Armageddon tired of superstition dictating government policy

The Divine Ms. Z has a great piece in today's Toronto Star - an interview with Marci McDonald, author of the just-released The Armageddon Factor: the Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, about which I blogged the other day. She points out the release of the book come on the very day that Canadian politicians are taking part in what has become a staple in U.S. politics - the prayer breakfast. These meeting of the pious and the political have been an annual event in Canada for 45 years, but have never had the prominence or the political import of similar events in the U.S.

These prayer breakfasts were begun in Seattle during the depression by a preacher named Abraham Veriede as a way to pull local business and political leaders together to beat the labor movement. Veriede courted the rich and powerful and built the organization now run by Douglas Coe and described in Jeff Sharlet's The Family. The group believes that the rich and powerful are given wealth and power by God to do his bidding and that minor considerations such as ethics and morality do not apply to them because they are doing God's bidding. Veriede and later Coe, often speak admiringly of the dedication of men such as Adolf Hitler and Lenin and want to harness the same sort of dedication to their cause. Read Sharlet's book, it is chilling stuff. The Family already has dozens of senators and congressmen in its "prayer cells" and it can be assumed their tentacles reach into these political prayer breakfasts in Canada too.

Then read Marci McDonald's book on the Canadian wing of theocratic movement and realize that it can and is happening here. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't really have anything against religious belief - I'm a believer myself, at least on odd-numbered days. What I object to is allowing any one religion to sway public policy, especially a religion as goofy as the North American brand of tent revival fundamentalist Christianity. How goofy are some of these people?

From Antonia Zerbisais' article in The Toronto Star:

According to The Armageddon Factor, evangelicals believe Canada has to clean up its act on abortion, feminism, and homosexuality because it has a special role to play in the “end times.”

That’s because of Psalms 72: 8-9, which leads off the book, and foretells of “dominion … from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

Never mind that it was likely about an ancient tribal leader’s turf. Many evangelicals see it as a sign, as they see how Parliament Hill’s Peace Tower clock, which stopped because of electrical problems for the first time ever in 2006, stopped at 7:28.

Yeah, that's the kind of magical thinking that you really really want governing economic, education, environmental and defense policy, the kind that thinks Jesus will take of everything for us and that there is no point planning past next Tuesday because the Rapture is coming.

Expect the lead up to the next election to consist entirely of distracting "culture war" wedge issues like gay marriage, crime, and whether the National Gallery should have nude pictures in it. There will even be coded references to changes in abortion law rules on maternal health and funding for religious aid organizations. If the Conservatives have their way the economy, the war in Afghanistan and the mistreatment of detainees and the government's abandonment of its responsibilities to its citizens (see Omar Khadr, Abousfian Abdelrazik, et al) will never be mentioned.

Live or Memorex?

Remember those ads with Ella Fitzgerald and the taped voice shattering the glass? The Onion has crossed into that same territory. Tell me this couldn't be a wingnut blog post. The only thing that would tip you off is the lack of excessive capitalization and prescence of proper punctuation.

Door2door insanity

Even living in Japan, we still get the weekend visits from the evangelists. Most weeks its the Jehovah Witnesses, but I see a lot of young Mormons around the major train stations with their whiter than white shirts, neckties and mountain bikes. Say what you want about the Mormons, but they have a stellar language program for their missionaries - their guys get off the plane here speaking better Japanese than I do, that much is certain.

Still, hearing that doorbell ring in the middle of a late, leisurely Saturday breakfast would piss me off if it were Jesus himself selling girl scout cookies, so seeing a couple of middle aged Japanese ladies with crazy eyes trying to foist off copies of the Watchtower usually harshes my coffee buzz considerably. Lately, they changed tactics and have sent a young British woman to try to sell me salvation, but I'm still not buying.


I have to wonder if anyone does. I mean, even if you are at the end of your rope, if you are desperate to find religion, to believe, to accept Hay-seus as your own personal savior -- are you really going to jump in to line with someone who comes round trundling tracts at your front door?

True story ( or at least presented to me as true by a trusted friend):Whenever I think of the Jehovah's witnesses going door to door, or I encounter an evangelist of any flavor knocking on doors or handing out tracts on the street corner, I am reminded of the experience of an old high school pal and his brush with immortality.
Todd and his father were avid outdoorsmen who lived in the neighbourhood the other side of the park from mine. He was a few years ahead of me in school and we moved in the same circles in Sault Ste. Marie back in "the day" as it were. One weekend he and his father had been out on an early morning duck hunt and had bagged several birds. As the junior partner in the operation, Todd, then about 17, was stuck with the chore of cleaning the ducks. So he dug in, plucking the feathers, lopping off the heads and feet and gutting the half dozen or so birds.
When a knock came at the front door, he went to answer, hunting knife in hand and spattered with gore from the quarry he was preparing for the table. It was all perfectly normal as far as he was concerned. He peeped through the peep hole in the front door expecting to see the paperboy collecting the weekly subscription fee for the newspaper or one of his younger sibling's friends come to call for them. It was a pair of middle aged ladies with the inevitable copies of The Watchtower.
Being a staunch agnostic and always ready for a good argument, Todd flung open the door and barked "What the hell do you want?" as a prelude to instructing them in their misapprehension that he gave a flying fuck at a rolling donut about their "good news" when his 14 year old sister saw a great big hairy spider in the upstairs bedroom and screamed as only a 14-year-old girl can.


Time, Todd told me later, slowed to the pace of molasses dripping uphill in February.


He stared at the Jehovah Witnesses. The Jehovah Witnesses stared back at him, briefly.


Mindful of his bloodspattered shirt and the big, bloody knife in his hand, Todd simply grimaced and the servants of Jehovah decided that it would be a good idea to give their witness elsewhere, immediately, if not sooner, and decamped in considerable haste.


Hilarity ensued. And ten minutes later when the police cruiser arrived, Todd, his sister, his father and his next-door neighbor who had allowed the panicked Witnesses to use his telephone were still sitting on the front porch roaring and holding their sides. When the constabulary were given the full picture, they were hard pressed not to take part in the merriment.


The Witnesses never darkened Todd's door again.


Obviously , we can't all have that kind of luck or timing, but you can fight back. Offer to trade literature with them. You get a copy of The Watchtower to wrap fish with and they get a copy of say Origin of Species, or some Pastafarian brochures or something like "Kissing Hank's Ass" (if you'd rather wait for the movie, wait no more, just look on the blogroll)





(video from the very funny Australian television series "Jon Safran vs. God" via Bruce at Canuck Attitude)
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