Ethiopianism conceptually shaped modern Africa. Perceivably, this has been deduced from distinguished events in Ethiopian history. This investigation explored Ethiopianism as a derivate of the multifaceted narrative of Ethiopian religious political dynamics. Ethiopianism has arguably been detached from the entirety of the Ethiopian Christian political establishment, being deduced separately from definitive events such as the Battle of Adwa 1896. This research reconnected Ethiopianism to a wholistic religious–political matrix of Ethiopia. Therefore, it offers an alternative interpretation of Ethiopianism, as a derivate (...) of Africanism and Apocalypticism, also correspondingly as a factor of Islamic Jihad and Jesuit Catholicism. The research was accomplished mainly through document analysis and compositely with cultural historiography. This study was a revisionist approach to Ethiopianism as a concept, deriving it from the chronological narrative of Ethiopian Christianity’s religious and political self-definition. Consequently, this realigned Ethiopianism as a derivate of multiple influences. Ethiopianism was possibly a convolution of the Donatist biblical appeal to the nativity, Judaic apocalypticism, Islamic attacks and Jesuit missionary diplomacy. Throughout the narrative of the Ethiopian Christian establishment, autonomy and independence are traceable; in addition, there is an entrenched enculturation of native Christianity and synergy with the political establishment. This formulates a basis for Ethiopianism as an ideology of African magnanimity. Parallel comparisons of Ethiopianism against Donatism and Zionism decode the nationalistic matrix of Ethiopia. Dually encultured native religious practice coupled with theocratic symbiosis of politics and religion fostered resistance from Islamisation and Jesuit Catholicisation. Further enquiry of Ethiopian Christianity as an index of the Ethiopian political establishment, from which Ethiopianism is derived, is qualified. (shrink)

The rediscovery of the force and scope of apocalypticism in primitive Christianity can help systematic theology to find new openings for thoughts of faith that have long languished in systems that obstruct their expression.

Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert’s 2010 collaborative work, The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, centers on a prophetic warning of impending apocalyptic collapse due to anthropogenic environmental destruction. An indigenous contribution to the contemporary burst of eco-apocalyptic writing and the search for a new ecological social order, The Falling Sky challenges the temporal vector of Euroamerican eco-apocalypticism. Instead of the teleological axis of anthropocentric temporality (the emergence of homo sapiens as the pinnacle of evolution), it refers us (...) to a temporality of terrestrial life, where homo sapiens is just one more living species in the web of life. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Apocalypticism, which resulted from a conference hosted by the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM) in Bedford, UK. The introduction provides a brief history of scholarly work in the intersections of apocalypticism and artificial intelligence and of the emergence of CenSAMM from a millenarian religious community, the Panacea Society. It concludes by pointing toward the contributions of the symposium's essays.

In this article, I present a critique of Robert Geraci's Apocalyptic artificial intelligence (AI) discourse, drawing attention to certain shortcomings which become apparent when the analytical lens shifts from religion to the race–religion nexus. Building on earlier work, I explore the phenomenon of existential risk associated with Apocalyptic AI in relation to “White Crisis,” a modern racial phenomenon with premodern religious origins. Adopting a critical race theoretical and decolonial perspective, I argue that all three phenomena are entangled and they should (...) be understood as a strategy, albeit perhaps merely rhetorical, for maintaining white hegemony under nonwhite contestation. I further suggest that this claim can be shown to be supported by the disclosure of continuity through change in the long‐durée entanglement of race and religion associated with the establishment, maintenance, expansion, and refinement of the modern/colonial world system if and when such phenomena are understood as iterative shifts in a programmatic trajectory of domination which might usefully be framed as “algorithmic racism.”. (shrink)

Debates over whether QAnon is a “religion” or a “cult” lack theoretical grounding; they depend on unacknowledged definitions and classificatory schemes and ultimately don’t prove useful as an analytical framework for sociological/historical scholarship. Instead, this article suggests we explore the ways one contemporary religious movement helped make widespread acceptance of QAnon possible by weaving their theological commitments to apocalypticism, conspiracies and persecution narratives into the larger American culture.

