La última vocación del Cristianismo

La última vocación del Cristianismo

Por Yoshie Furuhashi
Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar

El mensaje para la Navidad de 2007 de Michel Sabbah, el Patriarca Latino y Arzobispo de Jerusalem, es muy convincente: critica agudamente la ocupación mientras aconseja contra "hablar de crear 'estados religiosos' en la Palestina histórica. La última vocación del cristianismo puede ser muy bien convertirse en el mediador entre judíos y musulmanes en el Medio Oriente.

Más aún, en el mensaje Sabbah cita a Jeremías 6:14, quizás la más apropiada respuesta a Anápolis:

Ellos curan a la ligera
el quebranto de mi pueblo,
diciendo: "¡Paz, paz!",
pero no hay paz.

The Last Vocation of Christianity

The 2007 Christmas message of Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch and Archbishop of Jerusalem, is very cogent: it sharply criticizes the occupation while counseling against "talk about creating 'religious' States" in historic Palestine. The last vocation of Christianity may very well be to be the mediator between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East.

Moreover, in the message Sabbah cites Jeremiah 6:14, perhaps the most fitting rejoinder to Annapolis:

They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
'Peace, peace,' they say,
when there is no peace.

Update

Yoshie Furuhashi, "La última vocación del Cristianismo," Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar, Critical Montages, 25 December 2007.

An All-American Muslim Story

Here's an All-American Muslim story. A group of Christians yell "Merry Christmas" to everyone on subway. In return, two young Jewish couples wish them a "Happy Chanukah." The Christians, enraged by the existence of religious diversity, attack the Jews:

One of the young men, who at one point displayed a tattoo of Jesus, shouted "Happy Chanukah?! That's when the Jews killed Jesus," said [attack victim Walter] Adler, who also heard shouts of "dirty Jews," "you f---ing Jews" and other slurs. (Doug Chandler, "Victims of Subway Assault Push for Hate-Crime Charges," Jewish Week, 12 December 2007)

(The Christian thugs are not only bigoted but also chronologically challenged.)

Only a young Muslim immigrant intervenes to protect the Jews from the Christians -- no one else on the train does. The Christians beat up the Muslim guy, though his intervention allows one of the Jewish victims to pull the emergency brake and call the police.

The Muslim hero, however, is unable to "go to the doctor because he's too busy working two waiter jobs and doesn't have the money for medical care" (Melissa Grace, "Muslim Hero Breaks Up Train Beating," New York Daily News, 12 December 2007) -- that's what makes this not just any old Muslim story but an All-American Muslim story.

The Twilight of the Empire

A famous British atheist embraced God in the twilight of his intellectual life, alarming atheists. At the same time, he embraced Islamophobia harder than his new-found God: "[H]e [Antony Flew] seemed generally uninterested in the content of his book [There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind] -- he spent far more time talking about the dangers of unchecked Muslim immigration and his embrace of the anti-E.U. United Kingdom Independence Party" (Mark Oppenheimer, "The Turning of an Atheist," New York Times Magazine, 4 November 2007).¹ His embrace of Islamophobia doesn't alarm atheists, however, for some of the most prominent New Atheists, atheists of the evangelical persuasion, are themselves Islamophobic imperialists. Christopher Hitchens is the most notorious example, but so is Sam Harris: "Harris' examples of irrational religious behavior are mostly Islamic, relating to suicide bombers and 9/11" (Alexander Saxton, "Faith in the 'War with Islam,'" MRZine, 19 October 2007).

In the same issue of the New York Times Magazine in which the aforementioned article about Antony Flew appeared, it is reported that MEMRI's clip of "The Truth about Islam from an Ex-Muslim Lady" is the most discussed video on YouTube.

"The Truth About Islam From an Ex-Muslim Lady," YouTube's most-discussed video ever, shows a woman on a TV-news program delivering a fearsome disquisition in Arabic on Samuel P. Huntington's clash-of-civilizations idea -- the concept that global politics are now determined by potentially apocalyptic cultural collisions. The woman [Wafa Sultan], identified as an Arab-American psychologist, celebrates the "civilization" of the West and denigrates the "backwardness" of Islam, according to the English subtitles. Since "The Truth About Islam" first appeared in the spring of last year, something about this video clip has inspired viewers to lay bare their ideological ids. It has prompted 200,000 comments. (Virginia Heffernan, "God and Man on YouTube," 4 November 2007)

It is as if the twilight of the US-led multinational empire brings as much intellectual senility as the twilight of an individual life.

