Religious Right Watch

"Lusting after the apocalypse"

Highlights from a recent article by Catherine Rolfsenon, a Vancouver-based writer with a Master's degree in Religion and Modernity, on the popular Left Behind series of books and movies.

[Left Behind: World at War] is a recent release in an ever-expanding Christian apocalyptic media market beginning to impact the mainstream and raising more than a few eyebrows. It is a spin-off of the wildly popular Left Behind book series masterminded by American fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye. This month, the fourteenth Left Behind title debuted at number six on the New York Times best sellers list, adding to a reported collective sales total of over 62 million copies for LaHaye and co-author Jerry Jenkins.
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The Left Behind book series is a fictional portrayal of the end of days happening in our time, not as the result of disease or terrorism, but at the hand of God. It all begins with The Rapture: a much-anticipated event when born-again Christians vanish from Earth, bound for heavenly rewards. They leave behind unbelievers to battle the tribulations of war, famine and disease, not to mention the Antichrist, until Jesus eventually returns to straighten things out.
[In the books] renegade Christians scrambles to spread the gospel truth to the world while heroically defying the Antichrist (who is easily identified as a cosmopolitan, European, pro-choice, pro-environment former UN secretary-general).
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[I]t is impossible to explain the Left Behind books without delving into their theology. LaHaye's vision stems from a highly debated method of scriptural interpretation known as premillennial dispensationalism. This belief system maintains that the Bible (and particularly its last and most apocalyptic book, Revelation) holds an encoded timeline for the end of the world as we know it and the return of Jesus Christ to usher in a millennial kingdom on Earth.
"The next thing that is scheduled, so to speak, to happen is what we call the catching away of all believers. Sometimes people call that the Rapture," explains Gordon Conner, Pastor of the Greater Vancouver Baptist Church. . . . "Then ushers in [the seven-year Tribulation]. . . . [T]here will be a world government established. . . . There will be the workings of a one-world religion, and during the last part, [the Antichrist] will try to establish himself as the object of worship, as being God. At the end of the tribulation period, at the end of those seven years, the Lord Jesus returns and sets foot upon the earth," explains Conner. "There will be a battle that takes place. Satan is destroyed. This Antichrist individual is also destroyed. The Devil is cast into a bottomless pit for a thousand years. That enters into a period of time called the millennium, which we believe is a literal thousand-year reign."
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Darrell Johnson, a professor at Vancouver's Regent College, has written his own book on Revelation.
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Johnson, an American citizen, says, "It concerns me that it shapes American foreign policy more than we want to admit."
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LaHaye claims the idea [to write novels] came through divine inspiration. Whatever its genesis, the results have been phenomenal, tapping into a previously latent market for apocalyptic Christian fiction. The series has engendered many spin-offs including a kids series in which child protagonists "find faith and fight the evil forces that threaten their lives," a military series written from the perspective of an end-of-days battlefield, and a forthcoming video game which promises to provide "Christians and non-Christians alike with opportunities to consider matters of eternal importance through the thought provoking content in our games."
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LaHaye eagerly seeks to expand the Left Behind series' reach beyond its evangelical base: its website urges fans to "share their experience with someone they know" and boasts that readers include Catholics, mainline churchgoers and atheists.

Fundamentalists increase influence in Texas

Two stories out today, when seen side-by-side especially, are cause for alarm on the part of anyone concerned with the continuing rise of the already-powerful Christianist movement in America.

First is an instance of more fundamentalist indoctrination in America's public schools. "ODESSA, Tex., Dec. 21 -Trustees of the Ector County Independent School District here decided, 4 to 2, on Tuesday night that high school students would use a course published by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools for studying the Bible in history and literature." (More here.)

Second is the growing influence of Texas lawmakers on the national scene. As you may know, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature grotesquely gerrymandered the state's districts to favor Republicans, but now the state's growing population could gain Texas up to three congressional seats following the 2010 census. (More here.)

