The Founder of Christian Zionism Leaves the Room

This is an excellent interview with Mel White, a biographer for Jerry Falwell and later openly gay...While we all struggle with this issue of homosexuality, never forget how sinful are our own heterosexual encounters...

McChurch cannot get this straight because it is mired in its own self justification...On the other hand, how to engage the issue of open homosexuality is anything but resolved within Evangelical circles...In the days before gays faced their aberration by coming out of the closet, Evangelicals were content to remain in denial...That is no longer possible...

Mel White demonstrated great courage in moving to Lynchburg and attending Falwell's church in his attempt to help Falwell understand the pain and suffering of gay men and women...When Falwell would get on his tirade, While would stand in place...Powerful stuff!

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry

Jews responding to the Christian right - because if Jews don't speak out, they'll think we don't mind
Rev. Mel White remembers Jerry Falwell. We have posted a conversation with Rev. Mel White, who ghost-wrote Falwell's biography before coming out as gay and founding Soulforce, an LGBT civil rights organization.

White never stopped trying to change Falwell's attitude toward homosexuality. He moved to Lynchburg "to try to help him understand the tragic consequences of his anti-gay rhetoric." He attended Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church, and, as he tells JewsOnFirst.org Co-Director Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, he found some admirable qualities in Falwell, who died Tuesday.

To listen to White's ten-minute conversation with Beliak, click here: www.jewsonfirst.org/audio-video/white_falwell.mp3 www.jewsonfirst.org/audio-video/white_falwell.mp3

To go to our page of remembrances and obituaries of Falwell (where there is also a link to the conversation), please click here: www.jewsonfirst.org/07b/falwell.html www.jewsonfirst.org/07b/falwell.html

Rev. Falwell's Epitaph

This is one of the sadder pieces I have seen in awhile…The death of Rev. Falwell brings with it a mixed reaction…On the one hand, the restraint that we have witnessed in the commentary on his life could be credited to his faithfulness, a condition that was prophesied to incur the wrath of the world…On the other hand, millions of believers have been hurt by his unfulfilled prophesies and judging…

In the final analysis, however, judging is left to God, reminding us that we all have a date with destiny…

Pastor Hagee, on the other hand, by invoking the wrath of the Christian community against anyone who dares question the principles of apartheid being carried out as policy by the Israeli government, directs us to the Scriptures to find no instance of Christian fury against a ruling government…In fact, quite the opposite…

“O, McChurch, you’ve done it again!”

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry

CHRISTIANS UNITED FOR ISRAEL

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Dr. Jerry Falwell

A Pioneer of Christian Zionism

On Tuesday, May 15, Dr. Jerry Falwell went to his reward in heaven. With his passing, the nation has lost a wonderful man of God and an important Christian leader. In addition, we in the Christian Zionist world lost one of our pioneers and leading lights.

When I was deciding whether to create Christians United for Israel, I called Dr. Falwell for his guidance. Dr. Falwell not only encouraged me to create CUFI in the strongest terms, but he pledged his full support. And Dr. Falwell kept this pledge. He served on CUFI’s Executive Board from day one and, despite his health challenges, he traveled to Washington, DC last July to participate in our first Washington, DC summit.

Supporting Israel was hardly new for Dr. Falwell. When he created the Moral Majority in 1979, he declared that one of its founding principles was to provide “support for Israel and Jewish people everywhere.” In the early 1980’s, Dr. Falwell reached out to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin when much of the American political establishment was shunning Begin. This odd couple, a Southern Baptist preacher and a Polish Holocaust survivor, became fast friends and remained close until Begin’s death.

When asked why he supported Israel so strongly, Dr. Falwell often mentioned Israel’s democracy and the fact that Israel was a strong American ally in both the Cold War and the War against Terror. Dr. Falwell was also fond of quoting Genesis 12:3. As he once correctly noted:

I firmly believe God has blessed America because America has blessed the Jew. If this nation wants her fields to remain white with grain, her scientific achievements to remain notable, and her freedom to remain intact, America must continue to stand with Israel.

In 2002, Dr. Falwell was interviewed for a segment that 60 Minutes was doing on Christian Zionism. With all of the challenges facing Christians in those days, Dr. Falwell made his top priority crystal clear. He looked in the camera and declared:

There’s nothing that would bring the wrath of the Christian public in this country down on this government like abandoning or opposing Israel in a critical matter.

As we mourn Dr. Jerry Falwell’s passing, let us remember his example. Let us remember what he taught us about the need for Christians to speak out on the urgent issues of our time. And let us remember that he always placed Israel at the forefront of these issues.

Pastor John Hagee

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©2007 Christians United For Israel

Walking on Eggs in Zionland...

Edgy Effort To Redirect Jewish Political Debate

By James D. Besser - Jewish Week
Friday, May 11, 2007 - Web Link

With the Christian Right laying off the abortion and homosexuality issues for Zionism, the fate of Israel looms large for everyone…At stake is the future of our nation…

Those who advocate trading land for peace are branded anti-Semitic, while those who advocate for the land as holy ground are Armageddonists…Christian Zionists seek to accelerate the Second Coming; Jewish Zionists seek to usher in the First Coming…At the end of the day, we live in an either/or culture – either good or evil; either believers or sons and daughters of Beelzebub…No middle ground…

McChurch continues to be alert to whatever will play in the press and swamp all debate…

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry

Listen to the 2008 presidential candidates and it’s easy to get the impression that the only thing Jewish voters care about is Israel.

The Jewish Funds for Justice, a New York-based incubator for social action projects, says that relentless focus ignores the agenda of a community with much broader concerns. And this week the group announced an innovative, Web-based project designed to educate politicians that Jewish politics doesn’t begin and end with the issue of Israel.

“We wanted to give the average Jew a role in shaping the domestic Jewish agenda for the 2008 elections,” said Mik Moore, the public policy director of the group, which uses the acronym JFSJ. “While there are a lot of Jewish organizations that get to sit down with the presidential candidates and tell them what they want, or what they think the Jewish community wants, for a lot of Jews those meetings aren’t representative of their interests.”

Domestic issues, he said, have gotten “short shrift” as more and more candidates focus on the big-ticket issue of Israel and as more Jewish organizations shift to an agenda heavily skewed toward international concerns.

