Christian theology and world politics can be strange bedfellows. Consider the intimate relationship between fundamentalist expectations of Jesus’ return and market-driven disdain for the environment.

The affair came to light in 1981, when James Watt, Ronald Reagan’s newly appointed Secretary of the Interior, once known for suing the department he later went on to head, tested before a House committee. Watt was asked if he was committed to saving some of our resources for our children?

That is the delicate balance that the Secretary of the Interior must maintain, the secretary affirmed, in order to be a steward of the natural resources for both this generation and future generations. But then he continued, I don’t know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns. Whatever it is, we must manage it with a skill to leave the resources for future generations.

Was Watt suggesting that his belief in the Second Coming would dampen the government’s conservation efforts? In response to the ensuing uproar, he claimed that his personal Pentecostal faith may have been imminent

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and of the

v

world would have no influence on official policy.

But his critics had doubts. Why would anyone who seriously thought that only a few more generations could enjoy the planet skimp on consuming its resources?

The Watt hearing brought public attention to the relationship between religion and environmental policy, but it was not the end of the matter. American evangelicals are still disproportionately disinterested in climate change and other environmental issues. Their apathy is driven not only by their well-documented distrust of science, but also by a specific eschatological belief that Jesus is coming soon to bring history to a rather climax. Most evangelicals believe this is simply what the Bible teaches, especially in the book of Revelation.

And it’s not just evangelicals. Popular evangelical culture, including Hal Lindsey’s 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth and, more recently, the blockbuster Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (with film spin-offs), has led many more Americans to believe that the Bible predicts our approaching end. While evangelicals emphatically believe these predictions, and non-evangelicals certainly do not, it is widely believed that this is indeed what the Bible predicts.

In fact, the Scriptures say no such thing, either in Revelation or in any other book. This is common knowledge among historical scholars of the Bible, but hardly outside our ranks.

That wasn’t always the case. Throughout the long history of Christianity, from at least the 4th century to the early 19th century, the vast majority of those who read and heard the stories in the Bible (including the precursors of modern evangelicals) believed that Revelation described events that had already taken place or were happening in their own time in the life of the church. They were not thought to refer to a near or distant future.

Oddly enough, the French Revolution changed all that. The surrealities of the Reign of Terror convinced the horrified Christians of Britain that the world came to a standstill in fulfillment of the catastrophes described in Revelation. This futuristic reading of Scripture swept through England and then, with vengeance, through America: the world went to hell, and all went according to plan.

This is a religious belief with obvious social and political implications. Even in secular life, future expectations influence the decisions we make. We may be willing to go into debt for law school or a second mortgage if we believe it will pay off in the long run; if we weren’t so sure, we don’t tend to take the risk. During the Cold War, Americans, convinced that a nuclear exchange was inevitable, put less money into their savings accounts. What would be the point?

In the religious field, virtually every major crisis has been used to demonstrate the fulfillment of the prophesied signs of the end times: the horrors of World War I, the Nazi threat, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, the Gulf Wars, the invasion of Ukraine not to mention all kinds of natural disasters. So also the antichrist has repeatedly arisen among us: the emperor,

benito

mussolini,

Michael

Gorbachev (with the mark of the beast on his forehead), Saddam Hussein,

Vladimir

Putin choose your enemy of the human race. The end is therefore constantly near, just as in 1959; 1988; 2000; 2011; 2021 choose your date.

Many such predictions were based on certain readings of Revelation and were demonstrably wrong and not because the doomsayers misunderstood a detail here or there or forgot some verse. They were wrong because of a fundamental misreading of Revelation.

Biblical scholars have long acknowledged that the book was written for a 1st century audience with concerns about the 1st century Roman era.

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Rich. But there is nothing special about that notion for a modern audience. You mean our generation isn’t the pinnacle of all human history? Isn’t it all about us? How disappointing.

While many of us continue to worry about how we might indeed destroy ourselves and our planet, incredible numbers are putting their faith in the ultimate

Deus ex Machina

. A 2006 Pew Research Poll showed that 79% of Christians (not just evangelicals) believed that Jesus would indeed return to earth. More intriguingly, a 2010 poll indicated that more than half of American Protestants thought he would return by 2050.

If a significant portion of the voting public believes that the end of our civilization is only 40 years away, why should we care about the environment? Why support the Paris climate agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050? It is no surprise that believers in the

S

Second

C

Coming are significantly more likely to oppose government efforts to combat climate change.

That this view is based on a misinterpretation of the Bible suggests that religious expertise has never been more crucial to humanity. Who would have thought serious biblical scholarship could help preserve the ice caps and stop the rising seas? Could it therefore contribute to our collective redemption?

It can only help. Let’s spread it before it’s too late.

Bart D. Ehrman is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End.