Defending Rev. Hagee
John McCain threw Hagee under the bus today, which was either (a) politically wise or (b) a disgraceful bit of pandering, not even to his own base, but to the New York Times and Co. (and, yes, I know that his desire to placate the NYT is a problem, but every Republican this year seems to be suffering from NYT’s placati-itis). Be that as it may, I still think it’s important to point out that Hagee is not the vile anti-Catholic hate-monger that he’s being portrayed as being in the anti-McCain, pro-Obama, pro-Jeremiah Wright MSM.
I’ve already linked to Dennis Prager’s column defending Hagee against the calumnies made against him. JoshuaPundit has also reacted strongly to the horrible claims made against Hagee. He points out, as did Prager, that Hagee did not say what Frank Rich and the HuffPo peopled said he did. He used the phrases “Great Whore” and “Catholic Church” in the same speech, it is true, but he didn’t say that they were one and the same.
Further, unlike Wright, who used “Zionists” and “evil oppressors” in the same speech with the clear intent that they be understood as comparable terms, Hagee, when he realized that his words had been taken out of context in order to smear Catholics, apologized. He met with Catholic leaders. He discussed doctrine with them. He apologized and they accepted his apology. Prager said this too.
JoshuaPundit goes a step further than Prager to discuss the way in which Hagee and his church have paired their actions with their beliefs, actions that I’m sure all of you will approve:
Pastor Hagee’s Crossroads Church, among their other numerous good works raised $8.5 million dollars to rescue Jews from the Soviet Union and to help them to settle in Israel.
And Pastor Hagee and his Church are the linchpin behind Christians United For Israel, one of the most diligent and uncompromising supporters of Israel and the Jewish people anywhere. They rival AIPAC when it comes to manning the trenches in Congress to lobby for the nation Jeremiah Wright famously referred to as ‘a dirty word’.
As you all know, being Jewish, Pastor Hagee’s doctrinal stance is alien to me. Further, since I’m in some gray area between atheism and agnosticism, much of what he says seems either silly or pointless to me. What I do know, however, is that this is a good man who does good things. That he thinks Hitler may have been Biblically prophesized — well, I think that’s a bit silly, because I don’t read the Bible as the literal word of God (my apologies for my skepticism to those of you who do). Whether logical or not, though, Hagee has taken his Biblical understanding and turned it into a series of good, moral acts. His interpretations, whether you view them as wacky or reasonable, stand as the framework for a life of humanism. How can one castigate that?
