Earlier this weekend, I spent some time getting caught up on back issues of the
Wall Street Journal. I ran across Andrew Higgins's
A Page One story in last Thursday's paper. It was entitled "Holy War."
The story was about Christians United for Israel, a national organization founded by a San Antonio-based megachurch pastor by the name of John Hagee.
Like many such preachers, Hagee is quite the entrepreneur. Thirty-one years ago, he took over the Church of Castle Hill, which Higgins described as "a moribund parish with only a few dozen worshippers and heavy debts." He also mentioned that Hagee had recently quit his previous church during a messy divorce that was quickly followed by his remarriage to a young churchgoer. (Funny how often right-wing figures swap out their wives when they reach their "sell-by" dates.)
Today, Hagee is a player, not just in the world of religion--his church has 19,000 members--but in U.S. foreign policy. He's a leading figure in the so-called Christian-Zionist movement. According to Higgins, "[t]his evangelical political philosophy is rooted in biblical prophecies and a belief that Israel's struggles signal a prelude to Armageddon." As a fellow Kossack's sigline reads, "The Book of Revelation is not a foreign policy manual." Hagee and his followers beg to differ.
Earlier this month, Hagee presided over a gathering of more than 3,000 evangelical Christians who cheered the current Israeli military operation:
Standing on a stage bedecked with a huge Israeli flag, Mr. Hagee drew rapturous applause and shouts of "amen" as he hailed Israel for doing God's work in a "war of good versus evil." Calls for Israel to show restraint violate "God's foreign-policy statement" toward Jews, he said, citing a verse from the Old Testament that promises to "bless those who bless you" and curse "the one who curses you."
And how did President react to this?
President Bush sent a message to the gathering praising Mr. Hagee and his supporters for "spreading the hope of God's love and the universal gift of freedom." The Israeli prime minister also sent words of thanks. Israel's ambassador, its former military chief and a host of U.S. political heavyweights, mostly Republican, attended.
It's disturbing enough that people like Hagee have so much influence in this administration. But even scarier is where they want to take us--namely, a "clash of civilizations" that, in some peoples' imagination, will bring on the End Times:
"This is a religious war that Islam cannot--and must not--win," Mr. Hagee wrote in a recent book, "Jerusalem Countdown," which focuses on what he says is a coming nuclear showdown with Iran. "The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching....Rejoice and be exceeding glad--the best is yet to be." The book has sold nearly 700,000 copies since it was released in January, according to his Florida-based religious publisher, Strang Communications.
By the way, Hagee talks out of both sides of his mouth about the forced conversion of Jews:
When addressing Jewish audiences, Mr. Hagee generally avoids talking about Armageddon. But his books, whose titles include "Beginning of the End" and "From Daniel to Doomsday," are filled with death and mayhem. "The battlefield will cover the nation of Israel!" he writes in "Jerusalem Countdown," his recent work, describing a "sea of human blood drained from the veins of those who have followed Satan."
For a while, he tried to argue that Christians and Jews had separate agreements with God that would get each into Heaven. However, he backed away from that view after Rev. Jerry Falwell branded him a heretic. Falwell is now on the board of Christians United for Israel.
Back to the influence of right-wing preachers over our foreign policy. Higgins wrote:
Israel's evangelical supporters "were out there before, but didn't really appear on the radar screen," says Dennis Ross, a Middle East envoy in the administrations of both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "Now they are an important part of the landscape." More than any prior White House, the Bush administration has established formal, regular contacts with American evangelical leaders.
Hagee is not only a supporter of George W. Bush, but he was even closer to former Majority Leader Tom DeLay:
Soon after becoming majority leader in the House of Representatives, Mr. DeLay gave the keynote speech at Mr. Hagee's 2002 pro-Israel gathering in San Antonio. Mr. DeLay, since embroiled in a corruption scandal, also spoke last week in Washington.
Lou DuBose and Jan Reid, the authors of The Hammer, a biography of DeLay, also mentioned the Hagee connection. They describe him as a "pre-millennial dispensationalist"--that is, someone who believes these are the End Times, which will culminate in a battle between Christ and the Anti-Christ, followed by a thousand-year reign of peace on Earth.
DuBose and Reid describe DeLay as having been even more hawkish than Bush himself on Middle East policy and actually worked to undercut the administration's efforts to work out a Middle East agreement during Bush's first term. His M.O. was pushing the administration into a more hard-line stance by threatening that evangelicals would stay home unless they get their way. They wrote that DeLay has built bridges to right-wing Jews in the United States (he even prayed in Hebrew at one appearance), and that figures such as Benjamin Netanyahu have turned up at fundamentalist churches.
There's one more disturbing angle to this story, and it involves the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC set up an "outreach" unit to work with Christians. The head of that group is "a San Antonio native who had previously worshipped at the synagogue of Mr. Scheinberg, the Orthodox rabbi who has been one of Mr. Hagee's keenest supporters." Some prominent Democrats, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, have expressed their strong support of AIPAC. I wonder what they think of the organization's connection to Hagee and his ilk.