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This Week in God

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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.”

Comments

  • phoebes in santa fe

    says:

    Now let’s see. Victoria Olsteen, in a first class seat from Vail to Houston, assaults a flight attendent because she didn’t get the seat cleaned up fast enough.

    I think she’s got way too much money, for one thing. Also, way too much pride.

    Hope she has to serve some time or give up some cash.

    If her husband isn’t gay, I’ll be very shocked. I’m just waiting for that scandal to break.

  • SteveT

    says:

    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.

    The Ten Commandments
    I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
    II. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
    III. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
    IV. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.

    http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/ten_commandments.htm

    Nope, nothing religious here.

    American law’s two major influences were, in fact, ancient Roman law and Germanic law — both of which came from Pagan, polytheistic cultures.

    Note to journalists in the corporate-controlled media:
    Your job is to report facts and report when public figures say things that are contradicted by the facts. It is not a matter of opinion whether a document is religious when the document EXPLICITLY STATES how its followers are supposed to worship their god.

  • Ten Bears

    says:

    The Red Sticks Council of the Iroquois Confederacy was as equal an influence as Roman and Germanic (itself rooted in Roman) Law. You know, them heathen redskins…

  • The Answer is Orange

    says:

    I [ahem] I’ve read some of the Left Behind books and unless it’s a freak coincidence, that’s what they were going for. However, comparing him to Moses at the end blew the whole message.

    I’ve never gotten the TalEvan’s attitude towards the apocalypse. According to them, they’re all saved so they’ll be whisked away to Heaven where they’ll eat holy popcorn while us sinners get eaten by iron lions and copper grasshoppers and whatever the fuck John of Ptamos hallucinated. But at the same tim they get their pants in a knot when they think the apocalypse is eminent (i.e, every time a state decides equal rights for gays & lesbians aren’t a bad thing).

    Like I said, I don’t know why they would want to avoid what they say is the most glorious event in our history.

    Oh wait, I forgot. There won’t be any hookers and meth in Heaven and they know the Muslims will be too pissed off with them to share their houris.

  • Jeff

    says:

    I’m a political adviser is the sense that I advise anyone in the room about my feelings on politics. Today, my advice for Senator Obama to maintain an even keel with regard to recent McCain ads while mentioning them from time to time between now and November. Perhaps the Obama campaign (with much surrogate inclusion) can begin to use key phrases like the ‘Britney campaign’ or the ‘Paris Campaign’ etc. to show off John McCain’s methodologies while running for president of the United States.

  • Chris

    says:

    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.

    Right-wingers are only happy when they have nameless/faceless enemies to hate.

  • Texas Aggie

    says:

    1. Yesterday I saw a report from the Nation that “reliable” fundamentalist theologians have shown that John McCain is the antiChrist among other reasons for his desire to stay forever in Babylon. At the time I thought it was a stupid thing for the Nation to report, but in light of McFlipFlop’s TV ad, I now understand.

    2. I also read a report on the Victoria Osteen affair and it seems that she made some rather degrading comments concerning the stewardess’ ethnic group, African American, while shoving her around. Her husband, on the other hand, showed some maturity in that he stepped between his wife and the stewardess and told her he would wipe the water, wine, whatever, off the armrest himself.

  • Lew Scannon

    says:

    It’s not Mrs. Osteen’s fault, the liquid had assumed the shape of People For The American Way leader ( and television producer)Norman Lear, which she had assumed was an evil omen that the plane was doomed to crash into New Orleans during a gay pride parade, embarrassing her and her family. It’s what Jesus would have done!

  • ThatTallGuy

    says:

    > 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.

    OK, now *that’s* bias, and so sloppy as to be beneat you: “I don’t understand it, so it must be something bad.”

    I’m as liberal as the next guy, and it happens I’m quite sensitive to dog whistles (my ears perked up when Bush mentioned “Dred Scott” in the debates) — but the correct reaction (especially for a journalist-type) is to investigate the underlying meanings rather than to pass along muckraking. There are plenty of analyses by knowledgeable people already which you could have linked to; for example here, here, and here, to list three easily locatable discussions.

