Evangelical support for Israel has remained unchanged amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, according to a recent survey. Researchers found the belief that "God’s covenant with the Jewish people remains intact today" serves as the greatest impact on support for the Jewish state.
"If a respondent professes this belief, the likelihood that this person strongly supports Israel increases almost threefold (180%)," reads a press release from researchers behind the study.
Dr. Motti Inbari, a professor of Jewish studies at UNC Pembroke, and Dr. Kirill Bumin, associate dean of Metropolitan College and director of Boston University Summer Term Programs, explained to CBN News what they found most stunning about the latest data.
"We've been doing this research for quite some time," Bumin said. "And one of the things that I find particularly interesting is the degree to which the attitudes that we see in the Christian community are crystallized or rigid."
He continued, "We have seen relatively little change in attitudes towards support for Israel, support for Palestinians, or support for neither from 2021 onward."
Bumin said this persists even after the Oct. 7 attack and the subsequent war broke out.
Another factor of interest was generational differences the researchers observed among young evangelicals, who have been found to be less supportive — particularly those under the age of 20 — of Israel. Listen to them break it all down.
To the newsmakers podcast, I'm Billie Hollowell, and this is a show where we go behind the headlines every day to bring you an interview with a pastor, entertainer, politician, or other notable news figure. And this is a show, again, it's daily, but it's based on our weekly TV show, which is also called Newsmakers. You can watch it on the CBN News channel and also on our YouTube page. And on this show, every day, we dive deep. It's a little more longer form with one of the people who you will often see on our Newsmakers show or across the CBN News platforms. On today's newsmakers, what is driving evangelical support for Israel? We sit down today with Dr. Madi Invari, professor of Jewish studies at UNC Pembroke, and also Dr. Kiril Buman, associate dean of Metropolitan College and director of Boston University Summer Term Programs, the two of them have been researching this issue for quite some time, and they break down all of the fascinating factors at the core of evangelical support for the state of Israel. Here they are to break it all down. So Dr. Buman, I want to start with you. When you look at the data that both of you have been looking at when it comes to Christian support for Israel, what has been most shocking to you? Well, we've been doing this research for quite some time, and one of the things that I find particularly interesting is the degree to which the attitudes that we see in the Christian community are crystallized or rigid. We have seen relatively little change in attitudes towards support for Israel, support for Palestinians, or support for neither from 2021 onward. So despite the recent fighting, and despite this terrible tragedy on October 7, the attitudes seem to be relatively stable across the time periods that we've observed. So that is one thing that's really interesting to me. Another area that we have explored quite extensively with the evangelical community, but just beginning to explore with Catholics and mainline is the generational differences. And so we've observed repeatedly in the evangelical community that under 30-year-olds are substantially less supportive of Israel. Even after we take into account their religious attendance, their specific religious beliefs, political beliefs, socialization in pro-Israel circles. So there's something really peculiar about this young generation. We deliberately do not call them millennials, because really the under 30s kind of straddle the generational divide in terms of the typical terms that we use for the generations. But there's definitely something very distinct about under the 30 crowd, especially in comparison to the 50 to 64-year-old respondents who are even more supportive of Israel than the 65-plus crowd. That's really interesting. When I hear that, I know we have to be careful with this in research, but Dr. Embari, when you looked at those numbers, were there any ideas or concepts surrounding what might be driving that generational difference? Yeah, of course, young people today have access to information that people of my age, I belong to this generation of the 50 and above, we didn't have social media, we didn't have the internet. So young people are exposed to those social medias and other types of medias. The social medias that they have today are designed by design, they are such that people are receiving just what they want to see and hear. So it creates an echo chamber, it creates your own mindset that you're not exposed to other views and this creates a lot of polarization also as a result. So this is one of the major aspects, another aspect is that it's very visual. You can see things that back when I was younger in that age and I was opening the newspaper, I was reading, now they see, they don't read, they see, it creates a different effect. So these are definitely the reasons why this young generation is much different views on political and social aspects than the older ones. Yeah, it is interesting to consider the, you know, with social media coming in and becoming so dominant that it has an effect over time with more young people using it too, but you wonder