The Great Fundamentalist Crack-up on Foreign Policy?

Maybe not yet but some hairline cracks can be detected. This trend deserves more attention from antiwar critics. While still a small minority among their brethren, more mainstream fundamentalists than ever are questioning the basis of American foreign policy in the Middle East. An example is Stephen Sizer, the author of Christian Zionism: Road-Map to Armageddon?

Sizer rejects the bloodcurdling, and melodramatic"end times" scenarios of premillennialists like Hal Lindsey as based on a flawed interpretation of Biblical prophecies. He subscribes to a theology that most of these prophecies either do not apply to current events or were fullfilled thousands of years ago. Sizer urges fundamentalists to build bridges to Arab Christians who he sees as potential peacemakers in the conflict between Muslim and Jew.

According to a description of the book on Amazon.com:

The term"Zionism" was first coined in the late nineteenth century, and referred to the movement for the return of the Jewish people to an assured and secure homeland in Palestine. Ironically, this vision was largely nurtured and shaped by Christians long before it received widespread Jewish support. The origins of"Christian Zionism" lie within nineteenth-century British premillennial sectarianism, but by the early twentieth century it had become a predominantly American dispensational movement, and pervasive within all main evangelical denominations. The contemporary Christian Zionism movement emerged after the"Six Day War" in Israel in 1967, and it has had a significant influence on attitudes towards the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Middle East. Evangelicals are increasingly polarized over whether Christian Zionism is biblical and orthodox or unbiblical and cultic. In this book Stephen Sizer provides a thorough examination of the historical development, variant forms, theological emphases and political implications of Christian Zionism. His excellent and informative survey is interwoven with critical assessment that repudiates both nationalistic Zionism and anti-Semitism.