|
Selling Armageddon It's almost spring. In the last week there
has been an orchestrated media focus on the religiosity of the current
administration intended to ease your mind. Of the Rapture, Stan Crock says
in Bush,
the Bible, and Iraq :
"Few of Bush's aides share his particular brand of faith. One of the Administration's leading strategists on Iraq and elsewhere, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, is Jewish. I can't see Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a Princeton grad from Chicago, speaking in tongues as he talks to General Tommy Franks about war plans. The President may use biblical language to justify and explain his position, but the Bible itself isn't the basis for his strategy. " Such broad sweeping misses much, as you
will see below. If we have learned anything from 911 and the Muslim
Fundamentalists who flew those suicide planes, it must be this. The
concern should be that beliefs act people, and that irrational beliefs lead people to
accept irrational paths of behavior.
It's only wise and honest to apply the lessons to ourselves. The number of Americans and leaders in this administration who accept a literal Rapture should be of concern for that reason. This peculiarity of Christian faith was pointed out by Jimmy Carter recently: As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. This is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders, with *the most notable exception of a few spokesmen of the Southern Baptist Convention who are greatly influenced by their commitment to Israel based on eschatological, or final days, theology.* This spoken by a former US President, a Christian himself. The articles below, read together, will let you draw your own conclusions of all that is not being said that very much needs to be said.
Power by stealth Let's go back to Gary North who
demonstrates his belief in stealth and in the end justifying all
means:
Christian ReconstructionismPaving the way Vol. IV No. 3 @ Institute for Christian Economics, 1981 January/February 1981 THE ESCHATOLOGICAL CRISIS OF THE MORAL MAJORITY by Gary North ftp://entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/newslet/cr/8101.pdf Last summer, I had the opportunity of speaking at the National Affairs Briefing Conference, sponsored by the Religious Roundtable, and held in Dallas. It was a truly remarkable event. Over 15,000 people attended the final evening meeting, which gave them an opportunity to hear James Robison, the Fort Worth evangelist (and, in my view, the most effective large audience preacher in the English-speaking world), and R.W. Reagan, a political candidate. (Yes, I know. His name is Ronald Wilson Reagan. Each name contains six letters. The three names make 666. And we all know what 666 means! Or do we?) The conference brought many of the nation’s leading Protestant evangelists to the podium, along with senior retired military men and Christian political leaders, to speak to thousands of (mostly) Protestant laymen and ministers. The message was straightforward: it is the Christian’s responsibility to vote, to vote in terms of biblical principle, and to get other Christians to vote. There can be no legal system that is not at bottom a system of morality, the speakers repeated again and again.Furthermore, every system of morality is at bottom a religion. It says “no” to some actions, while allowing others. It has a concept of right and wrong. Therefore, everyone concluded, it is proper for Christians to get active in politics, It is our legal right and our moral, meaning religious, duty. You would think that this was conventional enough, but it is not conventional at all in the Christian world of the twentieth century. So thoroughly secularized has Christian thinking become, that the majority of Christians in the United States still appear to believe that there is neutrality in the universe, a kind of cultural and social “no man’s land” between God and Satan, and that the various law structures of this neutral world of discourse are all acceptable to God. All except one, of course: Old Testament law. That is unthinkable, says the modern Christian. God will accept any legal framework except Old Testament law. Apparently He got sick of it 2000 years ago. So when the crowd heard what the preachers and electronic media leaders were saying, they must have booed, or groaned, or walked out, right? After all, here were these men, abandoning the political and intellectual premises of three generations of Protestant pietism, right before the eyes of the faithful. So what did they do? They clapped. They shouted “Amen!” They stood up and cheered. These men are master orators. They can move a crowd of faithful laymen. They can even move a crowd of preachers. Was it simply technique that drew the responses of the faithful? Didn’t the listeners understand what was being said~ The magnitude of the response, after two days of speeches, indicates that the listeners liked what they were hearing. The crowds kept getting larger. The cheering kept getting louder. The attendees kept loading their arms with activist materials. What was going on? Victory They were, for the first time in their lives, smelling political blood. For people who have smelled nothing except political droppings all their lives, it was an exhilarating scent. Maybe some of them thought they smelled something sweet back in 1976, but now they were smelling blood, not the victory of a safe, “born again” candidate like Jimmy Carter once convinced Christians that he was They were smelling a “throw the SOB’s out” victory, and they loved it. Only Reagan showed up. Carter and Anderson decided the fundamentalists wouldn’t be too receptive to them. How correct they were. But it was not simply politics that motivated the listeners. It was everything. Here were the nation’s fundamentalist religious leaders, with the conspicuous exception of the fading Billy Graham, telling the crowd that the election of 1980 is only the beginning, that the principles of the Bible can become the law of the land, that the secular humanists who have dominated American political life for a hundred years can be tossed out and replaced with God-fearing men. Every area of life is open to Christian victory: education, family, economics, politics, law enforcement, and so forth. Speaker after speaker announced this goal to the audience. The audience went wild. Here was a startling sight to see: thousands of Christians, including pastors, who had believed all their lives in the imminent return of Christ, the rise of Satan’s forces, and the inevitable failure of the church too convert the world, now standing up to cheer other pastors, who also have believed this doctrine of earthly defeat all their lives, but who were proclaiming victory, in time and on earth. Never have I personally witnessed such enthusiastic schizophrenia in my life. Thousands of people were cheering for all they were worth — cheering away the eschatological doctrines of a lifetime, cheering away the theological pessimism of a lifetime. Did they understand what they were doing? How can anyone be sure? But this much was clear: the term “rapture” was not prominent at the National Affairs Briefing Conference of 1980. Almost nobody was talking about the imminent return of Christ. The one glaring exception was Bailey Smith, President of the Southern Baptist Convention, who later told reporters that he really was not favorable to the political thrust of the meeting, and that he came to speak only because some of his friends in the evangelical movement asked him. (It was Smith, by the way, who made the oft-quoted statement that “God doesn’t hear the prayer of a Jew.” Ironically, the Moral Majority got tarred with that statement by the secular press, when the man who made it had publicly disassociated himself from the Moral Majority. He has since disavowed the statement, but he certainly said it with enthusiasm at the time. I was seated on the podium behind him when he said it. It is not the kind of statement that a wise man makes without a lot of theological qualification and explanation.) In checking with someone who had attended a similar conference in California a few weeks previously, I was told that the same neglect of the rapture doctrine had been noticeable. All of a sudden, the word has dropped out of the vocabulary of politically oriented fundamentalist leaders. Perhaps they still use it in their pulpits back home, but on the activist circuit, you seldom hear the term. More people are talking about the sovereignty of God than about the rapture. This is extremely significant. How can you motivate people to get out and work for a political cause if you also tell them that they cannot be successful in their efforts? How can you expect to win if you don’t expect to win? How can you get men elected if you tell the voters that their votes cannot possibly reverse society’s downward drift into Satan’s kindgom? What successful political movement was ever based on expectations of inevitable external defeat? The Moral Majority is feeling its political strength. These people smell the blood of the political opposition. Who is going to stand up and tell these people the following? “Ladies and Gentlemen, all this talk about overcoming the political, moral, economic, and social evils of our nation is sheer nonsense. The Bible tells us that everything will get steadily worse, until Christ comes to rapture His church out of this miserable world. Nothing we can do will turn this world around. All your enthusiasm is wasted. All your efforts are in vain. All the money and time you devote to this earthly cause will go down the drain. You can’t use biblical principles – a code term biblical O l d Testament law – to reconstruct society. Biblical law is not for the church age. Victory is not for the church age. However, get out there and work like crazy. It’s your moral duty.” Not a very inspiring speech, is it? Not the stuff of political victories, you say. How correct you are! Ever try to get your listeners to send you money to battle the forces of social evil by using some variation of this sermon? The Moral Majority fundamentalists have smelled the opposition’s blood since 1978, and the savory odor has overwhelmed their official