Aimee and Apocalypticism; or The 3 Days of the Sutton

Paul Harvey

Send lawyers, guns, and money,

The s*** has hit the fan
(Warren Zevon)

Warhol had his 15 minutes (leading one wag recently to opine that in the future everyone would be anonymous for 15 minutes), The Condor had three days, but this week our friend and contributor Matt Sutton has had his three days -- with some more to come. Call it the 3 Days of the Sutton.

First there was the New York Times editorial in Monday's paper, which we blogged about here. Then there was the appearance on the Lawrence O'Donnell show (and the usual hate mailers afterward). Then an hour later after the show, as if to personify the point (much more literally than Matt ever meant it), there was a heckler yelling at President Obama about how he was the anti-Christ. Then there was the inevitable commentary about how the heckler was a "plant." Yada yada blah blah.

(Here I digress just for a moment to quote from @MartyVanBuren, some very funny historian tweeting from "The Great White House in the Sky" as President Martin Van Buren: Obama heckled at campaign stop as the 'Antichrist.' Been there. Some folks just don't understand us Masons.)

Then there was Lawrence O'Donnell commenting on the previous evening's segment with Matt, replaying the heckler and Matt's comments and inserting his own measured commentary on the basic point here, which is the way the extreme has become part of the mainstream in political rhetoric (Ponzi schemes and Bachmann's fact-free speculations about vaccinations being some recent cases in point). Then there was Matt's appearance on the Michael Medved show, where he made some points that apparently left the conservative radio host apoplectic. I don't know if there's a link, but here is Matt's summary:

Just did the Medved show . . . I ended up comparing evangelicals to Muslims -- the vast majority are good people:-) He was not pleased.

I'll see if I can find a clip of that to link here.

Then there are the proliferating internet commentaries on the editorial and O'Donnell segment, by which point the subtler points of Matt's analysis have long since been muffled in the media noise.

And this doesn't even get to Matt's other career -- as an advisor for the musical Saving Aimee, premiering soon in Seattle with the hope of getting it to Broadway. Matt recently met with Kathie Lee Gifford, who is involved closely with this production in some way that I can't remember offhand, and maybe one of these days he will blog about that. In the meantime, here is a wonderful segment from Seattle Channel Video recorded in August; the first 10 minutes or so features Matt talking about Sister Aimee's life, the rest features various producers and actors from the musical talking about their roles.

You can also go here for a podcast of an interview with Matt by Ian Masters, where Matt talks about the conspiracy theories floating around the loonier sections of the media about the timing of that heckler (some have accused Matt of paying the heckler -- no way a university professor can afford that! And never mind that the New York Times piece was submitted about a month ago and delayed several times since then).

Finally, you should also check out his piece at the Harvard University Press website, "The Resurrections of Aimee Semple McPherson," which concludes with a comparison of Aimee's failed attempt to star on Broadway in the 1930s, but the hopeful success of the current theatrical revival of her life:

McPherson’s continuous reappearances in pop culture illustrate that the issues raised by her life were not simply about Los Angeles in the 1920s. Rather they illustrate how the mix of religion, sexuality, and mass media that she represented cut to the heart of modern American culture—then and now. In crafting a powerful, culturally engaged, theologically conservative movement in an era saturated with controversy over the roles of women in society and the relationship of fundamentalism to American culture, she garnered a lot of attention.

Although Aimee tried—and failed—to star on Broadway in the 1930s, she may yet get her chance. The new musical, Saving Aimee, will once again revisit her compelling, complicated life. With Aimee as the subject, it is bound to be an excellent show.

On a more serious side, there have been some excellent discussions of Matt's points, which ultimately are about the role of apocalypticism in American political discourse through the 20th century. Sarah Posner discusses Matt's piece together with Michael Kazin's consideration "Whatever Happened to the American Left" in Sunday's Times (short answer: the right has organized, the left has not; Diane Winston challenges that view here).

