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This study examines how the hope for peace in the Middle East is articulated in Swedish Christian Zionist movements, both publicly and in private interviews with leaders and speakers. The article s ...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)ArticlesIn 2011 the Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn published The Harbinger , an ostensibly fictional story that nevertheless sought to convey quite literal warnings from God regarding the spiritual state of the United States at the start of the twenty-first century. Referencing everything from the inauguration of George Washington to specific elements of the 9/11 attacks and the 2008 economic downturn, Cahn's central characters insisted that key developments in the U.S. directly--and prophetically--mirrored developments in ancient Israel that served as divine harbingers of God's impending judgment. The book struck a responsive chord, quickly selling over one million copies. This success coupled with the direct parallels that Cahn drew between ancient Israel and the U.S. illustrated the degree to which evangelical identification with Jews and Israel coincided with the nationalistic sentiments of believers. While the dire warnings contained in Cahn's book hinted at a post-American sensibility, his overall message was predicated on the close association of the contemporary U.S. with God's "chosen people."1 Whereas The Harbinger exemplified the resonance between evangelical identification with Israel and belief in American exceptionalism, other aspects of Cahn's ministry pointed to a more experiential, less cognitive set of pro-Israel emphases among evangelicals. Such themes were especially prominent in pentecostal and charismatic circles, which tended to favor experience-oriented expressions of Christianity.2 Cahn pastored the charismatic Jerusalem Center/Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, New Jersey, for instance, where attendees were invited to experience "the richness of the faith in its original biblical flavor . . . It's exciting, its prophetic, its joyous, & it's life-changing." Weekly services were held both on Sundays and Friday nights (the beginning of the traditional Jewish Sabbath), and typically included the blowing of shofars, Jewish-themed music and dance, and an "Aaronic blessing" delivered in Hebrew. Indicative of the immersive nature of the experience proffered by Cahn, the worship center's interior was modeled after the city of Jerusalem: "The walls have all the ancient gates of the city, the stage is lined with the stones matching the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, and the entrance to the Holy Temple." Significantly, the center was advertised as a place where "Jew & Gentile, people from all backgrounds, nations, and denominations are together again in Messiah." Undoubtedly many who associated with the Jerusalem Center/Beth Israel Worship Center embraced visions of the U.S. that were rooted in a sense of American exceptionalism, but the center's main appeal did not rely on such expressions of religious patriotism. Rather, participants were promised authentic religious experience, and in particular an experiential identification with Israel and the "Jewish roots" of the Christian faith, that anyone from around the world could access.3 It is tempting to view the Jerusalem Center/Beth Israel as an idiosyncratic outlier in the world of U.S. pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, not to mention U.S. evangelicalism. Numerous signs, however, suggest otherwise: in addition to congregations that catered to Messianic Jews (i.e., Jews who embraced the basic tenets of Christianity), Jewish-themed rituals and pageantry also frequently appeared in non-Messianic congregations, and in meetings conducted by pro-Israel organizations such as Christians United for Israel (which was founded by the pentecostal minister John Hagee). North American charismatics also spearheaded the initial Feast of Tabernacles celebration in Jerusalem, which attracted thousands of individuals from the U.S. and other nations who joined in elaborate displays of pro-Israeli sentiment on an annual basis. Even more important, programs hosted by charismatic Messianic leaders broadcasted Israel-themed worship and messages around the globe, and served as permanent fixtures on pentecostal-charismatic radio and television. …

