slacktivist

L.B.: Yesterday's news

Left Behind, pg. 45

And but so anyway, Rayford Steele and LaHaye & Jenkins are moving along and so must we.

Finally in the terminal, Rayford found crowds standing in lines behind banks of phones. Most had angry people waiting, yelling at callers who shrugged and redialed.

Left Behind was written in 1995, before cell phones had reached the tipping point and become indispensable and omnipresent. Much of the book therefore is occupied with the now anachronistic-seeming logistics of pay phones and pre-cell communications. We've already explored this a bit in discussing Buck Williams' dubious splicing of a dial-up modem and an airphone.

This is a reminder of how much our communications world has changed in just the last nine years. It's also a reminder, as Patrick Nielsen Hayden noted in comments to this post, that writing about the immediate future is difficult. I'm willing to give L&J credit for degree of difficulty here -- anticipating short-term technological changes is tricky. But you'd think they'd have gotten something right.

Airport snack bars and restaurants were already sold out or low on food, and all newspapers and magazines were gone. In shops where staffers had disappeared, looters walked off with merchandise.

What can explain this strange run on "newspapers and magazines"? Millions of people around the world have just disappeared. Actually, since all the children have disappeared, that would be billions of people. In the wake of such an event people would presumably be desperate for news. The morning editions of the Sun-Times and the Tribune would be full of yesterday's news -- events that would seem horribly trivial and out-of-date in the light of the tragedy that has just unfolded.

L&J haven't given us a clear idea of what time of day it is in Chicago (or what time of year it is, for that matter), but it seems unlikely that the papers would have managed -- between whenever the disappearances occurred and whenever it is that Rayford arrives at the terminal -- to produce and distribute afternoon extras in time for anything newsworthy to be in the racks at the airport newstands. Time, Newsweek and "Global Weekly" would be even more irrelevant with their stale summaries of the previous week's news.

As for the rest of the magazines -- the entertainment and style and sports glossies that make up the bulk of an airport newstand -- I can't begin to imagine what would prompt someone to think, "Oh the humanity! I'd better get me a copy of Elle." (And since airport newstands also reserve several feet of shelf-space for porn, the now-empty racks might suggest that O'Hare's mens rooms would be a very unpleasant place.)

The looting of other shops is similarly strange. I can understand people walking off with, say, the candy section because, hey, free Snickers. But why would people facing a serious apocalyptic calamity bother to walk off with an armful of Sears Tower sno-globes?

The preoccupation with pay phones seems anachronistic to us now because L&J failed to anticipate the cell phone revolution. But the biggest reason that the beginning of Left Behind seems dated and unreal has nothing to do with technological change.

The early chapters of the book are all about people responding in the aftermath of a world-shifting tragic event. We have since learned what such an event feels like. We saw how people responded, what became important and what was set aside. And it wasn't like this. These early chapters aren't just technologically dated, they also seem a bit September 10.

L.B.: Inhumanly profamily

Left Behind, pg. 45

Rayford Steele and Hattie Durham make the long walk back to the terminal, carefully threading their way past the smoldering wrecks of various crashed planes. "All around were ambulances and other emergency vehicles trying to get to ugly wreckage scenes," LaHaye & Jenkins tell us.

One pictures Rayford wheeling his little pilot's bag behind him, muttering G-rated curses under his breath as it pops up onto one wheel and drags on its side after bumping over the still-twitching body of one of the thousands of injured. "Two square miles of tarmac," Steele thinks, "and this jerk has to drag his fatally wounded self right here so I have to wheel around him? Like I don't have enough trouble already?"

Okay, that last scene doesn't actually appear in the book. LaHaye and Jenkins, like their hero, are wholly focused on moving along. The "ugly wreckage scenes" are not explored in any further detail -- they exist only as obstacles between Rayford and his family.

Here we see the "profamily" ethic of Timothy LaHaye's brand of religious conservatism at work. Rayford is, first and foremost, a husband and a father. The dead and the dying who surround him at the airport are strangers, untermenschen. They are not his family and therefore, according to LaHaye's profamily view, Steele is right to ignore them on his way back to Irene and the kids. (Even though, by now, Steele has a pretty good idea that Irene and the kids are long gone.)

Rayford Steele's single-minded tunnel-vision -- his ability to avoid even seeing the suffering of those outside of his immediate family -- is typical of the worst extremes of this profamily ethic as applied by the outer wing of America's religious right.

I don't wholly reject the idea at the heart of this "pro-family" approach. Marriage and parenthood are extraordinary bonds that would seem to entail some extraordinary responsibilities. Some of our obligations to our families do seem to take priority over some of our obligations to others.

Yet when these obligations are allowed to trump every other claim, something has gone horribly wrong.

I would suggest that what has gone wrong for "profamily" types like Steele and LaHaye is that they have confused priorities with boundaries.

