Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 2016, 77:4 359–385
doi:10.1093/socrel/srw050
Political Engagement Meets the Prosperity
Gospel: African American Christian Zionism
and Black Church Politics
Roger Baumann*
Yale University
How do religion and race affect political engagement in black churches? Studies of black church-based
politics typically use religious frameworks of emancipation in the form of social gospels, associating politically engaged groups with socially liberal politics and movements for racial justice. In contrast, this article draws on two years of fieldwork as well as interviews with clergy and laity to explain how nonemancipatory religious frameworks and politically conservative religious activism operate in black
churches. Using the case of African American Christian Zionism, which draws on racial and religious
motivations to foster political support for the State of Israel, this article argues for increased attention to
theologically and politically conservative social movements within black churches. The discourse of this
movement provides an instructive example of how black church political engagement is increasingly
focusing on alternative motivations and social solidarities, rather than exclusively operating in contexts
that emphasize racial justice and emancipation.
Much of the literature on political engagement in American black church
contexts has addressed the question of what kind of churches are likely to be politically active, differentiating “political churches” from those that retreat from the
political sphere and examining what drives black church political participation
(Brown and Brown 2003; Calhoun-Brown 1996; Gilkes 1998; Harris 2001;
McClerking and McDaniel 2005; McDaniel 2008; Savage 2008; Smith 2003;
Smith and Harris 2005; Smith and Smidt 2003; Tate 1993). Political churches are
identified as those possessing certain resources and motivations for mobilization—
usually those espousing a progressive social theology that emphasizes emancipatory
and social gospel themes. Alternatively, some studies have acknowledged the
growing importance of theologically conservative, non-emancipatory black
*Direct correspondence to Roger Baumann, Department of Sociology, Yale University, PO Box
208265, New Haven, CT 06520-8265, USA; E-mail: [email protected]
# The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for
the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.
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churches and their political significance (Baer and Singer 1992; Calhoun-Brown
2003; Tucker-Worgs 2011). Several studies of conservative black church contexts
have focused on how theologically conservative Pentecostal pastors engage in progressive social issues (McRoberts 1999), the involvement of conservative churches
in the 2000 presidential elections (McDaniel 2003), the participation of African
American leaders in predominantly white evangelical missions movements
(Frederick McGlathery and Griffin 2007), and the growing influence of the theologically conservative prosperity gospel preaching of prominent black televangelists (Frederick 2003; Walton 2009). This article builds on such studies of
theologically conservative black churches that do not fit the typical dominant association of political with race-conscious emancipatory theology. By examining discourse around Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within conservative
evangelical black congregations, this article considers how race and culture drive
political engagement within African American Christian Zionism.1 In doing so, I
pay particular attention to how the politico-religious discourse of African
American Christian Zionism produces a form of black church political engagement more in prosperity gospel rather than in social gospel terms.
Scholars of black church social movements have noted the particular contribution that culture makes to motivating and driving public engagement (Barnes
2005, 2010; Harris 2001; McDaniel 2008; McRoberts 1999, 2005; Pattillo-McCoy
1998; Wood 2002). In this article, I use qualitative evidence from a case study of
the conservative African American Christian Zionist movement within evangelical and charismatic black churches to show how black church leaders invoke, define, and deploy certain aspects of black church history, identity, and culture to
build support for pro-Israel activism. The activists I studied deploy a form of discourse that combines language on religion and racial identity in ways that confound prevailing conclusions about how race and religion shape political activism
in American black churches. While existing studies of black church-based social
action have largely focused on emancipatory paradigms for political and social engagement that emphasize the social gospel, I argue that attending only to these
contexts gives an incomplete picture of the ways that race and religion are linked
to politics. As a religious social movement, African American Christian Zionism is
an instructive example of a conservative, non-emancipatory, and distinctly prosperity gospel-oriented social movement in which actors creatively generate new
and diverse meanings from existing discursive tropes. This movement also provides
a new framework for understanding the relationship between race, religion, and
1
Christian Zionism is Christian support for the State of Israel that exists at the nexus of
politics, ideology, theological interpretation, and cultural civil religion. Typically, Christian
Zionists posit Israel as America’s closest and most natural ally against various political and cultural threats (Smith 2013). And many Christian Zionists base their support for the State of
Israel as a modern fulfillment of Bible prophecy founded on a particular dispensationalist
Protestant theology that emphasizes “end times” themes (See Weber 2004). African
American Christian Zionism, then, is simply the manifestation of Christian Zionism in
American black Protestant contexts.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT MEETS THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL
361
politics—in American contexts and on issues of global concern, like the Israeli–
Palestinian conflict.
African American Christian Zionists engage with legacies of black
Christianity and the contemporary social significance of black churches as
American religious institutions. The activists I studied interpret the role of black
churches in society and posit a kind of social engagement that coheres less with
the social gospel and more with the prosperity gospel. They do this by advancing a
particular vision for black church political participation and advocacy in support
of the State of Israel. Survey research has found noteworthy differences between
white evangelical and black Protestant sympathies for Israel in the Israeli–
Palestinian conflict. Nationally, 79% of white evangelicals sympathize more with
Israel and 5% with Palestinians, while 59% of black Protestants sympathize more
with Israel and 19% with Palestinians (Pew Research Center 2016). Given this
disparity, it should not be surprising that the case of African American Christian
Zionism represents a unique discourse on Israel, speaking specifically to American
black church contexts. The discourse of African American Christian Zionism
challenges black pastors and church members to rethink the social and political
significance of black churches and to become active in “blessing” Israel by (1) situating Christian Zionism within the scope of black church political engagement,
(2) broadening the scope of black church social concern, (3) advancing a form of
Christian political engagement in prosperity gospel terms, and (4) reframing the
salience of race in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
CONSERVATIVE BLACK CHRISTIANITY AND BLACK CHURCH
POLITICAL IDENTITY
Much of the social scientific literature on the question of political and social
engagement in black churches has been concerned with whether particular
churches should be thought of as having a this-worldly versus other-worldly orientation. This has been a durable typology, reaching from early debates over whether
black churches could better the social conditions of black Americans (Du Bois
1903; Woodson 1939) to more recent analyses of black churches (Barnes 2004;
Calhoun-Brown 1996, 2000; Lincoln and Mamiya 1990; Wilmore 1972). Using
this typology, some scholars have argued for the idea that black churches have, by
and large, retreated from politics in favor of attending exclusively to the otherworldly spiritual and religious needs of their communities (Frazier 1974; Marx
1967; Myrdal 1944; Reed 1986; Wilmore 1972). Others have seen black churches
as this-worldly social institutions deeply connected to various secular aspects of
community life, including politics (Cone 1970; Lincoln and Mamiya 1990;
McAdam 1982; Morris 1986; Woodson 1939). Virtually all studies of black
churches since the civil rights movement, however, have agreed with C. Eric
Lincoln’s (1974) conclusion that the social, political, and cultural upheaval of the
1960s gave rise to the form of contemporary black churches and permanently
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transformed their social significance, as these churches learned to deal with questions of power in social, political, economic, and theological terms. Many black
churches changed from inward looking congregations concerned largely with spiritual matters to engaged institutions impelled to speak to the social and political
realities in which African American Christians lived their lives—a transformation
from “the invisible institution” (Raboteau 1978) to “the visible church” (Frey
2008). The result for black churches is what Anthony B. Pinn (2002) has called “a
tentative positioning between two worlds”—between this-worldly and otherworldly, between secular and sacred (xiv).
