From the pulpit to the Hague: Uganda’s Christian Zionist dilemma

"For these are the days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written."

Luke 21:22

A significant controversy has recently erupted concerning the comments of the Ugandan judge and Vice-President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Julia Sebutinde, who identifies as a Christian Zionist, during an interview on August 10th. She stated that she defends the ongoing Israeli 'genocide' in Gaza because this war is a sign of the 'End Times' mentioned in the Bible, and that God is counting on her to stand with Israel.

Her comments followed Sebutinde’s longstanding pro-Israel stance, which became even clearer after her election as Vice President of the ICJ in February 2024, for a three-year term ending in early 2027. These remarks raise questions about the authenticity of Christian Zionist thought in the Ugandan and East African experience, its connection to the British colonial project in the region since the early 19th century, and the implications of this continued influence today.

The 71-year-old judge’s declaration of ideological support for Israel revealed the deep entrenchment of Christian Zionist ideas among sections of the elite in Uganda and East Africa. This is unsurprising given that the spread of Christianity there, except on the Abyssinian plateau, was tied to British colonial expansion, where Christian Zionist ideas formed an essential part of its roots and instruments, consciously and unconsciously.

Since at least the 17th century, Protestants held a conviction that Jews must return to Palestine and Zion, and developed the belief that Christians should help them accomplish this project. In the early 19th century, with the rise of English missionary activity in the Anglophone world, Evangelical missionaries renewed their interest in the Jewish people and their fate, sometimes directing efforts to advance initiatives for the Jews’ return to Palestine.

Although these calls did not achieve immediate tangible results, yet they fostered the development of Zionism, generated Christian sympathy for it, and countered anti-Zionist trends. By 1917, it was abundantly clear that evangelical openness to Zionist ideas had influenced actual British government policy.

The beginnings of Christian Zionist thought in East Africa came via the colonizer, used explicitly to dominate Negro peoples. Later, East African elites absorbed and politically instrumentalized these ideas, even to the point of justifying genocide and sympathizing with it. This reflects the formation of a borrowed identity hidden behind the mask of 19th-century colonial thought, producing racist and supremacist “African” policies (currently, against Palestinians).

Illustrating this notion, British journalist Henry Woodd Nevinson (1856–1941) observed during his late-19th-century visit to Uganda that strict biblical education had created the perception that the promises and threats of Jewish prophets and lawgivers applied entirely to them (the British) from an all-knowing divine power. “We never doubted for a moment that we, the English Evangelicals, were God’s chosen people… that we would bring light to the Gentiles… and that missionary societies would guide the Negroes to the light of the Gospel, while God’s English people would gain the glory.”

Tudor Parfitt, in his influential book Black Jews in Africa and the Americas (2013), described this transitional and indeed pivotal phase in detail. He labeled the phenomenon of groups modeling themselves after the Jewish people as the “Israelite Trope,” which thrived in 19th-century Britain, parts of Europe, and later the United States, helping form a “new radical religious identity” among both whites and non-whites.

British and American Israeli-centrism also produced the idea of “Lost Tribes of Israel” manifested ethnically and culturally among various African communities, such as the Igbo in Nigeria, the Beta Israel (Falasha) of the Ethiopian highlands, parts of the Sahel, and beyond. This idea, developed by John Wilson and later Edward Hine, was accompanied by concepts of exterminating colonized peoples (especially in East Africa) in fulfillment of Israel’s mission, and expelling indigenous populations in colonies to their margins. Hine argued that exterminating non-Israelites proved that the Anglo-Saxons were heirs to the biblical covenant.

According to Parfitt, Sir Harry Johnston, first British governor of the Uganda Protectorate and a prominent writer, offered a striking view still relevant today: that Phoenicians or Canaanites had once penetrated Africa, intermarried with Ethiopians, spread into East Africa, and founded more advanced communities there. Such, mostly borrowed, historical claims added further dimensions to the spread and adoption of Christian Zionist thought by Sebutinde and its broader reception among sections of the Ugandan elite.

