Doomsday

Strozier interviews several fundamentalists to get their take on the end of the world. Since many of the people he interviews grew up during the Cold War era, they equate the end of the world with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.

Each generation thinks that it is the predestined time of the second coming of Christ. One interviewee. Wilma, describes why she thinks it will be his generation that will see the end of the world: “The Bible doesn’t say it is going to be a nuclear war but it’s going to burn…. Could be a bomb because the Bible says the earth shall burn in fire. Could be a bomb.” She isn’t sure that the end of the world will be humanity’s own doing but she feverishly tries to connect the dots.

 The people Strozier talks to have an ambivalent relationship with the possibility of an atom bomb ending the world. From some, it’s an eternal source of anxiety but for others being on the brink of destruction is invokes them with a permanent urgency resulting in a religious enthusiasm. One man says, “There’s something so powerful about it that it just evokes fear and awe.” These feelings of fear and awe could possibly remind him of the fear and awe he feels for God.

 The fundamentalists also have conflicting opinions about whether the nuclear war will be the final end of the planet. They wonder if God will stop humans from completely destroying the world or will he let humanity be the cause for its own end. It is written in God’s plan for human beings to be the ultimate victim of their lust for power and domination? For humans beings to destroy the second Garden of Eden?

In Chapter 7, “The Problem of Endism,” Strozier concludes, “Social crisis, or a big war, or a disaster like nuclear terrorism could transform the [fundamentalist] movement overnight into a  potent and active apocalyptic force, and so transform the American political and social landscape” (Strozier 166).

America, as a Christian nation, and more importantly, as the most religious industrial nation in the world, provided a perfect example of this “pull towards totalism” both in the 1950’s and in the aftermath of September 11th (Strozier 164).

In the 1950’s, apocalyptic visions of nuclear war, as illustrated for children in the film “Duck and Cover,” (1951) were supplemented with McCarthyism in response to the Red Scare. The American people, afraid of Soviet espionage infiltrating all arenas of American life,  supported Senator McCarthy’s program of accusing, investigating, blacklisting, and generally persecuting suspected Communists. Accused Communists were always guilty until proven innocent.

The terrorism on September 11th, 2001, was the worst in recent American history. As a direct result of the attacks, Congress drafted and passed the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act). The Act was supported by members of both political parties, and was passed in both houses of Congress with ease. Only one Senator voted against it.

Written with the goal of protecting the country against foreign and domestic terrorists, it greatly expanded the government’s law enforcement power. After the initial shock of the attacks subsided, however, some Americans began to question whether the Act unreasonably curtailed civil liberties in granting permission for such a zealous pursuit of security. After all, as Ben Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Strozier’s conclusion about fundamentalism (that its tendency to be totalistic stems from the fact that its ideological basis is so apocalyptic ) is equally applicable to America. America, as a Christian nation, is also steeped in apocalyptic values. According to Strozier, then, it was only natural for the apocalyptic scares of the 1950’s and 9/11 to give rise to expressions of totalism in America.

Mary is a character that I initially found myself relating to. I was raised in a bible believing church by bible believing parents and have for the past few years challenged and shaped my own faith in God. However, as I read further into her narrative I  found myself becoming a little confused. I realized that we did not have as much in common as i had originally thought. I was truly surprised at her level of  certainty of the role nuclear war would play and then be down played by God’s desire to preserve the Earth and the role of the Anti-Christ who prevents nuclear war altogether as a deceptive peace maker. I began to reflect on how many stories I have heard in regards to the “end.” I cannot recall  hearing  many accounts of the book of Revelation and how the end of the world as we know it will play out. Perhaps my spiritual influences have played the safe card by not attempting to describe the details of the world’s final showdown. I have seen movie adaptations of Left Behind and others in the same vein, but after watching them I noticed the same reactions every time in the audience.  the general sentiment could be  summed up simply as: “Wow” and “That’s awful.” In spite of what played  out on the screen in front of the audience everyone simply mentally to move on to  their own current issues. There was no discussion or attempts to interpret the end but a simple admonition to make sure that you were not there…Not on the earth when it is supposed to end. This then brought me to a resounding theme in my own personal experience with the end of the world- the rapture. I have heard so many songs, sermons and conversations discussing the rapture of the saints. In fact, I am certain that many songs that I sang weekly  allude to the fact that despite of what has happened and what might possibly happen, God is in control. If we lived “right”  we would “be caught up to meet him,” therefore bypassing or being at least safe from any apocalyptic events. Which then brings me back to Mary. Why was she preoccupied with finding the exact details for herself? What purpose does it serve to figure  out the end for herself? Am I so self absorbed that I am blind an unable to acknowledge the “signs of the times”? To be frank I am quite satisfied with taking one day at a time without attempting to define God or the impending doom, regeneration or salvation that will befall the earth and those who inhabit it. Perhaps from the beginning of human history every civilization or people has experienced their own apocalypse. Their worlds seemed as if they  would collapse and at times they did.  The “end” has always ushered in the beginning somewhere else for someone else.