Scholars have developed various schemas for interpreting the tension between
sacred and secular identities in black churches in the wake of this upheaval.
Sociological attention to diversity of black church political engagement in the
post-civil rights era began perhaps most notably with C. Eric Lincoln and
Lawrence Mamiya (1990). Their dialectical model highlights the changing role of
black churches by examining key tensions including: priestly versus prophetic
functions, other-worldly versus this-worldly orientations, and universalism versus
particularism in terms of racial identification. Building on this model, Tamelyn
Tucker-Worgs (2011) suggests a series of continua for understanding how the diversity of theological views in black churches shape social engagement, including:
black theology versus color-blind theology, prosperity gospel versus social gospel,
and communal versus privatistic outlooks. The strength of these models is the dynamic view of social engagement in black churches they open up. But they also
focus almost exclusively on more theologically liberal and social gospel-oriented
churches as those likely to engage in social and political issues. Black churches
that emphasize a prosperity gospel have been largely left out of considerations of
so-called “political churches,” with primary attention given to more progressive,
social gospel-oriented churches. Allison Calhoun-Brown (2003), however, has
noted a dramatic rise in the number of parishioners attending theologically conservative churches, who “deemphasize racial issues in favor of a ‘prosperity gospel’”
(48). And Tucker-Worgs (2011) recognizes this more conservative strain of prophetically motivated social action in black churches and its potential to create “fissures” in black politics in the post-civil rights era (164). Such churches exemplify
public expressions of a more politically conservative stance on social issues and a
kind of public engagement that rejects progressive politics, the social gospel, and
liberation theology. Further, Omar McRoberts (1999) and David D. Daniels
(2003) have shown how black Pentecostal leaders are challenging the quietist and
accommodationist histories of their denominations and advocating for a distinct
kind of prophetic public engagement on more theologically conservative terms.
My typology for black church social engagement (summarized in Table 1)
seeks to broaden studies of social and political engagement in black church contexts to include those that are more conservative and prosperity gospel-oriented.
African American Christian Zionism, which engages in discourse aimed at creating a politically engaged identity for black Christians on prosperity rather than social gospel terms, is an example of such a movement.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT MEETS THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL
TABLE 1
363
Political orientations of black churches
Prophetic
Priestly
1 – Politically active (with a focus
on justice)
2 – Socially active (with a
focus on charity)
3 – Politically active (on prosperity
gospel terms)
4 – Quietist (not politically or
socially active)
Social Gospel
Prosperity
Gospel
1. African American churches representing prophetic, race-conscious black Christianity;
often invoking Black Liberation Theology—Race is highly salient as a social and political category with religious/theological implications
2. African American churches that attend to social or economic needs in their communities by providing charity at an individual or local level—Race is moderately salient in social
action
3. African American churches that engage in political issues (e.g., African American
Christian Zionism)—Race is salient socially and politically but this salience is reframed, positing alternative solidarities (e.g., Black–Jewish relations across racial lines)
4. African American churches that focus largely on the other-worldly or spiritual needs of
their members, eschewing engagement in politics and social action as not matters of religious
or theological concern—Race is less salient.
In Table 1, the priestly versus prophetic distinction concerns an inward versus
outward orientation (or this-worldly vs. other-worldly). Priestly churches are “bastions of survival,” and prophetic churches are “networks of liberation” (Lincoln
and Mamiya 1990:12). The social versus prosperity gospel distinction speaks to differences in how churches think about social problems. A prosperity gospel focuses
on what individuals or congregations can do to unlock God’s material blessings—
including wealth, physical health, and victory over adversity (Bowler 2013).
Alternatively, a social gospel identifies and tries to solve systematic injustice and
oppression in society. Embedded within the prosperity versus social gospel distinction is the important question of the salience of race. Churches for whom race is
particularly salient tend invoke a black perspective on the role of churches in society and emphasize the social gospel concern to liberate oppressed people—
particularly people of color—from systematic injustice and in liberationist terms
(Cone 1970).
Table 1 provides a framework for understanding the social and cultural components that determine political engagement in black churches. It should be
noted, however, that these designations are not hard and fast distinctions. Like
Lincoln and Mamiya (1990) and Tucker-Worgs (2011), I see these tendencies as
existing on continua. That is, any given group or congregation might represent
multiple influences, expressing this-worldly and other-worldly inclinations or
elements of social and prosperity gospels. Quadrant 1 of Table 1 represents the
dominant view of political black churches—they emphasize working for justice
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and a corporate social gospel, wherein race is particularly salient. Quadrant 4 represents the primary alternative—churches that emphasize a more personal prosperity theology, de-emphasize race in favor of Christian universalism and, in turn, are
less likely to be politically or socially engaged. Quadrant 2 represents black
churches that are socially engaged in their communities but whose engagement is
largely at priestly level of meeting needs through individual charity rather than
prophetic political engagement focused on systematic change and addressing injustice. These congregations typify churches that participate in government “faithbased initiatives” and social programs (Black, Koopman, and Ryden 2004;
McDaniel 2008). The priestly orientations of churches in both Quadrants 2 and 4
represent what has been called “comfortable church culture”—churches that
largely eschew structural approaches to social problems (Delehanty 2016).
Quadrant 3 represents a fourth, less studied, political orientation of black
churches—political engagement that draws more on prosperity gospel themes like
“blessing” rather than on a race-conscious social justice political outlook. I argue
that African American Christian Zionism is an example of this kind of black
church political engagement. Attending to the discourse of African American
Christian Zionism and the narratives of its proponents as an example of Quadrant
3 reveals novel ways of thinking about the relationship between race, religion, and
politics in the United States and on global issues like the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Christian Zionist black pastors and their churches exemplify prosperity gospel
influences (in ways shaped specifically around the notion of “supporting” or “blessing” Israel), yet they also invoke a prophetic calling to engage in politics beyond
providing social services and charity. By working to create a politically engaged
identity for black Christians in prosperity gospel terms—specifically around U.S.
foreign policy related to Israel and the Middle East—African American Christian
Zionists also work to bridge the political divide between black and white
evangelicals.
RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA
This article is based on two years of fieldwork among pro-Israel Christian
Zionist activists in black church contexts, carried out between January 2013 and
April 2015.2 I focused primarily on the outreach efforts of the pro-Israel Christian
organization Christians United For Israel (CUFI). As the largest Christian proIsrael organization in the United States, CUFI is at the forefront of Christian
2
I conducted this study with Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and obtained
permission to attend events and conduct interviews variously from event hosts and speakers,
pastors, and organization staff. All interview subjects provided informed consent to participate
in the research. As public figures, pastors and other leaders gave consent for their real names
to be used, while lay people consented to being included without the use of their real names.
