"Left Behind": Evangelical Pornography?

Ken Morefield examines the outrageously popular saga, and considers how it plays to evangelical "appetites."

Left Behind

And listen to this...

Left Behind

It has been my argument that much of the success of Left Behind has been because its evangelical readers feel exactly that sort of anger at and powerless over those loved ones who reject their own Christianity as well as at those non-Christians who have mocked or marginalized them. The response has been to create a fantasy world where those loved ones who have injured “me” are humiliated and forced to repeatedly acknowledge their own inferiority to “me,” while those strangers who have hurt me are placed in fantasy scenarios where roles are reversed and my arguments are clearly superior, my thinking always awarded the last word. While it may be comforting to imagine such a world, it is worth thinking on whether our comfort is worth the price we pay when we purchase it by stereotyping and caricaturizing those who threaten or disrupt it.