Aimee and apocalypticism represent different forms of religious theater that ultimately play towards ideas of the resurrection of Christian America. Michele Bachmann has mastered this point, as evidenced in her speech before Liberty University's students, which "found the precise sweet spot where testimony and Christian American exceptionalism mythology intersect" (the link takes you to a C-SPAN video of the talk). Bachmann's campaign is faltering and she'll be out of the picture soon enough, but she's made an impact with this kind of galvanizing rhetoric, bringing certain strands of apocalyptic themes into mainstream discourse through her own form of theatricality. God help us.

P.S. Forgot to mention the most startling thing of all: Sutton's fantasy football team is now 2-1, and he's a threat to make the playoffs. Truly the time of tribulation is upon us.

Why the AntiChrist Matters in Politics

by J. Michael Utzinger

Matthew Sutton's reflections on the antichrist and American politics can be found in today's New York Times under the title "Why the Antichrist matters in Politics." There is some great food for thought here including how dispensational premillennialism (Sutton wisely didn't use this term in an op-ed) feeds anti-government sentiment. He also suggests that a power vacuum among politically oriented evangelicals have allowed libertarians and Tea Party activists (like Bachmann, Perry, and Paul) to exploit evangelical energies without the type of religious leadership (previously seen in individuals like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell) who tempered the tendency toward apocalyptic excess. Perhaps a throw-away line, but I appreciated the analogy with Marxism to explain apparent tensions within the evangelical between expectation and action. After all, to those of us who study apocalypticism historically, it is easy to see Marxism as a secularized form of Christian apocalypticism (albeit a this-worldly type). The whole piece can be found here.

Update from Paul: Matt is going appear this evening on MSNBC's "The Last Word" with Lawrence O'Donnell, via satellite. Check your local listings!

Update from Kelly: Here's the clip!

Post-Rapture Pet Care

Post-Rapture Pet Care
by J. Michael Utzinger



In a famous quotation, often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln, the Rev. Henry Rowland once preached about the effectiveness of the Gospel on the Christian's conduct claiming that it makes "husbands better husbands, and wives better wives; parents better parents, children better children, masters better masters, and servants better servants; in a word, I would not give a farthing for a man's religion, whose cat and dog were not better for it!" Rowland might have been pleased with the sentiment behind the various post-rapture services offered to evangelicals, whose beloved pets might be "left behind." Kelly briefly mentioned these pet services in her last post, and I became intrigued.

Religious concerns about pets are hardly new for Protestants. Martin Luther, if the Table Talk can be believed, thought there would be dogs in heaven with silver fur and gold tails. Billy Graham's Swedenborgian vision of heaven included dogs and golf. Likewise, post-rapture services for pets existed long before Harold Camping's predictions became part of the recent media frenzy. Modern premillennialists love their pets too. In the words of one online company, After the Rapture Pet Care, the pets of raptured Christians are a real concern, and a legitimate concern. Our pets are given to us by God for us to care for. We are stewards of their lives. Should we simply forget them at the Rapture, allow them to starve or worse? Therefore, they promise immediately after the Rapture that all pets registered with them will receive the following:

1. Our non-Christian administrators will activate our rescue plan.
2. Volunteers will be alerted immediately by email and telephone that they have been activated.
3. Pets will be assigned to our Volunteer Pet Caretakers based upon location and other factors.
4. Our administrators and Volunteer Pet Caretakers will do whatever it takes to find and rescue your pets. If your pet has a location chip, they'll use that, or they'll go to every location you've registered with us, and, if your pets are not at one of those locations, they'll search for your cars as well as stay in contact with the local pet shelters. If they are unable to reach a Volunteer Caretaker in your area for whatever reason, our administrators will communicate with local animal organizations, like the Humane Society, to advocate for your pet's rescue and care.
5. Our administrators will stay in touch with our Volunteer Pet Caretakers regarding each and every pet to be sure everything is being done to rescue and care for them.

If all of the true Christians are raptured, one might well wonder how these services could be guaranteed. The typical answer is found in the FAQ of one company, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA:

Q: How do you ensure your representatives won't be Raptured.
A: Actually, we don't ensure it, they do. Each of our representatives has stated to us in writing that they are atheists, do not believe in God / Jesus, and that they have blasphemed in accordance with Mark 3:29, negating any chance of salvation.



