They Don’t Teach IR in Sunday School
Cruz on supporting Israel.
As noted in yesterday’s Open Forum, Ted Cruz made claims about why he supports Israel in his interview with Tucker Carlson. It is a timeworn position held by many conservative Christians in America.
The good news for OTB readers is that over the course of my life, I have both taught Sunday School to adults in Baptist Churches* and I have taught international relations at the graduate level!
Let me deal with a simplistic, but common, problem with Cruz’s position.
Let me affirm that, yes, what Cruz recites without knowing either the textual context or the meaning of the words is commonly taught in conservative churches.
Here are the verses in question, from Genesis 12:1-3.
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s family. Go to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation.
And I will bless you.
I will make your name great.
You will be a blessing to others.
3 I will bless those who bless you.
I will put a curse on anyone who puts a curse on you.
All nations on earth
will be blessed because of you.”
The bolded part is what Carlson is specifically referencing as the basis of Cruz’s position. I will note that these are not the only verses about Israel that conservative Christians will point to.** However, I am fairly certain this is what Cruz and Carlson were specifically referencing.
Note that Abram becomes Abraham and has a son, Isaac. Isaac then has a son named Jacob, who is re-dubbed “Israel” in Genesis 32:28. Jacob/Israel was then father to twelve sons, who formed the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The Israelis are a people group (a nation) with a common ancestry. Or, if you prefer Klingon or Game of Thrones stylings, Jacob/Israel was the founding member of the House of Israel.
Abraham’s seed was promised the land by God in Genesis 12 as per the above. Hence, the nation (people group) descended from Israel would eventually take possession of (i.e., conquer) what would become Judea and Samaria, and is now more or less the modern state of Israel. Indeed, this text is the basis of a lot of contemporary politics in the US and in Israel itself about the region.
Now, what Cruz has heard preached from the pulpit/stated in Sunday School Class/uttered by Evangelicals is them taking Genesis 12:1-3, knowing the “nation” promised in verse 2 is made up of the descendants of Jacob/Israel, and hence making verse 3 about Israel.
As Carlson correctly notes (a painful thing to write, but truth is truth), Cruz neither knows the text or the context. He just knows the vibe and even assumes that the text says something specific that it does not say.
Indeed, I was misremembering that the text said “I will bless those who bless Israel. I will put a curse on anyone who puts a curse on Israel,” but I looked at a number of translations, and nope, it does not say that! (See here).
I may be missing something, but I am willing to think that there is a bit of a Mandela Effect going on here, based likely on ways that pastors and the like have reedited 12:3 above to substitute “Israel” for “you.”
I am going into these details to help anyone who is wondering what it is that Cruz is carrying on about, and because a lot of conservative Christians are basing their view of Israel on this bit of text (but not only this text). In addition to the basic notion, that well, if God gave the land of Canaan to the Israelites, well, who are we to argue with God? There are also their views of the End Times, which some Christians interpret as having Israel and Jerusalem playing central roles.
In short, Abraham’s seed was given the promised land by God in Genesis 12 as per the above. Hence, the nation (people group) descended from Israel would eventually take possession of (i.e., conquer) what would become Judea and Samaria and is now the modern state of Israel, more or less.
I am not claiming to be giving more than a thumbnail sketch. I am not claiming to be representing the Jewish version of this tale, and certainly not one that a historian might tell. I’m also not saying it is correct. Setting aside whatever metaphysical truth one may or may not ascribe to all of this, I am firmly of the view it is not good guidance for US Senator in terms of fomulating foreign policy and it definitely is no guide to determing the morality of Israel’s current attacks on Iran nor to whether or not the US should bomb Fordo.
Let’s turn away from the Sunday School lesson and turn to some Comparative Politics/International Politics 101.
The crux of it all is the word “nation.”
So, circa 2090 BC, when the events of Genesis 12 took place, the word “nation” was not used the same way it is used in common parlance in 2025.
If you look here at various translations of 12:2, most use the word “nation,” but many use “descendants,” while others use “a great people” instead of “a great nation.”
Nation means in this context the descendants of Abraham, and the specific interpretation is the descendants through Isaac to Jacob (Israel) to his twelve sons. ***
Put simply, a “nation” as used here is about a people group with a common ancestry. As such, Jews as an ethnic group are part of this nationality.
As such, what Genesis describes as “a nation” and what people colloquially mean when they say “nation” (like “United Nations” or “one nation under God” and so forth) aren’t the same thing. Cruz means the country of Israel, or the sovereign state of Israel, which is a government that oversees a territorially delimited space and the people that reside within those delimitations (i.e., borders).
It seems worth pointing out that what is described in Genesis, if simply taken at face value, is about all Jews descended from the twelve tribes. Not specifically just the ones living in contemporary Israel.
I would note that there are national groups, like the Kurds or various Native American tribes, that lack their own territories. I note this because when people like Cruz talk about “the nation of Israel,” they are very specifically assuming that this refers to a physical territory. But “a nation” need not mean control of specific borders.
Worse for the Cruz position, since it is based on a text that is over 4000 years old, is that the idea of sovereign states controlling specific territories delimited by clearly recognized lines on a map really only dates to 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia that came after the Thirty Years’ War.
In ~2090 BC, the notion of countries/states, the way we mean the term in more recent history, simply did not exist.
