A Doctrine With a Traceable Origin
“Christian Zionism” is the belief that the modern secular state of Israel is the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, that the Jewish people retain a special covenant standing with God apart from faith in Jesus Christ, that Bible-believing Christians are obligated to support the political and military ambitions of that state as a matter of religious duty, and that any person or nation that opposes Israel’s interests thereby opposes God himself. It is today the dominant eschatological framework of American evangelical Christianity. It drives the foreign policy positions of tens of millions of American voters, shapes the political landscape of the Republican Party, and has made the Israel lobby one of the most powerful forces in American electoral politics.
What most of those who hold this belief do not know is where it came from. Christian Zionism, as a systematic theological framework, does not come from the Bible, from the early church, or from the believing churches through the centuries. It comes from a specific set of ideas developed in nineteenth-century England by a small group of men — ideas that were then packaged into a popular Bible and distributed across America with results that have shaped American foreign policy for more than a century.
The story of how this happened is almost identical to the story told in our earlier article on how mainstream Protestantism abandoned the papal antichrist doctrine. In both cases, a theological novelty of relatively recent origin — in both cases with traceable connections to forces hostile to biblical Christianity — replaced a long-established and scripturally grounded consensus. In both cases, the vehicle was a change in prophetic framework that suited powerful institutional interests. And in both cases, the change was accomplished not by open theological argument but by the quiet transformation of what ordinary Christians assumed had always been taught.
The Jesuit Origins of Futurism: A Brief Recap
We documented in a previous article on this site that the dispensationalist prophetic system — of which Christian Zionism is a direct product — has its roots not in the Protestant tradition but in the Counter-Reformation scholarship of the Society of Jesus. Francisco Ribera (1537–1591), a Spanish Jesuit, produced a futurist commentary on Revelation in 1590 that relocated the Antichrist from the present papacy to a future individual world ruler. Manuel Lacunza (1731–1801), another Jesuit, writing under the pseudonym Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, elaborated this system in The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty (published 1812), relocating prophecy’s fulfilment entirely to the end times.
These Jesuit ideas entered mainstream Protestantism through Edward Irving (who translated Lacunza’s work into English in 1827) and were systematised by John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) of the Plymouth Brethren into the complete dispensationalist framework. The critical feature Darby added was the doctrine that God’s promises to Israel and his promises to the Church were entirely separate — that none of the Old Testament prophecies to Israel had been transferred to or fulfilled in the Church, and that all of them remained to be literally fulfilled in a future national restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Canaan.
From Darby, dispensationalism passed to Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, whose Scofield Reference Bible (1909) embedded the system’s footnotes directly alongside the text of the King James Bible and distributed it to various Christians and non-Christians alike who had no idea they were reading Jesuit-derived prophetic speculation printed beside the inspired Word of God. Behind Scofield’s footnotes — as researchers have documented — was an agenda to promote a pro-Zionist subculture within Christianity. Zionist-friendly comments were inserted in the notes between verses and chapters. As each generation found the old English of the KJV harder to read, the modern-language footnotes became more readable and more influential. The result was that an entire generation of American evangelicals came to believe that the political and military fortunes of the modern state of Israel were not merely of historical interest but of eternal prophetic significance — and that to oppose Israel was to oppose God.
What Dispensationalism Teaches About Israel
The dispensationalist framework that underlies Christian Zionism rests on several specific theological claims, each of which has direct political consequences:
First, that God made an unconditional, eternal, and not-yet-fulfilled covenant with Abraham promising his physical descendants the land of Canaan forever. This covenant, dispensationalists insist, was never abrogated, never spiritually reinterpreted, and never transferred to the Church. Every promise God made to Israel in the Old Testament will be literally fulfilled in a future literal Israel on literal Palestinian land.
Second, that the Church and Israel are two entirely separate entities in God’s programme, operating under different covenants, with different destinies, and under different divine promises. The Church is a parenthesis in God’s plan — an interruption between the rejection of Christ by Israel and the future restoration of Israel. When the Church is raptured, God’s programme for national Israel resumes.
Third, that the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, and particularly its capture of Jerusalem in 1967, are fulfilments of biblical prophecy and signs of the imminent return of Christ. To oppose the State of Israel is therefore to oppose the unfolding of God’s prophetic programme.
Fourth, that Christians have a religious duty to bless Israel — citing Genesis 12:3, I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee — which dispensationalists apply directly to the modern state. American military, financial, and diplomatic support for Israel is therefore not merely a political choice but a matter of divine obligation.
What the Scripture Actually Teaches
Each of these claims is directly contradicted by the New Testament. The Scripture does not leave these questions unresolved. It answers them plainly.
