As I type these words, Britain’s Channel 4 is airing a major piece of breath-taking propoganda.
This two-hour prime-time ‘documentary’ is called ‘The Doomsday Code’ and purports to be a ciritical examination of the violent, apocolyptic, end-of-the-world ideology of (wait for it)…American Christians!
The story so far:
- American Christians and Israelis are conspiring to bring about a global nuclear holocaust and this is why they are attacking Islam
- Americans are deliberately causing global warming as a part of their monstrous plot to realise ‘End Times’
- The only hope for mankind lies with the UN but its effectiveness is being undermined by the “corrosive hostility” of the fundamentalist Christian Americans
I cannot find any specific programme website to which to link but there is a link to the website of the production company which is somehwat illuminating:
The Doomsday Code is produced by Fozia Khan and directed by James Quinn. It was commissioned by Aaquil Ahmed, Commissioning Editor for History, Science, Religion and Arts at Channel 4.
It is still broadcasting and has now moved on to Africa which, allegedly, is proving to be a fertile recruiting ground for the insanely violent American Evangelicals who are (among other things) doing their best to facilitate the spread of AIDS in accordance with the Book of Revelation.
I am not making this up.
Wouldn’t the Cold War have been a better, and easier, time to bring about global nuclear holocaust? Why wait?
Sounds like a parody.
Either that or channel 4 have just officially gone batshit insane.
Dude – I’m watching it and yes Channel 4 have officially gone batshit insane. I wonder if Luke Johnson ever watches the c**p that comes out of his channel.
I watched it too. I’m never sure what to think about these types of programs. They talk about some extreme idea which most people must believe is a load of old cobblers and then back it up very weakly by going to lots of different locations and talking to moonbats. During the program, the presenter expresses a bit of cynicism to the camera, but doesn’t question the moonbats about their opinions at all. The program ends with the implied conclusion that: I know it sounds crazy, but there really could be something in this theory. Leaving you to rely only on the integrity of the presenter for evidence.
Very unsatisfying.
I watched it too. I’m never sure what to think about these types of programs. They talk about some extreme idea which most people must believe is a load of old cobblers and then back it up very weakly by going to lots of different locations and talking to moonbats. During the program, the presenter expresses a bit of cynicism to the camera, but doesn’t question the moonbats about their opinions at all. The program ends with the implied conclusion that: I know it sounds crazy, but there really could be something in this theory. Leaving you to rely only on the integrity of the presenter for evidence.
Very unsatisfying.
At least you don’t have to watch, and you’re not paying for it.
Oh, wait….
I like these ‘Biblical Mystery’ programmes, so I started to watch it, but couldn’t actually believe what I was seeing. Just another excuse to knock Israel. Production information was interesting, I didn’t catch that as the programme was so bad, that I switched to the X Factor.
It was more credible.
Well I watched it, and I find it amusing that it seems to be being taken in every which way other than the one in which it was ostensibly intended.
From what he writes the poster sees it at anti-American propaganda, someone else somewhat derides it with a formulaic strawman which doesn’t quite fit the structure of the programme, and a couple more people just stick their knives into Ch4 because it’s something to do.
Really can you guys not actually attack the program on its premise, rather than whine about real or imagined context and metacontext?
Or go watch Dawkins’ “Root of All Evil” from earlier this year – also on Ch4 – if you want to froth and misconstrue some more.
If I weren’t such a free speech fan, I’d insist on a “fairness doctrine” for all such things: if you have a Christian-bashing show, you must follow it up with equivalent X-bashing, where X is the several other major religions.
Same goes for “shock” art – if you can’t bring yourself to dip other holy works in urine – possibly for fear of more, er, enegetic actions than tut-tutting from minor religious officials – don’t dip that cross…
Sanity Inspector: we don’t pay for Channel4, at least it’s not ostensibly part of the license-fee package, though I suppose there’s some money bled on out of the public purse somewhere to prevent that being an absolute statement.
Foobarista: The problem comes with Atheists, in which case to bash them you are trying to disprove a negative and to represent the opposition have to pick from one of the pantheon of gods available to humanity worldwide. This puts you squarely up there with the rebuttal to Pascal’s argument for belief: if you pick the wrong god to support, you may well be screwed…
“can you guys not actually attack the program on its premise”
Certainly. It was an interesting presentation of the religious beliefs of a group of people that, like most religious beliefs, look crazy to those who don’t hold them. (Although I’ve seen worse.) They were at least fairly honestly presented, AFAIK. However, this was combined with the explicit but unproved insinuations that these people influence US policy, that they do not care about the future of the world or themselves, work to bring the prophecies about and revel in the coming destruction, and are the source of every anti-US stereotype going – US support for Israel, Zionism, global warming scepticism, AIDS, the LRA wars in Uganda, Islamophobia, and Survivalist gun culture, etc. While the interviewees were clear on their beliefs (and in the process entirely discredited themselves in the eyes of the viewer), the connections made to these stereotypes was implicit only in Tony Robinson’s commentary.
