Recent Polling on Evangelical Views on Israel

Chosen People Ministries  

Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem 

Towards Jerusalem Council II 

Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture and our topic today is evangelicals in Israel. And I have with me three guests, two of whom are professional pollsters, which you probably have to think about what that category is but we'll let you do that as we proceed. And then Mitch Glaser who's done The Table many times before. Mitch is president of Chosen People Ministries, and then I have Kirill and I may botch the pronunciation of these names, so I'll do the best I can. Is it Bumin? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Bumin. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. Very good. Dean of Graduate Studies at Stonehill College in Easton Massachusetts and Mordechai Inbari who is at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke, in the department of philosophy and religion. So welcome to Kirill and to Mordecai who I know is Motti so I probably will do that as we engage. Kirill and Motti were our pollsters who helped Chosen People Ministries and the Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem do some polling on issues related to evangelicals in Israel. But before we go to that topic in particular, I want to talk about polling in general. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
So my normal first question on The Table it's kind of a baptismal question is so how did nice guys like you two get into a gig like this? How did you all manage to get into polling? And you all were colleagues when we were doing this, right, at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke, so that's another point to kind of make people aware of. So how did you get into polling, Motti? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
Okay. So I have several answers to this question. So, first of all, I said that I came to the Pembroke, North Carolina about 12 years ago, and I had some general knowledge about evangelicals and what they're thinking about Jews because I'm a religious studies professor, so I need to know those things. And I was speaking with my neighbors basically, many of them were evangelicals and then I realized there are multiple answers to these questions of why evangelicals have interest in Israel, and it's kind of still my interest and eventually I was able to speak with a person who was the leader of a foundation. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
And when I told him many times Jews don't really understand what stands behind evangelicals and what their motivations are. And so, he suggested, "Why don't you study them? Why don't you poll them?" And this was the first time that I had this idea, but I'm religious, I'm an expert in theology and I don't know how to run surveys." So this is where I teamed with Kirill and I suggested the idea, and this is how it started. Now, next to us, Mitch was doing his own studies and at some point, the two paths collided. But Mitch was doing his own research and we were doing our own research more or less at the same time. At some point we said, "Why don't we collaborate?" 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. And Kirill, so Motti pulled you into this? Is that the short answer to the question? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Indeed it is. Motti and I have talked for quite some time about doing some sort of a joint project, maybe teaching a course together, maybe doing a study abroad. I come from a political science world, particularly my focus was on ethnic conflict and of course, Israeli-Palestinian dispute figures very prominently into that and so I had some interest in the subject area, but I am predominantly international relations and comparative politics guy. I study mostly post-communist world. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
So in 2017 when he approached me with this project, I really thought, "Well, this is going to be kind of a one-off project. I'll help him design the survey, run the analysis, and then I'll get back to studying post-communist constitutional courts." And lo and behold, right. Almost five years later now, and we are still focused on Christian Zionism. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Yeah. Interesting. So I'm asking a question. I don't know the answer to, which is something a lawyer is not supposed to do, but well, I'm not a lawyer and so I will do it. Did you guys both grow up in Israel or have you been in America all your life? What's the biographical background on that question? Motti? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
Yeah. I grew up in Israel. I was born and raised in Jerusalem, and I moved to the United States in 2007, I want to say. So long that I don't remember, but yeah, I am an Israeli by birth and actually, today we're celebrating Israel's Independence Day. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Yes. Happy Independence Day, although we're not supposed to time tag our recording, but that's okay, for Israel, we'll do it. And so Motti, when you teach in the area that you…what kind of courses do you teach? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
Yeah, I teach classes on Jewish studies and also Islamic studies and middle Eastern studies. My expertise is in fundamentalism or Jewish, religious radicalism, something like that so, yeah. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. And Kirill, did you grow up in Israel or you've been in the states all your life? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
No. I actually grew up in Soviet Union and my family immigrated to the United States when I was almost 15 years old to a small town of Asheville, North Carolina. And 28 years later, I guess I am more American now that I am Soviet. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Interesting. Yeah. Asheville is a beautiful place. One of my favorite places in the country. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Sure is. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
And what do you teach? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
So I'm a political scientist by trade. I do quantitative analysis and substantive areas of focus for me are ethnic conflict, comparative judicial politics, and increasingly, so the study of Christian Zionism through survey research. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. So Motti told us how he got into doing polling work and it was through curiosity of a particular question, what about you Kirill how did you get into polling? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
