Holy-Holy -The Fourth Great
Awakening Has Still Not Run Its Course-The End Times, The Fire In The Lake, The
Book Of Revelations And Much More
By Seth Garth
One of the great political
mysteries of the age, the age of Trump, is how faithfully those who call themselves
evangelicals (white brethren portion) have supported the heathen city dweller
and philanderer over the past four years. In the end they may be his last
bulwark against the flood tide coming down on his head not so much from the
impeachment process which is very iffy but his bid for reelection. Recently I
was re-reading some articles by the late Gonzo journalist (the father of the
genre) written a couple of years before the 1988 elections for the San Francisco
Examiner. In one article (maybe more
than one) he noted that the previously fringe evangelicals hovelled up in their
local churches had begun via tele-evangelists to break into the political sphere-and
organize around that idea of political power, bringing it to bear. That factor
got me wondering about when the latest “great awakening” will run its course
since it already is and remains a major factor in American political life.
These great awakenings
have a certain cycle. The first one came as far as I know sometime in the 18th
century when the likes of Cotton Mather ruled the roost and some of the old-time
pilgrim pioneers “got religion” after they had started the road to devastation of
the continent. The second awakening came and “burned over” areas outside the East
Coast citadels. Names like Grandison and Pike played to large tent crowds from
Albany to South Bend. The third great awakening was more problematic since it
edged considerable on politics although the evangelicals themselves were at the
margins in campaigns like William Jennings Bryan and the ill-advised Prohibition
Amendment which had to be revoked. And now the fourth awakening which seems to
have started around the late 1970s in reaction to what some saw as the excesses
of the 1960s to provide some space for the woe-begotten and lost.
This fourth awakening is
of its own kind since along with the dramatic increase of numbers the cash
started rolling in once the major tele-evangelists found out that their message
played well out in the heartland to those with televisions and credit cards.
The rise of big mega-churches, conventions, sale of merchandise, etc. got some
of those preachers like Jerry Farwell and Pat Robinson to dream bigger dreams
especially when what they were advocating socially fit in nicely with what the
Republican Party was espousing. In tried and true political ABCs fashion they
began to fill the branches of the Republican bureaucracy, state and local. And
there we have it except to say that for the look of things even after the
heathen Trump finds the door these evangelical will play a part in public life.
In the headline I mention “end
times,” the “fire in the lake” and the dreaded Book of Revelation. The reason
for that is once you buy into these concepts (and the search for the lost
tribes of Israel) then whether the POSTUS is a heathen, a philanderer, a
habitual liar, so crooked that he needs a phalanx of valets to put on his pants
and a little crazy does not matter. Judgement day is coming and everybody
should be ecstatic.
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