Bush, the Bible, and Iraq

[pynchonoid]

Bush's fundamentalism may be more damaging to
"America" than the Calvinism that Pynchon treats in GR
and elsewhere.


BusinessWeek Online
Bush, the Bible, and Iraq
Friday March 7, 8:37 am ET 
By Stan Crock 
[...] 

 A third factor is also at work, though: religious
rhetoric, perhaps even fervor, which divides the
President and many of those who voted for him from
leading thinkers abroad, including those in some
Western democracies. As European nations become more
secular, they're increasingly suspicious of a country
with a born-again Christian President, whose political
base includes the majority of non-Arab fundamentalists
in the U.S. British playwright Harold Pinter
spotlighted this suspicion when he recently called
Bush "a hired Christian thug." 

Iraq plays into these concerns like no other issue.
One reason is that fundamentalist Christian doctrine
envisions a horrific conflict, the Biblical
Armageddon, as the way to hasten the return of Jesus
and the Millennium -- not the 21st century, but a
thousand years of enlightenment that Jesus will return
to preside over, according to the Good Book. And guess
where Armageddon is supposed to take place. 

"GOD IS NOT NEUTRAL." President Bush's constant talk
about evil and evildoers fuels concern even in
countries outside the Middle East that an apocalyptic
vision based on such Bible stories underlies his
strategy in Iraq. In a recent Washington Post article,
Fritz Ritsch, pastor of the Bethesda [Md.]
Presbyterian Church, expressed concern that Bush had
become the "theologian in chief." 

[...]
Beyond the President's broad-brush notions of good and
evil lies a more complicated fundamentalist dogma that
many of his supporters -- and indeed, more than 40% of
the American public -- subscribe to. These beliefs
were outlined in an article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education by Paul S. Boyer, a history professor
emeritus at the University of Wisconsin. Boyer pointed
out that the school of biblical prophesy, formulated
by 19th century British churchman John Darby, foresees
a series of events signaling the last days of the
world as we know it. These events include war, the
emergence of a new world economic and political order,
and the return of Jews to the land God promised
Abraham. 

A RESHAPED WORLD. The "Left Behind" series of
best-selling books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins has
updated and popularized this dogma. While millions of
people in the U.S. and abroad may accord these
prophesies no more credibility than they grant to Lord
of The Rings or Harry Potter, many others fear that
they're a call to action for the President and the
fundamentalists among his followers -- just as many
Americans imagine that the Koran provides a blueprint
for Islamic fundamentalists. 

Such logic is quite a stretch, of course, given
Darby's unearthly version of how the world will be
reshaped. According to Boyer, that starts with a
"dispensation" phase, loosely defined as the here and
now, which will evolve into the Rapture, when true
believers "will join Christ in the air." Then will
come Tribulation, when the Antichrist will arise and
seize world power. From the days of Saladin, a
medieval Islamic ruler, to the Ottoman Empire, and now
to the era of Saddam Hussein, Christian
fundamentalists have viewed Islamic leaders as a
possible Antichrist or its forerunner. 

After seven years under this satanic figure's
tyrannical rule, Christ and the saints -- presumably
represented by George Bush & Co. -- will return and
conquer the powers of evil at Armageddon, an ancient
battlefield outside of Haifa in northern Israel, not
far from Iraq. Ensconced in Jerusalem, Christ will
then reign peacefully for a thousand years, the
Millennium. [Darby's theory has the Antichrist
slaughtering most Jews, as Saddam probably would like
to, with the rest converting to Christianity. In the
eyes of a non-American, this might explain why Jewish
neo-conservatives are among the strongest supporters
of Bush's Iraq policy]. 

THE ANTICHRIST'S VEHICLE? In foreign lands, it's a
short leap from such thinking to the conclusion that
Bush is the religion-crazed bad guy in the Iraq
crisis. If you accept that view, the determination of
Israel's Likud Party to expand Israeli settlements
means the Jews are returning to Judea and Samaria, the
territory God promised Abraham. And now, with the U.N.
balking at Bush's wishes, even some among America's
allies worry that the Christian right -- and maybe
even the President himself -- see the U.N. as the
vehicle for the Antichrist's world order. 

The only thing remaining to complete John Darby's
prophecy is the war. It's no surprise that in a Feb.
26 debate in the British Parliament, George Galloway,
a Labor Party backbencher from Scotland, declared that
"that born-again, right-wing, Bible-belting,
fundamentalist Republican Administration in the United
States want war." 

That sentiment is no doubt a reaction to the words
created for Bush by his chief speech writer, Michael
Gerson, an evangelical Christian. Historian Boyer
notes that when Bush said in his State of the Union
address that Saddam Hussein could unleash "a day of
horror like none we have ever known," the President
not only played on memories of September 11 but also
invoked "a powerful and ancient apocalyptic vocabulary
that for millions of [Christian] prophecy believers
conveys a specific and thrilling message of an
approaching end -- not just of Saddam, but of human
history as we know it" -- complete with the return of
Jesus to lead a much-expanded flock. 

NOT ALL NUT JOBS. It's true that a President sending
political messages to a key constituency isn't the
same as a President basing a strategy on a messianic
vision. But European geopolitical strategists with
long ties to the U.S. -- people who can't be dismissed
as nut jobs -- are convinced that religious beliefs
are the primary motivation for the Bush
Administration. [...]

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