Religion and geopolitics: apocalyptic geopolitics as a way of knowing about global space

This chapter explores the reciprocal relationship between religion and geopolitics in which historically formed religious beliefs produce imaginations of global space and, conversely, geopolitical knowledge becomes embedded in religious beliefs. We make a distinction between “the geopolitics of religion” (theological concerns of geopolitics) and “religious geopolitics” (secular political-theological geopolitical imaginations and practices). We focus on how millennial and apocalyptic belief systems (the geopolitics of religion) shape geopolitical imaginations as they address a cosmic struggle between good and evil. However, we approach any form of religious practice and knowledge as shaped by an assemblage of cultural, social, and geopolitical histories and therefore also explore the assemblage of politics and religion. It is presumed that the End-Times can only take place on a global scale and therefore eschatology profoundly affects the perception of international relations, global crises, and intergovernmental institutions. However, and consistent with recent literature in critical geopolitics, we challenge this presumption by arguing for a scaling down of apocalypse from the global to the individual levels. After a review of the academic literature on religious geopolitics, we engage with the history of American evangelical apocalypticism to illustrate the complex relationship between religion, conspiracism, apocalypse, and geopolitics. In that context, we provide historical and contemporary examples of the flexible evangelical End-Times discourses to illustrate the interdependencies between anti-globalist American exceptionalist attitudes and socially constructed biblical knowledge.