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SBL Annual Meeting Papers November 2005 WORKING DRAFT: Please do not cite without permission of the author Social Atomization and Community Identification A young woman, mother of one young child, church-going and devout for her entire life, returns one summer evening from a meeting for the Sunday school committee at her church. The front door is open, the garage door is open and her husband's car is inside. But there is no sign of her husband or her child. In the weeks previous to this event, the woman had been reading the Left Behind series, and while she hadn't thought much about the psychological effects of that seemingly harmless reading, her first thought upon seeing the door open and her family gone was, "Oh, no! I've been left behind. They've been raptured, my husband and my child, without me." This woman, whom I will call Leah, told me this story, not during her scheduled interview as a participant in my project on readers of the Left Behind series, but after the interview was over in the midst of a casual conversation. As she started to tell it, she broke out into self-deprecating laughter. In fact, everyone in the room laughed. We laughed, in part, because we all recognized the consequences of anxiety produced by something that has taken hold of our imagination in unexpected ways. As Leah's story illustrates the phenomenon of the Left Behind series is predicated in part by a social anxiety, the terrible fear of being "left behind." In this paper, I will look at ways that the Left Behind series sparked both fears of social atomization and the comfort of community identification in its readers. As readers used the books to secure themselves within the ideological framework of the books, they described ways that the fiction brought biblical texts vividly to life. At the time that Leah read Left Behind, she was not exactly a strong believer in the Rapture nor was she an avid fan of the Left Behind series. She read a few of the books in the context of her church where others were reading them and discussing them. She believed that the Rapture was certainly a possibility available in biblical teaching, but she hadn't herself come to any strong conclusions. Her faith in the truth of the Bible did not rest on any sort of end times theory. Despite this ambivalence-or perhaps because of it-reading Left Behind had an anxiety producing effect on Leah that surprised her. It had planted in her mind a seed of doubt, the possibility that whatever she had done or believed to secure her salvation was not enough. When I started interviewing readers of the Left Behind series, I had just read Christian Smith's work on Christian evangelicalism. I had noted particularly his argument that evangelicals experience less doubt about their faith than others. (He writes that in his survey, 71% of evangelicals expressed "never" having "doubts about faith.") I started my interviews with readers of the Left Behind series anticipating that they would demonstrate themselves to be as secure in their faith as Smith depicts. Instead, what I found was not exactly doubt about the truth of the faith to which they were committed, but instead a considerable amount of self-doubt that the Left Behind series seemed capable of both arousing and assuaging, often at the same time. To understand the self-doubt evidenced by Leah's story, but expressed in various ways by many of the readers I interviewed, we have to understand Left Behind as a social phenomenon. Media depiction of the series often had us envisioning individual readers who wandered into bookstores looking for a "good read" and came out with Left Behind and transformed lives. My research suggests the phenomenon didn't quite work that way. Instead, readers discovered the books in their social networks and gave the books meaning in their lives using the same networks. One reader purchased half a dozen books to give to friends and relatives or alternatively one book was passed through multiple readers. In other words, the meaning of the books was created in part from the moment a book was transferred from one reader to another. Sometimes, this was in the context of fellow believers sharing their faith with each other, "Oh, you'll just love this story! It's great!" Sometimes, it was in the context of a subtle evangelism, "Hey, I'm reading this really great book right now. Why don't you read it and tell me what you think?" Either way, the book was contextualized for individual readers by their social networks. Whatever meaning the book had for them was not separate from the hand of the one who passed it to them. Readers used the books to confirm their identities within social networks, but the series also seemed capable of raising specific anxieties about social position vis-à-vis salvation. The more I talked with readers, the more I saw the very phrase "left behind" as a pinpoint for anxiety. One woman, who felt ostracized in the Christian communities in which she circulated because of her divorce, was fascinated by the series. But she also found herself asking, "What if...what if I am left behind? I mean I know I am saved, but..." This woman seemed to give voice to a particular anxiety that worked through many readers. They were not entirely convinced that this condition of salvation-a condition at once absolute and certain and intangible and uncertain-applied to them. The Rapture existed as an indistinct moment in the future when they would find out whether the state of salvation had really "taken" for them. Until then, they had no way to know for