特朗普政府与原教旨主义末世论

《外交政策》刊登自由撰稿人，公共演说家，宗教与政治、美国基督教右派、俄罗斯、和外交政策评论员，目前是因斯布鲁克大学“后世俗冲突研究项目”的高级研究员克里斯托弗·斯特鲁普文章《从基督教讲坛蔓延开来的美国伊斯兰恐惧症》

文：Christopher Stroop

译：由冠群

我17岁时，在基督教布道会上第一次听到有人将伊斯兰教等同于恐怖主义，当时我还只是印第安纳波利斯传统基督学校的一名高二学生，我妈妈是那所学校小学部的老师。那是1998年，当时伊斯兰恐惧症还没有在西方成为主流。我们一家人在卡默尔郊区参加了一个小型的跨教派福音教会，我父亲是那里的音乐牧师。

那天早上，首席牧师马库斯.沃纳说：“一个虔诚的穆斯林，应该渴望杀死基督徒和犹太人。”他坚称这是他仔细研读《古兰经》后得出的唯一结论。尽管我现在已是一个不可知论者，当时的我还是个福音派信徒，不过我仍对这种极端的说法感到不适。如今，在新西兰基督城枪击案发生之后，类似的反穆的言论应该被视为与反犹言论同样令人厌恶。

但在实际操作中，美国对反穆和反犹言论执行着根深蒂固的双重标准，这一点从伊尔汗·奥马尔参议员反以色列言论掀起的轩然大波中可见一斑。美国正确地将反犹主义视为毒药，并且（至少左派）实行着言论监督，不管有心还是无意的反犹言论都不放过。但伊斯兰恐惧症却仍然塑造着美国外交政策，受基督教鼓励的反穆言论常常不受任何批判地在公共领域大行其道。

作为美国首批进入国会的两位女性穆斯林议员之一，奥马尔关于以色列的言论的确让人产生反犹主义联想。她后来在《华盛顿邮报》发表评论时，在遣词造句上更加谨慎，没有再使用“效忠”这个词——这是许多人批评她的正当理由。然而，许多针对奥马尔的批评不仅是恶意的，而且其背后的伊斯兰恐惧症与反犹主义的恶劣本质并无不同。

白人新教徒保守势力担心权力和影响力下降，而这种担忧又塑造了特朗普政府。当前多元化和民主化在美国社会遭遇挫折，类似的先例在历史上并不鲜见。不久之前，美国新教徒还把“双重效忠”的帽子扣在犹太人头上，质疑他们的爱国本色；在上世纪六十年代，肯尼迪成为美国首位信仰天主教的总统，也有人质疑过天主教徒的忠诚度。

今天，类似的言论再次出现。由福音派基督徒和小部分犹太裔美国人构成的保守派又开始兜售他们的阴谋论，宣称穆斯林兄弟渗透了美国政府，穆斯林正密谋将伊斯兰教法强加于美国。

由宗教牵扯出的反穆情绪对美国外交政策构成巨大破坏。前中情局局长、现任国务卿蓬佩奥等仇视伊斯兰教的人在特朗普政府中扮演着日益突出的角色。相比美国之前历任总统执政时期，特朗普政府的外交决策尤其受到反多元主义的基督教原教旨势力影响，这部分信徒对穆斯林表现出特别强烈的敌意。白人福音派基督徒不仅是特朗普的选民基础，也是当今美国最倾向于本土主义的人群。

从冷战至今，多数福音派新教徒坚持末世论（注：eschatology，研究历史终结及其相关方面的哲学或者神学理论 ）信仰——它基于19世纪对《启示录》和其他预言性文本的解释——倾向于将基督的主要敌人与苏联联系在一起。1948年，以色列不可思议地作为一个现代国家复国，这被福音派用来证明他们解读圣经预言的正确性。1970年出版的哈尔·林赛的畅销书《圣经预言：消失的伟大地球》成为了福音派的标准末日叙事，大大普及了时代论神学（注：dispensationalism，保守派基督教信徒相信神在圣经圣约中透过一系列的"时代"或历史上的时期来给与人类启示）的千禧年前论（注：premillenialism，基督教神学末世论学说，认为基督将于千禧年之前复临世界）。

林赛把俄罗斯描绘成圣经中的“玛各王国（kingdom of Magog）”，根据“预言”它将在末日之战中率领邪恶力量作战。但在冷战结束后，尤其是最近几年，福音派基督徒开始拥戴俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京，因为他重视“传统价值观”。尽管福音派极力寻找，但仍难就谁是新的玛各达成共识。而就在这时，随着反伊斯兰情绪在福音派教徒中蔓延，主要由穆斯林组成的国家（比如伊拉克战争时期的伊拉克）便可以临时充当这样的角色。福音派作家乔尔·理查森就曾表示，敌基督者（Antichrist）将来自伊斯兰教。

