Master's Theses

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

Spring 2023

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Advisor

Dr. Daniel McClure

Abstract

Scholarship on American evangelicalism and its historical intersection with the ideology and activities of White Nationalism has typically focused on identifying shared cultural affinities in areas related broadly to the values and objectives of historic conservatism. These include issues of traditional patriarchy and gender roles, racial and/or religious prejudice, anti-immigrant views, and hostile responses to progressive socio-cultural change. Sociological, psychological, political and other frames of analysis applied to the study of American evangelicalism’s historical and cultural crossover with White Nationalism also identifies shared tendencies towards operating with conspiratorial and apocalyptic beliefs and frames of mind. To date, no comprehensive historical examination has been made in scholarly literature of the role of apocalyptic narratives and conspiracy beliefs in animating or motivating the actions and attitudes of evangelical Christians or White Nationalists or to what extent the apocalyptic narratives of each of these subcultures may have interacted and influenced each other’s development.

Through a process of intra-White cultural and ideological exchange the premillennial dispensational apocalyptic narrative of fundamentalist-evangelical Christianity as illustrated in Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) informed the later development of the apocalyptic narrative of the White Power movement’s vision of an end times race war as seen in The Turner Diaries (1978). Organizations such as the John Birch Society and other anticommunist political and cultural movements and messaging like those of the McCarthy hearings of 1954 and the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater in 1964 served as the nexus of this intra-White apocalyptic narrative exchange.

Comments

For questions contact ScholarsRepository@fhsu.edu

Rights

© 2023 by Zachary W. Gipson

Download


Included in

History Commons

Share

COinS