More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism . By Robert O. Smith. Foreword by Martin E. Marty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xvi + 284 pp. $26.96 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism . By Robert O. Smith . Foreword by Martin E. Marty . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. xvi + 284 pp. $26.96 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesThe degree of American "affinity with the State of Israel," to use Robert O. Smith's language in his enlightening book, is simply remarkable. As Smith documents, polling results over the last few decades make abundantly clear that American Christians--led by white evangelicals--consistently and overwhelmingly side with Israelis and against Palestinians. Regarding U.S. policies in the Middle East, while polls show that a majority of people throughout the rest of the world--including, as revealed in a 2003 poll, Israelis themselves--believe that American foreign policy is unfairly tilted toward Israel, Americans maintain that U.S. policies are fair and evenhanded. In short, "Americans' consistently positive attitude toward the State of Israel is exceptional" (32).This sets up the question animating More Desired than Our Owne Salvation : why do so many Americans understand support for the state of Israel as a God-mandated responsibility? Smith rightly rejects the simplistic argument that this exceptional affinity is the product of assiduous efforts made by the "Israeli lobby." But Smith also rejects the notion--advanced by many others (including himself in the past)--that it can simply be explained by the popularity in America of John Nelson Darby's 19th-century prophetic schema, dispensational premillennialism. While Darby's emphasis on the prophesied restoration of the Jews to Palestine certainly fuels Christian (particularly evangelical) support for the state of Israel, Smith argues that there are not enough Americans who hold to Darby's schema to explain the level of pro-Israel sentiment. Moreover, Darby adamantly held to the notion that the "church age" had to end with the "rapture" before the prophesied "restoration of the Jews" could take place. Smith puts it succinctly: "the most elegant approach is to recognize that premillennial dispensationalism alone is not a sufficient cause to explain Christian political activity on behalf of Jews or the State of Israel" (160).Instead, Smith convincingly argues that the roots of Christian Zionism in the United States go back much further, to the "English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation" (3). He devotes three detailed and interesting chapters to the development of this interpretation in 17th-century England, along the way noting that this interpretation consistently included "Catholics and Muslims as eternal enemies of God" while simultaneously--in the hands of Puritan interpreters--"constructing Jews . . . as eventual allies against the Turko-Catholic Antichrist" (70). Remarkably, or perhaps not so remarkably, these interpretations were being developed in a country where Jews had been banned for centuries. These Puritans brought the Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation to America, understanding the Jews as a typological referent for their national covenant in the New World. …