Welcome to Doomsday

Praise

"Doomsday refers to "a time of catastrophic destruction and death," and clearly, ours qualifies. War rages, terrorists kill, natural disasters escalate, and people suffer on all fronts. Overarching these horrors are the dire threats of global warming, a slow-motion catastrophe our leaders refuse to acknowledge or attempt to combat. This brings us to the second definition of doomsday, as a day of final reckoning, for Christians the End Times leading up to the Second Coming. This is where journalist Moyers enters the picture. Himself a graduate of a Texas Baptist seminary, Moyers succinctly and decisively links the Bush administration's obdurate disregard for science and environmental realities to the corrosive influence of the Christian Right. Since Christian Fundamentalists see the Iraq War and attacks on Israel as necessary precursors to the Rapture, why should true believers worry about the biosphere? God will take care of his own until Christ returns and the saved are lifted up from this polluted, extinction-plagued, and warming world. Moyers' concise yet meticulous critique of this dangerous viewpoint is clear and necessary. -Donna Seaman
YA: Moyers notes that religious materials given to teens tend to dismiss biological realities; this provides invaluable checks and balances. DS." –Booklist


“The truth is, the [Alaska National Wildlife Refuge] vote is merely a small part of a larger…neoconservative attitude that has a…fundamentalist belief in the End Times, in the Apocalypse. Don't believe it? Have yourself a nice read of famed journalist Bill Moyer's delicate, excellent essay "Welcome to Doomsday" via the New York Review of Books, which brings in all the numbers and data into a beautifully articulate essay on the state of the American religious landscape..–The San Francisco Chronicle


Praise for Moyers:

“Bill Moyers speaks for, and to, the conscience of our nation.”—Walter Cronkite

“Bill Moyers believes with his very heart-bone in the interchange of ideas, in individuals speaking out. . . . And he is, in a very real sense, a man of faith: of faith in America.”—James Dickey, The New York Times

"Not only a good reporter... a first-rate storyteller."–The Boston Globe

"Bill Moyers is doing what Madison and Jefferson desperately hoped the press would do –provide information ... so that the people would be informed enough to enable constitutional democracy to survive."–Nat Hentoff