Dobson's World: God loves Israeli settlements and global warming

Bill Berkowitz reports on how Evangelicals Rally Their Flocks Behind Israel Inter Press Service 04/05/06. I'd have to say that too many writers use "evangelical" to equate with "fundamentalists". This is a blurring of important differences that fundamentalists encouraged. It gets even more confusing for people who are accustomed to the European convention of using "Evangelical" as synonomous with "Protestant".

In America, "evangelical" refers to Christians who follow theological conservative "born-again" theology, which includes fundamentalists but is a larger group than that. Evangelicals like Jimmy Carter can be moderate-to-liberal on social and political issues. Fundamentalists tend to regard evangelical Christians of that sort, whose Christianity leads them to seriously oppose war, racism or poverty, as "liberal" in their theology, which in fundi-speak is pretty much the same as "heresy".

This is an article about a rightwing, hawkish group called Christians United for Israel (CUFI) headed by the "charismatic" (i.e., Pentecostal) televangelist John Hagee:

Hagee is the author of a number of books including "Attack on America - New York, Jerusalem, and the role of Terrorism in the Last Days", and "The Beginning of the End - The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist". His latest non-fiction book is called "Jerusalem Countdown - A Warning to the World", which landed on best-seller lists.

The new book posits that "biblical prophecy is playing itself out daily in the Middle East," Agape Press, a Christian-based news service, reported. "Hagee says Iran's new president, coupled with... [the] victory by terrorist-backed Hamas in the Palestinian elections, paves the way for an impending war in the region."

In addition to spearheading the launch of Christians United for Israel, and appearing on a panel at the recent National Religious Broadcasters convention, Hagee has aligned himself with a number of Christian right evangelicals that condemned the Evangelical Climate Initiative, signed by 86 evangelical leaders acknowledging the seriousness of global warming and pledging to press for legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

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