First up from the God machine this week is the response in some faith communities to John McCain’s “The One” ad, launched last week.
To briefly recap, the McCain campaign released a web video eight days ago, characterizing Barack Obama as having some kind messianic complex, comparing him to Moses, and with a mocking narrator saying, “He can do no wrong.”
This week, a number of progressive Christians starting reporting on the possible subtext underlying the ad: the McCain campaign may be playing on evangelical fears of, believe it or not, the Antichrist. The argument made the rounds a few days ago, and was elevated to a national issue by Time’s Amy Sullivan yesterday, who noted that the ad’s suggestion of Obama as the Antichrist might actually make the Willie Horton ads “seem benign” by comparison.
“The language in there is so similar to the language in the Left Behind books,” says Tony Campolo, a leading progressive Evangelical speaker and author.
As the ad begins, the words “It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One” flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: “We Are God”) and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, “A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”
The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than McCain’s “Celeb” ad linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seem to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they’re not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.
Democratic consultant Eric Sapp insists, “the frequency of these images and references don’t make any sense unless you’re trying to send the message that Obama could be the Antichrist.” Mara Vanderslice, another Democratic consultant, who handled religious outreach for the 2004 Kerry campaign, added, “If they wanted to be funny, if they really wanted to play up the idea that Obama thinks he’s the Second Coming, there were better ways to do it. Why use these awkward lines like, ‘And the world will receive his blessings’?”
Personally, I’m not sure how coincidental any of this might be, but I would note that this is what dog-whistle politics is all about.
Also from the God Machine this week:
* The union that represents workers at a Tyson Foods poultry plant in Tennessee “negotiated a contract that substitutes a Muslim holiday for Labor Day as one of the eight paid holidays at the plant,” a move the union said was necessary to help accommodate the spiritual needs of an increasingly large Muslim workforce. Responding to the news, right-wing bloggers freaked out, began to organize a boycott, and Tyson Foods announced yesterday that it has backed down.
* Two Kentucky counties that want to promote state-sponsored Ten Commandments displays are trying to convince a federal judge that the religious code of the Old Testament is not, in fact, religious. Ironically, one might think anti-religion activists would want to strip sacred texts of their spiritual significance. In recent years, it’s conservative Christians who have been doing it. (thanks to reader U.S. for the tip)
* And finally, this has become quite an embarrassment for one of the nation’s high-profile megachurch leaders: “Victoria Osteen, co-pastor of one of the nation’s largest megachurches, denied in testimony Friday that she had assaulted a Continental Airlines flight attendant who is suing her for 10 percent of her net worth. The plaintiff, Sharon Brown, whose account is backed by other flight attendants, maintains that Ms. Osteen shoved her against a restroom door, in the process elbowing her in the breast, during boarding of a December 2005 flight to Vail, Colo., from Houston. The altercation developed, Ms. Brown says, because Ms. Osteen felt that a spot of liquid had not been cleaned from her first-class seat’s armrest fast enough.”