The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism [1 ed.] 9780195301052, 2010049028

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LIS, i, the Taiping Christian Dispem Revolution, cargo cults in Oceania, the Baha’i Faith, and the Raelian Movement would seem to have little in common. What they share, however, is a millen¬ nial orientation—the audacious human hope for a collective salvation, which may be heavenly or earthly or both. Although many religions feature a belief in personal salvation, millennial faiths are character¬ ized by the expectation that salvation will be accomplished for an entire group by a superhuman agent, with or without human collaboration. The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism offers readers an in-depth look at both the theoretical underpinnings of the study of millennialism and its many manifestations across history and cultures. While the term “millennialism” is drawn from Christianity, it is a category that is used to study religious expressions in diverse cultures, religious traditions, and historical periods. Sometimes, mil¬ lennial expectations are expressed in peaceful ways. Other times, millennialists

become involved in violence. The Oxford Handbook of Millennial¬ ism begins with a section that examines four primary types of millennialism. Chapters in the next section examine key issues such as charismatic leadership, use of scripture, prophetic failure, gender roles, children, tension with society, and violence. The rest of the book explores millennialism in a wide variety of places and times, from ancient Near Eastern movements to contemporary apocalyptic and new age movements, including the roles played by millennialism in national and international conflicts. This handbook is a valuable resource for scholars of religious studies, sociology, psychology, history, and new religious movements.

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THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

MILLENNIALISM

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

MILLENNIALISM Edited by CATHERINE WESSINGER

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The oxford handbook of millennialism / edited by Catherine Wessinger. p.

cm.

Includes index. ISBN 978-0-19-530105-2 1. Millennialism.

I. Wessinger, Catherine, 1952BL503.2.O94 2011

202.3—dc22

2010049028

135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

II. Title.

Contents

Contributors

ix

Part I Introduction

i. Millennialism in Cross-Cultural Perspective

3

Catherine Wessinger

Part II Millennialism: Primary Categories and Histories

2. Catastrophic Millennialism

27

Eugene V. Gallagher 3. Progressive Millennialism

44

W. Michael Ashcraft 4. Avertive Apocalypticism

66

Daniel Wojcik 5. Nativist Millennialism

89

Jean E. Rosenfeld

Part III Issues Relating to Millennialism

6. Charismatic Leadership in Millennial Movements Lome L. Dawson 7. Millennialism, Scripture, and Tradition

133

Eugene V. Gallagher 8. Prophetic Failure in Millennial Movements Lome L. Dawson

150

113

CONTENTS

VI

9. Gender Roles, Sexuality, and Children in Millennial Movements

171

Melissa M. Wilcox 10. Millennial Visions and Conflict with Society

191

David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger 11. Fragile Millennial Communities and Violence

213

John Walliss

Part IV Millennialism in Cross-Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective

Nascent Monotheistic and Monotheistic Traditions 12. Ancient Near Eastern Millennialism

235

Robert Gnuse 13. Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Millennialism

252

James D. Tabor 14. Early Islamic and Classical Sunni and Shi‘ite Apocalyptic Movements

267

David Cook 15. European Millennialism

284

Rebecca Moore Asian Millennial Movements 16. Chinese Millennial Movements

307

Scott Lowe

17. Korean Millennial Movements

326

Robert Pearson Flaherty

18. Japanese Millennial Movements

348

Helen Hardacre

19. Millenarian Elements in the Hindu Religious Traditions HughB. Urban

369

CONTENTS

Vll

Millennialism in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific 20. Millennial and Apocalyptic Movements in Africa

385

Rosalind I. J. Hackett 21. Millennialism in the Caribbean

420

Barry Chevannes 22. Pacific Millennial Movements

435

Garry W. Trompf

Nineteenth-, Twentieth-, and Twenty-First-Century Millennial Movements 23. Native American Geopolitical, Georestorative Movements

457

Michelene E. Pesantubbee 24. Babi and Baha’i Millennialism

474

Peter Smith and William P. Collins 25. Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Millennialisms Jon R. Stone 26. Christian Dispensationalism

515

Glenn W. Shuck 27. National Socialist Millennialism

529

David Redles 28. Modern Catholic Millennialism

549

Massimo Introvigne 29. New Age Millennialism

567

Phillip Charles Lucas 30. UFOs, ETs, and the Millennial Imagination

587

Robert Pearson Flaherty 31. Millennium, Apocalypse, and American Popular Culture Douglas E. Cowan 32. Environmental Millennialism Robin Globus and Bron Taylor

628

611

492

CONTENTS

Vlll

Millennialism and Contemporary National and International Conflicts 33. Millennialism on the Radical Right in America

649

Michael Barkun 34. Radical Millennial Movements in Contemporary Judaism in Israel

667

Yaakov Ariel 35. Millennialism and Radical Islamist Movements

688

Jeffrey T. Kenney

Part

36. Millennial Glossary

V

Glossary and Indexes

717

Compiled by Catherine Wessinger 37. Index of Millennial Groups and Movements Index

731

725

Contributors

Yaakov Ariel is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include Judaism in the late modern world; new Jewish religious movements; and Protestant Christianity and its attitudes toward the Jewish people and the Holy Land. Ariel has written numerous articles and books on these subjects. His book, Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880—2000 (2000), was awarded the Albert C. Outler Prize by the American Society of Church History. W. Michael Ashcraft is Professor of Religion at Truman State University. He is the author of The Dawn of the New Cycle: Point Loma Theosophists and American Culture (2002); coeditor of New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader (2005); and coeditor of Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America (2006) in five volumes. He is also the reviews editor for Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Michael Barkun is Professor Emeritus of Political Science in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. His books on millennialism include Disaster and the Millennium (1974); Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-Over District of New York in the 1840s (1986); Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (1997); and A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (2003). He serves on editorial boards for Terrorism and Political Violence; Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions; Journal for the Study of Radicalism; and Communal Societies: The Journal of the Communal Studies Association, and also edits the Religion and Politics series for the Syracuse University Press. Professor Barkun has served as an adviser to the FBI and has held fellowships and grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His most recent book Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security since 9/11 was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2011. David G, Bromley is Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology in the School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has written or edited over a dozen books on religious movements. His most recent books include Cults and New Religious Movements: A Brief History (with Douglas E. Cowan, 2008); Teaching New Religious Movements (2007); Critical Approaches to Drawing Boundaries between Sacred and Secular (with Arthur Greil, 2003); Cults, Religion, and Violence (with J. Gordon Melton, 2001); and Toward Reflexive Ethnography: Participating, Observing,

X

CONTRIBUTORS

Narrating (with Lewis Carter, 2001). He is former president of the Association for the Study of Religion, and the founding editor of that association’s annual series, Religion and the Social Order; and former editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, published by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Barry Chevannes was Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the West Indies, Mona, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences from 1996 to 2004. He authored three books and scores of articles on the Rastafari and Revival religions, male socialization, and Caribbean culture. A public scholar, he served as Chairman of the Institute of Jamaica, the National Ganja Commission, the Jamaica Justice System Reform Task Force, and the National Commission on Reparations. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Professor Chevannes passed away in 2010.

William P. Collins was Director of the Baha’i International Library, 1977-90, and Chief of the Cataloging Division, United States Copyright Office, 1991-2000, and has been Program Planning Officer with the United States Copyright Office since 2000. He is author of Bibliography of English Language Works on the Babi and Baha’i Faiths, 1844-1985 (1990), and numerous articles on Baha’i history and beliefs, includ¬ ing millennialism. He has served in various professional capacities on boards for the Baha’i Faith, including the United States National Baha’i Archives Committee, and the Editorial Committee of the Journal of Baha’i Studies. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Baha’i Studies Review.

David Cook is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, special¬ izing in Islam. His areas of specialization include early Islamic history and develop¬ ment, Muslim apocalyptic literature and movements (classical and contemporary), radical Islam, historical astronomy, and Judeo-Arabic literature. His books include Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (2003); Understanding Jihad (2005); Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (2005); Martyrdom in Islam (2007); and Understanding and Addressing Suicide Attacks, with Olivia Allison (2007) • He is continuing to work on contemporary Muslim apocalyptic literature, with -a focus on Shi'ite materials, as well as preparing manuscripts on jihadi groups and Western African Muslim history.

Douglas E. Cowan is Professor of Religious Studies at Renison University College in the University of Waterloo in Canada. He is the author or editor of ten books and several dozen articles and chapters related to a wide variety of topics concerning new religions and popular culture. His most recent books include Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television (2010); Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen (2008); and Cults and New Religions: A Brief History, with David G. Bromley (2008). He is a former co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions.

Lome L. Dawson is Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He is cofounder and Director of the Laurier-Waterloo Ph.D. Program in Religious Studies, focused on the multidisciplinary study of religious

CONTRIBUTORS

XI

diversity in North America. He has written two books (e.g., Comprehending Cults, 2nd ed., 2006), edited three (e.g., with Douglas Cowan, Religion Online, 2004), and published over sixty articles and book chapters. In recent years his research has been focused on the related issues of charismatic authority, millennialism and prophetic failure, and the comparative analysis of the process of radicalization in religious and terrorist groups. Robert Pearson Flaherty completed his Ph.D. in comparative folklore and mythol¬ ogy/history of religions at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1990. He has been living in Korea since 1994, where he currently teaches in the English Department of Kyungsung University in Busan. His general interests include anthropology of religions, comparative mythology, ritual studies, religious syncretism, millennial¬ ism, legend (especially experiential legend), and cultural psychology. He is espe¬ cially interested in Korean studies: folk religion (minsok jonggyo); newly emerged religions (sinheung jonggyo); “Ancestor Worship” (Josang Sungbae); and “Korean Shamanism” (Musok Sinang). He has a prior interest in German folklore and an abiding interest in New Age religions, especially UFO religions. He has published articles in Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Anthropology News, Anthropological Quarterly, and Folklore: Journal of the British Folklore Society. He is currently working on a book about Korean newly emerged religions. Eugene V. Gallagher is the Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College. He is the coauthor, with James D. Tabor, of Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (1995); and the author of The New Religious Movements Experience in America (2004). With W. Michael Ashcraft, he is the coeditor of Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in the United States (2006) in five volumes. He is co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. He has written widely on new religious move¬ ments in the United States and on religions in the ancient Mediterranean world. Robin Globus is a doctoral candidate in the Religion and Nature Program in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Her dissertation project focuses on the effects of Endtime belief on environmental attitudes and behavior among theologically conservative Protestants. A National Science Foundation fellow in the University of Florida’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in Adaptive Management, she is also Assistant Editor of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. Robert Gnuse is the James C. Carter, S.J./Bank One Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Religious Studies Department at Loyola University New Orleans, where he teaches Old Testament and related courses. He is the author of twelve books, including, most recently, The Old Testament and Process Theology (2001); Emergent Monotheism in Ancient Israel (1997); and Dreams and Dream Reports in Josephus (1996), as well as eighty articles in Bible and related fields.

Xll

CONTRIBUTORS

Rosalind I. J. Hackett is Professor and Head of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee. She has published widely on religion in Africa, notably on new reli¬ gious movements—for example, New Religious Movements in Nigeria (1987)—as well as on art, media, gender, conflict, and religious freedom in the African context. Her most recent books (edited) are Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets, and Culture Wars (2008); and Religious Dimensions of Conflict and Peace in Neo-Liberal Africa (with James H. Smith, 2011). In 2005 she was elected President of the International Association for the History of Religions (until 2015). Helen Hardacre is Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University. She has done extended field study of contemporary Shinto, Buddhist religious organizations, and the religious life of Japan’s Korean minority. She has also researched state Shinto and contemporary ritualizations of abortion. Before moving to Harvard in 1992, she taught at Princeton University (1980-89) and Griffith University (Australia) (1990-91). Her publications include The Religion of Japans Korean Minority (1984); Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan: Reiyukai Kyodan (1984); Kurozumikyo and the New R.eligions of Japan (1986); Shinto and the State, 1868-1988 (1989); Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (1997); and Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Japan: A Study of the Southern Kanto Region, Using Late Edo and Early Meiji Gazetteers (2002). Her current research projects include a study of Shinto history and the issue of constitutional revision in Japan and its effect on religious groups. Massimo Introvigne is the managing director of CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, in Torino, Italy. He is the author of some sixty books in Italian, some of them translated into French, German, Spanish, English, Czech, and Croatian, and of more than one hundred articles on the sociology of contemporary religious pluralism and new religious movements. He is the editor of the award¬ winning encyclopedia of religions in Italy, Le religioni in Italia, published in two editions in 2001 and 2006. Jeffrey T. Kenney is Professor of Religious Studies at DePauw University, where he teaches courses in history of religions and Islamic studies. His research focuses on modern Islamic thought in Egypt and the greater Middle East, with a special inter¬ est in political religion, radicalism, Islamism, modernization, and secularization. He is the author of numerous articles on the Kharijites, the first sectarian movement in Islamic history, and their legacy in modern Muslim discourse. His first book was Muslim Rebels: Kharijites and the Politics of Extremism in Egypt (2006). He is cur¬ rently editing a textbook on modern Islam and researching a religious history of modern Egypt. Scott Lowe is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. His first book, Mo Tzu’s Religious Blueprint for a Chinese Utopia: The Will and the Way (1992), examined the Mozi, a Zhou dynasty text produced by a group that, had it existed in the United States in the 1970s, would have been labeled a “cult.” He has since written a number of articles

CONTRIBUTORS

XIII

and book chapters on Falun Gong, Chinese millennial movements, Chinese religion-state relations, and several new religious movements in the United States, including Adidam and Transcendental Meditation. Phillip Charles Lucas is Professor of Religious Studies at Stetson University. He is founding editor of Nova Religio, a scholarly journal dedicated to the study of new and minority religious movements throughout history. He has authored or edited four books, including New Religious Movements in the 21st Century: Legal, Political, and Social Challenges in Global Perspective (with Thomas Robbins, 2004); Cassadaga: The South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community (with John J. Guthrie, Jr., and Gary Monroe, 2000); Prime Time Religion: An Encyclopedic Guide to Religious Broadcasting (with J. Gordon Melton and Jon R. Stone, 1997); and The Odyssey of a New Religion: The Holy Order of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy (1995). Rebecca Moore is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. Her research has focused on Jewish and Christian dialogue and on the history of biblical interpretation. She has served as president of the Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages and on the steering committee for the History of Interpretation Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. She has pub¬ lished extensively on Hugh of St. Victor, a medieval Christian canon whose biblical commentaries reflected contemporary Jewish influences. She published a history of Christianity titled Voices of Christianity: A Global Introduction (2005). She also coau¬ thored a book with Risa Levitt Kohn titled A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity (2007), which shows how Judaism and Christianity emerge from the same religious tradition—that of ancient Israel—at the same time. She was co¬ general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions from 2000 to 2011 and has been an Associate Editor of Luther Digest since 2000. Michelene E. Pesantubbee is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Indian and Native Studies at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Choctaw Women in a Chaotic World: The Clash of Cultures in the Colonial Southeast (2005); and “Wounded Knee: Symbol of Resistance and Recovery,” in Recovering Memory: Exposing Religion, Violence, and the Remembrance of Place, edited by Oren Baruch Stier and J. Shawn Landres (2006). She specializes in southeastern Native American religious traditions, Native American women and religion, and Native American reli¬ gious movements. She currently serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion. David Redles is Associate Professor of History at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. He is author of Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation (2005). His articles include “‘The day is not far off...’: The Millennial Reich and Induced Apocalypse,” in War in Heaven/Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic, edited by Glen McGhee and Stephen O’Leary (2005); “Nazi End Times: The Third Reich as Millennial Reich,” in End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity, edited by Karolyn Kinane and Michael A. Ryan (2009); “Ordering Chaos: Nazi Millennialism and the Quest for Meaning,” in

CONTRIBUTORS

XIV

The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Reflections on Religion, Violence, and History, edited by Charles B. Strozier, James W. Jones, and David M. Terman (2010); and “The Turning Point: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Eschatological War between Aryans and Jews,” in The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred-Year Retrospective on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, edited by Steven T. Katz and Richard A. Landes (2011). Jean E. Rosenfeld is Academic Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles Center for the Study of Religion and an occasional lecturer in the Department of History. She is a historian of religions who has published articles about revitaliza¬ tion movements, millenarianism, and sacred space. Her book, The Island Broken in Two Halves (1999), examines the Maori “Spirit” movements in New Zealand—the King Movement, Pai Marire, and Ringatu—that led to the nineteenth-century Land Wars and the formation of a new, biethnic nation state. Since 1996 she has studied, taught, and written about the current wave of religious violence. She is the editor of Terrorism, Identity and Legitimacy: The Four Waves Theory and Political Violence (2011). Glenn W. Shuck is Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College. Among his books are Marks of the Beast: The “Left Behind” Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity (2005); and Escape into the Future: Cultural Pessimism and Its Religious Dimension in Contemporary American Popular Culture (with John M. Stroup, 2007). Peter Smith is Associate Professor and Chair of the Social Science Division at Mahidol University International College, Thailand, where he teaches courses in world history and the history of social thought. He has published extensively in the field of Babi and Baha’i studies, including: The Babi and Baha’i Religions: From Messianic Shi’ism to a World Religion (1987); A Concise Encyclopedia of the Baha’i Faith (1999); and An Introduction to the Baha’i Faith (2008). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Baha’i Studies Review. Jon R. Stone is Professor of Religious Studies and affiliate faculty in American Studies at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of A Guide to the End of the World: Popular Eschatology in America (1993); On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism: The Postwar Evangelical Coalition (1997); Prime-Time Religion: An Encyclopedia of Religious Broadcasting (with J. Gordon Melton and Phillip Charles Lucas, 1997) and editor of Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy (2000); and Readings in American Religious Diversity (with Carlos R. Piar, 2007), among others. His most recent essay, “Prophecy and Dissonance: A Reassessment of Research Testing the Festinger Theory,” appeared in Nova Religio 12, no. 4 (May 2009). James D. Tabor is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of

North Carolina at Charlotte and is Professor of Christian Origins and Ancient Judaism, with a focus on apocalyptic and millenarian modes of thinking (200 b.c.e. to

200 c.e.).

He has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in

CONTRIBUTORS

XV

archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada, Wadi el-Yabis, the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba, the “Tomb of the Shroud” at Akeldama, and most recently the Mount Zion excavation in Jerusalem. Among his published books are Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise and Its GrecoRoman, Judaic, and Early Christian Contexts (1985); A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (with Arthur J. Droge, 1992); Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (with Eugene V. Gallagher, 1995); The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (2006); and Restoring Abrahamic Faith (2008). He currently has two books in press, The Jesus Discovery (November 2011) and Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (April 2012), both with Simon & Schuster. Bron Taylor is Professor of Religion and Nature at the University of Florida, where he assumed the Samuel S. Hill Ethics Chair in 2002. His writings focus on the ways in which nature-related perceptions and attitudes influence the environments peo¬ ple inhabit, as well as on the political, ethical, and religious dimensions of grassroots environmental movements. His books include Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (2010) and Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism (1995). He is editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (2005) and the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (from 2007), and he is founding president of the affili¬ ated International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. Information about his projects and writings is available at www.religionandnature.com and www.brontaylor.com. Garry W. Trompf is Emeritus Professor in the History of Ideas, University of Sydney, Australia. He was formerly Professor of History at the University of Papua New Guinea, and visiting professor to the universities of California (Santa Cruz), Utrecht, Edinburgh, Warsaw, and the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich. He has written extensively on Melanesian religion and so-called cargo cults in the Pacific. His books on Melanesia include Melanesian Religion (1991); Payback: The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Religions (1994); Religions of Melanesia: A Bibliographic Survey (2006); and Religions of Oceania (with Tony Swain, 1995). His other relevant books are The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought (1979); Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements: Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious Movements (edited, 1990); and Early Christian Historiography (2000). He is the Sydney branch Director of the Center for Millennial Studies. Hugh B. Urban is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He is primarily interested in the role of secrecy in religion, particularly in relation to issues of power and knowledge. His primary area of research is Hindu Tantra in India, but he has also written widely on contempo¬ rary new religious movements, modern magic, and the role of religion and secrecy in the Bush administration. He is the author of six books, including Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion (2003); Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic,

XVI

CONTRIBUTORS

and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (2005); The Secrets of the Kingdom: Religion and Concealment in the Bush Administration (2007); and The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality, and the Politics of South Asian Studies (2009). John Walliss is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Sciences and Social Sciences and Director of the Centre for Millennialism Studies, Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom. He is the author of Apocalyptic Trajectories: Millenarianism and Violence in the Contemporary World (2004); and coeditor of The End All Around Us: Apocalyptic Texts in Popular Culture (with Kenneth Newport, 2009); and Reel Revelations: Apocalypse and Film (with Lee Quinby, 2010). Catherine Wessinger is Rev. H. James Yamauchi, S.J., Professor of the History of Religions at Loyola University New Orleans. Her books include How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heavens Gate (2000); Annie Besant and Progressive Messianism (1988); and the following edited volumes: When They Were Mine: Memoirs of a Branch Davidian Wife and Mother, by Sheila Martin (2009); Memories of the Branch Davidians: Autobiography of David KoresWs Mother, by Bonnie Haldeman (2007); and Millennialism, Persecution and Violence: Historical Cases (2000). She has published a number of articles and encyclopedia entries on categories of millennialism. She is co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Melissa M. Wilcox is Associate Professor of Religion and Director of Gender Studies at Whitman College. She is author or coeditor of several books and numer¬ ous articles on gender, sexuality, and religion, including Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity, and Community (2003); Queer Women and Religious Individualism (2009); and Sexuality and the World’s Religions (with David W. Machacek, 2003). Daniel Wojcik is Associate Professor of Folklore Studies and affiliate faculty in Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The End of the World As We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America (1997); Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art (1995); and Outsider Art Realms: Visionary Worlds, Vernacular Traditions, Trauma, and Transformation (2011). He has published a number of arti¬ cles on American apocalypticism, Marian apparitions, supernatural photography, and vernacular artistic expression.

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

MILLENNIALISM

PART I

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE CATHERINE WESSINGER

Book of Revelation reveals the future. Come hear it. —New Orleans Bible Church One Saturday night while driving through a New Orleans neighborhood I spot¬

ted the sign quoted above. It encapsulated a primary motivation that is found in the many permutations of phenomena that scholars have termed “millennialism”: the concern to know the future, which implies a larger concern—the ultimate concern1—to experience permanent well-being. Human beings want to over¬ come the suffering of their present experiences, and they hope that in the future they will achieve a state of permanent well-being, in which the limitations of the human condition are eliminated. Millennialism is the audacious human hope that in the imminent future there will be a transition—either catastrophic or progressive—to a “collective salvation” (Cohn 1962; Cohn 1970; Talmon 1966), which will be accomplished by a divine or superhuman agent and/or by humans working in accordance with a divine or superhuman plan. Prophets, messiahs, preachers, and texts arise to deliver messages that purport both to reveal the future and to give instructions about what persons need to do to be included in the imminent millennial kingdom. A prophet is believed to speak words given by the divine or superhuman agent. Scholars use the Hebrew term messiah to refer to an individual believed to be empowered by the superhuman agent to create the collective salvation. The thirty-five chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism demonstrate that while millennial phenomena are diverse, there are also distinctive patterns that

INTRODUCTION

4

emerge from cross-cultural and comparative studies. These patterns of millennial expression are dynamic, and they interact as millennialists respond to factors and events in their contexts. In the following discussion of the categories and conclusions that can be drawn from the volume’s chapters, I will not attempt to refer to all of the groups and move¬ ments treated. An index of millennial groups and movements is provided at the end of this volume.

Primary Categories of Millennialism In other works, I have offered categories to promote the cross-cultural study of millennialism and to elucidate commonly shared contours of millennial¬ ism in religious traditions beyond Jewish and Christian movements familiar in the West (Wessinger 1997; Wessinger 2000a; Wessinger 2000b). The authors of the chapters in this volume were not required to employ my categories, but many did. All the authors utilize terms and categories that are consistent with each other. For convenience, a “Millennial Glossary” is located at the end of this volume. The classic foundational definitions of millennialism were formulated by Norman Cohn and Yonina Talmon. According to Cohn (1962, 31; see also Cohn 1970), millennialists expect a salvation that is (a) collective, in the sense that it is to be enjoyed by the faithful as a group; (b) terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realized on this earth and not in some otherworldly heaven; (c) imminent, in the sense that it is to come both soon and suddenly; (d) total, in the sense that it is utterly to transform life on earth, so that the new dispensation will be no mere improvement on the present but perfection itself; (e) accomplished by agencies which are consciously regarded as supernatural. Talmon (1966,159) provides a succinct definition of millenarianism or millennial¬

ism2 as referring to groups and movements that “expect imminent, total, ultimate, this-worldly, collective salvation” (emphasis removed). Cross-cultural studies, including the study of new religious movements, indi¬ cate that many millennialists expect an “otherworldly” or “heavenly” collective sal¬ vation.3 Often the belief in an earthly collective salvation is blended with belief in a heavenly salvation.4 Additionally, a number of millennial movements do not rely on a supernatural or divine agent. Secular millennial movements may rely on the force of “history,” “progress,” or the “consciousness of the people,” while UFO millennial movements rely on extraterrestrials to effect the transition. Therefore I stipulate a functional definition of millennialism as

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

5

belief in an imminent transition to a collective salvation, in which the faithful will experience well-being, and the unpleasant limitations of the human condition will be eliminated. The collective salvation is often considered to be earthly, but it can also be heavenly. The collective salvation will be accomplished either by a divine or superhuman agent alone, or with the assistance of humans working according to the divine or superhuman will and plan. (“Millennial Glossary”) Scholars of Christianity have utilized the terms premillenarianism and premillenni-

alism to refer to belief in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, in which he will destroy the present world and evil, resurrect the dead, carry out the final judgment, and create God’s kingdom, either on Earth or in heaven, or both. This millennial out¬ look involves a pessimistic view of human nature and society. Humans and society are seen as being so corrupt that the only way that things may be made perfect is through divine intervention to destroy the current order and establish a new one. Since similar patterns are found in non-Christian millennial movements, I have suggested the term catastrophic millennialism as a broader category that is not tied to Christian doctrines. A range of activity is associated with faith in a cataclysmic transition to the Millennium (the collective salvation): believers may dedicate themselves to worship and spiritual practices while they wait for divine intervention; they may make prep¬ arations to survive the expected destruction; they may prepare to serve as warriors in God’s Endtime army when the apocalyptic moment arrives; or they may wage active revolutionary warfare against those they perceive as holding back the arrival of the collective salvation (Eugene V. Gallagher, chapter 2). Scholars of Christianity are also familiar with the pattern they term postmillen-

nialism, the belief that Christians working according to God’s will can build God’s kingdom on Earth, and then Jesus Christ will return. This perspective involves an optimistic view of human nature and society, along with a strong belief in progress. Through divinely guided progress human beings and society are able to improve so that suffering will be eliminated. Since this millennial pattern is found also in many non-Christian movements, I have offered the term progressive millennialism for use in cross-cultural studies. There is a broad historical sweep of progressive millennial ideas and move¬ ments (see W. Michael Ashcraft, chapter 3). While Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202) is identified as an important father of progressive millennial thought in the West, pro¬ gressive millennial themes are found worldwide. Beginning in the West in the sev¬ enteenth century, the Enlightenment conviction that humanity could “progress” as a result of rationalism and science led to a widespread conviction in the reality of progress by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Progressive millennialists wed their faith in progress with their conviction that they are working accord¬ ing to a divine or superhuman plan. Despite the tragic events of the twentieth century, many millennialists maintain faith in progress. Progressive millennialists dedicate themselves to self-improvement and social reform, but progressive millen¬ nialism is not solely about doing good. There have been expressions of progressive millennialism that have killed many millions of people.

6

INTRODUCTION

Avertive apocalypticism, or what Daniel Wojcik (1997, 209-10) terms conditional apocalypticism, is a commonly found type of millennial expression that has not received much scholarly attention.5 Avertive apocalypticism involves the belief that if people respond appropriately to prophetic warnings, the imminent cataclysm may be averted. These responses range from personal spiritual practices to taking violent actions. The pattern that Wojcik calls avertive millennialism combines avertive apoc¬ alyptic ideas with progressive millennialism: if imminent apocalyptic destruction is averted, then humanity will progress into a collective salvation (Wojcik, chapter 4). Many of the movements treated in this volume’s chapters are nativist millennial movements. Nativist millennial movements manifest all of the variations of millen¬ nialism. Nativists—like all millennialists—respond to contextual events, so they often change their millennial expectations and strategies. Some nativist movements are catastrophic millennial movements, and some are progressive millennial move¬ ments. Some nativist millennialists await divine intervention while engaging in spiritual practices; others establish communities apart from the colonizing power and will defend themselves if attacked; and others resort to violent revolution to drive out invaders. Sometimes the spiritual preparation includes abandonment or destruction of the means of livelihood (possibly attacking neighbors who do not do likewise), in anticipation of imminent arrival of the collective salvation. For many indigenous peoples the “end of the world” has already occurred via the incursion of colonizing peoples with superior technology, who take over natives’ sacred land and destroy their sacred way of life (Jean E. Rosenfeld, chapter 5). These “culture clash” contexts (Lanternari 1963,116,160, 239) have stimulated millennial movements throughout history and in many parts of the world. The nativist millen¬ nial hope is that the foreign invaders will be removed from their lands and that their idealized past way of life will be restored (“Millennial Glossary”). The al-Qaeda/ International Jihad movement is an interesting case of a transnational nativist mil¬ lennial movement, which aims to defeat God’s enemies and restore the godly khilafa (caliphate) as the desired earthly collective salvation for the umma, the Islamic com¬ munity or “nation” (Rosenfeld, chapter 5; see also Jeffrey T. Kenney, chapter 35). A wide range of behaviors can be stimulated by intensely held millennial beliefs. Believers may wait for divine intervention; they may make drastic changes to their lives in response to a millennial message and leader; they may prepare themselves to survive the turbulent transitional period; they may work to improve society and themselves; they may devote themselves to spiritual practices; and sometimes they resort to vio¬ lence to avert an anticipated apocalypse and/or create the desired collective salvation.

Issues Relating to Millennialism A number of issues arise in relation to millennial groups and movements, whose expectation of a transition to a new order challenges the status quo and, often, the religious and political order. These include questions concerning charismatic

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

7

leadership, interpretation of scripture, failure of prophecy, gender roles and childrearing, conflicts with society, including the use of violence, and fanaticism. Charisma was originally a theological term referring to someone believed to possess the “gift” (charism in Greek) of special contact with the Divine. Both proph¬ ets and messiahs have charisma in the sense that followers believe that they have access to an unseen divine or superhuman source of authority (“Millennial Glossary”). Max Weber (1864-1920) provided the foundational sociological descrip¬ tion of charismatic authority, which has been expanded by continuing social scien¬ tific analysis. There are social conditions that produce charismatic leaders, and some leaders’ mismanagement of charismatic authority contributes to the demise of members of the millennial community. Charismatic leaders tend to share common traits, including strong faith in their personal mission; willingness to lead by exam¬ ple; responsiveness to the needs of others; strong communication skills; and the ability to create the impression that they possess extraordinary qualities. Yet the authority of charismatic leaders rests on the faith given to them by followers, and followers may withdraw their faith at any time (Lome L. Dawson, chapter 6). In addition to personal charisma, there is also charisma of a sacred text, which literate millennialists interpret to “read the signs” in current events concerning the anticipated transition to a collective salvation (Eugene V. Gallagher, chapter 7). Apocalyptic or millennial beliefs are often present at the founding of a new religious movement, but as the movement becomes accommodated to mainstream society and institutionalizes, apocalyptic beliefs may be put on the back burner. However, these beliefs will be preserved in the tradition’s scriptures, to be highlighted by future interpreters. As Gallagher (chapter 7) stresses, “Millennial messages are made, unmade, and remade in dynamic processes of interaction among interpreters, tra¬ ditions, texts, contexts, and communities.” Since millennial movements rely on predictions by prophets, messiahs and interpreters of scriptures, and the perfect Millennium has never been accomplished, millennialists must deal with the failure of prophecy. Scholars have tested the pio¬ neering study of “cognitive dissonance” by Leon Festinger and colleagues, When Prophecy Fails (1956), to explore what happens when the millennial goal is not achieved. Lome L. Dawson (chapter 8) provides a theoretical framework for under¬ standing the social and psychological conditions in which believers reaffirm their faith after a prophecy is disconfirmed. Following Roy Wallis (1979), Dawson points out that a prophet or messiah prepares a “prophetic milieu” in which followers are socialized to accept the plausibility of a prophecy. If the prophetic milieu has been prepared well, then it will be more likely that the prophet will be able to offer a plausible rationalization for a failed prophecy. Two general strategies are commonly utilized to respond to prophetic failure, and they are often used in tandem: rational¬ ization and reaffirmation. Millennial groups and movements have been noteworthy for their experimen¬ tation with alternative gender roles, sexual expressions, and childrearing practices, which challenge social norms and values. Catastrophic millennial groups promote understandings of gender, sexuality, and family to prepare believers for the expected imminent end of the current world. Progressive millennialists seek to promote

8

INTRODUCTION

gender roles, cultivate sexual relations, and carry out childrearing practices that they believe will be actualized in the coming Millennium (Melissa M. Wilcox, chap¬ ter 9). Allegations of child abuse and unconventional sexuality have been used by authorities to take actions against millennial communities, sometimes in excessive ways that harm the children and women they claim to want to protect. The unconventional beliefs and lifestyles of millennial groups may bring them into conflict with wider society. The strategies that millennial groups adopt in response to “cultural opposition” (Hall 1995) contribute to whether or not a millen¬ nial group avoids a decisive confrontation, a “dramatic denouement” (Bromley 2002). The Twelve Tribes, The Family International, and the Branch Davidians offer contrasting responses to conflicts with mainstream society (David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, chapter io). Three strategies millennialists may adopt in response to conflict are exodus, compromise and accommodation, and confrontation. These strategies may be used in different combinations at different points in the group’s history. The particular strategies adopted will be consistent with the group’s millennial outlook and orga¬ nization; nevertheless, millennial narratives are flexible, and prophecies and inter¬ pretations of scriptures will be adjusted in response to events. Dramatic denouements occur in interactive contexts (Bromley and Wessinger, chapter 10). While it may appear that millennial groups are routinely violent, the vast major¬ ity are peaceful. However, since violence involving religious believers seems to occur most often in relation to millennial movements, I have offered three categories for understanding groups involved in violence: assaulted millennial groups; fragile mil¬ lennial groups; and revolutionary millennial movements (Wessinger 2000a; Wessinger 2000b; “Millennial Glossary”). These categories are not mutually exclusive. A group or movement may shift from one category to another in response to events. Often a millennial group involved in violence will possess the characteristics of two or more of the categories simultaneously. Fragile millennial groups share a number of characteristics (see John Walliss, chapter 12). Three key endogamous, or internal, predisposing factors may contrib¬ ute to a group becoming fragile: (1) a sharply dualistic millennial worldview; (2) charismatic authority; and (3) totalistic organization (Robbins and Anthony 1995)- Internal stresses alone, or internal weaknesses in combination with pressures

coming from external society, may cause a group to become very susceptible to any type of disturbance. When this occurs, a fragile millennial group’s members may resort to violence to preserve their ultimate concern. Numerous millennial movements throughout history have been assaulted by citi¬ zens or authorities. Often they are mistakenly perceived as dangerous due to prejudice. Believers may be assaulted to suppress and eradicate the movement. Examples of assaulted movements include early Christians, early Muslims, Mormons in nineteenthcentury America, a band of Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890, black Israelites at Bulhoek, South Africa, in 1924, and the Branch Davidians in 1993. The millennial movements associated with the greatest violence—revolutionary millennial movements—strive to overthrow the current social and political order to

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

9

create their idea of the collective salvation for the Elect on Earth. They believe that their violence is mandated by a divine or superhuman agent. If the movement’s members are not numerically dominant, they resort to terrorism. There have been both revolutionary progressive millennial movements and rev¬ olutionary catastrophic millennial movements. German Nazis (David Redles, chap¬ ter 27) and the Khmer Rouge (Salter 2000) comprise the former, while the Taiping Revolution (Scott Lowe, chapter 16) and the contemporary transnational radical Islamist movement (Rosenfeld, chapter 5; Kenney, chapter 35) are examples of the latter. Catastrophic revolutionaries believe themselves to be agents of the Divine, mandated to destroy the evil current order and create the new. Although revolu¬ tionary progressive millennial movements believe in advancement, participants uti¬ lize violence “as a virtually sacramental rite of accelerating progress to apocalyptic rate” (Ellwood 1995, 242). Leaders and participants in both progressive and cata¬ strophic revolutionary movements see things in terms of a radical dualism (Wessinger 2000a)—belief in sharply distinguished good versus evil, us versus them. A final issue relating to millennialism comes from the events of September 11, 2001, which prompted me to consider devising a descriptive definition of fanaticism in light of case studies of millennialism and violence. I concluded that the charac¬ teristics of fanaticism manifest themselves on a continuum, with the most extreme individuals committing violence either by killing themselves and/or others, or by deliberately placing themselves and/or others in harm’s way. Admittedly, the term

fanaticism involves a value judgment, which is often influenced by the groups who win historical conflicts. The winners will judge those on their side who died for the cause to be heroes, patriots, saints, and/or martyrs. Correspondingly, the historical and cultural winners will deem people willing to kill or die for a cause they do not share to be “fanatics.” Despite the pitfalls in defining “fanaticism”—based on my previous comparative case studies—I suggest that fanaticism involves a worldview that includes (a) total confidence that one has the “Truth” and others are wrong and evil; (b) a lack of openness to considering other points of view; (c) “radical dualism,” a conviction that there is a battle between absolute Good and absolute Evil, which is translated into an “us versus them” perspective; (d) the conviction that the end justifies the means, therefore, the willingness to utilize any method, even violent methods, to accomplish the ultimate concern. (“Millennial Glossary”) It is at this point in my millennial studies that I wish extremist millennialists would heed my favorite hand-painted sign in New Orleans neighborhoods: THINK THAT YOU MIGHT BE WRONG

INTRODUCTION

10

Millennialism in Cross-Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective

Nascent Monotheistic and Monotheistic Traditions Apocalyptic and millennial ideas in nascent monotheistic and monotheistic tradi¬ tions have been associated closely with either political power, or nativist or peasant aspirations to overthrow oppressors and gain political power. In the ancient Near East, the earliest texts (from the second millennium

b.c.e.)

expressing the anticipa¬

tion of a collective salvation were written to support a ruler or dynasty using vati-

cinia ex eventu, predictions of a future that had already come true. Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts predicted a period of woes, to be followed by the appear¬ ance of a strong ruler who would defeat enemies, bring peace and prosperity, and restore ancient customs. That prediction was declared to be fulfilled in the current reign. With the expansion of Greek conquest in the Near East from the fourth cen¬ tury

b.c.e.,

Persian, Egyptian, and Hebrew nativist millennial movements devel¬

oped. Their texts predicted a divinely sent ruler who would defeat the Greeks, restore true religion, and create a nativist millennial kingdom. Texts were also written in Mesopotamia that probably had an influence on subsequent biblical texts (Robert Gnuse, chapter 12). Zoroastrian influence from Persia is likely seen in the inclusion in early Jewish eschatology (study of last things) of concepts such as periodization of history, a time of woes during the Endtime, bodily resurrection, personified angels and demons, a coming savior/king, and evil as a strong supernatural force. Jewish escha¬ tology evolved in the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible until its full development in Isaiah and Daniel. Contemporaneous Hellenistic and Roman texts also contrib¬ uted to millennial thought in the West (Gnuse, chapter 12). Both early Christianity and early Islam demonstrate that preaching a message of imminent apocalyptic destruction is a powerful tool for proselytizing and con¬ vincing listeners to change their lives and adopt a radically new religion and way of life. Apocalyptic Judaism and early Christianity prophesied an imminent heavenly battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness (James Tabor, chapter 13; also Gallagher, chapter 2). Humans may or may not be involved in the cosmic con¬ flict between God and Satan. But because radical change was forthcoming, human life on Earth needed to change as well. Both ethics and liturgy changed as a result of these theologies, because judgment and punishment were pending. Similar themes are found in the revelations given to Muhammad during the early Meccan years and recorded in the Qur’an. These stress the imminent Day of Doom, m which the world will be destroyed, the dead resurrected, and everyone judged. Subsequent Islamic apocalypticism developed to include belief in the appearance of the Dajjal (Antichrist), the return of Jesus to fight and kill the Dajjal, the appearance of a Mahdi (rightly guided one), a beast arising from the earth, the

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

11

appearance of Gog and Magog, the destruction of the world, and the Day of Judgment. The Mahdi developed into a Sunni and Shi‘ite messianic figure. The millennialism in early classical Sunni and Shi‘ite apocalyptic movements motivated uprisings to create kingdoms, and the use of realized millennial themes to support a dynasty and suppress challengers (David Cook, chapter 14). Judaism, Christianity, and Islam exercised mutual influence on their respective millennial concepts from the medieval and Reformation/Renaissance periods to the early modern era. A trio of recurring themes can be identified in the millennial thought and movements from Southwest Asia to the British Isles: sacred time, in the sense of setting dates for the end; sacred geography, particularly in struggles over control of Jerusalem and its holy sites; and sacred commonwealth, in the attempts to establish a righteous government as collective salvation (Rebecca Moore, chapter 15). Richard Landes (2006) describes two types of aspirations to establish millennial kingdoms, which can be seen in the three faiths under consid¬ eration: (1) hierarchical millennialism, generating millennial hopes from the top down; and (2) demotic millennialism, expressing popular and grassroots aspira¬ tions for justice and freedom. Hierarchical millennialism utilized realized messian-

ism to legitimate its rule; and demotic millennialism led to numerous revolts and revolutions against oppressive states.

Asian Millennial Movements Asian millennial movements demonstrate the same range of diversity found in the Abrahamic traditions: from groups focusing on spiritual practices and pilgrimages to accomplish the collective salvation; to political millennialism legitimating rulers and dynasties; to revolutionary millennial movements aimed at overthrowing rul¬ ing orders and establishing new dynasties. Asian millennial expressions include both catastrophic and progressive themes. Chinese and other Asian millennial movements demonstrate that a cyclical view of history is compatible with millennial expectations. India’s concepts of cos¬ mic cycles were so vast as to discourage millennial speculation, but after Buddhism was brought to China in the first century

c.e.,

the Chinese greatly shortened the

cosmic cycles (kalpas). A kalpa in its downward course leading to a new era can be thought to conclude in cataclysm. This pessimistic, catastrophic view of history was augmented by the adoption of the Buddhist concept of three declining ages following Gautama Buddha’s (c. 563-483

b.c.e.)

teaching of the Dharma, with the

third age being a period in which humans were incapable of practicing the selfeffort methods taught by the Buddha, so they had to rely on the grace of savior Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Whereas Maitreya, the future Buddha, was not associ¬ ated with millennial movements in India, Maitreya claimants were often found in Chinese Buddhist millennial movements. Indigenous Chinese Daoist millennial ideas have focused on the expectation of an imminent Taiping Tianguo (Heavenly Kingdom of the Great Peace) to be established after a great cataclysm. The most violent and recent Great Peace movement was the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64),

12

INTRODUCTION

which merged evangelical Christian ideas with Chinese millennial expectations and caused the deaths of approximately 20 million people. China has produced numerous and often competing millennial movements, and a number of success¬ ful Chinese dynasties have claimed to be the products of a realized millennialism (Scott Lowe, chapter 16). Revolutionary millennial movements in China were catastrophic millennial movements until the importation of Marxist thought in the twentieth century. Lowe (chapter 16) describes Marxist philosophy as a cool millennialism because it sees the Communist collective salvation as a distant but inevitable result of the pro¬ gressive forces of history, whereas Maoism was a hot millennialism because it sought to speed up progress. Maoism and its Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was a violent progressive millennial movement in which it was believed that the inexorable forces of history in combination with the power of the people’s consciousness would cre¬ ate an imminent Communist collective salvation. Millennial movements continue to manifest in China, with the Falun Gong

qigong movement being severely repressed since April 1999, after it surprised the highest officials in the Chinese Communist Party by staging a protest gathering of about 10,000 people near their residential complex in Beijing. In Korea, a realized millennialism was expressed in the establishment of Mireuk-sa, a temple dedicated to Mireuk (Maitreya Buddha), by King Mu of Baekie (r. 600-641) (Best 2007). Veneration of Mireuk provided the basis of the Silla dynasty’s unification of Korea in 676, but the expectation of Mireuk also contributed to peasant revolutionary movements. Millennialism in Korea can be characterized as reflecting a “deep yearning for a just society” (Robert Pearson Flaherty, chapter 17). Millennial and messianic ideas in Korea drawn primarily from Buddhism, Daoism, and Korean indigenous religion have been utilized to challenge feudal aristocratic rule and to promote justice for minjung, the mass of people. A number of Korean movements have focused on the coming of Mireuk to establish his Dragon Flower World on Earth. The largest revolutionary millen¬ nial movement in Korea, the Donghak (Eastern Learning) Revolution, involved the Daoist expectation of guidance from the Jade Ruler of the Universe, and began m l894 in response to the oppression of peasants. It caused approximately 400,000 deaths in one year. The Donghak leaders were executed, but several new religious movements emerged from the revolution and continue in Korea. Christian mil¬ lennial ideas are influential in Korea today, but millennialism in Korea remains based primarily in Daoism, along with Buddhist expectations of Mireuk (Flaherty, chapter 17). Millennialism in Japan has been strongly influenced by Buddhist ideas imported from China, including the shortened kalpas, the Latter Days of the Dharma (mappo) and the expectation of Miroku (Maitreya Buddha). In the thirteenth century, the monk Nichiren (1222-82) preached an avertive apocalyptic message, saying that Japan would be subjected to foreign invasion if people did not practice his version of Buddhism based on the Lotus Sutra. Eighteenth-century popular songs expressed the conviction that Miroku would arrive soon in a ship bearing rice and bringing

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

13

abundant harvests, similar to later cargo millennial cults in Oceania (see Garry W. Trompf, chapter 22). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries millennial man¬ ifestations included mass pilgrimages to the Grand Shrine of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu at Ise. There were also periods in which masses of people danced and sang ecstatically in anticipation of imminent miraculous improvement. A number of millennial movements emerged in the modern period (1868-1945), initially led by women prophets speaking for indigenous deities, and drawing on Buddhist and Shinto ideas (Helen Hardacre, chapter 18). Millennial themes can be found in a number of contemporary Japanese new religious movements. Soka Gakkai, the lay-led modern heir to Nichiren, is an inter¬ national movement with a goal of contributing progressively to the global peace movement. Aum Shinrikyo, whose followers released sarin poison gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995, blended apocalyptic ideas drawn from the Christian book of Revelation with the prophecies of Nostradamus and with Shoko Asahara’s (b. 1955) understanding of Vajrayana Buddhism. Public shock at the violent actions of Aum Shinrikyo devotees has prompted the disappearance of catastrophic millennial expectations in Japan for now (Hardacre, chapter 18). Although the vast cycles of time in Hindu cosmology did not initially promote millennial thought in India, Hindu tradition contained the concept that Vishnu takes periodic incarnations (avataras, descents) to defeat evil on Earth. There have been a number of nativist millennial movements in India, some of which adopted elements of Christian apocalypticism, responding either to oppression by the domi¬ nant Hindu castes or to British colonization (Hugh Urban, chapter 19). In the twen¬ tieth century, Hindu gurus influenced by science have blended the Darwinian theory of evolution with Hindu philosophy, meditation, and yoga to promote progressive millennial ideas of collective transformation (see also Lowe 2011).

Millennialism in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific The peoples in Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the Pacific islands have responded to colonialism, removal from their indigenous lands, and destruction of their tradi¬ tional ways of life with a variety of millennial movements. In Africa, millennial movements draw on indigenous religions, Christianity, and Islam. There have been nativist millennial movements based on indigenous religious beliefs, and nativist movements in which black Africans identify with the Israelites of the Christian Old Testament. There has also been a range of Muslim millennial movements. Peaceful millennial communities have been attacked by authorities, and millennial ideas have been used to motivate people to fight in revo¬ lutions (Rosalind I. J. Hackett, chapter 20). The mass murders discovered in 2000 in relation to the Marian apocalyptic Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda appear to have been the outcome of a fragile millennial group (see also Walliss, chapter 11). The Lord’s Resistance Army, active in northern Uganda since 1987, is a revolutionary millennial movement responsible for egregious human rights violations and loss of life.

INTRODUCTION

14

Many African millennialists await divine intervention, while others fight to destroy the old order according to God’s plan to renovate society. There have been, and still are, numerous prophets, messiahs, and mahdis in Africa. Apocalypticism will continue to be persist in Africa, in part due to the chronically difficult chal¬ lenges to health and well-being. The circulation of apocalyptic and millennial ideas through mass-mediated culture and burgeoning Pentecostal churches is also a fac¬ tor. Africa may currently be the area of the world with the greatest number of mil¬ lennial movements involved in violence and deaths (Hackett, chapter 20). Millennial movements in the Caribbean have their roots among the descen¬ dants of African slaves brought to the islands. Black slaves in the Caribbean identi¬ fied themselves with Ethiopia described in the Christian Bible, and also with the Israelites and the biblical story of their enslavement by the Egyptians, their two exiles from their homeland, and their deliverance through God’s intervention. In the Caribbean, biblical themes have been used to create nativist millennial move¬ ments for people who long to return to Africa, their idealized homeland. This is manifested most prominently in the Rastafari movement, which has seen the set¬ ting of dates for repatriation to Ethiopia by the Rastafari messiah and God, Emperor Haile Selassie (1892-1975). After these disappointments, the Rastafari hope of return to Africa is maintained in a general way. As long as blacks in the Caribbean continue to be relegated to the lowest economic and social standing, the millennial dream of salvation by divine intervention will remain (Barry Chevannes, chapter 21). In the Pacific islands, millennialism developed in contexts in which Stone Age peoples were confronted suddenly by colonizers with advanced technology, bring¬ ing wondrous forms of cargo, first in ships, and later in airplanes and helicopters. Not all

cargo cults” in the vast area of Oceania were millennial movements.

“Cargoistic” behavior was pragmatic as Pacific islanders attempted to appropriate the magic that produced the wealth the foreigners possessed. For a cargo cult to be millennial, the expectations must also involve belief in a Second Coming of a cul¬ ture hero (or Jesus) and/or the imminent return of ancestors, who will restore the people to a collective salvation. Most cargo cult millennial movements were not violent, due to the islanders’ awareness that the colonizers possessed superior weap¬ ons. After World War II, islanders’ efforts to obtain prosperity shifted increasingly to acquiring education and participating in cash economies. However, other millen¬ nial beliefs have become strong in Oceania due to the importation of forms of Christianity, including Mormonism (Garry M. Trompf, chapter 22).

Nineteenth-, Twentieth-, and Twenty-First-Century Millennial Movements During the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, a number of millen¬ nial movements became globalized, although some retained a regional focus. A number of these movements indicate how millennial perspectives shift between catastrophic and progressive expectations in reaction to changes in the context.

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

15

Native American geopolitical and georestorative movements illuminate con¬ temporary nativist millennial movements. Native Americans have taken actions to defend themselves and their sacred traditions and lands from Euro-Americans. In response to the disasters of the nineteenth century, numerous Native American prophets arose to preach of coming destruction of white oppressors and imminent well-being in the form of game, crops, and the return of deceased relatives. Whites’ fears concerning the Lakota Spirit Dance prompted American troops to massacre more than three hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on 29 December 1890, making them a classic assaulted millennial group (Michelene Pesantubbee, chapter 23). Native Americans gained United States citizenship in 1924, and their twentiethcentury millennial movements took two forms: militant protests to regain sacred lands and rights; and peacemaking, focused on disseminating prophetic warnings of the threats of global conflict and/or environmental degradation. The peacemak¬ ing movements, continuing into the twenty-first century, are expressions of avertive apocalyptism (Pesantubbee, chapter 23). Like the history of Native Americans, the story of the Babi and Baha’i millennial movements, originating in Persia/Iran, demonstrate how historical contexts pro¬ duce, shape, and change the trajectories of millennial movements, as well as how political regimes respond to the threats posed by these movements. Within the con¬ text of a generalized expectation of the return of the Twelfth Imam or Mahdi of Shi‘ite Islam in the year 1260

a.h.

(1844), Sayyid Ali Muhammad (1819-50) pro¬

claimed himself to be the Bab (Gate) and attracted a significant following. In 1848 the Bab declared himself to be the Mahdi, and since the Mahdi is regarded as the head of the Shi‘ite polity, such claims were seen as challenges to state and clerical power, leading to the Bab’s imprisonment and ultimate execution in 1850. His fol¬ lowers were severely persecuted, especially after a few Babis attempted to assassinate the shah in 1853 (Peter Smith and William P. Collins, chapter 24). A moderate Babi, Mirza Husayn-’Ali Nuri (1817-92), who took the title Baha‘u’llah (Glory of God), said he was a Manifestation of God and the one pre¬ dicted by the Bab and other religions, and he spent the remainder of his life in prison or exile. Baha'u’llah emphasized a progressive millennialism focused on unity, equality, and peace. The Baha’i Faith is now an international religion that has routinized the charisma of its founders into institutional structures, but Baha’is remain a persecuted minority in Iran. Catastrophic expectations have occasionally emerged within small groups separated from the main body of Baha’is (Smith and Collins, chapter 24). Millennial movements in the United States similarly have been produced in cultural contexts shaped by scriptures and prophecies and have manifested expecta¬ tions ranging from catastrophic to progressive. With its roots in Puritan millennial¬ ism, the United States is well known to be a nation of millennialists. Prior to the twenty-first century, American Protestants expected the imminent coming of God’s kingdom on Earth, but they differed on how it would be accomplished. The Millerite movement, expecting the Second Coming of lesus in the mid-i840s, was

i6

INTRODUCTION

a significant expression of premiUenarianism. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, American premiUenarianism became associated with the Christian Fundamen¬ talist movement. On the other end of the millennial spectrum, Protestant exponents of the Social Gospel advocated a postmillennial perspective and engaged in social work to create God’s kingdom on Earth (Jon R. Stone, chapter 25). Christian Dispensationalism, with strong roots in literalist approaches to interpreting the Bible in the British Isles and the United States, now exercises a global influence (Glenn Shuck, chapter 26; also Stone, chapter 25). Christian Dispensationalism is noted for its doctrine of the Rapture of true believers before the events of the Tribulation and the Second Coming of Christ. In the twentieth century, through influences emanating from the Dallas Theological Seminary, notably in The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) by Hal Lindsey (b. 1929), and the Left Behind novels coauthored by Tim LaHaye (b. 1926) and Jerry B. Jenkins (b. 1949), Christian Dispensationalists became Christian Zionists, convinced that the estab¬ lishment of the State of Israel and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was part of God’s plan leading to Christ’s Second Coming (see also Yaakov Ariel, chapter 34). In contrast to Christian Dispensationalism’s positive valuation of God’s plan for Jews, Germany’s National Socialism was a particularly virulent expression of twentieth-century revolutionary progressive millennialism, which manifested itself in violent anti-Semitism. It can be seen a type of nativist millennial move¬ ment, since post-World War I Germans were reacting to the defeat of their nation, rapid social change, and severe economic conditions. Germans felt threatened by the rise of communism and the Bolshevik revolt in Munich in 1919. This context of repeated disaster and despair (see Barkun 1986) led to a search for a messiah who would lead Germans into a third and final Reich (kingdom) (David Redles, chapter 27). When the teenage Adolf Hitler (1889—1945) attended a performance of the Wagner opera Rienzi, he became inspired to imagine himself as a messiah. Social and political events after the German defeat in World War I created a context in which Hitler was able to realize his dream. His great oratorical skill contributed to his becoming the head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and ulti¬ mately the Fiihrer of the Third Reich. Hitler and his secondary leaders dissemi¬ nated the view that Jewish Bolsheviks and Jews in general were self-destructive “parasites” who would kill their host, the German people. To avoid apocalyptic destruction of the Volk, all Jews had to be exterminated, thus making German National Socialism a grotesque expression of avertive apocalypticism (Redles, chapter 27). In contrast to Protestant and National Socialist expectations of a coming Millennium, the Roman Catholic Church has emphasized Augustinian amillennialism, equating the Christian Church with the realized Millennium and post¬ poning the Second Coming of Christ into the nonimminent future. Nevertheless, in addition to apocalyptic and avertive Marian apparitions popular among rankand-file Catholics (Wojcik, chapter 4; Gallagher, chapter 2; Hackett, chapter 20),

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

17

there is a strain of modern Catholic millennial thought that has influenced popes. For example, Pope John Paul II (1920-2005, r. 1978-2005) endorsed the view of Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716) that the last period of the world’s history before Christ’s Second Coming would be the age of Mary. Promotion of belief in the reign of Mary is a type of progressive millennialism, in which human effort guided by the Holy Spirit and Mary will accomplish the greater flourishing of the Church. This current of Catholic millennialism is also influenced by the Marian visions of Melanie Calvat in 1846 at La Salette, France (Massimo Introvigne, chapter 28). The Roman Catholic Church attempts to “domesticate charisma” by selecting which Marian apparitions receive approval. But this attempt to control the cha¬ risma of visionaries outside the hierarchy has limited influence, as evidenced by the numerous apparitions with apocalyptic messages throughout the world. One group, the Army of Mary, based in Quebec, looks to Marie-Paule Giguere (b. 1921) as an incarnation of Celle (She) who was manifested in the Virgin Mary; this group has established its own Church of John with its own Universal Father to compete with the Church of Peter headed by the pope (Introvigne, chapter 28). The New Age movement provides additional examples of catastrophic and progressive expectations shifting in responses to changes in the context. The New Age movement’s progressive millennial expectation of the “Age of Aquarius” has its roots in Western Esotericism influenced by the Enlightenment, in combination with Hindu and Buddhist concepts popularized by the Theosophical movement. The New Age progressive millennial view is that masters (or extraterrestrials) are guiding human evolution into an imminent era of universal awakened awareness, unity, and peace. An early source for New Age catastrophic expectations is the American psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), who predicted “Earth changes.” The catastrophic New Age vision sees coming purification of humanity and the Earth by cataclysm. New Age thought in general affirms that there will be an imminent spiritual transformation, that self-realization is the necessary precursor to global transformation, and that religion and science can be harmonized to improve the human condition, and promotes religious tolerance and eclecticism (Phillip Charles Lucas, chapter 29). The institutional trajectories of two New Age organizations, the Holy Order of MANS and the Church Universal and Triumphant, demonstrate how a group may shift from catastrophic to progressive expectations, or vice versa, in response to changes in the context. After it was accused of being a “cult” subsequent to the Jonestown mass murders and suicides in November 1978, and in response to increased pessimism in American society, the Holy Order of MANS reconfigured itself as an Eastern Orthodox group, Christ the Savior Brotherhood, jettisoning its 1960s Age of Aquarius optimism for apocalypticism. Conversely, after receiving negative publicity for resorting to fallout shelters in response to Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s (1939-2009) predictions of a nuclear missile strike on the United States by the Soviet Union in 1990, and particularly after being identified in 1993 as the group likely to be “the next Waco,” the Church Universal and Triumphant shifted

i8

INTRODUCTION

from a paranoid apocalypticism to an optimistic New Age outlook. According to Lucas, “millennial visions are living phenomena, continually undergoing refine¬ ment and revision as group dynamics and outer events change.” Although the approach to the year 2012 is stimulating fears of cataclysm based on alleged Mayan prophecies, at present most New Agers are settling for modest goals of deriving personal benefit from knowledge gleaned from synthesis of science and spirituality (Lucas, chapter 29). Related to the New Age movement is UFO millennialism, in which extraterres¬ trials play the roles of gods, saviors, and demons in millennial hopes and fears. The earliest Unidentified Flying Objects were observed shortly after the detonation of atomic bombs over Japan in 1945. Fear of the atomic bomb and technology as forces threatening to destroy humanity is a common theme in UFO religions. Extraterrestrials are often cast in the role of saviors in avertive apocalyptic scenarios, while evangelical Christians may believe that ETs are demons in opposition to God’s plan (Robert Pearson Flaherty, chapter 30). Apocalyptic/millennial themes appear elsewhere in products of American popular culture, which have worldwide distribution. Popular culture can be defined as the structural and functional relationship between mass entertain¬ ment products and those who consume them” (Douglas E. Cowan, chapter 31). In the twentieth century and into the twenty-first the trend has been the expres¬ sion in popular media of fears of a catastrophic end of the world. These narra¬ tives explore the threat of destruction, how it might be averted, and/or how humanity might survive it. Few of the popular cultural narratives in American movies end in complete destruction, and thus most express hope for the future (Cowan, chapter 31). In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, concerns about the destruction of the environment have led to environmental millennialism. Environmental millen¬ nialism shares with other millennial expressions a deep concern about the future. Environmental millennialism is innovative in that its expectations are based prin¬ cipally on scientific findings rather than the visions of religious prophets. These science-based expectations are often hybridized with various religious beliefs, such as the conviction that certain spiritual practices are essential to bring humans into harmony with their environment. Still, whether secular or incorporating reli¬ gious elements, the impulse to warn of imminent destruction and call humanity to take actions to ameliorate it seems universal (Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, chapter 32). Environmental avertive millennialism can be seen in the belief, espoused by some, that if the catastrophe can be averted, then humanity will be able to actualize spiritual progress in harmony with nature. Environmental catastrophic millennial¬ ism is expressed in the belief that the coming destruction will purify the Earth, so that the surviving “Elect” of humanity will repopulate a renewed planet, although it is not linked to passivity, as adherents continue to affirm the importance of engag¬ ing in pro-environmental practices. As environmental change and destruction con-

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

19

tinue, environmental millennialism is likely to become more prominent (Globus and Taylor, chapter 32).6

Millennialism and Contemporary National and International Conflicts Currently there are millennial movements that have been involved in intense national and/or international conflicts, are still involved in conflict, or continue to carry the potential for violent conflict. So far the activities, including occasional violence, of white racist Americans have been confined to the United States, although the impact of their violence reverberates internationally. The varieties of millenni¬ alism in Israel and radical Islamist movements are entwined in the international conflict today between Muslims and Israel, and also between radical Islamists, Israel, and the United States and its allies. The millennialism of the radical Right in America involves a white suprema¬ cist and anti-Semitic movement, which I have termed the “Euro-American nativist millennial movement” (Wessinger 2000a, 23, 158-61, 167, 172-78). This movement consists of Identity Christians who believe that the Bible teaches that white people are the true Jews, Jews are the children of Satan, and people of color are animals; nonsupernatural racial religions, including Neo-Nazis; and racist Neopagan movements such as Odinism (Michael Barkun, chapter 33). Identity Christians tend to be survivalists who retreat to armed enclaves to survive the imminent Armageddon; sometimes individuals have emerged from these com¬ munities to commit murders and terrorism. William Pierce (1933-2002) was the Neo-Nazi intellectual who wrote the novel The Turner Diaries (1980), which inspired the founding of The Order, a terrorist organization consisting of Identity Christians and Odinists active in the United States in 1983-84. The Turner Diaries also inspired Timothy McVeigh (1968-2001), who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. This diffuse Euro-American nativist millennial movement wants to preserve the sacred land of America for white people and to recover an ideal¬ ized lifestyle, which is believed to be threatened by increasing racial diversity, changing gender roles, and increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians. Participants in all three of these streams within the radical Right expect Armageddon to con¬ sist of an imminent race war. Many participants in the radical Right adopt a “radical localism,” opting out of contact with the federal government to form isolated communities. They seek to escape the forces of globalization and what they believe to be the evils of what they call the “New World Order.” The enemies they believe are behind the American government and the New World Order are Jews. In this extreme right-wing milieu, the spurious document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was so influential

20

INTRODUCTION

in motivating the German Nazi genocidal project (see Redles, chapter 27), is highly influential in convincing people that there is a Jewish conspiracy to control the world and enslave or destroy white people (Barkun, chapter 33). American v/hite racist millennialists have been vague in describing their expected collective salvation—except that Jews and people of color will be destroyed or enslaved, and white people will regain “their” sacred land of America—but they are very clear in describing the present evils of American society. In this extremist movement, “the battle is everything.” Focusing on the battle builds morale among believers. When defeats occur, attention can be shifted to planning the next battle. The radical Right movement gains momentum by stressing the power of its per¬ ceived enemies, making the process toward achieving the collective salvation “a seemingly endless conflict” (Barkun, chapter 33). Given the contested status of Jews throughout Western history, rabbis after the first and second centuries downplayed apocalypticism and millennialism in Jewish thought. Secular Jewish Zionists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were strong believers in the Enlightenment notion of progress. Thus a progressive millennial dream undergirded the early settlement of Zionists in Palestine, and later the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, to provide hope to the international Jewish community after the Holocaust. The first prime minister of Israel, David ben-Gurion (1886-1973), became a secular prophet in the progressive millennial project of building a Jewish commonwealth through human effort in fulfillment of biblical prophecies. But Israel found that it had to defend itself from attacks by Arab countries aggrieved by the removal of Palestinians from their lands (Yaakov Ariel, chapter 34). Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, in which it seized control of the Old City in Jerusalem and other territories, appeared to many religious Israelis and Christian Dispensationalists to be the result of divine intervention. Some Orthodox Israelis expected the imminent coming of the Messiah and Redemption; Christian Dispensationalists expected the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ. Following the 1973 war, more religious Israelis began to hope for divine intervention to enable Jewish settlements among Arabs so a Jewish state could be created in the entire land of Israel (Ariel, chapter 34). In 1977 the Israeli government, controlled by the Likud Party, began to encour¬ age Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, many by members of the radical Orthodox Gush Emunim movement. Radical Orthodox Jews and radical Christian Zionists have been cooperating to prepare for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple on Temple Mount/al-Haram ash-Sharif, where the Muslim structures, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, stand. Today the Israeli government attempts to pro¬ tect the sacred Muslim buildings from destruction by Jewish and/or Christian ter¬ rorists (Ariel, chapter 34). On the other side of an “adversarial symbiosis” (Ariel, chapter 34) exist radi¬ cal Islamist or Jihadist millennial movements. Islamists, who have the goal of cre¬ ating a political state that enforces sharia in a manner that Islamists deem suitable, must be distinguished from ordinary Muslims practicing Islam. Moderate

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

21

Islamists utilize political processes to achieve their goal of an umma (Muslim community or nation) governed by sharia, while radical Islamists resort to vio¬ lence. It is important not to overlook the dynamic nature of Islamist movements and their interactions with other actors and factors in complex contexts. Islamists, like all millennialists, respond to events in the social/political context and may shift from moderate to radical methods, and vice versa, as well as between cata¬ strophic and progressive expectations. Radical Islamists are responding to threats to their sacred way of life. These shifts can be seen in the histories of Sunni and Shi‘ite radical Islamist millennial movements, including al-Qaeda and the inter¬ national lihadist movement. Although the stated goal of the international Jihadist movement is to create a “righteous caliphate” (khilafa) enforcing the sharia, this goal is distant for Sunni jihadis. Similar to American racist millennialists, the jihadi focus is on continuous holy war and the promise of rewards in Paradise for those who die as martyrs. Jihadis see themselves as carrying out “good terrorism” to combat the evil terrorism of the United States and its Muslim allies (Jeffrey T. Kenney, chapter 35). Islamist millennialism contains the same diversity we have seen in other millen¬ nial movements, and these activities and visions for the future are not mutually exclusive: some resort to social work according to a progressive millennial vision; some withdraw to safe havens to survive an expected catastrophic transition, and they may resort to violence if threatened; and some are active revolutionaries. Most Muslims are concerned to have their grievances addressed and their earthly lives improved, therefore it is possible that Islamists may be encouraged by changes in the context to shift from revolutionary catastrophic millennialism to progressive millennialism focused on activities to achieve social and political reform (Kenney, chapter 35).

Further Conclusions Millennial beliefs are multifaceted. They have the power to inspire the building of communities and states; to start new religious movements, some of which become worldwide religious traditions; and to work for social justice. Millennial ideas can be used to promote and uphold the power and sanctity of a political (or religious) regime, or to inspire revolutions. Millennial movements provide hope when com¬ munities and peoples are oppressed. They stimulate people to take actions to avert a perceived imminent catastrophe. Millennial movements—like all religions— provide meaning and social connection. Millennial concepts, groups, and movements are dynamic. T hey shift between catastrophic and progressive visions in response to events. Some millennialists are responding to their experiences of disasters and oppression. Many others draw on ideas found in their tradition, including its scriptures, as well as new revelations

22

INTRODUCTION

from prophets and messiahs, to address the suffering of the human condition. MiUennialists may utilize solely indigenous sources, but they often combine ele¬ ments from a variety of religious traditions. Millennialists exercise what Ian Reader (cited in Wessinger 2000b, 14) has termed the pragmatics of failure: when particular methods and a related millennial vision fail, they often shift to other methods and hopes for the future. Changes in the millennial vision and methods also come about as the movement experiences changed circumstances, including accommodation with society and routinization of charisma into institutions and institutionalized roles. Millennial groups and movements involved in violence may combine charac¬ teristics of fragile millennial groups, assaulted millennial groups, and revolutionary millennial movements, or they may shift from one category to another as the inter¬ active trajectory unfolds. None of the categories of millennialism discussed in this volume stand alone and separate from other types. The millennial hope for a better collective future motivates believers to strive to improve themselves, help others, and build communities and nations. The project of nation-building can have positive consequences for the historical winners, but serious consequences for people dispossessed from their lands, their way of life, and their lives. At its worst, millennialism stimulates bigotry, rigidly held dualistic views that dehumanize and demonize perceived enemies, and complex and interactive situations of violence.

Acknowledgment. I thank all of the contributors to this volume for giving me the opportunity to learn from them. I am grateful to Rebecca Moore for her expert copyediting of an earlier draff of this chapter. My thanks go to Theo Calderara, Oxford University Press, for inviting me to edit this volume. I also thank Interim Dean Mary McCay, College of Humanities and Natural Sciences, Loyola University New Orleans, for giving me release time in fell 2008 to edit chapters; and Dean Jo Ann Moran Cruz, College of Humanities and Natural Sciences, Loyola University New Orleans, for the Bobet Fellowship that enabled me to write this essay and com¬ plete the editing of this volume in summer 2010.

NOTES 1. Robert D. Baird (1971,18) uses the term coined by theologian Paul Tillich to refer to “a concern which is more important than anything else in the universe for the person involved” (emphasis removed). My point here is that all ultimate concerns are about achieving permanent well-being. 2. The terms are used interchangeably. 3. Two examples are the Solar Temple and Heaven’s Gate (Wessinger 2000a, 218-52). 4. This can be seen in numerous Christian and Muslim movements. This blend can be seen in the cosmology of the Branch Davidians (Wessinger 2000a, 56-119).

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

23

5. Apocalypticism is used in this volume as a synonym for catastrophic millennialism (“Millennial Glossary”).

6. As I write, in July 2010, oil continues to spew into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico due to the activities of BP.

WORKS CITED Baird, Robert D. 1971. Category Formation and the History of Religions. The Hague: Mouton. Barkun, Michael. 1986. Disaster and the Millennium. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Best, Jonathan. 2007. “King Mu and the Making and Meanings of the Miriik-sa.” In Religions of Korea in Practice, edited by Robert E. Buswell, 35-50. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Bromley, David G. 2002. “Dramatic Denouements.” In Cults, Religion, and Violence, edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, 11-41. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cohn, Norman. 1962. “Medieval Millenarianism: Its Bearing on the Comparative Study of Millenarian Movements.” In Millennial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative Study, edited by Sylvia L. Thrupp, 31-43. The Hague: Mouton. -. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Ellwood, Robert. 1995. “Nazism as a Millennialist Movement.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 241-60. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Festinger, Leon, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter. 1956. When Prophecy Fails. New York: Harper and Row. Hall, John R. 1995. “Public Narratives and the Apocalyptic Sect: From Jonestown to Mt. Carmel.” In Armageddon in Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict, edited by Stuart A. Wright, 205-35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Landes, Richard. 2006. “Millenarianism and the Dynamics of Apocalyptic Time.” In Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context, edited by Kenneth G. C. Newport and Crawford Gribben, 1-23. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Lanternari, Vittorio. 1963. The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults, translated by Lisa Sergio. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Lowe, Scott. 2011. “Transcendental Meditation, Vedic Science and Science.” Nova Religio 14, no. 4 (May): 54-76. Robbins, Thomas, and Dick Anthony. 1995. “Sects and Violence: Factors Enhancing the Volatility of Marginal Religious Movements.” In Armageddon in Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict, edited by Stuart A. Wright, 236-59. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Salter, Richard C. 2000. “Time, Authority, and Ethics in the Khmer Rouge: Elements of the Millennial Vision in Year Zero.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 281-98. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Talmon, Yonina. 1966. “Millenarian Movements.” Archieves Europeenes de Sociologie 7:159-200.

INTRODUCTION

24

Wallis, Roy. 1979. Salvation and Protest: Studies of Social and Religious Movements. New York: St. Martin’s. Wessinger, Catherine. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 47-59. New York: Routledge. -. 2000a. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. -. 2000b. “Introduction: The Interacting Dynamics of Millennial Beliefs, Persecution, and Violence.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 3-39. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Wojcik, Daniel. 1997- The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York: New York University Press.

PART II

MILLENNIALISM: PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

CHAPTER 2

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM EUGENE V. GALLAGHER

In July 1994, less than a year before he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh wrote a long, impassioned letter to a child¬ hood friend. In it, McVeigh professed his devotion to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and detailed his alarm at increasing government encroachment on individual freedoms. Making it clear that he understood himself to be on the front lines in a battle for the future of the United States, McVeigh described the imminent conflict in these terms: I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray that it is not your blood, my friend. (Michel and Herbeck 2001,154)

With those chilling words, McVeigh evoked a powerful scenario of the total trans¬ formation of the current social order through a violent clash of dramatically opposed forces. He strove to impress on his friend the need to take sides as well as the seriousness of what was at stake. Despite his professed antipathy toward orga¬ nized religion, with his references to God and prayer and the stark antitheses of good versus evil and freedom versus slavery, McVeigh implied that the events about to take place had ultimate importance and perhaps even divine sanction (Michel and Herbeck 2001,142-44). In a few short sentences, McVeigh vividly sketched out a view of the world that Catherine Wessinger has called catastrophic millennialism. That pessimistic view of society, history, and human beings anticipates the imminent, violent destruction of the world as we know it; but it also envisages that God will then act, with or without human assistance, to accomplish a total renovation of the world (Wessinger 1997,

28

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

48-50; Wessinger 2000,16-18). An encompassing pessimism succinctly captured in the statement from a resident of Amarillo, Texas, that “the world stinks” (Boyer 1992,150), is relatively unexceptional in itself. But it can achieve extraordinary scope and power when it is embedded in a comprehensive religious view of the world. The same person from Amarillo, for example, reported, “There’s a possibility of nuclear war, but if it comes, it’s because God allowed it. I believe as a Christian I’m ready to go home at any time” (Boyer 1992,150). That espousal of a Christian view of the world mitigates the pervasive pessimism by positing that the world, after all, is not the Christian’s true home and that there is a different, better world to which believ¬ ers belong. The destruction of this world consequently pales in comparison to the heavenly glories that await the faithful. Framing events and expectations in terms of catastrophic millennialism has the power to convert pessimism into optimism, despair into hope. Catastrophic millennialism thus has a double focus. On one hand, it virtually revels in cataloging the myriad ways in which this world has gone wrong and in spelling out in often gruesome detail the multiple social, economic, political, natural, cosmic, and religious processes that are both signaling and enact¬ ing its end. On the other hand, it can offer tantalizing hints of the wondrous out¬ lines of the “new heaven and new earth” (Rev. 21:1) that lie just out of reach, on the other side of the cataclysmic end. As a result, the proclaiming of a catastrophic mil¬ lennial message can have a profoundly galvanizing effect on its audience. Although precisely what people should do in light of the impending calamity becomes a particularly urgent question in catastrophic millennialism, it receives no single answer. Understandable as it may be for their audiences simply to recoil in terror before the predicted disasters, those who spread millennialist messages demand action. McVeigh, for example, clearly implies that his friend Steve needs to choose “good” and being “free,” but stops well short of outlining a comprehensive plan of action. Similarly, alienation from a world that “stinks” could as easily lead to withdrawal from it as it could to a vigorous engagement in trying to reduce its stench. While millennialist rhetoric that envisions catastrophe is designed both to cultivate conviction and to incite action, millennialists themselves have drawn dis¬ parate conclusions about just what forms of action are called for. From his subse¬ quent actions, for example, McVeigh appears to have become convinced that he had a central, activist role to play in bringing the new world into existence. More than 2,100 years earlier, the biblical book of Daniel directly critiqued such activist inter¬ vention on behalf of God (Dan. 11:14). Actions taken by those who endorse a cata¬ strophic vision of the Millennium can be located anywhere along a continuum from active engagement with the world to passive withdrawal from it. Since the practical consequences of adopting a view of the world that antici¬ pates catastrophic upheaval are variable, it becomes particularly important to look carefully at how individual millennialist arguments are constructed. Those arguments address why the world is on the verge of a violent, total transforma¬ tion, how the cataclysm will actually unfold, who will bear responsibility for initi¬ ating, sustaining, and bringing to culmination the events of the end, when and where those events can be expected to transpire, and what the immediate and

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

29

longer-term consequences will be for those who heed and those who ignore the millennial message. There is a rich dossier of information throughout history and across cultures about how millennialists have expressed their indictments of the evils of the worlds in which they have lived and voiced their powerful longing for their renovation. In what follows I will develop from the examination of a pair of texts from Late Antiquity an analysis of the basic descriptive vocabulary of catastrophic millennialism. I will argue that the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 13 (c. 70 c.e.), and the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness from the Qumran library near the Dead Sea (c. first century b.c.e.) lay out in relatively short compass an array of images and themes that have been used repeatedly in the con¬ struction of millennialist messages, particularly in the West. I will pay special atten¬ tion to how those two early apocalyptic texts answer the basic questions of why, how, who, when and where, and what, as outlined above. In the subsequent section I will show how a group of contemporary millennialist movements have used the basic tropes of catastrophic millennialism to create their own distinctive apocalyp¬ tic messages. Those groups include the Roman Catholics who have endorsed the Marian apparitions at Bayside, Queens, New York; the early Nation of Islam as exemplified in Elijah Muhammad’s teachings; the group known as Heaven’s Gate; and the Japanese new religion Aum Shinrikyo. Although these groups are unani¬ mous in their expectations that momentous changes are just around the corner, they differ in their assessments of why the world will soon be destroyed, precisely how it will happen, who will accomplish that destruction, when and where it will happen, and, especially, what their faithful followers must do in the meantime.

The Vocabulary of Catastrophic Millennialism: Mark 13 and the War Scroll The questions of whether Jesus himself was a millennialist prophet and, even if he was, how much of his authentic teaching is preserved in the Gospels continue to be debated (Allison 1998). Nonetheless, many passages in the New Testament do express a form of catastrophic millennialism. Dale Allison sums up the evidence this way: “Jesus and those who enjoyed his company shared an eschatological vision, one that was not peripheral to what they were all about. It rather permeated their thoughts, reinforced their imperatives, and energized their activities” (Allison 1998,129). The outlines of that vision can be gleaned from chapter 13 of the Gospel according to Mark (see also chapter 13 by James D. Tabor, this volume). That chapter presents a long speech by Jesus that is elicited by a question from a few of his disciples. In Mark’s construction of his public career, Jesus and his disciples had only recently entered Jerusalem after spending most of their time in the more rural

30

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

north, in Galilee. Mark 13 begins with the disciples expressing their naive amazement at the architectural glories of Herod’s Jerusalem: “Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” Mark’s Jesus, however, sees a much darker story; he responds, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). Their interest captured, the disci¬ ples then ask (Mark 13:3): “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?” In the long discourse that follows, Jesus cata¬ logs the signs of the coming end. The events that Jesus enumerates fall into five primary categories. Social upheavals will include the rise of false prophets who will attempt to lead Jesus’s followers astray (Mark 13:5-6,21-22), persecution of the faithful (Mark 13:9, 11-13), and strife within families as brothers turn against each other and children turn against parents (Mark 13:12). Political clashes will happen at the same time; there will be wars and rumors of wars” (Mark 13:7). Natural catastrophes including earthquakes and famines will also occur (Mark 13:8). Cumulatively, however, those events represent only the “beginning of the birth-pangs” of the end (Mark 13:8). They set the stage for the religious climax of the events of the end, which Mark describes in much more allusive fashion. Mark 13:14 warns that when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be...there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation” (Mark 13:14,19). Mark is clearly alluding to a phrase that the book of Daniel (Dan. 9:27; 11:31,12:11) used, with equal indirection, to refer to the profa¬ nation of the temple in Jerusalem by the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 b.c.e. In addition to rescinding the law of Moses, Antiochus required that all Jews abandon the worship of Yahweh for the worship of gods of the Gentiles. Elias Bickerman sum¬ marizes the affront to the Jews in this way: It was the pig, precisely the animal regarded by the Jews as unclean, that was the most acceptable offering to these gods. Pigs were offered even upon the altar of the Sanctuary at Jerusalem, upon which each day, in early morning and at the approach of evening, offerings had been made to the God of Israel. The abomination of desolation” hovered over the Sanctuary and the wrath of God over the people. (Bickerman 1962, 93-94) Daniel took Antiochus’s actions as a sign that the “latter days” (Dan. 10:14) had arrived. Though Daniel’s expectation turned out not to have been fulfilled (see chapter 13 by James D. Tabor, this volume), he provided the author of the Gospel according to Mark with a vivid image, anchored in the prophetic authority of the Hebrew Bible, for describing the Roman general Titus’s destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70

c.e.

Like Daniel, Mark took the desecration of the temple as a sign of

the end. Mark has Jesus underscore the importance of that religious catastrophe by then turning to a series of cosmic signs that also presage the end of the world. Jesus predicts that “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken” (Mark 13:24-25). Although Mark 13 devotes most of its attention to describing how the events of the imminent end will unfold, Mark’s view of why the end is near is signaled in his

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

31

treatment of the “desolating sacrilege,” with its multiple echoes of Antiochus Epiphanes, the book of Daniel, and Titus’s much more recent sacking of Jerusalem. The turn from the relative naturalism of the description of social turmoil, military battles, and natural disasters in Mark 13:4-13 to the extraordinary disruptions in the cosmos of Mark 13:24-25 reinforces the notion that the destruction of the tem¬ ple was the turning point in history. Accordingly, most contemporary New Testament scholars situate the composition of the Gospel according to Mark some¬ time after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70

c.e.

and see it as the most

forthrightly apocalyptic of the four canonical Gospels. Mark is substantially less forthcoming about who will actually bring about the events foreseen in chapter 13. The brief assertion that only the Father knows when the final day will take place (Mark 13:32), however, could be taken to support the idea that God the Father will be behind the events described in Mark 13. The focal role played by the destruction of the temple indicates that Jerusalem will be the center of the catastrophic changes that will transform the world, but the broader, unspecified scope of the descrip¬ tions of the rest of the imminent events suggests that the rest of the known world will also be involved. As in Daniel and many other apocalyptic texts, the events that will both lead up to and constitute the end of the world are portrayed as distressingly near but impos¬ sible to pin down. Mark 13:32 makes the point most forcefully, with Jesus cautioning his listeners that “of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Consequently, the upshot of the speech that was provoked by the disciples’ simple admiration for the monumental architec¬ ture of the sacred center of Jerusalem is to leave them apprehensively suspended between what they can see in the present and the dramatic scenario of destruction and judgment that they are assured is about to transpire. For the conduct of their lives in that anxious interim, they receive only parabolic guidance. Jesus tells the disciples that the time before the end “is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his own work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch” (Mark 13:34). Because the servants have no idea when the master of the house will return, they must maintain constant vigilance, “lest he come suddenly and find you asleep” (Mark 13:35)- A single admonition, therefore, carries enormous but unspecified implications: “Watch” (Mark 13:36). Fortunately for those seeking guidance about how to live in light of the coming apocalypse, the Gospel does offer some further guidance. The first statement attrib¬ uted to Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, for example, announces that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). A number of enigmatic statements, like “whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mark 3:35) and “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17), multiple parables (see Mark 4), illustrative stories like Jesus’s instruction to a rich man who desires to inherit eternal life that he must sell everything he has and give it to the poor (Mark 10:17-31), and tales of clashes with the religious authorities over topics like ritual purity (Mark 7:1-23), resurrection of the dead (Mark 12:18-27), and the most important of the

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

32

Mosaic commandments (Mark 12:28-34) at least sketch out the general parameters of a way of life that could be followed in the relatively short time between the preaching of Jesus and the coming of the prophesied end. Mark’s Gospel does not envisage an active role for Jesus’s followers in bringing about the events of the end; they are to watch for the signs and cultivate their personal piety in the meantime. That attitude is confirmed in the depiction of an incident during the arrest of Jesus. When “one of those who stood by drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear” (Mark 14:47), Mark’s Jesus offers no encouragement to armed resistance to the authorities, and all those who were with him quickly vanish from the scene of the arrest. Although the Gospel according to Mark describes plenty of things that the faithful follower of Jesus should do, it does not support in any way an armed struggle that will hasten or effect the culmination of history. While not entirely passive, the role for the follower of Jesus’s millennialist message in Mark’s Gospel does not include serving on the front lines of the battle that will transform the world. In direct contrast to the ethic implied by Mark’s Gospel is the self-conception of the group behind many of the texts found since 1947 in caves near the ancient settlement of Qumran, on the northwest shores of the Dead Sea (see also chapter 13 by James D. Tabor, this volume). The texts include a diverse array of biblical manu¬ scripts and commentaries, sectarian documents, and other texts that can be dated roughly to between 200

b.c.e.

and too

c.e.

(Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,15). One

group of scholars argues on the basis of the text usually referred to as the “Community Rule that the group thought of itself as warriors awaiting God’s signal to begin the final war against the nations and the wicked among the Jews. Meanwhile, they sought to live in a heightened state of purity, as the Bible required for holy warriors” (Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,125). The group described and addressed in many of these “Dead Sea Scrolls” clearly saw itself as standing on the verge of a new era. One text begins with the assertion that “this is the rule for a11 the congregation of Israel in the Last Days (lQSa 1:1; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,144). A recurring theme is the division of the world into the “Children of Light” and the “Children of Darkness,” who are under the sway of Belial or Satan. Several texts look forward with hope to the anticipated intervention of God, because “at the time appointed for visitation He shall destroy such [Children of Darkness] forever” (1QS 4:18-19; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,131). That destruction will be accomplished in an eschatological battle, in which the group will play an essential role. One text even describes all of the male members of the group as “troops” (iQSa 1:6,17; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,145) who are preparing for a “war that will bring the Gentiles to their knees” (iQSa 1:21; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,146). That ultimate conflict is described in great detail in a text known as the “War Scroll” (c. 50

b.c.e. —

50

c.e.)

The War Scroll lavishes extraordinary attention on the preparations for battle. It describes in great detail the recruitment and deployment of troops for the escha¬ tological battle, the trumpets and shields that wifi be used, and the ceremonies that must accompany both the beginning and the successful conclusion of the war of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness. It anticipates nothing less than “eternal

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

33

annihilation for all the forces of Belial” (lQM 1:5; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,152). The text leaves no doubt about who will be behind the great victory: And You, O God, are awe [some] in the glory of Your dominion, and the company of Your holy ones is in our midst for etern[al] support. We [shall direc]t our contempt at kings, derision and disdain at mighty men. For the Lord is holy, and the King of Glory is with us together with the holy ones. Mighfty men and] a host of angels are with our commissioned forces. The Hero of Wa[r] is with our company, and the host of his spirits is with our steps. Our horsemen are [as] the clouds and as the mist covering the earth, and as a steady downpour shedding judgment on all her offspring. (lQM 11:7-10; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,161)

Success on the battlefield will usher in an everlasting transformation of Israel, including a total reversal of Israel’s material and political circumstances, so that Israel will now “reign eternally,” with its enemies forever vanquished (lQM 11:16: Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,162). Jesus’s unnamed companion from Mark 14:47, as well as Timothy McVeigh, would likely find much more congenial company in the group of divinely driven warriors imagined by the War Scroll and related texts from the Qumran library. Without denying the necessity for careful study of the sacred writings and cultiva¬ tion of personal purity and piety, the texts from the Qumran library envision a much more active role for God’s faithful followers than did the Gospel according to Mark. The “congregation of Israel in the Last Days” needs to be prepared to take dramatic, violent action at the decisive time of judgment, in order to help realize the transformation of the world by a God who “shall never be appeased until righteous¬ ness be established” (1QS 10:20; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996, 141). The Qumran sectarians’ withdrawal from the world was a temporary tactic, and their persistent attention to purity and holiness was not only a goal in itself but an effort to make sure that they would be fit to fight alongside angels and God in a war that would remake the world forever. Although texts from the Qumran library do mention some of the signs of the end that are cataloged in Mark 13, such as “pestilence and bloodshed... flooding rain, hailstones, fire and brimstone” UQ387> frag. 4,1:4; Wise, Abegg, and Cook 1996,354), their focus generally narrows on what Mark briefly described as “wars and rumors of war.” Nonetheless, they provide answers to the fundamental ques¬ tions that drive catastrophic millennialism. The evidence of the scrolls indicates that the world is on the verge of transformation because of both the ascendancy of Pharisaic misunderstandings of Judaism and Roman imperial domination of Palestine; the end will unfold in a holy war in which God will guide and fight alongside the Qumran sectarians; the effects of the imminent war will be world¬ wide, but they will focus on the restoration of Israel; and those who constitute the “congregation in the Last Days” need to prepare themselves for battle. Thus, the War Scroll and related documents both share with Mark 13 an expectation of impending catastrophe and depart from Mark 13 in the type of actions that they require.

34

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

Contemporary Catastrophic Millennialism

Marian Apparitions in Bayside, Queens Beginning on 5 June 1968, the date of Robert R Kennedy’s assassination, Veronica Lueken, of Queens, New York, had a series of extraordinary religious experiences that would last until her death in 1995. At times she smelled a strong fragrance of roses, and she also had visions of Saint Therese of Lisieux. Eventually, in 1970, she began a long period of encounters with the Virgin Mary. Mary initially told Lueken to build a shrine for her at Saint Robert Bellarmine Church in Bayside, New York, and continued to be a very voluble companion throughout her life. Despite the skepticism of church officials and their ultimate condemnation of the “Bayside apparitions” in 1986 (Cuneo 1997,167), Lueken continued to maintain that she had no hand in tailoring the messages. Professing to be merely a conduit, she claimed, Now Our Lady and Theresa have often told me, not to try to understand what’s given to me, but just pass it on” (Lueken 1968). The messages that Lueken received were starkly millennialist. Daniel Wojcik argues that the Bayside apparitions “are probably the most apocalyptic of contemporary Marian visitations” and that they represent an intensification of the eschatological, anticommunist, and conspirato¬ rial themes of this modern Marian worldview” (Wojcik 1997, 66; see also chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, this volume). Mary’s revelations to Lueken have been transcribed for publication by devotees and posted in electronic formats on the Internet.

From the beginning, the revelations that Lueken received made it clear that his¬ tory was drawing to a close. On 4 September 1968 Saint Therese announced that here on earth are years that are numbered—a temporary home of 50, 60,70 years more or less” (Lueken 1968). For example, recalling an image from the book of Revelation, Mary proclaims: “Your city we place as Babylon, your city, the city of murder and evil, corruption and godlessness, your city will fall” (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 29)! Contemporary problems are not limited to New York City, how¬ ever. Lueken’s Mary is appalled by the extent of immorality; she observes that “demons are gathering to start uprisings in your country, the United States. These will be led by those who commit abominations upon their bodies. You will call them homosexuals (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 4). She is particularly critical of the changes in the Roman Catholic Church that followed the Second Vatican Council. She commands that “all manner of novelty and experimentation must be removed from My Church now!” and even asserts that “Satan was present, he listened with careful ears at the Great Council. He awaited every move and he placed his agents among you!” (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 8,6). Nor does Mary ignore the natural disasters, persecutions, and military clashes that Mark 13 had also foreseen (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 4, 28, 35). Lueken’s messages also betray contemporary influences, with their references to a “one-world government,” a “one-world religion,” and the pervasive dangers of Satanic cults, AIDS, and nuclear war (Our Lady of the

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

35

Roses [2008], 28, 19, 32, 34). The signs of the end in Lueken’s messages both re¬ present traditional motifs from the Christian millennial tradition and add pointed observations on specific issues in contemporary society. All of them, however, point to the same conclusion: that the world is desperately in need of a thoroughgoing cleansing. Lueken’s vision of that purification also receives fairly elaborate treatment. Although the sequence of events posted on the “Our Lady of the Roses” website may impose more coherence on Lueken’s prophetic utterances in retrospect than they originally had, many features of the events of the end are summed up as a great “Chastisement.” As Mary put it on 6 October 1975, “There will be sent upon man¬ kind a Chastisement! Your earth shall tremble! Do not hide yourselves in the mountains! Your soul is exposed before the Eternal Father. None shall hide from his wrath! Your earth, a world that has given itself to satan, shall be cleansed by a bap¬ tism of fire” (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 39)! Then the Chastisement will itself be followed by the climax of the “Ball of Redemption,” apparently a divinely directed comet that will strike the Earth with such force that it will complete the extermina¬ tion of three-quarters of its population. Mary’s various comments leave no doubt that God the Father will unleash the apocalyptic violence that will eventually cleanse a thoroughly chastened world. Though only a few will be saved, they will then be able to enjoy the new Heaven and new Earth, where, Mary promises, “one day you will see Me, as you, Veronica, see Me now” (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 46). But in the interim, the faithful few need to make sure they will be worthy of such intimacy. Interspersed through Mary’s comments are both direct admonitions to observe certain practices and more general indications of what needs to be done. Echoing in part the first proclamation of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, Mary admonishes the faithful to “pray a constant vigil or prayer going throughout the whole world, and you must turn back from your sin, or you will die” (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 35)! Mary also stresses that the evangelization of Russia, first disclosed in her appearance at Fatima, must definitely be continued and that the pope should “make known the full message of Fatima” (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 5). The criticisms of both the innovations sanctioned by the Second Vatican Council and the reluctance of the priests at Saint Robert Bellarmine parish to endorse the Bayside apparitions also suggest that Mary favors a traditionalist form of Catholicism in which devotion to her and the liberal use of “sacramentals,” like crucifixes, various medals, and scapulars, figure prominently. Along with that traditionalist Catholicism goes vigorous opposition to both homo¬ sexuality and abortion. Through such practices, both great and small, the Bayside faithful hope to prove themselves worthy of surviving the coming Chastisement and enjoying the benefits of a new world. The Bayside messages both amplify and update the vision of catastrophe that animates Mark 13, and they urge on the faithful a similar watchfulness, since “the time is ripe” (Our Lady of the Roses [2008], 21). They provide substantial, if not complete, guidance about the types of religious and ethical practices that are neces¬ sary in light of the impending end, but, in contrast to the War Scroll, they do not aim

36

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

to prepare Mary’s minions to take up arms. It is enough for them to practice personal piety, cleanse the Roman Catholic Church, and resist the tide of contemporary evils that threatens to engulf them. The attitude of prayerful waiting counseled by Mary is more like the stance recommended by Mark 13 than that of the Qumran sectarians.

Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam Following the Islamic doctrine that the Qur’an both includes and completes the rev¬ elations contained in the Torah and Gospel, and following the teachings of his own master, the shadowy W. D. Fard, Elijah Muhammad combined biblical, Islamic, and his own idiosyncratic ideas to form a synthetic picture of the dawning of a new world (Muhammad 1965, 278). Like the Mary of the Bayside apparitions, he identified America as “Babylon” and saw the world as so universally corrupt that it had to be destroyed (Muhammad 1965,273,284). The particular problem on which Muhammad focused was the historical oppression and domination of black people by whites, which deprived them of their identities and a homeland. He asserted that America must be taken and destroyed according to the prophets, at the time and end of the wicked world, where the lost and found members of the ancient and aboriginal people are found, America hates and mistreats her slaves to the extent that it has reached the heart of Allah and the righteousness of the people of the earth (the Nation of Islam). (Muhammad 1965, 280)

Accordingly, Muhammad urgently argued, “the so-called American Negroes (my people) are now in a time when they must decide on life or death” (Muhammad 1965,297)- Muhammad s millennialism was likely shaped by the dominant forms of eschatological expectation current in the black churches in the early twentieth century (Curtis 2002,64-67). His conception of the events of the end blended famil¬ iar images of nature gone amok, economic collapse, persecution of the faithful, and cosmic disturbances (Muhammad 1965, 274, 275, 289, 292) with an account of the climactic Endtime battle that was his alone. Taking off from Ezekiel’s vision of heav¬ enly wheels (Ezek. 1:15-21; 10), Muhammad asserted: The present wheel-shaped plane known as the Mother of Planes, is one-half mile by a half mile and is the largest mechanical man-made object in the sky. It is a small human planet made for the purpose of destroying the present world of the enemies of Allah. (Muhammad 1965, 291)

That Mother-Ship carried some fifteen hundred smaller planes loaded with bombs and might also be the source of stories about flying saucers; it was the source from which the destruction of the world would be unleashed. Though terrible by any standard, the destruction that would be meted out by Allah would also be selective. Muhammad consoled his readers with the promise that “the earth shall not be burned; it will be here for many thousands of years to come. Only that on the earth (the devils) which has sinned against Allah and his laws will be destroyed” (Muhammad 1965, 281). Those who survive Allah’s wrath will

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

37

inherit a new world where “the present brotherhood of Islam is typical of the life in the hereafter” and where “they will see their God in truth, the righteous will meet and embrace them with peace” in an intimacy with the divine reminiscent of the Bayside promises (Muhammad 1965, 304). Although Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam were often accused of inciting their members to violence, in his major work, Message to the Blackman in America, Muhammad did not try to rally his troops to pursue the destruction of white America. Instead, he repeatedly recommended rigorous self-reliance, dedi¬ cated participation in the life of the mosques of the Nation of Islam, dedicated ritual purity, devotion to true self-knowledge, and separation from the contaminating white world (Muhammad 1965,301,285,299,302,272). Although he definitely saw a coming catastrophe, Muhammad sided with the Mary of the Bayside apparitions and the author of the Gospel according to Mark in recommending watchful waiting and dedication to religious and ethical practice as the appropriate form of response. At least implicitly, Muhammad rejected the more activist and bellicose response to imminent catastrophe that was favored by the Qumran sectarians and Timothy McVeigh. In Muhammad’s view, God was not seeking to enlist the help of his true followers in destroying a wicked world, nor did he need them. The Mother Plane would take care of that. Their responsibility was to make themselves worthy of entering the new world that only Allah could bring about.

Heaven’s Gate Like Elijah Muhammad, Marshall Herff Applewhite, one of the two founders of the Heaven’s Gate group and also known by the musical moniker “Do,” cobbled together his millennial vision from an eclectic assortment of sources (see also chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume). For a time, he saw himself and his partner Bonnie Lu Nettles (“Ti”) as the “two witnesses” mentioned in Revelation 11:3-13; he often quoted from the Bible, and he consistently held to the conviction that as a messenger chosen by the Next Level he was “in the same position to today’s society as was the One that was in Jesus then” (Representatives from the Kingdom of Heaven 1996, iii; Rodman 2006). He also speculated extensively about other worlds and took the approach of the Hale-Bopp comet as a crucial sign of the Endtime (Balch and Taylor 2002,223). Applewhite’s dominant metaphor was that the Earth was a garden that was about to be “spaded under” in an act of cosmic recycling. Those who could accept the wisdom that he was preaching had the opportunity to depart to The Evolutionary Level Above Human (TELAH) and avoid the worldwide trauma. Although Applewhite did not approach Bayside’s Mary in lavishing attention on the tragic upheavals of the Endtime, he acknowledged that the events would not be without their pains, some of them self-inflicted by a wayward humanity. Lie warned in 1995: Since this is the close of the Age, the battle in the Heavens with their servants on Earth will be the means of that closing and the spading under of the plants (including the humans) of this civilization. “Weeds” are now getting rid of

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

38

weeds—from gang wars to nations involved in ethnic cleansing. That is simply a part of the natural recycling process which precedes a restoration period of the planet in preparation for another civilizations beginning. (Representatives from the Kingdom of Heaven 1996,1:7)

Expressing the dualism so often found in catastrophic millennialism, Applewhite viewed the spading under of the Earth as part of a much broader cosmic conflict, pitting the caring superhuman beings who had originally “planted” Earth’s civiliza¬ tion against malevolent races of space aliens called Luciferians, who took the fallen angel of the book of Genesis as their God. Applewhite believed that Lucifer was working assiduously to keep people on Earth from accepting his message about their true identity, that they are “not from this world but from the Level Above Human” (Representatives from the Kingdom of Heaven 1996, app. A:4). Applewhite asserted that the approaching events confronted individuals with the urgent need to make a crucial choice. Alluding to the idea that he was simply presenting the same message that was communicated through Jesus nearly two thousand years earlier, Applewhite announced: Now that we are here again, how an individual responds to us and our information will, in fact, judge that individual as to whether he or she will or will not have a further relationship with the Next Level. In other words, coming into contact with this information will force a decision for all with souls, and the stand they individually take will judge or determine their future. (Representatives from the Kingdom of Heaven 1996,1:6)

Like the person from Amarillo who asserted that this world stinks, Applewhite was convinced that the Earth was not his true home. He, and those who recognized their true identity, really belonged to the Next Level. His mission was to spread the mes¬ sage about true human origins so that a fortunate few could escape the tilling of the garden. Between 1976 and 1992 Nettles and Applewhite retreated from the public eye and turned their loose band of followers into a rigidly organized monastic community devoted to overcoming ties to mammalian appetites to prepare themselves for their transit to The Evolutionary Level Above Human. Since there was no gender in TELAH, the task of overcoming the human kingdom requires that they overcome human flesh—the genetic vibrations, the lust of the flesh, the desire to reproduce, the desire to cling to offspring, or spouse, or parents, or house, or money, or fame, or job or, or—that could go on and on—overcoming the human flesh and its desires—even its religious desires” (Representatives from the Kingdom of Heaven 1996, add. 1:10). As a sign of their commitment, some of the males in the group had themselves cas¬ trated, but a less spectacular and more telling indication of monastic discipline was that all members of Heaven s Gate had left families, work, friendships, and the rest of their former lives to form a community dedicated to Applewhite’s teachings. Initially, Applewhite was convinced that his followers would have to purify their bodies so that they could enter a spaceship that would whisk them away to the Next Level, where they would enjoy eternal life without death (Balch and Taylor 2002,

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

39

212-13). Over time, however, Applewhite began to realize that the transition to the Next Level could be made without the physical body. The turning point came with Nettles’s death in 1985. Since Applewhite believed that she had returned to the Next Level, it became evident to him that the body was simply a container for the soul, which could apparently make the transit on its own. As Applewhite’s alienation from the physical realm intensified, and fortuitous events like the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet occurred, the possibility of accomplishing a transit to the Next Level through suicide took shape. Applewhite’s students directly expressed their acceptance of his reasoning in a set of Internet postings in 1996. One stated starkly, “I know there is nothing for me in the world,” and “I am this soul and not the body that I am using.” Another testified that “to lose this vehicle means absolutely nothing to me.” A third summed up what was ultimately at stake: “Ti and Do and the Next Level are my life. Without them, there is nothing—literally. Nothing else is real” (Representatives of the Kingdom of Heaven 1996, app. A:23, 24,7,5). Driven by that logic, thirty-nine members of Heaven’s Gate exited their vehicles in March 1997 in a house in Rancho Santa Fe, California, outside San Diego, so they could enter the Next Level. Abandoning the posture of watchful waiting that had been adopted by other millennialists who expected a catastrophic destruction of the world, they took matters into their own hands. Unlike Timothy McVeigh and the Qumran sectarians, they located the enemy not outside themselves but in their own fleshly containers, which they valued so little that they were eager to shed them like a shell or a suit of clothes (Representatives of the Kingdom of Heaven 1996, app. A:4). Their convic¬ tions led the members of Heaven’s Gate to enact what outsiders saw as a catastro¬ phe, but what they saw as salvation.

Aum Shinrikyo Shoko Asahara, the founder of the Japanese new religion Aum Shinrikyo, was another contemporary millennialist who fashioned his vision of the end of the world from diverse sources (see also chapter 18 by Helen Hardacre, this volume). Initially claiming to teach the doctrines of “original Buddhism,” Asahara became progressively more fascinated by the images of Armageddon in the biblical book of Revelation. Asahara based his authority both on having achieved enlightenment while in the Himalayas in 1986 and subsequently having attained complete compre¬ hension of the New Testament in 1991 (Asahara 1992, vii). At the same time that he was incorporating more biblical imagery into his millennial vision, Aum Shinrikyo was experiencing heightened opposition in Japanese society, and Asahara progres¬ sively moved the date of the end closer to his present, from 2005, to 2000, to 1999, to 1997, to 1995 (Reader 1996,63). Asahara’s eclecticism was evident in this 1990 account of why the end was near: We are heading for Armageddon. It becomes very clear if you analyze the situation in the Middle East. Also the coming of Halley’s comet, the frequent appearances of UFOs, the Soviet Union’s democratization and its introduction of the presidential

40

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

system, the unification of Europe, and so forth—what are all these incidents telling us? They are telling us that the world is getting ready for Armageddon. And what will happen after Armageddon? After Armageddon the beings will be divided into two extreme types: the ones who will go to the Heaven of Light and Sound, and the ones who go to Hell. (Kaplan and Marshall 1996, 48-49)

Drawing on familiar vocabulary, Asahara predicted that natural disasters, extreme social instability, international turmoil, economic chaos, and World War III would all be evidence that the end of time was unfolding (Asahara 1995, 8, 9,11,12,19-20,31). Although human beings would be the creators of those various catastrophes, Asahara saw the gods at work behind the scenes of the global devastation (Asahara 1995,19). Asahara, too, was convinced that his millennial message constituted a challenge to all those who heard it. As the editors of a collection of radio broadcast discus¬ sions between Asahara and some followers phrased it, “Will you be able to survive by making use of this prediction and choosing wise actions? Or are you going to be simply tossed by the current of the drastically changing end of the century and to die for nothing? At any rate, a warning has already been made” (Asahara 1995,3). In response to the coming end, Asahara considered various solutions, including con¬ structing a shelter for the faithful in the mountains, on the water, or underground (Asahara 1995, 60-61). But his fundamental recommendation to his followers was that “at least you should practice.” Similar to the monastic discipline of Heaven’s Gate, he instructed that “if you want to spend positive lives, renounce your home lives as soon as possible and spend the rest of your lives helping defense and salva¬ tion activity of Aum Shinrikyo. If you recognize this, World War III will not be fear¬ ful for you” (Asahara 1995,61). The reward for proper practice was substantial: “And so far as Buddhist scriptures or Bible tells, it is prophesied that only those who live their lives properly and in such a way that they purify their mind will survive, and accordingly the life span of human beings will ultimately increase to one hundred thousand years” (Asahara 1995,91). Asahara, however, could not wait for the dawning of the Millennium. Escalating pressures from external investigations and the growing fragility of the group com¬ bined to spur some Aum Shinrikyo members into action. On 20 March 1995 mem¬ bers released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in an attack that killed twelve and injured some five thousand (Wessinger 2000, 121). As with the decision by members of Heaven’s Gate to effect their transition to the Next Level through suicide, it is impor¬ tant to uncover the logic by which members of Aum Shinrikyo turned their millen¬ nial dreams into actions. John Hall, for example, argues: The only hypothesis that makes sense centers on the beliefs of the sect and the years of conflicts between it and opponents in the wider society. The actions of the group were instrumentally rational only within the narrow frame of the group’s increasingly apocalyptic struggle against what its leaders portrayed as external forces of evil. (Hall with Schuyler and Trinh 2000,104-5)

But Catherine Wessinger correctly notes, “The activities of their cultural opponents were minuscule compared to the violence perpetrated by Aum Shinrikyo devotees,”

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

41

and she emphasizes that the fragility of the group led to a spasm of violence in the desperate hope of bringing about the millennial kingdom of Shambhala (Wessinger 2000,120-21). In her view, the processes that convert dreams into actions can be speeded up when it appears that the dreams might never be realized. As their group threatened to crumble around them, and the gods still had not acted, members of Aum Shinrikyo took the divine prerogative for themselves. Their vision of a new world met the perennial fate of millennial dreams, however, and the extraordinary punitive power of the state brought about the demise of the group, which they had so ardently feared. As with Timothy McVeigh, actions intended to usher in a new world only brought about destruction of the group and Asahara’s imprisonment.1

Conclusion Although they differ in their details, visions of millennial catastrophe focus on a limited number of general topics. For a variety of reasons, catastrophic millennialists conclude that “the world stinks” and cannot be rehabilitated without superhu¬ man intervention. The End of Days will be signaled by social disruptions, political and military clashes, natural disasters, serious threats to religious institutions, and cosmic disturbances. The focal point for those events varies according to individ¬ ual preferences, but they are universally expected to take place in the very near future. Consequently, all those who hear a millennial message are confronted with an urgent choice. Those who fail to heed it will forever be denied entry into the wondrous new world that lies so enticingly near, just beyond the cleansing catastrophes. Those who embrace a millennial promise, on the other hand, need to be prepared to act on it. The form their actions take can have profound personal and social consequences. The movements surveyed in this chapter show unequivocally that there is no necessary connection between subscribing to a catastrophic millennialist view of the world and any particular actions. Without a doubt, expectation of a violent end of the world can easily elevate one’s anxiety. But the steps that can be followed to allay that anxiety vary. Some millennialists, like the audience of the Bayside appari¬ tions, may be driven to cultivate their own piety, attempt to purify their religious institutions, and strengthen their resistance to the corrosive evils of the world in which they live, all the while keeping a wary eye on the heavens. Others, like the fol¬ lowers of Elijah Muhammad, might attempt to withdraw as much as possible from the dominant social order to form an oasis of brotherhood and self-reliance, while alertly looking for signs of the beginning of the end. Most often, catastrophic mil¬ lennialists adopt the attitude recommended by the Gospel according to Mark. Uneasily suspended between the world they know and the world they fervently desire to inhabit, they strive to make themselves qualified for entrance into their new Jerusalem. In a few instances, combinations of factors can lead individuals or

42

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groups to take a more interventionist role in the Endtime scenario. The Qumran sectarians, for example, appear to have been preparing to do just that. For their own distinctive reasons, Timothy McVeigh, the members of Heaven’s Gate, and mem¬ bers of Aum Shinrikyo actually did take matters into their own hands. Each identi¬ fied a different adversary and acted to achieve a different goal. McVeigh hoped to spark a Second American Revolution; the “class” of Heaven’s Gate wanted to make a painless and bodiless transition to the Next Level; Aum Shinrikyo members des¬ perately looked to unleash an Armageddon that would effect the establishment of Shambhala before the group itself imploded. All saw that the dawn of the Millennium would be attended by catastrophe, and all hastened to bring that about. But their reasons for acting, the particular targets of their wrath, and the ways in which they committed violent acts were very different. Thus, even as millennial dreams often draw upon a limited vocabulary of images and themes, the actions that people take in the hopes that their dreams will become reality are decisively shaped by the par¬ ticularities of their dispositions and circumstances.

NOTE i. In 2000 the greatly reduced remnant of Aum Shinrikyo changed its name to Aleph. In September 2006 Asahara lost the final appeal of his death penalty sentence. Eleven members of Aum Shinrikyo have been sentenced to death, but as of 2008 no executions had been carried out. In 2007 a new group led by Fumihiro Joyu, the former public relations director for Aum Shinrikyo, formed by separating from Aleph.

REFERENCES Allison, Dale C. 1998. Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. Asahara, Shoko. 1992. Declaring Myself the Christ: Disclosing the True Meanings of Jesus Christ’s Gospel. Shizuoka, Japan: Aum Publishing. --. 1995- Shoko Asahara!s Horrifying Prediction: A Doom Is Nearing the Land of the Rising Sun. Tokyo: Aum Publishing. Balch, Robert W„ and David Taylor. 2002. “Making Sense of the Heaven’s Gate Suicides.” In Cults, Religion, and Violence, edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, 209-28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bickerman, Elias. 1962. From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Postbiblical Judaism. New York: Schocken Books. Boyer, Paul. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American

Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cuneo, Michael W. 1997. The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in

Contemporary American Catholicism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

CATASTROPHIC MILLENNIALISM

43

Curtis, Edward E., IV. 2002. Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hall, John R., with Philip D. Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh. 2000. Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan. New York: Routledge. Kaplan, David E., and Andrew Marshall. 1996. The Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult, from the Subways of Tokyo to the Nuclear Arsenals of Russia. New York: Crown. Lueken, Veronica. 1968. VN1970 tape transcription, 11-14. The Messages from Heaven—The Early Years 1968-1970 website. August, www.roses.org/messages/early/earlyoo7.htm/. Accessed 9 March 2011. Michel, Lou, and Dan Herbeck. 2001. American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: HarperCollins. Muhammad, Elijah. 1965. Message to the Blackman in America. Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society. Our Lady of Roses, Mary, Help of Mothers. [2008.] The Prophecies of Bayside Sequence of Events website, www.roses.org/prophecy/seqevnt.htm. Accessed 15 June. Reader, Ian. 1996. A Poisonous Cocktail? Aum Shinrikyo’s Path to Violence. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Representatives from the Kingdom of Heaven. 1996. How and When “Heaven’s Gate” (The Door to the Physical Kingdom Level above Human) May Be Entered. Reprint. Denver: Right to Know Enterprises. Rodman, Rosamond C. 2006. “Heavens Gate.” In Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, edited by Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft, 5:197-212. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. Wessinger, Catherine. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 47-52. New York: Routledge. -. 2000. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook. 1996. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. Wojcik, Daniel. 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York: New York University Press.

CHAPTER 3

PROGRESSIVE MILLENNIALISM W. MICHAEL ASHCRAFT

Progressive

miHennialism is an outlook that expects society on Earth to become

increasingly purified or perfected. Eventually people will develop an ideal society that will last for either one thousand years or an indefinite period of time. To achieve this ideal society, progressive miHennialism teaches that humanity must cooperate with a superhuman authority, such as God or some other type of divinity, or a metahistorical system such as Nazism or socialism. The typical progressive millennialist allows for setbacks but believes that ultimately the world will become a far better place than it is now. Catherine Wessinger coined the phrase progressive miHennialism. In her study of millennial movements, she found that some do not await a catastrophic end to his¬ torical time. Instead, they expect collective salvation to occur through progress. She also noted that millennial groups shift from catastrophic to progressive views of the Millennium depending upon circumstances. Groups that feel harassed by the larger society expect their millennial future to arrive with great drama in both the social and natural worlds. Groups that are not in great tension with their contexts often antici¬ pate that the coming Millennium will dawn slowly but surely (Wessinger 1997,50).

Progressive Millennialism in Christian History to the Seventeenth Century Revelation 20 contains the only mention in the Bible of a millennium, or thou¬ sand-year period. In Revelation 20:4, deceased persons who remained faithful to Christ during persecution are resurrected and reign with Christ on Earth for one

PROGRESSIVE MILLENNIALISM

45

thousand years. When the millennium ends, God releases Satan from his previous imprisonment and they fight a final battle. God defeats Satan, then judges humanity and chooses who will live with him eternally in heaven and who will be separated from him eternally in hell. In Revelation 21, the New Jerusalem descends from heaven to Earth, making a paradise where no one suffers and all are in the presence of God forever. In Christian history, postmillennialists emphasized the peaceful reign of Christ on Earth and described the accomplishment of this reign as gradual and progres¬ sive. In this essay the term postmillennialism is used interchangeably with the term progressive millennialism. Postmillennialists believed that Christ’s return to Earth would happen after the Millennium. Their opponents were “premillennialists” who believed that Christ’s return would occur before the Millennium. Many contempo¬ rary scholars question the utility of these labels, since millennialist writers disagreed on much more than the timing of Christ’s return (Stein 2002). The problem with distinguishing between postmillennialists and premillenni¬ alists is that the texts on which they stake their claims are largely symbolic. The book of Revelation provides not a literal description of the end of history but rather a dreamlike stream of revealed visions. But many Christians, including most post¬ millennialists, assume that the images in Revelation refer to historical events and figures, or predict actual events. With Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Christianity entered a long period of “amillennialism,” or the belief that no Millennium happens, at least not in the literal sense of one thousand years. In his masterpiece The City of God (c. 410), Augustine argued that the Millennium was the present age. He believed that the survival of Christian communities amid Roman persecution was a sign that the millennial age had dawned. Christ now reigns, said Augustine, through the lives of the faithful (Smolinski 2001, 147). In general, this view of the Endtime predominated in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. Today, Roman Catholicism rejects the progressive millennial viewpoint. The second advent (or return to Earth) of Christ and final judgment will not occur “by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1995,193-94).

Joachim of Fiore and the Franciscan Spirituals Joachim of Fiore (c. 1132-1202) was a major exception to this story of a long and unbroken amillennial attitude in Roman Catholic history (see also chapter 15 by Rebecca Moore, this volume). He believed that God sent him visions, which inspired him to write a history with strong millennialist overtones. His millennialism, if not progressive in the sense used in this essay, certainly qualifies as proto-progressive. Joachim’s belief in the millennial future was based on his method of biblical inter¬ pretation. He identified three historical ages, each named after one of the three Persons of the Trinity. The first age was the Old Testament period, which Joachim

46

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called the age of the Father, when human society was governed by Old Testament law. This was the age of married men or householders, typified in the Old Testament by the Hebrew patriarchs. Jesus began the second historical period, that of the Son, with the New Testament as the guidebook. This age will last until Christ returns to Earth. During this period, human life is governed by grace rather than law. The ideal person is the cleric, typified in the New Testament by the twelve apostles. The coming third age will be the age of the Holy Spirit. Catholic trinitarian teaching says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, so this age proceeds from the first two. The age of the Spirit, according to Joachim, will be the time when monks lead the world. Ultimately, the third age will blend into eternity (Reeves 2005, 4928-29). Joachim thought that Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-547), founder of the Benedictines, was the pathfinder, showing others how to live in the age of the Spirit. Near the end of his life, Joachim started a monastery of strict Cistercians, a reformist wing of the Benedictines. This foundation, in the Fiore region of Italy, perhaps exemplified for Joachim what the age of the Spirit might be like for humanity (Gardner 1910). Many Franciscan Spirituals and their lay supporters were deeply influenced by Joachim’s writings. The Spirituals wanted to reinvigorate their order with the piety and poverty of their founder, Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Joachim’s prediction that monks would lead the world in the age of the Spirit inspired the Spirituals. They attempted to reclaim their order from more moderate Franciscans. For a time there was great excitement and enthusiasm behind this renewal movement. However, in 1254 one of the most zealous advocates of Joachim’s work, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino (d. 1276), claimed that Joachim had written the gospel for a new age, sur¬ passing the Old and New Testaments. His condemnation by the pope ended the freewheeling period of Joachimite activity. However, the Spirituals continued to propagate their message for years to come (Fambert 2002, 208, 211-13). During the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the New World, Franciscan Spiritual missionaries inspired by Joachim’s writings hoped to create a New Jerusalem in Mexico (Canizares-Esguerra 2006, 19-20), and Joachim’s millennial scheme continued to appear at various times well into the modern period. For example, Michael York, a scholar of the New Age movement, argues that the New Age “has essentially recast Joachim de Fiore’s twelfth-century‘Three Ages of History’ theory into astrological terminology” (York 2001,224).

Seventeenth-Century English Puritanism The leaders of the Reformation were amillennialist (Smolinski 2001,149-50). John Calvin (1509-64) asserted that Christ’s second advent would be the judgment day at the end of time, not a cosmic event preceded by other millennial happenings (Quistorp 1955, 12). He opposed Christians who focused too much on millennial speculation: Those who assign the children of God a thousand years in which to

PROGRESSIVE MILLENNIALISM

47

enjoy the inheritance of the life to come do not realize how much reproach they are casting upon Christ and his Kingdom.” He argued that millennialists are either “utterly ignorant of everything divine or they are trying by a devious malice to bring to nought all [that] the grace of God” would accomplish (Calvin i960,995-96). Yet the first progressive millennialists of the modern era were English Puritans in Calvins Reformed tradition! Why did they advocate a millennialist position when Calvin himself opposed millennial speculation? A brief review of their history helps to answer this question. Most historians date the appearance of the first truly “pro¬ gressive” arguments made by western European thinkers in the seventeenth century with the blossoming of rationalist thought. Thinkers rejected the received wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics and used scientific means of discovering the truth about nature and God. They were confident that scientific investigation would lead to a bet¬ ter world. Thus was born the idea of progress, which assumes that society and culture will improve as people apply scientific analysis to human problems (Weinberger 2005, 1913). Cambridge Platonists in England argued that God guided the universe toward higher ends. French thinkers tended to eliminate God, putting their faith entirely in scientific and technological advances. A. R. J. Turgot (1727-81), for example, said that each age has its geniuses who give birth to new inventions and ideas. As time passes, these genius-based advances build on one another, so that today’s society is better than yesterday’s, and tomorrow’s society will be even better (Olson 1982,203-6,219). The English Puritans of the 1600s, like other Protestants, believed that the Reformation restored the true church, reversing the corrosive trends of medieval Catholicism. They lived during a time of political and social unrest, culminating in the English Civil War (1642-49). They wanted Calvinism to guide the Anglican Church and the English nation. In this context, certain Puritan writers felt free to argue for new ideas that departed from the past, even though they claimed the past as their guide. That is, they were Calvinist in theology, yet deeply influenced by pre¬ vailing ideas of their time, especially the conviction that scientific learning could lead to a better world. One of these writers was Thomas Brightman (1562-1607). Like other Puritan commentators, Brightman read Joachim of Fiore and the Franciscan Spirituals (Holifield 2003,50). He believed that God would establish the heavenly kingdom on Earth before Christ returned. He hoped that Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) would instill Reformation ideals in English church and society (Toon 1970,28). He forecast a future of hundreds of years in which the gospel of Christ would spread through¬ out the world. During this time, Protestant Christianity would defeat the Ottoman Empire, Christendom’s most feared Muslim foe, and Roman Catholicism would wither in the light of the Reformation (Bozeman 1988,207-8). Brightman argued for a progressive Millennium by interpreting the resurrec¬ tion in Revelation 20:4 as the spiritual regeneration of humanity, not as a literal event. Millennialists who interpret the future in catastrophic terms are more likely to argue that this resurrection happens in history. For Brightman, it refers to the spreading of the gospel in the future. Eventually Christ will return to claim this world and his church for himself and inaugurate the final judgment.

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

48

Brightman thus brought millennial thought into the realm of possibility, not as a radical rejection of the social order, as many apocalyptic writers had it, but as the natu¬ ral working of God’s grace on Earth. Joseph Mede (1586-1638) agreed with Brightman that the future age was one of glory for the church of the Reformation. For Mede, the future was unfolding according to God’s plan, which included the scientific revolution (Tuveson 1949,77, 81, 84). This mixture of science and religion characterized progres¬ sive millennialism from Mede’s day to our own. Although progressive millennialists have differed with one another over how science and religion are related, they all agree that progress cannot be understood when either science or religion is absent.

New England Puritanism and the American Colonial Period The first Puritan settlers in the New World did not think that their colonies were the New Israel or the New Jerusalem. They were interested in purifying the Anglican Church. If this could not be done successfully in England, then they would pursue that agenda in a new England (Bozeman 1988, 221-22, 224). The first New England Puritan divine to write about millennialism was proba¬ bly John Cotton (1585-1652), but he only addressed millennial topics in a few lec¬ tures. He incorporated Brightman’s and Mede’s ideas, but he did not think that New England would lead the way to the Millennium. Rather, he reflected ideas about the Millennium then prevalent among English Puritans: the Reformation was the soul of the new Millennium, and Roman Catholicism would be defeated. For Cotton the coming age would restore the purity and spiritual zeal of the first church of Christ and his apostles (Bozeman 1988,230-32,237-42). In the latter part of the seventeenth century, Puritans began to speak of New England as a place blessed by God, free from the anarchy and confusion of old England. Increase Mather (1639-1723) and others held a catastrophic outlook. They expected the dead to rise and ascend into the sky with Christ, then God would destroy the wicked and the New Jerusalem would come to Earth. Mather and Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) speculated that New England might be the New Israel, but they did not think that the Millennium would begin in their colonies (Stein 1984, 273, 275). This mixture of optimism and pessimism constituted the “logic” of millennial thought. New England Puritans could talk about both the suffering of this age and the glory of the age to come. In other words, their millennial ideas were neither postmillennial nor premillennial, but some of both (Davidson 1977,138-39).

Jonathan Edwards This was the intellectual context for the most noted theologian in American colo¬ nial history. Jonathan Edwards (1703—58). Edwards examined nearly every major

PROGRESSIVE MILLENNIALISM

49

theological issue of his day, including millennialism. But his thinking on millennialism varied according to the time in his life when he wrote about it. As a young man, he kept a personal notebook about millennial themes. He decided that the key to understanding the book of Revelation was to identify the Antichrist as the institution of the papacy (Jenson 1988,132), a notion shared by most Puritan commentators. For Edwards, as for many who predated him, the way to defeat the Antichrist was to proclaim the (Protestant) gospel. And that was what Edwards devoted his life to: proclaiming the gospel through preaching and writing (Stein 1977,11-13). In 1734-35 revival occurred in Edwards’s church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Many historians now see this event as a prelude to the Great Awakening that swept the British American colonies in the mid-voos. Edwards thought that this revival might herald the Millennium’s advent. After several years, however, revival fervor cooled. In 1739 Edwards preached a series of sermons published posthumously as A History of the Work of Redemption (1774) (Holifield 2003,123). In these sermons Edwards said that history was divided into three ages. The first began with Adam’s fall, the second with Christ’s incarnation on Earth, and the third with Christ’s res¬ urrection. In this present, third age, Edwards believed that Christians should support the ongoing reformation of the church, especially by holding revivals. In this way humanity would lay the groundwork for the Millennium. During that Millennium, said Edwards, each country would adopt a Christian form of govern¬ ment and Christianity would spread around the globe. After the Millennium, a final battle between God and Satan would occur, followed by the eternal reign of God (Stein 1977,22-25). The famous English Methodist evangelist George Whitefield (1714-70) stirred up revival in Northampton in 1740. Two years later, Edwards published an optimis¬ tic assessment of that revival in Some Thoughts concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England. Here he referred to revival as the harbinger of the Millennium. He even speculated that the Millennium might occur first in New England. Edwards’s tone was more subdued in his final published work on millen¬ nial themes, An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer (1747). He looked for any sign of hope that the world was headed for the Millennium, such as the stunning victory by British forces against the French fortress at Louisbourg in Canada in 1745, an event that seemed miraculous to most New Englanders. But mainly Edwards argued that the faithful should pray constantly for revival. He hoped that by uniting with others in regular prayer, Christians could achieve unity and hasten the coming of the Millennium (Stein 1977,30-47).

The Eighteenth Century after Edwards Those inspired by Edwards—the New Divinity or Edwardsean school of theology— espoused a “conversionist millennium” (Davidson 1977, 220). They saw the Millennium as the gradual conversion of the world to Christianity. In the later 1700s,

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

50

as the rhetoric about British tyranny increased and the colonists moved toward revolution, the Edwardsean millennialist tradition blended with other ideas to pro¬ duce “civil millennialism.” Advocates for civil millennialism said that the future would be glorious because the world would embrace civil and religious liberty, val¬ ues that inspired American patriots to rebel against the British. Although rooted in the Great Awakening, civil millennialism was mostly a product of political debate. The progressive views of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European intellectu¬ als made a significant impact on the literate classes in colonial American society. Civil millennialists said that we know God best by using reason and that the natural world is governed by the laws of reason. Roman Catholicism, in their view, was not only the Antichrist but also opposed to rational thought (Hatch 1983, 499-503). After Americans won their independence, millennialism became rationalist and nationalistic. The millennial future was seen as a gradual improvement in worldly conditions as humanity applied the insights of science to improve human life, and that future would be characterized by American civic values. Yet this was not a completely secular perspective. God was still quite real for these preachers, writers, and leaders, who assumed that the Bible was God’s Word and that Providence guided human affairs (Bloch 1985, 67-86). However, no sooner had Americans achieved their revolutionary goals than many of them worried about British retaliation, the corrosive influences of the French Revolution, and economic isolation and stagnation (Engler, Fichte, and Scheiding 2002, 30). Catastrophic millennialism was touted in many books and pamphlets in the last years of the eighteenth century. Although this way of thinking about the millennial future would not become dominant in American culture until the nineteenth century, it appeared in the 1700s as an alternative to the progressive millennialism that was the de facto means of interpreting the future, especially for the literati of New England (Bloch 1985,105,135,137).

Nineteenth-Century America

Progressive Millennialism in Antebellum America During the antebellum period (1800-1861), four Protestant denominations prevailed in the United States: Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. They were voluntary organizations, unsupported by state or federal funding. All were deeply affected by the Second Great Awakening, a period of revivalism in the early nineteenth century. Baptists and Methodists ultimately became the largest Protestant traditions in nineteenth-century America and depended upon conversions for numerical and financial growth. They believed that America’s problems could be solved through the actions of individual Christian believers, not by social reform

PROGRESSIVE MILLENNIALISM

51

efforts. Presbyterians and Congregationalists, however, wanted to improve society through interdenominational reform institutions. The people who made up the majority of these two denominations were middle- and upper-class Americans in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. They were also the segment of the antebellum population with the most political and social power (Conkin 1995,117-20,130,137). Postmillenialism was the millennial viewpoint of most people in the major antebellum Protestant denominations. Even the more revivalistic Baptists and Methodists held to some form of it. But the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, because of their social and political power, are the more noteworthy denominations to consider. Their millennialism was steeped in both the Edwardsean and the civil millennialism of the previous century. They believed in the viability of Christian efforts to bring the Millennium to fruition on Earth, and they also believed in the United States’ unique role in the millennial future. These Congregationalists and Presbyterians were “formalist” evangelicals. They wanted formal, ordered worship, not the uncontrolled spiritual exercises of frontier camp meetings. Their clergy and laity were better educated than their Baptist or Methodist counterparts. They controlled governments, businesses, and churches. They supported missions at home and abroad; the abolition of slavery; efforts to rid cities of crime, poverty, prostitutes, and orphans; eradication of the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages (temperance); creation of Sunday schools and other educational institutions; and, ultimately, greater public roles for women. The formalists were convinced that this work of social transformation marked millennial activity and would gradually usher in the millennial future. Secular notions of progress were also influential. Formalists were enthusiastic about the technological and scientific advances of the day, such as the railroad, the telegraph, and the steam engine. From their viewpoint, human achievement was unlimited (Johnson 1993,7,156-59). Although most formalist evangelical strength was in the North (New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and western states settled by people from the first two regions), formalists in the South also held to a progressive millennial ideology (Johnson 1993, 159-60). These were mainly upper-class Presbyterians who argued that slavery was an institution ordained by God and would remain part of the Millennium for cen¬ turies to come. Obviously they disagreed with their northern peers on this issue, but in the antebellum era both anti- and pro-slavery formalist evangelicals espoused postmillennial ideas (Maddex 1979,47,49-50). Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), grandson of Jonathan Edwards and a prominent Congregationalist theologian, gave classic expression to antebellum progressive millennialism in his famous poem “Greenfield Hill” (1794). Millennial society, much like his native Connecticut, was composed of small communities where peo¬ ple were hard-working and honest. For Dwight, nothing in the future contradicted present society, but in terms of morals, technology, the economy, and church life, the present would find perfection in the future. Dwight predicted that if America became like Greenfield Hill, it would function as the redeemer nation of the world (Abzug 1994, 35-37)-

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52

Spiritualists, Mormons, and Shakers Progressive millennialism was so pervasive in antebellum America that even alter¬ native religious movements like Spiritualism espoused it. In 1848 two sisters in Hydesville, New York—Catherine Fox (18391-92) and Margaret Fox (i833?-93)— said that they heard “rappings” in their home. These noises had no logical origin other than from the spirit of a deceased person. The Fox sisters helped to create public interest in Spiritualism, or communication with the deceased. Spiritualist social reformers believed that the dead continued to improve themselves in the afterlife. Reform efforts on Earth were seen as existing on a grand continuum with endless cosmic improvement. For more idealistic reformers, who were disappointed that their efforts had not made a greater impact on society, Spiritualism was a com¬ forting ideology. What we had failed to do on Earth, they reasoned, would be com¬ pensated for in eternity (Cox 2006,31,34). Other antebellum religious movements, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (Shakers), drew much of their membership from the same regions and ethnicities as the denominations that advocated postmillennialism (see also chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox and chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, both in this volume). However, they differed from the religious mainstream on millennial matters. Mormons and Shakers believed that the Millennium had already occurred in the form of their own religious work. In this sense, they reflected a realized rather than progressive millen¬ nialism. The distinction is subtle. Progressive millennialists easily mixed present and future aspects of the Millennium, and the Mormons and Shakers certainly incorpo¬ rated secular and religious variations of the notion of progress in their belief systems. Nonetheless, differences remained. Shakers believed that they were living in the Millennium, and Mormons believed that they had restored the early church in their time. The emphasis in progressive millennialism was always on a future glory, even if hints of that future appeared in the present. Stephen J. Stein has pointed out that historians use the terms premillennialism and postmillennialism synonymously with pessimistic and optimistic views of the Millennium. Shakers could exhibit both posi¬ tive and negative attitudes about the Millennium. Mormons, too, could not be easily categorized. While they were in conflict with mainstream culture they adopted an apocalyptic outlook, but once they settled in Utah their apocalypticism abated. Stein concludes that Mormons and Shakers point to “the creative religious diversity among antebellum sectarian communities” (Stein 2002,202).

Christian Restorationism Another religious movement in antebellum America that embraced postmillennial¬ ism or progressive millennialism was Christian Restorationism. Modern represen¬ tatives of this movement include the Churches of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The Restorationists originated from two sources: the revival activity of Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) and the preaching of Scotch-Irish

PROGRESSIVE MILLENNIALISM

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Presbyterian Thomas Campbell (1763-1854). These two leaders eventually joined forces (Hughes 2000,65). They were part of a larger trend in antebellum America to restore the primitive or first church of Jesus and his apostles. Restoration became popular because many people were confused and disillusioned by the many denom¬ inations competing for converts. Many thoughtful people concluded that not all of these groups could be right. The solution was to use a common-sense reading of the Bible to discover what the primitive church did, then restore that church (Hatch 1989,169-70). Thomas Campbell’s son, Alexander (1788-1866), became the major leader of the Restoration movement. In 1830 his magazine, Millennial Harbinger, began reporting on trends that proved the nearness of the Millennium (Harrell 1988, 850). Campbell believed that the Millennium would begin because of his move¬ ment. The gospel of Christ, he said, was the ancient, fundamental truth about humanity, and all nations would eventually recognize that truth when it was pre¬ sented to them by Restorationist missionaries (Hughes 1976, 89). Like others affected by the Enlightenment, Alexander Campbell believed that truth was selfevident to the open-minded (Hughes 2000, 74). Although later in life he thought the Millennium might be postponed until 2000 c.e., he never stopped believing that it would eventually dawn (Holifield 2003,300-301; see also chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume).

Progressive Millennialism, the Civil War, and Postbellum America During the Civil War (1861-65), millennial expectations reached new heights. By the time the war began, Northern formalist evangelicals, who had previously expected slavery to die out gradually as the Millennium dawned, had become radicalized in their opposition to Southern slavery. Many Northerners believed that slavery had powerful advocates in the federal government and was spreading across the country like a disease. They wanted the territories and new states to become free societies, similar to the Connecticut-like world of Dwight’s “Greenfield Hill”—a land of small towns where everyone worked hard and worshipped God of their own free will and no one owned other human beings. During the Civil War, both sides called on God to support them, but the Northern version of holy war included progressive millen¬ nialism. The worldwide advance of both Christianity and American political values, they believed, depended on Northern victory. Once the North had won, these Northern progressive millennialists saw no limit to what America, and Christianity, could do for the world (Fredrickson 1998,115-17,124). Until the later nineteenth century, millennialists of all persuasions assumed that the Bible gave a true account of both history and the future. In the postbellum era (c. 1870-1910), Protestant liberals introduced into Protestant theology a heavy dose of secular, science-based learning from Europe. Postbellum liberals applied scientific reasoning to the Bible, relegating it to one among many sacred texts and

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54

Christianity to one among many religions. The consequences of the liberal agenda for progressive millennialism’s story are clear: once beliefs about the Millennium were reinterpreted as metaphorical, postmillennialism or progressive millennialism ceased to be an entirely religious perspective. Liberals insisted that they were not sapping Christianity of its uniqueness but modernizing it so that they could com¬ municate Christianity to modern culture. They still thought that the basic plot in Revelation 20-21, including the Millennium and subsequent events, would occur, but they interpreted prophecies about the Millennium figuratively. Their oppo¬ nents, the premillennialists, gained popularity during the postbellum period, accepting the Bible as an infallible guide for understanding both history and the future (Moorhead 1999,26-27,29-34). The Social Gospel was an important variant of liberal theology (see also chap¬ ter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). Social Gospelers believed that Christians should alter social structures. But some of them held to an older evangelical approach while also advocating liberal positions. One such figure was Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), whose publications promoted the idea that the Millennium would begin when Christians transformed their souls via conversion and godly living, and reformed social systems that oppressed the poor and the weak (Bowman 2007,101-3,106). To improve the social order, he advocated legisla¬ tion giving workers property rights, so that capitalist managers and owners did not have unrestrained power (Dorrien 2003,111-17). The Millennium, then, was pro¬ gressive in the sense that sin was being rooted out of institutions as well as the hearts of converted individuals. The Social Gospel was deeply influenced by developments in socialism. Many postbellum American socialists espoused a secularized progressive millennialism. Their greatest literary source of inspiration was not Karl Marx (1818-83) but Edward Bellamy (1850—98), who wrote the utopian classic Looking Backward: 2000—1887 (1888). The main character in this novel falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in 2000. The society he discovers in the future has realized all the reforms that Bellamy and other socialists advocated. Industrial production is in many hands, not just a few. All workers are paid equally, and they take pride in their work. Technology makes daily life joyful and leisurely (Dorn 2002,1-3,5). A racial component was evident in postbellum millennial expectations of the late nineteenth century. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea, who provided a tomb for the crucified Christ, became the first missionary to England. Thus the true gospel was always in England. The British colonies in North America supposedly preserved the true faith, as well, in the form of the New England Puritanism, which passed it along to the nineteenth-century evangelicals of Anglo-Saxon background (Tuveson 1968,140-42). Not all postbellum liberals supported this interpretation of Protestant history, but many did. Liberal writer Josiah Strong (1847-1916) proclaimed an Anglo-Saxon future in Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885). Strong said that Anglo-Saxons were best suited by God to usher in the Millennium because they gave the world scientific and technological advances, the best political systems, and love of liberty. They would dominate and control the Millennium from

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America, but their control was benevolent, in the best interests of all inferior races and peoples (Quandt 1973,398-99).

Twentieth-Century America

The Sixties After the early part of the twentieth century, millennial optimism began a slow but steady decline in the United States. The horrors of World War I, World War II, and the Holocaust assured the death of progress as a guiding idea in the modern world. Robert S. Ellwood said that faith in modern progress finally ended around 1968. After this point, the tacit assumption seems to be that though the world may be girded several times over by fiber-optic networks, and computerized Virtual Reality may take the place of Sixties psychedelics, for as far into the future as one can see the planet will still be sorely overpopulated and ecologically ravaged, much of its people still sunk in deep poverty and as ready as ever to kill one another with anything from machetes to nukes. (Ellwood 1994, 262) In the Sixties, moreover, progressive millennialism became non-Christian. That decade witnessed the rise of a romantic social movement... mainly composed of teenagers and persons in their early twenties, who through their flamboyant lifestyle expressed their alienation from mainstream American life. Counterculture, written as one word or two, became the standard term for the movement... after the appearance, in 1969, of Theodore Roszak’s influential book The Making of a Counter Culture. (Miller 1991, 6) Roszak himself sounded a millennial theme when he wrote that the Sixties genera¬ tion would provide “the matrix in which an alternative, but still excessively fragile future is taking shape” (Roszak 1968, xli). Writers like Roszak placed their hope in the several hundred thousand young people who adopted the naturalistic lifestyles and anti-authoritarian ideals of the hippie counterculture. Hippies searched for the meaning of life. They did not see it in the middle-class affluence of their parents, or in the faceless technological society of twentieth-century America. Many of them looked to occult practices of earlier centuries or Asian religions then making significant inroads in the United States (Zicklin 1983,11-13). Some hippies started rural communes; others lived in cities. All of them hoped for a new age of social and personal equality and integrity (Spann 2003,115). Although their own ranks were filled with people who committed crimes and abused illegal drugs, as a movement the hippie counterculturalists believed they could show the rest of the world how a new society might work. They preached love

56

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for all and tolerance of differences among neighbors (Tipton 1982,15,17). Their hope for a radically changed society was reflected in new religions of the period, including the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) and Werner Erhard’s est (Erhard Seminars Training), a quasi-therapeutic self-help movement. One grad¬ uate of the est training spoke for many in the movement by saying, “There’s a cumu¬ lative effect from graduates changing personally. They create the space for other people to get it. It’s Werner’s intention to give the training to forty million people in America, which would be like a critical mass” (Tipton 1982,221).

The New Age Movement The New Age took its cues from the Western Esoteric traditions dating back to the Renaissance (see also chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume). Among these movements was the Theosophical Society, established in New York City in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91) and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832-

19°7)- Theosophists believed in the guidance of advanced beings called Masters, as well as in reincarnation, the oneness of all things in the universe, the underlying unity of all religions and sciences, and the destiny of humanity to evolve over mil¬ lennia into higher forms (Gutierrez 2006,120-25). One proponent of Theosophy, Alice Bailey (1880-1949), did more than any other writer to influence New Age seek¬ ers. She wrote about the need for all enlightened people to focus their spiritual ener¬ gies so that the New Age would dawn (Melton 1998,134-35). Although the New Age movement peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, the newest generation of people inter¬ ested in New Age ideals is even more committed to a progressive millennial view than those who first began the movement (Melton 2007,107).

Christian Reconstructionism A major exception to the twentieth-century trend toward non-Christian expres¬ sions of progressive millennialism is Christian Reconstructionism, which is in the Reformed tradition. The intellectual foundation of Reconstructionism was laid by the Dutch Calvinist writer Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). He advocated presuppositionalism, which says that in order to live most fully in accord with God’s will, one must have the correct presuppositions about God and the world. In 1923 Qilvin College undergraduate Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) was converted to presuppositionalism by Kuyper’s work and turned it into a rigorous system of thought. He argued that God is totally sovereign over all things in history and that we can¬ not discern truth by ourselves. Van Til taught at the conservative Presbyterian Westminster Theological Seminary. Although he never embraced Reconstruc¬ tionism, his theology is basic to the Reconstructionist worldview (Barron 1992,35-39) The “father” of Reconstructionism, Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), read Van Til’s work as well as libertarian publications that influenced his approach to economic questions (McVicar 2007). Rushdoony wrote Institutes of Biblical Law (1973),

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considered a classic of Reconstructionism. Today, Reconstructionist literature includes hundreds of books, newsletters, magazines, and blogs. Through the writings of Rushdoony and others, Reconstructionism spread among fundamentalist and evangelical leaders in the 1970s and 1980s (English 2003, 111). Individuals who openly espouse Reconstructionist ideas are usually affiliated with one of several extremely conservative Presbyterian denominations, such as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Clarkson 2000, 85). But the real centers of Reconstructionism are parachurch ministries, the foremost being the Chalcedon Foundation, begun by Rushdoony. Another notable center of Reconstructionism is the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas, begun by Gary North (b. 1942) (English 2003,111). Reconstructionists tend to be libertarian, believing that government should be severely limited. They think that a minimum wage and Social Security should be eliminated. Since God’s biblical laws are still relevant today, education should be in the hands of churches and families (Barron and Shupe 1992, 87). An ideal society would be a theonomy—all civil and criminal law would be based on the Bible; the death penalty would be imposed not only for murder and rape, but also for adul¬ tery, heresy, homosexuality, blasphemy, prostitution, and occult practices; and women would be the property of their fathers until marriage, then become the property of their husbands. Reconstructionists find parallels to this ideal Christian society in Calvin’s Geneva and in Puritan New England (Clarkson 2000, 85). Progressive or postmillennialism is crucial to Reconstructionist theology: Postmillennialism expects the proclaiming of the Spirit-blessed gospel of Jesus Christ to win the vast majority of human beings to salvation in the present age. Increasing gospel success will gradually produce a time in history prior to Christ’s return in which faith, righteousness, peace, and prosperity will prevail in the affairs of people and of nations. After an extensive era of such conditions the Lord will return visibly, bodily, and in great glory. (Gentry 1999,13)

This statement reveals the basic Reconstructionist view of the future. In the Millennium, Christian governments will rule, with Christian principles and laws providing the basis for all societies. This may take hundreds, even thousands, of years, but Reconstructionists are in no hurry. According to Reconstructionist writer Keith Mathisen, “the messianic kingdom has been inaugurated” and Christ is its head. “Postmillennialism teaches that the growth of the kingdom will reach a point where the majority of men and nations have willingly submitted to Jesus” (Mathisen 1999,190,193). Another foundational principle of Reconstructionism is “dominionism.” Based on Genesis 1:28, Reconstructionists believe that God gave humanity dominion over everything on Earth. However, not all dominionists are Reconstructionists. Many are associated with Charismatic groups. Earl Paulk (1927-2009) was probably the most important leader among non-Reconstructionist dominionists. He argued that Christians should rebuild all of society along Christian lines (Barron and Shupe 1992,85). This approach is called Kingdom Now theology, and many such advocates

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are called Restorationists (not to be confused with the nineteenth-century Restoration movement described above). Unlike Reconstructionists, Paulk did not expect social and political institutions to become Christianized. Rather, as the church matured, the world would be seeded with gospel truth, ultimately turning to Christ in continuous revival. Paulk believed that God continued to reveal truth to him, supplementing the revealed truth of the Bible. Paulk also placed more empha¬ sis on human activity than do the Reconstructionists. For Paulk, the coming Restoration of Christ’s Kingdom in the Millennium was heavily dependent on sin¬ ful people converting, then becoming “little gods” who would alter the world. Much of the Kingdom Now theology derived from a quasi-Pentecostal movement begun in 1948 called Latter Rain. Although this movement died out in the 1950s, its teach¬ ings were later adapted by Charismatics (Barron 1992, 70, 72-73, 75). Today Charismatics who adhere to some form of progressive or postmillennialism include many groups of British Restorationists and the Third Wave movement in the United States called the Vineyard churches (Hunt 2001,332,335).

