I. Historical Roots of Pentecostal Fascination with Jews and Israel

When pentecostals began experimenting with Israel-themed identities and practices, they modified two Israel-related legacies inherited from nineteenth-century evangelicalism. First, individuals across the spectrum of conservative Christianity were keenly interested in biblical prophecy, and in particular with the role of Israel in unfolding “end-times” events. Like numerous fellow evangelicals, first-generation pentecostals embraced premillennial dispensationalism, with its literal, futuristic hermeneutic. They scoured current events for points of connection with biblical prophecies that they associated with the “last days,” paying special attention to the fate of the Jewish people and the growing Zionist movement.Footnote ⁶ Emblematic of these trends, in 1916 a writer for the Assembly of God's Weekly Evangel, later renamed the Pentecostal Evangel, listed eight crucial fulfillments of scripture that pointed to Christ's soon return. Alongside the “wars and rumor of war” and the fact that “the world is growing worse,” the author highlighted the large number of Jews in Palestine. Now that “nearly 300,000 Jews” lived in Palestine, it was only a matter of time before prophecy would be fulfilled, and God would “drive the Turk out of Palestine and cause his ancient people to take possession of it.”Footnote ⁷ Along similar lines, a representative 1935 issue of the same denominational periodical satiated readers' thirst for prophetic happenings with miscellaneous tidbits of information related to Jews and Palestine: The author noted the Zionist Federation of Great Britain's purchase of a farm in Harrietsham, UK, “as a training center for young Jews and Jewesses, with the idea of their going to Palestine as skilled agricultural workers.” Another news item discussed Palestine's first radio station, commenting on the prophetic import of the event. According to the author, the event functioned as a direct fulfillment of the words of the Prophet Isaiah, who decreed that “out of Zion will come forth the Law.”Footnote ⁸ For any good pentecostal, the implications of such developments were crystal clear: Christ was returning, and he was returning soon.

As the historian Robert Smith argues, the fascination with biblical prophecy and developments in modern day Palestine on the part of numerous American Christians was intimately tied to a view of the United States as a divinely chosen nation. Dating all the way back to the Puritans, individuals steeped in Reformed Protestantism envisioned their communities as a recapitulation of the same type of covenant that defined ancient Israel's relationship with God. And by the time the colonists separated from Britain and formed the United States, broad swaths of the American populace embraced a corporate national identity as God's New Israel. As this sense of connection with Israel evolved over the course of the 1800s and into the twentieth century, U.S. citizens continued to see the “typological referent” of their own national destiny in the yet-to-be-realized State of Israel. With this backdrop in mind, evangelical support for the fledgling Zionist movement in the early 1900s—including early pentecostal Zionism—can be read at least in part as a means of protecting and preserving white American Christians' view of themselves and of their nation as divinely favored by God.Footnote ⁹

A second Israel-themed legacy bequeathed to pentecostals from their evangelical forbearers extended well beyond adherents' search for present-day manifestations of biblical prophecy. The experience of the supernatural—as opposed to overt political actions or even interest in interpretations of biblical prophecy—stood at the center of pentecostal identity. And when the saints looked for symbols to describe their divine encounters, they often perpetuated a nineteenth-century evangelical camp-meeting tradition steeped in imagery associated with the tabernacle and temple described in the Hebrew scriptures.

In many respects the appeal of the Judeo-centric tabernacle tradition for pentecostals was closely tied to a pervasive restorationist impulse that permeated the early movement. In his 1916 The Apostolic Faith Restored, the participant-historian Bennet F. Lawrence provided a classic articulation of such themes. Lawrence contrasted pentecostalism with groups unduly shaped by the accretions of church history: “[T]he Pentecostal movement has no such history,” he declared. “It leaps the intervening years crying, ‘Back to Pentecost.’ In the minds of these honest-hearted, thinking men and women, this work of God is immediately connected with the work of God in New Testament days.”Footnote ¹⁰ Much of the rhetoric surrounding restorationism in the pentecostal tradition, as Lawrence's comments suggest, focused on the saints' desire to recreate the experience of the New Testament church described in the book of Acts. Scholars typically convey believers' longing to restore the power associated with New Testament spirituality, yet they frequently miss the degree to which the faithful also looked to the Hebrew scriptures and the example of the “children of Israel” for their ideal spiritual model. Here, it is significant that a large proportion of early pentecostals hailed from Reformed denominations that historically emphasized covenantal language derived from the Hebrew scriptures. Pentecostals familiar with this tradition would have been primed to look to ancient Israel as a model for the present-day church.Footnote ¹¹ Even apart from this Reformed connection in pentecostal circles, the camp-meeting tabernacle tradition influenced a broad spectrum of nineteenth-century evangelicalism, and as a result pentecostals with backgrounds in a wide variety of evangelical traditions would have been exposed to camp-meeting imagery tied to the ancient Israelites.

In a sign of the influence of this evangelical camp-meeting tradition in pentecostal circles, one of the most common symbols that the faithful utilized to describe their experiences involved references to the “Shekina glory.” An extra-biblical term, it generally referred to palpable manifestations of God's presence, and was closely associated in believers' minds with descriptions of the Hebrew tabernacle and temple found in the Bible. A writer for the flagship periodical of the early movement, Apostolic Faith, for instance, drew on imagery associated with the most sacred place in the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, in order to illuminate pentecostals' distinctive teachings regarding the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” and speaking in tongues. Due to the “great Shekina glory” that rested directly above the Ark of the Covenant, the author explained, the “Holy of Holies did not have any light from the sun, neither did it have any candle, but the light of the Holy Ghost lit it up.” In turn, “[w]hen a man or woman get the baptism in the Holy Ghost, they are filled with continual light.”Footnote ¹² A similar article detailed the experiences of the priests when dedicating Solomon's temple. “And when they praised the Lord in unison,” the author explained, “the house was filled with the glory of the Lord.” If believers followed these priests example, then God would “fill the room and you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, and God will give you a new tongue as a trumpet in singing or speaking as He did the 120 on the day of Pentecost.”Footnote ¹³ To be sure, pentecostals' stress on “speaking in tongues” deviated from evangelical precedents. But otherwise, their references to the Hebrew temple, to the presence of God that accompanied the Ark of the Covenant, and even their language regarding the baptism in the Holy Spirit—all mimicked trends that were already well-established motifs in nineteenth-century evangelicalism.

II. Towards a More Literal Embrace of Israel

For all of the ways that Israel-themed theology and rhetoric among early pentecostals derived from similar trends in the broader evangelical world, distinctive emphases closely related to Christian Zionism also set believers apart from their non-pentecostal counterparts. In particular, pentecostals facilitated an important shift towards identification with Israel as a real, concrete place. Such emphases went beyond the primarily analogical approach modeled in Reformed evangelical circles, or the focus on Israel as an ideal, aspirational place that appeared among turn-of-the-century dispensationalists.

