The Rev. Michael Stevens may be best know in Charlotte as the senior pastor of University City Church of God, one of the area's largest and fastest-growing congregations. But on the national stage, he wears another hat.

In May 2010, he was appointed by famed evangelist John Hagee to serve as national African American outreach coordinator for the group Christians United for Israel.

As the name implies, CUFI is a faith-based organization that seeks to support Israel in its political, diplomatic and domestic efforts.

In some ways, Stevens’ role was fortuitous. In May 2007, he told his Charlotte congregation that God had called that church to be a blessing to Israel.

A few months later, he and Hagee crossed paths in Memphis, Tenn. Following that meeting, Hagee, who founded CUFI in 2006, invited Stevens to became heavily involved in the organization, working primarily to get involvement from Christian leaders in North Carolina.

The Rev John Hagee

The two preachers eventually began discussing the need to get more African American churches involved, and in May 2010 Hagee appointed Stephens to his current role.

Qcitymetro.com contributor Michael Gentry recently met with Stevens to discuss his outreach to African American Christian leaders as well as his views on Israel. The Q&A below is based on that interview. Some answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What is Christians United for Israel?

Christians United for Israel is a pro-Israel, grassroots organization. As a matter of fact, it is the largest pro-Israel organization now in the world. It started six years ago and today we have over 600,000 members across the world. Not only are we the largest but we are the premier pro-Israel organization in the world. And basically we exist to support Israel from a biblical and a moral perspective.

Q: Why is it important?

It’s important because, as Christians, we have a biblical mandate to support Israel, which is found in Genesis, Chapter 12, as well as in Isaiah, Chapter 62. Israel is the greatest democracy and the only democracy in the Middle East, and America historically has already been blessed and protected and provided for, we believe as Christians, because of its relationship with Israel, God’s covenant people. And so it’s very important that America (supports Israel) because of the ongoing threats from obviously Hamas, Hezbollah and even the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who has clearly said in the media that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Any threat against Israel is a threat against the United States. In the Muslim world, many of your extreme Muslims consider Israel little Satan and consider the United States big Satan.

Q: How much support would you say CUFI has in the U.S.?

Right now there is a lot of support, particular from the Evangelical Christian community, and not only from the white church but now the black church as well as the Hispanic church.

Q: Why did John Hagee feel it necessary to have an African American outreach for Israel?

We both agreed that the African American church has a tremendous wealth of influence and resources, and Israel needs some support. Israel needs the presence of the African American church to support them in this very difficult hour of her statehood.

Q: And why were you chosen?

Almost four years ago I met pastor Hagee at my denominational headquarters, Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tenn. The Lord had spoke to my heart personally right here in Charlotte, that he wanted our church to be a blessing to Israel. The problem was, I didn’t have any Jewish friends. I had never been to a synagogue. But I knew the Lord spoke to my heart in prayer to support Israel. So I shared it with my church that following Sunday. And at that time we had three services, so about a thousand people heard me in the pulpit publicly say that God wants our church, as a black church, to support Israel.

I didn’t know pastor Hagee at that time. I didn’t know anyone from Israel. So about a month later, in November of 2007, in of all places my denominational headquarters, you got 40,000 blacks at our convocation and, lo and behold, who is our guest speaker? Pastor John Hagee. So he had asked me at that time to help work in North Carolina as a state director because he really needed help. I told him this was really a divine confirmation because the month before we had heard the King’s call to be a blessing for Israel.

I got involved in North Carolina. I went to Israel a couple of times, and I said, “Pastor Hagee, there are African Americans all over the country that believe in supporting Israel.” In fact, many of us grew up in churches where our mothers and grandmothers told us to always be kind to Israel and the Jewish community. So he said, “Pastor Stephens, if you’re willing to take the charge…” I told him absolutely, and the rest is history.

Q: What does your position as the director entail?

Right now I travel extensively throughout the 50 states doing workshops and seminars to encourage and educate African American leaders -- namely pastors and ministers -- on the biblical and on the theological right to support Israel. I show in the scriptures -- Genesis 12, Isaiah 62, Psalms 122, Luke Chapter 7 -- why as Christians we should stand for God’s covenant children, the children of Israel.

Not only that, we also build bridges between the two communities, the black community and the Jewish community. There’s what I call shared communities. We’ve both been through some horrendous times. Particularly the Jews went through the Holocaust, 6 million Jews murdered. African Americans went through 300 years of the slave trade, 1500s to the 1800s, where some 280 million Africans died traveling to North and South America. So we’ve got some painful experiences as a group.

In fact, back in the '60s, it is commonly known that 1 out of 3 people who marched in the Civil Rights Movement and were non-black were Jewish Americans. The Jewish community stood with blacks during the Civil Rights Movement.

Q: How has University City responded?

Overwhelming -- 100 percent response. I had absolutely no resistance. Because again, we’re Christians, and when you’re Christian you go to your Bible, which is our road map. When I’m able to educate and articulate scriptural authority from the Old Testament and the New Testament on why we support Israel, as a Christian, what is there to say? So we’ve had great response.

Q: Have you taken this message to other churches in Charlotte, and how have they responded?