Violent Progressive Millennialism Most Americans who advocated progressive millennialism were not violent, but progressive millennialism has been violent in other contexts. Nazis in the interwar period thought that Germany was standing on the cusp of a new world order, which Germans would inaugurate by eliminating the Jews. This new order would exist on Earth as a thousand-year Reich (Redles 2005,121—24; see also chapter 27 by David Redles, this volume). For the Nazis, the divine authority guiding them was not God, but “race as a transcendent reality” (Ellwood 2000,243). The world would progress toward racial and social perfection, and the Nazis would accelerate the realization of the millennial Reich through thuggery, concentration camps, and war against other nations. Other examples of violent progressive millennialism are derived from Marxism, which argues that conflict is inevitable between workers and the wealthier classes that exploit them. The great force guiding history is not God, but the clash between economic classes. Friedrich Engels (1820-95), more than Karl Marx, communicated the drama and urgency of class conflict to the masses, especially in his Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848). He urged the oppressed to revolt against and over¬ throw the wealthy, thus initiating a process leading to a classless society (Tuveson 1984, 325). In China, Communists under Mao Zedong (1893-1976) struggled with the implications of Marxist ideology. They said that since China was not an indus¬ trialized nation, its peasants required a longer period to overcome class oppression than European workers needed. They hoped to hasten the advent of a classless soci¬ ety in China, fighting against Chinese Nationalists and the Japanese before and dur¬ ing World War II. After China became a Communist nation, Mao instituted drastic reforms during the era called the. Great Leap Forward (1958-62), when economic progress was expected to be phenomenal. Unfortunately, the results were disastrous;

PROGRESSIVE MILLENNIALISM

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millions starved to death (Lowe 2000,233,235-36; see also chapter 16 by Scott Lowe, this volume).

Technological Millennialism The ultimate expression of progressive millennialism as secular progress is techno¬ logical millennialism, which says that technology will gradually improve humanity, leading to a perfected human state beyond our imagination. Two key terms in tech¬ nological millennialism are “transhuman” and “posthuman.” The former refers to those stages through which humanity will pass on the way to the latter (Bendle 2002, 48). Transhumanism marks the present time, when technological advances enable us to defy the physical limitations of the body. They include “cryonics, nano¬ technology, cloning, psychopharmacology, genetic enhancement, artificial intelli¬ gence, brain chips, robotics, and space colonization” (Elliott 2003,14). The word transhuman was coined by Fereidoun M. Esfandiary (1930-2000), known as FM-2030 because he wanted to live to be one hundred years old. He is presently in “cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona” (Hughes 2006, 4n). FM-2030 wrote some of the major early works for transhumanists and posthumanists. His legacy has been furthered by Oxford phi¬ losophers Nick Bostrom and David Pearce, who started the World Transhumanist Organization (WTO), now the movement’s leading association, with approximately four thousand members worldwide (Members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association 2007, 27). Authors who popularized transhumanist and posthumanist ideas include Ray Kurzweil (b. 1948), a noted inventor and scientist; Hans Moravec (b. 1948), with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Frank Tipler (b. 1947), a physicist at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana (DeLashmutt 2006,274, 281). For transhumanists, the possibilities for enhancing human life are infinite. Kurzweil and others argue that human civilization will reach a stage called the Singularity, when human minds will be downloaded into computers and thus “live” indefinitely. Transhumanists say that we cannot imagine what life will be like in the Singularity. When “we” reach this stage, we will no longer be human in any sense of that term used today. Hence the word posthuman is used to refer to a future exis¬ tence when individuality ceases to be meaningful, and a matrix of mind and com¬ puter will rule the world. Ironically, posthumanists are individualists, even though they expect a future golden age when individuality has ceased. They do not form a community, nor do they seem interested in the welfare of society. They communi¬ cate with one another mostly via the Internet (DeLashmutt 2006,281-82). They are rarely active in religious traditions, with some exceptions, like the Mormon Transhumanist Association, begun in 2006, which sees parallels between Mormon teachings about dispensations and multiple worlds and transhumanist ideas (Members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association 2006, 25-26, 33-35). Critics note that transhumanists place absolute faith in technology. They rarely talk about

6o

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suffering caused by human use of technology, or technological failures that could result in pain or death. They assume that technology will lead humanity to its ulti¬ mate evolutionary destiny and that this process has a momentum of its own (DeLashmutt 2006, 284). Technological millennialism is the logical outcome of myth-making processes in American history that have been unfolding for centuries. Most advocates of trans¬ humanism and posthumanism are white males. Women and persons of color are noticeably absent from their ranks. Technology and male superiority, faith in pro¬ gress, and America’s greatness are components of this powerful myth about the United States. Today’s transhumanists are the heirs of this male-dominated world of technological advance. In the future they will discard the human organism and “live” on as “male” minds in machines that are as much organic as they are mechan¬ ical (Dinerstein 2006,570-79,584).

For Further Research Many questions remain regarding progressive millennialism. For example, since most of the evidence surveyed here is literary, we should ask what the nonliterate in various historical eras thought about progressive millennial themes. Depictions of the future Millennium were usually expansions of ideals held by educated upper- and middleclass writers. But people of different class identities surely dream different dreams. In the colonial period, for example, progress toward the Millennium might have meant something quite different for a yeoman farmer and a Puritan divine. Related to issues of class are those of gender. Must of the written sources com¬ monly available on progressive millennialism were produced by males. Many of these writers said little or nothing about women in the millennial future. Did women hold progressive millennial views in different ways from men? And what about those whose sexual orientations were often hidden from public view? How might they have conceived of progress toward the Millennium? One suspects that they might see the ideal future as one in which their sexual orientations were not just tolerated, but celebrated. Ethnicity is also a key area for future investigation. Scholars interested in pro¬ gressive millennial themes thus far have explored very little of the literature pro¬ duced by African American writers, for example. How those writers conceived of progress toward the Millennium would tell us as much about the differences between them and their white contemporaries as it would about how we all give imaginative expression to our aspirations for a future golden age. Progressive millennialism is international. Useful comparisons could be made between progressive millennialism in various European and European-derived cul¬ tures, on the one hand, and similar ideas from Asian, African, and other cultures not rooted in European thought. Also, religion will continue to play a vital role in the

6l

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shaping of progressive millennial values. How do notions of “progress” differ across religious divides? Where time is viewed cyclically, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, are concepts like progress and progressive millennialism useful at all, and if so, how? A good starting point in exploring Indian views on progressive millennialism would be the thought of Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), who expected cosmic progres¬ sion culminating in a future when the divine, or supramental, would be fully con¬ scious in our material world (Ghose 1990; see also chapter 19 by Hugh B. Urban, this volume). This viewpoint provides interesting parallels to Westernized progressive millennialism, yet also differs from Western views in many respects. And what of progressive millennial themes found in secular contexts? This essay has mostly relied on religious writers, yet millennial themes in which progress is the central feature exist outside religious worldviews and are probably as wide¬ spread in secular contexts as in religious ones. Then, too, there is the question of the interplay between the secular and the sacred. In the case of Christian socialists, Social Gospelers, and other liberal-minded figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the boundaries between secular and sacred, with regard to pro¬ gressive thinking about the millennial future, were fuzzy. Charting the evolution and development of progressive millennialism could shed light on the continually relevant matter of how we distinguish between what is religious and what is not, and why we make those distinctions.

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Catechism of the Catholic Church. 1995. New York: Doubleday. Clarkson, Frederick. 2000. “Christian Reconstructionists and Dominionists.” In Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, edited by Richard A. Landes, 84-87. New York: Routledge. Conkin, Paul. 1995. The Uneasy Center: Reformed Christianity in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Cox, Robert S. 2006. “Spiritualism.” In Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America. Vol. 3, Metaphysical, New Age, and Neopagan Movements, edited by Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft, 26-47. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. Cross, Anthony. 2001. “The Bible, the Trinity and History: Apocalypticism and Millennialism in the Theology of Joachim of Fiore.” In Faith in the Millennium, edited by Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, 260-97. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Davidson, James West. 1977. The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth-Century New England. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. DeLashmutt, Michael W. 2006. “A Better Life through Information Technology? The Techno-Theological Eschatology of Posthuman Speculative Science.” Zygon 41, no. 2 (June): 267-87. Dinerstein, Joel. 2006. “Technology and Its Discontents: On the Verge of the Posthuman.” American Quarterly 58, no. 3 (September): 569-95. Dorn, Jacob H. 2002. An Optimistic Millennium: Edward Bellamy’s Vision of Socialism as Applied Christianity.’” In Expectations for the Millennium: American Socialist Visions of the Future, edited by Peter H. Buckingham, 1-17. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. Dorrien, Gary. 2003. The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity 1900-1950. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press. Elliott, Carl. 2003. “Humanity 2.0.” Wilson Quarterly 27, no. 4 (Autumn): 13-20. Ellwood, Robert S. 1994. The Sixties Spiritual Awakening: American Religion Moving from Modern to Postmodern. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. . 2000. Nazism as a Millennialist Movement.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 241-60. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Engler, Bernd, Joerg O. Fichte, and Oliver Scheiding. 2002. “Transformations of Millennial Thought in America, 1630—1860. In Millennial Thought in America: Historical and Intellectual Contexts, 1650—1860, edited by Bernd Engler, Joerg O. Fichte, and Oliver Scheiding, 9-37. Trier: WVT, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. English, Adam C. 2003. “Christian Reconstruction after Y2K: Gary North, the New Millennium, and Religious Freedom.” In New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America, edited by Derek H. Davis and Barry Hankins, 107-18. 2d ed. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Fredrickson, George M. 1998. “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the Civil War Crisis.” In Religion and the American Civil War, edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 110-30. New York: Oxford University Press. Gardner, Edmund G. 1910. “Joachim of Flora.” In The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Co.; retrieved from www.newadvent.0rg/cathen/08406c htm. Gentry, Kenneth L„ Jr. 1999. “Postmillennialism.” In Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond, edited by Darrell L. Bock, 11-57. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. Ghose, Aurobindo. 1990. The Life Divine. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

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Gutierrez, Cathy. 2006. “The Elusive Isis: Theosophy and the Mirror of Millennialism.” In The End That Does: Art, Science and Millennial Accomplishment, edited by Cathy Gutierrez and Hillel Schwartz, 119-37. London: Equinox. Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. 1988. “Restorationism and the Stone-Campbell Tradition.” In Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements. Vol. 2, edited by Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams, 845-58. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Hatch, Nathan 0.1989. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. -. 1983. “The Origins of Civil Millennialism in America: New England Clergymen, War with France, and the Revolution.” In Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, edited by Stanley N. Katz and John M. Murrin, 497-518.3d ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Holifield, E. Brooks. 2003. Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Hughes, James D. 2006. “Democratic Transhumanism.” Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology 1, no. 1 (1st quarter): 1-8; retrieved from terasemjournals.net/GN0102/ hughes_01d.html. Hughes, Richard T. 1976. “From Primitive Church to Civil Religion: The Millennial Odyssey of Alexander Campbell.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (March): 87-103. -. 2000. “The Apocalyptic Origins of Churches of Christ and the Triumph of Modernism.” In American Origins of the Churches of Christ: Three Essays on Restoration History, 65-107. Abilene, Tex.: Abilene Christian University Press. Hunt, Stephen. 2001. “At the Cutting Edge of What God Is Doing’: Millenarian Aspects of British Neo-Pentecostalism.” In Faith in the Millennium, edited by Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, 324-46. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Jenson, Robert W. 1988. America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards. New York: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Curtis D. 1993. Redeeming America: Evangelicals and the Road to Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. Johnson, Gregory. 1976. “The Hare Krishna in San Francisco.” In The New Religious Consciousness, edited by Charles Y. Glock and Robert N. Bellah, 31-51. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lambert, Malcolm. 2002. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. 3d ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Lowe, Scott. 2000. “Western Millennial Ideology Goes East: The Taiping Revolution and Mao’s Great Leap Forward.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 220-40. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Maddex, Jack P. 1979. “Proslavery Millennialism: Social Eschatology in Antebellum Southern Calvinism.” American Quarterly 31 (Spring): 46-62. Mathisen, Keith A. 1999. Postmillennialism: An Eschatology of Hope. Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R. McVicar, Michael J. 2007. “The Libertarian Theocrats: The Long, Strange History of R. J. Rushdoony and Christian Reconstructionism.” Public Eye 22, no. 3 (Fall): 3-10; retrieved from www.publiceye.org/magazine/v22n3/libertarian.html. Melton, J. Gordon. 1998. “The Future of the New Age Movement.” In New Religions and New Religiosity, edited by Eileen Barker and Margit Warburg, 133-49- Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press.

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-. 2007. “New New Religions: Revisiting a Concept.” Nova Religio 10, no. 4 (May): 103-12. Members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. 2007. “Transfiguration: Parallels and Complements between Mormonism and Transhumanism.” Sunstone Magazine 145 (March): 25-39. Miller, Timothy. 1991. The Hippies and American Values. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Moorhead, James. 1999. World without End: Mainstream American Protestant Visions of the Last Things, 1880-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Olson, Theodore. 1982. Millennialism, Utopianism, and Progress. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Quandt, Jean B. 1973. “Religion and Social Thought: The Secularization of Postmillennialism.” American Quarterly 25, no. 4 (October): 390-409. Quistorp, Heinrich. 1955. Calvin’s Doctrine of the Last Things. Translated by Harold Knight. London: Lutterworth. Redles, David. 2005. “‘The day is not far off...’: The Millennial Reich and the Induced Apocalypse.” In War in Heaven/Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic, edited by Stephen D. O Leary and Glen S. McGhee, Millennialism and Society, Vol. 2,119—41. London: Equinox. Reeves, Marjorie. 2005. “Joachim of Fiore.” In Encyclopedia of Religion, 2d ed. Vol. 7, edited by Lindsay Jones, 4928-29. Detroit: Thomson Gale. Roszak, Theodore. 1968. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smolinski, Reiner. 2001. “Caveat Emptor: Pre- and Postmillennialism in the Late Reformation Period.” In Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern Culture, Vol. 3, edited by James Force and Richard H. Popkin, 145-69. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. Spann, Edward K. 2003. Democracy’s Children: The Young Rebels of the 1960s and the Power of Ideals. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources. Stein, Stephen J. 1977. Editor s Introduction.” In The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 5, 1-93. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. -. 1984. “Transatlantic Extensions: Apocalyptic in Early New England.” In The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents, and Repercussions, edited by C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich, 266-98. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. . 2002. American Millennial Visions: Towards Construction of a New Architectonic of American Apocalypticism.” In Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, edited by Abbas Amanat and Magnus T. Berhardsson, 187-211. London: I. B. Tauris and Co. Tipton, Steven M. 1982. Getting Saved from the Sixties: Moral Meaning in Conversion and Cultural Change. Berkeley: University of California Press. Toon, Peter. 1970. The Latter-Day Glory.” In Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of IsraelPuritan Eschatology 1600 to 1660, edited by Peter Toon, 23-41. Cambridge: James Clarke. Tuveson, Ernest Lee. 1949. Millennium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press. -. 1968. Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ; Weinberger, Jerry. 2005. Progress, Idea of.” In New Dictionary of the History of Ideas Vol 5 1912-16. Detroit: Thomson Gale. ' ’

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Wessinger, Catherine. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 47-59. New York: Routledge. York, Michael. 2001. “New Age Millenarianism and Its Christian Influences.” In Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco, edited by Stephen Hunt, 224-38. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zicklin, Gilbert. 1983. Countercultural Communities: A Sociological Perspective. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.

CHAPTER 4

AVERTIVE APOCALYPTICISM DANIEL WOJCIK

Apocalyptic

and millennial worldviews generally assert that earthly destruction

and worldly renewal are foreordained and determined by superhuman forces beyond human control. Whether worldly catastrophe and collective salvation are brought about by otherworldly beings or human beings acting in accordance with divine or superhuman mandates, the idea of an inevitable and unalterable plan is central to much apocalyptic and millennial thought. However, in some instances, apocalyptic and millennial beliefs and discourses may include ideas about avert¬ ing or postponing impending apocalyptic scenarios. The concept of avertive apoc¬ alypticism describes a wide range of beliefs that predict imminent worldly destruction, but also maintain that apocalypse may be averted or forestalled if believers engage in specific spiritual or ritual actions. Such practices are not only believed to prevent worldly catastrophe, but often are regarded as redemptive actions that will create collective or worldly salvation. When such ideas have both avertive and redemptive aspects, they may be considered an expression of avertive millennialism} Some avertive apocalyptic beliefs share features with progressive millennial¬ ism in the assertion that collective salvation and a golden age will be brought about gradually by human beings acting in cooperation with a divine authority or superhuman plan that will transform the world (Wessinger 1997, 50; Wessinger 2000a, 16-17; chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume). Avertive apocalyptic ideas also often express catastrophic millennial ideas about the imminence of worldly destruction and may similarly reflect a corresponding pessimistic view of humanity as evil and corrupt (Wessinger 1997, 48-50; Wessinger 2000a, 16-18; chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume). Yet unlike in catastrophic millen¬ nialism, in avertive apocalyptic thought the destruction of the current world is not entirely predetermined, nor is the world viewed as fatally flawed and

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67

unredeemable by human effort. Instead, worldly cataclysm is regarded as condi¬ tional and preventable by the efforts of human beings, whether they are acting in accordance with divine mandates, obeying the decrees of prophets, fulfilling a supernatural plan, or embracing a diversity of beliefs to prevent cataclysms or “heal the earth” through collective spiritual endeavors. Although this chapter focuses on selected contemporary expressions of spiritual avertive beliefs and practices, such ideas have been expressed historically and cross-culturally, and recent secular strategies for preventing worldly destruction are relevant as well, such as those within the environmentalist movement (see chapter 32 by Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, this volume). Varying expressions of avertive beliefs have been associated with apocalyptic apparitions of the Virgin Mary, new religious movements such as the Church Universal and Triumphant, various UFO religions, some Native American prophe¬ cies and indigenous earth-healing practices, and specific New Age and Wiccan beliefs, among others. The vernacular practice of avertive apocalypticism as lived religion is expressed in diverse ways: prayers or decrees, collective repentance, affirmations of true faith, rejection of sin and evil, a nativistic return to previous traditions, healing and energy ceremonies at sacred sites, the use of magical or apotropaic practices and objects, ritualistic cleansing and sometimes violent acts of purification, penance and sacrifice, and other forms of devotion and spiritual action. The methods for avoiding impending apocalyptic destruction are usually communicated by prophets, visionaries, channelers, or charismatic leaders who serve as intermediaries between humanity and otherworldly beings or forces. In some instances, however, no prophet is required, as in the case of nonhierarchical healing circles and New Age groups that believe egalitarian collective prayer may prevent or mitigate environmental destruction, the use of nuclear weapons, and other potential catastrophes. Although

most

avertive

prophecies

and

practices

are

intentionally

“pre-apocalyptic” and performed to prevent imminent catastrophes or dimin¬ ish the extent of the impending destruction, avertive ideas also have been embraced when specific prophecies fail, as after-the-fact explanations for a non-apocalypse. In these instances, prophets and members of millennial groups sometimes have attributed the failure of apocalyptic prophecies (see chapter 8 by Lome L. Dawson, this volume) to the avertive and redemptive powers of the spiritual activities and faith of group members or leaders. Failed apocalyptic predictions, avertive explanations, and millennial yearnings for a perfect world may result in a shift in emphasis among believers over time between catastrophic, avertive, and progressive millennial beliefs, or varying combinations of such ideas, as exemplified by the Church Universal and Triumphant. Avertive apocalypticism, as a recently proposed exploratory cat¬ egory, offers insights into the dynamics of apocalyptic thought and prophecy traditions; the features of fatalistic and avertist belief systems; ideas about divine determinism, human agency, and free will; and current fears, hopes, and visions for the future.

68

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Fatalism and Avertive Apocalypticism Before analyzing the attributes and variability of avertive apocalyptic beliefs, it is useful to describe the features of the more pervasive non-avertive beliefs about an imminent worldly catastrophe that cannot be prevented. Non-avertive apocalypti¬ cism, also referred to as unconditional apocalypticism (Wojcik 1997, 209-10), is characterized by an inherent fatalism, the belief that certain events and experiences are inevitable, unalterable, and determined by external forces beyond human con¬ trol. The term fatalism is not used here in a pejorative sense, but considered to be an enduring and widespread means of interpreting experiences and understanding the world. The word apocalypse (from the Greek, apokalypsis) means “revelation” or “unveiling,” and this sense of a revealed and underlying design for history has tradi¬ tionally characterized apocalyptic thought and resembles ancient notions of fate as an absolute force in the universe that determines all things. As historian Bernard McGinn observes, apocalyptic ideas from various religious traditions and historical periods exhibit “a sense of the unity and structure of history conceived as a divinely predetermined totality (1979> 10). In addition to the idea that history is predeter¬ mined, non-avertive apocalyptic thinking maintains that the world is irredeemable by human effort and its cataclysmic destruction is necessary for earthly redemption and collective salvation. By proclaiming that history and worldly renewal are part of a preordained plan, such apocalyptic narratives and beliefs affirm that the cosmos is ordered, evil and suffering ultimately will be destroyed, human existence is meaningful, and a millen¬ nial realm of peace and justice will be created. These deterministic apocalyptic tra¬ ditions present the story of human existence as coherent and deliberately designed from beginning to end, punctuated by dramatic, preordained events and character¬ ized by an ongoing battle between good and evil. Apocalypticism, as a fatalistic mode of thought, offers privileged explanations that unveil the otherwise obscure meanings behind events and experiences, reassuring believers that current crises and social evils are part of an Endtime scenario that is moral and orchestrated by God or superhuman forces. Faith and fatalism are thus interwoven into the fabric of apocalyptic thought: a profound fatalism regarding a world believed to be inevita¬ bly doomed is entwined with the faith in a predestined, perfect age of harmony and human fulfillment for the elect. Today, non-avertive beliefs concerning inevitable apocalypse and millennial salvation are integral to the worldviews of many evangelical Christians, such as members of the Southern Baptist Convention and various Pentecostal and charis¬ matic denominations, including the Assemblies of God, the Church of the Nazarene and thousands of independent evangelical “Bible churches.” The most popular form of prophecy among evangelical Christians, premillennial Dispensationalism, exem¬ plifies non-avertive catastrophic millennial thinking (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone and chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, both in this volume). Dispensationalists hold that human beings are incapable of preventing cataclysmic worldly destruction.

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Attempts to prevent worldly destruction through social action or the promotion of peace in the Middle East are not only considered to be hopeless but often inter¬ preted as heresy—a direct refutation and denial of God’s plan for humanity (Halsell 1986,16). A comparable sense of fatefulness is expressed in the prophecies and nonavertive beliefs about inevitable worldly cataclysm embraced by numerous other catastrophic millennial groups and movements, including the Millerites, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, Native American Ghost Dance movements, and some radical environmentalists who proclaim that societal destruction is necessary and inevita¬ ble, part of an unalterable design for the renewal of the world. Avertive apocalyptic ideas might appear to be clearly distinguishable from nonavertive apocalyptic and millennial belief systems and characterized by an overt emphasis on human agency, free will, and a nonfatalistic view of an apocalypse that can be avoided through human action. However, avertive apocalyptic beliefs fre¬ quently contend that impending worldly destruction may be prevented only if human beings behave in ways prescribed by a superhuman power. Such beliefs assert that humanity cannot prevent imminent worldly destruction entirely through its own efforts but that human beings may avoid or forestall worldly catastrophes if they act in accordance with divine will, prophetic pronouncements, or a cosmic plan. This view is illustrated, for example, by certain beliefs about Marian appari¬ tions, messages from extraterrestrial beings, prophecies delivered by leaders of new religious movements, and some Native American prophecies that foretell of a period of chastisement and warn that the end of the world is near. But these messages and prophecies declare that human beings may postpone or avert the day of doom if they change their behavior, heed the warnings, and act in accordance with a divine plan or spiritual principles. In these scenarios, human beings may prevent worldly destruction only when they follow God’s decrees or those of a superhuman author¬ ity, and apocalyptic destruction will occur only as a consequence of humanity’s destructive or evil behavior that violates divine or cosmic laws. There also are other, less deterministic expressions of avertive apocalypticism that do not depend on divine mandates or rely on the all-powerful guidance and cosmic plan of deities or supernatural agencies. Instead, human beings, in response to perceived imminent catastrophes, attempt to avert apocalypse through their own collective efforts. Sometimes these efforts are inspired by spiritual principles, some¬ times individuals combine spiritual and scientific knowledge in attempts to prevent the end of the world, and in other instances spirituality is left out of the equation completely in secular efforts to save the planet. Such beliefs are not overtly fatalistic if the future is not believed to be determined and the warnings of imminent catas¬ trophes do not reveal a divine plan or supernatural mandate for salvation. For example, in the book The Fate of the Earth (1982), Jonathan Schell speculates about the devastating effects of large-scale nuclear war, an event that he argues would end civilization. But Schell states that human action may lead to nuclear disarmament and thus prevent a nuclear apocalypse. The predictions of potential disasters described in books such as Silent Spring (Carson 2002/1962), The Population Bomb (Ehrlich 1968), Overshoot (Catton 1982), The End of Nature (McKibben 1989), and

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

70

the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth (Gore 2006) similarly forewarn of worldly cataclysms, yet these possible catastrophes are not regarded as inevitable or unalterable, but presented with the hope of alerting and motivating people to activ¬ ist attempts to avert disasters.

Avertive Apocalypticism and Superhuman Guidance

Apparitions of the Virgin Mary Avertive apocalyptic ideas pervade popular beliefs and prophecies associated with Catholic visions of the Virgin Mary that foretell of imminent worldly chastisement as part of a divine plan unfolding in the last days. In her role as intercessor, the Virgin Mary intervenes through these apparitions to save humanity from approach¬ ing cataclysms. Avertive messages have been delivered at numerous Marian appari¬ tion sites, including Fatima, Portugal; Garabandal, Spain; San Damiano, Italy; Akita, fapan; Kibeho, Rwanda; Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Conyers, Georgia; Oliveto Citra, Italy; and Bayside, New York, among others. These prophecies and associated beliefs are expressions of Catholic folk tradition, originating apart from the approval of the institutional Roman Catholic Church. In these apparitions, the Virgin Mary warns of disasters to be unleashed because people are so sinful and have rejected God, but offers the hope that these catastrophes may be forestalled if human beings behave in ways ordained by God. This form of avertive belief is exemplified by the Marian apparitions associated with Veronica Lueken (1923-95) and the Bayside movement (Our Lady of the Roses) in Queens, New York City (see also chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume). For more than twenty years, until her death, Lueken communicated Endtime proph¬ ecies from the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and numerous saints. The Bayside apparitions address a litany of subjects, but the most prominent topics are the evils of contem¬ porary society, corruption within the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican itself, the urgent need for worldwide atonement, and especially the approach of an apoca¬ lyptic scenario. The apparitions assert that “a worldwide Warning, Miracle, and fiery Chastisement in the form of a Ball of Redemption’—a comet which will strike the earth, and along with World War III and other disasters, will remove threequarters of mankind—are very near at hand” (Our Lady of the Roses n.d., i). The coming worldwide cataclysm, or what Baysiders refer to as the “Great Chastisement,” may be averted through personal penance, prayer (especially praying the rosary), and a return to traditional Catholic faith. The Bayside apparitions thus manifest certain aspects of catastrophic millennialism while expressing avertive apocalyptic beliefs as well.

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The imminence of worldly annihilation is a predominant theme in the Bayside messages, but other disasters are emphasized as well, such as earthquakes, drought, famine, starvation, epidemics, hurricanes, and terrorist attacks, all of which are regarded as punishments from God because of the increasing evil in the world. While the Bayside apparitions have certain idiosyncratic elements, they also have clear antecedents in previous Marian prophecies, particularly the apparitions at Fatima in 1917 and the ecclesiastically unsanctioned visions at Necedah, Wisconsin (during the 1950s), San Sebastian de Garabandal, Spain (1960-65), and San Damiano, Italy (1964-81). The Bayside apparitions epitomize the apocalyptic and conspiratorial aspects of this modern Marian folk belief system, with Mary appear¬ ing in the roles of intercessor and nurturing mother, intervening on behalf of her children to rescue them from the apocalyptic punishments of an angry God (Cuneo 1997> i52-77; Wojcik 1997,60-96). According to the Bayside apparitions, as human¬ ity becomes increasingly sinful and violent, God will repay human violence with apocalyptic violence unless people change their behavior. The Bayside prophecies express the view that human history is unfolding according to a divine Endtime plan, but the messages also proclaim that human beings may prevent the day of doom if they act in accordance with God’s will and if God permits that the world not be destroyed. Although apocalyptic destruction is imminent, it may be forestalled if human beings behave in ways prescribed by God. In this scenario, human will is effectual in averting worldly destruction only when it corresponds to God’s decrees. Popular Catholic prophecy belief, because of the emphasis on the personal relationship between the saints in heaven and the faithful on Earth (the doctrine of the communion of saints), appears less overtly fatalistic than those forms of apocalypticism which assert that history is predetermined and apocalypse is inevitable and unalterable by human effort. In comparison, Protestant premillennial Dispensationalists interpret the signs of the Endtime as noncausal markers on a foreordained timetable of irreversible doom; the messages of Lueken and other Catholic visionaries contend that apocalyptic destruction is imminent but that the divine timetable maybe postponed if people repent and return to God’s ways. The apocalypse predicted by Lueken will occur at a specific historical moment, not because it is preordained to occur at that time, but because of God’s anger at humanity’s increasing sinfulness. In this view, the Virgin Mary can petition God and intercede on behalf of the faithful, and Baysiders, like many other Catholics, believe that through Mary the destiny of the world may be altered. But the Bayside prophecies reiterate that if worldly sin reaches a specific anti-Christian critical mass, Mary’s merciful pleas will be powerless to hold back the punishing hand of God. In contrast to the apocalyptic anger of God in these apparitions, the tone of the Virgin Mary is that of concern and love for humanity gone astray, and the hope that destruction can be averted and humanity redeemed. Lueken s prophecies fluctuate between visions of devastation, with Mary depicted as a warrior deity who will lead the battle against Satan and ultimately crush him beneath her heel, and Mary as compassionate mother, pleading with her children to prevent the prophesied catastrophes through repentance, prayer, and conversion. Ultimately her avertive

PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

72

protection is contingent upon human beings following divine mandates and returning to pre-Vatican II Catholic doctrines and specific ritual actions.

UFO Religions The variable nature of avertive apocalypticism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is exemplified by UFO religious movements, which are a synthesis of ear¬ lier mythologies, religious traditions, occult teachings, scientific discourse, and ideas inspired by science fiction literature and popular films. For more than fifty years, beliefs about UFOs have been characterized by expectations of imminent worldly destruction and the belief that extraterrestrial beings will rescue human beings from catastrophe or help humanity transform the world and usher in a new age of peace and enlightenment (see also chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume). These UFO beliefs have concerns in common with both catastrophic and progressive millennial traditions and express similar yearnings for collective salva¬ tion and earthly transformation by otherworldly beings. A recurring belief is that human beings are flawed and that the world is in a state of crisis and in need of extraterrestrial guidance in the face of impending cataclysms. Although some UFO groups have embraced a theology of inevitable apocalypse and planetary escape (e.g., Heaven’s Gate), a number of other groups warn that worldly catastrophe is imminent, but emphasize that complete annihilation may be prevented if people follow the directives of space entities. Like the apocalyptic warnings delivered by the Virgin Mary at various apparition sites, the avertive beliefs associated with UFOs maintain that if people change their behavior as prescribed by otherworldly beings— put an end to violence, save the environment, become spiritually attuned, or work for the transformation of planetary consciousness—the world may be saved. This view is expressed by the Aetherius Society, one of the best-known and longest-lived UFO contactee groups, which has asserted since 1955 that imminent disasters may be averted through prayer and other spiritual practices. Based in Los Angeles, the society was founded by George King (1919—97), originally from England, who stated that he was selected as the primary channel for extraterrestrial messages transmitted from a space being named Aetherius. King said that in 1954 he was contacted telepathically by numerous Cosmic Intelligences orbiting Earth and given messages concerning the salvation of the world. According to King, imminent worldly destruction may be avoided if the dangers of atomic weapons are acknowledged and humans resort to prayer and the promotion of the meta¬ physical teachings of the Cosmic Masters (including Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, and Mars Sector 6). Members of the Aetherius Society use Spiritual Energy Batteries that harness and amplify their prayers for world salvation; this Prayer Power, a form of psychic healing energy, is then discharged periodically to avert potential planetary catastro¬ phes, such as the outbreak of war, hurricanes and other natural disasters, and a dangerous warp in the Earth’s magnetic field produced by atomic experiments (Curran 1985, 63; Smith 2003, 93-99). The various prayers, rituals, and spiritual

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73

Operations performed by the Aetherians are intended to promote planetary heal¬ ing, alleviate human suffering, and prevent the destruction of humanity. Like the Baysiders, the Aetherians believe in the power of prayer and ritual to forestall or avert disaster, and the Aetherians claim that their prayers, amplified by the spiritual technology provided by the Cosmic Masters, are responsible for the end of the Cold War and for preventing various disasters such as a predicted earthquake that would have submerged California in the Pacific Ocean (Curran 1985, 63-69). In addition to the threat of earthly cataclysms, King declared that a constant threat of invasion by evil space beings exists and that the Aetherians and Cosmic Masters have fended off these nefarious invaders on various occasions (Saliba 1995, 36). In other messages, the Masters have promised that the Aetherians will be warned if the apocalypse is about to occur, so they may gather at certain sacred, spiritually charged mountains to await rescue from above. The goal of the society, however, is to prevent worldly annihilation, save every soul on the planet, and transform plan¬ etary consciousness. In this respect, the members of the Aetherius Society manifest avertive, catastrophic, and progressive millennial ideas to varying degrees in their belief system. Often within UFO religious movements, avertive apocalyptic strategies are presented, yet the tone of such messages expresses little hope that humanity will make the changes necessary to save the planet. If apocalyptic destruction does occur, believers are promised that a select few of the chosen ones will escape the destruction by means of planetary evacuation. One of the better-known groups that embraces this view is the Guardian Action International organization, which is centered around the channeled messages of Ashtar, who is said to be the com¬ mander of thousands of space ships referred to as the Ashtar Command that will descend prior to worldly catastrophe. Beaming his messages to contactees from a colossal starship, Commander Ashtar predicts enormous natural disasters, shifting land plates, nuclear cataclysm, and numerous other crises in the near future and warns that “such an event cannot be postponed much longer. Your planet’s vibra¬ tions are very, very negative” (Beckley 1980, 27). Although warning of imminent destruction, Ashtar and his cosmic colleagues hold out the hope that human beings will change their ways: There is a chance this can all be averted, but with each passing day, the chance gets less and less. If mankind could change the way it lives, if mankind were to put down its arms, then it could be averted. However, there is no sign that this will happen.... We will do what we can. Tell those who believe, tell those who are righteous, that we are here, that we are watching over them, that we are praying for their safety. (Beckley 1980,29)

While this and other communications from the Ashtar Command call for worldly transformation, the messages repeatedly imply that humanity mostly likely will not heed the warnings and thus will have to pay the “karmic consequences” for its destructive behavior. Even though catastrophe is imminent, believers are reassured that benevolent beings are watching over them and will rescue the chosen ones.

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Like the apocalyptic predictions of seers of the Virgin Mary and previous prophets, the avertive beliefs communicated by George King and the Ashtar Command and various other UFO visionaries express the view that humanity tee¬ ters on destruction, but through the guidance of otherworldly beings, collective salvation is possible. In these avertive systems of belief, doomsday may be prevented, but only if human beings act in ways prescribed by superhuman entities. As noted, the degree of belief and confidence in the fulfillment of avertive strategies is vari¬ able, and avertive, catastrophic, and progressive millennial ideas are embraced by such groups to varying degrees. While some UFO groups seem to hold out real hope for avoiding apocalyptic destruction and may engage in ritual and spiritual actions to prevent catastrophes, other groups are much less optimistic about the ability of human beings and societal institutions to change their destructive ways and avert the End.

The New Age Movement and Earth-Healing Beliefs Like UFO religions, the avertive and millennial ideas associated with the New Age movement demonstrate the ways that eschatological beliefs exist as an eclectic form of alternative spirituality apart from institutional religions (see also chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume). New Age notions about averting catastrophes and transforming the world range from beliefs about cataclysmic Earth changes to ideas concerning a gradual shift in global consciousness and spirituality that will lead to a golden age. New Age beliefs usually offer a kinder and gentler approach to apoca¬ lypse and tend to emphasize shifts in global consciousness rather than inevitable cataclysmic destruction. Such beliefs often promote a progressive millennial view that involves the gradual evolution into a new age of harmony and peace brought about by human effort and new forms of spirituality. Although catastrophic millen¬ nial beliefs do exist in some New Age communities and among those who identify with the New Age movement, a more prevalent attitude is that human beings can prevent worldly cataclysm and create a better world through spiritual action. The mixture of avertive and millennial New Age beliefs is epitomized by the Harmonic Convergence, which was organized around a cross-cultural melange of prophecy traditions, the cycles of the Aztec and Mayan Calendars, and the configu¬ ration of the planets in the solar system. Promoted by author Jose Argiielles (1939-2011), tens of thousands of people participated in the event throughout the world on 16-17 August 1987, dates interpreted as a critical juncture in the history of humanity, a liminal period of dangerous transition that would determine the future destruction or salvation of the planet (Argiielles 1987). According to Argiielles, the ancient Mayans were cosmic visionaries who left a “galactic calling card” in the form of coded messages in the Mayan calendar that reveal how human beings may trans¬ form themselves and join the Galactic Federation in the year 2012. The Harmonic Convergence was organized to avert humanity’s descent into a negative cycle of worldly destruction, which could be prevented only if 144,000 people or more gathered at sacred places across the planet to restore Earth’s solar

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and cosmic resonance. Over the weekend of 16-17 August 1987 individuals gathered at sacred sites such as Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid, Machu Picchu, and Mount Shasta, where they chanted, meditated, and engaged in various ceremonies to avert catastrophe, spiritually transform the planet, and create a trusting relationship with extraterrestrial and cosmic powers. Through such spiritual actions, it was believed that the efforts of human beings not only prevented apocalyptic destruc¬ tion but also activated the return of the spirit of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and all of the gods and goddesses and heroes and heroines that have ever existed in the human imagination (Argiielles 1987,170). The archetypal divine energy of these beings was to be reborn in the hearts of all people on 16-17 August 1987, instilling a new global consciousness, resulting in a world in which human beings live in harmony with each other and the environment. Organizers and participants of the Harmonic Convergence emphasized that their spiritual efforts during the two-day event not only saved the world from destruction but also allowed humanity to pursue its evolutionary cosmic destiny in establishing a New Age. Avertive and progressive millennial ideas were completely connected in the beliefs and practices associated with the Harmonic Convergence, with human beings not only prevent¬ ing worldly catastrophe but also ushering in a new era as they acted in harmony with a cosmic plan for salvation. In this and other New Age progressive millennial traditions, it is asserted that all of humanity, not just a select few, may achieve a terrestrial paradise. In contrast to catastrophic millennial worldviews, characterized by a pessimistic and tragic view of the world as irredeemably evil, New Age millennialism often regards evil as conquerable by humans with help from spiritual beings or through the enactment of spiritual teachings. Although New Age ideas may have decreased in recent years, many people still believe that a perfect age is attainable through the incremental improvement of the world, an idea that has its secular equivalent in the notion of a utopia achieved through progress and human effort. Unlike apocalyptic belief sys¬ tems that emphasize salvation for the righteous and the destruction of the evil “oth¬ ers,” avertist and millennial beliefs within the New Age movement tend to be less dualistic and more accepting of humanity in an inclusive millennial embrace. In some instances, those who are involved in New Age communities may reject the idea of apocalyptic destruction completely: even though they may feel worldly catastrophes are imminent, they may avoid discussing the idea of apocalypse, expressing the belief that by thinking about it, one “gives energy to the thought of apocalypse” that might then produce or manifest catastrophic destruction in the material world (Amick-Elder 2009). Instead, some individuals consciously attempt to embrace only positive and world-affirming beliefs, with no apocalyptic thoughts permitted. Such ideas might not seem to be explicitly avertive, yet they resemble traditional avoidance beliefs and taboos that prohibit mention of dangerous and forbidden things, deities, people, or acts. In this regard, the avoidance of thoughts about apocalyptic destruction and the attempt to manifest the “power of positive thinking” to create a better world is an implicit form of preventive magic and avertive apotropaic belief.

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By contrast, other individuals may attempt to prevent apocalyptic events by participating in healing circles involving prayers, meditation, and rituals in the belief that their spiritual energies may be directed to avert potential disasters, heal the Earth, or preserve life on the planet; these healing groups may meet in person, or in virtual reality, with people participating in Internet chat rooms and sending their prayers and energies while online. For example, in 2008, with the activation of Large Hadron Collider (the world’s most powerful energy particle accelerator), there were concerns that the machine would initiate a worldly cataclysm, and there were spiritual attempts to prevent a potential disaster. Some individuals feared the device would create micro-black holes or release hypothetical strange matter “killer particles” known as strangelets that would bring about planetary destruction, and there were urgent requests online for avertive prayers and ceremonies to protect Mother Earth (Worldwide Interfaith Healing Circles 2008). Comparable avertive beliefs and practices are expressed by those involved in the contemporary Wiccan community, known for the nature-based orientation of their beliefs, as well as a diversity of feminist, animistic, pantheistic, and polytheistic ideas. However, some Wiccans also express specific apocalyptic concerns, believing that human actions such as environmental destruction, pollution, war, and greed have disrupted the ecological balance and that current natural disasters and pre¬ dicted cataclysms are attempts by the Earth (a living entity, a deity, or the Goddess Gaia) to cleanse and rebalance itself (Arthur 2008, 202). Although these disasters may be viewed either as natural processes of Earth purification or as a form of angry Earth retaliation in punishment for the transgressions of human beings, some Wiccans assert that future apocalyptic catastrophes may be averted through spiri¬ tual practices and activist efforts. As Shawn Arthur notes in his research on Wiccan apocalypticism, many practitioners express the view that the “apocalypse could be averted, or at least its worst parts could be mitigated, if enough people focused their energies on healing the Earth and preventing further damage” (2008, 214). These avertive practices take the form of healing rituals, eco-magic, environmental activ¬ ism, and various attempts at social change, motivated by the desire to heal the Earth and prevent approaching worldly catastrophes. Specific spiritual actions sometimes are considered more powerful and efficacious than social activism: some individu¬ als believe that their avertive and healing efforts have actually forestalled catastro¬ phe, temporarily saved the Earth, and increased environmental awareness and an understanding of the sacredness of the natural world. A representative example of this avertive and salvific ethos is presented in the book Beyond Prophecies and Predictions: Everyone’s Guide to the Coming Changes by Moira Timms (1994), which surveys various apocalyptic prophecies that are consid¬ ered to be wakeup calls to humanity to prevent or diminish impending disasters. Like ideas associated with the Harmonic Convergence or the “quickening” theory promoted by radio broadcaster Art Bell (1997) and others, events and crises in the current era are said to be inexorably accelerating toward a momentous climax in 2012, culminating in worldly destruction or transformation, with the years leading up to that pivotal moment regarded as a “window of opportunity”: “How we

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respond to this challenge will determine the fate of humanity, and of the world itself.... [T]he call is to action. It is the Earth who calls. We ignore Her at our own peril” (Timms 1994, xii-xiii). The various prophecies in Timms’s book are presented as warnings, with assorted avertive solutions provided, such as protecting the envi¬ ronment, returning to a harmonious relationship with nature, eliminating war and nuclear weapons, embracing non-Western spiritualities, cleansing “negative plane¬ tary karma,” and specific individual actions that have the potential to alter the future: “Positive changes in the mass consciousness and constructive actions can modify our planetary karma and avert catastrophe” (1994, back cover, 307-32). Numerous other publications, websites, and events associated with the New Age movement present cross-cultural apocalyptic prophecies that warn of immi¬ nent doom but also offer the hope that worldly destruction can be prevented or diminished by human spiritual actions to save the Earth. For instance, Original

Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (Nelson 2008) is a collec¬ tion of talks presented over a sixteen-year period at Bioneers conferences, which are annual gatherings of leaders of indigenous communities and ecologically concerned “visionaries” who hope to prevent global environmental catastrophe through ancient and traditional cultural wisdom that is “reemerging at the eleventh hour to help avert global ecological and social collapse” (Nelson 2008, back cover, xvii, xxi). The avertive apocalyptic messages in the book caution that human beings are in the final days of prophecy—having violated natural laws, poisoned the Earth, and neglected the ancient “original instructions” from different cultures—but if people take social action and honor traditional ecological and spiritual values, they may divert the approaching destruction and heal the planet (2008, 8-9). Similar avertive ideas are expressed in another particularly influential publica¬ tion related to the Bioneers conferences, entitled Grandmothers Counsel the World (Schaefer 2006), in which elderly indigenous “wise women” (healers, shamans, and prophets) from various cultures express their views about impending worldly disas¬ ters and share their sacred knowledge with their oppressors in an effort to guide and save humanity (Schaefer 2006,1-2). The Grandmothers agree that “the circle of life” was broken five hundred years ago, when white people came to the Americas, but that the resulting apocalypse that now approaches may be avoided and the Earth healed if people embrace indigenous knowledge, female energies and principles, the sacredness of all life, and eco-spirituality, among other things (Schaefer 2006, 115-16). The destruction of indigenous peoples and their cultures are viewed as inte¬ grally connected to the future of the planet: as indigenous peoples suffer genocide, are displaced from sacred lands, and lose their traditions, so too does all of human¬ ity face destruction and loss. Apocalyptic and avertive prophecies, as presented in these books and Earth¬ healing beliefs, are regarded as unfolding over time and not revealed all at once, but shared “in bits and pieces” among different people like a puzzle, with the explicit purpose of guiding and instructing humanity to change for the better; however, these apocalyptic and “dire prophecies are fulfilled when humanity refuses to change” (Schaefer 2006, 116-17). Like related avertive apocalyptic beliefs, such

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prophecies are viewed as conditional and as calls to human action, in contrast with the majority of apocalyptic and millennial traditions, which regard worldly destruc¬ tion, renewal, and collective salvation as predetermined, inevitable, and unalterable by human action. The traditions of Christian apocalyptic prophecy are largely rejected in this context and in many other New Age prophecy publications and communities, which tend to view them as deterministic, repressive, and Earthdestroying doctrines. Indigenous prophecies are embraced instead as life-affirming warnings and solutions to imminent planetary destruction, as spiritual means of preventing possible apocalyptic destruction brought about by human ignorance, and Euro-American and Christian worldviews are condemned for having destroyed and oppressed indigenous cultures.

Native American Prophecies A diversity of Native American millennial traditions and prophecy beliefs express avertive apocalyptic ideas, some of which have been incorporated into New Age eschatologies in recent years. Earlier Native American apocalyptic prophecies, related to the arrival of Europeans and the destruction and displacement of Native cultures, were often catastrophically millennial, exemplified by the Ghost Dance movements of the 1870s and 1890s. As a response to cultural oppression, coloniza¬ tion, and radical cultural change, Ghost Dance movements stressed the nativist revival of traditional ways of life, the divine destruction of white settlers, the arrival of ancestor spirits, the return of the buffalo, and a millenarian revival of a previous world before the white man arrived and ruined nearly everything (Linton 1943; Pesantubbee 2000; chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld and chapter 23 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee, both in this volume). After the violent suppression of the Ghost Dance and the massacre of more than 150 Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890, there was an eighty-year period of relative silence and privacy in Native American communities about prophecy traditions. In the 1970s a resur¬ gence in prophecy beliefs occurred, as some individuals began to make their pre¬ dictions public, linked in part to the popularity and promotion of such beliefs within the New Age movement in the United States. Although these recent predic¬ tions may be influenced by popular culture, broader American prophecy tradi¬ tions, and activist movements, they are largely situated in the Native American prophetic idiom and tradition (Johnson 1996,576,584; chapter 23 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee, this volume). This second wave of prophecies exhibits continuities with previous Native mil¬ lennial traditions, but often differs in that the catastrophic predictions are not addressed exclusively to Native Americans but are now frequently directed to EuroAmericans. While some of these prophecies predict worldly catastrophe, purifica¬ tion, and renewal, many of them have avertive aspects, warning of imminent cataclysms but offering spiritual instructions to both Native Americans and EuroAmericans for preventing apocalypse. In both catastrophic millennial and avertive prophecies, the coming destruction is frequently attributed to the actions of

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Euro-Americans, caused specifically by their destructive treatment of the Native American people, the degradation of the land, greediness, other immoral behaviors, and the rejection of spiritual principles. For example, Mathew King, a Lakota, fore¬ sees cataclysmic natural disasters as punishment for Euro-American cruelty and exploitation of Native Americans, but he does not regard worldly annihilation as completely inevitable, asserting that the destruction may be mitigated if Native people are compensated for past losses, if their lands are restored to them, and if Euro-Americans acknowledge previous transgressions: “You killed our people. You killed our chiefs. You stole our land. But God gave us this land. You can’t take it away.... Maybe you can change, maybe you can stop what’s coming. There’s not much time” (Wall and Arden 1990,34-35). Belief in imminent apocalyptic destruction, along with hope for averting it, are also expressed by Manitonquat, a member of the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, who envisions two distinct directions for the future of humanity, with one path leading to worldly catastrophe and the other to renewal and an age of harmony (Manitonquat 1991, 38-39). According to Manitonquat, humanity’s current path will lead to increased violence, plagues, natural disasters, starvation, and mass death, but if human beings return to sacred traditions and change their ways, this suffering and destruction may be diminished or prevented, and people “would still be able, if they understood in time, to retrace their steps and return to the way of Creation. Those who returned to Creation would raise their children in the right way. These children would begin a whole new world, a world in harmony with all Creation” (38-39). Like various other recent Native American prophecies, Manitonquat’s mes¬ sage is inclusive, inviting non-Native peoples to embrace Native American values and spirituality in the effort to avert future disasters and renew the world. Because much of Native American spirituality is based on relationships to the land and local ecology, many Native prophecies regard the destruction of the envi¬ ronment, the displacement of Native peoples from their traditional lands, and the exploitation of the Earth by Euro-Americans as catalysts that will lead to worldly annihilation. These themes are expressed in the prophecies of Thomas Banyacya, who became a spokesman for the Hopi Traditionalist Movement. Although Banyacya’s traditional status within Hopi society has been disputed, as have some of his prophecies, he has had a significant influence within some Native American communities and among non-Native audiences and members of the New Age movement (Geertz 1994, 261-78, 329). Banyacya spent thirty years lecturing, travel¬ ing, and promoting the prophecies and a Hopi message of peace, warning of an impending apocalyptic “purification” but saying that the destruction could be averted if people changed their selfish and materialistic ways and protected the environment. He was especially concerned about the displacement of Native people from their lands and the desecration of sacred lands by non-Indians: If you don’t stop what you are doing, Nature will intervene.... Our prophecies tell us in the last stages the White Man will steal our lands. It’s all happening now. We pray and meditate and ask the Great Spirit to keep the world together a while longer. But it’s coming. The Purifers are coming. (Wall and Arden 1990,95-96)

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Banyacya argued that the mining of uranium on sacred lands to create nuclear weapons was particularly sacrilegious and disruptive of the natural balance, and he stated that Hopi prophecies predicted the invention of an apocalyptic “gourd of ashes” (the atomic bomb) that will destroy the world in a fiery cataclysm unless people change their behavior (Banyacya 1992). In December 1992 Banyacya delivered his avertive apocalyptic message to the United Nations, conveying his interpretation of a petroglyph called Prophecy Rock, which he said depicted the two paths that now stretch before humanity. The upper path, with its highly developed technology, is separated from spiritual and natural laws and will lead to chaos, while the lower path, in balance with nature and Hopi values, will lead to a golden age: “If we return to spiritual harmony and live from our hearts, we can experience a paradise in this world. If we continue only on this upper path, we will come to destruction” (Banyacya 1992). Like other recent Native prophecies, Banyacya’s messages promise that apocalyptic destruction may be averted if traditional lands are returned to Native people, and humanity unites in peace, reforms its ways, and renews its spiritual respect for the Earth. The environmentalist themes in Hopi and other Native American prophecies, and the emphasis on the redemptive power of a nature-based American Indian spirituality, have made such ideas especially popular among some members of the environmentalist movement and among various subcultural groups (i.e., the Rainbow Family of Living Light). Although catastrophic millennial beliefs about the necessary and inevitable apocalyptic purification of the Earth exist in some circles—such as the prophecies of Sun Bear (Chippewa, 1929-92)—the avertive aspects of selected prophecies have been widely promoted and embraced, with their nonfatalistic emphasis on preventing or alleviating environmental crises and other approaching catastrophes through activism, spirituality, and changes in people’s behavior. Native American prophecies and related beliefs, whether traditional expressions, recent innovations, or fictive reinventions, are a significant and influ¬ ential source of cultural critique, eco-spirituality, and avertive apocalypticism, not only among Native Americans but now among many non-Native people as well.

The Shifting Nature of Millennialist Beliefs: The Church Universal and Triumphant The prophetic beliefs and spiritual practices of the Church Universal and Triumphant provide particular insights into the dynamics of avertive apocalypti¬ cism (see also chapter 8 by Lome L. Dawson and chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, both in this volume). As Catherine Wessinger observes, the beliefs and doctrines of the Church reflect a cautious millennial optimism,” with members

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preparing for “the possibility of imminent catastrophe but utilizing spiritual tech¬ niques to avert the mayhem” (Wessinger 1997, 56). Founded as the Summit Lighthouse in 1958 by Mark L. Prophet (1918-73), the Church represents a syncre¬ tism of religious traditions, including Christianity, Eastern religions, Theosophy, Ascended Master beliefs, mysticism and occultic ideas, and aspects of the “I AM” Religious Activity founded by Guy Ballard (1878-1939) and Edna Ballard (18861971) in the 1930s, as well as patriotic, anticommunist, and conspiratorial views. After Mark Prophet’s death, his wife Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939-2009) became the leader of the group, and as the Anointed Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood she claimed to have received numerous messages from Ascended Masters, who include Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Archangel Raphael, the eighteenthcentury French nobleman Saint Germain, Ray-O-Light, K-17, and Masters familiar to the Theosophical Society: El Morya, Lord Maitreya, and Sanat Kumara. In the Church Universal and Triumphant these Ascended Masters are believed to guide the world and help humanity fulfill the “cosmic destiny of the millions of souls evolving on the planet earth” (Prophet 1987, i). In the early 1980s the Church, which had its headquarters near Malibu, California, purchased thousands of acres of land several miles north of Yellowstone National Park in Montana. The group’s members were told to gather their belong¬ ings and move to the Royal Teton Ranch in order to prepare for possible apocalyptic destruction and escape the spiritual darkness of the east and west coasts of the United States (Whitsel 2003, 80). Several communities were established in Paradise Valley, Montana, and families joined together to build fallout shelters. Ms. Prophet announced that the shelters were being built in preparation for the descent of twenty-five thousand years of negative karma, which in all likelihood would be made manifest on Earth in the form of cataclysmic disasters, including a Soviet Union nuclear-armed missile attack against the United States. To counter the effects of this negative karma, Church members practice a spiritual technique called “decreeing” (a form of mind-over-matter chanting, prayer, or command), which is believed to combat evil, avert danger, and “attune the planet to the power of light (God) in the universe” (Whitsel 2003, 36, 80; Wessinger 1997, 57). Prophet and her staff viewed the Royal Teton Ranch in part as a spiritual retreat where members could focus their decreeing and collective spiritual energies in an effort to avert worldly cataclysm and cleanse society of destructive forces (Whitsel 2003, 80; Dowbenko 2009b). While the group’s literature and beliefs express progressive mil¬ lennial ideas of gradual human perfection and the attainment of a golden era, throughout the 1980s the group increasingly emphasized the alternative scenario of approaching worldly catastrophe. As Brad Whitsel notes, “Although prayers, decrees, and other spiritual exercises were used to avert worldly catastrophe, the specter of an apocalyptic event preoccupied the members of the church” (2003,84). In anticipation of possible nuclear apocalypse, the Church began extensive sur¬ vivals preparations with the hope of not only enduring the cataclysm but also passing on its spiritual beliefs to future generations of “lightbearers” and establish¬ ing a New Age in the post-apocalyptic world. The survivalist ethos was framed in

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terms of the biblical story of Noah and the ark: food, water, and all of the items necessary for a post-apocalyptic scenario were assembled. Although some writers and the media often stated that Prophet absolutely predicted a nuclear attack to occur on 15 March 1990, according to Phillip Lucas (2006), Prophet actually speci¬ fied a range of dates for potential nuclear cataclysm, with 15 March 1990 as one seri¬ ous possibility. During this period, members intensified their preparations, transported hundreds of tons of food into the shelters, and participated in practice drills; many spent nights in the shelters prior to the expected attack. Throughout this tense time, members continued to decree to mitigate the catastrophic effects of negative karma and perhaps prevent the apocalyptic event. When 15 March arrived, Church members descended into shelters and some prayed and decreed throughout the night, while others apparently considered the event a “test run.” After 15 March passed uneventfully, Prophet told her congregation that the next predicted date for the catastrophic arrival of thousands of years of negative karma would occur on 23 April 1990, and if that date passed without a crisis, the danger of worldly destruc¬ tion would decrease (Lucas 2006). After the intense emotion leading up to the 15 March and 23 April 1990 dates, at least half of the three to four thousand members who had moved to Montana left the area, some in disillusionment, others because they believed the threat of nuclear holocaust had passed, and others for economic reasons and the lack of jobs in the region (Lucas 2006; Whitsel 2003,115). In the fall of 1991 Prophet responded to the perceived failure of her predictions by informing her Church that “its prayers and preparedness during the last year had been the reason for the prevention of nuclear war.” In a type of “test of faith” expla¬ nation, she said that “the group’s very act of preparing the shelters had forestalled a calamity” and that the apocalypse had been avoided because of the faith of the members (Whitsel 2003,121). As Valerie Dowbenko, a member of the Church at the time, recalls: Clare Prophet said that the reason there was not a nuclear war was because we had all followed the orders of the Ascended Masters and gone through the entire Shelter Cycle. Because everyone was obedient, because we all prayed through the entire situation, our prayers had prevented the End. More importantly however, the collective actions of the group—committing so fully to building the bomb shelters and doing the “drills”—it was enough to prove there are faithful and obedient people in the world, and the apocalypse was averted. (Dowbenko 2009b)

In this way the “failure” of the prophecy was transformed into an ex post facto con¬ firmation of faithfulness, emphasizing the spiritual power and devotion of Church members, reassuring them of the efficacy of their actions, and bolstering the faith of those who continued to live together in the community. Furthermore, the intense Shelter Cycle preparations and experiences ultimately may have reinforced com¬ mitment to the group and functioned as a rite of passage for some members.2 Prophet also said the media had misconstrued and exaggerated the “failure” of her 15 March 1990 prophecy, since it was not a definite and irrefutable prediction; she stated that the construction of the shelters was an “insurance policy” against potential nuclear disaster (Whitsel 2003,118). Prophet had previously asserted on a

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number of occasions that through preparation, decreeing, and keeping faith with the Ascended Masters (for instance, by following the instructions to build the fall¬ out shelters), Church members could prevent apocalypse from occurring (Lucas 2006). Like Old Testament prophets who warned the wayward in attempts to pre¬ vent their destruction, Prophet explained that her prophecies were avertive fore¬ warnings and not declarations of inevitable and unchangeable future events. This avertive view of prophecy is reflected in Prophet’s subsequent book, Saint Germains Prophecy for the New Millennium (Prophet, Spadaro, and Steinman 1999), in which she states that the function of prophecy is to alert humanity and offer predictions that motivate changes in behavior to prevent disaster. As an example, she recounts the Old Testament story of Jonah, whose apocalyptic prophecy, delivered to the Ninevites, motivates them to repent and thus saves them from annihilation. Prophet’s presentation of this particular story is revealing, reiterating the belief that prophecies are not “set in stone,” and when they fail they actually may have success¬ fully fulfilled their avertive function by preventing apocalyptic destruction; how¬ ever, sometimes overly righteous prophets and their followers egotistically and cruelly desire the fulfillment of cataclysmic prophecies, even if this is against the will of God (Prophet, Spadaro, and Steinman 1999,5-13). In the years following Prophet’s retirement from its leadership in 1999, the Church has deemphasized predictions of worldly cataclysm, in some cases even redefining the battle of Armageddon in a seemingly amillennialist and individualis¬ tic manner, as a personal battle of the soul with the forces of light and dark fighting for the individual (Prophet and Prophet 2005, 202-5). Worldly catastrophe is still considered a possibility, but the Church apparently does not regard physical destruc¬ tion as a necessary event for the coming of the millennial age, claiming that it may be attained in a progressive, noncatastrophic manner. According to Dowbenko, the more recent and younger members of the Church, who did not participate in the apocalypse-driven era, tend to support an optimistic and progressive millennial view, focusing on the potential golden age and viewing themselves as instruments for initiating its arrival (Dowbenko 2009a; 2009b). Ultimately, the dynamic and variable beliefs associated with the Church Universal and Triumphant not only demonstrate the ways that apocalyptic movements may emphasize catastrophic, avertive, progressive, or amillennialist beliefs over time, but also show how such ideas may be interconnected or coexist and how they are transformed in response to changing cultural, situational, or individual contexts.3

Conclusion As this survey of avertive apocalypticism indicates, ideas about preventing or fore¬ stalling worldly destruction are diverse, widespread, and malleable. Unlike strictly catastrophic millennial views, which regard the annihilation of world as inevitable,

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necessary, and part of a divine plan, avertive apocalyptic beliefs express the notion that the world is not irredeemably evil or absolutely doomed. Like progressive mil¬ lennial ideas, human agency is emphasized, as the actions of human beings not only may save the world from destruction, but in some cases may bring about a perfect age. However, these avertive beliefs and prophecy traditions that stress human effort and choice are characterized by a conditional attitude about the possibility of pre¬ venting apocalypse, as the avoidance of apocalypse is never guaranteed but always contingent upon human action, superhuman dispensation, grace, intervention, or forgiveness. The majority of avertive beliefs discussed here are expressions of avertive millennialism, as these ideas about preventing the End are frequently coupled with the promise of a coming millennial paradise and collective salvation. Although human agency and free will are emphasized in avertive beliefs and practices, in most instances these preventive actions must follow the mandates of divine beings, prophets, or a superhuman plan, and apocalyptic destruction can only be prevented if people act in accordance with the divine will or superhuman decrees. While God or otherworldly forces may respond to human decisions and actions and intervene to save the world from destruction, human beings must adhere to the will of a transcendent source, and human agency is ultimately subor¬ dinate to a master plan, reflecting the inherently deterministic tendencies that char¬ acterize millennial beliefs in general. Nonetheless, unlike non-avertive beliefs that deny the efficacy of human action, avertive apocalyptic ideas maintain that an inter¬ active or reciprocal relationship with divine or superhuman forces exists: human beings may respond to such forces, which are responsive to human efforts; and human action is crucial for worldly salvation. Similar to progressive millennial ideas, avertive beliefs may compel people to confront genuine apocalyptic threats and may inspire attempts to alleviate suffering and injustice, which may result in efforts at social reform or societal transforma¬ tion. Avertive ideas and prophecies also may be used to coerce and manipulate peo¬ ple and on some occasions may result in violent actions, particularly when such beliefs express radically dualistic ideas that condemn others who must be destroyed to avert worldly catastrophe or societal decay. For example, avertive apocalyptic ideas may have influenced revolutionary millennial movements that have attempted to “cleanse” the world of perceived evil and corruption and thereby accelerate through violent actions the arrival of a millennial Reich or ideal state, such as Hitler’s National Socialism in Germany (see chapter 27 by David Redles, this volume). Further research is needed on the ways that avertive beliefs might motivate violent acts, or social reformist efforts, in both religious and secular contexts. A number of other topics relating to avertive apocalypticism deserve additional inquiry. Of particular interest is the relationship between failed prophecies and apparently after-the-fact avertive rationalizations, which may be understood emically as an apocalypse prevented due to the exceptional faith and avertive efforts of believers. An awareness of the prominence and acceptance of avertive ideas by mem¬ bers of religious groups seems especially important when considering the various factors that influence the persistence of faith and commitment when a predicted

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catastrophe does not occur. Among the many other topics worthy of scholarship are the significance of avertive ideas within secular views of imminent apocalypse; the role of avertive ideas in the environmentalist movement; issues of gender and belief in the avertive power of female principles and deities; avertive prophecies and cove¬ nant relationships with deities; avertive apocalyptic themes in contemporary film and popular culture; and avertive views, prophets, and charisma. Avertive apocalypticism constitutes an ancient and ongoing expression of belief that exists cross-culturally. Further comparative studies and theoretical analyses of the centrality and variety of avertive belief are needed, with particular attention given to the variable and shifting nature of such beliefs. The avertive apocalyptic ideas of people reflect specific cultural and social circumstances, often expressing current fears, hopes, and issues of ultimate concern. The continued analysis of the dynamics of such ideas is crucial for an expanded understanding of the complexity and enduring appeal of apocalyptic and millennial thought and practice.

NOTES 1. Although avertive apocalypticism is a newly proposed term, such beliefs have been previously described as conditional apocalypticism (Wojcik 1997,187-89; 209-11); the term avertive apocalypticism has been suggested by Catherine Wessinger to encompass such ideas, while Richard Landes refers to such beliefs as “Ninevite apocalyptic” or “prophetic” (Frontline 1999). The avertive aspects of some prophecies in biblical tradition that may motivate people to repent and change their ways in order to prevent destruction have been referred to as “conditional prophecies,” because they “express God’s intention to act in a certain way if a particular course of action obtains or if people behave in a certain way.... Their fulfillment depends—or is conditional—upon the way their recipients respond to them” (Rice 1985,79). Some beliefs and ritual actions have less explicitly conditional and avertive functions, and instead of warning of worldly destruction and calling for repentance, they are performed to preserve and regenerate human existence. For example, the ritual performances of Dreamtime stories by some Australian Aboriginal groups not only convey ancestral wisdom and tribal mythology but are enacted in part to sustain and renew the world. Among the Warlpiri people, ancient sacred songs and ceremonies are believed to be unalterable and eternal, and if they are not performed correctly, they will endanger or end existence (Manley 1998,11). In this regard, these sacred ceremonies are implicitly avertive, as their cyclic enactment ensures the continuation of life and sacred mythic realms, and perhaps the survival of divine beings as well. Similarly, widespread winter solstice ceremonies that have been performed historically and cross-culturally to reverse the increasing darkness of winter or prevent the “death” of the sun seem to have an implicitly avertive purpose. Sacred bonfires, ritual dances, and battles between the forces of life and death, or darkness and light, not only reenact the return of the sun but in some cases are believed to cause its rebirth or return. Analogous practices involving the “magical control of sun” and the renewal or rekindling of its energies of light and heat appear to be both regenerative of life and avertive of apocalypse, in those instances in which it is believed that

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death, darkness, or destruction will occur if such practices are not performed (see Frazer 1976,90-92,745-53)2. Comparable after-the-fact avertive explanations have been given in instances of seemingly failed prophecies; a well-known example is presented in the study When Prophecy Fails (Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter 1956). After Dorothy Martin’s predictions of a catastrophic flood and the salvation of the chosen by flying saucers did not transpire, she revealed that God prevented the destruction and that the world had been saved because of the intense faith of believers (169-70). 3. A relevant example of the changing nature of beliefs about the immediacy of apocalypse is illustrated by the history of the Seventh-day Adventist movement. As Seventh-day Adventism expanded and its interactions with government and broader civil society increased, emphasis shifted to a less imminent view of the End, and the timing of Christ’s expected return was recalculated and extended further into the future. Some Seventh-day Adventists believe they can forestall the apocalypse and “prolong the future of America” in avertive efforts that will allow them more time to spread the Adventist message through missionary work, by trying to postpone certain events predicted to occur prior to Christ’s Second Coming (such as the passage of a law mandating worship on Sunday). They have attempted “to delay the end in order to have greater opportunity to preach that it was at hand” (Lawson 1995,355).

REFERENCES Amick-Elder, Davena. 2009. Personal communication, 19 June. Arguelles, Jose. 1987. The Mayan Factor. Santa Fe: Bear and Company. Arthur, Shawn. 2008. “Wicca, the Apocalypse and the Future of the Natural World.” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2, no. 2 (June): 199-217. Banyacya, Thomas. 1992. “The Hopi Message to the United Nations General Assembly.” 10 December, banyacya.indigenousnative.org/un92.html. Beckley, Timothy Green. 1980. Psychic and UFO Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, N.J.: Inner Light. Bell, Art, and Jennifer L. Osborn (ed.). 1997. The Quickening: Today’s Trends, Tomorrow’s World. New Orleans: Paper Chase. Carson, Rachel. 2002/1962. Silent Spring. 40th anniv. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Catton, William. 1982. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Cuneo, Michael W. 1997. The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Curran, Douglas. 1985. In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space. New York: Abbeville. Dowbenko, Valerie. 2009a. “‘Living Religion’: Religious Practices of Young Adults, Spiritual Creativity, and the Dynamics of a New Religious Movement.” M.A. thesis, University of Oregon. -. 2009b. Personal communication, 21 April.

Ehrlich, Paul R. 1968. The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine. Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. 1956. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. New York: Harper & Row.

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Frazer, Sir James George. 1976/1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Abridged ed. New York: Macmillan. Frontline. 1999. “Apocalypse! A Roundtable Discussion.” WGBH Educational Foundation. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/roundtable/. Geertz, Armin W. 1994. The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gore, Al. 2006. An Inconvenient Truth. Directed by Davis Guggenheim. Paramount Classics. FFalsell, Grace. 1986. Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War. Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Company. Johnson, Willard. 1996. “Contemporary Native American Prophecy in Historical Perspective.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 3 (Autumn): 575-612. Lawson, Ronald. 1995. “Sect-State Relations: Accounting for the Differing Trajectories of Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Sociology of Religion 56, no. 4: 351-77.

Linton, Ralph. 1943. “Nativistic Movements.” American Anthropologist 45: 230-40. Lucas, Phillip C. 2006. E-mail communication. 22 December. Manitonquat (Medicine Story). 1991. Return to Creation: A Survival Manual for Native and Natural People. Spokane: Bear Tribe. Manley, Roger, ed. 1998. The End Is Near! Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium, and Utopia. Los Angeles: Dilettante. McGinn, Bernard. 1979. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press. McKibben, Bill. 1989. The End of Nature. New York: Random House. Nelson, Melissa K., ed. 2008. Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future. Rochester, Vt.: Bear & Company. Our Lady of the Roses, Mary, Help of Mothers: An Introductory Booklet on the Apparitions of Bayside. N.d. Bayside, N.Y.: Our Lady of the Roses, Mary, Help of Mothers Shrine. Pesantubbee, Michelene E. 2000. “From Vision to Violence: The Wounded Knee Massacre.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 62-81. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. 1987/1976. The Great White Brotherhood in the Culture, History, and Religion of America. Livingston, Mont.: Summit University Press. Prophet, Elizabeth Clare, with Patricia R. Spadaro and Murray L. Steinman. 1999. Saint Germain’s Prophecy for the New Millennium. Corwin Springs, Mont.: Summit University Press. Prophet, Mark L., and Elizabeth Clare Prophet. 2005. Paths of Light and Darkness. Corwin Springs, Mont.: Summit University Press. Rice, Richard. 1985. God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will. Minneapolis: Bethany House. Saliba, John A. 1995. “Religious Dimensions of UFO Phenomena.” In The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, edited by James R. Lewis, 15-64. Albany: State University of New York Press. Schaefer, Carol. 2006. Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet. Boston: Trumpeter. Schell, Jonathan. 1982. The Fate of the Earth. New York: Avon. Smith, Simon G. 2003. “Opening a Channel to the Stars: The Origins and Development of the Aetherius Society.” In UFO Religions, edited by Christopher Partridge, 84-102. London: Routledge. Timms, Moira. 1994. Beyond Prophecies and Predictions: Everyone’s Guide to the Coming Changes. New York: Bahantine.

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Wall, Steve, and Harvey Arden. 1990. Wisdomkeepers: Meetings with Native American Spiritual Elders. Hillsboro, Ore.: Beyond Words. Wessinger, Catherine. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 47-59. New York: Routledge. -. 2000a. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. -, ed. 2000b. Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Whitsel, Bradley C. 2003. The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Apocalyptic Movement. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Wojcik, Daniel. 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York: New York University Press. Worldwide Interfaith Healing Circles. 2008. “Topic: Mother Earth in Real Danger—Prayers Needed!” www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=722i8q)st=ni285i. Discussion board accessed 27 April 2008.

CHAPTER 5

NATIVIST MILLENNIALISM JEAN E. ROSENFELD

As they rode along, the Messiah flew above them in the air, teaching them new songs for the new dance. Dee Brown (1971, 408) How should one regard Dee Brown’s fanciful statement about Kicking Bear and his Sioux companions, as they returned on the newly completed transcontinental rail¬ road from their visit to Wovoka, a Paiute shaman, who preached the imminent res¬ urrection of the ancestors? First, by acknowledging that its poetry rings truer than anthropologist Ralph Linton’s prosaic analysis of “nativistic” phenomena (1943). The “new dance” was a ritual innovation of Wodziwob, a.k.a. Fish Lake Joe, who had received visions of a “georestorative” transformation of the world twenty years ear¬ lier (see chapter 23 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee, this volume). His Ghost/Spirit Dance was a supernova among Native American new religious movements that caught the attention of social astronomers as distant as New Zealand, where histo¬ rians observed that a like enthusiasm—Pai Marire (Good and Peaceful)—had swept over North Island, New Zealand, in the 1860s like a “fire in the fern” (Cowan 1922, 19-20), detonating a twelve-year series of wars over the disputed settlement of the land by British colonists. Second, to record that Wovoka “flew” is to affirm that sha¬ manism is a transformative phenomenon as ancient as the Khoi-San paintings in the Drakensberg mountains, South Africa, or the cave masterpieces of Dordogne, France. Visions inform shamans, who must answer their divine call to bring a mes¬ sage of salvation to their people (Eliade 1964). “Religious experience is practical” (Wach 1951, 33). Its devotees act to gain access to ultimate reality and the powerfrom-beyond by stepping over symbolic thresholds in a variety of ways. Visions, dreams, oracles, songs, dances, invocations, and rituals—praxis and gnosis—ensure food, fecundity, health, and peace. All are vital to the survival of any social group

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(Hittman 1973; Johnson 1975; chapter 23 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee, this volume; Neihardt 1932). Thus, religion is indispensible, fundamental, and pragmatic. The trick is to learn about how it works “to perpetuate a culture... when a society becomes conscious that there are cultures other than its own and that the existence of its own culture is threatened” (Linton 1943, 230). The phenomenon of nativism ranges in intensity from an insular reaffirmation of one’s own culture to a truculent xenophobia (Linton 1943; Bennett 1988).1 It may manifest as a defensive response to a perceived attack on one’s territory and tribe, a symbolic defense of custom and ethos, a political movement to repel invaders, an irredentist struggle to reclaim ancestral territory, or any other inventive means of resistance against forceful cultural change. According to Ralph Linton, nativistic movements are a ubiquitous subtype of acculturation,2 constituting a range of responses from native groups threatened with depopulation, loss of land, subordina¬ tion, and extinction of treasured resources and values (Linton 1943; Hittman 1973). They are also inherently transactional; natives desire elements of the invaders’ culture even as they reject their influence, and prophets broadcast what bargain must be struck with power-ffom-beyond in order to reverse the status quo. The myriad means employed may be as symbolic as a dance to resurrect the dead or as strategic as a holy war. This article examines five nativistic millennial movements that are culturally, geo¬ graphically, and temporally dissimilar to find the similarities that bind them into a single category: the Ghost Dance, the Common Law Freemen, Pai Marire, “cargo” cults, and al-Qaeda/the International Jihad. Each conforms to defining features of nativist millennialism that began to be extrapolated in the mid-twentieth century with the appearance of pioneering monographs by anthropologists Ralph Linton and Anthony F. C. Wallace. Otherwise disparate nativist millennial movements share the following defining characteristics across cultures, time, and place: irredentism, a reli¬ gious “ultimate concern,” magic and miracle, symbolic transactions that reverse loss and/or debt to the invaders, and nostalgia for an idealized past state of affairs.

Characteristics of Nativist Millennial Movements Ralph Linton proposed a paradigm of nativism based on four types, only one of which, the revivalistic-magical nativistic movement, is millenarian (1943, 233-34).3 Anthony F. C. Wallace examined the nativist movement of the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake and took note of several hundred other “revitalization movements” variously subtyped as nativistic, revivalistic, vitalistic, messianic, and millenarian. Although a given movement might exhibit characteristics of more than one subtype, all engage in “deliberate, organized, conscious efforts by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture” (Wallace 1956,265).

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To extrapolate the grammar of dynamic acculturation and protest requires attention to data generated by those who strive to recover what is perceived to be threatened by invaders. Foreign ideas, practices, institutions, and systems, as well as colonizers or armies, may be invasive. Perception is paramount, because resistance is born in the minds of autochthonous people who experience stress, hardship, mis¬ ery, frustration, humiliation, colonialism, imperialism, and/or anomie. Finding the nativist millennial paradigm involves mining the data on a variety of movements to extract their defining features and building the paradigm as more cases are analyzed. There is never a perfect fit between a formal type and the natu¬ rally occurring movements, but a paradigm should function as a combined frame¬ work of characteristics shared by all members of a type and not found in combination in other revitalization movements. Frank Graziano searches for “major motifs of nativist millennialism” in New World rebellions (1999,110), while Norman Cohn focuses on millennial “patterns which in their main outlines recur again and again, revealing similarities” at different times, in different parts of the world, and in soci¬ eties that differ in “technologies and institutions, values and beliefs” (1957, xiv). Despite their idiosyncrasies, nearly all nativist millennial movements exhibit the following major motifs, which in combination yield a paradigm. The salient feature of nativist movements is irredentism, the drive to redeem territory that members of a nation claim as exclusively theirs. Nativist millennial movements arise in the context of actual or perceived invasion of homeland, the ancestors’ land (Wallace 1956, 264). The Maori prophet Rua Kenana responded to a divine voice, “If your wish is for me to save only people, I won’t help, but if it is to save the land, then I shall carry out this task” (Webster 1979,158). The claim to the land is deontological (a necessary obligation), because homeland is a gift to a cho¬ sen people from a superhuman source, whose power is invoked to take back the land from foreign invaders. The land symbolizes collective identity as a “nation” (ethnos, gens), a commu¬ nity of people that includes the dead and those yet to be born. “We were the land’s before the land was ours,” recited Robert Frost in his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on 20 January 1961. The nation is a genealogical or a Active kin group, since nationhood can be inherited or symboli¬ cally constructed. Flomeland, like corpus, is bounded and set apart, sacred (Douglas 1966, 121-28); and trespass by the impure stranger is sacrilege, which incites attempts—retributive and/or magical—to cleanse the land of pollution. Acts of trespass ignited the nation-founding Land Wars from i860 to 1872 in New Zealand, which the Maori lost, although they have since gained back some “treasures” by other means (Rosenfeld 1999,23-24). Homeland invasion is a religious offense that may trigger violent attempts at redress. Second, nativist millennialism is a religious phenomenon motivated by ultimate concern, Paul Tillich’s fruitful theological concept. Ultimacy is the basis of religious experience, according to Joaquim Wach (1951,32). Robert D. Baird defines ultimate concern as “more important than anything in the universe for the person [or group] involved” (cited in Wessinger 2000a, 7-8). For purposes of this article, ultimate

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concern is the predominant goal, mission, or commitment that members of a collective acknowledge or demonstrate that they strive for and are willing to die for. The ultimate concern of nativist millennial groups is the regaining, renewal, and repopulation of the homeland and the concomitant disappearance of the invaders. The Millennium originally denoted Christs thousand-year reign on Earth in Revelation 20:6, but since similar motifs of world transformation have been found in non-Christian myths, “millennialism” has come to signify any doctrine of salvation or redemption that is collective, total, and realized on this Earth (Cohn 1957, xiii, 4; Wessinger 2000a, 6-7; Graziano 1999, 8).4 Third, nativist millennial visions and modes of transforming the world are magical and miraculous. The new millennial world is heralded by signs such as cos¬ mic prodigies, the return of a hero or god, the resurrection of the ancestors, the sudden repossession of the land and disappearance of the invaders, and an altered landscape. In many cases of nativist millennialism, the myth of a golden age incor¬ porates motifs from Christian and indigenous religions that are found in the post¬ contact millennial movements occurring among the aboriginal peoples of the Americas, Oceania, and Africa (Wallace 1972; Graziano 1999; Eliade 1970; Worsley 1968; Ngavirue 1990; Steyn 2000). Both Utopians and millennialists hope for an ideal world. What distinguishes millennialism from secular utopianism is its belief in efficacious magic—prophecy and oracle; the intervention of god(s) and messiahs; and the use of names, num¬ bers, and other symbols to create the new world. “The word, in and of itself, is pow¬ erful” (van der Leeuw 1986, 422). Millennialists typically favor transformations and reversals potentiated by sacred acts, incantations, dreams, prophecies, visions, signs, and wonders. Nativists magically manipulate symbols that are “more or less familiar elements of [their] culture to which new meanings have been attached” (Linton 1943, 232, emphasis added). They consciously enact a collective salvation that is made possible through access to a power from beyond the visible world. Fourth, nativist millennial movements are symbolically or sacrificially transac¬ tional. Members frequently relinquish their daily work and material possessions in exchange for greater wealth to be “unleashed from a sympathetic spirit world” (Trompf 1991, 203). Among Pacific Islanders, these acts of “retributive logic” were a kind of payback, in which the invaders’ knowledge, goods, and status were thaumaturgically transferred to the natives as redress for a perceived imbalance of power and wealth (ibid.). Symbolic transactions are an “empowerment process” (Dyer !997> 53)- Common Law enthusiasts publicly renounce their identity as U.S. citizens and give themselves new names, addresses, and titles as “Freemen characters.” Followers of Maori messiah Rua Kenana trekked to the base of a sacred mountain in anticipation of the return of a diamond symbolizing their tribal homeland (Webster 1979, 169). The ascetic renunciation of Muslim millionaire Osama bin Laden inspires al-Qaeda “martyrs” to sacrifice comfort and lives for the certainty of Allah’s victory over infidel “Crusaders.” Fifth, nativist millennial movements are nostalgic. Among millenarians, only nativists anticipate a future cosmos that is “modeled directly on the past” (Linton

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93

*943> 232). “Nativists long for a return to an idealized past golden age” (Wessinger 2000b, 80). The International Jihad fights for an eschatological khilafa (caliphate) modeled on past caliphates, and the Ghost Dance promised the eternal return of dead relatives and the buffalo (Hittman 1973, 248). Common Law millennialists separate themselves from the “satanic” United States in order to restore their vision of the antebellum South. Cargo cultists expected the arrival of material wealth, a motif in native myths of creation and sacrifice by gods and heroes such as Mansren in New Guinea (Worsley 1968, 131-35) and Hainuwele in Indonesia (Eliade 1963,104-7).5 Thus, the nativist millennial paradigm combines irredentism, ultimate con¬ cern, magic and miracle, sacrificial transactions, and nostalgia, to delineate one type of revitalization movement that arises only in the context of perceived invasion of the homeland by foreigners, who threaten what native peoples value most. “A nativ¬ ist millennial movement consists of people who feel under attack by a foreign colo¬ nizing government that is destroying their traditional way of life and is removing them from their land” (Wessinger 2000b, 80, emphasis added). Paradoxically, acculturation introduces foreign items and motifs that are eagerly adopted by natives (Lacey 1990,194,197,199; Ngavirue 1990). Nativist mil¬ lennial movements are syncretistic, selecting desired elements of foreign culture that enhance the restoration of their society. Handsome Lake revived Iroquois religion by fusing it with Christianity in his written Code, which formed the basis of an enduring church centuries later (Wallace 1972, 8, 334-35). Nativists seek power wherever they find it, whether it inheres in the invaders’ trove of knowl¬ edge or their own ancient ways, which is why jihadists reject secularism and embrace communications technology, or Maori “Israelites” accept the Old Testament as the genealogy of their ancestors. Interpretation matters. Elements of the foreign invading culture may be utilized to serve the goal of taking back the traditional world. Nativist millennial movements occur in a specific type of context: they are likely to arise only after a sudden rupture from traditional modes of orientation is provoked by a more forceful culture. Invaded populations undergo a “feeling of disjunction” or “sense of discontinuity” between their old ways and the new order (Trompf 1991, 200). In North America, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, for example, the experience of time as rhythmic and cyclical was pre¬ empted by the invaders’ linear time fixed by clocks and work schedules. Invasion was an Endzeit—a cosmic upheaval; the neue Zeit was a corrective response envisioned in the dreams of nativist prophets (Trompf 1991, 200; compare to Neihardt 1932). The Pai Marire founder, Te Ua, lamented his “forsaken” people in their island “standing broken in two halves” (Rosenfeld 1999, 1). Thus, the end of the world happens to colonized peoples; it is not imagined. The religious response to invasion utilizes whatever can be devised from the materials at hand to reverse cosmic despair, because the alternative is annihilation of what the people hold to be most essential: life, standing, wealth, customs, health, fertility, and identity.

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Case Studies There is no counting the possible ways of imagining the Millennium and the route to it. Norman Cohn (1957, xiv) The following instances of nativist millennial movements were chosen because they appeared disparate and unrelated, although two of them—the Lakota Sioux and Euro-American rural farmers—occupied an overlapping region of the American West. The Ghost Dance sprang up in Nevada and was crushed in Dakota Territory. A century later, some of the descendants of the white settlers who dis¬ placed Native American tribes practiced Common Law magic to reclaim their expropriated farms. The Pai Marire niu cult of the Maori in the 1850s and 1860s was compared to the 1880s Ghost Dance movement by a New Zealand historian, although there was no contact between them (Cowan 1922,19-20). Likewise, the Melanesian cargo cults of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rose up a thou¬ sand miles from New Zealand among tribes who knew nothing of Pai Marire marchers,6 Paiute ghost dancers, or American farmers. Al-Qaeda/the International Jihad will be examined as a contemporary evolving case of nativist millennialism. Four of these movements are ethnologically distinct: Native American, European American, Polynesian, and Melanesian. The International Jihad is an offshoot of Sunni Arab culture but includes non-Arabs. Members are called to jihad from Muslim societies that span half the globe. Each case conforms to the nativist mil¬ lennial paradigm, which is expressed in a variety of creative guises and is repli¬ cated in other places and times.

The Ghost Dance In 1870 a Nevada shaman named Wodziwob dreamed of the Ghost Dance ritual after drought and epidemic threatened the future of the Walker River Paiute people. He prayed for the return of those who had died. Twenty years later, the son of a follower of Wodziwob, a shaman named Wovoka, dreamed of his dead tribespeople partici¬ pating in their old pursuits, which had been curtailed by the loss of homeland and food-gathering places to Euro-American settlers. Since Wodziwob’s vision, the Walker River Paiutes had recovered from starvation, but they deeply resented the domination of white people over their homeland. God told Wovoka to deliver a mes¬ sage to his people: “Live in peace with white invaders. Don’t steal or lie. Don’t fight or make war.” Instead, God told them to perform the Ghost Dance for five days7 and promised that sickness and death would be no more and the dead would return (Johnson 1975,41-48).8 By dancing, irredentist natives would make whites disappear, bring back the ancestors, and regenerate food resources (see also chapter 23 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee, this volume).

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Wovoka’s message spread to other tribes in Nevada, California, Oregon, and the Great Plains, instilling hope in a delegation of Lakota Sioux that sought Wovoka out. In 1889 the Lakota’s Great Reservation was broken up by the U.S. government. The buffalo herds had dwindled: “The people were hungry and in despair, and many believed in the good new world that was coming. The Wasichus [white officials] gave us less than half of the beef cattle they promised us in the treaty, and these cattle were very poor” (Neihardt 1932,212). Wovoka’s message was interpreted according to the circumstances of its listen¬ ers: Sarah Winnemucca told a news reporter that a prophet had arisen to spread the message that the dead would return to exterminate whites and acculturated Native Americans like her. Kicking Bear told the Sioux that if the ghost dancers wore a rit¬ ual shirt, it would repel the army’s bullets. Because settlers and officials in Dakota Territory mistakenly feared that Lakota believers had withdrawn to a sacred site to perform a war dance, the army sent soldiers to disarm and remove them. On 29 December 1890 at Wounded Knee Creek, shots rang out when soldiers tried to take a rifle from a deaf warrior. Soldiers panicked and killed between 150 and 300 Native American men, women, and children. Twenty-five soldiers also died (Brown 1971, 417-18; Pesantubbee 2000,79). A witness to the massacre, Black Elk, declared, “A people’s dream died there.... The nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer and the sacred tree is dead” (Johnson 1975, 49). The “center” he refers to is an axis mundi,9 the sacred center at which the visible and invisible worlds intersect and from which the directions are measured and the people orient both their daily lives and ritual activities. When the sacred center is lost, chaos ensues, social pathologies and infer¬ tility increase, and population declines.

The Common Law Freemen Movement A century after the Wounded Knee massacre, an Oklahoma State University study of mortality statistics among Euro-American family farmers found that suicide had overtaken accidents as the leading cause of farmers’ deaths (Dyer 1997, 32-33). In a shocking number of cases farmers had staged car wrecks and hunting accidents in efforts to provide their families with insurance benefits that would pay off debt and stop farm foreclosures, which were occurring at an all-time high in the mid-1980s. These so-called altruistic suicides were regarded as honorable in a culture of rural Americans posited as “truly different” from the ways of urban Americans. Joel Dyer emphasizes these farmers’ ultimate concern: “Farmers’ ties to the land are their ties to their family, their history, and their God. Rural farmers would often rather die than lose their land. Many will kill before they give it up” (Dyer 1997,33). Dyer visited impacted areas of rural farmland to find out why farm suicides and other pathologies were occurring and how farms and communities were trans¬ formed by globalization and the economic consolidation of small farms by agri¬ business. Product prices fell while land prices and mortgage rates increased,

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squeezing the Caucasian, Christian population of the Great Plains out of its tradi¬ tional homeland, leaving farmers almost as disheartened as the Native Americans their grandparents had displaced. Near Lebanon, Kansas, Dyer visited the symbolic and “exact center” of America,10 a “rock pyramid bearing the United States Geological Survey seal with a tattered American flag flying overhead” and a “tiny chapel.” Inside on the wall “hangs a red, white, and blue plaque that merges a map of the United States and a cross into a single icon and contains the words, ‘Center of the United States Prayer Chapel.’” Four seats faced a small podium on which rested a Bible: “Its yellow, worn pages are open to Psalm 106.... The psalmist describes how the nation of Israel had forgotten its past, the place it had come from, and the trials it had been through. Each time it forgot there was a corresponding human tragedy” (1997, 14). Dyer interprets the oracle: “We, too, have forgotten where we came from. We no longer seem to remem¬ ber the way of life that has made us who and what we are as a nation.” To forget is to invite a “tragedy of monstrous proportions” (ibid.). A church with a flag and a Bible turned to a psalm at the center of farmers’ homeland is an expression of the predominant symbolism of Christian Identity, a syncretistic American variant of British-Israelism (Barkun 1994, 48-71; see also chapter 33 by Michael Barkun, this volume). Its Caucasian adherents believe that they alone are “true Israelites” who migrated from the Jordan River to America, where they will establish a millennial kingdom ruled by biblical law dispensed by “supreme courts” and enforced by county magistrates (Sapp 1986, 3). Christian Identity doctrine was adopted by members of antigovernment movements calling themselves “Christian Patriots” (Barkun 1994; Neiwert 1999). One such movement set up georestorative “townships” and renounced their American citizenship by means of their Common Law magical paper documents that imitated valid legal instruments of U.S. courts. Calling themselves “Freemen,” they appealed to rural dwellers who had lost their properties to confiscation and foreclosure in the 1970s and 1980s. Freemen filed liens against government officials who opposed their acts of defiance against lending institutions, the Internal Revenue Service, civil courts, and law enforcement (Neiwert 1999; Pitcavage 1997). For demoralized, indebted farmers Freemen practices offered alternatives to suicide or land loss. In 1996 the Clark family of Jordan, Montana, refused to leave their foreclosed farm, which they and resident Freemen proponents named “Justus Township.” They mounted an armed defense against one hundred agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for eighty-one days (Pitcavage 1996; Rosenfeld 2000b). In 1989, after the farm crisis and before the spread of the disruptive Freemen movement to more than thirty states, the governor of Oklahoma had created a task force to gather information in the form of letters from farmers that “provide evidence of the connection between economic stress and depression and the resulting disdain directed toward government and bankers” (Dyer 1997,20). Some names on those let¬ ters appeared years later in news stories about antigovernment activity, as a “tranquil and stable lifestyle was replaced by “paranoid conspiracy theories” (Dyer 1997, 25)

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taught by Christian Identity leaders who blamed “international Jews” and secular humanists for imposing a “new world order” on heartland residents. They believed that a secret power elite, the Illuminati, together with Jews and Freemasons, had taken over the banks, media, courts, legislatures, schools, and churches of Europe and America in order to destroy Christianity and impose the reign of the Antichrist (Noble 2010, 75~77> H9> 33°~403)- In 1986 a farmer had killed himself and his family and set his house ablaze because he did not want them to live through the Tribulation—the seven years of apocalyptic plagues before the battle of Armageddon (Dyer 1997,29—30). A decade later, Gloria Teneuvial Ward, who sought refuge with her daughters in the Clark farmhouse in 1996, wondered if the Tribulation had begun.11 Adumbrations of apocalypse pervade the writings and thoughts expressed by nativist Christian Patriots and Christian Identity believers. A local pastor in Jordan, Montana, reported that some of the Freemen spoke of this time as the advent of God’s millennial kingdom, proclaiming, “We have established God’s law on earth.” They talked about violence and tribulation, had gas masks, and carried guns (Rosenfeld 2000a, 331). Messages from a divine source instill hope and the expectation of an imminent reversal of the status quo in the hearts of those who believe that aliens are imposing their new order on the old, cherished, sacred world of the native population. Dyer contends that “tribulation, suicides, the farm crisis, antigovernment groups, rural economics, and small-town culture... are separate parts of a larger whole” (1997, 32). The antidote to foreclosure, confiscation, and suicide was sought in an “empow¬ erment process” that included Freemen Common Law courts, militia groups, and antitax organizations and their representatives, who showed up at farm auctions to proclaim a means of redemption in the form of liens and lawsuits that promised to recoup the debt farmers believed the banks and magistrates—construed as being the “satanic” U.S. government and its “prophets of Baal”—owed to them (Dyer 1997, 53; Rosenfeld 2000a, 328). One farmer, Gideon Cowan, followed the typical conver¬ sion trajectory from disillusioned victim to government resister. Encouraged by a social worker, he studied the Uniform Commercial Code, as well as documents “coming from the Library of Congress and the Federal Register” (Dyer 1997, 56). After years of research and meetings with antigovernment disciples, Cowan explained his “payback” scheme: I found that I had a remedy... to retrieve my property or recompense for my property in terms of creditory monetary value—which could be used to repurchase my property, livestock and house... a nonjudicial private security agreement in which you file a UCC-i [suit] against whoever has caused you harm and damages and loss of property. (Dyer 1997,57)

After thousands of Freemen lawsuits and liens overwhelmed the courts in a major¬ ity of states, the government struck back. Freemen leaders who took over a Montana courthouse and installed their Common Law court as the county judicial authority were arrested on racketeering charges (Pitcavage 1996). Freemen who established their autonomous “Justus Township” on the Clark family farm in 1996 were charged by the FBI with producing spurious bank drafts.

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Freemen engaged in symbolic transactions that presumably exorcised alien authority by substituting biblical law and the “organic Constitution”12 of their nos¬ talgic counterworld for the state’s civil code. To become a Freemen one filed a “quiet title” legal instrument that functioned as the rite of initiation into a pure realm that replaced evil U.S. magistrates with Freemen judges and sheriffs, in imagined imita¬ tion of English medieval common law (Ward 1996, 7).13 Freemen issued counterfeit bills and dismissed mortgages as usurious; they denounced the Internal Revenue Service as an illegal usurper of power over free men and refused to pay taxes. In Freemen Common Law terms, the quiet title released them from the Antichrist’s rule and granted them standing as separate “characters” beholden only to God’s rule. The standoff at the Clark farmhouse in 1996 was resolved after lawyers who sym¬ pathized with the Freemen, serving as “third-party intermediaries” (mediators) between the Freemen and FBI negotiators, entered the Clark farmhouse and called for group prayer. Edwin Clark asked the FBI agents to fly some of them to a jail to consult with their imprisoned leader, LeRoy M. Schweitzer, but after Schweitzer told Clark that death was preferable to capitulation, Clark returned and talked the others out of the farmhouse, because his son needed medicine and he valued his son’s life more than Common Law ideology.14 Earlier, Gloria Ward had exited the farmhouse with her two children after she received a letter from her jailed pastor affirming that God released her from her protest (Wessinger 2000c, 190-92; Rosenfeld 2000a, 335). The eighty-one-day Freemen standoff was the longest confrontation in U.S. history between law enforcement agents and a millennial movement. It was settled peacefully after FBI agents maintained a low-key, unhurried tactical presence, initi¬ ated face-to-face negotiations using innovative negotiation measures, and employed a number of third-party intermediaries.15 Contrary to conventional wisdom, mem¬ bers of nativist millennial movements weigh their options at critical times of deci¬ sion. Schweitzer, the jailed Freemen leader, decided to risk death and imprisonment rather than give up his transactional wager that God intended to replace all local, state, and federal government jurisdictions with Common Law courts and sheriffs. Gloria Ward would not leave the besieged farm to protect her children from physi¬ cal harm until she was assured that there was no spiritual danger in exiting. Edwin Clark, however, decided that the health of his son, who needed medicine and care, outweighed his love for his confiscated home. The negotiated terms upon which the diehard Freemen agreed to exit the Clark farm assured them that they would be able to argue their case against the legitimacy of the U.S. government and its agencies in federal court, thus enabling them to preserve their commitment to their ultimate concern to live only under God’s rule (Wessinger 2000c, 193; Rosenfeld 2000a, 339). Each member of a millennial movement weighs the costs of staying the course ver¬ sus leaving according to his or her commitment to the group’s ultimate concern.

Cargo Cults and Pai Marire After colonization by Europeans (Dutch, French, Germans, and British), nativists in New Guinea, the New Hebrides, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands were attracted to a

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message of cosmic regeneration spread by charismatic prophets (see also chapter 22 by Garry W. Trompf, this volume). What attracted the notice of early scholars was their unusual claim that a ship would soon arrive filled with wondrous cargo, like the coveted material goods brought from afar by the colonizers or the Japanese and Americans during and after the Second World War. Cargo would be distributed only to natives, usually by a mythical ancestor-messiah, whose name the prophet would invoke or sometimes assume, and the colonizers would depart (Lawrence 1964; Worsley 1968; Eliade 1970; Ngavirue 1990; Trompf 1991). During and after the Second World War, a series of prophets in New Guinea named themselves Mansren, after an archetypal culture hero, and prophesied the arrival of cargo and the disappearance of Dutch colonists. Their prophecies appeared to be confirmed when a Japanese force conquered the islands, but great disappointment followed after the Japanese proved more oppressive than the Dutch. Again, their prophecies of deliverance were fulfilled after the American Navy arrived with supplies more wondrous than those seen before, but the Americans selfishly hoarded for themselves what rightfully belonged to the natives. Ultimately, the hope of Mansren’s new cosmos of wealth and peace died out, but it was replaced by a more pragmatic political movement that agitated for independence. That movement succeeded when half of the island of New Guinea became the state of Papua New Guinea. The western part of the island, Irian Jaya, is still ruled by Indonesian invaders, and the hope of eventual self-determination remains unfulfilled there. Cargo cults occurred throughout Melanesia during the nineteenth and twenti¬ eth centuries. One of the first was the Tuka (Standing Upright Immortal) move¬ ment in Fiji. A Maori sailor may have told Tuka adherents about a movement to hold fast to the disappearing land in New Zealand’s North Island called Pai Marire (Good and Peaceful) (Worsley 1968, 25). Pai Marire’s founder, Te Ua Haumene, preached the return of their alienated lands and of spiritual power if his followers marched around a pole resembling a ship’s mast and repeated incantations in a mixture of English and Maori. The niu pole was symbolic of the invader’s arrival and departure on ships with tall masts, and ancient niu sticks were magically employed in old rituals to forecast victory in battle (Rosenfeld 1999,145-58). In Melanesia and Polynesia, mana is a spiritual endowment located in things or beings. It accompanies success in any endeavor, whether it is pragmatic, such as vic¬ tory over a foe, or spiritual, such as recitation of a prayer (karakia). Mana was asso¬ ciated with prestige by Raymond Firth (1940), and wealth may be an outward sign of the mana of a warrior, chief, or priest. Mircea Eliade conceived of mana as a shared, or communal, power that moved with the outward signs of success from person to person, place to place, or thing to thing. A Maori schoolteacher told me, “Mana is like a light,” meaning that it can burn brightly or be extinguished. The anticipation of a ship filled with cargo and the return of the hero may signify the return of numinous mana to the homeland and its people. In this way a cosmic regeneration takes place: old ways are restored magically by the power from beyond manifested in the treasures brought by ships.

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Anticipation of the magical and sudden return of food, customs, ancestors, fer¬ tility, and territory characterizes Polynesian and Melanesian nativist movements, as well as Native American ghost dancers. Mana is associated with Polynesian sacred places and power is associated with Native American sacred places. Maori healers in the 1850s confronted an epidemic of sickness incurred after sufferers had unwit¬ tingly walked over abandoned sacred places. Only the healers could identify the sites and perform the appropriate rituals to remove the sickness. Prayer and magic tend to overlap, because word is spiritually efficacious. Prayer also has concrete purposes, as do cargo cults: to locate sources of sickness, heal, restore fertility, multiply live¬ stock, ensure victory, repel harm, and redress cosmic imbalances. Te Ua’s mixedlanguage incantations appropriated the magic power of English words used by colonial surveyors and soldiers in order to reverse foreign occupation of tribal lands. An offshoot of Pai Marire was founded by Rua Kenana, who imitated the Jews of the Old Testament and reclaimed “Zion” for his people by marrying the daugh¬ ters of chiefs associated with contiguous territories threatened by imminent foreign occupation. Thus, elements of foreign culture were used to safeguard the old ways by innovative leaders who exhibited mana and restored it to the tribe. Charismatic leaders in the Pacific Islands were arrested and intentionally humiliated by police and the media, labeled as mad, demeaned as ignorant, jailed, and even executed. In all instances, the cosmic regeneration did not materialize in a millennial kingdom as expected.

Al-Qaeda/the International Jihad I saw in a dream, we were playing a soccer game against the Americans. When our team showed up in the field, they were all pilots. Abu al-Hasan al-Masri That was a good omen for us. Osama bin Laden16 Muslim apocalyptic myth has assimilated millennial motifs since 1921, when the Allied Powers began partitioning the Ottoman Empire into European-style nation¬ states. Western culture inspired the secular Ataturk revolution in Asia Minor, as well as postcolonial socialist dictatorships in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. In response to modernity and acculturation, the broad-based movement of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) agitated for the implementation of sharia (Islamic law) in postmonarchic Egypt. After Gamal Abdul Nassar suppressed the Ikhwan, clandes¬ tine groups split off to implement their bellicose doctrine, “jihad of the sword,” based on Qur’an 9.5: “Then when the sacred months have slipped away, slay the polytheists wherever you find them, seize them, beset them, lie in ambush for them

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everywhere. The jihadist insurgency proclaimed that it is the individual obligation (Jard ayn) of every Muslim to overthrow “apostate” regimes, institute sharia, and reclaim Muslim lands, religion, and people from infidel values, mores, and foreign occupation (Jansen 1986, 195, 199—200). After Anwar al-Sadat made peace with Israel in 1979, Jamaat al-Islamiyya, Tanzim al-Jihad, and Egyptian Jihad embarked on assassinations and bombings in the Valley of the Nile in order to bring down secular rule. National jihadist movements waged attacks against infidel hegemony in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Algeria; cultural imperialism in Egypt and Jordan; and U.S. troops in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. To preserve their pure “house of Islam” from invasion by the infidels’ secular “house of unbelief,” Muslim nativists modeled their practice and faith after such cultural heroes as Islam’s first generation of “pious predecessors” (salafiyyun), the first four “rightly guided” caliphs (successors to Muhammad), and the medieval defenders against invasions of Jerusalem and Baghdad: Salahal-Din Yusuf ibnAyyub (called Saladin in the West) and IbnTaymiyya. They elevated jihad to unprecedented status as a “sixth pillar” of Islam, second only to tawhid (affirmation of the oneness of God), and rejected major Muslim traditions—rationalism, Sufism, Shfism—as idolatrous. Jihadists accepted the the¬ ology of the North African Salafist school (Wiktorowicz 2001, 20-22), but orthodox Salafists reject jihadism because it promotes civil instability (fitna) and violence against other Muslims (Naji 2006,5-7; Wiktorowicz and Kaltner 2003,77-79). In 1948 the state of Israel was established by UN resolutions, and Britain with¬ drew from Palestine. Arab farmers, pastoralists, and urban classes were displaced during the initial war of resistance and subsequent internal settlement policies of the Israeli government. Refugees spilled over into Lebanon and Jordan, giving rise to further conflicts and the irredentist organizations of Hizbullah, the “party of God,” and Hamas (an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement), which, like al-Qaeda, “cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish” (bin Laden 2001a).17 To Muslims Jerusalem (al-Quds) is of singular importance as the first qibla (direction of prayer) for Muhammad’s community, and as the place where the Dome of the Rock commemorates Muhammad’s night journey to heaven and Allah’s victory over Crusader armies. Muslims believe that God ordains which land a given nation shall inhabit. Palestine was conquered by Islamic armies in 638 c.e., because it was God’s will that Muslims possess the land. The Jewish counterclaim is that God gave the Land of Canaan to Israel. In the Crusader cry, “God wills it,” Christians asserted that God granted the Holy Land to the Church. The doctrine of land possession in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity potentiates holy wars and vali¬ dates each one’s occupation of Jerusalem as the divine expression of God’s will. Thus, wars and intifadas (uprisings) have erupted since Israel was founded by European Jews. Religious Jews, Muslims, and Christians are likely to base their claims to homeland on intractable beliefs regarding God’s will (Miles 2005). The father of the national jihadist movement was Sayyid Qutb, a Muslim Brother in Egypt executed in 1966 by the Nassar regime for writing Milestones (1964), a moral manifesto against Western jahiliyya (ignorance) and for the establishment

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of an Islamic state, from which Islam could be propagated throughout the world (Moussalli 1992, 210-13). Qutb’s writings inspired al-Qaeda’s founders, Abdullah Azzam, a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence, and Osama bin Laden, a university stu¬ dent from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Azzam became bin Ladens mentor during the Afghan war of liberation from the Soviet Union (1979-89).18 In Peshawar, Pakistan, they founded Bayt al-Ansar (House of Supporters), which became Maktab al-Khidamat (Office of [Mujahidin] Services) to feed, house, and educate foreign fighters in the theology of jihad of the sword. Before he was assassinated in 1989, Azzam named their organization al-Qaeda al-Sulbah (The Solid Foundation) (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 2004; Gerges 2005,136). During the 1980s, fugitives from the Egyptian Jihad group fled to Afghanistan with their founder, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to answer Azzam’s call to arms against the Soviet Union. After Azzam’s death, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri directed transna¬ tional terrorist operations against the “far enemy,” defined as the [new] “Crusaders and the Jews.” In 1996 al-Qaeda issued a “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” (Saudi Arabia). In 1998 bin Laden joined with jihadist leaders from three nations in an international jihad against the United States, which “has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest places, the Arabian Peninsula,” and called on “every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God’s command to kill the Americans... wherever he finds them.” This document, “The World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders,” dates al-Qaeda’s emergence as the International Jihad (Gerges 2005,39; bin Ladin et al. 1998). Thus, three charismatic founders—Azzam the Palestinian, bin Laden the Saudi Arabian, and al-Zawahiri the Egyptian—combined Sayyid Qutb’s idea of an eternal holy war with the irredentist struggle for a transnational caliphate (khilafa) that would revitalize Islam and drive all foreigners from Muslim lands (Gerges 2005,4-5, 29-34, 205-6). They called for all Muslims from the Philippines to Mauritania to awaken and wage permanent jihad. Their “eternal jihad” is a “magic wand” to replace a “decadent system” with “God’s sovereignty” (hakimiyya) (Gerges 2005,114). One member of the “sacred struggle” affirmed: “We felt we were on the verge of reenact¬ ing and reliving the Golden Age of our blessed ancestors” (Gerges 2005, 81-82). Azzam preached that “jihad is the safest path for transformation... of the leadership of combat, into the universal leadership and Caliphate” (Azzam [2003]). The khilafa is invoked by the magic of words and established by violent deeds. Like Bakunin, the Russian anarchist, bin Laden taught that terrorism is propa¬ ganda by the deed19 and that terrorist attacks will rivet world attention on jihad, forcing Muslims to choose between truth and falsehood (bin Laden 2001c). In 1998 al-Qaeda conducted simultaneous suicide bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. government retaliated with a missile attack on three training camps in Afghanistan in an attempt to annihilate bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Three years later, on 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda attacked financial, government, and military power centers simultaneously in the United States, damaging the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and destroying the Twin Towers of the World Trade

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Center in New York City, thus activating a deliberate strategy to escalate conflict by attracting U.S. forces to Afghanistan (Scheuer 2003, 255-56). Since then, terrorist attacks in the name of al-Qaeda have been committed in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Because word is powerful, in al-Qaeda names magically reconstitute the terri¬ tories of past caliphates. Al-Qaeda commanders refer to Iran and Afghanistan as Khurasan; Spain as Andalus; Syria and Lebanon as Al-Shams; Israel as Palestine; Iraq as Mesopotamia; Saudi Arabia as the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; North Africa as Al-Mahgreb; Egypt as the Valley of the Nile; Russia as the Persian Empire; and the United States as the Roman Empire. Names and deeds repossess the home¬ land by invoking power from beyond to name enemies and bring into being the nostalgic millennial kingdom, thus wresting it from the invaders’ control. Abu Bakr Naji outlines the jihadist strategy for retaking Muslim lands in The Management of Savagery (2006). It calls mujahidin (those who wage jihad) to join the caravan under the banner of the International Jihad, for Muslims to arise from their lethargy and take up arms against “apostates,” “hypocrites,” and “infidels”— their moral inferiors—who imprison, torture, and execute “true Muslims” who fight for a just rule under the laws of God. First, it is necessary to disrupt the “halo of respectability” around the infidels by waging spectacular attacks against accessi¬ ble targets, whether they are civilian or official, domestic or foreign. Terrorism is a tactic to produce savagery—brutal reprisals and chaos—the precondition for tak¬ ing control of territory from which a proto-caliphate can grow into a global millen¬ nial kingdom. Thus, Naji argues that terrorism enacts a divine intent to transform the natives’ world. Abdullah Azzam identified the mujahidin as “The Saved Sect and the Victorious Group,” an elite, mystical vanguard of warriors who have defended Muslim lands, religion, and people throughout history. The “first criterion for those who claim to be the saved sect [is] that they should be upon what the first generation was upon in belief and actions, in morals and in manners, outwardly and inwardly” (Azzam [2002]). By sacrificing comfort and life the warriors gain a millennial kingdom. Though they are few and reviled, they are destined to prevail, because “Allah will chastise [the evil ones] at your hands and He will lay low and give you victory over them” (Qur’an 9:14). Al-Qaeda is the vanguard and its relative strategic weakness is counted as proof of God’s divine guidance in the ultimate struggle against the most powerful adversaries on Earth. The ideal warrior of the International Jihad is committed to religion and the mission and is mature, sacrificing, obedient, loyal, patient, tranquil, intelligent, pru¬ dent, truthful, observant, analytical, and action-oriented (Naji 2006, 249). Trusted al-Qaeda operatives tend to be mentally stable and well-educated (Stern 2003,51-52; Scheuer 2003, 72-73). Al-Qaeda’s founders could have been political contenders in their respective societies: bin Laden was the son of a Saudi billionaire and kingmaker renowned for his piety; Azzam received a Ph.D. with honors from al-Azhar University in Cairo; al-Zawahiri is a physician from a prominent Egyptian family. Bin Laden conceptualized al-Qaeda as “a small leadership cadre of willing martyrs, who will,

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by their actions, encourage the Muslim masses to rise up” (Riedel 2007, 16). Bin Laden invited selected recruits to swear an oath of fealty to himself (Gerges 2005, 64) in symbolic imitation of the Mahdi of Sunni millennial myth. Al-Qaeda engages in sacrificial transactions, calling “a new transnational generation of warriors” to risk persecution and death in exchange for eternal glory (Gerges 2005,62). Numinous elements such as dreams and omens (Edgar 2007), the magic of words, pious prede¬ cessors, a millennial kingdom, and redemption of ancestral homelands identify alQaeda/the International Jihad as an international and multiethnic nativist millennial movement (see also chapter 35 by Jeffrey T. Kenny, this volume).

Conclusion Nativist millennial movements may lay the necessary groundwork for pragmatic institutions, such as native churches and political parties, and for cultural renais¬ sances that incorporate the signs, symbols, and ultimate concerns of their religious and magical antecedents (Worsley 1968; Driver 1961). Maori political activists reclaimed land and fishing rights a century after the demise of Te Ua and Pai Marire. After the failure of community salvation through the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance ritual became an enduring means of individual redemption among the Lakota Sioux. The “hoop” may have been “broken” and the people still live within a larger alien world, but they guarantee their future existence by continuing the dances and songs that tether them to ancestors’ bones and homeland (Jorgensen 1972,20, 24, 28). Although it may be too soon to discern a delayed success in the case of American farmers, the failure of global trade negotiations in 2006 affords them a possible opportunity to regain economic control over their circumstances. The 2001 Doha Development Agenda program for agriculture would have accelerated the conver¬ sion of family farms to global agribusiness firms (Mongoven 2006),20 but the unex¬ pected failure of the agenda in the global trade talks at Doha, Qatar, in 2006 brought belated attention to the formerly ignored farm crisis of the 1980s. “New agricultural issues are emerging,” and one of them is the fate of “medium-sized farms in the era of globalization and the changing economy of rural America” (ibid.). The U.S. Congress has provided increased subsidies for family farmers since 2001 (Sidley Austin Brown & Wood 2002,77). Tourists and retirees have a stake in preserving the regional character of rural communities. New uses for crops, such as biofuels, and new industries expanding to agricultural areas, such as tourism, may regenerate entrepreneurial activity in the depressed heartland of America (Mongoven 2006). Over time, nativist millennial movements in New Guinea, New Zealand, and North America have failed, but in several cases they have also proved to be necessary precursors of political re-empowerment and cultural revitalization. Like ghost dancers, Common Law Freemen, cargo believers, and Pai Marire enthusiasts, the jihadists are irredentist, ultimately concerned, transactional,

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magical, and nostalgic, and al-Qaeda is evolving in unprecedented ways. By claim¬ ing all the lands of the globe for the umma (worldwide Islamic community), alQaeda/the International Jihad has pushed the paradigm of nativist millennialism into the realm of paradox—homeland reimagined to include the invaders’ land, as well as one’s own. In a brief examination and comparison of five disparate cases we may discern the nativist millennial paradigm: When indigenous people encounter invaders, a forceful process of acculturation disrupts the traditional world order, causing a pro¬ found disorientation, discontinuity, and sense of loss. Ancestral values and customs are disregarded. The people lose access to their sacred center, traditional resources, and identity, which in turn spurs the growth of social pathologies, including depres¬ sion, suicide, infertility, and depopulation. Nativist millennial movements promise redress, but they are not necessarily violent, although they may be assaulted by the invading power. Rarely, they initiate violence to achieve their ultimate concerns. Since occupation of the homeland is connected to the indigenous people’s loss of power and prestige, charismatic shamans, seers, and prophets proclaim revelatory messages of deliverance. They instruct followers to relinquish their possessions and roles in the alien culture in expectation of a total world transformation based on a past golden age that will occur miraculously. Through various kinds of symbolic and/or sacrificial transactions, power returns to the land and restores the old ways. Those who heed the message are energized by renewed hope. However, when the anticipated cosmic regeneration fails to take place, millennial movements decline and disappear. Their failure, however, may be illusory, because nativist millennial movements nearly always lay the groundwork for subsequent pragmatic and lasting changes that offer redemption of the ancestral land and/or salvation of the people.

NOTES 1. In United States political history nativism refers to recurrent activism in defense of one’s culture and values against an immigrant population (Bennett 1988, 2-9), but as a worldwide phenomenon nativism is “a social movement that proclaims the return to power of the natives of a colonized area and the resurgence of native culture, along with the decline of the colonizers” (“Nativism” 2007). 2. According to Robert Redfield, “Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups” (quoted in Linton 1943, 230). 3. The others are “revivalistic-rational,” “perpetuative-magical,” and “perpetuativerational.” 4. Nativist millennial movements involve an earthly collective salvation; other types of millennial movements may locate the millennial kingdom in heaven or on some other plane or planet.

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PRIMARY CATEGORIES AND HISTORIES

5. Both myths predate the naming of these countries and are associated with the islands of Miok Wundi (Mansren) and Ceram (Hainuwele). 6. There is one reported contact between a New Zealand adherent and Fijians in Worsley 1968,25. 7. The Sioux shaman Black Elk refers to a three-day dance in one instance. 8. The Ghost Dance phenomenon developed from a traditional round dance or “cry dance” on the Walker River reservation in Nevada (Johnson 1975, 42-43). 9. The axis mundi concept and its requisite function of religious and spatial orientation in the lives of a people were developed by Mircea Eliade (1959,35-47). 10. Since Dyer’s visit to Lebanon, Kansas, the officially designated geographic center (a “holy place”) of the United States has shifted to South Dakota (Barry 2008). 11. Her unpublished writings were transmitted to a consultant by the FBI. 12. The Common Law movement’s “organic Constitution” is the U.S. Constitution minus all amendments enacted after the Civil War began in i860. 13. The quiet title normally concerns land ownership, but the Freemen’s quiet title supposedly released them and their property from any legal jurisdiction by U.S. courts, which they regarded as Satan’s courts. 14. Personal communication from a lawyer-participant in the negotiations. 15. Neutral and tolerant mediators aided in a nonviolent outcome, while impatient, media-conscious intermediaries actually exacerbated tensions (Wessinger 2000c, 181-82, 185-93; Rosenfeld 2000a, 332,335-36,339~4o). 16. In mid-November 2001, bin Laden videotaped his discussions with supporters about the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The audio portion was translated by George Michael and Kassem M. Wahba of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Al-Masri’s statement about his dream occurred in 2000 before the attacks, and bin Laden regarded it as an omen. For the entire translation see bin Laden 2001c. For a treatment of the significance of dreams in the international jihadist movement, see Edgar 2007. 17. This remark was deleted from the allegedly “full statement” published by the

London Times on 7 October 2001 (bin Laden 2001b). 18. Scheuer (2003, 85) and McGregor (2003) claim that Azzam and bin Laden met in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, while bin Laden attended King Abdul Aziz University, but Azzam’s relatives claim they met in Jordan or Pakistan, where Azzam also taught (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 2004). Osama bin Laden’s wife Najwa remembers her husband meeting Azzam in Indiana (bin Laden, bin Laden, and Sasson 2009,35—36). 19. “Those young men [the 9/11 attackers]... said in deeds in New York and Washington, speeches that overshadowed all other speeches made everywhere else in the world” (bin Laden 2001c). 20. For an analysis of the 2001 Doha Development Agenda for agriculture see Sidley Austin Brown & Wood 2002, chap. 10.

REFERENCES Azzam, Abdullah. [2002.] Who Are the Ghuraba’a—The Strangers?” www.azzam.com. Accessed 22 October; now defunct. . [2003.] “Sh. Abdullah Azzam on Jihad.” Translated by Abu Shaheed. Boston: Care International, www.cybercom.net/~cib/. Accessed 14 May; now defunct.

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Barkun, Michael. 1994. Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Barry, Dan. 2008. “In the Middle of Nowhere, a Nation’s Center.” New York Times. 2 June. www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/us/02land.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. bin Laden, Najwa, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson. 2009. Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World. New York: St. Martin’s, bin Laden, Osama. 2001a. “In Osama bin Laden’s Own Words—Al-Jazeera TV—Version Two. October 7,2001.” As reported by ABCNEWS.com on 8 October. September 11 News.com, Osama bin Laden Speeches. www.septemberimews.com/OsamaSpeeches.htm. -. 2001b. “Osama Bin Laden’s Response to the Attacks on Afghanistan.” 7 October. http://everything2.com/title/Osama+Bin+Laden%2527s+response+to+the+attacks +on+Afghanistan. -. 2001c. “Transcript of Usama bin Laden Video Tape.” 13 December, www .defenselink.mil/news/Dec2001/d20011213ubl.pdf. bin Ladin, Usamah bin Muhammad, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu-Yasir Rifa’i Ahmad Taha, Mir Hamzah, and Fazlur Rahman. 1998. “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders: World Islamic Front Statement.” 23 February. Federation of American Scientists website. www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm. Bennett, David H. 1988. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Brown, Dee. 1971. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: A Native American History of the American West. New York: Bantam. Cohn, Norman. 1957. The Pursuit of the Millennium. London: Seeker 8c Warburg. Cowan, James. 1922. The New Zealand Wars, Volume 2: The Hauhau Wars, 1864-72. Wellington: Government Printer. Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Purity and Taboo. London: Routledge 8c Kegan Paul. Driver, Harold E. 1961. Native Americans of North America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dyer, Joel. 1997. Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only the Beginning. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. Edgar, Iain R. 2007. “The Inspirational Night Dream in the Motivation and Justification of Jihad.” Nova Religio 11, no. 2 (November): 59-76. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. -. 1963. Myth and Reality. New York: Harper 8c Row. -. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. -. 1970. “‘Cargo Cults’ and Cosmic Regeneration.” In Millennial Dreams in Action, edited by Sylvia Thrupp, 139-43. New York: Schocken. Firth, Raymond. 1940. “The Analysis of Mana: An Empirical Approach.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 49, no. 4 (December): 483-510. Gerges, Fawaz. 2005. The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graziano, Frank. 1999. The Millennial New World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hittman, Michael. 1973. “The 1870 Ghost Dance at the Walker River Reservation: A Reconstruction.” Ethnohistory 20, no. 3 (Summer): 247-78. Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies. 2004. “The Influence of the Legacy of Global Jihad on Hamas.” Special Information Bulletin (November), http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/site/home/default.asp.

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Jansen, Johannes J. G. 1986. The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East. New York: MacmilJan. Johnson, Edward C. 1975. Walker River Paiutes: A Tribal History. Salt Lake City: University of Utah. Jorgensen, Joseph G. 1972. The Sun Dance Religion: Power for the Powerless. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lawrence, Peter. 1964. Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press. Lacey, Roderick. 1990. “Journeys of Transformation: The Discovery and Disclosure of Cosmic Secrets in Melanesia.” In Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements, edited by Tony Swain and Garry W. Trompf, 181-212. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Linton, Ralph. 1943. “Nativistic Movements.” American Anthropologist 45, no. 2: 230-40. McGregor, Andrew. 2003. “‘Jihad and the Rifle Alone’: ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam and the Islamist Revolution.” Journal of Conflict Studies 23, no. 2 (Pall) : 92-113. www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/ JCS/Pallo3/mcgregor.pdf. Miles, Jack. 2005. “Judaist Israel, Islamist Palestine: Can United States Poreign Policy Respond to Competing Religious Rationales?” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 33, no. 2 (Autumn): 42-54. Mongoven, Bart. 2006. “A Doha Pailure and the U.S. Parm Bill.” Stratfor. 4 August, www .stratfor.com. MoussaLli, Ahmad S. 1992. Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb. Beirut: American University of Beirut. Naji, Abu Bakr. 2006. The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage through Which the Umma Will Pass, translated by William McCants. www.wcfia.harvard.edu/olin/ publications/miscpubs.htm. “Nativism.” 2007. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. 6th ed. New York: Columbia University Press. www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0834984.html. Neihardt, John G. 1932. Black Elk Speaks. New York: Washington Square Press. Neiwert, David A. 1999. In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Ngavirue, Zedekiah. 1990. “On Wearing the Victor’s Uniforms and Replacing Their Churches.” In Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements, edited by Garry W. Trompf, 391-424. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Noble, Kerry. 2010. Tabernacle of Hate: Seduction into Right-Wing Extremism. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Pesantubbee, Michelene E. 2000. “Prom Vision to Violence: The Wounded Knee Massacre.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 62-81. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Pitcavage, Mark. 1996. “Every Man a King: The Rise and Fall of the Montana Freemen.” ‘Patriot Profile #3. www.adl.org/mwd/freemen.asp. -. 1997. “Common Law and Uncommon Courts: An Overview of the Common Law Court Movement.” www.adl.org/mwd/common.asp. Riedel, Bruce. 2007. “Lunch with Bruce Riedel.” Saban Center for Middle East Policy, the Brookings Institution. Alexandria, Va.: Anderson Court Reporting. Transcript. Rosenfeld, Jean E. 1999. The Island Broken in Two Halves: Land and Renewal Movements among the Maori of New Zealand. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. -—. 2000a. “The Justus Freemen Standoff: The Importance of the Analysis of Religion in Avoiding Violent Outcomes.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical

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Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 223-344. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. -. 2000b. “Common Law Millennialists of the 1990s.” Paper presented at the International Association for the History of Religions meeting, Durban, South Africa. Sapp, Allen D. 1986. “Ideological Justification for Right Wing Extremism: An Analysis of the Nehemiah Township Charter Document.” Warrensburg: Center for Criminal Justice Research, University of Central Missouri. Scheuer, Michael. 2003. Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s. Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, LLP. 2002. “Updated Analysis of the Doha Round of Trade Negotiations: New Opportunities and Challenges for Global Business.” www.sidley .com/db3o/cgibin/pubs/dohaupdate.pdf. Stern, Jessica. 2003. Terror in the Name of God. New York: HarperCollins. Steyn, Christine. 2000. “Millenarian Tragedies of South Africa.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 185-204. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Trompf, Garry W. 1991. Melanesian Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, van der Leeuw, Gerardus. 1986. Religion in Essence and Manifestation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Wach, Joaquim. 1951. Types of Religious Experience: Christian and Non-Christian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1956. “Revitalization Movements.” American Anthropologist 58, no. 2 (April): 264-81. -.1972. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Vintage Books. Ward, Gloria Teneuvial. 1996. “Freemen Characters to Remain in Lock-down until They Submit.” Jubilee (September/October). Simon Wiesenthal Museum archives. Webster, Peter. 1979. Rua and the Maori Millennium. Wellington: Victoria University Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000a. “Introduction: The Interacting Dynamics of Millennial Beliefs, Persecution, and Violence.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 3-39. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. -. 2000b. “Nativist Millennial Movements.” Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, edited by Richard Landes, 280-81. New York: Routledge. ———. 2000c. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges, www.loyno.edu/~wessing/. Wiktorowicz, Quintan. 2001. “The New Global Threat: Transnational Salafis and Jihad.” Middle East Policy 8, no. 4 (December): 18-37. Wiktorowicz, Quintan, and John Kaltner. 2003. “Killing in the Name of Islam: Al-Qaeda’s Justification for September 11.” Middle East Policy 10, no. 2 (Summer): 76-92. Worsley, Peter. 1968. The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of “Cargo Cults” in Melanesia. New York: Schocken.

1

PART III

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

CHAPTER 6

CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP IN MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS LORNE L. DAWSON

Looking for something to read one day I came upon a curious passage in New Yorker magazine: Suddenly you are looking in his eyes. Officially, they are brown, but for you they’ll always be blue. He is speaking in a soft, seductive voice. Glory if you follow, eternal shame if you don’t_In a moment, your destiny shifts. Incredibly, you have volunteered. You are given a red shirt, an obsolete rifle, a bayonet. You are taught to sing a hymn full of antique rhetoric recalling a magnificent past, foretelling a triumphant future. You learn to march at night in any weather and over the most rugged terrain, to sleep on the bare ground, to forgo regular meals, to charge under fire at disciplined men in uniform. You learn to kill with your bayonet. You see your friends killed. You grow familiar with the shrieks of the wounded, the stench of corpses

You write enthusiastic letters home. You have

discovered patriotism and comradeship_You will follow him to your death. (Parks 2007,92)

The author chose this dramatic scenario to open his review of a biography of leg¬ endary Italian revolutionary leader Giuseppe Garibaldi. The word charisma is never used, but readers will make the association. Great leaders have the power to get things done by convincing us to do things we would never entertain normally, but we are not quite sure why or how. The reviewer notes that biographies of Garibaldi typically can be divided into books that seek either to foster or to puncture the charismatic aura of this heroic figure. Garibaldi is either something more than just a man, a truly extraordinary leader with unique gifts and virtues, or simply a tal¬ ented or even manipulative man on whom fortune happened to smile. Determining which is the case is important, as the author passionately argues. In a general sense,

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though, scholars have been reluctant to grapple with the relevant issues in a system¬ atic way, outside the safe confines of interpreting the idiosyncratic aspects of the lives of great men and women. Frederick Bird laments this surprising omission at the beginning of his essay “Charisma and Leadership in New Religious Movements” (1993, 90), and little has changed since he noted the problem. Systematic and comparative investigation of how authority is achieved, exercised, developed, sustained, or lost in millennial groups is still in its infancy. The lacunae is strange, given the tremendous emphasis on the study of leadership in the worlds of business, politics, and social activism, and the near universal association of new religions, especially apocalyptic ones, with strong forms of charismatic authority. Undoubtedly, as Bird surmises (1993, 90), scholars have been reluctant to dwell on issues of authority and leadership because of the marked popular ten¬ dency to engage in reductive and largely pejorative psychological speculations about the nature and motivations of group leaders. In the popular press, and hence the public consciousness, it is common to view extreme religious move¬ ments as little more than social vehicles for expression of the perverse desires and deranged ideas of their leaders. The implication is that these leaders have found ways to exert an extraordinary, and probably unnatural and harmful, influence over their followers. Frequently the concept of charisma is invoked to help make sense of the situation, though what is meant is rarely explained, beyond the allu¬ sion to a mysterious and suspect ability to convince people to accept seemingly outlandish beliefs and actions. There is, however, a vast and diverse academic literature on leadership, and charismatic leadership in particular, which spans multiple disciplines (e.g., sociol°gy> psychology, political science, anthropology, and management science). With a few exceptions, it has yet to be brought to bear on the study of religious groups. While this is not the context for anything like a sufficient review of the pertinent literature, the relevance of the knowledge in hand can be indicated by examining three foci of the literature on charismatic authority. These foci are becoming more important as investigators increasingly come to think of charisma in terms of a series of overlapping yet analytically distinguishable social processes. They point to a shift in the study of the nature, origins, and operation of charismatic authority from largely psychological, and even psychoanalytical, frames of understanding to more social psychological and sociological ones. Stated plainly, the three foci are (1) the conditions giving rise to charismatic leaders; (2) the social construction and management of charismatic authority; and (3) the institutionalization of charismatic authority, or what Max Weber called the routinization of charisma” (1964,363-73). The successful management of the chal¬ lenges of these moments in the career of a charismatic leader has a determinative influence on the birth, progress, and demise of almost all millennial movements. Space limitations restrict this analysis to the first two foci. The third is addressed, at least partially, elsewhere (e.g., Wallis 1982a; Trice and Beyer 1986; Simmons 1991; Dawson 2002; Bromley and Bobbitt 2009). But we need to get our bearings first by

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considering the identifying features of a charismatic leader, discovering in the pro¬ cess why the study of such leaders so piques the interest of sociologists.

Identifying Charismatic Leaders Many scholars disparage the very notion of charisma and charismatic leadership because it is hard to define. But the presence of charisma in social life is fairly obvi¬ ous to people when they encounter it, and a description of the phenomenon of charismatic leadership can be pieced together from the cumulative theoretical and empirical research. Still, an element of mystery clings to the idea of charismatic authority, which is more than the by-product of our ignorance. In its very concep¬ tion charisma is designed to capture and express our profound and repeated sense that certain leaders have an uncanny ability to win and hold our attention, to per¬ suade and motivate us, to earn our approval. Like it or not, the mystery is a defining feature of the phenomenon, and when social scientific explanations become too complete or reductive in nature, there is a sense that we are no longer dealing with charisma per se. Weber introduced the concept of charisma to the social sciences. He is thought to have borrowed the term from Rudolph Sohm’s writings on the history of the Christian church (Sohm 1882; San Juan 1967; Haley 1980; Smith 1998). For Weber, charisma applies to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which [they are] set apart from ordinary [people] and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader. (1964,358)

By exploring certain ambiguities and tensions in Weber’s foundational understand¬ ing of charisma we can lay the groundwork for the discussion that follows. On the one hand, it is important to note that while the term charisma refers to certain aspects of a person’s presence, of their personality, this is not the actual source of someone’s influence or power over others. Weber was interested in cha¬ risma as one of three ideal typical modes of authority (i.e., legitimate domination). The other two are traditional authority and rational-legal authority. In the first, authority is granted to certain people by virtue of custom. In the second, authority resides with certain legally constituted positions or offices. In the case of charismatic authority, the locus of power is the person, but as in the other cases the authority actually emanates from those who willingly submit to this individual. Charismatic leaders, unlike traditional or rational-legal leaders, secure the right to rule by being identified with certain attributes. But their actual authority is attributed to them by

n6

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

others. As Weber stresses: “It is recognition on the part of those subject to authority which is decisive for the validity of charisma” (1964, 359). This subtle but crucial distinction is often glossed over in discussions of charismatic leadership. The focal point of research, as most scholars argue now, is the relationship between charis¬ matic leaders and their followers—the charismatic bond—and not just the person¬ ality of the leader (e.g., Wilson 1975, 7; Bord 1975). It is the social psychological and social structural features of this relationship that should concern us. Language misleads us in this regard when we commonly speak of someone pos¬ sessing or being charismatic, as Weber himself sometimes does. In truth, leaders who behave in certain ways under certain circumstances are seen as charismatic, but many contingencies determine whether an individual will be granted charismatic authority. Many aspiring or potential charismatic leaders exist at any time, but most are simply dismissed as “peculiar, deviant, or perhaps, insane” (Friedland 1964, 21). It is recognition that transforms “incipient charismatics” into “genuine charismatics” (Friedland 1964, 25). To guard against confusion, it would be preferable if the term charisma was replaced by the more accurate phrase charismatic authority, but this is unlikely to happen. Certainly when I use the term charisma here it should be understood that I have this more social conception in mind. In other words, there is no single charismatic personality type that can account for the spectacular charisma of both Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi (Willner 1984,14-15; Wallis 1993,169). To a large extent it can even be said that the attribution of charisma, and hence the very conception of the charismatic leader, is culturally, even subculturally, relative. One persons saint is another’s sinner; one need only consider the acclaimed charisma of such diverse and controversial millenarian leaders as Girolamo Savonarola, Thomas Miintzer, Shabbatai Zvi, Mother Ann Lee, Joanna Southcott, Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, David Berg, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet. On the other hand, we can identify some shared behaviors and traits of leaders in many different cultural contexts that seem to prompt the attribution of charisma. Empirical research, case studies, and biographies suggest that people think charis¬ matic leaders are characterized by at least five sets of overlapping attributes that can be briefly indicated here (e.g., Tucker 1970; Bord 1975; House 1977; Willner 1984; Bass x9^5> 1988; Conger and Kanungo 1988a, 1988b, 1994; Gardner and Avolio 1998; Yorges, Weiss, and Strickland 1999). First, charismatic leaders tend to be energetic people who exude self-confidence and determination. They display a consistent faith in the fulfillment of their mission. Second, their style of leadership is more visionary and emotionally expressive. They lead by example as well, which entails a notable will¬ ingness to make the sacrifices they demand of others. In Bernard Bass’s words, they are the object of devotion because they appear to be “more concerned with doing the right things than with doing things right” (1988,40). Third, they are known for their seeming sensitivity to the needs of others—they make a personal connection with those they meet, showing interest in their lives, no matter how brief the encounter may be. In at least the early stages of their rise to power, charismatic lead¬ ers are more engrossed in the daily struggles of the groups they lead, prompting

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people to feel more of a direct affinity with them. Fourth, they are known and admired for their superior rhetorical skills and their ability to manage impressions in face-to-face and larger group contexts. They are visionaries who know how to frame problems and solutions in simple and appealing terms. Fifth, charismatic leaders create the impression that they are extraordinary, and that they possess uncanny powers, by audaciously inserting themselves into the great historical and mythical scripts of their cultures (Wallis 1982b; Willner 1984). In fact, it is common for such leaders to present themselves as “saviors,” emulating, sincerely or other¬ wise, the lives and deeds of great figures from the past. This last trait, which is difficult to pin down, invokes another tension in Weber’s original definition: the supposedly supernatural nature of the power charismatic leaders wield. Charisma referred originally to a divine gift, yet Weber carefully, if awkwardly, qualified his description of charisma to preserve its application in secular contexts, speaking of “supernatural” or “exceptional powers or qualities” that “are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary” (1964, 358). In human history most charismatic leaders have been deemed semi-divine, and in its purest form charisma is a magical-religious notion. Thus some commentators suggest that most of what passes for charisma in modern, and presumably nonreligious, societies is a pseudo¬ charisma at best (e.g., Bensman and Givant 1975; Wilson 1975; Glassman 1975). Studying millennial movements, contemporary or otherwise, we need not enter this dispute. The leaders who interest us are thought to have the true gift of grace. The analysis offered here is also distinctly sociological, and I will not address the psychology of either the leaders or their followers. An assessment of some of the methodological and substantive shortcomings of many of the most influential psy¬ chological theories of the charismatic relationship is provided elsewhere (Wallis 1993, 170-72; Dawson 2006,11-16). In the absence of reliable evidence about the psychologi¬ cal condition of the rank-and-file members of millennial movements, especially while they are active in the movement, these psychological theories are too conjectural. With Wallis, I propose that more credible information can be obtained by concentrat¬ ing on the microsociological analysis of “the interpersonal processes of negotiation of the charismatic claim” (Wallis 1993,172; and 1982b, 26-27). More specifically, I argue we should be examining “the observable social psychological processes that seem to prompt people to attribute charisma to a leader” (Dawson 2006,7).