Broad-gauged emphases within early pentecostal culture reinforced believers' predilection for a more literal identification with Israel. For one, the restorationist logic prevalent in early pentecostal circles helped nurture an evidentiary impulse as believers looked for tangible, visible signs of the Spirit's work that mirrored the miraculous happenings described in scripture. After reading in their Bibles about the early church, pentecostals fully expected to see identical manifestations of divine power in the here-and-now. Other evangelicals certainly affirmed biblical miracles, and many believed that God still divinely intervened at times to interrupt the natural order of events, but few conservative Christian groups at the turn of the twentieth century joined pentecostals in placing present-day miraculous encounters with the divine at the heart of their corporate identity.Footnote ¹⁴

Believers' predilection for more literal, contemporary manifestations of the Spirit's work spilled over to shape a distinctive approach to Jews and Israel. The most widespread example of believers' more literal identification of Israel involved a unique eschatological perspective among pentecostals that originated in late nineteenth-century radical holiness circles. Elaborated by leaders such as David Wesley Myland, “latter rain” teachings discerned deep spiritual significance in biblical verses referencing annual periods of early rain and latter rain in ancient Israel. According to Myland and others, much like the physical latter rain that fell immediately prior to the final harvest, a spiritual latter rain—which the saints associated with the pentecostal revival—similarly initiated a final “harvest” of souls prior to Christ's second coming.Footnote ¹⁵

Latter rain ideas nurtured in the saints a profound sense of connection to the physical land of present-day Palestine. According to Myland, “Spiritually the latter rain is coming to the church of God at the same time it is coming literally upon the land.” “Since 1860,” he continued, “the measurement of rain in Palestine has been recorded very accurately at Jerusalem, and shows a great increase, especially of the latter rain.” Myland concluded that in the sixteen years prior to 1908 the amount of rainfall had “doubled again, amounting to one hundred per cent increase” since 1860. Was it merely coincidence that this physical rain coincided with the “spiritual rain” pouring down in pentecostal services? Hardly, Myland thought. Instead, these simultaneous developments confirmed God's provision of special power to the church “to unite and empower her, to cause her to aid in God's last work for this dispensation, to bring about . . . the consummation of the age, and the catching away of spiritual Israel, the Bride of Christ.”Footnote ¹⁶

Fig. 1.

This chart appeared in David Wesley Myland's The Latter Rain Covenant and Pentecostal Power, 2nd ed. (1911). According to the “latter rain” teachings promoted by early pentecostals such as Myland, the increased rainfall that was recorded in Jerusalem from 1861 to 1907 represented a tangible sign from God that paralleled and confirmed the outpouring of divine power in pentecostal services. This particular reproduction includes handwritten notations and markings added by a previous owner of the book.

While Myland's reference to the church as a “spiritual Israel” resonated with similar Israel-themed symbols in various segments of the broader evangelical world, his simultaneous focus on “spiritual” and “natural Israel” modeled a distinctive perspective in conservative Christian eschatology. On the one hand, evangelicals in traditions molded by the writings of John Calvin had long described the church as a “spiritual Israel,” focusing on God's covenantal promises to Israel that foreshadowed his even greater promises to the church. Reformed believers' concentration on ancient Israel remained thoroughly analogical in nature, though, and attracted opposition from staunch dispensationalists who balked at any suggestion that the church “replaced” Israel in God's end-times scheme. In order to preserve national Israel's role in God's last-days drama, dispensationalists instead tended to emphasize a sharp distinction between Israel and the end-times church. Pentecostals like Myland, on the other hand, developed a position betwixt and between these two poles. Spurred by his vision of parallel restorations that directly linked the pentecostal movement to developments in the Middle East, the early pentecostal theologian simultaneously appropriated the language of “spiritual Israel” to describe the church while remaining fully committed to the literal restoration of Israel as a nation. (Years later, pentecostals associated with the midcentury New Order of the Latter Rain revived Myland's approach, combining discussion of spiritual and natural Israel. And in time, evangelical theologians such as George Eldon Ladd would spread similar ideas to an even broader evangelical audience.)Footnote ¹⁷

The extent to which Myland and other early pentecostals linked their identity to the actual land of Israel—to the point of monitoring the rainfall in modern day Palestine in order to legitimate pentecostal revivals around the world—illuminated the way in which many early pentecostals identified with Israel as a concrete, real place. Mainstream evangelicals also followed the historical developments in Palestine with great interest, of course, but for most, Israel tended to represent an aspirational ideal associated with the yet-to-be-realized nation. Early pentecostals' latter rain teachings regarding parallel restorations of Israel and the church, on the other hand, fostered a quite literal identification with the land of Israel well before the state of Israel was founded in 1948. This quite literal sense of connection to Israel, in turn, would continue to manifest as the pentecostal movement evolved over the course of the twentieth century.

III. Pentecostal British Israelism

If latter rain teachings proved the most widespread example of pentecostals' predilection for a more literal identification with Israel, an even more intense sense of connection manifested among a smaller group of pentecostals and proto-pentecostals who adopted Jewish-themed dress and rituals, and who at times claimed direct racial descent from the ancient Israelites. For example, the proto-pentecostal figure Benjamin Irwin, founder of the interracial Fire Baptized Holiness Association in Iowa in 1895, is best known for his teachings regarding the baptism in the Holy Spirit as a distinct third work of grace. But he also stressed the importance of following the ancient Hebrew dietary codes. Irwin spread such practices in his Fire Baptized congregations, and influenced key figures in the early pentecostal movement, most notably Charles Parham, who adopted similar Judeo-centric themes.Footnote ¹⁸

In addition to Irwin, the early African American pentecostal figure Charles Harrison Mason, who led the Church of God in Christ, was mentored in his early preaching career by proponents of Black Israelite forms of holiness Christianity who claimed that black Americans were the direct descendants of ancient Israel. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Mason carried these emphases forward into the predominantly African-American Church of God in Christ, which ultimately became the largest pentecostal denomination in the United States. Not coincidently, prominent figures in the black Israelite movements that emerged in the 1960s possessed ties to the Church of God in Christ.Footnote ¹⁹

A better documented line of influence transmitting similar Judeo-centric emphases into early pentecostalism involved proto-pentecostal leaders who stressed an Anglo-Israel connection linking white Americans to ancient Israel. According to proponents of British-Israelism (also known as Anglo-Israelism), individuals with an Anglo-Saxon ancestry descended directly from the so-called ten lost tribes of Israel.Footnote ²⁰ As the term British Israelism suggests, the movement first took shape in nineteenth-century Britain, providing a ready defense against those who questioned England's colonial ambitions. Individuals across the Atlantic, though, soon applied similar teachings to themselves; their message of Anglo-Saxon superiority was aided in no small part by the U.S.'s growing international clout at the turn of the twentieth-century, including the acquisition of islands in both the Pacific and the Caribbean in the aftermath of the War of 1898.Footnote ²¹