theology. So they have stopped talking about the rapture. But this schizophrenia cannot go on forever. In off-years, in between elections, the enthusiasm may wane. Or the “Christian” political leaders may appoint the same tired faces to the positions of high authority. (1 use the word “may” facetiously; the Pied Pipers of politics appoint nobody ex. cept secular humanists. Always. It will take a real social and political upheaval to reverse this law of political life. That upheaval is coming.) In any case, the folks in the pews will be tempted to stop sending money to anyone who raises false hopes before them. So the Moral Majority fundamentalist preachers are in a jam. If they preach victory, the old-line pessimists will stop sending in checks. And if they start preaching the old-line dispensational, premillennial, earthly defeatism, their recently motivated audiences may abandon them in order to follow more consistent, more optimistic, more success-oriented pastors. What’s a fellow to do? Answer: give different speeches to different groups. For a while, this tactic may work. But for how long? Theological Schizophrenia Eventually, the logic of a man’s theology begins to affect his actions and his long-term commitments. We WIII see some important shifts In theology in the 1980’s. We will find out whether fundamentalists are committed to premillennial dispensationalism – pretribulation, midtribulation, o r posttribulatlon – or whether they are committed to the idea of Christian reconstruction. They will begin to divide into separate camps. Some will cling to the traditional Scofieldism. They will enter the political arenas only when they are able to suppress or ignore the implications of their faith. Men are unlikely to remain in the front lines of the political battle when they themselves believe that the long-term earthly effects of their sacrifice will come to nothing except visible failure. Others will scrap their dispensational eschatology completely and turn to a perspective which offers them hope, in time and on earth. They will be driven by the implications of their religious commitment to the struggles of our day to abandon their traditional premillennialism. Pessimistic pietism and optimistic reconstructionism don’t mix. This is not to say that consistent premillennialist cannot ever become committed to a long-term political fight. It is to say that most premillennialist have not in the past, and are unlikely to do so In the future. If they do, leadership will come from other sources, theologically speaking. Three basic ideas are crucial for the success of any religious, social, intellectual, and political movement. First, the doctrine of predestination. Second, the doctrine of law. Third, the doctrine of inevitable victory. The fusion of these three ideas has led to the victories of Marxism since 1848. The Communists believe that historical forces are on their side, that Marxism-Leninism provides them with access to the laws of historical change, and that their movement must succeed. Islam has a similar faith. In the early modern Christian West, Calvinists and Puritans had such faith. Social or religious philosophies which lack any one of these elements are seldom able to compete with a system which possesses all three. To a great extent, the cultural successes of modern secular science have been based on a fusion of these three elements: scientific (material) determinism, the scientists’ knowledge of natural laws, and the inevitable progress of scientific technique. As faith in all three has waned, the religious lure of science has also faded, especially since about 1965, when the counterculture began to challenge all three assumptions. Modern fundamentalism has long since abandoned all three. The fundamentalists are divided on the question of predestination, but the majority are committed to Arminian views of God, man, and law. They believe in man’s limited autonomy, - or “free will. ” Furthermore, they have rejected biblical law as a guideline for social order. They argue that there is no expli citly Christian law-order in the era of the church, from Pentecost to the future rapture into heaven of the saints. Finally, they are committed to eschatological pessimism concerning the efforts of the church, in time and on earth. Without a doctrine of the comprehensive sovereignty of God, without a doctrine of a unique biblical law structure which can reconstruct the institutions of society, and without a doctrine of eschatologicai victory, in time and on earth, the fundamentalists have been unable to exercise effective leadership. The prospects for effective political action have begun to shake the operational faith of modern fundamentalists — not their official faith, but their operational world-and-life view. This shift of faith will steadily pressure them to rethink their traditional theological beliefs. The leaders of the Moral Majority will come under increasing pressure, both internal and external, to come to grips with the conflicts between their official theology and their operational theology. It is doubtful that many of the leaders will announce an overnight conversion to the long-dreaded Calvinist faith. It is doubtful that they will spell out the nature of the recently rethought world-and-life view. But younger men will begin to become more consistent with their own theological presuppositions, and those who adopt the three crucial perspectives – predestination, biblical law, and eschatological opti. mism – will begin to dominate the Moral Majority movement. It will take time, and older, less consistent leaders will probably have to die off first, but the change in perspective is predictable. The taste of victory will be too hard to forget.
Christian Reconstruction IS publ!shed SIX t!mes a year, alternating w)th Blbllcal Economics Today. It IS pubhshed by the Institute for Chr, st,an Economics, a non-proftt, tax-exempt organ lzat!on. It IS mailed free of charge to res,dents of North Amer,ca One year subscript, on sent free upon request P O Box 61 16, Tyler, TX 7571 1 Donations are fully tax deductible Checks should be made out to Inst)tute for Christ Ian Economics. http://www.onlinejournal.com/Books___Reviews/Binion040301/binion040301.html Clarkson quotes Reconstructionist Gary North, "Our ideas are now in wide circulation. They no longer depend on the skills or integrity of any one person . . . We are a decentralized movement. We cannot be taken out by a successful attack on any one of our institutional strongholds or any one of our spokesmen. Our authors may come and go (and have), but our basic worldview is now complete. We have laid down the foundations of a paradigm shift." North has also said that women who have abortions should be publicly executed, "along with those who advised them to abort their children." (Clarkson's source: Gary North, "Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism," Institute for Christian Economics, 1989, p. 627.)
North: http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/html/gnde/Chapter21.htm —————————————————————————————————————————— http://www.sweetliberty.org/garynorth.htm excerpt ——————————————————————————————————————————
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8803-2003Jan31.html washingtonpost.com . . . And Armageddon Tops the Bestseller List By Melani McAlister Sunday, February 2, 2003; Page B03 Come spring, many Americans will turn their attention to thebattle of Armageddon. Whether or not it coincides with anactual war in the Persian Gulf, "Armageddon," the 11th entryin the best-selling series of "Left Behind" novels byevangelist Tim LaHaye and writer Jerry Jenkins, will appearin stores April 8. Almost certainly, it will debut as No. 1on bestseller lists — as have each of the last four "LeftBehind" books. This time, the most popular adult fictionseries in recent memory is going to war — a cosmic battlebetween good and evil that will pit Satan himself, who rulesthe world from New Babylon, Iraq, against Israel and itsChristian allies. The timing may be perfect for the publisher, butdisconcerting for others. Just as Europe's literature of thehorrors of war has fostered pacifism and war wariness there,these novels must be influencing the American view of wartoday. Except that Armageddon is no ordinary war. As preludeto what the "Left Behind" authors describe as "the greatestevent in history" — the Second Coming of Christ —Armageddon is a battle that, in the novels and among manyChristian fundamentalists, is to be both feared and longedfor. The "Left Behind" series rests on an interpretation ofbiblical "end times" prophecies. The entire series is onestory, which traces the experiences of characters who are"left behind" when God takes committed Christians bodilyinto heaven to spare them from living through the ordealsthat culminate in Armageddon. The novels' heroes are theless-than-saintly "Joes" and "Janes" who, newly converted orwith faith renewed, resist the man they know as theAntichrist. The rest of the world, however, initiallybelieves this villain to be a great peacemaker, who in theform of a young, handsome Romanian statesman first getshimself elected secretary general of the United Nations on apromise of world peace and then goes on to build adictatorial one-world government. Now, eight years after the first "Left Behind" bookappeared, the final showdown between the forces of theAntichrist and those of God's people is at hand. It will bethe most devastating war in human history; Jesus returns notwith peace but with a sword. Although unabashedly Christianfundamentalist in their worldview, the "Left Behind" novelshave found an audience beyond traditional evangelicalcircles. "In office settings, these things are being passedaround like Stephen King novels or the Sports Illustratedswimsuit issue," says Larry Eskridge of the Institute forthe Study of American Evangelicals. So far, the books havesold more than 35 million copies. Fundamentalist popular fiction is hardly new, but it gainednew vitality after Sept. 11, when the ninth book in the"Left Behind" series, released in October 2001, became thebest-selling hardback fiction of the year. Historically,fundamentalist authors have made an industry of biblicalprophecy interpretation, especially