Tom Delay and the Christian Zionists

I know, I know, this is from a conservative publication, but these are not your foaming-at-the-mouth Bush fanatics--CA

Tom DeLay & the Christian Zionists

Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: The Christian Palestinians

I've noted before the high quality of Pat Buchanan's weekly magazine, The American Conservative, which he co-publishes with Scott McConnell. There is always at least one piece in each issue that by itself is worth the price of admission, and always several worth reading. The current May 24 issue offers this dazzling piece by Anders Strindberg on a major missing piece to the Middle East puzzle. Read it and you can begin to see why the most important barrier to peace in the Middle East is neither Arab nor Jew, but a Christian Zionist from Houston named Tom DeLay. Yes, the American Jewish Political Establishment has a powerful lobby in Washington, but it would not be nearly as powerful if it did not have the leverage of the born-again fundamentalists. JW

Forgotten Christians
Not all displaced Palestinians are Muslims

By Anders Strindberg

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” is playing to full houses in the Syrian capital Damascus. Watching it here turns out to be much the same as watching it on opening night in New York—customarily rowdy moviegoers observe a reverent silence, the usual sound of candy wrappers is replaced by sobbing and gasping, and, at the end of it all, the audience files out of the theater in silence and contemplation. Many of those watching the movie on this occasion are Palestinian Christian refugees whose parents or grandparents were purged from their homeland—the land of Christ—at the foundation of Israel in 1948. For them the movie has an underlying symbolic meaning not easily perceived in the West: not only is it a depiction of the trial, scourging, and death of Jesus, it is also a symbolic depiction of the fate of the Palestinian people. “This is how we feel,” says Zaki, a 27-year old Palestinian Christian whose family hails from Haifa. “We take beating after beating at the hands of the world, they crucify our people, they insult us, but we refuse to surrender.”

At the time of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it is estimated that the Christians of Palestine numbered some 350,000. Almost 20 percent of the total population at the time, they constituted a vibrant and ancient community; their forbears had listened to St. Peter in Jerusalem as he preached at the first Pentecost. Yet Zionist doctrine held that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Of the 750,000 Palestinians that were forced from their homes in 1948, some 50,000 were Christians—7 percent of the total number of refugees and 35 percent of the total number of Christians living in Palestine at the time.

In the process of “Judaizing” Palestine, numerous convents, hospices, seminaries, and churches were either destroyed or cleared of their Christian owners and custodians. In one of the most spectacular attacks on a Christian target, on May 17, 1948, the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate was shelled with about 100 mortar rounds—launched by Zionist forces from the already occupied monastery of the Benedictine Fathers on Mount Zion. The bombardment also damaged St. Jacob’s Convent, the Archangel’s Convent, and their appended churches, their two elementary and seminary schools, as well as their libraries, killing eight people and wounding 120.

Today it is believed that the number of Christians in Israel and occupied Palestine number some 175,000, just over 2 percent of the entire population, but the numbers are rapidly dwindling due to mass emigration. Of those who have remained in the region, most live in Lebanon, where they share in the same bottomless misery as all other refugees, confined to camps where schools are under-funded and overcrowded, where housing is ramshackle, and sanitary conditions are appalling. Most, however, have fled the region altogether. No reliable figures are available, but it is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 Palestinian Christians currently live in the U.S.

The Palestinian Christians see themselves, and are seen by their Muslim compatriots, as an integral part of the Palestinian people, and they have long been a vital part of the Palestinian struggle. As the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, the Reverend Riah Abu al-Assal has explained, “The Arab Palestinian Christians are part and parcel of the Arab Palestinian nation. We have the same history, the same culture, the same habits and the same hopes.”

Yet U.S. media and politicians have become accustomed to thinking of and talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one in which an enlightened democracy is constantly forced to repel attacks from crazy-eyed Islamists bent on the destruction of the Jewish people and the imposition of an Islamic state. Palestinians are equated with Islamists, Islamists with terrorists. It is presumably because all organized Christian activity among Palestinians is non-political and non-violent that the community hardly ever hits the Western headlines; suicide bombers sell more copy than people who congregate for Bible study.

