelled interest in Christian Zionism. Ironically, English had edited a young person's version of the Scofield Bible, entitled the Holy Bible, Pilgrim Edition, some twenty years earlier, in 1948. It is interesting to note that the popular edition of the Scofield Reference Bible was published in 1917 coinciding with the Balfour Declaration and in the words of Lord Cecil, 'the rebirth of a nation'; the youth edition of Scofield with the War of Independence in 1948; and the 'new' edition of Scofield with the Six Day's War of 1967.

Billy Graham's father-in-law, Nelson Bell, the editor of the prestigious and authoritative mouthpiece of conservative Evangelicalism, Christianity Today, appeared to express the sentiments of many American Evangelicals when, in an editorial in 1967 he wrote,

That for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.

The most influential of all Fundamentalist writers is Hal Lindsey. He has been described by Time Magazine as 'The Jeremiah for this Generation', and by his own publisher as 'The Father of the Modern-Day Bible Prophecy Movement.' Lindsey is a prolific writer, with no less than eight books dealing with the end times, his own radio and television programmes, seminars, Holy Land Tours, and for $40 per year, his monthly International Intelligence Briefing.

Lindsey's most famous book, The Late Great Planet Earth has been described by the New York Times as the '#1 Non-fiction Bestseller of the Decade.' It has gone through more than 100 printings with sales, by 1993, in excess of 18 million, with a further 30 million copies in 31 foreign editions. Despite dramatic changes in the world since its publication in 1970, most significantly, it remains in print in its original unrevised form. Lindsey has, perhaps not surprisingly, since become a consultant on Middle Eastern affairs to both the Pentagon and Israeli Government.

This particular kind of reading of history, coloured by a literal exegesis of selected biblical scriptures, is dualistic, triumphalist and confrontational. Lindesy's latest book, The Final Battle, includes the statement on the cover "Never before, in one book, has there been such a complete and detailed look at the events leading up to 'The Battle of Armageddon.'" It asserts that the world is degenerating and that the forces of evil manifest in godless Communism and militant Islam are the real enemies of Israel. Various speculative apocalyptic scenarios are postulated, centred upon a great battle at Megiddo between massive armies that will attempt but fail to destroy Israel. These will only hasten the return of Jesus Christ to be the King of the Jews who will rule over the other nations from the rebuilt Jewish temple on the site of the destroyed Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem will be the spiritual centre of the entire world...all people of the earth will come annually to worship Jesus who will rule there.

One of the reasons fundamentalists appear so enthusiastic about such a terrible scenario may have to do with their doctrine of the secret rapture. Just before the final conflagration they believe Jesus will,

...'rapture' true Christians into the upper air, while the rest of humankind, was being slaughtered below. 144,000 Jews would bow down before Jesus and be saved, but the rest of Jewry would perish in the mother of all holocausts.

Authors such as Lindsey also Goldberg, a professor of Theology and Jewish Studies at the Moody Bible Institute, offer detailed illustrated plans ostensibly showing future military movements of armies and naval convoys leading up to the battle of Armageddon.

The Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary have played no small part in promoting a Fundamentalist and Zionist eschatology among thousands of American ministers and missionaries. Charles Dyer, a professor of Bible exposition at Dallas even includes photographs allegedly showing Saddam Hussein reconstructing Babylon to the same specifications and splendour as Nebuchadnezzar. Dyer warns that this is evidence that Hussein plans to attempt to repeat Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Israel, the only Arab ever to have done so. 'The Middle East is the world's time bomb, and Babylon is the fuse that will ignite the events of the end times.'

An indication of how seriously Fundamentalists take the military aspect of their apocalyptic scenario can be seen from the content of the itinerary used by Jerry Falwell in his Friendship Tour to Israel in 1983. It included meetings with top Israeli government and military officials and an,

.....On-site tour of modern Israeli battlefields...Official visit to an Israeli defence installation...strategic military positions, plus experience first hand the battle Israel faces as a nation.

The demise of the Soviet Union, the rise of militant Islam, the 'success' of the Allies in the Gulf War, and the approaching third millennium have only fuelled more imaginative speculations among Fundamentalists, while the same anti-Arab prejudices and Orientalist stereotypes persist.