Reasons for Studying Charismatic Authority The extraordinary character of this authority means, as Weber argues, that in its pure form charisma is innovative, even revolutionary. By its nature it is a force for change, since it comes into being in the absence of, or in opposition to, the other two forms

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of authority, which are marked by the creation and preservation of routine and order. But the charismatic prophet or hero says to his or her followers, “It is written, but I say unto you” (Weber 1946, 250). The idiosyncratic and inspirational basis of this authority is intrinsically resistant to routinization; it repudiates the past and the status quo in calling for something new. It is often quixotic and involves taking risks and empowering others to do so as well. This link to social change, and often dra¬ matic and disruptive change, is what drew Weber’s interest and keeps the notion of charismatic leadership alive in the social sciences. It is the first of three reasons that I will specify for sociological interest in developing a better conception of charisma.1 But the innovative and disruptive character of charisma means that charismatic authority is destined to be unstable and inevitably transitory, since daily life and social organization require order and some permanence. Routinization follows almost inevitably, and the charisma disappears, either by quite literally ceasing to exist or being transformed into one of the other forms of authority. Compared with traditional and rational-legal leaders, charismatic leaders face unique challenges in securing and sustaining the legitimacy of their authority (see Dawson 2002). Weber captures their plight well: The charismatic leader gains and maintains authority solely by proving his strength in life. If he wants to be a prophet, he must perform miracles; if he wants to be a war lord, he must perform heroic deeds. Above all, however, his divine mission must prove” itself in that those who faithfully surrender to him must fare well. If they do not fare well, he is obviously not the master sent by the gods. (1946,249)

This necessity places great strains on charismatic leaders and their most immediate followers, motivating them to reduce the burden, minimize the costs, and stabilize their mission by encasing the charisma in an ever more bureaucratic operational framework. Alternatively, with failure, the leader’s charisma can evaporate, leaving the followers demoralized and disoriented. An awareness of this dilemma is a second reason why sociologists have turned their attention to charismatic authority. Charting the vicissitudes of the routiniza¬ tion of charisma is the fulcrum of the sociology of charismatic authority, as Weber emphasized (1964,363-93). Charisma is a force for change in society, but its conse¬ quences are contingent on management of the routinization of charisma. Lasting changes require institutionalization. But such order often is anathema to the char¬ ismatic prophet—as Weber repeatedly stressed (1964,358-63), and Wallis illustrates well in his study of David Berg, founder of the Children of God/The Familv (1982b). 7 Third and even more fundamentally, sociologists have harkened to the siren call of the concept of charisma because, like Weber (1964, 358-63), they recognize some of its unique features relative to the other forms of authority. It is extraordi¬ nary because it is intrinsically free of conventional constraints (e.g., reason, law, custom) and largely unrestricted in scope. Charismatic leaders of religious

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movements are granted the right to dictate even the most intimate aspects of their followers’ personal lives. The charismatic bond entails rapt attention and deferential devotion to the beliefs and desires of a single individual, and it is remarkably suc¬ cessful in motivating people to engage in extreme behaviors. It is the degree of devotion, what amounts to more or less blind faith in the leader, that distinguishes the charismatic bond, rendering it a force to be reckoned with in every sphere of social life, but particularly the flights of the religious imagination (Couch 1989).2

Conditions Giving Rise to Charismatic Leaders Discussion of what prompts the attribution of charisma to some leaders and not others is focused primarily on two aspects of the social conditions facilitating the rise of charismatic leaders. Both foci are prompted by Weber’s analysis. The first is whether social crises precipitate the emergence of charismatic leaders. The second is whether charismatic leaders, and perhaps their followers as well, are necessarily drawn from the margins of society. Once established, the leader’s charisma is sub¬ ject to a process of development and dispersal that is the focus of attention in the next section of this chapter, where the internal processes affecting the creation of charismatic authority are identified. Weber argued that charismatic figures arise as natural leaders “in times of psy¬ chic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, and political distress” and that charisma has its source in “devotion to the extraordinary and unheard-of, to what is strange to all rule and tradition” (1946,245,249). He further said that “the master as well as his disciples and followers, must stand outside the ties of this world, outside of rou¬ tine occupations, as well as outside the routine obligations of family life” (1946, 248). This last statement refers to the fate of charismatic leaders and their followers after the charismatic bond has been struck, but Weber repeatedly implied that it is also a qualification for the birth of that relationship. In Weber’s view, crises, distress, marginality, and even opposition to normal social life mark the social origin and location of charismatic authority (see Cohn 1961 and Wilson 1973 as well). But Weber’s observations are rather sweeping, programmatic, and ambiguous, and some scholars have called these assumptions into question. At any time there are many potential charismatic leaders in most societies, organizations, or groups, but few are ever recognized, let alone granted authority. To explain why, many researchers propose we must turn to the prevailing social conditions. Douglas Madsen and Peter Snow (1991,1-5) argue, in fact, that the study of charisma has been handicapped significantly by a failure to examine adequately how the social context shapes an audience that is susceptible to the influence of charismatic leaders. Too much attention has been fixed on the characteristics of the

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charismatic leaders and their actions. When the context is examined, a near consen¬ sus exists about one thing: as Weber surmised, charismatic leaders commonly rise to prominence in times of crisis (Devereux 1955; Friedland 1964; Tucker 1970; Bord 1975; Barnes 1978; Bass 1988; Kets de Vries 1988; Madsen and Snow 1991; Pillai 1996; Seiwert 2003). This view is summarized well by Jay Conger and Rabindra Kanungo: “Followers become charisma hungry’ when they experience a loss of control over their environment, when their needs and expectations are frustrated because of perceived environmental barriers and threats, when an uncertain future is pre¬ sented, and when a state of anomie (decline of old values and rituals) arises and results in identity crisis” (1988b, 323-33). In some respects the correlation is obvious, and most discussions of social conditions giving rise to charismatic authority are essentially variations of two stock explanations of the origins of movements of social protest, religious extremism, and apocalyptic fervor: relative deprivation the¬ ory and social disorganization theory (Aberle 1962; Glock 1964; Wallace 1956; Lanternari 1963). But this means the link postulated between crises and charisma is subject to some well-known limitations (Hine 19745 Gurney and Tierney 1982). Undoubtedly the rise to authority of some charismatic leaders is tied to the experi¬ ence of both real and relative forms of deprivation, often born of social upheaval (Cohn 1961). But it is always a question of degree and open to interpretation, espe¬ cially in the near total absence of firsthand knowledge of the thoughts and feelings of those most intimately involved in these situations. Furthermore, the notions of deprivation and disorganization used in these theories, like the condition of crisis postulated by Weber, are too vague and inclusive to account for the fairly small number of people who join such movements. Bryan Wilson (1990,195) captures the problem well with a few adroit questions: “Why... do some people not feel deprived when by all objective criteria, they are deprived, and why, even of those who feel deprived, do only a proportion become absorbed by [such] groups? Do none of the undeprived become [followers]?” In other words, the correlation with distress and crisis is too broad to distinguish sufficiently between how charismatic leaders and other kinds of inspirational leaders achieve authority. Crisis and distress are fre¬ quently, perhaps even necessarily, precursors to the rise of charismatic leaders, but they are not sufficient to explain it; some doubt whether they are even necessary factors (Willner 1984). In general, as Joan Gurney and Kathleen Tierney conclude, these approaches take as given the very link which must be empirically established to render... [them] plausible. [The] failure to link convincingly psychological states with antecedent societal conditions on the one hand and with subsequent move¬ ment participation on the other hand is [their] Achilles heel” (1982, 40). In many historical cases, of course, we may never be able to establish such links for want of appropriate information. In this vein, even Robert Tucker (1970, 81-82), who subscribes to the crisis theory of the origins of charisma, makes an interesting observation. He suggests there is a notable difference in the charismatic authority of Hitler (see chapter 27 ^ Da^ Redles’ thls volume) and Gandhi, for instance, over against Winston urchill or Franklin D. Roosevelt—a difference that cannot be accounted for

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adequately by the presence of crises. All of these leaders were responding to seri¬ ous crises, yet the latter two enjoyed what could at best be called a kind of “situ¬ ational charisma.” When the Second World War was over, for example, Churchill was voted out of office, but many tens of thousands of Germans more or less fought to the bitter end for Hitler. What makes figures like Hitler and Gandhi stand out as examples of “pure charisma” of the kind Weber associates with reli¬ gious prophets? A survey of some of the literature points to at least five more specific situational factors that allow us to make a finer determination, though no one scholar has synthesized the insights. Three of these factors are straightfor¬ wardly “situational,” predisposing a society or a substratum to an attribution of charisma; two factors, while still situational, point to how incipient charismatic leaders must act in these situations. In other words, the first three factors are more or less beyond the control of the would-be charismatic leader, while the last two introduce a more strategic component that may or may not be the result of the willful engagement and planning of the leader. Alternatively, they may be the result of a fortuitous affinity between the leader’s self-conception and worldview and the circumstances at hand. Of course, in some cases both explanations may be true, in some combination. First, as numerous researchers note, the crisis in question must be “acute” and or “chronic” in nature. But that alone is not enough. It must be “ultimate” somehow (Tucker 1970, 83; Barnes 1978). True charismatic authority is most likely to arise in circumstances where people feel an existential anxiety about their basic life circum¬ stances. Of course, as several observers note in passing (Boal and Bryson 1988; Bass 1988), successful charismatic leaders often play a role in causing others to see a crisis as ultimate in the first place. This is one of the keys to their success. That said, Ann Ruth Willner (1984, 46) denies that crises played a significant role as a precursor to the creation of charismatic authority in four of her six cases of charismatic leadership. Further, she stresses that the basic charisma of a leader must be established before the advent of such crises, which Tucker (1970), Wallis (1982b), Conger and Kanungo (1988b), Finlay (2002), and Seiwert (2003) suggest as well. Only then can the crisis serve as an opportunity for the leader. Charisma is gener¬ ated in small groups, rather independent of larger crises, and the leader may play a significant role in inducing and framing the crisis when it happens, using it to cata¬ pult herself or himself to new heights. James Beckford (1996) cautions us to avoid overidentifying the crises thought to precipitate the rise of social and religious movements and charismatic leaders with times of disruptive social change. Alternatively, it may be times of cultural and economic stagnation that are most relevant. Second, and more specifically, the crisis must entail the breakdown of existing forms of traditional and legal-rational authority. It is this looming void that creates the sense of an ultimate crisis (Friedland 1964, 22-23; Barnes 1978, 4; Tucker 1970), establishing the opportunity for claims to charismatic authority. This is why charis¬ matic leaders are so strongly associated with the birth of new states (George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela), revolutionary

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movements (Napoleon Bonaparte, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong), and new reli¬ gions (Jesus, Muhammad, Nichiren, L. Ron Hubbard). Sean McCloud (2008) suggests it might be useful to think of these situations in terms of the emergence of “liminal subjectivities.” When circumstances bring about dramatic changes in people’s social networks, both individually and collectively, the unsettling new situation can create a hunger for renewed order. But it can also foster a greater awareness of new possibilities and perspectives. Alternatively, Richard Bord (1975) suggests that a pervasive crisis heightens our susceptibility to a charis¬ matic leader’s vision by reducing our awareness of the options available. This hap¬ pens, he proposes, for at least three reasons: (1) the stress of the crisis induces a situational norm of relatively passive receptivity in which critical orientations are inhibited; (2) the stress induces greater intergroup homogeneity, overriding status and identity differences, and hence the multiplicity of perspectives that normally limit any potential leader’s influence; and (3) the stress reduces individuals’ breadth of perspective, and hence judgment, as fewer alternative courses of action are brought to bear on the situation (487-90). Third, charismatic leaders are only likely to arise in societies with some kind of traditional cultural supports for such claims to authority, and these established sup¬ ports can vary in strength and relevance. Tibetan Buddhism, for example, with its inspirational focus on lineages of reincarnated lamas, provides more fertile ground for the manifestation of charisma than the bureaucratic culture of the Anglican Church. Similarly, claims to charismatic authority are destined to be much more problematic in secular than religious contexts. In the religious context, notes Barbara Finlay, “awe-inspiring symbols and traditions are already at hand, ready to be tapped to interpret the experiences and the role of the charismatic person.... The channels of validation... may already be well defined and recognized” (2002, 549-50). For this very reason some scholars have questioned the viability of charismatic forms of authority in an increasingly rationalized and hence “disenchanted” modern context (Wilson 1975; Glassman 1975; Swatos 1981). Four, as is reiterated in the literature, in the context of crisis the message of the potential charismatic leader must resonate with the masses, or at least with a suffi¬ cient number of people, to lay a plausible foundation for a claim to authority. The appeal of the leader’s message or doctrine is crucial, though the grounds for the appeal can be difficult to discern. Undoubtedly, as William H. Friedland (1964, 23) comments, charismatic leaders manage to formulate and express the inchoate senti¬ ments deeply held by the people around them. Charismatic prophets, says McCloud (2008), “put words and meaning to things already sensed...but not explicitly dis¬ cussed. This is part of their genius, or gift, no matter how coincidental (Willner 1984; Finlay 2002; Seiwert 2003; McCloud 2008). But it will only result in truly char¬ ismatic authority, many agree, if the fifth and final condition is met. Five, the leader must be someone who believes, and can convince others, that he or she is the only one capable of really relieving people’s distress (Wallis 1982bFinlay 2002; Seiwert 2003). Tucker (1970, 81; his italics) emphasizes this point! Charismatic leadership is specifically Salvationist or messianic in nature. Herein lies

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its distinctiveness in relation to such broader and more nebulous categories as ‘inspired leadership’ or ‘heroic leadership.’” Certainly Weber framed his under¬ standing in these terms, and Willner (1984) lays great emphasis on it in her com¬ parative analysis of six charismatic political leaders. In this regard Douglas F. Barnes (1978, 3-4) raises another telling insight not adequately picked up in the rest of the literature. Charismatic leaders are distin¬ guished and empowered by their perception of “sacred symbols as subject to change or verification by their own personal experience.” They have what he calls a ‘de-alienated” understanding of religious ideas and symbols,3 because they believe they have “an intimate connection with a transcendent or immanent divine source” (see Bergera 1986; Finlay 2002; Seiwert 2003). Seeing themselves as saviors, they feel free to “manipulate religious symbols,” bending them to their will and more imme¬ diate goals. This would clearly seem to be an important aspect of the creative genius of many charismatic leaders, from Jesus to Joseph Smith. Flow and why this comes to be the case is an important aspect of the rise of charismatic leaders that has yet to be seriously investigated, though Roy Wallis (1982a, 1982b) provides some suggestive observations in his analysis of the career of David Berg (Children of God/The Family) (see also chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, this volume). Berg was raised, for example, in a family of unorthodox yet reasonably successful itinerant preachers, and since his birth his mother had prophesied David’s special role in God’s plans. Surely similar family and social influences could be detected in the backgrounds of other millennial leaders. But we are dealing with speculation, and for most leaders the sources of their inspiration will remain part of the mystery that surrounds them, since we lack the kind of biographical informa¬ tion needed to surmise much of merit. But can we say that such religious prophets are alienated, in some definable sense, from the mainstream of society? Are they drawn from the margins of society, as Weber’s analysis implies? Does this social condition have some bearing on their ability to manipulate religious symbols? A link seems plausible, and it is widely assumed. But there are few studies examining the issue. One exception is Peter Berger’s “Charisma and Religious Innovation: The Social Location of Israelite Prophecy” (1963). As Berger demonstrates, “one of the building blocks of Weber’s theory of charisma was his understanding of Israelite prophecy” (940). Relying on the scholarship of his day, and images still pervasive in our culture, Weber portrayed these charismatic prophets of ancient Israel as outsiders, as a group of “literati” and “political ideologists” detached from and criticizing the priesthood and other estab¬ lished politico-religious institutions of the day. But more advanced scholarship sug¬ gests that the situation was much more complex, and it is far more likely that the canonical prophets came from within, and duly bore the marks of, one of the accepted cultic and oracular institutions of the times, the Nabis. Consequently, their calls for moral and political reform were seen as a logical extension of their perceived role in that society. In other words, their authority stemmed in part from their “insider” status, leading Berger to conclude: “Charismatic innovation need not necessarily originate in social marginality. It may also originate within traditionally established

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institutions—and, even there, be sufficiently powerful to effectively change these institutions” (1963,950). Barbara Finlay’s analysis of the origins and development of the charisma of Hildegard of Bingen (2002,1098-1180) provides another apt illustra¬ tion. Hildegard’s charismatic status, based on her extraordinary visionary experi¬ ences, wisdom, and force of personality, evolved slowly within the confines of her role as a cloistered Benedictine nun, and was systematically validated and legitimated by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, including the pope. At a more mun¬ dane level, much of the extensive research on charisma undertaken in the field of management science is premised on this same possibility. The objective is to find the means for predicting, identifying, and even cultivating charisma in order to harness its creative power for corporate interests (Bass 1985; Conger and Kanungo 1988a, 1988b; Bryman 1992).

The Construction and Management of Charismatic Authority The emergence and maintenance of charisma is heavily dependent on contingen¬ cies of timing and history that cannot be generalized. In David Berg’s extraordinary case, for instance, Wallis suggests that the death of his domineering mother was crucial. Her death, just at the point when Berg and his family were beginning to meet with some surprising success in evangelizing the youth of southern California, had a liberating effect on Berg and his teachings, increasing their antinomian appeal for those immersed in the 1960s counterculture. In fact, his very access to this recep¬ tive audience was fortuitous, the result of his retreat in defeat to the security of his mother’s home in Huntington Beach, California. Much also hinged on his meeting Maria, his adoring and much younger second wife, at this same time. Berg credits her with giving him the confidence and courage to live up to his prophetic destiny. Wallis’s account of the slow development of Berg’s self-conception as a divinely inspired prophet leaves the distinct impression that the Children of God/The Family would never have been but for these, and some other, coincidences. Surely the same can be said about other charismatic leaders (Finlay 2002), and due attention should be given to these idiosyncratic factors. We can, however, arrive at a more systematic conception of the shared experi¬ ences and organizational strategies that help to cement the charismatic bond. Some important insights can be gleaned from a handful of groundbreaking though still fairly unsystematic studies of the socialization process leading converts to see their leaders as divinely gifted people worthy of complete devotion and obedience (Wallis 1982b; Barker 1993; Coney 1999; Finlay 2002). Eileen Barker (1993) calls this process charismatization,” and the brief analysis offered here draws heavily on her discussion.4

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We must pause, however, to stress two preliminary points. First, as many observ¬ ers of new religions have noted, in many cases it is far from obvious why the leaders in question are seen as charismatic. From the outsider’s perspective the attribution does not stem from any significant powers of personality or the presence of the extraordinary traits or gifts noted above. The leader may appear to nonfollowers as quite ordinary, unappealing, or even absurd or repulsive. The rapt attention, awe, and admiration of the insiders is puzzling. Barker (1993) calls on her experiences with the awkward public appearances of Sun Myung Moon (see also chapter 17 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume) to illustrate this point, and similar observa¬ tions could be made about such other charismatic leaders as David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians (Newport 2006; chapter 10 David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, and chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, this volume); Shoko Asahara, leader of Aum Shinrikyo (Lifton 1999; chapter 18 by Helen Hardacre, this volume); Joseph Di Mambro, leader of the Solar Temple (Hall and Schuyler 2000); or Earl W. Blighton, leader of the Holy Order of MANS (Lucas 1995; chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume). Many such figures do not seem to fit the popular stereotype. Clearly, something more is at work. Second, once a movement is established it is common for most members to have little or no contact with the leader. They fall in love with, and dedicate their lives to, someone they may have seen only a few times, and never spoken with, let alone had a personal conversation with. So again, their conception of the special nature and authority of the leader must stem from something else. Attributions of charisma are encouraged by some kind of social conditioning, such as the ten pro¬ cesses delineated below. First, and most obviously, the teachings of these groups consistently give a cen¬ tral role to the leader in the fulfillment of the prescribed goals. In fact, the leader’s actions are instrumental to everyone’s salvation, and the leader is repeatedly held up as an exemplar of the behavior demanded of everyone. Second, the convert is surrounded with all the trappings of a cult of personal¬ ity—with varying degrees of conspicuousness. Pictures of the leader are promi¬ nently displayed; the leader figures in the refrains of songs and is the focal point of ritual activities. All documents bear the signature of the leader, and the literature trumpets the success of the group in association with the leader’s efforts. The achievements of the leader, great and small, real and imagined, are celebrated and rehearsed. Third, this all is happening usually in a relatively closed and authoritarian orga¬ nizational context, which consistently directs the attention and energy of members inward, magnifying the significance of all that happens to the group and to the new convert. Fourth, in this encapsulated group context the member is exposed to what Barker calls the “internal folklore” of the group. Members become familiar with the mythology associated with the leader. They are informed of the esoteric connec¬ tions between the leader and various scriptural precedents and predictions. Tales of extraordinary feats and miraculous experiences are circulated, and in an urge to

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display fealty or secure preferential status, members competitively recount tales of the leader’s prowess or exceptional impact on their lives. Fifth, this all happens in an environment that is progressively stripped of dis¬ senting voices, by the natural attrition of converts or the deliberate suppression or expulsion of malcontents. There is a consistent reduction of normative dissonance in the group, particularly with regard to celebrating the virtues of the leader (Mills 1982). Sixth, various efforts are made to court the recognition of other kinds of prom¬ inent leaders, politicians, educators, scientists, social activists, artists, and celebrities to legitimize the status of the leader. These carefully orchestrated meetings, confer¬ ences, interviews, and photo opportunities appear insincere to outsiders. But, in many ways, these staged events are intended for internal consumption, to bolster the confidence of those inclined to believe in the rhetoric of the leader’s greatness. Seventh, once initiated into a group, members often may find themselves slowly exposed to a more esoteric and secretive body of teachings designed to differentiate true believers from others. These secrets have a special bonding effect, elevating members to the status of the elect and opening doors to advancement in the upper echelons of the organization. More often than not, a significant aspect of these more complex teachings are revelations about the true nature, powers, and responsibili¬ ties of the leader, about “who they really are” (Coney 1999). In the case of the Unification Church, Barker says, Some time before I became interested in the pro¬ cess of charismatization, I decided to call this internal theology‘Moonology’ because of the degree to which it centres on the person of Moon” (1993,192). Eighth, the adept use of rationalizations plays an important role in sustaining and even embellishing the leader’s charisma. Ready-made and difficult-to-dispute excuses are available to discount apparent failures and to turn seeming defeats into signs of progress, even of triumph. Commenting on the Unification Church, Barker notes, Even when external events seem to be going in the wrong direction, these are interpreted in a manner that can enhance rather than diminish Moon’s specialness. They are taken to indicate that Satan has become really worried by Moon’s success” (i993> 196). Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, founder of Sahaja Yoga, called on the concept of Mahamaya (great illusion), Judith Coney observes (1999,110-11), to deflect the fall¬ out of setbacks. As a manifestation of the goddess, Shri Mataji is thought to have the power to alter reality, including immersing her followers in illusion to test their understanding and commitment. With this rationalization in place, failures can be attributed to the inability of her devotees to penetrate the illusions, because of their egoistic fixations, rather than the deficiencies of Sahaja Yoga. All failures are inter¬ preted as tests to prepare members for their ultimate freedom from illusion. Ninth, the physical isolation, even disappearance, for a time, of the leader can be manipulated to enhance the sense of mystery essential to the construction of charisma. As Emile Durkheim (1965) specified, sacred things are “set apart and for¬ bidden.” Removing the leader from daily contact with followers protects the pre¬ carious charisma of the leaders from the exposure of their flaws, foibles, and failings.

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Greater control can be exercised over the flow of information to the followers as well as the impressions created by the leader’s appearances, which are all the more special for their rarity.5 Tenth, and perhaps most consequentially, the physical separation of the leader sets the conditions for the creation of the Gemeinde—or true charismatic commu¬ nity, to use Weber’s term (1964, 360—61)—the inner circle of followers blessed enough to be called to the personal service of the leader. These immediate subordi¬ nates have a vested interest in promoting and protecting the leader’s charismatic status and authority, since their own status and authority is contingent upon it. They are the primary source of the renewed paraphernalia of the cult of personality, tales of wonder, and rationalizations. In other words, they are the true engine of charisma, magnifying and sustaining the leader’s authority long after the leader is unable to maintain the intense personal contact that first created it. Moreover, this group lives in a highly competitive environment, constantly vying for the attention and favor of the leader, and in turn granting the leader the opportunity to perpetu¬ ate and enhance her or his authority by singling out new individuals for elevation, while demoting others. These are some of the mechanisms of charismatization. The list offered is far from complete, and the discussion is cursory. Each of these processes warrants sys¬ tematic and comparative investigation. In this regard, in addition to specific field studies, it would be helpful to examine the autobiographical accounts of current and ex-members of movements for further evidence of the charismatization pro¬ cess, developing a finer sense of the participant’s experience. Doing so would also help to correct two unintended implications of discussions of these processes: (1) the impression that the process of charismatization is fully premeditated and carefully orchestrated; and (2) the impression that charismatization is something that happens to followers, rather than something followers actively participate in, help to develop, and perpetuate.

Concluding Remarks Charisma is real and it is mysterious. But it is not inexplicable. On the contrary, we know much about it, but few efforts have been made to forge a sufficiently system¬ atic and comprehensive grasp of the social dynamic that lies at the heart of this powerful force for social change. In this chapter I have traced its nature, the condi¬ tions that foster its emergence, and the processes of socialization that seek to assure its spread and success within a movement. Thus we have examined some of the important factors determining the rise of charismatic authority and its manage¬ ment and dispersion. As indicated, we have not been able to address a crucial third phase in the career of this phenomenon, its institutionalization, though the gen¬ erative capacity of charisma is contingent upon the successful negotiation of this

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final process (see Weber 1946, 363-73; Dawson 2002). Each phase in the career of any specific instance of charismatic leadership is fraught with difficulties that must be understood, just as we must come to a more incisive understanding of the skills and strategies used to surmount these difficulties. In this regard, as stated, we need to engage in the microsociological investigation of the exchange between charis¬ matic leaders and their followers so we can identify and dissect the many things that leaders do, consciously or otherwise, to encourage or allow the attribution of charisma. The relative authority or degree of charisma achieved by any leader will depend on a number of case-specific contingencies, but it is equally certain that there are identifiable uniformities in the conditions and actions that generate attri¬ butions of charisma. In undertaking the case studies and comparative analyses required to detect and understand these common factors, we need to bear in mind the situational differences of incipient charismatic leaders and established figures, as well as the distinction between the interactions leaders have with their close subordinates and the movement’s rank-and-file members. To this we need to add an awareness of the larger group dynamics set in place by a charismatic mode of authority, such as those between the leader’s favorites and other followers, between different types of followers, and between all members of such movements and outsiders. This net¬ work of related exchanges is part of what Diana Tumminia aptly calls “charismatic labor (2005). It is through this work that the leader’s charisma plays a crucial role in shaping the initial and ongoing collective identity of most millennial and other radical groups. Grasping all of this activity is a tall order, but some of the resources required are beginning to fall into place (Bord 1975; Wasielewski 1985; Gardner and Avolio 1998; Howell and Shamir 2005; Lalich 2004; Bromley 2006; Joose 2006). Every analysis of millennial movements, whether sociological, psychological, or historical, will benefit from a sharper conception of these social dynamics. Acknowledgment. This chapter draws on research undertaken with the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

NOTES 1. Finlay (2002,55°) calls the emphasis on social change into question, noting that Weber spoke of a potential to be revolutionary but did not claim that charismatic authority is necessarily so (Weber 1963,47). The charismatic authority of Hildegard of Bingen, the subject of Finlay’s study, was officially sanctioned by the church and served to renew and reinforce the Catholic tradition. 2. In agreement with Willner (1984, 9-10) and implicit opposition to the practice of others (Madsen and Snow 1991,5; Bird 1993), I do not think these three latter points, all raised by Weber, should be formally incorporated into the definition of charismatic' leadership or authority. It would “overload” the definition.

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3. Barnes (1978) is calling on the conception of religious alienation developed in Peter Berger’s seminal book, The Sacred Canopy (1967). 4. The process of charismatization might be extended, in ways Barker did not anticipate, to the slow socialization of leaders to their own charismatic authority as well, as delineated in Wallis s description of Berg s emergence as a prophet (see also Finlay 2002,543—47). 5. For a more detailed discussion of the dangers of this situation see Dawson 2002, 86-88.

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Madsen, Douglas, and Peter G. Snow. 1991. The Charismatic Bond: Political Behavior in Time of Crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. McCloud, Sean. 2008. “Prophecy, American New Religions, and Liminality: Toward a Non-Deprivationist Approach to Prophetic Movements.” Unpublished paper. Mills, Edgar, Jr. 1982. “Cult Extremism: The Reduction of Normative Dissonance.” In Violence and Religious Commitment, edited by Kenneth Levi, 57-87. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Newport, Kenneth G. C. 2006. The Branch Davidians of Waco: The Elistory and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parks, Tim. 2007. “The Insurgent: Garibaldi and His Enemies.” New Yorker, July 9-16: 92-97. Pillai, Rajnandini. 1996. “Crisis and the Emergence of Charismatic Leadership in Groups: An Experimental Investigation.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 26, no. 6: 543-62. San Juan, E., Jr. 1967. “Orientations of Max Weber’s Concept of Charisma.” Centennial Review 11, no. 2: 270-85. Seiwert, Hubert. 2003. “The Charisma of the Prophet and the Birth of Religions.” In Carisma profetico: Fattore di innouvazione religosa, edited by Giovanni Filoramo, 291-306. Brescia: Morcelliana. Simmons, John K. 1991. “Charisma and Covenant: The Christian Science Movement in Its Initial Postcharismatic Phase.” In When Prophets Die: The Postcharismatic Fate of New Religious Movements, edited by Timothy Miller, 107-23. Albany: State University of New York Press. Smith, David Norman. 1998. “Faith, Reason, and Charisma: Rudolf Sohm, Max Weber, and the Theology of Grace.” Sociological Inquiry 68, no. 1:32-60. Sohm, Rudolph. 1882. Kirchenrecht. 2 vols. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot. Swatos, William H., Jr. 1981. “The Disenchantment of Charisma: On Revolution in a Rationalized World.” Sociological Analysis 42:119-36. Trice, Harrison M., and Janice M. Beyer. 1986. “Charisma and Its Routinization in Two Social Movement Organizations.” In Research in Organizational Behavior, edited by Barry M. Staw and L. L. Cummings, 113-64. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI.

Tucker, Robert C. 1970. “The Theory of Charismatic Leadership.” In Philosophers and Kings: Studies in Leadership, edited by Dankwart A. Rustow, 69-94. New York: George Braziller.

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Tumminia, Diana G. 2005. When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying-Saucer Group. New York: Oxford University Press. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1956. “Revitalization Movements.” American Anthropologist 58: 264-81. Wallis, Roy. 1982a. “Charisma, Commitment and Control in a New Religious Movement.” In Millennialism and Charisma, edited by Roy Wallis, 73-140. Belfast, Northern Ireland: Queen’s University Press. -. 1982b. “The Social Construction of Charisma.” Social Compass 29, no. 1: 25-39. -. 1993. “Charisma and Explanation.” In Secularization, Rationalism and Sectarianism: Essays in Honour of Bryan R. Wilson, edited by Eileen Barker, James A. Beckford, and Karel Dobbelaere, 167-79. Oxford: Clarendon. Wasielewski, Patricia L. 1985. “The Emotional Basis of Charisma.” Symbolic Interaction 8, no. 2: 207-22. Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 245-52. New York: Oxford University Press. --1963- The Sociology of Religion, translated by Ephrim Fischoff. Boston: Beacon. -.1964- The Theory of Economic and Social Organization, edited and translated by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, 358-73,386-93. New York: Free Press. Willner, Ann Ruth. 1984. The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Wilson, Bryan R. 1973. Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Social Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples. New York: Harper and Row. .1975. The Noble Savages: The Primitive Origins of Charisma and Its Contemporary Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press. -. 1990. The Social Dimension of Sectarianism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Yorges, Stefani L., Howard M. Weiss, and Oriel J. Strickland. 1999. “The Effect of Leader Outcomes on Influence, Attributions, and Perceptions of Charisma.” Journal of Applied Psychology 84, no. 3: 428-36.

CHAPTER 7

MILLENNIALISM, SCRIPTURE, AND TRADITION EUGENE V. GALLAGHER

have always been eager to locate themselves in history. That desire has led them to examine their present and past situations for indications of where they might stand. In their quest for meaning and coherence, they have looked for clues that reveal the structure and direction of history. As one con¬ temporary prophecy writer, Ray Stedman, put it, “If we could learn to read life rightly, almost everything is a sign” (quoted in Boyer 1992, 238). By identifying and interpreting such signs millennialists frequently confirm and adapt estab¬ lished paradigms for understanding human experience. David Frankfurter observes that apocalyptic literature in early Christianity “served to relate reli¬ gious situations in this world to paradigms in the other world” (1999, 433). This project of “biblicizing reality” can infuse apparently trivial details with transcen¬ dent meaning (Graziano 1999, 45, 49). As a character in the enormously popular novel series Left Behind describes the prolonged throes of the Endtime: “It is like we are living in the New Testament” (LaHaye and jenkins 1997, 258). In some instances, millennialists also build new models to organize vast amounts of information into easily comprehended patterns. Michael Barkun, for example, Millennialists

characterizes contemporary “improvisational millennialists” as “ideological omnivores” who combine ideas from disparate sources into idiosyncratic expres¬ sions of millennial hope (2003, 24). For millennialists, then, figuring out where they stand in history and where his¬ tory itself is heading is preeminently an interpretive task. They strive both to read the signs of their times and to read them in light of established models, especially ones that have a supernatural imprimatur. In literate societies, traditional wisdom is often enshrined in texts recognized as scripture or canonical expressions of

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authoritative wisdom; but in other societies, the form of traditional wisdom may be solely or predominantly oral. The process of aligning one’s perception of the present with traditional para¬ digms may be rhetorically presented as a relatively simple task. In The Late Great Planet Earth, for example, Hal Lindsey comments on biblical prophecy, saying that “some of the future events that were predicted hundreds of years ago read like today’s newspapers” and that in writing his book he is only “attempting to step aside and let the prophets speak” (1970, 20, 8). Yet Lindsey intentionally obscures the interpretive decisions, great and small, that any millennialist has to make (O’Leary i994> 78). In practice, reading the signs of the times and the contours of the past demands considerable ingenuity and industry. The millennialist’s extension of traditional paradigms of understanding to the interpreter’s present and immediate future can revivify the authority of tradition, but it can also produce distinctive innovations, even moving beyond commonly acknowledged boundaries of the tradition. Production of new meanings for estab¬ lished traditions and construction of new traditions that claim to rival or surpass older ones is an important dynamic in millennial movements. As interpreters of tradition and the world around them, millennialists face substantial challenges in figuring out how to wring contemporary meaning from material that may initially appear dated or otherwise irrelevant to their immedi¬ ate concerns. Kenelm Burridge has evocatively described that process as “quarrying into tradition,” suggesting that tradition can be mined to provide raw materials for millennialist interpretations of history and that each interpretation is a dis¬ tinctive, creative construction in itself (1969,163). Further, when individuals claim to derive meaning from tradition, they must establish their own legitimacy and the authority and persuasiveness of their “reading” of the past, as well as claim and address in accessible terms a specific audience even while frequently defend¬ ing their reading against competing ones. This requires substantial facility in the selection and arrangement of the building blocks the tradition may provide. Similarly, in their contemporary situations millennialists must sort through a vast number of possibilities to identify signs that are truly telling and then fit indi¬ vidual signs into a coherent pattern, by either relating them to existing paradigms of understanding, renovating those paradigms to accommodate new insights, or inventing new ones. The hard intellectual work and creativity characterizing millennialists’ inter¬ pretative efforts are particularly evident in the broad biblical tradition, but they can be seen elsewhere. Millennialists everywhere are indefatigable readers whose avid pursuit of meaning never flags. For example, David Cook observes that contempo¬ rary Muslim millennialists can find meaning in everything, from biblical texts like Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation, to anti-Semitic tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to contemporary Christian prophecy writers (2005,3,4). Each new experi¬ ence or insight is potentially grist for the interpretive mill, and any novel event may provoke the rearrangement of previously discerned patterns. Accordingly, more

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than a few scholars have characterized millennialism as a learned phenomenon. Norman Cohn, for example, observes that Jewish “apocalyptic is a learned genre, and the smell of midnight oil pervades it” (1993,165). More specifically, Jonathan Z. Smith traces the typical preoccupations of millennialists in the ancient Mediterranean world to the activities of ancient scribes: The paradigmatic concerns of the scribes, whether expressed in the interpretation of oracles and omens, in legal rulings, in the hermeneutics of sacred texts or in their other manifold functions, led to the development of complex exegetical techniques devoted to the task of discovering the ever-changing relevance of ancient precedents and archetypes. (These concerns also led, at times, to the fabrication of ancient precedents and archetypes.) These exegetical techniques were international, being diffused throughout scribal centers in the Eastern Mediterranean world. Texts are used and reused, glossed, interpreted and reinterpreted in a continual process of “updating” the materials. (1975,144) The learned character of millennialism, however, is not always recognized by the dominant educational or cultural institutions of a society. Barkun shows how some contemporary millennialists appeal to “rejected knowledge” drawn from a “cultic milieu” that keeps alive traditions of occult beliefs and practices while serving as a breeding ground for new ones (2003,24-26). They may also cling fast to “stigmatized knowledge” or “claims to truth that the claimants regard as verified despite the mar¬ ginalization of those claims by the institutions that conventionally distinguish between knowledge and error—universities, communities of scientific researchers, and the like” (Barkun 2003, 26). To describe millennialism as a learned phenome¬ non, then, is not to make a judgment about the cultural prestige it may enjoy in a given society, but to focus on the intellectual mechanisms of identifying, decipher¬ ing, sorting, classifying, and interpreting that characterize millennialist thinking. Millennialists see themselves as insightful individuals whose efforts to create mean¬ ing are coherent and consistent according to their own rules, even when those rules are not recognized by many others. In what follows I will examine three primary examples. The first two will focus on the complex dynamics of the formation and uses of two texts from the Bible. I will show how the authors of Daniel and Revelation combined their readings of the signs of their respective times with creative appropriations of tradition to pro¬ duce new and distinctive millennial texts that were then reinterpreted in classic, “orthodox” commentarial tradition and in contemporary contexts. Finally, follow¬ ing Smiths caution that “ancient precedents and archetypes” can be fabricated as well as followed, I will examine a contemporary millennialist text that attempts to legitimize its message by expressing its millennial hope in a scriptural mode. The discussion of each of those examples is intended to reinforce the contention that the decision to read the signs of one’s time and elements of traditional wisdom as con¬ veying a millennialist message represents an intentional interpretive decision. Millennial messages are made, unmade, and remade in dynamic processes of inter¬ action among interpreters, traditions, texts, contexts, and communities.

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The Dynamics of Biblical Millennialism: Daniel Both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures contain a number of millennialist or apocalyptic texts. Paul Hanson identifies “the dawn of apocalyptic” as discernible in the immediate post-exilic period of Israel’s history, c. 500

b.c.e.

(1979). The single

most striking and influential millennial text in the Hebrew Bible is the book of Daniel, set in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who sacked Jerusalem in 597

b.c.e.

Commentators since the third century

c.e.

have dated the

book, particularly chapters 7—12, to the brutal and oppressive reign over the Jews of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, around 165

b.c.e.

(Collins 1998, 85-90).

In the story, Daniel and his companions struggle to maintain their distinctive religious commitments in the court of a foreign king. For example, Daniel resolves that he would not defile himself with the king’s rich food, or with the wine which he drank (Dan. 1:8). More importantly, Daniel and his companions show them¬ selves to be “ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters” in his kingdom (1:20). In a prayer, Daniel attributes his superior insight to the patronage of God (see 2:20-23), which secures his status as the most authoritative voice in the book. The author clearly intends to draw a parallel between the situation of Daniel and his companions in Nebuchadnezzar’s court and the Jews suffering under Antiochus Epiphanes. The lesson is clear: even though the rule of Antiochus indicates that they are entering the last days, Jews are to emulate Daniel and cultivate their personal piety. In that sense Daniel provides an answer to the poignant question about life in exile posed in Psalm i37;4; How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” In addition, the book of Daniel is explicitly critical of any attempt, such as that of the Maccabees, to take up arms against Antiochus on behalf of God. Daniel 11:14 observes that “the men of violence among your own people shall lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision; but they shall fail” (Collins 1998,112). The apocalyptic transformation of the world is dramatically portrayed in the second half of Daniel in a series of visions—such as the four beasts arising from the sea in chapter 7 and the profanation of the Jerusalem temple in chapters 9 and 11—that provide arresting images but ffustratingly imprecise chronological details about the course of history. The point of Daniel’s visions, says his angelic interlocu¬ tor, is to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days” (Dan. 10:14). The review of history in chapter 11 strongly indicates that those suffering under Antiochus Epiphanes are actually living in those latter days. The crucial pas¬ sage in 11:31 warns that the “king of the north” will send forces that “shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shah take away the continual burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate” (11:31). In fact, Antiochus Epiphanes actually did set up an altar in the temple in Jerusalem in 167

b.c.e.,

thus

profaning the central site of Jewish worship, an event to which Dan. 11:31 almost certainly refers (Bickerman 1962,93-111).

MILLENNIALISM, SCRIPTURE, AND TRADITION

137

Daniel supplements his readings of these signs of the times with a reinterpreta¬ tion of a prophetic tradition about the renovation of Jerusalem: “I, Daniel, per¬ ceived in the books the number of years which, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years (Dan. 9:2). But given that Jeremiah was active in the years leading up to the Babylonian destruction of Judah in 586

b.c.e.,

a span of seventy

years would not reach the time of Antiochus Epiphanes in the mid-second century b.c.e.

Daniel 9 provides a creative solution to that dilemma that both preserves the

authority of tradition and transforms its meaning. After an extensive prayer, Daniel is graced by a visit from the angel Gabriel, who informs him that “I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding.... Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city” (Dan. 9:22, 24; see Jer. 25:11—12; 29:10). With supernatural guidance, Daniel multiplies Jeremiah’s seventy years by seven and thus locates the Endtime in the relatively near future after the reign of Antiochus. Daniel’s renovation of tradition gives Jeremiah’s hope for the restoration of Jerusalem new life and force. Although the millennial vision in the book of Daniel has yet to be realized, its imagery of the end has added to the storehouse of motifs that subsequent millennialists could draw upon in the service of their own scenarios. In the New Testament, for example, Mark 13:14 and its parallel synoptic passage in Matthew 24:15 make use of the oblique reference in Daniel 9:27 to “one who makes desolate” the temple rituals by putting “a stop to sacrifice and grain offering.” Following the lead of the author of Daniel, who reinterpreted Jeremiah’s prophecy, the synoptic authors reinterpret Daniel’s references to the desecration of the Jerusalem temple in order to situate the climax of history not in the period following Antiochus Epiphanes but much closer to their own times, after the destruction of the temple in 70

c.e.

Daniel’s abstract language, along with similarities between Titus’s destruction of the temple and Antiochus Epiphanes’s earlier actions, allow the synoptic authors to imply that Daniel was actually referring to future events that had now occurred in their own times. Many subsequent readers of Daniel and the apocalyptic passages in Mark 13 and Matthew 24 succumbed to the lure of fixing the time of the end. Despite warn¬ ings such as Mark 13:32—“but of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”—several early Christian writers devoted substantial effort and ingenuity to aligning Daniel’s vague attempts at chronology with both observed and anticipated events. For example, Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, written in 407

c.e.,

reviewed the interpretations of Daniel’s

seventy weeks (Dan. 9:24) ventured by Julius Africanus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Hippolytus, Apollinarius of Laodicea, Clement, Origen, and Tertullian. Jerome, however, was unwilling to commit himself to a particular interpretation. In fact, one contemporary scholar describes Jerome as “completely baffled” by Daniel’s chronology (Kelly 1975,302). With a strained diplomacy that did not quite mask his own reluctance to take a stand, he wrote:

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

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I realize that this question has been argued over in various ways by men of greatest learning, and that each of them has expressed his views according to the capacity of his own genius. And so because it is unsafe to pass judgment upon the opinions of the great teachers of the Church and to set one above another, I shall simply repeat the view of each, and leave it to the reader’s judgment as to whose explanation ought to be followed. (Archer 1958) In effect, Jerome passed the millennial buck to his readers. He declined to see him¬ self or his general situation in the text of Daniel 9:24-27, though he was well aware of ample precedent for doing precisely that and equally aware of the ongoing disin¬ tegration of the Roman Empire (Kelly 1975, 296-98). In fact, Jerome seemed par¬ ticularly uneasy about a commentary on Daniel that envisaged the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple in 482

c.e.

(Kelly 1975,296-98).

Jerome’s disinclination to endorse explicitly the more millennialist readings of Daniel 9:24-27 indicates that seeing one’s own situation in a millennial text is a choice rather than a necessity. In fact, even seeing a particular text as millennial is itself a matter of choice. Jerome’s comment that Clement of Alexandria found Daniel’s chronology “a matter of slight consequence” (Archer 1958,105) highlights how millennial readings of tradition represent choices to attribute significance to certain things and not others. While millennial potential may be particularly latent in certain texts, it remains to be activated through intentional acts of interpretation.

Rastafarianism Where Daniel transposed Jeremiah’s prophecy into a millennial key, Jerome muted the millennial emphasis of Daniel. Nonetheless, the millennial potential of Daniel remained, waiting only to be reactivated by an interpreter, as it has been many times in the nearly 2,200 years since its composition. In this contemporary example, Rastafari elder Mortimo Planno identifies himself fully with the experiences of the Babylonian exile and with Daniel and his companions: I an I being in captive Has to admit, to names of those w[h]o did pass through great tribulation: Such as Daniel, John, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, David, Shadrack, Meshek, and Abendego, Dream Interpreter and Dreadlock Rasta: All these names are Biblical, but there true identity has reproduce^] its manifestation. So I an I invite Human to travel through Prophesies. (Planno 1995) Planno, who died in 2006, was a key figure in the development of Rastafarianism, a millennialist religious movement that originated in 1930s Jamaica and has since spread throughout the world (see also chapter 21 by Barry Chevannes, this volume). Like virtually all other Rastafarians, Planno read his situation as a recapitulation of biblical paradigms. As one Rastafarian sister put it, “We see ourselves as ancient people, people of ancient times” (Romano and Leib 1984). Like Daniel, Planno saw himself as being in captivity, subject to the terrifying and awesome power of Babylon, now reinterpreted as the entire social, economic, political, racial, and religious

MILLENNIALISM, SCRIPTURE, AND TRADITION

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system that continues to oppress the descendants of slaves in Jamaica and every¬ where else they may be found (Edmonds 2003,41-52). Planno also suggests that, like Daniel, he is concerned with maintaining his “true identity” despite systematic pres¬ sures exerted by Babylon to have him appropriate a false identity. But Planno, a Dreadlock Rasta, stands firmly with his biblical predecessors, including Daniel and his companions, who resisted such external pressures and did not betray their religious convictions. Unlike Jerome, many Rastafarian brethren, following in Planno’s footsteps, have chosen to activate the millennialist potential of their situation. One of the brethren flatly declared that

we are on the threshold of a new dispensation”

(Chevannes 1994, 251). Commenting on the yearning for a messiah in first-century Palestine, another observed that “this time now is the said time coming back” (Owens 1976, 262). Like Daniel, Rastafarians see themselves as poised on the verge of a divine renovation of the world, eagerly anticipating the time when God or “ Jah” will destroy their enemies and reestablish them in their Ethiopian homeland. The authorizing sanction for this interpretation is derived from their reading of the Bible. As Ras Sam Brown put it, “We also know the significance of Daniel, declar¬ ing from that time to this time” (Barrett 1988,105). In fact, Brown claims a collective prophetic and even messianic role for the Rastafarian brethren: “We the Rastafarians who are the true prophets of this age, the reincarnated Moseses, Joshuas, Isaiahs, Jeremiahs who are the battle-axes and weapons of war (a Jihad), we are those who are destined to free not only the scattered Ethiopians (Black man) but all people, herbs and all life forms” (Barrett 1988,105). The sense of their contemporary biblical identity leads Rastafarians to a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of the Bible. As one Rastafarian reader said, the “Bible is really the black history, you know. They term it the ‘Holy Bible’ but [it] is black man’s history, his present and his future recorded in there” (Chevannes 1994,116). In the Rastafarian view Christian minis¬ ters have collaborated with the other representatives of Babylon to keep from them gaining access to the Bible’s true message. To counteract the monopoly Christian ministers have claimed over biblical interpretation and to legitimize their own understandings of biblical texts, Rastafarians have appealed to alternative sources of inspiration. Rastas emphasize that everyone has an indwelling sense of God and the ultimate source of that sense is Jah Rastafari himself or the emperor Haile Selassie (Kitzinger 1969). Just as the book of Daniel legitimizes Daniel’s visions by having angels deliver the approved interpretations, Rastafari legitimize their readings of history by attributing them to God (Moodie 1999, 38). Thus, the general Rastafarian community has activated what they see as a potential apocalyptic context by identifying selected biblical texts, including the book of Daniel, as direct descriptions of and commentaries on their situation in the world. Echoing Hal Lindsey’s comment about the relation of bibli¬ cal prophecy to contemporary events, Joseph Owens has said, “The Rastafarians sit and read with the newspaper in one hand, as it were, and the Bible in the other” (Owens 1976, 37). Notably, Rastafarians diffuse interpretive authority throughout the entire community. The concept of the indwelling presence of Jah Rastafari

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140

makes every Rastafarian who becomes conscious of his or her true identity an authoritative interpreter. In Rastafarian communities individual insights are pro¬ posed, shared, challenged, defended, refined, extended, confirmed, and potentially made common property during ritualized “reasoning” sessions in which brethren gather to proclaim and discuss the glories of Jah Rastafari, “chant down” the evils of the Babylonian system, and partake sacramentally in the smoking of ganja (marijuana). In these sessions, the chorus of the community plays the confirming role of Daniels angelic interlocutors, with insight and wisdom becoming commu¬ nity products. Thus Rastafari millennial hopes are continually rekindled in their ritual practice and individual interpretive insights always have the opportunity to be incorporated into the community’s store of wisdom. Daniel’s inclusion in the canon of the Hebrew Bible along with Jeremiah implic¬ itly conferred legitimacy on Daniel’s reinterpretation of Jeremiah’s “seventy years” as “seventy weeks of years,” among many other things. Similarly, reinterpretations of Daniel 9:27 by Mark 13 and Matthew 24 attained canonical status, and hence legitimacy, within Christian scripture. Rastafarian readings of texts like Daniel, however, have generally been judged to overflow the boundaries of biblical millennialist tradition so thoroughly as to constitute elements of a new, distinctive reli¬ gious tradition. Though Rastafari do quarry biblical sources, the edifice they are constructing is viewed by both Rastafari and outside observers as something that stands on its own as a related but separate religious tradition. While their traditions remain ever open to assessment and augmentation, Rastafarians’ self-understanding as “Israelites” oppressed by the “Babylon system” has been the primary paradigm through which they interpret their experience. That self-understanding thus enjoys a virtually canonical status in Rastafarian communities.

The Dynamics of Biblical Millennialism: Revelation

The New Testament contains a wide range of millennialist texts. These include numerous passages in the apostle Paul s letters, including the promise in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 that “the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,” as well as the “little apocalypse” of Mark 13 and Matthew 24 reinterpreting Daniel 9’s oblique commentary on Antiochus Epiphanes’s profanation of the Jerusalem temple. But the most fully developed millennial vision, and in many ways the most perplexing apocalyptic text, is the final book, Revelation. Although the book of Revelation has moments when it communicates its mil¬ lennial hope in vividly succinct terms, as with the enthroned deity’s declaration, Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5), its baroque imagery makes even Daniel

MILLENNIALISM, SCRIPTURE, AND TRADITION

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pale by comparison. Revelation is framed as a report of the author’s visionary experience (Rev. 1:10—11). What John saw was an elaborate scenario of the Endtime designed to comfort small Christian groups in Asia experiencing internal conflict and external persecution. Like Daniel, Revelation is deeply concerned with issues of sovereignty

in short, politics. As Adela Yarbro Collins puts it, “The primary con¬

flict in John s time was the cultural tension between the views and lifestyles of a strictly monotheistic and exclusive type of Christianity, on the one hand, and the Roman imperial ideology on the other” (1999, 398). But, like Daniel, Revelation addresses those issues indirectly, through the extraordinary imagery of its author’s visions. The book contributed an impressive number of distinctive images to the common store of biblical millennialist tradition, including the scroll sealed with seven seals (Rev. 5:1); the Lamb of God as the only one who can open the scroll (Rev. 5:6-10); 144,000 as the number of those who will be saved (Rev. 7:4); the two wit¬ nesses who will prophesy, be killed, and then be resurrected (Rev. 11:3-13); 666 as the number of the beast, commonly associated with the Antichrist (Rev. 13:18); Babylon and the whore of Babylon (Rev. 14:8; 17:5; 18:2); the notion of the Millennium itself (Rev. 20:2,4,7); and the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:3,22; 22:2). These motifs, and many others, are woven into a series of set pieces that communicate John’s extravagant vision of the imminent end. Like Daniel, Revelation reinterprets traditional materials. Revelation 13, for example, uses a vision of a beast “with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads” (Rev. 13:1) to excoriate the Roman Empire’s opposition to the Christian churches. John’s vision echoes several of the elements in Daniel 7 of four beasts coming out of the sea. Daniel’s fourth beast, for example, has ten horns (Dan. 7:7); both Daniel and Revelation describe their beasts as having attributes of a bear, a lion, and a leopard (Rev. 13:2; Dan. 7:4, 5,6), and both emphasize that the beasts exercise sovereignty (Rev. 13:2,7; Dan. 7:6). Revelation and Daniel are reading the political signs of their times, and each sees God’s faithful partisans suffering at the hands of illegitimate rulers. By reworking some of the imagery from Daniel 7, Revelation 13 gives its indictment of the Roman Empire historical depth and additional force, particularly for an audience presumed to be familiar with the Hebrew Bible. Revelation recasts other traditional materials in the service of its millennialist message. Adela Yarbro Collins argues that Revelation has reinterpreted an ancient Near Eastern myth of combat that appears in a variety of cultures. In her reading, the pattern depicts a struggle between two divine beings and their allies for universal kingship. One of the combatants is usually a monster, very often a dragon. This monster represents chaos and sterility, while his opponent is associated with order and fertility. Thus their conflict is a cosmic battle whose outcome will constitute or abolish order in society and fertility in nature. (2001,57) Yarbro Collins finds that the combat myth underlies much of Revelation 12:1 to 15:8, especially Revelation 12. In that chapter a “great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads” (Rev. 12:3) menaces “a woman clothed

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with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1) who is in the process of giving birth. But before the dragon can devour him, the child is “caught up to God and his throne” (Rev. 12:5). A battle ensues in which Michael and his angels conquer the dragon, “that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan” (Rev. 12:9). Yarbro Collins concludes that Revelation 12 is “an adaptation” of the Python-Leto form of the combat myth (2001, 83). Revelation’s reinterpretation of that material claims a broader audience for its millennial message than its reinterpretations of Jewish traditions, as befits a text that addresses churches in seven cosmopolitan cities in Asia Minor. Although its authority was a matter of some controversy, Revelation captured the imaginations of many groups of early Christians and eventually achieved canonical status in the Christian New Testament, thus becoming an important object of interpretation and use for subsequent readers of the Bible. In the second century, for example, in the backwaters of Phrygia, the prophets Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla proclaimed, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the heav¬ enly New Jerusalem of Revelation 21-22 was soon to descend upon the small vil¬ lage of Pepuza. This account from fourth-century Montanist critic Epiphanius may preserve one of their prophetic oracles: “Having assumed the form of a woman... Christ came to me in a bright robe and put wisdom in me, and revealed to me that this place is holy, and that it is here that Jerusalem will descend from heaven” (Heine 1989, 4-5). Like other millennialists, the Montanist prophets demanded certain types of ethical action in preparation for the coming end, in this case asceticism. As the movement spread through Asia Minor to North Africa it continued to gain both adherents, including the prominent theologian Tertullian, and opponents such as Epiphanius. The Montanist movement was condemned by a series of synods but maintained flickers of life into the sixth century (Trevett 1996). It shows how Revelation’s millennial vision had the power to spark social movements. Not all readers of Revelation were as eager to claim that its promises were about to be fulfilled, including the influential Christian theologian and bishop Augustine of Hippo. In his review of Augustine’s understanding of history, R. A. Markus detects a movement away from any sympathy toward millennialism and notes that begin¬ ning in the fifth century “even the residual echoes of millennaristic ideas which have been detected in his earlier writings finally disappear” (1970,20). In his master work, The City of God, composed over at least a decade beginning around 412, Augustine directly disavowed a millennialist reading of several passages in Revelation. Referring to the mention of a “first resurrection” in Rev. 20:1-6, Augustine wrote that “there should follow on the completion of

sex

thousand years, as of

sex

days, a kind of

seventh-day Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years; and that it is for this pur¬ pose the saints rise, viz. to celebrate this Sabbath.” He acknowledged that “this opin¬ ion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God,” and even admit¬ ted that “I myself, too, once held this opinion.” But he was plainly appalled by the

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idea that those who have risen will enjoy “immoderate carnal banquets.” He argued strongly that such assertions can be believed only by the carnal. They who do believe them are called by the spiritual Chiliasts, which we may literally reproduce by the name Millenarians. It were a tedious process to refute these opinions point by point: we prefer proceeding to show how that passage of Scripture should be understood.

(The City of God 20.7) Augustine eventually argued that the “first resurrection” in Revelation refers to something that will occur not at the dawning of a new Millennium but repeatedly as new members enter the Church, which “begins its reign with Christ now in the living and the dead” (The City of God 20.9). Ultimately Augustine opts out of a millennialist reading of Revelation, arguing that “how, or in what order” events of the Last Judgment occur “human understanding cannot perfectly teach us, but only the experience of the events themselves” (The City of God 20.30). Like his contem¬ porary Jerome, Augustine chose for theological reasons to mute the millennial message of a biblical book. Where the Montanists eagerly awaited the fulfillment of Revelation’s prophecies in the very near future, Augustine saw the scenario of Revelation being played out daily in the Church, imperfect as it was. Augustine read his scriptural source in a way that defused its millennialist potential and transformed its meaning into something more congenial for his view of history, the Christian Church, and the world.

Millennial Movements in Papua New Guinea Although Augustine’s amillennialist reading of Revelation remains a possibility for Christian interpreters of that book, it has more often been subjected to the type of reading the Montanists gave it. Its power to ignite millennial dreams remains undi¬ minished and can be noticed virtually anywhere Christian scripture is heard or read. On the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea, for example, relatively recent encounters with Christian missionaries and the coming of the year 2000 provoked reinterpretations of traditional wisdom (see also chapter 22 by Garry W. Trompf, this volume). In general, as Jaap Timmer argues, “the revelations in the Bible pro¬ vide points of reference to interpret new phenomena. In particular, New Testament stories recounting the return of Jesus Christ and the impending millennium stimu¬ late critical reflection on the old relationship between the earth and sky, people and sky beings” (2000,56). In some instances, as among the Huli-speaking people of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, creative reinterpretation incorporates a reading of traditionally expected signs of social and cultural decline into the newer biblical frame story: We were told that ferns and weeds would grow across the swamps. If we saw this, we would know that the world would soon end. They said that the roar of the rapids would die to a whisper and that, when it ceased entirely, we would all die.

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Now we are the thirteenth generation. Children do not listen, small girls grow breasts and marry, and small boys grow beards. Old age comes more swiftly, with white hair, with broken knees and broken teeth. They said we would rape our own mothers and sisters, murder our own fathers and brothers. Rape, kill and eat them. Now this killing has begun. The eating and the fighting, the children with beards, the married girls—these things have all come to pass. Count swiftly, for everything is coming to a close. Truly it is now the time of deafness and we shall all die. This was my father’s mana [religious knowledge] and it has come together as one with the mana of the church. (Quoted in Ballard 2000, 217) Chris Ballard reports that “in the expanded search for signs of this new apocalypse, intensive Bible reading is supplemented by equally fervent scanning of the radio waves for news of impending disasters or wars” (2000, 218). Moreover, some in Papua New Guinea share with the Rastafarians the suspicion that the colonial and postcolonial powers have hidden from them the full, true meaning of the Bible (Timmer 2000,44). The impact of Revelation on new visions of the Millennium in Papua New Guinea is succinctly conveyed in different interpretations given to the number of the beast, 666 (Rev. 13:18). For example, “while the Urapmin expect this number to appear on a check, the Wiru foresee it to be written on the new banknotes. According to a pamphlet distributed among the Huli, it will ‘take the form of electronic bank account numbers’” (Jebens 2000, 177). In interpreting allusive references of Revelation, people in Papua New Guinea appear no less ingenious than those in the United States, at least one of whom, Mary Stewart Relfe, sees the number of the beast in the bar codes used on so many products (Boyer 1992,286ff.). And it is pre¬ cisely interpretation that needs to be brought to the Bible. As an anonymous infor¬ mant critical of the missions put it: We should ask them to consider my analyses so that we put an end to making explanations with quotations only. The clergymen or others who announce things from the pulpit should search beyond the Bible. They know that the Bible contains stories that are based here [in New Guinea] and deal with things that our ancestors knew about. Why then keep on following the twisted words in the Bible. Only when they make analyses like I do, other parish members will understand what the Bible is about. (Timmer 2000, 40) Thus, many groups in Papua New Guinea are involved in the same type of interpretive work as the authors of Daniel and Revelation, commentators like Jerome and Augustine, and contemporary Rastafarians. They are striving to make sense of their present experience and their futures in the contexts of traditional knowledge and new developments like the encounter with Christian missionaries. In Papua New Guinea, “biblical narratives are interpreted as proof of the truth, or validity in present-day life, of their ancestral lore, thus integrating and confirming both forms of knowledge” (van Oosterhout 2000, 70). Specific passages, images, and themes from Revelation have become part of the trove of wisdom through which individual interpreters and the audiences who support them attempt to situate themselves in the course of a his¬ tory that often seems on the cusp of breathtaking transformation.

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Inventing Tradition in a Contemporary Millennial Text: The Turner Diaries Although William Pierce, writing as Andrew Macdonald, first published The Turner Diaries in 1978, it did not gain wide public notoriety until 1995, when it was revealed to be a primary inspiration for Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19 (Juergensmeyer 2003, 31; Michel and Herbeck 2001, 39, 59,167, 228, 304). Presented as the contemporaneous diary entries of Earl Turner, Pierce’s novel recounts the overthrow of the U.S. govern¬ ment and, ultimately, the political and social transformation of the entire planet (see also chapter 33 by Michael Barkun, this volume). Turner observes early on that the signs of his times are indeed ominous. Most threatening, in his view, is the pas¬ sage of the “Cohen Act” outlawing the private ownership of guns (Macdonald 1980, 1). To protect his freedom and transform a world gone wrong, Turner joins the revolutionary war against “the System.” The full scope of the renovation he seeks is evident in Turner’s goal of the revolution: “We are forging the nucleus of a new society, a whole new civilization, which will rise from the ashes of the old. And it is because our new civilization will be based on an entirely different world view than the present one that it can only replace the other in a revolutionary manner” (Macdonald 1980, 111). A communique from “the Organization” reinforces that goal, stating, “We intend to liberate, first, the entire United States and then the remainder of this planet. When we have done so we will liquidate all the enemies of our people” (Macdonald 1980,181). The Organization’s view of its enemies force¬ fully reproduces the virulently racist and anti-Semitic ideology of Pierce’s National Alliance. Reflecting on his experience in the newly liberated area of southern California and giving direct voice to Pierce’s beliefs, Turner rapturously describes his appreciation of his first encounter with a new world: “Every face I saw in the fields was White: no Chicanos, no Orientals, no Blacks, no mongrels. The air seems cleaner, the sun brighter, life more joyous. What a wonderful difference this single accomplishment of our revolution has made!” (Macdonald 1980,171). The Turner Diaries clearly expresses a hope for the transformation of this world that is collective because it will be shared by the worthy members of the “White Race”; terrestrial because it will “liberate” the United States and eventually the entire planet; immi¬ nent because Turner and the Organization are in the process of initiating “the New Era for our whole planet” (Macdonald 1980, 209); and total because it involves a new civilization with “a new moral basis” and “a new set of fundamental values” (Macdonald 1980,168). Consequently, Turner and the Organization meet the first four of the five criteria by which Norman Cohn defines a millenarian movement' (1970, 15). Cohn’s fifth characteristic is that the world’s transformation be miraculous, “in the sense that it is to be accomplished by, or with the help of, super¬ natural agencies” (1970,15; italics added). On that criterion, The Turner Diaries is more ambiguous, making no appeal to any discernible element of the biblical tra-

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

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dition and no explicit use of any other religious tradition. Nonetheless, in order to give force and even legitimacy to its story of the birth of a “New Era,” The Turner Diaries often turns to religious language, themes, and practices. For example, emu¬ lating the Gregorian calendar’s division of time into time into

b.n.e.

(“Before the New Era”) and

n.e.

b.c.

and a.d., the novel divides

(Macdonald 1980, iii, iv). More

importantly, the novel identifies at least two texts that appear to have gained authoritative, if not scriptural, status in the New Era. Following an interrogation designed to certify his loyalty to the Organization, Turner is given a book. Both his reading and description of the book indicate its centrality when he says it pro¬ voked something like a visionary experience: What I had read... had lifted me out of this world, out of my day-to-day existence as an underground fighter for the Organization, and it had taken me to the top of a high mountain from which I could see the whole world, with all its nations and tribes and races, spread out before me. And I could see the ages spread out before me too, from the steaming, primordial swamps of a hundred million years ago to the unlimited possibilities which the centuries and the millennia ahead hold for us. (Macdonald 1980,71) Turner’s experience is not mediated by an angelic interlocutor, nor is it a result of being “in the Spirit,” yet what he sees enables him to understand the overarching framework of history and his place within it. With dramatic religious rhetoric, he concludes that “we are truly the instruments of God in the fulfillment of His Grand Design” (Macdonald 1980, 71). In the narrative of The Turner Diaries, “the Book” definitely functions as a source of authoritative tradition. Lest the reader miss the point, the author breaks into the narrative with an almost breathless “note to the reader”: It is obvious that Turner is referring to the Book. We know from other evidence that it was written approximately ten years before the Record of Martyrs in which it is mentioned—i. e. probably sometime in 9 b.n.e. or 1990 according to the old chronology. Turner mentions “typed pages,” but it is not clear whether he means reproductions of typewritten pages or the originals themselves. If the latter is the case, then we may have here the only extant reference to the original copy of the Book! (Macdonald 1980,71) Together, the Book and the Record of Martyrs constitute the sacred records of the revolution; from the perspective of the author, writing his preface in “New Baltimore” in

100 n.e.,

they document the sacred origins of the new world order. The Turner

Diaries thus invents traditions and scriptures that document the “miraculous” suc¬ cess of the revolution that created a new world. The novel’s fictional world thus mirrors the processes and structures by which other millennial visions have been constructed, communicated, and legitimized from at least the time of Daniel to the present. Pierce’s canny construction of a millennialist vision solves the dilemma of legitimation in much the same way as did the ancient Mediterranean scribes described by Jonathan Smith. Pierce chooses not to avail himself of the most promi¬ nent millennialist precedents and archetypes” available to him because he rejects

MILLENNIALISM, SCRIPTURE, AND TRADITION

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Christianity and viciously excoriates Judaism. So, like those ancient scribes, he fills the gap by “fabricating” his own set of precedents and archetypes in the form of “the Book and the Record of Martyrs,” thus anchoring his millennial vision in an alter¬ native view of authoritative tradition.

Conclusion The yearning for a better world that drives millennial movements both expresses and intensifies participants’ desire to make sense of their own situations. Sensing that they are on the cusp of extraordinary events, millennialists can become hyper-aware of the potential significance of virtually anything—dramatic political changes, economic and social developments, and events in the natural world. “World news,” as the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea call it, feeds millennialists’ imaginations and spurs their creation of Endtime scenarios, even when the “news” concerns what others may think are relatively trivial matters (Robbins 1997, 36). Since those scenarios are intended to disclose the pattern and direction of history, they also lead millennialists to a reconsideration of their past. They quarry their deposits of traditional wisdom, particularly scriptures and other authoritative sources, to find paradigms that can illuminate the present and immediate future. Because perceived facts of the present rarely fit traditional models of understanding without adjustment, millennialists are challenged to employ the same type of interpretive ingenuity that they bring to discerning the signs of their times to aligning those signs with authoritative tradition. Millennialists, then, are continually involved in reading what they perceive as the signs of the times and what they accept as traditional wisdom in creative ways. The interactions of millennialist interpreters, pres¬ ent contexts, authoritative texts and traditions, and potential audiences are always dynamic, and millennialists remain ever alert to discovering the clue that might finally enable them to discern fully the meaning and direction of history.

REFERENCES Archer, Gleason L., Jr., trans. 1958. Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House. Ballard, Chris. 2000. “The Fire Next Time: The Conversion of the Huli Apocalypse.” Ethnohistory 47 (2000): 202-25. Barkun, Michael. 2003. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Barrett, Leonard. 1988. The Rastafarians: Sounds of Cultural Dissonance. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon. Bickerman, Elias. 1962. From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Postbiblical Judaism. New York: Schocken.

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Boyer, Paul. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Burridge, Kenelm. 1969. New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activity. New York: Schocken. Chevannes, Barry. 1994. Rastafari: Roots and Ideology. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press. -. 1993. Chaos, Cosmos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Collins, John J. 1998. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 2d ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Cook, David. 2005. Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Edmonds, Ennis Barrington. 2003. Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers. New York: Oxford University Press. Frankfurter, David. 1999. “Apocalypticism in Early Christianity.” In The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, Vol. 1: The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, edited by John J. Collins, 415-53. New York: Continuum. Graziano, Frank. 1999. The Millennial New World. New York: Oxford University Press. Hanson, Paul D. 1979. The Dawn of Apocalyptic: The Historical and Sociological Roots of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatalogy. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: Fortress. Heine, Ronald E. 1989. The Montanist Oracles and Testimonia. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press. Jebens, Holger. 2000. Signs of the Second Coming: On Eschatalogical Expectation and Disappointment in Highland and Seaboard Papua New Guinea.” Ethnohistory 47 (2000): 171-204. Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2003. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. 3d ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kelly, J. N. D. 1975. Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies. New York: Harper & Row. Kitzinger, Sheila. 1969. “Protest and Mysticism: The Rastafari Cult of Jamaica.” Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion 8 (1969): 240-62. LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry B. Jenkins. 1997. Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House. Lindsey, Hal, with C. C. Carlson. 1970. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. Macdonald, Andrew (William Pierce). 1980. The Turner Diaries. 2d ed. Hillsboro, W.Va.: National Vanguard. Markus, R. A. 1970. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press. Michel, Lou, and Dan Herbeck. 2001. American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: HarperCollins. Moodie, John. 1999. Hath... The Lion Prevailed... ? Chicago: Research Associates/School Times. O’Leary, Stephen D. 1994. Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press. Owens, Joseph. 1976. Dread. Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster’s Book Stores. Planno, Mortimo. 1995. The Earth Most Strangest Man the Rastafarian, www.cifas.us/ caribbean/resources/planno/. Accessed 9 March 2011.

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Robbins, Joel. 1997. “666, or Why Is the Millennium on the Skin? Morality, the State and the Epistemology of Apocalypticism among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea.” In Millennial Markers, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern. Townsville, Australia: Centre for Pacific Studies, James Cook University of North Queensland. Romano, Renee, and Elliott Leib. 1984. Rastafari: Conversations concerning Women. Video. San Diego: Eye in I Filmworks. Saint Augustine. 1950. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. New York: Modern Library. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1975. Wisdom and Apocalypse.” In Religious Syncretism in Antiquity: Essays in Conversation with Geo Widengren, edited by Birger A. Pearson, 131—56. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press. Timmer, Jaap. 2000. The Return of the Kingdom: Agama and the Millennium among the Imyan of Irian Jaya, Indonesia.” Ethnohistory 47 (2000): 29-65. Trevett, Christine. 1996. Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy. New York: Cambridge University Press. van Oosterhout, Dianne. 2000. “Tying the Time String Together: An End-of-Time Experience in Irian Jaya, Indonesia.” Ethnohistory 47 (2000): 67-99. Yarbro Collins, Adela. 2001. The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock. . 1999. The Book of Revelation.” In The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, Vol. 1: The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, edited by John J. Collins, 384-414. New York: Continuum.

CHAPTER 8

PROPHETIC FAILURE IN MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS LORNE L. DAWSON

Millennial

movements are almost always focused on prophecies predicting future

events. In fact, the two phenomena are more or less identical, since the expectation of a miraculous better age to come tends to give rise inevitably to attempts to fore¬ tell how and when this will happen. The prophecies themselves vary widely in their nature and specificity. But those drawn to the prophecies commonly invest deeply in them, both emotionally and materially, incurring sacrifices and reorganizing their lives. Almost all of these prophecies, however, ultimately fail. Empirically, that is, they prove to be untrue. Dates and events pass without either the cataclysmic or wonderful consequences anticipated, leading one keen observer to conclude that “ideological cris[es] born of prophetic failures [are] a virtually universal feature of the careers of millenarian groups” (Zygmunt 1972,245). When the prophecies fail to come true, believers are often shocked, disap¬ pointed, and bewildered. The passionate convictions that had given special purpose to their lives become the source of chagrin as they must embarrassingly explain to others, and themselves, what went wrong. Yet it is rare for these failures to result in the dire consequences that outsiders expect. Counterintuitively, the vast majority of groups making millennial predictions weather the storm of disconfirmation quite well. Rather than driving members away in doubt and frustration, the failures may intensify the commitments of followers, at least for a time. Faith in the leaders who made the prophecies and their broader ideologies remain intact, and with some adjustments the disappointed often turn their attention to new prophecies. Social scientists and historians of religion have long wondered why this is the case. Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schacter first drew attention to this unusual state of affairs in their classic study When Pvophecy Fails (1956),

PROPHETIC FAILURE

151

postulating the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance to explain it. In the face of evidence contradicting a strongly held belief, Festinger and his colleagues conclude, people will be inclined to find a means to discount the evidence than surrender their beliefs and commitments. They will resolve the cognitive ten¬ sion and consequent anxiety they experience by seeking to change the way the world is perceived, in line with their expectations, rather than abandon their cherished convictions. More specifically, Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter argue, the faithful will attempt to convince others of the veracity of their views, on the premise that their ability to persuade others testifies to the continued worth of their beliefs. The conversion of others, or at least the silencing of critics, will reduce the dissonance caused by the faith in prophecy and lack of confirming evidence. Festinger and his colleagues based this surprising conclusion on a field study of a small American religious group given a pseudonym, the Seekers. The leader of this group, Mrs. Marion Keech (also a pseudonym), had predicted the destruc¬ tion of much of the United States in a great flood, but not before the faithful few would be rescued by alien spaceships. Participant observation of the repeated failure of Mrs. Keech’s prophecy led Festinger et al. to specify five conditions under which we can “expect to observe increased fervor following the disconfirmation of a belief” (1956,3-4). This chapter systematically examines the veracity of these conditions in the light of the comparative analysis of a growing body of case studies of instances of failed prophecy. The stratagem allows us to test the limits of this influential theory, while surveying the results of later research and laying the foundations for an alternative theoretical perspective. In recent years students of the phenomenon have called for a conceptual reorientation away from the specifics of cognitive dissonance theory to the study of the more generic social-psychological processes of dissonance management in religious groups (e.g., Dawson 1999, 75-78). In slightly different ways Joseph Zygmunt (1972), J. Gordon Melton (1985), and Lome Dawson (1999) have detected three primary strategies used to manage the dissonance caused by a prophetic failure: rationalization, reaffirmation, and proselytization. But the success of these strategies is conditioned by a long list of social factors that could impinge on any specific case. In the end, while the case study lit¬ erature broadly confirms the expectations of cognitive dissonance theory, it is clear that the survival of groups depends on a more complex set of interdependent social variables than anticipated. Seeking to bring greater order to the analyses examined here, I argue that the ability of groups to survive the failure of prophecy, to implement successfully dis¬ sonance management strategies, is determined by four social processes: (1) the degree to which members are socialized to the prophetic process and expecta¬ tions; (2) the degree to which members are motivated or compelled to engage in costly preparations; (3) the degree to which leaders respond swiftly and thor¬ oughly to apparent failures; and (4) the degree of in-group social support present in the group.

152

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

The Ambiguous Legacy of When Prophecy Fails The study of how groups respond to failed prophecies thrives at the margins of the sociology of religion. In the burgeoning literature on new religious movements it has played a surprisingly minor role, but in the study of millennial movements it has achieved a greater prominence. Since the publication of When Prophecy Fails (1956) the number of studies has grown slowly but steadily (see Dawson 1999 and Stone 2000b). It is increasingly apparent that the full cycle of actions associated with prophecies—making them, preparing for them, dealing with their seeming failure, and then starting the process over again—plays an important role in the formation and transformation of many new religions (e.g., Lofland 1977; van Fossen 1988; Palmer and Finn 1992; Poloma 2003; Whitsel 2003; Tumminia 2005; Shepherd and Shepherd 2006). But this function of prophecy has yet to be systematically explored. The neglect stems in part from the preoccupation of researchers with testing the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance rather than developing a better grasp of the social-structural factors determining when a shift in the cognitions of believ¬ ers is likely either to occur or to have the desired effect.

The Bottom Line Festinger and colleagues discovered that prophetic disappointments lead to cogni¬ tive dissonance, which may be resolved by reinterpretation and intensified proselytization. Contrary to common sense, the disconfirmation of a prediction does not shake peoples faith. Many groups experience setbacks and some defections. But the research record shows overwhelmingly that groups usually survive, and in this sense the theory of cognitive dissonance is confirmed. It is equally apparent, though, that few groups revert to increased proselytization to cope with their disappointment. In this limited sense, the generality of the Festinger theory is compromised. But on this count, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. In an otherwise intriguing study, Chris Bader (1999) states, “No case study of failed prophecy... has provided support for the cognitive dissonance hypothesis” (1999,120, emphasis in the original). His mentor Rodney Stark similarly states: “There have been a number of subsequent tests of [Festinger et al.’s hypothesis], none of which found the predicted outcome” (1996,220, emphasis in the original). Such misleading pronouncements are based on an insufficient sampling of the relevant studies and the misidentification of the theory of cognitive dissonance with the prediction that failed prophecies will neces¬ sarily result in increased proselytization.1 My examination of over fifty studies of prophetic failure involving twenty-eight different religious groups revealed only two clear instances of a group disintegrating soon after the failure of a prophecy (Palmer and Finn 1992, on La Mission de

1 Esprit Saint; Newport 2006, 95-114, on the original Davidian group near Waco).

PROPHETIC FAILURE

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Approximately 69 percent of the groups studied seem to have survived the failure of prophecies quite well, with varying degrees of success. The fate of 26 percent of the groups is more ambiguous. They border on being failures because they experienced significant disruptions and losses of membership from which they did not fully recover. But the exact status of each of these groups is open to debate. Only 15 per¬ cent of the groups turned to increased proselytization to negotiate the turmoil caused by a prophetic failure.2 It is, though, a real option.3 The challenge is to dis¬ cern which groups are likely to do so and why, and that requires taking into consid¬ eration a complex set of variables. Insight on this front will help to establish the grounds for identifying and explaining when and why other types of responses to prophetic failure occur as well, and why there are different outcomes even when the responses are similar.4 Thus the research record provides only partial substantiation for the theory advanced in When Prophecy Fails. But the core of the theory of cogni¬ tive dissonance has been elaborately verified by experimental results in psychology (Harmon-Jones and Mills 1999; Cooper 2007), and it remains the primary explana¬ tion for why committed members feel compelled to discount the significance of a failed prophecy in the first place. In other words, it provides a necessary but not suf¬ ficient explanation of this phenomenon.5

Reasons for Confusion Some confusion on these matters stems from the fact that the supposed survival of some groups is ambiguous. What constitutes “survival” in these situations? It is often hard to gauge the consequences of disconfirmations because we lack reliable evidence about the number of people in these groups before and after the failures, and the time span covered by studies is usually too limited. In most instances it is apparent that the core membership of the movements stayed faithful in the imme¬ diate aftermath of the failure, and usually for some weeks or months afterward. But we are dealing with “snapshots” and lack the kind of systematic and comparative diachronic data needed. The sole exceptions are studies of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (e.g., Zygmunt 1970; Beckford 1975; Wilson 1978; Singelenberg 1988; Schmalz 1994), the Lubavitch Hasidim (e.g., Shaffir 1995, Dein 1997, 2001, 2002; Dein and Dawson 2008), the Davidians (Newport 2006, 95-114), and to a lesser extent Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant (Balch, Farnsworth, and Wilkins 1983; Balch et al. 1997). Even these analyses are rather episodic, but cumulatively they offer important longitudinal insights. It is very rare for a group to disintegrate fully after a prophetic failure. But it is far from obvious that even the UFO group studied in When Prophecy Fails actually “sur¬ vived.” The group was very small to begin with, and many of its members during the study were actually covert participant observers from Festinger’s team. When the research ended, some people still harkened to the teachings of Mrs. Keech, but the epilogue of the book states that the group “dispersed” within a week of the final failure. It dissolved alto¬ gether within a month, and Mrs. Keech eventually moved away.6

154

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

Similar ambiguities surround the case of the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT). Thousands of devotees of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the leader of the church, emerged from their bomb shelters on 16 March 1990 to discover that the United States had not been destroyed by a nuclear attack as predicted. Within weeks well over half of the people who had crowded into the shelters fled the groups headquarters in Montana. Does this mean the group failed? Eventually many who left were replaced by others who had not heeded the initial call, and a sizable group exists to this day. Significant changes in the nature of CUT and its leadership soon followed this failure, however, and the group has experienced a steady decline in its fortunes, slowly shrink¬ ing in size. Dawson and Whitsel (2005) argue that the weight of the evidence suggests the group has more or less failed, highlighting some of the ways the leaders missed their opportunity to overcome the frustration many followers experienced in the days, weeks, and even months following the disconfirmation. Other researchers (e.g., Lucas 2007; Wessinger 2007), however, dispute this conclusion, arguing there is evidence that the supposed failure was never perceived as such by most of the members of CUT and that the real decline in membership was precipitated by other and later organiza¬ tional woes (also see chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, and chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, all in this volume). In the face of the com¬ plex and seemingly conflicting information in hand, it is difficult to determine the causal relationship between the prophetic failure and the decline in the group’s for¬ tunes. Clearly it had an impact, but did it threaten the group’s “survival”? The perti¬ nent data is subject to considerable interpretation, if only because most of it is derived from retrospective accounts and later observations. This situation is very problematic, but also almost inevitable in these cases (see Beckford 1978; Dawson 1994). Nonetheless, having a better knowledge of what to look for and why, based on a more systematic and comparative approach to the study of the phenomena, will be helpful. Much the same can be said about the well-known case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Minimizing the reliance on retrospective accounts, Richard Singelenberg (1988) was able to quantify the damage done to Jehovah’s Witness membership and proselytization in Holland after the failure of the prophecy that the apocalyptic events predicted in the New Testament book of Revelation would occur in 1975. But the group rebounded within a few years, and the parent organization remains strong throughout the world (see also chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). So are the Jehovah’s Witnesses indic¬ ative of how groups successfully manage the failure of prophecy or how they are dam¬ aged by it? Stark and Iannaccone (1993,142-44; 1997,136-37) and Bader (1999,122-23) emphasize the latter interpretation, using the case to dismiss the ideas of Festinger et al. Most other commentators see the Jehovah’s Witnesses as demonstrating the essential truth of Festinger’s theory (e.g., Zygmunt 1970; Wilson 1978; Schmalz 1994). In these matters there has been a tendency to overinterpret and misuse another important study. Jane Hardyck and Marcia Braden (1962) studied a small American Christian evangelical group that they called the Church of the True Word. The 135 members of this group spent forty-two days and nights waiting in the bomb shel¬ ters they had buffi to escape a prophesied nuclear disaster. The study of this group, entitled Prophecy Fails Again: A Report of a Failure to Replicate,” is often cited as a

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refutation of When Prophecy Fails. But in line with Festinger et al., Hardyck and Braden document that the disconfirmation of this prophecy had few, if any, real negative consequences for the Church of the True Word. The group remained intact and so did its beliefs. The researchers did not observe, however, any intensification of proselytization. Thus, they conclude proselytization is not an essential feature of the response to failed prophecy. Contrary to the impression created by later cita¬ tions, the study does not constitute a falsification of the theory of cognitive disso¬ nance per se (see McGhee 2005,208). Rather, as Flardyck and Braden argue, it points to the need to better specify “the conditions that must obtain in the disconfirmation situation in order that the predicted proselytizing might occur” (1962,141). Hardyck and Braden propose two conditions: the amount of social support present within the group, and the amount of ridicule the group receives from the outside world (1962,139-40). I will have more to say about the former condition below, but the gist of their argument is that “the more social support an individual receives above the mini¬ mum he needs to maintain his beliefs, the less he will have to proselyte” (1962,139). The Seekers—the group Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter studied—had fewer members than the group Hardyck and Braden studied, and most of them had joined only months or even weeks before. The Seekers also suffered from some internal dissension, so in the face of failure they turned to proselytization to shore up the existing social support for their ideas. The Church of the True Word was a much larger group by comparison, and the members had known each other for years. They had worked hard together on the preparation of the bomb shelters and other projects. They had no need to supplement the social support at hand. Similarly, they happened to live in a community that not just tolerated their apocalyptic views, but supported them. The Seekers, on the other hand, received a rough ride from the local media and so they had to reach out to the larger community to compensate for this criticism (1962,140). In other words, the true importance of the Hardyck and Braden study is not that it refutes the theory of cognitive dissonance but, rather, that it demonstrates the need to search for what Zygmunt later called “the interac¬ tional and structural properties of millenarian collectivities” (1972, 249). It is these larger social and organizational variables that will determine how, and just how well, any group will cope with disconfirmation.7 Whether the cogni¬ tive dissonance experienced in each case will be resolved and with what conse¬ quences is shaped by preexisting and emergent social processes that we need to delineate and examine systematically.

Toward a New Theoretical Framework Prior to considering some of these processes, we need to complete the analysis at hand in two ways. We need to take a closer look at the lessons to be learned from When Prophecy Fails and summarize what we know about strategies used to avert

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the worst consequences of prophetic failures. At this juncture I will pause also to refute the deceptively appealing alternative explanation of the variant responses to failed prophecy proposed by Chris Bader (1999).

When Prophecy Fails In advancing their theory Festinger and his colleagues specified five conditions under which we would expect to observe increased fervor following the disconfirmation of a prophecy (Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter 1956,3-4). Simplified, these conditions are that (1) a belief must be held with “deep conviction” and have an impact on people’s behavior; (2) the conviction must lead to important actions that are “difficult to undo”; (3) the belief must be “sufficiently specific” so that events may unequivocally refute [it]”; (4) this “disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized”; (5) the believer must have the “social support” of fellow believers. Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter assert that the first and second conditions are the ones that make a belief resistant to change. The third and fourth conditions are the ones that exert pressure to discard the belief, and the fifth condi¬ tion alone determines whether the belief will be either discarded or maintained with new fervor (1956, 4). Framed in this more exacting way, with the requirements of psychological experimentation in mind, the conditions for testing their hypothesis are rarely satisfied in naturalistic settings. This is because we normally lack sufficient information about the nature and depth of people’s belief in a prophecy; the prophecies commonly include vague or ambiguous language that may render them insufficiently specific, or concerned with the physical world, to be unequiv¬ ocally refuted; and we lack the information required to say whether people find the disconfirmatory evidence to be undeniable (though their actions suggest otherwise). Consequently, most supposed attempts to test the predictive value of this the¬ ory have become implicit attempts to fashion more generalized theories of how and why groups survive the failure of prophecy. With a few exceptions (e.g., Zygmunt 1972; Melton 1985; Dawson 1999; Stone 2000a), the results have been fragmentary, and synthesis is needed. Two key insights from the conditions set by Festinger et al., which are at least implicitly preserved in most later studies, point the way to such a synthesis. First, as Festinger and colleagues stipulate in their second condition, there is a strong correlation between the amount of preparatory work done for a proph¬ ecy and the level of commitment to the prophecy, which conditions the willingness of believers to break faith with their cobelievers. Second, as Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter assert in their fifth condition, there is a strong correlation between the level of in-group social support and people’s willingness to work to overcome a failed prophecy. Research on two quite different contemporary cases of failed prophecy, the Church Universal and Triumphant (Dawson and Whitsel 2005) and the Lubavitch

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Hasidim (Dein and Dawson 2008), has led me to expand these two conditions into the following four social processes. How well groups manage to survive the failure of prophecy depends on (1) prior processes of socialization; (2) prior preparatory processes; (3) leadership response processes; and (4) social support processes. While this formulation stems from research undertaken without specifically considering Festinger et al.’s conditions, it is instructive to note the continuity. Certainly the first of the five conditions Festinger and colleagues set seems to allude to the importance of preparing what Roy Wallis (1979) called the “prophetic milieu.” Prophecies work, in terms of galvanizing the commitment of group members, to the extent that members are socialized to the prophet’s worldview. The socialization makes the predicted events plausible. Correspondingly, the better the socialization, the more likely it is that the rationalization of a failed prophecy will seem plausible as well. The role played by the actions of the leadership in making sure this is the case, however, receives little direct attention in When Prophecy Fails, though the parting words of the book are suggestive (1956,233): [The group’s] ideas were not without popular appeal, and they received hundreds of visitors, telephone calls, and letters from seriously interested citizens, as well as offers of money (which they invariably refused). Events conspired to offer them a truly magnificent opportunity to grow in numbers. Had they been more effective, disconfirmation might have portended the beginning, not the end. Leadership is important on many fronts, and the comparative analysis of many other groups points to a strong correlation between the speed and confidence with which a rationalization is formulated, plus the thoroughness with which it is com¬ municated, with the ability of a group to negotiate a disconfirmation successfully (Balch, Farnsworth, and Wilkins 1983; Palmer and Finn 1992; Dawson 1999; Dawson and Whitsel 2005). These four processes, then, encompass many of the more lasting insights of Festinger’s seminal research, while adding new insights. Taken together they also encompass the full arc of relevant influencing conditions, from before the initial promulgation of a prophecy to the aftermath of its failure.

A Critique of Chris Bader’s Theory of Who Survives the Failure of Prophecy Bader (1999) has attempted to frame a new theory of prophetic failure that is even more parsimonious. In effect he reinterprets the two main conditions preserved from When Prophecy Fails using theoretical generalizations drawn from the rational choice theory of religion developed by Stark and his colleagues (Stark and Bainbridge 1985,1996; Stark and Iannaccone 1993; Stark and Finke 2000).8 At the heart of Bader’s argument is the discovery of a curvilinear relationship between the levels of tension a group experiences with the rest of society and the defection of members following the failure of a prophecy. Following Stark and colleagues, Bader proposes that levels of tension are correlated with levels of commitment. The higher the tension with

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society, the more exclusive, extensive, and expensive is the level of commitment required of members (Stark and Finke 2000). He then examines different groups that have experienced a failure of prophecy and have variant levels of tension with society, and hence presumably differing commitment expectations. His three main cases are the Morrisites, an early and radical splinter group from Mormonism; the Jehovah’s Witnesses; and a group that he studied and calls the UFO Center. Plotted on a graph, the UFO Center had a low level of tension with society, and hence presumably low levels of commitment. When predictions about the arrival of extraterrestrials with the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997 failed to come true, it expe¬ rienced little or no loss of membership. Alternatively, the Morrisites were in open conflict with their fellow Mormons and the rest of society. They had retreated to an isolated part of Utah and imposed severe demands on their members. Yet mul¬ tiple disconfirmations of their prophecies resulted, as with the UFO Center, in few defections. The Jehovah’s Witnesses occupy a position, in Bader’s scheme, between these two extremes. They have higher than normal levels of tension with society, and hence higher levels of commitment, but they still operate successfully within society. Relatively they represent moderate levels of tension and commitment. But in the wake of the failure of their 1975 prophecy Bader thinks they suffered signifi¬ cant loses in membership. There is thus a correlation, he concludes, between the levels of tension and the negative consequences of having a prophecy fail. Of course, the real explanatory variable, in this scheme, is the levels of commitment expected. If the costs of commitment are low, then the failure of a prophecy will be relatively inconsequential to the survival of the group. If the costs of commitment are very high, the impact will be minimal as well because the costs of leaving the group are high, deterring defection. Failure of prophecy poses the greatest risks to groups with quite high expectations of their members, yet not so high as to make the costs of leaving prohibitive.

At first glance the theory is very appealing. There is undoubtedly a correlation between the level of commitment and the impact of a failed prophecy. Festinger and colleagues noted as much in their five criteria, and it is an undergirding principle of the four processes I have specified. But as Bader admits, there are problems posed for his analysis by our lack of appropriate information. I would go much further, questioning the explanatory value of measures of tension with society and of com¬ mitment levels (assuming that either of these judgments can be made accurately in the first place). It is not surprising that the UFO Center experienced little loss of member¬ ship, because it is unlikely that we are really dealing with a true test of prophecy m such a low-tension, low-commitment, nonexclusive group. As Bader states, the participants barely even noticed that the predicted events had failed to occur, as they effortlessly turned their attention to the next extraterrestrial contact story circulating in the news. Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, he acknowl¬ edges that Morrisites threatened defectors with violence. They employed coercion to retain members. Thus, they, too, fail to provide an appropriate test of the the¬ ory. Can we speak of high commitment levels when coercion is involved? Surely

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the commitments that we are interested in, and that are measurable and compa¬ rable, must be voluntary. The fate of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as indicated, is sub¬ ject to more dispute than Bader recognizes. Just as the presence of coercion introduces a distorting factor to Bader’s analysis, in most cases we can point to other, more specific factors than only relative commitment levels, which in vari¬ ous combinations account for the actual results recorded. Bader presages his argument by briefly discussing another group, the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant (Balch, Farnsworth, and Wilkins 1983), at the beginning of his article. He concludes his analysis by saying (1999,121): Thus, in the BUPC’s case, it seems a reasonable argument that the least committed members of the group left after the failed prophecy. Most of the core, committed members, some of whom had moved over 2,000 miles to be with [the prophetic leader of the BUPC] in Missoula, remained in the group, despite their profound disappointment.

But many other factors may explain this outcome and pattern. Bader overlooks, for instance, the stress that Balch, Farnsworth, and Wilkins (1983) place on how poorly the rationalization for the prophetic failure was communicated to the followers who were more distant, and hence probably less committed. Better leadership on this matter, Balch and colleagues clearly suggest, could have stemmed the tide of defections (a position reinforced by other case studies, e.g., Sanada 1979; Singelenberg 1988; Palmer and Finn 1992). Then there is the probable role played by the increased preparatory activities of those in Montana, the greater in-group social support available to them, and the insulating effect of their relative physical and social isola¬ tion, compared with members scattered through the rest of the United States and elsewhere. These same factors played a critical role in the fate of the Church Universal and Triumphant just a few years later in Montana. Yet the result was quite different. Many of the core members who had traveled long distances to work with the leader and enter the bomb shelters defected, to be replaced by the presumably less com¬ mitted members who had not heeded the original prophecy (Whitsel 2003; Dawson and Whitsel 2005). So commitment levels in themselves do not seem to be explanatory. We need a theory that highlights and relates the more specific background variables that are critical to the survival of a disconfirmation. These are often manifested in differen¬ tial commitment levels, so overall I suspect that there may be a fairly reliable curvi¬ linear relationship between commitment levels and membership losses. But the reasons why will elude us if we treat commitment as more than an indicator of probable outcomes.

Strategies and Conditions Returning to the case literature, the record suggests that increased proselytization is a relatively infrequent response to failed prophecies. Two other strategies are far

l6o

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

more common and usually occur in tandem: “rationalization” and “reaffirmation.” The formulation and communication of a rationalization for the failure is crucial to the survival of a group, but it is only the first step in a process of reaffirmation that involves “the social and ideological reinforcement of beliefs” and a “restruc¬ turing of expectations” and sometimes organizational structures as well (Zygmunt 1972, 259). Building on information scattered in the literature, previously I sug¬ gested that there are four main types of rationalization (Dawson 1999). In account¬ ing for the disconfirmation, the leadership may choose to characterize the failed prophecy as a “test of faith” or say that the result stems from “human error.” Or the leadership may “blame others” for the missed opportunity, or offer what Melton (1985) aptly calls a “spiritualization” of events. These rationalizations commonly occur in various combinations, and they may be further divided into subtypes. Blaming others, for instance, may involve claiming that the believers did not pre¬ pare properly, or that the news media misunderstood what was at stake; or it may entail new revelations that some hostile superhuman agent interfered with the pre¬ diction. The details of the individual rationalizations are manifold, but the basic forms are fairly consistent and limited.9 In fact, a close reading of the evidence indicates that much actually depends on the successful implementation of a few subtypes of these strategies: the use of a spiritualization and the reaffirmation of commitment to the group through the creation and staging of new rituals and ceremonial events. When nature, God, or our fellow humans fail to destroy the world as predicted, or when the start of the Millennium is postponed once again, prophetic leaders commonly seek to con¬ found their critics by claiming that they can discern that the events expected in this world have actually come true on another—usually spiritual—plane of existence. Christ did not literally return, as first anticipated, or the extraterrestrials did not land at the predicted time and place, but the leaders will declare that the prophecy has nonetheless been fulfilled, at least partially. Jesus has set in motion what is needed for our redemption in heaven, but he will not be coming to Earth just now; or the extraterrestrials have placed a mother ship in orbit around the Earth, but the time is not yet propitious for contact. This spiritualization of the original prediction will succeed best when it is accompanied by a new program of activities, especially ritual and ceremonial acts, that are designed to mark and memorialize the change and in the process reaffirm the group’s commitment to its mission (Melton 1985; Palmer and Finn 1992; Tumminia 1998). But its success is also contingent on how well the group has been prepared for hearing and accepting such an alternative account, how gifted the leader is in managing the crisis and exploiting the ideologi¬ cal resources at hand, and the amount of social support available in the group. Zygmunt (1972, 263-64) captures the situation well: To the unbeliever who has not shared in the life of the movement prior to the point of crisis, such claims may appear to be irrationally wrought delusions or crassly face-saving tricks of propaganda. But why such claims should so frequently appear credible to a believing group becomes more understandable when viewed in the context of their prior interactional history.... The credibility

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of a claim is not merely a function of its empirically demonstrable “truth” but also a function of its symbolic compatibility with previously developed convictions.... When such convictions are shared, consensually validated, and ideologically anchored, they become an important source of “autonomous” influence upon group responses to prophetic failures.

Of course, the success of any and all of these strategies is contingent on a host of other identifiable factors, both internal and external to the groups under study (see Dawson 1999; Dein 2001; Dawson and Whitsel 2005). Internal factors include the strength or precariousness of the charismatic authority exercised by leaders; the degree and type of collective organization in the group; the group’s ideological ori¬ entation to the rest of society (e.g., communal withdrawal versus revolutionary activism); and the scope and sophistication of the group’s ideology. External factors include the degree of physical and social isolation experienced by the group; the level and type of public attention attracted by the group and its prophecy; the pres¬ ence or absence of organized opposition; and the spiritual alternatives for the mem¬ bers. The list of factors that could exercise an influence is long and open-ended. The list of factors that do influence any specific situation is variable. So while the genera¬ tion of such lists is necessary and helpful, it does not provide a sound foundation for developing the theoretical framework needed to encourage the more systematic investigation of how groups respond to failed prophecies, let alone how prophecies function to help create, maintain, and change religious groups. That end is better served by a more process-oriented and interactive framework, one that treats these strategies and influencing conditions as parts of a larger dynamic whole.

Four Social Processes Shaping the Response to Failure of Prophecy To reiterate, I am arguing that the ability of groups to survive the failure of proph¬ ecy is determined by four social processes: (1) the degree to which members are socialized to the prophetic process and expectations; (2) the degree to which mem¬ bers are motivated or compelled to engage in costly preparations; (3) the degree to which leaders respond swiftly and thoroughly to apparent failures; and (4) the degree of in-group social support present in the group. The differentiation of these four processes is somewhat artificial; it is for analytical purposes. In reality the four processes are intertwined, and in specific cases the lines of demarcation may blur. In some cases, as well, some of the processes may be more relevant than others. Yet in all cases, all four of the processes probably play some contributing role in shaping how group members respond to the failure of prophecy. Giving due consideration, then, to each of these four factors provides a simple and systematic foundation for the comparative analysis of responses to failed prophecy, bringing greater precision

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to our understanding of these phenomena. Two of these processes for two groups are briefly illustrated here: socialization to the prophecy; and how leaders respond.

Preparing the Prophetic Milieu The Lubavitch Hasidim provide one of the best contemporary illustrations of the significance of this process (see also chapter 9 by Melissa Wilcox and chapter 34 by Yaakov Ariel, both in this volume). Long known and praised in the Jewish commu¬ nity for their commitment to outreach to bring Jews back to Orthodoxy, the Lubavitchers became increasingly controversial in the 1990s for their ecstatic expec¬ tation of the imminent appearance of the Messiah. In the mid-1980s the Lubavitchers launched a Mosiach (Messiah) campaign, urging Jews to prepare and pray for the redemption that was close at hand. By the late 1980s much of the community had actually come to identify their own Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as the Messiah. This unorthodox view grew in strength, paradoxically it seemed, even as the Rebbe was crippled by a stroke in 1992, and then died of another stroke in 1994. Since his death the community has witnessed the rise of a large and influential camp of followers dedicated to recognition of Schneerson’s messianic status and proselytizing intensely on his behalf. This scandalous behavior, from the perspec¬ tive of most other Jews and outsiders, should not have come as a surprise given the preparation of the Lubavitch community for such a prophecy. The ground had been carefully prepared by Rebbe Schneerson and his entourage, in ways and for reasons that cannot be explicated here, and by most of his predecessors. Highlighting one aspect of this socialization process, Dein and Dawson (2008,171) note three impor¬ tant ideological influences at work in the Lubavitch community: “(1) the central and controversial role of the Zaddik and its messianic implications, (2) the specific focus on proselytism in the Lubavitch community, and (3) the teachings of the Tanya, the mystical text written by the first Lubavitch Rebbe and studied by all Lubavitcher.” Hasidic Jews are distinguished from other Ultra-Orthodox Jews by their belief in and submission to the authority of the Zaddik, or Rebbe (a more reverential form of rabbi). The Zaddik is the perfectly righteous man who mediates between God and humanity. The Lubavitchers are further distinguished from other Hasidic Jews by their teaching that the long-awaited Messiah will be no more than a particularly successful Zaddik, and Schneerson was widely regarded as the most successful of all Rebbes. He is credited with bringing Lubavitch Hasidism back from the brink of obscurity and transforming it into a powerful international movement. As Dein and Dawson argue (2008,172), much of his reputation stemmed from the remark¬ ably successful new proselytizing he initiated, which in turn ffreled the fires of mes¬ sianic expectation. The success in spreading the word and winning converts not only directly heightened Schneerson’s prestige, it also secured the tolerant acceptance of the rest of the Jewish community. The benefit of the doubt was extended to the “We-want-Mosiach” campaign, with its growing veneration of Schneerson

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as the Messiah. More mundanely, the great wealth won through donations to the proselytization work helped to insulate the community from any sustained criticism.

In the face of this success there was good reason to be reluctant to accept defeat with the Rebbe’s death, and the means of effecting the spiritualization of this seeming failure of prophecy lay readily at hand in the mystical teachings of the Tanya and other Hasidic texts. The Tanya in particular seeks to unify the esoteric teachings of Kabbalah with the exoteric teachings of the Talmud. In the Lubavitch community everyone, not just a scholarly elite, is expected to study these teachings. The Rebbe had called on these teachings to argue that physical reality is ultimately illusory. Things are not necessarily what they appear to be, but the truth can be discerned with careful study and devout practice. From this perspective, death itself is illusory, and hence it is not surprising that many began to declare that the Rebbe is still alive and waiting in another spiritual plane to return soon. In fact, soon after his death, reports began to circulate that he had been seen by a blessed few, attending services at the synagogue in his home or miraculously responding to the needs of some individuals in distress. Clearly the stronger, longer, and most appropriately configured the history of ideas associated with a prophecy in any group, the greater the group’s chances of successfully explaining away an apparent failure, and perhaps even transmuting it into new grounds for success. Yet only spotty attention has been given to this pro¬ cess, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Zygmunt 1970; Whitsel 2003; Tumminia 2005). The significance of the prophetic milieu, though, is conditioned by the con¬ comitant role played by the other three processes.

The Response of Leaders The record of case studies strongly suggests that the actions of charismatic leaders located at the heart of most of these groups, in the immediate aftermath of pro¬ phetic failures, will play a crucial role in determining how well the group “survives” such crises. The best support for this claim comes from the two known instances of groups truly failing to survive: La Mission de l’Esprit Saint in Quebec in the mid1970s (Palmer and Finn 1992), and the Davidians of Waco, Texas, under the leader¬ ship of Florence Houteff, from 1955 to 1962 (Newport 2006, 94-114).10 In each case considerable work had gone into preparing the prophetic milieu; there had been a fairly heavy investment in specific preparations for the expected catastrophic change; and there was an established sense of community, in a large enough group, to pro¬ vide the in-group social support needed to ride out the storm of controversy. But in these cases it is difficult to assess the precise efficacy of these three factors because the actions, or really the inaction or inappropriate actions, of the leaders (prema¬ turely) sealed the fate of the groups. In the array of somewhat more ambiguous cases, ranging from the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant (Balch, Farnsworth, and Wilkins 1983) to the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Singelenberg 1988;

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Schmalz 1994) and the Church Universal and Triumphant (Whitsel 2003), leader¬ ship again appears to be pivotal, but the situations are too complex to detail here. On the whole, it appears that a number of important tasks fall to the charis¬ matic prophet in apocalyptic movements facing a failure of prophecy. These tasks can be managed with variable degrees of skill and foresight. But when they are han¬ dled well, the damage from a disconfirmation can be reduced, perhaps even neu¬ tralized. In sequence the tasks are: 1. The leader must carefully cultivate a prophetic milieu by which his or her followers are prepared for receiving and responding to prophecies. 2. This often entails building “side bets” into the prophecies in the form of vague qualifying phrases, such as “the end of the world as we know it” or even stipulating in advance reasons why a prophecy may not come true, such as the suggestion that diligent prayer or meditation may prevent the predicted cataclysm. 3. Once a prophetic disappointment has occurred, the leader must develop a plausible rationalization, one presumably building on aspects of the prior prophetic milieu and the ideological system of the group. 4. Spiritualization is usually the best kind of rationalization to formulate, since it cannot be disproved by physical facts. 5. The rationalization must be communicated effectively—that is, promptly, with assurance, and as completely as possible—to the full membership of the group, no matter how physically dispersed they may be. 6. Once in place, the rationalization should be reiterated and probably elaborated and associated with specific reaffirming activities, either new ones or reinterpreted familiar activities. 7- The leadership in general must stay the course and provide a larger sense of continuity between the pre-prophetic failure period and the postprophetic failure period. These measures will maximize the possibility of retaining a sufficient number of properly motivated members to sustain the level of in-group social support essen¬ tial to weathering the failure. In the wake of seeming failure, we must remember, the followers of these prophets are eager for reassurance. They desperately want a rea¬ son to continue to believe and preserve their emotional and material investments. The leader’s job is simply to provide an appropriate opportunity for this to happen. Yet, surprisingly, sometimes this is just not effectively accomplished. La Mission de 1 Esprit Saint was a rather unusual Catholic working-class group founded in 1913 by Eugene Richer, who claimed to be the living incarnation of the Holy Spirit. This ascetic and highly traditional group grew to contain many thou¬ sands of members, in part because of the great stress placed on fertility. The group eclectically fused beliefs drawn from Catholicism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Mormonism, and Adventism in its teachings. In 1973 the group’s leader, Emmanuel Robitaille, the son of Richer’s charismatic successor Gustav Robitaille, announced that the group must begin preparations for the battle of Armageddon, which his father revealed in a dream would begin in 1975.

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Members were advised to start storing provisions, and some of the wealthier fami¬ lies began collective efforts to build bomb shelters. Curiously, followers were also told not to contact their leaders, and their meeting hall was closed. They were sim¬ ply to wait for instructions. The membership dutifully prepared for the end, waiting to be told what to do next, while 1975 passed uneventfully. As the truth set in, they remained scattered and confused. In the meantime the leadership of the group had been busy discussing Robitaille’s ongoing nightmares. Then in a meeting with some Jehovah’s Witnesses, intended to convert the Witnesses, Robitaille himself became a Jehovah’s Witness. He pressed others to follow suit, and soon over twelve hundred members did so. The remainder of the group (about five hundred people) split their allegiance between three other leaders who organized their own schismatic sects. As Palmer and Finn (1992,411-13) argue, Robitaille virtually assured the failure of La Mission de l’Esprit Saint by not even trying to reinterpret his prophecy. By simply not formulating and communicating a rationalization he squandered the opportunity to reorient and even reenergize his group by capitalizing on the specific emotional ten¬ sion created by preparing for the end. Why is unclear, but his inaction radically under¬ mined his own charisma and, hence, the future of the group. This curious and complete abdication of responsibility constitutes one end of a continuum. In all other cases I know, with the notable additional exception of Florence Houteff’s Davidian group (Newport 2006,95-114),11 a rationalization of the failure was forthcoming; a survey of the cumulative record of case studies suggests that the likelihood of success increases if the rationalizing effort displays the traits delineated above. To test this supposition further, we need to document more carefully, comparatively analyze, and correlate information about the nature of the rationalizations offered by numerous groups, who offered them, when and how, with data on the relative membership levels and general prosperity or success of these groups, before and after a significant failure of prophecy. The spotty character of much of the information available will pose problems for such an undertaking, but the exercise is imperative if we wish to bring a greater precision to our explanations. Likewise, we need systematic comparative studies investigating the complex and dialectical interactions of the four processes distinguished here, and the additional role of some of the other more contingent variables noted above (e.g., the degree and type of collective organization in the group). The permutations are almost endless, but this does not mean that there is no structural order to be detected in the prevailing developmental tendencies we can discern. Complexity should not be allowed to act as a deterrent to analytical progress on this front.

Conclusion: A Cautionary Note Research on millennial movements concentrates on their emergence, nature, and demise, rather than the social mechanics of their persistence. Thus insufficient atten¬ tion has been given to determining how groups survive the failure of prophecy, even

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though such failures are an empirical constant. In advocating a more systematic and comparative analysis of how people are socialized to prophetic expectancies, how they prepare for the fulfillment of prophecies, how leaders respond to failures, and how social support is sustained in the face of disappointment, I am cognizant of the need to be cautious in one regard. As several observers stress (e.g., van Fossen 1988; Schmalz 1994; Balch et al. 1997; Leatham 1997; Dawson 1999; O’Leary 2000; Tumminia 2005; McGhee 2005), the level of dissonance anticipated by outsiders may not actu¬ ally be consonant with that experienced by insiders. Different evidential standards are at work, and the impact of failed prophecies is often relativized by the more important background commitments of believers. In many cases the daily rewards of spiritual practice and social interaction in these groups are sufficient to account for the continued loyalty of members in the face of prophetic failure. The theory of cognitive dissonance grew out of Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter’s consternation with believers’ persistent commitments. But frequently the explanation may be simpler than they realized. The continuation of these groups may only indicate that the disc.onfirmation was not really recognized in the first place (Melton 1985; Dawson 1999,78). It is difficult to discern if and when this is case, but it is consistent with much of the behavior observed. Future studies need to acquire a better understanding of how ordinary members make sense of things. In general we need to bear in mind the interpretive framework of believers, the habits of thought ingrained by years of socialization to their subculture. As indi¬ cated, when believers are confronted with a seeming failure, they can draw upon a repertoire of dissonance management techniques that they are accustomed to using to deflect criticism and doubt. Spiritualization may be introduced so effec¬ tively in these circumstances, with sufficient social support, that it is hard to dis¬ cern whether there was any significant dissonance following a disconfirmation. Core members of a group will know how to read the signs of the times—whether of mounting doom or nascent spiritual triumph—to rejuvenate their faith, for the world is brimming with possibilities for prophetic confirmation for those equipped with the right interpretive template. In the end, then, while it is an exaggeration to say that prophecy never really fails, it is fair to say that it rarely fails. Some of the groups making prophecies stumble more than others, however, because leaders, in particular, mismanage the resources at hand for coping with the fallout of prophecies that did not turn out as planned.

NOTES 1. On this point several other scholars have added to the confusion as well, while otherwise making significant contributions to the literature (Melton 1985,18-19; Stone 2000a, 23; Tumminia 2005,155).

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2. While the literature on prophetic failures should include studies of the Solar Temple, Heaven’s Gate (see chapter 31 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume), and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (see chapter 20 by Rosalind I. J. Hackett, and chapter 29 by Massimo Introvigne, both in this volume), these studies have not been taken into consideration in the figures reported because of the ambiguity of their ultimate status. The members of these groups committed ritual murder and suicide thinking the time had come to make the predicted transition to a better world. Did they actually succeed? For those of us left behind it seems unlikely, and the public interprets the tragic events as failures. But who can really say for sure? (On these cases, see chapter 12 by John Walliss.) 3. The response of increased proselytizing was pursued by such groups as the Seekers (Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter 1956), the Seventh-day Adventists (O’Leary 2000; Wilson 2002), the Lubavitch Hasidim (Shaffir 1995; Dein 2001; Dein and Dawson 2008), the followers of Shabbatai Zvi (Zenner 1966; Hazani 1986), and the early Christians (Jackson 1975; Wernik 1975). 4. I disagree with Jon R. Stone when he concludes that “later research has tended to suggest that the peculiar evangelistic response of Mrs. Keech’s... flying saucer group was indeed peculiar to that group: their response was counterintuitive but largely idiosyncratic” (2000a, 23; italics in the original). 5. Anyone working on this topic will note the curious divergence of psychological and other social scientific (primarily sociological) approaches to cognitive dissonance: it ranks as one of the most influential theories ever formulated in social psychology, but sociologists of religion and scholars studying millenarian movements have been largely critical in their comments. There has been little or no meaningful interaction between the two bodies of scholarship, which is regrettable (see McGhee 2005). 6. Mrs. Keech’s real name was Dorothy Martin, and she lived in Minnesota at the time of the Festinger study. She went on to lead other Esoteric groups under the name Sister Thedra in Sedona, Arizona, and Mount Shasta, California (“About the Late Sister Thedra” N.d.). 7. The same argument can be made for Matthew Schmalz’s article “When Festinger Fails: Prophecy and the Watch tower” (1994). As with Hardyck and Braden’s study, the rhetorical flourish of the title is misleading. Schmalz’s argument is about the need to improve our grasp of the conditions facilitating how groups survive a failed prophecy, passed to us by Festinger et al., by developing a better understanding of the role played by more complex ideological and organizational factors. 8. Bader would not frame things in this manner, but he partially acknowledges his debt to Festinger et al. in this regard (1999,127-28). 9. The role of these adaptive strategies is widely recognized in the literature, but most analyses impose insufficient theoretical order. In the conclusion to When Prophecy Never Fails, for example, Diana Tumminia (2005,155-56) writes: “Dissonance reduction may involve numerous adaptive strategies, like denial, date reassignment, claiming fulfillment, assigning blame, or revamping the prophecy and the organization itself. Heightened commitment and increased proselytizing are not the only options.” While such blanket statements are true, they make it harder to solve the puzzle of failed prophecy because the pieces of the puzzle are inadequately differentiated. As every experienced jigsaw puzzle maker knows, to begin to reconstruct the complex image of horses in a field on the box cover, you must overcome the confusion before you by carefully sorting out the pieces of the sky, the grass, the fences, the horses, and so on. Only by working on the parts carefully, in hermeneutic fashion, can you solve the puzzle.

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10. Florence Houteff and her executive council resigned from the leadership of the General Association of Davidian Seventh-day Adventists on 1 March 1962, issuing a public statement saying that founder Victor Houteff s teachings were in error concerning biblical prophecies. On 11 March 1962 the General Association was dissolved by a resolution of its members (Newport 2006,108-11). 11. It is worth noting that at the time of the failures of prophecy resulting in the disintegration of La Mission de l’Esprit Saint and the first group of Davidians near Waco, the leaders were not the founding figures of these movements. Their charisma was clearly secondary and derived from the original prophets. This reduced status was probably significant, as Palmer and Finn (1992) note for La Mission de l’Esprit Saint. In each case it seems plausible that the leaders might even have been drawn into taking the risky step of setting dates for the catastrophic transition to the millennial kingdom either to create, increase, or shore up their derivative and perhaps limited or faltering charisma.

REFERENCES “About the Late Sister Thedra.” N.d. www.wolflodge.org/sananda/sister-thedra.htm. Accessed 25 August 2008. Bader, Chris. 1999. “When Prophecy Passes Unnoticed: New Perspectives on Failed Prophecy.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38, no. 1:119-31. Balch, Robert W., Gwen Farnsworth, and Sue Wilkins. 1983. “When the Bombs Drop: Reactions to Disconfirmed Prophecy in a Millennial Sect.” Sociological Perspectives 26, no. 2:137-58. Balch, Robert W., John Domitrovich, Barbara Lynn Mahnke, and Vanessa Morrison. 1997. “Fifteen Years of Failed Prophecy: Coping with Cognitive Dissonance in a Baha’i Sect.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 73-90. New York: Routledge. Beckford, James A. 1975. The Trumpet of Prophecy: A Sociological Study of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Oxford: Blackwell. -. 1978. “Accounting for Conversion.” British Journal of Sociology 29, no. 2: 249-62. Cooper, Joel. 2007. Cognitive Dissonance: Fifty Years of a Classic Theory. Los Angeles: Sage. Dawson, Lome L. 1994. “Accounting for Accounts: How Should Sociologists Treat Conversion Stories?” International Journal of Comparative Religion and Philosophy 1, no. 1-2: 46-66. -. 1999- “When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists: A Theoretical Overview.” Nova Religio 3, no. 1 (October): 60-82. Dawson, Lome L„ and Bradley C. Whitsel. 2005. “The Impact of Failed Prophecies on the Success of New Religious Movements: The Case of the Church Universal and Triumphant.” Paper presented to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Rochester, N.Y., November 4. Dein, Simon. 1997. “Lubavitch: A Contemporary Messianic Movement.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 12:191-204. . 2001. “What Really Happens When Prophecy Fails: The Case of Lubavitch.” Sociology of Religion 62, no. 3: 383-401. . 2002. Mosiach Is Here Now: Just Open Your Eyes and You Can See Him.” Anthropology and Medicine 9, no. 1: 25-36.

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Dein, Simon, and Lome L. Dawson. 2008. “The ‘Scandal’ of the Lubavitch Rebbe: Messianism as a Response to Failed Prophecy.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 23, no. 2:163-80. Festinger, Leon, FFenry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter. 1956. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. New York: Harper and Row. Hardyck, Jane Allyn, and Marcia Braden. 1962. “Prophecy Fails Again: A Report on a Failure to Replicate.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 65, no. 2:136-41. Harmon-Jones, Eddie, and Judson Mills, eds. 1999. Cognitive Dissonance: Progress on a Pivotal Theory in Social Psychology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Hazani, Mosche. 1986. “When Prophecy Fails: Leaders Die, Followers Persevere.” Genetic, Social, and General Psychological Monographs 112, no. 2: 245-71. Jackson, Hugh. 1975. “The Resurrection Belief of the Earliest Church: A Response to the Failure of Prophecy?” Journal of Religion 55, no. 4: 415-25. Leatham, Miguel C. 1997. “Rethinking Religious Decision-Making in Peasant Millenarianism: The Case of Nueva Jerusalem” Journal of Contemporary Religion 12, no. 3: 295-309. Lofland, John. 1977. Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. Enlarged ed. New York: Irvington. Lucas, Phillip C. 2007. Unpublished response to Dawson and Whitsel 2005. McGhee, Glen S. 2005. “A Cultural History of Dissonance Theory.” In War in Heaven, Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic, edited by Stephen D. O’Leary and Glen S. McGhee, 195-219. London: Equinox. Melton, J. Gordon. 1985. “Spiritualization and Reaffirmation: What Really Happens When Prophecy Fails.” American Studies 26:17-29. Newport, Kenneth G. C. 2006. The Branch Davidians of Waco: The History and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Leary, Stephen. 2000. “When Prophecy Fails and When It Succeeds: Apocalyptic Prediction and Re-Entry into Ordinary Time.” In Apocalyptic Time, edited by Albert I. Baumgarten, 341-62. Leiden, Holland: Brill. Palmer, Susan J., and Natalie Finn. 1992. “Coping with Apocalypse in Canada: Experience of Endtime in La Mission de l’Espirit Saint and the Institute of Applied Metaphysics.” Sociological Analysis 53, no. 4: 397-415. Poloma, Margaret. 2003. Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira. Sanada Takaaki. 1979, “After Prophecy Fails: A Reappraisal of a Japanese Case.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 6, nos. 1-2: 331-45. Schmalz, Matthew N. 1994. “When Festinger Fails: Prophecy and the Watchtower.” Religion 24, no. 4: 293-308. Shaffir, William. 1995. “When Prophecy Is Not Validated: Explaining the Unexpected in a Messianic Campaign.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 37, no. 2:119-36. Shepherd, Gary, and Gordon Shepherd. 2006. “The Social Construction of Prophecy in The Family International.” Nova Religio 10, no. 2 (November): 29-56. Singelenberg, Richard. 1988. “‘It Separated the Wheat from the Chaff’: The ‘1975’ Prophecy and Its Impact among Dutch Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Sociological Analysis 50, no. 1: 23-40. Stark, Rodney. 1996. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

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Stark, Rodney, and William Sims Bainbridge. 1985. The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation. Berkeley: University of California Press. -. 1996. A Theory of Religion. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stark, Rodney, and Laurence R. Iannaccone. 1993. “Rational Choice Propositions about Religious Movements.” In The Handbook on Cults and Sects in America, Part A, edited by David G. Bromley and Jeffrey K. Hadden, 241-61. Religion and the Social Order, Vol. 3. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI. -. 1997. “Why the Jehovah’s Witnesses Grow So Rapidly: A Theoretical Application.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 12, no. 2:133-57. Stone, Jon R. 2000a. Introduction to Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy, edited by Jon R. Stone, 1-29. New York: Routledge. -, ed. 2000b. Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy. New York: Routledge. Tumminia, Diana G. 1998. “How Prophecy Never Fails: Interpretive Reason in a FlyingSaucer Group.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 59, no. 2:157—70. -. 2005. When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying-Saucer Group. New York: Oxford University Press. van Fossen, Anthony B. 1988. “How Do Movements Survive Failures of Prophecy?” In Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change: A Research Annual, edited by Louis Kreisberg, Bronislaw Misztal, and Janusz Mucha, 193-212. Greenwich, Conn • JAI. Wallis, Roy. 1979. Salvation and Protest: Studies of Social and Religious Movements. New York: St. Martin’s. Wernik, Uri. 1975- Frustrated Beliefs and Early Christianity: A Psychological Enquiry into the Gospels of the New Testament.” Numen 22, no. 2: 96-130. Wessinger, Catherine. 2007. Unpublished response to Dawson and Whitsel 2005. Whitsel, Bradley C. 2003. The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Apocalyptic Movement. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Wilson, Bryan. 1978. “When Prophecy Failed.” New Society 26:183-84. -. 2002. “Millennialism and Sect Formation in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” In Apocalyptic in History and Tradition, edited by Christopher Rowland and John Barton, 212-32. London: Sheffield Academic Press. Zenner, Walter P. 1966. The Case of the Apostate Messiah: A Reconsideration of the Failure of Prophecy.’” Archives de Sociologie des Religions 11:111-18. Zygmunt, Joseph S. 1970. “Prophetic Failure and Chiliastic Identity: The Case of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” American Journal of Sociology 75, no. 6: 926-48. • !972- When Prophecies Fail: A Theoretical Perspective on the Comparative Evidence.” American Behavioral Scientist 16, no. 2: 245-67.

CHAPTER 9

GENDER ROLES, SEXUALITY, AND CHILDREN IN MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS MELISSA M. WILCOX

Many

millenarians saw the terrorist attacks in the United States on

n

September

2001 as a sign that the anticipated end of time was imminent. Millenarian Christians, especially, had expected the year 2000 or 2001 to mark the beginning of Armageddon, the final battle between the forces of God and Satan. Images of the crumbling Twin Towers in New York City threaded throughout apocalyptic Christian literature and speeches in the following years, underlining the urgency of the evangelists’ calls for conversion. But two days after the attacks, conservative Christian leaders Jerry Falwell (1933-2007) and Pat Robertson (b. 1930) turned to avertive apocalypticism (see chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, this volume), agreeing that the terrorist attacks were not themselves the work of God but were, rather, a sign of God’s displeasure with the country—a displeasure that could be avoided if the United States would only turn back from its errant ways. Though Falwell laid general blame for God’s refusal to protect the country on what he saw as the growing secularity of the public sphere in the United States, he paid special attention to several issues, all of which centered on gender roles, sexual¬ ity, children, and religion. “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this,” he told Robertson on the Christian television show 700 Club, because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them

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who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.” (Harris 2001)

For Falwell—and for Robertson, who agreed with his statement—the apparent sec¬ ularization of the American public sphere is fundamentally tied to changes in the social understanding of gender roles, the lives of children, and sexual norms. While blame laid at the feet of “pagans,” the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), People for the American Way, and courts directly targets the perceived weakening of Christianity’s hold on the American public, Falwell mentioned no factors that were neither directly religious nor focused on gender, sexuality, and childbearing. More than war, more than poverty, more than racial inequality, more even than statesponsored torture, Falwell and Robertson located American culture’s self-distancing from God in these three interconnected factors. Implied in Falwell’s statement is that in order to win back God’s favor and protection, the United States must outlaw abortion, make the home a woman’s primary place of work, and crush all non¬ heterosexual forms of sexual activity. Because avertive apocalypticism is a close relative of catastrophic millennialism, in that the former is aimed at averting the catastrophe foreseen by the latter, this chapter will not focus separately on avertive apocalypticism. Instead, it will explore gender roles, sexuality, and family structure in several examples of cata¬ strophic millennialism, progressive millennialism, and nativist millennialism drawn from eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Western religious move¬ ments. It will argue that while catastrophic millennial movements promote under¬ standings of gender, sexuality, and family that prepare their members for an abrupt and radical end to the world, progressive millennial movements seek to live out in the present the roles they believe to await all humankind in the future. Finally, nativ¬ ist millennial movements, like nationalism in general, often promote strictly patri¬ archal models of gender, sexuality, and family, but the impact of those values differs depending on the social context of followers. Though there is little scholarship available at present on gender, sexuality, and family in millennial movements of Asia and the global South, it seems quite possible that the trends identified in this chapter will emerge in future research on such movements.

Catastrophic Millennialism “The appointed time has grown short,” wrote the apostle Paul to members of the early Christian church in Corinth. “From now on, let even those [men] who have wives be as though they had none... for this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:29-31). Because many of the millennial movements discussed in this section are Christian, in discerning proper gender roles and family structures during what they perceive to be the Endtime they turn to the guidelines established for the early Christian

GENDER ROLES, SEXUALITY, AND CHILDREN

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church in anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ. While Paul’s letter to the Corinthians stresses that his audience should remain in whatever marital state they currently find themselves and that those who cannot control their sexual passions should marry in order to temper those passions appropriately, Paul clearly valued celibacy above all. Likewise, in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century millennial Christian groups there is an overall pattern of celibacy, although there are variations within that pattern.

Society of the Universal Friend A fascinating early example of this pattern of celibacy comes from a small movement focused on the enigmatic Publick Universal Friend (Juster 1996). The Friend came into existence in 1776, in the body of one Jemima Wilkinson (1752-1819), a former Quaker from Rhode Island. At the age of twenty-four, Wilkinson took ill and was bedridden for some time. The person who arose from that sickbed later explained that Wilkinson had died and the “Spirit of Life from God” was now animating her body in order to “warn a lost and guilty, perishing, dying World, to flee from the wrath which is to come” (Juster 1996,27). The Publick Universal Friend claimed to be the Second Coming of Christ. Dressing in the clothes of a (male) minister, refusing to be addressed in gendered pronouns, and signing written work as “your friend and brother,” the Friend defied gender norms at a time in American history when those norms were strictly essentialist and binary. Some of the Friend’s female followers also adopted masculine forms of dress, and although male followers did not begin to dress as women, Juster argues that they did take on feminine roles of compassion. And yet the Society of the Universal Friend did not simply invert gender, for reports of the Friend’s public appearances also note an accompanying party of “three men whose duty it is to speak, and three women who keep silent” (Juster 1996, 33). Like other preachers of the time, the Friend drew heavily on negative images of women as metaphors for sin and false teaching. Thus, this movement did not so much defy gender norms as blur masculinities, leaving stereotypical feminin¬ ity out of the movement altogether—or silent—and expanding the possibilities of masculinity to apply to the female-bodied and the male-bodied alike. As one might expect from this blurring of gender boundaries and from the group’s Christian millennialism, the Friend enjoined celibacy on all followers. The society’s communal settlement in New York numbered around 260 in 1800 and lasted another twenty years beyond that time, disbanding shortly after its founder’s demise.

Seventh-day Adventism By the mid-nineteenth century another powerfully millenarian group had arisen that disrupted the gender norms of the time, though far less so than the followers of the Publick Universal Friend. While not advocating celibacy—indeed, while generally advocating quite normative gender roles for its members—Seventh-day

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Adventism placed a woman at the center of its organization and its first half-century of growth. In a nineteenth-century catastrophic millennial church preparing for the Endtime, such a powerful role for a woman could best be justified in the way that women’s leadership has long been justified in Christianity: through direct inspira¬ tion from God in the form of prophecy. The Seventh-day Adventist church arose out of the earlier Millerite movement as a response to the prophetic failure known as the Great Disappointment (see also chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). Like a number of other biblical interpreters in the early nineteenth century, William Miller (1782-1849) believed that biblical prophecy pointed to the 1840s as the beginning of the apocalypse. He predicted that the return of Christ to the world would take place between 21 March 1843 and 21 March 1844; when this year passed uneventfully he recalculated, setting the new date for 22 October 1844. A recent study of Adventist history estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 followers of Miller’s teachings awaited the Second Coming on that day; its failure to materialize devastated the movement (Morgan 2001, 2). A handful of Miller’s followers, though, reinterpreted Miller’s prediction, claiming that the Second Coming had in fact begun on the forecasted date but that it had begun in a subtler form in heaven and would take far longer to manifest on Earth than had initially been expected. Young Ellen Harmon (1827-1915; later Ellen Harmon White), only seventeen years old at the time of the Great Disappointment, received visions from God affirming the truth of this reinterpretation. Like many new religious movements, the Seventh-day Adventists promoted a number of alternative social norms for their members. They were followers of the Sabbatarian movement, which argued that the true day of worship was Saturday and that worshipping on Sunday was tantamount to blasphemy. By the 1860s they had also adopted many of the principles of the health reform movement, integrating dietary restrictions into the church with the support of White’s visions. Adventists also became social activists as a part of their work to prepare the world for the Second Coming, in addition to being pacifists, they were ardent abolitionists and, as one might expect, active in the temperance movement. While they did not promote celi¬ bacy as a part of their preparation for the Endtime—no doubt an important factor in the movement s continuing presence today—they did and still do support a very traditional understanding of gender roles and the role of children within the family. The one exception to this was founder and prophet Ellen Harmon White. Both her youth and her sex should have prevented the eighteen-year-old Ellen Harmon from leadership in the fledgling church. But millennialism offered a way around such restrictions: with the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God and the self-identification of the Seventh-day Adventists as the chosen people of God, the new movement had ample ideological room for a prophet of the new era, and though many could (and did) challenge the propriety of a woman preaching in public, none could challenge God’s apparent decision to use White as a mouthpiece. Like other Christian women before and since, Harmon obtained authority because her direct revelations from God circumvented existing male authority structures (for other examples see Wessinger 1993; MacHaffie 2006). Powerfully influential in the movement to the present day, Ellen Harmon nevertheless came under fire for

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traveling to preach as a single woman in the company of a single man, and in 1846 she and co-preacher James White (1821—81) married, at least partly in response to rumors of impropriety on their travels.

Branch Davidians Closely related to the Seventh-day Adventists but taking a different spin on gender and sexuality in the Latter Days were the Branch Davidians under the leadership of David Koresh (1959—93) (see chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, and chapter 11 by John Walliss, both in this volume). The Branch Davidians grew out of the Davidian movement founded by Victor Houteff (1885-1955) in 1929, which settled in the Waco, Texas, area in 1935. The founder of the Branch Davidian lineage, Ben Roden (1902—78), emerged out of the Davidian movement after a “disappointment” in relation to a failed prophecy based on Victor Houteff’s teachings promoted by his widow, Florence Houteff, in 1959 (see also chapter 8 by Lome Dawson, this volume). Toward the end of Ben Roden’s life, his wife Lois Roden (1905—86) became the next Branch Davidian prophet when she received a revelation in 1977 that the Holy Spirit was feminine. Lois Roden attempted to introduce feminist gender roles and theology to the Branch Davidians in her publication, SHEkinah, which reprinted the writings of cutting-edge Christian feminist theologians, including Rosemary Radford Ruether and Virginia Mollencott, but the small journal was discontinued in 1983. By that time the core of the Branch Davidian membership had decided that the “Spirit of Prophecy” had moved from Lois Roden to Vernon Howell, who changed his name to David Koresh in 1990 (Pitts 2009). While the leadership of the Branch Davidians was disputed between David Koresh, Lois Roden, and her son, George Roden (d. 1998), Koresh and his followers left Mount Carmel, the Branch Davidians’ property outside Waco, for a few years. In 1988 they returned to Mount Carmel (Haldeman 2007), which became infamous in 1993 when it was raided by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents and sub¬ sequently besieged by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. Koresh’s writings and numerous recorded speeches make it clear that both he and his followers regarded Koresh as more than simply a brilliant interpreter of the Bible. With an impressive command of biblical text, a sharply inquisitive mind, and a conviction that the writings in the Old Testament provided the keys to decipher¬ ing the symbolic “Seven Seals” in the New Testament book of Revelation about the Endtime events, Koresh not only produced unique interpretations of the contem¬ porary relevance of such prophecy; he also read himself into it. Seeing himself as the Seventh Angel in Rev. 10:7 and the Endtime Christ (Gallagher 2000; Newport 2006), Koresh believed that he and his followers would have a central role to play in the coming confrontation between the forces of God and those of Satan. Koresh taught that the Branch Davidian community would be attacked by agents of satanic “Babylon,” he and community members would be killed, and then they would be resurrected to carry out God’s judgment and establish God’s kingdom on a trans¬ formed Mount Zion in the Holy Land. Furthermore, prophetic interpretations that Koresh revealed in 1989 made it clear that he expected to be the ruler of the coming

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kingdom of God. In this capacity, he was to have twenty-four children, who would help judge humanity and rule in the coming kingdom. To this end, Koresh not only instituted strict celibacy but also taught that all women living with the Branch Davidians were his wives (Martin 2009) and were sexually accessible to him for the purpose of producing the expected progeny. With the exception of Kenneth G. C. Newport’s study (2006), the extensive scholarly discussion of the Branch Davidians has generally relegated Koresh’s sexual teachings to a footnote or two, when they have been mentioned at all.1 There are a number of possible reasons for this apparent evasion. The most likely is that accusa¬ tions of sexual deviance, sexual impropriety, and child abuse are common ways of discrediting marginal religions (see Richardson 1999). Often such accusations are false, or at least wildly exaggerated. Furthermore, the FBI assault of the Mount Carmel residence on 19 April 1993, which resulted in the destruction by fire of the building and most of its inhabitants, obtained final approval from then-Attorney General Janet Reno partly on the strength of alleged continuing child abuse (Reno later had to retract this claim), allegations that had originally been brought by for¬ mer members of the group. Experience has taught scholars of new religious move¬ ments that former members are sometimes unreliable sources of information on the groups they have left. On the other hand, the Branch Davidians, like some other conservative Christian groups, did advocate the corporal punishment of children, but in a controlled manner (Haldeman 2007, 21, 99-100), and at least one of the women with whom Koresh was sexually active was under the legal age of consent when the sexual relationship began (Haldeman 2007, 50,136044).2 Faced with evi¬ dence from both sides—that the Branch Davidians’ sexual practices were indeed out¬ side of social norms and possibly even illegal, and that potentially unreliable apostate allegations of sexual misconduct and child abuse were a direct cause of the fatal and much-condemned attack on the residence—most scholars have fallen silent. Neither celibacy nor polygyny nor statutory rape is an excuse for the carnage that resulted from the FBI’s extraordinarily ill-advised siege and final CS-gas and tank assault on this catastrophic millennial movement, which resulted in the deaths of seventy-four people, including twenty-three children. Thus, it would seem that a navigable course lies open for scholars who wish to pursue more fully the theology and practice of gender roles, sexuality, and childrearing at the Branch Davidians’ Mount Carmel, while at the same time remaining sensitive to the tendency toward sensationalism that accompanies the public reception of such work.

Progressive Millennialism Perhaps because they see themselves as actively helping to bring about, or at least to prepare humanity for, the arrival of a new world, progressive millenarians seem to produce a greater range of experimentation with gender and sexuality than do

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catastrophic millenarians (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume). Emulating not the conditions of a group awaiting the final battle, but rather the conditions of a future utopian society, progressive millennial movements have enacted everything from celibacy to polyamory, from gender egalitarianism to patriarchy to matriarchy. The following section discusses examples of such groups in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western contexts, under two main rubrics: divine messianism and human messianism.

Divine Messianism A number of religious millennial movements see their role as preparing themselves or the world for the arrival of a divine savior or messiah. In Western countries this theme is best known as an aspect of Christianity; millennial Christian groups uni¬ formly expect the return of Christ to mark the beginning of the new world. What distinguishes catastrophic millennial groups from progressive millennial ones, however, are beliefs about what exactly will happen when this “beginning” arrives. Rather than a violent overturning of the existing world, most progressive millennial groups expect a smoother and more peaceful transition. Progressive millennial groups that believe in a divine messiah often expect the savior’s arrival to crown their own efforts to prepare the new world. Innovations in gender roles, sexuality, and the roles of children in such groups, then, are generally modeled after the group’s expectations for the new world, based on the teachings of the expected sav¬ ior or on expectations about that savior’s nature. In some cases, relatively fine lines divide progressive divine messianism from the catastrophic version of this phenomenon. One example can be found in the similarities between the Society of the Universal Friend and the Shakers. Both groups were founded in the late eighteenth century by women—or, at least, by peo¬ ple known at one point as women. Both were led by figures followers believed to be messianic incarnations of the divine, although only the Publick Universal Friend agreed with such claims, and both promoted celibacy and experimented with gen¬ der roles. The Shakers, however, were far from being catastrophic millenarians. While the Publick Universal Friend was traveling the United States warning of the impending apocalypse, the Shakers were seeking simply to live in conformity with God’s wishes. While they rarely spoke or wrote in apocalyptic terms, their belief that their founder had been the second incarnation of Christ points to a quiet, subtle form of millennialism that can best be described under the “progressive” rubric (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft and chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, both in this volume).

Shakers The Shakers originated in mid-eighteenth-century England as a charismatic branch of the Quakers, drawing their name from their earlier moniker, “Shaking Quakers.” Ann Lee (1736-84) came to leadership in the group in 1770 and, based on a vision

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she had that summer, began to teach that sexual intercourse was the basis of all evil and the cause of the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden. She enjoined celibacy upon all of her followers. Like the Quakers, the Shakers embraced both pacifism and gender egalitarianism; Ann Lee was honored with the title “Mother.” Shaker theology also developed a dual-gendered understanding of the divine. Unable to attract much of a following in England, the Shakers relocated in 1774 to a religiously experimental, socially restive area: the British colonies of North America. Somewhat fortuitously, they settled in central New York, a region that would see repeated religious revivals and numerous innovations over the next century. Though the major growth in Shaker communities did not occur until after Ann Lee’s death, Lee remained a central figure in the movement, so revered that some of her followers came to believe she was an incarnation of God. Since Shakers believed the deity was both male and female, and since the first incarnation of the divine spirit had taken place in the male form of Jesus, it was logical to expect that the Second Coming would complete the divine incarnation by taking female form. Living in the presence of the divine, the Shakers sought earthly perfection and a life free from original (sexual) sin. Though daily roles in Shaker communities still often followed traditional gendered patterns, with men performing most of the outdoor work and women the indoor work, leadership was shared (Procter-Smith 1993). Some members came into Shaker settlements with children, who were then cared for communally within the sex-segregated living environment. Lawrence Foster argues that the Shakers’ celibacy was the key to the success of their gender egalitarianism: “Shakers justified their arrangements theologically by observing that St. Paul’s admonitions to wives to be subject to their husbands, keep silence in the Church, etc., did not apply to women who had given up earthly marriage and were living a life of Virgin purity’” (Foster 1984,38). The communal sharing of child care may have played an equal role in freeing women for leadership—a factor that com¬ plicates historical evaluation of women’s roles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The unique beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) follow a long-established pattern among whites in North America of seeing the continent as the new Eden and the literal site of the future kingdom of God (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, and chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, both in this volume). The implied circularity of this image is no accident: from the early English invaders onward, white Protestants who were inclined toward a progressive millennialism believed that the Second Coming would bring about a state of perfection on the continent similar to that experienced by Adam and Eve prior to their fatal trans¬ gression in the biblical Garden of Eden. The purported discovery in 1827 of the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-44), followed directly in this trajectory, as this sacred text tells the story of two lost tribes of Israel that made their way to

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North America. The early Mormons saw themselves returning to ancient biblical days as they built the new kingdom. They drew on Hebrew for the name of their early Illinois settlement, Nauvoo, and subsequently saw in Utah’s Salt Lake basin a geological parallel to the land of Canaan—the Promised Land. In this light, then, it is hardly surprising that the LDS Church would also adopt the practice of polygyny so often mentioned in the early books of the Hebrew Bible. A number of sources indicate that Smith may have expected the revival of polygyny as early as 1831, a year after the LDS Church was founded (see, e.g., Foster ^84, 134—39)- However, it was not until 1843 that Smith made the revelation of plural marriage widely known to his followers. While this was the only aspect of Mormon marriage generally focused upon by non-Mormon commentators, it was one of a series of revelations laying out a unique understanding of marriage in LDS theology. A later revelation given to the LDS Church’s fourth president, Wilford Woodruff, in 1890 revoked plural marriage in time to save Utah’s bid for statehood (1896), but the other teachings on marriage remain. Most central is the idea that a couple sealed to one another in a sacred, “celestial” form of marriage would remain married not simply until death, as secular weddings ensured, but into the afterlife as well. In the revelations given to Smith, some celestial mar¬ riages were understood to be plural, and these were “particularly exalted” (Foster 1984,145)The historical record indicates that in practice plural marriage was relatively rare, generally being the province of church elites who had the resources to support multiple wives. But as Lawrence Foster notes, polygynous households may have held advantages for wives as well as husbands: with leaders of the church often gone on extended missionary travel, for instance, and LDS converts possibly estranged from their blood relatives, a nuclear family structure frequently made wives into “temporary widow[s]” (Foster 1984,141). In the best of cases, a polygynous family could provide a network of support for individual wives for everything from child care to emotional succor to extra hands for the daily tasks involved in successfully managing a homestead. Plural marriage continues today in some offshoots of the LDS Church, beset by many of the same ambiguities that are involved in the Branch Davidian case; when reporters flock to a story of forced, underage, polygynous mar¬ riages, scholars must struggle to straddle the divide between concern over the social control and very real violence exercised by insular religious groups and concern over the social control and violence exercised by a society suspicious of non-normative religions. This has been the case most recently with the raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a community of Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (FLDS) in Texas that prac¬ tices polygyny (see Wessinger 2008 for commentary). Acting on an anonymous phone call (which now appears to have been false) from a sixteen-year-old girl alleg¬ ing that she had been forced into marriage and pregnancy, state law enforcement and child protective services officers entered the ranch and removed hundreds of women and children. The children were separated from their mothers and placed in foster homes; only nursing infants under one year in age were allowed to reunite. Child

i8o

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

Protective Services claimed, on the basis of a single telephone call and public sus¬ picion of this insular religious community, that all of the community’s children were at risk. Although a judge later ordered the children returned to their homes, Texas authorities continue to bring claims against FLDS parents on an individual basis.

Unification Church Suspicions directed toward unconventional religions are, in fact, an important part of the story for nearly every progressive millenarian group that experiments with gender, sexuality, and children’s roles. A prominent example of this phenomenon in the later twentieth century is the Unification Church, whose members are popularly and derogatorily known as the Moonies (see also chapter 17 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume). The Unification Church was founded in Korea by Sun Myung Moon (b. 1920) during the mid-twentieth century and was introduced to the United States by a missionary in 1959. It grew slowly in the United States at first but gained significantly more converts once Moon relocated to the United States in the early 1970s. It is now a widely international movement. Like the Christian sects described above, the Unification Church is distin¬ guished from other branches of Christianity by its beliefs about the Messiah, whom most members of the church believe Moon to be. They thus also believe that they are living in the time of the Second Coming. Flowever, under Unification theology this has a somewhat unusual meaning. In her classic study The Making of a Moonie (1984), Eileen Barker explains that the Unification Church understands the origin of sin to be the perversion of God’s trinitarian ideal (God, Adam, and Eve) into a satanic trinity (Satan, Adam, and Eve). God attempted to restore the ideal through the lives of Eve’s two children, but when one son killed the other, the fate of human¬ ity was temporarily sealed until the proper conditions could be prepared for a sec¬ ond attempt at redemption. This attempt also involved a trinity composed of God and an “ideal” masculine-feminine pair: Jesus and his wife. When Jesus was executed rather than marrying, an event the Unification Church believes was not ordained by God, Jesus was at least able to carry out the spiritual redemption of humankind through his pairing with the (female) Holy Spirit as a second Adam and a second Eve. Finally, a material, earthly redemption will be carried out by a third Adam and Eve, an ideal couple without original sin. The Unification Church teaches that not until the early twentieth century was the world once again ready for the arrival of such a Messiah, and it gives numerous reasons for believing that the new Messiah was born somewhere in Korea between 1917 and 1930. Widely accepted within the Unification Church as the third Adam and the final Messiah, Moon has the task of returning the world to its ideal balance of positive and negative forces in alignment with God. Each (heterosexual) couple whose mar¬ riage he blesses undergoes a final removal of original sin before the blessing, with the result that their children, too, will be free of such sin. Because the church does not believe that sex itself is the source of sin, within a blessed marriage sexual activity

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is acceptable. However, church members adhere strictly to principles of celibacy prior to marriage, and couples who convert after their marriages are instructed to return to celibacy until their marriages can be blessed. Finally, because the church teaches that God is ultimately the one who brings couples together, Moon as God’s representative arranges marriages for many of his unwed follow¬ ers. Because the church originally held that all marriages must be personally blessed by Moon in order to become ideal marriages, practicality dictated that weddings in the Unification Church must take place en masse; these weddings, sometimes involving hundreds of thousands of couples, have become the group’s hallmark.

Lubavitchers Somewhat strikingly, Judaism, too, is home to a sect that believes the expected divine savior has come to Earth in the twentieth century in the form of a human man. Believing like the Unification Church that they are taking part in the gradual devel¬ opment of God’s kingdom, this group too endorses conservative social values, clearly differentiated gender roles, the importance of marriage and children, and strict guidelines for sexual behavior. Yet most Lubavitchers would be shocked to hear their beliefs and practices compared to those of the Unification Church and, of course, as Jews they do not believe that a divine savior has already lived among humans once before. The Lubavitchers are a branch of Hasidic Judaism, a pietist movement that began in eastern Europe in the seventeenth century (see also chapter 8 by Lome Dawson and chapter 34 by Yaakov Ariel, both in this volume). Hasidic Jews believe in a direct and joyous relationship with the divine that is maintained through action, especially in the fulfillment of the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, that they believe are contained within the Torah. Though women are not bound as men are by the vast majority of these commandments, women’s role in supporting their husbands’ practice and in raising devout children who will carry on the tradition is deeply respected. Lubavitchers subscribe to an essentialist understanding of gender that Susan J. Palmer has termed “sex complementarity,” which “regards each sex as endowed with different spiritual qualities and emphasizes the importance of marriage for uniting two halves of the same soul to form one, complete androgynous being” (Palmer 1994,10). In keeping with the rabbinic teaching that humanity was originally cre¬ ated androgynous but later separated into male and female halves that would be rejoined in marriage, Lubavitchers and other Hasidic Jews see men and women as having been created with intrinsically different but ultimately complementary abili¬ ties, temperaments, strengths, and weaknesses. Because sexual temptation is held to be a special weakness of men, women in these communities dress modestly and same-sex socialization is preferred, especially for those who are unmarried. Like most Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Lubavitch women observe family purity

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laws that include abstaining from physical contact with their husbands during menstruation and for a week thereafter, and resuming sexual activity only after immersing themselves in a ritual bath. Men, too, observe sexual restrictions, mod¬ esty requirements, and purity laws. Children are greatly treasured in Lubavitch communities, and although women have the primary care of young children, both sexes are expected to be involved in child care. Unlike in the Christian groups discussed above, in Lubavitch communities ideas about gender, sexuality, and children are shared with Orthodox and UltraOrthodox Jews more broadly, and in some cases with all Jews. Thus, these ideas do not derive in the same way from the group’s messianism. Yet they are con¬ nected all the same. Aside from a sometimes aggressive evangelism among non¬ observant Jews, what distinguishes Lubavitchers from nearly all other Jews, with the exception of a few other branches of Hasidism, is that many believe their deceased spiritual leader, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902—94), to be the redeemer promised to the Jewish people. The belief that performance of mitzvot will bring about the coming of the Messiah, coupled with the deep con¬ nection to the divine that Hasidic Judaism fosters in all its adherents, in some ways finds its apex in the designation of a Hasidic leader as the Messiah and thus further reinforces the appropriateness of existing Lubavitch social structures.

Human Messianism While most millenarian groups offer some explanation of what or who will bring about the anticipated new world order, not all believe that the agent of change will be divine. Some secular and even some religious millennial groups focus primarily on the role of humanity in preparing the way for the new world, bringing it into being, or demonstrating its existence through their own lived example. A wide range of beliefs underlie such basic parallels, from secular utopianism to Christian perfec¬ tionism to radical feminism. The economic and social changes brought about in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries by political revolutions and the rise of industrial capitalism produced significant changes in gender roles and family structure among Western cultures. In reaction to all of these changes, a number of new religious and secular movements arose, many of them promoting either old or radically new visions of gender and sexuality. Some of these movements have already been described above: the Society of the Universal Friend, the Shakers, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Seventh-day Adventists. More radical than most of these groups in their reforms, however, were the communalists. The earliest of these groups were secular and were in fact among the most important forerunners of the socialist movement, having directly influenced the thought of Friedrich Engels. They offered egalitarian ideals (if not always realities) of gender, and in their later

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years they supported the nineteenth-century free love movement (Guarneri 1991; Kolmerten 1990).

