03835nam 22005655 450 991082989600332120170630101125.00-8122-9401-710.9783/9780812294019(CKB)3710000001363124(MiAaPQ)EBC4857582(DE-B1597)481227(OCoLC)987775888(OCoLC)992470941(DE-B1597)9780812294019(EXLCZ)99371000000136312420170630d2017 fg engurcnu||||||||rdacontentrdamediardacarrierExistential Threats American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era /Lisa VoxPhiladelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]©20171 online resource (283 pages)0-8122-4919-4 Includes bibliographical references and index.Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Secularizing the Apocalypse -- Chapter 2. Race, Technology, and the Apocalypse -- Chapter 3. Postnuclear Fantasies -- Chapter 4. Spaceship Earth -- Chapter 5. The Politics of Science and Religion -- Chapter 6. Postapocalyptic American Identity -- Chapter 7. Post-9/ 11 Despair -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index -- AcknowledgmentsAmericans have long been enthralled by visions of the apocalypse. Will the world end through nuclear war, environmental degradation, and declining biodiversity? Or, perhaps, through the second coming of Christ, rapture of the faithful, and arrival of the Antichrist-a set of beliefs known as dispensationalist premillennialism? These seemingly competing apocalyptic fantasies are not as dissimilar as we might think. In fact, Lisa Vox argues, although these secular and religious visions of the end of the world developed independently, they have converged to create the landscape of our current apocalyptic imagination.In Existential Threats, Vox assembles a wide range of media-science fiction movies, biblical tractates, rapture fiction-to develop a critical history of the apocalyptic imagination from the late 1800s to the present. Apocalypticism was once solely a religious ideology, Vox contends, which has secularized in response to increasing technological and political threats to American safety. Vox reads texts ranging from Christianity Today articles on ecology and the atomic bomb to Dr. Strangelove, and from Mary Shelley's The Last Man to the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, demonstrating along the way that conservative evangelicals have not been as resistant to science as popularly believed and that scientists and science writers have unwittingly reproduced evangelical eschatological themes and scenarios in their own works. Existential Threats argues that American apocalypticism reflects and propagates our ongoing debates over the authority of science, the place of religion, uses of technology, and America's evolving role in global politics.End of the worldEnd of the worldForecastingEschatologyEschatologyForecastingAmericansAttitudesHistory20th centuryChristianity and cultureUnited StatesHistory20th centuryEnd of the world.End of the worldForecasting.Eschatology.EschatologyForecasting.AmericansAttitudesHistoryChristianity and cultureHistory306.0973Vox Lisa1665932DE-B1597DE-B1597BOOK9910829896003321Existential Threats4024901UNINA