Abstract
The introduction discusses issues surrounding the study of Christian Zionism and national identity in the historical context. It begins by questioning the historiography of “elect nationhood”, which suggests a likely clash between the “elect” nation and ethnic Jews. Instead, it suggests a model of “chosen” nationhood in which the nation is defined in relation to their treatment of Israel. This portrays the Jew as a positive “other”. This is analysed through a modified version of Bauman’s concept of allosemitism. It suggests an eschatological “point of encounter” in which self and other momentarily cross paths. The introduction ends by suggesting a five-point framework for understanding Christian Zionism and “chosen” national identity.
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- 1.
William Koenig, Eye to Eye: Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel (Alexandria: About Him Publishing, 2004), pp. 118–120. On Koenig see Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 251–255.
- 2.
Edward Nicholas, An Apology for the Honorable Nation of the Jews, and all the Sons of Israel (London, 1648), p. 5.
- 3.
Thomas Collier, A Brief Answer to Some Objections…Against the Coming in and Inhabiting of the Jews (London, 1656), sig. A2r.
- 4.
For an analysis of the development of this idea, and its roots in Augustine, see Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkley: University of California Press, 1999). For a recent overview see Gerald R. McDermott, “Supersessionism: Getting the Big Story Wrong”, in Gerald R. McDermott (ed.), The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land (Dowers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016), pp. 33–44. Supersessionism is sometimes described as “replacement theology”. This is inaccurate—the church does not replace Israel, but has always been the true Israel by faith (cf. Rom. 9:6). The difference rests in the way the church is used (as a spiritual, rather than a national body) as God’s prime instrument, and the access now available to gentiles. Supersessionists would therefore argue that their theology promotes continuity: the prophets and patriarchs are therefore as much a part of the church as the contemporary believer.
- 5.
William Haller, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963), p. 53. For a full examination of this theme see Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples (Oxford: OUP, 2003).
- 6.
Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: CUP, 1997).
- 7.
Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Boston: Belknap, 1956); Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), pp. 65–145. For a recent (nuanced) restatement see Philip Gorski, American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 37–59.
- 8.
Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 3–87; Haller, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Smith questions the centrality of Protestantism to the idea of English election, suggesting that it was present in Anglo-Saxon times (Chosen Peoples, p. 117).
- 9.
Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), pp. 163–172.
- 10.
Gitlin and Leibovitz, Chosen Peoples, p. 67.
- 11.
James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 44.
- 12.
Achsah Guibbory, Christian Identity, Jews and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: OUP, 2010), p. 90.
- 13.
Clifford Longley, Chosen People: The Big Idea that Shapes England and America (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000), p. 101.
- 14.
Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: OUP, 1999), p. 214. The suggestion that election is “a reward” here represents a misunderstanding of the concept. Election depended on the initiative of God whose choice of people came prior to any action. Smith is correct to presume that election necessitated action (as he details at length in later work), but election should never be seen as a “reward”.
- 15.
Longley, Chosen People, pp. 35–38.
- 16.
Guibbory, Christian Identity, pp. 21–55; 159–185.
- 17.
Claire Jowitt, “‘Inward’ and ‘Outward’ Jews: Margaret Fell, Circumcision and Women’s Preaching”, in Tony Kushner and Nadia Valman (eds), Philosemitism, Antisemitism and ‘the Jews’: Perspectives from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 155–176.
- 18.
Bruce Cauthen, “Covenant and Continuity: Ethno-Symbolism and the Myth of Divine Election”, Nations and Nationalism 10:1/2 (2004), p. 30.
- 19.
Smith, Chosen Peoples, pp. 50–64.
- 20.
Smith, Chosen Peoples, pp. 95–130.
- 21.
David Loades, “The Origins of English Protestant Nationalism”, in Stewart Mews (ed.), Religion and National Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), p. 304.
- 22.
Gitlin and Leibovitz, Chosen Peoples, pp. 190–192.
- 23.
Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), pp. 8–9.
- 24.
Richard W. Cogley, “The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Restoration of Israel in the ‘Judeo-Centric’ Strand of Puritan Millennialism”, Church History 72:2 (2003), pp. 304–332. Cogley defines certain forms of apocalyptic thinking as Judeo-centric “because [they] located the start of the millennium in Jerusalem and because [they] assigned the role of inaugurating the kingdom to the converted posterity of Jacob” (p. 304). See also Richard W. Cogley, “‘The Most Vile and Barbarous Nation of All The World’: Giles Fletcher the Elder’s The Tartars Or, Ten Tribes (ca. 1610)”, Renaissance Quarterly 58:3 (2005), pp. 785–791.
