UBA2 –Ugly Born-Again American

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.

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?