Newsweek - "The Pop Prophets"

[Fenris]

This is from last week's issue, but I thought I would post some of the highlights:

As the world gets increasingly scary, with much of the trouble centered in the Mideast—just where you'd expect from reading the Book of Revelation—even secular Americans sometimes wonder (or at least wonder if they ought to start wondering) whether there might not be something to this End Times stuff. After September 11, 2001, there was such a run on the latest "Left Behind" volume, "Desecration," that it became the best-selling novel of the year. And it's no coincidence that the books are a favorite with American soldiers in Iraq.

<snip>

The many critics of the series see a resonance between its apocalyptic scenario and the born-again President Bush's apocalyptic rhetoric and confrontational Mideast policies. And they see LaHaye's far-right political agenda behind having fetuses Raptured from pregnant women's wombs, and making the Antichrist the secretary-general of the United Nations. Roman Catholics aren't happy that the Antichrist's assistant is the pope, and while "Left Behind" shows the common evangelical sympathy for Jews, they exist to be converted and to fulfill Christian prophecy. (For Jenkins and LaHaye, of course, so does everyone else.) And minorities may find the books' attempts at multiculturalism condescending. "I ain't seen no Bible for years," says one character, a "heavyset Latina." "What got me was that it wasn't fancy, wasn't hard to understand ... All them Scriptures sounded true to me, 'bout being a sinner."

<snip>

According to Tyndale's research, more Jews, agnostics and atheists read the series than mainline Protestants, and back in 2000 even the president of the Lutheran Church's conservative Missouri Synod denounced the "Left Behind" series as "an unbiblical flight of fancy." Most establishmentarian Christians agree with Tina Pippin, a professor of religious studies at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., in saying "Left Behind" "encourages people to see the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, with us or against us."

<snip>

And they do see the world in terms of good against evil: isn't that what their reading of the Bible tells them? "The liberals have crafted a Jesus that's unscriptural and to their liking," LaHaye says. "They want their God to be a big, benevolent grandfather who lets them into heaven anyway. The worst thing a person can do against God is to deceive people about the Bible. That's satanically inspired."

Oh, there is soooo much more. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4998044/site/newsweek/

The part that scares the shit out of me is that this crap is being read by soldiers fighting in Iraq.

[NMDemDist2]

1. i read a few of them

they were badly written with a hysterical overtone

no worries, was just bad sci-fi IMO

[Mike Niendorff]

2. And by the time their tours are done (whenever that is) ...

... most of those soldiers will be using these whack-job tracts for toilet paper.

Just repeat after me: "this cultist nonsense is why so many 'religious' Republicans want to keep us here, in Iraq, fighting and killing and dying. For as long as it takes. Until the end of human history."


MDN

[indigobusiness]

3. POP False-Prophets

would be more apt.

Not to say this isn't the apocalypse. Who can say? But their context is clearly bogus.

[Alerter_]

4. The American Taliban's answer to radical Imams

Their "fatwahs" provide excuses for torture and murder.

[Fenris]

5. Kick