By Holden Marshall and Josh Neuberger
In George A. Romero’s 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, a zombie slowly treads the cemetery, its path leading towards two siblings, Johnny and Barbara, visiting their father’s grave. Johnny teases his sister’s fear and trauma from when he scared her during their childhood, “They’re coming for you, Barbara…They’re coming for you. Look! There comes one of them now.” “Look!” he points, addressing the zombie that nears them. “I’m getting out of here,” Johnny says, oblivious to the fact that a flesh-eating zombie is in front of them. He runs, literally in front of the zombie which ignores him (for now). Barbara walks in front of the walking corpse as well until it violently grabs her breasts, pulls her close, and attempts to devour her. A feminist reading can be done here: The zombie represents the patriarchy, so it can be argued, and further, it represents the primitive-Freudian sexual desires of humanity. The woman is thus subordinated by the male zombie and is wrestled with (by her breast) like a ragdoll—implying weakness and subservience. It isn’t until Barbara runs away and finds an abandoned house and then is saved by a Black man (Ben, played by Duane Jones). At the end of the film, the police arrive at the house exterminating the remaining zombies in the area. Ben, who took shelter in the cellar of the house, emerges but is shot dead by the police.
Zombies, then, represent something. In the brief reading above, they can represent the patriarchy or can represent the Other/Them, a foreign entity that is to be opposed by the Self/Us. But in the current essay, our zombie is a (metaphorically) dead politician. Specifically, a dead president. In 2016, an event happened—Donald J. Trump was to be America’s president for the next four years. A lot of the population did not expect this. His four years, so it can be said by some—both right and left—was a slow tread, like that of the zombie. For others, time was irrelevant. President Trump was their savior to “drain the swamp” and impose order in the American government and safety by placing children without parents in cages. In their ecstasy, they did not want the Trump administration to end—and this shows, wherein 2020 President Joe Biden was elected, superseding Trump to become the next president of the United States. “Fake news,” and “The election was a fraud,” was exclaimed by the mouths of QAnon (often called “the Q” or “Q” for short) conspiracists and other republican citizens. In their disbelief, these same republican-Trump supporters, for the sake of their katechon, marched to the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
The fascination over the man is another phenomenon worth exploring. But for the current essay, it will be argued that the Trump supporters today who wish for their former president to run again in 2024 are treating him like a zombie, and thus, through that infatuation—their love—they are expressing necrophiliac behavior. Note, we are not arguing that current Trump supporters are quite literally having sex with Trump’s cadaver. Trump is not dead, therefore there is no cadaver to be having sex with! Rather, the necrophiliac behavior is one to be considered metaphorically, through the lens of Moisés Naim’s concept of “ideological necrophilia”—a blind fixation with dead ideas. On another note, for the current essay, we do not care if Trump can run for president in 2024 or not because current Trump supporters do not care for this either. What they care about is that he becomes president. And because of this condition, the ideological necrophilia or presidential necrophilia takes place—the love of a (metaphorically) dead president and his failed, dead ideas.
Finally, concerning the current Trump supporters, a theological lens will be applied. What we mean by this is: White evangelicals were among Trump’s biggest Christian supporters during his reign. We will not be studying how these two Christian sects morphed their theological understanding to justify Trump’s trampling of ethos and common sense. Rather, we will be studying their treatment towards Trump as their katechon, a concept in Christian tradition which refers to a divine force that is imposed on the world to prevent it from collapsing into sin and destruction. For ancient Judeo-Christians and Gentile-Christians, this was Jesus Christ; for white evangelicals, this is Trump. Moreover, their treatment towards Trump not only as their messiah but also as a zombie—where Christos anesti ek nekrōn (Christ rose from the dead), they wish their dead President to rise again (“resurrectio” in Latin). In other words, they look towards their messiah’s second coming—the rise from the grave of a dead president and his defeated and harmful ideas. As a response to Trumpism and its trampling of ethos, we will offer a solution through a Kierkegaardian lens of anxiety that when looking at the zombie (in our case, Trump) rather than succumbing to anxiety entrenched in fear one can embrace anxiety in such a way to inform them of their infinite freedom and possibilities among possibilities to make an ethically informed choice.
