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Thread ID: 16097 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2004-12-27
2004-12-27 18:12 | User Profile
From San Antonio Current: [url]http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13423763&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=484045&rfi=6[/url]
The enemy of my enemy
John Hagee supports Zionism to the detriment of Israel and Jewish Americans
By Elaine Wolff 11/24/2004
It's Wednesday, November 17, and Rabbi Barry Block is speaking to the downtown Rotary Club luncheon crowd at the Bright Shawl. Rotary is an international network of affiliates, guided by the philosopy of founder Paul Harris who envisioned Rotarians as goodwill ambassadors of all faiths and nationalities, engaged in promoting a more peaceful and prosperous world. In addition to that worthy goal, San Antonio's century-old downtown Rotary functions as an influential business network whose members include prominent Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and a large contingent of what is good-naturedly referred to as the Central Catholic Mafia.
It's not at all unusual for a Jewish rabbi to address the attendees. Downtown Rotary's membership is relatively diverse and so are its speakers, but his appearance is significant in light of another bridge-building event held the same week at which Block - head of Temple Beth-El - will not be appearing. On Sunday, November 21, Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church will host the Night to Honor Israel, a fundraiser that makes the Right of Return (Israeli citizenship extended to members of the Jewish diaspora who meet certain genealogic criteria) a reality for Jews living in the former Soviet Union through a program Hagee calls, in inimitable Barnum & Bailey hyperbole, Exodus II. Since its inception, John Hagee Ministries claims that Exodus II has raised more than $3.7 million and helped to relocate more than 6,000 Russian Jews.
It's an impressive show of support for Israel. Over the past 20 years, since the first Night was held in 1981, Hagee has befriended some of the most influential Jewish leaders in Texas and the country. The elegant gold-lettered invitation lists among its sponsors Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg of Congregation Rodfei Sholom and the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston. As important, however, are the names that don't appear below the scripture excerpt from Zephaniah 3:20 (For I will give you fame and praise ... When I return your captives before your eyes, Says the Lord): The rabbis of Temple Beth-El, the city's prominent Reform congregation, and the Jewish Federation of San Antonio.
What's not to love about an evangelical Christian pastor who has made more than 20 trips to Israel, raised more than a million dollars for resettlement, and has devoted pages of his newsletter and hours of talk to his self-professed devotion to the Jewish people? Hagee preaches that Christianity owes its very inception to the Jewish religion and he frequently reminds his followers that the prophets and holy texts they worship sprung from Judaism. "The support of Israel for every Christian believer is Biblically based," Hagee told a BBC reporter in 2002, and he has repeatedly described his emotional first trip to the Holy City in 1978, which inspired the Night to Honor Israel. (Hagee declined to be interviewed for this story, saying through his personal assistant that he would be traveling until just before the event).
In the decades following the Holocaust, Jewish leaders have also been keen to forge relationships with Christian and Catholic congregations in order to foster greater understanding and respect, and guarantee that the horrible events of World War II do not happen again. These alliances necessarily involve some agreement to disagree on theological matters, and forbearance on the part of prosthelytizing religions such as evangelicals. Fear that evangelical Christians might be out to convert them fuels much of the mistrust that Jews feel toward people like Hagee who stand with their arms and Bibles stretched out to the children of Abraham. To the chagrin of some evangelicals, however, Hagee doesn't try to convert Jews because he believes God will do it Himself during the Second Coming; all Hagee has to do is get all of biblical Israel into Israeli hands, and settle enough Russian Jews in its environs.
Hagee is a Christian Zionist, a proponent of movement that can trace its roots to 19th-century premillenial dispensationalism, a theology that interprets literally biblical prophesies about the Rapture, Armageddon, and the Second Coming. Premillenial dispensationalism tunnels even deeper into history, to the First Crusade launched by Pope Urban. "It was also a popularly held belief," notes scholar Thomas Asbridge, "that the 'Last Days' prophesied in the Bible ... could only come to pass once the city of Jerusalem was once again in Christian hands."
