Thinking back on all of this #RaptureAnxiety stuff today and I have to say I am so grateful to still have faith in God and God's kingdom.
Never thought I would live past 16 (which is partly why I never made college plans). Mayfield recalls how she never made college plans, as she was convinced the rapture would come before she turned 16.
Another recalls the terror she felt when her parents forgot to pick her up from a junior high school soccer practice and she became convinced that they had been raptured, leaving her behind to face tribulations alone. One contributor to the hashtag recalls that the anticipation of the rapture led some people in her community to max out their credit cards, believing that the rapture would come before payment was due. In most accounts of the rapture, believers go straight to heaven, while nonbelievers are left behind to undergo a period of political chaos and personal torment. Many Americans are aware of the concept of the rapture - a time when, according to some evangelical traditions, believing Christians will be suddenly and unexpectedly “raptured” up to heaven before the events that presage the end of the world. #RaptureAnxiety, like #ChurchToo (by which people shared stories of sexual harassment at church) and #EmptythePews (which critiqued hypocrisy in the evangelical community) before it, seeks to amplify the voices of those affected by the waves rocking the evangelical community. Both Trump’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem - a city central to some American evangelical apocalyptic narratives - and the resurgence in popularity of Moore, a Christian theocrat who has been accused of sexual misconduct with several teenage girls, have made apparent that the “fringe” has entered the political and theological mainstream. Many are taking to Twitter to process their thoughts through the hashtag #RaptureAnxiety, which explores the many ways in which evangelicals have experienced anxiety or trauma around narratives of the “rapture.” An anxiety that includes other harbingers of the “end times” associated with a particular strain of American evangelical Christianity, and that - for many - has been compounded by some of the last week’s political events.Ĭertain strains of evangelical thought that many members of the mainstream media have long dismissed have come to the fore.
A deluge of news in recent weeks, including the contentious election involving evangelical judge Roy Moore and President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem has quite a few evangelicals on edge.
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