Increasingly, I’m looking at the political universe, and the ever-evolving power centers within it (e.g., ‘left’, ‘right’ and otherwise), for signs of a global, anti-Christian faith system taking hold. islam is an obvious choice, but lets set it aside for the moment.

To qualify in end-times prophetic terms, such a movement needs to be:

- Reasonably comprehensive. (I.e., addressing a wide range of questions across different domains of life — social, personal, economic, natural, historical — and in such a way as to be self-reinforcing to its adherents),

- Seemingly attractive. (I.e., sounds good on paper, in sound bites, or upon cursory inspection by those who don’t care to delve deeper into historical track records.)

- Widely shared. (Aside from Christianity itself — which is rooted in fundamental, universal truths observable throughout history and human nature — worldviews with just a handful of adherents are, by definition, not the basis for earthly power and thus don’t make good synthetic vehicles for the coming world leader to ride to destruction.)

- Faith- rather than fact-based. (Truth is truth is truth. Any competitor to it must rely on a kind of faith demonstrably divorced from truth. Over and over again, those who have taken a hard, honest look at the wide range of evidences for the Christian faith have had their minds changed by the facts. Furthermore, as various commentators have noted (popular myth to the contrary), the Christian system of belief has absolutely nothing to fear from honest, hypothesis-based, empirically demonstrated science that recognizes the limitations of its own (and the human) perspective (as opposed to the theoretical or conjectural variety that increasingly tries to pass itself off as scientific.) After all, the Judeo-Christian worldview gave rise to the scientific process and revolution. The expectation of a consistent set of physical laws is a uniquely Judeo-Christian construction — anathema to the god of islam which even its adherents, the koran and hadiths acknowledge to be capricious, unknowable and untrustworthy.

In that context, I find it fascinating that one of the best candidates for such a religion is right under our noses, as John Steele Gordon points out in today’s WSJ (worth reading in full for the facts and supporting arguments I’ve left out for the sake of brevity):

Thus the liberal paradigm divides the American body politic into sheep, wolves, and would-be shepherds. The shepherds must defeat the efforts of the wolves.

This paradigm… had a basis in reality… The liberal revolution [then, was]… one of the greatest—and most peaceful—political triumphs in history…

Now if only someone would tell the shepherds about their own success… [Instead, they see themselves] as being on the outside, speaking truth to power, even when speaking from the Oval Office.

…the liberal paradigm… has largely congealed into a political religion… Since liberals care about the sheep, all who disagree with liberalism must not, making them morally inferior if not downright immoral… the so-called wolves are now a majority.

Gordon’s piece could be filed away as just another grenade lobbed over the left-right political fence. If it were only that, I would not have posted it.

Yet he makes the assertion, and begins to build the case that the current worldview known as ‘liberal’ (which has, quite sadly, morphed into a Marxist-leftist one from its reasonable and compassionate FDR, HST, JFK roots) has many of the hallmarks of a comprehensive, widely shared, faith-based system capable of fulfilling end-times prophecy and providing a plausible vehicle for the coming world leader, aka antichrist.

The fact that one of the left’s primary political planks and priorities (urgently setting up a global system to thwart the imagined threat of anthropocentric, catastrophic, man-fixable, global warming) has broad reach and serious money and power behind it makes it very interesting as a candidate for end-times synthetic (anti*-Christian) religion.

(*The word ‘anti’ as used in Biblical constructions such as ‘antichrist’ actually means “pseudo” or “imitation” and not, as many would have it, “opposed-to” — though the former, over time, eventually drives to the latter.

The effect is to draw devotion and attention away from the real thing, gradually and subtly, over years if not generations.

satan, we are told, is wily; a faith system directly in opposition to Christianity from its inception could never get off the ground and turn into a mass movement within a Judeo-Christian society. In other words, the ‘best’ antichrist is one whom many without deep grounding in the real thing can fervently believe to be the real thing.

This helps to explain why those with a leftist world view often seem to draw many of their impulses and goals — e.g., compassion for their fellow humans, desire for peace and justice, etc. — from Christianity and why, further, they might even feel very strongly that they have been inspired by the moral teachings of Jesus.)

Finally, the fact the leftist worldview exhibits a perverse and persistent affinity towards islam (a faith system that would seem to share none of the laudable paleo-liberal priorities such as civil rights, womens’ rights, equality, peace, etc.) makes it even more interesting as a candidate for antichrist vehicle.

The combination of these two factors raises the question of what irrational, behind-the-scenes force or shared animosity would draw together such very strange bedfellows. If anthropocentric, catastrophic global warming is a lie (and it is — a very big one indeed) those that buy into it need to ask themselves: What (who) is truth? (And who is the father of lies?)

And related to that: How would you be able to tell if you were under the influence of a powerful delusion? To what source of truth would you turn?

UPDATE: As if on cue, Senate forges ahead with the lie (saw this after I posted).