1 That's a turn similar to one that Oriana Fallaci made before her death:

Fallaci has been known throughout her long career for her strong anti-clericalism (she is a long-time leftist, daughter of an Italian partisan who fought the Fascists), but describes herself as a "Christian atheist." While stating that she does not believe in God, she claims that the West cannot ignore its Christian origin and identity. Even if we deny God's existence, Fallaci says, Christianity has shaped the Western world. It defines "who we are, where we are coming from, and where we are going."

But the Church, she says, is not able -- or worse, not willing -- to defend Christianity. Fallaci accuses the Church of helping the expansion of the "Islamic empire," lobbying for more Muslims to come to Europe. (Lorenzo Vidino, "Forceful Reason: Fallaci Issues a Wake-up Call to Europe," National Review 4 May 2004)

New Prophets of the Proletariat

Historical materialism, in so far as it is a variety of materialism, takes nature, human and non-human, into account. One of the most important factors for social change in this century will be natural disasters, whose intensity and frequency are likely to increase due to climate change.

The business-as-usual scenario yields an increase of about five degrees Fahrenheit of global warming during this century. . . . How much will sea level rise with five degrees of global warming? Here too, our best information comes from the Earth's history. The last time that the Earth was five degrees warmer was three million years ago, when sea level was about eighty feet higher.

Eighty feet! In that case, the United States would lose most East Coast cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Miami; indeed, practically the entire state of Florida would be under water. Fifty million people in the US live below that sea level. Other places would fare worse. China would have 250 million displaced persons. Bangladesh would produce 120 million refugees, practically the entire nation. India would lose the land of 150 million people. (Jim Hansen, "The Threat to the Planet," New York Review of Books 53.12, 13 July 2006)

James Hansen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA, Presentation at Albany Law School, April 18, 2006.

James Hansen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA, Presentation at Albany Law School, April 18, 2006.

The world at the end of the 21st century, if not sooner, may very well look like demographic and environmental nightmares of Mike Davis re-mixed, amplified, and in an endless loop. The impacts of climate change will be especially severe in the global South. Disasters will displace and dispossess untold numbers, and weak states unable or unwilling to provide for the newly displaced and dispossessed will be in for legitimation crisis.

Old priests of capitalism will be challenged by new prophets of the proletariat of global slums. The new prophets, however, are unlikely to speak the language of Marx. "Indeed, for the moment at least, Marx has yielded the historical stage to Mohammed and the Holy Ghost. If God died in the cities of the industrial revolution, he has risen again in the postindustrial cities of the developing world" (Mike Davis, "Planet of Slums," New Left Review 26, March-April 2004). Can the new prophets, unlike the old ones, prevail?

What's Good about Islam?

What's behind David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness" week? A short supply of pinkos in the USA, observes Alexander Cockburn: "The left in America is really in very poor shape: near zero Commies, and really only a sprinkling of radical black profs, militant Lesbians and kindred antinomians to beat up on" ("So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness," CounterPunch, 27-28 October 2007). Right he is.

Leftists in the USA have built neither a mass communist party nor a mass social democratic party. The Red Purge of the fifties was so successful that few Reds remain in trade unions. There are only two institutions that leftists have managed to "capture" through a "long march" in the USA: academia and mainline Protestantism.¹ The former has been a target of Horowitz for a long time, as its conquest was never complete, its summit (boards of trustees and top administration) firmly in the enemy camp. It's only a matter of time before he turns to the latter.

Cockburn also contends in the aforementioned article: "Coalitions have formed to combat Horowitz's version of Awareness with superior Progressive Awareness about what is good or not so good about Islam" (27-28 October 2007). This I doubt. Rare are secular leftists who, though quick to point out what's "not so good" about Islam, wouldn't stumble if asked to explain what's "good" about it.

Average secular leftists are, in reality, as uncomfortable about encounters with Muslims as rightists. They, unlike rightists, tolerate Islam and even defend Muslims when they become victims of right-wing Islamophobia, but that is as far as they are willing to go. They still think it is a "tragedy" that Muslims, especially Muslim women, adhere to their faith, assuming it to be inferior to their own secular ideology: "Liberal-Leftist Islamophobia Watch (Part I)," Ihsan, 18 September 2007; and "Left-Liberal Islamophobia Watch (Part II)," Ihsan, 23 October 2007.² That won't do. We expect the religious to recognize that the irreligious are morally equal to them. So would they in turn. Unless and until secular leftists realize that Islam is as good a theology of liberation as Christianity and historical materialism, and vice versa, solidarity won't be forever.

