Before Scofield, Before Herzl, Christianity Has Always Been Zionist [2/2]

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Long before Scofield: Three centuries of pre-dispensational Zionism

Critics often (wrongly) claim that Christian Zionism began with 19th-century dispensationalists like John Nelson Darby or the Scofield Reference Bible. History says otherwise. By the time Rev. William Blackstone in 1891 and Rev. C.I. Scofield in 1909 popularized the idea that the Jewish return to Palestine was biblically mandated, Christian Zionist fervor had already been flourishing for hundreds of years.

The 18th and 19th centuries abound with Christian theologians and leaders who pressed for a Jewish restoration well before modern dispensationalism made it fashionable. For example, the great American preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), though a Calvinist and postmillennialist (not a dispensational premillennialist), vigorously affirmed from Scripture that the Jews would one day “be reconciled to their divine Parent, regain their ancient homeland, [and] establish a polity there” in fulfillment of prophecy. Edwards even criticized his hero Calvin for “overlooking the plain meaning” of the Hebrew Scriptures regarding Israel.

Meanwhile in Britain, James Bicheno (1752-1831), a Baptist minister, published The Restoration of the Jews in 1800 urging the English government to actively promote the return of Jews to their land. Bicheno was perhaps the first to call for Britain’s foreign policy to include the restoration of Israel.

He was soon followed by Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1801-1885), one of the Victorian era’s most prominent evangelical statesmen. Shaftesbury, guided by his reading of prophecy, tirelessly advocated for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It was Shaftesbury who coined the slogan “A country without a nation for a nation without a country,” and his lobbying helped lay the groundwork for Britain’s pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 pledged support for establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This historic policy statement did not arise in a vacuum – it crowned a long tradition of Christian advocacy for Jewish restoration.

Devout figures like Lord Shaftesbury had campaigned for such a declaration for decades, driven by their conviction that biblical prophecy and God’s covenant demanded the Jews’ return to Zion. The Balfour Declaration’s issuance during World War I marked the first time a major world power officially embraced Zionism, vindicating centuries of Christian anticipation and activism.

Crucially, many of these pre-20th-century Christian Zionists were not fringe extremists but respected thinkers of varied theological stripes – Anglicans, Baptists, Puritans, Lutherans, even Russian Orthodox priests and German pietists.

For instance, Charles Jerram in 1795 won a Cambridge University prize for an essay upholding the inalienable right of Jews to the Land of Israel based on God’s oath to Abraham. He argued that the promise to “give… all the land of Canaan” to Abraham’s seed “for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8) is “absolute and unlimited,” making the Jewish title to Palestine “inalienable.”

Such views, far from being novel, were the logical outgrowth of taking the Bible at its word. By the dawn of the 20th century – before Scofield’s Bible was published in 1909 – Christians across denominations had already built a rich legacy of Zionist thought and action. In 1891, Chicago evangelist William E. Blackstone even gathered thousands of signatures (including industrialist J.D. Rockefeller and future US President W. McKinley) on a petition urging the great powers to restore Palestine to the Jews, an initiative predating political Zionist Congresses.

Simply put, the idea that Christian Zionism “began” with Scofield or American televangelists is a myth. The historical record shows an unbroken thread of Christian Zionist belief stretching back to the very foundation of the faith. Whether Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox, individuals moved by Scripture have continually affirmed that God still has promises for Israel and that the Jewish people’s return to their land accords with those promises.

Eastern Christian witness vs. modern anti-Zionism

It is one of history’s ironies that today some of the loudest opponents of Christian Zionism are Middle Eastern Christians, including certain Arab clergy. Influenced by Islamic and nationalist narratives, they often denounce Christian Zionists as heretical or politically subversive. This stance is not only theologically mistaken – it is tragically forgetful. Middle Eastern Christianity’s own heritage affirms God’s future for Israel.

The Eastern Church Fathers, who lived under early Byzantine and later Islamic rule, did not uniformly adopt the hostile replacement theology of the Latin West. In fact, several ancient Eastern saints clearly taught that Israel would ultimately turn back to Christ.

St. Cyril of Alexandria (378-444), an esteemed Patriarch in Egypt, wrote that “at the end of time our Lord Jesus Christ will be reconciled with Israel, his ancient persecutor… No one who listens to the words of holy Scripture can doubt that… Israel also will have to be received again into the love of Christ through faith.”

This is a remarkable testimony from a 5th-century Eastern bishop: he explicitly refutes the notion that God has cast off the Jews forever, asserting instead that their reconciliation is assured by Scripture.

Likewise, Theodoret of Cyrus and others commented on Paul’s epistles to insist that when the Gentile mission is complete, “even [the Jews] will believe” – the hardened Israel will be restored in God’s mercy. Such voices prove that the expectation of Israel’s eventual salvation was alive in the Eastern tradition, even if at times muted.

Modern Arab Christian anti-Zionists, in aligning with Islamist or ultranationalist denials of Israel’s legitimacy, are betraying their own theological patrimony. They have, sadly, internalized centuries of Islamic supersessionism (which viewed both Church and Synagogue as superseded by Islam) and a 20th-century political ideology that paints Zionism solely as a colonial enterprise.

In doing so, they ignore the fact that for the first 600 years of Christianity, and indeed among many churchmen through the ages, belief in the Jews’ divinely ordained return was commonplace. How can it be “un-Christian” to affirm what Cyril of Alexandria – a Doctor of the Church – boldly taught? How can one claim it is unjust for Jews to reclaim their historical homeland, when countless Christian exegetes over the centuries rejoiced in that very prospect as a sign of God’s fidelity?

