INVASION OF THE MIND SNATCHERS

by Dennis McKinsey, editor of Biblical Errancy, 3158 Sherwood 
Park Dr., Springfield, Ohio, 45505 (published in issue #146, Feb. 
1995).  Title not in original. 
copyright Dennis McKinsey, 1995

	Nearly every time I hear a fundamentalist tell me the exact 
time, place, and occasion under which he or she underwent the born-
again experience, I can't help but think of a movie released in 1956 
entitled "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."  The parallels are striking 
if not unnerving.  In the movie, large football-shaped pods are placed 
beside people while they are sleeping and the latter awaken with an 
entirely new personality.  With respect to Christianity, Jesus and the 
Bible are placed near people and they, too, are absorbed, 
transformed, and awaken with a new character.  In the movie, the 
absorbing pods are the product of a being or beings from another 
world just as the Bible is supposedly an emanation from God and 
heaven.  In the movie, people are troubled with life in general before 
they change but afterwards they testify to a feeling of contentment, 
serenity, and happiness.  Being born-again generates the same 
feeling according to fundamentalists.  In the movie, those who are 
absorbed by the alien force devote a tremendous amount of time and 
energy trying to convince the unconverted to accept the inevitable, 
succumb willingly, and join them in their realm of bliss.  The 
comparison between this and the amount of religious propaganda on 
radio and TV programs throughout this country is all too obvious.  
In the movie, people are betrayed by those whom they trust the most---
relatives and friends---who have already been absorbed.  And that is 
no less true of the process by which most people join religious 
rigidity and are changed today.  People are suckered in by those in 
whom they place the greatest confidence.  In the movie, people had 
the same outward appearance before and after being incorporated, 
but the inner change was sinister, insidious, deceptive, and 
devastating.  And that is no less true of those who have been co-
opted by the born-again experience.  In the movie, people are only 
assimilated when they lower their guard and are lulled to sleep.  How 
true that is of the process by which people are taken in through 
fundamentalist cunning and duplicity.  In the movie, those converted 
to the alien force do not hesitate to resort to coercion when 
persuasion proves to be ineffective.  When peaceful measures are 
ineffective, imposition and violence are readily employed.  Recent 
torchings of abortion clinics and the killing of their personnel, as 
well as events in the Ayatollah's Iran, show that's no less true of 
those who have undergone the born-again experience or something 
comparable.  In the movie, those who have succumbed to the alien 
force behave as mindless, uncritical robots, blindly following every 
command or whim of their new cause.  Those who have undergone 
the born-again experience adopt a similar mind-block to any 
concepts or ideas emanating from a source other than the one to 
which they have succumbed.  But undoubtedly the most important 
parallel is that in the movie, the hero, the sane man, the sensible 
man, was doing everything in his power to either escape or destroy 
the alien force and its agents.  And when it comes to the Bible in 
general and Jesus in particular, that's no less true of sanity today.  In 
the movie, the hero puts up great resistance, escapes from the town 
controlled by his enemies, is chased by them through the hills out 
onto a busy highway occupied by people still unconquered by the 
alien force.  As he is running up and down the highway saying and 
doing everything in his power to alert the unwary, a leader of his 
band of pursuers tells the others to stop the chase and then turns to 
them and says paraphrastically, "Never mind, let him go.  They'll 
never believe him anyway."  How well that applies to today's society.  
How well I know the feeling of that poor man on the highway trying 
to alert Americans to the ideology that is seeking inroads everywhere.  
When I see my programs on public access cablevision, I can't help 
but feel there are some influential figures in the audience saying to 
themselves: Never mind, let him go.  They'll never believe him 
anyway.