Armageddon

I feel almost as if I'm becoming a doomsday writer. I was too young to remember much of the Cuban Missle Crisis of 1962 and didn't pay attention through much of the Cold War so this is my first, real brush with the potential annhiliation of the entire human race and most other mammals on earth.

I've read several things recently about Evangelicals who stridently believe we are heading into, or striving to usher us into, Armageddon.

[subliminal message] "Click the pic! Click the pic!" [/subliminal message]

It's scaring the shit out of me.

We seem to be careening down this path which ends abruptly, permanently and inevitably at the intersection Religious Fervor Avenue and Fanatical Nationalism Boulevard.

Alternet's Jesus at the Movies by Sarah Posner was the port of departure for tonight's flight of fancy. It landed at Lobbying for Armageddon, also from Ms. Posner. The focus of the Armageddon article is one John Hagee, a televangelist and pastor of an 18,000 member megachurch in San Antonio, the Cornerstone Church. Pastor Hagee seems to feel that current world events are the forerunners of the great apocalypse foretold by the Biblical prophets, and he's working toward what he sees as scriptual fulfillment. Sarah Posner also wrote more extensively about Hagee at the American Prospect.

So, "fundamentalist" preachers are screaming from their pulpits for a preemptive military confrontation with Iran in order to pave the way for the return of Jesus. American children are being indoctrinated in being, literally, soldiers for Christ. And the American president may or may not be an adherent of an "end times" ideology.

Is it any wonder I'm concerned?

(Top photo pilfered, with impunity, from AlterNet.)

tags: Armageddon / Bush / Christianity / Christian Zionism / "end times" / fundamentalism / Israel / Middle East / religion / US politics / war / world politics / Zionism