Тимоти ЛаХей: Жизнь и творчество американского евангелиста.

Evangelical Christian minister and author from the United States

Timothy Francis LaHaye (April 27, 1926 – July 25, 2016) was an American Baptist evangelical Christian minister who wrote more than 85 books, both fiction and non fiction, including the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which he co authored with Jerry B. Jenkins. He was a founder of the Council for National Policy, a Conservative Christian advocacy group. LaHaye opposed homosexuality, believing it to be immoral and unbiblical. He was a critic of Roman Catholicism, and a believer in conspiracy theories regarding the Illuminati.

Timothy Francis LaHaye was born on April 27, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan, to Frank LaHaye, a Ford auto worker who died in 1936 of a heart attack, and Margaret LaHaye (née Palmer). His father's death had a significant influence on LaHaye, who was only nine years old at the time. He had been inconsolable until the minister at the funeral said, "This is not the end of Frank LaHaye; because he accepted Jesus Christ, the day will come when the Lord will shout from heaven and descend, and the dead in Christ will rise first and then we'll be caught up together to meet him in the air." LaHaye later said that, upon hearing those remarks, "all of a sudden, there was hope in my heart I'd see my father again."

LaHaye started numerous groups to promote his views, having become involved in politics at the Christian Voice during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1979, he encouraged Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority and sat on its board of directors. LaHaye's wife, Beverly, founded Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian women's activist group. Then in 1981, he left the pulpit to concentrate his time on politics and writing. That year, he helped found the Council for National Policy (CNP), a policy making think tank in which membership is only available through invitation. ABC News called it "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of". In the 1980s he was criticized by the evangelical community for accepting money from Bo Hi Pak, a longtime Sun Myung Moon operative. He was additionally criticized for joining Moon's Council for Religious Freedom, which was founded to protest Moon's 1984 imprisonment. and served as his spiritual advisor. The series, which started in 1995 with the first novel, includes 12 titles in the adult series, as well as juvenile novels, audio books, devotionals, and graphic novels. The books have been very popular, with total sales surpassing 65 million copies as of July 2016. Seven titles in the adult series have reached No. 1 on the bestseller lists for The New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly. Jerry Falwell said about the first book in the series: "In terms of its impact on Christianity, it's probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible." The best selling series has been compared to the equally popular works of Tom Clancy and Stephen King: "the plotting is brisk and the characterizations Manichean. People disappear and things blow up." which opened in January 2002 and was named after LaHaye. He also served as its president. He provided funds for the LaHaye Ice Center on the campus of Liberty University, which opened in January 2006. LaHaye's book The Rapture was released on June 6, 2006, in order to capitalize on a 6 6 6 connection.

Tim LaHaye married activist and fellow author Beverly Ratcliffe in 1947 while attending Bob Jones University. LaHaye died on July 25, 2016, in a hospital in San Diego, California, after suffering from a stroke, aged 90. In addition to his wife, Beverly, he was survived by four children, nine grandchildren, 16 great grandchildren, a brother (Richard LaHaye), and a sister. His funeral service took place at Shadow Mountain Community Church on August 12, 2016, with David Jeremiah, who succeeded LaHaye as pastor at what was then Scott Memorial Baptist Church, led the service. LaHaye is interred at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego, California.

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." The Unhappy Gays also argues that homosexuals share 16 pernicious traits, including "incredible promiscuity", "deceit", "selfishness", "vulnerability to sadism masochism", and "poor health and an early death." He believed that homosexuality can be cured. However, he said that such conversions are rare.

LaHaye believed that the Illuminati is secretly engineering world affairs. In Rapture Under Attack he wrote:I myself have been a forty five year student of the satanically inspired, centuries old conspiracy to use government, education, and media to destroy every vestige of Christianity within our society and establish a 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. The Illuminati is just one of many groups that he believed are working to "turn America into an amoral, humanist country, ripe for merger into a one world socialist state." Other secret societies and 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 State Department, major foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), the United Nations, "the left wing of the Democratic Party", Harvard, Yale "and 2,000 other colleges and universities." Many mainstream Christians and certain other evangelicals had broader disagreements with the series as a whole, pointing out that "most biblical scholars largely reject the eschatological assumptions of this kind of pop end times literature." In The Rapture Exposed by Barbara Rossing, a number of criticisms are raised regarding the series, particularly its focus on violence.

LaHaye was a harsh critic of Roman Catholicism, which he called "a false religion". 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, gone to his own place." 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 II, becomes Pontifex Maximus of Enigma Babylon One World Faith, an amalgamation of all remaining world faiths and religions. Other Catholic writers have said that while the books aren't "anti Catholic per se", they reflect LaHaye's other writings on the subject. 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." He also endorsed Catholic convert Newt Gingrich for president in 2012.

Time Magazine named LaHaye one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America, and in the summer of 2001, the Evangelical Studies Bulletin named him the most influential Christian leader of the preceding quarter century.