If God Meant to Interfere: American Literature and the Rise of the Christian Right

by Christopher Douglas

Overview

The 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501746819
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	378
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christopher Douglas is Professor of English at the University of Victoria. He is the author of A Genealogy of Literary Multiculturalism, also from Cornell.

Table of Contents

Part One: Multicultural Entanglements
1. Multiculturalism, Secularization, Resurgence
2. The Poisonwood Bible's Multicultural Graft
3. Christian Multiculturalism and Unlearned History in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
4. Recapitulation and Religious Indifference in The Plot Against America Part Two: Postmodern Entanglements
5. Thomas Pynchon’s Prophecy
6. Science and Religion in Carl Sagan’s Contact
7. Evolution and Theodicy in Blood Meridian
8. The Postmodern Gospel According to Dan
Conclusion: Politics, Literature, Method

What People are Saying About This

Tracy Fessenden

Christopher Douglas's If God Meant to Interfere is an eloquent, learned, and utterly engrossing study of American literature and culture in an era of resurgent religious conservatism.

Susan Harding

Christopher Douglas takes us on a most fantastic journey through a medley of recent American novels, tracing how they obliquely registered the politics of the conservative Christian resurgence and its surprising entanglements with multiculturalism and postmodernism, as all three movements forswore the insipid secular assimilationist consensus of the 1950s and early 1960s. If God Meant to Interfere powerfully subverts the mind-numbing secular/religious dichotomy that dominates most writing about the period—the so-called culture wars—and cultivates a more nuanced, generative attention to lively interstitial worlds in which nothing is either/or, and everything is both/and.

Editorial Reviews

If God Meant to Interfere demands that literary critics pay attention to a form of religiosity... It represents a vital and necessary intervention into American literary studies.

American Literature

Timely and helpful in unpacking the confusion around contemporary American politics.... It is refreshing that rather than simply point fingers at the Christian Right as a reactionary movement, Douglas is willing to consider the culpability of the modern academy and the embrace of postmodern linguistic theories in the rise of contemporary right-wing movements.... An important contribution to understandings of the Christian Right and to understanding how postmodern authors engage with religion.

English Studies in Canada - Andrew Crome

If God Meant to Interfere demands that literary critics pay attention to a form of religiosity... It represents a vital and necessary intervention into American literary studies.

-- "American Literature"

If God Meant to Interfere is effectively two essay collections with a powerful argument uniting its halves in critical conversation.

-- "American Literary History"

If God Meant to Interfere is full of surprises. Douglas is conversant with the field of Biblical studies, for instance, and offers up detailed accounts of how archeological findings like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts have reshaped our understanding of early Christianity, particularly underappreciated strains of apocalyptic and gnostic thinking. He is a skilled and reliable interpreter of discourses outside his own field of literary studies. One thing I admire about the book is that Douglas takes time to explore his materials fully, so that forays into the controversy surrounding Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, say, or an excursus into the scholarship on lived religion, or an entire section devoted to the nuances of intelligent design, come to seem less diversionary and very much to the point. Above all, Douglas takes time to tell stories, which is all too rare in literary scholarship.... A compelling and consistently surprising book for anyone interested in the relationship between literature and religion.

-- "Modern Fiction Studies"

Douglas traces a surprisingly broad and complex network of linkages between the Christian Right, postmodernism, and literary multiculturalism.... If God Meant to Interfere is a rich and complex treatment of three sociocultural movements that are rarely examined in combination, but should and will be, thanks largely to this book.

-- "Religion & Literature"

Douglas' If God Were to Interfere amounts to one of the best historical studies of recent American fiction by a scholar immersed in issues of religious debate and historical context. It is an impressive achievement...

-- "Christianity and Literature"

Timely and helpful in unpacking the confusion around contemporary American politics.... It is refreshing that rather than simply point fingers at the Christian Right as a reactionary movement, Douglas is willing to consider the culpability of the modern academy and the embrace of postmodern linguistic theories in the rise of contemporary right-wing movements.... An important contribution to understandings of the Christian Right and to understanding how postmodern authors engage with religion.

--Andrew Crome "English Studies in Canada"

With superior research, wide-ranging reading among conservative believers themselves, and a panache and sympathy that allows readers of religious commitment themselves to feel as though they are in good company with a fellow traveler... If God Meant to Interfere amounts to one of the best historical studies of recent American fiction by a scholar immersed in issues of religious debate and historical context. It is an impressive achievement that will become a model for all workers in the vineyard of [the study of] religion and literature within a contemporary American literary focus.

-- "Christianity & Literature"

From the Publisher

"Christopher Douglas's If God Meant to Interfere is an eloquent, learned, and utterly engrossing study of American literature and culture in an era of resurgent religious conservatism."

Tracy Fessenden

"Christopher Douglas takes us on a most fantastic journey through a medley of recent American novels, tracing how they obliquely registered the politics of the conservative Christian resurgence and its surprising entanglements with multiculturalism and postmodernism, as all three movements forswore the insipid secular assimilationist consensus of the 1950s and early 1960s. If God Meant to Interfere powerfully subverts the mind-numbing secular/religious dichotomy that dominates most writing about the period—the so-called culture wars—and cultivates a more nuanced, generative attention to lively interstitial worlds in which nothing is either/or, and everything is both/and."

Susan Harding

Douglas traces a surprisingly broad and complex network of linkages between the Christian Right, postmodernism, and literary multiculturalism.... If God Meant to Interfere is a rich and complex treatment of three sociocultural movements that are rarely examined in combination, but should and will be, thanks largely to this book.

Religion & Literature

If God Meant to Interfere is effectively two essay collections with a powerful argument uniting its halves in critical conversation.

American Literary History

With superior research, wide-ranging reading among conservative believers themselves, and a panache and sympathy that allows readers of religious commitment themselves to feel as though they are in good company with a fellow traveler... If God Meant to Interfere amounts to one of the best historical studies of recent American fiction by a scholar immersed in issues of religious debate and historical context. It is an impressive achievement that will become a model for all workers in the vineyard of [the study of] religion and literature within a contemporary American literary focus.

Christianity & Literature

If God Meant to Interfere is full of surprises. Douglas is conversant with the field of Biblical studies, for instance, and offers up detailed accounts of how archeological findings like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts have reshaped our understanding of early Christianity, particularly underappreciated strains of apocalyptic and gnostic thinking. He is a skilled and reliable interpreter of discourses outside his own field of literary studies. One thing I admire about the book is that Douglas takes time to explore his materials fully, so that forays into the controversy surrounding Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, say, or an excursus into the scholarship on lived religion, or an entire section devoted to the nuances of intelligent design, come to seem less diversionary and very much to the point. Above all, Douglas takes time to tell stories, which is all too rare in literary scholarship.... A compelling and consistently surprising book for anyone interested in the relationship between literature and religion.

Modern Fiction Studies

Douglas' If God Were to Interfere amounts to one of the best historical studies of recent American fiction by a scholar immersed in issues of religious debate and historical context. It is an impressive achievement...

Christianity and Literature

"In this volume Douglas (English, Univ. of Victoria, Canada) continues work on multiculturalism he began in A Genealogy of Literary Multiculturalism (CH, Oct'09, 47-0711) by considering how American authors responded to the conservative Christian resurgence in the late 20th century. Douglas's literary analysis rests on firmer footings than his political commentary; in taking faith seriously, Douglas offers incisive literary readings, whether tracing Cormac McCarthy’s consideration of theodicy or exposing Philip Roth’s failure to confront the power of religious belief. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."

Choice - J. Bilbro