Antisemitism, Christian Zionism, and Evangelicalism
(With thanks to Abigail, Lucy, Bethany, Layla and Drey for their excellent suggestions)
“The half philosemitic and half antisemitic obsession with the expansionism of modern Zionism within American Christendom is so prominent it’s insane.” -ScholarlySpoon
Introduction
My mother, a lifelong Evangelical Christian raised by lifelong Evangelical Christians, has some interesting opinions on George Soros. This, of course, is not uncommon among conservatives and Evangelicals (two groups which have significant but not absolute overlap). For instance, around a month after I came out as transgender, my mother called my family into the living room to watch a sermon. Within the first ten minutes, the speaker was talking of how George Soros and other “demon-possessed individuals” were working to “undermine Americans’ morality.” I left after that, walked the dog, and didn’t return until I was sure the sermon was over.
The last time I visited my parents, we decided for whatever reason to watch Schindler’s List together. If you’ve seen the film, you may remember that there is a part in the film which is set in a ghetto set up by the Nazi government in Poland, policed and run by Jews who collaborated with the regime. During these scenes, my mother turned to me and said “Isn’t that how Soros made his money? Selling out his fellow Jews during the Holocaust?” I was rather astonished that she’d repeat a right-wing lie about Soros, particularly while watching that movie. I thought about it for a second, brought up his Wikipedia page, and said “He was 15 when the war ended.” My mother’s response was to say that “Well, 15 was different back then” and I decided to stop there, since nothing good was going to happen if I continued probing her beliefs.
Now, I and many others might think that these conspiracy theories, that a Jewish financier is funding the left to replace white people and destroy “Christian morality,” are, if not outright antisemitic, then certainly coming pretty damn close. But I can tell you from experience that if you bring up the issue with my mother, or the many others on the American Right like her, they will respond to you by saying that they can’t be anti-Semitic because they support the State of Israel, unlike those leftists and liberals who support “Palestinian terrorists.” Putting aside the simply illogical set of beliefs on display here, I think it is worth asking, as my friend Layla put it above: why and how does the American right mix a purported philosemitism (aggressive support for Israel, appropriation of Jewish symbols such as the shofar) with the very real antisemitism of people like Kanye West, Donald Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, to name but a few? And what about evangelicals, in particular, has made them so willing to support Israel and claim to oppose anti-Semitism, even while spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?
Antisemitism in the Modern American Right
Antisemitism and the political right are, of course, an unfortunately durable pairing. The antisemitic roots of the American right are long and extend back at least as far as the Second KKK and Charles Coughlin, if not further. However, I think it is clear that the past several years have seen the introduction of antisemitism in an increasingly overt way in American politics. There are numerous conspiracy theories about George Soros, in addition to the introduction of vocabulary such as “globalist elites” and “rootless cosmopolitans,” which manages to piggyback off of antisemitic canards and tropes without many people, even perhaps some of those who use such terms, fully realizing the implications of such language. There are numerous examples of numerous Republican politicians and right-wing influencers using such tropes or outright engaging in antisemitic behavior. A limited selection would include:
Kanye West’s infamous antisemitic rant,
Steven Crowder, in response to said rant, saying that there was a “disproportionate number of people with Jewish names in higher banking,”
Donald Trump dining with West, the neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, as well as pushing the dual loyalty trope,
Marjorie Taylor Greene blaming a “Rothschild space laser” for wildfires and appearing with Fuentes at a conference he organized,
Tucker Carlson’s repeated pushing of the Great Replacement conspiracy theories,
and many, many more.
It is also worth commenting on the general tenor of right-wing discourse outside of naming specific politicians and influencers. It has been discussed at length how the QAnon conspiracy theory is merely a modern reinterpretation of the old blood libel. QAnon, like the blood libel, holds that there is a powerful cabal of individuals who seek the blood of innocent children to perform arcane, even Satanic rituals. The original canards that children were kidnapped by Jews in order to reenact the crucifixion of Christ (dovetailing with the canard that Jews killed Jesus, not the Romans) or to use their blood to make Passover matzo have been replaced with the creation of adrenochrome, or the sexual abuse of children. Most QAnoners would not name Jews specifically, but it is not hard to discern what is really meant by terms like “globalist financiers” and “cultural Marxist elites.”
