Historically, one longstanding certainty in American religious life was evangelical support for Israel. No matter what was happening in Washington or on college campuses or in elite media discourse, evangelicals were reliably pro-Israel. However, there is another takeaway from the polling: White evangelical support for Israelis and the Israeli government might be softening, especially among young Christians.
Polling from May 2026 showed that white evangelical Protestants held favorable opinions of the Israeli people. Seventy-four percent of white evangelical Protestants polled by the Pew Research Center said they had a favorable view of the Israeli people. That still puts white evangelical Protestants well above Pew’s polling of other American religious groups when it comes to viewing the Israeli people favorably. But compared with 84 percent in 2024, it is significant. When it comes to views of the Israeli government, support has dropped even more steeply among white evangelicals. From 2024 to 2026, the percentage of white evangelicals viewing the Israeli government positively dropped from 71 percent to 57 percent. According to Pew, 57 percent of white evangelical Protestants held a favorable view of the Israeli government, and they were the only religious group in the survey in which a majority did so.
“No matter what was happening in Washington or on college campuses or in elite media discourse, evangelicals were reliably pro-Israel.”
But a generational gap may be even more impactful. Tablet Magazine covered research from Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin that showed that 68.9 percent of evangelical respondents who were younger than thirty supported Israel as part of a 2018 study. But 33.6 percent of evangelical respondents supported Israel in a larger 2021 study Bumin and Inbari conducted among young evangelicals. In that 2021 survey, 24.3 percent of respondents supported the Palestinians and 42.2 percent took neither side. The samples were not identical. The under-thirty population from the 2018 study had 148 respondents, compared to the 700 respondents from the 2021 study. Thus, the percentages should not be taken to reflect how one group’s views changed over time. They can, however, be used to suggest that young evangelicals are far less uniformly pro-Israel than their parents and grandparents were at the same age.
A 2025 study, Crossroads of Belief: Evangelicals and the Jewish People, produced by Infinity Concepts and Grey Matter Research, points toward another factor that may help explain why: theology. When the researchers surveyed evangelicals about their beliefs, overall belief that Jews are God’s chosen people remained relatively constant. 49 percent said Jews are God’s chosen people today, little changed from 51 percent in 2021. Among evangelicals under thirty-five, however, only 29 percent agreed that Jews are God’s chosen people. Again, this doesn’t show that evangelical theology is eroding. What it does suggest is that younger evangelicals are missing some of the theological motivations that drove and accounted for fervent evangelical support for Jews and their ongoing theological importance.
“Younger evangelicals are missing some of the theological motivations that drove and accounted for fervent evangelical support for Jews and their ongoing theological importance.”
Pointing this out is not to say that declining pro-Israel sentiment equals anti-Semitism. It does not. Christian believers can oppose Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli settlements, the war in Gaza, or even particular actions by the Israel Defense Forces without being anti-Semitic. Palestinian suffering is real, and taking their suffering seriously is not anti-Semitic either. Christians who support Israel should never have to pretend that every Israeli government decision is wise, moral, or above critique. 
The broader fear is what occurs when one plank of traditional Christian support for Jews and Israel erodes. If evangelical (or Catholic or Orthodox Christian) belief that Jews are God’s chosen people becomes weaker, or ties to Israel are seen as less necessary or valuable, what prevents a Christian community from accepting viewpoints they might have once considered dubious or outside the pale of acceptable discourse? Diminished support for Israel does not cause anti-Semitism, but it may eliminate one of the factors that once inoculated ordinary Christians from explicitly anti-Semitic ideas. But it warrants highlighting because this shift is happening alongside historic levels of antisemitism in American society.
The Anti-Defamation League reported 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2025. Compared to 2024, that represented a 33 percent decline from the record-breaking 9,354 incidents the ADL recorded the year prior. But 2025 still saw the third-highest number of annual incidents since the ADL began compiling data in 1979. Incidents were five times higher than they were a decade ago, and physical assaults reached an all-time high. Nearly half (45 percent) of the incidents ADL tracked in 2025 “included narratives related to Israel or Zionism” (ADL).
“The broader fear is what occurs when one plank of traditional Christian support for Jews and Israel erodes.”
