More than a thousand pastors, ministers, and Christian influencers descended on ancient Shiloh in early December, a powerful demonstration that faith communities in America are refusing to be silent about Israel’s most sacred places. The scale of the visit — organized as part of the Friends of Zion Ambassadors Summit — sent a clear, unmistakable message from the pews to the policymakers in Washington: religious Americans care about Judea and Samaria and they will not be shamed into silence.
The pilgrimage wasn’t a casual tour; it was a coordinated effort led by Dr. Mike Evans and the Friends of Zion organization in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, designed to educate, commission, and mobilize a bipartisan army of spiritual influencers. Organizers called it the largest public-diplomacy mission of its kind in Israel’s history, and the partnership with official Israeli bodies made clear this was intended to shift hearts and policies alike.
Speakers at Shiloh made no apology for framing the land by its biblical names — Judea and Samaria — and for tying that nomenclature to sovereignty and history. Dr. Evans and other leaders argued that applying Israeli law to these territories is not a political whim but a moral imperative rooted in Scripture, and they urged the visiting pastors to carry that conviction back to their congregations and to the White House.
This was not merely political theater; countless pastors described a spiritual encounter standing where the Tabernacle once stood, saying the visit crystallized their duty to defend Israel in the public square. For many attendees, seeing the stones and hearing the history first-hand turned abstract support into lifelong commitment — the kind of grassroots energy that changes national discourse when voters insist it does.
Make no mistake: this gathering is a rebuke to the international chorus that blandly labels the area the “West Bank” while ignoring its millennia-old Jewish and biblical identity. Conservatives have long argued that language matters — and when a thousand spiritual leaders adopt Judea and Samaria by name, it undercuts the false neutrality of that euphemism and forces policymakers to reckon with historical truth.
The summit even carried diplomatic weight, with prominent voices urging pastors to act as ambassadors for truth rather than partisan warriors, a distinction that nevertheless places moral pressure on the Biden White House and on any official who pretends the question of sovereignty is merely academic. If America’s leaders will not defend the friend who stands as a bulwark against radical forces in the region, then citizens and their pastors must raise their voices louder than the bureaucrats.
Organizers framed the gathering as part of a larger ideological battle — an information war funded by unfriendly regimes and amplified by hostile tech — and they warned that Christian and Jewish allies must fight back with truth, prayer, and political will. This is precisely the kind of principled, faith-driven activism conservatives should applaud: standing with allies, pushing back against antisemitism, and refusing to cede the cultural battlefield to those who would rewrite history.
Patriotic Americans should take heart: ordinary pastors showing up in droves to defend Judea and Samaria proves that change comes from the bottom up. If the White House and Congress are sensible, they will listen — and if they do not, voters who love God and freedom will remember which leaders stood with Israel’s historic rights and which chose silence. The Shiloh pilgrimage was more than a tour; it was a declaration that faith still matters in geopolitics, and that truth will not be negotiated away.