in 20 years when everybody's been on it, what does that look like? I mean, we can't project ahead, we don't know, but that actually is a very interesting consideration on every issue, not just this one. Dr. Boom, and you spoke a little bit about the evangelical support for Israel. What, just to dive in a little bit more on that, what were some of the biggest drivers of that evangelical support based in the research you've done? Support for Abrahamic Covenant, this notion that God's covenant with the Jewish people is intact and eternal, and that as a result of Gentiles supporting Abrahamic Covenant, that there are blessings for the Gentiles to be had, godly blessings, that aspect has repeatedly received support not only in the evangelical community, but indeed across all Christian denominations that we have studied. In fact, in our 2024 survey, that is the number one most impactful variable that we've considered in terms of relative impact on people's attitudes in terms of support for Israel. So, of all the political, sociological, economic, demographic, religious explanations, support for Abrahamic Covenant is exceptionally important. We also find for evangelicals, again and again, that ascribing to a particular theology, a theological view related to end times known as premillennialism has been really important. There are a lot of different elements to these millennial views. There's a premillennialism, post-millennialism, amillennialism, but the most important aspect in terms of these views for us is the relationship to the Jewish people in Israel and the end times. And premillennialism paints a very clear-cut picture for the role of the Jewish people and Israel in the end times. Christ is supposed to rule for thousand years, literal thousand years in Jerusalem, according to the premillennial thought. And so, as a result of that, when people think about the role of Israel, they can paint a clear picture about where they stand today and why the role of Israel and the role of the Jewish people continues to be important all the way to the redemption, right? And so, they may not know all of the different facets of this eschatological view, this end times view, but what they do recognize is that elevated role of the Jewish people in the state of Israel. And so, that repeatedly buttresses support for contemporary Israel in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. There is also some more, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say it is fascinating, too, because, you know, if you look at the book of Revelation, it talks about Israel, Jerusalem, right? So, this idea that Israel, from the perspectives you've highlighted there, that Israel needs to be or would be part of that end time scenario, you know, theologically, it is interesting how that would then coalesce with the views on what is currently happening now and how that would, you know, create that support. I'm sorry, I just wanted to make that point, so, go ahead and continue. Yeah, I just want to make an injector comment that young people, young evangelicals, are much less inclined to the pre-millennial views, and our studies repeatedly show that. So, it's another way to explain why young evangelicals are drifting away from supporting Israel. It's part of this eschatological view that is a part of that mix as well. Yeah, in fact, there was just a survey the other day showing exactly what you just said about young people being much less, you know, inclined to have that viewpoint. That is interesting, but go ahead, I apologize. Pre-millennialism was a part of popular culture, of social fabric for the evangelicals in the 1960s and 1970s. There were a set of, you know, books about redemption. It was, you know, the great, late, late, great planet Earth. It was in the popular imagination that, that vision of the end times is relevant and important. State of Israel was just recently created. It really jived very well with some of the predictions and, you know, beliefs in the evangelical pre-millennial tradition, it resonated with a view of Revelations 20, and so as a result, I think the older folks also were, you know, in the environment that really popularized that view made it a part of living environment which they recognized in their daily lives. Contemporary young folks, of course, see a very different kind of political and sociological environment and they see much less relevance to pre-millennialism. But you know, they're beyond, beyond theology. We found, among evangelicals, some pretty common, you know, things that are already in conventional mainstream media, like we find that there is repeatedly, you know, greater levels of support for state of Israel among conservatives and GOP supporters than among liberals and Democratic Party voters. We find that socialization is really important. Being in pro-Israel circles for the evangelical community produces that positive effect that rubs off. There are some caveats to that, again, with young people, but by and large, you know, evangelicals socialize in circles that support that pro-Israeli position and that's why we continuously see that, you know, on average, evangelicals are more supportive of Israel than other Christian faiths. Yeah. Now, you know, it's so fascinating in light of all these different pieces of the puzzle to sort of try to put them together to understand what is going on, what is driving it. And this is an ongoing crisis, obviously, the war in the Middle East, you know, between Israel and Hamas. Dr. Ambari, you know, we talked a little bit about