Christofascism Alert! Radical Christian Right Preaches Liberal Evil

[Ian David]

Members of the radical Christian End Times movement are being taught to believe that America is ruled by evil, clandestine organizations disguised as liberal groups. As a result, the fearful are hoping for the end.

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted April 10, 2007.

The Gilead Baptist Church, outside Detroit, is on a four-lane highway called South Telegraph Road. The drive down South Telegraph Road to the church, a warehouse-like structure surrounded by black asphalt parking lots, is a depressing gantlet of boxy, cut-rate motels with names like Melody Lane and Best Value Inn.



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The plagues of alcoholism, divorce, drug abuse, poverty and domestic violence make the internal life here as depressing as the external one. And those gathering today in this church wait for the final, welcome relief of the purgative of violence, the vast, bloody cleansing that will lift them up into the heavens and leave the world they despise -- the one that was devastated by corporatism -- to be racked by plagues and flood and fire until it and all those whom they blame for the debacle of their lives are consumed and destroyed by God. It is a theology of despair. And for many, it can't happen soon enough.

The guru of the End Times movement is a small, elderly, gnome-like man with dyed coal-black hair, a battery-powered earpiece and a pedantic, cold demeanor. He is Timothy LaHaye, a Southern Baptist minister and the co-author, along with Jerry Jenkins, of the "Left Behind" series of Christian apocalyptic thrillers that provide the graphic details of raw mayhem and cruelty that God will unleash on all nonbelievers when Christ returns and raptures Christians into heaven. The novels are the best-selling books in America, with over 62 million in print. They have been made into movies, as well as a graphic video game in which teenagers can blow away nonbelievers and the army of the Antichrist on the streets of New York City.

The global nightmare that leads to the end of history is a visceral and disturbing expression of what believers feel about themselves and our world. The horror of apocalyptic violence -- the final aesthetic of the movement -- at once terrifies and thrills followers. It feeds dark fantasies of revenge and empowerment.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/story/50366/

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. The words of that preacher are awful - so full of hate

They are as bad as anything anti-semitic that came of out 1930s Germany.

For a very good, detailed (incredibly detailed, in fact) ongoing demolition of the vacuity (theological, literary, and just plain human) of 'Left Behind', see the Slacktivist blog by Fred Clark, a liberal Christian. Every Friday, he rips another few pages of 'Left Behind', and what passes for the thoughts of the authors, to shreds. The rest of his blog is pretty good too.