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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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The Dispensationalist view that (1) the Apocalypse of John was a coded prophecy about events in the near future and (2) the advent of events therein can be hastened by facilitating the events that are described therein was mainstream in American Protestantism since the early days of the Cold War, significantly carried support for Israel (under the idea that the events of the prophecy are set off by the reascendancy of Israel in its original location, followed by two nations called "Gog and Magog" waging a war of annihilation against it) and in particular re-peaked under the Bush administration. During the latter, the Left Behind series of books, which combined this theology with du jour political concerns of the US Right like opposition to the UN/international governance and socialism, was immensely popular, and random samplings of online protestant commentary from the era made it clear that plot points from the book (in particular, the ascendancy of a Romanian UN One World Government leader who is actually the antichrist) significantly coloured how pedestrian believers imagined the biblical apocalypse would play out in practice.

Thank you for the clarification.