since the Israelioccupation of all of Jerusalem in the 1967 war convincedmany of them that conditions were in place for the "endtimes" countdown to begin. In the 1970s, evangelist HalLindsey's folksy commentary on current events and biblicalprophecy, "The Late Great Planet Earth," became thebest-selling book of the decade. More recently, the popularculture of evangelicals has been deeply influenced, perhapseven dominated, by tales of the Apocalypse: films like thechurch-circuit staple "Thief in the Night" and novels likeevangelist Pat Robertson's "The End of the Age." The "Left Behind" series, however, offers something new:fast-paced and plot-driven stories, featuring moderncharacters who are as comfortable whipping out theirsatellite phones during a rescue mission as they are inproselytizing to an unconverted colleague while piloting themost advanced aircraft in the world. If the "guts and gear"motifs call to mind Tom Clancy, others invoke Stephen King.The "tribulations" that are supposed to mark the end timesprovide the authors with seas that turn to blood, swarms offlesh-eating locusts and ghostly airborne horsemen hurlingfire and burning sulfur. At the same time, they also grapplewith a whole range of public issues — globalism,environmentalism, occultism and terrorism, among others.Unlike the earlier generation of evangelical culture, thesenovels also espouse multiculturalism, featuring globalheroes who are not only white, African American and NativeAmerican, but also Chinese, Greek, Eastern European andMiddle Eastern. But these modern accouterments don't alter the starkpolitical spirituality at the heart of the stories, whichcan fairly be described as Christian Jihadist. It is theobligation of the "Left Behind" Christians both toevangelize as many potential converts as possible and tojoin in battle on behalf of Israel against the armies of theAntichrist. Like other jihadists, these militants take ahard line on international relations. LaHaye and Jenkins take particular aim at the very notion ofpeace in the Middle East, from Israel to Iraq. With theAntichrist posing as a peacemaker and campaigning for worlddisarmament, the authors suggest that things such as armscontrol or peace processes are mockeries or, worse yet, figleaves for those planning world domination. The authors alsomake clear that Israel is to be the epicenter of Armageddon,ground zero in the final battle that many fundamentalistleaders believe will occur "in our lifetimes." The political vision of the novels sees the Middle East as aplace of inevitable conflagration, perhaps hardening readersto the upsurge in violence in Israel during the past twoyears. In their detailed and exciting descriptions of theinvading demons and seas that turn to blood, or thestarvation and suffering of those caught in the finalbattle, LaHaye and Jenkins join a chorus of fundamentalistcommentators who, despite their protestations to thecontrary, have expressed a perverse enthusiasm for thespilled blood and millions of dead that will signal theSecond Coming. The Middle East has been and remains a site of immenseconcern for secular people: It is the home of greatreligions, great civilizations and a great deal of oil. Butthe fundamentalist concern is qualitatively different.Claiming biblical injunction, it looks upon "peacemakers"with suspicion and imagines Middle East political conflictin terms of good versus evil, in which the evil is notmerely human, but literally Satanic. That "Left Behind" isone of the most popular series of novels ever suggests thatthey appeal to more than just fundamentalist believers. Whatthey say is sobering: that war is not proof of the failureof politics, but the necessary sign of God's action inhistory and the path to world redemption. Melani McAlister is an associate professor of AmericanStudies at George Washington University and author of "EpicEncounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the MiddleEast, 1945-2000" (University of California Press).© 2003 The Washington Post Company
LEFT BEHIND a self-fulfilling prophecy Tim LaHaye's LEFT BEHIND is a series of mass-marketed books and movies about an impending end-time. The story is put forth as truth, the ultimate truth of prophecy, though the characters are admittedly fictional. The core message of the series is that the survival of each and every person on the earth hangs on the slender thread of joining the 'Tribs' force; becoming the 'chosen,' the 'saved,' *which LaHaye defines exclusively as those who believe as he believes.* Everyone else will burn. This is marketed to children of all ages as good, moral Christian entertainment. Here is an except from the Operation Rescue National May 1998 Newsletter:
From the wash Post article cited below:
*That 42 million bucks will go straight into the coffers of the radical Religious Right.* as in.... http://www.nljonline.com/June2001/June6.htm Hundreds Enrolling in Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy By Jerry Falwell Publisher, National Liberty Journal LaHayes Give $4.5 Million for Liberty Student Center http://www.nljonline.com/June2001/June1.htm religious right watch "In January, President George Bush addressed the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters in Washington. He commended the group for their support of the war against Iraq." http://watch.pair.com/cnpdbase.html
Does no one know who Tim LaHaye is? His agenda? It's a real revelation, who and what he vilifies in the Left Behind books in the guise of Bible prophecy. Tim LaHaye, whose Biblical end-time fiction has sold 50 million copies. Background: "... The Christian Right anticipated Reagan's reelection campaign as another opportunity to demonstrate the movement's influence. Likewise, the Reagan Bush reelection committee welcomed evangelical support. Three Christian publishing houses affiliated with the National Religious Broadcasters produced mass circulation books about Ronald Reagan.The Moral Majority and the Free Congress Foundation sponsored Family Forum conventions, one in San Francisco and one in Dallas, to capture press attention in conjunction with the Democratic and Republican conventions. The Reagan-Bush campaign assigned reverend Tim LaHaye to coordinate Christian Right voter registration projects. Toward that end, in 1983, LaHaye had established the American Coalition for traditional values (ACTV), consisting of and largely funded by television preachers. Together with Christian Voices and the Moral Majority, ACTV received a one million dollar grant from White House fundraiser Joe Rogers, for the purpose of registering new voters. Thousands of churches affiliated with the Christian Right, supervised by 350 field directors, delivered an estimated 2000,000 new voters to the Republican Party in 1984. "The theme of "religious persecution" was a staple in the Christian Right's 1984 organizing. The same group of television preachers leading Tim LaHayes's ACTV were also part of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, established by the Unification Church while cult leader Sun Myung Moon was imprisoned for tax fraud, perjury, and obstruction of justice. In 1984 and 1985, Moon's followers spent millions of dollars courting Christian ministers to support Moon as a "victim" of government prosecution. Some of the Coalition for Religious Freedom ministers tried to distance themselves from the Unification Church after unflattering press reports on Tim LaHaye's acceptance of "Moonie" money. The heretical nature of Moon's teachings made the financial link a scandal, though one that would pale by competition to the television preacher scandals of the late 1980's. "The infusion of Moon money into the Christian Right came at a time when the movement's organizational structure was changing. Out of the evangelical church milieu, in the late 1970's, the Christian Right had taken in a few nationally headquartered, highly centralized organizations, most notably the Moral Majority and the Christian Voice. By the mid-1980'd the structure expanded. New organizations with locally based affiliates gave more activists opportunities to become leaders in their own right. That voter registrations projects could not continue to deliver millions of new voters for each election was leas significant than the mobilization of already aroused voters into greater degrees of political participation. "Christian Right leaders constructed several grassroots organizations, each with different purposes. Pat Robertson's Freedom Council was started in 1981, and promoted frequently on the "700 Club," for the stated purpose of education viewers to the threats to the "religious freedom" of Christians. The Freedom Council never became a decentralized organization—with semi-autonomous state chapters—as did Robertson's Christian Coalition, started in 1989. Instead, Robertson used the Freedom Council's tax-exempt educational status to build direct mail fundraising lists, and to cull precinct delegates for Michigan's early presidential campaign caucuses. "Tim LaHaye's ACTV faded from public view but his wife Beverly's Concerned Women for America (CWA) soared after the LaHaye's moved to Washington DC in 1985. CWA was organized along two tracks, one a truly grassroots formation, the other a typical centralized lobbying operation. Beginning in San Diego in 1979, Mrs. LaHaye had organized "kitchen table activists" into "prayer chapters" of fifty women. Each chapter consisted of a leader and serve prayerchain leaders who contacted seven women on a phone tree whenever a new piece of legislation warranted constituent phone calls and letters. CWA's monthly newsletters listed the names and phone numbers of new chapter leaders, plus summaries of legislative action to be taken. Through the initiative of chapter leaders, who had an interest in seeing their recruits start new chapters, CWA's membership grew by leaps and bounds, reaching a claimed total of 6000,000 members in 1992. "Membership" implied only a small yearly dues and commitment to write a few letters, thus involving thousand of women not otherwise able or willing to commit to a social movement organization. Beverly LaHaye was chosen as representative women's leader to testify at a Senate hearting on the qualifications of Judge Robert Bork, whom