American Evangelical Christians Research Articles

The American Peace Movement’s Use of Religious Influence and “The Pulpit” as a Public Relations Strategy in the Early 1800s

In response to calls for more public relations historical research in sectors outside business and before the 20th century, this research examines the communication efforts of American peace societies from the early to mid-1800s. It finds that peace societies demonstrated strategic intent, honored human agency, and employed full-time public relations practitioners. In addition, this research documents a nondenominational reform movement applying the strategic communication systems developed by American evangelical Christianity. Moreover, it pushes back the boundaries of the earliest known use of a religious public relations strategy by a social reform movement by 65 years.

“How Am I Responsible?”: Evangelical White Rage and Moral Injury in the Interpassive Perpetration of White-Body Supremacy

ABSTRACT Using the language of white rage as a term for the defensive reaction of white Americans to having one’s insular and central social location exposed and threatened, this paper explores the manifestation of white rage in American Evangelical Christian culture. Utilizing a focused psychoanalytic reflection and analysis, the authors explore the seeming unintelligible dissonance between the stated personal & communal morals of the white American Evangelical Church and the actions of its leaders and members regarding social and political responses to racism. Discussing how four interlocking theological particularities mask and sustain in-group identity at the expense of an other, the authors introduce and explore the concepts of perpetration-induced trauma and interpassivity and their intersection with whiteness, Linking identification to perpetration through the interpassive participation of inhabiting whiteness, the authors then articulate how the intolerable affective states of guilt and helplessness are defended against and theologically justified through the experience of white rage.

The mis-appropriation of Abraham Kuyper’s ideas about “worldview” by American Evangelical Christians

Beginning in the mid-1970s, the term “worldview” gradually became popular among evangelical and fundamentalist Christians as a result of the work of Francis A Schaeffer. He popularized the term through his best-selling books and films. This paper argues that in developing his thoughts about worldviews, Schaeffer appropriated earlier, and far more sophisticated, theories from Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd. The ideas of these men are explored to enable readers to understand the way evangelicals developed Schaeffer’s ideas. It is argued that they moved away from the way both Schaeffer and his mentors used the term. As a result, they lost sight of the fact that understanding worldviews was intended by Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, and Schaeffer to facilitate discussion between people holding very different views. Instead, worldview was turned into a propaganda device that enable people to avoid engagement with people and ideas they dislike. The paper concludes by suggesting that instead of dismissing Christians who employ worldview thinking for political purposes they ought to be challenged to develop a fuller understanding of worldview and confronted with the insights of Kuyper and Dooyeweerd upon which Schaeffer built his ideas.

The revelations of Q. Dissemination and resonance of the QAnon conspiracy theory among US Evangelical Christians and the role of the Covid-19 crisis

Previous studies show that the QAnon conspiracy theory is especially popular among American evangelical Christians. The paper investigates the reasons behind this relationship. We hypothesize a mediation relationship between evangelical dogma and how it is practiced on the one hand and the susceptibility for conspiracy thinking on the other hand. We argue that evangelicalism due to its biblicism is characterized by the belief that its perception of reality holds absolute truth (nomization), that the world can be clearly divided into good and evil (Manichaeism), and that salvation can be achieved through political means (immanent eschatology). Those beliefs, in turn, in the uncertain times of the Covid crisis resonate with the cognitive (epistemic), the affective (moral), and conative (eschatological) elements of conspiracy theories. Using data of waves 46 (March 2019), 68 (April 2020), and 73 (September 2020) of the American Trends Panel, conducted by the PEW Research Center we show respective mediation effects: Evangelical Christians are particularly convinced that their religion alone holds absolute truth and that religion has not enough influence on politics. The latter also correlates with the conspiracy belief that “powerful people intentionally planned the Covid outbreak”. QAnon support again is linked both to such Covid related conspiracy thinking and the three elements of nomization, Manichaeism, and immanent eschatology.