G. Douglas Young, the founder of the American Institute of Holy Land Studies (now Jerusalem University College), is a largely forgotten figure in the history of Christian Zionism. Born into a fundamentalist household, Young developed an intense identification with Jews and support for the state of Israel from an early age. By 1957, when he founded his Institute, Young developed a worldview that merged numerous strands of evangelical thinking—dispensationalism, neo-evangelicalism, and his own ideas about Jewish-Christian relations—into a distinctive understanding of Israel. Young's influence in American evangelicalism reached a climax in the years 1967–1971. This period, and Young's activism therein, represents a distinct phase in the evolution of Jewish-evangelical relations and evangelical Christian Zionism. Young's engagement with the Israeli state prefigured the Christian Zionists of the 1980s.This article examines Young's distinctive theology and politics and situates them in intellectual and international contexts. It argues that Young sought to place Christian Zionism at the center of American evangelicalism after 1967 and that his effort was only partially successful. While Young spoke to thousands of evangelicals, trained hundreds of students, and sat on boards and committees to broaden the appeal of Christian Zionism, he also met stiff resistance by some members of the American evangelical establishment. The Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy, which saw Young collide with Carl F. H. Henry, a leading American evangelical, illustrates the limits of Young's efforts. Ultimately, a look at Young reframes the rise of Christian Zionism among American evangelicals and situates activism in Israel as central to the development of Jewish-evangelical relations in the twentieth century.

This study explores a facet of the construction of a new worldwide religious tradition that fuses the beliefs, rituals, and identity claims of both Judaism and Christianity. The Brazilian ‘Messianic Anussim’ comprise former Charismatic Evangelicals that adhere to a variety of Jewish practices. Unlike Messianic Judaism, where Jewish-born people identify themselves as believers in Jesus, or Christian Zionism, where Evangelicals emphasise the eschatological importance of the Jews and Israel this particular community maintains the veneration of Jesus and calls for a purification of Charismatic Evangelicalism while observing Jewish laws. Their calls for a ‘pious restoration’ are guided by a recovered Jewish identity that is inspired by the historical figure of the Bnei Anussim. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2013 and 2015, this study explores the formation of a new hybrid religious group.

The Radical New Perspective on Paul distinguishes between two subgroups of believers in Christ in Paul’s time: gentile believers and Jewish or Judaean believers. The same distinction is utilised in supporting contemporary Messianic Judaism, which presupposes an ongoing covenantal relationship between God and contemporary Jews that exists over and above Christianity. Many proponents of Christian Zionism, a Christian movement that envisions the Jews’ return to the land of Israel, utilise aspects of both the Radical New Perspective on Paul and Messianic Judaism in support of their beliefs. Ironically, while the Radical New Perspective on Paul is a certain product of post-holocaust theology, Christian Zionism can be perceived as a perpetuation of a kind of imperial theology that brings injustice to Palestinian people, especially in view of a post-imperial South African context. While none of these connections are inevitable, to point out the relationship between these approaches to identity serves to rethink some of the preconceived notions behind them, as well as some of the (unintended) consequences that arise from them.

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The article traces the origin, content and influence of Christian Zionism. A 'Ladder of exclusivism within Christian Zionism' is developed to identify the core of this ideology, and the most relevant actors found on the different steps of the ladder. Christian Zionism builds upon a certain reading of the Bible and precedes the Jewish Zionism. Actually, Christian Zionists were acting as advisors and mentors of Theodor Herzl, a fact that is overlooked in most accounts of Zionism.

The divide within Christianity over the Israel/Palestine conflict is essentially on Bible interpretation and what the coming of Jesus Christ implied. This article traces the origin of the term ‘Christian Palestinianism’, introduced by Christian Zionist actors to criticize their adversaries. It identifies the core of their criticism of Christian Palestinianism, finding that some of the criticism has its merits, even if its definition is imprecise. Accusations against promoters of Christian Palestinianism rose when the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement emerged around 2005. BDS illustrates the recognition of the Palestinian cause and the criticism of Israel in churches and Christian organizations.

No abstract available.

Discusses the growing influence of Protestant millennialism, not just among religious Israelis and Palestinian Christians, but also among Palestinian Muslims.

