Political News: McCain Endorser Pastor John Hagee: God Curse and Doom America

Saturday, May 3, 2008

McCain Endorser Pastor John Hagee: God Curse and Doom America

"As a nation, America is under the curse of God, even now." That ominous slam at America came from Pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement Republican presidential candidate John McCain sought, secured, and recently affirmed to ABC News that he is "glad to have." Hagee claims God's "curse" and "doom" is upon America because of two key issues: reproductive freedom and broad support for the teaching of the theory of evolution.

Although Senator McCain recently told George Stephanopoulos in an interview that his seeking of Hagee's endorsement was "probably" a mistake, he then doubled back to affirm his approval of Hagee's endorsement, stating, "I'm glad to have it."

If McCain did not know of Hagee's belief that God is against America, he should have: Hagee's pronouncement of God's "curse" and "doom" on our nation was not a passing comment. It was a major theme of Hagee's book, Day of Deception (1997). In fact, Hagee devotes a whole chapter to it. Here's the curse and doom quote in context:

In "America Under a Curse," a seventeen page chapter in Day of Deception, John Hagee wrote, "As a nation, America is under the curse of God, even now. Look at the scriptures and see for yourself. The stand we have taken on abortion, the stand we have taken against God in our classrooms, just may have sealed or doom."

topic: John McCain

In Hagee's telling there's a whole taxonomy of divine curses that afflict Americans and all of Homo Sapiens - curses on individuals, curses on families, curses on nations and curses on mankind. "The Curse on America" is neatly organized into subsections for different types of divine curses sapping and damaging America and its people, its culture and economic well-being: God's curses on individuals; God's `curse on America'; "The Curse on The Home"; "The Curse against People" (Americans generally); "The Curses of The Cities"; "The Economic Curse"; "The Curse of The Plagues"; "The Curse of Servitude".

According to Hagee, in the case of curses humans speak against each other, "[if] you are not protected by the blood of Christ that curse will stick. It can follow you and your family for generations." The implication is that Christianity alone confers special protection against curses, which slide off Christians but stick to people of all other faiths and beliefs. In a later book, Hagee has described a terrible, permanent divine curse upon Jews for worshiping idols. To work and to sweat, explains Hagee, are the curses of men while menstruation and childbearing are curses of women.

There are many curses that afflict individuals, some of them unsurprising - incest and thievery incur divine penalty, but other curses Hagee describes seem better placed in the Medieval Era than the post-Enlightenment age. The poor may be cursed simply because they're poor; divine curses can extend for four generations so that Americans can be cursed for the deeds of their great-great grandparents and disobedient children can be cursed for rebelliousness.

America is also collectively cursed for specific reasons, such as legalized abortion and a Supreme Court decision against sectarian Bible classes in public schools but also, more generally, for rebelling against God. As a consequence of America's disobedience and rebellion, according to McCain-endorser John Hagee, God's has cursed America and that curse has caused American military defeats, in Korea and Vietnam, plagues such as AIDS and social blights like violent crime. God's curse on America has also led "hundreds of thousands" to secretly sacrifice children to the devil.

Pastor Hagee bears in on Hollywood, with special intensity, as an almost uniquely pernicious curse on the nation - "Hollywood continues to show its hatred towards God, because Hollywood hates Christianity. It is... a cancer that eats at the soul of the country."

The belief in divinely mandated collective and generational punishments is one Pastor John Hagee has carried from the 90's into the current decade. In a September 18, 2006 interview on the WHYY radio show Fresh Air, with Terry Gross, Hagee stated that God nearly obliterated the whole city of New Orleans, via Hurricane Katrina, due to a gay pride event which had been planned prior to the disaster. In his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown" Hagee wrote that God may curse the East and West coasts of the United States, for insufficient support of the type of US foreign policy approach towards Israel Hagee advocates, punishing them with a Russian nuclear first strike that immolates America's coastal regions. In the same book, Hagee describes how Jews are cursed collectively because the ancient Hebrews once worshiped idols. Thus God, expressing "boundless love for the Jewish people", sent Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust. Hagee does not mention whether Americans who are 1/2 or 1/4 Jewish carry 1/2 or 1/4 of that specific curse.

If America and most Americans are cursed, there's one person who, according to John Hagee, isn't at all cursed, doomed or damned: John Hagee. In a 2002 BBC interview Hagee declared he knows the future with absolute certainty and the good pastor has repeatedly stated his certainty of going to Heaven.

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Below: videos and Talk To Action stories on McCain/Hagee

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