One of the most high-profile proto-pentecostal figures to avidly promote British Israelite themes in the incipient pentecostal movement was the Chicago evangelist John Alexander Dowie. Though best known for his faith healing practices and staunch opposition to traditional medicine, the Scottish minister's practices and ideas exerted a shaping influence on early pentecostalism in numerous other areas as well, including his keen fascination with Israel. When Dowie founded a religious community on the banks of Lake Michigan in the year 1900, he named it Zion. And in perhaps the most dramatic confirmation of Dowie's Judeo-centric interests, in 1901 he claimed to be no less than the Prophet Elijah, sent as God's messenger to earth at the end of the age.Footnote ²²

As it happens, Dowie's connections to Mormonism likely played an important role in his captivation with all things Jewish. Few—if any—religious groups in the United States could match the zealous embrace of Judeo-centric emphases evidenced in nineteenth-century Mormonism, and in particular their very literal identification with Israel. Early Mormons viewed their tradition as a restoration of ancient Israel, reimagining the North American landscape as an American Zion. In the words of a prominent historian of Mormonism, “[M]embership in the Church of Jesus Christ means that the Saints are literally adopted into Israel and are thereupon brought into the covenant by virtue of their membership in the tribes of Israel.”Footnote ²³ Indicative of the strength of Mormons' more literal identification with Israel, numerous believers in the late nineteenth century echoed the central tenets of British Israelism.Footnote ²⁴

Dowie's first interactions with Mormons occurred in Australia, and in 1890 he followed up on this initial contact with an extended six-month visit with Mormon leaders in Utah. In his own words, he “studied [the Mormon] church,” concluding that it was the “best organized and most clearly scripturally organized of all churches.” Dowie went on to praise Mormons for hewing “closely to the apostolic model.”Footnote ²⁵ Suggestive of just how thoroughly this modern-day “Elijah” identified with the Latter Day Saints during his early years in the U.S., Dowie apparently desired to be named part of their Quorum of the Twelve governing body.Footnote ²⁶

Dowie's overtures to Mormons only extended so far, however, and he eventually attacked the apostasy of “Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon, the teaching of the Book of Covenants and certain writings of the Apostle Pratt.”Footnote ²⁷ In 1903, he described Mormonism simply as “that which we hate and fight.”Footnote ²⁸ Dowie's vitriol notwithstanding, his ties to Mormonism were strong enough that Mormons felt the need to dispel any perceived link between their movement and “Dowieism,” especially when Dowie began to lose control of the city he founded in Illinois. “There is not the slightest affiliation between ‘Mormonism’ and Dowieism,” a writer for the Deseret Evening News insisted in 1906. The reporter nevertheless acknowledged Dowie's contact with the Mormons and their impact on his teachings. The “alleged ‘Elijah’ obtained many ideas as to the founding and conduct of his city from ‘Mormon’ colonization,” the author added, “and the organization of a church from the system which he endeavored to a certain extent to duplicate.”Footnote ²⁹ Despite the fact that Dowie's relationship with Mormonism ended in an ugly public divorce, this mutual excommunication should not obscure the very real points of connection linking the two.

Specifically in light of future developments in the pentecostal-charismatic movement, the most significant area of overlap between Mormons and Dowie ultimately involved a shared, literal identification with Israel epitomized by both parties' keen interest in British Israelism. For his part, Dowie confirmed on a frequent basis that he believed “strongly in the Israelitish origin of the Anglo-Saxon people.”Footnote ³⁰ He traced his Scottish lineage back to King Jehoram of Israel, in fact, though he concluded that “Jehoram was a rascal,” and held out hope that the Dowie clan was “of more honest stock in Israel.”Footnote ³¹ Whereas Dowie's creative genealogy proved highly idiosyncratic, it was also symptomatic of proto-pentecostals' and early pentecostals' maverick tendencies and their willingness to experiment with new interpretations of scripture. As such, it should come as no surprise that a number of believers well beyond the shores of Lake Michigan also experimented with new religious identities premised on a literal, racial identification with Israel.

The ministry of Frank Sandford in particular served as another crucial lynchpin linking British Israelism to the early pentecostal movement. A former Baptist pastor who embraced radical holiness emphases, Sandford founded the Holy Ghost and Us Bible School in Maine as well as a religious community known as “Shiloh.” In Dowie-like fashion, Sandford portrayed himself as a modern-day Elijah sent to prepare the way for Christ's return. Also like Dowie, Sandford's seemingly limitless self-confidence helped attract a sizable following, including individuals who would ultimately play a formative role in the early years of the pentecostal movement. (Sandford's desire to recreate the theocratic leadership modeled in ancient Israel, for instance, had a profound impact on the teachings of A.J. Tomlinson, founder of the pentecostal Church of God, and by extension on Tomlinson's sons, Homer and Milton.)Footnote ³²

Beyond Sandford's theocratic rhetoric and inclinations, British Israelism likewise proved a recurring theme in Sandford's teachings. While lacking the specificity of Dowie's ancestral claims, Sandford related to his followers that he belonged to the tribe of Judah.Footnote ³³ More important, he anticipated language utilized by Myland, discerning a crucial role for both “carnal” Israel (i.e. Britain and the United States) and spiritual Israel (i.e. the church) in God's end-times drama. In short, the imperial expansion and success of the former would pave the way for the missionary success of the latter. He was also convinced that any setbacks experienced by these two powerhouse nations, such as Britain's prolonged war against the Boers in Africa, represented God's purifying fire that prepared these nations to fulfill their respective destinies. “Thank God, He is backing up both carnal Israel and spiritual Israel,” Sandford concluded. “We see that God has been using carnal Israel and spiritual Israel along these two lines as a battle-axe or a devouring ‘lion’ among nations and as a ‘dew’ of blessing to carry civilization, education, enlightenment, the gospel of the Son of God and every kind of blessing among all the other nations.”Footnote ³⁴ Sandford's millennial prognostications illuminated the symbiotic relationship between British Israelism and the more widespread sense of Anglo-Saxon triumphalism in American society; they also revealed the numerous this-worldly, tangible blessings that Anglo-Israelites laid claim to as God's “chosen people.”Footnote ³⁵

Not surprisingly given his depth of commitment to British Israelism, Israel-themed symbolism and ritual permeated Sandford's ministry. When Sanford looked for inspiration in naming his religious commune, he turned to the Hebrew scriptures, and even went so far to declare Shiloh a “New Jerusalem” that would play a crucial role in the restoration of its namesake as a “worldwide spiritual headquarters on earth.” Looking forward to the day that Anglo-Israelites would be reunited with their Jewish brothers and sisters, he “thanked God” that the faithful would “return to the [Jewish] feast days and to the Sabbaths of old.” Not content to wait for the millennium, the Maine Prophet went ahead and celebrated the traditional Jewish festivals, and demanded that his followers accept circumcision, abstain from pork, and worship on Saturday in observance of the traditional Jewish Sabbath.Footnote ³⁶

