This summer the Evangelical Studies Bulletin named Tim LaHaye as the most
influential Christian leader for the past quarter century. The Bulletin, published
by the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, selected LaHaye over Billy Graham
and a host of other evangelical leaders. "For the last 20 years LaHaye and his wife,
Beverly, leader of Concerned Women for America, have been ‘key leaders of the
religious right,'" the Bulletin wrote. The Bulletin concluded that
LaHaye "rose from the ranks of the [evangelical] movement, then...played a strategic
role at key points that have cemented—for good or ill—the direction
[evangelicalism] will be taking in the next few decades."
The Institute is probably right, even though many Christian leaders
have never read anything Tim LaHaye has written. LaHaye is the coauthor of the Left
Behind series of novels about the end times—a remarkable publishing success, with
28.8 million sales at last count. Christian leaders tend to be indifferent to the series
and its popularity or dismiss this eschatological fiction as "Christian lite."
But LaHaye is a man with a mission, and it is a mistake not to take deadly seriously
anything he writes.
Academics often don't recognize how influential authors like
LaHaye are with the rank-and-file. Much of his influence on the church and the culture,
regrettably, has not been positive. The Left Behind series, written with Jerry
Jenkins, is propagating his ideological views to an audience that reaches far beyond his
evangelical culture. LaHaye's writings tend to foster both an eschatology of
disengagement and the politics of fear.
John Nelson Darby came as a missionary from Britain to the United
States in the 1830s with some new theories about how the world will end. These speculative
views—called premillennial dispensationalism—took much deeper root in the United
States than they ever did in his homeland. Through books like The Late Great Planet
Earth by Hal Lindsey, which sold 19 million copies, this end-times theory has become
widely popularized in American culture. Those who popularize these views are chronically
trying to force-fit changing world events through this end-times filter, often with
disastrous consequences.
Those reading the Left Behind series often say, "Regardless
whether you like the books or not, they certainly are biblical." But LaHaye's
eschatology is not supported by a careful study of scripture. Most biblical scholars
largely reject the eschatological assumptions of this kind of pop end-times literature.
Implicit in this kind of literature is a fatalistic view of the future
and a degenerative view of history. As a consequence many Christians who ardently embrace
this view insist that "the Bible teaches that everything is destined to get worse and
worse, so it makes absolutely no sense to work for social change. The best we can do is to
get a few more people in that salvation life boat before Jesus comes back." Several
years ago Jerry Falwell reflected this kind of end-times fatalism when a TV commentator
asked him if he was concerned about growing degradation of the environment. He said, in
effect, that he had no concern about the environment because Jesus is coming back, and
therefore we had better use it before we lose it.
Evangelicals in the United States and the United Kingdom acted in
starkly contrasting ways as we crossed the threshold into a new millennium. Many American
evangelicals—believing that the "Y2K crisis" (remember that?) would trigger
wide-scale social breakdown and set the stage for a one-world takeover—stored away
large quantities of food, medical supplies, and guns. At the same time, British
evangelicals hardly gave a thought about end-times fears. Instead they saw the crossing
the threshold as an opportunity to birth a range of new ministries.
The difference reflects the difference between an eschatology of
kingdom transformation and hope versus an eschatology of inevitable deterioration and
fatalism. The Left Behind series could influence many outside the evangelical
movement to succumb to an eschatology of escape and disengagement, in contrast to the
biblical vision that people can be a part of the in-breaking of God's new order even
now.
NO WHERE ELSE in the Western world do I hear the raging anger about the
"threat of big government" that I hear in the United States. Elsewhere, one
might find Christians who are cynical about their government, but they don't display
the rage and fear common among many American believers.
To understand the American Christian Right, as I wrote in Cease
Fire, you need to "understand not what they think or even believe but what they
are afraid of." One of the mantras that we hear repeated constantly by a number of
Christian leaders in America is that "there is a sinister elite of secular humanists,
liberals, and feminists in Washington, D.C., who have as a conscious agenda the
destruction of the Christian family, the elimination of Christian values, the revoking of
our liberties, and the confiscation of our guns!" Only in America have I heard
Christian leaders engaging in this kind of fear-mongering. Where does this conspiratorial
fear come from?