Lebanese and Syrian Christians were essential in the conception of Arab nationalism as a general school of anti-colonial thought following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. During the 1930s, Hajj Amin al-Hussein, the leader of the Palestinian struggle against the British colonialists, surrounded himself with Christian advisors and functionaries. In the 1950s and ’60s, as the various factions that were to form the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) emerged, some of the most prominent militants were yet again of Christian origin. For instance, George Habash, a Greek Orthodox medical doctor from al-Lod, created the Arab Nationalists’ Movement and went on to found the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Naif Hawatmeh, also Greek Orthodox, from al-Salt in Jordan, founded and still today heads up the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Among those better regarded in the West, Hannan Ashrawi, one of the Palestinian Authority’s most effective spokespersons, is a Christian.

In fact, over the decades, many of the rank and file among the secular nationalist groups of the PLO have been Christians who have seen leftist nationalist politics as the only alternative to both Islamism and Western liberalism, the former objectionable because of its religiously exclusive nature, the latter due to what is seen by many as its inherent protection of Israel and the Zionist project.

Among the remnant communities in Palestine, most belong to the traditional Christian confessions. The largest group is Greek Orthodox, followed by Catholics (Roman, Syrian, Maronite, and Melkite), Armenian Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans. There is also a small but influential Quaker presence. These communities are centered in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, and Ramallah.

For them, the conflict with Israel is quite obviously not about Islamism contra enlightenment but simply about resistance against occupation. To be sure, there have been periods of tension between the Christian communities and members of the Islamist groups, yet to many Christian Palestinians the Islamist movements have emerged by default as the heroes in the conflict with Israel. Following the incremental atrophy of leftist ideals, the Islamists are seen as the only ones who are willing and able to fight the occupation. The Lebanese Hezbollah, widely seen as a nonsectarian organization that is able to cooperate with people of all faiths, is particularly admired both among the refugees in Lebanon as well as those who remain in Palestine. “We have received far more support and comfort from the Hezbollah in Lebanon than from our fellow Christians in the West,” remarked one Christian Palestinian refugee in Damascus. “I want to know, why don’t the Christians in the West do anything to help us? Are the teachings of Jesus nothing but empty slogans to them?”

This is a justified and important question, but the answer is not straightforward. The Catholic Church has, in fact, long argued for an end to the Israeli occupation and for improvement of the Palestinians’ situation. The leaders of the Eastern Orthodox churches have taken similar, often more strongly worded positions. Likewise, many Lutheran and Calvinist churches run organizations and programs that seek to ease the suffering of the Palestinians and draw attention to the injustices with which they are faced. Usually working within strictly religious frames of reference, however, their impact on the political situation has been minimal.

This political limitation has not applied to those parts of the Evangelical movement that have adopted Zionism as a core element of their religious doctrine. Christian Zionists in the U.S. are currently organized in an alliance with the pro-Israel lobby and the neoconservative elements of the Republican Party, enabling them to put significant pressure on both the president and members of Congress. In fact, they are among the most influential shapers of policy in the country, including individuals such as Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell, and groups such as the National Unity Coalition for Israel, Christians for Israel, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and Chosen People Ministries.

Christian Zionism is an odd thing on many levels. A key tenet of Christian Zionism is absolute support for Israel, whose establishment and existence, it is believed, heralds Armageddon and the second coming of Christ. The politically relevant upshot of this is that without Israel’s expansion there can be no redemption, and those who subscribe to this interpretation are only too eager to sacrifice their Palestinian fellow Christians on the altar of Zionism. They do not want to hear about coreligionists’ suffering at the hands of Israel.

Israeli and Jewish American leaders have until recently kept their distance from the Christian Zionist movement. But Beltway alliance politics coupled with a sharp turn to the right among American Jewish organizations since Israel began its onslaught on Palestinians in September 2000, has driven them into each other’s arms.

One of the most potent forces behind the Evangelical Zionist influence in Washington is Tom DeLay, leader of the Republican majority in the House. DeLay insists that his devotion to Israel stems from his faith in God, which allows him a clear understanding of the struggle between good and evil. Be that as it may, he is also able to cash in financially and politically from his position. Part of DeLay’s growing influence within the Republican Party stems from the fact that his campaign committees managed to raise an impressive $12 million in 2001-2002. Washington Post writer Jim VandeHei suggested, “In recent years, DeLay has become one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel and has been rewarded with a surge of donations from the Jewish community.”