Long ago the psalmist predicted the final mad attempt of the confederated Arab armies to destroy the nation of Israel...The Palestinians are determined to trouble the world until they repossess what they feel is their land. The Arab nations consider it a matter of racial honour to destroy the State of Israel. Islam considers it a sacred mission of religious honour to recapture Old Jerusalem.

Following the Gulf War, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism hired the Fundamentalist musician Pat Boon to promote pilgrimages in North America through a series of costly advertisements in Evangelical journals and on television. According to Wagner there are a number of Evangelical Christian Zionist leaders even more right wing than Falwell and Robertson, who in the 1980's had direct access to Reagan and the White House. These include Terry Risenhoover and Doug Kreiger who were very influential in gathering American support for the Jewish extremist organisation, the Temple Mount Faithful. These particular Christian and Jewish Zionists believe that the Moslem Dome of the Rock must be destroyed and the Third Jewish Temple built in order to ensure the return of Jesus.

To such Fundamentalists the existence of a Palestinian Christian church is either ignored completely, or maligned as theologically Liberal and spiritually dead, an irrelevancy in the inexorable movement of world history leading to the imminent return of the Jewish Messiah. Basilea Schlink, for example, berates the Palestinian Intifada as 'terrorism....aimed solely at destroying Israel.' Her uncompromising views are typical of many other Zionists who elevate the State of Israel to a privileged status far above any human sanction or criticism.

Anyone who disputes Israel's right to the land of Canaan is actually opposing God and his holy covenant with the Patriarchs. He is striving against sacred, inviolable words and promises of God, which He has sworn to keep.

The founding of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem in 1980 represents in some senses the coming of age of Christian Zionism as a high profile concerted international movement. The ICEJ was opened with the express intention of bringing comfort and support to the Jewish people and the State of Israel. It was built at a time when other governmental embassies were being moved out of Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in protest at Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem. Their promotional material includes the following explanation.

When the vision of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem was first given it was expressed in the following concerns; to care for the Jewish people, especially for the newborn State of Israel which includes standing up for the Jews when they are attacked or discriminated against, and for Israel to live in peace and security....to care that the world wide body of Christ will be rightly related to Israel in comfort, love and prayer for her well-being, to care for the nations whose destinies will be increasingly linked to the way in which they relate to Israel, the care and preparation for the coming of the Lord.

Among other things the work of the ICEJ specifically includes promoting Zionist pilgrimages, and imposing a Zionist agenda on pilgrimage itineraries. ICEJ are not alone in offering explicit support for Israel. Doug Kreiger, an Evangelical Fundamentalist listed over 250 pro-Israel evangelical organisations operating in America and founded between 1980-1985

2.11 The Coalition of Religious and Political Zionism

There are a number of similarities between 19th century British and 20th Century American attitudes to Israel. In both, as the international power broker of their day, the blend of religion and politics became inextricably entwined. In the closing decades of the 19th and early 20th Century, there was a convergence of British strategic colonial interests and Christian Zionism within significant segments of the intellectual and political intelligensia. Likewise current American foreign policy in the Middle East largely coincides with that of the powerful Christian Zionist lobby. Both parties, now as then, favour a strong and dominant pro-American presence in the Middle East whether for pragmatic reasons of military strategy, or because it conforms to their particular eschatology. Among a consensus of American Christian Fundamentalist leaders, these twin motives, religious and political are unashamedly connected and intrinsic to a predicted apocalyptic scenario which one writer has gone so far as to describe as, 'Operation Desert Storm II.'

In 1976-77 several events occurred simultaneously which had the effect of accelerating the influence of Christian Zionism as a political phenomenon in America.

A religious and political marriage was consummated between American Zionist organisations, Israeli leadership, and Fundamentalist Christian Zionists.

In 1977 the Likud party under Menachem Begin came to power on an expansionist Zionist platform using biblical phraseology to justify the settlement of the West Bank. It was Begin for example who first renamed Israel and the Occupied Territories as Judaea and Samaria. In America the Jewish lobby realised the potential significance of wooing the political endorsement of the powerful 50-60 million Evangelical block vote through their fundamentalist leadership. With this in mind, in 1979, the Israeli government honoured Jerry Falwell with the Jabotinsky Award in appreciation of his support of Israel. They also provided him with a Lear jet to assist in his work on their behalf.

