Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times - Conscious Evolution TV

obin-bobin Social and Political Messages 187The relationship between Christianity and consumer culturehas long been a complicated one. On one hand, when consumerculture claims that this world is the only one that matters, thatbuying things and looking good will make a person happy,Christianity has claimed that there are things of greater significance.Christianity has suggested that buying things will neverfully satisfy a person, that the material world is only partial andincomplete. People need spiritual food as well as material food.For some Christians, this has meant situating themselves inopposition to consumer culture, resisting demands to buy moreand asserting instead the rightness of a simple life that makesroom for spiritual things.On the other hand, most American Christians participate inconsumer culture along with other Americans. They spendSaturdays at the mall, read magazines, watch television, and goto the movies. Christians often buy explicitly Christian products—T-shirts, books, bumper stickers, CDs, and so on—but all ofthese things are very much products of consumer culture.Churches, youth groups, and religious organizations rarely raisecomplaints against the dominance of consumer mentality;instead they often use this mentality to “sell” their own organizationsto a consuming public. We “shop” for churches; we“buy” into religious programs.In Christian fiction depicting the rapture, however, this hasnot always been the case. Rapture fiction has been a place whereChristians, especially conservative Christians, expressed fearsand anxieties about a world that seemed bent of gratifyingmaterial rather than spiritual needs. Rapture fiction—a genreborn about the same time as the rise of consumerism in theUnited States—saw consumer culture as dangerous to thehuman soul. One of the ways rapture fiction expressed protestwas by “rapturing” poor people and leaving wealthy peoplebehind to suffer. Wealthy and worldly people, people hungry formoney and things, were depicted as being the first to give theirsouls to the antichrist, the first to line up to take the mark of thebeast. The mark of the beast, in particular, was a sign of anxietyabout consumer culture. It was something one had to receive torobin-bobin