Presentation for Christians Concerned about Christian Zionism

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Presentation for Christians Concerned about Christian Zionism

By Amy Frykholm, for the Christian Zionism, Rapture & the Holy Land, Conference at Fuller Theological Seminary, October 4, 2008

One key difficulty in confronting an apocalyptic culture like Christian Zionism is not falling into patterns of apocalyptic thinking yourself. In the more than a decade that I have been studying Christian apocalypticism in America, I have been struck by how often critics' dislike of dispensationalism becomes a kind of apocalypticism of its own. We heighten the dangers; we indulge the sense that it is us vs. them and that is we don't stop them, they will destroy us and everything that we stand for.

I want to suggest that instead, we take a lesson from the natural landscape where I live. I live in a small community in Colorado that was formerly sustained by mining. To many, this might be considered a post-apocalyptic landscape. In many places, the ground is covered in slag, devoid of undergrowth and trees; there are abandoned mine shafts so deep in some places that people are afraid to walk their dogs. But nature has been—very slowly—reclaiming this land. Sage, juniper and evergreeen grow wherever they can. Raspberry and strawberry grow out of the slag piles.

Unlike apocalypticism, this landscape is not an either/or proposition. It is opportunistic, seeking openings wherever it can find them. In considering how to understand, evaluate and perhaps even to intervene in rapture culture, I propose that we take nature to be our model. We look for cracks and openings. We think cyclically, and we restrain, whenever possible, our own tendencies to absolutes or certainties. Apocalyptic thinking reinforces apocalyptic thinking. Each side underlines the other.

I have identified four "surprises" from my research interviewing readers of the dispensationalist Left Behind series. These surprises can help us think differently about dispensationalism and perhaps to see where we can intervene.

The people that I interviewed were far less self-righteous than they were anxious. I had expected to encounter people who knew everything and were eager to tell me whether I was saved or damned. Instead I encountered a lot of anxiety around the question of salvation and a lot of people who questioned, not whether I was saved, but whether they were. The fear of being "left behind" should there be a rapture was a powerful one.
Left Behind and dispensationalist theology in general stimulated the imaginations of readers. They were not as interested in "literal" readings as they were in imaginative readings. They liked to use biblical texts and then invest their imaginations in possibilities. One woman expressed disappointment over how "literal" LaHaye and Jenkins' use of the biblical image of locusts were, for example. She preferred Hal Lindsey's more imaginative notion that the locusts might be first century attempts to describe helicopters. Another woman admitted that she was deeply invested in the story described by the authors of the books and that "another story" would probably be the only thing that would convince her to take a different view.
Readers of the Left Behind series frequently used the material presented in the books to give themselves a sense of hope. For example, they often worried about the eternal salvation of various friends and relatives. The books provided a way that these loved ones might "come to know Christ." One man talked about how the books made him wonder if he might be strong enough to confront evil in these situations. Another woman described her relationship with one of the books' characters as "I'm a survivor and he's a survivor."
While the books have been depicted by many a scholar as dictatorial and false, readers would sometimes use the books to drive a wedge between themselves and more immediate authorities in their lives—especially clergy. One woman had a minister who preached that these books were wrong because they led people to believe there might be salvation after the rapture. This woman decided based on her reading that "God would never turn away an earnest heart." She took a slightly more liberal position than her minister because of Left Behind.

What these surprises lead us toward, I think, is an understanding that the people who read the Left Behind series are not passive dupes of an oppressive system, so much as they are people who are actively and imaginatively engaged with cultural material. They use that material for purposes that are directly related to their lives. This means that we, who wish to change that culture, should address them on the level of imagination, find ways to speak to their hopes and fears, and avoid meeting hostility with hostility.