Killing the Buddha has an excerpt from Frank Schaeffer’s Patience with God about the disastrous politics of the rapture. Schaeffer gives a good introduction to the Left Behind phenomenon which has worried me for some time, even before I was an atheist. Here’a an excerpt:
[F]eeding the paranoid delusions of people on the fringe of the fringe contributes to a dangerous climate that may provoke violence in a few individuals. And convincing folks that Armageddon is on the way, and all we can do is wait, pray, and protect our families from the chaos that will be the “prelude” to the “Return of Christ,” is perhaps not the best recipe for political, economic, or personal stability, let alone social cohesion. It may also not be the best philosophy on which to build American foreign policy! The momentum toward what amounts to a whole subculture seceding from the union (in order to await “The End”) is irrevocably prying loose a chunk of the American population from both sanity and their fellow citizens….
The words left behind are ironically what the books are about, but not in the way their authors intended. The evangelical/fundamentalists, from their crudest egocentric celebrities to their “intellectuals” touring college campuses trying to make evangelicalism respectable, have been left behind by modernity. They won’t change their literalistic anti-science, anti-education, anti-everything superstitions, so now they nurse a deep grievance against “the world.” This has led to a profound fear of the “other.”
Jenkins and LaHaye provide the ultimate revenge fantasy for the culturally left behind against the “elite.” The Left Behind franchise holds out hope for the self-disenfranchised that at last soon everyone will know “we” were right and “they” were wrong. They’ll know because Spaceship Jesus will come back and whisk us away, leaving everyone else to ponder just how very lost they are because they refused to say the words, “I accept Jesus as my personal savior” and join our side while there was still time! Even better: Jesus will kill all those smart-ass Democrat-voting, overeducated fags who have been mocking us!
I have a feeling that evangelical Christianity will indeed be left behind. Hopefully within a century or so it will be reduced to a minor cult.
It could go one of three ways, I think:
1) The “rapture within 50 years” will be a *perpetual* 50 year deadline that’s always 50 years from your present (if you get my meaning) and the whole thing will just stagnate and stay about the same as it is now.
2) One of the truly insane ones will decide to pre-empt armageddon by doing something truly messed up like shooting a missile at China (let’s not forget how dominated the US military is by fundies, particularly the officer class).
3) It’ll wither and die in time.
I hope that option 3 is the one the wins out.
Doomsday cults have been around for a long, long time. When the promised end of the world doesn’t come, they show an amazing resilience for reinterpreting their ideas and either pushing the deadline out further or doing something else. Both the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses started out as Doomsday splinter sects. They’re still around.
One thing that modern American evangelical fundamentalism of this stripe doesn’t have is centralized leadership and vision. That makes it more likely in my mind that it will wither up and die as interest in The End of the World wanes. As it does. Doomsday stuff is fairly cyclical – some future event gets people thinking that The End is coming up and gets a ton of hype and then, when the landmark passes, interest wanes and people move onto the next thing. It happened in the late 1800s as the century mark was coming up and it happened again in the 70s as the millennium mark was approaching. I think this one has a longer tail than the last one for a few reasons (New Agers clinging to the fake Mayan 2012 Doomsday date, September 11th freaking people out, better communications technology to keep those who are like-minded in communication with each other and feeding each others’ beliefs), but it’ll dwindle off as well.
But I doubt American evangelical fundamentalism will die off with it. It’ll refocus – as it did in the early 20th century. I suspect that the marketshare of swindlers selling Prosperity Gospel crap will grow as the marketshare of swindlers selling Doomsday contracts. If people think there’s a future ahead of them, it makes it more likely to turn to thoughts of how to make that future comfortable, after all.
‘Both the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses started out as Doomsday splinter sects.’
Haha, sorry I just have to say, I read that line quickly at first and it looked like you wrote ‘Both the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses started out as Doomsday sphincter sects.’ Maybe that’s what we should just start calling them all. :))
Win. Just *filled* with win.