Hagee is fond of talking about how much Christianity owes Judaism, but what he's really interested in is collecting future interest. "It is an undeniable fact of history that the man or the nation that has blessed Israel, has been blessed of God," he told the BBC. "And so we, as a church, bless the nation of Israel with practical acts of kindness ..." But Hagee's prescription for salvation is harder to swallow than that. As evangelicals who are critical of Hagee's teachings have noted, Hagee sees himself as the instrument who will fulfill biblical prophesy as we enter the beginning stages of the End of Days. This leads to some almost hilariously precise interpretation. Why Russian Jews in particular, you might wonder (the Winter 2004 issue of Reform Judaism reported that "Along the Trans Siberian Railway Jewish communities are being revitalized," and that 200 Jews recently moved from Jerusalem back to the Siberian town of Birobidzhan). Based on the words of the prophet Jeremiah, the time is coming, says Hagee, when the Jewish people will no longer worship the God that brought them out of Egypt, but the God "that brought [them] from the north parts." If you draw a line straight up from Israel, you land in ... Moscow! Hence, Exodus II.
In Daniel to Doomsday, one of a handful of books he has written detailing his apocalypse theories, Hagee argues that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 marked "the beginning of the end." During the inevitable Rapture, Jesus will return to earth and "The hearts of the Jewish people ... will fully turn to their true God ... " He can be more diplomatic when he's talking to a pluralistic audience, telling the BBC that "I say to my Orthodox Jewish friends, when we're standing on the streets of Jerusalem and the Messiah is coming down the road, one of us has a big theological adjustment to make." Of the Jews interviewed for this story who participate in Night to Honor Israel, none admitted to being familiar with Hagee's specific teachings, but they're willing to accept him more or less at face value for the benefit they believe he brings Israel, and because he has neutralized the contentious conversion issue.
Rabbi Block, however, is not inspired by a "Christian Messianic vision in which we Jews don't fare very well. You could say, 'Who cares?' because we don't believe in those views anyway, but that doesn't seem to show much respect for each other's positions." As Israeli author Gershon Gorenberg writes in The End of Days, the school of biblical prophecy that Hagee preaches is a four-act play, "where we as Jews disappear in the fourth act, just prior to the return of Jesus."
The San Antonio Federation's executive director Mark Freedman gave the Current a very carefully worded appreciation for, "the generous donations ... to the Jewish Agency for Israel that have helped to enable Jews from the former Soviet Union to emigrate to Israel." But the lack of formal representation, says Block, is because there is dissension in the city's Jewish community.
If this were strictly an inter-religious scriptural disagreement, though, it wouldn't merit much attention outside of synagogues and churches. Temple Beth-El member Janet Alyn is among Hagee's critics who believe that American Jews have the benefit of making distinctions among their allies. As a member of a progressive Reform congregation, she says, "I cannot support his activities because his preachings infringe on my rights." A longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood, Alyn is deeply opposed to Hagee's teachings on social issues such as abortion and homosexuality. "Hagee says we love the sinner but abhor the sin. I'm concerned with honoring the humanity of people, regardless of their sexual orientation."
Alyn is most concerned that Hagee is a leader in a movement that wants to make religious tenets such as creationism into legal statutes. John Hagee Ministries organized a Road to Victory 2002 "pro-life, pro family" rally in Washington, D.C. that featured Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Tom DeLay, and a Christian Support for Israel Rally, implying that the Jewish-American community and co-sponsor Christian Coalition also share a common social agenda. For Reform Judaism in particular, the largest branch of American Judaism, this has historically not been true. "I don't believe Hagee's beliefs should be made the law of the land anymore than mine," says Alyn.
The trade-off has even larger ramifications than potential, if inadvertent, support for right-wing Christian efforts to restrict civil rights. As Donald Wagner of Chicago's North Park University, who has written extensively on the subject, has observed, Hagee's activities are part of a larger political alliance between Christian Zionists and conservative Jewish-American and Israeli Zionists that began to form during Jimmy Carter's administration when Carter articulated the idea that peace in the Middle East would require some accommodation of Palestinian claims.
