Structures of loyalty : A comparative study of Jewish and Palestinian evangelicals’ acquiescence to fundamentalist and authoritarian values

This is a qualitative comparative study of two evangelical movements in Israel and in the West Bank: the Israeli Messianic (IM) movement and the Palestinian Evangelical (PE) movement. Through interviews on how informants understand the Middle Eastern conflict, our aim is (1) to compare the prevalence of fundamentalist/authoritarian (F/A) values in the IM and PE movements and (2) to understand how a particular socio-political context – Israel and the West Bank – might affect the acquiescence to a F/A mindset amongst the two movements. To accomplish this, we created a F/A construct that measures five values: literalism, social withdrawal, authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionalism. We found that the IM scores higher on all five F/A values. To explain the difference, we point out the importance of structures of loyalty: the difference in how IMs and PEs connect to key societal groups affects the way they acquiesce to fundamentalist and authoritarian values.