the Senate ultimately rejected as a Supreme Court nominee. LaHaye's notoriety increased further when President Reagan himself addresses the CWA's 1987 convention. Reagan thanked the CWA for its grassroots support for Bork and for the Nicaraguan Contras. During the mid- and late 1980's, CWA devoted considerable recourses to propaganda and material aid for the Contra forces in based in Costa Rica. At the same time. CWA provided attorney's to parent's groups in litigation to remove "secular humanist" books from public schools. With its hand in virtually every issue, CWA remained one of the Christian Right's cornerstone organizations, capable of shifting its focus as apolitical opportunities changed. "Where CWA's approach attracted unprofessional, though committed and useful, activists, the Coalition for Revival (COR) functioned as a network of full-time Christian Right activists and ministers. COR was designed to increase unity among theologically disparate camps of evangelicals. It was COR's 1986 conference that leading figures of the Christian Right met asnd discussed the use of "stealth" candidates in local elections, one county at a time. COR itself, however, never became an electoral vehicle. It remained, instead, a forum through which prominent evangelical ministers debated politically relevant theological positions, namely "pre-" verses forms of "post-" millennialism, and controversial organizing styles such as the autocratic "shepherding" system. COR also promoted a broad view of political participation by organizing itself into about two dozen working groups on everything from home schooling to legal defense to alternative "kingdom" banking systems. "Similarly, the American Freedom Coalition (AFC) started in 1987 as a grassroots merger between Christian Voices of the Unification Church affiliates, established topical "task forces" on economics. education, the environment, "religious freedom," and "world freedom." Each of AGC's state chapters elected to concentrate, variably, on local activism within one of these spheres; while nationally, the organization raised funds selling a videocassette about Reagan National Security Council aide, Oliver North...." From Chapter 10, pp242-243, ROADS TO DOMINION: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States by Sara Diamond. Guilford Press (1995). Sara Diamond, PhD, Berkley _____________________________________________ Note: The Washington Times is a Moonie owned paper. Ideas market and shape policy, a radical policy of change in the direction and laws of this nation. At the moment, it is used to sell us war. _____________________________________________ Fundamentally unsound Left Behind, the best-selling series of paranoid, pro-Israel end-time thrillers, may sound kooky, but America's right-wing leaders really believe this stuff. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/07/29/left_behind/index.html - - - - - - - - - - - - By Michelle Goldberg July 29, 2002 | The most popular novel in America right now is one in which the world is tyrannized by the former secretary general of the U.N., who operates from Iraq, and his global force of storm troopers, called "peacekeepers." Revered rabbis evangelize for Christ, repenting Israel's "specific national sin" of "[r]ejecting the messiahship of Jesus." Much of the world is deceived by a false prophet, part of the inner circle of the Antichrist, who seems a lot like the pope — he's a Catholic cardinal, "all robed and hatted and vested in velvet and piping." "The Remnant," which debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, is the 10th entry in Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's phenomenally popular "Left Behind" series, a Tom Clancy-meets-Revelation saga of the Rapture, the Tribulation and, presumably, the eventual return of Jesus. Last year's "Desecration," the ninth volume of a projected 14, was 2001's bestselling hardcover novel. There is probably very little overlap between Salon's readership and the audience for apocalyptic Christian fiction, but these books and their massive success deserve attention if only for what they tell us about the core beliefs of a great many people in this country, people whose views shape the way America behaves in the world. After all, Tim LaHaye isn't merely a fringe figure like Hal Lindsey, the former king of the genre, whose 1970 Christian end-times book "The Late Great Planet Earth" was the bestseller of that decade. The former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, LaHaye was a member of the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and an organizer of the Council for National Policy, which ABCNews.com has called "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of" and whose membership has included John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson and Oliver North. George W. Bush is still refusing to release a tape of a speech he gave to the group in 1999. The point isn't that all these leaders are part of some kind of right-wing Illuminati. It's simply that the seemingly wacky ideology promulgated in the Left Behind books is one that important people in America are quite comfortable with. The Left Behind series provides a narrative and a theological rationale for a whole host of perplexing conservative policies, from the White House's craven decision to cut off aid to the United Nations Family Planning Fund to America's surreally casual mobilization for an invasion of Baghdad — a city that is, in the Left Behind books, Satan's headquarters. Political attitudes and actions that make no practical or moral sense to secularists become comprehensible when viewed through Christian pop culture's eschatological looking glass. At a time when America is flagrantly flouting international law, spurning the U.N. and tacitly supporting the land grabs of Israeli maximalists, surely it's significant that the most popular fiction in the country creates a gripping narrative that pits American Christians against a conspiracy of Satan-worshipping, abortion-promoting, gun-controlling globalists — all of it revolving around the sovereignty of Israel. Israel is the key to the theology that dominates Left Behind (as well as much of American evangelical Christianity). In the religion, as in the series, the rapture is kicked off by a military attack on the country, which survives almost unscathed (though the first Left Behind, written before the current intifada, had Russian aggressors rather than Arabs). Indeed, the chain of events that lead to the return of Christ depends on the existence of a Holy Land that is under catastrophic assault. No wonder the born-again lobby is obsessed with Israeli self-defense, but opposed to any peace plan. Those Israeli settlements in the West Bank that add so much kindling to the conflagration in the Middle East are often "adopted" and funded by American evangelical churches whose members are devouring a novel that depicts Jews reclaiming Palestinian land, moving Al-Aqsa Mosque out of Jerusalem and rebuilding the second temple on the Dome of the Rock. The chosen people are suddenly the darlings of the religious right, while a bestseller promotes the idea that Jews will soon convert to Christianity — and atone for their centuries of stubbornness — en masse. Of course, it's not that every reader of the more than 50 million Left Behind books sold so far is an end-times fundamentalist any more than every Eminem fan is a homophobe. Nor are the books guaranteed to change their audiences' views on American foreign policy — the relationship between culture and politics is never that simple. But the stories people tell themselves about the world necessarily shape the way they act in it, and right now, this is the story that's captivating America. On one level, the attraction of the Left Behind books isn't that much different from that of, say, Tom Clancy or Stephen King. The plotting is brisk and the characterizations Manichean. People disappear and things blow up. Revelation is, after all, supremely creepy, which is why it gets so much play in horror flicks from "Rosemary's Baby" to "End of Days." The opening sequence of the first Left Behind book is gripping and cinematic. Rayford Steele, an unhappily married commercial pilot, is flying to London and contemplating an affair with a stewardess, when, handing the controls over to his co-pilot and walking into the cabin, he finds her hysterical. People throughout the plane have disappeared, their clothes left in neat piles on their seats. "This was no joke, no trick, no dream," Jenkins and LaHaye write. "Something was terribly wrong, and there was no place to run." Returning to America, Steele finds a world in chaos. All real Christians — as opposed to mere churchgoers — as well as children and fetuses out of wombs have vanished. Planes flown by believers have crashed, along with cars driven by the faithful. The media struggles to make sense of it, but Rayford, whose marital troubles were caused by his wife's newfound religious passion, knows what happened. His wife had told him that Christians would be raptured up to heaven in preparation for the rise of the Antichrist, his nefarious seven-year reign and the Second Coming of Jesus. The Left Behind books chronicle those seven years — known to Christians as the Tribulation — as a ragtag group of new believers form the "Tribulation Force" to thwart the murderous plans of Nicolae Carpathia, the U.N.