And the project, tapping some of the hippest Jewish Web sites with strong appeal to younger Jews, represents an effort to start creating networks of young activists who believe the traditional Jewish organizations do not represent their interests.

JFSJ leaders are convinced the politicians will pay attention. But some political analysts point to an obvious problem: political candidates focus overwhelmingly on Israel because that’s the issue that opens the wallets of big campaign donors.

“If politicians stereotype Jews as single-minded on Israel, it’s not because they are unaware of the general liberal political orientations of the community,” said Ken Wald, a University of Florida political scientist who studies the Jewish community. “The organized Jewish community, which is the best way to find and tap donors, is cohesive behind Israel, and therefore it’s sensible for candidates to aim their fundraising and rhetoric to that audience.”

The idea behind the JFJS project, Moore said, is simple.

This week the group is asking visitors to its popular JSPOT Web blog to consider a list of 10 domestic issues, ranging from child care to fair wages.

“Folks coming to the site are asked to pick the five [domestic] issues they think should represent the Jewish agenda,” he said. “We describe what we see as the major challenges in each of these issues. We’ll leave it open for about two weeks. Our expectation is that thousands of Jews will participate and express their preferences.”

Then, JFSJ will contact each presidential campaign and provide not only the results of the survey but the names of all those who participated.

“And we will ask them: if you are elected, what are you going to do to address these areas of concern to the Jewish community?” Moore said. “As their answers come in, we will post them on our Web site, and encourage people to use the site to evaluate and discuss the responses.”

The group will not promote particular positions, he said. “We won’t be saying ‘we want to you to commit to raising the minimum wage by $2’; it’s just to give the campaigns an opportunity to understand what the real priorities of this community are, and then to provide a forum for a genuine exchange.”

The goal, he said, is to foster a genuine dialogue between the candidates and a politically diverse Jewish community instead of the pro-Israel talking points most candidates stick to when addressing Jewish groups.

The project will only work, he said, if there are “thousands” of participants. The key to making that happen is JFSJ’s partnership with several organizations that focus heavily on domestic issues and Jewish Web sites that have a strong following among younger Jews — including the Web magazine “Jewcy” and the popular Velveteen Rabbi blog.

Also on board: JDub Records, a nonprofit company that produces innovative Jewish music and uses it “as a means of bridging religious, ethnic, and cultural boundaries,” according to the group’s Web site, and The Tribe, a Web site centering on an offbeat film by producer Tiffany Shlain that offers “an electric ride through the complex history of both the Barbie doll and the Jewish people — from biblical times to present day.”

Those partners — 14 so far — will actively promote the JFSJ experiment.

“While we are a record company dealing in the cultural realm, one thing we are really interested in is getting our peers involved in the real world,” said Aaron Bisman, president and CEO of JDub records. “This is an opportunity to engage people by simply asking them: what do you care about? And having them respond in a format that really has the potential to be important in the world.”

Bisman said he believes the involvement of JDub and other icons in the new Jewish media “will help engage younger Jews. It’s operating within the realms younger people exist in, reaching out to them where they are — sitting in front of their computer screens, surfing the Net.”

Other partners include some of the small, progressive social action groups that have sprung up in cities across the country, in many cases in response to the perception that big national Jewish agencies have been edging away from their traditional domestic liberalism.

Among those participants: the Progressive Jewish Alliance in California and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) in New York.

“This is particularly important to us because as a Jewish social justice group, we really want politicians to focus more on the domestic issues,” said Dara Silverman, the JFREJ director. “We see this as a way to project our local goals — including things like immigrant rights and housing — on a national level.”

And she said the project is a way to draw in Jews who have not been involved in public policy from a Jewish perspective.

“The real question for us is how you engage people who have not been engaged by the existing Jewish organizations because the emphasis hasn’t been on the domestic issues that so many Jews see as a core part of their Judaism,” she said. “So many haven’t found ways to plug in.”

Silverman said the JFSJ project won’t revolutionize Jewish politics or instantly change the way most politicians relate to Jewish voters.

“But my hope is that candidates will start talking about issues,” she said. “Mechanisms like this can have an impact on the way politicians talk about issues and frame them.”

Some major Jewish leaders commended the effort but said it won’t be so easy to offset the impact of big, narrowly focused Jewish groups — and of Jewish campaign giving, which is focused heavily on the Israel issue.

“It’s a good idea; it’s important for politicians to know that Jews care about more than Israel,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), an umbrella Jewish group that has traditionally focused heavily on domestic affairs — but which in recent years has also turned up its Israel involvement.

But he said that most “politicians do know that Jewish groups support other issues; the disconnect comes because of the intensity, the amount of lobbying and the money that goes into political campaigns.”

To succeed in shifting the political balance back to the domestic side, JFSJ “has to go the next step and mobilize real resources,” Gutow said. “Their constituency has to be ready to put their energy and their money on the line. That’s what really turns politicians on. Until that happens, you’ll still see politicians come before Jewish groups and talk mostly about Israel.”

But participants say the edgy, Internet-focused project has the potential, at least, to draw a whole new generation into Jewish activism — and to start the process of giving politicians a broader view of Jewish interests.

“It is our expectation that when a presidential campaign receives a letter from more than a dozen organizations and signed by thousands of individual voters, they will take it seriously,” said JFSJ’s Mik Moore. “At this point in the primary process, most Jewish voters are undecided. We are giving candidates an equal chance to put their best foot forward, to have their positions examined by a community that takes public policy seriously.”

As an “added incentive,” he said, the group will take out full-page ads “to make it known to the readers of tens of thousands of Jewish newspapers which candidates have been responsive and which have not.”

"Onward Christian Soldiers!"

The Dangerous Potent Elixir of Christian Zionism

By Pat Morrison

An excellent take on the dangers of interpreting the Bible as history written beforehand…

“Oh, McChurch, you’ve done it again!”

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry

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.

Message from McChurch: "Jews Are Toast!"

"Friends Of Israel" Envision "Final Holocaust"; "Jew Toast"

By Bruce Wilson
Posted on March 14, 2007, Printed on May 3, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/wilson/49224/

This is a must-read for those who question the narcissism of the Christian Right…It seems that McChurch is about to try to push the administration’s war hawks into a nuclear confrontation with Iran so that they can “hasten the return of Jesus.” This will, of course, forever exclude those elect who have yet to come into the Kingdom. But since in the theology of McChurch election plays no part, so what?

