Jessica Johnson (PhD Washington 2010)

Research Interests:
Evangelical church movements; gender and feminist theory; sexuality and queer theory; visual and new media; economies of attention and affect theory; neoliberalism and militarism

"At present, I am writing a book manuscript based on my ethnographic research at an evangelical church in Seattle. In this project, I analyze the public performance and online circulation of gender and sexuality doctrine by the pastors and congregants at Mars Hill Church to examine how conviction and sin are articulated in narratives pertaining to military combat, spiritual warfare, gender equality, sexual freedom, and entrepreneurial discipleship. I argue that Mars Hill uses innovations in visual and digital technology to proselytize, market, and replicate, influencing and capitalizing on economies of affect and attention to instrumentalize congregants’ labor in its efforts to expand like a multinational corporation. I investigate Mars Hill’s growth in relation to mechanisms of security, surveillance, and empire as contextualized by an unending global war on terror, neoliberal and military logics of volunteerism, and emergent forms of social media. By examining the mobilization and multiplication of evangelical congregations on local, national, and global scales as shaping and shaped by shifting dynamics of transnational capitalism, virtual networking, and hegemonic masculinity, my project provides insight into how the stakes and strategies of conservative evangelicals are shifting from culture war issues and partisan voting patterns to the circulation of globally directed, affective political values on the information marketplace."