The phrase “cultural Marxism” itself has become a right-wing boogeyman, although lately it has been replaced with the admittedly more succinct “wokeness.” This is not a particularly new phenomenon – there is an SPLC article on the use of the phrase from 2003, naming antisemites Pat Buchanan and William Lind as one of its propagators. Lind alleged that the Frankfurt School, a group of predominantly Jewish intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany, were responsible for “political correctness” and controlled American academia. Anders Breivik, the infamous Norwegian terrorist, quoted from Lind’s works often and approvingly in his manifesto, while the gunman who killed one and injured three at a San Diego synagogue also wrote about his hatred for “cultural Marxism” in his manifesto. More mainstream figures such as Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Jordan Peterson, and the Heritage Foundation have attacked “cultural Marxism” with some explicitly naming the Frankfurt School a la Lind.
QAnon has dovetailed quite horrifically with the already extant homophobia and transphobia of the right, with “groomers” seen as part of the conspiracy. In this worldview, “globalist elites” (one can always hear the triple parentheses with these terms) are pushing “gender ideology” on vulnerable children in schools and the media to ensure that they are easily abused and trafficked by the network of “globalist elites.” (There is a further link between QAnon’s condemnation of medications used in gender-affirming care and the wellness-to-QAnon pipeline that definitely merits further in another setting). More traditional neo-Nazis have been attempting to capitalize on the “groomer” panic pushed by Matt Walsh, Chaya Raichik and other conservatives, revealing that they believe the panic has antisemitic undertones (sometimes overtones) which can be exploited to turn conservatives and QAnoners into Nazis.
With all of this said, I believe I am justified in my conclusion that the modern American right is, if not antisemitic in an axiomatic sense, at the very least exceptionally prone to constant failure when it comes to excising antisemitic tropes, concepts, politicos, and influencers from its ranks.. However, a persistent response to claims of antisemitism on the right is an attempt to flip the script – to claim that it is the Democratic Party and the left who are the real antisemites because of their opinions on Israel, Palestine, and the Boycotts, Sanctions, and Divest (BDS) movement. While there are undoubtedly antisemites who are left-of-center, I think it is clear that there is no comparison between the two American parties on this issue. I have witnessed this rhetorical strategy first-hand when I confronted my mother about the incidents at the beginning of the article – she said that she supported Israel ardently, and spoke about her respect for Benjamin Netanyahu. And so, at this point, I think it’s worth exploring the question of why exactly American evangelical Christians care so much about Israel, the US-Israel Alliance, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Premillenarian Dispensationalism (But Were Too Afraid of the Name to Ask)
My mother has always been a great believer in the importance of Biblical prophecy to explain current events. When I was younger, I was given a series of books called The Last Jihad to read, by an author named Joel C. Rosenberg, who previously worked for Rush Limbaugh and Benjamin Netanyahu. These books are more or less intended to be a crossover between the technothrillers of Tom Clancy but with an explanation of premillennialist dispensationalist interpretations of Biblical prophecy, in a similar vein to Left Behind. These books have long scenes wherein characters will explain to Jon Bennett, the protagonist skeptic who is described as the only Democrat in Republican James MacPherson’s administration, the ins and outs of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation. To give you an idea of the quality of predictions we are dealing with, the first book, published in September 2003, features Saddam Hussein targeting Washington, New York and Tel Aviv with nuclear weapons, only to be foiled when President MacPherson uses a B-2 stealth bomber to nuke Baghdad. (Admittedly I am doing my best to piece together what are already fairly foggy memories of this period of my life, as there is no synopsis online as far as I can find, and I refuse to buy these books or even read them through LibGen).
Throughout the five books of the series, Russia and Iran (who are, of course, the Gog and Magog described in Ezekiel 38, a fairly common belief among fundamentalists) attempt to exterminate Israel and its stalwart ally, the United States, only to be thwarted later in the series by literal meteors from space which destroy their nuclear weapons. Alas, in the beginning of the fifth book, jihadists manage to launch four nuclear-tipped Scuds from cargo ships off American soil, destroying Seattle, Los Angeles (where President MacPherson is speaking at the RNC), New York and Washington, D.C. and eventually the Rapture begins. Also, there’s a European politician who is turning the European Union (Rosenberg, being humble and not wanting to crib entirely from Left Behind, confines the ambitions of his version of Nicolae Carpathia to mere Europe) into a new Roman Empire. (Remember, this is the branch of Christianity and the right that thinks the Roman Empire was bad and evil because of all the boyfucking, feeding Christians to lions, and creating Catholicism, not the one that got its name, liturgical language, and love of marble statues from it). The Antichrist is either heavily implied or outright stated to be a new Iraqi leader elected after Saddam is deposed, who uses oil money to create a new Babylon.
