Why Obama Must Not Work With Republicans

Ever wonder why the Republican Party's foreign "policy" got so off the wall and bellicose? Want to know why we're in two wars? Want to know why so many evangelicals hate Obama for saying he'll negotiate with Muslims? Want to know why President Obama should not try to work with Republicans?

All you need to know is that the Republican/Sara/Palin base of evangelical support is rooting for war, death and killing as a longed for -- even prayed for -- conclusion to human existence. No kidding! Understand what I'm going to tell you here, and you'll understand what went so wrong with America with W. Bush and why we are the most dangerous country on earth. Shorthand: we have nukes and risk being run by kooks. And, until the election of 2008, an evangelical born-again kook was running our country.

Disclosure: I'm the son of one of the evangelical's foremost thinkers, the late Francis Schaeffer. And until I left the fold in the mid 1980s I was intimately involved with the Religious Right and have been (until quite recently) a life-long Republican. I knew Jerry Jenkins' and Tim LaHaye personally and both are followers of my father.

The wild financial success of Jerry Jenkins' and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of sixteen novels is about belonging to the winning side. The books have made hundreds of millions of dollars while spawning an "End Times" industry, inclusive of Left Behind wall paper, screen savers, children's books and video games. The evangelicals -- and hence, from the early 1980s until the election of President Obama in 2008, the Religious Right as it informed US policy through the then dominant Republican Party -- are in the grip of an apocalyptic "Rapture" cult centered on revenge and vindication.

This End Times cult is built on a literalistic interpretation of the book of Revelation. The book was the last to be included in the canon of the New Testament. It was only recognized gradually as canonical late in the process -- after the year 400 AD -- of collecting the gospels and various letters included into the New Testament. The historic Church remained so suspicious of the book Revelation that to this day in the Orthodox Church it has never been included as part of the cyclical public readings of scripture. In other words the book of the Bible that the historic Church found (and finds) most problematic and dangerous is the one that American evangelicals have latched on to like flies on spilled jam.

According to Jenkins and LaHaye the "chosen" (in other words born-again evangelicals) will be airlifted to safety in the "Rapture" when the "End" comes. At last evangelical Americans will know "we" were right about everything and "they" were wrong. We'll know that because Spaceship Jesus will come back and take us away leaving everyone else to ponder just how very lost they are because they failed to say the words: "I accept Jesus as my personal savior."

Evangelicals not only wish to be proved right they also want revenge on all other religions and peoples. Not unlike Islamic terrorists who behead their enemies, the evangelicals relish the prospect of God doing the messy killing for them as they watch from on high. It isn't enough for them to cast the individual "apostate" out of their midst, or to denounce the Roman Catholics as the "whore of Babylon," they want revenge on all people not like them. The Left Behind novels provides access to vicarious revenge . No need to wait for the End Times, you can get your violent jollies now!

Jenkins and LaHaye describe various deadly scenarios proceeding and following believers being "snatched away" to safety leaving the infidels to their punishment. The authors cash in on years of evangelical paranoia and imagined victimhood. (A strange belief imbued with losers' self pity by people who have run Congress and the White House until this election!)

Jenkins and LaHaye provide an entertaining book version of a cosmic I-told-you-so from the backward earthly losers (as evangelicals perceive themselves in this the age of science and secularism) to the earthly winners (as evangelicals think of all those clever big city, over-educated progressive secular "elites"). Glory be! As God kills them, including those "secular Jews" running the New York Times who will have to admit we were right all along just before Jesus blasts them!

The promotional copy for one of the books -- Shadowed -- promises plenty of we-told-you-so entertainment; "After God intervenes with a miracle of global proportions, the tide is turned on international atheism!"

God Is Great! Kill them God! Kill those "international atheists!" They made fun of us because we refused to believe in evolution and built a creationist theme park! They laughed at us for opening our Friday night football games with prayer! They even laughed at Billy Graham, our one and only saint, when his son Franklin raised 28 million dollars to build the Graham theme park! Strike them Lord!

