This account of Alessandra has the rare quality of being a true story

Does she work for CBS or something?

He's been dealing with the media a long time. Sometimes spokesmen unintentionally speak the truth.

To LaHaye disciples, one of the core conservative constituencies, this woman has just sold her soul to the devil.

Wow, Jim. You really know nothing about evangelicals, do you?

Timothy:

As a Satanic Death Cookie-munching Mystery Babylonian ("Ia! Ia! Nimrod! Ia! Ia! Semiramis! Ia! Ia! Tammuz!"), I can attest that a LOT of Evangelicals are still fighting the Reformation Wars. Check out your local Christian Bookstore sometime -- there are a LOT of anti-Catholic hate screeds besided Jack Chick's Alberto.

LaHaye is all about Catholic hate, the man has it nuanced to a point that Kerry could run on it. They sell it at my wife's evengelical big box church. In LaHaye's masterpieces, one Pope is raptured after turning Protestant, leaving a second pope to become Satan's top henchman. If it's Catholic hate fiction, it's OK with the Tammy Faye set; if it's black/jew hate literature, it's now out of favor.

American Christianity's dirty little secrets. Jim's quite right.

However, I quarrel with the caption about 'rarity.' I venture to guess that more books are published in English each year about personal conversion experiences than anything other than Harlequin rape fantasies.

*snickers* LaHaye is like Andrew Jackson At New Orleans who didn't get the memo that the War of 1812 was over.

Sheesh! Two years of reading BrosJudd and my first comment has to be a defense of Tim LaHaye, limited at any rate to the extent that his theology is explicated in the cartoonish "Left Behind" series. Even worse, I have to admit I read the silly books - every last one. I'd rather admit to doing crack.

Nonetheless:
The raptured pope (clearly modeled on JPII) did not first convert. And Mother Theresa is mentioned by name as being snatched from her grave to join the heavenly host. The rapture prerequisite is presented as simply acknowledging Jesus as one's Lord, not adherence to a particular denomination. Satan's "pope", given his post by Satan's human host, is head of a new, humanistic, universal religion. The evil-doers eventually set up shop in "New Babylon", Iraq (prescient, eh?). Thus transformed is the old evangelical "whore of Babylon" canard aimed at the Church of Rome.

BTW, I'm a pretty orthodox Catholic and I opened the first Left Behind book looking for the kind of old-fashioned Catholic bashing described here.

Pat: you are most forgiving of LaHaye. I direct you to his correspondence with Carl Olson, Catholic apologist, in Envoy Magazine entitled "Rapture Rumble." Mr. LaHaye maintains that Catholicism is a "Babylonish Mystery" religion and is pagan. He goes on to grieve for Olson's soul because of Olson's conversion to the Catholic faith.

The Catholics, for all their faults, know more about eschatology than Tim LaHaye will ever know.

His books may sell, but his understanding is bunk.

Mr. Gooding: Having googled the Envoy reference, I wish I could thank you more wholeheartedly for furthering my education. Instead I'm just sad.