T he Rapture has always struck me as the quintessence of religious crankery, right up there with snake handling and speaking in tongues. How does anyone get to a mindset where they’re absolutely positive that Jesus will be coming around this week and whisking them off to heaven? If you’re not familiar with the Rapture — or with Armageddon, the Second Coming, and the whole End Times theology — let’s bring you up to speed a bit. An Australian writer named Dan Foster has an excellent article on the subject, written from his own experience. Raised in a “Rapture culture,” he says he suffered from “Rapture anxiety” as a child. He defines the Rapture as: …a belief held by many evangelicals. It describes a sudden moment when all Christians, living and dead, will be taken up into heaven. According to this view, the faithful will escape the world before a long period of disaster and suffering begins for everyone left behind. The theology is based, loosely, on the B...
Life and Politics in the Age of Covid