In his second epistle to the Thessalonians, St. Paul discusses the return of Christ, the idleness among believers, and the need to remain faithful and hopeful. One of the most mysterious passages within this epistle is its second chapter. Within this chapter, Paul writes, “Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way” (2 Thess 2:5-7, NKJV). This mention of “the one who restrains” has been debated for millennia, with groups throughout history attaching various interpretations to the passage. The Greek term for “the one who restrains” is katechon (κατέχον). The mention of the katechon first appears in Paul’s writing but remains heavily pertinent to contemporary evangelicalism within the United States. This katechon prevents the Antichrist, or son of perdition, from coming into power and ending the world. The katechon holds back lawlessness and prevents the eschaton.
In Nomos of the Earth, Carl Schmitt writes of the katechon: “The decisive historical concept of this continuity was that of the restrainer: katechon. ‘Empire’ in this sense meant the historical power to restrain the appearance of the Antichrist and, the end of the present eon”[1]. He adds, “The empire of the Christian Middle Ages lasted only as long as the idea of the katechon was alive” [2]. For Schmitt the katechon, in holding back the coming of the Antichrist (a necessary condition for the messianic return), it was also holding back the redemption of Christ. It is important to note that Carl Schmitt was a conservative political theorist and a prominent member of the Nazi Party. A morally dubious human, Schmitt’s ideologies permeate his works, but his comments on the katechon remain important, nonetheless.
In Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation, Italian philosopher Paolo Virno looks back to Schmitt in his conversation of the idea of katechon. Virno emphasizes the point that the katechon is “a radically antieschatological and theologopolitical concept […] opposed to the atrophy of the opening to the world, to the various ways in which the crisis of presence can be made manifest”[3]. He adds that, “since it safeguards the ‘radical evil’ that it has engendered: the antidote, here, is no different than the poison”[4]. This latter quote is essential to grasp in order to properly follow the progression of this essay.
The idea of the katechon has been popularized among evangelical groups in the United States; the holding back of evil and lawlessness have been of grave concern for many conservative Christians since the beginning of the 20th century. In her book Jesus and John Wayne, historian Kristin Kobes du Mez intricately details the history of American evangelicalism and the faith cycle that the movement has fallen into time after time as its fear-driven members place their hope in the emergence of various leaders, often warrior-like, masculine figures.
Du Mez begins with her discussion at the onset of Victorian Christianity in the late 19th century, which many thought seemed “insufficiently masculine”[5]. By the early 20th century, Christians in the United States were looking to leaders to squelch the rising acceptance of a “sissy” Christianity. Evangelicals glommed onto figures such as John Wayne, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan. These are all men considered typically masculine and of exemplary Christian character. Women were expected to submit to their husbands no matter the cost. The real trouble for these evangelicals began in the ‘60s with the rise of feminism, the sexual revolution, and the Civil Rights movement. A time in which sexual expression was openly accepted and the idea of the nuclear family was threatened, many conservative Christians were uneasy and looked to a national leader to save them. Nixon was that man. Du Mez writes, “[Nixon] understood that anticommunism abroad and ‘moral values’ and ‘law and order’ politics at home could woo this coalescing voting bloc”[6]. Nixon’s name is now synonymous with corruption and duplicity. As Virno would suggest, the antidote was no different than the poison. The election of a morally corrupt leader whose qualities run contradictory to Christian values doesn’t seem to make much sense. This search for an antidote has been a constant among evangelicals. Nixon held the dam for the time he was in office, but in Ford and Carter, evangelicals were greatly displeased. It may be said that the current era of evangelicalism began with the nomination of Ronald Reagan. Du Mez writes of Carter, “to evangelicals, [Jimmy] Carter had been a disappointment on all counts. They denounced the Carter administration for siding with feminists and for ‘wooing the homosexual vote’”[7] and contrasts this with Reagan: “To conservative evangelicals, Reagan was a godsend. In the face of Carter’s ‘wimp factor,’ Reagan projected the rugged, masculine leadership they believed the country so desperately needed”[8].
Looking at the past 100 years, it should come as no real surprise that Donald Trump would appeal to conservative evangelicals. After eight years of an Obama presidency, evangelicals were desperate for a new “high priest.” Obama was an open critic of many American policies which worried many evangelicals. His middle name was Hussein and he was Black—two more points of anxiety for many evangelicals [9]. 74% of evangelicals voted against Obama in the 2008 election while 24% sided with Obama. In 2010, more white evangelicals believed Obama was a Muslim (29%) than a Christian (27%) [10]. Throughout Obama’s two terms, evangelicals saw many of his policies as oppressive to their ideals. The Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate was a hot-button issue. The list goes on: the federal legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” and the birther movement. Many evangelicals felt as if they were battling an evil force, something akin to the Antichrist.
