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April 12, 2006

Everyone's Talking Armageddon

It seems everywhere I turn lately someone's got an editorial or book out talking about George W. Bush, the fundamentalist Christian movement, and Armageddon.

Bob Burnett, on Huffington Post, has this to say:

Whether the President actually is a Christian is controversial. Where I live, we judge people by what they do, rather than what they say. Judged by this conduct, Bush certainly isn't like the Christians I know. … But there are a bunch of American Christians that believe the end of the world is coming soon, right after Bill O'Reilly goes off the air. Apparently, they are the same Christians who have absolute confidence in Dubya; that chant, "He's doin' a heckuva job."

And Hughes for America offers some quotable quotes:

- People who believe the End Times are upon us should never be given the means to bring them about.

- If you think you're headed to heaven in short order, what good are the rest of us to you? Or the environment? Or diplomacy? What good is moderation and bridge building when your president can bring about the end of the world, which, to you, is a good thing?

- The key difference between Bush and his supporters, sadly, is that the End Timer-in-Chief has his finger on the nuclear trigger - and seems poised to pull it.

Then, of course, we have Kevin Phillips's new book "American Theocracy."

And here's one that looks like a must read: Divine Destruction: Dominion Theology and American Environmental Policy, by Stephenie Hendricks. Buzzflash has a fascinating interview with Stephanie today that you must not miss. In it, she explains the dominionist theology that is behind much of the anti-environment, anti-health, pro-war craziness that has baffled so many of us and reveals several Bush Administration officials who subscribe to this theology. She also reveals the role of Armageddon author Tim LaHaye in the vast right-wing conspiracy. Here are a few excerpts, but generally, you just have to go read the interview for yourself:

- Dominionists and other extremist Christians are in the Administration. Chip Berlet, an analyst on theocracy, estimates that there are over 3,000 graduates of Regent College, which is Pat Robertson’s school, serving as civil servants in our federal government today. These are the people that shape policy, laws, and so forth, who are being led by fundamentalist Christians with a corporate agenda like Tim LaHaye.

-We have to realize that there are right-wing fundamentalists who interpret the Bible a different way. And they’re having a holy war in Washington right now.

- Tim LaHaye is a strategic conservative corporate player. He wrote those books to sway the popular Christian culture into believing in end of times. He’s a founder of the Federalist Society. Karl Rove was just boasting a month ago that the Federalist Society put John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court, and they’re going to get one more. The Federalist Society is ripping apart our judiciary to put anti-environmental law in. LaHaye’s a founder of the Council on National Policy, which is a think tank that’s fueling Bolton in the U.N. And LaHaye is leading Jesus tours over to Israel. There’s a great Craig Unger article in Vanity Fair on it – he accompanied Tim LaHaye to Israel.

- I would argue that most of those people, Dick Cheney included, don’t give a rat’s ass about Christianity or about the Bible, or about any of that stuff. They do like the fact that they’re working in tandem with Tim LaHaye and Ralph Reed, and James Dobson, to control big chunks of the voting blocs through these popular culture strategies that they’ve developed. I think these people are so amoral that they wouldn’t understand a spiritual, religious concept – they consider themselves above that.

- [K]ey powerful people have shrewdly manipulated popular culture on a couple of levels to get a big voting bloc in to keep their corporate representatives in Congress, and to get them on the Supreme Court – to basically take over all three branches. Whether they themselves believe in the religious ideology, or they’re exploiting it, I don’t know if we’re ever going to know that.

Posted by Becky at April 12, 2006 09:14 AM

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