L.B.: Faith vs. Reason

Left Behind, pg. 237

Chloe Steele is a bit hesitant to embrace her father's newfound apocalyptic faith. "I have to be intellectually honest with myself," she says.

The implication is that her father's premillennial dispensationalist sect seems intellectually dishonest. The word "intellectually" is the key there for LaHaye and Jenkins. They come from the visceral, experiential strain of evangelicalism, so for them "intellectual" is always bad. Their particular PMD variant of this strain arises from, and relies heavily upon, anti-intellectualism.

Our authors, therefore, regard Chloe's phrase -- "intellectually honest" -- as an oxymoron. Anything intellectual, they believe, is fundamentally dishonest. There is, for them, no such thing as sophia apart from sophistry.

Chloe's "intellectual" objections are never explained or described. The authors cannot imagine what the substance of such objections might be. Nor do they care. If those objections are intellectual, then they are anti-faith, and that is all that they or their readers need to know.

Evangelicals are hardly alone in believing that faith and the intellect are incompatible. This misconception is quite popular among people who misunderstand one or the other (or both). Miracle on 34th Street was on cable the other night. Edmund Gwenn is terrific, but I still can't abide that film's refrain: "Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to."

No. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. "Believing when common sense tells you not to" is something else. That's called "denial." The former involves belief in something that cannot be proved true, the latter involves belief in something that can be -- or has been -- proved false. The former requires a vital intellect, the latter necessarily regards the intellect with fear and suspicion.*

Mix in some anger with that fear and suspicion and you get Rayford's reaction to his daughter's comment about intellectual honesty:

It was all Rayford could do to stay calm. Had he been this pseudosophisticated at that age? Of course he had. He had run everything through that maddening intellectual grid -- until recently, when the supernatural came crashing through his academic pretense. But like the cabbie had said, you'd have to be blind not to see the light now, no matter how educated you thought you were.

We can only give the authors partial credit for this impressively anti-intellectual paragraph. They managed to work in dismissive references to sophistication, intellect, academia and education, but of course for full credit, they would also need to have mentioned chardonnay, brie, the French and Ivy-League elites.

This is the first we've seen or heard of Rayford Steele's "academic pretense." (I'm picturing him in the cockpit, wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, smoking a pipe and explaining to his copilot that altitude is merely a social construct.) Our hero is certainly pretentious, but his is the pose of someone who's trying to pretend he's Steve McQueen, not of someone who's trying to pretend he's Stephen Hawking.

Rayford's "academic pretense" is only retro-introduced here in order to note that it had been swept away "when the supernatural came crashing through." This is a major theme of Left Behind, and the characteristic that distinguishes it from most other evangelical apocalyptic fiction.

Most such stories -- think of the literal cult-film A Thief in the Night -- are mainly concerned with trying to scare people into Heaven.** They function as hellfire-and-brimstone sermons, complete with altar call, except instead of telling people they're going to Hell, these stories tell people that Hell is coming to them.

I'm not a fan of this scared-straight approach to evangelism, but at least it arises from heartfelt good intentions. The brimstone preachers may have a disturbing notion of the character of God, but given that notion as their premise, they're acting out of genuine concern for others. Left Behind, by contrast, is less interested in saving unbelievers from Hell than in "proving" that they're wrong. And since they're wrong, they deserve what they're going to get.

For all its faults, the message of A Thief in the Night was something like, "Please, repent and save yourselves from suffering and Hell." A pervasive message of LB is something more like, "You'll see. We're right and you intellectuals are wrong. Neener, neener. Have fun in Hell."

One of the stranger things about LB is the way the authors seem to think that their novel, their work of fiction, serves as "proof" of their claims. They seem to think it not only illustrates, but demonstrates, that faith conquers reason and that Scofield's notes are canonical rather than heretical. They've created a fictional reality in which their weird theories are true. In this fictional world, all who disagree appear as fools. Taking potshots at one's opponents through fiction is nothing new -- the political disputes of Dante's Florence are immortalized in the Divine Comedy. But Dante didn't seem to think that he had settled the argument by condemning his opponents to a fictional Inferno.

Chloe Steele is trying to remain neutral in the supposed war between faith and reason. Such neutrality, the authors suggest, is untenable. Chloe, like everyone, must choose sides. And when faith conquers reason -- when the supernatural crashes through academic pretense -- you'd better be on the right side. Or else.

You'll see.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* On the subject of anti-intellectualism in American evangelicalism, let me recommend yet again Mark Noll's wonderful The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Here's a small taste from Noll, in which he in turn recommends two other excellent books on the subject:

Recently two very good, but also very disquieting, books have illustrated the weaknesses of evangelical intellectual life. Both are from historians who teach at the University of Wisconsin. Ronald Numbers's book The Creationists (Knopf, 1992) explains how a popular belief known as "creationism" -- a theory that the earth is ten thousand or less years old -- has spread like wildfire in [the 20th] century from its humble beginnings in the writings of Ellen White, the founder of Seventh-day Adventism, to its current status as a gospel truth embraced by tens of millions of Bible-believing evangelicals and fundamentalists around the world. Paul Boyer's When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Harvard University Press, 1992) documents the remarkable popularity among American Bible-believing Christians -- again mostly evangelicals and fundamentalists -- of radical apocalyptic speculation. Boyer concludes that Christian fascination with the end of the world has existed for a very long time, but also that recent evangelical fixation on such matters -- where contemporary events are labeled with great self-confidence as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies heralding the End of Time -- has been particularly intense. ...