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry

[also see PEEK story AIPAC's Anti-Semite and AIPAC Speaker's Illuminati Conspiracy Video [VIDEO]]

In previous installments of an ongoing series, I've examined the beliefs of Pastor John Hagee, founder of "Christians United For Israel", an ostensibly pro-Israel lobby whose members seek to trigger a Mideast conflict they hope will spiral into a devastating world war that will cause Global mass death and the death of 2/3 of Jews in Israel. Hagee, who calls for a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran and also states that will trigger the apocalyptic war he craves, has also warned in his sermons about a conspiracy of "Illuminati" and international bankers seeking to create a "New World Order". John Hagee spoke, before many US Senators and Congress members, to a cheering crowd, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual convention last Sunday evening :

That leading US politicians now happily appear at public events with, cheer on, and consent to share the stage with a man who advocates a fringe conspiracy theory some would call anti-Semitic and urges a "preemptive" use of nuclear weapons in order to cause widespread nuclear war indicates the extent to which US political and religious culture has lurched far right, towards what some call an "apocalyptic death cult", over the past four decades since the era in which Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign devastated Barry Goldwater's presidential hopes by airing just one time a 30 second TV commercial, the "Daisy" ad, that effectively tarred Goldwater as eager for nuclear war. Now, for Republican politicians wooing a key bloc of evangelical GOP voters, public expressions of nuclear blood lust are no longer stigmatized or politically toxic ; they are an asset.

Pastor John Hagee's warmly received AIPAC speech illustrates the extent to which political leaders who espouse ideology that in the 1960's was considered to be scandalously close the extreme end of the political spectrum can now expect to broadcast their views from a national stage.

Once upon as time a single 30 second TV ad, run only once, effectively destroyed the presidential chances of Barry Goldwater by alleging that Goldwater itched for nuclear war. But since the 1960's Christian apocalyptic religious ideology has spread so extensively in American popular culture that now, in 2007, direct advocacy for widespread nuclear war is no longer considered beyond the pale and, indeed, American enthusiasm for nuclear destruction is sufficient to support a national lobbying group. And, Republican politicians, but some Democratic ones as well, are willing to appear at "apocalypse lobby" public events, to share the stage with religious activists who are no longer content to merely predict the end-times but now actively work to make an apocalyptic nuclear inferno really happen.

What's also striking is the willingness of AIPAC partisans to embrace the political support of the Christian "Apocalypse lobby" while dismissing statement from CUFI's board members and from other Christian Zionists, that the hoped for catastrophic conflict will kill most Jews in Israel and that Jews who survive will have convert to Christianity or die. American fundamentalist leaders such as John Hagee have been saying that quite loudly for decades and now, more than ever perhaps, the attainment of such bloody and ultimately anti-Semitic goals seems within the bounds of possibility but Jews who are grateful for the political support CUFI and its predecessor organizations have given Israel seem almost schizophrenic in their willingness to dismiss the underlying ideology of totalistic religious warfare that's lurking under the cuddly philosemitic face, to Christian Zionism, which John Hagee has so zealously constructed.

But, Jews might do well to consider the implications of the fact that apocalyptic thinking has penetrated the United States military, to unknown effect, or the possibility that Christian Zionist thought is popular in the White House. Claims, by Jack Van Impe and Paul Rosenberg, of having been consulted by the White House on end-times prophecy, might by self serving hype but it's worth noting that back in 1998, with the gearing up of George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, that John Hagee made of gift to Bush of one of Hagee's books, "Final Dawn Over Jerusalem".

In the end, even neoconservative boosters such as Michael Ledeen who have promoted the idea of turning the entire Mideast into a "cauldron" should have pause at this ; the oldest apostasy in the Judeo-Christian and Abramic theological traditions is the human presumption to divinity and that's what in effect the CUFI lobby presumes : to influence divinely appointed fate.

Even the most hard bitten of neo-conservatives might do well to dwell on the possibility that recent theological mutations in some streams of American Christianity might have led to a situation where, quite literally, key national decision makers both in the White House, The Pentagon, and the US Armed Forces, with control over nearly godlike destructive powers, might also think of themselves as quasi-divine and hold end-times views in which Israel is reduced to smoking rubble in a future conflagration that some Christian Zionists have described as "worse than Auschwitz". In light of such statements, the bargain AIPAC has made with John Hagee and his fellow Christian Zionist raises the question ; how lucky does Israel feel ?

In a June 22, 2006 Los Angeles Times story entitled " 'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon" journalist Louis Sahagun relates an interview with Bill McCartney, co-founder of the Promise Keepers, in which McCartney talked about the goals "The Road To Israel", an apocalyptic organization he has founded since the Promise Keepers movement waned :

' "Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times", he said, "The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one -- they'll want to be a part of that. That's going to signal Jesus' return." '

Jews and others who don't accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, "are toast."

A number of leaders in the Promise Keepers movement have been attributed as religious influences on President George W. Bush.

Such views are anything but unusual within Christian Zionism : McCarney's sputtering apocalypse booster organization has since been far outsripped by the meteoric rise of Texas megachurch Pastor John Hagee's "Christians United For Israel", and CUFI's name should be taken at exact face value. CUFI supports Israel, as Christian Zionists define Israel per their religious eschatology, but they envision a different fate for Israel Jews.

CUFI board member Jerry Falwell has written of the battle of Armageddon Christian Zionists long for as a "final holocaust" while CUFI board member pastor George Morrison appears to expect merely "another holocaust":

Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra. I don't know how, but God will keep them because the Jews and the Chosen People of God." ( CUFI Executive Board Member Jerry Falwell, in a December 2, 1984 sermon)

As recounted by Terje Langeland, reporting for the Colorado Springs Independent in 2003, one of Pastor John Hagee's CUFI board members, George Morrison, expresses his sense of how Israeli and Israeli Jews will fare in the apocalytpic scenario Hagee and others long for:

"Morrison, whose casual, folksy manner belies his apocalyptic beliefs, already sees signs that the End is approaching. The European Union, he says, might be the alliance of nations that according to prophecy will join the Arabs to wage war against Israel during the final days.

