Today our discussion takes us to a cluster we published last month, W(h)ither the Christian Right?

This cluster, a wide-ranging exploration of relationships between literature, broadly conceived, and American evangelical Christianity, was edited by Christopher Douglas and Matthew Mullins. It feels like an especially urgent and timely cluster, given the religious contexts surrounding the recent overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the January 6th insurrection and QAnon, and the evangelical movement’s embrace of Trumpism more generally, as we approach the 2022 midterms and look forward nervously to the presidential election of 2024.

To discuss the role that literature plays in the evangelical world, the political moment in which the American Christian right finds itself, and how secular literary critics might engage with faith, Contemporaries co-editor Michael Docherty was joined by the cluster's editors Chris and Matt, alongside two of its contributors, Jenny Van Houdt and Melodie Roschman.

During the episode, we mention an episode of the NYT's The Daily podcast that intersects with Jenny's essay. Listen to that here.

Check out all our clusters at post45.org/contemporaries, email us at post45contemporaries@gmail.com, and follow us on Twitter at @AtPost45.

Guests

Jenny Van Houdt is an instructor at North Idaho College and an assessment designer for Washington State University's College of Medicine. Her work is interested in how apocalyptic thought reorients beliefs about the world. Her essay is "Red-Pilling on Patmos: A Quick and Dirty Hermeneutic for the Evangelical–QAnon Connection."

Melodie Roschman (@roschmachine) is a recent English PhD graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. Her dissertation examines memoir, community, and resistance in the progressive Christian community surrounding the late Rachel Held Evans. Her essay is "'We Must Choose Manhood': Masculinity, Sex, and Authority in Evangelical Purity Manuals."

Matthew Mullins (@MullinsMattR) is Associate Professor of English and History of Ideas at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina and the author of Postmodernism in Pieces (Oxford 2016) and Enjoying the Bible (Baker 2021). Christopher Douglas (@crddouglas) is Professor of English at the University of Victoria and the author of If God Meant to Interfere: American Literature and the Rise of the Christian Right. His recent publications include "Christian White Supremacy in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead Novels" and "Silence: Kidnapping, Abuse, and Murder in Early-Twenty-First-Century White Evangelical Fiction." Chris and Matt co-edited the cluster and co-wrote its introduction.

Jason Berry, "City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300" (UNC Press, 2018)