Both Numbers and Boyer are first-rate scholars who write with sympathy for their subjects. Neither is an antireligious zealot. But their books tell a sad tale: Numbers describes how a fatally flawed interpretive scheme of the sort that no responsible Christian teacher in the history of the church ever endorsed before [the 20th] century came to dominate he minds of American evangelicals on scientific questions; Boyer discusses how an equally unsound hermeneutic has been used with wanton abandon to dominate 20th-century evangelical thinking about world affairs. ...

They share in common a picture of an evangelical world almost completely adrift in using the mind for careful thought about the world. As the authors describe them, evangelicals -- bereft of self-criticism, intellectual subtlety, or an awareness of complexity -- are blown about by every wind of apocalyptic speculation and enslaved to the cruder spirits of populist science. In reality, Numbers and Boyer show even more -- they show millions of evangelicals thinking they are honoring the Scriptures, yet interpreting the Scriptures on questions of science and world affairs in ways that fundamentally contradict the deeper, broader and historically well-established meanings of the Bible itself.

** A strange side-effect of spending so much time with Left Behind has been an increased appreciation for earlier, less-awful works of apocalyptic fiction. Before reading LB, I regarded Thief and its sequels as inconsequential, inept pieces of dreck. But by getting everything wrong, LB illustrates that Thief wasn't actually as bad as it could have been. By resetting the bar so much lower, LB enhances the reputations of its predecessors. It's kind of like the way we're having to reconsider the presidency of George H.W. Bush.

Comments

[cjmr]

I can't believe I have the opportunity to make first comment--and I have nothing to say!

[Robert]

What's interesting here is how intellectualism is seen only as a barrier to faith. Analyzing the Event can only lead to the conclusion that it was caused by an intelligent agency with near-limitless power. No natural cause can possibly explain the selectivity of the vanishings.

The power of logic also tells us that the agency behind the Event is at best indifferent to human welfare and may be actively hostile. It seems unlikely that the power to selectively vanish human beings from across the planet could not have been used in a staged fashion in order to limit collateral casualties.

That would have been an interesting argument. "You say it's God? Well screw God! He took Mom and Ray. He's responsible for all those people who died in plane crashes and car accidents. You think you have the answers? Well answer this one Dad, why is God so horrible and incompetent?"

[Mouse]

[That would have been an interesting argument. "You say it's God? Well screw God! He took Mom and Ray. He's responsible for all those people who died in plane crashes and car accidents. You think you have the answers? Well answer this one Dad, why is God so horrible and incompetent?"]

That would have been very interesting, Robert, if the authors had thought of it. They seem to think the instant people figure it's of God, they'll instantly fall to their knees praising God. None of the characters upon finding out that this is of God decide to say "To Hell with God." This would make much more sense because who really wants to worship such a heartless bastard? If given the choice between kowtowing to a heartless bastard of a god and going to Hell, I'd pick Hell every time. Least the devil's consistent.

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

It's true that Left Behind and its ilk and chiefly best at making a great many other works of bad "Christian" popular fiction look much better in comparison. But Left Behind is in a vast company not only in its anti-intellectual tenor (which ignores that Jesus, following Hebrew scripture, said, "love the Lord your God with all your MIND" -- which I'd say we do best by using it.

[Zorya]

I just wanted to tell you how much I have enjoyed your deconstruction of the LB books. I just barely forced myself to finish the first one and couldn't bear to allocate any more of my time to the sequels. I have recommended your analysis to my 20 yr old son as a primer on How to Determine if the Book You Have Written is a Stinker.

[ako]

This would make much more sense because who really wants to worship such a heartless bastard? If given the choice between kowtowing to a heartless bastard of a god and going to Hell, I'd pick Hell every time. Least the devil's consistent.

See, here's the logic as I figure it;

1) No matter how unjust or cruel God appears to be, he is by defintion, just, merciful, loving, etc. So therefore, whatever he does is fair. If you don't percieve it that way, it's because you're bad. If the Premillenial Dispensationalist interpretation of the Bible seems to paint a cruel picture, it can't because they're interpreting it wrong, or because God's being cruel. It has to be because your sense of right and wrong are so warped that you can't see justice in front of your face. To think otherwise would be suggesting that the Bible was unclear and difficult to interpret (if you can get suckered in to a bad interpretation once, who's to say it can't happen again?), and that it was at least possible that it wasn't actually true. And this particular stripe of Christianity seems afraid to even let that thought into their brain. It's a bit like crimestop in 1984. If you can't let the bad concepts into your mind, you can't fall for them.

2) There is nothing you can do against an apparently evil Christian God. You will burn in Hell for all eternity without relief. There is no hope of inspiring pity, or using persuasion. Because the fundamental rules of the universe are that you deserve eternal torture for not loving him prior to death. You get no moral credit, becase he IS morality. No one will ever successfully rebel, because they can only do what he allows. Sort of like Big Brother on a cosmic scale. He knows all, sees all, is supremely concerned that you have the correct frame of mind, and worries far more about heretical beliefs than guilty self-indulgence. He allows you a brief run of acting up and causing trouble, so that when he comes to punish you, there's easy evidence of how bad you are. The only things that matter are: loving him, fearing him, and having the correct beliefs about him. If you do this, he may let you be used or hurt for a while, but that's his right. At least you won't get the bad consequences, and unlike Big Brother, God promises rewards. If you don't do these things, aren't good, then you get the worst thing in the world. Room 101, except forever.

