Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-254) and index.

Eleven minutes after Israel declared its independence on 14 May 1948, the United States granted it de facto recognition. President Harry Truman's memo was short and to the point: "This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel." Truman's concise memo belied the drama behind its creation. Despite enormous pressure from Truman's State Department and members of his cabinet to withhold recognition, the president quickly offered it. Some scholars have argued that pressure from Jewish lobby groups explains Truman's speedy actions, but this alone does not fully explain the president's immediate support for the new Jewish state. What accounts for it, then? A significant part of the answer lies in the actions and lobbying efforts of an elite group of "mainline," or liberal, Protestant leaders who persuasively argued that the destruction of the European Jews during the Second World War necessitated support for Zionism. Historic Christian antisemitism helped to create the twentieth century's worst genocide, they insisted, and therefore its solution constituted a Christian responsibility. This powerful, well-connected mainline Protestant minority set about radically changing the nature of Protestant-Jewish relations and U.S. foreign policy over the course of the century.

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