Religious Right and Iraq War Part II
Before going into the crux of the debate, some ground needs to be cleared first.
A BBC news item tries to link evangelical support for Bush’s God-talk with their eschatology. Rather bizarrely, this item tries to suggest that Bush would receive support because his actions could be used to hasten Armaggeddon.
Some comments:
1) There is no appreciation of different eschatological opinions. Not all evangelicals see a Middle Eastern Armaggeddon as central to their eschatology.
2) I have yet to come across any religous right leader who has defended the Iraq war based on Armaggeddon hastening rhetoric. No reference to eschatology was present in the (in)famous Land letter. This last comment needs to be nuanced with a realisation that many move from their eschatology to a full, uncritical support of the state of Israel.
Of course, there may be some on the “Loony” fringe of American evangelicalism who use this kind of rhetoric. I have not come across any, but I tend to be aware of more mainstream voices, and after all one can find loonies to defend any kind of exotic idea. Although I am critical of RR support for the Iraq war, any critique which is based on caricature is not worthy of consideration. What might have led to a more interesting debate was how certain pre-millenial eschatologies result in an anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab outlook (ignoring the fact that there are both Palestinian and Arab Christians) and how this affects RR understaning of the Iraq war.
Tags: Iraq war, religious right
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