美国对以色列的政策深受福音派末世信仰影响，这十分令人担忧。福音派千禧年前论和敌视伊斯兰的思想在美国国务卿蓬佩奥的身上均有体现，他是一名福音派长老会教徒，曾经明确支持反穆阴谋论狂人弗兰克·加夫尼，还发誓要与邪恶斗争到底，直到“被提（rapture）”（注：基督教末世论概念，认为耶稣再临时信徒将复活高升并获得不朽）。当然，蓬佩奥不久前确实也说过“我们都是亚伯拉罕的子孙”，但如果你了解福音派教义就会发现其实他话里有话。福音派认为犹太人是以撒（注：亚伯拉罕与正室妻子所生）的后裔，阿拉伯人是以实玛利（注：亚伯拉罕与女仆所生）的后裔，二者之间永远不会有和平。

尽管美国福音派的政治与地缘政治行为的主要目的不是迎来末日天启（apocalypse），但显然他们也不会阻止这样的事发生。福音派按照他们理解执行上帝的旨意，而他们对圣经预言最常见的理解便是现代国家以色列必须扩张国土，恢复古以色列王国的疆域，因为那是上帝应许赐给亚伯拉罕、以撒和雅各后代的土地，而且以色列必须重建耶路撒冷圣殿，这样末世才会降临，而现在圣殿遗址被伊斯兰教第三大圣寺阿克萨清真寺占据。这就是为什么福音派长期以来一直支持美国承认耶路撒冷为犹太国不可分割的首都，并为此不断游说美国政府。

这些白人福音派希望迎来末日天启，而特朗普显然愿意推动他们的激进事业，这不但体现在美国决定将驻以大使馆从特拉维夫迁往耶路撒冷，还体现在开馆仪式上特朗普随行新教牧师的选择上。其中一人叫约翰·哈吉，他写过很多关于世界末日的书，他把纳粹屠杀犹太人说成上帝的计划，目的是召唤犹太人重返以色列。另一名牧师叫罗伯特·杰夫里斯，这个曾在2017年让唱诗班合唱“让美国再次伟大”圣歌的人，毫不掩饰地宣称所有不皈依基督教的犹太人都会下地狱。

尽管蓬佩奥、理查森、哈吉和杰夫里斯等人与时下的白人民族主义者不同，他们一般都努力避免发表露骨的种族主义言论，但他们的观点仍然是有害的，他们虔诚的宗教语言不过是偏执思想的遮羞布罢了，而他们的种种言论都在助长世界各地的群体性暴力。最近犹太人和穆斯林遭受暴力攻击的原因都是白人至上主义者的仇恨，比如2018年10月27日匹兹堡“生命之树犹太教堂”枪击事件和今年3月15日新西兰基督城的清真寺遇袭事件，两者分别导致11人和50人丧生。

 为了显示团结，“生命之树犹太教堂“的会众为新西兰清真寺枪击案受害者募捐了58000多美元。这次善举令人回想起明尼苏达州的穆斯林社区是怎样与犹太社区携手推进民权的，那些穆斯林许多是来自索马里的难民，而奥马尔议员就是从那里走出来的。我们有合法途径确保奥马尔谨慎发言，比如她可以批评美国对以色列的政策，但不可以批评犹太人；另一方面，那些企图利用奥马尔来证明伊斯兰阴谋“渗透政府”或“以教法统治美国”，进而散布恐慌情绪的人，不应该获得任何公共舆论空间。

但不幸的是，这种阴谋论在白人福音派——他们72%的人支持某种形式的“禁穆令”——当中十分常见，而这些人对特朗普政府有巨大的影响力。当前本土主义笼罩美国权力最高层的情况是可怕且危险的，它将引发更多群体性暴力事件，并导致中东地区局势失稳——相比奥马尔批评美国以色列公共事务委员会，白人福音派的威胁要严重得多。

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America’s Islamophobia Is Forged at the Pulpit

The first time I remember hearing Islam equated with terrorism from the pulpit, I was a 17-year-old junior at Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis, where my mom was—still is, in fact—an elementary teacher. It was 1998, long before Islamophobia seized the Western mainstream. My family attended a small, nondenominational evangelical church in the suburb of Carmel, where my dad was the music pastor.

“A good Muslim,” our head pastor, Marcus Warner, intoned that Sunday morning, “should want to kill Christians and Jews.” He insisted that this was the only conclusion possible from a serious reading of the Quran. As a doubting young evangelical who would later become an agnostic, this extreme statement made me uncomfortable even then. Today, in the wake of the shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, it should be considered every bit as offensive as the worst anti-Semitic tropes .

But a harsh double standard has been in effect, as the brouhaha over the comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) proved. The United States recognizes anti-Semitism for the poison it is, and polices—at least on the left—even accidental falling into its tropes. But the religiously inspired Islamophobia I grew up with continues to shape Washington’s foreign policy—and Islamophobic statements too often pass without criticism in the public sphere.

To be sure, the statements about Israel by Omar, one of the first two Muslim women ever elected to U.S. Congress, did conjure up anti-Semitic tropes. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, she chose her words more carefully, avoiding the rhetoric of “allegiance” that rightly caused many to criticize her language. Some of that criticism, however, was not only made in bad faith—it was shaped by the very Islamophobia that darkly mirrors anti-Semitism.

