How a Wacky, Fringe Religious Belief Has Taken Over the U. S. Government

At the beginning of the 21^st century, the leadership of the most economically, technically, and socially advanced nation in history has fallen to a politician with fringe, reactionary religious beliefs from a part of the country with a primitive extractive economy.  This article will examine George W. Bush’s reactionary religious beliefs and the impact of those beliefs on the domestic and foreign policies of his administration.  To start our examination of Bush’s fringe religious belief, we must go back in history – back to England in the 1820’s.

John Nelson Darby and  Premillineal Dispensationalism

John Nelson Darby was an Anglican priest in Ireland who left the Church of England in the 1820’s to form his own sect, The Brethren.  Over the years, The Brethren spread through the British Isles, Germany, and North America.  Darby developed an elaborate end-times theory that he called Premillineal Dispensationalism – this theory is one of the prevalent influences on Southern Protestant fundamentalists to this day.

Darby's fringe beliefs

 Darby’s vision of the “end times” – which has not been altered by his successors – holds the following beliefs.

 ·           In the end times, Israel will be re-created as a nation-state.

·           God will intervene repeatedly to save Israel from destruction.

·           Eventually, Israel will be destroyed by in the battle of Armageddon, in which an international federation will be led by the Anti-Christ.  Many fundamentalists believe the federation that will destroy Israel is either the United Nations or the European Federation.  Also, many believe the antichrist will be a Jew who has renounced Judaism.

·           Most Jews will be killed in Armageddon, but 144,000 will convert to Christianity and be “saved.”

·           Jesus will physically return to Earth to defeat the antichrist.

·           At this point, the ancient Jewish temple on the Temple Mount – where the Al-Aqsa mosque stands today – will be restored as will the Throne of King David, one of the kings of ancient Israel.

·           Jesus will establish a world government in the form of a theocracy and rule as a benevolent dictator for the next thousand years at which time Satan will escape and be defeated again, this time forever.

Darby's American disciples

 The most prominent and influential Americans to accept this view of the future were Dwight L. Moody, founder of the Moody Bible Institute, and Cyrus Scofield of the Dallas Theological Seminary.  Scofield’s Scofield Reference Bible has persuaded generations of Protestant fundamentalists that Darby’s bizarre interpretation of scripture is correct.

 According to Darby, one of the conditions necessary to the return of Jesus was the restoration of Israel to its “biblical boundaries” and the establishment of a secure Israeli state.  Israel’s victory in the 1967 war and its conquest of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank created a wave of apocalyptic anticipation among Protestant fundamentalists in the U. S., especially in Texas and the rest of the South.  The restoration of Jews to “the Holy Land” has been a priority for the Southern right for a generation before the Southern right hijacked the national Republican Party.

Further, it is no accident that every Southern Protestant fundamentalist is almost surgically attached to his well-worn, underlined, cross-referenced copy of the "King James translation" Scofield reference Bible.

 Now, review and think about what you have just read.  In the 1820’s a fringe priest developed a theory that, before Jesus can come to earth again, Israel must be established as a state.  This belief led American fundamentalists to sponsor the “restoration of the Holy Land” to the Jews so that the Jews can be destroyed in the final battle of Armageddon, except for 144,000 who will convert to Christianity.

Southern Protestants adopt Israel

 By 2002, Southern Protestants fundamentalists in the U. S. had launched an “adopt-a-settlement” program in which they provided financial assistance to settlements in Israel to further the establishment of a state of Israel occupying “Israel’s biblical lands.”  One of the principal actors in this movement is John Hagee, pastor of the San Antonio, Texas, Cornerstone Church who announced that his congregation would give $1,000,000 to the government of Israel to resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union.  When Hagee was told that U. S. law considered the Israel settlements to be illegal, he replied: “I am a Bible scholar and theologian and from my perspective, the law of God transcends the law of the United States government.”  According to Hagee, the Israeli colonization of the occupied territories “is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”  Some American fundamentalists are allied with Jewish fanatics who dream of destroying the Al-Aqsa mosque in order to build the restored Temple on the Temple Mount.

Influence on Congress

 The leading conservative members of Congress from Texas were among the most fervent supporters of the far right in Israel.  In the last week of April 2002, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay said that all of the West Bank – which he called “Judea and Samaria” in accordance with Jewish practice – belong to Israel.  On 1 May 2002, House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey endorsed the call by the Israeli right wing for their military to engage in ethnic cleansing to purge the West Bank of native Palestinian Arabs.  In an interview with Chris Matthews, Army proposed that over three million people be expelled for the homeland where they had lived since history began.

Right-wing Israeli's support of American Protestant fundamentalists

 The fervent support of Israel by Protestant fundamentalists – rooted in Darby’s fringe interpretation of the Bible – has been manipulated for over 25 years by right-wing Israeli politicians and their American neoconservative allies. 

From 1948 until 1977, moderates and progressives in Israel kept the radical right wing Likud party at bay.  Then came the election of Menachem Begin, the first Likud Primer Minister, followed by Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ariel Sharon.  The Likud Party has opposed and eventually destroyed every peace plan put forward for Israel.  Since Begin’s election in 1977, American Protestant fundamentalists have been an echo for the Israeli Likud Party:  supporting Israel’s invasion of Lebanon; opposing the Oslo peace process; demanding an end to US negotiations with the Palestinians; and, encouraging the expansion of Jewish settlements. 

