Screw the environment?

[Faithless]

According to this article by Bill Moyers, that's the message of Christians that believe in the Rapture Index.

If we don't act soon, there is no tomorrow (http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/ci_2557360)

ONE of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how 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."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But 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 12 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.

Its outline is simple, if bizarre: Once Israel has occupied the rest
of its "biblical lands," legions of the antichrist will attack, thus 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.

I'm not making this up. I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed — an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 — just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by 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.

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 and 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 Sen. 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.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. 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?

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the Lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, "America's Providential History." You'll find these words: "The secular or socialist has a limited-resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." Yet "the Christian
knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth ... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with resources to accommodate all of the people."

No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a driving force in modern American politics.

It is hard for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I, myself, don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about.

Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered.

"Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not either. Once upon a time, I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that — it's just that I read the news and connect the dots.

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration:

-That wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the government to judge beforehand whether actions might damage natural resources.

-That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and
ease pollution standards for cars, sport-utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

-That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep information about environmental problems secret from the public.

-That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting, coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees with coal companies.

-That wants to open the Arctic (National—) Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.

I read the news and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend $9 million —

$2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council — to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news and learned that the administration's friends at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon Mobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising" (and) scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news, but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer
— pictures of my grandchildren. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: "Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we have lost our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?"

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly." I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free — not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma — the science of the heart ... the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Bill Moyers was host until recently of the public affairs series "NOW with Bill Moyers" on PBS. This article is taken from Moyers' remarks upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

[Faithless]

Another twist on the so-called "rapture index":

Pastor Joe is collecting money (so far, some $40,000) from his congregation to help send the Jews home.

In Van Koevering's view, the end of days is first signaled by the return of the Jews to Israel, a process he says began with the country's founding in 1948.

Seven years before the world comes to an end, all true believers of Christ will be taken from earth in the "rapture," he says.

Fast-forwarding to the apocalypse (http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/15/Southpinellas/Fast_forwarding_to_th.shtml)

A St. Petersburg minister is helping Jews move back to Israel, saying their presence will trigger end times.

By LAUREN BAYNE ANDERSON * Published May 15, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - At the end of his half-hour television segment, Joe Van Koevering urges viewers to mail in their $250 checks. He sweetens his pitch with the promise of a free "beautifully crafted" gold-plated gift.

Van Koevering isn't the host of some late-night infomercial, hawking weight loss products or get-rich-quick schemes. He is the pastor of an evangelical church in St. Petersburg.

For their $250, he tells viewers of God's News Behind the News they can help speed the apocalypse and the end of the world.

And the gift? A shofar - a traditional Jewish ram's horn blown during ceremonies, for donors to sound "the soon coming of the Lord."

Van Koevering pastors Gateway Christian Center on Central Avenue, and believes by helping Jews immigrate to Israel he's speeding Bible prophecy. So, with donations from his congregants and TV viewers nationwide, he wants to send Jews "home."

"They must be there, when Jesus returns to that land," said Van Koevering, who also directs God's News. "And the Bible seems to indicate that we can hasten the coming of the Lord."

So far, he's raised over $40,000 for the cause.

Van Koevering cites the Bible's Book of Revelations, telling viewers Jesus will come again after the Jews return to the Holy Land. He doesn't know how many must be there, but whatever the number, he wants to get the ball rolling.

Van Koevering uses the Old Testament to bolster his New Testament beliefs as Jeremiah 32:37 scrolls down the screen in yellow letters, "I will surely gather them from all the lands . . . I will bring them back to this place."

God's News has been around since 1948, created by a St. Petersburg minister, the Rev. Ray Brubaker, Van Koevering's father-in-law. The half-hour show airs on the local Christian Television Network and on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the largest Christian cable station in the world.

According to TBN spokesman John Casoria, Van Koevering's show has the potential to reach 95 percent of American households.

The funds raised through God's News go to a Christian organization based in England, the Ebenezer Emergency Fund, which helps Jews from the former Soviet Union immigrate to Israel, a practice known as making aliyah.

The Ebenezer Fund was founded in 1991 by Gustav Scheller, a Swiss businessman who said God told him to help gather the Jews in Israel. The organization said it has helped more than 100,000 make aliyah from the former Soviet Union.

Israel pays the cost of flights for immigrants, but Ebenezer assists them with travel expenses to consulates and with documents and food.

Van Koevering said about 80 percent of the funds raised through God's News go to Ebenezer, with the rest for overhead and the shofar gifts.

