Rabid anti-Semitism grounded in paranoia about The Jews; political support for a Jewish state in Israel; and friends who are Jewish--none of these are surprising in the world of late 20th century evangelical Christianity. And the early 1970s, when Graham and Nixon had this conversation, is when they all came together.

I'm going to focus on conservative evangelicalism (hereinafter simply evangelicalism, but know there is a liberal tradition as well) more broadly. Partially because the story is bigger than the SBC and partially because Graham himself came out of a conservative Quaker tradition--Nixon as well, actually.

I discussed last week how opposition to the desegregation of public and then religious schools motivated evangelicals to political action in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is true. But it's important to recognize that we're just talking about a call to action here--not the underlying readiness.

The political activation of evangelical Christians was so successful because the appeal of evangelical Christianity had been as much about politics as religion since the beginning of the century.

When you think about "religion and politics" in 1999, you probably think abortion; in 1969, civil rights; in 1919, temperance. But the politicized messaging that drew so many people to the evangelical fold over the 1910s-1960s was not so overtly social. Believe it or not, one of the driving forces of conversion to evangelical Christianity was anti-Communism.

This historiographical development has been massively influential in recent scholarship on evangelicalism. (It's even got a name--the "Sunbelt thesis"). Different scholars obviously stress different elements. But in general, I think we can group arguments about the appeal of anti-socialism as a religious belief into two categories: money-based opposition to New Deal and similar policies, yes.

But just as important was xenophobia/nativism. "There is no room in America for any hyphen...We will not submit to any qualifying word before the word ‘American," declared popular preacher Charles Matthews on his 1924 Christian radio show.

Communism was one of those scary foreign things. And in the wake of the Russian Revolution, evangelical Christians--like so much of (especially white) America--were even more afraid of Communist takeover of America.

The thing about Christian anti-Communism? Even more so than secular, it was deeply and inherently anti-Semitic. "Atheist Jewish Bolshevik" was even somewhat of a catchphrase. It wasn't just an incidental association, either. It had to do with the end of the world.

Thanks to a labrynthine and very non-literal interpretation of handpicked Bible verses mashed together out of order, evangelical Christians at the turn of the 20th century believed they had a roadmap to Armageddon. And everywhere they looked (that is: contemporary popular culture), they saw a world so fallen into sin that God needed to bring to an end.

One of the earliest stages of what they believed was how God would intervene for all eternity? World domination by foreign agents of evil.

Meanwhile.

In the late 19C/early 20C, Europe and America levelled up in anti-Semitism. Eastern European Christians feared of too-successful segregated Jews (thanks to Russian policy); Central European Christians feared of too-successful assimilated Jews (thanks to German &c. policy). Paranoia of Rich Jewish Bankers taking financial control of the world, and Evil Jewish Leaders taking political control in order to kill Christians swept across Europe and America through texts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Evangelical Christians terrified of/excited for/terrified of the apocalypse saw in the bigoted fears of Jewish "world domination" what they feared/wanted/feared: the fulfillment of eschatological prophecy. One English evangelical preacher said about the Protocols:

“The Protocols’ profound if unconscious knowledge of prophecy makes any likelihood of their being a fake extremely remote."

Evangelical scholar/preacher Arno Gaebelein agreed: the Protocols had surely been written by “a believer in the Word of God, in prophecy...a true Christian." God had judged The Jews, once a chosen people, as "the enemies of the truth of God and the enemies of the Cross of Christ."

In early and midcentury evangelical radio preaching, fears of Jewish world domination and Communist world domination were conflated into, of course, those "atheist Jewish Bolsheviks" who were apparently Communist capitalist bankers.

Politicized anti-socalist theological teaching that was also anti-Semitic drew more and more people to evangelical Christianity during the early/mid-20C. Apocalyptic fears that were inherently anti-Semitic was a significant part of that teaching. Billy Graham was absolutely speaking out of long established conservative evangelical tradition.

In the early 1970s, in fact, evangelicalism was doubling down on that tradition.

Hal Lindsey took the credit for 1970's The Late Great Planet Earth, called the best-selling non-fiction book of the 1970s. It analyzed the "signs of the times" and argued that God was coming to punish and destroy the world (except real Christian believers, of course)...probably in the 1980s. It revitalized/publicized/evangelized/legitimized evangelical eschatology.

Good old premillennial apocalypticism still had its plotline of world domination, and The Jews were still convenient scapegoats. In the Left Behind books, it's no accident that Jonathan Boulderchick Stonagal, the creatively-named bankroller of science and the Antichrist, is the religion that Rockefeller was not.

But also, as you note, the evangelical, premillennial apocalypse plot means that evangelical want to support Zionism--the theory holds that one of the steps towards the Battle of Armageddon is the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. (Notably: the current occupant of that site is the Dome of the Rock.) Evangelical support of Jewish people here is pragmatic, utilitarian, self-serving, and temporary.

It probably did help open the door to political collaboration between conservative Jews and conservative Christians on social issues in the 1970s, as a social-political agenda became more important to the new "Religious Right." But once again--we're talking cooperation because of mutual use.

And none of that overrides the paranoid stereotype that infused Graham's remarks to Nixon--bigotry against The Jews that, in 1970, was just as inherent to conservative evangelical Christianity as ever.