I’ve noticed also that this kind of people – in their infantile egocentrism – always assume this millennial event will of course happen in their own lifetimes!
Interesting, isn’t it? They don’t say, “Oh, the Rapture/Armageddon/Sweet Return of Crazy Psycho Jesus will happen in 2459.” Nope, it’s gonna happen NOW!
Well, you gotta stick with the tradition. Armageddon has been just around the corner for the last 2000 years, so why change that.
Yeah I have been hearing about Jesus returning since the 70′s and there have been several so called predictions of his return just to go past. I always wonder if any of the rapture believers ever think they were passed by when the rapture happened. LOL
Funny, I will use this line when I make fun of my fundie cow-orker.
All that moralizing, gay bashing platitute only to end up in the same Hell with us Liberal voting, abortion loving, porn consuming infidels.. Too funny.
If you don’t believe in an afterlife or Heaven, then why do you believe there is a “Hell”?
“And convincing folks that Armageddon is on the way, and all we can do is wait, pray, and protect our families from the chaos that will be the “prelude” to the “Return of Christ,” is perhaps not the best recipe for political, economic, or personal stability, let alone social cohesion. It may also not be the best philosophy on which to build American foreign policy!”
“The evangelical/fundamentalists, from their crudest egocentric celebrities to their “intellectuals” touring college campuses trying to make evangelicalism respectable, have been left behind by modernity. They won’t change their literalistic anti-science, anti-education, anti-everything superstitions, so now they nurse a deep grievance against “the world.” This has led to a profound fear of the “other.” ”
Once again, someone *besides me* brings up problems of the extreme religious right’s hand in politics. From my angle (as an educator), I fight to keep these people out of policy decisions for public schools and, if I had it my way, wouldn’t allow home-indoctrination via homeschooling either through regulation.
But what the hell do I know?
I’ve just read all of this article and it should be saif that Schaeffer does an excellent job of excoriating the religious right and their leaps into paranoia. Unfortunately he could not resist a dig at Dawkins and the “fundemental atheists”.
>>As the authors of An Evangelical Manifesto wrote, “striking intolerance shown by the new atheists is a warning sign.”
A warning sign of /what/? Considering how cogently he wrote about the dangers of isolationism, resorting to bogeyman-allusion is a little low-brow.
Dawkins is primarily an evolutionary biologist. He would be delighted if all the fundies went away and let him get on with it.
He’d make a great deal less money, though.
When I was a kid (I was too a kid!) I heard preaching saying that Jesus was going to return within a generation of when Israel was reestablished as a nation. The guess was that a “generation” was about 20 years, which meant by 1968. Well, that didn’t happen, so a generation became 40 years. Then 1988 slid by us, too. Pat Robertson started saying it would probably (he’s usually at least smart enough to hedge his bets) be in 2007, or after ~60 years. Nope. The latest I heard was from Benny Hinn. He said a generation was 100 years. Of course, he’ll be gone by 2048. So will I, but I’d like to hear the excuses when January 1st, 2049 rolls around.
Boy, they really can’t pin down what a “generation” actually means, can they! When I was a kid, I remember people saying that Jesus was gonna make a guest appearance in October of ’79. Didn’t happen. Some moron on the web whose website color choices are likely to cause seizures has been braying about the Rapture happening “this fall.” Yeah, *right*.
Yes it’s always amusing to me to listen to them explain the whole “this generation will not pass away [until I return]” verse.
My sister was born in Oct ’79, and while she can’t walk on water, she is a very strong swimmer. Coincidence?
Maybe the rapture did happen, but everyone was left behind so noone noticed.
I’ll check with her when I see her this weekend.
Yeah, the Rapture was due September 21st, I think. However, teh godz mucked up the schedule, and it turns out to actually be due on October 21st.
Uh-oh …
Check this space tomorrow for further announcements. Okay? Please?