I've been pondering the anti-intellectualism among some evangelicals myself. Although I do understand that Jesus did go to save the common men and women and children, the ones the Pharisees and scribes wouldn't touch, that doesn't mean that he loves intelligent and questioning people less than less intelligent and more obedient ones (heck, He may have well created them that way), strong-willed people less than weak-willed ones, working moms less than housewives, etc.

I wonder if the whole notion of a woman who has a brain and a uterus (to paraphrase a quote by Colorado congresswoman Patricia Schroder) scares the hell out of LaHaye and Jenkins. Especially because they could get together with intellectual husbands (or lesbian lovers) and make babies (naturally or via sperm donor) and make intellectual children. That's what my mom did. I guess in L&H's viewpoint, being raised by a single mom pursuing her PHD and eventually becoming a professor would be the equivalent of being raised in a lesbian coven in Castro, San Fransisco.

In this sense it reminds me of the worst of C.S. Lewis' sexism prior to meeting Joy Davidson Grisham, as expressed in That Hideous Strength. One of the points of that stupid book was to say that women are mediocre scholars at best (something that totally pissed me off because I was an English major like the heroine) and should stay home and have sex with their husbands in order to honor Venus--oops, sorry, the divine spirit of love or whatever--and make babies. It angered me so much I actually threw the book at the wall at one point. The thing about Lewis, though is that he met an intellectual woman (aforementioned Davidson) and apparently came around after that, if the way he portrayed women improved and became more complex as The Chronicles of Narnia progressed is any indication, apparently changed his mind and became less terrified of intelligent women.

Does anyone know here if L&H continue in this vein against women, especially intellectual ones like Chloe? (Come to think of it, it doesn't make sense for L&H to portray Chloe as an intellectual when they don't even say what her major is. Maybe it was something truly evil and diabolical like Physics or Modern Philosophy or Women's Studies or Multicultural Studies or evolution science.)

[82_Cygni]

P.S.--That was me who just posted the following. Notice also that I go by a shorter name now.

[hapax]

My very erudite spouse has published elsewhere about the motivations behind the Creationist attitude towards the Bible We came up with the notion of "Schroedinger's God" -- the terror of applying your intellect (through historical study, form criticism, anthropological analysis, etc.) to open the box of Scripture, lest you discover your God is dead in there.

Festinger's work in "When Prophecy Fails" may have come under severe methodological attack, but I think his fundamental insight is basically sound. When you mortgage everything (both metaphorically and literally) to back a particular belief system, the more reality contradicts your mental world, the STRONGER your commitment to your beliefs (up to a certain point). L&J's rebuttal to any challenge with a sort of smug hysterical insistence that "you'rewrongyou'rewrongyou'rewrongyou'rewrongIcan'tHEARyou" is absolutely typical of this sort of cognitive dissonance.

[e. nonee moose]

And when faith conquers reason -- when the supernatural crashes through academic pretense -- you'd better be on the right side. Or else.

You'll see.

I've never understood Christians who are gleefully happy about billions of people burning in hell forever. No pity, no compassion, no sympathy for the sinner at all. Just joy at the thought of being rewarded for being right even if it means everyone else must suffer for being the slightest bit wrong. I have to wonder if it's this guilt that somehow drives Calvinism. By believing people are 'predestined' sticky questions such as Is it just and righteous that a person who commits only one sin in his entire life be burned in Hell forever if he doesn't repent are avoided and any new ones raised can comfortably be dismissed as 'God's Will.'

[Alexela]

@Ako: 1) No matter how unjust or cruel God appears to be, he is by defintion, just, merciful, loving, etc. So therefore, whatever he does is fair.

I love the quote: "All true evil is committed by people convinced that they cannot do wrong."

The only things that matter are: loving him, fearing him, and having the correct beliefs about him. If you do this, he may let you be used or hurt for a while, but that's his right.

We have a word for people like that: "psychopath"... And I mean this in the very literal, absolute, and non-metaphorical sense of the word.

And then Happax talking about Festinger... it warms a social psychologists heart. Following on, some of the things that matters for dissonance are that it helps to have a public statement of the belief in question (oh, say, like writing a well known book), and it helps to have violation of the belief tied to a violation of your self concept... Can you imagine what L&J would have to accept about themselves if they believed a tenth of a percent of the things we say about them here? It would be soul destroying (in the very metaphorical, non-literal sense of the word). So really, they don't have a choice now. Their bubble has floated much too high to be safely popped.

[Col Bat Guano]

Doesn't their anti-intellectualism basically say "If you really think about it, God couldn't possibly exist. So stop thinking!"

[Mechagodzilla]

"Jesus, following Hebrew scripture, said, "love the Lord your God with all your MIND" -- which I'd say we do best by using it."

Ah, but there's the rub. Because following Jesus in the original scripture would require ignoring pretty much all of the teachings later modified by Paul of Tarsus, making Left Behind very nearly correct. Remember that Jesus said, in Matthew 5:17-20, that the laws of the old testament are mandatory until the end of the world. This is something that Paul directly contradicts with a happier worldview with less mass-executions.
Intellectual dishonesty, the topic here, is the practice of using comfortable falsehoods to argue a position that is not logically correct.

