American evangelicals often profess deep love for and support of Israel, yet the motivations underlying that support have long been the subject of debate. A common critique holds that evangelical support is fundamentally instrumental rather than unconditional. According to this view, support for Israel is rooted less in concern for the Jewish state itself or in concern for the Jewish people than in eschatological beliefs linking Israel to the anticipated return of Christ. Critics further argue that, within this theological framework, the Jewish people are assigned a largely instrumental role in salvation history, with some contending that ultimate evangelical aims include Jewish conversion either before or after the Second Coming.

In the past eight years, we have been carefully measuring and analyzing evangelical public opinion toward Jews, Judaism, and the modern State of Israel. In our recent book, we present a complex picture of theological, societal, and political motivations that together bring this community – estimated at 80 million Americans – to favor Israel over the Palestinians. In our earlier work, we found that religious motivations are the primary drivers of evangelical support for Israel. Importantly, this support is driven less by expectations that the End Times are near than by the belief that Jews remain God’s Chosen People.

In December 2025, we had a unique opportunity to dig even deeper. We commissioned an online survey of 3,800 self-identifying evangelicals (such as Baptists, Pentecostals, non-denominational, etc.) and mainline Protestants (such as Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.). Our analysis here is based on properly weighted individual-level data, aligned with the population estimates reported by Pew’s Religious Landscape Study (2024). Our credibility intervals range between ±1.9 and ±2.3 percentage points per question. Because our pool of respondents is generated via non-probability sampling, we report credibility intervals rather than a more conventional “margin of error.” A credibility interval functions similarly to a margin of error but is designed for surveys such as this one that do not use random sampling.

Because self-identification alone does not always capture the theological core of evangelical belief, we also incorporated a doctrinal measure based on the widely used framework developed by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). Under this approach, an individual is classified as evangelical if they strongly agree with four core statements of faith: that the Bible is the highest authority for belief, that encouraging non-Christians to trust in Jesus Christ is personally important, that Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice capable of removing sin, and that eternal salvation is granted only through trust in Jesus Christ alone.

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