Master of Arts in Humanities Capstone Project

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Evangelicals, the Gnostic Impulse, and the Natural World
(2021-12-09) Rice, Trey; Edmondson, Todd
Dualism between between the body and the soul has become a prevalent view in the evangelical community. This said view bears a passing resemblance to perspectives rejected as heresy within the early Church, such as gnosticism, which produces political implications. For example, the implication that the created world is evil and without value - as gnosticism asserts - would result in a lack of care for the natural world among those who hold these beliefs. In making these observations, this paper explores how and why the majority of evangelicals have moved to political positions that are indifferent of hostile to the care of the natural world. Over time, the religious evangelical community has constructed a theology that is particularly anthropocentric, hyper-individualistic, and apocalyptic to provide cover for these presupposed political biases and decisions. Said construction has been enabled by theological illiteracy, allowing false orthodoxies to spread in Evangelicalism which share more similarities to gnostic approaches than they do with historical Christianity. This adoption of a rewritten orthodoxy then guides new generations in the direction of the political positions this orthodoxy was created to justify, producing an ideological feedback loop.