A Thinking Reed

Apocalypse not yet

Written by

Lee M.

in

This bit from a news account of a speech President Bush gave yesterday in Ohio on the state of the Iraq war made me chuckle:

One woman asked Bush if the war in Iraq and rise in terror were “signs of the Apocalypse.”

“Hmmm,” Bush replied. “I haven’t really thought of it that way. … I guess I’m more of a practical fellow.”

Translation: leave me alone, crazy lady!

Despite his reputation as the poster boy for the Christian Right, Bush has always struck me as pretty much in the mainsteam of the evangelical wing of mainline Protestantism in his religious beliefs (he is a Methodist after all). By contrast, I seem to recall that the not particularly pious Ronald Reagan gave a considerable amount of thought to apocalypticism when he was in the White House.

Comments

5 responses to “Apocalypse not yet”

  1. Joshie

    To be fair, the question the woman was actually asking was if the president shared the views of some evangelicals that the war in Iraq is a sign of the end times, a view I’ve heard expressed by people (usually underinformed), and some particularly silly TV preachers.

    Its a part of this obsession with linking current events to apocalyptic lit in the Bible. Many of them have made a Babylon-Iraq connection.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    Really? I got the impression from the story that this was a kind of town-hall meeting where the pres. was taking questions from random ordinary people.

    Well, my version’s funnier anyway.

    Reply
  3. Joshie

    It was a town hall meeting, but she was asking whether he shared those views, she wasn’t necessarily espousing those herself.

    Reply
  4. kim

    I’ve never believed that Bush is the fundamentalist wacko that he’s portrayed as in the media. Sometime in the past few years, I recall he was quoted as saying that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship the same God – that sounds downright liberal to me.

    Reply
  5. Joshie

    Yeah I’m inclined to agree with you kim, but he is very adept and making fundies think he’s one of them. That’s really part of his (or Rove’s or whoever’s) political genius, I think. He was able to harness the energy of this whole, somewhat marginal part of the county’s religious and political scene and ride it into office.

    Reply

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