Disciples of Destruction

What's going on in the world? Every day we hear more horror stories about the wars in the Middle East. Americans are afraid to travel world-wide because of their justified fears of terrorism. And here, at home, we watch with amazement as the fundamentalists battle over control of a TV empire riddled with sex and drugs, with a scenario that makes prime time television look tame. As money, sex, and power once again take their toll, "Disciples of Destruction" examines religion itself and the role it has played since time, as we know it, began. Sutherland uncovers and analyses the real ramifications of organised religion and its devastating effects on Western civilisation. This book is packed with little-known vignettes that are sure to astonish, amuse, and sometimes even outrage the reader. Few will fail to be drawn in by the account of the 'Corpse Synod', in which a Pope's body was exhumed, put on trial for high crimes, and subsequently dragged through the streets of Rome; or shocked by the plausible contention that Albino Luciani, elected Pope John Paul I in 1979 but destined to reign for only 33 days, did not die a natural death but was in fact assassinated.
Sutherland convincingly concludes that organised religion, even today, maintains the proclivities of its barbaric origins, as Israeli expansionism, the Vatican's obsession with its financial empire, the atrocities of Khomeini's 'Islamic Republic', and Marxist militarism and repression amply demonstrate. These proclivities, updated to our century, indicate that while the long battle to liberate the mind from the fear of tyranny continues, the slow process of slaying the dragons of mythology is not keeping step with the pace of nuclear weapons development and deployment, which accelerates in the context of an equally explosive growth of religious fundamentalism. Unchecked, this makes 'armageddon' the easiest prophecy to fulfil.