The cost of these services really vary. If premillennialists like anything besides charts it is calculations, so the savvy post-rapture shopper will find that it pays to do some prophetic math:
While there are many monthly subscription plans on the market, flat fee plans seem more reasonable. Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA, for example, charges a $135 fee for its services. (They raised the rate earlier this year by $20 because of the large volume of requests that Camping's predictions apparently caused). The pre-tribulationist dispensationist of the Scofield-Lindsey-LaHaye ilk understand that after the rapture there will be seven years before Armageddon. Using Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA's services, therefore, will add up to $19.28 per year of care. Of course, the fine print makes clear that the rapture must take place within ten years or your contract will expire. This means that buyers risk spending more if the Lord tarries more than a decade (and there is a precedent for this). However, there is a silver-lining that a portion of the proceeds are donated to area food-banks.

Those pet-lovers following Camping would have a greater annual cost for care. Because the end of the world will be in September, the monthly cost of $33.75. Further, since rapture will come by this Saturday there will be no fear of one's contract expiring. No hidden costs.

With a one-time $10 flat fee After the Rapture Pet Care is the best buy of these pet services. In the meantime you can also purchase gear from their online store, including t-shirts, coffee mugs, and wall clocks (the irony/humor of this last item is not lost on me, especially since it is not clear you can definitively tell what time it is with this clock. I think I may have to order one for myself). Ultimately, one will have to balance cost and risk: the key factor being credibility.

According to an LA Times article, "Entrepreneurs Offer Post-'Rapture' Services," (19 May 2011) there have a been a proliferation of businesses, well beyond pet care, that cater to the needs of premillennialists who are concerned about maintaining their affairs after the rapture. In a very cursory surfing of the web I found post-rapture wills, videos for non-raptured family members, and encrypted document storage and "rapture"-triggered email messaging systems.

Opponents of dispensationalism have often argued that its otherworldly preoccupations lead to quietism. Charles Erdman, long-time professor of practical theology at Princeton Seminary, felt compelled to challenge this view in 1916. A premillennialist himself (though not a dispensationist) he noted that belief in Christ's premillennial second coming compelled people to act concretely in this world because of this belief not in spite of it. Put another way, for believers, the imminent rapture creates one of the parameters that dictate moral behavior in and for this world. Indeed, buying services to warn, alert or care for non-believing family members (whether human or animal) after the rapture is not so much lunacy as reasonable behavior for a true believer. Kelly Baker has reminded us that the rapture is not just "rhetorical and absent but material and present."

The consumption of post-rapture services is a means to concretely express faith and act morally, which in turn reinforces the belief in the rapture and makes it satisfying. Donning a t-shirt that expresses one's belief in the end witnesses to one's faith, while the risking of stigma from non-believers confirms and proves the seriousness of that faith. And Saturday, one might see these beliefs embodied in a variety of interesting ways, maybe even "On the Dance Floor" with Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez right up "Till the World Ends."

Rapture Ready (Or Not)

Kelly Baker

While Paul, Chris, and Emily review excellent books in American religious history, I have spent a couple of days basking in the news coverage of the impending Rapture, at least according to the octogenarian Harold Camping and his Family Radio. As many of you likely know (thanks to Emily and Charity or the deluge of media coverage), Camping has proclaimed that the God’s Judgment signaled by the Rapture, the “catching” or “snatching up” of righteous Christians, will occur this Saturday, May 21, 2011. This is not the minister’s first calculation for the beginning of the end (1994), and it will likely not be his last. The beauty of millennialism is not in its rigidity but its malleability and adaptability. Camping fits securely into a long line of doomsday prophets, millennial visionaries, and according to the less gracious, religious hucksters who prey on people’s fears, money, and naiveté. Huckster or not, I don’t really care. Rather, I do care about what Camping’s media-frenzied stint says about the pervasiveness of millennial fervor in North America and the popularity of the vengeful fantasies of judgment that inundate apocalyptic belief, practice, and products.

