Bill Moyers is the former host of NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS. He was one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, spokesperson for President Lyndon Johnson, publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent for CBS News, and producer of many of public television's groundbreaking series. He is the winner of more than thirty Emmy Awards, and the author of the best-selling books Listening to America, A World of Ideas, and Healing and the Mind. He lives in New York. »

Welcome to Doomsday

By Bill Moyers
Preface by Bill McKibben

The influence of the evangelical Christian right on the Bush administration has had a mostly unnoticed impact on America's environmental policy. While some take God's granting of dominion over the earth to man as a call to good stewardship of our planet, many evangelicals distrust science and disdain environmental protections. They live in anticipation of one event: the Rapture, when Christ will return to cleanse the earth while the true believers are transported to heaven. For those who believe that the Rapture and the destruction of the world are imminent, there is no need to be concerned about saving the planet from environmental catastrophe.

Welcome to Doomsday is an investigation into the intrusion of religion into political life in America today. Global climate change is a rapid, possibly irreversible occurrence, yet the stance taken by the White House in both international and domestic arenas is one of both ignorance and disbelief. Appeasing the influential agendas of corporations, as well as the uncompromising beliefs of evangelical groups, the Bush administration has firmly established a disastrous record of ignoring the urgency of potentially devastating climate change.

Welcome to Doomsday is a passionate call to save the planet from the forces not only of greed and exploitation but from those who associate its destruction with a spiritual apocalypse. Written by the compelling and articulate Bill Moyers, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the current dismal state of environmental policy as well as in the growing power of the evangelical movement in the United States.

Reviews

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.
— Booklist

Welcome to Doomsday...brings in all the numbers and data into a beautifully articulate essay on the state of the American religious landscape.
— The San Francisco Chronicle

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