Evangelicalism and Political Violence

Conservative evangelicals have, through the 20th century, used violent, militarist language, to describe their relation to  worldly society. They have, however, understood this language as figural because their warfare was supernaturally oriented: spiritual warfare conducted via prayer and proselytization against “the spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:10-18). This paper explores the way that the ideational logic of conspiratorialism provides a vector for certain forms of the American evangelical imagination to import rhetorics that allow the literalization of its discourses’ figural militancy. It discusses psychologist Jordan Peterson as a bridge figure whose conspiratorialist homiletic rhetorical style, figural schemata, narrative and affect is congruent with the imaginative substructure of this kind of evangelical imagination and allows it to exchange and integrate ideas with other online domains whose concerns he engages, such as the “manosphere,” a corner of the internet devoted to legitimizing (white) male grievance, persecution anxieties and violent revenge fantasies.