Trump has made clear that he is listening to a powerful group of people eager to set the stage for Armageddon and the Second Coming.

By Matthew Avery Sutton, Edward R. Meyer distinguished professor of history

Biblical prophecy is being fulfilled. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has set in motion events that evangelicals have long predicted. Or so it seems to the president’s most faithful supporters.

The president’s latest foreign policy decision is a gift to the evangelicals who have long supported him, those who advise him and those who fill his cabinet.

American evangelicals believe that Jesus is going to return to earth soon. But for that to happen, most of these Christians believe, Jerusalem has to become the capital of Israel.

With Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, evangelicals are eagerly anticipating what might come next—perhaps the rebuilding of the temple, the rapture of all true Christians from earth, then, for the rest of us left behind, tribulation, war and the battle of Armageddon.

Find out more

Seattle Times

The Trump administration’s controversial decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is an appeal to Alabama evangelicals who largely support embattled U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, says radio host Ian Masters.

Masters discusses the role of evangelicalism in U.S. politics and history with Matthew Sutton, Edward R. Meyer distinguished professor of history at WSU.

Find out more

Background Briefing

Sometimes you just get lucky.

Washington State University graduate students Laura Briere and Jared Chastain, along with their faculty adviser, historian Orlan Svingen, were in College Park, Maryland last spring looking for information about the storied 161st Infantry Regiment when they stepped off the elevator on the wrong floor.

It turned out to be a fortunate mistake.

They’d hoped to find old photographs and other paper documents from the Washington National Guard regiment’s World War II deployment but stumbled onto something even more dramatic. Specifically, an old film reel containing never-before-publicly viewed footage of the unit’s fierce, island-by-island march across the Pacific.

“I wasn’t expecting any video clips,” says Briere, a school teacher from Richmond, Virginia working on a history master’s at WSU in Pullman. “We had gone there hoping to find documents, paperwork and maybe some pictures.”

They came away with so much more.

Find out more

WSU Insider

Ryan W. Booth, a Ph.D. student in history at Washington State University and member of the Upper Skagit tribe, gave his talk “They Are Always at the Front” Tuesday night at Wolff Auditorium, discussing the contributions of Native American soldiers during World War I.

Despite assimilation being well-studied, he explained that martial race theory, which says that certain races of men are more war-like than others, has only been recently discussed. He added that both of these concepts help explain some of the motivations behind Native men volunteering for service during the war.

Using anecdotes, Booth explained how the spirit of most Native soldiers was of valiance and bravery, and that the front represented the greatest chance of death, but also the greatest freedom away from the strictures of Army life.

Through the martial race theory, World War I military sought to “identify and exploit” these groups to fight for their side, but the same armies supported efforts to assimilate these indigenous soldiers into Euro-American culture.

“The odd nature of attitudes towards Native Americans in the World War I period is the two-faced aspect of it,” Booth said. “On the one hand, Natives represented a fierce fighting force backed up by millennia of ancient warrior culture. On the other hand, that same culture was under assault at home as the assimilation projects, such as boarding schools, attempted to eradicate all remnants of that indigenous culture.”

Find out more

Gonzaga Bulletin