Why SWNID Hates Dispensationalism, And Those Who Misunderstand Its Influence

We thank gentle reader Carl for directing our attention to the interesting but hyper-loquacious blog "Slacktivist," which seems partly occupied with laying bare the silliness, biblical and otherwise, of the Left Behind series.

Our contempt for Left Behind and other dispensationalist sensationalism is probably too well known. So we are glad to direct gentle readers' attention to another's bloviation on the subject.

However, we note that our Slacktivist friend does what many of the political left tend to do with the excesses of the dispensationalist-prophecy-and-futurism crowd. Namely, he seriously overestimates the influence that the details of such stuff has on the political thinking of religious adherents. Specifically, we note this passage from the blog, offered at the end of the analysis of how Left Behind interprets the warrior horseman of Revelation 6:2 as a global peacemaker, through the opaque lens of Daniel 9:27:

That right there is why "peacemakers" are suspect. More specifically, that --precisely that passage of scripture and a supposedly "literal" reading of it -- is why millions of American evangelicals believed it was wrong for President George H.W. Bush to work with the United Nations to build a multinational coalition for the first Gulf War. That verse is why millions of American evangelicals supported President George W. Bush's refusal to do so for the current war in Iraq. It may even be part of why Bush fils himself has such contempt for the U.N.

Well, we agree that the exegesis is without merit, to put it mildly. However, we insist that there is no sociological data whatsoever to suggest that "millions of American evangelicals" made anything close to these connections in the run-up to either phase of the Gulf War, or that thousands of their preachers made such a point, or that Dubya ever thought any such thing. It is pure fantasy to imagine as much.

Politically, the influence of dispensational prophetic interpretation has extended in one area and one only, albeit with considerable power: evangelicals' enthusiasm for America's support of Israel. That point has been extremely well documented. We do agree that lots of American evangelicals think it's their biblical obligation to support Israel unconditionally, as at least part of their blessedness in eternity is conditioned on such unwavering support.

But anything else is hardly palpable. The truth is, the details of dispensational prophetic interpretation are of interest mostly to people who are deeply into the stuff, and whose interests in the matter are regarded as eccentric even by those who adhere broadly to dispensationalism. Call those people "prophecy geeks," and recognize that they are as rare as they are unusual. Regular folks just aren't that interested. They'll maybe get a bit excited that a specific event, like 9/11, might play a role in biblical prophecy, or listen now and then to a broadcaster who likes to talk about the stuff, or occasionally get worried when a particular book, like 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988, but that fearful enthusiasm has a way of fading, and quickly. Their enthusiasm fades, we think, because the reasoning in this line of thinking is so unfathomably unreasonable and because the specific conclusions and applications so often shift with changing political events that few can sustain their attention.

But our friend "Slacktivist," who doesn't seem to spend a lot of time actually hanging out with real evangelicals in significant numbers, sees the particulars as so pervasive that they determine questions like whether the US ought to seek a coalition to invade Iraq.

SWNID stipulates, insists even, that many dispensationalists have a pessimism about government actions in the future that borders on fatalism. We attended a professional meeting not too long ago in which a Christian educator, commenting on the Spellings Commission's attempts last spring to enforce standardized assessment measures in higher education, say that he thought such measures were inevitable because "I believe the Bible teaches that we're headed toward one world government."

That was a seriously weird moment. But note what that outlook engenders. It does not merely suggest suspicion against international organizations. It also prompts suspicion of the United States' government's attempts to extend its power.

So our counter observation to Slacktivist would be that dispensational theology isn't what props up the so-called religious right's support for Bush's Iraq invasion. It can just as much prop up someone else's suspicion of anything that comes out of imperial Washington. It's much more complex than Slacktivist's oversimplification. Dispensational theology probably plays very little role shaping political opinions at this level of detail.

Folks on the left, however, including some evangelical Christians of the left, would like to make it as influential as all that. Leftist rhetoric in part depends on portraying the right as immoral or stupid, thereby preserving the image of leftist ideology as moral and informed. Claiming that those nuts (mis)believe the Bible literally* is a means of aligning them with the stupid, in turn taken advantage of by the immoral.

We are on a personal campaign to help people understand that the Bible doesn't really present a God who does lots of stupid stuff, all covered by CNN, on the way to a bitterly unfair final judgment. But we're also on a campaign to stop people blaming such points of view for effects that they don't actually have.

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*Our repeated call that we desist making grossly imprecise utterances about people taking the Bible literally are going unheeded. Literally.