Israel is feeling the love from an unusual constituency.

A slice of evangelical Christendom, which spent decades trying to convert Jews, has organized in recent years to support them.

Todd R. McQueen (ENLARGE)

John Hagee of Christians United for Israel spoke in Powder Springs at 'A Night to Honor Israel.'

Todd R. McQueen (ENLARGE)

Meg Hunt-Williams of Hiram shows her support for Israel with a call for peace in the Mideast.

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During a local show of support last Monday, 2,500 conservative Christians gathered in a Powder Springs church to wave Israeli and U.S. flags, bow their heads as a rabbi prayed, applaud local Jewish and Israeli dignitaries and shout out support for Israel, pep-rally style.

The crowning speaker was the Rev. John Hagee.

"Those who fight against Israel are fighting against God himself," he told the cheering crowd.

Hagee is an old-fashioned Texas TV preacher whose perfectly modulated baritone and fast-pitch delivery are ideal for sermons about sin and hell and for his esoteric teachings about the quickly approaching end of the world. The end is so nigh, he is fond of warning his San Antonio congregation of 18,000 and the cameras, it could come before he leaves the building.

Hagee has become one of America's best known proponents of a movement with a contradictory name: Christian Zionism. It is a marriage of politics and current events as seen though particular interpretations of biblical writings, a blend of red-blooded nationalism with evangelistic Protestantism.

Hagee uses biblical references to threaten Iran for its anti-Israel posturing as easily as he talks about the love of Jesus, and he leads a fierce opposition to Israel forfeiting so much as one more grain of sand to Palestinians.

He has organized or speaks at pro-Israel gatherings across the United States that are drawing from several hundred to several thousand people. The Powder Springs event was sponsored by Israel Always, an Israel support group founded by Christians.

Leading Jews from metro Atlanta, including Israel's ambassador to the Southeast, Reda Mansour, listened to Hagee in a sanctuary shorn of Christian symbols, such as a cross, and heard talk without a reference to Jesus.

"I think there is a great effort by the Christian community to let people feel comfortable in their event and to feel that they don't have any secret motive here," Mansour said.

Such as conversion. Many Jews had initial suspicions several years back. Now, they bus in local synagogue members to participate and bask in the love expressed for Israel, he said.

What impresses Mansour is that this is an American grass roots movement, percolating up from U.S. communities large and small, he said.

The movement is based in conservative churches that hew to literal interpretations of the Bible and sympathize with Israel out of shared religious heritage and political affinities.

Hagee said Scripture teaches that Israel is the only nation founded by divine decree, God gave Israelis the Mideast land, and the Bible directs people to help and support Israel.

"We want to be on the right side of this," Hagee said of his carte blanche support of Israel and denigration of Palestinian claims to land.

Timothy Weber of Denver, a Baptist former seminary dean, documented the rise of Christian Zionism in his book "On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friends."

The most ardent Israel supporters hold a controversial and convoluted end-time theology called Dispensationalism. In it, Israel and Jerusalem play central roles in Jesus' eventual triumphal return to Earth, and current events can be foreseen by enlightened readers in symbolically dense biblical passages, Weber said. He said Jews pragmatically overlook theology that includes beliefs that they must either accept Jesus as messiah during the last days or perish.

Hagee didn't talk about his apocalyptic beliefs Monday, saying they had nothing to do with his support.

Weber estimated that 10 million or more of the estimated 40 million evangelicals believe in or are influenced by Dispensationalism.

With the rise of the political-religious right, the Dispensationalists discovered their political muscle.

"They have become the unbending lobby for the support of Israel," Weber said.

And their influence is substantial.

Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman and former congressmen Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay are among the politicians who have showed up at events sponsored by Hagee's Citizens United for Israel group.

The support movement leaves its followers feeling like they are doing God's work and the Israelis a little baffled, but happy.

Steven A. Rakitt, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, said, "We are focusing on the support, not the theology, in a world where Israel is threatened by her immediate neighbors and by a disinformation campaign around the world."