Jenkins and LaHaye are End Times revenge pornographers. Reading about violence against unbelievers is the evangelical Viagra. Take this passage from Glorious Appearing in which Jesus slaughters unbelievers;

The riders not thrown leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted, and their tongues disintegrated... the soldiers stood briefly as skeletons in now-baggy uniforms, then dropped in heaps of bones as the blinded horses continued to fume and rant and rave. Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they too rattled to the pavement.

Evangelicals can't get enough of this trash. The video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces was developed by a publicly traded company, Left Behind Games. The player controls a "Tribulation Forces" team and allows the player to "use the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world." The game blesses and encourages religious violence.

Guided by a literal reading of the prophetic sections of the Bible the expanding Left Behind entertainment empire also feeds the delusions of Christian Zionists who are convinced that the world is heading to a final Battle of Armageddon. Christian Zionists led by the likes of John McCain's Jabba the Hutt lookalike and big fan -- the Reverend John Hagee -- believe that war in the Middle East is God's will. Hagee predicts in his book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, that Russia and the Arabs will invade Israel and then will be destroyed by God. This will cause the Antichrist -- the head of the European Union -- to stir up a confrontation over Israel between China and the West. Armageddon will ensue and the Second Coming of Christ.

This would all be a joke except for the fact that sixty million Americans identify themselves as evangelicals. That's a lot of crazy voters -- as McCain proved he recognized when he nominated the religious Right's pet evangelical goof Sara Palin to be his running mate to re-energize the army of goofs who gave us the 8 years of W that brought us to war and economic ruin.

Note to Jews: the evangelicals say they are the State of Israel's friend, love Jews etc., etc. Wake up! In the evangelical "game" Jews are just apocalyptic Jesus fodder! With friends like these you don't need enemies. Friends of Israel -- and I am one -- don't see Israel as nothing more than a pawn in the End Times. Dig under the surface and you'll find Hagee, Jenkins, LaHaye are profoundly and fatally anti-Semitic. Follow their uncompromising "Rapture logic" and Israel will be destroyed. These people will always push the US government to take the hardest line against the Arabs. That is no long term favor to Israel. Eternal war is no answer. Check out the area's demographics. Make peace while there is time!

Christian Zionists support all violent actions by Israel for any reason because in the fevered evangelical mind the nation of Israel is presently standing in for Jesus-the-avenger-on-evildoers everywhere, i.e. Arabs, all of whom (according to the born-again porn peddlers) are soon destined to burn anyway! So, who cares if 10 Israeli deaths from Hamas' rockets fired into southern Israel are avenged by the killing of 1,300 men women and children in Gaza?USA! USA! Go Jesus! Time for another godly session on my Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game! Hurry Jesus come back and kill em' all.

And that is the Republican's base. Good luck to President Obama trying to find bipartisan solutions to our world wide problems with these folks.

Frank Schaeffer is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back Now in paperback.

Comments

[Keith52]

This is my basic question to Evangelicals has always been this:

If Charles Manson accepts Christ as his personal savior 3 minutes before he dies, by your standards he will be "raptured" and go to heaven. But a person who is a lifelong "do-gooder", as many conservatives call liberals who believe that helping others is their duty, but this "do-gooder" has never said "i accept Jesus as my personal savior said "do-gooder will not be seen in heaven. How is that possible?

Can a "good person" say, "gee I HOPE all of this is true but honestly I can't possibly say I know for sure" and go to heaven or be raptured? Or does one need to be one of these loony frothing Evangelicals in order to get to heaven?

To me that is all about group control and very little about "what is right and good."

[marxmarv]

Romans 2 says the liberal "do-gooder" who does not sign the contract but still has the "law written on his heart" still gets the pass on Spaceship Jesus.

Much as I am an advocate for church-state separation, I sometimes think an entire unit on the Letter to the Romans really should be part of the middle school curriculum, as it has quite a bit to say on those judgmental fundies. "YOU wanted the Bible taught in school, what are you complaining about?"