Tears fall from Van Koevering's eyes as he speaks of the "precious Jewish people" during church services and on God's News.

At Gateway, the Israeli flag stands next to the American flag. Shofars decorate his church pulpit. In his office, Van Koevering displays a framed picture of himself and President Bush in Jerusalem at the Western Wall - the holiest site for Jews.

"I love them, because God loves them," he said of Jews, noting Christianity stemmed from Judaism.

But his fundamentalist vision of what lies ahead for them in Israel has given some pause. Everyone has a role to play in Van Koevering's version of the end times. And for the Jews, it's bloody.

In Van Koevering's view, the end of days is first signaled by the return of the Jews to Israel, a process he says began with the country's founding in 1948.

Seven years before the world comes to an end, all true believers of Christ will be taken from earth in the "rapture," he says.

It is a reading of Scripture familiar in fundamentalist circles, featuring the anti-Christ disguised as a peacemaker, who declares himself God. A holy war ensues, and most Jews, says Van Koevering, will be left to fight. The rest either perish as "martyrs" or convert to Christianity.

He concedes some Jews may be put off by his forecast.

"From their perspective it's,"Oh my God, another Holocaust,' but we see it as the redemption of Israel," he said. "What we are doing, we're doing with hearts of love, concern and care."

Not everyone agrees with Van Koevering, even the company to whom he donates money.

Debra Minotti, a spokeswoman for Ebenezer, confirmed Van Koevering has donated about $40,000 to the group, but said speeding the apocalypse is a worrisome idea. "I would suspect that would be forcing the hand of God," she said. And Rabbi Brian Zimmerman, with Beth-Am Synagogue in Tampa, said he's disturbed that this end-of-days scenario involves the death of Jews.

"I take it with a grain of salt," he said. Van Koevering concedes that evangelicals supporting Israel is a bit of an anomaly, but it's becoming more popular. In fact, Ebenezer isn't alone in raising funds for Jewish immigration to Israel.

The Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews said it has raised tens of million of dollars from Christian backers of Israel, and helps Jews from the former Soviet Union make aliyah.

And with the success of Left Behind, an apocalyptic fiction book series, and NBC's new miniseries Revelations, it seems Americans are fascinated with end-of-time prophecy.

Gordon Isaac, an assistant professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., said interest in prophecy is not new.

""Left Behind didn't create interest, but struck a chord . . . that was already there," he said.

Isaac, a self-described conservative Christian, said about 40 percent of Protestants agree with Van Koevering's prophetic teachings, which he called "particularly distressing."

One problem, he said, is that fundamentalist Christians often don't support peacemaking with the Palestinians, because they say God promised all the disputed land to Israel.

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union in New York, an organization of more than 1,000 synagogues in the United States, said he doesn't agree with Van Koevering's reasons for helping.

"We share his desire that Jews make aliyah," he said. "Although, we differ with his theological objectives."

There is also opposition in Israel. In March, Avshalom Vilan, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, published an opinion piece in Ha'aretz, an English-language Israeli newspaper, expressing concern over the "unholy alliance" between Jews and evangelical Christians. It "absolutely runs counter to Israel's long-term interests," he wrote.

And in 2004, two former chief rabbis of Israel accused the International Fellowship of missionary activity and urged Jewish organizations not to accept money from the group. Ebenezer and the International Fellowship say they do not not evangelize.

Isaac, the professor, says opinions vary on how to interpret Revelations, but it shouldn't be taken literally. Revelations, the last book in the New Testament, is a form of literature that is largely symbolic and casts events in terms of a cosmic war, he said.

"Just like you read a poem differently than a newspaper, so you should read Revelations differently than a book of history," Isaac said. But on God's News, an announcer encourages viewers to "be a part of fulfilling Bible prophecy."

He urges, "Please, help us help them."

[stupidredhead13]

Second article: let's face it, he just hates Jewish people :rolleyes:. 'The further away, the better'.

The first one is seriously depressing. But at least i'm aware of several Christian pro-environmental lobbying groups.

[Yeahman]

They're all nuts. Doomsday cults, Christian Zionists, and Bill Moyers.

[Martino]

Aren't all these the same people who thought the world would end in 2000?

[(___(___)]

It did....

[yoMAMA]

They're all nuts. Doomsday cults, Christian Zionists, and Bill Moyers.

with all due respect, bill moyers does not belong on that list.

