I think you’re correct. I’m very non-extreme (unless you piss me off), also a Christian (have been most all of my life) but really, you don’t have to worry about most of us.

You don’t wanna be one – you don’t have to be one (Christian, that is) We don’t care. It’s still America (where I live) and that still means you’re free to be or not as you choose and may it ever be so.

I will fight to my last breath for your right not to be one if you so choose.

Can I get a witness?

**** the fundies. They’re nuts. They don’t even know their Bible good … I bust ‘em all the time on their bogus BS.

Mo:

Religion Reporter Cathleen Falsani.

The Ex-CIA Analyst Ray McGovern, who tirelessly points out what a murderous disaster the entire “War on Terror” is.

The Rapper “Speech” of Arrested Development

Jim Wallis – I don’t agree with him about homosexuality, and other issues, but he clearly cares about the poor, and peace.

And that’s off the top of my head. There are a lot more. Check out the United Church of Christ for a group of Christians who obviously take the message of love and acceptance quite seriously, even if you and I don’t agree with everything they say.

I think that part of the problem is that non-extreme Christians don’t get the kind of exposure that Pat Robertson, Falwell et. al. get through their syndicated programs. And that issue, the marginalization of non-extreme Christianity, is a really serious problem.

Purely from a ‘Realpolitik’ standpoint, it makes any kind of coalition building with Christians, on any important issue, very difficult. And, I don’t know what country you are in, but here in the USA, self-described Christians make up about %75 of the population. Which means that if Christians really start to get it in the heads that their religion is ‘under attack’ by ’secularists’, etc, then USA secularists are fucked.

Jillian:

I don’t know that you necessarily have to be scared of all Christians. I also know Christians that aren’t into this kind of thing at all. I know two people who have expressed interest in the “Left Behind” series over the past couple of years. One a rather right-wing, but very nice, relative. The other is a heavy-metal-listening, dope-smoking co-worker, who I’m also freindly with.

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is not always the ones you expect who get into this kind of End-times theology.

not all christians are like this

Name some.

I mean, off the top of my head, I can name Robertson, Falwell, Baker, Swaggert, Buchanan, O’Reilly, Ratzy, and Judie Woodruf as very well-known Christians who interpret the calling of their faith and fame to be laying the smackdown on the heterodox. Name anyone since Sloane Coffin and Rev. King who is taking Christ’s message of love and tolerance to the public square as the true motive of Christianity. Because, from my experience, if there is a silent majority of Christians who feel that Christ is love, they are certainly doing a good job of keeping their light under a bushel.

Or is your careful phrasing acknowleding that most Christians are like this?

Frankly, I’m at least mildly scared of ALL Christians nowadays. I can’t help but wonder what it will take to push even the nice ones over the edge into Rapture Ready territory anymore.

This shit is really terrifying to think about. Not knowing a whole lot about it, it seems to me that If enough people start taking this type of theology as truth, it could seriously tear our entire society apart.

And I must say, I have seen otherwise perfectly normal, nice people, not even particularly religious, start to really get into that “Left Behind” series over the past few years.

As a secular person, my knee-jerk reaction is to consider stuff like this to be so doggone wacky that I can only laugh. But then I remember that these people are serious, organized, and powerful, and they actually want to start a frikkin’ nuclear war.

It’s true that all Christians are not like this. But all Christians at that convention are. And if they’re not–if, per Johnny, above, there are sober, intelligent, rational people expressing a non-insane, non-bloodthirsty faith–then they’re in the wrong room. Or they’re as disingenuous and false as Johnny accuses Max of being.

HTML is dead right about the true scorn being due those smarmy Jews, like Lieberman, who know full well what these provincial cretins think of him and his “race,” but stand up there and call that preening pastor a “man of God.” Or maybe he’s right. They’re both men of God, which is one of the worst things you can say about God.

I am currently working on the final draft of How to Profit From the Coming Rapture, due out next year (in Sept., probably.) Our main source has been Revelation Unveiled, by Tim LaHaye, published in 1999 before the Left Behind series got started.

For a complete, lunatic, and often unwittingly amusing play-by-play of the Rapture and the Tribulation, that’s your book. Unless you’ve read chapter after chapter of what these maniacs are obliged to assert because they take the Bible literally, you haven’t lived. But make sure it’s your only book, because no two books, and no two web sites or magazine articles, agree on this supposedly “fated” event. You can go nutz trying to figure out what will “really” happen by reconciling these varying “teachings.” (They obviously have.)

Read about the Seal, Trumpet, and Bowl judgments to understand what a sadistic, ultra-bloody revenge fantasy (against modernism, ultimately) this is. When you hear these sincere, smug, idiotic people like that woman talking about Satan, this is what is in the back of their minds. This is what they can’t wait for.

And, of course, as soon as the self-validating thrill of this barbaric fantasy is challenged by its own contradictions….as soon as you point out that you can’t take X literally (which you want to) without having to take Y literally (which contradicts X), they smother it with pious bullshit or change the subject.

I was going to say “don’t get me started,” but it’s too late, innit?

Yeah, like the man who founded and leads the organization in the first place. Sheesh.

that says it all. I doubt there was a person attending that conference outside of Max and a few cops – that wasn’t a bit meshugah.

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If they’re really that ticked about an anti-Christ being “someone who comes preaching peace”, they may be in for a huge disappointment if Jesus ever does come back.

they’d crucify him all over again because they really are a perverse amalgamation of the Pharisees and the Romans of that earlier era

1. i heart max blumenthal.
2. not all christians are like this.

If i had to spend a lot of time being a humorless and joyless supplicant, i’d be pretty eager for the end to come too

I have a friend who comes from a fundamentalist family, all the way down to the small-town Baptist church. Now, he is probably a six on the Kinsey Scale, and unfortunately deals with quite a lot of self-esteem and depression issues. Some of it is medical—he’s on medication which does help, but it doesn’t take a licensed psychiatrist to see where his family, and having to hide his secret while growing up, has taken it’s toll on this poor fellow. Thankfully, he lives away from home in the city and is reasonably open about his sexual preference there, but he lives within driving distance of his dot-on-the-map hometown and is frequently there on weekends. His mother suspects him, unfortunately.

I was pursuing a possible relationship with him last fall, and while that fell apart (although we gradually became friends), I still have the e-mails I exchanged with him—to hear him talk about his experience would break your heart. If there’s any justice in this world, he will find love—he needs it more than most of us.