this before, but I want to sort of go a little deeper on it because one would imagine that with that war in the chaos that has unfolded that some of the opinions maybe about Israel in particular, maybe even the Palestinian people, their quest for a state that there have been major shifts on those opinions in light of the war, what actually has been found in the data in light of what we've seen happen. Yeah, we actually have seen. So we had an opportunity to check that before and after, so before the we were able to examine before and going to after the war began, you know, just a few months ago, we took another survey. We have noticed that, for example, with Catholics attitudes, the zero, almost no change at all. This is fascinating. Yes, it's really no change at all. We saw with evangelicals some changes here and there, but overall, it looks like a stable map of opinions that are already set, that are already that are already determined and you know, the laws and situations and whatnot, doesn't really make a big difference all in all in how people think about this conflict. Yeah, you know, and that again, in light of what we're talking about, when you have fixed, you know, and I don't want to just boil it down to those fixed things, but those theological, those big issues that are very fixed. It makes sense to me that some of this wouldn't change. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, the Palestinian state, the question of Palestinian state views on Muslims, Dr. Boom, and have we seen changes or shifts there at all? There's been not a very significant but but but measurable negative attitude toward the Palestinian state and Muslims in general as a result of the recent conflict. We found that more than 50% of the respondents in our most recent survey blame Hamas in blame Palestinians for the fighting and for the current war in Gaza. And we see that the attitudes have become a little bit less positive towards Palestinians, specifically in Muslims more generally. So I think that even despite different interpretations and different sites that folks want to take on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, this current fighting is perceived as largely Palestinian and mostly Hamas fault rather than Israeli. That's very interesting. You know, if we ask this question yesterday after the bombing of, you know, of the school and the death of several innocents, that result could have been different, you know. And so that's just really important to remember that what we have are snapshots in time and that we have to always interpret the data that we have with some degree of caution. But the snapshots that we do have indicate that, in general, American Christians ascribe greater level of fault for what is going on now to the Palestinians than to Israelis. You know, I want to give you just as we round out to the end here, just a final word. If there's something maybe we didn't hit on, if there's a big takeaway that you want people to have, I'll start with you, Dr. Ambari. Yeah, I wanted to emphasize that we clearly were able to see a distinction between the different Christian movements that we have surveyed. And if we want to break it down into two major groups, we can definitely have seen a difference between Catholics and Protestants, where Protestants exhibit a much higher level of support for Israel and the Jewish people and much less acceptance of antisemitic stereotypes than Catholics. And if we want to look at the Protestants deeper, we have seen that evangelicals are interested in Israel and while mainline, mainline Protestants tend to be more on American Jews. And so, but overall, they are not so different in their views than one of them expected. We want, I want to say a few words about mainline Protestants, you know, their leadership tend to be very pro-Palestinian, they accepted multiple resolutions against Israel and assemblies of these churches like methodist, Presbyterians. The followers are not there. The numbers show it very clearly. So this is also something interesting that we have noticed. Wow, that's an interesting potential divide there. And I think we're seeing the main lines, they're dividing on a lot of other issues too. You're seeing some of that happen, right? So this is just another one that that's fascinating. Dr. Buman, for you, any final words, points that you'd want people to highlight? So for the first time in the survey, we scratched a new angle that we haven't explored before and I find it fascinating as a first generation immigrant, in fact both Moti and I are, you know, we're naturalized citizens. And so we asked our respondents if there were native born Americans or if they grew up elsewhere and immigrated to the United States and also asked them about the length of time that they spent in the US. And what the data essentially shows is that folks who have been in the US for a longer period of time tend to be more pro-Israel than folks who have recently come. So our pro-Israel general culture tends to socialize immigrants into more ardent supporters of Israel or at least less likely to support the Palestinian side. So there's definitely a simulation that happens even on this specific foreign policy issue among immigrants and it's a fascinating angle that I think we're going to continue exploring. Well I so appreciate you both coming on to break it all down and I'm looking forward to having you back again during the next survey wave to talk about what you find. Thanks for your time today. Thank you very much. [Music] [Music] [Music] You
