Post-Rapture Pet Care

Post-Rapture Pet Care
by J. Michael Utzinger



In a famous quotation, often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln, the Rev. Henry Rowland once preached about the effectiveness of the Gospel on the Christian's conduct claiming that it makes "husbands better husbands, and wives better wives; parents better parents, children better children, masters better masters, and servants better servants; in a word, I would not give a farthing for a man's religion, whose cat and dog were not better for it!" Rowland might have been pleased with the sentiment behind the various post-rapture services offered to evangelicals, whose beloved pets might be "left behind." Kelly briefly mentioned these pet services in her last post, and I became intrigued.

Religious concerns about pets are hardly new for Protestants. Martin Luther, if the Table Talk can be believed, thought there would be dogs in heaven with silver fur and gold tails. Billy Graham's Swedenborgian vision of heaven included dogs and golf. Likewise, post-rapture services for pets existed long before Harold Camping's predictions became part of the recent media frenzy. Modern premillennialists love their pets too. In the words of one online company, After the Rapture Pet Care, the pets of raptured Christians are a real concern, and a legitimate concern. Our pets are given to us by God for us to care for. We are stewards of their lives. Should we simply forget them at the Rapture, allow them to starve or worse? Therefore, they promise immediately after the Rapture that all pets registered with them will receive the following:

1. Our non-Christian administrators will activate our rescue plan.
2. Volunteers will be alerted immediately by email and telephone that they have been activated.
3. Pets will be assigned to our Volunteer Pet Caretakers based upon location and other factors.
4. Our administrators and Volunteer Pet Caretakers will do whatever it takes to find and rescue your pets. If your pet has a location chip, they'll use that, or they'll go to every location you've registered with us, and, if your pets are not at one of those locations, they'll search for your cars as well as stay in contact with the local pet shelters. If they are unable to reach a Volunteer Caretaker in your area for whatever reason, our administrators will communicate with local animal organizations, like the Humane Society, to advocate for your pet's rescue and care.
5. Our administrators will stay in touch with our Volunteer Pet Caretakers regarding each and every pet to be sure everything is being done to rescue and care for them.

If all of the true Christians are raptured, one might well wonder how these services could be guaranteed. The typical answer is found in the FAQ of one company, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA:

Q: How do you ensure your representatives won't be Raptured.
A: Actually, we don't ensure it, they do. Each of our representatives has stated to us in writing that they are atheists, do not believe in God / Jesus, and that they have blasphemed in accordance with Mark 3:29, negating any chance of salvation.



The cost of these services really vary. If premillennialists like anything besides charts it is calculations, so the savvy post-rapture shopper will find that it pays to do some prophetic math:
While there are many monthly subscription plans on the market, flat fee plans seem more reasonable. Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA, for example, charges a $135 fee for its services. (They raised the rate earlier this year by $20 because of the large volume of requests that Camping's predictions apparently caused). The pre-tribulationist dispensationist of the Scofield-Lindsey-LaHaye ilk understand that after the rapture there will be seven years before Armageddon. Using Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA's services, therefore, will add up to $19.28 per year of care. Of course, the fine print makes clear that the rapture must take place within ten years or your contract will expire. This means that buyers risk spending more if the Lord tarries more than a decade (and there is a precedent for this). However, there is a silver-lining that a portion of the proceeds are donated to area food-banks.

Those pet-lovers following Camping would have a greater annual cost for care. Because the end of the world will be in September, the monthly cost of $33.75. Further, since rapture will come by this Saturday there will be no fear of one's contract expiring. No hidden costs.

With a one-time $10 flat fee After the Rapture Pet Care is the best buy of these pet services. In the meantime you can also purchase gear from their online store, including t-shirts, coffee mugs, and wall clocks (the irony/humor of this last item is not lost on me, especially since it is not clear you can definitively tell what time it is with this clock. I think I may have to order one for myself). Ultimately, one will have to balance cost and risk: the key factor being credibility.

According to an LA Times article, "Entrepreneurs Offer Post-'Rapture' Services," (19 May 2011) there have a been a proliferation of businesses, well beyond pet care, that cater to the needs of premillennialists who are concerned about maintaining their affairs after the rapture. In a very cursory surfing of the web I found post-rapture wills, videos for non-raptured family members, and encrypted document storage and "rapture"-triggered email messaging systems.

Opponents of dispensationalism have often argued that its otherworldly preoccupations lead to quietism. Charles Erdman, long-time professor of practical theology at Princeton Seminary, felt compelled to challenge this view in 1916. A premillennialist himself (though not a dispensationist) he noted that belief in Christ's premillennial second coming compelled people to act concretely in this world because of this belief not in spite of it. Put another way, for believers, the imminent rapture creates one of the parameters that dictate moral behavior in and for this world. Indeed, buying services to warn, alert or care for non-believing family members (whether human or animal) after the rapture is not so much lunacy as reasonable behavior for a true believer. Kelly Baker has reminded us that the rapture is not just "rhetorical and absent but material and present."

The consumption of post-rapture services is a means to concretely express faith and act morally, which in turn reinforces the belief in the rapture and makes it satisfying. Donning a t-shirt that expresses one's belief in the end witnesses to one's faith, while the risking of stigma from non-believers confirms and proves the seriousness of that faith. And Saturday, one might see these beliefs embodied in a variety of interesting ways, maybe even "On the Dance Floor" with Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez right up "Till the World Ends."

