According to Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist and lawyer, “Religious Fanaticism Is a Huge Factor in Americans’ Support for Israel.” This is a serious accusation. Is it true?
Greenwald was distressed at the findings of a recent Bloomberg Politics poll which indicated that, “Almost half of all Americans want to support Israel even if its interests diverge from the interests of their own country. Only a minority of Americans (47 percent) say that their country should pursue their own interests over supporting Israel’s when the two choices collide” (his emphasis).
This caused Greenwald to wonder “what accounts for this bizarre aspect of American public opinion. The answer,” he writes, “should make everyone quite uncomfortable: it’s religious fanaticism.”
Unfortunately, Greenwald never defines what he means by religious fanaticism, although he clearly compares born-again, Christian beliefs to those of radical Muslims, stating, “The U.S. media loves to mock adversary nations, especially Muslim ones, for being driven by religious extremism, but that is undeniably a major factor, arguably the most significant one, in explaining fervent support for Israel among the American populace.”
Yes, he explains, “the primary reason evangelical Christians in the U.S. are so devoted to Israel is simple: Their radical religious dogma teaches them that God demands this.”
To back this claim, he cites Pat Robertson, who once said, “We believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God.”
This is religious fanaticism? This is comparable to Islamic extremism?
Since when has it been fanatical to believe that, according to the Scriptures, the land of Israel remains a promised land for the Jewish people? Since when has it been extremist to believe that the God who scattered the Jewish people worldwide and who preserved the Jewish people in the midst of intense suffering is the same God who brought them back to the land?
Greenwald also makes reference to “the wildly popular ‘dispensationalist’ sect,” by which he means evangelical Christians who believe in an imminent (“pre-tribulation”) return of Jesus to rapture the Church and who believe that events in the Middle East tie in with end-time prophecy.
But there are plenty of Christians who are not dispensational who stand with Israel, while to refer to this subset of evangelicals as “sect” is to further disparage.
Apparently for Greenwald, to believe that Israel should retain control over its ancient holy sites, to believe that Jerusalem should not be divided and to believe that it is not simply political happenstance that led to the re-establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 is to be guilty of religious fanaticism.
As he stated so clearly, “That is the ugly religious extremism about Israel heard over and over in America’s largest evangelical churches.”
Greenwald referenced a 2013 article by evangelical Robert Nicholson in which he stated, “Evangelicals believe that God chose the biblical people of Israel as His vehicle for world redemption, an earthly agent through whom He would accomplish his grand plan for history.”
Exactly. This is a great theme through the entire Bible, from Old Testament to New. But for Greenwald, it is yet another example of what he calls this “extremist religious dogma about God’s will.”
What this apparently translates out to is that if you believe that literal promises and statements in the Bible are to be taken literally, you are an extremist and fanatic. If you believe that, in any tangible way, the Jews are God’s chosen people (which, for the record, has been quite a burden to carry through the centuries, often resulting in judgment and discipline and hardship), you are an extremist and fanatic.
Aside from this radically secularist view of Scripture and faith, there’s something else that Greenwald seems to underestimate.
The older generation is quite aware of the horrors of the Holocaust, while the younger generation continues to watch the rising tide of Islamic anti-Semitism. And it’s all too clear that Israel stands out in many ways in the midst of the surrounding Muslim nations.
Why shouldn’t America stand with Israel? Why shouldn’t the Jewish people have their own homeland? Could this be why 26 percent of Americans with no religious affiliation were willing to back to Israel regardless of U.S. interests? (This according to the Bloomberg poll.)
Rather than focus on why religious Christians feel so strongly about standing with Israel, perhaps the better question would be, “Why do even a significant minority of non-religious Americans feel the same way?”
To be sure, I am one of those who believes that God will bless America for standing with Israel and that the modern state of Israel is an ongoing fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
I simply reject the “religious fanaticism” caricature, finding it to be inflammatory, inaccurate and unhelpful.
That being said, if Mr. Greenwald wants to label me and my kind as religious extremists and fanatics (although I am not a dispensationalist), that won’t offend me in the least. I’ve been called far worse.
More importantly, we’re simply believing what is true.
