To some Christians, the oil plume in the Gulf of Mexico heralds the apocalypse.

Uh, not to harp on christians but...

As a former Evangelical, I can tell you we really did think this way. Every generation is told that they will live to see the rapture. And according to Pew, there are like 60m of these people in varying phases of commitment to this philosophy.

While your beliefs may not coincide with this particularly toxic brand of christianity, they are a significant portion of the American population and their actions can have huge impact.

If you are christian and you are offended by this article, what would you rather they have said? Would you prefer the word "evangelical christian"?

If you don't know many fundamentalist Christians, it's easy to assume that this kind of thinking is very rare. I assure you, there are an eerily large number of people who interpret oil spills, wars in the Middle East, hurricane, and so on, as signs that the apocalypse is coming, as foretold in the book of Revelations. I realize, this is still not statistics. This, however, is:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1002759-2,0...

I'll just quote from the article: "A TIME/CNN poll finds that more than one-third of Americans say they are paying more attention now to how the news might relate to the end of the world, and have talked about what the Bible has to say on the subject. Fully 59% say they believe the events in Revelation are going to come true, and nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the Sept. 11 attack."

So, yes, I would say that there's something statistically significant going on here.

You forget Hanlon's razor:

  Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

This kind of reporting does not take place because the reporter is malicious. It takes place because the reporter thinks his public will consider it interesting and because he thinks his public should be informed about it. Which can be considered stupid, because it is really not that interesting, because it may have adverse effects by strenghtening or causing prejudices through overly broad generalizations and because it may simply be spreading falsehoods.

(In which I do not intend to take a stance on the veracity of the claim.)

Unfortunately the very noisy minority of a few specific derivative ideologies have worked very hard to claim the word “christian”. You're in the unfortunate positon of having to win your word back from an extremist connotation and years of political pandering.

Right after the part you quoted, Jesus exhorted people to "Be on guard! Be alert!" He goes on to repeat that people should watch vigilantly for the apocalypse, so they wouldn't be caught off guard. Isn't that exactly what you're scolding people for?

(I mean, sure, obviously they continue to be wrong, and it's silly. But the Bible verse you quote is a perfect example of a quote's meaning changing when you take it out of context.)

"I'll never really understand how some people can be so enthusiastic about the end of the world."

Well if you believe that the end of the world is when you will be part of a small elite chosen by the Guy In The Sky to be immortals free from all disease and suffering in a newly created perfect world, you might want to end of the world to get here soon!

Why go to the office and fill in that TPS report when you can be an immortal in a perfect world? ;-)

With carefully chosen premises almost anything can be "logical". This doesn't have anything to do with Christianity per se. All religions and "belief systems" exhibit this phenomenon.

Doubtless there are some few for which everything does, but typically and paradoxically things that are in fact substantially threatening do not. US nuclear stockpiles or preemptive aggression or plain old drilling for oil are godly and protective, while AGW and swine flu are hoaxes.