 It was an e-mail we weren't meant to
see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking
two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off
bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued
fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current
Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every
level" - this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself
to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume
of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the
National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic
Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their
sectarian doomsday scenarios.
-
- But now we know.
-
- "Everything that you're discussing is information
you're not supposed to have," barked Pentecostal minister Robert G.
Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received
on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed
by Upton and obtained by the Voice.
-
- The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and
North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic
Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the
Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously
oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal
from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all
of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and
David's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.
-
- Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating
that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as
Joseph's tomb or Rachel's tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can
be sacrificed for the cause of peace."
-
- Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush
reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over
parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the
Gaza Strip.
-
- In an interview with the Voice, Upton denied having written
the document, though it was sent out from an e-mail account of one of his
staffers and bears the organization's seal, which is nearly identical to
the Great Seal of the United States. Its idiosyncratic grammar and punctuation
tics also closely match those of texts on the Apostolic Congress's website,
and Upton verified key details it recounted, including the number of participants
in the meeting ("45 ministers including wives") and its conclusion
"with a heart-moving send-off of the President in his Presidential
helicopter."
-
- Upton refused to confirm further details.
-
- Affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic
Congress is part of an important and disciplined political constituency
courted by recent Republican administrations. As a subset of the broader
Christian Zionist movement, it has a lengthy history of opposition to any
proposal that will not result in what it calls a "one-state solution"
in Israel.
-
- The White House's association with the congress, which
has just posted a new staffer in Israel who may be running afoul of Israel's
strict anti-missionary laws, also raises diplomatic concerns.
-
- The staffer, Kim Hadassah Johnson, wrote in a report
obtained by the Voice, "We are establishing the Meet the Need Fund
in Israel - 'MNFI.' ... The fund will be an Interest Free Loan Fund that
will enable us to loan funds to new believers (others upon application)
who need assistance. They will have the opportunity to repay the loan (although
it will not be mandatory)." When that language was read to Moshe Fox,
minister for public and interreligious affairs at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington, he responded, "It sounds against the law which prohibits
any kind of money or material [inducement] to make people convert to another
religion. That's what it sounds like." (Fox's judgment was e-mailed
to Johnson, who did not return a request for comment.)
-
- The Apostolic Congress dates its origins to 1981, when,
according to its website, "Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open
the door to Apostolic Christians into the White House." Apostolics,
a sect of Pentecostals, claim legitimacy as the heirs of the original church
because they, as the 12 apostles supposedly did, baptize converts in the
name of Jesus, not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ronald
Reagan bore theological affinities with such Christians because of his
belief that the world would end in a fiery Armageddon. Reagan himself referenced
this belief explicitly a half-dozen times during his presidency.
-
- While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent
from George W. Bush's speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics
- a point of pride for Upton. "We're in constant contact with the
White House," he boasts. "I'm briefed at least once a week via
telephone briefings... I was there about two weeks ago ... At that time
we met with the president."
-
- Last spring, after President Bush announced his Road
Map plan for peace in the Middle East, the Apostolic Congress co-sponsored
an effort with the Jewish group Americans for a Safe Israel that placed
billboards in 23 cities with a quotation from Genesis ("Unto thy offspring
will I give this land") and the message, "Pray that President
Bush Honors God's Covenant with Israel. Call the White House with this
message." It then provided the White House phone number and the Apostolic
Congress's Web address.
-
- In the interview with the Voice, Pastor Upton claimed
personal responsibility for directing 50,000 postcards to the White House
opposing the Road Map, which aims to create a Palestinian state. "I'm
in total disagreement with any form of Palestinian state," Upton said.
"Within a two-week period, getting 50,000 postcards saying the exact
same thing from places all over the country, that resonated with the White
House. That really caused [President Bush] to backpedal on the Road Map."
-
- When I sought to confirm Upton's account of the meeting
with the White House, I was directed to National Security Council spokesman
Frederick Jones, whose initial response upon being read a list of the names
of White House staffers present was a curt, "You know half the people
you just mentioned are Jewish?"
-
- When asked for comment on top White House staffers meeting
with representatives of an organization that may be breaking Israeli law,
Jones responded, "Why would the White House comment on that?"
-
- When asked whose job it is in the administration to study
the Bible to discern what parts of Israel were or weren't acceptable sacrifices
for peace, Jones said that his previous statements had been off-the-record.
-
- When Pastor Upton was asked to explain why the group's
website describes the Apostolic Congress as "the Christian Voice in
the nation's capital," instead of simply a Christian voice in the
nation's capital, he responded, "There has been a real lack of leadership
in having someone emerge as a Christian voice, someone who doesn't speak
for the right, someone who doesn't speak for the left, but someone who
speaks for the people, and someone who speaks from a theocratical perspective."
-
- When his words were repeated back to him to make sure
he had said a "theocratical" perspective, not a "theological"
perspective, he said, "Exactly. Exactly. We want to know what God
would have us say or what God would have us do in every issue."