Where names are given, they are real names.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT MEETS THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL
365
theological and political support for Israel.3 Since at least 2007, CUFI has been actively organizing outreach efforts and mobilizing political support within black
churches. My data represent a regional study of congregations and events located
mainly in the Northeastern United States, which activists have identified as an
area of critical concern for the following reasons: (1) there is less general theological and political support for Israel among Christian leaders in the Northeast,
(2) there are higher levels of liberal theological education (and accompanying
theological skepticism of Christian Zionism) among black clergy in the Northeast,
and (3) the Northeast is an area of heightened historical and contemporary connection and contention between black and Jewish communities, with a relatively
high concentration of the American Jewish population. Thus, my focus on this region reveals a wide range of issues related to how black Christians think about
Israel and Black–Jewish relations that would perhaps be less visible in other geographic areas.
In the course of my fieldwork, I attended a large black church that has been
involved in pro-Israel outreach efforts to the black Christian community. At this
church, I participated in various worship services, interest-based meetings, local
outreach events, and two Israel-specific teaching meetings. I also attended fourteen
Israel-focused Christian events sponsored by CUFI in New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, North Carolina, and Washington D.C. Most of the events (with the
exception of CUFI’s annual Washington D.C. summit and four college campus
events) were hosted by black churches, some of which represented historic black
denominations (e.g., Black Baptists and the Church of God in Christ) while others
were independent non-denominational congregations. These Israel-focused events
were a mix of Sunday church services, Jewish–Christian interfaith events (called
“Nights to Honor Israel”), Bible study meetings, and pastors briefing luncheons
where visiting movement leaders spoke to local pastors on the topic of Israel and
Jewish–Christian relations.
Because CUFI speakers invited me to many of these events, these speakers
often introduced me to the audience or congregation as a guest and researcher
interested in the topic of Israel and African American Christians. In events at
black churches, I was often the only white person in attendance—or one of very
few white people—and was welcomed warmly by pastors and congregants.
Occasionally I was asked about where I am from or my institutional affiliation.
Rarely, was I asked about my religious views. On the few occasions where someone
I met at an event asked me about my religion, the question was posed as, “are you
Jewish?”—to which I simply responded negatively without offering additional information unless asked. Some of the pastors I interviewed paused during their answers to one of my questions to ask if I was Christian or came from a Christian
3
CUFI describes itself as “the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., with over 3 million members.” The organization’s largest constituency is white evangelicals but recent “diversity” outreach efforts have included Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American
communities (Christians United For Israel n.d.).
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background. When asked, I explained that I come from a Christian background.
Because of my demographics in terms of race and religious affiliation during my
fieldwork, I presented myself (and felt as though I was viewed by default) as an intellectually curious outsider.
Participating in and observing these events provided the opportunity for punctuated immersion into CUFI’s outreach movement in black churches as well as access to conversations about Israel among movement leaders, local pastors,
denominational representatives, and lay church members. Through these events, I
was able to observe the discourse of Christian Zionism in black church contexts, as
articulated by both African American Christian Zionists and white Christian
Zionists. My data from these events comes from extensive fieldnotes and recordings (when available). Attending events also provided the opportunity for dozens
of informal conversations with attendees (both clergy and lay people) about their
interest in the events, relationships with Jews, activism in support of Israel, etc.
From these conversations, I followed up with those who were interested and
willing to discuss the event and their views on Israel further in a recorded interview. I conducted 30 formal recorded semi-structured interviews with 28 different
black pastors, lay leaders, and church members within CUFI’s outreach in black
church contexts.4 My interview subjects represent various black denominations
and non-denominational black churches in nine different states—primarily in the
Northeast United States but also some from the South and the West Coast. They
also represent different degrees of affiliation with CUFI—ranging from those who
were learning about the organization for the first time when I met them, to paid
staff members and outreach coordinators. Interviewing both clergy and lay church
members provided multiple perspectives on the issue of Israel in relation to black
churches. My interview subjects included activist pro-Israel pastors who see supporting Israel as part of their calling and ministry, their colleagues who do not see
Israel as part of their core ministry but are curious about Israel for theological or
political reasons, and members of their various churches who take cues from their
leaders on what issues ought to be important to them and their families. In all
cases, having been at the same Israel-focused events and church services as my subjects, I was able to use the interviews to explore in greater depth the themes introduced at the events. Thus, my observation of these events is augmented by my
interview data, which situates these meetings and church services within the wider
cultural and social framework of each interview subject’s knowledge, experience,
beliefs, home church context, local community, and larger ministry focus.
4
The 28 interview subjects included 21 men and 7 women. All were African American
Christians including clergy (n ¼ 17) and lay people (n ¼ 11). At the time of interviewing,
subject age ranges were: 20s (n ¼ 3), 40s (n ¼ 14), 50s (n ¼ 5), 60s (n ¼ 5), and 70s (n ¼ 1).
Most subjects had at least some post-secondary education (n ¼ 26) and a majority of the clergy
had post-graduate education (n ¼ 11). Non-clergy were either full-time college students or
worked stable jobs (e.g., nurse, insurance adjuster, human resources, college administrator, college instructor). Thirteen interviews took place in person and 17 by phone. The average interview length was approximately 40 minutes.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT MEETS THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL
367
My preliminary coding of fieldnotes and interviews used an open coding process (Strauss and Corbin 1990), whereby I identified frequently repeated topics
and themes (e.g., Jewish–Christian relations, Black–Jewish shared suffering, blessing, oppression, the civil rights movement). Secondary coding refined these topics
and identified overarching themes and connecting concepts (e.g., the role of black
pastors in their communities, the proper social/political role of black churches, the
contemporary significance of the historical civil rights movement, the salience of
race in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict). These themes and connecting concepts
formed the basis of my analysis of African American Christian Zionist discourse,
with attention to how the messages of Christian Zionist leaders are perceived by
local pastors and church members. My analysis focuses primarily on the teaching,
preaching, and writing of movement leaders. It also includes the narratives of local
pastors, as CUFI’s outreach methods rely heavily on informal networks of pastors
and leaders across denominations.
CHRISTIAN ZIONISM AND THE CULTURE OF BLACK CHURCHES
The discourse of Christian Zionism deployed in black churches invokes a
mandate for political activism on behalf of the State of Israel. In doing so, it establishes a normative framework for how “the black church” should engage in politics
and social issues in a way that aligns the religious and political frameworks of
African American Christians with Jews and the State of Israel (Snow et al. 1986;
Snow and Benford 1988). After briefly presenting a typical setting from my fieldwork, I examine four aspects of African American Christian Zionist discourse that
draw on black church culture, black Christian identity, as well as prosperity gospel
themes: (1) locating Christian Zionism with broader traditions of black church social engagement, (2) broadening the social concerns of black churches beyond
local issues, (3) framing political support for Israel in prosperity gospel terms, and
(4) reframing the salience of race in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The Setting: A Night to Honor Israel
One event I attended in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia provides an
instructive account of African American Christian Zionist discourse on Israel and
Black–Jewish relations. On a Sunday night, black Christians representing several
local congregations gathered together and welcomed guests from the local Jewish
community to a special “Night to Honor Israel.” The host pastor, Ray Barnard,
took the stage to welcome those attending: “Tonight we are here to honor Israel,”
he declared, adding that the evening would be a reflection on “the reason why
Israel is the apple of God’s eye.” He went on to tell his story of how he came to
realize the importance of standing with and supporting the State of Israel, saying:
“As Christians, we take every opportunity that we have lifting up that Star of
David and praying for our Jewish brothers and sisters, because we all really find our
origin from the same family—we come from the same root. And so we will always
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stand with Israel.” Next, Jonathan Leath, another local African American pastor
and co-host of the event, took the pulpit and outlined three reasons why he supports Israel. First, he cited a “clear mandate in scripture to stand with Israel” quoting Psalm 122:6: “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love
thee.” “I love prosperity,” he added, “so I understand how I get prosperity by praying for the peace of Jerusalem.” Second, he emphasized that God’s covenant with
the Jewish people is still intact. Finally, he added, “I just wanna be blessed.
