Editing Left Behind (section)

==== Evangelical shift and views on non-Christians ====
In 1999, journalist [[Adam Davidson (journalist)|Adam Davidson]] placed the series in the context of a shift in evangelical views over the last several decades on non-believers. He argues that evangelicals went from "[not yet knowing] who they were in the American public sphere" in the 1960s and early 1970s to a "major shift in evangelical thought which allowed for political and social activism" by the late 1990s, more negative and divisive. Evangelicals, Davidson states, had previously been more separatist, with little interest in attempting to create large-scale religious, moral, and political change. He uses the 1972 Christian end-times film ''A Thief in the Night'' as an example of this former approach, with its compassionate view towards unbelievers: "This is a portrait of regular people who don't know what to do and happen to make the wrong choice".<ref name="Davidson">{{Cite web |last=Davidson |first=Adam |author-link=Adam Davidson (journalist) |date=April 8, 1999 |title=The Mean Spirit |url=http://www.feedmag.com/deepread/dr200.shtml |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000614081304/http://www.feedmag.com/deepread/dr200.shtml |archive-date=June 14, 2000 |access-date=June 1, 2025 |website=[[Feed Magazine]]}}</ref> In contrast, ''Left Behind'', he contends, has a contemptuous and triumphant view of non-Christians and their suffering in the end times that he sees as symptomatic of a larger change in evangelicalism.
{{Blockquote|text=While predicting the apocalypse may be a constant, the way evangelicals think about it has undergone a massive overhaul. The progression (or regression) is the move from rural towns to the halls of power. It's the expansion of the evangelical sphere of concern from the very local (my friends, my church) to the national and global (my president, my international policy). It's a move from a complex view of the individual to an oversimplification that identifies everyone as either good-believer or bad-heathen. It's also a change in sentiment towards the unbeliever from sadness, caring, and invitation to triumph, judgement, and dismissal. It's a chilling mutation, and has entrenched evangelical Christianity in an antagonism to secular America that borders, at times, on cruelty.<ref name="Davidson" />}}
While writing that the series fulfills the norms of mass-market fiction, magazine writer [[Michelle Goldberg]] also characterized the books as an attack on [[Judaism]] and [[liberalism|liberal]] [[secularism]], and suggested that the near-future "[[Eschatology|end times]]" in which the books are set seem to reflect the actual worldview of millions of Americans, including many prominent [[Conservatism in the United States|conservative]] leaders.<ref name="goldberg">{{cite news |author=Goldberg |first=Michelle |date=July 29, 2002 |title=Fundamentally unsound |url=http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/07/29/left_behind/index.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071214062956/http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/07/29/left_behind/index.html |archive-date=December 14, 2007 |work=[[Salon.com|Salon]]}}</ref>