Bartholomew's Notes

A little more news about NBC’s attempt to cash in on the Left Behind phenomenon:

(Variety) Feature star Bill Pullman (“Igby Goes Down”) has joined NBC apocalyptic thriller “Revelations” in the limited-run series’ leading male role, while Natascha McElhone (“The Truman Show”) has taken the female lead…Pullman will play Dr. Richard Massey in “Revelations,” which comes from Pariah TV. The character is a Harvard professor whose daughter is murdered by satanists. McElhone stars as a nun who recruits Massey to help investigate whether what’s told in the Book of Revelations is starting to come true.

The story will be scripted by David Seltzer, who brought us The Omen back in the 1970s. In an earlier report from Variety magazine, Seltzer enthused that:

What the Book of Revelation predicted is at hand…Nuclear brinkmanship, worldwide terrorism, collapsing economies and environmental atrocities make it clear that the critical mass of injury to this planet is sufficient to bring down the wrath of God and put the biblical prophecies into play. What is not written in the Bible is whether man can do anything about it. This is where our story begins.

Perhaps not as fatalistic as LaHaye’s efforts, but it’s still religious paranoia dressed up as entertainment. And it’s going out primetime over the Olympic period.

Seltzer promises “a respectful look” at the Bible. This is the man who made up awful doggerel for The Omen which he then ascribed to the Book of Revelation:

When the Jews return to Zion, and
A comet rips the sky,
And the Holy Roman Empire rises
Then you and I must die.

From the eternal sea he rises,
Creating armies on either shore;
Turning man against his brother
‘Til man exists no more

Meanwhile, nine years after the first Left Behind novel, we discover ourselves still unraptured and the final novel in the series, Glorious Appearing, about to be released. Apparently the first print run is already sold out. The book ends with the return of Jesus (sorry to give it away), but this will not stop Jerry Jenkins and Tyndale Books from milking this cash cow even more: check out Soon.

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A great new blog by The Blogmenbashi charts “President Sapurmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan and the infinite wisdom of his words and deeds”. Niyazov, the “Turkmenbashi” (father of the Turks), is a flamboyant megalomaniac in the tradition of Caligula and Amin, and like them his despotism is so excessive that tragedy comes interlaced with black humour.

Niyazov is Turkmenistan’s former Communist ruler who has made Turkmenistan into “his own little USSR”, according to a foreign diplomat, with a cult based around his own personality mixed with Islam. As he writes in the Ruhnama, his Book of the Soul which Muslims and Christians must touch whenever they enter a mosque or church:

Fate gave me the role of being leader of Türkmenistan at the juncture of the second and third millennia. The burden of the responsibility of taking my people from the last years of the second millennium, in which things did not go well, to the summits of the third millenium fell onto my shoulders.

This position and responsibility, which have been given to me without my asking, have motivated me to call up my spiritual, intellectual and physical strength that Allah granted me with and use them as a societal force to achieve progress in my country.

This means political and religious oppression, as well as bizarre rulings such as renaming the word for “bread” after his mother. Contrary to Islamic teaching, Niyazov has declared himself to be a Prophet. The current Sunni Mufti is in prison for opposing the personality cult, and religious groups other than Sunni Islam and Russian Orthodoxy are banned – as, Ross Perot-like, are beards. Dissenters risk being taken to “The Ministry of Fairness”. But as an opponent of Islamic fundamentalism, Niyazov is unlikely to face much pressure from the West to mend his ways.

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As former Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt faces charges for manslaughter, conspiracy and threatening bodily harm in relation to the death of journalist Hector Ramirez, I look in vain for a word on CBN’s website. Montt, as is well known, enjoyed huge support from Pat Robertson back in 1982-3, despite massive human rights abuses and massacres of Mayan Quiche Indians. Montt is a Charismatic Protestant, and within a week of his coup in 1982 Robertson had flown down to meet him, promising a billion dollars and missionaries. Robertson raised cash for Montt on his “700 Club”, and lobbied Reagan to allow military aid to the country. He also provided an introduction to an apologetic for Montt and apparently wrote in his book New World Order (quoted second hand, I must confess) that Montt’s successor

continues the enlightened leadership of his patron, former President Rios Montt, who insisted on honesty in government and then had every key official sign a pledge that read, “I will not steal; I will not lie; I will not abuse.”