In Oct. 2002, Benny Elon, Sharon’s minister of tourism and a staunch advocate of a comprehensive purge of Palestinians from the Holy Land, appeared with DeLay at the Washington convention of the Christian Coalition. Crowds waved Israeli flags as Elon cited Biblical authority for this preferred way of dealing with the pesky Palestinians. DeLay, in turn, received an enthusiastic welcome when he called for activists to back pro-Israel candidates who “stand unashamedly for Jesus Christ.” In July 2003, Tom DeLay traveled to Israel and addressed the Knesset, telling the assembled legislators that he was an “Israeli at heart.” The Palestinians “have been oppressed and abused,” he said, but never by Israel, only by their own leaders. DeLay received a standing ovation.

Christians find themselves under the hammer of the Israeli occupation to no less an extent than Muslims, yet America—supposedly a Christian country—stands idly by because its most politically influential Christians have decided that Palestinian Christians are acceptable collateral damage in their apocalyptic quest. “To be a Christian from the land of Christ is an honor,” says Abbas, a Palestinian Christian whose family lived in Jerusalem for many generations until the purge of 1948. “To be expelled from that land is an injury, and these Zionist Christians in America add insult.”

Abbas is one of the handful of Palestinian Christians that could be described as Evangelical, belonging to a group that appears to be distantly related to the Plymouth Brethren. Cherishing the role of devil’s advocate, I had to ask him, “Is the State of Israel not in fact the fulfillment of God’s promise and a necessary step in the second coming of Christ?” Abbas looked at me briefly and laughed. “You’re kidding, right? You know what they do to our people and our land. If I thought that was part of God’s plan, I’d be an atheist in a second.”

___________________________________________________
Anders Strindberg is an academic and a journalist specializing in Mideast politics.

http://www.amconmag.com/2004_05_24/article.html
May 24, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative

[Gentle Giant]

As a liberal American Jew, it's been very disturbing to me in the last few years that Israel's traditionally liberal support base in the US has been supplanted by the religious right. I don't trust them or their motives, nor do I think their support has been particularly helpful. I do fear, however, that some liberal American Jews will move to right-center because conservatives have been more vocal in support of Israel.

The left, I guess, always roots for the underdog and these days the Palestinian cause is their darling, while Israel, once seen as the small, vulnerable oasis of democracy, is now portrayed as the large, evil aggressor. No doubt Sharon makes an easy poster boy for iron-fisted diplomacy, but let's not forget that Palestinian leaders are in bed with terrorists and have never done anything to dissuade suicide bombers, nor have they ever presented their people with a vision and a plan for peaceful autonomous statehood.

[graypencil]

As an American agnostic ( closer to being a druid ), I think Tom Delay along with DUBBya represent the largest danger to face America in its existence ..governing the country AND the world by some assumed divine right to bring about the dire predictions ( i.e. Zionism, Armageddon ) in their far right wing conceptions of what is to my mind an ancient collection of historical writings.

To my mind, both Delay and the Bush administration should be impeached for violating the constitutional imperative to separate church and state ..

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by graypencil

To my mind, both Delay and the Bush administration should be impeached for violating the constitutional imperative to separate church and state ..

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the Constitution only prohibits the *congress* from enacting laws establishing or infringing upon the exercise of religion. Pretty hard to impeach a president on that score.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

I'm not up on my Christian mythology, but doesn't the second coming of Christ also signals the end for Jews who do not convert to Christianity?

As for DeLay, I think his support for Israel goes beyond just his Christian beliefs. Jews have been an important part of the Democratic Party. Bringing them into the Republican Party would be a huge step towards creating a one-party state in the US.

To my mind, both Delay and the Bush administration should be impeached for violating the constitutional imperative to separate church and state ..

Thats fair enough GP. Now if you'd be so kind to point out where this alledged seperation of church and state actually exists in the Constitution, it would be much appreciated.

This being one of the greatest liberal fantasies.

[graypencil]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the Constitution only prohibits the *congress* from enacting laws establishing or infringing upon the exercise of religion. Pretty hard to impeach a president on that score.

JMJ:

I bow to your obvious superior knowledge of the constitution ( after all , I am just a druid type musician )

so, by that standard, I assume Congress can do nothing about DUBBya sending our troops into a pre-emptive war in Iraq because he was admittedly following " his higher father" ?

that's some really scary shit

[Enforcer]

"God: Starting wars and serving as the inspiration for murder and genocide for as far back as recorded history can be traced!"