The rhetorical function of the future in Christian Zionists' commemoration of Israel is a core component of their collective memory. As a discursive act, commemoration typically involves a remembering of the past. Based on an analysis of a corpus of US Christian Zionist texts from 1934 to 2010, I argue that a sort of commemorating and remembering of the future takes place, which silences alternative future worlds and possibilities that discord with Christian Zionist ideologies. These texts exhibit a concern with the future that is rooted in a particularized narrative in order to validate Christian Zionist understandings of the role of Israel in human history. Thus, for Christian Zionists, remembering the future is a strategic resource for constructing specific expectations about Israel. Moreover, I argue that these expectations inform how discourse participants assign meaning to the present by forming biased mental models of Israel and manipulating social cognition.

This article examines what is described as a symbiotic relationship between individuals and groups that make up “outsider” and “insider” enemies within a conservative strand of American Christian Zionism. It argues that a particular construction of Islam and Muslims as inherently violent is given a timeless quality through a particular reading of the sibling rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael in the Hebrew Bible, a reading which simultaneously unites Christians and Jews as heirs to God’s covenantal promises. It argues that this description of “outsider” enemies produces a particular kind of knowledge which is used to define and criticize what are termed “insider” enemies. As with Christian Zionists’ outsider enemies, these insider enemies are also given a timeless quality through a Christian Zionist reading of the Passion narrative and history of early Christianity that places them in a position of instruments of Satan, and a danger to the state.

In February of 1820, a cohort of clergymen and lay leaders gathered in New York City to launch a new, multidenominational, nationwide missionary project called "The American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews." The Society was spearheaded by Joseph Samuel Christian Frederick Frey, a former rabbinical student who had converted to Christianity as a young man in his native Germany. Before immigrating to the United States, Frey had spent some time as a missionary in England where he helped to found the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. As the group's popularity grew among the Lutheran and Reformed communities who had built the organization, Anglican members wrested control of the leadership and expelled nonconformists. Rejected from his life's work, Frey traveled to the United States to start again.1In New York, Frey became involved with the city's Presbyterian community and began preaching in a city church. Once settled in the community and with the urging of friends and local clergymen, he revisited his pet project to evangelize Jews. Frey's idea to build an organization to preach to Jews appealed to his American Presbyterian colleagues and quickly attracted interest from members of other Protestant denominations, including a number of influential political and religious leaders such as John Quincy Adams, Peter Jay, and the presidents of Yale, Princeton, and Rutgers: Jeremiah Day, Ashbel Green, and Philip Milledoler.2Members of the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews believed that they were in a unique position to usher in a new era of cooperation between Christians and Jews. While Europe was still riddled with dogmatism, participants in the society mused that Americans "heartily rejoice[d] in every triumph of real liberality," and were truly "open-minded" and "free from prejudice." They viewed their enthusiasm as evidence that "bigotry had no power, and even toleration [was] not an appropriate term" to describe the environment of religious freedom in the United States. To realize its vision, the Society partnered with a German nobleman, Count Adelbert Von der Reke, who promised to recruit converts for the colony from among the thousands of European Jews he claimed had already embraced, or wanted to embrace, Christianity. On the American side, the Society-an executive board based in New York, a network of auxiliary societies spanning from Maine to Georgia, and a small group of converts-worked to raise money to procure property for a colony to settle the converts. In short, the Society's tolerant mission would evangelize and colonize Jews.3How do we make sense of this strange coalition-a former rabbinical student, a German count, a group of American religious and political elite, a sundry network of Protestant charitable societies, and a phalanx of "Hebrew Christians"-who promoted tolerance and unity in the United States by evangelizing and colonizing European Jews? The members of the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews were inspired by evangelical impulses encouraging them to put aside their denominational differences in order to spread the kingdom of Christ. They were also influenced by Christian Zionism, or Restorationism, a biblical prophecy that led many evangelicals to believe that the restoration of Jews to Israel was a prerequisite for Christ's return to Earth. At the same time, the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews reflected new trends emerging in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War. Americans were trying to figure out how to construct policies, institutions, and practices to accommodate the variety of religious life in the United States, given that they fundamentally embraced civil and religious liberty, yet few were interested in compromising their own beliefs.4Many historians have worked to make sense of Americans' conflicted embrace of religious freedom. They have revealed that while Americans viewed religious freedom as a fundamental right, many also tended to believe that in order for the republic to flourish, coercive measures were necessary to cultivate a virtuous society. …

