Multiple modernities and political millenarianism : Dispensational theology, nationalism, and American politics

There is a swell developed argument from Alexis de Tocqueville to Jose Casanova that Christianity is not only deeply embedded in the founding myths of American society as the First New Nation and the Israel of the New World, but also an important component of contemporary American politics from the Moral Majority to the Tea Party. This chapter looks at the millenarian dimensions of that aspect of American political culture. Starting with the dispensational theology of the nineteenth century to the “unusual relationship” between evangelical Protestantism and modern Judaism, this chapter explores how American foreign policy toward the Middle East has been influenced by dispensational theology, the idea that the end of times will be foretold by the gathering in of the Jews and by a nationalist reading of American exceptionalism. The foreign policy of George W. Bush was in particular constructed around this version of the theology of catastrophe. The more intense the Middle East crisis, the more evangelicals believe that their catastrophic view of history is coming to fruition. Those who reject this millenarian view of the end of history will be left behind. In short, American foreign interest toward Israel and the Arabs is shaped by the intersection of a nationalist sense of America as a society with a unique commission in the world, a religious theory of apocalypse, and the conjunction of a Middle East crisis.