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Tim and Jerry on the cover of Newsweek
What more can be said about the Left Behind series? Not much, though this week's Newsweekcover story tries to go for one less-played angle by profiling authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins rather than focusing on the popularity of premillennial dispensationalism.

There's some nice bits in the piece, though LaHaye comes off as a bit caustic while Jenkins is the humble peacemaker. When it comes to salvation and eschatology, writer David Gates understands that they're talking about the same thing in different ways. But he misses the similarity when they start talking about themselves.

"Those millions that I'm trying to reach take the Bible literally," LaHaye says. "It's the theologians that get all fouled up on some of these smug ideas that you've got to find some theological reason behind it. It bugs me that intellectuals look down their noses at we ordinary people."

Ah, a heaping helping of anti-intellectualism, which Gates attributes to a "still-aggrieved sense of social class."

Jenkins says, "Pedestrian writing, thin characters—I can handle the criticism," he says. "I write to pedestrians. And I am a pedestrian. I write the best I can. I know I'm never going to be revered as some classic writer. I don't claim to be C.S. Lewis. The literary-type writers, I admire them. I wish I was smart enough to write a book that's hard to read, you know?" Gates characterizes this as evidence of Jenkins "chronic modesty," but misses the jibe. That's gloating, friend.

Ah, but while the magazine promises to show how the "contrasting sensibilities" of the "most successful literary partnership of all time … suggest the complexities of the entire evangelical movement, often seen as monolithic," it can't help but add to those same mistaken stereotypes. Newsweek explains that evangelicals are "Christians who say they have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," while Fundamentalists are "Christians who believe the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God."

In a sidebar, fundamentalists are contrasted with Eastern Orthodox Christians and Lutherans, as Lisa Miller explains that "Christian fundamentalists … are devoted to Revelation, and believe that the events it describes will come to pass—perhaps sooner rather than later."

There's a hint that LaHaye is supposed to represent fundamentalists while Jenkins is more of the evangelical fold, but there's little help for the reader who tries to discern the difference between the two groups, or whether one is a subset of the other.

Likewise, there's no hint about whether the critical "fellow Christians, who find the books more interested in God's wrath than God's love, as well as scripturally questionable" are evangelicals, fundamentalists, or some other breed. Over at GetReligion, Terry Mattingly rightly critiques the article as mischaracterizing the eschatology debate as one between liberals and conservatives. "Even in most Episcopal churches, the congregation still affirms its belief that 'Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,'" he writes. "The disagreements center on what the world will look like until then."

Newsweek repeatedly suggests that Left Behind is popular because of global terrorism and the Iraq war. "That LaHaye and Jenkins's books are selling so briskly at a time of global chaos suggests that millions are taking refuge in literal renderings of Scripture, seeking a port amid the storm of the present," writes editor Jon Meacham. Problems like the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison raise "Difficult questions, with … few easy answers. Little wonder, then, that so many people are turning to fiction to alleviate the burden of fact."

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48