The presidency of Donald Trump has been shaped by the fear of decline in power and influence among conservative white Protestants. This moment of backlash against increasing diversity and democratization is familiar. Not so long ago, the dual-loyalty trope was employed by American Protestants not only to impugn the patriotism of Jews, but also of Catholics, prominently during the 1960 election, when John F. Kennedy ultimately became the United States’ first Catholic president.

There is a similar notion in play today when conservatives—often evangelical Christians, along with a small number of Jewish Americans—traffic in conspiracy theories about the supposed infiltration of the U.S. government by the Muslim Brotherhood and suggest that Muslims seek to impose sharia law on the United States.

But the most damaging impact of religious Islamophobia may be in foreign policy. Islamophobes like former CIA head and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo loom large in the Trump administration. Under Trump more than under previous presidents, U.S. foreign policy has been shaped by an anti-pluralist, fundamentalist form of Christianity whose adherents exhibit a particularly virulent animosity toward Muslims. White evangelicals make up not only Trump’s base but the single most nativist demographic in the United States today.

During the Cold War, evangelical Protestants, most of whom adhered (and still adhere) to a set of eschatological beliefs based on a 19th-century interpretation of the Book of Revelation and other biblical texts considered prophetic, tended to associate the primary enemies of Christ with the Soviet Union. The historically improbable founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 was used to prop up the validity of their understanding of biblical prophecy, and Hal Lindsey’s popular book The Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970, became the standard evangelical narrative of “the end times,” popularizing an interpretation of the eschatological scheme known as dispensational premillennialism.

Lindsey represented Russia as the kingdom of Magog, which was “prophesied” to play a leading role among the forces of evil in the Battle of Armageddon. Since the end of the Cold War, and especially in recent years as some evangelicals have embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin because of his stance on “traditional values,” evangelicals have struggled to find a consensus replacement candidate for Magog. Meanwhile, as anti-Islamic sentiment has increased among evangelicals, predominantly Muslim powers (such as Iraq during the Iraq War) have sometimes been floated as possibilities, and evangelical author Joel Richardson has suggested the Antichrist will arise from Islam.

The influence of evangelicals’ end-times beliefs on U.S. policy toward Israel is a serious concern. Both these strands of popular evangelical thinking—dispensational premillennialism and Islamophobia—can be found in Pompeo, an Evangelical Presbyterian who has expressed support for the views of Islamophobic conspiracy nut Frank Gaffney, and who has vowed to struggle against evil “until the rapture.” To be sure, Pompeo has more recently said, “We’re all children of Abraham,” but when you understand that evangelicals are taught that Jews are descended from Isaac and Arabs from Ishmael, and that there will never be peace between them, that statement takes on a different, coded meaning.

American evangelicals’ actions on the political and geopolitical stage are not primarily targeted at bringing about the apocalypse—but they are certainly not trying to prevent it.  Evangelicals seek to follow God’s will as they understand it, and their most common understanding of biblical prophecy suggests that Israel must expand its borders to align with those of the ancient biblical kingdom God promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that Israel must rebuild the temple—the site of which is currently occupied by the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, the third-holiest site in Islam—before the end times can come. This is why evangelicals have long since widely supported, and lobbied for, the recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of a Jewish state.

Trump’s willingness to pursue the radical agenda of apocalyptically minded white evangelicals was on display not only in his administration’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but also in the choice of Protestant pastors he brought along to speak at the embassy’s opening. John Hagee, who has written numerous books about the end times, has characterized the Holocaust as part of God’s plan to gather the Jews back in Israel, and Robert Jeffress, a man who had his church choir perform a sort of hymn called “Make America Great Again” in 2017, has made no secret of his belief that Jews who do not convert to Christianity will go to hell.

Views like those of Pompeo, Richardson, Hagee, and Jeffress are not innocent. Even if they generally take greater care to avoid explicitly racist statements like those found among contemporary white nationalists, their religious language is a mere veneer on bigotry, and their words add fuel to the fire that results in mass violence, whether in the United States or abroad. The consequences of white-supremacist hate have recently played out in devastating attacks on both Jews and Muslims, in the Tree of Life syngagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that took 11 lives on October 27, 2018, and in the attack on two mosques in Christchurch that took 50 lives this month, on March 15.

In a gesture of solidarity, the Tree of Life Congregation has raised more than $58,000 for the victims of the New Zealand mosque shootings. The act recalls the ways in which the Minnesota Muslim community of Somali immigrants—many of them former refugees—from which Omar comes has generally worked in concert with the local Jewish community to promote civil rights. And while there are legitimate ways to press Omar to make sure she uses language critical of Israeli policy rather than critical of the Jewish people, those who would use her presence to engage in fearmongering over Islamic “infiltration” or “creeping sharia” should be given no quarter in our public sphere.

Unfortunately, such views are common among the white evangelicals who are exerting unprecedented influence on the Trump administration, 72 percent of whom support some form of Muslim ban. The hold of such nativism in the highest echelons of American power is frightening and dangerous. It will produce more mass violence and further destabilization of the Middle East—a much greater threat than is posed by criticizing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

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