Friday, May 14, 2010

Waiting for Armageddon DVD

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Headline: DVD Examines Evangelical Christianity’s Radical Fringe

In America, there are about 50-million fundamentalist Christians whose literal interpretation of the Bible leads them to believe that the Second Coming of Jesus is imminent. These devout Evangelicals refer to that eagerly-anticipated reunion as The Rapture, the fateful day on which the faithful will allegedly rise into the sky with their Savior while the rest of humanity is left behind to suffer for another seven years.
Directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, Waiting for Armageddon is an amusing expose’ which takes an eye-opening look at the worldview of members of the Evangelical community, focusing particularly on their passionate support of Israel. They say politics makes strange bedfellows, and none might be stranger than the unlikely alliance of Jews and the Religious Right.
For, if I follow what this documentary is suggesting, these Christian Zionists’ uncritical backing of Israel emanates not out of a sense of kinship or brotherhood, but is rather based on an eagerness to see World War III erupt in the Middle East region. Still, as unsettling as that philosophy sounds, the couples and ministers profiled in the picture seem likable enough, provided they’re not reciting or referring to scriptures, which is rare.
Waiting for Armageddon is the best contribution to the Evangelical genre since Jesus Camp, the flick that indirectly ended up bringing down the career of televangelist Ted Haggard when a male prostitute decided to out the gay-bashing hypocrite. This movie features a preacher with a mega-church, too, Pastor John Hagee, who is shown exhorting his 18,000-strong congregation to gird their loins for the impending showdown with “Islamofascism.”
The scary specter of all-out Holy War as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 74 Minutes
Distributor: First Run Features
DVD Extras: Bonus film “Interfaith Roundtable Discussion.”

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