Abusing the Scripture
On Sunday 8 March in the sermon I mentioned some of the reporting coming out of the United States of hundreds of complaints within the armed services of the way military commanders are utilising religious, biblical and theological rhetoric. Independent journalist Jonathan Larsen reported as part of his Substack:
A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing [on] Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
[An] NCO wrote to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
Last year as part of my reading around the growth of Christian Nationalism, and particularly to understand better what is going in the United Kingdom (as you can imagine there are many books about it from an American perspective, of which I have read more than a few), I read a book recommended to me by a staff member in the central Church of Scotland offices. The book is titled "The Church, The Far Right, And The Claim To Christianity" edited by Rev Dr Helen Paynter and Maria Power. Paynter is the Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence based out of Bristol Baptist College. She is very worth reading or listening to.
Today I saw she had written an excellent piece that would make a very good follow up to my brief comments during the sermon. She titles it "Armageddon, the bombing of Iran, and the irresponsible use of Revelation".
She starts...
This is the first of what I hope will be a handful of rapid-response blogs to speak into the inflammatory and dangerous rhetoric of ‘Armageddon’ and ‘End Times’ being used in the current political moment, which is the combined assault upon Iran by the USA and Israel. A speech like this looks calculated to pour the fuel of religious zeal onto the powder keg that is the Middle East right now. In this post, I intend to argue that such a use of Revelation is ill-founded, incongruous, and dangerous.
You can read the whole post here.
