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The Texas Blue
Advancing Progressive Ideas

Hagee Endorses McCain, Angers Donahue

Stop me if you've heard this one before: The head of the Catholic League, the televangelist pastor of Texas' largest mega-church and a Senator from Arizona walk into a bar...

Upon seeing yesterday's news about Catholic League head Bill Donahue's displeasure over Senator John McCain's buddy act with Cornerstone Church Pastor John Hagee, I don't think we're going to be seeing that scene anytime soon.

Hagee, a leading figure in the fundamentalist social conservative movement, endorsed John McCain on Wednesday in San Antonio.

This has to sting for Mike Huckabee, a man much more in tune with Hagee's philosophy than John McCain. It does add another brick in the wall to my theory that the leaders of the fundamentalist movement don't care as much about ideological purity as they do about being on the winning side.

Hagee's minority fundamentalist beliefs include referring to the Catholic Church as "The Great Whore" and "a false cult system", calling the Harry Potter series "contemporary witchcraft" and that the Bible predicts that Russia and the Islamic states of the Middle East will invade Israel and be destroyed by God. After this happens, the Anti-Christ (the head of the European Union, natch) will cause a confrontation over Israel between China and the West which will lead to the Second Coming.

Nice endorsement, Senator.

Ahhh, the old refrain...

"Hagee's minority fundamentalist beliefs include ..." Sigh. That list brings back (not so) fond memories of my upbringing.

While many fundamentalist leaders seem to embrace ideology only when it suits them, their followers are much more unconditional in their faith. The rank and file of churches like Hagee's are a credulous and trusting bunch. Even so, there will be backlash if their leaders are caught in a blatantly obvious compromise.

Hagee is taking a risk. If McCain happens to attain the presidency, and reverts to his older, more permissive views on religious conservative issues (a likely thing, I think, for him to do), it would force at least some of Hagee's followers to conclude that while Hagee has spiritual insight, he is not worldly wise.

That kind of disillusionment would bolster those in the church that say political means are not appropriate to religious ends, and help dissipate the activism of the religious right.

Of course, if a Democrat wins (which seems pretty likely), Hagee can easily get away with saying that McCain would have really sic'd it to those liberals. But while Hagee's hard core base will content themselves with digging into the hills and preparing for God's judgment, more mainstream followers will start to question the religious conservative movement in the face of its increasingly apparent failures, and start to move to more mainstream churches.

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