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literature and science, their opinions and claims derived exclusively from biblical quotation. Their particularly favorites were Paul’s letters and some of the later prophets, particularly Jesus-auguring Isaiah. “In the beginning was the word…” became the real reality. The meaning of life was Scripture as explicated by their book church pastors. They scribbled notes in the margins of their Bible pages during sermons They were displeased when I interpreted the wild imagery and 666 symbolism of Revelations from the point of view of the historicity of encoded political messages, meanings hidden for the safety of the early Jews in their world of Greco-Roman governance. Twenty-five years, before the glut of books by Tim LaHaye, my well-educated sons claimed that Revelations was literal and foretold the coming tribulation that augured the end of the world and ascension to heaven of the believers. My youngest, since childhood a well-read history buff, now viewed New Testament scripture as sui generisly, divinely and literally true. They said the conduct of their lives their meaning had been clarified by the biblical truths revealed to them by The Book. What I did not say was that much of the talk seemed to me to be an intellectually and spiritually impoverished miasma of cant and righteousness. At the same time, their remarkable transformation appeared to be the expression of a powerful and mystical force, the scientific understanding of which has been the ostensible focus my life’s work. Why did their alterations appear so alien, strange and forbidding?

Born to a home of psychoanalytically and scientifically oriented political liberals, these precociously bright and worldly sophisticated young men were suddenly transformed into, unrecognizable to me, radical Christian Fundamentalists. They are now in their late thirties and remain just as ardent, Christian patriotic, Right Wing voters to this day. The eldest is now an executive in Morris Cerullo’s San Diego based, worldwide missionary movement, raising money for revival and media ministries. He travels to and is involved with hundreds of Fundamentalist Christian churches in countries ranging from Argentina and Africa to the Middle East and Russia. He hasn’t allow me to contact his children, my grandson and granddaughter, because, in vague talk and mostly silent implication, I and people like me are seen as sources of potentially satanic, worldly

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