I challenge my Arab Christian brethren to revisit their own Scriptures and early writings. The Apostle Paul, a Jewish Christian himself, warned Gentile believers “not to be arrogant” toward the Jewish people, for “if [Israel] was cut off for a time, God is able to graft them in again” (Romans 11:18-23).

Paul confidently predicted that “all Israel shall be saved” once the fullness of the Gentiles has come in (Romans 11:26) – a clear biblical promise of a future conversion and restoration. Christians who stand against the Jewish return are thus standing against the plain implications of the Bible that nurtured their faith. They are adopting the arguments of those who historically oppressed both Jews and Eastern Christians under the crescent, rather than the hope handed down by their saintly forefathers.

Although this may seem ironic – given that I am neither Christian nor a Zionist – I believe it is time for a course correction: a return to the balanced truth that the Church does not replace Israel but joins it, and that God’s promises to the Patriarchs remain sure. Christian support for Israel’s rebirth isn’t a capitulation to secular Zionism; it’s a recovery of the church’s own “Zion-friendly” roots.

Justice and consistency: Standing with Israel as a matter of faith

At its heart, the issue of Christian Zionism is one of theological integrity and moral justice. If the God of the Bible is faithful, then the covenant promises and prophecies regarding Israel must hold true, no matter how many centuries pass. The Hebrew prophets repeatedly foretold the return of Israel’s exiles to their land and a glorious future for Jerusalem. These promises were never revoked.

Indeed, the Apostle Paul reminds us that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” when it comes to Israel (Romans 11:29). For Christians to support the Jewish people’s return to their homeland is simply to side with the fulfillment of God’s word. It is to declare, as Charles Jerram did in the 1790s, that the title deed written in God’s hand cannot be nullified by time or empires. It is to affirm that God’s pledge of “everlasting possession” of Canaan to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is just as valid in 1948 or 2026 as it was in biblical times.

In fact, for believers, witnessing the astonishing rebirth of Israel in the modern era – after nearly two millennia of exile – should only strengthen Christian faith and can be interpreted as a living sign that God keeps His promises. Those early church fathers and Puritans who clung to the prophets’ vision were not fools; they were vindicated by history.

Moreover, supporting the Jewish return is a matter of simple justice after ages of injustice. For centuries, Christians (along with others) sinned grievously against the Jews – exiling them, ghettoizing them, slaughtering them in pogroms and the Holocaust. Is it not fitting, in God’s providence, that the church which once was complicit in Jewish dispersion should now encourage Jewish regathering?

Christians, above all people, should rejoice to see wrongs partly righted: an oppressed people restored to their ancestral home, able to live securely at last. To stand with Israel’s right to exist in its land is to stand with the Bible’s consistent story of redemption, wherein God “will plant them in their land, and they shall never again be uprooted” (Amos 9:15).

It is for Christians to align themselves with the arc of God’s plan, rather than resist it. And it in no way contradicts Christian love for all peoples, including Palestinians and Arabs; rather, it insists that true peace can only be built on truth, not on erasing Israel’s identity and promise.

In conclusion, “Christian Zionism” is not a modern aberration – it is simply Christianity, rightly understood. From Paul to Justin Martyr, from Tertullian to the Reformers, from the Puritans to allies of Herzl, the church has never lacked witnesses to Israel’s enduring role in God’s purposes. The phrase “Christian Zionism” may be of recent coinage, but the phenomenon it describes is as old as the New Testament itself.

The Christian faith sprang from the root of Israel, and it always believed that God’s covenant with that root would flower again. To support the Jewish people’s return to Zion is not to idolize one nation; it is to honor the faithfulness of God and the consistency of His Word. It is to confess that the Church’s story and Israel’s story are divinely intertwined. We do not need to add Zionism into Christianity as an alien element – it has been there from the start.

Thus, the term “Christian Zionist” is arguably redundant: a truly biblical Christian will, by conviction, love and anticipate God’s restoration of Zion. Far from distorting history, this viewpoint corrects the distortion that centuries of supersessionism introduced. In our time, when Israel’s existence is challenged and supporters of Israel are maligned, the church must remember who she is and where she came from.

Christians must remember that their Savior is a son of David, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who will yet “set His feet on the Mount of Olives” (Zechariah 14:4) in a restored Jerusalem. In standing with Israel’s rightful restoration, they stand with the God of Abraham – the God who never reneges on His promises, but rather, in Christ, confirms them “Yes and Amen.”

But, as this may seem like a coup d’état, the real end of all this must be theology itself. Christianity may affirm divine promises, covenants, and eschatological hopes – but should modern politics be governed by ancient revelations, sacred chronologies, and metaphysical certainties forged in a pre-modern world?

Faith can illuminate meaning; it cannot substitute for law, ethics, or political responsibility. The moment theology is allowed to rule the state unchecked, it ceases to be faith and becomes power. And power, when cloaked in the language of God, is rarely questioned, rarely restrained, and never innocent. History teaches this relentlessly. Perhaps the most faithful act today is not to absolutize belief in the political realm, but to recognize its limits – lest God be reduced to an instrument of governance, and politics to a theatre of sacred coercion.

I am known among my colleagues for playing roles – for speaking as a Muslim when invoking figures like Al-Ghazali, or as a Christian when drawing on Augustine of Hippo. Not because I claim ownership of these faiths, but because my task is not to speak for myself so much as to inhabit the logics of others. I have no position here other than to articulate positions – to stage arguments as they understand themselves.

What I have done in this explanation is precisely that: to let traditions speak in their own grammar, even when I do not belong to them.