I’m certain that if I were to waste my hard-earned money by buying and rereading these books again, there would be, in the words of Contrapoints, a lot to unpack here. Perhaps that’s even a future set of articles, as there is much to discuss. A particularly interesting topic is that one of the key plot points in the book is that Saddam’s attempt to nuke Israel and America disrupts an Arab-Israeli peace plan (with no details on settlements, right of return, or any such issues) written by the main character which shares the profits from a large new oil field discovered in the Mediterranean. This was written back when the American right at least paid lip service to the idea of ever ending the Israeli occupation, in a way that I simply don’t think would happen if this book were published today. I hope you’ll excuse my lack of intellectual rigor, but I am not going to spend money on these books again just for this post.
I think that The Last Jihad is a fascinating text to help us dive into the theology and belief of American evangelicals, particularly in relation to Israel and the Apocalypse. To fully descend into all the possible permutations of modern evangelical thought on the apocalypse and its relationship to current events would drive anyone insane, even someone like me who has marinated in these brainworms since birth. However, there are a few key points to take away and discuss: first, the idea that the Biblical prophecies of the Books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation (a book I once described as the “acid trip of the Bible,” to my high school theology teacher, who did not find this as funny as I did) are literal predictions of historical events to come; second, that the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 was a key moment in the advancement of the End Times; and third, that the United States, being a Christian nation specially ordained by God, has a particular responsibility to be allied with Israel (and to assist with its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to claim the “Biblical extent” of Israel, as the Texas GOP’s platform makes explicit, although this is often left merely implied) or risk its own destruction.
The biblical basis for the evangelical interest in Israel is found in many of the major and minor prophets, which predicts that before the End Times, the people of Israel (as in the patriarch Jacob) shall be gathered once more. This precedes the Tribulation, a period described in Revelation in which God shall “pour out his wrath” upon the world, resulting in, well, the End of Days. The precise ordering of Christian eschatology (or, indeed, if it has happened already) is endlessly debated by scholars and has been for millennia – let alone how these events would actually play out in the real world.
A comparatively recent set of views is encompassed under the mouthful of “premillenarian dispensationalism.” Premillenarian dispensationalism is a theological stance on eschatology, and is composed of two separate but often intertwined beliefs. As they are heavily linked to modern evangelical Protestantism, and particularly to their opinions on Israel and Biblical Prophecy, it is worth discussing them here. In Revelation 20:2-3, there is a mention of a thousand year period (all Biblical quotations are in the King James Version unless otherwise noted):
And he [an angel] laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
Revelation further describes in the next verses that there will be:
…thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus…and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
Verse 6 describes that the martyrs and righteous shall “shall with him [Christ] a thousand years.”
These verses have been subject to intense debate and criticism from the earliest days of Christianity, and there are three broad sets of beliefs about the Millennium. Amillennialists believe this period of time to be figurative, and not a literal depiction of any potential Apocalypse. Postmillenialists believe that the Millennium will be achieved by man, and precedes the Second Coming of Christ (hence the “post-,” as Christ will come after the Millennium). It is from this belief that the word millenarian, in reference to any movement which expects an imminent utopia, derives from. Postmillennialism used to be much more popular in the heady, High Modernist days when it seemed that capital-P Progress and Christianity were spreading across the globe to enlighten and civilize everyone from the lower classes of Britain to the colonial subjects of European empires, when one (of a very particular race, background and social class) could talk of achieving utopia and world peace with a level of seriousness and gravity. As one theology teacher in high school (different one from the acid trip anecdote, who had a much better sense of humor) said to me, “the 20th-century made people much more skeptical of achieving utopia,” and this applied to Christian eschatology as much as any other social or political movement.