The worst thing about it was the unstated suggestion that the crazed religious beliefs of this group, who it was insinuated made up about half of all Americans, were the sole source and sole reason for US/right-wing concern about Islamism, support for Israel, and scepticism about environmentalism. An impressive and expertly conceived smear on every politically incorrect “right-wing” belief as the product of religiously inspired delusion.
I look forward to next week’s programme on the 12th Imam and the talking trees in that other end-times cult. Not.
Oh come on. Tony Robinson doing yet another pseudo religio-hisorical documantary thingy on Ch4 is hardly evidence of a plot against Israel.
What the programme actually said was that elements of the evangelical christians (based in the US) seem to be financially backing anything that they believe brings about the precursors to the rapture. ‘Buying prophecy’ if you will allow me to summarise Tony.
They went to great lengths to show that these extremists draw their belief from sources other than actual scripture and even delved a little in to actual history of the biblical text…something most evagelical preachers leave out of their surmons
I highly doubt that the reporter talked to any more than one or two “believers”…
It’s been said that there are as many interpretations of Revelation as there are people trying to interpret it.
That being said, the description given above doesn’t remind me of any of the dozens of Christian leaders (or hundreds of Christians) that I have run into in the United States.
Ya know, if it had been our intent to bring down Armageddon, it would have happened already.
“That being said, the description given above doesn’t remind me of any of the dozens of Christian leaders (or hundreds of Christians) that I have run into in the United States.”
The above description isn’t very descriptive of the people in the programme, either. It’s descriptive of the commentator’s take on them, though.
There are certainly more than a couple of these believers in the rapture and the Book of Revelations currently coming true – a quick search shows the idea’s popularity; and they mention raptureready.com in case you couldn’t manage that – but they’re rare enough that I’ve never knowingly come across one to talk to either.
But the point is that by only showing these extreme Evangelists they give a handy “explanation” to the viewer for everyone else who supports the same sort of causes.
Britain is quite a secular society nowadays, very cynical about passionate literalist expressions of religion. I would expect this approach to be effective.
Actually, the idea that human actions could bring about the end of days would amount to blasphemy in all the major evangelical sects. The entire idea behind Revelations is that it represent deterministic prophecy. The idea that the apocalypse can be averted, delayed or hurried along comes purely from hack horror writers and hollywood.
One thing the internet has taught me is just how fanatically provincial Europeans are especially the intellectual classes. They hold the most comical ideas about people outside their own little world.
Tony Robinson?? As in Baldrick?
Ok, I know nothing of the man other than a 20 year old comedy show .. but I’m surprised.
Or are there two of them?
Tony “Baldrick” Robinson?
Oh yes, that’s him. He’s taken-on second and third jobs after comedy, as a documentary presenter on Archaeology – and thence History, and now Religion-focused – programmes, and also as a minor political commentator with a famous long-held Old-Labour / Socialist viewpoint.
Which I suspect goes a long way to explain a lot of the rancour in the comments for this posting.
Yes, in Britain we are secular and so this sort of thing shocks. Therefore it also makes “good television”, since the point of commercial television to be to draw an audience.
As for “not a lot of Americans actually believe like that”, I remember with some horror a Californian colleague’s refridgerator, on which a piece of his son’s art had been glued with magnets. It represented an enormous, towering Jesus, in a “bring unto me” pose, rising up over NY from the ashes of the twin towers.
So: that significantly many Americans believe in “the rapture” (etc) – I dunno, I’ve not done or seen a reputable poll; but that ordinary churchgoing American folk fear terrorism and tie their fear into their religious belief? Oh yes, that happens, that worries me, and I was interested to see another point of view presented last night.
But it’s not an anti-American / anti-Israeli conspiracy.
Get real.
I don’t think Thaddeus saw the same programme I did, though I did watch Tony Robinson present a programme of the same name on the same channel on the same night.