Rapture Ready (Or Not)

Kelly Baker

While Paul, Chris, and Emily review excellent books in American religious history, I have spent a couple of days basking in the news coverage of the impending Rapture, at least according to the octogenarian Harold Camping and his Family Radio. As many of you likely know (thanks to Emily and Charity or the deluge of media coverage), Camping has proclaimed that the God’s Judgment signaled by the Rapture, the “catching” or “snatching up” of righteous Christians, will occur this Saturday, May 21, 2011. This is not the minister’s first calculation for the beginning of the end (1994), and it will likely not be his last. The beauty of millennialism is not in its rigidity but its malleability and adaptability. Camping fits securely into a long line of doomsday prophets, millennial visionaries, and according to the less gracious, religious hucksters who prey on people’s fears, money, and naiveté. Huckster or not, I don’t really care. Rather, I do care about what Camping’s media-frenzied stint says about the pervasiveness of millennial fervor in North America and the popularity of the vengeful fantasies of judgment that inundate apocalyptic belief, practice, and products.

As someone with an ongoing scholarly obsession with the apocalypse, consumption, and materiality, I am surely following my bliss this week with each mention, web click, Facebook status update, and journalistic attempt to understand the appeal of Camping and his billboard/caravan campaigns. The coverage of the impending Rapture runs the gamut of pet care services for the dogs, cats, and iguanas of the Raptured to Richard Dawkins’ grumpy commentary about said press coverage to Killing the Buddha’s Apocalypse Week 2011 to Salon’s explanation of Camping’s mathematical equations and dating of the end. The coverage ranges from somewhat sympathetic to downright hostile. Some admirably tie Camping a larger history of millennialism in North America, while others declare him a false prophet outright.

In August, I have an article coming out on rapture readiness (seems a little late considering the climate now), in which I document two other sources of Rapture information and practice, the prophecy work of Tim LaHaye and RaptureReady.com to document how the Rapture emerges as not only rhetorical and absent but also material and present. Why, for instance, is there such a thing as rapture practice or rapture pranking?

LaHaye is the co-author of the Left Behind books and avid author of prophecy books including one aptly titled The Rapture, and I have blogged about him before. In the competitive market of prophecy knowledge, LaHaye and the team at RaptureReady.com all deride Camping’s dating of the end. LaHaye notes that Camping has been wrong before and further proclaims:

You can be sure the rapture will not occur when anyone sets a date because God wants us all to live every day as though Christ could come today. A great motto for daily living is PERHAPS TODAY. For one day it will happen and we don't know when, but we don't want you to be left behind!

LaHaye’s reaction to Camping is not really surprising since they have competing visions of the Rapture for Christian consumption. Even RaptureReady.com, the self-proclaimed most visited (Christian) prophecy site on the web, provides a fascinating take down of this particular dating of the Rapture (“we can’t possibly know the date” is the usual refrain). Moreover, the founder Todd Strandberg writes:

In a dubious way, Camping is helping to set the stage for the Rapture. His failed predictions are helping to create the element of apathy that Jesus warned about. I read a report this week that said America is on track to have its most costly year ever for natural disasters. If people knew the Bible, they would understand the likely root cause of these disasters.

Strandberg designed the site to provide Christians, and those who might become Christians, with all the tools they need to become rapture “ready,” which includes belief in God, commitment to Jesus, and righteous action and living. RaptureReady.com houses information on biblical prophecy, readiness, and survival tips for the Tribulation period for those who are unlucky enough to be left behind.

While Camping might appear less credible if the 21^st comes and goes without the Rapture, LaHaye and Strandberg will continue to plug along prophesying an almost-but-not-yet end. I can’t help but wonder whether Camping’s ministry has aided in the sale of the Left Behind series or the web traffic to RaptureReady.com, which posted record-breaking site visits earlier this year. While prophets of doomsday come and go, the idea and artifacts of apocalypse remain. Perhaps, the larger lesson for May 21^st is the fervent wish for the end cannot be tamped down by disappointment or lack but reinvented in another form for another (or a remarkably similar) set of consumers. Rapture or not, just remember the Mayans and the zombies are lurking around the corner for their respective turns at the end.

Judgment Day Approaches... Again

by Charity Carney

This past weekend my husband and I took a much-needed respite before the onslaught of finals week to see a WILCO show (a rockin’ one I might add) in Denton, TX. We drove four hours through the Piney Woods of East Texas up into the DFW area for a little taste of civilization before spending the bulk of our summer cooped up in tiny Nacogdoches. As >we approached the metroplex, I saw evidence of the new apocalyptic fad that has thrown their millenarian lot and quite a few bucks in with Harold Camping, who has predicted that the Rapture will occur next Saturday (May 21). On the side of the road with about a dozen ads of Fergie selling Cherry Dr. Pepper (apparently it’s” smooth,” like her), the group has peppered in its own billboards declaring that the world will end this Saturday and urging passersby to prepare for Judgment Day. There is an excellent user friendly Salon article on the group and its beliefs (anti-orthodoxy/organized religion and End Times theology), which is especially good at describing the principle beliefs behind the Rapture and the way in which Camping has determined the date:

Camping and his affiliates present at least three explanations -- what he refers to as "infallible, absolute proofs" -- for May 21 being the day.

• It's the anniversary of Noah's Flood: A great deal of effort has been made by biblical literalists over the years to identify the exact chronology of the events dictated in the Old Testament. Some scholars, including Camping, adhere to the theory that the Biblical Flood took place on May 21 in the year 4,990 B.C. Then, in Genesis, God told Noah seven days before the Flood to warn people of the impending cataclysm. And Camping posits that this figure, seven days, holds greater significance than meets the eye. According to the biblical passage 2 Peter 3:8, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Therefore, argues Camping, Rapture should occur 7,000 years after the Flood. And the 7,000th anniversary of the biblical deluge, by his math, falls on May 21, 2011.
• It's the anniversary of Creation ... sort of: Another piece of evidence -- explained by Family Radio affiliate eBibleFellowship -- suggests that the world began in 11,013 B.C., and its 13,000th anniversary came and went in 1988. During that year, apparently on May 21, the end of the "church age" came to pass. Then, a 23-year time of "tribulation" began, during which Satan claimed dominion over all the world's churches. (Camping also supports this notion. He claims that the number "23" -- far from just being a poorly received Jim Carrey film -- also represents "destruction" in biblical symbology.) The end of this particular period of cosmological strife is said to fall on May 21, 2011.
• Divine Numerology: This elaborate line of reasoning first argues that Jesus Christ was killed on April 1 in the year 33 A.D. Using that date, the crucifixion would have occurred exactly 1,978 years and 51 days -- or 722,500 days -- before May 21, 2011. It turns out that 722,500 is also the product of an equation -- (5 x 10 x 17)^2 -- that includes three different numbers of significance, according to Camping. Five means "atonement." Ten indicates "completeness."And 17 signifies "heaven." Thus: Armageddon.

