{"id":35799,"date":"2017-12-18T12:15:13","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T17:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=35799"},"modified":"2017-12-18T12:15:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T17:15:13","slug":"trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

President Donald Trump\u2019s core supporters are celebrating his announcement earlier this month that the United States will be moving it\u2019s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This is something white evangelical Americans have been wanting to see for many years, and they\u2019re elated it\u2019s finally happening.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that<\/em> all about? Well, it has to do with \u201cBible prophecy.\u201d And with white evangelicals\u2019 insistence that America must demonstrate \u201csupport for Israel.\u201d*<\/p>\n

Some really smart people who understand this particular intersection of sectarian Protestantism and foreign policy have written a bunch of very good articles providing an overview of just why this is something of such great concern for white American evangelicals. I recommend all of these:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Julie Ingersoll, \u201cWhy Trump\u2019s evangelical supporters welcome his move on Jerusalem<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n

\u2022 Sean Illing, \u201cThis is why evangelicals love Trump\u2019s Israel policy<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n

\u2022 Diana Butler Bass, \u201cFor many evangelicals, Jerusalem is about prophecy, not politics<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n

\u2022 Jonathan Merritt, \u201cUnderstanding the Evangelical obsession with Israel<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n

\u2022 Matthew Avery Sutton, \u201cJerusalem: Trump\u2019s gift to evangelicals<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n

Julie Ingersoll and Matthew Avery Sutton, in particular, put their finger on just what makes this announcement so exciting for Rapture Christians. Here\u2019s Ingersoll:<\/p>\n

The nation of Israel and the role of the city of Jerusalem are central in the \u201cend-times\u201d theology \u2013 a form of what is known as \u201cpre-millennialism\u201d \u2013 embraced by many American conservative Protestants. \u200b<\/p>\n

While this theology is often thought of as a \u201cliteral\u201d reading of the Bible, it\u2019s actually a reasonably new interpretation that dates to the 19th century and relates to the work of Bible teacher John Nelson Darby.<\/p>\n

According to Darby, for this to happen the Jewish people must have control of Jerusalem and build a third Jewish temple on the site where the first and second temples \u2013 destroyed centuries ago by the Babylonians and Romans \u2013 once were. In Darby\u2019s view this was a necessary\u00a0precursor to\u00a0the rapture, when believers would be \u201ctaken up\u201d by Christ to escape the worst of the seven-year-period of suffering and turmoil on Earth: the Great Tribulation. This is to be followed by the cosmic battle between good and evil called\u00a0Armageddon\u00a0at which Satan will be defeated and Christ will establish his earthly kingdom. All of this became eminently more possible when the modern state of Israel was established in the 1940s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here\u2019s Sutton:<\/p>\n

For the last century and a half, a long line of evangelical preachers, theologians and media personalities have insisted that the re-establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people with Jerusalem as its capital would set the stage for Jesus\u2019 Second Coming.<\/p>\n

In recent years, best-selling authors and theologians have reinforced such conclusions.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, the heavily mustachioed, Mississippi-River-tugboat-captain-turned-evangelist Hal Lindsey published \u201cThe Late Great Planet Earth,\u201d a book that sold more copies in the 1970s than any other work of nonfiction in the United States. It has remained in print ever since.<\/p>\n

Israel occupied the center of Lindsey\u2019s analysis. He believed that as the world moved toward the battle of Armageddon, three events would occur. First, the Jews would retake Palestine. Second, they would repossess old Jerusalem and its sacred sites. Third, they would rebuild King Solomon\u2019s temple on its original historical site.<\/p>\n

The first of these steps was accomplished in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel. The second occurred in 1967 when Israel captured Jerusalem during the Six Day War. The final event has not happened. Yet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s all about dates and check lists and the final countdown. And, as Sutton says, the key date for late-20th-century Rapture Christians was the creation of the modern political nation of Israel in 1948. That event set the stage for a late-20th-century revival of this Darbyism. It set the final countdown in motion. Starting in 1948, the clock was ticking, and Rapture mania roared back to life.<\/p>\n

The timing for this seemed providential for white evangelicals in America. It came just in time to reassure them that all the cultural changes their fervent prayers had failed to prevent \u2014 the Civil Rights Movement, the end of (sectarian Protestant) prayer in schools, Medicare, feminism, hippies, peace protests, Woodstock,\u00a0Elvis. Aron. Presley.<\/a><\/em> \u2014 were not horrors to be lamented, but horrors to be celebrated<\/em> as Signs of the End. Their once comfortable world was going to Hell in a hand basket, but that was Good News, because it was just exactly what their \u201cBible prophecy\u201d said would happen in the Last Days!<\/p>\n