Oneida Perfectionists Yet not all of the nineteenth-century advocates of free love were secular. In fact, one of the most famous proponents of this ideal in a heterosexual format was a devout if unorthodox Christian and a graduate of Yale Theological Seminary. Influenced by widespread revivals and other theological trends of the early and mid-nineteenth century, John Humphrey Noyes came to believe that God’s kingdom, already estab¬ lished in heaven, was imminent on Earth as well and that human effort could help to pave its way. Furthermore, he concluded that at such a time in history, perfection was possible for true Christians in the form of a perfect confidence in God and in one’s salvation. As perfected human beings, Noyes believed, true Christians should begin living as though the kingdom was already in their midst. To this end, he founded a Perfectionist community in Putney, Vermont. When rumors of the com¬ munity’s sexual practices led to increasing hostility, Noyes moved the community to Oneida, New York, and his group became known as the Oneida Perfectionists (see also chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). Though Noyes was always the clear leader of the communities he founded, and thus those communities remained at their core patriarchal, along with other uto¬ pian communalists at the time, Noyes was concerned with the inequality and mis¬ treatment of women in the world around him. Women at Oneida wore loose pants under short skirts and cut their hair. They worked in a number of the industries that kept the community financially solvent, although as in other communes of the time they tended to be assigned to more domestic tasks than the men. Nevertheless, women did more industrial work and men more domestic work than would have been considered normal or even acceptable outside the commune. All members of the community were encouraged to engage in sports together, and women as well as men became prominent leaders at Oneida. Child care was communal to such a radi¬ cal degree that special efforts were often made to disrupt the bond between a parent and child and create, instead, multiple bonds between the child and all of the com¬ munity’s adults. What made Oneida most infamous was the practice of complex marriage. The Christian New Testament records Jesus saying that in the kingdom of God “they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mk. 12:25). In preparing for the kingdom, the Shakers understood this passage to mean that all people will be celibate; the Mormons understood it to mean that mar¬ riages performed properly in the human realm will be eternal and that no new marriages will be performed in heaven. John Humphrey Noyes took it to mean that restricting one’s sexual affections to a single person was an earthly practice necessary for the imperfect. In anticipation of the coming kingdom, and in recog¬ nition of the perfected nature of the members of the Oneida community, Noyes

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abolished all two-person marriages and instituted in their place a system called “complex marriage.” Under this system, (hetero)sexual intercourse was simply an extension of other social pleasantries, to be engaged in through the practice of similar social niceties. Noyes also came to believe early on that pregnancy, especially when not chosen by a woman, was oppressive and harmful. He thus introduced the concept of “male continence”—a form of coitus interruptus that would both limit the pregnan¬ cies resulting from the frequent sexual unions of his followers and encourage the participants to focus on intimacy rather than male orgasm. When two Oneida members wished to produce a child, they could petition the community’s leaders for permission, and in its later years the community also experimented with a form of spiritual eugenics referred to as “stirpiculture.”

Dianic Witchcraft Though other examples abound of religious and secular groups whose humanmessianic beliefs have led to radical experiments with sexual norms and family structure (see especially Palmer 1994, 2004), only one more case study will be presented here. Turning like some Christian millenarians to a mythic past as inspiration for the future, some feminists in the 1970s strove to re-create ancient women-centered societies that they believed once pervaded the planet. Though many of these movements were secular, one in particular stands out for its religious take on such goals: Dianic Witchcraft. Named for the unmarried Roman goddess Diana, Dianic (or Feminist) Witchcraft arose in Los Angeles during the early years of the Women’s Liberation movement. Though many of the branches of this movement denounced religion as a source of women’s oppression, some feminists were not so sure that all religions should be tarred with the same brush. “Cultural feminists,” especially, were willing to consider the potential promise involved in feminist reclamations of religion, because their approach to women’s liberation centered on creating alternatives to patriarchal culture. In attempting to develop a “women’s spirituality,” many femi¬ nists blended avertive apocalyptic and progressive millennialist predictions for the future, warning that patriarchal culture was hurtling headlong toward its own and the planet’s destruction, while reviving a women-centered culture would simulta¬ neously produce a new, feminist world order and save the planet. Zsuzsanna Budapest, a Hungarian immigrant and convert to radical feminism, came to the conclusion in the early 1970s that feminism needed a spiritual base. To that end, in 1971 Budapest and a handful of other feminists founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1. Blending the Wiccan practices introduced to the United States in the 1960s with radical feminist beliefs and practices, Budapest produced a version of Wicca with a uniquely feminist twist. Believing that women raised in a sexist culture could not fully develop their power and self-confidence in mixed-sex gath¬ erings, Dianic Wicca allowed (and continues to allow) only women who were born

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and raised as women into its rituals and classes. Children of all sexes are admitted if under the age of three, and Budapest has long proclaimed her commitment to teaching men in separate classes. As with much of cultural feminism, Dianic Wicca focuses intensely on teaching women to celebrate their bodies. This extends not only to the realms of self-care, healing, and life-stage rituals, but also to the realm of sexuality. From the beginning, Budapest clearly acknowledged that some members of her coven might be in inti¬ mate relationships with men, and others with women. Viewing sexuality as politi¬ cal, however, Budapest also envisioned the possibility of a “Dianic Great Rite” in which women would celebrate their sexuality together in the absence of men (see Budapest 1989, 98—100). Though she admitted she had never tried such a ritual, she felt the Goddess was calling for one.

Nativist Millennialism Though feminism is not generally considered a form of nativism because it focuses on sex differences rather than national or cultural differences, a feminism like Budapest’s is in many ways closely parallel to nationalist or nativist movements (see also chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld, this volume). Both focus on the political rights and intrinsic positive qualities or even superiority of a particular group of people, and in their millenarian forms both connect the liberation of a particular group to divine will or natural inevitability. Yet because nationalist movements focus pri¬ marily on ethnicity, national identity, or race, sex often becomes a foil for such identities rather than another focus for liberation.3 This is the case in the two dia¬ metrically opposed nationalist millenarian movements on which this section focuses: white supremacy and the Nation of Islam.

White Supremacy Although white supremacist groups range theologically from Christian to Neopagan to secular, they share a vision of a coming new world in which all those not of “pure Aryan” descent will be separate from and irrevocably subordinate to white people (see also chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld and chapter 33 by Michael Barkun, both in this volume). Though Christian white supremacy has a touch of divine messianism, these groups are in general progressive, human-messianic millenarians. Their pre¬ ferred methods for bringing about the new world order range from evangelism to political activism to paramilitary and terrorist tactics. Strikingly, though, along with their vision of an ideal society for whites only come gender roles in which men are aggressive, muscular leaders and women serve as wives and mothers, raising the next generation of pure Aryans (see, e.g., Ferber 2004). Children learn white

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supremacist doctrine (as well as gender roles) in the cradle, and older children may assist with the distribution of literature and other small tasks. In these movements that focus on the purity of bloodlines and that have been known in extreme cases to deal out capital punishment to interracial and same-sex couples, women’s sexuality is closely guarded. By contrast, male sexual modesty does not fit well with the aggressive and confrontational masculinity encouraged in some white supremacist cultures such as the Aryan Nation. In her study of white supremacist women, Kathleen M. Blee (2002) found that many of her interviewees complained of dominating or abusive treatment from their husbands and demean¬ ing treatment from other men. Though some white supremacist groups make an effort to recruit women, and some have separate women’s organizations that paral¬ lel more powerful groups targeted at or at least dominated by men, Blee found that despite their public avowals of devotion to the cause, most of the racist women she studied felt ignored or marginalized in a movement to which they had devoted a great deal of time and energy.

Nation of Islam Interestingly, though some womanists have decried the sexism implicit in the tra¬ ditional gender roles of the black nationalist Nation of Islam (NOI), others have found in them an important corrective to white stereotyping of black women. Thus, structurally similar movements—white nationalism and black national¬ ism—may have very different results depending on the social status of the groups they address. At the same time, even here the situation is not clear-cut, as the roles outlined for black women in the traditional Nation of Islam are just as narrow, albeit far more valued, than those outlined for black women by the prejudices of a white racist society. The Nation of Islam was one of a variety of black nationalist organizations that arose in northern cities of the United States in the early twentieth century. Responding to the disillusionment caused by post-Reconstruction segregation laws, a resurgence of white racist and nativist violence (including a surge in Ku Klux Klan membership), race riots, and the failure of northern cities to live up to the promises that had lured many southern blacks to relocate, the nationalist movements were among the earliest promulgators of black pride and were the forerunners of the Black Power movement. The Nation of Islam was founded in Detroit in the early 1930s by a man named W. D. Fard but was consolidated and led for decades by Elijah and Clara Muhammad, themselves poor emigrants from Georgia. Responding to long-standing white beliefs that people of African descent bore the “curse of Ham” or had even been created separately from the white Adam and Eve,4 the Nation of Islam developed a sacred myth in which all humans were originally black (for a summary, see McCloud 2003). Over six thousand years ago, this narrative recounts, a man named Yakub, hoping to destroy humanity, experimented with a type of cloning and produced a race of aggressive, white-skinned, blue-eyed devils. After

GENDER ROLES, SEXUALITY, AND CHILDREN

IS/

this race was driven out of Arabia into Europe, God eventually allowed it to domi¬ nate the original humans, but only for two thousand years. As the end of those two millennia approached in the twentieth century, blacks needed to recognize, claim, and value their own identities in order to end the rule of the white devils. To

this

education

end, Elijah

and

Clara Muhammad encouraged healthy diets,

especially in African history and culture—and propriety. As a display

of pride as well as a preparation for the coming resurgence of black power, the Nation of Islam developed a paramilitary branch for men called the Fruit of Islam. For women there was no such paramilitary; instead, in the early years of the Nation, women and girls learned in NOI schools “about domestic skills, family life, and proper public conduct, and... that characteristics like ‘modesty, thrift, and service are commended as their chief concerns’” (Ross 2003,156). To be fair, in the 1940s white women’s education was still similarly focused. Furthermore, the clear social conservatism of this message—still carried today by the Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan (b. 1933)5—also served as a powerful contradiction to the demean¬ ing and widespread stereotypes of black women as sexually aggressive and innately morally degraded. In the final analysis, though, the (perhaps unanswerable) ques¬ tion that must arise is whether this assertive reconfiguring of black women’s images was ultimately for the benefit of black nationalist women, or for that of black nationalist men.

Conclusion

The case studies examined make it clear that the effects of a millennial worldview on gender, sexuality, and the role of children vary widely. Factors that influence these effects include the type of millennialism involved, the group’s image of the new world that will be inaugurated, its understanding of human roles in bringing about that new world, and its broader social, historical, and religious contexts. While the avertive apocalyptic rhetoric of those like Falwell and Budapest tends to hearken back to an earlier era, urging listeners to resume “golden age” gender norms and sexual roles in order to avoid a coming catastrophe, the closely related catastrophic millennial groups like the Society of the Publick Universal Friend, the Seventh-day Adventists, and the Branch Davidians see the apocalypse as unavoidable and instead take as their guide ideas about how the chosen faithful are to prepare for the destruc¬ tion of the current world. Progressive millennial groups range much more widely in their understandings of gender, sexuality, and children’s roles, depending on their concepts of the coming utopia and their ideas about the roles of humanity and divinity in bringing those concepts to reality. While the Shakers, the LDS Church, the Unification Church, and the Oneida Perfectionists all came up with new under¬ standings of gender, sexuality, and marriage based on differing interpretations of Jesus’ assertion that “in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage,”

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ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

Lubavitchers see a smoother transition to redemption and thus stress a strictly observant version of more widespread Jewish practices, and nineteenth-century communalists and twentieth-century Dianic witches alike saw in their future uto¬ pias a radical equality of the sexes and the possibility of free love. Finally, nativist millennial movements tend to emphasize sexual purity for women and often patri¬ archal gender roles, but evaluations of such roles must also take social context into account. Thus, while millennialism provides the impetus for social change, it is worldviews, social structures, and cultures that provide the model.

NOTES 1. Other aspects of Newport’s study have been challenged by an established scholar of the Branch Davidians (Wright 2007). Since Wright’s objections are largely to Newport’s analysis of the FBI siege and final assault, and since other sources confirm Koresh’s sexual theology (e.g., Gallagher 2000) and activities (Haldeman 2007), Newport’s work seems to be a reliable resource for this aspect of Branch Davidian teaching. 2. Michele Jones, the sister of David Koresh’s legal wife, Rachel, was twelve when she became one of Koresh’s extralegal wives with the permission of her parents. In Texas at that time, a girl could marry at age fourteen with the permission of her parents. In 1995, when she was fourteen, Kiri Jewell testified in a congressional hearing that when she was ten her mother had left her alone in a motel room with David Koresh, who had sexual contact with her. Shortly after that, Kiri’s father gained custody and did not let her return to Mount Carmel and her mother (Jewell 1996). 3. A related effect can be seen in millenarian forms of feminism, which in the West have often claimed the similarity of all women’s experiences and then described those experiences through the narrow lens of Western, white, middle-cslass women. 4. The latter interpretation is still held by followers of the Christian Identity movement. 5. Louis Farrakhan left the parent movement in 1977, after Warith Deen Muhammed, the son of Elijah and Clara Muhammad, moved it toward orthodox Sunni Islam, which he indicated by renaming and ultimately dissolving the organization and changing how he spelled his family name. Farrakhan formed his Nation of Islam in 1978 to continue the teachings of W. D. Fard and Elijah Muhammad.

REFERENCES Barker, Eileen. 1984. The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? New York: Basil Blackwell. Blee, Kathleen M. 2002. Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Budapest, Zsuzsanna. 1989. The Holy Book of Womens Mysteries. 2d ed. Berkeley, Calif.: Wingbow. Feldman, Jan. 2003. Lubavitchers as Citizens: A Paradox of Liberal Democracy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Ferber, Abby L., ed. 2004. Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism. New York: Routledge.

Foster, Lawrence. 1984. Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Gallagher, Eugene V. 2000. “‘Theology Is Life and Death’: David Koresh on Violence, Persecution, and the Millennium.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, ed. Catherine Wessinger, 82—100. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Guarneri, Carl J. 1991. The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Haldeman, Bonnie. 2007. Memories of the Branch Davidians: The Autobiography of David Koresh’s Mother. Edited by Catherine Wessinger. Waco: Baylor University Press. Flarris, John F. 2001. “God Gave U.S. ‘What We Deserve,’ Falwell Says.” Washington Post, 14 September, C03. Jewell, Kiri. 1996. “Statement of Kiri Jewell, Resident at Mount Carmel, Accompanied by Fler Father David Jewell,” 147-50, and “Prepared Statement of Kiri Jewell, Resident of Mount Carmel,” 151—55. In Activities of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies toward the Branch Davidians (Parti): Joint Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, and the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 104th Congress, First Session, July 19, 20, 21, and 24,1995. Committee on the Judiciary Serial No. 72. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Juster, Susan. 1996. “To Slay the Beast: Visionary Women in the Early Republic.” In A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender, and the Creation of American Protestantism, edited by Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane, 19-37. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Kolmerten, Carol A. 1990. Women in Utopia: The Ideology of Gender in the American Owenite Communities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. MacHaffie, Barbara J. 2006. Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition. 2d ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. Martin, Sheila. 2009. When They Were Mine: Memoirs of a Branch Davidian Wife and Mother. Edited by Catherine Wessinger. Waco: Baylor University Press. McCloud, Aminah Beverly. 2003. “Blackness in the Nation of Islam.” In Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity, edited by Craig R. Prentiss, 101-11. New York: New York University Press. Morgan, Douglas. 2001. Adventism and the American Republic: The Public Involvement of a Major Apocalyptic Movement. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Newport, Kenneth G. C. 2006. The Branch Davidians of Waco: The History and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Palmer, Susan J. 1994. Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers: Womens Roles in New Religions. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. ———. 2004. Aliens Adored: Rael’s UFO Religion. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University

Press. Pitts, William L., Jr. 2009. “Women Leaders in the Davidian and Branch Davidian Traditions.” Nova Religio 12, no. 4 (May): 50-71.

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Procter-Smith, Marjorie. 1993. ‘“In the Line of the Female’: Shakerism and Feminism,” in Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions: Explorations Outside the Mainstream, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 23—40. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Richardson, James T. 1999. “Social Control of New Religions: From ‘Brainwashing’ Claims to Child Sex Abuse Accusations.” In Children in New Religions, edited by Susan J. Palmer and Charlotte E. Hardman, 172-86. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Ross, Rosetta E. 2003. Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights. Minneapolis: Fortress. Wessinger, Catherine. 1993. “Going Beyond and Retaining Charisma: Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions.” In Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions: Explorations outside the Mainstream, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 1-19. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. -. 2008. “Culting: From Waco to Fundamentalist Mormons.” Religion Dispatches 6 (May). Available at www.religiondispatches.org/art219.php. Wright, Stuart A. 2007. “Book Review: The Branch Davidians of Waco: The History and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46, no. 2 (June): 283-84.

CHAPTER 10

MILLENNIAL VISIONS AND CONFLICT WITH SOCIETY DAVID G. BROMLEY CATHERINE WESSINGER

Despite considerable diversity among them, millennial movements typically exhibit two distinctive characteristics. First, they create narratives that describe an end to the current order of affairs in the world and announce the inauguration of a new order. Second, such movements heighten group mobilization in anticipation and/ or furtherance of the anticipated events. The combination of a narrative foretelling a seismic shift in the world as it presently exists, and a tight-knit group of believers committed to the cause, poses a distinct challenge to the legitimacy of the estab¬ lished social order and its capacity to induce conformity. To the extent that believers take seriously the doctrines of the millennial movement in which they participate, conventional existing knowledge and ways of life lose their legitimacy. Members of millennial groups often utilize rhetoric condemning the hopelessly corrupt nature of the existing social order and confidently predicting its impending demise. These groups usually assign themselves a pivotal role in unfolding cosmic events. Believers’ certainty about future events and their status as the Elect lends them a strong sense of moral superiority and unconcern with existing social conventions. These movements and their members may distance themselves from society, band¬ ing together to await or foster the events that will inaugurate the Millennium. The communities they form attempt to model the new order they anticipate, which inevitably clashes with the established order in some respects. Therefore, it is not surprising that the social response to millennial groups can be hostile. Millennial groups and movements are commonly portrayed as destructive, dangerous, subversive, or deranged, as well as potentially violent. Adding to this

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sense of threat is the perception that millennialists are inherently irrational and unpredictable. Yet the evidence from the histories of millennial groups indicates that the extreme threat that they are thought to pose rarely materializes. The dispar¬ ity between societal apprehension and actual threat is striking, which raises the question of how millennial groups avoid or resolve serious conflicts with host social orders so conflicts do not escalate into “dramatic denouements” or moments of final, decisive confrontation (Bromley 2002). To explore this question we examine three contemporary Christian millennial groups: the Twelve Tribes, The Family International, and the Branch Davidians. These groups share a number of characteristics: each emerged in the United States during the same historical period; claimed to be the legitimate representative of the Christian tradition; relied on literalistic readings of the Bible and especially the book of Revelation to provide a map to expected Endtime events; defined key roles for themselves and their children in the Endtime and Millennium; originated with a charismatic founder/leader; and adopted a communal lifestyle to sustain mem¬ ber commitment and separation from conventional society. Each also engendered opposition from established churches, former members who fashioned careers as apostates and deprogrammers, the anticult and countercult movements,1 and one or more established institutions (Shupe and Bromley 1980; Cowan 2003). Most importantly, each group experienced a sufficient level of conflict so that there were raids on their communities, and thus faced roughly comparable circumstances to which they were compelled to respond. Further, in each case, allegations of child abuse—a particularly incendiary issue during this period—constituted a key source of legitimation for the social control agents who initiated the raids (see also chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, this volume). A confrontation between a millennial group and society provides an opportu¬ nity to examine the strategies available to religious groups when they have chal¬ lenged or been challenged by the established social order. We examine the conflict responses of the Twelve Tribes, The Family International, and the Branch Davidians and argue that the group’s millennial narrative and organization in anticipation/ furtherance of the Millennium are broadly predictive of members’ responses to opposition. Millennial groups have a choice concerning strategies to address oppo¬ sition and are generally consistent in acting on strategies that are consistent with their eschatological narratives. However, the eschatological narratives of millennial groups and their prophets are flexible, and millennialists typically adjust their theo¬ logical interpretations of scripture in response to events (Gallagher 2000,83-84; see also chapter 7 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume).

We present brief histories of the Twelve Tribes, The Family International, and the Branch Davidians, their visions of the Millennium, their organizations in antici¬ pation of world-changing events, and the strategies they adopted in managing con¬ flict with host social orders. Each of the three groups has been the target of opposition from established churches, government agencies, anticult and countercult groups, and the media. The legitimacy of their religious beliefs and practices, their leaders, and their status as religious organizations has been challenged. Conflicts with

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opponents have been a significant source of the volatility attributed to these groups. The focus of this comparative analysis is on how these millennial groups responded to the challenges they faced through the strategic use of and adjustments to their millennial narratives and organizations, and the extent to which these approaches were effective. Millennial groups experiencing a high degree of tension with society may adopt one or more of three strategies: exodus, compromise, and confrontation. The escha¬ tological narrative espoused by the group, as well as the nature of its organization and leadership, contribute to the group’s trajectory during the period of conflict.

Twelve Tribes The group now known as the Twelve Tribes, or Commonwealth of Israel, was founded by Elbert Eugene Spriggs, Jr., who was born in 1937 in East Ridge, Tennessee, into a devout Methodist family. His early adult life was unsettled in a number of ways. He held a succession of jobs and was married three times before meeting his current wife, Marsha Ann Duvall. More importantly, Spriggs describes himself as being in a state of spiritual uneasiness during this period of his life. In 1970, at age thirty-three, Spriggs reported a life-changing experience in which he confessed the sinfulness of his past and dedicated his life to Christ. Two years later, Spriggs and his wife moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, opened a coffeehouse, and began min¬ istering to countercultural youth. Some of the young people moved into the Spriggs’s home; the fledgling group began emulating the early Christian commu¬ nal lifestyle and formed the Vine Christian Community Church. Spriggs came to be regarded as an Apostle within the movement and known by the Hebrew name Yoneq. The Twelve Tribes has grown to a reported membership of three to four thousand members, about equally divided between adults and children. There are more than two dozen communities across the United States, and more than a dozen communities abroad.

MiUennialism in the Twelve Tribes The Twelve Tribes is a postmillennial movement focused on building up the twelve tribes of Israel, consisting of a minimum of twelve hundred believers each, after which time it is believed that Jesus Christ will return. The movement receives con¬ tinuing revelations about the Endtime through Yoneq and others with apostolic gifts. In Twelve Tribes doctrine, “Natural Law” is described as expressing those abso¬ lute values that all humans recognize as inherently true and right. While the values of Natural Law are laudable and divinely rewarded, Twelve Tribe members have concluded that adherence to a Natural Law standard will not be sufficient to create the conditions necessary for the return of the Messiah. A separate, spiritual nation

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will have to be formed in which members are committed to living faithfully accord¬ ing to God’s commands. Twelve Tribes members understand themselves to be that nation, the Commonwealth of Israel. Each Tribe lives in a different geographic area and forms a community that remains apart from the world, faithful to God’s Word, and a model for others. Separation is critical for the Twelve Tribes because the absolute values of Natural Law are being lost in contemporary society. The Commonwealth of Israel decries what it perceives as the rise of a multicultural, global social order: a single world government and world religion. The former relativizes values; the latter undermines and compromises the values of Natural Law and promotes rampant materialism and acquisitiveness, feminism, the demise of the traditional patriarchal family, and the legitimation of gay marriage. Members of the Twelve Tribes envision an increasingly hostile, repressive world dominated by a world government. During this time the movement anticipates that its members will continue to purify themselves spiritually and move in a direction opposite to unfolding world history. Since history has witnessed numerous groups that have attempted to remain faithful to God’s Word only to fail in resisting worldly corruption and compromise, members are critically aware of the precariousness of Twelve Tribes’ destiny. Given their belief that the return of the Messiah is contingent on the gathering of a faithful remnant, the movement views its own struggle for faithfulness and purity as a battle with cosmic implications. Confronted by an increasingly corrupt and repressive world and compelled to maintain their own spiritual purity, Twelve Tribes members expect that as they create the conditions for the Messiah’s return and face an increasingly hostile world, they will be forced into the wilderness in the years preceding the Endtime. Twelve Tribes members’ understanding of the Endtime, based on the New Testament book of Revelation, is that it will unfold through four phases in which the Twelve Tribes will play a key role. The first phase involves the spiritual restora¬ tion of the twelve tribes of Israel that have been lost and scattered through the creation of their communes. In the second phase, Yahshua (Christ) will return, taking back the Earth from the Evil One. The third phase will occur with the build¬ ing of the Stone Kingdom, which involves a total separation of religion and the state and pursuit of spiritual purification that will make members worthy as the bride of Yahshua. The fourth phase closely parallels conventional Christian ren¬ derings of the battle of Armageddon in the book of Revelation, with the army of Yahshua destroying the army of the Evil One. Those who have maintained the cov¬ enant with God will rule alongside Yahshua; those who are aware of their obliga¬ tions but have failed to keep them will be consigned to the Lake of Fire; and individual judgment will be rendered for those who have never been made aware of their spiritual obligations. In furtherance of their millennial vision, Twelve Tribes members have sepa¬ rated their communities from conventional society to pursue the spiritual purity that will allow the group to play its designated role in the Millennium. The move¬ ment adopted a communal lifestyle: at first members moved into the Spriggs’s home

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in Chattanooga, and later they began building more self-contained communities, initiated by relocating to Island Pond, Vermont, in 1977. That the movement must build numerous communities to achieve its spiritual goals and establish a spiritual nation means that the movement must assume a somewhat decentralized form. While Twelve Tribe members keep their distance from conventional society and have concern about being corrupted by its influence, the communities do have ties to the wider society, operating businesses that offer services to residents of the surrounding community. With the advent of the com¬ munity at Island Pond, the movement assumed a more communal form and Twelve Tribes communities became more tight-knit. One of the most important areas in which the movement sought control and separation from conventional society was the socialization of children. Given the movement’s vision of the Millennium being several generations in the future and progressive spiritual growth being required during this period, raising children within the tradition and ensuring their commitment to the cause is of the highest priority. Differing visions of childhood socialization, of course, have been at the core of the conflict between the Twelve Tribes movement and society.

The Twelve Tribes in Conflict The Twelve Tribes experienced opposition beginning in the movement’s early days in Chattanooga. During the fifteen years after its inception the movement began distancing itself from established Christian churches. When a local church they had been attending canceled its worship service on Super Bowl Sunday in 1975 so con¬ gregants would be free to watch the football game on television, Spriggs’s group responded by initiating its own services. They held worship services outdoors, bap¬ tized converts in local park lakes, and observed the Jewish Sabbath, from Friday evening until Saturday evening. Tensions with established churches intensified as the movement openly rejected their legitimacy. The final break with established churches occurred in 1987, when members expressed their determination to elimi¬ nate any remaining influence from existing Christian churches by walking together into a lake and being reborn as a new spiritual community. Conversions to the movement by countercultural youth produced conflict with countercult and anticult groups. Some members were kidnapped and subjected to deprogramming, which led, in turn, to public condemnations of the group by apos¬ tate members. There was also opposition from local business leaders, who charged that the free labor available to the communally organized Twelve Tribes constituted unfair competition. After encountering anticult opposition in Chattanooga, the movement adopted an exodus strategy in 1977 as the entire membership began moving to Island Pond, Vermont, and renamed itself the Northeast Kingdom Community Church. While opposition from various sources in the outside society continued, con¬ flict increasingly centered on allegations of child abuse. From the movement’s

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perspective, children are particularly valued and constitute key players in the mil¬ lennial expectations. The group is working toward both achieving increasingly greater spiritual purity and gathering the faithful remnant necessary to create the conditions for Yahshua’s return. Children play a critical role in both processes as each generation strives for greater spiritual purity and contributes to building the faithful remnant. Preparing children for committed, spiritually pure lives is there¬ fore the goal of Twelve Tribes’ childrearing practices. The element of their childrear¬ ing that became the primary focus of contention was the practice of immediately disciplining disobedient children, typically by striking them on the palm of the hand with a thin, flexible reed. From a child welfare agency perspective, corporal punishment is synonymous with abuse, and oversight of groups that are communal and religious is particularly problematic due to limitations on access. Given the group’s sense of being besieged by evil forces, and control agencies’ suspicion of concealment of abusive practices, the escalation of tension between the two parties was not surprising. An active coalition developed between the anticult movement, Vermont state child welfare officials, and an influential apostate (Palmer 1998). These tensions came to a head on 22 June 1984, when ninety Vermont state troopers and fifty Social Rehabilitation Services workers staged a surprise dawn raid on the Island Pond community, searched the homes, and took 112 children into protective custody. The case was resolved within a day, with the court releasing the children to the custody of their parents and condemning the raid as lacking legal justification. This confrontation with state officials had the potential to have turned violent, or at least produced a more insular group. However, Twelve Tribes members clearly recognized their vulnerability and developed a new strategy that exchanged exodus for partial compromise with society. The group actively sought out supporters among members’ families, identified less antagonistic journalists who would offer the group more balanced media coverage, negotiated its schooling practices with the state school board, and, most strikingly, disbanded the commune in favor of communal households dispersed throughout New England and other states (Palmer 1998,203; Dreher 2005). The result was a lower, less contentious group profile. Several factors in the Twelve Tribe’s millennial narrative and social organization mitigated against a more militant, confrontational response. First, the Twelve Tribes has a progressive millennial outlook in which confrontation with the state is explic¬ itly disavowed. To pave the way for the Millennium, the movement must expand from its present nine to twelve tribes, each of which must grow to consist of at least 1,200 members, thus creating the 144,000 faithful who will be included in God’s millennial kingdom (Rev. 14:1, 3). The expectation is that this preparatory period may extend to as many as seven generations. In the interim, the Twelve Tribes’ stance toward government is to maintain distance and separation, but also to seek out “men of conscience” to serve as allies when conflicts arise. In fact, the positive expe¬ rience of being dealt with justly by the judge, who returned their children seized in the 1984 raid, led to the conviction within Twelve Tribes that it is possible, and even essential, to locate “righteous men of the nations” with whom to ally to protect their

MILLENNIAL VISIONS AND CONFLICT WITH SOCIETY

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communities (Palmer 2010). This was precisely the course the group followed in the aftermath of the Island Pond raid. While there is an expectation that there will ulti¬ mately be a violent confrontation between the forces of good and evil, this will occur only after the return of Yahshua, which is a relatively distant event. The 1984 raid was therefore not interpreted as a culminating historical moment. With respect to group organization, centralization of power and the charis¬ matic authority of Yoneq were limited. It was understood that prophetic revelations within the group came from a variety of sources, which lessened the likelihood of a dominant charismatic leader emerging and moving the group in a radical direction during the period of confrontation. Further, the inviolability of individual conscience in determining right and wrong was emphasized in teachings, which created a power base at the individual level. The local communities are largely autonomous and self-governing, with Yoneq and his wife traveling among the communities simply as advisers. Scattered, auton¬ omous communities are less capable of unified, confrontational strategies, irrespec¬ tive of ideology. The partitioning of the Island Pond community into a loose network of regional communities after the 1984 raid propelled the movement even further in a decentralized direction. The overall strategy of limited compromise with society was consistent with the evolving millennial narrative and movement organization of the Twelve Tribes. The response certainly was not capitulation, as the movement maintained its doctrinal system, its communal organization, and its distance from conventional society. Twelve Tribes simply worked to reduce tension with outside society to a manageable level, which assured that Twelve Tribes members could continue to pursue their long-term vision of the Millennium.2

The Family International The Family International, originally the Children of God, is one of the best known of the 1960s lesus Movement groups. It was founded in 1968 by Moses David Berg, formerly David Brandt Berg (1919-94), who led The Family until his death. When Berg died in 1994, his death was interpreted as a sign that the Endtime was fast approaching. His partner, Maria, and longtime disciple, Peter Amsterdam, assumed leadership of the movement and continue to solicit guidance from lesus and Berg (“Dad”) in the spirit world, as well as from other spiritual guides. The Family has approximately nine thousand full-time members, about equally divided between adults and children, drawn from ninety different nationalities and living in Family homes in more than one hundred different nations. David Brandt Berg was born in Oakland, California, to parents who were active evangelical Christian missionaries. Berg reported being endowed with a variety of spiritual gifts as well as experiencing a miraculous healing during his early adult

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years, following which he dedicated his life to God. After serving in the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector, Berg married Jane Miller, and the couple had four chil¬ dren. Berg went on to become a minister in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, but left his position to establish an independent missionary organization, the Florida Soul Clinic. He reported receiving a message from God in 1961 calling on him to pronounce the established churches as doomed for forsaking God. Berg, his family, and a small group of disciples responded by initiating an evangelism cam¬ paign across North America. A key moment in The Family’s development occurred in 1967, when Berg and his followers traveled to his mother’s home in Huntington Beach, California, and began witnessing to countercultural youth at a local coffeehouse. “Uncle Dave,” as Berg was then known, preached an antiestablishment message to the hippies. The “System” was hopelessly corrupted; its destruction was imminent; and Jesus was the true revolutionary (Wallis 1981,100). Over the next several years the group’s mem¬ bers began living communally, evangelized actively, and established “colonies” across the United States and Canada. The movement grew quickly as Berg’s spiritual revolution message resonated with young adults in the counterculture. During this period Berg ended his marriage with Jane Miller and began a lifelong partnership with Karen Zerby, known as Maria within the movement. Berg’s charismatic stand¬ ing also grew as he began to pronounce himself God’s Endtime Prophet. By the end of 1971 membership totaled almost fifteen hundred in nearly seventy colonies.

Millennialism in The Family International The Family accepts a number of the basic doctrines of traditional Christianity: a triune God who created the universe and humans in six days; Satanic temptation as the cause of humankind’s fall; the virgin birth; and Jesus as God’s Son who was sent to atone for original sin. However, Family theology also departs from Christian orthodoxy in a number of ways—most significantly in Berg’s claim to be the Endtime Prophet who receives ongoing divine revelations; his assertion that his movement constitutes God’s Endtime Army; his revelations about the timing and nature of the Endtime; and his interpretations of Jesus’s teachings. Berg preached continuing revelation through which God provides knowledge to humanity as his¬ tory unfolds. As God’s Endtime Prophet, Berg’s revelations supplement biblical knowledge and receive greater emphasis within the movement. Teachings about the Endtime are central to Family theology. At a number of points in the movement’s history, expectations have risen that the Endtime was about to begin, but these have been speculations rather than formal date-setting. In early 1969, for example, expectations of the imminent destruction of California cir¬ culated within the movement. Members continue to believe that the Endtime may begin within their lifetimes. When the Endtime does begin, the corrupt, ungodly world order will collapse, and the Antichrist—disguised as an apparent savior—will emerge to rule the world

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for three and one-half years before his true identity is revealed. As the Tribulation commences, humanity will be forced to accept the authority of the Antichrist, who is possessed by Satan, for an additional three and one-half years. The Family will remain a faithful remnant and be compelled to practice their faith in secret during the Tribulation. At the end of this period Christ will return, and Family members, as well as other born-again Christians, will be raptured to heaven. The faithful will return to Earth as part of Christ’s army, and the Antichrist will then be vanquished in the battle of Armageddon. These events will usher in the Millennium and the re¬ creation of Earth.3 Family members have been assigned a key role in world gover¬ nance during the Millennium. Perhaps Berg’s most historic revelation—and the one around which conflict was concentrated—was the “Law of Love,” which Berg shared with his disciples in his writings beginning in 1973. Berg reminded his disciples that Jesus had taught that the greatest law was love: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22: 36-39). Since The Family was God’s chosen move¬ ment, Berg concluded that it was bound only by this commandment (Melton 1994, 77-78). Berg extended the commandment to love, making it broader and stricter, by insisting that it involved not only conformity to rules, but a loving spirit in all con¬ duct. Since the most loving act that a Family member could perform was to ensure others’ salvation by bringing them to Christ, showing others God’s love in whatever way was necessary to reach them was acceptable, and in some cases necessary. This logic led Berg to interpret the Law of Love to permit use of sexual allure in winning souls, and beginning in 1974 female members began the practice referred to as “flirty fishing.” Other social conventions quickly came under scrutiny as well, and Berg encouraged extramarital sexuality (“sexual sharing”) that was voluntary and loving. It was Berg’s evolving interpretation of the Law of Love that ultimately led The Family in the direction of the radical sexual practices that became the central ele¬ ment of its public identity. The Family viewed itself as forming a “new nation” modeled on the early Christian church and as playing a key role in preparing for the Endtime. More rap¬ idly even than most other millennial groups, The Family moved toward the margins of the established social order. Early in its history The Family organized commu¬ nally while at the same time changing residential locations frequently. Members cut ties with most mainstream institutions. They did not participate in Social Security and heath care plans; they declined military service; they typically did not hold conventional jobs; they did not possess bank accounts or credit cards. Family homes did not have permanent addresses or list telephone numbers; property was rented rather than purchased. Family homes were supported primarily by members selling movement literature and soliciting public donations. Movement cohesiveness was maintained largely through sharing of Berg’s ongoing writings and revelations and through constant circulation of members among homes. Berg presented a charismatic presence as his status grew from “Uncle Dave” to God’s Endtime Prophet. His revelations about how members should fulfill the

200

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obligations of God’s faithful remnant and about impending Endtime events served as an anchor for the movement. The focal point of movement activity was offering others the opportunity for salvation, through recitation of a simple prayer acknowl¬ edging Christ as savior, and building the faithful remnant through conversions. By its own estimate, The Family has witnessed to over 200 million individuals through its history, and members have engaged in personal prayers with 20 million indi¬ viduals who have acknowledged Jesus as their savior. The movement also estimates that at least forty thousand individuals have joined the movement, although only a few thousand remained as disciples on a long-term basis (Chancellor 2000, 17). Witnessing and conversion not only help to set the necessary conditions for the Endtime; they also offer benefits to individual members, as one’s position in Heaven is understood to be determined by one’s activity in the present life.

The Family International in Conflict The Family first experienced opposition during its early history in Huntington Beach, California. Members conducted “commando raids” on churches during which they confronted parishioners, sometimes interrupting services and warning worshippers of their spiritual corruption. Later, movement members, dressed in biblical attire and carrying large wooden staffs, marched through major urban cen¬ ters with a similar message of impending divine retribution. Such symbolic con¬ frontations were the most aggressive tactic the movement employed. The primary strategy the movement employed in its early history,

exodus,

emerged almost from the outset. The early growth that the movement enjoyed was achieved through aggressive witnessing methods. When authorities began to make inquiries, the entire group left California and embarked on a journey that members described as the “Exodus” from “Egypt” and as a “long march” that ended in a Canadian campground in Laurentides, Quebec. Resistance to recruitment to movement intensified when the witnessing teams returned to the United States. Parents of converts banded together in an anticult organization, focusing public scrutiny on the group (Shupe and Bromley 1980). For a time the movement was a primary target of deprogrammers, who physically abducted and held movement members (Patrick 1976; Shupe and Bromley 1980; Bromley 1988) to induce them to renounce their faith and membership. The depro¬ grammings produced a siege mentality in the movement, and again the response was to retreat into greater isolation. As pressure mounted, Berg called for a mass exodus from North America. This tactic proved largely successful because the reduc¬ tion in recruitment activity lowered the movement’s visibility and put it largely out of reach of its opponents. After Berg left the United States he went into seclusion, concealing his whereabouts even from his disciples for the remainder of his life. The most serious opposition The Family experienced arose later in response to its revolutionary sexual practices. There was experimentation with nudity, sexual sharing among members, group sex, flirty fishing, child sexual activity, and

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adult-child sexual relations at various times and locations. The accusations of adultchild sexual relations were particularly discrediting, and Berg himself was accused by one of his daughters of having engaged in incestuous relationships and encour¬ aged adult-child sexual activity (Davis 1984,12,193). By the early 1980s The Family began moderating its sexual practices, in response to social opposition and the danger that members would lose custody of their chil¬ dren. Flirty fishing was discontinued, sexual sharing was limited, the age at which teenagers could engage in sexual relationships was raised to avoid adult-adolescent sexuality, child sexual experimentation was forbidden, and adults’ sexual contact with children became grounds for excommunication. Despite the fact that the movement discontinued its most controversial sexual practices, officials in a number of countries initiated raids on Family homes based on allegations by apostates of child abuse and sexual molestation (Oliver 1994, 144-50; Bainbridge 2002). Family members were arrested or expelled from India, Egypt, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia during the 1980s on the basis of allegations about sexual teachings and practices (Van Zandt 1991, 167). There were raids on Family homes and investigations on child abuse charges in Spain in 1990,1991 and 1992; in Australia in 1992; and in France and Argentina in 1993. In each of these cases, children were taken from their parents for varying periods and examined and tested by authorities. The Family adopted a strategy of legal contestation, and in all of these cases the outcome was the same. No evidence of child abuse or molestation was discovered, charges against Family members were dropped, and children were returned to their parents. However, despite its legal victories, the movement’s members became acutely aware of their vulnerability. The turning point in the movement’s strategy for deal¬ ing with societal conflict occurred in response to these cases. The most significant case occurred in England in 1993 when the grandmother of a Family member sought legal custody of her daughter’s young son. Family leaders were compelled to admit group excesses, repudiate past policies, and acknowledge Berg as the source of the abusive behaviors. The presiding judge excoriated Berg as sexually perverted before ultimately awarding custody of the son to his mother (Lattin 2001; Chancellor 2000,30-31). Subsequently, the movement further compromised its former radical positions in a number of ways: a partially successful program of reconciliation with former members was initiated; movement governance was democratized; a variety of mem¬ bership categories that lowered membership requirements were created; and cha¬ risma claims were dramatically reduced with Berg’s passing, since the new leaders possessed primarily administrative authority. For example, a procedure that “democratizes” prophecy has developed in which grassroots members, as well as officials and staff with the administrative unit (World Services), are encouraged to submit prophecies received to Maria, who then uses her spiritual discernment to decide which prophecies have validity and are to be utilized in guiding the move¬ ment’s work (Shepherd and Shepherd 2007; Shepherd and Shepherd 2009). The result has been a much lower profile and level of tension with society for the

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movement, although its image continues to be substantially shaped by its earlier radicalism and deviant sexual practices.

The Branch Davidians In contrast to the Twelve Tribes and The Family International, the Branch Davidians have a much longer history. The Branch Davidian community grew out of the Davidian community, which in turn was an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church dating back to the 1930s. In 1929 Victor Houteff (1885-1955) began teaching his interpretations of the Bibles Endtime prophecies, and in 1935 he established the General Association of Davidian Seventh-day Adventists on property close to Waco, which he named Mount Carmel. After Houteff died, his wife Florence took over the leadership, sold the original property, and relocated the group to land—also named Mount Carmel—which was to become well known in 1993 due to the conflict of federal agents with David Koresh’s (1959-93) group. Based on Victor Houteff’s teachings, Florence predicted an apocalyptic event on 22 April 1959. Out of the dis¬ appointment over the failure of that prophecy, Florence Houteff and Executive Council members dissolved the General Association in 1962 and sold most of the Mount Carmel land, leaving seventy-seven acres for those who remained faithful (Newport 2006, 95-114)- Ben Roden (1902-78) emerged to form the remaining believers into the General Association of Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, and he assumed the prophet’s mantle. Before his death, his wife Fois Roden (19161986) established herself in 1977 as the next Branch Davidian prophet when she announced she had received a revelation that the Holy Spirit is feminine (Newport 2006,115-35,155-70). In 1981, a confused and despondent young man, Vernon Howell, who had been raised a Seventh-day Adventist and had been imbued with that denomination’s emphasis on the book of Revelation and its predictions of the imminent cata¬ strophic destruction of the Endtime, joined the Branch Davidian community (Haldeman 2007,120-27). Within a short time Fois Roden indicated that Howell would succeed her as the next prophet, but this decision was contested by her son, George Roden (d. 1998), who himself aspired to be recognized as the Branch Davidian prophet. Nevertheless, Howell succeeded in gaining the support of the core Branch Davidians, who followed him into voluntary exile on a camp they con¬ structed near Palestine, Texas, where they lived from 1985 until 1988 to avoid George Roden’s violent behavior (Haldeman 2007, 27-38). In 1987 Howell and some of his men got into a shoot-out with George Roden on the Mount Carmel property. A trial was held in 1988 but resulted in no convictions, and the Branch Davidians moved back to Mount Carmel in 1988 while George Roden was in prison (Haldeman 2007, 55-63) and subsequently confined to a mental hospital for killing a man.

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In 1990, after Howell had consolidated his control over Mount Carmel and the Branch Davidian movement, he changed his name to David Koresh to signal his increased charismatic status. The name “David” indicated that he saw himself as the Davidic Messiah predicted in the Bible. “Koresh” (Hebrew for Cyrus) indicated that he identified himself as the “antitype” for our day prefigured in the “type” of Cyrus, king of the Persians who defeated the Babylonians in 539 b.c.e. and who is said to be a messiah (“anointed”) in Isaiah 45:1 (Tabor and Gallagher 1995,59-60).4

Branch Davidian Millennialism The Branch Davidians saw themselves as the “first fruits” (Rev. 14:4) or “wave sheaf” (Lev. 23:10-11) of God’s harvest of the faithful for membership in the millennial kingdom. They would “sing a new song” of salvation and thus convert the 144,000 (Rev. 14:3) who would gather on Mount Zion with the Lamb (Tabor and Gallagher 1995, 60-61). Kenneth Newport (2006, 166, 314-23) has shown that in Branch Davidian theology going back to Lois Roden it was taught, based on Matthew 3:11, that the community would have to be purified through a baptism of fire. Koresh interpreted the Bible’s prophecies as indicating that the community would be assaulted by representatives of evil society the author of Revelation called Babylon. Their deaths would be part of the Endtime events prior to their resurrection, but when they were assaulted they should do everything possible to prevent their slaughter (Tabor and Gallagher 1995, 65). When Vernon Howell assumed the David Koresh persona, he announced him¬ self as the Endtime Christ, who was chosen to be the key actor in the violent apoca¬ lyptic events predicted in Revelation and other parts of the Bible. Specifically, he would die with his followers in an attack by the agents of “Babylon.” He would then be resurrected and be the “rider on a white horse” (Rev. 19:11-16), who would lead an army of the resurrected martyrs of the ages, including those who died with him, to carry out God’s chastisement against the wicked and create and rule God’s king¬ dom on a miraculously elevated Mount Zion in the Holy Land. These events would fulfill the predictions contained in Revelation. Koresh (Vernon Howell) acquired his messianic persona during a 1985 trip to Israel with his wife. While in the Holy Land he experienced himself being taken up to heaven and given a scroll to eat, which he interpreted as signifying that he had been given divine inspiration to synthesize all the Bible’s prophecies about the Endtime. He believed that it was at this time he received the “Christ Spirit” to be the Endtime Messiah, the Lamb (Tabor [2008]), and the Seventh Angel described in Revelation (10:7, 11:15). Upon his return, the Branch Davidians noted that he expounded the Bible’s prophecies with a greater sense of authority. Koresh utilized a biblical exegesis in which he interpreted the prophecies of Revelation in light of other biblical prophecies, including those in the Old Testament, and especially the psalms of David (Tabor and Gallagher 1995, 52-58). Specifically, Koresh was believed by his followers to have “unlocked” the secrets of the Seven

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Seals in Revelation about the predicted Endtime events. Since Revelation states that only “the Lamb,’’“the Root of David,” can unseal the Seven Seals (Rev. 5:2-9), Koresh reasoned that he must be the Lamb, the Endtime Christ, who would be slain (Rev. 5:6, 9,12) and then resurrected, and the Branch Davidians found this interpretation to be persuasive. Through much of the Davidian and Branch Davidian history, the community was organized as a patronal clan—a network of interrelated families with an eco¬ nomic, political, and familial leader, who also served as the community’s prophet (Bromley and Silver 1995). The advent of Vernon Howell and his adoption of the David Koresh identity changed both the physical organization of the community and its family relationships—the believers regarded themselves as members of a single Koresh family, who were bound to Koresh through ties of love and polyga¬ mous sexual expressions. Beginning in 1989 Koresh was the one male who could procreate children for special purposes in God’s coming kingdom. The other men in the community undertook to live in celibacy, support the large, unconventional family, protect the children and their mothers, and provide a front for Koresh’s sex¬ ual activities with the women. Koresh physically rebuilt the deteriorating Mount Carmel community by restoring it to financial solvency—thanks to gifts and entrepreneurship of enter¬ prising members—and building a single large residence. The rejuvenated commu¬ nity supported itself by a variety of work activities, which brought them into regular contact with outside society, including operating an automobile repair/renovation enterprise, and a gun and gun-accessory business. Koresh and young male followers formed and promoted a Christian rock band, which disseminated Koresh’s theology through his songs. Koresh undertook mission trips to California, Hawaii, Canada, England, and Australia to increase membership. While Seventh-day Adventists were the primary targets of proselytization, Koresh was able to attract young adults due to his own youthful, countercultural demeanor and his musical and automotive interests. The combination of community self-sufficiency, a communal residence, and expanded membership consisting of individuals committed personally to Koresh, moved the Branch Davidians away from a clan type of organization and in the direction of a communally oriented, millennial family. The group also amassed a supply of weapons for self-defense during the expected apocalyptic moment, which they believed to be imminent and which they believed would involve an attack. Koresh acted out his charismatic persona in ways that had profound effects on the community. In 1984 Vernon Howell married Rachel Jones, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a longtime Branch Davidian family. At that time it was legal in Texas for a fourteen-year-old girl to marry with parental permission. In 1986 he revealed that God wanted him to take unmarried women in the community as his wives with whom to conceive children, and he began fathering children with unmarried young women and girls—some of whom were under the age of legal consent—with their parents permission. Koresh taught that it was central to his messianic mission to create a lineage of God’s children from his own seed. Producing these children was

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defined as part of Koresh’s sacred task. They would be the “twenty-four elders,” described in Revelation as seated next to God’s throne in the Endtime, participating in the judgment of humanity, and ruling the millennial kingdom (Tabor and Gallagher 1995,66-76; Haldeman 2007,99). An important development in Koresh’s charismatic status was his announce¬ ment of a “New Light” doctrine in 1989, involving the celibacy of all the males and Koresh’s appropriation of all the women in the community as his wives, including married women.

Branch Davidians in Conflict The Branch Davidians existed in relative obscurity for a number of decades, with the only significant conflict involving disputes with the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the split from the Houteff Davidian tradition. The advent of David Koresh changed the Branch Davidian community significantly as it began living out unconventional sexual arrangements centered on Koresh and adopted practices that brought the group into direct conflict with social control agencies. For example, it appears that the demolition of the individual houses at Mount Carmel and the construction of the one large residence that the Branch Davidians occupied beginning in the spring of 1992 was part of the preparations for the antici¬ pated attack. There was hope in the community that they would be “translated” (lifted up into heaven) instead of having to be slain by the agents of “Babylon,” but many Branch Davidians were prepared to die in a conflict if that was what God willed. Despite the community’s apocalyptic orientation, it had not been confronta¬ tional with society. Under Koresh’s leadership, the community attempted to negoti¬ ate the conflicts that arose with authorities, and beginning in 1990 these conflicts tended to focus on child welfare. Koresh had implemented a policy of an adult spanking a misbehaving child with a small paddle, which was worrisome to state child-protection social workers, although Koresh was firm that the punishment should not be carried out in anger, the child should be informed about the reason for the spanking, and the child should be “loved” afterward (Haldeman 2007, 21). Child custody issues arose when Robyn Bunds, one of Koresh’s wives, left the com¬ munity in 1990. In 1991 Bunds filed a complaint with La Verne, California, police that Koresh had taken their son Shaun to Mount Carmel in Texas. After the La Verne police visited him at Mount Carmel, Koresh returned Shaun to his mother within forty-eight hours (Love 2003). In 1992 Koresh lost access to two more sons, Sky and Scooter, when their mother, Dana Okimoto, left the Branch Davidians and returned to her parents in Hawaii (Adamski 2003). Also in 1992, Koresh cooperated with an investigation of possible child abuse by social workers with Texas Child Protective Services, and the case was closed due to lack of evidence. However, state officials remained suspicious, and Koresh appeared determined that he not lose custody of more of his children.

206

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The Branch Davidians had armed and trained themselves for self-defense in the predicted attack by the agents of “Babylon,” prepared the residence for gunfire by reinforcing the walls below the windows with cement, and stocked up on food and supplies for a siege (Haldeman 2007, 73-74; Bromley and Silver 1995, 61; Wessinger 2009). Koresh legitimated community armament by pointing out that on the night that Christ was arrested, he had instructed his disciples to purchase weapons for self-defense (Luke 22:36). Although Koresh had a history of cooperating with law enforcement officers in their investigations and had extended an invitation to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) agents to come to Mount Carmel to inspect his weapons (Wright 1995), the Branch Davidians presented a profile of an armed survivalist community that attracted BATF agents’ interest. Koresh’s sexual activities with underage girls proved to be an extraordinarily volatile issue for the Branch Davidians to resolve. This issue had several important consequences, as it created divisions within the Branch Davidian community that resulted in defections and mobilized powerful opponents. The key defector was Marc Breault, who subsequently gained the support of the anticult movement and also succeeded in prompting reporters with the Waco Tribune Herald to prepare a sensationalized expose series in 1993 entitled “The Sinful Messiah,” which branded Koresh as a “cult leader” and the Branch Davidians as a “cult” (Wessinger 2006). Breault also provided information to the BATF officer who wrote an inflammatory affidavit, alleging that the Branch Davidians were a “cult” that practiced child abuse (which does not come under BATF jurisdiction) to obtain the warrant for the BATF raid against the community. With the permission of their parents, Koresh was indeed having sexual relations with girls younger than fourteen, several of whom bore Koresh’s children. Koresh’s sexual relations with underage girls did not admit to a negotiated solution. It was intolerable to child welfare authorities, and Koresh would almost certainly have been charged ultimately with statutory rape had he not died in the violent confron¬ tation with federal authorities in 1993. The Branch Davidians could not accept state officials assuming custody of Koresh’s children, since these were God’s children who would help rule the world during the Millennium. The child welfare issue was trumped by the BATF’s 28 February 1993 assault on the Branch Davidian community, which resulted in the deaths of four BATF agents and six Branch Davidians. The violent exchange produced another confrontation that was not easily amenable to a negotiated settlement. From a police agency per¬ spective, law enforcement officers had been killed and the perpetrators were resist¬ ing arrest. From the Branch Davidians’ perspective, BATF agents made no effort to serve the warrants peacefully, and this might be the initial attack they had been expecting, as predicted in Revelation’s Fifth Seal (6:9-11). The ensuing fifty-one-day siege conducted by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) resulted in failed attempts at a negotiated settlement. On the FBI side, there were ongoing tensions between the negotiating and tactical teams. While the negotiators were trying to persuade Branch Davidian parents to send

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their children out and to come out themselves, each time adults exited the building, other FBI agents on the tactical team cut off electricity to the building, blasted highdecibel sounds at the residence, illuminated the area with bright spotlights through¬ out the nights, and made threatening maneuvers with the tanks that surrounded the building. Whenever adult Branch Davidians surrendered to authorities, FBI agents ratcheted up the psychological pressure on those who remained barricaded (Wessinger 2000,57,70-81). These methods of psychological warfare were part of a “stress escalation” approach taken toward the Branch Davidians, which were also intended to keep the Branch Davidians from communicating with the outside world by using flashlights at night to convey Morse code signals and by playing excerpts from negotiations on their own loudspeakers for the press to hear. Thus, the bright spotlights at night and the high-decibel sounds were aimed at increasing the isolation of the Branch Davidians during the siege (Wessinger 2009). As the standoff continued, represen¬ tatives of the FBI asserted to the public that legitimate police authority was being flouted. The Branch Davidians’ problem became how to surrender to authorities with¬ out capitulating their allegiance to the Bible’s prophecies. They hoped to avoid a deadly second confrontation, but FBI tactics appeared to the Branch Davidians to confirm Koresh’s prophecies that they were surrounded by “Babylon’s” evil agents and that they were destined to die in the conflict (Tabor and Gallagher 1995,97-111; Wessinger 2000, 55-58, 70-81, 100-112). Koresh’s charismatic authority as the Endtime Christ was dependent on his followers continuing to believe that he was divinely inspired to unlock the Seven Seals and other biblical prophecies (Wessinger 2000, 89). From Koresh’s perspective, therefore, he could only lead his followers out of the residence if that act conformed to an interpretation of one of the Bible’s prophecies. Koresh taught his followers that there were three possible ways the siege might be resolved: (1) they would be “translated” to heaven by God; (2) they would be killed in a second assault, after which they would be resurrected as members of the Lamb’s apocalyptic army; or (3) they would be taken into custody by authorities and God would intervene to deliver them. Koresh thought that either the first or second possibilities would occur during Passover week in April, and he experienced disappointment when they were not lifted into heaven. After nothing happened during Passover, Koresh formulated a plan to fulfill the third possible option— involving compromise rather than armed confrontation—whereby he could main¬ tain his charisma in the eyes of his followers, based on his interpretation of the Bible’s prophecies, and still surrender to authorities (Wessinger 2009). Revelation describes the Seventh Angel as holding a “little scroll” or “book” (10:2), and Koresh had identified himself as being the Seventh Angel. On 14 April 1993—the day after Passover concluded—Koresh sent a letter out to the FBI saying that he and all the other Branch Davidians would surrender after he had written a “little book” containing his interpretations of the Seven Seals. Koresh was in the process of writing this book on 19 April 1993 when the FBI tactical unit carried out

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an assault that involved the demolition of the building with tanks and the insertion of CS tear gas. This assault culminated in a fire that consumed the building and killed seventy-six Branch Davidians, including twenty-three children (Wessinger 2000,58; Hardy with Kimball 2001). In contrast to the exodus and compromise approaches to conflict taken by the Twelve Tribes and The Family International, Koresh and the Branch Davidians had prepared for an assault, a siege, and a final assault in which they would be killed as a preliminary step to their resurrection to carry out God’s judgment on sinful humanity and set up God’s kingdom. They were willing to negotiate their peaceful exit from the residence, but any compromise had to conform to what they viewed as a plausible interpretation of the Bible’s prophecies. Unfortunately, the FBI agents’ actions confirmed the earlier interpretations of the Bible’s prophecies, that Koresh and the majority of the community’s members would die in a second assault by the agents of “Babylon” and thus fulfill the second portion of the Fifth Seal. There is evidence that FBI agents were well aware of the Branch Davidians’ apocalyptic the¬ ology of martyrdom, prepared the general public to accept a “mass suicide,” and took actions that would prompt some of the Branch Davidians to act on their theol¬ ogy of martyrdom (Wessinger 2009; Fair and Bragg 1993).5 Both the Branch Davidians and the FBI agents were “gambling with death” (Stone 1993; Wessinger 2009), and the children were the pawns in the wager. During the 19 April 1993 assault, an FBI-driven tank was ordered to insert CS gas into a con¬ crete vault—which had protected its contents in a 1983 fire that had destroyed the previous building on that site—where the mothers and children had taken shelter. FBI agents were betting that the mothers would grab their children and run out of the building to save them from the pain caused by the CS gas. The Branch Davidians were betting that FBI agents would not harm the children.6 Koresh probably under¬ stood the gassing of the children as the sign that the time had come for the commu¬ nity to die in its fiery baptism and is reported to have issued the order to light the fires. Apparently not all of the Branch Davidians were on board about committing group murder and suicide by gunshot and fire, since nine escaped the burning build¬ ing, but the majority of them died in the conflagration (Wessinger 2009).

Conflicts Involving Radical Millennial Groups Contemporary millennial groups like the Twelve Tribes, The Family International, and the Branch Davidians are not anomalous historically, as millennialism has been a relatively common feature of the global religious landscape. Millennial groups are m fact quite diverse, but we have argued that two important distinguishing charac¬ teristics of millennialism are (1) narratives that envision an epochal change in the

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order of things in which the power of the Divine is displayed and (2) an organized movement that seeks to anticipate and model that change. Because millennial groups challenge the legitimacy and viability of the existing social order, members may distance themselves from it, and practice lifestyles that clash with its ordering logic. Therefore, there is inevitably some measure of tension between society and a millennial movement. However, the societal definition of millennial groups as unpredictable and irra¬ tional does not appear to be supported by historical evidence. In most cases the period of intense millennial excitement lasts only through the lifetimes of the founders/leaders and their first generation of converts. The predominant pattern of a millennial movement’s relation to society is toward gradual accommodation, although there are numerous examples of millennial and sectarian groups that maintain a position at the margins of their host social orders. We argue that during periods of high movement/society tension, millennial groups have available three major strategies for handling tensions: exodus, com¬ promise, and confrontation. Groups may, of course, mix and alter strategies as conflicts unfold. The eschatological narratives and organizations of millennial groups provide valuable clues about how movements will probably navigate peri¬ ods of high tension. The kind of radical responses of groups such as Heaven’s Gate (see chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume) and Aum Shinrikyo (see chapter 18 by Helen Hardacre, this volume) are quite rare (see chapter 11 by John Walliss, this volume; Wessinger 2000). The three groups discussed in this chapter are illuminating because they share historical and environmental circumstances, a Christian religious heritage, and moments of major confrontation with elements of the dominant social order over similar contentious issues. Each group attempted to work its way through these moments of conflict with strategies that reflected its millennial vision and organi¬ zational style. At a broad level, their responses to the tension and conflict that they both engendered and encountered were relatively consistent and predictable. Confronted by social control agencies, the Twelve Tribes members maintained their millennial vision and distance from conventional society but broke the movement up into smaller, less threatening communities and enhanced their working relation¬ ships with a variety of established institutional groups in society. The Family International faced a more serious and sustained set of challenges. In response, the movement sought reconciliation with disenchanted former members, distanced itself from the socially unacceptable doctrines and practices initiated by their founder, and democratized movement governance. At the same time, the move¬ ment retained its position as a social outsider, its millennial expectations, and its communal organization. The Branch Davidians faced the most complex circumstances and the most powerful societal intervention. Their inclination toward the confrontation strategy can be seen in the fact that they had armed and trained for battle and had stocked supplies for a siege. The group was faced with the almost certain criminal prosecu¬ tion of its leader and the potential for losing custody of the children who were

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central to the group’s millennial mission. Koresh and the Branch Davidians attempted to find a theologically acceptable, peaceful compromise until it became obvious that FBI agents were going to carry out a second assault against the com¬ munity. Then they probably reverted to their original apocalyptic narrative that they would be attacked and killed in the events immediately prior to the resurrec¬ tion, final judgment, and creation of God’s kingdom (Wessinger 2009). What emerges, then, from these three case studies of millennial groups directly challenged by social control agencies is a pattern of responding to societal resistance to radical movement practices by adopting strategies that are designed both to carry out the movements’ millennial missions and to reduce movement/society tensions to manageable levels. The strategies that the movements adopt flow from the nature of the group’s theology/ideology and organization. Nonetheless, in these three instances, neither the groups nor their opponents were completely in control of the conflicts that ensued, because conflict by its very nature is a dynamic, interactive process. From an external perspective at least, the degree of provocation on both sides was least for the Twelve Tribes and greatest for the Branch Davidians—probably because the Twelve Tribes were not armed, whereas the Branch Davidians were heavily armed. The strategy of compromise led to a resolution of conflict for the Twelve Tribes and The Family International, while the confrontational interactions that developed in the Branch Davidian conflict led to deaths on both sides and the catastrophic demise of the Branch Davidian commu¬ nity, thus fulfilling at least a portion of David Koresh’s prophecies.

NOTES 1. The anticult movement is populated primarily by secular activists, while the countercult movement is found among evangelical Christians concerned to combat heresies. 2. Some conflicts continued to occur, of course. In 2001 the movement was charged with using underage children in its commercial enterprises (Lovett and Macintosh 2001). 3. At the end of the earthly millennial kingdom, God will release Satan, who will lead the remaining rebels into battle. Satan and his forces will then be destroyed at the battle of Gog and Magog. At the end of this final battle, the faithful will be raptured and the eternal Kingdom of Heaven will be instituted. 4. On the Adventist typological method of interpreting the Bible, see Newport 2006, 34 41 -

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5. FBI spokesperson Bob Ricks appears to have been preparing the American public for a “mass suicide” by his statements in press briefings in March 1993, which indicate that FBI agents were well aware of the significance of the Branch Davidians’ theology of martyrdom. Ricks warned that the “cult’s” apocalyptic theology could become a “selffulfilling prophecy.” “If there is no resolution in sight, if he is still moving toward an artificially created Armageddon, we’re going to have to deal with that. From the mid-1980s on, he s preached that his group will end in a violent confrontation with law enforcement.”

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Ricks put the entire burden of the welfare of the Branch Davidian children on Koresh, saying that he either does not care about those children, or he is using them as a shield, which is cowardly” (Fair and Bragg 1993). 6. Dana Okimoto reported that Koresh’s children were “supposed to live and become living witnesses to his messages” (Adamski 2003). This is similar to Sheila Martin’s report that during the shoot-out with the ATF, Koresh sent word to the adults that even if they died, the children would survive to continue the work (Martin 2009,53-54).

REFERENCES Adamski, Mary. 2003. “Koresh’s Former Wife Recalls Regaining Her Senses.” Starbulletin. com. 19 April, archives.starbulletin.c0m/2003/04/19/news/st0ry3.html. Bainbridge, William Sims. 2002. The Endtime Family: Children of God. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bromley, David G. 1988. “Deprogramming as a Mode of Exit from New Religious Movements: The Case of the Unification Church.” In Falling from the Faith, edited by David G. Bromley, 166-84. Beverly Hills: Sage. -. 2002. “Dramatic Denouements.” In Cults, Religion, and Violence, edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, 11-41. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bromley, David G., and Edward D. Silver. 1995. “The Davidian Tradition: From Patronal Clan to Prophetic Movement.” In Armageddon in Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict, edited by Stuart A. Wright, 43-72. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chancellor, James D. 2000. Life in The Family: An Oral History of the Children of God. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Cowan, Douglas E. 2003. Bearing False Witness? An Introduction to the Christian Countercult. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Davis, Deborah. 1984. The Children of God. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. Dreher, Christopher. 2005. “The Doomsday Prophets on Mainstreet.” Boston Globe, 23 October. Fair, Kathy, and Roy Bragg. 1993. “Man Enters Waco Compound.” Houston Chronicle, 25 March. Gallagher, Eugene V. 2000. “‘Theology Is Life and Death’: David Koresh on Violence, Persecution, and the Millennium.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 82-100. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Haldeman, Bonnie. 2007. Memories of the Branch Davidians: The Autobiography of David Koresh’s Mother, edited by Catherine Wessinger. Waco: Baylor University Press. Hardy, David T., with Rex Kimball. 2001. This Is Not an Assault: Penetrating the Web of Official Lies Regarding the Waco Incident. N.p.: Xlibris Corporation. Lattin, Don. 2001. “Escaping a Free Love Legacy: Children of God Sect Hopes It Can Overcome Sexy Image.” San Francisco Chronicle, 14 February. Love, Marianne. 2003. “Branch Davidians Lived in La Verne.” Inland Daily Bulletin. 19 April. www.religionnewsblog.com/3054/residents-recall-cult-leader-david-koresh. Lovett, Kenneth, and Jeane Macintosh. 2001. “Cultists Insist Kids Are Not Oppressed.” New York Post, 13 April.

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Martin, Sheila. 2009. When They Were Mine: Memoirs of a Branch Davidian Wife and Mother. Waco: Baylor University Press. Melton, J. Gordon. 1994. “Sexuality and the Maturation of The Family.” In Sex, Slander, and Salvation: Investigating The Family/Children of God, edited by James Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, 71-96. Stanford, Calif.: Center for Academic Publication. Newport, Kenneth G. C. 2006. The Branch Davidians of Waco: The History and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oliver, Moorman. 1994. “Today’s Jackboots: The Inquisition Revisited.” In Sex, Slander,and Salvation: Investigating The Family/Children of God, edited by James Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, 71-96. Stanford, Calif.: Center for Academic Publication. Palmer, Susan J. 1998. “Apostates and Their Role in the Construction of Grievance Claims against the Northeast Kingdom/Messianic Communities.” In The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, edited by David G. Bromley, 191-208. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Palmer, Susan J. 2010. “The Twelve Tribes: Preparing the Bride for Yahshua’s Return.” Nova Religio 13, no. 3 (February): 59-80. Patrick, Ted. 1976. Let Our Children Go! New York: Ballantine. Shepherd, Gary, and Gordon Shepherd. 2007. “Grassroots Prophecy in The Family International.” Nova Religio 10, no. 4 (May): 38-71. Shepherd, Gordon, and Gary Shepherd. 2009. “World Services in The Family International: The Administrative Organization of a Mature Religious Movement.” Nova Religio 12, no. 3 (February): 5-39. Shupe, Anson, and David G. Bromley. 1980. The New Vigilantes: Anti-Cultists. Deprogrammers, and the New Religions. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Stone, Alan A. 1993. “Report and Recommendations Concerning the Handling of Incidents Such as the Branch Davidian Standoff in Waco, Texas.” Report to Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann, 10 November, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/ stonerpt.html. Tabor, James D„ and Eugene V. Gallagher. 1995. Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tabor, James D. [2008.] David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.” Apocalypse! Apocalypticism Explained: Doomsday Cults, www.pbs.org/wgbhipages/frontline/ shows/apocalypse/explanation/cults.html. Accessed 30 September. Van Zandt, David E. 1991. Living in the Children of God. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Wallis, Roy. 1981. “Yesterday’s Children: Cultural and Structural Change in a New Religious Movement.” In The Social Impact of New Religious Movements, edited by Bryan Wilson, 97-133- New York: Rose of Sharon Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. -. 2006. “The Branch Davidians and Religion Reporting—A Ten-Year Retrospective.” In Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context, edited by Kenneth G. C. Newport and Crawford Gribben, 147-72,270-74. Waco: Baylor University Press. -. 2009. “Deaths in the Fire at the Branch Davidians’ Mount Carmel: Who Bears Responsibility?” Nova Religio 13, no. 2 (November): 25-60. Wright, Stuart A. 1995. “Construction and Escalation of a Cult Threat: Dissecting Moral Panic and Official Reaction to the Branch Davidians.” In Armageddon in Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict, edited by Stuart A. Wright, 75-94. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER 11

FRAGILE MILLENNIAL COMMUNITIES AND VIOLENCE JOHN WALLISS

If there is any truth to Mark Juergensmeyer’s (2001) assertion that religious texts

are riddled with violence, then perhaps no single text best exemplifies this than the New Testament book of Revelation. Derided by George Bernard Shaw as “the curious record of the visions of a drug addict” (Shaw 1933, 73), the twenty-two chapters of Revelation present a vivid and almost cinematic description of, to give but a few examples, harlots drunk on “the blood of the saints” (Rev. 17:6), angels “pourfing] out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth” (Rev. 16:1), the level¬ ing of great cities, rivers turning to blood, plagues being unleashed upon the Earth, and cataclysmic cosmic battles in heaven and on Earth. Moreover, while on one level, the core message of Revelation is positive in that it describes the ulti¬ mate victory of Good over Evil and the emergence of the New Jerusalem, this occurs at the expense of those who, at the Last Judgment, do not find their names written in the “book of life” (Rev. 17:8) and whose fate it is to be cast into the lake of fire with Satan and his minions. Its message is thus, as Marina Warner observes, one of “hallucinated triumphalism,” wherein the blessed ones will triumph at the expense of damned, for whom the text “does not show much pity, or invite us to feel it either”: Armageddon does not engulf us all in this book: it holds out the hope that it will engulf all of them—Satan, the Beast, the Dragon, the Whore of Babylon, the unchaste and the lukewarm, dogs and sorcerers, and all those other famous antagonists and embodiments of evil; these will be swept away while we survive. (Warner 2005, n.p.)

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214

The invective of the book of Revelation has, however, for most of the last two thousand years, been interpreted within Christianity in an allegorical, rather than a literal sense. Beginning in the third century, a number of Christian theologians, most notably Origen, Augustine, and Jerome, sought to discredit the literalistic interpretation of Revelation, arguing instead that the events described therein should be understood as a spiritual allegory for personal salvation or the establish¬ ment of Christ’s kingdom on Earth in the form of the Church. However, despite the official condemnation of literal interpretations of Revelation, such understandings “persisted in the obscure underworld of popular religion” (Cohn 1993 [1957], 30), and, as Norman Cohn shows us in his classic The Pursuit of the Millennium, inspired numerous outpourings of apocalyptic excitement—often accompanied by brutal violence—-among the poor and those living on the margins of medieval society, particularly during periods of social upheaval (see also chapter 15 by Rebecca Moore, this volume). As Cohn notes, for such groups any disturbing, frightening or exciting event—any kind of revolt or revolution, a summons to a crusade, an interregnum, a plague or famine, anything in fact which disrupted the normal routine of social life—acted on these people with peculiar sharpness and called forth reactions of peculiar violence. And one way in which they attempted to deal with their common plight was to form a Salvationist group under a messianic leader.

Where this occurred, Cohn asserts, a collective sense of impotence and anxiety and envy suddenly discharged itself in a frantic urge to smite the ungodly—and by doing so bring into being, out of suffering inflicted and suffering endured, that final kingdom where the Saints, clustered around the great sheltering figure of their messiah, were to enjoy ease and riches, security and power for all eternity. (Cohn 1993 [1957], 59-60)

Although the great majority of the bloodiest of such incidents had all but ended by the birth of the modern era, the final quarter—particularly the final decade—of the twentieth century witnessed, in the context of the preceding centuries, a veritable explosion of incidents of violence involving communities holding millennialist/ apocalyptic ideologies. In 1978 over nine hundred members of Peoples Temple, an American new religious movement, died in an act of collective murder and suicide m their agricultural commune in Jonestown, Guyana; almost fifteen years later, in 1993) seventy-four members of the Branch Davidians, a Seventh-day Adventist splin¬ ter group, met a fiery end at the conclusion of a fifty-one-day standoff with U.S. authorities (see also chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, this volume); between October 1994 and March 1997, around seventy-three members of the Order of the Solar Temple died in a series of ritualized murder-suicides in Switzerland, Quebec, and France; in May 1995 members of Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese group already implicated in at least twenty-three other murders, launched an attack on the Tokyo subway using the nerve gas sarin, an attack that could easily have resulted in thousands of fatalities but killed twelve people (see chapter 18 by Helen Hardacre, this volume); two years later thirty-nine members of a group calling itself

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Heaven’s Gate committed collective suicide in the apparent belief that the world was about to be “spaded under,” and that they could escape the destruction via a space ship hiding behind the then-passing Hale-Bopp comet (see chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, both in this volume); finally, in Uganda in the spring of 2000 around 780 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTCG) died in a series of mur¬ der-suicides, the details and reasons for which are still unclear (see chapter 20 by Rosalind I. J. Hackett and chapter 28 by Massimo Introvigne, both in this volume). Indeed, such was the fear in the period leading up to the eve of the year 2000 that “doomsday cults” (FBI 1999,3) would unleash havoc on the world or on themselves, that several law enforcement agencies, most notably the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) (1999), produced reports for their respective staffs concerning what the former referred to as “individuals or domestic extremist groups who profess an apocalyptic view of the millennium or attach special significance to the year 2000” (FBI 1999,3). In this chapter my aim is to review the literature that has emerged in religious studies and the social sciences in response to these incidents. In doing so, I will focus on two broad themes or questions: first, what are the factors that predispose apocalyp¬ tic/millennialist communities to become involved in violence; and, second, what factors lead apocalyptic/millennialist groups such as those mentioned above from being predis¬ posed to volatility to actually becoming violent. What factors, in other words, serve to

translate potential volatility into actual violence. Before doing so, however, I should offer two caveats. First, one of the great disadvantages for the study of apocalyptic violence is that cases such as those outlined in the introduction are, thankfully, rare occurrences. Scholars thus have only a small number of (particularly contempo¬ rary) cases to work with and therefore are unable to undertake extensive compara¬ tive analysis of the different factors and issues involved. Second, linked to the last point, while the issue of apocalyptic violence has received a lot of scholarly and media attention, little or no attention has been directed toward the comparative question of why some millennial communities have become involved in violence while other, similar groups have not (although, see Wessinger 2000a, chapter 8; and chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, this volume).

Predisposing Factors These caveats become particularly salient when we begin to examine the factors that have been highlighted as crucial in predisposing millennialist groups to volatility. In broad terms, the debate over millennialism and violence centers around two key questions. First, are the internal characteristics of millennialist groups (such as their beliefs, practices, and leadership styles) sufficient in themselves to produce violence, or do they serve instead simply to make certain groups more likely (all things being equal)

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to become violent? Second, if internal, organizational factors are necessary but not sufficient in themselves, what other factors serve to precipitate acts of millennialist vio¬ lence? Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony (1995; see also Robbins 2002), for

example, have framed the debate by focusing on the role of what they term endog¬ enous (or intragroup) and exogenous (or cultural/intergroup) factors in precipitat¬ ing violence. Thus—and while accepting that such factors only exist in their “pure” form in the theoretical constructions of scholars—Robbins and Anthony highlight the role of three key predisposing factors as being of particular salience: millennial ideologies, charismatic leadership, and “totalistic” organizations.

Millennial Ideologies The first and perhaps most obvious factor that could be seen as predisposing millen¬ nialist groups to volatility is their millennial ideologies. In particular, the belief that one is living in the “Last Days” could lead to antinomian behavior, and in some cases may seemingly offer a sanction for the use of violence in hastening the final Endtime scenario. Linked to this, the dualistic vision inherent within millennial thought may also act as a predisposing factor. Catherine Wessinger (2000a), for example, has argued that the radically dualistic worldview of what she terms “catastrophic millennialism” increases its propensity to become involved in violence. Similarly, Robbins and Anthony have highlighted what they term “exemplary dualism”—“an apocalyp¬ tic orientation in which contemporary socioreligious forces are viewed as exemplify¬ ing absolute contrast energies in terms not only of moral virtue, but also of eschatology and the millennial destiny of humankind”—as an extremely potent fac¬ tor in millennialist violence. Like Wessinger, Robbins and Anthony argue that such a worldview “is volatile because it confers deep eschatological significance on the social and political conflicts of the day, thereby raising the stakes of victory or defeat in immediate worldly struggles” (1995, 243). In particular, they argue, actual or per¬ ceived opponents will come to be seen as actors on the side of Evil in the cosmic war against the forces of Good. Likewise, apostates will often be perceived through the lens of exemplary dualism as “traitors” and de facto enemies of the forces of Good.

Charismatic Leadership The second factor cited within the literature as predisposing millennialist groups to volatility or violence concerns the role that charismatic leadership plays within such groups (see also chapter 6 by Lome Dawson, this volume). Indeed, a common image presented in the media and in the rhetoric of anticult groups is that of the “charis¬ matic leader” who is able to control his or her followers through a form of hypnotic mind-control and/or brainwashing (see, for example, Szimhart 2004; Singer and Lalich 1996). Although such views have largely been discredited among scholars of new religions, a number of commentators have focused in a more measured way on the role that charismatic leadership may play in producing volatility or violence

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within millennialist groups. In particular, drawing on the work of Max Weber (1947, 1991)> a number of commentators have focused on the precarious nature of charis¬ matic authority and the role it may play in destabilizing millennialist groups. According to Weber, charisma is not a quality that certain individuals possess, but is, rather, the outcome of an interactive social process whereby a specific indi¬ vidual’s claim to charisma is recognized and accepted by others, typically potential followers. There are, in other words, no inherently “charismatic people,” only those whose claims to charismatic authority have been accepted by others. As Bryan Wilson notes, Charisma denotes not the quality of the individual, hut of a relationship between believers (or followers) and the man in whom they believed. His claim, or theirs on his behalf, was that he had authority because of his supernatural competences. Charisma is not a personality attribute, but a successful claim to power by virtue of supernatural ordination. (Wilson 1975,7)

One consequence of this, Weber and his successors have argued, is that charismatic authority is inherently precarious and must constantly be “proven” or “demon¬ strated”: the prophet, for example, must perform miracles, the warlord must deliver great victories, the political leader must deliver political successes and so on. Charismatic authority, in contrast to other forms of authority, thus requires con¬ stant “impression management” (Goffman 1974; Gardner and Avolio 1998) or “legit¬ imation work” (Dawson 2002), whereby the leader attempts to maintain their authority through their actions. When this does not occur—when, for example, they are unable to offer “signs of the miraculous” (Weber 1947,364)—they may thus be said to have experienced a crisis of charismatic authority/legitimation. Where this occurs, the potential that violence may ensue becomes heightened. Thus, Lome Dawson has argued that in order to avoid creating instability and successfully sus¬ tain their legitimacy, charismatic leaders must manage four key problems or issues inherent within charismatic leadership: they must maintain their own persona; moderate the effects of followers’ psychological identification with them; achieve new successes; and negotiate the routinization of charisma. If this does not occur, if the charismatic leader fails to manage one or more of these issues successfully or, indeed, mismanages them, then, Dawson argues, the cumulative effect may be implosion of the group and, in certain cases, violent behavior. Similarly, in my own comparative analysis of contemporary millennial violence, I have focused on the role played by several types of “crises of charismatic authority” in precipitating the incidents outlined in the introduction of this essay: loss of reputation or real/per¬ ceived rebuffs; being exposed as having used trickery or deceit; and, finally, suffering from a real or perceived loss of health (see Walliss 2004,2005,2006). The precarious nature of charismatic authority may also serve to produce insta¬ bility in millennialist groups in another important way. Both Weber and more recently Roy Wallis (1983), for example, have highlighted the ways in which charismatic leaders may intentionally or unintentionally act as destabilizing agents by how they respond to the “routinization” of their authority. In order to continue

218

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and develop beyond “short-lived mass emotions of incalculable effects,” Weber (1991, 263) argues, charismatic authority will typically undergo a process of “routinization,” whereby it is transformed into either “traditional” or “legal-rational authority.” The leader’s words, for example, may be written down by his or her fol¬ lowers and become codified into a clear theology, or the, often ad hoc, structure of the charismatic group may give way to a more structured hierarchical organization. Charisma will not, of course, completely disappear, but where it does continue to coexist, it will do so in “a greatly changed sense” (ibid.). There are, however, marked differences in how leaders negotiate this process. Whereas, in many cases, the leader may either acquiesce or even actively support the process of routinization, in other cases, Wallis (1983, 8) suggests, a leader may attempt to forestall the process in a number of ways, most notably through “the introduction of unpredictable changes and demands,” or engaging “in continual crisis-mongering, whereby a movement is kept in such turmoil that stable institutional structures and routines cannot be con¬ solidated” (Robbins and Anthony 1995, 247). In turn, Wallis argues, this serves to eliminate or erode any potential restraints on the leader and “provide [s] opportuni¬ ties for charismatic leaders to indulge the darker desires of their subconscious,” pos¬ sibly through “unconventional sexual practices and violence” (Wallis and Bruce 1986,117; emphasis added). Another explanation for the link between charismatic leadership and volatility concerns the lack of institutional restraints and, indeed, supports for such forms of leadership. Unlike those holding legal-rational forms of authority, the charismatic leader, according to Weber, “does not deduce his authority from codes and statutes,” nor, like those holding traditional forms of authority, does “he deduce his authority from traditional custom” (Weber 1991, 248-49). Indeed, it is often the case that the charismatic leader will self-consciously set himself or herself against both “codes and statutes” and “traditional custom.” Rather, as noted previously, (s)he will typi¬ cally deduce authority from their own actions. Charismatic leaders thus operate in a context without any of the restraints and supports available to other kinds of lead¬ ers. In such cases, in the absence of both checks and balances on leaders’ actions and supports for leaders’ decision-making, the potential for volatility and instability is increased in that the leader may try and simplify the environment within the group by eliminating sources of dissension, normative diversity, and alternative leader¬ ship, or, perhaps more dangerously, “feel increasingly impelled to act forcefully to meet the expectations of the devotees” (Robbins and Anthony 1995, 246). In such situations, Robbins and Anthony claim, violence may be turned either inward in the form of purges, or outward if, in an attempt to shore up his or her position, the leader lashes out at actual or perceived enemies in the outside world.

Totalistic Social Systems The final factor highlighted by Robbins and Anthony as having the potential to produce volatility within millennial groups stems from their roles as world-rejecting

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219

totalistic social systems. Stemming from their world-rejecting orientation, mil¬ lennial groups have traditionally set themselves apart from the rest of society, both in an ideological sense and very often, also in a geographical sense (Lebra 1972). Consequently, such communities are thus required to (re)socialize their members into the beliefs, values and practices of the collective. Thus, Marc Galanter (1989), for example, has proposed a model of “charismatic groups” wherein, in a manner akin to factories, such groups take “input” from the outside world (recruits with outside attachments and beliefs), which they then “process” through a variety of social and cognitive techniques into a specific “output” (adherents). Similarly, Rosabeth M. Kanter (1968) and Takie S. Lebra (1972) have argued that millennial movements act as agents of resocialization in a manner similar to other “total insti¬ tutions” (Goffman 1961), such as psychiatric or correctional institutions. However, whereas the latter typically “serve the established order and... [aim] ...to rehabili¬ tate misfits [sic],” the millennial movement, in contrast, expects and prepares for the imminent destruction of that order (Lebra 1972,195-96). One aspect of this (re)socialization that may increase the likelihood of violence involving millennialist totalistic groups is highlighted by Edgar W. Mills’s theory of “normative dissonance” (1998 [1982]). According to Mills (390; see also Galanter 1989; Dawson 1998; Lalich 2004), within most groups, contrasting norms and values act as “countervalues” or “dampers” to each other, thus reducing the possibility of what he terms “supercommitment” occurring; a situation in which individual autonomy “both in moral judgment and role behavior, is replaced by unquestion¬ ing obedience, even to participation in violence.” This “ordinary morality” is, how¬ ever, “constantly in danger of being reduced by leaders who aspire to total rationality, to complete devotion to a cause” (Mills 1998 [1982], 393). Such leaders will, he argues, seek through a variety of means, such as purges, tests of faith, or demands for total commitment, to reduce such “slack” and produce a “taut” organization of “supercommitted,” obedient members. When potential damping mechanisms are absent, Mills argues, possible constraints on extreme behavior are effectively removed and the possibility for volatility increases.

From Potential to Actuality This is not, of course, to say that what Mills terms “the slide toward violence” neces¬ sarily follows from the absence of damping mechanisms. As Mills concedes, “the relative absence of normative dissonance within a group does not in itself produce violence.” Indeed, Mills notes that “many examples exist of wholehearted and unquestioning devotion to a cause or leader that does not issue in violence” (Mills 1998, 395). Likewise, although there is no denying that millennialist rhetoric can often be incredibly violent and that in some cases it may apparently offer a divine

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sanction for violence, it would be wrong to say there is a direct causal link between such rhetoric and violence. Rather, in the majority of cases the violent rhetoric of millennialism typically remains at the level of rhetoric, and does not become trans¬ lated into action. Indeed, as a rule such groups almost always possess a passive ori¬ entation to millennial salvation, and do not anticipate playing any major role in bringing about the final Endtime scenario. Rather, as they see it, their role is to sim¬ ply wait and watch for the Signs of the End (Talmon 1966; Lepakari 2002). Moreover, although charismatic leadership may by inherently precarious, it would equally be wrong to claim that such forms of leadership were inherently prone to volatility or violence. Although I would argue that crises of charismatic authority/legitimation played a significant role in the development, and potentially in the violence, of all of the groups outlined in the introduction, such groups were in many ways excep¬ tional cases. Not only is charismatic leadership found, and indeed, actively culti¬ vated and rewarded, in a variety of settings, ranging from political leaders to religious leaders, there also exist innumerable charismatic leaders who have not (as yet at least) manifested any propensity toward volatility or violence (Melton and Bromley 2002). There are also numerous groups that could be characterized as “totalistic,” yet very few of these have ever (again as yet) displayed any propensity toward vio¬ lence. Indeed, as Kanter (1968) has shown, many such groups will dissolve before they have the chance to develop in one direction or the other. The question there¬ fore that commentators have had to ask is what factor or clusters of factors serve to translate the potential violence of millennial, particularly apocalyptic, rhetoric into actual violence? One answer that has been provided by commentators—and which has, over the last decade, achieved an almost paradigmatic status—focuses on the role of exoge¬ nous factors, and, in particular, the role of external or “cultural opposition” (Hall 1995, 207). Such opposition can take various forms, ranging from “atrocity tales” concerning specific groups being presented in the media, the abduction and force¬ ful “deprogramming” of members, through to, in some cases, the use of actual phys¬ ical force/violence against members of marginal religious groups (Richardson 2001; Lucas and Robbins 2004); it is claimed that this cultural opposition plays a crucial role in providing the necessary catalyst for translating the potential for volatility within millennialist groups into actual violence. Within the literature, there are three broad, often interlinking, positions regard¬ ing the role of exogenous opposition in precipitating incidents of violence involving millennial communities: the cultural opposition” model; the “interpretive approach”; and the “fragility thesis.”

The Cultural Opposition Model While accepting that some groups may be more predisposed to violence than oth¬ ers, the central thesis of what may be termed the “cultural opposition model” is that millennial violence develops as a product of the interaction between such

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communities and their opponents in the outside world. John Hall and his col¬ leagues, for example, have proposed what they term an “interpretive sociocultural model of apocalyptic religious conflict,” in which they argue that while endogenous factors are necessary conditions, they are not in themselves sufficient to produce violence. Rather, they claim, millennial violence “grows out of the escalating social confrontations” between apocalyptic groups and their opponents in the wider world (Hall with Schuyler and Trinh 2000,38). Such conflicts, they assert, typically develop through several stages. First, in some cases when individuals leave marginal reli¬ gious groups they take up the position of “oppositional apostates,” and along with other former members and perhaps the relatives of current members attempt to mobilize broader opposition in the outside world, such as the media or representa¬ tives of the state (see Bromley 1998 for a discussion). Where these campaigns are successful, the media and/or the state may then “take actions intended to discredit the movement in the public eye, or subject it to actions and policies that undermine its capacity to exist as an autonomous collective” (Hall with Schuyler and Trinh 2000,12). The media for example, may publish the atrocity tales of the apostates or critical editorials and exposes, and/or representatives of the state, such as law enforcement or child protection agencies, may begin to investigate the group. In some cases, anticult groups may mobilize against the group and, at the behest of parents, may attempt to remove members from the group for “deprogramming.” In response to such pressures, Hall, Schuyler, and Trinh claim, the community in ques¬ tion may unleash aggression in one of two ways. In some cases, violence may be directed outward, with the members attacking real or perceived opponents in the outside world, before committing collective suicide. Alternatively, in others, the group in question may forgo attacking their opponents and instead seek through an act of collective suicide to “escape” from the material world, and, in so doing, achieve some kind of otherworldly grace. David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton have proposed a similar theory of religious violence, in which they claim that such acts are “the product of an interac¬ tive sequence of movement-societal exchanges” (Bromley and Melton 2002,2). Such “dramatic denouements,” as Bromley terms them, occur when a marginal religious movement and representatives of the social order reach a juncture at which one or both conclude that the requisite conditions for maintaining their core identity and collective existence are being subverted and that such circumstances are intolerable.... Parties on both sides thereupon undertake a project of final reckoning under the aegis of a transcendent mandate to reverse their power positions and to restore what they avow to be the appropri¬ ate moral order. (Bromley 2002,11)

The path to a dramatic denouement is, however, an interactive and contingent one, with numerous outcomes and responses possible during the increasing groupsocietal tension. According to Bromley, prior to such “moments of destiny,” disputes between marginal religious groups and the wider society develop through three stages of increasing tension (latent tension, nascent conflict, and intensified conflict),

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with three types of response possible for both parties at each stage of the process: the group may sever its connections with the wider world and withdraw itself physi¬ cally and socially, or, alternatively, the social order may ignore or marginalize it (retreat); either the group or the wider society may become more accommodative of the other (accommodation); or, one side may enter into conflict with the other (icontestation) (see also chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, this volume). Similarly, conflict, if it occurs, may take a variety of forms ranging “from symbolic posturing, to ritualized disputation, to violent combat” (Bromley 2002,12). Dramatic denouements are thus relatively rare due to the variety of means whereby both parties can reach a settlement and thereby lower the tension/hostility between themselves. Indeed, even where such heightened degrees of tension emerge, it does not necessarily follow that contestation is the only possible outcome. Rather, according to Bromley, the full range of response actions are still available, although “a few of the logical possibilities are the most probable” (2002,120). Crucially, the option that each side is likely to choose is, according to Bromley, determined by the asymmetrical power relationship that exists between the parties. As the state cannot withdraw completely, the only path open to it is that of contestation. The group may respond through exodus, by either relocating itself physically so it is removed from direct conflict or through an act of collective suicide. When group suicide is chosen, the community reasserts “the moral superiority of its position, rejects the existing social order, and totally separates itself from that order.” The group may choose a last option, battle, whereby the group “launches a coercive campaign to replace that order with its own vision of an appropriate social order” (Bromley 2002,12,13). At this point, the group in question becomes a revolutionary millennial movement.

The Interpretive Approach The notion of millennialist violence as a product of social interaction between con¬ flicting parties parallels, and in many ways overlaps with, what has been termed the interpretive approach to understanding millennialist violence (Robbins 1997). Drawing implicitly on ideas found within symbolic interactionism (see Blumer 1986), this approach focuses on the manner in which millennial groups and their cultural opponents act on the basis of the meanings that they ascribe to the actions of the other. As noted previously, both millennialist groups, and, in some cases, their cultural opponents (Anthony, Robbins and Barrie-Anthony 2002) tend to per¬ ceive the world and, particularly, the other party in extremely stark dualistic terms. According to Michael Barkun, each side claims to have knowledge of the other, yet this knowledge is not derived from the other but from one’s own concept of the world. To the extent that the other is demonized—to millenarians, the state is evil, and to the state, millenarlans are crazed—there is little incentive to see the world from the other’s point of

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view. What is looked for instead is evidence that confirms the picture already held. To the extent that the two sides interact on the basis of these mirror-image scripts, each will selectively identify and interpret evidence that fits into the appropriate script. (1995, 6)

The result, as Michael Barkun (1997) has shown in his discussion of the Christian Identity movement, is a form of deviance amplification (Wilkins 1964; Wallis 1976), wherein the actions of both parties seemingly confirms the script that they hold of the other and, more importantly, offers a justification for their continued posture vis-a-vis the other party (see also chapter 33 by Michael Barkun, this volume). Similarly, several discussions of the Branch Davidians (see, for example, Tabor and Gallagher 1995; Docherty 2001; Walliss 2004, chapter 2), have focused on the way in which mutual misperception of the actions of the other party played a crucial role in exacerbating the standoff between the American law enforcement agents and the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, in March/April 1993. As Docherty observes, Waco was a textbook example of what happens when two socially negotiated realities, or worlds, collide. Each world was legitimate in the eyes of its adherents. Each world contained a rich array of scripts, schemas, scenarios, and frames that gave rise to coherent structures of explanations. However, the adherents of each worldview also made truth claims deemed offensive by adherents of the other worldview. Consequently, the lines of action preferred by the federal agents and those preferred by the Branch Davidians did not readily fit together. (Docherty 1999>18)

Thus, whereas the federal agents were concerned with the Branch Davidians’ “ter¬ restrial salvation” and sought to deal with them in terms rooted in instrumental rationality, the Branch Davidians’ focus was on their “transcendental salvation” and in a value rationality that weighed all actions against their millennial concerns. More crucially, each side’s actions during the standoff had the effect of seemingly confirming the others’ initial beliefs and thus increased their commitment to their own definition of the situation. Koresh’s insistence on “preaching” to the negotia¬ tors, giving them “Bible studies” discussing the situation in light of his understand¬ ing of biblical prophecies and his perception of what God wanted him to do, was perceived by the agents as both evidence of his mental instability and of his desire to prolong the standoff for as long as possible. This in turn prompted them to deploy a “stress-escalation program” that involved, among other things, playing various sounds—such as, for example, Nancy Sinatra singing “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” crying babies, seagulls, helicopters, crowing roosters, laughter, and dying rabbits—at high decibel throughout the night in an attempt to add pres¬ sure to the Branch Davidians to end the standoff. This, however, served instead both to confirm the Branch Davidians’ belief that they were being persecuted and would soon be martyred by those whom they perceived to be the forces of “Babylon” and, by extension, also increased their commitment to stay inside their residence at Mount Carmel (see also chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, this volume).

224

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

The Fragility Thesis A slightly more nuanced perspective on millennial violence may be found in Catherine Wessinger’s (2000a) work on “catastrophic millennialism” and, in par¬ ticular, in her notion of “fragile millennial groups.” Like all religious groups, Wessinger argues, millennial groups possess an “ultimate concern”—“a concern which is more important than anything else for the person [or group] involved” (2000a, 15). When this concern—or “millennial goal”—is threatened in some way, a group that possesses a radically dualistic perspective may in some cases seek to preserve or fulfill their goal through acts of violence. On this basis, she distinguishes between broad, non-mutually-exclusive, ideal types of millennial groups involved in vio¬ lence: assaulted millennial groups; revolutionary millennial movements; and, finally, fragile millennial groups.

Assaulted millennial groups, Wessinger argues, commit violent acts in selfdefense when they “are attacked... because they are perceived as dangerous” (2000a, 20). As discussed in the cultural opposition model outlined above, such groups are “assaulted by persons in mainstream society, because the members’ religious views and actions are misunderstood, feared, and despised. The group is assaulted because it is viewed as being dangerous to society. The group’s members are not seen as practicing a valid religion worthy of respect” (Wessinger 2000c, 39). Consequently, the violence unleashed by them is typically reactive in nature, in that it is a reaction to real or perceived external threats to their ultimate concern or millennial goal. By contrast, revolutionary millennial movements are likely to engage in pre¬ emptive, offensive actions, believing “that revolutionary violence is necessary to become liberated from their persecutors and to set up the righteous government and society” (Wessinger 20ooe, 357). In such cases, then, the group in question moves from a position of waiting and watching the signs, and engages in actions that they hope or believe will bring about the Endtime. Violence is thus a method whereby such groups may bring about their millennial goal. Finally, and I would argue most usefully, Wessinger adds the category of fragile millennial groups, where violence stems from a combination of internal pressures and the perception or experience of external opposition. In such cases, Wessinger argues, when internal pressures are exacerbated by real or perceived cultural oppo¬ sition, the group may become destabilized and, in an attempt to preserve their ulti¬ mate concern, may direct their violence outwardly to kill enemies or inwardly to commit murders and group suicide” or both (Wessinger 2oood, 163). In my own work on contemporary millennial violence, I have sought to extend Wessinger’s notion of fragility by examining the respective “apocalyptic trajecto¬ ries” found within each case outlined in the introduction: that is, the key recurring internal and external issues and social processes that fostered the increasing accep¬ tance of violence within the group’s ideology, and ultimately helped to precipitate the use of force against the group’s own members or against outsiders. In doing so, I have argued against the claim that external opposition is either a necessary or

FRAGILE MILLENNIAL COMMUNITIES AND VIOLENCE

225

sufficient factor in precipitating violence within millennial groups (see Walliss 2005) and have argued instead that where cultural opposition does play a role it typically works to exacerbate existing internal tensions (and thereby heighten the respective group’s fragility). In particular, as noted earlier, I have sought to shift attention back toward the internal dynamics of millennial groups and, in particular, to the role of crises of charismatic authority in precipitating incidents of millennial violence. While such crises are rarely sufficient causes in themselves, the evidence would seem to suggest that they serve instead as catalysts to the internal crises that can, when coupled with real or perceived external opposition, make such groups fragile and thereby more prone to volatility. Thus, for example, in the case of Peoples Temple, the cultural opposition that the Jonestown community encountered in the last year of its existence in the form of apostates, the families of former and existing members, along with various agen¬ cies within the American government, served to exacerbate existing tensions within the community: namely, internal dissent; defections; the growing incapacity of its leader, Jim Jones; and a lack of economic self-sufficiency. In this way, Jonestown effectively became a “city under siege,” while simultaneously fracturing from within (Chidester 1988,138; Hall 1989; Maaga 1998; Moore 1985,2000). Similarly, with the Order of the Solar Temple, the conviction of one of its leaders, Luc Jouret, for illegally buying guns with silencers and the subsequent, albeit brief, police investigation into the Order’s affairs likewise exacerbated a series of tensions within the group. Primarily, members had become aware that the various supernatural events that accompanied the Order’s rituals—and which were a major element in the charisma of the Order’s coleader, Joseph Di Mambro— were in fact faked, produced not so much by supernatural beings as by a combina¬ tion of lights, projectors, and unwittingly ingested hallucinogenic drugs. Both this and Jouret’s conviction subsequently led to widespread defections, with for¬ mer members demanding refunds for the often thousands of dollars that they had donated. Coupled with this, Di Mambro was suffering from chronic ill health, a state of affairs that further undermined his credibility, and heightened his belief that he and the Order were under attack from various foes. However, perhaps the most important internal threat to the Order and its perceived millennial goal was Di Mambro’s daughter, Emmanuelle. Raised from birth to be the avatar of the new age, by 1993 Emmanuelle had become what Wessinger (2000b, 28) refers to as “a messiah difficult to deal with”; not only was she rejecting her cosmically assigned role, but she was also becoming unruly and expressing an interest in teenage pop culture. Her messianic role was also, Di Mambro believed, under threat from the infant son of two former members of the Order whom Di Mambro had forbidden to have children. After leaving the Order, the couple, one member of which had been Di Mambro’s lighting engineer, had a child and named him Christopher Emmanuel. For Di Mambro, this was a double affront to his already embattled charismatic authority, and he came to see the child as nothing less than the Antichrist and, consequently, as a threat to both Emmanuelle and the Order (Mayer 1998,1999, 2001).

226

ISSUES RELATING TO MILLENNIALISM

Conclusion As I noted in the introduction, the academic study of millennial violence involving religious communities is ultimately limited in that the number of well-documented cases such as those outlined in the introduction are, thankfully, few in number and occur too irregularly to perform detailed comparative analyses. Consequently, those of us who examine these cases are faced with the situation of being able to say a significant amount about a limited number of cases, but being unable to perform the types of comparative analyses that one finds in other academic fields—in the case of religious violence, see, for example, Ami Pedahzur’s excellent recent study of suicide terrorism (2005). However, be that as it may, from the analysis of the inci¬ dents of communal millennialist violence that occurred during the last quarter of the twentieth century, it is possible to highlight several endogenous and exogenous dynamics and factors that would appear, in these cases at least, to lead a millennial group to engage in acts of violence. To summarize, despite the violent nature of apocalyptic beliefs and rhetoric, the majority of millennial groups possess a passive orientation, believing that it is the role of God, and not themselves, to inaugurate the final Endtime scenario. However, in a very small number of cases—probably less than .1 percent of possible cases— some communities will cross the line and engage in acts of violence in order to defend, salvage or fulfill their respective millennial goals. Thus, they may direct vio¬ lence outward against their real or perceived enemies in the outside world, and/or inward in the form of acts of collective suicide in order, for example, to escape their enemies, preserve their millennial goal, or perhaps to escape the prophesied destruc¬ tion of the Earth. This, the evidence would seem to suggest, is most likely to occur when the group becomes “fragile”—that is, when it believes that its millennial goal is threatened by a combination of real or perceived external pressures and internal cri¬ ses. In the majority of cases, the millennial communities will be able to negotiate the crises, finding solutions for them within their respective eschatologies or by reread¬ ing the apocalyptic texts and/or prophecies that inspire them (see also chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, this volume). Rebuffs from the world, for example, may be interpreted as signs that the outside world is truly corrupt and evil. Similarly, “failed” prophecies may be reinterpreted as tests of loyalty/faith, events that have been delayed as a consequence of the actions/prayers of the Elect, or even as events that have occurred, albeit in a spiritual rather than literal sense (Dawson 1999-> see also chapter 8 by Lome Dawson, this volume). However, in a very small

number of cases, such as those outlined in the introduction, the crises will not be successfully resolved and the leader’s perceived charismatic authority, and by exten¬ sion the groups continued existence and its millennial goal, may become fatally undermined. Where this is already under threat from real or perceived cultural oppo¬ sition, the group in question may then become volatile and, as occurred in the above cases, attempt to defend, salvage, or fulfill their respective millennial goals by unleash¬ ing violence on themselves and/or their perceived enemies in the outside world.

FRAGILE MILLENNIAL COMMUNITIES AND VIOLENCE

227

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Hall, John R. 1989. Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History. London: Transaction. -. 1995. “Public Narratives and the Apocalyptic Sect: From Jonestown to Mt. Carmel.” In Armageddon in Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict, edited by Stuart A. Wright, 205-35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hall, John R., with Philip Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh. 2000. Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan. London: Routledge. Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2001. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kanter, Rosabeth M. 1968. “Commitment and Social Organization: A Study of Commitment Mechanisms in Utopian Communities.” American Sociological Review 33, no. 4 (August): 499~5VLalich, Janja. 2004. Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lebra, Takie S. 1972. “Millenarian Movements and Resocialization.” American Behavioral Scientist 16, no. 2 (November/December): 195-217. Lepakari, Maria. 2002. The End Is a Beginning: Contemporary Apocalyptic Representations of Jerusalem. Abo, Finland: Abo Akademi University Press. Lucas, Phillip C., and Thomas Robbins, eds. 2004. New Religious Movements in the 21st Century: Legal, Political, and Social Challenges in Global Perspective. London: Routledge. Maaga, Mary McCormick. 1998. Hearing the Voices of Jonestown: Putting a Human Face on an American Tragedy. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Mayer, Jean-Fran^is. 1998. “Apocalyptic Millennialism in the West: The Case of the Solar Temple.” Paper presented at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. http://www. healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/ciag/pubhcations/report_apocalyptic_millennialism_ c1998.pdf. Accessed 23 March 2011. -. 1999- “‘Our Terrestrial Journey Is Coming to an End’: The Last Voyage of the Solar Temple.” Nova Religio 2, no. 2 (April): 172-96. -. 2001. “The Dangers of Enlightenment: Apocalyptic Hopes and Anxieties in the Order of the Solar Temple.” In Esoterisme, gnoses et imaginaire symbolique: Melanges offerts a Antoine Faivre, edited by Richard Caron, Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter J. Hanegraaf, and Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron, 437-51. Leuven: Peeters. Melton, J. Gordon, and David G. Bromley. 2002. “Challenging Misconceptions about the New Religions-Violence Connection.” In Cults, Religion and Violence, edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, 42-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mills, Edgar W. 1998 [1982]. “Cult Extremism: The Reduction of Normative Dissonance.” In Cults in Context: Readings in the Study of New Religious Movements, edited by Lome L. Dawson, 385-96. London: Transaction. Moore, Rebecca. 1985. A Sympathetic History of Jonestown: The Moore Family Involvement in Peoples Temple. New York: Edwin Mellen Press. -. 2000. “ American as Cherry Pie’: Peoples Temple and Violence in America.” In Millennialism, Persecution and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 121-37. New York: Syracuse University Press. Pedahzur, Ami. 2005. Suicide Terrorism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Richardson, James T. 2001. “Minority Religions and the Context of Violence: A Conflict/ Interactionist Perspective.” Terrorism and Political Violence 13, no. 1 (Spring): 103-33.

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Robbins, Thomas. 1997. “Religious Movements and Violence: A Friendly Critique of the Interpretive Approach.” Nova Religio i, no. 1 (October): 13-29. . 2002. Sources of Volatility in Religious Movements.” In Cults, Religion and Violence, edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, 56—79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robbins, Thomas, and Dick Anthony. 1995. “Sects and Violence: Factors Enhancing the Volatility of Marginal Religious Movements.” In Armageddon at Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict, edited by Stuart A. Wright, 236-59. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shaw, George B. 1933. The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. Singer, Margaret T., and Janja Lalich. 1996. Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives. Hoboken, N.J.: Jossey-Bass. Szimhart, Joseph P. 2004. “Persistence of ‘Deprogramming’ Stereotypes in Film.” Cultic Studies Review 3, no. 2. www.culticstudiesreview.0rg/csr_issues/crs_toc2004.2.htm. Accessed 11 December 2004. Tabor, James D., and Eugene V. Gallagher. 1995. Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Talmon, Yonina. 1966. “Millenarian Movements.” Archieves Europeennes de Sociologie 7: 159-200. Wallis, Roy. 1976. The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology. London: Heinemann. -. 1983. “Sex, Violence, and Religion.” Update: A Quarterly Journal of Religious Movements 7, no. 4 (December): 3-11. Wallis, Roy, and Steve Bruce. 1986. “Sex, Violence, and Religion.” In Sociological Theory, Religion and Collective Action, edited by Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, 115-27. Belfast: Queens University. Walliss, John. 2004. Apocalyptic Trajectories: Millenarianism and Violence in the Contemporary World. Bern: Peter Lang. -. 2005. “Millenarian Violence and Persecution: Rethinking the Role of Cultural Opposition.” Paper presented to the 2005 European Association for the Study of Religions Conference, Turku, Finland, 17 August. -. 2006. “Charisma, Volatility and Violence: Assessing the Role of Crises of Charismatic Authority in Precipitating Incidents of Millenarian Violence.” In Hotbilder: Vald, agression och religion, edited by Maria Leppakari and Jonathan Peste, 177-94. Religionsvetenskapliga skrifter nr 67.

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Warner, Marina. 2005. “Angels and Engines: Apocalypse and Its Aftermath, from George W. Bush to Philip Pullman.” London Times Literary Supplement, tls.timesonline.co.uk/ article/0,,25338-1886361,oo.html. Accessed 28 December 2005. Weber, Max. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. London: CollierMacmillan. -. 1991. “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 245-64. London: Routledge. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000a. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. -. 2000b. “Introduction: The Interacting Dynamics of Millennial Beliefs, Persecution and Violence.” In Millennialism, Persecution and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 3-39. New York: Syracuse University Press.

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PART IV

MILLENNIALISM IN CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

■

Nascent Monotheistic and Monotheistic Traditions

CHAPTER 12

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM ROBERT GNUSE

with a strict definition of the Millennium, one would have to admit there is no real millennial literature in the ancient world prior to late Jewish and early Christian texts (200 b.c.e. to 200 c.e.), since the concept of a golden age that would last for a thousand years, or some other comparable length of time, does not appear. However, literary images and concepts that eventually would evolve into millennial schemas may be observed. Most notably, some ancient texts envision a period of distress and chaos followed by a significant era of peace and prosperity under the leadership of strong rulers. Furthermore, we find texts that record the visions of seers or prophets who ostensibly pretend to predict a future era of woes followed by an age of peace and stability. Such predictions are vaticinia ex eventu, that is, predic¬ tions of the future, which have already come true. Generally such documents are propaganda for a ruler or dynasty of rulers who feel that they have brought an age of peace out of an era of chaos. Sometimes such documents are written with the hope that such a ruler shall soon arise and remove the foreign oppressors and restore the religion and culture of the native peoples (see also chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld, this volume). In such a case, we observe an actual prediction of the future, albeit obviously vague. In such documents vaticinia ex eventu predictions are made of past events to legitimate the hope of the impending predicted future deliverance. Scholars see these ancient Near Eastern literary creations evolving toward the fluorescence of Jewish apocalyptic literature from 200 b.c.e. to 200 c.e. Most of these apocalyptic texts are not found in the Hebrew Bible or the Apocrypha, but in a loose corpus of literature that we call Jewish Pseudepigrapha. (Apocrypha are Jewish books that are not found in the Hebrew Bible but were added to the Septuagint or Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible between 200 b.c.e. and 100 c.e. They are Working

236

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

included in Roman Catholic but not Protestant versions of the Old Testament. Pseudepigrapha are Jewish books that were not included in any version of the canonical Hebrew Bible.) In this literature, a seer from the distant past purportedly sees a future time of woes and divine intervention of cosmic proportion in which Gods people will be saved. The seer undergoes either a visionary experience or a journey to the heavenly realm wherein God permits the seer to observe the future. For the initial audience of the text all the predictions have come true save for the divine intervention and salvation. The actual author may be encouraging his con¬ temporaries to stay faithful to traditional religion by implying that the end is near and salvation is at hand for the faithful (sometimes persecuted) believers. Out of that Jewish literature arose later concepts of a millennial era of peace, which would be brought by the initial intervention of God for the sake of faithful believers, but existing before the final cosmic judgment of the entire world, thus a special period of time, a reward, for the faithful. Jewish apocalyptic literature is characterized as having an eschatology (a view of the future that speaks of the denouement of human history), the motif of pro¬ phetic predictions that will transpire due to divine will (which are really predictions after the fact), a visionary scope involving a lengthy period of time and the actions of diverse nations, symbolic and esoteric imagery, a deterministic view of history (since events will unfold as the seer predicts them), and authorship that is anony¬ mous or pseudonymous (since the work is projected into the distant past from the time of the actual author) (see also chapter 13 by James Tabor, this volume). Obviously, texts from the ancient Near East do not conform to these characteristics completely, but they appear to have some of these characteristics, or foreshadow them. Thus, when we look for appropriate texts in the ancient Near East, we seek forerunners to the genre of Jewish apocalyptic literature, for that Jewish literature, in turn, gave rise to Western notions of a millennial era.

Egyptian Millennial Texts The oldest texts in our possession that utilize the vaticinia ex eventu format for a seer to predict future times of woes and deliverance come from Egypt. These include the texts of Ipu-Wer and Neferti (Grayson 1975,7). The Admonitions of Ipu-Wer are words of prophetic judgment or lamentations supposedly spoken to a Sixth Dynasty pharaoh in the late third millennium

b.c.e.,

but the text seems to date from the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom in the early second millennium

b.c.e.

Ipu-Wer predicts a doleful future, the total break¬

down of society, extensive crime, tomb robbery, murder everywhere, the spread of the desert into the sown land, reversal of the roles of poor and rich, the end of trade (especially foreign trade to places such as Byblos in Palestine), severe limitation of food supplies, a society run by slaves, exposure of infants, and even the Nile turning

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

237

to blood as dead bodies float in it. Some scholars have suggested that the passion of the author may indicate that he had seen some of these things, though he expressed them in overdramatic literary fashion, while most scholars view the text as contain¬ ing literary stereotypes. According to the text, strong pharaohs will reverse these problems and bring a golden age. Most likely the author refers to the pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty in Thebes, the beginning of what we call the Middle Kingdom (McCown 1925, 371-82; Pritchard 1969, 441-44; Hayes 1971, 527; Lichtheim 1973, 149-63).

The Prophecy of Neferti (also spelled Neferty and Neferrohu) was supposedly spoken to Pharaoh Snefru of the Fourth Dynasty in the Old Kingdom (mid-third millennium

b.c.e)

by a lector priest who sought to entertain pharaoh with his elo¬

quent words that predicted the future. This text was composed during the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (early second millennium oracle predicts how Pharaoh Amen-em-het I (1990-1960

b.c.e.),

b.c.e.).

The

called Pharaoh

Ameny or Ameni in the text, the founder of that dynasty, would restore order after a period of chaos. Rhetorical images of this era of tribulation speak of how the land perished, the Nile dried up, the sun was covered, Asiatics invaded Egypt, Egyptians betrayed each other, crops failed, wild desert beasts roamed the land, war and death abounded, theft was frequent, the god Re was distant, and the poor became rich while the rich became poor. But a ruler from the south named Ameni would arise to save Egypt. Obviously this was political propaganda for Amen-em-het I. Scholars have sensed that the language is stereotypic and probably has exaggerated the woes of the previous Eleventh Dynasty pharaohs (McCown 1925, 382-86; Hallo and Younger 2003,1:106-10; Pritchard 1969, 444-46; Hayes 1971, 494-95, 527; Lichtheim 1973,139-45). Though both of these Egyptian texts do not directly speak of a Millennium or a specific golden age with a particular duration; nonetheless, we may see here some of the themes that will emerge with the later literature concerning the Millennium. Specifically we have a visionary who “sees” a future age of woes both for nature and human society, and this age of turmoil will be ended by a strong ruler who defeats the enemies of the people, brings peace and social stability, ensures fertility for the land, and restores the practice of religious customs. His rule then inaugurates a good age for the people.

Mesopotamian Millennial Texts A series of Mesopotamian texts are known to us as the Akkadian Prophecies, in which future predictions are made—most of which have transpired at the time the text was written. Sometimes the text ends with a realized prediction of a king who will bring a good age of religious and political restoration for the audience. We have five texts: (1) Dynastic Prophecy; (2) Text A; (3) Uruk Prophecy; (4) Marduk

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

238

Prophetic Speech; and (5) Shulgi Prophetic Speech. The first three are written in the third person, the last two are written in the first person. As they “predict” the future rise and fall of kings, they often use the stereotypic formula, “a prince/king will arise.” Rulers are not named, but they can be identified. This language, among other things, leads us to classify the texts together in the same genre. Some scholars suggest that these texts were most instrumental for inspiring later Jewish apocalyp¬ tic literature and thus call them apocalypses (Hallo 1966, 240-41; Beyerlin 1978, 118-19; Grayson 1992,282; Vanderkam 1995,2094). They do lack, however, the fuller developed eschatological imagery of the later Jewish literature (Collins 1992, 285; Vanderkam 1995, 2094). Some scholars demur from calling these texts apocalyptic because there is no final period of salvation, messianic king, or a decisive end to history, and thus prefer to characterize them simply as prophecies (Vanderkam 1984, 65-67). The last two mentioned texts appear to come from the second millennium b.c.e., from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (1127-1105 b.c.e.), who is not to be con¬ fused with the Nebuchadnezzar recalled in the biblical books of 2 Kings and Daniel. These two accounts were found in sequence on clay tablets from the late seventh century b.c.e. library of Ashurbanipal of Assyria. The Marduk Prophetic Speech (Borger 1971, 16, 21-22; Beyerlin 1978, 120-22; Hallo and Younger 2003,1:480-81) affirms the elevation of Marduk at the time of Nebuchadnezzar by indicating that this event had been predicted many years prior. Marduk speaks to the other gods about the three times his statuary was removed from Babylon by the Hittites, the Assyrians, and the Elamites. He declares that a king will arise to reestablish order in Babylon and attack Elam so as to return his statuary. Reference to the Elamites helps us date the oracle to the time of Nebuchadnezzar I (1127-1105 b.c.e.) of the Second Sealand Dynasty of Isin, for he brought the statues back from Elam after a victorious military campaign. In this account the spokesperson is a god rather than an ancient sage, so its pseudepigraphy is rather distinctive. The pseudonymous author of the Shulgi Prophetic Speech, is a Sumerian ruler of the Ur III Dynasty (2112-2004 b.c.e.), who is inspired by the gods Ishtar and Shamash. Though quite fragmentary, the Shulgi Prophetic Speech speaks about the claims of Nippur and Babylon to privileged religious status, and the rebuilding of shrines in Nippur and Isin. It predicts events down to the fall of the Kassite dynasty and perhaps to the slightly later time of Nebuchadnezzar I. It may be older than the Marduk Prophecy. Perhaps the format for both of these predictive visions may go back to Sumerian texts in the third millennium b.c.e., though we have none of those texts (Borger 1971, 20, 23; Grayson 1975, 7, 13-16, 22; Beyerlin 1978, 119-20; Vanderkam 1995,2092). Text A comes from the seventh century b.c.e. and predicts the events of the twelfth century b.c.e., thus purporting to come from before that era. Allusions are made to kings with certain lengths of rule (eighteen, thirteen, three, eight, three, and eight years respectively) that seem to refer to kings from the Second Sealand Dynasty of Isin. It declares that when the good “prince” comes, the crops will be

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

239

good and the foreign enemies will be defeated (Pritchard 1969, 451-52; Hallo 1966, 235; Vanderkam 1995, 2092). Again, like the Egyptian texts, these Mesopotamian texts do not articulate a concept like the Millennium, but they speak of a time of woes and disorder both in society and in the natural order. These woes will be ended by a strong ruler, who defeats the enemies, brings peace to society and fertility to the land, and his rule is the beginning of a good age for the people. All of these motifs in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts will become part of the language of the Millennium.

Culture Clash Millennialism: Resistance to Hellenization A number of texts were stimulated by the advent of Alexander the Great and Greek rule in the Near East. Native peoples chaffed under the rule of these Greeks in the Hellenistic era, especially when they felt that their traditional religion was being deliberately displaced by a new synthetic religion endorsed by the Greek overlords. Resistance to Greek culture and local Greek rulers was greatest among the Persians, Egyptians, and the Jews; resistance was less fervent in Mesopotamia, Syria, Media (northern Persia), and Asia Minor. Those areas most fervently opposed to Hellenism generated significant literature envisioning a golden age to be brought by a native ruler who would defeat the local Greek rulers in battle. (Unfortunately much of this literature has been lost.) Many Persians, Egyptians, and Jews, in particular, opposed Hellenization for the following reasons: (1) They had a memory of independent self-rule under their own native kings, and they felt despair over the loss of that independence. Persia and Egypt were former imperial centers. (2) They had a sense of destiny, the religious belief that the god(s) had chosen them for a special mission in history. (3) Economic oppression was experienced by those people more so than elsewhere in the Greek-ruled Near East. (4) They had a strong sense of justice, and they articulated a well-developed view of the afterlife, which would bring justice for the faithful believers who had been oppressed. Some of this afterlife imagery would permeate their rhetoric about the coming messianic age that would spell the end of Greek rule. (5) The existence of a large and ethnically cohesive population in those three areas meant a strong sense of identity permeated the popular mind (Eddy 1961, 326-42 and passim). It is worth noting the continuity of these characteristics with phenomena associated with millennial concepts at other times and places in human history. The native peoples longed for independence from local Greek rulers and a return to traditional religious values. Thus, oracles were generated that spoke of an ancient prophecy which predicted the coming of the Greeks, the Romans, or some foreign power, the concomitant deterioration of religion and society, and eventually the restoration of political independence and religious values with the

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

240

overthrow of foreign rule. Persians and Jews sometimes envisioned this new king¬ dom as the fifth kingdom, a divinely sent rule, after a series of four major empires. Thus, the advent of Hellenistic culture, in part, inspired the emergence of apocalyp¬ tic literature throughout the Near East (Collins 1975, 27-36; Boyce 1991, 371-89; Vanderkam 1995, 2091; Carr 2005,194). The fervent thought of this Hellenistic era would provide imagery and inspiration for later millennial ideas. These texts would affect biblical and extrabiblical Jewish literature, which in turn, would have great impact on later writers in the Western tradition. Of the texts still possessed by us, the most significant appear to be from the Persians and the Jews. Persian material will be discussed later in this article; Jewish material will be discussed in chapter 13 by James Tabor in this volume. Worthy of mention at this point are texts from Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Mesopotamian Resistance Even though Mesopotamia was not a strong center of resistance to Greek rule; nonetheless, we possess two texts that appear to come from this era, and they are two out of the five texts we call the Akkadian Prophecies. The Uruk Prophecy comes from the Seleucid era in the third century

b.c.e.,

but

it is set in the very distant past and it pretends to predict Assyrian and Babylonian history down to the time of the “good king,” Nabopolassar (625—605 Nebuchadnezzar II (605—562 suggest that the

b.c.e.)

b.c.e.)

or

of Chaldean Babylon, though some scholars

good king” referred to an earlier Assyrian monarch, such as

Ashurbanipal (668-627

b.c.e.).

Both good and bad kings are promised for the

ancient Mesopotamian city Uruk, but ultimately good rulers will come in the Seleucid era, and then the kings of Uruk “will exercise rulership like the gods” (Grayson 1992,1: 282; Vanderkam 1995,2092; Scurlock 2007,449-67). The Dynastic Prophecy (Hallo and Younger 2003,1:481-82) relates a vision of the future that refers to the fall of Assyria in the seventh century of Chaldean Babylon in the seventh and sixth centuries Persia from the sixth to the fourth centuries century

b.c.e.,

b.c.e.,

b.c.e.,

b.c.e.,

the rise and fall

the rise and fall of

the rise of Macedon in the fourth

and perhaps also the rise of the Macedonian general Seleucus I

Nicator in Syria in the third century

b.c.e.

Seleucus and the Macedonian Greeks

obviously are the harbingers of evil times, which are destined to end according the predictive vision. Dynastic Prophecy appears to allude directly to Chaldean Babylonian rulers in the sixth century

b.c.e.,

such as Neriglissar, Labashi-Marduk,

and Nabonidus, for the text speaks of kings and how long they ruled, and that helps us make equation with those historical personages. Cyrus the Great of Persia (sixth century b.c.e.) is called the king of Elam, a bad king. Other allusions appear to be to Persian rulers such as Arses, who was killed by the eunuch general Bagoas, and to Darius III (fourth century

b.c.e.)

and his defeat by Alexander at the battle of Issus.

Interestingly, the Greeks are called the Khaneans, an allusion we do not understand. The oracle, with its vision of successive empires reminds scholars of the visions in

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

241

Dan. 8:23—25 and 11:3—45. Like the Daniel visions, this predictive prophecy not only envisions past history vaticinia ex eventu, it actually makes a prediction of the future collapse of Hellenistic rulers and restoration of native rule. This technique of end¬ ing the vision with a futuristic prediction is a significant characteristic of full-blown apocalyptic literature. Though the Dynastic Prophecy has a Babylonian setting like that of Daniel 2, it differs from Daniel 2 by having the alternation of good and evil kingdoms (not a continual decline of life), it lists the reigns of particular kings, it does not have an eschatological climax, and it does not have the dramatic fifth and final kingdom of history (an image Daniel 2 shares with other contemporary works, however). Perhaps Sibylline Oracle III may preserve some of the old elements of a Hellenistic Persian or Babylonian vision critical of Greek rule, similar to this Dynastic Prophecy. These late Akkadian Prophecies may have been known by the biblical authors and authors of Jewish pseudepigraphical literature and inspired their writings. (Eddy 1961,11-14; Grayson 1975,17-27; 1992, 282; Hasel 1979, 22-23; Vanderkam 1995,2092).

Egyptian Resistance Additional vaticinia ex eventu oracles critical of Hellenism come from Egypt in the Hellenistic or Roman era. Egypt witnessed significant resistance to Greek rule late in the third century

b.c.e.

The Demotic Chronicle appears to have been written in the third century

b.c.e.

sometime between the rule of Ptolemy I Soter and Ptolemy IV Philopater. It is set in the era of Nectanebos II (360-343 Tachos or Teos (362-361

b.c.e.).

b.c.e.)

and especially during his revolt against

Scholars suspect that there may have been an early

Persian period edition that was revised in the Ptolemaic era. It is cast as a revelation of the Egyptian god Thoth. Judgment is passed upon pharaohs of the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Dynasties in the fourth century

b.c.e.,

depending on how well

they supported the traditional Egyptian religious values and provided money for shrines, and a vision of the future is provided by the text. The document declares that Pharaoh Nepherites (398-391

b.c.e.)

and Pharaoh Psemut (392-391

sinned and were punished, but Pharaoh Hakoris (391-378

b.c.e.)

b.c.e.)

was generous to

temples, so his rule was prolonged. The visionary element in the document describes the pain of Persian occupation, the coming of the Greeks, and their eventual defeat. It especially refers to the “great day”—an allusion to either Alexander the Great or Ptolemy I (who is characterized negatively as a “big dog,” while other Greeks are simply “dogs”). Rhetorical imagery describes the pain of foreign conquest, destruc¬ tion of shrines, suppression of true religion and worship, social disorder, the defeat of foreigners by the divinely chosen native ruler—a new pharaoh—and the subse¬ quent restoration of order (Ma’at) and true worship. This new savior pharaoh was to come out of the holy city of Herakleopolis, perform the role of both king and priest, and take special pity upon the poor Egyptians. (Scholars are reminded of imagery associated with Jesus in later years.) Perhaps, a native rebellion by Egyptian

242

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

soldiers against Ptolemic leadership after their victory at Raphia in 217

b.c.e.

over

Greek Seleucids may have been inspired by this oracle. These soldiers fought for the Ptolemies, but their victory inspired them to seek an Egyptian messiah to lead the Egyptians in future victories instead of the Greek Ptolemies (McCown 1925,387-92; Eddy 1961,264-66,289-97,302,338; Vanderkam 1995,2087; Carr 2005,194). The Lamb to Bocchoris is a Demotic papyrus dated to the thirty-fourth year of Augustus (7-8

c.e.)

and contains a text entitled, “The Curses upon Egypt of the

Sixth Year of King Bocchoris.” Only the last three columns remain of the text. Bocchoris was the only ruler of the Twenty-fourth Dynasty in Egypt (719-712 b.c.e.).

The text was originally composed in the Ptolemaic or early Roman era.

A lamb predicts the future woes for Egypt during the reign of Bocchoris, and the vision spans nine hundred years. In this future time someone would attack Egypt and remove shrines to Nineveh, but they would be recovered by the Egyptians. Such imagery could refer to the Assyrian conquest of Egypt in the seventh century b.c.e.

under the Assyrian ruler Esarhaddon and the subsequent independence of

Egypt not long thereafter, or it might be a double metaphor that also refers to the rule of Egypt by either Greeks or Romans. After proclaiming this message the lamb dies and is buried by Pharaoh Bocchoris (McCown 1925,392-97; Vanderkam 1995, 2087; Carr 2005,194). Copies of the Potter’s Oracle or the Apology of the Potter to King Amenhotep date from the second or third centuries

c.e.

in Greek, but the original was in

Egyptian Demotic from an earlier period. The text refers to the city of Alexandria, built by Alexander in the fourth century

b.c.e., so

it dates to the Hellenistic era,

probably contemporary with the Demotic Chronicle in the third century

b.c.e.

It

was more widely read than that work, and it, too, may have helped inspire the native Egyptian uprisings against Greek Ptolemaic rule in 217

b.c.e.

The oracle

purportedly was uttered in the time of Amenhotep, a name for four different pha¬ raohs in the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom, which ruled Egypt from the sixteenth through the fourteenth centuries

b.c.e.

In the narrative a pot maker pre¬

dicts evil times for Egypt, which would be caused by the “girdle-wearers,” an allu¬ sion to the Greeks from the time of Alexander onward. It described the chaos of social and natural world order—even the sun will be darkened and seasons will be confused—and this curse is brought about by the “Typhonians,” the Greeks. The poor Egyptians will suffer especially under Greek rule. When the city of the girdlewearers (Alexandria) is destroyed and sacred objects are returned to Egypt, then the Egyptian city of Memphis will be great once more. (Memphis suffered when the new city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in the late fourth century

b.c.e.)

The new pharaoh will be sent explicitly by the goddess Isis and Re,

the sun god. When pharaoh comes, the sun will shine once more and the seasons will proceed normally. Life will be so good that Egyptians will wish for their departed dead to come to life once more to enjoy the new age. Memphis had been the ancient capital of Egypt during the time of the Old Kingdom in the early and mid-third millennium

b.c.e.;

hence, a restoration to a very ancient past was envi¬

sioned. According to the text, the potter made these predictions in anger after his

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

243

pots were destroyed (McCown 1925, 397—.400; Eddy 1961, 292-94; Collins 1975, 29; Vanderkam 1995,2087-88; Carr 2005,194). The Apocalypse of Asclepius dates from the first century c.e. and is part of a lon¬ ger dialogue between Asclepius, the Greek god of healing and dreams, and Hermes Trismegistus, a synthesis of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. This narrative predicts that in the future religion will end and the created order will not be honored, but God will reverse the deterioration of the world at the end of time. Ironically, though the text opposes Greek culture, the influence of Greek style is unmistakable in the narrative (Vanderkam 1995,2088; Carr 2005,195). In addition, there are other fragmentary accounts in which predictions are made of bad times that are to be followed by good times. These include: the Story of Mycerinus, which was set in the Third Dynasty of Egypt in the Old Kingdom of the early third millennium

b.c.e.

but recounted by Herodotus in the fifth century b.c.e.;

the Dream of Nectanebos, which was set in the fourth century

b.c.e.

but written in

the second century b.c.e.; and the story of Dedi and KingKhufu, which as set in the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt of the Old Kingdom but is not datable (McCown 1925, 401-5).

Prefiguring Jewish Millennialism In this Hellenistic period we may observe motifs and concepts that will surface in the biblical and pseudepigraphical literature and ultimately play a significant role in the development of later millennial thought. Most notably there is the messianic figure, who will come after a significant time of troubles and bring stability once more to the social and cosmic orders. This theme was evident in earlier Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature, but one might sense that in these biblical and pseude¬ pigraphical texts the imagery is a little more dramatic.

Millennial Themes in the Hebrew Bible Biblical texts deserve special attention because they were the primary vehicle by which all of the above mentioned motifs were effectively communicated to Western culture in a way so as to engender the development of millenarian concepts. The scope of this essay is to discuss biblical materials prior to the emergence of classic Jewish concepts in the later post-exilic era, particular with Jewish pseudepigraphi¬ cal literature. Hence, concern will be directed toward canonical biblical texts, espe¬ cially those in the prophetic corpus. In general, the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible arose between the years of 750

b.c.e.

and 400

b.c.e.

to speak a critical public

message against the social injustices of their age and the proclivity of people in Israel and Judah to worship the gods of the nations or to worship Yahweh, the god

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

244

of the Israelites and Judahites, as though he were no different from the gods of the other nations. They often spoke of how Yahweh would punish the people for their sins if they did not repent. But ultimately, they proclaimed, Yahweh was gracious and eventually would forgive and restore the people. The most significant motif in the prophetic oracles is the image of the impend¬ ing Day of the Lord (Heb. Yom-Yahweh). It is a theme used by many prophets, which appears to evolve over the centuries, and could be used to generate a sum¬ mary sketch of the evolution of the prophetic traditions. Prophets refer to the “Day of the Lord,” though sometimes they merely say “that Day,” implying that the motif was sufficiently known to allude to it in such abbreviated fashion. As a theological motif the concept of the Day of the Lord may have originated from the ancient Near Eastern image of a divine council of gods who can go to war (Collins 1992, 1: 284), or from traditional Israelite battle imagery (von Rad 1959, 97-108), or from mythical nature imagery, or perhaps from the liturgical imagery of some festival, such as the fall festival of Tabernacles (Mowinckel 1956, 23-233). Throughout most of the prophetic corpus, the concept remains “mundane,” that is, it refers to events on the human level (Collins 1992,1:284). Usually prophets used the expression to speak of the impending action of Yahweh in human history in a dra¬ matic, often military fashion. Prophets used it to speak of the impending fall of Samaria, the capital of Israel, in 722 Judah in 701

b.c.e.

b.c.e.

(Amos 4:1-3), the siege of Jerusalem in

(Mic. 1:10-16), the impending fall of Jerusalem in 586

b.c.e.

(Ezek.

7:1-27), or even the experience of foreigners, such as the defeat of Egypt by Babylon in 605

b.c.e.

at the battle of Carchemish (Jer. 46:2-12). As the motif develops among

the very latest prophets and moves into postprophetic literature, it assumes cosmic dimensions and evolves into the Jewish and Christian concept of the judgment day. As it evolves, particularly in the later stages, it develops many of the images that will become part of later millenarian speculation. One may speak of stages of development in the motif. First stage: Scholars suspect that originally the expression “Day of the Lord” may have been used to describe Yahweh’s defeat of Israel’s enemies in any particular dramatic battle. Isa. 9:4,10:26—27 refers to the “day of Midian,” which could refer to Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites in Jud. 7:1-25. Second stage: In the middle of the eighth century b.c.e. Amos appears to be the first prophet to declare that on the Day of the Lord Yahweh will fight and punish Israel instead of their enemies, and it will be a “day of darkness” for Israel (Amos 2:4-16, 3:14-151 5:18-20, 8:9-14). Later prophets continued to use the expression to describe Yahweh’s specific punishment of Israel and Judah for their sins of worship¬ ping other gods and oppressing the poor, even though they may have additional themes (Hos. 5:9; Isa. 5:30,7:10-25; Mic. 5:10-15; Zeph. 7-18; Joel 1:13-20,2:1-11). Third stage: In the late eighth century

b.c.e.

Isaiah introduced the notion of a

“remnant” of people who would survive the day of punishment (Isa. 10:20-27). For Isaiah this “remnant” appears to be simply lucky survivors, not a “righteous rem¬ nant,” and he could be alluding to those who survived the onslaught of the Assyrian army under Sennacherib against Judah in 701

b.c.e.

(Mic. 4:6—7 also speaks of a

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

245

“remnant” with the Day of the Lord; this passage may be contemporary with Isaiah’s motif of the “remnant” or it may be a sixth-century

b.c.e.

exilic addition to the

oracles of the eighth-century prophet Micah.) Fourth stage: With the late seventh-century Jeremiah, as well as the sixth-century

b.c.e.

b.c.e.

prophets Zephaniah and

prophets Ezekiel and Second Isaiah

(Isaiah 40-55), the Day is magnified into a time of extensive punishment for many people. Not only will Judah be punished by war initially, so will many of the other evil nations in the Near East. Such nations include Egypt (Jer. 46:1-26; Ezek. 29:1-21, 30:1-26, 32:1-31), Babylon (Jer. 50:1-46, 51:1-64; Isa. 47:1-15), Philistia (Zeph. 2:4-7; Jer. 47:1-7; Ezek. 25:15-17), Moab (Zeph. 2:8-11; Jer 48:1-47; Ezek. 25:8-11), Ammon (Jer. 49:1-6; Ezek. 21:28-32, 25:1-7), Edom (Jer. 49:7-22; Ezek 25:12-14), Damascus (Jer. 49:23-33), Elam (Jer. 49:34-39), Tyre (Ezek. 26:1-21, 27:1-36, 28:1-19), Sidon (Ezek. 28:20-24), Ethiopia (Zeph. 2:12-15; Ezek. 30:9), and all kings in general (Zeph. 1:14-18). The Day of the Lord has become international in scope, so that although it still is a day of judgment for the people of Judah, it will also be a day of hope because the enemies of Judah will also be punished. One also gets the impression that the scope of the Day of the Lord extends over a generation or two as all the necessary political scenarios unfold to insure that all of the evil nations receive their punish¬ ment. The “remnant” that survives now appears to be a “righteous remnant” of people (Zeph. 2:3, 3:11-13), the faithful who have retained their trust in Yahweh. Although the Day of the Lord is much more significant than articulated by previous prophets, history does not end, everyday life still goes on. Fifth stage: With post-exilic prophets (539-250

b.c.e.),

such as Haggai, Third

Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66), Zechariah (Zechariah 1-8), Second Zechariah (Zechariah 9-11), Third Zechariah (Zechariah 12-14), Joel, Obadiah, and Malachi, however, the Day of the Lord becomes much grander and appears to be a more final event in the rhetoric of the prophets. The day is sometimes described in supernatural cosmic terms (Isa. 64:1-4, 65:17-25, 66:6-24; Joel 2:30-31; Zech. 14:1-21; Mai 4:1-3)- It becomes more consistently a day of hope for the people of Judah. On that day the enemies of Judah will be defeated and righteous Jews will be elevated to a position of power and acclaim in the eyes of the world (Isa. 60:15-16, 62:1-3, 66:18-20; Joel 3:1-21; Obad. 15-21). At times, it sounds as though Jerusalem will become a respected religious center and foreigners will recognize the God of the Jews (Isa. 56:3-8,60:116; Zech. 2:10-12,8:13,20-23); at other times, it sounds as though the Jews will have a military empire (Isa. 61:5-7, 63:1-6, 66:12-24; Obad. 15-21; Zech. 9:1-17,10:3-12, 12:1-9,14:1-21). Furthermore, it appears as though there will be only one dramatic day or moment in time when this occurs, but history will continue, as the “day” is an earthly experience. People shall live for a long time, but they will die ultimately (Isa. 65:20). Sixth stage: Finally, after 250

b.c.e.

the Day of the Lord becomes a cosmic day,

when the heavens and the Earth will both be drastically changed by cataclysmic events that involve the heavens and the Earth in total conflict (Isa. 24:1-3,17-23). In the “Little Isaianic Apocalypse” of Isaiah 24-27, Daniel 7-12, and a number of Jewish apocalyptic works, the coming Day of the Lord features conflict between good and evil and God’s

246

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

total entrance into the world in order to terminate the powerful cosmic forces of evil that have come to dominate people and creation (Isa. 24:21-22,27:1). History ends and a new age begins. One finds references to afterlife for the righteous (Isa. 26:19) and sometimes for both good and evil people (Dan. 12:1-3). Judgment will be visited upon even evil denizens of the heavenly realms (Isa. 24:21-23; I Enoch 18). One senses that the Day now emphasizes the value of the individual more, since individuals are prom¬ ised an afterlife, whereas in the prophetic tradition the Day spoke more of the national destiny of the corporate people. As the “Day” evolved from the prophetic tradition to the apocalyptic tradition, it became more universal, more dramatic, extremely immi¬ nent, and God was seen to be totally victorious both in the cosmic and world order (Russell 1964,92-95). Thus, the Day of the Lord evolved into judgment day, a theme that would continue into the New Testament. In summary, the Day of the Lord motif evolved with the prophetic movement. It began as a day of judgment with pre-exilic prophets and then became a great day of restoration for the post-exilic prophets. It moved from being a regional event in Palestine (a single battle or a local military campaign) to become an international war lasting for years and finally transform into a cosmic event. The motif became grander in connection with the prophetic vision of the messianic age in the postexilic era. As the prophetic movement fed into the apocalyptic movement, the motif evolved into the image of judgment day, whereupon it was used by Jesus and early Christians to provide symbols for the concept of the coming Kingdom of God. Later visions of the Millennium drew upon these texts of the prophets and the final cul¬ mination of imagery in apocalyptic literature to provide grist for the weaving of diverse millennial scenarios.

ZOROASTRIAN MILLENNIAL TEXTS

An unknown variable in the development of eschatology (discourse about events leading up to the end of time) in general and millennialism (imagery about a golden age with a specific duration in the Endtime) in particular is the influence of Zoroastrian thought upon the biblical tradition and Western culture. For over a century biblical scholars have been wont to assume that Persian Zoroastrian reli¬ gious ideas influenced late Jewish thought and even Christian thought. Persia ruled the Near East from the sixth through the fourth centuries

b.c.e.

and many people

outside of Persia, especially in Turkey, were Zoroastrian due to Persian colonists and conversion of the local populace. Variant forms of Zoroastrianism arose outside of Persia, such as Mithraism in southeastern Turkey. That Jews and Christians picked up some Zoroastrian ideas is indisputable, but the extent of that influence is highly debatable. Contact with Persian religious thought in Turkey remains a probable but speculative option for the source of that influence upon Jews and even later Christians (Boyce 1991, 3:361-490). The problem lies primarily in our inability to

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

247

date Zoroastrian texts or to be certain of how Zoroastrian belief developed. Persian Zoroastrian religious texts arose centuries after the time in which scholars assume Jews and Christians might have been influenced, so we must attempt to reconstruct hypothetically what Zoroastrian concepts might have been available for Jews and Christians from 500

b.c.e.

to 100

c.e.