I really appreciate the work this site is doing, because LB is horribly stupid phenomenon, but it's somewhat dishonest to claim that LB doesn't fit into Jesus's teachings when you're actually refering to Paul's loose and oft-contradictory interpretations of those teachings.

I mean, there is some dissonance to be had in saying that the left behind series isn't as well-written and logically consistent as the bible it's based on, which tells us both to kill people of other religions (remember that Jesus says old-testament law is mandatory, as does God Himself in Numbers 15:15 and Deuteronomy 4:2) and to never, ever kill them (according to Paul, whose ability to override God's law is surely suspect).

It means it might be fun and games to mock LB for its misogyny and one-dimensional characters who react strangely to impossible events, and then reading - as allegorical fact* - the bible's stories of subservient women and people who go out of their way to piss off God (i.e. "God flew down from space and said never build a golden cow. Let's build a golden cow. Okay now we are all dead.").
Let alone poking fun at the inaccuracy of LB's predictions when Jesus himself estimated the end times as occurring somewhere around the year 100 AD, in Matthew 24:34.

It's important to note that LB isn't as much a bastardization of the bible as the average christian would expect, because that's fundamental to understand the authors. If you read the bible literally, or even just as a book with a consistant internal logic, you are going to have to ignore Paul. That's exactly what the "bad" christians, like Lafay and Friend do.

[Tim Lehnerer]

Years and years ago, there was a fantastic series of articles on Rapture movies on a now-vanished webzine called the Control Voice. For those of you who missed them the first time in 1999, here's the link to the first of three articles from archive.org (sadly, all the graphics are gone):

http://web.archive.org/web/19990508220613/www.ungh.com/control/features/rapture1.html

It appears that the second article is gone forever and IIRC the third was never posted at all. Sadness.

[New Duane]

They seem to think it not only illustrates, but demonstrates, that faith conquers reason and that Scofield's notes are canonical rather than heretical. They've created a fictional reality in which their weird theories are true.

When I was in a PMD Christian school, every now and then a Revelations-inspired story would go around that seemed to reinforce the notion of Armageddon right around the corner.

I'm not sure who made up these stories but they'd scare all the kids half to death and there'd inevitably be a rush of kids getting "saved" or "right with God". I remember one story - this would be have been the early '80s - that had someone attempting to cash a check and They wouldn't let him because he didn't have a mark on his forehead, or somesuch.

Ya know, NOW these memories invoke in me a kind of sheepish embarassment but on another level, it really tears me up that kids today - many, many more than back when - are STILL being terrorized by these PMD fuckers.

Someone has to stop the madness. It's not enough to point and laugh at them.

[Sue W]

How the hell does being intellectually honest make you "pseudosophisticated" anyway? I don't think the authors even know what the word means. They just like how the sound of it as a way to put down people who have the audacity to use their brains.

Rayford doesn't seem to have much faith, for any meaningful usage of the word. He gets all bent out of shape because Chloe doesn't just believe without questoin, because he's so afraid she won't get saved in time. Doesn't he trust God to take care of her as He sees fit?

[Chris]

"There is nothing you can do against an apparently evil Christian God. You will burn in Hell for all eternity without relief."
I'd still like to think I would take the Eugene Debs view -
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
If there is a hell, the only moral thing to do is volunteer for it. The only intellectual thing to do, mind you, is to say you're anxious to collaborate, and on the balance of probabilities I'd probably do that.

[Mnemosyne]

They seem to think the instant people figure it's of God, they'll instantly fall to their knees praising God. None of the characters upon finding out that this is of God decide to say "To Hell with God."

Which, not incidentallly, is the climax of Michael Tolkin's film The Rapture. It's really a terrific film if you're willing to sit back and let Tolkin tell his story. I know people who turned it off halfway through because it bothered them that the religion in the film is taken 100% seriously, but Tolkin follows it to its logical end and it's completely devestating.

[bulbul]

the terror of applying your intellect (through historical study, form criticism, anthropological analysis, etc.) to open the box of Scripture, lest you discover your God is dead in there.
Hasn't happened yet, but you'll be the first to know :o)
That being said, I'd like to point out that anti-intellectualism isn't cofined to the this particualr strand of the evangelical movement, but seems to be (at least to me) a firm part of the American culture. And thinking about this particular version of the chicken and egg dilemma, I'd have to say that since the culture beget the LB kind of evangelicalism... Well you get my point.
Anyone care to prove me wrong? Please?

when Jesus himself estimated the end times as occurring somewhere around the year 100 AD, in Matthew 24:34
Now who's playing fast and loose with the Scripture? :o)
KJV: "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."
Jesus did not specify any time, he spoke of "η γενεα αυτη", which could mean "this generation", "this race" or even "this nation" or "this age".
But even it we stick with the standard translation "this generation", the question of what 'these things' are still remains. And therein lies the rub.

82_Cygni:
One of the points of that stupid book was to say that women are mediocre scholars at best
Hm, I must have missed that part. In any case, referring to "That Hideous Strength" as stupid shall surely incur my wrath. Don't make me call my shipping company :o)

[bad Jim]

Chardonnay is so 80's. We proud members of the effete corps of impudent snobs are all drinking pinot noir now.

