Few things about religion are as interesting to me as fundamentalist Christians’ ideas about how “the world” (i.e., anyone who is not a fundamentalist Christian, but most specifically anyone they deem “secular”) views them. I recently watched bits of Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, the latest in the whole Left Behind movie series. It’s about what will supposedly happen when all the true believers are whisked away to heaven and the heathen are — here comes the title — left behind.

The main protagonist, whose wife and young son were raptured away, decides to visit the church she attended. The voice-over narration explains that as soon as the Christians disappeared, churches were the target of violent protest. This included the graffiti below: “All souls matter!”

The thinking behind this seems to be that those left behind would be angry at the remaining Christians (though not true Christians because, you know, they got left behind) as they proclaimed that those who disappeared were Christians, that the fact they disappeared is proof a god favored them. The reaction: those left behind who didn’t think they were Christian (i.e., the true heretics) would be angry at this perceived sense of Christian superiority and would adopt a slogan like “All souls matter!”

I’m not even sure what they’re suggesting with this little detail. Do they think the dumb liberals left behind (because you can’t be a liberal and a true Christian) would be highly offended at the sense of Christian superiority that they would adopt an altered slogan from the right and throw it back at the remaining Christians? Do they think the dumb liberals would be so self-contradictory that they would argue about the equality of all souls even though they don’t believe in a god (because you know all liberals are atheists)?

I just don’t get this little detail. I don’t think they do either.