So I've done some work with surveying data for my dissertation and for subsequent research on constitutional courts, but I haven't designed my own surveys until we teamed up on our first survey that went out in 2018. So that was the first step for both of us at designing the survey ground up and implementing it or "fielding" it as they call it. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Well, I have to thank you guys for teaching me about polling, because what I know about polling I've learned from watching you all which has worked well for me in the areas that I teach. I do a lot of DMin supervision and most DMin dissertations involve polling of one sort or another. So I'm going to ask one technical question just to justify this whole line of questioning and that is: what's the difference between a qualitative and a quantitative survey? And Kirill, I ask you that to kind of help sort that out for us. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Sure. And so, both are types of data, quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data is statistical data; it's easy to transpose real world facts into numbers. Qualitative data tends to be more in depth; it tends to be more archival, more descriptive; sometimes it's more difficult to transpose it into concrete number, to quantify it so to speak. It is more anecdotal in some respects, thicker. Immanuel Kant referred to qualitative research as thick descriptions and that's the way I tend to think of it. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
So quantitative tends to be the survey that you might get on the Internet about how you feel about the place that you visited or something like that and you're filling in bubbles or checking boxes, that kind of thing? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Correct. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And each one of those bubbles has an assigned value. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
… oftentimes have a specific set of answers that you can give, whereas a quantitative is more interview based oftentimes and more interactive, if I can say that. That's where the depth comes from. Is that a fair contrast, Motti? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
Yeah, yeah. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. So the stuff that we did for you all, and then I'm going to pull Mitch in and talk about how he got involved in the mix here. The surveys that you did for us were primarily quantitative, is that fair? And there were a touch of qualitative elements in it. Is that a fair way to describe what we did in these surveys? Either one of you. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Yeah, that would be correct. Predominantly, we focused on quantitative analysis of that data. However, in our research on young evangelicals in 2021, we asked them to respond in depth to some open-ended questions where they actually wrote out an answer and then provided for more qualitative kind of in-depth content assessment of what these folks were saying. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
So a quantitative approach would just ask where someone is, if I can say it that way and give them some options, that kind of thing, but a qualitative question tends to push a little bit, okay, why did you answer it that way? What's the rationale or the reasoning for the choice that you made? Is that another good distinction to be making? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
It is. I think there's another way to sort of think about the differences between qualitative and quantitative. So quantitative is really good at identifying the relationships that exist in real world, the two factors go hand in hand. Whereas qualitative is really good at process tracing. It allows us to show how exactly one factor impacts the other. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
I see. Very good. Very helpful. Okay, Mitch, so let's join this story. Motti said earlier that you all collided, I'm not sure that would be the metaphor I would choose to describe what happened, although that might have been the effect of the explosion of activity that came as a result, but talk about one, how did you find Motti and Kirill? That's the first question. And then the second question is: what was the project that you were hoping them to help you with? 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Yeah. So we didn't collide, we converged, and it brought about a great synergy for a number of reasons. I believe that Motti and Kirill, even though they had some help from someone named Gordon Byrd at the beginning, that they had a little bit of a feel for evangelicals, plus they were living in North Carolina so that gave them a leg up also. But still, it's a very particular area with a lot of different streams and beliefs and aspects to the culture even. And so I lead a Jewish ministry and I'm a Jewish believer and so Motti, Kirill and I have that in common, as well as with you, Darrell. So there's a common Jewish experience which is nice to have because there are some underlying attitudes we don't have to explain all the time to one another, but we understand them. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
I mean, why are Jewish people aloof from Christianity? We've never even spent that much time talking about it? We understand that that is historically and sociologically the case. And so there was a lot for me to try and gently navigate Motti and Kirill through in better understanding the nuances of evangelicalism and understanding evangelical theology, particularly on areas of eschatology and other matters. But, they were very quick learners and so it was pretty easy, but we sort of "drank" from each other's experiences. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
The second thing was we had done a fairly major survey of evangelicals and their views of Israel and the Jewish people that was implemented by Lifeway research, the Southern Baptist research arm, and we had over 2,000 people respond to a survey, and it was a good survey. And what happened was Kirill and Motti came up with the idea to do a similar survey, and the leader of Lifeway told them, "Well, something similar was just done, you might want to talk to these people. And while you're at it, you might want to see if they can provide you with some funding." 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
