"Vanished From The Earth"

[minoanmiss]

Wow, Slate has had my number recently.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/05/rapture-fear-evangelical-americans-church-miller.html

"As an evangelical kid, I was terrified of the rapture—and so was everyone I knew. Years after I left the faith, I wanted to understand the power it held over us all."

Two selections. One personal:

Other evangelical kids I knew growing up would tell me about their own first rapture scares. They were always triggered by mundane things: Somebody came back from school one day and no one was home. Or someone’s parents didn’t answer a phone call the way they normally would have. In an instant, the cosmic outlook we’d been instilled with for our entire young lives would coalesce with shocking clarity: Was this it? Had the rapture happened? Were we going to face judgment alone?

It’s hard to overstate how large the rapture loomed while I was growing up in the evangelical world. As a child, I was taught that I might live to see the end of the world. I learned how to see it coming, too: How the nation of Israel was “God’s timepiece” hitting marks on a prophetic timeline, how the machinations of the Catholic Church and the United Nations would soon come to a head and form a one-world government, how God would be driven out of America’s public square as people looked to other things for salvation.



and one political:

The specter of the rapture is unavoidable in America now. I see it in pastors’ fire-and-brimstone sermons admonishing Muslims and the LGBTQ community and urging people to get right with God. I see it in the curricula of Christian schools that still maintain the United States has a part to play in the fundamentalist idea of the End Times, that state that the country must once again assert itself as a Christian nation, a light to a doomed world. I saw it in the callous inaction on and lack of concern from evangelical leaders about the COVID-19 pandemic and our now-regular cycles of gun violence and hate crimes. There’s a reason why the cliché is 'thoughts and prayers.'

Comments

[cmcmck]

Don't mention 'The Great Disappointment'!

I did, but I think I got away with it! :o)

There are times I'm glad I'm a Quaker!

[dine]

I don't think the Rapture was a thing when I was a kid in the dark ages; at least I sure don't recall ever coming across the concept until well into adulthood. but even if it were a thing, it's not something the Catholic Church would have dwelt on. I still don't grok it, though I know plenty of people believe

[dewline]

Growing up in the prairies of Canada, I do remember it being a thing of discussion, however vaguely and distant the memory is now.

[brooksmoses]

The Rapture is very much an evangelical Protestant thing, not a Catholic thing nor even an all-Protestantism thing. It's not just that the non-evangelical-Protestant churches don't dwell on it; the very idea of a Rapture in this sense is not something that's a universal part of Christian theology or even a majority position.

In particular, it relies on a particular literal understanding of a handful of verses in one of Paul's letters that most Christian theologists consider to be metaphorical and allegorical. It's not something that is supported by a large number of Biblical verses or authors.

[lemonsharks]

It honestly doesn't matter how common doomsday cult eschatology is across denominations, especially in the united statea: raptureists entered the republican party en force in the late 70s/early 80s and their influence on the republican platform from the mid-80s to present is undeniable.

Further, your final paragraph is treading dangerously close to the no true scotsman paradox: these self professed christians are exactly what they say they are, and the work of deradicalizing them falls on their fellow-christians.*

I understand you did not make the argument that raptureists "aren't real christians". However, I have seen this argument so often from less radical and no radical christians that I recognize the setup for "they aren't real christians" and intended or not, you *did* write out that setup.

*I know this can be done, because I've done it, but it does take years of thankless work to accomplish what ultimately feels like very little.

[brooksmoses]

Wow, and here I thought I was just explaining to dine why the fact that it wasn't a thing in their Christian upbringing had more to do with their being in the Catholic church than it had to do with the time when they grew up....

[lemonsharks]

Turns out you can do both at once 😉

[lynnenne]

but even if it were a thing, it's not something the Catholic Church would have dwelt on.

Not sure I agree with that. The “rapture” isn’t all that different from the Catholic belief in Christ’s return for the last judgement. That belief is still reaffirmed in every mass during the Apostolic Creed, “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Nowadays it’s seen as more or less metaphorical, but for most of the Church’s history it was taken quite literally. Until a few decades ago, the Church forbade people from cremating their dead, because the body needed to be preserved for the last judgement. (My family got into a huge fight after my grandmother passed away because some of my relatives still clung to this belief. They said they wouldn’t come to the funeral if we cremated her body. We did, and they came anyway.)

