And I beheld an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, "Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth..."

(Revelation, 8:13)

IF NOTHING ELSE, the Book of Revelation is one of the great page-turners in history. We meet giant locusts with gold crowns atop their human heads and bizarre beasts with eyes everywhere and the countenances of a lion, an eagle, a man, and a calf. The four horsemen of the apocalypse, of course, forever thunder through our imagination, as do the dreaded things that come in sets of seven: seven seals, seven trumpets, seven angels. Jesus appears, too, saying "I am Alpha and Omega and have the keys of hell and of death." His eyes burn with flame "and out of his mouth" comes "a sharp two-edged sword." The imagery is glorious, the fury of the seven-year destruction horrifying, and, judging by two millennia of disagreement, the Book can be used to prove just about anything you want to believe.

It's no surprise that within evangelical culture there is a grand tradition of apocalyptic films, books, and radio plays inspired by that singular work. The top books on the Publisher's Weekly religion best-seller list right now and for the last four years have come from the most popular Revelation novelization effort ever, the Left Behind series. The latest installment, Apollyon, has been climbing the New York Times list, which doesn't even tabulate sales in the majority of Christian bookstores.

Upon reading the books, though, the question that comes to mind is not why hasn't Spielberg optioned these yet, but, rather, why is anyone reading them at all? The books are painfully dull and utterly devoid of supernatural imagery. The only thing you find in abundance are tepid chase scenes written by hacks and monotonous moralistic lectures about saving your soul. Every few sentences prove how little the authors understand the world around them. So, why does anyone read them? Evangelical Christians surely have access to other moral tales, and there's no religious reason that they should choose to spend their money on these.

One answer may be that the apocalypse is not just another crackerjack story. For many in America, but particularly evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, the story of the end of the world is the mechanism by which they can look at themselves and those non-believers who surround them. And that vision of things has changed in the 30 years since a strange, low-budget film about the end times found its way to nearly every evangelical church basement in America. That odd movie, A Thief in the Night, was a vision of terror, to be sure, but, in marked contrast to Left Behind, it was suffused with love and understanding, too.

You won't find much of that these days. While predicting the apocalypse may be a constant, the way evangelicals think about it has undergone a massive overhaul. The progression (or regression) is the move from rural towns to the halls of power. It's the expansion of the evangelical sphere of concern from the very local (my friends, my church) to the national and global (my president, my international policy). It's a move from a complex view of the individual to an oversimplification that identifies everyone as either good-believer or bad-heathen. It's also a change in sentiment towards the unbeliever from sadness, caring, and invitation to triumph, judgement, and dismissal. It's a chilling mutation, and has entrenched evangelical Christianity in an antagonism to secular America that borders, at times, on cruelty.

Read on for Part Two: The Summer of Love and Jesus.

SPECIAL ISSUE The Future of Drugs A FEED Special Issue RE: 12.08.00 RE: Hideo Kojima Catherine Pawasarat talks with the designer of Metal Gear Solid REPORT 12.06.00 The Wet Planet Christine Kenneally on lakebeds in Mars ESSAY 12.05.00 The Horror! The Horror! Lauren Sandler on silly slasher flicks SOUND & FURY 12.04.00 All Right Already Alex Abramovich on one of rock's basic building blocks THE MATERIALIST 11.27.00 Death Is Irrelevant Stefanie Syman on Damien Hirst's new show DAILIES 12.05.00 Scott McLemee on the the old old thing 12.04.00 Lisa Levy on a show about sex

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