Intelligent Judge Bars Intelligent Design from Public Schools

from The League: Reassembled

The separation of church and state avoided a blow today when, according to the Washington Post, a "federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that a public school district in the south-central part of the state cannot require the inclusion of 'intelligent design' in biology classes as an alternative to evolution."

The Dover school board had required teachers to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology classes. Statements from board members made clear, however, that they were not as concerned with teaching good science as with infiltrating religion into the public schools.

The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, acknowledged the school board's agenda: "The secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he said.

Intelligent design, which proposes that an "intelligent designer" is responsible for the universe, is nothing more than religious creationism in disguise. To teach religion as fact in public schools is a clear violation of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state. The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board decision is cause for celebration.

from The League: Reassembled

Child-production as eliminationist tactic?

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, declared that the decision to not have children is a violation of God's will. He stated,  "We are barely replenishing ourselves. That is going to cause huge social problems in the future."

A critique of Mohler's call on Talk To Action by Dr. Bruce Prescott, Exec. Dir. of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, prompted a rhetorically violent response by the Chalcedon Foundation's Director of Communications, Rev. Chris Ortiz, whose comments as summarized by author Frederick Clarkson, come down to declaring liberal Christians to be:

"satanic," "unbiblical"  "wolves," who must be "condemned in the severest terms."  [Ortiz] also strongly implies that the only reason they should not be eliminated now, is that they will eventually eliminate themselves by failing to sufficiently breed.

Compared to the Chalcedon Foundation that Mr. Ortiz represents, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is, or at least was, arguably mainstream among Christian organizations and denominations. That is why I think politicized calls from leaders of its seminaries for large families is an important and alarming development in the history of the Christian Right.

So numerous are the members of the SBC (an estimated 16,400,000 members in 2003), and so relatively venerable (organized in 1845) and influential is the SBC as a denominational institution, that some informed commentators probably don't see the SBC as necessarily part of the Christian Right, which is essentially a religio-political movement. To be sure, leaders of the SBC have not always advocated political involvement.

But, obviously, the Christian Right includes more than self-proclaimed theocrats. Therefore, it is a significant moment in the history of the Christian Right and The United States when large numbers of offspring are being demanded of or encouraged among families within religio-political parameters, just as it would be if they were being demanded of parents along racial or national lines (e.g. all white families, all German families).

Setting aside the fact that when already large groups of people engage in a campaign of procreation it has negative impacts on the natural world--the environment--it is important to note that historically such calls often end up with endorsements (direct or indirect) of genocide resting comfortably alongside them.

It should be considered that a call to procreation along racial, national, or politically-charged theological parameters is by definition a political act, and that sees some other population--real or perceived--that must be out-produced: it is a social Darwinist call and aimed against another group of human beings. It is a call to cultural violence.

Put slightly differently: calls to procreation among only the racially-, ethnically-, or theologically-sanctioned is probably more closely related to eliminationist or genocidal belief than it might seem at first glance: it is a call to eliminate an opponent, but not by means of sterilization, concentration camps, or killings, but by a quasi-mechanized operation of over-production of children that will guarantee overwhelming an enemy. What is more, it is playing fast and loose with human life: the lives of those whom the over-producers want to overwhelm, as well as the over-produced children themselves--children used essentially as weapons in a war. 

As leaders within the SBC continue calls for a child-production campaign, the already large industry of  conservative evangelical (including Southern Baptist), conservative Reformed, and non-denominational mega-churches and schools may be expanded and modified to facilitate this over-production: more and larger church-sponsored daycare centers, classes on motherhood (practical child-rearing tips combined with indoctrination), and so on. At the same time, many conservative Christians within the medical, hospital administration, political, and charitable organization fields--as well as many conservative Christian elected officials--will continue to promote Christianization of the institutions and professions in which they labor, and to strive to work more collaboratively. (E.g., politicians working to secure federal funding for faith-based day care centers.)

Comedic ride to stop "war on Christmas"

This article reads at first like satire, but it's for real: "Jackie Mason to defend Christmas: Will ride down 5th Avenue for Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation"

Representing a Jewish organization that defends Christians, comedian Jackie Mason will ride down New York City's 5th Avenue today to highlight the "war on Christmas."

