Evangelical Christians Get a Little Too Excited, Claim American Founded to Protect Israel
Stan Goodenough, a successful evangelical Christian journalist and former editor International Christian Embassy’s Middle East Intelligence Digest, is suggesting that America was founded in 1776 to protect modern-day Israel:
"I believe the main reason the United States was founded 250 years ago was so that our great country would be in a position to stand with the restored nation of Israel in these days." This astonishing point of view was expressed by a North Carolinian Conservative candidate for the US Congress in conversation with an American pastor friend early in 2004.
Apparently, David Huffman believed that when, in the early 17th century, God moved on the hearts of men to leave England and make their way west across the Atlantic, it was in His mind to plant a new nation to which He would bequeath a special honor and spectacular destiny... His reason for elevating America to this position was so that she would ally herself with the surviving remnant of the Jewish people, help them take root again in their national homeland, and support them in their struggle against a hostile world.
There are two reasons we're skeptical of this claim: (1) it sounds an awful lot like the wildest anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which hold that Israel manipulates United States policy to further its own interest, (2) if He was really intent on consistently using the United States to protect the Jewish people, wouldn't He have prevailed upon President Roosevelt to let Jewish refugees on the S.S. St. Louis enter the US rather than forcing them to return to Hitler's Europe? We're not attempting to disparage the potential role of divine providence in the creation and survival of the Jewish state, nor are we even saying that the United States has played no positive role in said creation and survival - it's merely that we believe that the United States' role has been be little too inconsistent for anyone to confidently claim to have ascertained divine intent.
"I believe the main reason the United States was founded 250 years ago was so that our great country would be in a position to stand with the restored nation of Israel in these days." This astonishing point of view was expressed by a North Carolinian Conservative candidate for the US Congress in conversation with an American pastor friend early in 2004.
Apparently, David Huffman believed that when, in the early 17th century, God moved on the hearts of men to leave England and make their way west across the Atlantic, it was in His mind to plant a new nation to which He would bequeath a special honor and spectacular destiny... His reason for elevating America to this position was so that she would ally herself with the surviving remnant of the Jewish people, help them take root again in their national homeland, and support them in their struggle against a hostile world.
There are two reasons we're skeptical of this claim: (1) it sounds an awful lot like the wildest anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which hold that Israel manipulates United States policy to further its own interest, (2) if He was really intent on consistently using the United States to protect the Jewish people, wouldn't He have prevailed upon President Roosevelt to let Jewish refugees on the S.S. St. Louis enter the US rather than forcing them to return to Hitler's Europe? We're not attempting to disparage the potential role of divine providence in the creation and survival of the Jewish state, nor are we even saying that the United States has played no positive role in said creation and survival - it's merely that we believe that the United States' role has been be little too inconsistent for anyone to confidently claim to have ascertained divine intent.