What happens if this Saturday passes with no major supernatural incident? Well, I guess they’ll just have to follow the Millerite example and do some recalculating…

But what’s really interesting about the group is that it taps into some of the themes recently discussed on this blog by writers like Kelly Baker, Paul Harvey, and Randall Stephens. That is, this group like many others has turned to commodification and mass marketing in order to advance their beliefs. While they are tapped into American religious traditions in many ways (disavowing denominationalism, promoting prophecies) they also demonstrate the continued modernization and progression of those traditions--plunging their message into the mainstream with expensive advertising campaigns and widely broadcast shows declaring their steadfast belief in the impending Judgment Day. While American religious groups have certainly evangelized through the air waves and have utilized the market before (Sister Aimee, Billy Sunday, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham….) we seem to have reached a new era in which proselytizing has become even more secularized/reliant on secular media to reach potential converts.

Fortunately for my husband, the hyper-analysis of the billboards only lasted for a couple of hours before I was distracted by pyrotechnics and awesome guitar riffs. And if the Rapture does come next Saturday, at least I can say that the two of us went out with a bang.

Family Radio, out to "...blow the trumpet ... warn the people"

Emily Clark

When discussing the impending doom of the end of the world, things like "2012," "rapture," and "Tim LaHaye" come into conversation. For us interested in American religious history, William Miller also comes to mind. Using his understanding of doomsday numerology, Miller rendered the symbols and metaphors in the apocalyptic books of the Bible incredibly meaningful. Having identified the day on which Jesus would return, Miller offered assurance in a time period of anxiety. Preaching in the 1840s, Miller was pre-Scofield Reference Bible and and preached before John Nelson Darby's ideas of premillennial dispensationalism would really take hold in America. Although contemporary popular notions of The End are often more in line with Darby than Miller (I'm thinking the Left Behind series here), Miller remains relevant.

A CNN reporting team recently spent time with a contemporary end-times group. In "Road trip to the end of the world," journalist Jessica Ravitz shares her journey following some members of "Project Caravan," the organization of mobile, proselytizing units of Family Radio. Family Radio was founded in 1958 by Harold Camping, and what began as a radio station has become a kind of national organization. For Camping and his listeners, the Bible, which contains no errors, is the religious authority. If you visit the Family Radio website, you cannot miss their end-times message. Judgment Day is May 21, 2011. "THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT!" Ezekiel 33:3 appears in bold type, "...blow the trumpet ... warn the people." This is where Project Caravan comes in. Launched in October of last year, the volunteers of Project Caravan travel the country in decked-out RVs (a contemporary reinvention of the early 20th century gospel car, complete with light reflecting paint) to warn the American populace of the coming rapture. CNN caught up with a team trekking across the Florida panhandle. And watch out New Orleans Mardi Gras, you're next on their itinerary.

People often ostracize those preaching about the end of the world. Someone will call them "crazy" and continue walking by without taking a pamphlet. And just like preaching "the end is near," this reaction isn't new either. As if divining his own future reputation, Miller himself wrote, "If I have erred in my exposition of the prophecies, the time, being so near at hand, will soon expose my folly; but if I have the truth on the subjects treated on in these pages, how important the era in which we live!" My students are always fascinated to learn how "millerism" became another term for insane in the 1840s. The New York Herald told of a Mr. Shortridge who "had run mad with Millerism, and attempted to ascend to Heaven from an apple-tree, but found the attraction of gravitation too strong for his celestial aspirations, and came to the ground with such momentum as to cause his death." Millerites were the inspiration for jokes and cartoons.

After The Great Disappointment on October 22, 1844 (when Miller's prediction proved inaccurate), his followers left him. A sizable contingent followed Ellen White and founded Seventh-day Adventism. But, it begs the question: What do you do if your prophecy is wrong? Some of the members Family Radio and its Project Caravan team have wondered a similar question: What if I'm still here on May 22, 2011? One member told CNN, "If I'm here on May 22, it simply means I wasn't one of the elect." The CNN take on Family Radio is worth reading, though I can't help but wish our own Kelly Baker was the one asking the questions and taking notes.

Zombies, Millennialism and Consumption

Kelly Baker

While perusing facebook yesterday, I happened upon a friend's event, entitled "Zombie Apocalypse." The end via shambling, brain-eating zombies is scheduled for December, 22, 2012, so please mark your calendars. It seems that the zombie apocalypse follows very closely behind the Mayan calendar's end on December 21 of the same year (unless you believe new estimates.) What was striking to me was not that such an event existed, since facebook is a world of random events, fandom, and strange pages, but rather the number of people attending said event. According to the event page this morning, 521, 035 people are attending, 80, 798 are maybe attending, and 289, 558 have politely declined their invitation to a gun-toting, gore-filled end. While some might still be shilling for the Mayan apocalypsis, zombies appear to be the vogue way for the world to end.

