The Evangelicals Who Pray for War With Iran

Most sane people, be it in America or around the world, are in no rush to see the end of the world. Nor are they eager to see the Middle East explode in war.  The term "sane people," in my view, rules out extreme evangelical Christians who cling to a bizarre reading of the Bible - a book totally composed by unknown authors who lacked any modern knowledge - that makes them want the world and life as we know it to end.  They want the "End Times" to Armageddon to come.   And to make this happen, they need a war in the Middle East involving Israel even though it would mean all but a few members of the Jewish nation perish.  Frighteningly, two such evangelicals are in positions of power that make their lunacy very dangerous: Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo.  Both are in tight communication with some of the most extreme Christian dominionists who, despite occasional disavowals when exposed by the media, want a theocracy in America.  These zealots are anti-LGBT, want women in subordinate roles to men, and would impose their beliefs on all Americans.  A piece in New Republic looks at Pence and Pompeo's disturbing alliances.  Here are excerpts:

Last Friday, a day after Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and nine others were killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq, the Christian Zionist advocacy group Christians United for Israel emailed its millions of supporters to praise President Trump’s move. “This Decisive Action Will Save Countless Lives,” read the subject line, echoing the assessment delivered that morning by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Fox and Friends.

Pompeo and Pence reportedly were the top officials pushing Trump to kill Soleimani. They’re also devout evangelicals and major allies of CUFI. This is not a coincidence. While the organization is best known for its unflagging “support” for Israel—that is, for Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and protracted erasure of the possibility of a future Palestinian state—it has, since its founding in 2006, depicted Iran as an existential threat to Israel.

Televangelist John Hagee launched CUFI in 2006, calling for military action against Iran, then led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom Hagee compared to Hitler. At the time, Hagee had been claiming that Iran would soon “have the nuclear capability to make a bomb, a suitcase bomb, a missile head, or anything they want to do with it.” That was untrue, given contemporaneous expert assessments of Iran’s projected nuclear advances. But for Hagee, a more militaristic approach was necessary in order to avert “an American Hiroshima.”

In his 2006 book, Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee imagined an elaborate scenario in which a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran would trigger an “inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon.” Faced with scrutiny over his apocalyptic theology, he strained to create a discrete image for his new political organization, insisting that his extensive writings on biblical prophecy about the Rapture and Second Coming were distinct from CUFI’s lobbying agenda. But it was a rocky start for the organization. In 2008, while running for president, John McCain first accepted, then rejected, Hagee’s endorsement. The rebuff was seen as damaging to the political neophyte and a brave stance by McCain against fringe elements within the GOP’s evangelical base. At CUFI’s annual Washington Summit, held just two months later, only three members of Congress attended.

But one of those three members was a certain congressman from Indiana: Pence. He continued to maintain close ties with the organization, and in 2014 CUFI paid for then-Governor Pence and his wife to travel to Israel to celebrate Christmas. With Pence as vice president, Hagee’s star has risen even more. He has claimed a role in convincing Trump to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, . . . . Hagee delivered the benediction at the embassy dedication, a day Hagee described as “nothing short of a divine miracle!”

On matters of Iran, too, there has been a seamless relationship between CUFI and the Trump administration. In 2017, just a few months into Trump’s presidency, Pence addressed the CUFI Washington Summit, assuring attendees that “President Trump has put Iran on notice: America will no longer tolerate Iran’s efforts to destabilize the region and jeopardize Israel’s security,” and promising that under Trump, “the United States of America will not allow Iran to develop a useable nuclear weapon.” Trump’s subsequent actions have only elevated the specter of chaos in the region.  . . . . and yet, his evangelical supporters consider this one of his top accomplishments.

Pompeo, in a political career spanning three terms in the House of Representatives, a brief stint as CIA director, and now, as the country’s top diplomat, has promoted intertwining his Christian faith with his public service. But he has scoffed at charges that evangelicals promote theocracy. In a March 2019 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, while visiting Israel, Pompeo was asked whether Trump “has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?” “As a Christian,” Pompeo replied, “I certainly believe that’s possible.” . . . and then thanked God for President Trump—“an immovable friend of Israel.” “We’ve implemented the strongest pressure campaign in history against the Iranian regime,” Pompeo said, “and we are not done.”

