Marketing New Dogmas: The Rapture and UOJ

AC V said...

UOJ has something in common with the rapture: "The rapture is a recent invention. Nobody had thought of what is now known as the rapture until about 1850," says Borg, canon theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/31/do-you-speak-christian/?hpt=hp_c1

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GJ - The Rapture has many putative fathers, but the Plymouth Brethren, a Pietistic group, probably did the most to promote the idea.

Garrison Keillor was raised a Plymouth Brethren, not a Lutheran. He knew he could get plenty of Lutheran laughs on his show in Minneapolis, but very few PB laughs. Lutherans did not discern the ruse because the Minnesota Lutherans were open about their Pietistic heritage. Any jokes about the gloom of PB membership fit their own experiences.

The Perryville-St. Louis gang began as a Pietistic cult under Bishop-for-Life Stephan and continued as a Pietistic cult under the Great Kidnapper and Thief, Bishop-for-Life C. F. W. Walther.

History records that CFW and his brother kidnapped their niece and nephew from their father's parsonage, hid them from police, and spirited them away to America, where they died. CFW left for America early, to escape arrest warrants from the police. Lawyers Marbach and Vehse helped the brothers in the crime. So did CFW's future mother-in-law.