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talkpoliticsThe topic for today is Dispensational Premillenialism.
If this term means nothing to most people, it is that way for a reason. This is, after all, about the fringe, not the norm. The concept here is one of Christian eschatology, i.e. a belief system in the end of the world and the Second Coming/Parousia of Jesus Christ. This is the view offered in the Christ Clone Trilogy (the actually frightening take on it) and Left Behind (which should be left behind on all bookshelves). Specifically this particular ideology is one with a great deal more influence on U.S. conservatism than it should rightfully have, with all kinds of disastrous impacts.
http://www.theprophecies.com/checklist1.html
^This is your basic summary of what this movement is all about, namely the belief that starting with the establishment of Israel in 1948 there is some kind of cosmic Doomsday clock ticking. This movement has the ironic aspect of wanting to make the state of Israel the world's largest, most grotesque ghetto in literally wanting to uproot every last Jew on the planet into Israel so that Jesus will beam them up into Heaven and they get a front-row seat for the Apocalypse. This movement also believes that Russia, Ethiopia, and a few other states will randomly launch a massive, suicidal attack on Israel for no real reason (as is portrayed in the Left Behind series).
The concept of Dispensationalism gets into a lot of estoceric takes on Christian concepts of salvation that amount to randomly picking verses from the Bible and making them mean more what they want them to mean than they actually mean, so I'm not going to cover the actual Dispensations. This is, after all, a political community, not a religious one. The primary danger the Dispensationalists pose in political terms is that these are the people who view the USA as having some kind of mandate to back Israel no matter what it does, and no matter why it does it, because that way they make the world's largest Ghetto and ensure the end of the world.
Put another way, if Dispensationalist ideas on foreign policy were in a movie, they'd be the ideas of supervillains: create massive geopolitical upheaval to induce black magic that summons an entity that will slaughter 99% of the human race. Including, of course, those Jews who decide to stay Jews and not follow Jesus. One can imagine how conflating foreign policy on a particular issue with the clash of God and the Devil might tend to constrict options and lead to outbreaks of curious paranoia in the United States over threats to Israel that seem to indicate a surprising inability to see the IDF as capable of defending itself.
If this particular analysis sounds U.S. exclusive, there is a reason for it: outside the United States this particular bunch of wackadoodles has no real existence or staying power in the First World. What it says about the United States that people like this have that kind of influence on both the Democrats and the Republicans is another question. Personally I think it's an instance of people attributing to Christianity a twisted interpretation of the Golden Mean fallacy that would never fly with any other religion, including Judaism.
If this term means nothing to most people, it is that way for a reason. This is, after all, about the fringe, not the norm. The concept here is one of Christian eschatology, i.e. a belief system in the end of the world and the Second Coming/Parousia of Jesus Christ. This is the view offered in the Christ Clone Trilogy (the actually frightening take on it) and Left Behind (which should be left behind on all bookshelves). Specifically this particular ideology is one with a great deal more influence on U.S. conservatism than it should rightfully have, with all kinds of disastrous impacts.
http://www.theprophecies.com/checklist1.html
^This is your basic summary of what this movement is all about, namely the belief that starting with the establishment of Israel in 1948 there is some kind of cosmic Doomsday clock ticking. This movement has the ironic aspect of wanting to make the state of Israel the world's largest, most grotesque ghetto in literally wanting to uproot every last Jew on the planet into Israel so that Jesus will beam them up into Heaven and they get a front-row seat for the Apocalypse. This movement also believes that Russia, Ethiopia, and a few other states will randomly launch a massive, suicidal attack on Israel for no real reason (as is portrayed in the Left Behind series).
The concept of Dispensationalism gets into a lot of estoceric takes on Christian concepts of salvation that amount to randomly picking verses from the Bible and making them mean more what they want them to mean than they actually mean, so I'm not going to cover the actual Dispensations. This is, after all, a political community, not a religious one. The primary danger the Dispensationalists pose in political terms is that these are the people who view the USA as having some kind of mandate to back Israel no matter what it does, and no matter why it does it, because that way they make the world's largest Ghetto and ensure the end of the world.
Put another way, if Dispensationalist ideas on foreign policy were in a movie, they'd be the ideas of supervillains: create massive geopolitical upheaval to induce black magic that summons an entity that will slaughter 99% of the human race. Including, of course, those Jews who decide to stay Jews and not follow Jesus. One can imagine how conflating foreign policy on a particular issue with the clash of God and the Devil might tend to constrict options and lead to outbreaks of curious paranoia in the United States over threats to Israel that seem to indicate a surprising inability to see the IDF as capable of defending itself.
If this particular analysis sounds U.S. exclusive, there is a reason for it: outside the United States this particular bunch of wackadoodles has no real existence or staying power in the First World. What it says about the United States that people like this have that kind of influence on both the Democrats and the Republicans is another question. Personally I think it's an instance of people attributing to Christianity a twisted interpretation of the Golden Mean fallacy that would never fly with any other religion, including Judaism.
