Preachers Line Up Against May 21 Leader

Talk about defending the brand: Christian writers are coming down on Harold Camping with the fervor of Disney lawyers quashing a Mickey Mouse painting at a daycare center.

Camping is the self-taught biblical scholar and radio mogul who says the Rapture is happening on Saturday, May 21, at exactly 6 p.m. local time, whatever your local time is. He’s been delivering this prediction for several years, a recalibration from his earlier prediction that the Rapture would happen in 1994. 

He’s been spreading the word via the 66 stations in his Family Radio Network, on his website www.familynetwork.com, and through billboards in several major cities. His prediction is based on some tangled algebra that sets numerical values for concepts such as "atonement" and "completeness," assumes that Jesus was crucified on April 1, 33 AD, and figures that these numbers actually represent something of importance.

Camping has also declared that every church in the world is false. One might expect that mainstream Christians would either dismiss Camping or ignore him. One would be wrong.

From seminaries, pulpits and personal websites, the condemnation of Camping’s prediction is almost universal. Why are they bothering?

“There is some branding differentiation going on, in that traditional Christians would not want to be lumped in with Camping,” said Mara Einstein a media studies professor at Queens University and the author of "Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age."

“You might compare this to most Muslims not wanting to be associated with the 9/11 hijackers — an extreme case, for sure, but in the same vein,” she said. “Another example you might use is the Susan G. Komen [Foundation] going after anyone that uses the term 'for the cure'" when discussing breast cancer.

While the reactions to Camping are accumulating as the predicted date draws nigh, the rebuttals started years ago. The website for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals has a point-by-point response written in 2004 by a pastor and a philosophy professor.

"We had people writing the organization asking for a thorough evaluation of Camping's thought and, being the organization we were, we felt that we ought to provide it,” said Mark Talbot, a philosophy professor at Wheaton College.

The theological equivalent of brand confusion was a factor in choosing to respond, he said. “His exegesis somewhat took the form of better exegesis, if someone didn't know enough to see the differences."

Why I Still Want To Be Left Behind

When California preacher, Harold Camping, predicted the world would end this Saturday evening, several of my Rapture-ready friends insisted I finish reading the Left Behind series and make my preparations.
Camping's ubiquitous billboard messages: "Blow the trumpet, warn the people!" were all over Seattle. People were so giddy with anticipation, it recalled the many loopy, no-exit conversations I've had with my righteous neighbor.
"Why are you so ... well, cheerful, about doomsday?" I always asked him.
He gazed at me with the true alarm of deep pity. "I'm afraid you'll have a rough time of it here during the Tribulations."
"Don't you love any of us you believe will suffer so?" I said.
This gave my neighbor a moment's pause. But then he admitted with some chagrin. "You can't blame us born-agains for at last getting our heavenly rewards. We've waited thousands of years for End Times. We've got holy wars, world financial markets crashing, Israel's military power, Middle East uprisings, and even global warming."
This last sign he pronounced brightly, as if our global climate was gleefully graduating into a hot time in the old world.
It struck me that being "raptured" out of this world trumps the insecurity of living and the surrender of dying or staying on. No bodily indignity. No suffering. One will simply be whisked off with the fellowship of the believers -- the Rapture gang -- to a heavenly reward.
In the twinkling of an eye they say, the righteous will ascend, dropping golden dental work, nightgowns, and perhaps some spouses. Unless you count losing the earth and billions of unfortunate sinners who cling to it, getting raptured is a blast. Who wouldn't want to escape prophesied plagues, floods, and nomadic thug-like legions of the unsaved?
This rather pitiless evacuation plan for only the righteous might seem darkly comic, if not for a Time magazine poll: 56 percent of Americans "believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true." Perhaps that explains why the Left Behind books are the biggest selling fictional series in the United States.
In complex and challenging times, apocalypse is such a simple answer. Fight-or-flight fear is hardwired into our reptilian, forest-slashing, migrating, pioneering species -- leave the Old World behind, find a New World. No need to really change, adapt or evolve, just find another planet or heaven to plunder for our own rewards. After all, the dark side of fundamentalism is consumerism.
The next time I saw my neighbor he sported a new bumper sticker: "THIS VEHICLE WILL BE UNMANNED IN CASE OF RAPTURE."
I did not say that I wanted a bumper sticker of my own: "IN CASE OF RAPTURE, CAN I HAVE YOUR CAR?"
It was a surprisingly sunlit Seattle day and we strolled down to our backyard beach on the Salish Sea to continue our End Times talk. We sat down on driftwood and watched the comic black-and-white tuxedo harlequins diving and popping up in the waves.
A Great Blue Heron swooped in with the caw of a dinosaur bird. How could this ancient bird fly with such huge wings? How did she escape extinction? Somehow the Great Blue had adapted and survived beautifully. Couldn't we?
"So," my neighbor asked excitedly, "Are you ready for the End?"
He had already taken out a post-Rapture insurance policy from Eternal Earthbound Pets USA to protect his beloved dog -- since animals aren't allowed in his heaven.
I put my arm around my neighbor, the driftwood creaking slightly under our weight.
"Listen," I said softly, "I want to be left behind."
Left Behind to figure out a way to fit more humbly into this abiding Earth, this living and breathing planet we happily call home, we call holy.
My neighbor looked at me, startled, then fell very quiet as we watched a harlequin float past, his bright beak dripping a tiny fish. Happy, so happy in this moment. The Great Blue cawed hoarsely and stood on one leg in a fishing meditation. Wave after bright wave lapped our beach and the spring sunshine warmed our open faces.
"You're a really good neighbor," I told him. "We'll all miss you if you zipped up to heaven. We'd say ... well, there goes the neighborhood."
"I'll miss you," my neighbor said softly. "and ... and all this, too."
It was a beginning.
Slowly he took my hand and we sat in silence, listening to waves more ancient than our young, hasty species, more forgiving than our religions, more enduring. Rapture.