The Left Behind Series (Official Site) of books have sold some 70 million copies. - In Swedish: 70 millioner ex.! - There are three movies based on the books. Quote from below: "Besides LaHaye (one of the authors), evangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are among the most well-known believers in these doctrines."
Video clip from the "Left Behind" (first movie), Part 1:
And who is the main Enemy in the opening scenes of film?
Israel Insider writes about the game (under Anti-semitism):
And then there are the books. The first volume in the "Left Behind" series was published in 1995. Since then, over 70 million copies have been sold, and several of the books have made it onto the New York Times bestseller list.
The series has been described as "Tom Clancy or Steven King meets Jesus": action-adventure with heavy Christian overtones. Spin-offs include a children's edition, comic books, postcards, board games, three movies and more.
Critics are particularly incensed by the identity of the series' authors: Dr. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. LaHaye heads several American conservative organizations, including the Council for National Policy, which leftwing journalists accuse of having undue influence on American policymakers.
Good for the Jews?
Where do we fit into all this? Jews and Israelis will find the series' plotline extremely troubling, to say the least.
In the first book, seven years of fighting between the forces of good and evil begin with a Russian attack on Israel, which survives to enable Jesus to return. While many Jews "see the light" and convert to Christianity, some liberal Israelis support the evil nonbelievers. In other words, "Left Behind" supports Israel but portrays Judaism as a mistaken religion.
The game has been attacked from both the left and the right. On The Daily Show, Rob Cordry showed a clip of the game's developer explaining that if a player "kills" an innocent bystander, he or she loses a point. However, if the player recruits and converts the bystander, he or she gains two points.
"Now I understand," Corddry quips. "The difference between murder and the soul's eternal salvation is three points."
Moderates view the implied connection between Christianity and violence with misgiving and caution that Islamists may use the game and the books as proof of American anti-Muslim intolerance.
Michael Standaert has written the book Skipping Toward Armageddon - The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire
Just what are "Incomplete Jews?"
by Michael Standaert
[ politics - june 06 ]
One of the deepest antipathies ardent Christians have had toward Jews through the ages derives from Jewish denial of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, a denial that has long fueled much of the anti-Semitism among Christian cultures. Most enlightened Christians, especially the non-proselytizing kind, don't obsess over this anymore. It's simply a non-issue. Furthermore, in an active sense, mainline Christian denominations have gone out of their way in the past half-century to rid their cultures of slurs referring to Jews as "deniers" or at its most virulent, as "Christ killers." For most it was the realization that fuel like this embedded in the minds of pre-secular Christian Europeans, helped ignite everything from pogroms in Russia to holocausts in lands under Nazi rule.
There were other aspects anti-Semitism, the more secular class and race based notions (as opposed to the simply religious), that also aided in turning people from everyday bigots and haters to exceptional purveyors of genocide. For many Jews in Europe at the time were hardly religious at all. Being a "denier" wasn't really much of an issue, apart from the total denial of religious life in any way. Being bourgeoisie was an issue, as was, paradoxically, being a Marxist champion of the proletariat. Hitler, with his Germanic version of nationalism, attacked both Jewish bourgeoisie (shopkeepers, bankers, businessmen) and socialist intellectual upstarts alike. Stalin's anti-Semitism feasted more of the flavors of ousting the bourgeoisie and later their minor remnants in the dekulakization campaigns, playing off popular anti-Semitic notions leftover from Czarist days.
What united both ideologies, Nazism and Stalinism, in their anti-Semitism was that Jews played central roles in their dramas. Secondly, was the fact that these ideologies based the Jewish threat to their nations on wild conspiracy theories, namely the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Under these lenses, Jews were seen as the Number One scapegoats, as purveyors of secrecy and conspiracy, as intellectual troublemakers, as anti-national internationalists, as unpatriotic, as outsiders, and as the ultimate "others." Today these same conspiracy theories are widely propagated throughout the Middle East by both Islamic fundamentalists and secular totalitarian regimes to use as propaganda against the state of Israel.
Considering what we know about how past uses of anti-Semitism in popular culture have later supported popular feeling against Jewish peoples, it is somewhat amazing how little has been said about these narratives within American culture. They are no more apparent today than in the hugely popular and successful series of Christian apocalyptic thrillers, the Left Behind novels.
Over the past decade, the Left Behind novels, have sold around 70 million copies and have become the most successful Christian publishing phenomenon ever in the United States outside the Bible. Written by Jerry B Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, a prominent Evangelical minister and political activist, series will culminate with the final and 15th book, The Rapture, appropriately enough, on June 6, 2006 (6/6/06). Three movies have been made based on the books, with the third movie, Left Behind: World at War, released last October 25th on DVD, skipping theatres altogether. It didn't skip churches, however. Over 3,000 churches signed up for a pre-release viewing the weekend before the official release.
For these books, LaHaye provides Jenkins with a detailed outline of prophecy based on the beliefs of dispensational premillennialism, a previously minor Protestant belief system that proposes a "Rapture" of "true believers" to Heaven prior to a seven-year period of tribulation culminating in the return of Jesus Christ and the Battle of Armageddon between the true believers and Satan. These beliefs came into being only 150 years ago when Scottish preacher John Darby formulated the ideas, ideas later disseminated in popular bibles such as the Scofield Reference Bible. They found a home in Protestant fundamentalism in the US and were propagated throughout academic systems, mainly through the Dallas Theological Seminary. The beliefs of dispensational premillennialism are then converted into a fictional narrative set in the present day and hung on the scaffolding of premillennialist prophecy interpretation, mostly based on the interpretation of the Book of Revelations. Besides LaHaye, evangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are among the most well-known believers in these doctrines.
Andra bloggar om: Left Behind, antisemitism, religion, mission, islam, islamism, islamofobi, kristendom, kristokrati, den kristna högern, Pat Robertson, video, film, Israel, USA, politik - Intressant
Technorati: Left Behind, Antisemitism, Anti-Semitism, Film, Games, Books, USA, Christocracy, Politics, Religion, Islamophobia, Christo Fascism, Christofascism, Christocracy, Religion, Video, USA, Politics
No comments:
Post a Comment