Holy War or Ungodly Mess

By Steve Matthews

The recent uptick in violence in the Middle East has resulted, predictably, in an uptick in calls to action from American neo-conservatives and dispensationalist Evangelicals.  Just today, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called for more decisive action from President Obama with regard to the Islamic State, calling the organization, “a direct threat to our homeland.”  On his program last week, Sean Hannity, among the most militant neo-conservative, pro-Zionist voices in the American media, breathlessly reported on current conflict between Israel and Hamas.  From the tenor of his reports, it was clear that Hannity’s aim was to gin up support from American conservatives and Evangelicals for the Gaza offensive being conducted by Israel.  Yellow journalism, it seems, did not die with William Randolph Hearst.

According to a report in the Washington Post, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), an organization founded by dispensationalist John Hagee and currently the largest pro-Israel group in the US, has launched an aggressive nation-wide advertising campaign with the same goal in view as Sean Hannity’s reporting, solidify Evangelical support for Israel in its struggle with Hamas.  According to the article, CUFI, “will be taking to Israel 50 pastors, one from each state, as part of a solidarity trip.  The itinerary, barring unforeseen developments due to the war, includes meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli soldiers…The trip affords CUFI a vehicle for expressing solidarity with Israel and then informing and energizing their flock back in the U.S.”

According to the CUFI website, there are Biblical and moral imperatives that obligate Christians to support the state of Israel.  Neo-conservative politicians columnists and academics call for further American military involvement in Middle East.  What is an Evangelical to make of all this?

Support for Israel

CUFI gives as its statement of purpose the following:  “The purpose of Christians United For Israel (CUFI) is to provide a national association through which every pro-Israel church, parachurch organization, ministry or individual in America can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues.” Under the heading Goals and Objectives, we find the following statement, “While millions of Christians support Israel, there are millions more who do not yet vocally stand up for the Jewish state.  It is crucial to educate Christians on the biblical and moral imperatives to support Israel and build Christian support for Israel throughout America.”  And by the term “support”, the group seems to mean principally political action.  The website continues, “While it is important that we pray for Israel, it is also important that we put feet to our prayers and speak truth to power about the need to stand with Israel at this critical juncture in history.  CUFI accomplishes these goals through:  CUFI’s annual Washington Summit CUFI members to personally speak with their elected officials on behalf of Israel. CUFI’s Action Alerts mobilize CUFI’s over one million members to contact their members of Congress or the Administration on critical policy issues.”

But while CUFI is very aggressive in making known its political support for Israel and encourages Christians to demonstrate their solidarity with that nation, oddly absent from its website is any mention of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It’s the 500 pound gorilla that Hagee and his colleagues would prefer to simply ignore.  One supposes this is due to the dispensationalist theology held by Hagee and his supporters who maintain the heretical doctrine that Jews already have a relationship with God through the law.  If CUFI and its members truly care about Israelis, they should be preaching the Gospel to unbelieving Israelis, not lobbying Congress to support the Jewish state’s offensive in Gaza.

Interventionist Foreign Policy

As a boy, I recall watching the nightly news in 1978 and seeing images of the scary mobs in Tehran.  Thousands of people in the streets were chanting, waving banners and denouncing the US as the Great Satan. It was disturbing to watch, but the joy of the Iranian mobs at the capture of the US embassy in Tehran also left me not a little bit puzzled.  I had no reason to hate Iranians, and it seemed to me that the vitriol directed by the Iranian mobs toward the US seemed completely unfounded.  It wasn’t until years later that I learned the root of the conflict between the US and Iran stretched back to 1953, when the CIA engineered a coup that deposed Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh and imposed the Shah, who served as an American puppet.  While not excusing the actions of the Iranian Islamists, this bit of background at least made clear why many in Iran harbored a deep dislike of the US.

In the years since, the US has continued armed involvement in the region.  In 1983, the US lost hundreds of marines when a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into the Beirut barracks of a US peacekeeping force.  Gulf War I and II followed in 1990 and 2003 respectively.  The war in Afghanistan, started in 2001, is still ongoing and has become the longest running military conflict in Americana history.  As if this were not enough, US backed NATO forces assisted in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.  The most recent US military involvement in the region was its attempt to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar Assad.  The US is also supports ongoing drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia.