[dine]

yeah, but that feels a bit different (at least in my brain) from the popular concept of Rapture where folks literally disappear from the face of the earth - wherever they are when it strikes.

I remember my grandmother was adamant about not being cremated, but my uncle & dad both requested it, so attitudes are changing on that

[ilyena_sylph]

I think we've talked about this before, but OMG, yes.

I don't even believe in that anymore and I still have moments where the Terror hits me.

[dewline]

I am reminded of stories included in books such as American Fascists by Chris Hedges, and The Armageddon Factor by Marci McDonald, stories of other peoples' lives. The latter book tells me that this phenomenon isn't a uniquely American thing. It's Canadian as well. I wish that it weren't anyone's thing, and I wish you didn't have to cope with such pains.

[lunabee34]

OMG, yes. I am so sorry this is something we share because it sucked.

I remember when I was a kid, they showed us this movie someone made imagining what the rapture would be like; it followed a girl who's left behind, and at the end she has to choose between being beheaded and living but dying and going to hell forever. I was really, really disturbing and upsetting.

I was so afraid of dying and going to hell. I am still afraid of dying and going to hell with my emotional brain. I wish I could scrub all of that disordered thinking out of me, but it is so insidious and little tendrils get into your psyche in ways you sometimes don't even realize. I have rejected my evangelical upbringing, but it is still fucking me over twenty years later.

[baranduin]

I did not know this was a thing with strong emotional/psychological impact though it makes so much sense. Thank you. Back in the 70s when I was working for Pasadena College, the Nazarene place my ex's parents wanted him to attend, I was walking down an office hallway and passed one of the ancient cheery old men who were always around. "Where is everyone? Thought everyone got Raptured! He he he." Weirdo.

[lemonsharks]

Christianity the doomsday cult means the Thursday night ritual of watching prophecy in the news with my (no longer beloved) grandmother.

Choice Of Prepositions

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

"the fundamentalist idea of the End Times, that state that the country must once again assert itself as a Christian nation"

Although I was raised by religiously Irish Catholics, I had never heard of The Rapture until I was long freed of my upbringing. My current comment is that, although many of my fellow Americans are Christians, at least on the surface, the U. S. A. is NOT a Christian country. I'm a firm believer in, not freedom OF religion, but freedom FROM religion.

Ann O.

Re: Choice Of Prepositions

[minoanmiss]

The US is not a Christian country but Evangelical Christians hold as an axiom that it is/it should be forcibly made to be one. I was told so explicitly.

[lynnenne]

It makes perfect sense that a doctrine of exceptionalism would take root in the land of Manifest Destiny. Just as white Americans saw themselves as the rightful claimants to the fruits of democracy and the free market, American fundamentalism arranged itself around the belief that the church was exceptional, a body of believers with a line to God so secure that he would one day allow them to cheat death.

Wow, that explains a lot about American evangelicalism.

[acelightning]

I was not exposed to serious fundamentalism as a child. Instead, we had to perform air raid drills, hiding under our school desks (they told us this would protect us against the atomic bombs the Commies were going to drop on us.) They showed us documentaries about the victims of Hiroshima, not Crucifixion. The only way to prevent nuclear destruction was to elect <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/barry_goldwater>Barry Goldwater to the Presidency. (When I was a child, I admired the man for his aviation prowess and his involvement in amateur radio. And for his famous remark, "You don't have to be straight to be a good soldier - you just have to shoot straight.")

[lokifan]

Do you follow Fred Clark, aka Slactivist? He linked to this as well; he's a liberal evangelical (his blog is mostly about ways white American evangelicalism is fucked up and how much of that is rooted in support for slavery) who's taught me a lot about these underpinnings. I'm a British atheist but it's still fascinating - and obviously has a lot of influence in American politics.

[minoanmiss]

I've read a few things he's written and appreciated all of them. Thank you for making sure I know about him. :)