Abstract: What is the political thought of early 21^st century evangelicalism? Political scientists have written about evangelical influences on Christian right policy in the late 20^th century, but how has the movement shifted in the new millennium? This paper focuses on a revival that began among evangelicals in the late 1990’s and continues today, seeking to reestablish evangelicals as primarily spiritual – rather than political – beings. Looking at the political thought underpinning the revival, I analyze the experience of subjectivity in contemporary evangelicalism – locating that experience through socialization processes and the establishment of norms, as well as the slippage between sensations, perceptions, emotions, and epistemological thought. In other words, this paper explores the ways affect operates in the spaces between theology, epistemology, and born-again experience. One of my chief considerations in the paper is the way evangelical thinkers promote an “open receptivity” to experiences with the divine. I suggest this receptivity is likely to effect the epistemological approach their readers take to other questions in their lives, such as career and relationship choices, voting, or assessing their own lifeworld. Furthermore, in stark contrast to the hell and apocalypse-oriented emotional appeals of the 20^th century Christian right, this new vanguard promotes a style of evangelicalism wherein the individual is capable of attaining heaven-on-earth through an affective-spiritual relationship with God. I argue that this move is part of a larger theoretical transformation, wherein the evangelical movement has shifted from a policy-driven politics to an ontologically driven politics. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s political theory of emotion, Michel Foucault’s ethical consideration of “the cultivation of the self,” and theories of belief from Talal Asad and Tanya Luhrmann, among others, this study seriously considers the role of affect in the political thought of contemporary evangelicalism.

Bio: Joanna Tice works at the intersection of political theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. Her dissertation project describes the political thought of contemporary evangelicalism as it pivots away from the Christian right. Previous projects include the study of “fundamentalist feminisms,” and analysis of the U.S. discourse around undocumented immigration. Joanna’s research has been supported by the Advanced Research Collaborative, and she is currently a Dissertation Fellow with The Mellon Committee for the Study of Religion at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has taught political theory and American politics at Brooklyn College, and currently works as a Writing Across the Curriculum Consultant at Borough of Manhattan Community College, where she trains faculty in writing pedagogies. Joanna holds a B.A. in Government and Philosophy from Wesleyan University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center.