Biblical Promise and Threat in U.S. Imperialist Rhetoric Before and After September 11, 2001

Predestination and Callings

As a strange counterbalance to the sense of urgency imparted by an apocalyptic need to combat evil, however, there is a certain strand of predestination in much of contemporary apocalyptic thinking. God’s unchangeable plan is fully prescribed and described in scripture; the Christian’s job is simply to understand God’s plan as it unfolds, and to be ready for the end. In the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s assessment, “It is impossible to stop the march of prophecy.”¹ There is, therefore, a certain fatalistic compliance embedded within the exigency of apocalypse. In more extreme representations of this viewpoint, the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, in particular, are scrutinized for their possible fulfillment in today’s world. So, for instance, multiple Internet sites interpret Iraq as the modern-day geographic and moral equivalent of ancient Babylon. For example, one such site offers this apocalyptic interpretation:

The anti-christ will get into war with Egypt, and take the spoils back to Iraq (Daniel 11:25). They will try to settle things; have peace talks. . . . He will come against Egypt again. In Daniel 11:30, it says the ships of Chittim, the U.S., shall come against him. He shall be grieved and return, and have indignation against the Holy covenant.²

In these literalist apocalyptic readings, world events turn around a third kind of “Israel,” the actual “holy land” which must be restored in some way before Christ is to return. God’s plan as dictated by the Hebrew prophets, therefore, entails the convergence of all three Israels – geographic, spiritual, and national – providing the perfect and (within this logic) uncontestable rational for U.S. involvement in the Middle East.³

In more allegorical readings of scripture, God’s plan for the future can be understood on the level of analogy between a biblical character and a reader, as can be seen in the autobiography of George W. Bush, where he likens his call to national leadership to that of Moses’s call to lead the children of Israel.⁴ Bush is challenged to accept the call in a sermon, which begins with the need to “spend” and “consume” time immediately and responsibly, before it runs out.⁵ Here, clearly, the covenantal notion of divine calling joins with an apocalyptic understanding of the necessity to fulfill that calling before it is too late. When the demand for (personal and national) submission to God’s unchanging plan is combined with an expectation of a sudden end, the outcome is pressing conformism. The president must adhere to God’s “plan,” and so, therefore, must the people.

In short, these twin discourses of covenant and apocalypse have produced a national identity in which the nation’s actions in the world are seen as inexorably urgent. Because the United States understands itself as a nation chosen and commanded by God, its path seems singular and unalterable (at least if the nation is to fulfill its covenantal obligation). But its task, because it functions on both human and cosmic levels, is of the utmost exigency. The future, not only of the United States but of the world, hangs in the balance. For the conservative Protestant Christian especially, this language resonates at a personal level with the urgent need to fight evil, internal and external, in order to prepare for the return of Christ. What works so effectively in Bush’s rhetoric is that, although it does not really stray too far, as Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard points out,⁶ from the mainstream confines of civil religion, it takes on a greater significance within the interpretive traditions of conservative Protestantism, to which much of the population adheres, and with which Bush’s personal commitment to Christ corresponds.

1. Jerry Falwell, interview by Cal Thomas, in Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?, by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 259-78, at 273. [↩]
2. Jerry and Dena Rogers, “God’s Plan for the End-Time Harvest” (2003), http://www.planetkc.com/nnnel/GODS_PLAN.htm. See also A Voice in the Wilderness, “Iraq War: Gulf War II” (2003), http://www.a-voice.org/main/iraq-war.htm. [↩]
3. For an entertaining account of Reagan’s apocalypticism, see Gore Vidal, “Armageddon?” in Gore Vidal: United States Essays, 1952-1992 (New York: Random House, 1993), 995-1006. For a more theoretical discussion of Reagan’s rhetoric, see O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse. [↩]
4. George W. Bush, A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House (New York: Perennial, 1999), 8-9. [↩]
5. Bush, A Charge to Keep, 2. [↩]
6. Fred Barnes, “God and Man in the Oval Office,” Weekly Standard 8, no. 26 (March 17, 2003): 11-12. [↩]