SectionOne - Chicago Reader · 2009-07-16 · July 1, 2005 SectionOne Letters 3 Columns Hot Type 4 The Seventh Circuit screws us again The Straight Dope 5 The promises toothpastes

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Let’s Hear It

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July 1, 2005

Section One Letters 3Columns

Hot Type 4The Seventh Circuit screws us again

The Straight Dope 5The promises toothpastes make

The Works 6Springfield pulls a fast one

Chicago Antisocial 8We have one question for the Dickbot.

Our Town 10Chicago’s first whooping crane in a century or so

ReviewsTheater 20Queen Lucia at Lifeline Theatre

Books 21My Life in CIA by Harry Mathews and Spy’s Fate by Arnaldo Correa

PlusInk Well

M ost likely nobody you know has read one,but more than 50 million books in the LeftBehind series have sold in the past decade.

Six of the 12 apocalyptic thrillers by Tim LaHaye andJerry Jenkins have entered the New York Times best-seller list at number one. LaHaye is influential inmore direct ways too: in the run-up to the 2000election he co-led the Committee to RestoreAmerican Values, a group of evangelicals whosubjected Republican candidates to a questionnaireto test their allegiance to the right-wing agenda. Aformer Baptist minister, he cofounded the Councilfor National Policy, the Concerned Women ofAmerica (headed by his wife, Beverly), and theCalifornia branch of the Moral Majority, all politicalChristian organizations, after leaving the pulpit inthe early 80s. He advocates what amounts totheocratic government for the U.S. in his 2001 workof nonfiction, Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth. TheLeft Behind series and assorted spin-offs (graphicnovels, Bible covers, a children’s series) are estimatedto bring in at least $100 million a year, whichLaHaye channels back into the Christian right.

The books novelize a not-too-cheery interpretationof the Bible, much of it based on the book ofRevelation, in which Jesus Christ returns to earthand, in an event known as the Rapture, takes thetrue believers to heaven. He leaves everyone elsebehind to suffer seven years of chaos then fight the

ON THE COVER: MARC MONAGHAN (CRANE)

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Let’s Hear Itfor the Loving,Wimpy JesusWith The Rapture Exposedout in paperback this week,Barbara Rossing is about toenter round two in her battlewith the Left Behind people.

By Todd Dills

Antichrist in the final war ofArmageddon. Then he comesback again to finish off theevildoers and save those who’veseen the light since his last visit.

The first book in the series, LeftBehind, was published in 1995,one year after Barbara Rossingjoined the faculty of the LutheranSchool of Theology at Chicago inHyde Park, where she’s nowtenured. When she spoke inchurches or in the classroomabout Revelation, inevitablypeople would ask her what shethought of the novel. She didn’tread it until ’98 or ’99, and shedidn’t think much of it. “[It’s] likea disaster movie with Bible versesthrown around continued on page 16

Barbara Rossing

strongest interests: religion andscience. She found it in theenvironmental movement. “Themovement stresses ethics andGod’s love for creation, theurgency of protecting thiscreated world,” she says. “I reallythink that God loves the earthand that the earth is introuble. . . . We need the best ofscience to help us approachthings like global warming andclimate change. And we needpeople to go into science, andthat doesn’t mean that scienceand religion are incompatible.This is part of the religiousright’s program that I think isreally misguided. It’s not what

16 CHICAGO READER | JULY 1, 2005 | SECTION ONE

in it,” she says. But by 2002,having read the whole series andstudied the political activities ofits authors, Rossing was writinga book of her own: The RaptureExposed: The Message of Hope inthe Book of Revelation, a work oftheology and pop-culturecriticism published in March2004 by Westview Press. It’s dueout in paperback, with a newpreface, on July 5.

The book has made Rossingthe leading voice of reason on thequestion of the Rapture. She’sbeen interviewed on talk radioand has appeared on 60 Minutesand World News Tonight WithPeter Jennings. When journalistsneed someone to represent thosewho disagree with LaHaye andJenkins, hers is the name thatcomes up. “When I first startedwriting my dissertation onRevelation, I never thought I’d bethinking so much about theAntichrist, and in such a publicway,” she says. “But I think thechurch really needs a public voiceagainst right-wing theology, soI’ve become more interested inbeing accessible.”

She wrote the book because shecame to believe that the Left

Behind interpretation was notonly false but dangerous. “Thementality. . . that somehow Godhas laid out in advance a script forthe end of the world, that thingshave to get worse and worse andthis is somehow God’s will beforethe world can end and Jesus canreturn, taking everyone away—Ithink it’s terrible theology,”Rossing says. “Because then as theenvironment or anything getsworse, people will somehow thinkthis is what the Bible says.”

The theology behind end-timeprophecy emerged in 19thcentury England and wasbrought to America by apreacher named John NelsonDarby, who read the Bible as akind of playbook for futureevents. He pieced togetherdisparate verses (some fromRevelation, others from all overthe Bible, including the book ofDaniel in the Old Testament andPaul’s letters to the Corinthiansand the Thessalonians) and gavethem new meanings that Rossingsays were never intended.