In 2016, evangelicals welcomed the nomination of Donald Trump. If evangelicals despised Obama, they saw Hillary Clinton as Satan herself. Despite Clinton’s Methodist faith and deep knowledge of Scripture, evangelicals saw her as an opponent of religious freedom; she was thought to be a radical leftist and communist. Gender, as had been the case in the past, also played a prominent role in evangelical opposition to Clinton.
Evangelical support for Trump was not instantaneous. But the more profane and brazen he became, the more evangelicals identified with him. This is evident in the growth of evangelical support for Trump between the 2016 and 2020 election. Despite Trump standing in stark contrast to the values Christ exemplified, evangelicals were willing to look past his follies claiming that we are all sinners. Anyone was better than Clinton, but eventually the coin flipped, and nobody was better than Trump. His racist, anti-immigrant, sexually immoral, narcissistic, egotistical tendencies didn’t seem to bother evangelicals. When the antidote was no better than the poison, evangelicals continued to believe that Trump was the antidote to return America to some fantasized prior glory. He was the “law and order” president. He was viewed as katechon – the restrainer of the “radical evil” of the previous eight years of Obama and the future of Clinton. Evangelicals viewed Trump as a protector and guardian of their freedoms and ideals of what America used to be. Their idea of making America great again was reverting to social and economic policies of the ‘50s, in which segregation still existed and African Americans were barred from voting and restricted in every facet of their public lives. In fact, in the 2016 election, Trump won 80% of white evangelical support, making up 1/3 of his total support.
This support didn’t wane over the course of his four years in office. Roughly 80% of white evangelicals once again supported Trump during his 2020 re-election bid against Joe Biden despite his disastrous presidency and hateful rhetoric. This time around, however, it wasn’t enough. Trump was decisively defeated. The reality of this election wreaked havoc on evangelical ideals – they refused to accept the result; Trump was their katechon. If he was removed from office, disorder would reign. The “evil empire” would destroy America. The Antichrist would be allowed to take control.
Neither Trump nor his evangelical followers were willing to concede defeat. Unsupported claims of election fraud and illegitimacy spread like wildfire. This culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol in which Trump’s acolytes attempted to “take back America” through violent means. Many believed that Trump was meant to rise again, return from the dead and lead America against a shadowy cabal of pedophilic democrats. Early on the day of the insurrection, Trump gave a speech in which he claimed that he would “never concede” and called Biden an “illegitimate president.” He spurred his listeners to march to the Capitol building and “stop the steal.” This attack led to five deaths and at least 140 police officer injuries. Four police officers committed suicide in the months following the attack. It was the first attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812 when British soldiers set it ablaze, a stunning fact when truly reflected upon. When this insurrection failed to lead to the execution of Trump’s opponents and the removal of Biden from office, many evangelicals felt confused at an unfulfilled prophecy of Trump’s rising again. So, they turned their eyes to 2024. Evangelicals now wait for the return of their katechon. Although Trump was legitimately voted out of office and his policies are now dead, his white evangelical followers refuse to accept reality. They look for the second coming of their katechon. They believe Trump will return from the dead.
This brings us to zombies. In Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, zombies are, as we have imagined them in folklore and films, undead or “living dead.” They are walking corpses with noticeable decay, blank stares, and clumsy motor movements. However, they are still “corporeal monsters that look uncannily like human beings”[11]. The zombie, then, provokes Freud’s Unheimlich, or “the uncanny”—“that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar”[12]. Using the terms of film professor Kyle William Bishop, what was once familiar (Heimlich) has now become unfamiliar (Unheimlich). More, the uncanny is a return of the repressed [13]. For Freud, these were primal desires. But more so, it is the anxiety of death, “This uncanny element is actually nothing new or strange, but something…estranged from [the psyche] only through being repressed.” On this note, zombies are the caricature of this anxiety—the anxiety of death is all too familiar yet it is shadowed away that when it resurfaces and confronts us face-to-face, the shock is unfamiliar, unexpected, and unaccounted for. Unlike other gothic horror monsters—like Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or Mary Shelley’s creature of Frankenstein—zombies lack consciousness, acting only on the passions without any “reason or common sense” [14]. Furthermore, they are nothing supernatural in behavior or appearance. They lack fangs, wings, and other monstrous features, as Bishop notes. Zombies, specifically Romero’s, are dead risen. Truthfully, there is nothing supernatural about Romero’s zombies; they are familiar because they were once living humans and then have died yet have risen as a walking human cadaver—nothing of a zombie is uncharacteristic of this world. There is no magic voodoo involved like Victor Halperin’s White Zombie (1932), or alien invaders as in the case of Edward L. Cahn’s Invisible Invaders (1959). The zombies in Romero’s film have become the complete id, a walking corpse with only the drive to fulfill its desires. In the words of the Swedish theologian Ola Sigurdson, “It is this persistence of pleasure beyond anything remotely beneficial for one’s own well-being that distinguishes human life from mere instinctual life, and this is why zombies are not just something different from human beings but the terrifying ‘inhuman’ or ‘undead’ core of our innermost being”[15].