"Great wars will begin to take place" Morrison says in a matter-of-fact voice. "Those wars are going to involve nukes."

The extent of the destruction will prompt Jesus to return in order to stop it, Morrison believes. Unfortunately, he says, many Jews will be killed.

"It's another Holocaust, if you will" Morrison says. "

Christian Zionist analogies about the bloodbath they expect (and hope) will be visited on Israelis go beyond "holocaust" talk and extend to comparisons to Auschwitz. As Gershom Gorenberg, expert on Christian Zionism and author of End Of days: Fundamentalism and The Struggle For The Temple Mount relates, "Chuck Missler, another popularizer of dispensationalism, says in a cassette lecture that Auschwitz and Dachau were "just a prelude" to the Tribulation. Missler sees no contradiction between looking forward to that horror and backing Israel; in an interview, he told me that "there is more support for the State of Israel from fundamentalist Christians in America than from ethnic Jews.""

As the Christian Zionist author and popularizer, evangelist Kay Arthur

also, according to Stan Goodenough, has used "holocaust" and "Auschwitz" comparisons:

Kay Arthur appears on the dais at all major pro-Israel events in the United States, and was recently nominated to co-chair a new women's association of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus. She has stated publicly that what lies ahead for Israel will make Hitler's Holocaust look like "a Sunday school picnic."

In her novel, "Israel My Beloved," Arthur has the heroine standing in a massively destroyed Jerusalem, dead and dying Jews littering the ground around her as she whispers in horror, "Auschwitz was never like this."

As stated in an October 6, 2002 CBS "60 Minutes" segment entitled "Zion's Christian Solidiers", Arthur blamed God for the destruction of Jews she envisioned:

Ms. KAY ARTHUR (Precept Ministries): The Jews need conversion. They need to know that Messiah is coming. And the Bible tells us what's going to happen.

(Footage of service)

Ms. ARTHUR: You're going to have to take the Word of God and get to know God so that a fellowship...

(Footage of "Precepts For Life With Kay Arthur")

SIMON: (Voiceover) Kay Arthur heads an organization called Precept Ministries in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She brings thousands of pilgrims to the Holy Land and has an answer for every question.

This is what confuses me. Here you are, a great friend of Israel...

Ms. ARTHUR: Yes.

SIMON: ...great friend of the Jews.

Ms. ARTHUR: Yes, and they would tell you.

SIMON: But what you're saying is that some of them are going to be destroyed and some of them are going to be converted.

Ms. ARTHUR: But see, I'm not saying it; God's saying it.

Such unbabashed predictions of another "holocaust" that will be "worse than Auschwitz", far from uncommon, are industry standard in Christian Zionist literaturem, with titles such as "The Next Holocaust & the Refuge in Edom (Prophetic Updates)" by Chuck Missler, Israel's Final Holocaust" by Jack Van Impe, and The Road To Holocaust by Hal Lindsey.

Thomas Ice, who works closely with Rev. Tim LaHaye, lays out the stock theological view inherent to most of Christian Zionist apocalyptic thought:

What one believes about the future of Israel is of utmost importance to one's understanding of the Bible. I believe, without a shadow of doubt, that Old Testament promises made to national Israel will literally be fulfilled in the future. This means the Bible teaches that God will return the Jews to their land before the tribulation begins (Isa. 11:11-12:6; Ezek. 20:33-44; 22:17-22; Zeph. 2:1-3). This has been accomplished and the stage is set as a result of the current existence of the modern state of Israel. The Bible also indicates that before Israel enters into her time of national blessing she must first pass through the fire of the tribulation (Deut. 4:30; Jer. 30:5-9; Dan. 12:1; Zeph. 1:14-18). Even though the horrors of the Holocaust under Hitler were of an unimaginable magnitude, the Bible teaches that a time of even greater trial awaits Israel during the tribulation. Anti-Semitism will reach new heights, this time global in scope, in which two-thirds of world Jewry will be killed (Zech. 13:7-9; Rev. 12). Through this time God will protect His remnant so that before His second advent "all Israel will be saved" (Rom. 11:36). In fact, the second coming will include the purpose of God's physical rescue of Israel from world persecution during Armageddon (Dan. 12:1; Zech. 12-14; Matt. 24:29-31; Rev. 19:11-21).

"Blow The Trumpet In Zion" (Richard Booker (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers), actually makes explicit predictions about how many million Jews worldwide will die:

( pp. 112-118 )

" The Jews' Final Holocaust

What is this terrible tribulation that awaits the Jews? Moses said it would take place in the "latter days". It is the last seven years of this age just prior to the coming of Messiah Jesus to earth. The Bible says this will be a time of suffering such as the world has never known.

The Antichrist

The tribulation period begins when Israel signs a peace treaty with the one we know as the Antichrist. The word Antichrist not only means one who is against Christ but also one who takes the place of Christ. The Antichrist will deceive the world into believing that he is the Christ who can solve the world's problems and bring peace among the nations, particularly the Middle East.

By this time hundreds of thousands of Jews will have come to accept Jesus as their Messiah. This will come about through the preaching ministry of 144,000 Jewish evangelists whom God will call especially for the purpose of preaching the gospel during the tribulation period. These followers of Jesus will know the Antichrist is not the Messiah.

The Great Tribulation

The Antichrist will march his troops into Israel and for a short period of time will occupy Jerusalem. Every nation will support his retaliation against Israel for their disturbing world peace. The Antichrist will kill two-thirds of all the Jews. THIS COULD MEAN THAT UP TO TEN MILLION JEWS WILL BE KILLED [Rawson: emphasis ours]. The Antichrist will plunder the beloved city of Jerusalem, and one-half of the citizens will be forced into exile."

This is a continuation of a running series on Pastor John Hagee and his new "apocalypse lobby," CUFI. For the last installment, see links below.

Holocaust For Zion: CUFI's Christian Zionism Made Simple

What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ?

GOP House Minority Whip Roy Blunt To Help Nuclear War Advocate

Also see these Alternet stories by Sarah Posner:

Lobbying For Armageddon

"As Bush's War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse"

"Apocalyptic preacher John Hagee says McCain is 'on target'"

"Can Giuliani Be the Armageddon Candidate?"