Televangelists, Flying Saucers, and Soul Eaters

Abstract This article outlines the general history of American Evangelical Christianity’s textual response to the UFO phenomenon, framed by the literary genre of the jeremiad and as part of the apocalyptic turn of the twentieth century. Beginning with its early entanglement in the 1940s and moving to the present, it highlights the shifts in the narrative from angelic harbingers to demonic co-conspirators. The article pays particular attention to a new Evangelical approach to the phenomenon through novelization that at once mirrors contemporary politicization and utilizes the literary form to initiate adherents. While “new” in some regards, the extended discussion and examination of Michael Heiser’s novel The Façade reveals a continuity with earlier forms of occult literatures birthed in the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately, the metaphysical and mystical nature of UFOs together with the similar qualities of the novel have been and are being appropriated by American Evangelicals in a hyperreal mode to extend their cultural influence.

"Crisis, Conspiracy, and Community in Evangelical Climate Denial"

Statistically speaking, American Evangelical Christians are uniquely attracted to apocalyptic conspiracy theories when it comes to the topic of climate change. Since Evangelicals constitute a powerful voting/lobbying/shopping bloc, it is worth asking why this might be the case and what (if anything) can be done about it. To this end, my study considers the relevance of two major cultural tributaries to American Evangelical pop apocalyptic culture. In the first section I consider biblical apocalyptic culture and argue that the characteristic apocalyptic promise to disclose hidden divine plans to a misunderstood but soon-tobe- vindicated elect group naturally entails conspiracy-theory thinking. I argue further that apocalyptic imagination and conspiracy-theory thinking are powerful tools for the definition of identity and community. In the second section I turn my attention to the kind of Evangelical pop apocalyptic culture that helped push climate science denial into the Christian mainstream. I argue that in pop apocalyptic productions like the influential tracts and comics of Jack T. Chick, the image of the elect as the persecuted and powerful bearers of special knowledge found a new lease on life, and continues to fascinate millions with the attractive offer of somebody special to be and somewhere special to belong. I conclude that apocalyptic questions of crisis and conspiracy have a sociological function, as means to the end of defining social identity. Understanding this concrete function of conspiracy-theory thinking in Christian apocalyptic imagination can help in assessing and addressing the troubling phenomenon of Evangelical climate denial.

'Our family picture is a little hint of heaven': race, religion and selective reproduction in US 'embryo adoption'.

People use selective reproductive technologies (SRT) in various family-making practices to assist with decisions about which children should be born. The practice of ‘embryo adoption’, a form of embryo donation developed by white American evangelical Christians in the late 1990s, is a novel site for reconceptualizing SRT and examining how they function among users. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2018 on US ‘embryo adoption’, this study provides an anthropological analysis of media produced by and about one white evangelical couple's race-specific preferences for embryos from donors of colour. This article shows how racializing processes and religious beliefs function as mutually reinforcing SRT for some ‘embryo adoption’ participants. Evangelical convictions justify racialized preferences, and racializing processes within and beyond the church reinforce religious acts. Race-specific preferences for embryos among white evangelicals promote selective decision-making not for particular kinds of children, a current focus in studies of SRT, but for particular kinds of families. This study expands the framework of SRT to include selection for wanted family forms and technologies beyond biomedical techniques, such as social technologies like racial constructs and religious convictions. Broadly, this article encourages greater attention to religion within analyses about race and reproduction by revealing how they are deeply entwined with Christianity, especially in the USA. Wherever constructions of race and religious convictions co-exist with selective reproductive decision-making, scholars should consider race, reproduction and religion as inextricable, rather than distinct, domains of analysis.

