Post-Dispensationalist America

The most part, the article seems pretty fair. My first impulse was to wonder if dispensationalism was ever all that culturally influential, but then the author started working through specifics, many of which I’m old enough to remember, and the idea seems to have more heft. From my perspective, it was peak in the 1970s and 80s.

More from the article…

Dispensationalism also promoted a dual passive-protective posture toward Israel and Jewish Americans, viewing them as central actors in a divine eschatological drama. On the positive side, it formed a firewall against antisemitism. On the less positive side, it romanticized and arguably objectified Jewish people and Israel. It created a widespread impression that Christian support for Israel was entirely based on dispensationalism and biblical prophecies. This assumption is playing out today as some postliberal Catholics are attacking Zionism as a supposedly Protestant heresy at odds with Catholic teaching, ignoring that many Catholics, and others, are Zionists without any reliance on dispensationalism.

The dominance of dispensationalism is currently being hollowed out by a dual-front migration. First, some younger evangelicals are abandoning the religious innovations of the 20th century in favor of older, more rooted forms of Christian worship. Central to this is a burgeoning interest in Anglicanism, framed not as a liberal departure, but as a return to a foundational, traditionalist, and robust Anglo-American Protestant tradition. Similarly, the move toward Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism represents a rejection of the “rapture culture” in favor of a sacramental worldview that is fundamentally non-dispensational.

The second of his ‘dual front migration’ is secularism among white former Christians.

The author is not a dispensationalist but his take is that the waning of it as a cultural influence is not an entirely positive thing.

Without strong dispensationalism, American evangelicalism needs not only a new explanation for friendship with Jewish fellow citizens and with Israel, but also to undergird its overall political framework for addressing the world.

Where I’ll challenge a bit is that there was a strong dispensational - nondispensational crossover in the 80’s and well before. I remember D James Kennedy and Coral Ridge, Francis Schaeffer, and other groups and individuals of Reformed perspective who were key players in the Religious Right and social conservatism in general. So there was, for a long time, a shared set of attitudes and beliefs that wasn’t uniquely disp or non-disp. It was ‘conservative Christian.’

So the drift might be more of ‘three front migration,’ really, the third being the reinvention of conservatism in general from a set of values, principles and perspectives to more of a tribal identity focused on obtaining or retaining direct, instrumental political power vs. hearts-and-minds influence.

For me, this is the biggest change of the last couple of decades. In the Reagan era (and years after it), there was a huge emphasis among conservatives on message and winning people over to ways of thinking. Today, ‘conservatism’ is all about winning policy fights.

I am thankful that dispensationalism as an eschatological perspective is on the decline. However, I'm thankful for the hermeneutic that it left behind. Dispensationalism championed the literal-grammatical-historical interpretive method. Others have demonstrated that one can hold to such an interpretive method and not attach to one's theology all the eschatological baggage.

As for how Christians ought to relate to Jews now that dispensationalism is on the decline... how about loving them per Jesus' command? How about treating Israel like any of our other nation state allies? Why do we need an eschatological system for us to befriend Jews?

It’s true that growing up, I often heard modern Israel equated with “God’s chosen people.” And that’s a pretty dispensationalist perspective. It’s quite open to debate though, whether it ought to have ever been a dispensationalist perspective. There isn’t really anything about dispensationalism that requires equating the people of God called Israel with current regime in the Middle East called Israel.

Dispensationalism tells us that the people of God called Israel will, one day, again inherit the land, but there isn’t really anything in the system that says what’s happening right now has to be any kind of fulfillment of that. So in a lot of ways I look back on its heyday and think that dispensationalists botched dispensationalism in a lot of ways. There’s a difference between problems of execution and problems of concept.

But anyway, the point I was getting to is that I think concurrent with the sloppy version of dispensationalism, and that particular rationale for befriending Israel, there was always for a lot of us a more compelling rationale, which was simply that the Jews were ousted from their homeland of many, many centuries and then suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis, along with other horrors over the centuries. So it’s always made sense to me to do what you can to help a people that have suffered in that way.

But there’s no denying that the argument is stronger if you can begin with the premise that the land belongs to the descendants of Israel. And people tend to equate that idea with dispensationalism, though it seems to me it’s more like the Old Testament.

But anyway, the point I was getting to is that I think concurrent with the sloppy version of dispensationalism, and that particular rationale for befriending Israel, there was always for a lot of us a more compelling rationale, which was simply that the Jews were ousted from their homeland of many, many centuries and then suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis, along with other horrors over the centuries. So it’s always made sense to me to do what you can to help a people that have suffered in that way.

But there’s no denying that the argument is stronger if you can begin with the premise that the land belongs to the descendants of Israel. And people tend to equate that idea with dispensationalism, though it seems to me it’s more like the Old Testament.

I agree that we do not need a dispensationalist framework to come to the above conclusions. We are preaching through Zechariah and we just looked at Israel being the apple of God's eye. As we have been preaching through the other minor prophets we have also noted that the people of Israel (Judah included) were also the recipients of God's wrath. Whether someone is dispensational or not, we must remind them that although Israel is worthy of God's wrath, it is God who is to bring that wrath, not us.

Hebrews 10:30 KJV 30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.

I tend to lean dispensational myself (it is a broad category and is defined so many different ways that I do not want to be put into a box either) so I believe that the great tribulation of the future will literally unfold and that it will be a time of Jacob's trouble when God again pours his wrath on Israel. At the same time 144,000 people of Israel will be protected and spared from his wrath during that time. Therefore, my dispensationalism does not suggest that all Israel will be protected at all times. It does however suggest that God still cares about Israel and has a special place for them. That means he cares enough to both punish and protect depending on his timing and purpose.