The Christians most devoted to this millenarian tradition are not poor and they are not suffering. They constitute a significant percentage of the population in America. They influence, if not control outright, most of the levers of power in American society. If they are not marginalized like the poor of the Roman Empire, how can these beliefs continue to be so appealing?
The answer is that they still consider themselves to be marginalized: culturally, socially, and politically. They believe themselves to be an oppressed minority, persecuted and despised for their beliefs. Their Bible tells them that this will be the case and, since the Bible is the Word of God, they expect it to be true. This expectation frames how they view everything in society, leading them to see persecution and marginalization everywhere they look.
The politics of the Christian Right in America is, in so many ways, the politics of religious populism and resentment. They resent the fact that abortion is still legal. They resent the increasing acceptance of gays. They resent not being able to use the power of the state to promote their beliefs. They resent how the media delivers messages contrary to their religious doctrines. They resent that so many of the cultural elite don't share their religious premises. They resent how the rest of the West is becoming ever more secular.
Instead of accommodating modernity, conservative evangelicals flee it and embrace a doctrine that is especially scorned not only by the secular society but also by many other Christians: apocalyptic millenarianism. They believe in the literal truth of a particular interpretation of the book of Revelations. Indeed, an absolute and unwavering devotion to their interpretation of Revelations is treated as a test of loyalty to the Bible and Christianity as a whole. If you aren't a "fool for Christ" then you aren't a real Christian.
The fact that all of this is occurring despite their numbers, their influence, and their obvious power only adds fuel to the fire — but in an unconscious way, I think, because it's rare to find them openly admitting to how much power and influence they have. Doing so would require acknowledging that they aren't the despised minority that their arguments require them to assume.
There is a gap here between perception and reality. Christians are no more "marginalized" than anyone else — we don't see, after all, the state promoting Hinduism or the media promoting messages with Buddhist themes. Unlike Hindus and Buddhists, however, conservative evangelical Christians think that American culture and politics should be doing more to reinforce their beliefs. This is a "Christian Nation" which in their ideology means that Christians (especially their type of Christians) should enjoy a preferred status with special privileges unavailable to other religious groups.
There is an inherent contradiction involved here. If the Christian Right were to actually succeed in their various political and cultural struggles, then they would find it much more difficult to maintain the fiction that they are a persecuted, marginalized group. Most groups would consider this a dream come true, but such a situation would contradict the Bible's promise that they would be persecuted and despised for their beliefs. Thus the leaders of the Christian Right are pursuing goals that they know they can't, or shouldn't, achieve. If they achieve them, they will have to find new enemies to demonize and pretend are the oppressors.
That is, after all, how the politics of resentment typically operates.
