U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in his keynote address to the graduating class of Yeshiva University on May 28, “I want you to know I’m not a Zionist because I’m Jewish.”
It’s worth noting that Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister from Arkansas and is the first non-ethnically Jewish U.S. ambassador to Israel since 2011.
Huckabee continued, “I’m a Zionist and an unapologetic one because I believe the Bible.” Many American evangelical Zionists, including by his own admission here, Southern Baptist Huckabee, believe that the current state of Israel formed in 1948 are the Jews of the Old Testament.
We should acknowledge that other Christians, such as Catholics, according to Catholic apologist Trent Horn, “does prohibit a more radical kind of Zionism, popular among some dispensationalist Protestants, that identifies the modern nation of Israel with the Israel described in the Bible.”
This is precisely the kind of radical Zionism Huckabee is clearly espousing, “unapologetically.”
Remember, this is the same Huckabee who in February said that he would be “fine” if Israel took over the entire Middle East, angering many of the surrounding Arab governments.
What would Israel potentially taking over the entire Middle East have to do with U.S. interests and security?
In one clip, Huckabee said, “And I’m not surprised because they realize that the best friends that Israel has are Bible believing evangelical Christians, especially from America…But I don’t want us to ever lose that edge.”
What edge would that be, exactly? Huckabee continued, “I don’t want the Christians of the United States to forget that our reason for standing with Israel is not political.”
Shouldn’t U.S. relations with Israel be based on practical political considerations? Not theology, and particularly one person or particular sect’s theology?
Because, again, Huckabee’s words certainly sound like the U.S. ambassador to Israel is prioritizing his own theology over American interests, or perhaps just conflates the two, and is using his office to promote it.
If so, this is an obvious problem.
Just this week, speaking to an audience in Israel, Huckabee seemed to defy or at least diverge from President Donald Trump’s current MOU peace plan with Iran. “Without Israel, there would not be an America,” he said. “We owe our very existence to what happened in this land.”
What is this, even? Does he not realize the United States is 172 years older than Israel? Or was it just Huckabee’s faith dictating facts yet again?
This is not a theological column. Every American has the right to their own religious views no matter how much other Americans might disagree with them. It’s every Americans’ First Amendment right.
But all Americans should not have to live under—and Palestinians should not have to die for—the specific foreign policy preferences of some types of Baptists, or at least the one who happens to be a high ranking administration official. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also frames American foreign policy through the lens of his particular flavor of Calvinism and is also a Zionist.
These men’s jobs are to represent their country and its interests in their given roles. Not to spread or execute their particular minority and relatively new Christian gospels through those roles.
There are about twelve million Southern Baptists in the United States whose church was founded in 1845 in the state of Georgia. To contrast, there are about fifty-three million Catholics in the United States whose church dates back over 2,000 years and was founded in ancient Rome, or Roman-occupied Judea (modern day Israel and Palestine).
This would not justify a Catholic U.S. ambassador being more concerned with a specifically Catholic version of U.S.-Israel relations than one that reflects American interests first. But Huckabee appears to be doing this with his own version of Christianity, with less American members and a much shorter history than the Catholic Church.
Also, among American evangelicals overall where Christian Zionism remains strong, not all of them are that. An NPR report from January noted that polling has indicated that about a third of under 30 evangelicals did not share the same Zionist views that are more popular with their parents and grandparents.
None of this is an argument for American foreign policy to be Southern Baptist, or Calvinist, or Catholic, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu—it should be none of these. It should be an American foreign policy, representing the interests of United States’ citizens of many different faiths.
From an American and Christian perspective, Ambassador Huckabee knows that the Israeli military has regularly attacked Christian villages in Palestine, even visiting the city of Taybeh last summer to inspect the damage to ancient churches.
But other than this, there is little to no acknowledgment by most American evangelical Zionists of the most ancient Christians who still walk on the land where Jesus did. When 1,000 American evangelical pastors and influencers traveled to Israel last year, all paid for by Israel’s government, they did not visit Palestine. Palestinian Christians have even said they feel betrayed by some American Christians.
One could wonder if “Thou shall not kill” is still in Huckabee’s Bible.
The personal religious beliefs of Mike Huckabee should not determine American foreign policy at all, but there are reasons to believe that they do.
