Volume 31, Number 15 · October 11, 1984
Meeting the Lord in the Air
By J.M. Cameron
The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America
by Richard John Neuhaus
Eerdmans, 280 pp., $16.95
Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Postmodern Theology
by Harvey Cox
Simon and Schuster, 304 pp., $16.95
The other day, in a coffee shop, I overheard a conversation between two men evidently engaged in the insurance business. They were discussing, after they had dispatched some professional matters, 'the Rapture.' At first I couldn't think what this was about. But when the conversation moved on to the topic of Armageddon, when and where this event was to take place, I began to see that the Rapture was a reference to Paul's first Letter to the Thessalonians, in which it is said that those alive at the second coming of Christ 'shall be caught up…in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.' What was startling was the conjunction of a sober conversation about questions of insurance with a discussion, equally sober in tone and, as it were, at the same level of concern, of the Rapture, understood as a happening of the same kind as the flights of astronauts, and of Armageddon, understood as a battle that would, when it happened, have the same reality as the war between Iran and Iraq.
Review, 3333 words
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