Genesis 12 verse 3 says, ‘I will bless them that bless thee and curse those that curse
thee.’”
The keynote speaker at this Night to Honor Israel was Pastor Michael
Stevens, one of the central proponents of the pro-Israel movement in black
churches. Pastor Stevens leads a large congregation in the Church of God in
Christ denomination in Charlotte, North Carolina and worked as CUFI’s African
American Outreach Coordinator from 2007 to 2015. In that time, he traveled extensively for CUFI, holding pro-Israel events in black churches across the United
States and around the world. In pastors’ meetings, sermons, and other churchbased events, Stevens described his role as “connecting the dots” between African
American and Jewish communities. He also talked about his task of connecting
African Americans with CUFI by overcoming the perception that the organization is only for white Republicans like its well-known founder, Pastor John Hagee.
In his messages Stevens presents reasons for African American Christians to get
involved in pro-Israel activism that overlap with mainstream white evangelical
support for Israel, and others that speak particularly to black communities. Like
Pastors Barnard and Leath, Stevens emphasizes a biblical mandate to bless Israel
with the expectation that God’s blessings will follow:
During a time of prayer and Bible study, the Lord placed on my heart the blessings that stem from
supporting Israel and standing with it. As I studied Genesis 12, God opened my eyes and gave emphatic instructions for my young black Pentecostal church and myself.5 I sensed him saying we
were to bless Israel and the Jewish people. (Stevens 2013:6)
The theme of blessing Israel is common to Pentecostal Christians like those in
Stevens’ congregation, as is a legacy of experiential identification with Israel as
God’s people and a dispensationalist theological outlook on Israel and the Middle
East (Williams 2015). Within CUFI’s black church outreach, however, dispensationalist theology is minimized while American Christian identification with Jews
and Israel is emphasized. Sometimes this identification is in general Christian
terms, as when Stevens preached on Jewish–Christian connections:
5
Genesis 12:1–3 reads: “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘. . . I will bless those who bless you,
and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed’” (New Revised Standard Version).
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We owe a debt of gratitude to the Jewish people for giving us the patriarchs. . . If it hadn’t been for
the Jewish community, we wouldn’t have our prophets. If it wasn’t for the Jewish community, we
wouldn’t have our Messiah. . . Because last time I checked, Jesus was Jewish.
But CUFI’s African American leaders also emphasize a unique black perspective on the relationship between black Christians and Israel. Dumisani
Washington, CUFI’s current Diversity Outreach Coordinator and founder of the
Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI), told a college audience that
African American Christian identification with Israel is rooted in a “spiritual
Zionism.” He explained, “Virtually all the negro spirituals were based in what the
Christians call the Old Testament.” Michael Stevens also emphasizes the unique
solidarity between African Americans and Jews:
[T]here is no other entity on earth that can most identify itself as a people with the Jews than the
African American church. . . [It] carries both a prophetic zeal and a historic resolve to boldly stand
against injustices and unrighteousness in the world. (Stevens 2013:xvii)
The “prophetic zeal” of black churches, however, has not been typically associated with pro-Israel political activism. The following sections describe how
African American Christian Zionist outreach in black church contexts operates by
attending to how leaders invoke and promote a particular social consciousness and
political concern among pastors and church members. This stance establishes proIsrael advocacy as a priority for black Christians on unique terms that suggest a reassessment of the political significance of theologies that scholars have often
thought of as being apolitical.
“It’s not church as usual”: Christian Zionism as Black Church Social
Engagement
When Michael Stevens suggests that African American churches have “a prophetic zeal” to work against injustice in the world, he frequently invokes Martin
Luther King, Jr. on the topic of the prophetic role of the church. Quoting King for
a group of black pastors, he said:
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the
conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the
church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral
or spiritual authority.
This quote is used by Stevens and other African American Christian Zionists
to link the civil rights narrative to contemporary pro-Israel activism, aligning that
cause with a broader tradition of black church social engagement.
Stevens uses King’s quote generally as a call to social action, which he refers to
as “kingdom” action. In a sermon on participating in “the kingdom,” he exhorted:
“Kingdom ministry goes beyond ushering and frying chicken. . . You have a priestly
king’s anointing.” “Too often,” he continued, “the [black] church is reduced to
shouting and dancing. . . What is your calling, your passion, your purpose?”
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SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
At the Night to Honor Israel described above, he expanded on this notion of
being called to “the kingdom” and related it particularly to supporting Israel:
Everywhere from Alaska to Florida, from California to Maine, pastors are feeling, you know
what, this is not church as usual. This is not business as usual. There’s something stirring in our
hearts to do something more than we’ve ever been doing. . . Could it be tonight, other than the traditional post and position and the titles that you carry, that maybe God is summoning you, he’s
inviting you to the table of greatness?
In calling African American Christians to participate in “the kingdom” on behalf of Israel, Stevens is embracing a prophetic call to action on more theologically
and politically conservative terms.
Another pastor who hosted an Israel-focused CUFI teaching event for local
pastors in New Jersey expressed a similar critique of black churches:
Our tradition in the African American church was really confined to a Sunday morning experience. . . In reality our churches, for many years, traditionally, only were effective on Sunday.
And then from Monday through Saturday they laid dormant.
These statements represent a particular kind of discourse that aligns the
African American Christian pro-Israel movement with the prophetic legacy of
King and other civil rights leaders by using “kingdom” language and other appeals
to call black Christians outside of local concerns and into a wider social
consciousness.
“They have a lot on their plates”: Broadening Social Concerns
The call to African American Christians to participate in “the kingdom,” suggests a kind of social concern that goes beyond local and domestic issues.
However, black Christian Zionist leaders also recognize that pastors are central figures in their communities and are pulled in many directions by local and immediate demands within their ministries. Jonathan Leath described how pastors of
black churches tend to be focused on the needs of their immediate communities:
“A lot of pastors are just so focused on growing their church. They just don’t have
time. It’s not a thing of not being concerned [about Israel], it’s just that, well I’m
focused so much on what I’m doing that I don’t have time. This is another thing
that I’ll have to add to what I’m already doing—a list of other things.” Speaking to
his own efforts to inspire concern for getting involved in supporting Israel, he
described the process of convincing pastors to expand the scope of their social
concern:
So the easy part is to talk about, hey when you bless Israel God will bless you because it’s in the
Bible—do what the Bible says. The other part where it takes more work is dealing with pastors
who represent a group of people who are in a certain mindset and are struggling and that pastor has
to be true to them. Because if a pastor disconnects with his congregation, he’s short-lived there. So
he’s got that tension of staying close to where the struggle is and then eventually pulling out [to
broader issues like Israel].