(this successor, Jorge Serrano Elias, was himself forced out after attempting to impose authoritarian rule in 1993)

Montt’s church is Verbo Ministries, which is still going strong in California and central America. Its one-time international director, Francisco Bianchi, was a presidential candidate in the 1999 election, standing for his own Democratic Reconciliatory Alliance party. Bianchi was Montt’s private secretary, and in one assessment was

one of the few candidates in this race who can be described as extreme right. At one point during Ríos Montt’s government, Bianchi told The New York Times that if the indigenous people sympathized with the guerrillas they had to be killed, even if they were civilians, a statement he now denies having made.

Although Bianchi’s impact was negligible, that election was won by Montt’s party, the Guatemalan Republican Front, under Alfonso Portillo. Montt himself came third in the 2003 election, despite being barred from office. The pro-Montt riots that followed his defeat, and the death of Ramirez leading up to it, suggest that, unlike Charles Taylor of Liberia, this friend of Pat Robertson remains a menace to his country.

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As variants of polio traceable to Kano in Northern Nigeria (see my post here) continue to be found across West Africa, Governor Ibrahim Shekarau has offered a long and rambling defence of his continued boycotting of polio vaccines. Several days ago, the federal government sent a committee to South Africa and India to investigate the issue. The committee discovered that

a) Trace amounts of estradiol were found in some samples analysed…The sensitivity of this equipment is very high to the level of one part in a hundred billion parts.

(b) No trace of progesterone was detected in any of the vaccine samples.

(c) The trace amounts of estradiol in question is much less than what is found in recycled drinking water in several developed countries. Also calf blood (serum) is used to help the growth of the polio virus during the production process for OPV by some production centres. These trace levels of estradiol might very well be physiological residues from serum.

Therefore, they concluded, the vaccine was safe. The results were explained to Shekarau by the chairman of the committee, Sheik Umar El-Kanemi.

However, Shekarau is still not having it. He insists that the investigators did discover “contamination”, but also that the vaccine declared safe was “different”. Also, bizarrely:

I challenge the committee put up by the federal government to south Africa, to India. They put a representation of Jama’atul Nnasril Islam, JNI, I say where is the representation of CAN [Christian Association of Nigeria].

This is priceless. Shekarau’s whole argument was that the vaccine was a plot to make Muslim women infertile. But now Muslim investigators have told him this is bunk, he’s suddenly decided that Christians were not given adequate say in the investigation, and that therefore the boycott should stay in place.

Shekarau has now decided to import vaccines from Muslim countries in Asia rather than take part in the government programme. Why this continual intransigence? I thought paranoia, but Nigerian President Obasanjo offers another possible explanation in a TV interview, where he claimed that

one of the Muslim leaders opposing the immunisation programme had unsuccessfully sought a government contract to import new vaccines.

Ahh, of course. The old adage about asking who’s going to profit…

UPDATE: See here.

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Robert Mugabe is a “black, political, economic Moses” whose vision is “to raise millionaires and billionaires” in Zimbabwe, according to Reverend Obadiah Musindo (or Obediah Musindo), at a ceremony to give thanksgivings for the despot’s eightieth birthday.

However, for those Christians who may have different opinion (such as Archbishop Pius Ncube), Musindo has previously warned that

The church is not allowed to rebel against the Government and has no business aligning itself with opposition movements.

“In cases where there is bad governance, the church must pray for leaders to rule wisely, but they must not be actively involved in efforts to bring down a government”.

He could have added that such behaviour was bad for the health, often leading to arrest, death, being tortured or raped.

Musindo, who heads the Destiny of Africa Network, also sees George W. Bush in a biblical light, as

the world dictator, world chief thief, world number one murderer, world big human rights abuser, big racist, unelected court-appointed president, world peace destroyer, international criminal liar – the true earthly representative of the Anti-Christ and the devil on earth.