Zoroastrian thought would have influence

upon scriptural and pseudepigraphical texts for Jews and Christians, if the influ¬ ence was felt that early. We do know that Zoroastrian thought influenced the Christian tradition through the writings of the Christian church father Lactantius, who recorded some of their notions in the fourth century

c.e.,

and his writings

helped inspire the later development of millennial thought in the West. Zoroastrian religious beliefs are preserved in their bible, the Zend-Avesta, and other religious texts written in the Pahlavi language during the eighth and ninth cen¬ turies c.e. Because of this late date, the possibility even exists that Zoroastrian thought may have drawn upon some motifs and concepts from Jews and Christians. Generally, however, scholars tend to assume that Jewish thinkers drew the following ideas from the Persian Zoroastrians: (1) periodization of history, usually into four ages; (2) the imagery of woes at the end of time; (3) the image of bodily resurrection; (4) the idea of personified angels and demons, even to giving names to the archangels (Persian Amesha Spentas) and the archdemons (Persian Amesha Daevas); and (5) the portrayal of evil as a supernatural force (Eddy 1961,20-21; Boyce 1991,361-71,401-56). Zoroastrian beliefs germane to a study of millennialism would be those con¬ cerning their views of history and eschatology. A number of Zoroastrian texts pro¬ vide different and conflicting scenarios of history and the end of time. The most comprehensive vision of history and the end of time is the Bundahishn, which preserves material from a lost Avestan work. According to this text, history will last twelve thousand years. There will be three thousand years of spiritual beings, but toward the end of the era a conflict between Ahura Mazda and the evil spirit, Ahriman, will lead to a compromise for the next nine thousand years of his¬ tory. The first three thousand years will see the will of Ahura Mazda prevail, the next three thousand years will see the intermingling of the will of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, and then in the final three thousand years Ahriman is kept away. Later in the work (chap. 34) the twelve thousand years are aligned with the zodiac. Toward the end of the ninth millennium true religion arises, and in the tenth millennium Persian kings, Alexander the Great, the Persian Sassanians, and the Arabs arise. Obviously this vision was generated in final form after the time of Muhammad. At the end of time evil will be defeated, demons will be destroyed, the resurrection will occur, and creatures will live forever (Vanderkam 1995,2089). The Zand-i Vohuman Yasn (or Zand-i Vahman Yasht), which is part of the Bahman Yashts, is a commentary on a lost Avestan work, the Vohuman Yasht, and part of this commentary may date back to Hellenistic times (300-50

b.c.e.)

and may

be based on a lost Zand of the Avesta. Chapters 1 and 3 deal with a dream sent by the good god of truth and light, Ahura Mazda, to the prophet Zoroaster. Zoroaster dreams about the “root of a tree” with four branches, one each of gold, silver, steel, and mixed iron. In chapter 2 Zoroaster sees a tree with seven metallic branches

248

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

(gold, silver, zinc, brass, tin, steel, and mixed iron). (The notion of a tree or branches is Persian in origin; the allusion to metals may reflect borrowed Greek imagery.) Branches in both dreams represent kingdoms. The vision with four branches can be interpreted thus: gold represents the present age in which king Vishtasp lives, who is the king converted by Zoroaster to bring the true religion to Persia. The next two kingdoms are also Persian and ruled by Ardakshir, the Kayan king, and Kushro, the son of Kevad. The last of the four kingdoms is evil, bringing the age of demons, and probably is Greek (the people are described as having “disheveled hair,” and Alexander the Great maybe mentioned in the text). It will be destroyed by Vishtasp’s descendant, Peshyotan or Peshyotanu (sometimes called Saoshyans or Hushedar). Since the text indicates a Persian king will come to function as a messiah, we might assume this narrative arose during the Hellenistic era when the Persians had no king of their own. Before this messianic Persian king comes, there will be popula¬ tion reduction, crop failure, failure of rain, extreme hot and cold weather, death of animals, and lawless injustice in human society. The Persian king will end all of this and restore the hegemony of Persian rule in the world. His arrival will be heralded by a falling star and he will perform miracles to demonstrate his authority. (The image of four kingdoms, the last of which is horribly evil, succeeded by a fifth king¬ dom of a messianic figure, reminds us very much of the vision in Daniel 2.) Furthermore, there is also a vision of a tree in Daniel 4 concerning the fate of a Persian king. Daniel s allusion to Babylonia, Median, Persian, and Greek empires implies his reliance on a Persian narrative by virtue of his allusion to Median rule, which Jews never experienced themselves, but Media was a significant kingdom in Persian history. (Persians referred to the four major kingdoms of Assyria, Media, Persia, and Macedon in some texts.) This Persian messianic kingdom of our text arises in the final millennium of human history. Once this millennium, in which Zoroaster also lived, finally is completed, there will be the purification of all crea¬ tures, a resurrection of the dead, and the final age of material existence (Eddy 1961, 17~32> Collins i975> 29; Collins 1992,1:285; Boyce 1975, 287—91; Boyce 1991, 371—86;

Hasel 1979,20-21; Vanderkam 1995,3:2088). Another text, Arda Viraf Nameh, assumes a period of time after Alexander. Alexander wreaked havoc in Persia, burned the written copy of the Zend-Avesta, the sacred text of Zoroastrians, in the capital city of Persepolis, but Alexander is destroyed and sent to hell. Subsequently, Viraf, the Persian priest, takes a narcotic in wine and makes a seven-day journey of heaven and hell while angels accompany him. He brings confirmation that religious rituals are for the gods, not demons, and he proclaims the rewards that await the good and punishments that await the evil (Eddy 1961,12-15; Vanderkam 1995, 3:2088). Viraf’s journey reminds us of similar heavenly journeys in Jewish literature where the hero is permitted to see the unfold¬ ing of future events. The Oracles of Hystaspas (or Vishtasp) is quoted by the Christian author Lactantius (250-325

c.e.)

in his Divine Institutes VII. The oracle originally may date

from the second or first century b.c.e. Hystaspes was supposedly the king converted by Zoroaster, which places him in the seventh century b.c.e. according to most schol-

249

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

ars or perhaps around 1200-1000

b.c.e.

according to other scholars, for dating

Zoroaster is very difficult (Boyce 1975,190). Most scholars believe the text is of Persian origin, but some suggest it is a Jewish fiction. The narrative recounts a dream expe¬ rienced by Hystaspes and interpreted by Zoroaster. Once interpreted, the meaning of the oracle refers to how human history will last for six thousand years and how we are living in the last age, at the end of the sixth millennium. In the final age wicked¬ ness increases due to the spread of imperial Rome. One particular event will be the destruction of the great Persian city of Persepolis. The oracle describes the afflictions and woes of the final days, how the righteous will gather on a sacred mountain as the evil one attacks them, the messiah will come and terrify the kings of the world, and the world will be destroyed. Perhaps, when it was initially written, this work may have envisioned a victory of the king Mithridates VI (or Mithradates) of Pontus in Asia Minor, a Zoroastrian who warred against Rome from 90

b.c.e.

to 63

b.c.e.

Perhaps Mithridates may have generated and circulated the oracle (Eddy 1961,32-36; Collins 1975,29; 1992,1:285; Boyce 1991,377-81; Vanderkam 1995,3: 2089). In the Zamasp-Namak Vishtasp interviews Zamasp, the person to whom Zoroaster revealed the truth. Zamasp says that true religion will last for one thou¬ sand years, then people will break the covenant, evil will abound, and nature will be corrupted. Then after three kings rule, Peshyotan will come, the wicked will perish, and joy will return to the world (Vanderkam 1995,3:2089).

Millennial Themes in Classical Literature Though the Zoroastrian texts are difficult to date, there are a number of classical texts that seem to resonate the same images, especially the image of four kingdoms or ages, or four kingdoms followed by a fifth and ultimately final kingdom in his¬ tory. This leads scholars to suspect that the Zoroastrian texts originally might have been contemporary with those sources. In general, most of the texts date to the Hellenistic and Roman eras and are thus contemporary with the Jewish apocalyptic literature and the other literature of resistance to Greek and Roman rule. Hesiod (eighth or seventh century

b.c.e.)

may provide the earliest reference to the ages of

humanity. In his Works and Days he speaks of history in four ages: gold (lines 112-13), silver (line 127), bronze (line 144), iron, or the present age (lines 151-201). Perhaps Persian texts borrowed the metal imagery from him. Valleius Paterculus (30 quotes the author Aemilius Sura (189-171

b.c.e.),

c.e.)

who envisioned five empires:

Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Macedonians, and finally Romans. Sibylline Oracle IV (80

c.e.,

but may use sources from before 140

b.c.e.)

speaks of the empires of Assyria

(4:49_55)5 Media (4:56-60), Persia (4:61-66), Macedonia (4:86-88), and ultimately Rome (4:103). The last two texts are comparable to Daniel 2 (Babylon, Media, Persia, Greek kingdoms, and a kingdom sent from God) with the four-kingdom scenario and then a fifth kingdom that seems to culminate history. If we include the Persian

250

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

text, Zand-i Vohuman Yasn, with Aemilius Sura, Sibylline Oracle IV, Daniel 2, then all four texts envision the replacement of Greek rule in particular by either Rome, Gods kingdom, or a new Millennium (Eddy 1961,11-13; Collins 1975,29; Hasel 1979, 18-20). Thus, the Hellenistic age especially seems to have spawned the hope of a new, and perhaps final age, in human history.

Conclusion The ancient Near Eastern texts do not speak of a Millennium in the sense that we may understand it in the Christian tradition of the West or in our own modern era. But one can observe in the texts of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and the early bib¬ lical materials the raw materials that will be picked up in the later evolution of the concept of the Millennium. Already by 2000

b.c.e.

in Egypt, writers spoke of a golden

age that would come after a time of chaos of woe. Mesopotamian authors likewise described the flow of history that would lead up to a golden age in Babylon around 1200 b.c.e.

But it is especially in the Hellenistic era that this golden age becomes greater

than a mere human restoration of native rule—it becomes described with hyperbolic imagery, some of which is otherworldly. It is now connected with the idea of religious restoration, and the golden age is for those with proper devotion to the correct gods. The concept of a truly magnificent golden age or judgment day appears. This then brings us to the point where authors will begin to speak of a Millennium—a collective salvation—for the religiously chosen people. From this time onward we may observe the evolution of the concept of the Millennium that we would recognize. Acknowledgments. I would like to thank the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst for the research grant in fall 2005 at the Fachbereich Evangelische Theologie of Philipps Universitat in Marburg Universitat, where this essay was generated.

REFERENCES Beyerlin, Walter, ed. 1978. Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Translated by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Westminster. Borger, Rykle. 1971. “Gott Marduk und Gott-Konig Shulgi als Propheten zwei prophetische Texte.” Bibliotheca Orientalis 1/2:3-24. Boyce, Mary. 1975. A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 1: The Early Period. Leiden: Brill.

. 1991- A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 3: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule. Leiden: Brill. Carr David. 2005. Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MILLENNIALISM

251

Collins, John. 1975. “Jewish Apocalyptic against Its Hellenistic Near Eastern Environment.”

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 220: 27-36. -. 1992. “Apocalypses and Apocalypticism: Early Jewish Apocalypticism.” In Anchor

Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 1:282-88. 6 vols. New York: Anchor Doubleday. Eddy, Samuel. 1961. The King Is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism

334-31 B.C. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Flusser, David. 1972. “The Four Empires in the Fourth Sybil and in the Book of Daniel.”

Israel Oriental Studies 2:148-75. Grayson, Kirk. 1975. Babylonian Historical Literary Texts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. -.1992. “Apocalypses and Apocalypticism: Akkadian Apocalyptic’ Literature.” In

Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 1:282. 6 vols. New York: Anchor Doubleday. Hallo, William. 1966. “Akkadian Apocalypses.” Israel Exploration Journal 16, no. 4: 231-42. Hallo, William W., and K. Lawson Younger, eds. 2003. The Context of Scripture, vol. 1:

Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World. Leiden: Brill. Hasel, Gerhard. 1979. “The Four World Empires of Daniel 2 against Its Near Eastern Environment.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 12:17-30. Hayes, William. 1971. “The Middle Kingdom in Egypt.” In The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 1, pt. 2: The Early History of the Middle East, edited by Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, Cyril John Gadd, and Nicholas Geoffrey Lempriere Hammond, 464-531. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lichtheim, Miriam. 1973. Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. McCown, C. C. 1925. “Hebrew and Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature.” Harvard Theological

Review 18:357-411. Mowinckel, Sigmund. 1956. He That Cometh. Trans. G. W Anderson. Nashville: Abingdon. Pritchard, James, ed. 1969. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. 3d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Russell, David Syme. 1964. The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic. Philadelphia: Westminster. Scurlock, JoAnn. 2007. “Whose Truth and Whose Justice? The Uruk and Other Late Akkadian Prophecies Re-Revisited.” Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible, edited by Steven Holloway, 449-67. Hebrew Bible Monographs, vol. 10. Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Phoenix. Vanderkam, James. 1984. Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition. Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series, vol. 16. Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association. -. 1995. “Prophecy and Apocalyptics in the Ancient Near East.” In Civilizations of the

Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 3:2083-94. 4 vols. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson. von Rad, Gerhard. 1959. “The Origin of the Concept of the Day of the Yahweh.” Journal of

Semitic Studies 4:97-108.

CHAPTER 13

ANCIENT JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MILLENNIALISM JAMES D. TABOR

Early

Christian millennialism is quintessential^ reflected in that most classic of all

ancient millennial texts at the end of the New Testament, the book of Revelation: Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years... that he should deceive the nations no more.... Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God.... They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (Rev. 20:1-4)1

This specification of a precise period of one thousand years, during which Satan is prevented from deceiving the nations of the world and a select group of redeemed humans reign with Christ, gave rise to the term Millennium (Latin mille, “thou¬ sand”; the equivalent term in Greek is chilias, which in English becomes chiliasm). Millennialism, as it developed in ancient Jewish and early Christian groups roughly from about tology

200 b.c.e.

to

200 c.e.,

is a specific subset of apocalyptic escha¬

the notion that human history is drawing to an imminent, climactic close,

at which point God decisively intervenes to usher in a era of peace, justice, and righ¬ teousness on Earth (see chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume). What condi¬ tions or “signs” are expected to precipitate this divine judgment, as well as the precise implementation and characterization of the “reign of God,” make up the variables that run through a host of texts during this period. How dire and catastrophic are the conditions to be just before the “end”? Is a messianic figure to act as the key agent to bring about God’s judgment and rule? Who participates in the new era and how is it described? Is this new age of God’s reign to last for a specific period of time

ANCIENT JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MILLENNIALISM

253

(i.e., a “millennium”), or is it seen as a final “eternal” state of a perfected cosmos? If a specific intermediate period of time is specified between the present age and the eternal age to come, how do the conditions during a “millennial” period (whether precisely one thousand years or not) differ from the state of things thereafter? What is fascinating about ancient Jewish and early Christian millennialism broadly conceived is that none of these variables are essential. In other words, there are texts that focus on messiah figures, while others have no messiah at all; texts that specify a period of time and those that have no such designations; and texts that describe the reign of God in earthly terms as well as those that envision a transcen¬ dent heavenly state. Given this diversity, a general working definition of a millennial text or move¬ ment—at least in the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world during this period—is one that expects a sudden end to ordinary human history, brought about by a deci¬ sive divine judgment, and followed by an ideal age with or without a specified inter¬ mediate period. When an intermediate period is expected, it typically functions as a lead-in to the more permanent ideal stage to follow. Such a new age involves a final judgment of humankind—both living and dead—the defeat of hostile angelic pow¬ ers, and the collective salvation of the entire cosmos from evil, suffering, and death. Since earliest Christianity can be viewed properly as a stream within the varied forms of apocalyptic Judaism of its time, its essential millenarian elements are paral¬ leled in Jewish texts, and its origins and development are thoroughly Jewish (Collins 1984). The period under consideration—roughly the two hundred years before and after the time of Jesus—might well be called the heyday of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic eschatology. Scholars are divided as to the precise implications of Jesus’s proclamation that the “kingdom of God is at hand,” since there is nothing directly from Jesus that survives in the textual sources, so the methods for recovering the message of Jesus himself yield vastly differing results (Crossan 1992; Ehrman 2001). There is little doubt that the movement Jesus inspired was thoroughly apocalyptic, with a strong emphasis on the imminent arrival of the end of history (Schweitzer 1931; Gager 1975). There is evidence of such a plethora of similar movements and ideas during this period it is important to remember that the Jesus movement is just one of many, regardless of the dominance Christianity eventually achieved in the fourth century c.e. as a new religion separate from Judaism. Christianity’s millenar¬ ian roots are firmly grounded in the various forms of apocalyptic Judaism, which flourished and thrived in the two centuries before the birth of Jesus.

The Birth of Millennial Hope Although there is no strictly defined millenarian scheme in the Hebrew Bible, or in other Ancient Near Eastern texts prior to the second century b.c.e., the historical conditions and conceptual building blocks that gave rise to such a vision of the

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

254

future were beginning to emerge (see chapter 12 by Robert Gnuse, this volume). The crises brought upon the nation of Israel by the military invasions of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, resulting in exiles and occupation between 750 b.c.e.

through the end of the fourth century

b.c.e.,

set the stage for a response of

hope and promise on the part of those pious Israelites who had faith in God and in the historic destiny of the nation of Israel as the chosen people. Although the Hebrew prophets denounced the Israelites for their moral failings and religious apostasy, they also invariably offered sketches of a more ideal future—often condi¬ tional upon the repentance of the people. Millennialism, as it developed in emerging forms of Judaism around 200 b.c.e., was a response to a much older conceptual problem and a specific historical crisis brought on by a program of Hellenization initiated by the Macedonian ruler, Antiochus IV (r-175-164 b.c.e.), a successor of Alexander the Great (356-323 b.c.e.), who had conquered Syria-Palestine in 332 b.c.e. The conceptual problem was that of theodicy, namely, how could a world so full of injustice, suffering, tragedy, and evil ever be rec¬ onciled with faith in an all-powerful and good Creator—particularly one who prom¬ ised to bless and prosper the righteous and punish the wicked? Why was God silent in the face of evil? O LORD, you God of vengeance, you God of vengeance shine forth! Rise up, O judge of the earth; render to the proud their deserts! O LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?” (Psalm 94:1-3). In the most general sense, millenarian hope is a response to this cry of how long?1f present conditions are seen to be irreparably hopeless, will there ever be a change in the future? The question “how long?” implies just such a hope, namely that God—and God alone as “judge of the earth”—will intervene decisively and bring about a sudden, dramatic, and drastic change of conditions. What will follow will be a new era, in which wars will cease among nations, justice and righteousness will fill the Earth, and even the ferocious nature of animals will be transformed (Isaiah 2:2-4; 11:4-8; 65:17-25). Ironically, death itself was accepted in the Ancient Near East as the lot of humankind, since humans, made from the dust, to dust must return (Genesis 3:19). All the dead—small and great, good and bad—were destined to descend as shades to the underworld (Sheol), from which there would be no return (Job 3:11—19; Gilgamesh Epic 10.3,7.4; Tabor 1989). All this changed with the Hellenization policies of Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), who apparently sought to suppress by force indigenous Jewish cultural and reli¬ gious observances in Galilee and Judea. His efforts included sacking the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and setting up in its central sanctuary an altar to Zeus (167 b.c.e.).

According to the pious Jewish author of 1 Maccabees, Antiochus burned

Torah scrolls, forbade Jews to circumcise their sons, and forced the population to eat pork and offer sacrifices to the images of Greek gods—all under penalty of death (1 Maccabees 1: 20-23, 47~6o). An armed resistance ensued, led by a priest named

Matthias and his five sons, including the infamous Judas Maccabeus (Judas the “Hammer”). The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, included in the Apocrypha, are the main sources for this crisis and its aftermath, and provide a very one-sided, pro-revolt,

ANCIENT JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MILLENNIALISM

255

version of the story.2 Apparently, as the author of 1 Maccabees admits, many Jews welcomed the Hellenistic pluralism that Antiochus represented, so his more drastic moves were most likely precipitated by the armed resistance of a pious minority (i Maccabees 1:41-45; M. Smith 1988; Cohen 2006). The Maccabees and their guer¬ rilla forces were successful in forcing the expulsion of Antiochus by 165

b.c.e.,

a

victory celebrated to this day by the festival of Hanukkah. Judas set up an indepen¬ dent Jewish state with his brothers and their successors, forming a priestly royal dynasty known as the Hasmoneans. Ironically, though devoted to their ancestral Jewish laws and customs, the Hasmoneans were remarkably Hellenized themselves (Bickerman 1962,93-111; Hengel 2003,1: 267-309). Their control was short-lived, as the Romans under general Pompey (106-48 Syria-Palestine a Roman client in 63

b.c.e.)

invaded the Levant and made

b.c.e.

It was the religious response to this Maccabean revolt as formulated by the author of the book of Daniel, that shaped the parameters of most forms of apoca¬ lyptic millenarian Judaism, including early Christianity, in the centuries that fol¬ lowed. In the book of Daniel, which consists of a series of visions and dreams, the foreign invaders of the land of Israel are pictured as a series of successive ferocious wild beasts with their individual rulers as horns—a lion, a bear, a four-headed winged leopard, and an indescribable ten-horned beast with iron teeth and claws of bronze. The ten horns refer to the Seleucid successors of Alexander the Great—who was represented by the leopard. Antiochus IV is particularly singled out, described as a “little horn” sprouting up among the ten, and characterized as a “contemptible person” who blasphemed God and destroyed the “saints”—those faithful Maccabean martyrs who chose death rather than bowing to the demands of the king (Daniel 7:24-26; 11:21,31-35)What Daniel set forth as the solution to the crisis precipitated by Antiochus IV was not merely his defeat, which the Maccabees had accomplished, but nothing less than God’s imminent destruction of all the foreign kingdoms of the world and the sovereignty of the kingdom of God filling the Earth: “And in the days of those kings [Alexander’s successors] the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44). This victory, as Daniel envisioned it, was a cosmic one in which the people of God would be given rule over all nations: “And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them” (Daniel 7:27). Another major component of the visions of the book of Daniel is the inclusion of chrono¬ logical schemes related to what is called the “appointed time of the end.” Such cal¬ culations offer the possibility of a match between predicted events and the question of precisely when the end will come, and how long a given set of circumstances— usually the persecution of the righteous—will prevail (Daniel 8:19; 11:27, 29, 35). This periodization of history, and particularly of its final events, is gauged in pro¬ phetic “days” and “weeks,” which are then correlated with calendar years. For

256

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

example, when Daniel asks, “How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?” referring to the complete fulfillment of the end of days, he is told, “Blessed is he who waits and comes to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days. But go your way till the end; and you shall rest, and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days” (Daniel 12:11-12). Since this final calculation is the last verse in the book of Daniel and the seer himself no longer expects to live to see the culmination of history, here is an example of adjustment to earlier chronological schemes that had tied the “time of the end” to the activities of Antiochus Epiphanes—a prediction that obviously failed (Daniel 11:29-35). A new and vitally important element in the book of Daniel is his declaration that God’s intervention in history will bring decisive judgment not only on those living at the end of time, but on the dead as well. He predicts that both the righteous and the wicked dead will be raised to life to experience either everlasting life or punishment: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). This passage is remarkable, as it stands as the earliest unambiguous reference to God raising the dead in the entire Hebrew Bible or Old Testament (Tabor 1989). The book of Daniel becomes foundational for the Jewish or Jewish-Christian millenarian vision of the future that became paradigmatic in this period. It consists of four elements: (1) the expectation of the imminent overthrow of the worldly powers, (2) a series of signs or apocalyptic (Greek apokalupsis means “to reveal or unveil ) indicators that the end is near, despite a period of persecution and crisis; (3) a chronological scheme leading up to the time of the end that lends itself to cal¬ culations as to when key events will transpire; and (4) a final judgment in which both the living and the dead are punished or welcomed into the newly established kingdom of God. Each of these elements, particularly the last one, address the fun¬ damental complaint that lies at the heart of any attempt at a biblical view of theod¬ icy, which is reconciling a sovereign God with a world of injustice, evil, and death. One of the great ironies in the history of Western ideas is that Daniel’s influence on subsequent Jewish and Christian views of the future had such a remarkable influence, given that everything predicted by Daniel utterly failed! The Romans soon replaced the Greeks as the latest occupiers of the land, even destroying the city of Jerusalem and its magnificent Temple in 70

c.e.;

thousands of Jews and Christians

were killed over the next few centuries; ah chronological schemes played themselves out, and the dead—wicked or otherwise—were never raised. One might expect that a book that had proven itself to be wrong on every count would have long since been discarded as misguided and obsolete, but, in fact, the opposite was the case. Daniel’s victory was a literary one. As a written text purporting to contain secret revelations of God’s plan of world salvation, including specific events and calcula¬ tions, Daniel not only survived but its influence increased. The book of Daniel became the foundational basis of all Jewish and Christian expressions of apocalyp¬ tic millenarianism for the next two thousand years. Daniel s essential schema of events, with subsequent and updated chronologi¬ cal calculations, was imposed upon subsequent times and sets of circumstances, in

ANCIENT JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MILLENNIALISM

257

efforts to find fits between prophecy and fulfillment. It seems that those sectarian Jewish and early Christian groups, who maintained faith in Daniel’s predictions, were actually bolstered in their confidence that their millenarian rescue was just around the corner, even though its reality and realization was always one more gen¬ eration away—never to be realized in one’s lifetime. Indeed, this kind of slippage and recovery seems to function at the heart of most systems of catastrophic millennialism (chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume). Daniel is the clearest exam¬ ple from this period of the “when prophecy fails” syndrome (Festinger, Reicken, and Schacter 1956; chapter 8 by Lome L. Dawson, this volume). Despite its failed proph¬ ecies, the book of Daniel was grasped all the tighter to the collective breasts of those Jews and early Christians who, unwilling to accommodate to the cultural hegemony of Roman rule, continued to hope for God’s intervention.

The Development of Millenarian Schemes The earliest evidence for the emergence of a millenarian periodization of history with reference to the Endtime comes in the “Apocalypse of Weeks,” now found embedded in 1 (Ethiopic) Enoch in section 5 of the book, titled “The Epistle of Enoch.” This section of 1 Enoch is dated usually to around 170

b.c.e.,

just before the

Maccabean period. Fragments of this text in Aramaic have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, witnessing to its dating from the second century b.c.e. (VanderKam 1996,33-60). The pseudonymous author “Enoch” divides human history into prophetic “weeks” of unspecified duration, with an “apostate generation” arising in the sev¬ enth week, and at the end of that week, the chosen righteous ones of God triumph¬ ing (1 Enoch 93). The eighth week is characterized as “that of righteousness,” and is followed by ninth and tenth weeks in which the cosmos is gradually subdued under God’s rule. Following the tenth week a new creation appears and no further periods are marked. Since the author “Enoch” says he was born at the end of the first week, and the book of Genesis puts the birth of Enoch 622 years after Adam (Genesis 5:18), it is likely that in this book a “week” equals seven hundred years, with each pro¬ phetic “day” being one hundred years, so that here, for the first time, is a complete seven-thousand-year scheme of human history. It is this notion of an allotted period totaling seven thousand years for the exis¬ tence of creation that gives rise to the notion of a millennium, or thousand-year period, making up one “day” of a seven-day “week” of God. Psalm 90:4 says, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night,” speaking of God’s perspective on time in contrast to that of a mere mortal, whose lifespan is said to be the proverbial “threescore and ten,” or perhaps “four¬ score” (Psalm 90:10). Although Psalm 90 itself provides no apocalyptic context, the notion of one day of God equaling one thousand years became enormously

258

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

influential. The letter of 2 Peter, written in the late first or early second century c.e., when the fervency of early Christian apocalyptic hope was beginning to wane, warns readers, “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”

(2

Peter 3:8). The author

concludes his exhortation with the affirmation, “But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells”

(2

Peter 3:13).

The appeal of the seven thousand years allotted to human history had to do with its correlation with the six “days” of creation in Genesis followed by a seventhday Sabbath of rest—the thousand-year Millennium idea! Given this perspective, the chaos of human history with its unending tragedies, wars, injustices, diseases, and deaths appeared ordered, unfolding on schedule according to God’s master plan. Most importantly, human history had a final thousand-year period as its divinely guaranteed termination. Just as God had rested on the seventh day from his work of creation, humankind will experience a thousand years of “rest” from the disruptive chaos of human history. 2

(Slavonic) Enoch, a Jewish text with Christian interpolations, usually dated to

the first century

c.e.,

reflects this scheme, but with an additional reference to an

eighth day to follow the seventh, in which there will be no more counting of time. God declares: And I blessed the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, on which he rested from all his works. And I appointed the eighth day also, that the eighth day should be the first-created after my work, and that [the first seven] revolve in the form of the seventh thousand, and that at the beginning of the eighth thousand there should be a time of not-counting, endless, with neither years nor months nor weeks nor days nor hours. (32:3-33:1 in Charles 1896) The early-second-century text Barnabas offers an expository overview of this gen¬ eral scheme, which gets repeated in many subsequent early Christian texts: Pay attention, children, to what it means that “he finished in six days.” This means that in six thousand years the Lord will complete all things. For with him a day represents a thousand years... .And so, children, all things will be completed in six days—that is to say, in six thousand years. “And he rested on the seventh day.” This means that when his Son comes he will put an end to the age of the lawless one, judge the impious... when lawlessness is no more and all things have been made new by the Lord. (Barnabas 15:4—7 in Ehrman 2003) This is undoubtedly the perspective of the author of the New Testament book of Revelation, who assumes that his readers will be familiar with the notion of a final thousand years of millennial rest prior to the creation of the new heaven and the new Earth (Revelation 21:1). The writer of Hebrews in the New Testament makes the explicit connection: For he has spoken somewhere of the seventh day in this way, “.And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” [...] So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God; for whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his. (Flebrews 4:4,9)

ANCIENT JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MILLENNIALISM

259

The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch), which dates just after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70

c.e.,

explicitly raises the question that is the

driving force behind most all apocalyptic and millennial texts of this period: “For how long will what is corruptible endure, and for how long will mortals thrive on earth, and the transgressors in the world continue their pollutions and corrup¬ tions?” (2 Baruch 21:19 in Sparks 1984). The author does not refer to a specific period of one thousand years, but he clearly describes a time following the reveal¬ ing of the Messiah and the destruction of the two chaotic sea monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan, who represent satanic forces of evil: “The earth also shall yield its fruit ten thousand-fold; on each vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster produce a thousand grapes, and each grape produce a vat of wine” (2 Baruch 29:5 in Sparks 1984). What follows this unspecified era of abundance is the resurrection of all the dead and a period of final judgment, the same scheme reflected in the book of Revelation. Not all texts of this period that reflect this general millennial pattern specify a period of precisely one thousand years. 2 Esdras is a composite text, which mixes Jewish and early Christian perspectives, and was also written in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70

c.e.3

The author sets out his vision of

the future: For my son the Messiah shall be revealed with those who are with him, and those who remain shall rejoice four hundred years. After those years my son the Messiah shall die, and all who draw human breath. Then the world shall be turned back to primeval silence for seven days, as it was at the first beginning, so that no one shall be left. After seven days...the earth shall give up those who are asleep in it, and the dust those who rest there in silence.... The Most High will be revealed on the seat of judgment. (2 Esdras 7:28-33; italics added)4 The text goes on to describe the destruction of the wicked in a pit of torment and a paradise for the righteous, who are predicted to be very few in number. This textual tradition, clearly stemming from Jewish sources, shows that Jewish groups were not as attracted to the one-thousand-year messianic age as Christians were. But what is more important here is that the general sequence of expectation remains the same: messianic age, followed by resurrection and final judgment, with punishments and rewards for all humankind. There seems to be more variation in Jewish texts concerning the duration of the millennial age than in Christian texts. This is probably due to the eventual canonical status of the book of Revelation in the New Testament, which put its stamp of approval on the thousand-year Sabbath rest schema. Rabbinic references in the Talmud, looking back from the fourth and fifth centuries

c.e.,

reflect specu¬

lative variations, as well as a general despair over all the predictions of the end that had failed. The age of the world is variously put at 4,250 years (eighty-five Jubilees), 4,230 years, and 6,000 years, under a general scheme that makes use of the seven-day creation pattern, but divides it quite differently from the Christians:

260

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Rabbi Kattina taught: Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one thousand, the seventh, it shall be desolate, as it is written, “And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.” [...] Just as the seventh year is one year of release in seven, so is the world: one thousand years out of seven shall be fallow. (Sanhedrin 93b in Epstein 1978)

To which Rabbi Eliyyahu replied: The world is to exist six thousand years. In the first two thousand there was desolation [no Torah]; two thousand years the Torah flourished; and the next two thousand years is the Messianic era, but through our many iniquities all these years have been lost. (Sanhedrin 93b in Epstein 1978)

The observation that all these years have been lost” reflects despair over such calculations, which led one rabbi to declare, “Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end” (Sanhedrin 97b in Epstein 1978). The general view of the rabbis of Late Antiquity was, All the predestined dates for redemption have passed, and the matter depends only on repentance and good deeds” (Sanhedrin 97b in Epstein 1978).

When Prophecy Fails The Dead Sea Scrolls were written by an intensely apocalyptic Jewish sect that flourished in the second and first centuries b.c.e. and is often identified with the Essenes mentioned in classical sources (VanderKam and Flint 2002, 239-54). The life of this sect, so intensely tied to the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible including the book of Daniel, offers us a glimpse into the ways in which a group of this period learned to cope with the disappointment that came with the failure of their expectations, particularly in terms of a chronological scheme or date-setting. Following the demise of their founding leader, whom they referred to as the Teacher of Righteousness,” apparently the community expected the arrival of the Messiah within forty years. They based this on Daniel 9 in which there is a final 490-year period (“seventy weeks of years”) leading to the arrival of the Messiah (Daniel 9:24-27). They understood this period as being ten Jubilees of forty-fine years. Since a Jubilee is seven cycles of seven years, the group had calculated that they had reached the point of the “first week of the tenth Jubilee,” or about forty years from the end: From the day of the gathering in of the Teacher of the Community until the end of all the men of war who deserted to the Liar, there shall pass about forty years. (■Damascus Document B19 in Vermes 1997) None of the men who enter the New Covenant in the land of Damascus and who again betray it and depart from the fountain of living waters, shall be reckoned with the Council of the people or inscribed in its Book, from the day of gathering

ANCIENT JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MILLENNIALISM

26l

in of the Teacher of the Community until the comings of the Messiah out of Aaron and Israel. (Damascus Document B20 in Vermes 1997)

Another scroll, commenting on the Psalms, also alludes to this forty-year period: “A little while and the wicked shall be no more; I will look towards his place but he shall not be there” [quoting Psalm 37:10]. Interpreted, this concerns all the wicked. At the end of the forty years they shall be blotted out and not a man shall be found on earth. (4Q171 in Vermes 1997)

After the forty years passed without any Messiah arriving to lead them in the absence of their teacher, the Dead Sea Scrolls community faced a genuine crisis of faith. Their response is preserved in a commentary written on the book of Habakkuk: This concerns the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of His servants the Prophets. For there shall be yet another vision concerning the appointed time. It shall tell of the end and shall not lie. Interpreted, this means that the final age shall be prolonged, and shall exceed all that the Prophets have said; for the mysteries of God are astounding. If it tarries, wait for it, for it shall surely come and shall not be late. (lQpHab VII in Vermes 1997)

Here we find two related notions that often come up in texts of this period: first, the age will be prolonged and extend longer than all the prophets declared; and second, if the vision seems to “tarry,” wait for it, for in God’s timing it is not “late.” A very similar predictive crisis is reflected in the so-called Synoptic Apocalypse of Mark 13, where Jesus predicts the end of the age, connecting it to the desola¬ tion of the Jerusalem Temple by a Antiochus-like foreign invader, based on the prophecies of the book of Daniel (Mark 13:1-4, 14). According to this text, the coming of the “Son of Man in the clouds of heaven,” will occur “immediately, after that tribulation, in those days” (Mark 13:24). The prophecy ends with the fateful declaration “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place” (Mark 13:30). Since a generation was thought to be about forty years, the early Christians, based on Mark, expected Jesus’s return— much like those in the Dead Sea Scroll community a hundred years earlier— within forty years of the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e. As the decades passed, they faced the same kind of crisis that apocalyptic Jewish groups had dealt with since the time of the Maccabees—what they most hoped for never came, and what they least expected turned out to be their new reality. In the case of the early Christians, from Mark to the book of Revelation, their hopes and dreams were dashed. Jesus never returned, the “beast” power—now identified with the Roman emperors—thrived and even reached its zenith in the second century c.e. under Hadrian (r. 117-38 c.e.) and Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-80 c.e.), and any calculation schema related to a final generation of forty years became impossible to maintain. Those texts that counseled patience concerning appar¬ ently failed prophecies, such as 2 Peter, gradually became less and less compelling as history continued and no cosmic salvation was in sight.

262

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Move to a Symbolic Millennium Although the history of Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism, has millenarian movements in every century, generally, Christians in the second and third centuries c.e. began to deal with apocalyptic and millennial expectations in a less literal and more symbolic way. The emphasis on a literal view of the Millennium continues in the writings of Papias (c. 130 c.e.), Justin Martyr (c. 150 c.e.), and Irenaeus (c. 180 c.e.), but with less emphasis on apocalyptic predictions of precisely when the end might come. By the third century c.e., any literal view of the Millennium was increasingly seen as materialistic and inferior, and apocalyptic interpretations of the book of Revelation were disfavored (Ford 1992, 4:833-34). The early-third-century theologian Origen (185-254), along with his teacher, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215), favored a more philosophical Neoplatonic interpretation of the Millennium. Origen suggested that the thousand-year reign of Christ predicted in Revelation 20 reterred not to an apocalyptic future, but to the present age in which Christ reigned in heaven as sovereign Lord of the cosmos and those reborn through baptism were its resurrected participants (Werner 1957? 269—304). Eusebius (c. 263-339), writing in the early fourth century c.e., explicitly criticized Papias, who was otherwise revered as one who had learned directly from the apostle John: Among them he [Papias] says that there will be a millennium after the resurrec¬ tion of the dead, when the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this earth. I suppose that he got these notions by a perverse reading of the apostolic accounts, not realizing that they had spoken mystically and symboli¬ cally. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39-12—13 in Oulton and Lawlor 1932) The move from the “earthly” to the “heavenly” Christian Millennium found its cul¬ mination in the influential work The City of God, written in the early fifth century by Augustine (354-430). Christians increasingly identified any literal interpreta¬ tions of the Millennium with the “inferior” views of the “Jews,” who had expected an earthly rather than a heavenly kingdom (Bietenhard 1953). c.e.

Conclusion Millennialism is a response to the all-too-human yearning for a better world, free from the chaos of nature and vicissitudes of suffering, injustice, and human failure. The more acute the perceived crisis, whether within one’s individual clan, or affect¬ ing the fortunes of one’s culture or homeland, the more desperate the longing. Catastrophic millennialism, especially with its apocalyptic overlay, is born in a cry-even a scream-for a sudden and grand deliverance, a collective and instant salvation, the imminence of which is signaled-even guaranted—by certain pro¬ phetic “signs” assuring the believer the time of the end is at hand.

ANCIENT JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MILLENNIALISM

263

In this formative four-hundred-year period from 200 b.c.e. to around 200 c.e., a more specific millenarian perspective began to develop among sectarian forms of Judaism from which Jesus and his movement arose. This was not the view of the mainstream culture, nor even that of the Jewish religious establishment, which had long ago made its peace with the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman culture that perme¬ ated the Levant (Hengel 2003). Even the triumphant Hasmonean rulers of the Maccabean family rushed to make alliances with Rome and lived a lifestyle akin to other Hellenistic monarchs of the time. The social and economic benefits of Roman rule, especially in the reigns of the Roman emperors Augustus (r. 27 B.c.E-14 c.e.) and Tiberius (14-37 c.e.), and even under rulers as cruel and capricious as Herod the Great (r. 37 or 36-4 or 1 b.c.e) and his successors, were considerable. Jews, both in the homeland and Diaspora, were given unprecedented freedoms and privileges by the Romans, accommodating their religious scruples. Jews were not required to worship the Roman gods, take oaths of allegiance, or serve in the army. Judaism thrived in all the major population centers of the Mediterranean world (Feldman 1993).

Apocalyptic millenarianism at that time was a minority perspective arising out of a religious fundamentalism based on the biblical promises to Israel, as God’s chosen people, and the messianic hopes expressed in the Hebrew Prophets. There is a sense in which these particular millennial hopes, especially in the homeland of Judea and Galilee—the ancient Land of Israel—were based not so much on oppres¬ sive social and cultural circumstances as upon the reading of sacred texts. One text, in particular, was the foundation of all the apocalyptic schemes and dreams of this period—the book of Daniel. The messianic pro-millennial hopes of books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and even the more apocalyptic perspectives of Zechariah, were not specific enough to give apocalyptic ideologies their running legs. Their collective message was that someday, somehow, God would intervene to judge the world and restore the fortunes of God’s people. It was Daniel that provided the how, the when, and the where, by means of a set of signs, symbols and chronological possibilities that were flexible enough to be appropriated for the next two millennia, drawing the attention of a host of disparate devotees, from the Dead Sea Scrolls community to Jesus and his early followers, to Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), to thousands of con¬ temporary fundamentalist Christians today (Collins 2010; Ehrman 2001; Newton Boyer 1992). Josephus (37-c. 100 c.e.), the first-century Jewish historian who wrote an eye¬ witness chronicle of the first Jewish revolt against Rome that resulted in the destruc¬ tion of Jerusalem as well as the Jewish Temple, makes a startling admission as to the 1733;

causes of the war: Now, if any one consider these things, he will find that God takes care of man¬ kind, and by all ways possible foreshows to our race what is for their preservation; but that men perish by those miseries which they madly and voluntarily bring upon themselves.... But now, what did most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, “about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable

264

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

earth.” The Jews took this p ediction to belong to themselves in particular and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. (Jewish War 6.310-16 in Whiston 2003)

Josephus’ reference here to an “ambiguous oracle” predicting the “time” when the Messiah would arrive is a clear reference to the “seventy weeks” prophecy of Daniel 9, which a variety of sectarian Jewish groups of the time, including the Dead Sea Scroll community, had calculated to terminate sometime around the first century c.e. Jesus, according to our earliest sources, began his preaching by proclaiming that the “time was fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15), also clearly referring to Daniel’s countdown chronology. In the Synoptic Apocalypse it is a sign from the book of Daniel that signals the end (Matt. 24:15). The apostle Paul refers to the “appointed time” having grown very short, recommending that people not even get married, another clear reference to Daniel (1 Cor. 7:29). The book of Revelation, which became one of the most influential books in the Christian canon, is essentially an elaboration on the prophecies of the book of Daniel. It can be said that apocalyptic millenarianism among ancient Jewish and early Christian groups is largely a history of footnotes and reappropriations of the per¬ spective of the book of Daniel. The power of Daniel lies in the potential “fit” it provides between chronological schemes, a set of political conditions involving Jerusalem and the land of Israel, and the oppression of a quintessential “final evil ruler” who threatens to slaughter those who do not conform. From Antiochus IV to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) the pattern is the same, and each time a given group of people, identifying themselves as God’s chosen people, find themselves in such cir¬ cumstances, the influence of the book of Daniel (and, for Christians, the book of Revelation) thrives. H. H. Rowley, the incomparable pioneer of twentieth-century academic study of the origins of apocalyptic millenarianism, gave a series of lectures in England in 1942 on the “Relevance of Apocalyptic.” These were the darkest days of World War II, when the fate of Europe hung in the balance. At that time, Hitler had taken most of Europe and General Rommel had orders to march to Jerusalem, link up with Arab allies and crush the Zionists once and for all, while dissident evangelical Christians and other sectarian groups had been imprisoned or killed under the Third Reich. One could hardly imagine a better candidate for the final ferocious Beast of Daniel and Revelation than Nazi Germany with its Ftihrer. In both the United States and Britain, the Bible prophecy movement was having a heyday. Rowley made a cautionary but astute observation: Yet where for more than two thousand years a hope has proved illusory, we should beware of embracing it afresh. The writers of these books were mistaken in their hopes of imminent deliverance; their interpreters who believed the consummation was imminent in their day proved mistaken; and they who bring the same principles and the same hopes afresh to the prophecies will prove equally mistaken. (Rowley 1944,173-74)

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History remains open ended, while the message of the book of Daniel and most of the other millenarian texts of this period speak perennially to humans living in troubled times. Having an understanding of the origins and development of these texts provides an essential interpretive perspective for modern readers who want to approach them today.

NOTES 1. Biblical quotations are from The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 2. The Apocrypha consists of ten books, most dating to the two centuries before the Common Era, included as part of the Roman Catholic Old Testament canon, which are not accepted by Jews or Protestants as part of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. 3. 2 Esdras is made up of three works: 4th Ezra, an apocalypse by a Jewish author of the late first century c.e., and two much later Christian supplements, 5 Ezra and 6 Ezra. Although it was not included in the Roman Catholic canon as defined at the Council of Trent in 1546, the Western Church was very attached to it, and it is found in many manuscripts of the Vulgate, or Latin Old Testament. It has no standing in the Greek Church, though the Armenians give it a semi-canonical status. 4. Translation from the New Revised Standard Version Bible with Apocrypha.

REFERENCES Bickerman, Elias. 1962. From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism. New York: Schocken. Bietenhard, H. 1953. “The Millennial Hope in the Early Church.” Scottish Journal of Theology 6 (1953): 12-30. Boyer, Paul. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Charles, R. H., trans. 1896. The Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Oxford: Clarendon. Cohen, Shaye J. D. 2006. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. id ed. Louisville: Westminster

John Knox. Collins, John J. 1984. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity. New York: Crossroad. -. 2010. The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 2d ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans. Crossan, John Dominic. 1992. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. New York: HarperCollins.

Ehrman, Bart D. 2001. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. New York: Oxford University Press. -, ed. and trans. 2003. The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Epstein, Isidore, ed. 1978. Soncino Babylon Talmud. 18 vols. New York: Soncino. Feldman, Louis, 1993. Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Festinger, Leon, Henry Reicken, and Stanley Schacter. 1956. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. New York: Harper and Row. Ford, J. Massyngberde. 1992. “Millennium.” In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, vol. 4: 832-35. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Gager, John. 1975. Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity. New York: Prentice Hall. Hengel, Martin. 2003. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period. 2 vols. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Newton, Isaac. 1733. Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. Public domain, E-book retrieved from www.gutenberg.org/files/16878/16878h/16878-h.htm. Accessed 15 April 2011. Oulton, J. E. L., and H. J. Lawlor, trans. 1932. Eusebius: The Ecclesiastical History. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rowley, H. H. 1944. The Relevance of Apocalyptic: A Study of Jewish and Christian Apocalypses from Daniel to Revelation. London: Lutterworth. Schweitzer, Albert. 1931. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, translated by William Montgomery. London: Adam & Charles Black. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1978. “Wisdom and Apocalyptic.” In Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity vol. 23, 67-87. LeidenE. J. Brill. Smith, Morton. 1988. Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament. Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International. Sparks, H. F. D., ed. 1984. The Apocryphal Old Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stone, Michael E. 1976. Scriptures, Sects, and Visions: A Profile of Judaism from Ezra to the Jewish Revolt. Philadelphia: Fortress. Tabor, James. 1989. “What the Bible Really Says about the Future.” In What the Bible Really Says, edited by Morton Smith and Joseph Hoffmann, 33-51. Amherst, N.Y.:

Prometheus. VanderKam, James C. 1996. “Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature.” In The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, edited by James C. VanderKam and William Adler, 33—101. Minneapolis: Fortress. VanderKam, James, and Peter Flint. 2002. The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity. New York: HarperCollins. Vermes, Geza, trans. 1997. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. 4th ed. New York: Penguin. Werner, Martin, 1957. The Formation of Christian Dogma: An Historical Study of Its Problem. New York. Harper & Brothers. Whiston, Joseph. 2003. The Complete Works of Josephus. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

CHAPTER 14

EARLY ISLAMIC AND CLASSICAL SUNNI AND SHITTE APOCALYPTIC MOVEMENTS DAVID COOK

apocalyptic beliefs are an outgrowth of the early development of tradition and the failure of the cataclysmic apocalypse described in the Qur’an (e.g., 54:1, 87:1-2, etc) to appear. Almost all the apocalyptic material in both Sunni and Shi‘ite Islam is related in the form of a hadith, a tradition, purporting to be from either the Prophet Muhammad, his cousin and son-in-law Ali b. Abi Talib, or one of their close companions. These hadith have the form of conversations in which Muhammad is asked about the signs of the Hour of Judgment, and gives some such formulation such as “the Hour will not arise until” the following events, usually of a horrifying or cataclysmic nature, will be fulfilled. Unlike the Christian and Jewish literary apocalypses of Late Antiquity, hadith are not literary documents, but atomistic and Muslim

random sayings that usually lack all context. Apocalyptic hadith are arranged for convenience sake into two basic groups: the Lesser Signs of the Hour and the Greater Signs of the Hour. The Lesser Signs are those dozens of preconditions that must be fulfilled prior to the appearance of the more obviously apocalyptic Greater Signs. These Lesser Signs can be political events, evidence of moral or social decay, economic disparity, natural catastrophes (volcanic eruptions, famines, plagues, locust), celestial spectacles (the appearance of comets, unusual conjunctions of stars, or a series of eclipses in a row), or other

268

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

random events. There are several hundred of them in total. The Lesser Signs are sufficiently general that they occur at almost any time in history and have a great deal of relevance for the appearance of apocalyptic or messianic movements because they are frequently used by instigators of these movements as proof that the end is near.

In contradistinction, the Greater Signs are those incontrovertibly apocalyptic events that herald the end. They include, in no particular order, the appearance of the Dajjal (the Muslim Antichrist), the return of Jesus to fight and kill him, the appearance of the Mahdi (the Sunni Muslim messianic figure), the appearance of the beast from the Earth (Qur’an 27:82), the rising of the sun from the west, the appear¬ ance of Gog and Magog (Qur’an 18:94,21:96), and the final destruction of the world. These events herald the Day of Judgment; however, Muslim apocalypses or more properly apocalyptic fragments do not take the reader all the way from the end of the world into the next. Most probably the cataclysmic scenery from the Qur’an is sufficient. The Qur’anic material is focused mostly on the graphic end of the world. Mountains move, the skies are rolled back, the moon is split, stars fall, and many other similar portents appear. In general, the sense that one gets from reading the Qur’an is that the portents of the end of the world are so blindingly obvious that the world has no future, no time line leading up to the apocalypse: “Do they, then, only expect that the Hour should come upon them suddenly? In fact, its signs have already come (Qur an 47:18, trans. Fakhry). Frequently observers are said to ask inside the text of the Qur’an when the Hour of Judgment will come: They ask you about the Hour, when will it strike. Say: “The knowledge thereof is with my Lord; none but He will disclose it at the right time. It will be fateful in the heavens and on earth and will not come upon you except suddenly.” They ask you, as though you know about it. Say: “The knowledge thereof is with Allah, but most people do not know.” (Qur’an 7:187, trans. Fakhry)

It is not difficult to understand why the early audience of Muhammad was curi¬ ous about the Hour. After all, nearly seven centuries had passed since the time of Jesus—seven being one of the key numbers of apocalypse—and the world of Late Antiquity was in the process of self-destruction. All during the career of Muhammad the two great empires of the day, the Byzantine (successor to the Roman Empire in the east, centered on Constantinople) and the Sasanian (Persian, centered on Ctesiphon, present-day Baghdad), were at war. Qur’an 30:1-2 reflects this reality saying, “The Greeks (literally Romans) have been vanquished in the nearest part of the land; but after being vanquished they shall vanquish... and the believers shall rejoice” (trans. Fakhry). The Byzantine Empire that had seemed to the Arabs to be the pillar of stability for centuries was overcome and reduced down just to the city of Constantinople itself. Even though the Byzantines did make a comeback in 628, this was just a brief interlude prior to the Muslim con¬ quest in the 630s and 640s.

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When we leave the apocalyptic framework of the Qur’an, the hadith literature becomes the most important source for apocalyptic prophecies. The apocalyptic scenarios after this speak of the wars between the newly Muslim Arabs and their most intractable opponents, the Byzantines. These wars usually took place in the region of northern Syria where the border between the two empires was located. For this reason, much of the apocalyptic landscape is Syrian—the Muslim control over this area was tenuous during the early period of Islam. The messianic figure is the most problematic one in classical Islam. Not only is there a sharp divide between the Sunni and Shi'ite messianic figures; there are also a large number of local messiahs, as well as claimants who hark back to tra¬ ditions older than Islam. In early Islam (before the sharp divide between Sunnism and Shicism) the figure of Jesus was probably the original messianic hero. However, possibly because of the polemics between Christianity and Islam, by the end of the seventh century messianic hopes began to be centered on the fig¬ ure of the Mahdi. Traditions about this figure apparently first developed in southern Iraq among proto-Shi‘ites, but quickly spread into most Islamic sects. The central tradition about the Mahdi is that “he will fill the earth with justice and righteousness just as it has been filled with injustice and unrighteousness” (Cook 2003,137-38). In his Sunni form the Mahdi appears from one of two alternative locations: Khurasan (today eastern Iran and Afghanistan) or the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Both of these Mahdi narratives have their basis in historical messianic movements—the one from Khurasan with the Abbasid dynasty (discussed below), while the one from Mecca and Medina with the failed messianic movement of Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya (d. 762) (see below). In general, the Sunni Mahdi will gather an army, and punish evil Arab rulers (usually the figure of the Sufyani, discussed below), and establish a messianic kingdom in Jerusalem. However, the millennial impulse in Sunni Islam is weak, and the messianic kingdom usually is said to last only five, seven or nine years. In some cases the Mahdi is said to establish a dynasty; in others he remains an isolated figure. Usually he continues with the conquests of the first Muslim century and conquers those areas that were too diffi¬ cult for the early Muslims (the Byzantines, the rest of Europe, Afghanistan, India, the Turks). The Shi‘ite Mahdi, who is also known as the Qa’im (the one who rises), is a considerably different figure. In Shi‘ite beliefs prior to 874 this title could be taken by any of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali. Many did take the title of Mahdi at one time or another and led the (usually) small, futile revolts that characterized early Shi‘ism. But the normative branch of Shi‘ism, called the Twelver Shi‘ites because of their belief in the position and role of twelve descendants of Muhammad, adheres to the Last Imam or the Mahdi, who disappeared and went into occultation in 874. He will reappear at the end of the world and establish the messianic kingdom, and inaugurate a dynasty that will rule for hundreds of years.

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There are many strains of apocalyptic and messianic practice in Islam. This chapter will examine several of the most popular and enduring that have influenced Muslim history. Side-by-side with the popular movements, there existed a whole body of apocalyptic and messianic literature with which the movements interacted.

Apocalyptic and Messianic Literature in Hadith and History Apocalyptic and messianic beliefs are backed up by a substantial literature. This lit¬ erature can take a number of forms. The first and most important for the larger Muslim community, both Sunni and Shi'ite, is the tradition (hadith) literature. Most of the prominent hadith collections in Sunni Islam were compiled during the ninth and tenth centuries, although some date earlier or later. Six collections in particular are known as canonical, of which the most important are those of al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875). Both of these collections, all of the other canonical col¬ lections and many of the less authoritative hadith compilations have sections devoted to apocalyptic traditions. These include sections on the signs of the Hour, the appear¬ ance of the Dajjal, the return of fesus to kill him, the appearance of Gog and Magog and other minor apocalyptic sequences. It is interesting to note, however, that most of the authoritative collections avoid detailed descriptions of the available traditions on the Mahdi and in general are weak on their accounts of the messianic age. Probably this fact is due to the politically explosive nature of these traditions. For the student of Muslim apocalyptic beliefs the most interesting books are those devoted specifically to apocalyptic or messianic topics. The earliest of these is the Kitab al-fitan (The Book of Tribulations) of Nuaym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844), who collected a great deal of the apocalyptic heritage of Syria. His book is unique in that it includes a wide range of traditions, mainly stemming from the north Syrian town of Hims (Madelung 1986a), which were not accepted by the canonical collections. These traditions enable us to see the background to the Muslim apocalyptic scenario described above, which is alluded to but not fleshed out in the accepted materials. Another early collector was the Iraqi Ibn al-Munadi (d. 947—48), whose book, Kitab al-malahim (The Book of Apocalyptic Wars), preserved an equally large number of noncanonical eastern Muslim traditions. Both of these books, however, remained on the fringes due to their problematic materials. The two most popular apocalyptic books that were ever published among Sunnis, those of al-Qurtubi (d. 1272) and Ibn Kathir (d. 1372-73), were both from the middle Islamic period. Al-Qurtubi, who lived in Muslim Spain witnessed the devastation of his homeland by the Spanish Christian reconquista as well as, from afar, the Mongol destruction of Baghdad (1258). For him, therefore, it was self-evident that the end of the world was near, and he included a lengthy description of the events that were to take place before that happened in his book al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawta wa-l-umur

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al-akhira (A Note on the Status of the Dead and Final Matters). His presentation has

been widely accepted among Sunni Muslims. A century later, Ibn Kathir, student of the famous iconoclast Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), produced as the final section to his world history, al-Bidaya wa-l-nihaya (The Beginning and the End) an epitome of all the important apocalyptic and mes¬ sianic traditions that he considered to be authentic. Following in the footsteps of a wide range of Muslim historians who had frequently speculated as to the length of the world’s duration in their works, Ibn Kathir apparently believed that the end was near. In his epitome he noted that despite the many traditions that indicate a short time span between the revelation of Islam and the end of the world (cf. Bashear 1993) that God had given the community a respite of five hundred years (Ibn Kathir, n.d.,i:25), apparently pointing to the idea that the end of the world would happen around the Islamic year 1000 (1591-92 c.e.). Although this calculation did not hold up, Ibn Kathir’s compilation is still considered to be normative by Sunnis. In the year 1492, about one hundred years before the thousand-year mark was due to be met, an unidentified man wrote to the famous Egyptian religious scholar Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505) saying that the Prophet Muhammad’s bones would not remain in their grave for more than a thousand years, and therefore the events of the end of the world were due to take place immediately. Al-Suyuti answered him in his al-Kashf ‘an mujawazat hadhihi al-umma al-alf (An Expose That This Community Will Pass 1,000 Years), and stated that God had given the community another respite of five hundred years, since not everyone had received a chance to repent of their sins (al-Suyuti, n.d., 2:86-9). Similar calculations and refutations of other calculations are strewn throughout the history books. Later apocalyptic literature has been mostly reactive to various cataclysmic events or designed to refute the claims of messianic pretenders. The most popular writer from this period was al-Barzanji (d. 1691), who wrote his al-Isha ‘a li-ashrat al-sa‘a {The Propagation of the Portents of the Hour) in response to the Jewish messianic movement of Shabbatai Zvi in 1665-66. Later writers such as Muhammad Anwarshah al-Kashmiri (d. 1933) wrote in opposition to the claims of Ghulam Ahmad (founder of the Ahmadi movement in India) to be the Mahdi and Jesus. The literary apocalyp¬ tic and messianic manifestation of Islam is quite large and has on a consistent basis throughout its history influenced and in some cases sparked active movements.

Messianism as Social Protest: The Early ShiTtes One of the basic problems for Islam is the fact that Muhammad left no obvious suc¬ cessor. While most of the early Muslim community accepted the first caliph Abu Bakr (r. 632-34) as Muhammad’s successor, there were many who could not because of the fact that he had no blood relationship with the Prophet. These people believed

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that the charismatic authority of Muhammad—although not his prophetic office— should and must devolve upon his genealogical descendants. However, there was a problem with this idea as well: Muhammad left no male progeny at his death, and only one of his four daughters bore male children who came to maturity. Arab cus¬ tom had not seen descent through a female line as significant, but it seems that the need to continue venerating the Prophet through his descendants was sufficiently strong to override that prejudice. Even within the lifetime of ‘Alib. Abi Talib (ruled as caliph 656-61), Muhammad’s son-in-law and the father of his two grandchildren al-Hasan and al-Husayn, certain extremist factions worshipped the Prophet’s family (AJI had one of his supporters burned for proclaiming him to be a manifestation of God). At first this veneration was diffuse, and included children of‘Ali not from Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter. The best example of this tendency was the messianic claim of Muhammad b. alHanafiyya, who was the first person in Islam to have been accorded the title of Mahdi in the 680s. But he himself did not make this claim; his supporters in Iraq made it on his behalf. As the veneration of Muhammad’s descendants spread, and especially after the rise of the ‘Abbasids (Sunni caliphs ruling between 747-1258 in the Central Middle East), who used Shi‘ite slogans to gain power, messianic claims were made by both the descendants of al-Hasan and al-Husayn. The descendants of al-Husayn had a very powerful point in their favor: their ancestor al-Husayn was murdered tragically by the Umayyads (the Syrian-based dynasty of the first century of Islam) at Karbala in southern Iraq. The Husaynids gained a huge level of prestige from this event, and most Shi'ites tended to support claimants from this branch of the ‘Aliid family. On the other hand, the Hasanids had no such history of sacrifice. By the middle of the eighth century they were restive in Medina—probably as a result of seeing the suc¬ cess of the ‘Abbasids—and proclaimed one of their own, Muhammad al-Nafs alZakiyya, to be the Mahdi. Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya had gained a large following throughout the Arabian Peninsula, both of scholars in Medina and Arab tribesmen in the surrounding regions. In 762 he revolted against the ‘Abbasids and proclaimed himself the Mahdi. However, because of the indefensibility of the oasis city of Medina the ‘Abbasids quickly crushed this revolt. The entire incident would be entirely unremarkable if it were not for the fact that the messianic traditions propagated by Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya became normative within Sunnism (ironically) as one of the two messi¬ anic narratives, the ‘Abbasids themselves having contributed the other (see below). Virtually all Shi‘ite uprisings during the first three centuries of Islam suffered the same fate as Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya. They were usually supported by a sig¬ nificant number of the religious leadership, used apocalyptic and messianic slogans, appealed to the emotional loyalty of the populace toward the Prophet Muhammad’s family, and failed to gather the necessary military support needed to overthrow the regime. Almost always the populace turned against the Shi‘ite claimants at some particular key moment, or remained passive when armed force was desperately needed. Always the claims of the family of Muhammad were tacitly recognized,

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almost always the force needed to make them good melted away in the face of oppo¬ sition. The one exception to this rule during the first three hundred years of Islam was the family of al-‘Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, which took the slogans of the Shi‘a and turned their emotive force into a mass movement.

Realized Messianism: The Abbasids During the early period of Islam, messianism was usually associated with the Prophet Muhammad’s family in the broadest sense. This meant that for most Muslims the family of Muhammad consisted of the descendants of his great-grand¬ father, Hashim. Most claimants to messianic titles had to come from this group. While Shi‘ites eventually managed to whittle down the number of possible claim¬ ants to just those immediate genealogical descendants of Muhammad, they did this only after the ‘Abbasid family had succeeded in pulling off a bait-and-switch opera¬ tion that used Shi‘ite slogans to come to power for the benefit of the descendants of al-Abbas, Muhammad’s uncle. Messianic claims played a major part in making this a reality. The ‘Abbasid family was not prominent in early Islam and played little part in the attempts of their cousins—either of the Hasanid or the Husaynid lines—to come to power. Instead, they focused their efforts on a distant location, the region of Khurasan, where many Arab tribesmen had settled and intermingled with the local Persian population. To this region they sent their agent Abu Muslim, who over the period of a number of years preached loyalty to “the agreed-upon one of the Family [of Muhammad].” This slogan, which was kept deliberately indistinct, proved to be attractive to many of the tribesmen, and Abu Muslim wove a web of clandestine operations throughout the province in support of the ‘Abbasid family. Many Shi‘ites and Shi‘ite sympathizers were taken in by this slogan and supported the ‘Abbasid revolution that began in 746 and continued for the following several years. Abu Muslim promoted a large number of messianic prophecies, and it is prob¬ ably due to his propaganda network that there is so much material on the Mahdi or the supporters of the Mahdi appearing from the east, from Khurasan. A typical tradition is the following: then the black banners will rise from the east, and they will kill a number of you the like of which has never been seen previously... when you see him [coming] swear allegiance to him, even if you have to crawl on the snow, for he is the caliph of God, the Mahdi. (Ibn Maja n.d., 2:1367, no. 4084)

This propaganda was directed against the ruling Umayyad dynasty in Syria (661-747), and sought to delegitimize its claim to authority. The ‘Abbasid armies advanced until they defeated the Umayyad armies in 747, and all of a sudden in Kufa, southern Iraq,

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they proclaimed Abu al- ‘Abbas al-Saffah caliph. All of the first seven of the ‘Abbasids— al-Saffah (749-54), al-Mansur (754-75), al-Mahdi (775-85), Musa al-Hadi (785-86), Harun al-Rashid (786-809), Muhammad al-Amin (809-13), and Abdallah alMa’mun (813-33)—took messianic titles. (Not all of these titles are easily understood, and some of them are associated with minor or local messianic figures; see Lewis 1968.) The message that this dynasty sought to convey was that the messianic era was realized under them. Gradually under al-Mansur and especially under al-Mahdi the dynasty moved away from its Shi'ite and revolutionary roots. One of the first things that al-Man¬ sur did was to murder Abu Muslim, who became an important messianic figure in his own right later in Persia, and he spent much of his time combating Shi'ites such as Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya. The dynasty for the most part—alMa’mun excepted—preached that the messianic rights devolved upon their ances¬ tor al-‘Abbas from the Prophet Muhammad and that they would give the caliphate over to Jesus when he appeared to kill the Dajjal at the end of time. By this tactic the ‘Abbasid family sought to create the impression that they would remain in power indefinitely. By the period of al-Mutawakkil (849-861) the ‘Abbasids were firmly Sunni, and although to a large extent they were deprived of power by their Turkish slave-soldiers during the middle of the ninth century, they continued to rule until the last of them was exterminated by the Mongols in 1258. Although their realized messianic phase was only a part of their five hundred years in power, it took them through the most rocky period of obtaining political and religious legitimacy. Although the Abbasids’ most deadly ideological enemies were obviously the Shi‘ites who supported the claims of the genealogical descendants of Muhammad— and the ‘Abbasids as a dynasty persecuted the family of Muhammad more ruth¬ lessly than did any other group in history—there were a wide range of other apocalyptic movements and messianic claimants available in the early Muslim period against whom the Abbasids also needed to beware. These were the tribal and local messiahs.

The Qahtani And The Sufyani: Local Traditions Messianism in Islam is both far broader than one sees in the strictly religious litera¬ ture and older than Islam. Thus it is not surprising that there are messianic claim¬ ants that are local or tribal. Prior to the rise of Islam the Arab tribes had been divided into northern and southern groups, although by the seventh century these group¬ ings had no geographic meaning. Culturally, the southern tribes were originally associated with the region of Yemen, while the northern tribes were associated with

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the desert cultures of northern Arabia. But because of migration (even prior to the conquests) the different groupings of tribes were to be found all over the peninsula. After the conquests, each tribe took with them their affiliation to either the north¬ ern or southern groupings, and often fought each other because of this rivalry. For the first two centuries of Islam whole provinces were torn apart because of the northern-southern division. (The Prophet Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh, was a northern tribe.) The oldest tribal messianic traditions are connected with the Qahtani, the messianic figure associated with the southern Yemeni tribes. He is described thus in the tradition: “a man from Qahtan will appear having pierced ears and [will rule] according to the manner of the Mahdi” (al-Suyuti n.d. 2:80). There are few classical examples of Qahtani claimants, but the messianic revolt of Juhayman al‘Utaybi in November 1979 (in the Muslim hijri year 1400), during which he led forces that seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and held it and the people trapped therein for three weeks before they were defeated in a bloody assault, was in the name of one Muhammad al-Qahtani (Kechichian 1990), who was killed in the battle. Beyond the tribal messianic figures there were those apocalyptic or messianic figures whose appeal was to a particular locality. The principal example of this ten¬ dency is the Sufyani in the region of Syria. The Sufyani stems from the family of Abu Sufyan, who was the most determined opponent of the Prophet Muhammad and led the Meccan pagans against him for six years (624-30). However, at the end of his life Abu Sufyan became a Muslim, and his son, Mu'awiya, became the fifth caliph (r. 661-80). Mu‘awiya came to prominence after his close relative ‘Uthman (r. 64456) was assassinated by a group of Muslim malcontents. Although his immediate successor Ali—the same man who was also the father of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandchildren—was not actually involved in the assassination, because of his will¬ ingness to pardon the assassins, Mu‘awiya was able to tarnish his reputation and ultimately cause his downfall, although ‘Ali was assassinated by another group, the Kharijites, in 661. (The Kharijites were a radical, egalitarian, puritanical sect of early Islam who opposed ‘Ali and Shi‘ism as a whole because of its focus on genealogical affiliation as a basis for rule.) For Shi‘ites, therefore, Mu‘awiya is an opponent of Islam, since he opposed the rights of Muhammad’s family to rule; if that were not enough, he was also the father of Yazid, under whose orders Husayn was killed at Karbala. But for the Muslims of Syria, the rule of Muawiya and Yazid, the family of Abu Sufyan, was a golden age and it was remembered as such in popular legend. Mu‘awiya was a brilliant and cultured ruler, and during his reign there was a continuation of the great conquests that brought tremendous wealth to the people of Syria. In general, Muawiya enjoyed close relations with the majority Christian population as well (his wife and a num¬ ber of close advisers were Christians), so he was remembered as a tolerant and broad-minded ruler. For all of these reasons, according to local Syrian apocalyptic narratives the figure of the Sufyani was supposed to appear to recreate this golden age. Shi‘ites, however, propagated numerous counter-traditions in which the Sufyani

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is presented as an evil and arbitrary ruler who hates Islam and slaughters large numbers of people, especially Muslims, without just cause. These counter-traditions had little effect on the historical appearances of Sufyanis in Syria. There are at least nine documented appearances of Sufyani claimants between 749 and 1413, all of them in the region of Syria. The first of them was apparently an actual descendant of the family of Abu Sufyan; concerning the other ones it is difficult to know. This figure, Ziyad b. Aballah b. Yazid b. Mu‘awiya, who revolted in 749 against the victorious Abbasids, clearly sought to focus dis¬ content with the new regime upon himself and called for rule to return to the descendants of Mu‘awiya (al-Baladhuri i960, 3:169-70). Later, in 754 the appear¬ ance of a comet heralded another Sufyani revolt, and one hundred years later a figure called Abu Harb al-Muburqa‘ (the veiled one) was hailed as the Sufyani in Syria: Abu Harb used to appear openly during the daytime and sit out, veiled, on the mountain in which he had taken refuge, and people would see him and come to him. He would exhort them and enjoin upon them good behavior and the prohibition of evil actions, and he would mention the central government and how it oppressed the people and would speak scathingly of it. He persisted in doing this habitually until a group of peasant cultivators from that region and also the villagers responded to his call. He used to assert that he was an Umayyad, with the result that those who responded to him said: “This man is the Sufyani!” When his adherents and followers from this class of people grew numerous, he summoned the members of the leading families and notables of the region. Out of these a good number of the leaders of the Yemenis [southern Arab tribes] responded to his call. (al-Tabari, trans. Bosworth 1991, 23: 203-4)

By the time of Abu Harb there was no way to prove one was a descendant of Muawiya anymore, so it was apparently sufficient that he was pious and known as an opponent of the Abbasids. Most of the other Sufyani appearances are very poorly documented, but the one in 1413 is interesting because the claimant made a major effort to fulfill the exact prophecies written in the books about the Sufyani. For example, this claim¬ ant, whose name was ‘Uthman, appeared in the region of Ajlun (today northern Jordan), which is exactly the region associated with the Sufyani in the traditions related in Nuaym b. Hammad’s Kitab al-fitan (from the ninth century). He took care to make sure that his appearance was in accord with the classical Sufyani and that the numbers of his followers were the same as those listed for the Sufyani. After a time this Sufyani claimant made a public proclamation of the foundation of a messianic state, and many were said to have responded to his call. However, the regime of the Mamluks, then ruling in Syria and Egypt, quickly suppressed this revolt, taking its leader captive and eventually killing him (Ibn Hajar n.d. 7:106-7). The Sufyani, like the Qahtani, never gained religious legitimacy; as we have seen even the figure of the Mahdi was dubious from the point of view of the strict hadith collectors. But there was one revivalist figure, at least, that has full Muslim legitimacy.

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Renewal and Religious Restoration One of the most prevalent traditions concerning religious revival is to be found in the early collection of Abu Da’ud al-Sijistani (d. 888-89): “God will send to this community [Muslims] at the turn of every century someone who will renew the religion for it” (Abu Da’ud 1988, 45:106-7, no. 4291). This tradition is the basis for the idea that there is (of in some cases needs to be) a renewer (mujaddid) of Islam every one hundred years, usually at the hundred-year mark of the hijri calendar, which dates from the Prophet Muhammad’s hijra or emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622 and is a purely lunar calendar. It is quite a remarkable idea, given the extreme abhorrence in Sunni Islam of anything connected to innovation (bida ), that the religion needs to be “renewed.” It is unclear from the tradition what form the renewal would take or what the authority of the renewer would be. In general the title of “renewer” was accorded in retrospect, with the exception of certain very egotistical scholars such as the great Sufi al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the Egyptian Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505), or the Indian Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624) who arrogated it to themselves. Nor is there any consensus as to who exactly is the renewer of a given century; the Arabic is ambiguous enough to support the idea that there might be multiple renewers. Other prominent renewers that have general acceptance are the Umayyad caliph ‘Umar II (717-20), who is usually seen as the one righteous member of that dynasty, and the great jurisprudent al-Shaf‘i (d. 820), the founder of one of the four Sunni rites of law. For the most part, indeed, the title of “renewer” was not given an extraordinary level of apocalyptic or messianic signifi¬ cance, since with the exception of ‘Umar II none of the people listed in the sources had or aspired to political rule (Landau-Tessaron 1989). But in later centuries, especially since the decline of Muslim power and the coming of European colonialists, the idea of renewal has acquired a certain amount of messianic or political significance. In those cases the “renewal” is seen as a renewal of Muslim power or domination either in a given area or in the world. During the century cycle of 1882 {hijri year 1300) and 1979 {hijri year 1400) prominent Muslim opponents of Western interests appeared, such as Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi in the Sudan, Ghulam Ahmad in British India, and then later in 1979 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (see also chapter 35 by Jeffrey T. Kenney, this volume). Because of the change in the circumstances of Islam an originally non-apocalyptic tradition has acquired during the recent past more of a messianic function.

Gunpowder Empires and Messianic Justice During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries five great Muslim empires came into prominence: the Ottomans in the Middle East and southeastern Europe, the Shi‘ite Safavids in Iran, the Shaybanids in Central Asia, the Sa‘dids in Morocco,

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and the Mughals in India. All of these “gunpowder” empires—called this because the foundation of their domination over such vast territories was the use of gun¬ powder—used messianic themes in different ways to legitimize their rule. Muslim apocalyptic and messianic traditions and beliefs are not merely destructive but, as in the case of the Abbasids and the Fatimids, can be used to legitimize dynasties. The Ottomans are the best case in point. Starting as a warrior band in the thir¬ teenth century, by the fourteenth and especially the fifteenth centuries the Ottomans had come to dominate the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in Anatolia and southeastern Europe. During a remarkable series of conquests in the sixteenth cen¬ tury the Ottomans came to rule most of the Middle East, which they continued to do until World War I. Apparently many of the early Ottoman rulers used the apoca¬ lyptic aspect of jihad to justify their rule—although it remains an open question as to what extent this should be taken seriously—but later rulers especially starting with Sulayman the Magnificent (or the Law Giver) (1520-66) used realized messianism as the basis for their rule. Sulayman, through the giving of and establishment of law and the construction of monumental buildings (in Constantinople and through¬ out the close environs), sought to create the sense that the ideal or perfect time had come (Fleischer 1990). Flowever, Sulayman never took deliberate messianic titles as had the Abbasids and the Fatimids before him. Later Ottomans continued to follow in his footsteps, although with less perfect results. Both the Sa‘dids and the Shaybanids in Morocco and Central Asia used messi¬ anic themes of dynasty to legitimize their rule. The Sa'dids claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad, while the Shaybanids claimed descent from Ghenghis Khan and the Mongol royal family, though they also emphasized their propagation of and defense of Islam among the Turks. Both dynasties at opposite ends of the Muslim world sought to realize grander visions of expansion. On a smaller scale so did the great Ethiopian conqueror Ahmad Gran, who sought to conquer the Ethiopian highlands for Muslims during the 1530s and 1540s and was inspired by apocalyptic motifs (Martin 1974.) The Safavid dynasty in Iran was truly an apocalyptic dynasty from the begin¬ ning. Shah Isma'il I (r. 1501-24), the founder of the dynasty, made messianic claims (as well as possibly even of divinity). Prior to the appearance of the Safavids Iran had been majority Sunni, but through the use of a charismatic blend of Sufism and Shi‘ism, in some cases making extreme claims about the authority of the dynasty, the Safavids managed to convert most of the country by the middle of the seven¬ teenth century. A key moment for the dynasty happened under the young Shah Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) at the turn of the Islamic millennium in 1591-92, when he suppressed the hitherto powerful Kizilbash group, which had been the backbone of messianic beliefs and the most fervent supporters of the Safavids. Thereafter, like the Ottomans, the Safavids moved away from the use of apocalyptic and messianic themes. In India, the foundation of the Mughal dynasty was not accompanied by any apocalyptic ideals. Babur (r. 1526-30), the founder of the dynasty, was a refugee

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from Central Asia, who managed to gain control over most of northern India, and ruled the mixed population of Hindus and Muslims through the Turkish military aristocracy. However, his descendants, especially the great Akbar (r. 1558-1605), either used messianic themes of justice or had to react to mass movements that were messianic in nature. Given the fact that Akbar, who was ecumenical enough to have actually founded his own belief system (called the Din-i ilahi, God’s Religion), was ruling as the Muslim millennium approached, it is not surprising that there were those who thought him to be the Mahdi, though the messianic title they gave to him was sahib al-zaman (lord of time). In this year [1581] low and mean fellows, who pretended to be learned, but in reality were fools, collected evidence that his Majesty was the Sahib al-zaman, who would remove all the differences of opinion among the seventy-two sects of Islam and the Hindus. Sharif brought proofs from the writings of Mahmud of Basakhwan that he had said that in the year 990 [1582] a certain person would abolish lies, and how he has specified all sorts of interpretations of the expression “professor of the true religion,” which came to the sum-total of 990. And Khawaja Mowlana of Shiraz, the heretic of Jafrdan, came with a pamphlet by some of the Sharifs [rulers] of Mecca, in which a tradition was quoted to the effect that the earth would exist for 7,000 years, and as that time was now over, the promised appearance of the Mahdi would immediately take place. The Moulana also brought a pamphlet written by himself on the subject.... All of this made the Emperor the more inclined to claim the dignity of a prophet, perhaps I should say, the dignity of something else. (Badaouni 1973, 2:295) The “something else” to which the hostile historian Badaouni refers in the last sen¬ tence is the fact that most probably Akbar entertained claims of divinity. This selec¬ tion demonstrates the numerous different ways in which an apocalyptic moment can be triggered: there was strong feeling that the hijri year 1000 (1591-92) must mean something, there were gematrical calculations from Mahmud of Basakhwan, there were chronological proofs based upon the seven-thousand-year “world-week” (in which Muhammad was supposedly sent at the year 6000 from creation and therefore the world would come to an end at the year 1000 hijri), and there was already a strong feeling of Mahdism in India. This sense of Mahdism was cultivated by the Mahdawi movement, which had been propagated already by Sayyid Muhammad Jaunpuri, who had proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi while on the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca in the hijri year 901 (1496). Later on Jaunpuri proclaimed himself again in Gujarat, India, and gained many followers. Eventually he wandered to Kandahar in Afghanistan, and then still farther, where he died in 1505. However, one of his celebrated followers, Mustafa Gujarati, actually debated before Akbar and no doubt aided in spreading the teach¬ ings of the Mahdawi movement, which is still present in India (Qamaruddin 1985; MacLean 2000). The imperialist aspect of Muslim messianism was strong and useful for the rulers of powerful dynasties, but messianism at the popular level was equally present and sometimes served to drive the rulers to use further messianic themes themselves.

280

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Anticolonial Protests and Local Mahdis As Muslim states began to be subdued by European conquerors during the eigh¬ teenth and nineteenth centuries, it was only natural that apocalyptic and messianic movements would form. A number of these movements were in fact purificationist in nature, such as that of Shehu Usaman Dan Fodio in (what is today) northern Nigeria. Dan Fodio wrote a large number of apocalyptic and messianic tracts, but insisted that he was not the Mahdi and refuted any attempts to give him an apoca¬ lyptic title. But others were not so coy, especially when fighting European infidels. The great Indian Mutiny of 1857, which spread to Hindus as well as Muslims, had a wide range of causes contributing to its popularity in northern India and had an apoca¬ lyptic aspect. One of the popular prophecies circulated at the time called for a mes¬ sianic figure who would resurrect the glories of the Mughal dynasty: Then the Nazarenes [Christians] will take the whole of Hindustan; They will reign one hundred years. There will be great oppression in this world in their reign. For their destruction there will be a King in the West, This king will proclaim a war against the Nazarenes, and in the war a great many people will be killed. The King of the West will be victorious by the force of the sword of jihad. And the followers of Christ will be defeated. Islam will prevail for forty years. (Quraishi 1996, 89)

Although the Indian Mutiny ultimately failed to bring in any identifiable Muslim messianic figure it is significant that the participants used this element of propa¬ ganda to gain followers. They were not the only ones. In Algeria, for example, where the French starting in 1830 had been trying to eliminate local Muslim opposition to their conquest of this country, the most determined foe of the French was Abd al-Qadir (usually written Abd al-Kader), who fought them to a standstill between 1832 and 1847, when he surrendered. However, his surrender did not mean the end of resistance to French rule and there were a number of revolts in 1849,1858, i860, and 1879 that can be clas¬ sified as apocalyptic (von Sivers 1973). Most of these revolts were sparked by indi¬ viduals outside the religious and political spectrum, and usually inspired by visions or other supernatural events, and by an overriding resentment at the injustice of French rule. Elsewhere in Africa many anticolonial movements were led by Mahdis or had messianic themes. The best known of all is the Mahdi movement of the Sudan (1882-98), which succeeded in founding a state based in Khartoum for almost thir¬ teen years, since Khartoum was conquered in 1885. As in other cases, the leader of the Sudanese movement, Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdiwas, came from outside the elite and gamed his followers through a series of unexpected victories culminating

ISLAMIC APOCALYPTIC MOVEMENTS

28l

in the taking of Khartoum. Ironically, the Mahdi himself died shortly after this vic¬ tory and left his state to his caliph, ‘Abdullahi. When the British conquered northern Nigeria in 1897 they encountered opposi¬ tion from the states set up by the successors of Shehu Usaman Dan Fodio, who all acknowledged the overlordship of the caliphate of Sokoto. By 1905 this opposition was no longer from the aristocracies descended from Dan Fodio’s relatives, but was on a local, popular level. Many of the Muslims in the Sokoto caliphate had been disgusted with the passive attitude of the elites and had emigrated to French terri¬ tory to the north. However, eventually this proved to be no refuge, since the French were also Christians and did not allow the Muslims to implement the laws of Islam in their own way. Consequently in 1905 a blind religious leader Saybu dan Makafo proclaimed jihad, and named a leader Malam Maikaho, who already the year previ¬ ously had declared himself to be the Mahdi. Although Maikaho died shortly after the j ihad began, his son ‘Isa (Jesus) continued the struggle and other figures through¬ out the area proclaimed themselves to be the Mahdi as well. By the end of 1906 most of the primary figures in this movement were dead and the movement had disinte¬ grated (Lovejoy and Hogendorn 1990). All of the protest Mahdi movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were initiated by charismatic individuals from outside the normal Muslim elites, who took it upon themselves to defend Islam or to try and establish an ideal messianic state. The number of movements in this category is quite large and only a tiny selec¬ tion of them have been discussed in this section. Their widespread activities indicate how deeply the doctrine of messianism has influenced Islam at a popular level.

Conclusion The apocalyptic and messianic heritage of Islam, in both its Sunni and Shi‘ite ver¬ sions is considerable. This heritage is represented by both religious and historical literary works as well as by the movements of would-be prophets, Mahdis, Sufyanis, and a wide range of other claimants to various different titles. Many of the promi¬ nent and lesser-known dynasties and rulers in Islam have in fact legitimized their rule by using messianic themes after having achieved power through apocalyptic movements. When one considers the number of failed Mahdis throughout the Muslim world—those attested run into the hundreds—it is easy to see the broad popularity of the title and the ideal of justice that stands behind it. One assumes that Mahdis and other messianic leaders listed in the sources are only the tip of the iceberg, and that in actuality there were on a local scale a great number who did not make it into the history books. However, the relationship of the religious elite of Islam toward the apocalyptic and messianic traditions and movements is problematic. On the one hand, this elite has in fact preserved the materials concerning the Mahdi, and in a number of cases

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has either supported or even participated in apocalyptic or messianic uprisings. But given the conservative nature of the religious elite it is not surprising to find that the figure of the Mahdi is seen as a problem, and that they might not want the messianic age to appear. The reasons for that might be some hesitation as to the religious authority of the Mahdi—no Muslim wants a figure that is going to call into ques¬ tion the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood—and the question about the end of the possibility of repentance that proximity of the apocalypse seems to imply. Even with these problems it is easy to see the popularity of the materials and the universality of the sentiments they proclaim. Issues such as justice, plenty, universal peace, and goodwill between humanity and even between species are common throughout the Muslim messianic literature.

REFERENCES Abu Da’ud. 1988. Sunan. 4 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Jil. Badaouni, ‘Abd al-Qadir. 1973. Muntakhab al-tawaikh. Translated by G. Ranking. 3 vols. Reprint. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Al-Baladhuri. i960. Ansab al-ashraf Ed. Al-Duri. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Bashear, Suliman. 1993. “Muslim Apocalypses.” Israel Oriental Studies 13: 75-99. Al-Barzanji. 1995. al-Isha‘a li-ashrat al-sa‘a. Beirut: Dar al-Hijra. Bosworth, C. E., trans. 1991. The History of al-Tabari. Vol. 23. Storm and Stress along the Northern Frontiers of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cook, David. 2003. Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic. Princeton, N.J.: Darwin. Fakhry, Majid, trans. 1997. The Qur’an: A Modern English Version. London: Garnett. Fleischer, Cornell. 1990. “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Suleyman.” In Suleyman the Magnificent and His Times, edited by Gilles Veinstein, 59-77. Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. N.d. Inba al-ghumrfi anba al-‘umr. 8 vols. Hyderabad: Dar al-Ma‘arif al-‘Uthmaniyya. Ibn Kathir. N.d. Kitab al-fitan wa-l-malahim. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Maktab al-Thaqafi. Ibn Maja. N.d. Sunan, 2 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr. Ibn al-Munadi. 1998. Kitab al-malahim. Qumm: Dar al-Sira. Al-Kashmiri, Muhammad Anwarshah. 2005. al-Tasrih li-ma tawatara bi-nuzul al-masih. Beirut: Dar al-Basha’ir al-Islamiyya. Kechichian, Joseph. 1990. “Islamic Revivalism and Change in Saudi Arabia.” Muslim World 70, no. 1:1-16. Landau-Tessaron, Ella. 1989. Cyclical Reform: A Study of the Mujaddid Tradition.” Studia Islamica 70: 79-113. Lewis, Bernard. 1968. “The Regnal Titles of the First Abbasid Caliphs.” In Dr. M. Zakir Husain Presentation Volume, 13-22. New Delhi: Matba‘Jami‘a. Lovejoy, Paul, and J. S. Hogendorn. 1990. “Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate.” Journal of African History 31: 217-44.

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MacLean, Derryl N. 2000. “La sociologie de l’engagement politique: le Mahdawiya indien et l’Etat.” In Special Issue: Mahdisme et millenarisme en Islam, edited by Mercedes Garcia-Arenal. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Mediterran.ee 91-94: 239-56. Madelung, Wilferd. 1986a. “Apocalyptic Prophecies in Hims in the Umayyad Age.” Journal of Semitic Studies 31, no. 2:141-85. -. 1986b. “The Sufyani between Tradition and History.” Studia Islamica 63: 5-48. Martin, E. G. 1974. “Mahdism and Holy Wars in Ethiopia before 1600.” Proceedings of the Seminar on Arabian Studies 4:106-17. Nu‘aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi. 1993, Kitab al-fitan. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr. Qamaruddin. 1985. The Mahdawi Movement in India. Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli. Quraishi, Salim al-Din, ed. 1996. Cry for Freedom: Proclamations of Muslim Revolutionaries of 1857. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel. Al-Qurtubi. N.d. al-Tadhkirafi ahwal al-mawta wa-l-umur al-akhira. Cairo: Dar al-Zahid. Al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Din. N.d. al-Hawi li-l-fatawa. 2 vols. Beirut: Dar-al-Fikr. von Sivers, Peter. 1973. “The Realm of Justice: Apocalyptic Revolts in Algeria (1849-1879).” Humaniora Islamica 1: 47-60.

CHAPTER 15

EUROPEAN MILLENNIALISM REBECCA MOORE

Attempting to summarize twelve hundred years of millennial thought in an area

that encompasses the British Isles, the European continent, the Mediterranean basin, and Southwest Asia presents a number of challenges. First, the sheer amount of time covered, in which three or four historical periods emerge—medieval (early, high, and late Middle Ages), Reformation-Renaissance, and early modern—defies easy generalization. Major paradigm shifts occurred within these periods, including the expansion of Islam from the seventh century forward and the Christian Reformations of the sixteenth century. Second, great economic and social changes, such as depopulation due to plague in the fourteenth century and the rise of guilds and capitalism in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods, transformed societies in multifarious ways. Third, the large geographical regions involved are topographically, economically, religiously, and politically diverse. Fourth, these his¬ torical, geographical, and economic frameworks contained the interactions of the three Western monotheisms. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam exchanged theologi¬ cal concepts, reinforced or challenged existing presuppositions, and influenced each other, especially in the area of millenarian thinking. Despite these daunting challenges and the complexity of issues, groups, and events found in this broad sweep through time and space, it is possible to identify three recurring themes: sacred time, sacred geography, and sacred commonwealth. Sacred time refers to the awareness of the importance of dates and millennial time and explains the significance specific years have in a variety of movements. The division of history into sacred eras also suggests the significance of sacred time. Sacred geography points to the centrality of certain religious landmarks, most importantly Mount Zion and Jerusalem, the latter of which looms large as a holy

EUROPEAN MILLENNIALISM

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site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Finally, sacred commonwealth indicates the attempts to establish millennial kingdoms in the here and now. Using these three categories—sacred time, sacred geography, and sacred com¬ monwealth—this essay considers the varieties of millennialism that occurred in Europe and Southwest Asia for more than a millennium. Scholarship over the last generation justifies this approach, making it appropriate, and even necessary, to con¬ sider millennialism an international phenomenon both diachronically, across large swaths of time, and synchronically, across multiple cultures and communities. Although this essay assumes some familiarity with the concept of millennial¬ ism, a few definitions nonetheless seem appropriate. Millennialism grew out of the Christian expectation of the thousand-year reign of Jesus before the final battle with Satan (Rev. 20:4-6), but the term now embraces a variety of movements— both past and present—in which members expect a dramatic reversal of the status quo. Millennialism “views time as a linear process which leads to a final future” that is imminent, earthly, collective, and messianic (Talmon 1962, 130 and passim). Millennialists are concerned about human suffering and justice, and thus millen¬ nialism is inevitably political and frequently subversive. Richard Landes distin¬ guishes two different approaches to millennialism: a hierarchical, top-down style; and a “demotic,” bottom-up style (2006,8) Catherine Wessinger identifies two types of millennial movements: progressive millennialism characterized by a slow but steady progression toward Gods reign on Earth; and catastrophic millennialism that expects or promotes a violent and cataclysmic upset (2000,16-17). Messianism is the expectation that a savior figure will lead the people into a millennial kingdom or rule over it. The messiah may be worldly or otherworldly and may serve as a mili¬ tary, political, or religious leader. We can find all of these examples and more in the European millennial movements considered in this essay.

Background Early Jews and Christians found the Bible replete with messages of hope that times of exile and oppression would end. Third Isaiah (chapters 56-66) describes the res¬ toration of Jerusalem and the vindication of the nation of Israel (Isa. 62). The prophet Zechariah speaks of God’s return to Zion, with the streets full of children playing (Zech. 8:1-8, 20-23). Jews and Christians alike turned to the book of Daniel, which presents heavenly visions, identifies the archangel Michael as savior, and suggests a timeframe for redemption (Dan. 7:25, 8:14, 9:24-27,12:7,12). Christians focused on the New Testament, however, with its apocalyptic imagery and timeframe. Paul’s let¬ ters anticipate Jesus Christ’s imminent return, while Revelation’s message of ultimate deliverance from evil is filled with blood and battles: “And the wine press was trod¬ den outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle” (Rev. 14:20). This was a trope repeated in later Jewish and Christian literature.

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Despite the widespread prevalence of apocalyptic and messianic thought, early Judaism and Christianity became firmly amillennial by the fifth century

c.e.

The

compilers of the Mishna, and later the Gemara (together forming the Talmuds of Babylonia and the Land of Israel), created the means by which Jews could live with¬ out a temple in Jerusalem, yet maintain an ongoing relationship with God. While God would redeem Israel, “messianic times and the fulfillment of biblical prophecy were postponed to an unspecified, almost theoretical future,” according to Yaakov Ariel (see chapter 34 in this volume). Nevertheless, the ultimate restoration of Israel as a people, with their spiritual and literal capital on the holy mountain of Zion, remained a hope for Jews living in Diaspora. Things were not much different on the Christian side. Repeated outbreaks of mil¬ lennial fever occurred in the century following Jesus’s death. The eschatological mar¬ riage of church and state, however, so eagerly welcomed by Eusebius in his praise of the Emperor Constantine (r. 306-37), had theologically disastrous consequences with the sack of Rome in 410. Consequently, Augustine of Hippo (354-430) argued that the millennial kingdom existed in the present Church, an earthly institution that could never achieve the perfection of the city of God. He chastised those who would read the book of Revelation “carnally,” or literally, as describing current events, and advocated a spiritual interpretation that softened the anti-imperial message contained in it. Islam also seemed to move beyond the apocalyptic battles of the Prophet Muhammad into a kind of amillennialism punctuated by what has been called “real¬ ized messianism” or “political apocalypticism” (Arjomand 2003, 383, 392). These terms refer to the Islamic triumphalism born of successful empire-building, clearly evidence of God s plan for human salvation. By the end of the seventh century, how¬ ever, an apocalyptic figure called al-Mahdi emerged in Islamic tradition. The Mahdi, or “rightly guided one,” was expected to restore “true religion” and provide redress of injustices. While the earliest Mahdi was Jesus, “the one who is to usher in the messi¬ anic kingdom (Cook 2005,83), Mahdist claimants appeared throughout the period discussed in this essay, and the early caliphs were written into subsequent legends as messianic figures (Cook 2002,38—39)- Islam was the heir to a vast apocalyptic tradi¬ tion handed down from the classical world ... [yet] the transfer was a two-way street” (Cook 2002,2-3). Christians responded to Islam in their contemporary apocalypses (Hoyland 1997), and Jews incorporated Muslim themes into their apocalyptic litera¬ ture and expectations (Wasserstrom 1995). (For a comprehensive treatment of early and classical Muslim millennialism see chapter 14 by David Cook, this volume.)

Sacred Time Jews, Christians, and Muslims adopted a time frame that was used for centuries by those anticipating the End of Days. Extrapolating from the six days of creation in the Bible, rabbis and theologians calculated a series of three ages totaling six thousand

EUROPEAN MILLENNIALISM

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years—plus a thousand-year sabbatical age—since a thousand years in God’s sight are but a day (Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8). The ages of history, especially the six-thousandyear figure, became important as Jews and Christians attempted to predict the com¬ ing of the messiah and the return of Jesus. Muslims also accepted the six-thousand-year scheme, since “a day for your Lord is like 1,000 years according to what you count” (Qur’an 22:47). Calculations about the duration of the world appear in almost every serious Islamic world history. We can therefore identify many occasions in which millennial activity accompanied specific dates or historical events, which seemed tied to a sacred time. Landes notes the importance of chronography for the development of apoca¬ lyptic and millennialist movements around the year 1000. He distinguishes chiliasm—which he sees as referring to the thousand-year reign of peace, justice, and harmony—from millennialism—which he ties to date-setting (2000b, 101). Far from being amillennial (in Landes’s usage), the Middle Ages were full of move¬ ments driven by specific dates and apocalyptic time frames, if the numerous texts expressing clerical concern about “false prophets, false christs, judaizers, and delirantes” (2000b, 106) are accurate indicators. Landes links repeated attempts to calculate the sabbatical year or era to belief in the six-thousand-year age of the world. Theologians and chronographers kept pushing the date for the turn of the millennium forward in an effort to delay the fervent millennialism of those antici¬ pating Christ’s imminent arrival, shifting the eschatological horizon accordingly. “The pattern appears at three key junctures: the approach of the first year 6000 in a.d.

500; the approach of the second year 6000 in a.d. 801; and the approach of a.d.

1000” (2000b, 111). As evidence, Landes points to the delirantes of 493 and 496; the excitement with which Charlemagne was crowned in 800; the surge in pilgrimages, the collection of relics, and the rise in historical calculations that preceded the year 1000; and the popular peace assemblies surrounding the millennial anniversary of Christ’s passion in 1032 and 1033. The years 1000,1032, and 1033 differed from the previous dates, however, being based on the Incarnation, or anno domini devised by Dionysius Exiguus in 525, rather than on the six-thousand-year calendar of world history. Both date and prophecy converged when Charlemagne became the first Roman Emperor in the West in three centuries. The Pseudo-Methodius, a prophetic work appearing in the seventh century in response to the rise of Islam, predicted that a Last Emperor would establish a holy kingdom before the advent of Christ. Although the emperor was supposed to come from Byzantium in the east, Charlemagne per¬ fectly captured the qualities of “heroic champion of Christ [and] tireless defender of Christendom against the armed might of Islam” (Cohn 1970,72). Myths and leg¬ ends surrounded Charles I: some said he never died but was merely sleeping, to rise again in future; others said that he led a crusade to Jerusalem and ousted the Muslims, constructing along the way the roads on which subsequent crusaders trav¬ eled to the Holy Land. Six centuries later, Charles VIII of France (r. 1483-98) was seen as a second Charlemagne, the Last Emperor, who would reform the Church and conquer the

288

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Islamic world by converting Muslims to Christianity (Sharot 1980, 405). Millennial expectations soared in Italy, especially in Savonarola’s Florence (see below) prior to Charles’s invasion of Italy in 1494. Jews saw Charles, who had evicted the pope and his cardinals from Rome, as presaging a new era, and an unknown Jewish prophet interpreted the emperor’s entry into Naples as a sign of the messiah’s impending arrival. “In a somewhat confused fashion he calculated that 1490 had been the begin¬ ning of the period of sufferings, that this period would end in 1495, and that deliver¬ ance would finally materialise in 1503” (Sharot 1980, 405-6). Another important date, 1260, surfaced as the time when Antichrist would appear. Although the word antichrist appears only in the letters of John in the New Testament (1 John 2:18, 22, 4:1-3; 2 John 7), references to a “lawless one” (2 Thess. 2:1-12) and to false prophets (Mark 13:21-22; Matt. 24:23-24; Rev. 19:20) led subse¬ quent Christians to understand this figure as the embodiment of evil and as a sign of the Endtime. Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202), a Calabrian abbot of the Order of S. Giovanni de Fiore, had come up with the number 1260 by multiplying the num¬ ber of generations (forty-two, based on the genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew, 1:1-17) by thirty, the length of a generation. Although he did not commit himself to the year 1260, but merely to the number—stressing the uncertainty of Last Things— his followers applied the formula to the Incarnation, and came up with a specific time frame (Reeves 1969,41,48). Rumors of Islamic expansion and heathen hordes pouring in through the Caucasus circulated and gave rise to a movement of Flagellants, clearly tied to Joachimism. Believed to have originated in Perugia without benefit of clergy, the Flagellants spread to Provence, Germany, Spain, and beyond. In addition to practic¬ ing penance—in processions, flagellation, and devotions—the Flagellants engaged in religious reform and reconciliation (Reeves 1969, 54). Amid famine, plague, and war, the Italian Flagellants awaited the dawn of an “age in which all men would live in peace, observing voluntary poverty, rapt in contemplative bliss” (Cohn 1970,129). The movement changed as it spread across the Alps, with those in Italy and south¬ ern France remaining orthodox, while those in Germany becoming heretical and suppressed. Flagellant movements materialized again with the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1348-49, with processions appearing as the plague spread, in order to avert the divine chastisement due a sinful humanity (Cohn 1970,131-32). Joachim’s philosophy of history would ultimately prove more influential on medieval millennialism than his reckoning of dates (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume). Marjorie Reeves notes the confluence of twos—two testa¬ ments, two genealogies (Matthew and Luke), two peoples (Jews and Gentiles)— with sets of threes—a Trinity comprised of Two (Father and Son) from which the Spirit proceeds, three world ages, and so on (1969,18-19). Joachim described three world ages that matched the Trinity: one corresponding with the Father, the era from Adam to Christ; one corresponding with the Son, the time from King Josiah to the present; and one corresponding to the Spirit, running from St. Benedict to the future. These three ages also related to types of people, with the last age belong¬ ing to the “perfect men,” comprising new orders of monks.

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These three states, or status, were what eventually attracted the attention of the new mendicant orders—the Franciscans and the Dominicans—and then drew the concern of the papacy and ecclesiastical Christendom. The first outbreak of what was later termed Joachimism occurred in the mid-thirteenth century, when a Franciscan, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, publicly proclaimed the age of the Holy Spirit. Gerard asserted that the Old and New Testaments had passed away, and that a new eternal gospel existed in the words of Joachim—a view that the abbot himself would have abhorred (Reeves 1976,33-34). Pope Alexander IV condemned Gerard’s writings in 1255, and the Council of Arles denounced Joachim’s “pernicious doc¬ trine” (posthumously) in 1263. Joachim’s historical outlook was dangerous and sub¬ versive because it was used to challenge the wealth and power of the Church. By the end of the thirteenth century, the spiritual Franciscans, who opposed settling into monasteries with libraries and buildings, saw their founder, St. Francis, as a second Christ. They unsuccessfully argued against the conventuals with the conviction that they were right because history was on their side (Reeves 1969,175, 209). Once the conflict was resolved in favor of the conventual wing of the order, a number of spiri¬ tual Franciscans, influenced by Joachimist thought, formed into groups called Fraticelli. Bitterly opposed to the papacy in the mid- to late fourteenth century, they separated themselves from an impure Church and moved throughout Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula. Their ideas were heretical: they preached a dualistic and pantheistic doctrine. Their lifestyle was extreme: they fanatically defended absolute poverty (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume). One final note on the influence of Joachim: The rise of the Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250), the grandson of Frederick I (Barbarossa, c. 1123-90), coincided with expectations concerning the year 1260. Like Charlemagne before him, Frederick II came to be seen as the Emperor of the Last Days, the precursor to the third age of the Spirit. Emperor of the territories of Germany, Burgundy, and most of Italy, Frederick went on a crusade in 1229, negotiated the return of Jerusalem, and was crowned king of the city. Though some Joachites saw him as a messiah, others saw Frederick as the Antichrist, especially in Italy, for his opposition to the pope and his persecution of the Church. Even after Frederick II died, legends of his resurrection and return circulated. Messianic hopes and sacred arithmetic also appeared within Judaism through¬ out this same time. We can see this clearly in arguments the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1138-1204) made against such calculations. His Mishne Torah presents his views on the messiah, in which he cites the Talmud as rejecting efforts to compute the eschaton: “[May] the spirit of those who calculate the ‘ends’ expire” (b. Sank. 97b, in Lenowitz 1998, 66). Nevertheless, “calculating the date of the coming messiah becomes a more popular activity soon after Maimonides’s opinion becomes known, and he himself takes part” (66). The year 1096 had earlier been identified as the “Year of Redemption,” although it proved to be the year of slaughter in which crusaders en route to the Holy Land massacred Jews living in the Rhine River Valley. Kabbalistic speculation fueled sacred mathematics, or gematria, “the process of interchanging words whose letters have the same numerical value” (Idel 2003,359).

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The Tiqqunei Zohar provided calculations for dating the End of Days (Idel 1998, 126). The expulsion from Spain in 1492 caused Jews to reflect upon that experience in light of their hopes for redemption and the coming of the messiah, and millen¬ nial expectations were high for the next thirty years. Rabbi Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi (1460-1532), a Kabbalist who left Spain for Jerusalem after the expulsion, “proved that the travails of redemption had already begun in 1492 and would end in full glory in 1531” (Scholem 1971, 42), Using the Bible, the Talmud, and a touch of astrology, another Spanish exile, Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508), “predicted that the process of redemption would begin in 1503, to be completed by 1531” (Sharot 1980,398). The last half of the sixteenth century saw a wave of messianic computations. The gematria, or numerological exegesis, of Genesis 49:10—“The staff shall not depart from Yehuda, nor the scepter from between his feet, until Shiloh come”— produced a number that pointed to 5335 in the Jewish calendar, which equaled 1575 c.e.

(Idel 1998,158). The numerical value of the Hebrew word mashiyah, 358, which

was tallied with the Jewish year 5358 led to speculations about the year 1598: “In the year of Messiah, namely in the year whose secret is 358 of the sixth millennium, which is the year Shanah, then the Messiah will arrive” (anonymous manuscript, in Idel 1998,159). Another Jewish equation was the calculation of the significance of the year 1648—which corresponded to the Jewish calendar year 5408—in which the Messiah would arrive (Lenowitz 1998,160). Muslims also looked to the stars, and to specific dates and events, as an indica¬ tion of the Endtime. Despite the Qur’anic prohibition on computing the End, the hadith are full of speculations, as are Muslim apocalypses. A civil war that occurred in 809-13 took place close to the year 200 of the hijra calendar (815-16) and raised apocalyptic expectations (Cook 2002,45). “Political astrology”—reading the stars to gauge the hour of the End—seemed to predict the rise of the Isma‘ili movement and the establishment of the Fatimid state for the Mahdi of North Africa in 909 (Arjomand 2003, 400). The capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 was interpreted to presage the appearance of the Mahdi (Goldish 2004,34-36). Finally, as the millennial year of Islam (1591-92) approached, political disorder rocked Istanbul, rebellions flared in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and apocalyptic expectations were great (Fleischer 1986,133-42; see also chapter 14 by David Cook, this volume). The rise of new science in the seventeenth century did little to dampen compu¬ tational endeavors. If anything, it encouraged belief in the ability to calculate very precisely the coming of the messiah. For example, John Heinrich Alsted (1588-1638), a Rhineland Calvinist, greatly influenced English sectarians of the seventeenth cen¬ tury. His exposition of Revelation 20 relied on the book of Daniel (12:11,12) to show that the Millennium would begin in 1694 (Clouse 1969,197). Alsted’s book met with criticism by those who interpreted the thousand-year reign as being historical, that is, from the time of Jesus until the eleventh century. Isaac Newton (1642-1727), for instance, read the book of Revelation historically, but he understood it propheti¬ cally as well. Newton estimated that the pope gained temporal authority beginning

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in the second half of the eighth century “and began ruling in a powerful worldly position for a time, times and half a time or 1260 years” (Clouse 1969,207). We can see how the book of Daniel, Matthew’s gospel, and Joachim’s number, 1260, con¬ verged in Newton’s thought. It is evident that millennial math, coupled with significant events, affected reli¬ gious and popular culture throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early modern periods. Sacred time imbued both the ordinary and the extraordinary with meaning. Nothing lay outside God’s providence. The signs of the time were visible, and everything was of consequence.

Sacred Geography In a similar fashion, space was also momentous, particularly the revered city of Jerusalem. Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike considered Jerusalem to be sacred, apparent even in its Arabic name al-Quds, “the Holy.” Each religion had a hallowed history there, and each looked forward to an eschatological hope in that location. Jews and Christians viewed Jerusalem as the capital of either an earthly or heavenly kingdom, while Muslims saw it as their third most holy city, after Mecca and Medina. Thus the sacred geography of Jerusalem played an important role in millennial expectations. For Jews, Jerusalem and Mount Zion symbolized the location of the Israelite encounter with God. (Although Mount Zion once indicated a precise geographical location at the southeast corner of Jerusalem, it came to refer to the entire temple precincts as well as the city itself, as indicated in several Psalms.) When the Babylonians destroyed the temple in 587/86

b.c.e.,

Israelites who were faced with

the departure of God from the holy of holies found comfort in the words of the prophet Ezekiel, who saw the glory of the Lord depart from the temple (10:18-19). Judeans rejoiced when a new temple was built after the return from Babylonia, but again faced disaster when the Romans destroyed this second temple in 70

c.e.

Still,

an eschatological hope in a revived temple and city continued, and generated mil¬ lennial hopes for centuries. “Jewish apocalypticism, more than its messianism, is topocentrically oriented,” writes Moshe Idel. “It involves dislocation, returning, immigrations of masses, battles over sacred space” (Idel 2003,362). The first attempt to recover Jerusalem occurred under Roman occupation in the first century. The First Jewish War (66-70

c.e.)

saw intra-Judean warfare within

the city until it came under attack by the Romans. The rebels minted coins with the engraving, “Jerusalem the Holy.” The next attempt came sixty years later, about the length of time between the Exile and the previous rebuilding of the temple. When the Roman Emperor Hadrian (r. 117-38) constructed a temple to Jupiter on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judeans rebelled under the leadership of Simon bar Kosiba (also known as bar Kochba, d. 135). There is some evidence that Judean rebels

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attempted to rebuild the temple, and coins exist on which is stamped the facade of the temple. Lamentations Rabbah describes one of the battles in the revolt, in which the city of Betar was taken by Romans, who “killed those who lived there until horses waded in blood up to their nostrils” (Lenowitz 1998,59). The accession of the Roman Emperor Julian (r. 361-63)—whom Christians called the Apostate—raised Jewish hopes again when he proposed rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. Other messianic movements arose in Diaspora under Roman rule that prom¬ ised the restoration of Jerusalem. The second century saw the emergence of the Mourners of Zion, an ascetic group known for “mourning the destruction of the temple in elegies and praying for its rebuilding and the ingathering of the scattered Jews” (Lenowitz 1998, 69). The Mourners of Zion reappeared under the Umayyad caliphate (661-750) and “devoted themselves to a life of asceticism in the Holy Land, practicing voluntary poverty and pious devotion in anticipation of the promised coming of the Messiah to that Land” (Wasserstrom 1995,53). Jewish messiahs appeared in Persia, Palestine, and Arabia, but one of the most relevant to the discussion of sacred geography is David Alroy (Menahem ben Shlomo al-Duji, c. early twelfth century). This Kurdish messiah began to implement a plot to take the Holy Land when he saw the conflict between crusaders and Muslims as the moment for apocalyptic war. Alroy and his forces attacked Amadia, his hometown, and success there would have given him access to the crusader king¬ doms of Edessa and Jerusalem. According to the Jewish chronicler Benjamin of Tudela, writing between 1160 and 1173, Alroy said, “The Holy One, blessed is he, has sent me to conquer Jerusalem and bring you out from beneath the yoke of the other nations” (Lenowitz 1998, 84). Alroy disappeared before this occurred, however, probably killed by Persians or assassinated by Jews anxious to appease the Persians. Another instance of a Jewish attempt to recapture Jerusalem came from David Reubeni (d. c. 1538), a Portuguese messianic claimant who traveled throughout the Mediterranean and Europe to plead his cause. He met with popes and kings to per¬ suade them to have Christians unite with Jews in a holy war against the Turks. Reubeni wrote in his journal that he reassured fearful conversos (Jews forced to con¬ vert to Christianity) to trust God forevermore, for you will merit seeing the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and do not be afraid; and I have not come before the king [of Portugal] this time to take you and bring you to Jerusalem, for there are great wars to fight in Jerusalem first, before you come. We will make our sacrifices and then we will come to you to bring you to the settled Land. (Lenowitz 1998,115)

These brief examples show the ongoing significance of Jerusalem for Jews. The words of the prophet Isaiah had continuing relevance: “The descendants of those who oppressed you shall come bending low to you, and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet; they shall call you the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel” (60:14). For Christians, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus put Jerusalem at the center of holy history. The city was also central to the eschatological future, the

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“home of God among mortals” (Rev. 21:3b). The writer of Revelation saw “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (21:2). Angels showed the author the city plan, which included pearly gates and streets paved with gold (21:21). Jerusalem became the locus of all that was holy for Christians. Liturgies that reenacted the passion of Jesus occurred throughout the city: the stations of the cross were actual locations in a sanctified geography. “Through religious processions, the church of Jerusalem usurped the urban landscape as stage and the entire popula¬ tion, Christian and non-Christian, as audience” (Wharton 1992, 320). The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was consecrated in 335, and thus commenced centuries of pilgrimages. Muslim control of Jerusalem began by 638. The city was important to Muslims for several reasons, most notably because it was the site of Muhammad’s night jour¬ ney to heaven to speak with God (Qur’an 17.1). Muslims had faced al-Quds for prayer until God ordered Muhammad to change the direction of prayer to face the Ka’bah in Mecca (Qur’an 2:142-50). Some Muslim hadith placed Jesus in Jerusalem in the future to defeat the dajjal, the Antichrist of Islam, while others stated that the destruction of Constantinople would avenge the destruction of Jerusalem and allow for the return of items stolen from the second Temple (Cook 2002, 54-58, 65). The second caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-44) reportedly traveled to Jerusalem to negotiate a treaty with a leader in the Christian church there and to build a tempo¬ rary mosque on Temple Mount. The Umayyad caliph Muawiyah (r. 661-80) planned initial construction of a monument—the Dome of the Rock—also on Temple Mount, to mark the point from which Muhammad ascended to the presence of God in heaven. This shrine was completed by 691, with the al-Aqsa Mosque built on the mount shortly thereafter. These structures were “part and parcel” of the messianic kingdom early Muslims expected Jesus to establish (Cook 2005,86). Even the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was revered by Muslims because Muhammad reput¬ edly visited the place where Jesus was born on his night journey to Jerusalem (Peri 1999,103). Jerusalem’s Christian appearance and character remained relatively unchanged under Muslim rule until the eleventh century, when a number of events upset its generally tolerant atmosphere. The destruction of the Holy Sepulcher by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (r. 996-1021) in 1009 outraged Christians, though the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX Monomachus had it rebuilt by 1048 with permission and help from other caliphs. European armies successfully began to challenge Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula and throughout the Mediterranean. Abu Amir alMansur (c. 938-1002), also called Almanzor by the Spanish, instituted a policy of repression against Christians, who saw him as a satanic scourge (Smith 1999, 320). The arrival of Turkish-speaking Muslims in the Eastern Empire and the capture of Jerusalem in 1076 by the Seljuk Turks caused alarm in Western Christendom. Perhaps as much as any other factor, an increasing number of Christian pil¬ grims unsettled Muslims in the East. Many traveled under package tours arranged by the monastery at Cluny, France, known for its animosity to Muslims. Pilgrims

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tended to come from the lower classes, people who had little to lose and for whom a trip to Jerusalem offered the opportunity for penance and eternal life. Even before Pope Urban II called for a crusade in 1095 at the Council of Clermont, Peter the Hermit, a charismatic itinerant ascetic, had traveled to Jerusalem. “In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher Christ had appeared to him and had given him a letter commis¬ sioning him to summon the Crusade” (Cohn 1970, 62). The first crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, principally because of fragmen¬ tation and chaos in the Muslim empires rather than by virtue of any military strat¬ egy of their own. The crusaders—knights and poor people alike—were said to have paraded barefoot around the city walls prior to the assault. Legend says that Muslims raised crucifixes and tormented them so much that they bled. Christians got ven¬ geance, however, for both the original crucifixion of Jesus and his current torture, by slaughtering Jews and Muslims indiscriminately. “The horses waded in blood up to their knees, nay up to the bridle,” wrote the Christian knight Raymond of Aguilers (Cohn 1970, 68). Jews took refuge in the synagogue, where Christians burned them alive. The First Crusade had clear apocalyptic overtones. The construction of the Dome of the Rock in the late seventh century undoubtedly prompted composition of the Pseudo-Methodius, which interpreted Muslim invasions as a sign of the Last Days and “incorporated the rise of Islam, the most important historical event since the conversion of the empire, into the Christian apocalyptic scheme of history” (McGinn 1998,71). Umar’s entry in Jerusalem seemed to fulfill the prophet Daniel’s expectation of a desolating sacrilege at the site of Solomon’s temple (Dan. 8:13); crusaders believed that Muslims worshipped an idol of Muhammad—called Antichrist by some—on Temple Mount. When Pope Innocent III called for a Fifth Crusade in 1213, he identified Muhammad as the beast in Revelation (Tolan 2002, 194). The capture of Jerusalem, therefore, was a purification in blood of the pollu¬ tion engendered by Islamic control.

The response of Muslims to the crusades was to call for a jihad to repulse the barbarians (Peri 1999, 98). The Turks’ capture of Edessa (now the city of Urfa in southern Turkey) in 1144 led to the formation of the Second Crusade, which failed in 1147. Christian control of the Holy Land was effectively ended by the Kurdish military commander Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub in 1187. Saladin, as he was called in the West, treated Christians humanely and reasonably; for their part, Christians compared “Saracen” warriors favorably to Christian knights in terms of their brav¬ ery, honor, and nobility. “The struggle for the liberation of Jerusalem from Christian control was accom¬ panied by strenuous Islamic propaganda which elevated the eminence of that city in Islam to heights that it had never experienced before” (Peri 1999,98). The Ayyubids and the Mamluks attempted to islamicize Jerusalem, and by the time the Ottoman Turks arrived in the early sixteenth century, they received Jerusalem as a ready¬ made Muslim city (Peri i999> 99)• The Ottomans continued Jerusalem’s transfor¬ mation by evicting Franciscan monks from Mount Zion, converting their church into a mosque, and sealing the Jewish synagogue of Rabbi Moseh b. Nahman because

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they claimed it was too close to a mosque (Peri 1999,100). Suleyman I (r. 1520-66), who saw himself as the new Solomon, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and refurbished the Dome of the Rock, but also allowed Christians to restore the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1555 (St. Laurent and Riedlmayer 1993, 77). The sacred geography of Jerusalem derived from historical events in all three Abrahamic faiths. Religious facts became revered symbols, and these symbols justi¬ fied repeated attempts to control the blessed past, the bloody present, and the beatific future.

Sacred Commonwealth Two types of millennialism pertain to the theme of sacred commonwealth, that is, the righteous government guided by saints under the rule of God, according to Landes. The first is what he calls a hierarchical or imperial millennial kingdom, which derives its power from existing authorities, generating religious hopes from the top down. The second, demotic millennialism, bubbles up from the bottom, and draws its strength from popular hopes and aspirations for freedom and justice (Landes 2006, 8-9). For Jews, hierarchical millennialism may be deduced from the Davidic cove¬ nant (2 Sam. 7:nb-i7), which established a permanent dynasty. The prophecies in Isaiah 14, on the other hand—that promised the restoration of the people Israel to the land—may be somewhat demotic. Messianic movements, such as the bar Kosiba (bar Kochba) revolt of 132-35 or the Jewish messiahs of the eighth century, augured the redemption of the people Israel, though “these messiahs actually attempt [ed] to establish the conceptual land of Israel in their own locales” (Lenowitz 1998,62). For Christians, the Bible suggested Landes’s imperial millennial kingdom in the reign of God on Earth, realized by God’s emperors such as Charlemagne or his successors. Demotic expectations appeared in the popular Christian anticipation of Jesus’s sec¬ ond advent, in which “the last shall be first, and the first last” (Matt. 20:16). For Muslims, the six-hundred-year caliphate (661-1258) served as a type of sacred commonwealth, an imperial millennial kingdom, in which the world was brought under God in “a new and righteous regime on earth” (Donner 1999,19). The Abbasid caliphate (750-950) initially claimed to be a Mahdist state, according to its propagandists, and some of the caliphs added “al-Mahdi” to their names (Furnish 2000,188). Ubayd Allah (d. 911), the founder of the Isma‘ili Shia dynasty, also claimed to be the Mahdi. The support he received from Berber armies led to the conquest of North Africa and the ascension of the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt (9091171) (see also chapter 14 by David Cook, this volume). A North African Mahdist claimant and holy man named Muhammad ibn Tumart (c. 1080-1130) inspired the capture of Iberia by the al-Muwahhidun, or “the believers in the one God.” Known in Spanish as the Almohads, the group attempted to restore “true” Islam by purify¬ ing Spain of both Christianity and heterodox Islam (1130-1269).

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Because of the relative powerlessness of Jews in the Diaspora, Jewish move¬ ments rarely were imperial in nature. Christians and Muslims, however, established sacred commonwealths of various types, most notably the Holy Roman Empire in the West, and various dynastic empires under the caliphate—Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, and others—in the East. Demotic commonwealths did not really begin to appear in Europe until the fifteenth century. These attempts to establish the king¬ dom of God on Earth seemed to accompany the vast changes occurring at the time: the invention of the printing press; the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the advance of the Ottoman Turks; the rise of capitalism, nationalism, urbanism, and monarchism; and the expulsion of Jews from Spain and their dispersion through¬ out the Mediterranean and beyond. The final trauma occurred in the early sixteenth century, when the Reformations convulsing Christianity seemed to foretell the Last Days promised in the Bible. Thus, beginning in the fifteenth century, we find movements in which the people themselves—frequently under the guidance of a charismatic leader, but not necessarily a king or messiah—organized sacred com¬ monwealths, sometimes progressively pressing toward the millennial kingdom, and sometimes catastrophically attempting to precipitate radical change and the inter¬ vention of God. The Taborites, for example, who emerged after the execution of Jan Hus (c. 1372-1415), began somewhat pacifically but turned to violence after the date set for the return of Jesus came and went. Hus had preached against the sale of indul¬ gences, argued for lay preaching, and claimed that tithes were voluntary rather than obligatory, and was burned at the stake for these teachings at the Council of Constance in 1415. The Taborites came out of the radical Hussite movement in Prague. They established a commune in Bohemia at the foot of a hill, which they called Mount Tabor, the biblical site of the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9:28-36). The group awaited Christ’s return and the establishment of an egalitarian order over which they, the saints, would reign. Many poor people joined the movement, practicing communal ownership as they awaited the day of Christ’s arrival. After the date of the return passed in 1420, the group became more militant, believing that Christ’s enemies must be eliminated to purify the Earth before his kingdom could be established (Bradstock 2001,78-80). The most violent faction, the Pikarts (Pikarti) or Bohemian Adamites, were antinomians who “held that God dwelt in the Saints of the Last Days, that is, in themselves; and that that made them superior to Christ, who by dying had shown himself to be merely human ’ (Cohn 1970,219). Although Taborite armies marched into Germany, threat¬ ening both clergy and nobility, the more moderate Hussites eventually defeated them in Bohemia in 1434. The short-lived Florentine Republic of the 1490s was another example of demotic millenmahsm. Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) was the charismatic Dominican friar who first summoned the people of the city to repentance, and then, once the ruling Medici family had been expelled and Florence was a free republic, called the city a New Jerusalem chosen by God to renew the Church. Better known for his prophecies of gloom and doom and his “bonfire of the vanities”

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(though this was instituted earlier by Franciscan friars), Savonarola both incited and captured the apocalyptic fervor that gripped Florence throughout the 1490s. The friar identified Charles VIII of France—who advanced upon Italian cities to enlarge his own empire—as the new Cyrus (Isa. 44:28-45:6, 45:13), the scourge of God coming to cleanse an evil and corrupt Church. When Charles entered the city, Savonarola, selected as spokesperson by the new city council, intervened so that Charles left peacefully. Savonarola’s prophecies of Last Days soon turned into prophecies of peace and love, with Florence replacing Rome as the city of God (Weinstein 1970,145-47). The New Jerusalem/New Rome was short-lived, however, as food shortages coupled with political intrigue made the populace that normally gathered at the Plaza San Marco to hear their prophet restive and unhappy. Rome also chafed under the Dominican’s relentless critique of its wealth and worldliness, and excommuni¬ cated him in 1497, forbidding him to preach and thus eliminating the source of his power—the people drawn to his message, especially his extremely ascetical follow¬ ers, the Piagnoni. Savonarola was arrested and tortured, and he confessed to not speaking with God, though he had always claimed that God (and not just inspired exegesis) was the source of his message. After his third trial by torture, however, he repudiated his confessions, saying he would prefer to endure tortures for truth rather than for lies (Weinstein 1970,288). The papacy and imperial order triumphed when Savonarola and two other friars were hanged and burned on 23 May 1498. Similar demotic agitation was occurring in the Muslim world around the same time. The development of Sufi orders in the twelfth century, coupled with the Mongol invasions of the early thirteenth, led to the emergence of Mahdist popular movements in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. “Containment of political apocalypticism by the doctors of law, be they Sunni or Shi‘ite, fell apart” (Arjomand 2003,407). A number of Sufi preachers promised a savior to redeem the people from harsh times and led a variety of millennial movements. Most notable was the Persian mystic Shaykh Safi al-Din (1252-1334), who founded the Safavid Sufi brotherhood in northwestern Iran, which “provided schools and residences” and cultivated a cadre of missionaries, students, and disciples (Lapidus 1999, 363). Although the Safavid brotherhood began as a demotic movement, it turned to more militant, and imperialistic, activities in the fifteenth century, waging war against Christians and Turks alike. More than anything else, the Christian Reformations of the sixteenth century seemed to unleash the drive for sacred commonwealths of the people. Movements ranged from the catastrophic attempt of Thomas Muntzer (c. 1490-1525) to change German society by force in the ill-fated Peasants’ War of 1524-25; to the progressive settlements of Anabaptists like the Mennonites, the Swiss Brethren, and the Hutterites. These pacifist groups practiced a type of Christian communalism in anticipation of the coming reign of Christ. Jews were also inspired by the fracturing of Christendom and saw portents of messianic days. Shlomo Molkho (c. 1500-1532), a Portuguese converso who circumcised himself, met with Pope Clement VII, who became his protector. Together with David Reubeni (d. after 1532) he met with

298

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Emperor Charles V at Regensburg to promote the idea of a joint Jewish and Christian army to fight against the Turks. Molkho was sent to Mantua, tried, and burned to death for his efforts (Lenowitz 1998, 107). According to Gershom Scholem, the Augsburg Confession of 1530, which explicitly condemned belief in the rule of the saints as a Jewish doctrine, reflected its author—Philip Melanchthon’s—disapproval of Molkho’s agitation (1973,100). The most famous, or infamous, millennial kingdom of the sixteenth century was the New Jerusalem established at Munster, Germany, in the 1530s. Bernard Rothmann (c. 1495-c. 1535), an Anabaptist prophet, preached a message of sharing the common good. Aided by the local guilds, he gained control of the churches in Munster and found wide support among the populace. The poor from surrounding areas thronged the city, and in 1534 two additional prophets arrived, John Mathijs and John Beukels of Leiden. Within six weeks, Mathijs announced plans to kill all of the godless for the peace of Zion, but he also introduced the communalism prac¬ ticed by the early church (Williams 1962, 369-70). When Mathijs died in a military misadventure defending the city from the armies of its bishop, Beukels took over. He dissolved the city council and appointed twelve Elders, or Judges, from the Tribes of Israel, to govern the city. Beukels declared himself king and high priest and insti¬ tuted both a new moral law—under which certain sins were punishable by death— and a stricter form of communalism. Beukels arranged marriages and practiced polygamy himself. Meanwhile, New Zion was under siege, and increasing famine and growing unhappiness with laws mandating marriage made his rule unpopular. In June 1535 the bishop’s mercenaries breached the city gates and slaughtered the inhabitants. Beukels and the other leaders were executed and their bodies put on public display.

Other attempts to establish sacred commonwealths occurred in England in the seventeenth century. The Long Parliament, the Civil War, the execution of Charles I, and the Puritan Protectorate gave credence to the widespread conviction that the nation was truly in the Last Days. There was jubilation at the execution of the king in 1649, but Puritan radicals wanted to go further and purge the clergy, abolish tithes, reduce taxes, remove the privileges of the rich, and impose a severe morality (Capp 1972,56). When Parliament failed to enact these changes, a military coup led by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) dissolved Parliament by force. Cromwell’s Parliament declared on 4 July 1653 that it would erect a kingdom of Jesus Christ, ruled by saints, and would launch a crusade against Rome. Hailed as a Second Moses, Cromwell eagerly awaited the arrival of the Messiah. “What turned out to be especially dangerous was the wholly traditional view, repeated by many of the preachers, that the common people had a very special role to play in this crisis, that they were somehow more chosen than the rich and the powerful” (Hill 1972,27). The Levellers, for example, sought to extend the franchise to all males, not just landholders. The Ranters believed that Christ was present in people s hearts and that one’s intentions, rather than one’s actions, were what mat¬ tered, leading to antinomian behavior. The Muggletonians, who, like the Ranters, believed the Mosaic law to have been abrogated, were also mortalist (believing that

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the soul is mortal), anti-Trinitarian, materialist, anticlerical, and anti-intellectual (Hill 1980,307). The Fifth Monarchists—so called because they succeeded the four empires described in Daniel 7 and 12—expected the imminent Kingdom of Christ on Earth. They attacked private property, anticipated establishing a theocratic regime, and believed in their right to take arms to overthrow the godless (Capp 1972, 14,172-94). But they were too radical even for Cromwell and his saints. The Diggers, on the other hand, were a progressive millennial group that saw a gradual change in society leading to the presence of Christ on Earth through the spiritual transforma¬ tion of people. Led by Gerrard Winstanley (1609-76), the Diggers advocated the total restructuring of land ownership in England, and they inaugurated the process by digging on common land. “Communal ownership and the resurrection of Christ were, for Winstanley, interchangeable concepts” (Bradstock 2001, 87). Progressive millennialism also materialized out of the marriage of science and religious latitudinarianism in seventeenth-century England. “Providence guaran¬ teed social and political stability in the world politic just as it ordered and harmo¬ nized, through laws discernible by scientific inquiry, the world natural” (Jacob 1976, 337). This stability would emerge only gradually, however, and “no amelioration of existing economic inequities is ever hinted at, much less imagined” (339). The new science identified ordered, providential, and pervasive patterns in the natural world, which would be replicated in historical processes in a Protestant polity. Radical action disrupted the order of nature, however, and would never lead to an earthly millennial paradise, according to scientists like Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, John Napier, and others. Jews did not escape the millennial momentum for a sacred commonwealth that gripped England and the continent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed, movements within Christianity, which advocated the political rights of Jews (Scholem 1973,101), or foresaw the imminent conversion of Jews, or preached tolerance of the Jews, generated messianic hopes, so much so that messianic con¬ tenders proliferated in the seventeenth century. The Spanish expulsion, the influ¬ ence of Christianity on conversos, and a shift in emphasis from Talmudic study to Kabbalistic mysticism, all served to raise Jewish hopes (Goldish 2004, 49-50). Theurgic Kabbalah, also called practical Kabbalah, would be able to “disrupt the continuum of history and cause radical change in the natural order” (Idel 1998, 127). Humans, and not God alone, would play a role in restoring the world, accord¬ ing to the Kabbalists gathering in Safed (Zefat in modern Israel). Sufi influences seemed to shape Kabbalistic ascetical practices and promote the status of Jewish holy men (Goldish 2004, 62). Children and young women, such as Ines of Herrera (c. 1488), were also leading prophetic movements, while the converso Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam (c. 1640s) influenced Jews and Christians alike with his discussion of the lost tribes of Israel. Manasseh even met with Cromwell to ask for readmission of the Jews to England, arguing that the ingathering of the Jews was one of the signs of the End of Days. The most famous of the Jewish messianic contenders of the time, and since, was Shabbatai Zvi (1626-76), who was widely promoted and legitimized by the prophet

300

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Nathan of Gaza (c. 1643/4-80). Born in Izmir (formerly Smyrna, in Turkey), Zvi had a checkered career as he traveled throughout the eastern Mediterranean basin. In 1648 he declared himself to be the Messiah and claimed that the time of redemption was near. These statements resulted in his excommunication and exile from Izmir. He eventually made his way to ferusalem where he encountered Nathan, who saw in Zvi’s suffering and exile the proof of his messianic status. Nathan faked some docu ¬ ments to prophesy the arrival of Zvi, predicting that the Turkish king, under the control of Zvi, would conduct a peaceful conquest. Zvi would erect an altar in Jerusalem and, in turn, reign over the Turks. A rebuilt Jerusalem and temple would descend from heaven, followed by the reign of Zvi, the lord and messiah. Zvi’s arrival in Constantinople in 1666 coincided with a significant date in Jewish numerological calculations, which contributed to his messianic status. The reality of Zvi’s life was much less exalted. When the sultan threatened Zvi with execution after his capture in Constantinople, the messiah converted to Islam and received an honorary post with salary. Although Nathan argued that this con¬ version was necessary, the movement splintered. Nevertheless, several hundred Sabbateans (Zvi’s followers) also converted in the 1680s. Zvi never got a chance to establish the sacred commonwealth predicted by Nathan, but his movement inspired Jews and Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire and the rest of Europe.

An Alternative View Although Scholem writes of a seventeenth-century Zeitgeist that may have encour¬ aged Zvi and the Sabbatean prophets, it seems more likely that actual interchanges between Jews, Christians, and Muslims prompted this and other movements whose coincidental appearances must otherwise be attributed to chance. Obviously the period of Muslim control of Iberia was a time in which adherents of the three faiths could engage in dialogue. Converso knowledge of Judaism and Christianity, and muwallad (Christian converts to Islam) and mozarrab (Christians who accepted Arabic language and culture) knowledge of Islam and Christianity undoubtedly played a role. At the same time, the Muslim conquest of the Eastern Empire, North Africa, and Iberia also sparked millennial prospects. Interreligious contact in Palestine and in the Byzantine and then Ottoman Empires seemed more open than on the European continent or the British Isles. The shattering effect of the Reformations made many people think that the end was near, for no one could have foreseen such challenges to the status quo. The joint religious background of Jews, Christians, and Muslims should not be neglected either. Shared traditions and stories, and the translation of various prac¬ tices into local customs and idioms, allowed for exchange. David Cook (2005) iden¬ tifies a belief in the imminent end of the world as the driving force of early Muslims

or

proto-Muslims,” in his words—who mobilized support from

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Christians and Jews who held similar views. Steven M. Wasserstrom traces the impact early Islam had on Jewish messianism, as well as the reciprocal influence the Jewish messiahs had on the development of Shi‘a Islam. “This was not a ‘borrow¬ ing,’” he writes, “rather, a common culture shared a common telos, a longing for a figure of the ultimate, under the impact of common circumstances” (1995,55). There is certainly clear evidence that theologians worked out of a universal intellectual culture: the Christian scholastic Thomas Aquinas read the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who read the Arabic philosopher ibn Rushd (1128-98), who read the pagan philosopher Aristotle. It should therefore not be too surprising to find common themes in the millennialisms that ran from the early Middle Ages to the early modern era. Though other approaches could be taken to study the millennialism of these periods—such as focusing on messianic and mahdist figures, examining religious warfare, or expli¬ cating the importance of the Antichrist—the ideas of sacred time, sacred geography, and sacred commonwealth crossed time, space, and theology with relative ease. Rather than being a mere Zeitgeist, or vague mood of the day, it is clear that these ideas involved actual interchange and dialogue, which propelled different groups to work for God’s reign on Earth.

REFERENCES Arjomand, Said Amir. 2003. “Islamic Apocalypticism in the Classical Period.” In The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, edited by Bernard J. McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein, 380-413. New York: Continuum. Bradstock, Andrew. 2001. “Millenarianism in the Reformation and English Revolution.” In Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco, edited by Stephen Hunt, 77-87. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Capp, B. S. 1972. The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism. London: Faber and Faber. Clouse, Robert G. 1969. “Johann Heinrich Alsted and English Millennialism.” Harvard Theological Review 62, no. 2 (April): 189-207. Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium. Rev. and exp. ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Cook, David. 2002. Studies in Muslim Apocalypticism. Princeton, N.J.: Darwin. -. 2005. “The Beginnings of Islam as an Apocalyptic Movement.” In War in Heaven/ Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic, edited by Stephen D. O’Leary and Glen S. McGhee, 79-93. London: Equinox. Donner, Fred M. 1999. “Muhammad and the Caliphate: Political History of the Islamic Empire up to the Mongol Empire.” In The Oxford History of Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, 1-61. New York: Oxford University Press. Fleischer, Cornell H. 1986. Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Furnish, Timothy R. 2000. “Islam.” In Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, edited by Richard Landes, 187-91. New York: Routledge.

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Gibson, Kenneth. 1997. “Apocalyptic and Millenarian Prophecy in Early Stuart Europe: Philip Ziegler, Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil and the Fifth Monarchy.” In Prophecy: The Power of Inspired Language in History 1300-2000, edited by Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton, 71-83. Thrupp, U.K.: Sutton. Goldish, Matt. 2004. The Sabbatean Prophets. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Head, Thomas, and Richard Landes, eds. 1992. The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Hill, Christopher. 1972. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution. New York: Viking. -. 1980. “John Reeve and the Origins of Muggletonianism.” In Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves, edited by Ann Williams, 305-33. Harlow, U.K.: Longman. Hoyland, Robert G. 1997. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Princeton, N.J.: Darwin. Idel, Moshe. 1998. Messianic Mystics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. . 2003. Jewish Apocalypticism.” In The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, edited by Bernard J. McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein, 354—79. New York: Continuum. Jacob, Margaret C. 1976. “Millenarianism and Science in the Late Seventeenth Century.” Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 2 (April-June): 335-41. Landes, Richard. 1995. Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989—1034. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. -, ed. 2000a. Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements. New York: Routledge. . 2000b. The Fear of an Apocalyptic Year 1000: Augustinian Historiography, Medieval and Modern.” Speculum 75, no. 1 (January): 97-145. -. 2006. “Millenarianism and the Dynamics of Apocalyptic Time.” In Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context, edited by Kenneth G. C. Newport and Crawford Gribben, 1-23. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Lapidus, Ira M. 1999. “Sultanates and Gunpowder Empires: The Middle East.” In The Oxford History of Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, 347-93. New York: Oxford University Press. Lenowitz, Harris. 1998. The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights. New York: Oxford University Press. McGinn, Bernard. 1994- Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. -. 1998. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. Rev. and exp. ed. New York: Columbia University Press. . 2001. “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism: A Brief Overview.” In Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, Vol. 2, Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbe Gregoire, edited by Karl A. Kottman, 1-13. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. Pen, Oded. 1999. Islamic Law and Christian Holy Sites: Jerusalem and Its Vicinity in Early Ottoman Times.” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 1: 97-111. Popkin, Richard H. 2001. ‘Introduction to the Millenarianism and Messianism Series.” In Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, Vol. 2, Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbe Gregoire, edited by Karl A. Kottman, vii-xiv. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.

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Reeves, Marjorie. 1969. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon. -. 1976. Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future: A Medieval Study in Historical Thinking. Stroud, U.K.: Sutton. Scholem, Gershom. 1971. The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. New York: Schocken. ———. 1973. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah 1626-1676. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Sharot, Stephen. 1980. “Jewish Millenarianism: A Comparison of Medieval Communities.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 3 (July): 394-415. Smith, Jane 1.1999. “Islam and Christendom: Historical, Cultural, and Religious Interaction from the Seventh to the Fifteenth Centuries.” In The Oxford History of Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, 305-45. New York: Oxford University Press. St. Laurent, Beatrice, and Andras Riedlmayer. 1993. “Restorations of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock and Their Political Significance, 1537-1928.” Muqarnas 10: 76-84. Talmon, Yonina. 1962. “Pursuit of the Millennium: The Relation between Religious and Social Change.” Archives Europeenes de Sociologie 3:125-48. -. 1966. “Millenarian Movements.” Archives Europeenes de Sociologie 7:159-200. Tolan, John V. 2002. Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press. Wasserstrom, Steven M. 1995. Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Weinstein, Donald. 1970. Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. Wharton, Annabel Jane. 1992. “The Baptistery of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the Politics of Sacred Landscape.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46:313-25. Williams, George Huntston. 1962. The Radical Reformation. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Asian Millennial Movements

CHAPTER 16

CHINESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS SCOTT LOWE

China has long been a hotbed of peasant unrest—not just in the past but continu¬

ing into modern times. In contrast to the popular image of the traditional Chinese Empire as a vast, stable monolithic state, throughout its history China has been wracked with a great profusion of rebellions and revolutions, motivated by nearly every imaginable cause. Some were simply reactions against horrible conditions: famines, oppression, natural disasters combined with high taxes, the depredations of corrupt officials, and the like. Some were led by aspirants to the throne. In bad times, of which China has had its share, a wide range of resistance movements and rebellions would often be flourishing simultaneously, with the imperial government fighting on several fronts. Only some of these insurgent groups were primarily reli¬ gious in inspiration, though many and perhaps even most rebellions had ritual dimensions intended to secure supernatural assistance; of these a further small group held clearly millennial beliefs. Unlike some modern Western nations, China has weak traditions of separation of church and state. If anything, China’s Confucian tradition promotes the opposite of this Western ideal. In China, dynasties ruled on the basis of the “Mandate of Heaven,” the ancient religio-political belief that Heaven, an involved, hands-on deity, picked the best rulers for the people. The Mandate was bestowed hereditarily, but contingently: dynasties had the right to rule only for as long as they manifested the way of Heaven on earth. The ideal state was benevolent but totalitarian; few areas of behavior or belief fell outside its purview. Heaven’s will provided the justi¬ fication for the state’s strong ideological control, which was seen as essential to maintain the cosmic order. In practical terms, this meant that the emperor was both a political and a religious leader; a great deal of his time was spent performing state

308

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rituals. The state was responsible for monitoring religious practices throughout the realm, and for most of China’s long history, the imperial government exercised tight control over ordination and the training of religious professionals. A state that failed to maintain ideological uniformity and proper religious observances was sure to lose the Mandate and fall. Heterodox religious beliefs and practices—including millennial traditions—were therefore viewed as treason more than heresy (Lowe 2001).

Most Chinese, even those in opposition to the state, shared the ideological assumptions underlying state control. One obvious implication of this worldview is that a transformed world, a new millennial kingdom, requires a dramatic change in leadership. The only real question is how this change is to be effected. Rebellious millennial groups generally believed that they were catalyzing the transformation by rising up against the established order. Of course, many millenarian groups do not engage in violent action of any kind, simply waiting for the time when divine or supernatural forces will transform the world. These passive millenarian groups may have tended to assume that a new leader, presumably from their group, would rise to power once the paradisiacal new world had been created. Until recently, literacy was never widespread in China, and record-keeping was traditionally the monopoly of a small, elite “Confucian” class, spread thinly across the countryside. This ensured that the historical record only preserves information on those groups that attracted the notice of the state and its high-culture support¬ ers. The best way to gain this attention was through rising in rebellion or by other¬ wise posing a threat to the guardians of orthodoxy. Benign groups were often ignored; quiet, low-profile religious movements of all sorts could be established, expand, and eventually die out without ever being described in the official records of the state. What this suggests is that the official records of the religious beliefs and practices of the masses are woefully incomplete for most districts of China in the premodern period. The groups we learn the most about are those that were perceived to pose a threat (sometimes real, often imaginary) to the state. Furthermore, the information about these groups that the elite sought, and chose to preserve, is preponderantly political and military in nature. The beliefs and spiritual practices of Chinese mil¬ lennial groups were usually assumed to be superstitious nonsense and therefore not worth recording, except in the most cursory and formulaic ways. Modern scholar¬ ship on Chinese millennial movements is largely driven by the data. Therefore a disproportionate emphasis is put on violent or insurrectionist groups, and even then we tend to know more about their military strategies than their beliefs. Little is known about the silent majority of millennial groups that have flourished in the past two thousand years. Before going further we should define two crucial terms. Apocalypse

literally “revelation”—will be used here to mean the revelation of a

coming cataclysmic overthrow of the current world order. A belief in the imminent destruction of the world is common in many Middle Eastern religious traditions;

CHINESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam all have, or had, apocalyptic teachings. Apocalyptic beliefs and imagery may have entered China with Zoroastrian or Manichaean missionaries (first attested in the sixth and seventh cen¬ turies of the Common Era respectively), though they appear to have been established much earlier and are almost certainly features of indigenous belief systems. In China, apocalyptic beliefs are also associated with the Mahayana Buddhist belief in Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, popularly envisioned as a divine savior who will rescue the world in its final period of decline. Most apocalyptic teachings maintain that only the pure-hearted followers of the true faith will survive the coming cataclysm; the wicked majority of the world’s population is doomed. The word millennium originally meant the thousand-year period of peace described in the biblical book Revelation of St. John the Divine but found earlier in Zoroastrian teachings and later in Islam. As such, the term is specific to Middle Eastern monotheistic traditions. In a broader sense, one that applies to non-Western religious traditions, the Millennium is a paradisiacal age usually predicted to be coming in the near future. China has produced a number of millenarian belief sys¬ tems from as early as the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 c.e.) that have survived in various permutations up to the present day. In the last two hundred years unam¬ biguously Western millennial beliefs have entered China in the form of evangelical Protestant eschatology and Marxism; these beliefs have been sinicized to varying degrees and are now part of the millenarian mix. Officials of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties often held a simple, materialist view of the motivating factors underlying insurrections: they assumed that bad conditions, local oppression, plagues, and similar traumas caused popular rebellions. At least this is what the surviving records of rebel interrogations suggest (e.g. Naquin 1981, 53,165-167). Why else would commoners risk everything by joining in a desperate, futile, and almost certainly doomed uprising? As best we can tell, this materialist explanation seems useful for many peasant revolts but is misleading when applied to the rebellions of millenarian sectarian groups. Millenarian rebels were rarely members of the high-level literati, but they were not necessarily the poorest of the poor. They tended to be economically average, but socially marginal, peasants, small business owners, and laborers. Many Chinese joined millennial religious sects as part of a search for meaning, safety, hope, and ultimately salvation, rebelling more for religious reasons than economic necessity. Religious beliefs mattered to them and guided their actions. The same seems to be true in our times. David Ownby argues that China has long-standing indigenous millenarian tra¬ ditions that have shown great creativity through the centuries, constantly adapting the external particulars of their beliefs, and manifesting many local variant forms, while retaining their basic underlying structures. These indigenous traditions have been very successful at absorbing and modifying foreign millenarian, and poten¬ tially millenarian, ideas and imagery as they have entered China. For example, while Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, was very popular in India, he was not a mille¬ narian savior. This new role developed in China, perhaps within a few hundred

3io

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

years of the introduction of Buddhism, and then quickly spread from orthodox circles into the folk religious traditions (Ownby 1999). In the nineteenth century, evangelical Protestant eschatology similarly escaped the control of Christian mis¬ sionaries to manifest in a sinicized messianic rebellion seeking to establish the Taiping Tianguo, the “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace” (Ownby 2002, pars. 2-38). It seems likely that Eastern Lightning, a recently established, theologically innova¬ tive, nominally Christian sect much maligned in the Chinese press and on the Internet, is basically a modern revival of an old indigenous millenarian tradition in Christian clothing.1

First Millennial Stirrings The idea of an idyllic era of Great Peace (Taiping) is first found in the Daoist (Taoist) classic Zhuangzi (Chuang tzu), a text that can be dated roughly to the fourth century b.c.e.