- 25.
Robert O. Smith uses the term to refer to a strengthening belief in a general conversion of the Jews, which sometimes included involvement at their conversion in the fall of Islam. At times, this leads him to label general conversionist works, such as John Bale’s Image of Both Churches and John Foxe’s 1578 sermon at the baptism of a Jew, as Judeo-centric. This risks ignoring the prevalence of the idea of conversion in medieval works, and of diluting what is unique in Judeo-centrism. See Smith, More Desired Than Our Own Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (Oxford: OUP, 2013), pp. 54–68.
- 26.
Cohen, Living Letters, pp. 391–394. See Chap. 2 for a discussion of this form of thought, and its subsequent development in England.
- 27.
Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (Oxford: OUP, 2009), pp. 1–3.
- 28.
As Stephen Spector has pointed out, definitions of Christian Zionism can over-emphasise the recent influence of American fundamentalism (Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, pp. 2–3). For example, Carlo Aldrovandi defines it as “a modern millenarian movement stemming from American Conservative Evangelicalism” (Carlo Aldrovandi, Apocalyptic Movements in Contemporary Politics: Christian and Jewish Zionism [Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014], p. 129). Given the controversial nature of studies of Zionism, definitions are often also politicised. For example Paul Wilkinson’s definition of a “true” Christian Zionist as one who must accept nine points including a pretribulation rapture, the restoration of the Jerusalem temple, and a seven-year tribulation period. (Paul Wilkinson, For Zion’s Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby [Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007], pp.13–14). This conflates Christian Zionism with Darbyite dispensationalism, which represents an important strand, but is far from its only manifestation.
- 29.
Smith, More Desired; Gerald R. McDermott, “Introduction: What is the New Christian Zionism?”, in McDermott (ed.), The New Christian Zionism, p. 12.
- 30.
Stephen Sizer has helpfully split Christian Zionism into four distinct strands: covenantal premillennialism, messianic dispensationalism, apocalyptic dispensationalism, and political dispensationalism. While this taxonomy can be questioned (for example, over its exclusion of liberal Christian Zionists who supported Israel in the 1950s and 60s due to their concern for prophetic justice), it usefully highlights the variety of theological justifications for Christian Zionism. See Stephen Sizer, Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon? (Leicester: IVP, 2005), pp. 254–257.
- 31.
Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad.
- 32.
Andrew R. Murphy, Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11 (Oxford: OUP, 2009), pp. 7–43.
- 33.
Bercovitch recognised that anxiety was a necessary part of the jeremiad, but argued that the aim of preachers was to “provide the sense of insecurity that would ensure [their vision’s] outcome” (Bercovitch, American Jeremiad, p. 23). Preachers therefore sought to generate anxiety for rhetorical effect and to influence behaviour, rather than a genuine fear of loss of status or possible failure of New England’s mission.
- 34.
Murphy, Prodigal Nation, pp. 34–37. For examples of this anxiety see, W.H. Oliver Prophets and Millennialists: The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England from the 1790s to the 1840s (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1978), pp. 44–63; 108–110.
- 35.
See, for example, Jewish Intelligence 7:6 (1841), p. 135. The comparison to Esther retains its power. See Sean Durbin, “Walking in the Mantle of Esther: ‘Political’ Action as ‘Religious’ Practice”, in Göran Gunner and Robert O. Smith (eds), Comprehending Christian Zionism: Perspectives in Comparison (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), pp. 85–124.
- 36.
Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States 1607–1876 (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), p. 8.
- 37.
Michael P. Winship, Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 29–52.
- 38.
Lewis Way, Palingenesia: The World to Come (London: Martin Bossanage, 1824), p. 139.
- 39.
Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, pp. 6–52.
- 40.
Smith, Chosen Nation, p. 95.
- 41.
As Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp note in their examination of philosemitism, the transhistorical approach does not aim to identify an “eternal essence” of the subject, that can be traced unbroken throughout history, but instead looks towards “various lines of continuity and influence” (Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp, “Introduction: A Brief History of Philosemitism”, in Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp (eds), Philosemitism in History [Cambridge: CUP, 2011], p. 3).
- 42.
William Laud, A Sermon Preached before His Majesty, on Tuesday the Nineteenth of June, at Wansted (London, 1621), p. 24.
- 43.
Samuel Eccles, The Candid Determination of the Jews in Preferring a Thief and a Robber before our Saviour: A Sermon Preached June 10, 1753 (London, 1753), p. 14.
- 44.
Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (London: Cassell, 1886), Vol. III, p. 139.