Always good for a quote,
Larry

so, by that standard, I assume Congress can do nothing about DUBBya sending our troops into a pre-emptive war in Iraq because he was admittedly following " his higher father" ?

Ok, so here's the part I don't understand.

You make a completely erroneous statement. One which, and I'll have to ask you to forgive me for thinking this if I'm wrong, has been fed to you by way of constant liberal talking points concerning the matter. One which is simply a flat out lie that can readily be proven.

And then you come back with THIS statement?

This is just one more example that leads me to believe that most liberals listen to what their media darlings tell them, and thats it. They don't seek any further knowledge or insight in the matter. The evening news tells them what they want to hear, and life is therefore good.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Scott,

What are your sources for news? This is not an attack. I'm just curious because a constant refrain I hear from my conservative friends (yes I have some) is the brainwashing of the liberal mind by the liberal press.

For instance, I read the Washington Post everyday. My conservative collegues refer to it as "that liberal rag". Yet its editorial staff supports the Iraq War and it's op-ed pages regularly features likes of Bob Novak, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, etc. As a matter of fact, I'd love to compare its op-ed section with the Washington Times which is the "conservative alternative' to the Post.

I mean, if you want to talk about talking points, the liberal bias in the media is one of the biggest ones out there. There was a survey done about reporting before the Iraq War started. I think the network with the most "positive" stories about the upcoming war was CBS. That's right, that old liberal Dan Rather was a war monger!

[bluenoter]

Even if you don't live in Texas, you can help to Dump DeLay!

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by graypencil

JMJ:

I bow to your obvious superior knowledge of the constitution ( after all , I am just a druid type musician )

so, by that standard, I assume Congress can do nothing about DUBBya sending our troops into a pre-emptive war in Iraq because he was admittedly following " his higher father" ?

that's some really scary shit

Congress basically handed him an open-ended authorization to act towards Iraq as he saw fit. *That's* when they should have done something about it (IMHO).

[graypencil]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Ok, so here's the part I don't understand.

You make a completely erroneous statement. One which, and I'll have to ask you to forgive me for thinking this if I'm wrong, has been fed to you by way of constant liberal talking points concerning the matter. One which is simply a flat out lie that can readily be proven.

And then you come back with THIS statement?

This is just one more example that leads me to believe that most liberals listen to what their media darlings tell them, and thats it. They don't seek any further knowledge or insight in the matter. The evening news tells them what they want to hear, and life is therefore good.

..and the same could be said of you folks on the other side of this argument as well ..we just aren't ever gonna be on the same page with this unfortunately ..

[crawjo]

To be honest, I think Bush's religiosity is overstated. He is an evangelical Christian, but he's not a fundamentalist. As for his saying that prayer to God led him to invade Iraq, I think he's just being honest about something that many leaders do.

Look at the history of our country. How many of our presidents have been religious? Nearly all of them. And nearly all of them have been Protestants, at that. I think that *any* religious person that decides to invade another country would only do so if they felt they were, in some way or other, doing God's will.

The anti-Bush crowd needs to get its story straight. Did Bush invade Iraq for oil, or is he on a religious crusade? Pick a fantasy and stick with it, please.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by crawjo

To be honest, I think Bush's religiosity is overstated. He is an evangelical Christian, but he's not a fundamentalist.

I mentioned this on another thread, but Janine Garofolo called Bush a "fundamentalist" when she was on the Daily Show a while back. When Jon Stewart suggested "we don't know that", she vehemently shot back (speaking over Stewart in her haste to make her assertion) that he was, in fact, a fundamentalist. Stewart finally laughed it off by saying "well, I guess we *do* know that".

[Root Doctor]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

I mentioned this on another thread, but Janine Garofolo called Bush a "fundamentalist" when she was on the Daily Show a while back. When Jon Stewart suggested "we don't know that", she vehemently shot back (speaking over Stewart in her haste to make her assertion) that he was, in fact, a fundamentalist. Stewart finally laughed it off by saying "well, I guess we *do* know that".

A recent piece in the Boston Globe, by an evangelical, claims Bush is not a fundamentalist, even if he does use language that often registers with fundamentalists.