Drawing on observations from on‐ and offline fieldwork among transhumanists and artificial superintelligence/singularity‐focused groups, this article will explore an anthropology of anxiety around the hoped for, or feared, posthuman future. It will lay out some of the varieties of existential hope and existential despair found in these discussions about predicted events such as the “end of the world” and place them within an anthropological theoretical framework. Two examples will be considered. First, the optimism observed at a transhumanist event will be (...) examined to emphasize the positive affective aspects of certain apocalypse scenarios, especially those with an implicit eschatological direction. Second, an online location where examples of existential despair can be noted will be explored further to demonstrate the kinds of negative responses to certain superintelligence/singularity ideas. These examples of existential hope and despair will demonstrate the intrinsic role of anxiety in ideas about a future artificial intelligence apocalypse. (shrink)

In this study, Lynne Moss Bahr explores the concept of temporality as central to Jesus's proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Using insights from Continental philosophy on the messianic, which expose the false claim that time progresses in a linear continuum, Bahr presents these philosophical positions in critical dialogue with the sayings of Jesus regarding time and time's fulfillment. She shows how the Kingdom represents the possibilities of a disruption in time, one that reveals the intrinsic relation between God and (...) humanity. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to problematize Slavoj Žižek’s use of the apocalyptic tradition in his political philosophy, especially focusing on the consequences it has for his understanding of hope. Especially, I find his strong emphasis on the disjunction between the state before and after the radical event implies a radical discontinuity between the present state and the state of emancipation, that the possibility falls away of any kind of criteria for a useful distinction between authentic and inauthentic events. Such (...) a lack of a more developed hermeneutics of discernment opens up for a potential ‘decisionism’ in Žižek’s work despite itself; decisionism in the sense of the evental decision itself provides the criteria for what counts as a legitimate emancipation rather than any preconceived criteria. (shrink)

This new study of the “First” Crusade argues that “apocalyptic fervor” (p. 305) was the driving force of the expedition, as well as the Crusade movement. Previous studies, the author contends, have failed “to capture how precisely apocalyptic the First Crusade was” (p. xii). The remedy Rubenstein offers is a relentless focus on apocalypticism that ignores any weaknesses inherent in this approach and overlooks alternative explanations.

Apocalypticism has been widely denounced as a framework that devalues the world and its history, funding moral dualism. While this is certainly true of many forms of apocalypticism, it is not an accurate understanding of ancient apocalyptic texts. This article establishes a framework of theological virtue ethics drawn particularly from Herbert McCabe, in which human rationality and Christian morality are understood as political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental. From within this framework, Anathea Portier-Young’s work is considered, relating early (...) Jewish apocalyptic to trauma theory and describing how these texts narrated socio-political catastrophe in order to open up possibilities of resistance and hope. These considerations point us towards a constructive understanding of apocalyptic imagination and praxis within a political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental framework. Contemporary employments of Afro-pessimism in Black theology, particularly in J. Kameron Carter, then interrogate the proposed apocalyptic imagination, asking whether Christian apocalyptic praxis can cultivate hope in the face of the catastrophe of modern racism. (shrink)

Despite their purported demographic and institutional decline, White evangelical voters were instrumental in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and even more so in his 2020 loss. The story of Trump’s electoral successes among Christian voters in the last two elections is in large part the story of religious nationalism—and White Christian nationalism in particular—because Trump personifies the convergence of nationalism-infused forms of messianism and apocalypticism intrinsic to White evangelicalism, which culminate in QAnon cultic ideology. However, these same (...) ethnoreligious/nationalist patterns and logics extend much further back than Trump’s insurgent candidacy. This chapter traces the recurring, resurgent patterns of “zombie nationalism” among White evangelical Christians in the United States over the last half century that emerged in response to periods of significant societal change and certain recurring sociopolitical issues. In particular, alongside established elective affinities around ethnicity (whiteness) and religion (Christianity), this chapter makes the case for incorporating gender and sexual politics as key factors in the articulation and legitimation of religious nationalism in the United States. White Christian nationalism tends to reemerge as a salient political force during periods of rapid social change and diversification, driven by racialized religious grievances symptomatic of Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, or the paradoxical internalization and reprojection of a person’s or group’s perceived endangerment, victimhood, and/or suffering, in order to gain power. Drawing on examples of marriage equality and reproductive rights, this chapter demonstrates how an understanding of sexual politics is key to both apprehending and breaking the cyclical reanimation of White Christian nationalism. Escaping the nihilistic impulses driving these cycles will require White evangelicals to develop new hermeneutical tools capable of transforming the exclusionary patterns of racism, ethnocentrism, heteronormativity, and patriarchy that fuel the engine of ressentiment animating zombie nationalism. (shrink)

