Zionism: Secular and Religious

Summary

Zionism is, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, ‘a movement that reestablished, and now supports, the state of Israel’. From that succinct beginning, Zionism has evolved and expanded to embrace not only Jewish supporters but Christian supporters – both secular and religious.

The beginning of Zionism was primarily secular and socialist, as Herzl led the Jewish people to think of reestablishing a homeland. The geographic location was in question, as was mentioned previously. Israel, as it is today, was not necessarily where it might have been, in those beginning modern day discussions. The temple was not the focus. The religious Zionists, today, however are focused on the restoration of the temple. In the 1890s the land was being settled by Jews. It was partitioned in 1946 by the United Nations and in 1948 the land was officially reclaimed and part of it was declared to be the State of Israel.

In 1967, following the Six Day War, the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem turned what had been in the majority a secular Zionist movement into an increasingly religious Zionist tendency. Out of this post-1967 war came thinking among the Jewish Israelis – and Jews around the world – that the land had been ‘liberated…(that) the religious claim to the land (had) become…very prominent and dominant’ (Ateek 1992: 2). It became a religious prerogative to hold onto the land, reclaiming what the fundamentalists felt had been given to them – once again – by God.