And so we were very, very happy to help Motti and Kirill with some matching grants and some funding. It wasn't a lot of money, I must say. It's been the bargain of the ages for me because we got for very little money. We got so much experience and expertise that I've learned tons. I feel like I've been in this school of survey understanding also for the last number of years. And so it was a pretty happy partnership, and we had a lot of the same concerns, I think, underlying one of the concerns was: we would like to see more people like Israel and Jewish people, and I mean, after all, we would all think that's a good thing. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Of course, it's very nuanced once you enter into the politics and the conflicts involved with that and how evangelicals feel about these things and so we've done quite a number of surveys over the years, and I can't always remember who implemented which survey, although I did do a recent paper on it which I think I got it straight in terms of the chronology and who initiated what. I think one of the most telling surveys that we did was a pre and post gods of war survey. And it was not just pre and post war was also pre and post Netanyahu who was very popular among evangelicals. And the surveys were designed and I'm not sure if we helped design it or paid for it, or I still can't remember totally, but we definitely felt like we were collaborating together on it. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
And basically, we discovered a lot about what intuitively some of us have felt strongly over the last 15, 20 years and that is that traditionally, older evangelicals are very supportive of Israel. We now have more of the reasons, more of the regions where they're more supportive, and we have a ton more information. But fundamentally, we knew that older evangelicals were more supportive of Israel than their children and their grandchildren. And we're concerned about the future of Israel and the Jewish people and evangelical support because evangelicals tend to be loyal Americans and vote, and they tend to probably be more on the conservative side to some degree. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
We've now analyzed all of that and we can tell you more about it, but we felt it's really important if we have the information that can prove that younger evangelicals are less supportive of Israel and here's why. Here's where they're getting their information. Here's how they feel about what their pastors are teaching. Here's where they're at theologically and what they understand and what they know. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
We feel that we can now, by analyzing it, which Kirill and Motti were superb at sticking to, they stayed in their lane of really in depth analysis and people like me, even though I'm, of course, very interested in the analysis, at the end of it all, I'm a do-something-about-it kind of person because that's my nature and my position, and so you can't do anything intelligently unless you have good information. And so we've got great information and we created the Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem which will hopefully be a way for evangelicals to be more supportive of Israel and take a stand against hatred of all Palestinians and Muslims which to some degree, I mean, it's an extremist position, but some people lean that way. And I think we have some good information on how to balance that out. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
So we formed the Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem, and then we've been able to put together some conferences, but I think one of the most exciting things that maybe Motti and Kirill will talk about is the book that they're putting together based upon so many of these surveys that will be published by Oxford University Press, and so all of this data will be compiled into an academic book that I think is going to have lasting and tremendous impact not only on evangelicals, but hopefully on the Jewish community and all those who have a deep concern for Israel and the Middle East. So that's how we began. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
And so the question that we were looking at and examining was how do evangelicals view Israel and how does that break down generationally, etc., even regionally in some cases, in relationship to certain denominations and that kind of thing. The one thing we haven't done that I know we're thinking about doing is the reverse, how did Jews think about evangelicals and what's that relationship which is also fascinating, but we haven't gone there yet. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
So let's focus in on what we have done and talk a little bit about the results of the survey. Tell us a little bit about the book. Now it's an academic book, so I'm not necessarily thinking that the title is going to be earth shattering or something like that, but does the book have a title yet? And then we'll talk about the contents of the survey. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
Yeah, well I think, wow, is Christian Zionism in the 21st century? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Zionism in the 21st century. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
Yeah. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
There you go. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
There you go. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
It's very descriptive. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
And actually, how many surveys have been done? Is it two, three? How many have we done? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
For the specific book, we are using three surveys. You already conducted the fourth survey that still needs to be critically analyzed and published as an article or academic article, but, yeah, so we have conducted so far four surveys including one that Mitch has done and we analyze but we did not write the survey or pay for it. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Yeah. So obviously, you did one and you said, "Oh man, we could ask more." So kind of what's that sequence? Where did we start and where did it end up? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
