Bill Moyers on Climate Change, Christian Fundamentalists, and the 'Rapture Index'

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers -- who retired last week after three decades as a TV reporter, producer, and host -- received the Global Environment Citizen Award earlier this month from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. In his acceptance speech, Moyers described the challenges journalists face in trying to tell environmental stories "without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear."

He also described an even harder challenge: "to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today." Said Moyers: "One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal."

To make his point, he told a story that, to most environmentalists, will likely border on the absurd, though it is very, very real. It focuses on the mindset and rationale of a large swath of the American populace when it comes to environmental issues.

Moyers' account, excerpted below (the entire speech, highly recommended, can be downloaded as a PDF document here) should be a wake-up call for companies, activists, communicators, and just plain folks seeking to effect U.S. action to mitigate catastrophic climate change. It strongly suggests a new set of strategies may be in order. (I welcome your suggestions as to what, exactly, those strategies might be.)

An excerpt follows:

In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right – the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the Messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed – an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 – just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer – ”The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

Comments

[Andrew]

Well, here's a thought: either de-couple the environmental movement from the Democratic party, or de-couple the Democratic party from its unpopular far-left spokespeople and political leaders.

There are plenty of libertarians and conservatives who care about the environment, but simply will not vote for politicians with a domestic agenda that smacks of socialism.

The Democratic party could pull many of those libertarians and conservatives away from the Republican party if it de-coupled its social goals (most of which are universally shared) from socialist means (most of which are unpopular).

It could also nominate someone like Joe Lieberman, who is appealing to many libertarians and conservatives, and who would be good on the environment, instead of someone like John Kerry, who is not. Lieberman could have gotten elected.

Sadly, I don't expect any of the above to happen any time soon.