Premillennial dispensationalism\u2019s pessimistic theology of accelerating decline was perfectly congruent with the increasing pessimism white evangelicals were feeling about an American society in which they felt increasingly at sea. They were losing their cultural influence and their moral authority. Kids these days with their long hair. And those other people \u2014 women, black people, gay<\/em> people \u2014 no longer seemed to accept their ordained place in the scheme of things. Surely some revelation is at hand; surely the Second Coming is at hand.<\/p>\n

And the Third Coming, too, since Rapture Christianity has Jesus returning twice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Greatest\"<\/p>\n

That date of 1948 became a major touchstone for Rapture Christians because their \u201cBible prophecy\u201d also included the belief that \u201cthis generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.\u201d That\u2019s a quote from the Gospel of Matthew, and why it can or should have anything at all to do with the founding of the modern nation of Israel in 1948 is neither simple nor obvious, but Rapture Christians seized on that as the assurance that their desperately awaited Second and Third Comings of Jesus were destined to happen within one generation of that date. They latched onto the idea of 40 years as a \u201cbiblical generation\u201d (because Moses) and, began feverishly predicting that there was no conceivable possibility that the Rapture could occur any later than sometime in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

The most bluntly literal of such \u201cBible prophecy\u201d prophets was a man named Edgar Whisenant, whose infamously popular book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988<\/em> could be summed up as \u201c1948 + 40 = 1988.\u201d Poor Whisenant managed to stick to his guns for a few years after that, employing the full array of \u201cBible prophecy\u201d fudge factors \u2014 the year zero glitch, the\u00a0Julian\/Gregorian switch, and a handful of other such complications that really couldn\u2019t be made to salvage the basic arithmetical wrongness of his original prediction.<\/p>\n

Most of the more reputable \u201cBible prophecy\u201d scholars were savvier than Whisenant about\u00a0trapping themselves in specific (and thus\u00a0falsifiable) date-setting. After all, \u201cNo man knoweth the day or the hour,\u201d etc. But their criticism of Whisenant wasn\u2019t really fair, considering that if you listened to what any of them were saying in 1980, none<\/em> of them allowed for\u00a0much possibility that the world would still be here by, say, 1995.<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert: The world was still here in 1995.<\/p>\n

While the unprophesied arrival of the 1990s was thus awkward for Rapture Christians, they still clung to the prophetic significance of that 1948 date, busily\u00a0rewriting their earlier insistence on a 40-year \u201cbiblical generation.\u201d For a look at one way they went about that, see this revisioning of a 52-year \u201cbiblical generation\u201d<\/a> from contemporary End Times preacher Walter Eugene Brazington. (You remember Brazington? We discussed him last week in, ahem<\/em>, a somewhat different context<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The numerology of \u201cBible prophecy scholars\u201d is remarkably elastic, but it\u2019s still odd to find someone still pushing this 52-year generation idea now, in 2017. That\u2019s a \u201990s<\/em> thing.** The whole point of it was to get past the failed arithmetic of 1948 + 40 to something still defensible, with the added bonus of 1948 + 52 yielding precisely the big round end-of-a-millennium number that allowed late-20th-century premillennial dispensationalism to survive the Great Disappointment of the Rapture-less 1980s. The impending Year 2000 \u2014 the end of 20 centuries of stony sleep \u2014 surely had to mean something<\/em>, and the excitement of that helped Rapture Christianity maintain some of its fervor right on up until the Y2K bug proved not to be one of the Seven Seals of Revelation.<\/p>\n

The passing of the century and the millennium sapped a lot of the energy and urgency from Rapture Christianity. That big date of 1948 was starting to seem like a very long time ago. That\u2019s not insurmountable \u2014 the ever-flexible numerology could be recalibrated to make a \u201cbiblical generation\u201d equal \u201cthree score years and ten\u201d \u2014 but still, the Rapture just didn\u2019t seem quite as any-moment-now imminent as it had back in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

