Immigration and apocalypse : how the Book of Revelation shaped American immigration / Yii-Jan Lin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lin, Yii-Jan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bible. Revelation--Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bible.

Emigration and immigration in the Bible.

United States--Emigration and immigration--History.

United States.

Emigration and immigration--Biblical teaching.

Emigration and immigration.

Emigration and immigration--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Physical Description:

xii, 281 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Immigration + apocalypse

Place of Publication:

New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"America appeared on the European horizon at a moment of apocalyptic expectation and ambition. Explorers and colonizers imagined the land to be paradise, the New Jerusalem of the Bible's Book of Revelation. This groundbreaking volume explores the conceptualization of America as the New Jerusalem from the time of Columbus to the Puritan colonists, through U.S. expansion, and from the eras of Reagan to Trump. While the metaphor of the New Jerusalem has been useful in portraying a shining, God-blessed refuge with open gates, it has also been used to exclude, attack, and criminalize unwanted peoples. Yii-Jan Lin shows how newspapers, political speeches, sermons, cartoons, and novels throughout American history have used the language of Revelation to define immigrants as God's enemies who must be shut out of the gates. This book exposes Revelation's apocalyptic logic at work in the history of Chinese exclusion, the association of the unwanted with disease, the contradictions of citizenship laws, and the justification for building a U.S.-Mexico wall like the wall around the New Jerusalem"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part 1. Conceptualizations. America the New Jerusalem ; On the "Island of Immortals": The Apocalyptic Exclusion of Chinese Immigrants

Part II. Disease and Plague. "Nothing Unclean Will Enter It": Apocalyptic Epidemiology and Exclusion ; "They Must Go": Non-White Peoples as Plague and Pest

Part III. Requirements and Categorizations. The Book of Life and the Book of Deeds in American Immigration and Naturalization ; The Book of White Life

Part IV. The Construction of Crisis. "Even Heaven is Going to Have a Wall Around It": Borders, Walls, and the New Jerusalem ; Conclusion: The Myth, the Spectacle, and the Prophecy

Appendix A: Timeline of Immigration History

Appendix B: Structural Outline of the Book of Revelation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-268) and index.

ISBN:

9780300253184

0300253184

OCLC:

1428036905