That's one reason that Chip Berlet, an analyst with the progressive think tank Political Research Associates, argues, "The current administration in the United States is packed with people who are literal Bible believers and who see in Israel a specific role in the end times." The most visible believers, says Berlet, are Attorney General John Ashcroft, Armey and Delay. "My argument is that you don't have to say, 'I am a dispensationalist' to be a person influenced by these apocalyptic metaphors. The more you're embedded in a Christian fundamentalist culture, the more you're going to be influenced by these ideas even if you claim you aren't."

Gershom Gorenberg, Israeli journalist and author of "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount," cautions that we need to pay attention to these views. "There's a tendency which is very common among secular-leaning people not to take theology very seriously," he says. Yet evangelical leaders are hardly reticent about the central role that religion plays in everything they do. Gorenberg adds, "When Jerry Falwell says, 'I don't think there's a West Bank, there's Judea and Samaria,' why shouldn't I take seriously that he's deriving that from the bible?" As Gorenberg points out, important elements in Israeli society take these people very seriously indeed. When Binyamin Netanyahu visited Washington during the '90s, he met with Jerry Falwell and other Christian leaders before he met with Bill Clinton. American evangelicals have raised millions to return diaspora Jews to Israel. Fundamentalist groups like the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities fund settler movements, "those pioneers now fulfilling the covenant to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob regarding the restoration of all the land God has allocated to Israel," as one pamphlet said.

Yet despite its international influence, most people on America's godless coasts have never heard of dispensationalism. It's one of those words that reveals the yawning ideological gulf between red states and blue. To secular urbanites, it might seem like just another example of fringe American madness, something akin to UFO cults. But it's thoroughly mainstream -- far more so than agnosticism. Darrell Bock, research professor of New Testament studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary, says that the most prevalent view among evangelicals is an unequivocal support for Israel, and that dispensationalism plays a large role in their conviction. And Gorenberg says, "Dispensationalism is a predominant belief among fundamentalists."

It matters that a lot of evangelicals are dispensationalists because a lot of Americans are evangelicals. According to a Gallup Poll taken in March, "46 percent of Americans describe themselves as 'born-again' or evangelical." In a 1999 Newsweek Poll, 71 percent of evangelicals said they believed that the world would end in a battle at Armageddon (which is itself a corruption of the name of the Israeli town Megiddo) between Jesus and the antichrist.

Of course, not every Christian who believes Jews have a God-given right to Palestinian territory is an end-time fundamentalist. "I'm not going to deny that it's a factor, of course it's a factor, but it's an insignificant factor," says Reed. "I think it shows a misunderstanding of both the complexity and the character of Christian support for Israel and the Jewish people."

As Bauer says, Christian support for Israel can be explained partly by the fact that evangelicals typically take a hard line on foreign policy. "American Christians were generally supportive of a more hawkish view in the cold war. It was seen in moral terms. Reagan would refer to us as a shining city on the hill, and many Christians did see it that way. I think now there is a strong sense among American Christians that there is a clash of civilizations going on, and broadly speaking, Israel and the United States are defending Western civilization."

Israel aside, evangelicals tend to be hostile toward Islam, as demonstrated by Billy Graham's son Franklin's statement that it is "a very evil and wicked religion."

"It's certainly seen as an illegitimate faith," says Bock. "Judaism supplies the roots for Christianity and Jesus was Jewish, so there is a recognition of kinship that doesn't exist with Islam. There is also a history of Islam's violent treatment of Christians and Jews that has accelerated this reaction that you've seen. Certainly something like 9/11 takes it high on the charts -- if that can be done as an act of religious faith, this is not a religion worth respecting." Evangelicals point out the horrors perpetrated by Sudan's Muslim government against the country's Christians -- including the widespread slave trade -- as evidence of the religion's amorality.

Recent Stories