And here are some more recommended takes:

Max Blumenthal : Israel, the US, and the Christian Right: The Menage a Trois From Hell

Bill Berkowitz : Holy Warriors Set Sights

on Iran

Esther Kaplan : Christian Zionism all juiced up

Richard Bartholomew : Armey: Bush Believes in Tribulation, but not Trying to Make it Happen

Bruce Wilson : Dick Armey Denies Bush Administration Trying To Provoke "End Times"

More on Apocalyptic Christian Zionism :

Pastor John Hagee's beliefs are closely aligned with other Apocalyptic Christian Zionists such as Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the "Left Behind" book series. Writes author and senior analyst at Political Research Associates, Chip Berlet:

When White supremacists post websites demonizing Jews and gay people, they are condemned for the hatemongers they are.

When leaders of the armed citizens militias and their allies in the Patriot Movement in the 1990s urged their followers to form anti-government underground cells and battle global cooperation and the United Nations, they were condemned as dangerous guerrillas spreading divisive conspiracy theories.

When Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins write the Left Behind series of novels containing the same type of bigotry, they sell 70 million books and are interviewed by clueless journalists who use a double standard by not confronting LaHaye and Jenkins for spreading hate and conspiracism as well as promoting religious violence as a heroic duty....

This is the demonizing theology, ideology, and action plan being taught to millions of Americans by the LaHaye and Jenkins Left Behind series. We ignore this phenomenon at our own risk.

Chip Berlet, on the underlying ideology of the "Left Behind" Books:

"Left Behind Video Reflects Bigoted Apocalyptic Violence of Original Fiction Series," (6/12/2006)

"LaHaye and Jenkins: Why is the Criticism Left Behind? "

The World According to Tim LaHaye: A Series

Part One: Hunting Down the Enemies

Part Two: Pre-Trib Perspectives

Part Three: Satanic Secular Humanism

Part Four: Secular Humanism as False Religion

Part Five: The Secular Humanist Web

Part Six: The Council for National Policy

Part Seven: Humanists Attack the Family

Part Eight: The Age Old Conspiracy

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/wilson/49224/

Peacemaking from the Christian Worldview
by

Stan Moody

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry

I come to you as an Evangelical Christian, and for that I make no apology. Because I am an Evangelical Christian, I shall speak from that worldview, asking those of other belief systems to give me a wide berth, as I have no intention of offending anyone.

As an Evangelical, I stand on four doctrines that speak not only to ”What would Jesus do, but to “What would Jesus have me do?” Those four core doctrines are:

The sovereignty of God…

The Lordship of Christ…

The authority of Scripture…

The presence of the Kingdom of God…

The three Abrahamic faiths share in vastly different ways the doctrines of the sovereignty of God and the authority of Scripture. To recognize that commonality, however, is to begin to understand our cultures.

From the Christian worldview, it is the Lordship of Christ and the dynamic presence of the Kingdom of God that guides our faith and practice.

Those two doctrines – the Lordship of Christ and the dynamic presence of the Kingdom of God – come together to move the Christian from an insistence that God act in a concrete-sequential, linear fashion in human history to a worldview in which redemptive history breaks through in the form of the hope to come of that which is already present.

Unfortunately, there are millions of biblically illiterate American Evangelicals who view the person and work of Jesus Christ as a day on the calendar that has become their ticket into Heaven. This Jesus, the risen Lord, has gone away. He has taken with Him the Messianic kingdom that He came to announce and to inaugurate.

It is up to American Evangelicals, apparently, to bring Him back and to make a place for His Kingdom with the blood of millions on the Plains of Megiddo.

Tragically as well, there are numbers of charlatans who head multi-million dollar pop-Christian industries, referred to in the more acceptable term, “ministries.” These charlatans – snake oil salesmen – have stepped into this sea of biblical illiteracy as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

It is in response to those charlatans that we gather here today.

I am a latecomer to pulpit ministry, having completed my seminary work at age fifty-four. The edge of cynicism concerning the Christian Right, however, had become deeply imbedded many years before, as I was owner of a small New England chain of Christian Bookstores for twenty-five years. I was, in other words, a purveyor of the culture of pop-Christianity – making a buck off Jesus.

In 1988, Hugh Barbour of Barbour Books (formerly an owner of Fleming H. Revell Publishers) published my first book, No Turning Back: Journal of an All-American Sinner. This was a plea to Evangelical Christians having trouble living up to the moral and ethical expectations of their self-righteous brethren to change focus from the American Dream church to the suffering servant image of Jesus Christ.

The book sold 10,000 copies. I quickly enrolled in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary to see if I knew what I was talking about. Since then, I have simplified the worship of the American Dream into the term “McChurch.”

What McChurch has done is to codify Premillennial Dispensationalism through its merger with, or takeover of, the Republican Party. The old bumper sticker, “Jesus is coming, and boy is He mad” has changed to, “Jesus is coming, and boy are we mad!”

Some years ago, at the beginning of my ministry at the little North Manchester Meeting House Church, I had shared Easter sunrise service with a very bright local pastor who had been educated at Oxford University. Imagine my surprise when, at the end of our last service together, he said to me, “Maybe next year we’ll be in Jerusalem,” referring to the so-called Rapture.

My response was this: “I’ll tell you what; when you get the sewer system ready, give me a call. Jerusalem with billions of Christians and overloaded utilities is not a place I should like to spend six hours, let alone 1,000 years.”

I fail to see anything Utopian in the Day of Judgment as Peter describes it in 2Peter 3:10. If you are a biblical literalist (which Premillennial Dispensationalists seem to be), and you are a Christian, this verse of Scripture, which I interpret as referring to the AD 70 destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, has to have you wondering why anyone would want the Kingdom of God to physically be brought to earth:

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Off hand, I would say that the prospects for a glorious rapture just went up in smoke, as did the prospects for a separate kingdom for Jews in Palestine.

We are here today because this biblical illiteracy that author and theologian Mark Noll calls “versification of Scripture,” has burst out of its self-imposed ghetto of the local church and into the very core of political power in this nation.

