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Adventist Congressman Roscoe Barlett in ‘Urban Danger’ Film

In a series of clips from a documentary called Urban Danger available on YouTube and 3AngelsTUBE, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), a Seventh-day Adventist, shares his fear of impending threats to America and advocates that people move out of urban areas.

In this trailer, Rep. Bartlett states:

. . .so there are a number of events that could create a situation in our cities where civil unrest could be a very high probability. And I think that those who can, and those who understand need to take advantage of the opportunity. . .to move their families out of the city. . . . It’s just plain fun when you’re looking at the challenge of what do I have to do so that I’m independent of the system.

In this segment Rep. Bartlett states that American cities’ supermarkets only have about a three-day supply of food.

In the context of his surmising about the threat of living in urban areas, Bartlett states in the video that there are two strains of smallpox, one is the U.S. and one in the “Soviet Union”.

I’m told with considerable assurance that the one in the Soviet Union has gotten loose and it’s now in China, and in a lotta different, a lotta different countries.

This film appears to have been produced in the last couple of years and is full of references to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, long after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Despite the creator’s claim on the Urban Danger site that this documentary is not “survivalist,” it is sold along with many survivalist media offerings and the classic anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant book by Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracy (1855). While they charge $16 for it, thanks to Google Books and Harvard University, it can be read for free here. Other titles produced by the same brother (Dave and Dan Westbrook)  team include a Total Prepardness series. In their own description of the Urban Danger film, they write:

Danger is stalking the city. Like it or not, its a fact… life in urban areas is about to radically change due to developments most people are not aware of. Find out what the issues are and what YOU can do to not only survive but also thrive.

In this final clip, as the music swells, Rep. Bartlett endorses their survivalist message and states: “As a member of Congress I would like everybody to do this.”

This sort of “back to the country” rhetoric is not news to Adventists familiar with fringe movements in the denomination. But is it professional and responsible for a member of Congress to mix his faith-based apocalypticism with fact-challenged scare-mongering about urban America?

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