John Hagee – We Hardly Knew Ye

John McCain threw evangelical pastor John Hagee overboard yesterday. Finally. Months ago, when anti-Catholic comments by the pastor came to light, McCain said he did not support the claims and Hagee did one of those faux-mea culpas in which he did not apologize for what he said but for any offense that might have been taken. Can’t imagine why anyone would be offended to have their church called the "whore of Babylon." He had also earlier claimed that Hurricane Katrina was visited by God upon New Orleans to disrupt a planned gay parade. Now, Hagee is in hot water for comments about the role of Adolf Hitler in the salvation of Israel. The comments were, as McCain correctly noted, "crazy." But, just because such views are crazy does not mean that they are rare. In the middle of Hagee’s rant about the prophet Jeremiah predicting Hitler’s role in bringing the Jews back to Israel, he said: "And that will be offensive to some people but don’t let your heart be offended. I didn’t write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth." Not too long ago, I sat through a tirade by a pastor at a large mega-church outside Washington, D.C. He used almost the exact same wording to defend the proposition that anyone who has not been baptized will be consigned to eternal hellfire, that there was no such condition as invincible ignorance, that God’s mercy could not extend to those who, through no fault of their own, had never been evangelized. "This is not my theory, this is God’s Holy Word," he assured his nodding audience. The combination of ferocity and fake-humility put one in mind of John Calvin. Well, Rev. Hagee, you have offended me, not just my heart but my mind. If you believe that God used Hitler to advance Zionism, if you believe that Catholicism is a "false cult system," or that God would rather destroy a city than permit a parade, I am not interested in anything else you have to say. But, millions of Americans sit through this kind of theological nonsense week in and week out. Too many evangelical Christians are not conservative at all. They are radical. And they are radically wrong. It is especially troubling that a group of Catholics have been trying to team up with evangelical Christians in an effort begun in the 1990s by Father Richard John Neuhaus and ex-Watergate convict Charles Colson. "Evangelical and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium" was issued in 1994, and a statement was signed by a group of leading Catholic and evangelical theologians in 1998 that noted points of agreement and continuing disagreement between the groups. One of the continuing points of disagreement was the issue of "the possibility of salvation for those not evangelized." This is not a mere theological trifle. A theologian once asked me if I thought the view of God revealed in the Koran was not so different from that revealed in the Christian scriptures that it was wrong to say we worshipped the same God. I confessed near-total ignorance of Islamic theology. But, I can say that the mean, capricious God of John Hagee bears little resemblance to the God whom I worship. And while I support most efforts at ecumenism, some leave me fearful that the ecumenical movement will be hijacked by Catholics who care more about political alliances with evangelicals than they do with confronting the hatefulness at the heart of Hagee’s worldview. John McCain distanced himself from Hagee’s craziness yesterday. He was right to do so. And, I would encourage Catholics charged with pursuing ecumenical endeavors to steer clear of those who think Katrina was God’s punishment or that Hitler was an agent of God’s will. If we are serious about Pope Benedict’s call to unite faith and reason, there is not much to say to the John Hagee’s of the world. Michael Sean Winters