-
- The Middle East was not the only issue discussed at the
March 25 meeting. James Wilkinson, deputy national security advisor for
communications, spoke first and is characterized as stating that the 9-11
Commission "is portraying those who have given their all to protect
this nation as 'weak on terrorism,' " that "99 percent of all
the men and women protecting us in this fight against terrorism are career
citizens," and offered the example of Frances Town-send, deputy national
security adviser for combating terrorism, "who sacrificed Christmas
to do a 'security video' conference."
-
- Tim Goeglein, deputy director of public liaison and the
White House's point man with evangelical Christians, moderated, and he
also spoke on the issue of same-sex marriage. According to the memo, he
asked the rhetorical questions: "What will happen to our country if
that actually happens? What do those pushing such hope to gain?" His
answer: "They want to change America." How so? He quoted the
research of Hoover Institute senior fellow Stanley Kurtz, who holds that
since gay marriage was legalized in Scandinavia, marriage itself has virtually
ceased to exist. (In fact, since Sweden instituted a registered-partnership
law for same-sex couples in the mid '90s, there has been no overall change
in the marriage and divorce rates there.)
-
- It is Matt Schlapp, White House political director and
Karl Rove's chief lieutenant, who was paraphrased as stating "that
the Presidents Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural,
economical, and social struggle on every level."
-
- Also present at the meeting was Kristen Silverberg, deputy
assistant to the president for domestic policy. (None of the participants
responded to interview requests.)
-
- The meeting was closed by Goeglein, who was asked, "What
can we do to assist in this fight for these issues and our nations [sic]
foundation and values?" and who reportedly responded, "Pray,
pray, pray, pray."
-
- The Apostolic Congress's representative in Israel, Kim
Johnson, is ethnically Jewish, keeps kosher, and holds herself to the sumptuary
standards of Orthodox Jewish women, so as to better blend in to her surroundings.
-
- In one letter home obtained by the Voice she notes that
many of the Apostolic Christians she works with in Israel are Filipino
women "married to Jewish men - who on occasion accompany their wives
to meetings. We are planning to start a fellowship with this select group
where we can meet for dinners and get to know one another. Please Pray
for the timing and formation of such." Elsewhere she talks of a discussion
with someone "on the pitfalls and aggravations of Christians who missionize
Jews." She works often among the Jewish poor - the kind of people
who might be interested in interest-free loans - and is thrilled to "meet
the outcasts of this Land - how wonderful because they are in the in-casts
for His Kingdom."
-
- An ecstatic figure who from her own reports appears to
operate at the edge of sanity ("Two of the three nights in my apartment
I have been attacked by a hair raising spirit of fear," she writes,
noting the sublet contained a Harry Potter book; "at this time I am
associating it with witchcraft"), Johnson has also met with Knesset
member Gila Gamliel. (Gamliel did not respond to interview requests.) She
also boasted of an imminent meeting with a "Knesset leader."
-
- "At this point and for all future mails it is important
for me to note that this country has very stiff anti-missionary laws,"
she warns the followers back home. [D]iscretion is required in all mails.
This is particularly important to understand when people write mails or
ask about organization efforts regarding such."
-
- Her boss, Pastor Upton, displays a photograph on the
Apostolic Congress website of a meeting between himself and Beny Elon,
Prime Minister Sharon's tourism minister, famous in Israel for his advocacy
of the expulsion of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled lands.
-
- His spokesman in the U.S., Ronn Torassian, affirmed that
"Minister Elon knows Mr. Upton well," but when asked whether
he is aware that Mr. Upton's staffer may be breaking Israel's anti-missionary
laws, snapped: "It's not something he's interested in discussing with
The Village Voice."
-
- In addition to its work in Israel, the Apostolic Congress
is part of the increasingly Christian public face of pro-Israel activities
in the United States. Don Wagner, author of the book Anxious for Armageddon,
has been studying Christian Zionism for 15 years, and believes that the
current hard-line pro-Israel movement in the U.S. is "predominantly
gentile." Often, devotees work in concert with Jewish groups like
Americans for a Safe Israel, or AFSI, which set up a mostly Christian Committee
for a One-State Solution as the sponsor of last year's billboard campaign.
The committee's board included, in addition to Upton, such evangelical
luminaries as Gary Bauer and E.E. "Ed" McAteer of the Religious
Roundtable.
-
- AFSI's executive director, Helen Freedman, confirms the
increasingly Christian cast of her coalition. "We have many good Jews,
of course," she says, "but they're in the minority." She
adds, "The liberal Jew is unable to believe the Arab when he says
his goal is to Islamize the West... But I believe it. And evangelical Christians
believe it."
-
- Of Jews who might otherwise support her group's view
of Jews' divine right to Israel, she laments, "They're embarrassed
about quoting the Bible, about referring to the Covenant, about talking
about the Promised Land."