1 Left-wing Jews might have "captured" at least Reform Judaism if not other branches had they remained within their faith community, but they have tended to reject their faith altogether. Indeed, Zionists' hegemony of major institutions, secular or religious, that claim to represent Jews is so complete that some Jewish leftists, exasperated, would even consider resigning from "the Jewish people":

Did you ever wonder what your last thought would be just before you died or believed you might die? Well, I did, and a few years ago in the waning moments before going under the knife for a life threatening operation I got my answer. As the nurses wheeled me into the operating room, what burst upon my consciousness was not, as might be expected, the fear of dying but a terrible angst at the idea of dying a Jew. I was appalled to finish my life with my umbilical cord still tied to a people with whom I can no longer identify. That this should be my "last" thought greatly surprised me at the time, and it still does.

What did it mean . . . and why is it so hard to resign from a people? (Bertell Ollman, "Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People," Dialectical Marxism)

2 For secular leftists' criticisms of Islamophobia on the Left, see, for instance, Deepa Kumar, "Danish Cartoons: Racism Has No Place on the Left," MRZine, 21 February 2006; Deepa Kumar, "Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics," MRZine, 3 April 2006; Richard Fidler, "Ontario's 'Sharia Law' Controversy: How Muslims Were Hung Out to Dry," MRZine 27 May 2006; Rami El-Amine, "Anti-Arab Racism, Islam, and the Left," MRZine, 3 September 2006;

El socialismo, el estadio más alto de la democracia y el republicanismo

El socialismo, el estadio más alto de la democracia y el republicanismo

Por Yoshie Yuruhashi
Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar

Hay una tendencia, entre los laicistas, tanto izquierdistas como liberales, a adoptar un punto de vista conspirativo frente a la aparición de un "Islam político": el imperio o las clases dominantes "compradoras", o ambas, lo implantaron entre las masas inocentes que previamente eran "tan sólo musulmanas". Esto es un punto de vista simplista. El Islam como movimiento político de masas no puede ser implantado desde afuera, así como el socialismo como movimiento político de masas no puede ser implantado desde afuera. Las clases dominantes, extranjeras o locales, sólo pueden ayudar a desarrollar y deformar lo que ya existe entre las masas, así como los socialistas sólo pueden ayudar a desarrollar, reformar y revolucionar lo que ya existe entre ellas.

Un punto de vista conspirativo del "Islam político" soslaya un examen empírico de las condiciones políticas y económicas, sociales y culturales del pueblo trabajador que lo acepta y lo hace propio. Esta negligencia no ayuda para nada a los izquierdistas laicos a cualquier aproximación que quieran hacer hacia alguna variedad de Islam, a darle un apoyo crítico, como los comunistas libaneses han estado haciendo con el Hizbollah, por ejemplo, o a combatir, tal como deben hacer, sectas terroristas voluntaristas y aventureras del tipo Al Qaeda, o a tratar de alguna manera con cualquier otro grupo (como el AKP¹, los Hermanos Musulmanes², etc.)

Los izquierdistas laicos deben acordar con un hecho: las variedades del Islam son una parte esencial de la cultural de las masas nacional-populares de muchos países, especialmente aquellos que son los más cruciales para el Gran Juego del Siglo XXI (la caza de energía en el contexto de una declinante hegemonía del dólar), tal como lo son las variedades de cristianismo en Latinoamérica. Y dentro de la misma cosmovisión religiosa de las masas existen semillas tanto de liberación como de reacción. Cuando los intelectuales orgánicos de la izquierda, laica o religiosa, que son "concientes de estar encadenados orgánicamente a las masas nacional-populares"³ fallan en levantar y crear una ideología nacional-popular que haga justicia a las semillas de liberación en la conciencia religiosa de las masas, las clases dominantes sacan ventaja de las semillas de reacción en esa misma conciencia.

Los izquierdistas laicos deben aprender a descartar la ilusión de que las masas trabajadoras religiosas deben primero ser secularizadas y luego, y sólo luego, serán receptivas a la idea radical de revolución. Aquellos que estén tentados por esta ilusión necesitan, tan sólo, mirar al Japón: la clase obrera japonésa es, quizás, la más secularizada del mundo y a la vez, y desde hace mucho, está entre las menos revolucionarias.