:wink:

[nola]

Bill Moyers is a visionary (in a good way).

[Yeahman]

with all due respect, bill moyers does not belong on that list.

:wink:
Sure he does. They're all wackos. Moyers is just a left-wing idiot.

[Faithless]

Interesting correction in a Washington Post article:

The Greening of Evangelicals (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1491-2005Feb5?language=printer)
Correction to This Article
A Feb. 6 story incorrectly quoted James G. Watt, interior secretary under President Ronald Reagan, as telling Congress in 1981: After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back. Although that statement has been widely attributed to Watt, there is no historical record that he made it.

James Watt has been angered to respond to the Moyers article.

The Religious Left's Lies (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001333.html)

By James Watt * Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A19

The religious left's political operatives have mounted a shrill attack on a significant portion of the Christian community. Four out of five evangelical Christians supported President Bush in 2004 -- a third of all ballots cast for him, according to the Pew Research Center. Factor in Catholics and members of other conservative religious communities and it's clear that the religious right is the largest voting bloc in today's Republican Party.

The religious left took note. Political opportunists in its ranks sought a wedge issue to weaken the GOP's coalition of Jews, Catholics and evangelicals and shatter its electoral majority. They passed over obvious headliners and landed on a curious but cunning choice: the environment. Those leading the charge are effective advocates: LBJ alumnus Bill Moyers of PBS fame, members of the National Council of Churches USA and liberal theologians who claim a moral superiority to other people of faith.


Their tactics are familiar. I encountered them more than 20 years ago as President Reagan's secretary of the interior, when I clashed with extreme environmental groups adept at taking out of context -- or in some cases creating -- statements that, once twisted, were attributed to me as if they were my religious views.

Now political activists of the religious left are refreshing those two-decades-old lies and applying them with a broad brush to whole segments of the Christian community: "people who believe the Bible," members of Congress and "Rapture proponents." If these merging groups -- the extreme environmentalists and the religious left -- are successful in their campaign, the Christian community will be marginalized, its conservative values maligned and its electoral clout diminished.

Last December Moyers received an environmental award from Harvard University. About three paragraphs into the speech, after attacking the Bush administration, Moyers said: "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.' 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."

I never said it. Never believed it. Never even thought it. I know no Christian who believes or preaches such error. The Bible commands conservation -- that we as Christians be careful stewards of the land and resources entrusted to us by the Creator. Moyers then attacked the congressional leadership, some by name, saying that "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 and more since the election -- are backed by the religious right."

Moyers is not without reinforcements. A liberal theologian and active participant in the National Council of Churches, Barbara R. Rossing of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, published a book titled "The Rapture Exposed." In it she attacks a large segment of the Christian community after attributing to me erroneous motives and beliefs on the basis of a fragment of a sentence taken out of context. Rossing contends that Christians who believe in the Rapture presume that there is no need for stewardship of natural resources because of the expected return of the Lord. She writes: "Watt told U.S. senators that we are living at the brink of the end-times and implied that this justifies clear-cutting the nation's forest and other unsustainable environmental policies. When he was asked about preserving the environment for future generations, Watt told his Senate confirmation hearing, 'I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.' Watt's 'use it or lose it' view of the world's resources is a perspective shared by the Rapture proponents."

Rossing fictionalizes this whole scenario and neglects to finish the sentence, which was as follows: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

Moyers, to his credit, has made a personal apology to me. But there has been no apology for the affront to major segments of the Christian community. Rather, the charges have escalated. On Feb. 14, the National Council of Churches issued a statement "in an effort to refute" what NCC theologians "call a 'false gospel' . . . and to reject teachings that suggest humans are 'called' to exploit the Earth without care for how our behavior impacts the rest of God's creation. . . . This false gospel still finds its proud preachers and continues to capture its adherents among emboldened political leaders and policymakers."

If such a body of belief exists, I would totally reject it, as would all of my friends. When asked who believed such error, where adherents to this "false gospel" might be found, the NCC turned to its theological sources, Moyers and a magazine called Grist, which had also apologized to me. I then contacted the chairman of the NCC task force and asked him about the "some people" who believe this false gospel and the "proud preachers" advancing this false gospel. He could not name such persons.

Be alert. I learned this lesson two decades ago -- the hard way. Never underestimate the political impact of the twisted charges by extreme environmentalists now advanced by the religious left to divide the people of faith.

The writer was secretary of the interior from January 1981 to November 1983.