Reviewed by:

• Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances by Jill Stevenson
• Stanton B. Garner Jr.

In Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances, Jill Stevenson continues the exploration of evangelicalism, affect, and performance that she initiated in her earlier study Sensational Devotion: Evangelical Performance in Twenty-First-Century America (2013). Her focus here is apocalypticism and Christian productions about the end of the world such as Hell House and Tribulation Trail. She is not the first to write about this performance genre. Ann Pellegrini’s 2007 American Quarterly article “‘Signaling through the Flames’: Hell House Performances and Structures of Religious Feeling” is one of several studies of this particular production, which originated in Arizona in the early 1900s and has been restaged at thousands of churches around the country. Building on these studies, Sensational Devotion is an engaging, original analysis of the affective strategies by which they generate intense experiences of end-time futurity, or the imminence of apocalypse in the present moment. To demonstrate the historical antecedents of this performance strategy, she juxtaposes today’s eschatological performances with those of the late Middle Ages, a period whose apocalyptic preoccupations mirror our own.

The book consists of an introduction, five chapters, and a coda. Chapter 1 lays out the theoretical and methodological principles underlying the project’s [End Page 406] argument. Evangelical beliefs concerning the end of the world and God’s judgment of humanity, Stevenson argues, involve a temporal dialectic between the preordained and the unknown. Because the timing of these final events is known to God but not to us, the prominent affective register for those who believe in them is anxiety. While fear is a response to known danger, anxiety is oriented toward what is not here yet; as such, it is indeterminate, unsettling. Employing a “dramaturgy of threat,” the performances covered in Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances generate anxiety in their spectators in order to produce embodied, deeply felt experiences of a certain but unpredictable future. Stevenson supports this argument with a skillful discussion of affect theory, time, performing futurity, and premillennial dispensationalism, the dominant framework for evangelical apocalypticism in the United States. Those who subscribe to this eschatological view believe that Christ will return to earth to transport (or “rapture”) true believers to heaven, then return again after a period of tribulations under the reign of Antichrist to inaugurate a new millennium.

Chapters 2 and 3 focus on four contemporary end-time performances. Like the other evangelical attractions included in the book, these are carefully scripted, immersive performances that spectators move through in groups. Hell House and Judgment House, which are licensed and packaged for purchase by congregations, use character-based realism and portrayals of violence to foment anxiety over the impending apocalypse and the genuineness of the spectator’s faith. Rapture House, which has been produced annually at Garner Free Will Baptist Church in North Carolina since 2003, focuses on the ascension of true believers when Christ returns to earth in order to lead participants to question their own fate during the Final Judgment. In a startling example of the theatrical effects employed by these attractions, the fact that judgment can occur at any moment was brought home to the audience on the night Stevenson attended when the light went out on a guide talking about the Rapture; when the lights came back on, only her clothes and glasses remained on the floor. By way of comparison, the morality play The Castle of Perseverance also “construct[s] future time by thickening present time with immediate physical experiences of individual judgment” (56). While these performances maintain clarity and legibility in their scenarios and lessons, Hell’s Gates, an annual event held in Georgia, assaults its spectators with a barrage of movement, noise, and direct confrontation (Antonin Artaud would have loved this one). The oscillation between legible and illegible affect throughout the performance generates anxiety about watchfulness and attentiveness. Stevenson’s analogs for this performance of violent affect and inattentiveness are the Hell Mouths in medieval theatre and the liturgical...

审核人：

• 在吉尔·史蒂文森的基督教末世表演中感受未来
• Stanton B. Garner Jr.

在《在基督教末日表演中感受未来》中，吉尔·史蒂文森继续探索她在早期研究《耸人听闻的奉献：二十一世纪美国的福音派表演》（2013 年）中发起的福音派主义、情感和表演。她在这里的重点是关于世界末日的世界末日主义和基督教作品，例如地狱之屋和苦难之路。她不是第一个写这种表演类型的人。Ann Pellegrini 的 2007 年美国季刊文章“'通过火焰发出信号'：地狱之家的表演和宗教情感的结构”是对这一特殊作品的几项研究之一，该作品起源于 1900 年代初期的亚利桑那州，并已在全国数千座教堂重新上演。在这些研究的基础上，《耸人听闻的奉献》是对情感策略的引人入胜的原创分析，通过这些情感策略，它们产生了对末世未来或当前世界末日迫在眉睫的强烈体验。为了展示这种表演策略的历史渊源，她将今天的末世表演与中世纪晚期的表演并列，这个时期的世界末日关注反映了我们自己的时代。

本书由引言、五章和尾声组成。第 1 章阐述了该项目[End Page 406]论点的理论和方法论原则。史蒂文森认为，关于世界末日和上帝对人类的审判的福音派信仰涉及预定与未知之间的时间辩证法。因为上帝知道这些最终事件的时间，但我们不知道，所以那些相信它们的人最突出的情感记录是焦虑。恐惧是对已知危险的反应，而焦虑则面向尚未出现的事物。因此，它是不确定的、令人不安的。采用“威胁戏剧”，在基督教末日表演中感受未来中所涵盖的表演在他们的观众中产生焦虑，以便对某个但不可预测的未来产生具体的、深刻的体验。史蒂文森通过对情感理论、时间、表演未来和千禧年前时代论（美国福音派世界末日论的主要框架）的巧妙讨论来支持这一论点。赞同这种末世论观点的人相信，基督会回到地球，将真正的信徒运送（或“被提”）到天堂，然后在敌基督统治下的一段磨难之后再次回来，开启新的千年。

第 2 章和第 3 章重点介绍了四种当代的末世表演。与书中包含的其他福音派景点一样，这些都是精心编写的、身临其境的表演，观众可以分组观看。地狱之家和审判之家由会众授权和包装购买，使用基于角色的现实主义和暴力描绘来煽动对即将到来的世界末日和观众信仰真实性的焦虑。狂喜之家，自 2003 年以来每年在北卡罗来纳州的加纳自由意志浸信会教堂制作，重点关注基督返回地球时真正信徒的升天，以引导参与者在最终审判期间质疑自己的命运。在这些景点所采用的戏剧效果的一个令人吃惊的例子中，判断可以在任何时候发生的事实在史蒂文森出席的那个晚上，当一个导游谈论狂喜时灯光熄灭时，观众就明白了这一点。当灯重新亮起时，地板上只剩下她的衣服和眼镜。相比之下，道德剧《坚守的城堡》还“通过个人判断的直接物理体验来增厚当前时间，从而构建未来时间”（56）。虽然这些表演在他们的场景和课程中保持清晰易读，但在乔治亚州举行的一年一度的《地狱之门》以一连串的动作、噪音和直接对抗来攻击观众（安东宁阿尔托会喜欢这个）。在整个表演过程中，清晰和难以辨认的影响之间的振荡产生了对注意力和注意力的焦虑。史蒂文森对这种暴力情感和注意力不集中的表现的类似物是中世纪戏剧中的地狱之口和礼仪......