The Blue Voice

Thursday, July 27, 2006

The last days ... of American journalism?

The Christian Right (mostly composed of Protestant fundamentalists and Pentecostals) have been saying for decades that they wanted to "put God back into the public square", or something similar. Well, they've clearly succeeded. The Republican Party is now also a Christian Right party. And Christian religious beliefs are now an essential part of the discussion of public affairs in America.

As I've said before, Christian fundamentalists might have been better advised to think about the idea in a song by Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly: "Be careful what you pray for/You just might get it."

But, like with so many other things, our "press corps" doesn't "get it" when interviewing Christian fundamentalists. Historically, the Saturday religion page and religious stories have tended to be seen as journalistic backwaters. Unless some titillating scandal broke out, reporters rarely thought to probe beyond the surface claims of believers about their faith or the routine business of church-sponsored events.

The inadequacy of mainstream journalistic laziness to deal with hardline Christian fundamentalists, many of whom are so used to scamming "outsiders" in talking about their faith that it's become second nature, is vividly on display in this Media Matters report of 07/26/06: CNN or CBN? Phillips asks apocalypse authors: "[A]re we living in the last days?"

The story is about a on-air CNN interview by Kyra Phillips with Jerry Jenkins and Joel Rosenberg, both of whom "share the view that the Rapture is nigh". (Now, I'm working the Media Matters transcript.) One question that journalists should pose to fundamentalist/Pentecostal advocates of "Rapture" theory is whether they accept "dispensational millenialism". Those not familiar with the fundamentalist arguments over the details of the End of the World won't be familiar with the term. But given the influence of the Christian Right, it's long past time the mainstream media started digging into things like this more thoroughly.

For the whiners of the right who constantly complain that their religious views are given short shrift by the Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press!, it notable that "For the second time in three days, CNN featured a segment on the potential coming of the Apocalypse, as indicated by current conflicts in the Middle East." Since we're talking about extreme theological interpretations stemming from an eccentric 19th-century Protestant reading of the Christian Scriptures, that's a notable fact in itself.

If CNN seriously wants to do an informative segment about End Times theology and its influence on current politics and military decisions, having two advocates of fundamentalist viewpoints on with no critical perspectives included is hardly the way to do it.

But guests like this shouldn't be treated with the stenography approach that is so typical for the Saturday religion page. For instance, there were some very specific claims that they made, interesting in themselves, about factual events verifiable in the material world:

ROSENBERG: ... I've been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill. Members of Congress, Israelis, Arab leaders all want to understand the Middle East through the lens of biblical prophecies. I'm writing these novels that keep seeming to come true. But we're seeing Bible prophecy, bit by bit, unfold in the Middle East right now.

... I mean, that's why I've gotten invited over to the CIA and the White House and Capitol Hill, because people - it's not that they necessarily believe the prophecies, but they want to understand the prophecies in the Bible in light of what's going on right now.

These are factual claims. And it would be interesting to know, who did Rosenberg talk to in "the White House", on what subjects, in what capacity, and who there is influenced by his particular twist on End Times forecasting? The same question could be asked about his alleged contacts in the CIA and "Capitol Hill". In what I just quoted, he implies but doesn't say that Israeli and Arab leaders are asking for his End Times counsel. Is that so? Who were they?

We're not talking about secrets of the confessional here. It would just be asking a guest for some verifiable details of a claim he's using to pump up his own importance to the audience.

Journalists need to be asking such questions because - news flash to the "press corps"! - fundamentalist spokespeople often lie out their asses about facts. And even about their own beliefs. Cynthia Tucker, in a worthwhile column on the Christian Right, gives a prime example of this (Theocrats Thrive WorkingforChange.com 07/24/06):

The theocrats have also intimidated scientists, stalled over-the-counter sales of an emergency contraceptive called Plan B, and used their political connections to get federal funds for their so-called pregnancy resource centers, where they wrongly inform pregnant women that abortions are linked to breast cancer and infertility. Several family planning experts say that same group of rigid ultraconservatives is now working to limit access to contraceptives.

They "are increasingly trying to portray contraceptives as ineffective and trying to redefine some of the most popular and effective methods as abortion -- such as birth control pills and emergency contraception," said Cynthia Dailard, senior public policy analyst for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which advocates family planning.

If these Christianists were genuinely interested in curbing abortions, they'd support the use of contraceptives. But their goal is to turn back the clock, to bring back the days when women had no control over reproduction. Like right-wing Muslims, they rage against modernity itself.

