Arab Center Analysis: Israel’s declining support among American Evangelicals

By Jonathan Kuttab

for the Arab Center of Washington D.C.

Evangelical Christian support for Israel and its policies has long been one of the bedrock factors behind backing for Israel in the United States. Such support pervaded all sectors of American decision-making at the executive and legislative levels and produced seemingly unlimited material, diplomatic, and political assistance to Israel.

Recently, however, Evangelical backing of Israel has declined, leading to panic among Israeli policymakers and pro-Israel advocates, who are responding with major new initiatives to regain such support.

A Past of Unconditional Support

It used to be a fundamental fact of American politics that the majority of Evangelical Christians stood firmly and uncritically behind US support for Israel’s policies, even those of the most right-wing governments of the State of Israel. Evangelicals seemed untroubled by the burgeoning Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, by Israel’s violations of international law, geopolitical considerations, or even by American strategic interests.

Instead, their support was grounded in a number of faith-based propositions: God gave the land to the Jews; Israel is a manifestation of God’s plan for history; the ingathering of the Jews is a harbinger of the End of Times and will bring on the Armageddon, a global war in which all nations will attack Israel; and God will bless, or punish, nations based on how they view and respond to the State of Israel.

Different US administrations had to deal with a powerful lobby of Christian Zionists claiming to speak for all Evangelicals. Even arguing in favor of a two-state solution—a basic tenet of US policy toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for decades—provoked opposition from Evangelical Christians who saw any reduction in Israel’s control over the entire area of historic Palestine as contrary to biblical precepts. A former Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, once even stated that the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States was Evangelical Christians, not American Jews. Such an overwhelming reality had significant political implications in Washington, but it seemed to take root outside of the normal logic, processes, and language of secular American politics.

Many Evangelicals view the creation of Israel as the fulfillment of a prophecy and the harbinger of the End of Times.

The pro-Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has for decades routinely and effectively supplemented its political muscle and financial contributions with the threat of mobilizing tens of millions of Evangelicals who saw in supporting Israel the realization of a biblical commandment that was impervious to political argument. Many Evangelicals view the creation of Israel as the fulfillment of a prophecy and the harbinger of the End of Times. They frequently pointed to biblical verses such as Genesis 12:3, which reads, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Such verses are taken out of context and incorrectly applied to the State of Israel, suggesting that God will bless those who bless it and punish those who oppose it. Christian Zionists argue that opposing Israel’s policies could bring upon them the wrath of God Himself. These sentiments, often promoted by televangelists appearing on Christian radio and television stations, were used to garner support for Israeli policies and to deflect criticism, leading to one-sided support for Israel that would otherwise be difficult to justify or to understand.

This influence has been evident in the policies of officials such as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and by powerful individuals serving in the US government who brought their Evangelical Christian Zionist views with them into their official positions. For example, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the current US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee share a biblical devotion for Israel. The phenomenon is not limited to US politicians, however. Ugandan International Court of Justice Judge Julia Sebutinde defended her dissenting vote on the genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa by saying, “The Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel.”

Gradual but Unmistakable Change

Yet, Evangelical support of Israel in the United States has started to erode, and has taken on a generational character as younger Evangelicals have become less enchanted with Israel than their parents are. This shift has been reflected in public opinion surveys that show declining support for Israel both among the general population and among Evangelicals specifically. A Pew Research report found that the deterioration of support has been especially marked among Democrats and young people. A plurality of the American public now believes that Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza are unjustified. A 2024 survey reported in Religion News of Catholic and Evangelical support for Israel noted that there was a sharp decline between 2018 and 2021 and a decrease in the number of Evangelicals who viewed Israel in a traditional biblical context, including a decrease in the number of Evangelicals who agree with the idea of the Abrahamic Covenant. A 2021 poll also registered a large decline in support of Israel by young Evangelicals (aged 18-29), from 75 to 34 percent between 2018 and 2021.

The reasons for this shift lie mostly in Israel’s own behavior, which has been difficult for Evangelicals to justify, especially in light of the massive destruction of Gaza and the horrendous suffering inflicted on civilians there. The deliberate starvation of the entire population and the use of all means of destruction to target and assassinate people on a large scale have taken their toll, causing the narrative to begin to shift. The change in opinion also resulted from continuous work by progressive Evangelical organizations, including Sojourners magazine, the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East, and Red Letter Christians. And a significant factor has been the influence of Palestinian Evangelicals themselves.

