I think leftists underestimate the role Evangelical Christianity plays in the current unhinged actions of the west.
The western support and founding of Israel, purposely making climate change worse and letting the pandemic spread make sense of you realise western leaders believe in a kind of holy prophecy.
I grew up going to my grandmother’s evangelical Southern Baptist church.
Those people are fucking insane, and I genuinely believe that the US needs to be occupied and de-christianized. Their beliefs are unhinged and incredibly dangerous and those who believe and spread them should be persecuted.
I’m glad she’s dead because she’d be cheering this on and I’m glad I mostly get to remember her as the nice lady who had chickens in the back yard
Yeah, it's really dangerous when the religion lines up with the imperialism.
In the case of Israel, you have the base materialism that's pushes the US to escalate there, but you also have the superstructure of holy war to cement it in the hearts of the population.
Yeah, it's really dangerous when the religion lines up with the imperialism.
"When religion and politics ride in the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man (baraka), nothing can stand in their path." - Dune, Appendix II
IMHO the imperialism is actively involved in promoting the religious right, just like the CIA did with moonies in s Korea and Japan. It's part of the black budget.
It really challenges the idea that nations ultimately are purely rational actors driven by resource competition. I have to remind myself sometimes that there are in fact some religious whackos tugging on the steering wheels. I don't have a very good understanding of Iran, but I assume they have their share of that too (how could they not?)
don't have a very good understanding of Iran, but I assume they have their share of that too (how could they not?)
The main example I have of this is that Iran doesn’t want nuclear weapons because it believes they’re . Which, fair enough, but they’d probably help keep the US from fucking with you as much.
ends with Jesus returning and Jews killed or converted.
There's that evangelical anti-semitism again. Literally supporting Israel to kill all the Jews. If tele-evangelism existed in the 1930s and 40s they'd be saying that Hitler was the second coming of Christ or something. These people have something deeply wrong with them.
I heard a irl lady say this to me once. These people are so ignorant of history to not realize that so many civilizations have come and gone, each claiming someone else was "Gog and Magog."
Bush already said Iraq was like Gog and Magog when he tried to get France onboard with the invasion. Jacques Chirac had no idea what he was talking about.
the foreign policy/natsec apparatus spun itself up to discredit the story as unfounded, because psychotic religious excitation was not the flavor of empire people had been sold. the neocon brand in those days was about being the wise adults in the room, taking care of business. of course, 20 years later, the apocalyptic death cult is a big constituency in the US and they have many people in high office praying for JFK Jr. to descend from the clouds and put Jim Caviezel on a white horse at the head of an purifying army. that was not the vibe 20 years ago among the rank-and-file war supporters, lol. it was about democracy and weapons of mass destruction and the burden of being the world's police.
In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. They asked him to supply them with a summary of the legends surrounding Gog and Magog and as the conversation progressed, he realised that this had originally come, from the highest reaches of the French government.
President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.
He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk.
He's been saying this shit about whoever is currently on the US state department's shit list for literally 50 years, you'd think people would get tired of it
Evangelical beliefs about the “end times” are hilarious, some day I should write up an effort post all about it. I wish more people knew about it. I was raised premillenial dispensationalist in particular, AMA.
All because of one book that barely made it into the Bible, written by some hopped up dude who could barely write Greek, and was not really taken literally until a couple centuries ago. And when you take it literally you come up with some real crazy shit, y’all don’t even know the half of it.
All because of one book that barely made it into the Bible, written by some hopped up dude who could barely write Greek, and was not really taken literally until a couple centuries ago. And when you take it literally you come up with some real crazy shit, y’all don’t even know the half of it.
The book of the apocalypse? or is it another book?
Please do! I was raised in an evangelical household that told me that when the end comes an "al'qaeda" terrorist will saw my head off if I say I'm christian but if I don't I'll go to hell.
I briefly looked into Eastern Orthodox Christianity in my deconversion process. I liked some aspects like how they view heaven/hell and in general they seemed pretty level headed but I never really explored them any deeper, I assume there’s plenty of problematic aspects with them too.
J. Edgar Hoover used the preeminent evangelical publishing wing, Christianity Today founded by Billy Graham himself and supported by oil baron J. Howard Pew, to publish anti-communist screeds less than 5 years into its lifespan. In it, he argued Christians should support Israel because of "Judeo-Christian values." Hoover wasn't an evangelical, but knew he could bend it to his own ends. Modern evangelical shit was created and/or co-opted by the imperial core to serve it's purposes nearly 100 years ago. We shouldn't even make a distinction between white christian nationalism and evangelicalism, because it's the same thing.