Before many Christians are ready for the rapture, they apparently have a lot of baggage to unpack. Lucky for them, Daniel Radosh has taken it upon himself to shake out all their dirty laundry.
In his recently published book, Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, Radosh bravely ventures into Christian music festivals, Holy Land theme park, Christian comedy clubs, and even Christian pro-wrestling matches to dig out the hairy secrets buried in the kitschy recesses of pop evangelicalism. And he lives to tell about it. And tell about it he does, spilling the embarrassing facts of this $7 billion industry.
But why? In an interview with Christianity Today, Radosh, a humanistic Jew, explains: “Honestly, I did it because a lot of it is quite funny.” But Radosh, who is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and a contributing editor at The Week magazine, was not on a mission to mock or shock. He goes on to explain: “We think about pop culture as something ephemeral and superficial, and I wanted to try to understand how that could be combined with something like faith, which is eternal and deep.”
In working on this unusual project, Radosh had the earnest desire to look beyond the tacky bumper stickers, tasteless “Testamint” breath fresheners, and humdrum rock and roll in order to discover what is behind many of the strange phenomena that comprise this misunderstood segment of American society. In the end, what he offers is not a scathing review but a brief history and fair-minded analysis of the commercialization of Christianity. And more interestingly, he offers Christians the rare opportunity to be a fly on the wall.
Read it all, and in case you are wondering, that sound you hear is the blog host sighing about all the poor eschatology in the church these days. Agghh!
Every time I hear the word “rapture” I just feel sad for those who believe that. I never even heard of such a thing until a few years ago. It seems to be a totally (or largely) Baptist belief. Some of the mega churches are preaching this stuff, but I fear for all the harm they are doing.
Being raised as a ‘Classical Pentecostal’ I can tell you it’s scary when you are a kid and your parent isn’t home when you come home from school: “Oh no the rapture happened and I didn’t make it!” 🙂 Those were the days
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It’s not necessarily Baptist. It’s dispensationalist.
For fun, go to Amazon.com and type in “Right Behind”.
Br. Michael is correct. Not all Baptists are Dispensationalists. This theological hermenutic is found among the Plymouth Brethren, users of the Schofield edition of the Bible – Authorized or King James version – and those influenced by Dallas Theological Seminary. Google “dispensationalist theology” for a summary.
On the other hand, the ideology of the ‘rapture’ is only one interpretation of Revelation… therefore, it should not be dismissed as pure nonsense. There is theological backing for it – just as there are for other Biblical interpretations of what has been called the ‘end times’. Since it hasn’t happened yet, I think we probably ought to keep our eyes and ears open for whatever means God chooses to reveal Himself.
Coming from a Baptist perspective, there was a time I believed ANYONE participating in something as rigid as a ‘liturgy’ or communion every week was bordering on making ‘Eucharist’ meaningless and not the remembrance it is supposed to be. Form prayers seemed to be just rote and saying the same thing again and again seemed almost a violation of Christ’s command to not ‘pray as the pagans do – thinking by the number of their words they will be heard’.
If we are wise, we shall remember our brothers and sisters love Christ as much as we do and love demands a certain degree of respect – even if we choose to disagree in particulars.
I was fortunate enough to run into an Anglican priest who helped me understand the beauty of liturgy and Eucharist – who constantly reminded us that we should never dismiss our brothers and sisters whether Baptist, Catholic, Charismatic, or Orthodox because EACH could help us become more the people God has created us to be.
For me, if I had not had my Baptist training of reading, memorizing and living by Scripture – then I would not have weathered this Anglican mess nearly as well. We would be wise to take on such training in our Anglican Sunday Schools as well as the Baptist passion for evangelism – which has transformed many, many lives… ask Billy Graham.
PS Not that I am sanctioning the silly ‘Left Behind’ series – I did try to read it, but sadly, it had to be ‘left behind’.
My Left Behind Story:
My Mother bought me Soul Harvest for Christmas. A few months later she asked me if I had read it and, trying not to hurt her feelings because I really had no desire to read it, I pointed out that she had bought me book four of the series and I should probably start with book one. A few weeks later Left Behind, Tribulation Force and Nicolae arrived in the mail!
St. Cuervo:
As we can find it, we like decent Christian literature – Father Elijah, by Michael O’Brien is an excellent book. We TRIED to read the Left Behind series but after about book 4 it seemed that they were putting one paragraph per page in order to sell books and the story line was awful. Did you see the movie… just say ‘no’ if given the opportunity.
Frank Perietti’s books are OK, but my husband and I think he has the corner on the worse analogy in writing history, “He felt like he’d stepped off a train into a wall of half set jello” – this has caused us more mirth over the years than anything else he ever wrote. The Wittenburg Door did a hysterical piece called “Frank Perietti Goes Miniature Golfing” – which I highly recommend.
