REAL-ID round-upEvangelicals see the "mark of the beast" in plan

As noted elsewhere in today’s issue, DHS is fighting the REAL-ID battle on a number of fronts, with privacy advocates and state legislators finding numerous reasons to oppose universal standards for identification cards. But here is a threat that the Bush administration will have an especially hard time solving: a number of evangelical groups say the plan represents the “mark of the beast” described in the Book of Revelations. According to some interpretations of that notoriously unspecific text, during the End Times humans will be “marked … so that no one can buy or sell who does not have that mark” — a clear prediction, some say, of the REAL-ID Act. “This is getting treacherously close to prophecy in the scripture,” said Irvin Baxter Jr. of Dallas, Texas-based Endtime Ministries. Anyone who receives the card, evangelicals say, “will be lost for eternity.”

Far be it from us to remark on any particular religious tradition, but a number of state legislators in Missouri are using the fear of Judgement Day as a reason for the state not to comply with the act. The Missouri House, prompted by State Representative Jim Guest, recently passed a bill to that effect, although no action has been taken in the State Senate. Guest’s office, he said, had been swamped by phone calls and e-mails from Christians worked up over the issue by a local radio personality. “Some people are genuinely worried about it,” said Guest, who offered privacy concerns as his major objection to the plan. “These are people who believe that a national ID number symbolizes something religiously evil.” Of course, as readers know, the plan involves no such number, and most people already have one anyway, from the Social Security Administration.