The Evangelical Right: Trojan Horse or Knight in Shining Armor?
There are few things that provoke more passion than the explosive confluence of religion and politics. It has generated and stoked today’s thorniest issues—from international terrorism to same-sex marriage. Over the millennia, Jewish people have been repeatedly burned whenever the forces of religion and politics converged. Yet today, in an era of almost unprecedented anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hostility, one Jewish ally seems to have emerged out of this volatile union—the evangelical Christian Right.
This development has provoked significant debate within the Jewish community. Some have enthusiastically embraced this new lone champion with few reservations, while others feel it is best to remain at arm’s length. Most Jewish leaders have opted to cautiously nurture this emerging relationship. Clearly, any reasonable assessment of the relationship between Jews and the Christian Right must be based on a sober understanding of the evangelical camp.
With over two billion people in the world identifying as Christians, we can appreciate that Christianity is by no means monolithic. Up until the middle of the twentieth century, evangelicals were relatively obscure and had little impact on American life. One of the factors that contributed to the fringe status of the movement was the perception that it was the heir to the backward fundamentalists associated with William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame).
During the sixties and seventies, there were seismic upheavals in the American cultural landscape. Uneasiness about the lingering Cold War, the backlash to the growing abandonment of conventional morality and the recognition that material plenty wasn’t ultimately fulfilling led to a renewed interest in the certainty and spirituality of traditional faith. An influx of born-again baby boomers came streaming through the doors of evangelical churches.
Evangelicals emphasize the following: the centrality and authority of the Bible, developing an intensely personal relationship with God/Jesus and the need to evangelize non-believers. Within the evangelical community, the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement—which emphasizes the dramatic immediacy of God’s supernatural presence in the life of the believer—is very popular. This idea is typically manifested in ecstatic prayer, speaking in tongues, miraculous healings and the belief that prophetic messages are routinely received.
The reality is that the same groups that are seeking our physical and political well-being are often dangerous to us spiritually.
While most mainstream Christian denominations have been on the decline over the past decades, the evangelical movement has experienced spectacular growth. In the fifties, only about 5 percent of the world’s Christians were in the evangelical camp—today it is reported to be between 20 and 30 percent. Americans were stunned when Pat Robertson, a well-known Christian televangelist, ran as a serious contender in the 1988 presidential campaign. The tremendous political clout of America’s 70 million evangelicals is attested to by their ability to help elect one of their own to the White House in 2000 and in the fact that religious conviction is currently an important qualification for anyone seeking high public office.
Traditional Jews usually find that they share many common values with evangelicals. Their conversion agenda is the one major sticking point. It is vital for us to understand why evangelism is such a priority in their lives.
The foundational evangelical doctrine is that after the primordial transgression in the Garden of Eden, mankind is thereafter born into a state of sin and totally powerless to extricate itself from its grip. Evangelicals believe that God became incarnated into Jesus of Nazareth who fulfilled his Messianic destiny by dying as a sacrifice to atone for mankind’s sins. The Christian Bible insists that personal salvation is only possible through faith in Jesus, and directs believers to bring this “good news” to every soul. Evangelicals feel a tremendous burden to share the news to a world they see as doomed; saving others from an eternity in hell drives them to constantly seek ways to share their faith.
Even though evangelicals view all non-believers as damned, they place a disproportionately high emphasis on reaching Jews. A recent study published by the evangelical publication Mission Frontiers shows that there are twenty times more Christian missionaries targeting Jews than there are targeting Muslims (although this population eclipses ours by over a billion). It further shows that there are ten times more missionaries targeting Jews than there are targeting Buddhists and Hindus. Evangelical Christians support hundreds of full-time missionary organizations—such as Jews for Jesus, Chosen People Ministries, Friends of Israel and the Jewish Voice—that operate worldwide and spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to convert Jews.
There are many reasons for the priority given to Jewish evangelism. Evangelicals are very rooted in the Bible, and the fact that the Jewish people play center stage in the Bible points them in our direction. From the Tanach emerges the truth that the Jews are God’s special people and that He will bless those who bless His people (Genesis 12:3). To the evangelical, there is no greater blessing that he can give a Jewish person than bringing him to faith in Jesus. Or, as some have expressed it, “Not telling Jewish people about Jesus is the most anti-Semitic thing we could do.”
In the Gospels, Jesus instructs his disciples, “Go not among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6). Christianity’s major architect, the apostle Paul, later reiterates this when he declares that the gospel should go “to the Jew first” (Romans 1:15). For some evangelicals, the urgency of Jewish evangelism hinges on their belief that Jesus’ “Second Coming” will not take place until the Jewish people first accept him. A contemporary commentary to Matthew 23:39 explains, “The fact that Yeshua [Jesus] will not return until Israel receives national salvation is a powerful motivator for evangelizing Jewish people. In fact, Jewish evangelism can hasten his coming.”1
No doubt, there are also strong psychological motivations for evangelical outreach to Jews. James Christison, a former general secretary for the American Baptist Churches National Mission Society, offered a revealing insight into this drive: “After all, unconverted Jews make Christians wonder if perhaps Jesus is not the Messiah after all.” Eric Hoffer, in his book The True Believer, explained how this dynamic could lead Christians to prioritize Jewish evangelism: “The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.” Christians understand that the Messianic concept is a Jewish one, and that the Jewish people’s confirmation of one’s Messianic credentials carries a tremendous amount of weight. Ultimately, the pursuit of Jewish converts serves to allay internal doubts, and every success dampens the troubling thought that “maybe the Jews are right.”