What I saw was a reasonably good introduction for European secularists to some strange ideas that are powerful in the US, and thus in the world, but little known over here. Its faults were mostly political presumption about certain left-liberal views positions being axiomatically good (a sort of anti-Alf-Garnet “stands to reason”), and perhaps an exagerration of the power of the more extreme evangelicals.
The most interesting thing on American religiosity published this week was the Baylor University study American Piety in the 21st Century [pdf] which attempts a trans-denominational segmentation of the US Christian scene. It’s in some ways more scary to a classical atheist like me than Robinson’s freakshow, and there’s relatively small comfort in the possibility that an evangelical institution using the methodology it did might inadvertently play up the old-time religion marginally.
Oops, sorry about not closing tag in right place – that looks ugly. I’m with alecm throughout this one.
[BTW, You left out Robinson’s role as a writer/producer of children’s TV, at which he’s jolly good.]
I’m with Guy and alecm on this. The power of the fundamentalist Christian lobby in the US has always worried me and there is lots of information outside this programme to justify that concern.
This for example.
Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.
Suppose this program were broadcast on American television? It wouldn’t happen, of course, since American television networks select only the best BBC programs for broadcast and this one doesn’t sound like one of the best.
But, if it were somehow broadcast, its American audience would immediately notice that the American Christians interviewed in the program were nothing like themselves or anybody they know. They would realize that while the program didn’t tell them much about American Christianity, it says a lot about the British Broadcasting Corporation.
It says absolutely nothing about the BBC – the programme appeared on a different channel and was made by an independent production company as the post and the comments make abundantly clear.
The entire moonbat world view relies on finding opposing sides who are as bad as each other, and sitting in the middle sneering. This means down-playing the threat from one side, by studiously ignoring the unambiguous threats, finding excuses for the atrocities, and ascribing noble motivations where none exist; and it means hugely exaggerating (or just inventing) the threat from the other, by muttering dark conspiracies about Neocons, fundamentalists and so on.
Older readers will remember the same thing during the Cold War – in my school it was a basic assumption that the Americans were the aggressive imperialists and the Russians just wanted to have peace, man, and nothing the Russians ever did could change that, not even invading Hungary or Czechoslovakia.
I’ve been to church in Texas and I’ve never seen a preacher waving a sword over his head and calling for the destruction of infidels. Maybe I went to the wrong one. Or maybe there really is no moral equivalence to find.
Having said that, I think Tony Robinson did a wonderful job of de-bunking the Da Vinci Code with systematic, good humoured ruthlessness, so he deserves some credit.
The commentary was so slanted on Doomsday Code, so negative towards American Christians. I thought documentaries like this were supposed to be more objective. Yeah there are millions who take Revelation literally, but not everyone is involved in a political conspiracy to bring about the apocalypse. The doc only hinted at other interpretations on Revelation that the church has embraced.
Real moonbat stuff < a href="http://raptureready.com/">here
Hmm. I don’t have a problem with this programme. It sounds like it is excessive in it’s claims – but, hey, that’s television. These crazy folk do exist. It seems strange that lots of libertarians will clap their hands when you say “(many) Muslims are insane” but get all defensive when you say “(many) Christians are insane”.
So these Christians support Israel because they think Jesus is coming back if Biblical prophecy is fulfilled. I support Israel because it’s the most liberal, tolerant, liberty-protecting state in that region and if I had to make a choice between living in a country like Israel and a country like Palestine (no free speech, meaningful individual or property rights, an economy that is as far from free as you can imagine), I’d pick the former any day of the week – because it’s a freer country, even though I don’t support everything Israel does. The crazy Christian fundies who this programme (mis-?)represents support the same end but for arational/irrational reasons. The difference is only the intention. I can criticise their intentions, even though I agree with the end – Israel over Palestine.
Oh, and Jack: it doesn’t tell us anything about the BBC. It’s a Channel 4 programme.
Hey,
Manuel II Paleologos
a C14th Byzantine is still in the commentariat.
Well bugger me sideways!
The link missing from my post above:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959
What many non-Americans fail to grasp is the sheer size of the United States: geographic, demographic and diversity.
In short: there are always a lot of people doing something or believing in something.
Fifty thousand people might believe that next Tuesday is Death By Pancake Day. In smaller countries, that’s a large number; in the U.S. it’s a statistical nothing.
“Tony” Robinson is a member of the Labour party National Executive Committee (just having a nice manner does not mean that a man is not antiAmerican -and Mr Blair has not cleared these people out of the Labour party, far from it).
