Christian Zionism as Geopolitics and Public Theology: A Latin American Perspective

Last February, a protest was held in São Paulo, Brazil against the government of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It was promoted by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro. One of the striking features of the mobilization was the presence of protesters with the flag of Israel. In a video from the platform “Mídia Ninja,” a journalist asked one of the protestors why she was wearing—in the form of a cape—the flags of Israel and Brazil. “Because Israel is Christian, like Brazil,” she answered. With some surprise, the journalist replied that Israel is not a Christian nation. The woman insisted: “But they represent us. We are not communists. Israel is with us.”

On its surface, this claim might seem absurd. However, it reflects the theological-political logic behind the increasingly common evocation of Israel in various political discourses in Latin America, especially within conservative governments that have arisen during the last decade, like those in Brazil, Argentina, and Guatemala. Zionist discourses, especially in their Christian varieties, permeate Latin American society. Understanding this framework helps us deepen our analysis of the complex relationship between politics and religion across the globe, but particularly in Latin America. It also illuminates the colonial role that conservative Christianity has historically played in the region. We could even say that Zionist Christianity is the novel factor within the new imperial logic we live today, where Gaza becomes a fundamental axiom for contemporary imperialist eschatology in moral, anthropological, and geopolitical terms.

The growth in this discourse has been spurred by the actions of neoconservative evangelical groups. Their aim is to build a counter-political position to leftist voices in governments or civil society, weaponizing an anti-communist discourse as a counter-position of ideal types, in this case treating Israel as a mythical representation of the origin of the west and its “values.” This results in the creation of new hegemonic narratives and political platforms for wielding power against rising progressive forces. In this sense, Christian Zionism operates as a theological framework that pursues public advocacy in support of Israel and legitimizes Israel’s imperialist actions against Palestinians. It does so using a cultural understanding of Christianity that corresponds to a broader agenda focused on the “true” defense of democracy, good morals, and civilization.

In this post, I would first like to highlight two elements of Zionist symbols and discourses. These will lay the foundation for an examination of the role of Zionism in Latin American politics more broadly. On the one hand, Zionism expresses a theological-religious-political content that mixes different signifiers that are often in tension with one another. At times, it is difficult to identify whether Zionism is a religious discourse that legitimizes a political ideology, or if it is a political discourse that masks itself as a religion. In these narratives, the borders between the religious and the political blurs, with the result that symbols and ideas of all kinds—such as the idea of Israel, communism, democracy, the religious itself—come to be resignified.

On the other hand, the evocation of Israel responds to a logic of antagonism and othering. “Israel” as a signifier embraces a set of political ideals (a “true” democracy, alignment with the west) and religious ideals (the notion of “chosen people,” the bedrock of Christian morality, a messianic promise in the face of the end times). Such signifiers serve as antagonists vis-à-vis other signifiers, namely communism, atheism, antisemitism, immorality, anti-family ideology, and so-called gender ideology.

Christian Zionism in Latin America Today

In the Latin American political arena, references to Israel have increased significantly in recent decades. Case studies from Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, among others provide evidence of this increase. The most emblematic recent case is that of President Javier Milei in Argentina, who claims to be close to Israel and Judaism and uses Jewish biblical references to describe his activism and political discourse. Brazil is another emblematic case, where we see not only the instrumentalization of the Christian Zionist discourse in the words of former President Jair Bolsonaro, but also in the broader cultural and political sphere. For example, there are constant Zionist references in the speeches of evangelical congressmen.

Local studies of these cases raise some important issues that need to be taken into account. On the one hand, references to Zionism are used to establish an antagonistic positioning vis-à-vis the political class and its traditional liberalism, as in the case of Milei who, as Argentine sociologist Damian Setton notes, uses Zionist narratives to highlight his prophetic position in relation to the monarchy represented by “the caste” (the political class) and the State. On the other hand, in Brazil Christian Zionism acts as a colonial device for othering. As the Brazilian anthropologist Rodrigo Toniol argues, the use of Israel flags at demonstrations and in wider political discourse is part of a “process of whitening,” which has three socio-political elements: stratifying (as a class distinction), saving (as a messianic designation for the evangelical groups), and nationalizing (invoking the principle of nationalism from Israel as an ideal type).

The influence of Zionism in political terms is directly related to the deepening influence of conservative evangelical sectors in the regional political arena. This link can be understood as part of a double dynamic. First, Christian Zionist narratives serve as discursive platforms for conservative evangelical sectors in Latin American. Second, Christian evangelical Zionist groups in the US collaborate with Latin American groups in lobbying efforts, especially in global, international, and multilateral organizations.

This brief summary helps account for the socio-historical complexity of Christianity, especially along the evangelical neoconservative spectrum. Here we see not just pragmatic political actions. Rather, we see a set of ritual practices and theological discourses that have permeated the deepest strands of evangelical identity to the point of an almost naturalized and imperceptible identification. This naturalization goes hand in hand with the construction of liturgical spaces with a Jewish ritual imprint, the theological work of giving biblical legitimization to the concept of the “holy land,” the elaboration of an eschatology based on the political role of the State of Israel, and even the promotion of missiological models that place Islam and other “unreached” religious groups as audiences for re-Christianization work, which is based on the Zionist theological recreation of the people of Israel (see, for example, the narratives behind Spiritual Warfare, the “10/40 Windows,” among others). These are theological perspectives that have been influencing Latin American evangelical thought since post-war times, especially since the new wave of missionary organizations arrived in the region at the end of the 1950s.

