printDesperate to create a Rev. Wright parallel in John McCain’s political universe, liberal madmen have been gleeful about uncovering Reverend Hagee’s many controversial statements. Hagee, an enormously powerful evangelical who’d endorsed McCain, has since withdrawn his endorsement.
Keith Olbermann, who barks orders AT his viewers as a Soviet commissar might do—but not as a TV talker ought to—offered up Hagee’s words:
“God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land”; the Roman Catholic Church is “the great whore”; “Hurricane Katrina was God’s retribution for homosexual sin.”
Olbermann had a giant “gotta moment” when it transpired too that Ohio megachurch pastor and author Rod Parsley, an “evangelical supporter of McCain,” had “sharply criticized Islam, calling the religion [an] inherently violent,” “anti-Christ religion,” and “the Muslim prophet Muhammad ‘the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil.’”
So? Many respectable scholars concur. Many more Americans agree.
As to the first thing that had Olbermann elated: As I understand them, many Christians believe that, good or bad, God controls events and that there is a method in the madness around us, and in unfolding events in general.
Hagee, moreover, is an eschatological scholar. As such, his raison d’être is an overriding concern with “the end of the world or of humankind,” and all that stuff.
Update 1: Obama clearly wants a quid pro quo. He has implied that, just as he doesn’t hold Hagee against McCain, so too should the Arizonan not be encumbered by Hagee. Meanwhile, McCain is bending over backwards to denounce Hagee, which only helps legitimize the media-manufactured parallels between Hagee and Wright. McCain is stupid. (But then I’ve said so before.)
Update 2 (May 23): PARSING PARSLEY. First off, to be anti-Islam is not to be anti-Muslim. This distinction is conveniently collapsed by the left-liberals piling on Hagee. Islam is indeed a violent creed, conducive to violence. Come back to me on that, when you’ve perused our Islam Archive, where you’ll find references to many reliable sources. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel here for those who do not want to do the reading.
Pastor Rod Parsley also said that “America was founded with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed.” We live in the YouTube age, when every botched, unfortunate utterance by a public figure is dissected ponderously, after which denunciations are issued and apologies exacted.
Please calm down to a blind panic.
The estimable Robert Spencer has parsed Parsley’s statement. I take a different tack to the tack taken in the first part of Robert’s assessment: “Statements like that give the anti-jihad movement a wingnut patina that, of course, ABC is happy to perpetuate in this anti-McCain hit piece.”
Parsley, clumsily, was probably referring to the hard-core Christianity that early Americans espoused. They would surely never countenance Islam.
I see Parsley and Hagee, with all their faults, as “ours,” if you know what I mean. They’re warrior Christians. Granted, I’m not; besides being an irreligious Jew, I oppose aggressive wars. Still, Hagee is a crusader of sorts. He belongs squarely within the tradition of a vigorous, fighting Christendom. He’s an anachronism (but so am I in many ways) and he’s indubitably of the West.
Rev. Wright, on the other hand, is not “ours” in any way. His thinking is non-western, alien. He comes to destroy the West, as he hates with all his might the men who founded it.
The kind of rabbis who condemn Hagee as an anti-Semite—they’re engaged in grand-scale projection, for they, not Hagee, will help bring about the end of a West, after which Jews will be even less secure. Very many liberal rabbis are honorary Muslims, or dhimmis, as far as I’m concerned. Hagee is an honorary Jew.
Update 3 (May 24): Sigh. There are those who argue against Hagee and all else they dislike by declaring themselves and their opinions as the norm, the magical mean. Evangelicals are, apparently, outside the norm. Now there’s a rational argument. That’s profoundly annoying to this writer, especially when contributors do so in defiance of facts.
Revivalism, evangelicalism, the faith of happy-clappers, whatever—this branch of Protestantism, and its beliefs, is as American as apple pie. Ever heard of the First and Second Great Awakenings? “Historians have debated whether the Awakening had a political impact on the American Revolution [no less], which took place soon after.”
Afrocentrism, on the other hand—Wright’s creed—is as American as Idi Amin. African-Americans, I suggest, are morel likely to be evangelicals than Afrocentrists.