As for the rapture, the end of the world, the last judgement (and so on). This is not “American” (let alone Israeli), this is mainstream Christianity and always has been (a handful of “liberal theologians” do not trump the vast majority of Christians over the last two thousand years).
What is not mainstream Christianity is to put a DATE on all this (something that some Americans, and some other people, sometimes do).
One should live as if the last judgement is going to be tomorrow – but accept that it may not come for a billion years.
As for the Jewish faith, it is accepted that even an athiest who is a “righteous gentile” can go to heaven. “So why do we obey the 613 regulations of the law?” – “you do not think that we do that for a REWARD do you?”
Arguments in Chistianity between justifcation by faith and justification by works continue (indeed the hardest version of predestination would hold that neither works or faith matter – that being saved is a matter of the ARBITARY will of God).
However, from a moral point of view, the existance of God and life after death are not relevant to how one should live (being moral is not a matter of seeking a reward after death).
As the 16th century (well he died, if memory serves, 1611 but he was mainly 16th century) theologian Fransisco Suarez (himself just repeating the ideas of theologians before him) put it “the natural law is God’s law, but if God did not exist it would be exactly the same”.
Thank you all for the corrections. Channel 4 is independent and not part of BBC.
It’s very easy to tell who does and does not live in America by simply reading the comments on this thread. I’m an atheist, and I live in the U.S. *Collective gasp* Don’t worry though, ian, I’ve been successful in hiding from the hordes of marauding Christians, thus far.
According to the theology PhD on the program the “rapture” is a product of the preaching of a 19th century priest.
I thought it was alright. The only thing that got me was the the bit where the UN and environmentalism were held up as Good Things Beyond Reproach, as if to oppose them automatically is reason for the G to send over men with white coats to sort out your mental illness.
You always have to be aware that they only interview a selective bunch of people. Reminds me of the documentary about the US war of independence where they were interviewing all these Americans who regretted winning. 😀
I bet they trawled the US long and hard to find those!
Guy, I took a look at that Baylor study you linked. The first thing I noticed was that it was wonderfully packaged with professional graphics design, etc.
I’ve read far more research than I would’ve liked in the last couple years and have developed an instinct for when things aren’t right. A few pages in I was getting those vibes rather strongly, so I did what I usually do first with surveys. I skipped down and read the questions. They seemed very leading to me, so I went back and looked at the data to see if anything jumped out.
When I got to figure 4 on page 27, I thought it odd that less than 0.0% professed either agnosticism or Deism. And yet a full 5.2% declared as atheist (defined as “certain that God does not exist”). This seemed a little odd, so I read all of page 27. Deism or agnosticism did not appear to be an option, so I searched the terms on the entire document. They did not occur in the survey and they did not occur in the document.
You know and have explained to us how surveys can be manipulated. A clever survey can be written to get desired answers.
I believe this survey is worse than flawed. I believe it was written with an agenda. I believe in intended from the start to show a dogmatic population, incapable of introspection and doubt (among other things).
From my position of having been raised in an extremely dedicated evangelical missionary family, and having left these beliefs decisively to take a rational approach to theology and morality, I can tell you that the survey got a lot of other things wrong, too.
Best to let it be. Your own individual judgement is no doubt far more accurate a picture than this carefully manipulated product.
I would be more worried about this if I were Channel 4
http://catholiclondoner.blogspot.com/2006/09/very-rushed-post.html
I am a Christian and I accept the statements in the Bible that Christ will return to the earth some day to set up a world ruling government.
People, especially those on the left, who hypervent about Christian conspiracies to bring about the return of Christ are doubly foolish. They clearly don’t care what the Scriptures say on the subject and they parade their ignorance around as an excuse to bash those who accept what the Bible very plainly says.
The next time anyone hums the words of the catchy chorus of Handel’s Messiah, they ought to listen to the words.
Midwesterner,
Thank you for that. If the survey is framed by an agenda, then that agenda is a little hard for me to comprehend, in itself. Do you know of anything better?
It is very difficult for an atheist Englishman to get an understanding of the place of Christianity in America.
TheBuckWheat,
They clearly don’t care what the Scriptures say on the subject and they parade their ignorance around as an excuse to bash those who accept what the Bible very plainly says.
To us atheists what the scriptures say, as opposed to how they say it, is of little interest because we hold it to be without consequence. What believers think they say, and how they may behave as a result, can affect us very strongly, so of course we care about that. Which is why hermeneutics remains of considerable interest to an atheist, and why we will tend to encourage believers who have soft-edged literary/allegorical interpretations – as the most believable options, and those least likely to result in violence towards us.
