it has been argued in geopolitical literature recently that “religion is the
emerging political language of the time” (agnew 2006, 183) and “international
politics is being increasingly scripted in the spatial grammar of a millennial
struggle between good and evil” (Bialasiewicz 2006, 720). With four of the last
seven U.s. presidents claiming to be ‘born-again’ (Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan,
Bill Clinton, and george W. Bush)1 political geographers should be attentive to
the strategies and reasoning practices used in the name of religion. geographic
inquiry into apocalyptic or millennial Christianity is often hinted at but has, with
few exceptions, received no focused analysis (but see special issues of the journals
Hérodote 2005 and Geopolitics 2006; gerhardt 2008).
it is a fundamental tenet of critical geopolitics that culture and politics are co-constitutive. as such, rather than critique theology in this volume we are interested
in examining the geographical imaginations of american evangelicals’ religious
worlds: their fiction, maps, public performances, discourses, prophecy books,
and descriptions. thinking, wanting, waiting, speaking, listening, and looking all
(re)construct geopolitical world views associated with evangelicalism. american
1 We say claimed because gerald Ford declared himself ‘born again’ in 1976 although
he was an episcopalian because Jimmy Carter’s born-again bent was appealing to the
electorate (see Lieven 2004). Barack Obama has specifically avoided referencing himself
as ‘born again’ (see the pulliam and olsen [2008] interview with candidate obama).
Mapping the End Times2
evangelical geopolitics is a complex topic that is manifested in many different ways
and generates varied reactions. scholars from religious studies, history, sociology,
anthropology, and political science who have paid close notice to evangelicals have
generally ignored the spatializing processes nested within evangelical discourses.
this book attempts to highlight these geographies and spark further discussion
of the evangelical geopolitical imagination in both its utopian and dystopian
manifestations. We outline the intersection of religious studies with the sub-field
of geography called geopolitics in order to faciliate further this engagement.
geopolitics and religion
the relationship between geopolitics and religion is a longstanding one, but has
recently undergone major changes, especially in academic circles. of course,
religion is at the root of international relations, with the question of religious
identity at the core of the treaties of Westphalia that are often cited as the beginning
of modern understandings and practices of sovereignty and the inter-state system
(e.g., Morganthau 1960; see also Campbell 1992; agnew 1998). similarly, the
‘threat’ of islam played a great role in the forging of europe’s geopolitical identity
as ‘Christendom’ during that same era. ‘geopolitics’ as a concept is, of course, of
much more recent vintage, dating only from the very end of the nineteenth century
(agnew 1998). Concerned primarily with environmental factors, so-called classical
geopolitics neglected the role of culture such that religion would have seemed
out of place in serious geopolitical analysis. Later incarnations of geopolitics
emphasized the role of political economy and Realpolitik, and so at least officially
were also uninterested in religion, even as religio-cultural assumptions continued
to undergird formal theorizing.
Critical geopolitics can be understood fundamentally as the study of spatial
discourses associated with global visions of power (dalby 1990; Ó tuathail
1996). As critical geopolitics has flourished over two decades, it has been pushed
and pulled in many directions that call into question such a simple definition of
the project, including nonrepresentational and more humanist approaches. this
volume remains fairly closely connected to the more conventional original focus
on discourse and the global scale; however this is not because we reject the newer
approaches to the study of geopolitics, but rather because we are coming to the
study of geopolitics and religion relatively late, and the salience of the topic to
conventional questions of american foreign policy and cultural power during
the presidency of george W. Bush beg for scholarly attention. that said, many
of the chapters presented in this book have deviated from discourse and textual
analysis to use interviews, participant observation, and even ethnography, broadly
understood, as methods for analysis. Critical geopolitics, in all its forms, has been
unified by its political and scholarly commitment to the reversal of academic
geography’s historic role as handmaiden to empire. instead of that dubious legacy,
critical geopolitics has advanced understandings of the processes that produce
Introduction 3
hegemonic knowledges of militarism and perpetuated inequality. it was with this
goal in mind that this book was envisioned.