-leader-cum-prince-of-darkness (often just called "the evil one," Osama bin Laden-style). Carpathia's rise is engineered by a cabal of bankers. He's supported by Israeli liberals enthralled by his devious promises of peace, and a Democratic American president sells out the country to Carpathia's one-world government. Meanwhile, the Tribulation Force finds a spiritual leader in Tsion Ben-Judah, a rabbi and former Israeli statesman who realizes the error of his Jewish ways and becomes a guerrilla media evangelist. It's bizarre that more attention hasn't been paid to the series' open hostility to the Jewish religion, if not the Jewish people. Imagine if, say, James Carville wrote a novel in which a band of heroic gay socialists defeated a voracious army of slack-jawed Bible-quoting Republicans to turn the world into a gigantic French-speaking free-love commune. He'd be crucified on the talk shows, and all kinds of sinister motives would be impugned to the Democratic Party. That a Republican player can create a blockbuster media empire out of analogous extremism suggests two seemingly contradictory things. First, Christian paranoia has become so mainstream that few see fit to remark on it anymore. Second, while the novels' popularity has received lots of media attention, their actual content is utterly off the radar of the kind of people who write about books. Nobody, it seems — except, of course, for the series' millions of fans — is reading Left Behind. The Left Behind books actually play on that sense of being unfairly ignored, reveling in the moment when smug agnostics, insufficiently zealous Christians and, most of all, Jews realize how terribly wrong they were. As Gersholm Gorenberg wrote of the books in his "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount," "Christianity's ancient, anxious amazement that the people who know the Old Testament best don't accept that it leads to Jesus (don't, in fact, accept that it is Old Testament) is at last disarmed." Cannily, the authors make their protagonists disbelievers who are disdainful of fundamentalism. That means that doubters can relate to them and are thus drawn into their dawning religious consciousness, while believers get the satisfaction of seeing the heroes come around to their point of view. By having even minor characters recount their conversions, Jenkins and LaHaye make sure that each volume has moments when readers can enjoy a bit of high-minded revenge against mocking urbanites. The writers take a special pleasure in the self-abnegation of supposedly sophisticated media types. In "The Remnant," a British reporter makes an appearance solely to explain her salvation. "All I can say is that the enemy has a stronghold over the mind until one surrenders to God," she says. "I was a pragmatist, proud, a journalist. I wanted control over my own destiny. Things had to be proved to me." Now born-again, she tells Steele that she's mystified by her former "lunacy." Seeing the self-defeating delusions of erstwhile elites exposed may be the greatest pleasure the Left Behind books offer their readers. The plotting alone certainly isn't enough to sustain attention in "The Remnant." That wasn't true of the first book — theology aside, the setup of the original Left Behind makes for a strangely compelling thriller. The stage is the whole world gone mad, and the story roils with international intrigue. Jenkins and LaHaye are very good at turning esoteric biblical augury into real-world scenarios, and they get the action going before they start inserting too many sermons into the mix. So simple fascination with a good story might have accounted for the book's initial success — after all, audiences don't necessarily endorse the politics behind every action adventure they devour. But by the time "The Remnant" starts, the suspense has pretty much died, because the story has the ultimate deus ex machina. Whenever things look grim for our heroes, when the enemy is closing in and there's nowhere to run, they're saved at the last minute by ... God. At the beginning of "The Remnant," Ben-Judah is encamped, Moses-like, with a million followers in the Jordanian desert. Carpathia's forces unleash a devastating bombing raid, but thanks to God, the resulting "massive sea of raging flames" leaves the so-called Judah-ites untouched. God can also be relied upon to speed up computer searches and drop plenty of nourishing manna on his blockaded flock. In the wittiest scene in "The Remnant," God is literally a co-pilot, sending an angel to help fly a plane during a tense getaway. There's not much drama in the repeated victories of an omnipotent being, but that's not the only thing that makes "The Remnant" sluggish. In order to stretch out the series for so long, Jenkins and LaHaye have larded it with tedious subplots and countless techno-geek scenes in which a crafty Christian hacker named Chang sabotages Carpathia's plans or creates false identities for his comrades. About a third of "The Remnant" concerns the rescue of a Tribulation Force pilot named George Sebastian from Greece. The action mostly involves the characters driving around, splitting up, reconnoitering and then trying to find each other. The Remnant has very little in the way of climactic good vs. evil showdowns. While there is a bit of supernatural deviltry (masses of vipers attack believers lured from Ben-Judah's protection by agents of the False Prophet) and some martyrdom (though not of any main characters), most of the story follows members of the Tribulation Force jetting around the globe running various errands. The nuclear annihilation of Chicago rates just a few lines, while the cellphone codes the Force uses to communicate gets several pages. Left Behind cloaks itself in the conventions of ordinary airport thrillers, but it does far more than just provide a Christian alternative to decadent mainstream entertainment. It creates a Christian theory of everything, one that slates current events into a master narrative in which the world is destroyed and then remade to evangelical specifications. It's an alternate universe in which conservative Middle Americans are vindicated against everyone who doesn't share their beliefs — especially liberals and Jews. There's nothing wrong with that. Everyone is entitled to their fantasies. But LaHaye and Jenkins are at pains to show that the Left Behind books are meant as more than fiction. They write on the Left Behind Web site, "While it is true that in the broad spectrum of Protestant Christianity there are multiple views of the end-times scenario, the pre-millennialist theology found in the Left Behind Series is the prominent view among evangelical Christians, including their leading seminaries such as Talbot Seminary, Trinity Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary." So the rest of us can ignore Left Behind, or chuckle at its over-the-top Christian kitsch. We should keep in mind, though, that for some of the most powerful people in the world, this stuff isn't melodrama. It's prophecy. salon.com\ - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon based in New York. Related stories Antichrist politics For many fervent Christians, support for Israel has less to do with Ariel Sharon than preparing for Armageddon. By Michelle Goldberg 05/24/02 ______________________________________________________________________ http://www.leftbehind.com/endtimes/endtimes.asp?item_id=7240 Terrific resource. More sara diamind, essays and articles: http://www.publiceye.org/diamond/sd_roads.html http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/sd_theo.html ___________________________________________________________________ Catholics were essential to the Christian Right during their mass organization against abortion. Now they are expendable. (O Israel, do you listen?) **It's important to realize the role the Catholic's serve in supporting the people against the atrocities, past, present, future, in Central and South America. The LaHaye's have a special interest in payback here:** "... Beverly (Mrs. Tim) LaHaye was chosen as representative women's leader to testify at a Senate hearting on the qualifications of Judge Robert Bork, whom the Senate ultimately rejected as a Supreme Court nominee. (54) LaHaye's notoriety increased further when President Reagan himself addresses the CWA's 1987 convention. Reagan thanked the CWA for its grassroots support for Bork and for the Nicaraguan Contras. (55) During the mid- and late 1980's, CWA devoted considerable recourses to propaganda and material aid for the Contra forces in based in Costa Rica. (56) At the same time. CWA provided attorney's to parent's groups in litigation to remove "secular humanist" books from public schools. With its hand in virtually every issue, CWA remained one of the Christian Right's cornerstone organizations, capable of shifting its focus as apolitical opportunities changed. ..." From Chapter 10, pp242-243, ROADS TO DOMINION: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States by Sara Diamond. Guilford Press (1995). _______________________________________________________________ see also: http://www.nativityukr.org/various_files/Rapture_article.html No Rapture For Rome:The Anti-Catholics Behind the Best-selling Left Behind Books by Carl E. Olson What on earth is going on? For a balanced and far reaching look at Revelation/The Rapture, see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/
"Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about...and kept us so busy with continuous changes and crises and so fascinated...by the machinations of the national enemies, without and within, that we had no time to think about those dreadful things that were growing, little by little all around us...Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted, that...unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these little measures...must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing than a farmer in his field sees corn growing...Each act...is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to go out of your way to make trouble...And it is not just fear...that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty...And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it...But the one great shocking occasion when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty...The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed...You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father...could never have imagined." - Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free; The Germans, 1938-45 Onward, Christian Soldiers http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13267 Deanne Stillman, The Nation May 31, 2002 A certain love affair has been playing out on the international stage. Because love affairs do not get coveredunless celebrities are involved, this one has gone mostlyunnoticed. It involves two nations: Israel and the diehard community ofborn-again Christians, the two redheaded stepchildren of bodies politic. Generally, they get covered in themainstream press when they're in trouble (an attack onIsrael) or causing it (the right-to-life movement).Unbeknownst to many outside the evangelical population andthe Israeli tourist industry, Israelis and born-againChristians-not all, but those who believe in the literalSecond Coming of Christ-have been tangoing across theflaming desert sands since shortly after the inception ofthe Jewish state in 1948. That moment in history is regarded by fundamentalistChristians as the fulfillment of two major biblicalprophecies: "I myself will gather the remnant of my flockout of all the countries where I have driven them and willbring them back to their pasture, where they will befruitful and increase in number" (Jeremiah 23:3), and "Iwill make rivers flow on barren heights and springs withinthe valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, andthe parched ground into springs" (Isaiah 41:18, which issaid to refer to the flowering of Israel). The Christian/Jewish tango became more intimate when Israelwon the Six-Day War in 1967, reclaiming Jerusalem and thusfulfilling another relevant prophecy: "And many peoples andpowerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek God's favor"(Zechariah 8:22). On the fiftieth anniversary of Israel, in1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed anAmerican group in Washington called Voices United forIsrael. Most of the 3,000 in attendance were evangelicals,including Ralph Reed and other prominent members of theborn-again community. Netanyahu said, "We have no greaterfriends and allies than the people sitting in this room."Reed recently elaborated on this theme in the WashingtonTimes: "I think it would be fair to say that Evangelicalsupport for Israel and its legitimate security interests hasbeen paramount to Israel's support in Congress and in manyadministrations, second only to the Jewish Committee." Nowadays, the affair between Jews and born-again Christiansis more passionate than ever, as events that seem to unfoldalmost daily in the Holy Land are interpreted by someevangelicals as preordained indicators of the Second Comingof Christ. Trouble in Jerusalem? It's in Zechariah 12:1-5.The advent of the Internet? That's what it says in Matthew24:14. According to Scripture, Israel is the designatedstaging area for Christ's return; it follows that if Israelgoes, the Savior will have no place to land. This is whyborn-again Christians see divine linkage between America(the only country that can save the Jewish state),Armageddon, getting inside those pearly gates and the fateof Israel. Not surprisingly, when speaking to the mainstream pressabout their beliefs, born-again Christians rarely cite theirpersonal interest in meeting Christ as the actual reasonthey embrace Israel. In the Washington Post, Gary Bauer saidrecently that conservative Christians believe "America hasan obligation to stand by Israel" based "on readings of theScripture, where evangelicals believe God has promised thatland to the Jewish people." (He didn't mention that onceChrist returns, Jews-at least those Jews who have notaccepted Jesus as a personal savior-get a one-way ticket tohell.) Such impassioned support for Israel among the GOP'sbase of religious conservatives counters the Republicantradition of bowing lower than the Democrats when it comesto Mecca. As both secular and religious types whisper about anapproaching Armageddon, some born-again Christians aresounding more pro-Israel than a Hadassah sewing circle. Justthe other day, an evangelist minister in Texas launched theJerusalem Prayer Team. Pastor Michael Evans is trying toenlist 1 million people in America to pray daily and 100,000American churches to pray weekly for peace in Jerusalem byreciting Psalm 122. Pat Robertson recently appeared onHannity and Colmes, pointing out that "right now, it'simportant to support Israel. There is no greater proof ofthe existence of God than the Jewish people." He noted thathe's been broadcasting from Israel since 1982. Partlybecause of Robertson's proselytizing for Israel, it becamecool in some non-Jewish quarters to talk about Christ's ownJudaism. During the 1980s, there appeared the ubiquitousbumper sticker, My Boss Is a Jewish Carpenter, proclaimingthat the driver "worked for" Jesus Christ. Robertson regardsthe Israeli victory in the Six-Day War as a "key moment inbiblical prophecy," and has written that it moved the worldthat much closer to Christ's return. Elsewhere in the born-again community, on the ChristianBroadcasting Network and on evangelical websites run bymega-pastors such as Billy Graham, Benny Hinn and scores ofothers, there are daily prayer offerings for Israel, ongoingsign-ups for trips to the Holy Land led by marquee-nameministers, examinations of the Jewish roots of Christianity,everything but news that the disciples sat shiva. Accordingto the 2002 Spiritual State of the Nation Survey, taken byCoral Ridge Ministries, 86 percent of pro-familyevangelicals agree that the country should not "back awayfrom America's traditional pro-Israel stance in light of thehatred it engenders in the Islamic community." And accordingto a survey of born-again Christians by the popular pastorHal Lindsey, 72.5 percent agree with the statement, "Ibelieve we actually are seeing the start of the war thatleads to antichrist and Armageddon." For these evangelicals-and for messianic Jews as well-theapproaching doom is not about Saudi oil, the right of returnfor displaced Palestinians, the war against terrorism, Bushfamily interest in the Carlyle Group or Ariel Sharon andYasir Arafat as warriors who can't disengage. For them, thefight for Israel boils down to a particular shrine inJerusalem called the Temple Mount, where Christ is supposedto return. As it says in Micah 4:1, "In the last days themountain of the Lord's temple will be established as thechief among the mountains; it will be raised above thehills, and people will stream to it." This is the heart of the matter, the holy of holies (yes,there are plenty of other holy of holies, but none as holyas this one, which is why Christians weren't all that upsetabout what went on at the Church of the Nativity, where thething that was supposed to happen there-the birth ofChrist-already happened). This is the full-on shmegeggy ofreligious weirdness, an ancient pile of rocks and amens andallahu akhbars, the place that sparked the intifada of thepast twenty months. There's a rock here that God asked Abraham to sacrifice hisson on and Abraham said OK and then God said I'm onlykidding, I just wanted to make sure you adored me. ThenAbraham became the father of the Jews and to honor Abraham,a descendant of his named Solomon built a temple on top ofthe rock. Solomon's enemies trashed the temple. The Romansrebuilt it and, not knowing from Abraham or Solomon, namedit after Herod. Later, Mohammed came along and said Abrahamwas the father of the Muslims. One day, while standing onthis same rock, Mohammed ascended to heaven. So the Muslimsbuilt the Dome of the Rock on top of what was once not onebut two Jewish temples. This presents a major problem for Christians: How can Jesusmake his scheduled landing at the Temple Mount if it'sbeneath a mosque that happens to be under Muslim control?(Such is the politics of Israel that Jews can control a citywhile Arabs can control a building in it, although Jewscontrol a wall of said building-which happens to be theone-and-only Western Wall.) Solution: Build a third templeon the mount. After all, the Bible-Old and NewTestament-says there's supposed to be a third temple. Whichis why Jerusalem cannot be divided in half, as Palestinianshave suggested, because the half that they want-the one withthe Dome of the Rock-would be part of their side. For fundamentalist Christians (and Jews) it's bad enoughthat Muslims already control it. When Sharon visited thesite there in 2000, the place went off because Palestinianstook it as a sign that the Israelis were getting ready todismantle the mosque and restore the Temple Mount, whichChristians saw as proof that Christ was around the corner.(Politically, Christ's imminent return is bad for Arafat: Heknows that he needs support among evangelical Christians,who are powerful in the Republican Party. As he saidrecently, "We will defend the holy Christian and Muslimsites," attempting to win Christians over by suggesting thatJews are a threat to both groups. "And we will die defendingJerusalem.") The problem posed by this triple-header power vortex isexplored by Robert Stone in his recent novel Damascus Gate.Several characters are afflicted with "Jerusalem Syndrome,"a term used by Israeli psychiatrists to describe people whobelieve they must hasten the Savior's return. They embrace aworldview that causes them to act as agents of chaos in theservice of biblical prophecy. For instance, before Y2Kcelebrations, Israel deported an American end-times cultcalled Concerned Christians. This obsessive little band hadset up shop in the Holy Land in order to wrest the TempleMount from Muslim control and return it to the Jews. In the culmination of Damascus Gate, Stone explores thisfinal Bible prophecy. Some of his characters have beencalled to build the third temple, to rip out the Dome of theRock and roll back the terrain to its original, God-intendedstate. This would start "The Battle for Jerusalem"-thesignal for Armageddon (otherwise known as "Megiddo," aregion outside Jerusalem where an attempted suicide bombingjust occurred, an act that has some evangelicals lickingtheir end-time chops). In both Stone's novel and the worldof many born-again Christians, the Temple Mount must besaved to set the stage for Christ's return, thus fuelingevangelical support for Israel as well as the unspoken viewthat Palestinians are blocking a divine plan. And so hereJews find themselves: temporarily in lockstep with theconservative Christian world, the same one that stood by andwatched them march to the ovens. When it comes to the Holy Land, whither our born-againPresident? While he does not hide his religious views, hedoes not speak of them explicitly-"wouldn't be prudent," inthe words of Bush Sr. But a look at the record providesenough information to suggest that Bush may (reluctantly andwith great difficulty) regard himself as an usher of theSecond Coming as mandated in the Bible, albeit in