Book Review: Suppose We Are Israel

Title: Suppose We Are Israel

Author: James S. McGaw

Publisher: America’s Promise

Date: not shown (a reader of one of my copies thought 1902, which was the publication date of a hardcover book this booklet cites)

ISBN: none

Length: 16 pages

Quote: “If we are Israel, then God has…kept faith with Abraham.”

Why was there ever an Anglo-Israelite Identity movment? Given the New Testament teaching that all sincere Christians are adoptive descendants of Abraham, why did adult Christians ever feel a need to prove that physical descendants of Abraham might have populated the west coast and islands of Europe? For some ministers in the twentieth century, the Anglo-Israelite controversy was enough to move their radio broadcasts out of competition for Sunday morning slots and thus attract audiences who were in real churches on Sunday morning…but why did anyone need the Anglo-Israelite Theory to be more than a “hook” into history?

(History does not, in fact, either prove or disprove the Anglo-Israelite theory. The hypothetical wanderings of the “Lost” members of the ten northern tribes of old Israel involved people who wrote down very little history. Abundant evidence suggests that some European Christians could be physically related to their favorite Bible characters, but does not positively prove that they are. Some, not all, Jewish men inherit Y-chromosome DNA that has not been dispersed throughout Europe.)

The Rev. Dr. McGaw wrote this pamphlet in support of the full-length book Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, which argues for the Anglo-Israelite theory, which became an important part of his faith and the faith of several Christians in the late ninetenth and early twentieth centuries. 

At this period in history, growing religious tolerance allowed Christians to admit that while God had promised to bless the heirs of Abraham in this world and the next, Jews were still being herded into slums, barred from owning land or entering many trades and professions, blamed and persecuted for doing the work the law allowed them to do, and generally not receiving the blessings promised to the children of Abraham. Western Europeans were receiving those blessings, especially if they had migrated to North America. This observation was actually being used to “debunk” the Bible. Christians who chose to debate in favor of the Bible wanted an explanation of why the blessings seemed to have been transferred to the “adoptive” heirs. Anglo-Israelite theory was that explanation. It taught that the British Isles and the nations along Europe's Atlantic coast might have become the homes of physical descendants of Abraham. If so, the prophecies of blessings for Abraham's descendants had already been fulfilled.

Today's DNA studies, and Modern Israeli history, suggest a different interpretation. Abraham had other sons and grandsons besides Israel. If a genetic quirk that is still peculiar to Jewish men is not found among British men, that suggests that any undocumented physical connection between "Anglos" and Israelites that may have existed failed to transfer whatever was special about Isaac's descendants to any British "race" (tribe). Instead, the special blessings promised to Israel as "Judah's sceptre and Joseph's birthright" may be yet to come. McGaw's argument is still interesting, but it may be wrong.

There were schools of Anglo-Israelite or Euro-Israelite thory that were used as excuses for hating Jews. Other schools of thought used the theory as a base for friendly outreach to Jews, as McGaw does in this pamphlet, thanking a Jewish friend for referring him to Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright. The pastor who talked most about it to my parents, when I was growing up, used it as a reason to encourage Christians to study the whole Bible, look up their family history, and of course tune in to his radio broadcasts. McGaw specifically says that “there is no place here for race pride” in the sense of arrogance or bigotry, but “for appreciation of the gifts bestowed by God upon us as a race.” (He used “race” in the old sense of “people claiming descent from a common ancestor.” For him Celts and Saxons were different “races” from Italians.)

Historically the more benign versions of Euro-Israelite theory seem to have predominated, because Hitler and Mussolini didn’t try to exploit it.

The comments—relevant and otherwise—handwritten in my copy of this booklet show a late twentieth century, skeptical reader’s reaction. Many whole-Bible Christians do not feel that Anglo-Israelite theory is a necessary base for studying the whole Bible. The reader concluded, “Bible says ‘a mighty angel will preach gospel to all Earth.’ (Men love lies for gain & fame.)”

For myself, I don’t know how typical I may be…My first conscious commitment to Christianity occurred while my family were involved with the Lord’s Covenant Church. We were whole-Bible Christians. I am a whole-Bible Christian. I am comfortable with a truth that seems to make many people uncomfortable: we don’t know everything, nor will we know everything. I don’t feel a need to believe any theories about ancestors who left no records of who they were, much less what they believed. 

What I do know is that following the teachings of the whole Bible is self-rewarding, enough that any reasonable person might want to live as an adoptive heir of Abraham. The Bible makes clear, and the L.C.C. taught, that individuals from any ethnic group might choose to make this commitment, as did Ruth, and the rules about separation from unclean foreigners no longer applied to them. In any case the Ishmaelites (Arabs), Edomites (descendants of "red and hairy" Esau, generally understood to meant northern Europeans), and descendants of Abraham and Keturah (Africans and Indians) are clearly identified as descendants of Abraham who were destined to follow the descendants of Jacob, or Israelites, into material wealth and spiritual prosperity.

In the ancient prophetic vision it may have mattered whether people were "Nordic," or true White, light-haired and hairy-skinned, like Esau, or "Mediterranean," dark-haired and smooth-skinned, like Jacob. It never mattered in the sense that one type was more valuable as human beings: Jacob and Esau were born as twins, and both were loved. It would not have mattered in the sense that anyone's human potential was limited by ancestry, but it may have mattered in the sense of a prophet's having foreseen a certain individual doing a certain thing. The church has not received such a "key" to the understanding of any prophecy, but it ma receive such a "key," according to the prophecies themselves, in due time. 

In Heaven our ancestry may matter...a little, if there are ceremonies in Heaven, in the order of precedence on formal occasions or suchlike. As far as salvation and morality are concerned it doesn't matter. Anyone who senses the vocation within may be adopted as a spiritual heir of Abraham and enjoy the benefits of living by the whole Bible's teachings. If we are Abraham's heirs physically through the children of Keturah, whom Abraham didn't have time to teach much, or through Esau, who was less favored ("hated") because he lacked spiritual sensitivity, or through Ishmael or not at all, God still knows us by our own names and can bless us as God chooses.

Meanwhile the English-speaking countries have certainly enjoyed blessings beyond the rest of the world. So if others still want to support their whole-Bible Christian practice with McGaw’s claim that it is their duty to claim the birthright of their British ancestors’ “race,” or races, this book is for them. Otherwise, it is an historical curiosity.