Credit Andy Singer 2024
why some Christians are obsessed with Israel
I’d say that Zionism is a Christian idea, but that would be false. It’s a “western” idea that orginated among English upper-class Christians that was utterly antisemitic - the idea that Jewish people will always be an “other” in the white, oops, I meant to say “western,” world and essentially “must go back where they came from.”
Right-wing Jewish people picked up this idea from there. Zionism has never been an exclusively “Jewish” thing and it has always been fundamentally antisemitic - that’s why you can even see neo-nazis singing Israel’s praises.
That’s very interesting - I never thought of it as being anti-semetic, but it makes a bit of sense. As a Christian and from a theological standpoint, I don’t see how a bunch of people descended from the ones who rejected Jesus forming a new country which they call “Israel” should be interpreted as being the same as the Biblical Israel. For all they care, they see us as heretics. Why should we see them as different from the likes of Muslims, cultural (but not) christians, atheists, etc. (Also before you think I’m saying we should hate these groups, I’m not, I actually kind of mean the opposite). I believe the temple’s destruction in AD 70 and the construction of the Dome on the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque 600 year’s later is an intentional thing about the old covenant being gone. I just don’t see why “christian zionism” is even a thing when the Bible is interpreted as a whole.