Has McCain Video Stirred Fears That Obama Is Antichrist?
Last week The Eleison Group sent out an email arguing that the McCain campaign's web video "The One" is "rife with image after image equating Senator Obama to the anti-Christ, and especially to Nicolae Carpathia, the anti-Christ in the popular Left Behind series."
"... this was not some YouTube video put together in someone’s basement," the Democratic consulting group wrote. "It was a professionally and carefully produced ad that had a much more sinister subtext that millions of Americans will pick up on."
Now Beliefnet's Steven Waldman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, is examining the charge. The ad opens with religious-tinged language: An announcer says, "It should be known, in 2008, the world will be blessed. They will call him: The One." The announcer adds: "...he has anointed himself ready to carry the burden of The One."
At one point, the announcer asks, "Can you see the light?" The spot then cuts to a clip of Obama saying, "A light will shine down from somewhere. It will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack.'"
As Waldman points out, McCain's supporters characterizes the ad as simply the latest iteration of critics' characterization of Obama as presumptuous – and, indeed, that's a theme that the McCain campaign has hammered in the last few months.
But progressive evangelical Brian McLaren and others say that the spot is designed to provoke fears of Obama as antichrist. The Eleison Group, in laying out its evidence, writes that "In The Left Behind series, the false religion set up by Nicolae Carpathia (the anti-christ) is called THE ONE World Religion." They also write that "[v]iewers will notice how similar the very odd pictures that appear in the middle of the McCain ad are to the cover art and fonts of the Left Behind series."
According to the memo, 70 million Left Behind books have been sold, and Carpathia, the book's antichrist, "began his political career as a young junior Senator who, with Satan’s help, then embarked on a meteoric political rise by preaching unity, hope, and peace in the midst of world-wide calamity following the Rapture."
"... this was not some YouTube video put together in someone’s basement," the Democratic consulting group wrote. "It was a professionally and carefully produced ad that had a much more sinister subtext that millions of Americans will pick up on."
Now Beliefnet's Steven Waldman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, is examining the charge. The ad opens with religious-tinged language: An announcer says, "It should be known, in 2008, the world will be blessed. They will call him: The One." The announcer adds: "...he has anointed himself ready to carry the burden of The One."
At one point, the announcer asks, "Can you see the light?" The spot then cuts to a clip of Obama saying, "A light will shine down from somewhere. It will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack.'"
As Waldman points out, McCain's supporters characterizes the ad as simply the latest iteration of critics' characterization of Obama as presumptuous – and, indeed, that's a theme that the McCain campaign has hammered in the last few months.
But progressive evangelical Brian McLaren and others say that the spot is designed to provoke fears of Obama as antichrist. The Eleison Group, in laying out its evidence, writes that "In The Left Behind series, the false religion set up by Nicolae Carpathia (the anti-christ) is called THE ONE World Religion." They also write that "[v]iewers will notice how similar the very odd pictures that appear in the middle of the McCain ad are to the cover art and fonts of the Left Behind series."
According to the memo, 70 million Left Behind books have been sold, and Carpathia, the book's antichrist, "began his political career as a young junior Senator who, with Satan’s help, then embarked on a meteoric political rise by preaching unity, hope, and peace in the midst of world-wide calamity following the Rapture."
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