The downfall of President Carter, in part due to his support for a Palestinian homeland and consequent loss of the Fundamentalist block vote; the exploitation of the media by a group known as 'Evangelicals' Concern for Israel' including well known figures as Pat Boone and Vernon Grounds; the rise of Moral Majority as a political campaigning organisation under Jerry Falwell; and the election of Ronald Reagan as a President who publicly subscribed to a Fundamentalist premillennial dispensational theology, all combined to give a considerable boost to the Zionist cause. In the 1980 presidential elections, Wagner claims that 80% of Evangelicals supported the conservative wing of the Republican party, and Ronald Reagan in particular.

The election of Ronald Reagan ushered in not only the most pro-Israel administration in history but gave several Christian Zionists prominent political posts. In addition to the President, those who subscribed to a futurist premillennial theology and Christian Zionism included Attorney General Ed Meese, Secretary of Defence Casper Weinberger, and Secretary of the Interior James Watt....Once the Reagan Administration opened the door, leading Evangelical Christian Zionist televangelists and writers were given direct access to the President and cabinet members. Rev. Jerry Falwell, Christian Zionist Televangelist Mike Evans and author Hal Lindsey among them.

'White House Seminars' became a regular feature of Reagan's administration bringing Christian Zionists into direct personal contact with national and Congressional leaders. In a conversation reported in the Washington Post in April of 1984, Reagan told the chief Israeli lobbyist, Tom Dine,

You know, I turn back to the ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if-if we're the generation that is going to see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me they certainly describe the times we're going through.

For Fundamentalists such as Jerry Falwell and Mike Evans, America is seen as the great redeemer, her role in the world providentially and politically preordained. The two nations of America and Israel are like Siamese twins, linked not only by common self interest but more significantly by similar religious foundations. Together they are perceived to be pitted against an evil world dominated by Communist and Islamic totalitarian regimes antithetical to the values of America and Israel. So for example, Mike Evans, founder and president of Lovers of Israel Inc, in the following quotations from his book, Israel, America's Key to Survival, almost mimics and plays on the apocalyptic scenario of Benjamin Netanyahu, offering 'biblical' grounds for their countries mutual survival.

If America goes down, then the whole world goes down. Nothing will remain of the world. If America was not around, the Soviet Union would take over the world in three days. Their goals are to destroy America...to destroy it...to reduce it to nothing; and they feel they can effectively do it through terrorism.

Only one nation, Israel, stands between Soviet-sponsored terrorist aggression and the complete decline of the United States as a democratic world power...Surely demonic pressure will endeavor to encourage her to betray Israel. This must not happen. Israel is the key to America's survival. For God has said of the nations who will oppose Israel, "Yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted...I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curseth thee..."(Isa.60:12; Gen. 12:3)...As we stand with Israel, I believe we shall see God perform a mighty work in our day. God is going to bless America and Israel as well. It is not too late. I believe this is the greatest hour to be alive, and the key is unity, standing tall, proclaiming with a voice of love our commitment to the House of Israel, and to the God of Israel.

Similarly, Ramon Bennett, author of 'Saga: Israel and the Demise of the Nations' and spokesman for Arm of Salvation, a Christian Zionist organisation based in Jerusalem, emotively dedicates his book, 'To the men of the Israeli Defence Force who display immense courage when facing impossible odds. To the grieving parents, wives, children, sweethearts, sisters and brothers and friends, whose tears have watered the parched earth of Eretz Yisreal.'

The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem has, since 1980, become the semi-official voice of this coalition of Christian religious and political Zionist organisations, frequently cultivated, exploited and quoted by the Israeli Government when ever a sympathetic Christian view point is needed to enhance their own policies, and rebut Western criticism. For example, in October 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu the Israeli Prime Minister spoke at the Jerusalem 3000 rally organised by the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, to support Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem. Following the provocative opening of an underground tunnel by the Israelis from the Western Wall through the Moslem Quarter, he was cheered when he insisted the tunnel, 'is open. It will stay open. It will always stay open.'

Not surprisingly the 1993 Peace-Accord signed by the Israeli Government and the PLO has been sharply criticised by Christian Zionist groups who see it as a threat to the realisation of Eretz Israel. In particular they have opposed the handing back of the West Bank and the threat to the status of the Jewish settlements. For example, Theodore Temple Beckett, Chairman of the Christian Friends of Israel Community Development Foundation, as well as President of the Colorado-based Foundation for Israel, has initiated an 'adopt-a-settlement program among American Evangelical Churches. The Jewish town of Ariel has already been adopted by Faith Bible Chapel in Denver. By the end of 1995 it was Beckett's expectation that around 70 Jewish settlements would have been adopted by churches,

...with larger churches adopting larger settlements and smaller churches adopting smaller settlements and giving all a morale boost to show them they are not alone and are loved by many.