Long-term support of Israel has been far more than partisan positions on foreign policy for evangelical Christians. In previous generations, evangelical support for Israel was based on a larger theological narrative about who Jewish people are, what their story means in the biblical narrative, and what God has promised to continue to do for Israel. The story of Israel has not only made Jewish people an important part of Christian theology but it has also had far deeper effects on evangelicals than just shaping American foreign policy. The story of Israel has made the Jewish people an important part of Christian theology and has given Christians theological reasons to regard hatred of Jews as morally and theologically condemnable.
If younger generations of evangelicals are abandoning this kind of Zionism, what could be lost is not simply a set of foreign-policy beliefs. What could be lost is part of the theological infrastructure that once helped ensure that such hatred was unthinkable. To be clear: I do not think young evangelicals who have shifted away from supporting Israel are antisemitic. I am not arguing that Christians ought to support any Israeli government policies no matter how unethical those policies may be. I want to suggest that unless young evangelicals have the same sorts of theological motivations for grasping the Jewish people’s ongoing role in God’s plans, they may lack the same theological safeguards against Jewish-hatred that former generations have benefitted from.
“What could be lost is part of the theological infrastructure that once helped ensure that such hatred was unthinkable.”
One reason this question matters to many Americans right now is because anti-Semitism remains at historically high levels in our country. Christians of the left and the right would do well to consider what their theology says about the Jewish people, and if their theology gives them religious reason to continue to reject one of Christianity’s oldest temptations; the temptation to hate Jews, marginalize Jews, or blame Jews for society’s problems. The test for American Christianity may come down to whether or not Christians can maintain a theological account of who Jews are that renders anti-Semitism unthinkable; or whether that commitment will fade away due to ambivalence, political tribalism, or a belief that Jewish uniqueness is no more than a benign relic of ancient Scripture.
Evangelicals should, and will, always disagree about Netanyahu, Hamas, Israeli settlements, and American foreign policy. But they should ask themselves what they stand to lose if they stop believing the theological story that made care for the Jewish people a central tenet of Christianity. In a time of historically high levels of antisemitism, losing that conviction and failing to replace it with something that can do the similar ideological work of guarding Christians against Jewish hate could become far more dangerous than any change of a few percentage points in the next poll.
Christians don’t need to be theological Zionists in order to have robust theological reasons to oppose antisemitism. Christianity starts with the belief that every person is made in God’s image, and that surely includes Jews. But Christians have reasons that go beyond a general affirmation of human dignity.
“Christians have reasons that go beyond a general affirmation of human dignity.”
Christians believe we worship a Jewish Messiah, read a Jewish Bible, and were inaugurated by Jewish apostles and a Jewish community. Jewish people, therefore, are not ancillary to Christianity’s story and cannot be safely ‘left behind’ once we get to the New Testament. Whatever one thinks about modern Israel, Christians cannot affirmatively construct a theology that makes Jews spiritually irrelevant or objects of contempt.
The New Testament, moreover, gives Christians additional theological reason to see animosity toward Jews as a grievous distortion of the faith. In Romans 9–11, Paul does not treat Israel like a people whose story has simply ceased to matter. Rather, he laments over Israel’s place in God’s story and sternly warns Gentile Christians against prideful attitudes toward Jews. Christians can and should debate Zionism, Israeli policy, and what to make of the modern State of Israel. But we can do those things and still believe that whatever God is doing with the Jewish people remains part of our theological story. Such beliefs do not obligate us to see Jews as morally superior to others. Nor do these beliefs commit us to endorsing any given Israeli politician. But they should give Christians a theological rationale by which hatred of Jews, collective blame of Jews, and animosity toward Jews should be unthinkable. If younger Christians are retreating from Zionism, the solution is not requiring Zionism as a marker of Christian faithfulness. It is instead making sure they have something richer: a Christian theology of the Jewish people that gives them theological grounds to despise antisemitism.
Sources
Anti-Defamation League. Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2025. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 2026.
Inbari, Motti, and Kirill Bumin. Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Opinion on Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Infinity Concepts and Grey Matter Research. Crossroads of Belief: Evangelicals and the Jewish People. 2025.
Pew Research Center. “Americans’ Views of Israelis Have Grown Increasingly Negative, but Views of Palestinians Have Held Fairly Steady.” July 9, 2026.
For more from Tim Orr and helping churches engage with Muslims, check out his Substack HERE. Used by permission.
