[lbo-talk] "Elmer Gantry with a foreign policy"

[Steven L. Robinson]

The Dangerous Potent Elixir of Christian Zionism

By Pat Morrison
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs


WHAT MAY BE potentially the greatest U.S.-born political threat to peace is
not terrorist sleeper cells or even the deployment of more U.S. troops to
the Middle East. Instead, it's the prolific spread of a brand of
fundamentalist Christian "End Times" pseudotheology linked to massive
support-military and financial-for the state of Israel. The threat goes by
the name Christian Zionism.

According to expert observers and critics, the movement is harnessing
incredible religious, political and financial power, thanks largely to
highly visible and well-funded preachers, their churches and congregations'
financial commitment. And the implications of Christian Zionism's ­belief
system-cum-political agenda are frightening.

One of those experts watching the rise of Christian Zionism-and alerting
mainline Christians, as well as Muslims, Jews and the public in general to
its danger-is the Rev. Donald Wagner. An ordained Presbyterian minister,
Wagner is associate professor of religion and Middle Eastern studies at
North Park University in Chicago and executive director of its Center for
Middle Eastern Studies. His most recent book is Anxious for Armageddon, a
critique of Christian Zionism (and available from the AET Book Club).

In a packed presentation last fall at the Kansas City Sabeel Conference,
Wagner outlined the movement's growth, major proponents and political
agenda.

Christian Zionism as a fringe biblical theory has been around in some shape
or form since the 1600s, Wagner said-long before the establishment of modern
Israel. But most recently it has morphed into a new entity that links its
literal and fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian Bible with a
convergence of political and sociological trends on the American landscape.

According to Wagner, these include: 1) growth of a "fear factor" in the
United States since 9/11, fueled by 2) the millennium and "End Times"
prophecy, as well as intensely marketed Christian fiction like the Left
Behind series; and 3) the rise of right-wing political conservatism in the
United States.

The Bush administration's talk about "the axis of evil" and its "Crusader"
mindset, coupled with the neocons' constant language of empire, captured the
imagination of many Christians who already were reading and identifying with
End Times biblical interpretation.

Blend all these ingredients together and you have the perfect recipe for
Christian Zionism, Wagner noted, and an audience primed to accept and push
it.

Although popular TV fundamentalist preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry
Falwell are enthusiastic supporters of Israel, Christian Zionism's newest
and most ardent promoter is Dr. John C. Hagee. Hagee, who is founder and
pastor of the 18,000-member non-denominational evangelical Cornerstone
Church in San Antonio, Texas, has a worldwide following through his John
Hagee Ministries.

Some commentators have described the charismatic and avuncular Hagee as a
"kinder, gentler" Rush Limbaugh look-alike, of similar political persuasion.
As one critic colorfully summed it up: "If there is one thing worse than
Elmer Gantry, it's Elmer Gantry with a foreign policy."

Today Hagee is perhaps best known as founder of an ultra-right wing
Christian Zionist political lobby in Washington, Christians United for
Israel, or CUFI.

According to Wagner, CUFI is completely aligned to AIPAC, the pro-Israel
U.S. lobby, and "defends a hard-right maximalist Israeli agenda: They
support Israel having control of all of the West Bank and Gaza because 'God
gave it to the Jews exclusively.'"

CUFI also fully supports the Israeli settler movement, Wagner said, and
financially underwrites the relocation of European Jews to illegal
settlements because Israel is "their land" promised them by God.

At the February 2006 launch of CUFI, Hagee stated that Christians United for
Israel "will [soon] have organized offices in every state in the union,
mobilizing every Christian and whoever will work with us on a pro-Israeli
agenda."

By mid-July of last year, Wagner said, Hagee had 3,500 CUFI supporters
"deployed to every congressional office in Washington, pressing for more
arms to be sent to Israel [during the Israeli-Hezbollah war] but also
calling for the U.S. to attack Iran [because Hagee sees war with Iran as a
prelude to Armageddon]."

In San Antonio last October, more than 10,000 CUFI supporters gathered to
work on their political platform and strategies. Among the key conference
presenters was former CIA director James Woolsey, a close supporter of AIPAC
and outspoken opponent of the peace movement and of churches active in it.

Hagee coined the term "Islamofascist" at CUFI's founding conference, Wagner
noted, "and within a week [President] Bush was using it, then [former
Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld."

Wagner said his two greatest concerns about Christian Zionism-which claims
to count up to 100,0000 evangelical believers around the world-is that it is
extremely Islamophobic and anti-islamic, and that it projects a militant
image of Christianity throughout the world.

"What [Christian Zionists] are projecting is a Western white, militant
Zionist image of Christianity into the region," Wagner said. "And what this
does is give global Muslims,  and global Christians, the impression that
Christianity is really a militant, Crusader type of religion. In the end,
even Jesus comes back in warrior fashion!"

In fact, he said, Christian leaders in the Holy Land are so worried about
Christian Zionism's harmful effects in the region that Catholic, Lutheran
and Orthodox church leaders invited Wagner and a group of other experts to
speak to them and help them inform their people about the movement's dangers
and its impact on the Muslim world.

Christian Zionism seriously damages Christian-Muslim and Christian-Jewish
relations, especially in the Middle East. But what is even more worrisome,
Wagner warned, is that because the resources of movement leaders like
Falwell, Robertson and Hagee include worldwide missionaries and media
outlets, they "have the reach to inflame the entire region."

Pat Morrison writes from Dayton, Ohio. She has covered the Middle East,
especially Israel/Palestine, extensively.

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