sure. The character in the series who piqued this fear more than any other was Pastor Barnes. In the first book of Left Behind, we learn that a pastor at Rayford Steele's wife's church has been left behind. Pastor Barnes, we are told, was by all accounts an earnest and upright Christian. Everyone believed that he was a true believer-everyone, including himself. Yet when the Rapture happens and he is not included among the saved, he is not entirely surprised. "In church and at school, I said the right things and prayed in public and even encouraged people in their Christian lives. But I was still a sinner. I even said that. I told people I wasn't perfect; I was forgiven... I had a real racket going...and I bought into it. Down deep, way down deep, I knew better" (Left Behind 196). One problem with the salvation story as many readers of Left Behind told it is that it offers no tangible evidence that a person is finally saved. A changed life, yes. But such a thing is difficult to judge unless you were a Satan-worshipping drug-addicted fanatic and you become transformed as a Christian. Most people do not have such dramatic accounts of their own conversions to tell. And no outward sign is proof enough. The possibility that a person is a "Pastor Barnes" who "down deep, way down deep" knew better always hovers. Where is down deep? What assurance of salvation do I have in moments of anxiety? How do I know that conversion really took? Given this condition of anxiety, readers had to work a little harder to secure themselves within the worldview that Left Behind offered as absolute. They had a variety of ways of doing this. Some described a particular kind of reading practice that they used to assure themselves of salvation. Jay described his way of reading Left Behind as using passages in the book to confirm his own salvation. "When they were walking through the steps to salvation, I find myself double-checking, 'Did I do this? Did I do this?' And I did do it, so I felt like I was pretty secure.... You know, even when you pick up a gospel tract, you're like, 'Well, have you asked God to come into your heart?' Yeah, I've done all this, so then you know you are a Christian. You know that little cloud of doubt will creep in." Whatever salvation meant specifically to Jay, he found reading as a means to confirming its status in his own life. Doubt could be quelled by reading and by asking himself if he had indeed done what was necessary to be saved. Confirmation was a part of the very practice of reading something like Left Behind, a way of remembering and reasserting his salvation. Such a reading practice is in part evidence of how intangible salvation is, how difficult it is even for a committed. Others used the books as a kind of currency in evangelizing and witnessing to others. The practice of witnessing also seemed to act as a practice of confirmation and as social reassurance. Evangelization is one of the central roles that publishers, authors and readers agreed on for the books. Even if readers did not specifically share the books with people who were unsaved in their lives, they felt that they should. They might pose themselves in strategic places where they could be seen reading the books with their distinctive covers-in line at the bank, on an airplane or waiting to pick up their children from school. Readers felt that just the visibility of reading was a "witness" to their faith. Someone might ask them about the book and give them an opportunity to speak about their relationship with Jesus. Evangelism is, of course, central to the evangelical worldview. One true act of faith is to share that faith with others, to be vocal and visible on the subject. Readers felt that the books provided a casual and non-threatening way to present their faith to others. The books offered an opening through which witnessing might begin and they could share their faith with someone in need and fulfill one of the central tenants of their religious culture. At the same time, witnessing through Left Behind was rarely reported as successful. While readers managed to share their faith with others, they rarely got a response-either from loved ones or strangers-that was particularly satisfying. Such an outcome is not surprising given that witnessing is as much about the believer's need as it is about the non-believer's lack. In a religious environment that offers so few opportunities for confirmation of salvation, witnessing has a significant role. A believer speaking about his or her faith can convince himself or herself as much as anyone else. Witnessing serves as a strong source of affirmation. It was a way of securing oneself within one's religious community and extending that community to invite others who were not yet included. Given the anxiety that often fueled readers' engagement with the text, we can also see how reading fiction provided a particular kind of relationship to Biblical texts. Readers frequently described the capacity of Left Behind to make texts "come alive" for them. This generally was possible for readers only if they had already committed to the basic truths of Rapture and tribulation. If they accepted that this is what the Bible teaches about the end of time, then the images that Left Behind provided deepened, expanded and made vivid this understanding. Many readers expressed this using language like, "I could really picture it" and "it made it real to me." One woman said, "I have always struggled with Revelation because it is so symbolic and all of the visions. [These books] helped me to see it. Before I had tried to picture it, it