longform journalism

I’m hoping you can give readers a sketch of the Weavers' particular brand of apocalyptic fundamentalist Christianity [Added context: They're talking about the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge]
The quick version is that around the end of the 19th century, the prevailing story that many American protestants told about the future began to take a dramatic turn. The earlier story (usually known as postmillenialism) was that life on earth will gradually improve as the gospel spreads and material conditions improve, leading ultimately to the millennial reign of God on earth. This was the dominant eschatology (theory of the End) that mainline protestants had been preaching basically since the founding of the country. For the most part this story meant that Christians needed to be out there sprucing things up to hasten the perfection of the earth.

The newer story, which arrived after the Civil War and basically gave rise to what came to be known as the Fundamentalist movement that got cooking around the 1920s, is generally known as premillenialism. It interprets the Bible to say that life on earth is supposed to grow worse and worse, culminating in a violent seven-year period known as the Tribulation, which will be followed by Christ’s return, and all the terrifying stuff described in the Book of Revelation. (For many there was also talk of the Rapture taking place somewhere in there too, in which all good Christians would be taken off the earth before a brutal period of global war and disorder.) Almost by definition this theology breeds conspiracism because believers are supposed to be on the look out for a secretive cabal that will usher humanity into an antichristian global order.

As Wattenberg and I examined the data together, a startling discovery came into focus: Back in the 1970s, singular names grew so popular that they became trends unto themselves. But “it just doesn’t work that way anymore,” Wattenberg said. Nowadays, trends are defined by many different names with similar suffixes. …

According to Wattenberg, Jason barely registered in the 1950s when parents often picked a name following family tradition. If your great-grandfather was named Clarence Leroy, odds were a piece of that name would fall intact to you.

Then came the counterculture movements of the 1960s. For the first time, parents began straying from traditional names. With the guardrails of convention removed, people were free to make up their own minds and forge their own paths. And suddenly, by the 1970s, every other kid was named Jason.

Then a funny thing happened: Names started giving way to sounds. Jason begot Mason, Jackson, Grayson, Carson and a whole family of other “-son” names that together make up a major 21st-century trend for baby boys.

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