From yesterday’s Guardian UK:

Some people think George W. Bush did as much as he could to bring about Armageddon with his earlier interventions in the Middle East. But not the man himself, apparently. He has signed up for a fundraising event for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, an organisation which aims to promote the second coming by converting Jews to Christianity, and will speak today at their fundraiser in Irving, Texas.

The idea is that Jews must be converted in order to trigger Jesus Christ’s return to the Holy Land for the Last Judgment. So it is written, somewhere. It’s deep stuff and Christian fundamentalists wouldn’t expect us heathens to understand.

Laugh if you will, but Christians have made great strides toward tolerance over the centuries. Sure, there were the countless pogroms and the Inquisition and they were not nice people during the Holocaust, but that’s ancient history. The new pope is cool and even the Christian primitives — the Baptists and such — are much better behaved, especially when the end is nigh.

And yes, support for Israel is conveniently in tune with the foreign policy goals of American right-wingers, but let’s not be too cynical. The fact that a great Christian thinker like Dubya is eager to convert Jews rather than slaughter them is progress, don’t you think?