the rise of critical geopolitics within political geography offered new
possibilities for engagement with the religion, in contrast to formulations in the
‘new’ geography of religion that are less concerned with critical social theory
than with questions concerning subjectivity (Livingstone, Keane, and Boal 1998;
Kong 2001; holloway 2006). Most of these possibilities remained latent and
unrecognized until recently. as has been lately noted, scholars of critical geopolitics
remained largely dazzled by elite discourses and representations of place for two
decades. Like previous scholars of geopolitics, we remained products of our
time – fixated on the end of the Cold War and politicians’ subsequent search for
geopolitical order through discourse. Further, the modernization thesis has long
been influential in the social sciences, arguing that religion itself would fall victim
to the twin forces of modern life and globalization. it became easy to think of
religion as something that mattered in other parts of the world, but was irrelevant
in the context of american geopolitics. it took the presidency of george W. Bush
to raise the issue of evangelical Christianity (and in particular the unique and
powerful strands of evangelicalism indigenous, but not endemic, to the U.s.) to
the attention of scholars within critical geopolitics, although the subject had long
been of interest to those in other disciplines (some of whom are in this volume).
A recent flurry of work in critical geopolitics has just begun to open up this “most
exciting frontier” (sidorov 2006, 340).
an interesting element of this emerging literature is that it has been remarkably
focused on evangelicalism, often to the exclusion of other religious perspectives,
and this book is no exception (but see de Busser 2006; dijkink 2006; Megoran
2006; sidorov 2006; West 2006). that this should occur during a period marked
by president Bush’s ‘global War on terror’, when much of the developed world’s
state-power was directed towards analysis and containment of the purported threat
of islamist violence, is remarkable evidence both of the anti-hegemonic bent of
critical geopolitics and also of the lingering effects of the crisis of representation.
Nevertheless, it would be a benefit to the literature on religion and geopolitics
were subsequent studies to broaden out and consider subaltern geopolitical visions
that are religiously informed. this is important not because it would serve the
needs of the state (that is a path critical geopolitics judiciously avoids) but because
these perspectives are just as key as some strands of american evangelicalism
in perpetuating injustice and bodily violence (and equally, like some strands of
american evangelicalism, may hold the keys to reducing injustice and violence).
Geopolitical Analysis and American Evangelicalism
Critical geopolitics has, since its inception, been systematized as the study of
three different kinds of discourse: formal, practical, and popular (Ó tuathail and
agnew 1992; sharp 2000). drawing on Lefebvrean theory, this trio is understood
as being only separate in an analytic sense, as they each inform and substantiate
Mapping the End Times4
the others. Formal geopolitical discourse has been described as the imagined
geographies of geopolitical theorists, both from the academy and from think tanks.
in regards to american evangelicalism, there are numerous nodes and loci that
serve as centers of formal geopolitical thought. these institutes were formed from
the late nineteenth century onward as an investment in intellectual infrastructure
following the national embarrassment of the scopes Monkey trial, and include
the Moody Bible institute, dallas theological seminary, Regent University, and
Liberty University. in particular, tulsa, dallas, Chicago, and Colorado springs
have emerged as centers of evangelical geopolitical theorizing.
it would be a mistake, however, to think of evangelical geopolitical theory as
somehow walled off from more ‘mainstream’ geopolitical theory. For instance,
samuel huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis resonated strongly with many
evangelicals because of the centrality huntington afforded religion and culture in
his argument. in addition to the written word, the sphere of formal theorizing also
includes the spoken word of individual evangelical pastors across the United states
(and around the world). these men (indeed, the job remains strongly gendered
in most evangelical parishes) study the Bible individually and produce weekly
sermons that often touch on the structures of geopolitics or current events in a
biblical context. the de-centered nature of evangelical thought (one of the central
tenets is of personal relationships with the Bible and god) means that evangelical
geopolitics resists monolithic interpretations. nevertheless, much attention from
the critical geopolitics community has focused on the Christian Zionist lobby in
Washington and Jerusalem/tel aviv, which have had a tremendous and direct
influence on both countries’ foreign policies. American evangelicals provide
perhaps the largest base of support for pro-israel interest in the United states,
providing the most unqualified, unwavering, and uncritical support for Israel in
what is by most accounts an already israel-friendly populace. evangelicals often
support highly violent foreign policies, such as the 2008–2009 War on gaza and
the possibility of a nuclear first strike against Iran. The reasons for this are highly
controversial, as seen in the recent dust-up over Mearsheimer and Walt’s book The
Israel Lobby (2007).
