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Christian Zionism has been a core belief of millions of Americans since the late nineteenth century. Its political influence, however, dates from the late 1970s, when the television evangelist the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the conservative Christian campaigning organisation, the Moral Majority.1 While its main purpose was domestic – to combat liberalism and permissiveness within America itself – the Moral Majority was also passionately Zionist, supporting the Israeli right wing’s claim to a Greater Israel within its biblical boundaries. The roots of this conviction, central to the Moral Majority and to its successor organisations, lie in a particular interpretation of the Bible. In the Old Testament there are references to the Chosen People being returned to the Holy Land and the coming of the Messiah, but in the New Testament it is the Book of Revelation that forms the basis of Christian Zionist belief. This contains the prophecy that the Millennium and the Second Coming will happen when the Jews are not merely restored to the Holy Land but converted to Christianity and accept Christ as their Messiah. In other words, the Jews, not known for their enthusiasm for conversion, have literally to see the light, to accept a Second Coming to make up for their rejection of the first one. From 1977, an alliance between the American religious right and the Israeli nationalist right began to form and it has endured to the present day.2 On xiv
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the face of it, it may seem bizarre that Israeli Jews should accept the friendship of those whose greatest hope is their conversion to Christianity. Yet the link has proved too important to both sides for them to let even this obstacle stand in its way. For the American religious right, a Jewish state in the biblical Holy Land, even if it has not yet become Christian, is a major step along the path set out in the Book of Revelation. For the Israeli right, the support of a grouping with such influence and voting power across the USA is far too useful to be sacrificed for a point of theology. The unspoken compromise appears to be that as long as the US Evangelicals leave the conversion of the Jews to God rather than man, the Israeli right is prepared to overlook its allies’ ultimate goal. There could be no better proof of this unlikely pact than the words of Binyamin Netanyahu to a Washington Evangelical prayer breakfast in 1985: I suggest that for those who know the history of Christian involvement in Zionism, there is nothing either surprising or new about the steadfast support given to Israel by believing Christians all over the world. For what after all is Zionism but the fulfilment of ancient prophecies? . . . And this dream, smouldering through two millennia, first burst forth in the Christian Zionism of the nineteenth century – a movement that paralleled and reinforced modern Jewish Zionism . . . Thus it was the impact of Christian Zionism on Western statesmen that helped modern Jewish Zionism achieve the rebirth of Israel.3 xv

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Christian Zionism has been a core belief of millions of Americans since the late nineteenth century. Its political influence, however, dates from the late 1970s, when the television evangelist the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the conservative Christian campaigning organisation, the Moral Majority.1 While its main purpose was domestic – to combat liberalism and permissiveness within America itself – the Moral Majority was also passionately Zionist, supporting the Israeli right wing’s claim to a Greater Israel within its biblical boundaries. The roots of this conviction, central to the Moral Majority and to its successor organisations, lie in a particular interpretation of the Bible. In the Old Testament there are references to the Chosen People being returned to the Holy Land and the coming of the Messiah, but in the New Testament it is the Book of Revelation that forms the basis of Christian Zionist belief. This contains the prophecy that the Millennium and the Second Coming will happen when the Jews are not merely restored to the Holy Land but converted to Christianity and accept Christ as their Messiah. In other words, the Jews, not known for their enthusiasm for conversion, have literally to see the light, to accept a Second Coming to make up for their rejection of the first one.

From 1977, an alliance between the American religious right and the Israeli nationalist right began to form and it has endured to the present day.2 On xiv

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