Contact: Jeff Walton, Institute on Religion and Democracy, 202-413-5639, jwalton@TheIRD.org
WASHINGTON, April 21, 2015 /Christian Newswire/ -- As Iran's regime strives for nuclear weapons, the Middle East is engulfed in strife, and as Christians in the region are killed by ISIS, Israel remains an island of law and stability where persons of all faiths are safe, according to speakers at a gathering examining Christian support for Zionism.
Scholars at "People of the Land: a Twenty-First Century Case for Christian Zionism" argued that it is time for a new form of Christian Zionism based not on End Times scenarios but rooted in intellectual traditions of ecumenical Christianity.
The April 17 gathering at Georgetown University came as an increasing number of elites among Evangelicals, traditionally Israel's strongest friends, are turning against Israel.
IRD President Mark Tooley commented:
"Too few Christians and Americans today know the deeply biblical and ecumenical intellectual traditions affirming a modern Jewish Israel. We hope our new 21st-century Christian Zionism, rooted in the venerable past, will open an exciting new chapter in Christian friendship with Jews and with Israel.
"This conference made a theological case that is substantively different from the various cases that have been made for Christian Zionism by traditional 'dispensationalists' who focus on the End Times.
"Jews need and deserve a homeland in Israel. Not to displace others, but to accept and develop what the family of nations—the UN—gave them in 1948, as well as to fulfill a special history of continual presence going back at least three thousand years.
"Support for this return of God's people to the land is eroding globally. It is surrounded by regimes bent on its destruction. Mainline Protestants have withdrawn their support. The Evangelical Left is now withdrawing support, using the same faulty arguments. It is a time for Christians, not just Jews, to make a case for the people and the land.
"Some of our speakers made prudential arguments—political and legal and moral for Israel. But chiefly they made a new theological argument for the 21st century that the people of Israel continue to be significant for the history of redemption, and that the land of Israel, which is at the heart of the covenantal promises, remains critical to God's providential purposes."
Conference talks will be made available on the IRD website at www.TheIRD.org by the end of the week. Academic papers from the event will be published in an upcoming book from InterVarsity Press.
