One of the oddest notions now alive on the ‘net is that Evangelicals support Jewish persons because they want to bring on the End Times. Says the leftist hater of Evangelicals to obvious evidence of Evangelical love of all things Jewish, “You cannot give Evangelicals credit for their support of Israel, because they really want all Jews to become Christians or die at the end of the world that Evangelicals are hoping to trigger.”

Now this is just a lie, or at best guilt by association, but it is the kind of lie that leads a great many Americans to dislike their religious neighbor. “Those Evangelicals are all Ned Flanders! So weird and such clever anti-Semites, pretending to love Israel and Jews so that they can kill them!” While figures like Flanders are funny, and often deflate Christian wind bags, such stereotypes become harmful when they are almost the only media image of Evangelicals . . . and then slander is mixed into this pop culture version of forty percent of the population: Evangelicals are shallow and scary!

Now this foolish and generally repulsive attitude attributed to Evangelicals may exist in some Evangelicals someplace, but it is usually best not to argue with the oddest pemutation of someone’s position, but his best. Google will find you someone who believes anything, but what do the scholars of a group say?

I work at one of the leading dispensational universities in the world and since dispensationalism is usually blamed for this weird and evil view (”We love Jews in order to kill them!”), perhaps I am in a good position to say I know of no one who believes it.

Why do Evangelicals care so much about Jewish persons? From my own life experience in many leading Evangelical churches and schools let me suggest four reasons.

First, the Holocaust and the Second World War deeply impacted American Evangelicals. People like Corrie Ten Boom may be little known to non-Evangelicals, but her story of helping her family save Jewish people from Nazi genocide was standard reading in my generation. Ignorance of Ten Boom, whose life was made into a movie by Billy Graham and shown in thousands of Evangelical churches, by non-Evangelicals is understandable, but it is the sort of ignorance of any sub-culture that makes lies told about it more believable. Only someone who does not know Evangelicals well can believe they harbor secret hatred of Jewish people.

Church failures to help Jewish people and the courage of those who did help in World War II were standard stuff in homegrown films, comic books, and books in the latter part of the twentieth century in Evangelical churches. They left many of us feeling that American Evanglicals had not done enough before the War and vowing never to make that mistake again. Bluntly, many Evangelicals now in their thirties and forties grew up with a sense of the failure of some Christians to protect “God’s chosen people” and a desire to be like those who did fight the anti-Semites.

Those opposing the anti-Semites running Iran intend to act as the Ten Boom’s would have acted.

Second, the rise of dispensationalism in Protestantism helped end “replacement theology” in many Evangelical churches. Replacement theology argued that all of God’s Old Testament message to Jewish persons was now directed toward the Church. Dispensationalism argued that God still had a future, positive role for the Jewish people.

The association of replacement theology with some people involved in acts of anti-Semite behavior contributed to a desire to replace it! While unfair to replacement theology as a whole (itself a guilt by association), this association with movements like pogroms may have been a powerful motive in causing many Evangelicals to embrace dispensationalism.

Given that the Roman Church has itself condemned “replacement theology,” dispensationalists were on the edge of a theological trend years before Rome.

Dispensationalism is almost always misunderstood by the media. It is a complex and interesting theological project not best understood by popularizers or novelists. Understanding dispensationalism through the “Left Behind” books is like trying to understand Roman Catholicism through Andrew Greeley novels. One gets some things right, but at the cost of any nuance and through the lense of a fairly eccentric point of view.

One should not measure theological stature by book sales or Pope Benedict would be asking Greeley for advice on encyclicals.

What is the dispensational view of Israel?

First, dispensationalists do not have any reason to believe that this state of Israel (now) is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. It may be or it may not be. Only the coming of the Messiah will answer the question whether this is “a return to the land” or “the return to the land.”

Second, dispensationalists do not believe that there is a “second way to heaven.” Like all traditional Christians (Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox), they believe that following Jesus, the Messiah, is God’s path to heaven for all humankind. However, many dispensationalists do believe in a millenium in which the prophecies related to a physical blessing for a literal Israel will happen. As a result there is an important “second blessing” in store for the Jews. . . a chance to see truth (as Christians understand it).

