Yesterday, JTA reported that Samuel Rodriguez’s National Hispanic Christian Leadership NHCL) Conference is joining forces with John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel to express their common love for, well, Israel. Over at Talk to Action, the ever-vigilant Bruce Wilson rings the theo-political changes on the alliance, but misses the key link–which Hagee himself provides in his quote to JTA: “My wife and the majority of my 20,000 congregants are Hispanic.”
The key thing to understand about the Hagee trajectory is that his Cornerstone Church has made its way by evangelizing Mexican-American Catholics in San Antonio. That’s why he was on the Catholic League’s radar screen in the first place. NHCL is, of course, chock full of former Catholics too, and whatever the organization feels about Israel, Cornerstone Church belongs in it. The CUFI connection is ethno-religiously overdetermined.
