APOCALYPSE NOW: CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN ZIONISM IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

Abstract

Political theology, formerly an essential form of Western political thought, has been increasingly overlooked as relic of a benighted past. Yet it remains relevant, even prevalent, in twenty-first century American politics. Christian Zionism, which upholds the millenarian Christian belief that restoration of Jews to their biblical territory of Palestine presages the Messiah’s impending return at the apocalypse, epitomizes this reality. Since the 1960s, its contemporary variant has manifested into a major socio-political force in US public life and popular culture. Christian Zionism currently boasts forty million adherents amongst the evangelical populace and representatives within the highest echelons of the US administration and Congress. This confluence of political power and religious dogma has resulted in controversial foreign policy prescriptions. However, scholars have often vacillated between underplaying and overestimating this ideology’s influence as well as insufficiently accounted for the multicausal nature of American foreign policymaking. Furthermore, Christian Zionism represents a microcosm of the division between secularism and religion which cuts through the American nation. A normative assessment of religion’s role in the public sphere value adds to perspectives on both sides of the divide. This thesis thus attempts to prove Christian Zionism’s influence on American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East by uncovering its underlying determinants for its historical growth in the US body politic. It then assesses the normativity of Christian Zionism from the perspective of democratic theory. In mapping specific policies to specific beliefs and specific actors, I argue that Contemporary Christian Zionism has significantly influenced American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East through diverse segments of the American power structure, ranging from Presidents to pastors to the public and even foreign entities. Ironically, Christian Zionism and the apocalypse it entails is perhaps heading for an anticlimactic ending.