Spiritual Politics tipped God-o-Meter off to a Revealer post showcasing a Holocaust-themed sermon from John Hagee, the Texas televangelist and John McCain endorser. Apparently from the 1990s, the sermon has Hagee blaming the Holocaust partly on the Jews and framing it as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and as part of God’s plan for the Jews’ return to the Holy Land.Watch it here:Spiritual Politics’s Mark Silk has trouble accepting that the “famously philosemitic’ Hagee can be tagged as anti-Semitic:
That seems to me an exaggeration at best. Theological interpretations of the Holocaust as God’s judgment is pretty standard in ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles, for example. And bear in mind that Hagee is exegeting the story of the dry bones in Ezechiel 37; it’s typical evangelical interpretation to see God’s action there as stirring the spiritually dead. I’m inclined to see this as Hagee indulging in the normal evangelical understanding of the Jews as not yet “awakened” through knowledge of Christ. That’s hardly anti-Semitic.
Whether the national news media would see those same distinctions, should the Hagee video make it that far, is another question. God-o-Meter doubts it. Which means John McCain could face another round of Hagee headaches, since the Arizona senator has refused to completely disown him.4
posted May 19, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I’m not sure that Hagee’s remarks were anit-Semitic. I don’t know if theologically they are sound. I would have thought that God could have invited the Jews to come back to Israel in a way different than sending Hitler to hound them there…oh say, by sending them a postcard…., but I’ll leave that for others to decide. I have problems with Hagee’s contentions that God sent a hurricane to New Orleans to kill and hurt its citizens because of a gay pride parade or calling the Catholic Church a whore, but again, I’ll leave the theology for others.
But, what shall we do with these troublesome ministers…McCain’s and Obama’s? Wouldn’t it be better to just leave both of them out of it? Does anyone really think that anyone who endorses Obama or McCain fully embraces all of their beliefs? What if some serial killer decides he’s going to endorse one of them? What would that mean? Neither Wright nor Hagee should have much to do with this election. Now if McCain endorsed Hagee and all his beliefs or if Obama endorsed Wright and all his beleifs, that would be news. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter.
posted May 19, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I recall that:
David Duke endorsed “Ronnie Ray-gun” and it didn’t hurt him much.
posted May 22, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Hagee may be following the normal evangelical understanding of the text, but it seems a bit of a non sequitur to me. So God causes the Holocaust so that Jews will go to Israel…considering that Hitler wasn’t rounding Jews and sending them to Israel, but instead to concentration camps where a great many were killed (and a great many other ethnic and social groups as well–was God calling them too? Or were they just collateral damage?), the idea sounds a bit off. And while a greater number of Jews did immigrate to Israel in the years right before and during WWII, it wasn’t actually all peace and love and matzah balls either…almost immediately there were violent conflicts with Arabs. But I guess that was in God’s plan too. Like a countdown to the end of days.
But not everybody went to Israel. And certainly not all Jewish people live in Israel now. Should we be in fear of being struck down now, just so a few more people will get the idea to move to Israel?
Sounds like a lot of fallacies in one sermon to me.