Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustincoates | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in an Evangelical church and I attend a Protestant church now (although not American) and the only place I've ever heard people claim that my fellow congregants believe that about Israel is online from people outside the church.

I'm sure you'll be able to find _someone_ who believes it, but it is so weird to see people claiming something as a fact about your church that you've never encountered in nearly 40 years. What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

View on HN

Whoa, I strongly disagree with this.

As someone who attended an evangelical, fundamentalist Baptist church as a child (Hyles Anderson), it is very much their view as well as larger groups like Independent and Southern Baptists (the largest Protestant denomination in the United States) that the existence of the nation of Israel and support for it is a precursor for the second coming of Jesus and the fulfillment of Gods plan.

Additionally, “Christian Zionism” is embraced by Christians in Australia and Western Europe as well.

There are academic sources for this everywhere, but feel free to watch their sermons on YouTube too:

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religio...

[2] https://www.brandeis.edu/israel-center/news/newsletter-5-rob...

> What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

What's really infinitely more likely is that israel and usa share some common enemies, and usa doesn't really have all that many geopolitical allies in the region to chose from. I don't know why everyone reaches for weird religious conspiracies when the obvious geopolitical explanation will do.

These are state laws. Alabama, for example, does not share enemies with Israel nor is it involved in any geopolitics. So it's extremely unusual to have such laws even in one state and in this case there are dozens of such states. Do you know of any other state laws concerning other US allies, say KSA?

Maybe it's because that the religion is one of the most important factors which formed these alliances and adversaries throughout the history.

Without these cultural and religious layers, what remains is same for everyone. A human body.

Sure, you are correct.

But that also means Jews/Christians have a very rocky road together. Technically, "Christians" performed the Holocaust, for starters.

It begs a question - when you add in Islam, why do Christians and Jews suddenly become political allies?

Because radical Islamists attack Christians and Jews equally. Actually they attack everyone that isn't a radical Islamist, including an awful lot of Muslims. In fact the vast majority of the victims of Islamist violence are other Muslims.

It's important to note that we throw around terms like The Muslims as though all Muslims and Christians, etc have the same beliefs and agenda, and that's clearly not the case.

Today's mainstream religion is something entirely different from yesteryear. I'm a Muslim, who has good friends who have faith in any and almost every religion (excl. extremists).

The subject is completely invisible to us except when we discuss interesting parts of the religions we believe.

I for one believe that religion is an ethics and conscience system, and when practiced correctly, all of them points to the same direction, albeit with different narratives and paths.

> when you add in Islam, why do Christians and Jews suddenly become political allies?

Goes back to the Crusades, the Islamic invasion of Europe and the fall of Constantinople

It’s not like Christianity embraced Jews either, but they did not present an existential threat

The reality of course is that being so strongly interlinked with Israel is one of the major reasons why everybody in the region hates them. The Israel alliance is geopolitically harmful to the US.

Whilst I've definitely got the impression, that _most_ people think of it as a shared heritage, I have now and then had a few people quoting the same prophecy from Zechariah as their reasoning.

> And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it - Zechariah 12:3

The (mis-)interpretation being that for the return of God to occur, the existence of Jerusalem is a pre-requisite. It can't disappear, again. So for that to happen, we should protect Israel, who will protect the city. We should especially protect them because the world will gather against them.

The logic has some major flaws to it, and can be easily worked around, but I've heard it a few times.

Possibly closer to the mark in terms of scripture is Ezekiel 38, which specifies that the Jews are to have returned/gathered from exile/dispersion and be living in peace ("unwalled cities") before an invasion/looting from the north. Of course, it only specifies the movement of peoples, not the political configuration of the land.

The same groups of people tend to apply that one to the Yom Kippur war, and treat it as already fulfilled. The thing about Jerusalem having to remain as a heavy stone is more what inspires them to defend it.

> for the return of God to occur, the existence of Jerusalem is a pre-requisite.

isn't it amusing how humans think their deity isn't powerful enough so they have to make things possible for him?

This is less a case of "powerful enough" and more that Christianity upholds that God is changeable, and expects people to _act_ and not merely trust that he will do everything for him. (Certain prosperity sects excluded.)

There are several times when significant figures such as Moses, David, Jeremiah, and so on, negotiate a new outcome with their God. There are also other times that their God refuses to act, because the faithless have fallen away.

They "wandered around in the desert", a rather small patch of desert, mind you, because of a lack of faith. The 40-ish years in the desert, to age out those who failed in their duty, rather than to enter into their "Promised Land". Moses was also forbidden from entering Cana'an, because he tried to act on his own, instead of in tandem with his god.

I believe your personal experience. Anecdotes are not data, though.

> > odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist

This seems to be overwhelmingly true[1].

> "...80% of the surveyed evangelicals believe that the modern rebirth of Israel and the return of millions of Jews to that land are a fulfillment of Bible prophecy and show 'we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ.'[1]

> more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage

This wouldn't really explain it.

Muslims also have a Judeo-Christian heritage (and even believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah), and there's no reason to believe the historical parts of Israel would be different if they were under Muslim control. After all, the Palestinians living there prior to Israel's formation preserved all that stuff for hundreds of years.

1. https://www.npr.org/2019/08/25/753720351/as-u-s-jews-cool-to...

There is a lot of diversity between churches so I'm not surprised you did not see this while others did. I grew up in the in a Pentecostal cult in the 90s and very much covered revelations, second coming/endtimes, Israel as part of the sermons and randomly speaking in tongues - the best I can describe it is batshit insane (we are talking computer chips as the mark of the beast in the future, single currency, russia as the beast out of the sea, nuclear war coming, lots of death and beheading) However my grandfather in a northeast baptist church which I occasionally went to was very tame and I never saw any of this. Had I exclusively gone to the baptist church I may very well have stuck around in the church.

I grew up in pentecostal churches in the 90s as well and can confirm that what you're stating here isn't hyperbole. Everything is a sign of the end times if you want it to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo77sTGpngQ

If you seek to 6 min 5 seconds, the narrator describes an Evangelical pastor by the name of Urban Baxter whose End Time ministry leads a tour to Israel twice a year. The pastor then explains to his tour group / congregation the significance of Armageddon in relation to the current location of the tour group, Megiddo.

> What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

Up until they actually travel to the Holy Land to see 1) that the Christians there are either of European descend, or Palestinians (there are very few Christians of Israeli descend), 2) how Palestinians are treated by the State of Israel.

This is kinda eye-opening. You imagine that there is some "shared Judeo-Christian heritage", but after seeing this firsthand you associate the Land more with barbed wire than with Jesus.

Source: been there, seen that.

12 years of Private christian schools.

It still shocks me how people that know nothing are the ones that define what Christian’s believe / behave.

> What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

I don't think historically this makes any sense at all. It's normally just a thing used by right wing politicians to say that muslims are not ok.

It's much more likely it just wasn't something you encountered in your practice and not that reliable sources analyzing American political and financial support for Israel all happen to make up the part Evangelical Americans play. A quick search for e.g lobbying for Israel in the United States brings up credible sources.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com