Pa Annoyed “However, this was combined with the explicit but unproved insinuations that these people influence US policy”
This is the crux for objecting to this programme.
The views of a small minority of US Christians matter little & do not make for an “important TV event” (a 2hr show!). So the makers have to spice up the mix by insinuating that these end timers drive US foreign policy – & we always thought that to be the job of the Zionist lobby!.
So Robinson tries to put GWB into the frame, “we don’t know if Bush shares these views, but …”.
In response to an earlier post concerning the ‘independence’ of Channel 4, it is a state-owned ‘for profit’ broadcaster (unlike the BBC which is funded through £3+ billion in direct taxation, the TV license) – hardly independent.
Guy,
No. Although I’ve never looked. I think it would be extremely difficult to get a representative data sample. Most data sampling methadologies work best with a homogenized source.
Because of extreme geographic variations in religion on all scales, I really don’t know how a good sample could be assured. For example, in the county I live in there are a couple of highly concentrated Amish communities. Aside from the fact that they could be easily missed by virtue of adults not owning cars, or using electricity and personal phones (only dairy farmers ever have phones and they are required to if they sell their milk. The phones are in the barns.) Amish communities are very concentrated. They use horses.
I think the most accurate data would come from census data, as this should eliminate sampling problems. However, it does not contain the sort of information that you’re looking for.
Reading a book on Jewish beliefs the author told an old truism, “Where ever there are two Jews, you’ll soon have three synagogues.” The same very definitely applies to Christianity.
You say it’s difficult for an atheist Englishman to understand the place of Christianity in America. Guy, it’s difficult for me to understand the place of Christianity in America. I think that’s the point. Views, and actions taken as a consequence of those views, are perpetually growing and changing. Something true today, could be false tomorrow. For example, most Evangelicals and other fundamentalists believed that Allah and God the Father were one and the same. My brother in law even has a plague with ‘Allah’ on it in Arabic hanging next to a cross in his house. This opinion is definitely changing. More and more Christians are beginning to acknowledge that these two religions are fundamentally antithetical to each other.
Some things to keep in mind that are very much the standard among fundamentalist Christians.
• Faith is personal and is fundamental to ‘Salvation’. When in doubt, they pray. From memory, approximately “For by grace are you saved, through faith, that not of works, it is a gift of God that you are saved.” Getting ‘converted’ at the point of a sword doesn’t cut it. (Ohhh, bad pun.)
• “The Church is the body of Christ.” And to understand what this means in practical terms, remember Christ’s activities. Unlike Muhammed, he didn’t cast the first stone, he resurrected more people than he killed (!), he fed people, he healed peple, he forgave, etc. etc. And when he went to his martyrdom, it was with the intent of saving lives, not taking them. Whether or not others believe these things, Believers do, and their Church must live this example.
• They follow the New Testament teachings. Whenever someone starts referencing Old Testament instructions, they are grinding a political axe and are not theologically consistent with general Christian interpretation of the Bible.
• They overwhelmingly lead by example and bring about conversions by providing secular help to others. (Something Islam has taken to doing in very select political circumstances.) While I type this, my niece, her husband, and their children are in Northern Pakistan helping with reconstruction from the earthquake. Effective missionaries lead by example and wait to be asked before proselytising.
• Fundamentalist Christianity is quite openly (little L) libertarian individualist. They strongly believe that conversion and faith are individual choices and responsibilities, and are resultantly very comfortable with libertarian indvidualism. The vast majority who oppose abortion, oppose it not for religious reasons per se, but for the same reason some (many?) here do; because we believe a new person exists when new DNA is formed, not at some arbitrary point in pregnancy.
The only difference between what most of these people believe and what the typical person here on Samizdata believes is that the Bible is literally true. You and I might find that an incompatable combination. But, I also find your faith in atheism to be at some level incompatable with rational thought. With the exception of some blind spots, atheists are very capable of rational thought and action. My personal belief is that agnosticism is the only rational way for humans to interact with each other. Perhaps you can accept that as a ground rule, I don’t know.
Woops “plague” should have been “plaque”.
Was that Freudian?
Europeans, please help us. We Americans are being forced to go to church and pray. We’re forced to vote republican and learn to shoot guns. Please send help. We’ve been thinking for ourselves and it’s beginning to overcome us all. It’s not easy keeping up with a booming economy and free speech and have a family life too. Please tell us what to do. Oh, the humanities.
