Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Understanding the Religious Right

A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

via Echidne

2 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

One of my husband's colleagues holds the opinions you're talking about - and believes that the Rapture is going to come in his lifetime.

My husband asked him if he was contributing to a 401k and if so, why. He was, and had no answer. Made me laugh.

What people say they believe and what, deep down, they actually believe, may very well be two different things.

Unless Heaven has some sort of entrance fee this guy's saving up for... 

Posted by bluesmama

Anonymous said...

I forwarded that original GRIST article to a friend of mine who works with the Evangelical Environmtalist Network - they are evangelical Christians who work with people of all faiths on "Creation Care" - the belief that God created everything on earth and wants us to take care of it. Still, my bet is that the vast majority of the christian "right" falls into the Rapture /End category. It's truly frightening. 

Posted by river2sea72