The reelection of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will certainly inflame the small but outspoken segment of American Protestantism that is anti-Israel. Mainline Protestant elites, undeterred by their empty pews, have been ideologically hostile to Israel for decades. More politically significant is the growing segment of Evangelical elites, many of them shifting left on a wide range of issues, who have become more critical of Israel than is common among mainstream Evangelicals.
One recent example straddles both religious worlds. Miguel De La Torre is a Cuban-American theologian, formerly conservative, who was ordained Southern Baptist and previously taught at largely Evangelical Hope College in Michigan until his controversial left-leaning polemics evidently lead to his departure for the firmly liberal Iliff School of Theology in Denver, a United Methodist seminary.
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