The various rules and regulations implemented at Shiloh underscored Sandford's experimentation with bodily practices that complemented British Israelites' more formal teachings, and marked believers as racial descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. He was not alone. Dowie's periodical, Leaves of Healing, frequently published images of the leader wearing vestments meant to recall those worn by the high priest of Israel.Footnote ³⁷ Similar emphases were likewise readily apparent in the ministry of one of Dowie's and Sandford's most prominent protégés, Charles Parham of Topeka, Kansas. While Parham is best known for his formulation of pentecostals' trademark doctrine regarding speaking in tongues, he had direct contact with both Sandford and Dowie, and imbibed many of their Israel-themed practices. He endorsed British Israelism, lectured frequently on Zionist themes, and, according to some observers, hinted at his own Elijah-complex.Footnote ³⁸ Parham also perpetuated Dowie's and Sandford's incorporation of Israel-themed rituals and dress: At times he was known to wear “Palestinian robes” while teaching. And in one particular instance, while speaking in Texas on the subject of Zionism, the early pentecostal figure had fourteen of his students on the platform with him wearing garb “purchased in the Holy Land.”Footnote ³⁹

In the end, the Israel-themed ritual displays fostered by British Israelism powerfully reinforced believers' literal sense of identification with Israel. Pointing to the dramaturgical dimensions of ritual, the late anthropologist Clifford Geertz suggests that its transformative power is not derived from “a persuasion of the intellect nor a beguiling of the senses,” but rather “the enveloping movement of the whole drama on the soul of man. We surrender and are changed.” (Here Geertz is quoting the British drama critic Charles Morgan.) Geertz's comments underscore one of the most fundamental functions of Israel-themed rituals among early pentecostal believers influenced by British Israelism: By engaging participants' bodies and senses in dramaturgical displays, adherents' experiential forms of Christian Zionism fostered a more transformative, all-encompassing identification with Israel and Jewish themes that far superseded the sense of connection to Israel generated by an abstract theological commitment. In the process, believers who adopted Israel-themed rituals discovered a powerful means to confirm their racial descent from the lost tribes of Israel, and solidify an “imagined community” premised on participants' shared biological ties to God's chosen people.Footnote ⁴⁰

IV. Early Pentecostal Racial Ambivalence towards Jews

The pursuit of authentic Israel-themed rituals and identities in proto-pentecostal and early pentecostal circles by no means reflected an unalloyed philosemitism. To the contrary, a complicated admixture of philosemitic impulses and racial “othering” was readily apparent among early pentecostals who endorsed British Israelism. For his part, Dowie repeatedly declared his love for the Jewish people, referring to Jews as his “brothers.” In 1901, he briefly referenced the Dreyfus affair in France, reminding his audience that both Jesus and the Apostle Paul were Jewish. “I do detest this hatred of the Jew,” he concluded. “It is one of the most shameful and disgraceful things in American life.” “It is bad to hate the negro because he is black,” Dowie continued, “but if there is a degree of wickedness worse, it is more shameful to hate the Jew because he is rich, when all your salvation comes through the Jews. It is shameful in the extreme.” Focusing on Jews' success in business, Dowie suggested that “[t]he Jew gets the cream” because “[h]e stands waiting until the pail is filled . . . and he does that because you are not smart enough to compete with him.”Footnote ⁴¹ As Dowie's comments indicate, his profession of philosemitism did not preclude an indulgence of widespread stereotypes at the turn of the twentieth century that ascribed tremendous power and influence to Jews. Dowie no doubt viewed his race-based assumptions regarding Jewish success in a positive light, but a very thin line separated such notions from the overt racial hatred fueling conspiracy theories regarding Jewish domination of world affairs during the twentieth century.Footnote ⁴²

A similar ambivalence surfaced whenever Dowie addressed the growing Zionist movement spearheaded by Theodor Herzl. Tapping longstanding anti-Jewish sentiment within the Christian tradition, Dowie blamed Jews for the crucifixion of Christ, and insisted that divine judgment would follow them until they “repent and look unto Him whom you have pierced for salvation, and recognize Him as the Christ of God.” As such, he could not support non-Christian Jews' current claims to the land. “How can [the founding of Jewish nation-state] be the fulfillment of prophecy,” he asked, “when it is the restitution to the Holy City and the land of Israel of a multitude of clever and able men who reject the Christ of God?” While Dowie longed “to see the time when Judah and Israel will come together,” he was adamant in his rejection of contemporary Zionist effort: “Jerusalem must be rebuilt by the Zionist Israelite, who has acknowledged that Jesus Christ the Jew is the Saviour of the world . . . Jews who reject the Messiah cannot rebuild Jerusalem.”Footnote ⁴³ Dowie did not go so far as later proponents of Christian Identity and deny contemporary Jews' ties to ancient Israel, but he did conclude that “Israel—as represented by the Anglo-Saxon Peoples—will get Jerusalem.”Footnote ⁴⁴ As these various comments illustrate, Dowie's construction of an Anglo-Saxon identity used Jews as a racial foil. His sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority relied heavily upon an image of Jews as distinct racial others who possessed significant wealth and power and had a role to play in the fulfillment of end-times prophecy, but who nevertheless continued to suffer corporately for their rejection of Christianity.

Although similar dynamics played out in Sandford's and Parham's depiction of Jews—neither hesitated to affirm the “curse” that Jews endured for rejecting Christ, or to highlight Jews' “innate” business acumen—important nuances distinguished their eschatological visions from that of Dowie.Footnote ⁴⁵ Parham, for example, deviated significantly from Dowie's anti-Jewish Zionist stance, concluding instead that Jews need not convert to Christianity prior to the fulfillment of prophecy and the fulfillment of Zionists' dreams. He maintained that God never intended “that the Jews, as whole, would accept Jesus of Nazareth when He came nineteen hundred years ago.” Rather, it was God's plan from the start that Jews would see and accept Christ at his Second Coming. Then and only then would Jesus unite Jews and Christians “in the Messiah's Sabbatic Kingdom of one thousand years.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Parham's comments revealed the significant differences that separated the various iterations of early pentecostal British Israelism. His clear distinction between Jews and the rest of humanity also underscored a consistent common denominator: As was the case with Dowie and Sandford, Jews remained a distinct racial other in Parham's British Israelite eschatology. In sum, if the quite literal association with the ancient tribes of Israel on the part of early British Israelites nurtured philosemitism at times, it also fostered a highly racialized corporate identity built in large part on a sharp contrast between Anglo-Christians and their contemporary Jewish counterparts.

V. Midcentury Transitions

As the twentieth century progressed, British Israelism resurfaced in the ministries of at least a few other prominent pentecostal figures, including the healing evangelists F.F. Bosworth and John G. Lake, but for the most part it was steadily pushed to the pentecostal margins.Footnote ⁴⁷ The esoteric genealogies and the messianic aspirations of figures like Dowie, Sandford, and Parham proved ill-suited for a movement looking for stability and rapidly moving towards the more respectable evangelical mainstream.Footnote ⁴⁸ That said, specific innovations introduced by early pentecostal British Israelites never lost their appeal as pentecostals' prioritization of experience over doctrine and innovation over commitment to tradition proved an ideal incubator for continued experimentation with Judeo-centric identities and Jewish-themed rituals.

