Christian Zionism

From the sixteenth century on, the Reformation’s theological and religious upheavals established a clear link, particularly among Protestants, between the concept of the millennium’s end and the conversion of the Jews and their return to Palestine. Thomas Brightman, an English clergyman in the sixteenth century, embodied these ideas when he wrote:

“Shall they return to Jerusalem again? There is nothing more certain: the prophets do everywhere confirm it and beat about it.” {{{Thomas Brightman, The Revelation of St. John Illustrated with an Analysis and Scholions [sic], 4th edn, London, 1644, p. 544.}}}

Brightman was not only hoping for the fulfillment of a divine promise; he, like so many others before him, wished for the Jews to convert to Christianity or flee Europe entirely.

Henry Oldenburg, a German theologian and natural philosopher, wrote a century later:

“if the occasion present itself amid changes to which human affairs are liable, [the Jews] may even raise their empire anew, and … God may elect them a second time.”{{{From a letter he wrote to Spinoza on December 4, 1665, quoted in Franz Kobler, The Vision Was There: The History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine, London: Birt Am Publications, 1956, pp. 25–6.}}}

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Charles-Joseph of Lign, an Austro-Hungarian field marshal, stated:

I believe that the Jew is not able to assimilate, and that he will constantly constitute a nation within a nation, wherever he may be. The simplest thing to do would in my opinion be returning to them their homeland, from which they were driven.{{{Hagai Baruch, Le Sionisme Politique: Precurseurs et Militants: Le Prince De Linge, Paris: Beresnik, 1920, p. 20.}}}

As this previous text makes abundantly clear, there was an unmistakable connection between these formative ideas of Zionism and a more entrenched anti-Semitism.

Around the same time, François-René de Chateaubriand, a famous French writer and politician, declared the Jews to be “the legitimate masters of Judea.” He influenced Napoleon Bonaparte, who hoped to enlist the assistance of Palestine’s Jewish community and other groups of peoples in his attempt to occupy the Middle East at the turn of the nineteenth century. He assured them of their “return to Palestine” and the establishment of a state.{{{Suja R. Sawafta, “Mapping the Middle East: From Bonaparte’s Egypt to Chateaubriand’s Palestine,” PhD thesis submitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013.}}} As can be seen, Zionism began as a Christian colonization project before becoming a Jewish one.

The foreboding signs of how these apparently religious and mythical beliefs could be transformed into a real program of colonization and dispossession began to emerge in Victorian Britain as early as the 1820s. A powerful theological and imperial movement arose that placed the return of the Jews to Palestine at the center of a strategic plan to conquer Palestine and convert it to a Christian entity. Throughout the nineteenth century, this sentiment gained increasing popularity in Britain and influenced the country’s official imperial policy:

“The soil of Palestine … only awaits for the return of her banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was in the days of Solomon.{{{A. W. C. Crawford, Lord Lindsay, Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land, Vol. 2, London, 1847, p. 71.}}}

Thus wrote John Lindsay, a Scottish peer and military commander. David Hartley, an English philosopher, echoed this sentiment when he wrote:

“It is probable that the Jews will be reinitiated in Palestine”.{{{Quoted in Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 432.}}}

The process was not entirely successful prior to receiving US support.
There was also a history of endorsing the notion of a Jewish nation having the right to return to Palestine and establish Zion. Simultaneously with Protestants articulating these views in Europe, they appeared in a similar form across the Atlantic. John Adams (1735–1826), the American president, stated:

“I really wish the Jews again in Judea as an independent nation.”{{{“Jews in America: President John Adams Embraces a Jewish Homeland” (1819), at jewishvirtuallibrary.org.}}}

A straightforward history of ideas leads directly from the movement’s preaching fathers to those with the power to alter Palestine’s fate. Lord Shaftesbury (1801–85), a prominent British politician and reformer who campaigned vigorously for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, was foremost among them. His justifications for a stronger British presence in Palestine were religious as well as strategic.{{{Donald Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 380.}}}

This perilous combination of religious zeal and reformist zeal would lead from Shaftesbury’s efforts in the mid-nineteenth century to the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Shaftesbury recognized that simply supporting the return of the Jews would not be sufficient; Britain would need to actively assist the Jews in their initial colonization. He asserted that such an alliance should begin by assisting Jews in traveling to Ottoman Palestine with material aid. He persuaded the Anglican bishopric center and cathedral in Jerusalem to contribute to the project’s early funding. This would almost certainly not have occurred without Shaftesbury’s successful recruitment of his father-in-law, Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign minister and later Prime Minister. Shaftesbury wrote the following in his diary entry for August 1, 1838:

