The Blue Voice

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

If you thought "Christian Zionism" was weird before ...

Both my posts today are partially in response to stuff from Tankwoman. She pointed out this article to me, probably figuring that it was just weird enough to really intrigue me: You don't need to be apocalyptic, but it helps: [A review of] Standing with Israel by David Brog, reviewed by "Spengler" Asia Times 06/20/06.

And she was right. Sprengler's review is so daffy that it's downright entertaining. He's reviewing a book that deals with the "Christian Zionist" phenomenon, i.e., the (mostly white) Christian fundamentalists who support the foreign and military policies of the most hardline Israeli parties. This group has been enormously influential on the Bush administration's Middle East policies because of the strength of the Christian Right in the Republican Party.

I've blogged here before about this particular ideology, e.g., Pat's paranoia - and bigotry 07/15/05. Very briefly put, Christian Zionists believe that the end of the world and the second coming of Christ will occur only after a huge war centered around Israel. And they tend to see this as reason to support aggressive military and settlement policies on Israel's part that increase the chances of such a war in the area.

Spengler has some useful observations about what this view, the most hardcore of which is called "dispensationalism", encompasses. More on that below.

But some of his generalization and ways of arguing make him sound like ueberhack Victor Davis Hanson on dope. Here are some of my favorites:

Apocalyptic inclinations provide a better sort of mental preparation for Middle Eastern politics than the pap dished out by the political scientists. [Say what?]

The rational criteria by which diplomats attempt to resolve conflicts do not apply to conflicts whose origin lies not in rational self-interest, but in existential desperation.

For the Dispensationalists, the End of the World is an existentially acceptable proposition. When dealing with the Middle East, that is an advantage.

He also makes this, uh, astute observation:

Many Jews find discomforting the evangelical view that great wars will wipe out most of the Jews in the tribulation preceding Christ's return.

Well, duh! Anybody in their right mind should find it disturbing, I would say. Oh, excuse me, "discomforting".

This review is so weird, though, that just quoting a few one-liners can't do it justice. It starts off relatively smoothly:

The importance of Christian eschatology in shaping US attitudes toward Israel disturbs enlightened world opinion, and David Brog's new book will inflame these concerns. At the heart of Christian support for Israel in particular and the Jews in general are Dispensationalists, who support Israel with more passion than do American Jews themselves. Their preoccupation with End Times has entered American popular culture through Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of bestsellers.

Standing with Israel has many virtues, but one big flaw, namely the author's failure to ask, let alone to answer, the obvious question: How is it possible that an idiosyncratic current in non-conforming Christianity, deeply concerned with End Times prophecy and until recently quite obscure, has taken on the decisive role in the great events of the day, as Brog reports?

A perfectly sensible question. The problem is that Spengler then goes off into a long explanation that comes down to saying, well, that's the best way to understand what going on in the Middle East.

And I think there is some kind of rational point in that, even if it positions Spengler as a partisan of the radical settler movement, or something close to that. I recall several years ago hearing a presentation by an Israeli diplomatic on the Mideast peace process. The one thing that stuck with me from his speech was that he said, American have a pragmatic inclinations to solve problems, so they have a hard time understanding that there may be problems with no solution.

The propaganda value of such an argument is that it invites Western audiences in general, and white fundamentalists in particular, to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one in which violent, intransigent, undemocratic Palestinian Arabs are just too fanatical and unreasonable to agree to a settlement. So all Israel can do is to proceed with necessary military measures to protect themselves from the violent, crazy Arabs.

Part of the political background of this is that somehow in the late 1960s, when Israel's image in the US was changing in the wake of the Suix-Day War of 1967 and there were urban riots in the US and the public schools in the South were being integrated, quite a lot of American white folks managed to develop an image of Israel as tough, sturdy white people holding off a swarm of hostile, dark-skinned enemies. Yes, I know it's weird. The whole "Christian Zionism" thing is very weird.

Spengler's position is pretty clear in these two paragraphs, which puts one of the above quotes into better context:

The Dispensationalists are developing an aptitude of sorts for US Middle East policy, for what might be called existential reasons. Try to explain to someone from State Department or Foreign Office that the Middle East is a train wreck, and that nothing can be done to stop it, and they will dismiss you as a crank, and for very good reasons. If there is a train wreck in the Middle East, most of the present employees of the State Department and Foreign Office would become redundant.

Today's diplomats must believe that the problem is manageable, whether through a land-for-peace exchange or through regime change and democratization. If they did not believe this, they would stop being diplomats and do something else. Radical Protestants, though, see little downside in the proposition: worse comes to worst, it might be the Apocalypse. For the Dispensationalists, the End of the World is an existentially acceptable proposition. When dealing with the Middle East, that is an advantage.

This is a typical rightwing view of the State Department as being full of a bunch of Arab-loving sissies who don't understand - like the Kadima and Likud parties in Israel and the settler movement - that force and violence is the only thing those uncivilized Arabs understand. All this here negotiating, and diplomacy and stuff, that's just for wusses. Something like this kind of thinking must have been behind radical cleric Pat Roberson's suggestion to blow up the State Department.

Spengler quotes this passage from Brog's book:

There is a wonderful irony in secular critics of Christian Zionism, typically Jewish, complaining about the great disasters that will befall them upon Christ's Second Coming. These critics, of course, don't actually believe that there will be a Second Coming of Christ. If there will be no Second Coming, then there will be no mass conversion or death [of the Jews]. So what exactly are these critics worried about?

He then proceeds to dismiss this question with some incredibly tangled analogy to Luther, which he gives the impression Brog uses in his book, though in a different way.