Writing at the end of World War II, the veteran British aid worker Francesca Wilson, whose long career on behalf of the Quakers had already spanned three decades, foresaw a momentous change in the course of the humanitarian movement. Although religious organizations remained key actors in the delivery of emergency help to millions of war refugees in Europe, she believed that a "non-proselytising impulse" was now ushering humanitarianism into a distinctively secular phase.1 Wilson took notice of this transformation as an employee of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in occupied Germany: the gospel spread by the mammoth agency created in Atlantic City in November 1943 to assist European civilians dislocated by the war was that of "rehabilitation," a concept closer to New Deal welfare philosophy than traditional Christian charity. Indeed, as recent scholarship has shown, humanitarianism took a secular turn during World War II and its immediate aftermath. "Increasingly planning-minded and influenced by states and their interests," the new humanitarianism born out of the war blurred many of the traditional differences separating confessional and secular aid agencies.2 To be sure, large religious relief organizations continued to fulfill vital responsibilities in postwar Germany. A survey conducted in 1953 revealed that 90 percent of the assistance provided to refugees in the Federal Republic emanated from Catholic and Protestant aid agencies.3 Moreover, the onset of the Cold War prompted new American evangelical organizations such as World Vision, founded in 1950 to help displaced Korean children, to enter the fray of humanitarianism in order to contain the antireligious threat posed by communism worldwide. Yet even when they aligned themselves with American Cold War strategy, faith-based aid agencies followed a path identical to that of their secular counterparts: extending their activities beyond the realm of medical or material relief, both types turned to "development," the leitmotif of Western foreign aid in the Third World from the 1950s to the 1970s.4Covering the three decades following the end of World War II, this secularization narrative eludes a unique Christian moment in the trajectory of the humanitarian movement after 1945. Like the so-called human rights revolution of the late 1940s, postwar humanitarianism was also greatly influenced by Christian humanist thought and activism.5 The World Council of Churches (WCC), the large ecumenical and overwhelmingly Protestant umbrella organization created in August 1948, is a case in point. Regrouping 147 non-Roman Christian churches around the world at the time of its birth, the WCC unified various Protestant denominations across the globe, even if North American and European affiliates vastly outnumbered others. Described as the "most comprehensive fellowship of churches that has yet to be seen," its founding conference, held in Amsterdam between late August and early September 1948, brought together 351 participants from 44 different countries.6 Capping several decades of efforts toward Christian unity, the WCC embodied a new activist Christianity claiming a stake in the shaping of the postwar order.Humanitarianism ranked particularly high in the list of Protestant ecumenical concerns. The WCC was formed as a fellowship of churches, but its most immediate preoccupation was to respond to humanitarian need. The greatest challenge posed to the Christian conscience, stated the WCC expert on refugee questions Elfan Rees, were the uprooted peoples of Europe and Asia, whose number was dramatically higher in 1948 than at the close of the war.7 Budgetary priority was accordingly given to "work for the material and spiritual welfare of refugees," with the plight of ethnic German expellees especially in mind. This particular sensitivity to the dismal predicament of millions of fellow Christians in the Federal Republic of Germany did not prevent the WCC from urging the international recognition of all "refugees and expelled of whatever nationality," a clear acknowledgment of the global and no longer exclusively European refugee crisis at the end of the 1940s. …

