In answer, I will examine the connection between the Lutheran Protestant Revolution (1517) and the birth and growth of Christian Zionism. I will address the effect Zionism might have had on America’s entry into the First World War on the side of Britain and the Allies (April 1917), the issuance of the Balfour Declaration by the British Government (November 1917), and the formation of Israel (1948). I will end with a brief outline of Islam’s veneration of Judaism, the safety Jews enjoyed in Muslim lands over the long sweep of history, and the hostility and dispossession Zionism rewarded Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinian since 1948.
Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in 1517 was an inflection point in the history of Christianity. In Catholic Europe, the blood of Jesus caused Jews to endure centuries of discrimination, persecution, and living in ghettos. The 95-Theses Lutheran Revolution shook the foundations of the Catholic Church like never before.
Driven by his objection to the sale of indulgences by Pope Leo X to fund the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Lutheran Revolution restructured Western Christianity in two fundamental ways:
1. Eliminated the role Catholic priests play in the absolution of sins. Luther’s direct covenant with God and priesthood-of-all-believers theologies enabled Protestants to confess sins directly to God, though the door to therapeutic consultations with a priest or a layperson was left open.
2. Eliminated the exclusive, infallible Papal authority and Church Councils over interpretating the Scriptures. Instead, Luther advocated a literal, grammatical, historical interpretation of the Bible by any Christian.
The consequences
The Lutheran Revolution opened the door wide to opinions, prejudices, and agendas of charismatic Protestant politicians seeking power and wealth dressed up in Lutheran garb.
Ending the singular Papal authority over Catholics divided Protestants into multiple, often contradictory, denominations. In England, Puritan Moderates aimed at reforming the Church of England from within. Puritan Separatists decided that the Church of England was too corrupt to be saved, choosing instead to create their own autonomous congregations. Presbyterian Puritans sought to replace the hierarchy of bishops with representative elders in a non-hierarchical system. Congregationalist Puritans believed that each local church should be autonomous, self-governing congregation. Baptists rejected infant baptism. Quakers emphasized the inner light over scripture.
Additionally, literal, grammatical, historical interpretation of the Bible produced bizarre outlandish theological speculations, particularly in the 1800s, regarding the second coming of Christ to Jerusalem and the restoration of world Jewry to the Holy Land to be converted to Christianity.
Political/religious turmoil in England
To understand American Christian Zionists’ control over Washington’s Middle East politics, tracing the emergence and growth of the puritans’ movement in England and the United States is important.
During the reign of seven English monarchs (1547 and 1685), including the 11 interregnum years when England was a republic, the Lutheran Revolution sparked violent swings between Catholicism and Protestantism. The process convulsed societal structures, fuelled ideological and religious confrontations; culminating in Civil Wars (1642-1651), execution of King Charles I (March 17, 1649), abolishment of the monarchy and the House of Lords, until King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660.
King Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) founded the Church of England in 1534 in reaction to Pope Clement VII’s refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Although he maintained Catholicism-without-the-Pope, the King confiscated the Catholic Church’s wealth, gifting and selling its large land holdings to the landed gentry, enriching and solidifying the political and economic power of the rich elites.
King Henry VIII converted the church’s power into royal wealth and loyalty to the Crown from the nobility.
The Regency Council of King Henry VIII’s child son, king Edward VI (r. 1547-1553), transformed the Church of England into a Protestant Institution, allowing priests to marry and removing from churches all images, statues, and stained glass.
Queen Mary I (r. 1553-1558) brutally restored papal authority and Catholic practices. Known as “Bloody Mary”, she burned many Protestant opponents to death for heresy. In reaction, over 800 Protestants, largely merchants, artisans, and clergy, fled to Germany and Switzerland. In exile, they grew more radical, determined to purify the Church of England from all vestiges of Catholicism. For example, they refused to bow to Jesus’ name, use the sign of the cross, kneel to receive Communion, and wear ornate vestments. Also, they rejected clerical hierarchy and considered crucifixes and statues of saints as idols. They were the cornerstone of English Puritanism.
Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) established a moderate Church of England. Following the death of Queen Mary I, many exiled Puritans returned to England. While Queen Elizabeth I revoked papal authority and allowed clerics to marry, she balanced Protestant doctrines with traditional Catholic practices and rituals. Puritans were dissatisfied. They wanted a clean break with Catholicism.
King James I (r. 1603-1625) adopted his mother’s middle way between Puritanism and Catholicism. Puritans were dissatisfied.
