Left Behind

I am busy right now reading this website that is analyzing the Left Behind books in some detail. He makes this comment which I find fascinating.

"Evangelical Christianity, at its core, is radically inclusive. Evangelicals, born-againers, want everybody else to become born-again too.

Granted, this inclusivity isn't always expressed in the most winsome or persuasive manner, but it's the heart and soul of evangelicalism. As the Sunday school chorus quoted at the top of this post shows, the goal of evangelicals has traditionally been to reach out to the lost, to the "untold millions" of the unsaved.

Most evangelical fiction has conveyed this evangelistic impulse -- albeit with the unfortunate awkwardness and fecklessness that characterizes too much of their evangelism. But that's not what one finds in Left Behind. Here you find little concern -- and even less of a sense of responsibility -- for the plight of the untold millions. What one finds instead is a sense of triumphalism. Those "inside the fold" feel no sense of obligation to those on the outside -- they are bad people who are getting what they deserve and the godly remnant gets to watch, more in delight than in sadness.

Anyway if you have any interest in this subject, this website is the bees knees.