Zombies have become a sci-fi/horror/fantasy genre staple. From the popularity of AMC's The Walking Dead to Romero's zombies and their legacies in film to Max Brooks's franchise of World War Z and the survival guide to various anthologies (The Living Dead I and II, Zombies, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and my personal favorite Zombies vs. Unicorns), the zombie apocalypse is a cottage industry. While I could reflect on what the zombie apocalypse teaches us about (in)human nature, gore, or the necessity of high power weaponry, I think the more pressing and interesting point for scholars of American religion and popular culture is the pervasiveness of this genre and the continued presence of catastrophic millennialism in American popular culture.

Michael Barkun discusses the "pervasive millennialism" of American culture in which end times theologies and scenarios are popular and consumable. Pervasive millennialism works because of the commodification of these ideas. Do you need to be briefed in the Mayan calendar? Buy this book or dvd. Need to survive zombies on the front step? Please purchase one of the many survival guides, necessary hardware, and stock up with food. Need to ride out the looming end (of any variety)? Please buy your rations for a year at Costco. Want to know how the world looks post-Rapture? Purchase the Left Behind series. Perhaps, one wants to survive post-apocalypse? Download various films via Netflix, read Cormac McCarthy's The Road or maybe not, or pick up any number of young adult fiction titles from Carrie Ryan (zombies) to Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games trilogy), pick up survivalist gear and stock up food. We can consume the end and all its possible varieties. What is clear from the proliferation of end times products is the hope and fervor that the right products can save us. Read, watch, stock and prepare.

In her excellent book, Tourists of History (2007), Marita Sturken argues that cultures of fear and paranoia bolster "consumer practices of security and comfort" (5). This "comfort culture" allows Americans to purchase goods that supposedly might protect us, and this "culture of comfort functions as a form of depolitization and as a means to confront loss, grief and fear through processes that disavow politics"(6). We consume supplies to comfort ourselves in the face of global war, domestic politics and personal strife. Moreover, Sturken claims that often Americans seek to be "tourists of history" who remain distant to the sites they visit, where they are often defined as innocent outsiders, mere observers whose actions are believed to have no effect on what they see" (10). As I read Sturken's book, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe apocalyptic consumption functions as a "culture of comfort." Purchasing survival guides or survivalist training, reading books, watching films that direct us how to kill zombies, purchasing a year's worth of food can all provide comfort. Americans are often "tourists" of the apocalypse.

Apocalyptic thinking is rife with paranoia, conspiracy and fear, and the genre of apocalyptic tales is as well. Consuming (products of) the end provides comfort that the end is not quite here but could be. Products can "save" us. The comment sections of the "Zombie Apocalypse" event page makes this obvious: what weapons, cars, tools, etc. might you need. Folks discussing the merits of a Louisville slugger over various guns or axes or other household objects. Part of my interest is the question of what does this mean about not only apocalyptic thinking but also about more secular visions of millennialism? What is at stake if we are "tourists" of the end? Why does consumerism go hand-in-hand with visions of catastrophe and the undead?

It is at this point that I wish already had Katie Lofton's book on Oprah. [Editor's note: Lofton's Oprah is available, so I misspoke early]. Now granted, I imagine Oprah doesn't have much to save about zombies but I bet Lofton has much to say about how products can save and how consumerism can become religious practice and devotion. Moreover, if half a million people are excited about the prospect of taking down zombies, then what is at stake in the consumption of this particular end? Why is the zombie apocalypse comforting? And why am I more and more convinced that apocalypticism functions as a comfortable rhetorical and imaginary space? If the apocalypse provides comfort, products can save us, then how might we understand the role of popular culture in the study of American religion?

[Cross posted at www.kellyjbaker.com]

The End is Always An Arm's Length Away

Kelly Baker

Spending my weekends in the End of Times section at the local bookstore is becoming a habit for me. Pouring over not only Tim LaHaye's popular Left Behind series but also any other work of fiction (Christian or otherwise) listed under apocalypse, rapture, post-apocalyptic or the end. The apocalypse haunts my book shelves, my waking hours and my dreams these days. If I am not reading about the end, I am watching cinematic ends including zombies, angels and the hot monster-stalking brothers of Supernatural. My Netflix queue is a bit scary and my movie watching partner any day now is going to declare apocalyptic burn out. The end is always an arm's length away at my house.

This apocalypse obsession is currently focused on LaHaye. My relationship with LaHaye is completely one-sided. He has no idea that I even exist but he would probably be content to know that I now own several of his books both fictional and theological. I would like to say that LaHaye has been a peripheral figure in my mind since my high school days and the popularity of his Left Behind series among the young (and not-so-young) evangelical set. In 1998, I even started reading the eponymous first book, "a novel about earth's last days" and didn't get further than piles of clothing lying haphazardly on an airplane. In 2010, I finally finished the 468 page book I started twelve years ago as well as LaHaye's new venture in fiction with Craig Parshall, The End (2010) series. Moreover, I now am the somewhat proud owner of several Left Behind:The Kids books, two Left Behind films and multiple theological works "unveiling" Revelation and explaining how we are actually at the end of days. Why might you ask would I spend my limited time and energy on evangelical pulp fiction? (If you ask this, then you possibly don't know me well.)

This can partially be blamed on my students and my Apocalypse in American culture class, but that is a bit disingenuous on my part. Granted, I did assign interviews with Tim and Beverly LaHaye, excerpts from The Edge of the Apocalypse and excellent analysis from Amy Johnson Frykholm's Rapture Culture. Yet, the real reason is that I have become a bit obsessed, in a scholarly way, with LaHaye's end of times theology from Rapture to the Glorious Appearing, which includes tribulations, destruction, more destruction and a vast majority of humanity being wiped out in inventive yet terrible ways. His Revelation Unveiled sits on my desk with a cover bent from use because of his charts that depict timeline and explore the essentials differences between pre-millennialists, a-millennialists and post-millennialists.

