Marks of the Beast: The Left Behind Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity by Glenn Shuck

Author:Glenn Shuck [Shuck, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: NYU Press, ISBN-13: 9780814740040
Published: 2004-08-19T21:31:05+00:00

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Marks of the Beast

The Struggle for Evangelical Identity

As the networks passing through us become more complex and the relations at every level of experience become more extensive and intensive, the speed of change accelerates until equilibrium disappears and turbulence becomes a more or less permanent condition. While occasioning confusion, uncertainty, and sometimes despair, this in-escapable turbulence harbors creative possibilities for people and institutions able to adapt quickly, creatively, and effectively. Those who are too rigid to fit into rapidly changing worlds become obsolete or are driven beyond the edge of chaos to destruction.1

—Mark C. Taylor, “Screening Information”

Many conversion narratives bear witness to such dark nights of personal identity. At these moments of extreme exposure, the null response, far from declaring the question empty, returns to it and preserves it as a question. What cannot be effaced is the question itself: who am I?2

—Paul Ricoeur, “Narrative Identity”

The Dark Night of the Evangelical Soul The Left Behind series, at its most basic level, addresses the question of what it means to be an evangelical. Whatever else LaHaye and Jenkins accomplish in their novels, they attempt, first and foremost, to reinforce evangelical identity against the subtly shifting threats of the modern age.

The cosmic drama LaHaye and Jenkins depict indeed highlights numerous external threats. The most meaningful battles occur not for territories or world control, however, but center on the disposition of souls. Individuals, rather than structures, prove most meaningful to the authors.

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142 | Marks of the Beast The nineteenth-century revivalist Dwight L. Moody described humanity as a doomed vessel, with the evangelist attempting to save those flounder-ing in the water. The metaphor remains apt for contemporary prophecy writers. LaHaye and Jenkins cite the numerous structural evils that oppress believers, but they ultimately appeal to the anxieties of a readership, struggling to make sense of their evangelical identity in the face of the emerging network culture. Nothing is as it appears to be, and only faith, the authors suggest, can deliver believers from the often crippling uncertainty in contemporary American culture that threatens to drown them.

Much of the uncertainty in the Left Behind novels stems from the sudden, mass disappearance of the righteous believers in the Rapture. LaHaye and Jenkins suggest, ironically, that the disappearances will trigger a turn to Christ among those left behind, but with all of the legitimate Christians removed, who or what will remain to certify the authenticity of the new converts? It is not surprising, then, that LaHaye and Jenkins, who situate the vast majority of their narrative within that unprecedented epoch of doubt and confusion known as the Tribulation, repeatedly return to such basic questions as, “who am I,” and “what does it mean to be an evangelical?” In an age marked by uncertainty, the answer is by no means clear. Although the authors periodically offer assurances to their readers, they also undermine such offerings—wise perhaps, given Antichrist’s dominance and propensity for deception. His Beast system—or network culture—challenges stable notions of selfhood.

Recalling terminology introduced in chapter 3, Mark C.

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