Christian Zionism Or, why Brian Tamaki gets on Israeli TV

The evangelical Destiny Church have emerged as the most vocal supporters of Israel in Aotearoa, but why?

Protesters in Ōtautahi Christchurch

For the past year, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has held regular rallies in cities around New Zealand, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and drawing attention to the ongoing genocide. If you attended one the rallies in Ōtautahi Christchurch you may have encountered a small counter-protest, sometimes as small as one man- specifically, Destiny Church pastor Derek Tait- and perhaps a couple of hangers on. 

Destiny Church has emerged as possibly the largest faction of Israel supporters in this country. There are more Israel-supporting evangelical Christians than there are Jewish people in Aotearoa, and of course a significant proportion of the Jewish population, represented by groups like Dayenu and Alternative Jewish Voices, are opposed to the occupation of Palestine.

Destiny Church leader Bishop Brian Tamaki can usually pull a bigger crowd than Tait. At a protest he held outside parliament in December 2023, he described himself as a “spiritual Jew”. Destiny Church Pastor Nigel Woodley speaking at the same rally stated that “Israel’s right to defend itself includes the right to wage war until there is an unconditional surrender."

This was not Tamaki’s first protest in support of Israel, he had previously appeared on Israeli television, who showed Destiny Church members performing a Haka before the host asked Brian Tamaki how he decided that “the Māori tribe” would support Israel. Tamaki has been used by Israeli media to claim support for Israel’s actions by indigenous people. At the December rally Tamaki described himself as “a bit of a star over there” 

Of course Brain Tamaki does not represent “the Māori tribe” there is not one tribe but many Iwi on this whenua. In April of 2024, Ngāti Kahungunu became the first iwi to call for a ceasefire and Te Pāti Māori has called not only for a ceasefire but, in the absence of one, the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, making clear the parallels between the colonisation of Aotearoa and the colonisation of Palestine. 

“Israel’s colonial occupation of Palestinian lands, engineered by the British Empire, has led to decades of pain, suffering and bloodshed. The international community must exert pressure to end the occupation, the blockade, and the continued confiscation of Palestinian land.” 

This is in stark contrast to Israeli news anchors claiming that Brian Tamaki is representative of Māori support for Israel. What Tamaki actually represents is his own evangelical church. His support for Israel comes from an ideology that is today called Christian Zionism. 

This ideology began with 17th century puritans in England who believed that for a Biblical prophecy to be fulfilled Jewish people needed to return to historical Israel. Deuteronomy 30:4–5 reads:

“Even if you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it; he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors.” 

Israeli historian Anita Shapira has suggested that in the nineteenth century this idea was spread from evangelical protestants to Jewish circles, so what we now call Christian Zionism may have actually influenced Jewish Zionism. More recent polling and academic research however suggests widespread distrust among Jews towards the motives of Evangelical Protestants. 

"The alliance that many born-again Christians offer to Israel and the Jewish people is astonishing to many Jews. Bible-believing Christians are the last people whom Jews expect to love, defend, and even idealize them”. Wrote Stephen Spector in his 2009 book Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism “Polls have shown just how much the Jewish community distrusts them. In 2004, when asked to give a 'thermometer rating' of their feelings towards groups of people... Jews gave evangelicals a frigid average rating of twenty-four degrees [Fahrenheit]. More than one-third of them (37%) rated evangelicals at zero!"

At that December rally Brian Tamaki stated “Everyone calls for peace and I pray for it but there will be no peace in this world and Israel has to accept Jesus Christ as its messiah.” 

There is an interpretation of Romans chapters 9-11 in the New Testament that sees the return of the Jewish diaspora to Israel as a precursor to a mass conversion to Christianity, during the second coming of Jesus Christ. Romans 10 reads: 

“Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

The motivating factor for Destiny Church to back Israel, is a belief that Jewish people should return there and then convert en masse to Christianity, in order to bring about the end times. Support for Israel and antisemitism are not actually mutually exclusive, it is in fact antisemitic to believe Jewish people should be expelled from the countries they reside in and migrate to Israel, and supporting Zionism as a means-to-an-end that will herald the return of the Christian messiah isn’t support for Jewish self-determination.

Within the theological framework of dispensationalism, which is the belief held by Christians United for Israel the largest pro-Israel group in the United States, only a third of Jewish people will convert to Christianity and the remainder will be killed. In 1878 William Blackstone, a Chicago based preacher published “Jesus Is Coming” a book which predicted future events leading to the return of Christ, the first being the return of Jewish people to what was then Palestine. Blackstone, along with his close associate, Dwight Moody, was a forerunner of modern evangelicalism.

Palestine, as mapped in 1851

In 1891, a petition authored by Blackstone calling for Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman empire, to be “returned” to the Jewish people was presented to President Benjamin Harrison by Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Blackstone highlighted the pogroms in the Russian empire that many Jewish people were fleeing.

"Where shall 2,000,000 of such poor people go? Europe is crowded and has no room for more peasant population. Shall they come to America? This will be a tremendous expense, and require years."

"Why not give Palestine back to them again? According to God's distribution of nations it is their home, an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force.”

The petition had been signed by Christian clergymen of different denominations, and by the industrialists J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Cyrus McCormick, as well as the editors of most leading American newspapers. Writing for Tablet Magazine in 2022, Walter Russell Mead suggests the motive for these wealthy captains of industry may have been economic.

“Some may have wished to support Blackstone out of regard for Moody and his movement—not because they shared Moody’s theology but because many upper-class Americans thought that the spread of revivalist ideas through the urban working class (and Moody’s ministry was chiefly aimed at this group) would help keep socialism at bay. Some no doubt were chiefly drawn to the potential of the Blackstone proposal to divert Jewish immigration from the United States to a faraway land.”

Mead goes on to say that “it is possible that, even at this early date, there were a few political calculators who understood that to advocate both for the creation of a Jewish homeland and for immigration restriction hit a sweet spot in American politics.” 

Indeed the Christian Zionist movement continued through the twentieth century. Evangelical religious leaders such as Jerry Fawell and Pat Robertson who became prominent during the rise of the Christian right in the US in the 1980s and 1990s promoted Christian Zionism. In his 1981 book The Fundamentalist Phenomenon Falwell stated "To stand against Israel is to stand against God. We believe that history and scripture prove that God deals with nations in relation to how they deal with Israel."

While American government support for Israel is largely for economic and military strategy reasons, the idea that supporting Israel is the way you get your country on the almighty's good side certainly keeps a sizable proportion of the US population invested in governments that continue to support Israel with military aid (The USA has provided $17.9 billion in security assistance for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere since October 7 2023)

In Aotearoa, evangelical Christianity doesn’t play the outsize role in politics it does in the US, but it is here on the fringes. It’s not just Destiny Church, it’s also other evangelical churches such as City Impact. Two minor political parties, the New Conservatives and New Zeal (previously called ONE) have both had policies about strengthening relations between New Zealand and Israel. There is also the lobby group ‘The Israel Institute’ which is a private company with three directors, one of whom is Jewish while the other two are Christian Zionists. “The IINZ is not a Jewish institution although it does reflect Israel’s increasing Christian Zionist support.” Writes Marilyn Garson, author of the recently released book Jewish, not Zionist. 

Evangelical Christianity does play a large role in the politics of Pacific Island states and this explains in part why when the UN voted on a ceasefire on October 27 2023 of the 14 countries voting ‘no’ six were Pacific island states.

When you see someone from Destiny Church (or one of the other evangelical churches active in Aotearoa) protesting with an Israeli flag, this is what led them to that point.