  • MsMuddled

    says:

    Hitler was the anti-christ. Y2K was the day of the *anti-christ*. Oh wait. He didn’t show up on midnight. Then Osama was the anti-christ. I had a conversation with someone recently who is completely obsessed about Mikhail Gorbachev being the anti-christ. I’m talking totally-obsessed-for-years obsessed. It was very hard not to laugh. Still, it was kind of scary to hear because so many people really think this way, all the time every minute of their lives.

    Curiously though, Joel Osteen is one of those guys who doesn’t preach fear. He’s actually been condemned by the anti-christers because he doesn’t terrorize folks. His sermons are about getting off your fat ass and enjoying life. What a concept.

    Maybe Osteen is the anti-christ!!!

  • SadOldVet

    says:

    McCain has limited appeal to the RR – just to its ‘leaders’ who are money and power junkies. Fear of Obama is all that McBush has left to appeal to them.

  • burro

    says:

    Responding to the news, right-wing bloggers freaked out, began to organize a boycott, and Tyson Foods announced yesterday that it has backed down.

    Tyson Foods backs down in game of chicken.

    It’s pretty funny that the labor union hating right is all het up about defending the sanctity of Labor Day. I reckon that a Muslim based holiday is something to be feared more than a holiday based on acknowledging the worth and contribution of American Labor but it sure as hell can’t be by much.

  • Dan

    says:

    If you’re wetting your pants in excitement of the coming apocalypse, do you vote to bring it on?

    If the innuendo is intentional, I would encourage these types of attacks. They make McCain (himself the antichrist!) look unhinged. And remember, religious nuts were saying the same thing about Bush, and he didn’t have any trouble with the fundagelical crowd. Many of these people are irrational, but honestly – if you dream of sugarplums and apocalypse, isn’t it perfectly rational to vote for the antichrist?

  • ericfree

    says:

    Thanks to CB, Time and everyone else for catching up. Not to be immodest, but I called this in these columns the afternoon the ad came out. To someone who lived for years in a heavily Evangelical area (southeast Ohio), the comparison was apparent immediately. In fact, I’ve been waiting for it for months.

    Apart from his issue positions, one of my concerns about Obama from the beginning was his superficial resemblance to some of the characteristics of the “Antichrist,” and the failure of the urban/Harvard people behind his campaign to realize this. The Left Behind series was nothing more than a bestselling distillation of ideas that have been circulating around Appalachia and the South since the early Seventies and that account, in part, for his failure to do better there.

    The first reference in Sullivan’s Time article is to a column by no less than Hal Lindsay, the seminal God/Doom huckster who is regarded as a prophet in some circles. As the McCain ad does, Lindsay wisely stopped short of calling Obama the Antichrist, merely saying that when the Antichrist arrives, he’ll look and act a lot like Obama, a kind of dry run for the real thing.

    It’s good this is hitting now, giving the Obama people time to deal with it. If they’re smart, they’ll hire some experts in religious folklore as consultants; my fear is they consider themselves too sophisticated to recognize the danger.

    But what do I know? I supported Edwards. Yesterday afternoon I had to endure an Obama supporter’s sympathetic “Aren’t you glad now he’s not the nominee?” I could only agree. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my hourly weeping session.

  • burro

    says:

    Last couple of paragraphs: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09houston.html?ref=us

    During testimony Friday, Ms. Brown’s lawyer, Reginald McKamie, asked Ms. Osteen what her husband meant when, without reference to the airliner incident, he once said during a church service that if it were not for him, she would be in jail.

    “He was being funny,” Ms. Osteen said, adding that she now wished he had not made the joke.

  • True American

    says:

    Tyson Chicken and you think they are right? BS. The company builds prayer rooms for them and won’t let Christians have time for prayer or build prayer rooms for them. Sorry, it should be none or all. Isn’t that what the word for democracy is about.

    Some fools, calling it about the right-wingers. Put your head back in the sand. I am glad once source of destroying American was stopped!!!!

  • Dale

    says:

    Good early call, ericfree @14. Warren Adler, the novelist, claims that Obama’s speech in Germany evoked Hitler more than JFK or Reagon. Who knows.

  • Prup (aka Jim Benton)

    says:

    Hold it a minute:
    Obama, the ‘radical Christian’ (according to those who are trying to bash him for Rev. Wright) who is ‘really a Muslim’ (according to the e-mails) is also ‘the AntiChrist’ — who is, according to John Hagee (the “New Moses’ — to hear the Connecticut Mugwump tell it) supposed to be ‘half-Jewish.’