So we started with a general survey of the entire evangelical community we conducted in 2018, and after we conducted that survey, we noticed with the sample that we have, that younger evangelicals ages 18 to 29 do not follow the pattern of older ones. There's some discrepancy in that age group, so concern was to try to focus on that age group, and so eventually we got to that age group, and we served them in 2021. In between, Mitch and Chosen People Ministry have conducted their own survey with evangelical pastors which is very interesting research, and we are very grateful that you allowed us to use the raw data and to analyze it ourselves. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
And we saw some trends, interesting trends between premillennial and amillennial beliefs that we realized are very significant in understanding that evangelical mindset. And so we were now pushing and asking on those things more and more because we realized this is one of the key issues to understand what's going on with evangelicalism. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
So the way to say this is there was a general survey. In between there was this pastoral survey, and then there was another general survey, right, or third one was general as well? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
So it was a general survey, pastoral survey and young evangelical survey. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Young evangelicals focused on, and now you're preparing and working on zeroing in on those answers that came from the third survey. Is that a fair way to characterize what the fourth one is going to do? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Actually, the fourth one is already done. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
It's another general survey and it will be a part of either the second book manuscript or a set of articles that we will do. We're now focusing on our fifth survey, this one will push the boundaries a little bit outside of the Protestant community and consider Catholics. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
I see. Wow. So… 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And to kind of- 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
If there's a cycle that you get a set of answers and you go, "Oh man, all that does is raise more questions." 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Absolutely. It's like going down the rabbit hole, the more you dig, the further you realize you have to keep digging. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
So you're still suspended in mid-air. Is that what you're telling me? You haven't landed yet? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
No. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Guys, there's a group called, Toward Jerusalem Council II, based on Acts 15 which was Jerusalem Council I. But Toward Jerusalem Council II is a global group started by a friend of mine, a messianic rabbi, maybe you already know about it. And this group includes Catholics and Orthodox as well as evangelicals and messianic Jews, and we're talking about involvement with Catholics at the highest level. And as you all know, there was Cardinal Lustiger who was a French Jewish Catholic, who was very influential, but there's been quite a few others. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Also, both those that are Jewish, some in Israel actually, and some in other places, and if you would like me to introduce you to a few people that could connect you with some of the major things that the Catholic church is now developing in relationship to their views on the Jewish people in Israel, I can do that. I think you'd find some of these people to be absolutely fascinating, and I think they'd find you because this is a real skillset being able to do what the two of you do. And so I think they would find you very interesting too, so I can broker that if you want. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
So this is a sociological look at these questions and kind of where the state of the evangelical community is in relationship to Israel. So now, we ended up having a long teaser here because now I can finally ask the question: so where is the evangelical community when it comes to Israel? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
So it's split. It's split. And so to answer your question and also to give a little bit more detail about what makes our work not just slightly different, but significantly different from other work on foreign policy attitudes, is typically when folks study foreign policy attitudes, they look at demographics, they look at age, they look at income, education, so on and so forth, and they look at political attitudes. They don't seriously consider religion, and there hasn't been a truly robust study of religious determinants of foreign policy positions, at least not a quantitative one. And that's where our analyses, not just the first one, but really all of the subsequent analyses provide additional insights. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
We very seriously consider the role of eschatology, the understanding of what happens in the end times and how that might impact support for Israel and attitudes towards the Israeli Palestinian dispute, as well as toward the two respective communities, Israelis, predominantly Israeli Jews, and the Palestinian Muslims. And so what we found was that there were several splits in the data. There were several kind of splits in the evangelical community in the 2018 survey that were puzzling to us at first. One as Motti pointed out was age. We found that there was a very substantial difference in attitudes about Israel and the Palestinians between young evangelicals and older generations, those that are 30 years of age or older. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
We also found this distinction between various eschatological views, premillennial dispensationalists in particular, those that believe that there are certain stages that must take place before the second coming of Jesus Christ, before the general resurrection, before the end of times, right? They were the most supportive of Israel, whereas post-millennial and amillennial attitudes tended to be much less supportive in some cases very critical of Israel vis a vis the Palestinians. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
