Fellow, affiliation:
10/2022-09/2024: Chair for History of Church and Theology, University of Siegen
Alternative Facts and Evangelical Fiction
Dr. Cassandra Ashton
The polarization of American culture has led to a political climate in which left and right disagree not only on the interpretation of facts, but on what those facts are, such that each side increasingly views the other as deliberately obtuse and morally culpable. My work on American evangelical fiction of the late 20th and early 21st centuries suggests that the gulf between positions is at least partly explainable by differences in what Paul Veyne calls programs of truth.
Studies of American white evangelical Christian fantastic literature are largely limited to apocalyptic fiction, and particularly the Left Behind novels. However, my research indicates that a closer look at a broader selection of American evangelical fantastic literature is warranted, because it shows consistent patterns in the modelling of decision-making and the evaluation of information.
While neither white American evangelicals nor American conservatives are a monolithic group, and the relationship between white American evangelicalism and cultural conservatism is complex, I propose that a study of American white evangelical fiction of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries will uncover not only a different set of values, but also different decision-making protocols and different criteria for truth itself. Further, I argue that due to the cross-pollination of ideas between white evangelical Christians and the broader conservative movement over the past few decades, this different program of truth sheds light on decision-making and communication strategies in present-day American conservatism. White evangelical fiction did not cause the current climate of alternative facts, but I do claim that it models and reinforces thought patterns that allow such a climate to arise.