We live in a nation ruled by death cultists. A bit harsh, you say? Well it's true. An evangelical Christian fundamentalist is nothing more than a death cultist with a really good public image and the weight of history to add a veneer of legitimacy.
I would love to be fair to people of faith on this one, and, in that spirit, I must say that most Christians and other people of faith do not fall in to this category. The vast majority of Christians are people of kind intentions and good will. They are sincere and, for the most part, normal. While I may disagree with the need for religion in one's life, it is a personal decision and not one I am willing to disparage. 59 percent of Americans call themselves evangelical Christians, but most are not of the power-mad fundamentalist type of which I speak.
You know the kind I speak of. They're the literalists. The ones who believe that the Bible is the written word of God Almighty, passed from on high without error and to be believed as 100% factual. Which version of the Bible (King James, New English, Standard American, et cetera) is the literal truth I've never been quite clear on, but there you have it. Revelations, that campy science fiction end to the Greatest Story Ever Told, is not only a literal prediction of truth but an end in and of itself to be hoped for and even worked towards.
Think about that for a moment. Revelations is the story of the Apocalypse. The Final Judgment, the End of Times. The skies will rain cheese, four dudes on black squirrels will scorch the earth of life while the Followers of Jesus Christ will be transported to Heaven to watch the festivities while sipping margheritas and mai tais. And this is what these people want to happen. It colors their every political decision. They wish to hasten the day where the Earth as we know it will end.
This literal belief, that it is their duty as devout Christians to hasten the arrival of the Apocalypse is what drives their support for Israel and the Bush Administration's Middle East Policy. Fundamentalists believe that the Jews must occupy the Holy Land (i.e. Israel and especially Jerusalem) in order for their little End of Times shenanigans to begin. Once this occurs, war and violence must flare throughout the Middle East. The Anti-Christ (typically portrayed as the Secretary General of the United Nations) will lead his minions across the land (probably in black helicopters), to be engaged in horrific battle by the ascended Jesus Christ, who will, apparently, raise an army of the dead faithful to wage holy war, getting all biblical on their Satanic asses.
Of course, none of this impending doom and destruction means much to the fundamentalists. See, they're going to have been magically transported to the big IMAX in the sky to watch the big show. They get to watch the fireworks safely ensconced in Heaven with ten-foot erections with cheeseburgers on the end and virgin daquiris in hand.
This colors their economical and environmental policies as well. If all is in God's hands, you see, all will turn out as it is meant to be. Good deeds are not important. Only accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior will prevent you from being swept out to the bloody seas on a rising tide of violence. And if good deeds are not important, then there is no need to care for your fellow man beyond getting him or her to accept Jesus Christ in to their heart, come hell or high water.
If, then, the Bible is literal truth, their logic goes, then the world cannot end before its appointed time. Therefore, it is not necessary to moderate their approach to the environment. Strip mining, global warming, resource depletion: none of this is to be worried about. The world, they believe, will provide until the Day of Doooooom. Future generations? No worries, we won't need any of those. World can't sustain life anymore? Who cares when the sky is raining cheese! Eat up!
Don't you see? These people pray for the end of the world. Not only that, they believe it is their solemn duty to hasten that day. They do not worship the living Christ as a figure of forgiveness and a preacher of kindess and love. They worship the dead, flayed body of Christ hanging from a cross as the embodiment of vengeance and wrath; the corpse of Christ is their altar, their God the God of the Old Testament, prone to asking for sacrifice and war as caprice and whimsy dictate. They are death cultists.
These people even engage in cult-like behavior. Rather than embracing Jesus' message to embrace those who are different than they, they practice exclusion and hate for the Other. They isolate themselves from those who believe otherwise. Their leaders, blithely ignoring the fact that they have the most powerful politicians in the land within their ranks, preach the mantra that they are constantly under attack. Somehow, even while possessing all the power of government at their beck and call, they are still oppressed.
They create this illusion, this fiction that they are under attack because they have learned their history very well. This is the same way all cults have encouraged solidarity within their ranks. "Only with us, are you safe. All others hate and fear us, and will do you harm." A stridency of message, combined with brutal social practices such as ostracizing the Other and the threat of faceless masses clamoring for their blood serves to keep their followers cowed and compliant.
We are governed by people who do not care for the future, because they see it as immaterial. We are governed by people who do not see the need to moderate their tone or actions with regard to their fellow man because they believe all who are not with them will be burned in a lake of hellfire... soon. We are governed by people who do not want to work for peace because peace will delay their deliverance to the Rapture they feel they so strongly deserve. And since they are evangelical, they do not believe in moderating their views, or compromising their governing. They expect all others to conform to them or be destroyed by the judgment of a wroth God and his Whipping Boy Son. Castigation and violence are more familiar to them than peace and understanding.
A cultist can be a cultist. Believe what you like. It's no skin off of my back. If you want to worship death, read a book of allegory and parable as factual text, and wait expectantly to die in a rain of fiery Limberger cheese, be my guest. Not only is that your nature-given right, it's the first right our Founding Fathers, a group of very smart men, wanted you to have, right after your right to speak your mind without fear of retribution. But you should not be in power. You should not speak with the voice of Authority and use that power to forward your religious beliefs at the expense of those who do not share them.
I want to leave a wonderful world for my children. Barring that, I'd like to at least leave them a world where they have a fighting chance. We live under the yoke of a cult of death that would deny us all that chance.
-Jim