In US evangelical capital, a new progressiveness and differing views on Israel
Title : In US evangelical capital, a new progressiveness and differing views on Israel
Link : In US evangelical capital, a new progressiveness and differing views on Israel
Thousands of miles away, in her home outside Colorado Springs, Kimberly Troup sat in a cluttered basement office. She is an evangelical Christian who takes to heart the Bible verse in which God speaks of the Jewish nation: "I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse." (Genesis 12:3)
Accordingly, she has devoted 22 years to Israel. She is now the US director of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, an advocacy group with a Zionist ideology. Two other CFIC employees work with her. This week, they have been very busy.
Ever since she was a child, in Kentucky, Troup has been immersed in Israel. Her father saw the creation of the state in 1948 and the six-day war of 1967as evidence of biblical prophecy surrounding the end of the world. Troup believes in such prophecies, though she does not pretend to know when they will occur. She sees it as her Christian duty to care for Israel, to defend it against “Arabs” who are “not interested in peace”.
As she described her position an associate, previously silent, spoke up, quoting the book of Isaiah: “You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”
Christians around the world have always had an intense interest in the Holy Land. It has often been believed that the restoration of the Jews in Palestine will bring about a holy war between good and evil (as prophesied in the Book of Revelation), after which God will set up a holy kingdom on Earth.
In the 1970s, Troup’s father was one of millions who purchased a book called The Late Great Planet Earth, which interpreted events in Israel as evidence that the great war of Armageddon would happen by the late 1980s. The non-fiction bestseller of the decade, it was followed by the wildly popular end times conspiracy tome The New World Order, by the televangelist Pat Robertson, and then the Left Behind novels and films, which concerned violent clashes in Israel that would bring about biblical prophecy.
‘We’ve been through all this before’
The recent move of the US embassy has solidified the notion – not shared by the Palestinian people – that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, an essential piece of the end times puzzle. In a recent poll of evangelicals from LifeWay, more than half of respondents said end times prophecy was the reason they supported Israel.
However, even in Colorado Springs, which in the heyday of the George W Bush administration was unofficially known as the “Evangelical Vatican”, such interpretations of the move are not universal.
"We've been through all this before,” said Bruce McCluggage, a former evangelical who now identifies as a “follower of Christ”. Throughout his youth, in the 1970s and 80s, McCluggage was part of the Christian movement that interpreted the signs of Israel as evidence of the last days. But for McCluggage, after a slow-burn of things not coming to pass, that conviction slowly faded.
“It was a classic tool used to witness to people,” he recalled. “We’d ask: ‘If Jesus returned today, would you go to Heaven?’ It was kind of a threat … and we thought, with Israel coming together, we could hasten the return of Jesus.” (Read article)
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In US evangelical capital, a new progressiveness and differing views on Israel
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