Versification of Scripture takes place when the Bible is viewed as standing by itself, removed from history or its cultural context. As a result, assortments of Bible verses are strung together to support previously-conceived dogmas practical to the survival of a particular movement or idea.

That is the setting in which we find ourselves. It represents the polar opposite of peace in the Middle East. It cares not for the even hand of justice. It obeys not the eternal command for God’s people to show mercy.

You need no reminder of these facts. You are all well acquainted with the groundwork that has been laid by these good folks behind me today.

My task is to struggle with the question, “What would Jesus do, or want us to do, about peacemaking in the Middle East?”

The short answer, in the Christian worldview, is that what Jesus would do, He already has done. The work is finished; God has spoken His best and last word; in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, all theocracies have ended.

Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, has Jesus coming back softly, unobserved but widely recognized. The Grand Inquisitor imprisons Him and intends to burn Him to the stake as the “worst of heretics.” Jesus’ heresy was to speak the truth against the tide of human pragmatism:

Hadst thou taken the world and Caesar’s purple (the Grand Inquisitor insists), Thou wouldst have founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him.

Jesus answered not. When the Grand Inquisitor was finished, Jesus approached him and softly kissed him on the lips. That was His answer, whereupon He was released and told, “Go, and come no more – come not at all.”

For the professing Christian, the final answer comes from the cross, “It is finished.” What Jesus would do, He has done.

There are Christians today who are willing to stake their hopes and our lives and the future of this great nation of ours on Caesar’s sword and Caesar’s purple. Peace has become for them, not the power of God made manifest in our weakness, but an illusive and impossible fantasy.

For those who cling to belief in a sovereign God, however, peace demands self sacrifice. There is no room within self-sacrifice for the armchair Christian apologist. The Bible is not a puzzle representing the future written beforehand. Instead, the Bible is the revelation of Jehovah God. This revelation cuts through both Testaments.

From the Bible comes down through redemptive history the ringing voice of the Prophet Micah:

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

That is the answer to the question, “What would Jesus have me do?” “Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with my God” wherever I am planted. This cuts across the worldview of both Jew and Christian.

To act justly is to act with integrity and honor, two virtues sadly missing in Christian Zionism, whose agenda is to claim the land at all cost, including the cost of human life.

To love mercy is to desire for the family of man that the heavy boot of imperialism and oppression be lifted from God’s most recent creation everywhere. This is sadly missing in the sectarian worldview of Christian Zionism.

To walk humbly with your God demands of Christian and Jew alike that we stand in a certain spontaneity that lives in the reality of a sovereign God. Instead, Christian Zionism has tired of waiting for God and has decided to take matters into its own hands.

The Christian Bible explains what it means to “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” “Be ready,” the Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 3:15, “to give an answer to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. And answer in reverence and respect.”

The hope for the Christian is not the so-called Rapture. It is the Lord of the Rapture. The hope for the Christian is not the so-called Millennial Reign of Christ. It is the Lord of the Millennial Reign of Christ. The hope of Israel is not the land. It is the Messiah who, for the Jewish people is yet to come, and who for the Christian is “already.”

From the early days of post-exilic Israel it was the Messianic kingdom that was their hope. For professing Christians, that same Messianic kingdom fulfilled in Jesus Christ ought to be both the present and future reality of their great hope.

The “hope that is within you” does not come in the form of a book, The Late Great Planet Earth, or Left Behind. It comes in the form of the law of Moses fulfilled in Jesus Christ:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and spirit…

“You shall want for your neighbor the best of what you want for yourself, especially when that neighbor is perceived to be your enemy” (and I paraphrase).

Therein lies the law and the prophets. Therein lies the hope that is within us, believers in God and lovers of our enemies. There is nothing there about land – only about turning enemies into neighbors. There is nothing there about “good vs. evil” – only about God’s strength being made evident in our weakness.

It is not an easy thing, Jew or Christian, to keep the Messianic Kingdom alive. It is far too easy to go back to the land because the land is physical, while the Kingdom is spiritual. The struggle for truth has always involved a balance between what is seen and what is unseen – between the temporal and the eternal.

Evangelical Christians who profess belief in Him whose message was, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, have no excuse.

Yet, in a world of sound bites and slick charlatans of the Christian faith, illiteracy among believers rules in both the faith and practice of as many as thirty-million Evangelicals.

For these folks, Jesus saves, but He is “away” except in some inexplicable sense of being “in the hearts” only of those who have repeated the official version of the “sinner’s prayer.”

For these folks, the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to inaugurate is wholly future, rendering moot the radical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

For these folks, God waits, not for the last of His kids to come home, but for righteousness to be instituted through law, through war and through politics – three venues that the Scriptures condemn from Genesis to Revelation in their call for circumcision of the heart of God’s people, Jew or Greek.

For these folks, fear reigns because they know of no “perfect love.”

Simply put, it is easier to wage war than peace. It is easier to eradicate evil than to do good. It is easier to trust the armies of Caesar than it is to follow God. It is easier to condemn than it is to love. It is easier to dictate righteousness for others than it is to repent.

Patriotism being the “last hiding place of a scoundrel,” it is easier to be a patriot than it is to trust the Almighty but uncertain hand of a sovereign God.

The narrative that threatens not only the fragile stability of the Middle East today is best summed up in the words of a letter that I received in 1999 from something called the “Pre-Trib Research Center. The letter had this to say:

As we near the year 2000, many contemporary events are pointing to our Lord’s return. The fact that Israel has been back in her land for 50 years constitutes “God’s super-sign of the end times.” In our lifetime, the stage is being set for the end-time drama that has been laid out for us in the Bible.

…We have two main objectives: First, to help Christians avoid the deception our Lord predicted would plague people in end times. And, second, to help them anticipate His imminent coming. Historically, whenever the church has anticipated His return, it has motivated Christians to holy living in an unholy age, greater evangelism and more zeal for world-wide missionary giving and sending.

…This letter is sent to you because we believe you are vitally interested in promoting those same effects in your congregation…It (their upcoming conference) will help offset some of the “false teachers, false prophets,” and even “false messiahs” Jesus predicted would come, by presenting them the truth about future things.

This letter was signed by such luminaries as Tim LaHaye, Dave Hunt, Hal Lindsey, Charles Ryrie and John Walvoord. No apology has been offered by these “true prophets,” whose dire prophesies of Y2000 were scandalous lies.