Personally, if one is a science denying, theocracy supporting evangelical, you should not be allowed to hold any important political position, not because of your "faith" but rather due to you dangerous embrace of ignorance. 

Huckabee’s "Oven" Attack On Obama Masks His Own Anti-Semitism

So far I have held back on commenting on Mike Huckabee's horrific claim the Barack Obama's Iran nuclear agreement "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."   But, given his refusal to apologize and walk back the statement - which seems aimed at cynically whipping up the Christofascist voters in the GOP base - a comment and condemnation seem in order.  As regular readers know, I believe that Huckabee is a despicable individual.  Hypocrite also needs to be added as a descriptive term of the man.  Like most of the far right Christofascists, when push comes to shove, Huckabee cares about Israel for one reason and one reason only: Israel is key in setting the stage for Armageddon and the supposed return of Christ.  

Of course, when Armageddon comes, most Jews will perish if one believes the allegedly inerrant Bible.   Thus, Huckabee actually doesn't care about the Israeli people.  He merely sees them as a means to bring about Armageddon.  With "friends" like Huckabee, Israel truly needs no enemies.   And as blogger friend Karen Ocamb points out, Huckabee supports a form of far right Christians who continue to support a view of Jews as "Christ-killers."  Here are excerpts from Karen's post on the issue:

While many are engaged in a reasoned debate over the deal, others are using it as an excuse for political grandstanding. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, for instance, seems to have torn a page from publicity hound Donald Trump’s poll-spiking, over-the-top playbook and commented on the deal—to almost universal condemnation.

“This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history,” Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Fox News contributor, told Breitbart on Saturday. “It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”

Fred Karger, the openly gay, Jewish, former 2012 Republican presidential candidate, also reacted strongly.  “No matter what you think of the nuclear deal with Iran, Mike Huckabee crossed the line by comparing it to the Holocaust. Huckabee will say anything to try and stay relevant while he also tries to divert attention away from the host of problems he faces in his campaign for president,” Karger said in an email. Karger has created a SuperPAC to look into Huckabee’s campaign and character.

Huckabee [self-appointed] entitlement to co-opt the Holocaust comes from his many years as a tour guide to Israel with the “Israel Experience With Mike Huckabee”—a favorite with evangelical Christians awaiting Armageddon.

Baptist minister Mike Huckabee is pledging to listen to God and not the “false prophets” if he is elected president—which begs the question of what he might do militarily to hasten Armageddon. But Huckabee’s Christian warrior message can be confusing. 

But in light of his comments about having been to Auschwitz as a tourist—I have stood at that oven door. I know exactly what it looks like.”—it is perhaps useful to consider Huckabee’s support for Mel Gibson, whom Huckabee thinks should be forgiven for what many perceived as anti-Semitic comments and attitudes, which Gibson may have inherited from his father, a religious zealot who said the Holocaust never happened.

[I]t is Huckabee—the presidential candidate who has seen “the door of the oven”—who fails to understand that Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ is controversial precisely for its dangerous depiction of Jews. Here’s an excerpt from one Jewish review:

“For Jews who have used this movie to confirm their conviction that Christians will always hate Jews, Gibson has perpetrated an unforgivable crime that negates one of the most remarkable acts of communal religious repentance in history. The Second Vatican Council acknowledged the sin of the Church for almost 2000 years in blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus. Neither the Jews of that generation or of those to come, they decreed, bear any guilt for deicide. In 1988, the Vatican published Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion, with a list of nine points that any future depictions of Passion Plays are to use as guides. Gibson’s movie ignores every one of them.

This is the true offense about the “door of the oven” comment: Christian extremist Mike Huckabee believes he has the right to talk about the Holocaust while passionately loving a film that portrayed Jews as Hitler and his Nazi Party saw them.