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  • Christians and Zionism:A Review Essay
  • Shalom L. Goldman (bio)

In 1953, English historian Christopher Sykes noted that "so much has been written on Zionism within the last thirty years that, when producing a new essay, some apology may be thought necessary." Sykes new essay, in Two Studies in Virtue, was on the Christian religious origins of the Balfour Declaration. It was "primarily addressed to Gentile readers"; for, in his words, "a very high proportion of the best Zionist books in Great Britain and America are addressed to a Jewish audience and assume [End Page 245] a knowledge of Jewish history rare among Gentiles who have not made detailed studies."1

Between the 1950s and the 1970s the number of books on Israel and Zionism increased dramatically. The extensive bibliography of Walter Laqueur's 1972 A History of Zionism opens with the observation that "there are many thousands of books and pamphlets on Zionism."2 By 2006 the bibliography of Zionism had grown exponentially. In that vast bibliography there was, until recently, comparatively little on Christians and Zionism. Sykes's illuminating essay in Two Studies in Virtue was one of the exceptions. Until recently the focus of most broad histories and detailed studies of Zionism has been on its Jewish leaders and their Jewish followers, and, for the most part, the books were directed toward a Jewish audience.

In the past five years there has been an outpouring of books and papers on Christians and Zionism; eight of these works will be discussed in this essay. Two of the books, by Stephen Sizer and David Brog, are quite polemical about evangelical Christian Zionism. Sizer's Christian Zionism, subtitled Road-map to Armageddon, is an indictment of the movement. Brog's Standing With Israel, subtitled Why Christians Support the Jewish State, is a panegyric to it. Of the other six books, five express strong political opinions on evangelical Christian Zionism.

In addition to Sykes's Two Studies in Virtue, two early and important exceptions to the scholarly neglect of the relationship of Christians to Zionism were the opening chapters of Nahum Sokolow's History of Zionism, 1600–1918, published in 1919, and N. M. Gelber's Zur Vorgeschichte des Zionismus, published in 1927. Among other noteworthy works was Franz Kobler's The Vision Was There: A History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine (1956). But, while Kobler gathered much information, he supplied little analysis. In 1978 Israeli scholar Yona Malachy published American Fundamentalism and Israel. Malachy's introduction notes that "no one has so far dealt with the history of Christian Zionism in a comprehensive manner."3 This was framed as the rationale for his short book. But to this day the task is still a desideratum, especially as Christian Zionism has grown greatly and has now entered current American political discourse. Among specialized studies of specific aspects of American Christian Zionism are [End Page 246] Hertzel Fishman's 1973 study American Protestantism and a Jewish State and Yaakov Ariel's 1991 authoritative study of dispensationalism, On Behalf of Israel.

In the early twentieth century studies, Sokolow, and following him, Gelber, described the many Protestant precursors of Zionism, who advocated the restoration of the Jews to their land. Among the first advocates of this restoration were the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century English theologians Henry Finch and Thomas Brightman. Brightman's 1644 commentary on the Book of Daniel was subtitled "the restoring of the Jews, and their calling to the faith of Christ, after the overthrow of their three last enemies."

The most elaborate exposition of English Christian support for what would later be termed Zionism was Barbara W. Tuchman's Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour, published in 1956. Tuchman's highly influential book left readers with the impression that the majority of pre-modern English churchmen were supporters of restoring the Jews to Palestine. We read little in Tuchman of opposition to such plans. But there was considerable opposition, especially in High Church circles. Tuchman's book, published during Israel's first decade, was itself a work of advocacy for Zionism, and as such left students of the...

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