It's understandable that frustration with God might incline some to the devil's party, but whoever said that the devil was even coherent, much less consistent? God may be no better than W or the pope, but by most accounts the devil is, in effect, a brutally ruthless drug dealer.

If I had to choose, I'd side with Bacchus.

[Noah Brand]

Bacchus? Please. All the REALLY cool people call him Dionysus, you Roman sellout. What have the Romans ever done for us?

[Wakboth]

I wonder if the anti-intellectualism and gullibility is, paradoxically, a result of the overemphasis on the Bible to the exclusion of rationalism and earlier theological thought.

[Axiomatic]

See, if Carpathia were smart, he could recruit every single grieving mother and father on the planet into his army.

Just tell them "God has kidnapped your children. Here's a sword. This is a hostage rescue op."

[Edo]

Mouse: None of the characters upon finding out that this is of God decide to say "To Hell with God." This would make much more sense because who really wants to worship such a heartless bastard?

To synthesize this with the rest of the thread and a conversation I had tonight, it strikes me that L&J's portrayal of God isn't just malevolent: it's Lovecraftian. Granted, I'm not sure if they portray God as having tentacles (I haven't read Book 12), but even without the tentacles they're nine-tenths there.

Merely accepting the idea of Y'hwh can cause you to shed your personality like an insect husk, dedicate your life to worshipping Him, and eagerly await His return, when he will cause the extinction of humanity.

Intellect is a lie, because all our thoughts are a veneer of sanity, a fleeting and ultimately doomed attempt to deny that Creation is worthless except insofar as we hasten the return of God to cause its destruction.

So forsake thought, get with the program and join the fucking cult already.

[PepperjackCandy]

Mechagodzilla:

Personally, I've always thought that the "end of the age" stuff referred not to the end of the world, but to the destruction of the Temple.

He did, after all, predict its destruction (Matthew 24:2, Mark 13:2, Luke 21:6), and he was right.

It even came before 100 A.D.

[Bugmaster]

...the equivalent of being raised in a lesbian coven...

Lol ! "Lesbian Coven". Because everyone knows that lesbians run in packs.

[alfgifu]

Someone invited me to join the cult of Dagon on facebook only yesterday... on the whole, I think I'll take my chances on the Christian God.

I'd never noticed any sexism in That Hideous Strength until someone pointed it out to me and I still don't notice it unless I'm looking for it. I think it depends a bit on whether you take Jane as a figure standing for all intellectual women, or as an individual whose intellectualism is mainly a defensive shell that she needs to walk out of (without sacrificing intelligence, but not using it to justify herself against the world).

One of the things I've found striking since coming up to read Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge is the strength of the Christian community here, inside the academic and intellectual bubble. I think it puzzles some people.

Of course, if the Christian God exists and is wrong, then the universe probably is Hell already - the more so for the cruel illusion that we can escape.

[Jos]

So... wait. Are LH&J saying that only stupid people get saved?

Or do they somehow manage some form of impressive doublethink that tells them that while smart people are, by definition, unsaved atheists they themselves, as Saved Real True Christians, are not un-smart?

[the opoponax]

ako: l. It has to be because your sense of right and wrong are so warped that you can't see justice in front of your face.

see, part of me thinks this is HOW one gets to the PMD theology/morality in the first place. the fundamental tenets aren't so much a literal reading of the bible, but this really bizarre sense of right and wrong, justice, etc. in the scary fundie world, what matters first and foremost is the warped "biblical literalist" morality. which includes misogyny, homophobia, that weird rural american brand of libertarianism (you know, of the "git off mah propahdy" sort), etc. among other things. then when compulsory education and the age of ideas rather than manual labor came up (post WW2, maybe?), it was realized that since people now had the tools to read the bible and think about it (college educations, library cards, weekends and 8 hour days, etc), the church leaders needed to introduce a reading of the bible that was warped to match the morality and call it "literalism". and the keys to doing that were to ignore jesus, play up the OT and paul, and have all sorts of fun with the revelation as it's so ambiguous it could mean virtually anything. in this chicken and egg question, i feel like the egg of morality certainly preceeds the chicken of scripture.

bugmaster: "Lesbian Coven". Because everyone knows that lesbians run in packs.

dude, we so do. to the detriment of those of us who don't happen to be in a pack, actually. it's one of the main problems with lesbian culture, in my mind (as a lesbian), congruent in its own way with the obnoxious cruisy-ness of gay male culture. lesbians are sceney and cliquish and it's impossible to settle down and find a mate if you're not initiated into that world. of course, "covens" isn't the word for it, but at a certain level it might as well be.

[Anarch]

How the hell does being intellectually honest make you "pseudosophisticated" anyway? I don't think the authors even know what the word means. They just like how the sound of it as a way to put down people who have the audacity to use their brains.

One might even say that "pseudosophisticated" is itself a pseudosophisticated word...

[Scott]

In wickedness there is a strong strain toward rationality.

"All true evil is committed by people convinced that they cannot do wrong."

I love seeing that on a liberal board.

We proud members of the effete corps of impudent snobs are all drinking pinot noir now.

Pinot Noir is so last year after the cattle rented 'Sideways' on DVD. We drink Syrah now. (I'll leave Duane some space here to make yet another tired 'drunk' joke).