In partnership with national organizations such as the American Israeli Political Action Committee, Hagee advocates for political policies that favor his biblical prophesies. When then-Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Yasser Arafat, Hagee inveighed against him on his radio and television programs, which have a potential audience of 90million. "Yes, let's have a Palestinian State," Hagee told the BBC. "But let's have it where there's no division of the City of Jerusalem, because Jerusalem must never be divided again."
told the crowd, "whoever sits in Washington and suggests to the people of Israel that they have to give up more land in exchange for peace, that is an obscenity." In light of the Knesset's recent hard-won vote to withdraw from Gaza and the Christian right's feeling that Bush owes them his reelection, it's worth pondering whether this is a good year to lend any political legitimacy to Hagee. Hagee has bragged that his advocacy on behalf of Israel gives him a great deal of influence with its government. "Well, if I phone Israel," he told his BBC interviewers, "I could get in contact with most anyone that I wanted to talk to."
The reporter presses him: "Pretty much straight away?"
"Right away," Hagee averred.
Hagee's hawkish political agenda makes Block uncomfortable. "The particular version of Israel that is applauded at [A Night to Honor Israel] is a very right-wing version of Israel," says Block. If [Hagee's claim of influence with the Israeli government] is true, then that in my mind is why it isn't our business in San Antonio to be granting him that legitimacy." Nonetheless, he says, "I don't think Jewish support of this event has any more significance this year."
Hagee's conflation of earthly and spiritual concerns in service of a particular ideology may also distance other Christian congregations. Block says he believes it would hamper the development of relationships with Christian denominations "who share our values at so many other levels," if he were to publicly support Hagee in Exodus II.
Pastor Charlie Johnson of Trinity Baptist Church declined to comment on Pastor Hagee personally, but he says he does not believe that the Second Coming of Christ is dependent upon any particular political agenda or configuration. "God doesn't love one nation above another," says Johnson, who also believes that the Kingdom of God promised by the New Testament is one of "empowerment, equality, justice, and inclusion.
"The principles of Jesus would call Christian people to work and act for justice on the part of Palestinians as well as the Jewish peoples," he argues. This seems to be the watershed dividing line for Jews debating the relative merits of Hagee's Israeli ministry.
Russell Davis is a member of both the Reform Temple Beth-El and the Modern Orthodox Congregation Rodfei Sholom. For most of the 20 years that Hagee has hosted the Night to Honor Israel, Davis didn't go because he disagrees with Hagee on many fundamental issues. But a few years ago, he began attending. "I just woke up one day and decided I was wrong." His support for Exodus II, he says, is not an endorsement of Hagee's other policies. "I'm passionate about this issue, and so is he."
"Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East," observes Lee Munsch, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston which co-sponsors the Night to Honor Israel. "Israel and America are fighting the same war on terror ... I think [critics of the event] don't understand the issues at play in the Middle East." Munsch acknowledges "the needs of the Palestinians," and says he is in support of the Israeli government's decision to pull back from Gaza, but adds that it is one of the Houston Federation's goals to increase American advocacy for a pro-Israeli solution to the conflict.
Investment banker Oscar Ehrenberg is a highly regarded member of the local Jewish community and one of the most influential supporters of Hagee. A survivor of the Holocaust, he speaks with authority in an avuncular manner. "I think he has accomplished the beginning of a very important reconciliation between the Christian and Jewish people worldwide," says Ehrenberg. "I'm not going to question his motives. If I'm hungry and somebody gives me a loaf of bread, I'm not going to question why he is giving it to me."
Rabbi Block doesn't believe he has that luxury. "I don't think [Hagee and I] share a vision of America or Israel." On issues such as the separation of church and state, he says, "we bolster him at our personal peril." Hagee's right-wing stance on homosexuals, AIDS victims, and other outsiders reminds Block of a passage from the Torah: "Remember the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the heart of Egypt."
2004-12-27 19:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE]In the decades following the Holocaust, Jewish leaders have also been keen to forge relationships [B]with Christian and Catholic congregations [/B] in order to foster greater understanding and respect, and guarantee that the horrible events of World War II do not happen again. [/QUOTE]
Say what?
2004-12-27 21:02 | User Profile
It's false priests and preachers like Hagee, and their blind allegiance to anti-Christ Israel, no matter their sins against humanity, that has put the American people in the cross-hairs of Islamic terrorists.
Not to mention the dishonor they bring upon the name of Christ. I find Hagee especially odious.....A classic 'wolf in sheeps clothing.'
'Next to Satan the Christian has no greater enemy than the Jew' ...Martin Luther...