I’m a Lewis fan myself – loving good English literature like Waugh, Austin, Bronte’, to name a few – unfortunately 90% of Christian pulp fiction just doesn’t make it up to that bar.
A popular culture is a sign of a living and growing social movement (be it good or bad).
That Anglicanism has historically not had a popular culture is a sign of intrinsic weakness. To be exclusively middle and upper class in culture can hardly be regarded as a virtue, yet Anglicans spent much energy attacking Catholic cultural forms popular with the lower classes on grounds that seem to have as much to do with taste as theology.
Now in many places it is held in bondage by the current prejudices of the educated upper middle classes, to which the Gospel must take a back seat.
#10
I did actually end up reading most of the LB series. I felt obligated to start after my mother got me the first four books! I bought the next four or five books on my own but I gave up around book 9 or 10.
As others have noted, the quality of writing is middling at best. LaHaye and Jenkins really needed an editor: there is no reason for that series to have gone to fifteen volumes or whatever it was. They could have easily told the same story with plenty of action in two or three volumes. And don’t get me started on “Left Behind for Kids” or any of the spin-off stuff….
I’ll date myself: but LB really reminded me of a 1970s film called “A Thief in the Night.” There was a whole series of sequals too. I remember watching them in my dad’s church as a child.
So I kind of knew how the LB series would end, I didn’t need to get to volume 15 to find out!
St. Cuervo :
LOL! You date both of us – I remember watching that as a kid too – how about “Time to Run” with Randy Stonehill… I gave my life to Christ after watching that one…
“We can be together, now and forever, I love you… I love you!”
Or “The Gospel Road” with Johnny and June Carter Cash? That’s the one that got me on the ‘road’ I’m on today.
But St. C., you beat me out — I didn’t get past chapter 2 of book 1!
I must have missed “A Time to Run” — too bad IMDB makes it sound very interesting…
I remember seeing a bunch of these films as a kid but I’m a little foggy on some of the details now. I do remember one in particular where a kid was in a old car (in a junk-yard maybe?) and gave his life to Christ. And I remember I felt jealous of him because I thought his prayer giving his life to Christ was so much better than my prayer (as a four or five year-old).
And I remember another one where they flashed Acts 2:38 up on the screen at the end of the film and it alarmed me because I had never been baptized. (Long story there.) I think I was about 8 or 9 and I went home after that movie and baptized myself in the bathroom sink! (Trinitarian formula too as I recall.)
Don’t worry, I’ve been properly baptized since but I like to think God smiled at that. I was just trying to do what the Bible said!
St. C.,
I believe that this is known in many liturgical churches as “the baptism of desire”. 🙂
I know this is a controversial book, but I would highly recommend “The Shack,” which has been climbing on the best seller list. I just finished it; once I started it I couldn’t put it down. I won’t reveal the plot, but essentially it’s an allegory of a man spending the weekend in an abandoned shack in the mountains with God, or more properly, the Trinity. Lots on the nature of God and the Trinity, sin, forgiveness, God’s desire to redeem people.
Haven’t thought through yet how much I agree with it theologically, but it sure makes you think. I think in the end it’s fairly orthodox in its theology, although presented in an unorthodox fashion. However, I can see how religious liberals could easily take a book like that in an entirely different direction than I think the author intends. I would also say a Calvinist would have some real problems with it.
Most modern overtly Christian literature I really have a hard time warming up to–it’s just too trite and formulaic–but this book was different.
Most of the other Christian blogs I’ve been on ‘trash’ (so to speak) “The Shack” theologically. Interesting that you take an opposite POV.
I have often said that modern Christian authors seem to have received a failing grade from their time in the “Harlequin Romance School of Writing”.
Few of them compare to the style and substance of 19th and early to mid 20th Century Christian writers such as George MacDonald, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
I was asked by a stranger the other day, “what do Episcopalians believe about the End Times”. I paused, as I always do, to decide whether to be honest about the liberal Episcopal mainstream or to use the opportunity for orthodox Christian witness. Even after deciding on the latter, I smiled and replied “How much time you got?”
As for Christian commercialization, I still remember the rant my orthodox rector went on when the “Got Jesus?” bumper stickers first came out. “What, we sell our risen Lord like milk now!?!”
I was at a Christian Festival in Homestead Fl one year, oh, around 1980. It was a great time, and one of the speakers was a Franciscan priest, Fr. Michael Scanlon.
After he finished he was approached by three young women (I would guess either Seniors in High School or early College age) who quizzed him about Catholic teaching. He handled himself very well.
Anyway, one of the questions was about the Pre-Trib Rapture and what did the Catholic church teach. He presented a thumb-nail sketch and a bit about the history of the teaching of the rapture.
The girls looked a bit confused and then asked, “but what if God chooses to do it THIS way?”
He smiled and responded, “If that’s how God chooses to do it, who am I to tell Him differently?”
Peace
Jim E. <><