Evangelical literary tradition and moral foundations theory

Evangelical literature has long used Biblical stories and genres as inspiration for contemporary fictions—think of C. S. Lewis refreshing the gospel story in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and revising the Eden myth in his science fiction novel Perelandra. Yet Biblical literature, as an anthology of sacred writing by scores of authors (and editors) across perhaps a thousand years in wildly different cultural and historical contexts, is a vast tradition that articulates a range of ethical values, all expressed in an array of genres with varied but specific conventions. This article examines two evangelical bestsellers from the last 20 years, William Paul Young's The Shack (2007) and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's Glorious Appearing (2004), the final novel in the Left Behind series, arguing that evangelicals draw on different Biblical genres for literary inspiration and religious faith. Their sales and movie adaptations attest to their continued power to move audiences. The Shack has sold over 20 million copies and was adapted in 2017 in a successful Hollywood movie starring Octavia Spencer and Sam Worthington, grossing $96 million in sales worldwide.1 The Left Behind series, meanwhile, written between 1995 and 2004 (with the prequels and sequel penned 2005–2007), has sold 80 million copies and continues to drive evangelical cultural production in films and video games. The series has been adapted to film six times: Most recently in 2023, starring and directed by Kevin Sorbo, in 2014, starring Nicholas Cage, and in 2000, 2002, 2005, with Kirk Cameron. The 2014 and 2023 reboots are in what we might call the same Left Behind Cinematic Universe (LBCU), with Cage's film ending with him as protagonist Rayford Steele landing the plane many passengers have been raptured from, and Sorbo as Rayford continuing in the months after the Rapture as he and others become born again Christians and discover the Antichrist's identity. The sixth film was a 2017 spinoff of the 40 volume adolescent series Left Behind: The Kids, written between 1998 and 2005, featuring young people becoming Christians and facing the Tribulation. The Shack and the Left Behind series have enjoyed vibrant afterlives since publication, indicating their enduring power to move evangelical audiences over the last 20 years. I argue in this article that we can measure the continued cultural appeal of these evangelical bestsellers by examining their animating moral values. To do so, I follow the lead of Bible scholar Carol Newsom, who uses the prism of Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to map the values of the book of Proverbs. MFT posits that transcultural human moral concerns are shaped by the values of care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation, which various cultures shape differently. Jonathan Haidt, the primary developer of MFT, has argued that liberals stress the aspects of care and fairness, while conservatives give roughly equal weight to all five values (2013). Here, I use MFT to map the concerns of two very different evangelical retellings of Biblical stories—building on previous research on how The Shack reimagines the theodicy of the Biblical book of Job and the way Glorious Appearing exemplifies the contemporary resonance of the Biblical genre of apocalypse, retelling the book of Revelation's final events. Young's novel and LaHaye and Jenkins's series are deeply indebted to Biblical literary tradition and genres, but their choice of source material reflects different moral priorities. Evangelicals exist along moral and political spectrums, and while there is certainly a shared audience for the novel and the series, with many readers enjoying and being moved by both, MFT shows how The Shack stresses the values of care and fairness while Left Behind depends on values of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Summarizing Newsom's “test case for a conversation between MFT and biblical literature” focused on Proverbs allows me to outline MFT and its value when analyzing “historical texts concerned with moral issues” which can “also be used to illumine the moral foundations of cultures” (2015, 122, 121). Examining Proverbs' repeated concern about “the wicked” (2015, 124) Newsom finds that Proverbs is concerned with fairness and authority more than care, loyalty, or sanctity. Of the care/harm dichotomy, she notes that “most [proverbs denouncing violence] do not feature the emotional component of harm to the vulnerable,” mentioning harm to “the poor, the wretched, and the orphan” in only a “small” number of sayings (2015, 126). Intriguingly, she finds that though there are a few sayings about cheating in weights and measures, the question of justice underlies much Biblical Wisdom literature (as well as the Deuteronomistic History and the prophets): Fairness is the “basis for the notion of retributive justice” (2015, 126). As such, “The act-consequence relationship, which is foundational to the thought world of wisdom, is, at its root, a concern about fairness” (2015, 126). The theme of loyalty versus betrayal “is not strongly represented in Proverbs” because “group identity is not a major feature of the moral profile of Proverbs” (2015, 127). But because the opening of “Proverbs 1-9 is largely structured by means of addresses urging a submissive, responsive disposition on the part of the son, who stands in for every reader,” the book takes the authority/subversion dynamic seriously (2015, 128). Lastly, Newsom finds that, in terms of sanctity/degradation, concern for moral or sexual purity is not emphasized in Proverbs: when “talking about sexuality, the concern is not the purity of the individual but care for the social fabric of community (Proverbs 5–7)” (2015, 128). Newsom concludes her test case by suggesting that MFT does not adequately grasp the range of moral concerns of Proverbs and recommends “honesty/deception” as “a separate moral foundation” (not subsumed by fairness/cheating) addressed in “over fifty sayings” (2015, 130). She further suggests that a “harmony/dissension” moral foundation animates over 30 