Newsweek magazine….
As a reader says, “an odd puff piece” on the pair. And it is rather puffy- nary a serious critique of the books’ theology or literary quality, only this:
The other principal critique comes from some of Jenkins’s and LaHaye’s fellow Christians, who find the books more interested in God’s wrath than God’s love—as well as scripturally questionable. “It’s pulp fiction, based on a particular reading of the Bible,” says Randall Balmer, chair of the religion department at Barnard College. “It diverts attention from the mandate of the New Testament to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself.” According to Tyndale’s research, more Jews, agnostics and atheists read the series than mainline Protestants, and back in 2000 even the president of the Lutheran Church’s conservative Missouri Synod denounced the “Left Behind” series as “an unbiblical flight of fancy.” Most establishmentarian Christians agree with Tina Pippin, a professor of religious studies at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., in saying “Left Behind” “encourages people to see the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, with us or against us.”
These points only begin to scratch the surface – the objection, more specifically, has to do with the peculiarities of the particular interpretation of Revelation and eschatology embodied in these books, which is really only as old as the 19th century.
The piece also contains this fascinating observation:
Readers identify with the “Left Behind” characters in part because they seldom speak in Christian cliches..
REALLY?
I’ve read six or seven of them (for professional reasons), and I was constantly busy, flicking cliches out of my hair.
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