Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America

Over the last thirty years, conservative evangelicals have been moving to the Northwest of the United States, where they hope to resist the impact of secular modernity and to survive the breakdown of society that they anticipate. These believers have often given up on the politics of the Christian Right, adopting strategies of hibernation while developing the communities and institutions from which a new America might one day emerge. Their activity coincides with thepromotion by prominent survivalist authors of a program of migration to the “American Redoubt,” a region encompassing Idaho, Montana, parts of eastern Washington and Oregon, and Wyoming, as a haven in which to endure hostile social change or natural disaster and in which to build a new social order.These migration movements have independent origins, but they overlap in their influences and aspirations, working in tandem to offer a vision of the present in which Christian values must be defended as American society is rebuilt according to biblical law. This book examines the origins, evolution, and cultural reach of this little-noted migration and considers what it might tell us about the future of American evangelicalism.Drawing on Calvinist theology, the social theory of Christian Reconstruction, and libertarian politics, these believers are projecting significant soft power. Their books are promoted by leading mainstream publishers and listed as New York Times bestsellers. Their strategy is gaining momentum, making an impact in local political and economic life, while being repackaged for a wider audience in publications by a broader coalition of conservative commentators and in American mass culture. Thissurvivalist evangelical subculture recognizes that they have lost the culture war - but another kind of conflict is beginning.

Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America adds complexity to our understanding of the methods that evangelicals have pursued to enact change as well as the periodization for these efforts., Whether familiar or unacquainted with those involved in Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest, readers will be equipped and prepared to think carefully about the movement and the relationship between faith, politics, and culture., an important book, For Lutherans, the value of this book can be found in the question of how best to approach secularism., A fine addition to an expanding list of historically grounded monographs on Christian Reconstruction.

Crawford Gribben is Professor of History at Queen's University Belfast, and is the author of a number of books on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, including God's Irishmen: Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland , Writing the Rapture: Prophecy Fiction in Evangelical America, Evangelical Millennialism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-2000, and John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences ofDefeat.