- 45.
James Renton, The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914–1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 85.
- 46.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism Second Edition (Malden: Blackwell, 2006); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Second Edition (Cambridge, CUP, 2013), pp. 1–19.
- 47.
Greenfeld, Nationalism, pp. 1–23; Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, pp. 35–65; Anthony D. Smith, The Antiquity of Nations (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), pp. 33–61.
- 48.
For example, Hobsbawm: “The basic characteristic of the modern nation and everything connected with it is its modernity” (Nations and Nationalism since 1780, p. 14).
- 49.
Anthony D. Smith, The Cultural Foundations of Nations: Hierarchy, Covenant, and Republic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 12–28.
- 50.
Kumar, Making of English National Identity, pp. 101–114.
- 51.
Following J.G.A. Pocock, “British History—A Plea for a New Subject”, Journal of Modern History 47:4 (1975), pp. 601–621.
- 52.
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, Revised Edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
- 53.
Although this book argues that Judeo-centrists believed that England fulfilled prophecy, and that they developed a strong English identity, this does not deny that they also affirmed an over-arching Britishness in their daily lives. For most people, there was no contradiction in viewing themselves as simultaneously English and British. As Kumar notes when attacking such either/or constructions of identity, “nothing in what we know about ethnic or national identities should compel us to accept such models” (Kumar, Making of English Identity, p. 149).
- 54.
Jewish Intelligence 7:1 (January 1841), p. 34.
- 55.
Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford: OUP, 2006), p. 240.
- 56.
Colley, Britons, pp. xv–xvii.
- 57.
Nancy Stevenson, “The Jews as a Factor in Mission: Scottish and English Motive into Action 1795-c.1840”, Position Paper 81, Currents in World Christianity Project (Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, 1997). A further issue is the role of the Church of Ireland—like the Church of England an established, Anglican church. As this book’s final chapter will show, Irish Anglicans felt that they would also play a key part in the restoration of the Jews.
- 58.
Franz Kobler, The Vision was There: A History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine (London: Lincolns-Prager, 1956); Michael Pragai, Faith and Fulfilment: Christians and the Return to the Promised Land (London: Valentine Mitchell, 1985); Barbara Tuchman, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour (London: Phoenix Press, 2001).
- 59.
In Bar-Yosef’s evocative phrase, these works link together historical figures “like a dot-to-dot drawing… [revealing] a neatly-sketched draft of the Balfour Declaration” (Eitan Bar-Yosef, “Christian Zionism and Victorian Culture”, Israel Studies 8:2 [2003], p. 19). Tuchman was aware of this issue when writing her foundational history, as she warned against presupposing that there was an “inevitable” progression towards the Balfour Declaration (Tuchman, Bible and Sword, p. xv).
- 60.
Irene Zweip, “Alien, Everyman, Jew: The Dialectics of Dutch ‘Philosemitism’ on the Eve of World War II”, in David Wertheim (ed.), The Jew as Legitimation: Jewish-Gentile Relations Beyond Antisemitism and Philosemitism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 119.
- 61.
Mark Krupnick, “The Rhetoric of Philosemitism”, in Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted (eds), Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 362–364.
- 62.
Paolo L. Bernardini and Diego Lucci, The Jews, Instructions for Use: Four Eighteenth-Century Projects for the Emancipation of European Jews (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012).
- 63.
As Wertheim notes in his reflection on Jews and Christian legitimation, Christians “wanted to keep recognizable Jews, because it needed them” (Wertheim, “Introduction”, p. 7).
- 64.
Quoted in Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, p. 112.
- 65.
William D. Rubinstein and Hilary L. Rubinstein, Philosemitism: Admiration and Support in the English Speaking World for Jews (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. ix–xiii; 126–148.
- 66.
Oliver, Prophets and Millennialists, p. 50.
- 67.
Alexandra Walsham’s recent emphasis on the emotional impact of providential thought opens up further avenues of research on prophetic attitudes to Jews that I hope to examine in future work. See Alexandra Walsham, “Deciphering Divine Wrath and Displaying Godly Sorrow: Providentialism and Emotion in Early Modern England”, in Jennifer Spinks and Charles Zika (eds), Disaster, Death and the Emotions in the Shadow of the Apocalypse, 1400–1700 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 21–43.
- 68.
As Walsham notes, providentialism was part of a “fruitful and enduring synthesis” of Protestant theology, folk belief and “proverbial wisdom” (Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England [Oxford: OUP, 1999], p. 328).
- 69.
