There is no connection between the movie, the Rapture, and the LaHaye/Jenkins series of books, other than the sketchy outlines of Protestant fundamentalist eschatology. The book series is part of a broad wave of enthusiastic apocalyptic millennialism that continues to sweep sectors of Protestant fundamentalism since the up-ramp to the year 2000. Apocalyptic interpretations of 9/11 fueled this increase. This is a significant trend within the evangelical subculture.
See:
http://tentmaker.org/articles/The-Touchstoning_of_Americas_Heart.htm
http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/articles/articles/judgments.html
http://www.publiceye.org/frontpage/911/froese1.JPG
http://www.publiceye.org/frontpage/911/froese2.JPG
This was an aspect of Christian conservative support for the Cold War, and Joel Kovel points out in
Kovel, Joel. (1994). Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America. New York, Basic Books.
and we point out in
Berlet, Chip and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Publications.
See:
http://www.publiceye.org/gallery/Demonization/Russia.jpg http://www.publiceye.org/gallery/Demonization/Behind_Communism.jpg
The LaHaye Jenkins books are teaching millions to despise liberalism and the left, international cooperation, and anything that weakens the patriarchy. The books are encouraging unthinking support for the most hardline policies of Israel, since Jews must control the temple mount and rebuild the temple (after destroying a current mosque) before Christ returns.
See
Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount
This is all easy to trivialize, but that would be a serious error.
For more than you want to know about apocalypticism, aee Dance with Devils:
http://www.publiceye.org/Apocalyptic/Dances_with_Devils_TOC.htm
-Chip Berlet
p.s. I am on the advisory board of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Gordon Fitch
> Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 9:05 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Mencken, thou shouldst be living at this hour
>
>
> > > The Left Behind series
>
> Michael Pollak:
> > Has anyone ever read any of these? I was just wondering if
> they were at
> > all gripping. Because the movie _The Rapture_ is kind of weirdly
> > fascinating. If the books were as interesting as that, the
> fact that 7
> > million people -- 2.5% of the population -- were fired up about them
> > wouldn't strike me as at all odd in this land of a thousand
> mini cults,
> > where women meet to discuss at great length their shared
> fantasies of
> > Spock and Kirk having sex.
>
> It seems sort of, well, chiliastic to believe that there is
> some end-times right-wing political flood running over the
> banks bringing locusts and war, because of some popular novels.
> A few years ago it was angels fixing flat tires.
>
> _The_Rapture_, the movie, doesn't belong to this category of
> mythopoetics. After all, at the end the heroine judges God
> and finds him wanting, and most of the audience will agree
> with her. The movie subverts the framework it accepts.
>
> -- Gordon
