Israeli Palestinian Conflict 14. Christian Zionism: Prophecy, politics, public opinion, Israel

Send us Fan MailChristian Zionism is the belief that the Bible predicted the creation of a Jewish state in 1948 and that Christians are obligated to support that state.  This belief grew out of the Protestant Reformation in the 1600s.  By the late 1800s it was very strong in America.  What is interesting is that the Protestant idea of "restoring" the Jews to Jerusalem predates the emergence of Jewish political Zionism in 1896 when Herzl wrote his famous essay.   This podcast, which was et up as a classroom lecture, discusses the Biblical texts that provide a foundation for the belief.  It discusses how traditional Catholic teachings (unfriendly to Jews) were transformed by the emergence of Protestantism and a new "philo-Semitic" way of reading the Bible. There is a discussion of the concept of the millennium (a thousand years of justice), of pre-millennial and post-millennial views, of the idea of an Anti-Christ, of the concept of "signs," and of the passage in the gospels known as the Eschatological Discourse. There is also a discussion of public opinion patterns and why public opinion does not shape policy but allows it to emerge without resistance. For those interested, my article on this topic is available in Deep Blue.  It's title is "Christian Zionism: Prophecy and Public Opinion."