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism . By Robert O. Smith . Foreword by Martin E. Marty . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. xvi + 284 pp. $26.96 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesThe degree of American "affinity with the State of Israel," to use Robert O. Smith's language in his enlightening book, is simply remarkable. As Smith documents, polling results over the last few decades make abundantly clear that American Christians--led by white evangelicals--consistently and overwhelmingly side with Israelis and against Palestinians. Regarding U.S. policies in the Middle East, while polls show that a majority of people throughout the rest of the world--including, as revealed in a 2003 poll, Israelis themselves--believe that American foreign policy is unfairly tilted toward Israel, Americans maintain that U.S. policies are fair and evenhanded. In short, "Americans' consistently positive attitude toward the State of Israel is exceptional" (32).This sets up the question animating More Desired than Our Owne Salvation : why do so many Americans understand support for the state of Israel as a God-mandated responsibility? Smith rightly rejects the simplistic argument that this exceptional affinity is the product of assiduous efforts made by the "Israeli lobby." But Smith also rejects the notion--advanced by many others (including himself in the past)--that it can simply be explained by the popularity in America of John Nelson Darby's 19th-century prophetic schema, dispensational premillennialism. While Darby's emphasis on the prophesied restoration of the Jews to Palestine certainly fuels Christian (particularly evangelical) support for the state of Israel, Smith argues that there are not enough Americans who hold to Darby's schema to explain the level of pro-Israel sentiment. Moreover, Darby adamantly held to the notion that the "church age" had to end with the "rapture" before the prophesied "restoration of the Jews" could take place. Smith puts it succinctly: "the most elegant approach is to recognize that premillennial dispensationalism alone is not a sufficient cause to explain Christian political activity on behalf of Jews or the State of Israel" (160).Instead, Smith convincingly argues that the roots of Christian Zionism in the United States go back much further, to the "English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation" (3). He devotes three detailed and interesting chapters to the development of this interpretation in 17th-century England, along the way noting that this interpretation consistently included "Catholics and Muslims as eternal enemies of God" while simultaneously--in the hands of Puritan interpreters--"constructing Jews . . . as eventual allies against the Turko-Catholic Antichrist" (70). Remarkably, or perhaps not so remarkably, these interpretations were being developed in a country where Jews had been banned for centuries. These Puritans brought the Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation to America, understanding the Jews as a typological referent for their national covenant in the New World. …

This article focuses on the concept of ‘blessing’ Israel that has become common among contemporary American Christian Zionists. After introducing a theological scheme that has dominated discussions of contemporary Christian Zionism, the article critically examines one of the emerging narratives concerning the (re)discovery of Christian Zionists’ Jewish roots and the way the Jewish contribution to Christianity is framed. Following this, the article considers the way Israel and Jews are understood to hold a distinct place in the network of world redemption and how contemporary Israel acts as a marker—what is referred to as a ‘signifier of stability’—that helps Christian Zionists locate God’s ongoing work in the world. Finally, the article discusses how Christian Zionists ‘bless’ Israel in practical ways as a form of submission to God, a reminder of their relationship with God, and a way to locate themselves in the redemptive process.

The article analyses the American ‘Christian’ television talk show, the 700 Club, created by Pat Robertson. It suggests that Robertson has developed a sophisticated form of programming based on the creation of a participatory identity between the viewer, programme hosts and interviewees. This is based on the skilful combination of rhetoric and myths, understood in terms of narrative paradigms, supported by the active involvement of worldwide church-based support networks.

This article argues that discourse used to define and understand Israel by prominent American Christian Zionists is a discourse of national idealisation. Drawing on Durkheim's (2008) notion of symbols as sources of social solidarity, I argue that this imagined Israel reflects conservative social and military values that are shared among Christian Zionists and their supporters – values which many in this broad category see the United States failing to uphold. Following this, I show how one of America's most prominent pastors – John Hagee – and his organisation – Christians United for Israel – have taken on the role of a contemporary Jeremiah, criticising the American government for not adequately supporting Israel. This article concludes by considering how Christian Zionists are calling America to renew and align itself with God by ‘blessing’ Israel, and acting like Israel.

