Christian Fundamentalism and the Culture of Disenchantment PaulMaltby. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013.

Abstract

Christian Fundamentalism and Culture of Disenchantment Paul Maltby. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013.Paul Maltby's extended comparative essay on American Christian Fundamentalism and postmodern ethos of contemporary secularism presents two inter-related arguments. Starting from premise that and Christian fundamentalism are diametrically opposed world views (3), Maltby demonstrates how can reveal tendencies and weaknesses of fundamentalism at rhetorical and imagistic levels (120). However, he inverts this logic, too, to show how fundamentalism's thematic concerns -transcendence, beauty, glory, and sacrality-are topics from which recoils, thereby limiting itself. Maltby's overarching argument illuminates how and fundamentalism symbiotically mirror other's structural weaknesses: contrast of two, we can learn lot about each (3).Christian Fundamentalism and Culture of Disenchantment succeeds in its (eminently postmodern) mission of unsettling truth claims of both fundamentalists and postmodernists. Three questions motivated Maltby: first, how to responsibly critique cultural system with which one disagrees; second, what specific social conditions led to growth of fundamentalism; third, what inadequacies are revealed in secular by ease with which it dismisses fundamentalism (x). Maltby accurately elucidates perspectives and logic of fundamentalism, correctly insisting that omni-presence of fundamentalist thinking in American culture, religion, politics, and commerce merit(s) detailed consideration (57), since the sheer force and scale of fundamentalism.. .constitutes striking rebuff to an overconfident postmodernism (174).Maltby takes distinctly cultural and aesthetic approach to question. The book doesn't ignore theoretical, theological, or, in case of post-modernism, anti-teleological, underpinnings: key figures include Jacques Derrida and Maltby's apparent patron saint, Richard Rorty; Rousas Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer, and Gary North represent other side. But use of art works-primarily literature and painting-vividly presents Maltby's definitions and arguments. Chapter Two on End Times Fiction and Ironic Reader, and Chapter Five on Evangelical Painting and Ironic Spectator, concern immensely popular artworks from fundamentalist culture-the Left Behind books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins and pious contemporary artwork (including late Thomas Kinkade). These, together with first chapter on history, are strongest in book. For instance, Maltby's analysis of apocalyptic novels unpacks how literal reading of Bible infects rhetoric of fiction: a programmatic assertion of doctrine precludes kinds of literary devices that can elevate prose above level of exposition. …