Brian McClaren in Life After Doom lays out an uncomfortable reality about the dangers of prevalent conservative theology...
Simply put, the theology so many of us inherited was perfectly designed to render us obedient drones, doing our part to extract natural resources, put them through industrial processes, and produce two things: waste and profit... We didn't ask questions about the long-term consequences of how we made a living. We didn't raise ethical objections when we heard the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor. Instead we let our theology conveniently turn our attention to what happened after we died...
Our descendants will have to ask why over 8 billion of us were willing to let a tiny group of oligarchs make 100 trillion dollars for themselves at the expense of... Everyone and everything on Earth present and future. When were we organizing a worldwide strike? When were we laying our bodies down in the driveways of oil company headquarters? The only rational explanation for our inaction, future historians will conclude, was that we were all victims of brainwashing, a combination of religious and economic brainwashing.
We have been inducted into a religious money cult, a civilizational death cult. We have become consumers who would rather die than disrupt the economy.
Let me say it is plainly as I can: capitalism tells a story no less alluring and destructive than the chart of the ages [an evangelical church prop that depicts the so-called periods of god's plan]. And in its current form this story will destroy the Earth just as certainly as the story told by conventional religious fundamentalism will... Working together, religious and economic fundamentalism will push us over the ledge, singing a hymn and counting corporate profits as we go.
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