But it is premillennialism that we are concerned with here, which argues that Christ’s return precedes the Millennium, and specifically the pre-tribulationist version of it made famous by Left Behind. In this view, Christ will rapture all true believers to heaven, there will be a Tribulation of some period (once again, dependent on how one interprets Revelation), and then after the Tribulation Christ shall return with his church of true believers to establish the Millennium. After this Millennium, Satan will be loosed “a little season” and then the Final Judgement will take place, leading to the New Jerusalem.
The expectation of a future Second Coming is, of course, a key doctrine of the Christian faith and has been from the beginning. But the particulars of “pre-trib pre-mil” eschatology (yes, these are actual abbreviations which are used) have a certain cruelty to them. Premillennialism in the church is by no means a new phenomenon, many of the Church Fathers believed in it. But in their version, the faithful would suffer first through the signs mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 24:
For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours [sic] of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.
All these are the beginning of sorrows.
And then through the Tribulation itself, wherein:
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
Instead, with the rapture coming before the Tribulation, the faithful will be safe in heaven as the world burns and the unfaithful are afflicted with all the famines and pestilences and the end of the world more generally. As more and more Christians feel that they are losing the culture war and watching their dominance slip away, it is perhaps unsurprising that this view, in which the faithful do not suffer but instead are finally rewarded as the unfaithful (liberals, abortionists, gays, Muslims etc) are afflicted.
Dispensationalism is a belief which holds that human history has been governed by a series of “dispensations,” or different sets of rules which God has given to different people at different times. It has become particularly popular in the last ~150 years of American Protestantism. One of its major beliefs is that the Israelites are merely an ethnic group whose destiny focuses on the land of Israel and the Third Temple, distinct from the Church of true believers, whose destiny is spiritual. Some dispensationalists allow an overlap between these groups, but most believe that all Jews will convert to Christianity shortly before the beginning of the rapture. Theologically, Christianity has very much seen itself as a completion of Judaism, even an evolution past it. Let us consider covenant theology, which is an opposing view to dispensationalism which holds that human history is governed by successive covenants, negotiated between the “federal head” of a group and God. Federal (or covenant) heads have included Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Jesus. In terms of covenant theology, the covenant of Abraham, which he made as the patriarch of the Israelites, has been superseded by the new covenant of Jesus, as the promised Messiah. The implicit and explicit antisemitism in both of these views is fairly obvious to grasp.
It is worth mentioning briefly that the dominant eschatological view of the early Protestant reformers, and a very common one among Protestants for centuries after, was historicism. Men such as John Calvin and Martin Luther believed that the Anti-Christ was the Pope, or more specifically the Catholic Church, and interpreted prophecies in various ways to denigrate the Catholic Church. William Miller, an American religious figure in the mid-19th century, famously used the Book of Daniel to proclaim the date of October 22, 1844, as the day of the apocalypse. When the world continued to exist (an event somehow labeled as “The Great Disappointment,”) Miller’s followers would form several other religious movements, including the Seventh-day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Preterism, which I mentioned before, and futurism (the dominant belief of evangelicals) were both popularized as a Catholic Counter-Reformation response to historicism.
I bring this up not only because the theology is fascinating, but also because I wish to emphasize that while predictions of Jesus’ imminent return are nothing new, that the mass organization of fundamentalist Protestants around the belief in a futurist eschatology is rather recent. Most Protestants, until at least the mid-19th century, would have followed Luther and Calvin in believing that the events of the Biblical Apocalypse had already begun sometime in the 1st-millenium AD when the Roman Catholic Church was established, and had merely played out over the past millennium. The belief that biblical prophecy was yet to begin was, indeed, considered to be a Catholic belief to counter historicist Protestants, especially as one of the first major tracts on futurism was written by a Jesuit. The current beliefs of the fundamentalist, evangelical Protestants who form a vital part of the Republican Party’s base are rather recent adoptions and many of their beliefs reflect specific aspects of American politics and culture rather than theology.
As anti-Catholic sentiment has become much less prevalent among Protestants, historicism has faded and been replaced with futurism. Of course, it does still exist – I knew people in high school who thought that Catholicism was descended from Babylonian paganism, and I highly recommend this deranged article about how Jerry Falwell was too ecumenical and theologically liberal for another example. Conservative Protestants and Catholics have in America become political allies on issues such as abortion and gay rights, with Falwell claiming in 1986 that Catholics were the single largest group, at 30%, in the Moral Majority.
