MARCH 7, 2003
AFFAIRS OF STATE
By Stan Crock
Bush, the Bible, and Iraq | What scares so many people outside the U.S. is the President's religious, apocalyptic rhetoric. Is he really ready for Armageddon? Not likely
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Two reasons have surfaced for the deep divisions over Iraq that have created a political chasm between the U.S. and allies such as France, Germany, and Russia. One is that other nations oppose what they see as an unprovoked war. The second is that they view the threat Baghdad poses to the world as far less ominous than the one the Bush Administration imagines.
A third factor is also at work, though: religious rhetoric, perhaps even fervor, which divides the President and many of those who voted for him from leading thinkers abroad, including those in some Western democracies. As European nations become more secular, they're increasingly suspicious of a country with a born-again Christian President, whose political base includes the majority of non-Arab fundamentalists in the U.S. British playwright Harold Pinter spotlighted this suspicion when he recently called Bush "a hired Christian thug."
Iraq plays into these concerns like no other issue. One reason is that fundamentalist Christian doctrine envisions a horrific conflict, the Biblical Armageddon, as the way to hasten the return of Jesus and the Millennium -- not the 21st century, but a thousand years of enlightenment that Jesus will return to preside over, according to the Good Book. And guess where Armageddon is supposed to take place.
"GOD IS NOT NEUTRAL." President Bush's constant talk about evil and evildoers fuels concern even in countries outside the Middle East that an apocalyptic vision based on such Bible stories underlies his strategy in Iraq. In a recent Washington Post article, Fritz Ritsch, pastor of the Bethesda (Md.) Presbyterian Church, expressed concern that Bush had become the "theologian in chief."
While supporters say the President's moral clarity is a good thing, divisions among the Christian clergy over a war in Iraq suggest that the issue is a complicated one theologically. And Ritsch is troubled that Bush doesn't see the complexity. He notes that Bush has said: "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know God is not neutral between them."
Beyond the President's broad-brush notions of good and evil lies a more complicated dogma that many of his supporters subscribe to -- though it's far from clear that Bush himself does. These beliefs were outlined in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Paul S. Boyer, a history professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin. Boyer pointed out that the school of biblical prophesy, formulated by 19th century British churchman John Darby, foresees a series of events signaling the last days of the world as we know it. These events include war, the emergence of a new world economic and political order, and the return of Jews to the land God promised Abraham.
A RESHAPED WORLD. The "Left Behind" series of best-selling books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins has updated and popularized this dogma. While millions of people in the U.S. and abroad may accord these prophesies no more credibility than they grant to Lord of The Rings or Harry Potter, many others fear that they're a call to action for the President and the fundamentalists among his followers -- just as many Americans imagine that the Koran provides a blueprint for Islamic fundamentalists.
Such logic is quite a stretch, of course, given Darby's unearthly version of how the world will be reshaped. According to Boyer, that starts with a "dispensation" phase, loosely defined as the here and now, which will evolve into the Rapture, when true believers "will join Christ in the air." Then will come Tribulation, when the Antichrist will arise and seize world power. From the days of Saladin, a medieval Islamic ruler, to the Ottoman Empire, and now to the era of Saddam Hussein, some Christians have viewed Islamic leaders as a possible Antichrist or its forerunner.
After seven years under this satanic figure's tyrannical rule, Christ and the saints -- presumably represented by George Bush & Co. -- will return and conquer the powers of evil at Armageddon, an ancient battlefield outside of Haifa in northern Israel, not far from Iraq. Ensconced in Jerusalem, Christ will then reign peacefully for a thousand years, the Millennium. (Darby's theory has the Antichrist slaughtering most Jews, as Saddam probably would like to, with the rest converting to Christianity. In the eyes of a non-American, this might explain why Jewish neo-conservatives are among the strongest supporters of Bush's Iraq policy).
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Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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