How ‘90s Evangelical Thrillers Taught Me to Fear Outsiders

Christian thrillers like ‘This Present Darkness’ and ‘Left Behind’ trained a generation to fear, demonize, and distrust

Image by Dall-E

Youth Group, Demons, and Sleepless Nights

It was the end of church youth group in the early ‘90s, after a session of Bible study and worship songs, and we were lingering the way teenagers do when they don’t want the night to end. A young man who’d grown up in that church pressed a book into my hands. “Dude, you have to read this,” his eyes ablaze in that uniquely evangelical way. The cover looked like a thriller: dark clouds, shadowy figures, a town engulfed in smoke.

The title was This Present Darkness. I thanked him, stuffed it into my backpack, and didn’t think much of it — until later that night, when I cracked it open.

What happened next would shape my spiritual and moral imagination for years to come. I read until the sky turned as ominously pink as the sky depicted on the cover. To this day, some 35 years later, I remember entire passages from that first night: demons perched like grotesque bats on rafters, their skin stretched taut over sinewy muscles, their whispers curling into the minds of teachers and newspaper editors. They didn’t just torment individuals —…