A huge amount of America is Baptist Christian and believes Israel needs to be at war for Jesus to come back etc. How impactful is this to real life?
Is American foreign policy always a cool rational neoliberal calculation or do the delusions of the general public have meaningful impact?
I've tried to avoid thinking it, but sometimes their choices only make sense if you think they actually believe the bullshit they peddle to the masses.
christofascism is a definite issue, though idk whether the christo or the fascist takes precedent. Former australian PM Scott Morrison is/was cosy with hillsong church, requested a +1 for Brian Houston to meet Trump, made mention on behalf of a qanon friend of 'ritual sexual abuse' in an apology to CSA survivors at the hands of the Catholic church.
We really pride ourselves on our hwhite, christian heritage. Idk how many are true believers rather than putting on the mask, but they're all out to create/uphold religio-ethnostates
pretty sure pence is a dominionist. christian nationalism skews hard republican because it aligns well with regional industrial capital interests and not so well with global finance capital interests, but there sure seems to be some true believers in the highest echelons of power.
I can't speak to the Baptist situation, but I grew up in an Evangelical church and this is a common view. The "Left Behind" books were basically novelizations of the Evangelical conception of the end times, and they were enormously popular.
If you want to know more about how the Evangelical church got involved with right wing politics, I'd suggest the book "Jesus and John Wayne."
Not very. Your expectation is the cause and effect in reverse. Israel is necessary for US dominance, so the US fabricates reasons to legitimize Israel.
The US state does not respond to democratic inputs unless the leverage is overwhelming; the right does not really have this leverage in evangelical votes to make the state support Israel; support of Israel is in fact, support of the US state. Israel is a surrogate to ensure and extend US regional dominance in the ME.
If the US does not find Israel useful and instead antagonistic to its interests, it'd excise Israeli lobbies and influences in a heartbeat.
I don't like the "the US supports Israel because evangelicals want the apocalypse!" explanation. It feels like a way for vote-blue-no-matter-who liberals to whitewash the Democrats' unstinting support for Israel's apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
I've literally never encountered this off the internet & don't actually believe that it is a real thing (beyond maybe dozens of people somewhere). But it is everywhere on the internet like it was an addition to the sermon of the mount or something.
It's absolutely a real thing
it's totally irrelevant, most of them can't locate israel on a map
yes and no. It's a great tool for forcing the compliance of a certain segment of the population but it doesn't work on everyone and that's what all the other consent tools are used for. For the most part foreign policy has been smoothed and streamlined enough to no longer require consent
"I'll come back because I love you, but ONLY if very specific certain circumstances happen" Lol imagine if your wife said this you would label it as an emotionally abusive relationship and rightly so. Religion is holding back humanity
The zealots’ means to an end is no different than the business minded neoliberals and the overtly genocidal neoconservatives. So really, as long as the latter two have an interest in the Middle East, it doesn’t matter.
I’m sure there are more concrete examples of religious zealotry being the main force behind a campaign, but more often than not it correlates with motives that are grounded.
Or maybe you can take the reverse stance and say the materialist motives are coincidental to the dominions running the show 👁️
In my experience, most Christian Baptists don't know know much of anything about Israel, and these days I'd expect the bulk of that community to be blindly making the same mix of misinformed facebook posts as everyone else.
I don't think any sincere Baptist community would cheer on any kind of death, Westboro style groups excluded.
Do the Catholics get a pass
that's a case where you need to get more specific than "catholic," because "catholic" includes chuds and liberation theologists at the same time
For my perspective, some Catholics get a pass, but most in the US get to hang with their Evangelical colleagues.
The current Pope doesn't have to go against the wall, but he probably needs a little re-education
afaik the official line is that all the apocalypse stuff is mostly literary and there isn't a concrete idea of when/what/where, so they don't worry about it. i'm sure some sects and clerics still get millenarian from time to time though.
what that means is that is that catholics shouldn't have a dog in israel, but evil white yankee catholics support israel through racism while Rome does the routine "stop killing people" they do for any war with stronger words when israel attacks christians, particularly members of the several churches in lebanon/palestine in communion with Rome
I don’t think I’ve met any Catholics who said that anything is metaphorical. Certainly not priests.
People are prone to forget how batshit religious Dubya was. It seems to me that Cheney wanted war and he wanted to grift. But Dubya was a believer and he probably thought he talked to God once in a while.
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When I was dumb teenager - Jimmy Carter used a phrase like "pray on it" and I didn't know if he meant that seriously. I asked my mom about it and I was taken aback to learn he actually meant it literally. His religiosity surprised me and my mom too.
Remember early on when they fucked up and called it a crusade against terror?