The Rapturous Bush
Whatever Bush's personal beliefs, the ideology of the Christian right is both familiar and congenial to him. This strange amalgam of ideas can perhaps throw light on the behaviour of a president, who, it is said, believes that God chose him to lead the world to Rapture, who has little interest in social reform, and whose selective concern for life issues has now inspired him to veto important scientific research. It explains his unconditional and uncritical support for Israel, his willingness to use "Jewish End-time warriors" to fulfil a vision of his own – arguably against Israel's best interests – and to see Syria and Iran (who seem to be replacing Saddam as the "enemy of the north") as entirely responsible for the unfolding tragedy.
[from Karen Armstrong, "Bush's fondness for fundamentalism is courting disaster at home and abroad ", Guardian Unlimited [UK], 31 July 2006.]
One Response
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Leave a Reply
To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Saturday, 5 August 2006 at 23.41
Permalink
I don't like to pass judgments on other people's faith, except in instances where people clearly speak or act in ways not in keeping with the beliefs they claim to hold.
Maybe this reluctance, this deference, isn't such a good idea where a president of the U.S. is concerned.
CNN seems to be trying to exploit whatever interest the public holds for end times talk. Paula Zahn had a segment on it earlier this week. The whole thing seemed bizarre. She was presenting it as some kind of news story, when it's no more a news story than would be speculation about the UFO and space alien that supposedly crashed in the Southwest back in the 1950s. This isn't news. This isn't current events, not even the fact there are people abroad in the land who passionately believe it's true. Or will be true any time now.
Then, Zahn talked it over with Jerry Falwell and some other guest.
The one interesting thing to come out during this exploitative mish-mosh was that the whole end times scenario isn't in the Christian Bible! It's a relatively modern concoction, apparently fashioned out of the notions of people who've read things into passages in the Book of Revelations — a rich vein of subject matter for doing just that.