Related articles and links |  1 of 5

1. Looking for an extreme voice on Israel? It's John Hagee time!
Maybe it's time for Weblog to shift from its regular "Pat Robertson doesn't represent evangelicalism" programming to "John Hagee doesn't represent evangelicalism." He's the latest Christian media darling, getting truckloads of press clippings from reporters eager to profile a Christian leader who sounds gleeful over war in the Middle East and ties current events to apocalyptic premillennialism. The latest and probably most prominent and detailed profile yet is on today's Wall Street Journal front page. Andrew Higgins describes the scene at last week's Christians United for Israel rally in D.C.:

Standing on a stage bedecked with a huge Israeli flag, Mr. Hagee drew rapturous applause and shouts of "amen" as he hailed Israel for doing God's work in a "war of good versus evil." Calls for Israel to show restraint violate "God's foreign-policy statement" toward Jews, he said, citing a verse from the Old Testament that promises to "bless those who bless you" and curse "the one who curses you." … "Leave Israel alone. Let them do the job," Mr. Hagee told his supporters.

Yeah, there's a number of people in the evangelical movement who believe that Israel should only be criticized when it's being too soft on its neighbors. Let's accurately describe them as Zionist Christians rather than as evangelical Christians. As a subset, Hagee's views are no more representative of all evangelicals than they are of all Texans. Just how big is this group? One indication comes from Hagee himself. His San Antonio church claims 19,000 members (it has a weekly attendance of about 8,000), and yet he says that getting 3,500 Zionists to attend his rally in D.C. is a "miracle of God."

2. Report: Britain's last missionary leaves Lebanon
"Nearly 140 years after British missionaries first brought a message of peace to this corner of the Biblical lands, their last remaining representative was driven out by the bombs yesterday," The Telegraph reports. Weblog isn't so sure that there are no British missionaries left in the country, but it's still an interesting story. As 62-year-old Peter Hayes boarded his ship, he warned, "What is being done in the dark, God still sees. Those who think they can do things in the dark and not be held to account are wrong, because all of us face God's judgment for our actions."

3. Catholics complain about evangelical chaplains and soldiers
An article in Our Sunday Visitor shows a surprising hostility to evangelical Protestants. "Many Catholic military men and women," the Roman Catholic newspaper warns, are vulnerable "to the proselytizing of evangelical chaplains and soldiers." The unsigned article continues:

Although the military brass has stepped in on several recent occasions to address concerns about proselytism … the practice continues among many rank-and-file evangelicals who see Catholic soldiers as prime targets. Lacking a solid formation in their faith or an available Catholic priest to visit for counsel, some Catholic soldiers find themselves too poorly equipped to effectively defend church teaching and practices against the evangelicals' charges. They may come away from such encounters confused or disillusioned about the church and be drawn away from the Catholic faith into evangelicalism or fundamentalism.

Nothing like a little friendly fire during wartime.

4. God's bounty hunter
Regular viewers of A&E and Bravo will already be familiar with Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman. Those who aren't familiar with the the only private citizen to have snared someone on the FBI's most wanted list can catch up with a brief profile in The Telegraph. Since it's a British newspaper, it's particularly fascinated by Chapman's quaint "religious inclinations." A sample:

next page... |  1 of 5

July (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50