On who are Abraham’s children and the heirs of the promises:
The New Testament could not be plainer. Abraham’s children are those who share his faith — that is, believers in Christ, of every nation. The promises made to Abraham find their fulfilment not in a secular Jewish state but in Christ himself and in those who are united to him by faith. The children of the flesh are not the children of God. Physical descent from Abraham carries no covenant standing whatsoever under the New Covenant.
On who Israel is in the New Covenant:
The Israel of God is the Church — all who are new creatures in Christ Jesus. This is not a supersessionist imposition on the text; it is the plain teaching of the apostle Paul, a Jew himself, writing under divine inspiration. The true Jew, the true circumcision, the true Israel are those who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3).
On whether Old Testament prophecy has been fulfilled:
All the promises of God find their Yes and Amen in Christ. The mystery hidden in past ages — that Gentiles would be fellow-heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the same promise — has now been revealed and is being fulfilled in the Church. The prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah concerning the gathering of Israel, the outpouring of the Spirit, the new covenant, and the reign of the righteous King find their fulfilment in Jesus Christ and his people. They are not waiting for a future literal restoration of a secular Jewish state.
On Genesis 12:3 and the blessing/cursing formula:
Christian Zionists apply I will bless them that bless thee directly to the modern State of Israel, making it a binding religious obligation to support that state’s political and military agenda. But the New Testament tells us explicitly who the heirs of this promise are. Paul quotes Genesis 12:3 in Galatians 3:8 and explains its fulfilment: the scripture… preached before the gospel unto Abraham… In thee shall all nations be blessed. The blessing comes on all nations through the gospel of Christ — not through military and financial support for a state that denies Christ and persecutes his witnesses. The Jews who rejected their Messiah are not Abraham’s heirs; believers in Christ are. To apply the Abrahamic blessing-formula to modern political Israel is to misread both the verse and the whole of Pauline theology.
The God’s Chosen People Claim
Perhaps the most persistent feature of Christian Zionist rhetoric is the claim that the Jewish people are God’s chosen people — and that this status confers on them a permanent, unconditional claim on Christian political loyalty. This claim is made and accepted without examination by tens of millions of American Christians.
The Scripture teaches that God did choose Israel — the nation descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — for a specific redemptive purpose: to preserve the knowledge of the true God, to be the custodians of the written Word, and to be the nation through which the Messiah would come. This national election was real and was for a specific purpose. But it was not unconditional and it was not permanent in the way Christian Zionists claim.
The entire Old Testament is the history of Israel’s repeated apostasy and God’s repeated judgment upon it. The northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria in 722 BC. The southern kingdom was destroyed by Babylon in 586 BC. The Temple was destroyed again by Rome in AD 70. At each point, the prophets made clear that national Israel had forfeited its covenant standing through unbelief and rebellion.
The New Testament is even more explicit. Paul writes in Romans 11:7: Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded. The elect — believing Jews and Gentiles — have obtained salvation; the rest of Israel was blinded. Peter, writing to the Church, applies to it the covenant language that the Old Testament applied to Israel: But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people… which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God (1 Peter 2:9–10). The people of God are now those in Christ.
The Jews are not God’s chosen people in any sense that gives the modern State of Israel a divine mandate, a claim on Christian political loyalty, or immunity from moral judgment. The chosen people of God are those who are chosen in Christ — according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). Election is in Christ. Those outside of Christ — whether Jew or Gentile — are not God’s people.
Christian Zionism and American Foreign Policy
The political consequences of this theological error have been enormous and are growing. The merger of dispensationalist eschatology with American evangelical Christianity has produced a voting bloc of tens of millions of Americans who regard unconditional support for the State of Israel as a religious obligation. These voters elect politicians who share this commitment; they fund organisations that promote it; and they punish with their votes any politician who questions it.
The result is a foreign policy apparatus in which American military, diplomatic, and financial resources are deployed in the service of a foreign state’s interests as a matter of religious conviction rather than national interest. The United States has given more foreign aid to Israel than to any other nation in history — over $300 billion in inflation-adjusted terms since 1948. It has vetoed United Nations resolutions condemning Israeli actions dozens of times, shielding that state from international accountability. It has fought wars in the Middle East — with American lives and American treasure — that served Israeli strategic interests while producing no discernible benefit to the American people.
None of this would be possible without the Christian Zionist voter base, which provides the theological justification, the electoral muscle, and the moral cover for a foreign policy that would otherwise be indefensible on any normal assessment of the national interest. When politicians attempt to apply that normal assessment — to ask whether American military aid to Israel serves American interests, whether American soldiers should die in Middle Eastern wars that benefit a foreign state, whether the United States should support a nation unconditionally regardless of its conduct — they face the full force of an ideologically motivated electorate that has been taught that such questions are not merely politically inconvenient but spiritually dangerous.
