Wrong, Tucker, evangelicals have not turned against Israel

OPINION:

Tucker Carlson has spent months using one of the biggest platforms on the American right to attack Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip and to question why American evangelicals support the Jewish state so strongly.

As Mr. Carlson has grown more vociferous in his condemnation of Christian Zionism, he has created the impression that American evangelicals are finally turning against Israel.

Our research suggests otherwise.

There is now a strong temptation in politics and media to confuse noise with reality. A viral monologue is not a congregation. A bitter online faction fight is not the same as a real shift in Christian conviction.

Mr. Carlson may be one of the most visible critics of Israel on the political right, but visibility is not the same as influence. The question is whether he is moving evangelicals at all.

Our recent evidence suggests not much.

In December, we surveyed 3,806 American Protestants and compared the results with earlier pre‑ and midwar surveys. What we found was not a sweeping evangelical break with Israel but rather a much more stable pattern. Among evangelicals, support for Israel stayed broadly steady.

Support for Palestinians fell compared with the prewar period, but that did not produce a dramatic rush in the other direction so much as a drift into the middle, where some respondents said they supported neither side or were unsure.

Months of war coverage, harrowing images and mounting criticism did not produce the evangelical realignment many assumed. If the claim is that evangelical support for Israel is shallow, fragile and one news cycle away from collapse, then our data does not support it.

Mainline Protestants did move more than evangelicals, but even there the story is narrower than many headlines suggest. Support for Palestinians rose slightly, and support for Israel softened by just 3 percentage points, yet nearly half (44%) remained pro-Israel.

Why has evangelical support held up better than so many critics expected?

First, because this support is not merely political or tribal. It is moral.

The strongest predictor was whether respondents believed Israel’s response after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks was justified. That tells us many Christians are not beginning with a pundit’s script or a party line. They are beginning with a moral judgment about terrorism, self-defense and the obligations of a country that has been attacked.

Second, this support is also theological. The belief that God’s covenant with the Jewish people remains in effect strongly predicted support. That’s important because it shows this is not just habit, sentiment or reflexive Republican loyalty.

For many evangelicals, support for Israel is rooted in what they believe Scripture teaches about the Jewish people and God’s purposes in history.

That is worth noting because one of the laziest criticisms of evangelical support for Israel is that it is all driven by End Times sensationalism. Once covenant belief, evangelical identity and moral judgment are taken into account, generalized apocalyptic urgency on its own does not explain support for Israel.

The picture is more serious and more grounded than critics often allow.

Another finding deserving more attention is that not all self-described evangelicals are the same. Among those meeting the stricter, theologically grounded National Association of Evangelicals’ definition, support was stronger still.

That helps explain why broad cultural evangelical identity can look different from deeper doctrinal commitment. The deeper the Christian commitment, the stronger and more durable the support for Israel tends to be.

That is one reason commentators so often misread this constituency. They assume evangelical support for Israel is emotional, inherited or politically programmed, and therefore easy to unravel. Our findings point in a different direction. For many evangelicals, support for Israel is tied to enduring beliefs about Scripture, covenant and moral responsibility.

One of us came into this research expecting evangelical support for Israel to be more transactional and less deeply rooted than it turned out to be. The data did not bear that out. That matters now because the public story being pushed is that evangelical support for Israel is fading fast, and figures such as Mr. Carlson are simply giving voice to a change that has already happened.

Our findings suggest otherwise.

Before journalists and politicians announce a new evangelical consensus, they should ask a simpler question: What do ordinary Christians in the pews actually believe?

Our research offers a clear answer. Despite Mr. Carlson’s claims, evangelicals have not turned against Israel.

• Motti Inbari of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and Dr. Kirill Bumin of Boston University wrote “Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century” and conducted their research in partnership with Chosen People Ministries.