Rubinstein and Rubinstein, Philosemitism, p. 133.
- 70.
Sutcliffe and Karp, “Introduction”, p. 12.
- 71.
Wertheim, “Introduction”, pp. 11–12.
- 72.
See Sina Rauschenbach, “Christian Readings of Menasseh ben Israel: Translation and Retranslation in the Early Modern World”, in David Wertheim (ed.), The Jew as Legitimation: Jewish-Gentile Relations Beyond Antisemitism and Philosemitism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 63–81.
- 73.
Timothy Weber highlights some of the ways in which nineteenth-century American missionaries to Jews found their benevolence taken advantage of by their hearers. At the same time, he notes the subversive tactics other missionaries would use to convert Jewish children or attract audiences on false pretences. As has always been the case, the interaction between missionaries and those they aim to convert raised numerous ethical issues on both sides (Timothy Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism 1875–1982 [Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987], pp. 141–153).
- 74.
Carlo Aldrovandi suggests that the position I adopt here risks playing into the antisemitic stereotype of the “scheming Jew” (Apocalyptic Movements in Contemporary Politics, pp. 181–192). While this is a genuine danger, it is nonetheless important to highlight that individual Jews took advantage of the opportunities offered to them, while rejecting the motivations operative on those doing the offering. The same sort of approach is evident among working class Britons more generally in the nineteenth century. For example, Dominic Erdozain has suggested that one of the causes of secularisation in the country was church-run leisure activities (The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation and the Crisis of Victorian Religion [Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010]). Originally organised with a spiritual motive, their popularity with the working classes saw them gradually move away from the churches entirely. This should not suggest that those using such facilities were duplicitous or scheming, but rather that they were capable of making use of what opportunities came their way, while ignoring proselytising elements.
- 75.
The question of agency in conversion is complex, raising questions of the accuracy of conversion narratives, the extent to which these were edited or changed, and the social pressures that led individuals to either accept or reject conversion. Nonetheless, it would be inaccurate to suggest that only those who rejected conversionist overtures were actively displaying agency. As Megan Clare Webber has recently noted, it is important to look for agency not just in resistance, but also in compliance with religious institutions, no matter how distasteful their methods may appear from a contemporary perspective. She warns, “by discounting agency that is ‘other’ to themselves, historians risk not only producing anachronistic histories, but doing a disservice to their subjects. Historians’ experiences and values may override those of historical actors”. (“Troubling Agency: Agency and Charity in Early Nineteenth-Century London”, Historical Research 91:251 (2018), p. 135).
- 76.
Michael Ragussis, Theatrical Nation: Jews and Other Outlandish Englishmen in Georgian Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), pp. 32–34; Shapiro, Shakespeare, pp. 1–11.
- 77.
Bryan Cheyette, Constructions of ‘The Jew’ in English Literature and Society: Racial Representations, 1875–1945 (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), pp. 1–12.
- 78.
Zygmunt Bauman, “Allosemitism: Premodern, Modern, Postmodern”, in Bryan Cheyette and Laura Marcus (eds), Modernity, Culture and ‘The Jew’ (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), p. 143. “Allosemitism” originated in the work of Polish novelist Artur Sandauer. Cheyette prefers the term “semitic discourse” (Constructions, p. 8). I believe Bauman’s term better communicates the position as an alternative to anti- and philosemitism, and therefore follow it in this book.
- 79.
Bauman, “Allosemitism”, pp. 150–154.
- 80.
Bauman, “Allosemitism”, p. 143.
- 81.
John Barrell, The Infection of Thomas de Quincy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 8–15.
- 82.
Eitan Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799–1917 (Oxford: OUP, 2005), pp. 8–10. As Krishan Kumar has pointed out, even extreme forms of othering allow for some recognition of potential likeness between self and other. A comparison with a group so alien to be beyond comprehension would make little sense (Kumar, Making of English Identity, pp. 61–62). Kumar calls for the use of Freudian categories that recognise identity construction through familiar groups, as well as through alterity.
- 83.
Bar-Yosef, Holy Land, p. 90.
- 84.
See, Eric M. Reisenauer, “Armageddon at Sebastopol: The Crimean War in mid-Victorian Britain”, in Alisa Clapp-Itnyre (ed.), ‘Perplext in Faith’: Essays on Victorian Beliefs and Doubts (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), pp. 39–74.
- 85.
Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: CUP, 2010).
- 86.
Tuchman, Bible and Sword, pp. 310–341.
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Crome, A. (2018). Introduction. In: Christian Zionism and English National Identity, 1600–1850. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77194-6_1
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