The planet is dying, and people want power. These intertwined truths are the root of the division and violence of modern politics. People want to be in control in the coming apocalypse.
On one end of the political spectrum, some see the onslaught of climate-related horrors – increasingly extreme weather, food scarcity, disease, forced migration – and realize that business as usual won’t work. The world as we know it is coming to an end, in a very literal, measurable sense.
Then, there are those who see the apocalypse in spiritual terms. They believe the End Times approaches, one of suffering and blood from which a Holy Remnant will be spared. This apocalypse, however, will not be caused by the avarice and gluttony of our capitalistic consumption but by so-called sexual depravity and the end of “traditional” values. This apocalypse, they believe, will wash away the sinners and lead them to the Promised Land—an Unholy Alliance.
–Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1887) painting by Viktor Vasnetsov.
In most religions, the hereafter – the Promised Land – is an eternal place of peace and happiness, a reward for a life well lived. Early shamans realized that to maintain control, they had to promise something beyond the veil. Thousands of years later, these promises still hold sway.
The Evangelical movement teaches that if you are not saved by the blood of Jesus, you will not enter Heaven. Worse, you are equal to an infidel, just as Islamic radicals feel about non-Muslims.
Evangelicals believe they must die to reach the Promised Land. They dismiss any notion that we should care about the Earth and our physical realm because this is merely a temporary home. Why worry about the environment, future generations, or other living beings? We’ll soon be in Heaven. Besides, whatever damage is done to the physical will be restored when Christ returns.
It’s like a collective psychosis has taken over much of the American Christian Church. It echoes the QAnon phenomenon in many ways, not just because it shares the same belief in demon possession and the idea that Democrats are sexual deviants looking to corrupt children. Both Evangelicals and the QAnon faithful believe something “big” is coming to wipe out loathsome evil (which just so happens to be their political opposition) and reestablish a righteous leader. Some believe they will have to be martyrs for the cause, but, in truth, most would rather kill for it.
Another trait QAnon and Evangelicalism have in common is an insatiable hunger to draw more people into the flock by any means possible. The QAnon movement (like Evangelicals) reminds me of the Borg in Star Trek: an aggressive, relentless hive mind that must continuously consume new members to survive. And, like the Borg, individualistic thought is squashed. While QAnon believers label themselves “free thinkers,” believing they’re the only ones who see the truth of reality, they are anything but. There have already been deep schisms in the movement less than five years after it began.
Rights Under Fire!…
LGBTQ people are the current target of a religious movement that sees any societal change as proof that the world is ending. With the LGBTQ community having won some hard-fought battles for civil rights in the last few decades, there’s now a backlash led by Evangelicals.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has made it clear that gay marriage and sexual freedom are under attack. Even as he was gutting Roe v. Wade to strip the right to an abortion from millions of Americans – a significant, decades-in-the-making victory for the Religious Right – he was making it known that LGBTQ rights were next on the chopping block.
Republicans will giddily champion the end of gay marriage in America. In a recent House vote to enshrine the right to marriage for all, 157 Republicans voted in opposition. The bill passed with the votes of all the Democrats in the House and 47 Republicans. That 47 decent Republican politicians still exist is, itself, a headline, but the fact that, seven years after the legalization of gay marriage, a vast majority of Republicans still oppose it is disturbingly par for the course. Will this bill get through the Senate? Who knows, but with a much slimmer Democratic majority, it certainly isn’t a foregone conclusion.
Justice Thomas in reference to Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception), Lawrence (same-sex marriage), and Obergefell (same-sex marriage)
Having thoroughly captured the GOP, the Evangelicals are winning. At no time in the last four decades have the Christofascists of America been more powerful or more successful. (If you think that term is too harsh, know that one of the most prominent voices in the movement, Matt Walsh, calls himself a “Theocratic fascist.” He can claim it’s tongue-in-cheek, but the label fits.)
Despite recent victories, Christian Fundamentalists won’t be sated until the return of Christ, even if it takes bringing about a literal apocalypse.
Mass Hysteria
Where did this collective insanity come from? I’d argue that the social changes of the 1960s broke the minds of many conservative Christians.
Before the gay rights movement was big enough to be on their radar, Evangelicals feared racial equality the most. Racism and oppression of dark-skinned people have always been present in America, with the Church both offering religious validity to this doctrine of oppression and fighting to maintain it.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation – one of the shameful tragedies – that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour, in Christian America.” Little has changed since then. After both Emancipation and Brown v. Board of Education, wherein Black children were allowed to go to school with white children, Evangelicals believed – feared – the government would force them to share their church pews with non-white members.
There have, of course, been numerous progressive Christians throughout this nation’s history who have stood against racism. However, the institution of the Church consistently fought for the status quo. So, when the civil rights movement upturned centuries of racial hierarchy (or, at least, attempted to), it wasn’t just that the Church opposed it. They saw it as the end of the world.
This is why, since the 1970s, Evangelicals have been obsessed with the return of Jesus and the coming apocalypse. For them, racial, gender, and sexual equality are all harbingers of the End Times. In their eyes, this world – one in which people of color can be equal to white people and homosexuals are open and out – is irredeemably evil. The only way to make it right is for Jesus to return and wash away the demons in a river of blood.
Until that time, Evangelicals are prepared to refight the Civil War. They need their guns to overpower Biden and his “evil forces,” like Hillary Clinton (whose “baby eaters” and “demonic overlords” want to eradicate the white race, according to some factions). The Evangelicals who control the white-wing Republican MAGA hats need that war to control (or eliminate) dark-skinned people and anyone who diverges from rigid heteronormativity.
And this is ultimately where we stand: Evangelicals prepared to kill – and be killed – in the name of Jesus, to usher in an apocalypse they see as inevitable. There is no saving the planet, no making the world a better place for future generations. As scientists, liberals, and reasonable people of faith seek to create a better world for the next generations and those to come, Evangelicals are prepared to burn it all down to gain their place in Heaven.
And they’ll take us all with them in the process.