2 of 4

What made you think immediately of evangelicalism—and not the Catholic faith or the Eastern Orthodox faith that also include beliefs in angels and demons, or even the Jewish faith, which includes the practice of exorcism?

One thing was the way that American history has unfolded in relation to Protestantism. Even though we are a country without a state church, a lot of our legal documents take as civil religion a lot of guidelines that come from Protestantism. One example of this is the orientation to individual experience, as opposed to tradition and ritual.

Secondly, horror and fantasy in film and television borrow specifically from Protestant evangelicals traditions of hellfire-and-brimstone sermons from the 17th and 18th century and the idea that there is this horrific supernatural realm beyond this world.

Is this part of what you call "the dark side of evangelicalism"?

The dark side of evangelicalism is this kind of horror impulse, which is rooted in evangelicalism and that surfaced in 17th- and 18th-century sermons and 18th-and 19th-century fiction, then became the impetus behind film and television programs.

Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather are among the ones who were concerned about things like witchcraft, amulets, and spirits from beyond. They were worried about people who were being drawn to alternative religions because of these things. People like Nathaniel Hawthorne and the poet William Blake picked up on some of those themes and popularized them in fictional form and in poetic form, and therefore removed them from the religious realm.

I call it the "dark side of evangelicalism" because I think when we look at horror, or even to things like Buffy the VampireSlayer or The Matrix, we don't really necessarily think of them as being about evangelicalism. And yet they borrow from frameworks of images, symbols, and stories that date back to periods when Christianity was under siege from different places within culture.

What made you think that evangelicals unwittingly end up encouraging young people's fascination with the powers of darkness?

There's always been tension between evangelical Protestantism and commercial marketplace. On the one hand we've seen popular culture borrowing from evangelicalism. On the other, you see evangelicalism borrowing from popular culture so that they can put together novels like Left Behind, for example.

The other thing that goes on is that teen culture is always about rebelling against what the norms of a society are at any given time. Teen culture has long been interested in the supernatural, partly because it's an area that adults can't control and don't think is legitimate. So as evangelicals bash things like witchcraft, it becomes more intriguing for young people who might be drawn to those things—simply out of a desire to rebel.

But what are evangelicals supposed to do? What's the alternative? Many teens want to have sex. The parents who care for them explain to them why it's harmful to them. They don't think, "I'm not going to tell my teen not to have sex because if I do, she will then want to rebel and jump in the sack with her boyfriend just to spite me."

Whether we're talking about the occult or premarital sex, I think those kinds of conversations are best handled on a one-to-one basis or in a small group setting. The young people could be part of youth groups where they can form strong bonds and define themselves by being able to resist the more dominant avenues for experimentation in different areas.

The problem that I was trying to highlight comes in because evangelicals have access to the public stage and are able to create a culturally legitimate viewpoint that's taken seriously by journalists and by other people. By saying, "We know what's bad, and we're going to claim the cultural authority to say what's bad for everyone," it becomes an issue that is more problematic.

next page... |  2 of 4

share this page

July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47