RE: Late Stage Capitalism & Historical Prophecies
The Christian theology regarding "end-times" was likely intended to motivate the faithful to lead virtuous lives, rather than waste time chasing vanities. Your theory of "use" is applicable here, as the core philosophy regarding Christianity, as well as other religions, is serving God (or gods). A person's value derives from his "use" to his God (or gods), much like a tool's value derives from its ability to serve a function. Thus, the Christian conception of the "end-times" as being akin to parousia, time of official examination or inspection.
The popular so-called "Christian" end time scenarios, mostly popular in the US and the related low Protestant factions, somewhat miss the original intent of the "apocalypse" or revealing. Their illiterate babblings do lead people astray with their despair engendering drivel, but then when has any populist whore-mongering ever generated anything positive?
True, the philosophy of the endtimes is mostly limited to those factions you mentioned. However - even though you're right about them being babbling illiterates - I respect their stance, because I think it's actually the correct one! I've read the Bible in classical Greek and Greek and English, and (although I didn't conduct a thorough investigation) I think there's no way about it: we didn't evolve from apes; if you count all the generations from Adam to Eve then you get the number of years humans have existed on this planet; the endtimes was supposed to have happened while Jesus' apostles were still alive; etc. I remember talking to a girl, who in 1995 believed evolution wasn't true, and in 1996 believed it was true, because her Pope said so. If we compare that kind of believer to the US evangelists, I don't know who'd come out looking better! In my few years on this planet, I've seen religion change with the times - but fighting progress every step of the way. I can ask a theologian today what he thinks about same-sex marriage, and I can mentally travel back to my teens and ask the same question to the priest who was teaching us theology (that's what we call religious studies), and I'd get the exact opposite response. I don't like this chameleon eel-like nature of religion. To me, the evangelists etc. are closer to the "true" religion, based on what the actual Bible says.
Never thought to apply the "use" idea to how God sees us! It does indeed chime with some of the vocabulary used, like people being vessels for God's love or instruments etc. It leads to a kind of alienation of self from body, since the body is meant to praise God, and doing anything unseemly with it (e.g. masturbation, which Kant famously argued against) is seen as offensive to God, because this is God's body basically we're doing this to.
Indeed, modern day "religions" are as you describe, chameleon, jettisoning inconvenient doctrines with shifting winds of populism. It is inaccurate to impute ludditism to religion, since the core of all human societies, prior to the Westphalian state, was religion and her institutions. All progress (scientific or otherwise) for vitually all of written human history were sponsored by religion at the center of social matrix.
Protestanism denies the real presence of their Messiah in the eucharist, which all of Christianity affirms and remains at the center of its religious rituals. "Evangelicals" would not be closer to God's word, given that they ignore the basis of Christian religion: theophagy.
Since Vatican 2 reforms, Western "Christianity" is as you encountered: empty, hollow, useless. They assume that God commands good, rather than What God commands is good. Thus, they run in circles discussing philosophy, art, politics, then back-around again in the Pandemonium fortress of psudo-religious drivel. In some ways, I too prefer the ignorant fanatics of ISIS to a Western "Christian."