Evangelical outreach to the Jewish people has unfortunately proven to be successful. These outreach efforts are maximized by not relegating the task to professionals only—most Jewish converts are reached by a Christian friend, neighbor or business associate. A measure of their success in our community can be seen in the dramatic international growth of the “Messianic Jewish” movement. Many Jewish converts to Christianity gravitate to this diverse community where Jesus is worshipped and a “Jewish” lifestyle is observed. North America was home to less than twenty Messianic congregations in 1970—today there are nearly 500. A growing number of these communities are developing “day schools,” such as Etz Chaiyim near Baltimore and the Chalutzim Academy in Philadelphia.
Congregations of Jews worshipping Jesus didn’t exist in the former Soviet Union until the early nineties. Today there are over one hundred in the Ukraine alone, with the largest one in Kiev attracting 1,000 people to a weekly “Shabbat” service. Israel now has approximately 7,000 Jewish converts to Christianity (Hebrew Christians) who worship in about one hundred congregations.
Many Jews are incredulous when they learn that the same Christian Right that has come out so passionately on behalf of Israel is equally committed to having Jews believe in Jesus. The late rosh yeshivah of the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, often spoke about the paradoxical idea of “light and darkness operating simultaneously.” The reality is that the same groups that are seeking our physical and political well-being are often dangerous to us spiritually.
The strong affinity evangelicals have for the State of Israel is rooted in a complex mixture of spiritual and political factors. The ties are similar to those of traditional Jews, similar but not congruent. It is vital to appreciate the primacy of the Bible in order to understand evangelical loyalty to Israel. The Torah clearly teaches that God established the land of Israel as the homeland for His Chosen People. As many Christian bumper stickers proclaim, “The Bible says it. I believe it. And that settles it!”
Israel is also the birthplace of Christianity. Thousands of Christian pilgrims flock to the Holy Land each year to “walk where Jesus walked” and see all the places they’ve read about in Sunday school. On some level, they feel that the Land belongs to them as well.
The Bible doesn’t only provide nostalgic associations for evangelicals. According to them, it is an oracle vividly forecasting the long-awaited return of Jesus to redeem the faithful and vanquish the forces of evil. Many evangelicals are fascinated by Biblical prophecies about the “end times,” as evidenced by the hundreds of evangelical conferences on prophecy held each year and the immense popularity of the Left Behind series. The setting for the unfolding of their entire eschatological drama will be Jerusalem, with the people of Israel playing a very central role. We are understandably uneasy about these apocalyptic scenarios, as they envision our wholesale conversion or slaughter.
Remorse over Christianity’s long and sad history of persecuting Jews is what motivates some evangelicals to now extend themselves on our behalf. Recalling a world that stood by as six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, many feel it is their duty to support Israel during its current crisis. These feelings are often intensified by a sense of gratitude to the Jewish people who gave Christianity both its Bible and Messiah.
For many on the Christian Right, loyalty to the Jewish State is also rooted in political considerations. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and a vital strategic ally in the ongoing war against terror.
With the mounting hostility to Jews across the globe and the Jewish homeland subjected to an ongoing campaign of terror and isolation in the international community, there has been little cause for optimism. The lone port in the storm has been the loving embrace of the evangelical community. However, since Christian affinity to Israel is often part of a larger agenda that envisions converting every Jew to their faith, we must tread very carefully when negotiating this relationship.
This knotty problem doesn’t lend itself to simplistic generalizations. The pitfalls of engaging evangelical Zionists range from the obvious to the subtle. Even Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and a most enthusiastic advocate of developing closer ties with the Christian Right, draws the line with any group involved with proselytizing Jews. This determination is not always that easy to make, as some groups aren’t upfront about their agenda, and others are only indirectly involved in converting Jews.
A few years ago, a huge celebration was organized by an umbrella group of “Christian Zionist” organizations in Orlando, Florida, to honor Israel’s fiftieth anniversary. The entire Jewish community was invited, with rabbis and community leaders slated to be part of the program. Only later was it discovered that the event’s co-sponsors, as well as many of the official participants, were leading “Hebrew Christian” missionaries. Virtually the entire Jewish community pulled out of the program—the inappropriateness was glaringly clear.
Friends of Israel, a large Christian organization based near Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is very involved in advocacy for Israel and has found a growing openness in the Jewish community to working cooperatively. However, the organization’s full name is actually Friends of Israel Gospel Ministries, and it actively targets Jews for conversion. Its Institute of Jewish Studies offers courses in “Jewish Evangelism,” and its monthly magazine includes a regular report from Zvi, a missionary in Israel who routinely demeans traditional Jews and boasts of his success in spreading the gospel.