practical geopolitics continues to be focused on the practitioners of statecraft,
although increasing recognition of the importance of other global discourses
emanating from prominent ngos and international organizations is apparent in
most critical geopolitical writing. This wider definition applies in the realm of
evangelical geopolitics, but the recent george W. Bush presidency has certainly
dominated attention from scholars of critical geopolitics for its perceived role
in implementing evangelical-influenced policy, both at home and abroad. The
‘crusade’ against Islamism, Operation: Infinite Justice, Axis of Evil, and other
ill-judged rhetorics associated with the ‘War on terror’ have dominated the
representations of the Bush administration, but other policies have been just as
crucial in identifying the U.s. government with the evangelical agenda, from
de-funding international development aid that included birth control, to leading
the charge to create a cease-fire in the civil war in Sudan between the Muslim-
Introduction 5
dominated government and the Christian and animist south, to ignoring the
Muslim-on-Muslim conflict that emerged in Darfur at the same time (Gerhardt
2008). nevertheless, practical evangelical geopolitics did not begin with george
W. Bush. a common argument has been that the U.s. government itself has been at
times run by born-again Christians pining for the apocalypse or interpreting world
events and acting on these events from this theological perspective (sturm 2006).
While there is little direct evidence of this claim, and the role of religion in
american elections makes clear why some politicians might voice beliefs they
do not hold sincerely, there is enough circumstantial evidence to raise questions.
For instance, president Reagan and members of his administration have been
particularly associated with making apocalyptic and religiously motivated
statements, although exactly what Reagan intended and what strategies he
employed to garner support among the Christian Right is unclear. however,
his official biographer, Edmund Morris (1999, 632–33), wrote that Ezekiel was
Reagan’s “favorite book of prophecy”. Morris’s ‘fictional’ biography is obviously
a questionable source; however, Reagan was quoted by the Washington Post when
he was governor of California as asking senator James Mills if he was “familiar
with the prophet ezekiel.” Upon replying that he was not, Reagan explained:
in the thirty-eighth chapter of ezekiel it says god will take the children of israel
from among the heathen [where] they’d been scattered and will gather them
again in the promised land. ezekiel says that… the nation that will lead all the
other powers into darkness against israel will come out of the north. What other
powerful nation is to the north of israel [besides Russia]? none. But it didn’t
seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian
country. now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic,
now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description perfectly.
(Mills quoted in Vidal 1993, 1001–2).
Reagan also appointed Christian Zionists to influential political positions including
figures like Attorney General Ed Meese, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger,
and secretary of the interior James Watt. these political outcomes make sense
when considered alongside the recent coalition-building politics of the Republican
party, which William Connolly (2005) has described as a cowboy capitalist-evangelical resonance machine, in which the power of the U.s. state and that of
the evangelical movement each feed off of each other without being caused or
determined by the other. Michael Lindsay argues in his book, Faith in the Halls of
Power (2007), that over the past twenty or so years evangelicals have taken to high
ranking positions of power, made a vast network of relationships in government,
and influenced the White House through political lobby groups. These include
the Christian israel public affairs Committee (CipaC), which was launched as
the Christian lobby wing of the Likud party, and the Christian counterpart of the
Washington based pro-israel lobby, the american israel public affairs Committee
(aipaC). others include John hagee’s Christians United for israel (CUFi) and
Mapping the End Times6
the United Coalition for israel (UCFi) whose biblical imperative is the territorial
expansion of israel. Just as practical evangelical geopolitics did not begin in 2001,
it has not come to an end with the george W. Bush regime; indeed evangelical
influence is increasingly felt in governmental discourse from the ‘global south’ to
the european Union, as some of the chapters in this volume attest.
