A foundational tenet of the Hebrew Scriptures is the proclamation that the earth belongs to God alone. We human beings are given the responsibility to care for God's earth. But early on in the story, the reader learns of the human foibles of lying, cheating and deceit resulting in the breakdown of family, and its inevitable corollary, the breakdown of society into warring factions. The notion of God's ownership, as well as the notion of the beloved community, is quickly swept away in a flood of violence that destroys that which was once dreamt of as a harmonious whole.
As the Hebrew story progresses, we learn of a man named Abraham who is chosen by God to be a blessing to all nations, restoring the harmony through the generation of a particular nation that will be a model of justice and righteousness. Through the blessing bestowed on Abraham comes a promise of land -- a promise that is at the root of the political crisis characterizing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Christianity emerged initially as a Jewish renewal movement. The earliest followers of Jesus were all Jews; they continued to worship in the Temple, they continued to maintain the dietary laws and customs of the Jewish way of life. The difference was that the Christian movement claimed that God had begun a new creation through the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus, in his death and resurrection, had become Israel's Messiah. That is, the followers of Jesus began to tell their fellow Jews that True Israel was following the way of Jesus rather than Torah. In other words, the Christian movement became a hostile takeover of the Jewish religion. All those promises to Abraham were interpreted as fulfilled in Jesus, and later, as the Jesus movement spread throughout the world, the promises were interpreted as belonging to the church. Inevitably, having highjacked Jewish identity, the church took to outright persecution climaxing in the ovens of Nazi Germany.
The Holocaust sobered Christians to the reality of what they had done in Jesus' name. Today we see evidence of a true repentance, and in some cases, amends making by the global church towards the Jewish people. An example of this is that Biblical scholarship has given Jesus his Jewish identity back, and has traced his teachings back to their roots in Hebrew scripture. There is a lot more dialogue between Jewish and Christian theologians, clergy and congregations than perhaps ever before in history.
Christian Zionism is most certainly part of this movement of repentance and amends making. Christian Zionists proclaim and practice that God's blessing of Abraham, the gift of the land, is not fulfilled in Jesus; rather, it is an eternal blessing for the Jewish people alone. This view, new in Christian history, has added fire to the flames currently destroying any hope of peace in the Middle East. To that view I will turn next week.