Biosoteriology and the Postsecular (In)Human: The Religio-Racializing Assemblages of Evangelical Nephilim Demonology

• Published in: Journal of the American Academy of Religion Vol. 92; no. 1; pp. 140 - 159
• Main Author: O’Donnell, S Jonathon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: US Oxford University Press 13-11-2024; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• ISSN: 0002-7189; 1477-4585
• DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfae067

Abstract
This article explores the use of apocryphal narratives of the angelic Watchers and their offspring, the nephilim, in contemporary American evangelical demonology. It contends that such demonologies use the figure of the nephilim to galvanize reactionary political narratives of crisis, placing the source of cultural change and ecological collapse in an inhuman Other whose removal would permit the restoration of social and spiritual order. Drawing on Black studies and postsecular critique, the article contends that nephilim demonologies mobilize processes of “religio-racialization” rooted in antiblackness to create a paradigm of “biosoteriology”—a conflation of biological “purity” and soteriological possibility mobilized through religio-racializing assemblages. Situating this paradigm in the context of US Christian nationalism and a racialized “return” of religion, the article shows that the nephilim become figured as an alterity threatening white, cisheteronormative visions of the human and the futurity of (white, Christian) America.