An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews

4. Evangelicals and Jewish Restoration

82 > 83 number of evangelical leaders who were concerned with the fate of the Jews, he was involved both in evangelizing the Jews and in trying to restore them to their ancestral homeland. Utilizing the international crisis over the Egyptian invasion of Palestine in 1838–40, he took out a full-page advertisement in the Times of London calling on the monarchs of Europe to act on behalf of the Jews’ restoration to Palestine. He also tried to persuade the British government to gain the support of the Ottoman Turks for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Wishing to offer a noneschatological justification for his plan, Shaftsbury argued in his petition to the Foreign Office that a Jewish homeland in Palestine would provide a buffer against future Egyptian incursion into Ottoman lands as well as increase the prosperity of the Ottoman Empire. Like other evangelical petitions that would follow it, the petition included a theological-biblical argument that “the Land of Palestine was bestowed by the Sovereign of the Universe upon the descendants of Abraham.” Shaftesbury succeeded in convincing Lord Palmerston, who served as the minister of foreign affairs, to back his initiatives. The relationship between the two offers an example of the interaction between evangelical leaders and supportive politicians concerning the idea of Jewish restoration. Palmerston was not a convinced premillennialist, but he was one of the early statesmen in the Englishspeaking world who became open to evangelical suggestions concerning the return of Palestine to the Jews.1 Shaftesbury, like later evangelicals, claimed that the Jews themselves, being an industrious people, would be able to cover much of the expense involved in their voyage to Palestine and the rehabilitation of that land. He wrote to Lord Ponsonby at the British Foreign Office: “The Jews . . . should be induced to go and settle in Palestine, because the wealth and habits of order and industry which they would bring with them would tend greatly to increase the resources of the Turkish Empire and to promote the progress of civilization therein.”2 Shaftesbury’s initiative represented a larger movement in Britain of his time. Hundreds of upper- and middle-class members of British society expected the imminent return of Jesus and organized gatherings to 84 > 85 well as on attempting to educate Christians on the centrality of the Jews in God’s plans for humanity. Like Shaftesbury, William Blackstone was an energetic missionary leader and a tireless advocate for the building of a Jewish commonwealth inPalestine.6 In 1889hevisitedPalestine,acountrythatforhim,aswellas other evangelical Christians, was the site of biblical events and the place where the more dramatic developments of the end times were about to happen. Blackstone was impressed by the communities of Jews who had cometoJerusalemduringthenineteenthcenturyforreligious,oftenmessianic reasons. He also noted that the first wave of Zionist immigration to a country that he considered to be underpopulated had resulted in the building of new Jewish neighborhoods, widespread agricultural resettlement , demographic growth, and growth of an economic infrastructure. The American evangelist viewed the expanding settlement of Jews in the country to be a “sign of the time,” an indication that the current era was endingandthattheeventsoftheendtimeswouldoccurverysoon.7 Blackstone ’s visit to Palestine strengthened his determination to take a proactive line and help bring about Jewish national restoration in Palestine.8 His comment that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land” echoed a claim by Shaftesbury half a century earlier that Palestine was “a country without a nation” for “a nation without a country ,” namely the Jews—although Blackstone had probably never read the Britishleader’sdiary.9 Thisremark,coinedbypremillennialistevangelical Christians, was picked up a few years later by Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism, and became a motto for Jewish Zionists for decades to come, usually without awareness of its Christian evangelical origin. In November 1890 Blackstone organized a conference in Chicago, to which he invited both Christian and Jewish religious leaders, to discuss the situation of Jews around the world. His aim was to reach a resolution that would demand international political action on behalf of the return of Palestine to the Jews. But the conference did not develop in that way. The Jewish participants were three Reform rabbis, while the Christian participants included both premillennialist and nonpremillennialist Protestant clergymen and professors in local theological seminaries. 86 > 87 home, an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force. Under their cultivation it was...