Żydzi i judaizm w chrześcijańskich scenariuszach końca świata

Abstract

The "Left Behind" series of books, pamphlets, and 'ministries', both by the spoken word and on the internet, is reaching millions of Americans - and it is both formulating and reflecting some very disturbing ideas. The "Left Behind" series has sold over 50 million copies, mainly in the United States, and the title "Desecration" was the number one best-selling hardcover fiction title for 2001. Scholars who study popular religion have been slow to recognise the growing influence and spread of fundamentalist publicity and ideas, partly because academics rarely share the cut-and-dried world-views and unequivocal belief in the Divine Authorship of Scripture that characterise this spectrum of the Christian right. 'Pre-millennial dispensationalism', as this theological direction is known, also has real-world corollaries: support for Israel from this group of evangelicals, including a recent subsidy of $2 million to help resettle American Jews in Israel as part of a 'Christian Zionist' project, is designed to 'accelerate' the End Times by making it possible for a central feature of this theology's timetable for salvation to be fulfilled, namely the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem so that it can be desecrated, as in the new Left Behind best-seller, "Desecration": namely, so that the Antichrist can, as they believe the Bible prophecies, enter and desecrate it in his role as adversary of Jesus in the final End Time battle for the souls of humankind. The anti-Judaic eschatology of the "Left Behind" series and the pre-millennial spectrum of evangelical Christianity in America are not 'merely' religious phenomena, especially since they are religious views about a group that defines itself in both religious and ethnic terms, without separating neatly as most westerners do. If the discourse about Jews in the Left Behind series were couched in secular or social terms, it would be actionable; and if it should ever spill any farther over the rather tenuous and arbitrary boundaries we have set for 'the theological' and enter 'the secular' - say in the event of a major eschatological disappointment - there might well be real trouble between conservative Christian supporters of Israel and the Jews who make common cause with them.