Radicals, Religion, and Revelation was written as a personal exploration of various religious expression within the context of the US culture of the early '00s. It was written from 2004 to 2006. This chapter is included because it touches on the background expounded upon in Conspirators, Confederates, and Cronies.
Cliff Potts -- June 14, 2014
Cliff Potts -- June 14, 2014
Change is Coming
Do you hear them? Do you see them? Can you feel them? The thundering hooves beat of what is to come. Move out of the way, obstructionist! Get out of the way, religious bigot, harlot of the Beast! Move over, bureaucrat! Change is coming. It is coming faster, harder, more drastically than you can believe. Commercial master, hear the voice of your indentured wage slave! Indeed you are losing control. The time of the citizen is once again rising. People will have what they need, one way or the other. Change is coming.
The horsemen ride, and we can only wait until they arrive. Are we ready? Can we wait? Not really. No, time has drained. It was squandered in search of gain. All that is left is fate. Come what will, we will face it together. What will come? More frightening and powerful challenges than we imagined are ahead. They will be drastic. They will come with altercations so powerful that even the corporate masters faint from fear.
Nothing can alter the inevitability of what is to come. The wise, may be unnerved, but they will not quake in fear. The wise will meet what comes. The wise will be ready. They are flexible and observant. They anticipate and see the coming changes and will be braced for them. The wise understand the wheel and are ready for change.
Pause for a Personal Perspective
I began writing Radicals, Religion, and Revelation in the days following the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. During the years between the attacks and the nation’s eventual invasion of Iraq, religion became a major topic of discussion. What was our religion, and what do we believe? What was their religion, and what do they believe? These discussions lead to a series of essays on the now defunct United States of America Free Web Zone (USAFWZ). USAFWZ was set up just before the invasion as an alternative news source on the web. It was renamed in late 2005 to the Progressive Voice and now has a new moderator.
A friend of mine, Ann, encouraged me to share my personal beliefs in a different forum. USAFWZ was a news and political site and did not lend itself to spiritual and religious discussions. My quest to combine the spiritual with the political led to Order of Olman’s birth as a Yahoo! ™ Group in October of 2003. The Order of Olman was the name of a mythical seventh century cleric and magician of Scottish origin near Edinburgh. In July 2004, this group was dismantled, and Lake Michigan Mystic’s Association (LMMC) was set up in Yahoo! ™ Groups to continue the work begun the previous year. In late 2004, that group became known as SpiritFlight. This book represents thirty-five of my essays written for these groups over the course of the past three years.
I rely heavily on Thomas Paine’s assertion concerning such revelations: what my perceived Creator reveals to me is my revelation, not yours. It is my expression and subjective understanding of my own spirituality as revealed to me during a time of spiritual and emotional exploration.
Within the Catholic Tradition there is a position that is popularly called “devil's advocate,” or, more officially promotor fidei, promoter of the faith. It is his responsibility to bring to light infractions which should be known, no matter how slight, in the process of beatification and canonization. It has been a sacred office since 1587. It is in the spirit of that role in which I author this book. There is a movement within the evangelical, fundamentalist religious community to “canonize” the ethos of the United States of America and the conservative agenda of the Republican Party. Very little dissent exists within this community to raise a voice of reason against the manifestation of the United States as a de facto theocratic nation. Kevin Phillips in his recently published American Theocracy, states, “We can begin by describing the role of religion in American Politics with two words: Widely underestimated.” Religion and politics are incredibly intertwined in the U.S., as they were in Europe before the foundation of the U.S.; and, that influence has been overlooked by the Establishment. Yet, George Gallop, the famous pollster, said, “religious affiliation remains one of the most accurate and least-appreciated political indicators available.”[1] This is because we have been taught that religion is not an appropriate topic for casual conversation.
Discussing religion is such a social sin in America that upon sharing one of these essays, “The Cycles of God,” with an on-line writers group, I was subject to a gale of criticism for having written about a religious topic at all. Following the passing of my mother, I wrote “Death and Life,” and was censured because one of the readers did not like how I glossed over the concept of Purgatory. When releasing the first draft of “Gods and Goddesses,” I was again taken to task by a forum member. She was bent on utter condemnation of Islam. Ironically, she is not even an evangelical; she is a “Jewitch,” someone who is both Jewish and Wicca.[2] Extremism in religious expression is not just an issue within the evangelical community.
People are making public policy based upon deeply held religious beliefs that color their individual perception of the world around them. As it is becoming a source of public policy, the underpinning beliefs have to be examined.
During the height of Catholic power, circa 999 CE to circa 1400 CE, Europe stagnated due to “millennium paralysis,” which is the view, or fear, that Jesus would return at any moment to rule with “a rod of iron” as predicted in the New Testament. It took the pandemic of the Black Death in 1349 to force social growth, reformation, and intellectual awareness.
There is no mistake that we, as a nation, are again caught in the grips of “millennium fever.” This is covered in “Biblical Prophesy,” “Dangerous Times,” and “End Times?” On one hand, people are paralyzed by fear, creating a pessimistic attitude towards solutions to social, environmental, domestic, and economic issues. Challenges in these areas are often shrugged off by the populace as “a sign of the [end] times.” At the same time, the nation is driving towards self-aggrandizing audaciousness and rash martial adventurism in the Middle East. Certain factions in the GOP seem bent on preparing the Middle East for the return of King Jesus to rule over the entire world – as if human intervention is required to catalyze an event known only to God Himself. If this were not within the confines of religious theosophy, there would be serious questions raised about the loyalty of any citizen who wants to turn over the nation to a foreign dictator, no matter how benevolent. Religion matters and it drives people at a basic level that is often overlooked by the majority of people.
In the 1950s, Ray Bradbury penned a story about people who, knowing they were to die, euthanized their children. Much of what we see today coming out of religious fundamentalism seems to follow that same pattern; they are so obsessed about the end of the world that they are capable, through their ruthlessly acquired political power, of creating that end.
These essays are not intended as heavy theological discussions. My primary objective is to give the reader something different to consider. I am not a theologian, but I do bring experience, both mundane and spiritual, to the discussion. I rely heavily on the history of theocratic states and my knowledge of events that have occurred over the past twenty years.
When I was a teenager, I joined the Baptist Church. During that time, the late 1970s and early 1980s, the primary theme of that denomination was that Jesus was a loving Lord and Savior to all humanity. Somewhere along the way, that has morphed into some kind of obsession with Jesus as conqueror. This is a position that can only be upheld in Scripture with exceptional intellectual gymnastics. The cause, revealed over time, is in response to the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism.
I have refrained from discussing the Muslim religion in this work. It is not an oversight. I wanted to look specifically at the religious traditions that historically rooted today’s Christian traditions and expressions.
[1]
Phillips, Kevin. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical
Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. New York : Viking, 2006.
[2]
Judeo-Paganism, or Jewish Paganism, is a religious
movement that mixes principles of Judaism, Neopaganism and the Kabbalah. Judeo-Pagans explore the origins of
the Jewish religion and its ancient neighbors, the religions of the Canaanites,
Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Ugarit
folk, and Egyptians. "Judeo-Paganism." Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. 5 Dec 2007 ,
00:17 UTC. Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc. 5 Dec 2007
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Judeo-Paganism&oldid=175820045>.
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