Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration

— —

Yii-Jan Lin

Immigration and Apocalypse

How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration

Yii-Jan Lin

$72.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Yale University Press
14 January 2025

Religion & politics; New Testaments; Migration, immigration & emigration; Central government policies

Tracing the metaphor of America as the Book of Revelation's New Jerusalem, Yii-Jan Lin shows how apocalyptic narratives have been used to exclude unwanted immigrants

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 book 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 those who must be shut out of America. 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.

This book is a fascinating analysis of the religious, biblical, and apocalyptic in American immigration history and a damning narrative that weaves together American religious history, immigration and ethnic studies, and the use of biblical texts and imagery.

By: Yii-Jan Lin
Imprint: Yale University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780300253184
ISBN 10: 0300253184
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 14 January 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Yii-Jan Lin is a historian of ideas and biblical texts and the author of The Erotic Life of Manuscripts. She is associate professor of New Testament at the Yale Divinity School. She is based in New Haven, CT.

Reviews for Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration

"“Yii-Jan Lin creatively and astutely uses the Book of Revelation to read US immigration history, highlighting how Revelation’s New Jerusalem has functioned as a founding myth to establish and reinforce an American sentiment of exceptionalism.”—Tat-siong Benny Liew, College of the Holy Cross ""A must-read for our times, this deeply original book excavates the legacies of the Book of Revelation in shaping dominant U.S. imaginations around immigration with particular attention to discourses of disease, citizenship, and the border wall.""—Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, author of Latina/o/x Studies and Biblical Studies “Once you have read this groundbreaking book, you will not see either American immigration policy or the book of Revelation in the same way. Any conversation about immigration in America that aims to be helpful must now start with Immigration and Apocalypse.”—Willie James Jennings, Yale University "