Actually, I already have heard the excuses they’ll issue in 2049. Same excuses, different dates, that’s all.
Another variation is that “generation” (Greek: “genea”) can mean both a chronological generation and a broader group of people united by shared genealogy, such as the Jewish people.
So when Jesus spoke about “this generation” experiencing the signs of the end times, he really meant the distant descendants (2000 years and counting) of the Jews (or maybe just all peoples in general) who were in the audience. Which really makes no sense – why would Jesus allude to people still existing at the end times? What is the point of mentioning this at all? But that’s apologetics for you.
If the rapture does occur, those of us who are left behind will be in a better place. Sort of ironic.
Which leads to: “When the rapture comes, can I have your stuff?”
From what I understand, the Jehova’s Witnesses now maintain that the rapture has already happened, and it happened exactly when they predicted it would!
It just happened in heaven… where no one could witness it…
Seriously…
Sounds good to me. Keep all that tribulation, antichrist, mark of the beast, and Armageddon stuff up there, too, where it can’t bother anybody.
Evangelical Christianity will either dramatically refocus its message, or it will go away.
The thing is, evangelical Christians are already moving very quickly in a progressive direction, some even going so far as to maintain that the church’s stated purpose is to adapt its message to the world around it (Mars Hill, for example, which has an active membership of tens of thousands, is clearly evangelical in origin, but is one of the more progressive large churches in the US).
What I’m saying is that evangelical Christianity is moving into a progressive stance much, much faster than many other denominations of Christianity (Baptists and Pentecostals come to mind). Even denominations that have characteristically been more progressive than evangelical Christianity are not moving in this direction as fast as the evangelicals are.
So, basically, either this progressivism will ‘take’ and trend evangelicalism into a more accepted role, or it will be an ultimately failed project, and become relatively even more entrenched (which is especially problematic for evangelicalism, since it isn’t even a coherent denomination and has multiple competing doctrines–at some point all that’s left would be embittered, tiny, dying churches who have very little support for their individual interpretations of Christianity.)
Those are the two options I notice. I’m watching intently to see which way things go. If we don’t shape up pretty quick I’m gonna have to convert to liberal Catholicism.
“I’m gonna have to convert to liberal Catholicism.”
Ugh. I can’t imagine anyone with even half a brain or an ounce of self respect slapping the label Catholic on themselves.
I mean, unless they just like the idea of money for pedophiles.
“I mean, unless they just like the idea of money for pedophiles.”
Oh, that’s nice… Catholics support pedophilia! What was I thinking?!?!
Indirectly, of course they do!
The church gave out millions of dollars as hush money to victims, and continued to use their funds legally defending these pedophiles from prosecution.
If I was a member of any group, religious or otherwise, that had used my donation money to protect or defend pedophiles I would be furious and immediately remove myself from their membership.
Why does the Catholic church get a pass on this?
The fact that they’ve done this does’t make you think they are an evil institution?!
They apparently bought up all of the “Get Out of Jail” free cards and we missed it. Sorry JonJon, but Ty’s point is valid. ANY other group or corporation would have all ready been out of business from lawsuits, and the arrest warrants would have been flying from day one!
Can you imagine if it were Bank of America’s top brass or the NFL that did this and then paid off people to keep it quiet? All “hell” would have broken loose.
Nobody else ever covered up something terrible done by their employees?
If you honestly think the Catholic church has a monopoly on corrupt employees, then whatever…
It is not one or a few employees that did something terrible, and it is not something that happened once or a few times. The RCC does in fact have a monopoly on hundreds of child molesters (“corrupt employees”, heh) getting covered for hundreds of years.
Well there was Halliburton and KBR … Nice company to be in, if you’re into comparisons.
The difference, of course, is that Halliburton doesn’t claim to be the spiritual guidance for millions of people, doesn’t pretend to moral authority (rather the opposite), and isn’t usually allowed to be in charge of orphanages, schools, or hospitals despite a long history of interference with children.
