Abstract
The conclusion briefly summarises the book’s findings, particularly focusing on the five-point framework and concept of the “point of encounter”. Although cautious in proposing wider applications of its historically contingent findings, it suggests the possible application of this book’s theoretical approach to other national manifestations of Christian Zionism, particularly in the United States.
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- 1.
Tuchman, Bible and Sword, pp. xv–xvi; Bar-Yosef, “Christian Zionism”, p. 9.
- 2.
Tuchman, Bible and Sword, pp. x–xi.
- 3.
For example, Sizer, Christian Zionism; Clark, Allies for Armageddon; Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Politics of Apocalypse: The History and Influence of Christian Zionism (Oxford: One World, 2006); Crombie, For the Love of Zion; Donald E. Wagner, Anxious for Armageddon (Scottsdale: Herald Press, 1995).
- 4.
For an overview of the Palestine Exploration Fund see Bar-Yosef, Holy Land, pp. 165–179.
- 5.
Norma Claire Moruzzi, “Strange Bedfellows: The Question of Laurence Oliphant’s Christian Zionism”, Modern Judaism 1:1 (2006), pp. 55–73.
- 6.
Henry Edwards, The Colonisation of Palestine (London: Ebenezer Palmer & Son, 1846), p. 14.
- 7.
Henry Edwards, Colonisation, p. 9. In an admittedly impressive piece of prediction, Edwards also suggests that British “flying machines” will be central to the future war he envisages (p. 13).
- 8.
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. 58–65.
- 9.
Walter Chamberlain, The National Restoration and Conversion of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (London: Wertheim and Macintosh, 1854), p. 384.
- 10.
Ragussis, Theatrical Nation, pp. 32–34; Shapiro, Shakespeare, pp. 1–11.
- 11.
Bauman, “Allosemitism”, pp. 143–156.
- 12.
Matar, “Controversy…from 1754”, p. 40.
- 13.
Bar-Yosef, “‘Green and Pleasant Lands’”, pp. 163–169.
- 14.
Kumar, Making, pp. 61–62.
- 15.
Smith, Chosen Peoples, pp. 95–130.
- 16.
Scott, The Jews: A Blessing, p. 26.
- 17.
Bercovitch, American Jeremiad, p. 23.
- 18.
Monthly Intelligence 1:11 (1830), p. 166.
- 19.
Tonna, Judah’s Lion, p. 405.
- 20.
Entry for 12th October 1841, Southampton Broadlands SHA/PD/2 f. 75v.
- 21.
For example, attempts to demonstrate the historical legitimacy of the Bible led some writers to find ancient designations of “Tarshish” in Isa. 18. This undermined the standard reading of the favourite text used to locate England in scripture. See Gareth Atkins, “‘Isaiah’s Call to England’: Doubts about Prophecy in Nineteenth-Century Britain”, in Frances Andrews, Charlotte Methuin and Andrew Spicer (eds), Doubting Christianity: The Church and Doubt Studies in Church History 52 (Cambridge: CUP, 2016), pp. 381–397.
- 22.
This is against Bar-Yosef’s reading in Holy Land, pp. 182–246.
- 23.
Renton, Zionist Masquerade.
- 24.
Cheyette, Constructions of ‘The Jew’, pp. 53–93; quotation at p. 90.
- 25.
As both Aldrovandi and Goldman point out, contemporary US Christian Zionism is not only a theological movement. There are other justifications for support, such as shared democratic ideals and opposition to Islamic extremism and Iran. As with the historical cases examined earlier in this book, theological and temporal concerns merge (Aldrovandi, Apocalyptic Movements, pp. 130–134; Goldman, God’s Country, pp. 6–12).
- 26.
George Faithful’s examination of the German Protestant “Sisterhood of Mercy” suggests ways in which they reversed the tropes of nationalism in order to undertake penance for national sins during the Holocaust. This included treating Israel as a superior nation. In terms of the model discussed in this book, this represents a switching of the allosemitic impulse as the Jews move from negative to positive others. Examining this in terms of whether it, as with the English case studies examined here, included a “point of encounter” might offer fruitful insights into the phenomenon. See George Faithful, “Inverting the Eagle to Embrace the Star of David: The Nationalistic Roots of German Christian Zionism”, in Göran Gunner and Robert O. Smith (eds), Comprehending Christian Zionism: Perspectives in Comparison, pp. 300–323.
- 27.
Faithful, “Inverting the Eagle”, pp. 301–324; Zweip, “Alien, Everyman, Jew”, pp. 117–134; Evelien Gans, “Disowning Responsibility: The Stereotype of the Passive Jew as a Legitimizing Factor in Dutch Remembrance of the Shoah”, in David Wertheim (ed.), The Jew as Legitimation: Jewish-Gentile Relations Beyond Antisemitism and Philosemitism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 173–195.
- 28.
A major difference between the British and American context relates to the links between American and Israeli frontier experience and theories of land use. On this see Walter Russell Mead, “The New Israel and the Old: Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State”, Foreign Affairs 87:4 (2008), pp. 28–40.
- 29.
The extent to which Britain has secularised across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is a subject of continued controversy among sociologists of religion. For the strongest argument on the loss of the Christian plausibility structure in British society see Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, Second Edition (Abington: Routledge, 2009). Accepting Brown here does not necessarily entail a full acceptance of secularisation theory. For nuanced case studies of a variety of forms of religion in Britain today see Linda Woodhead and Rebecca Catto (eds), Religion and Change in Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 2012).
- 30.
As the British Christian Zionist Rob Richards notes: “as we actively resisted the return of the Jews, following the Second World War, we lost our Empire with hardly a fight” (Has God Finished with Israel? [Milton Keynes: Authentic, 2002], p. 179). For the British Empire’s culpability see John Hagee, The Battle for Jerusalem (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003).
- 31.
See Aldrovandi, Apocalyptic Movements, pp. 195–220 on the resurgence of premillennial plausibility structures in US society post-9/11.
- 32.
Paul D. Miller, “Evangelicals, Israel and US Foreign Policy”, Survival 56:1 (2014), pp. 7–26.
- 33.
Colter Louwerse and Ron Dart, “Donald Trump and the Christian Zionist Lobby: Letter from Canada”, Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 16:2 (2017), pp. 237–243; Ben Sales, “Steve Bannon: ‘I’m Proud to be a Christian Zionist’”, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 13 November 2017, https://www.jta.org/2017/11/13/news-opinion/united-states/stephen-bannon-says-im-proud-to-be-a-christian-zionist. Accessed 29 November 2017.
- 34.
Louwerse and Dart (“Donald Trump…”) note that Christian Zionist rhetoric has often been used in election campaigns, but is rarely fully followed through in policy decisions. They argue that as of mid-2017, the same was true of the Trump administration. This backs up Jonathan Rynhold’s findings that during the Bush administration, despite their influence, Christian Zionists “did not determine any crucial decision” (Jonathan Rynhold, The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture [Cambridge: CUP, 2015], p. 115). As the shock decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem suggests, we should nonetheless be cautious about making any predictions in regards to Trump’s governance, which seems to thrive on unpredictability.
- 35.
http://www.christianpublications.us/product/eye-to-eye-facing-the-consequences-of-dividing-israel-book/. Accessed 29th November 2017.
- 36.
Way, Palingenesia, p. 139.
- 37.
Thomas Page, “The Claims of Jews Upon the Sympathies and Aid of Christians”, Church of England Magazine, IX: 225, 28th November 1840, p. 339.
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Crome, A. (2018). Conclusion. 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_7
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