TELOS, Soros, and Tim LeHaye

They call themselves TELOS, and they try not to make a splash. They're evangelicals who try not to be either Trumpsters or NeverTrumpsters, but who make it their business to talk about justice in the Middle East. They like to think of themselves as "pro-Israel" AND "pro-Palestine." They look for balance in a region where balance is almost impossible to assert or maintain. That's not easy. 

They keep their head down too because a part of their funding comes from George Soros, which, to the Fox News crowd, is like having Satan on your board of directors. They don't want a high profile; they don't look for headlines. They're Christians, evangelical  Christians, who want Middle-East policy to find some balance, to talk about justice in a broader way than simply offering Israel unending support.

A long article in Politico last week described what TELOS sees as their mission. What demographics seem to suggest, they say, as did the article, is that adherence to a strictly pro-Israel stance is waning. Among evangelicals, people my age tend to stand foursquare on the doctrine that Israel is the nation of God's chosen people--and thereby must be protected at all costs. Their children's resolve?--not so foursquare. And their children's children, clearly less so. The times, once more, are changing.

I wouldn't be surprised if every ethnic group at some time or another in its path toward acculturation uses the word "American" fearfully. Once upon a time in Dutch circles, marrying "an American" meant simply someone not of the tribe, someone whose behavior and theology was almost certainly questionable. 

The idea of unyielding support of Israel is not native to Dutch theology. It's an American theological idea built on a view of scripture that never wore wooden shoes, an idea borne out of what we used to call "dispensationalism," a theology that's not much more a century old but has countless adherents among those who call themselves evangelical in this country.

And the dispensationalists have done a marvelous job of spreading their special gospel, even developed their own incredibly successful prophets and myth-makers. When I was a kid, it was Harold Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, a searing prophecy that turned the Bible into a kind of board game. "Did you see what happened last week? You can read it all about it in the book of Daniel." 

The came the phenomenal "Left Behind" series of novels that even spun out Hollywood movies, nail-biters, action-packed thrillers about bad-luck people on jets who suddenly found themselves pilot-less in the wake of THE RAPTURE. 

What's clear is that dispensationalism plays a huge role in Middle East American policy because the thousands, the millions of evangelicals who buy into it view the establishment of a Jewish state and Israel's existence as something right there, chapter and verse, in scripture, a sign of the times, all of which makes not supporting Israel into apostacy.

Nothing so clearly earmarks the acculturation of Dutch theology (which has its own beauty and power) into peculiarly American evangelicalism as acceptance of the dispensationalist notion that America has to support Israel because the Bible says so. 

Books have been written--lots of them--opposing dispensationalist dogma; but if you line them up against Harold Lindsey and Tim LeHaye, in the big theater that theology is as meaningful as popcorn.

And it's sad. I think, very sad. That's why, for me at least, it's a joy to know there's TELOS.