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Authors: Daniele Bolelli

50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion (15 page)

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Incidentally, along the way the Inquisition was also a profitable business since all the wealth of those convicted would be seized and split between king and church. But whether inquisitors burned you at the stake because they were greedy, or because they truly believed they were doing God's work, it didn't exactly make a huge practical difference.
 
Clearly, the devil had many fans since Torquemada's holy mission didn't find universal support. He was so fearful of assassination that he traveled with more than 250 bodyguards (hell … even Mafia bosses are satisfied with less than that …).
 
But God's hit man also had many admirers. Not only most Catholic inquisitors looked up to him as a model to be followed, but even Protestants ended up following his same recipe. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin, the giants of Protestant theology, were as insistent as Torquemada about the necessity of barbecuing witches and other soldiers of the devil. It was only after the worst of the devil's inventions became popular—that pesky Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason, science and individual rights—that the hands of Torquemada's spiritual descendants were no longer free to strike down
heretics. So, these must truly be dark times, now that heroes of the faith like Torquemada are no longer able to carry out their holy mission. If you can't even burn them on the public square, how can society defend itself against the servants of the devil?
39 IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE)
 
If you are reading these lines, it's a safe guess that none of the many gloomy prophets predicting the end of the world has gotten it right yet. But humans are weird. Despite being stood up for its date with Apocalypse time and time again, humanity keeps on giving it one more chance, believing that
this time
will be different; this time will be the one. The Apocalypse is a player who keeps leading humanity on but, like stereotypical women who love bad boys who barely pay attention to them, humanity's obsession only grows each time she is spurned. And spurned she certainly has been …
 
Christians, for example, have been waiting for the end of the world since before Jesus was even crucified. Like most lower class Jewish people in those days, early Christians had a tough life. So, there was something appealing in the idea of seeing the whole world destroyed before a Final Judgment that would consign evildoers to eternal damnation and reward the faithful. Many were
those looking forward to Armageddon and the Apocalypse. The fact that this revenge fantasy didn't materialize as quickly as advertised didn't deter Saint Paul and his colleagues from continuing to push it as a central piece of Christian theology.
 
However, throughout history, the temptation to fix a precise date for when the Apocalypse train should pull into the station has induced many wannabe prophets to go public with their doomsday predictions. Here are just a few of the most spectacular.
 
The book of Revelation, with its reference to a thousand year period until the end of the world, is singlehandedly responsible for a hell of a lot of anxiety among those who lived in Christian Europe close to the end of the first millennium post-Jesus. The fact that in the year 989 CE, the notoriously unlucky Halley's Comet had shown up in the sky had sent masses of
people in a panic. The belief that the end was near was so popular that, had bookies existed back then, they could have made bank betting on the world's survival (not a bad bet considering that if the world had indeed ended, no one would have come to collect).
 
Pope Innocent III tried his hand at the prediction game by suggesting Jesus would come back in 1284. He came up with this date by adding the diabolical 666 to 668 CE (the date when he believed Islam—of which he was not particularly fond—was born). But 1284 came and went: no Jesus's visits, no end of the world.
 
Wisely, no popes after him picked a date for the Apocalypse, but Martin Luther couldn't resist the urge to proclaim that Judgment Day was about to come any minute. Yet again, minutes turned into days, days turned into years, and still no Apocalypse. Similarly, Anabaptist prophet Melchior Hoffman picked 1533 (and incidentally added that the city of Strasburg would somehow survive the end of it all). The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, placed his bet in the Apocalypse roulette on June 18, 1836. The ultra-fascist Reverend Moon predicted that 1967 would be the end. When that didn't come true, he amended the prediction to 1980. When that didn't come true either, he decided to get out of the prediction business. Most recently, Harold Camping predicted the Rapture for May 21, 2011, and was
so bummed out when it didn't happen that he promptly had a stroke.
 
Competing for the record of the highest number of failed apocalyptic predictions are the members of the sect founded by Joanna Southcott who initially picked 1774, revised it to 1820, and tried their luck one last time for 1977. William Miller's boys, who would later morph into the Seventh Day Adventists, had picked July 7, 1843. By July 8, they were in dire need for a new date, so they pushed it to March 21 1844, and when that didn't pan out either they pushed it to October 22. By October 23, they decided it was a good idea to give up making specific predictions, and they should just consign the Apocalypse to a more generic “some time soon.”
 
Under the file “some people take the end of the world too seriously,” over 100 Russian members of a group called “Brothers and Sisters of the Red Death” killed themselves in occasion of what they believed to be the end of the world. Along the same lines, in 1978 Jim Jones's apocalyptic beliefs pushed over 900 of his followers to kill themselves as well as other followers who were less than enthusiastic about this plan. And in 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult killed themselves so that their souls could have access to a higher level of existence before an impending Apocalypse destroyed the Earth.
 
