An Introduction to The Guillotine In Evangelical Media

'Biochip injectors. And, of course, loyalty enforcement facilitators.'

Loyalty enforcement facilitators!? Why not just call them cranium and trunk separators? 'Guillotines, you mean?'

That made her wince. 'Director, please. That has such an eighteenth-century sound to it, and you can understand why we want to avoid any language that bespeaks violence or conjures images of beheading and the like.'

And the like? 'Begging your pardon, ma'am, but do we not assume that people will recognize the guillotines, or loyalty enforcement facilitators, for what they are? What else might they be used for, halving cabbages?'

'I don't find that the least bit amusing.”'

'I don't either, but let's call a blade a blade. People see a heavy, angled, razor-sharp edge waiting to be triggered from the top of a grooved track, with a head-shaped yoke at the bottom over a handy basket, and my guess is they'll have a clue what it's about.' 
— The Mark: The Beast Rules The World by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

Who is my audience? You, I hope. 

Someone who has seen Evangelical political stances and (reasonably) responds with “Why are these so hypocritical? Don’t they know?” 

Someone who grew up Evangelical or Evangelical-adjacent, who had this fear but never knew why. Someone who wants to understand where the persecution complex of one of the most powerful demographics in the world comes from — not just from a space of knowing propaganda, but also from a space of trauma that generations of that trauma have inflicted on them.

I ask for your curiosity, your interest, and maybe a bit of a sense of humor as you read this. Maybe you’ll learn something new.

An Introduction To The Guillotine In Evangelical Media is a plain text exploration of Evangelical apocalyptic aesthetic and how that bleeds over into politics, with introductions by Kieryn Darkwater and Emily Rose Cole.