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McCain Rejects Endorsement From Televangelist

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The New York Times

Published: May 23, 2008

Sen. John McCain on Thursday rejected the endorsement of the Rev. John Hagee, a televangelist, after a watchdog group released a recording of a sermon in which Hagee said Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God's plan to chase the Jews from Europe and drive them to Palestine.

In a statement Thursday about the sermon on the Holocaust, McCain said: "Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."

Hagee issued his own statement withdrawing his endorsement of McCain.

Audio of the sermon, from the late 1990s, was posted last week by the Web site Talk to Action, which scrutinizes the Christian right, and then reported by The Huffington Post.

In the sermon, which is also available on the church's Web site, Hagee said the Bible prophesied Hitler's brutality. "How is God going to bring them back to the land? The answer is fishers and hunters," Hagee said, referring to how Jews ended up in the modern State of Israel. "A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and forces you. Hitler was a hunter.

Hagee continued: "That will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, 'My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the Land of Israel.'"

Asked on Thursday why those particular remarks led him to act, McCain said, "I just think the statement is crazy and unacceptable."

He added, "We reached a point where that kind of statement, simply, I would reject the endorsement of the expression of those kinds of views."

Some have compared Hagee's remarks to those of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the Democratic presidential front-runner, Sen. Barack Obama, but McCain said his relationship with Hagee was different: "I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views," McCain said in his statement. "But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for 20 years."

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