My friend Dave Gushee is an ethicist, a Southern Baptist moderate who was among those purged in the conservative takeover of Southern Baptist Seminary. Dave's dissertation work, expanded into a book, involved the Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust. Specifically, he explored why it was that some people, at great personal risk, helped their Jewish neighbors in Nazi-occupied Europe while the majority did not.

Much of Dave's study involves what he calls "boundaries of moral obligation." One such boundary, for many, was the fear of putting one's own family at risk in order to rescue a neighbor or a stranger from certain death. Many of those who remained bystanders did so due to a kind of "profamily" ethic. They allowed a legitimate priority of moral obligation to become an illegitimate boundary of moral obligation.

It is only by erecting such boundaries that Rayford Steele is able to sidestep the suffering of strangers, picking his way across the airport to the terminal and refusing to let his gaze dwell on the "ugly wreckage" that surrounds him.

There's something deeply perverse and inhuman about a story in which we are asked to consider such a man "heroic."

L.B.: Carl Olson sits in

I'm not accustomed to being in total agreement with something posted at the National Review Online, but I have to offer a hearty "Amen" to Carl E. Olson's devastating dismissal of Glorious Appearing, the latest book in Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind series.

Olson is an orthodox Catholic and the author of Will Catholics Be Left Behind?: A Critique of the Rapture and Today's Prophecy Preachers. (For a long list of Olson's articles debunking apocalyptic Rapture-mania, see here.)

As such, he is offended by the strange 19th-century heresies that L&J peddle as biblical truth. And he's just as offended -- almost just as angry -- with their aesthetic and literary sins:

... episode #12, titled Glorious Appearing, is underwhelming and pedestrian, poor qualities for a novel about a Big Event. ...

Having read many of the other "Left Behind" books, I readily admit that I expected Glorious Appearing to be bloated, stilted, and corny. As it turns out, that combination would have been a welcome relief from the 400 pages of repetitive, numbing bombast that assaulted my weary eyes. ...

This apparent cynicism isn't a matter of theological triumphalism (I believe in the return of Jesus Christ) or literary snobbery. I've enjoyed books by Louis L'Amour, Robert Ludlum, and Wilbur Smith and have never mistaken them for literary giants, although they did have the commendable ability to tell a story, a talent not employed in the writing of Glorious Appearing. That is, unless you think a good story can consist of endless details about weaponry, vehicles, telecommunications, Palestinian geography, and premillennial dispensationalist theology, interrupted by the conversations of bland characters who elicit no sympathy whatsoever.

Olson also catches LaHaye in what is at best an arrogant delusion, at worst a lie. LaHaye told Pentecostal Evangel magazine that "Left Behind is the first fictional portrayal of events that are true to the literal interpretation of Bible prophecy." LB's premillennial dispensationalism is hardly based on an obvious or literal reading of the Bible, but let that pass for the moment. The problem here is that L&J's books are merely the latest in a long line of PMD novels -- novels from which L&J derived their basic template and borrowed many essential tropes.

I noted earlier how Buck Williams is plainly based on the journalist-protagonist Tom Hammond in Sydney Watson's 1916 Rapture novel The Twinkling of an Eye. Olson notes that many of the details of LB are "remarkably similar" to Salem Kirban's 666, a best-selling Rapture novel published in 1970 by Tyndale House -- L&J's publisher. (Olson explores these similarities in more detail in "Recycled Rapture.")

As Olson writes, the LB series:

... weren't the first Rapture novels, nor are they the last. Whether or not they are the most painful to read is still open for vigorous debate ...

Many others have written scathing reviews of the newest book in L&J's series, but what sets Olson's review apart is that he rejects the authors' claim that the theology informing their series is biblical, or even Christian:

First, the "left-behind" theology is not the "Christian" or the "biblical" view of the end times, despite what LaHaye says, or what the media sometimes echoes. Premillennial dispensationalism and the belief in a Rapture event separate from the Second Coming is rejected, either explicitly or implicitly, by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and nearly every major Protestant denomination. Dispensationalism, with its particular views about the nature of the Church and the role of Jews in end-times events, was created in the 1830s by former Anglican priest John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and later systematized in the United States by C. I. Scofield (1843-1921) and Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952). Hal Lindsey's 1970 best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth took popular dispensationalism into secular culture, a feat repeated by the "Left Behind" series.

As Evangelical scholar and Wheaton College graduate Ronald M. Henzel has decisively shown in his book, Darby, Dualism, and the Decline of Dispensationalism, Darby built his entire theology on a radical dualism between heaven and earth that was unprecedented in the history of orthodox Christian thought.

A key phrase here is "despite ... what the media sometimes echoes." Olson puts his finger on what I find infuriating in the vast majority of coverage of the LB series. Naive and ignorant journalists (such as Morley Safer) simply take at face value L&J's preposterous claim that they are presenting biblical, Christian theology. They're not. And by repeating this claim, even otherwise critical reviews wind up bolstering LaHaye's dubious authority as a "biblical scholar."