La historia muestra que una revolución social auténtica puede ocurrir a través de una ideología secular (Francia), una ideología religiosa (Irán) o una creativa combinación de ambas (Venezuela). Las experiencias de auténticas revoluciones sociales, así sean religiosas o seculares, jacobinas o bolivarianas, son más importantes para la educación política de las masas acerca de la democracia y el republicanismo que el laicismo autoritario impuesto desde arriba por déspotas ilustrados (sean nacionalistas o socialistas) o la secularización molecularmente efectuada por el consumismo capitalista (que tiende, primero, a pacificar las masas y, luego finalmente, invita a la reacción cuando el despotismo ilustrado degenera en mero despotismo, y esto despolitiza al pueblo y los hace más pasivos que ninguna otra ideología, religiosa o secular). Y por lo que luchamos es la democracia y el republicanismo: después de todo, ¿qué es el socialismo sino el más alto estadio de democracia y republicanismo?


1 Partido religioso turco, vencedor en las últimas elecciones. Expresa puntos de vista de centro derecha y enfrenta el tradicional secularismo kemalista, que ha gobernado el país durante varias décadas y ha sido, después de la guerra, un aliado estratégico de los EE.UU. Nota de JFB.

2 Movimiento religioso revolucionario egipcio, de creciente influencia política en oposición al régimen laicista pro norteamericano. Los Hermanos Musulmanes son el movimiento político más numeroso de Egipto y, oficialmente, han sido proscriptos. Nota de JFB.

3 Antonio Gramsci, El Príncipe Moderno. Nota de JFB.

Socialism, the Highest Stage of Democracy and Republicanism

There is a tendency, found among secular leftists as well as liberals, to take a conspiracist view of the emergence of "Political Islam": the empire, its comprador ruling classes, or both implanted it among the innocent masses who were previously "just Muslims," just like that. That is a simplistic view. Islam as a mass political movement cannot be implanted from outside, just as socialism as a mass political movement cannot be implanted from outside. The ruling classes, foreign or domestic, can only help develop and deform what already exists among the masses, just as socialists can only help develop, reform, and revolutionize what already exists among them.

A conspiracist view of "Political Islam" slights empirical examinations of political and economic, social and cultural, conditions of working people who consent to it and make it their own. This neglect does not help secular leftists at all in any approach they may take toward any variety of Islam, in giving critical support to it, as the Lebanese Communists have been doing for Hizballah for instance, or in combating voluntarist and adventurist terrorist sects of Al Qaeda varieties as they must be, or in dealing with anything else (like the AKP, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.) in any way.

Secular leftists must come to terms with a fact: varieties of Islam are an essential part of the culture of the national-popular masses of many nations, especially those who are the most crucial to the Great Game of the 21st century (an energy hunt in the context of the declining dollar hegemony), just as varieties of Christianity are in Latin America. And within the same religious worldviews of the masses there exist seeds of both liberation and reaction. When organic intellectuals on the Left, secular or religious, who are "conscious of being linked organically to a national-popular mass" fail to arise and create a national-popular ideology that does justice to the seeds of liberation in the religious consciousness of the masses, the ruling classes take advantage of the seeds of reaction in the very same consciousness.

Secular leftists must learn to discard the illusion that religious working masses must be first secularized, and then and only then they will be receptive to the radical idea of revolution. Those who are tempted by this illusion need only look at Japan: the working class of Japan are perhaps the most secularized in the world, and yet they are also among the least revolutionary, as they have been for a long time.

History shows that authentic social revolution may come about through a secular ideology (France), a religious ideology (Iran), or a creative combination of both (Venezuela). Experiences of authentic social revolutions, whether they are religious or secular, Jacobin or Bolivarian, are more important in schooling the masses in democracy and republicanism than authoritarian secularism imposed from above by enlightened despots (whether they are nationalists or socialists) or secularization molecularly effected by consumerist capitalism (the former tends to first pacify the masses and then eventually invite reaction when enlightened despotism degenerates into mere despotism, and the latter depoliticizes people and makes them passive more than any other ideology, religious or secular). And it is democracy and republicanism that we should aim for -- after all, what is socialism but the highest stage of democracy and republicanism?

Update

Yoshie Furuhashi, "El socialismo, el estadio más alto de la democracia y el republicanismo," Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar, Critical Montages, 25 October 2005.

After Eschatology

When Marxism was the dominant ideology of resistance to capitalism and imperialism, it had a grand narrative of history, a cousin of the Christian narrative, in which "the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen" (Matt. 20:16), a narrative whose protagonist is the proletarian vanguard inspired by an eschatological vision.

