CCD working papers seminar: Part of Prophecy: Christian Zionism, Dispensationalism, Time

Aron Engberg is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the School of Education and Communication: He holds a PhD in Global Christianity and Interreligious Relations. In his talk, he will discuss the affinity of pro-Zionist evangelical Christianity for the land and state of Israel, considering Protestant Christianity's historical ambivalence towards materiality and sacred locality. To these evangelical Christians, Israel is both a place of biblically inflected memory—the “land of the Bible” where Jesus historically walked—and the prime locus of a premillennial eschatological imaginary, the place Jesus will return to in the (near) future. This chapter draws on ethnographic research among Evangelical Christians in Jerusalem to explore how Christian Zionism structures Evangelical temporality. I argue first that the Evangelical “cosmology of land” significantly shapes their phenomenological experience of time and place in Israel, and secondly, that Evangelical Zionist temporality is more elastic and flexible than previously recognized, despites its premillennial leanings. This suggests that the scholarly focus on a “punctuated” dispensationalist time and a simple ‘prophecy-as-prediction’ formula needs to give way to a broader exploration of the Christian Zionist time-scape, and the ways in which it interacts with place and divine presence.

All seminar participants are required to read the paper in advance of the event. Please reach out to Aron Engberg at aron.engberg@ju.se for a copy of the paper.

Chair: Peter Karlsson

Zoom: https://ju-se.zoom.us/j/66725185932