anevenhanded, presidential way. Those who would attempt todecode Bush's daily moves according to shifting politicalsands are missing the point. To many evangelical Christians,what's playing out in the Mideast is all part of God's plan.The only thing a born-again President can do is stand at thehelm and occasionally turn the rudder, making sure thatIsrael survives, knowing that the seas and wind are out ofhis control. According to his autobiography, A Charge to Keep, written byhis communications adviser Karen Hughes, Bush's "walk withJesus" began in 1985 when Billy Graham visited him inKennebunkport and he had an awakening. Christianity Todaymagazine reports that during White House meetings, Bushfrequently shows visitors a painting inspired by the hymnthat suggested his book's title. "I still have a charge tokeep," Bush reportedly tells guests. "Indeed, a verse fromthe hymn seems to fit Bush's convictions," the magazineobserves: "'To serve the present age, my calling tofulfill./Oh may it all my powers engage, to do my Master'swill.'" It would appear that Bush's awakening was authentic:In 1993, he told a reporter from the AustinAmerican-Statesman that "Jews are going to hell," a viewthat he later "clarified" to the satisfaction of JewishRepublicans. (One of his key spiritual advisers in fact isthe Texas-based Marvin Olasky, a former Jew turnedfundamentalist Christian.) In 1998 Bush traveled to Jerusalem with a group ofpro-Israel Republicans and was reportedly moved to tears ashe read from the Beatitudes at the Temple Mount. In 1999,having walked with Jesus for fourteen years, Bush heard asermon about God convincing Moses to lead the Jews out ofEgypt. "He was talking to you," his mother told him. Hecites the moment as instrumental in helping him decide toseek the presidency. One of his last acts as governor was toproclaim June 10 as "Jesus Day," an unwitting moment ofkitsch to which only the most guile-free devotee could affixhis signature. The very words, "Jesus Day"-as if Christmasor Easter did not cover the subject-smack of George Bush athis most sincere. Recently, Pat Robertson remarked that George Bush is "torn,"referring to his demand for Israel to withdraw troops fromPalestinian refugee camps, an act that evangelicalChristians regard as anti-Scripture. They are puzzled thatit was ordered by brother Bush. "He's being pressured bypeople who want to cozy up to the Arabs," Robertson said,alluding to a perceived team Bush rift between Rice/Powell(pro-Arab) and Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz (pro-Israel). Yet it would appear that Bush is not the only born-againChristian who may be having second thoughts about the SecondComing. In the wake of ongoing violence in the Middle East,Christian tour groups have canceled their trips to Israel.Those who would hasten the apocalypse may now prefer toavoid it, which means that maybe it's not such a great ideaafter all. But make no mistake: Evangelicals will tango withIsrael till the end, long after everyone else has left thestage.
Subject: US TV for Iraq run by Christian fundamentalists Grace News
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grace Digital Media is controlled by a fundamentalist Christian millionaire, Cheryl Reagan, who last year wrested control of Federal News Service, a transcription news service, from its former owner, Cortes Randell. Randell says he met Reagan at a prayer meeting, brought her in as an investor in Federal News Service, and then she forced him out of his own company. Grace Digital Media and Federal News Service are housed in a downtown Washington, D.C. office building, along with Grace News Network. When you call the number for Grace News Network, you get a person answering "Grace Digital Media/Federal News Service." According to its web site, Grace News Network is "dedicated to transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today." "Grace News Network will be reporting the current secular news, along with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the news' to reflect the Kingdom of God and its purposes," GNN proclaims. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. government agency producing the television news broadcasts for Iraq, likes to say it is the BBC of the USA. BBG runs Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Sawa — Arabic language radio for the Middle East. " Our mission is clear," BBG's Joan Mower told us. "To broadcast accurate and objective news about the United States and the world. We don't do propaganda, leafleting — we are like the BBC in that respect." Well, then why hook up with Grace? BBG's Joan Mower said that Grace Digital Media is a mainstream Production house used by all kinds of mainstream news organizations. " Grace will have nothing to do with the editorial side of the news broadcast," she said. "They are renting us equipment, space, studio. The Grace personnel we use include technicians, production people but no editorial people." But Mower said she couldn't get us a copy of the contract between BBG And Grace Digital media. Nor could she say how Grace Digital was chosen as the production studio. Grace News Network proclaims that it will be a "unique tool in the Lord's ministry plan for the world." " Grace News Network provides networking links and portals to various ministries and news services that will be of benefit to every Christian believer and seeker of truth," according to the company's mission statement.
Auchter did not return our calls seeking comment for this story. While it's unclear whether Grace News Network actually produces any news, it has produced a documentary movie titled "Israel: Divine Destiny" which it showed at the National Press Club in September 2002. The film is about "Israel's destiny and the United States' role in that destiny," according to Grace News Network. Grace News said that it could not make a copy of the film available to Us at this time, since it is now undergoing post-production editing. Nor could it provide a transcript. The mainstream media has documented strong and growing ties between right-wing Republican Christian fundamentalists and right-wing Sharonist Israeli expansionists. This alliance is personified in Ralph Reed's Stand Up for Israel, a Group formed to "mobilize Christians and other people of faith to support the State of Israel." President Bush has very strong ties to fundamentalist Christians, most notably Franklin Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham. Last week, Franklin Graham delivered a Good Friday message at the Pentagon, despite an uproar over his previous slander of Islam as "a Very evil and wicked religion." Don Wagner, a professor of religion and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University, an evangelical Christian College in Chicago, has written extensively about what he calls Christian Zionism, whose leaders he identifies as, among others, Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, and Franklin Graham. " Christian Zionists have historically pointed to Genesis 12:3 - I will bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you, I will curse," Dr. Wagner said. "They have interpreted this to mean that individuals and nations who support the state of Israel will be blessed by God. It has come to mean political, economic, and moral support, often uncritically rendered to the state of Israel." Grace News Network seems to fit the mold. Joan Mower says that BBG is currently producing and transmitting six Hours of news into Iraq including a dubbed version of the daily evening news from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS, plus three hours of original news programming from BBG. BBG says it sees no problem in having Grace produce the evening news broadcast for Iraq. Given the brewing anti-American revolt through all sectors of Iraqi society, maybe it should reconsider. We called Grace Digital Media to speak with Cheryl Reagan. Her secretary told us that she has been away in extended vacation for more than a month — in Israel. When will she back? we asked. No one knows, the secretary said. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org/ (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/Library/opposition/vol1num2/art5.htm The Council for National Policy: Stealth Leadership of the Radical Right by Russ Bellant When the leadership of the American Radical Right needs a strategy, chances are very good that the planning will occur in a meeting of the Council forNational Policy (CNP). The meetings of this secretive and little-knownorganization, held three or four times a year, are often the springboard forRadical Right campaigns and long-term planning. But these efforts willseldom be traced to the CNP. The council's invitation-only membership isdrawn from the key leaders, activists, and funders of the Radical Right.Membership is secret. So are its quarterly meetings, which have been heldacross the United States and in such cities as London, England; Sinaia,Romania; Seville, Spain; and St. Petersburg, Russia. The council was founded in 1981 at the initiative of John Birch Society(JBS) leaders William Cies and the late Rep. Larry McDonald (R-GA), who hadrecently become chairman of JBS. They brought in Christian Right leader Rev.Tim LaHaye to be the first chair of the group. Among the earliest recruitswere brewer Joseph Coors, Louisiana State Rep. Woody Jenkins, and athen-obscure marine major on the staff of the National Security Council,Oliver North. By 1984, the CNP had 400 members comprised of Christian Rightleaders, Reagan administration operatives, New Right election experts,militant anti-communists, pro-apartheid activists, and conservative funders.Although CNP membership has remained steady at around 500, the compositionhas recently included more leaders of the Religious Right and feweranti-Communists and pro-apartheid activists. Current members include: Richard Schoff Former Indiana Ku Klux Klan(1) leader and owner of Lincoln Log Homes inNorth Carolina. Shoff is also a funder and leader of The ConservativeCaucus, the foremost U. S. supporter of South Africa's pro-apartheidregimes.