LEADER 04374nam 2200685 450 001 9910465526503321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-5017-0353-6 024 7 $a10.7591/9781501703539 035 $a(CKB)3710000000711544 035 $a(EBL)4533734 035 $a(OCoLC)950738868 035 $a(SSID)ssj0001675018 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)16483945 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0001675018 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)14827202 035 $a(PQKB)11009624 035 $a(StDuBDS)EDZ0001599457 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4533734 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse51392 035 $a(DE-B1597)478478 035 $a(OCoLC)979581439 035 $a(DE-B1597)9781501703539 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL4533734 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr11215292 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL951814 035 $a(EXLCZ)993710000000711544 100 $a20160617h20162016 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aIf God meant to interfere $eAmerican literature and the rise of the Christian right /$fChristopher Douglas 210 1$aIthaca, [New York] ;$aLondon, [England] :$cCornell University Press,$d2016. 210 4$d©2016 215 $a1 online resource (378 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a1-5017-0211-4 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tAcknowledgments -- $tIntroduction: Fiction in the God Gap -- $tPart One: Multicultural Entanglements -- $t1. Multiculturalism, Secularization, Resurgence -- $t2. The Poisonwood Bible's Multicultural Graft -- $t3. Christian Multiculturalism and Unlearned History in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead -- $t4. Recapitulation and Religious Indifference in The Plot Against America -- $tPart Two: Postmodern Entanglements -- $t5. Thomas Pynchon's Prophecy -- $t6. Science and Religion in Carl Sagan's Contact -- $t7. Evolution and Theodicy in Blood Meridian -- $t8. The Postmodern Gospel According to Dan -- $tConclusion: Politics, Literature, Method -- $tNotes -- $tWorks Cited -- $tIndex 330 $aThe rise of the Christian Right took many writers and literary critics by surprise, trained as we were to think that religions waned as societies became modern. In If God Meant to Interfere, Christopher Douglas shows that American writers struggled to understand and respond to this new social and political force. Religiously inflected literature since the 1970s must be understood in the context of this unforeseen resurgence of conservative Christianity, he argues, a resurgence that realigned the literary and cultural fields.Among the writers Douglas considers are Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, N. Scott Momaday, Gloria Anzaldúa, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown. Their fictions engaged a wide range of topics: religious conspiracies, faith and wonder, slavery and imperialism, evolution and extraterrestrial contact, alternate histories and ancestral spiritualities. But this is only part of the story. Liberal-leaning literary writers responding to the resurgence were sometimes confused by the Christian Right's strange entanglement with the contemporary paradigms of multiculturalism and postmodernism -leading to complex emergent phenomena that Douglas terms "Christian multiculturalism" and "Christian postmodernism." Ultimately, If God Meant to Interfere shows the value of listening to our literature for its sometimes subterranean attention to the religious and social upheavals going on around it. 606 $aAmerican fiction$y20th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aAmerican fiction$y21st century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aChristianity in literature 606 $aFundamentalism in literature 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aAmerican fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aAmerican fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aChristianity in literature. 615 0$aFundamentalism in literature. 676 $a813/.5409382 700 $aDouglas$b Christopher$f1968-$01049565 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910465526503321 996 $aIf God meant to interfere$92488116 997 $aUNINA