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A North Carolina pastor echoed this observation on the tendency to focus on
local community issues:
In one regard, African Americans. . . have such struggles here in America in trying to exist, that
there’s not a whole lot of attention and embracing what is going on in Israel. Even though the people here are Christians, and of course we are instructed to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and so
forth, but that they are in such a struggle to exist here in America that I don’t know that there’s a
whole lot of attention. Maybe it’s selfish, but [they’re saying] “I’m trying to make it myself, so I
don’t have a whole lot of time and energy to place on what’s going on in Israel.”
Michael Stevens refers to pastors as the “epicenters of their communities” and
sympathizes with the difficulty of getting their congregations to become concerned
with issues beyond their immediate local concerns— “they have a lot on their
plates,” he says, so they should not be faulted altogether for not thinking about
Israel. Thus African American Christian Zionist leaders face the task of broadening the social concerns of American black pastors and church-goers—or, in other
words, encouraging a prophetic mode of political engagement on a global scale rather than a focus on local issues.
For many African American Christian Zionist pastors, a more narrow local
focus can be addressed through education and emphasis. A Connecticut pastor explained this, calling attention to a biblical imperative to be concerned with Israel:
The African American church is behind in the area of Israel. It’s not really communicated or
taught the way it should be. So for me it’s important because I understand the significance of Israel
and the way the word speaks of Israel—that we’re supposed to teach this and get our people to go
there and experience it.
A New Jersey pastor offered a similar indictment of pastors who fail to recognize the importance of maintaining and promoting concern for Israel, in this case
in more political rather than biblical terms:
For African Americans, even though many are sympathetic [toward Israel], very few are supportive. And I think that it comes from the fact that, for many African Americans, and even pastors,
their view is shortsighted. . . I don’t think African American pastors really see the relevancy of the
security of Israel affecting them here in America. So they have a very severe lack of sympathy or
sensitivity to Israel’s plight.
Thus, African American Christian Zionist pastors are successful in their outreach efforts to the extent that they can direct their congregations towards a more
global political focus. A lay elder in Michael Stevens’ church in North Carolina
described coming to realize that churches should focus on more than local issues:
I think that it definitely made me feel like I was in the right church, that I’m getting exposed to relevant things that are outside of Charlotte or my own personal world. . . [Traveling to Israel] confirmed that I’m fellowshipping in the right place, and I’m under the right type of leader that has a
bigger vision than just, you know, my zip code here in Charlotte.
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A female college student in the same church who travelled to Israel with
Stevens similarly described coming to realize the importance of her pastor’s work
on behalf of Israel:
I’m always like, “where’s my pastor, where’s my pastor?” And I’m like, “wait, he’s in Israel?”
. . . Now when we finally went with him and see what he does there and that people recognize him
that just blew my mind. It took me to another level. . . And sometimes during our church service,
we have an offering for Israel or for outreach or for something specific, and I’m like, okay. . . my
money is really doing something.
Whether support for Israel is framed as financial aid or national political solidarity, going beyond “church as usual” requires that pastors cultivate a balance between local and global concerns in their ministries. Speaking specifically in and to
black church contexts, African American Christian Zionist leaders work to extend
the priestly concerns of pastors to global issues like the security of Israel, arguing
for the importance of a maintaining a local-global tension in the social and political outlook of churches.
“Favor and Increase”: Blessing, Prosperity, and Influence
Another important symbolic approach in pro-Israel black church outreach is a
focus on material blessing and positions of influence. This is where African
American Christian Zionists apply the general prosperity gospel emphasis on
claiming, unlocking, and receiving God’s blessings in the lives of individuals and
church communities to the more specific act of engaging in political and theological support for the State of Israel. We have already seen the general emphasis
on blessing among Christians Zionists at the Night to Honor Israel described
above, as well as the explicit expectation that supporting Israel will produce God’s
favor. Michael Stevens’ teaching on blessing reveals more specifically the kind of
blessing anticipated when African American Christians support Israel. When I
saw him speak at pro-Israel events, Stevens typically showed a series of pictures of
himself with well-known political and religious leaders. And he told an accompanying story of sitting at a table with a group of African American pastors and
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
Being at the table. . . was a unique honor. More than the domestic honor of my personally being at
the table, that day eight African American pastors sat at that table. And since that time, I’ve
learned and I’ve grown to call it the table of greatness. . . I believe, particularly in the African
American community, there is a seat at the table of greatness, particularly as it relates to supporting the Jewish state.
Stevens also extended the metaphor of the “table of greatness” by telling his
African American audience, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” He
explained:
I’m now coming to the realization that we need to be at the table. We [African Americans] need
to be at the table of dialogue, the table of networking, the table of impact, of influence. And
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unfortunately, oftentimes in our community. . . we’re just happy to be in the choir. . . we’re happy
to serve and usher and I’m not satisfied with that. I’d like to see church leaders at the table and
making some tough decisions. . . particularly in the context of supporting Israel.
The blessings expected to come from God for supporting Israel also have a distinct material connotation, as is typical across the diverse theological spectrum of
prosperity gospel teaching (Bowler 2013). In preaching a sermon on blessing
Israel, Stevens emphasized two words for the congregation: “favor and increase.”
“The blessings of God can come on your life if you bless the Jewish people,” he
said. And he continued, “If you will stand with and support Israel, you will receive
God’s blessing, prosperity, power and favor.” Elsewhere Stevens writes, “God’s
blessings are often manifested in prosperity and well-being. . . This is true today; if
we bless Israel, God will prosper us in return” (Stevens 2013:13). Here, the prosperity gospel narrative of receiving God’s blessing is explicitly tied to the political
issue of supporting the State of Israel. This expectation that God will bless those
who bless Israel is echoed in the comments of pastors and their church members
who emphasize blessing Israel. This expectation of personal blessings from God in
return for supporting Israel is sometimes articulated in general terms. For instance,
one New Jersey Baptist pastor told me:
I believe that, just as the Bible says, that those that bless Israel are blessed. So therefore, one, we
just wanna be blessed. . . Those that honor Israel are blessed and those that don’t are cursed, and I
believe that. I believe what Genesis 12 says is true.
And sometimes that expectation is very specific. A member of Michael
Stevens’ congregation who travelled with him to Israel on a CUFI trip recounted
the story of the first time she gave money to an Israel-related cause and the blessing
that she experienced in return:
The very first time I gave any money to Israel, I gave it because I felt like God was telling me right
then and there to give. I’ve never given that much money at one time to anyone else besides a bill
and to church in my tithes. So when God said for me to do it, I didn’t really want to because it
was such a large amount that I felt like God was asking me to give. But I jumped in, I made the
call, I didn’t think about it too much and I did it. And it’s amazing that within weeks of me giving,
it was like I got it all back in some way, shape, form, or fashion. . . And it was just incredible to
me that that would happen because it was like, wow, being obedient [and] blessing Israel, does give
you a blessing.
Finally, many of the black pastors I interviewed also articulated an expectation
of God’s blessing in return for blessing Israel in national terms. A Massachusetts
pastor of an independent evangelical congregation said: “I personally believe that
one reason for our great success as a country is because of our involvement and
love for Israel.” Another New Jersey pastor expressed a similar sentiment: “It is
important—vitally important—that Israel be supported by America and be supported by Christians. Simply because the blessing that God has promised will
come upon us for doing what God has commanded us to do.” Whether in personal,
financial, congregational, or national terms, African American Christian Zionists
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invoke prosperity gospel expectations of receiving blessings from God, but they
link these expectations specifically to their understanding of God’s call in the
Bible to support Israel.
