LaHaye and Jenkins: Why is the Criticism Left Behind?
Chip Berlet printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Mon Jun 19, 2006 at 11:26:37 PM EST
Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates
(author info)
Left Behind
When White supremacists post websites demonizing Jews and gay people, they are condemned for the hatemongers they are.

When leaders of the armed citizens militias and their allies in the Patriot Movement in the 1990s urged their followers to form anti-government underground cells and battle global cooperation and the United Nations, they were condemned as dangerous guerrillas spreading divisive conspiracy theories.

When Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins write the Left Behind series of novels containing the same type of bigotry, they sell 70 million books and are interviewed by clueless journalists who use a double standard by not confronting LaHaye and Jenkins for spreading hate and conspiracism as well as promoting religious violence as a heroic duty.

All religions have peaceful and violent sides, notes Rapoport. Fundamentalism does not necessarily demonize opponents, or promote theocracy or violence. LaHaye and Jenkins, however, are embedded in a type of fundamentalism rooted in dualistic apocalypticism. As Wessinger explains, this form of fundamentalism is b