A Nation with the Soul of a Church

As a non-evangelical Christian (I am a Lutheran of lower-case catholic sensibilities), I share the evangelical majority’s pro-Israel sympathies, though not, for the most part, their reasons for that sympathy. But that reservation does not diminish my bottom-line agreement with Robert W. Nicholson’s admirable essay. Evangelical Protestants are, all in all, good for the Jews, and Jews committed to Israel should have no problem recognizing the overriding reality that evangelicals, as undoubted friends of Israel, are friends of theirs.

As a Lutheran, I endorse the two-kingdoms understanding of Christian social responsibility. In that view, God rules over all of existence, but does so under different rubrics. The right-hand kingdom of the gospel and salvation is governed by love, while the left-hand kingdom of law and creation is governed by justice. Given the reality of a fallen world indelibly marked, short of the end times, by the stain of original sin, it is neither necessary nor possible, in Lutheran terms, to rule the realm of politics by the gospel. The norms of social justice—available not merely to Christians but to all people of good will—do not rest on theological grounds and do not require theological justification.

In the present instance, one need not depend on biblical prophecy or covenantal theology to find reasons to support the state of Israel. Israel has the only truly democratic political culture in the Middle East. It is a friend of the West in politics and political economy, and, more important, a consistent and unswerving ally of the United States. It is a regional bulwark against the radical Islamists who are its and America’s sworn enemies. The more I see of the populist Arab spring, the stronger is my commitment to Israel. I support Israel not because I am a Christian—though nothing in my Christian beliefs would preclude that support—but because that support coincides with the requirements of justice and the defense of the American national interest.