The “Duck and Cover” film was almost laughable.  I’m sure that people of a certain age can look back on these informative and important announcements from the Federal government not without some nostalgia and longing for a day when enemies were defined and threats confined to the latest few weapons.  The list of potential harm from the atomic bomb is underwhelming and underemphasized.  Nothing about radiation or heat or other harmful effects of the bomb.  No mention that the United States has just deployed one against Japan.  Further, the primitive safety guidelines, though somewhat protective, (“cover your neck with your coat”) are unlikely to make much of a difference in the event of true nuclear warfare.  And the civil defense worker arrives just in time to help Tony!  What did children think of these videos when they were shown in their classrooms?  I imagine a video presentation of this sort making apprehensive young school children even more worried about imminent disaster.  The fact that the average citizen knew almost nothing about the science behind atomic bombs made them entirely vulnerable and dependent on any information that the government distributed.  Additionally, since a lone man did not have any power to prevent the bomb, and since the threat of attack could only be prevented or defended by the federal government, films like these probably inspired more relief than skepticism.  Even the skeptic could try to “duck and cover.”  What did he have to lose in the case of total catastrophe?  Further, the 1950s were generally characterized by post-war quietude and conformity and belief in and reliance on the great American government that had granted them victorious in the war (though this neglects important movements that were simmering just below the surface).  The war hero is reincarnated in the civil defense worker who so kindly helps the little boy with his bicycle.  It’s your friendly hero just doing a day’s work in small-town America.  This was also an audience that had become accustomed to regularly watching newsreels of great importance during the war years.  Films had authority and anything released by the federal government even more so.

The pairing of the Strozier piece with this film suggests the threat of nuclear holocaust to which he has referred and which many Christian fundamentalists anticipate at end time.  But Strozier also points out that this end is a generalized notion of violence and warfare.  What he also notes is a curious sort of dissonance between fundamentalists external placidity as expressed through good works, charitable actions and religious devotion and an attention to violence to come at end time.  Religious fervor seems to manifest itself through intense acts of violence (and sex and domination) all in the name of salvation.  Strozier speak of indoctrination of youth that is so critical to maintaining the movement.  From a young age, children of the faith are inculcated with religious teaching and guilt to steer them in the path of the saved.  Concomitant with this teaching comes an understanding and fear of the wars at the end of the world.  Most intriguing in this piece was Strozier ideas about guilt and fears of end time.  In my own fatalist worldview, everything is going to turn out the worst it can.  It is a relief each time something does not go wrong.  But the anxiety that precedes is something to which I relate.

We are all products of our generation. Our ideas, beliefs and basic tenets are imprinted in us from infancy; as we watch our parents go about their lives, their behavior is absorbed into our impressionable minds. That we should apply the culture of our time with a prophetic event is no great leap of logic. We view the world around us through the lens of our upbringing and our ingrained prejudices. That people who grew up under the constant threat of nuclear attack would equate the Apocalypse with nuclear holocaust is understandable. However, let us not forget that every generation has done the same. Why would we be different?

The children of the Cold War were brought up in an environment where nuclear holocaust was imminent. As the video informed us, a nuclear blast could happen at anytime, with or without warning. A nuclear blast would be preceded by a great light, and would bring calamity and violence. The threat of nuclear attack was as normal as getting sunburn or eating lunch. This information was programmed into the minds of the Cold War generation. It inspired a culture of wariness, promoting the idea of sudden death amidst normalcy.

Charles Strozier argues that many fundamentalists believe that the apocalypse shall come in the form of nuclear holocaust. It is very reasonable, to those who subscribe to endism, to connect nuclear war to the End of Days. Among those who preach this doctrine are people who were brought up during the Cold War; the vivid apocalyptic imagery of Revelations parallels their childhood stereotype of how a nuclear attack would look like. The light that warns people of a nuclear attack could easily be “a great star [falling] from heaven burning as it were a lamp.” (Revelations 8:10) The intense violence visited on people, the destruction of nature, combined with the symptoms of radiation poisoning sound a lot like the signs of the Apocalypse in the Bible.