What we also found was a fairly surprising level of ambivalence. There were a number of evangelical and born-again respondents that didn't really feel strongly one way or the other, and so we really wanted to understand why that is the case. It wasn't a matter of not having the knowledge, because we gave the respondents a "don't know" option. So those that felt like they didn't know responded that way, but many of them felt relatively lukewarm about the questions. They didn't want to take a side. And so when we conducted a follow up survey with young evangelicals, we wanted to pick apart not only what young evangelical views are, but why exactly they hold those views. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And so both our 2018 general survey, as well as the survey on the attitudes of pastors, in regard to replacement theology and eschatology, really informed a set of questions that we included in our young evangelical survey, and Mitch was very instrumental as well as you, Darrell, in designing that eschatology question in a way that young people could really understand what we were looking for. It's not easy to ask these sorts of questions, and it took several revisions of the survey to really get to the bottom of it. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And one of the really interesting things that we did find in that survey was that: not only are young evangelicals less supportive of Israel and more supportive of the Palestinians, but that that portion of the evangelical community is rapidly changing and increasingly growing distant from the previous generations. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. Now, Motti, the next question. Go ahead. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
I had something too. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Okay. Go ahead. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
I will say the opposite. So everybody knew that there is something with evangelical ideology that drove them to support Israel, and so we were able to dig on this ideology of premillennial, post-millennial, all those things. But what we found very significant that there's also social settings that makes evangelicals support Israel. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
So just the opposite, it's not necessarily supporting Israel because of the ideology, but because other things like for example, socialization, that people are talking about Israel, we realize that the people that come more often to church, those who are the church goers come every Sunday tend to be more supportive of Israel from those who identify as evangelicals but come less to church, yes. And so we found all kinds of social indicators to tell us who would be more supportive, who would be less supportive, and so. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
That's good. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And so we felt really great about that finding because it indicated that socialization matters, that the social dynamics in which you kind of spend time in really help explain whether you support Israel or not. And then in 2020, I'm sorry, '21 when we conducted the Young Evangelical Survey, we actually found something completely opposite. We found that young evangelicals were less likely to support Israel if they socialize with pro-Israeli evangelicals. And so we kind of puzzled at first as to what that might indicate, why would we have this counterintuitive finding? 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And we believe that it reflects this sort of almost teenage angst, this desire to stand against the establishment, to hold a contrasting view to one that has been offered by the older generations. And indeed, when we look at some of the open ended responses, perhaps Motti you can kind of talk a little bit about that, we could see that rift emerge, and we can explain that rift better. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Kirill, you're going the direction I was going next, which is, obviously, the question is you've got the split, why do you think you have it? What's going on here? What are the factors that play into it? And so explain this counterintuitive one because hanging out with pro-Israeli people makes you less pro-Israeli. Am I hearing that right? 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Especially if they're older. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Especially if they're older. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Especially if they're younger. Younger. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Or younger. Explain that one to me, Kirill. I obviously missed that one. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
So 2018 data shows that socializing with pro-Israel evangelicals improves or increases one's support for Israel. When we focus in our '21 survey on 18 to 29 year old evangelicals only, so only on this young evangelical cohort, there, the result is completely the opposite. The more you socialize with pro Israel evangelicals, the less you support Israel. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And now Motti can tell us what those young evangelicals actually say, because not only did we ask him why they supported Israel or why did they support Palestinians or why they supported neither, but we also asked them to put their social scientist hats on and think about why surveys find that young evangelicals are less supportive of Israel than older evangelicals. So we actually asked them that question outright and they had to write their answer. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
I'm so glad Motti has the answer for this. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Now we go and the survey said… Motti? 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
It's a complex picture. There's many explanations and I want to say just want to take it one step before and say that when we asked evangelicals that said that they support Israel, we asked them, "Why do we support Israel?" The majority of the answers to this question came in the realm of the Israeli covenant, meaning they support Israel because it says in the Bible that Israel is God's people. And these are typically the words that they've been using, Israel is God's people. These are kind of the combination of words that they've used to explain this. 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
And even if they use different terminology and even if they use political arguments, it tend to draw on this argument, it's it relates to the Bible. So now we know for sure that among evangelicals, young evangelicals, who say that they support Israel, the reason relates to the Abrahamic covenant in that way or another. And we asked those who said that they supported the Palestinian and there was a big group about one-third of the survey, and they support the Palestinians. Something interesting that we saw with that is that a big portion of them say that when they ask them, "Why do you support the Palestinians?" A big portion said, "I don't know." 