But other than being representations of Freudian psychology, zombies and the films they take place in can criticize the director’s milieu. Romero’s film took place in the sixties, during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. Concerning the former, the civilians in Night of the Living Dead take up arms and shoot first, ask questions later—symbolizing a criticism towards the moral poverty of the United States military during that time, offering a reflection of the Mỹ Lai Massacre. Moreover, our hero of the film is played by a Black man. Ben rescues a white woman, Barbra, and returns her to the abandoned house, fortifying it and defending the fortress against the cannibal intruders. Later in the film, he threatens to strike Barbara because of her hysteria. Towards the end, Ben reveals himself to the rescuing militia, however, he is gunned down, a clear criticism of the white American fear that Black Americans would become “socially impertinent and come to threaten the safety of white women”[16]. Romero’s zombies, who would become the paradigm of the genre for future zombie films, most strikingly highlights the “Us vs. Them” or the “Self vs. Other.” However, they inverse this: in Romero’s film, the zombies now outnumber the humans, as described by a radio that a zombie apocalypse is occurring and therefore it is best for any survivors to stay locked in their homes. The Other of the zombie presented in prior films has now become the Self, the Us. In other words, the protagonist humans have now become the minority, the antagonist, a prominent theme in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (a novel that has greatly influenced Romero). The all too familiar (Heimlich) way of life is challenged by the zombie, becoming uncanny (Unheimlich) in such a way that the citizens are now survivors, and in the claustrophobic fortress, the survivors are to live with each other despite their differences of sexuality, race, gender, policy, etc.
From here, the working definition of “zombie theory” can be established under Romero’s model of the zombie and its profound legacy of zombie movies today. Zombies are the embodiment of our cultural anxieties and are capable of being used for theoretical work, like in Analee Newitz’s Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture, which argues that zombies embody the overworked, ravaged, and alienated worker. The zombie, then, “clarifies much larger issues with which we humans, either transhistorically or currently (at the turn of the twenty-first century) grapple—from the death drive and faith in an afterlife, to fears of contagious disease, to the relationship between capitalism and humanism, to the workings of contemporary horror film on the body”[17]. Because most, if not all, zombie movies past 1968 are a footnote to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, all films after Romero’s share a common characteristic: “their cultural criticism” [18].
Working with zombie theory as cultural criticism, the theory can be applied to former president Trump and his followers which engages with the idea that Trump is treated like a zombie and his followers, with love and infatuation with this zombie, behave as though they are ideological necrophiliacs.
The Trump presidency was born on January 20th, 2017, and died on January 20th, 2021, when now-President Joe Biden superseded him in the election. So, it can be said that the Trump presidency is dead. Although a Roman Catholic democrat now sits on the throne in the White House, many Americans, specifically white evangelicals, are acting as though Trump will return. In other words, they believe and want the Trump presidency to rise from the grave in 2024, and therefore, Trump will be president once again. The white evangelical’s katechon is the repressed being that many Americans have feared up to the 2017 election results and during his presidency. And because their katechon is repressed, regardless of if he can run or not, his supporters want Trump to return. Thus, expressing Freud’s notion of the return of the repressed. Sparking news coverage and concern, headlines read “Trump hints at 2024 Comeback” for example, from the Washington Post, as well as militaristic overthrowing of Biden expressed by QAnon and Michael Flynn. Many Americans fear this return along with their speculation. But there are many Americans, as just discussed, that wish for nothing more than their messiah to have his second coming. Such an infatuation and love by these white evangelicals with a dead presidency is concerning. History has shown—by Mao Zedong and Hugo Chavez, for example—that dead ideas are better left dead. Yet, ideas like Chavez’s strike many hearts with an appeal. So too, do we find Trump’s dead ideas—degrading Barack Obama’s cages at the southern border by stripping food, influenza vaccines, and parents from their children; to “grab [women] by their pussy” –appealing millions of Americans with reciprocated love. Their love of a dead ideology, a dead presidency, can be considered as “ideological necrophilia.”
