We Need a New Defense of Christian Zionism

Mark Tooley

Sunday, July 26, 2026

 

Christian Zionism in America is becoming an exhausted force of mostly older white people on one side of the political spectrum relying on 50-year-old arguments that no longer have wide traction.

 

But given what is replacing it, we will miss it when it is gone.

 

Twentieth-century Christian Zionism, whatever its faults, was an accessible framework for Christian friendship with Israel and with Jews. It was a shelter against antisemitism, which is not just hateful in itself, but is poisonous to society. With this form of Christian Zionism receding, ugly spirits are emerging that are hostile both to the nation of Israel and to Jews in general.  

 

America is not ready for the consequences.  

 

Though Christian Zionism in its various forms dates back centuries, the modern movement mostly emerged from the Dispensationalism popularized by Hal Lindsey’s 1970 book, The Late Great Planet Earth. Then in the 1970s and ’80s came evangelical television (especially Pat Robertson’s 700 Club), the religious right’s rise with the Moral Majority, the tacit embrace by leaders like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the Left Behind literature of the 1990s and early 2000s, the 2006 creation of Christians United for Israel, and the displacement of Mainline Protestantism with generic evangelicalism.

 

This strand of Christian Zionism asserts that modern Israel fulfills biblical prophecy, that the Jewish state is central in the End Times, and that God will bless Israel’s friends while cursing its enemies. It was populist, patriotic, and paradoxically optimistic despite its doomsday prophecies. Its chief proponents were confident religious entrepreneurs, like Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who lived out the American dream, and regular people, not just theologians, could readily understand it.

 

Everything that fueled contemporary Christian Zionism is now receding: Seminaries no longer teach Dispensationalism. And few Christians under age 50 believe in it. The Left Behind literature has run its course. There are no Robertsons (who died in 2023) or John Hagees with a national platform. Christian institutions have lost influence to online influencers.

 

Catholics have strong documents about Christian relations with Jews, such as 1965’s Nostra Aetate, which denounced antisemitism and affirmed the common “patrimony” of Jews and Christians. But sadly these documents are not widely accessed by Catholics and do not interest evangelicals. Post-Dispensationalist evangelicals are more non-interventionist, more suspicious of overseas commitments, more open to at least mild conspiracy theories with anti-Jewish themes. They agree with John Quincy Adams about not searching for “monsters” abroad to destroy.  

 

Popular Christian influencers are skeptical of religious neutrality and universal human rights. For example, religious entrepreneur Doug Wilson, the godfather of Christian nationalism whose denomination includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wants a Christian confessional state and rejects voting rights for married women. His progeny, such as Stephen Wolfe, who wrote A Case for Christian Nationalism, and James Baird, who more recently wrote King of Kings: A Reformed Guide to Christian Government, want the state to punish blasphemy and institute religious tests for public office. Others somewhat more benignly want to root the United States in a Christian consciousness that would effectively consign Jews and other religious minorities to their own separate communities. These new voices are negative toward the American creed. They want an American identity rooted at least tacitly in religion, ethnicity, ancestry, and place.

 

Postliberal Catholics commonly deride Christian Zionism as an evangelical “heresy.” Candace Owens and Carrie Prejean have been among the most vociferous on this point. Postliberal Protestants and evangelicals reject the eschatology behind 20^th-century Christian Zionism and see no providential role for Jews except possibly as targets for conversion.

 

The post-World War II taboo against antisemitism is disappearing. Young men, including evangelicals, now openly speak against Jews as “too powerful.” They resent Israel, an attitude exacerbated by the Iran war. These views may originate with online influencers like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, or Nick Fuentes. But they have spread and become so omnipresent that many young men absorb them through a stream of 30-second social media reels.

 

Pastors have told me of young Christian men speaking cavalierly against Jews, and those pastors respond with arguments that no longer have resonance. And 20^th-century Christian Zionism for most young people is as archaic as 1920s Prohibition. Why should they support Israel? Or why even should they not resent Jews?   

 

Most of the antisemitism now germinating is not a white-hot hatred but a soft, banal prejudice that sees Jews as “others.” It’s not Nazi or pro-Hezbollah, but it is still dangerous.

 

What to do?

 

There are no simple answers, of course, but we should start by admitting this reality. Late 20^th-century Christian Zionism cannot rebut the strong trends in America against Israel and toward antisemitism. Christian Zionism still includes millions of politically influential and wealthy older people, with the veneer of long-term vitality. But it’s an aging, non-replicating demographic, operating on outdated theological and political premises.

 

Nearly all major Christian institutions disdain antisemitism, even if they are not specifically pro-Israel. But these institutions are losing influence even among their own constituents. Christianity has become individualized, self-curating, and online. The Christian online voices against antisemitism are mostly staid and lack traction with the groups becoming more antisemitic. Who now in Christianity is crafting new theological perspectives to rebut animus against Israel and the Jewish people? Almost nobody.

 

What’s needed is a new online ecosystem that could aim to reach a wide audience with a simple message. But it must be fed by deeper theological and political thought. In 2015 my organization hosted theologians who published The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land, which avoided Dispensationalist theology and found roots in older Christian teaching.

 

There is also the Christian Realist version of Zionism, advocated by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King Jr. They saw Israel and social justice for Jews as a matter of biblical justice and warned that the realities of human sin meant Jews would always face threats, against which Christians must be vigilant.

 

And although now unfashionable, Christian teaching about human dignity and universal human rights, premised in the Imago Dei that every human bears, rejects othering Jews or any minority group. Christians must explain and defend this stance against all the headwinds, creatively and convictionally.

 

Late 20^th-century Christian Zionism—after 50 years of shaping American politics and, by extension, the world—is now concluding. A new form of Christian Zionism or some equivalent will have to be crafted and propagated successfully to replace it. Otherwise, the dark forces that are now faint will become bolder and dominant. This work may take years, if not decades, but it needs to start now, before it is too late.