[crawjo]

My understanding is that fundamentalists tend to interpret the Bible literally (in other words, the Earth was REALLY created in seven days, to use one example) and also tend to be hostile toward any other religious faith. (In other words, if you are a Methodist, you believe that all non-Methodists are going to hell.) I don't think Bush fits either of those descriptions. Garofolo was just making a slur against Bush. The word "fundamentalist" has a lot of negative connotations, so people who hate Bush's brand of Christianity toss the word around without really understanding what it means.

[Root Doctor]

Thanks to Lexis-Nexis, here's the article mentioned above:

APOCALYPTIC PRESIDENT?
HOW THE LEFT'S FEAR OF A RIGHT-WING CHRISTIAN CONSPIRACY GETS GEORGE W. BUSH - AND TODAY'S EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS - ALL WRONG.

By Alan Jacobs
Alan Jacobs is a professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois and the author most recently of "A Theology of Reading."

AS THE PRESIDENTIAL election draws closer, some people are asking, in ominous tones, a question: What impact does President Bush's evangelical Christianity have on his administration's policies? As an evangelical, an interpreter of literary and cultural texts, and a long-time observer of the evangelical world, I have both a personal and a professional interest in this question. And I'm here to offer an answer: Probably not much.

Some pretty smart people disagree. Last November, Joan Didion published an essay in The New York Review of Books that explored the relationship between President Bush and the "religious right," looking closely at the wildly successful apocalyptic "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. (The series' climactic installment, "Glorious Appearing," went on sale last week.) For Didion, the series is more than just the action-packed tale of a determined band of Christian guerrilla warriors fighting against the forces of the Antichrist in the last days before the Second Coming. It may also be the key to unlocking the hidden agenda of the Bush administration.

Didion thinks she hears language coming from the White House suggesting that the president believes he is God's chosen instrument in our time - just as Rayford Steele, the hero of the "Left Behind" books, is destined to carry out God's will at the end of history. If George W. Bush does understand himself in this way, and if he is influenced by the theology of LaHaye and Jenkins, and if "the President's preferred constituency," as Didion claims, consists of people who believe that whatever happens in the Middle East is "foreordained, necessary to the completion of God's plan" - then we're all in deep weeds indeed.


Others have suggested a link between Bush and the little-known Christian Reconstructionist movement, whose members advocate the establishment of Biblical law as the only way to restore a civilization based on Christian faith. According to an article in Salon.com by Max Blumenthal, California multimillionaire and Christian Reconstructionist Howard Ahmanson Jr., a strong supporter of the president, "has played a subtle but crucial role in driving Bush's domestic agenda" on such issues as abortion, gay marriage, and welfare.


Last month, media theorist Mark Crispin Miller of New York University developed the connection in an address to the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Miller noted darkly that Ahmanson has been a chief financial backer of Diebold and Election Systems & Software, two major makers of electronic voting machines. Miller does not argue that the introduction of those voting machines will inevitably lead to laws mandating the stoning of adulterers; but if people like Ahmanson have Bush's ear, what does that portend for the administration's policies?


I am not a political scientist, nor have I any special knowledge of the Bush White House. But I find such suggestions curious, and the atmosphere of conspiracy they create rather unreal. I don't think that arguments like these capture the way that ideas get translated into policies by evangelical Christians - or by any other group. The sociology seems wrong to me. And I'd like to explain why.



Someone outside the Christian orbit will likely see the LaHayes and Ahmansons as parts of a unitary phenomenon called "the religious right." And certainly they have a lot in common: They believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, and so on. But there are major disagreements between them, especially about eschatology - that is, what the Bible teaches about the way human history will end. And those differences lead to very different ideas about how politics works and what it is for.


LaHaye's "premillennial" eschatology is, generally speaking, the default position for those who occupy the fundamentalist corner of the evangelical world. To be sure, many readers of the "Left Behind" books may enjoy the story without believing that LaHaye and Jenkins have rightly calculated every detail. But they will probably share the premillennialist view that human societies will not exhibit moral progress, but will deteriorate until the only option for redemption is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ in power and glory, which will usher in the Millennium, the "thousand-year reign" of God. (What happens after that is disputed and complicated. Let's just say that eventually God wins. Reconstructionists such as Ahmanson, by contrast, generally don't believe in a Millennium in LaHaye's sense, and are pretty confident that Jesus isn't going to show up any time soon to rescue us. In fact, it is precisely because they don't believe in an imminent Second Coming that Reconstructionists are so determined to use Biblical law as the foundation for civilization. They'd like to build a world that Jesus would want to return to.


