Christian Zionism

The Christian Sionisme is the name given to the belief of a certain number of Christians, in particular of the Protesting S Fondamentaliste S, that the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 is in agreement with the biblical Prophétie S , and thus prepares the return of Jesus on Earth like Christ triumphing over the Apocalypse.

This belief is distinguished from the Jewish Sionisme by its anchoring in a religious and nonpolitical vision of the world. The Christian Zionists are persuaded that the return of Jesus will cause the Conversion Jews. This Zionism Marie thus paradoxically with a certain form of Antijudaïsme.

This belief is also distinguished from the traditional and not-Messianic support for the Zionism of many Christians not having will to convert the Jews in the long term. It acts for them of a moral and political, and nonevangelic engagement.

The term “Zionism Christian” thus gathers a whole of groups (generally fundamentalist) believer that the judaisation of historical Palestine (Israel + Palestinian territories) is a divine obligation which will bring back Jesus on ground, will make definitively him to it Christ or Messie and will ensure the triumph of Christianity at the time of the Apocalypse.

Biblical bases

The roots of the Christian Zionism are in several books of the Bible, as private individuals in the apocalyptic visions of the Livre of Daniel, and of the Livre of Ézéchiel, like in the Apocalypse of the New Testament. The only spiritual and poetic visions for the majority of the believers are interpreted by these Christian Zionists actually geopolitical.

Like all the Protestants, these fundamentalist attaches a great importance to the Old Testament but make a literalistic reading of it. They do not admit the historical criticism of the texts which they read, texts that they interpret from the Messianic and apocalyptic point of view. For them, the historical events are with being read according to a scenario which leads at the end of times and to the redemption, on which majority current protesting does not insist.

Historical developments

The Christian Zionism appears at the XVIIe century within the puritan movement. Oliver Cromwell is the first Head of State to claim the creation of the State of Israel. It will be followed by a long line of English politicians who Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (intervention with the conference of Berlin) with the Prime Minister David Lloyd George (Déclaration Balfour) will make this creation an objective of the British Crown. This design is taken again in the United States by the presidents Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman.

In the evangelic and fundamentalist mediums of English and American Protestantism, develops little by little the idea that to hasten the return of Jesus on Earth, and thus the last Judgment, it is necessary that certain numbers of acts announced in the Writings are achieved. Among them, the gathering for their conversion of all Jews into Holy Land, and particularly with Jerusalem.

For a certain number of them, the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948 is the first act of the driving process to the Fin of Times. This belief has quite concrete implications, since it is the principal spring of the support American Christian line for Israel and more still for the Israeli Colonies in the occupied territories after the war of 1967.

According to Albert de Pury, professor with the faculty of theology of the university of Geneva. “As of the XIXe century, they engage, of the years before the Jewish Zionists, for the creation of a State of Israel in Palestine. They are certainly moved by the sufferings by the Jewish people, protest against the Christian Antijudaïsme, but especially see in this future State the reinstauration of old Israel announced by biblical prophecies. A British politician as Lord Balfour (his Declaration of 1917 envisages the establishment of a Jewish national hearth in Palestine) belonged to this Protestant current”. “These movements do not have any idea of what are the churches of the East. One can even speak about contempt. That creates tensions within the Protestantism of which the majority current engages for creation of a Palestinian State and a peace fair in the Middle East. These Messianic militants do not have any notion of the real policy issues on the ground. For them, only their biblical vision counts which leads them to support the Israeli positions more the extremists”.

Thus, the decision of the government of Ariel Sharon to withdraw Gaza Strip in 2005 was very badly perceived by these mediums, which see the destruction of a project there having to allow the return of Jesus-Christ. One of the American religious line pastors known (Pat Robertson) thus implied the January 6th 2006 in its emission The 700 Club on Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) that the cerebral vascular accident of Ariel Sharon was a divine revenge against the withdrawal on Gaza: “God tests hostility with regard to those which divide Its ground And with each Prime Minister of Israel which decides to cut out it and to give up it, God known as: " Not, this is Mien". Ariel Sharon divided the ground of God”. Declaration which also seems to interpret the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin like a divine punishment.

This attitude explains why the Christian Zionists are with the the United States (country of origin of the movement with England) hostile with any American intervention in favor of israélo-Palestinian negotiations. They influence in this direction certain deputies or republican senators . The attitude enough “abstentionnist” of the republican administration at the time of the the Second Intifada their sometimes was partially allotted.

Relations between Christians Jewish Zionists and Zionists

Although the objective of the “Christian Zionists” is not the same one as that of the Jews Zionists (since it in the long term implies the conversion of the latter), this current of thought represents an enthusiastic support for the most radical Zionists religious for the foundation of the “Grand Israel” (Israel in its biblical borders, including the Palestinian territories, even beyond).

At the end of the 20th century, among certain Christian Zionists (but not majority) the theology of the “double alliance appears”: God would have concluded the Old Testament with the Jews and New Testament with the Christians, so that all and sundry would be saved at the end of times without the Jews having to convert with Christianity.

Position of other Christian Churches

The Catholic church, the orthodoxe Church, the episcopal Church, and the evangelic Church Lutheran, by the voice of their local managers, published on August 22nd, 2006 an oecumenical document, the “Declaration of Jerusalem on the Christian Zionism” rejecting these doctrines: “The Christian Zionism is a modern theological political movement which adopts the ideological positions most extreme of the Zionism, thus harming the establishment of a peace fair between Palestine and Israel. In its extreme form, it stresses apocalyptic events leading at the end of the history rather than to lived current of the love of Christ and justice”.

See too