It also seems relevant to note that Israel, as a modern state, has only existed since 1948. Indeed, while the general geographical area was referred to as the Land of Israel, IIRC, in some Biblical texts. But, for most of history, that hasn’t been what the place was called. Maybe a 1000 years-ish before Christ, there was a united Kingdom of Israel, but it was later divided. In other words, and without spending a lot of time trying to parse out Biblical and historical accounts, the notion that Genesis was referring to a specific nation-state is almost impossible to establish, even if one takes Genesis 12:1-3 as definitive in any way. It requires a lot of simplistic thinking to decide that Genesis 12:3 means the post-1948 state of Israel.
So, Cruz may have learned one thing about Israel in Sunday School, but be really needs a basic international relations course to help him 1) have a better grasp of the terms he is using, and 2) have a better basis for determining what US foreign policy ought to be vis-a-vis both Israel and Iran.
The good news is that Trump has given him at least two weeks to like, you know, read a book or something.
*Without getting into a prolonged personal discussion, let me just note that taking very serious teaching Sunday School firmly placed me on the pathway of first becoming exhausted by Southern Baptist churches, and eventually led to a clear break with conservative evangelical theology.
**See, for example, some representative sample of the kinds of arguments made, such as from Greg Laurie, Why Christians Should Support Israel or from Jimmy Morales, Why Christians Should Stand with Israel. These would comport very much with Cruz’s postion.
***Note that Abraham had other descendants. See, for example, the CSM, Where Islam Diverges From Western Religions and Ishmael in Islam.
I can understand how that could happen perfectly.
Don’t ever be hesitant to admit someone is right, even though that person is a political opponent. No one is wrong 100% of the time, not even Carlson or Connor/Drew/Tinkiewinkie.
Either way, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you” should not be interpreted as meaning that those seeking “blessings” from God vis a vis relationship with Israel need to blindly follow a secular government of a secular nation/state that calls itself Israel despite the fact that it follows virtually none of the commands said God gave to the descendants of Jacob as they made their way back “home.” There is such a thing as larger context, as you noted
The amusing thing is that it was standard Christian doctrine, among all variants of Christianity, until the late 19th century, that the Jews had forfeited both their status as “Chosen People” and their claim to the “Holy Land”.
Certainly the Christian Roman Empire, which in its Christianised version, ruled Palestine for over 250 years, showed absolutely no inclination whatsoever to cede that, by then largely Christian, territory, to a revived Israel or Judaea.
(The latter being actually the more recent Jewish state in the area.)
I’m inclined to think the “Judeo-Christian” stance of, mainly American evangelicals, has a lot to do with a desire to appropriate as much Old Testament argumentation as possible, as a reaction to the incursion of both “liberal” theology, the “liberal” state, and “modernity” in general.
American “Christian Zionism” seems to be largely a side-effect of that theological-politcal stance.
Even more ironic, Jewish Zionism was largely a development of late 19th century European Jews who were largely rather antipathetic to traditional Orthodox Judaism, and often very much left-wing in their politics.
And emerged largely in in reaction to the anti-Semitic persecution endemic in Tsarist Russia.
It really is one of histories great ironies that the great bulwark of support for Israel in the US ended up being right-wing Christian fundamentalists.
Having also marinated in many of these teachings for years, one surprising thing I learned (or maybe just recognized) in the past year is that only rarely in history did Israel/the Jews control the whole territory known today as Israel: during the reigns of David and Solomon circa 1000 BC, and during the Hasmonean dynasty circa the last century BC. The rest of the time, the Jews shared the territory (often not peacefully) with various other peoples and kingdoms, and/or were subject to different conquering empires. So basically, it was only their exclusive land for about 200 years in 3000 years of history.
None of this is a statement about the best way to resolve the current crisis in Gaza or the overall Israeli-Palestinian situation. Just that ancient history shouldn’t be a guide for modern geopolitics. I recall the president of Mongolia trolling Putin on social media, reminding him that in centuries past Russia used to be part of his empire, and thus, he’d have the same justification to invade Russia that Russia is claiming for Ukraine. (He added that he wouldn’t actually do so, because he respects modern nation state sovereignty).
When you quoted the passage correctly, and then outlined Abram/Abraham’s immediate descendants, I immediately thought, “So this applies to Ishmael and Esau as well as to Jacob and Israel. And to the lost tribes, etc.”
And since the Christian tradition is that the Muslims come from Ishmael, then they too are subject to “I will bless those that bless you, and curse those that curse you”.
In fact, I am quite comfortable with that reading.
I’ve mentioned this before a few times, but I was raised without any religious beliefs, not even perfunctory ones, such as occasional church attendance on Christmas or Easter. I’m of the Baby Boom generation, and I think my situation might have been a bit unusual–most people I knew were nominally something or other.
It does strike me as hilarious, though, that someone as blatantly, utterly Godless, irreligious, and amoral as Trump is so beloved of the purportedly Godfearing.
If you really wanna have some fun with Evangelicals (FTR, I attended an Evangelical church and served as a ministry helper for years) point out that “Israel” includes ALL 12 tribes–not exclusively the Jews( the tribes of Benjamin and Judah).
As such, the promise of the OT God is irrevocable, despite the fact that 10 of 12 Tribes were consumed by the indigenous peoples of the land on Canaan and adopted their religions. For the Evangelical that accepts the Bible as literal history, it should be beyond question that the people that inhabited Palestine before the “return” of the Jews–ARE ALSO ISRAEL and have equal claim to the land.
I enjoy watching the look of utter confusion on their faces and the gyrations made to explain why their previously declared plain literal text–should no longer be taken as plain or literal.