In the Zhuangzi, the era of Great Peace is presented as an ideal time when

humans lived in peace with each other and their environment; however, it is thought to have existed in high antiquity, not the future, so while it is a utopian age, it is not millennial. The Confucian Analects also looks back to a similar golden age of Great Harmony (Datong), suggesting that early mainstream Chinese traditions sought perfection in the past, not the future. In 184

c.e.,

during the declining years of the Eastern Han dynasty, two strikingly

similar, though geographically separate Daoist groups rebelled nearly simultane¬ ously, both intent upon creating millennial kingdoms. The eastern group called itself the Taiping Dao, the Way of Great Peace.” Its members were known popularly as the Yellow Turbans because of the identifying insignia they wore into battle. Their revolt was contained and their kingdom never realized, though the group struggled on for the next eleven years (Overmyer 1976,73-75). The western rebellion is generally known as the Five Pecks (or Bushels) of Rice Movement (Wudoumi dao), its name coming from the annual fee paid by member families. The movement created an independent millennial kingdom in eastern Sichuan that survived until 215, when it was incorporated into the new state of Wei (Overmyer 1976,74). This defeat was not the end of the movement’s political aspira¬ tions, however. In 302, descendents of the original Five Pecks rebels established the state of Perfection (Cheng) in eastern Sichuan that was governed on the basis of Daoist principles until 334 (Kleeman 1998, 87-107). Both the Way of Great Peace and the Five Pecks display beliefs and practices characteristic of the Daoist tradition of the Celestial Masters, a tradition that is still fairly strong in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan.2 Both groups arose m times of turmoil and offered hope for those who repented and transformed their lives. They taught that disease was caused by sin, especially those sins that were hid¬ den. Great public ceremonies of confession and repentance were held to produce

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healing. The movements sought to create utopian societies on Earth by instituting their practices throughout the areas they controlled. The Five Pecks/Celestial Masters movement taught that a day of Great Peace was coming, in which the most devout and pure would be lifted into heaven. The ordinary people of the world would be annihilated and the new world repopulated by the saved, evocatively called the “seed people” (Kleeman 1998, 74). Through the centuries the Celestial Masters tradition has influenced a number of Chinese millennial groups that, on the surface at least, might not be considered Daoist.3

Buddhist Influenced Millennialism Buddhist teachings entered China sometime in the first century of the Common Era. The actual date has not been determined, but it is clear that monastic commu¬ nities had been founded by the second century, and Chinese translations of Buddhist sutras soon began to appear. The process of transmitting Indian Buddhist ideas into Chinese culture was not always smooth. The Chinese had never before encountered a culture equal to their own, and Buddhism had yet to be transmitted to a civiliza¬ tion with an extensive literature and sophisticated cosmologies. The process trans¬ formed both Buddhism and Chinese culture. Indian Buddhist concepts like no-self and nirvana were remarkably difficult to express in Chinese; the vocabulary simply did not exist, so Daoist terms were pressed into use. As one consequence, the two significantly different traditions were con¬ fused in popular culture for centuries. (Even now they seem complementary in the minds of many Chinese.) In addition to translations of Indian and Central Asian Buddhist texts, the Chinese soon began composing their own sutras using the forms and conventions of the older imported texts. Many Chinese Buddhists must have found it hard to distinguish the older translated texts from the newer indigenous compositions. Chinese sources document that Buddhist lay sectarian groups led by “rebel monks” began appearing in the fifth century, indicating that Buddhist teachings were moving out of monasteries and gaining popular acceptance (Overmyer 1976, 2). The Indian theory of kalpas, vast periods of time, each with their own character¬ istics, that replace one another in sequence, was adopted in China, though the spans were dramatically shortened, perhaps in response to the sense of immediacy found in Daoist millennial ideas. In popular belief, time was divided into three great kal¬ pas, each ending in destruction and followed by the arrival of a new Buddha and the re-creation of the world. The belief in three great kalpas seems also to have merged with the belief in the three ages of the Buddha’s teaching. The latter was not accepted by all Buddhist schools, but it resonated well with the general public. It holds that there are three periods of time following the death of every Buddha. In the first, the true teachings

312

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are preserved, humans are able to pursue rigorous spiritual practices, and enlight¬ enment can be earned through individual effort. The second period is one of grad¬ ual decline: the teachings are confused, enlightenment becomes impossible for all but great saints, and the moral tenor of society continues to deteriorate. In the third and final period, the current age, the Buddhas teachings have become hopelessly muddled, spiritual effort is fruitless, and enlightenment is available only through faith in the saving grace of great Bodhisattvas and celestial Buddhas, understood in this tradition as superhuman saviors. When this last period ends, Maitreya, the new Buddha for the new age, will appear on earth to save his followers, the world will be purged and re-created, and the process will start over. The theory of the three kalpas and the belief in the three periods of the Buddha’s teaching are easily combined; both end in a final dark time of confusion and chaos that is resolved by the appear¬ ance of a savior. The belief that the current kalpa is about to “turn” and a new age will soon begin became widespread. Sutras were composed in China expressing apocalyptic themes that were largely absent in Indian texts. The Buddha of the future, Maitreya, already seen as a savior bodhisattva in India, assumes the role of messiah who saves the faithful from the apocalypse and guides the millennial transformation of the world. Chinese sutras claim that a terrible cataclysm of floods, fires, plagues, and winds will soon occur, bringing the end of the age. Most people will be killed; only the faithful will survive. The texts tend to elaborate enthusiastically on the suffering of the immoral and impious. This destruction is accompanied by the coming of the savior—sometimes immediately, but in other cases in the distant future—and the establishment of a new age of spiritual purity, incredibly long fife, and material well-being. The expected savior is often Maitreya, but a number of others, such as Chandraprabha, the Moonlight Bodhisattva (also known as the King of Light and the Lord of Light) also appear (Overmyer 1999,15-16). The relatively orthodox Buddhist belief in the three kalpas followed by destruc¬ tion and the advent of Maitreya proved appealing to Chinese millennial thinkers. Similar, presumably derivative themes recur repeatedly in new millennial groups through the centuries.

Ming-qing Sectarianism (White Lotus) and Secret Societies A number of groups have been labeled “White Lotus” in the course of Chinese history. The term apparently originated with Huiyuan’s White Lotus Society (baihan hui), a fourth-century Buddhist society focusing on rebirth in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. The White Lotus groups of the Song dynasty (960-1279) appear to have been lay Buddhist societies that were well integrated into their local communities and not

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particularly apocalyptic in orientation. In contrast the term White Lotus Teaching (bailian jiao) of the eighteenth century referred to often rebellious millenarians wor¬ shipping an “Unborn Ancient Progenitoress” for salvation during the coming catas¬ trophes predicted to accompany the “turning of the kalpaT It is this last tradition that we will discuss next. It may make sense to view the label White Lotus with considerable suspicion, especially when applied by critics of the groups in question. Barend ter Haar has demonstrated quite convincingly that the whole idea of an unbroken, ideologically consistent White Lotus tradition is based on unsupportable assumptions, unreli¬ able evidence, and questionable inferences. By the eighteenth century, White Lotus seems to have been little more than a pejorative term applied by Qing officials in much the same way that newspapers (or government officials in the People’s Republic of China) now use the term cult.4 In other words, the term White Lotus is used so broadly and indiscriminately that it is basically meaningless. Nonetheless, a number of millenarian groups sharing similar folk religious beliefs staged rebellions during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Though all of the rebellions were ultimately defeated, several were quite resilient—one held out from 1796 until 1804. They have been documented in some detail. It might be most accu¬ rate to call these groups sectarian folk traditions rather than White Lotus groups. These sectarian folk traditions were widely distributed in northern China, called themselves by a bewildering number of names, and did not always recognize their kinship with competing groups within the same tradition.5 Sectarian folk traditions were usually not secret, though proscribed by the state, and not necessarily rebel¬ lious, though often assumed to be. By the sixteenth century the Eternal (or Unborn) Ancient Mother (Wusheng Laomu) was a common savior in sectarian scriptures, though Maitreya retained popularity as well (Overmyer 1999,59). These sectarian scriptures, called bao juan, or “precious volumes,” show Buddhist and Daoist influences, and additionally incorporate material drawn from oral folk traditions. Never widely available, these scriptures were confiscated and destroyed by authorities whenever they were detected. Many sect leaders used the possession of one or more scriptures to bolster their claims to authority. Variations on a creation myth are found in many sectarian folk traditions. The myth describes the Eternal Mother in Heaven mourning for her lost children. In past ages, the children, creatures of pure spirit, had come down to earth to play. Once on earth, they began to lose their incorporeal nature, becoming creatures of flesh who reincarnated from body to body. Now that the kalpa is about to turn and a black wind and other calamities will soon destroy all living things, the Eternal Mother is calling her children back to their true home in the world of light. Sect leaders often claimed to have found Maitreya (frequently in the person of a small child) and to have determined the time of the kalpa s turn. Followers were then urged to spread the message and engage in group-specific spiritual practices to prepare themselves for the coming traumatic transition. Most groups relied heavily on mantras, and secondarily on martial arts, to protect themselves from the perils

314

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of the apocalypse and the weapons of the state. Of course, as the excitement spread, the authorities would eventually notice the unusual activity, and the groups would be investigated. For those already inclined toward rebellion, the date of the kalpa’s turning would be pushed up by state intervention, and the rebellion would begin. Nonviolent groups were usually just arrested. The failure of millennial rebellions throughout the Qing did not seem to demoralize the true believers. Even the undeniable evidence that magic spells did not deflect bullets could be explained by claiming that the rebels who were shot had wavered in faith, leaving them temporarily vulnerable, or that their adversaries had employed countervailing magic.6 So-called White Lotus rebellions recurred with startling regularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The basic millenarian ideology survived the challenges posed by repeated failures.

Secret Societies Through the centuries, China has produced a bewildering array of mutual aid groups, sworn brotherhoods, and secret societies. These groups run the gamut from the totally law abiding to the purely criminal. At various times, the government has cracked down on even apparently benign groups, on the assumption that any orga¬ nization with sworn Active kinship ties, and especially blood covenants, is poten¬ tially dangerous. The Chinese have traditionally placed secret societies and heterodox religious groups in different categories, despite areas of overlap. Both Chinese and Western scholars often recognize religious elements in the rituals, beliefs, founding myths, and practices of Chinese secret societies; however, they tend to analyze them as criminal rather than religious organizations. Rather than provide an overview of the field, we will concentrate on one group with a history of millennial teachings. The Triads, a group of related secret societies (and criminal gangs), have long stimulated the public imagination, both in China and increasingly the West. Despite the high levels of interest, surprisingly little is actually known about their beliefs.7 Even the name “Triad,” the English term usually used for the Chinese Tiandihui (“Heaven and Earth Society”), does not suggest any of the names that groups con¬ sidered to fall within the Triad fold would use for themselves. Barend ter Haar, a Dutch scholar of Chinese sects and secret societies, has spent years finding and analyzing Triad source materials. His research provides the best insights available on the groups. Ter Haar believes the Triad founding myths exem¬ plify what he calls the “demonological messianic paradigm.” This indigenous south¬ ern Chinese millenarian paradigm shares general outlines with various Buddhist, Chinese sectarian, and even Christian millenarian schemes in that the world is seen as fallen and filled with evil supernatural creatures. An apocalyptic series of disasters wifi soon occur through which the earth wifi be cleansed of both demons and unsaved humans; however, in this belief system, unlike the other paradigms, salvation is not

CHINESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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contingent on moral behavior or changes in lifestyle. It comes from “exorcist tech¬ niques, calling in the aid of divine armies, and protective amulets” (ter Haar 2000, 224). Unlike the millennial teachings that call on humans to repent and change their behavior before the imminent destruction of the world, the demonological messi¬ anic paradigm relies on magic, secret rituals, and the ability to summon supernatural soldiers, precisely the sort of esoteric knowledge passed on in the tradition of the Celestial Masters. Ter Haar sees clear historical links between the two traditions, once assumed to be distinct. The language of the Triad myths and rituals is drawn from Chinese historical romances and the popular culture of the seventeenth century, so, not surprisingly, it sounds a great deal like that of Chinese popular religion. Scholars are uncertain of the degree to which current Chinese gangs and secret societies are related to the original sixteenth-century groups, and disagree on the extent to which traditional rituals and myths survive. Ter Haar suspects that the religious and millenarian aspects of Triad lore have faded with time (2000,14).

The Taiping Rebellion The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) was so large and destructive that it deserves to be discussed in detail. A product of both Western and Chinese millenarian teachings, the Taiping Rebellion largely fits Catherine Wessinger’s definition of a catastrophic millennial movement (1997).8 The movement is usually traced back to the visions experienced by Hong Xiuquan after repeated failure in the Imperial Civil Service exams. (The exams were designed to exclude all but the most brilliant and/or lucky aspirants; less than 1 percent of the candidates passed at the district level.) The exams were the main avenue through which bright, ambitious Chinese males could hope to move into the Mandarin class. Success in the exams led to enormous opportunities for upward mobility, for both the successful candidate and his extended family, so the pressures to pass were intense. Hong’s family had great hopes for young Xiuquan and had invested precious resources in his education. In 1837, after learning that he had failed the exams yet again, Hong slipped into a state of delirium. According to the elaborate accounts later published by the Taiping movement, Hong then traveled into the heavens, where his internal organs were replaced and he was brought into the presence of the Heavenly Father. The Heavenly Father recog¬ nized Hong as his second son and set him to the task of purging the world of the demons who had been multiplying prolifically and now posed quite a problem. Hong was sent back with the instruction that he would “sleep” for several years and then discover his divine mission. According to the Taiping founding story, Hong gradually returned to ordinary consciousness, none the worse for his extraordinary celestial adventures. In fact, even skeptical viewers grudgingly acknowledged that Hong was imbued with a new power and presence (Hamberg 1854,14; Michael 1971,

316

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63). Seven years later, Hong finally picked up a set of evangelical Protestant pam¬ phlets he had been given after a previous trip to take the exams and discovered in their pages the key to his visions.9 Hong realized that he was Jesus’s younger brother and that his divine mission required him to rid the world of demons in order to establish the divine city described in the book of Revelation. It was all clear: Hong was to kill the earthly demons (Manchus, idol worshipers, unrepentant Confucians, and the like) and create a Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (the Taiping Tianguo). And that is what he set out to do, though it took several years before his following was large enough to rebel. Early in his outreach efforts, Hong had converted several talented evangelists who in turn established numerous “God-Worshipping Societies,” especially among the Hakka and Zhuang minority communities scattered across the rough, lawless terrain of Guangdong and Guangxi. These missionaries, not Hong, produced the explosive growth that characterized the movement’s early years. Though the Taiping Rebellion is often seen as a textbook illustration of the problems arising from the rash export of Western millennial teachings stripped of their proper warning labels, Robert Weller argues persuasively that whatever the initial Christian impetus underlying the movement, by the time the Taipings rose in rebellion the movement had become thoroughly sinicized and represented indige¬ nous Chinese millennial traditions as much as Christian teaching (1994,33-110). As the religion spread, ambitious converts claimed to be possessed by the spirits of the Heavenly Father and Jesus, Hong’s elder brother, and jockeyed for position within the leadership of the God Worshippers. Possession by a wide range of spirits, both biblical and Chinese, soon became so common that it threatened the survival of the movement and had to be restricted by the leadership (Weller 1994, 69—80). By 1850 local elites were raising the alarm about the seditious actions of the God Worshippers. Several leaders had already been arrested before Hong decided to act. While it might appear that the God Worshippers rebelled in response to persecu¬ tion, it seems more likely that Hong’s original vision provided the casus belli (see Lowe 2000, 226; Boardman 1952,15). The God Worshippers’ rebellion was initially successful. Individual battles were sometimes lost, but the traveling army of the faithful picked up new followers and skills as it moved across the countryside, heading north and east. Even while on the march, religious instruction and discipline were maintained. New converts soon learned the movement’s theology and quickly became battle hardened. The heredi¬ tary soldiers of the Qing dynasty were overpowered and repeatedly routed as the God Worshippers moved on, by land and river, to take Nanjing, the “Southern Capital” of the Ming dynasty. Once m Nanjing, the God Worshippers’ leaders announced the establishment of the Taiping Tianguo, the “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace,” a new dynasty, and promptly rewarded themselves with the mansions and harems traditionally enjoyed by emperors and princes. The movement’s momentum was lost, though this was not clear for several years. The future still offered opportunities for major military advances, though they were squandered. The kingdom was eventually besieged and

CHINESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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spent the next decade fending off increasingly serious attacks, ultimately falling in a bloody slaughter. Some of the most vexing questions plaguing historians of the Taiping Rebellion involve the puzzling decision to halt in Nanjing. What were the leaders thinking? Why didn’t they move on to Beijing while they had the advantage?10 Rudolph Wagner may provide the best answer. He believes that the Taiping advance ended because the instructions in Hong’s visions had stopped with the establishment of the millennial Kingdom of Great Peace. Once the Millennium had arrived, no further guidance was needed or provided (Wagner 1982, 4-5). God had given his instructions, and Hong had followed them. The future was up to God. From our viewpoint, Hong made a bad call, but from his perspective the decision came from God. The scholarly consensus is that roughly 20 million Chinese died as a direct result of the Taiping Rebellion. This makes it one of the bloodiest single movements in the history of religions.

The People’s Republic of China11

Maoist Millennialism East is red, Rises the sun. China has brought forth A Mao Zedong. For the People's happiness He works, He is the People’s Great Savior.12

“The East Is Red” In the People’s Republic of China (PRC) the state itself provided the millennial ideol¬ ogy and motive force behind the disruption of society, an unusual—though not unprecedented—circumstance in Chinese history. The power of a state was behind the millennial kingdom of the Five Pecks of Rice. The Tang dynasty (618-907) pro¬ vides another case where the ruling family used explicit millennial claims to provide at least partial justification for their assumption of power.13 The Ming (“Light,” “Radiant”) dynasty (1368-1644) also had its origins in a millennial rebellion. Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming, began his military career as a soldier support¬ ing a messianic claimant to the throne known as the “Little King of Light.” After gaining the throne, the new emperor sanitized the records to obscure his early his¬ tory (ter Haar 1992,116-17). Even the failed Taiping Rebellion temporarily established a millennial state. Of these, however, only the Five Pecks and the PRC appear to have made sustained, concrete efforts to transform society to fit their millennial vision.

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CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Marx and Engels, the great theorists behind modern Communism, were cir¬ cumspect when writing about the ends of the historical process. Both seemed to believe that humans would eventually live in a utopian paradise, but neither dwelled on the specifics, assuming that true Communism would not arrive for centuries and its form could not yet be imagined. Their millennialism was undeniable but luke¬ warm and in many ways a secondary concern. By contrast, Maoism could be called a “hot” millennialism. From its inception in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was distin¬ guished by its impatience. Marx saw true Communism as a distant but inevitable result of the inexorable forces of history. The CCP wanted it as soon as possible, if not sooner. Wolfgang Bauer notes the extreme “voluntarism” displayed by factions within the CCP (1976,376-77). The Chinese Communists realized that if China had to pass through the long historical stages of modern capitalism and socialism before reaching Communism, it would never catch up with, much less surpass, the Western industrial nations. This was clearly unacceptable, since the arrival of true Communism might be hundreds or even thousands of years in the future. Voluntarism, the idea that the will of the people could trump the otherwise ironbound historical process, offered a theo¬ retical solution. The voluntarism developed by Li Dazhao and his acolyte Mao Zedong was in some ways compatible with traditional Chinese beliefs about the paramount importance of an ideologically unified populace. As Mao saw it, if the people worked in complete unison and shared the same progressive political consciousness, they could transform their world and basically ignore the so-called laws of nature. There would be no limits to what they could accomplish. In its most extreme formulations, Maoist voluntarism can be understood as a form of magical thinking. In the typology developed by Wessinger (1997), Maoism is a progressive, though violent, millennial movement, in which the inexorable forces of history and the power of the people’s consciousness take the place of a divine plan and constitute a kind of superhuman agency. At the peak of millennial frenzy, during the high points of the Great Leap Forward (c. 1958-62) and the Cultural Revolution (c. 1966-76), Mao’s devout followers believed that they were on the verge of a fantastic transfor¬ mation in which China would leap past the great industrial economies of the West to become a socialist paradise. The beliefs of Maoists, though ostensibly grounded in dialectical materialism, seem in retrospect to be as delusional and magical as those of any cargo cult or nativist revival movement. Maoists, overtly antireligious, rejected all feudal superstition and made a great show of their atheism, yet regarded their supreme revolutionary leader with the awe and reverence normally reserved for the greatest spiritual authorities and sought to imitate him in their every thought, word, and deed. The “scientific” theories of Mao Zedong, the infallible party chairman, were treated as revealed truth, a kind of twentieth-century “gnosis” that gave privileged insight into the inexorable evolu¬ tionary forces of history, forces that ensured the ultimate triumph of the revolution. China would achieve a “thousand years of Communist happiness” through class struggle, permanent devolution, the guiding light of Mao Zedong Thought, and the power of the people’s consciousness, independent of material circumstances and historical conditions.

CHINESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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Mao’s first millennial adventure was the Great Leap Forward. By 1957, only eight years after the Communist victory in China, Mao apparently thought that socialism had been achieved, despite China’s poverty and weak industrial base. He felt that the time was right for the nation to move directly into Communism. The way to do this was not by patiently developing a solid economy based on heavy industry—the Russian approach—but to galvanize the entire populace, industrialize the country¬ side, plant fields more closely, mobilize every member of society, exhort the masses to work harder, and simply make Communism happen by leaping over the develop¬ mental stages of history. Though many Chinese intellectuals seem to have realized that this was folly, few spoke out. Most were either intimidated or inspired to go along, as wave after wave of artificially stimulated enthusiasm (and real hysteria) swept the nation. By late 1958, peasants had begun spontaneously organizing their villages into communes, and officials were soon reporting staggering (and impos¬ sible) increases in agricultural productivity. Rural industrialization projects took up any time left over from agricultural labor. The most infamous of these initiatives was the effort to produce high-grade steel in backyard furnaces. Every community was expected to produce steel, and virtually every community tried, even those without the requisite raw materials. Massive failure was soon evident across the board, with the exception of agriculture; the crops were generally excellent, though the peasants were often too exhausted to harvest them. Tens of millions of Chinese are thought to have died of famine and malnutrition-related disease between 1959 and 1962. Rather than question his theory, Mao blamed the failure of the Great Leap on hid¬ den enemies. If only everyone had believed, the Leap would have worked. By 1966, Mao was ready to try again, this time with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.14 The history of the Cultural Revolution is remarkable and convoluted. It began with a weird idealism, as Mao unleashed the young to create an entirely new civiliza¬ tion, a Communist utopia, by destroying the social networks, historic artifacts, and cultural traditions of China. The chaotic energy and wild proliferation of movements aimed at destroying all authority and hierarchy eventually led to internal war, as armed factions fought to demonstrate their credentials as true revolutionaries, using guns and grenades to settle fine points of doctrine. The country verged on complete anar¬ chy, with order finally being restored by the army. Purges and counterpurges contin¬ ued for years. While the millennial vision motivating the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution quickly faded in the bright lights of interrogation rooms, for most Chinese Mao retained his orchestrated but apparently tangible charisma as the people’s sav¬ ior.15 The millennial aspirations that set the Cultural Revolution in motion only lasted a few years, yet the faltering movement itself struggled on until Mao’s death in 1976. The practical outcomes of the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution were largely disastrous. In the Great Leap period, the rush to industrialize the countryside led to crises in agriculture and food distribution. The carnage wrought by the Cultural Revolution has been especially well documented. Millions of Chinese saw their edu¬ cational prospects destroyed, and the damage to China’s environment, infrastructure, art, architecture, and historical record is still being felt. The economy has recovered.

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Recently scholars—most notably Jung Chang and Jon Halliday—have attempted to rewrite the biography of Mao and reevaluate the history of his rule. Chang and Halliday appear intent on destroying the last tattered remnants of the Maoist legacy by portraying Mao Zedong as an unprincipled narcissist, liar, and sociopath, a ruth¬ less manipulator whose one and only goal was the attainment and employment of power.16 It is not clear that all their conclusions will withstand critical scrutiny or even that all their sources can be independently verified, but if they are even close to being correct Mao should no longer be regarded as a millenarian. They have con¬ vincingly demonstrated that Mao did not believe the message he preached. For Mao, Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought were merely blunt instruments with which to bludgeon his adversaries, real and imagined (Chang and Halliday 2005, throughout). One suspects that had the theoretical underpinnings of National Socialism been applicable to China, Mao might just as well have embraced Nazism. Curiously, even if Chang and Halliday are found to be correct in all their conclu¬ sions, Maoism was still a millennial movement for the millions of Chinese who believed in its promises. Mao may have been a transparently false prophet, yet many of his followers were sincere believers in a shared millennial vision.

The Post-Mao Era A surprising number of popular religious teachings have managed to survive the period of Communist control; millenarian movements based on popular interpre¬ tations of traditional Chinese teachings, as well as Protestant apocalyptic thought, have flourished more or less openly since the relaxation of government control began in the 1980s. As of 2006, the government of the PRC is still struggling to find effective strategies to contain the spread of what it calls “evil cults.” Perhaps the best known of the current popular religion-based millenarian movements is Falun Gong.17 Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is an excel¬ lent example of a religious group that began without pronounced millennial inclinations, but became increasingly apocalyptic and millennial in the face of prolonged persecution.18 When Falun Gong was founded in 1992 by the nowreclusive “Master Li” (Li Hongzhi, b. 1951), it was just one of many new qigong movements that attracted the interest of Chinese in the PRC who were eager to improve their health and enjoy greater happiness. With the tacit approval of the state, traditional healing arts were enjoying a renaissance, as the government struggled to cope with increasing medical costs and the collapse of social welfare services. Falun Gong was soon distinguished by its simple practices, its cost (it is taught for free), its extravagant and exclusive claims, and its founder’s polemical and speculative writings. The movement grew rapidly, while its relationship with the state deteriorated. In 1999 Falun Gong practitioners staged a massive, silent protest outside the walled compound housing the top leaders of the PRC.19 Though nonviolent, the protest deeply alarmed the Communist leadership, especially since the otherwise

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effective secret police had been caught unawares. In the minds of China’s still-total¬ itarian leaders, any group that could organize such a large protest without being detected clearly posed a serious threat to state control. It was quickly discovered that the practice of Falun Gong had spread to the highest echelons of government and the military, so the fears of the ruling CCP elite seemed justified.20 Falun Gong was quickly outlawed, and other previously tolerated religious groups soon came under attack as well. The PRC has continued to monitor sectarian and unregistered religious groups closely in the aftermath of the Falun Gong proscription. Though practitioners have protested vigorously and used the world’s media to their advantage, the movement has been severely damaged within the PRC, and many practitioners have been imprisoned or martyred. Falun Gong still survives underground in the PRC, but most of its vitality lies within the Chinese diaspora. The story is complex and still developing. What is most significant in this context is the way that the teachings of Falun Gong have changed since 1999. From its inception, Falun Gong taught a dualistic view of the universe. The vis¬ ible world is only a small part of the cosmos, which is divided into many levels, all inhabited by beings, both good and evil. Some life-forms are visible to ordinary humans; most are not, though advanced practitioners gain access to a great number of other worlds, or spiritual dimensions, and can see higher and lower beings. Humans have been exiled on Earth, the highest of the hell planets, because they have become entangled in desires over the course of many lifetimes. This Earth is not our true home, of course, for we were originally spirit beings. The goal of human life is “consummation,” an escape from the confines of the body and the cycle of reincarnation, a return to our true home (Lowe 2003). Master Li’s teachings seem directly derived from folk sectarian traditions, though he explicitly denies the connection. His account of human origins is remark¬ ably similar to the creation myth of the Eternal Mother, and his multilevel cosmol¬ ogy is drawn from related Chinese folk sectarian worldviews (for a full discussion see Ownby 2003). However, he does not use the traditional religious vocabulary, coining his own quasi-scientific terminology, thereby disguising the sources upon which he apparently draws. Practitioners of Falun Gong, though generally well edu¬ cated, do not seem aware of the folk sectarian affinities of their cultivation system. As the persecution of Falun Gong followers increased, Master Li’s language became more harsh, dualistic, and direct. Master Li began calling the persecutors of Falun Gong subhuman and demon-possessed, urging his followers to engage their tormentors in spiritual warfare. A great “fa rectification” is coming in which the true practitioners will achieve spiritual “consummation” and the demons will be destroyed.21 Master Li’s writings are often both cryptic and vague, making him hard to pin down, but the growing apocalypticism of Falun Gong materials was notable in the opening years of the twenty-first century. Edward Irons, a scholar researching Falun Gong, was told by Hong Kong practitioners that they were convinced that Master Li is, in fact, Maitreya Buddha (2003,253). Whether consciously or not, these followers of Falun Gong have explicitly linked Falun Gong with its folk sectarian antecedents.

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Eastern Lightning Perhaps the most infamous, and least understood, millennial movement in mod¬ ern China is Dongfang Shandian, a secretive group with Christian roots, the “Lightning in the East” (or “Eastern Lightning”). I am not aware of any published scholarly work on this group, though a number of critical reports are available on the Internet. If the available sources are trusted—most are highly polemical— Eastern Lightning appears to be a highly sinicized, aggressively evangelistic millen¬ nial group that has been recruiting forcefully and deceptively in northeastern China since 1989.22 The movement is apparently now centered in Henan (central China), though its critics believe it has spread throughout China. As with Falun Gong, its leader is now apparently directing the organization from a safe haven in the United States. Eastern Lightning apparently teaches that the world has passed through two ages and is now in its final, third age. In the first age, God was named Jehovah; in the second he took the name Jesus. Now God has incarnated as a reclusive Chinese woman who has revealed new scriptures for the last days. The savior figure of Eastern Lightning has never been photographed and may not actually exist. She is described a young, plain woman who is, despite appearances, the returned Christ. Her mission is to destroy the PRC, identified as the Red Dragon of the book of Revelation, and take her followers up to heaven. The themes of the three ages of the Earth, a mysterious young messiah in hiding, and the destruction of the world, with only a small band of the faithful destined for salvation, are prominent in Chinese popular religion, of course. Further study will be needed before the group can be analyzed in greater depth, though its millennial theology certainly sounds as indebted to Chinese folk religion as it does to mainline Christian teachings.

Conclusion China is home to a number of apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian traditions. Having originated independently in China, they are not identical to Western tradi¬ tions, however, they share clear similarities with their Western counterparts. It makes sense to discuss them with a common vocabulary. Far from being overpow¬ ered by foreign millennial teachings, Chinese traditions have been able to incorpo¬ rate ideas and images from these imported ideologies to create new forms of indigenous millennialism. The Chinese historical record favors millennial groups that engage in rebellion; pacifist groups receive little attention. Still it is clear that many strains of millennial belief, both quietist and revolutionary, have flourished in China for the last two thousand years. Clearly, the West has no monopoly on either millennial thought or millenarian violence.

CHINESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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The Chinese Communist Party was created with distinctive millenarian ten¬ dencies that have surfaced at least twice during its rule. In both instances, the results were devastating. Nonetheless, there are still Maoists openly extolling the millennial fantasies Mao promulgated, while just beneath the surface, more traditional millen¬ nial teachings seem to be adapting, evolving, and spreading in this time of rapid change and uncertainty.

NOTES 1. Eastern Lightning is by no means the only example of this phenomenon. Many other millennial groups, Christian and otherwise, are currently active in China. 2. Some scholars, like Michel Strickman, have taken the normative position that the Celestial Masters tradition is Daoism. 3. Many of these groups believe in savior figures like the deified Laozi (Lao tzu) and anthropomorphic star gods drawn from Daoism and popular traditions. 4. Ter Haar (1992, 253) notes that the terms White Lotus and xiejiao (“evil cult”) were used interchangeably by Qing officials. 5. In this they might resemble some martial arts lineages. 6. The “magic” employed to defeat the millenarian rebels often involved yin forces. For example, the millenarian rebels who followed Wang Lun, a sectarian rebel, initially appeared to be invulnerable to gunfire. The soldiers in the besieged city of Linqing (Lin-ch’ing) were deeply dismayed as they watched volley after volley of bullets miss their targets. Then a canny defender saved the day by stationing prostitutes on the ramparts. As soon as the prostitutes exposed their genitals to the rebels, the soldiers’ bullets hit their marks; the rebels’ protective yang magic had been undone by the prostitutes’ yin energy (Naquin 1981,100-101). 7. The dire threats leveled against initiates who might contemplate revealing Triad secrets evidently worked! 8. Catastrophic millennialism, as defined by Wessinger, is characterized by the expectation of an imminent dramatic, cataclysmic transition to the millennial kingdom. In this dualistic pattern of belief, the world is seen as divided into forces of good and evil that are battling for control. This polarized worldview tends to produce an “us versus them” mindset that often leads to violence as millenarian forces fight to create their transformed world (Wessinger 1997). 9. These pamphlets, “Good Words to Exhort the Age,” contained excerpts from the Bible translated into literary Chinese by Liang Afa, an early Protestant convert. The selected passages emphasized the might and majesty of God and warned of the punishments to be visited upon the unrighteous. The saving grace of Jesus received short shrift. 10. And, of course, could they have conquered all of China had they continued their rapid advance? 11. We will not consider the topic of millenarian movements on the disputed island of Taiwan, except to note that popular religion is flourishing there and millennial movements are quite common. 12. “The East Is Red” functions as the PRC’s de facto national anthem. The phrase translated here as “Great Savior” is dajiu xing, which literally means “Great Saving Star,” a

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startling reference to the ancient Chinese messianic belief in star gods who can assume human form and descend to earth to save people in times of crisis. 13. Unlike Mao and the Zhangs of the Five Pecks movement, the ruling Li family of the Tang did not seriously pursue their millennial claims, which were based on supposed descent from Laozi, viewed in popular religion as a messiah figure since his deification during the Han dynasty. 14. Historians now generally interpret Mao’s great transformational initiatives largely within the context of CCP infighting. There is a great deal to be learned from this approach (e.g., Spence 1999,142-75). Here we will simply examine the millennial dimensions of Mao’s schemes. 15. Mao has maintained his divinity in the eyes of many Chinese; he has now entered the pantheon of popular religion as a protector god, and one can see medallions of the Chairman hanging from the rearview mirrors of cars, and especially taxis, in many parts of the PRC. 16. Others have made this case, though less passionately, for years. It is obvious to anyone who reads the literature that Mao was an unusually horrible human being. 17. Falun is a term derived from Buddhism meaning “the wheel of the dharma (or true law, true teaching, cosmic principle).” Gong is a term for spiritual effort that is also found in the compound word qigong (spiritual effort using qi, a Chinese term for psycho¬ spiritual-physical energy). Falun Dafa means “The Dharma Wheel of the Great Law.” (It works better in Chinese.) 18. We should note that Falun Gong does not wish to be labeled a religion. As part of their education, citizens of the PRC have been taught that religions are organized institutions, with infrastructure, clear hierarchies, and dogmas based on feudal, antiscientific superstition. Believing that this definition of religion is universally shared, Falun Gong and most other qigong-based teachings understandably prefer to be called systems of spiritual cultivation. 19. The protest was triggered by the publication of an article critical of Falun Gong in a state-sponsored but small-circulation magazine targeting teenage readers. From its early days, Falun Gong has seemed very sensitive to media reports. Falun Gong’s extreme reaction appears to have been counterproductive, since it only increased the concerns of the PRC’s leadership. 20. CCP leaders’ concerns seemed justified according to their paranoid standards. At this early date, for most practitioners Falun Gong was just a free and simple way to improve health and well-being, only slightly more threatening to state control than jogging. 21. Master Li s language is quite unclear at times. Fa rectification is apparently a dramatic, apocalyptic cleansing that will restore the true dharma (fa). At times, consummation sounds like the Buddhist nirvana; in other uses it refers to an undying, eternal state of bliss in which the practitioner’s personal identity is maintained. 22. It seems to have become notorious mostly because its recruiting exclusively targets the members of other Christian denominations. Other clandestine groups, like the Three Grades of Servants, are equally large but apparently less threatening to fellow Christians.

WORKS CITED Bauer, Wolfgang. 1976. China and the Search for Happiness: Recurring Themes in Four Thousand Years of Chinese Cultural History, translated by Michael Shaw. New York: Seabury.

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Boardman, Eugene. 1952. Christian Influence upon the Ideology of the Taiping Revolutionary Rebellion, 1851-1864. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. 2005. Mao: The Unknown Story. New York: Knopf. Hamberg, Theodore. 1854. The Visions of Hung-Siu-Tshuen and Origin of the Kwang-si Insurrection. Hong Kong. Irons, Edward. 2003. “Falun Gong and the Sectarian Religion Paradigm.” Nova Religio 6, no. 2 (Spring): 244-62. Kleeman, Terry F. 1998. Great Perfection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Lowe, Scott. 2000. “Western Millennial Ideology Goes East: The Taiping Revolution and Mao’s Great Leap Forward.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Case Histories, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 220-40. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. -. 2001. “New Religious Movements and the Chinese State.” Nova Religio 4, no. 2 (Spring): 213-24. -. 2003. “Chinese and International Contexts for the Rise of Falun Gong.” Nova Religio 6, no. 2 (Spring): 263-76. Michael, Franz. 1971. The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents. Vol. 2. Documents and Comments. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Naquin, Susan. 1981. Shantung Rebellion: The WangLun Uprising of 1774. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Overmyer, Daniel L. 1976. Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. —-——. 1999. Precious Volumes: An Introduction to Chinese Sectarian Scriptures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ownby, David. 1999. “Chinese Millenarian Traditions: The Formative Age? American Historical Review 104, no. 5.38 pars, www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/104.5/ ah001513.html. -. 2002. “Is There a Chinese Millennial Tradition? An Analysis of Recent Western Studies of the Taiping Rebellion.” In Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, edited by Abbas Amanat and Magnus T. Bernhardsson, 262-81. London: I. B. Tauris. -. 2003. “A History for Falun Gong: Popular Religion and the Chinese State since the Ming Dynasty.” Nova Religio 6, no. 2 (Spring): 223-43. Spence, Jonathan. 1999. Mao Zedong. New York: Penguin Putnam. ter Haar, Barend J. 1992. The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History. Leiden: E. J. Brill. -. 2000. Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads: Creating an Identity. Leiden: Brill’s Scholars List. Wagner, Rudolph G. 1982. Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weller, Robert P. 1994. Resistance Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts, and Tiananmen. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 47-59* New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 17

KOREAN MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS ROBERT PEARSON FLAHERTY

article examines certain of the main contributors to millennialism in the Korean context. In the history of religions in Korea, millennialism is not primarily a reflection of Christian eschatology. Jesuit missionaries began visiting the Korean peninsula in the late sixteenth century, and there existed the beginnings of an orga¬ nized church of Roman Catholics by the late eighteenth century (Grayson 1989, 142)> however, as Lee Sang-taek1 noted, millennialism only became a prominent feature of Korean Christianity during the Protestant Revival Movement of 1907 (1996,155)This

Korea s so-called indigenous religions, those new religions (sinheung jonggyo2 literally, newly emerged religions) that originated in the nineteenth century during the late Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), were predicated not on Christian myth, but on pre-Christian religious beliefs: Maitreya, the Future Buddha; Sangje (Shangti), also known as the OkhwangSangJe (Jade Ruler of the Universe) of religious Taoism; Neo-Confucian and Taoist cosmology; I Ching (JuYeok in Korean); yin/yang (eum/ yang m Korean) theory; Cheonggamnok, a book of prophecies written in the six¬ teenth century that was based on the I Ching and predicted the collapse of the Joseon dynasty and the coming of Cheong Toryeong, the Taoist savior; and belief in Seoncheon GaeByeok (Great Opening [GaeByeok] of the First Heaven [Seon-Cheon]) and Hu-cheon GaeByeok (Great Opening of the Later Heaven [Hu-Cheon]). GaeByeok (literally “opening [gae] dawn [byeok\? but often translated as Great Opening) refers to a time of transition from one cosmic age to another. The term

GaeByeok is related to the I Ching (Ju-yeok in Korean, the Book of Changes), familiar to Korea from both Taoism and Neo-Confticianism. GaeByeok can be cataclysmic or gradual, corresponding to Catherine Wessinger’s catastrophic and progressive

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millennialism, respectively (1997,48). GaeByeok are generally thought to be cataclys¬ mic, though. The GaeByeok worldview is not linear like that of Christian eschatology, but cyclical, like those cosmologies described in Mircea Eliade’s seminal work The Myth of the Eternal Return (Eliade 1974). As Wessinger has noted, millennialism is as compatible with cyclical worldviews as it is with linear views (1997,48). Korean new religions are generally syncretistic, incorporating elements from Buddhism (Bul-gyo), Confucianism (Yu-gyo), Taoism (Do-gyo), and an underlying Korean Shamanism (Musok-Sinang, or simply Mu-gyo), which are generally unified by a central eschatological myth. Additionally, a number of Korean new religions that have arisen since Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945 (such as Mun Sunmyeong’s Unification Church [Tongil-gyo]) are based in Christian myth, however loosely interpreted. Korea’s new religions are often characterized by extreme Korean nationalism, which is often linked to a belief in the Korean peninsula’s geomantic importance in the advent of the new age that is justified by reference to Korean geomancy (hungsuchiri), the Korean analogue of Chinese fengshui. Boudewijn Walraven (2002) has described well the interpretation of history and creation of national mythology by Korea’s new religions, particularly the JeungSan family of religions. Koreans often joke that Korea is the supermarket of religions. There are at present an estimated five hundred new religions in Korea (Ro 2002,32). Although millennialism in the Korean context has not been primarily a reflec¬ tion of Christian eschatology, a pre-Tribulation Rapture and belief in Christ’s Second Coming were central to the teachings of Pastor Kil Seon-ju, regarded by many as the Father of Korean Christianity and the most prominent figure in the Great Protestant Revival of 1907. Pastor Kil, a Taoist master before his conversion to Christianity, believed Cheonggamnok to be genuine prophecy and Jesus to be Cheong Toryeong, the Taoist savior (Chong-bum Kim 2006). Belief in a pre-Tribulation Rapture has remained a prominent feature of a number of movements within mainstream Korean Protestant Christianity, notably the Korean Hyu-geo (Rapture) Movement of 1992.

Maitreya Buddhism in Korea Maitreya (Mireuk, in Korean), the Future Buddha of Buddhist eschatology, has been important in Korean Buddhism since the Dharma (Buddhist teachings) diffused to Korea from China in the fourth century c.e. Mireuk’s worship has been a promi¬ nent feature not only of orthodox Korean Buddhism, but also of Korean folk reli¬ gion and a number of popular millennial religious movements.3 While the exact date is unclear, scholars believe the Maitreya Sutra to have been written between 200 b.c.e. and 200 c.e. According to the Maitreya Sutra (in Korean, Mireukhasaengkyong sutra), Maitreya was born to a Brahmin family in Varanasi, India and was a disciple of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni (Seokkamoni, in Korean). Following his death,

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Maitreya is said to have ascended to Tushita Heaven. According to the Maitreya Sutra, Maitreya will return to this world 5,670,000,000 years after the death of Shakyamuni, and will attain Buddhahood in this future incarnation while seated beneath the Naga-puspa (the Dragon Flower tree; in Korean yonghwasu). Buddhism came to Korea in the fourth century c.e. during Korea’s Three Kingdoms Period (Gogoryeo, the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms, encom¬ passing what is now North Korea and Manchuria; Silla in the southeast of the Korean peninsula; and Baekje in Korea’s southwest). The first unambiguous evi¬ dence for Buddhism’s introduction to Korea dates to 372 c.e. Gogoryeo was the first of the Three Kingdoms to accept Buddhism, Baekche the second, and Silla the last. It has long been widely believed in Korea that Mireuk will be born as a human being in the degenerate Dharma Age (NanBop), an idea that has a long history in Pure Land Buddhism (Jeongto) and is a feature of many Korean new religions. There are two tendencies in Pure Land Buddhism: a transcendent Pure Land and descent of the Pure Land. Maitreya belief takes both forms in Korea: belief in Mireuk’s descent and belief in rebirth in Jeongto, the Pure Land (Kwon 1994,200). There is an inscrip¬ tion on the halo of a gilt-bronze Maitreya image from Gogoreyo dating from fourth century c.e. that expresses the desire not to be born in Maitreya’s Tushita Heaven, but for Maitreya Buddha to be born in this world. Maitreya Buddhism in Baekje and in the kingdom of Chin from which Baekje received Buddhism had a strong tendency for belief in Maitreya’s descent and the realization of the Pure Land in this world. Although Silla was the last of the three kingdoms to receive Buddhism, Buddhism in general and Maitreya worship in particular provided the ideological basis for Silla’s unification of the Korean peninsula in 676 c.e. Unified Silla (Tongil Silla, 676-918) styled itself Bulguk (Buddha Nation), and believed that Maitreya would be born in Silla, which would become Maitreya’s Land of the Dragon Flower (Yonghwa doryang) predicted in the Maitreya Sutra. A statue of Maitreya was enshrined at the first Silla Buddhist temple, Hungnyun-sa. The temple’s abbot prayed that Maitreya would be born as a member of the Hwarang, the Flower Boys: an elite youth organization of Silla society. The “flower” in “Flower Boys” (Hwarang) refers to the Dragon Flower (Yonghwa), which, of course, is associated with Maitreya. The Hwarang were also known as Yonghwa-hyangdo, the Incense (hyang) Group of the Dragon Flower (Yonghwa) (Kim Young-tae 1993, 60). The Hwarangdo were regarded as the collective embodiment of Maitreya. The Maitreya cult of the Hwarangdo was developed by the state during Tongil Silla, according to Pankaj N. Mohan, to co-opt the potentially revolutionary appeal of the Maitreya cult and pro¬ mote Maitreya belief in the service of unity and stability, “blunting its millenarian edge and harnessing its appeal as a force of national unity” (2001,173). Belief in Mireuk in Korea has not been limited to state religion, though, and Mireuk worship has long been a prominent feature of folk religion and Korean sha¬ manism (.Musok Sinang or Mu-gyo) as well. Mireuk provided the symbolic focus for a number of popular uprisings in Korean history, and since the late Joseon dynasty Maitreya has been a prominent feature in many Korean new religions that arose in

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response to acculturative strain, rapid social change, and the changing geopolitical conditions of northeast Asia. Belief in rebirth in the transcendent Pure Land of Maitreya (Mireuk) has been more popular during stable times in Korea, while belief in Mireuk’s descent to this world (i.e., Maitreya’s transformation of this world) has been more widespread in Korea during times of crisis, such as when a new dynasty was founded or during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945). Belief in the imminent coming of Maitreya was especially high during the Imjinweiran, the so-called Hideyoshi invasion by Japan in 1592. Similarly, Mireuk belief was widespread during the Ch’ing invasion in 1636. During early Joseon dynasty, the state actively persecuted Buddhism, unlike the preceding Goryeo (918-1392) and Tongil Silla dynasties (676-918), in which Buddhism had been the state religion. Neo-Confucianism was instituted as state (sub¬ stitute) religion during the Joseon dynasty, and Buddhism became the religion of the socially marginal and Maitreya the anticipated savior of the common people.

Minjung Religion in the Late Joseon Dynasty The late Joseon dynasty (the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) was a particularly dark time for Korea, a period when Western values and Japanese impe¬ rialism threatened the stability and general worldview of Korean society. There was also growing dissatisfaction with the feudal order that had characterized the Joseon dynasty since its establishment in 1392. Joseon society was dominated by a native aristocracy (the yangban) supported by a large class of peasant farmers. In recent decades the term minjung (literally “the mass of the people”) has become popular as an analytical category among Korean theologians, historians, and social theorists. Korea’s social theorists distinguish between two categories of minjung. The first are conscious participants in history. The second are not fully aware of their impor¬ tance, although they can be motivated to destruction and are prone to following messiahs (Lee 1996,39). In the nineteenth century a religious awakening began in Korea that was char¬ acterized by a mythic core blending elements from Buddhism (particularly Maitreya Buddhism), religious Taoism, Korean Neo-Confucianism (especially its cosmog¬ ony), and an underlying Korean shamanism. There were at this time many wander¬ ing intellectuals or poets (bangnang shi-in) whose travels often took the form of vision quests for spiritual revelation from which they formulated religious teach¬ ings that were thinly veiled criticisms of the yangban social order and the Joseon dynasty. Such teachings were often formulated in reference to Maitreya’s Dragon Flower world or to the coming of the Taoist savior, Cheong Toryeong. Such religions were not entirely wmjtmgreligious movements, though. Although they drew their support from the masses, they were formulated not by the minjung

330

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themselves, but by the wandering poets (bangnang shi-in), marginalized intellectu¬ als who, while well educated, were often the second sons of yangban fathers or the sons of concubines of yangban. Choe Je-u (1824-64), the founder of Donghak Awakening, is reputed to have been the son of a concubine. Nine centuries earlier, the monk Kung-ye (d. 918), who believed himself to be Maitreya and who led a suc¬ cessful revolt against Silla, helping to lay the foundation for the subsequent Goryeo dynasty (918-1392), is reputed to have been the son of a royal concubine and thus the son of the Silla emperor himself. Millenarian religions and what Ralph Linton (1943) called magical nativistic movements flourish in periods of psycho-historical dislocation (Lifton 1983) and cultural distortion, phase two of Anthony F. C. Wallace’s revitalization process (1956). Korea’s late Joseon dynasty was such a time. Belief in Mireuk’s imminent appearance or that of Cheong Toryeong (the Taoist Savior) was especially strong among the common people (the minjung, if you will), and a religious awakening occurred that reflected the desire to abolish feudalism and to create a more egalitar¬ ian society.

The Cheonggamnok and Cheong Toryeong During late Joseon a number of books of prophecies were circulating that were based on the I Ching. These books contained prophecies that were criticisms of Joseon society. The most representative of these books was the Cheonggamnok, which is attributed to Nam Sa-go (1509—71). Based on I Ching and the use of bung-

suchiri (geomancy) for prognostication, the Cheonggamnok is a book of prophe¬ cies in the form of dialogues between the fictitious characters of Cheong Kam and Yi Sim about the coming of the ideal society (Kim Nak-pil 1993, 129). The

Cheongammnok foretold the fall of the Joseon dynasty, the coming of a Taoist sav¬ ior (Cheong Toryeong), who would be born to the Cheong family in the Gyeryongsan (Chicken-Dragon Mountain) area in Jeolla Province, and the relocation of the capital from Hanyang (as Seoul was known at the time) to the Gyeryong-san area (which continues to be the focus of many new religious movements and much traditional shamanistic activity to this day). The Cheonggamnok provided the basis for a number of millenarian movements during the late Joseon period, such as the utopian community in the Hadong area near Jiri-san Mountain (Ro 2002, 36) or the rebellion led by Hong Kyung-nae in 1811 (Lee 1996, 80-81). According to the

Cheonggamnok, Cheong Toryeong’s coming will be preceded by plagues, earth¬ quakes and disruption of normal social relationships. The Cheonggamnok identi¬ fied Ten Excellent Districts, most of which are in what is now South Korea, that would be safe during the cataclysms accompanying the destruction of the Joseon

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dynasty. The Cheonggamnok has continued to figure prominently in the millennial imagination in Korea, and during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the twenti¬ eth century (1910-45), the Japanese colonial authorities sought to suppress the book, which at the time was interpreted as predicting the defeat of the Japanese (Lee 1996, 59).

Sun Choe Je-u and the Donghak Awakening The most representative new religion of the late Joseon dynasty, though, is the Donghak (literally, Eastern Learning) Awakening, which was founded by Choe Je-u, a young scholar from Gyeongju, the former capital of the Silla dynasty. Following several years of spiritual journeys throughout Korea in a fashion typical of the wan¬ dering intellectuals of the period, in i860 on the fifth day of the fourth lunar month Choe Je-u reportedly heard a voice that identified itself as Sangje (Shangti, in Chinese), the Jade Ruler of the Universe (OkhwangSangJe), a title commonly used in religious Taoism and Korean folk religion. Choe Je-u’s epiphany is vividly described in P’odok Mun (On Propagating Virtue) as follows: During the fourth month when my heart was distressed... the voice of an immortal suddenly made itself heard. “Don’t be afraid. Mankind calls me the Supreme SangJae. I sent you to save mankind,” said the voice_“I have a talisman which is called the Elixir of Immortality. Cure mankind’s illness with this talisman,” said the voice. (Choi 1997,106) Hu-Cheon GaeByeok (the Great Opening of the Later Heaven) and Cheon-do (the Way of Heaven) were fundamental to Choe Je-u’s teachings. Choe Je-u referred to the Ruler of the Universe as SangJeNim (mm being an honorific suffix in Korean), as well as Cheonjunim (Heavenly God) and Haneunim (Heavenly God, haneul being “sky” in Korean). Sangje allegedly gave Choe Je-u the Taoist Elixir of Immortality (seonyak) and longevity (jangsaeng), and a talis¬ man (bujeok) on which was written a mantra or incantation of twenty-two char¬ acters, which Choe Je-u was instructed to recite for the salvation and healing of humanity. Sangje reportedly promised Choe Je-u that he, the Lord of the Universe, would soon incarnate in this world and initiate the Great Opening (GaeByeok) of the Later Heaven (Hu-Cheon). Choe Je-u was influenced by the I Ching and by Neo-Confucian cosmology, teaching that after fifty thousand years another age had passed and that the world was entering the Hu-Cheon GaeByeok (Jorgensen

1999, 4). Donghak was formulated in opposition to Seohak (literally, Western learning, which at the time meant Roman Catholicism). In 1864 Choe Je-u was arrested by the emperor, accused of treason and, ironically, of being a secret Catholic, and

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executed in the city of Daegu. It is thus that he is referred to as Sun Choe Je-u (Sun being martyr in Korean). The central features of Choe Je-u’s Donghak religion were the Hu-Cheon GaeByeok (the Great Opening of the Later Heaven), Goejil (the mysterious disease that will afflict humanity during the GaeByeok), what I term the Donghak Promise (that Sangje would soon incarnate in this world), and the innaecheon doctrine, the unity of Humanity and Heaven. Choe Je-u is said to have developed his idea of GaeByeok based on the I Ching and the Sequence of the Earlier Heaven and the Sequence of the Later Heaven (Jorgensen 1999, 4). The innacheon doctrine emphasized that all people—rich and poor, free-born and slave, male and female—should be treated equally. Donghak offered a radical vision of society and the relationship not only of the yangban and the minjung, but also of the relationship of women and children to society, which was in sharp contrast to the patriarchal society of the Joseon dynasty, in which women and children were structurally inferior. After Choe Je-u’s death in 1864 his nephew Choe Si-yeong (1827—98) succeeded him as leader of Donghak. The Donghak Awakening of founder Choe Je-u was characterized by strong shamanistic and folk religious (Taoist) elements. Choe Je-u utilized bujeok (paper talismans and amulets that are burned after reciting different incantations and mantras) to heal disease. Choe Si-yeong (also known as Haeweol Sinsa) established the institutional framework of Donghak (Bell 2005,9) and sought to eliminate shamanistic elements from Donghak. In 1894 the Donghak Revolution (Nongmin Bonggi or Farmers’ Rebellion) began in the Gobu area of Jeolla Province. The immediate cause for the uprising was the oppression of the people by corrupt public officials, heavy taxes on rice farmers, and the general excesses of the yangban (native aristocrats). The first Donghak uprising began on 10 January 1894 when Donghak followers seized weap¬ ons, opened prisons, and returned rice to farmers that had been extracted as tax. A second uprising in March is regarded by some historians as part of the first upris¬ ing. A third uprising began in October. The Donghak Revolution began under the direction of Jeon Bong-jun, the Donghak Master of the Gobu area. In the spring of 1894, the government based in Seoul appealed to Japan and China for assistance in suppressing the rebellion. Donghak leaders decided that to continue their struggle would jeopardize the safety of the Korean nation, as it would attract even greater attention from foreign powers. Therefore, Donghak leaders agreed to stop fighting. However, in the sum¬ mer of 1894 Japanese troops attacked the palace in Seoul and killed the Joseon Empress, installing the old king’s father as ruler. In September the Donghak army was reconstituted in Jeolla Province, not to seek reform of Korean society, but to oppose the Japanese. Korean and Japanese troops defeated the Donghak army near the city of Gongju in Jeolla Province. The Donghak Revolution lasted about a year and is estimated to have claimed more than 400,000 lives. Jeon Bong-jun was exe¬ cuted in March 1895. Choe Si-yeong, the second Donghak patriarch, was executed in 1898.

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Cheondogyo: The Religion of the Heavenly Way

Choe Si-yeong was succeeded as Donghak patriarch by Son Byeong-hui (18611922), who in 1905 changed the group’s name to Cheondogyo, the religion (gyo) of the Heavenly Way (Cheon-do). The collected writings of Donghak’s founders, Choe Je-u, Choe Si-yeong, and Son Byeong-hui, form the Cheondogyo Kyeongjeon, the Cheondogyo Scriptures. Son Byeong-hui became one of the most prominent leaders of the March First Independence Movement of 1919 that sought liberation from Japanese colonial rule (Young 2002, 65). Following Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945, Cheondogyo opposed the election conducted by the United Nations in 1948, as its members still hoped for reunification of the divided Korea (Kang 1968, 42). Son Byeong-hui established Cheondogyo’s headquarters in Seoul, started a monthly newspaper called GaeByeok (The Great Opening), and opened schools, including a number of schools for women (Kang 1968, 41). During its peak in the early twentieth century, Cheondogyo had an estimated 3 million adherents. Fifteen of the thirty-three signers of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea in 1948 were members of Cheondogyo. Following liberation from Japan in 1945 Cheondogyo was, according to Kirsten Bell, embraced by both South Korea and North Korea to further their respective political agendas (2004, 22). Cheondogyo is said to be the largest religion in North Korea, the Kim family’s cult of personality aside. Two former leaders of Cheondogyo in South Korea fled to North Korea in 1986 and 1997, and were suspected of spying for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The most comprehensive account of Cheondogyo is Benjamin Weem’s seminal Reform, Rebellion, and the Heavenly Way (1964). Recently, Kirsten Bell has written extensively about Cheondogyo (Bell 2004,2005,2008). The core element in Cheondogyo is tonggwi ilche, which can be translated as “all men (or beings) return to unity” (Young-choon Kim 1975, 52). According to Cheondogyo, world unity and peace are possible through the principles of innaecheon (the “Man is God” concept), sainiyeocheon (the enjoinder to treat others as God), and toggwi ilche (return to unity).

Il-bu Kim Hang and Namhak

Another movement about the same time as Donghak was that of Kim Hang (1826-90), known by his honorific name Il-bu, who founded Namhak (Southern Learning) based on his interpretation of the I Ching and Cheonggamnok. Il-bu’s Namhak is sometimes referred to by historians as the Revised Book of Changes

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Movement. Like Sun Choe Je-u, Il-bu Kim Hang taught the Hu-Cheon GaeByeok (Great Opening of the Later Heaven). Il-bu Kim Hang is reputed to have studied with the Taoist master Lee Un-gyo, who also taught that the I Ching foretold the end of the First Heaven (Seon-Cheon) and the Great Opening (GaeByeok) of the Later Heaven

(Hu-Cheon). The popular uprising on Cheu-do Island in 1898 was organized by the Namhak Party, a group predicated on Il-bu’s Namhak teachings (Ro 2002,42). Il-bu Kim Hang’s teachings greatly influenced a number of subsequent new religions, particularly the leungSan family of religions. JeungSan Gang Il-sun (18711909), on whose teachings the leungSan family of religions is based, is said to have met Il-bu in 1897 (Jorgensen 1999), shortly before Gang Il-sun began his 1901-09 Reconstruction of the Universe (Cheonjigongsa).

Gang Il-Sun and JeungSan-gyo Leon Festinger observed that when confronted by disconfirmation of prophecy, a follower often will not abandon religious belief, but will “frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view” (Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter 1964,3; see also chapter 8 by Lome Dawson, this volume). One response to the defeat of the Donghak Revolution of 1894 was the social reformism of Son Byeong-hui, the third Donghak patriarch, who changed the group’s name to Cheondogyo. Another response to the failure of the Donghak Revolution was JeungSan religion (JeungSan-gyo), which was based on the teachings of Gang Il-sun and represented a retreat from the revolutionary millennialism (Cohn 1970,21) of the Nongmin Bonggi (Farmers’ Rebellion) to mes¬ sianic thinking and renewed faith in the Donghak Promise, the belief that Sangje, the Lord of the Universe in religious Taoism, would incarnate in this world to initi¬ ate the Hu-Cheon GaeByeok, the Great Opening of the Later Heaven (Flaherty 2004). The religion of Gang Il-sun arose in large measure from the Donghak movement. In this sense Sun Choe Je-u was to Gang Il-sun as John the Baptist was to Jesus of Nazareth (see chapter 13 by James Tabor, this volume), or the Bab to Baha’u’llah (see chapter 24 by Peter Smith and William P. Collins, this volume). As Gemot Prunner observed, Donghak and JeungSan religion were both responses to the feudal order of Joseon Korea, but Donghak emphasized the social and revolutionary aspect while JeungSan religion emphasized the spiritual and magical aspect (Prunner 1980, 5). More exactly, JeungSan religion was not a direct response to the social conditions of late Joseon society, but a compensatory response to the failure of the Donghak Revolution of 1894. JeungSan Gang Il-sun was twenty-four years old in 1894 when he witnessed the defeat of the Donghak Revolution in his native Jeolla Province. After the defeat of the Donghak Rebellion Gang Il-sun traveled throughout Korea in the fashion of the

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wandering intellectuals (bangnang shi-in) of the day, eventually returning to Jeolla Province, where he reportedly achieved enlightenment on Moak-san Mountain. Like Donghak and Namhak before it, the central belief of Gang Il-suns new religion was Hu-Cheon GaeByeok, the Great Opening of the Later Heaven. Gang Il-sun’s four closest disciples (Kim Hyeong-yeol, Cha Gyeong-seok, Pak Gong-u, and Mun Gongsin) had been Donghak followers. At the height of its influence, JeungSan religion was characterized by up to sixty religious sects (Choi 1997,114). Most do not survive today. One of the JeungSan reli¬ gions, Pocheon-gyo, founded by Cha Gyeong-seok, had more followers in Korea during the Japanese colonial period than any other religion, more than an estimated 6 million adherents (Ro 2002,46), and controlled an estimated io percent of Korea’s wealth in the 1920s (Jorgensen 2001, 80). The major groups presently claiming to represent Gang Il-sun’s teachings are JeungSanDo (Flaherty 2004) and Daesunjillihoe (Jorgensen 2001). There are also a number of small, localized expressions of JeungSan religion around Gimje in the vicinity of Geumsan-sa temple in Jeolla Buk-do, the province where Gang Il-sun was born and lived. Most of the Jeolla Province groups— in Gimje and Jeungeup—were established from 1911 to 1935. These localized expres¬ sions were founded by Gang Il-sun’s disciples and have persisted through apostolic succession, representing different lineages from JeungSanDo and Daesunjillihoe.

JeungSanDo Although the first meeting of what came to be JeungSanDo was in the mid-i920s, the name JeungSanDo (literally, the Way [Do] of JeungSan) was first used in 1945 at the end of World War II by its founder and present leader, Super Master An LIn-san. JeungSanDo arose through apostolic succession from the group established by Gang Il-sun’s wife, whom JeungSanDo calls TaeMoNim, whom Gang Il-sun regarded as the Incarnation of the Mother of the Universe and whom JeungSanDo teaches he appointed as his successor prior to his death in 1909. TaeMoNim founded TaeEul-gyo in 1911, the lineage through which JeungSanDo claims apostolic descent from Gang Il-sun.

Daesunjillihoe Daesunjillihoe is based on the teachings of Cho Cheol-je (1895-1958), who founded Mugeuk-do in 1918, and who reported that JeungSan Gang Il-sun had appeared to him after his death as the Heavenly Sangje. While JeungSanDo and other JeungSan religions can claim apostolic descent from Gang Il-sun through the eleven religious bodies founded by Gang Il-sun’s widow in 1911, Cho Cheol-je had no direct contact with Gang Il-sun or any of his disciples. He is reputed to have lived with Gang Il-sun’s younger sister. In 1948 Mugeuk-do was renamed Taegeuk-do. When Cho Cheol-je died in 1958 the group split into an old school under the direction of his son, Cho Yeong-rae, and a new school under the direction of Pak Llang-yeong that in 1972 was renamed Daesunjillihoe.

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Daesunjillihoe differs from other JeungSan religions, as John Jorgensen notes, in that the founder, Cho Cheol-je, claimed direct revelation from the Heavenly JeungSan Gang Il-sun. Daesunjillihoe’s claim is rejected by all other sects of JeungSan religion (Jorgensen 2001,81), who base their authority not on direct revelation from the heavenly master, but on apostolic succession and lineages that trace themselves back to JeungSan Gang Il-sun and TaeMoNim. In Daesunjillihoe, Gang Il-sun is regarded as the Gucheon Sangje, Mugeuk-do’s founder Cho Cheol-je as the Sosoeng OkhwangSangJe, and Daesunjillihoe’s founder Pak Hang-yeong as the Parkseong Mireuk Sejon (reflecting the cosmic principles of the cauldron, the kettle, and charcoal/water, respectively).

General Features of JeungSan Religions Cheonjigongsa (Reconstruction of the Universe) and the relieving of wonhan (resent¬ ment or grudges) is a general feature of JeungSan religions, including JeungSanDo and Daesunjillihoe (ironically, the two groups do not seem to like each other). All tragedies—including wars, earthquakes, and the mysterious disease (Goejil) during the Hu-Cheon GaeByeok—are attributed to the accumulated bitterness and resent¬ ment (wonhan) of earthbound souls. Gang Il-sun’s Reconstruction of the Universe from 1901 to 1909 was conducted for the relief of wonhan through the use of bujeok (paper talismans on which spells and incantations are written) and the recitation of mantras. Recall that Choe Je-u sought to cure humanity’s ills through bujeok and incantations (mantras) and that Donghak’s second patriarch, Choe Si-yeong, wanted to eliminate all such shamanistic elements from Donghak practice. Like Donghak (Cheondogyo) and Namhak, the present time, according to both JeungSanDo and Daesunjillihoe, is the Great Opening of the Later Heaven (Hu-Cheon GaeByeok). There are two major GaeByeok or Great Openings, at the transition from Cosmic Summer to Cosmic Autumn (the Great Opening of the Later Heaven, Hu-Cheon), and from Cosmic Winter to Cosmic Spring (the Great Opening of the First Heaven, Seon-Cheon). Additionally, there are minor GaeByeok at the junctures of months in the Great Year. The Later Heaven (Hu-Cheon) includes Cosmic Autumn (Harvest) and Cosmic Winter (Rest). The First Heaven (SeonCheon) includes Cosmic Spring (Birth) and Cosmic Summer (Growth). Humanity arises naturally through the interaction of yin and yang during the Cosmic Spring, grows to maturity during the Cosmic Summer, and is harvested during the Cosmic Autumn. The Later Heaven will last for 64,800 years, after which the universe will reenter the First Heaven and the cycle will begin again.

The Polar Shift One of the triggers of the Hu-Cheon GaeByeok, according to JeungSanDo, will be a shift of Earth s poles. Human life on Earth, according to JeungSanDo, is imbalanced owing to the tilt of the Earth’s axis and the resultant imbalance of yin and yang.

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In the United States, Edgar Cayce (1887-1945) predicted that a polar reversal would occur in 1998, and the polar shift has become a general feature of many American New Age religions (see chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume). There is a picture of Edgar Cayce in the JeungSanDo publication GaeByeok (An 2003), as well as sections on the French prophet Nostradamus, the New Age Spiritualism of Ruth Montgomery, and George Michael Scallion’s “Future Map of North America,” which depicts what the United States would look like by 2001 following the polar shift. There is widespread interest in Korea in Western psychics such as Edgar Cayce and in prophets such as Nostradamus. The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) did a televi¬ sion special about Western apocalyptic traditions in the late 1990s in which Cayce’s prediction that “the greater portion of Japan must go into the sea” was discussed at length. Prominent Korean geomancers (bungsuchiri-gwan) such as Son Seok-u have also predicted the destruction of Japan by earthquakes and tsunami (Son 1994). JeungSan Gang Il-sun is also recorded as having predicted the destruction of Japan: “The Japanese fighting the Americans is the abhorrent act of betraying one’s teacher. The Japanese will be utterly ruined. Most of Japan will go down under the sea” (Teachings of JeungSanDo 1997,5:7). Given the geopolitical dynamic of Korean/ Japanese relations over the centuries, it is understandable that the destruction of Japan would figure prominently in the eschatology of Korea’s nativistic religions. Such Earth changes (as American New Age religionists would say) are seen in accor¬ dance with traditional Korean geomancy (bungsuchiri) and the I Ching. The Tao of Sangje is the Reconstruction of the Universe (Cheonjigongsa). JeungSan Gang Il-sun is recorded as having said of the polar shift and the I Ching: “Those who know say that the direction of the earth is about to change. However, how can they know that I have already changed the direction of Heaven and Earth?” One day SangJeNim said, “The principles of Heaven and Earth are in Yeok [change].” He said, “I-Ching is to be used at the time of GaeByeok, the Great Opening. If you read I-Ching, you shall know my work.” (Teachings of JeungSanDo 1997,2:2)

JeungSan Gang Il-sun’s prediction of a pole shift was predicated not upon that of Western New Age religionists such as Edgar Cayce, but upon Il-bu Kim Hang’s proph¬ ecy of a polar shift, which was itself predicated upon the cosmology of the NeoConfucianism of Chu Hsi (1130-1200) and its reformulation in Korea during the Joseon dynasty by I-Toegye (1501-70), to whom the Supreme Ultimate, the Tai-chi (Tae-geuk, in Korean: the principle underlying yin/yang), is the pivot of the universe and the ground of all things (Ryutaro 1985). Chu Hsi taught that the North Star is the Pivot of Heaven (pei-chen) of the North-South Axis of Heaven. According to Chu Hsi, the heavens revolve around the line between the North and South Poles of the Earth, and the Axis of the Universe passes through the Earth, connecting the Earth’s poles.

JeungSan Gang Il-sun as Maitreya Buddha While Gang Il-sun is seen by his followers as the incarnation of the OkhwangSangJe (Jade Ruler of the Universe) of Donghak prophecy, Gang Il-sun is also regarded

338

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as being Maitreya (Mireuk). He told his disciples, “I am Mireuk. So if you want to see me, then go see the Mireuk statue at Geumsan-sa” (Mok 1994, 200). As Mok Jeong-bae observes: “The Mireuk belief adopted and developed by JeungSan Gang Il-sun had an immense effect. This new religion has continued and is still practiced today with many sub-sects which have grown up out of the strong feel¬ ings resulting from the firm belief in the crisis of the end of the world” (1994, 200). Prior to his incarnation as JeungSan Gang Il-sun, JeungSan religions in general teach that Sangje resided in the statue of Maitreya Buddha at Geumsan-sa Temple in Jeolla Province near where Gang Il-sun was born, listening to human¬ ity’s prayers for thirty years. JeungSanDo teaches that JeungSan Gang Il-sun was both the incarnation of the OkhwangSangJe (i.e., the fulfillment of the Donghak Promise) and Maitreya/Mireuk, the Future Buddha. The ideal world that Gang Il-sun foresaw greatly resembles and is likely predicated upon descriptions of Maitreya Buddha’s Yonghwa-doryang, Land of the Dragon Flower, described in the Maitreya Sutra. Gang Il-sun believed Yonghwa village in Jeollabuk-do Province to be Yonghwa-doryang, which would become the center of the world in the new age, and that Geumsan Temple would be the seat of the new world’s government. Mireuk Bulgyo, which, like JeungSanDo, arose from TaeEul-gyo (the group established by Gang Il-sun’s widow in 1911), believed Gang Il-sun to be Mireuk. JeungSanBeopJeong-gyo, established by Gang Sun-im, believed (like JeungSanDo and Daesunjillihoe) Gang Il-sun to be both Sangje and Maitreya. Some Buddhist scholars, such as Mok Jeong-bae, consider JeungSan religion in general to be pri¬ marily a form of Maitreya Buddhism (1994, 210).

SOTAESAN PAK CHUNG-BlN AND WON BULGYO Won Bulgyo (Won Buddhism) is an indigenous Korean religion that presents itself as a reformulation of Buddhism (Bulgyo) appropriate for the new Dharma Age. Won Bulgyo was founded in 1916 by Pak Chung-bin (1891-1943), called by his fol¬ lowers Sotaesan Taejongsa. Won Buddhism was intended as a form of Buddhism appropriate to the needs of the laity rather than a monastic elite. Won Bulgyo emphasizes regular Zen (Seon, in Korean) meditation and commitment to social welfare, religious tolerance, and world peace. Won Buddhism International is active as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in consultation to the United Nations, and is engaged in many social programs in Korea and throughout the world. Unlike orthodox Korean Buddhists, Won Buddhists do not venerate Buddha images. It is intriguing to speculate that Pak Chung-bin was influenced in this respect by the iconoclasm of Protestant missionary Christianity. The Dharmakaya (the Buddha Mind), according to Won Buddhism, is best represented not by Buddha images, but by the Il-Won-San (the One Circle):

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We worship Il-Won-Sang (the Perfect Circle) with the same spirit as that with which traditional Buddhism worships the Buddha image. A Buddha image is a symbol of the body of the Buddha, while Il-Won-Sang is a symbol of the mind of Buddha. The bodily form shows nothing but the human shape, while the mind form symbolizes the limitless vastness of the mind which includes all Being and Non-being, and exists through our three lives: past, present, and future. (WonBulgyo Kyojun 1988, 2:3)

Won Buddhism is not regarded by orthodox Korean Buddhists as a genuine expres¬ sion of Buddhism. Unlike Korean Buddhists and orthodox Buddhists in general, Won Buddhists, according to Korean Buddhists, do not take refuge in the tradi¬ tional understanding of the Three Jewels (SamBoh, in Korean): the Buddha, the Dharma (the orthodox Buddhist teachings), and the Sangha (the Buddhist monas¬ tic community of monks and nuns). Nor does Won Buddhism support the tradi¬ tional customs of orthodox Korean Buddhism. Therefore, Korean Buddhists, while generally admiring Won Buddhism’s commitment to service to humanity and world peace, regard Won Bulgyo as one of Korea’s new religions. Won Buddhists are called upon to realize the Buddha Dharma in their own lives and to work actively for the betterment of society and for world peace, thus exemplifying what Catherine Wessinger (1997) has called progressive millennialism: the expectation that human beings working according to a divine plan can create the collective salvation in a noncatastrophic transition. Sotaesan Taejongsa preached a noncatastrophic advent of the new Dharma Age (the Millennium or collective salvation). The Great Master said, “Recently some people have said that the world, which is in its last period, will be destroyed, but I do not believe that will happen. Doubtlessly, the world in which has not existed a sage for a long time is in its last period, with justice and morality in decline. Still, the world will not be destroyed. A more civilized world is coming. Now is only the end of this degraded world, but at the same time, it is the beginning of the new world.” (Won Bulgyo Kyojun 1988,14:19)

Sotaesan’s new religion was originally called Bulbeop yeongu hoe (Research Society of the Buddha Dharma). In 1935 Sotaesan published the Joseon Bulgyo Hyoksiollon (On the Reformation of Korean Buddhism). In 1943 Sotaesan published the Bulgyo Chongjon (Correct Canon of Buddhism). Later that same year Sotaesan passed away. JeungSan Song-kyu (1900-1962) succeeded Sotaesan as the Dharma Master (Jeongbeopsa) of the order. In 1947, three years after Sotaesan’s death and two years after Korea’s liberation from Japan, Master Song-kyu renamed the order Won Bulgyo and compiled the canon of Won Buddhism, Won Bulgyo Kyojun (Scriptures of Won Buddhism). In 1962 JeungSan Song-kyu was succeeded by Master Taesan (Kim Tae-go, b. 1914), the current Dharma Master of Won Bulgyo. Won Buddhism is not presented as the exclusive religion of a new age, and Won Buddhists are committed to religious tolerance and interreligious dialogue. Unlike Korean mystagogues who claimed to be Mireuk, Sotaesan Pak Chung-bin never made such a claim. Even so, historian of Buddhism Mok Jong-bae considers Won

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Buddhism to be rooted in Mireuk belief (1994, 201). When asked about Mireuk (Maitreya) and the Dragonflower Order, Sotaesan Taejongsa Pak Chung-bin spoke as follows: Maitreya Buddha symbolizes the Truth of Dharma-kaya, which is to come forth. The Dragonflower Order stands for the world that is perfectly bright. In other words, it is the world where the teaching of “All are incarnations of Truth Buddha; do each thing as an offering of worship to Buddha” is widely practiced— The Dragonflower Order cannot be established by words. Even without saying anything, if any of the sects and schools is aware of the real meaning of Maitreya Buddha and practice what Maitreya Buddha does, it will naturally become a Dragonflower Order and will even see Maitreya Buddha. (WonBulgyo Kyojun 1988,14:16)

Pastor Kil Seon-ju and Protestant Premillennialism Premillennialism was not really a feature of Korean Christianity until the Protestant Revival movement of 1907, which began in Pyongyang and spread across Korea. Millennialism was central to the teachings of Kil Seon-ju (1869-1935), the main figure in the 1907 Revival, whom many regard as the Father of Korean Christianity (Chong-bum Kim, 2006). Rather than destroying the world, Kil Seon-ju believed God would restore Eden, the earthly paradise, which will be a terrestrial reflection of the New Jerusalem wherein dwell those who were raptured prior to the Tribulation and the reign of the Antichrist. Those dwelling in the restored terres¬ trial paradise will be those who accepted Jesus during the Tribulation. Kil Seon-ju taught a pre-Tribulation Rapture (hyu-geo) (see also chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, this volume). Prior to his conversion to Christianity Pastor Kil had been a Taoist master. Whereas early Korean Protestants such as Kil Seon-ju rejected Korean ancestor wor¬ ship CJosang Sungbae) and Korean shamanism (Mu-gyo), Pastor Kil and many early Protestant Christians in Korea believed that the prophecies of the Cheonggamnok were genuine and that Jesus was Cheong Toryeong, the Taoist savior prophesied therein (Chong-bum Kim, 2006). Kil Seon-ju’s Christianity differed from the revolutionary millenarian move¬ ments of the late Joseon dynasty, such as Donghak, as Chong-bum Kim (2006) observes, in that it never became a mass movement resisting the Japanese occupa¬ tion; rather, it was characterized by passive millennialism in that the transformation would be accomplished by divine intervention (the Second Coming) rather than armed struggle (such as that of the Donghak Rebellion). Korean Protestant Christians often cast themselves in a central role in Gods plan, and a sense of Korea’s eschatological importance is emphasized. One often

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hears Korean Protestants proclaim that Korea has been chosen by Hananim, the God of Korea’s Protestant Christians, to evangelize Asia and that Korea will play a crucial role in salvation.

Mun Sun-myeong and Tongil-gyo There are also a number of more recent Korean new religions that are based, how¬ ever loosely, on Christian myth. The best-known in the West is perhaps the Unification Church (Tongil-gyo) of the Reverend Mun Sun-myeong (often called “the Moonies,” but properly known as the Holy Spirit Church for the Unification of World Christianity). Reverend Mun was born in 1920 in Cheongju in what is now North Korea. After Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945, Mun Sun-myeong, who was then living in Pyongyang, North Korea (which during Pastor Kil Seon-ju’s time had been regarded as the center of Protestant Christianity in Korea and the socalled “Jerusalem of the East”), declared that God had instructed him in 1936 to start a movement to reform Christianity (Grayson 1989, 247). In 1948 Mun Sun-myeong was imprisoned by the North Korean Communists, but he was freed by United Nations troops in 1950. He moved to Busan in South Korea, where in 1954 he estab¬ lished Tongil-gyo. Mun Sun-myeong’s Unification Church has been most successful outside of Korea. Tongil-gyo’s activities in the United States and England have been well documented by David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe (1979) and Eileen Barker (1984). Mun Sun-myeong teaches that Jesus failed in his intended mission of establish¬ ing God’s kingdom on Earth by marrying and overcoming original sin by establish¬ ing the True Family due to his untimely death by execution. Tongil-gyo teaches that Mun Sun-myeong is the Second Adam and the Lord of the Second Advent, who has been sent by God to complete the mission that Jesus failed to complete, and that the unification of all religions, governments and sciences is a prerequisite of the advent of God’s kingdom on Earth.

The Hyu-geo Movement of 1992 A prominent feature of evangelical Christian Dispensationalism worldwide is a belief in a pre-Tribulation Rapture (see chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, this volume). Christians, it is asserted on the basis of biblical passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, will be unaffected by the final battle of Armageddon, for they will be “rap¬ tured,” or lifted into heaven, prior to the seven-year rule of the Antichrist in the Tribulation. As Timothy P. Weber observes, belief in a pre-Tribulation Rapture was

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a prominent feature in nineteenth-century American premillennialism (1987, 21) and has continued to be a prominent feature of evangelical Protestant Christianity in America. Enthusiasm for a premillennial Rapture (Hyu-geo, in Korean) has not been confined to the United States. Recall that a pre-Tribulation Rapture was a con¬ spicuous feature of Pastor Kil Seon-ju’s Protestant millennialism. In 1991 Pastor Lee Jang-rim, founder of Tami-gyo (which was known in the United States as the Mission for the Coming Days), predicted that the Rapture would occur at midnight on 28 October 1992. The Rapture of the faithful would be followed by seven years of Tribulation under the rule of Antichrist and then Christ would return in 2000. Lee Jang-rim’s Tami-gyo was only one, albeit the most conspicuous, of an estimated 250 churches in Korea that were preaching the 28 October 1992 Rapture and that together are referred to as the Hyu-geo (Rapture) or Jongmal-ron (Endtime theory) movement. Other Hyu-geo churches include the Taberah World Mission of prophet Ha Bang-ha (it was Ha Bang-ha who in 1991 at age twelve had predicted that the Rapture would occur on 28 October 1992, but it was Lee Jang-rim who popularized the boy’s prophecy), and the Maranatha Mission, which is remembered for grueling mara¬ thon prayer vigils leading up to the anticipated event. The Korean Hyu-geo move¬ ment is said to have had adherents in the United States and other countries as well. Korean Hyu-geo movement followers sold their homes, left their families, quit their jobs, publicly burned their worldly belongings, and gave their wealth to the churches. Estimates for the size of the Hyu-geo movement vary widely, placing membership at anywhere between 20,000 and 100,000. In the aftermath of the disconfirmation of Hyu-geo prophecy, Tami-gyo issued a statement on 1 November 1992 apologizing for having misinterpreted biblical prophecy. Pastor Lee Jang-rim was charged with fraud and embezzling the esti¬ mated equivalent of U.S. $4 million of his followers’ money, much of which he invested in bonds that would mature in 1993, and sentenced to two year’s imprisonment. After the disappointment of the Hyu-geo Movement of 1992, mainstream Korean Christians seem understandably reluctant to specify an exact date for the end of the present age. Nonetheless, premillennialism remains a prominent feature of Korean Protestant Christianity.

Conclusion Religions such as Donghak, Namhak, and the Cheonggamnok movements during the late Joseon dynasty were minjung religions that reflected the collective desire of an oppressed peasantry for the abolition of the yangban feudal order. Collective salvation is a distinguishing characteristic of millennialism, according to Norman Cohn’s seminal definition (1970,15). However, since Korea’s liberation from Japan in

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1945 and especially since the end of the Korean War in 1954, there has been a general shift in emphasis among Korean new religions from collective goals to more indi¬ vidual goals (Ro 2002), which presumably reflects the rise of the middle class and the consumer society. Additionally, there has been a shift from revolutionary millennialism, such as that which motivated the Donghak Rebellion of 1894, to pro¬ gressive

millennialism

and

social

reformism,

exemplified

by

Cheondogyo

(reformulated Donghak) and Won Buddhism, or to passive, albeit still cataclysmic, millennialism, such as that of JeungSanDo and Daesunjillihoe, the two main con¬ temporary expressions of JeungSan Gang Il-sun’s teachings. Fear of world destruction and a belief in Korea’s significance in the new age are still central to the teachings of many contemporary Korean religions. South Korea’s indigenous religions often see the Endtime more in terms of the geopoli¬ tics of northeast Asia than of the Middle East (which characterizes Bible-based apocalyptic religions), predicting that a world war beginning in Korea will be a trigger event of the Hu-Cheon GaeByeok, the Great Opening of the Later Heaven. Of course, fear of war is realistic in the Korean peninsula, which remains divided and technically still at war. Korea’s division into North and South Korea at the close of the war with Japan in 1945, the Korean War (1950-53), the subsequent cold war between the two Korean states, the continuing presence of American troops in the Korean peninsula, and the current North Korean nuclear threat, as well as wars, earthquakes, and epidemics elsewhere in the world are interpreted as fulfill¬ ment of prophecy. We are well into the GaeByeok, Korean New Age religionists have told me. Korean society is characterized by religious pluralism. Religious syncretism is characteristic of religions in Korea. Often elements from different religious tradi¬ tions are combined in a single, unifying millenarian vision. In the history of reli¬ gions in Korea the millennial imagination has been variously expressed: in belief in the future Buddha Maitreya (Mireuk) and Maitreya’s Dragon Flower world (Yonghwa doryang); in the coming of Cheong Toryeong, the Taoist savior prophesied in the Cheonggamnok, the book of prophecies composed by Nam Sa-go on the basis of the I Ching and bungsuchiri (Korean geomancy); in the incarnation of Sangje (Shangti), Taoist Ruler of the Universe, prophesied by Sun Choe Je-u, founder of the Donghak religion; and in the Great Opening of the Later Heaven (Hu-cheon GaeByeok) prophesied according to the I Ching by Il-bu Kim Hang, founder of the Namhak religion. In the JeungSan religions, Sangje has incarnated in this world to initiate the Great Opening (GaeByeok). JeungSan Gang Il-sun is regarded by some to have been both Sangje (Shangti) and Mireuk (Maitreya). A pre-Tribulation Rapture and Christ’s imminent Second Coming were central to the Protestant millennialism of Pastor Kil Seon-ju, a former Taoist master who saw in Jesus Christ the long-awaited Taoist savior, Cheong Toryeong. Premillennialism and a belief in a pre-Tribulation Rapture remain strong among Korean Protestant Christians, as evidenced by the Hyu-geo (Rapture) Movement of 1992. Tongil-gyo (Unification Church) portrays Mun Sun-myeong as the Lord of the Second Advent, come to complete the work begun—but left unfinished—by Jesus Christ. Won Buddhism’s founder Sotaesan

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Taejongsa (Pak Chung-bin) taught what he intended to be a form of Buddhism appropriate for the new Dharma Age. As Russian folklorist and linguist Vladimir Propp wrote on the basis of the Afansiev collection of Russian folktales, “Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled” (1975, 21). This is perhaps as true of myth and the millennial imagination as it is of the folktales that Propp studied. Function to Propp does not depend on the drama¬ tis personae performing the functions; rather, a function is defined as a noun expressing an action. Functions are acts of characters: Maitreya (Mireuk), Sangje (Shangti), Cheong Toryeong, and Jesus Christ are morphologically congruent. The function is collective salvation, understood as millennial transformation. In the his¬ tory of religions in Korea, millenarian religious movements have arisen during times of rapid social and cultural change and psycho-historical dislocation in com¬ pensatory response to both intrasocietal class tensions and acculturative strain. This is often true of millennial religions, of course. The millennial imagination in Korea—as everywhere and throughout history—has been nourished by deep yearn¬ ing for a just society and an end to suffering in a world transformed by supernatural agency.

NOTES 1. In Korean the family name is given first. Thus the celebrated Korean baseball player who is known as Chan-ho Pak in the United States is known in his native Korea as Pak Chan-ho. Also, the name of the UN Secretary-General is Ban Ki-mun, not Ki-mun Ban. Here I follow the Korean practice of giving the family name first, unless specified by a Korean author who prefers to give his or her family name last. Prominent people in Korean history are sometimes referred to by their honorific name (ho) rather than by their family name, sometimes complicating historical research. For example, Gang Il-sun, the founder of the JeungSan family of Korean new religions, is often referred to as JeungSan or JeungSan Sangje-nim (-mm is the honorific suffix in Korean). Il-bu Kim Hang, founder of the Namhak religion (the Revised Book of Changes Movement), is sometimes referred to simply by his honorific, Il-bu. 2. All Korean words have been transliterated according to the system of romanizing Korean instituted by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea in 2000. Korean romanization has had a long history since the latter half of the nineteenth century; nonetheless, there is still no universally accepted Korean romanization system. Many scholars prefer the McCune-Reischauer System (MRS) for romanizing Korean, developed by G. M. McCune and E. D. Reischauer (1939). In 2000 the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism developed the revised system for romanizing Korean that does not use diacritics. All government publications and textbooks used in Korean schools that previously used the MRS were directed to use the new Revised System as of February 2002. All signs in Korea that use romanization in addition to Hangeul, the Korean alphabet (a true alphabet

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in that it represents sounds and not ideas, as in Chinese), were directed to use the Revised System as of 31 December 2005. Proper names may continue to be written as before. The new system of romanization became effective in July 2000, when it was proclaimed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Of course, no system for transliterating Korean can completely and accurately represent Korean words. 3. The most comprehensive historical and cross-cultural study of Maitreya is Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre’s edited volume Maitreya: The Future Buddha (1988). I refer to the Future Buddha interchangeably by both his Sanskrit name (Maitreya) and his Korean name (Mireuk).

REFERENCES An Gyeong-geon. 2003. GaeByeok. 6th ed. Daejeon, Republic of Korea: Daewon Books. Barker, Eileen. 1984. The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? Oxford: Blackwell. Bell, Kirsten. 2004. “Cheondogyo and the Donghak Revolution: The (un)Making of a Revolution.” Korea Journal 44, no. 2 (Summer): 123-48. -. 2005. “The Trouble with Charisma: Religious Ecstasy in Cheondogyo.” Asian Studies Review 29 (March): 3-18. -. 2008. “Pilgrims and Progress: The Production of Religious Experience in a Korean Religion.” Nova Religio 12, no. 1 (August): 83-102. Bromley, David G., and Anson D. Shupe. 1979. Moonies in America: Cult, Church, and Crusade. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Choi Joon Sik. 1997. “New Religions.” In Religious Culture in Korea, edited by General Religious Affairs Division of the Ministry of Culture, Republic of Korea, 103-7. Elizabeth City, N.J.: Hollym. Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Rev. and exp. ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1974. The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series 46. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. 1964. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the End of the World. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Flaherty, Robert Pearson. 2004. “JeungSanDo and the Great Opening of the Later Heaven: Millenarianism, Syncretism, and the Religion of Gang Il-sun.” Nova Religio 7, no. 3 (March): 26-44. Grayson, James Huntley. 1989. Korea: A Religious History. Oxford: Clarendon. Jorgensen, John. 1999. “Millenarianism, Apocalypse and Creation in Contemporary Korean New Religions.” In Linking Korea and America for the New Century: Proceedings of the First KSAA Biennial Conference, edited by D. S. Park and C. S. Suh, 336-41- Sydney: University of New South Wales. -. 2001. “Taesunchillihoe: Factors in the Rapid Rise of a Korean New Religion.” Korean Studies of the Dawn of the Millennium: Proceedings of the Second KSAA Biennial Conference, edited by Young-A. Cho, 77-88. Melbourne: Monash University Press.

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Kang I-jo. 1968. “Belief and Political Behavior in Ch’ondogyo.” Review of Religious Research 10, no. 1: 38-43. Kim, Chong-bum. 2006. “Preaching the Apocalypse in Colonial Korea: The Protestant Millennialism of Kil Seon-ju.” In Christianity in Korea, edited by Robert Buswell and Timothy S. Lee, 149-66. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kim Chong-suh, ed. 1993. Reader in Korean Religion. Seoul: Academy of Korean Studies. Kim Nak-pil. 1993. “Taoism in Korea: A Brief Introduction.” In Reader in Korean Religion, edited by Kim Chong-suh, 99-138. Seongnam, Republic of Korea: Academy of Korean Studies. Kim Young-choon. 1975. “Cheondogyo Thought and Its Significance in Korean Tradition.” Korea Journal 15, no. 5: 47-53. Kim Young-tae. 1993. “Buddhism in the Three Kingdoms.” The History and Culture of Buddhism in Korea, edited by Korean Buddhist Research Institute, 37-74. Seoul: Dongguk University Press. Kwon Kee-Jong. 1994. “Jeongto Thought.” In Buddhist Thought in Korea, edited by Korean Buddhist Research Institute, 211-55. Seoul: Dongguk University Press. Lee Sang-taek. 1996. Religion and Social Formation in Korea: Minjung and Millenarianism. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Liffon, Robert Jay. 1983. The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life. New York: Basic Books. Linton, Ralph. 1943. “Nativistic Movements.” American Anthropologist 45: 230—40. McCune, G. M„ and E. D. Reischauer. 1939. “The Romanization of the Korean Language.” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29:1-55. Mohan, Pankaj N. 2001. “Maitreya Cult in Early Silla: Focusing on Hwarang as Maitreyaincarnate.” Journal of Korea Studies 14:149-73. Mok Jeong-bae. 1994. “Mireuk Thought.” In Buddhist Thought in Korea, edited by Korean Buddhist Research Institute, 179-210. Seoul: Dongguk University Press. Prunner, Gernot. 1980. The New Religions in Korean Society.” Korea Journal 20, no. 2 (February): 4-15. Propp, Vladimir. 1975. Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press. Ro Kil-myung. 2002. “New Religions and Social Change in Modern Korean History.” Review of Korean Studies 15, no. 1:31-62. Ryutaro, Tomoeda. 1985. “T’oegye and Chu Hsi: Differences in Their Theories of Principle and Material Force. In The Rise of Neo-Confucianism in Korea, edited by William Theodore de Bary and JaHyun Kim Haboush, 243-60. New York: Columbia University Press. Son Seok-u. 1994. Teo (Place), id ed. Seoul: Dapgae. Sponberg, Alan, and Helen Hardacre, eds. 1988. Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. The Teachings ofJeungSanDo (JeungSanDo Dojeon). 1997. Daejeon, Republic of Korea:

Dojeon. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1956. Revitalization Movements.” American Anthropologist 58, no. 2: 264-81. Walraven, Boudewijn. 2002. “The Parliament of Histories: New Religions, Collective Historiography, and the Nation.” Korean Studies 25, no. 2:157-78. Weber, Timothy P. 1987. Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1982. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weems, Benjamin. 1964. Reform, Rebellion, and the Heavenly Way. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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Wessinger, Catherine. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 147-60. New York: Routledge. WonBulgyo Kyojun (The Scripture of Won Buddhism). 1988. Iri, Republic of Korea: Won Kwang. Young, Carl. 2002. “Tonghak and Son Pyeong-hui’s Early Leadership, 1899-1904.” Review of Korean Studies 5, no.i: 63-83.

CHAPTER 18

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS HELEN HARDACRE

Throughout

its history Japan has been home to a tradition of millennial expecta¬

tions. Japanese millennialism came into sustained contact with Western religions possessing the idea of a Millennium only in the last century. For that reason, many of the key Japanese millennial concepts have no parallel in the West, and the tradi¬ tion’s ideas about sacred time and history are quite different. For example, whereas Christian millennialism is based on the expectation of Jesus Christ reigning for one thousand years after his return to Earth, neither the concept of a century nor the idea of one thousand years bore a distinctive meaning in Japan. Before the advent of Buddhism in Japan in the sixth century

c.e.,

we have no evidence of a dominant

theory of cosmic time or destiny. Because rice agriculture was the dominant mode of subsistence, agricultural cycles of germinating and transplanting seedlings, growth in the fields, and harvest must have structured religious understandings of time. The oldest extant Japanese literature, the poetry collection Manyoshu (c. 759), shows a keen awareness of the four seasons, and this awareness also must have pro¬ vided important temporal bearings. Because all ancient Japanese historical texts were compiled under Chinese influence, Chinese concepts of sixty-year cycles and imperial reigns have shaped Japanese understandings of cosmic time. All these frameworks remained influential alongside Buddhist ideas. From the time of its arrival, a Buddhist cosmological theory of time has pro¬ vided the dominant temporal framework for Japanese millennialism. Within this framework we find the idea that the cosmos alternates between periods of a mani¬ fest universe and its absence or non-manifestation, each consisting of a phase called

kalpa, an eon, a unit of time usually thought to be unimaginably long, even bil¬ lions of years in length. The possibility of liberation from the law of karma is at its

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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zenith at the beginning of each manifestation cycle, when humans live eighty thou¬ sand years and neither poverty nor war exist. Gradually a decline begins in which human life expectancy diminishes to a mere ten years and poverty, strife and con¬ flict increase. Humanity is engulfed in war. Then the cycle reverses, and life spans begin to lengthen and conditions improve until another peak is reached. Further elaborations on this theory of cosmic evolution and devolution chart the period of decline according to whether a Buddha is actively preaching in the world, the extent to which errors have crept into the texts that transmit his teach¬ ings, and the rectitude of his followers, both clerical and lay. At no point is there any incentive within this scheme to hasten the advent of the next Buddha, named Maitreya, because his world can only manifest naturally after the period of decline is exhausted. During the time of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, the period of decline was already well under way, but Maitreya cannot appear until the nadir is reached (Nattier 1988,27). Given the differing concepts structuring Japanese understandings of cosmic time, millennialism in Japan necessarily shows different rhythms and periodicity than in the West. Agricultural cycles, imperial reigns, sixty-year cycles, and Buddhist concepts coexist without any single framework becoming uniquely hegemonic.

Historical Overview We can see reflected in myths of the ancient period in Japan (prehistory through the eleventh century) millennial beliefs connected with the “eternal world” (tokoyo) and with the future Buddha Maitreya. Maitreya was a frequent subject for some of the finest Japanese Buddhist painting and sculpture as well as monumental sculpture. Starting near the end of the ancient period and continuing into the medieval period (twelfth through sixteenth centuries), the idea of the Latter Days of the Dharma

(mappo) provided a new strain of millennial thinking, based on the calculation that in 1052 Japan entered the last age before apocalyptic destruction would usher in a new cosmic era, reigned over by Maitreya. The Latter Days concept shaped subse¬ quent interpretations of natural disasters and the fortunes of the court, its rever¬ berations rippling through religion, the arts and literature. The death of the Buddhist saint Kukai (774-835) exemplified the aspiration to be present when Maitreya reigned on Earth; his body was interred atop a high mountain near the great monas¬ tic complex he had founded, where he was believed to remain in a meditative trance until Maitreya arrived. In a similar spirit many court figures had sutras copied and interred so that they would be discovered when Maitreya appeared. Japan came under attack from the Mongols during the late thirteenth century, and it was only by a providential wind that the Mongol fleet was blown away from the Japanese coast and the islands spared a full-scale invasion. During these years, the Buddhist saint Nichiren (1222-82) prophesied that Japan would be overcome if the Kamakura

350

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

shogunate and the people did not turn to the Lotus Sutra as the only means of salvation in the Latter Days. In the early modern era (seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries), a popular religious movement formed around religious ascetics who practiced at Mount Fuji, led by one who called himself Miroku (the Japanese pronunciation of Maitreya), who taught distinctive doctrines of gender equality. Concurrently, a kind of eschatological thinking developed in connection with political protest, calling for the “rectification of the world” (yonaoshi). Some peasant rebels carried flags bearing these words as they lodged their demands against their overlords. Near the end of the period, new religious movements arose outside the Buddhist and Shinto cler¬ gies, and some of them, such as Tenrikyo founded in 1838, had millennial themes. In the modern period (late nineteenth century to 1945), millennial thought was a major theme in the new religious movement, Omoto, and its offshoots. Omoto was founded by Deguchi Nao (1836-1918), a peasant woman who prophesied that rectification of the world was at hand, foreseeing the overthrow of the political sys¬ tem. Her prophesies were further elaborated by her charismatic successor, Deguchi Onisaburo (1871-1948), who also allied Omoto with intellectuals’ widespread inter¬ est in Spiritualism following the Russo-Japanese War (1904—5). As a rapidly growing organization with a nationwide newspaper and followers in positions of influence in the military, Omoto was perceived as highly threatening by the State, so much so that it was severely suppressed in 1921 and again in 1935. Other religious organiza¬ tions with a millennial message, especially small Christian groups, were also sup¬ pressed. One small Shinto movement, Tensho Kotai Jingukyo, was founded at the end of the war by a woman farmer named Kitamura Sayo (1900-1967), who proph¬ esied the overturn of the government, and went on to spread her millennial message into the postwar years. In the contemporary period (1945 to the present), millennial thinking has dropped out of mainline Buddhism and Shinto but has been a prominent element of two new religions, Aum Shinnkyd and Kofuku no Kagaku. In these contempo¬ rary cases, we can see significant influences from the New Testament book of Revelation and the prophesies of Nostradamus (1503-66). In fact, Nostradamus has appeared on the best-seller list in Japan numerous times in recent decades, espe¬ cially during the late 1990s, when for the first time the idea that the Millennium was at hand spurred a boom in apocalyptic publications.

The Ancient Period The first indication of millennialism in Japan appeared in the mid-seventh century, when the country was divided over the influx of continental culture and foreign immigrants. In 552 (or 538) the court officially adopted Buddhism as part of its rit¬ ual system, and this highly contested decision symbolized its increasing openness to

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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Chinese religion, forms of government, technology, and its sponsorship of immigrant groups specializing in such skills as metallurgy and ceramics. While these decisions undoubtedly represented wise choices not to be left behind or defenseless in the growing orbit of Chinese influence, they nevertheless destabilized older clans whose status and authority were based on kinship ties to the court, which were legitimated in myth and symbolically expressed in indigenous rites for the kami. Though in fact greatly influenced by Buddhism and other forms of conti¬ nental thought, the kami were regarded as the native deities of Japan, and their wor¬ ship was associated with those on the losing side of the struggles around the adoption of Buddhism. For these groups the court’s openness to the continent spelled a downgrading of their own rank and privileges. In 644, during the reign of Empress Kogyoku (r. 642-64), a coup against the Soga, the leading immigrant clan, was brewing. In the Nihonshoki (720), a compila¬ tion of myth and dynastic history, we read in the section describing events of the sixth month of 644 as follows: Through the country the Kamunagi took branches and fastened streamers... to them.... They contentiously called out the mysterious words.... These shamans were exceedingly numerous, and so could not be clearly heard. Old people said it was a sign of shifting winds. (Aston 1956/1896, Book II, XXIV, 20,188-89)

The kamunagi were male and female shamans whose worship of the kami involved the use of branches decked with streamers. Their worship of kami aligns them with the nativists. Apparently, large numbers of them had taken to the roads, proclaiming some sort of prophecy. Describing events of the following month, the text recounts: A man named Ofube no Oshi... urged on the people of his village the worship of a caterpillar, saying, “this is the Tokoyo-kami [the god of the Eternal World]. Those who worship this kami will bring themselves wealth and long life. In time the Kamunagi uttered pretended divine oracles, saying, “The person who worships the Tokoyo-kami, if poor will become rich, if old will become young.” Saying such things, they more and more urged the people to cast away the valuables in their homes, and to line up by the side of the road sake, vegetables, and domestic animals. They then cried out, “The new wealth is at hand! People of the capital and the countryside alike took the caterpillar of Tokoyo, put it in shrines, and with song and dance prayed for good fortune. They tossed away their goods, but to no benefit at all. The loss and waste was extreme. (Ibid.)

From this passage, we learn that the kamunagi had a leader who urged one and all to take up the worship of a divine caterpillar and throw away their worldly posses¬ sions, in the expectation that they would reap youth and “new wealth.” The fact that this prophecy was affecting the capital as well as the countryside spelled its end, and soon the leader was killed by one of the immigrant clans. Robert Ellwood (1984) likens this ancient cult of the caterpillar of the eternal world to a cargo cult (see chapter 22 by Garry W. Trompf, this volume), arising at a time when new forms of knowledge and wealth were upsetting the status order of society and enriching

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

352

some, but not others, overnight. Lacking the knowledge to understand the changes affecting them, the cultists came to believe that “new wealth” would be granted them if they abandoned the old. Inasmuch as the cult of the divine caterpillar promised the inauguration of a new order, it had characteristics in common with millennialism as found elsewhere. The distress of the kamunagi at the prospect of being displaced by Buddhist worship was actually closely related to the future Buddha Maitreya, inasmuch as the first Buddhist sculptures that came to Japan are believed to have represented him. However, he was at first perceived as a “foreign kamu Maitreya has been at the cen¬ ter of Japanese millennialism, but what were the origins of this idea of a future Buddha?

Maitreya The life story of the Buddha taught that the method of spiritual liberation he dis¬ covered was open to all, and that there had been other Buddhas in previous ages. Some scriptures taught that there would likewise be more Buddhas in the future. Most prominently, we find the story of Maitreya, a “being of enlightenment” (bodhisattva), who is presently cultivating the final stages of the path to liberation that will lead him to become the Buddha for this world system. The prospect of a future Buddha, yet another in the long line of Buddhas, offers an attractive possibility. Although liberation from suffering is possible for anyone at any time according to Buddhists, those beings fortunate enough to live at a time when a Buddha is active in the world are far more likely to realize the arduous goal of bringing all craving to cessation. Given the notion of individual human existence as a series of lives stretching over eons of time, it is not surprising that the ideal of gaining rebirth at one of those rare times when a Buddha is active in the world came to be seen as an attractive prospect in its own right. Though perhaps initially a minor figure in the early Buddhist tradition, Maitreya thus came to represent a hope for the future, a time when all human beings could once again enjoy the spiritual and physical environment most favorable to enlightenment and the release from worldly suffering. (Sponberg 1988,1-2)

As Alan Sponberg indicates, worshippers of Maitreya look forward to some per¬ sonal encounter with him, and his expected advent represents humanity’s best chance for achieving final liberation. The manner of his arrival and its meaning for the present order has been imagined in various ways. Sometimes he is described as a messianic savior who is expected to ring in a new age, but sometimes his appear¬ ance is expected to shore up the present order and guarantee its stability. Believers have sometimes cherished the aspiration to be reborn in his Buddha land, the Tushita Heaven, but in other cases they hope to be reborn at the time when he will reign on Earth. Following a typology developed by Buddhologist Jan Nattier, we can divide different manifestations of Maitreya worship according to the place and tim¬ ing of the believer’s encounter with him.

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1. Here/now: In this version of the myth, the believer expects to meet Maitreya on earth during his or her present lifetime. 2. Here/later: The believer expects the meeting to take place on earth, but at some time after the believer’s death (i.e., in a future rebirth). 3. There/now: In this “visionary” recension of the Maitreya myth, the believer strives for an immediate encounter with Maitreya, who is (according to the basic structure of the myth in all its versions) currently residing in the Tushita Heaven. 4. There/later: The believer may aspire to a rebirth in Maitreya’s otherworldly paradise, the Tushita Heaven, after this present lifetime. (Nattier 1988,25) According to Nattier, there are actually no canonical texts of the here/now type in India or Central Asia, and while there are such texts in Chinese sources, they are apocryphal in nature. No canonical texts claim that Maitreya’s appearance is immi¬ nent or depict Maitreya as a messiah who will actively bring about a new world order. “The canonical texts are unanimous in stating that Maitreya will not person¬ ally bring about the Golden Age; rather, he will appear when that era has already (and gradually) come into being” (Nattier 1988,31). In Japan we do not find exam¬ ples of people proclaiming themselves to be incarnations of Maitreya until the early modern period. Both the oldest Maitreya texts and the greatest number of them adopt the here/ later motif. In this version, ordinary believers hope to be reborn on Earth during Maitreya’s manifestation to hear him preach, so that they can attain final liberation. These texts preach that believers should support the Buddhist teaching, the monks and nuns, and generally the existing government as well. The East Asian Buddhist texts relating to Maitreya that are best known in Japan are of two types, one emphasizing ascent to his Buddha land, the Tushita Heaven, and the other his descent to this world. The text known in Japan as Miroku josho kyo (Taisho Canon 452) represents the ascent type, while the descent type is found in Miroku gesho kyo (Taisho Canon 454) and Miroku jobutsu kyo (Taisho Canon 456). The former text relates that if believers acquire sufficient merit, they may ascend to the Tushita Heaven to be reborn there. The latter two texts relate that some 56 million years after the death of Shakyamuni, Maitreya will descend from the Tushita Heaven to Earth and preach three sermons. The ascent type emphasizes the idea of rebirth in the Maitreya’s Pure Land, but this idea is not found in the descent type. By the seventh century we find references in Japan to the idea of ascending to the Tushita Heaven; it was assumed that the individual accumulated merit and achieved this rebirth. This belief was supplanted by the late eighth century, however, by the cult of a different Buddha, Amitabha. Rebirth in his Western Pure Land could be achieved by one’s descendants’ merit transfer rites, a possibility that did not require so much confidence in the individual’s ability to accumulate merit. Thus the idea of ascending to Maitreya’s Tushita Heaven gradually disappeared (Miyata 1988, 176-77)-

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

354

According to art historian Christine Guth, seventh-century Japan had no tradition of portraiture. To create a likeness of a living person was to create a magical image that might be misused as a curse. Thus living rulers tended to be represented in the guise of some Buddhist deity. Prince Shotoku (552-621) became the object of much devotional belief and practice, and Maitreya was one of the forms in which he was venerated. It is highly likely that the famous image at Chuguji, a nunnery adjacent to Horyuji, represents Prince Shotoku in the form of Maitreya. As the Buddha who will appear at the end of this world cycle to reestablish a just order over the entire world, Maitreya was linked with the cakravartin, the ideal universal monarch who conquers with the Buddhist Dharma rather than with his sword. Maitreya’s earthly name of Ajita, meaning “victorious,” undoubtedly contributed a militant element to this image. [... ] As a devout Buddhist ruler who had ensured the future of Buddhism in Japan.... Shotoku was undoubtedly perceived as a cakravartin. (Guth 1988, 209) The motif of Maitreya’s descent was an idea adopted by the Tendai and Shingon schools of Buddhism. The great Buddhist saint and culture hero Kukai also known by the honorary title Kobo Daishi, traveled to China in 804, where he studied Sanskrit as well as practiced under a master who certified that he had reached the highest level of spiritual attainment. Returning to Japan with many texts of the eso¬ teric Shingon Buddhist tradition, as well as many works of art and ritual equip¬ ment, he eventually received the court’s permission to establish temples for the study of the esoteric teachings and practice he had learned. The use of mantra,

mudra, and mandala spread not only through the religious world, but also was emulated within the court and greatly influenced cultural life. Kukai enjoyed impe¬ rial patronage and his prestige was acknowledged widely. When Kukai passed away, instead of being cremated his body was interred in a meditation position at Koyasan, his mountain monastic complex. His dying words proclaimed that he would be reborn in the Tushita Heaven and would descend with Maitreya to this world. His fervent disciples preached that until then his body remained on the mountaintop in a state of deep meditation, in a state of suspended animation epitomizing the here/ later orientation (Miyata 1988,176-78).

The Latter Days of the Dharma During the Heian period (794-1185), the idea of the Latter Days of the Dharma became a prominent theme in cultural life, affecting a broad spectrum of the arts. It was widely believed that the year 1052 signaled the onset of the decline of the Buddhist Dharma (mappo), an age leading to the disappearance of Buddhist teachings and concomitantly to lawlessness on earth. This apocalyptic belief prompted the burial of Buddhist scriptures, images, and other objects in holy spots, especially mountaintops, there to await the coming of Maitreya, whose appearance would initiate a new age of Buddhism. (Guth 1988, 203)

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For example, the courtier Fujiwara Michinaga believed that the mountain Kimpusen was the actual Tushita Heaven. He made a pilgrimage there in 1007 to bury a gilt sutra cylinder, in the hope that it would be unearthed when Maitreya arrived on Earth. Other aristocrats such as Nakamikado Munetada identified Maitreya’s para¬ dise with another mountain called Kasagisan, where they traveled to worship a giant image of Maitreya carved into the rock (Miyata 1988,178-79). This rock carving of Maitreya on a mountain some ten miles northeast of Nara could only be reached from the capital in the ancient period by a difficult journey by boat and overland. The carving, some fifteen meters high, depicted Maitreya standing, surrounded by a halo and mandorla, and receiving a robe from an arhat. A second arhat bears an incense burner. Two pilgrims and a monk are shown approaching the temple Kasagi-dera. This depiction is evidently based on the leg¬ end that at his death Shakyamuni entrusted his robe to his most trusted disciple, Kashyapa, to be given to Maitreya after his descent, as proof that Maitreya was the successor to Shakyamuni. Probably carved in the late eighth century, the Kasagisan Maitreya image was an important pilgrimage site for Heian aristocrats (Brock 1988).

The Medieval Period

The Impact of the Mongol Invasions In 1274 and 1281 the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan (1215-94) sent naval expeditions against Japan when the shogunate not only refused to submit to his authority, but also beheaded the messengers. The Mongols were vastly more powerful than the Japanese, and Japanese islands and towns along the route of the Mongol invasions were obliterated in the attacks. It was only due to typhoons that twice destroyed the Mongol fleet that Japan escaped greater devastation or even complete subjugation. The winds that spared Japan this horrible fate were widely seen as kamikaze, “divine winds,” and the belief that the kami had protected Japan from the Mongols undoubt¬ edly deepened popular faith in the kami. At the same time, however, the costs of the effort to repel the Mongols were astronomical and led to great dissatisfaction among the warrior class and ultimately to the downfall of the Kamakura shogunate in 1333

-

All the temples and shrines of the country were called upon to pray for Japan’s deliverance from the barbarians. Shogun and emperor alike sponsored prayers, cer¬ emonies and meritorious acts of piety, as well as went on pilgrimage and secluded themselves to pray for divine assistance in repelling the Mongols. In his 1260 trea¬ tise, Establishing the Truth for the Peace of the Country (Rissho Ankoku-ron), the Buddhist saint Nichiren proclaimed that Japan would be overrun by foreign invasion unless the people and the shogunate converted to the teachings of the

356

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Lotus Sutra. He also attributed floods, famines, earthquakes, typhoons, and other disasters to failure to uphold the Lotus Sutra. While the shogunate did not deign to respond to this apocalyptic prophecy directly, leaders of other Buddhist sects reacted violently against Nichiren, and he was banished in 1261. The millenarian theme within Nichiren Buddhism has remained an element of its belief system down to the present, as we will see below. The fifteenth century was a time of prolonged warfare in Japan. The capital burned, and neither the court, the aristocracy, nor the common people were spared. During this time, especially in eastern Japan, we find the use of Maitreya’s name in connection with the calendar. It was the prerogative of the imperial court to desig¬ nate the name given to a period of years, and traditionally the name would be an auspicious combination of characters meant to ensure good fortune. When things were not going well, the court would change the era name, sometimes more than once in the reign of a single emperor. In this era of long-lasting civil strife, the use of “private era names” arose, including Maitreya’s name, in the hope that by includ¬ ing his name, something of his power could be invoked to change fortune and bring about better times (Miyata 1988,181).

The Early Modern Era

(1600-1868)

The Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan from the seventeenth through the mid¬ nineteenth century, and popular expressions of millennialism were tightly con¬ trolled. This is not to say that such thinking did not exist, but anyone prophesying the overthrow of the government would meet a violent end. Thus millennial beliefs and practices from this era were muted and mild by comparison with what came before and after. We find popular songs of the eighteenth century, for example, which refer to Maitreya s ship, a boat full of rice that would arrive from across the sea along with Maitreya and a variety of other deities. Maitreya (Miroku)’s ship is coming! The deities of Kashima, Ise, and Kasuga are at the helm. On a cloud come thirteen princesses from India. They come scattering rice, much rice, before them, And after them will come Maitreya, also scattering rice. The earth is abundant, and the harvest is rich. The five grains are ripening, and the people of the world rejoice. (Miyata 1988,180) The kami of the Kashima, Ise and Kasuga shrines, not to mention Indian princesses, make up Maitreya’s entourage on the ship, whose advent foretells an abundant har¬ vest. This song and others like it were accompanied by dances aiming to ward off evil and epidemics. We notice, however, that this complex of belief is quite distinct

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

357

from the verticality of earlier ideas about Maitreya’s descent or believers ascending to the Tushita Heaven. Instead, he comes horizontally, from across the sea, and he has been transformed into a harvest deity similar to those of the major shrines named in the song. So disconnected from the Buddhist textual models is this folk tradition of Miroku that it is hard to recognize Miroku as Maitreya. In the early modern period, Miroku became quite detached from and distinct from the textual models of earlier eras. A new popularization of the cult of sacred mountains was an important ele¬ ment of religious life in this period that helped to create new strands of millennialism in Japan. Since ancient times the idea of the sacrality of mountains had been a pervasive feature of Japanese religions, and there were orders of ascetics called

yamabushi, shugenja, and other terms, who developed regimens of religious prac¬ tice in the mountains. Some of them became affiliated with the Tendai and Shingon sects of Buddhism. There were mountains in virtually every region of Japan where ascetics underwent austerities to acquire the spiritual powers associated with moun¬ tains. The idea emerged that the mountains were symbolic representations of para¬ dise or Pure Lands on Earth, or that they actually were those lands. During the early modern period, these ascetic orders practicing in the moun¬ tains were required to cease peripatetic wanderings and take up residence in the villages and cities. Often they made their living as healers and religious profession¬ als who would perform prayers and rituals for fees received from clients. In other cases, they became members of the peasant class and popularized mountain asceti¬ cism among fellow villagers. Some became highly respected members of rural soci¬ ety. These newly settled yamabushi also began to lead groups of people on pilgrimages to sacred mountains. In this period the idea spread that the mountains represented the world where the ancestors dwelt (Miyata 1988,183).

The Cult of Mount Fuji In eastern Japan Mount Fuji is the most prominent sacred mountain. From as early as the mid-Heian period, we have abundant evidence of the worship of Mount Fuji, and documentation of several trails leading to the summit opened by ascetics. More so, even, than that of other sacred mountains, its perfect conical shape soared upward, linking the earthly world with the divine. The plume of smoke constantly rising from its summit suggested vast spiritual energies, the snow that covered it for most of each year provided a natural symbol of purity and freedom from pollution. From an early period shrines were built on its slopes, the moun¬ tain was made the home of a variety of Buddhist and Shinto deities, its peak was associated with several different paradises, and its inner fires with the Buddhist hells. (Collcutt 1988, 251)

Mount Fuji was clearly visible from Edo, the shogun’s capital, and Edo became a center for the development of millennial phenomena connected with Mount Fuji. From around the early seventeenth century there were groups organized for the

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

358

worship of Mount Fuji that conducted annual ascents to the peak. New routes to the summit were opened up, and stone huts were constructed to shelter climbers from bad weather. The ascetics worshiped the mountain’s deity, called Sengen Daibosatsu. In 1773 a man calling himself Miroku foretold the coming of “Miroku’s world,” proclaiming that he would starve himself to death for the salvation of the people. On the thirteenth day of the sixth month of 1733, a sixty-two year-old oil merchant from Edo climbed to the seventh stage of Mt. Fuji, to a place known as Eboshi Rock. There he set up a flimsy portable shrine that he had carried with him, entered it, and began a fast of thirty-one days and nights during which he allowed himself only a cup of melted snow daily. It was to be a mortal fast. On the thirteenth day of the seventh month he died, or, as those who heard of his death believed, entered a deathlike state of meditation, samadhi (nyiijo). (Collcutt 1988, 248)

Jikigyo Miroku wrote his name with different characters than the Buddhist render¬ ing, an innovation signaling the distinctive aspects of this early modern instance of Japanese millennialism and its essential divorce from the canonical tradition. Despite his name, Jikigyo devoted himself not to Maitreya but to the Mount Fuji deity Sengen Daibosatsu. When Jikigyo prophesied the advent of Miroku’s world, what he had in mind was a plentiful supply of rice, material good fortune and abun¬ dant harvests. Jikigyo evidently believed that his suicide would somehow hasten the arrival of Miroku’s world, but he did not connect this with any message of political change (Collcutt 1988).

Okage Mairi Pilgrimage to the Ise Shrines, the most important of which is the shrine dedicated to Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess and ancestor of the imperial family, was the largest movement of the Japanese population during the early modern period. Much of it was institutionalized and conducted according to established protocols and sched¬ ules. In addition, however, a distinctively millennial element motivated mass pil¬ grimage in certain years. During the Edo period, it is believed that on average, between 200,000 and 500,000 people visited the shrines annually (Fujitani 1981, 32), and that number increased in years when the vicennial renewal was held.1 That was, we might say, “pilgrimage as usual.” While pilgrimage as usual continued, mass pilgrimage also developed. Mass pilgrimage is believed to have occurred in 1650, 1705, 1718,1723, 1771,1830,1863, and 1867; the ones in 1705,1771, and 1830 are the best documented. The pilgrimage of 1705 is best known from a compilation of miracle tales by an Outer Shrine priest named Watarai Hironori, The Continuing Record of Divine Marvels of the Grand Shrine of Ise, compiled in 1706. The 1705 pilgrims were largely made up of children and youths; many of them indentured domestic servants or agricultural workers, who reportedly left for Ise on a sudden whim without

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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permission. In other words, they absconded. Such pilgrims were known as nuke

mairi (Watarai 1996/1706,129/207-130/208 note 12). According to Watarai the pilgrimage beginning on the seventh or eighth day of the fourth intercalary month saw staggering numbers of pilgrims over the next two months; these numbers are listed in Table 18.1. While they are obviously impres¬ sionistic, these numbers can be regarded as broadly indicative of unprecedented numbers of pilgrims, with rises and falls within the period. Children from throughout Osaka... began leaving on nukemairi in groups of two and three. [... ] It was said that the children who left on nukemairi between morning and evening [the first] day numbered more than ten thousand.... Rain fell the next day, but they paid no heed, pouring out one after the other in a wave of chaos... filling the roads and leaving not so much room as to stand a needle. [... ] The wealthy furnished assistance... some donating copper money, some giving fans, others donating hand towels, red sacks, walking staffs, rush sandals, medicines, or tissue paper, while some others even gave out a piece of silver to each pilgrim. (Watarai 1996/1706, pp. 109/228-110/227)

Table 18.1. Numbers of pilgrims on the pilgrimage beginning in the fourth intercalary month Dates

Number of Pilgrims

4/9

2,000-3,000

4/10

2,000-3,000

4/11

20,000-30,000

4/12

30,000-40,00

4/i3

100,000

4/14-4/25

100,000 daily

4/26

50,000-60,000

4/27 4/28 and 4/29

70,000-80,000

5/i

70,000-80,000

5/2

40,000-50,000

5/3-517

120,000-130,000

5/8-5/10

140,000-150,000

5/11

70,000-80,000

5/12-5/14

100,000

5/15

150,000-160,000

5/16

220,000-230,000

5/17

70,000-80,000

5/19-5/20

50,000-60,000

5/21 5/22-5/23

40,000-50,000

120,000-130,000

20,000-30,000

5/24

10,000-20,000

5/25-5/28

10,000

36o

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

From 1771 mass pilgrimage was referred to as okage mairi, literally “thanks pilgrim¬ age,” following the expression okage de or okagesama de, meaning “thanks to [some¬ one].” The expression referred to alms offered by merchants and ordinary people living along the routes to Ise; it was “thanks to” their charity that pilgrims could reach their goal and return home again. Documents on the 1771 okage mairi are very different from the rosy picture depicted in miracle tales. Whether compiled by the Ise priests or by people living along the route, the overwhelming impression is that mass pilgrimage was a public health nightmare. The 1771 diary of the Head Priest of the Inner Shrine recorded that the roads were choked with pilgrims, many of whom were children. People living along the roads to the shrines set up alms stalls, and the priests also set up alms stations inside the shrines. They gave each person money and a talisman, regardless of ability to pay. The priests feared that the huge crowds would cause a fire in the shrines. There were endless meetings to inform the authorities of the situation. They ran out of horses and oxen to transport firewood and food, and at the same time, the animals used to transport pilgrims completely clogged the entrance to the shrine grounds. Palanquin bearers gouged on prices. There were pickpockets and thieves (Mie ken 1998,1028). A diary of the 1771 pilgrimage by otherwise unknown Tsuda Kin’uemon Norinao, Ise mairi okage no mkki (1771), uses the word fushigi (uncanny, incred¬ ible, unbelievable) repeatedly to describe events unfolding before him. During this pilgrimage, many pilgrims did not eat for days at a time and could not explain what they hoped to attain in going to Ise, except that they wanted a talisman. Child pil¬ grims trudged along with no money at all. The author found the ceaseless tide of pilgrims ominous, pitiable, and sometimes frightening. Rumors in Osaka of talismans falling from the sky set off a wave of seventy thousand to eighty thousand nuke mairi. Some fell ill from hunger and thirst. Talismans started falling in Nara. Even dogs were observed going on pilgrimage with talismans on their collars! Groups of pilgrims tied themselves together so as not to be separated in the crowds. In the midst of all this misery, some pilgrims played music day and night as if it were a festival. There were so many pilgrims that they ended up sleeping on the Uji Bridge once they reached Ise. Many approached the shrines by lamplight, provoking great fear that the sanctuaries might catch fire. Talismans kept falling (Tsuda 1971/1771,103-23). Clearly, okage mairi was a mixed blessing for all concerned. Whereas the shrines at the beginning of the period were working hard to promote regularized, orderly “pilgrimage as usual,” by the late eighteenth century Ise pilgrimage had not only become self-sustaining but also had completely overflowed the bounds of priestly control and the capacity of facilities for travelers. The result was a volatile mixture of misery, crime, sickness, carnival, and religious enthusiasm. When the shogunate made no move to help in 1771, the people themselves organized huge quantities of alms to alleviate the suffering as best they could in a large-scale effort at disaster relief.

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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The okage mairi of 1830 had many of the same features as in 1771: starving pilgrims, pilgrims sick and dead by the road, overwhelmed inns and tea houses, alms organized on a huge scale by merchants and by others who undoubtedly did so in part out of fear that pilgrims would take what they wanted if the mood turned ugly. Horrifically, the fear of fire came true when a huge conflagration burned down the Uji Bridge, numerous subshrines and priests’ homes. The main sanctuary was undamaged, but outlying subshrines burned down as the fire spread to the hills beyond, raging intensely, impossible to put out. The fire occurred only a year after the vicennial renewal, requiring extraordinary contributions of labor and resources. So merciless was the fire, so ominous did it seem, that all ringing of bells and bois¬ terous entertainments in Kyoto were suspended for five days (“Ise okage mairi jitsuroku kagami” 1971/1830,123-27). A subdued millennial dimension to these mass pilgrimages can be discerned in the pilgrims’ apparent expectation that completing a visit to the shrines would pro¬ duce a radical positive change. The era’s restrictions on religious expression were probably the primary cause for the expectation remaining muted.

Yonaori, Yonaoshi: Rectifying the World A mild form of millennial belief can be seen in two expressions of the early modern period that mean “world mending”: yonaori and yonaoshi. The yo-element means “world,” while naori and naoshi are intransitive and transitive forms of a verb mean¬ ing “mend,” in the sense of “set right” or “reform.” Yonaori suggests a natural process of the universe, a flow that reverses misfortune and moves toward the original and correct form of the world. By contrast, yonaoshi implies an active human agent who brings about reform. At the end of the period in 1867, a movement called Eeja nai

ka (Anything goes!) occurred in which large numbers of people sang this expression and songs invoking yonaori as they performed ecstatic dances and went on sponta¬ neous and unplanned pilgrimages to numerous shrines, especially the Ise Grand Shrines. They were responding in part to rumors that divine talismans were falling from the sky. Their songs proclaimed that Japan would be “reformed” to become an agrarian utopia with abundant harvests, and that the kami and Maitreya would appear (Miyata 1988,186).

Modern Period (1868-1945) The modern period began with the Meiji Restoration (or Meiji Revolution) of 1868, resulting in the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate and the eventual establish¬ ment of a constitutional system of government. The period was marked in its early decades, especially, by rapid modernization: industrialization, urbanization, and

362

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

the beginning of military conscription and compulsory education. The result was a fundamental transformation of the economy, politics, and society. Traditional stan¬ dards of value were greatly changed by the establishment of textile factories in rural areas, leading to great disparities of wealth. Inevitably, many people became impov¬ erished, and those who did not share in modernization’s benefits became a ready audience for millennial prophecy.

Omoto The new religious movement Omoto, in which millennial prophecy was a major component, became the fastest-growing association of the early twentieth century. Omoto was founded in 1892 by Deguchi Nao (1836—1918), a peasant woman from a rapidly industrializing area north of Kyoto. Nao experienced many hardships before her revelations; married to a drunkard, she lived in poverty and supported herself and her children by rag picking. Two of her daughters went mad. She turned to an earlier movement, Konkokyo, which preached that the true god of the universe called Ushitora Konjin had been ensnared, and true knowledge of him erased, by impos¬ ters. In trance Nao became the mouthpiece for this god and proclaimed that Ushitora Konjin would emerge soon to assume his rightful place. In the process, the wicked would be vanquished, and those who had kept him in obscurity would be punished. Nao, who had no formal education, originally scratched her prophecies with a nail on the wall of the cell where she was imprisoned on suspicion of insanity. These prophecies were later expanded greatly and collected as The Brush Tip, (Ofudesaki, a nineteenth-century term for automatic writing). Nao believed that this millennial event would occur in 1918, and in anticipation of Ushitora Konjin’s descent to a par¬ ticular island, she and her followers traveled there to await his appearance. The god failed to appear, however, and Nao died later that year. She was succeeded by her sonin-law, also the cofounder of Omoto, Deguchi Onisaburo (1871-1948), and under his leadership the movement grew to massive proportions, attracting followers far beyond the rural base Nao had brought in, including urban intellectuals, students and members of the military. Over the years 1921 to 1935, Onisaburo composed a massive work of millennial prophecy entitled Tales of the Spirit World (Reikai monogatari). Based on Nao s original prophecies, this work also portrays a god who has been ensnared and blocked from assuming his legitimate rule over the cosmos. The Tales looked forward to a time when a god from Japanese myth named Kunitokotachi would take control of the universe and usher in “the Age of Maitreya.” The government twice suppressed Omoto, which “had been preaching of an impending apocalyptic war with the United States, after which the emperor would reunite defeated Japan from Omoto’s sacred shrine at Ayabe outside Kyoto” (Garon 1986, 289). The first suppression of 1921 was repeated with great vengeance in 1935, when five hundred policemen reduced the group’s headquarters to rubble, even bombing it from the sky. Almost one thousand members were imprisoned; Onisaburo was released only at the end of the war. Since that time millenn ial thought has not played so prominent a role in the group’s thought.

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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Tensho Kotai Jingukyo, the Dancing Religion Near the end of the war another millennial prophet emerged, a woman farmer named Kitamura Sayo (1900-1967), who went on to found one of the most promi¬ nent new religious movements of the early postwar years, Tensho Kotai Jingukyo (founded 1944), sometimes referred to as the Dancing Religion because of its “Dance of No-Ego.” Sayo’s prophecies began as it was becoming plain to all that Japan would lose the war. The American B-29 bomber airplanes were strafing the islands daily. In the midst of Japan’s peril, Sayo first attracted police attention by denouncing the emperor: “Look at the present Emperor—he has been totally secluded and is nailed up in an air-tight box like a puppet” (Tensho Kotai Jingukyo 1967,1:77). She proph¬ esied Japan’s destruction, speaking in the name of the god possessing her: Oh, bring on the bombs—bring on the bombs— May they exterminate the maggots of this rotten world, And burn all their lairs to ashes, whereupon Let there appear God’s New Kingdom! But wait a while; will such a state last long? Ah no, the maggots’ world will soon collapse For I have sent for tons of bombs to sound Its death knell and to herald the change. (Tensho Kotai Jingukyo 1954,44) In her prophecies Sayo looked forward to Japan’s defeat and the inauguration of an entirely new world. She became the most flamboyant exemplar of the new religions emerging just after the defeat, liberated by the removal of prewar and wartime restrictions and the threat of suppression. Sayo eventually accumulated a following of several million people in the early postwar period and built a mammoth head¬ quarters in her hometown of Tabuse in Yamaguchi Prefecture, which she named “God’s Country” (Kami no kuni). She established branches all over Japan, as well as in Hawaiian and South American communities of Japanese immigrants. Her fol¬ lowers saw her as a living god (Ono 1979).

Contemporary Period (1945 to the Present) Tensho Kotai Jingukyo was a small, rural group until the end of the war, but since that time many other new religious movements with millennial themes have emerged. Until the mid-1970s, apocalyptic millennial thinking remained some¬ what muted, however, and it was only with emergence of the so-called Occult Boom that these themes became more prominent. In the interim, however, we can observe the phenomenon of progressive millennialism in the new religious move¬ ment Soka Gakkai, founded in 1925 and derived from the Nichiren Buddhist tradition.

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

364

Soka Gakkai had been severely suppressed during the prewar and wartime years, and its founder, Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944), had died in prison. Upon his release from prison, Makiguchi’s principal disciple, Toda Josei (1900-1958), reconstituted the group with a strong millennial impetus, developing beliefs and practices aimed at improving society by improving individual morality. Like other new religions of the postwar era, Soka Gakkai attracted adherents with its optimis¬ tic perspective, fully confident that human effort was capable of creating the spiri¬ tual and social conditions in which humanity could achieve its full potential. In 1964 the movement formed a political party, the Clean Government Party (Komeito), which acts to promote social welfare and other measures of social improvement (Stone 2000). The Occult Boom refers to the proliferation of millennial phenomena through the media from around 1970 through the end of the century, and also a host of newly commercialized religious rituals and services. Although religion was infre¬ quently covered in the press and on television before the oil shocks of the mid1970s, it became much more pervasively embedded in popular culture thereafter. Throughout the developed world, media proliferated during the 1980s with the advent of satellite and cable television, provoking increased competition among the news and entertainment industries of mass culture, especially television. Particularly after the First Gulf War (1990-91), the twenty-four-hour news cycle created height¬ ened pressure to generate news and entertainment programs in quantity. While Spiritualists previously had appeared occasionally in Japanese televisions “dead zones of morning and afternoon broadcasting, commercialized ritual to appease aborted fetuses (mizuko kuyo) were widely promoted. Temples specializing in heal¬ ing or mizuko kuyo advertised widely and drew clientele from around the country. Bookstores devoted special sections on “The Spiritual World” (seishin sekai), with apocalyptic bestsellers such as Japan Sinks (1973) and the works of Nostradamus. Fortune-telling parlors sprouted up in all the cities, becoming patronized enthu¬ siastically, especially by the young. The 1988 classic anime film Akira (Otomo 1988) is a prime example of the mil¬ lennial themes of the Occult Boom. This film evokes well-worn tropes of apoca¬ lypse, such as the atomic bomb and the destruction of Tokyo. A more original segment highlights the irrationality and fanaticism of millenarianism, in the Prophets of Akira, who cry out to anyone who will listen to repent and prepare for “The Great Akira Awakening,” a phrase painted on the pavement in red as if for a god to see as it descends to Earth. Some of the prophets are dressed like mountain ascetics (yamabushi); they chant with Buddhist prayer beads in the manner of ascet¬ ics and bear flags on which is written, Hail to Akira!” As a mushroom cloud rises over Tokyo, the declaiming prophets start crossing a bridge, only to have it collapse in flames and plunge them into roiling waters below (Napier 1993). Founded mainly since the mid-1970s, a cluster of “new new religions” (shin-

shin shukyd) emerged alongside widespread commercialization of assorted religious goods and services. Adherents of new new religions tend to believe that humanity does not know what forces rule human destiny and/or human effort is powerless to

JAPANESE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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influence them; the supernatural world may not be benevolent; and divination in various forms is more important than self-effort. Their founders do not necessarily have a personal history of suffering and spiritual training, as did the founders of the earlier new religions. Instead, they are more likely to proclaim authority on the basis of revelation not preceded by a period of spiritual searching. The movements recruit in large part through the published writings of the founders; they do not necessarily stress communal activity; advancement may depend more on passing written examinations than on participating with others in worship or proselytizing. Members seem to reject the intimacy of communal fellowship characteristic of sec¬ ond-sector organizations in favor of individualized study or training. Science of Happiness (Kofuku no Kagaku) is the largest single organization of this type; at one time it claimed to have 10 million members.

Aum Shinrikyo Aum Shinrikyo, founded in 1986, also belongs to the category of new new religions (see also chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume). Aum Shinrikyo’s partially blind founder, Asahara Shoko (born Matsumoto Chizuo in 1955), opened a natural food store in Chiba Prefecture in 1978, with a yoga school on the second floor. In 1982 he was arrested for manufacturing fake medicine. He traveled to India around 1986, returning to claim that he had experienced enlightenment. From this time on, his yoga practice evolved into a syncretic religion incorporating aspects of Hinduism and esoteric Buddhism, which he called “Aum Supreme Truth” (Aum Shinrikyo). Aum believers were increasingly pressured to leave their families and to aban¬ don secular employment in favor of full-time volunteer labor for the religion, fre¬ quently in the movement’s computer manufacturing and sales business. Ordained members were expected to donate all their resources to the organization. Around 1988 localized conflicts over land purchases also emerged. Alarmed relatives banded together to force Aum to permit ongoing contact with ordained members who had cut off relations with their families and to compel Aum to return family assets. Sakamoto Tsutsumi (1956-89) was a Yokohama attorney representing a newly formed group of aggrieved relatives of Aum members, Aum Shinrikyo Higaisha no Kai (“The Victims of Aum Association”). On 4 November 1989 Sakamoto and his wife and infant son disappeared without a trace. An Aum badge was found in their apartment. Aum members murdered the Sakamotos on Asahara’s orders, though this was not discovered until after the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995

-

In February 1990 Asahara lost his bid for election to the Diet, as did several other Aum leaders. Having predicted victory, Asahara was shocked to find that soci¬ ety overwhelmingly rejected him. Thereafter, Asahara gave up the idea of peaceful coexistence with society in favor of creating an alternative government with himself as theocrat. He styled himself “King of the Dharma” and “the Lamb of God” and predicted his martyrdom in an apocalyptic confrontation with the state. On the night of 27 June 1994 he celebrated the formation of his new government with his

366

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

closest leaders, and that very same night, he ordered them to carry out the first attack using sarin gas, aimed at the judges of the District Court of Matsumoto, where a trial challenging the group’s purchase of land was being held. Approximately six hundred people were injured by the gas, and seven died. Fearing that a police investigation was going to begin, Asahara ordered the 20 March 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway as a diversionary tactic. On that morning five Aum members boarded subway trains bound for Tokyo’s government center. Each man got off his train a station or two before the center, first dropping two small plastic bags to the floor, piercing them with the sharpened tip of an umbrella, mingling the contents to produce sarin gas. Terror struck as fumes rose, sickening everyone nearby, spreading to the platform when the doors opened at the next stop. Stricken subway workers fell to the ground as they tried to help the fleeing passen¬ gers. Thousands of people flooding the street-level exits blocked ambulances and paramedics from reaching the sick and dying. Once outside people collapsed on the street in droves. Miraculously, only twelve were killed, but five thousand required hospitalization. Many sustained lifelong trauma. Police investigation began two days later, leading to Asahara’s arrest on 16 May. Since that time, Asahara and numer¬ ous leaders have been convicted in the sarin attack and sentenced to death. Since the Aum episode, apocalyptic millennial themes have largely disappeared from Japanese religious life (Hardacre 2007-2008; Reader 2000).

Conclusion This essay has discussed the history of millennial beliefs in Japan from earliest times to the present. We have seen that while such phenomena have occurred in each era of Japanese history, they do not show significant continuity in terms of explicit ref¬ erence to earlier occurrences. Nor do we find a common scriptural basis. While the figure of Maitreya has been seen in multiple occurrences, it is notable that over the course of Japanese history the meaning of this figure was almost entirely detached from its Buddhist canonical moorings and transformed from a Buddha of the future to a harvest deity. It is only in the modern era that we find millennial movements such Omoto and Tensho Kotai Jingukyo that predict the overthrow of the political order. More commonly Japans millennial religious phenomena have hoped for a gradual renovation of society that would improve the material conditions of life.

NOTE 1. The Ise Shrines were composed of two main sites, and their main sanctuaries were rebuilt—and their shrine treasures re-created—every twenty years.

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Tsuda BCin uemon Norinao. 1971 [1771]. “Ise mairi okage no nikki.” Okage mairi in Ses6, edited by Tanigawa Ken’ichi. Part 1; vol. 12 of Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryo shusei, edited by Miyamoto Tsuneichi, Torao Haraguchi, and Shuncho Higa. Tokyo: San’ichi Shobo. Watarai Hironori. 1996 [1706]. Ise Daijingu zokujiniki [The Continuing Record of Divine Marvels of the Grand Shrine of Ise]. Annotated Translation by Norman Havens. Transactions of the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics 78 (September): 262-301.

CHAPTER 19

MILLENARIAN ELEMENTS IN THE HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS HUGH B. URBAN

Strictly speaking, there is no concept of a Millennium and nothing quite like what we think of as millenarian movements in the Western sense in the Hindu traditions prior to the modern period. Although the vast array of sects, movements, texts, and ritual traditions we now collectively label “Hinduism” is extremely diverse and het¬ erogeneous,1 most of them accept a common mythology and a common view of cosmic time, which is quite different from the Abrahamic model of linear history. As in most South Asian traditions, the Hindu model is a cyclical and infinite view of cosmic time with an endless series of universal creations, destructions, and re-cre¬ ations. Thus, the concept of a coming Millennium as the teleological goal of history makes little sense from a Hindu perspective. That being said, however, the Hindu traditions do have visions of cataclys¬ mic change, eschatological destruction, and a radical remaking of the world that have certain structural parallels to Western visions of the Millennium. Moreover, India also gave birth to a number of powerful religious leaders who claimed to be divine incarnations for the last, most degenerate age before the end of this cosmic cycle. Finally in the modern period, and particularly in the wake of European colo¬ nialism and the encounter with Christianity, a number of new, syncretistic, and explicitly millenarian movements emerged. Many of these movements, such as the powerful peasant uprisings among the Munda and Santal communities in the nineteenth century, were in fact anticolonial movements of indigenous resistance,

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looking forward to a millennial transformation with the overthrow of British rule. Others, like the infamous “guru of the rich,” Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (a.k.a. Osho), have been praised as gurus for a new millennium of globalization and even transnational capitalism. And still others, like the “man of miracles,” Sathya Sai Baba, have been called final incarnations of God for this last cosmic age, ful¬ filling the millennial prophecies of Hindus, Christians, and all the world’s religions.

The Golden Age and the Kali Yuga in Classical Hindu Mythology Classical Hindu mythology presents a vast and complex model of time, which is developed in its most elaborate form in the texts called the Puranas (composed beginning in roughly the fourth through fifth centuries c.e.). According to Puranic cosmology, the world goes through a cycle of four yugas, or cosmic ages: first, there is the krita or satya yuga, a golden age of perfection and harmony (lasting 1,728,000 human years), which is then followed by the tretayuga (1,296,000 years), the dvapara yuga (864,000 years), and finally, the kali yuga (432,000 years), which is our present age of darkness, violence, and turmoil. As in classical Greek mythology, the world declines from a perfect state toward an increasingly more degenerate state in which religion and social duty (dharma) are forgotten, human lives are short, and war is rampant, before the world is regenerated once again and returns to the perfect state. The image used to depict this cycle is a cow that first stands on four legs, then on three, then on two, and finally just on one in the kali yuga. The total period of four yugas is called a manvantara, that is, a lifetime of the Noah-like figure Manu. After one thousand manvantaras, the entire universe is destroyed by either a cataclysmic fire or a flood and then enters a period of night for another one thousand manvantaras. The total cycle, called a kalpa, comprises 8,469 million years, after which the whole process begins all over again and repeats without end for all eternity. It has no pur¬ pose other than the gods’ own pleasure and play (lila) (Flood 1996,112-13). Throughout the cycle of yugas, the god Vishnu periodically intervenes in the form of his physical incarnations or “descents” (avatars) into the physical world. As the preserver and upholder of dharma in the Hindu pantheon, Vishnu periodically descends to restore the cosmic order and combat evil whenever the dharma begins to decline. Often these avatars are numbered at ten, the most famous being his human incarnations as the playful child-god Krishna and the virtuous hero Rama. The last of Vishnu s incarnations appears at the end of the kali yuga in the form of Kalkin. According to the Bhagavata Purana, Kalkin will appear riding a swift white horse, destroying all the barbarians and heretics who overrun the Earth and thus restoring the dharma for a new golden age (O’Flaherty 1976,38).

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More than one author has observed the striking parallels between the mythic figure of Kalkin and the figure of Christ returning on his white horse in the New Testament book of Revelation. As Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty points out, there could well have been historical links between the two narratives: His resemblance to the “rider on the white horse,” whose cloak is soaked in blood and who is sent to put the pagans to the sword, is striking; and there is almost certainly a historical connection between the two images. Moreover the concept of a Golden Age following the deluge appears together with the image of the horseman in the Book of Revelation, where, after the rider on a white horse has appeared, an angel binds the Devil, Satan, for a thousand years in a bottomless pit; later Satan is cast into hell forever and the world is created again, this time without death or sorrow [Rev. 19-21]. (O’Flaherty 1976, 38-39)

Regardless of the possible historical links, however, there are clear structural paral¬ lels between the Puranic vision of cosmic destruction and renewal and the Christian ideal of the Millennium. Moreover, the Puranic narrative similarly gave birth to a series of religious movements centered on new divine incarnations who were believed to have descended to Earth specifically for the last era before the cataclysm.

Avatars For the Kali Yuga: Chaitanya AND RAMAKRISHNA While the mythic figure of Kalkin himself has rarely been the center of a major reli¬ gious movement or sect of Hinduism,2 a number of historical figures have claimed to be special avatars for this last, most degenerate age—the kali yuga.