Meanwhile, as the country suffers inflation of over 600%, unemployment of over 50% and 60% of the population needing food aid as the economy implodes and the country totters on the edge of famine, the “black Moses”  used the birthday celebration to show that fixing the nation’s woes is his top concern:

“I’m morally repulsed by homosexuality,” Mugabe told the function…”It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Adam, Eve and Eve…Let us never entertain the theory that man and man can form a family.”

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Last year saw one of the weirdest “scandals” to erupt around Tony Blair. His wife, Cherie Booth, was receiving advice and friendship from a New Age therapist named Carole Caplin, whose partner was a convicted Australian fraudster named Peter Foster. Foster helped Booth buy an apartment, creating an opening for reactionary British tabloids frustrated at being unable to attack Tony Blair politically from the right. The odious Daily Mail was at the forefront, but given that the apartment story, while damaging, was not really that serious, the rag tried to portray Booth’s liking for Caplin’s quackish therapies as a national crisis, devoting dozens of pages spread over days to humilating Booth in an attempt to wound her husband. Now Foster, living in Australia and separated from Caplin, has written a book with the help of a Mail freelancer, in which he alleges that Caplin was also close to Blair. According to today’s Observer, the book alleges that

Caplin shared late-night telephone conversations [with Blair] and went for long walks in the woods at the Prime Minister’s official residence, Chequers.

She also gave him advice on what clothes to wear, down to his underpants.

Whether he took the advice is unstated; and, given Foster’s background, the whole story is quite likely rubbish. However, whereas with Bush what you see is more or less what you get (although there is the notorious suppressed tape of his pre-election speech to Tim LaHaye’s Council for National Policy), Blair’s religiosity is somewhat mysterious.

Like Booth, Blair also enjoys some New Age therapies: Francis Wheen’s new book records how Blair and Booth underwent a rebirthing experience in Mexico, which allegedly involved being smeared with mud and papaya and indulging in primal screaming. My question is how that went down with Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle. Dow was Blair’s university chaplain, and he is probably the highest clergyman in the Church of England to espouse the “deliverance” ideas of the likes of Derek Prince or C. Peter Wagner. According to one report derived from his booklet Explaining Deliverance, Dow believes that

miscarriages denote the work of evil spirits and that people who choose black cars may well be possessed.

(From stories I have heard, Dow also has the habit of suddenly performing exorcisms on people he has decided are demonically oppressed, including bewildered teenagers up for confirmation)

However, Blair is also a regular worshipper at Westminster Cathedral, the centre of English Catholicism, and he got into trouble with the late Cardinal Hume for taking communion there despite being Anglican. It seems that Blair is probably virtually Catholic, but has not converted because he wants to avoid media attention, or perhaps for reasons concerning Northern Ireland. He is friends with Hans Küng, the dissident German Catholic priest and intellectual whose ability to knock off huge tomes makes him the James Michener of serious theology. Much to the bewilderment of political hacks, Blair chose to give a paper at a conference organised by Küng in Tübingen in 2000. Blair’s religion is rather more sophisticated than underpants, demons and papaya.

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From the Kansas City Star (via Christianity Today):

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A statue criticized as anti-Catholic continues to cause problems for Washburn University, a week after a federal judge ruled that the school does not have to remove it from campus…The sculpture, entitled “Holier Than Thou,” depicts the bust of a scowling, heavyset clergyman wearing a ceremonial headgear called a miter. Some observers believe the miter looks like a penis, and have said the statue insults Catholics.

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Saints Thérèse of Lisieux and Gemma Galgani are the subjects of a review essay by Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books that looks at the connections between holiness, anorexia and stigmata in a way that goes beyond reductionism into “hysteria” or merely dwelling on the morbid aspects of their illnesses and self-abasements:

The saint first affected by the stigmata was Francis of Assisi, but it has afflicted many more women than men. It insists on the likeness of the believer’s body to that of Christ. It argues that the gender of the redemptive body does not matter. It undermines the notion of a masculine God. It shows that Christ can represent women and women can represent Christ – no wonder it makes the church nervous.

