Alternatives to Left Behind Series
Scot McKnight has posted ten helpful resources as alternatives to the millennial approach taken in the Left Behind series by Tim La Haye and Jerry Jenkins. They’re over at his blog, Jesuscreed.
Did you know that there’s a whole web site dedicated to the Left Behind series? I keep forgetting that this whole world view continues.
I must make a confession here. While I was on staff at a fairly large church, we started a bookshop in association with a Christian books supplier. We were sent a huge pile of Left Behind books with the encouragement that they would sell like hotcakes. I was involved in the decision not to put them in stock. Why? It was 2001. We already had enough paranoia in the world without adding more conspiracy theories to the people of God. I was concerned that obsession with end times is an expression of avoidance - not wanting to live in the here and now.
We need alternatives to a gloom and doom approach to eschatology. So thank you Scot for your resources.
2 Responses to “Alternatives to Left Behind Series”
By philjohnson on Aug 9, 2005 | Reply
Duncan
Of analytic interest is the following essay:
Glenn W. Shuck, “Marks of the Beast: The Left Behind Novels, Identity, and the Internalization of Evil,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 8/2 (2004): 48-63.
The Abstract for the article:-
The Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have become a major publishing phenomenon in recent years. The novels have succeeded in part because they address the anxieties of their readers, using apocalyptic language to depict a future world in which evildoers are punished, and the faithful reverse the tables on their cultural marginality. The novels, however, also speak to the “here and now,” articulating in narrative form the beliefs and actions that place one among either the saved or the damned. The novels accomplish this through the issuance of marks. Both believers and the followers of Antichrist have distinctive marks, which prove less than reliable. At stake, ultimately, is an evangelicalism open to the ambiguity and uncertainty of contemporary life, and a reactive fundamentalism that insists, metaphorically, on the rigidity of marksa quest for certainty ill-advised in a world characterized by relentless change.
And the URL to the journal, where for a fee one can then download the essay in pdf see:-
http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/nr.2004.8.2.48;jsessionid=jGxk8YTp2UWd?cookieSet=1&journalCode=nr
Cheers
By Matt Stone on Aug 11, 2005 | Reply
I challenge you to check out the religion and spirituality shelves in a Dymocks bookstore. You may be able to censor stocks on home turf but often this crap is the only ‘Christian’ alternative to Bishop Spong in secular bookshops. Very problematic for potential seekers I’m sure you’ll agree.