[heymacpaddywac]

Hello Frank,

I'm a big fan. Thank you for all you are doing to bring this topic into the mainstream. It's crucial that your voice be heard

In my own effort to keep this conversation alive, I recently created a music video called "Jesus Talk To Me Too", about the tragedy of the Bush administration.
I know it’s hard to look back on nightmares and really examine them, but if we don’t really go through what happened, the poison Bush (and his administration) injected into the fabric of the country and the world will never be fully brought to light. We can't just move on and get caught up in the sense of relief. Bush may be out of office, but what he's done will have ramifications quite possibly for ever.

I'd appreciate if you could post this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWxhl3ysEHg

Odette Springer

[Keith52]

Odette,
Just that thought alone, Jesus Talks To Me Too, is so powerful. It could start a movement.

Thanks.

[sandpiper1]

That was beautiful and so right on. I have tears streaming down my face. Thank you and God bless you and your family. We need more people like to you expose this evil perpetrated on America and the world during the eight years of Bush's regime. Once again, thank you...I will pass it on to friends.

[sawdustinhershoes]

Odette, Incredible.

You all made a masterpiece.

It's all so sad.

[BachelorJohnnyCool]

That was tremendous, Odette! Very moving! I'm going to pass it on to my friends.

[heymacpaddywac]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

[bachmantsk]

Excellent post. If truth were a nail, you'd be the hammer.

I've come to conclude, the best explanation for 8 years of Bush is the Republican Party's uncanny ability to mobilize the ignorant.

[Keith52]

Frank,
Like many others who have left comments here I am so grateful for this post. We need to shed light on the dangers of cross-breeding neo-con ideology and Christian evangelical ideology. I too was a child of evangelical family preaching but also at the expense of a proper secular education. Much of my parents' focus regarding education was about biblical studies and little attention was paid to quality schools and basic education. I have a feeling this is a common problem and is why many are willing to follow leaders and vote for them simply because they claim to be Christians. They just have not been exposed to alternative rational points of view. I do however disagree about the glee over revenge. Many evangelicals simply look at the violence related to the second coming as "what GOD needs to do"
On the other hand I have not read or seen any of the "Left Behind" merchandise...
I am so glad that someone besides myself has been horrified by what began as evangelical paranoia and perceived persecution by "liberals" has become a campaign lead by neo-cons to predict and encourage all events that hasten the "end times" including a disregard for science and environmental policy, war, failed economic policy and even racial inequality.

[oldschoolmarm]

Frank
Thank God somebody has the forum to say this OUTLOUD. I have been speaking this freakish truth since I decided that living by fear was not the truth that Christ said would set me free, but shackles. As a cradle fundementalist baptist and Moody alumni, I grew up watching films at church (the only time we were allowed to go to the movies) like "Mark of the Beast" and other sh@#t.
My husband is an OCA chaplain in the army. He's been to Iraq many times. He works hard to help young soldiers make sense out of why they risk their lives while their wives shop for food with a meager amount of foodstamps. He's made so many death notifications over the years that he became numb.Why? So the greed of those who have power can continue to dupe the religious right into thinking that they are doing God's will. Little guy evangelical has not developed the capacity to think beyond Piaget's concrete stage. He and his are thrilled by their great government 's hastening of the rapture!
Why would anybody want to take care of God's gorgeous, fascinating earth when it's all gonna be destroyed anyway? Let the greedy lords of the political right suck the life out of it.

I replaced my conjured up "faith" with ahope that God is good, and began to look around me for that goodness. The price of intellectual honesty wasn't nearly as painful as everyone in evangelicalism seemed to think.

[propitiousmoment]

Your last comment really struck a chord with me. You are right, it is all about intellectual honesty. I was a member of a fundie church for a long time, it was only my love of and drive for higher education that helped me escape by learning to think for myself. Personally, I believe that most of these people do not really believe that there is going to be a rapture they must be prepared for, but they have a sense that they *should* believe it, so they have to prop themselves up with ever-more-gory fantasy. That makes for the worst fanatics, imo.

[IndianRidge]

The Bible itself is the greatest con ever put together. Constantine continued the con, hoping people would declare him the Messiah. And now the con continues. To paraphrase Henry, "Will someone not rid me of these priests?"

