In Christians Respond to the War on The Jewish State, which appears in the September 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Rick Richman profiles Christians United for Israel (CUFI), “The largest pro-Israel organization in the world in terms of membership,” as well as its founder, Pastor John Hagee. Richman documents CUFI’s impressive numbers and vocal activism, but notes that “[S]ince most evangelical Christians are conservatives, and most American Jews are liberals, the evangelical-Jewish alliance will always be ‘at least partially a matter of strange bedfellows,’ in the words of cultural historian Wilfred M. McClay.”
But CUFI’s support for Israel is sincere and impressive. Richman begins by recallying the organization’s response to the decision of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) to divest from Israel:
[CUFI] issued an “action alert” to its 1.75 million members. The alert condemned the action and said, “Happily, this small and shrinking denomination does not speak for America’s Christians.” Within 24 hours, 26,000 CUFI members emailed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, “As an American Christian, I want you to know that the PCUSA does not speak for me.”
The reference to PCUSA as “shrinking” is not an idle insult, as “its membership has been declining for more than a decade.” In contrast, CUFI’s membership has grown from 100,000 members in 2008 to 1.75 million now, six years later.
Richman leaves no doubt about Hagee’s and CUFI’s effectiveness and sincerity, but American Jewish skepticism towards Christian Zionists remains. This worries Richman, who writes:
It is good to have friends and allies; it is never prudent to take them for granted, regardless of inevitable differences on other issues. This is all the more important today, when Christian Zionism itself is under attack, opposed by both American and Palestinian Christian activists who seek to replace Christian support for Israel with support for the Palestinians.
Luke Moon documented the efforts of some of these anti-Israel Christians in The Latest Threat to Evangelical Support of Israel, which was published in the June 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine. Richman, in the end, calls for greater American Jewish – liberal and conservative – engagement with Christian Zionists, because “[i]f Israel is only a Jewish cause, the cause of Israel will be in danger.”
[Photo: CUFI / Facebook]