The demise of Hal Lindsey on Nov. 25 symbolically brings to an in depth a chapter of evangelical theology that was standard for greater than a century and has had an outsize impact on American politics.
Born in Texas, Lindsey graduated from the College of Houston after which from Dallas Theological Seminary, with a grasp’s diploma in theology. He labored for Campus Campaign for Christ in Southern California after which, cribbing from his seminary notes, wrote what turned one of many bestselling nonfiction books of the Seventies, “The Late Nice Planet Earth.” (Whether or not the e-book qualifies as nonfiction is a dialog for an additional day.)
Lindsey’s e-book popularized an method to biblical interpretation known as premillennialism, which posits that the world as we all know it would come imminently to an finish, as predicted in each the E-book of Daniel within the Hebrew Bible and within the E-book of Revelation on the finish of the New Testomony.
Christians by the centuries have tried to make sense of those prophetic writings, particularly Revelation with its filigreed imagery of multiheaded dragons and vials of judgment, the antichrist and the numerals 666. A key bone of competition is whether or not Jesus will return to Earth earlier than (premillennialism) or after (postmillennialism) the 1,000 years of righteousness predicted in Revelation 20.
The distinction is perhaps dismissed as theological nitpicking, the equal of counting the variety of angels that may dance on the pinnacle of a pin. However evangelical understandings of premillennialism and postmillennialism have had a profound impact on American historical past.
Within the early a long time of the nineteenth century, evangelicals by and huge have been submitmillennialists — that’s, they believed that Jesus would return after the devoted had reformed society in accordance with the norms of godliness. This doctrine in flip animated quite a lot of social reforms — peace crusades, public education (known as widespread faculties within the 1800s), jail reform, ladies’s equality, opposition to slavery (within the North) — all aimed toward bringing in regards to the kingdom of God on Earth, and extra notably in America. The Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, essentially the most influential evangelical — a Presbyterian, by the best way — of the period excoriated free-market capitalism as a result of commerce elevated avarice over altruism.
By the late 1800s, nonetheless, evangelicals have been changing into disillusioned. The carnage of Civil Struggle battlefields and the squalid tenements in Decrease Manhattan, teeming with labor unrest, hardly resembled the precincts of Zion that evangelicals had so confidently predicted earlier within the century.
To the rescue got here a theologian from Britain, John Nelson Darby. He advised American evangelicals that they’d all of it unsuitable. Jesus would return earlier than not after Revelation’s thousand-year utopia kicked in.
As Darby’s interpretation turned standard, American evangelicals’ attitudes towards society modified radically. That they had been activists making an attempt to reform society, to make the world a greater place. But when Jesus was going to return at any second, why trouble? This world was doomed and transitory, they believed, so why fear about social amelioration?
Theologically, the emphasis shifted from social reform to a person reckoning — accepting Jesus as your private savior. Premillennialism stoked political apathy; it absolved evangelical Christians of the duty of social reform.
In some ways, Lindsey’s “Late Nice” e-book represented the end result of that sentiment. The church buildings and believers thought-about to be evangelical misplaced a fixation on the Sermon on the Mount (“blessed are the peacemakers”) and Matthew 25 (take care of “the least of those”), and gained one on salvation and prophecy, particularly the methods Israel figured into that prophecy.
Lindsey sought to interpret present occasions — the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, for instance, or the 1967 Six-Day Struggle — by references to the apocalyptic passages of the Bible. The takeaway was that Jesus would return imminently, gather the devoted (learn: evangelicals) and rain judgment on anybody “left behind.”
However instances and fixations shifted once more. As white evangelicals turned politically organized late within the Seventies, initially in protection of racial segregation at evangelical establishments and later in opposition to abortion, they targeting particular politicians and electoral outcomes. Following a string of such political successes — starting with Ronald Reagan’s election over a progressive evangelical, Jimmy Carter — white evangelicals have been now not premillennialists (although many nonetheless declare to be).
They have been searching for to affect and remake the world once more, like their nineteenth century forebears — however with one necessary distinction: Whereas evangelicals of the sooner period overwhelmingly directed their efforts towards these on the margins of society — the much less lucky, individuals of shade, ladies — white evangelicals for the reason that rise of the non secular proper have embraced an agenda that exalts capitalism and cares little for “the least of those.”
Lindsey’s premillennialism represents the end result of practically a century of evangelical social indifference within the U.S. However as that period gave technique to the Christian non secular proper, it has resulted, sarcastically, in political activism largely detached to the teachings of Jesus.
Randall Balmer is a faith professor at Dartmouth School and the writer of “Mine Eyes have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America.”