I have no problem with people writing novels based upon their religious beliefs, no matter what those beliefs may be. Authors like L. Ron Hubbard or Ayn Rand had every right to promote their esoteric pseudoreligious claims in didactic novels. But authors do not have the right to pretend these views are something they are not. You can't write a book about Scientology or objectivism and then claim that it's actually based on Buddhism or Santeria. You can't write a book about premillennial dispensationalism and then claim that it's actually based on orthodox Christianity.

I'm not arguing for the persecution of heretics. I'm devoted to pluralism -- let a million flowers bloom. But don't write an Arminian novel and then tell me it represents strict Calvinism. Don't write a Mennonite novel and then tell me it represents Roman Catholicism.

And don't fecklessly fictionalize a 19th-century American mistake and tell me it represents "biblical Christianity."

L.B.: Scream morality

Left Behind, pp. 43-45

Rayford, Christopher and Hattie were the last three off the 747.

Christopher, you may remember, was Rayford's first officer on the flight. Up until now he's played little part in the story beyond handling the controls while Rayford talked to Hattie and wandered the plane. But we're about to learn that Christopher Smith is a villain -- at least according to the code of Left Behind -- and therefore he is doomed.

... The bus driver insisted that the crew ride with him and the last passengers, but Rayford refused. "I can't see passing my own passengers as they walk to the terminal," he said. "How would that look?"

Christopher said, "Suit yourself, Cap. You mind if I take him up on his offer?"

Rayford glared at him. "You're serious?"

"I don't get paid enough for this."

"Like this was the airline's fault. Chris, you don't mean it."

"The heck I don't. By the time you get up there, you'll wish you'd ridden too."

"I should write you up for this."

"Millions of people disappear into thin air and I should worry about getting written up for riding instead of walking? Later, Steele."

It's not clear why Rayford would be able to "write up" Smith for accepting the airline's preference that its crew ride back to the terminal. "It was a long walk," we later read, "and several times they waved off rides."

Smith seems to be doing nothing more than following the moral code clearly outlined by Buck Williams in the previous chapter:

"I'ts OK in a situation like this to think of yourself a little. That's what I'm doing."

But Smith here violates the strange code of chivalry that governs ethics in Left Behind. Even worse, he flouts the authority of Rayford Steele -- and therefore of Tim LaHaye himself. No character can do that and live.

L.B. has its own moral rules that function like the rules for slasher flicks that Jamie Kennedy's character outlines in Scream. By violating those rules, Smith dooms himself as surely as that teenager who says, "Don't believe those crazy stories. Let's sneak off into the woods and have sex."

Hattie refuses to follow Smith off the cliff:

Rayford shook his head and turned to Hattie. "Maybe I'll see you up there. If you can get out of the terminal, don't wait for me."

"Are you kidding? If you're walking, I'm walking."

"You don't need to do that."

"After that dressing-down you just gave Smith? I'm walking."

"He's first officer. We ought to be the last off the ship and first to volunteer for emergency duty."

By "volunteer for emergency duty" Steele does not mean, you know, actually volunteering for emergency duty. Don't be silly. He means not accepting a ride back to the terminal.

As they walk back, LaHaye and Jenkins tell us, "All around were ambulances and other emergency vehicles trying to get to ugly wreckage scenes." Steele is, in other words, having to thread his way through people who were actually doing "emergency duty." He does so, successfully, without volunteering in even a single case. The moral code of L.B. does not have anything to do with helping people in need.

Hattie fatally misreads Smith's violation of L.B.'s code of chivalry:

"Well, do me a favor and consider me part of your crew, too," she tells Steele. "Just because I can't fly the thing doesn't mean I don't feel some ownership. And don't treat me like a little woman."

Just as it was a violation of the code for Smith to ride while little women walked, so too it is a violation for Hattie to act like a man by refusing the ride. She's doomed too.

L.B.: Buck deplanes

Left Behind, pp. 41-43

While we the readers were busy turning the page to the beginning of Chapter 3, Rayford Steele was making a risky and precarious landing on the narrow, smoke-filled runways of Chicago's O'Hare Airport. I'm sure it was terribly exciting, but LaHaye and Jenkins felt it was best not to let us read about it.

As Chapter 3 begins, they pick up where they left off -- with an exciting discussion of airport logistics:

Hattie Durham and what was left of her crew encouraged passengers ...

... what was left of the passengers ...

... to study the safety cards in their seat pockets. Many feared they would be unable to jump and slide down the chutes, especially with their carry-on luggage. They were instructed to remove their shoes and to jump seatfirst onto the chute. Then crew members would toss down their shoes and bags. ...

I know what you're thinking: Millions of people worldwide have disappeared. Every child and infant on the planet is gone. Death and destruction litter the landscape. So how will these passengers get their checked baggage?