The above is just a brief summary of US activity in the region.  There is much more to it.  But US involvement there is not limited to bombs only.  On the opposite side, it has been a longstanding policy of the US to provide foreign aid to the region.  For example, during Fiscal Year 2012, US taxpayers were forced to provide the following amounts to the nation of the Middle East,

• Afghanistan             $12.8 billion
• Iraq                           $1.9 billion
• Israel                        $3.1 billion
• Egypt                       $1.4 billion
• Pakistan                    $1.2 billion
• Jordan                      $1.1 billion
• West Bank/Gaza      $457 million

And just what has the US to show for all this activity?  Are Americans better off today than they were before spilling their blood and treasure?  Hardly.  The Middle East is more unstable now than at any point in the last several decades.  In addition to the war in Gaza against Hamas, Israel is threatening to attack Iran to prevent it from building a nuclear arsenal.  The US backed Syrian rebels, many of whom have Al Qaida ties, have gone rogue, taken a significant stash of the most advanced US weapons, formed the Islamic State, and overrun a large portion of Iraq.  Their next move is anyone’s guess, but calls have already begun for the US to put boots on the ground in Iraq.  Meanwhile the civil war continues to fester in Syria.

Pre-emptive War

As if all this weren’t danger enough, the unchristian, neo-conservative doctrine of pre-emptive war, the notion that it is acceptable to launch a military attack on the grounds of a perceived threat to a nation’s interests, has taken hold in Washington and all but ensures more US wars in the near future.   Speaking to the graduating class at West Point in 2002, President George W. Bush made the following statement,

We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best.  We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them.  If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long – Our security will require transforming the military you will lead – a military that must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world.  And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.

Such a statement represents a complete departure from the Biblical and historic American stance on foreign policy given voice by President Millard Fillmore in the quote below,

Among the acknowledged rights of nations is that which each possesses of establishing that form of government which it may deem most conducive to the happiness and prosperity of its own citizens, of changing that form as circumstances may require, and of managing its internal affairs according to its own will. The people of the United States claim this right for themselves, and they readily concede it to others. Hence it becomes an imperative duty not to interfere in the government or internal policy of other nations; and although we may sympathize with the unfortunate or the oppressed everywhere in their struggles for freedom, our principles forbid us from taking any part in such foreign contests. We make no wars to promote or to prevent successions to thrones, to maintain any theory of a balance of power, or to suppress the actual government which any country chooses to establish for itself. We instigate no revolutions, nor suffer any hostile military expeditions to be fitted out in the United States to invade the territory or provinces of a friendly nation. The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self interest, or the desire of aggrandizement. To maintain a strict neutrality in foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously every treaty obligation — these are the duties which we owe to other states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to like treatment from them; or, if that, in any case, be refused, we can enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience. (Emphasis in the original)

Imagine that, a president who understood the foreign policy implications of the Golden Rule and actually took them seriously.  Today of course, if he is thought of at all, Fillmore and his foreign policy views are held in derision not only by the power brokers in Washington, which is not terribly surprising, but also by those such as John Hagee who claim to be Evangelicals. During a 2012 Republican Presidential debate held in South Carolina, candidate Ron Paul was roundly booed by the Bible Belt audience for daring to suggest a Golden Rule policy.

Conclusion       

In his 2006 essay The Religious Wars of the 21st Century, John Robbins made the following sober observation,

Because this false thinking [Evangelical support for Zionism, activist foreign policy, pre-emptive wars] is so widely accepted, there is, humanly speaking, no hope for peace or freedom in the twenty-first century, but rather the spectre of global religious war.  The theology of the Prince of Peace, who is the author of liberty, has been rejected even by most of those who call themselves Christians.  If the Lord Jesus Christ does not return from Heaven soon – and not 10,000 years from now as the Postmillennialists say he will – devoutly religious, Antichristian men will kill hundreds of millions of souls in the bloody wars of the twenty-first century.  The Protestant Reformation is indeed over; the respite of peace, freedom, and prosperity it afforded the West from the long history of human brutality is drawing to a close; and the world is about to enter a new Dark Age of slavery, brutality, and war.  Only the second coming of Christ or an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit can prevent religious totalitarians from imposing their will on billions of people.

Although one could hope for evidence to refute this statement, the last eight years have seen the US and the world make great strides toward proving Robbins correct.  While this essay has focused on US involvement in the Middle East, there are other hot spots brewing in the world as well.  As of this writing, the US and its European allies have imposed sanctions on Russia for its support of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and China is making noises about taking control of the South China Sea.  Far from being a holy war for freedom and truth, the interventionist foreign policy of the US over the past century has created an ungodly mess, involving this nation in a sequence of unnecessary and increasingly dangerous conflicts around the world, any one of which could erupt into full-scale war.   Baring the return of Christ or a second Reformation, it appears this is just where we are headed.

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