The FundamentaList: This week in the religious right:

This week in the religious right: Jeremiah Wright and John Hagee agree on theology, Hagee explains divine "curses," and the Christians-only National Day of Prayer comes to Washington.

Sarah Posner | April 30, 2008 | web only


1. God Damn It!

After coming under fire for insisting that God punished New Orleans with a catastrophic hurricane because of a gay-pride parade, John Hagee finally relented on Friday. Or did he? Here's the statement his public-relations firm put out on his behalf:


As a believing Christian, I see the hand of God in everything that happens here on earth, both the blessings and the curses. But ultimately neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise. No matter what the cause of the storm, my heart goes out to all who suffered in this terrible tragedy. There but for the grace of God go any one of us.
Of course this new statement does not alter Hagee's position that God condemns the "sin" of homosexuality, or even discounts the possibility that God could use a hurricane to curse a city for sinning. He's just saying he can't know what God was thinking when he destroyed New Orleans with a Category 5 hurricane.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright claimed to use the same biblical starting point -- the Book of Deuteronomy -- in his now-infamous "God damn America" sermon. Deuteronomy laid down the law for the Israelites in the Promised Land after they spent 40 years wandering in the desert. It says that God blesses obedience and curses disobedience. Examples of disobedience include the death penalty for drunkenness and homosexuality, and most are largely ignored by even the most traditionalist Christians (but not by the Christian Reconstructionists).

Wright explained his use of the word "damn" on Bill Moyers Journal Friday:


If you look at the damning, condemning, if you look at Deuteronomy, it talks about blessings and curses, how God doesn't bless everything. God does not bless gang-bangers. God does not bless dope dealers. God does not bless young thugs that hit old women upside the head and snatch their purse. God does not bless that. God does not bless the killing of babies. God does not bless the killing of enemies. And when you look at blessings and curses out of that Hebrew tradition from the book of Deuteronomy, that's what the prophets were saying, that God is not blessing this. ... I also think people don't understand condemn, D-E-M-N, D-A-M-N. They don't understand the root, the etymology of the word in terms of God condemning the practices that are against God's people.
Wright is backpedaling here -- because he just as easily could have sermonized, "God's not going to bless America for its aggression; He might just condemn it." It would have had the same theological impact and he might have even found more sympathizers. But as we saw this week, scaled-back rhetoric is not his forte. Nor, for that matter, is it Hagee's.

2. What Says Hagee About Blessings and Curses and War?

While Wright asserts that God condemns the death and destruction wrought by war, Hagee thinks that God just might condemn avoiding war. In his 2006 book, Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee wrote that God would curse America if it stood by as Iran attacked Israel. This is not some random, taken-out-of-context quote. He wrote a whole book on this, preached about it, and founded an organization called Christians United for Israel to mobilize grassroots political support for his ideas. He gets private meetings with members of the president's national security staff, presents former CIA director James Woolsey as a speaker at his "Middle East Intelligence Briefing" (held at his church), and sits down with congressional leaders of both parties to talk about foreign policy. But don't worry, McCain's never even been to Hagee's church!

In Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee explains how the Book of Ezekiel prophesies that an army of Arabs (including Iran, although Hagee doesn't explain that Iran is not an Arab country), led by Russia, will invade Israel, but that God will exterminate all but one-sixth of the "Russian axis of evil." Hagee actually describes God's murderous judgment as "His strategy of war."

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fundamentalist_043008