The influence of Rapture Christianity has been waning ever since the 21st Century began.\u00a0I\u00a0wish I could say that this was due to the quixotic crusade of one blogger\u2019s long, devastating critique<\/a> of what was then the most popular and influential series of books promoting Rapture mania, but \u2014 alas \u2014 I don\u2019t think that had anything to do with it. It had to do, rather, with the passing of that Big Round Number milestone, and with\u00a0the election, then re-election, of George W. Bush. Bush\u2019s ascendancy helped to dispel white evangelicals\u2019 cultural pessimism, thus dampening their enthusiasm for eschatological pessimism. At the same time, premillennial dispensationalism was competing with a new rival framework \u2014 a strange form of post-millennial eschatology involving \u201cdominionism\u201d and \u201cseven mountains\u201d theories of restoring Christendom. This competing eschatology has been rapidly spreading among Pentecostal\/charismatic churches \u2014 a branch of Christianity that is itself growing rapidly, rather than shrinking like the forms of white fundamentalism that had most fervently embraced PMD Rapture folklore.<\/p>\n

Along with all of that, Rapture Christianity has also had to contend with its perennial Why Are We Still Here? problem \u2014 a problem that gets more acute with each passing year.\u00a0Tim LaHaye\u00a0recently died of old age. \u201cBible prophecy\u201d scholars were never supposed to reach<\/em> old age, let alone to die<\/em> from it (or to die at all). The final countdown had ticked down to zero years ago, and it was getting harder and harder to argue that we were still lingering only in some kind of divine stoppage time.<\/p>\n

So I think some of the white evangelical celebration following Trump\u2019s Jerusalem is a sense of relief and of renewed hope that Rapture Christianity might stage a comeback. Rapture Christians\u00a0have now been given a pretext\u00a0for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Never mind 1948. The clock starts now \u2014 with God\u2019s chosen people (America) officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital. Trump just gave\u00a0them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.<\/p>\n

Of course, most Rapture preachers don\u2019t have<\/em> another 40 years. John Hagee is 77. Hal Lindsey is 88. Billy Graham is 99. To continue for another generation, Rapture Christianity will need a new generation of leaders \u2014 of \u201cBible prophecy scholars\u201d and \u201cBible prophecy\u201d preachers, authors, peddlers, marketers, hucksters, hustlers and barkers. And at this point I can\u2019t see where that new generation is going to come from.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* This white evangelical imperative of \u201csupport for Israel\u201d is based on God\u2019s promise to Abram in the book of Genesis: \u201cI will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.\u201d For American evangelicals, oddly, this hasn\u2019t prompted\u00a0any ideas of \u201csupport for\u201d or\u00a0solidarity with all Jewish people as the children of Abraham, but only \u201csupport for Israel\u201d meaning political support for the political entity of the modern nation-state called \u201cIsrael.\u201d<\/p>\n

In practice, it means seeking God\u2019s blessing by ensuring that the United States \u201cblesses\u201d the nation of Israel with military aid and weapons systems, and with the use of America\u2019s veto power on the UN Security Council. But this \u201cblessing\u201d does not prevent these same Israel-supporting American evangelicals from, for example, snarling a hostile \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d at their Jewish neighbors here in America as an annual reminder that they mustn\u2019t challenge Christian hegemony in this Christian nation.<\/p>\n

** Then again, Winona Ryder is the star of a hit TV show, The New York Times<\/em> is credulously promoting bogus conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton,\u00a0and\u00a0Dave Grohl brought the house down this weekend on Saturday Night Live<\/em><\/a>. Bust out the flannels \u2014 the \u201990s are back, baby.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rapture Christians have been given a pretext for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Trump just gave them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[238,28,240],"class_list":["post-35799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-left-behind","tag-religious-right","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Rapture Christians have been given a pretext for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Trump just gave them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rapture Christians have been given a pretext for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Trump just gave them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-12-18T17:15:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2017\/12\/Greatest.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"10 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/\",\"name\":\"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-12-18T17:15:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-12-18T17:15:13+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Rapture Christians have been given a pretext for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Trump just gave them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks","description":"Rapture Christians have been given a pretext for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Trump just gave them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks","og_description":"Rapture Christians have been given a pretext for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Trump just gave them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2017-12-18T17:15:13+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2017\/12\/Greatest.jpg"}],"author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"10 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/","name":"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2017-12-18T17:15:13+00:00","dateModified":"2017-12-18T17:15:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47"},"description":"Rapture Christians have been given a pretext for resetting the clock and restarting their perpetual countdown. Trump just gave them a fresh set of downs \u2014 another 40 years in which to revive their message of an urgently imminent Rapture.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/18\/trump-lets-rapture-preachers-reset-countdown-clocks\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}