King Charles I (r. 1625–1649) believed in his Divine Right to rule without accountability to Parliament. His marriage to a Catholic French princess compounded his problems with the Puritans in the House of Commons. Conflicts over finances, religion, and foreign policy led the King to dissolve Parliament four times between 1625 and 1640. Reacting to the harsh treatment, ~20,000 Puritans emigrated from England to New England between 1620 and 1640. Described as the Great Migration, it was the cornerstone in the development of American Puritanism.
The English Civil War erupted in 1642. Puritans played a defining role, despite of being a 10% of the English electorate. Their influence was disproportionately high in the Parliament due to their activism, organizational skills, alignment with opponents of the monarchy, presence in London and other commercial centres that held significant political and economic weight.
The Civil War led to the execution King Charles I on January 30, 1649. An interregnum period of 11 years followed, during which England became a republic known as the Commonwealth (1649–1653) and subsequently the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, until his death (1653-1659). He was succeeded by his son Richard for less than one year, paving the way to the restoration of the monarchy under King Charles II in 1660.
Cromwell’s hostility towards Catholics, particularly his massacres of Catholics in Ireland, made him an anti-Catholics Puritan. On the other hand, he allowed Jews to return to live in England, 350 years after they were expelled by King Edward I in 1290. His belief that the returning Jews would convert to Christianity, fulfilling the terms of scripture and hastening the Second Coming of Christ qualifies him to have been an early proponent of Christian Zionism.
King Charles II (r. 1660–1685) maintained his role as the head of the Church of England but held strong Catholic sympathies. He formally converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.
Puritanism and Palestine
Puritans viewed their migration to America as a divine Exodus akin to the return of the Jews to the Holy Land. They named American towns after biblical locations, such as Salem, Canaan, Goshen, and Mount Zion. They saw themselves as God’s chosen people who had fled religious oppression in England and settled in their Promised Land of America.
During the Puritans’ voyage to America in 1630, leader John Winthrop expressed the Puritans’ identity with the Israelites during the ocean journey in his Model of Christian Charity sermon:
The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his oune people…. Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us…. Wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill.”
The Dogma
English Puritan and theologians in the late 16th and especially 17th centuries held the view that the literal return of the Jewish people to Palestine was a prerequisite for the second coming of Christ and the conversion of the Jews to Christianity. They interpreted promises in Genesis (12:3, 17:8) to Abraham and his descendants as a physical geographical grant. Likewise, they interpreted Prophecies in Ezekiel (37) and Isaiah (11) as events to be fulfilled literally in the modern era.
In the 1830s, literal, grammatical, historical interpretation of the Bible led John Nelson Darby to package and popularize a bizarre theological system, premillennial dispensationalism. It involves a sequence of cataclysmic events that will precede the return of Christ to the Earth to establish 1,000 years of justice and prosperity; the Rapture, the 7-year Tribulations, the Antichrist, and Armageddon.
Rapture specialists propagate that Christ will snatch all Christians, dead and alive, at some unknown future to meet him in the air on the way to heaven or, to protect them from wrath of God during the following seven Tribulation years.
Such dogmatic notions gained in acceptance in America after the Civil War (1861-1865), largely through the work of Bible conferences and the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. The dogma became the foundational theology for modern evangelicalism and Christian Zionism in America.
Following the 1967 War and the capture of the Old City of East Jerusalem, rebuilding the Third Jewish Temple gained momentum among Jewish Zionists and American Christian Zionists. The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. To build the Third Temple, the sacred al-Aqsa Mosque must be demolished. That the Second Intifida was triggered by Ariel Sharon’s visit to the site reflects the explosiveness of this issue to all Muslims.
Post 1967, Genesis 15:18 gained Zionist political prominence:
The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, ‘unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
Israeli politicians and American Christian Zionists invoke Genesis 15:18 to lay claim to lands in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria as if they were in possession of these lands’ title-deeds.
Politicizing the Bible politicized the Quran.
Christian Zionists’ current efforts to convert Jews to Christianity
Certain Christian Zionist groups and individuals cannot wait for some distant eschatological event, like the second coming of Christ, to convert Jews to Christianity. Instead, today, they are actively seeking the conversion of Jews to Christianity. Among such organizations are the International Mission to Jewish People, Christian Friends of Israel, Jews for Jesus, Chosen People Ministries, Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations.
Puritanism/Christian Zionism in America
Biblical literalism planted a seed in Palestine for world Jewry. The seed bore fruit when General Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem on December 9, 1917, after four centuries of Muslim Ottoman rule, followed by the creation of Israel in 1948.