[johnwinner]

Keep reminding us of this, Mr. Schaeffer. It is unclear why the mainstream media and even most progressives want to ignore this story, which is near the core of the W. Bush story.
It is also known that many Bush appointments in the Pentagon share these Apocalyptic beliefs, and it is now clear they are actively subverting the Obama agenda - quite publically, in fact.
I know Obama came to office seeking to resurrect the kind of mainstream political dialogue of the '60s and '70s; but I think we need to clean house before we get to working on that goal. We can't talk with nuts as though they had opinions we could reasonably discuss - they have dogma that needs ridicule and marginalization.

[jollyelle]

This post underscores the problems encountered with our unconditional support of Israel and the hatred they have of their neighbors.
Since when do we as a country let radical, fundamentalist religious beliefs dictate our policies?
Trouble occurs when religious beliefs are the driving force behind governing policies. The strange union between Christian and Jewish Zionists/Fundamentalists has permeated the mainstream media and US policy. We have been spoon-fed Pro Israel propaganda for so long we have simply absorbed it without even realizing there are two sides. Occasionally pieces get through Bob Simon from 60 Minutes http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml
Bono singing peace to Palestinians at the Lincoln Memorial Celebration. These are few and far between and are quickly and loudly reprimanded by AI PAC members.
Christian Zionists like John Hagee team up with Israel firsters like Joe Lieberman and their radical ideas spill out into the mainstream.
Unequivocal loyalty to Israel ignites much of the Anti-US feelings around the world, especially from Muslim countries.

Will the Obama Administration follow their own lead and continue their centrist positions? For too long, we have been clinging to absolute loyalty to Israel. Moderate Jewish organizations are gaining strength, hopefully the Obama Administration will be able to redirect the conversation back to the center. Re teach Congress to stop taking orders from Fundamentalists (Christian or Jewish). Neither should not have a place at the governing table.

[Collielady]

I so strongly believe that we need to do something about religion in this country. Quite frankly, it scares me more than any terrorist threat, or even Kim Jong Il.

It takes a certain arrogance to hope for revenge and punishment of others, while the "believers" are granted special treatment. The late Sydney Harris said, "Those who ask the gods for special favors are racketeers by nature." I would go a stop further and say they're childish to need a parent figure who favors them. Evangelicals still need to be "teacher's pet", when they really should just grow up.

The religious people I know are strongly arguing that this country was founded on Christianity. As if people fled Europe's oppressive religions to come over here and start a government based on religion! Of course the opposite is true according to the history I learned, but these evangelicals are the same people who are at war with public education and have successfully made its failure a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I could rant all night about the religious scourge on our country and our ignorant society that's still stuck in the dark ages.

[Keith52]

Please rant. I love reading it. It's therapy for me. Know any good books?

[Collielady]

Start with LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION, by Sam Harris

[propitiousmoment]

Actually, you have an interesting take on the myth of how this country was founded. I had always been taught that the earliest european settlers came here to escape religious persecution in england, but in recent years have come across accounts that say they were such extremists that no one in the mainstream would put up with them. The early settlements did have some interestingly oppressive religious practices. It was a hundred years or so before the more enlightened generation of the founders sprang up. In any case, in present times there is no longer a new world to pack the extremists off to - we're going to have to root out the poison some other way.

[Toriach]

Much of what you talk about is why I left Christianity. The idea that the end of the world would be cause for glee disgusts me. Basically I took a long hard look at the god that these people worship and decided that I refuse to believe in a deity who's more emotionally screwed up than I am.

[Keith52]

Wow I can't believe someone else besides me has been thinking that!!!!

[mommadona]

"Shorthand: we have nukes and risk being run by kooks. And, until the election of 2008, an evangelical born-again kook was running our country."

And THAT, sir, is about as clear as you can get.

I am very dissappointed in the young man from Illinois, for following the Bush legacy of rendition and refusal to come to grips with prisoners held around the world.

There are soooo many of these "end timers" now embedded in the Judicial Department - AND THEY ARE BEING GIVEN THE GREEN LIGHT TO STAY.....you KNOW that good ol' time religion of passive-aggressive action will put allll sorts of nasty things in the wheels of justice by their presence.

I don't know anymore.

What IS a politician or a political system good for when the results are always opposite of what your vote intended?

WHY is he doing this?