 
Mordechai Inbari: 
What does it mean? It means that in their gut feelings, they think that they need to support the Palestinians. They can't really rationalize it in very clear terms, they can't really give a good explanation why they support Palestinians over Israel, but they feel it's the right thing to do, the right choice to make. And those who did give an explanation, it mostly was related to social justice because Palestinians are victims, because Israel oppresses the Palestinians. So this is kind of the typical answer that they gave. And for the second question was how do you explain it? So the main explanation is that there is just a generational difference between the two groups. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Oftentimes they stress that their parents and grandparents grew up in an informational environment, they didn't have a lot of diversity of opinions. That it was limited sources, and it was predominantly pro-Israeli coverage, whereas now with the widespread availability of information from variety of different sides and sources, they're able to form a much more comprehensive picture which leads them, in turn, to support Palestinians or to be more critical of Israel. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
So that was another really interesting part is that they highlighted the importance of liberalization of the media space. That the space has grown, it has expanded, and that has allowed people diversity of opinions that has the possible proportion. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
That's a very interesting observation. I was in a meeting last weekend with a younger person who was making the point that how the older generation sees the world is not how they see the world, and the reasons for that which I found to be a fascinating remark. In the back of my head, there's also this factor, which I think may impact it and that is the older generation has some memory of how Israel came into being and what was involved in that, and Israel being under a lot of pressure from its neighbors for its existence which made Israel more, if I can put it this way, the victim in that environment, and that has apparently, in a lot of people's minds, flipped. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
And so that has impacted the way different generations tend to view things. And of course, with the review, another that's happening is with the review of what really happened in 1948 and in 1967, that also has come along down the pike. That has complicated, at least for younger people, the understanding of what really happened back there which was something they didn't see or feel as the older generation perhaps did. So I wonder if that's part of what's going on. Mitch? 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
I think you could take it even one step further back, Darrell, because the boomers were raised by people who had gone through the Holocaust, some of these American soldiers who were Christians liberated Dachau or they ended up in Auschwitz after the war and there was actually quite a movement and Motti, and Kirill, you may not be fully aware of this, but there was tremendous growth of evangelicals in the post-World War II period. There was a tremendous growth of what we call missionary activities because these guys went through the war, they drew closer to the Lord, and they began visiting other countries for a variety of bad reasons. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
And they went to other countries and understood that they needed to be more culturally sensitive and to reach out to other countries as missionaries. In fact, there was a whole Bible college movement that started as a result of the post-World War II evangelicals, and they were characteristically premillennial, like Dallas Theological Seminary where Darrell teaches, Talbot Theological Seminary where I teach, Moody Bible Institute. Even though they may not have been founded, they were greatly influenced by a lot of these soldiers who were on the GI bill and eventually became leaders and missionaries and pastors. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
And so that next generation was raised on the horrors of the Holocaust. So it wasn't just prophecy and eschatology that moved them; it was also this, and these are pretty hard groups to survey because most of them are dead, but some of them are around. And if you're like me, I'm more of a historian that uses archival research, and so I'm not limited to surveys. I get a lot of good information from dead people. And so this really impacted them. So one needs to sort of then ask the question which I think arises from all that you've worked so hard to determine. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
So from my point of view, the traditional evangelical worldview in general of the last 50 years is declining and changing. That's really important. And these fundamental values which form the building blocks of the worldview of these boomer evangelicals in previous and Great Generation folks, they drive vision. Those building blocks of our world view, they drive vision, or they drove vision that was sort of theologically intertwined, but a lot of that vision for the new generation has been driven by the social issues of the day, which are not the Holocaust, it's other things. And this would include how evangelicals will relate to Israel. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Israel was part of the old evangelical worldview, theologically, from the Holocaust, for a lot of reasons. And the Jewish people, the love for Israel and the Jewish people is an expectation on the part of boomer and Great Generation evangelical parents, and so younger evangelicals are supposed to buy the whole evangelical cultural worldview agenda, which is not only theological, it's also social. And the next generation, millennials, Gen X, millennials, and Z and onward and upward, they don't have the same experiences, and Israel does not have a role in the same way that it had with the older evangelicals. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
And people like Darrell and I, we're trying to help evangelicals become more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel and stand against antisemitism and all these kinds of things, and, bluntly, to share the good news of Jesus with Jewish people, they need to be motivated by our heart for Jewish people, but the problem is they're not embracing the worldview of their parents or their grandparents. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
And so by assuming that they would, we'll lose the Israel battle in trying to get younger evangelicals to re-recognize or to re-embrace the worldview of previous generations. So trying to better explain our worldview which includes a heart for Israel and supporting Israel with our young people is never going to work. It just won't work because they're not in the same place, it's different generations. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
If I may add to what Mitch is saying, one of the moderating influences that we found in the young evangelicals data was that those young evangelicals that perceived that Israel treats Palestinians fairly were significantly more supportive of Israel in the Israeli Palestinian dispute than those who perceived that Israel was unfairly treating the Palestinians. And so the reason why I mention this is this is one area where we can enhance evangelical support for Israel among the young people, by showing more coherently, all of the things that Israel does to be inclusive of the Israeli Arabs, of the fair and just treatment of the Palestinians and the Palestinian Territories. That could be partially corrected. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
Of course, I'm not saying that everything that Israel does in the occupy territories is fair and just, but it seems that young evangelicals are responsive to those types of messages and that they will adjust their view or reevaluate their view of the Israeli Palestinian dispute if they hear more about that. This narrative of victim and aggressor is really important. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
It's true. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And you both are completely correct in saying that sort of the image of who is an aggressor has changed with these more recent generations. Another thing that really changed about the evangelical community more recently is that the community has become more diverse, ethnically and racially. 