Dined with Palmerston. After dinner left alone with him. Propounded my schemes, which seems to strike his fancy. He asked questions and readily promised to consider it [the program to help the Jews to return to Palestine and take it over]. How singular is the order of Providence. Singular, if estimated by man’s ways. Palmerston had already been chosen by God to be an instrument of good to His ancient people, to do homage to their inheritance, and to recognize their rights without believing their destiny. It seems he will yet do more. Though the motive be kind, it is not sound. I am forced to argue politically, financially, commercially. He weeps not, like his Master, over Jerusalem, nor prays that now, at last, she may put on her beautiful garments.{{{Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, Diary entries as quoted by Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, London, 1886, Vol. 1, pp. 310–11; see also Geoffrey B. A. M. Finlayson, The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, London: Eyre Methuen, 1981, p. 114; The National Register Archives, London, Shaftesbury (Broadlands) MSS, SHA/PD/2, August 1, 1840.}}}

As a first step, Shaftesbury convinced Palmerston to appoint William Young as the first British vice-consul in Jerusalem. Young was a fellow restorationist (believer in the restoration of Palestine to the Jews). He later wrote in his diary:

What a wonderful event it is! The ancient City of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations; and England is the first of the gentile kingdoms that ceases to ‘tread her down.’”{{{Quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, From Cromwell to Churchill, New York: Encounter Books, 2011, p. 119.}}}

A year later, in 1839, Shaftesbury authored a thirty-page article entitled “State and Restauration (sic) of the Jews,” in The London Quarterly Review, in which he predicted a new era for God’s chosen people. He insisted on the following:

the Jews must be encouraged to return in yet greater numbers and become once more the husbandman of Judea and Galilee … though admittedly a stiff-necked, dark hearted people, and sunk in moral degradation, obduracy, and ignorance of the Gospel, [they are] not only worthy of salvation but also vital to Christianity’s hope of salvation.{{{The London Quarterly Review, Vol. 64, pp. 104–5.}}}

Palmerston was persuaded by Shaftesbury’s gentle lobbying.
Palmerston, too, became an advocate for Jewish restoration for political reasons rather than religious ones. Among the other considerations in his deliberations was the:

“view that the Jews could be useful in buttressing the collapsing Ottoman Empire, thus helping to accomplish the key object of British foreign policy in the area.”{{{Ibid.}}}

Palmerston wrote to the British ambassador in Istanbul on August 11, 1840, expressing his belief that allowing Jews to return to Palestine would benefit both the Ottomans and Britain. Ironically, the restoration of the Jews was viewed as critical to preserving the status quo and averting the Ottoman Empire’s disintegration. Palmerston expressed the following:

There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe, a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine … It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and to settle in Palestine because the wealth which they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan’s dominions; and the Jewish people, if returning under the sanction and protection and at the invitation of the Sultan, would be a check upon any future evil designs of Mohamet Ali or his successor … I have to instruct Your Excellency strongly to recommend [the Turkish government] to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine.{{{Ibid.}}}

Mohamet Ali, more commonly referred to as Muhammad Ali, was the governor of Egypt during the first half of the nineteenth century who seceded from the Ottoman Empire. Palmerston wrote this letter to his ambassador in Istanbul following a decade in which the Egyptian ruler came dangerously close to deposing the sultan. The notion that Jewish wealth exported to Palestine would fortify the Ottoman Empire against internal and external enemies demonstrates how Zionism was linked to anti-Semitism, British imperialism, and theology.

We have on our side the fanatical and religious elements, and you know what a following they have in this country. They are absolutely determined that Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine shall be reserved for the Jews to return to; this is their only longing to restore the Jews.”{{{Quoted in Geoffrey Lewis, Balfour and Weizmann: The Zionist, The Zealot and the Emergence of Israel, London: Continuum books, 2009, p. 19.}}}

As a result, the Earl of Shaftesbury was referred to as:

The leading proponent of Christian Zionism in the nineteenth century and the first politician of stature to attempt to prepare the way for Jews to establish a homeland in Palestine.”{{{Deborah J. Schmidle, “Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury,” in Hugh D. Hindman (ed.), The World of Child Labour: An Historical and Regional Survey, London and New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2009, p. 569.}}}