Instead, these charlatans continue pointing the finger of anti-Semitism at those who would dare expose the heresy of escalation of war in the Middle East as a means of triggering the return of Jesus.

Make no mistake about it; this pop-Christian industry has found its voice in the highest seats of power in our government. Current leaders of this collapse of faith are the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Rev. John Hagee and those who would have Christians “focus on the family” rather than the Lord of the family.

True to form, you who would call the Church of Jesus Christ to live in the power and sovereignty of God rather than in the arm of flesh are branded as “false teachers and false prophets.”

The narrative has taken on a very real agenda in recent days.

It began with the proper response to 9/11 by bombing terrorist camps in Afghanistan and unseating the Taliban. The theatre of war then shifted to Iraq for reasons that had no relationship to Al Qaeda and the threat of terrorism.

Now that we have strengthened the hold of Shiite control over Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah and have reinstituted the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have, in four short years, given rise to a whole generation of radical young jihads who see the United States as the Great Satan.

The charlatans of the Christian faith, instead of repenting and seeking forgiveness, are calling for an invasion of Iran to trigger Armageddon. In the words of a dear Jewish friend with whom I frequently talk about these matters, “They want to herd all the Jews into Israel so they can kill us!”

We understand the narrative. The question remains, “How can we reframe the narrative?”

Re-Framing the Narrative

Restoring to Israel the Doctrine of the Kingdom of God:

From the worldview of the Christian who understands that he has been grafted into the root of Jesse (rather than the other way around), Israel has expanded its tent from physical boundaries to a boundless spiritual realm in the inauguration of the Messianic Kingdom.

The Baptist and Jesus called it “Kingdom of God.” The Prophet Isaiah called it the “Highway of the Redeemed.” Whatever it is called, a principal purpose was the destruction of the Jew/Greek barrier through the ministry of the Church, the Community of the Redeemed.

We carry into that community freedom from cultural and religious constraints and live in a state of anticipation, not of the next cataclysmic event in human history, but anticipation that is responsive to God alone.

The mandate of the Christ-walk is carried into the world in which we live through hearts turned away from self.

Central to our rejection of self is the theology of the cross. If we are indeed a people set apart, we must minister first to each other and then to those of that other kingdom, the world.

The legitimate call of the Gospel is very simply away from our demonic ideologies. The ideology of Christian morality; the ideology of self-preservation; the ideology of prosperity; the ideology of a Utopian, war-free society – these are all perversions that arise when a legitimate end becomes the thing worshipped.

It is, then, within the Kingdom of God that love is possible and that men and women can be freed to be peacemakers in the true sense. Rather than devising clever means of getting into Caesar’s door, such as taking over the Republican Party, our energies would be better directed toward building a “visible alternative” to Caesar.

Theologian William Willimon, in a 1989 article, “An Offering of Slogans,” said it this way:

The church is God’s attempt to create a plan of peace and justice where we might be saved from the disasters of our efforts to take matters into our own hands…The “peace that passeth all understanding” is about the One who came to us because we could not get together and come to Him – the One who comes to guide our feet into the way of peace (Willimon, “An Offering of Slogans, Christianity Today, August 12, 1989, p. 24).

Willimon reminds us that our task as believers is not to be “…useful within the present scheme of things, but to be helpful…Setting things right, in itself, is not the supreme moral action. The supreme moral action is to live and die as Christ (p. 25).”

Of this I am certain. The bottom line of Christian ethics demands that we treat others as we ourselves would be treated. To carry that out is to stop our judging and to earn the right to speak by bearing another’s burdens until it costs us something.

If we cannot practice this here in our culture, we have no business invading other cultures with our pious ideas of right living. By definition, then, to be a tourist, a Christian in somebody else’s land or a short term resident, is to pray, not for the plight of “the lost,” but for an obvious and constant humility.

To witness to the power of the cross with our lips and not our lives is to do violence to the cause of Christ and our brothers and sisters who come after us.

The “ugly born-again American” never stays long enough to repent for the damage he has caused.”

What, Then, Must We Do?

Christians who take seriously the presence of the Kingdom of God have a few basic requirements by which to live out their lives of faith:

1. We have a requirement to know what we believe and to measure what we hear by the core doctrines of the faith…

2. We have a requirement to reject all doctrines that fail to square with the Sermon on the Mount…

3. We have a requirement to expose and reject false prophets who teach anything other than the Gospel of peace and the power of a sovereign God…This includes those who have built corporate empires around the false worship of the American Dream ethic of power and prosperity…

4. As tourists to the Holy Land, we have a requirement to studiously avoid the tourist traps and to seek out Christian communities there so that we may be linked with brothers and sisters who prayerfully seek only God’s will…

5. We have an obligation to pray, not for the so-called Second Coming of Christ but that the presence of Christ and His Kingdom might be made evident through His bride, the Church…

6. We have an obligation to prayerfully vote, not for a person steeped in Christian idiom and little else, but for him or her who is the right person to protect and defend the United States of America…

7. We have a requirement to live in prayerful anticipation of God’s hand in human history in times and in manners unknown to us…

8. We have a requirement to reject the United States of America or the nation of Israel as our hope and to accept the Kingdom of God as victorious over all such hegemonies, while at the same time respecting and protecting the rights of others…

9. We have a requirement to live with a race-free, color-blind, sex-blind, classless worldview that strives to do its best with our weak, human institutions…

10. Finally, we have an obligation to faithfully build the church and believe that God is capable of working through the church to His good purpose…

It is only in community that we can offer hope to a world spinning out of control and aided by false prophets.

If there is gathered together the community of the redeemed in the Holy Land, and if any one of us is indeed called to bear witness there to the reality of the living Christ, may God give us strength to endure the death required of our pre-conceived agendas.

For, of all places on earth, the true witness of Jesus Christ clearly stands in violent opposition to all sides. Peacemaking, therefore, because it is the fruit of true Christian love, will cost us our right to be right and may indeed put our very lives at peril.

May God have mercy.

The Pathology of Christian Zionism

By

Stan Moody

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry

Psychologist Eric Fromm has left behind (pun intended) some very incisive gems that link the pathology of Christian Zionism with the culture of fear that gave rise to Nazi Germany.