... They were advised not to wait in the terminal for their checked baggage. That, they were promised, would eventually be delivered to their homes. No guarantees when.

So you see, the situation is serious. Now let's watch as Buck Williams puts the moves on Hattie:

Buck Williams gave Hattie his card and got her phone number, "just in case I get through to your people before you do."

"You're with Global Weekly?" she said. "I had no idea."

"And you were going to send me to my room for tampering with the phone."

Even amidst the post-apocalyptic chaos, chicks dig guys who work for newsweeklies. (I've read that Joe Klein has to beat 'em off with a stick.) Buck secures the digits.

Now Buck says his farewells to Harold's wife. The reader, like Buck, never learns her name:

When he opened the bin to pull down his leather bag, he found the old man's hat and jacket still perched atop it. Harold's wife sat staring at Buck, her eyes full, jaw set. "Ma'am," he said quietly, "would you want these?"

The grieving woman gratefully gathered in the hat and coat, and crushed them against her chest as if she would never let them go. She said something Buck couldn't hear. He asked her to repeat it. "I can't jump out of any airplane," she said.

Even poor Harold's wife is obsessed with logistics. You might think that some of the people on the plane whose loved ones had vanished would refuse to leave. They might want to stick around to see if they reappeared as inexplicably as they had gone. You might also expect that at least one of them would have gone into shock, or perhaps a crazed parent snapping, tearing the plane apart in a mad frenzy to find their lost child. But no, just like our heroes, they're mainly concerned with getting from point A to point B.

Buck carefully laid his laptop and case in among his clothes. With his bag zipped, he hurried to the front of the line, eager to show others how easy it was ...

Another cool thing about working for a major newsweekly magazine is that you get to cut to the front of the line. Chicks dig that too. It shows them that you know you're special.

Over the last two pages, Buck has come across as a bit of a pushy, swollen-headed jerk. That's what makes the next little scene so surprising. What happens next was so unexpected to me that I'm almost inclined to say I liked it:

... he clutched his bag across his chest, took a quick step and threw his feet out in front of him.

A bit enthusiastic, he landed not on his seat but on his shoulders, which threw his feet over the top of his head. He picked up speed and hit the bottom with his weight shifting forward. The buggy-whip centripetal force slammed his stockinged feet to the ground and brought his torso up and over in a somersault that barely missed planting his face on the concrete.

It's slapstick, but I like slapstick. The scene loses a bit of its comic, Blake Edwardsian kick when Buck ends up slamming the back of his head on the concrete and jumps up, his hair "already matted with blood." (In general, slapstick should avoid profuse bleeding.* A big lump on the back of his head would've been funnier than sticky gore.)

He quickly retrieved his shoes and began jogging toward the terminal ...

He may be injured, but he's still Buck Williams. He's got places to go.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Some exceptions that come to mind are a handful of Monty Python sketches, that SNL bit with Dan Ackroyd as Julia Child, and Itchy and Scratchy. From these examples we can perhaps discern a corollary rule: If you're going to have blood in your slapstick, make sure you've got a lot of blood.

L.B.: The evil of banality

Left Behind, pp. 35-39

As our heroes prepare to touch down in the shattered, post-"rapture" world, they survey the damage, the consequences -- so much loss, death, disaster and calamity -- and they realize what this means: a logistical nightmare.

That's the theme of these pages, and a major theme of the next chunk of Left Behind. LaHaye and Jenkins present glimpses of mass carnage, but almost always from the perspective of how this makes it inconvenient for our heroes to travel from point A to point B. L&J are like a commuter who sees on the morning news that a school bus has exploded on the expressway, killing all 37 children on board, and whose only reaction is, "That's gonna slow down my commute."

As [pilot Rayford Steele] settled into a holding pattern miles from O'Hare, the full impact of the tragedy began to come into view. ...

Steele's view. Not the readers'. L&J don't show us much.

... Flights from all over the country were being rerouted to Chicago. Rayford needed to stay in priority position after flying across the eastern seabord and then over the Atlantic before turning back. It was not Rayford's practice to communicate with ground control until after he landed, but now the air-traffic control tower was recommending it. He was informed that visibility was excellent, despite intermittent smoke from wreckages on the ground, but that landing would be risky and precarious because the two open runways were crowded with jets. They lined either side, all the way down the runway. Every gate was full, and none were backing out. Every mode of human transport was in use, busing passengers from the ends of the runways back to the terminal. ...

Note the smoke from wreckages -- plural -- on the ground. Nothing to see here. Move along.

But, Rayford was told, he would likely find that his people -- at least most of them -- would have to walk all the way. All remaining personnel had been called in to serve, but they were busy directing planes to safe areas. The few buses and vans were reserved for the handicapped, elderly and flight crews. Rayford passed the word along that his crew would be walking.