The goal of the anti-intellectual bent of evilvangelical 'leaders' is to literally dehumanize their 'sheep'. Humans think; it's what separates us from the other animals. I can teach a dog to submit and obey. If faith is believing a set of assertions of fact regardless of the evidence, doubt is a lack of faith and will send you to Hell. How to eliminate doubt? Find a Strong Leader to suppress those doubts thru his own charisma and force of will (and give him control of the information flow so you don't run across the wrong facts). If you think, you end up in Hell, so let them do the thinking for you.

Why do you think they still supporting Shrub? Because he is so evangelically manly as to be able to force himself to believe invading Iraq was a good idea despite the evidence. THAT is what evilvangelicals want from 'leadership': certainty. You don't rethink strategies that don't work; sticking with them is both a sick test of machismo and of saving faith. Anyone who can believe Iraq was a threat can believe the world is 6000 years old, and that person can help you believe it is 6000 years old and thus stay out of Hell.

Has anyone else heard the evilvangelical phrase "True Truth" being tossed around? Is there a "false truth"? Normal people consider that an oxymoron. Evilvangelicals consider that the term for any fact that stops you from believing what they want you to believe.

[Erick Oppeen]

Anti-intellectualism is endemic to the culture that L+J are appealing to, along with PMD theology and fundamentalism in general. As far back as the Second Great Awakening, back in the early 1800s (which was when you got one of the first "the end of the WORLD is coming!" scares, courtesy of Miller---his followers morphed eventually into the Seventh-Day Adventists) a lot of what drove evangelical religion was sulky resentment of the religious Establishment of the time---the Anglicans, the Presbyterians in New England, and so on. Many big-name preachers of the time were quite proud of the fact that THEY had never been to seminary---all they needed, they proudly proclaimed, was the Bible.

_In general_ (there are many individual exceptions) the poorer and less successful a person is, the more susceptible he (or she) is to fundamentalist beliefs. L+J's fan-base is not, on the whole, well-educated or very well-off, and they often resent people who are well-educated, particularly if those people come across as condescending. When you're living in a crummy house, working a McJob because you couldn't be bothered to get through high school, and wondering how you'll pay the bills, there is some consolation in believing that when THE RAPTURE comes, you'll be laughing your head off from heaven at all those smarty-pants who'll be burning in hell. Kind of like Jack Chick comics---come to it, Chick's theology and L+J's are AFAICT almost identical.

[Mark]

Umm, not to distract everyone from their various PMD / anti-intellectual / Paul / American evangelical bashing but could we at least draw mention to all the great intellectually honest evangelical scholars who're kicking around? Lets not tar everyone evangelical with the same brush here. I'm sure I read some thing about John Stott that said that he deliberately tried to show that evangelicalism was good, biblical and would stand up intellectually.

[Scott]

not to distract everyone from their various PMD / anti-intellectual / Paul / American evangelical bashing but could we at least draw mention to all the great intellectually honest evangelical scholars who're kicking around?

Right after we discuss all the tall midgets and dark skinned albinos.

[Skyknight]

I'm guessing that's why Scott crafted the "evilvangelical" neologism...never mind that we already HAVE a narrower term that fits this lot (i.e. "dispensationalist", which has the added benefit of not suggesting intentional evil).

On a side note, Scott...which set of Christian precepts (Presbyterian, Catholic, Adventist, Methodist, etc.) do you see yourself as adhering to, or at least most similar to?

[the opoponax]

We drink Syrah now.

Syrah/Shiraz was after Chardonnay and before Pinot Noir. Now we drink Malbec or Cotes du Rhone. duh. no wonder you're a libertarian -- you can't even keep abreast of the important wine trends.

the poorer and less successful a person is, the more susceptible he (or she) is to fundamentalist beliefs.

the funny thing is that i'm not sure this is so true anymore. the people who attend these megachurches in places like Houston and Colorado Springs aren't the same "po' white trash" (for lack of a better euphemism) who've traditionally been associated with non-mainline denominations. the modern fundie movement is suburban rather than rural and comfortably middle class. which is, i think, why they're still so virulently anti-intellectual.

poor people might resent the wealthy, but probably half my class in my rural magnet high school grew up in trailer parks and their parents wanted, more than anything, to send them to college. and by college i mean studying something academic or professional, not so that they could be middle manager types. and close to ten years later, they're all becoming doctors and lawyers and getting PhD's, and their parents aren't scowling at them for being "pseudosophisticated", they're proud.

most of the really anti-intellectual fundie types i know (and i include members of my own family here) resent academia not because that sort of thing is/was out of their reach, but because they KNOW it's the road not taken. and they need more than anything to justify their choice in not taking that road. people who DID go to college so that they could learn a trade or get a gig pushing paper around, who wanted the McMansion and the SUV and the investment package more than the life of the mind. and they know enough now to second guess it. and they resent that. and rather than using their substantial resources and free time having the best of both worlds, they choose to shit all over everything. Most of the upper middle class SUV fundie types could quite comfortably read real literature, see real films, vacation on the coasts and Europe, take weekend art classes, join book groups, send their kids to montessori kindergarten, drink chardonnay, eat brie, etc. etc. they just choose not to, probably because they feel arty intellectual types would go, "oooh, i told you so!" if they did. the attitude is, to quote from a previous thread, "This isn't Amsterdam! Live with it!"