In his 2010 piece “La necrofilia ideológica,” Moisés Naím presented the concept of “ideological necrophilia.” When Trump became president, Naím developed this idea further, writing, “Necrophilia is a sexual attraction to cadavers. Ideological necrophilia is the blind fixation with dead ideas. It turns out this pathology is more common in its political rather than sexual form”[19]. Recall, we are by no means calling evangelicals necrophiliacs in the sense that they are sexually attracted to a dead body. Rather, they are attracted to a dead presidency and its dead ideas. “His plans echo[ed] Europe’s tragic history of singling out ‘dangerous’ social groups for discrimination and expulsion from their homes. For years, the United States has constructed walls and fences to keep immigrants from crossing the border, without solving the problem of illegal immigration” [20]. But it is precisely these harmful ideas that attracted evangelicals to Trump because they were militant and oppressive to the “dangerous” Other. Regarding Biden’s southern border crisis, a call for their katechon has been placed—a resurrection of Trump’s ideas during his presidency, a return from the dead. Tracing back before Trump, the craving for a militant figure to sit in the white house is nothing new. As discussed, the evangelical condition of voting for a hyper-toxic-masculine figure to be president has been occurring since the early 20th century. So, not only are evangelicals ideologically linked to Trumpism, they are ideological necrophiliacs towards themselves—the white evangelical history that seeks oppressive ideas that have been tried but have failed.
The moral value of Trump’s presidency to rise from the dead in 2024 is concerning because his ideas were harmful and thwarted human flourishing. So much so, that Jesus Christ—the true katechon, the true Messiah—would not recognize such destructive ethos. Boston University professor of social ethics Nimi Wariboko writes, “America’s redemption or greatness cannot be through the sin of trampling democratic ethos and common decency. That path only leads further down into chaos and moral breakdown. The true path, and which Jesus himself would recognize, is one that fights all the evils that thwart human flourishing” [21].
Perhaps, then, are we to become zombies for the sake of human flourishing? Are we to die to the world and be born again in Christ? For many, this is already accomplished. But the relapse to sin and to forget Christ’s words and use them merely as a means to an end are still possible. Therefore, one thing is for certain—it is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Doing so does not look like, as Wariboko writes, a trampling of democratic ethos and common decency. Instead, it is to have our selfish understanding of ethos to die and to be born again, or like a zombie, rise again in Christ. Recognizing that redemption is solely up to us in the time that remains before the fulfillment of eschaton. But such possibilities should not include the threatening of another’s life by not taking a vaccine when you are healthy enough to do so; nor is it placing children without their parents in cages and without necessities. Christ would not recognize such trampling of ethics and our neighbors as love. Instead, it would be recognized as selfish and egocentric understandings of what it means to love one’s self and not the other person next to them.
Søren Kierkegaard, in his The Concept of Anxiety, argues that Angest (or, “angst”) exposes one’s anxiety when faced with the freedom of infinite choices. To Kierkegaard anxiety is, “freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.” In other words, anxiety reveals the human being’s freedom showing them the infinite possibilities they have in their life. Adam, when prohibited by YHWH to consume the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, aroused in him the anxiety of being able—the acknowledgement of being able to sin when told to not sin.” Like Adam and his primal sin, what awakens in us when faced with anxiety is the infinite possibility of being able, and when one stares into the “yawning abyss” of possibilities, one becomes dizzy. “It is in this way that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” yet out of fear, “grabs hold of finiteness to support itself. In this dizziness freedom subsides.” Acknowledging such freedom and infinitude lays a great weight of responsibility on one’s shoulders, a pressure to make the right choice among many. Put straightforwardly, Kierkegaard writes, “Anxiety is freedom’s possibility,” and to not succumb to the finite is to wrestle with the infinite, idealizing our finitude in the shape of infinity.
