{"title":"Black evangelicals, white evangelicalism","authors":"Isaac Sharp","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13527","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"#ChurchToo: Rethinking purity culture and reforming evangelicalism","authors":"Karen Swallow Prior","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13525","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Evangelical literature has long used Biblical stories and genres as inspiration for contemporary fictions—think of C. S. Lewis refreshing the gospel story in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and revising the Eden myth in his science fiction novel Perelandra. Yet Biblical literature, as an anthology of sacred writing by scores of authors (and editors) across perhaps a thousand years in wildly different cultural and historical contexts, is a vast tradition that articulates a range of ethical values, all expressed in an array of genres with varied but specific conventions. This article examines two evangelical bestsellers from the last 20 years, William Paul Young's The Shack (2007) and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's Glorious Appearing (2004), the final novel in the Left Behind series, arguing that evangelicals draw on different Biblical genres for literary inspiration and religious faith. Their sales and movie adaptations attest to their continued power to move audiences. The Shack has sold over 20 million copies and was adapted in 2017 in a successful Hollywood movie starring Octavia Spencer and Sam Worthington, grossing $96 million in sales worldwide.1 The Left Behind series, meanwhile, written between 1995 and 2004 (with the prequels and sequel penned 2005–2007), has sold 80 million copies and continues to drive evangelical cultural production in films and video games. The series has been adapted to film six times: Most recently in 2023, starring and directed by Kevin Sorbo, in 2014, starring Nicholas Cage, and in 2000, 2002, 2005, with Kirk Cameron. The 2014 and 2023 reboots are in what we might call the same Left Behind Cinematic Universe (LBCU), with Cage's film ending with him as protagonist Rayford Steele landing the plane many passengers have been raptured from, and Sorbo as Rayford continuing in the months after the Rapture as he and others become born again Christians and discover the Antichrist's identity. The sixth film was a 2017 spinoff of the 40 volume adolescent series Left Behind: The Kids, written between 1998 and 2005, featuring young people becoming Christians and facing the Tribulation. The Shack and the Left Behind series have enjoyed vibrant afterlives since publication, indicating their enduring power to move evangelical audiences over the last 20 years.
I argue in this article that we can measure the continued cultural appeal of these evangelical bestsellers by examining their animating moral values. To do so, I follow the lead of Bible scholar Carol Newsom, who uses the prism of Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to map the values of the book of Proverbs. MFT posits that transcultural human moral concerns are shaped by the values of care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation, which various cultures shape differently. Jonathan Haidt, the primary developer of MFT, has argued that liber
{"title":"Evangelical literary tradition and moral foundations theory","authors":"Christopher Douglas","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13530","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Evangelical literature has long used Biblical stories and genres as inspiration for contemporary fictions—think of C. S. Lewis refreshing the gospel story in <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i> and revising the Eden myth in his science fiction novel <i>Perelandra</i>. Yet Biblical literature, as an anthology of sacred writing by scores of authors (and editors) across perhaps a thousand years in wildly different cultural and historical contexts, is a vast tradition that articulates a range of ethical values, all expressed in an array of genres with varied but specific conventions. This article examines two evangelical bestsellers from the last 20 years, William Paul Young's <i>The Shack</i> (<span>2007</span>) and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's <i>Glorious Appearing</i> (<span>2004</span>), the final novel in the Left Behind series, arguing that evangelicals draw on different Biblical genres for literary inspiration and religious faith. Their sales and movie adaptations attest to their continued power to move audiences. <i>The Shack</i> has sold over 20 million copies and was adapted in 2017 in a successful Hollywood movie starring Octavia Spencer and Sam Worthington, grossing $96 million in sales worldwide.<sup>1</sup> The Left Behind series, meanwhile, written between 1995 and 2004 (with the prequels and sequel penned 2005–2007), has sold 80 million copies and continues to drive evangelical cultural production in films and video games. The series has been adapted to film six times: Most recently in 2023, starring and directed by Kevin Sorbo, in 2014, starring Nicholas Cage, and in 2000, 2002, 2005, with Kirk Cameron. The 2014 and 2023 reboots are in what we might call the same Left Behind Cinematic Universe (LBCU), with Cage's film ending with him as protagonist Rayford Steele landing the plane many passengers have been raptured from, and Sorbo as Rayford continuing in the months after the Rapture as he and others become born again Christians and discover the Antichrist's identity. The sixth film was a 2017 spinoff of the 40 volume adolescent series Left Behind: The Kids, written between 1998 and 2005, featuring young people becoming Christians and facing the Tribulation. <i>The Shack</i> and the Left Behind series have enjoyed vibrant afterlives since publication, indicating their enduring power to move evangelical audiences over the last 20 years.</p><p>I argue in this article that we can measure the continued cultural appeal of these evangelical bestsellers by examining their animating moral values. To do so, I follow the lead of Bible scholar Carol Newsom, who uses the prism of Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to map the values of the book of Proverbs. MFT posits that transcultural human moral concerns are shaped by the values of care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation, which various cultures shape differently. Jonathan Haidt, the primary developer of MFT, has argued that liber","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jacc.13530","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Big-tent eschatology: Apocalypse as a mobilizing concept for the January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot","authors":"Jenny Van Houdt","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13529","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exvangelical exodus: David Bazan and the fallout of culture war Christianity","authors":"Matthew Mullins","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13528","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Old town road By Chris Molanphy, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2023. pp. 152. ISBN: 978-1-4780-2551-1","authors":"Kirsten Møllegaard","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13518","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trans identity, transfiguration, and apocalypse in Daniel M. Lavery's “Something That May Shock and Discredit You”","authors":"Melodie Anne Roschman","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13526","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13526","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Frankfurt School in Exile By Thomas Wheatland, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2023","authors":"Daniel C. Charlton","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13521","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jacc.13521","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139841316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teen movies: A century of American youth (second edition) By Timothy Shary, New York: Wallflower. 2023. pp. 170. ISBN: 978-0-231-20621-1","authors":"Kathy Merlock Jackson","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13519","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jacc.13519","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139804683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Manifest Destiny 2.0: Genre trouble in game worlds By Sara Humphreys, University of Nebraska Press. 2021","authors":"Shelby E. E. Vitkus","doi":"10.1111/jacc.13517","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jacc.13517","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44809,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139620499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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