Evangelicals 'Highly Important Allies' to Israel, Says Rabbi Eckstein
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
March 14, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Jewish rabbi says liberal, mainline Protestant churches are no longer allies of the Jewish people. But Evangelicals, he says, offer love for Israel "without limits and without conditions" -- and because of that deserve the thanks and cooperation of Jews around the world.Last summer, the Presbyterian Church USA voted overwhelmingly to divest from companies that do business with Israel and profit from Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza. And recently, the governing body of the World Council of Churches urged its members to look to the PCUSA as a model for pursuing divestment, saying the denomination's action "is commendable in both method and manner, uses criteria rooted in faith, and calls members to do the 'things that make for peace' (Luke 19:42)."
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is the founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), which is based in Chicago and Jerusalem. The Fellowship describes its mission as "promot[ing] understanding and cooperation between Jews and Christians" and "build[ing] broad support for Israel and other shared concerns." In a recent column, the rabbi addressed the importance of the support of American evangelical Christians to the nation of Israel.
"Evangelical Christians are highly important allies -- particularly at this time, when Israel finds itself at a political and social crossroads," Eckstein says. "While it is true that many of the evangelical Christians belong to the right wing of the political map, their love for the State of Israel is unconditional. At a time when the rest of the world is arrayed against us, evangelical Christians are true friends who stand alongside us."
Without belittling the critical influence of American Jews, the rabbi points out the importance of the economic, political, public relations, and tourism support of the evangelical Christian community. "[T]he influence of the evangelicals on the decision-making process in Washington, and particularly on the now-dominant Republican Party, is several times greater than the influence of U.S. Jewry," he says.
Eckstein says he notices a strengthened Jewish-Evangelical alliance. "I think there has never been a time, that I can recollect, when the relationships between America and Israel, and between conservative, Bible-believing Christians and the Jewish people ... have been stronger," he says.
But unlike evangelical Christians, the rabbi says, liberal Protestants have become increasingly hostile to the only democratic country in the Middle East. "The fact of the matter is that the Presbyterian Church, and then the Episcopal Church, and now the World Council of Churches all came out not against countries like Sudan and others, where there is a real violation of human rights, but against little Israel," Eckstein states.
Noting the churches did not call for a boycott of what he describes as "the darkest and most savage regimes known to humanity," he adds: "This boycott does not issue from sublime humanitarian motives."
But the effect of the moves, he adds, has been regrettable. "[T]hese churches have succeeded in creating a media echo that reverberates through the U.S. and Europe," he says. "A poll conducted by The Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper that resonates loudly among liberal believing Christians, found that more than 60 percent of its readers support boycotting Israel."
Eckstein believes there is currently an "internal strife" between Evangelicals and mainline Protestants over Israel -- and that those Protestants are lashing out against Evangelicals because "evangelical churches are growing and mainline churches are diminishing."
