The Faithful Citizen: Popular Christian Media and Gendered Civic Identities

4 Brutish Masculinity and the War on Evil

87 Brutish Masculinity and the War on Evil Left Behind 4 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10:34 For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. . . . Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.” Revelation 21:1, 6-7 As the year 2000 approached, Americans succumbed to millennial fever. Whether the new millennium would technically dawn at the advent of 2000 or 2001, Americans could not deny that they were possibly facing the end of civilization or the beginning of a new era in human history. The Y2K computer glitch was just one popular framework for making sense of this potentially cataclysmic change; Americans also drew on the theological frameworks developed and popularized by their parents and grandparents.1 Indeed, Christian visions of apocalypse and millennium, Armageddon and the New Jerusalem, have resonated with American cultural identities through the generations as the colonists, like their 88 g The Faithful Citizen descendants, were eager to envision themselves playing a central role in God’s unfolding plan for humanity. These apocalyptic and millennial narratives have also, however, found themselves fundamentally at odds with the American ethos that otherwise privileges individualism and self-determination. Many of these millennial and apocalyptic belief systems place faith in a God who has preordained human history and who continues to control its progression. These belief systems, then, share a fundamental dilemma: what capacity for agency can human actors have in a world where events are entirely controlled by God? In other words, why should Christians work to create better schools, safer streets, and a cleaner environment if they know that God will soon bring the present world order to a careening halt, only to reward believers with a new heaven and a new earth? These questions have certainly been apt in the most recent generation of millennial enthusiasm. Some of the most outspoken heralds of the apocalypse—public preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—were also the political leaders of the Christian Right. If their example suggests that an apocalyptic or millennial worldview is not fundamentally incompatible with earthly activism, they prompt another question: how can the two be reconciled? The Left Behind books fit this millennial hysteria perfectly. Spanning twelve volumes and nearly five thousand pages, the novels offer a fictional account of apocalypse and millennium, based on the Christian Scriptures and the theological tradition of dispensational premillennialism. The brainchild of influential evangelical Christians Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins,2 the novels have now sold more than sixty-two million copies. From just one novel in 1996, published with only tentative plans for a few more, the series has grown beyond the twelve volumes for adults to include another fortybook series for children, graphic novels, feature films, shorter video adaptations of the stories, prequels to the original series for adults, and, ultimately, a final thirteenth sequel to that original series. Originally distributed only through the niche Christian bookstores, the Left Behind series ultimately benefited from extensive promotions by the national chain booksellers (Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco, and Barnes & Noble).3 By winter of 2005, exactly 19 percent of respondents to the Baylor Religion Survey reported having read at least one of the novels.4 The first of the three feature films, starring Kirk Cameron, was also released widely, premiering in 867 theaters in February 2001.5 Surely, the Left Behind books became a cultural phenomenon in part because they coincided so perfectly with the millennial fervor awaiting the Brutish Masculinity and the...