How ‘Left Behind’ Got Left Behind
How ‘Left Behind’ Got Left Behind
A changing political mood among evangelicals has many believers imagining the end of the world differently than they used to.
Since the advent of the Trump era, the evangelical landscape has undergone rapid shifts, often in turbulent and dangerous directions. To be sure, there are still plenty of evangelical premillennialists out there faithfully waiting on the Rapture. But their sequestering, defensive posture is becoming outmoded. Remarkably, the most prominent and powerful new leaders—the ones dedicated to fully recentering evangelical politics on Donald Trump, and who have grown their power and influence through their association with him—are overwhelmingly anti-Rapture. They believe Christians have a more active and forceful role to play in the end of the world.
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I disagree two-fold. At least in the deep South where I'm from, the rise in popularity of the idea of the rapture did not cause Christians to be any less fervent in their rush to convert everyone else. It did not make the vast majority of them self-isolate at all. The author's viewpoint is likely affected by his parents making him live in a commune. Secondly, even if evangelicalism is moving in some new directions lately, I don't think the idea of the rapture is falling out of fashion at all. Christians have no problem with both thinking they should assist in bringing about the end of the world and also believing that the rapture can happen any second. As we all know, cognitive dissonance never bothered them anyway.
For some of them, it's not even cognitive dissonance. They believe certain things must happen before for the rapture can happen. Most of them believe these things have already happened or will soon™, though.