Jacob R. Neiheisel and Paul A. Djupe

In a recent interview with Bryce Crawford–a self-described Christian evangelist and podcaster–Vice President JD Vance spoke candidly about the end times. Vance said that he “wouldn’t be shocked if we are living in the end time.” He went on to say that, as someone in a leadership position, he has come to terms with the fact that his actions may hasten their arrival, adding that the end times have long held something of a fascination for him.

He is hardly alone in this regard among prominent American leaders. Possibly in response to criticisms of the VP’s remarks, conservative writer (and sometime friend of Vance’s) Rod Dreher noted that Ronald Reagan held similar beliefs, which were on full display during the last debate of the 1984 presidential race.

Dreher also argued that many Americans – particularly Christians and Republican voters – are of a similar mind when it comes to the end times. On this front, again, Dreher is largely correct. According to a survey conducted by Pew in April of 2022, 39 percent of Americans believe that we are currently living in the end times. That figure was slightly higher among Republicans (45 percent) and lower among Democratic identifiers (33 percent).

Our own data show something similar. In our forthcoming book The Politics of the End: Apocalypticism in America (NYU Press), we report that 29 percent of those we surveyed in 2023 either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “We are currently entering into the prophesied End Times.” Two years earlier, in 2021, 33 percent agreed with that same statement.

Like many Americans, Vance also seems to equivocate on the matter of whether the end is coming soon or is simply likely to happen someday, saying on Crawford’s podcast that “I just think you’ve got to kind of try to have an attitude of the end times may be coming.” He continued by throwing a bone to the major end times schools of thought, saying that “In fact, they are coming, it’s just a question of whether they’re coming thousands of years down the road [“post-millennialism”] or a few months down the road [“pre-millennialism”], and we’ve got a lot of work to do right now.” In the 2022 Pew survey, 55 percent of all U.S. adults indicated that they believe that Jesus will return to Earth someday – a figure that showcases greater acceptance of the idea that the world may end at some point, even if they are less certain of the exact timeline.

Taken together, the evidence suggests that Dreher may be right on several points. It is true that leaders in the past have revealed that they think about the timeline surrounding the end. Survey data likewise point to the fact that a sizable number of Americans believe similarly to Vance.

Catholics, however, have historically been less concerned with end times prophecy and Vance is a recent convert to Catholicism. Yet, the way in which he talks about the end times would hardly be out of place coming from an evangelical Christian. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that Vance has attracted attacks on social media that focus on his apparent ignorance of Catholic doctrine.

Vance’s stance resonates with a broader pattern that we have found. Since at least the late 1970s, different views on the end times have collapsed into a more generalized apocalypticism that would be unrecognizable among people of faith just a generation ago.

We believe that we are among the first to document such changes in the population. While theologians may still debate the finer points of the different timelines of how the end is expected to unfold, the public now appears to care little about such matters. Instead, what is of primary importance is simply the belief that we may be witnessing the kinds of events that might be expected to lead to the end times. And, as Vance said in his interview on Crawford’s podcast, “I think that there are, like, things about the world that make me feel, like, not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us.”

The problem is that for apocalyptic believers everything is interpreted through such a lens, and the world has a way of continually offering up terrible images of suffering that fit the mold and might plausibly pave the road to Armageddon. Our work has repeatedly shown that these commitments are hardly benign in nature. Apocalypticism tracks with a host of anti-democratic attitudes, prepping for disaster and gun hoarding (blog post), and extreme reactions to the presence of diverse people (blog post) in their communities. The mere fact that it is a widespread belief system that has shaped the thinking of past leaders in the U.S. should give us pause, especially when those sentiments are being echoed by the sitting Vice President.

Jacob R. Neiheisel is an associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY and is coauthor of the forthcoming The Politics of the End: Apocalypticism in America (NYU Press).

Paul A. Djupe directs the Data for Political Research program at Denison University, is an affiliated scholar with PRRI, the book series editor of Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics (Temple), and co-creator of religioninpublic.blog. Further information about his work can be found at his website and on Bluesky.