6-B Tim La Haye's Paranoid Politics

If Left Behind co-author Tim La Haye is one of the Most Influential Evangelicals, as Time reports, then he is surely also one of the Most Paranoid as well. In his non-fiction books he openly admits to believing in various bizarre conspiracies including that of a shadowy group known as The Illuminati. The Illuminati, you ask? Me, too. Here’s how commentator Rob Boston, writing for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, describes it:

“(La Haye) believes a secret society called the "Illuminati" has engineered world events since the 18th century. The Illuminati, a frequent obsession among conspiracy buffs, was supposedly founded in 1776 by a cabal of power-hungry
Europeans. As the story goes, over the centuries its members have sparked wars
and manipulated financial markets to enrich themselves and bring about an
atheistic one-world government…In his non-fiction book Rapture Under Attack,
LaHaye writes, "I myself have been a forty-five year student of the
satanically-inspired, centuries-old conspiracy to use government, education, and
media to destroy every vestige of Christianity within our society and establish
a new world order. Having read at least fifty books on the Illuminati, I am
convinced that it exists and can be blamed for many of man's inhumane actions
against his fellow man during the past two hundred years."

As Boston reports, the authors of this popular series are not exactly ecumenical in their approach to Christianity. They are old-school anti-Catholic bigots, for example.

In 1999's Are We Living in the End Times? LaHaye and Jenkins imply that the
Catholic Church may be the "whore of Babylon" mentioned in Revelation.

"The present pope," the pair assert, "is on record as believing in the
Trinity and may indeed pray in the name of Jesus Christ. However, his
infatuation with the vision of Fatima and his reverence for Mary (whom he
credits with saving his life from an assassin's bullet) concerns some who fear
he could be setting up his church and the religions of the world for the
fulfillment of Revelation 17, where the 'Mystery Babylon, the mother of
harlots,' unifies all the religions of the world during the first half of the
Tribulation… LaHaye holds other odd views. As an early leader of the Religious
Right, he once insisted that the federal government reserve 25 percent of all
federal jobs for "born-again" Christians, since that is the percentage of the
population they represent. In The Battle for the Mind, LaHaye asserts that since
World War II, most members of the House of Representatives, Senate, presidential
cabinets and the State Department have secretly been humanists who have labored
to disarm the nation and deliver it up to the Soviets.

The millions of readers of the Left Behind books mostly have no idea of just how extreme the views of its authors are. However, people who feel alienated from the mainstream culture readily tap into the anger and resentment that drives the series forward and young and old alike have a somewhat morbid fascination with the Rapture. Why are these people so angry? What resentments does Left Behind address?

Stephen Waldman of Belief Net made these insightful observations about the Christian Right just after the election:

But religious conservatives look at this way: they have clear beliefs about what
is right or wrong. They think homosexuality is wrong, for instance. They turn on
the TV and see it treated as morally okeedoke, and there's nothing they can do
about it. They may have the numbers but they nonetheless feel powerless against
a popular culture that doesn't seem to share their values, and in the face of
aggressive judges who impose their will over the objections of state
legislatures. Why do they care so much? Are they just obsessed with sex? What
that fails to understand is that for many religious conservatives the stakes
could not possibly be higher. They believe that in condoning legalized abortion
or gay unions or even out of wedlock heterosexual sex, America is messing with
morality as outlined in the Bible and so attacking God. As anyone who takes the
Old Testament seriously knows, the consequences of that could not be more
enormous.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/156/story_15629_1.html

One young conservative commentator has noted that obsession with the Rapture is essentially an immature phase that people go through in their faith journey:

“I guess in light of the whole "Left Behind" series, I can see why someone would
think that there is a huge focus on End Times. I've always thought of this as an
immature phase that people go through at one point in their lives. I haven't
read anything on End Times since I was 14, and quite frankly I have very little
interest in the subject…”

He also suggested that progressives overstate the interest that mature conservative Christians have in the topic. http://lawnrangers.blogspot.com/2005/02/faithful-progressive-what-is-religious.html

This may well be, but it is hard to overstate the appeal of the Left Behind series and End Times lore in general. The cheesy Rapture Index, a sort of daily weather report on the likelihood of the end-times, is one of the web-sites with the greatest numbers of hits on the whole Internet. http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html

This brings me back to La Haye's comments about the tsunami-- that it is a good thing because it might bring people back to God in time to avoid being Left Behind. This is what End Times logic is all about in a nutshell: the prophesy of the author of Revelation is given greater weight and priority than the Old Testament or Gospel message of compassion for the suffering. In the next installment (next week) we will consider the question of whether this book was even properly a part of the Biblical canon and use it as a way to discuss various approaches to understanding the Bible.