Suburban megachurch evangelism is one of the best and easiest and most self-righteous ways to do that. As is conservative politics. Which is probably why they go so well together.

[Conscience]

"_In general_ (there are many individual exceptions) the poorer and less successful a person is, the more susceptible he (or she) is to fundamentalist beliefs"

I do remember reading an article a few months back claiming that church attendance was higher among blacks than whites, women than men and the poor than the middle class. Maybe it's just free entertainment on a Sunday, or maybe they're more desperate.

[PerfectBlue]

See, it's passages like that that make the upcoming argument over Hattie way more unsettling than it otherwise might be. Rayford's personal monologue continues to serve as the mouthpiece of the authors. He thinks that Chloe is being "pseudo-intellectual" and "blind," and the authors share this view. His frustration and anger are as justified as his later despairing over her. They clearly don't view his fits of pique, really outrageous overreactions to confrontation, as negative, narcissistic traits. There's nothing more complex than ugly, vicious narcissism going on here, with a little misogyny tossed in, and it's magnified ten fold during the conversation about Hattie. This stuff just preps me with context for the following scene, and it disturbs me not because Rayford is that way, but because the authors and the readers of these books seem to believe that it's perfectly reasonable to be that way.

[Beth]

All these comments and no one's yet come to the defense of Miracle on 34th Street? Well I guess it's up to me then. The movie wasn't taking the blindly anti-rational approach of people like L&J, rather it was striking a blow against the stifling pragmatism that silences dreams and hope and imagination. There's nothing wrong with common sense, indeed it can be extremely useful. It helps to keep us safe and fed and warm. It's a wonderful thing, but only as a tool, not as a tyrant. Should we refuse to fall love because common sense (and GB Shaw) tells us it's just a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else? Should we stop finding wonder in a sunset or a parade because common sense says it's a waste of time? Should we refuse to stand by a friend because common sense warns us it might interfere with our career goals? Should we turn our backs on someone we love and who loves us because common sense tells us that to do otherwise invites disappointment? Should we give up on our dreams because common sense says the odds are against us?

We all have minds, God-given if you like, but we also have hearts and souls. If it is a sin to reject the first, it is just as much a sin to reject the other two. To trust in love, even when common sense tells you it would be better to play it safe; that's not a denial of rationality but a recognition of its limits.

[Scott]

Now we drink Malbec or Cotes du Rhone.

http://www.bumwine.com

On a side note, Scott...which set of Christian precepts (Presbyterian, Catholic, Adventist, Methodist, etc.) do you see yourself as adhering to, or at least most similar to?

I was raised PCUSA. My only current involvement w/ the church now is giving to The Covenant Network of Presbyterians. Not that who the PCUSA ordains is a big issue for me, but just to expand it out of spite to the point it drives the Southern Baptist wanabees out of the PCUSA and to the PCA where they belong. I send copies of my online donation receipts to some of my 'favorite' would-be Baptist hijackers and gloat they will be leaving the denomination soon.

[ericblair]

a lot of what drove evangelical religion was sulky resentment of the religious Establishment of the time---the Anglicans, the Presbyterians in New England, and so on. Many big-name preachers of the time were quite proud of the fact that THEY had never been to seminary---all they needed, they proudly proclaimed, was the Bible.

I'm just your basic interested layperson and atheist, but this would be a good explanation of why biblical literalism is such a modern phenomenon. Before the rise of secular democracies (and after, say 400 AD), Christianity was always either the secular power or tied to it. It was far better for the powers-that-be to be able to control the interpretation of the Bible for political reasons. There was no percentage in encouraging the teeming masses to take the Bible, and "read it literally" (that is, interpret it yourself), since the teeming masses could quite possibly come to a conclusion that the powers-that-be didn't like.

Now, in most of the developed world, Christianity isn't tied to secular power, at least in the historical way. You realistically have to be a Christian or at least a Jew to get elected in the U.S., but in practice that means pretty much nothing in terms of how you're expected to govern; it's pretty much a tribal marker. Therefore, you're not really bound to Biblical interpretation. The modern Biblical literalist televangelist doesn't really have to push a particular position in support of the state, and is free to find a parade and get in front of it rather that doing the work of putting the parade together in the first place. It's much more opportunistic: "believe whatever you think the Bible says, just send me a check."

[emjaybee]

That Hideous Strength lost me when Jane got a stern finger-pointing from Awakened Merlin for using birth control, thus preventing the birth of some Christian hero or other. So...God didn't find Mary's virginity a problem, but couldn't get past a diaphragm? He can part the Red Sea but not cause a condom to break?

There is quite a lot of messed up sexism in that series, mainly boiling down to a lot of essentialist male=closer to God nonsense and monarchy-worship. Perelandra ties itself in knots dealing with the puzzle of why a woman should have the right to decide humanity's (or Venusian humanity's) future, given that she's the weaker vessel and all.

Lewis never did resolve his feelings about women, although Till We Have Faces has an astonishing first person warrior maiden narrator. But even she gets short shrift in the end--unlike Ransom, who got elevated to near divinity.

(/ot)

[Corbie]

I wonder if the whole notion of a woman who has a brain and a uterus (to paraphrase a quote by Colorado congresswoman Patricia Schroder) scares the hell out of LaHaye and Jenkins.