Then, many Marxists, for good and bad reasons, had a crisis of faith, the crisis of which Khomeini took note, and they turned to a new myth, the myth of Western Liberal Democracy as the End of History, the myth of which Francis Fukuyama is the best known narrator. In short, they became liberals, whether or not they knew that they did.

Historical materialism as a social theory has become better, having shed the myth of the End of History; and yet, it has fewer adherents than before, and many of the remaining adherents are intellectuals who are not in a position to lead workers and farmers, estranged from them by income, education, secularism, and other dividers. Historical materialists must find a way to overcome this estrangement.

Ubi Lenin, Ibi Jerusalem

In the Presbyterian household of my partner's family (his father is a retired Presbyterian pastor), his marriage to an alien historical materialist who refuses to be fruitful and multiply caused no ideological ripple, but his youngest brother and his wife's exploration of Unitarian Universalism did. My father- and mother-in-law muttered, "But Unitarian Universalists have no creed." They, wise people, correctly understand that historical materialism is a creedal religion (albeit a creed increasingly more honored in the breach than the observance), thus more like their faith than Unitarian Universalism, New Age philosophy, or the ideology of those who say they have "no religious affiliation" and who do not have any other affiliation either.

Ubi Lenin, Ibi Jerusalem

Gnostic Gospels and Conspiracy Theory

The National Geographic Society had the Gospel of Judas translated. The story has received much attention from the corporate media.

The Gospel of Judas tells us that Judas didn't really betray Jesus. Rather, Judas fulfilled the task he was given by Jesus: "sacrifice the man that clothes me." By doing so, Judas would "exceed" all other disciples, says Jesus. That is the "secret knowledge" that Jesus made Judas bear and that the Gospel of Judas purports to reveal.

But if Judas didn't betray Jesus, there would be no real conflict and no human drama!

What makes the Synoptic Gospels in the New Testament more interesting than Gnostic Gospels, to me, is that the four Gospels tell an insightful story about the politics of a community. Judas betrays Jesus for money. Peter betrays Jesus by denying him three times, and he does so, unlike Judas, out of weakness, not wanting to be associated with his teacher when the powerful really come after the teacher. Jesus expected both kinds of betrayal, not because he was the Son of God, but because he had a pretty good insight into human nature, as all good political leaders do. The empire gets Jesus, a rebel leader, executed by having the pillars of a community from which he comes demand his execution. On the day of execution, it is the marginalized and oppressed -- a condemned criminal, a former prostitute, and so on -- who stand by the man who gets martyred. Happens all the time, in the history of the left.

The structure of Gnostic Gospels, in contrast, resembles that of conspiracy theory, or rather conspiracy theory may have taken its undemocratic narrative structure from Gnostic Gospels: events are determined by the power that orchestrates both sides of a seeming opposition; and knowledge is accessible to only a chosen few, rather than all who strive to acquire it.

Moreover, the four Gospels of the New Testament are free from statements that could lend themselves to homophobia, whereas the newly translated Gospel of Judas includes them and even attributes one to Jesus:

They [said, “We have seen] a great [house with a large] altar [in it, and] twelve men -- they are the priests, we would say -- and a name; and a crowd of people is waiting at that altar, [until] the priests [… and receive] the offerings. [But] we kept waiting.”
[Jesus said], “What are [the priests] like?”
They [said, “Some …] two weeks; [some] sacrifice their own children, others their wives, in praise [and] humility with each other; some sleep with men; some are involved in [slaughter]; some commit a multitude of sins and deeds of lawlessness. And the men who stand [before] the altar invoke your [name], [39] and in all the deeds of their deficiency, the sacrifices are brought to completion […].”
After they said this, they were quiet, for they were troubled.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jesus said to them, “Those you have seen receiving the offerings at the altar -- that is who you are. That is the god you serve, and you are those twelve men you have seen. The cattle you have seen brought for sacrifice are the many people you lead astray [40] before that altar. […] will stand and make use of my name in this way, and generations of the pious will remain loyal to him. After hi another man will stand there from [the fornicators], and another [will] stand there from the slayers of children, and another from those who sleep with men, and those who abstain, and the rest of the people of pollution and lawlessness and error, and those who say, ‘We are like angels’; they are the stars that bring everything to its conclusion. For to the human generations it has been said, ‘Look, God has received your sacrifice from the hands of a priest’ -- that is, a minister of error. But it is the Lord, the Lord of the universe, who commands, ‘On the last day they will be put to shame.’” [41]

All in all, the Gospel of Judas brings no good news politically.

