Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia

by Gregory S. Camp, Sherman S. Smith (Foreword by)

A host of Christian teachers have tapped into conspiracy theories to design their own end-times scenarios. But how do their prophetic schemes hold up against Scripture, logic, and history? Historian Gregory Camp offers a sane counterbalance.

Genres: Nonfiction, Conspiracy Theories

287 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

Reviews

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d like to think Gregory S. Camp is a victim of the nature of his work. It’s not stuffy enough to be a paper in an academic journal. It’s not slick enough to be a magazine article. That seems to leave Camp only with the option of making a book out of it, and he has nowhere near enough material to turn this into even a short book. So what he’s done is take roughly 50 pages of interesting history of conspiracy theories in modern American Christian theology and stretch it out to four times its reasonable length. Honestly, the middle third of the book is devoted almost exclusively to a rehash of 20th century U.S. history useless to anyone who managed to pass the subject in high school. Much of the remainder of the work is strongly tilted by the author’s approach: a moderate Christian questioning – sometimes even ridiculing – right wing fanatic Christians. He also spares a barb or two for the New Age, a subject he seems not to have researched as thoroughly as he did other parts of the book. I also question Camp’s decision to adopt a guilt-by-association line of attack with some of the more moderate members of the end-times crowd. In so doing he leaves himself open to the same criticism; his espousal of the broader version of the Semiramis myth places him in the company of some strange bedfellows, including some of the selfsame folks he criticizes. The tedious and sometimes inaccurate history lesson aside, this wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read. But given the subject and the time spent, it could have been a great deal better.