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Donald Trump’s MAGA movement has long drawn much of its strength from the extensive Evangelical movement, which provided Trump Republicans with a ready-made network throughout much of rural America and voted for Trump partly because of its near Messianic support for Israel.

Lately, that seemingly rock-solid support has begun to fracture. Even more concerning for Trump, mounting criticism of Israel and growing empathy for Palestinians, particularly among American Evangelicals aged 18 to 29, may signal a larger power shift in the global Evangelical community. 

“This train has left the station. It’s not coming back, especially with the younger generation,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), an Evangelical conspiracy theorist. During the COVID-19 epidemic, Greene compared protective masks to the yellow Star of David that Nazis forced Jews to wear. She later apologized for her comment.

The power shift comes as influential MAGA figures, including podcaster Tucker Carlson, have turned up the volume on criticism of US support for Israel and platformed far-right antisemites such as 27-year-old neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes, and blatantly antisemitic podcaster  Candace Owens.

The shift in American Evangelical attitudes is compounded by the rise to prominence of non-Western Evangelicals, who account for 70 percent of the global Evangelical community. These Evangelicals may share a belief in End Times but do not see that as a reason for supporting Israel.

For many American Evangelicals, the End Times will be marked by Jews once again gathering in the Promised Land, where they will experience persecution similar to the Tribulations. The Evangelicals believe that Jews who survive the persecution and recognize Jesus as their Messiah will be saved.

“Theological emphasis is shifting. We younger Evangelicals interpret the teachings of Jesus as emphasizing compassion, peace, and justice for all, rather than a political alignment with a specific nation,” said a young Evangelical activist.

The global power shift in the Evangelical community was on display last month when the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), which represents 600 million Evangelicals from 161 countries, elected Sri Lankan activist Godfrey Yogarajah as chairman to replace Thomas Schirrmacher, a religious scholar with close ties to the German political establishment, at its general assembly in Seoul, South Korea.

Yogarajah has not spoken publicly about Israel or the Gaza war but stressed that he would work closely with Botrus Mansour, a Nazareth-born Israeli Palestinian lawyer with a history of mediating between Israeli Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews.

Mansour was appointed as the Alliance’s secretary general and CEO in August. Assembly attendees said Yogarajah was signaling that the WEA would take a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict compared to Schirrmacher’s more pro-Israel slant.

“It means something profound that, in this moment, a Palestinian Christian from Israel has been asked to serve as secretary general,” Mansour said in his inaugural address.

Mansour argued that it was time to “reclaim” the word “Evangelical” and bring it back to its original meaning as “bearers of good news.” “It has been politicized and changed, and people use it in different ways,” he said. 

For several years, Mansour operated a popular website that highlighted Israeli discrimination against Israeli Palestinians, who account for 20 percent of the country’s population. The website invited Evangelicals to visit Israel to establish facts for themselves rather than uncritically accept predominantly American pro-Israel Evangelical assertions.

The website is “aimed at Western Christians, many of whom confuse biblical references to Israel with the modern state by that name, and often think of the Palestinians as a modern extension of the Philistines that Joshua fought in Old Testament times,” said Israeli Palestinian lawyer and human rights activist Jonathan Kuttab.

In a similar vein, the European Baptist Federation (EBF) elected Lebanese Rev. Charles Costa as its new president in September. The EBF comprises associations in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

At the same time, the Baptist World Alliance, of which the EBF is a member, appointed Jordanian Rev. Nabeeh Abbassi as its first ambassador to the Middle East and North Africa.

Following an Israeli attack on the Baptist Hospital in Gaza early in the Gaza war, Abbassi emphasized Jordanian King Abdullah’s consistent call “for the right of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, along the entire borders of June 4, 1967,” a reference to the war in which Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

These developments notwithstanding, North American Evangelicals retain considerable influence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, despite the shift in power in the global movement.

That was evident last year when International Court of Justice (ICJ) Vice President Julia Sebutinde was the only member of the world’s highest judicial body to oppose all provisional measures it advocated in South Africa’s case, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

“The Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel,” Sebutinde said in August at the launch of a new Watoto Church Evangelical ministry in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. It was Sebutinde’s first public comment on her opposition to the ICJ ruling. Watoto Church was founded in 1984 by Zimbabwe-born fourth-generation Canadian missionary Gary Skinner.

The Ugandan government distanced itself from Sebutinde at the time of the ICJ ruling.

“The position taken by Judge Sebutinde is her own individual and independent opinion and does not in any way reflect the position of the government of the Republic of Uganda,” the government said in a statement.

Now it appears that other Evangelicals have been distancing themselves as well.

James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.