Redneck Gun-totting Jesus Freak
Thanks for the clarification about Channel 4.
Non-Americans should know what intolerance awaits people like this, when we Christians get wind of them. Even in this day & age, an American citizen who has done nothing more than refuse to give assent to the prevailing religious ethos in this country, can still walk out of a store, go to his car, and find… a religious tract tucked under his windshield.
As others have pointed out, but which people like Guy have ignored, the objection many of us have to this program is not the portrayal of fringe fundamentalist Christians (which seemed accurate enough), but rather the insinuation that these beliefs are the driving force behind US foreign policy.
And that is what makes this program batshit insane. To my experience, many Europeans are already seriously misinformed about President Bush’s religious beliefs, and false comments such as when it was claimed that “God told him to go into Iraq” gain huge traction as a result. Programs such as this one, which dishonestly imply without any basis in fact that America’s actions are driven by irrational and fundamentalist Christianity, do two things: One, they increase distrust of and misunderstanding towards, the American Christian community and Two, they serve to increase the already disturbing levels of Anti-Americanism. Neither of these outcomes are particularly desirable.
I really am getting quite tired of documentaries that do little else than put forth deranged conspiracy theories to please the ignorant. Where are all the real documentaries, the ones which report on facts and not theories?
false comments such as when it was claimed that “God told him to go into Iraq” gain huge traction as a result.
Was that in the programme? If so I missed it.
Are you seriously suggesting that American policies, foreign and domestic, are not influenced by evangelical views, despite the religious right being a patently well-organised lobby? That would be very odd.
If evangelicalism does wield some influence, then it’s important for us outsiders to try and understand how much influence and what model of the world it is being applied to.
Guy Herbert “If evangelicalism does wield some influence, then it’s important for us outsiders to try and understand how much influence and what model of the world it is being applied to.”
I agree, but this programme produced no evidence, just made the assertion that end-timers were driving policy.
They did not name a single lawmaker as holding these views, but kept referring to “powerful people”.
That the programme stated as fact that Bush had the word of God in his ear over Afghanistan & Iraq is not surprising given that a Google of “Bush God Iraq” will produce as top hit a link to the BBC programme that made this claim. Subsequent denials by White House staff & the fact that the supposed Bush statement to Palestinian leaders had gone through translation(s) are ignored by the likes of Channel4.
Guy, I seriously doubt these views effect US policy any where near as much as moral/philosophical viewpoints effect general European policies. THere is in fact, far more aggressiveness from other parts of the spectrum in Europe than even the greatest Euro fantasy of what happens here.
Knowing “what model of the world it is being applied to” is a reasonable desire, and to this end I tried to give you some of the commonalities that apply across an extremely diverse population.
I would like to help you gain a better knowledge, but there are some things that from over there may be difficult for you to understand. There is no monolithic anything outside of the Catholic church. Even the Southern Baptist Convention is so diverse that from congregation to congregation may bear little similarity of what is or is not acceptable behaviour. Something else to keep in mind is that people can hold a belief in the ‘end times’ and at the same time, not believe any action can, or should, be taken to effect this beyond personal spiritual preparation. I find much more to worry about in people of the European religion that has found some traction here, who believe that man and technology is evil and needs to be purged from the earth.
Another thing that may be hard to accept from an MSM fed perspective, is that Christianity is very passive by comparison with social ‘religion’ and believes that change is brought about within one’s self. Not by external force. This is why most Christianity, at least in America, is compatible with libertarian ideals and the Euro/social religion is not.
I will try my best to answer specific questions if you have any. Trying to explain this to you has helped me to realize how difficult it is to convey an accurate picture. I don’t know how to convey attitudes to you except to give you an example. My dad worked for over two decades in an evangelical mission after having attended a very fundamentalist college. At that point he transferred to a very secular job as a buyer and was surrounded by profanity on a daily basis. Far from the reaction you might expect, he said “Well, they’ve chosen the topic, it’s a good time for me to follow up with some information.” This is what’s called ‘witnessing’ and he was quite effective.
Let me know what specific questions/concerns you have and I’ll do my best.
President Bush is a Methodist, Mrs Clinton is a Methodist.
Why is President Bush presented, by the media, as a religious fanatic and Mrs Clinton not so presented?
As for the type of Methodist – I believe that both people are antiCalvinist (i.e. Wesleyan) Methodists.
As for the Bush family, the President’s father (President George Herbert Walker Bush) is Episcopalian (Anglian) and his brother J.E. Bush is a Roman Catholic.