I’ve had a couple of what I call pastor/leader meetings. Churches like Greater Salem -- Greater Salem under their new pastor, they were overwhelmingly in support. Several of our COGIC Churches have been in full support in the meetings. Phillip Davis at Nations Ford; we’ve had his full support. These are pastors who either in the past have been in some my meetings or they’ve placed their support.

Q: Have you run into roadblocks as the African American outreach coordinator?

I’ve run into some resistance with other pastors, other African American pastors in particular, a couple of pastors up in Baltimore, a couple of pastors in the Los Angeles area. And the resistance is just sure ignorance. They just don’t know. No one’s ever told them or taught them biblically why African Americans should support Israel, so when people don’t know what to do, typically they resist.

I have reached out and lovingly invited some of these pastors and media leaders to have dialogue with me. “This is not coming from a white man. This is not coming from a white organization. I am African American. I am Pentecostal. Let’s sit down and look at these scriptures together.”

The response I get is, “I’ve never heard it presented this way. I never knew we had so much in common as a cultural people.” So the resistance that I get is a genuine and sincere issue of ignorance. Once people are educated, once people are informed, there are really no problems from that point forward.

Q: You’ve made the point that in the 1960s Jews marched with Dr. King. One could also say that during that time we had black leaders like Stokely Carmichael who opposed the Israeli Zionist movement as it sparked war with Palestinians. And Carmichael described it in a way that was reminiscent of whites taking land from blacks in South Africa. How well then do you expect the black church to unite for Israel when our leaders have not been historically united on the matter?

That would be a huge misconception. I understand the whole Stokely Carmichael and the whole issue as it relates to Apartheid. And that’s probably one of the most illogical and irrational comparisons anyone can make, and I’ve got tons and tons of literature on why the argument is very, very weak.

I’ve been to Israel several times, and most people who are in the mainstream media have never been to Israel, have never been on the terrain of the land. You cannot compare Israel’s situation with Palestinians with the Apartheids of South Africa. I’ve been to South Africa several times, and their leaders tell me, “You can’t make that comparison.”

In South Africa blacks couldn’t vote. Blacks couldn’t be a part of regular society. Blacks couldn’t be a part of leadership. Whereas in Israel, you can go to a Pizza Hut, Burger King or the Mall and you have Muslims, you have Palestinians, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Jews. They have voting rights. They have human rights; citizen rights just as any Jewish person would have there.

But again, sincere ignorance can fuel an argument that has no merit. So when you take your Farakhans, you take your Jeremiah Wrights, and that whole black liberation theology type influence, well guess what; if you don’t go home and do your homework…

What I do is this. I don’t ask you to take everything hook, line and sinker. Go read your bible. Go look up Rabbi Joshua Heschel who stood shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Martin Luther King. Do some homework on one of the greatest liberators in the history of mankind, Dr. King, and see what his opinions were. You’re always going to find someone that will want to identify with the color of skin more so then their Christ theology. And that’s where I get off the boat with some of our black brothers and sisters. I am more Christ centric than I am ethnocentric.

Is there a Palestinian issue? Absolutely. Do you have some Palestinian Christians caught in the crossfire? Absolutely. And our hearts go out for them. But let me say this: To be pro-Israel doesn’t mean I’m anti-Palestinian.

Q: What about those who say Judaism doesn’t acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, so why should we support Jews?

That is correct, but here’s my theory on that. There are a lot of blacks in the city of Charlotte who don’t consider Christ their Lord. I still support their causes and do what I can do to help them out. I don’t turn my back on those who need help, despite what they believe.

I am called biblically to support and to love my Jewish brothers and sisters. Their conversion and their theology, that’s not my battle right now. Because they don’t believe Christ as Lord as I do should not take away from me supporting them. Again, the threats that are against them are the same threats that are against me as an American citizen. So it would be to my advantage and to my right to support her statehood in Israel.

There are Jews who are coming to know the Lord and accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior. But again, the church was the iconic poster child of the Holocaust back in Hitler’s day. It was the Catholic Church and the silence of protestant churches that fueled the Holocaust. So the same Jew that we are asking to get saved, receive Jesus Christ, be a Christian, is the same Jew that was murdered in the name of Christianity.

When you look at the Crusaders, when you look at Jewish history, it was often times the Church that made Jewish people either get born again or die at the stake. These are the same Jews today we are wanting to help. So again we’re not telling them to get right with Jesus. What we’re doing is showing love and support, and I believe God has a redemptive plan.

Q: Jews are pretty solid in support of Israel. That has become a strong component in Judaism in America. So if Israel has the support of American Jews, why do they need the support of African Americans?

Jews need support from everybody right now, not just from their own. In fact, a lot of Jews are what you would call ultra-liberalist Jews. They don’t believe in Zionism. They don’t believe in the protection of Israel. There are a lot of liberal Jews who are not in agreement with some of the politics of the state of Israel. But again, it doesn’t take away from the fact that the Jews need Christian support. We’ve always been there to support them. I believe our country has been blessed because of that. More now than ever before do they need our voice and our values.

Q: Would they welcome the support of Christians?

They cry and they jump in the street. They shout and dance. Not only do they welcome it, they are probably some of the most appreciative vocal people you’ll ever meet in your life. Every two years we do a solidarity march in downtown Jerusalem. Thousands of Christians and Jews come together during that march to show solidarity. The reception is overwhelming and most appreciative from the Jewish community.

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