Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

Bill Moyers

I couldn't think of a catchy title for this post but it is one that ought to be read by everyone who is concerned about the appearance if not fact that the Christian right has taken a deathgrip on power in America and how this is bad not only for those of us in America but for everyone else too:

quote:

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed – an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 – just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire...

as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in god's earth ... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

This is serious business folks. I saw through the whole "Jesus loves you" talk that many (I can't say all) Christians have given me. I even have a neighbor who's son (5 years) likes to talk about how I am a pagan, but that neighbor loves to ask me to watch the child. But I suppose the pagans are supposed to "be there" for the believers. Anyway I knew that deep down their "love" was very much conditional. and in fact they were more interested in Rapture than anybody else around them. That thier God was so parochial as to seek to eternally damn people who may have lived lives of Iwa Pele (Good character) simply because they chose to worship differently, seemed pretty stupid to me. But perhaps this rapture will come soon and remove these resource wasting people from our midst so we can live in peace.

Links:
http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/">http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/