by Nathan Smith

I must admit, it was a bit shocking to hear the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee agree it “would be fine” if Israel invaded multiple Arab countries because of the bible.

Huckabee made those comments in a teeth-pullingly frustrating interview with journalist Tucker Carlson. Carlson has been on a mission to figure out why the US gives so much support to one of the smallest countries in the Middle East. That support cannot be explained by geopolitics or “realpolitik,” as the experts claim. He suspects the ties are deeper, weirder and ironically easier to explain than that.

So, Carlson spoke to Huckabee to get to the bottom of Christian Zionism. This is a complicated phrase with a lot of baggage which seems to mean different things for different people. First, we have “Christian,” which is a name for someone who believes that Jesus Christ is a god. Second, we have “Zionist,” which, if you accept the propaganda, simply means a person who thinks Jews have a right to exist in their own homeland.

“Christian Zionism,” then, is a political construct whereby Christians accept a specific interpretation of the Bible commanding them to support Jewish Zionism. Where this gets sticky is that the proposed Jewish homeland is not just any old plot of land say, in the middle of the Congo or perhaps Irian Jaya. It is the lands of Israel, according to the bible (the book that Jews wrote).

Obviously, whether Jews or another group of people owns Israel is a heavily disputed topic, but we don’t have to get into that. What’s worth dwelling on is why millions of Christians like Huckabee support Jewish Zionists in their real estate claims. This is important because, as Carlson correctly points out, the bible also says that Israel is the rightful owner of land stretching from the “river of Egypt” (the Nile) to the “great river,” the Euphrates, covering Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

That’s a huge area. And it’s currently full of people who aren’t Jews. If Jews were to fulfil their self-described “prophesy” and dominate this area, just as Genesis 15:18 says, it would cause enormous demographic and political pain.

But Huckabee said, “It would be fine if they took it all.”

He then tried to backtrack like a good diplomat, but you should read that again. This is the US Ambassador to Israel saying that it “would be fine” if Israel took control of two million square kilometres in the Middle East. Needless to say, the governments in those countries weren’t too happy with Huckabee’s Christian Zionist.

The scary thing is that Huckabee is not alone in his thinking. About the same overall percentage of US Christians as US Jews believe Israel was given to the Jewish people by (what they consider to be) god. According to the Jewish Federations of North America, the top-line figure of Jews who believe in Israel’s right to exist (the basic definition of Zionism) is about 88% while 82% of US evangelicals agree.

The exact theological gymnastics required for Christians to become Zionists is a story for another day. What interests me is where this idea came from because it could lead to major wars in the Middle East. I don’t want that to happen, and neither should you.

Essentially, Christian Zionists believe that the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 as a necessary fulfilment of a prophecy in a book written by the Jews, which is claimed by the Jews to be the divine word of a god who was also invented by the Jews. If you believe all this, congratulations, you are a dispensationalist (which was created by a guy called John Nelson Darby).

Dispensationalists argue that the nation of Israel is distinct from the Church, and that God has yet to fulfil his promises to Israel. In this framework, the Church is viewed as a temporary insert into the flow of history, while the original biblical covenants with Israel remain in place. This reading contrasts with traditional Christianity, in which the church fathers understood that the Church itself was to be the “New Israel”. Dispensationalists disregarded that tradition when they adopt a literalist reading of scripture.

That’s all fine, I guess, but where did this strange belief come from? And why does is smell so… American?

Probably because this literalist theology spread through the influence of an American man named C.I. Scofield, an obscure, alcoholic, criminal, abusive, womanising, Civil War deserter who lied about being ordained as a reverend. Funded by the Oxford University Press, his 1909 Scofield Reference Bible contains the text of the King James Authorised Version, along with extensive annotations by Scofield himself. The scholar Albertus Pieters described Scofield’s version of this Bible as “perhaps the most influential single work thrust into the religious life of America during the 20^th century.”

Central to Scofield’s influence was his commentary on Genesis 12:3:

“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

Then the notes for the New Scofield Study Bible added these crucial lines:

“For a nation to commit the sin of anti-Semitism brings inevitable judgement. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew – well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.”

In all other versions of the bible, the Israel that Jesus Christ brings with him is the new covenant of god, therefore the new Israel belongs in the souls of all Christians. However, Scofield translated Israel to mean a literal nation-state and god’s blessing for those who bless Israel went from obeying and serving god in their soul, to the worship of Israel as a political project.

Scofield himself was a Kansas City lawyer with no formal theological training. After his reported conversion to Christianity in 1879, the Atchison Patriot newspaper described him as the “late lawyer, politician and shyster generally”, recounting forgeries in St. Louis that led to a six-month jail sentence.

Despite his obvious character flaws (to put it mildly), Scofield’s career advanced quickly. In The Incredible Scofield and His Book, Joseph M. Canfield suggests that Scofield’s unexpected admission to the exclusive Lotos Club suggested that “someone was directing the career of C.I. Scofield.” Canfield suggests that someone was probably the wealthy Wall Street lawyer and Zionist Samuel Untermyer, although it’s hard to tell for sure. Untermeyer and other influential Zionists also funded Scofield’s travel in Europe. While in England, Scofield met the head of Oxford University Press, who was keen for a project for a new biblical interpretation.

Scholfield’s translation was at the core of the Christian Zionism of US Presidents ranging from Truman and Johnson to Reagan and George W. Bush. Even Donald Trump is a “fellow traveller” of the Christian Zionists. While there were legitimate Cold War geopolitical motives behind the US support for Israel, along with post-9/11 counter-Jihad reasons, it’s not irrational to think that Scofield’s translation made American leaders more sympathetic to Israel than they perhaps otherwise would have been.

Prominent evangelical figures such as John Hagee, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell all preached dispensationalism. When John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), declared that “50 million evangelical bible-believing Christians unite with five million American Jews standing together on behalf of Israel,” he was referring to Scofield’s legacy.

Fast-forward to today, and we have the current US Ambassador to Israel agreeing that Israel has a biblical right to conquer almost the Near East. Surely you can see how this might become a problem.

Since the bible was written by humans, it’s going to have a lot of mistakes. The bible has also been re-written so many times and translated into so many different languages, that it will no doubt have even more mistakes. Maybe Scofield’s additions had the effect of warping biblical interpretations? History is not a science, so it’s hard to know for sure.

But the raw fact is that geopolitics simply does not explain how the world works. States do not strictly act within their constraints in pursuit of “interests.” The layers of ideology and religion count for much more than secular people realise. Beliefs are impossible to extricate from the activity of government because there is an inexhaustible supply of people willing to perform government functions who share the same complicated, confusing and confused beliefs. Dispensationalism is one such belief that has had lasting impact of US foreign policy, mostly due to the influence one man: C. I. Scofield.

None of this should be surprising to those who understand that the United States of America is not an extension of Europe. It is something else, wholly and ontologically different, born in rejection of European ideas and ideals. Dispensationalism is a child of the American mind. It is an idea dripping with ego, “progress” and the End of History. American Christians love dispensationalism because it narcissistically treats them as the main character in the arc of history. Israel is just supporting cast, a MacGuffin allowing America to justify why it rules the world.

The frightening thing is there is quite literally nothing stopping America and Israel from doing whatever they want to fulfil their deluded biblical prophesies. Huckabee is just one among millions who dream daily of fire and brimstone and of conquering the planet for their god.

Originally published on Flat Circle.