Saturday, 20 December 2014

American Apocalypse, Key to the Loony Right in Coin Collecting?


In a new book ('American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism', Harvard University Press December 15, 2014), Matthew Avery Sutton, a professor of history at Washington State University, traces the history of American evangelical apocalypticism from the end of the 19th century to the present day.
In the process, he proposes a revised understanding of American evangelicalism, focused on the urgent expectations of the end of human history. [...] The question that initially sparked this research was why were fundamentalists and their evangelical heirs skeptical of the state? Why were and are they critical of the federal government? [...] the apocalyptic theology that developed in the 1880s and 1890s led radical evangelicals to the conclusion that all nations are going to concede their power in the End Times to a totalitarian political leader who is going to be the Antichrist. If you believe you’re living in the last days and you believe you’re moving towards that event, you’re going to be very suspicious and skeptical of anything that seems to undermine individual rights and individual liberties, and anything that is going to give more power to the state.
See Daniel Silliman, 'It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More', December 2, 2014.

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