Mike Huckabee’s distorted theology does not speak for Christians worldwide
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, left, joins Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a visit to the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, on 14 September 2025
Fares Abraham writes in Middle East Eye on 25 January 2025:
On Tuesday [20 January], US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee posted a defence of Christian Zionism after senior clergy in Jerusalem warned of the threat it poses to Christians in the land.
In a statement released last Saturday, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem described Christian Zionism as a “damaging ideology” that misleads the faithful, sows confusion, and harms the unity of Christian communities in the Holy Land.
It cautioned against individuals who claim authority outside the communion of the church and undermine the pastoral responsibility entrusted to churches that have shepherded Christian life in Jerusalem for centuries.
Rather than engaging the substance of these concerns, however, Huckabee sadly chose to dismiss both the churches’ arguments and their moral authority.
As a Palestinian-American evangelical Christian whose family lives with the consequences of Huckabee’s distorted theology, I want to say plainly that he does not speak for me, nor for millions of Christians worldwide.
Huckabee warned that no “sect” should claim exclusivity in speaking for Christians worldwide. But the authors of the Jerusalem statement are not random voices or ideological activists. They are pastors, priests and bishops shepherding the oldest Christian communities in the world, communities that have endured occupation, displacement and repeated cycles of violence for generations. Invalidating their testimony reflects a detachment from reality.
More troubling still is Huckabee’s suggestion that Christians who do not share his understanding of God’s covenant with Israel are undermining Scripture itself. This is not the language of a diplomat. It is the posture of a theological hawk, one who treats disagreement as disloyalty to God. Such absolutism leaves no room for humility or for the possibility that Scripture might challenge political conclusions already reached.
Huckabee insists, correctly, that God does not break His covenant. On this point, Christians broadly agree. But he does not tell the whole story.
Covenant without Christ
Christians have long believed that the covenant revealed in Jesus is directly connected to the promise God made to Abraham. It does not cancel that promise but fulfills it. And because Jesus established a new covenant, the old one is renewed and transformed through him.
At every stage of the biblical story, including in the Old Testament, covenant faithfulness meant responding to what God was doing in that moment.
In the New Testament, that same faithfulness is expressed by embracing Jesus as the Messiah. To omit this is not a minor oversight. It is a gospel distortion that relocates the meaning of God’s covenant away from Christ and into power, territory and exclusion. By collapsing covenant faithfulness into unconditional political support for Israel, Huckabee transforms this message into its opposite.
The covenant becomes a mechanism of reward and punishment; God is reduced to an enforcer of geopolitical loyalty; and scripture is no longer a moral compass but a shield against scrutiny.
For Huckabee, Christian Zionism is framed as an affirmation of biblical promise. But for Palestinian Christians like myself, and for Palestinians more broadly, its political outworking has meant dispossession, restriction, fear and loss.
This is not theoretical. It is the daily reality of Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike, including the congregations Jerusalem’s church leaders shepherd. Yet Huckabee shows little interest in listening to those who bear the cost of the ideology he blesses. Their suffering becomes theologically inconvenient.
Voices ignored
The weakness of Huckabee’s argument becomes clearer when viewed beyond Jerusalem. The church leaders he dismisses are not isolated voices.