NPR : All Things Considered for August 9, 2002

Make me vomit…….What an embarassing display of gullibility with decades of inept eschatological interpreting by the fundamentalist groups and the more conservative “Bible” crowd who see no other hermeneutic than this one.  It makes me sick because this is the impression millions of Americans get of Christians.  It makes me cringe to hear of the constant theme of demonizing many of the world’s “broad-based alliinace efforts” such as ecumenical organizations and multi-country alliances as “insidious fronts for Satanic infiltration”.  


So much of these books (and although I haven’t read any of the Left Behind things,  I read Tim LaHaye’s book on the end times about 25 years ago,  and read a couple of novels of similar ilk wiuth the same exact themes and interpretations of world events based on what I was to later discover to be a very questionable lifting of questionable references from a wide variety of passages,  many of which were obviously dealing with events current to the author and not at all mean to be used to “crystal ball” gaze.


The NPR audio clip does include a quote from somebody pointing out the extremely cynical view of collaborative and cross-cultural and alliances of various kinds such as the “European Common Market,  and ecumenical agencies that are portrayed as stale, corrupt,  “believe in so many things they believe in NOTHING”…….which is a theme you hear time and time again from fundamentalist circles,  becrying the evils of religious pluralism.   What it is usually,  is an inability to think outside one’s own cultural context.   And this often reaches the level of doctrine within churches,  where it is perpetuated and encouraged as a “defense” against the forces that would destroy orthodoxy.



‘Left Behind’ Series The Remnant is the tenth installment of the Left Behind series, and it is at the top of The New York Times bestseller list. Evangelical titles have become big business in the last few years and now both Christian and secular publishing houses are cashing in. Some call it profitable proselytizing; others are worried about the world view evangelical fiction spreads. Fred Mogul of member station WRTI Philadelphia reports. (5:30)


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