Keeping the End in Mind: Left Behind, the Apocalypse and the Evangelical Imagination

Guest, Mathew

doi:10.1093/litthe/frs053

Keeping the End in Mind: Left Behind, the Apocalypse and the Evangelical Imagination

Guest, Mathew

Authors

Professor Mathew Guest m.j.guest@durham.ac.uk
Head Of Department

Abstract

The Left Behind novels, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, illustrate how rapture fiction has become established as a highly successful subgenre of Christian literature. However, their public reception—within popular and scholarly contexts—reflects an instrumentalisation of the novel that obscures their significance as cultural expressions of evangelical identity. This article challenges this tendency, drawing from social scientific research into reader negotiation of texts within the evangelical world, and argues that both processes of engaging with the novels, and the novels themselves, mirror an evangelicalism that is not simple, univocal or homogeneous, but is complex and conflicted.

Citation

Guest, M. (2012). Keeping the End in Mind: Left Behind, the Apocalypse and the Evangelical Imagination. Literature and Theology, 26(4), 474-488. https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frs053

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Dec 1, 2012
Deposit Date	Feb 28, 2012
Publicly Available Date	Mar 2, 2016
Journal	Literature and Theology
Print ISSN	0269-1205
Electronic ISSN	1477-4623
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	26
Issue	4
Pages	474-488
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frs053

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Copyright Statement
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Literature and Theology following peer review. The version of record Guest, Mathew (2012). Keeping the End in Mind: Left Behind, the Apocalypse and the Evangelical Imagination. Literature and Theology 26(4): 474-488 is available online at: http://litthe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/frs053?.