The Massie Case: Christian Zionism and Electoral Democracy
The clearest recent illustration of Christian Zionism’s grip on American electoral politics occurred on May 19, 2026, when Thomas Massie of Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District lost his seat after serving seven terms in the United States House of Representatives. Massie voted with his party — as he himself stated publicly — approximately 91 per cent of the time. The Heritage Foundation’s congressional scorecard rated him at 92–96 per cent across multiple terms. He was not a Democrat in disguise, not a moderate, and not an opponent of conservative principles. He was, by any objective measure, a reliable conservative Republican.
What Massie was not was a reliable supporter of unconditional American military and financial assistance to Israel. He voted against aid packages. He opposed American military involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict. He questioned whether American interests were served by Middle Eastern military commitments that benefited a foreign state. He said publicly: I vote with Republicans 91% of the time, and the 9% I don’t, they’re taking up for pedophiles, starting another war, or bankrupting our country.
For this, he was targeted for removal. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, labelled him the most anti-Israel Republican in the House. AIPAC spent more than $4 million directly opposing him. The MAGA KY super PAC — heavily funded by pro-Israel billionaires including Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson — spent another $5.6 million. The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund added further millions. Total outside spending in the race exceeded $25.8 million. Total overall spending reached $32 million, making it the most expensive House primary in American history — surpassing the two previous record-holders, which had also involved AIPAC targeting congressional critics of Israel.
Massie’s opponent, Ed Gallrein — a former Navy SEAL — had no legislative record, no established policy positions, and no history of conservative activism. He ran primarily on Trump’s endorsement and on his strong pro-Israel stance. He won 54.4 per cent to Massie’s 45.6 per cent, aided by Trump’s repeated denunciations of Massie as “the worst congressman in the history of our country,” “a bum,” “weak,” and “pathetic,” and by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth campaigning personally in Massie’s district the day before the vote.
A Pew Research poll conducted around the time of the race found that 57 per cent of Republicans aged 18 to 49 had an unfavourable opinion of Israel. Gallrein’s support skewed heavily toward voters over 55 — the cohort most thoroughly shaped by decades of Scofield Bible dispensationalism and Hal Lindsey-style Christian Zionism. Massie’s support came from younger Republicans who have not absorbed that framework and who evaluate American foreign policy by American interests rather than by the eschatological commitments of their grandparents’ generation.
The lesson of the Massie race is not primarily a lesson about AIPAC’s money, though that money was decisive. It is a lesson about theology. A foreign lobby was able to spend $32 million to remove a highly rated, seven-term conservative congressman because a large enough segment of the American evangelical electorate had been taught by their dispensationalist theology that supporting Israel unconditionally was a religious obligation. AIPAC did not create Christian Zionism. Darby and Scofield created Christian Zionism. AIPAC merely harvests what they planted.
The Protestant Silence and the Faithful Remnant
Mainstream American Protestantism and evangelicalism have not merely accommodated Christian Zionism — they have made it a near-orthodoxy. To question dispensationalism in many American evangelical churches is to invite accusations of anti-Semitism. To suggest that the modern State of Israel is not the fulfilment of biblical prophecy is to mark oneself as spiritually suspect. To raise the question of whether American soldiers should die for Israeli strategic interests is, in the minds of millions of Christian Zionist voters, to curse Abraham’s seed and invite divine judgment.
This is not the historic Protestant position. No believing church through the centuries taught Christian Zionism. The early church fathers, the Waldensians, the Anabaptists, and the Independent Baptists — all understood the Church as the continuation of the covenant community of Israel, the New Covenant people in whom all the promises of God find their fulfilment. The great Baptist confessions are silent on any future national Israel because their authors did not believe in one. John Calvin, John Owen, the Puritans, and Jonathan Edwards — whatever their other errors — were equally clear that the Church is the Israel of God.
The doctrine of Christian Zionism is, in the Baptist and sovereign grace tradition, a novelty — a nineteenth-century innovation of Jesuit origin, propagated through a heavily footnoted popular Bible, that has distorted American foreign policy, enabled a foreign lobby to purchase congressional elections, and sent American soldiers to die in wars that serve no American interest. It is not the teaching of Scripture. It is the teaching of Darby and Scofield, dressed in the language of the Bible.
The smaller, confessionally serious churches of the sovereign grace and Independent Baptist tradition have largely resisted Christian Zionism, not out of hostility to the Jewish people — whom we are called to evangelise, as all nations — but out of faithfulness to the New Testament’s plain teaching about who the people of God are, who the heirs of the Abrahamic promises are, and what the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy looks like. The answer to all three questions is the same: Jesus Christ and those who are in him by faith. That has always been the answer. The question is whether American evangelicalism, shaped by a century of dispensationalist eschatology and now bound by billions of dollars of political infrastructure, can find its way back to it.