This isn't a difficult notion to follow, people. The "dispensationalist" view has at its core the idea that it is God's will that most of the Jews of the world should be slaughtered. And then the few remaining ones would stop being Jews by becoming Christian. Anyone who thinks this is a friendly view toward Jews, or "philo-Semitism", please contact me immediately. For a small fee, I'll share with you the exclusive, never-before-told story of what really happened to Saddam's WMDs.

You know, some danger signs of negative social phenemona can be hard to perceive. But this one is simple. When somebody tells you that it is God's will that most Jews in the world should be violently slaughtered, this is not an enlightened, humane, or sensible worldview. I would also say it's bad Christianity, but I won't use the favorite Christian sophist argument that the idea isn't "true" Christianity. Because it certainly is an idea that a lot of real, existing Christians in America have.

Let me say it slightly differently. When somebody tells you that it is God's will that most Jews in the world should be violently slaughtered, you have to be effectively brain-dead not to realize that this is a nasty, Jew-hating outlook at its core. I don't care if its advocates get along just fine with the Jews at work, or love the Jews so much that they want to convert them to Christianity so they won't burn in Hail for eternity.

It's really not a hard concept to grasp. Somebody who believes it's God's will that most Jews in the world should be violently slaughtered is not someone who has a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings about Jews. They're just [Cheney]ing not. You don't need any convoluted stories about Martin Luther to figure that one out.

Spengler's discussion of Luther, though it gets pretty far away from the crackpot but consequential notions of Christian Zionism, also gave me a dizzy feeling in the head. Discussing Luther's notorious work Die Juden und Ihre Luegen (The Jews and Their Lies), he writes:

Luther recapitulated Spain's persecutions of 1492, which exiled the Jews to prevent the spread of Protestantism.

I don't think this particular aspect of Spanish history gets nearly as much attention in the history books as Columbus' fateful sea voyage of that year. But the popular rhyme should be amended to:

In fourteen-hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
And Spain got rid
Of all its Jews

Which they did. The "Catholic Monarchs", Ferdinand and Isabella, gave Spanish Jews the choice of either converting to Christianity or leave Spain. Did they do so, as Spengler say, "to prevent the spread of Protestantism"? Let's see:

1492: Expulsion of Jews from Spain

1518: Augustinian monk Martin Luther is directed to recant his 95 Theses (Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences) criticizing many practices of the Catholic Church. The latter event marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, though some historians might want to date it a few years later.

But in any case, 1492 was at least 26 years before there even were any Protestants. So Ferdinand and Isabella didn't expel the Jews because they could tell the Protestant Reformation would begin in 26 years and that somehow Spanish Jews might help it spread in their kingdoms.

So, I would say that they exiled the Jews to get rid of the Jews. Also pretty much a no-brainer. Something as creative as exiling Jews to get rid of Protestants that didn't even exist yet would have to await the kind of statesmanship we saw from the Bush administration in the runup to the war over Iraq's non-existent "weapons of mass destruction".

Like I said, this is hackery almost worthy of Victor Davis Hanson. This is a prime specimen, too:

It may seem strange, but the only Christians who identify with the Jews to the point of taking up their cause have been eschatologically [End-Times] oriented radical Protestants. That has been the case since the first days of the Reformation, and remains true today. Christ's Kingdom is not of this world; Christian life is a pilgrimage to the next world. The stations along this journey recapitulate the history of Israel: Christ's sacrifice on the Cross relives the Exodus from Egypt, and the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai is transmuted into the descent of the Holy Spirit to Christ's disciples on Pentecost.

Dude, are you [Cheney]ing nuts? And what does "taking up their cause" mean? Supporting the present-day settler movement in Israel? Proselytizing for Judaism? How many Christian fundamentalists are out there doing that?

Christian life is like the trials of Israel? Gosh, Spengler, with an imagination like that, you should go to work forging documents for the Italian spy agency to sell to the US to start wars with. You could make some serious money doing that, I bet.

The thing goes on about how Presbyterians and Episcopalians hate Jews because they don't believe God wants them to be slaughtered in order to prepare the way for the return of Christ. Or something. And then he says the second half of Huckleberry Finn isn't that good (hey, I don't have the imagination to make stuff like this up!), and that Jews are politically and morally "stupid" for not understanding that Christian Zionists who do think God wants them to be slaughtered in order to prepare the way for the return of Christ are really their best friends. And about how Jews are selfish (you know about Jews and money, nudge-nudge, wink-wink) but rightwing Christians who think God wants the Jews to be slaughtered in order to prepare the way for the return of Christ are looking "to a better world beyond this one". (That would be one with no Jews in it, if I'm following this correctly).

Oh, and he says moderate Christians are pagans who hate Jews. Just so you know.

It's not surprising that by the last paragraph he's saying:

Appreciative as he may be for the ministrations of Christian Zionists, Brog tries to apologize for their eschatological views. That not only condescends to American evangelicals but, even worse, it betrays a misunderstanding of what inspires Christian passion. Christians identify with Israel precisely because Israel's living history provides the beacons for their own journey to redemption, a journey whose end implies the change in the foundations of the Earth. Prophecy does not concern me, but I know something about shaky foundations. Not only chance, but also Providence favors the prepared mind.

Does anyone have the vaguest idea what he's trying to say there? Because, by Athena, I don't have a clue. It reminds me of the paragraph Jonathan Scwartz wrote to mock a comment from Peter Beinart that was less obscure than Spengler's:

Gerbil narcolepsy sofa-bed detritus squanders Bigfoot. Crapulent snurf machine? Crapulent snurf machine knob knobbler! Groucho lithe koala traipsing noreaster flange mucus. Mithril acne fluffernutter shamus fling-ding-a-ling-doo!

posted at 1:58:00 PM by Bruce Miller

| +Save/Share | |