| It is an amusing story but there are some darker implications. A new Pew survey finds that 52 percent of folks living in the Southern U.S. believe that Jesus will return within the next forty years (read the whole survey here, it has a lot of other interesting factoids).
While that might sound all good and fine to those who don't follow Christian religions, the prophesied return of Jesus is not really that nice a thing. Oh, sure after he and God defeat the ungodly there is a 1,000 years of paradise on earth, but the time leading up to that is your run-of-the-mill millennialism, floods, great wars, the Antichrist, mass destruction and death.
Now to the political dimension. With the high numbers of evangelicals in the South and the numbers who believe that Jesus will return in the next 40 years, where does that leave a politician who is one of the faithful? If you are sure, as are a solid majority of your constituents, that sometime in the next four decades your messiah will return how seriously will you treat the long term issues facing a nation?
Issues like peak oil and global climate change are not going to get a lot of attention, if like the cult members in the 80's you don't think you will be around for it , or you think that your god is going to come, kick some pagan ass, and make everything better with the wave of a hand. If you are millennialism in your views, then it is okay to go out and start wars or let long standing alliances decay, because Jesus is going to come and sweep the board clean anyway and soon, maybe next week.
You can also expect to see them really standing hard on the issues they think are a big deal to their god. After all no office is every as clean and efficient as when the CEO is coming for an inspection. You might see them, oh, really making a big deal about moral issues like abortion or full civil rights for gay citizens.
The thing is, shouldn't a belief in the end of the world and soon, be a disqualifying one for political office? If you think the world is ending and it is a good thing, doesn't that actually prevent you from working to make things better? Especially if your belief says that things have to get a lot worse before your particular deity shows up?
Given the pride so many of the Republican (and sadly some of the Democrats) in Congress seem to have in their Evangelical faith, shouldn't we ask them if they think we are in the End Times? It seems to me that this is an important piece of information to know. You could be the most dyed in the wool Liberal, but if you think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is going to come and destroy the world with his noodly appendages, well, you can't have my vote and you shouldn't get a vote from anyone else.
The other reason to ask this question and get elected officials on the record is a purely "setting the cat among the pigeons" one. It is a real trick bag of a question, once asked the politician who does believe has two choices, a) say yes and then have to take the heat for believing the world is going to end or b) say no and take the heat from their constituents that really believe. To me, that looks like a win/win situation.
I don't really have anything against people having a religion. Like dandruff most people do have it, and like dandruff they seem to gain a lot of satisfaction from spending time and effort tending it (a paraphrase of Robert Heinlein). If that is how you want to spend your time, knock yourself out, it does not affect me, right up to the point where you start to try to govern our nation based on your religious belief and the prophesies it contains.
When a belief in the soon coming end of the world is one that drives your thinking on foreign policy and large scale ecological issues, then you have to step aside. It is not that your belief is wrong (though I certainly think it is) but rather that the nation as a whole does not hold your view points. The casual recklessness of someone who believes the world will end in the our lifetimes is too dangerous. To entrust such a person with the decision making power for a nation is to magnify this danger exponentially.
It is probably too late, there are lots and lots of elected Republicans who seem to be part of this millennial thinking. To expose them will be to only make them more popular with the voters who believe the same bunk. If believing that government can't do anything positive is not reason enough to disqualify them from public office, surely their belief in the near future end of the world will not do the trick. Still it is probably worth while to know if people like Sen. Inhofe of Oklahoma is really a bought and paid for shill for the Oil and Coal industries or if his actions are based on a firm conviction that it is too expensive to change because in a couple of decades it won't matter anyway.
Knowing where people are coming from on this positions makes it easier to move them or oppose them. It seems like a good time to ask all our Representatives and Senators if they think the end is near or that there is a future to work towards.
The floor is yours. |