Chaitanya One of the most famous and influential was the Bengali saint, Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534), who inspired a major revival of devotional spirituality (bhakti) in northeast India from the sixteenth century onward. Like tantra and other later forms of Hindu practice, bhakti is often described as the religious path best suited to the degenerate kali yuga: when human lives are short, when intellects are limited and wills are weak, a simple devotional path to God in a loving personal form is the most effective religious practice. Chaitanya became perhaps the most influential proponent of the devotional love of the playful god, Krishna, together with his divine consort, Radha. Indeed, Chaitanya came to be seen as the joint incar¬ nation of both Krishna and Radha together, who had decided to descend to Earth during the kali yuga to cleanse it of evil. So joined in love are Krishna and Radha

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that they could not bear to be separated and therefore appeared united in a single human body as Chaitanya. According to one Bengali text, the gods... came to Krsna and complained that the Kali Age on earth was an age of wickedness. So Krsna said to Radha, “Let us both become avataras—In this avatara we will be one even in body—you externally, me internally. Thus will I, in the most complete way possible, taste your love.” (Dimock 1989,146-47; see Dimock 1999,1.3.22-31)

The simple, direct form of devotional worship taught by Chaitanya is thus consid¬ ered the most effective means to liberate frail human beings in these declining years before the new golden age is born. We should note here that the devotional revival inspired by Chaitanya in the sixteenth century has had a long and lasting influence. It is the foundation, for example, of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, popu¬ larly known as “Hare Krishna”), which emerged as one of the most powerful and controversial new forms of Hinduism that spread to the West in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ramakrishna A second Bengali saint who came to be regarded as a special avatar for the kali yuga and the herald of a new era of spiritual unity was Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-86). A poor, simple priest of the Goddess Kali near the colo¬ nial metropolis of Calcutta, Ramakrishna, too, was seen by his disciples as a divine incarnation for this final cosmic cycle.3 The saint himself declared, “he who was Rama and he who was Krsna is now Ramakrsna,” implying that he was in fact the incarnation of both the Rama and Krishna avatars of god, joined together in one form (Kripal 1998, 219). According to Swami Vivekananda—his most famous disciple and arguably the most important figure in the spread of Hinduism to the West—Ramakrishna’s appearance marked not just the end of the kali yuga but the return of the age of perfection: “with his birth the golden age, the age of truth, had dawned once again” (Hacker 1995, 321). For Vivekananda, Ramakrishna and his teachings represented the synthesis of the teachings of all the great sages of Hinduism—indeed, even the culmination of all the world’s spiritual traditions: “The time was ripe, it was neces¬ sary that such a man should be born... Ramakrishna [is] the fulfillment of the Indian sages, the sage for the time, one whose teaching is just now...most benefi¬ cial (Vivekananda 1984,267—68). Indeed, today Ramakrishna is commonly praised as a special avatar of religious unity, whose teachings reconcile all the world’s spiri¬ tual paths for a new age of global harmony: The Hinduism which Ramakrishna exemplifies, in particular in the stylized and mythicizing presentation by his successors, appears as an open, yet in itself complete, framework of encounter and reconciliation with other traditions, as the timeless presence of the religious per se. (Halbfass 1988, 227-28)

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Syncretist Millenarian Movements in Colonial India: Birsa Munda and Indigenous Prophets of Rebellion Perhaps the closest thing we find to an actual millenarian movement in India appears during the British colonial era, and particularly with the many peasant insurgencies and uprisings among India’s tribal communities. As Stephen Fuchs showed in his 1908 study of Indian messianic groups, virtually every region of the subcontinent gave birth to some form of prophetic and/or revolutionary religious movement. Many of these, such as the uprising (hool) among the Santal community in the mid-nineteenth century, were tribal movements that incorporated both indigenous pre-Hindu and Hindu elements with frequent borrowings from Christian messianic themes (Fuchs 1965 [1908]; Guha 1994* 229-38; Adas 1979).

Birsa Munda Perhaps the most remarkable of the various anticolonial messianic movements was the tribal revolt led by Birsa Munda (or Birsa Bhagwan) of the Munda community in the state of Bihar. Combining indigenous Munda beliefs with elements of Hindu mythology and apocalyptic elements probably taken from the Christian missionar¬ ies, Birsa Munda led one of the most powerful peasant uprisings of the colonial period. Adapting traditional Hindu cosmology, Birsa looked back to a blissful past, the satjug (= satya yuga), when the Munda people were ruled by their own god, Niranjan, the creator of the universe, and lived in harmony on their own land. In modern times, by contrast, the Mundas were said to suffer in the dark age, the kaljug (= kali yuga), ruled by the demon Queen Mandodari. In this dark age, the Munda land had been taken away by the landlords and bankers, the zamindars and mahajans, while the toiling Mundas were left to starve. As Ranajit Guha observes, this mythic account is clearly also a real description of the Mundas’ life under British colonial rule; “The contrast between life under divine rule and subjection under the Raj presided over by Queen Victoria could not be more clearly stated” (Guha 1994,294; see Adas 1979,19). Yet Birsa also prophesied the imminent end of the kaljug, which would be destroyed in cataclysmic violence. “O men beware!” he warned. This world will not end like this... it will end in great misery. I will turn deep waters into outlets. I will crush the hills.” The enemies of the Mundas, he predicted, would be destroyed in violent conflict, and all “Romans, Germans, British, Rajas and Zamindars, Satans and devils” would be driven from the land (Guha 1994, 295). The Mundas land itself was to regain its former purity after it had been washed clean with the sacrificial blood of a “white goat”—that is, the blood of white men. The Mundas would then, Birsa claimed, march to Delhi, occupy the throne, and so rule in the land as a new satjug dawned: “there will be no war in the land. All will be done in accordance with

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religion. Just as our ancestors ruled according to their religion, so shall we reign” (Guha 1994,296). Birsa’s millenarian vision was also ritually enacted as the Mundas prepared for their violent confrontation with their enemies. At an assembly on Dombari Hill in February 1898, Birsa and his followers combined the traditional Hindu celebration of Holi with a kind of ritual celebration of the end of British rule. In the traditional Holi festival, an effigy of the she-demon Holika is burned to signal the end of the old year and the birth of the new year. In this case, however, the Mundas substituted an effigy of Queen Victoria, which was then ritually burned to signal the end of British domination and the dawn of a new golden age: To perform the last rites of the enemies an artificial grove was improvised on Dombari hill. And they cut a banyan tree in the name of the Queen and observed the Holi festival. They placed the earthen lamps all over the tree and pitched a red and white flag near it. Then they danced the karma dance of Kaljug.... [Birsa] danced on the dancing ground to the accompaniment of drum beats and declared that the Empire of the British Queen had come to an end. They proclaimed that in the name of the Queen they would shoot arrows at her effigy. They set the plantain tree on fire and cut it down and did away with it in her name. (Guha 1994, 296)

Despite his bold millenarian predictions, Birsa’s movement ended in tragic defeat. Realizing the growing seriousness of the Munda revolt, the British mobilized troops to Dombari Hill in January 1900. During the clash, Birsa abandoned his followers and fled into the forest; he was arrested just a month later and died while awaiting trial on 9 June 1900. However, he remains to this day both a powerful symbol of tribal resistance against social injustice and a remarkable example of the complex blending of indigenous tradition with the millenarian hope for a new world (Guha 1994; Adas 1979).

“An Avatar that Cannot be Slain”: Millenarian Themes in the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement One other powerful anti-British movement that emerged in the waning decades of colonial rule was the wave of revolutionary nationalism that arose in Bengal in the early twentieth century. While Mahatma Gandhi and others adopted a non¬ violent form of anticolonial resistance, others like the young Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) believed that more extreme measures were needed to win India’s free¬ dom; they also adopted far more aggressive forms of Hindu myth and imagery, looking forward to the violent transition from British rule to a “new age” of independence.

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Aurobindo Ghose Although Aurobindo Ghose is today best known as a spiritual teacher and philoso¬ pher, he was also, in his youth, one of the primary leaders of the revolutionary nationalist movement. Born in India but educated in England, Aurobindo returned to his homeland in 1893 to work for the State Service in Baroda. With the Partition of Bengal in 1905, however, Aurobindo decided to leap headlong into the political maelstrom. The ideal that Aurobindo came to adopt was that of swaraj, or com¬ plete autonomy for India, which could only be achieved by a radical overthrow of British power and a liberation of the oppressed Indian populace (Guha 1978, 20; Heehs 1992; Heehs 1993). As Aurobindo put it, Indian nationalism is not a mere political ideal; rather, “nationalism is a religion that has come from God,” even a new kind of divine incarnation (avatar), and a manifestation of the divine power of the Great Goddess (shakti), which has come into this world and cannot be defeated by any mortal army. “Nationalism is an avatar that cannot be slain. Nationalism is a divinely appointed shakti of the Eternal and must do its Godgiven work before it returns to the bosom of Universal Energy from which it came” (Aurobindo, in Iyengar 1950, 211). The primary medium for Bengal’s early revolutionary activities was a network of secret societies and underground movements. The two most prominent of these secret groups were the Anushilan Samiti—which was founded by Aurobindo and others in 1902—and a looser group later known as Jugantar (“A New Age”)—which credited Aurobindo as its primary inspiration and its “boss” (Heehs 1993, 243). Jugantar was also the title of a revolutionary newspaper published by Aurobindo and his brother, which made explicit the radical nationalists’ hope for a new age. Calling the Bengali youth to give themselves in “sacrificial death” to the nationalist cause, the journal gave precise directions as to how one should start a secret terrorist organization and carry out terrorist activities. Throughout the pages of Jugantar and Aurobindo’s early writings, the primary symbol of the Indian nation was the terrible Goddess Kali—the dark mother of time and death, who appears with a loll¬ ing tongue, holding a severed head and a sacrificial sword in her hands, with a gar¬ land of severed heads and a waistband of severed arms. Kali is the image of Mother India in rage against her foreign oppressors, and the saying “sacrificing white goats to the Goddess” became the revolutionaries’ metaphor for throwing bombs at British officials (Urban 2003a, chapter 3). If Indians would rise up against their for¬ eign masters and worship the Goddess in this way, Jugantar declared, independence could be achieved and the new age would dawn: The Mother is thirsty and is pointing out to her sons the only thing that can quench that thirst. Nothing less than human blood and decapitated heads will satisfy her. Let her sons worship her with these offerings and let them not shrink even from sacrificing their lives to procure them. On the day on which the Mother is worshipped in every village, on that day the people of India will be inspired with a divine spirit and the crown of independence will fall into their hands. (Choudhuri 1979,46; see Urban 2003a, chapter 3)

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As Aurobindo put it, the people of India are like the epic warrior Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, on the verge of a holy struggle in which they “must not shrink from bloodshed” but be willing to give their own lives as sacrificial victims to the Goddess (Nandy 1983,92). Like Kurukshetra, the field of the great bloody “sac¬ rifice of battle,” the soil of contemporary India had become a “cremation ground” upon which Kali would soon unleash her terrible power. But it is also the cremation ground of the great cosmic sacrifice at the end of time, the conflagration of worlds that signals the end of the old yuga and the violent dawn of the new cosmic cycle (Choudhuri 1979,50). After a failed attempt to bomb a British official in 1908, Aurobindo was arrested and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. It was during his time in prison that he had a profound religious experience, which led him to abandon the violent arena of political struggle and turn instead to the spiritual life. He would eventually be revered as one of the great spiritual teachers of the twentieth century and, together with his partner, a French woman named Mira Richard (1878-1973) but simply known as “the Mother,” regarded as a new kind of avatar for the modern world. Indeed, Aurobindo was seen as the divine male principle (Purusha) and Mira the divine female principle (Shakti), who move through all of history, guiding the evo¬ lution of humankind toward its final goal of perfect spiritual realization (Heehs 1989,133; Urban 2003a, 101; Halbfass 1988, 248-50). Although he did not use the term himself, a powerful “millenarian” theme did emerge in Aurobindo’s later writings on yoga and philosophy. Indeed, one of the most remarkable and unique features of Aurobindo’s new system of “Integral Yoga” is that it looks forward to an evolutionary transformation not just of the individual yogi but of the entire universe and society, bringing about “an integral and total change of consciousness and nature...for all of humanity and the entire cosmos” (O’Connor 2005,634). This evolutionary transformation would involve not just an ascent of the individual to the divine, but also a descent and manifestation of a new divine consciousness in this world. As Aurobindo wrote in one of his later works, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth: As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness....Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of truth-consciousness. (1971a, 20-21)

Rather than the descent of some sort of messianic savior, however, Aurobindo looked forward to the perfection and transformation of the human individual, who would evolve from man to “superman” (Heehs 1989,113). And this upward evolu¬ tion through Integral Yoga would in turn transform the world, manifesting “spiri¬ tual divine light and power and joy” within material nature itself. As Aurobindo

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explained in The Life Divine, many such supermen acting together would give rise to “a new common life superior to the present individual and common existence,” by “carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status” and so transforming nature and society alike (1971b, 1067-69). Today, the center of Aurobindo’s movement lies in Auroville, a community of both Western and Indian followers near Pondicherry, India, which is designed to put this ideal of a transformed humanity into a living practice. According to its charter document, written by the Mother in 1968, Auroville does indeed have a kind of millenarian vision: for it is “the place of unending education, of constant prog¬ ress, and a youth that never ages,” as well as “a living embodiment of an actual human unity” (Heehs, 1989,150-51). In sum, Aurobindo’s early revolutionary ideal of a coming new age led by the dark Mother Kali, raging violently against oppres¬ sion, was transformed into a peaceful ideal of a coming new age led by the human Mother Mira, bringing about a total spiritual and material rather than merely polit¬ ical transformation.

“New Man for the New Millennium”: Global Gurus and New Age Messiahs for a Transnational Era Finally, since the late twentieth century, a variety of new Hindu gurus have emerged, offering a kind of global message for a new age of universal spirituality and crosscultural encounter. Often combining traditional Hindu avatar imagery with the vision of a coming new age of global transformation, many of these contemporary gurus explicitly invoke millenarian rhetoric and themes.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh/Osho One of the most controversial and most interesting of these new global gurus is Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a.k.a. Osho (1931-90), who became infamous in the United States as the self-styled “sex guru” and “guru of the rich” (Urban 2005). Born in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, Rajneesh claimed to have had various ecstatic experi¬ ences from an early age, finally achieving full enlightenment at twenty-one. By the late 1960s, Rajneesh had gathered a large number of disciples at his ashram in Poona and then, in 1971, assumed the title “Bhagwan”—i.e., “Blessed One” or “God.” Ever a source of controversy and scandal, Rajneesh was notorious for his eclectic mix of Eastern and Western philosophies and his irreverent sense of humor (for example, calling Mahatma Gandhi a chauvinist pervert [Feuerstein 1991, 65]). His remarkably lucrative new movement also came into conflict with the Indian authorities, however, and he was forced to flee the country in 1981, trailed by some $5 million in debt.

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Announcing himself “the Messiah America has been waiting for” (Urban 2005, 172), Rajneesh and his followers arrived in the United States and eventually estab¬ lished a huge and extremely prosperous religious movement at a ranch in Oregon dubbed “Rajneeshpuram” (city of Rajneesh). In its four short years of existence, Rajneeshpuram was at once remarkably successful as a business enterprise— amassing some $120 million in revenues—and remarkably controversial as a reli¬ gious movement—accused of brainwashing, fraud, and a wide array of criminal activities, including arson, burglary, racketeering, and attempted murder. By 1986, after a long series of conflicts with the local community of Antelope, Oregon, and investigations by the state attorney general, Rajneeshpuram was dismantled, and Rajneesh was deported. Refused entry to virtually every country to which he applied, Rajneesh finally returned to his ashram in Poona in 1987 (Carter 1990, 225-37). Perhaps the most incredible part of the Rajneesh story, however, is that he would become even more popular and successful upon his return to India, where he renounced his title as Bhagwan and assumed the new name of “Osho.” Undergoing a kind of new age apotheosis, Osho began to spread a far more explic¬ itly universal religious message, now marketed to a global audience for a new mil¬ lennium of transnational spirituality. “My message is too new,” as he put it, “India is too old, ancient, traditional. I am rebellious_I belong to no nation. My mes¬ sage is universal” (Aveling 1996, 78). Since then, his Poona center has grown into a hugely successful, globalized organization, the Osho Commune International. Linked through its Global Connections Department, the commune runs an intri¬ cate network of centers worldwide, including Osho International in New York, which administers the rights to Osho’s works. Describing itself as the “Esalen of the East,” the Osho Multiversity in Poona teaches a dizzying array of spiritual tech¬ niques drawn from a smorgasbord of different traditions—astrology, Feldenkrais body work, crystal energy, acupuncture, neo-Zen, and other New Age activities (Urban 2005). All of this is part of Osho’s vision of the “new man for the new millennium,” in which traditional boundaries and divisions break down for a new age of global spirituality. “I want a meeting of East and West,” he declared, envisaging the perfect blending of Eastern meditative methods with Western science and psychotherapy (Osho 2000, 205). Indeed, his vision of the enlightened being for the future is none other than “Zorba the Buddha”—that is, the frilly integrated being who combines the sensuality and materialism of Zorba the Greek with the spirituality and tran¬ scendence of the Buddha (Osho 2000; see Urban 2005). With the birth of this ideal new person, wedding East and West, materialism and spirituality, we will also usher in a new era of harmony in which war, destruction, and violence have been overcome: We have come to that critical moment where this whole earth can become one—should become one—because it can only survive if it becomes one. The days of the nation are over, the days of divisions are over, the days of the politicians are over. We are moving in a tremendously new world, a new phase of humanity—and the phase is that there can be only one world now,

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only one single humanity. And then there will be a tremendous release of energies. The East has treasures, the religious technologies, and the West has treasures, the scientific technologies. And if they can meet, this very world can become a paradise. Now there is no need to ask for another world; we are capable of creating the paradise here on this earth, for the first time.... That’s what I am trying to do here. It is a meeting place of East and West; it is a womb where the new humanity can be conceived, can be born. (2000, 213) Osho describes this new age vision in explicitly millenarian terms. As he puts it in New Man for a New Millennium, we have the opportunity to remake the world our¬ selves, realizing heaven right here on Earth: “Once we have brought this new man into existence, earth can become a paradise: this very body the Buddha, this very earth the paradise” (2001, 219).

Sathya Sai Baba Finally, one of the most famous and internationally recognizable Hindu gurus today is Sathya Sai Baba (1926-2011), who is perhaps best known for his mass of curly black hair and his miraculous ability to produce a variety of small objects, sweets, jewelry, coins, and trinkets out of nothingness. Born Satyanarayana in the small village of Puttaparthi, he claimed to have a divine disclosure that revealed him to be the reincar¬ nation of another Indian holy man, Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1913), and he thus assumed the title of Sathya Sai Baba. Still later in 1963, he claimed a second divine disclosure that revealed him to be none other than an avatar of Lord Shiva (who, we should note, does not normally have avatars), who had appeared in Sathya Sai Baba’s body together with his divine consort, the Goddess Shakti (Palmer, 2005,101; Urban 2003b, 79). In the eyes of his many Indian disciples, Sai Baba is not merely an avatar but an incarnation specifically for this current age of turmoil and violence, sent to restore virtue to India. As Sai Baba describes his mission, his birth is the fulfillment of the prophecies of countless sages who have yearned for a new incarnation to save the world from its modern crisis: At the present time, strife and discord have robbed peace and unity from the family, the school, the community, the society... and the state. The arrival of the Lord is also anxiously awaited by saints and sages. Sadhus prayed and I have come. This Divine body has not come in vain. It will succeed in warding off the crisis that has come upon humanity. (Ruhela and Robinson 1976, 23, 29) Indeed, Sai Baba is often explicitly compared both to the Kalkin avatar (Kalhi Avathar) of the Puranas and to the Word of God in the Christian book of Revelation, heralding the dawn of a new millennium of peace and spiritual unity: This description of the descent of God [in the book of Revelation] is strikingly similar to that of the description appearing in the Puranas of Hinduism, heralding the coming of the Kalhi Avathar—the soldier with a sword, mounting a white horse, at the dawn of the Kali Era. Though the scriptures are from different

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religious backgrounds, the message, once again seems to be that, “God is One.” Is it just pure coincidence or the prediction of the future? Examining the evidence, one comes to the conclusion that the avathar who is spoken of in the scriptures is no other than Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba himself.... All prophecies of sacred scriptures and revelations of seers and enlightened souls point to Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai as divine incarnation of God in the Kali Yug. His teachings of truth, righteousness, peace, love, non-violence, and unity of all faiths reflect the mission of the previous avathars—Krishna, Rama, Buddha etc_ His discourses and knowledge of the most profound truths of the universe reveal his omniscience. Hence it is undeniable that Sai Baba is the veda purusha, agni purusha, the leelavathara, Shiva-Shakthi incarnate and Lord Kalhi, the deliverer of peace and righteousness at the dawn of the new millennium. (“Advent of the Sai Avatar” 2004)

Sai Baba, moreover, is a distinctly “modern” sort of guru, an avatar whose message is clearly aimed at a contemporary audience in an era of globalization and transna¬ tionalism. As Lawrence Babb describes him, Sai Baba is a kind of “jet lag holy man,” who fits in well with the new wealth and affluence of modern India, and his message powerfully resonates with “the religious yearnings of the cosmopolitan and wealthy” (Babb 1986,160). Sai Baba combines an attractive brand of Hindu nationalism and love of the motherland with a global vision of religious unity and a transnational following of devotees (Palmer 2005,106-7). Perhaps not surprisingly, Sai Baba has become at once hugely popular and intensely controversial. At the same time that he has become a favorite guru to many Western celebrities, such as Isaac Tigrett, the multimillionaire founder of the Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues empire, Sai Baba has also been accused of child molestation and voted one of the top five “scum bag gurus” by a recent website (Urban 2003b, 73-74). Sai Baba, it would seem, is truly a guru for the new millennium—an avatar for our age.

Conclusion In sum, while the Hindu traditions do not contain anything corresponding pre¬ cisely to millenarianism in the Western sense, they do have a number of mythologi¬ cal and structural parallels that have given rise to a series of influential religious movements over the last five hundred years. During the colonial era, with the influ¬ ence of Christian missionaries on the subcontinent, more explicit millenarian themes began to meld with both traditional Hindu and indigenous movements—at times in violent and catastrophic ways. And finally, in a new era of transnational exchange, elements of traditional Hindu avatar theory and millenarian Christianity have blended completely in neo-Hindu gurus like Osho and Sathya Sai Baba, offer¬ ing a new message of religious synthesis for a global audience of spiritual consumers. As Hindu traditions become increasingly dispersed throughout the globe by

MILLENARIAN ELEMENTS IN THE HINDU TRADITIONS

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ever-growing populations of diasporic Indians, we can only expect that a variety of new millenarian movements and avatars for a new age will emerge.

NOTES !• The term Hinduism” is a problematic one and largely a modern construction. Hindu is a Persian adaptation of the Sanskrit sindhu, referring to the region of the Indus River Valley. In the late eighteenth century, British authors began using “Hindu” to refer to the religions of the non-Muslim peoples of India. The first author to use the general term “Hinduism” was probably the Bengali reformer Rammohun Roy, in 1816. While some scholars argue that “Hinduism” is so problematic and ambiguous that it should be rejected altogether, most agree that we are stuck with the term now and that there are also enough family resemblances among all the various Hindu traditions as to be usefully grouped together under one category (see King 1999, 98; Urban 2003a, 2940). 2. A recent exception is a figure calling himself Kalki Bhagavan, the spiritual leader of the Golden Age Foundation near Chennai. Born Vijay Kumar in Tamil Nadu in 1949, Kalki Bhagavan believes we are in the midst of the transformation to a Golden Age, which will be completed by 2012 and will bring about the full enlightenment of all humanity. Although it is claimed that he has millions of followers, there is little information on Kalki Bhagavan apart from Internet sources (Global Oneness Commitment [2007]). A second exception is the famous Sathya Sai Baba, discussed below, who is frequently referred to as the “Kalhi [i.e., Kalki] avatar.” 3. I should note that the goddess Kali (spelled with a long a and i in Sanskrit) is not directly related to the fourth yuga, the age of kali (short a and i). Her name derives from kola, which means both “black” and “time.”

REFERENCES Adas, Michael. 1979. Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Aveling, Harry. 1996. The Laughing Swamis. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Babb, Lawrence. 1986. Redemptive Encounters: Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carter, Lewis. 1990. Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram: The Role of Shared Values in the Creation of a Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Choudhuri, Keshub. 1979. The Mother and Passionate Politics. Calcutta: Vidyodaya Library. Dimock, Edward C. 1989. The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in Bengal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. -, trans. 1999. Caitanya Caritamrta ofKrsnadasa Kaviraja. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Feuerstein, Georg. 1991. Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of CrazyWise Adepts, Holy Fools, and Rascal Gurus. New York: Paragon House.

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Flood, Gavin. 1996. An Introduction to Hinduism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fuchs, Stephen. 1965 [1908 ]. Rebellious Prophets: A Study of Messianic Movements in Indian Religions. New York: Asia Publishing. Ghose, Aurobindo. 1971a. The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. -. 1971b. The Life Divine II. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Global Oneness Commitment. [2007.] www.experiencefestival.com/. Accessed 12 March. Guha, Arun Chandra. 1978. Aurobindo and Jugantar. Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad. Guha, Ranajit. 1994. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hacker, Paul. 1995. “Vivekananda’s Religious Nationalism.” In Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta, edited by Wilhelm Halbfass, 319—33. Albany: State University of New York Press. Halbfass, Wilhem. 1988. India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. Albany: State University of New York Press. Heehs, Peter. 1989. Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography. Delhi: Oxford University Press. -. 1992. “Aurobindo Ghose and Revolutionary Terrorism.” South Asia 15, no. 2: 47-69. -. 1993. The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India, 1900-1910. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Iyengar, K. R. Srinivasa. 1950. Sri Aurobindo. Calcutta: Arya Publishing. King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and the Mystic East. New York: Routledge. Kripal, Jeffrey J. 1998. KdTTs Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nandy, Ashish. 1983. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press. O Connor, June. 2005. “Aurobindo Ghose.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Lindsay Jones. 2d ed. Vol. 2, 633-34. New York: Macmillan. O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. 1976. The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Osho. 2000. Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic. New York: St. Martin’s. . 2001. New Man for the New Millennium. New York: Penguin. Palmer, Norris W. 2005. “Baba’s World: A Global Guru and His Movement.” In Gurus in America, edited by Thomas A. Forsthoefel and Cynthia Ann Humes, 97—122. New York: State University of New York Press. Ruhela, Satya Pal, and Duane Robinson. 1976. Sai Baba and His Message: A Challenge to Behavioral Sciences. Delhi: Vikas. Advent of the Sai Avatar.” 2004. Sri Sathya Sai Baba Avatar, saibaba.ws/avatar/ adventsaiavatar.htm. Accessed 5 April 2011. Urban, Hugh B. 2003a. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. -. 2003b. “Avatar for our Age: Sathya Sai Baba and the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism.” Religion 33: 73-93. -. 2005. “Osho, from Sex Guru to Guru of the Rich: The Spiritual Logic of Late Capitalism.” In Gurus in America, edited by Thomas A. Forsthoefel and Cynthia Ann Humes, 169-92. New York: State University of New York Press. Vivekananda, Swami. 1984. The Complete Works ofSwami Vivekananda. Vol. 3. Calcutta: Advaita Ashram.

Millennialism in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific

CHAPTER 20

MILLENNIAL AND APOCALYPTIC MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA ROSALIND I. J. HACKETT

While

several apocalyptic-style movements in the African context—such as the

Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God or the Lord’s Resistance Army, or for that matter, Mungiki or Maitatsine, not least because of their dramatic rituals and mass killings—may be known to wider publics, a fuller picture of the history and present-day status of millennialism in Africa is lacking. This essay seeks to provide a comprehensive, although not exhaustive, analytical overview of Africa’s rich tapestry of millennial movements, prophets, beliefs, and practices.1 It will attempt to draw together scholarship on both the older and the newer, the known and the less-well-known manifestations of the millennial and apocalyptic imaginary, supplementing this with analysis of recent “doomsday” groups that have garnered media attention.2 In conclusion, the distinctive features of this particular breed of African religious movement—with its emphasis on an imminent new age of salvation and radical social transformation, as well as the commonalities with like-minded movements in other geographical locations, will be discussed, along with suggestions for future areas of research.3 It hardly needs stating that such an exercise represents a daunting task, even for the present author who has conducted research on Africa’s extensive new religious movements scene for more than three decades (see, e.g., Hackett 1987,1989,1999, 2004). The African continent is extremely diverse, with fifty-five nations, more than two thousand ethnic groups, and a host of indigenous and exogenous forms of reli¬ gious expression. Religious ideas and practices are frequently imbricated with other forms of social and cultural expression, especially politics (on the latter, see Ellis and

386

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

ter Haar 2004). Christianity and Islam now dominate the religious public spheres, and both have undergone several transformations due to diversification, enculturation, and revitalization. It is the millennial dimension of these religious trends, as well as their indigenous forebears, that concern us here. While the various move¬ ments and prophetic figures may be intrinsically interesting, it is impossible to comprehend their provenance and social impact without reference to the prevailing socioeconomic conditions. These range from migration, sickness, famine, land appropriation, social discrimination, political subjugation, and economic margin¬ alization to local conflicts and world wars. Colonialism was the crucible for the early generation of movements; now we must look more to the forces of globaliza¬ tion in all their guises (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001). Because of the methodological challenges raised by the aforementioned goals and considerations, and the need to frame the material in conducive ways, it seems more productive to focus on religious traditions, rather than regions or specific movements. The majority of movements tend to cluster around the prophetic ideas associated with Christianity, Islam, or their indigenous, ancestral traditions. Creative, syncretic intersections will, however, be explored. In order to address the historical roots of both the older and new religious formations, a two-phase struc¬ ture—colonial and postcolonial—will be utilized, with some preservation of chron¬ ological development. The continuities notwithstanding, colonization and the postindependence period represent paradigmatic moments in Africa’s history. Moreover, such a structure will help us situate and trace more effectively instances of millennial and apocalyptic activity in Africa. The emphasis on activity is perhaps more apposite for this diverse region, with both explicitly millennial groups—that is, collectivities that draw on millennial and apocalyptic ideas as a primary element of their identity—as well as more implicit ideas, discourse, and imagery that become embedded in popular culture, all under discussion here.4 The question of terminological correctness in relation to African millennial movements that “dream of an imminent transition to a new era, a condition of col¬ lective salvation” (Wessinger 2000, 4) is complicated by a preponderance of messi¬ anic figures. Harold W. Turner, one of the earliest and most influential scholars of new religious movements in Africa, was critical of the imprecise use of terminology regarding messianic and millennial groups, and he dismissed the too easy confla¬ tion of the two types of movements (Turner 1979, 52-54). He maintained that mil¬ lennial groups constituted only a very small segment of the spectrum of new religious movements in Africa more generally. Hopes of a “grandiose millennial future,” he suggested, were more common at the outset of a movement and, if they persisted, were more likely in a minor key. ”5 Bennetta Jules-Rosette notes, by con¬ trast, that millennial and messianic strains may coexist in a movement (1979,19), while Yvan Droz (2001), in his study of millenarianism among the Kikuyu, sees no difference between millennial and messianic movements, except for emphasis on the person of the son of God and his reign in the latter. Turner was in part correct about the proportionality of millennial movements in Africa’s overall religious landscape, but he could not have anticipated how millennial hopes and apocalyptic

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA

387

transformation might find new life in Africa’s fast-changing religious public spheres. As a final methodological note: the turn to violence by a minority of this type of religious movement demands explanatory attention, as has been ably demon¬ strated by other scholars in the field (Wessinger 2000; Walliss 2004). The African context provides not just abundant data in this regard, but also a prominent com¬ munitarian angle that would appear to support interpretations more predicated on catharsis and revitalization (Wallace 1956), than psycho-pathological aberrance (Cohn 1970/1957). In fact, for those interested in divergent interpretations of the manifestations and consequences of millennialism, some of the African cases detailed below will provide more than enough stimulation.

Colonial Period Studies of religion in Africa usually begin with local forms of indigenous belief and practice, often referred to as “traditional,” “indigenous,” or “ancestral” religions. We shall respect this convention even though many of the traditionalist movements described below drew explicitly or implicitly on Christian millennial ideas to vary¬ ing degrees. Since these popular movements often constituted forms of political resistance to colonial rule, they have been termed “nativist” or “neotraditionalist” (Lanternari 1963; Adas 1979; Wilson 1973; chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld, this vol¬ ume). Protomillennial notions within indigenous religions may also have shaped Christian evangelization in certain African regions (see Droz 2001, 101; van Binsbergen 1981,152-53), and vice versa (Ranger 1975), in the early twentieth cen¬ tury. Lamin Sanneh (2002,250) contends that vernacular translations of the Bible— appearing from the mid-nineteenth century onward—made chronicles of prophets, wars, apocalyptic narratives, and messianic messages available to Africans. These resonated, in turn, with indigenous ideas and practices, such as divination, that allowed Africans to scrutinize the Bible in search of “omens of reassurance.”

(Neo)Traditionalist Movements Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement Of the African religious movements that prophesied the return of the ancestors and a new, more plentiful existence for the people, none rates more highly in terms of dramatic response and tragic outcome than the Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-57 (Peires 1989, ix; see also Wenzel 2009). In his detailed study of this southern African movement and the young girl, Nongqawuse, whose redemptive message purportedly lured tens of thousands of Xhosa to their deaths, historian J. B. Peires seeks to go beyond the lies, accusations, and conspiracy theories to uncover the root

388

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causes of this human catastrophe. Against a backdrop of military action by local prophets and brutal repression by colonial forces, Nongqawuse, the niece of a local leader and religious visionary/preacher, Mhlakaza, claimed that she was in contact with a “new people” from over the sea, who were the ancestors of the Xhosa (309-23). To facilitate their return, they instructed her to tell the people to kill their cattle and destroy their corn. They were also to cease witchcraft activity and plant¬ ing new crops. In preparation for the miraculous return of the ancestors, when all unbelievers would be destroyed in a storm and searing heat, the Xhosa were to build new houses and wear new ornaments. Despite the doubts and subterfuges, by the end of 1858 it was clear that the proph¬ ecies had failed, more than 40,000 Xhosa were dead, and the number of cattle slaugh¬ tered had topped 400,000. Many Xhosa were displaced and the majority of their lands were lost to the British. The Xhosa were left destitute and forced to join the colony as wage laborers. Peires concludes that this was not a national suicide but logical action in the face of desperation, or even murder, given the manipulative role of the then colonial governor, Sir George Grey (Peires 1989, x). He notes additional factors that contributed to the cattle-killing strategy: the lungsickness epidemic among cattle that began in 1855 and its religious interpretation, and the ritual sacrifice of cattle as a cor¬ rect form of communication with ancestors. To these signs, and the Xhosa belief in the continuation of life after death, was added the popularized Christian notion of the resurrection, together with news of the Russian defeat of the British in the Crimea. Nongqawuse s prophecies were not original in Peires’s estimation, and were not inher¬ ently anti-white, just reflective of a movement “driven by positive expectations.”6 South African religion scholar and traditional religious activist Nokuzola Mndende (2005) disputes the prevailing interpretations of the movement by arguing that the account of events was invented or at least manipulated by the colonial powers to destroy African identity and buttress Western superiority. She examines the cultural contradictions in the story, as well as possible exaggerations of the outcome.

Mgijimas Israelites A much smaller South African millennial movement, but one that has also gone down in the annals because of its tragic ending, is Enoch Mgijimas Israelites. Born in 1858 into a prosperous Wesleyan Methodist family, Mgijima began seeing visions in 1907 (Steyn 2000,194; Edgar 1987). He claimed that he was instructed by an angel to lead people to the Old Testament worship of God so that they would be saved when the world ended. Mgijima interpreted Halley’s comet in 1910 as a vindication of his prophetic preaching. He came under the influence of an African American, William Crowdy, who taught that black people were descended from the lost tribes of Israel. After parting company with the Methodists in 1912, Mgijima began to pre¬ dict that the world would end before Christmas Day in 1912 and said his followers should not plant their crops. Impoverishment did not lead to disillusionment for the movement. Mgijimas visions became more apocalyptic in nature, and he predicted a war between blacks and whites. This led to his excommunication from the Church

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA

389

of God and the Saints of Christ. Mgijima and his followers now referred to them¬ selves as the Israelites” and observed the Sabbath and the annual Passover festival. In 1920, following a call by Mgijima to his followers, many began arriving at his home in Bulhoek in the Eastern Cape. This caused serious consternation to the authorities as an illegal camp began to develop and the group began to arm themselves. Despite numerous appeals to the Israelites to disperse, a large police force was deployed in May 1921 and a battle ensued. Nearly two hundred people lost their lives, many were injured, and Mgijima and his brother were sentenced to six years’ hard labor. The escalation in hostilities between the Israelites and the colonial government needs to be understood in light of the deteriorating conditions for black South Africans over the previous two decades. Droughts, cattle disease, increased taxes, and unfair land laws primed people for an Endtime message of dramatic change and a new social dispensation.7 Following the Bulhoek tragedy, the government appointed a commission to investigate the independent churches. There was little sympathy from the white church leaders, while others felt that a compromise could have been reached (Millard 1997). Robert R. Edgar and Hilary Sapire (1999) contend that the Bulhoek massacre “left an indelible imprint on official attitudes toward prophetic movements” and led to the harsh treatment of the Xhosa prophetess Nontetha, who began having doomsday dreams from the time of the 1918 world¬ wide flu epidemic onward.

Maji Maji However, the loss of life was far higher in German East Africa (now Tanzania) when the colonial authorities brutally suppressed an uprising known as the Maji Maji Rebellion from 1905 to 1907. In his account of this mass movement in southern Uzaramo, John Iliffe (1967) argues that it stemmed from peasant grievances over harsh labor associated with cotton production, later acquiring a religious dimen¬ sion through prophetic leadership. The rebels claimed they were instructed to get rid of their livestock by Kolelo, the god of the Zaramo. They ceased paying taxes and were given maji, a type of water medicine, believed to protect them from the bullets of the Germans. More radical prophetic ideas began to circulate predicting that a great flood would engulf the whites and that a new god would come and transform the world. The German punitive expedition eventually moved in, burning several villages and killing around seventy-five thousand Africans. Viewed by the authori¬ ties as conspiracy and witchcraft, the Maji Maji Rebellion sought nonetheless to eradicate the practice of sorcery. Iliffe holds that indigenous millennial beliefs were instrumental in the expansion of the insurgency, but it has also been noted that many of the Zaramo were Christian converts (Kimambo 1999).

Mumboism Punitive expeditions led by the British into the remote highlands of southwestern Kenya in the early twentieth century generated a series of millennial responses among the pastoral-agricultural Gusii. The pan-ethnic cult of Mumbo (local name for God)

390

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

or Mumboism became the object of a short, but excellent study by the sociologist Audrey Wipper (1970). She identifies the political reorganization and cultural dislo¬ cation attendant upon colonialism, in addition to missionary (some Adventist) activity, as contributory factors in the emergence of Mumboism around 1914-15. Rejecting Christianity as “rotten” and all Europeans as “enemies” and defying tradi¬ tional chiefs, the movement preached cataclysmic transformation. Depending on the various stories, water would be turned into blood and only Mumboites would have drinking water, all white people would disappear leaving only Africans as sole survi¬ vors, or the Germans would come and cut off the arms of those in clothes (i.e., Europeans and Westernized Africans) (Wipper 1970,397). There were reports of peo¬ ple buying lamps in preparation for the end of the world that would be dark. The projected utopia would be a time of role reversal, healing, and plenty that could only be effected by traditional sacrifices and rituals. Different instantiations of the move¬ ment occurred over the next few years, particular during times of calamity and eco¬ nomic depression. It was eventually proscribed during the Mau-Mau emergency in 1954. Wipper comments on how demeaning language employed by the colonists and missionaries (and by some academics) to describe the movement served to obfuscate its adaptive capacity and the genuine grievances of the Gusii.

Kathambi Traditional spirit-possession movements and local seers also served as vehicles of prophetic messages in central Kenya, during this same period of early colonial rule (Ambler 1995). One movement in particular, Kathambi, attracted large numbers of people to its ritual dances from 1910 to 1922. Spirits would possess the dancers and transmit messages with millennial overtones. Songs would prophesy God’s coming to Earth to purify humanity or recount dreams of liberation from oppression. Two Kathambi leaders even preached of the imminence of the Millennium and ordered people to abandon their crops and remain in their homes. The resulting disruption of the colonial order was met with rapid repression by the authorities. In 1922 a man named Ndonye wa Kauti, claiming to be a prophet and traditional specialist, began attracting people from far and wide, all afflicted by hunger, sickness, poverty, and the travails of colonial domination. He delivered a radical message, which he had received in a dream from God, about healing and restitution. He instructed his fol¬ lowers to destroy the sacred groves and reject traditional beliefs to bring in a new age in which the Earth would be restored and there would be freedom from state domination. Despite Ndonye’s call for cultural rejection, he is inscribed into what Charles Ambler terms a vital prophetic tradition of divinely inspired women and men addressing communities in crisis” in the region (1995,236).

Mau-Mau Interpretations vary widely as to the configuration of political and religious ele¬ ments in the later Mau-Mau movement among the Kikuyu of Kenya. Nor do all interpreters recognize that millennial notions of supernatural intervention played

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any role in the dynamics of this famed movement (Wilson 1973, 266-68). What is clear is that the oath-taking rituals and singing of Mau-Mau hymns helped mobi¬ lize the resistance fighters in Kenya during the 1950s, as they sought the restoration of Kikuyu land and the removal of British settlers. Yvan Droz (2001) demonstrates the association of the announcement of the great cycle of ritual purification with social and natural cataclysmic events. He also points to a number of factors that served to prepare the terrain for the Mau-Mau, namely the Kikuyu social ethos, early Christian missionary preaching that “time is short,” the growth of the East African Revival, together with the widespread belief that Kenya was going through a political purgatory before the arrival of a messiah-type president to conquer the forces of evil. So while Mau-Mau revolt could not merit an exclusively millennialist label, it did exhibit such characteristics in its quest for and promise of a better world.

Early Christian Messages of Social and Religious Reversal Antonians One of the earliest recorded independent church movements in Africa, the Antonians, grew out of the remarkable activities of a young Kongo woman, Kimpa Vita, known by her baptismal name, Dona Beatrice (Thornton 1998). Born around 1684, she claimed that she was possessed by St. Anthony and that Christ was born in the Kingdom of Kongo. Her mass movement was aimed primarily at ending a long civil war in the region and restoring the broken monarchy, while also constituting a protest against slavery. Revered as a saint, Dona Beatrice promised a new era of wealth: trees would turn to gold and silver, and her followers would discover European treasures and luxury goods hidden around the city, as well as mines of gold and silver beneath the city. Because she preached a form of anti-Catholicism, infused with Kongo ritual and symbolism, and an increasingly politicized message, the Kongo king, Pedro IV, had her burned at the stake as a heretic in 1706. Her nationalization and democratization of Christianity, according to Wyatt MacGaffey, “threatened all the existing hierarchies” (1986, 210). He underscores the continuity between the Antonians and the later, modern Kongo prophets such as Simon Kimbangu (see below).

Arathi Movement Similar articulations marked the growth of the Arathi Movement in central Kenya in the 1920s (Githieya 1999). Whether viewed as independent church, spirit movement, or autochthonous revival, the Church of the Holy Spirit (Watu wa Mungu or “People of God” in Swahili) had a strong eschatological dimension. One of its founding prophets, Joseph Ng’ang’a, was told in a vision to go and preach about God’s inten¬ tion to destroy Europeans, who had colonized the Kikuyu and expropriated their land. This was to be followed by a new golden age of Kikuyu cultural revival. The Arathi found affinity with the Hebrew Bible, in particular the concept of a chosen

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people and the experience of exile. But they also drew on traditional and Christian ideas and practices.8 They were known for their style of possession, which involved trembling and animal-like cries (Hoehler-Fatton 1996,76). Arathi prophets disputed the actual date of the expected social reversal: some believed that there would be a major earthquake in which Europeans would perish (Githieya 1999, 239). Others believed that the world would end in 1931. Failed expectations and the death of Ng’ang’a led some to combine their millennial vision with political action.

The Watchtower Movement and Indigenous Millennialism By the time of the First World War, millennial ideas were beginning to circulate on a much larger scale in Africa, notably Central Africa. They stemmed, in part, from the adventist teachings of Joseph Booth in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) in the late 1890s (Shepperson and Price 1958). This English fundamentalist Baptist mis¬ sionary, who shuttled between Australia, New Zealand, Nyasaland, South Africa, Britain, and the United States, introduced many Central Africans to the millennial doctrines of Charles Taze Russell (1852—1916) from Alleghany, Pennsylvania, which formed the basis of the present-day Jehovah’s Witnesses (Shepperson 1970,148; see also chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). One such teaching, concerning the “time of trouble” from 1874 to 1915, resonated with several Africans as it corre¬ sponded with the arrival of the first effective Christian mission in the region, the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia, as well as growing dissatisfaction with European rule. In fact, it was lapsed members of this mission who formed the core group of converts and preachers.9 Their leader was a young Tonga man, Elliott or Kenan Kamwana, who, after meeting with the deported Booth in South Africa in 19°7> began preaching to vast crowds back in his homeland that the new age was at hand when Africans would supplant Europeans and taxes would be abolished. Fie, too, was deported by the authorities after the end of the First World War. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (WTBTS, known as Jehovah’s Witnesses from 1931) went on to spawn many indigenous millennial movements, following the abortive expectations of 1914 and the dispersal of many adherents into neighboring territories (Shepperson 1970,150). In the Rhodesias, the Watchtower movement was known as Chitawala and in Congo and Portuguese territories as “Kitawala.” Several of these offshoots were associated with resistance to British colo¬ nial rule (Cross 1978, 304-5), although the real militancy fell to more politicized groups (Fields 1985, 9). Shepperson deems their premillennial character to be a “commentary on the state of race relations” in the region (1970,146). It was not until the 1950s that the WTBTS managed to establish control over the “heterodox” move¬ ments that had appropriated its name, Watch Tower or Watchtower (Cross 1978, 305; Assimeng 1986,74-77). Yet, it, too, was subjected to state restrictions in that preand postindependence phase. Sholto Cross attributes the grassroots, populist appeal of these Watchtower movements to their social ethic, their communal solidarity, and an ideology that could interpret the upheavals of the outside world with a promise of ultimate salvation (1978,307).

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John Chilembwe’s Movement In his study of religious change in the Central African country of Zambia, Wim van Binsbergen (1981) examines the socioeconomic and political tensions in the region that generated religious innovation.10 The prophetic movements that he terms eschatological are the ones that concern us here. Inspired by the 1915 revolutionary movement of John Chilembwe, a Booth-influenced Baptist from Nyasaland (Shepperson and Price 1958),11 their leaders began to penetrate central Western Zambia in the 1920s and 1930s, preaching the need for a “total cleansing and radical transformation of the community, as a prerequisite for the new society which was allegedly imminent” (van Binsbergen 1981,152). Their main ritual activities consisted of dipping (ritual immersion of whole body), witch-finding and -removal, and hymn-singing. Many claimed to be repre¬ sentatives of Watchtower, while others operated more independently. Some claimed that they had visited heaven and had been sent back to Earth to prepare for the imminent changes. They also called for taboos on certain crops and domestic ani¬ mals. Van Binsbergen argues that this movement served to intensify preexisting eschatological notions of a “radically new, final society,” giving them a new ritual expression and preparing the ground for the preachers and dippers of the 1930s. The colonial authorities were initially alarmed by the “political overtones” of the move¬ ment, but eventually allowed the various groups to subside (153-54). It is notewor¬ thy that the greatest and most successful of the Zambian prophets discussed by van Binsbergen, Mupumani, refrained from voicing any colonial protest in his preach¬ ing. But because of the prophet’s extensive travels and his popularity he was eventu¬ ally imprisoned on a charge of vagrancy and false pretensions. Many nonrural Watchtower religious movements in Central Africa, according to van Binsbergen, started out with anticolonial stances, but, because of the percep¬ tions and needs of rural populations, refocused their ritual activities on witch¬ cleansing and the eradication of sorcery (284-85). This common focus or “instant millennium” of these movements (to use Roy G. Willis’s designation [1970]) repre¬ sents religious innovation, in van Binsbergen’s view, rather than straight continuity with tradition.

Mwana Lesa Movement This interpretation tallies with Terence Ranger’s fine analysis (1975) of another witch-finding and witch-killing movement, the notorious Mwana Lesa Movement of 1925 in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia). He dismisses alternative readings that viewed the movement as anti-white, nationalist, and nativist. In contrast, Ranger considers that the movement centered on the Watchtower preacher, Tomo Nyirenda—who came to be known as Mwana Lesa, the Son of God—is more revealing of the interaction between Christianity and traditional (Lala) beliefs, in particular the differences between indigenous and Christian millenarianism. He argues that Nyirenda, who was born in Nyasaland and moved to work on the Copperbelt in Zambia advocated an “explicitly Christian millenarianism” (1975,

394

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

50) in that he preached the imminent coming of God and the promise of Christian brotherhood, rather than the “earthly millennium” (ibid.) offered by witchcraft eradication movements. He was also was very concerned about the future disci¬ pline and structure of the church, and firmly believed that African American mis¬ sionaries would come to revitalize and replenish their communities (cf. Fields 1985,165).12 While Watchtower teachings were clearly the main source of Nyirenda’s ideas, Ranger considers he would most likely have been influenced by the intense millen¬ nial fervor that swept Nyasaland until the end of World War I. He would also have experienced the revivalism within the Scottish mission church (United Free Church), as a pupil at their famous mission school, Livingstonia. Nyirenda was operating amidst the changing tensions and pressures of Lala society and was subject to politi¬ cal manipulation (Cross 1978,162,168). He was also subject to the expectations of the people whose own indigenous millennial beliefs about divine intervention fueled their desire for social order and an end to witchcraft, or what Ranger terms a witch-dominated spiritual economy” (1975, 60). Nonetheless, he remains a tragic figure, having angered the government by drowning nearly two hundred purported witches who failed to pass his test of baptism in both Nyasaland and then the Katanga province of the Belgian Congo (now Zaire). The Belgians pursued him back to Zambia, where the authorities tried and hanged him in 1926 (Lipschutz and Rasmussen 1986). In her landmark work, Karen E. Fields raises the issue of the rationality of Watchtower movements like that of Mwana Lesa (1985, 268-71). Recalling Eric Hobsbawm’s thesis that in some kinds of community the line between religion and politics cannot be clearly drawn, especially in the case of millennial movements, Fields argues that the Watchtower revival had the effect of “galvanizing politically effective groups

(1985, 268). Mass baptism, and its association with deliverance

from witchcraft, together with its capacity for appropriation by different players, constituted a threat to the colonial structure of indirect rule. Contrary to the view of some Western interpreters, Fields contends that African millenarians, even if they were “doomed in the long run, they were of their land and their historical time— and that, as rational actors, they lived in it” (1985,271). Ghanaian sociologist Max Assimeng, in his 1986 study of the missionary activi¬ ties and social impact of “heterodox movements” in West and Central Africa, notes the disproportionate popularity” of millennial and Adventist groups in the latter region (251). He claims that, by contrast, West Africa has been more receptive to thaumaturgically and expressively oriented groups, such as Pentecostals, while Central Africa has favored those groups predicated on the imminence of the Millennium, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists.13 He attributes the millennial bent of Central Africa to white settler influence and the lack of secular modes of protest against oppression and racism (Assimeng 1986, xiv). Although, as Brian Wilson notes, in some instances millennial beliefs and nativist sanctions may provide a “context of expectation” for more secular and political causes (1973,270).

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395

Kongo Prophetism L’Eglise de Jesus Christ sur la terre par Son Envoye Special Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK) A particularly fertile region in colonial times for the emergence of prophet movements with messianic and millennial characteristics was the region known as Lower Congo Province of the Belgian Congo or Lower Zaire. These have been well documented by Ephraim Andersson (1958) and Wyatt MacGaffey (1983). These movements are a particularly instructive example of the interdependence of religious and political ideologies. The foremost church in the region, then as now, L’Eglise de Jesus Christ sur la terre par Son Envoye Special Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK), declared millennial expectations in the period from 1959 to i960, but these later faded, being retained only in the name of the church (MacGaffey 1983, 75). During Simon Kimbangu’s imprisonment by authorities from 1921 to 1951 (he eventually died in jail in Elizabethville in 1951), a number of his followers continued to be arrested, and the Kimbanguist movement began assuming new forms.

Black Church

One of the more striking prophetic leaders in this Central African

region was Mpadi Simon-Pierre, who hailed from eastern Congo. Influenced by the Salvation Army (which had arrived in 1934), and believing like many that the army’s red flag, its military characteristics, and the S on the uniforms heralded the return of Simon Kimbangu “to renew the prophetic struggle,” he named his movement the Mission, later Eglise des Noirs en Afrique (ENAF) or Black Church (MacGaffey 1983,41-45). The teachings of the Black Church on sickness and healing were shaped by their millennial beliefs. They preached that God’s future kingdom on Earth would be devoid of sickness. The Black Church developed a program of herbal medicine, which they presented as an African version of Western medicine. This political overtone stemmed from the close association of ideas about the Millennium and pan-African independence, particularly the independence of Angola—from which most Mpadists originated. The Black Church formed part of a group of churches known as “Dibundu dia Mpeve a Nlongo” (DMN). Many of their leaders were considered to be subversive by the colonial authorities. One such prophet, Kinene Jean (1915-62), who, after working for some years in an American Baptist Mission and then traveling abroad for several months (he claimed he went to Mecca), realized his own prophetic call¬ ing, rather than heeding the unifying call of the EJCSK, and created a small church before he died. What is interesting about this particular group is the founder’s pre¬ dilection for telling stories and making predictions. He would recount to his follow¬ ers about troubles in Palestine and America, and of the coming of a messiah who was “between” Christ and Kimbangu, yet superior to them. Influenced by his travels and by Watchtower theology, he claimed that the messiah would sweep away the world’s institutions and install a new government. There would be a new currency and an oppressive military regime (which his later followers all denoted as Mobutu). His prophecy derived from a period of confinement by the colonial government in 1953. With independence in i960 he enthusiastically printed out copies of his revela¬ tion on which he identified eight ages. The latter he described as follows:

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CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

The time of recrimination has come... .Belief in the Lord of Heaven and his helpers is absent. People prefer witchcraft, killing others without good reason, quarrelling, adultery, theft, dirty books, misconduct of women in the presence of men, man with man, woman with woman, so that procreation ceases. For such people there is no heaven; for them dawns only the fire of hell. (MacGafifey 1983,46)

The fact that no one took his miracles and “vision of doom” seriously (as the church was winding down in the 1970s) constituted enough proof for his followers that they had already entered the age of unbelief.

The Lumpa Rising: Contesting the Zambian State

Around the time of inde¬

pendence in Zambia there arose one of Africa’s best-known independent churches. Like Watchtower, it was predominantly a rural movement. Known as the Lumpa Rising or Lumpa Church, it became renowned, not just because it was founded by a woman, the prophetess Alice Lenshina Mulenga Mubisha, but also because of its eventual rejection of secular authority and clashes with the new government (Roberts 1970; Hinfelaar 1991). Born around 1920 among the Bemba of northeastern Zambia, Lenshina began receiving visions in 1953. She was associated with a Presbyterian mission at the time but was not yet baptized. She claimed to have died several times and returned from the dead. According to one of her visions, Christ had ascended on a white cloud but would return at the Last Judgment on a black one (Shepperson 1970, 157). She began attracting many thousands of former Catholics and Presbyterians because of her healing rituals, simple evangelical liturgy, and popular hymns. After she began baptizing her followers, the movement assumed independent status in 1959 &nd became known as the Lumpa Church (lumpa means best or highest in Bemba). At its inception, there were no separatist aspirations. As with other Central African movements, such as the Bamucapi of the 1930s, she propagated a message of witchcraft eradication but did not call for a revival of traditional religious beliefs and practices (Bond 1979). In its earlier phase, the movement was nationalist and anticolonial (van Binsbergen 1981, 288—91; Bond 1979> 158—59)- But, inspired by chiliastic teachings, it moved toward the construction of new social and economic relations, along theo¬ cratic lines, as well as new (stockaded) villages in local, rural contexts. This put the community (about twenty thousand after many defections in the early 1960s) (van Binsbergen 1981,306) at odds with nationalist leaders, as well as local chiefs, and, in the face of attacks in 1963-64, it became increasingly intransigent and withdrawn from the state. Lenshina rejected the registration of her church and the payment of taxes (Garvey 1994). In the course of police and army attacks lasting three months, seven hundred church members were killed. The church was eventually banned and Lenshina was arrested. After being released in 1975, she was re-arrested two years later for conducting a church service. This put an end to the movement and she died under house arrest in December 1978. Just as many stories circulated about Lenshina’s powers and exploits, so too have interpretations differed among the various analysts over the nature of Lenshma’s role and the orientation of her movement. Brian Garvey (1994) notes

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that while the Lumpa Church was generally seen as an outgrowth from the Livingstonia Mission, the appeal of its founder was to all those Bemba who retained a fear of witchcraft, whatever their religious affiliation. Hugo Hinfelaar (1991) high¬ lights the way in which Lenshina restored women’s religious roles as intercessors, and the significance of the firm foundation of family life. Van Binsbergen (1981,312) views her as an innovator who opposed peasantization, while George C. Bond (1979, 159) puts her in the Christian reformist tradition in that she sought to restore fun¬ damental Christian (Free Church) values. He also underscores the appeal of Lenshina’s egalitarian and otherworldly message for such a subordinated social group as the Lumpa Church members, who were both the laboring poor of the towns, mines, and plantations of east, central, and southern Africa, as well as the least prosperous and educated of the peasantry when they returned home. Interestingly, Van Binsbergen (2001) notes the way the postcolonial Zambian gov¬ ernment has used the Lumpa Rising as a “reference point” to stress the “the dangers of religious sectarianism for national unity and stable government” in its harsh treatment of Watchtower movements in the postindependence phase.

Islamic Millennial Movements Messianic and millennial Islamic expectations have flourished for centuries in Africa, in both political and apolitical forms. Lamin Sanneh documents one of the earliest reports of millenarian ideas in West Africa—the great medieval traveler, Ibn Battuta’s 1353 account of a Shii settlement in the ancient kingdom of Mali seeking to keep the “flame of expectancy” alive in the tradition of hijra communities (2002, 238-40). Several other scholars of Islam have emphasized the agency of Muslim Sufi brother¬ hoods (tariqa) in resisting colonial rule in Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Willis 1967; Hiskett 1994). Muslim reformers in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century West African jihads, from Senegambia to Nigeria, exported their beliefs to Western Sudan about the ever-present hope for an otherworldly deliver¬ ance (Holt 1970; Al-Karsani 1993). Three examples—one from West Africa and two from East Africa—illustrate the trajectory and impact of such ideas.

The Satiru Rebellion The Satiru Rebellion of February-March 1906 is enshrined in the annals of anticolo¬ nial resistance in northern Nigeria. It provides a clear example of how millennial beliefs, in the form of Mahdist expectations about the appearance of a deliverer or expected Mahdi in the Endtime to ensure the triumph of Islam over infidel forces, played a catalytic role in fomenting rebellion, in this case with a tragic outcome (Adeleye 1972). Building on local eschatology and rising frustrations about the loss of sovereignty under British rule, a series of individuals, from 1902 onward, began preaching in the Sokoto Caliphate against the payment of taxes and the imminent end of colonial domination, and predicting mysterious forces that would exterminate the British. These incipient risings were suppressed by the British administration.

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

398

A complex set of circumstances ensured that Satiru, an emergent center of disaffec¬ tion, would prove to be the most dramatic of the anticolonial Mahdist revolts. In February 1904 a village chief proclaimed himself the Mahdi and named his son the Prophet Isa (Jesus Christ) according to Islamic tradition. He died in prison in 1904, leaving his son to assume leadership of the Mahdist movement. So the ris¬ ing of February 1906 was, in effect, the final phase. The appearance of a religious leader in the area in the previous month, a man who had instigated rebellion against the French in Zaberma and who taught that the bullets from European guns would turn to water, was a contributory factor. Instead of arresting peacefully the Prophet Isa—as they had done with his father, “the Mahdi”—the British moved in to sup¬ press the movement with undue force and mismanagement. They were roundly defeated, and a subsequent expedition was also routed, in part because many of the fighters in the army of a co-opted Islamic leader from the traditional aristocracy refused to oppose the “holy cause” of the rebels. Eventually, on 10 March 1906, the rebellion was brutally suppressed and Satiru razed to the ground. Beholden to their British overlords, the Sultan of Sokoto and his chiefs condemned the uprising as fanaticism and British Indirect Rule rediscovered its equilibrium.

The “Mecca Letter” Of interest is the role played by a subversive letter with millennial overtones that was circulated by a branch of the Qadiriya Brotherhood in East Africa at the outset of the twentieth century (Martin 1969). In 1908 reports began to come in from the German protectorate of Tanganyika that a letter from Mecca” was inciting antiEuropean preaching among the locals. This letter spoke of a dream by a certain Shaykh Ahmad in Mecca, who was told by the Prophet Muhammad that God was exasperated with the moral failures of his fellow Muslims and that the end of the world was at hand. Anyone who read the letter was supposed to pass it on or face the opposition of the Prophet at the Day of Judgment. The Germans traced the origins of the letter to Zanzibar, and a famous slave-trader and ivory merchant known as Rumazila and his family. His political and commercial interests had suffered under the German protectorate. Comparisons have been drawn with other anti-European manifestoes that emanated from Sudan some years earlier (Soares 2003). The Germans eventually moved to suppress the activities of the leaders, as it had only been a year since they had put down the Maji Maji revolt in the same region.

Mohamedan Movement A little-known Islamic millennial movement in western Kenya in the 1920s is the sub¬ ject of a revealing study by Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton (forthcoming). The Mohamedan Movement of 1926 in North Kavirondo, in the country of the Abaluyia, appeared to be an anomaly in the region because of its anticolonial content, appeal to women and nonurban context. Overlooked by historians with their prevailing model of urban Islamization, the movement demonstrates, in Hoehler-Fatton’s opinion, the appeal of

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millennial hopes in the rural hinterland—an area experiencing a sudden political and economic downturn. The prophecies declared that African Muslims would soon tri¬ umph over European Christians. But rather than interpreting these millennial dis¬ courses as a response to the upheavals of foreign rule, Hoehler-Fatton asserts that experience of colonialism was filtered through preexisting Islamic eschatological beliefs concerning the promised Mahdi, and then expressed through local and reli¬ gious idioms (such as using protective water, involvement of women).14 She also notes how millennial prophecies and rumors were associated in this case, as indeed in other parts of Africa, with the incursions of railway lines into local territories.

Postcolonial Period

Neotraditional Movements This period, from the 1960s onward, is characterized by modernization and political independence along with increased trade and travel and new forms of communica¬ tion. Of particular importance is the greater availability of literature and films on spiritual warfare, much of it coming from United States-based ministries of deliver¬ ance. Some would link the appeal of this type of religious message to the growing insecurities of urban living.

Mungiki Designating millennialist-style groups in the postcolonial phase as traditionalist or neotraditionalist is particularly challenging, given the pluralization of religious options, and more extensive encounters between religious ideas. One such example is the mysterious Mungiki group in present-day Kenya, which is said to have a mil¬ lennial component (Wamue 2011). They have gained local and international notori¬ ety because of their public acts of violence against women (notably in 2002-3) in seeking to return Kenya to indigenous African, specifically Kikuyu, traditions and values (Wamue 2001,2011).15 They have also been harassed by the Kenyan authori¬ ties. Kenyan scholar of religion Grace Wamue argues that to label it as an ideological reaction to modernity or as an apolitical movement of misguided youths is to miss its deeply religious origins and ethos, such as their ritual surrender of material objects and the apocalyptic dimension of its mythology. As inscribed on their flag, bloodshed must precede the attainment of peace.

Kiyang-yang Movement A rare example of a millennial group from Lusophone Africa is the Kiyang-yang movement founded by a Balanta woman prophet, Ntombikte, from Guinea-Bissau in 1984. Emerging from a subsistence existence, a series of personal afflictions, and

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a turbulent political context, Ntombikte claimed that she was elected by Nhaala, the Balanta God, to proclaim a new era without disease, conflict, barrenness, and child mortality (Jong and Reis 2010). It would be an age when the underdevelopment of the Balanta in comparison with other ethnic groups and the “white man” would come to an end. It could only be achieved by a radical break with traditional divina¬ tion and witchcraft. The communications from Nhaala are recorded in an invented written language, and sometimes expressed in a glossolalic language. Inger Callewaert (2000), who conducted research on the movements ritual songs, sug¬ gests that this idea of revealed writing and language may derive from Christian and Muslim influences. She also claims that the movement is ambivalent toward tradi¬ tional thought and practice in that it still affirms the importance of the Balanta ancestors and community.

Uganda: Spirit Armies and Political Resistance Holy Spirit Movement

It might be expected that Uganda’s tortured political

history would give rise to, and be fueled by, prophets of a new Millennium. The world has come to know of two such figures, Alice Auma (Lakwena) and Joseph Kony, both protagonists in the tragic drama of northern Uganda’s two-decade-old civil war. Alice Auma was an Acholi spirit-medium who, in 1986, began to organize a resistance movement known as the Holy Spirit Movement to wage war against the government of Yoweri Museveni, witches, and impure soldiers (Behrend 1998,107). She set out to cleanse Acholi society of violence and ethnic rivalries (the outcome of an earlier civil war) using traditional ritual practices and a Christian vision of moral renewal. She had converted to Catholicism in the mid-1980s. Through her possessing spirit, Lakwena (or “messenger” in Luo), she drew up a set of moral prohibitions, known as the Holy Spirit Safety Precautions. Thereby she was able to instill discipline among the many former soldiers in her army, as well as courage through the ritual anointing intended to make them bulletproof (Behrend 2000,59). Her goal was to create a new society predicated on Christian ideals of love and repentance, but her paradoxical teachings, in Heike Behrend’s view, effected a “re-magification” of society. Lakwena forbade inducements to fight, yet offered rewards; banned witchcraft, but reapplied its idiom in her struggle against the National Resistance Army; and promoted peace, yet conducted war. Her Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (between seven thousand and ten thousand individuals) famously marched on Kampala in 1987 before being defeated by government forces at Jinja (just over forty miles from the capital).

Lord s Resistance Army (LRA)

There was an interim period when Alice Auma’s

father, Severmo Lukoya, took over the reigns of the movement after she fled to Kenya (where she died in January 2007, in a refhgee camp, at age fifty-one). If Lakwena’s mission was to end a reign of terror for her people, her cousin (some say nephew), Joseph Kony, was intent on creating one. Biographical details on him are rare and confused, despite the fact that he has been on the scene as leader of successive movements (the Uganda People’s Democratic Christian Army, then the

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Lord’s Resistance Army [LRA]) from 1987 to the time of writing. He was reportedly a high school dropout and a Catholic. Despite the rivalry between Lakwena and Kony, he adopted many of her ritual and military tactics. However, his movement was not about transcending ethnicity but rather about restoring Acholi identity and resources (Behrend 2000,174). He also claimed to be possessed by a greater range of local and foreign spirits. Kony’s insurgency began to assume a different character from 1990 onward, becoming more international, more brutal, and, arguably, more apocalyptic (Behrend 1998,115-18; Behrend 2000,179-200). The LRA began to terrorize the local population with killings, abductions, and raids, accounts of which have featured in numerous reports the world over. One abductee reported that Kony had told her that the end of the world was imminent— heralded by the Gulf War—so too was the advent of the savior. He justified kidnap¬ ping children and youth so they could be rescued and live in an uncorrupted New World, grounded in the Ten Commandments (Behrend 2000,182-83). The war has been perpetuated by lack of political will and ineffective military strategies, and compounded by a series of failed peace talks (Allen and Vlassenroot 2010). As of 2009 the LRA had retreated to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it was involved in brutal attacks and was being hunted down by a coalition of regional forces.

Christianity Kimbanguist Church African Christian movements of the postindependence phase are less millennial in outlook than some of their earlier counterparts who lived in more repressive cir¬ cumstances. Yet research by Anne Melice (2001) in the 1990s on the Kimbanguist Church reveals a renewed millennial thrust in the church’s theological teachings as it seeks to situate the “dynasty” formed by Kimbangu and his descendants, as well as the Kongo people, and the black race as a whole, within biblical history. The ethnocentrism of this new millenarianism is reflected in the increased significance of Nkamba, the Kimbanguist holy city or “New Jerusalem.” The rituals intended to inaugurate the imminent Kongo kingdom are understandable, in Melice’s view, in light of the “anomie” of contemporary Congo. Lamin Sanneh recognizes the pro¬ found impact of the European encounter on the evolution of the millennial tradi¬ tion in Africa. He maintains that independent church movements, such as Zionism in South Africa and Aladura in West Africa, effected a shift to a more “moderate soteriology” from a more troubled view of the past and future (2002,260-61).

Brotherhood of the Cross and Star One could also highlight the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, with headquarters in Calabar, southeastern Nigeria, for its distinctive New Kingdom, New Age rhetoric and its theocratic aspirations. Talk of ascension toward a type of millennial fulfill¬ ment, beginning in 2001, was more characteristic of earlier writings by the (late)

402

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founder Olumba Olumba Obu (1918-2003?), but Elias Bongmba still wants to label the Brotherhood as postmillennial (2007,112-13). Obu’s role is articulated as usher¬ ing in a new reign of love. Obu Jr. continues with the same emphasis on “practical Christianity” but his leadership style is more “corporate charismatic” compared to his father’s traditional prophetic status.

Masowe Apostles The founder of the Zimbabwean church known as the Masowe Apostles, Johane Masowe (d. 1973), asked to be buried in a coffin with a glass top, “possibly because he would be able to see the Lord at the Second Coming in which he so firmly believed” (Dillon-Malone 1978, 41). In an account of one of his visions, where he was given the power of John the Baptist at his baptism, Masowe claimed he was told by Jesus “to go back to earth to drive away witches and to destroy all medicines (mishonga) because the world is about to come to an end. The different churches have failed to teach the laws that I have given them” (148).

House ofYahweh A group with more transnational millennial connections is the House ofYahweh in Kenya (BBC News 2006). Taking its lead from the founder of the sect, Yisrayl Hawkins in Abilene, Texas, the group bunkered down in central Kenya on 12 September 2006 in anticipation of the end of the world. Several hundreds of Hawkins’s followers in Kenya hid in basement bomb shelters and donned gas masks on that date. Deriving their predictions about nuclear cataclysms from their Book of Yahweh, the leaders were eventually arrested and later disappeared. Some blamed negative media coverage for the reaction of the authorities. It is interesting to note that the Kenyan group took the prophecy more seriously than its American coun¬ terpart, perhaps due to local fears and insecurities. Not long after, in neighboring Tanzania, the Seventh-day Adventist Church dissociated itself from a breakaway sect, which had persuaded its members to abandon jobs, farms and school in antici¬ pation of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (Ubwani, Jumbe, and Kagashe 2008). The group attracted media attention as they camped out at the international airport in Dar es Salaam, expecting to fly out to foreign countries to preach their message_ even though they possessed no passports or tickets.

The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God Africa was largely unaffected by turn of millennium anxieties. There was one major exception m southwestern Uganda (Robinson 2000). On 17 March 2000, more than five hundred followers of a Catholic-related, apocalyptic movement known as the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTCG) per¬ ished in a fire in their main church in Kanungu, 217 miles southwest of the capital, Kampala (Introvigne 2006; Mayer 2000).16 What looked initially like a mass suicide in* this remote region was soon designated as mass murder when graves were discovered

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of people who had died violent deaths. Some suicides were also reported. The death count (to date) stands at over one thousand, many of them women and children. A significant proportion was Rwandan refugees who had escaped the genocide. Various theories and rumors still abound as to the reasons for the tragedy (Businge 2007). One of the three main leaders died in the conflagration, and the whereabouts of the others are still unknown. The movement came into being in 1989, following apparitions of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and activity by the Legion of Mary. Such experiences were com¬ mon in this part of Uganda and neighboring Rwanda.17 Not all were endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church. The group moved in 1993 to Kanungu, registering in the same year as a religious nongovernmental organization. They named the site “Ishayuuriro rya Maria,” meaning “where Mary comes to the rescue of the spiritually stranded.” The movement attracted people (predominantly women and children) from various religions, classes, and professions and was the preserve of the illiterate as had been generally thought. The key figures of this very secretive movement were Paul Kashaku (1890-1991), who died before the events of March 2000; his daughter, Credonia Mwerinde (1952-2000?), a barmaid with a reputation for sexual promiscu¬ ity and renowned Marian visionary; Joseph Kibwetere (1932-2000?), a former politi¬ cian and locally prominent Catholic layman; and Dominic Kataribabo (d. 2000), a former Catholic priest and college-educated theologian. The group was in contact with the local authorities over registration issues. In fact, they had even paid their taxes not long before March 2000. There were reports, nonetheless, of police ignor¬ ing appeals to investigate charges of child abuse and kidnapping in the group. Not long after the tragedy, the department of Religious Studies at Makerere University produced a report that sheds light on the “chaotic situation” that devel¬ oped in the camp when the earlier predictions regarding the end of the world on 31 December 1999 did not come to pass, and the date was reset to 17 March 2000 (Kabazzi-Kisirinya, Nkuruniziza, and Banura 2000; see also Atuhaire 2006). It remains unclear whether the final events were precipitated by apocalyptic fears, failed prophecy, or demands from members for the return of their funds and prop¬ erty (Mayer 2001). Several observers agree that, unlike with other groups, such as the Branch Davidians and Jonestown, where the tragic outcome was influenced by external factors (see chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, and chapter 11 by John Walliss, both in this volume), internal dynamics predominated in the case of MRTCG (Walliss 2005). At any rate, there were elaborate prophesies from the leaders about the impending end of a generation and future salvation of the redeemed, with the Virgin Mary coming to take the latter to heaven: All of you living on the Planet, listen to what I’m going to say: When the year 2000 is completed, the year that will follow will not be year 2001. The year that will follow shall be called Year One in a generation that will follow the present generation; the generation that will follow will have few or many people depending on who will repent. [... ] The Lord told me that hurricanes of fire would rain forth from heaven and spread over all those who would not have repented. (Cited in Introvigne 2006)18

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Several scholars note how MRTCG was fueled by a global and regional network of Marian apocalyptic movements (Introvigne 2006; Kamphausen 2000; Behrend 2001, 81-82; Vokes 2005; Walliss forthcoming; see also chapter 28 by Massimo Introvigne, this volume). Not only did the group’s key actors have access to Marian literature from other parts of the world, but they also produced some literature of their own, including a book, A Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the Present Times (1991). In arguing that the group only developed its millennial outlook in response to the “worldwide hype” about the year 2000, Richard Vokes demonstrates the centrality of this “gospel” text. He claims that the book allows the tracing of MRTCG’s evolving millennial thinking, as the visions are recounted in chronologi¬ cal order. As he indicates, the “shift from judgement day as inchoate future possibil¬ ity to impending event” (2005,302) occurred in a group vision after 1991. The tone thereafter is darker and more apocalyptic, with predictions of rape, cannibalism, and deformed and nonhuman births. There was to be a final battle between Satan and Jesus on Earth, with only a quarter of the population being saved. Uganda was to be the “new Israel” after the judgment, with MRTCG enjoying a privileged posi¬ tion in the global Marian network. Vokes underscores the strategic, transformative role played by the Marian literature consumed by the group: it came from a “star¬ tling array” of worldwide Marian organizations—from Australia to Vermont. According to the former wife of Kibweteere (it was she who acquired many of these sources), many people came to the early meetings in their home just to hear read¬ ings from this literature. By 1991, the principal ideas—moral dislocation, chastise¬ ment and imminent apocalypse predicted by Holy Mary—were incorporated into their visions and teachings. The primary factor then, in Vokes’s view, in the radicalization of the group, was not a response to social tensions and change, but rather the influence of the external literature and their interpretation of the urgency of the imminent end of the world. Ugandan Catholic theologian Emmanuel Katongole suggests that the group’s growing isolation from the wider Catholic community helped fuel its radicalization and vision of itself as a privileged community (2005,129-30). Ronald Kassimir attri¬ butes the ferment in popular Catholicism, of which MRTCG and the LRA could be considered manifestations, as due to lack of grassroots inculturation, as well as the growing presence of foreign evangelical movements and local independent religious groups (1999, 251-55). The more open political environment was an additional fac¬ tor, although the violence of Uganda’s postcolonial history, in the likes of Idi Amin (1925-2003) and Milton Obote (1925-2005), was still fresh in historical memory. Anthropologist Heike Behrend also highlights the salience of local traditions of renewal, such as witch-cleansing movements (2001,82-84), which aimed to create a world free from evil, again recalling Willis’s notion of an “instant millennium” (1970). She also postulates that the increase in the death rate due to the AIDS epi¬ demic, in addition to poverty and malnourishment, generated a sense of impending crisis or what she calls “internal terror.” Katongole (2005) talks of the “hopelessness and violence” of everyday life for Ugandans and Africans more generally as a root cause of the tragedy.

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA

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The Kanungu inferno was almost immediately compared to Jonestown and the Branch Davidians (see chapter 10 by David G. Bromley and Catherine Wessinger, and chapter 11 by John Walliss, both in this volume) by the local and world press (Behrend 2001, 81). The repercussions were manifold. The Ugandan government, encouraged by the mainline churches, started clamping down on many minor¬ ity religions notably those perceived as “doomsday” groups, including several Pentecostal churches. The latter tried to turn the tables by casting aspersions on the normally unassailable Roman Catholic Church. The arrest in July 2000 of Wilson Bushara, leader of the World Message Last Warning Church, who had been on the run in Uganda for ten months and accused of embezzlement, unlawful assemblies, and sexual and child abuse, was much heralded by the media. In July 2000 Kenyan human rights groups expressed fears about the MRTCG being reincarnated in Kenya in the guise of another movement known as Choma. They appealed to the authorities to “move in and save the people of western Kenya from mass suicide that may be occasioned by the cult” (Pan-African News Agency 2000a). Several African governments (Botswana, Namibia, Kenya, and Rwanda) made it known to their populations that they were stepping up vigilance and/or control of “sects and cults.” The media seemed readier than ever to cover and comment on the questionable activities of such groups, as when Heaven’s Gate members purportedly entered Kenya in 2000 to make contacts and distribute literature (Panafrican News Agency 2000b).

Apocalyptic Media: Pentecostal Style The newer generation of charismatic/Neo-Pentecostal churches that abound in many parts of contemporary Africa are more focused on messages of personal sal¬ vation and life transformation than cataclysm and doom. However, one of Nigeria’s largest churches, the Household of God Church, founded by a former popular musician, Kris Okotie, is known for its apocalyptic message. Indeed, Okotie’s televi¬ sion program is entitled “Apocalypse” and in a major book, The Last Outcast (2001), he claims that the Antichrist will be a product of cloning, as prophesied in the Bible. The mission statement of the influential Nigerian deliverance ministry of Dr. D. K. Olukoya—the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries—includes the goal of building an aggressive Endtime army for the Lord ([2009]; see also Hackett 2011). The popular video-recordings of the sermons of Pastor (Dr.) E. A. Adeboye, the cur¬ rent leader of Nigeria’s largest Pentecostal church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, are called “End Time Messages for the World” and advertised as “the undi¬ luted Word of God for this end time.” In his extensive study of this organization, Asonzeh Ukah notes that the teachings are fairly conventional in terms of millenarianism: they involve Rapture, Tribulation, Last Judgment, and new heaven and new Earth for the holy and saved (Ukah 2008,207-9). More influential in Ukah’s view is the video-film Rapture (2002), produced by Pentecostal evangelist and film producer Helen Ukpabio, which took “last days anx¬ iety” to new heights (Ukah 2003, forthcoming). This controversial two-part film has

406

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been subject to censorship and litigation for its demonization of the Roman Catholic Church in depicting pre- and post-Rapture settings. Ukah uncovers the influence that the Left Behind series of novels (see chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, this volume) has had on Rapture. In a visit to her office, he discovered that Ukpabio had read all the volumes before writing the film script. However, in her narrative, Armageddon begins, not in Babylon and Jerusalem, but in the chaotic and dangerous streets of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial mega-city. Ukpabio claims that is not her own inter¬ pretation of the biblical apocalypse but a divine revelation for the present age. The appeal and impact of such mass-mediated and mass-marketed apocalyptic mes¬ sages are well analyzed by Ukah in relation to the insecurities and struggles of the Nigerian populace (see also Ojo 2006).19 Similarly, in his ecclesiological study of an important Ghanaian charismatic publication, God’s End-Time Militia (Anaba 1997), Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (2004) situates the message of a democratized ministry, combating the evil forces inimical to the world’s redemption, against the backdrop of a revolutionary army led by J. J. Rawlings, seeking to overthrow a corrupt and ineffective “regular army” from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Citing corruption in the churches as well as in national politics, Kenyan scientist-turned-prophet Dr. David Owuor also disseminates his Endtime proph¬ ecies via modern media technologies, using blogs, Facebook, or his Jesus Is Lord radio station. Viewed by many as a “prophet of doom,” and by others as a timely critical visionary, Owuor has been preaching a stark message of repentance and holiness since 2003. While focused on Kenya’s “defiled state,” his website lists the natural disasters he has predicted in various parts of the world, including the Asian tsunami in 2004. He is also well known for organizing a National Day of Repentance in Nakuru, and in June 2009 was appointed by the Kenyan govern¬ ment to lead a nationwide prayer campaign following the postelection violence of 2007. Writing of the new waves of transnational Pentecostalism in both Africa and Latin America and their emphasis on the struggle against the devil, Waldo Cesar suggests that they have transferred postmillennial optimism to daily living. In other words, “the devil of daily life is more real than the Satan of the millennium, and must be eliminated each time he is encountered.” He considers that the “blending of everyday time and millennial time reveals in many ways the very ethos of Pentecostalism” (2001, 34-35). This is well evidenced in Filip de Boeck’s fascinating study (Boeck 2001, 2005) of everyday life in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) and how the book of Revelation has become an “omnipresent point of reference (2001, 57) in the Congolese experience. He claims that most Congolese inhabit an interstitial space between salvation and doom, vividly expressed in popular art and music, and one which blurs the delineation between the three orders of imaginary, symbolic, and real. He notes that the “rapid demon¬ ization of everyday life in Congo” (59) is both countered and nurtured by religious organizations. Droz (2001) emphasizes how the millennial imaginary that pervades Kenya’s contemporary urban spaces is sustained by the historical memory of earlier millen¬ nial groups such as Mau-Mau. While the Pentecostal discourse on the timing of the

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Millennium is generally restrained—for fear of recriminations of false prophecy, it is nonetheless replete with millennial convictions about the Second Coming of Christ.

Islam Maitatsine: Nigeria’s Apocalyptic Paradigm In December 1980 the ancient city of Kano in northern Nigeria erupted into a vir¬ tual civil war, as a result of violent clashes between the security forces and the fol¬ lowers of a dissident religious teacher, Muhammadu Marwa, or “Maitatsine” (“the one who damns”), as he was known. The details of Maitatsine’s life, the growth of the movement, and the 1980 revolt by his followers, which led to the deaths of more than 4,177 people (including Maitatsine himself),20 and the subsequent uprisings in the early 1980s, and again in 1993, have been well documented by a number of authors (Nicolas 1981; Christelow 1985a, 1985b; Lubeck 1985; Isichei 1987; Hiskett 1987; Clarke 1987; Kastefelt 1989; Hickey 1984). Many see this incident as the turning point in terms of religious intolerance in Nigeria.21 Even today, when communal clashes occur, for whatever reason, the name of Maitatsine is invoked metonymically (Kastefelt 1989,367; Lubeck 1985). The many and varied interpretations of this millennial Islamic or Islamist movement, and the reasons for the outbreak of vio¬ lence on a scale not seen in Nigeria since the civil war (1967-70) have been discussed by the present author in an earlier essay (Hackett 2005). Here the focus will be on those accounts that foreground the millennial variable. Central to the Mahdist tradition in northern Nigeria, argues historian of religion Peter Clarke, is that “the process of ‘redemption,’ the onset of the millennium involves a form of defensive ‘war’ ” (Clarke and Linden 1984,121). Mahdists seek the Golden Age of Islam by either hijra (migration) or jihad (holy war) and view its implementa¬ tion as essentially an “irruption of the divine into human history in the person of the Mahdi” (109). They do not seek a revolutionary transformation of society as such, but periods of waiting and pietism can suddenly be transformed into violent action when the time is right. There was a growing awareness of Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran (see chapter 35 by Jeffrey T. Kenney, this volume), and this may have inspired more aggressive tactics in Maitatsine’s movement, furthermore, the beginning of the new Muslim century—1400 a.h., or 1979 c.e.—was believed by millennialist Muslims to be the end of the world, after which all the world would be converted to Islam (Al-Karsani 1993).22 Some of Kano’s leading scholars indeed saw the crisis as evidence of “Signs of the Hour,” which in Islamic eschatological thought is related to the idea that at the end of every century a mujaddid or renewer may arise to restore order (Barkindo 1993, 99). Allan Christelow (1985b, 8off; see also Clarke 1987) argues that there was a clear Mahdist motif operating through the Tan Tatsine movement. He attributes this in part to the fact that Maitatsine came from northern Cameroon where several Mahdist movements had operated during the colonial period. The 'Yan Tatsine, in his opinion, also bore resemblance to a branch of the Tijaniyya, known as the Hamaliyya, in that they were reclusive.

408

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Moreover, the fact that Maitatsine rejected the hadith (stories about the Prophet) and the sunna (custom or example of the Prophet), and arrogated to himself the role of prophet after downgrading the status of the Prophet Muhammad to “just another Arab,” served to create an “intense religious fervor” and, simultaneously, “a frightening moral anarchy” (Christelow 1985a, 83). It was this, argues Christelow, that accounted for the distinctiveness of this movement and its appeal to those who, for reasons of youth and/or poverty, felt the need to be “different and defiant” (Christelow 1985a, 84). Others have tried to situate the 'Yan Tatsine movement as one element in the wider, burgeoning phenomenon of radical religious activism. Michael Watts argues that Maitatsine’s reformist, even utopian, message inscribed itself into a dynamic, discursive tradition that dated back to colonial times of debat¬ ing Muslim identity and correct practice. In that respect this controversial religious leader was not, in Watts’s view, an “isolated fanatic” (1996,279). The large numbers of West African immigrants, including Maitatsine, who was from neighboring Cameroon, fomented a number of conspiracy theories (Isichei 1987,205). These were readily fueled by journalistic accounts, which picked up on the fears and rumors generated by this violent episode (Christelow 1985a, 69). For exam¬ ple, Zahradeen (1988, 75), a journalist who was involved with the coverage of the incident, writes about the purported “Jewish connection” of the Maitatsine move¬ ment, as publicly announced even by then Governor Abubakar Rimi. Zahradeen also described how Maitatsine’s appearance—he had a squint in one eye—contributed to the fear that he was the “Dujal,” the one-eyed Antichrist who would fight gallantly against the true faith of Islam at the beginning of the end of the world (1988,11). Similarly, theories sprung up about the role of Muammar al-Qaddafi, the Saudis, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or at very least, the manipulation of events by power-hungry Nigerians (see Isichei 1987, n.76-78). But many of the analy¬ ses of the movement came down to the centrality of socioeconomic factors (Lubeck 1985)- Increased migration in the north, higher unemployment, poor adaptation of Quranic students, and an ethnic and cultural reaction to poorly integrated nonHausas in Hausa Muslim society were all cited as contributory factors (Barkindo 1993> Hiskett 1987) 221—22). A disaffected class, made up of both rural and urban fol¬ lowers, was ripe for the antimodernist message of Maitatsine—symbolized in the ban on radios, buttons, watches, bicycles, and automobiles (see especially Watts 1996, 282). But, as Clarke notes, the Mahdists possessed no effective strategies for bringing about the period of earthly rule of Islam lasting a thousand years (1987,108).

Concluding Reflections In comparative terms, the African continent offers a rich tapestry of millennial and apocalyptic movements that go back at least two centuries and still emerge today. While, as in other areas of the world, they are minoritarian, they have nonetheless

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made their mark in various ways.23 Some have become paradigmatic in terms of national heritage, while others have become metonymic for dangerous, unconven¬ tional religious behavior. Unlike in some other contexts, women have played a sig¬ nificant role in the formation and leadership of several of these movements—reflecting their capacity to generate social power, and sometimes authority, in the face of local and colonial patriarchal structures. There have been some interesting academic debates more generally over the weighting of internal, predisposing factors and real or perceived external pressures in precipitating violence (see chapter 11 by John Walliss, this volume; Bromley 2002; Hall with Schuyler and Trinh 2000). While recognizing that a synergy is always at work, many of the cases adumbrated above seem to point to the significance of a hostile “outside” world—whether in the form of repressive colonial regimes, inef¬ fective postcolonial governments, or precarious quotidian existence. It is also pos¬ sible that, due to these difficult social conditions, far greater loss of life has been sustained in connection with the millennial—especially the apocalyptic—impulse in contemporary Africa than in many other locations. Another distinctive feature of the African religious landscape is the persistence of traditional forms of belief and practice, even in those millennial manifestations that are more explicitly Christian or Muslim and that ostensibly reject tradition. These may translate into ideas about the return of the ancestors or the sacredness of land. They also shape perceptions of the imbrications of the spiritual and the mate¬ rial, as well as religious and political activity—a not insignificant factor in the move¬ ments under consideration here, and a challenge to overreliance on secularization paradigms. Africa’s movements of millennial persuasion will continue to challenge research¬ ers on a number of counts. Sources will remain problematic, in contrast to some other locations that are better served by archives and publications. Modern media technologies may help offset this. As stated at the outset, it is possible to differenti¬ ate those movements for which apocalyptic or millennial ideas constitute a primary marker of identity, from those which only draw on such ideas in a partial or tempo¬ rary manner. But there remains the task of tracking the provenance and confluences of millennial teachings in particular instantiations. These could stem from indige¬ nous, Christian, or Islamic sources, or a combination thereof. It is this complex interplay of endogenous and exogenous beliefs concerning future collective salva¬ tion that accounts for the challenges of categorization in the African setting. A move¬ ment might go through different phases and attract a range of labels—messianic, prophetic, millennial—in the course of its lifetime. In South Africa, for instance, prophets and movements were variously influenced by the different currents of preand postmillennial thought as propounded by different missionary groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Mills 1997). Several Africans aban¬ doned the more positive, and socially and politically engaged, postmillennial out¬ look for more fundamentalist and Pentecostal congregations, whose premillennial outlook was more in keeping with their experiences of repression and disillusion¬ ment in church and society.

4io

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Another area of perduring interest for scholars of African religious movements is the question of agency. What Jean Comaroff (1985, 168-69) calls the “cultural logic” of such groups, and the ways in which they may play a mediatory and trans¬ formative role in conditions of structural inequality, has also been taken up by other scholars (e.g., Fields 1985) on their “rationality,” discussed above. Comaroff argues that we should not underestimate the “cultural signification” (1985,168-69) of the ritual and symbolic practice of these groups. In other words, neither destruction nor escapism would tell the whole story of the plight of those African leaders and their followers who chose to interpret the Endtime with greater radical urgency. The current phase in Africa involving urbanization, democratization, modern¬ ization, and globalization seems more conducive to the persistence, if not flourish¬ ing, of millennial and apocalyptic ideas, rather than actual movements. The modern mass media are salient in this regard (see also chapter 31 by Douglas E. Cowan, this volume). They can both vilify nonconventional religious groups and sustain them through a range of apocalyptically oriented local, regional, and global cultural products (films, websites, broadcasts, tracts, books) that can be customized as appropriate by a range of consumers. GOD TV, for example, an international reli¬ gious broadcasting operation in Jerusalem, with outlets in several African countries, has developed new programming on “Apocalypse and the End Times.”24 Moreover, with fears over the HIV-AIDS pandemic, all manner of social deception, corruption and poor governance, and global economic insecurities, it is hardly surprising that the millennial-apocalyptic trope is finding new life in many of Africa’s (religious) public spheres.

Acknowledgments. I wish to acknowledge the research assistance of Chris Byrns and Jeremy Spiers, and the references and resources supplied by David Cook, Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Bella Mukonyora, Benjamin Soares, and David Maxwell. I am also grateful for the feedback provided by colleagues at the University of Alberta in response to my lecture on this topic, 16 March 2009, and to Annie Blankenship for her close reading of the text.

NOTES 1. Due to space constraints, millennial movements stemming from the Islamic tradition will not feature as prominently in this essay as those related to indigenous forms of religious practice and Christianity. Furthermore, the African diaspora in Europe and the Americas will not be treated here, but it can be assumed that many of the contemporary African religious movements that operate in diasporic spaces facilitate the exchange of millennial ideas, literature, and related media products. 2. Most present-day scholars of millennialism acknowledge the seminal work of historian Norman Cohn in The Pursuit of the Millennium (Cohn 1970/1957). There is also a

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preference for viewing miUennialism or millenarianism as a continuum, ranging from more passive, peaceful expectations about imminent, collective salvation to more active, apocalyptic Endtime scenarios (Wessinger 2000). Richard Landes (2004) argues that the latter type of movement or orientation is more short-lived than the former. Herein I employ the term apocalyptic to refer to those groups with more radical, and often violent, proclivities and to reflect local discourses on particular movements. 3. Rare are studies that offer a comparative perspective on African millennialism and apocalypticism: see Sanneh 2002; Wilson 1973. 4. Droz (2001,100) contends that a broader understanding of millennialism, that is to say, the expectation of a period of peace and prosperity that realizes the wishes and desires of a group, is more likely to uncover the millennial aspects of prophetic activity in a region. 5. This is underscored by Bengt Sundkler (1961), who also notes the small percentage of African independent churches that could be classified as messianic (1976). 6. David Chidester notes, somewhat ironically, that the Cattle-Killing Movement led to the recognition by some government agents that the Xhosa had a religion (Chidester 1996). 7. These same conditions provoked Namibian prophet Klaas Stuurman, or Hendrik Bekeer (as he was known in South Africa), into organizing “sacred warriors” for a holy war of liberation that would drive out the whites and redeem the oppressed blacks. The liberators would cross a large bridge to Germany, where they would eventually kill all whites (Dedering 1999). 8. Adrian Hastings considers that the emphasis of Protestant Christian missionaries on the resurrection of the dead may well have contributed to the millennial orientation of such early Xhosa prophets as Nxele in the 1820s in South Africa (Hastings 1994; Hodgson 1985,1986). 9. Assimeng (1986,71,75) contends that this literate constituency, as well as the availability of proselytic literature, contributed to the spread of the Watchtower message. He also notes the influence, from the 1880s onward, of the burgeoning movement of Ethiopianism in South Africa, with its quest for African-led churches and religious emancipation (69-70). 10. Cross notes that parts of Zambia (in the 1970s) had some of the highest concentrations of Witnesses in the world (1978,305). 11. In trying to explain why an American-educated leader fomented revolt, Rotberg argues that Chilembwe’s disturbed mental state “encouraged him to equate the outbreak of war [World War I [with the imminence of existential doom and provoke a call to arms” (1970,372). This complex, John Brown-type figure was killed in a skirmish with police in 1915. The Malawi currency now bears the imprint of Chilembwe’s portrait, and plays about this revered figure are aired on radio and television on Chilembwe Day and Martyrs’ Day. 12. The (mythical) liberatory role played by African Americans during this period is attributed by Shepperson to the educational experiences of five Africans from Nyasaland who studied in black American institutions, to missionary visits by African Americans— some of whom came from radical millennialist groups in the United States, and the influence of pan-African ideologies (“Africa for the Africans” and the “Back to Africa” movement), such as Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (1970, 152-53). In 1921 a South African in the Transkei, Wellington Buthelezi, posed as a black American and informed his followers that all Americans were “negroes” and that they would soon come in airplanes to free the Bantu from European power and taxes (153). Jean Comaroff also examines the “structural equivalence” between the two dispossessed communities of black Americans and black South Africans and the “cultural logic” of the

412

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American Zion (1985,177-78). She highlights the formative role played by John Alexander Dowie’s Chicago-based Zion City, through its missionary work in South Africa from 1904 onward, in transmitting a new emphasis on healing and millennialism. 13. Assimeng notes that Adventists are now known more for their Sabbatarianism than for their earlier millennial teachings (1986, 22-52, 248). 14. For these ideas, she draws on the work of Muhammad S. Umar (1999). 15. It is interesting to note how Mungiki has featured quite regularly on Western anticult websites as an example of a dangerous atavistic and apocalyptic movement. 16. See summary of the Uganda Human Rights Commission report on the Kanungu massacre in Byamukama 2005. See also Hexham 2000 for analysis of the press reports— local and international—of varying reliability. Several of the media reports are available at www.cesnur.org. 17. Richard Vokes (2002), an anthropologist who worked in the region and made several visits to Kanungu following the fire, points to the significance of the location of the initial public visions of the group’s main leader, Credonia Mwerinde. These occurred in the Nyakishenyi caves, one of the most important spiritual sites in the area, conferring on Mwerinde the status of medium. But it was the Virgin Mary and not the fertility goddess Nyabingi who was the purported source of her visions and auditions. 18. An excerpt from the main MRTCG publication, A Timely Message from Heaven: The End of Present Times, cited in Introvigne 2006. He also notes that similar messages came from (MRTCG-approved) visions of Kibeho visionaries in neighboring Rwanda. 19. The pan-African, indeed global, influence of Nigerian Pentecostals and charismatics and their cultural production should not be underestimated. 20. According to the Aniagolu Commission of Inquiry, which was reprinted in thirty-five installments in the New Nigerian from 13 November 1981 to 2 January 1982. 21. In fact, the Aniagolu Report (1981,106) reports that a total of thirty-four clashes between rival religious groups in the northern states had preceded the Maitatsine episode, in most cases requiring police intervention. The report indicated that steps had been taken from 1979 by the government in the form of an advisory council on Hajj affairs and an edict (from the Sokoto State government) to regulate Islamic religious preachers. 22. In comparing Sudanese and Nigerian patterns of millennial Islam, Al-Karsani shows that both used the images and messages to express popular discontent and grievances but that the Nigerian form tended toward more militant action (1993,151). 23. See Jennifer Wenzel s wonderful 2009 study of the literary memories of the Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement. 24. See www.godtv.org (accessed 11 February 2009).

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Allen, Tim, and Koen Vlassenroot. 2010. The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality. London: Zed Books. Ambler, Charles. 1995. “‘What Is the World Going to Come To?’: Prophecy and Colonialism in Central Kenya.” In Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in Eastern African History, edited by David M. Anderson and Douglas H. Johnson, 221-39. Athens: Ohio University Press. Anaba, Joseph E. 1997. God’s End-Time Militia: Winning the War Within and Without. Rev. ed. Accra: Design Solutions. Andersson, Ephraim. 1958. Messianic Popular Movements in the Lower Congo. Uppsala: Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia VI. Aniagolu, A. N. 1981. Report of Tribunal of Inquiry on Kano Disturbances. Lagos, Nigeria: Federal Government Press. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2004. “God’s End-Time Militia: Ecclesiology in Ghana’s New Charismatic Ministries.” Journal of African Christian Thought 7, no. 1: 31-37. Assimeng, Max. 1986. Saints and Social Structures. Legon: Ghana Publishing Corporation. Atuhaire, Bernard. 2006. The Uganda Cult Tragedy: A Private Investigation. London: Janus. Barkindo, Barwuro M. 1993. “Growing Islamism in Kano City Since 1970: Causes, Form and Implications.” In Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Louis Brenner, 91-105. London: Hurst & Company. BBC News. 2006. “Kenyan Joy as World Fails to End.” 12 September. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ africa/5337438.stm. Behrend, Heike. 1998. “War in Northern Uganda: The Holy Spirit Movements of Alice Lakwena, Severino Lukoya and Joseph Kony (1986-97).” In African Guerillas, edited by Christopher Clapham, 107-18. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. -. 2000. Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1985-97, translated by Mitch Cohen. Athens: Ohio University Press. -. 2001. “Salvation and Terror in Western Uganda: The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.” In Millenarian Movements in Africa and the Diaspora, edited by Jan Lodewijk Grootaers, 77-96. Brussels: Belgian Association of Africanists. Boeck, Filip de. 2001. “Dancing the Apocalypse in Congo: Time, Death and Double in the Realm of the Apocalyptic Interlude.” In Millenarian Movements in Africa and the Diaspora, edited by Jan Lodewijk Grootaers, 55-76. Brussels: Belgian Association of Africanists. -. 2005. “The Apocalyptic Interlude: Revealing Death in Kinshasa.” African Studies Review 48, no. 2:11-32. Bond, George C. 1979. “A Prophecy That Failed: The Lumpa Church of Uyombe, Zambia.” In African Christianity: Patterns of Religious Continuity, edited by George C. Bond, Walton Johnson, and Sheila S. Walker, 137-60. New York: Academic Press. Bongmba, Elias K. 2007. “Portable Faith: The Global Mission of African Initiated Churches (AICs).” In African Immigrant Religions in America, edited by Jacob K. Olupona and Regina Gemignani, 102-29. New York: New York University Press. Bromley, David G. 2002. Dramatic Denouements. In Cults, Religion and Violence, edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, 1-10. New York: Cambridge University Press. Businge, Gerald. 2007. “Seven Years since the Kanungu Massacre. Are We Any Wiser?” UGPulse.com. 17 March, www.ugpulse.com/articles/daily/homepage.asp?ID=586. Byamukama, Nathan. 2005. “Religious Mass Suicide or Massacre? The Kanungu Case.” www.iheu.org/node/1567. (last accessed 9 February 2009).

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6: 375-93-. 1985b. “The ‘Yan Tatsine Disturbances in Kano: A Search for Perspective.” Muslim World 75: 69-84. Clarke, Peter. 1987. “The Maitatsine Movement in Northern Nigeria in Historical and Current Perspective.” In New Religious Movements in Nigeria, edited by Rosalind I. J. Hackett, 93-115. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen. Clarke, Peter B., and Ian Linden. 1984. Islam in Modern Nigeria: A Study of a Muslim Community in a Post-Independence State 1960-1983. Mainz: Grunewald. Cohn, Norman. 1970 [1957]. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press. Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance. Chicago: University of Chicago. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff, eds. 2001. Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Cross, Sholto. 1978. “Independent Churches and Independent States: Jehovah’s Witnesses in East and Central Africa.” In Christianity in Independent Africa, edited by Edward R. Fashole-Luke, Richard Gray, Adrian Hastings, and Godwin Tasie, 304-15. London: Rex Collings. Dedering, Tilman. 1999. “The Prophet’s ‘War against Whites’: Shepherd Stuurman in Namibia and South Africa, 1904—7.” Journal of African History 40:1—19. Dillon-Malone, Clive M. 1978. The Korsten Basketmakers: A Study of the Masowe Apostles, an Indigenous African Religious Movement. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press. Droz, Yvan. 2001. “Les formes du millenarisme en pays kikuyu.” Bulletin des seances/ Academie royale des sciences d’outre-mer 47 (Suppl.): 97-111. Edgar, Robert. 1987. Because They Chose the Plan of God: The Bulhoek Massacre of 1921. Johannesburg: Ravan. Edgar, Robert R„ and Hilary Sapire. 1999. African Apocalypse: The Story ofNontetha Nkwenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet. Athens: Ohio University Press. Ellis, Stephen, and Gerrie ter Haar. 2004. Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press. Fields, Karen E. 1985. Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Garvey, Brian. 1994. Bembaland Church: Religious and Social Change in South Central Africa, 1891-1964. Leiden: Brill. Githieya, Francis Kimani. 1999. “The Church of the Holy Spirit: Biblical Beliefs and Practices of the Arathi of Kenya, 1920—50.” In East African Expressions of Christianity, edited by Thomas Spear and I. N. Kimambo, 231—43. Athens: Ohio University Press.

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Hackett, Rosalind I. J., ed. 1987. New Religious Movements in Nigeria. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen. -. 1989. Religion in Calabar: The Religious Life and History of a Nigerian Town. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. -. 1999- “Radical Christian Revivalism in Nigeria and Ghana: Recent Patterns of Conflict and Intolerance.” In Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa, edited by Abdullahi A. An-Na’im, 246-67. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. -. 2004. “Prophets, ‘False Prophets,’ and the African State: Emergent Issues of Religious Freedom and Conflict.” In New Religious Movements in the 21st Century: Legal, Political and Social Challenges in Global Perspective, edited by Phillip Charles Lucas and Thomas Robbins, 151-78. New York: Routledge. -. 2005. “Theorizing Radical Islam in Northern Nigeria.” In War in Heaven/Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic, edited by Stephen O’Leary and Glen McGhee, 138-56. London: Equinox. -. 2011. “Is Satan Local or Global? Reflections on a Nigerian Deliverance Movement.” In Who Is Afraid of the Holy Ghost? Pentecostalism and Globalization in Africa and Beyond, edited by Afe Adogame, 111-31. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World. Hall, John R., with Philip D. Schuyler, and Sylvaine Trinh. 2000. Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan. New York: Routledge. Hastings, Adrian. 1994. The Church in Africa 1450-1950. Oxford: Clarendon. Hexham, Irving. 2000. “What Really Happened in Uganda?” Religion in the News 3, no. 2: 7-9. www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol3No2/uganda.htm(last accessed 9 February 2009). Hickey, Raymond. 1984. “The 1982 Maitatsine Uprisings in Nigeria: A Note.” African Affairs 83, no. 331: 251-56. Hinfelaar, Hugo. 1991. “Women’s Revolt: The Lumpa Church of Lenshina Mulenga in the 1950s P Journal of Religion in Africa 21, no. 2: 99-129. Hiskett, Mervyn. 1987. “The Maitatsine Riots in Kano 1980: An Assessment.” Journal of Religion in Africa 17, no. 3: 209-23. -. 1994. The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio. 2d ed. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Hodgson, Janet. 1985. “A Study of the Xhosa Prophet Nxele (Part One).” Religion in Southern Africa 6, no. 2:11-36. -. 1986. “A Study of the Xhosa Prophet Nxele (Part Two).” Religion in Southern Africa 7: 3-23Hoehler-Fatton, Cynthia. 1996. Women of Fire and Spirit: History, Faith, and Gender in Rojo

Religion in Western Kenya. New York: Oxford University Press. -. Forthcoming. “Millennialism on the Margins: Contextualizing an Islamic Movement in Colonial Western Kenya.” Holt, P. M. 1970. The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881-1898: A Study of Its Origins, Development and Overthrow. Oxford: Clarendon. Iliffe, John. 1967. “The Organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion.” Journal of African History 8, no. 3: 495-512. Introvigne, Massimo. 2006. “Tragedy in Uganda: The Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a Post-Catholic Movement.” www.cesnur.org/testi/ uganda_002.htm. (last accessed 9 February 2009). Isichei, Elizabeth. 1987. “The Maitatsine Risings in Nigeria in 1980-85: A Revolt of the Disinherited.” Journal of Religion in Africa 17, no. 3:194-208. Jong, Joop T. de, and Ria Reis. 2010. “Kiyang-yang, a West-African Postwar Idiom of Distress.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 34, no. 2: 301-21.

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Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1979. “Symbols of Power and Change: An Introduction to New Perspectives on Contemporary African Religion.” In The New Religions of Africa, edited by Bennetta Jules-Rosette, 1-22. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex. Kabazzi-Kisirinya, S., Deusdedit R. K. Nkuruniziza, and Gerard Banura, eds. 2000. The Kanungu Cult-Saga: Suicide, Murder or Salvation? Kampala: Department of Religious Studies, Makerere University. Kamphausen, Erhard. 2000. “The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God: Apokalypse und religioser Massenmord in Aff ika.” Evangelische Theologie 60: 456-72. Kassimir, Ronald. 1999. “The Politics of Popular Catholicism in Uganda.” In East African Expressions of Christianity, edited by Thomas Spear and I. N. Kimambo, 248-74. Athens: Ohio University Press. Kastefelt, Niels. 1989. “Rumours of Maitatsine: A Note on Political Culture in Northern Nigeria.” African Affairs 88: 83-90. Katongole, Emmanuel M. 2005. “Kanungu and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda.” In A Future for Africa: Critical Essays in Christian Social Imagination, edited by E. M. Katongole, 119-49. Scranton, Penn.: University of Scranton Press. Kimambo, Isaria N. 1999. “The Impact of Christianity among the Zaramo.” In East African Expressions of Christianity, edited by Thomas Spear and I. N. Kimambo, 63-83. Athens: Ohio University Press. Landes, Richard D. 2004. “Millennialism.” In The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, edited by James R. Lewis, 333-58. New York: Oxford University Press. Lanternari, Vittorio. 1963. The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Lipschutz, Mark R., and R. Kent Rasmussen. 1986. “Nyirenda, Tomo (‘Mwana Lesa).” Dictionary of African Christian Biography, www.dacb.org/stories/zambia/nyirenda_ tomo.html. (last accessed 9 February 2009). Lubeck, Paul. 1985. “Islamic Protest under Semi-Industrial Capitalism: Yan Tatsine Explained.” Africa 55, no. 4: 369-89. MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1983. Modern Kongo Prophets: Religion in a Plural Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. -. 1986. Religion and Society in Central Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Martin, B. G. 1969. “Muslim Politics and Resistance to Colonial Rule: Shaykh Uways B. Muhammed al-Barawi and the Qadariya Brotherhood in East Africa.” Journal of African History 10, no. 3: 471-86. Mayer, Jean-Fran^ois. 2000. “The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God: Between Facts and Fiction.” Unpublished report on a research trip to Uganda, 13-23 August. -. 2001. “The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.” Nova Religio 5, no. 1: 203-10. Melice, Anne. 2001. “Le Kimbanguisme: un millenarisme dynamique de la terre aux cieux.” In Millenarian Movements in Africa and the Diaspora, edited by JanLodewijk Grootaers, 35~54- Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen. Millard, Joan. 1997. “The Bulhoek Tragedy.” Missionalia 25, no. 3, at www.geocities.com/ Missionalia/bulhoek.htm. (last accessed 9 February 2009). Mills, Wallace G. 1997. “Millennial Christianity, British Imperialism, and African Nationalism.” In Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social, and Cultural History,

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edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport, 337-46. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mndende, Nokuzola. 2005. “Nonqawuse and the Cattle-Killing Saga: An African Religion Perspective.” Paper presented at a seminar organized by Icamagu Institute, Capetown, 28 July. Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries. [2009.] “Vision and Mission Statement.” http://mfmikorodu2.org/about%20mfm.html. Accessed 7 June 2009. Nicolas, Guy. 1981. “Guerre Sainte a Kano.” Politique Africaine 1: 47-70. Ojo, Matthews A. 2006. The End-Time Army: Charismatic Movements in Modern Nigeria. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World. Panafrican News Agency. 2000a. “Ugandan Doomsday Cult Surfaces in Kenya.” 31 July. -. 2000b. “American Suicide Cult Invades Kenya.” 27 October. Peires, J. B. 1989. The Dead Will Rise: Nongqawuse and the Great Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7. Johannesburg: Ravan. Ranger, T. 0.1975. “The Mwana Lesa Movement of 1925.” In Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa, edited by Terence O. Ranger and John Weller, 45-75. Berkeley: University of California Press. Roberts, Andrew D. 1970. “The Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina.” In Protest and Power in Black Africa, edited by Robert I. Rotberg and Ali A. Mazrui, 513-70. New York: Oxford University Press. Robinson, Simon. 2000. “An African Armageddon.” Time Europe 155, no. 13 (3 April). www.time.c0m/time/europe/magazine/2000/0403/uganda.html. Rotberg, Robert 1.1970. “Psychological Stress and the Question of Identity: Chilembwe’s Revolt Reconsidered.” In Protest and Power in Black Africa, edited by Robert I. Rotberg and Ali A. Mazrui, 337-73. New York: Oxford University Press. Sanneh, Lamin. 2002. “Comparative Millennialism in Africa: Continuities and Variations on the Canon.” In Imagining the End: Visions of the Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, edited by Abbas Amanat and Magnus T. Bernhardsson, 234-61. New York: I. B. Tauris. Shepperson, George. 1970. “The Comparative Study of Millenarian Movements.” In Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutional Religious Movements, edited by Sylvia L. Thrupp, 44-54. New York: Schocken. Shepperson, George, and Thomas Price. 1958. Independent African: John Chilembwe and the Origins, Setting and Significance of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Soares, Benjamin F. 2003. “A Warning about Imminent Calamity in Colonial French West Africa: The Chain Letter as Historical Source.” Sudanic Africa 14:101-14. Steyn, Christine. 2000. “Millenarian Tragedies in South Africa: The Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement and the Bulhoek Massacre.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 185-202. Syracuse: Syracuse UniversityPress. Sundkler, Bengt. 1961. Bantu Prophets in South Africa. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute. -. 1976. Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists. New York: Oxford University Press. Thornton, John K. 1998. The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatrix Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706. New York: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Harold W. 1979. “The Approach to Africa’s Religious Movements. In Religious Innovation in Africa: Collected Essays on New Religious Movements, edited by Harold W. Turner, 49-62. Boston: G. K. Hall.

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Ubwani, Zephania, Mwanamkasi Jumbe, and Beatus Kagashe. 2008. “Tanzania: Church Head Disowns Sect in Airport Drama.” The Citizen. 14 July, www.wwrn.org/article .php?idd=29o6o&sec=i3&con=58], Ukah, Asonzeh F. K. 2003. “Advertising God: Nigerian Christian Video-Films and the Power of Consumer Culture.” Journal of Religion in Africa 33, no. 2: 203-31. -. 2008. A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power: A Study of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World. --. 2011. “Mediating Armageddon: Popular Christian Video-Films as Source of Conflict in Nigeria.” In Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa, edited by James H. Smith and Rosalind I. J. Hackett, 243-82. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. Umar, Muhammad S. 1999. “Muslims’ Eschatological Discourses on Colonialism in Northern Nigeria.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 1: 59-83. van Binsbergen, Wim M. J. 1981. Religious Change in Zambia: Exploratory Studies. Boston: Kegan Paul. -. 2001. “Religious Innovation and Political Conflict in Zambia: The Lumpa Rising.” www.shikanda.net/african_religion/lumpao.htm(last accessed 9 February 2009). Vokes, Richard. 2002. “Kanungu, Nyabingi and the Virgin Mary.” East African, 8 July, www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=i2347&sec=6&cont=all. -. 2005. “The Kanungu Fire: Millenarianism and the Millennium in Southwestern Uganda.” In The Qualities of Time: Anthropological Approaches, edited by David Mills and Wendy James, 81-100. New York: Berg. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1956. “Revitalization Movements.” American Anthropologist 58: 264-81. Walliss, John. 2004. Apocalyptic Trajectories: Millenarianism and Violence in the Contemporary World. Berlin: Peter Lang. -. 2005. “Making Sense of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.” Nova Religio 9, no. 1: 49-66. -, ed. forthcoming. Apocalypse in Uganda: The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. Aldershot: Ashgate. Wamue, Grace. 2001. “Revisiting Our Indigenous Shrines through Mungiki.” African Affairs 100: 453-67-. 2011. “The Mungiki Movement: A Source of Religio-Political Conflict in Kenya.” In Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neo-Liberal Africa, edited by James H. Smith and Rosalind I. J. Hackett, 93—124. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. Watts, Michael. 1996. “Islamic Modernities: Citizenship, Civil Society and Islamism in a Nigerian City.” Public Culture 8: 251-89. Wenzel, Jennifer. 2009. Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa and Beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heavens Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. Willis, John Ralph. 1967. "Jihad fi Sabil Allah: Its Doctrinal Base in Islam and Some Aspects of Its Evolution in Nineteenth-Century West Africa.” Journal of African History 3: 395-415Willis, Roy G. 1970. “Instant Millennium: The Sociology of African Witch-Cleansing Cults.” In Witchcraft Accusations and Confessions, edited by Mary Douglas, 129-39. London: Tavistock.

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Wilson, Brian R. 1973. Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples. London: Heinemann. Wipper, Audrey. 1970. “The Gusii Rebels.” In Protest and Power in Black Africa, edited by Robert I. Rotberg and Ali A. Mazrui, 377-426. New York: Oxford University Press. Zahradeen, Nasir B. 1988. The Maitatsine Saga. Shanu: Hudahuda Publishing.

419

CHAPTER 21

MILLENNIALISM IN THE CARIBBEAN BARRY CHEVANNES

The

islands of the Caribbean, which were colonized by the Europeans beginning

with the Columbus voyages (1492 to 1504), became significant for the wealth they generated on the basis of African slave labor and Asian indenture, following the genocide of the Amerindian population. For over three hundred years, begin¬ ning in the sixteenth century, an estimated 12 million people were transported across the Atlantic from West and Central Africa to work on plantations and in mines throughout the Western Hemisphere. There they were to endure not merely the physical hardships and humiliation that came with enslavement, but also the indignity of racism, which survived emancipation and continues to plague the modern world. In the Caribbean, where by the eighteenth century Britain had emerged as the strongest European power, and where cane sugar was king, those Africans laid the foundations of new languages and cultures that have also borne the influences of the aboriginal and other incoming peoples. But at no time throughout the centuries was the memory of Africa completely erased. First, until the abolition of the slave trade by Britain in 1807, the slave population was for the most part replenished by new slaves brought from the African continent and to a lesser extent by natural reproduction. Second, those coming into contact with the Bible soon identified themselves with the Ethiopia mentioned in it and with the stories about the “chil¬ dren of Israel,” their oppression first in Egypt and then in Babylon, and their longawaited redemption and return to Zion, their home. And third, the belief in mystical return to Africa, either by the release of the spirit through suicide, or by the power to fly through observance of a salt taboo, prevailed among many of them. On this historical and cultural foundation millennialism in the Caribbean has been shaped

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by themes of racial oppression and a return to an idealized pre-enslavement African past.

Alexander Bedward In Jamaica, Britain’s largest and most prized colony in the Caribbean for most of the period of slavery and after, the memory of the African past first took political form in the Garvey movement of the early decades of the twentieth century, which advo¬ cated return to Africa. At the time, and for most of the century, the country’s social structure could be described as a pyramid of class and color, at whose apex sat a small, privileged, and wealthy white elite, at the base a large black peasantry and working class, and in between a brown middle class of professionals and entrepre¬ neurs. Buttressing this class structure was an ideology of race and color that privi¬ leged light complexion and denigrated anything black. Racism permeated all the leading institutions—church, school, business establishments, the civil service, and even the family. Marcus Garvey’s movement was therefore popular among the blacks, although they were not all members of his organization. It was foreshadowed, however, by a religious movement led by the prophet Alexander Bedward. A laborer on the Mona sugar estate on the outskirts of the capital city of Kingston, Bedward gave up his job and journeyed to Panama, where after a few years he was instructed in a vision to return and lead his people (Beckwith 1929,167). This he did, developing a large fol¬ lowing attracted by his reputation as a healer and his fiery sermons against the white establishment. In 1895 he was arrested and charged for sedition on grounds that he threatened to incite rebellion, but he was diagnosed as insane and interned in the mental asylum, where he spent several months before returning to his flock (Chevannes 1971, 35). Bedward’s following grew considerably in the succeeding decades, as his fame spread far and wide, embracing even the migrant Jamaican workers in Cuba and Central America. But, unable to get the kind of recognition he thought he deserved, because of racism that denied him and his ministers the privi¬ lege of becoming marriage officers, while according the same privilege to the white priests and parsons of other Christian denominations, Bedward proclaimed the end of the world on 31 December 1920, when the whites would be destroyed and he and his followers would fly to heaven (Beckwith 1929,178). Hundreds flocked to August Town to await the end, which when it did not happen predictably led to disillusion¬ ment among some but, as well, a hardening of resolve among a faithful core. A few months later, with seven hundred of his faithful, Bedward decided to march on the city of Kingston to wage spiritual battle with his enemies,1 but the authorities acted swiftly to ambush the procession. Many were sentenced for disturbing the peace, but the Lord and Master, as Bedward was called by his followers, was interned in the mental asylum, where he was to remain until his death in 1930.

422

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in 1887 in the parish of St. Ann. Finding the condition of blacks the same wherever he traveled—poor, unrepresented, and the victims of rac¬ ism—Garvey returned to Jamaica and in 1914 founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). One of UNLA’s most ambitious aims was the uniting of all “400 million Negroes of the World” into one political power.2 For this goal Garvey cam¬ paigned from his headquarters in the United States for black engineers, doctors, and other professionals to return to Africa to build. Thus the Back-to-Africa movement was born. Notwithstanding Garvey’s failure to get the British government to cede one of its African colonies to start repatriation, or to enlist the partnership of the Liberian gov¬ ernment, the UNIA grew rapidly into a large international organization, with branches all over North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa, as Garvey’s influence as a Pan-Africanist spread (Martin 1976; Lewis 1987). Africa took center stage in his teachings as a place of ancient civilizations and the spiritual home of all blacks. He founded a shipping line, the Black Star Line, to encourage trade and the movement of pioneers to Africa. Hounded by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Garvey was accused of using the mail to defraud, tried and sentenced to prison, and deported. From Jamaica he tried keeping the UNIA alive, but it had been struck a crip¬ pling blow. After several unsuccessful years in politics in the still-colonial Jamaican society, Garvey departed for the United Kingdom in 1936 and died there four years later. But Garvey had by then left a rich legacy of pride in being black and of the cen¬ trality of Africa in the identity and fortunes of black people all over the world.

Origins of the Rastafari Sometime in 1928 Garvey wrote and staged a play entitled “The Crowning of the King and Queen of Africa,” whose climax was a coronation scene. In light of his Back-to-Africa project, some of those who followed his teachings took the play as prophetic, especially as one of the lines in it is alleged to have been “Look to Africa when a King is crowned, for your redemption is at hand” (Chevannes 1994,94-95). The prophecy was believed to have been fulfilled two years later, when Ras Tafari Makonnen (Ras meaning“Prince”) was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. The Makonnens traced their ancestry thousands of years back to Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, or Axum, and King Solomon of Judah, to whom she had paid a state visit. Haile Selassie expressed this ancestry by taking as one of his imperial titles, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the exact same title prophesied by the visionary of Revelation 19:16 (New King James Version): “And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” His other titles, “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah,” “Elect of God,” “Light of the World,” were

MILLENNIALISM IN THE CARIBBEAN

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thought to identify him further as the Messiah, promised from the tribe of Judah, to which belonged Solomon and Solomon’s father, David. Several followers of Garvey in Jamaica knowledgeable in biblical matters were quick to make the connection. Also not lost on them was the fact that in the wellpublicized coronation, princes, and heads of state and other representatives of the major powers were on hand to pay their respects to the new sovereign. This, they concluded, was clearly the man prophesied by Marcus Garvey, the Messiah come to redeem Africa’s scattered peoples. The man said to have been the first to preach this news about the emperor was Leonard Howell (Lee 1999). Born in 1898, the son of a peasant, Howell joined the mass of migrant workers going to Panama, ending up in the United States, where he came into contact with the Garvey movement while working variously as cook and construction worker (Hill 1981). After returning to Jamaica, around the same time as Haile Selassie’s coronation, Howell began preaching, using photographs of the emperor, which he sold for a shilling, as proof of Selassie’s Judaic pedigree and his blackness (Chevannes 1994,110). In a very short time he won a following and began his King of Kings Mission. But Howell was not the only one to conclude that Tafari was the returned Messiah. At least two others, Joseph Hibbert, another Garveyite, and one Archibald Dunkley, claimed to have arrived at the same insight from their study of the Bible. These three men, along with Robert Hinds, erstwhile member of Howell’s King of Kings Mission, have been credited with being the most successful voices in spread¬ ing the message of the new religion: Ras Tafari was the Messiah, and repatriation was imminent (Chevannes 1994,121-43). The period was one of rapid growth of the city of Kingston, mainly through in-migration of the landless and rural poor in search of employment, as the country suffered from the effects of the Great Depression. This was the stratum of the popu¬ lation from which the movement was to draw most of its members, but Howell also recruited from the easternmost parish of St. Thomas, where in March 1934 he was charged, tried, and sentenced to two years for seditious speech. It was alleged that he had attempted to incite contempt for the king of England and disaffection among the king’s subjects. The chief justice himself presided over the trial and handed out a heavy sentence. If the intent was to crush the movement, the opposite happened, especially as the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation throughout the British empire was approaching on 1 August, and expectation was building up that given the return of the Messiah, repatriation would take place on that day. A dele¬ gate at the UNIA convention in August told the convention that members of the new movement expected to be repatriated and that their beards would serve as the mark distinguishing them from those to be left behind (Post 1978,189). In lieu of passport, the photograph of Ras Tafari was all that would be needed. By November 1934 the press was calling for action to be taken against this “cult,” using the example of one John Ricketts as a warning against being deceived. According to the editor of the Jamaica Times (20 October 1934, 14-15)7 Ricketts, a Rastafarian, sailed on his own to Abyssinia (Ethiopia), where falling among thieves he was beaten up and

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

424

robbed of all his money. His only recourse, being a British subject, was the British consul, who arranged his return home. Despite these millennial impulses, the emphasis of the early preachers during the first decade of the movement was on the identity of God—his blackness and reincarnation in the person of the newly crowned emperor. It was not until after the Second World War with the mass migration of Jamaicans to Britain that the millen¬ nial dream began to exert itself. One of the first signs was marches organized by various groups of Rastafari demanding to be sent back to Africa. As these were gen¬ erally peaceful, they received little attention. One, however, organized by a militant group known as the Youth Black Faith, was intercepted by police and the members brought before the magistrate for marching without a permit. Because they each gave as their name “Ras Tafari” they were sentenced for contempt of court and given thirty days in prison (Chevannes 1994,159). Youth Black Faith, operating out of the west end of the city of Kingston and Higes Knots in the east end (Homiak 1995), introduced within the movement some of the characteristics commonly associated with the Rastafari today, the most prom¬ inent of them being dreadlocks, a style of self-presentation they felt identified them with anticolonial Maasai warriors in Kenya (Campbell 1985, 95-96), but which in their own country put them in the category of outcastes, especially when combined with clothes made of burlap, the discarded material used to bag produce, which they equated with the biblical sackcloth worn by the prophets (Chevannes 1995, 88). The folkways now known as livity, which signals a return to natural ways and things—unprocessed foods, meatless and salt-free diets, vessels of calabash and coconut shells, organically grown herbs and vegetables, and a life in harmony with God and nature as opposed to the man-made environment—were introduced around this time, as well as what has come to be called dreadtalk (Pollard 1994). Dreadtalk makes liberal use of homonyms and inversions—over for understand, down for oppression, and so on—and makes the first-person pronoun central. In dreadtalk “I” replaced all other personal pronouns: I an I instead of we, you (plu¬ ral), and us; the-I for you (singular and plural) and him. Brethren becomes fdren, natural is z'tal, pepper is zpa, holy is fly, praises is zses, and so on. Haile Selassie I (the First) becomes Haile Selassie I (first-person pronoun). The result was not only a mode of speech separating Jail's people from the users of both Standard English and the Jamaican creole, but a new way of understanding the self, the community, and God. The statement I an I Rastafari” gave the speaker an identity in which, for that moment, the self was absorbed in the community and in Jah, Haile Selassie I (Chevannes 1994,167). Each individual male Rastafari was thus a king, in a shared identity with the king of kings, and his spouse a queen.

1958 Convention In March 1958 Prince Emmanuel Edwards, the founder of a group that was to later acquire the name “Bobo” or “Bobo Shanti” but which at the time was called the Coptic Theocratic Temple, called a twenty-one-day-long convention, which was

MILLENNIALISM IN THE CARIBBEAN

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billed as the first and last. The convention took place at Prince Emmanuel’s camp in the infamous Back-o-Wall slum in Kingston’s west end. Repatriation being upper¬ most in their minds, hundreds of Rastafari turned up with the expectation that the convention would settle the matter of repatriation. In the early morning hours of the day after the scheduled end of the convention, hundreds of them staged a sym¬ bolic capture of the city by occupying the central square, planted their red, black, and green flags on the statue of Queen Victoria, and demanded their immediate return to Africa. The police intervened and dispersed the demonstrators. His camp later razed to the ground, Prince Emmanuel and his flock eventually found their way to Bull Bay, a semi-rural village east of Kingston, where under the name Ethiopia Africa Black International Congress they set up a commune on a hill overlooking the village and the sea. From there the Bobo continued to press for repatriation, including, as late as 1988, the filing of a lawsuit against the government for the recov¬ ery of 20 million pounds, which they claimed had been granted by the British gov¬ ernment at Emancipation to repatriate the former slaves. In truth it has been the commonly held claim of all Rastafari that the sum of money had been granted to compensate the slaves for the injustice of slavery rather than the slaveholders for the loss of their slaves. Specifically, they were seeking “free transportation on seven, nine or 13 miles of Black Starliner ships3 to return to their ‘rightful inheritance’ of Black Ethiopia, Black Africa, recovery of 20 million [pounds], reasonable compen¬ sation, and punitive damage and costs of the action” (Jamaica Daily Gleaner, 8 July 1988,3). The case was thrown out. Prince Emmanuel died in 1994, but the millennial fervor has remained, expressed mainly by a number of young DJ reggae artists, such as Anthony B and Capleton, who inform their lyrics with the fire-burn Babylon motif.

Claudius Henry Meanwhile, as the Rastafari movement continued to grow, a preacher named Claudius Henry was attracting a large following, around the repatriation theme. Henry claimed to have received the call while serving as an itinerant preacher in the United States (Chevannes 1976, 265-66). Returning to Jamaica, he met and married Edna Fisher, a fish vendor who ran a thriving business, but who was also a Garveyite and the leader of a branch of the Ethiopian World Federation. Henry converted the membership into his African Reform Church, with headquarters at Fisher’s home in Kingston and a branch in the sugar-producing parish of Clarendon. In a move reminiscent of Leonard Howell, Henry printed and sold a blue card, which announced that 5 October 1959 was to be “Decision Day,” when Africa’s scattered flock would be repatriated, and that this was the only passport needed. Days before the appointed hour hundreds of his members as well as other Rastafarians assembled at his Rosalie Avenue church, many having disposed of their property. The failure of the prophecy had the predictable effect that some members fell away, but Henry continued to plan with a more resolute and hardened core

426

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

membership. In the following year, the police raided his headquarters and uncovered a cache of dynamite, two revolvers, and a copy of a letter addressed to Fidel Castro, inviting the new president of neighboring Cuba to come and take over Jamaica, as blacks were about to depart for Africa (Chevannes 1976,277). The letter, which was taken seriously by the state, was nothing but an expression of a general belief by Rastafarians that Fidel Castro represented the native peoples of the Americas, who in the 1 January 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution had begun to take back the hemisphere stolen by the Europeans. Repatriation therefore required not only the return of blacks to Africa, but also the return of whites to Europe. Henry was charged, tried, and sentenced to ten years for treason felony, while his wife and other top leaders received lesser sentences. Sometime after his release on parole, Henry claimed to have visited Africa, where he met Emperor Haile Selassie, who informed him that instead of fighting to return to Africa, they should fight to make Jamaica better, for Africa was already in Jamaica (Chevannes 1976,281).

The Mission to Africa The Henry affair brought down on Rastafarians as a whole considerable pressure from the police and the general public. In a defensive move, a small group led by Mortimo Planno petitioned Sir Arthur Lewis, the principal of the University College of the West Indies, to have a study done of their movement to prove that they were a peaceful group. In truth, “Peace and Love!” had since the late 1950s become the standard greeting of Rastafarians. The study, a rapid appraisal, confirmed their gen¬ erally peaceful nature and recommended that, among other measures, the govern¬ ment investigate the possibility for emigration to Africa (Smith, Augier, and Nettleford i960). An unofficial nine-man delegation, including Mortimo Planno and two other Rastafarians, visited five countries—Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, and, of course, Ethiopia, where they were cordially received by the emperor. Even though on the delegations return to Jamaica the Rastafarians chose to table their own minority report, the government acted on the positive evaluation of the majority and dispatched a Technical Mission to hammer out the practical details of a migration agreement. The Technical Mission was a few months into its work when it was recalled following the sudden announcement of a general election in 1962.4 The project petered out under the new government.

Growth of Rastafari Movement Notwithstanding these setbacks, the Rastafari movement grew at a phenomenal rate both in Jamaica and other islands of the anglophone Caribbean during the 1960s. The main contributing factors responsible for this growth included, first, the highprofile publicity the movement received from the Claudius Henry case, which began forcing Jamaicans to come to terms with the Rastafari presence in their midst. Second, the widely publicized “Report on the Rastafari Movement in Kingston,

MILLENNIALISM IN THE CARIBBEAN

427

Jamaica” (Jamaica Daily Gleaner, 3 August i960) and the Majority and Minority Reports of the Mission to Africa (Jamaica Daily Gleaner, 10 May 1961), plus the state visit of Haile Selassie in April 1966, served to legitimize the concerns raised by the Rastafari—the unresolved injustice of slavery, the society’s equivocal attitude toward Africa and its continued racism. The third and most important factor was the displaced youth. With the post¬ war migration to Britain at an end from 1962, unemployment doubled during the decade to 26 percent. Its main casualty was the youth, who flocking to Kingston in search of opportunities managed only to swell the ranks of the urban underclass. There they discovered the message of the Rastafari. But if they received meaning from this clearly controversial spiritual force, they gave to it a powerful tool of their own—reggae music. The result was a generation of young, highly creative artists and musicians who informed the rhythms of the new music with an African and specifically a decidedly Rastafarian content, thus expressing the locus of their hopes and aspirations—the King of Kings. Groups and individuals with names like the Abyssinians, the Ethiopians, the Congos, and the Burning Spear (after Jomo Kenyatta) and songs like “Satta Massa Gana” (Abyssinians), “Rivers of Babylon” (Melodians), “Seven Miles of Black Star Liners” and “Beat Down Babylon” (Junior Byles), “Natty Want to Go Home” (Junior Delgado), “Move Outa Babylon” (Johnny Clarke), “Zion Gate” (Horace Andy), “Exodus” (Bob Marley), “Message from the King” (Prince Far-I) articulated Rastafari discontent with the oppressive conditions in Babylonian captivity and their dreams of return to Zion, the land of their ancestors, where Jah dwells. These Jamaican reggae art¬ ists and musicians became in effect the Rastafari missionaries of the 1960s and 1970s. By the end of the 1960s virtually all Jamaican artists were Rastafarians, a development that gave the movement its own legitimacy. Their influence was not limited to Jamaica, but extended across the Caribbean into the wider world, in a remarkable feat of courage and conviction. As far as the wider anglophone Caribbean was concerned, the regional University of the West Indies, with its campus in Jamaica, and the short-lived West Indies Federation (1958-62), with its free movement of peoples, helped to bring many into contact with the Rastafari movement in Jamaica, but music played the major role in the dissemination of Rastafari.

Rastafari Organizations An acephalous movement, the Rastafari have had three main groups or “Houses” since the 1960s. The Nyabinghi House evolved out of a reform movement initiated in late 1940s by a group of young converts who called themselves the Youth Black Faith. They introduced into the movement its main identifier, the dreadlocks. Loosely organized, the Nyabinghi House is governed by all the Elders meeting in assembly, with a Patriarch and a High Priest functioning as an executive body. The second group is the one founded by Prince Emmanuel Edwards in the 1950s, which

428

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

featured in the Back-to-Affica convention of 1958. Then known as the Coptic Theocratic Temple, it is formally the Ethiopia Africa Black International Congress, but popularly called the Bobo. Led by their founder until his death in 1994, the Bobo distinguish themselves from other Rastafari by their attire of “a robe and a crown,” the crown being a tightly-wrapped turban over their dreadlocks; their communal life on a hillside camp on the outskirts of Kingston; their rigid confinement of men¬ struating women for twenty-one days; and their production and sale of brooms in imitation of the children of Israel, who until their deliverance out of Egypt were compelled to find straw in order to make bricks (Exodus 5). The third group is the Twelve Tribes of Israel founded in the mid-1960s by Prophet Gad and governed by a council of “tribal” representatives. Known for their order and discipline, Twelve Tribes has proved attractive to the middle class and has therefore been able to num¬ ber among its members attorneys, teachers, scientists, and other professionals. Bob Marley and Dennis Brown were the most famous of the many reggae artists belong¬ ing to Twelve Tribes.

Haile Selassie and Repatriation Despite their differences in leadership, organization, rituals, and some beliefs, all three groups identify Haile Selassie as divine and repatriation as an imperative. In 1966 the emperor paid a state visit to Jamaica, and in a move of expediency the state gave virtual recognition to the Rastafari by inviting them to meet him, while trying unsuccessfully to get him to disclaim his divine status. The Rastafari inter¬ preted his speech to the joint meeting of the Houses of Parliament, in which he declared that Jamaicans and Ethiopians were brothers, as a declaration that Jamaica came under his hegemony, and claimed that he left them a new constitu¬ tion to that effect. In the years after the visit, which they all now celebrate as an event on their liturgical calendar, anticipation steadily mounted that repatria¬ tion was imminent. In 1975, when Jamaica played host to the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOG) meeting, a rumor spread among the Rastafari that Haile Selassie would be in attendance, and that repatriation was an item on the agenda. This incited a small militant faction within the Nyabinghi House to split off from the main group in an attempt to force a resolution (Chevannes i994> 245-53). Basing their actions on a prophecy they attributed to Marcus Garvey, that the rise of a third party was the sign of the imminence of departure for Africa (the United Party having just been formed to contest the general elec¬ tion alongside the ruling People s National Party and the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party), they confidently expected a decision by the CHOG on repatria¬ tion. If no decision was made, they threatened that repatriation would still take place, but with much bloodshed. The CHOG meeting took place uneventfully and the Nyabinghi faction was later to congeal into a political party virtually in name only, reasoning that political power would make repatriation easier, and also that they had a responsibility to safeguard the interests of those of Jah’s chil¬ dren who would be left in Jamaica.

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Millennial Expectations Another prophecy attributed to Garvey foretelling the end of the world when “the two sevens clash” gained wide circulation with Culture’s instant hit song by the same title when it was released in 1977. By July of that year, when “the three sevens” clashed, expectation of a catastrophe was at an all-time high throughout the country, and on the seventh of that month, when not just the two or the three but all “four sevens” were to clash, many people stayed home (Chevannes 1994,104). Over the ensuing years, however, the millennial fever among the mainstream Rastafari in Jamaica steadily abated. Not even the approaching end of the millen¬ nium and the anticipated collapse of all computer-based systems throughout the world stimulated any action among the brethren.

School of Vision5 One small group, however, using the Ethiopian calendar, calculated that 2007 would mark six thousand years from the creation of Adam. On 11 September of that year, or soon thereafter, His Imperial Majesty would appear in a chariot of fire to repatri¬ ate all those who had prepared themselves and to rain down fire to destroy all those who remained. The group, calling itself the School of Vision, Bible Study, Prophecies and Sabbath Worship, was founded in 1997 by an ex-soldier by the name of Dermott Fagan. Born in 1954 in the parish of St. Ann, Fagan spent six years in the Jamaica Defense Force before migrating to the United States in 1981, where he eventually formed his own construction company. As the business flourished, Fagan got drawn into using cocaine and trafficking in it, until he was caught and sentenced. It was while in prison that in a vision he was given the gift of healing by the laying on of his hands. Deported from the United States in 1993, he joined a group of Rastafarians who used to gather in the St. William Grant Park in downtown Kingston. He had been introduced to the Rastafari during his days in the army, but had repressed the desire to join them because it conflicted with his dreams for material advancement. But now that those dreams had proved illusory, turning to the Rastafari was easy. However, Fagan soon fell out with the group and decided to form his own, the School of Vision. Fagan believes he is commissioned by His Imperial Majesty to warn the world of its impending end by identifying the Beast—the Antichrist—whose mark is given in the book of Revelation as 666. Ronald Wilson Reagan is the Beast—each of his three names has six letters—and far from being dead he is very much alive, living in the pyramid of the Egyptian god Horus, whose symbol, the triangle and eye adorn¬ ing the American dollar bill, is also the symbol of the Illuminati. Appearance of the Beast and his mark constitutes the first sign of the imminence of the end. Another is the introduction on the sixth day of the sixth month in 1996 of the Tax Registration Number (TRN), by which the Jamaican government is able to track every citizen,

430

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

since no legal transaction can be made without it. Fagan regards the TRN as a prelude to the introduction of the biochip, of which there has been talk in the United States about inserting under the skin of every person from birth. The biochip will be the last sign and was expected to be introduced by the close of the millennium according to the Ethiopian calendar, on 11 September 2007. Then the King of Kings would appear at the head of a fleet of flying saucers, which Fagan claims to have already seen twice, once at their mountain retreat and again at their headquarters in Duhaney Park, a suburb of Kingston. In anticipation of these events on 11 September 2007, the group repaired to an encampment four thousand feet above the city on a ridge across from the Jamaica Defense Force train¬ ing camp at Newcastle in the Blue Mountains. Members were still involved with the rest of the society, working, attending school, worshipping in the Papine Square in the city on Saturdays, and purchasing in the Kingston markets what they did not themselves produce. But when the time drew near, they assembled on the moun¬ tain, awaiting their repatriation by means of “chariots of fire,” the flying saucers of His Majesty, the King of Kings and Ford of Fords. The date 11 September 2007 came and went, and still Fagan and his followers wait. By focusing not on the specific date but on the increase in the use of micro¬ chips that defines the current era, Fagan has been able to retain his following.

The Dreads of Dominica The spread of Rastafari throughout the rest of the Caribbean, propelled mainly by the witness of reggae artists and musicians, meant that it was primarily the youth who were attracted to the movement. Tacking the grounding provided by a ritual community, but adopting the outward symbol of the dreadlocks and the generally known opposition to “Babylon”—the oppressor—they interpreted what they understood as Rastafari in light of their own historical social conditions. In Dominica in the 1970s a group of youths known as the Dreads, drawn from different social classes, placed themselves in opposition to what they saw as the white establishment and took to the bush to live out their millennial dreams outside the reach of Babylon (Salter 2000). The period was one of intense political and social change, as ideas of Black Power and socialism spreading throughout the anglophone Caribbean and with them, Rastafari, posed challenges to the existing social order. Several whites, including a Canadian couple who had recently settled in Dominica, were killed by Dreads in separate incidents, in which the motives were not clear, but which the general populace believed were connected to their espousal of this “alien” religion. In response to the call for stiff measures to preserve law and order, the government passed the Dread Act in 1974, giving immunity from prose¬ cution to anyone who killed or injured a Dread who invaded his or her property. The result was, predictably, a repression of Rastafarians, until it became clear, through the efforts of the well-connected members of the movement in having the

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government set up a committee, that the Rastafari were “a peaceful counter-culture group infiltrated by criminal elements” (Caribbean News Agency Report, Jamaica Daily News, 7 April 1976,16), and therefore not a threat to society. The radicalism dissipated.

Kim John and Francis Philip of St. Lucia6 On the last day of December 2000 at early morning Mass in the Minor Basilica Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Castries, the capital city of St. Lucia, two young Rastafarians, Kim John and Francis Philip, attempted to sprinkle the entire congregation with petrol, intending to set them all on fire. One priest died as a result of severe burns to his body, and a nun died from a lethal blow to her head with a piece of wood, while several other people received injuries from burns. The assailants were arrested and tried for murder. In the course of the trial, it emerged that Philip and John had retreated from society to the hills, where they reinforced each other in the chiliastic beliefs set out in Revelation 17:4-5 (New King James Version), which identified Rome as Babylon the Great and the Mother of Harlots: The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abomination and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written: mystery, babylon the great, the MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

In Christian millenarian movements, including the Rastafari, Rome refers to the Church of Rome, with its seat in the Vatican. The two St. Lucians saw themselves as acting with the authority of Jah Rastafari to burn Babylon,7 here represented by the priests and worshippers of the Church of Rome, the enslaver and oppressor of Africa’s children. They were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Not only did it appear that Philip and John acted alone and not on behalf of any group or trend, but other St. Lucian Rastafari denounced their actions as contrary to Rastafari principles. Nevertheless, the motif of fire as a divine weapon is common among all Rastafari, receiving wide currency in recent years through the lyrics of a number of very popular Jamaican “fire-bu’n” DJ artists, including Capleton, Sizzla, and Anthony B.

Mother Earth In a remote corner of Trinidad’s northern coast lived a small community of young men, their spouses, and their children under the leadership of a woman called Mother Earth.8 Their most striking feature was their nudity. Jeanette Baptiste, her

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

432

husband, and their six children first came to that part of the island in 1973 to work on the copra estates but settled there after falling out with their employer. In a series of visions between 1975 and 1976, she came to the enlightenment that the Christian teachings about God and creation, as commonly held and as she had been taught by the Spiritual Baptists among whom she had grown up, were false. The Creator was none other than Nature, the Earth, from whose womb came forth all creation, including the black race, including her Son. The Son, jealous of his Mother’s creative power, succeeded in gaining knowl¬ edge of it by reentering her womb and thus creating the white race. His reentry brought about pain and change. As the Earth changed she yielded Flesh, her other spirits in the form of all mothers, and still the Son pressured, until he forced the division of the prick from the cunt, calling himself Man. The way of the Son is Science, technology, chemicals, exploitation and death; the way of the Mother is Nature, the simplicity of nakedness, working with one’s hands, and equality in rela¬ tionships and life itself. For Mother Earth, the visions marked the beginning of the End, which is immi¬ nent, for Nature has lost all patience with the Son, who with his drive to replace humankind with robots and computers has entered into the final stage. She will visit destruction on the current order of the Son through famine, drought, and nuclear catastrophes, and restore her original state, where there will be no sickness or division. Then, the Son will return to his own planet bearing his name, the Sun, which is really a place of ice. Heat will then return to the Earth.

