An intellectual conversation on Christian Zionism does exist, Joel Willitts and Robert Nicholson said during the religion department’s annual Gershom Lectures on Christianity and Judaism.
The lecturers presented their contributions to the book “The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land,” which argues for Jewish land rights in modern Israel, on Sept. 29 and 30. The Gershom lecture series aims to bring Jews and Christians into dialogue with each other, Professor of Religion Don Westblade said.
“This is a college where Judaism and Christianity are both in the mission statement,” Westblade said. “The relationship between them is at the heart of who we are as a college. The importance of Jews and Christians to one another comes to expression in these lectures.”
Westblade met this year’s Gershom lecturers at an April 2015 conference at Georgetown University, where contributors to “The New Christian Zionism” presented papers that would eventually help make up the book.
Joel Willitts, professor of biblical and theological studies at North Park University in Chicago, said the book is the first serious scholarly argument for Zionism, the idea that Jews should be allowed to live in Israel.
Willitts said the New Testament offers a defense of the belief in a physical homeland.
“We’re trying to show that it’s not just a giveaway to posit in the Bible, in history, and in present Israel the right of the Jewish people to have a place,” Willitts said.
Robert Nicholson — director of the Philos Project, a nonprofit organization that supports Christian engagement in the Middle East — said he sees the book and the Gershom Lectures as a chance to dispel misconceptions about Zionism and Judaism itself. Throughout time, support for Zionism has been popular, folksy, and extreme, Nicholson said.
“For most Christians in America, Israel is a black box,” he said. “They may love it or hate it, but they don’t know what’s inside it…The Hebraic tradition is the source of our tradition, and to the extent that we ignore it, we ignore our own.”
Junior Shelby Nies said this year’s Gershom Lectures emphasized lessons she learned on the trip to Israel with the Philos Project and Hillsdale College in January.
“They showed me why this conversation is mostly addressed to Christians,” Nies said. “There is a divide between Jews and Christians that Christians don’t realize. In order to have a conversation, you have to know where they’re coming from.”
The Gershom Lectures began in 2013, after Robert Chenoweth, a Messianic Jewish rabbi, donated to Hillsdale’s religion department to encourage the study of the Hebraic tradition.
Nicholson said Israel’s place in the world is not just a question for academic or religious study. It applies to politics today, as well.
“Israel is still in the story,” Nicholson said. “It’s not done yet. Israel is an integral part — it’s a main character.”
