How "Left Behind" Haunted a Generation of Evangelicals

Kaitlyn teaches us about the beginnings of rapture fiction, its problematic messages, and the impact it had - with some lingering effects today - on American evangelicalism. Find the full conversation on Getting Schooled by Kaitlyn Schiess (only on holypost.com/plus)

Skye: I think some people—most people—are going to know what we're talking about here. It’s Left Behind, the books and the movies. It’s A Thief in the Night, the famous one from the 1970s. But it goes earlier than that. So take us back—where was the beginning of Rapture fiction?

Kaitlyn: Yes. I thought this would be interesting after Phil did a couple of episodes with Daniel Hummel on dispensationalism. In general, they didn’t get much into the fiction side of things. But what I learned in my own research—research I did this past summer for my new book—was just how significant the fiction part of this was in shaping American evangelicalism.

Skye: Totally. It’s what popularized this whole theology. Because people don’t read theology books. They don’t even read the Bible. What they engage with is this nonsense pop fiction.

Kaitlyn: Yes. Not only that, but as they talked about in those two episodes, dispensational theology was always a minority view, even within evangelicalism—especially among theologians. Some of the earliest Rapture fiction—or prophecy fiction; there’s some overlap—don’t always include the Rapture or focus on it. Depending on the theological bent, some believe in a post-trib Rapture, so they can still be dispensationalists or at least premillennialists, and still believe in the rapture in some form. But the book might not center on it.

These are all books that take imaginative approaches—especially to Daniel and Revelation—and imagine Christians, people who eventually become Christians, or people who are not Christians, living through the tribulation. The early American examples really overlap with the rise of dispensationalism in America in general. That started before the 20th century, but it really accelerated in the early 20th century—especially as major global events made people less likely to be postmillennialists, less likely to think the world would keep getting better until Jesus returned. Things like the Civil War, but especially World War I and World War II. You can maybe get through one world war and still think things are getting better, but after the second one? You’re not going to think that’s a good trajectory.

So the fiction part really starts happening in that era, which is interesting—because at that time, there was still a lot of energy among conservative Christians to say all forms of popular culture were evil and should be avoided. That included novels, just the category of novels. So there was this adjustment period where people had to be convinced. But the thinking became, Well, if it’s about the Bible, then it must be okay. And that still continues to this day—

Skye: —we’re redeeming the devil’s music, right?

Kaitlyn: Yes. Throughout the 20th century, especially the late 20th century, people said: "Look at all these popular apocalyptic thrillers or movies—we have to make Christian versions of these."

Skye: Now, “Rapture Fiction” is something of a misnomer. You and I would see it as fiction, and it may have been sold as fiction, but the way the audience engaged with these books and movies—it wasn’t really as fiction. They saw it almost like a pre-documentary. A preview of what’s going to happen in history. So how did people engage with this stuff? How was it marketed? Did they push it as an accurate layout of the end times, or did people view it as entertainment—true fiction?

Kaitlyn: It really depends. One book in particular helped me understand this—Rapture Culture by Amy Frykholm. It’s an ethnographic study of people who read the Left Behind novels. She’s not making theological judgments—she’s just asking, “Who are these people? How do they read these books? How do they think about them?” And she found that a good part of the market were people who weren’t even Christians. They just thought these were thrillers.

Then there were Christians who read them but weren’t dispensationalists. Even when asked about dispensational theology, they didn’t really identify with it at all. There were also lots of people who came from traditions that were not dispensationalist—whose pastors would be horrified to learn they believed this was true. But they’d read a lot of these novels, and so they started to believe it.

One of the most interesting things she found—again, this was specifically about Left Behind, but I think it applies more broadly—is that people read the Bible and Left Behind very differently. They’d read the Bible in short daily spurts, like good evangelicals doing their quiet time. A chapter or two at a time. Then close it and ask: What does this mean for me today? How do I apply this to my life? They’d read Left Behind for hours at a time—but with the same mindset. What do I do with this? How does this change my life?

They read Left Behind and thought: I need to evangelize my neighbors so they don’t go through the tribulation. I need to be the kind of hero who fights against the evil economic power in this book. I need to see myself in the characters and come away with a sense of what I’m supposed to do in the world. And that’s one of the most frightening parts about this. People want to be the Average Joe guy who, in all these stories, just happens to be in the right place at the right time—or is chosen by God to fight evil, to sacrifice whatever needs sacrificing. It’s not someone whose response to the antichrist is to stay married and plant a garden—to be faithful in their local community. No. Their response is to fly to Israel and fight the guy. It’s so dramatic. It’s so action-movie. And that has had a real effect on how people think they’re supposed to respond—not just to these stories, but to Scripture. They expect the answer to “How do I apply this to my life?” to be something big and cinematic. Dramatic. World-saving.

Skye: Yeah, I think the action-movie component is really important here. I can understand why a 20-year-old guy back in 1995 reads Left Behind or watches the movie—maybe had no interest in church stuff before—and thinks: Oh, this is cool. This taps into that insecurity I have about proving my worth. It’s a big piece of all this.

Kaitlyn: And another really interesting effect—so in Left Behind, there’s Ray, the pilot (played by Nicolas Cage in that version), and there’s Buck Williams, the reporter (played by Kirk Cameron). Buck loses his big reporter job in the first book. But the Antichrist figure controls the media—by which they mean traditional TV, radio, magazines, newspapers. So what does Buck have to do is spread the truth about the Antichrist on the internet—because it’s the one place the Antichrist doesn’t have control over.

Skye: Oh wow.

Kaitlyn: So if you start thinking about Christian susceptibility to conspiracy theories today, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say this kind of storytelling played a role.

Skye: What an amazing perversion this literature has pulled off on an entire generation—or two—of evangelicals.

Kaitlyn: Exactly. That’s why you can’t separate the political or social effects of this from the theological ones. It’s all intertwined. We should also say—I’m not a dispensationalist, and I have no interest in defending dispensationalism as a whole—but it is true that in the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of dispensationalist authors wrote books critiquing or clarifying what was true and false in this fiction. They didn’t want to endorse Hal Lindsey completely. They definitely didn’t want to take Left Behind totally seriously. And that’s not a reason to say, “Hey, jump on board the dispensationalism bandwagon and just avoid the fiction.” It’s just to say: don’t assume that just because a book has Christian themes, it’s truthful—or even a truthful representation of the theology it claims to present.

Skye: I agree.