Editing Tim LaHaye (section)

==Views==
===Homosexuality===
{{See also|Homosexuality and Christianity|The Bible and homosexuality}}
In 1978 LaHaye published ''The Unhappy Gays'', which was later retitled ''What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality''. The book called homosexuals "militant, organized" and "vile."<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Thirty Years' War: A timeline of the anti-gay movement |url=http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=523 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011053622/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=523 |archive-date=October 11, 2007 |access-date=December 19, 2007 |website=[[Southern Poverty Law Center]]}}</ref> ''The Unhappy Gays'' also argues that homosexuals share 16 pernicious traits, including "incredible promiscuity", "deceit", "selfishness", "vulnerability to [[Sadomasochism|sadism-masochism]]", and "poor health and an early death."<ref name="cloud">{{cite magazine |author=Cloud |first=John |date=June 23, 2002 |title=Meet the Prophet |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,265422,00.html?iid=chix-sphere |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081202151833/http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020701/books.html |archive-date=December 2, 2008 |access-date=December 19, 2007 |magazine=TIME }}</ref> He believed that [[Conversion therapy|homosexuality can be cured]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Schaub |first=Michael |date=October 2002 |title=The Unhappy Gays: What Everyone Should Know About |url=http://www.bookslut.com/propaganda/2002_10_000326.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080101151033/http://www.bookslut.com/propaganda/2002_10_000326.php |archive-date=January 1, 2008 |website=[[Bookslut]]}}</ref><ref name="moser">{{Cite web |last=Moser |first=Bob |date=Spring 2005 |title=Holy War |url=http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=862 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070714185603/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=862 |archive-date=July 14, 2007 |access-date=December 20, 2007 |website=[[Southern Poverty Law Center]]}}</ref> However, he said that such conversions are rare.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Caramagno |first=Thomas C. |title=Irreconcilable Differences? Intellectual Stalemate in the Gay Rights Debate |date=2002 |publisher=Praeger/Greenwood |isbn=9780275977115 |location=Westport |pages=159}}</ref>

===Global conspiracies===
LaHaye believed that the [[Illuminati]] is secretly engineering world affairs.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=McGuire |first1=Paul |url=https://archive.org/details/babyloncodesolvi0000mcgu/ |title=The Babylon Code: Solving the Bible's Greatest End-Times Mystery |last2=Anderson |first2=Troy |date=2016 |publisher=Faith Words |isbn=9781455589432 |location=Nashville |pages=22–23 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> In ''Rapture Under Attack'' he wrote:<blockquote>I myself have been a forty-five year student of the [[satan]]ically-inspired, centuries-old [[Cabal|conspiracy]] to use government, education, and media to destroy every vestige of Christianity within our society and establish a [[New World Order conspiracy theory|new world order]]. Having read at least fifty books on the Illuminati, I am convinced that it exists and can be blamed for many of man's inhumane actions against his fellow man during the past two hundred years.<ref>Quoted in {{Cite book |last=Versluis |first=Arthur |title=The New Inquisitions: Heretic Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism |date=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195306378 |location=New York |pages=121}}</ref></blockquote>

The Illuminati is just one of many groups that he believed are working to "turn America into an amoral, [[Humanism|humanist]] country, ripe for merger into a [[World government|one-world]] socialist state."  Other [[Secret society|secret societies]] and [[Modern liberalism in the United States|liberal]] groups working to destroy "every vestige of Christianity", according to LaHaye, include: the [[Trilateral Commission]], the [[American Civil Liberties Union]], the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]], the [[National Organization for Women]], [[Planned Parenthood]], "the major TV networks, high-profile newspapers and newsmagazines," the [[United States Department of State|State Department]], major foundations ([[Rockefeller Foundation|Rockefeller]], [[Carnegie Corporation of New York|Carnegie]], [[Ford Foundation|Ford]]), the United Nations, "the left wing of the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]]", [[Harvard University|Harvard]], [[Yale]] "and 2,000 other colleges and universities."<ref name="dreyfuss"/>

LaHaye believed that [[political mobilization]] of the [[Christian right]] in voting for Ronald Reagan thwarted the Illuminati, who had been attempting to create a New World Order.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Perry |first=Samuel |date=2020-10-12 |title=Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell Sr. have long talked of conspiracies against God’s chosen – those ideas are finding resonance today |url=https://theconversation.com/evangelical-leaders-like-billy-graham-and-jerry-falwell-sr-have-long-talked-of-conspiracies-against-gods-chosen-those-ideas-are-finding-resonance-today-132241 |access-date=2025-05-25 |website=[[The Conversation (website)|The Conversation]]}}</ref>

===Eschatology===
While himself a premillennialist who asserted the end times were near and that the nation will be judged, LaHaye also adopted aspects of [[R. J. Rushdoony]]'s [[Postmillennialism|postmillennialist]] movement, [[Christian reconstructionism]]. Despite varying beliefs on how the end times will occur, both groups share a "desire to reclaim the culture for Christ by reasserting [[patriarchal authority]] and waging battle against encroaching [[secular humanism]], in all its guises."<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=94}}

The [[Christian eschatology|eschatological]] views of LaHaye have been described as "view[ing] the U.N. and Islam as literally satanic; oppos[ing] any compromise in the [[Israeli–Palestinian conflict]]; and foresee[ing] an imminent eschatological crisis in which millions of human beings will perish in agony".<ref name=":3" />