On the 21st December 1995, just hours before the Israeli's handed over administrative responsibility for Bethlehem to the Palestinian National Authority, the Voice of America radio station carried a news report claiming some Evangelical Christian groups had called for a boycott of Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem in protest.

Nine Christian Organisations have called their faithful not to go to Bethlehem this Christmas, to protest the transfer of the City to Palestinian rule. One of those Groups is called Bridges for Peace. Its Director is Clarence Wagner.

'There are millions of Evangelical Christians and other Middle East Christians who are concerned about the fact that Bethlehem has been unilaterally turned over to the Palestinian Authority, which is under the aegis of the PLO, and therefore has placed Bethlehem under Muslim control. Historically, Islam has not respected Christian holy sites. And here, Manger Square, the birthplace of Jesus, one of the holiest shrines in Christianity, is sort of quietly being turned over to a Muslim authority and no one is saying anything like, 'What will this mean for the future?...We have no idea what the experience under the PA will be, particularly if more fanatical Islamic Fundamentalism does increase in the years to come.'

...But the Latin Patriarch of the Holy Land, Michel Sabbah, who is Palestinian, said he welcomes the transfer of authority in Bethlehem and Mr. Arafat's plan to attend Midnight Mass. He says, religion and politics have always been linked in the Middle East and this is an opportunity to make that linkage in a positive way. Patriarch Sabbah...sharply criticizes those who are calling for a boycott of Bethlehem this Christmas.

'They are our brothers, every human being is our brother, but they are coming from abroad and they are bringing in the country feelings from abroad which do not correspond to the views and to the needs, spiritual and human, of the Land. This Land needs reconciliation. So, this is what we need, and not people coming from outside to tell us to boycott this and boycott that.'

The International Christian Embassy, quoted in the Sunday Times, on Christmas Eve 1995 predicted that the celebrations that night would, '...look more like Arafat's birthday than that of Jesus.' Ray Borlaise, writing in the Prayer Bulletin of Intercessors for Britain in January 1996, made similar criticisms of the transfer of power in Bethlehem, but apparently on sound theological grounds,

It is plain from Zechariah 12 that Jerusalem will become a contentious issue leading to conflict. Many feel that Ezekiel 38 & 39 will take place in the last days and will be a conflict between Islamic countries and Israel. There may be previous skirmishes before that battle takes place on the 'mountains of Israel' - some areas of which have just been handed over to the Palestinians. We sense that the peace may falter causing Samaria and Judea to pass back into Jewish hands. Will God allow Bethlehem, the burial place of Rachel, the town of Ruth and the birth place of David (let alone that of Jesus) to remain in Arab hands when it was promised to Abraham, Issac (sic) and Jacob as an eternal inheritance? (Genesis 17)

Borlaise, in one short paragraph, makes a number of typical Christian Zionist assumptions which will be explored in more detail in a later chapter. He assumes, for example, that selectively chosen ancient Hebrew writings relate directly to contemporary events, and will thereby some how determine future events, conveniently ignoring other prophetic passages in which God warns of the expulsion of the Jews from the land as and when they fail to act righteously and with justice. It is also interesting that Borlaise not only refers to the Occupied Territories, as 'Judea and Samaria,' but also assumes that because Bethlehem had an historical significance in Jewish history between 3,500 - 2000 years ago, contemporary Jewish people have some divine right to occupy and confiscate the land of those living there prior to 1967.

A notorious example of this relates to the confiscation of Palestinian owned land at Abu-Ghoneim mountain, located at the northern edge of Beit Sahour on the traditional site of the Shepherds Fields, which was ratified by the Israeli Supreme Court on December 4th 1994. Local Christians see this particular Jewish settlement project, called Har Homa, as one of the most serious and dangerous, not only because the building work involves the destruction of several ancient Christian shrines, but also because it demonstrates a flagrant State-initiated contradiction and judicially-ratified disregard for both the text and spirit of the Peace Accord signed a year earlier.

At the Third International Christian Zionist Congress, held in February 1996 under the auspices of ICEJ, the following resolutions were passed unanimously indicating the explicit religio-political agenda of ICEJ.