 
Dr. Kirill Bumin: 
And as a result, the perception of an aggressor has also been more frequently attached to the Jewish people and Israel because it comes from African Americans or Latino respondents that see themselves as people of color much more closely aligned to the Palestinians who they also see as people of color, whereas they're essentially viewing not all of them, but some of them, are viewing the Jewish people as privileged whites. So some of the racial dynamics of American political discourse also infiltrate one's views of these Israeli Palestinian. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Absolutely. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
That's fascinating. Listen, we're running out of time so let me ask Mitch one final question. I need this to be kind of concise, but what can we do to encourage more support for Israel and Jewish people among evangelicals? I mean, Kirill has perhaps suggested one thing, and that is to get the story out a little better about a more balanced portrayal of how Israel handles Palestinians and Arabs in the areas that they control, but what else? 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Well, one thing we need to do is to do is we need to get young people speaking to young people, because if not, then people are going to just rebel against their parents. And so we need to help young people, encourage them to speak to younger people. I 100% agree with Kirill and that comes out of the research, and that is I think we need to help present a biblical worldview that is ethical, and to have older evangelicals just poo-pooing all issues of social justice is a big mistake. That's going to serve to our detriment. And besides we have a Messiah, Jesus, who was very concerned about social justice, and Moses told us to lead the four corners of the field so that poor people could have food to eat. And there were a lot of rules in the Old Testament in the Torah about treating the marginalized. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
So I think we need to root and ground our social justice argumentation and worldview building blocks that we're trying to offer in scripture rather than in sociology and politics. I think that that's going to have more of an appeal to young people, who I think also our surveys showed that the more people studied the Bible, the more they went to church. Actually, the more seriously they took the biblical information and the more seriously they took the pastors. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
Finally, I think that it's going to be really important to try and listen to younger people. I think that we just presume and assume that we are the older ones that they should listen to and just do what we tell them to do. That is a non-starter, and so we must get young people motivated, give them good information to argue back as Kirill just suggested, and there are plenty of great arguments, but we have to watch our tone. We have to make sure that we're more embracing, more kind, and that we're standing for justice in the way that God views justice in scripture. 
 
Dr. Mitch Glaser: 
And that might mean that sometimes we have to separate ourselves a little bit from our parents and our grandparents who can be actually very kind, and I mean, World Vision was created by people from previous generations, one of the greatest evangelical organizations that does all sorts of good things for people. So it's not that evangelical older Christians do not care, it's just that there's a presumption of worldview inheritance that we need to scrap. We have to go back to the beginning and help our younger people come to these conclusions from scripture and from their own context and culture, and that's the only way to win the Israel battle, I think. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
Well, I want to thank you all for taking the time to walk us through what you all are doing, have been doing, are doing, and will be doing. I want to welcome Motti and Kirill to the rabbit hole which they apparently are still navigating, and we trust that you'll navigate it well. Thank you, Mitch, for your help in this, and we thank you for joining us on The Table and we hope you'll join us again soon. 
 
Dr. Darrell Bock: 
If you want to see other episodes of The Table, you can go to voice.dts.edu and hit the podcast tab and you can get a look at over 350 hours of discussions that we've produced over the last 10 years, we're now hitting our 10 year anniversary and so it's quite an archive. Some of them delve in some of the very areas that we've talked about, Israel in eschatology, you're more than welcome to do so and we thank you for joining us today