Other believers in [[Dispensationalism|dispensational]] [[premillennialism]], who believe that the [[Second Coming|return of Jesus]] is imminent, criticize various aspects of his theology.{{Cn|date=May 2025}}

Many mainstream Christians and certain other evangelicals had broader disagreements with the ''Left Behind'' series as a whole, pointing out that "most biblical scholars largely reject the eschatological assumptions of this kind of pop end-times literature."<ref name="sine" /> In ''The Rapture Exposed'' by Barbara Rossing, a number of criticisms are raised regarding the series, particularly its focus on violence.<ref name="sine">{{Cite web |last=Sine |first=Tom |date=September–October 2001 |title=Who is Tim LaHaye? |url=https://sojo.net/magazine/september-october-2001/who-tim-lahaye |access-date=March 12, 2024 |website=Sojourners |language=EN}}</ref><ref name="Rossing2007">{{cite book|author=Barbara R. Rossing|title=The Rapture Exposed|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mK2fcw-GkMIC|date=March 1, 2007|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=978-0-465-00496-6}}</ref>

===Anti-Catholic sentiments===
LaHaye was a harsh critic of [[Roman Catholicism]], which he called "a false religion".<ref name="NYTMC"/> In his 1973 book ''Revelation Illustrated and Made Plain'', he stated that the Catholic Church "is more dangerous than no religion because she substitutes religion for truth" and "is also dangerous because some of her doctrines are pseudo-Christian."  Elsewhere the same book compared Catholic ceremonies to [[Paganism|pagan]] rituals.<ref name="NYTMC"/> It was these statements that were largely responsible for LaHaye's dismissal from [[Jack Kemp#Presidential bid (1988)|Jack Kemp's 1988 presidential campaign]].<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=December 8, 1987 |title=Evangelical Leader Quits Kemp Campaign |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-12-08-mn-27432-story.html |access-date=March 12, 2024 |website=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> It was later revealed that [[Scott Memorial Baptist Church]], the San Diego church that LaHaye had pastored throughout the 1970s, had sponsored an anti-Catholic group called [[Mission to Catholics]]; one of their pamphlets asserted that [[Pope Paul VI]] was the "archpriest of Satan, a deceiver, and an [[antichrist]], who has, like [[Judas Iscariot|Judas]], gone to his own place."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Boston |first=Rob |date=February 2002 |title=If Best-Selling End-Times Author Tim LaHaye Has His Way, Church-State Separation Will Be...Left Behind |url=http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5601&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=cs_ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081201130835/http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5601&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=cs_ |archive-date=December 1, 2008 |access-date=March 12, 2024 |magazine=Church & State}}</ref><!-- This is a quote from Bob Jones Jr. – was it published in Mission to Catholics' pamphlets? -->

The issue of anti-Catholicism also comes up in regard to the ''Left Behind'' series. While the fictional Pope John XXIV was raptured, he is described as having "stirred up controversy in the church with a new doctrine that seemed to coincide more with the 'heresy' of [[Martin Luther]] than with the historic orthodoxy they were used to," and this is implied as the reason he was raptured. His successor, Pope [[Peter Mathews (Left Behind)|Peter II]], becomes [[Pontifex Maximus]] of [[Enigma Babylon One World Faith]], an amalgamation of all remaining world faiths and religions.<ref name="akin">{{cite web |last=Akin |first=Jimmy |title=Catholic Answers Special Report: False Profit |url=http://www.catholic.com/library/false_profit.asp |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080711172106/http://www.catholic.com/library/false_profit.asp |archive-date=July 11, 2008 |access-date=May 20, 2007 |website=Catholic Answers }}</ref>

Other Catholic writers have said that while the books aren't "anti-Catholic per se", they reflect LaHaye's other writings on the subject.<ref name="olson">{{Cite web |last=Olson |first=Carl E. |title=No Rapture for Rome: The Anti-Catholics behind the Best-selling Left Behind Books |url=http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2000/0011fea2.asp |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070706152802/http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2000/0011fea2.asp |archive-date=July 6, 2007 |access-date=December 14, 2007 |website=Catholic Answers}}</ref>

Despite his anti-Catholic views, he praised [[traditionalist Catholic]] director [[Mel Gibson]]'s 2004 film ''[[The Passion of the Christ]]'', saying that "Everyone should see this movie. It could be Hollywood's finest achievement to date."<ref>{{cite web |last=Robinson |first=B. A. |date=March 13, 2005 |title=Reviews of "The Passion of the Christ" by conservative Christians |url=http://www.religioustolerance.org/chrgibson3.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110622021900/http://www.religioustolerance.org/chrgibson3.htm |archive-date=June 22, 2011 |access-date=January 30, 2013 |website=Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance }}</ref> He also endorsed Catholic convert [[Newt Gingrich]] for president in 2012.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ward |first=Jon |date=January 13, 2012 |title='Left Behind' Author Endorses Gingrich, Says Jerry Falwell Backs Newt From Grave |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tim-lahaye-newt-gingrich-endorsement_n_1204466 |access-date=October 29, 2019 |website=HuffPost}}</ref>