corrente

Slacktivist can tell you why the bigger picture matters with respect to the corrosive nature of fundamentalist Christian end-timer prophecy story-time hucksterism. And why there is more to the message than meets the easy reader eye.

I have, as a kind of antidote, been re-reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. This is a whipsmart book that I hope will serve as a prophylactic against the potential intellect-eroding effects of LaHaye and Jenkins' stupefying work.

But why take the risk at all? Why expose myself and the readers of this blog to the potentially toxic foolishness of Left Behind?

Because LB is more than simply a wretched novel. It is a wretched novel with serious consequences.

[...]

At a very basic level, this worldview opposes and undermines any long-term thinking, any sustained effort to make the world a better place -- replacing the hope of redemption with a perverse longing for apocalypse.

LaHaye's Left Behind series is of course colorable nonsense.
But colorable nonsense has never been an obstacle to the wowsers who bow on knee in the shadow of the Great Crayon. Just ask Hal Lindsey. Better yet, just go read: L.B.: Welcome to the Hellmouth