Evangelical leaders’ fear of Islam was manufactured to sell militant faith

Evidence

As in the Cold War era, for all their militant rhetoric and supreme confidence that God was on their side, evangelicals seemed curiously fearful. In twenty-first century evangelicalism, the threat of radical Islam loomed large. Yet upon closer examination, this fear appears suspect. On the part of evangelical leaders, at the very least, fear of Islam appeared to be nothing more than an attempt to drum up support for the militant faith they were hawking. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 493

Categorization

• SEED: The manufactured-fear thesis offers an article angle on how leaders convert ideological threats into marketable product.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader continuity thesis and to scholarship on moral panics as elite-manufactured. — connects to: Religious leaders stoked fears of mass conversion to justify anti-Christian violence — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 243