While Evangelical Christians are a minority of a minority among Palestinians and generally are not politically active, they have confronted Christian Zionism among Evangelicals in the United States in very effective ways. Prominent among Palestinian Evangelical organizations is the Bethlehem Bible College, a conservative evangelical institution in Bethlehem that launched a series of conferences titled “Christ At the Checkpoint” to address Christian Zionism specifically from an evangelical biblical perspective. Also effective are individual Palestinian Evangelicals like Rev. Alex Awad and Rev. Munther Isaac, whose creche of “Christ in the Rubble” in Christmas 2023 went viral on US social media and landed him a number of media interviews, including one with Tucker Carlson. Palestinian Evangelicals pose a particular problem for pro-Israeli Evangelicals, many of whom are not even aware of the existence of Christian Palestinians, much less of Palestinian Evangelicals, and who have tended to view Middle East politics as a conflict between Islam and the Judeo-Christian West.

Young Evangelicals have become less enchanted with Israel than their parents are.

Another factor influencing shifting public opinion among US Christian Evangelicals, who tend to be very conservative politically, is the changing attitude of right-wing conservatives like Tucker Carlson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), and Charlie Kirk, the leader of the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA who was assassinated in September 2025. Such influential figures traditionally have been very supportive of Israel and Zionism, although some observers have cast them as anti-Semitic. They have recently started asking questions about US aid to Israel from an “America First” perspective. They have questioned why Americans should be involved in foreign wars at all, and why they should support Israel with billions of dollars of taxpayer money for military aid, funds that they argue are needed in the United States. They have pointed out that Israel provides its citizens universal health care insurance and nearly free university education, benefits that Americans do not get. Before his assassination, Charlie Kirk had begun to question the involvement of the Israeli intelligence services with Jeffrey Epstein and his trafficking operation. Kirk’s discourse brought on an immediate and vicious attack from AIPAC and its supporters, but these right-wing figures doubled down on their critique. This trend was cemented with Kirk’s assassination shortly after he began publicly expressing his doubts about Israel and its policies. After he was assassinated, despite—and perhaps because of—continuing denials by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Internet was suddenly abuzz with accusations that the Mossad had killed him because he was considering changing his position on Israel/Palestine. Many of the followers of these right-wing figures are Evangelicals, and there is now a split among them over support for Israel.

Shoring Up Support

Taken together, these factors have led to an evident decline in support for Israel among Evangelical Christians, a development that has caused serious panic among Israel and its supporters. In response, new strategies and hundreds of millions of dollars are being deployed to regain that vital support.

The Israeli government recently announced a 2026 public relations budget of nearly $750 million, much of which is likely to be directed at Evangelicals. The Israeli government has begun to lobby them directly, in addition to working through AIPAC and existing Zionist entities in the United States. The reason for this may be AIPAC’s waning influence as a small but notable number of American politicians have openly stated that they will no longer accept campaign donations from the organization. The November 2025 election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, after he openly rejected AIPAC and its influence, is a clear sign of changes in the political atmosphere.

To directly influence Evangelicals, Israel is required to register its American interlocutors as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938. FARA filings provide a wealth of information about Israel’s public activities, and a newly filed FARA document indicates that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs has contracted with an American organization, Show Faith By Works, to target Christian churches in four western states—Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nevada—as part of a $4 million dollar campaign.

Much of Israel’s 2026 public relations budget of will likely be directed at Evangelicals.

In addition, the Israeli government reported that Rev. Mike Evans, a well-known Christian Zionist Evangelical, invited more than 1,000 Evangelical ministers to visit Israel in December 2025 at its expense in order to be trained to become ambassadors for Israel in their communities.

Perhaps even more alarming than this propaganda campaign is the deliberate use of technology to influence American Evangelicals through Geofencing, which uses geographic targeting to reach audiences in certain locations, in this case several hundred American churches in the aforementioned four Western states as well as Christian colleges and seminaries. The technology will “fence” the radius of the targeted locations and the Israeli government will then bombard phones and computers in those locations with special messaging of a Christian nature relating to Israel, Zionism, Gaza, and the policies of the Israeli government.

This campaign has not been unnoticed by pro-Palestine Evangelicals. Several articles have been published about it, and a website has been launched that describes the plan and invites individual Evangelicals to check if their own church is being targeted. Furthermore, Jack Sarah, President of the Bethlehem Bible College, published a scathing rebuke to the more than 1,000 ministers who visited Israel recently but who did not bother to meet with Palestinian Evangelicals.

It remains to be seen how Israel’s campaign to lure back those Evangelicals who have soured on it and to revive its centrality in their religious doctrine will fare. The same can be said of the campaign against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and Palestinians in general. But what is clear is that polls measuring both Israel’s support among Evangelical Christians and among the broader American public indicate that the soft spot Israel has long enjoyed has hardened to a measurable degree, necessitating a counteraction from Israeli policymakers as well as from Israel’s supporters in United States.

The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.

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