The Rev Tim LaHaye

The Reverend Tim LaHaye, who has died aged 90, was one of the most influential – and, some argued, one of the most dangerous – Christian fundamentalists in America, credited with moving religious fanaticism based around a belief in an imminent apocalypse into the American cultural mainstream.

An unorthodox but powerful element in LaHaye’s ministry was fiction. His Left Behind series of 12 novels (co-written with Jerry Jenkins) became the publishing phenomenon of the turn of the 21st century, selling more than 58 million copies, with four of them topping the New York Times bestseller list.

On the surface, LaHaye’s books were old-fashioned adventure stories, but their core was theological, inspired by premillennialism, a teaching based on an imaginative reading of certain New Testament texts, which prophesies that the Second Coming is imminent and that before it comes, Christ will summon all “true believers” who will dematerialise Star Trek-style in an event called the “Rapture”: the first novel in the series opens with passengers vanishing from on board a transatlantic Boeing 747 leaving nothing but piles of clothes, jewellery and dental fillings.

LaHaye’s theology was accompanied by some fairly extreme political views. He was anti-evolution, anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti-gun laws, anti pacifism, anti-UN, anti environmentalist, anti-Harry Potter, anti-feminist and virulently anti-homosexual. Born April 27 1926, died July 25 2016