L&J present the airport as being as narrowly, logistically focused as our heroes. Wrecked planes litter the ground. "All remaining personnel" are called in. Not to search for survivors in the wreckage. Not to douse the flames of the burning, twisted metal and corpses littering the runways. But to "direct planes" and to drive buses and vans so that surviving passengers will not be overly inconvenienced.

L&J want to provide a sense of drama and suspense. Seeing no potential for drama in those "wreckages on the ground" they instead turn to the dramatic and suspenseful situation of Buck Williams, who is working on his laptop computer as the plane approaches Chicago:

By the time the plane began its descent into Chicago, Buck had been able to squeeze onto only one briefly freed-up line to his computer service, which prompted him to download his waiting mail. This came just as Hattie announced that all electronic devices must be turned off. ...

Omigod! What's going to happen?!? Will our hero be able to "download his waiting mail" in time? What if he's forced to stop before he's finished? It could be hours before he's able to read about the latest features available in the next AOL upgrade ...

With an acumen he didn't realize he possessed, Buck speed-tapped the keys that retrieved and filed all his messages, downloaded them, and backed him out of the linkup in seconds. Just when his machine might have interfered with flight communications, he was off-line ...

Whew! That was close! Fortunately, our hero is a master typist.

Hattie Durham comes by, unaware of Buck's narrow brush with e-mail catastrophe. She's weeping, and with the trained eye of an expert reporter, Buck intuits something is wrong:

"Mr. Williams," she sobbed, "you know we lost several old people, but not all of them. And we lost several middle-aged people, but not all of them. And we lost several people your age and my age, but not all of them. We even lost some teenagers."

He stared at her. What was she driving at?

"Sir, we lost every child and baby on this plane."

"How many were there?"

"More than a dozen. But all of them! Not one was left."

L&J here are making a case for some notion of an "age of accountability," which they (and we) will get into in more detail later, but what's interesting here is that Hattie seems to be a much better reporter than Buck.

"You know ..." she tells him, but he doesn't know. He has been too busy with important journalist stuff, like checking his e-mail, to bother with any basic examination of who was and wasn't missing. It's up to Hattie to figure out what is perhaps the most devastating aspect of this story -- all of the children have disappeared, all of them. But even after she tells him, it doesn't seem to sink in. Nowhere -- here or anywhere in the book, really -- does Buck Williams, GIRAT, consider that perhaps the spontaneous vanishing of every parent's child across the globe might be, you know, a story angle.

What is Buck thinking about instead? What else? Logistics. Travel arrangements.

Having just cut through the cloud bank ...

"Cloud bank?" I thought visibility was excellent ...

... the plane allowed passengers a view of the Chicago area. Smoke. Fire. Cars off the road and smashed into each other and guardrails. Planes in pieces on the ground. Emergency vehicles, lights flashing, picking their way around the debris.

As O'Hare came into view, it was clear no one was going anywhere soon.

I didn't cut anything there. That's the progression, the response of our heroes and our authors: Smoke, carnage, not "going anywhere soon." It's bizarre. It's inhuman. And it happens again and again in this book.

The most charitable explanation is that L&J are providing a subtly unreliable narrative. Buck and Rayford are not yet redeemed at this point in the story. Perhaps L&J are artfully trying to suggest that this is the unregenerate nature of fallen humanity without God -- to consider only ourselves and our narrow self-interest, to ignore the pain and need and suffering of others to such an extent that we barely even acknowledge its existence except in terms of how it impedes or inconveniences our own lives.

But this theory doesn't stand up. Jerry Jenkins ain't Nabokov and the narrator here isn't a persona. The narrator(s) is/are the author(s) and the reader is expected to accept the account and perspective we are given. Later in the book and the series -- long after Rayford and Buck have allegedly been born-again, baptized and sanctified -- our heroes behave and relate to the world in the same way, with the same egocentric, compassionless tunnel-vision.

This is what LaHaye and Jenkins believe it means to be a Christian. This is what LaHaye and Jenkins believe it means to be a human. Hannah Arendt gave a name to this perspective: "the banality of evil." The subject of her book, like the heroes of Left Behind, was a man primarily focused on travel arrangements.

... it was clear no one was going anywhere soon. There were planes as far as the eye could see, some crashed and burning, the others gridlocked in line. People trudged through the grass and between vehicles toward the terminal. The expressways that led to the airport looked like they had during the great Chicago blizzards, only without the snow.

Cranes and wreckers were trying to clear a path through the front of the terminal so cars could get in and out, but that would take hours, if not days. A snake of humanity wended its way slowly out of the great terminal buildings, between the motionless cars, and onto the ramps. People walking, walking, walking, looking for a cab or a limo.

It's not just the prose here that's awful ("like ... the blizzards, only without the snow"), it's the stunted vision of what L&J are trying to describe. They make the apocalypse sound like trying to get out of the parking lot at Shea Stadium after a game.