This period of enthusiasm among the British establishment for the idea of restoration would be more accurately described as proto-Zionism. While caution should be exercised when reading contemporary ideology into this nineteenth-century phenomenon, it possessed all of the ingredients necessary to transform these ideas into the future justification for erasing and denying the indigenous Palestinian population’s basic rights. Of course, there were churches and clergymen who identified with the indigenous Palestinians. Among them was George Francis Popham Blyth, a Church of England cleric who developed strong sympathies for Palestinian aspirations and rights, along with some high church Anglican colleagues. Blyth founded St. George College in 1887, which is still one of the best high schools in East Jerusalem today (attended by the children of the local elite, who would play a crucial role in Palestinian politics in the first half of the twentieth century). However, power was concentrated in the hands of those who supported the Jewish cause, which later became known as the Zionist cause.

In 1838, the first British consulate in Jerusalem was established. Its brief included informal invitations to Jews to come to Palestine, assurances of protection, and, in some cases, attempts at conversion. James Finn (1806–72), the most well-known of the early consuls, whose character and direct approach made it impossible to conceal the implications of this brief from the local Palestinians. He wrote openly, and probably for the first time, about the connection between the return of Jews to Palestine and the possibility of Palestinian displacement as a result.{{{The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis, 1700–1948, London: Saqi Books, 2010, pp. 84, 117.}}} This connection would be central to Zionism’s settler colonial project over the next century.

Between 1845 and 1863, Finn was stationed in Jerusalem. Later Israeli historians have lauded him for assisting Jews in settling in their ancestral homeland, and his memoirs have been translated into Hebrew. He is not the only historical figure to have appeared in both a pantheon in one nation and a rogues’ gallery in another nation. Finn despised Islam in general and the Jerusalem notables in particular. He never learned to speak Arabic and communicated with the local Palestinian population through an interpreter, which did nothing to improve his relationship with them.

Finn was aided by the establishment of the Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem in 1841, led by Michael Solomon Alexander (a convert from Judaism), and by the 1843 inauguration of Christ Church, the first Anglican church in Jerusalem, near Jaffa Gate.
Although these institutions eventually developed a strong affinity for Palestinian self-determination, they initially backed Finn’s proto-Zionist aspirations. Finn worked harder than any other European to establish a permanent Western presence in Jerusalem, organizing the acquisition of land and real estate for missionaries, commercial interests, and government entities.

The German Temple Pietist movement (later known as the Templers) was a vital link between these early, primarily British, Christian Zionist buds and Zionism. They were active in Palestine from the 1860s until the outbreak of World War I. The Pietist movement developed out of Germany’s Lutheran movement, which spread throughout the world, including to North America (where its influence on the early settler colonialism is felt to this very day). Around the 1860s, it developed an interest in Palestine. In 1861, the Temple Society was founded by two German clergymen, Christoph Hoffman and Georg David Hardegg. They maintained strong ties to the Pietist movement in Württemberg, Germany, but developed their own strategies for advancing their brand of Christianity. For them, rebuilding a Jewish temple in Jerusalem was a necessary step in God’s plan of redemption and forgiveness. More importantly, they were convinced that by settling in Palestine, they would hasten the Messiah’s second coming.{{{Helmut Glenk, From Desert Sands to Golden Oranges: The History of the German Templers Settlement of Sarona in Palestine, Toronto: Trafford, 2005, is one of the few English-language works. The majority of works on the Templars are written in German or Hebrew. }}} While not everyone in their respective churches and national organizations approved of their particular interpretation of Pietism in Palestine, senior members of the Royal Prussian court and several Anglican theologians in the United Kingdom enthusiastically supported their dogma.

As the Temple movement gained prominence, it was persecuted by the majority of Germany’s established church. However, they took their ideas to a more practical level and settled in Palestine, fighting with one another and adding new members along the way. They established their first colony on Mount Carmel in Haifa in 1866 and quickly spread throughout the country. At the turn of the twentieth century, the warming relationship between Kaiser Wilhelm II and the sultan bolstered their settlement project. The Templers remained in Palestine during the British Mandate until 1948, when the new Jewish state expelled them.

