Protestant Evangelicalism in America is a potent cultural, historical, and political force. It is an inseparable part of our national character. This is nothing new. As a religious denomination, the personal faith of Evangelicalism brings hope to millions of followers, just as other forms of religious belief enrich and give meaning to the adherents of these faiths.

But below the surface there is a more dangerous, ominous, and cynically manipulated message bent more on enforcing a political ideology in the United States and around the world than any type of religious belief. In reality, this political-Evangelicalism could be compared to what some call the takeover of the Islamic faith with a form of virulent political-Islam. The core objectives of each are to control minds, markets, and resources. Where one uses barbarous terrorist tactics, spiteful propaganda, and violence to achieve its goals, the other uses flashy and pervasive television, radio, savvy publishing and technological propaganda as means to deliver its message.

The most effective message yet found by the people seeking to hijack Protestantism is the LEFT BEHIND series, described in a marketing report commissioned by Tyndale House (the series' publisher) as "one of the most widely experienced religious teaching or evangelistic tools among adults who are not born again Christians," and that books "reached a larger unduplicated audience of non-believers than most religious television or radio ministries draw through their programs."

Skipping Toward Armageddon explores:

1. The history of millenial thinking across cultures from pre-Christian times to the present.

2. The evolution of the militantly evangelical version in the United States, from Billy James Hargis, through Hal Lindsey to the present-day.

3. The linkages (raising money and peddling influence) between these nominally religious figures and mainstream right-wing politicians, initally through the john Birch Society and now through such organizations as the Moral Majority and the more secretive Council of National Policy.

4. The specific ideological configurations in the books themselves and how they connect to the larger goals of the Religious Right.
Above all, what the book reveals is that the LEFT BEHIND series is not a harmless series of thrillers written from an Evangelical Christian perspective but the primary tool of a man of whom none other than Jerry Falwell has remarked: "He has set the agenda for evangelicalism more than any other person." This agenda, by its very own admission, seeks to bring about the end of the world.

With no end on sight to the series (the first title in the prequel trilogy was published in March 2005), with other large publishers issuing "me-too" series (most notable Bantam), we trivialize these books at our peril.

Michael Standaert (Iowa City, IA) has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Review, Maisonneuve (Montreal), Far Eastern Economic Review, Reason Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal Europe, and Salon.com. He received an MA in European Journalism from Cardiff University.