With conservative Protestants and Catholics agreeing that it is much better to join forces and bash the queers, the feminists and the liberals instead of each other, we now find ourselves in a position where the most ardent lobby for backing Israel to the hilt, even as (or rather, because) it elects fascists and continues its illegal, blood-stained occupation of the Palestinian territories, is evangelical Christians. Even as their co-religionists suffer under the occupation, they continue to support Israel and more specifically its most radical, Kahanist and anti-democratic elements, and they do all of this while failing to remove the antisemites from their own parties and churches. The Israeli right itself, for what it’s worth, has begun to intentionally appeal to American evangelicals. Instead of focusing on interacting with American Jews to politically support Israel, they now focus on evangelicals. During my childhood, Benjamin Netanyahu was a constant presence on Fox News, and he has only continued this since.
Finally, an important part of American Protestantism has been identification with the ancient Israelites of the Old Testament. Ever since the first Puritans landed in 1620, Christians (and particularly Protestants) in this country have identified themselves with the biblical Israelites. This is by no means a phenomenon limited to America, but it is particularly prominent here. When the Arbella set sail in 1630, the Puritan minister John Cotton gave a sermon in which he quoted 2 Samuel 7:10: “Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more.” The meaning of his sermon is clear - the Puritans are the new Israelites, who have been given the New World as their new Canaan. (Another implication, outright stated by other Puritans even as Cotton tells his congregation to “offend not the poore Natives,” is that much like how God destroyed the Canaanites for the people of Israel, the Native Americans of the new Israel have been struck by disease and starvation, and may require a war to fully exterminate them).
The idea of the “New Jerusalem” has been a part of Christian thought for two millennia, and during that time, countless sects have attempted to make their New Jerusalem as the new “Israelites.” To claim to be Israelites, however, Christianity has always had to ignore the very real, still-living descendants of those Israelites. To claim to be Israelites building the New Jerusalem is, in effect, a claim that the Jews who do live are not really Jews, or that any sort of distinction as “God’s people” has instead been transferred to Christians instead.
Synthesis:
The ultimate end of all of this is that American evangelicals, in the present-day, see Jews as useful in three ways – first, they see them as an ally against Muslims. We see this in the constant invocation of “Judeo-Christian values,” the very concept of which would have been laughable to most Jews and Christians before recently, given that Christianity has seen itself as a completion of Judaism, let alone the long and bloody history of Christian antisemitism. It is also a phrase which pointedly excludes Abrahamic faiths like Islam which lies on similar ethical and historic foundations. Islam also contributed greatly to the preservation of Greco-Roman texts, and therefore “Western civilization” (if such a concept can be said to coherently exist) which conservatives prolifically invoke despite clearly never having actually studied. Thus, for the evangelical, Judaism is a rhetorical cudgel against Islam, and Israel a staunch ally in the fight against Islam (one can particularly see this during the heyday of the Global War on Terror). Given that the term “Judeo-Christian” itself became popularized in the Cold War as a counterpoint to the “godless communism” of the Soviet Union, it is perhaps unsurprising that the target has changed as America’s anxieties and attentions have.
American evangelicals, as we have discussed, also find Judaism useful for fulfilling eschatological prophecies. Given that most evangelicals are premillennialists (that is, believing that Christians will be raptured into heaven before a millennium of pain and suffering will follow), accelerating the End of Days is desirable as it will lead to perfect bliss and contentment for Christians, whereas unbelievers will get their just punishment by horrifically and painfully suffering for eternity. This is perhaps further explained by the fact that a great many American Christians (my own mother among them) sincerely and genuinely believe that they are persecuted in this country. (The second article linked contains this incredible quote: “What do you call it when a Christian is fired for believing that, according to God’s Word, God made men as men and women as women and only those two genders? Or for refusing to tell lies by using she/her or they/them to describe he/him? It’s persecution.”) Given that so many Christians feel that they are persecuted by the horrors of wokeness and pronouns (or at least the somewhat more substantial fears that they have lost the culture war among young Americans), it is perhaps natural that they wish to trigger their salvation and the eternal torment of the rest of us.