As someone with an ongoing scholarly obsession with the apocalypse, consumption, and materiality, I am surely following my bliss this week with each mention, web click, Facebook status update, and journalistic attempt to understand the appeal of Camping and his billboard/caravan campaigns. The coverage of the impending Rapture runs the gamut of pet care services for the dogs, cats, and iguanas of the Raptured to Richard Dawkins’ grumpy commentary about said press coverage to Killing the Buddha’s Apocalypse Week 2011 to Salon’s explanation of Camping’s mathematical equations and dating of the end. The coverage ranges from somewhat sympathetic to downright hostile. Some admirably tie Camping a larger history of millennialism in North America, while others declare him a false prophet outright.

In August, I have an article coming out on rapture readiness (seems a little late considering the climate now), in which I document two other sources of Rapture information and practice, the prophecy work of Tim LaHaye and RaptureReady.com to document how the Rapture emerges as not only rhetorical and absent but also material and present. Why, for instance, is there such a thing as rapture practice or rapture pranking?

LaHaye is the co-author of the Left Behind books and avid author of prophecy books including one aptly titled The Rapture, and I have blogged about him before. In the competitive market of prophecy knowledge, LaHaye and the team at RaptureReady.com all deride Camping’s dating of the end. LaHaye notes that Camping has been wrong before and further proclaims:

You can be sure the rapture will not occur when anyone sets a date because God wants us all to live every day as though Christ could come today. A great motto for daily living is PERHAPS TODAY. For one day it will happen and we don't know when, but we don't want you to be left behind!

LaHaye’s reaction to Camping is not really surprising since they have competing visions of the Rapture for Christian consumption. Even RaptureReady.com, the self-proclaimed most visited (Christian) prophecy site on the web, provides a fascinating take down of this particular dating of the Rapture (“we can’t possibly know the date” is the usual refrain). Moreover, the founder Todd Strandberg writes:

In a dubious way, Camping is helping to set the stage for the Rapture. His failed predictions are helping to create the element of apathy that Jesus warned about. I read a report this week that said America is on track to have its most costly year ever for natural disasters. If people knew the Bible, they would understand the likely root cause of these disasters.

Strandberg designed the site to provide Christians, and those who might become Christians, with all the tools they need to become rapture “ready,” which includes belief in God, commitment to Jesus, and righteous action and living. RaptureReady.com houses information on biblical prophecy, readiness, and survival tips for the Tribulation period for those who are unlucky enough to be left behind.

While Camping might appear less credible if the 21^st comes and goes without the Rapture, LaHaye and Strandberg will continue to plug along prophesying an almost-but-not-yet end. I can’t help but wonder whether Camping’s ministry has aided in the sale of the Left Behind series or the web traffic to RaptureReady.com, which posted record-breaking site visits earlier this year. While prophets of doomsday come and go, the idea and artifacts of apocalypse remain. Perhaps, the larger lesson for May 21^st is the fervent wish for the end cannot be tamped down by disappointment or lack but reinvented in another form for another (or a remarkably similar) set of consumers. Rapture or not, just remember the Mayans and the zombies are lurking around the corner for their respective turns at the end.

The OKC Bombing, the Millennialist Right, and Terrorist Realities and Phantoms in the work of Michael Barkun

Paul Harvey

On a more serious note than the below, and in remembrance of a hugely significant day for my home state, today of course is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, an event that didn't entirely surprise me (albeit the scale and destructive force were shocking) given the level of conspiratorial and hate-mongering rhetoric amongst the various far right groups that was prevalent in the state prior to that time (although the perpetrator was from New York, and his accomplice from Kansas, so not to overly provincialize the causation). Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in downtown OKC, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum is a terrific memorial site, largely free of the treacly sentimentalism that I feared would dominate. Instead, the memorial is simple, stark, and reflective, as good a remembrance as one could hope for.

Reflecting on the Oklahoma City tragedy, and its antecedent in the David Koresh and the Branch Davidian debacle at Waco two years previously, the religious studies scholar Michael Barkun produced one of the most thoughtful examinations of the subject, one that foreshadowed a good deal of the culture of fear that emerged after 9/11, in his essay "Reflections After Waco: Millennialists and the State," originally published in the June 2, 1993 Christian Century, and later reprinted in The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America Since 1945, edited by Phil Goff and myself.

