Revenge is a genre best served old: Apocalypse in Christian Right literature and politics

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorDouglas, Christopher
dc.date.accessioned2022-11-17T00:17:51Z
dc.date.available2022-11-17T00:17:51Z
dc.date.copyright2021en_US
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractApocalypse is a phenomenology of disorder that entails a range of religious affects and experiences largely outside normative expectations of benevolent religion. Vindication, judgment, revenge, resentment, righteous hatred of one’s enemies, the wish for their imminent destruction, theological certainty, the triumphant display of right authority, right judgement, and just punishment—these are the primary affects. As a literary genre and a worldview, apocalypse characterizes both the most famous example of evangelical fiction—the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins—and the U.S. Christian Right’s politics. This article’s methodological contribution is to return us to the beginnings of apocalypse in Biblical and parabiblical literature to better understand the questions of theodicy that Left Behind renews in unexpected ways. Conservative white Christians use apocalypse to articulate their experience as God’s chosen but persecuted people in a diversely populated cosmos, wherein their political foes are the enemies of God. However strange the supersessionist appropriation, apocalypse shapes their understanding of why God lets them suffer so—and may also signal an underlying fear about the power and attention of their deity.en_US
dc.description.reviewstatusRevieweden_US
dc.description.scholarlevelFacultyen_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThis research was funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant number 167670.en_US
dc.identifier.citationDouglas, C. (2021). “Revenge is a genre best served old: Apocalypse in Christian Right literature and politics.” Religions, 13(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010021en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010021
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/14485
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherReligionsen_US
dc.subjectapocalypseen_US
dc.subjectChristian Righten_US
dc.subjectLeft Behinden_US
dc.subjectBibleen_US
dc.subjectmonotheismen_US
dc.subjectpolytheismen_US
dc.subjecttheodicyen_US
dc.subjectevangelicalen_US
dc.subjectfundamentalismen_US
dc.subjectsufferingen_US
dc.subjectreligious violenceen_US
dc.subjectpoweren_US
dc.subjectevilen_US
dc.titleRevenge is a genre best served old: Apocalypse in Christian Right literature and politicsen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Douglas_Christopher_Religions_2021.pdf
Size:
366.61 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
2 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download

Collections

Faculty Publications (Humanities)
 
University of Victoria Libraries

We acknowledge and respect the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees and Esquimalt) Peoples on whose territory the university stands, and the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.