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Hagee has said, among other things, that the Antichrist will be gay and half Jewish.
The March for Israel event held Tuesday in Washington, D.C., drew participants and speakers from across ideological and partisan lines. But the presence of one speaker raised some concerns: John Hagee, a virulently anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, and yes, often anti-Semitic minister from Texas.
Hagee is senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and chair of Christians United for Israel. He has claimed that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans in 2005 as punishment for hosting an LGBTQ+ event (Southern Decadence); that “God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land” through the Holocaust and that Hitler was “a half-breed Jew”; that the Roman Catholic Church was “the great whore” identified in the Bible’s Book of Revelation and a “false cult system”; that “all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews”; that “women are only meant to be mothers and bear children”; that Jewish bankers control the U.S. economy; and that the Antichrist, the evil figure who will battle the forces of good at the end of the world, will be gay and half Jewish.
Hagee has walked back a few of these comments to some degree over the years, including the ones about the Holocaust and Katrina, but he has continued to spew much hateful rhetoric. When John McCain ran for president in 2008, he rejected Hagee’s endorsement. Recently, though, other Republican presidential hopefuls have cozied up to him, including Nikki Haley and Mike Pence.
Hadar Susskind, who is Jewish and heads Americans for Peace Now, expressed outrage at Hagee’s role in the rally. “I am horrified that he was given this platform,” Susskind wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “His history of hateful comments should disqualify him from decent company, much less from speaking on stage.” The liberal Jewish organization J Street also spoke out, writing on X, “A dangerous bigot like Hagee should not be welcomed anywhere in our community.”
Hagee’s remarks at the event were largely limited to support for Israel and condemnation of terrorists, but his idea of support for Israel is complicated, David Corn noted at Mother Jones. Unlike some of his fellow evangelical Christians, Hagee does not embrace the idea that supporting Israel will bring about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ, Corn wrote. But he has preached that the end times and the second coming will be preceded by the Antichrist’s brokering of a false and temporary peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the “rapture” of faithful Christians into heaven, and years of misery for those left behind until Christ’s triumphal return, Corn reported, linking to a sermon Hagee gave in March.
“This scenario does not seem good for the Jews — or anyone else outside Hagee’s flock,” Corn wrote. “Given Hagee’s Israel narrative — along with his record of bigotry — it’s rather curious that any organizers of this pro-Israel rally thought he deserved a speaking slot and validation. Could this be a sign the end times are near?”
Others have spoken out against Hagee over the years. “While John Hagee has for decades loudly and publicly condemned anti-Semitism, his writings and sermons have nonetheless promoted some of the most influential and inflammatory anti-Jewish tropes of the modern era, such as the claim that predatory Jewish bankers control international finance and prey upon the masses of humankind,” Bruce Wilson wrote atHuffPostin 2015.
Among his other bigoted rhetoric, Hagee’s anti-LGBTQ+ outbursts have continued. Legalizing same-sex marriages, he said in 2005, “will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not then punish America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” In 2015, he condemned the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling as “judicial tyranny.” And just last year, he tweeted, “The only marriages God will ever recognize is between a man and a woman.”
