As support for Israel slips among young Latinos in the United States, and some Latin American countries cut ties with Israel over the war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, a prominent Hispanic evangelical leader is working to build a “firewall” of young pastors in his community to boost pro-Israel sentiment.
Pastor Sam Rodriguez, founder of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told The Times of Israel that there is a campaign in the US and Latin America seeking to turn the public against Israel and to “hold hands in the global brotherhood of perpetual victimization.”
“Our objective is to build a firewall against that.”
The NHCLC is a Latino evangelical network with 45,000 churches around the world. The conference represents 16-20 million evangelical Christians in the US alone.
In September, NBC called Rodriguez “a charismatic leader who is well on his way to becoming one of the most influential figures in American politics today.”
Rodriguez, a self-described “nonpartisan” who spoke to The Times of Israel from Jerusalem, has advised US presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
A March 2024 Axios poll showed that 40% of Hispanic-Americans said that the US should push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and another 39% said the US should not be involved in the conflict at all.
While some Latin American countries are solid allies of Israel, others are vocal critics. Bolivia cut diplomatic ties with Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, while Chile, Colombia and Honduras recalled their ambassadors soon after.
Mexico and Chile joined calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Israel-Hamas war.
But Rodriguez has a different vision for Latinos.
“We’ve really got to focus on the next generation,” he said. “We are what we tolerate. There’s a phrase that we use. Today’s complacency is tomorrow’s captivity. And, in many places around the world, today’s complacency is tomorrow’s Holocaust. We are what we tolerate.”
According to a 2023 American Jewish Committee poll, 41% of young Latinos sympathize more with the Palestinians, and only 29% sympathize more with Israel.
“Latino students are key part of pro-Palestine encampment protests,” read an Axios headline.
“I saw young people in New York City, NYU, Columbia, Harvard, Yale,” said Rodriguez. “Many of them are Latinos. And I went, are you kidding me? No, no, we’re not going to do this. This is not Inquisition 2.0 in the 21st century. That’s where the Latino evangelical church rises up.”
“What if the Latino community emerges as the number one most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish community on the planet, building the wall against antisemitism?” he asked.
Rodriguez is laying the foundations for that wall by bringing leading young Latino pastors to Israel, in partnership with Bishop Robert Stearns, founder of Eagles’ Wings Ministries.
Thirty-eight prominent church leaders from the US, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Argentina, and Panama were on last week’s mission.
“We bring them as tourists, and they return home as Zionists,” said Stearns.
According to Stearns, who was in Israel with his family during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Eagles’ Wings has brought over 35,000 Christians to Israel in its 30 years. Many have been college students from its “Christian birthright” trips.
Since the attacks, Eagles’ Wings has been focused on bringing young evangelical leaders to Israel, believing that it brings “the single largest return on investment to secure Israel’s future,” according to Stearns. “When you invest in a leader, you’re impacting his entire congregation.”
“For far too long Israel has been a bucket list trip for pastors that they accomplish when they’re 65, 67, 70 years old, ready to retire, and you’ve lost 40 years of their pulpit ministry,” he explained.
To date, he’s brought 700 pastors from 14 countries and 35 US states to Israel for the first time. Two-thirds of the young pastors bring a group from their church to Israel within 18 months, said Stearns.
With the Hispanic pastors last week, Rodriguez — known as “Pastor Sam” — stood up in a meeting and asked how many would be bringing groups back within the year; 80% raised their hands.
Both clergymen acknowledge that there is a suspicion among some Jews that evangelical Christians support Israel out of a belief that the end times can only start if Jewish people reconstitute and repopulate “Greater Israel,” and accept Christ as their Messiah.
“I would just encourage the Jewish community who, frankly, of all people groups, should beware of tropes and stereotypes,” said Stearns. “Jews have been victimized by stereotypes and tropes like that. You really need to go much deeper into the reality of the motivation of the Christian Zionist community.”
The Christian Zionist community is motivated by three things, he argued — a “debt of eternal gratitude” to the Jewish people for being the foundation of Christianity’s stories, worldview, and inspiration; a “debt of eternal repentance” for the atrocities committed against Jews under the banner of Christianity; and a common threat from “an unholy alliance” of far-left groups and a radical vision of Islam.
Rodriguez said he no longer recognizes the Democratic Party he worked with during the Obama administration.
“The progressive, the ultra-left Marxist-Socialist wing of the Democratic Party has hijacked the party,” said Rodriguez. “There’s a civil war right now in America, and it’s ideological, and it’s in the Democratic Party.”
He said that the idea that Israel is losing its bipartisan support in the US is a “legitimate concern.”
“It’s unfortunate,” Rodriguez said, “but it’s the reality, the Democratic Party is becoming, unfortunately, a party embracing viable, measurable threats of antisemitism. While on the other side, the Republicans are saying, we are the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish party.”
“We’re encouraged by those within the Democratic Party who are still on the right side of history,” Stearns said, adding that “it’s not just a question of their stance on Israel. I think it’s a question of their stance on America as well.”
Mark Mellman, founder and CEO of the Democratic Majority for Israel, strongly disagreed with that characterization.
“The vast majority of Democrats and our party leadership is solidly pro-Israel,” the leading pollster told The Times of Israel. “President Biden, for example, led the most pro-Israel presidency in American history as the first American president to visit Israel during wartime, providing Israel unprecedented levels of military aid, and leading international coalitions to protect Israel from Iranian attacks. Our Senate Leader, House Leader and Governors are strongly pro-Israel.”
Mellman, who has also worked a strategist for Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, acknowledged that “there are a handful of very loud anti-Israel and indeed antisemitic voices in both parties, but they do not reflect the majority.”
He suggested that Stearns and Rodriguez should focus on getting antisemites out of the GOP than “trying to paint a false picture of Democrats.”
Rodriguez argued that US President Donald Trump’s backing for Israel is rooted in large part in the knowledge that Christian Zionists form the core of his support.
“It’s driven by this commitment that his core team, his number one support in America, bar none, no other group at that number supports his presidency like evangelicals,” he said.
“What drove Donald Trump to have this incredible landslide outcome in November?” Rodriguez asked. “Eighty-four percent of evangelicals in America supported Donald Trump. Over 70 % of Latino evangelicals supported Donald Trump.”
In his first term, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy there, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, cut off funding to UNRWA, and ushered in a series of diplomatic agreements with Arab countries known as the Abraham Accords.
In the month since he has been back in the White House, Trump appointed senior officials in key diplomatic and defense roles who have long records of support for Israel, imposed sanctions on the courts in The Hague, pulled funding from hostile UN bodies, and has robustly backed Israel’s war aims in Gaza, even calling for the relocation of Palestinians from the war-torn Strip.
At the same time, there are signs that Trump and Netanyahu are out of sync over the second stage of the hostage release-ceasefire deal with Hamas.
Rodriguez acknowledged that many Israelis might not be aware of the importance and extent of evangelical support for Israel in the US and around the world.
“But if they don’t know it, they will because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump will be the single solitary reason why Israelis that may not be cognizant of the commitment, the level of commitment from the evangelical community regarding Israel and the Jewish people, they will be aware of it.”