adversus christianos nunc

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; likewise, a moral tradition is only as just as its most violent adherents. Religions that generate or tolerate violent extremists face a distinctive internal dilemma: non-violent believers, better acquainted than outsiders with their tradition's capacity for zeal, often hesitate to oppose the extremists for fear of being seen as traitors to the faith. This study interprets that tension as a systemic weakness within religious communities. It argues that within modern history, Christian Zionism has functioned as the vulnerable link of Christianism, and Jewish Zionism as the vulnerable link of Judaism - each an eschatological or political amplification of older theological motifs. The article traces the chain of influences from centuries of Christian anti-Judaism through nineteenth- and twentieth-century British evangelical eschatology (e.g., Shaftesbury, Hechler, Balfour), Jewish political Zionism (e.g., Rothschild, Herzl, Weizmann), and British imperial strategy (e.g., Sykes). The resulting synthesis, it contends, produced the ideological preconditions for today's conflicts in Israel-Palestine. Section 2, "Political Evangelicalism Entails Vast Immiseration," tells the story about broken covenants and parochial ultimata leading inexorably to the intractable conflict over the land of Palestine. Section 3, "Microlectics Microlect," is a self-referential specialized way of speaking and writing about specialized ways of speaking and writing, which are called "microlects." These are semi-formal capsules of thought about specific topics. Sections 3-9 present microlects referring to philosophy, biology, and theology, leading to section 10, the "Christian-Anti-Human Microlect." Section 11, the "Ism Microlect," describes a desirable but impossible "Ism Place."