On March 7th, John McCain is forced to repudiate the endorsement of Reverend John Hagee, a well know force in the Evangelical movement out of San Antonio. Hagee's position against Catholics, catagorizing the church as evil and a "whore" caused McCain to reject the endorsement.
So what else does Hagee believe? He is a leader in the Christian support of Israel, viewing the renewal of the Jewish state as a sign of the end times, as told in Revelation. According to Hagee, the US must support Israel as one would support God's mission on earth. Hagee gets his view from the literal interpretation of the Bible. In fact, this is one of 3 components of Evangelical thought.
1. The infallibility of the Bible
2. Jesus is God, in that he is a divine part of the Trinity
3. A believer must be saved, accepting Jesus as one's Savior
So how is the Catholic Church in the crosshairs? Simply put, the traditions and restrictions of the Catholic faith is far more extensive and complicated. The Catholic Church is viewed as excessive and less focused on the faith--a charge convincingly advanced by Luther & Joan of Arc 6 centuries past. Hagee is the latest in a long line of critics against Catholicism.
In the end--will the evangelical vote matter in 2008? Absolutely, but unlike the past 1 elections, the faith based vote may shift or even stay home. This does NOT bode well for the Republicans.
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2 comments:
This is by far the bestest, most thorough education-related blog I've seen in my extensive perusing of three blogs. Well done indeed!
I know this post is very old, but I feel it necessary to comment. That being said, I grew up in one of these "Evangelical" churches and over the years began to notice that the Catholic faith was always discounted as just plain "wrong" by many of the members of that church. Upon further questioning, 99% of them could not tell me why they thought Catholicism was wrong, they just "knew" it was wrong. After attending several masses at different Catholic churches, I realized that, while the Catholic church itself may have more "traditions" or "rituals" it oftentimes does not mean that, for a casual churchgoer, a Catholic is very much different from an evangelical. This has been my experience, at least.
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