Nineteenth Century ‘Jewish Restorationism’ in the Service of Anti-Catholicism: Lord Shaftesbury and the Christian Zionist Movement in Britain

In 1839 the Evangelical Lord Shaftesbury published a review of Lord Lindsay's Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land. After describing and analysing the work, Shaftesbury addressed his main topic: the conversion of the Jews and their restoration to Palestine. It was a theme popular throughout the nineteenth century but led to few conversions. The timing of the article was significant, appearing precisely as the first British Consulate in Jerusalem was about to be established. This article performs a contextualised reading of Shaftesbury's article revealing its two significant themes: that the arrival of the Jerusalem Consulate also meant the arrival of Protestantism in the Holy Land, and that his apparently philo-semitic religious identification with Jews ran alongside antipathy to Catholicism. Shaftesbury's view of Jews was transactional: Jews could be, by their conversion, potential facilitators of prophetic fulfilment but those resistant to proselytism were subject to censure. Shaftesbury celebrated the Anglican Protestant presence in Jerusalem as a victory over what he saw as resurgent Catholicism throughout Britain and Europe. He claimed that the consulate would bring the ‘pure doctrines of the Reformation’ back to its land of origin ( Shaftesbury 1839a : 187). It would thus represent a challenge to Catholic, French, presence in Palestine. The paper argues that although the political context was one of the beginnings of British imperial acquisition that led to the denial and erasure of Palestine Shaftesbury celebrated the beginning of the Anglican presence in sectarian terms.