McCain rejects televangelist Hagee's endorsement

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Republican John McCain rejected the months-old endorsement of an influential Texas televangelist after an audio recording surfaced in which the preacher said God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land.

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well," the presidential candidate said in a statement issued Thursday.

Hagee quickly responded that he was withdrawing the endorsement.

McCain actively courted Hagee, who leads a megachurch with a congregation in the tens of thousands and has an even wider television audience. Former GOP presidential rivals also sought Hagee's backing.

The preacher has controversial views that were well-known before McCain accepted his endorsement at a news conference Feb. 27 in San Antonio shortly before the Texas presidential primary.

Hagee has referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore" and called it a "false cult system." He also has linked Hitler to the Catholic church, suggesting it helped shape his anti-Semitism. And Hagee said Hurricane Katrina was God's retribution for homosexual sin.

And

Hagee said critics are "grossly misrepresenting my position on issues most near and dear to my heart."

"I am tired of these baseless attacks and fear that they have become a distraction in what should be a national debate about important issues," Hagee said. "I have therefore decided to withdraw my endorsement of Senator McCain for president effective today, and to remove myself from any active role in the 2008 campaign."

Click here for the rest. Click here for some audio of Hagee's classic fire and brimstone.

Once again, this is what you get when you mix religion and politics.

I was so unsurprised by Hagee's remarks that I didn't even think twice about them. I've heard them before, really. In a very bizarre way, this makes sense from a fundamentalist perspective. When you read the Old Testament literally, as all fundamentalists do, you can't help but see one of the major themes as Jews pissing off God, followed by God extracting revenge, followed by Jews renewing their faith and obedience in their usually angry master. Apply this theme to recent history and you can't help but get Hitler in on the act. This makes even more fundamentalist sense when you incorporate the evangelical conception of God as divine puppet-master: he's always here, always calling the shots, even right now, right here while you read this.

Kinda makes the notion of free will problematic.

Anyway, this is but one of the many reasons I reject Christian fundamentalism and Christianity in general. If you take the Bible seriously, you simply have to understand God as either stark raving bonkers or straight-up evil. He's always smiting and destroying, over the least little transgression. He's either enslaving his own children, or encouraging those children to commit genocide. To God, if we're doing the right thing, we're sheep. If we're doing the wrong thing, we're meat.

A total nut, with omnipotence.

At least Obama's pastor problem is about real world issues. It's nice to see that kooky religion is being driven out of the public square and back into the church where it belongs. Here's hoping it stays this way for awhile.

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