Her reading of the book ofRevelation follows a moretraditional pattern, starting withthe original Greek text andconsidering its source and

historical context. Revelation,the final book of the NewTestament, is an exhortationwritten by Saint John (whetherit’s the apostle John is disputed)to his fellow Christians in whatwas then the Roman province ofAsia Minor, expressing hisconfidence, Rossing says, inGod’s victory against oppressionby the Roman Empire. Rossingcontends that John’s true vision,and God’s message for us, is oneof hope, of the end of empire andoppression when Jesus returns—not to lay waste to the earth or torescue humans from it, but tolive with humanity again in theearthly kingdom.

Rossing grew up in Northfield,Minnesota, the daughter of a

physics professor and a chemist.Her grandfather, a Lutheranpastor, encouraged her to studyreligion when she was debatingoptions for college, but she tookthe practical route, enteringCarleton College in herhometown in 1972 and majoringin geology. But after a summer atthe Holden Village Lutheranretreat in western Washington,she started looking for a fieldthat would combine her two

Christianity is about.” During her time at Carleton,

Rossing was grounded in herhome church, St. John’sLutheran. There was a Christiancommunity on campus, she says,but they were “Crusaders forChrist types” who proselytized aChristianity influenced by HalLindsey’s then-populardoomsday polemic, The LateGreat Planet Earth. Lindsey’sbook interpreted the cold warthrough the lens of Darby-influenced Bible prophecy andpredicted that the Rapturewould happen any day now, to befollowed shortly by World WarIII. “Lindsey’s got ‘Red China’and the ‘yellow peril’ in there,”Rossing says. “He didn’t yet havethe Muslim world as the enemy,but he kept ‘updating’ it over theyears . . . . I call it the ‘Antichristdu jour’ mentality.”

Rossing says many of her fellowstudents argued for the truth ofLindsey’s book: “‘If you don’tbelieve exactly what we say, thenyou’re going to get left behind,you’re going to hell.’ That’s a veryscary thing for young people,” shesays. But it didn’t turn her offreligion. After graduating shewent to Yale Divinity School on a

Rossing

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CHICAGO READER | JULY 1, 2005 | SECTION ONE 17

fellowship. She finished hermaster’s and was ordained in1982 and went on to teach andserve as pastor at Holden Villageand at Bethany Lutheran Churchin Minneapolis throughout the80s. In 1998 she earned adoctorate in theology fromHarvard, where she concentratedon the New Testament and earlyChristianity, and then moved toChicago to teach at the LutheranSchool. “I had other job offers,”she says, “but this school had anexcellent reputation. It has a PhDprogram, so I have PhD students,some of whom are internationalstudents who go back to theircountries and become worldleaders. So our school really hasan important voice.”

The hardcover version of TheRapture Exposed was released

to coincide with the publication ofthe last chapter in the Left Behindstory, The Glorious Appearing. 60Minutes invited Rossing toappear on a Morley Safersegment about the Left Behindbooks. LaHaye and Jenkinstalked about the vast sales they’dracked up being no doubt theLord’s work. And they talkedabout America as world leader bydivine bequest, about bleedingred, white, and blue. They talkedabout the liberal manufacture ofa “loving, wimpy Jesus.”

During Rossing’s few minuteson the air, she responded to theimage of the destructive,avenging Christ so crucial to theRapture script, saying, “You canpiece together that vengefulwarrior Jesus, you can find himhere and there, but the heart ofthe Bible, the overwhelmingmessage, even of the book ofRevelation, is of a nonviolentlamb who conquers not bykilling people, but by giving hislife. . . . They take the messagecontinued on page 18

then and personalize it toevildoers, they make this an ‘usversus them’ kind of theology—ifyou’re not with us, you’re againstus. They forget that the messageof the Bible is that each person iscreated in the image of God.”

In academia, Rossing says, herworldview is the common one. “I think pretty much everyscholar on Revelation thinkswhat I’ve said. The onlydifference is that I’ve written atrade book that is moreaccessible, and I’ve made someconnections to popular culture.”The reason no one else haswritten a book like hers, she says,is that “we thought the LeftBehind books were so ridiculousthat they didn’t need to beanswered. They’re just pulpfiction. You don’t usually need tohave scholars critiquing that levelof novel. But then I discoveredthat everyone was reading them!

“I don’t think I am themaverick,” she says. “I’m thetraditionalist—the ancienttradition, 2,000 years ofChristian understanding thatJesus is only going to come backonce, not twice, and not todestroy the earth, but to save it.And, yes, I’m cast as a maverick,and in the end I guess it’s great. Ithink we need to take back theBible, and I’m trying to do that.”

She’s currently at work on asecond book, about theconnections between Christianityand ecology. “If we’re not going tobe taken off this earth, and if Godwants us to live on this earth,what does that mean in terms ofsustainability and environmentaldegradation, and how does Godheal the world?” she says.“Because that’s what I think theend of Revelation is about: Godhealing the world.” v

Rossing

Find those fabulous oldhome movies to show atChicago Home Movie Day.

Saturday, August 13 at theCultural Center. It’s soonerthan you think so startlooking now! For more information call:

773 478 3799or visit our website at:www.chicagofilmarchives.orgor visit:www.homemovieday.com

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency

I urge anyone with an interest in learning moreabout how to care for and preserve their ownpersonal memories to join in the festivities beingoffered in their community on August 13.

Martin Scorsese

18 CHICAGO READER | JULY 1, 2005 | SECTION ONE

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