(2) Shoff has a well-established record of unethical and illegalactivity. He has two convictions for check forgery, has traveled through 11states writing bad checks,(3) and has had many complaints of unethicalbusiness practices filed against Lincoln Log Homes. Shoff, a donor to manyRadical Right groups, and a key supporter of U. S. Sen. Jesse Helms(R-NC)(4), was also named as a principal in an AIDS charity scam.(5) Rousas John Rushdoony Founder of the Christian Reconstructionism movement and president of theChalcedon Foundation. He has advocated that Christian fundamentalists take"dominion" over the U.S.; abolish democracy, which he calls a "heresy;" andestablish a theocratic state. According to Christianity Today magazine,Rushdoony also believes that under such a state, "True to the letter of OldTestament law, homosexuals... adulterers, blasphemers, astro-logers, andother will be executed."(6) Pat Robertson Televangelist and president of the Christian Coalition, the largest activistorganization within the Republican Party. Robertson is also a past presidentof CNP. Gary North President of the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas. North isalso a Reconstructionist, who believes God may intervene against abortion:"How long do we expect God to withhold His wrath, if by crushing thehumanists who promote mass abortion... He might spare the lives of literallymillions of innocents?"(7) He also advocates a system of slavery out ofwhich Christians could work their way after a set period of time.(8) Rev. D. James Kennedy Founder of Coral Ridge Ministries, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida who launched hisministry into a more political role with his first "Reclaiming America"conference in January.(9) Indicative of his orientation is his leading ofthe conferees in the "Christian pledge of allegiance" prior to keynoteaddress by former Vice President Dan Quayle, who stood at attention.(10)Kennedy, who says he is not a Reconstruction-ist, has been close to themovement for years.(11) Rev. Jerry Falwell Has re-activated Liberty Alliance (formed after Moral Majority folded) toattack the Clinton administration. His bi-monthly Fundamentalist Journal haspublished Reconstructionist writers.(12) Paul Weyrich Head of the Washington, D.C.-based Free Congress Foundation. Weyrich,perhaps the most important leader of the Radical Right, also chairs NationalEmpower-ment Television (NET), a closed-circuit satellite program foractivists across the U.S. Some NET programming is done in collaboration withPat Robertson's Christian Coalition.(13) Viewers are given backgroundinformation on issues, with recommendations for political action. This yearNETlaunched a 24-hour public programming format and is seeking cable TVoutlets. Phillis Schlafly President of Eagle Forum. Schlafly is a leading anti-feminist.Rev. Donald Wildmon President of the American Family Association, headquartered in Tupelo,Mississippi. Wildmon is the self-styled morality cop of the entertainmentindustry. His campaign against the movie The Last Temptation of Christ wascharged by the Anti-Defamation League, among others, with using anti-Semiticpropaganda.(14) Seeking Power The Birchers' motives in forming the CNP stem from their view that Americanpolicy-making has been in the hands of a sinister cabal, centered in theCouncil on Foreign Relations (CFR), a group of influential leaders frompolitics, media, business, universities, and government. The Birchersbelieve the CFR is behind "communist conspiracies" to enslave the world.Hence, Birch leaders ultimately seek to displace the power structure of theU.S. and create a society that conforms to their notions of social order.This new order would not be democratic. Birchers believe democracy is afraud and tend to identify with rightist military dictatorships abroad.(15) The CNP sees itself as the Right's answer to the CFR and seeks nationalpower. The CNP's first executive director, Louisiana State Rep. WoodyJenkins, told a reporter, "I predict that one day before the end of thiscentury, the council will be so influential that no president, regardless ofparty or philosophy, will be able to ignore our concerns or shut us out ofthe highest levels of government."(16) While most CNP members are not Birchers, they share the extreme goals of aradical reordering of power. Paul Weyrich once said, "We are no longerworking to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn thepresent power structure of this country."(17) Weyrich has said on severaloccasions that this country is run by "defective elites" and called fortheir replacement.(18) Pat Robertson's book, The New World Order, shows strong Birch influences. Infact Birch sources are cited in the book, as are two classics ofanti-Semitism. The influence of the latter appears throughout the book —which was a national best seller several years ago.Leaders of the Christian Recon-structionist movement, the most explicitlyanti-democratic element of the Christian Right, are well-represented in CNP.In addition to Rushdoony and North, there are three Rushdoony associates;Chalcedon Foundation staffer Otto Scott, home schooling advocate SamuelBlumenfeld, and syndicated columnist John Lofton. The handful of CNP members highlighted here are neither a fringe groupwithin the CNP nor within the conservative movement. Membership isrestricted to those who pass a unanimous secret-ballot vote of the CNP'sexecutive committee. The executive committee has included Paul Weyrich,Oliver North, Richard DeVos of Amway, and Reed Larson of the anti-unionRight to Work Committee.(19) We Are the World A triumvirate of Weyrich, Larson, and Morton Blackwell (the current CNPexecutive director) share oversight of CNP and closely collaborate on suchprojects as the Conservative Leadership Conferences. While the CNP presidentand vice president may change from year to year, the secretary-treasurer'sposition had been held for years by Weyrich and more recently by Larson.Other top CNP offices have been filled by close Weyrich associates DeVos andRobert Krieble, who are members of the Free Congress Foundation board Blackwell and Weyrich also lead International Policy Forum (IPF), whichappears to be the international parallel to CNP. The two organizations heldjoint meetings in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1991 and in Romania in 1992. Blackwell has also trained rightist political forces in Latin America andAfrica(19) through IPF, notably supporters of the Pinochet militarydictatorship, Argentinean rightists, and supporters of Inkatha chiefButhelezi in South Africa. It was Buthelezi's group that later attempted tocreate civil war in South Africa to keep apartheid policies in place.Inkatha worked with pro-apartheid and neo-nazi groups to stop the electionseventually won by Nelson Mandela. A number of IPFprojects, including theInkatha training, were aided by U.S. government funding through the NationalEndowment for Democracy.(20) Meanwhile, Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation trains organizers of rightistpolitical movements in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. His statesideadvisor is Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Nazi collaborator from World War IIHungary.(21) R. Marc Nuttle, Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaignmanager frequently represents Weyrich in Eastern Europe. Foreign policy matters are not new to the CNP and its allied organizations.In the mid-1980s, CNP members launched a campaign to force the resignationof Secretary of State George Schultz because they felt that Schultz was notsufficiently supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa.(22) Many in the CNP were active in the covert efforts on behalf of theNicaraguan contras. At least some CNP meetings featured fellow CNP memberOliver North explaining the needs for the contras. Among the CNP members whohelped them was Alan Dye, a Washington, D.C., attorney who set up variousorganizations to assist the contras. Dye continues as an attorney forNorth's Freedom Alliance and the CNP. Council for Stealth Politics The secretiveness of CNP is consistent with the covert character of theseprojects in foreign lands, as well as the contemporary "stealth tactics" ofthe Christian Right in this country. As members, they are proscribed fromdiscussing any aspect of the CNP with non-members. Try as some do to denythat they conduct stealth politics, that claim will always be untrue so longas they are part of the Council for National Policy. Other Leaders of the CNP Russ Bellant is the author of The Coors Connection: How Coors FamilyPhilanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism. Copyright 1994 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. ————————————————————————————————————— Notes Islam a 'Diseased'
Faith, Ex-GOP Chief Says Monday 21 April 2003 Out of office for less than two months, former state Republican Party Chairman Shawn Steel is still on the hustings, trying to pitch that "big tent" of inclusion the GOP covets to return to relevancy in California. In two appearances at campus pro-troop rallies, Steel took dead aim at Islam, referring to it as "a diseased religion" at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. At the University of Southern California, he was more specific. "The Islamic community has a cancer growing inside it, which hates Jews, hates freedom and hates Western society," Steel said, as reported by the Daily Trojan, the campus newspaper. "The disease of Islam must be rectified. It's kill or be killed." Steel also managed to bash the peace movement and Democrats: "Because of the peace movement, we had the Holocaust," Steel said, according to the Trojan. "The Democratic Party is keeping the Ku Klux Klan alive, and if we'd listened to Southern Democrats who wanted peace in the Civil War, we'd still have slavery." The California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations was furious and asked current GOP leaders to repudiate Steel's comments. Party officials Friday said they were investigating Steel's claims that his words were presented out of context. "If the remarks are accurate, they'll be condemned," said GOP spokesman Rob Stutzman. In any case, Stutzman added, "We want to make it clear that he does not speak for the party anymore." (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) |
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