Part of my effort is to understand the theology that LaHaye has spent much of his life popularizing. The other is to attempt to understand the appeal of the sixteen book series that sold 65 million copies and even made it to the top of the New York Times bestselling list. Left Behind, the book, turns fifteen this year, and LaHaye is still writing and preaching his approach to the end of times. The plot of the first book includes the rapture of true Christian believers, international intrigue, intrepid reporters, converted Christian skeptics and the appearance of the anti-Christ in the form of the Romanian Nicolae Carpathia. The Left Behind books follow the melodramatic saga of the Tribulation Force to the Glorious appearing of Jesus and eventually to the millennial kingdom. The series also includes three prequel books that follow Rayford Steele (the pilot), Buck Williams (the journalist) and Carpathia before the Rapture.

Fifteen years later, LaHaye and Parshall's The Edge of the Apocalypse provides a different and sometimes more disturbing narrative. Joshua Jordan, a former military man and now weapons designer, saves New York City from nuclear destruction using his Return-To-Sender defensive shield developed by his private company. In the early pages, Jordan's wife, daughter and son face nuclear annihilation, but Jordan saves the day. However, Jordan is not hailed as a hero but rather he is called in front of a Senate Committee for hostile questioning and maligned by the liberal media. LaHaye's favorite threats are still present: globalization, one world currency and the dangerous nature of peace. But, Jordan, a skeptic married to beautiful church-going wife, is not concerned with the end of the world but rther the end of the American nation. The patriotic hero fears that the government will steal his top-secret weapon and leave America unprotected from enemies that pretend to be allies. The edge of the apocalypse, then, is not for the global world but the particular American population, who cannot trust their government to protect them. The cynical Jordan, however, is one step ahead of the reader, and he organizes a small group of powerful capitalists, including one woman, called the Roundtable. The small cabal hopes to illuminate the government's diabolical plans and protect the nation at all costs.

What proved most striking to me was the intimate relationship between the American nation and the end of the larger world. LaHaye and Parshall's America was the redeemer nation, the model, and when America failed, so too would the rest of the globe. LaHaye and Parshall uplift a small band of Christian patriots to take back the nation if the government no longer protects its citizens. The book ends with Jordan contemplating how to work against our national government and deciding his group could lead the way to revolution. Perhaps, the reader is supposed to think, people like Jordan could save our nation from itself. This vision of the nation and the world bears some similarity to Left Behind but the larger tale appears more ambivalent about the end of a nation and its people.

Yet, the call for small groups to defend the nation and antagonize government proved a little too similar to the white supremacists that I study as well. They can't trust government either, the end is near and they guarantee that they are ready for it. The Edge of the Apocalypse conveys a similar meaning. At least with Left Behind, the violence did not erupt until after the Rapture. With Edge, the end of the book, and the possible end of the nation, no longer has the guarantee, and its end feels nearer and closer. The Edge haunts my dreams and waking hours, and maybe my obsession with LaHaye is to place that book in perspective. Or maybe, it is my attempt to see how America's fate became intertwined with the apocalypse more largely.

The Light, the Glory, and the Star Wars

Paul Harvey

What do Peter Marshall of The Light and the Glory fame, and Star Wars, have in common? Nothing, you say? Actually, everything, Matt Sutton says -- click here for more. A taste:

So what do Peter Marshall and Star Wars have in common? A lot. Most importantly, they show us that Americans are still searching for and finding faiths that affirm who they imagine themselves to be as a people rather than religions that challenge them to be better than they are. Marshall tells Christians that they are linked to a long line of holy predecessors just like them. Star Wars, in turn, helps viewers recognize their connection to an all-powerful, all-encompassing Force.

Is Anything Not a Sign of the Apocalypse?

Kelly Baker

These days, my brain alternates between at least two or three scholarly things/themes: the 1920s Klan and the apocalypse (and often vampires and religious intolerance, but that is for another day). The first, of course, is quite obvious. I am counting down the days until my manuscript is tied in a bow and shipped to my publisher. The second, however, started as a minor interest in apocalyptic scenarios in American culture more generally and in pop culture more particularly (see here and here for our other bloggers take on this topic), and it is possible that the apocalypse is becoming quite an obsession of mine. I am teaching a class on the Apocalypse in American culture in the fall, and I even have a Google news alert set broadly for apocalypse (what interesting things appear with that word in the title). According to bloggers, new pundits, and other various talking heads, almost anything is a sign of the apocalypse: Miley Cyrus, a myriad of commercial products, Americans in general, the environment, Obama, various political maneuvering, 2012, nuclear armament and disasters (natural or otherwise).

It is not surprising, then, that the BP oil spill would become one of the impending signs of Armageddon. Lisa Miller, over at Newsweek, reports that in some Christian fundamentalist circles the oil plume points to biblical prophecy come alive. She's a little light on the history of millennialism in America, but she pulls in the Millerites as a key example of the problem with predicting the end of the world. What is more interesting is that a part of the Christian blogosphere finds the oil plume in the Gulf

to be manifestation of Revelation. Miller writes:

Revelation 8:8–11[:]“The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed … A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter.” According to Revelation, in other words, something terrible happens to the world’s water, a punishment to those of insufficient faith. The foul water, according to the New Oxford Annotated Bible, mirrors one of the plagues God called upon Egypt on behalf of his people Israel.

Though maybe it’s Revelation 16:3: “The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died.”

Some interpreters are very sure: The oil spill matches biblical prophesy and is another predictor of the end. One commenter at Godlike Productions argues that the redness of the oil seen in pictures can be interpreted as blood. “The water is tinted red from the oil … it ACTUALLY looks like blood. coincidence??? NOT!!!!” On Facebook, at least two discussion groups are devoted to mining the parallels between events in the gulf and those predicted in the bible; and in a heart-rending interview with CBS, a Louisiana minister named Theodore Turner, whose congregation is one third fishermen, said he knew it to be so. “The Bible prophesized hardships,” he said. “If we believe the word of God is true—and we do—we also know that in addition to prophesying hardships he promised to take care of us.”