Before Judeo-centric ritual forms and identities could reach a broader pentecostal audience, they needed to be severed from the faddish theories of British Israelism. And by midcentury, the time was ripe for just such a transition. The most obvious catalysts for a renewed focus on Jews and Israel—the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and Israel's dramatic success during the 1967 Six-Day War—captivated the entire evangelical movement. Among pentecostals, the close connection between the midcentury healing revival and fascination with Zionist efforts illustrated the intense interest among the faithful regarding all things Israel. The administrative mastermind behind many of the most prominent healing evangelists, Gordon Lindsay, for example, used the influential platform of the Voice of Healing magazine to call the saints' attention to developments in the Middle East. (Not coincidently, Lindsay's parents were part of Dowie's community in Zion, Illinois.) Issue after issue of the Voice of Healing confirmed both Lindsay's and his readers' fascination with Israel. The various Israel-themed articles that inundated the faithful included “The Holy Land in Prophecy,”Footnote ⁴⁹ “The Fate of Israel,”Footnote ⁵⁰ and “Israel's Prophetic Destiny Revealed in Her Stamps,”Footnote ⁵¹ to name a few. If much of Lindsay's and other pentecostals' keen interest in Israel simply represented an amplified version of similar trends in the broader evangelical world, once again distinctive emphases emerged within independent pentecostal and charismatic groups who placed a direct sense of connection with Israel at the heart of their identity.

One of the most prominent examples of the resurgent interest in Jewish-based identities emerged in the controversial New Order of the Latter Rain. Originating in Canada before it impacted a number of individuals in the U.S., prominent figures associated with the New Order revival decried denominationalism, stressing instead the restoration of modern-day prophets and apostles who would recover the lost power of the New Testament church. Detractors, on the other hand, condemned New Order figures' divisiveness, authoritarian forms of prophetic ministry, and perceived preoccupation with the demonic. Frequently missed amidst these internecine quarrels was the extent to which the New Order movement revived key aspects of earlier latter rain teachings that placed Israel at the center of the pentecostal imagination.

Responding to the evolving situation in Israel, New Order leaders discerned profound parallels between the founding of the Israeli state and the fresh outpouring of God's power that they perceived in their midst. Percy Hunt, a former pastor in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada and a key figure in the initial outbreak of the New Order revival, worked to establish once-and-for-all the connection between the physical restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine and pentecostal identity. According to Hunt, the restoration of Jewish control of the land of ancient Israel directly corresponded with the full restoration of a “spiritual Israel” composed of “true” believers. Writing in 1951, a few short years after the establishment of the state of Israel, he sought to leave zero doubt in the mind of his readers regarding when these parallel restorations would occur:

In similar fashion, George H. Warnock, who penned one of the most popular books associated with the New Order movement, The Feast of Tabernacles, spent the entire book expounding on the implications of believers' standing as “spiritual Israel.” We are confident that the hour has come in the history of the Church when Israel's annual cycle of Feasts is about to be fulfilled in the midst of the saints,” Warnock explained. “And inasmuch as the natural observance of the Feasts constitutes a type and pattern of great and momentous spiritual events,” he continued, “it is vitally important that we should understand their meaning.”Footnote ⁵³ As Hunt's and Warnock's writings make clear, the inclination to place an intimate connection with Israel at the very heart of pentecostal identity, or to simultaneously stress the import of “spiritual” and “natural Israel,” had by no means disappeared within the pentecostal movement.

Despite the fact that the New Order of the Latter Rain remained limited in scope, midcentury pentecostal figures associated with it functioned as a key bridge linking the Israel-centric emphases prominent in early pentecostal circles with late-twentieth century believers' fascination with all things Jewish. At least a few adherents, including the New Order leader George Hawtin, eventually embraced Anglo-Israelism.Footnote ⁵⁴ The more important (and more common) trend was epitomized by Hunt and Warnock. These figures jettisoned the racial theories embraced by earlier figures, and drew a bright line distinguishing natural Israel from the church. Yet they still constructed pentecostal identity using Israel-themed symbols. In the process, key New Order leaders modeled a form of Judeo-centric pentecostalism that could thrive in the broader movement, and that would ultimately encompass all manner of Israel-themed rituals and practices.

The transitions initiated by New Order figures proved all the more important given the way these changes coincided with broader developments in American society. The emerging mythology surrounding a “Judeo-Christian civilization” in particular created an entirely new context for pentecostal appropriation of Jewish-themed identities and practices. During World War II and its aftermath, invoking a “Judeo-Christian tradition” served as a shorthand of sorts for those seeking to distance themselves from any hint of association with the antisemitic ideology tied to the Axis powers, or, in time, “godless” Communism. In a famous speech delivered on the eve of his inauguration, President Eisenhower insisted, “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept but it must be a religion that all men are created equal.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Pentecostals never would have agreed with Eisenhower's appeal to any “deeply felt religious faith.” Yet the newly ascendant focus on a shared Judeo-Christian civilization in the West nevertheless created a radically different context for believers' appropriation of Jewish-themed rituals and identities. Moving forward, pentecostal appropriation of Jewish dress, dietary laws, and worship forms would no longer function to confirm notions of racial descent linking Anglo-Saxons to ancient Israel. Rather, these practices would resonate to a significant degree with prevalent emphases in U.S. society, and serve to confirm widespread beliefs regarding shared cultural norms that linked Christians and Jews.

Already at midcentury, signs pointed to the growing popularity of Israel-themed identities—if not Israel-themed ritual forms—among the faithful. David Nunn, one of the more well-known pentecostal healing evangelists, directly echoed Hunt's claims; he too discerned a clear connection between the fate of Israel and the emergence of pentecostal revival.Footnote ⁵⁶ Of even greater importance for the future of the pentecostal-charismatic movement, high-profile charismatics adopted similar rhetoric to describe the burgeoning charismatic renewal that gained national attention beginning in the 1960s.

Reflecting back on his initial efforts to spread pentecostal practices to the established churches, the influential pentecostal leader David du Plessis explained, “In 1948, there happened what I was waiting for: Israel became a nation.” Biblical prophecies found in the book of Joel convinced du Plessis that a “new wave” of revival would envelop the churches following the Jewish return to Palestine. “[I]f God will restore Israel on a promise made 2,500 years ago,” he concluded, “He will also restore Christianity on the promise of Jesus . . . [A]s God is blessing all Jews, so He will bless all churches.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Identical claims appeared repeatedly in the writing of Derek Prince, a Cambridge-educated convert to Christianity who served as one of the most important pro-Israel voices in the charismatic movement. According to Prince, who based his ministry out of the United States, it was no accident that the appearance of pentecostal revival in the early 1900s followed immediately on the heels of Theodor Herzl's efforts to ignite the modern Zionist movement, or that the midcentury pentecostal healing revival took shape in the late 1940s when the state of Israel became a reality, or that pentecostal-style spirituality spread within the Catholic Church just as Israelis celebrated a “miraculous” victory in the Six-Day War.Footnote ⁵⁸ Describing the strength of his attachment to Israel, as well as his decision to spend half of each year in Israel, in 1979 he explained: “My prior commitment in God is to Israel before any other . . . We feel that God wants us there as a kind of midwife to assist with whatever the Holy Spirit is going to birth in Israel, and to us this is a very thrilling opportunity.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Du Plessis's and Prince's Israel-centric messages—not to mention their status as two of the most visible leaders in the early charismatic movement—boded well for the future of Jewish-themed practices in pentecostal and charismatic circles. Decoupled from the controversial racial theories espoused by British Israelites and now consonant with prevalent themes in the broader American society, more experiential, ritual-based forms of identification with Israel were primed for a resurgence.

