A few more quibbles with David Gates' Newsweek cover story on "The Pop Prophets," Left Behind authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. One of my complaints was already voiced in the comments to the previous post. Andrew Cory noted this odd assertion in Gates' article: Left Behind gives believers an equivalent of such secular sagas as the Lord of the Rings books: a self-contained, ordered world with a wealth of detail in which a reader can become blissfully immersed, and... Read more
Via Eric Alterman I see that the cover story of the May 24 Global Weekly Newsweek is a long profile of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins by David Gates. Gates does a good job in many ways, offering many insights into the Left Behind authors that the two men seem to have missed themselves. But he has one major stumble and a few points with which I want to quibble. The first is the comic-book illustration that accompanies the online... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 46-48 Finally, 30 pages after the mass disappearances have occurred, Rayford Steele looks up at an airport television and the reader gets to see some scenes from the worldwide Rapture. From around the globe came wailing mothers, stoic families, reports of death and destruction. Dozens of stories included eyewitnesses who had seen loved ones and friends disappear before their eyes. Okay, it turns out the reader doesn’t actually get to see these scenes. We’re actually just told... Read more
Via Atrios, we read Rick Perlstein's Village Voice report on a meeting between various White House staffers and representatives of the Apostolic Congress — a Pentecostal group that's pretty fringe-y and esoteric, even by Pentecostal standards. Perlstein correctly points out that this splinter-group of a splinter-group of Christians has some frightening notions of foreign policy derived from their frightening (and heretical) apocalyptic theology. But he also probably overstates the fear factor here — this isn't a group that's influencing the... Read more
The following is from an essay, “A Reply to Professor Haldane,” which was published after C.S. Lewis’ death and can be found, most recently, in the collection On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. Lewis’ comments were brought to my attention by bellatrys in comments to this post, and I’m cutting and pasting the quote from this Theologyweb page. The Professor Haldane to whom Lewis is replying had written a Marxist critique of Lewis’ science fiction trilogy. Lewis’ response rejects... Read more
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs, where at least three priests have been accused of sexual abuse, is headed by Bishop Michael Sheridan. Sheridan, The Denver Post reports, has recently found a way for his diocese to make national headlines about something other than the buggering of adolescent boys: The bishop of Colorado's second-largest Roman Catholic diocese has issued a pastoral letter saying Catholics cannot receive Communion if they vote for politicians who support abortion rights, stem-cell research, euthanasia... Read more
So yesterday I walked the 663 steps from my apartment to the local McDonald's to try the new Go Active Happy Meal for grownups. You get a salad and a bottle of Dasani (Coca Cola's bottled tapwater — it's filtered!), plus a pedometer and a little booklet encouraging you to walk more. First, the salad: I chose the "Fiesta Salad." It's a pile of iceberg lettuce about half the size of your head with a few lonely shreds of romaine... Read more
Promoting democracy abroad has become a cornerstone of American foreign policy — or at least of American foreign policy rhetoric. This is a mistake. Democracy is, of course, a Good Thing. I am eager to see it spread to the billions of people around the world who do not enjoy it today. But democracy is not of primary importance — it does not come first. It is secondary — both in importance and chronologically — to the establishment of basic... Read more
The 1993 movie Falling Down doesn't quite add up. Ebbe Roe Smith's screenplay wants to explore some interesting ideas about the relationship between violence and impotence, but director Joel Schumacher — the hack who made Batman and Robin — is much more interested in revelling in that violence than in understanding it. Still, no movie with Robert Duvall can be all bad — and Michael Douglas again shows how good he can be when he's playing a jerk. Falling Down... Read more
Today's political hero is Delaware state Rep. Deborah Hudson, R-Fairthorne, for saying the following: "The General Assembly made a ridiculous decision and approved the three-tiered diploma. … I apologize. I voted for that. It was in haste. We didn't know what was going to happen." The three-tiered diploma refers to a recent Delaware initiative to enforce "standards" and "accountability" in the state's high schools. Based on their performance on a standardized achievement test taken in the 10th grade, students would... Read more
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