Religion

There are two particularly important religious groups in American society with respect to Israel. The first, of course, is Jewish Americans. The second is evangelical Christians. We review each and test their effect on support for Israel.

Although Jewish Americans are a small minority in the United States (roughly 1.5—2% of the population, see Pew Research Center, 2013), they are important because of their unique attachment to Israel. The attachment that many American Jews have to Israel and its status as the home of the Jewish people suggests that support for Israel among Jewish Americans should be the highest among all other American religious groups. We find that this is indeed the case but that it has declined somewhat in recent years, probably due to two major changes. First, the transformation of the issue from a bipartisan one to a partisan one, which may have created a conflict of opinions for many Jews (Druks, 2001; Goren, 1999; Stein, 2011). Jewish Americans have traditionally been a strong Democratic voterbase and show high levels of support for several liberal policies, foreign and domestic (Abramowitz & Saunders, 2006; Campbell, Green, & Layman, 2011; Forman, 2001). Recent partisan differences in support for Israel among party elites (Cavari & Freedman, 2019) may create a tension between Jewish liberal inclinations and their support for Israel (Becker, 2016; Kotler-Berkowitz, 2005; Sasson, 2009). We discuss this further in Chapter 6. Second, younger Jewish generations increasingly feel detached from Israel culturally, religiously and politically (Cohen & Kelman, 2010) and are less politically deferential to Israel and more divided over policy issues (Rynhold, 2015; Waxman, 2017).

The second important religious group is evangelical Christians. The demographic and political emergence of this group has had several important implications for American politics (Putnam & Campbell, 2010; Spector, 2009). Regarding foreign policy, evangelicals often support hawkish views, especially on Islam, terrorism and the Middle East conflict (Baumgartner et al.. 2008; Boyer, 2005; Smidt, 2005). According to the modern beliefs among many evangelicals, Israel, a land given to the Jewish people by God, is a confirmation of biblical prophecies that reinforce the belief in Christ’s return. Therefore, support for Israel is particularly high among this group because of Israel’s central role in their religious doctrine (Carenen, 2012; Cavari, 2013; Davies, 2018; Goldman, 2018; Hummel. 2019; Mayer, 2004; Spector. 2009).

We begin by plotting in Figure 5.13 attitudes toward Israel by major religious groups—for now not dividing evangelicals from mainline Protestants. American Jews are represented by the black solid line, which is consistently and substantially higher than any other religious group throughout most of the period examined and across most issues. Note, however, that on some issues there is a clear decline over time. This is particularly evident on favorability and sympathy, where this decline is not occurring in parallel to the trends of other religious groups. Support among Protestants is generally higher than other groups, especially Catholics. The margin is much smaller, though.

FIGURE 5.13 Longitudinal Trends of Religious Differences in Support for Israel

Note. N = 24,261 in 25 surveys (Favorability); N = 89,700 in 106 surveys (Sympathy); N = 10,681 in 17 surveys (Blame); N = 13,258 in 16 surveys (Force); N = 41,652 in 24 surveys (Aid). We exclude other Christian denominations from the figure. Other/none refers to all non-Christian, non-)ewish religions or to identifying as agnostic/atheist.

Lines represent Lowess smoothing lines with a bandwidth of 0.8.

According to our statistical model, Jewish Americans are significantly more likely to support Israel across all measures. Protestants are more likely to do so on three of the five measures—favorability, sympathies and aid. We illustrate these differences in Figure 5.14 using predicted probabilities following the regression model.

Jewish support for Israel towers above all other religious groups, ranging from a low probability of 0.83 on Israel’s use of force (which has proven in this chapter to be the most controversial issue) to a high of 0.97 on sympathies. The figure also illustrates the relatively consistent difference between Protestants and Catholics, with Protestant support slightly higher than that of Catholics. Support for Israel among the catch-all category for other religions, including Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, is significantly lower in each category. Differences on aid are again smallest, except for the overwhelming support among Jewish Americans.

In Figure 5.15, we distinguish between evangelical Protestants and mainline Protestants (i.e., Protestants who did not identify as evangelicals). For this comparison, we use a subset of the data that includes only surveys that probe respondents whether they consider themselves evangelical or born-again Christians.¹⁶

The data are clearly not as rich as other indicators in this chapter. Nonetheless, for the most part, they illustrate the tendency for greater support for Israel among evangelicals than among mainline Protestants. Using the subset of the

FIGURE 5.14 Predicted Probabilities of Supporting Israel, by Religion

Note: Religious differences in the predicted probabilities of reporting a pro-lsrael position, following five binary logistic regressions. Bars represent the predicted value, and vertical lines represent 95 percent confidence intervals. We exclude other Christian denominations from the figure. Other/none refers to all non-Christian, non-jewish religions or to identifying as agnostic/atheist. Regression estimates are summarized in Table 5.4 in the Appendix for this chapter.

FIGURE 5.15 Comparing Mainline and Evangelical Trends of Support for Israel

Note: N = 2,615 in six surveys (Favorability); N = 13,228 in 29 surveys (Sympathy); N = 3,131 in 11 surveys (Blame); N = 2,214 in six surveys (Force); N = 3,546 in five surveys (Aid).

Lines represent Lowess smoothing lines with a bandwidth of 0.8.

FIGURE 5.16 Predicted Probabilities of Supporting Israel, by Protestant Denomination

Note: Differences between evangelical Christians and mainline Protestants in the predicted probabilities of reporting a pro-lsrael position, following five binary logistic regressions. Bars represent the predicted value, and vertical lines represent 95 percent confidence intervals. Regression estimates are summarized in Table 5.6 in the Appendix for this chapter.

data that includes an evangelical indicator, we estimate the same model on four of the issues using the same predictors—gender, age, race, education, party, religion, region and model-specific controls—but our religious indicators now distinguish between evangelicals and mainline Protestants.¹'

As expected, support for Israel among evangelical Protestants is significantly and substantially higher than that of mainline Protestants on all measures. We illustrate this using predicted probabilities in Figure 5.16 (see also the regression table in the Appendix for this chapter). For ease of comparison, we only plot the predicted probabilities of mainline and evangelical Protestants. On average, evangelical support is 6-12 points higher than mainline Protestants.

Of particular interest is favorability. The descriptive trends on favorability did not point to a large difference, but it is quite large, according to the predicted probabilities. This may be due to the inclusion of other influential variables.

A Brief Summary

Reviewing demographic sources of attitudes toward Israel suggests that gender, age and education do not divide Americans in support for Israel, at least not strongly. Many of the differences we found among these groups were inconsistent across various measures of support for Israel. Moreover, even when we find differences, they are often small and do not point to a clear divide.

Three demographic sources, however, are meaningful for understanding the divide on attitudes toward Israel: Religion, race and generation. Religion has become the most important demographic source of attitudes toward Israel, with significantly high levels of support among Protestants, especially evangelical Protestants, and, of course, American Jews. Racial differences suggest that support is usually higher among whites compared to African-Americans and Hispanics. Finally, generations that reached adulthood in the 1980s onwards express lower levels of support for Israel compared to earlier generations. As older generations exit the population, this may have dire consequences for future American public support for Israel.