Harvard University President Increase Mather (1639–1723), son of Puritan minister Richard Mather (emigrated from England to America in 1635) argued in The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation (1669) for the physical restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine. He reinforced the glorious and wonderful nature of this physical return, identifying it as a literal fulfilment of biblical prophecy rather than a purely allegorical event. Further, he stated in his The Doctrine of Divine Providence Opened and Applied that the twelve tribes will be brought out of bondage into a state of salvation, not only spiritual but temporal. He argued that the Jews will be repossessed of their own Land again.
John Adams, the 2nd President of the United States (1797-1801), reflected Christian Zionist Messianic agenda in a letter he wrote to a Jewish friend, M. M. Noah, dated March 15, 1819, Adams expressed the desire to see the Jews again in Judea an independent nation in time to become liberal Unitarian Christians.
John Quincy Adams, the 6th president (1825-1829) expressed his desire for the Jews again [were] in Judea, an independent Nation, . . . once restored to an independent government and no longer persecuted.
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president (1861 until his assassination in 1865), in a meeting with Canadian Christian Zionist, Henry W. Monk, in 1863, said that Jews be emancipated by restoring them to their national home in Palestine. Lincoln said this was a noble dream and one shared by many Americans.
In 1891, in a petition signed by 413 prominent Americans, William Eugene Blackstone, an American Evangelist and Christian Zionist lobbied President Benjamin Harrison for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. Known as the Blackstone Memorial, among its signatories were, the US Chief Justice, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, and William McKinley, a Congressman from Ohio, then the 25th President of the United States (1897 until his assassination in 1901).
The first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It was led by a secular, Theodor Herzl. The Basel Congress was a secular affair dressed up in Biblical colors to appeal to devout Jews.
It may be said that Jewish Zionism was the brainchild of America’s Christian Zionism, and that the Herzl Congress was engineered by America’s Christian Zionists.
Harry Truman, the 33rd President (1945-1953), revealed his Christian Zionist bias when he was the first to announce US recognition of Israel’s independence eleven minutes after it was declared by David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948. He did so despite the opposition of the State Department and the military establishment to the partition of Palestine in the United Nations in November 1947. Truman compared himself before a group of professors at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York to Cyrus the Great, King of Persia in the Old Testament who enabled the Jews to return to their land in 539 BCE from 70-year captivity in Babylon.
Ronald Reagan, the 40th President (1981-1989), was heavily supported in his campaign for the White House by Christian Zionist organizations. Reagan brought Christian Zionists leaders into White House activities, promoting their political agendas and forging strong alliances between them and the Republican Party.
George W. Bush, the 63rd President (2001-2009) said that his war in Iraq in 2003 was a mission from God. His support of the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank was aligned with Evangelical Christian Zionists’ interests and the Israeli Government. The Messianic Jewish Bible Institute in Dallas hosted George W. Bush as the keynote speaker at its annual fundraiser on November 14, 2013. He spoke to about bringing Jewish people into a personal relationship of faith with Yeshua, the Messiah.
Donald Trump, the 45th President (2017-2021), recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, starved UNRWA of US funds, cut aid to Palestinian hospitals, shut Palestinian Liberation Organization’s office in Washington D.C., and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights.
Joe Biden, the 46th President (2021-2025), frequently declared himself a proud Zionist and that if there weren’t an Israel, we’d have to invent one. He was a complicit partner in the Armageddon visited upon Gaza by the Israeli Government since October 8, 2023, until he left office.
Donald Trump, in his second term as the 47th President, was elected despite criminal indictments and convictions in multiple American Courts of Law. That he was allowed to run for President and win the November 2024 elections do not reflect well on either the American Constitution, which allowed a convicted felon to run for the highest office in the land, or the electorate, which voted for a felon.
Trump’s connection to evangelical leaders was on full display on March 5, 2026, when a group of some 20 evangelical leaders and pastors surrounded him behind the Resolute Desk placing their hands on his shoulders in prayer.
Trump did not contradict Mike Huckabee, his Ambassador to Israel, or relieve him from duty, after declaring in an interview on February 20, 2026 that it would be fine if Israel took the territory from the Nile to the Euphrates, despite protests from Jordan, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Huckabee is an ordained Evangelical Baptist Minister.
Influence of Christian Zionists in the United States
Standing behind Christian Zionists’ control over Washington is a large base of around 20%-25% of the estimated 100-130 million Evangelicals. For example, Christians United for Israel, the largest Christian Zionist organization, claims a membership count of over 10 million, outnumbering America’s Jewish population of 6.3 million.
The Balfour Declaration
Among Britain’s many Christian Zionist leaders during the First World War were Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour.