A friend of mine just told me that a child is more likely to be abused in public school than catholic school. not ground-breaking information, to be sure.
But crazy people wanted to give Michael Jackson the nobel prize…
I don’t think the argument holds up, to be frank. People never support an institution for the mistakes it makes. Every institution makes mistakes. The US government has officials embroiled in scandal every month. No corporations ever took money given them in good faith by their customers and did something unethical with it… oh wait.
Do you think that there are more pedophiles per capita working for the Catholic church than there are in the population at large?
There are legitimate beefs with Catholicism. Unethical behavior is certainly one of them. I’m not getting that you are primarily upset with individual catholics who participated in unethical cover-ups, though. I’m seeing a blanket condemnation of an organization, *and every single member of it*, no matter their involvement in unethical activity. Which I don’t think is particularly fair. If you think every Catholic is responsible for the actions of a few bad ones, I’m gonna have to disagree.
Do you think there are more pedophiles in positions of power and authority and in frequent close contact with children per capita working for the Catholic church than there are in the population at large?
Nope. I could be proven wrong I suppose, but I’d need to see data.
The problem is that the number of Catholic priests in the US is such a tiny proportion of the total population.
I don’t think its inconsistent for a pedophile to actively attempt to attain positions of close contact with, and power over, children. Call me crazy.
I think an organization whose employees are in frequent contact with children and in positions of power (like, say, elementary schools, or churches) should be extra-special-careful about vetting applicants for tendencies toward child molestation. The RCC went in the completely opposite direction, hiding and protecting their child molesters.
If it was discovered that a particular school district had a bunch of teachers that were molesting children, and the school district (all the way up to the superintendent, who knows about the problem) engaged in a conspiracy to protect the molesters and hide the truth from the childrens’ parents and the police, you’d be crazy not to be pissed off.
(Also, said school district would lose any moral authority they had, right?)
What I’m saying is that evangelical Christianity is moving into a progressive stance much, much faster than many other denominations of Christianity
Skeptical. American Evangelical Christianity has always had a liberal/progressive wing, and it’s been pretty much on the losing side for the past few decades. It’s going to take more that young evangelicals reading “Blue Like Jazz,” and flocking to trendy megachurchs to turn it around.
The conservatives are just more savvy; in terms of building institutions, in terms of media, in terms of message. Compare the media empire of “Focus on the Family” to Jim Wallis’s “Sojurners.” Compare the “700 Club” to Marc Noll’s wonderful but scholarly books. Who’s going to win this fight? Who’s going to get to define what it means to be an Evangelical Christian to the American public?
“It’s going to take more that young evangelicals reading “Blue Like Jazz,” and flocking to trendy megachurchs to turn it around.”
Of course it is. That’s why I think it could go either way.
If you think the traditional “religious right” is going to win out by default, I really don’t agree. Yes, they have political backing, but I don’t see that they have that much of a future.
Indirectly, of course they do!
The church gave out millions of dollars as hush money to victims, and continued to use their funds legally defending these pedophiles from prosecution.
If I was a member of any group, religious or otherwise, that had used my donation money to protect or defend pedophiles I would be furious and immediately remove myself from their membership.
Why does the Catholic church get a pass on this?
Aw, Ty! Does that mean you’re giving up your membership to NAMBLA?
I had never heard of NAMBLA. And I just Googled it. And now I am deeply disturbed.
NAMBLA = Why the radical personal freedom advocates in the US scare the living hell out of me.
Let’s hope that the rapture is real and very soon. Then we have finally our peace. LOL
Seconded! The sooner these retards get raptured, the sooner they can piss off and leave the rest of us alone!
What few believers in the rapture, left behind theology know is how new this theology is. It only started about 170 years ago in Scotland, when a teenage girl name Margaret McDonald
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_McDonald_(visionary)