history and criticism

Rapture Culture by Amy Johnson Frykholm explores both the reactions of readers to the Left Behind series, and the historical and societal context of the readers and the authors of this series, which has sold so phenomenally. Amy Johnson Frykholm provides excellent background material on the roots and growth of the evangelical movement in American popular religion over the last 150 years. She also explains rapture belief and its historical development both in its predominant form of dispensational premillenialism and less common forms of dispensational belief.

Frykholm shows that belief in the secret rapture of true believers in Jesus Christ draws believers together not only into their church groups, but forms them into a distinct culture within the larger society. She explores the way this rapture culture affects the relationships of believers among themselves, with their families and with those outside the culture. She also shows how the rapture culture produces strongly homogeneous political convictions.

Frykholm explores the background and convictions of the authors of the Left Behind series, Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Much of the book is a fascinating and illuminating discussion of the varieties of reactions of readers to the books, drawn from a series of interviews by the author with a diverse cross-section of readers.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining insight into evangelical Christianity and the theology of the secret rapture of Jesus Christ which sets evangelicalism apart from mainline Protestant Christianity as well as from Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.