By David W. Hopewell
“The heart of darkness, as Joseph Conrad has shown, is deep within the individual human soul; and Fundamentalists make it perfectly obvious they want to keep that particular region as dark and murky as they possibly can.
“The incredible credulity of the great mesa of humanity persists unabated in spite of the many advances in science, the availability of education, and what was believed to have been a certain degree of social progress over the millennia. Millions upon millions of people still want to believe ridiculous things, and a good number still want very much to die for them...
“There is just too much bloody money to be made in this racket. The extremely well-fed and superbly coiffed appearance of most modern-day Elijahs is best explained, I think, by the mountains of cash to be had by anyone who can tap into the astounding, monumental gullibility of the faithful, with their inexhaustible, child-like credulity, and insatiable hunger for misery and death.
“Fundamentalists believe that the present is a glorious time in which to live - because Christ will return shortly to destroy everything and kill almost everyone.
“What interests Fundamentalists to the exclusion of everything else is not the paradisal happiness of the saints, but rather the horrors other people are going to have to suffer for their skepticism.
“Great religious faith cancels obligations to the world of reason and to common sense: the heroes of Christian morality seem to be those who can demonstrate the greatest contempt for the ground that keeps them up.”
David Hopewell a novelist and quondam streetcorner jazz-guitarist, holds a Ph.D. in literature from Dalhousie University. In preparing this book, he had to plow through the entire Christian Bible, read stunning numbers of mind-numbing pages in Fundamentalist publications, and subject his nervous system to hours of stupefying broadcasts produced by aggressive marketing agents of the Ignorance industry. Fortunately, he has survived these ordeals to produce a book that is a major contribution to the study of that worrisome phenomenon Christian Fundamentalism, showing that those who are drawn to its vortex are embarking upon A Journey into the heart of Darkness.