McChurch - The Ugly Born Again American

UBA² –Ugly Born-Again American

by:

Stan Moody, author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry."

We all have heard of the “Ugly American” – at least those of us over fifty. The term originated as the title to a book published in 1958 by authors William Lederer and Eugene Burdick. It has become a cultural stereotype of arrogant behaviors by American tourists abroad.

At its core, “Ugly American” applies to tourists who visit other countries with an attitude of superiority, making little or no effort to understand the culture or the people they are visiting. In recent years, as America has become the dominant player on the world scene, there are signs of the “Ugly American” attitude becoming endemic. Individually and nationally, we are known for our arrogance and our ignorance.

The most current example is the attempt to export democracy to Iraq. Iraq is a sectarian culture. Under Saddam, it was ruled by a party representing 20% of the population. Under democracy, it now is ruled by the Shiites, comprising 48% of the population. The 20% have, for all intents and purposes, been outlawed and marginalized. Thus, the violence, and thus the current boldness of the Shiite regime in Iran. We have solved their security problem for them.

Enter the “Ugly Born-Again American” (UBA²), swashbuckling, Bible-spouting “ditto head,” whose fears and failures can be traced directly to liberals and whose God has been reduced to a few select Scripture verses, absent the Sermon on the Mount. These folks are known for tracing every ill of society to a conspiracy to take God out of public life.

In fact, God is very much a factor in public life, brought forth through the quiet, determined ethic of faithful people who consider their vocation a calling. What has been removed from public life is not God but sectarianism, and that is a good thing.

The answer that the “Ugly Born-Again American” has for any lifestyle or belief system that fails to fall into its own tight, parochial vision is to outlaw it. The way out of the ghetto of sectarianism, it seems, is not to find the God-given strength to live righteously and build righteous, God-fearing families in a non-believing culture. It is to drag the rest of society back into your ghetto.

Stephen Sizer, in his latest book, Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? (Sizer, Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?, Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2004), offers a profile of the Ugly Born-Again American with which many of us who have visited the Holy Land are familiar:

Research into the pilgrimages has shown that because of the bias in favor of an Israeli tourist agenda, approximately 95% of Western tour-groups visiting the Holy Land fail to make any contact with the indigenous Christian community…They see themselves as active participants in what are the “Last Days,” showing solidarity with Israel (p.118).

The implication is that the typical evangelical tourist, holding hands and singing, I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked, finds the suggestion of a Palestinian Christian community in Jerusalem an unwelcome complication.

The Jewish people, biblically but unilaterally thrust into a chosen status, are imbued with an ancient aura that is frozen at the Resurrection of Christ. In fact, there is a two-thousand year history of living within Christian communities worldwide that bears little relationship to the American evangelical perception of Israel as the preferred dwelling place for God.

You might ask where, in the example of Jesus, does land ever take precedence over people? Walking where Jesus walked brings us into a realm (the Kingdom of God) where the Christian is instructed to touch a life, not exercise its political muscle to secure national borders. In this realm, gender, nationality and economic status are erased. Human weakness somehow becomes a vehicle for display of God’s strength, and love of neighbor, regardless of which nation, tribe or tongue, becomes the healing touch.

Evangelist John Hagee, current charismatic leader of the UBA² movement, removes God from the equation when he states that, “Salvation is of the Jews; the point is if you take away the Jewish contribution to Christianity, there would be no Christianity” (FrontPageMagazine.com, United for Israel, John Hagee, March 27, 2007).

The reality is that the Jewish people were dragged kicking and screaming into the Christian Messianic age. The contribution they made to Christianity was living by the law and losing sight of the God of the law, a human proclivity very much present in the lives of the Christian Right today.

The Christian Zionist movement has been instrumental in the emigration of tens of thousands of European Jews, predominantly Russian, to the Holy Land. The 1967 borders are sacrosanct, with some even insisting that this will not be enough land for the eventual emigration of all people of Jewish descent now living in the United States.

The end-game of this agenda remains obscure. All Jews must return to Israel, and the Temple must be rebuilt on the present site of the Moslem Dome of the Rock. Then, we are ready for Armageddon, when two-thirds of those émigrés will be slaughtered, and Jesus will come back to establish His throne in Jerusalem.

In other words, “If you build it, they (Gog and Magog) will come.” And they will destroy it all. In the meantime, billions of dollars are being siphoned away from relevant ministries to build this paper tiger.

You have to ask yourself, “Wouldn’t American Jews be safer in the United States?” Yes, but if they don’t go back home, Jesus won’t come, and the Christian Zionists will have to wait and perhaps, God forbid, even die! With those kinds of friends, does Israel need enemies?