In other words, President Bush could scarcely be a premillennialist and a Reconstructionist at the same time - at least not with any consistency. "Aha!" you may reply, "but is someone like Dubya likely to be consistent? I think not." And I think not, also. But that's precisely why I don't share the fears of Didion and Miller. The scenarios they construct require Bush and his key advisers to be people who read the Bible in light of a coherent theology that yields a specific political program (rather than politicians whose chief concern is getting reelected). The danger would lie in consistency itself - in Bush's willingness to get policy from theology as a mathematician derives an equation. Yet even if that were true - even if Bush's mind worked that way - these fears could only be realized if he were a premillennialist in foreign policy and a Reconstructionist on the domestic front.


My experience as an evangelical suggests to me that such consistency is highly unlikely. And if I didn't know it from self-reflection, I'd know it from nearly 20 years of teaching at Wheaton College, the leading evangelical liberal-arts college in America.


Evangelicals are defined, essentially, by their belief in the authority of Scripture, their acceptance of Jesus Christ as personal savior, and their desire to share their faith with others. And yet, though they read the Bible, they also watch "The Simpsons"; they may study eschatology, but probably not as closely as they study college basketball when March Madness rolls around. America's 60 million evangelicals are, after all, contemporary Americans, and take their moral and cultural bearings from a wide range of sources.


There are, of course, fundamentalist Christians who manage to dissent wholeheartedly from mainstream American culture, who homeschool their children and exercise strict control over the forms of information and entertainment that enter their homes. Such separatism is intrinsic to true fundamentalism, with its concern for maintaining purity and avoiding defilement. But these true fundamentalist separatists are relatively few in number. I know plenty of people who profess LaHaye's premillennialism, and by and large they also watch "Oprah," go to the movies, and send their children to public schools - though when choosing churches they will tend to avoid "liberal" Christian denominations.


There are, likewise, Reconstructionists who are thoroughly separatist, but not many: a much smaller group, they tend also to be far better educated, wealthier, and more at ease with "high" culture than their premillennialist cousins. (Howard Ahmanson Jr., some may be surprised to learn, is an Episcopalian. But the broader evangelical world to which the president belongs is a very different one. If you don't believe me, consider this: Bush belongs to the same denomination, the United Methodist Church, as Hillary Clinton. Though some congregations are more theologically conservative than others, the United Methodist Church is way too liberal for a true fundamentalist, and has been for a long time.


Two points, then, should emerge: First, there are differences between evangelicalism in general and the subset called fundamentalism; and second, those differences are hard to specify because they are matters of tendency and preference rather than doctrine or belief. Basically, all evangelicals (fundamentalist or not) believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins; that people need to repent of our sins and "accept Jesus as Lord and Savior"; that we must preach the Gospel to those who don't know or don't believe; and that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. The hard part begins when we get down to asking what the Bible actually says.


For many fundamentalists, the way other evangelicals (such as myself) interpret the Bible makes us indistinguishable from liberals: when we say, for example, that the universe is more than 6,000 years old, or approve of the ordination of women, or a hundred other things. You know you're an evangelical if the fundamentalists think you're a liberal and the liberals think you're a fundamentalist.


Evangelicals, in short, are unpredictable - and nowhere more so than in political matters. While most evangelicals continue to vote Republican (largely because of the abortion issue), a significant subset is either ambivalent towards or critical of many Republican policies.


The Project on Lived Theology, run by Charles Marsh, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, has traced the work of many evangelicals for whom racial justice is a central component of authentic Christian witness, and to whom the silence of evangelical churches on this matter is tragic. Evangelicals for Social Action, founded by Ron Sider, sees the widespread Christian acceptance of American nationalism as a threat to the Church comparable to the "life and death" issues of abortion and euthanasia. And the sociologist Christian Smith, in his recent book "Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want," reports that among those evangelicals he interviewed there was significant doubt about the possibility, and (more important) even the desirability, of America's becoming a "Christian nation."