-
- Pastor Upton is not embarrassed, and Helen Freedman is
proud of her association with him. She is wistful when asked if she, like
Upton, has been able to finagle a meeting with the president. "Pastor
Upton is the head of a whole Apostolic Congress," she laments. "It's
a nationwide group of evangelicals."
-
- Upton has something Freedman covets: a voting bloc.
-
- She laughs off concerns that, for Christian Zionists,
actual Jews living in Israel serve as mere props for their end-time scenario:
"We have a different conception of what [the end of the world] will
be like ... Whoever is right will rejoice, and whoever was wrong will say,
'Whoops!' "
-
- She's not worried, either, about evangelical anti-Semitism:
"I don't think it exists," she says. She does say, however, that
it would concern her if she learned the Apostolic Congress had a representative
in Israel trying to win converts: "If we discovered that people were
trying to convert Jews to Christianity, we would be very upset."
-
- Kim Johnson doesn't call it converting Jews to Christianity.
She calls it "Circumcision of the Heart" - a spiritual circumcision
Jews must undergo because, she writes in paraphrase of Jeremiah, chapter
9, "God will destroy all the uncircumcised nations along with the
House of Israel, because the House of Israel is uncircumcised in the heart
... [I]t is through the Gospel ... that men's hearts are circumcised."
-
- Apostolics believe that only 144,000 Jews who have not,
prior to the Second Coming of Christ, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah
will be saved in the end times. Though even for those who do not believe
in this literal interpretation of the Bible - or for anyone who lives in
Israel, or who cares about Israel, or whose security might be affected
by a widespread conflagration in the Middle East, which is everyone - the
scriptural prophecies of the Christian Zionists should be the least of
their worries.
-
- Instead, we should be worried about self-fulfilling prophecies.
"Biblically," stated one South Carolina minister in support of
the anti-Road Map billboard campaign, "there's always going to be
a war."
-
- Don Wagner, an evangelical, worries that in the Republican
Party, people who believe this "are dominating the discourse now,
in an election year." He calls the attempt to yoke Scripture to current
events "a modern heresy, with cultish proportions.
-
- "I mean, it's appalling," he rails on. "And
it also shows how marginalized mainstream Christian thinking, and the majority
of evangelical thought, have become."
-
- It demonstrates, he says, "the absolute convergence
of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel
lobby, driving U.S. Mideast policy."
-
- The problem is not that George W. Bush is discussing
policy with people who press right-wing solutions to achieve peace in the
Middle East, or with devout Christians. It is that he is discussing policy
with Christians who might not care about peace at all - at least until
the rapture.
-
- The Jewish pro-Israel lobby, in the interests of peace
for those living in the present, might want to consider a disengagement.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Village Voice Media, Inc., 36 Cooper
Square, New York, NY 10003
-
- http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php
-
-
-
- Comment
Alton Raines
- 5-22-4
-
- What is really sad about these evangelical yahoo's is
that they are utterly blind to the meaning of the prophets they lay claim
to! "The Promised Land" was nothing more than a living picture
in history, drawn out by God through a people, to symbolize something greater
and spiritual -- the Kingdom of God. Not a piece of physical property or
real estate! This is even explained plainly in the New Testament, but goes
utterly ignored by them:
-
- "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out
into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed;
and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
- 9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in
a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs
with him of the same promise:
- 10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God.
- 11 Through faith also Sara herself received strength
to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because
she judged him faithful who had promised.
- 12 Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good
as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand
which is by the sea shore innumerable.
- 13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises,
but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced
them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
- 14 For they that say such things declare plainly that
they seek a country.
- 15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country
from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.
- 16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an
heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath
prepared for them a city." (Hebrews 11:8-16)
They have missed the boat completely on the meaning of the New Jerusalem
and God's Israel. And I have no doubts its deliberate and for the same,
sick, pocket-lining, power-now, ego-based sinful reasons the Pharisees
did it. I have no doubts these very men would be the first to convince
the world that the coming Christ was the enemy. We are told in the Revelation
and the Gospels that Christ's second coming will be preceded by a sign
in the heavens; Jesus appears to suggest in Matthew 24 that this sign will
be his literal coming, from heaven, upon the clouds of the sky -- but before
that, heralded by a great sign in the heavens. Could this be his very approach
to the planet itself? Then we are told in the Revelation that 'the Beast'
will gather all the armies of the world to one place, to do battle and
make war with "the Lamb" (the coming Christ). That place he gathers
them is called Armageddon, and it is a specific, geographical location
north of Jerusalem in Israel, in the land of Edom and Moab. I can just
see these weasels telling their millions of Christian followers that the
spectacle in the heavens is an alien invasion of Satanic entities. It wouldn't
surprise me a bit if someone like Bush has been convinced he is some pivotal
character in the last days scenario.
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