Don’t Carry on Camping

by John Martin

There’s nothing new about rapture predictions, just that the Internet means more people hear about them.

Counted among my friends is a very unusual Seventh-Day Adventist. An American, he was for some years based in England as general secretary of the movement in this country. His father and grandfather before him were international presidents.

He himself was very keen to help the Adventist movement gain a place at the table among the mainstream denominations. For years he attended meetings of the General Secretaries of the Christian World Communions: among them the Methodists, Anglicans, Lutherans, World Association of Reformed Churches, Disciples of Christ and various branches of Orthodoxy. Given Adventist attitudes to the Catholic Church he was very courageous, like somehow gaining observer status at the Second Vatican Council.

Adventism had beginnings not unlike the scenario that’s surrounded Harold Camping and his rapture prediction. William Miller a layman from New York State after much study predicted that Christ would return between 21 March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Some of his followers even dressed in white and waited on a hilltop in expectation. When the date passed uneventfully Miller regrouped and set another date, which again passed.After this Miller faded from the scene. Some of his followers persisted however and eventually concluded that Miller had been onto something.

It was not the coming of the Lord, but that at that time in 1843-44 God had begun to cleanse the heavenly sanctuary as the start of the countdown to the end, based on an obscure passage in Daniel (8.14). The sanctuary doctrine got Miller’s followers off the hook and the movement expanded all over the world with a special mission to be a holy remnant living in expectation of the imminent return of the Lord.

Every so often there are rumblings within Adventism that a root and branch review of the sanctuary doctrine is needed. A few years ago when I asked my friend about yet another groundswell in this direction he told me, “If we deny that God did something special in 1843-44 then what is the point of this community existing?” A classic piece of re-framing.

So Harold Camping is one of a long line of misguided prophets and his failed enterprise is a useful reminder that date setting is folly: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,but only the Father.” (Matt 24.36) The majority of date setters like him disappear into the sands of history. Others like the Adventists, having taken their medicine for initial follies, find ways to reinvent themselves. Who knows what will happen to the people who at Camping’s word took to the streets to proclaim a coming rapture? Camping has set another date in October. But there are signs that at the same time he is taking a route similar to the Millerites that claims that a key event has occurred in the heavenlies as a prelude to the end.

Yes it is of little use to ridicule Camping, but I think this man raises some important issues for evangelicals.

Let’s begin with the role of the Internet. At present it is effectively beyond any form of central control and we should expect more of the same. Only in countries where there are internet clampdowns is “control” possible.

The Internet is a world uncannily like the pre-Constantine world where religious ideas from the sublime to the wacko could circulate without restriction save when they challenged the power of the imperial cult. After Constantine the Western Church gradually evolved a system of majisterium that created clear boundaries beyond which speculation was permissible within Christendom.. St Augustine of Hippo’s City of God effectively silenced millenarian expectations, saying the 1000 years of Revelation 20 were a word-picture for the age of the Church. Voices of millenniarian speculation were effectively silenced until they re-emerged within the Anabaptist movements of the 16^th century.

Some commentators have said a way needs to be found for some sort of “authentication” of stuff on the blogosphere. That seems to me to be utterly unrealistic. The genie is out of the bottle and we can’t put it back. The great thing about the blogospshere is that it means there is a transparency trail. No international tribunal is going to convict Camping on a charge of bringing Christianity into disrepute, but his words are permanently on the record. It means that the Campings and the Terry Joneses effectively convict themselves and it’s there for all to see.

This is an issue close to home for Anglicans. We only have to look at the part played by email and the blogosphere in the present-day Anglican crisis. The central systems of the Communion who were committed to thorough and painstaking consultation across the board (including with people without Internet access) were always being outflanked by the speed of messaging possible because of the technology. Agendas for meetings were so worked over on the Internet that by the time scheduled meetings happened, debates had moved on.

We are in a new paradigm where something like a pre-Constantinian ferment will be a characteristic of an Internet-driven post-Constantinian era in the life of global Christianity. All sorts of sense and non-sense will live side by side.

So it will be more important than ever that our churches teach the faith well. That takes me to a hobbyhorse of mine. I know a lot of evangelical churches put a premium on teaching well, but are they checking to see if their people are learning well? How are we doing, for instance, with teaching a profound eschatology? How many of our lay people can give a good account of the final words of the Nicene Creed, “He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his Kingdom shall have no end”?

Perhaps because eschatology, in particular End Time theories, have been so fraught with controversy, evangelicals tend not to teach well on the subject. It’s an issue that evangelicals tend to avoid. I’m told that at the 1967 Keele Congress one delegate wanted these words added to the Final Statement: “The expectation of the personal return of Jesus in space and time.” The Steering Committee would have none of it and made sure it didn’t come to the floor for debate.

There are implications all over the place: the issue of whether evangelism and getting people saved has the priority over holistic teaching with concern for the environment in our preaching and teaching; wooliness about what we say at funerals (I recently went to a funeral where there were at least three different –incompatable –ideas expressed about the hereafter and what was happening to the person whose mortal remains were in the casket); confusion about attitudes to the modern State of Israel and peacemaking with the Palestinians.

A lot of the pro-Israel rhetoric of the American religious right is highly dangerous. But if you take an afternoon off to sample some of the TV preachers being beamed out on cable and satellite into UK living rooms, you have to conclude it’s not a problem confined just to the other side of the pond.

This is one reason why I agree with my friend fellow Fulcrum team member Stephen Kuhrt about the value of engaging properly with the work of Tom Wright, not least how he approaches eschatology.