[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Bush and Apocalypse

Tue Jan 7 15:17:34 CST 2003

>Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 01:02:38 -0800
>From: "Michael Ortiz Hill"<michaelortizhill at earthlink.net>
>To: mitten at life.uiuc.edu
>Reply-To: michaelortizhill at earthlink.net
>Subject: Bush and Apocalypse
>Sender: michaelortizhill at earthlink.net
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>
>    Dear Jay
>    Here is  the sequel to the piece on Bush and apocalypse.
>    Could you help me get it out ?  The clock is ticking and we seem to be
>reliant on invisible communities to shift this trajectory.
>                       Blessings,
>                       Michael Ortiz Hill
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>Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Bush's Armageddon Obsession, Revisited
>by Michael Ortiz Hill
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>CounterPunch.org
>
>January 4, 2003
>
>"We are lived by forces we scarcely understand," wrote W.H. Auden. What forces
>live us now as America again torques toward war?
>
>George W. Bush is certainly the plaything of such forces as the geopolitics of
>oil but it seems that he is susceptible to other even darker archetypal
>concerns. Let me be blunt. The man is delusional and the shape of his delusion
>is specifically apocalyptic in belief and intent. That Bush would attack so
>many vital systems on so many fronts from foreign policy to the environment
>may seem confusing from the point of view of realpolitik but becomes
>transparent in terms of the apocalyptic worldview to which he subscribes. All
>systems are supposed to go down so the Messiah can come and Bush, seemingly,
>has taken on the role of the one who brings this to pass.
>
>The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush to live in anticipation of the Second
>Coming but it was his friendship with Dr. Tony Evans that shaped Bush's
>political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr.
>Evans, the pastor of a large Dallas church and a founder of the Promise
>Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should be seen from a divine
>viewpoint," according to Dr. Martin Hawkins, Evans assistant pastor.
>
>S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes, "Most of the leaders of the Promise
>Keepers embrace a doctrine of 'end time' (eschatology), known as 'dominionim.'
>Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the 'people of
>God' as the only means through which the world can be rescued.... It is the
>eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has
>gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been
>called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control', a 'chosen vessel', so
>to speak, to bring in the Restoration of All Thingss." Shearer calls this
>delusion, "Messianic leadership"-- that is to say usurping the role usually
>ascribed to the Messiah.
>
>In Bush at War Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some
>have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that
>camp."
>
>"To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," says Bush. Grandiose
>visions. Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of
>the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan."
>
>In dominionism we can see the theological source of Bush's monomania. Not to
>be distracted by the fact that he lost the popular election by a half a
>million votes, that the Joint Chief of Staff at the Pentagon were so concerned
>about his plans to invade Iraq that they leaked their unanimous objection,
>that he has systematically alienated much of the world, that roughly seventy
>percent of Americans remain unconvinced of the imminent threat of Saddam
>Hussein and the same percentage object to war if there will be significant
>American casualties--none of this is in the least relevant. He believes his
>mandate toward action is from God.
>
>As humans we live within stories. Some stories, like apocalypse are thousands
>of years old. The scriptured text that informs Bush understanding of and
>enactment of the End of Days (Revelations 19) depicts Christ returning as the
>Heavenly Avenger. Revelations is the only New Testament book that justifies
>violence of any kind, and this it takes to the limit: Christ himself the agent
>of mass murder.
>
>"I saw heaven open and there before me was a white horse who is called
>Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war...He is dressed in a
>robe dipped in blood and his name is the word of God...Out of his mouth comes
>a sharp sword with which to strike down the Nations. And I saw an angel
>standing in the sun who cried in a low voice to all the birds flying in
>midair--come gather together for the great supper of God, so you may eat the
>flesh of kings, generals and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the
>flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great."
>
>Such is "the glory of the coming of the Lord." Truth, carnage, and the ecstasy
>of vultures. In a ruined world the Messiah slays the antichrist and creates "a
>new heaven and a new earth." The dead are judged, the Christians saved and the
>rest damned to eternal torment. The New Jerusalem is established and the Lord
>rules it "with an iron scepter."
