When Fundamentalists Write Foreign Policy: Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD

When Fundamentalists Write Foreign Policy

Mike Huckabee’s recent assertion—that Israel holds a divine, biblical title deed to the entire Middle East and therefore may act without restraint—reveals a deeper crisis at the intersection of faith and geopolitics. It is the moment when hermeneutical certainty hardens into political absolutism, and when foreign policy is guided not by prudence but by a selective reading of Scripture reframed as a land grant. Moreover, it demonstrates how quickly fundamentalism can turn a living biblical narrative into a geopolitical charter, sanctifying state actions without regard for historical complexity, human cost, or the Church’s call to reconciliation.

However the matter is viewed politically, the theological danger is clear. When fundamentalists collapse contemporary events into biblical categories, nations cease to be actors in a web of regional interests and become proxies in an eschatological struggle. Negotiation becomes appeasement. Diplomacy becomes weakness. Compromise becomes betrayal.

This is not how wise statecraft functions, nor is it how the Church sustains its integrity.

I write this as someone shaped by a conservative theological tradition, who learned to love Scripture deeply, and who later discovered through the Fathers that Scripture resists simplistic readings. The early Church understood that the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ and extended to the whole world—not parceled out as perpetual territorial claims. Augustine, in particular, warned against confusing the earthly city with the City of God. The prophetic imagination is not a tool for drawing borders; it is a summons to justice, mercy, and humility.

Huckabee’s rhetoric participates in a long pattern whereby political leaders or their religious allies appeal to biblical destiny to justify national aims. Woodrow Wilson invoked a kind of democratic messianism, reading America as an instrument of global salvation. The Cold War repeated this habit with a civil religious fervor. In recent years, sectors of the evangelical movement surrounding Donald Trump adopted a similarly sacred nationalism. The logic is consistent: if God has issued a mandate, then any prudence, restraint, and/or negotiation become faithlessness.

Moreover, the Church soon pays the price. History has repeatedly shown that whenever Christians bless the ambitions of the state, the Church loses its ability to critique injustice—even when that injustice is perpetrated by the state it has made  sacred. The Donatist controversy offers a sobering reminder: when political circumstances are confused with spiritual purity, the Church fractures under the weight of its own self-righteousness.

The present moment reflects a widening divide within American Christianity. On one side are those who see the Church as chaplaincy to the nation, tasked with blessing political goals through biblical language. On the other side are those who understand the Church as the Body of Christ—rooted in sacrament, tradition, and the ministry of reconciliation. The former is drawn toward triumphalism; the latter, toward humility. The former can only produce foreign policy shaped by absolutism; the latter recognizes the moral necessity of prudence.

Huckabee’s claim that Israel “owns” the Middle East by virtue of biblical mandate is not simply a misreading of Scripture; it is a symptom of a wider disorder in which political desires are cloaked in the garments of divine entitlement. Moreover, this framing invites Christians to mistake ancient covenantal history for a contemporary geopolitical blueprint, as though the promises of God were land deeds waiting to be activated by modern politicians.

The danger is that once divine sanction is presumed, restraint becomes unnecessary and justice becomes negotiable. It is precisely here that the Church must speak clearly. The Gospel does not grant any nation—Israel, America, or any other—a perpetual exemption from moral scrutiny. The promises of God are fulfilled in Christ, extended to all nations, and never intended to justify unchecked political power. If we are to answer Huckabee’s argument faithfully, we must reclaim a theological imagination that resists triumphalism and insists that foreign policy be shaped not by biblical proof texts but by the hard, patient work of justice, mercy, and peace. Only then can the Church recover its voice in a world too ready to baptize its own ambitions.

Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD