Like Birds in a Cage — a book what will change the way we see Christian Zionism

David Crump’s Like Birds in a Cage is the newest, most comprehensive academic study of Christian Zionism to date. Crump is a former pastor and recently-retired professor of New Testament at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His book on prayer, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, is famous for its depth, clarity, and readability. The same is true here. Anyone who reads Like Birds in a Cage will never see Christian Zionism the same again.

We on the ChristianZionism.org Editorial Board have selected the Forward to Crump’s book as this month’s Featured article. The forward was written by Dr. Gary Burge, author of Whose Land? Whose Promise? and Jesus and the Land. Burge is a graduate of Fuller Seminary and Aberdeen University (Scotland) and today serves as academic dean at Calvin Theological Seminary. Burge provides a concise overview of the book and shows how Dr. Crump contributes to our understanding of Christian Zionism.

Forward to Like Birds in a Cage, by Gary Burge

The evangelical church has been examined from almost every angle during the last five years. From its political commitments to its deeper moral values, many have begun to wonder if the passions that drive this movement are still personal faith in Christ, exemplary moral leadership, orthodox theological convictions, and care for the poor. These are values that evangelicals read about in the Bibles. Pundits marveled at evangelical voting behavior in the last two elections (2016, 2020), wondered at evangelical tolerance for less than excellent moral conduct among leaders, and began to see that political action had moved to some center stage in evangelical life since the 1980s.

While North Americans are keenly aware of this in our national elections, there is another dimension here that has slipped beneath the radar. Running through the evangelical world is a particular political commitment that is as unwavering as it is invisible to outsiders. It is Christian Zionism. This commitment is the perfect wedding (or the perfect storm) where a dubious reading of the Bible has wed itself to raw political interests in the Middle East. Most evangelical pastors know this problem instinctively: for some people, commitment to Israel ranks up there with commitment to Jesus. Pastors have told me that it would be safer for them to proclaim an error in the Bible than to openly criticize Israel. Or to doubt the claim that Israel is a divinely sanctioned country with unique privileges. Israeli leaders also know instinctively what messages they need to send to American evangelicals to secure cover for their national policies. As one Isareli leader remarked, Israel has more friends among American evangelicals than among American Jews. This translates into enormous sums of money, political leverage in Washington, and an outcome in Israel that few American ever see.

David Crump’s Like Birds in a Cage is perhaps the most complete analysis of Christian Zionism to date. Crump has credentials that every evangelical will recognize. His family was conservative evangelical (fundamentalist perhaps) and attended independent dispensationalist Bible churches. His Sunday school classes were decorated with those long wall charts illustrating the seven dispensations and always pointing to the near-rapture and Israel. He was taught from an early age that Israel’s miraculous appearance as a new nation in 1948 was a crucial sign that we were now living in the “end times,” because Israel was key to God’s fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The Scofield Reference Bible and Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth were mainstays on his family’s reading list.

While his church friends went to fundamentalist Bible colleges after high school, David attended the University of Montana. And here his worldview broadened. It was through Intervarsity Christian Fellowship that David began finding new heroes and new authors such as John Stott and J.I. Packer. At 18 he was a convinced Christian Zionist. By 25 he believed that his evangelical background had betrayed him. Eventually he would earn a PhD in New Testament and become a highly respected scholar in Biblical studies eventually teaching at Calvin University in Michigan.

David never left classical evangelical faith. His role models were simply relocated to Intervarsity where sincere faith is wed to deep commitments to social justice. Through his own careful study of the scriptures he came to see that the Bible is being misused by a movement in evangelicalism called Christian Zionism.

This marvelous book is the culmination of David’s 40 years of reflection on how evangelicals succumbed to a teaching about the modern state of Israel that misrepresents the Bible. But more, this teaching has led to the oppression of millions of Palestinians in the Middle East. He is no amateur in this matter. This study is replete with resources showing that he is a first-rate Biblical scholar who has decided to apply his advanced research skills to only one topic that is compromising the faith of the church. He has also traveled to Israel and Palestine many times, even living for extended periods in refugee camps in the West Bank. It is also important to know that a critique of Israel does not mean that a writer hates Israel. Nor is the rejection of Zionism a sign that someone is anti-Semitic. Opponents of his view will say this but they are wrong.

There are already a number of studies about Christian Zionism from people who view it from a distance and rarely understand the inner logic of its theology. This is where David’s study stands out. He is was an insider who now writes about the errors of his church, the evangelical church.

He begins by showing the foundational Biblical texts from the Old Testament that became the basis of this movement – and he shows how tragically those texts are being misused.  He then describes how Christian Zionism arose in the church and how its political influence led to astonishing injustices to the Palestinian people. In a word, the gospel was being used by Christians to harm and imprison over 4 million people. He then shows how a selective use of the Bible has led to “rules” for using the Bible and this promoted a religious colonialism (or religious/ethnic nationalism) in Israel fully backed up by American churches. All of these distressing discoveries conclude with a prophetic challenge to the American church to awaken from the dream of national mythologies that have been spun for almost 100 years, myths that enslave us and that have no connection to our discipleship in Christ.

Throughout his discussion, two things surprised me. Since 1948 an entire trove of sealed documents has been released under Israeli law. And historians now have access to the inner working of Israeli views from the seminal years 1948 to 1967. David incorporates these and in doing so removes the masks that have persisted in Israeli narratives of this era. Second, David also write from lived experience. Again, and again, he describes the suffering Israeli causes not through footnotes but through his own personal experiences on the ground. In a word, he is a witness. And we are privileged to listen in as he journals for us in these pages what he saw. It is hard to read these pages without deep sympathy for the suffering and a resolve to never let this happen any longer.

Like Birds in a Cage will take you on a tour through the history of Christian Zionism and show how it emerged on the 20th century scene as a powerhouse of American politics. You will learn its influence in American policy-making and how its followers are easily manipulated to believe things about Israel that are untrue. Above all David will model a thoroughgoing and compelling use of the Bible unmasking interpretations that are as unscholarly as they are misdirected.

This book is a signal achievement by a senior Biblical scholar. It deserves a close reading by anyone who is committed to Christ, desires to promote Christ-like values in the world, and is open to rethinking the role of modern Israel in the American church.

Evangelicalism is today at a crossroads. Just as America is polarized, so too, evangelicals are polarized. Some are pulling the church into political theaters like we have never seen before. Other evangelicals are in despair about the whole mess – and when they see these political movements like Zionism upending good churches, their despair runs deeper. It is at times like this when the church desperately needs prophets like Dr. David Crump.