Canary Brother Bill Moyers Speaks

Line up, conform, and do not question because
then you'll feel REALLY rotten. Guilt, God,
Government, Greedy Corporations — these are
the four "G's" that I use to control you.

Onward We March - To Heaven

Okay, Common Dreams is a group of my Canary brothers and sisters. They publish powerful articles that regularly get bounced around on the Internet. Three different people sent me a recent article on Common Dreams, so it must be REALLY important.

The article is actually an acceptance speech from journalist Bill Moyers , who was recently given the Harvard Medical School's Global Environmental Citizen Award. In giving his speech, Bill really got to the heart of the matter. He talked about how Christian fundamentalist beliefs are influencing government policy, and more specifically, how talk of the "rapture" creates a group of people who may actually WANT things to get worse in order to speed the return of Christ. This idea flies in the face of my own belief of taking personal responsibility for the Planet.

Bill tells the story better than I EVER could, so allow me to share a few quotes:

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'

Man, do I ever remember James Watt, the Ban-the-Beach-Boys guy. He is loony-tunes, yet Washington is now filled with people just like him.

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the Left-Behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Wow, my brother recently told me this story — that the rapture/tribulation idea was a school of thought created in the 1800s, I assume by traveling evangelists. I remember at age 10 how our preacher would terrify me with all the tribulation stories. The idea is that the world is deteriorating, Christ is coming, and if you're left behind things will REALLY be bad. A whole series of bad things are suppose to happen during the seven year tribulation. This really messed up my mental psyche — even to this day. Every morning I wake up and say, "What the heck and I still doing here?"

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre ... once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

Well, that's how MOM and the PREACHER told it to me as a little kid (as if I already didn't have ENOUGH stress in my young life). Yep, this all comes out of an interpretation of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. I really wish the Bible could have ended on a sweeter note — the Book of Revelations is rough, man.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer - 'the road to environmental apocalypse. Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

Yep.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the Biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land.' He seemed to be relishing the thought.

Okay.

... A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation 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 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? ...

Well, well, that is the end of the story — thanks Bill for sharing this. The irony is that as these Believers continue to ignore the world's environmental and social problems, the world WILL get worse, and then they will use this as further evidence that the end is near. Thus, we have a downward spiral.

Growing up in a "pre-trib" household, I know all about the so-called prophesies of Revelation. It seems to me that rather than spending so much effort trying to decipher this book of the Bible, the time and effort could be better spent feeding the poor and helping widows. After all, I thought that's what Christians were supposed to do.

From the article, "On Receiving Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award, published on Monday, December 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org