Pleistocene Park is a large-scale science experiment in Arctic Siberia in the form of a future-oriented rewilding project with the goal of mitigating climate change. The park’s creators hypothesize that introducing large herbivores into the area will slow the thawing of permafrost. Using the approach of multispecies ethnography in attending to the nonhuman agencies at work in the project, I argue that the park differs from other rewilding projects, which are usually ecocentric, in emerging as a survivalist project with a (...) distinct anthropocentric bent. Even so, the park’s survivalist goal for humans coexists with ontologies based on collaboration and mutual aid between humans and nonhumans and between organic and inorganic matter, with extensive agency assigned to nonhuman others. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within the frame of the park’s various genealogies, I trace the project’s underlying assumptions in equal measure to the history of Russian science and to the park’s lead scientists’ experience of sociopolitical rupture following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a case study, Pleistocene Park is especially suited to exploring issues of time and temporality, apocalypticism and redemption, and extinction and eternity, in addition to particular visions of the natural and the human. (shrink)

This guest column examines the historical fate of Russia in its catastrophic confrontation with Ukraine and the West. The piece considers the negative self-definitions of Russia that have arisen in the aftermath of the communist utopia and its virtual transformation into an anti-world — a society whose purpose is to undermine and destroy. Emerging Russian cults of war, death, and apocalypticism are stressed, as are the paradoxes and inversions by which Russia, in attempting to become stronger, becomes weaker and (...) indeed suicidal. (shrink)

This article investigates the eschatological expectations of apocalyptic and millenarian groups from a spirituality perspective. It first analyses various historical examples of such expectations with particular attention to their sociopolitical consequences. A second part discusses the negative perceptions of, and violent responses to such groups by those who hold them in contempt as lacking spirituality. This issue is then specifically analysed in more detail in terms of the siege of the Davidian group, an offshoot of Adventism, in Waco, Texas, by (...) law enforcement officials in 1993. An analysis of the group’s spirituality discusses their religious commitment, spiritual practices and use of the Bible as positive outcomes that they share with other millenarian groups. A concluding part spells out the negative characteristics and dynamics of their spirituality. (shrink)

This article identifies and examines the arguments put forward in the last decades by the proponents of a «non eschatological / non apocalyptic Jesus», in order to assess their explanatory value. It concludes that not one of them withstands critical examination because they are all built on arbitrary grounds and are refuted by extant literary evidence and/or by sound reasoning. Furthermore, the fact that this kind of untenable arguments reappears time and time again in the history of research powerfully suggests (...) that they are the result of an immunisation strategy, contrived by scholars who are embarrassed by the implications of an apocalyptic Jesus. (shrink)

Dans l’article suivant, je donne une introduction à mes travaux sur un des textes de la fameuse « bibliothèque » copte de Nag Hammadi, à savoir l’Apocalypse de Paul, un court texte gnostique qui raconte l’ascension de l’apôtre Paul jusqu’au dixième ciel. En plus d’une description du texte et aussi un résumé de l’histoire de la recherche sur ce texte, je discute comment il pourrait être vu comme le point de rencontre de trois « courants de pensée » dans le (...) christianisme ancien, c’est-à-dire l’apocalyptique, le paulinisme, et le gnosticisme. In this article, I present an introduction to my work on one of the texts from the Nag Hammadi library, the Apocalypse of Paul, a short gnostic work which tells of the apostle Paul’s ascension to the tenth heaven. Along with a description of the text and the history of research on it, I discuss the advantages of viewing it in its literary and intellectual context as the meeting-ground of three currents of early Christian thought, namely apocalypticism, Paulinism, and Valentinian gnosticism. (shrink)