The Templers’ colonies and settlement methods were modeled after by early Zionists. While German historian Alexander Scholch coined the term “The Quiet Crusade” to describe the Templers’ colonization efforts, the early Zionist colonies established from 1882 on were anything but quiet.{{{Alexander Scholch, Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882: Studies in Social, Economic, and Political Development, Washington: Institute of Palestine Studies, 2006.}}} By the time the Templers arrived in Palestine, Zionism had already established itself as a significant political force in Europe. In a nutshell, Zionism was a movement that asserted that the problems of Europe’s Jews could be resolved by colonizing Palestine and establishing a Jewish state there. These ideas germinated in the 1860s throughout Europe, spurred on by the Enlightenment, the 1848 “Spring of Nations,” and, later, socialism. Zionism was transformed into a political project by Theodor Herzl’s visions in response to a particularly heinous wave of anti-Jewish persecution in Russia in the late 1870s and early 1880s, as well as the rise of anti-Semitic nationalism in western Europe (where the infamous Dreyfus trial revealed how deeply rooted anti-Semitism was in French and German society).

Zionism became an internationally recognized movement as a result of Herzl’s efforts and those of other like-minded Jewish leaders. Initially acting independently, a group of Eastern European Jews developed similar ideas about resolving the Jewish question in Europe, without waiting for international recognition. They began settling in Palestine in 1882, after preparing the ground in their home countries through communal work. They are referred to as the First Aliyah in Zionist jargon—the first wave of Zionist immigration that lasted until 1904. The second wave (1905–14) was distinct in that it was dominated by frustrated communists and socialists who saw Zionism not only as a solution to the Jewish problem but also as a vehicle for the propagation of communism and socialism in Palestine. However, the majority of both waves chose to settle in Palestinian towns, with only a minority attempting to cultivate land purchased from absentee Arab landowners, initially relying on Jewish industrialists in Europe for support before seeking a more self-sufficient economic existence.

While the Zionist connection to Germany was ultimately insignificant, the connection to Britain became critical. Indeed, the Zionist movement required strong support as the Palestinian people realized that this particular form of immigration did not bode well for the country’s future. Local leaders believed it would have a significant negative impact on their community. One such figure was Jerusalem’s mufti, Tahir al-Hussayni II, who connected Jewish immigration to the city with a European assault on the city’s Muslim sanctity. Several of his elders had already noted that it was James Finn’s idea to link the Jews’ arrival to the restoration of Crusader glory. It’s unsurprising, then, that the mufti led the opposition to this immigration, emphasizing the importance of not selling land to such projects. He recognized that land ownership established ownership claims, whereas immigration without settlement could be viewed as a transient pilgrimage.{{{Pappe, The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty, p. 115.}}}

Thus, in many ways, Britain’s strategic imperial impulse to use the Jewish return to Palestine to deepen its involvement in the “Holy Land” paralleled the emergence of new cultural and intellectual visions of Zionism in Europe. Thus, colonization of Palestine was viewed as an act of repentance and redemption by both European Christians and Jews. The convergence of these two impulses resulted in a powerful alliance that transformed the anti-Semitic and millenarian idea of relocating Jews from Europe to Palestine into a viable settlement project at the expense of Palestine’s indigenous people. This alliance became public knowledge on November 2, 1917, with the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration, a letter from the British foreign secretary to the leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community in which he effectively promised them unconditional support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

As a result of the British archives’ accessibility and efficiency, we now have a wealth of excellent scholarly works examining the background to the declaration. Among the best of them is a 1970 essay by Mayer Verte of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.{{{Verte’s 1970 article was republished as “The Balfour Declaration and Its Makers” in N. Rose (ed.), From Palmerston to Balfour: Collected Essays of Mayer Verte, London: Frank Cass, 1992, pp. 1–38.}}} He demonstrated in particular how British officials incorrectly asserted that Jewish members of the Bolshevik movement shared Zionist aspirations and that a pro-Zionist declaration would pave the way for good relations with Russia’s new political power. More importantly, these policymakers assumed that such a gesture would be welcomed by American Jews, whom the British suspected of wielding considerable influence in Washington. There was also a mix of millenarianism and Islamophobia: David Lloyd George, the country’s prime minister at the time and a devout Christian, favored the return of the Jews on religious grounds, and strategically, he and his colleagues preferred a Jewish colony in the Holy Land to a Muslim one (which is what they saw the Palestinians as).

