Amos,

The difference between Moyers and Limbaugh is style -- not substance.

The notion that the statistics that you echo make Moyer's point doesn't have anything to do with the point I made -- that Moyers defines too broad a group with the narrow rhetoric of the few on one extreme end.

Nobody is arguing that some believe as Moyers claims. What is arguable is whether they are enough in number or infuence to paint the apocalyptic picture that Moyers so ironically paints of those whom he claims to be the "apocolyptic" ones (I can't wait to re-read that line! --it has to sound as convoluted as Moyer's logic! Ha ha!).

Mark Clark is as kind and good a gentleman as you'd ever want to meet. What he writes above is written as absolute dogma -- though, as illustrated by Joe Offer's mild disagreement, it is no more certain than any other inter-denominational disagreement. Just as those illustrate two views on the issue, I can assure you that, just because millions of "Bible thumpers" read the "Left Behind" series, FEW of them are in agreement on the series' veracity. IN fact MOST, even those who buy the notion of a returning Jesus, don't think of the series as anything but fiction/speculation. As a double "in fact" you ought to get to know a few of the really "deep-enders" (my brother is one of them) -- they cannot even agree with each other -- each playing their little games of interpretational one-upsmanship in very heated debate. The thought that they would agree enough to be united as a strong political force is laughable.

And I can assure you that, having grown up around people who firmly believed in an "end times" scenario -- and many of them even thinking that those end times are now -- I do not hear them drawing the conclusions that Moyers assumes they must draw. For the majority of them, the notion that the "end times" might be around the corner was just a daily admonishment to always be living a life they would not be ashamed of were Jesus to return tomorrow.

Have a happy day!