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In these visions of a not-so-distant future, Christians have been duped by a commonplace and robotic Christianity. There's nothing frightening, nothing disruptive, nothing hard about following Jesus. Christian faith is merely a project to be accomplished so that the world can end, not so it can be remade.

Target practice is easy, and at times Post-Rapture Radio can seem to take potshots at a lineup of usual suspects: consumerism, "me"-centered Bible teaching, an individualized gospel, professional (i.e., "slick") church structures, market-driven ministry—okay, really it's all just consumerism.

As a reader who thinks we have much to gain from talking about the dangers of consumerism, I have ears to hear Rathbun's concerns. But the novel has a hill to climb not only because its critiques are familiar, but also because they have been put front and center by the recent "emergence" of voices such as Brian McLaren, whose blurb appears on Post-Rapture's back cover along with other leaders in the emergent community. Rathbun risks being relegated to just another instance of that "conversation"—an entertainment for people who happen to be interested in talking about such things.

One of the dangers of the crystallization of the emergent movement is that its concerns can more easily be disregarded. Already, some people consider emergent thinkers cynical ex-fundamentalists, and such people could legitimately find fault with Rathbun. Indeed, I flinched at the novel's more cynical sentiments, such as the description of a "professional sports guy who becomes a born-again Christian and then starts sucking at his professional sport."

In the end, Post-Rapture Radio can withstand those faults, because what really counts in the book—what makes it work—is its call to a more biblical Christianity. Scattered among Lamblove/Rathbun's ravings are inspired and challenging readings of Scripture. Pushing against our habitual, reflexive understanding of famous gospel passages and bits of Revelation, Post-Rapture Radio presents a series of scriptural reflections that remind us of the power of the first Christian revolution. Thus, the revolution Lamblove wants to ignite is not new, and its commands are nothing if not scriptural: Forget yourself. Follow Jesus. Do what he did. Upend the world and bring the new kingdom to earth. Do it now.

If Post-Rapture Radio is the literature of paranoia and revolution, it is also the literature of Christian proclamation. In this way, Rathbun pays his debt to the matron saint of American letters, Flannery O'Connor. The Christ-haunted Lamblove approximates O'Connor's famous preacher figures, and Rathbun ends one of his novel's sub-stories with a paraphrase of the ending of O'Connor's best short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." In that story, an escaped convict named the Misfit is the oddest kind of good man—to wit, a bad man God uses to extend a strange and awesome grace. Lamblove, an evangelical misfit who might be deemed harsh and antisocial by many of our contemporary standards, is also an odd good man. Even as he comes to a strange and violent end, and even as we recoil at some of his harsher criticisms, he has something good to proclaim and something to teach us about the always strange and awesome grace of God.

Patton Dodd is author of My Faith So Far and a Ph.D. candidate in religion and literature at Boston University.

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Post-Rapture Radio is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.

More information is available from Jossey-Bass.

Rathbun is a pastor at House of Mercy in St. Paul.

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April (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50