sayings about strife, especially between brothers (2015, 130). She recommends these additions based on Haidt's criteria for “moral foundations”: normativity to third parties, a quick emotional reaction, culturally widespread, evidence of innateness (as in children or animals), and explicable in terms of evolutionary adaptive change (Newsom, 2015, 120). Haidt and others, meanwhile, have introduced a sixth moral foundation, liberty/oppression, for reasons I discuss below.2 While the set is open-ended, MFT's argument is that while different cultures configure these “moral taste receptors” in different ways, the foundations themselves are transcultural and universal (2015, 120). As Newsom concludes her article, “MFT also offers biblical studies a useful tool for better discerning how different moral configurations existed side by side in Judean society” (2015, 132). Newsom's use of MFT to map how different literary texts exemplify synchronous, distinct moral values in a nuanced, non-monolithic culture is a good method for getting at the complexity of early 21st century American evangelicalism, which similarly produces literary and cinematic texts that have quite different “moral configurations.” The Shack attempts to grapple with the kidnapping, abuse, and murder of a child in a universe with a good and omnipotent God. Young is primarily concerned with how harm reduction and fairness resolve the traumatic stories of both the murdered daughter and the bereaved father, himself a victim of childhood abuse. While camping with his family, the protagonist Mack is distracted when two of his children capsize their canoe; coming to their rescue, he momentarily leaves his daughter Missy, who is abducted by a serial murderer, taken to a remote shack in the Oregon woods, assaulted and then murdered, her body not found. Mack's wife finds solace in her Christian faith, but Mack in grief and doubt abandons his. When a mysterious note invites him back to the shack where Missy was murdered, he finds not the murderer he hoped to confront, but a racially and gender-diverse Trinity in which the Father appears as an African American woman (and later a Native American man), the Son as a Middle Eastern man, and the Holy Spirit as an Asian American woman. Over the course of the weekend, Mack cooks with the Father, gardens with the Spirit, hikes with the Son, and shares meals with them as they help him heal and return to faith through lots of theological discussion. As I have argued elsewhere, The Shack is a modern-day retelling of the book of Job: A father's anguished questioning about his murdered child(ren), accompanied by a defensive theodicy structured through rounds of dialogue, favoring theological exploration at the expense of plot, and featuring the theophany of himself to his The Shack also on part of the Job Mack's of and But because the and Mack with the The Shack to Job by the of this to a being in the of Job who are with how about justice with an about power and be with also about Mack's and to of the The Shack Job is its of as “the in Job from for me to him for the as a and for Mack's (and this The Shack the of thousand years for the that the to is an than to Young's for two I The historical is that religious about a and a shaped the and of the two in the The is that the shape of across on this MFT The “moral Newsom's Most The Shack on the of care and fairness, which in abuse, and As with Job (and all the question is there is a moral in the As Newsom notes in the fairness underlies the Biblical of retributive that is from for This is represented by of who that murdered children have but is by the and where he the for of me what is as Job this in The but the question of the of her as well as the of what her does to her is the novel that is and omnipotent he this harm to of the between Mack and the on fairness, the primary moral The the of Mack's about fairness, the Missy and her to the of fairness for and all of they the of human of a with while others their way to this fairness to the serial the fairness to Missy not to be and this might not be is a question the novel does not The of fairness the novel is that and in the world are of of and to their The novel and not in a or way Young appears to they all their the of and is as is of human not for the this is of be for of years to the of two remote a question the novel The Christian theodicy on these of and be to readers and not to others, of based on theological But the novel also has a to the Job an of Mack is by Wisdom to Missy in with her was but is by an of and Fairness for Missy in the is by the to Christian of the and on the to for human and to The of fairness is also as Wisdom the of the serial to how he was also as a child childhood with the of him on is with of people of with all by a of fairness as the concern for justice is when the Father Mack to which later Mack to lead the to the based on and the Mack's with also that he was but not by his father, him the in to him Mack has also perhaps on of retributive Lastly, the question of fairness is by the that from for the he and Missy have Here, a of to heal that be of fairness are when we that Young in an has about his sexual as a child at the of at a Christian while his in Young part of what Missy and Mack's at what to his daughter in the novel is also the anguished questioning of the that to The theological and the moral foundation of fairness, the cheating of and is an moral foundation of the and Mack's with are of care, and While the harm be or because of theological not to have the and that Missy and her a long way for readers to the of to suggests to Mack that the Spirit Missy to give her she was and murdered perhaps the The the Trinity to Mack a for Missy, her body in an by and with of from the also Mack that his who the on the of for the and that Mack her on her the harm reduction to him and in him with the and on the value of harm reduction after the to human and moral foundations are in The Shack in authority is in the but they Mack's about their justice and to be Mack with the he the Father as Young the authority to evangelical the of The of versus is in at the a 121). 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