Shock Horror!

In a country where weekly church attendance is about 20 times the level it is in Britain (40% v 2%), the relationship between religion and politics in the US is intense. And there is little doubt that, last spring, when President Bush dithered and dallied over his Middle East policy before finally coming down on Israel's side, he was influenced not by the overrated Jewish vote, but by the opinion of Christian "religious conservatives" - the self-description of between 15 and 18% of the electorate. When the president demanded that Israel withdraw its tanks from the West Bank in April, the White House allegedly received 100,000 angry emails from Christian conservatives.

A decade ago, when the president's father was in the White House, his eldest son's election-time job was to act as unofficial ambassador to this group, offer assurances that they and the administration were at one on such matters as abortion and pornography and prayer in schools, the issues they like to group together as "family values". US-Israel relations, which reached rock bottom when George Bush Sr was president and the obstreperous Yitzhak Shamir was Israeli prime minister, were never an issue.

What's changed? Not the Book of Genesis, which is what Michael Brown, the coalition's church liaison officer, quotes when you ask him to explain the support for Israel. "And I will make of thee a great nation," the Lord told Abraham, "And I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee."

On the conference floor, however, the explanation has more to do with the end of the world than the start of it. What has really changed is the emergence of the doctrine known as "dispensationalism", popularised in the novels of the Rev Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. LaHaye and Jenkins may not mean much to you or to the readers of the New York Times Book Review, but the ninth volume of their Left Behind series sold three million hardback copies in the US last year, eclipsing John Grisham.

Central to the theory - based on a reading of scripture Brown would prefer not to discuss - is the Rapture, the second coming of Christ, which will presage the end of the world. A happy ending depends on the conversion of the Jews. And that, to cut a long story very short, can only happen if the Jews are in possession of all the lands given to them by God. In other words, these Christians are supporting the Jews in order to abolish them.

Oh yes, agreed Marion Pollard, a charming lady from Dallas who was selling hand-painted Jerusalem crystal in the exhibition hall at the conference. "God is the sovereign. He'll do what he pleases. But based on the scripture, those are the guidelines." She calls herself a fervent supporter of Israel, as does Lewis Hall of North Carolina. "I believe they do have to accept the Messiah." And if they don't? "I believe they will when they know who He is. I believe that one day they are going to wake up. It might take a third world war to do that."

Meanwhile, outside the hall was Leanne Cariker from Oklahoma, carrying a placard saying "Just Say No! To A Palestinian State". Her support of Israel is based on the same premise. "The Bible says there is no way to worship God except through the son," she explains.

To add to the bizarreness of this scene, she was standing opposite another group of demonstrators: anti-Zionist Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn in long black coats, who oppose the state of Israel based on their own reading of the Bible. Confused? You should be. Poor Leanne Cariker was. "I'm not against them," she wailed. "I'm for them. I believe they're God's chosen people."