Cliff Cutler is a retired Episcopalian priest and a former member of C-J Allies.
Domination or Liberation: Christian Zionism or the Jesus Movement?
I met liberation theologian Naim Ateek at Saint George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem in 1996. The worship was in Arabic, but he translated his homily for the several of us who were visiting from the U.S. Afterwards he graciously invited us to join a small base community Bible Study. There he shared his fear of the evangelical influence of the Christian right. This struck me as odd. The Moral Majority had disbanded in 1989, some seven years before! The Christian right to my mind was in decline. I was wrong: a year later in 1997 Bibi Netanyahu keynoted a massive rally organized by Jerry Falwell protesting then-President Bill Clinton’s attempt to pressure Israel into withdrawing from settlements on the West Bank. Ten years after my first meeting with Naim Ateek, Texas mega-church televangelist John Hagee founded the Christian Zionist “Christians United for Israel”. An earlier organization, perhaps not as well known in the U.S., is the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem founded in 1980 as a world-wide arm of Christian Zionism.
While Christians United for Israel (CUFI) has sought to distinguish itself from the theology of dispensationalism, it has not quite managed to shake the connection. Senior Editor at Breitbart News, Joel Pollak, wrote an exclusive four days after President Trump relocated the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He quoted John Hagee who explained, “Christians believe that Jerusalem will be the capital city in the Eternal Kingdom ruled by Jesus Christ.” As if to make this clear, Pollak adds in parenthesis, “Religious sources tell Breitbart News that this belief is a tenant of dispensational theology…”
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