Just re-read this - such a well written and researched essay! Thank you. Your analysis of 'rapture-theology' and its basis in a misguided misinterpretation of ancient texts is fascinating. It interests me that so many eighteenth-nineteenth century Protestant sects seemed to have put down deeper roots in the US than in Europe. (Maybe Europe just had a stronger Catholic taproot that resisted Protestantism? Or at least watered it down as Anglicanism?) The Latter Day Saints were of course born in the USA, but Jehovah's Witnesses and Plymouth Brethren and Mennonites (I believe?) all grew out of radical Protestantism in Europe and are all in for the literal readings of the bible that you describe here. And, like Mormons, they all seem to have found more fruitful soil in the USA than elsewhere. New world new religion? Why is that?
This isn’t really my analysis; it’s pretty much consensus among Bible scholars, who unfortunately are at odds with the evangelical conservative groups in the US who have influence beyond their numbers. As for the prominence of the Rapture in the US: it’s a thing for most Evangelicals including here in Ao/NZ. Also, Darby made several trips to the US and found congregations there more receptive to his ideas generally. Earlier history such as the Great Awakenings had led to religious expression being more populist, ecstatic, literalist, Pentecostalist, prior to Darby. Whole religious communities had decamped to the US for religious freedom, and they weren’t your mother’s high anglicans. They were the puritans and anabaptists and so on. Richard F Hofstadter’s 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” touches on the first US conspiracy theories: they were against Catholics and Freemasons. Christianity in the US has always had a strong sense of in-group.
Just re-read this - such a well written and researched essay! Thank you. Your analysis of 'rapture-theology' and its basis in a misguided misinterpretation of ancient texts is fascinating. It interests me that so many eighteenth-nineteenth century Protestant sects seemed to have put down deeper roots in the US than in Europe. (Maybe Europe just had a stronger Catholic taproot that resisted Protestantism? Or at least watered it down as Anglicanism?) The Latter Day Saints were of course born in the USA, but Jehovah's Witnesses and Plymouth Brethren and Mennonites (I believe?) all grew out of radical Protestantism in Europe and are all in for the literal readings of the bible that you describe here. And, like Mormons, they all seem to have found more fruitful soil in the USA than elsewhere. New world new religion? Why is that?
This isn’t really my analysis; it’s pretty much consensus among Bible scholars, who unfortunately are at odds with the evangelical conservative groups in the US who have influence beyond their numbers. As for the prominence of the Rapture in the US: it’s a thing for most Evangelicals including here in Ao/NZ. Also, Darby made several trips to the US and found congregations there more receptive to his ideas generally. Earlier history such as the Great Awakenings had led to religious expression being more populist, ecstatic, literalist, Pentecostalist, prior to Darby. Whole religious communities had decamped to the US for religious freedom, and they weren’t your mother’s high anglicans. They were the puritans and anabaptists and so on. Richard F Hofstadter’s 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” touches on the first US conspiracy theories: they were against Catholics and Freemasons. Christianity in the US has always had a strong sense of in-group.