Aside from the sort of zealotry that justifies lying to teenagers and pregnant women about basic medical facts by thinking its okay if you're lying for God, fundamentalists are recruiters, proselytizers. It's considered to be a basic part of their duty as Christians. And so their ministers tend to have much more a sales approach in their public presentations than more mainstream Christian clerics. So when they're doing a presentation, they're looking to "close the sale", and are not always entirely srupulous about their claims in doing so. Again, they're recruiting for a Higher Cause.

So journalists should taken that into account in interviews like that one. There were some other claims that deserved probing questions. One came from Phillips, the CNN "journalist", told an anecdote of the type that will be very familiar to anyone who has heard stories about people flipping open Bibles and seeing just the verse they needed to see, or about the Bible from home sent to the soldier on the front that winds up saving his life by stopping a bullet.

This one involved the alleged discovery in Ireland of "an ancient book of Psalms that experts date to the years 800 to 1000". Now, last I heard, "ancient times" in Europe pretty much ended with the fall of Rome in the fifth century CE. And 800-1000 CE would count as the Middle Ages and/or the Dark Ages. But I digress.

When this Latin book was discovered, it was supposedly opened to Psalms 83, which says, "God hears complaints that other nations are plotting to wipe out the name of Israel." Psalms 83 also mentions the nations that are so plotting: Ishmael, Edom, Moab, Hagar, Gebal, Ammon, Amalek, Philistia, Tyre, and Assyria, but she doesn't mention that. She opens by asking her guests:

Well, that's precisely the kind of news nugget that would get the attention of my next guests - a seemingly random event with an eerie coincidence to reality. ... So, gentlemen, from books, to blogs, to the back pews, the buzz is all about the End Times. What do you think of the Book of Psalms? Is this going to be the next thing that both of you will write about?

And here I thought "the buzz" was all about Shakira's world tour! Jenkins responds to her, first saying he hasn't heard the story before, but it only took him seconds to accept it as recounted:

In some ways, it's not terribly surprising. I mean, I think God finds ways of communicating with us, and he does that through his Word. That's an incredible story, and it will probably have to be written in fiction form because people are going to find it hard to believe.

Hard to believe .... Let's see, gee, somebody found a very old copy of the Book of Psalms. And it's open to a page that says something about Israel! It's a miracle!!! Aside from being completely unremarkable to anyone not predisposed to interpret is as a blessed event, did it actually happen? Was there more than one witness? But it's too silly to really spend more time on asking those kinds of questions.

Now, there may have been a certain kind of condescension in Phillips' question, the kind of light but friendly cynicism that our "press corps" is expected to display about such things. The kind of condescension that the OxyContin crowd constantly says is the perspective of The Liberals.

In another case, Rosenberg observes something he takes to be a Biblical forecast of the End Times:

But, what are we watching? Saddam Hussein or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hezbollah leader [Hassan] Nasrallah, they're all drunk with the dream of capturing Jerusalem. That's what The Copper Scroll novel [by Rosenberg] is about, which is this battle, this intense battle to liquidate the Jewish people and liberate Jerusalem. I mean, are we seeing that happen? It's hard not to say that we are.

"It's hard not to say we are". Is Suddam Hussein "drunk" with the idea of capturing Jerusalem? It looks to me like he's more focused on saving his own neck at the moment. Does Admadinejad "drea of capturing Jerusalem? Beats me, though I haven't heard anything to make me think he does. Is Nasrallah "drunk" to capture Jerusalem? As far as I've ever heard, the only terrotorial ambitions actively pursued by Hizbullah are the Shaba Farms, occupied by Jerusalem, officially belonging to Syria and coveted by Lebanon. And are we seeing an "intense battle to liquidate the Jewish people and liberate Jerusalem"? Only by a great deal of imaginative interpretation, though I can believe a lot of Israelis think the current war with Lebanon is a war for survival, because that is such a familiar part of their justifications for wars.

And some of their more theological claims - if you can call them "theological", because they claim to be foreseeing future events - could stand some closer questioning. The whole premise of this kind of End Times theology is that the Bible is giving us predictions about future occurrences. And yet their assertions, vague as they were, were all over the map. Jenkins talks about the value of literally reading of Biblical prophecies as predictions of future events. Rosenberg claims that the Bible "does lay out [events] that will get us closer to those events [of the End Time].

But wait. I feel like the village atheist coming up with sophomoric objections. But CNN apparently treated them like serious Biblical scholarship. So, the village atheist asks, if Jesus is going to return eventually, doesn't every day "get us closer to those events"?

