http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/weekinreview/04kirk.html

April 4, 2004

WRATH AND MERCY

The Return of the Warrior Jesus
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WRITERS and artists have been imagining the Second Coming of Jesus for 2,000
years, but few have portrayed him wreaking more carnage on the unbelieving world
than Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

In their new apocalyptic novel, "Glorious Appearing," based on Dr. LaHaye's
interpretation of Biblical prophecies about the Second Coming, their Jesus
appears from the clouds on a white horse with a "conviction like a flame of
fire" in his eyes. With all the gruesome detail of a Hollywood horror movie,
Jesus eviscerates the flesh of millions of unbelievers merely by speaking.

"Men and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood," Dr.
LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins write. "It was as if the very words of the Lord had
superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin.'' The
authors add, "Even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes
melted and their tongues disintegrated."

Dr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins did not invent fire and brimstone. But some scholars
who study religion say that the phenomenal popularity of their "Left Behind"
series of apocalyptic thrillers - now the best-selling adult novels in the
United States - are part of a shift in American culture's image of Jesus. The
gentle, pacifist Jesus of the Crucifixion is sharing the spotlight with a more
muscular warrior Jesus of the Second Coming, the Lamb making way for the Lion.

Scholars who study religion in American culture say the trend partly reflects
the growing clout of evangelical Christians and the relative decline of the
liberal mainline Protestant denominations over the last 30 years. The image of a
fearsome Jesus who will turn the tables on the unbelieving earthly authorities
corresponds to a widespread sense among many conservative Christians that their
values are under assault in a culture war with the secular society around them.
The shift coincides with a surging interest in Biblical prophecies of the
apocalypse around the turn of the millennium, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11
and the two wars with Iraq. And the warlike image of Jesus also fits with
President George W. Bush's discussions of a godly purpose behind American
military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are signs of the same shift in Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the
Christ," which dealt almost exclusively with the submissive Jesus of the
Crucifixion. "When you see him stand up at the end of the movie, he reminds you
of Schwarzenegger,'' said Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston
University and author of "American Jesus," a new cultural history. "I think that
movie shows more of a macho Jesus, who, in this case, is brutalized instead of
brutalizing."

He added, "I definitely think the pendulum is swinging toward a darker, more
martial, macho concept of the Messiah."

Some worry that the turn toward a more warlike Jesus reflects a dangerous
tendency to see earthly conflicts in cosmic terms. "I think a lot of people are
looking at contemporary conflict around the world and seeing it as a kind of
religious war," said Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton. "And
there is no kind of conflict that becomes more intractable than when people are
convinced that they alone have access to God's truth and the other side are the
people of Satan."

But Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, called
the warrior Jesus of the "Left Behind" novels a healthy corrective, reminding
people that Jesus is judgmental as well as merciful. "The fear of God is a
worthy emotion," he said.

He argued that the wrathful Jesus in the book series was an antidote to what he
called "the effeminate Jesus" that has sometimes prevailed in the culture. "In
our stained-glass windows and our popular culture, Jesus is a kind of
marshmallowy, Santa Claus Jesus, which is not at all in keeping with the
gospels," he said.

The fight for a manly Jesus has been long-running. At the beginning of the 20th
century, some Christian critics railed against what they called "bearded lady''
portraits of Jesus of the Victorian era. But the battle over the manliness of
Jesus had settled down by the middle of the 20th century, when the relatively
liberal, mainline Protestant denominations were at their apex.

Few liberal Protestants believed in a literal hell or talked much about the
Second Coming. Their masculine but soft-spoken image of Jesus was exemplified by
the once-ubiquitous portrait "Head of Christ,'' made by Warner Sallman in 1941,
which depicted a handsome man looking serenely upward. "It is the classic Mr.
Rogers Jesus picture," Professor Prothero said in an interview.

But a less visible subculture of more evangelical Protestants held on to a far
sterner, more bellicose image of Jesus that centered on the apocalypse. Like Dr.
LaHaye, they maintained a darker "pre-millennialist'' view that the Bible
predicts a period of turmoil before Jesus returns in a final apocalyptic battle
to overthrow the Antichrist.

Bible scholars holding this view have often sought to apply Biblical prophecy to
current events, frequently taking the creation of the state of Israel as a
welcome sign that history is nearing a close. Dr. LaHaye's "Left Behind" series
starts when all the born-again are summoned to heaven in the Rapture. Then the
Antichrist uses the United Nations to create a single world government, world
currency and world religion - all signposts on the road to Armageddon, in Dr.
LaHaye's view. The Antichrist establishes his global capital at the Biblical
Babylon, now known as Baghdad.

The overarching themes in such Biblical interpretation also bear a strong
resemblance to contemporary talk of a culture war pitting secular liberals
against conservative Christians, said Timothy Weber, president of Memphis
Theological Seminary. "The culture war fits into the pre-millennialists'
expectation of the end of history - the decline of civilization, the breakdown
of morality, a general breakdown of order,'' he said. "The warrior Jesus returns
to set everything right again."

Until about 30 years ago, evangelical Christians who leaned toward such views
tended to shun engagement with politics or the larger culture as a little bit
dirty and a little bit pointless, said John Green, a political scientist at the
University of Akron who studies religion. But that changed around the 1970's,
when many conservative Christians began to feel that their traditional values
had come under attack by the secular culture around them. When conservative
Christians began to join the culture war, Dr. LaHaye was on the frontlines,
joining Jerry Falwell in founding the Moral Majority.

Not all evangelical Protestants agree with Dr. LaHaye, but they are much more
likely than other groups to sympathize with him. "The groups that had those
views are much more visible than they used to be,'' Professor Green said. "They
are more politically active than they were in the past.''

Even in the Catholic Church, which does not share Dr. LaHaye's interpretation of
the Second Coming, a growing number of conservatives, including Mr. Gibson,
identify with conservative Protestants, he said.

They have also helped put allies in the White House. President Ronald Reagan
occasionally alluded to Biblical prophecies of a final battle at Armageddon,
stirring fears among liberal Christians that he envisioned a nuclear showdown
with the Soviet Union.

President George W. Bush, a born-again Methodist, has not talked publicly about
Armageddon, but he has been unusually outspoken about the role of his faith in
both his own life and his foreign policy, suggesting the United States was doing
God's work by spreading freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For his part, Mr. Jenkins, co-author of "Glorious Appearing," acknowledged that
the "tough love" Jesus might not please everyone. "Some people might say, 'We
like thinking that Jesus is the man who spoke in paradoxes and beatitudes,' and
they might not want to find out that he is also the one who is going to judge at
the end of the world,'' he said, adding: "But, of course, that is the way it is
in the Bible."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company