One of Israel’s chief supporters among US Protestant fundamentalists is Reverend Jerry Falwell, a Lynchburg, Virginia, Baptist preacher and founder of the “Moral Majority.”  In 1981, when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor, Begin phoned Falwell before he told President Reagan.  In 1979, the government of Israel gave Falwell a Lear jet.  In 1998, when Netanyahu visited the US, he addressed more than a thousand evangelical fundamentalists at a Falwell rally before he went to Washington to see President Clinton. 

The relationship between the Protestant fundamentalists and the Jews is strange because the Protestant fundamentalist leadership is frequently on record with anti-Semitic statements.  Bailey Smith, an influential Dallas Baptist preacher proclaimed that “God does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”  Pat Robertson, in his book The New World Order, claimed that Jewish financiers and Freemasons have caused most of the world’s wars.   

The alliance of white Southern Protestant evangelicals and Jewish neoconservatives is strengthened by a sense on both their parts that they are embattled and despised minorities in both the world and their own ethnic groups.  The Jewish conservatives are a minority within the American Jewish community, which remains predominantly liberal in domestic policy while Southern right-wingers and religious fundamentalists have always been a minority among white Americans.

Roots of Southern Protestant religiosity

 The fierce religiosity of Southern Protestant fundamentalists can be traced back to Ulster and Scotland.  The 18^th century Irish and Scots who moved to the American colonies from Northern Ireland combined frontier ferocity with simple, unquestioning, fervent Calvinist Protestantism.  These people compare themselves to the oppressed Hebrews of the Old Testament and have little or no use for the forgiving, loving, peaceful Jesus of the New Testament.  It is no accident that Southern Protestant fundamentalism is called “the old-time religion.”  It consists of near-literal translations from the Old Testament law; laws and social strictures in the South today are near-literal transcriptions from the book of Leviticus.  The gun-toting, Bible-thumping Southerner with his devotion to the Ten Commandments is no different from the Torah-thumping, gun-toting Israeli settler in occupied Arab territories. 

The parallels between white southerners in the historically majority-black Deep South and the Israeli occupation of Arab lands are obvious.  In each case, a minority, surrounded by an oppressed majority without rights lives in fear of rebellion by the subjugated majority.  In each case, the isolated minority promulgates an ideology of racial and religious solidarity to enlist the support of its ethnic kin to help keep themselves in power. 

In his approach to the Middle East, the first President Bush and his advisers – such as Secretary of State James Baker – reflected the pro-Arab tilt of big business in the oil patch – rescuing Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, pressuring Israel not to retaliate against Iraqi rocket attacks.  In response, the Israeli right-wing directed bitter, vicious attacks against the first President Bush – attacks that no doubt were not lost on his son, the second President Bush.  George W. Bush is a devout Southern Protestant fundamentalist and he shares with the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and long-dead Charles Nelson Darby his commitment to the “restoration of Israel and the temple” so as to prepare for the “second coming of Jesus.”

George W. Bush and 21st-century American Imperialism

 The conservative imperialism of George W. Bush’s administration has no precedent in US foreign policy.  However, it is strikingly like 19^th century British imperialism.  Just like the British in the 19^th century, the US wants to rule the world in isolation – “dominance” is the word used in Bush’s September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States – wants to promote free trade, and foster the return of Jews to “the Holy Land” – which was also a project of British evangelical Protestants in the 19^th century and now of American Protestants in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries. 

In the 19^th century United States, British imperialists found their closest allies in the Southern planter class.  The fact that the 21^st Southern conservative world view resembles 19^th century British imperialism is no surprise.  The South, including Texas, is a provincial museum of dead British ideologies, British religious denominations, and British customs.  The South’s religion is 17^th century British Cromwellian Puritanism with a large dose of Darbyist Dispensationalism.   The South’s notion of social relationships is that of the 18^th century British landed elite.

 Southerners failed between 1861 and 1865 to separate themselves from the US and establish their own militaristic, devoutly Protestant empire; conservative Southerners now seek to use the American presidency to remake the world in the image of the 19^th century British Empire.  The fact that in order to do so they must repudiate over half a century of US internationalism and social justice does not bother Southern Protestant fundamentalists in the least – including George W. Bush.  After all, they regard Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt as the enemy.

 I realize that many people reading this article will, by now, be enraged and denounce me as a commie, an atheist, and a sicko liberal.  The fact is that I was born in 1944 in rural Wilkinson County, Mississippi.  When people talked about "the war," they were referring to the Civil War, not WW II.  When I was seven, my father's business transferred us to Knoxville, Tennessee -- at the junction of central and southern Appalachia.  Thus, I grew up cradled in the arms of Southern Protestant fundamentalism.  I own a well-used, underlined, well-studied King James Scofield reference Bible.  I know all about being washed in the blood of the lamb, being born again, the rapture, the seven seals, the four horsemen, and rebuilding the temple. 

I was born a Southerner, a Baptist, and a Democrat.  Then I learned to read.  I am still a Southerner and a Democrat.

So, save your epithets -- I am neither a commie, and atheist, or a sicko liberal.