Evangelical conservatives join with MBS in the wake of the Khashoggi murder
by digby
I wish I could say that I’m surprised by this but honestly, I’m not. These people have a nihilist agenda dressed up as Christianity. They are basically a doomsday cult:
A group of U.S. evangelicals, including former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), held a rare meeting Thursday with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman at his palace.
The delegation to Riyadh was led by Bachmann and communications strategist Joel Rosenberg, who are each known for pushing an apocalyptic worldview relating to events in the Middle East, and the heads of other Israel-tied evangelical organizations, reported Al Jazeera.
“We’re under no illusions about the challenges that are in Saudi Arabia and that remain,” Rosenberg said. “But I think it’s respectful to go and listen to leaders who have the opportunity to make life better for Christians and Muslims and potentially for Israel as well and who are against the crazies in Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
“I’d ask people to pray,” he added. “Pray for the (Jordanian) king, pray for the crown prince, pray for the people of Saudi Arabia — and I think it’s the right thing to do.”
The unusual visit came a day short of the one-month anniversary of Washington Postcolumnist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
An adviser to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday the journalist was “dissolved” after he was murdered and dismembered.
The crown prince, who has denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance, reportedly described the journalist as a dangerous Islamist shortly after he vanished in a phone call with White House adviser Jared Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton.
The American right-wing Christian delegation, which included Mike Evans, founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, met with Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi ambassador to the U.S. prince Khalid bin Salman and secretary-general of the Muslim World League Mohammed al-Issa.
Saudi Arabia has long insisted that normalizing relations with Israel requires its withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war — which Palestinians seek for a future state.
“We aren’t here for a short-term purpose,” Bachmann told CBN News. “We are not here for a photo op, we could care less about that. We’re here to build long-term relations and to benefit our brothers and sisters that are here in this region.”
Johnnie Moore, the group’s spokesman who also serves as the White House’s unofficial liaison to conservative evangelicals, said they “discussed” Khashoggi’s killing, but declined to elaborate, and he insisted they were not representing Israel or Trump in any way.
They said the White House knew nothing of their visit. Maybe. But it doesn’t make any difference. They are on the same page. There is a temporary alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia forming to combat Iran and they are as excited as John Bolton is about that.
It brings the Rapture that much closer.
Hallalujah.
Update: More on American conservative (alleged) Christians, who provide the single most fervent bloc of Trump supporters. They don’t just support him they love him with a passion:
CBN consistently stoked fears in several articles that “radical leftists” were behind the caravan, and that it was full of “felons” and “exotics” — one of its sources’ terms for migrants of Middle Eastern or African origin. Little attention, if any, was paid to migrants’ reasons for leaving their homes behind, or the social and political instability in Honduras that is attracting the travelers to the United States. (CBN has not responded to an emailed request for comment.)
The nativist rhetoric spouted by outlets like the Christian Broadcasting Network and plenty others has proved toxic. Elsewhere, intimations of Soros-related conspiracy theories have proven fatal. A Pittsburgh man is suspected of fatally shooting 11 people at a synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday. He frequently posted nativist sentiments and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the caravan and other political issues on the far-right social networking site Gab. In one post, he apparently blamed Jews for aiding and abetting “invaders” — meaning the Honduras migrant caravan.
In the wake of that violence, it’s worth asking a wider point: How did white evangelicals come to so fully embrace the Trumpian rhetoric on immigration? How did a religious group whose foundational sacred text explicitly mandates care for the poor, the sick, and the stranger become a reliable anti-refugee, anti-immigrant voting bloc?
They don’t really believe in Christian teachings, obviously. They were really waiting for their own Messiah. And they got him.
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