Shared Suffering: Reframing the Salience of Race in the Israeli–Palestinian
Conflict
African American Christian Zionists incorporate a limited form of raceconsciousness in their advocacy on behalf of Israel, demonstrating how prosperity
theology can be used to support political engagement. There is a certain amount of
ambivalence among African American Christian Zionists when it comes to raceconscious theology. On one hand, it is affirmed to the extent that it provides an
impetus for social engagement in black churches, drawing on the memory of the
civil rights movement, for example. On the other hand, it is rejected in so far as it
is used to compare the historical civil rights cause to the Palestinian situation. This
ambivalence is evidenced when Michael Stevens warns against Black liberation
theology, identifying it as unbiblical and associating it with anti-Semitism: “If
you’re not studying the Bible, it’s easy to hear that kind of theology,” he cautioned
a church Bible study group. Elsewhere, however, he presents Black liberation theologian James Cone as one who can “offer insights into the identity, contributions,
and distinctiveness of the African American church and its theology” (Stevens
2013:63). For African American Christian Zionists, black theology (and accompanying race-consciousness) is only useful in so far as it is directed towards
increased solidarity between Blacks and Jews, which is premised on the prosperityinflected imperative to bless Israel. Thus, what appears to be ambivalence about
black theology is perhaps better described as an appropriation of the scope of its
implications. Within African American Christian Zionist discourse, black theology is accepted as an important cultural legacy of black churches and is invoked
as an impetus for social action, but the implications of a Black liberation theology
perspective are reoriented in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
In my interviews with black pastors and church members who have traveled
to Israel on trips specifically aimed at African American Christians, respondents
tended to de-emphasize the importance of race in favor of prioritizing a universal
solidarity. This was expressed by two women who traveled to Israel with Michael
Stevens who both prioritized a more universal outlook on their experiences in
Israel, emphasizing the spiritual connection shared by Christians and Jews:
It was a group of African Americans that went but I personally didn’t see it as African (or black)
and white. I just saw it as Christians going and being united with our people that we are linked
with spiritually. [First woman]
To me, my faith trumps my race and it really, to me, doesn’t matter what the ethnicity is as
long as our faith lines up. [Second woman]
When race was a salient factor for trip participants, African American identity
was invoked to underscore Black-Jewish solidarity. One Pittsburgh pastor
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described a sense of brotherhood with Jews in Israel, linking African American experiences of slavery to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust:
I felt even brotherhood [with Jews] because of our history—African American history—of being
enslaved and persecuted in such an injustice. And when I went to the holocaust memorial, I felt
that kindred spirit of a race that had gone through similar oppression as we went through.
Another pastor articulated Black–Jewish solidarity in broader terms, invoking
lessons imparted by his parents about shared suffering between African Americans
and Jews:
My parents formulated for me at an early age that. . . we need to be cognizant that we’re not the
only people that have gone through it. . . I grew up with a sense that, wow, one, I’m not in this
alone, and two, there are others who can relate, if not maybe on a deeper level than I can to some
of the atrocities and some of the oppressions that we’ve had to endure.
Thus among African American Christian Zionists, the salience of race with regard to Israel is typically minimized in favor of emphasizing solidarity with Jews—
either in universal faith-based and spiritual terms, or in terms of shared historical
suffering.
In addition to focusing race-consciousness on Black-Jewish solidarity, African
American Christian Zionists also contest the application of racial consciousness
and black theology to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict specifically. Commenting on
the ways that African Americans have looked at that conflict through the lens of
race, Dumisani Washington explained:
[Israel’s enemies] began to, more and more and more, use the Arab–Israeli conflict and discuss it
in race terms—terms that were particularly pointed towards black people—using terms like “Jim
Crow segregation,” “Apartheid,” “colonialism.” Those are negative images for us, and so if I
don’t have any more information other than you just feeding it to me, my sense of morality is going
to cause me to stand against whoever you say is doing that.
To a group of students, Washington further described his “righteous indignation” at hearing comparisons of Jim Crow America and Apartheid South Africa
applied to Israel. “When I hear black student unions talking about Apartheid,” he
said, “[I answer]: Are you kidding me?” This type of warning against viewing the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict through the lens of race and identifying with
Palestinians is echoed by Jonathan Leath:
When [African Americans] look at the skin tone of most of the Israeli people that they know, they
look white. So it’s that whole thing of, “Oh man these are just white people, and the Palestinians
are dark skinned”. . . Also, just a lot of churches are dealing with the oppression issue. We just
kind of look at who’s hurting. And right now, I tell ya, the Palestinians have a lot of sympathetic
people, and they can paint the picture that, “Hey, we’re hurting the most.”
For African American Christian Zionist pastors, the primary identification
based on suffering and oppression should be with Jews and the State of Israel.
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Understanding Israel as an oppressor of the Palestinians is framed as an incorrect
or misinformed position. Michael Stevens writes:
It has been both alarming and unnerving to me, as an African American pastor, to see the comparisons made between the Palestinian movement in Israel and the civil rights struggle of the 1950s
and 1960s. Unfortunately many people want to believe that Israel is oppressing and systematically
persecuting the Arab Palestinian people. (Stevens 2013:90)
One area where this is particularly relevant is the question of comparing Israeli
policies to those of Apartheid South Africa. Stevens, Washington, and their colleagues take a firm stand against the argument that Israel practices apartheid.
Stevens writes, “The use of the word apartheid in an Israeli context cheapens the
evil of that system and discounts the suffering of those who lived under it”
(Stevens 2013:111). Further, Stevens ended most of his presentations I attended
with a video that challenges the notion of Israeli apartheid practices.
Overall, the African American Christian Zionists I met and interviewed
tended to emphasize the salience of race minimally and only insofar as it pertains
to invoking the uniqueness of black churches and their potential for social action.
When discussing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, however, the salience of race was
categorically minimized, and identification with Jews as a historically oppressed
people was prioritized.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The notion of transcending “comfortable church culture” has been used to describe efforts in black churches and other Christian contexts to draw congregations
into progressive politics (Delehanty 2016). This echoes the notion of going beyond “church as usual” invoked within African American Christian Zionism as activists work to encourage black churches to be concerned with global issues like
the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This is a move toward a more prophetic church
culture that adopts social and political concerns and rejects a more inward community focus. The Israel-focused call to participate in “the kingdom” by “going beyond church as usual” has a distinctly theological dimension but it also has a social
dimension. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903 [2007]), W.E.B. Du Bois uses the language of participating in “the kingdom” to describe black striving to gain a place
in American social and political life. African American Christian Zionist pastors
and leaders present engagement on the issue of Israel as a theological and social
priority for black Christians, aware of the tendency among many pastors to focus
on local congregational concerns over global politics. In my conversations with
black pastors and church members, I consistently heard pastors talking about Israel
as an opportunity for black pastors to exercise more social and political influence.
And church members applauded pastors and leaders for opening their eyes to an
issue that was previously unknown to them and for providing a political outlet for
a theological affinity for Israel.
