LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thedemonprist)

Hi, I'm a lurker on this community, but I ran across something I felt was of importance. I stopped off at Walgreens today to get some pictures developed, and as I was walking out I spotted the newest issue of Newsweek magazine (May 24th). Featured on the cover are the authors of the 'Left Behind' series, so I stopped to pick it up. I left feeling nauseated after I'd read the story. Some choice excerpts:

The other principal critique comes from some of Jenkins's and LaHaye's fellow Christians, who find the books more interested in God's wrath than God's love—as well as scripturally questionable. "It's pulp fiction, based on a particular reading of the Bible," says Randall Balmer, chair of the religion department at Barnard College. "It diverts attention from the mandate of the New Testament to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself." According to Tyndale's research, more Jews, agnostics and atheists read the series than mainline Protestants, and back in 2000 even the president of the Lutheran Church's conservative Missouri Synod denounced the "Left Behind" series as "an unbiblical flight of fancy." Most establishmentarian Christians agree with Tina Pippin, a professor of religious studies at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., in saying "Left Behind" "encourages people to see the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, with us or against us."

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Certainly LaHaye and Jenkins promulgate what might be called outsider theology. But they are outsiders: they grew up that way, and they're proud of it—much as they might also like to be insiders. And they do see the world in terms of good against evil: isn't that what their reading of the Bible tells them? "The liberals have crafted a Jesus that's unscriptural and to their liking," LaHaye says. "They want their God to be a big, benevolent grandfather who lets them into heaven anyway. The worst thing a person can do against God is to deceive people about the Bible. That's satanically inspired."

This next one in particular I found offensive. Read what LaHaye has to say about wealth, and wonder...:

LaHaye won't be along next month when the genial Jenkins appears at the secular BookExpo America's first-ever Religion Day. They may not be quite ready for LaHaye. With Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, he was one of the most divisive figures of the 1980s religious right, and he's still a loose cannon. He can't resist an opportunity to get in a dig about school prayer, the United Nations, homosexuals or "libertine living"—or to question a NEWSWEEK reporter about his personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

"I wake up every morning," he says, "and I see this beautiful place [his home, a country-club condominium off Rancho Mirage's Frank Sinatra Boulevard], and that drop-dead gorgeous view of the mountains, and I think, 'This is fantastic.' Because God is faithful." How does he reconcile that with Jesus' injunction to sell all you have and give to the poor? "I can accomplish far more from my present lifestyle and the giving that I do to Christian work," he says. "If I just sold everything and gave it to the poor, I can't see where that would advance the Gospel as much as I'm doing." But wouldn't it advance the poor? "Well," he says, "you know how much I pay in taxes?" To LaHaye, spreading the Good News is far more compassionate than redistributing the wealth.

You can read the whole vomitrocious article here: Pop Prophets