Yes, in fact, it does. When I was a teen and getting ready to head off to college, our church's youth pastor made it pretty clear to me that he thought I was entirely too smart, and that the only legitimate reasons for a woman going to college were to find a husband (and I was going to a state college, not Messiah College or some other approved institution), and to have a backup plan if your husband somehow found himself unable to work or got killed in a car accident or something. I found that whole conversation very condescending and repugnant, even though I was still quite the good little bible-thumper at the time.

Speaking of scary things, the Promise Keepers seem to have spawned a new offshoot, GodMen.
When I blogged about this, a friend of mine posted, "I've got a friend who's into the Promise Keepers thing. He's making me nuts. He called me all depressed the other day because he thought The Men were getting somewhere in his church, but he'd gone to the Sunday service and the sermon was all about turning the other cheek, and 'even the music was all soft and feminine' and he 'felt emasculated.'"

Um. So, Jesus didn't actually advocate turning the other cheek? Who, exactly, did say that, then? I think these guys would crucify Jesus all over again for being some kind of hippie radical.

[Jeff Weskamp]

''One of the stranger things about LB is the way the authors seem to think that their novel, their work of fiction, serves as "proof" of their claims. ''

I've noticed that myself, Fred. It's one of many, many incomprehensible things about this benighted series.

Obviously, anybody could write a story where improbable (or impossible) events occur. But a story can only demonstrate the strenghth of the author's imagination. A story can in no way serve as evidence. The Harry Potter series gives no evidence of the existence of magic. War of the Worlds and The Day the Earth Stood Still do not prove the existence of extraterrestials.

I could write a book depicting the arrival of Ragnarok, in which Thor and Tyr and Loki appear, the World Serpent starts eating cities, and all sorts of lovely chaos ensues. And have all of the Asatrus sneering at the Christians for disbelieving the clear message of the Eddas. But, since it would be a work of fiction, it wouldn't prove that Ragnarok will take place in the future (much less prove the existence of the Aesir).

As for L&J's anti-intellectualism, I would love to ask them how people can decide which religion to follow if they aren't allowed to use their brains.

[Skyknight]

LaHaye himself said in "The Beginning of the End" that humanity came in two varieties: Christian and unbeliever. Next, add in a bit in one of Paul's letters where he said that the law of God is written in the hearts of humanity. Hypothesis: LaHaye's position is that humanity has an innate, albeit sublimated, recognition of the authority of the Christ. If the unconscious is already at that conclusion, intellectual delving can't do much more than go off-course.

The answer, I guess, is to NOT decide per se, but listen to the decrees of the heart. If one STILL goes off course, it likely means that they let their sin-addled mind get in the way.

[bulbul]

although Till We Have Faces has an astonishing first person warrior maiden narrator. But even she gets short shrift in the end--unlike Ransom, who got elevated to near divinity.
Well, duh. Ransom is - at least in the first two books - the main protagonist doing all kinds of cool stuff (like fighting the personified Evil), Orual is "merely" the narrator.

[82_Cygni]

I checked out the article about GodMen, and it's quite scary. It sounds more like a gross-out comedy directed by the Farelly Brothers and starring Jack Black than it does any Christian ritual I have ever heard of or seen. Moreover, I don't like the attitude that it encourages, that because men are leaders of the house and the pater familias and are God-like (like the angry bearded white guy version of God, not the loving God who feeds His/Her Children bread and created everything in the Cosmos out of love), they can't help a wife who's nursing and has an infant son??? And they act like they can just forget about Jesus' ministry with women, and how revolutionary it was that they be treated LIKE ADULTS (which apparently these GodMen have forgotten).

Lastly, one small gripe about fresh flowers. Fresh flowers ARE NOT effeminate. In fact, the word "orchid" comes from a Greek word for "penis," and there are what botanists refer to as male and female flowers (like what you would see on a squash plant). Most of the hybridizers and many of the painters of flowers, until recent times, were MEN. I have a great-uncle who ran a motorcycle shop and was an avid gardener until a bad back forced him to give up his hobby, and an uncle who lovingly tends to his new orchids and is so proud that one of them bloomed. And both of these men are heterosexual and could never be accused of being masculine. Moreover, if God is supposed to be male, then why did He bring into being a global ecosystem in which much of the life depended on flowering plants--fruits, leaves, crops, and the animals that feed of them?

[bulbul]

Hypothesis: LaHaye's position is that humanity has an innate, albeit sublimated, recognition of the authority of the Christ.
Brilliant. That would actually make sense, because it would then mean that to L&J, evangelization is not a debate nor a way to lead the other to a conscious decision. Isidor of Sevilla, St. Cyril and Thomas Aquinas just wasted their time inventing arguments and appealing to logic. All they had to was make all the infidels recite the Magic Words© which would activate the Jesus Gene® and turn the infidel into a God-fearing Republican-voting Evangelical.

[Darren X]

Fred, I want to thank you for these HILARIOUS critiques of LB. (I discovered them through the recommendation of others). As an atheist, I was unlikely to actually read LB, so thank you for saving me the trouble in such a pleasurable way. Thanks also for opening my eyes to some of the theological problems of LB from a Christian perspective... heck, I just assumed that LB *was* mainstream Christianity.

Darren X, Toronto, Canada

[bulbul]

Lastly, one small gripe about fresh flowers. Fresh flowers ARE NOT effeminate.
Whoa, chill :o) Of course they're not. Screw them and screw all their insecurities.