just wouldn't come clear to me." For many readers the value of the books was in their ability to create pictures in the mind of difficult and complex biblical texts. When the readers returned to the Bible, they found things suddenly clearer and more understandable. Some readers struggled to keep the line between fiction and the truth they found in the Bible. One reader described how the books were "pretty much the Bible" and still fiction. A friend cautioned her that she was making too much of a work of fiction, and while she could see the distinction, she found the narrative so compelling that it structured her reading and understanding of the Bible. "Because Revelation is a hard book to understand, and I had never... I had tried to read it, but I could never...make sense of it. It became so real to me. I mean, I could see this happening...I had to remember this is fiction. It was hard for me to keep separate." As the framework of the novels took on life for readers, so to did biblical texts that had before seemed beyond their reach. Structured within the narrative of Left Behind, these texts suddenly became vivid and confirmed the truth in a way that mere exposition of the text had been unable to do. Nearly every reader, especially those who were believers in the Rapture reminded me that the Left Behind series was based on the Bible, but was also fiction. I was intrigued by the imaginative possibilities of that but. They gave the series some authority to speak as truth, but also considerable leeway to invest the biblical images with contemporary imagination. Readers described spending many absorbed hours reading the series, and "waking up" after a long reading session with a kind of hangover that stayed with them after they moved from a fictional world back into everyday life. One reader described turning on the television after reading Left Behind and expecting to see news about the antichrist. Another described having to "pinch herself" to remember that half of the United States had not actually been destroyed by an earthquake. It is important to note that these comments were generally made in the context of laughter. Readers were aware of the impact the novels had on them, and they expressed some anxiety about that. One woman said that she felt that even when she was reading Left Behind, she "should" be doing her Bible study instead, but she couldn't keep herself away from the compelling story. In some ways, by denying the biblical authority of the books, readers prepared themselves to accept the books stories in more subtle but perhaps equally powerful ways-through their imaginations. They accepted the theology as truthful in part because it came through a narrative they found compelling. On the other hand, readers also often came to the books already accepting the theological statements as true. This made them feel that they were reading something "safe," and so they could indulge their imaginations more than they might if they were leery of the theological foundation. Readers who did not share the same theological assumptions tended to have shallower and less sustained relationships with the books and stopped reading sooner than those who were theologically invested in the story of Rapture and tribulation. In the two and a half years since the series produced its last book (setting aside for the moment the question of spin-offs, sequels and prequels, and movies which will keep Left Behind technically around for some time to come), understanding evangelicalism as a dominant factor in American culture has become commonplace. Even five years ago, you had to make an argument for its significance. Now the importance of evangelicalism in shaping both politics and culture seems so self-evident, it hardly bears notice. The Left Behind series had a role in that changing dynamic. It paved the way for Christian fiction to top secular bestseller lists and be prominently displayed in mainstream retail outlets. It helped to alert the media to the presence of an evangelical audience that had strong sway in American culture. And while the series has faded, the worldview that Left Behind represents has hardly disappeared. Thousands of people still read the newspapers and watch television news looking for signals of end times events much as they are depicted in Left Behind. Thousands police themselves with the thought that the Rapture could occur at any moment. And Americans have long been fascinated by apocalyptic theories of almost any kind. That apocalyptic structure of thought is hardly likely to disappear. Yet the fate of evangelicalism in the public eye is yet unclear. While it has assumed a somewhat dominant position in the media, how fleeing will that be? How tied is Rapture belief to the social position of evangelical Americans in culture? In a world in which evangelical Christians have evident social and political power, is Rapture belief compelling, and how might it shift as power shifts? My work on the Left Behind series has attempted to draw attention to the fact that narrative is a dynamic and historical process, one that changes as circumstances and social and individual demands change. I would suggest that we still have a long way to go in understanding the way that end time narratives and apocalyptic interpretations of the Bible are structured by social yearnings and social power-both perceived and real. As this particular phenomenon fades into the popular culture horizon, we still have cause to consider the worldview out of which it comes and into which it flows. |
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