From Creed to Constituency: The Impact of the Gaza War (2023–2025) on the Attitudes of Dispensationalist Evangelical Christians in the United States

Abstract

    This study examines the structural shifts in the attitudes of American Dispensationalist Evangelicals toward Israel in the wake of the Gaza War (2023–2025) and its subsequent political ramifications leading into 2026. Employing a descriptive-analytical methodology supported by methodological triangulation, the study combines a secondary analysis of recent public opinion data (Pew Research Center, Gallup, University of Maryland) with a discourse analysis of prominent evangelical leaders such as John Hagee and Franklin Graham. The findings reveal that Christian Zionism no longer constitutes a monolithic political or theological bloc. A profound generational divergence has emerged; the belief in Israel’s “divine right” to the land is 26 percentage points lower among evangelicals under 30 (45%) than among those over 65 (71%). The study highlights how this statistical divide manifested qualitatively in the 2024–2026 U.S. campus protest movements, where young evangelicals actively participated in rights-oriented activism. By examining recent 2026 data, where youth sympathy for Palestinian humanitarian rights crossed the majority threshold (53%), the study argues that the American evangelical church is transitioning toward a state of "Theological Pluralism." The study concludes that the erosion of the church's narrative monopoly, accelerated by direct digital media environments, marks the decline of Christian Zionism’s historical hegemony, potentially transforming U.S. support for Israel into a highly conditional and partisan issue in the coming decades.