Buck began plotting how he would beat the new system. Somehow, he had to get moving and get out of such a congested area. The problem was, his goal was to get to a worse one: New York.

Buck has to get to New York because he's a reporter. And there's obviously nothing happening here in Chicago that might be worth covering.

The chapter closes with the suspenseful account of Rayford Steele's landing of the plane on the smoke-filled, crowded runway. L&J have heightened the tension by telling us that this landing will be "risky and precarious." And now for the dramatic payoff. Rayford cautions his passengers:

... to stay seated with their seatbelts fastened until he turned off the seat belt sign, because privately he knew this would be his most difficult landing in years. He knew that he could do it, but it had been a long time since he had had to land a plane among other aircraft.

Rayford envied whoever it was in first class who had the inside track on communicating by modem. He was desperate to call Irene, Chloe and Ray Jr. On the other hand, he feared he might never talk to them again.

That's it. End of chapter. The next one starts with the plane already on the ground. As it turns out, the suspenseful account of the landing is neither suspenseful nor an account.

L.B.: God took my copilot

Left Behind, pp. 34-35

Rayford Steele sat ashen faced in the cockpit. Half an hour from touchdown in Chicago, he had told the passengers everything he knew. The simultaneous disappearance of millions all over the globe had resulted in chaos far beyond imagination ...

So far beyond imagination that LaHaye and Jenkins scarcely even try to imagine it for us.

... He thought, but didn't say, how grateful he was to have been in the air when this event had taken place. What confusion must await them on the ground! Here, in a literal sense, they were above it all. They had been affected, of course. People were missing from everywhere. But except for the staff shortage caused by the disappearance of three crew members, the passengers didn't suffer the way they might have had they been in traffic or ...

And here it finally occurs to unsaved, and therefore "left behind," pilot Rayford Steele the central message of the book's first chapter:

... if he and Christopher had been among those who disappeared.

Above all else, L&J remind us, you should never, ever get on a plane with a born-again pilot.

I couldn't help but be reminded of this fundamental rule in early February when news broke of an American Airlines pilot who had asked all the Christians on his plane to raise their hands, said something about "crazy" people and generally scared the bejebus out of everybody on board.

If you wanted the real story of what the pilot actually said, and why, the only news outlet that had it was the only one that happened, by chance, to have a reporter there on the plane: The Advocate.

Advocate.com editor-in-chief Bruce C. Steele (no relation) was on the plane and heard the announcement by pilot Roger Findiesen. And he interviewed Findiesen after landing.

Steele's interview is a model of allowing a subject to speak for themselves in their own voice. The story Steele and Findiesen relate is one of an evangelical expressing his passion and faith in an inappropriate way, and an inappropriate setting. Yet Steele is charitable -- he respects Findiesen's conviction, no matter how clumsily it was expressed.

The oddly hopeful thing about this entire report is how the interaction between Steele and Findiesen utterly contradicts the standard tropes about evangelical activists and homosexual advocates. Steele affords the pilot courtesy and respect. Findiesen, in turn, exhibits no suspicion or distrust of the reporter:

Findiesen's identity has been shielded by American Airlines, but the pilot spoke candidly to The Advocate and Advocate.com editor in chief Bruce C. Steele, who identified himself to the captain at the end of the flight. Findiesen then confirmed to Steele his identity, the spelling of his name, and that his home base is Washington, D.C. At no time did Findiesen mention homosexuality or say anything antigay. During the three- to five-minute interview, he was positive and upbeat and interested only in explaining the importance of witnessing about his faith.

What Findiesen said, as best the stunned passengers could recall once they were able to move about the cabin and confer after Flight 34 took off, was this: "I just got back from a mission," Findiesen said after making a routine announcement about the plane being second in line for takeoff. "You know, they say about half of Americans are Christians. I'd just like the Christians on board to raise their hands."

In the suddenly hushed coach section of the airplane, a few nervous passengers raised one hand, most no higher than shoulder level, none above tops of the seats.

"I want everyone else on board to look around at how crazy these people are," the pilot continued, with an intonation suggesting he was using the word "crazy" in a positive, even admiring manner. Evidently addressing the non-Christian passengers, he concluded that they could "make good use of [the flight], or you can read your paper and watch the movie."

The movie on the flight was Under the Tuscan Sun, with Diane Lane and Sandra Oh as Lane's lesbian best friend.

Findiesen did not directly ask Christians to witness, nor did he explicitly ask non-Christians to talk to the people he imagined were raising their hands, but the implication that he hoped such interactions would take place was clear, and he confirmed his desire to foster religious discussion in his interview with Advocate.com.

Capt. Findiesen believes that God wanted him to speak to the passengers on his plane. Considering the backlash of negative publicity this story generated, I wonder about that.

