Against: What Does the White Evangelical Want?

by Tad DeLay

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Author: Tad DeLay

Publisher: Cascade Books

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1532668465
ISBN 13: 978-1532668463

What does the white evangelical want? In our moment of crisis and rage, this question is everywhere. Scholars ask from where its desires emerged, pundits divine its political future, and the public asks how we lapsed into social chaos. For their part, white evangelicals feel misunderstood while failing to see the direction of their ambitions. We must interrogate its aims not only through its past or current trends but also through the various fantasies by which it rejects and enlivens reality.

Against traces five zones of opposition: future, knowledge, sexuality, reality, and society. If climate change is the greatest threat civilization has ever faced, then a faith aiding collapse must face analysis. If it swims in assured forgiveness, it feels no shame for its sins against humanity. If it wants a king, it threatens democracy. If it veils xenophobia, it shall be ever more cruel. In a critical and accessible history of odd ideas, DeLay chronicles the past and sketches its troubling future. It might die, but what's certain is that a faith built on nostalgia and supremacy won't moderate. We live in dangerous times, so let us consider its justifications, turmoil, appetite, and catastrophe.

Review

""In this tour de force, Tad DeLay refuses to mince words as he exposes contemporary white evangelicalism for what it's become: faith in white supremacy, misogyny, and heteronormativity masquerading as faith in Christ. By pulling back this curtain, he shows us that what is commonly confused for white evangelical hypocrisy is actually perfectly consistent with the white evangelical desire for domination and destruction. This book is a must read for all those who wish to better understand the hidden motivations of contemporary white evangelicals, as well as those who recognize the urgent responsibility of resisting what white evangelicalism has become in this day and age."" --Phil Snider, editor of Preaching as Resistance and Justice Calls

""Tad DeLay's remarkable Against represents a pathbreaking psychoanalysis of the evangelical movement. Each page has an arresting new insight into the structure of the evangelical appeal and the damage that it's doing. In lucid prose, DeLay lays out the case for why we need psychoanalysis to understand the recalcitrance of evangelicals when confronted with obvious facts. Rather than condescending to them or parroting the liberal line about the need for more education, DeLay's book articulates the immense enjoyment that derives from the evangelical denial of common sense--including, most importantly, the burning up of the planet. It is an urgent plea for recognition of a problem that threatens everyone's survival and is simply a must-read for anyone concerned about where things are headed."" --Todd McGowan, University of Vermont

""People wonder why secularism has not yet domesticated American Evangelicals. They wonder why 'pro-life' people cannot see the climate crisis as life-negating. They wonder why godly people support Donald Trump. Such persons should read Tad DeLay's vital book, and temper their fantasies about reason. Today's threatening mode of reason is a powerful 'resonance machine' positing the perpetual absence of absolute self-sovereignty as an injunction to punish. We are, DeLay argues, being punished into apocalypse."" --Paul Johnson, University of Pittsburgh

About the Author

Tad DeLay is the author of The Cynic & the Fool and God Is Unconscious. He teaches philosophy and religious studies in Denver.

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Psychoanalysis

Against: What Does the White Evangelical Want?