All of this is on God’s time table and attempting to “speed it up” or “avoid it” would be ludicrous. In the eternal now, God sees and disposes as He will.

Better information on sophisticated forms of dispensationalism can be found by reading Progressive Dispensationalism and this seminal book by Biola’s own Robert Saucy. Progressive dispensationalism is a movement of global importance led out of Biola University and Dallas Theological Seminary, but of course media types feel free to write about it without doing even basic reading and research.

Fact: It is still not possible to understand an important philosophical idea without reading a book . . . or at least talking to people who have written important books. Reporters should remember this basic rule!

In any case, to the extent that dispensational theology of some Evangelicals impacts their views on Judaism it is by reminding them of the Jewish roots of Christianity and future good plans for the Jewish people. “God has not forsaken,” they are fond of saying, “His chosen people.”

To associate this lovely view of God’s watchcare and promise keeping with “exploiting Jews to bring on the Second Coming” is to judge a vast movement by its extremes . . . or by purely hostile secularists stereotyping them and to miss a chance at dialog between two groups with much in common.

The third reason Evangelicals tend to reject anti-Semite seducation is based on the last. Evangelicals are, more than most Christians, very aware of the Jewish roots of Christianity.

If liberal Protestantism went through an anti-Semite phase where Jewish roots of the New Testament were minimized or ignored (and it did), modern Evangelicals never did. They delighted and still glory in the association of Christianity with Judaism. Many lay Evangelicals know more about Passover traditions than some secular American Jews. Many Evangelicals have to be reminded that in enthusiastically chatting with many American Jews, Evangelicals will know more about the Jewish Scriptures than their conversational partner.

The fact of Jesus Jewishness (and of the early leaders of the church) is emphasised again and again in Evangelical churches. . . and not just in those churches dominated by dispensationalism. Evangelicals love their Jewish roots . . . and this has led to the utter obliteration of any trace of anti-Semite rhetoric in their midst.

I have yet to hear one demeaning comment about Judaism in an Evangelical church.

Of course, some might challenge this statement by the simple observation that Evangelicals (with all traditional Christians) think Judaism (at least most Judaism) is wrong in its decision about Jesus. It is not, however, bigotry to have honest disagreement with people one likes. It is even possible to have honest disagreements with one’s spiritual parents! To think Judaism wrong about Jesus and His status and to think that wrong serious is no more hatred of Jews than it is for Jews to think Christian’s wrong.

God will judge at the end of time. If Jesus is God, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, than all of us will have to trust in His divine mercy. In any case, there is nothing about Evangelical faith (historically or at present) that would demand or condone forced conversions or anything but the civil presentation of competing views.

In short, Evangelicals are a sub-culture that is thankful to Judaism for its religious heritage.

Finally, Evangelicals are traditionally Republican going back to the very founding of the Republican Party. Southern Evangelicals, the exception to this rule, still fit the general pattern of mainstreet conservatism. As such they tend to embrace “republican values.” In Israel, Evangelicals (like all American conservatives) see the only Middle East power that also embraces republican values and allows for a “main street” style of free market economics (however imperfectly).

Combined with a vast knowledge of the land of Israel from hundreds of hours of Sunday School. . . where Nazareth looms larger in their imagination than Athens or Paris. . . and one can see how a quick and easy sympathy can develop for this brave nation.

Israel is a free nation in a sea of unfree states, the majority are Jewish to whom Evangelicals owe the deepest debt one man can owe another in this life, and Jewish people have (in the lifetime of many Evangelical leaders) been subject to the worst persecution in the history of man.

Is it any wonder that Evangelicals support the Jewish people and Israel? One need not invent any weird stories, when a more charitable answer is so easy. In fact, the sympathy (often unreturned) and good faith shown by Evangelicals to Jews in the USA and to Israel is one of the most attractive features of modern Evangelicals.