Then there are the pro-Israel evangelical organizations whose proselytizing agenda is more difficult to spot. To determine their goals, it is usually necessary to pay attention to what they say “in-house” rather than to just read what they prepare for Jewish community consumption. Occasionally, some in this group let their guard down. In an interview held with the National Courier, Joe Dean, a pioneer of Christian Zionism, displayed uncharacteristic candor:
By standing with the Jewish people in love and support, we can provoke them to jealousy [the phrase “provoke to jealousy,” found in the eleventh chapter in the Book of Romans, refers to how the Jewish people will ultimately come to faith in Jesus], as the apostle Paul said, so as to win them to Christ. Not by cramming the Gospel down their throats, but by showing that our faith produces fruitful works. I have told the Jewish agencies that we are not an evangelical group as such, and this is true. We are not actively trying to win Jews to Christ—but by taking this stand, the Jewish people don’t run away from us, and we are able to witness to them indirectly.
Numerous organizations that eschew traditional proselytizing are unconvincing when they insist that they have no hidden agenda. Shalom International aims to “build bridges of love” to Israel and the Jewish community, and bristles at the suggestion that there are ulterior motives behind its admirable work. Fundraising letters to its Christian supporters, however, reveal that there is more to the picture.
We should never lose sight of the fact that many evangelical organizations are actively involved in some type of Jewish evangelism.
I want to see Christians wake up and stand up for the Jewish people. Only then will Jews be impressed and one day want Jesus as their Messiah! There are almost 6 million Jews living in the United States—what a harvest field we have right under our noses! The key to Jewish hearts is unconditional love. More Jewish people are loving Jesus today than at any time in history, and we’re told that our ministry is a big reason for that happening.
Christians for Israel is an organization that works tirelessly to oppose growing anti-Semitism and to encourage Christian support of the Jewish State. On the surface, there seems to be little cause for concern. However, perusing through issues of its publication Christians for Israel Today turned up the troubling refrain that Christian love and solidarity will “provoke the Jews to jealousy.”
At a Christians for Israel church program near Toronto, Rev. Willem Glashouer reported on the Exobus Project, a program that the organization supports and that assists Jews in the Ukraine to make aliyah. Rev. Glashouer enthusiastically explained how Christian volunteers “shared the love of Jesus” with the thankful Jewish people being transported to the airport. At the same program, Paul Wilbur, a Jewish convert to Christianity, gushed as he described how “one of my dear friends is in Haifa today to establish a Russian-speaking congregation. They’re clothing these immigrants with a ministry called Tents of Mercy, and they’re bringing them to the salvation knowledge of Yeshua!”
By definition, evangelicals hope and pray that Jewish people will embrace the Christian faith. The only variable is the degree to which they are either directly or indirectly involved in nudging the process along. However, Dr. John Hagee, a leading American pastor, is a truly staunch friend of Israel with a unique view that Christians have no duty to evangelize Jews today because ultimately they will come to faith when Jesus is revealed to them. Hagee’s laissez-faire posture toward proselytizing Jews has garnered him strong criticism in the evangelical community—an indication of how out of step his position is with the mainstream.
Those who adhere to what is often referred to as “dual covenant” theology occupy the most extreme end of the evangelical continuum. Regarded as heretical by mainstream evangelicals, this small group believes that God has a special covenantal relationship with the Jewish people whose salvation doesn’t require their conversion to Christianity.
There is clearly much to applaud in the evangelical community’s solidarity with Israel. Its lobbying for and financial support of Israeli causes are vital and have virtually no downside. In addition to the work of a plethora of organizations, thousands of individual Christians have been stepping into the breach. They pray ceaselessly for the peace of Jerusalem and by continuing to visit—even during periods of great unrest—they support the economy and raise the morale of Israel.
That most of these Christians are praying and hoping that Jews will find their way to Jesus should spur us on to ensure the spiritual health of our own community. We must immunize the most vulnerable in our community against the lure of other religions. Moreover, we should never lose sight of the fact that many evangelical organizations and individuals do more than just pray that Jews come to Jesus—they are actively involved in some type of Jewish evangelism. Given the infinite value of every Jewish neshamah (soul), we dare not inadvertently assist those who seek to “provoke the Jews to jealousy” by partnering with them.
What this calls for in practice is a delicate policy of chabdeihu vechashdeihu, appreciative engagement and careful scrutiny, when dealing with evangelicals. We need to carefully connect the dots to ensure that we don’t unwittingly cooperate with groups whose work puts Jews at spiritual risk.
Ultimately, most of the evangelical programs in Israel or those in support of Israel that may raise red flags don’t seek our support or cooperation. Our “quality control” capacity is limited to those Christian groups who seek our involvement. What is in our court, however, is our ability to help create a spiritually vibrant Jewish world where we need not be concerned about Jews being swayed to alien faiths, but where “ten men from all of the languages of the nations of the world will take hold of the garment of a Jew and say, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you!’” (Zechariah 8:23)
Rabbi Skobac is the director of education for the Toronto branch of Jews for Judaism, an international counter-missionary organization.