But I digress. Melissa was struck by the weirdness of the assumption that all Catholics were to follow Bill Donohue's lead. I was sturck by another line:
"Mr. Donohue said of Mr. Hagee’s letter: “Well, miracles do happen. If I wasn’t a believer before, I sure am now.According to wikipedia, Hagee has several degrees and not all from bible schools. During that education, he never actually read any history? For all the buzz about Jeremiah Wright, I remember hearing Hagee say amazingly stupid and uneducated things. He actually told his church (and I can't document this, but remember it from when I watched his circus) that the government was lying about how AIDS was spread and suggested to them that it was in fact spread through casual contact and through the air.
“Republican activists have been working with him over the last several weeks, giving him books and articles and getting him up to speed and away from the black legends about the Catholic Church. I have to assume he’s acting sincerely, and now understands” that he has been recycling conspiracy theories."
This is what happens when you emphasize reading the Bible and a personal experience with God over tradition, and reason.
7 comments:
I would hazard to say that Hagee's entire "ministry" is based upon a conspiracy theory borne of horrible OT theology and a dual track of salvation, one for Jews; one for Gentiles.
As I posted this morning, I think Hagee's "apology" is out of political expediency and not genuine contrition for his remarks. If it was out of contrition, he might apologize for other hateful and inflammatory remarks aimed at Muslims, Arabs, and the GBLT community. I doubt that will happen; unless Hagee will gain something from it.
Its simple; without the broad Catholic voting bloc, McCain won't move into the White House.
The "beauty" of the apocalyptic and prphetic writings in the bible are that they can be and have been interpreted in ways about as varied as those who have done the interpretation. Hagee and plenty of others like him from the famous to the unknown have had as their bread and butter the appearance of being able to give the faithful an exclusive look into all of the conspiracies. After all, for alot of people the books of Daniel and Revelation are the biggest conspiracy theory texts of all times. Eventually history will show him to be like those that have gone before- clueless and foolish and too arrogant in his prophet complex to see otherwise.
It's interesting how "prophecy" is so often tied to geopolitical agendas that are adapted down through history to the current context.
Later-BB
This is what happens when you emphasize reading the Bible and a personal experience with God over tradition, and reason.
Other things happen, too. Do you think religious people were better off when only certain people were supposed to study the Bible? Tradition can be fine, but getting too wrapped up in doctrine is not healthy either. Emphasizing tradition sounds like stagnation to me.
Late back to this conversation. BB makes a good point about how prophecy is used often to simply project some current political agenda. And Tony and I have agreed about Hagee's terribly theology for a long time.
Steves, I don't think I ever suggested that tradition should be it. Of course there is a reason the reformation happened. And of course, it is better to challenge tradition's historic hold on religious thought. But replacing that with an idiot like Hagee is not a good trade, is it? And surely there is a middle ground--more along the Anglican three-legged stool of tradition, reason, and scripture. Do I have that right, Anglican?
There seems to be a difference between not holding experience, tradition and history as necessarily authoritative (in the sense that you could use them as premises in a persuasive argument) on one hand, and on the other holding them up as things to be not just ignored but opposed. I suspect it's possible to think tradition is important without giving it the final word, but that isn't what Hagee is doing. What matters is him, him, him, now, now, now.
The biggest problem I see is the authoritarian environment these groups create. When you strip people's moral compasses and replace them with needles that always point to the church leadership, all the reason and tradition and Scripture and experience in the world would still lead people astray.
The only thing I know about Hagee is what has been said here. I certainly wouldn't hold him up as an example, but there are plenty of other good pastors, theologians, and other scholars that are around today.
The "beauty" of the apocalyptic and prphetic writings in the bible are that they can be and have been interpreted in ways about as varied as those who have done the interpretation.
I am sure Tony can correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Jesus caution against trying to predict the apocalypse?
I plan on posting more on this in the future, but I think Leighton's comment is right on. It seems to me that evangelicals (well, many protestants, but evangelicals in particular) came out of a tradition that, no pun intended, rejected tradition and learning. All you needed was either to be able to read the bible or have it read to you. No book learning required. The Bible means what it says, and says what it means. Added to that, is a magical process of praying over that Bible and God somehow communicates to the individual. No one else is privy to these communications, and since the person has "direct access to God" tradition and reason are irrelevant. The past is irrelevant.
And if you look at modern conservative evangelical thought, it is almost completely barren of history. They exist in their own little island, or perhaps, people in the past all experienced God in exactly the same way.
Hagee might not be normative of this experience, I will grant you, but he reaches and speaks to millions of Americans. He is hardly irrelevant. He reminds me of the first line of Noll's Scandal--something like, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind."
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