One thing that's struck me as I browse online Christian forums is how many conspiratorial anti-war types there are out there. Evangelicals who seem to have formed their view of the world from the Noam Chomsky Easy Reader.
It made me wonder. What set well-adjusted, church-going Americans to muttering archly about Megacorporations conspiring to take over the world? Some of these people seem to really believe that a Yale fraternity is meeting even now out on Martha's Vineyard to plot their next war of aggression... And then I realized--
--Bad theology has consequences. In the 90's we had the frisson about the New World Order sweep through Generic North American Protestantism (GNAP). People bought Pat Robertson's book in droves. Gary Kah followed with En Route to Global Occupation. Always one to spot a sound investment, Larry Burkett jumped onboard with The Illuminati. Suddenly a section of Evangelicalism was sure that Bush '41 was trying to push us into a New Age/Communist/Masonic/Big Business-led world government where we would all have 666 tatooed on our forearms and the Queen of England printed on our money.
Couple this with the speculative theology-cum-delusional fantasies passing for Dispensational Premillenialism these days. A good example of this is the Rapture Index, a site which alerts you when it's a good idea to have your fire insurance paid up. If you really believe that Old Scratch is seizing power next week, it COULD make you a little suspicious about what role the world's only superpower might have to play.
With two segments of Evangelicalism eagerly looking for signs of an impending one-world system, it makes sense that some of them would latch on to the idea of an evil Capitalist conspiracy to pollute and dominate the world. Once Communism died they needed someone to fill the role.
Posted by Discoshaman at avril 5, 2003 05:10 AM | TrackBack