Tender Warriors: Muscular Christians, Promise Keepers, and the Crisis of Masculinity in Left Behind

Abstract

The Left Behind series of “rapture” novels is undoubtedly one of the most intriguing, indeed perplexing, popular cultural phenomena to emerge from America in recent years. This essay seeks to analyze the problem of masculinity in the novels. A close textual examination reveals a masculinity that is far from monolithic and, at times, deeply troubled. Rather than offering consistent and convincing performances of hegemonic masculinity, the male protagonists vacillate between spectacular displays of heroic machismo, and affective acts of feminine submission. I will argue that the paradoxical representation of masculinity in Left Behind can be located in the ambivalent notions of gender that are evident in both the prophetic hermeneutic of dispensationalism, and the broader culture of conservative evangelicalism.