    Now if the RR only realized that Zoroastrianism (the religion of the Persian rulers of the “Holy Land’ for decades before they ‘lost’ it to the Romans — whose ideas filtered into the ‘folk religion’ of the Jews in much the same way as Christianity became part of voudoun) is as much a source of Christianity as is Judaism (the ‘redeemer son of God’ is a Zoroastrian idea, as is all the demonology — which does not appear at all in the Old Testament — in it Satan is “God’s Prosecuting Attorney’ not an evil creature.) they could make a ‘clean sweep’ and call him “Ahriman” as well.

  • Don Singleton

    says:

    Anyone that read and understood the Left Behind books could not possibly think Obama was the AntiChrist or even Nicolae Carpathia. I covered it more here, but Osama is not the AntiChrist. I just think he is a con man with a gift of gab, but not the experience to be President.

  • Steve

    says:

    Actually, I think Condi Rice is the Antichrist. Or would that be “Antichristess?” I’m confused on this Antichrist business. Suppose we just agree that anything even remotely connected to the Bush administration is the Antichrist?

    Now on the other hand, Vickie Osteen should have been dragged off that plane in chains. She not only disputed, delayed, and impeded the departure and operations of a commercial aircraft, but she physically assaulted a member of the flight crew. Maybe someone can creatively build a federal complaint against her for—oh, I don’t know—TERRORISM? I mean, if terrorists are fundamentalists, then mightn’t we acknowledge that the reverse—that fundamentalists are terrorists—is at least measurably similar?

  • libra

    says:

    If her husband isn’t gay, I’ll be very shocked. — Phoebe S, in Santa Fe, @1

    Well… Not only is he good looking, but he offered to mop up the spill himself. You may be right, in your suspicions — definitely not a manly man (grin)

    But I thought Obama was a secret Muslim, so he can’t be the anti-Christ! — Hannah, @23

    But Muslims *are* “partly Jewish”. Remember Hagar? Of course, Jews wouldn’t accept it — they trace their bloodlines through mothers (mother is a matter of fact, father a matter of opinion) — but, for those who think “father knows best”, which includes both Christians and Muslims, he carries the seed of Abraham…

  • smerling rosario

    says:

    Hey, Victoria is a great woman, she works for the money she earns, and there is no shame in using it.

    That flight attendant just wants MONEY!!!! its ovious, exageration!
    How convinient, sue them! at this time of need.

  • MsJoanne

    says:

    I covered it more here, but Osama is not the AntiChrist. I just think he is a con man with a gift of gab, but not the experience to be President.

    Don, newsflash: Osama isn’t running for president.

    Do you get points for that, too?

  • joey

    says:

    Steve, thanks for running this segment every week. I do enjoy reading it.

    Wasn’t it McCain who said, “Jesus was a little shit who abandoned his mother and brothers and went off into the desert to spout some liberal bullshit. He deserved everything he got”? Or was that Lieberman? Did Jesus really slap Mary Magdeline because she didn’t clean up a spot of oil on his sandals fast enough? I think I heard that from Victoria Osteen.

    Obama is not “The One”…he is “The Right One” and one thing you can count on…this anti-Christ will not be a liberal since Christ was a liberal. So it follows that the “Anti”-Liberal or Anti-Christ won’t be a liberal and since the republicans try to frame Obama as “the most liberal member of the Senate” then logic tells you he must be the furthest thing away from the “Anti-Christ”.
    Rumor fixed.

  • Rabi

    says:

    That Tyson story is awful. The idea of replacing labor day being an anti-labor move when a union pushed for it verges on parody. Besides, Labor Day isn’t an important holiday to anyone. People just like the day off, so who cares if you replace it with a different day off, one which would actually inherently mean something to other people?

    The evangelical right never ceases to disgust me.

  • Lucy

    says:

    At first I thought McCain’s the one ad was just an attempt to inject some humor in the campaign. Then I read the memo mentioned in the Time article that was released by the Eleison Group (find the full memo at http://www.eleisongroup.com). Not to mention the fact that the ad was made by a close friend of Ralph Reed and that according to the Wall Street Journal, even the authors of the Left Behind series saw the parallels to their books
    (http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121816422728523227.html).
    The McCain camp is trying to prey on people’s fears and scare them into voting for him. They need to be called out for using such cheap tactics.