But I do think that maybe God wanted Bruce Steele on that plane to be the one reporter who could get this story right, providing a model -- a witness, even -- that we can show one another not merely tolerance, but respect.

L.B.: Flirting with disaster

Left Behind, pp. 32-34

As the GIRAT, Buck Williams' first priority when confronted with a mysterious disaster is to file a report to his editors.

This is part of what separates Buck from the pack. Other, lesser reporters might busy themselves with taking notes, interviewing witnesses and gathering as many facts as possible. But, like real-life superstar evangelical reporter Jack Kelley, Buck doesn't need to do all that. After a cursory glance around the cabin, and without interviewing a single passenger, Buck is ready to file his first story. It's the same report-first, figure-out-what-happened-later approach that has helped to make CNN America's most trusted source for news.

After splicing his laptop's dial-up modem onto an airphone, Buck -- who apparently is using Compuserve or Prodigy -- is ready to e-mail his editor, but he's interrupted by Hattie, the head flight attendant.

Any other reporter might have seen this as an opportunity to gather more information on what happened on the plan. The head flight attendant, one might think, would be an ideal witness to describe what had occurred with the trained eye of a professional.

Yet Buck remains focused on the task at hand. His only goal is to convince her not to interrupt him. Her only goal is to defend the integrity of the jet's air phones:

Hattie grabbed a computer printout from her pocket and located Buck's name. "Mr. Williams, I expect you to cooperate. I don't want to bother the pilot with this."

Dozens of people on the plane have mysteriously disappeared. How many, exactly? And who were they? Hattie, the flight attendant responsible for those passengers, doesn't know. Buck, the journalist reporting on the disappearances, doesn't know.

If only they had a list of everyone who boarded the plane and their corresponding seat numbers. Then Hattie would be able to collect the information she will surely need for her report to the airline and Buck would be able to write the lead to the story he is reporting ("XX passengers vanished from Pan-Continental flight ...").

Hattie is, of course, holding exactly such a list in her hand, yet it doesn't occur to either of them to do their jobs in this way. Instead, the dispute over the jury-rigged air phone becomes the pretext for some flirting. "Beautiful Hattie," Buck calls her, suavely demonstrating his ability to read her nametag:

Buck reached for her hand. She stiffened but didn't pull away. "Can we talk for just a second?"

"I'm not going to change my mind, sir. Now please, I have a plane full of frightened people."

"Aren't you one of them?" He was still holding her hand.

I suppose Buck gets points for not correcting her -- the plane is now only partly full of frightened people, after all. Anyway, the two strike a deal: she'll let him send e-mail via the air phone if he agrees to try to contact her family. In defending this deal, Buck summarizes the ethics that will shape our heroes' behavior throughout the rest of the novel and the series:

"It's OK in a situation like this to think of yourself a little. That's what I'm doing. ... You have to admit, when people disappear, some rules go out the window."

L.B.: Rayford "Mary Sue" Steele

The realm of "fan fiction" is one of the few places one can turn to reliably find prose as awful and implausible as the writing of Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

I have discovered, googling around, that there exists a sub-subculture of fanfic set in the apocalyptic world of L&J's "Left Behind" series.

This is not a world I choose to explore. I imagine that the writers of this fanfic are guilty of the same kinds of aesthetic, theological and political sins that L&J commit in their series of novels, and it is tempting to wade in and begin ridiculing the ridiculous there as well.

But one must keep in mind that L&J's disciples are also their victims. The perpetrators of these fanfic horrors do not have the imperial influence of their masters, nor are they making the tons of money that L&J are reaping from the worst books ever written.

So these poor LB fanfic writers deserve pity, not condemnation. In many versions of the vampire myth, killing the head vampire will free their minions of the curse. The best thing we can do for these poor souls writing LB fanfic is to continue trying to drive a stake through the evil, unbeating heart of their masters.

The sad world of fan fiction does, however, provide some insight into the underlying meaning of the LB series. I am indebted to Teresa Nielsen-Hayden for introducing me to the concept of "Mary Sue" stories. Teresa provides a helpful definition:

MARY SUE (n.): 1. A variety of story, first identified in the fan fiction community, but quickly recognized as occurring elsewhere, in which normal story values are grossly subordinated to inadequately transformed personal wish-fulfillment fantasies, often involving heroic or romantic interactions with the cast of characters of some popular entertainment. 2. A distinctive type of character appearing in these stories who represents an idealized version of the author. 3. A cluster of tendencies and characteristics commonly found in Mary Sue-type stories. 4. A body of literary theory, originally generated by the fanfic community, which has since spread to other fields (f.i., professional SF publishing) because it's so darn useful. The act of committing Mary Sue-ism is sometimes referred to as "self-insertion."

This wish-fulfillment and self-insertion pervades Left Behind.

