Religious issues, properly speaking, are related to two human concerns: ethics (works) and salvation (faith). In this essay I explore the space occupied by Israel in American religious life – a topic that has intermittently engaged the attention of quite a few Americans and been of acute significance to some of them, at both levels of religious thought. This would seem to require some explanation in view of Israel’s considerable distance from the United States and its minuscule size: a population of less than eight million (in the same range as Honduras or Bulgaria), in a land area of some 8,500 square miles (similar to Belize or El Salvador). Most Israelis are Jews (about 75 percent); about 20 percent are Muslims. Israel would appear to have very little in common with the mental habits, culture, personal background, and direct concerns of most Americans, yet its place in postwar American affairs has far outweighed that of other small nations. That has little to do with objective considerations and a great deal to do with the symbolic and moral realm, which is the proper sphere of religion.

Several historical trajectories have converged to confer upon Israel this kind of role. Centuries of theological development in Anglo-American Protestantism in which the place of scripture has been prominent have caused Americans’ ideas of sacred history to be intertwined with the geography of the Bible. Biblical place-names such as Zion, Salem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Sharon, and Canaan dot almost every state in the Union.