Prophecy Fiction and Evangelical Political Reengagement
This chapter describes the evangelical political reengagement of the 1980s, as American prophecy believers began to search for a new eschatological enemy in the face of the impending collapse of the dangers of European Communism. Evangelical prophecy fiction had advanced an essential bipolar worldview. Its sustentation required the identification of a new enemy. Throughout the 1980s, American evangelicals searched for and attempted to combat the influence of that new enemy in a renewed political engagement. This chapter documents the New Age panic, and perceptions of a vast and overweening conspiracy involving significant American institutions. This chapter advances on the basis of a close reading of Frank Peretti’s novels, This Present Darkness (1986) and Piercing the Darkness (1989), and Pat Robertson’s The End of the Age (1995) to argue that the evangelical political reengagement reflected new trends in beliefs about spiritual warfare and the morality of violence.
Keywords: political reengagement, Communism, New Age, conspiracy, Frank Peretti, This Present Darkness, Pat Robertson, spiritual warfare, violence
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