Armageddon

Armageddon

 Gerry OShea

End-of-time scenarios are part of the Judeo-Christian narrative. Evangelical Christians expect a final showdown, a great battle between the godly forces of righteousness and the multitude of the damned representing the world’s depravities with Satan himself slouching around prompting rebellion and promoting hatred and pillage.

The prophet Daniel who lived a few hundred years before Christ is deemed to have foreseen the massive destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as an absolutely horrendous event. Some of the early Christian writers felt that only the Latin language could adequately convey the enormity of his vision: abominatio desolationis stans in loco sancto – abomination of desolation standing in the holy place is the rather pallid English translation.

In later centuries - right up to the present - Daniel’s fierce words are used by some theologians and preachers to predict impending disasters that can only be understood in payoff terms where sinners would get their comeuppance at the hands of an angry deity.

Today, some evangelicals joined by a coterie of conservative Catholics share a sense of impending cataclysmic events resulting from God’s anger at the evildoers of the world. They preach the need for repentance before the galloping biblical end times that will engulf all humanity.

Readers may wonder if Daniel somehow dreamed about the climate crisis facing the world today when experts tell us that we are only short years away from facing unsustainable temperatures and multiple cities submerged in water – awful but realistic predictions grounded in real science.

 Way-out ideas of apocalyptic happenings directed by a deity fuming about people’s sinfulness are central to one version of Christianity. In this Manichean world what is at stake is a ferocious conflict between absolute good and total evil while an irate god is portrayed as running out of patience with his creation.

Today’s cataclysmic verbiage is closely associated with the QAnon movement which gleefully predicts an imminent massive purge of liberals in America because of their alleged sexual predations. According to the mysterious Q, given credence by about 15% of Americans, liberals, led by Hilary Clinton and George Soros, sacrifice children after sexually abusing them, with stories of the culprits sucking the blood of their victims. The only problem here centers on finding even one of these victims of liberal terror.

Recently, Donald Trump, seen by most of his religious followers as the man who will lead the drive for biblical victory, visited a restaurant in Miami where supporters swarmed around to lay hands on him and to pray for his success.

That same evening in a televised statement the former president railed against “the misfits and Marxists” planning to bring him down while denouncing special prosecutor Jack Smith as a “deranged lunatic” and a “thug” and a “raging uncontrolled Trump hater.”

Mr. Trump has also decried federal agencies, especially the FBI and Department of Justice, for “running illegal psychological warfare campaigns against the American people.” In the high point of this speech, he expounded a clear revival theme: “We have a country in serious decline. If the communists get away with this --- they will ramp up their persecution of Christians.     We must end it permanently and we must end it immediately.”

 Michael Flynn, a devoted protégé of the former president who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about trafficking in classified intelligence, asserted in one of his homilies that his boss’s cause is sacred, “this spiritual war we are engaged in --- this good versus evil --- an America First versus a globalist elite.”

Around 80% of white evangelicals are firmly rooted in Republican politics and largely support Trump’s re-election over the other candidates competing in that party’s primaries. By comparison, the former vice-president, Mike Pence, a serious born-again fundamentalist, lags far behind his former boss whose affinity with Christian theology can best be described as tactical.

Slightly more than half of white Catholics opted for Trump the last times out, and, by all accounts, the allegiance of the bishops exceeded that percentage. The big issue that cemented that support centered on his promise to appoint conservative judges who would reverse the 1973 Roe decision, which left decisions about pregnancy termination to the woman and her doctor.

He delivered on this promise and so he is assured of a warm welcome when he knocks on the doors of the substantial pro-life community which defines close to 25% of Americans.

In a recent edition of the prestigious Jesuit magazine, America, they published a diagram which highlights the answers given by a representative sampling of Americans to the question: Should abortion be illegal or legal in most or all cases? 

The results were clear, 62% favor legal access with 36% on the other side. Even among over 65’s the affirmative vote reached 56%. The approval of those identifying as Republicans dropped to 40% and the yes vote by white evangelical Protestants, not surprisingly, sunk to 23%.

True to these statistics, in the midterm elections last November the Dobbs decision reversing Roe assured a big turnout and ensured good results for Democrats, the pro-choice party which campaigned vigorously for laws that honor a woman’s right to choose in this crucial area.

So, the QAnon messaging on abortion supported by Evangelical Christians and most of the Catholic hierarchy may not have the impact they imagine. 

Reflecting on the priorities evident in the prophetic pronouncements in the Old Testament and by Christ in his sermons recorded in the New Testament, it is clear that their main concern focuses on the disgraceful treatment of the poor and marginalized.

 From this perspective, there is a glaring irony in the fact that Republicans in Congress, while marching behind the Christian banner, oppose every bill that is designed to alleviate the disgraceful plight of the tens of millions of Americans living in dire poverty. 

If the NATO-backed Ukrainian forces continue to push the invading Russian army back to their own country, will Putin resort to using nuclear weapons rather than accept defeat? That horrible but realistic scenario could usher in unimaginable destruction, a modern Armageddon. Abominatio desolationis in our time.

Gerry OShea blogs at weustbetalking.com