Lexington Behold the Rapture Millenarianism is becoming a force on the right in American politics
THERE used to be bumper stickers in north Florida warning, "In case of Rapture, this car will be driverless." The Rapture is an apocalyptic event: at some point, Christ will swoop to earth and beam all true believers up to heaven. People will vanish, as the first book of Corinthians has it, in the twinkling of an eye, leaving everything else behind-the clothes they are wearing, their wedding rings, false teeth-and, of course, unbelievers. So if a car is being driven by a born-again Christian, it will careen off the road and crash into something. You have been warned.
To many people, particularly Europeans, the Rapture comes from the UFO-watching, conspiracy-obsessed fringes of American life, where "X-Files" enthusiasts meet the Montana Freemen to stockpile supplies in caves. Apart from marvelling at the varieties of religious experience, one's natural reaction to it is a Gallic shrug. Such things hardly merit political attention.
Not this year. Millenarianism-the belief in the thousand-year reign of King Jesus-is starting to spill out over its narrow banks and is flooding towards the mainstream. Conservative radio stations across the sunbelt have been full of this stuff since September 11th. But the best evidence comes from the phenomenon called the "Left Behind" series-a bestselling sequence of novels, whose sales have soared in the past year, that dramatise Americans' strange obsession with the end of the world.
The first book of the series (sales so far: 7m) opens under a slight cloud. Millions vanish overnight and Antichrist becomes secretary-general of the United Nations. From then on, it's all downhill. Antichrist, formerly the president of Romania for some reason, fools almost everyone "left behind" except a plucky band which includes, to Lexington's delight, a political reporter for an international news weekly. Antichrist engineers a peace treaty with Israel, institutes a world currency, rebuilds the Temple of Solomon, moves the UN to Iraq (don't ask) and persuades all nations to disarm. This is just asking for trouble. Volume five, "Apollyon" (3.1m sold), unleashes a plague of locusts with human heads and metal wings. Volume eight, "The Mark" (3m sold), has people queuing up to let Antichrist's world government implant micro-chips in their right hands-the mark of the beast. In the latest instalment, "The Remnant" (first print run: 2.75m), half of mankind has been killed or is living underground, the polar icecaps melt and the seas turn to blood. "Armageddon" is due next spring.
Amongst the millenarian mayhem, "Left Behind" has a not-very-hidden political agenda. It is no accident, for example, that the poor old UN is Antichrist's chosen vehicle. International agencies and supra-national currencies are works of the devil. The kings of the earth "shall give their power and strength unto the beast" (Revelation 17:13). The whore of Babylon sits upon "seven mountains" (Revelation 17:9). Rome has seven hills. The Treaty of Rome is the European Union's founding charter. You can see where the authors are going with this.
The Book of Revelation is the source for the whole series. It was written soon after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD and looks forward to a time when Jews will return to their homeland. In other words, to some Christians, the establishment of the state of Israel is intimately bound up with the Second Coming and the end of the world. The City of God is impossible without the state of Israel. This is a big reason why evangelical Christians are among Israel's most vociferous supporters in America.
If you combine these views with the spread of nuclear weapons-ie, things which actually could destroy the world-and the emergence of mega-terrorists bent on acquiring them, then it is not hard to imagine how the daily news can begin to look like front-line dispatches from the first stages of the end of all things. According to a poll by Time magazine, 59% of Americans think the Book of Revelation will come true. Almost a quarter believe the Bible predicted the attacks of September 11th.
This makes the "Left Behind" phenomenon fundamentally different from most millenarian cults. They tend to be marginal and isolated: David Koresh, who led his Branch Davidians into a fiery and fatal confrontation with the FBI, was a characteristic example. Readers of the "Left Behind" series are neither. The two most recent instalments both topped the bestseller lists. More than 40m copies have been sold in all.
Most of the series' readers surely voted for Mr Bush. Around the country, they provide foot soldiers for the Republican Party: they ring doorbells, stick envelopes and support their town's conservative radio station. They are the president's people. When Mr Bush talks about "the axis of evil", they take his phrase literally-and he knows it.
A date for your diary
Still, if the end of the world is nigh, policy of any kind seems rather pointless. Why bother? Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations explains why. Some views, he argues, are more dangerous to ignore than to contain. By talking in terms of the struggle of good against evil, Mr Bush is assuring millions of Americans that he is serious about defending them against terror; that he can be trusted to fight the good fight.
Foreign-policy sophisticates may despair at the unsubtlety of the president's rhetoric. They may despair even more at the beliefs of the end-of-the-worlders (many of whom would consign Mr Mead and the Council on Foreign Relations to the bottomless pit, alongside the Trilateral Commission and the European Union). But the critics are missing the wider-and real-danger. As McCarthyism showed, the demons of zealotry, once unleashed, can be devastating. Any American government-particularly a Republican one-thought to be failing in a war against terrorism could face forces far uglier than unsubtlety. To Mr Bush and his party, that may be a more serious worry than mere carping from abroad about lack of sophistication.