Skipping Towards Armageddon: (Exposes the Left Behind Series)

[RamboLiberal]

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=1932360964&itm=1

Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire

FROM THE PUBLISHER
The most effective message yet found by the hijackers of mainstream religion is Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of apocalyptic Christian novels. This wide-ranging study examines the books and the empire behind them. Author Michael Standaert contextualizes the Left Behind phenomenon by probing millennial thinking across cultures, from pre-Christian times to the present, and tracing the evolution of militant evangelism in the U.S., uncovering the links between fundamentalist religious figures and mainstream right-wing politicians through organizations like the Moral Majority. Skipping Toward Armageddon rips the lid off the Left Behind books' ideological underpinnings, showing how LaHaye uses them to advance the foreign and domestic policy goals Religious Right, from fomenting Middle East violence to promoting homophobia and xenophobia. The book is a timely cautionary tale, revealing that these best-selling books are not simply harmless thrillers written from an evangelical Christian perspective but a tool in a fanatical group's agenda.

[MountainLaurel]

1. Sounds interesting.

Will have to go look for it. I've avoided the LB books deliberately: I spent a childhood attending a fundie church and still have the panic attacks about the Rapture to prove it. But in the vein of "Know thy enemy," this sounds like a useful work.

[bhikkhu]

2. among friends we call it Lahayism...

the notion that whatever ills we may have inflicted upon the planet are unimportant, as all will soon be made as "new". Or more perniciously - that somehow the greater the destruction, the sooner the rebirth, so that each new global tragedy, whether naturally occuring or deliberately caused, brings us closer to the inevitable judgement and paradise.

[Democrats_win]

3. Great info thanks. Book's title is clever play on Bork's book:"Slouching

Towards Gomorrah." A famous advice columnist wrote another book called "Skipping Towards Gomorrah" which is a fun response to Bork's book and is a very good book. I look forward to reading this more serious book: "Skipping Towards Armegeddon" and how it explains how they are using religion for political gain, a subject that I find very timely.

[bhikkhu]

5. which is a likely clever play upon Yeats

"Second Coming" :

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[RoyGBiv]

4. Cool ...

Possibilities for Bookstore Vigilantism here.