[TN60]

Don't give up on "the young man from Illinois" quite yet !

You have not heard from his mouth anything about following W on rendition and gulags around the world. All you have heard and read is supposition from the same "some say" crowd on cable news and "some say" press of the newspapers and magazines.

The President said repeatedly in his campaign that he would "take the fight" to those who killed 3000 on 9/11. Namely Afghanistan/Pakistan... They are murderers and are still training murderers. Just because he is re-routing troops to Afghanistan instead of Iraq doesn't mean that war "Is Obama's War" as Newsweek or Time reported.

Between the kooks Frank talks about and the press in this country, it is going to be a difficult job to rid ourselves of both destroyers of this nation. That's after the Republican Party has been reduced to Whig statis.

[balloo101]

Psychological Views On Conservatism

"Psychologist Felicia Pratto and her colleagues have found evidence to support the idea that a high Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is strongly correlated with conservative political views, and opposition to programs and policies that aim to promote equality (such as affirmative action, laws advocating equal rights for homosexuals, women in combat, etc).[46] According to psychologists, an SDO is an attitude toward intergroup relationships which says that groups are subordinated and of lesser status than others.[47][46] High-SDO persons (Conservatives) seek to maintain this structure by promoting group inequality and policies that help maintain the dominance of one group over another. Low-SDO persons (liberals) seek to reduce group inequality and eliminate the hierarchical structure of society's groups. Pratto and her colleagues also found that high SDO scores were also highly correlated with measures of sexism and anti-Black prejudice. However, her results have been debated within the psychological community with some holding that "principled conservatism," is the reason behind opposition to programs that promote equality. They suggest that the opposition is based instead on a "concern for equity, color-blindness, and genuine conservative values."

[Tim303]

Are the detractors of this theory conservative psychologists? Have they been tested for SDO?

[bdaved]

I read John Dean's book "Conservatives Without Conscience" some time back and was very interested in his references to John Jost's work on authoritarian personalities.

[Collielady]

I would agree with the SDO theory and even argue that the need to either dominate or be dominated by another is a personality disorder. Conservatives seem to thrive on very rigid world view. Because they LOVE punishment, prisons, America's Most Wanted and COPS, I've always felt that they wouldn't be able to cope in a fair and healthy society. Some people just can't feel good unless they have "bad" people to compare themselves to. It's all about competition, rather than just living one's own life. That's what frightens me so about religion and religious people. They thrive on the need to be better than others.

[Keith52]

BINGO!!!

[DasBoot]

This is just anecdotal evidence from my personal experience, but the extreme evangelicals I know are almost without exception: control freaks, egomaniacs, self-hating cheaters who need an excuse to continue doing what they are doing.

[editorjudy]

It would explain a lot. It doesn't make any sense for people to want this new president to fail. That means we all fail.

[DasBoot]

These people don't use regular logic: Obama's failure means success (the Rapture) for them. Black is white, up is down. Double speak and double think. Straight out of George Orwell.

[ThePeacemakers]

I couldn't stand Bush - but I "prayed" he would get something right.

[MAragon]

Excellent comments. Thank you again for your insight.

[bdaved]

When my uncle was a little boy in the 1920's, he saw, and more particularly heard, a car coming down the road for the first time. He thought it was the Apocalypse on wheels, bringing the end of the world. When it turned out to be just a car he started turning away from that way of thinking.

[devanate]

Considering 1. the number of people who die in car accidents every year, 2. the pollution and global warming caused in part by burning of fossil fuels and 3. the wars fought over those fossil fuels... your uncle's first instincts may have been correct.

[bdaved]

I'll have to tell him that.

[SilviaMaria]

I am European, so it is really hard for me to understand that people really believe this. If I had to compare with another time, it would be with the Medieval era. You can find writings from that time that sounds just like that. It is really scary and sad at the same time.

Again, education makes a difference especially if you have some critical thinking.

[devanate]

I've often felt like over the past 8 years that we are entering a new dark age.

[tigerakabj]

That is what it felt like over the past 8 years -- a mini dark age. No science, no education, no discovery, all fear and panic. Sort of like the time before the age of enlightenment.