Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee recently invoked the holocaust in criticizing President Obama’s deal with Iran, saying that Obama “will take Israelis and march them to the doors of the ovens.” On the radio program Background Briefing hosted by Ian Masters, Matthew Sutton, professor of history at WSU and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, discussed Huckabee’s attempt to appeal to Christian Zionists who love Israel because it is central to bringing about the rapture and the end of times according to their interpretation of the Bible’s Book of Revelation.
Sutton, who is a National Endowment for the Humanities research fellow, examines the relationship between American evangelicalism, apocalyptic thought, and political activism during times of national crisis and war.