Update 4 (May 25): This is not a statement of support for either tradition, but merely a statement of historical truths vis-à-vis America’s creedal nature. (If I am not wrong, revivalists were active in the abolitionist movement.) Do I personally have more affinity for a Zionist Christian (Hagee) than an anti-Zionist, Afrocentrist of the left (Wright)?
You bloody bet.
But that’s because I’m a woman of the Right, not a neoconservative. Neoconservatives have very little patience or affinity for “their own.” As I’ve written, “Neo-con nirvana is a U.S.-supervised world where Afghani and Israeli alike are fashioned into global democrats, citizens of the world.” (A mold, incidentally, to which Wright would be infinitely more suitable than Hagee.) I’ve long maintained that neocons—they’re crypto-leftists—are as deracinated as any good left-liberal.
Neoconservatives, moreover, have always evinced contempt toward the Religious Right. You’d think the likes of Hagee would have learned. In fact, neocons consider the Religious Right a bunch of rube hicks. I’ll take the rubes any day over the wretched neocons, the two factions’ philosophical overlap notwithstanding.
I think political candidates should listen carefully to their scatological scholars. They’ve long been the primary source of spiritual guidance and give prodigious output in the form of material for your article “Lexicon Of Lies“.
Happy weekend to you, Ilana.
Maybe I can be the mad rabbi: Last week’s Torah reading was about crop rotation – in politics, we have CROOK rotation where we replace Republicans with Democrats and vice versa. This week is what happens when one turns away from God –
when the Republicans turn away from limited government, you get incompetent Bush giving way to Barack Obama and the Republican can wonder the desert until they get their act together or the Democrats screw it up badly enough.
There isn’t that much great on Obama – he’s far worse than McCain on the farm bill and ethanol subsidies …. but I have to admire that the Democrats (unlike with Dukakis and Kerry) can counterattack the Republicans. I’ll see your nutty minister and raise you a nutty minister. Obama seems to know how to play the political game to win. Governing, of course, is a different matter.
I enjoyed your essay Lexicon of Lies.
While it may stretch credulity, Hagee was attempting a modern application of the ancient and thoroughly scriptural principle that God at times uses Israel’s enemies to chasten His people and thus position them to receive greater blessing. This, however, never justifies any form of evil.
As the Egyptian administrator Joseph said to the treacherous brothers who had sold him into slavery, “You intended this for evil, but God meant it for good.” Olbermann would doubtless brand as anti-Semites the patriarchs themselves for articulating such a simple faith.
Hagee is a non-starter for the liberals, even though they are trying their best to make it blow up. Was McCain in Hagee’s pew every week for over a decade?
Every candidate has to deal with a few endorsements they have to later distance themselves from. It’s not a reason for me to withold my vote from McCain (I have plenty more reasons to do that!).
Believe me, I understand the Islam/Muslim distinction, and I bow to none in my antipathy towards Islam. But that doesn’t change the fact that Hagee’s other views are crackpot, such as the one that Katrina is a vengance on a sinful city, or his rather odd ideas about the End of Days (e.g. the antichrist will be the Head of the European Union). In the nuclear age I fail to see how a fascination with the wierdness of Revaltions is helpful. [Once again, you seem unwilling to understand that evangelicalism, weird or not, is a branch of Christianity with its own doctrines. The fact that you—and I—do not identify with it, means nothing to the millions who do—or to an intellectually meaningful debate, for that matter.—IM]
Ayn Rand wrote: “To say that your position is based on faith is to imply that reason is on the side of your opponent” She was talking about a defence of capitalism, but I submit it applies to discussing Islam. It just marginalizes and discredits the anti-Jihad movement. [This assertion is simply wrong; she was talking about religion being rubbish, irrational.–IM]
As I said before, the religious right have been crying wolf about all sorts of nonsense – gays, secularism, wicca etc. – and now, when the real wolf is before the door, they find they’re not taken seriously. Surprise, surprise.
