Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Christian fundamentalism dramatized . Even the avid "trekie" reader of the Star Trek science fiction novels, movies and television series must suspend disbelief, when he finds Captain Kirk saying "Beam me up, Scotty."  But the biblical literalist reading this book need make no such effort, when he reads in this book that Jesus will effectively beam millions of true Christians up to heaven in the world-wide "Rapture."  Though the characters and their roles are fictitious, the book specifically references the relevant biblical passages for the believer.     The story line opens with the chaotic moment of discovery after the historic mass Rapture event, and the remainder is a moral melodrama concluding with emotional born-again conversions.     In the September/October 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs Walt Mead writes that fundamentalists are not hospitable to the idea of gradual progress toward a secular utopia driven by technological advances and the cooperation of intelligent people of all religious traditions.      Instead fundamentalists separate themselves from the world and have a premillennial pessimism about prospects for social reform.  Billy Graham's biography by Strober notes that they criticized Graham's "new evangelism" for its inclusiveness and for its involvement in addressing social problems. Yet their separatism does not preclude proselytizing as portrayed in these novels by the "Tribulation Force" or as exemplified by Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority.    They are also committed to an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world and are hostile to international institutions such as the United Nations. Mead notes that it is no coincidence that the Left Behind novels show the Antichrist rising to power as the secretary-general of the United Nations.    The U.S. Statistical Abstract reports that the per capita numbers of fundamentalists are growing exponentially, while evangelicals and liberals - e.g. Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists - and Catholics are continuing their per capita declines.  Such data and the reported popularity of these Left Behind novels indicate fundamentalism's growing appeal in reaction to contemporary American society.    I see the readers who seriously respond to this book as the "left behind" in the backwash of the tidal flows of cultural change in modern American society, and as conservative Christians who believe it is better to stay behind.  And in not just a few respects, they may be wise to do so.    Thomas J. Hickey
Output (English): NEG