Left Behind: Evangelical Pop Culture

Nicholas D. Kristof, a liberal columnist of the New York Times, is appalled by the popularity of the Left Behind series of best-selling novels based on a fundamentalist Christian belief, which "have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide":

If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes. ("Jesus and Jihad," July 17, 2004)

Kristof's criticism of a common double standard -- objecting to intolerance in fundamentalist Islam and yet failing to see the same thing in fundamentalist Christianity -- has a very good point. One possibility that he does not explore, however, is that the cause and danger of the Left Behind series' commercial success may have more to do with American politics than a strictly religious sort of intolerance that glorifies believers and damns infidels (which has probably existed since the dawn of religion). Look at the official website of Left Behind, and you'll find an offering such as the following:

This Week's Prophecy Club Articles

• World Court Rules Against Israel —- A look at the International Court of Justice ruling calling Israel's security barrier illegal.


• A Fence and a Falling Wall —- Consulting editor Mark Hitchcock provides his view on recent events in Israel.


• The Curtain Will Fall —- A letter from the director of the International Christian Zionist Center, a European who is a staunch defender of Israel, on the role of America.


• Senate Debates FMA —- A look at the Senate debate on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which started on Monday.


• Prophecies Fulfilled in the Church Age (part 1 of 8) —- A Bible study based on Tim LaHaye's Prophecy Study Bible.

Join the Prophecy Club to read these articles and more!

Without Washington's support for Israel, I doubt that the worldview like this would have become so widespread.

Another possibility that Kristof does not consider is that the Left Behind series has done so well because it has been read by more than the core audience of Christian fundamentalists, as Melani McAlister suggests:

The Left Behind books are remarkably popular not only with the fundamentalists who form their core readership, but also with many more casual readers who pick up the books when they see the highlighted displays at Wal-Mart, or visit the special sales section at Amazon.com, or perhaps who have seen the ads "Read the Future" and "leftbehind.com" blazoned on the side of one of the cars at NASCAR races in recent years. As one scholar describes it, "In office settings, these things are being passed around like Stephen King novels or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue." 9 Indeed, as each new installment races to the top of the hardcover charts, paperback versions of earlier books in the Left Behind series continue to dominate the paperback lists. 10 In addition, the series has spawned two movies, no fewer than five soundtracks, calendars, mugs, and an impressive line of screensavers and e-greetings. 11 What we are seeing, then, is a remarkable mainstreaming of evangelical pop culture, one in which nonevangelicals seem to be willing to read overtly proselytizing messages, as long as they are delivered in a readable genre. (Melani McAlister, "Prophecy, Politics, and the Popular: The Left Behind Series and Christian Fundamentalism's New World Order," The South Atlantic Quarterly 102.4, [2003], p. 775)

Why such a wide appeal? In part, McAlister argues, because the Left Behind series -- "not your father's fundamentalism" (p. 782) -- exhibits impressive techno savvy and effectively draws upon the images of science fiction in both the novels, their marketing, and merchandise inspired by them:

These images draw on the look and feel of popular action and sci-fi movies: weapons, anxious people fleeing a scene, or images of nightmarish post-nuclear-war style devastation that are familiar to anyone who has seen Terminator or Mad Max. The e-card/screensaver for Apollyon is a perfect apocalyptic cliché: in the background, a destroyed building, with only the half-standing outline of the structure left. Strangely orangish clouds dominate the sky; fires burn on the street. In the foreground, a large, almost distended image of a man's face—he is middle-aged, probably white, and his eyes are bulging, fearful. (McAlister, p. 786)

Indeed, the image is not out of place as a poster for a sci-fi disaster film from Hollywood. Last but not the least, the Left Behind series, unlike fundamentalism in the past, projects "an emergent evangelical racial liberalism" (McAlister, p. 775), the racial liberalism that is surprisingly expansive and flexible and yet clearly limited by the novels' self-consciousness about it and the Christian fundamentalist political vision of Israel, which McAlister analyzes incisively:

[I]n the 1990s, with the rise of the Promise Keepers and other new parachurch organizations, evangelicals began to talk more extensively about crossing racial barriers, and did so in ways that brought discussions of racism into the heart of white evangelism. Perhaps it should not be so surprising, then, that [Tim] LaHaye and [Jerry] Jenkins put the white characters who form the core of the Tribulation Force through their multicultural paces. At various times, they work closely with at least two African-American male characters, one set of Chinese Christians, a Native American woman, two Arabs, and uncountable numbers of Israeli Jews. The plot consistently presents racial liberalism as the norm for the characters, and implicitly for the readers as well.

