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published on August 17, 2022
Michelle A. Harrington
Know-Nothing Nihilism: Pandemic and the Scandal of White Evangelicalism
White evangelical habits of mind and idolatrous allegiances propped up a devastatingly irresponsible political administration; I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic should be viewed as an apocalypse: “a catastrophic revelation”—in this case, of Christian responsibility refused. I engage the works of Christian historians Mark Noll and Kristin Kobes Du Mez to interrogate how evangelical habits of mind and heart have nurtured anti-intellectualism, credulousness, and the uncritical adoption of neoliberal economic individualism before turning to a constructive Christian realist call for “nasty” (honest, embodied) thinking and genuine repentance which draws from Andrew DeCort’s Bonhoeffer scholarship.