Christian Zionism is the logical end-game of a diasporic Evangelical Right that has lost sight of Jesus’ inauguration of the Kingdom of God as a homeland for the stranger and the alien in society.

Redemptive history always holds out the hope of a Promised Land – from the Jews in exile in Egypt to Christians in exile in a culture hostile to freedom from national allegiances. What invariably happens is that along with hope goes unrealized expectation that can lead to discouragement. Discouragement renders God distant and unresponsive and turns the individual to seeking other options for surrendering his identity. Religion becomes an identity to be protected rather than a victory to be lived.

A distant and unresponsive God leads the discouraged believer to long for security within geographical or ideological boundaries rather than within the boundless presence of God with his people. The transfer of passion from boundless presence to geographical boundaries inevitably leads to nationalism and the insistence on the ability to worship without biblical or intellectual challenge to one’s doctrines.

Fromm dissects nationalism and finds within it pathology of narcissism. In the outline of a lecture, he extends to groups certain familiar codependent behavior patterns prevalent among individuals. This phenomenon is not unlike that explored by Anne Wilson Schaef (Schaef, When Society Becomes an Addict, HarperCollins, New York, 1987). The difference is that Fromm writes from the very real condition of an alienated and discouraged German populace safeguarding itself against an alienated European Jewish population.

For nationalistic Germans, their Promised Land was to be the Third Reich, strengthened by the annihilation of a vulnerable and competing Jewish culture – vulnerable by a seemingly odd religion and economically competitive.

“Three Aspects of Nationalism”

Fromm’s three aspects of nationalism are:

1. A sentiment of belonging with those who share the same language…

2. The organization of shared ideas into a sovereign state representative of those ideas…

3. The unification of the state by a common economy…

If we were to apply these three aspects of nationalism to the agenda of the Christian Right, it is easy to see how the movement has progressed from the local church to political activism to nationalism.

The local church is a classic group of people who share the same language – a cryptic language, the use of which stands as a litmus test of faith. Each denomination or sect has its own idiom. Such terms as “born again,” “saved” and “Rapture” are metatags of language to qualify believers. “Talking the talk” carries with it the assumption that one is “Walking the walk.”

As a result, con artists whose faith runs no deeper than a platform for self protection and self advancement abound within the Christian Right.

Over time, churches become ghettoized in their longing for comfort against the painful search for truth that requires exposure to and confrontation with competing beliefs. Study becomes sloppy and superficial, and core doctrines of the faith give way to idiom. In short, the ghettoized Christian knows what he knows but does not know, or perhaps care, what he believes outside its shorthand language.

This pathology leads to a resistance to cultural change and becomes reactive in a system that has codified its symbols into its faith. Change from without challenges paralysis from within. The more change, the more fear. The more fear, the greater the feeling of alienation. The more alienation, the greater the tendency toward seeking comfort in larger groups, leading ultimately to nationalism and the enshrining of religious language into the law.

Fromm distinguishes a healthy interest in and love of country from narcissism, a condition under which love of country overrides love of humanity, and love of family overrides love of neighbor.

Narcissism sees self as the only viable reality. When narcissism is extended to groups, group-think, group-fear and group-oppression become the only reality. The “outside world” has no credibility. When that outside world begins encroaching on the ability of the group to remain comfortable in its ghetto, however, the group seeks out other groups whose language of faith is shared. As a result, the language of faith becomes watered down into one-size-fits-all and supersedes core beliefs.

The ultimate comfort in this search for acceptance is nationalism and the constitutional protection of religious language. It is not unusual, for example, for the Christian Right to advocate for the replacement of the Constitution with the Bible. Such patriots, then, work against liberties of other groups than their own, which translates into bias against those who fail to adopt familiar language.

Even the proud phrase, “God bless America,” can be narcissistic when stated in the context of, “My country is the most wonderful nation on earth.” Implied is that all others, including their citizens, are substandard. It is the war cry of the closed mind. Unfortunately, such sentiment is applauded as loyal and patriotic in America. Samuel Johnson, on April 7, 1775, made this statement: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

The resulting consensus yields an ethic that says, “My group or nation is wonderful.” Church people are notorious for selling their church to others on the grounds that theirs is what everyone in the church culture is seeking: “You ought to check out my church!”

Fromm sees social narcissism as a way of boosting one’s own estimate of self through the adoption of desired qualities by the group. “I am wonderful because my group is wonderful.” Rather than work on self improvement, the narcissist bypasses the pain of personal growth by deferring to the group. Religious convictions, therefore, become head-bound rather than heart-bound. Religious language becomes group law rather than personal conviction.

Today, nation, religion and political creed are the main objects of Group Narcissism.

“Pathology of Narcissism”

Lack of Judgment and Reason:

By closing the mind to alternative belief systems or examining its own language for content and meaning, Group Narcissism protects its creeds against an encroaching world. Fromm sees this development as an inability to view the world objectively.

In the church culture, objective truth evolves into subjective faith because it is protected against an assault that usually never happens. While the world lumbers on in its inimitable fashion, any deviation from the body of truth that has solidified into group-think is perceived to be a focused attack on group values.

Because symbolism (creeds, carvings and language) becomes the hallmark of faith, any attack on symbols is viewed personally by the group as an attack on its beliefs. As the group develops a poor self-image, the only way to right its perceived strength is to join forces with other groups of like language and fight for the reinstitution of the symbol. At this point, belief becomes secondary to the language of belief.

Thus, school prayer, which is really not Christian prayer at all, is a symbol that must be restored at the expense of discrimination against people of other faiths or of no faith at all. Traditional marriage must be constitutionally mandated at the expense of those who are in non-traditional lifestyles. Love of self, then, overrides love of neighbor. Faith loses its objective of trusting God and subjectively turns to the group, the political party or the nation.

Failure of Love:

The second pathology of narcissism that Fromm identifies is its antithesis to love. The great irony for the church, of course, is its common failure as a community of love to demonstrate that love to a watching world. The war in Iraq is a classic example. It is common for evangelical Christians to justify that war on the grounds that it is better “…that we kill them over there than that they kill us over here.”

Narcissism never goes much beyond “them” being those who pose a threat, however remote, to the language of faith, and “us” being those who are surrounded