Interestingly, Miller notes that there might be a problem with this interpretation because usually these catastrophes are punishment for very bad behavior, so what did the people of the Gulf do to deserve this? Nothing. Miller continues, "Yet through a biblical lens, it’s hard to see the oil spill as anything but God’s punishment for greed and a disrespect of Creation—and both of those sins fall mostly on the shoulders of the Republicans, who have been aggressively lobbying for more offshore drilling, without, obviously, ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place. " Why I am not in the game of interpreting God's will, it is pretty clear that Miller's assessment might strike some as dead on.

I wonder what religion scholars in the Gulf region (here's looking at you, Mike Pasquier) think about Miller's assessment and the desire to place the oil spill in such a dramatic theological narrative. Watching coverage of the oil spill and BP's failures to stop the plume makes me feel ill and distraught because of the ecological and human consequences, but I am not sure I "see" the apocalypse. Yet, this scenario does feel more convincing as a one of many biblical disasters leading to the final days than teen pop star. Maybe there is too much geographic distance between me and the Gulf. More likely, it is because I have been reading so many articles, posts, etc. about the impending apocalypse. I can't help but wonder if anything can be a sign of the apocalypse, then maybe nothing is.

Rival Revivals and Liberal Protestant Recovery

Rival Revivals and Liberal Protestant Recovery
Paul Harvey

Just back from the Organization of American Historians (OAH), I had planned on doing an extensive post on the excellent panel I saw there, “Rival Revivals,” featuring papers by Alison Greene, Jarod Roll, and Matt Sutton, and with commentary by Kenneth Fones-Wolf and chaired by Lizabeth Cohen. But now I don’t have to, as we have an excellent summary of the panel from the OAH reporting at HNN, with full videos of the presentations and summaries of the papers. I would just say in addition to what is there that the panel featured the interesting twist of having the fundamentalists of the 1930s/1940s (discussed in Matt’s paper) as the northern, educated elites, in comparison to the various folk preachers, Garveyites, and premillennial radicals discussed in Alison and Jarod’s papers, turning the usual stereotypes about recent fundamentalism on its head.

The material in Jarod Roll’s paper came from his book, out any day now (I saw it at the University of Illinois press table at the OAH, but wasn’t between regular hard covers yet), entitled Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the Cotton South. A bit more about the work here:

In Spirit of Rebellion, Jarod Roll documents an alternative tradition of American protest by linking working-class political movements to grassroots religious revivals. He reveals how ordinary rural citizens in the South used available resources and their shared faith to defend their agrarian livelihoods amid the political and economic upheaval of the first half of the twentieth century.

On the frontier of the New Cotton South in Missouri’s Bootheel, the relationships between black and white farmers were complicated by racial tensions and bitter competition. Despite these divisions, workers found common ground as dissidents fighting for economic security, decent housing, and basic health, ultimately drawing on the democratic potential of evangelical religion to wage working-class revolts against commodity agriculture and the political forces that buoyed it. Roll convincingly shows how the moral clarity and spiritual vigor these working people found in Pentecostal revivals gave them the courage and fortitude to develop an expansive agenda of workers’ rights by tapping into existing organizations such as the Socialist Party, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the NAACP, and the interracial Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union.

Yesterday morning I attended an equally excellent panel of a very different sort: “Putting Faith in American Democracy: Remembering Liberal Protestantism in the Twentieth Century,” featuring papers by Mark Edwards, Matthew Hedstrom, and Bryan Peery, and with commentary by Mark Hulsether. Mark discussed Protestant ecumenicism in the post WWII era, emphasizing how it dovetailed with a one-world liberalism rather than a Cold War realism that we associate with Reinhold Niebuhr. Matt’s paper discussed the Protestant liberal influence on the American Library Association, which created a sort of quasi-canon of books to read each year (sort of a well-publicized “top 50” list), one which pushed a reading public towards Protestant liberal thought and thus exerted more influence culturally than we might recognize looking only at the Protestant liberals and politics. Bryan Peery, a graduate student at George Washington, covered the course of Protestant-Catholic dialogue after WW II and the vital influence of Robert McAfee Brown in the same, who held that “dialogue itself was valuable, even if it only led to more dialogue.” Those views competed with an upsurge of anti-Catholicism signaled in Paul Blanshard’s 1949 screed American Freedom and Catholic Power, which compared the Vatican to the Kremlin.

Hulsether called for more appreciation and respect for mid-century liberal Protestants. Often they are interpreted as being powerless -- thus, nowhere -- or as leading the charge for a “secular neutrality” that was just liberal Protestantism in disguise -- and hence, everywhere. He suggested that the Protestant liberals assumed a position sort of like the UN non-aligned movement in distinction to the choosing up of sides going on in the Cold War, and that their vision should be given more respect and credence than is usual in a scholarship which in recent years has made the Protestant liberals the object of target practice.

Politically radical premillennialists, preachers jumping out of airplanes to call attention to the imminent millennium, Garveyite devotees picking up the cause of radicalism in the South, Protestant liberals demanding alternative visions besides those given to them during the Cold War, northern fundamentalists wondering if the “Blue Eagle” of the NRA was the mark of the beast -- who said 20^th century Protestants were boring? Actually, I just said that, a few posts ago, about Methodists. My bad.

Going Rogue Zionist Style!

by Matt Sutton

This post is more derivative than usual. It started as an article in the Baltimore Jewish Times, which got picked up by a Baltimore Sun blog. Now, for your reading pleasure (and because Harvey likes it when I write about Palin) here it is for you.

