A small but growing number of American evangelical Christians have criticized their movements’ pro-Israel stance, and there is even a George-Soros-funded organization that supports them. Mark Tooley gives the background and points the way forward:
A new generation of evangelical leaders is more reluctant to wade into the [Israeli-Palestinian] controversy. Some old religious-Right figures were believers in dispensationalism, a 19th-century movement . . . stressing various end-times events, including the restoration of Israel, before Christ’s return. . . . [M]illions of sincere Christians adhere to some version of [dispensationalism]. Critics of Christian Zionism often critique dispensationalism as apocalyptic and imply it is the main force for evangelical support for Israel. They also claim that dispensationalism is on the decline, with little pull among young evangelicals.
But most pro-Israel Christians, including evangelicals, have never been full-throttle dispensationalists. They instead focus on sympathy for world Jewry after the Holocaust, the ongoing threat of anti-Semitism, nasty anti-Israel regimes like theocratic Iran, Israel’s thriving democracy, Israel’s alliance with America, and more recently, Israel as an oasis of protection for Middle East Christians, under siege nearly everywhere else.
Many evangelicals and other Christians also mystically believe . . . in an ongoing organic, familial tie between Christianity and Judaism, of which the land of Israel is a not insignificant part. . . .
Neither providence nor the Bible is neutral between a people striving to survive [and those] many others who hope for their elimination. Effectively explaining why requires both good political and theological judgment.
Read more on Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-is-the-future-of-christian-support-for-israel/article/2563089