Recently, we gained access to an even more exhaustive analysis, written in 1939 but lost for many years before resurfacing in 2013. This is the work of British journalist J. M. N Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality, which spans over 700 pages and explains the circumstances surrounding the Balfour Declaration.{{{J. M. N Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality, Washington: Institute of Palestine Studies, 2013.}}} It elucidates who in the British admiralty, army, and government was working on the declaration and why, based on Jeffries’ personal connections and access to a wide variety of no longer-extant documents. It appears that the pro-Zionist Christians in his story were far more enthusiastic about the idea of British sponsorship of the colonization process in Palestine than the Zionists themselves.

The conclusion drawn from all previous research on the declaration is that various decision makers in Britain viewed the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as compatible with British strategic interests in the region. Once Britain occupied Palestine, this alliance enabled Jews to construct the infrastructure for a Jewish state under British auspices, while being protected by the bayonets of His Majesty’s Government.

However, Palestine was not easily conquered. Britain’s campaign against the Turks lasted nearly the entire year of 1917. It began positively, with British forces storming through the Sinai Peninsula, but were then stalled by an attritional trench war between the Gaza Strip and Bir Saba. Once this stalemate was broken, it became much easier; indeed, Jerusalem capitulated without resistance. The subsequent military occupation brought all three distinct processes—the emergence of Zionism, Protestant millenarianism, and British imperialism—to Palestinian shores as a potent fusion of ideologies that annihilated the country and its people over the next thirty years.

Some have questioned whether the Jews who settled in Palestine as Zionists in the aftermath of 1918 were truly descended from the Jews exiled by Rome 2,000 years ago. It began with popular doubts raised by Arthur Koestler (1905–83), who wrote The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), in which he advanced the theory that the Jewish settlers were descended from the Khazars, a Turkish nation in the Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the eighth century and were later forced to migrate westward.{{{The book has been reprinted as Arthur Koestler, The Khazar Empire and its Heritage, New York: Random House, 1999.}}} Since then, Israeli scientists have attempted to establish a genetic link between the Jews of Roman Palestine and those of modern-day Israel. Despite this, the debate continues to this day.

Serious analysis came from biblical scholars who were not influenced by Zionism, such as Keith Whitelam, Thomas Thompson, and Israel Finkelstein, all of whom reject the Bible as a credible historical account.{{{Keith Whitelam, in The Invention of Ancient Israel, London and New York: Routledge, 1999, and Thomas L. Thompson, in The Mythical Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel, London: Basic Books, 1999, established the Copenhagen School of biblical minimalism, which focuses on the central arguments and research on this subject.}}} Whitelam and Thompson, like others, cast doubt on the existence of anything resembling a nation in biblical times and criticize what they refer to as the “invention of modern Israel” by pro-Zionist Christian theologians. Shlomo Sand’s two books, The Invention of the Jewish People and The Invention of the Land of Israel, provided the most recent and comprehensive deconstruction of this concept. Sand demonstrates that the Christian world, in its own self-interest and at a particular point in modern history, embraced the idea of the Jews as a nation destined to return to the holy land. This return, along with the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of the Messiah, would be part of the divine plan for the end of time, according to this account.{{{Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, and The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland, London and New York: Verso, 2014.}}} I admire and respect this scholarly endeavor. Politically, however, I believe it is less significant than the assumption that the Palestinians do not exist. Individuals have the right to invent themselves, as so many national movements have done during their formative years. However, the issue becomes more serious if the genesis narrative is used to justify political projects such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, and oppression.

In the case of nineteenth-century Zionism’s claims, it is irrelevant whether those claims are historically accurate. What matters is not whether the current generation of Jews in Israel are authentic descendants of those who lived during the Roman era, but rather the state of Israel’s insistence that it represents all Jews worldwide and that everything it does is for their benefit and on their behalf. Until 1967, this assertion was extremely beneficial to the state of Israel. When Israel’s policies were questioned, Jews worldwide, particularly in the United States, became its staunchest supporters. This is still true in many ways in the United States today. However, even there, as well as in other Jewish communities, this unmistakable connection is being questioned today.

Zionism began as a minority view among Jews. They had to rely on British officials and, later, military power to make the case that the Jews were a nation belonging to Palestine and should be assisted in their return. Jews and the rest of the world did not appear to be convinced that the Jews were a landless people. Shaftesbury, Finn, Balfour, and Lloyd George all supported the idea, believing it would help Britain establish a foothold in Palestine. This became irrelevant after the British occupied Palestine by force and were forced to decide whether the land was Jewish or Palestinian, a question it could never properly answer and thus had to defer to others to resolve following three decades of colonialism and oppression of the indigenous Palestinian people.