Not so many decades ago, fundamentalists ruled the conservative Protestant roost. If one wanted to trace today's American evangelicalism to its beginnings, one could do worse than to point to the Billy Graham Crusades in the 1950s, when Graham appalled the fundamentalist world by agreeing to work with pastors and laypeople of all denominations, as long as they supported the goals of evangelism. Even today, it's easy to find hundreds of fundamentalist websites that excoriate Graham for his failure to repudiate Roman Catholics and, yes, United Methodists and Episcopalians. As is widely known, a key event in George W. Bush's decision to change his dissolute ways - and eventually turn his life over to Jesus Christ - was a meeting with Graham in 1985. It seems reasonable to think that Bush's faith emerges from the messier, more diverse, less predictable evangelical culture pioneered (intentionally or not) by Graham.


President Bush, like most evangelicals (and most Americans), is intellectually mongrel. The likelihood that his thinking and his policies are shaped by a single, coherent, radical ideology is virtually nil. Bush may be a bad president - he may pursue bad policies on the domestic front and abroad - but if so, his Christianity has little or nothing to do with it. And with the exception of John Ashcroft, there's no one among his core advisors who could possibly teach him what right-wing evangelical politics are supposed to look like - at least, not until Donald Rumsfeld becomes an ardent premillennialist or Karl Rove a disciple of Christian Reconstruction.


The connection between Christian commitment and politics has always been pretty strange in this country. Ronald Reagan became beloved of the "religious right" while rarely darkening the door of a church and articulating only vague belief in a vague God, while the church-going, Bible-toting Bill Clinton was despised by them. If there has been a recent American president whose policies were derived relatively consistently from evangelical Christian theology, it would be Jimmy Carter, that Baptist Sunday-school teacher from Plains, Ga. But that's a story for another day.

[MRS]

Originally Posted by crawjo

To be honest, I think Bush's religiosity is overstated. . .did Bush invade Iraq for oil, or is he on a religious crusade? Pick a fantasy and stick with it, please.

I agree per his faith being overstated. . .but I certainly don't think the assertion that our incursion is predicated on oil is anywhere near fantasy.

Originally Posted by Darryl G. Thomas

Scott,

What are your sources for news? This is not an attack. I'm just curious because a constant refrain I hear from my conservative friends (yes I have some) is the brainwashing of the liberal mind by the liberal press.

Why would I take that as an attack? This is a very good, and very fair, question.

I actually try to get my news from various places(like many who truthfully follow the news do). I just tend to have a different way of digesting it. Because after I read or hear about something, I'll usually spend some time researching it on the net. Usually just by Googling it, but I'll try and find out what makes things tick, what kind of history is behind them and so forth.

I usually watch a half hour of Fox before I go to work. And I'll sometimes watch MSNBC when I get home. I kind of get a kick out of those two channels because of the way they constantly take cheap shots at each other. I'll usually listen to a little Rush on the way to work, and I get the CBS newsbreaks during my drive time as well. On occassion I might check out ABC News online. I'll sometimes get in a little Hannity while driving home for lunch.

My boss, who's hardcore liberal(and gleefully admits it)sometimes sends me news articles via e-mail. Actually I sometimes get great deals of info from my boss. He is truly one of THE most intelligent guys I've ever met, liberal to the core, but will hit you with solid facts from 30 different angles. He and I often get into some extremely heated battles(so much so that neighboring employees from the next office over will come and ask us to keep it down)which really shapens my skills because I know I better have my shit together and air tight or he'll eat me alive.

All those things combined give me a pretty good sense of balance, because I'm almost constantly hearing every last side and angle of any given story.

I'll sometimes catch a little Scarborough Country on MSNBC at night. He's a conservative, but he plays everything straight foward and doesn't try to be an entertainer to his audience like Limbaugh and Hannity tend to be.

Hell, he's the one reason I've grown to really like Kucinich. He and Scarborough served in Congress together and are very good friends to this day, and Dennis has appeared on the show several times. Funny little chap, seems like a hell of a nice guy.

..and the same could be said of you folks on the other side of this argument as well ..we just aren't ever gonna be on the same page with this unfortunately .. - GrayP

I agree completely.

Oh, and Darryl. I agree with you to a certain extent about liberal media bias.

Like Bush being a fundamentalist Christian, or the religious right running the country, it'a just a perception that isn't easily proven.

We're all guilty of it in one way or another.

It mostly boils down to the extremely weak argument of "I know it when I see it".