A shadow looms large over America and what’s more, the world. It is neither radical jihadist or Islamic movements, nor neo-Nazism or neo-Fascism, rather extreme evangelical Christianity.
All across the country extreme evangelicals are engaging in warfare against secular society. In a New York Times article regarding the push by evangelicals to hijack school boards and alter the curricula of school districts nation wide, Don McLeroy, who sits on the Texas school board, said, “There are two basic facts about man … He was created in the image of God, and he is fallen.”
McLeroy advocates the teaching of intelligent design next to evolution, inclusion of the references to America’s “Christian” roots, amongst other extreme evangelical positions. Essentially, McLeroy, like the broader extreme evangelical movement, rejects modernity and the empirical scientific method.
Referring back to McLeroy’s comments, one must seriously question the sanity of an individual who believes mankind is fundamentally flawed and, in accordance with extreme evangelical dogma, the only cure is a bloody rapture.
Extreme evangelicals support not only an end-times paradigm in theory, but they actively attempt to bring about its early occurrence. Their support for Israel extends only so far as to hasten the Rapture, and the likely extermination of most Jews thereafter.
How can one seriously not believe that, if the overriding concern for extreme evangelicals is the end of the world, they should be trusted with preserving the world in the long term? They believe that the Rapture could occur at any moment and prepare accordingly.
Beyond just their actions in the U.S., extreme evangelicals spread their message of intolerance across the world. The recent Ugandan legislation, which not only supports the death penalty for participants in homosexual activity but also criminalizes the act of advocating for gay rights, was supported by external extreme evangelical lobby groups with ties in the U.S.
The movement also is anathema to other religions exerting any religious influence in the U.S. For example, when Rajan Zed became the first Hindu clergyman to give the morning Senate invocation, protesters, said to belong to the Christian right anti-abortion group Operation Save America, condemned it as “an abomination,” and “false prayer,” according to The Times of India.
So to paint a more concise picture of the extreme evangelical world view; they fear, loathe and want the destruction of modern science, oppose inclusion of other faith groups in the public forum, are vehemently anti-gay, overtly anti-Muslim, and seem to want to come dancing with bells on in hopes for the end of the world.
They await the end of the world gleefully. That should be terrifying for the average American, their other extreme views aside. If left unchecked, this extreme evangelical movement, by no means a small minority at over 22 percent of the American population, will prove the undoing of modern society.
They want the end of times now; I just want to make it until the end of the semester.
Reach Max at maximilian.feldhake@asu.edu
