Blessèd Assurance: At Home with the Bomb in Amarillo, Texas

By A.G. Mojtabai and A. G. Mojtabai

Book Overview

In 1982, with Cold War anxieties running high, A.G. Mojtabai set out for Amarillo, Texas, home of Pantex, the final assembly plant for all nuclear weapons in the United States. Through the lens of this particular city, she sought to focus on our adaptation as a nation to the threat of nuclear war. Her interviews began with Pantex workers assured of both the necessity and the safety of the work that they did, and in the steady, beneficent, advance of science. Working alongside them were fundamentalist Christians who believed in inevitable catastrophe, and who testified to quite another, blessed, assurance of Divine rescue from the holocaust to come. This startling juxtaposition of apocalyptic and technocratic world views was not confined to Pantex. Blessed Assurance brilliantly examines this clash of spiritual visions as it presented itself repeatedly in the streets, churches, and corporate offices of Amarillo. The voices that you hear in this book are those of the people of Amarillo speaking for themselves. Their narratives powerfully reveal their hopes and fears, their sense of the meaning of history, and the future of the human race. Blessed Assurance won the year's Lillian Smith Award for the best book about the South in 1986.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815605080
• ISBN13: 9780815605089
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Build the Bomb and Expect the End

This readable, accomplished writer author deals with the presence of the Pantex plant in Amarillo, the only final assembly factory in the US for nuclear weapons, warheads and bombs. She presents this as a piece of investigative journalism, uncovering the background stories of some personalities involved, both individual and communal. Mojtabai explores, then analyzes the attitudes of local residents toward the plant. She analyzes in some detail the personal and group philosophies of war, peace, safety, and the future. She gives attention to the views and attitudes of individual members of churches who work in the bomb factory. She looks into the question of safety for nuclear weapons. In this regard she analyzes the views of Amarillo residents. She looks at both the security provided by the bomb as a deterrent and the danger of the bomb as a provocation to nuclear war or an attack on their town as a production center. Mojtabai also provides a fascinating analysis of how religious views relate to this situation. She outlines how many individual Christians and churches accommodated the presence of nuclear weapons, and the future in light of their possible use. Some just dismissed the question and abdicated any personal sense of responsibility or concern. They were satisfied to accept the economic benefits resulting from the enterprise, such as the jobs provided. On the other side, a few churches and Christian activists did oppose both the production and use of nuclear weapons and their assembly in their neighbourhood. In a perhaps unexpected, but relevant, focus, the author explores the various religious views of the End Time of churches in Amarillo. Those with apocalyptic views of how the world would end seem not to be as concerned with the implications of nuclear weapons.

Compelling Story for Everyone

I first read this book in college in a theory of religion class. But don't be put off by that. This is the story of the people in Amarillo TX who build nuclear warheads. Most of the community are born-again Christians who are Rapturists -- they welcome the end of the world. Their story is contrasted with those people in the town and all over who are against nuclear war. It is an unbelievable sociological tale, and Mojtabai writes with compelling impartiality. She tells the whole story in a way that reads like one of the best novels I have ever read. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in human nature. It will blow you away.