  • Taritac

    says:

    Lay off Joel Osteen. I like him. He actually has a lot of common sense and is NON-POLITICAL, something that is increasingly in short supply among religious leaders these days.

    I have long disliked his wife, for no other reason than the fact that she looks like she is only barely tolerating being the First Lady of Joel’s church. Whenever the camera lands on her, her face looks like she smells something bad.

    I would have hoped that Tyson could show better sense than to bow down to evangelicals over an internal employee policy. The more publicity the issue gets, the more evangelicals will look bad.

    Oh, and by the way, we’ve already had the anti-christ, and his name is George W. Bush. The characteristics compiled by Wikipedia include: “sitting in the temple” [White House, National Cathedral, the seat of power, etc.], opposing himself against anything that is worshiped [haven’t worked this one out except to note that his evangelical supporters supported him in spite of his evildoing, denying and lying about it], claiming divine authority [claims of how he speaks to God, dogwhistling Christian hymns and themes], working all kinds of counterfeit miracles and signs [“Mission Accomplished”], and doing all kinds of evil [torture, warrantless wiretapping, DOJ firings, outing Plame, lying about WMD/Saddam/9-11/etc.]. The fact that he has been and, it seems, continues to be successful and unaccountable in all these only lends weight to the idea that his evil is a true evil.

  • Bruno

    says:

    Thattallguy @ 9

    Thanks for the links. it was an interesting read. I signed the petition. I’ll probably get some religious spam mail, but it was worth it.

  • Bruno

    says:

    the authors of the Left Behind series saw the parallels to their books

    Maybe the authors can sue McCain’s campaign for copyright infringement, or insist they get 10% of his campaign funds as a royalty for insinuating their idea in their ad.

    wouldn’t that be too much fun to have: Right wingers suing right wingers.
    🙂

  • jhm

    says:

    Not to repeat myself at too great a length, but it seems important enough to stress that Jesus himself prophesied the the end of the world would come in the apostles’ lifetimes. He is quoted in the bible on several occasions to this effect (my favorite is the tradition of the wandering jew who has been alive since Jesus carried his cross down the Via Dolorosa since he claimed that the end would come before all who watched him had died). John wrote the apocalypse after Jesus died, from the disillusionment he experienced when nothing happened. The coming of the end had been an ever present feature of the various christian sects from the beginning.

  • Nancy Irving

    says:

    I wonder whether the Obama=Antichrist meme won’t boomerang on them.

    After all, doesn’t your true fundie *want* Armageddon to come as soon as possible? Isn’t this the reason why fundies support the state of Israel–because they believe its existence to be a prerequisite for the second coming?

    Fundies anxious for the Rapture might therefore be, er, tempted to support Obama, since the Messiah won’t come until *after* the Antichrist takes over the world, if I remember my wacko-theology correctly.

    This meme could seal McCain’s doom! 🙂

  • chrenson

    says:

    I dunno, Nacy. Voting for the Antichrist would be a lot like wearing the “number of the beast.” And these fundies are known for refusing license plates and phone numbers that feature the number of the beast. God can see who you vote for [although, it’s not known whether God can tell for whom Diebold actually counts your vote]. No self-righteous religious nutjob is going to willingly vote for the Antichrist. Although, if Obama wins, they will say they were powerless to stop it.

    To me this ad is so obviously designed to be passed around as proof that Obama is the Antichrist. It is narrowcasted directly at the tiny minds that can unlock its base symbolism in order to make them very afraid. It basically says, “So you don’t think John McCain is religious enough, huh? Well, why do you think that Obama guy is so popular? Satan? Maybe you should run with that.”

    Prediction: Someone will unlock a Nostradamus quatrain that predicts Obama will win followed by a “rain of fire on the twelve tall cities of the east on the day of the twelfth return of the McRib.”

    Look it up, people.

  • Louisa

    says:

    A friend of mine from Alabama has been receiving e-mail forwards from her family members for MONTHS saying that Obama is the Antichrist. It’s going around Southern churches. This is not something new that the McCain campaign cooked up this week — it’s been a useful strategy on a smaller scale for a while now.