When Bishop Robert Stearns speaks, he does so like someone weighing the heaviest of responsibilities. “I’m feeling very grateful,” Stearns said, reflecting on the decades of advocacy that have placed him at the forefront of Christian support for Israel. “Grateful to the Christian leaders who came before me, who paved the way in Jewish-Christian cooperation and understanding.” That gratitude, he stressed, is inseparable from urgency, and for Stearns, founder and executive director of the Christian organization Eagles’ Wings, Jewish-Christian partnership is no longer a niche theological concern or a symbolic gesture of goodwill – it is a defining moral fault line of the present moment. “The issues at stake are a future of extremism versus a future of tolerance, respect and the dignity of all human life,” he said. “These are the core values of Western civilization.”
Stearns is careful to frame the relationship not as an inward-looking alliance, but as something with global implications. “This is not about Jewish-Christian friendship just in and of itself, as important and wonderful as it is,” he said. “It’s part of a much broader dialogue about whether the values of Western civilization can survive and be shared by all people.” That worldview has shaped Stearns’ work for decades, long before Israel became a daily flashpoint on Western campuses and social media feeds. Founded in 1994, Eagles’ Wings has brought more than 40,000 people to Israel over the past 31 years, including over 1,000 pastors and Christian social media influencers.
According to Stearns, the organization has seen particularly sharp growth since October 7, but he is adamant that the mission did not begin there. “This isn’t a trend,” he said. “We’ve led multiple missions every year since the mid-1990s. This is who we are.” What has changed, Stearns argues, is the intensity of the information war surrounding Israel, especially among young Christians. “The single most effective way that has real, verifiable, long-term results,” he said, “is bringing young pastors and influencers to Israel and letting the land and the people speak for themselves. You can put a 20-second clip in front of someone and stir their emotions,” he said. “But if you don’t really have truth, you can’t have justice. Truth takes time, history, commitment.”
One moment, in particular, has stayed with him. On a pastors’ visit to Israel, as the COVID-19 pandemic was slowing down, Stearns found himself shepherding a group through testing at Ben-Gurion Airport. Doctors and nurses of different backgrounds moved efficiently through the crowd. “One of the young pastors looks at me and says, ‘Who are these people?’” Stearns recalled. “I said, ‘Doctors and nurses.’ He said, ‘But my doctor’s name is Mohammed. And that woman is wearing a hijab. And that man has a kippah.’ Then he said, ‘But this is an apartheid country.’ They had not yet left the airport, and the lie had already been exposed. The truth had been seen,” Stearns said. “Without a lecture. Without an argument.”
Stearns points to Israel’s complexity as its most overlooked truth more than once. He recently visited the Druze village of Hurfeish in northern Israel, noting with admiration its high rate of military service. Just miles away, he said, Druze and Christian communities across the border are facing brutal persecution, largely ignored by the international spotlight. “Here is a religious minority living freely within Israel, proudly serving in the IDF, while their people are being slaughtered just across the border,” he said. “What better example could there be of partnership leading to real social action?”
A future marked by action
When asked what sets this generation of young Christians apart, Stearns is quick to point to their moral clarity, describing them as intensely committed to justice. “They truly want a just world,” he said. “That’s a beautiful thing.” But passion, he warns, can become dangerous when detached from depth. Quoting a familiar biblical refrain, he adds, “The truth will set you free, but truth takes work.” He also invokes a teaching from Jewish tradition. “The verse says, ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue,’” he notes. “I’ve been taught that a better translation is: you must pursue justice justly. Carefully. Judiciously. That’s what’s missing right now.”
Stearns' visibility, however, comes at a cost. He has paid a personal and professional price for his stance – particularly as a Christian leader in the United States. Friends and colleagues say the pressure has only intensified as his advocacy has become more prominent. Still, Stearns shows little inclination to retreat. For him, that is precisely why he continues. Not for accolades, and not for controversy, but because, as he sees it, the stakes could not be higher.