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May 18, 2004

Name That Death-Cult

Which apocalyptic zealots trouble you more? The ones with knives in a desert somewhere? Or the ones who get meetings with the White House?

The problem is not that George W. Bush is discussing policy with people who press right-wing solutions to achieve peace in the Middle East, or with devout Christians. It is that he is discussing policy with Christians who might not care about peace at all—at least until the rapture.

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"We're in constant contact with the White House," he boasts. "I'm briefed at least once a week via telephone. . . ."

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Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

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[A]n evangelical worries that, in the Republican Party, people who believe this "are dominating the discourse now, in an election year." He calls the attempt to yoke Scripture to current events "a modern heresy, with cultish proportions. I mean, it's appalling. And it also shows how marginalized mainstream Christian thinking and the majority of evangelical thought have become." [emphasis mine. pk]

It demonstrates, he says, "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby, driving U.S. Mideast policy."

The real war isn't between Arabs and Americans, or Christians and Muslims. It's between superstitious fanatics and regular people who just want to live our lives.