>
>It is not inconceivable that Bush is literally and determinedly drawn,
>consciously and unconsciously, toward the enactment of such a scenario, as he
>believes, for God's sake. Indeed the stark relentlessness of his policy in the
>Middle East suggests as much.
>
>It dishonors the profundity of the Christian tradition if one doesn't note
>that Revelations has always been a rogue text. Because of its association with
>the Montanist heresy (which like contemporary fundamentalists took it to be
>literal rather than allegorical) it was with great reluctance that it was made
>scripture three centuries after the death of Christ. Traditionally attributed
>to St. John, most Biblical scholars now recognize its literary style and its
>theology has little in common with John's gospel or his epistles and was
>likely written after his death. Martin Luther found the vindictive God of
>Revelations incompatible with the gospels and relegated it to the appendix of
>his German translation of the New Testament instead of the body of scripture.
>All the Protestant reformers except Calvin regarded apocalyptic millenialism
>to be heresy.
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>But Revelations is also a rogue text because it is unmoored from its origins,
>which are far from Christian. It is a late variant on a story that was
>pervasive in the ancient world: the defeat of the wild and the uncivilized by
>a superior order upon which a New World would be established. Two thousand
>years before Revelations depicted Christ slaying the antichrist and laying out
>the New Jerusalem, Marduk slayed Tiamat and founded Babylon.
>
>This pagan myth recycled as a suspiciously unchristian Biblical test found new
>credence in the 19th century when John Darby virtually revived the Montanist
>heresy of investing it with a passionate literalism. Given to visions (he saw
>the British as one of the ten tribes of Israel) Darby left the priesthood of
>the Church of Ireland and preached Revelations as both prophecy and imminent
>history. In this he inaugurated a lineage in which Bush's mentors, the
>Reverend Billy Graham and Dr. Tony Evans are recent heirs. Revelations is much
>beloved by Muslim fundamentalists and like their Christian compatriots they
>also thrill to redemption through apocalypse. Jewish fundamentalists of course
>do not believe in Revelations but have nonetheless made common cause with the
>Christian Right. "It's a very tragic situation in which Christian
>fundamentalists, certain groups of them that focus on Armageddon and the
>Rapture and the role of a war between Muslims and Jews in bringing about the
>Second Coming, are involved in a folie a deux with extremist Jews," said Ian
>Lustick, the author of For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in
>Israel. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition (and yes it is a single
>tradition) is being led by its fringe into the abyss and the rest of us with
>it.
>
>The world has been readied for the fire but the critical element is the Bush
>Administration. Never in the history of Christendom has there been a moment
>when this rogue element has carried anything like the credibility and
>political power that it carries now.
>
>Michael Ortiz Hill is the author of Dreaming the End of the World (Spring
>1994) and, (with Augustine Kandemwa) Gathering in the Names (Spring Journal
>books, 2002). The companion to this essay, The Looking Glass War, is posted at
>http://www.gatheringin.com/. He can be reached at
>michaelortizhill at earthlink.net.
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>Peace and Blessings,
>Michael Ortiz Hill
>www.gatheringin.com
>
>*********************************************************
>
>Just Out:
>Gathering in the Names by Augustine Kandemwa and Michael Ortiz Hill [Spring
>Audio and Journal Inc.]
>
>Please order from your favorite bookstore [Our distributor is Continuum.] Or
>call Spring Audio and Journal 860 963 1191 or fax 860 974 -3195  Coming soon
>to Amazon.com
>
>
>
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>Peace and Blessings,
>Michael Ortiz Hill
>www.gatheringin.com
>
>*********************************************************
>
>Just Out:
>Gathering in the Names by Augustine Kandemwa and Michael Ortiz Hill 
>[Spring Audio and Journal Inc.]
>
>Please order from your favorite bookstore [Our distributor is Continuum.] 
>Or call Spring Audio and Journal 860 963 1191 or fax 860 974 -3195  Coming 
>soon to Amazon.com