However, humanity’s ego and self-importance causes them to forget that throughout history, people of have always believed their eras to be the last days of mankind. This is the most important thing Strozier pointed out. The people alive now are no more special than those that live last century. Yet we are so preoccupied by ourselves, so impressed by our technologies, our achievements, our uniqueness, so convinced of our advanced state, that we deserve to be made special by being the last generation. We have forgotten that millennial prophecies and dates for the Rapture have come and passed. The plagues of Europe followed by the development of firearms could arguably be the nuclear holocaust of the seventeenth century. Every generation is convinced that mankind could not become more violent, more impious, more destructive–every generation has been proven wrong.

But then again, this generation is more special than the last.

Until a few years ago I laughed at the words, “don’t drink the Kool Aid.” Although I did not understand the reference, I imagined what it could mean. In my mind I had created stories of someone slipping GHB or disgusting bodily fluids into an, otherwise, normal glass of Kool Aid. It was only after I saw a documentary on Jonestown a few months that I realized that 909 people died in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, and that many of these victims drank grape-flavored Kool Aid that was laced with potassium cyanide. Jim Jones, the “father” of this movement had already held various suicide drills in this negative Utopia that was Jonestown before the actual event. The picture below was seared into my mind the night I watched the film and I still have trouble looking at it.

(Taken from http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/jonestown/jonestown_06.jpg

There were a few excerpts from his speech (call to suicide) that, I felt, relate to our assignments from this week: (transcript from http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/Tapes/DeathTape/death.html watch this for speech):

1. I want to go–I want to see you go, though…. It’s not to be afeared. It is not to be feared. It is a friend. It’s a friend … sitting there, show your love for one another. Let’s get gone.

Strozier says in his Apocalypse that Evangelicals tend to like to imagine their death as part of a group (67). This explicit desire that he has to see others die with him is perverse but, in a way, very common. Here, he calls dying together a show of love. Moreover, he says that the group must die in peace because they cannot live in peace. He paints death itself as a sort of rapture.

2. Lay down your life with dignity. Don’t lay down with tears and agony. There’s nothing to death…. It’s just stepping over to another plane. Don’t be this way. Stop this hysterics…. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity. We must die with some dignity. We will have no choice. Now we have some choice.…

The choice that Jim Jones is referring to, the choice of not having to face the real consequences of the world around him, reminds me of the “Duck and Cover” video. Here, children are being told that if they just “duck and cover” when they see a flash (even if all they have to cover themselves with is a thin piece of cloth or paper) that they will be able to escape the horrors of an atomic blast. Obviously, in this situation, neither the children nor their parents have any real agency when it comes to their mortality, this video gives them a false choice. Jones is feeling a similar sense of loss of control and decides to escape what he sees as apocalyptic through suicide

The Duck and Cover film, though intended to be educational, was confusing.  Who were they (the Federal Civil Defense Administration and the Safety Commission of the National Education Association)  trying to fool?  The kids?  The adults, or “grown-ups” rather?

From the wiki article:

“Acting on the human body, the shock waves cause pressure waves through the tissues. These waves mostly damage junctions between tissues of different densities (bone and muscle) or the interface between tissue and air. Lungs and the abdominal cavity, which contain air, are particularly injured. The damage causes severe hemorrhaging or air embolisms, either of which can be rapidly fatal.”

Besides the force of the blast, the radiation was another deadly force – as we’ll see this Tuesday in On the Beach.  The scientists knew from observational evidence that these were the effects of a nuclear blast, so why with the, “look at father shrewdly covering the skin of his neck with a newspaper!  Oh my, he will be saved!”

Whether secular or religious, hope emerges minutes to midnight.  Be it G-d’s benevolence or a picnic blanket, “THERE IS STILL TIME..BROTHER.”  It was curious to read in Strozier’s essay how on one hand his interviewees were convinced of the inevitability of John’s Revelation yet they still hoped that G-d will save us all (page 71).

Another facet I found interesting was the notion of collective death, a recurring theme in the interviews with the fundamentalists.  I think that’s because it’s comforting to know that you won’t be alone when the end comes.  “But there might not be any grownups around when the bomb explodes,” the narrator says, wrapping it up, “then, you’re on your own.”  That was the scariest line of the film.