From here, I want to outline three key points:

• Christian Zionism acts as an articulator of the new political position of the neoconservative evangelical field. Sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, we see this occur directly through its work with Zionist political lobbies, governments, and evangelical organizations focused on influencing public officials and congressmen (especially North American) in both national and multilateral instances (like the Interamerican System). We see it indirectly through the use of theological symbolism related to this movement to legitimize its political actions.
• Christian Zionism operates as a floating signifier of socio-political/moral differentiation and antagonization in a religious key. The narratives of Christian Zionism offer a symbolic scaffolding that reconfigures political positions within the context of ideological polarization. It moves towards a moral Manichaeism that constructs a place of purity and sacredness exempt from ideological bias and contingency. We also find a conception of political rivals as the enemies who are evil, contaminated, and immoral, and thus whose political legitimacy must be contested. We see, even, a resignification of history, as in the allusion to the same signifiers of the cold war, such as “cultural battle,” anti-communism, and “axis of evil,” among others.
• Christian Zionism enables a field of articulation, instrumentalization, and political mobilization. Christian Zionism, as a lobbying mechanism, presents itself as a transversal space, that is to say, trans-ideological, trans-partisan, and trans-geopolitical.

Taking all this into account, we can define Christian Zionism as a political-religious movement with outreach to various social sectors (churches, political groups and parties, civil society organizations, and faith-based organizations) founded on the theological conjunction between the biblical-apocalyptic figure of the people of Israel with the modern State of Israel. Such a nexus legitimizes a Christian supremacy and a set of values associated with its western distinction. These include modern ontology itself, the processes of “civilizing,” and the legitimization of US politics, with diverse impacts on different levels, such as the geopolitical (the colonial policy adopted in the Middle East and its global resonances), the religious (so-called Judeo-Christian hegemony in liberal democracy), the moral (the promotion of “Judeo-Christian values” with respect to sexuality, the body, the economy, and the family), and the social (the channeling of ideological antagonisms in the capitalist context).

Zionism as Public Theology and Colonial Device

We can affirm that the effectiveness of Christian Zionism resides in having transformed itself into a public theology that makes it possible to counter discourses and link spaces in a comprehensive and effective manner. It can do so in the face of the crisis of traditional political discourses (conservative and progressive, from the right to the left) and their respective theological-religious platforms (especially within Latin American Catholicism).

Nukhet Ahu Sandal suggests that a public theology can be understood as a process of reflection on the implications of religion in everyday life. In her words, “what sets the tone of political debates in society is usually not the religions themselves, but the public theologies created, disseminated and consolidated by political and religious institutions” (69). Following along these lines, we can identify two characteristics of this Christian and Zionist public theology that need to be contested. First, Christian Zionism operates as a colonial public theology that de-humanizes the human from a radicalization of moral purism. This type of Zionist colonialism goes far beyond the characteristics of the classical neocolonial theory and even of the more complex postcolonial theories. This is a type of colonialism that is based, following Frantz Fanon, on treating colonial subjects as existing in the zone of non-being as bodies that can be discarded, who do not deserve to be considered as individuals or as being assignable to any type of collective. They are, rather, bodies of the dregs that, as Edward Said stated, are the target of a “redemptive occupation” for the transformation or eradication of their perverse moral condition (68–69).

In other words, Christian Zionism is presented as a public theology where coloniality is legitimized on the basis of the Manichean principle of an original pure morality, promoted by a chosen people, and channeled by a historical-political-cultural reality, such as the presence of (the State of) Israel in Palestine. Such public theology as a colonial and moral political project is directly related to conservative US geopolitics and its imperial expansionism, not only in geographical and political terms, but also in cultural and religious terms. It is a theology that operates in the background of anti-feminist, anti-LGBTIQ+, anti-Indigenous people, and anti-“minorities” movements of all kinds.

Christian Zionism is presented as a public theology where coloniality is legitimized on the basis of the Manichean principle of an original pure morality,

The colonialism of settlement over the colonized bodies of Palestine—with its eschatology and redemptive theology—acts as a geopolitical symptom for a moral colonialism, a colonialism of settlement over bodies. It sustains its political agenda in different countries and multilateral organizations to the point of justifying the discarding of these bodies. Thus, Christin Zionism allows for a metaphysical inversion in a moral key by combining the elements of colonial “manifest destiny,” the end of (barbarian) time, and the redemption of western morality (identified with its Christian political theology). This moral colonial policy pursued by the neoconservative evangelical groups also acts as a basis for the justification of the war and genocidal enterprise in Gaza. This is an inevitable part of and a necessary element in the same redemptive enterprise of the world, as we can see in countless speeches of pastors and religious leaders.

Conclusion: Towards a Transcendental and Re-humanizing Utopian Imagination

To conclude, we can say that a counter-reaction to the growth of Christian Zionism as a political device implies both a work of theological critique as well as the construction of alternative platforms of religious advocacy in public space to contest naturalized meanings. Christian Zionism is based on a moral immanentism that co-opts anthropological potential for its colonial control and abolishes all dignity by emptying bodies of transcendence. The utopia it claims is nothing more than a teleological, fatalistic, and metaphysical vision of history, which blocks any possibility of movement, of liberation, of genuine redemption. Here lies one of the most important tasks we have: how do we recover these meanings from a critical point of view, towards other public theologies? Here I recall Franz Hinkelammert’s idea of overcoming what he called abstract universalism towards a practical universalism, based on a utopian transcendental imagination. In the face of political theologies that legitimize terror, genocide, and death in the name of God, we need a trans-immanent theology—in the words of Ignacio Ellacuría, a theology that searches for the “beyond” within history in its possibility of being something different (328–29)—that promotes collective work for an alternative that redesigns the dominant immanence.