Monday, September 11, 2006
Heaven On Earth
When the Christian right breaks down the wall of separation between church and state and Christianizes this sinful land it will be heaven on earth, right?
What will this paradise look like?
Well, if we take the word of TV preachers and evangelists such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Luis Palau, it may look a lot like Guatemala in the early ‘80s when Efrain Rios Montt, a general and lay pastor of the Pentecostal Verbo Church, was running the show.
"It's great to have a Christian president as a model," Palau told Christianity Today in 1983. "The hand of God appears to be on him."
Of course, if there's a heaven there's got to be a hell. And, in Guatemala under Rios Montt, they might just have violated the physical law that says two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time.
A U.S. State Department report describes Rios Montt's 17-month rule as probably the most violent in the nation's 36-year civil war resulting "in about 200,000 deaths of mostly unarmed indigenous civilians." In 1999, a U.N.-sponsored truth commission, called the Historical Clarification Commission, found government forces responsible for 93 percent of war deaths.
Don't worry though.
"We've moved on. He's nobody, a failed politician," says Danny Carroll Rodas of the Central American Theological Seminary.
Thanks to reader TB for calling this to our attention. Americans United also comments on this story here.
What will this paradise look like?
Well, if we take the word of TV preachers and evangelists such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Luis Palau, it may look a lot like Guatemala in the early ‘80s when Efrain Rios Montt, a general and lay pastor of the Pentecostal Verbo Church, was running the show.
"It's great to have a Christian president as a model," Palau told Christianity Today in 1983. "The hand of God appears to be on him."
Of course, if there's a heaven there's got to be a hell. And, in Guatemala under Rios Montt, they might just have violated the physical law that says two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time.
A U.S. State Department report describes Rios Montt's 17-month rule as probably the most violent in the nation's 36-year civil war resulting "in about 200,000 deaths of mostly unarmed indigenous civilians." In 1999, a U.N.-sponsored truth commission, called the Historical Clarification Commission, found government forces responsible for 93 percent of war deaths.
Don't worry though.
"We've moved on. He's nobody, a failed politician," says Danny Carroll Rodas of the Central American Theological Seminary.
Thanks to reader TB for calling this to our attention. Americans United also comments on this story here.