Attitudes towards mental illness in American Evangelical communities, supernaturalism, and stigmatisation

ABSTRACT Social-cognitive variables and religious attributions regarding mental illness were examined with a homogeneous sample of 180 American Evangelical Christians, using a novel tool and the Mental Health Knowledge Scale (MAKS). In the first trial, participants were randomly assigned to one of two Bible verse priming conditions, which made salient willpower, faith and anxiety-reduction or the suffering Christ. Priming effects revealed that those exposed to the willpower-faith admonishment condition showed lower stigma on the MAKS and stronger condition recognition scores. Participants who endorsed unilateral religious causes and solutions to mental illness also presented with less knowledge about mental health disorders and lower condition recognition, but the latter was unrelated to positive views regarding religiously-informed interventions. Females showed higher levels of condition recognition and fewer stigmatising attitudes.

The Allegiance of White American Evangelicals to Donald Trump

Abstract This article discusses why American evangelical Christians, particularly white evangelicals, have granted overwhelming support to Donald Trump, first as a presidential candidate in 2016, and then as president since his inauguration in January 2017. The loyalty afforded to him by this voting bloc results in an abandonment of the values and priorities of the greater Christian mission, exchanging faithful discipleship for political expediency. While this demographic of voters does not explicitly renounce the Christian faith or their belief in the authority of Scripture, the concerns exhibited in their fidelity to President Trump as a monarchical figure stand in contrast to both biblically-based evangelicalism and historic American political values.

Antisemitism under erasure: Christian Zionist anti-globalism and the refusal of cohabitation

ABSTRACT Two narratives used by conservative evangelicals as justification for supporting Donald Trump are his support for the state of Israel and opposition to “globalists.” However, narratives of “globalism” are rooted in and often deploy the codes of antisemitism. Using conspiratorial constructions of progressive billionaire George Soros in American evangelical Christian Zionist texts as a case study, this article interrogates the relationship between hostility to “globalism” and support for Israel. It argues that rather than simply evading or reproducing antisemitism, evangelical Christian Zionist anti-globalism relies on the antisemitic figure of “the Jew” as both present and absent, structurally necessary and necessarily disavowed. The article contends that the result of this disavowal is the figure of “the Jew”—one whose antisemitic archive is placed under erasure and whose figuration facilitates a theo/geopolitical imaginary grounded on the securitization of borders and ethnocratic concepts of the nation-state over and against the possibilities of cohabitation.

Relationship with God and the Word: Faith among American Evangelical Christian families

A little more than 40% of Americans self-identify with the Evangelical Christian faith. American Evangelical Christians generally report that the primary convictions of their faith are a strong belief in the Bible and deep commitment to and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We explore how these specific faith convictions and practices of Evangelical Christians influence their family life and family interactions. The article is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 23 Evangelical Christian families (46 parents, 10 youth). Themes related to the domain of marital strengths included: (1) enhancing marital unity, (2) resolving marital conflict, and (3) giving and receiving forgiveness in marriage. The three central themes related to parenting include: (1) enhancing parent–child unity, (2) resolving parent–child conflict, and (3) giving and receiving forgiveness.

CHRISTIAN AND SECULAR VALUES FOR SALE: THE RELIGIOUS APOSTASY OF CELEBRITY AND DISNEY’S “HANNAH MONTANA” STAR MILEY CYRUS

Religious apostasy is a complex phenomenon that becomes even more obscure when it involves public figures in the media industry with economic interests at stake. A paradigmatic case is that of American singer Miley Cyrus, who went from being a famous religious role model for conservative American evangelical Christians to becoming a secular and liberal celebrity, playing in highly sexualized live shows and videos. Drawing on a complementary use of sociological, economic and language theories of value, this paper explores Cyrus’ religious apostasy as a transformation from a Christian commodity to a secular one. Our study shows that, while for the industry, be it Christian or secular, Cyrus’ sociological and language values are always subsidiary to her economic value as a commodity, for Christian consumers, her economic value depends on her social and language values.

Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film by Casey Ryan Kelly

Reviewed by: Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film by Casey Ryan Kelly Maureen Rogers (bio) Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film by Casey Ryan Kelly. Rutgers University Press. 2016. $26.95 paperback; $15.95 e-book. 210 pages. Casey Ryan Kelly's Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film explores the proliferation of youth-oriented plots about abstinence in contemporary cinema, arguing that such films make up a broader popular media phenomenon that reflects cultural anxieties about the legacies of feminism and sexual liberation. The case studies analyzed in each chapter cover "abstinence cinema," what Kelly defines as an "emerging constellation of disparate film texts from 2000 to the present that collectively articulate circumscribed meanings of sexuality, gender, and family within the symbolic and discursive repertoire of the abstinence movement."1 Kelly argues that different facets of neoconservative politics and evangelical Christianity are reflected and refracted in diverse contemporary feature films ranging from straight-to-DVD teen comedies to globally distributed action films. Working within a cultural studies interpretive framework, the author understands contemporary movies as privileged "site[s] of ideological contestation" that engage in a "cultural proxy war over what kind of sexual morality should govern public and private life."2 Through the interpretive protocols of ideological critique and textual analysis, Kelly uncovers the conservative ideological dimensions of current films that engage, on textual and subtextual levels, youth sexuality and virginity loss. Kelly argues that these filmic discourses emerge from the rhetoric of contemporary evangelical purity [End Page 172] teachings and resonate with the sex-negative politics of the religious Right. As a result, abstinence cinema registers conservative cultural attitudes that valorize female purity, heteronormative masculinity, and traditional coupling. Abstinence Cinema shows how a corpus of film texts refracts the sexual and gender politics of contemporary American evangelical Christianity. Establishing the tenets of abstinence culture in the book's introduction, Kelly explains that abstinence outside of wedlock is a core biblical value, and one recently enjoying mainstream visibility, as illustrated in the popularity of abstinence organizations such as True Love Waits and the Silver Ring Thing and through high-profile celebrities, notably Selena Gomez, who previously publicly discussed purity-ring ceremonies and abstinence pledges.3 Of course, the abstinence movement has made gains in public policy as well. As Kelly shows, abstinence-only sex education in public schools was promoted in the 1980s by the Christian Right (many of whom who were also combating pornography and gay rights at the time) and has continued in the United States throughout the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Kelly presents the corpus of abstinence cinema as the collective cultural manifestation of the anxieties, fears, and moralism that drive purity culture, as well as a phenomenon that has emerged in recent years. The book's introduction briefly charts a lineage from the "white slave" films of the teens, through the Production Code of the studio era, and toward a resurgence of raunchy teen comedies of the early 1980s. Soon after, public awareness of AIDS prompted Hollywood to abandon sex-positive representations, resulting in the disappearance of "the 1970s rhetoric of sexual liberation" from mainstream movies.4 Kelly argues that the early 2000s saw Hollywood "revisit[ing] virginity … this time with a host of films that overinflate the personal and social value of remaining chaste, imploring audiences to think more carefully about the potentially dangerous repercussions of sexual activity."5 The case studies in Abstinence Cinema, which range across releases from 2005 to 2012, reflect Kelly's periodization and represent a diverse range of films, not limited by production context, intended audience, or genre. The book's five main chapters are used to illustrate the pro-abstinence rhetoric of recent mainstream feature films. Kelly analyzes the rhetoric about family, sexuality, and gender in The Twilight Saga (2008–2012), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, 2005), The Possession (Ole Bornedal, 2012), and Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008), as well as across a recent cycle of low-budget teen sex comedies that includes American Virgin (Jean-Pierre Marois, 2000), American Virgin (Clare Kilner, 2009...