Often assumed to induce fatalism, empirical evidence shows that environmental apocalypticism is frequently associated with activism. I suggest this is the case because the notion of imminent catastrophe reveals a moral to the environmental story, and in so doing furnishes a point of view from which people can determine what constitutes environmentally ethical behavior. Insofar as it guides behavior, this apocalyptic moral reasoning can be usefully understood as a folk version of consequentialism. Further research on how people put environmental (...) ethics into practice would complement the significant advances environmental ethicists have made in the areas of normative and meta-ethics over the past several decades. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction to Benjamin I. Schwartz' "China and Contemporary Millenarianism—Something New under the Sun"Lin Yu-shengIn the spring of 1998, my colleague Mike Clover, a historian of the ancient West and an admirer of Benjamin I. Schwartz' The World of Thought in Ancient China, invited Professor Schwartz to participate, with Heiko Oberman, J. C. Heesterman, and Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, among others, in a conference he had been organizing on "Eurasia and Africa (...) during the Last Thousand Years." The essay that follows—the last piece of scholarly writing by Ben Schwartz, finished thirty-seven days before his passing—was read by me on his behalf at the conference, held on October 11 and 12, 1999, in Madison.From my telephone conversations with Ben in the summer of 1999, I learned that while he intended to work on a paper for the conference to be titled "The Idea of Unilinear Evolution and the Destinies of China," his attention was very much drawn to the fact of the onset in America of unbridled consumerism and materialism, whose characteristic of feeding on themselves with ever increasing intensity and widespread impact seemed to indicate to him the rise of a profoundly disturbing new phenomenon in this world. When I visited with Ben and Bunny (Mrs. Schwartz) in Cambridge on October 2 and 3, Ben was in the midst of writing an essay on what he would call the "new technological-economic millenarianism" or "materialistic apocalypticism." He said that he preferred to have me read this essay, which he would finish before the conference, rather than the one he originally intended to write. Since the conference was meant to take note of the significance of the passage of time from a world-historical perspective, the reflections by a thinker as deeply serious and searching as Ben Schwartz at the juncture of the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the third on the implications of an entirely new worldwide phenomenon as he perceived it—though having little direct bearing on China's past—would of course be most welcome at the conference.Ben's health deteriorated almost immediately after he had completed the essay on Friday, October 8, and he died on November 14, 1999. We now know from hindsight that Ben had probably felt that he might soon leave us, but he summoned enough energy not to let this happen before his completion of the essay, partly due to his sense of responsibility to deliver what he had promised and partly, and more importantly, because of the imperative he felt to issue, in the spirit of the old prophets, as his parting words, a grave warning to his fellow human beings.The essay is discursive, with many important points implied through nuance rather than formally argued. We can hardly expect more, given the physical condition of its author at the time of its writing. Although this does not, in my opinion, diminish its importance, it does demand close reading from its readers. The following is my brief attempt at this task, for whatever it may be worth. [End Page 189]To begin with, that Ben chooses to use religious language (which is related to "ultimate concerns")—words like "millenarianism" or "apocalypticism," which are ordinarily reserved for depicting the rare and drastic deliverance of humankind from "the vast burden of human suffering and despair"—as a means to explore metaphorically the nature and implications of the new consumerism and materialism is indicative of how serious he has perceived the onset of the phenomenon under consideration to be.To the extent that consumerism and materialism promise to their true believers "a totally new way of neutralizing the age-old causes of human suffering" (italics mine) through their "total attention on every aspect of human life from the techno-economic side," it is legitimate to speak of them as "materialistic apocalypticism," in that they transcend all tensions and agonies in life and elevate the true believers to a state of salvation. However, in its exclusive concern with "unalloyed, unreflective contentment" and pleasure in the self without any regard for the ethical consequences of techno-economic progress, it is a new materialism very different from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"And They Sang A New Song":Reading John's Revelation From The Position Of The LambJ.A. Jackson (bio) and Allen H. Redmon (bio)Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and the seven seals." Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among (...) the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.—Revelation 5:5–6In an interview with Markus Müller, René Girard asserts the importance of taking into account the apocalypticism of Christianity. Apocalypse, Girard reminds us, "means revelation: apocalypto means to open up and to show the truth. But it also means absolute violence, so the apocalypse is a violent revelation and a revelation of violence" (Girard 1996). That the Revelation is a violent revelation has been well established. Despite textual evidence that would beg those who approach the text to do just the opposite, readers have fixated on the violence of the Revelation since its inception, finding in it God's final retribution against those who persecute the Church.1 Commentators such as Dennis E. Johnson, William Hendricksen, and George Elden Ladd have produced recent, full-length commentaries that champion the appearance of a Christ in Revelation ready to establish himself as a military champion and exact his revenge on those who persecute him (see, for example, Johnson 2001; Hendricksen 1998; and Ladd 1993). These accounts, and those that follow suit, are blinded by the violent revelation of John's apocalyptic narrative and fail to see the poem's revelation of violence—the other, prophetic half of what Girard rightly contends exists in Christian apocalypse.This error is understandable to some