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Likewise, writes Gates, "As the world gets increasingly scary, with much of the trouble centered in the Mideast—just where you'd expect from reading the Book of Revelation—even secular Americans sometimes wonder (or at least wonder if they ought to start wondering) whether there might not be something to this End Times stuff."

One small problem with this theory, though: Left Behind first came out in 1995, and the series was a bestseller long before 9/11.

Miller has a different theory:

John [the Revelator] was a passionate, furious Christian, and he had a very clear message, one that resonates strongly with evangelical Christians today: Do not be seduced by the temptations of secular culture. … Substitute a sex-drenched mainstream popular culture for the emperor, and you can begin to understand why the "Left Behind" books have hit such a nerve with evangelicals. Jenkins, LaHaye and their readers feel driven to defend their values and way of life against the onslaught of secularism, and for them, Revelation describes the battle lines.

But it's not only pre-millennial dispensationalists who share this concern about the onslaught of secularism. And that's the real story, says evangelical Anglican theologian Kendall Harmon:

The only way I know to teach about eschatology is to teach what Christians have understood about these things, and then to dialogue with dispensationalism and explain why those who teach it are wrong. I believe dispensationalists deserve our great respect, because at least they are trying to understand these vital subjects, whereas nearly every Episcopal Church ignores them. It is hypocritical in the extreme for mainline churches to sneer at Tim LaHaye and others without explaining why he is wrong (which he is) and what the right theology is in all of this.

In short, Newsweek's piece is fine, but it's just one more pass over overplowed sod (as is a sidebar drawing a spurious line from Left Behind theology to Bush's foreign policy). The magazine is late to the party, but it's still better than its odd Christian music piece a few years back. Examining LaHaye and Jenkins as archetypes for various streams in the evangelical movement actually could have been a fresh angle, so long as it didn't stray into angry fundamentalist vs. friendly evangelical caricatures. Better to focus on LaHaye's longterm efforts to inform, teach, and disciple the church, how this differs from Jenkins's frequent efforts to create cultural (and largely evangelistic) artifacts that have mainstream appeal, and what the popularity Left Behind (along with Jabez, Veggie Tales, The Passion, and other recent Christian entries into popular culture) means when these two items meet. Have evangelicals changed their cultural engagement strategy from overt evangelistic appeals to seeing various aspects of theology as "entry points" into the larger Christian story?

The other article that hasn't yet been done: examining how the dispensationalist theology of the Left Behind books (and of Tim LaHaye specifically) differs from the "progressive dispensationalism" being taught at Dallas Theological Seminary, the cornerstone of such eschatological thought.

There are other stories, too, but time is running out. LaHaye and Jenkins are still writing a prequel and sequel to the core series, but articles on the Left Behind phenomenon are going to seem stale after the 10-year anniversary of the first book's publication.

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48