Apparently Barbara Walters asked Palin last week about the Obama administration’s opposition to Israeli expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Palin's answer:

“I disagree with the Obama administration on that,” the former Alaska governor told interviewer Barbara Walters. “I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

What makes this especially interesting is that it is totally contrary to actual Israeli immigration trends. According to the original blogger, Michael Felson, "Since 2002—the year in which the major wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union came to an end—there has been a consistent downward trend in immigration to Israel. By 2006, immigration was down to 1980s levels, during which time 9,000-24,000 people immigrated annually. And in 2008, the number was 13,681, representing the lowest ratio of immigrants to Israelis since the establishment of the State – 1.9 immigrants per 1000 residents."

This, of course, raises the question: what is Palin's source of information? You guessed it. The books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation. That serious political candidates take premillennial apocalypticism seriously is great news for me; but it might not be such good news for the country (or the Palestinians). Sarah: keep rogue-ing it up!

The Apocalyptic Visions of the Left

by Matt Sutton

While not busy watching the libertarians skewer Harvey for daring to give us his take on a new book’s strengths and weaknesses (which last time I checked is what you are supposed to do in a book review, right libertarians?) or witnessing the continuing implosion of my fantasy football team (thanks for nothing this week Cedric Benson) I am finally catching up on some old reading. In the May issue of Harper’s Jeff Sharlet (of The Family fame) has a fascinating article entitled “Jesus Killed Mohammed.” In it he examines the continuing problem of hyper-Christian rhetoric and ideology in the U.S. military, which is a particularly troubling phenomenon in the context of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I have two problems with the article; one petty and one more significant. First, the petty. He writes:

“Every man and woman in the military swears an oath to defend the Constitution. To most of them, evangelicals included, that oath is as sacred as Scripture. For the fundamentalist front, though, the Constitution is itself a blueprint for a Christian nation. ‘The idea of separation of church and state?’ an Air Force Academy senior named Bruce Hrabak says. ‘There’s this whole idea in America that it’s in the Constitution, but it’s not.’” Sharlet then condescendingly points out: “That’s technically true; it’s in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.”

This, of course is both inaccurate and not the issue Hrabak is raising here. As all readers of this blog—and Jeff Sharlet—are well aware, the establishment and the free exercise clauses have been interpreted in different ways over the centuries. The First Amendment may have meant “separation of church and state” in Thomas Jefferson’s mind, at least when he was writing to Danbury Baptists, but it has not always meant that and it has certainly never been consistently interpreted that way by American courts. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State can happily provide legions of violations of the supposed “high wall of separation.” Hrabak is not an idiot in making the claim above; Sharlet does him a disservice by not unpacking his statement in the context of the culture wars and competing views of the American past. It is not as if we good humanist liberals all agree on the meaning of the First Amendment while the fundies keep making stupid sh*t up.

The larger question (problem?) I have with Sharlet’s work is the representativeness of the people he profiles. He certainly finds tantalizing handfuls of rogue nuts and dozens of their asinine statements. Furthermore, he rightly points out that evangelical and conservative Catholic proselytizing of Jews, Muslims, and secularists in the military is a serious problem that needs to be taken seriously. But I am not sure that his evidence is sufficient to build the case that a secret group of behind-the-scenes and off-the-record fundamentalists lurking in the hallways of power (in Congress in his previous work, in the military here) will soon dominate the nation. Maybe he is right, but I suspect that most of the people, most of the time—even soldiers and former Republican presidents—know better than to tell Muslims that Jesus killed Mohammad. If they don’t than we really are in for a world of trouble.

Faith and Politics

by Phillip Luke Sinitiere

A few weeks ago I posted about Edward Curtis's new encyclopedia on Muslim-American history and Thomas Kidd's latest offering on the history of evangelicals and Islam in America. American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism is now available, as is Kidd's HNN piece on the attempt by some evangelicals to paint Barack Obama as a Muslim. Kidd brings some historical clarity to these claims, and calls for some much needed cosmopolitan thinking on the matter.

Here's the first part of Kidd's informative and brief historical summary:

During this year’s presidential campaign, widely-circulated e-mails claimed that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim. “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim,” one version of the e-mail asserted. “Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.” Setting aside the factual problems with this e-mail (the swearing-in claim confused Obama, a long-time practicing Christian, with Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress), how has the prospect of a secret Muslim as President taken such a prominent place among the cyber-myths of this election?

One might easily point to the fear of Muslim extremists generated by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as a contributing factor to this rumor about Obama. The prominent role of evangelical Christians in American politics might be another cause. Anxiety about Islam has particular resonance among conservative Protestants: polls have consistently demonstrated that contemporary evangelicals have a substantially more negative view of Islam than other Americans. But American fears about Muslims precede 9/11 by hundreds of years, with origins as early as the founding of the first English colonies in America. History also shows conflicted American attitudes toward Islam, even among conservative Christians, whose views of Islam have ranged from studied respect to apocalyptic revulsion.

Read the rest of the article here and find a copy of the book here.

Don’t Fear the Pistol-Packing Pentecostal (For Being a Pistol-Packing Pentecostal)

By Matt Sutton

It is true. I have been unfaithful. While my ultimate loyalties are to this blog, I have been on occasion posting elsewhere. Here is what I promise will be my last word on Sarah Palin (unless she and McCain actually win).

Sarah Palin has problems. A lot of them. Nevertheless, we have nothing to fear from her faith. Ever since John McCain announced that the pistol-packing, moose-dressing, beehive-sporting hockey mom from Alaska was his vice presidential nominee, journalists, bloggers, Democrats and even the cast of Saturday Night Live have all been in a fury. Does Palin speak in tongues? Does she believe that the battle of Armageddon is imminent? Does she believe in casting out demons? Does she talk to God? Does she believe the Rapture is coming?

The answer to all of these questions is probably yes. But so what?

The rest of the article is here, over at the History News Network.

