Reply #24: Here's a glimpse: article "The Godless Must Be Crazy"

[JudyM]

I can't recommend this article highly enough - it should be on the front page of papers nationally. Please forward far and wide if you agree. Excerpts follow.
---------------
...Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

... We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum, Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush.

...Like it or not, faith in the Apocalypse is a powerful driving force in modern American politics...While there are many divergent End-Time theologies and sects, the most politically influential are the dispensationalists and reconstructionists...The social and environmental crises of our times, dispensationalists say, are portents of the Rapture, when born-again Christians, living and dead, will be taken up into heaven....The reconstructionists (also known as dominionists)...believe that Christ will only make his Second Coming when the world has prepared a place for Him, and that the first step in readying His arrival is to Christianize America.... DeLay, who has considerable control over the agenda in the House, has called for "march forward with a Biblical worldview" in U.S. politics.

... In the past, it was not deemed politically correct to ask probing questions about a lawmaker's intimate religious beliefs. But when those beliefs play a crucial role in shaping public policy, it becomes necessary for the people to know and understand them. It sounds startling, but the great unasked questions that need to be posed to the 231 U.S. legislators backed by the Christian right, and to President Bush himself, are not the kind of softballs about faith lobbed at the candidates during the recent presidential debates. They are, instead, tough, specific inquiries about the details of that faith: Do you believe we are in the End Time? Are the governmental policies you support based on your faith in the imminent Second Coming of Christ? It's not an exaggeration to say that the fate of our planet depends on our asking these questions, and on our ability to reshape environmental strategy in light of the answers.

http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/12982.php