What Have We Really Left Behind?

I just finished reading Bill Moyers’ account of the effect of “left-behind” eschatology on many American Evangelicals’ views on the environment (current edition of the New York Review of Books). It makes for both depressing and depressingly predictable reading. Depressing because Moyers recounts the way the wedding of theology and ideology in out time has produced a rabid apocalyptic worldview that cares little for classical theology, the environment, peace or even goodwill. Depressingly predictable because any thoughtful person already knows this and specifically knows what this implies for a Christian discourse on the environment.

To make matters worse, the current Altantic Monthly highlights a recent Cornell University study in the USA. First, the study shows a correlation between strong Christian commitment and the belief that American Muslims should be made to regiser their wherabouts with the government. These same “highly religious” folk are twice as likley as “not very religious” to hold that US Mosques should be monitored and that the government should infiltrate Islamic civic and volunteer groups. If that is not alarming enough, then study further finds that the correlations rise relative to the attention paid to TV News.

Maundy Thursday to me is always a powerful symbol on two fronts. First, the image of fearless devotion in Jesus’ washing of the disciples feet. Second, the resolve to face the destiny of the cross in spite of the uncertainty of the garden. However, this twisted and self-centred ‘theology’ that we see in our age makes a mockery of this by holding fast to fear, mistrust and also to an apocalyptic fantasy.

What better way to absolve ourselves of the need to fulfill God’s mission for the world than to invet a doctrine of total destruction and commit ourselves to its implimentation? What better way to obliterate the call to selflessly serve the other and love our neighbour than to submit to a media-driven campaign of hate and mistrust?

We should weep…