Sociologists, historians, and other researchers generally recognize the complex interaction between religious doctrine and culture: each influences, changes, and reacts to the other. Religious believers tend not to understand this, though, imagining that their doctrines are independent of (if not prior to) the culture around them. This prevents them from better understanding their own beliefs — and if they can't understand the sources of their beliefs, they can't critically evaluate them.
It doesn't take much investigation to notice that Christianity in America is very different from the forms of Christianity we find elsewhere in the world — there can even be significant differences when compared to European Christianity, which should in theory be fairly close. What's more, some of the doctrines and traditions which believers regard as among the most important or fundamental to their religion may in fact be far more dependent upon contingent cultural circumstances than religion itself.
In Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America, Amy Johnson Frykholm writes:
Most scholars of American religion agree that the rapture [as a theological doctrine] emerged in American Protestant culture at a moment when conservative Protestants felt a decline of cultural power. Two related trajectories of modernity — urbanization and immigration — began to transform an American landscape that had belonged to the powerful Protestant majority for decades. These two forces portended the decline of traditional life and a loss of a sense of cultural security and control.
Between 1865 and 1900, 13.5 million people immigrated to the United States. Many of these were Roman Catholics and Jews. While non-Protestant religious communities were certainly intimidated and exploited by the Protestant majority, Protestants also felt threatened. Historian Timothy Weber suggests that evangelicals began to feel that “something solid had gone out of American life” and that their world was in rapid decline.
It retrospect, it makes some sense that rapture theology would arise as a reaction to the cultural, political, and social decline of conservative evangelical Protestants. Rapture theology is the ultimate revenge fantasy, teaching Christians that the world is so wicked and sinful — especially in the horrible persecution of Christians — that it will have to be essentially destroyed before the second coming of Christ.
Before that awful time, however, the truly faithful Christians will be “raptured” — in other words, they will be rescued just before God visits unimaginable death, destruction, and suffering on the world and humanity. God is depicted as particularly savage here, but that savagery is justified by how wicked the world has become. Sinners are only getting what they deserve — since the world is evil and only “true believers” are good, then only those believers need to be rescued (raptured) while the rest can just go to hell.
And how do Christians know that the world is so wicked? Well, the world must be wicked because it is ignoring the values, principles, and doctrines of conservative evangelical Christianity. A moral and virtuous culture would listen to these Christians and institute their recommendations for a more just, godly society. Rejecting Christians' demands is just proof that they must be punished for all eternity.
If these Christians had more cultural, social, and political power, it might be easier for them to believe that there is still some essential goodness that would be worth saving. In the end, though, their inability to exercise enough power over others in these particular cultural, political, and economic circumstances is driving a theological doctrine with little-to-no scriptural backing.
It’s no wonder that rapture theology continues to be popular among conservative evangelicals in America because their social, cultural, and political power continues to decline relative to other ideological forces. It’s also no wonder that this theology hasn’t really taken hold in other cultures. Even where conservative evangelicals don’t wield much power, they have come to terms with it in a way that American Christians have not.
