Dobsons's World and the end of it

The title may seem kind of ponderous (though maybe not if you've just plowed through two books on contemporary Southern Baptist theology like I just did): The Brutal Christ of the Armageddonites: Religious fanaticism in American foreign policy by Jon Basil Utley of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. But it's a good description of the theological perspective known by the near-incomprehensible name of "dispensational pre millenialism" and its effects on current American foreign policy.

I should mention that the Ludwig von Mises Institute is a rightwing-libertarian group that has been known to be receptive to neo-Confederate ideas. I'm not familiar with Utley's other work. But good ideas can come from surprising places; it doesn't mean we have to turn off our nonsense-detectors about rightwing groups, though. He even cites a hard-right Christian Reconstructionist, Gary North, sympathetically in this piece.

Utley writes of the Christian Right "premillenialists":

Arab, Egyptian, Armenian, and other Middle Eastern Christians interfere with their thesis, so the Armageddonites try to hide their existence. Pat Robertson's 700 Club, for instance,refused to show a segment about Christian Arabs. Jerry Falwell's tours of Israel purposely avoid them, according to Grace Halsell, who traveled with Falwell's group and wrote several books about the Armageddon lobby. And far from merely believing in an apocalypse at a time of God's choosing, the dispensationalists work to "hurry up God" by opposing any peace efforts in the Middle East. In March 2004, after being bombarded with letters protesting President Bush's "roadmap for peace," the White House held a special meeting with leading Christian fundamentalists to explain that removing Israeli settlements from Gaza would not interfere with God's plans for Armageddon (because Gaza has no sites of Biblical significance).

A major reason the Armageddonites have become so powerful is that most journalists can't comprehend that millions of Americans could really want, in this day and age, their God to destroy most of the human race, much less that they are donating millions to promote it (subsidizing settlements on the West Bank and paying for Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel in order to fulfill prophecies faster). Nor do most Americans know that Armageddonites are in the highest levels of government. But it was erstwhile House Majority Leader Tom DeLay who argued that the Iraq war should be supported because it is a precursor to the second coming of Christ. He also tried to undermine the Bush "roadmap for peace" when he visited Israel.

| +Save/Share | |