Nicholas Guyatt

Apparently, 50 million Americans believe that we are living in the end times, and that any day now, Jesus is going to swoop down to earth and Rapture his true believers. Everyone else will have to hang around for the Tribulation and life under the one-world global empire of the Antichrist and face Armageddon. Guyatt, an Englishman, is fascinated by this worldview and wonders why, if these people are leaving soon,are they bothering to get involved in US politics? And are the leaders of this movement (prophecy preachers who are part of the Religious Right) influencing Washington in hopes of bringing this on?

Having been raised by Bible-literalists as a child, but waking up as an adult to realize I don't share that worldview, I find literalists, fundamentalists and political evangelicals both fascinating and scary. Guyatt approaches these people with a great deal of respect, and for the most part they come off as nice people (he is no Richard Dawkins). This is an interesting, easy read (he's a history professor here in Vancouver, but this is not a dry academic read).

Some readers have criticized the book because he doesn't exactly answer the question in his title ("WHY millions of Americans are Looking Forward to the End of the World"). I think he does in an oblique manner -- one answer he gives is that people are attracted to this belief because it means they will avoid "the whole death thing" (p 211).

The biggest concern that this book raises is that these prophecy preachers are often invited to appear on TV (Fox of course, but also CNN) and are presented as "Middle East Experts" but without mentioning that they've earned this label only through studying Biblical prophecy and not through educational or career credentials. Further, they are in regular communication with congressional representatives and government staffers. This could have scary results, as their idea of the future is very different from the general population.

The author is currently working on a book about creationism that I will definitely read when it is published.… (mais)

(posted on my blog: http://davenichols.net/have-nice-doomsday)

The Skinny: Guyatt clearly put in a lot of time and effort on this book, he's delivered a read worthy of your time, but lower your expectations a bit. Three stars.

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Nicholas Guyatt takes a level-headed first-hand survey of several well-known apocalyptic prophecy 'experts' in the USA, and comes away with an interesting story about differing goals with competitive and contradictory interpretations, and puts a human face on these merchants of End Times. The author strings several interviews together with interludes of historical background as he winds his narrative in a familiar and easily-digested manner.

My major beef with this book is due to the subtitle. "Why Millions of Americans are Looking Forward to the End of the World" was very inaccurate. Guyatt didn't attempt to survey 'millions' of Americans, just a few. His effort was solid in what he did, but he left the reader with an unsatisfactory answer to the subtitle's query. Worse, he took a shortcut to his answer through nothing short of wishful thinking.

Guyatt tells the reader this story in a curious but concerned mood. He never quite calls out his interviewees as crazy, but he's carefully darting incredulous looks out of the corner of his eye throughout every passage. His message, though not delivered particularly strongly or with much depth, is that there are crazy nuts out there who honestly believe they are living near the End Times, who are nonetheless pleasant to converse with in person.

To be fair, the reader is left with a humane view of these men (with the exception of John Hagee) to whom the author has given a fair deal of opportunity to make known their prophetic opinions through his book. The reader is not often given the courtesy of a reasonable fact check, though it is clear from reading between the lines that the author is aware of his subject's misleading, contradictory, or otherwise questionable 'facts'. Guyatt states in an addendum section that he is anticipating writing a follow-up to this book focused on creationism, so maybe he is trying the Bob Woodward method of playing nice now and scalding them later. More likely, he simply chose a less confrontational narrative than other secular writers would have delivered in order to explain apocalyptic Christianity to people who don't understand it.

We know, thanks to the book, why a handful of the movement's unique middlemen and top dogs are into prophecy and End Times, but Guyatt doesn't attempt to apply this to the rest of the 'millions'. In fact, he equivocates a bit by offering near the end of the book that he doesn't really believe that most apocalyptic Christians (a group he defined broadly as those who bought Left Behind books) are as nutty as the guys he interviewed or talked about (such as Hal Lindsey and John Hagee), and perhaps they could be reasoned with by the secular world. He does a bit of self-bashing by asking liberals and secularist to play a bit nicer with these folks, not to push them harder into the arms of the hardcore apocalyptic crowd.

He never really answers why so many people 'look forward' to the End Times, and worse, he goes another step in the wrong direction by ignoring most of the evidence he presented throughout the book. Most of these guys are hardcore. Some believe they should cheerlead decisions which push the world to the brink, a few offer a more restrained version. There was only one guy that the author appears to have considered reasonable, level-headed, and practical, and yet, to Guyatt, the untold majority of those 'millions' he asked about are more like the exception and less like the rule? Sorry, Nicholas, but that's a pretty strange bit of wishful, non-empircal deduction from an author who should know better, especially after heavily investigating a subject fraught with wishful, non-empirical deduction.

Anyway, that last point is more of an overly-critical assessment of the book (in hopes that Guyatt will be more rigorous with his next subject), and I did enjoy this read. I got a background of many players in the apocalyptic Christian game which I've not read elsewhere, and a few behind-the-scenes opinions of those guys were insightful and troubling. Guyatt clearly put in a lot of time and effort on this book, he's delivered a read worthy of your time, but lower your expectations a bit. Three stars.… (mais)