This month a statement from leaders of some of the most ancient Christian churches around Jerusalem condemned “damaging ideologies, such as Christian Zionism” that “mislead the public” and “sow confusion” that “have found favor among certain political actors in Israel and beyond who seek to push a political agenda which may harm the Christian presence in the Holy Land and the wider Middle East.”

Christian Zionism is a belief prevalent among many evangelical Christians that Jews of the Old Testament also represent the current state of Israel formed in 1948 and that true believers should unequivocally and enthusiastically support that government, even if its carrying out a genocide in Gaza and (perhaps even especially) when it is committing mass murder.

This evangelical Zionist movement was popularized roughly around 150 years ago in the late nineteenth century and blends a relatively new minority view among some Christians with U.S.-Israeli politics.

This group that issued the statement against the Christian Zionists, the “Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land,” include Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, non-Latin Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran denominations. These are some of the most ancient Christian churches in the history of the faith, who still exist “in the very land where our Lord lived, taught, suffered, and rose from the dead” and who reject the heretical and “damaging ideology” of evangelical Zionism.

Some of these churches’ Christian teachings have existed for around two thousand years, going back to the time of Jesus Christ.

So who were these “certain political actors” the older churches are rebuking?

No doubt the one thousand American Christian pastors and influencers who traveled to Israel in December, a mega-trip paid for by Israel’s government, whose purpose, according to Fox News, was to “provide training and prepare participants to serve as unofficial ambassadors for Israel in their communities.”

The unofficial leader of these Christian Zionists is also the United States Ambassador to Israel, former Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee.

Last week, Huckabee rebuked the older churches.

“Labels such as ‘Christian Zionism’ are too often used in a pejorative manner to disparage free-church believers, of which there are millions across the planet,” Huckabee said in a statement.

It might sound like a pejorative to Huckabee because this belief would be alien to most Christians throughout history. The Patriarchs were making a point in calling it both “damaging” and dismissing it as an “ideology,” not a traditional part of their faith.

Huckabee continued, “Christians are followers of Christ and a Zionist simply accepts that the Jewish people have a right to live in their ancient, indigenous, and Biblical homeland. It’s hard for me to understand why every one who takes on the moniker ‘Christian’ would not also be a Zionist.”

The U.S. ambassador is presenting his personal interpretation of the Bible as something all Christians must accept. This is something that not even all Baptists in Huckabee’s own denomination subscribe to.

After telling Christians with two-thousand-year-old beliefs that they must now adopt his less than two-hundred-year-old beliefs, Huckabee called for Christian unity, writing, “We need to unite in those truths that should be agreed upon, such as the sanctity of life, the sacred act of marriage, the autonomy of the individual, the desire to lift up every human and alleviate human suffering, and the belief that grace is God’s gift to us all.” (Emphasis added.)

The “sanctity of life” is not being respected in Gaza by Israel, or a U.S. government that supports and funds war and that is promoted by American Christian Zionists like Huckabee.

There is also no “desire to lift up every human life and alleviate human suffering” by Israel and its allies in Gaza, including the one thousand Christian Zionists who traveled to Israel to be further propagandized in December.

It’s laughable that Huckabee would even go there. Especially from a Christian perspective, but really, also almost any other.

Defending life and alleviating suffering is exactly what the Catholic and Orthodox churches were doing with their statement. They are frustrated that their own Christian churches are being assaulted and the unorthodox views of other types of Christians have become a political support base for that assault.

American-born Orthodox Christian and conservative author Rod Dreher also brought up a key problem with Huckabee using his particular theology to represent all Americans in regard to U.S. relations with Israel, as the ambassador’s job demands.

Dreher observed:

I support the State of Israel, but as an Orthodox Christian I object to a U.S. Ambassador, who represents all Americans, taking a controversial theological position, esp one at odds w the beliefs of Christians who lived in the Holy Land when his (our) ancestors were pagans. https://t.co/yXR7xhqg4K

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) January 21, 2026

Conservative writer Arthur Bloom put it even more bluntly:

I don’t care what his beliefs are, but to the extent Ambassador Huckabee’s Christian Zionism gets in the way of his ability to articulate the principles of international law, U.S. interests, and longstanding U.S. policy, his ass should be fired. https://t.co/53FEnmDU3M

— Arthur Bloom (@j_arthur_bloom) January 20, 2026

They’re right. The notion that all Americans should be represented according to the particular unhistorically Christian beliefs of evangelical Zionists and that this should also shape American and Israeli foreign policy does not compute. It is more theocratic than democratic..

I am not a theologian and would defer a deeper analysis to faith leaders and others with far more education and experience on this front.

But from a birdseye view, these are some of the basic dynamics of what’s happening in this debate between today’s leaders of ancient Christian churches stuck in a warzone, and newer theology promoted by a comparatively newer Christian sect with an obvious political agenda that includes relentless war.

The current leader of the oldest Christian Church with a direct lineage all the way back to Christ and Peter, the Apostle Christ specifically chose to build His church, has repeatedly called for the suffering in Gaza to stop.

Perhaps Mike Huckabee would like to have a word with Pope Leo too.