The most insidious way that American evangelicals use Jews is, of course, to mask their own antisemitism. As discussed in the previous section, Christianity, theologically, has seen itself as a fulfillment of and evolution of Judaism. And while there have been genuine strides in Judeo-Christian relations in the past century, the fact remains that there has been a persistent streak of antisemitism in the history of every Christian denomination. As discussed earlier in this article, given the ideas and rhetoric of the American right, this streak has not yet been destroyed. Over and over again, we see fundamentalist Protestants who are willing to ally with vicious antisemites and participate in it themselves. To counter the criticism they are faced with for these views, they point to their support of Israel (conflating Jews everywhere with Israel, in itself an antisemitic trope) and pretend that this is a genuine show of philosemitism, instead of an alliance of convenience for their own purposes.
There are, I am sure, many evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants who genuinely believe they are friends of Jews and Judaism because of this. However, no matter how ardently they believe it, we must evaluate that claim not on the strength of their belief, but on the facts. And the facts at hand are unequivocal that evangelicals have participated in an unholy, incestuous union with an increasingly antisemitic Republican Party and American right, and have not only refused to condemn it, they have marched in lockstep as Donald Trump dines with Holocaust deniers and as QAnon continues to take lives. They are, as Jesus himself put it,
“like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and all corruption” (Matt. 23:27).
Conclusion:
People often assume that I am no longer Christian because I am trans. It is certainly true that the way which most Christians think of and treat people like me is hardly an incentive to attend church again. And it is also certainly true that being raised in an evangelical bubble, which was proudly and ferociously hostile towards people like me, has permanently affected my relationship with any sort of Christianity, even mainline or non-Protestant denominations. But I was an atheist years before I knew that I was trans, and one of the main reasons why I became so disillusioned with my family’s faith was because of its constant demands for orthodoxy, its incestuous union with the Republican Party, the implication (sometimes outright stated) that one could not be a good Christian without being a good conservative as well. As I began, through the internet, to finally read liberals and leftists (and evolutionary biologists!) in their own words, not as caricatures, I realized that I did not think that Jesus would have had many opinions on privatizing Social Security, and nor did I think He would think that the most pressing issue in our world today was “the gay agenda.”
It would have been foolish for me to abandon my faith solely over politics. And I did not, I abandoned it because I kept struggling with the Calvinism I was taught and because I could not feel or see God’s presence in the world, no matter how hard I tried. But it did get the ball started. Evangelicals wonder why their churches are getting older and older, and why young Americans do not listen to them. It is because they have become whited sepulchers, because they have not cleaned the rot out. It is because they have sacrificed their principles at the altar of worldly power, because they have lost their soul to gain the whole world. It is because they speak of God’s love and salvation while protecting abusers and abusing queer children. It is because they teach people to believe it is worse for your child to be trans than for you to refuse to love them because they’re trans.
It is because they claim to support Jews with one side of their mouth while spreading blood libel with the other.
What communion hath light with darkness? If you care about the fate of this country, you need to oppose these people. And particularly, if you wish American Christianity to be more than a marginal presence in this country (no comment), hack off your right hand rather than sin again. Fundamentalist Protestants, by all indications, will continue to preach their hate and seek to impose theocracy on the rest of us. The only way out is to ensure they do not get more power to enact even more of their horrors on this country. Because if they do, God help us all.
Recommended Reading:
Berlatsky, Noah. “The Lethal Antisemitism of ‘Cultural Marxism.’” Jewish Currents, May 3, 2019.
The Houston Chronicle, “Abuse of Faith,” February 10, 2019
Kobes du Mez, Kristin. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright, 2021.
Lavin, Tal. “QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic,” The New Republic, September 29, 2020
Leifer, Josiah. “Kahanism’s Raucous Return,” Jewish Currents, September 23, 2022
Loeffler, James. “The Problem with the ‘Judeo-Christian Tradition’” The Atlantic, August 1, 2020
Luo, Michael. “The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind.” The New Yorker, March 4, 2021.
Lynch, Collum. “What’s Next for Christian Zionists?” Foreign Policy, July 19, 2021
Hoberman, Michael. New Israel / New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America. University of Massachusetts Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkb33.
Orbach, Nate. “You’ve heard of Bibi and Ben-Gvir. Now meet the rest of the new government.” 972 Magazine, December 29. 2022
Sutton, Matthew Avery. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism. Belknap Press, 2015.
Unrecommended Reading:
Rosenberg, Joel. The Last Jihad, Forge Books, 2003.