By John W. Morehead
This series of posts is designed to explore what I see as a more positive and holistic way of engaging other religious traditions as an evangelical Christian. Along the way so far, I’ve looked at a couple of facets, including how we use the biblical text. That prior exploration of the Bible and theology was more general in nature. In this post I will focus on our eschatology, the doctrine of “last things,” known more popularly as “end-times theology,” and how a particularly popular expression of this theology can have negative ramifications for how we view those in other religions.
The Christian tradition, like many religions, has not only an origin story—how the world came to be—but also a story relating to its ending, or at least how the current form of it ends as it transforms into something else. There is some variety in the ways in which Christians understand their eschatology or end-times, but one of the more popular and widespread versions is known as Dispensational Premillennialism. In this post I’m not offering a general critique of this way of understanding the Bible. It’s not my theological framework and I find it theologically problematic; however, I’m not criticizing this way of understanding eschatology simply because it’s not my view. What I am criticizing is that this way of understanding eschatology often has some unfortunate tendencies, one of which is creating enemies for the church. Over the years this system of theology has been used to identify any number of potential antichrists, as well as those political and religious groups assumed to be as in league with this figure. In fact, one evangelical writer jokingly referred to our ongoing and ever-changing efforts at identifying key end-times figures as “Pin the Tail on the Antichrist.” For example, not long-ago Communism and the former Soviet Union were seen as major prophetic figures. Before that, Hitler was a candidate.
Now some biblical prophecy authors are telling us that Islam figures into the eschatological mix. This development was fueled by the terror attacks of 9/11. After reviewing evangelical literature on Islam, Richard Cimino documented how prior to 9/11 most Evangelicals viewed Islam as a religion that should be the focus of their evangelistic and missionary efforts. However, after 9/11 things changed dramatically. As a result of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Cimino notes that Islam was viewed primarily as a religion of violence, perhaps not even as a religion at all, but rather as an evil political movement. This dramatic change in evangelical attitudes had repercussions, such as a concern that American Muslims wanted to institute sharia law as a replacement for the Constitution, and evangelical spearheading of efforts in some parts of the country to curtail the building of mosques.
As the examples of Christian responses to Muslims indicates, it is a short journey from identifying those said to be in league with spiritual forces of evil in the end-times to dehumanizing them and seeking to curtail their religious freedoms. I’m afraid this has happened with evangelicals as Dispensational Premillennialism has had a negative influence in shaping our views on things like Muslim immigration, the wars in Iraq and Syria, the “War on Terror,” relations between America and Iran, and concerns for justice for Palestinians as well as Jews in Israel and Gaza.
We might ask ourselves why we look to this specific type of end-times narrative and fit members of other religions into it so easily, with little regard for how this casts a shadow on how we understand and relate to them. Grayson Robertson has some thoughts on this that he expressed in his article “Confronting the ‘Axis of Evil’: Christian Dispensationalism, Politics and American
Society Post-9/11.” The abstract reads in part:
“Dispensational pre-millennialism offers the evangelical Christian an escape from a post-modern, inclusive society that is increasingly at odds with the evangelical exclusivist view of religious truth. As a result, religious pluralism, a traditional, core tenet of the American democracy, has come under fire from dispensational pre-millennialists who view religious pluralism as a threat to America’s identity as a ‘Christian nation’. The rapidly changing, post-modern, pluralistic world, in which the influence of other religious traditions must be considered, drives the pre-millennialists to seek theological positions that provide shelter and encourage religious isolation, such as that offered by dispensational pre-millennialism.”
My hope is that a post like this might help us see how our doctrinal views, particularly end-times perspectives, can influence how we think and act toward those in other religions. Certain forms of end-times prophecy have an unfortunate tendency to create eschatological enemies among those in other religions.
John W. Morehead is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, and the Director of its Evangelical Chapter (Multifaith Matters). You may contact him at
johnwmorehead@msn.com .