During the last thirty years, the Evangelical relationship with the State of Israel has drawn much academic and popular attention, particularly from historical, theological, and political perspectives. This dissertation engages with this literature but also complements it with an ethnographic account of the discursive practices of Evangelical Zionists through which, it is suggested, much of the religious significance of the contemporary state is being produced. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Evangelical volunteer workers in Jerusalem, focusing on their stories about themselves, the land, and the biblical text. The volunteers are located at three Christian ministries in Jerusalem – the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), theBridges for Peace (BFP), and the Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) – all of which consider their work in Israel a natural consequence of biblical promises to Israel and their responsibility as Christians to “bless the Jewish people”. After introducing the theoretical and socio-cultural context in which this study is located, Chapter Three analyses the volunteers’ “coming-to-Israel” stories and the ways in which agency and selftransformation are understood therein. The analysis suggests that the ritual-like performance of these narratives situates the encounter with Israel as a religious conversion process and Israel as a religious symbol. Chapter Four discusses the volunteers’ narrative production of Israel as a sacred space that has a unique ability to mediate divine presence. It also shows how Israel’s special status is being negotiated both in relation to the encounter with material realities and with ideas about religious fetishism. The final analytical chapter focuses on “biblical literalism” as a textual ideology and on how this ideology becomes manifest in discourses about Bible prophecy and the “Hebraic roots of Christian faith”. It is suggested that these two discursive domains are deeply embedded in contestations about the authenticity of Evangelical religious forms: while the former often serves as empirical evidence for the truth of the biblical scripture, the latter constructs a historical narrative within which Evangelical Zionism is positioned as a rediscovery of authentic biblical faith. Ultimately, this study suggests that the beliefs and practices of Evangelical Christians engaged with Israel not only represent a recalibration of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism and between faith and politicsthemselves, but also a more fundamental reordering of the ways in which God is understood to relate to the world. While deeply embedded in Evangelical narrative traditions, the ideational and physical encounter with Israel also requires a renegotiation of Evangelical religion. This process involves questions of biblical reading practices and the meanings of signs and their social functions, and it invites Evangelical Zionists to negotiate the proper location of human and divine agency as well as the relationship between materiality and divine presence. For the volunteers the “realization of Israel’s spiritual significance” is a highly transformative experience, but rather than being a definite rupture from the past it is part of a broader process of increasingreligious commitment.

This article seeks to understand what it means when, in 2006, a noted British pastor and Bible teacher stood up in front of 8000 evangelical Zionists from all over the world at the convention centre in Jerusalem and addressed the audience with the following counter-intuitive words: ‘Thank you Israel, for supporting America!’ Evangelical Christianity has complex relations and ambivalent relations to the nation state and globalisation. Supernaturally speaking, Israel is the only nation state in the world that matters. Contemporary Israel becomes a kind of litmus test, both for manifesting the truth of the word of God and for manifesting the individual's or the nation's commitment to realising God's will in this world. For Christian Zionism, this transnational flow of resources into and out of Israel ultimately redeem locality, offering ‘the nations’ a place in the story, and the opportunity to serve as vehicles for God's will.

A great deal of work on contemporary Christian Zionism focuses on the apocalyptic eschatology of premillennial dispensationalism, critiquing it from an idealistic perspective that posits a direct line of causality from "belief" to action. Such critiques frequently assert that since Christian Zionists are biblical literalists, they read apocalyptic texts such as Revelation and Ezekiel with the goal of making the events they find predicted in these books come about in the world. This article takes a different approach. Although many Christian Zionists can be considered "literalists," they read themselves into the text typologically. Special attention is paid to the book of Esther which is shown not to function primarily in a prophetic or apocalyptic role, but as a tool to help Christian Zionists understand political action, construct identity, and strengthen faith.