Latin American Migration, Evangelical Christianity and Gender in Italy

Protestant Evangelical churches are expanding in the global South. In Europe too, while Christian confessions such as Catholicism and ‘mainline’ Protestant churches are losing worshippers, migration-driven Evangelical churches, especially Pentecostals, are growing. This paper investigates the role of faith and Evangelical churches in helping migrants to negotiate class demotion and integration, attain respectability and resist racialization. The paper applies a gender perspective to the study of the narratives and practices of Latin American men and women who are members of an Evangelical church in Italy. It finds that the church provides its members with gendered norms, enabling men and women to identify with valued models of feminine/masculine Christian morality and respectability. Through religious participation, migrants members may dissociate from dominant stigmatising representations of Latin American drunkards, ‘gangs’, ‘broken families’ and ‘bad mothers’ as well as from Pentecostal religious practices, which are regarded as ‘unorthodox’ in Italy. The paper also identifies generational differences in the way in which migrants make use of Evangelical religion to resist racism. Finally, the analysis points to ambivalent processes of ‘domestication’ of migrant men and of migrant women’s agency, which combine with an overall resilient gendered asymmetry in the distribution of power in the church.

The Varieties of Religious Responses to Homosexuality: A Content and Tonal Analysis of Articles in Pastoral Psychology from 1950 to 2015 Regarding Sexual Minorities

Psychology has a complex history with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Substantial shifts in stance, rhetoric, and research over the decades have influenced the greater societal view of LGBT people. While a noticeable cultural shift is occurring in America toward acceptance of LGBT people, some continue to argue that same-sex relationships are not healthy. Evangelical Christians, those who hold a high respect for the authority of the Bible and support nearly literal readings of its teachings, generally support such a position (Sullivan-Blum 2009). There is strain among evangelicals regarding what it means to live faithfully and to engage LGBT people, which becomes increasingly complex as evangelicals who identify as sexual minorities speak up and share their stories. Historically, a delayed time trend can be seen in responses to homosexuality among evangelical Christians. A content and tonal analysis was conducted of 53 peer-reviewed articles found in Pastoral Psychology, which were categorized as non-affirming, neutral/exploratory, or affirming. This analysis revealed a notable trend over the last 65 years toward more open and inclusive dialogue surrounding LGBT people, even when more traditional stances were being held. Tracing the views toward homosexuality in psychology and society allows for a more complex understanding of the current tensions among American evangelical Christians.

God's Greenhouse

God's Greenhouse

Insult and Insecurity: Discernment, Trust, and the Uncanny in Two US Pentecostal Communities

Within many North American evangelical Christian communities, discernment denotes attentiveness to an interior voice that believers learn to identify as God’s. This article adopts a comparative perspective on everyday domains of perception and feeling that practices of discernment implicitly distinguish as unmarked by God’s activity, and as characterized by specific forms of anxiety from which believers desire to be redeemed. In a majority White Pentecostal congregation in suburban Buffalo, New York, believers cast emotional insecurity as a condition demanding redemption, while members of African American churches in the inner city hope to be redeemed from sensitivity to insults. While practices of discernment counter such anxieties by fostering forms of intimacy and trust, they also reinforce anxiety by focusing believers’ attention on how familiar relations may be distorted in uncanny ways.

Writing, Religious Faith, and Rooted Cosmopolitan Dialogue

Some literacy scholars have embraced rooted cosmopolitanism as a framework for educating in today’s globalized and pluralistic world, where communicating across difference is an important individual and societal good. But how is the “cosmopolitan turn” in writing complicated by considering the religiosity of writing teachers and student writers? Is it possible for writing instructors and student writers to stay rooted in their own faith traditions, while maintaining openness to other ethical vantage points? What new questions are raised for cosmopolitan-minded writing pedagogy by these considerations? Through portraiture, we present complex pictures of how an American evangelical Christian teacher, Sam, and one of his evangelical Christian students, Charlie, engaged with a writing unit focused on “This I Believe” essay writing. The portraitures suggest that Sam, a more cosmopolitan evangelical, envisioned the unit as an invitation to (a) articulate one’s own beliefs in the wide universe of moral possibility and (b) get used to the beliefs of others who are ethically different from oneself. Charlie, on the other hand, conceptualized the unit’s writing, listening, and reading tasks as ways of honoring God and letting God speak through his literate practices. Our interpretation suggests that his populist evangelical faith made it difficult for him to openly engage in cosmopolitan dialogue across ethical difference. We hope our portraits of Sam and Charlie might move scholars interested in writing, literacy education, and rooted cosmopolitanism to engage themselves with the challenges and possibilities opened up when students’ and teachers’ religious roots are taken seriously.

Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. By Molly Worthen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. viii + 354 pp. $27.98 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority American Evangelicalism . By Molly Worthen . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. viii + 354 pp. $27.98 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesMolly Worthen's remarkable Apostles of Reason is an authoritative guide past six decades of American evangelical Christianity. It is one of most important accounts we now have on post-World War II evangelicalism, alongside books such as Joel Carpenter's Revive Us Again , Darren Dochuk's From Bible Belt Sunbelt , and Steven Miller's The Age of Evangelicalism . Yet Worthen's highly engaging book may not garner as much of an audience among American evangelicals as one might hope, because contest between evangelical conservatives and myriad evangelical dissenters, Worthen is not hesitant take sides. Her preference is for dissenters.Worthen's wide-ranging survey centers on evangelicals' quest for certainty and biblical authority, and especially effort defend of inerrancy. From Carl Henry, founding editor of Christianity Today , leaders of Southern Baptist Convention's Conservative Resurgence, traditionalist evangelicals have elevated inerrancy as an indispensable precept for Bible-believing Christians. Inerrancy posits that Bible (in original manuscripts) is God-breathed, authored by Holy Spirit working through inspired saints, and is therefore entirely free from factual or ethical error. The obvious problem with inerrancy is that it never solves debates over scripture's meaning: even conservatives do not agree on all manner of biblical issues, from proper method of baptism theology of end times.Worthen takes a skeptical--even hostile--view of real agenda of inerrantists. Whether they perceive it or not, doctrine of inerrancy was a comforting gauze that concealed a great deal of ugliness, she says. It was and is, in essence, a means of managing Bible's vulnerability subjective judgment (199). Evangelicalism, Worthen contends, has always been a multivalent, fractious conglomeration of perspectives rather than a unified set of principles. Anyone who suggests that there is a set of defining evangelical doctrines--as authors of The Fundamentals argued a century ago, just as today's conservative seminarians do--are really acting on their anxiety about free inquiry and about their movement's impermanent qualities.Twenty-five years ago, his magisterial Evangelicalism Modern Britain , historian David Bebbington, whose name does not appear index, offered his famous quadrilateral of conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism (the centrality of cross), and activism as defining traits of evangelical Christianity. Whether or not Worthen has Bebbington mind, it is precisely attempt define evangelical faith that she finds objectionable, and usually politically motivated. Pop evangelical gurus from Francis Schaeffer Christian America history writer David Barton have promoted their own versions of historical, theological, and scientific orthodoxy--usually more crass than those of scholars like Bebbington--in order give the appearance of sophistication and unassailable truth, but ultimately, to shut down debate (209). …

The Construction, Preliminary Validation, and Correlates of a Dream‐Specific Scale for Mystical Experience

This study aimed to create and test a dream‐specific version of Hood's Mysticism (M) Scale for the purpose of studying dreaming mystical experience. Factor analysis of the Spiritual Dreams Scale (SDS), based on data collected from 289 adults affiliated with an American evangelical Christian school, clearly resulted in three factors in accordance with prior studies of the M Scale. However, the factor composition of the SDS did not identically resemble the findings of previous studies of the M Scale. Instead, the three‐factor solution suggested a Jamesian interpretation according to which the factors were labeled mystical psychology (passivity), perceived alternate reality (ineffability), and noesis. Scores on the SDS shared significant positive correlations with scores for absorption, dream beliefs, dream recall, and kataphatic prayer. A scale for apophatic prayer failed to share a significant correlation with the SDS.