Joshua Zeitz writes:

It’s no secret that Israel is losing ground in American public opinion on both the left and the right, even as many American Jews feel newly besieged by rising antisemitism. On much of the left, activists and intellectuals increasingly interpret Israel and Zionism through anti-colonial and anti-racist frameworks, casting the conflict in the moral language of oppressor and oppressed.

On the right, a different but equally consequential shift is underway. Influential conservatives like Tucker Carlson have come to view Israel as a drain on American resources, setting up debates with Israel supporters like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher and ambassador to Israel. But the criticisms go beyond the MAGA movement’s “America First” isolationism. The turn on the right isn’t just about geopolitics — it’s about theology.

“Christian Zionism,” as Carlson described it in his podcast interview with white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, is a “brain virus” and “dangerous heresy.”

For decades, one of the most reliable pillars of pro-Israel sentiment in the United States was not just Jews but conservative Christians. That support had a theological motor: Israel mattered not just as an ally on a Cold War map, but as a central actor on the map of the End Times. Put simply, Christians needed Jews to return to the homeland of Israel to usher in the second coming of Christ.

But now, that theological motor is sputtering.

Carlson’s point of view appears to resonate especially with younger evangelicals. A survey commissioned by the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and administered by the Barna Group found that support for Israel among young evangelicals fell from 75 percent in 2018 to just 34 percent in 2021. This trend is of a piece with a decline in Biblical literalism. In 2022, a Gallup poll found that just 20 percent of Americans describe the Bible as the literal word of God — an all-time low.

With hardline readings of scripture on the decline, many young evangelicals are less tethered to elaborate prophetic systems and more likely to see evangelicalism as a kind of political identity. As the political scientist, Baptist pastor and Washington University professor Ryan Burge has argued, “more and more Americans are conflating evangelicalism with Republicanism — and melding two forces to create a movement that is not entirely about politics or religion but power.” [Continue reading…]