Humanity has been courting the world’s destruction for centuries. Especially within the monotheistic religions the return of a messiah is expected to liberate the true believers from the wicked...Show moreHumanity has been courting the world’s destruction for centuries. Especially within the monotheistic religions the return of a messiah is expected to liberate the true believers from the wicked world they live in. However, since the Enlightenment, the division between church and state, and the increasingly influential scientific voice within the Western world has driven these eschatological depictions to the outskirts of the civilised world as antiquated and ignorant religious theories. However in other parts of the world this did not happen. In the last couple of years Daesh is not only using propaganda based on religious texts declaring their right to establish a caliphate, but also using these texts to describe something called ‘the end of ages’. However the big difference when it comes to Western politics is that these ideas are kept out of politics due to the division between church and state. Or so it may seem to many viewers. In the United States of America the Christian Right has been influencing its government tremendously in regard to both domestic as foreing issues. Especially in foreign affairs concerning the Middle East the main focus of the USA was laid on issues as Israel and Iraq. However, one of the most significant reasons has been highly neglected for decades and is sometimes still moving under the political and sociological radar, namely the religious aspect. Within the Christian Right the theology or theory of dispensationalism is widespread. Dispensationalism is, in short, the belief that at the end of times nations will rebel against God, attacking His people (Israel), which will result in complete annihilation of those armies, the return of Jesus Christ and the Last Judgement. In this thesis, this relationship between evangelical thinking and US politics will be further researched within a period an Evangelical president lead the country. This will be done by investigating the following question:, “Did dispensationalism influence the George W. Bush Administration in their policy towards the Middle East, and if so, how?”Show less