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The Rev Dr Ian Paisley’s website notes that there are 679 seats in the European Parliament, but that number 666 is unallocated. I suggest three possibilities:

1. Paisley is making it up.

2. No MEP wants the number – which would be an interesting concession to superstition, like the lack of row 13 on aeroplanes.

3. As Paisley suggests, the seat is being kept vacant for the anti-Christ, who will take it up in due course. Bit of a giveaway, though.

By the way, if A=6, B=12, C=18, D=24, E=30, F=36 etc. (a formula beloved of some fundamentalists), Ian Paisley is himself the anti-Christ.

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Rochdale council in the UK is being sued by the parents of four children who were among fourteen taken from their homes in 1990 by care workers obsessed with Satanism:

Sensational claims emerged of satanic rituals including sacrificing babies in cemeteries, children being locked in cages and being drugged by occult followers, and the slaughtering of animals. Then 18 months later, a judge ruled that there was no evidence to back up the bizarre claims and branded social services staff “amateurs”.

This was, of course, a transatlantic phenomenon, in which Christian fundamentalists in the USA and the UK (see works by Victor and LaFontaine) touted Satanic conspiracies that led to families being broken up and innocent people facing prison sentences for the most hideous of crimes. As accounts by Christian “survivors” of Satanism such as Lauren Stratford (endorsed by Hal Lindsey, by the way) and Doreen Irvine were discredited (although still available from Christian bookshops), those committed to the conspiracy theory turned to other forms of evidence: bizarre medical tests such as “anal dilation” and the notorious idea of repressed memories.

The latter idea is discussed at length by Frederick C. Crews in the latest New York Review of Books, in a review of The Trauma Trap by Richard J. McNally. The big question is, how did this idea ever get taken seriously? First, there was the question of the evidence:

McNally finds that no unanswerable evidence has been adduced to prove that anyone, anywhere, has ever repressed or dissociated the memory of any occurrence. Traumatic experiences may not always remain in the forefront of memory, but, unlike “repressed” ones, they can be readily called to mind again. Unless a victim received a physical shock to the brain or was so starved or sleep deprived as to be thoroughly disoriented at the time, those experiences are typically better remembered than ordinary ones.

This is the conclusion from studying Holocaust survivors and others.

Second is the question of credibility. Alan Scheflin, an “expert” on the subject, had presented a paper at a conference in Texas

held by the Society for the Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse, whose other speakers asserted, inter alia, that there were 500 Satanic cults in New York City alone, committing 4000 human sacrifices per year, that Bill Clinton was serving as the Antichrist in the worldwide Satanic fraternity of the Illuminati and that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation [an organisation opposed to the idea] is “a Central Intelligence Agency action.”

Meanwhile, D. Corydon Hammond, another “authority” manages to flirt with Jewish conspiracy theory when he argues that abuse victims who had repressed memories of trauma

will be slaves to a worldwide intergenerational cult that is organized into “Illuminatic councils.” The cult, said Hammond, is headed by a shadowy “Dr. Greenbaum,” a Hasidic Jewish collaborator with the Nazis who once assisted in death camp experiments and later used the CIA to further his nefarious ends.

Quoting Hammond directly:

My best guess is that they want an army of Manchurian Candidates, tens of thousands of mental robots who will do prostitution, do child pornography, smuggle drugs, engage in international arms smuggling, do snuff films, …and eventually the megalomaniacs at the top believe they’ll create a Satanic order that will rule the world.

Both Hammond and Scheflin contributed to a work titled Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law. It won an award from the American Psychiatric Association in 1999. McNally gives some reasons for why the ideas managed to gain currency, concerning the legacy of Freud and past failures by therapists to spot real (and remembered!) sexual abuse. However, the continued credibility given to these claims by therapists and the media suggest that there may be future tragedies inspired by self-serving panic-mongers.

PS – Crews notes that some day-care workers remain in prison even today in the USA as the result of accusations prompted by fundamentalist investigators, and cites Dorothy Rabinowitz, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times (Wall Street Press Books/Free Press, 2003).

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