The remaining few: Christian Zionists making sense of a changed ecclesiastic landscape

Abstract

Using a hermeneutical method, this study seeks to understand Christian Zionism as a meaningful practice in late modern Sweden. We visited four Christian Zionist conferences where we observed, analysed the sermons, and conducted interviews. The conferences are almost entirely attended by elderly people and the style is characterized by an old-time revivalist nostalgia. Results show that Israel is seen as a key to understanding a general conflict that the informants experience in late modern Swedish society and in relation to the majority church. Supporting Israel is intertwined with support for conservative values and theology and Israel becomes a nodal point that puts the greater conflict in a new perspective: identifying with Old Testament prophecies and God’s dealings with Israel gives hope and a sense of continuity to a revivalist movement that has become out of date. In Israel, Christian Zionists connect with both the past and the future, personally and as a movement.

Keywords:

• Christian Zionism
• Israel
• revivalism
• meaningful practice

Notes

1. At FI and WL, we were met with openness. At SI, we were first denied all access; only after some negotiation could we attend one evening service at the conference and interview two board members. With the Oasis movement, we had an unfortunate misunderstanding regarding our roles as participant observers. This led to some irritation and we were expressly asked to acknowledge that, although there was a seminar on Israel and the prophecies at their conference, the speaker Peter Andersson does not represent Oasis in any official way.

2. It should be noted that there are people who voice concerns about the wrongs committed by the IDF. Chairman Ragnarp of FI is one such person.

3. The Free Church movement is usually understood to denote denominations other than the Lutheran Church of Sweden (the former state church), e.g. Baptist, Pentecostal, Salvation Army or holiness congregations. For the sake of convenience, we follow Øyvind Tholvsen and include the parts of the Lutheran church family which share a literalist theology and membership criteria with, and the fate of, the above denominations (Tholvsen 2016).