RT Article
T1 The deliverance of the administrative state: deep state conspiracism, charismatic demonology, and the post-truth politics of American Christian nationalism
JF Religion
VO 50
IS 4
SP 696
OP 719
A1 O'Donnell, S. Jonathon
LA English
PB Routledge
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1734277289
AB This article uses discourse analysis to explore the intersection of spiritual warfare demonology and Christian nationalism among Trump-supporting neo-charismatic evangelicals. Analysing public materials produced during and after the 2016 US presidential campaign, it demonstrates how demonologies operate discursively to categorise, comprehend, and contest understandings of American identity and destiny. Situating spiritual warfare demonology in relation to narratives of ‘post-truth politics’ as the destabilisation of neoliberal consensus reality, the article explores how charismatic evangelicals position Trump’s election as a divine assault on a demoniac status quo, epitomised in the conspiratorial figure of the ‘Deep State.’ Examining demonologies of the ‘state’ and ‘border’ as joint arenas of epistemic and societal contestation, the article shows how spiritual warfare discourses seek to (re)define sociocultural notions of truth and falsity and thereby (de)legitimise specific gendered, sexualised, and racialised forms of being and belonging.
K1 Christian Nationalism
K1 post-truth politics
K1 Spiritual warfare
DO 10.1080/0048721X.2020.1810817