Customer Reviews

Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America

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Rapture Culture by Amy Johnson Frykholm explores both the reactions of readers to the Left Behind series, and the historical and societal context of the readers and the authors of this series, which has sold so phenomenally. Amy Johnson Frykholm provides excellent background material on the roots and growth of the evangelical movement in American popular religion over the last 150 years. She also explains rapture belief and its historical development both in its predominant form of dispensational premillenialism and less common forms of dispensational belief.

Frykholm shows that belief in the secret rapture of true believers in Jesus Christ draws believers together not only into their church groups, but forms them into a distinct culture within the larger society. She explores the way this rapture culture affects the relationships of believers among themselves, with their families and with those outside the culture. She also shows how the rapture culture produces strongly homogeneous political convictions.

Frykholm explores the background and convictions of the authors of the Left Behind series, Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Much of the book is a fascinating and illuminating discussion of the varieties of reactions of readers to the books, drawn from a series of interviews by the author with a diverse cross-section of readers.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining insight into the large segment of evangelical Christianity which holds the doctrine of the secret rapture of Jesus Christ which sets these evangelicals apart from other evangelicals and mainline Protestant Christianity as well as from Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. While those who hold the rapture doctrine seem to rarely demonstrate willingness to examine their beliefs, those who do not hold this doctrine should find this an exceedingly helpful tool for understanding the rapture culture.

Ms Frykholm provides her informative analysis with sympathy toward the people/movement/phenomenon she observes. Her work neglected to note that the Scofield Bible which is held by many as the cornerstone of Rapture teaching was (if my information is correct) published originally by Oxford. She failed to compare evangelical Christian culture in America before and after the adoption of dispensational/rapture theology. She also presumes that someone converted by a book would have an interest in documentation. That is rarely the case. A couple of my friends became evangelical Christians after contact with the teaching of Hal Lindsey. And even though both are socially prominent in the community and unashemed of their faith, I don't believe they have ever publicly credited Hal's theology. While one can sympathize with Ms. Frykholm's desire, I have never seen people who get salvation from endtime theology highlight the book that caused them to become Christians. Rather they concentrate more on the Bible, their new social contacts in their church, and perhaps on more "prophecy" study. It would also have been nice contrast the endtimers' social networks with either some non-endtime evangelicals social networks or perhaps a non-evangelical's social network. Nonetheless, this book probably is one of the very few that treat a large part of Americans' beliefs/lifestyle seriously and ought to be read by every thinking evangelical and every non-evangelical that wants a better grasp of rapture culture.

Read for class, was okay. Not what I initially thought I was going to read, but author is thorough and makes the whole crazy rapture believer more human and a lot more similar to you than you might realize.