VI. The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism

In a steadily growing fashion since the 1960s, the same type of attraction to all things Jewish so evident in the ministry of someone like Prince thrived in the pentecostal-charismatic movement as a whole. Midcentury figures who displayed an unrelenting interest in Israel focused mainly on the profound connections that they discerned linking pentecostal identity to the formation of the Israeli state. Increasingly, however, these sentiments found new means of expression as believers experimented with a variety of Israel-themed ritual practices that satisfied adherents' thirst for “authentic” religious experiences. Reminiscent of the ministries of Dowie, Sandford, and Parham, a surprising number of churches blew shofars during times of worship, endorsed the celebration of traditional Jewish holidays, or incorporated pageantry in the form of banners, Israeli flags, dancing, and the like, all of which were meant to call to mind the Hebraic roots of Christianity. Looking back on these developments, the charismatic leader Rob Stearns noted in 2006: “For some time, churches across America have observed a unique group of Christians coming to worship services. They wear Jewish prayer shawls and Star of David jewelry, greet fellow congregants by saying, ‘Shalom,’ and stop people after the service, a ram's horn tucked under one arm, to explain why every believer needs to go to Israel.” He went on to describe these individuals as “‘Israel people’—supporters of the Jews and their nation.”Footnote ⁶⁰ While the perceived historical link in pentecostals' and charismatics' minds between their movement and events surrounding Israel goes a long way towards explaining the religious experimentation highlighted by Stearns, the revival of ritualized forms of identification with Jews and with Israel during the second half of the twentieth century built on a number of other developments as well.

Outside of pentecostal and charismatic circles, epochal changes in American society opened the door for more overt forms of religious experimentation with “exotic” religious forms: Loosened restrictions on non-European immigration beginning in the 1960s, an anti-authoritarian ethos exemplified by the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam efforts, a burgeoning neo-Romanticism that prioritized experiential knowledge, and the declining power of denominations in American religious life—all contributed to an environment where more and more Americans were willing to reevaluate traditions that had been handed down by religious authorities and formulate their own combinative forms of spirituality.Footnote ⁶¹ The highly individualized forms of religiosity fostered by these trends coincided with a consumer-oriented therapeutic culture in the U.S. that prioritized self-realization and self-expression over fealty to tradition, and that had been reshaping much of U.S. society throughout the twentieth-century.Footnote ⁶²

Significantly, the rising socioeconomic status of the average pentecostal in the second half of the twentieth century coupled with the large number of charismatics who hailed from a solidly middle class background paved the way for many adherents to wholeheartedly embrace the flourishing therapeutic culture in the U.S. Whereas the “plainfolk culture” characteristic of the early pentecostal movement stressed the “lore of the honest, hardworking ordinary American,” increasingly believers reflected widespread therapeutic sensibilities.Footnote ⁶³ The accompanying emphasis on personal fulfillment and self-actualization freed believers to push beyond inherited forms of religiosity, encouraging in turn a more widespread religious experimentation with Judeo-centric imagery and symbols that had appeared in incipient form earlier in the century.Footnote ⁶⁴

Somewhat ironically, one of the most significant trends fostering pentecostal and charismatic believers' adoption of Jewish-themed rituals involved the growing number of American Jews who responded to the various historical developments in the 1960s and 70s by rebelling against Jewish orthodoxy. The Jesus People movement, which first took root in California and evangelicalized the 1960s counterculture, proved especially successful in attracting young Jews who were disillusioned with their religious upbringing. This Christian “hippie” movement dovetailed neatly with the same therapeutic emphases increasingly embraced by pentecostals and charismatics more generally, and satiated seekers' thirst for highly experiential, individualized forms of spirituality. (Not surprisingly, pentecostal and charismatic practices, including speaking in tongues, prophecy, and claims to divine healing, were ubiquitous within these groups.) Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but by all accounts the Jesus movement played a central role in the growing number of Jewish “followers of Yeshua”; several Messianic Jewish leaders possessed direct ties to the Jesus movement, and charismatic-style Christianity became a hallmark of most Messianic Jewish congregations.Footnote ⁶⁵

The growing number of Jews who embraced conservative Christianity did more than just experiment with Christian norms and rituals. Just as the counterculture prized self-expression and independence, a number of these Messianic Jews avoided direct submission to existing Christian denominations, insisting instead on a form of Christianity that preserved and celebrated their Jewish heritage.Footnote ⁶⁶ In the words of the charismatic insider and historian Peter Hocken, Messianic believers continually became “more liturgical as a consequence of the desire to be authentically Jewish.” Common practices included “the keeping of the biblical feasts, the observance of Shabbat, particularly the Friday evening welcoming of the Shabbat.” Over time, he observed, more and more groups also incorporated “processions with a Torah scroll,” and a few used a traditional Jewish prayer book. Earlier Jewish believers had also sought to preserve a sense of connection to Jewish ritual and culture, of course, but the newly minted Jewish followers of Christ proved much more successful in one very important respect: they successfully created their own congregations. In the process, they launched a distinct Messianic Jewish movement that grew rapidly throughout the late twentieth, early twenty-first centuries, especially in the U.S. and Israel, not to mention the former Soviet Union.Footnote ⁶⁷

As Messianic Judaism developed, most participants did not sever their strong ties to charismatic renewal. In a sign of these connections, when charismatics gathered by the tens of thousands for a conference in Kansas City in 1977, Messianic Jews offered their own morning sessions, and leaders in the Messianic movement spoke in afternoon workshops.Footnote ⁶⁸ By 1990, a study of Messianic believers determined that a full 77 percent identified as charismatic.Footnote ⁶⁹ Assessments made by charismatic insiders at the turn of the twenty-first century pushed those numbers even higher, suggesting that roughly 85 percent of Messianic adherents identified with “spirit-filled” forms of Christianity.Footnote ⁷⁰

On the one hand, Messianic Jews' status as second-class citizens in Israel may have led some pentecostals and charismatics to qualify their backing of the Israeli state, but overall it did not dent most pentecostals' and charismatics' support for Jews and the nation of Israel.Footnote ⁷¹ Quite the contrary, the influx of Messianic Jews into the pentecostal-charismatic movement mainly confirmed pentecostal and charismatic believers' profound sense of attachment to Judeo-centric religious identities. In fact, one of the most surprising statistics related to expressions of Messianic Judaism in pentecostal-charismatic circles involved the high number of non-Jews counted among its ranks: estimates made by knowledgeable insiders in the early 2000s claimed that non-Jews accounted for anywhere from fifty to eighty-five percent of the typical Messianic congregation.Footnote ⁷²