In the fourth book, for example, the first of two important African-American characters is introduced into the plot. Floyd Charles is a young physician who helps save Buck's wife Chloe when she is pregnant, injured, and on the run from the forces of the Antichrist. Dr. Charles is soon making regular visits to the Tribulation Force's safe house; he eventually ends up living there, and in the process, falling in love with a woman in the group, Hattie. When Floyd reveals his feelings for Hattie to Rayford, who functions as the Tribulation Force's leader, Rayford expresses deep concern. This concern, however, is not framed as an issue of race; the fact that Floyd is black and Hattie is white goes unmentioned in their discussion. Instead, Rayford is worried that Hattie is simply not a good enough person for Floyd, since she is both unconverted and remarkably selfish. Though Floyd conveniently dies before he can even declare his love to Hattie, much less act on it, it is nonetheless remarkable that the Left Behind series would present an interracial relationship as so utterly noncontroversial (what is controversial is falling in love with a nonbeliever). It says volumes about the ways in which white fundamentalism has changed its self-presentation, both within the community itself and in terms of its public voice on issues of race.

But though LaHaye and Jenkins have obviously made a conscious decision to bring African Americans into close proximity to the core characters, the novels register a particular self-consciousness about this fact, one that at times borders on self-parody. On several occasions, for example, Buck or Rayford make what the authors seem to think are rather cute jokes that play off the parallels between the concept of brothers in Christ and the trope of African-American men as "brothers." At another point, an older and uglier stereotype appears: when Rayford and Floyd are in trouble, Rayford asks the other African-American male character, T. M. Delanty ("T."), to help him by trading cars with Floyd. T. has never met Floyd, and Rayford explains that he can recognize Floyd because of the vehicle he is driving, and the fact that he "looks a lot like you." A few pages later, LaHaye and Jenkins have T. refer back to this apparent reality—that black men basically look alike—as useful in carrying out an escape plan. This character is forced, in other words, to testify in favor of the subtle racism of the books.

The global racial and religious politics of the novels are even more complex, and equally problematic. As the Tribulation Force expands its global reach —- over the course of the series, more and more of the action is set in New Babylon, Iraq, where the Antichrist has set up his headquarters —- the white American members run into diverse believers all over the world. In one novel, an Israeli Jew who has also converted to Christianity gets a friendly lesson on avoiding stereotypes from a Native American woman named Hannah Palemoon (The Mark, 215); later in the series, the young Chinese man, Chang, moves to the forefront of the action as he battles with his father over his Christian beliefs. And soon Chang's sister Ming becomes a leading character, and her emerging romance with a Korean believer is followed enthusiastically.

These international characters are among the most popular on the fan sites, and it is here that one gets the strongest sense of a worldview in which multiculturalism, albeit of a rather limited type, is the presumptive norm. One female fan, for example, has written a series of stories on a fan Web site about a young man named Jonathan Palemoon, who she describes as Hannah Palemoon's younger brother. On the story site, she listed among her character's strengths his "family and his heritage," and his martial arts skills. Early in the series, the African-American man "T" was frequently listed by contributors to the message boards as their favorite; since the last few books were released, Chang, the young computer hack with parent problems, has been widely embraced. 41

The internationalism of this multiculturalist vision is precisely of a piece with the stark doctrinal narrowness of the stories: anyone can convert, but conversion to (born-again) Christianity is of course necessary to be recognized by God. This has been the source of concern for a good many Jewish and Israeli commentators, who have pointed out that the fundamentalist love of Israel comes at the price of a belief in the massive conversion of Jews at the end of time —- 144,000 Jewish "witnesses" recognize Jesus as the Messiah and join with the non-Jewish believers to fight the Antichrist. As Gershom Gorenberg has argued, this seeming embrace of Jews and Israel is merely instrumental at best. At worst, it is vicious: Israeli Jews exist to testify, in the end, to the truth of Christianity. 42 But these views about conversion are, of course, entirely consonant with the larger fundamentalist view of the "narrow road" to heaven. When conservative Christians insist that Jews and Muslims and all others must be converted in order to see God, this is perhaps best understood less as racism or anti-Semitism, per se, than as the logical conclusion of the novels' severe doctrinal conservatism.

