The Political Chase

Jeremiah Wright seems more like an altar boy when compared to John Hagee

Longtime readers of TPC know how I feel about mixing religion and politics, and particularly my view on the religious test applied to Barack Obama with respect to Jeremiah Wright. But for those that aren’t, I had to give this particular issue on Pastor John Hagee, and by association John McCain, considerable thought before posting it.

The Jeremiah Wright controversy was initiated by others. They sought information and videos on Wright with the sole intent of destroying Barack Obama. Wright did not come out on the national stage and endorse Obama as a result of Obama seeking and promoting that endorsement. Instead the facts show Obama sought to distance himself from Wright rather than publicize him. In other words — it wasn’t pandering or trying to curry favor with a particular sect of voters.

The same cannot be said for the relationship between John McCain and Pastor John Hagee. I don’t believe John McCain’s views are entirely synonymous with Pastor Hagee’s views, but their alliance does reflect on John McCain’s judgment and his hypocrisy. John McCain has one standard for his opponents and another standard for himself.

Hagee recently apologized for referring to the Catholic Church as the “great whore” and as I said at the time, that was but one of Hagee’s offensive remarks. Cliff Schecter has uncovered another one of Hagee’s “teachings” that is not only offensive, to me at least, but also flies in the face of George Bush and remarks he made against Obama this week and McCain fully supported.

Yesterday I discovered an astonishing audio recording of a sermon, by controversial McCain endorser Pastor John Hagee, in which Hagee elaborates on his view that Hitler and the Nazis were divine agents, sent by God to (with gruesome inefficiency it would seem) chase Europe’s Jews towards Palestine. In his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown”, Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves - the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive.

I can’t think of a better way to frame this than by using John McCain’s words. “I think that Barack Obama John McCain needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with the support of a man who is the head of a government church…who denies the [source and tragedy] of the Holocaust [for what it was.]“