The significant number of non-Jewish evangelicals in Messianic congregations—most of whom possessed ties to the pentecostal-charismatic movement—underscored the broad appeal of Judeo-centric trends during the latter decades of the twentieth century. The most widely circulated magazines for pentecostals and charismatics, such as New Wine and Charisma, deluged believers with miscellaneous updates related to Messianic Judaism, advertisements for Israel-themed products, and numerous invitations to Holy Land Tours led by high-profile pentecostal and charismatic leaders. Beginning in the 1990s, lengthy portions of various issues of Charisma effectively functioned as pentecostal and charismatic-friendly Israeli tourist guides. (An article penned by the wife of prominent charismatic pastor accurately captured the tenor of a 1995 Israel-themed Charisma issue: “Come With Me to the Holy Land.”)Footnote ⁷³

One of the most frequent Judeo-centric topics to appear in pentecostal and charismatic periodicals involved updates regarding Christian-led celebrations of the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, which were initially spearheaded by two Canadian charismatics, Merv and Merla Watson. From 1980 forward, this annual Jewish festival attracted thousands of Christians from the U.S. and elsewhere, many of whom were inspired by biblical prophecies that they associated with the event. (Participants pointed, for instance, to the biblical prophet Zechariah, who foresaw a time when individuals from “all the nations” would gather in Jerusalem to join in the Feast of Tabernacles celebration.)Footnote ⁷⁴

From the start, those who gathered for the Feast of Tabernacles incorporated colorful, Israel-themed pageantry and worship that tangibly reinforced their sense of identification with Israel. As one participant explained, “Worship leaders, singers, and dancers outfitted in silver and gold colors carried banners and flags from thirty-five nations down the aisles and onto the stage of the auditorium where we met. Trumpets sounded as three thousand Christians stood and praised God, singing ‘Thou Shalt Arise and Have Mercy on Zion.’”Footnote ⁷⁵ In the succeeding years, similar celebrations were simultaneously held in the U.S. One such event conducted in 1994 by CBN Conferences in Virginia Beach, Virginia, featured speakers from the pentecostal and charismatic-led International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), and included four days of “Davidic praise and worship, Jewish ceremonies and festive pageantry.” Four years later, a “jubilee” celebration of Israel's fiftieth anniversary planned by charismatic figures attracted over twelve thousand individuals to Orlando, Florida. Reports noted the “array of pageantry and dance accentuated by an often ecstatic crowd.” The opening ceremonies, which “included a replica of the Ark of the Covenant and colorful banners—each naming one of the original 12 tribes of Judah,” in turn “ushered in what participants described as an unusual sense of God's presence.” (Eager to tap participants' enthusiastic support of the Israeli state, the organizers of the event circulated pro-Israel petitions that were then forwarded to members of the U.S. Congress and to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)Footnote ⁷⁶

Following the turn of the twenty-first century, the growing prominence of Judeo-centric themes in the pentecostal-charismatic movement became even more apparent. Various ministries sprung up dedicated to the merger of Jews and Gentiles as “one new man.” Representative books included Reuven Doron's One New Man (1993), Don Finto's Your People Shall Be My People (2001), Sid Roth's The Incomplete Church: Unifying God's Children (2007), and the One New Man Bible (2011).Footnote ⁷⁷ At the same time, Jewish-themed rituals continued to appear with greater frequency. Indicative of the sheer reach of these trends, in 2012 Bishop Eddie Long, who pastored a predominantly African-American, 25,000 member charismatic megachurch in Atlanta, invited a self-proclaimed Messianic rabbi, Ralph Messer, to his church. During the service, Messer conducted a ceremony in which he wrapped Bishop Long in a Torah, proclaimed Long a “king,” and then had four men lift Long up in a chair and carry him around. A video of the ceremony went viral, attracting no small amount of condemnation.Footnote ⁷⁸ In 2009 Messer conducted a similar ritual on the television program hosted by the popular charismatic personality Paula White, though it did not receive the same attention as Long's ceremony.Footnote ⁷⁹ Messer's appearances highlighted the fusion of ritual and entertainment characteristic of the megachurch and television environments represented by Long's and White's ministries, and neatly satisfied the quest for exotic and authentic religious experiences nurtured by American therapeutic culture. More generally, Messer's elaborate ritual displays in Long's church and on White's television show accentuated just how many pentecostals and charismatics experimented with Judeo-centric ritual forms and identities by the turn of the twenty-first century.

VII. Post-Americanism and the Global Spread of Pentecostal Zionism

It is no surprise that depictions of Christian Zionism in the U.S. frequently call attention to the political dimensions of the movement, or that politically active individuals such as Pat Robertson and the Texas-based pastor John Hagee garner most of the attention. Robertson played a crucial role in the rise of the Religious Right to national prominence in the 1980s, which made his staunch political support for the state of Israel all the more important. Likewise, Hagee helped revive the well-funded “Christians United for Israel” (CUFI), which had a similar goal of encouraging evangelical Christians to lobby their legislators on behalf of pro-Israeli causes. CUFI's yearly summits featured high-profile political players including Joe Lieberman, Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, Sam Brownback, Glenn Beck, as well as Benjamin Netanyahu via satellite.

As it happens, both Robertson and Hagee closely identified with the pentecostal-charismatic movement, and one study published in the mid-1990s confirmed that among late-twentieth-century evangelicals, pentecostal and charismatic leaders reflected the highest levels of political support for Israel. The same study also identified a direct correlation between staunch Christian Zionism and believers' embrace of premillennial eschatology.Footnote ⁸⁰ Judging from these statistics as well as the ministries of Robertson and Hagee, it is impossible to tell the story of contemporary Christian Zionism among pentecostals and charismatics without taking into account adherents' more formal eschatological beliefs or the emergence of the Religious Right as a formidable force in American politics.

All of that said, a whole other set of contributing factors related to Christian Zionism comes into play when considering pentecostals' and charismatics' distinctive contributions to the movement worldwide. Here, a closer look at Hagee's Christians United for Israel is instructive. Intermixed throughout the political speeches, prayers, and sermonizing at CUFI's yearly meetings, planners also incorporated sustained periods of worship that featured worship songs with references to Zion, the blowing of shofars, Jewish-style dancing, extensive use of banners with Jewish symbolism, not to mention songs sung in Hebrew.Footnote ⁸¹ All of the pageantry incorporated into Hagee's CUFI events could be read simply as an elaborate effort to rally the troops on behalf of Israel. The long history of pentecostals' and charismatics' intimate identification with Israel, however, points to the much deeper identity-formation at work as participants borrowed Jewish and Israel-themed ritual forms.

