Jason Bivins is a specialist in religion and American culture an is the author of 2008's Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism.

He has also published multiple articles, review essays, and occasional pieces on religion, politics, and culture in the United States.

His most recent book is Embattled America: The Rise of Anti-Politics and America’s Obsession with Religion (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, April 2022).

A child of the era of the Satanic Panic - the unfounded moral hysteria around devil worship that gripped much of the US and Canada in the 1980s and 90s - Jason's interest and study of religion has been driven in large part by the experiences of his metal-loving, comic book-reading youth.

Here he talks to Kelly and John about how conservative evangelicals manipulate and embrace horror tropes for their own ends in books like Left Behind, the story of Hell Houses, and how are cultural fractured and broke all our brains sometime in the mid 1990s.

If you want to connect with Jason, you can email him at [email protected].