The next time the world is supposed to end is 2012, at least according to the gloomiest interpretations of the Mayan calendar. Sooner or later, someone will get it right. But in the meantime, the beauty of the “end of the world” idea is that as long as you can always push the date further in the future, you never have to give up on it.
40 TELETUBBIES ARE GAY (AND GOD HATES THEM)
 
According to the always very sweaty conservative evangelical leader, the late Jerry Falwell, the Teletubbies—the funky looking protagonists of a TV show for kids—are the devil's minions. They may look innocent and sweet, but Satan's little helpers are guilty of covertly trying to corrupt the minds of the young by subliminally pushing the message that homosexuality is ok. In fact, according to Falwell—who, by the way, is the same man who had said the 9/11 attacks were the result of God punishing the United States for the feminism, homosexuality and secularism popular in American society—at least one of the Teletubbies is really gay. And Falwell is not the only one to have outed the incriminated Teletubby. Across the world, in Poland, members of a conservative Catholic party also felt the need to comment of the dangers posed by the Teletubby's hidden sexuality. And many others have joined them in pointing their homophobic finger against the Teletubbies.
This may be the only time in life that I find myself in partial agreement with that sorry excuse for a human being that was Jerry Falwell. The Teletubbies are indeed demons straight out of hell. I’ve become convinced of this after being forced by my 2-year-old daughter to sit through more Teletubbies marathons than any adult should ever be subjected to. The experience left me in dire need to go trade punches with heavily tattooed guys in a ring. I grew to hate the damned Teletubbies so much that once I could finally sleep my dreams featured evil-looking Roman soldiers torturing the Teletubbies Mel Gibson-style, before finally crucifying them. Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po (these are their names) are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—I’m sure of it.
 
What I don't share with Falwell, however, is the notion that homosexuality is a terrible threat we need to keep at bay. Falwell was clearly obsessed with homosexuality—I mean, when you start worrying about whether a cartoon character named Tinky Winky is gay or not, then you know you really have a problem …
 
But Falwell is in good company. Traditional wisdom tells us that the most virulent homophobes are really people struggling with their own repressed homosexuality. If this is true, then the world is packed with secret gays made psychotic by being in the closet for too long. Despite hating each
other with a passion, in fact, fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims are all united in their deep-seated horror of homosexuality. Apparently, one of the main articles of faith shared by religious fundamentalists of all creeds is gay bashing. In Leviticus, the Bible offered a simple cure for the “disease” of homosexuality: the death penalty. Christians and Muslims quickly followed this Jewish lead with their own severe condemnations. To this day, fundamentalists belonging to the trio of Western religions compete with each other for who can express the deepest disgust for gay people. At one extreme, you have the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who regularly demonstrate outside the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with banners advertising their belief that the soldiers died because God is punishing American tolerance for homosexuality. As they tastefully remind us, “God hates fags.” Even though they may not recognize it, these guys have a spiritual twin in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who famously stated that there are no gays in Iran (the fact that the biblical death penalty against homosexuality is still in use in his country may have something to do with the lack of enthusiastic gay crowds contradicting him openly).
 
But fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims are also joined by Nazis, who sent gays to concentration camps in large numbers, and Communists, who similarly persecuted homosexuals with gusto (ironically, Stalin accused
gays of being Nazis, while the Nazis accused them of being Communists …). In other words, Tinky Winky better watch his back because the entire team of freedom-hating freaks—from religious fundamentalists to secular fans of totalitarianism—is united in hating his purple gay ass.
41 THE SHRINE OF HYPOCRISY
 
When, in 2001, the fun-loving bunch known as the Taliban decided to show their progressive views on freedom of religion by blowing up colossal, ancient statues of Buddha, the world was horrified. What kind of evil bastards would destroy religious monuments from over a thousand years ago? Not that these guys are unique in this. Muslims and Hindus have been playing the “we'll destroy your temple to build our own” game for a few centuries. In the 1500s, the Spaniards tore down Aztec pyramids and erected their churches right on top of the ruins. Demonstrating they are better with dynamite than at creating, the Taliban didn't really build anything in place of the Buddhas. But the basic idea remains the same: destroying the sacred places of conquered people is a statement of domination and ownership—the religious equivalent of a dog pissing on the ground to mark his territory. What was disturbing about the Taliban case was that it happened not in some distant forgotten past when people were considerably weirder about religion, but in the modern world.
 
But in all the indignation about the Taliban being the freaks that they are, we forget that similar things have happened even in the United States not that long ago.
 
Consider for example the national monument of Mount Rushmore—the enormous sculpture of the faces of four American presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt) that was carved out of the Black Hills of South Dakota in the 1930s. The monument was baptized the “shrine of democracy.” Over 2 million tourists every year visit it (which is amazing when you consider it's in damn South Dakota!) and shed patriotic tears in front of what they imagine to be a wonderful symbol of freedom. In the minds of most Americans, Rushmore goes hand in hand with Mom, Bible and cherry pie—an icon of everything that is good and wholesome.
BOOK: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion
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