Given that actions speak louder than words, it’s important to remember that Pastor Hagee has helped raise millions of dollars in support of Israel. Anti-Semites don’t do that; the anti-Semitic libel against Pastor Hagee is baseless, in my opinion. That said, I would disagree that God sent Hitler against the Jews to bring them home to Israel. Rather, I believe that what man intends for evil, God can use for good, similar to the argument made by Mr. Swanson, above.
Commentators such as Keith Olbermann appear not to understand the biblical basis behind Pastor Hagee‘s remarks. Anderson Cooper understands even less. Both commentators, and their colleagues, could do Americans a favor by at least attempting to gain some knowledge of the foundations upon which such comments are made. I doubt that will happen any time soon.
My mother lives where Katrina hit. On visiting there, I was struck by the seeming ad-hoc pattern of destruction. Buildings that you would not have expected to survive did and they were next to seemingly stronger buildings that did not. Based on that evidence, I cannot rule out Divine intervention.
Dear Mr. Khiyal:
It is actually not that unusual for Bible-believing Christians, including Pastor Hagee, to give some thought to conditions currently unfolding in the world with respect to biblical prophecy about the end times. It is not particularly strange to suggest that the Antichrist will come from Europe, or indeed, be the head of the European Union. European Christianity is very weak at this time, which is why my church and many others send missionaries there. European youth hunger for values upon which to base their lives, and European Muslims provide such “values,” non-Western in the extreme. This fact underscores the continued and absolute need for Christian missions to Europe.
In the nuclear age, that “fascination” you speak of with the Book of Revelation is not only helpful, but essential. If we truly understand that times are not only tough, but biblically-ordained, Christians like me might be more successful spreading the Gospel message to those who have not yet heard it.
Ms. Mercer: Thank you so much for your reasoned defense of John Hagee. You are truly kind to call him an honorary Jew, as I suspect that nothing would make Hagee happier than to read that! Why is it that — if Pastor Hagee is such an Anti-Semite — the three biggest defenders of Hagee in the media that I have heard thus far (Medved, Hagee, and Mercer) are all… Jewish? The question is self-answering. Too bad John McCain is too pea-brained to realize that — by disassociating himself from Hagee — he was, in effect, sticking BOTH evangelicals AND Jews in the eye. Though not a member, I have attended Hagee’s church, and he displays a flag of Israel in the main auditorium — how is that for Anti-Semitism in action? Update: I wish you hadn’t closed comments on the FLDS Update: Wow! You NAILED it! Only you, Michael Savage, Vox Day, and Joseph Farah even seemed to come close. As you say, O’Reilly and Grace were over the top on this naked act of tyranny. Where was Texas’s Republican Governor on this issue?…..
1. As regards this kind of evangelism being as ‘american as apple pie’, so what? So was segregation; justifying something on the basis of tradition is no basis whatsoever.
2. The belief that Jesus will return and solve all problems seems to me to be the worst kind of pipe dream, at the time when the West can least afford any kind of wishful thinking.
4. I still haven’t heard any comment about the marginalization of the anti-Jihad efforts because of association with this kind of lunacy.
Correction, the one phrase SHOULD have read: “the three biggest defenders of Hagee in the media that I have heard thus far (Medved, SAVAGE, and Mercer) are all… Jewish?”
My apologies for the typo.
Dear Mr. Khiyal:
I wanted to respond to your assertion that Jesus will return and solve all problems. I believe that He will, but not anytime soon.
I do not believe, however, that Christians can count on Jesus to solve our problems, here and now. We must evince a healthy regard for the Constitutional principles upon which this nation was founded, and a respect for individual rights. If Christians don’t do that, if we “worship” the government and seek to bend its power to our ends, we risk falling into idolatry and laying a foundation upon which many individuals will be deceived.
‘Pastor Rod Parsley also said that “America was founded with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed.” ‘
I don’t know about the above statement but I do know that Columbus desired to fight Islam via a new trade route to the Indies. So the DISCOVERY of America is certainly linked to a desire to oppose Islam as the quote below shows:
“Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the above-mentioned countries of India, to see the said princes, people, and territories, and to learn their disposition and the proper method of converting them to our holy faith; and furthermore directed that I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone.”
from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/Columbus1.