extent. Read in its own light and apart from the Gospel revelation as understood by those familiar with mimetic [End Page 99] theory, one has no hermeneutical principle for recognizing the end to which John is writing. The victims of the text can be ignored in the precise way that all victims are disregarded when the scapegoat mechanism functions properly. Such should not be the case in the Revelation, though, a text in which the scapegoat mechanism is exposed and pushed to its logical conclusions. John offers his reader a glimpse into the way this mechanism will function when all that is left is wall-to-wall violence, when one is left with only two alternatives: succumb to the mechanism and reciprocate its violence, or extricate oneself through nonreciprocation (and potentially die).In the margins of the violent revelation in John's apocalyptic vision, a revelation of violence emerges that can expose humankind's potential to annihilate itself and the mechanism with which it will do so. When read through the lens of mimetic theory, one discovers that John's narrative delivers a revelation of violence, an explicit naming and unmasking of the sacrificial mechanism that can capture for the reader not only the machinations of the sacrificial apparatus but one's own potential participation in it as well. As such, the poem can posit itself as a commandment (a Thou-shall-not-murder) that ultimately refuses the temptation to respond to violence in violence.The fact that John uses the apocalyptic to present this directive should not be surprising. Girard writes: "Only through the mediation of the scapegoat mechanism can violence become its own remedy, and the victimage mechanism can only be triggered by the frenetic paroxysm of the 'crisis.' This means that the violence, having lost its vitality and bite, will paradoxically be more terrible than before its decline. As the whole of humanity makes the vain effort to reinstate its reconciliatory and sacrificial virtues, this violence will without doubt tend to multiply its victims, just as happened in the time of the prophets" (Girard 1978, 195–96). While Girard's commentary on biblical eschatology and apocalypse refers mainly to the scapegoat mechanism as it applies to and is revealed in the Gospel texts, we see the immediacy and the frenzy of the apocalyptic and the ubiquitous violent mimetic appropriations also performed in John's Revelation.2 John captures... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger DeltaMelissa BrowningEthics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta Nimi Wariboko Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010. 193 pp. $60.00In Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta, Nimi Wariboko offers a new definition of temporal orientation, arguing that this new (...) understanding of time can help us rethink social ethics, particularly economic ethics. He begins by citing literature showing that temporal orientation has always been used to speak about how a sociocultural group sees itself in light of a “time or origin” (such as a sacred past) or “time preference” (such as a preference for past, present, or future). Wariboko proposes a third way, redefining temporal orientation as a break or clearing in time between the past and the future—a kairos event. He goes on to say that understanding how members of a sociocultural group understand time is essential to understanding how they see themselves and their moral sources.Wariboko speaks of temporal orientation in terms of “time gaps,” contending that freedom and new beginnings are found within these gaps. Suggesting that these gaps are important to the process of defining subjectivity—since human beings live in a time-defined gap between birth and death—he coins the term “chronomethics” to refer to a new methodology where ethics is studied [End Page 213] through the lens of temporal orientation with attention to the analysis of cultural forms.Wariboko provides an exemplar of this methodology by doing an in-depth analysis of the Kalabari community of the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria. Through the use of ethnography, Wariboko explores politics, religious imagination, apocalypticism, and the philosophy of history in Kalabari beliefs and practices—setting African studies in dialogue with Western philosophy and theology. Here, and throughout the book, he draws heavily on the work of Hannah Arendt in his analysis.Although this ethnographic analysis makes an important contribution to ethical reflection, it is not without problems. Wariboko focuses almost exclusively on the chiefs of the Kalabari community, using both male language and male concepts. When Wariboko moves to a discussion of traditional Kalabari religion, he speaks mainly of the male or neuter aspect of God (which is called So, or so) and only briefly mentions the female aspect (Teme-órú). This leaves the reader to wonder whether the actors and agents Wariboko refers to include women. In sum, his descriptive analysis of Kalabari culture lacks a critique of patriarchy, which should be present in any analysis that seeks to make a contribution to Christian ethics.Perhaps the most significant contribution of the book is found in its chapter on imagination. Here Wariboko examines the ways in which the Kalabari people imagine their own society and construct a moral imagination. He pays significant attention to African conceptions of community and the ways in which individuals relate to their communities. Although Wariboko contributes an important original voice to this dialogue, this voice could be strengthened by incorporating the voices of other African philosophers and theologians rather than relying primarily on Western sources in his analysis of Kalabari culture.The book concludes by relating the newly proposed methodology (and to some extent the ethnography) to concrete applications within the realm of economic development. Here Wariboko focuses on the “kairos-ordering of society,” arguing that economic development will only be attained when the state maintains the rules of just conduct, nurtures kairos, develops human capabilities, embraces pluralism, and uses social practices to disperse knowledge. Although this final section is brief, it invites further reflection by delineating how temporal orientation could be used as a new methodology for Christian ethics. [End Page 214]Melissa BrowningLexington Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī, and Beyond. By L. W. C. van Lit. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Apocalypticism and Eschatology, vol. 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Pp. viii + 278. $110, £75.