Further, we are persuaded by the clear unction of our God to express the sense of this Congress on the following concerns before us this day,

1. Because of the sovereign purposes of God for the City, Jerusalem must remain undivided, under Israeli sovereignty, open to all peoples, the capitol of Israel only, and all nations should so concur and place their embassies here.

2. As a faith bound to love and forgiveness we are appreciative of the attempts by the Government of Israel to work tirelessly for peace. However, the truths of God are sovereign and it is written that the Land which He promised to His People is not to be partitioned... It would be further error for the nations to recognize a Palestinian state in any part of Eretz Israel.

3. To the extent the Palestinian Covenant or any successor instrument calls for the elimination of Israel or denies the right of Israel to exist within secure borders in Eretz Israel, it should be abolished.

4. The Golan is part of biblical Israel and is a vital strategic asset necessary for the security and defense of the entire country.

C. The Islamic claim to Jerusalem, including its exclusive claim to the Temple Mount, is in direct contradiction to the clear biblical and historical significance of the city and its holiest site, and this claim is of later religio-political origin rather than arising from any Qur'anic text or early Muslim tradition.

7. While Gentile believers have been grafted into that household of faith which is of Abraham (the commonwealth of Israel), replacement theology within the Christian faith, which does not recognize the ongoing biblical purposes for Israel and the Jewish People, is doctrinal error.

8. Regarding Aliyah, we remain concerned for the fate of imperiled Jewish People in diverse places, and seek to encourage and assist in the continuing process of Return of the Exiles to Eretz Israel. To this end we commit to work with Israel and to encourage the Diaspora to fulfill the vision and goal of gathering to Israel the greater majority of all Jewish People from throughout the world.

Under Netanyahu's influence, the Israeli government remains enthusiastic to nurture the support of Christian Zionists. Exploiting the association of Megiddo with the apocalypse, Israeli planners and architects, with Netanyahu's blessing, have began creating a three dimensional 'virtual Megiddo'. While some critics have described it 'Apocalypso', Israeli officials are keen to capitalise on the millions of additional visitors, 'expected to flock to mark the end of the millennium in gloomy style.' Ze'ev Margalit, the official in charge of the development claimed, ...the beauty of this place is that it has a 6,000-year history that can take people back to the dawn of civilisation, a vibrant present and an apocalyptic future. Anxious to avoid creating a 'Disneyland of the apocalypse', Margalit added, 'There are a lot of different ideas on how to deal with this. It is easy to get kitsch and we must avoid that. So we will leave a lot to the imagination.' Keen to encourage greater numbers of Christians to visit Israel leading up to the Millennium, Netanyahu has recently taken part in programmes broadcast on Evangelical radio stations.

Boosting evangelical tourism dovetails with his plans to deepen Israel's ties with leaders of America's Christian far right, many of whom are sympathetic to Zionism...Netanyahu has a long history of nurturing these ties. He believes the conservative Christian influence in American public opinion, and particularly within the Republican party controlling congress, can be used to counter liberal Democrats such as President Bill Clinton, who want Israel to cede land to the Palestinians.

n.b. Further Examples; Jerusalem 3000 campaign; Tunnel under the Moslem Quarter

2.12 A Preliminary Critique of Christian Zionism

Armstrong is not alone in tracing in Western Christian Zionism evidence of the legacy of the Crusades. Fundamentalists have, she claims, 'returned to a classical and extreme religious crusading.' Ruether also sees the danger of this kind of Christian Zionism in its, 'dualistic, Manichaean view of global politics. America and Israel together against an evil world.'

This 'simple dualism' and 'highly dogmatic thinking' is something a number of sociologists have observed as common to much American Fundamentalism in particular.

It is so; God chose the Jews; the land is theirs by divine gift. These dicta cannot be questioned or resisted. They are final. Such verdicts come infallibly from Christian biblicists for whom Israel can do no wrong-thus fortified. But can such positivism, this unquestioning finality, be compatible with the integrity of the Prophets themselves? It certainly cannot square with the open peoplehood under God which is the crux of New Testament faith. Nor can it well be reconciled with the ethical demands central to law and election alike.

The Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), representing the indigenous and ancient Oriental and Eastern Churches, has been highly critical of the activities of Christian Zionists, and the ICEJ in particular. They assert, for instance, that the ICEJ has aggressively imposed an aberrant expression of the Christian faith and an erroneous interpretation of the Bible which is subservient to the political agenda of the modern State of Israel. Indeed they represent a tendency to,

...force the Zionist model of theocratic and ethnocentric nationalism on the Middle East...(rejecting)..the movement of Christian unity and inter-religious understanding which is promoted by the (indigenous) churches in the region. The Christian Zionist programme, with its elevation of modern political Zionism, provides the Christian with a world view where the gospel is identified with the ideology of success and militarism. It places its emphasis on events leading up to the end of history rather than living Christ's love and justice today.

In 1988 the MECC went further insisting that Christian Zionism had no place in the Middle East and should be repudiated by the universal Church because it was 'a dangerous distortion' and significant shift away from orthodox Christocentric expressions of the Christian faith .

(This is) ...a fundamental disservice also to Jews who may be inspired to liberate themselves from discriminatory attitudes and thereby rediscover equality with the Palestinians with whom they are expected to live God's justice and peace in the Holy Land.

Although ICEJ's support for Israel is primarily political, MECC has been concerned more with its theological basis, and ICEJ's attempt to sacralize a political ideology beyond human criticism or ethical standards and to treat the security of a Jewish State within the entire land presently occupied as a fundamental axiom of their supra-historical eschatology. The declarations following the first, second and third Christian Zionist Congresses, organised by ICEJ in 1985, 1988 and 1996, according to MECC, show a significant shift away from orthodox Christocentric expressions of the Christian faith. Based on the writings of ICEJ's spokesman, Rev. Jan Willem van der Hoeven, MECC argue that the 'Christian Zionist',

......is placed in a reductionist eschatology by engaging in actions designed to bring 'comfort and support' to modern political Israel. Accordingly, Jesus is de-emphasised, as is His death and resurrection, while salvation and judgment are redefined.... Christians will be judged solely according to their actions on behalf of the state of Israel. True Christians are those who leave their Gentile background and become 'Israelites of God'

It is therefore perhaps not surprising that among the Middle East churches generally, Christian Zionism is regarded as a devious heresy and an unwelcome and alien intrusion into their culture, which advocates an ethnocentric and nationalist political agenda running counter to their work of reconciliation, and patient witness among both Jews and Moslems. As one leading Anglican cleric described it, 'Making God into a real estate agent is heart breaking...they are not preaching Jesus any more.' They are, in the words of another Palestinian clergyman, 'instruments of destruction' Another senior churchman was equally forthright,

Their presence here is quite offensive....projecting themselves as really the Christians of the land... with total disregard for the indigenous Christian community.

Similarly outspoken criticisms of the Israel Trust of the Anglican Church (ITAC) have been made by Palestinian Anglican clergy.

CMJ are propagating Zionism rather than Christianity. It is working against the interests of the Anglican Church in Israel.

Essentially, Christian Zionism fails to recognise the deep seated problems that exist between Palestinians and Israelis; it distorts the Bible and marginalises the universal imperative of the Christian gospel; has grave political ramifications and ultimately ignores the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of indigenous Christians. It is a situation that many believe Israel exploits to her advantage, cynically welcoming American Christian Zionists as long as they remain docile and compliant with Israeli government policy. Consequently,

Local Christians are caught in a degree of museumization. They are aware of tourists who come in great volume from the West to savour holy places but who are, for the most part, blithely disinterested in the people who indwell them. The pain of the indifference is not eased insofar as the same tourism is subtly manipulated to make the case for the entire legitimacy of the statehood that regulates it.

Cragg offers this astute critique of Christian Zionism,

The overriding criteria of Christian perception have to be those of equal grace and common justice. From these there can be no proper exemption, however alleged or presumed. Chosenness cannot properly be either an ethnic exclusivism or a political facility.

Christian Zionism appears, at least in the eyes of its critics, to offer an uncritical endorsement of the Israeli political right and at the same time shows an inexcusable lack of compassion for the Palestinian tragedy. In doing so it has apparently legitimised their oppression in the name of the Gospel.

Is such a condemnation of Western Christian Zionism legitimate? The task of this thesis will be to examine in detail the various forms of Western Fundamentalist Christian Zionism, to appraise their theological interpretation of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and to assess their political impact on the indigenous Palestinian Church.

 

This material forms part of my doctoral thesis. A copy with footnotes is available on request

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