In his essay, Barkun traces the tragic story of the misunderstanding between Koresh and the ATF, and how the inability of the ATF and other agents to understand Koresh's millennialism had the ironic and terrible effect of feeding further into that very millennialism, leading up to the conflagration at the compound and the deaths of the agents attempting to storm it. He wrote of how "the single most damaging mistake on the part of federal officials was their failture to take the Branch Davidians' religious beliefs seriously." Instead, the natural impulse was simply to result to the tag label of "cult": "The very act of classification itself seems to make further investigation unnecessary," made worse by the reliance on a network of so-called "cult experts": "Like many other law-enforcement agencies, the FBI hass relied heavily on this questionable and highly partisan expertise--with tragic consequences. It was tempting to do so since the hostility of those in the 'anti-cult' movement mirrored the authorities' own anger and frustration." The end result, according to Barkun, was that "the government's actions almost certainly increased the resolve of those in the compound, subdued the doubters and raised Koresh's stature by in effect validating his predictions."

Barkun furthered his investigation of millennialist groups on the right with his 1996 book Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, a study of the long history of the Anglo-Israelite movement which somehow wound its way down, in a somewhat bowdlerized but nonetheless potent form, to the latter-day militia movements and other groups who influenced Timothy McVeigh and others of his ilk. Barkun then went on to produce a far-ranging survey of A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America.

Today's UNC Press blog features an interview with Barkun about his new book (the first I had heard of this text) Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11. A brief excerpt:

Q: How did you get interested in government homeland security policy?

A: If we think of homeland security in the broadest sense, it goes back to the mid-1990s, the years of the armed standoff at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, the growth of the militia movement, and the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI had failed to grasp the importance of religion in the Waco standoff and was now trying to figure out how to factor religion into their decision-making process, an enterprise in which I was involved. In that period, of course, the emphasis was on domestic sources of violence, not foreign terrorism, a focus that didn’t change until 9/11.

Premillennialists and Their Charts

Randall Stephens

It's hard to narrate the history of millennialism to a general audience without losing the plot in a thicket of obscure Bible verses, dispensational disorientation, and premill fatigue. Sure, there's a rage to explain. But how many paragraphs should a historian of American millennialism devote to "Armageddon," "tribulation," "Gog," "Magog," "Mark of the Beast"? (Paul Boyer navigated this well in his classic When Time Shall Be No More. That's a wonderful guide.)

What better illustration of the Babel of premill confusion than the charts, diagrams, and cartoons premill experts used. The gleeful focus on minutiae, sidetracks, and the like dominates so much premill writing from the 19th and 20th centuries. It must not have been too difficult for a superfan of Star Trek to have turned his/her attention to the second advent in the 1970s or 80s.

So, I paste here some of my favorite confusing charts and illustrations. Try explaining any one of these to a room full of the uninitiated. It would be easier to wax eloquent about the distinguishing characteristics of the Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, Vulcans, and Cardassians.

From William E. Blackstone's wildly popular Jesus Is Coming (1878). Degree of difficulty: 6 out of 10.


Click to enlarge this iconic Millerite poster from 1843, which deciphers prophetic math from Daniel and Revelation. Would like to see a black light version of it. Degree of difficulty: 9 out of 10.


From Isaac Cummings Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message and Mission, Doctrine and People (1874). Degree of difficulty: 7 out of 10.



And finally, this one from a copy I picked up back in seminary days, Clarence Larkin, The Dispensational Truth: God's Plan and Purpose in the Ages (1920). This handsome text has some real mind-blowing charts in it. Degree of difficulty: 8 out of 10.

The Light, the Glory, and the Star Wars

Paul Harvey

What do Peter Marshall of The Light and the Glory fame, and Star Wars, have in common? Nothing, you say? Actually, everything, Matt Sutton says -- click here for more. A taste:

So what do Peter Marshall and Star Wars have in common? A lot. Most importantly, they show us that Americans are still searching for and finding faiths that affirm who they imagine themselves to be as a people rather than religions that challenge them to be better than they are. Marshall tells Christians that they are linked to a long line of holy predecessors just like them. Star Wars, in turn, helps viewers recognize their connection to an all-powerful, all-encompassing Force.