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The kind of social action that African American Christian Zionists aim to foster is one that requires a global and communal outlook, yet it also requires a particular lens on global politics—one emphasizing prosperity gospel themes of
blessing and deemphasizing the importance of particular racial identities. Thus,
the African American Christian Zionist movement exemplifies Quadrant 3 of
Table 1, as the teaching of the movement’s leaders overlays prosperity gospel motivations onto a prophetic call to social and political engagement and aims at a
specific broadening and refocusing of communal concerns. This is a move from
Quadrant 2 to Quadrant 3—from a limited social concern with local issues and
providing charity and social services to a prophetic engagement in global politics
on prosperity gospel rather than social gospel terms. As African American
Christian Zionists refocus black Christian identity onto the issue of Israel and prioritize Black-Jewish solidarity, they are engaging in a form of what Snow et al.
(1986) have called “frame alignment” between African American Christians and
Israeli and American Jews.
Understanding the work of African American Christian Zionists and the narrative of blessing and prosperity described above, then, requires further attention
to the question of what kind of blessings do African American Christian Zionists
expect from and attribute to their political engagement on behalf of the State of
Israel? I heard black pastors and church members speak variously about very specific material blessings or curses as well as more vague notions of blessing as success
and well-being. Some African American Christian Zionists described receiving
blessings back from God for their support of Israel in very specific material terms,
like the female member of Michael Stevens’ congregation described above, who
made a donation and told me about having “got it all back in some way.” On the
other hand, pastors also talked about the potential curses associated with failing to
support the State of Israel. A Connecticut pastor told his congregation the story of
a colleague whom he knew to be critical of Israel and Jews. “I couldn’t figure out
why he had this terrible disposition about the Jews,” he said. And continued, “I
[felt] like something’s gonna happen to him. And I want you to know he hasn’t
been the same since. His health has deteriorated, his ministry went sour. And
when God says I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, I
know exactly what he means.”
More often, however, the language of blessings received or expected was used
in broader terms. Pastors tended to speak more vaguely about blessing as expanded
influence in ministry—like a Massachusetts pastor who described his mentor as
“tremendously blessed” in his life and ministry because of his work on behalf of
Israel. Similarly, in telling the story of how he decided to take up the issue of Israel
and the blessings he has consequently received, Michael Stevens said, “God I
want you to bless my church. I need you to bless my wife and kids. And we wanna
do some real significant things for you in the kingdom.” On several occasions,
Stevens told groups of pastors and church congregants how his work with CUFI
has become an additional full-time job on top of his local pastoring responsibilities,
but that it has come with an increased salary from CUFI and has resulted in him
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being “happy and blessed today.” Pastors of large, growing congregations like
Michael Stevens and the pastor described above as “tremendously blessed” serve as
role models for pastors aspiring to lead larger congregations, work in expanded
areas of ministry, and exercise increased spiritual and political authority. This is
also reflected in the experiences of church members who seek out pro-Israel congregations, looking for such leaders. A female member of Michael Stevens’ congregation described how she decided to join the church based on Stevens’ emphasis
on blessing Israel:
I know of the promises in the Bible that [if] you bless the Jewish people, that you’ll be blessed. So
I’ve always known that was a thing you should do.
I mean that’s a little bit selfish, but if you want to be blessed you better bless. So him saying that, it
was like all right, he’s on target, he’s going down the right path.
Statements like these about being part of a ministry that is blessed were common in my fieldwork.
I also encountered other more vague narratives of blessing including national,
personal, and community blessings. These more ambiguous notions of blessing
included: feeling connected to the land and the people of the Bible, success in business or ministry, good health for one’s self and family, the general prosperity of the
United States as a nation, and the opportunity to visit Israel as “the land of the
Bible.” Tours of Israel are something that pastors receive free or highly-subsidized
from CUFI. For these pastors, the opportunity to visit Israel is a distinct material and
spiritual “blessing.” But travel to Israel also confers prestige, authority, and credibility
for Christian clergy who can exposit the Bible based on their travel to “the land of
the Bible.” Further, it confers political authority and acumen to these pastors, who become authorities on Israel and the Middle East to their colleagues and congregants.
I also found that African American Christian Zionists focus far more on how
they will bless Jewish people and the State of Israel rather than how they will be
blessed. This is manifest via a kind of shift in temporal focus, where contemporary
activism on behalf of the State of Israel is framed as a debt owed to Jews for past
support of African Americans during the civil rights movement. Beyond Jewish
participation in the civil rights movement, African American Christian Zionist
leaders also invoked other examples of historical Jewish support for African
Americans—such as the Jewish American philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who
funded thousands of schools for low income African Americans in the first half of
the twentieth century. Or, on a smaller level, secondhand stories of Jewish landlords who helped black families eventually purchase a home or start a business.
With this overwhelming focus on what African Americans have gained from Jews
in the past, there is little attention on what Jewish communities (in Israel or the
United States) can do reciprocally for African Americans today. The kinds of
blessings expected that African American Christian Zionists described were not
connected to African American communities specifically. And because the blessings expected for supporting Israel are expressed in either personal or national
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terms, the de-emphasis on race among African American Christian Zionists with
respect to Israel comes with a corresponding minimization of the relevance of systematic racial injustices and inequality in the United States. But the prosperity
gospel tendency of African American Christian Zionists (i.e., their focus on blessing) actually propels a version of the social gospel, albeit in more theologically
conservative terms. And the prosperity orientations of the pastors and lay people I
studied are not only inward-looking or self-serving—they also provide a source for
political mobilization outside of black churches and black communities.
Further, as African American Christian Zionists cultivate a prophetic and politically engaged stance on the grounds of prosperity gospel theology, they also deemphasize the political salience of race in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Viewing
the conflict though the lens of race and identifying with Palestinians on the basis
of skin color is anathema to African American Christian Zionists. Black Christian
pro-Israel advocates seek to create an alternative prophetic stance in politics—one
that posits Christian universalism and Black-Jewish solidarity as primary concerns
in determining political alliances. This stance is made possible through reframing
the question of who the oppressors and who the oppressed are in the Middle East.
The African American Christian Zionist narrative of the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict—and the politics of the Middle East more broadly—depicts Israel as a
small country surrounded by enemies. Michael Stevens told a group of New Jersey
pastors:
Israel is the size of the state of New Jersey. . . If you’ve never been to Israel, if you know nothing
about Israel, you would think Israel was the big bad bully of the Middle East, and she is basically
bullying her way throughout. . . that region of the world and strong-arming all of her neighbors.
Stevens then showed a map of the Middle East and North Africa with Israel
barely visible and all the surrounding Muslim countries highlighted in green. “As
you can see here,” he said, “you’ve got all of [these] green countries, so 650 times
size of Muslim countries that surround Israel.” Similarly, describing Israel’s position
in the Middle East to a Connecticut Bible study group, Stevens said that the recent
Arab Spring had become “a terrorist tsunami.”