From the 'Uganda Scheme' to the Sebutinde Controversy and Beyond

Christian Zionist thought had deep roots in Ugandan Christianity, with exceptions such as the Acholi in northern Uganda, many of whom converted through Catholic missionaries. A concise but important text by Ugandan thinker and novelist Okot p’Bitek, Decolonizing African Religions, reveals this organic connection. He noted that Christians affirmed that Christ was the historical Jesus, that Christianity was a Jewish movement among Jews as a form of reformed Judaism, and that “Jewish Christianity was deeply intertwined with the messianic expectation. It anticipated with absolute certainty Christ’s return to earth soon, to topple the Roman Empire and establish divine rule in Jerusalem.”

This demonstrates how deeply Christian Zionist ideas were embedded in Ugandan Christianity and how they continue to shape the thinking of influential Ugandan elites today.

Furthermore, this intellectual backdrop is reinforced by the fact that Uganda figured prominently in London’s colonial strategies for solving the “Jewish Question.” At the start of the 20th century, Britain proposed the so-called “Uganda Scheme” to resettle Jews in this African territory as a solution to the Jewish problem.

Paul Merkley, in The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891–1948, observed that while Theodor Herzl, the man regarded as the father of political Zionism, was convinced of England’s central role in the Zionist program and enamored with its political system and colonial options (including the Uganda Scheme, at least temporarily), Chaim Weizmann, the Russian-born scientist and movement's chief diplomat, was more pragmatic.

Though bitterly opposed to the plan, Weizmann recognized it as a step forward, since it confirmed popular English support for addressing the Jewish problem. When he first visited England in 1903, his opposition to the Uganda Scheme was already gaining ground within the Zionist Congress.

Weizmann only came closer to Herzl’s view of England after becoming a chemistry professor at Manchester University and working closely with the Manchester Zionist Association in the years that followed. He met Arthur Balfour, then former Prime Minister, in 1903, shortly before Balfour contested the 1905–06 elections for the Conservatives. Weizmann convinced Balfour to dismiss the Uganda Scheme, arguing it lacked religious legitimacy, a reasoning Balfour himself recounted.

Regardless of the later historical developments of Christian Zionism’s spread in Uganda – before and after independence – and its ties to Israel during key moments, Sebutinde’s position has sparked extensive analyses of her motives and placed them in Uganda’s broader political context.

One such analysis is Yotam Gidron’s study, Christian Zionism and Political Legitimacy in Uganda, which highlighted Sebutinde’s notable church backing in Uganda, particularly The Covenant Nations Church; its pastor, Patience Museveni Rwabwogo (daughter of President Yoweri Museveni), praised Sebutinde as a national heroine, praying for God’s mercy upon her and affirming that Uganda should always remain – as a nation – on the Lord’s side.

Gidron also noted that Odrek Rwabwogo, husband of Pastor Museveni, serves as an export adviser to the president, in addition to being a prominent businessman and active member of Ugandan church circles. Although Sebutinde did not invoke explicitly religious grounds in her refusal to condemn Israel since January 2024, her belonging to the Pentecostal movement in Uganda has been clear since 2014, when she declared full adherence to the principles of Watoto Church, which was founded by Canadian missionaries in Uganda in 1984, the name meaning “Children of God.”

Sebutinde’s remarks echoed Pastor Museveni’s exactly: “To stand with Israel is to stand with the Lord.” Such claims are fundamentally rooted in the Christian Zionist ideas brought by Protestant missionaries to Uganda and other East African colonies.

However, Uganda officially bets on a humanitarian stance toward the Gaza war, repeatedly condemning the Israeli “massacre” there and criticizing the international community’s failure to stop it. Kampala’s hosting of the January 2024 Non-Aligned Movement summit, which strongly condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza, reaffirmed Uganda’s anti-war position.

But Sebutinde’s statements, criticizing her own country for not adopting her Christian Zionist defense of Israel, highlight the danger of Christian Zionism’s hold in Uganda. It remains an ideological current with deep roots among elites who may become increasingly dominant and capable of gradually shifting public opinion away from opposition to genocide.

This pattern is repeating itself across other African states, especially in East and southern Africa (e.g., Zambia), while Israel today continues restructuring its Africa strategies with the help of global institutions like the American Jewish Committee, building on what it calls “shared religious values” at the core of which lies Christian Zionism.