In particular, a simplistic focus on the link between conservative Christian support for Israel and premillennial eschatology misses the way in which ritualized expressions of Christian Zionism have helped forge a cohesive movement in the U.S. and abroad. Pointing to the multitudinous interpretations of ritual practices typically offered by religious participants, scholars of religion have suggested that the social cohesion fostered by rituals often occurs precisely because of the emphasis on shared symbols as opposed to more explicit beliefs.Footnote ⁸² Such observations help illuminate pentecostal Zionism's success in creating a powerful pro-Israel coalition: by focusing on experience-based rituals, not formal eschatological beliefs, pentecostals and charismatics facilitated the formation of a broad-based imagined community and helped bridge the various theological divisions that separated conservative Christians into numerous camps. Caught up in shared ritual expressions of support for Israel, believers could set aside, at least temporarily, debates over proselytization efforts among Jews, the relevance of specific premillennial frameworks for understanding Israel's import, or the role of the United States during the end-times.Footnote ⁸³

A closely related—and arguably even more important—function of pentecostals' and charismatics' experiential forms of Christian Zionism involved the transnational appeal of such ritual expressions and the international networks that they helped solidify. Put simply, believers' pursuit of authentic religious identity and experience tied to the Hebraic roots of Christianity did not require a U.S. context to thrive (though it certainly could coexist with pro-American sentiments, as Jonathan Cahn's ministry so aptly illustrated). Scholars have oft-noted the way which pentecostals' prioritization of divine encounters over doctrine lent their movement a remarkable flexibility, and contributed to its “innate ability to make itself at home in almost any context.”Footnote ⁸⁴ In a very similar fashion, believers' experience-based expressions of Christian Zionism translated well across cultures, and were easily accessible to anyone, regardless of nationality.

One look at the various constituencies attracted to the Feast of Tabernacles event sponsored by the pentecostal and charismatic-led International Christian Embassy Jerusalem each year graphically corroborates the global appeal of Judeo-centric identities and ritual forms among the faithful. While half of the three thousand attendees at the first large-scale celebration conducted in 1980 were from North America, the remaining 1,500 individuals hailed from thirty-three different countries.Footnote ⁸⁵ In succeeding years, the number of number of countries represented grew rapidly: in 1993 four thousand individuals from seventy different countries attended, and in 2007 organizers reported that more than seven thousand participants from ninety different countries traveled to participate in the festivities.Footnote ⁸⁶

At least a few churches outside of North America transformed their church interiors in a manner reminiscent of Cahn's New Jersey worship center. A sociologist who observed an Assemblies of God church in Brazil “was struck by the very prominent menorah on the altar.” A satellite branch of the church in Rio de Janiero went so far as to construct “an enormous exhibit room with a replica of what the city of Jerusalem looked like in the first century, complete with city streets, lighting, and temple structures.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Not coincidently, the 2007 Feast of Tabernacles celebration in Jerusalem included over 1,200 individuals from Brazil.Footnote ⁸⁸

Another important confirmation of the transnational appeal of Israel-themed practices and identities involved Messianic leaders who built successful radio and broadcast ministries. While committed to evangelizing fellow Jews, the leaders of these global outreaches crafted programs that simultaneously appealed to large non-Jewish audiences.Footnote ⁸⁹ Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Louis Kaplan, a Jewish Christian who initially served as a healing-evangelist in New York City, initiated his Phoenix-based radio program, Jewish Voice Broadcasts, which focused on “Israel and Bible prophecy, testimonies of Jewish believers and teachings on sharing the Messiah with Jewish people.” By the mid-1980s, Kaplan's annual ministry budget was just shy of one million dollars, and he had added a television program, “Le Chayim,” that reached 21 countries in Western Europe via the European Satellite Network, not to mention radio broadcasts that extended into Eastern Europe, Lebanon, and Israel.Footnote ⁹⁰ Kaplan's legacy continued into the twenty-first century, as Jonathan Bernis took over the production of Jewish Voice following Kaplan's death in 1998. Under Bernis's leadership, the ministry began sponsoring large-scale “Festivals of Jewish Music and Dance” around the world, in addition to the television broadcasts.Footnote ⁹¹

Another up-and-coming charismatic Messianic Jewish leader, Sid Roth, similarly ventured into broadcast media after embracing Jesus as the Jewish Messiah in the early 1970s. Roth launched his Messianic Vision radio program in 1977. Much like Kaplan, by the mid-1980s his ministry operated on an annual budget of $900,000, and Messianic Vision was broadcast on sixty radio stations. Not only did Roth's ministry include a substantial focus on the Jewish roots of Christianity and on the end-times unification of Jews and Gentiles, but it was also international in scope; his 30-minute program was translated and broadcast into Israel, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.Footnote ⁹² And in the late 1990s, he too expanded into television with the show It's Supernatural. By 2014, Roth indicated that It's Supernatural was aired throughout much of the Middle East, was broadcast in Russian to 182 countries, and would soon be broadcast “across the Spanish-speaking world.”Footnote ⁹³

In the end, just as pentecostals and charismatics experienced remarkable success spreading their movement around the globe, exuberant expressions of Christian Zionism proliferated alongside these preexisting pentecostal networks as well. A ten-country survey of pentecostals on four different continents conducted by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirmed the strength of pentecostals' commitments to Israel. One question, for example, gauged respondents' support for Israel in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The gap between pentecostals and “non-renewalist” Christians on this query was high in the U.S., with 60% of pentecostals sympathizing with Israel compared to 40% of non-renewalists, but a similar pattern held in other parts of the world. The disparity between pentecostals and non-renewalists on this same question reached 23% in Brazil, 19% in India, 17% in Guatemala, 16% in South Africa, 13% in Chile and the Philippines, and 3% in South Korea.Footnote ⁹⁴

The international scope of Christian Zionism underscored its remarkable adaptability to various cultural contexts well outside the U.S., as well as the need for studies that help to explain the movement's global appeal. While further work needs to be done regarding indigenous contributions to Christian Zionism outside of North America, this essay highlights one important piece of this puzzle: Pentecostalized expressions of Christian Zionism originating in North America promised an enhanced sense of religious identity and experience that were transnational in scope and fully separable from U.S.-centric perspectives. In and of itself, the “Anglo-Israelite” identity promoted by early pentecostal British Israelites already suggested an imagined community that was not neatly contained by national boundaries.Footnote ⁹⁵ Later, deracialized expressions of pentecostal Zionism only strengthened this incipient transnational impulse, and easily crossed national borders.Footnote ⁹⁶ As such, pentecostalized forms of Christian Zionism complicate recent studies that focus primarily on the interconnections linking U.S. Christians' support for Israel to a belief in American exceptionalism.Footnote ⁹⁷

None of this is to say that global Christian Zionism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century should be understood solely as a North American export. It is to suggest, though, that American pentecostals' and charismatics' appropriation of Jewish-themed ritual forms and identities bolstered Christian Zionism's ability to replicate itself around the world. Like their American counterparts, believers across the globe wanted to know that they too were God's chosen. Most pentecostals and charismatics attracted to Israel-themed rituals may not have gone as far as Jack Hayford, a prominent California pastor and leader in the pentecostal Foursquare denomination, who declared: “I see myself as Jewish spiritually. I see myself as a gentile Jew.”Footnote ⁹⁸ Even so, by adopting Jewish-themed rituals and identities that reinforced an intimate sense of connection with Jews and Israel, believers participated in a transnational tradition with deep roots in pentecostal circles. Anyone, it turns out, could be a “gentile Jew.”