Apocalyptic thinking permeates Paul’s ideas about the gospel, God, the present age, and what is to come. Paul in his letters not only writes about the revelations that he himself has received, but also how the gospel reveals God’s ultimate justice. Apocalypticism as an ideology is fundamentally concerned with justice and the expectation of a future intervention that will conclusively reconcile the injustices of the world with the justice of God. Though of course Paul never sat down and wrote (...) an “Apocalypse” or even an apocalyptic letter, his letters reveal glimpses of the apocalyptic ways Paul thought about the world and humanity’s place in it. This article reviews the history and main tenets of apocalypticism and then examines three fundamental areas of apocalyptic thinking as expressed in Paul’s letters: the idea of apocalypse as full disclosure, the apocalyptic promise of full justice, and Paul’s use of apocalyptic ideas to reorient his readers to thinking about true-but-hidden identity, both of the “present evil age” and of one’s current place in it. Paul draws upon and employs apocalyptic imagery to solve practical problems in his communities, equipping them to face the world with a full cosmic perspective. (shrink)

Since the turn of the millennium, theologians and secular scholars of religion have increasingly begun exploring the relationship between transhumanism and religion. However, analyses of anti-transhumanist apocalypticisms are still rare, and those that exist are situated mainly among broader explorations of religious and secular bioconservatism. This article addresses this lack of specificity by drawing analyses of transhumanism and religion into dialogue with explorations of contemporary demonology through a close study of the beliefs of the evangelical conspiracist Thomas Horn and the (...) anti-transhumanist milieu around him. Exploring the milieu's multifaceted demonology of the secular world in light of genealogies of religion and secularity, the article situates Horn's demonology as one attempt to negotiate these genealogies, using what Sean McCloud terms a “‘supernatural’ hermeneutics of suspicion” that sees spiritual forces as the structural base of reality. It argues that, while fringe, milieus like Horn's illuminate broader cultural tensions and genealogical relations surrounding the place of religion in a secular world. (shrink)