Tim LaHaye has become such a dominant influence in American Christian
culture because he has defined the terms of America's culture war. In 1979 he joined
Falwell in starting the Moral Majority. He wrote the blueprint for how conservative
Christians could "take back America" around a conservative political agenda in
his most important work, The Battle for the Mind. This book was a huge bestseller,
but interestingly is not listed in any of the Left Behind books. (His new
manifesto, Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium, was released in
January.)
In Battle for the Mind, LaHaye identifies with laser clarity
what he sees as the real enemy of American Christians. He borrows the phrase that Francis
Schaeffer coined, "secular humanism," and gives it sinister new conspiratorial
definition. LaHaye asks us to believe that there is a monolithic group of humanists in
America who have as their single agenda the destruction of Christian faith, family values,
and democratic freedoms.
Listen to Tim LaHaye's breathless warning in the opening pages of
the book. "Most people today do not realize what humanism really is and how it is
destroying our culture, families, country—and one day the entire world," LaHaye
wrote. "Most of the evils in the world today can be traced to humanism, which has
taken over our government, the U.N., education, TV, and most of the other influential
things of life." Perhaps it's already too late! LaHaye wrote in 1980 that unless
American "Christians wake up to who the enemy really is the humanists will accomplish
their goal of a complete world takeover by the year 2000." It is out of this kind of
fear that many on the Religious Right have demonized those on the Left, and often those on
the Left have returned the invectives.
American philosopher Eric Hoffer argued that "mass movement can
rise and spread without a belief in God, but never without a belief in a devil." The
devil, Hoffer said, must be "tangible" and "vivid." LaHaye succeeded
brilliantly in Battle for the Mind in making his chosen devil extremely tangible
and vivid. His explanation of what was wrong with the world and his identification of the
enemy is the de facto apologetic for the Religious Right. It has influenced millions of
American evangelicals to support the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, take
their kids out of public schools, and support a number of right wing causes.
Tim LaHaye is not a non-ideological writer of novels. His mission is to
galvanize support for the very narrow political agenda of the Religious Right. The Left
Behind series reinforces the fictional fear that there is some sinister group (which
LaHaye calls "the council of ten" or the "council of the wise men")
actively at work creating the much feared one-world socialist gulag for all those who are
left behind.
Why are so many people attracted to this kind of apocalyptic
literature? First, there is something in our culture in which we love to be scared to
death. Many seem to want to embrace the X-Files not merely as entertainment but as
reality. Second, many of us are strongly attracted to simple black-and-white explanations
of what has gone wrong in our world. Finally, it seems to me that American culture is more
visceral and less reflective than that of our English-speaking cousins. As a consequence,
we seem often to be more motivated by fear-mongering than reasoned discourse.
However, the greatest concern is with Christians leaders who share
neither LaHaye's eschatological views or his right wing ideology, but who fail to
acknowledge or understand the cavernous gulf between the important biblical work they do
and the reading diet of the average American Christian. Christian communicators and
educators have much to learn from Tim LaHaye about communicating in accessible and
convincing ways. We need to find better ways to communicate compellingly a biblical vision
of hope and transformation to those at the grass roots, to provide the alternative to the
eschatology of escape and the politics of fear. If we don't find a more popular voice
in which to express those concerns, we could be permanently left behind.
Tom Sine's latest book is Mustard Seed vs McWorld: Reinventing
Life and Faith for the Future (Baker Book House, 1999).
For more on pop eschatology—and how to counter it—check out:
Cease Fire: Searching for Sanity in America's Culture War, by Tom Sine
(Eerdmans, 1995), available from Box 45867, Seattle, WA 98145; msasines@cs.com.
The Millennial Maze: Sorting Out Evangelical Options, by Stanley J. Grenz
(InterVarsity Press, 1992).
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