Mason is a founding member of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, or JAACD, the organization sponsoring the event. According to a statement from the group, the entertainer will ride in a 15-foot Ford Excursion with banners proclaiming, "Jews for 'It's OK To Say Merry Christmas.'"

"His route will pass many of the retail stores that no longer wish shoppers a 'Merry Christmas,'" JAACD stated.

The ride, scheduled for 1:30 p.m., will begin at St. Patrick's Cathedral where Mason and others will have a press conference. Those scheduled to participate are Don Feder, JAACD president, Bill Donahue, executive director of the Catholic League, Rabbi Aryeh Spero, a member of the JAACD advisory board, and attorney and author Raoul Felder.

On Dec. 1, Jews Against Anti-Christian held a press conference at the National Press Club to publicize efforts to purge Christmas from the culture, highlighting the Wisconsin school that changed the lyrics of "Silent Night" to "Cold in the Night." Yesterday, the school relented, saying the Christmas carol will be sung in its original form.
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[Americans] all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point. - Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

"Onward Christian Soldiers . . . "

This is an interesting first-person tale of someone who may have had her military career ruined because of her stand against the aggressive Christian elements in our republic's armed forces.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/12/4/13323/7142

A snippet--emphasis mine:

I also learned something else about military evangelicals in particular when I politely questioned my book-burning roomie's boyfriend about his priorities. Why was he in the military if he was so religious? The answer was surprising, and in retrospect, insightful: <b>He'd joined [the U.S. military] because the military was a 'mission platform' enabling him to spread his interpretation of the Gospel to people all over the world. He'd hoped to go to Turkey or some other 'non-believing country' so he could save some souls. </b> He didn't care about the Cold War, or defending the US. He only cared about religion, and even told me that his loyalty was to Christ, not to his superiors.

The White House Gospel

Mel Seesholtz over at Online Journal does some thinking about "The Gospel According to George."

The Gospel According to George was fervently preached by “Take Him Out" Pat Robertson: “I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord. It's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way. . . . The Lord has just blessed [George W. Bush]. I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him."

Seesholtz has some other interesting observations about the Christian Right in general. Check it out.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie's Speech and the Great Irrelevancy

I applaud the recent speech by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, concerning the seizure of the centers of power by representatives of the religious right in America. In particular, I applaud his observations concerning the homophobia of the rightwing and the Religious Right.

Rabbi Yoffie is correct that the homophobia intensifying in America does evoke Nazism. But it also evokes what I think of as a sort of medievalism, something that seizes upon a Great Irrelevancy, in this case same-sex sexual relationships between consenting adults, and elevates it to moral--even seemingly cosmic--importance.

What is more, the Religious Right and the rightwing follow this medieval illogic to its final conclusion by actually legislating based on their homophobia.

What else was slavery in America but the same manner of thing: formal codification (alongside informal codification by way of received tradition) of discrimination based on irrational emphasis on skin color?

Skin color, hair color, handedness, and also gender--they are all Great Irrelevancies that have prompted human civilizations at points in history to waste immeasurable time and energy playing deadly political games. Exemplary evidence from the Middle Ages themselves include the many stained-glass images in European cathedrals showing an ever-perfidious Judas with red hair--red becase red hair was a characteristic associated with Satan, as was left-handedness.

Sexual orientation is another of the Great Irrelevancies, much to the dismay of Democratic politicians who justifiably would prefer that issues like gay marriage disappear so they can more easily win elections.

The securing of full and equal civil rights and opportunities for gay Americas is the horizon line now for anyone claiming to be a citizen soldier of the civil rights movement of the twenty-first century. This is a simple truth still unrecognized by not only most Americans, but almost certainly a majority of self-proclaimed progressives. So variously demonized or trivialized has been the issue that progressives, particularly heterosexual ones, run to fight for almost any other issue they can.

-scott isebrand