As discussed earlier, when one stares at the zombie, an uncanny feeling arises in them as an unfamiliar (yet familiar) creature walks before them. In other words, anxiety builds up in the fear of facing the repressed angst of death. But, as Kierkegaard challenges, are we to succumb to our anxiety of finitude in the time that remains until death? For the sake of human flourishing, when one stares at the zombie that is Trumpism, one is to “wrestle with the infinite,” and in doing so, realize the human being’s freedom and infinitude. By not succumbing to this anxiety, as a reaction towards the zombie of Trump, one acknowledges not only their freedom but possibilities among possibilities and therefore great responsibility to make a choice. Against Trumpism’s trampling of democratic ethos and common decency, the right choice, among our infinitude and freedom, should be one that Jesus would recognize. This includes taking a vaccine when one is healthy to do so, not stripping parents from their children at the southern border, and not conferring and de-ranking the rights of women. So, when looking towards 2024, regardless of if he can run or not, Trump running for the next presidential election is the narrative that is being prophesied today by many of his supporters, specifically white evangelicals. Indeed, this can be anxiety-provoking. So, as Christians, we must fully accept the call to imitate Christ and not misconstrue His words for our selfish agendas. This involves truly loving one’s neighbor, which can be done in the possibilities of possibilities in our infinitude, to fight against all evil as Jesus did, while we look into the zombie’s lifeless and rotting eyes.
[1] Carl Schmitt, The nomos of the earth in the international law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. Trans. G.L. Ulmen (Telos Press, 2003), 59-60.
[2] Carl Schmitt, 60.
[3] Paolo Virno. Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation. (United Kingdom: Semiotext(e), 2008), 60.
[4] Virno, 189.
[5] Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. (United States: Liveright, 2020), 17.
[6] Du Mez, 44.
[7] Ibid, 101.
[8] Ibid, 106.
[9] Ibid, 233.
[10] Du Mez, 238.
[11] Kyle William Bishop, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2010), 109.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid, 111.
[14] Ibid, 110.
[15] Ola Sigurdson, “Slavoj Žižek, the Death Drive, and Zombies,” in Zombie Theory, ed. Sarah Juliet Lauro (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 93.
[16] Bishop, American Gothic Zombie, 120.
[17] Sarah Juliet Lauro, “Wander and Wonder in Zombieland,” in Zombie Theory, ed. Sarah Juliet Lauro (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), xx.
[18] Ola Sigurdson, “Slavoj Žižek, the Death Drive, and Zombies,” 93.
[19] Moisés Naím, “What is Ideological Necrophilia?” The Atlantic, February 24, 2016.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Nimi Wariboko, “Between Evangelicals and Trump: Redemption Through Sin,” Political Theology, November 4, 2020.
Holden Marshall is a first year MTS student at BU STH who enjoys reading and studying the Hebrew Bible. He also enjoys reading classic literature from authors like Herman Melville and Samuel Beckett with the sound of Sergei Rachmaninov in the background.
Josh Neuberger is a first year MTS student who enjoys studying ethics, reading the works of Karl Ove Knausgård, and watching the films of François Truffaut. He originally hails from Minnesota.
Complete Bibliography
- Jessica Martínez and Gregory A Smith, “How the Faithful Voted.” 2008. Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. November 5, 2008.
- Bishop, Kyle William. American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2010.
- Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Alastair Hannay. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing, 2014.
- Kobes Du Mez, Kristin. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. United States: Liveright, 2020.
- Lauro, Sarah Juliet. “Wander and Wonder in Zombieland,” in Zombie Theory, ed. Sarah Juliet Lauro, vii-xxiii. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
- Martínez, Jessica, and Gregory A Smith. 2016. “How the Faithful Voted: A Preliminary 2016 Analysis.” Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. November 9, 2016.
- Naím, Moisés. “What is Ideological Necrophilia?” The Atlantic, February 24, 2016.
- Schmitt, Carl. The nomos of the earth in the international law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. Translated by G.L. Ulmen. Telos Press, 2003.
- Sigurdson, Ola. “Slavoj Žižek, the Death Drive, and Zombies,” in Zombie Theory, ed. Sarah Juliet Lauro, 85-101. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
- “Transcript of Trump’s Speech at Rally before US Capitol Riot.” 2021. AP NEWS. January 14, 2021.
- Virno, Paolo. Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation. United Kingdom: Semiotext(e), 2008.
- Wariboko, Nimi. “Between Evangelicals and Trump: Redemption Through Sin,” Political Theology, November 4, 2020.
- Wolfe, Jan. 2021. “Four Officers Who Responded to U.S. Capitol Attack Have Died by Suicide.” Reuters, August 3, 2021, sec. United States.
buprophet.wordpress.com 