By page 32, where we left off, readers have been introduced to three of the main characters: Rayford Steele, Cameron "Buck" Williams and Hattie Durham. These three are among the surviving passengers on a jumbo jet piloted by Steele that is about to make an emergency landing in Chicago.

Buck Williams is a world-famous, universally admired and envied writer, the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time. He's the perfect fantasy stand-in for Jenkins, a veteran ghostwriter and as-told-to hack whose career up until this series consisted mainly of trying to make other people look good.

Rayford Steele, the mature, commanding presence in the cockpit -- graying, but still attractive to women -- stands in for LaHaye. (Since Jenkins did the vast majority of the actual at-the-keyboard writing for these books, it's intriguing to consider whether the portrayal of Steele's warped sexuality was LaHaye's own idea, or if it reflects Jenkins' insights into his more-famous partner.)

And what of Hattie Durham, the servile, "drop-dead gorgeous" flight attendant? She represents, for the authors, a kind of Everywoman. She is sexually attractive and sexually available, and therefore must be punished for arousing naughty sensations in the hearts and loins of our heroes, who alternately hit on this poor woman, then push her away as a means of asserting their virtue and their authority. For the dual sins of being female and attractive, Hattie will soon find herself enslaved by the will of the Antichrist himself.

But I'm gettting ahead of myself. Now, where were we ... ?

= = = = = = = = = = = =

P.S.: From the e-mailbag:

Steve S. sent along this link to The Door interview with Jerry Jenkins (sort of).

And I forget who sent this in, but go see Apocamon: The Final Judgement.

L.B.: 60 Minutes falls asleep in church

"How many home runs did the quarterback shoot?"

That's the sort of question 60 Minutes might ask if they began covering sports with the same contextless, ignorant approach they sometimes take on matters of religion.

Amy Sullivan of Politicalaims has already commented on how 60 Minutes on Sunday confused evangelicals with fundamentalists, and thus totally distorted what Peter Gomes of Harvard had to say about the former by making it look like he was talking about the latter.

Morley Safer reported that evangelical Christians seem to have some kind of influence on the Republican Party. To anyone who's been alive and awake in America for the last three decades, this is old news. What was particularly strange about Safer's report was the way he seemed to think he had a hot scoop.

Poor Safer was out of his depth. He was not sure what an evangelical is, or who to ask about it, or how to evaluate what they told him. Safer came across as befuddled and asea -- the second-most embarrassing appearance on a news show this Sunday.

Howard Dean was widely criticized for putting the book of Job in the New Testament and for generally having a tin ear for matters of faith. But compared to Safer, Dean comes across like Jesse Jackson.

Safer's reporting on religion has the treacherous naivete of a babe in the woods -- or of a Paul Wolfowitz in Iraq. Like the Pentagon's Wolfowitz, Safer relies heavily on the distorted impression he gleans from unreliable fringe leaders. Safer's Chalabian native guides are none other than our old friends Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the co-authors of the heretical Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which may well be the Worst Books Ever Written.

Reporting on evangelical Christians shouldn't be that hard. Others have done it well. A simple Google search would have turned up scores of articles that might have pointed Safer to reliable, knowledgeable, mainstream native guides to this strange world of evangelicaldom. Steven Waldman of Beliefnet; the editorial boards of Christianity Today and Books & Culture magazines; Mark Noll, George Marsden and Nathan Hatch -- the prolific, go-to historians on the subject; Martin Marty -- the prolific, go-to historian on any part of American religion; PBS-favorite Randall Balmer; Edith Blumhofer of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College; seminary president Richard Mouw or pretty much anyone at Fuller Theological Seminary; church historian and Calvin College provost Joel Carpenter; Luis Lugo, Carpenter's successor at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life; John Green et al -- the premier number-crunchers of American Protestantism; George Barna; George Gallup ...

Any of these folks could have spared Morley Safer and 60 Minutes from the embarrassing, classic blunder of the clueless outsider -- mistaking the charismatic fringe voice for a representative of the majority.

Instead -- in a step that unwittingly parallels the market-driven ecclesiastical structure that afflicts too much of the evangelical church -- Safer just assumes that the authors of some best-selling books must be representative, legitimate and authoritatively orthodox.

Tim LaHaye has a substantial following (as does his wife, Beverly) in the fundamentalist world, but he has never been considered a representative of mainstream evangelicalism. Even by the loopy standards of the apocalyptic, premillennial dispensationalist branch of the evangelical family, LaHaye is a fringe figure compared to, say, the folks at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Let's put this bluntly, in the terms of an SAT-style analogy.

Tim LaHaye:evangelicalism :: Lyndon LaRouche:Democratic Party

Imagine a network news report on the Democratic Party based entirely on the perspective of LaRouche and a handful of his adherents and you'll get an idea of why Safer's report is upsetting to us evangelical types.

Of course, a lot of evangelicals probably didn't see this on 60 Minutes. The show airs Sunday evenings -- prayer meeting time.