While African American Christian Zionist leaders do express some empathy
for the condition of Palestinians, they do so in non-racial terms with a specific emphasis on Palestinian Christians. They also place blame for the condition of
Palestinians away from the State of Israel. Speaking to the tendency for black students to sympathize with Palestinians as oppressed people on the basis of race,
Dumisani Washington affirms their concern for social justice but argues that blaming Israel is misplaced. “There is suffering in the Middle East, that cannot be
denied,” he said. And he went on to describe how African Americans—and
African American Christians in particular—have a cultural legacy of empathizing
with oppressed people, of “remembering the least of these.” But, for Washington
and other African American Christian Zionists, aligning with the Palestinian
cause results in black students thinking they are doing good and working for justice
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while actually becoming “just a PR group for terrorists.” Not willing to concede
the social justice impetus, however, Washington points to neighboring Arab states
and the Palestinian leadership as the cause of Palestinian suffering. This reframing
of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Middle East provides a distinct rhetorical and political advantage to the State of Israel in its attempts to deflect criticism from groups like the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)
movement that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is akin to the racist policies of
Apartheid South Africa. The salience of race, then, in African American
Christian Zionist discourse exemplifies a tension within black churches between
the universalism of the Christian message and the particular experiences of black
people with respect to racial injustice.
Given the particularity of its narratives on blessing, prosperity, race relations,
and racial consciousness—all tied strictly to support for the State of Israel—
African American Christian Zionism might be thought of as a fringe black church
movement connected only indirectly to wider prosperity gospel and raceconsciousness themes. But the African American Christian Zionists I met and
spoke with do not see themselves as a fringe group outside of the traditional black
church. Rather, they see themselves as a vanguard movement within black
churches, manifesting the authentic history and culture of black Christianity in
their activism on behalf of the State of Israel. For them, the issue of Israel is central
to the identity and the distinctiveness of “the Black Church.” If political and religious Zionism are marginal issues in American black churches, proponents aim to
bring them into the mainstream by engaging with received historical and cultural
legacies of black Christianity. This is noteworthy for scholars of black religious politics because the theological concerns of conservative black Christians have been
increasingly expressed outside the bounds of prophetic and emancipatory black religion (Calhoun-Brown 2003; Daniels 2003; McRoberts 1999; Tucker-Worgs
2011). Thus, attention to African American Christian Zionism can further our
understanding of how black church-based social and political movements can follow the model of Quadrant 3 of Table 1, drawing on prosperity gospel themes rather than on concerns for systematic racial injustice.
African American Christian Zionism is also distinct from other well-studied
fringe movements in black churches—like the followers of Father Divine, Daddy
Grace, or the Black Hebrews, for example—because of its emergence from within
conservative white Protestant circles. While African American Christian Zionism
has grown within historically black denominations and congregations by articulating a vision for what black churches are, how they should be engaged politically,
and with whom they should stand in solidarity, the movement is funded and propelled by CUFI—a largely white evangelical organization. Within this context, a
common legacy of dispensationalist theology links this black religious movement
with white evangelical Christianity. Even though CUFI’s official rhetoric and messaging distance the organization from an apocalyptic dispensationalist “end times”focused vision for the State of Israel and the Middle East, pastors and lay church
members less formally affiliated with the organization often referenced
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dispensationalist themes in our conversations. Christian Zionism, then, is a movement where attempts at bridging the noteworthy racial divide between black and
white evangelicals in the United States on a host of issues (Emerson and Smith
2000) can be observed in the form of political advocacy on behalf of the State of
Israel.
But this bridging effort is not always successful and CUFI’s pro Israel message
is not universally embraced among the black pastors and church members that I
studied—even those whose theology lends itself to an affinity for Israel. While
most of the church leaders and members I met and interviewed were sympathetic
to CUFI’s efforts to draw black Christians into the issue of supporting Israel, a few
expressed skepticism about the issue and the organization. Specifically, some expressed perceptions of CUFI as a white Republican organization out of line with
their wider political interests. One Connecticut pastor that I spoke to about a
CUFI event that we both attended put it this way:
You know, when you take [CUFI founder] John Hagee and say, what is he teaching? You know,
he and [black pastor Michael] Stevens might be closer together on the idea of the importance of the
Jewish state and the preservation of the Jewish state and what it means politically to the relationship
with the United States of America. However, Hagee is, you know, very far right of the center as
it relates to any sort of theology that normally affects social action in our country.
Because of this, and though they may support Israel in principle, some black
pastors are reluctant to commit substantial resources to the cause. When I asked
another Connecticut pastor whether he planned to get involved with CUFI after
attending an event for the first time, he said: “To be quite frank, you know, this
particular subject matter is not high on our list of priorities. . . While we love Israel
and we do understand the biblical connection. . . CUFI doesn’t really rank at the
top.” Thus, CUFI’s African American Christian Zionist outreach should be seen
as part of the broader effort at racial reconciliation and cooperation within
American evangelicalism, and also as an example of the limits of that
reconciliation.
This article shows how African American Christian Zionism represents a distinct mode of political engagement, made possible through creatively drawing on
select aspects of African American, history, experiences and black church culture.
As a study of the discourse of African American Christian Zionism within CUFI’s
black church outreach, however, it has several limitations. First, by focusing on
African American Christian Zionist narratives and discourse, I have left aside the
question of what African American pro-Israel activism looks like in practice beyond outreach efforts. That is, in what specific ways do African American
Christian Zionists work to achieve their goals beyond black church contexts and
in the public sphere? What kind of political action do they undertake domestically
and internationally? Second, my overview of the theological motives of this particular kind of global political orientation raises further questions about overlapping religious nationalisms in transnational context, especially in terms of how
Christian Zionism has become a form of religious nationalism in relation to Jewish
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SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Zionism, for example. Third, because this study focuses on majority black congregations (including those in historically black denominations and nondenominational churches), I cannot speak to how African Americans in predominantly white or multi-racial congregations think about and relate to the State of
Israel. Finally, the present study also brackets the important related study of alternative expressions of African American Christian Zionism beyond CUFI’s outreach to black churches, as well as alternative black church stances on the issue of
Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The American social context in which the influence of such conservative,
prosperity gospel-oriented congregations are growing is one that continues to
change rapidly. Scholars of black churches have noted that changes in gender
roles, communication technology, and church attendance trends—including suburbanization—are shaping how black churches understand themselves and interact with the world (Calhoun-Brown 2003; Gilkes 1998; Pattillo-McCoy 2013;
Wiese 2004). Further, while local community issues, domestic policy, and electoral
politics remain central to understanding black church social engagement, attention to black church politics beyond the spheres of electoral and protest politics is
of increasing importance (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990; Owens 2007). In this context, attention to the rise of conservatively oriented social movements like
Christian Zionism can help scholars of race, religion, and social movements understand the changing theology and praxis of black churches. I have argued for a
wider theoretical approach to political engagement in black churches that pays
increasing attention to theologically conservative congregations. Attention to
these churches reveals how they work innovatively with and within black church
culture to create a space for alternative forms of political engagement that challenge black Christians to transcend privatistic spiritual concerns in favor of attention to global political issues. This treatment of the case of African American
Christian Zionism—as an example of black church political engagement on prosperity gospel terms—aims to broaden our understanding of the nexus of race, religion, and politics, with applications for studying religious social action and
mobilization on a range of domestic and transnational political issues.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Philip Gorski, Frederick Wherry, Jonathan Wyrtzen,
Clarence Hardy, Marcus Hunter, Elisabeth Wood, Richard Wood, and readers
from the Yale Sociology Department and Comparative Research Workshop for
their contributions to the development of this paper. I would also like to thank
the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT MEETS THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL
383
FUNDING
This work was made possible in part by funding from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada and the George M. Camp Grant at Yale
University.
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