Jesus Made Me (and McCain) Puke

Paul Harvey

While the media obsesses over religious figures vaguely linked to Obama, the story of McCain's alternate courting of and then distancing from some of the more bizarre figures on the religious right's lunatic fringe remains relatively underplayed.

Here are a couple of good places to start. First, Matt Taibbi's amusing "Jesus Made Me Puke: Undcover with the Religious Right," tells his story of going native at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. Never fear, Jesus will cast out those ACLU liberals.

More seriously, and ominously, our contributing editor Matt Sutton's "McCain's Ministers of Doom," drawn in part from his excellent ongoing work in the history of Christian evangelical apocalypticism through the twentieth century, explains the perils of McCain's alternate flirtations with and then public denunciations of these current-day eschatological theorists. Sutton concludes:

The firestorm that the candidate’s embrace of Hagee and Parsley incited was inevitable. That McCain didn’t see it coming reveals what terrible advice he is getting and how truly out-of-touch he is with religious conservatives. In picking some of the most extreme agents of intolerance to buddy up to in an effort to mend fences with the Religious Right, and then having to publicly denounce them, McCain has done the unthinkable—he has simultaneously lost face with the moderates who liked his independent streak and the religious conservatives that he so badly needs.

After these warning signs, time for a more cheery piece, so check out "Taking Their Faith, But Not Their Politics, to the People," from the NY Times, which reports this of "The Journey," described as a "megachurch of mostly younger evangelicals" in St. Louis:

They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.

Doubtless the recent gay marriage decision in California will re-energize the culture wars, so it will be interesting to see what these younger green evangelicals will do, and how successfully the older warriors of the religious right will be in mobilizing the anti-"gay agenda" vote as was so brilliantly executed in Ohio in 2004.

Meanwhile, all those San Antonians getting their demons excised should be required to watch Samuel Jackson's quoting from the book of Ezekiel in Pulp Fiction; I don't recall him reading anything in there about the ACLU.

Happy Earth Day! (And the Count Down to the Eco-Apocalypse)

Kelly Baker

With local radio stations handing out saplings for Albuquerqueans to plant, various emails on list-serves this morning proclaiming how to reduce my carbon footprint, and my terribly guilty conscience over driving a small SUV, I feel like Earth Day has hit me full force this year. One of the campuses where I teach has started a film series on the environment, and another has started a huge recycling campaign on campus. What has proved most interesting for the start of the Earth Day was a great article by Rebecca Onion at Slate on what she aptly calls "Envirogeddon." Onion explores the fascination of many environmentalist writers about Armageddon, eco-style, which would require the surviving humans to be kinder to the planet and her resources. The beauty of Onion's piece is that she traces this "wish" for an apocalypse back to eco-literature from the 1970s until today to show this continuing vein of thought. She takes on James Howard Kunstler's new novel, World Made by Hand, which examines the lives of survivors of calamitous events and their attempts to live in a ravaged world. Onion writes:

World Made By Hand takes place a couple of decades in the future, after a series of rolling catastrophes has left people without electricity, communications, or transportation infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of others have died of the "Mexican flu." Despite their burdens, the men and women of this imaginary world seem to have pretty good lives. Robert has lost his wife and children, but now he lives in an Arts and Crafts bungalow and makes his living as a carpenter—having been rescued, by the apocalypse, from an emasculating job as a software-marketing guy. The townspeople replace the suburban infrastructure with ever-more creative and beautiful houses and hold lively square dances. A beautiful and much younger widow, needing protection, falls into Robert's bed and makes him chicken stew with new potatoes and peas for dinner. (Kunstler's post-apocalyptic women have given up trying to be involved in government for their true roles as cooks and sex partners.) Even the occasional bouts of violence are cleansing, putting hair on Robert's sunken chest. In short, thanks to the world's upheaval, Robert becomes a true man while the people around him become a true community.

Onion renders these apocalyptic tales as an attempt a new frontier story, in which the humans start over in various, earth-friendly endeavors. She opines:

This equation of emptiness with rebirth and human freedom was a new kind of frontier story—predicated not on distance from civilization but on the wholesale death of civilization itself. As such, it also forms the basis for Kunstler and Weisman's utopian visions. While the enviros of the 1970s worried about population, we worry about climate change, but the possibilities for post-crisis humanity remain rosy. Kunstler's glorious images of ripped-up strip malls and catamounts in empty houses echo Weisman's regenerating landscapes, and both recall the new eco-orders of Abbey and Wiley. In the perfect green apocalypse, population reduction leaves a world in which everybody wins—birds, bees, and people.


Her concern is that in many of these tales, the "green apocalypse" can only occur with annihilation of humans to recover the damage. The haunting visions of a planet stripped of humanity and the stunning comeback of nature brings to mind the film, I am Legend. The main character played by Will Smith is the sole survivor of epidemic that kills most humans and turn some into light-sensitive zombies. Alone with only his dog, Sam, in New York City, he hunts for deer in an overgrown Times Square and fishes in the remnants of a reflection pool. A city, once densely populated, appears eerily quite in the day, but of course, the zombie-like beings hunt for humans to dine on at night. The movie's premise is that the population has been almost decimated by a vaccine, which proved to have disastrous results. The "green apocalypse" echoes religious visions of the end, but also provides a damning critique of human relationship with the environment. The film gives a glimpse of how the world might appear after such an event. (In an effort of full disclosure, the film proved to be quite disturbing to me, so I am not quite sure I can recommend it. My spouse liked it, but the isolation and despair of the film proved haunting.) The film provides visual impact to the words of various Envirogeddon writers.

If any of blog readers have come across scholarship on environmental visions of the Armageddon (and comparisons with other apocalyptic groups), please post the references in the comments section. This topic proves to be a fascinating distraction from grading and other work. Happy Earth Day!