Jenkins says that he and his co-author Tim LaHaye also believe "that nothing else has to happen before Jesus returns. He could do it at any time." Any alert fundamentalist can bury the obvious question in a muddle of quasi-theological subtleties. But if Jesus could come at any time, then doesn't that mean that all the "signs" of his coming are already fulfilled? So why are we bothering to analyze the Middle East for more to come?

Hey, religion is part of "the public square", now. This is the stuff of which American foreign policy is built these days. The fact that a lot of it is airy nonsense may give a clue to some of the, uh, shortcomings of the Cheney-Bush foreign policy.

Now, back to the Apocalypse. Jenkins gave us an important glimpse of the theory behind his and LaHaye's phenomenally popular *Left Behind* series of books and related products. But Phillips didn't seem to know and/or care enough to follow up on it:

PHILLIPS: All right now, Jerry, you know, there are a number of people, I'm sure, that would sit back and go, "You know what, that Jerry and that Joel, they are crazy. How can you take this book that was written more than a thousand years ago -- these are just stories. You can't relate it to what's happening right now." What do you say to those critics?

JENKINS: Well, I think that's the uniqueness of how we treat the Scripture. So many people try to interpret Revelation symbolically or figuratively, and they can interpret it a couple of hundred different ways. Dr. LaHaye's view has always been let's take what we can -- literally, what we can take literally, and tell it as if John the Revelator meant what he said. When he said, "I looked and I saw," unless he's making some comparison, let's just tell it as a literal story. It's really made it come to life for people and open it up and make it understandable. It has for me as a writer. And all the prophecies of the Old Testament about the coming of Christ as a baby were fulfilled literally, so we're saying: What if all the prophecies of the New Testament about Jesus coming back and Rapture and his church are also literal? We should treat those that way and just see what it looks like.

It's a conceit of fundamentalists that they read the Bible literally. The Book of Revelations is description of a vision. A cosmic vision, with all sort of wild creatures from Hebrew, Greek, Babylonian and probably Persian religious and astrological beliefs. In fact, to squeeze out accounts of contemporary world events from the Book of Revelations requires a very elaborate, interpretative reading of that book. A "literal" reading wouldn't get you very far in that direction.

Rosenberg in the interview says that chapters 38 and 29 from the Book of the Hebrew Prophet Ezekiel tells us that an alliance of "Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, [and] Russia" will begin to form an alliance against Israel. Check out Ezekiel 38 and 39.

There's a lot about Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, from the land of Magog. And Israel is mentioned. See if you can find the words Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, or Russia in those chapters. There is a mention of Persia in 38:5, so you could count that as a reference to Iran, I guess.

Actually, I think that a more parsimonious reading of this text would be to assume that it refers to the attacks on Israel by the Assyrians and Babylonians, events which involved massive deportation of Jews from the lands of kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Finally, Rosenberg's closing shot could have used a little probing, too. He said he was watching the speech of Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki "in the House of Representatives" (did Rosenberg mean that he was phsyically there wataching it?). The Book of Revelations talks about an evil ruler called the Antichrist, which at the time it was written probably referred to a particular Roman Emperor or maybe to Roman Emperors in a more generic sense. The fundi view of the End Times makes this character a central villain of the Apocalyptic drama to come. Rosenberg said:

You know, the Bible taught in Jewish theology and Christian that Iraq will be reborn as a country and be phenomenally peaceful and prosperous, and then a huge dictator known as the Antichrist will arise. Watching this speech today in the House of Representatives, the first speech by an Iraqi prime minister to a joint session of Congress, bit by bit we're watching Revelation and the other prophecies get closer and closer to fulfillment.

I mean, if CNN is going to put these guys on TV and pretend that they're adults worth listening to, couldn't they ask them some straightforward questions. Like, what the [Cheney] is Rosenberg talking about in that statement. That Al-Maliki is the Antichrist? That Iraq is becoming a "phenomenally peaceful and prosperous" country and later the Antichrist will take over? That American soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq in order to dress the place up to be turned over to the Antichrist? And what if Iraq breaks apart into separate Shi'a, Sunni and Kurdish states? What do Jenkins and Rosenberg think the Christian Bible says about that?

Yes, this is a big part of how foreign policy is made in the Christian Republican world of the Cheney-Bush administration. And our "press corps" but these characters on TV and then can't be bothered to ask them any real questions about their claims and their weird, eccentric theories.

posted at 4:50:00 PM by Bruce Miller

| +Save/Share | |