Arabs and Muslims, however, fare particularly badly, though they are also subject to a version of the deadly love offered to Jews. In 2002, the news media reported a rather extraordinary series of anti-Muslim slurs by fundamentalist leaders: Falwell's infamous declaration on 60 Minutes that "Mohammed was a terrorist," and Pat Robertson's warning on his Christian Broadcasting Network that Muslims are "worse than the Nazis." 43 Yet in the Left Behind series, Arabs and Muslims are woven into much more complicated cultural tapestry. On the one hand, there is the demonic Pakistani who is the Antichrist's head of security (and who joins a virtual Rainbow Coalition of evil, including the Antichrist himself, Romanian Nicholae Carpathia; his "right-hand man," the Italian-American Leon Fortunato; and the leader of the abominable One World Faith, the former Catholic U.S. bishop Peter Matthews; and later the Chinese security expert Walter Moon). Yet there have been over the course of the series, several moments in which Islam and/or Arabs figured importantly. In the most recent novel, there is a fairly long scene in which a group of Chinese Muslims prove themselves to be hold-outs against the Antichrist and are thus about to be executed. The tenets of Islam are summarized briefly but respectfully. Just before they are about to die, a group of the Muslims convert to Christianity and thus assure their assent to heaven (Remnant, 282–97).

In the earlier novels, two key Arab characters emerged, both of whom are Muslims who convert after the Rapture. Both are presented as highly positive individuals. One, "Al-B" or Albie, is described as a native of Al Basrah, Iraq, which in later novels is glossed as simply "north of Kuwait." He plays a key role in many of the novels' most daring rescues and escapes. The second is Abdullah Smith —- "the name looks weird," his friend Mac explains, "but he has his reasons" (Apollyon, 333). Abdullah is a Jordanian pilot, and is almost always named as a favorite character on the fan sites. One young person has even taken his name as her nom-de-web, and he is often featured in fan fiction as well. In fact, Abdullah is one of the central characters of the entire last half of the series. As one of the pilots who can ferry the Tribulation Force members back and forth between the United States and the Middle East, he is key to the plot. But he is also figured as a good friend to several of the male characters at the heart of the story, particularly Rayford Steele.

Abdullah is one of the tough men of action who provide the story's emotional center; he is laconic but has a rough and earthy sense of humor that allows him to trade friendly insults with another pilot, a white American named Mac. When Abdullah first appears, his broken English is presented as the source of "friendly" amusement for the readers and other characters (Apollyon, 353, and Assassins, 136). Later, as he becomes more central to the Tribulation Force, he and Mac trade the kind of ethnic jokes that are supposed to be the staple of locker-room and battlefield bonding: he makes fun of Mac's "Texan" talk and calls him a "cowboy"; Mac returns by calling him a "camel jockey" (Remnant, 350–53). Here, as with the African-American characters in the earlier novels, LaHaye and Jenkins exhibit a genuine but awkward embrace of diversity and yet a none-too-subtle racism. Abdullah is warmly welcomed into the fraternity of Christian believers, but he must consistently perform as a (racially) marked man.

The more subtle but perhaps more important signifier within the world of Left Behind is the fact that Abdullah is located as Jordanian, not Palestinian. In fact, there are no Palestinian Arabs ever mentioned in a series where much of the action takes place in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. There are Arabs, presumably, in the masses who gather to hear the Antichrist when he speaks in Jerusalem, but in those moments, it is Jews and Israel that matter: Israeli Jews are central doctrinally, and they are key characters in the novels, as they convert, provide leadership to other believers, and, in the most recent novel, find themselves gathered and protected in the city of Petra, as the Antichrist marshals his forces. (On the other hand —- and surely this is not incidental —- there are no American Jews in Left Behind.)

So it is that the mapping of characters' identities is also a mapping of the space of Palestine/Israel, precisely because the very notion of "Palestinian" is made invisible, impossible. There are Muslims and there are Arabs in Left Behind, but there are few Arab Christians and there are no Palestinians. Within the logic of the series, Palestinians cannot convert like Abdullah or Albie and they cannot resist like the righteous Chinese Muslims, because they are simply outside the representational possibilities of the Left Behind world. Dick Armey's suggestion that Palestinians should be removed from the West Bank and Gaza, and Pat Robertson's insistence that Israel should never compromise one bit of land, are enacted within the novels as wish fulfillment: there is no Palestinian problem on the evangelical map. (pp. 788-792)

So, Kristof is not wrong to see "ethnic cleansing" in the Left Behind series, but what escapes his attention is the fact that the "ethnic cleansing" that it promotes is predicated on Christian Zionism's narrative of Israel. Therefore, it seeks to be -- and, to a large extent, it is -- racially liberal toward converts from all faiths, nations, and races -- accounting for its popularity -- except those who defy the political and theological plot of the novels: Palestinians and American Jews.