In a letter revealed on November 2, 1917, by the then Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to the Jewish community leader, Lord Rothschild, Britain offered lands in Palestine it never owned to the Zionist Federation. Curiously, the Balfour Declaration was revealed more than a month before British troops took Palestine. The letter said:
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
“His Majesty’s Government views with favour [sic] the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours [sic] to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
Significantly, the text of the Balfour Declaration was submitted to President Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States (1913-1921) and was approved by him.
Curiously, Edwin Montagu (1869–1924), the Secretary of State for India and the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet, was the fiercest opponent of the Balfour Declaration. He believed that the declaration made Jews as if they did not belong in their home countries. Other objectors were the President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, C.G. Montefiore, and the Chairman of the Jewish Board of Guardians, L.L. Cohen.
That the part of the Declaration: Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, was ignored. According to the United Nations, 700,000 Palestinian refugees were created in 1948.
Curious Timings
The Balfour Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917, more than a month before British troops had even taken Palestine fully. Events in 1917 raise two questions:
First, what might have prompted the UK Government to issue the Declaration? Was it America’s Christian Zionists’ fantasy over the return of Jesus to Palestine to convert the Jews to Christianity?
Second, why did the US join the First World War on the side of Britain and the Allies? Was the Balfour Declaration an American precondition to join the War?
Two years into the War, in 1916, the Allies were under severe pressure on the battlefield. They desperately needed America’s help. The Battle of Gallipoli ended in disaster for the Allies on January 9, 1916, with more than 200,000 casualties (out of a force of 500,000). On April 29, 1916, the Ottoman army took 13,000 British troops prisoners in Kout near Baghdad, along with their commanding officer, Major General Townshend.
Islam’s veneration of Judaism
While Catholic Europe has discriminated against Jews for centuries, Christian Zionists in America and Europe want to transfer world Jewry to Palestine so that Christ may return to the Earth to force their conversion to Christianity.
By comparison, Islam venerates Judaism. Arabs believe that Jews are their Semitic cousins, going back to Ismail (Ishmael), the son of Abraham by the Egyptian slave woman Hagar, and Ishaq (Isaac), the son of Abraham with Sarah. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in peace in Arab and Muslim societies for centuries before the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Qur’an praises Abraham as the first Muslim and describes Islam as the religion of Abraham.
Today, names like Dawoud (David), Ibraheem (Abraham), Ishaq (Isaac), Mousa (Moses), Sara (Sarah), Sulaiman (Solomon), Yacoub (Jacob), Yousef (Joseph), Zakariyya (Zakaria), and Sham’oun (Shimon) are common in Arab societies. Until Jewish migrations into Palestine started in earnest, Jews in the Arab and the Muslim worlds had centuries of generally peaceful relations. It was rather common for Muslim men to marry Jewish women.
It was the Muslim Saladin who encouraged Jews to return to Palestine following his defeat of the Crusades in 1187. In 1492, the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid-II (1481-1512) allowed Jews driven out from Spain and Portugal to settle in the Ottoman territories, where they were able to rebuild their lives after being expelled from Iberia.
In his novel Coningsby, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s first and so far, only prime minister of Jewish parentage (1868 and 1874-1880) described the golden age of Muslim Spain:
“That fair and unrivalled civilization in which the children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves. During these halcyon centuries, it is difficult to distinguish the followers of Moses from the votary of Mohamet. Both alike built palaces, gardens, and fountains, filled equally the highest offices of the state, competed in an extensive and enlightened commerce, and rivalled each other in renowned universities.”
The fact that around 850,000 Jews migrated from the Arab world around the time of Israel’s creation in 1948 and shortly after suggests that the Jews of the Arab world must have found it agreeable to live among Arabs for centuries. In 1917, around a third of the population of Baghdad, for example, were Jewish.
Arabs and Palestinians are bewildered as to why Zionism rewarded them with killing, deportation, dispossession, occupation, and humiliation. They are baffled as to why far right Zionist politicians refuse to share the Holy Land with them, the way they lived together in Arab and Muslim societies over the long sweep of history.
In provoking the enmity of Arabs and Muslims, Zionism has harmed the long-term interest of the Jewish people. The safety and prosperity of Jews in the Muslim World require the welcome of Israel by its Arab neighbours. For Israel to be welcomed in the Middle East, it must become a good neighbour.
Christian Zionists’ unlimited support of Israel is not out of love for Judaism or Jews. That far-right Jewish Zionists take advantage of Christian Zionists’ eschatological gaslighting is naked opportunism. They are riding a vicious tiger. Sooner or later, they will be devoured.
For a durable solution in the Holy Land, depoliticize the Bible and the Quran.