Civil Religion

When pressed on whether biblical geography implied sovereignty beyond Israel’s current borders, Huckabee responded: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

That sentence is not incidental. It encapsulates a worldview. Beneath his selective invocation of international law lies Christian Zionism: the belief that Israel’s legitimacy rests not on negotiated sovereignty or contemporary legal norms, but on biblical covenant.

Some interpretations envision borders extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing territory in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, countries that together are home to hundreds of millions of people.

This is no longer fringe theology. It increasingly intersects with political power.

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