For all their ostensible difference and separateness, Judaism and Christianity have a long history of mutual engagement and profound entanglement. I take Daniel Boyarin's assertion that ‘…the borders between Christianity and Judaism are as constructed and imposed, as artificial and political as any of the borders of the earth’ (2004, 1) as my starting point. But what Boyarin sees as an ongoing process of differentiation between Judaism and Christianity and distinct identity-building in late antiquity, I look for still today in Christian Zionism. The busy border crossing continues to separate people and ideas at the same time as it serves as the meeting place between them, the uncomfortable place where Judaism and Christianity rub up against each other. This paper examines some constructions of the Jewish–Christian border by way of two case studies of prominent religious leaders, each firmly at home in their respective communities, Jewish and Christian, who ventured out to the borderland of Christian Zioni...

In recent years there has been considerable controversy over the relationship between the United States and Israel. Neoconservatives and Christian Zionists have been vociferous in support of the relationship, while John Mearsheimer and other critics have questioned what America gains from such an alliance. While the G. W. Bush administration has often been portrayed as uncritically favouring Israel, it was the subject of criticism on the issue from within the American Right. Now it is the Obama administration which is drawing fire for its stance on Israel.

This article focuses on the ‘theo-political’ core of US Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism. The political militancy characterizing two Millenarian/Messianic movements such as Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism constitutes a still under-researched and under-theorized aspect that, at present, is paramount to address for its immediate and long terms implications in the highly sensitive and volatile Israeli-Palestinian issue, in the US and Israeli domestic domain, and in the wider international community. Although processes of the ‘sacralisation of politics’ and ‘politicisation of religions’ have already manifested themselves in countless forms over past centuries, Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism are unprecedented phenomena given their unique hybridized nature, political prominence and outreach, mobilizing appeal amongst believers, organizational-communicational skills and degree of institutionalization.

L’imagerie biblique issue du courant messianique protestant joue un rôle dans la formation des attitudes américaines envers la Palestine depuis le XIXe siècle. Cependant, depuis 1967, la présence du protestantisme conservateur en Terre Sainte s’est renforcée considérablement, et la foi évangélique millénariste a joué un rôle décisif dans la formulation d’une prise de position politique de cette partie de la chrétienté américaine vis-à-vis du conflit arabo-israélien et vis-à-vis du Moyen-Orient en général. C’est surtout depuis la fin de la Guerre froide que le courant chrétien millénariste et pro-israélien est devenu l’un des éléments les plus importants dans la formulation de la politique américaine au Moyen-Orient.

Underneath the beautiful Sea of Galilee lies a hidden fault-line that runs down from Mount Hermon through the Jordan Valley to the Red Sea, the Arabian peninsula and on to the heart of East Africa. Over thousands of years, earthquakes along this fault-line have devastated countless civilizations.Today there is a human fault-line running through the same land — a fault-line that is largely hidden from view until it erupts in violence. The cause of these volcanic eruptions has to do with the pressure of two peoples, like two tectonic plates, trying to occupy the same land — one the military occupier, the other the occupied. The media present this as a clash between two cultures, Palestinian and Israeli or Oriental and Western. As I hope to show, the convictions of Christian Zionists have made a significant contribution to the Israeli—Palestinian conflict.

This review expresses great concern with so-called Christian Zionism. The author explains the confusing push-pull relation of Pentecostalism to Christian Zionism's underlying apocalyptic eschatology, premillennial dispensationalism. He agrees with the thrust of Smith's discussion from a Lutheran perspective of the complex historical, theological, and political dynamics involved in Christian Zionism's formation and development, but accents distinctions between a generally harmless conventional form and a particularly virile fundamentalist form that can be aggressive and possibly even dangerous. Of special concern is articulation of an erudite political ethic informed by the theology of a Christian pneumatic apocalyptic eschatology, faithful to the incoming reign of God taking seriously predictive prophecy. In conversation with Smith, this appreciative response suggests a possible paradigm for positive involvement in political and social aspects of the present world congruent with apocalyptic hope expressed in premillennialist terms.