#1907: Anne Graham Lotz

Anne Graham Lotz is the spawn of the odious Billy Graham, founder of AnGeL Ministries, author of numerous books (including Just Give Me Jesus), hardcore wingnut and bigot, and promoter of a society organized after principles disconcertingly similar to those of the Taliban. Lotz is frighteningly influential, and rotten to the core. As most of these evangelists, her focus is ostensibly on God’s mercy and love, but is really about pure fear, hatred and anger – fear of the end times, and anger at those evil secularists and humanists who are causing it. It always takes a bit of mental gymnastics to reconcile the evil of the people causing the end times, which is bad, and God causing it, which is presumably good, but the point is presumably to sell books and reassert her self-image as an authority on Christendom anointed by Jesus Christ himself.

So yes, as many fundies before her, Lotz is claiming that the endtimes are imminent – they will arrive “within my lifetime” (or sooner) – and claims that God’s judgment has already begun. As proof she cites recent wars, terrorism, natural disasters, economic problems, and social unrest, and this time it is totally different from all the previous examples of wars, terrorism, natural disasters, economic problems and social unrest. The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, for instance, is according to Lotz just a “small snapshot” of what The Rapture is going to look like. In 2015 she even issued a “Mayday!” prayer alert predicting that the Rapture could come any day now: “Banks will close. The Stock Market will plunge,” warned Lotz.

Not everything is bad, though. In 2014 Lotz saw a rainbow in DC, which she interpreted as a possible sign that God heard her prayers. Things are often about her.

In particular, the end of the world will becaused by gay people, legal abortion, the theory of evolution and the ever-present “abandonment of Israel”. Tolerance is apparently a problem, too.

And the 2016 terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino are “wake-up calls” from God to Christians who have turned away from Him and failed to prevent such things as advances in LGBT rights in America (cause it’s all about America – at least Lotz’s audience and book sales are), and to harbingers of impending Armageddon (Hurrican Katrina and economic recession are other signs). 9/11, too, was a warning: “God is warning us and he gives warning after warning. 9/11 was a shot across the bow. So God is moving slowly in his judgment because he doesn’t want to do it.” Or, put differently, though she isn’t a 9/11 truther in the traditional sense, neither does she blame radical Islamists: It was God. At least God caused it very reluctantly, so that makes it OK. Terrorist attacks are, according to Lotz, just God’s way of demonstrating his love for us.

“We’ve lost our common sense, we’ve lost our ability to think straight – pun intended,” says Lotz. But if only Americans buy her book repent, then “there will be peace on our streets” and God will begin to “reveal the plots of our enemies and terrorists before they are carried out” and “control the weather patterns [I think “It’s God” counts as climate change denialism] and protect us from these violent storms that are taking human life.” Any storm or blizzard or terrorist attack is just evidence that you didn’t repent hard enough. So it goes. It’s interesting that to send a message about gay marriage God would send terrorists who hate gays almost as much as Lotz does. But again: so it goes. “No nation in human history has ever done this,” she said of gay marriage, before blaming gay marriage for unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson: “the evil just comes pouring in, which is what we’re seeing in Baltimore and Ferguson and some of these other places, it’s anarchy.” She didn’t go into details; her own intuitions Jesus is all the detail she need to causally link her hatred for gay people to any other random thing she doesn’t like. However, she did say that Satan is behind the Supreme court decision on gay marriage.

Not the least of our sins is the theory of evolution: “In our schools, we teach evolution as fact and Creationism, if it’s mentioned, it’s sort of a fringe theory,” complains Lotz. According to Lotz, evolution is animal worship and therefore clearly one of the reasons God has turned His back on America (except for when he demonstrates his love for Americans by sending terrorists); apparently the theory of evolution is described in Romans 1:22–23: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.” This does not resemble the theory of evolution. But the message is clear: don’t trust your scientists and teachers, for they worship false idols; listen to Lotz instead, for she can personally assure you she really truly has a direct hotline to God (no, really).

Pornography is a problem, too. According to Lotz pornography is a bit like a locust army, which could be interpreted as a reflection of somewhat interesting Internet habits on her part.

She is, completely unsurprisingly, not above appealing to some revisionist history to prop up her America-as-a-Christian-Nation nonsense, either.

Diagnosis: Ok, so it’s hard not to think of her as so ridiculous as to be a parody and therefore rather fun. But she is really not fun. She is a horrid and dangerous person.