popular geopolitics refers to the discourses found in, and resonating through,
everyday life practices. this has usually been conceptualized in critical geopolitics
as elite discourses that are disseminated among the masses, thus keeping the
discourses analyzed within critical geopolitics strictly an elite affair. however,
recent shifts in the sub-discipline have emphasized the role of everyday audiences
in re-interpreting these discourses and recognized the continued agency of (in
this case) evangelical consumers of popular culture and news media. among
evangelical cultural forms, popular and academic attention has focused on the Left
Behind book series, which fictionalizes the final seven years of the current age
roughly as outlined within american apocalyptic evangelicalism (adhering to an
eschatology called dispensational premillennialism, see below). these books have
been a runaway best-seller in the United states, selling over 60 million copies
and spawning a variety of spin-offs, including movies, video games, audio books,
children’s versions, and a graphic novel (dittmer and spears 2009). the series
single-handedly turned its publisher, tyndale house, into a publishing giant (see
afterword, this volume).2 as such, this series has received the lion’s share of
popular and academic attention. however, the series is only the most prominent
symbol of the consolidation of the evangelical market using new media such as the
internet. Literary sensations such as William Young’s The Shack (2007) illustrate
the power and possibilities of evangelical audiences’ word-of-mouth in the
selection and perpetuation of some discourses over others. hollywood cinematic
examples include, although not designed for evangelicals alone, The Passion of the
Christ (2004), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005), the evangelical big
budget film, 2012: Doomsday (2008), and Roland emmerich’s secular apocalyptic
version simply titled, 2012 (2009). Christian popular music and worship songs
contain a wealth of doctrinal messages that are inculcated weekly before and after
services, at concerts, and in ipods (see Mcalister 2008). the focus on evangelical
eschatology in much of the work thus far published within critical geopolitics has
left open analyses that focus on other forms of geopolitically-informed evangelical
popular culture.
2 it can be argued that Left Behind is the best-selling fiction series by American
authors. Certainly other fiction series have sold many millions more, but on a per-book
basis (16), selling 62 million in 14 years qualifies it as a contender if we discount the
posterity granted to its predecessors and account for books included in the series.
Introduction 7
Dispensational Premillennialist eschatology and its rise in America
Christian millennialism is not a recent phenomenon, although historically it has
experienced varying levels of popularity (Cohn 1957). to put the current movement
in context, it is necessary to trace its pedigree, at least at a cursory level. the
first Christians believed the kingdom of God was imminent from the beginning
(Collins 2000). since then, some branches of prophetic belief about the end of
time have become distinctly american. as Wallace (2006) has suggested, to many
american evangelicals god is not an abstract character from which believers glean
moral grounding. Rather, for American evangelicals God has a firm grip on history
through an earthly engagement with geopolitical events and his central territorial
concerns are america and israel. this leads Wallace to argue that in some ways the
movement is more american in its reading of scripture than it is Christian. that
said, Mcalister (2003, 782) points out that american evangelicalism of the last
two decades is “not your father’s fundamentalism,” insolated from worldly events.
the movement is, rather, transnational in orientation as evidenced by followers’
renewed interest in politics and the influence exerted on them by non-American
voices (albeit with particular american nationalist ideology [Lieven 2004]).
the americas were conceived in the fervor of apocalypticism. Christopher
Columbus thought American gold and silver was placed in his hands to finance
a new crusade against the Muslims in Jerusalem to rebuild the third temple, “the
apocalyptic city par excellence” (Kirsch 2006, 170). Columbus thought he was
personally written into the Bible to rebuild it. to Columbus, america (or what
he thought was asia) was the new heaven and new earth according to divine
revelation. as is well known, some of america’s earliest colonists saw america
itself as the new israel and puritans were known to ruminate on the end of the
world, which led to what historian stephen stein calls “the americanization of
the apocalyptic tradition” (quoted in Boyer 1992, 68; see also Bercovitch 1978;
Cherry 1998).3 during the american Civil War both sides, north and south,
considered themselves to have divine favor (see Chapter 1, this volume). of
course both World Wars would be envisioned in the same way, but this time with
the United States geographically unified in battle against evil (Marsden 1980). It
should not be surprising then that sign watching would explode with fervor during
the present “wars and rumors of wars” in the Middle east because the times we
are in can always be thought of as horrible enough to be envisaged as the end
(Matthew 24:7).
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