Some Republicans have responded to the Palestinian flag outside Palestinian American Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s office by proposing a measure to ban all non-U.S. flags from Congress. Rep. Brian Mast took a different approach: For the latest meeting at which House Republicans are trying to find a speaker, he showed up in an Israel Defense Forces uniform, saying, “Tlaib has her flag, I got my uniform.”
Hanging the flag of the people from whom you’re descended is bad. Wearing the military uniform of another country to which you have no hereditary or ethnic ties is good. But this isn’t just a Republican trying to own the libs. Mast’s IDF uniform is a reminder of how many evangelical Christians view Israel.
Mast volunteered with the IDF in January 2015, packing medical kits and moving supplies. Previously, he was in the U.S. Army for 12 years, losing both of his legs and a finger when, working as a bomb disposal technician, he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan. He likes to talk about how he’s “the only Member of Congress who has worn the uniform of both the U.S. Army and the Israeli Defense Forces.” But again, why? We may find some clues in evangelical Christian views of Israel.
Mast is an evangelical Christian who attended a Christian high school and is a member of The Presidential Prayer Team. He frames his support for Israel in terms of “democracy and human rights,” and maybe that’s what it is for him. But “evangelical attitudes toward Israel account for most of the Republican Party’s support for Israel; without evangelicals, Republican attitudes on Israel do not substantially deviate from the rest of America,” Brookings fellow Shibley Telhami wrote in 2021, drawing on University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll research.
When Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, U.S. evangelicals in particular were “ecstatic.” As much as that move was intended to appeal to some Jewish people, it was aimed at making Trump’s evangelical base happy.
“Jerusalem has been the object of the affection of both Jews and Christians down through history and the touchstone of prophecy. But most importantly, God gave Jerusalem — and the rest of the Holy Land — to the Jewish people,” the Rev. Robert Jeffress told CNN at the time.
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump later picked up on that quote and unpacked it in ways that are relevant to the Republican response to Hamas’ attack on Israel. A large majority of evangelicals believe that the Holy Land was promised to Abraham and his descendants, so the existence of Israel is biblically important to them. This is what these evangelicals base their support for Israel on. But that’s not all. A smaller group of evangelicals, though still a majority, also believe that the creation of Israel moves the world closer to the second coming of Christ and the accompanying Rapture, and say that is central to their support for Israel.
“What kick-starts the end times into motion is Israel’s political boundaries being reestablished to what God promised the Israelites according to the Bible,” Pastor Nate Pyle told Newsweek in 2018.
Support not just for Israel’s existence but for its control of very specific boundaries becomes a means to facilitate the second coming, which is key to the theology of a substantial proportion of evangelicals. Bump reported that in a 2017 poll of evangelical attitudes on Israel, “Sixty percent of those age 65 and older said the fulfillment of prophecy was an important factor in their support for Israel. In a follow-up question, 12 percent of respondents said the fulfillment of prophecy was the most important reason they supported the state of Israel.”
Israel is, in other words, a means to an end for many evangelicals. Or, actually, a means to the end times.
So when an American evangelical goes to Israel to volunteer in the IDF, it is unlikely to be a simple statement of support for an ally of the U.S. And this is important context to remember when you’re contemplating how it is that Republicans are so loud in their support for Israel as a nation and so frequently antisemitic in other contexts.
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