Once a year, the community trekked to the capital city of Port of Spain, there to recruit other blacks and Indians, whom Mother Earth regarded as her children, warning them of the Son, who has even taken possession of many of them. According to her teachings, the God of the Bible is really the Spirit of the Son, and the real creator is the so-called Devil. Right is really left, bad is good, and where the com¬ munity lives is hell. Although the Mother Earth group bears many similarities with the Rastafari— natural living, the dreadlocks, the tenet that the black race is the original race from which all other races have come, and the use of inversions and homonyms, to cite a few—it is not an offshoot.

Conclusion The Rastafari of lamaica represent the main millennial force in the Caribbean. It derives its impetus from European racism, which sought to justify the evils of slav¬ ery and colonialism and which has continued, albeit attenuated, in the postcolonial status quo. The dream of a permanent return to Africa will remain an important tenet of the movement as long as racial stratification consigns the black majorities to the lowest stratum of economic power and social status.

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NOTES 1. In the African Caribbean worldview human beings can summon the assistance of spiritual powers in struggle against human forces, through rituals such as fasting, prayer, chanting, Bible reading, and manipulation of symbols. 2. References to 400 million Negroes are liberally scattered throughout Garvey’s speeches. See, for example, Garvey 1967,6,8,18,21,25,31,32,45,47, 64, and so on. 3. The Black Star Line was the shipping line of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA. 4. Personal information from Rex Nettleford, a member of the Technical Mission. 5. Information on the School of Vision comes from the author’s interviews with Dermot Fagan in July 2007. 6. Information on these two St. Lucian Rastafarians is drawn from the transcript of the court proceedings in R. v. Kim John and R. v. Francis Philip. 7. The fire motif is strong in the book of Revelation, where at chapter 19, verse 20, the King of Kings throws the beast and his false prophet into a lake of fire. But there is also a possible Koongo origin for its pervasiveness among the Rastafari (see Chevannes 2006, 25-26). 8. The information here is drawn from Roland Littlewood (1993), the only anthro¬ pologist to have studied the group.

REFERENCES Beckwith, Martha Warren. 1929. Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Campbell, Horace. 1985. Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. London: Hansib. Chevannes, Barry. 1971. “Revival and Black Struggle.” Savacou 5 (June): 27-39. -. 1976. “Repairer of the Breach: Reverend Claudius Henry and Jamaican Society.” In Ethnicity in the Americas, edited by Frances Henry, 263-89. The Hague: Mouton. -. 1994. Rastafari: Roots and Ideology. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. -. 1995. “The Origin of the Dreadlocks.” In Rastafari and Other African-Caribbean Worldviews, edited by Barry Chevannes, 77-96. London: Macmillan. -. 2006. Betwixt and Between: Explorations in an African-Caribbean Mindscape. Kingston: Ian Randle. Garvey, Amy Jacques. 1967. Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. 2d ed. London: Frank Cass and Company. Hill, Robert. 1981. “Dread History: Leonard P. Howell and Millenarian Visions in Early Rastafari Religions in Jamaica.” EPOCHE 9: 31-70. Homiak, Jake. 1995. “Dub History: Soundings on Rastafari Livity and Language.” In Rastafari and Other African-Caribbean Worldviews, edited by Barry Chevannes, 127-81. London: Macmillan. Jamaica Times. 1934. “Disillusionment.” 20 October, 14-15. Lee, Helene. 1999. Le Premier Rasta. Paris: Flammarion. Lewis, Rupert. 1987. Marcus Garvey: Anticolonial Champion. London: Karia. Littlewood, Roland. 1993. Pathology and Identity: The Work of Mother Earth in Trinidad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Martin, Tony. 1976. Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. Pollard, Velma. 1994. Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari. Kingston: Canoe. Post, Ken. 1978. Arise, Ye Starvelings: The Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and Its Aftermath. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Salter, Richard C. 2000. “Shooting Dreads on Sight: Violence, Persecution, Millennialism, and Dominica’s Dread Act.” In Millennialism, Persecution and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 101-19. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Smith, M. G., Roy Augier, and Rex Nettleford. i960. Report on the Rastafari Movement in Kingston, Jamaica. Kingston: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, Mona.

CHAPTER 22

PACIFIC MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS GARRY W. TROMPF

The Pacific Ocean covers over 30 percent of the Earth’s surface. The Pacific Islands,

however, or those far-flung regions usually denoted as Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia (excluding Indonesia west of Irian Jaya), constitute only about .9 percent of the world’s total land mass. Surprisingly, across this huge orbit of scattered habi¬ tations, between a quarter and a third of our planet’s distinctive languages and reli¬ gions have been documented. Melanesia, the most populous of the three Pacific island regions (running in an arc-like chain from Vogelkop in Irian Jaya to western Fiji), harbors as many as 1,500 discrete culturo-linguistic complexes; many of these are locked away in the rugged mountain fastnesses of the greater New Guinea island. The islands of Micronesia and Polynesia are more widely dispersed, Micronesia in a wider arc from Palau Islands in the west (even Wuvulu farther south) across to the Phoenix group (Kiribati) in the east, and Polynesia within a giant triangle from Aotearoa (New Zealand) to the south up to the Hawaiian Islands in the north and across to Rapanui (Easter Island) in the east. As the etymology of these three named regions suggest, Melanesia is inhabited by “black” peoples (with much more diver¬ sity in linguistic and religious terms), while Micronesia (“small islands”), basically made up of many coral atolls, and Polynesia (“many islands”), spread out in a very diverse topography, are perhaps surprisingly more homogeneous in their (mainly “Austronesian”) language profile, and their religions thus conform to more discern¬ ible patterns. Prehistoric evidence reveals, though, that Melanesians have been in Oceania much longer (from around 70,000 farther destinations after around 1500

b.p.),

and that the others journeyed to

b.c.e.

Such a vast area hardly lends itself to safe generalization, and in approaching the subject of millenarian thought and action one should tread very warily with

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regard to conceptual categories. If we apply “millennialism” typologically,1 then we are looking for signs of anticipation among Pacific Islanders that the known cosmos will be utterly transformed, or that a resounding end to the old order of things approaches, followed by the start of a totally new dimension to life. Now, this is not what we can expect from traditional Oceanic religions. Preparation for the ritual future is characteristic (sometimes with long-term planning, since certain great feasts could be up to twenty years apart), but life with a finalizing future in mind is another matter. In rare cases, admittedly, it was thought that everything would run down and end, apparently forever. Such is the pessimistic understanding of the New Guinea highland Ipili (west of Enga), who talked of the possibility that a long-armed spirit being called Isini might one day plug the sinkhole receiving all the river waters and thus bring a end to everything with a great flood (Gibbs 1975, 80-81; and on “cosmic entropy” in nearby cultures, see Ballard 1995). Earthquakes, volcanic erup¬ tions, and solar eclipses were sometimes taken to threaten all existence (Mai 1981), but projections of grand destructions, whether punctuated or final, are rare. Where myths of a Great Flood are told, moreover, as on Micronesian Palau and Yap (atolls that would seem forever under threat of the ocean), talk of a future rep¬ etition or total destruction is absent from tradition (Dobbin 2011). The notion that each New Year has to be wound up, as if the winter solstice might bring on the Earth’s last breath, does not show up in the indigenous religions of the Pacific, where tropical conditions generally apply. Mircea Eliade’s claim (1965, 125-40) that Melanesians enacted New Year rites as if “the end of a [whole] mode of being” approached, and a

cosmic and eschatological renewal” were necessary, simply

imposes a “myth and ritual school” interpretation on material that cannot sustain it, because annual festivals were neither uniformly practiced nor conceived this way (Trompf 2004a, 199-200). Moreover, while there are many myths revealing how human death came to be, there are few beliefs that, in a given people’s collective future, mortality will be undone in a cosmic denouement, because islanders gener¬ ally presumed they would be lucky enough to secure a positive state in the afterlife (Swain and TrompI 1995,154-61). In traditional imaging, admittedly, a few individ¬ uals’ discoveries of the hidden land of the departed, who had access to all riches, constituted heroic breakthroughs of legendary proportions; and the dead could return collectively, at grand feasts or as real bearers of gifts” when unexpected moments of prosperity arrived (e.g., Malinowski 1961,73-73,184); but notions of a final (teleologic) arrival at some perfect state or recovered paradisiacal order were virtually foreign to cultures socially absorbed in environmental and ritual recurrences. A now standard way of defining so-called millennialist views is that they con¬ cern the future coming of a final and “cosmic” scenario that changes the world (as a people knows it) forever. This ultimate transformation is usually taken as preceded by a grave crisis, to be followed by the most welcome of all resolutions, at least for those who believe in (and hold fast to) the proclamation of the Great Coming. Those who harbor such hopes most intensely often share and propagate their views about the impending change, and the resulting social coteries, sects, cults, or

PACIFIC MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

437

movements we often call “millenarian” are those whose members expect “immi¬ nent, total, ultimate, this-worldly collective salvation,” as Yonina Talmon (1966,159) neatly summarizes it. Now, millenarianism often carries language associations—of an eschaton, apocalyptic signs, messianic leadership, an eternal kingdom, or return of paradisiacal “golden” conditions—that can be almost presumed in advance as alien to Oceanic traditional religions. Thus on two counts one should cultivate a “methodological preparedness” toward Pacific “millennialisms”: that the expecta¬ tions of extreme change they reveal have been affected by introduced beliefs about an extraordinary future (from the Jewish-Christian-Islamic-Marxist axis of thought) and thus by contact with a very much wider world; and that the discourse of hope will typically combine “talk” deriving from missionary religion with indigenous concepts. Distinctive Pacific Islander millennialisms, we find, have emerged in the con¬ text of rapid social change—of unexpected contact with outsiders, colonial incur¬ sion and control, and decisive technological shifts. Indeed, considering the last matter, it is hardly without significance that many landlocked “lithic” (or Stone Age) cultures of western Oceania found themselves suddenly confronted with intruders from societies at the very pinnacle of contemporary technological achieve¬ ments, arriving in helicopters, speaking into telephones, eating out of metal and plastic containers, shaving with sharp metal blades and portable mirrors, and so on. As I once put it (1979, in 2004a, 47), the very advent of an “order of the new things” brought (at least potentially) a final end to the age-old modes of subsistence and was thus already implicitly eschatological in its impact on islanders (or “demanded an eschatology” from them).2 Various meanings invested in the new goods, espe¬ cially in Melanesia, have given rise to social activities social analysts have named “cargo cults” and “cargoistic” behavior, focused on introduced, internationally mar¬ keted, commodity-style goods—“the Cargo” (Pidgin English/Tok Pisin: Kago). To such phenomena we are bound to turn, beginning the more discursive part of this contribution with what are taken as the most fabled species of millenarism in the Pacific region.

“Cargo Cultism” At the time Dutch Nieuw-Guinea, German Neuguinea, (Australo-) British New Guinea (Papua), and the Solomon Islands were being colonized in the

1880-90S,

the Second Industrial Revolution had begun in Europe, and various marvels were being developed in the contemporary world—electric lighting, radios, telephones, cars, airplanes, refrigeration, efficient sewage, and mass-produced utensils, cloth¬ ing, and tinned food. Manufacturing many of the goods the industrialized world now takes for granted as necessary for a comfortable lifestyle was beyond the wild¬ est dreams of traditional Melanesian “hamleters.”3 In a drawn-out and complex

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

438

process from the many “first contact” scenarios in the nineteenth century on into the postwar era of national independence in the “Third World,” Melanesians have adjusted to the trappings of modern civilization. Opening up recesses of the high¬ lands in the great New Guinea island came so late (basically from the 1930s) that it is small wonder that very unusual reactions and interpretations toward strange objects have been spotted, for “high technology” was literally flown in. In 1930, for instance, Taiora and Kamano warriors circumambulated lines of shirts laid out for them on an airstrip, as if reconciling themselves to these peculiar gifts disgorged from a “shining bird”; and when the great Baliem Valley of Irian Jaya was opened for missionization in the 1970s, the Dani highlanders often thought prefabricated toilets were built so that whites could confer with their ancestors, assuming also that what the newcomers possessed from the spirit world would soon become theirs as well. Apart from the pressure for explanation, we can tell, the baggage of intrusion also obviously suggested opportunity. In the myriad of responses to novel odd¬ ments—plain imitations (such as setting makeshift tables, with knives and forks, on the beach), attempts to appropriate magical power (constructing huts connected by ancestral poles with make-believe “radio wires”), the initial queuing up with foodgifts to secure the chance of borrowing metal tools from their first indigenous pos¬ sessors, ritual actions employed to make and multiply money, the hour-upon-hour group watching of television (in recent years), and so on—there is obviously a “sociology of hope” to be discerned (cf. Desroche 1979,69-71). At contact, suddenly, there were extraordinary possibilities—and the interest in acquiring the new things would increase exponentially the moment one’s fellows or neighboring villagers had access to them—because the experiences of “lack” and “desire” coincided and clashed in a highly accentuated way. On the one hand, the difference between two sets of encountering technologies was extreme. It was not as if there was no sense of “surprise and excess” in indigenous religious expectations, because, as already noted, spirits—deities, ancestors, and so on—were looked to as the “real sources” of fertil¬ ity, able to bring about a remarkable abundance of crops and fauna in the best tropical conditions (Gesch 1985, 305). But how different the ability to cut down a tree in hours and hollow it for a canoe in weeks, with a steel axe, when before, with stone tools, the task could take months! What a difference between walking for a day from one valley to another and an hour’s trip by a “Public Motor Vehicle,” or between the “use-by time” of unrefrigerated fish and tinned tuna! On the other hand, the want of the new goods was heightened beyond what could be reasonably expected from the workings of a market economy. The items would normally be intended for purchase, using money, yet the monetization of Melanesia came slowly and unevenly; the region was peripheral to world business, so the quantities of the novelties were limited, and access to them was concentrated only in towns or places where expatri¬ ates lived (such as mission stations). The general situation generated an ethos of desire, met by frustration, which occasionally issued into collective expressions of dissatisfaction, including marginal or subcultural outbursts of exaggerated desire that have been dubbed “cargo cults.”

PACIFIC MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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We are by now bound to ask whether or not we are here considering a species of millennialism. For a mature answer to this question, much depends on herme¬ neutical finesse and a judicious deployment of social scientific classifications. First, as has been my wont, it is useful to distinguish a general ethos from par¬ ticular “cults” or movements and thus, in the Melanesian case, to recognize the pervasive influences of “cargoistic attitudes” (or “cargoism”) as the social temper from which collective agitations of the cargo cult kind could emerge (Trompf 1990a, 10-15). Cargoism is a set of assumptions, beliefs, or attitudes varying greatly in degrees of thought-out formulation. Context will be all-important; wonder at the first sight of a “disrupting presence”—with German steel-hulled warships plying the coasts of New Britain by 1900, for example, or hundreds of military personnel and vehicles disgorged on Los Negros Island (Manus) in the American effort to drive back the Japanese by 1944—would vary from individ¬ ual to individual, episode to episode, location to location, and oral reports would tend to rise in embellishment (cf. Trompf 2004b). Whether or not some¬ one was present to attempt explaining what a clock was, let us say, or a record player, could affect consequences, because the very absence of accounting for something, or a failure to set minds at rest, could readily breed heightened talk of the miraculous. Cargo cults (if one is still willing to be seduced by an all-tooalliterative catchphrase!) are virtually by definition special associations—cohe¬ sive enough group activities—setting hopes on the coming of new-style wealth, which was classically offloaded from oceangoing vessels as boxed cargo. A mul¬ tiple mystery surrounded the landings of this material: what was in the boxes was intriguing enough, but then there was the question as to why the kago would always go to newcomers (white missionaries for one important lot, traders— sometimes Chinese—for another); and also the grand conundrum presented itself, already implying a secret (might one say esoteric?) solution, where did the new goods come from? Leaders of “cargo activities” (Burridge 1969,47-74) would claim to know the answers to these momentous queries and would typically prophesy the extraordinary—commonly tagged“miraculous”or“supernatural”— coming of the Cargo to their followers. Prima facie, this great arrival would seem to have the “type structure” of a “Millennium.” But we must continue with methodological caution. So, as a second point of distinction, we need to avoid making mountains out of molehills if we find what is expected is too limited to meet the case. When during the 1950s two Iwa Islanders, Caleba and Udilei (from Milne Bay, Papua), commanded their supporters to destroy food gardens, even coconut and mango trees, they thereby suggested that tradi¬ tional modes of generating food were preventing (barely accessible) tinned fish and meat from arriving. They told followers to look out for a ship looming on the hori¬ zon, and coordinated select “coastwatchers” through a highly mobile man renamed “Truck” who needed coconut-milk (bendine = Benzine) for his fuel (Kaniku 1977, 1-3). However confined we may need to imagine the I was’ cosmos to be, and even if they believed the foretold ship was to be brought by their ancestors, a portended plentiful supply of bully-beef will not be spectacular enough to constitute a final,

440

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

total event, or indeed salvation (as against a way out of a predicament or an as yet inexplicable “collective lack”). In the complicated history of cargo cults, of course, grand visions of momen¬ tous change have definitely been disclosed, and they can set a standard by which we can adjudge cargo cult variations. Tagarab of Milguk (near Yabob, Madang District, coastal New Guinea) had an overwhelming sense in January 1942, when the Australian colonial officialdom withdrew in advance of Japan’s invasion, that the long-departed culture hero Kilibob (now referred to as God-Kilibob and like a Jesus in his Second Coming) was about to return, along with the ancestors—in the guise of Japanese servicemen. God-Kilibob would order the ancestors to transfer “cargo, not only ordinary trade goods but also rifles, ammunition, and other military equip¬ ment” to the eagerly waiting Madangs. They would bring the goods to the natives by airplane and help them drive out the Europeans, missionaries included. At the same time, God-Kilibob would change the color of the natives’ skins from black to white. These events would be heralded by the occurrence of storms and earthquakes of unprecedented severity and number. (Lawrence 1964,102)

Well, that carries a much more decidedly millennial flavor, and, with a touch of Christian eschatology, we are left with the impression that the Madang cosmos is about to change forever. The difference vis-a-vis the lwa scenario is telling, for two reasons. First, as a rule of thumb, whenever dreams of arriving cargo are connected to the idea of a Second Coming (of Jesus or any other equivalent indigenous hero) and/or to anticipations of the imminent collective “Return of the Ancestors” in some genuinely “consummate action,” then appeals to cargo cults as millenarist will hold credence. But also, second, the very “stuff” of the cargo dreaming has to be big enough to convince us (or the ones doing the classifying) that its extraordinary coming possesses a certain “ultimacy.” This is to clarify for good, therefore, that not all cargo cults are millenarian. Cargo basically defines both cargo cults and cargoism as “cultural climate,” not eo ipso as millennial hope (see Firth 1955 on Polynesian outlier Tikopia); and therefore some cargo expectations and cults will be quite sufficient unto themselves. That will be more understandable when one considers again that Melanesian traditional reli¬ gions reflect a distinctive emphasis on wealth and concrete benefits. Neo-Marxist Peter Worsley has argued that it is precisely because Melanesians are among the most materialistic people on Earth that they tried all sorts of means to procure the useful things that the cosmos offered, including its new and strange products (1970,246—56). And I myself have added that, because one half-heartbeat of traditional religious life was the excitement of reciprocity (of constant give-and-take, trade, exchange, gaug¬ ing and balancing concessions and debts), it was integral to Melanesia’s “assumptive worlds” that the arena of circulating valuables was open to all kinds of goods the cosmos offered, and it was against life itself that perceived necessities—new or old_ would be left out of the system (1994,209-58). Not only before but also after contact, documented religious changes occurred. The Baigona and Jipari (or Snake and Taro)

PACIFIC MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

441

cults among the northern Papua Orokaiva are useful examples: in these cults there were attempts to improve fecundity and security, or replace failing, unproductive procedures, by instituting innovative cultic practices, yet no appeals to cargo were made (Opeba 1987). Thus there were so-called prosperity cults in Melanesia before (and also parallel to) cargo cults, and the latter can often be read as special extensions of the former. When New Guinea highland Dene danced to turn wooden staves and blood-smeared stones into rifles, tobacco, red cloth, gold-lipped shells (traditional money) in 1947, they just wanted their “competitive chance” in changed socioeco¬ nomic circumstances, not an utterly transformed world (Salisbury 1958). But when the vision is broader and the prospective results apparently total and finalizing, applicability of “millennialism” can be justified. Scholars must remember that the descriptive-cum-social scientific epithets cargo cult and then cargoism only came into vogue later on in the history of the rel¬ evant phenomena (esp. Mair 1948, 68; Harding 1967, cf. Trompf with Tomasetti 2006,22 for bibliographical complexities). The Second World War made the differ¬ ence, because the sheer volume of manufactured effects brought by the Allied Forces, and the exponentially heightened flow of cash where they were present, would startle even an average Western witness, let alone engender beliefs in the miraculous among indigenes. Before that time, other descriptors were applied. In Papua and New Guinea, for example, the pejorative phrase Vailala Madness was a favorite, referring back to unusual collective altered states among certain (Papuan coastal) Elema villagers, who destroyed traditional ceremonial paraphernalia and imitated certain white ways (Williams 1923) in what became the second most docu¬ mented “small religious reaction” in the colonized world (after the American Indian Ghost Dance). The slightly less hostile German catchphrase Schwarmgeister (“enthu¬ siasts/fanatics”) (e.g., Holtker 1946) came in a good second. In West Irian/Irian Jaya, there was concern with so-called Koreri movements, which were dubbed “adventist” (because of their hope that “eternal” or perfectly satisfying afterlife conditions called Koreri would break in) and “messianic” (because of the role of Koreri s prophetic heralds) (esp. Kamma 1939-1940). When one learns about the less spectacular dreams in these earlier sets of movements, one should develop a healthy caution. In them “the return of the dead” is a typically pronounced motif but their projected appearance, with or without Jesus (or Jehovah, etc.), is often more like an extraor¬ dinary visitation; and the coming of plenty (including “tobacco, calico, knives, axes”) looks more the extension of traditional “prosperity cult” preoccupations with remarkable consequences (including changed skin color, great feasts) flowing from arriving dead (Williams 1923,15-20). There is no suggestion either of a cosmic re-creation, whether single or recurrent (as in Meso- and South America; see Graziano 1999,36-42,206). One trouble ready to arise, then, is the writing of long¬ term histories of cargo cults and millenarian movements in Melanesia that general¬ ize the situation for the last 150 years, foisting grand cargo expectations and millennialism on many activities not wearing them (thus, e.g., against Christiansen 1969; Steinbauer 1970; Worsley 1970).

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

442

An historical perspective needs developing here. No wonder Martha Kaplan complained about the way Fiji’s Tuka movement (begun 1873) was put first in such histories, when “neither cargo nor cult” applied, let alone millenarism, to this ritu¬ ally focused resistance movement to defend threatened land (1995,202-4). And logi¬ cally, of course, Willington Jojoga Opeba (1987) would disallow Baigona and Jipari (1930s) being placed in such histories at all. Why, there is also a debate over “Marching Rule” (or Maasin[g]a) on the Solomon Islands (1944-1953), because, even if vast quantities of soldiers and equipment were certainly landed on Guadalcanal, the most typical Maasina “oneiric reaction” was to look forward to being “civilized” and “living like” the Americans (admittedly with their own kind of foodstuffs) and thus to organize themselves into autonomy (e.g., Laracy 1983, 150-51; yet cf. Cochrane 1970, 88-89). Such fine points remind us, in any case, of contentious issues regarding the clas¬ sification of cult movements. Does the very reference to cargo in the term cargo cult already invest too much of Western investigators’ penchant for the exotic or unusual (Lindstrom 1993)? Is it better to deploy more generic terms, writing of “disaster” or ‘crisis” (or just prophetic) cults than millennialisms, when it comes to preparations for upheaval in indigenous societies (Barkun 1974, 12-14, 117-18; La Barre 1971, 24-25)? Is there a danger that the term cargo cult will be overused to the detriment of such concepts as “proto- or micro-nationalist,” “self-help,” anticolonial “protest,” or “rebel,” “resistance,” even “revolutionary” factors (e.g., Raima 1991; May 1982; Hempenstall 1981)? Of course, we can treat cargo cults under umbrella socioreli¬ gious classifiers, such as sects, independent (or new) religious and salvation move¬ ments, or revitalization, adjustment, and (in leadership terms) messianic movements (Mair 1959; Ahrens 1974; Lanternari 1962,161-80); but this is only to say that the world, and the colonized one in particular, is littered with all kinds of agitations wanting to make something positive out of rapid change, some being remarkably millenarist, some less so, and some hardly or not at all. Is it also not important to decide the extent to which cargo cultists are prepared to deal with outside influ¬ ences? To ask whether they are more inclined to face change only on their own terms, by reappropriating the “true old times” or custom (nativism; neotraditionallsm) (e.g., Keesing 1978)? Or, by comparison, whether they more eagerly seek to embrace the new acculturatively, that is, in innovative, would-be (if partly uncon¬ scious) “Europeanizing,” syncretic activities, and “doing what can be done” (given limited technological means), even if erring, or being understandably psychotic, or “fanatically” defensive, or in some sense play-acting (van Baal 1961; Billings 2002)? If only full-length studies can sort out such issues, at least our position has been further sustained that one cannot reduce cargo cultism to millenarism, even to what Bryan Wilson calls “commodity millennialism” (1973,309-47). Cargo cultism has a very complicated history that will have to be better told one day than it has been thus far. That will have to account, above all, for the intricate interplay of payback energies so characteristic of Melanesian cultures—between the urges to act against outside interference (and its unsatisfactory consequences) and the readiness to enter into reciprocal relations for social benefits (Trompf 1994,159-281). When what

PACIFIC MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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is thought desirable does not come, or when the cargo is barely at hand—and this is always a matter of difficult-to-quantify relative deprivation—one impulse or option is toward extravagant hopes. It is not the only one: theft might be another, as well as independent quests for gold, tax evasion, a plain uprising to get back what had been lost (the more retaliatory choices), or pragmatic engagements (the more reciprocal ones). If there are high hopes, they will typically be connected to a story— “ideology”—as to why the local people do not yet possess the cargo, and to explana¬ tory motifs (e.g.,“the whites are deceiving us or not revealing all”); and myth-histories (e.g., “God-Kilibob has been elsewhere but at last decided to return”) will always be rounded off by a leader’s declaration about a future denouement. The observant investigator-scholar is then left deciding whether or not the enunciated hopes are “millennial enough.” In preparing to rewrite the history of cargo cultism, I hold the impression that before the Second World War, so-called cargo cultists (by arriere-penseel) were at core about the reversal of fortunes for the indigenes so that they could engage with the foreigners on their own terms. This was so whether they wanted to be empow¬ ered to reciprocate, as in the Vailala case (Swain and Trompf 1995,176), or to become equal—with iron, axes, food, tobacco, motorcars, and (significantly) firearms, as in the case of Pako’s projections on Buka (Bougainville)—and thus to remove domi¬ nation or allow possible freedom (Worsley 1970,125). Just before the landing of the Allied Forces in 1942, intriguingly, visions of drastic transformation show up, a shift that can partly be put down to the blending of increased fascination with Christian mission eschatological discourse and the circulating fear among expatriates about world war reaching the Pacific. Thus Tagarab’s visions (see above); and so also with a shift in the messages regarding the mythical Jo[h]n Frum on Tanna Island (New Hebrides/Vanuatu) from “cultural revivalism” to millenarianism in 1942. In Lindstrom’s words (1990,245): [Now] the message proclaimed the coming of a new age. It told people to discard European money, to kill introduced animals, and to abandon houses and gardens as all these things would be replaced by new goods. John Frum also reportedly warned that Tanna would overturn and emerge joined with neighboring islands; that mountains would flatten and valleys fill; that Europeans would vacate the island.

The actions of sacrificial faith by destroying the old in anticipation of the new is a frequent motif in cargo cult phenomena; it is not in itself a marker of fulsome millennialism (see the Iwa case above), but here, where is it coupled with visions of a stupendous cosmic drama, it gives a different impression. In one wartime tragedy (May 1942) in Irian Jaya, an ill-equipped armed force was formed to free the cargo-prophetess Angganita Menufeur from the Japanese. The members of this “America Blanda” Army went to the field (as Tanganyika’s Maji-Maji did in 1904-5; see chapter 20 by Rosalind I. J. Hackett, this volume) believing in the promise that magic oil on their skins would protect them from guns, and they were decimated in their hundreds. Angganita (“the maiden of

444

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Judaea”) had prophesied the accoutrements of a great prosperity (koreri) arriving in a ship of returning culture hero Manarmakeri, and her words were confirmed (at least temporarily) when the U.S. forces brought a “downpour of goods” at their base on Meokwundi, a place sacred to Manarmakeri (Kamma 1972,160-204). Thus here on the opposite side of the southwestern Pacific to Vanuatu, the coupling of the grand dream with an extreme collective act of desperation on a leader’s behalf—an act that was to inspire impulses for freedom after it—reveals an important messianic-millenarian constellation. Most Pacific millennialisms did not involve major physical reprisals; they were on that score clearly realistic, given the superior firepower of colonial overlords. Their very waiting for supreme help, however, was always “altercatory” (cf. Desroche 1979> 36-37)> as was their noncooperativeness, and in tense moments the chances of recourse to violence were always there. If in wartime Melanesia the sporadic exposure to stupendous quantities of commodities gave justification for extravagant expectancy, one must attend to var¬ iegations of cargoist-type responses in the postwar period. Small outbursts of unfet¬ tered dreaming there certainly were present—witness “the Noise” on Rambutyon Island (near Manus) in 1947, when, on discarding much traditional property into the sea and abandoning the mission, many islanders believed their returning ances¬ tors airplanes had been seen unloading cargo, and constructed a wharf to receive their ship (Mead 1956, 39-40). But surprisingly, while high hopes were certainly circulating, the second half of the twentieth century is better known for the artful means by which charismatic leaders canalized talk of cargo into new institutions. Thus Yali Singina created a regional organization (policed by “law bosses”) that routinized cargoism through a Tuesday table ritual, the weekly use of his semen in it being said to multiply money in each member village (Morauta 1974, 39-43). On Manus, Paliau Maloat founded both Melanesia’s first local government council and autonomous bank (with safes in each village) and Papua New Guinea’s first inde¬ pendent church, bolstered by the common acceptance that his “new fashion” and true governance would fulfill all desires when the foreign administration and mis¬ sions would dramatically withdraw (Schwartz 1962, 252-61; Trompf 1983, 60-61). For all that, the occasioning of tense, more dramatic cargo waiting further into postwar times is certainly known. Most memorable is the setting of 7 July 1971 (7/7/71) by Sepik prophet Matias Yaliwan as the date when Mount Hurun would open up a cornucopia of new goods after the American geodesic markers had been brought down from its summit in a collective chainlike protest (and thus after removing unwanted influences that kept diverting the riches of this sacred spot away from their true owners) (Gesch 1985, 27-80). Even then, this remains a clear instance of unfulfilled prophecy being followed up with skillful management. Selfpromoting side-kick to Yaliwan, Daniel Hawina, directed periodic rituals to reas¬ sure the hopeful that something was going to come of it after all. Thus nubile bare-breasted women were organized to stand in line at night in a great hall to shuffle money around in dishes of water and make coins multiply. Men would bury wooden cases in new cemetery plots marked by their ancestors’ names on the under-

PACIFIC MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

445

standing that money would be found in the cases—if only the possessors could manage to carry them home without averting their eyes either to the left or right! Again, a local political association was organized, a cross-tribal affair for Sepik peo¬ ple called Peli (“Hawk”); and eventually this was transformed into an independent church (Niu Apostolik), Hawina using the Canadian New Apostolic Mission for his own purposes (Trompf 1983,66-67) (on the importance of addressing failed proph¬ ecies see chapter 8 by Lome Dawson, this volume). The overall tendency toward politicization and/or religious independence is a characteristic of cargo cult histories over the last thirty years. In the newer shift pragmatism and willful engagement in the procedures of modernity have strength¬ ened, while talk of cargo has tended to be played down or deliberately hidden from outsiders (cf. Lattas 1998). After a time of wharf and airstrip building in 1978, for instance, Dakoa of Penata, a movement leader on Unea Island (off West New Britain), was ready to be a trader and businessman, declaring for my benefit that “Kago emi simbol tasol” (Cargo is just a symbol). Cargo cult-type beliefs lay deep in the heart of the Bougainville Rebellion (1988-2001), Damien Damen providing the ideology of Meekamui (i.e., Bougainville as a sacred island with untold prospects of prosperity) while regularly collecting money for the resistance movement against central government control from Port Moresby (in the spirit of the antitax activity on Buka Island to the north during the 1960s) (Trompf 1994,353-54, cf. 216-17). By comparison, one large movement, the Pomio Kivung on East New Britain, has been thoroughly involved in modern Papua New Guinea politics (its “ideologue” Francis Koimanrea, for example, became national Minister for Health), and the Kivung even sent independent grants in aid to help disaster victims in Australia. At the same time, their core belief and object of ritual life is the sudden return of their ancestors, including founder-messiah Koriam Urekit, and they by a mere wish could create a city the size of New York at Pomio on Jacquinot Bay (Trompf 1990b, esp. 73). The cargo qua millennial hope, then, is hardly dead, just less in evidence and slowly being replaced by varieties of realism. Yet the extent to which hoped-for cargo can indeed be deemed millennialist must always be discerned with solicitude.

Other Millennialisms The presumption that “cargo cults” make up the only type of new religious move¬ ment in Melanesia is false, as is the preconception that they make no appearance in the wider Pacific, or indeed the rest of the world (Loeliger and Trompf 1985).4 It behooves us now, though, to reflect on varieties of millennialism in the Pacific that make much less or nothing of arriving Cargo. As background, it cannot go without notice that the Christian missionary impact on the Pacific Islands has been enor¬ mous (over 90 percent of the region identifies with Christianity), and that there are

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

446

few biblical messages less fascinating than the idea of God bringing all things to a great Finish. In cultures where the Urspriinge (of primordial mythic events) had been strong, the projection of an Endtime captures adjusting imaginations of time into a Gestalt (Gebser 1953/1949), indeed the destabilizing of old myths by evange¬ lists may make the preached Endzeit a “life-giving” alternative to shattered begin¬ nings (Sierksma 1961). How reception of this new course translates into distinctively Pacific expressions of thought, hope, and action becomes a key matter of attention. First, apocalyptic interest among Christians has been very prevalent in modern Pacific history. Mormonism’s first “kingdom” was in Polynesia (before Salt Lake City), and Seventh-day Adventists have their highest proportion of membership in Melanesia than any other religion. Anxiety over the new millennium was intense enough in certain quarters to warrant research (e.g., Stewart and Strathern 1997; Kocher Schmid 1999), and talk of the millennial change was capable of replacing that of cargo because the biblical eschaton apparently rendered yearnings for mate¬ rial betterment irrelevant (Bieniek and Trompf 2000). While mainline churches taught against apocalyptic excitation, breakaway churches and foreign-sponsored sectaries have recently burgeoned in the Pacific, with the current Time of Troubles and nearing End being frequently preached subjects in their services (Ernst 1994). Second, distinctively Pacific Island ideas and episodes have presented them¬ selves through postcontact times. To offer preliminary coverage, we should begin with sudden outbursts in which someone will announce the fast-approaching End, calling people to join him/her if they want to avoid the final cataclysm. Take two undocumented instances. In 1965, a splinter group of the South Sea Evangelical Mission among the Toafmjbaita, north Malaita (Solomons), announced that an angels foot had come through the roof of a church; in reaction, all work was to stop and the people called to constant prayer before the imminent End of the World. Among the Wahgi (New Guinea highlands) in i960, recent Lutheran converts her¬ alded a final flood and fire, built an enclosed palisade, and warned that anyone who did not enter would perish. Both these movements amount to peremptory, uncon¬ sidered propulsions that did not last long, had no after-effect once the urgently decided day of climax had passed, and were considered by most hearers as “mad¬ ness.” There are parallels in the wider Pacific. Take the better known showdown on Onotoa of the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati, Micronesia) in 1930-32 (now Kiribati) under firebrand London Missionary Society pastor Barane, who proclaimed that God was going to descend on the island in person, and then surprisingly changed his own role from prophet to “Father of God,” a realized eschaton surrounded by body¬ guards called “Swords of Gabriel.” God did not come, and anger at the nonarrival of their “Millennium” was diverted, in this short-lived outbreak, into an attack on rejecting Catholics, two of whom were killed (Grimble 1932). In these cases an “err¬ ing acculturation” is obvious, leaders with a smattering of Bible knowledge turning its discourse to suit their own emotional needs or pretensions. There is a typical differentiating feature that shows up between most Melanesian’s new religious movements and those among the Austronesian-speakers of Polynesia

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and Micronesia. In the latter regions, prophets become distinctly mediatory in a cosmos viewed hierarchically and “vertically”; they are more likely to announce their own special divinity. Thus the presence of the Millennium in a living person becomes possible, as during the so-called Nuipana Madness of 1938 on Rennell Island (outlying Polynesia), when priest-chief Tegheta’s self-proclaimed godlike sta¬ tus allowed him to prepare the house that would take people “to heaven,” break the strictest taboos, and order (unclean) people with sores to be killed (Elbert and Monberg 1965,398-412). The same aspect showed again in 1987 when the renowned female healer Apii Piho of Rakahanga declared she was Jesus “come” (like a Polynesian Ann Lee!) and unwittingly split the Cook Islands Christian Church down the middle (Swain and Trompf 1995,185). In the above examples the millennialist tone is set by action and presence; in other situations it is located more in the working out of ideas, in “theological forms”—a third element that can contain distinctively Pacific tones. Certainly, one must be cautious about assessing the weight of millenarian thinking vis-a-vis other complexes of thought in any given movement. Only when the eschatological ele¬ ment obviously serves as a mainspring, or when a group’s ideology is well-nigh saturated with it, can we justifiably identify a set of activities as millennialist (rather than carrying millennialism as one ideational component). Various Maori move¬ ments are pertinent here. Jean E. Rosenfeld (1999; see also chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld, this volume) has wisely written of the King Movement (1858-66) and both the Pai Marire (Hauhau) and Ringatu eruptions (1862-67,1868-72) as “land and renewal movements,” and others have stressed their “prophetic” qualities, because the Maori co-opted the language of the Hebrew prophets and identified themselves as struggling Israelites (e.g., Elsemore 1985). Insofar as they developed theologies of a return to justice and a promised land as a “final solution,” the mil¬ lenarian undertones of these movements require acknowledging (Rosenfeld 1999, 38-41,125,145,281-82), and they all point toward the emergence of a Maori “Zionism” under Rua Kenana and his Twelve Apostles (in the 1900s), an attempt at a realized Millennium over which he ruled at Maungapohatu as Jesus Christ’s brother (while Christ ruled in heaven, with the two of them being “Holy Ghosts”) (Webster 1979, 160, 245). Apropos ideational issues, what we may call the “defensive use of the Scriptures,” is the point of interest: the Bible is given as holy (even if only certain books were selected) and the indigenous leaders exegete around its apocalyptic without developing a full-blown ideology.5 “Ideologies” of millenarism are distinguished by greater systematization of ideas, with their presentation sitting in a more obviously “independent space” from scriptural (even “traditional textual”) sources. In the afterglow history of Melanesian cargo cultism, for instance, such ideologies have been formulated to justify the emergence of new social forms, with the hope of abundant cargo being replaced by an alternative eschatology. Thus when, in the mid-1970s, Beig Wen sought to suc¬ ceed the deceased Yali as leader of the latter’s cross-tribal “Work,” he adjusted past teachings to answer the general consolidation of Christian discourse in the Madang region. As is characteristic of millenarian movements, he developed a new “story”

448

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(or “mythological macrohistory”) as the badge of his movement’s identity, utilizing resources from his days as a Lutheran Church Councillor. The biblical plan of salva¬ tion applied to the whites and was true for them, Beig taught, but the Madang peo¬ ples have their own “salvation history.” The blacks experienced a good period in their ancestral time (Tok pisin: taim bilong tumbuna)—paralleling the Bible time between Abraham and Moses—but then came a bad period, with the competition between Christianity and tradition, comparable to the time of divided loyalties addressed by the biblical prophets. The right road was eventually revealed by Yali (like a Melanesian Jesus), and now the Madangs can expect the longed-for time of resolution—not the coming of cargo, though, or even of Yali, let alone Jesus, but the return of the ancestors (Trompf 1983, 67-68). Notice that, by comparison with Micronesian and Polynesian examples, the Melanesian worldview is typically less hierarchical and more horizontal, the ancestors returning from the bush or over the waters rather than from a heaven or underworld. In the Wen case we find the Yali movement tending toward the guise of an inde¬ pendent church, and indeed I located one of its splinter groups in 2004, under Douglas Bad, the son of a former “law boss,” preaching (in Madang’s Trans-Gogol area) that Yali’s name should be read in the Bible instead of God, Lord, or Jesus. Other independent churches and parachurch movements in Oceania have their own comparable millenarian ideologies. Take the novel Seven Church on Misima Island (far eastern Papua), for example, where a special version of the Great Week model of history has been framed by church leader Vila Yaledona of Boma. He talks of the seven nations passing through seven ages from Adam to Noah, Noah to Jacob, Jacob to Moses, Moses to Jesus, Jesus to the present, and from the present on to the new nation to come, called the Secret Citizen. The new church exists to service the coming of this last (eschatological) nation, which is to be peo¬ pled both by the righteous spirits from the previous nations and by the Misima ancestors (Namunu 1988,31-32). Former cargoist hopes connected with mining on the island translated into this church, because by regularly “investing” money in it Misima s ancestors will allegedly ensure the maturity of millions of kina at the time of “the Secret Citizen.” The notion of an island nation playing a millennial role is hardly unknown in the Pacific. The well-known healer (vuniwai) Sekaia Loaniceva, founder of the inde¬ pendent Congregation of the Poor on Viti Levu (Fiji), announced that all the Fijian churches would “bind together” by 1985 and that Fiji would become “head of the world” by 1991, before the “Creation of a New World” by 1995 and a process of binding together all peoples into a unity by 2001 (Rokotuiviwa 1985, 182). The independency self-styled as the Remnant Church on Malaita (Solomon Islands), for another example, took its origins to be Israelite, remnants of a lost tribe arriving on the island led by Beldigao, an ancient Levite priest. A true theocracy according to his dream was at last set up in Melanesia in the Remnant Church, which would survive the false peace, then the terror” and eventual consumption of the world by fire (Maetoloa 1985,142,145). Remnantists share with other sectarian Protestants rejec¬ tion of the World Council of Churches and the European Economic Community;

PACIFIC MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS

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they are bad signs of the End, with their members unwittingly bearing the (apoca¬ lyptic) “mark of the Beast,” 666. Such reactivity against perceived threats of (globalizing) world processes has also been picked up by micronationalist and resistance groups in the complex vola¬ tilities of Melanesian politics. Playing on being a “chosen” people, and honoring flags of group identity (like the Remnantists), for instance, were features of Malaitan politics in the recent Solomons civil conflict (2000-2005); and during the war on Bougainville “King Tore’s” 666 Temple Movement signboarded the Beast’s mark of Satan’s evil empire to bolster the Resistance against pro-independence revolution¬ aries (Bohane 1997).

Conclusion Pacific millenarian activities make up a highly variegated tapestry of hopes, beliefs, and experimental strategies. In general, “metatechnology” is strong in them—by ritual and desperate action they seek to manipulate the spirit order for collective benefit, and in cargo cultism it is presumed that religion is to bring material results (Tok Pisin: kaikai) just as traditional rites did (in plentiful pigs, rich yam harvests, pregnant women). Typically, though, the social disturbances discussed above have been marginal, even eccentric; they occur mostly in out-of-the-way areas, or regions felt to be less well serviced than those near or surrounding large towns (Knauft 1978). Frustration about lack of access to goods and services, stress within changing socioeconomic relations, susceptibility to false rumors, anxiety over the implication of changes for the future, and resentment over insensitive outside interferences all can affect such areas. The responses seem irrational but are more strictly experimental and exploratory in awkward circumstances. And given the flowing together of traditional cultic attempts to have an effect on fertil¬ ity and the awesome possibilities presented by the new goods, cargo cults are quite intelligible (Jarvie 1969, 55-169), even if we can never say they were pandemic in Melanesia. Of Pacific millennial outbursts in general, we can safely affirm that most are minor episodes and apparently “go nowhere.” That others last or survive may be put down to the depths of aggravation, clever leadership, and captivating thought. On the whole, however, Oceania is a vast place where discourse of the Millennium (or the cargo, especially in Melanesia) percolates to almost all social corners; it is just that modernizing processes (such as bureaucratization, monetization, sophisti¬ cated theology, and rational planning) hold it in check. As time passes, the ambas¬ sadors of modernization—as students who return to their home villages—will have an increasingly dampening affect on more extreme expressions of millennialism. As Forrest Gump of the novel (rather than the film) discovered, when his space capsule landed in a New Guinea lake, there was no cargo cultist to be seen, only Sam (his

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

450

real name “quite a mouthful”), who was a graduate of Yale and so glad that someone “dropped in”—“Would you like some tea?” But if distinctive elements of islander eschatologies will lessen, hopes for final solutions to human predicaments will never cease, not in Oceania or anywhere else.

NOTES 1. On my prior terminological preference for millenarism (or millenarianism) as against millennialism, see Trompf 1990a, 1-10; 2000,103-7. 2. Burridge (1969,172 n. 1) and Swain (1993,133, cf. 134-42, 247-52) argue comparably, concerning the Australian Aborigines, that, with the appearance of Captain James Cooks ship, “millenarian activities... became possible.”

3. Small precontact house-lines or “hamlets” were often relocated and enlarged as villages through colonial or missionary encouragement.

4. Did the earliest cargo cult come with Rapanui (Easter Island) responses to sixteenth-century Spanish visitations, and with what the indigenes did from their quarry after the first European vessels passed by? See Swain and Trompf 1995,168, and for cargo cultism in Aboriginal Australia see Swain 1993, 217-63. 5. The unwritten assumption that the Bible is the key to European wealth—the Cargo factor —is also not to be neglected. Note Binney 1969,155.

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Barkun, Michael. 1974- Disaster and the Millennium. New Haven: Yale University Press Bieniek, Jan, and Garry Trompf. 2000. “The Millennium, Not the Cargo?” In Millennial Countdown in New Guinea, edited by Neil Whitehead, 113-32. Special issue of Ethnohistory 47, no. 1 (Winter). Billings, Dorothy. 2002. Cargo Cult as Theater: Political Performance in the Pacific. Oxford: Lexington. Binney, Judith. 1969. “Christianity and the Maoris to 1840.” New Zealand Journal of History 3, no. 2 (October): 143-65. Bohane, Ben. 1997. “Cults of War.” Australian Financial Review Magazine (November): 38-44Burridge, Kenelm. 1969. New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Cochrane, Glynn. 1970. Big Men and Cargo Cults. Oxford: Clarendon. Desroche, Henri. 1979. The Sociology of Hope. Translated by Carol Martin-Sperry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dobbin, Jay. 2012. Micronesian Traditional Religions. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Elbert, Samuel, and Torben Monberg. 1965. From the Two Canoes: Oral Traditions of Rennell and Bellona Islands. Copenhagen: Danish National Museum. Eliade, Mircea. 1965. The Two and the One. Translated by J. M. Cohen. 2d ed. New York: Harper & Row. Elsemore, Bronwyn. 1985. Like Them That Dream: The Maori and the Old Testament. Tauranga: Tauranga Moana Press. Ernst, Manfred. 1994. Winds of Change: Rapidly Growing Religious Groups in the Pacific Islands. Suva: Pacific Conference of Churches. Firth, Raymond. 1955. “The Theory of‘Cargo’ Cults: A Note on Tikopia.” Man 55, no. 142 (September): 130-32. Gebser, Jean. 1953 [1949]. Ursprung und Gegenwart. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt. Gesch, Patrick. 1985. Initiative and Initiation: A Cargo Cult-Type Movement in the Sepik against Its Background in Traditional Village Religion. St. Augustin, Germany: Anthropos-Institut. Gibbs, Philip. 1975. “Ipili Religion Past and Present.” Diploma of Anthropology diss., University of Sydney. Graziano, Frank. 1999. The Millennial New World. New York: Oxford University Press. Grimble, Arthur. 1932. “Religious Disturbances.” In Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, and the Central and Southern Line Islands: Report for the Years 1929-30, edited by Great Britain, Colonial, Office, 31-34. London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office. Harding, Thomas. 1967. “A History of Cargoism in Sio, North-East New Guinea.” Oceania 38, no. 1 (September): 1-23. Hempenstall, Peter. 1981. Protest or Experiment? Theories of “Cargo Cults.” Melbourne: LaTrobe University. Holtker, Georg. 1946. “Schwarmgeister in Neuguinea wahrend des letzten Krieges.” Neue Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft 2, no. 3: 201-16. Jarvie, Ian. 1969. The Revolution in Anthropology. 2d ed. Chicago: Gateway. Raima, Sam. 1991. “The Evolution of Cargo Cults and the Emergence of Political Parties in Melanesia.” Journal de la Society des Oceanistes 92-93, nos. 1-2:173-80. Kamma, Freerk. 1939-1940. “Levend Heidendom.” Tijdschrift: “Nieuw Guinea,” no. 2 (August): 69-90. -. 1972. Koreri: Messianic Movements in the Biak-Numfor Culture Area. {De Messiaamse Koreri-bewegingen in het Biaks-Noemfoorse cultuurgebied [1954]). Translated by M. J. van de Vatherst-Smit. The Hague: Nijhoff. Kaniku, Anne. 1977. “Milne Bay Cargo Movements.” Unpublished manuscript, University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby. Kaplan, Martha. 1995. Neither Cargo nor Cult: Ritual Politics and the Colonial Imagination in Fiji. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Keesing, Roger. 1978. “Politico-Religious Movements and Anticolonialism on Malaita: Maasina Rule in Historical Perspective.” Oceania Pt. 2,49, no. 1 (September): 46-73. Knauft, Bruce. 1978. “Cargo Cults and Relational Separation.” Behavior Science Research 13, no. 3 (second quarter): 185-240. Kocher Schmid, Christin, ed. 1999. Expecting the Day of Wrath: Versions of the Millennium in Papua New Guinea. Port Moresby: National Research Institute.

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La Barre, Weston. 1971. “Materials for a History of Studies of Crisis Cults: A Bibliographic Essay.” Current Anthropology 12, no. 1 (February): 3-44. Lanternari, Vittorio. 1962. The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults. New York: Mentor. Laracy, Hugh, ed. 1983. Pacific Protest: The Maasina Rule Movement, Solomon Islands, 1944-1952. Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies. Lattas, Andrew. 1998. Cultures of Secrecy: Reinventing Race in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Lawrence, Peter. 1964. Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lindstrom, Lamont. 1990. “Knowledge of Cargo, Knowledge of Cult: Truth and Power on Tanna, Vanuatu.” In Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements: Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious Movements, edited by Garry Trompf, 239-57. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -. 1993. Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. Loeliger, Carl, and Garry Trompf, eds. 1985. New Religious Movements in Melanesia. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies. Maetoloa, Meshach. 1985. “The Remnant Church: Two Studies.” In New Religious Movements in Melanesia, edited by Carl Loeliger and Garry Trompf, 120-48. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies. Mai, Paul. 1981. “The ‘Time of Darkness’ or Yuu KuiaT In Oral Tradition in Melanesia, edited by Donald Denoon and Roderic Lacey, 125-40. Port Moresby: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. Mair, Lucy. 1948. Australia in New Guinea. London: Christophers. . 1959. “Independent Religious Movements in Three Continents.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 1, no. 2 (January): 113-36. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1961. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. 2d ed. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. May, Ronald, ed. 1982. Micronationalist Movements in Papua New Guinea. Canberra: Australian National University. Mead, Margaret. 1956. New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation—Manus, 1928-1955. New York: Mentor. Morauta, Louise. 1974. Beyond the Village: Local Politics in Madang, Papua New Guinea. London: Athlone. Namunu, Simeon. 1988. “The Bible and the Misima Cult.” Catalysts, no. 4 (fourth quarter): 30-34. Opeba, Willmgton Jojoga. 1987. “Melanesian Cult Movements as Traditional and Religious Responses to Change. In The Gospel Is Not Western: Black Theologies from the Southwest Pacific, edited by Garry Trompf, 49-66. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. Rokotuiviwa, Paula. 1985. “The Congregation of the Poor: Fiji.” In New Religious Movements in Melanesia, edited by Carl Loeliger and Garry Trompf, 163-84. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies. Rosenfeld, Jean. 1999. The Island Broken in Two Halves: Land and Renewal Movements among the Maori of New Zealand. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Salisbury, Richard. 1958. “An ‘Indigenous’ New Guinea Cult.” Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 18: 67-76.

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Schwartz, Theodore. 1962. “The Paliau Movement in the Admiralty Islands, 1946-1954.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History New York 49, no. 2: 211-421. Sierksma, Fokke. 1961. Een nieuw hemel en een nieuwe aarde. The Hague: Mouton. Steinbauer, Friedrich. 1970. “Die Cargo-Kulte als religionsgeschichtes und missionstheologisches Problem.” Ph.D. diss., University of Erlangen-Niirnberg. Stewart, Pamela J., and Andrew [ J.] Strathern, eds. 1997. Millennial Markers. Townsville: James Cook University of North Queensland. Swain, Tony. 1993. A Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swain, Tony, and Garry Trompf. 1995. Religions of Oceania. London: Routledge. Talmon, Yonina. 1966. “Millenarian Movements.” Archieves Europeennes de Sociologie 7, no. 2:159-200. Trompf, Garry. 1983. “Independent Churches in Melanesia.” Oceania 54, no. 1 (September): 51-72; no. 2 (December): 122-32. -. 1990a. Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements in Melanesia: Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious Movements. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -. 1990b. “Keeping the Lo under a Melanesian Messiah: An Analysis of the Pomio Kivung, East New Britain.” In Christianity in Oceania: Ethnographic Perspectives, edited by John Barker, 59-80. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. -. 1994. Payback: The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Religions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -. 2000. “Millenarism: History, Sociology and Cross-Cultural Analysis.” Journal of Religious History 24, no. 1 (February): 103-24. -. 2004a. Melanesian Religion. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -. 2004b. “On Wondering about Wonder: Melanesian and the Cargo.” In Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religions and Modernity, edited by Jacob Olupona, 297-313. New York: Routledge. Trompf, Garry, with Friedegard Tomasetti. 2006. Religions of Melanesia. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. van Baal, Jan. 1961. “Erring Acculturation.” American Anthropologist 62, no. 1 (February): 108-21. Webster, Peter. 1979. Rua and the Maori Millennium. Wellington: Price Milburn. Williams, Francis. 1923. The Vailala Madness and the Destruction of Native Ceremonies in the Gulf Division. Port Moresby: Government Printer. Wilson, Bryan. 1973. Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples. New York: Harper & Row. Worsley, Peter. 1970. The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of “Cargo” Cults in Melanesia. 2d ed. London: Paladin.

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Nineteenth-, Twentieth-, and Twenty-First-Century Millennial Movements

CHAPTER 23

NATIVE AMERICAN GEOPOLITICAL, GEORESTORATIVE MOVEMENTS MICHELENE E. PESANTUBBEE

Scholars typically categorize Native American movements as nativistic ones,

which Anthony F. C. Wallace defined as “revitalization movements characterized by strong emphasis on the elimination of alien persons, customs, values, and/or mate¬ rial from the mazeway” (Wallace 1956, 267).1 Many of these movements are millen¬ nial in that Native people prophesied the destruction of whites by catastrophic natural events followed by a renewed world in which plants and animals would once again abound, the sick would be healed, and the spirits of the ancestors would return. Native efforts to eliminate alien people and customs often have been described as revolts or acts of resistance to the existing cultural system. For example, James Mooney identified the 1680 Pueblo movement as the “great revolt of the Pueblo.” He also described the movement as “one of the first determined efforts made by the natives on the northern continent to throw off the yoke of a foreign oppressor” (1973,659). In the case of the Lakota Spirit Dance of 1890, the movement was often referred to as an uprising rather than as a religious gathering. Without a doubt nativist millennial movements arose in response to European colonization of the North American continent (see chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld, this volume). For Native people, however, these movements were not revolts or uprisings against an existing cultural system. Native people, especially in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries of European and, later, American

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colonization, did not recognize the authority of European or American govern¬ ments over them, nor did they consider themselves part of those cultures. They did recognize the strength of the American will and military and many submitted to treaty negotiations and assimilation efforts in attempts to avoid or end conflict. Likewise, the early American government acknowledged the sovereignty of Native people by engaging in treaty-making with them on a nation-to-nation basis.2 Native people sometimes looked to Europeans or Americans as allies against other Native or European nations and sometimes as their enemies. When Native people joined nativist millennial movements, they were not rising up against their own governments or cultural systems. They were defending themselves against oppres¬ sion and colonization by foreign nations. If we approach the study of Native American movements as defensive acts against intruders who treat Native peoples as subject peoples, or against aggressive colonization rather than as revolts against existing cultural systems (i.e., Western, Christian), then these movements begin to take on different meanings. Nativist mil¬ lennial movements, for the most part, were responses to European and American aggression. The byproducts of colonization such as epidemic diseases, decline of game, and weakening of clan systems as well as the direct effects of military defeat, removal from traditional homelands, and relocation to reservations led to desires for salvation from oppression. However, freedom from oppression does not neces¬ sarily mean the wholesale rejection or “elimination of alien persons, customs, val¬ ues” (Wallace 1956, 267). Native people willingly incorporated some aspects of European and American cultures that made daily living easier (iron kettles, cloth, hunting rifles) or helped make sense of the changing world around them. They did want to rid themselves of those whites who oppressed them and, in some cases, those Native people who had adopted a white lifestyle. Some Native movements, however, made exceptions for particular whites. In the case of the Cherokee movement of 1811-12 three Cherokee traveling together reported being visited by a messenger from the Great Spirit who told them to “keep good and neighborly relations” with whites as long as the white people stayed outside the Cherokee nation’s boundaries (McLoughlin 1986,179-80). The messenger also told them that the Cherokee should build white houses (houses of peace) in their beloved towns for those white men to live in who were good to them and for others who can be useful to them with writing’” (McLoughlin 1986,180). According to William McLoughlin the Cherokee movement cannot “be defined simply as a reactionary effort to return to the past. Only a few looked for a miracle to rid them of the white man and bring back the game.” Rather, they sought “to survive in a way that would retain the essence of the Cherokee identity” (1986, 178-80). For Native people economic, health, social, and political concerns associated with European American colonization, although immediate and overwhelming, were symptomatic of their ultimate concern, which was loss of land. Land orients Native people; it provides continuity of stories, community, and ceremonial prac¬ tices that inform cultural identity. Without a land base, traditional economies

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religious practices, and political and social identities erode and transform. For Native Americans, as Vine Deloria, Jr., a Dakota scholar, wrote, “memory of land is a memory of ourselves and our deeds and experiences” (1999,253). The importance of land is indicated by how Native people identified and named themselves. According to John Wesley Powell, the Newe (Shoshone-Bannock) people never asked a person what nation or tribe or body of people she belonged to, but rather to ‘“what land do you belong and how are you land named?”’ (Smoak 2006, 87). The Wanapum prophet Smohalla at birth received “the name Wak-wei, or Kukkia, meaning ‘arising from the dust of the Earth Mother.” His people later called him Yuyunipitqana, “the Shouting Mountain,” because they believed that, “during his dreamings, revelations came to him from a mountain speaking inside his soul” (Ruby and Brown 1989,19). Native people’s lives were so closely tied to land that the Choctaw in Mississippi often referred to Nanih Waiya, their place of emergence, as Iholitopa Ishki, or Beloved Mother (Swanton 1931,30). The close relationship Native people have with the Earth is evident in their origin stories of emergence from the Earth, migrations across the continent, or creation of the Earth from mud taken from the depths of water and placed on Turtle’s back. Much of what has been written about Native American movements refers to Native peoples’ beliefs that the decline in praying and ritual practices had displeased the Creator, who in turn withheld the bounty of the Earth and allowed whites to take their land. Deloria agreed, noting that Native prophets warned the people that their laxity in carrying out ceremonies and their failure to pray regularly to the Creator had led to their present state. However, he attributed the decline in ceremo¬ nial life and destruction of much of the cultural systems that made ceremony and ritual significant to the removal of Native people from their traditional territories (Deloria 1999,244-45). Likewise, for those movements that incorporated new sym¬ bols or drew on Christian beliefs, such as the Indian Shaker Church founded in 1882 by the Squaxin John Slocum, from the Puget Sound area of Washington, loss of land and removal to reservations underlie much of the discussion about their existence. When Congress passed the Dawes Act (the Indian land severalty act) of 1887, the Indian Shakers chose to own land in severalty, in essence becoming landholding citizens of the United States, in order to be able to establish their own church dis¬ tinct and independent of the white Presbyterian Church (Mooney 1973, 757, 760).3 Land was so important to Native people’s orientation to the physical and spiritual world that, according to Reverend Myron Eells, land had “been the only thing which even caused them [Puget Sound Native people] to talk about war” (Barrett 1957, 342). Among the Cherokee the Council passed a law in 1818 “affirming that any Cherokee who agreed to sell any land of the nation without the approval of a full council would be subject to death” (McLoughlin 1986, 241). Thus, nineteenth-century Native movements might be better understood as geopolitical, georestorative movements in that they focused on return of traditional homelands to Native people and restoration of a symbiotic relationship to those lands. The same is true of the Native peace movements of the twentieth century that sought to restore Native rights to land including gaining title to land illegally taken

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by non-Indians, access to restricted sites, and unhindered movement across borders. Peace movements also sought to halt the environmental devastation taking place on reservations. Although the Native movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries expressed similar concerns regarding traditional homelands, they differed some¬ what in their political relationships to the United States which, in turn, informed the ways in which they envisioned the coming of a renewed world. Nineteenthcentury Native millennial prophecies warned of supernatural intervention, in some cases, with human collaboration that would lead to a catastrophic end. Some of the prophecies provided approximate dates for the onset of the apocalyptic event. Late twentieth-century Native peace movements also warned of the destruction of the world. However, according to some Native activists, the end would be brought about not by supernatural intervention, but rather by humans’ failure in following the Creator’s instructions to live in peace and care for the Earth. In other words, humans would bring about the destruction of the world through war or environ¬ mental ruin. Other Native activists did speak of divine intervention. For example, Corbett Sundown from Tonawanda Reservation warned that the Creator was mad about the environmental destruction and was “going to send a great wind—more terrible than the atom bomb (Arden 1987, 398). In addition, Native peace activists tied the catastrophe not to a specific date, but to place. That place was neither geo¬ graphically local, as was the case in the nineteenth century, nor was it limited to Native lands; rather, it was a global phenomenon. Thus, destruction of whites only was not a central theme. In the case of the Hopi the Universal Plan included purifi¬ cation of those Hopi who failed to follow the prophecies and teachings in order to save the world and all humankind (Katchongva C1972,22-23). Late twentieth-century peace movements were avertive in that Native peace activists taught that if humans heeded divine warnings to halt human conflict and environmental destruction, the prophesied catastrophic end of the world could be prevented.

Nineteenth-Century Movements The geopolitical, georestorative movements of the nineteenth century were distin¬ guished by Native efforts to stop aggressive American expansion and to restore their symbiotic and sacred relationship to their traditional homelands. The struggles for land began long before the establishment of the United States. In the case of the British, the Crown forbade individuals to treat with Native people for lands. Such negotiations were generally left to the separate colonies. However, partly in response to the uneven management of Indian affairs and Native people’s responses to land fraud and unauthorized encroachments, the British Crown issued the 1763 procla¬ mation that forbade further cessions of Indian land west of the crest of the Appalachians (Price and Clinton 1983,70-71). The proclamation, however, did little

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to stop the westward migration of white settlers. After the American Revolution the Continental Congress tried “to guarantee Indian occupancy of land against encroachment of white settlers,” but “could secure approval only for a proclamation restraining alienation of Indian lands” that were outside the limits or jurisdiction of any of the states (Price and Clinton 1983, 72). When the United States signed the Treaty of Paris of 1783 it not only proclaimed victory in the war with Great Britain but also interpreted that win as a defeat of Britain’s Native allies giving the United States and its member states “not only political sovereignty over, but also ownership of the soil of, all Indian territory south of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River and east of the Mississippi River” (Wallace 1969,151). The westward migration of European Americans led to a series of treaties between the United States and Native nations that for the next eighty years resulted in massive cessions of land and relocation of Native people to reservations.4 In the eastern part of the United States the Continental Commissioners, through threat of war and taking of hostages, forced the Iroquoian Confederacy to sign the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784) in which the Haudenausaunee (Six Nations of the Iroquoian Confederacy) agreed to cede their lands west of New York and Pennsylvania and to move to a reservation in New York (Wallace 1969,153). About fifty years later west of the Rocky Mountains the Newe and other Native peoples witnessed more than 250,000 emigrants with tens of thousands of animals crossing their territory on the way to the Pacific coast. The massive emigration denuded pastures and used up nearly all available firewood in a narrow, semiarid corridor where many Newe estab¬ lished their winter camps. The impact on the pedestrian Newe was profound as the emigrants overfished and hunted the areas critical to Newe survival (Smoak 2006, 41-42). By the 1850s the United States initiated wars against various Native groups in the region followed by imposed land cessions and relocation to reservations. Numerous prophets arose all across the continent following the occupation and destruction of land and resources and creation of reservations. They typically attracted followers from a number of tribal nations creating regional georestorative millennial movements. The leaders of Native movements often drew inspiration from previous defensive efforts by other Native peoples. In the case of the 1792 Handsome Lake movement, the events leading up to the Seneca prophet’s vision involved the Haudenausaunee as well the Shawnee, Wyandot, Anishinabeg, Delaware, Ottawa and Ojibwa. Two Shawnee brothers, Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh, who later started another movement in 1805, were influenced by the 1760-65 Delaware movement led by the Prophet Neolin and the Ottawa warrior Pontiac. In fact, Gregory Dowd argues that the Shawnee brothers “drew upon traditions of nativism and well-established networks of intertribal relations that had long been vibrant throughout the trans-Appalachian borderlands, reaching back into the past far beyond the time of Pontiac” (1992,311). The trade economy, encroachment of white settlers, and the “civilizing” agenda of the United States led to conflict, displacement, and impoverishment of Native people. As Native people adopted more of the habits of white settlers, their atten¬ tion to traditional mores declined. The leaders of nativist movements of the

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nineteenth century understood that in order to reverse the decline in Native cultural ways, they needed to reestablish proper relations with the land. Without the land Native people could not properly carry out ceremonies, remember creation stories, or care for other inhabitants of the land such as birds, animals, and fish. And, they believed if they did not carry out their responsibilities the Creator would withhold favor. The Shawnee, for example, believed that the Master of Life had cho¬ sen them “to occupy the center of the earth (the Shawnee homeland) and to bring harmony to the universe” (Edmunds 1983,25). The Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa, taught that life in the spirit world provided the same elements as in this world with “a rich, fertile country, abounding in game, fish, pleasant hunting grounds and fine corn fields” (Trowbridge 1939,41). He instructed Native people to restore the bounty of the Earth by praying to the Master of Life “that the earth be fruitful” (Edmunds 1983,36).

As white settlers encroached more and more upon Native lands and sovereignty, Native people began emphasizing their separate origins and creation from white people. Whites were seen not only as invaders on the American continent, but also as sources of evil (Dowd 1992, 312). Tenskwatawa told his people that the Master of Life declared that the Americans were not his children, “but the children of the Evil Spirit” (Edmunds 1983, 38). According to Joel Martin (1991, 128), the Muskogee (Creek) prophets of the 1814 Redstick Movement told their people that “if the earth shook, it was because the Maker of Breath could no longer stand the evils that Anglo-Americans forced on creation and on the people of the land.” Like many Native nations across the continent the Wanapum, who lived along the Columbia River in Washington, initially were friendly toward whites and incorporated those Western goods and habits that made life easier for them. However, once Americans began fighting the Wanapum over land and negotiating treaties that confined the Wanapum and Yakima onto reservations, the Columbia River people began to view Americans as evil (Ruby and Brown 1989, 24-25).

Many Native prophets preached that the land would destroy the evil white invaders and restore the old ways. In the case of the Shawnee movement, Tenskwatawa told his followers that the Master of Life had said if the Indians followed his doc¬ trines then the land would be overturned destroying the whites, and Native people alone would inhabit the land and order would be restored to their world (Edmunds 1983,38). According to Moravian records, Tenskwatawa also declared that the Master

of Life “had shown him the deer were half a tree’s length under the ground and that these would soon appear again on the earth if the Indians did what he told them to do, and then there would be an abundance of deer once more” (Gipson 1938,392). Among the Cherokee, in 1811 Tsali related that in his vision a messenger from God told him. The Mother of the Nation has forsaken you because all her bones are being broken through the grinding. She wifi return to you, however, if you put the white people out of the land and return to your former manner of life” (Gambold and Gambold 1811). To Native people natural disasters were evidence of the Earth’s anger at Native and non-Native people. When a severe earthquake rocked the Pacific Northwest on 14 December 1872, Native people “believed that the Earth Mother was

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shaking the land in anger at whites and those Indians who were desecrating her face, and at Indians who would let them do this” (Ruby and Brown 1989,61). Restoration of the right relationship with the Earth and the spirit world required that followers of nativist movements return to their old ways. All these elements were fast disappearing from their world. Smohalla, the Dreamer prophet, who led the 1850 movement among the Columbia Plateau people, said that the Indians’ troubles with invading white people and their related suffering was due “to their having abandoned their own religion and violated the laws of nature and the pre¬ cepts of their ancestors” (Smoak 2006, 79; Mooney 1973, 719). Smohalla and other prophets in the Columbia River region warned the people that the Earth Mother also shook the Earth because they were lying, gambling, stealing, and drinking (Ruby and Brown 1989, 61). Native people became angry with missionaries and the U.S. government, which had waged war against various tribes and as victors imposed land cessions. The removal of Native people to reservations and the opening of previously held tribal lands to white settlers further fueled expressions of anti-Americanism (Ruby and Brown 1989, 9). Native people experienced disorientation and conflict when forced onto reservations that previously had been part of the territory of others. Relocation not only removed one group of people from their sacred places and thus their his¬ tories, but also displaced another group who had previously occupied the land, which was to become the destination of the newcomers. When General Oliver O. Howard tried to convince the Nimi’ipuu (Nez Perce) and other Dreamer bands to accept some land for a reservation in 1877, Chief Joseph told him he would not accept the land. He said, “It would be wrong to disturb these people. I have no right to take their homes. I have never taken what did not belong to me. I will not now” (Young Joseph 1879, 422; Ruby and Brown 1989, 77). In addition, the U.S. govern¬ ment often removed Native people to areas that proved to be unhealthy for them. Chief Joseph lamented that his people were moved far from their healthy country of mountains and clear water to “a low river bottom, with no water except river water to drink and cook.” He reported that many of his people “sickened and died, and we buried them in this strange land” (Young Joseph 1879,430).

1890 Ghost Dance The 1890 Lakota Spirit Dance, or Wanagi Wacipi, more popularly known as the Ghost Dance, has received the most attention of all Native American movements primarily because of the massacre of more than three hundred Minneconjou and Hunkpapa Lakota, including women and children, at Wounded Knee Creek in the dead of winter 1891. The dance known by the Numu (Paiute) as nanigukwa, “dance in a circle,” first gained notice in 1870 when Wodziwob, a Numu (Fish Lake Paiute), related a message from the Creator that if Native people followed the prescribed

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ceremonies the spirits of the deceased would return to this Earth and change it into a paradise (Mooney 1973, 870-71; Flood 1995, 29, 45; DuBois 1939, 4). News of the dance spread quickly north and west into California and Oregon. The dance had all but ceased by fall 1873 but it inspired revivals of preexisting religious traditions and new belief systems among various California peoples. The dance continued longer among the Newe people, according to Smoak, because it could be interpreted vari¬ ously as militant resistance for the mounted buffalo hunters, who felt the depriva¬ tion most due to depleted herds, and as accommodation by the less mobile pedestrian Shoshones, who participated more in the government’s agricultural and assimila¬ tive programs. The Ghost Dance was also deeply rooted in Newe cultural and reli¬ gious beliefs (Mooney 1973, 791; DuBois 1939, 1-4; Smoak 2006, 114-16, 118, 80; Hittman 1997,29, 63). The better-known 1890 Ghost Dance began when Wovoka, a Numu (Northern Paiute), had a vision during an eclipse of the sun that occurred 1 January 1889 (Mooney 1973, 771, 774). In 1892 Wovoka told Mooney that he began teaching the Ghost Dance to his people sometime around 1888 and that during his vision, “God told him he must go back and tell his people they must be good and love one another, have no quarreling, and live in peace with the whites” (Mooney 1973, 771-72). Wovoka’s message was transformative in that he prophesied a renewal of the Earth, and redemptive in that he called for Indians and whites to live in peace (Smoak 2006,165). He promised Native people that if they faithfully obeyed his instructions and performed the dance he gave them, then a time would come when they would be reunited with their relatives and there would be no more death, sickness, or old age (Mooney 1973,772). Porcupine, a Cheyenne, reported that Wovoka told him and others “the whites and Indians were to be all one people.” If everyone behaved as friends, the Earth would become “large enough to contain us all” (Mooney 1973, 796).

The Lakota had heard rumors about the dance. However, they received their first definite account in spring 1890 from a delegation of Lakota who visited Wovoka. The delegation told them that if Native people followed Wovoka’s instructions and danced, the spirits of deceased relatives would return and whites would be annihi¬ lated by the Great Spirit. The spirits would reinhabit the Earth, which originally belonged to the Indians, and would drive immense herds of buffalo and fine ponies in front of them (Mooney 1973, 787). One Lakota version of the catastrophe pre¬ dicted that a “landslide was to be accompanied by a flood of water, which would flow into the mouths of the whites and cause them to choke with mud. Storms and whirlwinds were also to assist in their destruction. The Indians would emerge onto the surface of the new Earth created by the avalanche to cbehold boundless prairies covered with long grass and filled with great herds of buffalo and other game” (Mooney 1973,788). Although the Ghost Dance originated with Wovoka and spread among the Great Basin and Plateau peoples, and less so to the south among the Walapai, Cohonino, Mohave, and Navajo, its spread east of the Rockies among the Lakota drew the most attention of the American public and scholars. Many outsiders felt

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that the Lakota had corrupted the basic message of peace in Wovoka’s prophecy. However, as Mooney pointed out, every Native nation that adopted the Ghost Dance shaped it according to their particular cultural practices and beliefs (Mooney 1973, 785> 777)- In addition, the Lakota were not alone in believing that a catastrophic event would lead to the destruction of whites. Many of the tribal nations that adopted the Ghost Dance believed whites would be destroyed by divine intervention. Lakota spirit dancers, like other ghost dancers, expected divine intervention would destroy the whites as long as they danced. Captain Dick, a Numu, told Captain J. M. Lee that a big flood would come and drown all white people. A Cheyenne and Arapaho delegation that visited Wovoka in August 1891 reported that Wovoka told them the Earth would shake but they would not be hurt (Mooney 1973, 781, 784). The Arapaho Sitting Bull, however, believed “that this new Earth as it advances will be preceded by a wall of fire which will drive the whites across the water to their original and proper country, while the Indians will be enabled by means of the sacred feathers to surmount the flames and reach the promised land” (Mooney 1973, 786). In yet another version told by the Walapai of Arizona, the future destruction of whites and unbelieving Indians would occur by hurricane with thunder and lightening (Mooney 1973,786). A number of factors fueled rumors that the Lakota Spirit Dance was a war dance and that ghost dancers planned to attack whites. Agents, well aware of the distressed conditions in which the Lakota lived due to confiscation of land and con¬ finement to reservations, failure of the government to comply with treaty obliga¬ tions, reductions in the amount of rations, poor quality of food, and failed crops due to drought, knew the Lakota had just cause to fight for their own survival. American Horse, speaking on behalf of a delegation of Lakota at a council at Pine Ridge in November 1890, said that since he and 580 others signed the Sioux bill, whites had taken their land, their chickens were stolen, some of their cattle killed, and their crops entirely lost because they were attending the council rather than home taking care of their crops. Many whites believed such deprivation led to Lakota unrest. In his report to the Department of War for 1891, General Miles wrote that there was no doubt that the suffering of the Lakota was one of the principal causes for the Sioux disturbance (Mooney 1973, 839-40, 834). The rumors that the Lakota planned to attack whites, however, derived from ignorance of Lakota culture, attempts by agents to suppress the dance, and the deliberate efforts by some whites to provoke the Lakota and scare white settlers. Local ranchers, without provocation, attacked a Lakota hunting party of fifty peo¬ ple, mostly women. In another instance a group of cowboys attacked some Brule Lakota who were returning to their camp after visiting a trading store (Flood 1995, 47, 51; Utley 1963, 140-41). Agents, local white settlers, and newspapers called for soldiers to be sent to South Dakota. For ranchers wanting more land and farmers suffering from the drought, soldiers meant much-needed income for local whites. Lakota responded to the threat of troops arriving in Dakota Territory by wearing ghost shirts believed to be impermeable to bullets and vowing to defend themselves

466

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against attacks. The presence of ghost shirts and unfounded rumors by local whites of weapons stockpiling contributed to perceptions that the Lakota Spirit Dance was a war dance and that the ghost dancers were preparing to attack whites. “Religious persecution, colonialism, and cultural ignorance” in conjunction with lack of coor¬ dination between agents, government officials, and military officers and inexperi¬ enced soldiers led to the 29 December 1890 massacre of more than three hundred unarmed Lakota men, women, and children (Pesantubbee 2000,63; Flood 1995,45). The massacre at Wounded Knee, billed as a battle by whites, forced the Lakota to give up land desired by ranchers and resulted in fraudulent claims by farmers and ranchers for Lakota depredations (Utley 1963,110,117; Flood 1995,50-51,53). In comparison to the Lakota experience, the Pawnee ghost dancers in Oklahoma, who also suffered deprivation and removal from their homelands, had a different experience with local white authorities. The Ghost Dance reached the Pawnee in fall 1891 when Frank White returned home from a visit with the Comanche and Wichita, who were dancing and singing as they had been instructed by Sitting Bull, a Northern Arapaho. Although the Pawnee ghost dancers at first sang mostly Arapaho and Wichita songs, they began to introduce their own songs and rituals as individual Pawnee began to learn them from their own visions. Late in 1892 Joseph Carrion and several other men went to see Sitting Bull. While visiting him Joseph fasted and had a vision in which he learned that any ghost dancer could learn new songs and rituals through visions. He also received a gift of the hand game. The highly ritual¬ ized hand games became a powerful ceremonial part of the Pawnee Ghost Dance (Lesser 1978,56, 62-63, 66-78). Frank White taught that all white people and those Pawnee who were part white would be blown away by the wind. He told the Pawnee that believers would awaken to buffalo and the return of their relatives who had died. Despite the apocalyptic tone of the message, local whites and agents did not fear a Pawnee attack. The vio¬ lence that struck the Lakota was avoided among the Pawnee partly because govern¬ ment officials promised to allow the Pawnee to ghost dance if they would sell what the government considered to be surplus lands and accept individual allotments. Although the Pawnee initially rejected the allotment plan, because it meant selling a large part of their land, many eventually agreed. They agreed to sell their land because the ghost dancers believed that once the wind blew away the whites their lands would be restored to them (Lesser 1978,62, 65-67).

Twentieth-Century Peace Movements Numerous Native movements arose in the twentieth century, but none matched the visibility and extent of the varied and numerous efforts that comprised American Indian activism during the 1960s and 1970s. Native people, no longer subject peo¬ ples, but citizens of the United States since passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of

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3 June 1924, began demanding redress for the wrongs they suffered as oppressed people. This “real and discernible social movement on the part of Indian people” differed, in part, from Native movements of earlier eras because the leadership was diffuse and the emphasis and action varied from place to place (Lurie 1970,305--6). Two major approaches developed, which can be broadly categorized as militant activism and peacemaking. Participants in both approaches sought to claim treaty rights; the right to self-determination in education, government, economic devel¬ opment, and health; return of illegally taken land; and revitalization of spiritual and cultural knowledge and practices. Militant activists, drawing on the tactics of the American civil rights movement of African Americans, emphasized political and social rights. Peacemakers turned to ancient prophecies to convince others of the urgency of bringing about global peace and environmental health to avert the inevi¬ table destruction of the world that would result from failure to follow the Creator’s messages. The roots of militant activism can be traced, in part, to the protests of the 1950s in response to the federal government’s relocation and termination programs and to the rise of national Indian organizations such as the National Indian Youth Council. However, the takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969 by Native activists became a defining moment in the movement. The island was first claimed by Native people in 1964. Belva Cottier, a Lakota, conceived of the idea of claiming Alcatraz Island as surplus land under the terms of the old Sioux Treaty of 1868, a claim the federal court system later disallowed. Those first claimants offered to purchase the island for forty-seven cents an acre, the same price the U.S. government had offered to pay to settle claims made by California Indians under the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 for 65 million acres taken from them (Johnson 1996,17-19,59). Five years later, on 9 November 1969, fourteen urban Native youths occupied Alcatraz for nineteen hours. This time they claimed the island by right of discovery. The occupiers released a statement to the press in which they demanded justice for all the suffering Native people had endured as a result of whites stealing their land. On 20 November of the same year, eighty-nine Native people again occupied Alcatraz (Johnson 1996,50,61,63,65). This time they told the U.S. government that they had gathered at Alcatraz “to claim our traditional and natural right to create a meaningful use for our Great Spirit’s land” (Johnson 1996, 69). Although the occu¬ piers had plans for development of an “All Indian University and Cultural Complex,” which would house a spiritual center, ecological center, medicinal herb garden, and a museum, land figured prominently among the messages displayed by the occupi¬ ers. Large-scale signs proclaiming “Indian Land,” “Indians Welcome,” “United Indian Property,” “Home of the Free,” and smaller signs on interior doors such as “Sioux,” “Pomo Room,” and “Paiutes” signified the importance of place to the occupiers (Rundstrom 1997,189-91,194-95,199). Alcatraz became a symbol of broken prom¬ ises, including the loss of land (Johnson 1996,1). Around the time of the Alcatraz occupations, other Native people were orga¬ nizing unity conventions on the East Coast and in Oklahoma. The Tonawanda Seneca hosted the first unity convention on their reservation in western New York

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in 1967. They drew around 175 delegates from more than fifty tribal nations (Treat 2003, 23). They came together to share mythic and prophetic teachings and “dis¬ cussed strategies for surviving the continuing invasion of the Americas” (Treat 2003, 23). After the convention ended several of the participants arranged the North American Indian Unity Caravan, which traveled across the country sharing a “mes¬ sage of apocalypse, natural law, and intertribal solidarity” (Treat 2003,24). The sec¬ ond unity convention was held in eastern Oklahoma the following year, and the third convention returned to Tonawanda Seneca Reservation in 1969. One of the organizers, Beeman Logan, wanted to unite all Indians and stimulate a revival of tribal traditions (Treat 2003,13,28). Although delegates discussed many issues ranging from health and education to unemployment and police brutality, land also figured prominently at these gath¬ erings. During their discussions at the 1969 gathering, everyone realized that “almost every tribal community represented at the convention was embroiled in some type of conflict involving land rights or cultural freedoms” (Treat 2003,14). Haudenosaunee activists, inspired by the 1969 unity convention, organized the White Roots of Peace collective for the purpose of encouraging intertribal solidarity. A group of tradi¬ tionalists led by Tom Porter made a two-month tour of the West Coast, visiting reservation communities, urban centers, college campuses, churches, and prisons, sharing the Haudenosaunee teachings on the Kalanerekowa or “Great Law of Peace” and showing You Are on Indian Land, a documentary film about the Cornwall Island Bridge blockade by the Mohawk in 1968 (Treat 2003,34). After the tour, Porter and Jake Swamp, Wolf Clan Chief at Akwesasne, contin¬ ued sharing the Great Law of Peace founded by the Peacemaker and Hiawatha sometime around 950

c.e.5

According to the Haudenosaunee, the Creator became

disappointed with humans who had started disregarding the original intent to give thanks to the Creator for all the elements in nature and to live in peace. The Creator sent the Peacemaker to the Haudenosaunee to convince the people who were con¬ stantly at war to set aside their weapons. The Peacemaker instructed the Haudenosaunee to place their weapons in the hole, where he planted a tall white pine tree called the Tree of Peace, which signifies the Great Law of Peace. At the top of the tree is the eagle who is the guardian of the Iroquois Confederacy. Four white roots, which signify peace, spread to the four directions (Swamp 1990,13; Schaaf 1985, 6; Treat 2003,23; Akwesasne Notes 1985). A few years earlier Thomas Banyacya, a Hopi, began traveling around the coun¬ try sharing Hopi prophecies about a coming global conflict, which Hopi leaders determined had begun with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Banyacya and other Hopi messengers spoke of “tolerance and peaceful coexistence” (Treat 2003,18). According to Hopi creation stories, humans emerged from three previous worlds, each of which had been destroyed after humans failed to follow nature’s rules. Only a few people survived each purification of the world (Banyacya 1993). When the Hopi emerged into this, the fourth, world they received sacred stone tab¬ lets from Maasau’u, the Great Spirit, which contained instructions and warnings. According to Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan Tablet, the Creator

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placed the Hopi in their homelands to be its caretakers. He further stated that part of the commission that the Hopi received from the Creator through Maasau’u was to sound the warning to the world that only by restoring land title to the Hopi can humans “avert the terrible consequences foreseen long ago” (1991,3). In his speech to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1992, Banyacya warned that we are now in the fourth world, which is in terrible shape, and that human beings are not taking care of the Earth as the Great Spirit directed. He pointed out that there are increasing floods, more damaging hurricanes, hail storms, climate changes and earthquakes, which Native prophesies said would come. According to him, “Even animals and birds are warning us with strange change in their behavior such as the beaching of whales.... If we humans do not wake up to the warnings, the great purification will come to destroy this world just as the previ¬ ous worlds were destroyed” (Banyacya 1993) (see also chapter 32 by Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, this volume). The Haudenosaunee and Hopi messages of peace and purification were expres¬ sions of avertive apocalypticism (see chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, this volume), and the prevention of the apocalypse concerned the restoration of land to Native people. According to the Mohawk prophecy of the Seventh Generation, seven generations after contact with Europeans Native people would see the day when the elm trees will die, birds will fall from the sky, maple trees and strawberries will disappear, thunder will come from the east instead of the west and then not come at all, and the fish will die. Eventually the human “would grow ashamed of the way that he had treated his mother provider, the earth. [...] After seven generations of living in close contact with the Europeans, the Onkwehonwe [human beings or Indians] would rise up and demand that their rights and stewardship over the earth be respected and restored” (Akwesasne Notes 1989c, 26). Banyacya addressed not only concerns about global environmental destruction, but also the wrongs suffered by indigenous people whose lands were forcibly taken from them. He told the delegates at the 1992 UN General Assembly, “No one should be relocated from their sacred homelands in this Western Hemisphere or anywhere in the world. Acts of forced relocation, such as Public Law 93-531 in the United States, must be repealed” (Banyacya 1993). The Native American activist movements that began at Alcatraz and Tonawanda continued throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. Swamp and Banyacya traveled across the country and internationally to spread their messages of peace. Swamp held Tree of Peace ceremonies as a symbol of peace and harmony for many peoples in the world. He helped plant trees across the United States, in Canada, at the Berlin Wall, in Australia, and in Japan. In 1985 the United Nations adopted the Tree of Peace as an ideal symbol for the International Year of Youth. The goal was to plant trees all over the world. More than one hundred nations and one hundred world organizations joined in the effort to plant 1 billion trees worldwide (Akwesasne Notes 1989a, 3; Akwesasne Notes 1990,12; Ryan 1990,1; Akwesasne Notes 1985,5; Schaaf 1985, 8). Banyacya shared the Hopi prophecies with spiritual leaders around the world. In 1972 he attended the Sweden Environmental Forum to share the Hopi message (Banyacya 1992). Banyacya also spoke to the UN General Assembly in 1992,

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the International Year for the World’s Indigenous Peoples. David Berry reported that a senior UN official said that Banyacya’s “effort to reach the United Nations inspired the invitation to indigenous people to address the General Assembly” (i993).

Conclusion For Native followers of nativist millennial movements, their ultimate concern, that “which is more important than anything else in the universe for the person[s] involved,” is arguably land (Baird 1971, 18). They are physically and spiritually sustained by the land. The feeling of unity with land orients people to the sacred and to a community of people who share stories about the land (Deloria 1999, 251-53)- The decline in ceremonial practices, the rise in antisocial behavior such as alcohol abuse and violence, and deprivation were all believed to be symptoms of loss of traditional homelands. Displacement from and changes to the land, including depletion of game, fish, and indigenous plants, led to the rise of geo¬ political movements that comprised efforts to regain control of land. Native leaders sought to remove invading whites by divine intervention, military action, or a combination of the two. The movements were geopolitical in that they wanted to change the future conditions of Native people by changing the politi¬ cal structure and authority that oppressed them. The movements were also geo¬ restorative in that by pushing white Americans back to the sea or by destroying them, Native people could once again occupy their traditional territories and reestablish spiritual and community ties with the land. Restoration of a symbi¬ otic relationship to the land meant revitalization of those customs and rituals that realized the relationship. Native people of the nineteenth century struggled against encroachments into their territories, loss of land through the treaty process, removal from traditional homelands, and confinement to reservations. They recognized their complicity in their changing status due to their adoption of white ways and the decline in atten¬ tion to their religious obligations to the Earth and to the Creator. Native millennialists sought to reinhabit traditional territories and assume the responsibilities that living on the land entailed, which included following the religious and cultural tra¬ ditions of their ancestors. These traditions were not only those of an ancient past, but also those of the past experiences of the living. They typically envisioned an ideal future free of oppression from white colonizers. They based their images of the future on the ideal conditions that they believed the spirits of the deceased encoun¬ tered in the land of the Spirit. The geopolitical, georestorative movements of the twentieth century differed from those of the previous century in approach but not in ultimate concern. Rather than focusing on divine intervention or war to restore land, Native people sought to

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affect public opinion through militant activism and peacemaking to end the polluting of reservation lands, gain recognition of treaty rights, stop desecration of sacred sites, and obtain the return of illegally obtained land. Native movements of the twentieth century, like earlier ones, sought to reestablish traditional ties to lands once occupied by Native people. They also sought the right to tribal self-determination about how they would live on that land. Adherents spoke of the responsibility of Native people and all people worldwide for restoring the health of the Earth. They turned to reli¬ gious leaders on their reservations to lend them spiritual support in their endeavors. Their prayers were not for divine intervention to destroy the whites, but for all peo¬ ple to come together in peace to stop the inevitable destruction of the world if people did not change their ways (see chapter 32 by Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, this volume). They believed, as concluded by the Indigenous Council of Elders at the Earth Walk Conference in Kurrajorg, New South Wales, Australia, in 1989, that peace and unity can only come when the sovereign rights to land and life of the indigenous peoples of the world are recognized (Akwesasne Notes 1989b, 3). The Native move¬ ments of the twentieth century were seen by Native people, as Deloria described it, as the “fulfillment of ancient Hopi and Iroquois religious predictions of the end of white domination of the continent” (Deloria 1970,246).

NOTES 1. Wallace (1956,266) defines mazeway as an individual’s mental image of nature, society, culture, personality, and one’s own body image. 2. See Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 315 (1832), for Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion that the Cherokee Nation is a distinct community occupying its own territory and that treaties “mark out the boundary that separates Cherokee country from Georgia” and establish their domestic dependent nation status (Price and Clinton 1983,372-78). 3. In order to encourage the adoption of the value of individualism among Native people and to discourage communal ownership of land, which supported Native culture and tribal institutions, the Indian land severalty act—the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887—authorized individually owned allotments of land. 4. Treaty-making with Native American tribal nations and recognition of their independent status ended in 1871 (25 U.S.C. 71). The Dawes Act of 1887 led to allotment of lands in severalty, with “surplus” land opened to non-Indian settlement. See Price and Clinton 1983,78-79. 5. Alvin Josephy estimated that the event occurred around 1570 (1961,12).

REFERENCES Akwesasne Notes. 1985. “Tree of Peace for Harmony” (Summer): 5. Akwesasne Notes. 1989a. “Akwesasne Family Visits Australia” (Spring): 3.

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Akwesasne Notes. 1989b. “The Committee of the Indigenous Council of The Earthwalk Conference Concludes” (Spring): 3. Akwesasne Notes. 1989c. “Two Prophecies: Hopes and Fears for the Future” (Mid-Winter): 26. Akwesasne Notes. 1990. “Mohawk Leader Visits Japan” (Early Fall): 12. Arden, Harvey. 1987. “The Fire That Never Dies.” National Geographic 172, no. 3 (September): 375-403. Baird, Robert D. 1971. Category Formation and the History of Religion. The Hague: Mouton. Banyacya, Thomas. 1992. Speech given at Unitas House in Berkeley, California. Native-L Issues Pertaining to Aboriginal People. 10 December, listserv.tamu.edu/cgi/wa. -■ 1993- “The Hopi Message to the United Nations Assembly.” Native-L Issues Pertaining to Aboriginal People. 18 January, listserv.tamu.edu/cgi/wa. Barrett, H. G. 1957. Indian Shakers: A Messianic Cult of the Pacific Northwest. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Berry, David. 1993. “Report on Progress and Request for Support.” Native-L Issues Pertaining to Aboriginal People. 9 January, listserv.tamu.edu/cgi/wa. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1970 [1969]. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Avon. -. 1999. For This Land: Writings on Religion in America. New York: Routledge. Dowd, Gregory E. 1992. “Thinking and Believing: Nativism and Unity in the Ages of Pontiac and Tecumseh.” American Indian Quarterly, no. 3 (Summer): 309—35. DuBois, Cora. 1939. “The 1870 Ghost Dance.” Anthropological Records 3, no. 1:1—144. Edmunds, R. David. 1983. The Shawnee Prophet. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Flood, Renee Sansom. 1995. Lost Bird of Wounded Knee. New York: Scribner. Gambold, John, and A. R. Gambold. 1811. “Springplace Diary,” Cherokee Mission, 10 February. Records of the Moravian Mission among the Indians of North America, Box 193, folder 8. Courtesy of the Moravian Archives, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Translated into English by Elizabeth Marx for William McLoughlin. Gashweseoma. 1991. “The Statement of Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan Tablet.” Akwesasne Notes 22, no. 6 (Midwinter): 3-4. Gipson, Lawrence Henry, ed. 1938. The Moravian Indian Mission on White River. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau. Hittman, Michael. 1997- Wovoka and the Ghost Dance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Johnson, Troy R. 1996. The Occupation of Alcatraz Island. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Josephy, Allen. 1961. The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Leadership. New York: Viking. Katchongva, Dan. c. 1972. Hopi Message for All People. N.p.: White Roots of Peace. Lesser, Alexander. 1978 [1933]. The Pawnee Ghost Dance Hand Game. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lurie, Nancy Oestreich. 1970. “An American Indian Renascence?” In The American Indian Today, edited by Stuart Levine and Nancy O. Lurie, 295-327. Baltimore: Penguin. Martin, Joel W. 1991. Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees Struggle for a New World. Boston: Beacon. McLoughlin, William G. 1986. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Mooney, James. 1973 [1896]. The Ghost-Dance Religion and Wounded Knee. New York: Dover.

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Pesantubbee, Michelene E. 2000. “From Vision to Violence: The Wounded Knee Massacre.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 62-81. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Price, Monroe E., and Robert N. Clinton. 1983. Law and the American Indian: Readings, Notes and Cases. 2d ed. Charlottesville, Va.: Michie; orig. ed. Bobs-Murrill Co., 1973. Ruby, Robert H., and John A. Brown. 1989. Dreamer Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Rundstrom, Robert A. 1997. “American Indian Placemaking on Alcatraz, 1969-71.” In American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk, edited by Troy Johnson, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne, 186-206. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ryan, Steve. 1990. “Hopi Elder Keeps Stance Strong on Environmentalism.” Arizona Daily Sun (25 January): 1,12. Schaaf, Gregory. 1985. “The American Indian Peace Movement: Past and Present.” AkwesasneNotes (Fall): 6-8. Smoak, Gregory. 2006. Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. Swamp, Chief Jake. 1990. “The Tree of Nations.” New World Times (Spring): 12-13. Swanton, John R. 1931. Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians. Bulletin 103. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology. Treat, James. 2003. Around the Sacred Fire: Native Religious Activism in the Red Power Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Trowbridge, C. C. 1939. Shawnese Traditions, edited by Vernon Kinietz and Erminie W. Voegelin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Utley, Robert M. 1963. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1956. “Revitalization Movements.” American Anthropologist 58: 264-81. -. 1969. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Vintage Books. Young Joseph. 1879. “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs.” North American Review 128, no. 269 (April): 412-33.

CHAPTER 24

BABI AND BAHA’I MILLENNIALISM PETER SMITH WILLIAM P. COLLINS

Millennialism

was a crucial element in the emergence of the nineteenth-century

Iranian Babi movement and has continued to play an important role in the devel¬ opment of the Baha i Faith, Babism’s main successor. There are important differ¬ ences between the two movements, however, with millennialism playing a central and potentially revolutionary role in Babism, while millennial concerns constitute merely one of several major motifs in the Baha’i Faith.1

The Babi Movement

Development The Babi movement began in 1844, spreading rapidly in Iran as well as attracting fol¬ lowers among the Shi'ites in Iraq.2 From the start, it proclaimed the imminent fulfill¬ ment of Shfi millennial hopes. This proclamation rapidly intensified, challenging the entire religious and political order. Initially encountering hostility and persecu¬ tion from powerful religious leaders, by 1848 the movement had come into conflict with the Iranian civil authorities, leading to a series of violent confrontations that convinced the country’s leaders to extirpate the movement in 1852. Thereafter, the Babi remnant led a largely secret and underground existence until reanimated and mostly incorporated into the newly emergent Baha’i religion in the 1860s.

BABI AND BAHAI MILLENNIALISM

475

The various branches of Islam have their own distinctive millennial traditions. Twelver ShiTsm (the predominant religion in Iran, and the majority religion in Iraq and parts of the Arab Gulf Coast) derives its name from its adherents’ belief that the rightful leaders of Islam after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (in 632 c.e.)

were a series of twelve divinely inspired Imams from the Prophet’s own family

who guided true Muslims in the path of faith.3 The first of these was Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, ‘All ibn Abi Talib, and then ‘All’s descendants through his wife, the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. The last was a young boy who is supposed to have disappeared suddenly in 873/4 c.e. (the Islamic year 260) in the city of Samarra in Iraq. It is believed that this Twelfth Imam still lives in a mysterious hidden realm and will return in the last days as the Mahdi (“rightly guided one”) to restore Islam’s purity, fight against the Antichrist, conquer the world, and establish a mes¬ sianic kingdom of justice until the resurrection and final judgment. As a minority in the Muslim world, Shi‘is also draw moral and emotional strength from the sto¬ ries of their Imams’ sufferings in the cause of truth at the hands of their non-Shi‘i adversaries, notably the murder of Imam ‘All (661 Husayn and his companions at Karbala (680

c.e.)

c.e.),

and the massacre of Imam

an event now annually com¬

memorated in an intense passion drama capable of inspiring the ideal of heroic martyrdom. Many Shi‘is also sharply differentiate between themselves and the Muslim majority, the Sunnis, said to have been originally led astray by those who unjustly usurped the Imams’ rulership (see also chapter 14 by David Cook, this volume). Twelver millennialism was one of a number of important components in early nineteenth-century Shi‘ism, given sharp focus by the approach of the year 1260

a.h.

(1843/4 c.e.), a full millennium after the disappearance of the Twelfth Imam.4 As the year approached, the idea that this might be the time of the Imam’s return became common. The period also saw the rise of an important movement among the Shi‘i religious leaders, the ‘ulama (“learned”), in which a small minority of clerical jurists assumed dominance over the religious establishment as a whole, marginalizing alternative models of clerical leadership and severely persecuting various forms of unorthodox belief. Particular victims of this purge were the Sufi mystical orders, which were for a time violently suppressed. The dominant jurists also succeeded in sectarianizing the Shaykhi movement, the latest expression of a long tradition of intellectually dissident Shi‘i esotericism. The Shaykhi movement provided the chief matrix for early Babism as an orga¬ nized movement.5 Based originally on the teachings of Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i (1753-1826), Shaykhism was consolidated into a widely spread formal movement by Sayyid Kazim Rashtf (d. 1843/4). Although early Shaykhi doctrine was complex and at times seemingly deliberately obscure, it included a radical statement of charis¬ matic authority for its first two leaders, who were implied to be the successive “Perfect Shi‘is” who acted as intermediaries between the Hidden Imam and the faithful, and on this basis were able to convey his esoteric knowledge to their follow¬ ers. Sayyid Kazim, at least, also appears to have stressed the near advent of the Hidden Imam to his followers, a significant number of whom quickly converted to

476

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Babism soon after the Sayyid’s death (around 1 January 1844) amid the resultant succession crisis. The central figure of this new movement was a young merchant from Shiraz, Sayyid ‘All-Muhammad (1819-50). Fervently religious since his youth,‘All -Muhammad experienced a number of dramatic visionary dreams that led to a declaration of reli¬ gious mission in May 1844 to one of the most prominent of the younger Shaykhi activists, Mulla Husayn Bushru’i (c. 1814-49) and the composition of a book, the Qayyumu’l-asmd\ in which he called upon all people to recognize him as the “Remembrance of God.” Exactly what ‘All-Muhammad was initially claiming to be was unclear. Many people understood him to be claiming to be the chosen intermedi¬ ary—the Bab, or “Gate”—to the Hidden Imam, and his followers thus came to be called “Babis,” but other readers perceived him to be claiming divine revelation. In any event, he was making a strong claim to charismatic authority and conveyed a height¬ ened sense of the near advent of the Imam. Mulla Husayn’s Shaykhi companions constituted most of the first converts, forming a core group of Babi missionaries who were responsible for establishing an extensive network of Babi groups, both among the Shaykhis and more widely. The Bab himself went to Mecca on pilgrimage (December 1844—January 1845) to make a symbolic proclamation of his mission, arranging to meet a gathering of his follow¬ ers at the holy city of Karbala on his way back to fulfill the prophecies associated with the Imam’s return. Many of those who gathered expected that the meeting would see the launching of the final jihad against unbelief, but the Bab cancelled the meeting in accordance with what he announced was a change in the divine decree (bada ). Meanwhile, clerical opposition to the new movement was quickly develop¬ ing, including among the more conservative Shaykhi leaders, who saw the Babis as a direct challenge to their own authority as well as a dangerous heresy. Persecution followed in a number of cities, as clerical leaders convinced local governors that Babi propagandists constituted a threat to public order, and the Bab himself was placed under house arrest. Babism continued to spread, however, sometimes semisecretly, but also openly as a widespread popular movement in some places. There was also a wider circle of admirers who saw the Bab as a holy man with charismatic power. In September 1846 the Bab escaped from Shiraz and found refuge in the city of Isfahan, where he became the guest of the sympathetic governor, who promised to arrange a meeting between the Bab and Muhammad Shah and his chief minister, Hajl Mirza Aqasi. The governor’s death in February 1847 ended these plans, and instead, the chief minister instructed that the Bab be sent as a prisoner to a fortress in the remote northwestern mountains, where he wrote extensively, informing his followers in early 1848 that he was the promised Mahdi; calling upon the shah and his minister to give him their allegiance and denouncing them for their injustice; and revealing a new book of Babi law, the Bayan (“Exposition”) to replace the Islamic sharia. In July 1848 he was brought for trial to Tabriz, where he proclaimed publicly his messianic status in the presence of the crown prince who was presiding.

BABI AND BAHA’i MILLENNIALISM

477

Spared from death on grounds of alleged insanity, the Bab was bastinadoed and reincarcerated. By this time, many Babis were becoming increasingly strident in the proclama¬ tion and defense of their faith and began to carry weapons, whether to defend themselves against possible attack or in expectation of fighting in support of the Mahdi. The potential for violent confrontation increased. Matters came to a head in the provincial town of Qazvin, where there were vehement mutual denunciations between the leading cleric, Haji Mulla Muhammad-Taqi Baraghani, a national fig¬ ure who had distinguished himself for his violent opposition to Shaykhis and Babis, and his niece and estranged daughter-in-law, the radical Babi leader Tahirih (181452).6 In this fraught situation, a Shaykhi with Babi sympathies murdered Baraghani in September or October 1847. Baraghani’s followers, who saw this as a premedi¬ tated plot instigated by Tahirih, then attacked the Babis in the town, killing several. This incident was a turning point, for while the Babis asserted their innocence of wrongdoing, they were henceforth increasingly seen as dangerous heretics. Baraghani’s fame ensured that the manner of his demise was widely known throughout the country. In June-fuly 1848, several leading Babis held a conference in the northern ham¬ let of Badasht at which they decided that as the Mahdi had now appeared, the Islamic era had been terminated. Tahirih, who had escaped from Qazvin, drama¬ tized the break with Islamic law by addressing the assembled men while her face was not covered by her veil. Shortly after this, Mulla Husayn led a growing band of armed Babis from the northeastern provincial capital of Mashhad westward, with the possible intention of rescuing the Bab from his imprisonment, but initially heading toward Tehran and proclaiming the appearance of the Mahdi as they went. According to some accounts, they marched under the messianic symbol of a black standard. In September they received news of Muhammad Shah’s death. The group decided to change their route, going north toward the Caspian until they were attacked on 21 September in the town of Barfurush. They killed a number of their opponents in self-defense before retiring to the neighboring shrine of Shaykh Tabarsi, which they fortified and where they were subsequently besieged (ZabihiMoghaddam 2002, 2004). The new king, Nasiru’d-din Shah (r. 1848-96), ordered that the defenders be wiped out. Although the Babis were few in number (six hun¬ dred at most), they were able to hold their own against the army of many thousands of men that eventually surrounded them, making daring sorties against the enemy and killing many until weakened by attrition and starvation. Finally, in May 1849 the government forces solemnly promised the remaining Babis safe passage out of the area but then massacred them. A hiatus followed. Many Babi leaders had been killed at Tabarsi, but the move¬ ment had not been defeated. This became evident to the government early in 1850, when a Babi group was discovered in Tehran (leading to the public execution of seven socially prominent Babis), while in the southern city of Yazd there were dis¬ turbances following Babi missionary preaching. In May armed struggles broke out

478

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

in the important northern town of Zanjan (Browne 1897; Walbridge 1996) and in Nayriz in the south. In both cases, large numbers of townspeople had become Babis, and local antagonisms escalated into intercommunal conflicts in which the Babis took up arms to defend themselves. As at Tabarsl, the Babis’ religious zeal enabled people without military training (ordinary townsmen and at least one woman) to battle effectively against government forces until eventually overcome—by deceit at Nayriz (after about a month) and largely by attrition at Zanjan (after over seven months). In both cases surviving fighters were massacred or enslaved and their wives and daughters often raped. Deciding that the Babis represented a permanent threat to social order, the new chief minister, Amir Kablr, sought to deprive the movement of its inspiration. He ordered that the Bab be brought back to Tabriz from his remote prison and executed there on 8 or 9 July 1850. The Babis had now lost most of their leaders and fragmented into a number of separate groups, although Mlrza Yahya, Subh-i Azal (“Morn of Eternity,” 1831/21912), a member of an important landowning family and the young son of a former government official, came to be widely regarded as an overall figurehead leader. Azal was linked to a small radical Babi faction that determined to take revenge on the shah for the reverses they had suffered. The attempted assassination on 15 August 1852 failed miserably (Momen 2008). Along with the small group of conspirators, Babis who had not been connected to the plot were arrested and killed—most in scenes of gruesome public torture. The Babi remnant was driven underground and the movement appeared to have been extinguished.

Babism as a Millennial Movement The Babi movement had a strong millennialist motif, proclaiming the advent of the Mahdi, fulfillment of the prophecies of the last days and the resurrection. It also tapped into widespread popular millenarian sentiment linked to the millennial year 1260 a.h. Beyond this, various complexities have to be considered. First, Babi millennialism was intricately linked to the tradition of Shi‘i esotericism, a rich and often elusive body of ideas and themes that combines speculative theosophical philosophy, extreme veneration of the Imams, a belief in hidden knowledge possessed by adept masters and transmitted to their followers in a hier¬ archical fashion, an opposition to the mere legalism of the more juristically inclined clerics, and an acceptance of various unorthodox ideas, which were often concealed in opaque language and the use of pious dissimulation (taqiyya) to avoid the reali¬ ties of possible persecution and death. Early Shaykhism was itself firmly part of this tradition, and it formed part of the background knowledge of most of the Babi leaders. One crucial element was the Babis’ acceptance of a heterodox interpretation of the Shi‘i doctrine of bada (the changeability of God’s will), whereby changes in events and circumstances may themselves lead God to change his decree—allowing the Bab, for example, to cancel the expected appearance of the Mahdi at Karbala. The ambiguous nature of the Bab’s early claims and the progressive elevation of his

BABI AND BAHA’i MILLENNIALISM

479

claims through the course of his ministry came to be explicitly seen as a progressive unveiling of truth, and led to a diversity of understandings among the Babis as to who the Bab was. The Babis also adopted an unorthodox allegorization of quranic and other texts, believing that they could see their hidden inner meanings through an understanding of symbolism and the “science of letters.” Millennialist prophe¬ cies thus did not always have to be fulfilled literally, and manifold esoteric meanings could be found in even a single letter of the Quran. According to the Babi doctrine of “return” (raj‘a), all of the holy figures of early Islam had reappeared, with the Babi leaders reenacting their roles in the divine drama. Finally, we may note further links to the Islamic esoteric tradition in the enormous importance given to numer¬ ology and “the science of talismans” in the structuring of the Bab’s religion (Smith 1987,35-38,43). Second, Babi millennialism was itself multilayered. Initially, when the Bab was widely understood as being merely the harbinger of the promised Imam Mahdi, the movement seemed to conform fairly much to traditional Shi‘i millennial expecta¬ tions, but this conformity soon disappeared as the movement developed, with the Bab openly proclaiming himself to be the Mahdi and subsequently operating essentially as a new divine messenger and revealing a new holy law to supersede that of Islam and give allegorical meaning to the expected miraculous signs of the Mahdi’s coming. Moreover, in his later writings, the Bab extended millennial expectation into the future by mentioning repeatedly a future messianic figure—Man-yuzhiruhulldh (“He whom God shall make manifest”) (Smith 2002,180-81). The ambiguity of the Babi position can also be seen in the Babis’ apparent expectations for the future. Initially, the Bab himself referred to the final jihad (holy war) that the Mahdi was expected to fight against the forces of unbelief, depicting the coming struggle in fairly traditional Shi‘i terms: God’s victory was near at hand and all people were summoned to assist in the approaching battle against the infi¬ dels (among whom the Babis included those Muslims who refused to recognize the Bab), purifying the Earth for the return of the Imam. The faithful were to prepare for “the day of slaughter.” Such a jihad was never launched, however. Returned from Mecca in 1845, the Bab avoided going to Karbala to meet his followers who had gathered there—essentially saying that God had changed his mind. Babi missionary expansion continued after this, but in his extensive writings the Bab turned to other matters, elucidating quranic verses and Islamic doctrines and practices, and elabo¬ rating the laws for future Babi states. He reduced emphasis on jihad and left its application to future Babi kings (MacEoin 1982b). Again, while the Babis who fought at Tabarsi, Zanjan, and Nayriz undoubtedly saw themselves as engaged in a holy struggle against unbelievers, they do not seem to have regarded their actions as part of a Babi jihad of conquest, but rather as a legitimate military defense against attack (defensive jihad), in which the example of sacrificial martyrdom as a reenactment of the Imam Husayn’s heroic death at Karbala could be offered as a “proof” of the rightness of their cause. Of course, the Babis are likely to have seen their “proof” as a means of accelerating the advent of the new kingdom, and it is of note that the Babi leader at Zanjan reportedly minted “Babi” coins (Walbridge 1996).

480

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

The variegated nature of Babism as a religious and social movement introduced a further complexity (Smith and Momen 1986). Although remaining united, it faced massive logistical difficulties of maintaining communications between an impris¬ oned leader and his widely scattered followers across enormous distances and often difficult terrain. Local leadership was therefore important, and in some areas (most notably at Zanjan), local variations of the Babi message emerged so that its millennialism was not all of a piece. Local conditions, including existing political and social tensions in particular localities influenced the movement’s development. During the few years in which Babism flourished, its teachings underwent dramatic change. Some aspects of its development were clearly the result of interactions with the environing society and of disappointed hopes of political support, thus making generalization about its beliefs difficult. Allowing for these complexities, we may describe the Babi movement as an example of catastrophic millennialism (Wessinger 2000,8-9), albeit one with subtle and ambiguous features. The Babis are also an excellent example of an assaulted millennial group (Wessinger 2000,16-25; Momen 2004,103-4). Although the move¬ ment had revolutionary potential and many of its adherents readily accepted the need for violence, no clear revolutionary position ever materialized except in 1852, when a small Babi faction embraced revolutionism with the attempt on the life of the shah (Momen 2008). It is of note that 1. The Bab himself never issued a call to wage the jihad or overthrow the regime, even after the shah’s rebuff of the Bab’s summons to become his follower and the commencement of sustained persecution of the Babis. 2. Although Iranian government figures and supporters at the time and various modern writers (e.g., Algar 1969,1991; Bayat 1982; Keddie 1962) have described the Babis as mounting insurrections, no firm evidence for such an intention has yet emerged. The Babis were militant, and prepared to kill and die in defense of their cause, but the armed struggles that occurred were localized conflicts with local causes and do not seem to have been part of some national plan of action to create a Babi state. Rather, the Babi militants saw the symbolism of their own heroic deaths as a means of proclaiming and advancing their faith. 3. Babi violence developed in interactive fashion within a hostile social environment characterized by increasing persecution, which itself seems to have been an important radicalizing factor for many Babis. (Smith and Momen 1986)7 Other features may also be noted. (1) As with many other millennial movements, charismatic leadership was a fundamental part of the Babi movement. In the case of the Bab this charisma involved claimed, and believed, access to divine revelation. Indeed, as the Bab and his chief disciples were not high-ranking clerics (and so lacked any religio-legal authority), charismatic authority was an essential part of their appeal. In this regard, the changes in Babi understanding of the Bab’s claims

BABI AND BAHAI MILLENNIALISM

481

underscore the importance of his perceived charisma, which transcended theologi¬ cal understandings. Also notable was the compensatory charismatic role increas¬ ingly assumed by secondary leaders after the Bab’s imprisonment made him relatively inaccessible. (2) Although there was some antinomianism among some of the Babis after the proclamation of a new dispensation in succession to Islam, this was extremely limited in extent. The Bab’s new law code indicated that religious law remained a vital part of religious life. (3) Babism lacked nativist elements. The Bab was aware of aspects of European ways and referred to them in his writings, but the European impact on Iran was as yet relatively limited, and the Babi movement should be seen as fundamentally part of indigenous Shi‘i socioreligious history and not a response to anything from outside. (4) Internal dynamics among the collectiv¬ ity of Shi‘i clerical leaders seemed to have played a significant role in the move¬ ment’s development, including sectarian and personal rivalries between clerics and inherent tensions between lower-ranking and higher-ranking clerics. (5) There is no clear consensus among historians about whether mid-nineteenth-century Iran was in a state of extreme social crisis and breakdown that is often regarded as a precon¬ dition for the emergence of millennial movements.

The Baha’i Faith

Development The revival of Babism was primarily the work of Mirza Husayn-All Nuri (1817-92), later known by his religious title, Baha’u’llah (the Glory of God), Azal’s older halfbrother and one of the most socially prominent of the Babis. Opposed to the Babi radicals who had plotted violent revenge, he was nevertheless thrown into prison in the aftermath of the attempt on the shah’s life, experiencing there, by his own later account, an initiatory vision. Later, exiled to Ottoman Iraq (1853 to 1863), he pro¬ vided a practical focal point for contact between various local Babi groups and attracted a growing number of followers. In 1863, on the eve of his departure from Baghdad, he revealed to his close companions that he was the messianic figure expected by the Babis—“He whom God shall make manifest.” The Ottoman gov¬ ernment summoned Baha’u’llah to Istanbul to take him away from the sensitive border area with Iran, then sent him on to Edirne in what is now European Turkey as an internal exile (1863 to 1868), where he made wider announcements of his claims to be a divine messenger and began to attract the allegiance of the majority of the Iranian Babis, henceforth “Baha’is” (from c. 1866). In this, Azal, who had joined his brother in exile, opposed him and, according to Baha’i accounts, sought to kill him. In 1868 the Ottomans subjected both brothers to further exile, Baha’u’llah

482

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

and a large number of followers to Acre in Syria and Azal to Famagusta in Cyprus. Baha’u’llah remained in Acre and its environs for the rest of his life, overseeing the consolidation and growth of a strong Baha’i community in Iran as well as smaller outliers in the Ottoman Empire, British India, and parts of Asiatic Russia. Although Azal’s followers (Azalis) were also active, they remained relatively few in number. These two Babi successor movements were markedly divergent in their reli¬ gious concerns. Even before he had proclaimed himself to be a manifestation of God, Baha’u’llah had begun to change the nature of Babi thought through his writ¬ ings, which were widely distributed among the Babis. These early works included intense expressions of his own experience of the divine presence, guides to the mys¬ tical path, ethical prescriptions, commentaries on quranic and biblical verses, and accounts of the fulfillment of prophecy and the reasons for human rejection of the prophets. He also steered the Babis away from the political radicalism still favored by Azal, a prohibition made explicit after Baha u’llah’s assumption of prophetic sta¬ tus. Additional themes received emphasis in his writings from Edirne and Syria: Baha’u’llah was the divine messenger for a new “Day of God,” and he summoned the peoples of all religions to his call. Baha’u’llah called upon the world’s rulers (to some of whom he sent proclamatory letters) to establish justice and world peace (with particular stress on education, representative government, the rule of law, assistance to the poor, protection of minorities, promotion of agriculture, the adop¬ tion of a world language, armament reduction, and collective security among nations). He counseled Baha’is to be righteous, God-fearing, and loyal to estab¬ lished governments. Their religion should be practical, expressed in working to earn a living, honesty and trustworthiness, tolerance of others, open association with those of different religions, activity for the betterment of the world and its peoples, and the promotion of the unity of the human race. Baha’u’llah composed a new book of religious laws, the Kitdb-i-Aqdas (“Most Holy Book,” c. 1873), to govern Baha’i conduct. By contrast, Azal continued the esotericism of the early Babis and supported continued political activism. Baha’u’llah appointed his eldest son, Abdu’l-Baha (the Servant of Baha) (18441921), to lead the Baha’is after his passing (1892). Under Abdu’l-Baha, the faith began to expand outside the Middle East (notably in North America, but smaller groups were also established in Europe and japan). This trend continued under the leader¬ ship of Abdu’l-Baha’s successor, his grandson Shoghi Effendi (1897-1957), especially during the 1950s, when Baha’is pursued a global plan of expansion, which saw sig¬ nificant Baha’i communities established in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and South America. The Baha’is established a system of elected local and national Baha’i coun¬ cils (“spiritual assemblies”), and in 1963 after a brief interregnum following Shoghi Effendi s death, the Baha i national assemblies elected the Universal House of Justice to be the supreme authority and governing body in the Baha’i world as provided in the writings of Baha u llah and Abdu’l-Baha. Global expansion continued, with Baha’is now being found throughout the world, drawn from almost every religious and cultural tradition.

BABI AND BAHA’l MILLENNIALISM

483

Millennial Themes in the Baha’i Faith Three separate millennial themes can be identified in the Baha’i Faith’s develop¬ ment: (1) the belief in messianic fulfillment; (2) the goal of establishing a future Millennium; and (3) apocalyptic expectations. It is of note that other motifs—nota¬ bly legalism, social reconstructionism, and universalism—also form an important part of the faith. Baha’u’llah’s immediate claims to the Babis were in terms of messianic fulfill¬ ment—most particularly that he was “He whom God shall make manifest” (Manyuzhiruhulldh) foretold by the Bab, but his key claim was to be a divine revelator, the latest in the series of “Manifestations of God,” including Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Bab. He claimed to be the universal savior figure of all reli¬ gions. During his lifetime, his followers were formulating “proofs” of his messianic role in terms of other religions,8 a development that has continued to the present day, with an extensive Baha’i apologetic literature presenting Baha’u’llah as the promised one of most of the world’s major religions, as well as of indigenous tradi¬ tions such as those of the Native Americans (e.g. Buck 1996). Shoghi Effendi pre¬ sented the official doctrine, stating that Baha’u’llah was “the incarnation” of the “Everlasting Father” for Jews, Christ returned “in the glory of the Father” for Christians, the return of the Imam Husayn for Shi‘i Muslims, the descent of Jesus Christ for Sunni Muslims, the promised Shah Bahram for Zoroastrians, the reincar¬ nation of Krishna for Hindus, and the fifth Buddha for Buddhists (Shoghi Effendi 1944, 94)It is of note that during the early expansion of the Baha’i Faith to the United States beginning in 1894, Baha’i teachers rapidly developed a Christian-oriented account of their religion that drew on the American Adventist tradition, particu¬ larly as expressed by William Miller (1782-1849), who in the Baha’i view had cor¬ rectly identified 1844 (the year of the Bab’s declaration) as the year of messianic fulfillment, but had wrongly expected Christ to come down from the physical heav¬ ens (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume).9 Given the biblicism of many of the early Baha’is in America, this interpretation provided an important bridge whereby an alien religion began to be indigenized, although other motifs subse¬ quently predominated in American Baha’i life. Part of the Baha’i Faith’s appeal to its converts from other religious and cultural traditions may derive from similar suc¬ cess in adapting and further universalizing its eschatology. Alongside his strong messianic claims, Baha’u’llah provided his followers with a radical interpretation of traditional messianic expectations, explicitly giving a symbolic meaning to biblical and Islamic references to the “last days,” replacing visions of an apocalyptic end of time with a cyclical model of prophetic fulfillment and spiritual reinvigoration. He also stated that the world had already become transformed as a result of his advent. Correspondingly, Baha’u’llah urged Baha’is to live ethically, follow the principles and holy law he revealed, and seek converts. While they should be willing to give their lives for their faith, it was better to live as

484

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

teachers and exemplars of the Baha’i religion. He explicitly forbade violence in the name of religion. The Baha’i Faith was a very different religious world from that of the Babis. Millennial concerns continued, but they were primarily projected into the future in the form of the expected “Most Great Peace,” constructed according to divine plan, the main lineaments of which Baha’u’llah outlined in his writings and which Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi further elaborated (Smith 2002, 266-67). This would be the kingdom of God on Earth prophesied in the world’s religions, the “coming of age of the entire human race” (Shoghi Effendi 1944, 411), a world order in which humanity would live in righteousness, justice, and unity under the principles and laws of Baha’u’llah. It would mark the culmination of a process of integration of humanity’s collective life, with a global federation and a world civi¬ lization characterized by spirituality and practical concerns for the improvement of human well-being, including the ending of destitution and excessive individual wealth, the “extermination of disease,” and the “prolongation of human life” (Shoghi Effendi 1955, 204). Thereafter, the potential for further human progress would be unimaginably glorious. Although divinely ordained and empowered, this golden age would gradually emerge through processes of social and political evolu¬ tion (Shoghi Effendi 1955, 19-20, 29, 43, 157, 162-66, 202—6). This progressivist vision received reinforcement from Baha’u’llah’s teaching that further Manifesta¬ tions of God would come after him and build on his work in the distant future; specifically, the first of these would not appear until after the passage of at least a thousand years. For the present, the world’s rulers are called to build an international system of justice and order and to end war. From a Baha’i perspective, this “Lesser Peace” is a divine summons that Baha’u’llah enunciated and the Universal House of Justice relayed to world leaders in global proclamations in 1967 and 1985 (Baha’u’llah 1967; Universal House of Justice 1996, 681-96). Baha’is are called upon to expound their vision of human progress and promote the social changes it entails in such fields as education, women’s empowerment, and social and economic development (Smith 2002,131,324-25,358-61). An apocalyptic element is still present, although in terms of official Baha’i belief it has been fairly constrained. Thus, Baha’u’llah himself lamented that the world was “in travail” because of its “waywardness and unbelief” and predicted that an “unfore¬ seen calamity” and “grievous retribution” awaited humanity as a result (Baha’u’llah 1976, sections LXI, CIV, CVIII), and Abdu’l-Baha referred specifically in 1912 to an approaching major European war that he equated with the biblical battle of Armageddon. He also predicted further conflict as a consequence of the flaws in the World War I peace settlement, but said that overall the twentieth century would be a period of growing human unity and achievement. He urged Baha’is to teach their faith and spread its unifying vision as this was ultimately the only realistic means of solving the world’s problems (Shoghi Effendi 1955, 29-30). Shoghi Effendi and the Universal House of Justice have frequently made similar appeals—explaining the world’s problems as being a consequence of its lack of response to Baha’u’llah and

BABI AND BAHAI MILLENNIALISM

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providing Baha is with an incentive both to teach their faith more vigorously to avert further human suffering and to disperse more widely—in particular, to leave large materialistic cities (Collins 2002a, 6; Smith 1982b, 265). The most explicit state¬ ments came from Shoghi Effendi, who referred to the international problems of the 1930s as marking both the birth pangs of the emerging world order10 and the deathpangs of an old order whose leaders refused to acknowledge the need for unity. It was an Age of Transition,” in which those political and religious institutions that had rejected Baha u’llah’s summons would experience divine retribution. Calamity and suffering would force the world toward unity and alert perceptive people to the future promise embodied in the Baha’i Faith (Shoghi Effendi 1955, 29,36,45-46,161, 168—94, 201—2). Shoghi Effendi saw World War II as continuing the process (Shoghi Effendi 1947,

42-43>

45~46, 48) 53~54; 1961,1-3), while in the 1950s (during the Cold

War), he adopted a more apocalyptic tone, writing of the “retributive calamity” and its associated dire catastrophes that would “sooner or later” afflict the world, purging it of corruption and forging a global unity (Shoghi Effendi 1971,103), and stating that the United States faced the double danger of aerial bombardment (often understood as nuclear attack) and racial violence (Shoghi Effendi 1965,126). In the 1950s, some North American pilgrims to the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa, Israel, attributed even more severe pronouncements to him (Piff and Warburg 2003), but such “pilgrims’ notes” are explicitly excluded from the body of authoritative Baha’i texts. Official Baha’i statements have carefully placed apocalyptic tropes within a wider and essen¬ tially optimistic progressivist context. At a popular level, the expectation of “messianic woes” before the establishment of the future millennium have clearly been a recurrent concern for at least some Baha’is, though lack of extensive research on Baha’i apocalyptic beliefs makes it dif¬ ficult to make any definite judgment as to its extent among Baha’is at a given period. Ibrahim Kheiralla, the Baha’i missionary who first established the Baha’i commu¬ nity in the United States, had strong apocalyptic views, including an expectation that the Millennium would be established in 1917. These ideas were presumably initially shared by many of the early Baha’is in America and were a natural accom¬ paniment of their Adventist concerns, but there was no community consensus on the matter, although 1917 still brought a frisson of excitement for many (Dime 1917; Smith 1982a, 155-61; Stockman 1985, 56-57, 82-83,152). Significantly, while Abdu’lBaha had predicted World War I and called it “Armageddon,” this was in the context of a progressivist view of the striving toward world peace. He did not endorse an apocalyptic vision of events (Collins 2002b, 9-10). While a number of Baha’is in the 1950s evidently had apocalyptic concerns (Piff 2000,122-30; Piff and Warburg 2003), the extent of these beliefs is unknown, and there is no evidence that such concerns dominated the community as a whole (Collins 2002b, 10-11). By contrast, the small (mostly American) sectarian Remeyite Baha’i splinter groups that developed after Shoghi Effendi’s death in 1957 often held strong apocalyptic millennialist beliefs.11 A third episode of apocalyptic expectation developed in the final years of the twen¬ tieth century in association with the widespread belief that the Lesser Peace would be established by the year 2000, and the anticipation by some Baha’is that this would

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

486

be preceded by catastrophic events. While it is not possible to assess the number of Baha’is who held such views, it is of note that the Universal House of Justice felt it necessary to discourage Baha’is from speculating on the subject (Collins 2002b, 12-13, 17-18). Although the apocalyptic subtext could potentially revive among Baha’is, our overall impression is that it no longer forms a major part of popular Baha’i belief.

Conclusion The Babi religion provides an important case study of a millennial movement. The Baha’i Faith, by contrast, while retaining important millennial themes, is a far more complex religious phenomenon in which various religious motifs coexist. Insofar as we can talk about “Baha’i millennialism,” it is evidently expressed within a funda¬ mentally progressivist view of human action and goals (see chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume). While apocalyptic ideas have surfaced from time to time, they have functioned essentially as an encouragement for missionary action, as well as a means of accounting for the world’s shortcomings in Baha’i terms. In this regard, strong central leadership has played a fundamental role in the definition of Baha’i concerns. Sociologically, both Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha were major charismatic figures whom their followers regarded as divinely appointed expounders of truth. They were thus able to unite a diverse following through per¬ sonal devotion to themselves. Where they led, the Baha’is followed, so that cata¬ strophic millennial themes were generally only as important as the leaders allowed them to be and never overshadowed devotion to the leaders and adherence to their teachings. Later, under Shoghi Effendi and the Universal House of Justice, charisma was successfully routinized, but central guidance of the religion remained strong so that catastrophic millennialist tendencies never became dominant. Only in the sec¬ tarian Remeyite splinter groups, quarantined from the main body of Baha’is, was apocalypticism able to come to the fore. While millennialist ideas in the Baha’i Faith have been subject to complex changes and developments, Shoghi Effendi placed apocalyptic and progressive mil¬ lennialism in a particular context. He compared humanity’s collective future to the individual s development during his life span. As the individual goes through the turbulence of youth before adulthood, so our species is passing through the last stages of its adolescence into maturity (Shoghi Effendi 1955,165 202). The immedi¬ ate challenges facing humanity engender suffering and calamity because people resist the fundamental changes such maturity requires. Baha’is nonetheless express a conviction that humanity will embrace the demands of maturity. Thus, while Baha’is condemn the “cancerous materialism” (Shoghi Effendi 1965,125) and other shortcomings that they believe characterize the modern age, Baha’is are essentially world-affirming. The future Most Great Peace—the “long-awaited Millennium”

BABI AND BAHAI MILLENNIALISM

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(Shoghi Effendi 1955,74,157)—provides a goal for Baha’i activity and a culmination beyond such upheavals as may take place in the process.

NOTES 1. On the overall development of the Babi and Baha’i religions see Smith 1987. On specific topics see Smith 2002. Shoghi Effendi 1944 provides the definitive Baha’i account. On Babi-Baha’i millennialism see Berger 1957; Cole 2002; Collins 2000, 2002a, 2002b; Lambden 1999/2000,2005; Momen 2004; and Smith 1982b. 2. On the Babi movement see Amanat 1989. The standard Baha’i account is Nabil 1932. See also Browne 1891,1893,1897; MacEoin 1979,1992; Momen 1981; and Smith and Momen 1986. For a comparison with the radical Anabaptists see Waite 1995; with the Taiping Revolution, Rinehart 1997. 3. On Shi'ism see Momen 1985. See also Nasr, Dabashi, and Nasr 1989; Sachedina 1981; and Tabataba’i 1975. 4. The Shi‘i Millennium consisted of a thousand lunar years. On religious developments in early nineteenth-century Iran see Algar 1969,1991; and Arjomand 1984. Keddie 1981 provides an overview of the period. 5. On Shaykhism see Bayat 1982,37-86; Corbin 1971-72, 4: 205-300; Nicolas 1910-14; Rafati 1979; and Scholl and Rizvi 2005. On the emergence of Babism out of Shaykhism see MacEoin 1979,1982a. 6. Tahirih (“the Pure”) was the only woman among the Babi leadership. She was also known as Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (“Solace of the Eyes”). See Momen 2003; Smith 2002, 332-33-

7. Compare also Wessinger’s account of “assaulted millennial groups” adopting militant self-defense in response to external hostility (2000,16-25). 8. One of the earliest Baha’i exegetes was the eminent scholar Mirzd Abu’l-Fadl [Abu’l-Fazl] Gulpaygani (1844-1914), who appealed to Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian prophecies as well as those of Islam in his presentation of the Baha’i Faith (Collins 1998, 23-24), deliberately seeking converts from Iran’s religious minorities. 9. On the early American Baha’is see Stockman 1985,1995; and Smith 1982a. Collins (1995; 1998; 1999) deals with the Baha’i appropriation of Miller and use of biblical time prophecy techniques. Other works presenting the Baha’i Faith in relationship to Christian Adventism include Marsella 1966; Matthews 1996; Moffett 1980; Motlagh 1992; Riggs 1981; Sours 1991; Tai-Seale 1992; and a dozen others to date. Sears 1961 seems to have been most widely used in Baha’i apologetic endeavors. 10. “World order” is used in two senses in the Baha’i writings. In a generic sense, it refers to the conceptualization of a global society united in a world federation during the period of the “Lesser Peace,” when nations agree to eliminate warfare and establish collective security. Shoghi Effendi most frequently used this term for the future Baha’i planetary social order that he often called the “World Order of Baha’u’llah,” which will come into being during the period of the “Most Great Peace” when the international federation is spiritualized and infused with Baha’i principles. Sometimes Shoghi Effendi used the phrase “new world order” to differentiate the spiritual society of the future from the collapsing “old” world order.

488

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

ii. These groups originated with the claims of a senior Baha’i leader, Charles Mason Remey (1874-1974) to be Shoghi EfFendi’s successor (hence the rubric “Remeyite”). Rejected by almost all Baha’is, Remey began to stress the immediacy of a final “great global catastrophe” (Johnson 1974,362-64). His followers soon split into several contending sects, the most studied of which were the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant headed by Leland Jensen (d. 1996) from Missoula, Montana, with about two hundred members at its peak (Balch, Farnsworth, and Wilkins 1983; Balch et al. 1997).

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Cole, Juan R. I. 2002. “Millennialism in Modern Iranian History.” In Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, edited by Abbas Amanat and Magnus Bernhardsson, 282-311. London: I. B. Tauris. Collins, William R 1995. “The Millerites and Time Prophecy: Their Function as Millennial Themes in the American Baha’i Community.” M.S. thesis, Syracuse University. -. 1998. “Millennialism, the Millerites, and Historicism.” World Order 30, no. 1 (Fall): 9-26.

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Conn.: Yale University Press. Lambden, Stephen. 1999/2000. “Catastrophe, Armageddon and Millennium: Some Aspects of the Babi and Baha’i Exegesis of Apocalyptic Symbolism.” Baha’i Studies Review 9: 81-99. -. 2005. “The Messianic Roots of Babi-Baha’i Globalism.” In Baha’i and Globalisation, edited by Margit Warburg, Annika Hvithamar, and Morten Warmind, 17-34. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. MacEoin, Denis. 1979. “From Shaykhism to Babism: A Study in Charismatic Renewal in Shi‘i Islam.” Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge. -. 1982a. “Early Shaykhi Reactions to the Bab and His Claims.” In Studies in Babi and Bahai History, vol. 1, edited by Moojan Momen, 1-47. Los Angeles: Kalimat. -. 1982b. “The Babi Concept of Holy War.” Religion 12 (April): 93-129. -. 1992. The Sources for Early Babi Doctrine and History: A Survey. Leiden: Brill. Marsella, Elena Maria. 1966. The Quest for Eden. New York: Philosophical Library. Matthews, Gary L. 1996. He Cometh with Clouds: A Bahd’i View of Christ’s Return. Oxford: George Ronald. Moffett, Ruth J. 1980. New Keys to the Book of Revelation. 2d ed. New Delhi: Baha’i Publishing Trust. Momen, Moojan, ed. 1981. The Bdbi and Bahd’i Religions, 1844-1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts. Oxford: George Ronald. -. 1985. An Introduction to Shii Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi‘ism. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. -. 2003. “Usuli, Akhbari, Shaykhi, Babi: The Tribulations of a Qazvin Family.” Iranian Studies 36, no. 3 (September): 317-37-. 2004. “Millennialist Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares.” In Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Bahd’i Faiths, edited by Moshe Sharon, 97-116. Leiden: Brill.

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CHAPTER 25

NINETEENTH- AND TWENTIETHCENTURY AMERICAN MILLENNIALISMS JON R. STONE

The time is fulfilled und the kingdom of God is at hand; tepent and believe the gospel. —Jesus (Mark 1:15) Since the founding of Plymouth Colony’s “Bible Commonwealth” in 1620, with its

providential calling to be as a “city upon a hill,” America has been home to a great variety of Protestant millennial movements, most seeking to prepare for or establish the kingdom of God on Earth. The earliest of these movements were transplanted from Europe during the colonial and early national periods, but many more were homegrown, sprouting forth from America’s rich and welcoming religious soil. Groups as diverse as the Puritans, Shakers, Millerites, Campbellites, Mormons, Adventists, Oneida Perfectionists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as independent evangelical and fundamentalist groups, give testimony to the persistence of Endtime expectation in America. Despite their apparent differences, what links these variet¬ ies of Protestant millennialists is not simply their belief in the Second Coming of Jesus, but their firm conviction that a new age—the Millennium—had arrived or would soon dawn. Many, in fact, believed that this millennial age—Christ’s thou¬ sand-year reign of peace—would usher forth from the New World, specifically the United States. 7

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Among American Protestants, there have tended to be three major types of mil¬ lennial expectation: premillennial, postmillennial, and amillennial. Generally speak¬ ing, premillennialism is the belief that Jesus’s Second Coming will precede the Millennium. According to this view, the fulfillment of various signs and portends predicted in the Bible herald the imminent return of Christ. After divine wrath lays waste to the Earth, the waters, and the sky, a renewed world will emerge and Christ will reign personally over the Earth for a thousand years. After the Millennium, God will judge the world, cast sinners into hell, and restore creation to its original perfec¬ tion (see chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume). By contrast,postmillennialism holds that the Second Coming and Last Judgment will occur after the Millennium, that is, after the world has achieved a thousand-year period of peace. Whereas premillennialists believe that the Millennium will arise in the aftermath of a series of natural and supernatural disasters, known generally as the seven-year Tribulation period, postmillennialists see an age of peace coming as a result of Christian social and political action in the world. The Millennium will not come violently; rather, it will come positively and progressively through the Church’s moral and spiritual influence in the world (see chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume). From the postmillennialists’ perspective, it was clearly evident that, as the direct result of their efforts to Christianize society, peace and progress were bursting forth like flowers in the springtime. By contrast, those who saw the world through the premillennial lens tended to interpret changes as evidence of a decline in social and personal morals: society was not getting better but was in fact getting worse. This outlook corresponded to the premillennial belief that, in the Last Days, the Earth would be ruled by the spirit of Antichrist, a spirit antithetical to Christ’s gos¬ pel of peace. Wars, famines, natural disasters, and widespread human suffering would signal the rise of the Antichrist and the coming judgment of the world. But notwithstanding these differences, there is at least one point on which premillennialists and postmillennialists agree: both believe that there will be an actual thousand-year period of peace on Earth and that divine judgment will follow. The differences, then, are essentially over how to interpret the Bible’s various prophecies and how each piece of prophecy fits into the picture puzzle of the Last Days (Clouse 1977; Stone 1993).1 The third type of American millennialism is amillennialism, or nonmillennialism. Similar to the two views outlined above, amillennialists hold that Christ will one day return to Earth. But, unlike other millennialists, amillennialists believe that there will be no earthly Millennium, that is, no prophetically predestined period of peace on Earth either before or after Christ returns. To the contrary, when Christ does return, it will be to usher in eternity. Believers will join Jesus in heaven, nonbelievers will be banished to hell, and evil will be forever destroyed. Behind this position is the belief that the so-called Endtime prophecies of the Bible, and especially the book of Revelation, are largely symbolic and should therefore be read figuratively, not liter¬ ally. The Kingdom of God is likewise symbolic, usually being understood as a meta¬ phor for the reign of Christ in the world through the witness of his Church (Clouse 1977; Stone 1993; see chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume).

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In the United States, the most popular and prevalent of these three types of millennialisms has been the premillennial view, a position typically held by conserva¬ tive and fundamentalist evangelical Christians. Postmillennialism, a position held generally among liberal or progressive evangelicals, if at all, has been far less popu¬ lar. Amillennialism, the traditional Christian position from the time of St. Augustine to the Reformation, has been the least prevalent type of millennialism in America, held primarily by the Disciples of Christ and some of the Reformed churches. Since the First World War, postmillennialism has been all but swallowed up by Protestant ecumenism, Christian socialism, and liberation theology—the latter being a type of “catastrophic” millennialism, informed by Marxist theories of his¬ tory and economics. But, whether Christ’s return will come pre-millennial, post-millennial, or amillennial, what all Protestant millennialists have had in common, if not all Protestants before the twenty-first century, has been their expectation of and/or earnest efforts in bringing to realization the kingdom of God on Earth. How that kingdom is established—by what means and by whom—are what truly define the differences among American millennialists.2 In this chapter we will survey a brief history of the various millennial movements that have thrived in America, with particular attention to the premillennial stream. The main focus throughout will be on the Protestant eschatological belief in “kingdom come,” a belief that dates back to the colonial period.

Heavens on Earth: Antecedents of Nineteenth-Century American Millennialism Even as the Puritans arrived in New England, they read their own miraculous expe¬ riences into the pages of the Bible—from their exodus across the waters of the Atlantic to the settling of Plymouth Colony as their Promised Land. Surely, they reasoned, hath not the hand of Providence guided us, as Israel of old? Among the millennial themes that animated the Puritans, as well as later New England colo¬ nists, were careful attention to signs and portends of the Last Days; the idea that the Native Indians were perhaps the “Ten Lost Tribes” of Israel; the conviction that Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, would appear in the New World; the belief in the res¬ toration of the Jews to Palestine; the expectation that a great apostasy would befall the Church; and that the Antichrist would arise in the last days (Tuveson 1968Davidson 1972; Bloch 1985). During the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, the various hills and hollows throughout New England, New York, Pennsylvania, the Appalachians, and the Ohio Valley were dotted with small religious settlements. It was in these regions

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that some of the first millennialist sects made their homes. The earliest of these mil¬ lennial communities were comprised mainly of Pietists and other types of German and English sectarians who had journeyed to the New World, either as a way to escape persecution or because of the attraction held out by the virgin American frontier. Many early millennial communities, like the Ephratans and “Woman in the Wilderness,” were largely male-dominated and tended to embrace celibacy as a Christian ideal. But by the latter half of the eighteenth century, a number of millen¬ nialist communities were being founded or otherwise led by women. Perhaps the best known and most successful of these later types of communal experiments were the Shakers, led by Ann Lee (1736-84) (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft and chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, both in this volume).

Ann Lee and the Shakers Known formally as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, the Shakers were founded sometime after 1747 by an English tailor and his wife, James and Jane Wardley. The Wardleys had fallen under the spell of the French Prophets, a remnant sect of immigrant Huguenots whose leaders claimed the gift of prophecy. Soon after, they broke with the Quakers, with whom they had fellow¬ ship, and followed this new light of prophecy. In 1757, at the behest of her father, Ann Lee and her husband, Abraham Standerin (or Stanley), joined with the Wardley’s “Shaking Quakers,” so-called because of their frenzied style of worship. By 1769, after the passing of Mother Wardley, Ann became recognized as the “spir¬ itual mother” of the Shakers. Though the Shakers under Mother Ann would remain small in number, totaling about thirty members in 1772, they grew in notoriety among the English public and authorities alike (Rupp 1844, 656-57; Holloway 1966,55-56). During one such brush with the law, Mother Ann, while in jail for breaking the peace of the Sabbath, beheld a vision of the Fall of Man. In her vision, it was revealed that the original sin committed by Adam and Eve had been sexual intercourse. Consequently, restoration of Paradise would require refraining from “the works of natural generation.” In a later vision, Mother Ann saw a large tree, “every leaf of which shone with such brightness as made it appear like a burning torch” (quoted in Holloway 1966, 57). As in Moses’s calling, the tree spoke to Ann and told her to travel to America and there establish the “Millennial Church.” In 1774 Mother Ann and seven others arrived in New York, and by 1776 had founded a small community outside Albany. During the next decade, other Shaker communities were founded in New York and the New England region. Periodic revivals, such as those in the 1820s and 1830s, provided adult converts to the society, while the adoption of orphaned children brought many younger members into the Shaker fold. By the end of the 1830s, the total number of Shakers would reach upward of four thousand to six thousand members (Rupp 1844, 657-58; Nordhoff i960, 118-19,125-26; Holloway 1966,57-59; Noyes 1966,152).

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Even before her death in 1784, Ann Lee’s spiritual reputation was being trans¬ formed into the stuff of legend. Not simply an inspiring leader, increasingly Mother Ann became identified by her followers as the female aspect of God’s bisexual nature, Jesus being the male aspect. Accordingly, the Shakers hailed Ann as “Mother in Christ and Bride of the Lamb,” or simply “Ann the Word.” And, as Mark Holloway has observed, “since the Day of Judgment had occurred at the foundation of their Church, [the Shakers] considered that they were living in the Resurrection Order, surrounded by, and in communion with, the spirits of the dead” (Holloway 1966, 65). All Shaker doctrines and practices, such as celibacy, separation of the sexes, nonviolence, and power over sickness and disease, stem from the belief that, with the coming of Ann Lee, the Millennial Age had likewise dawned (Holloway 1966,57, 64-65; see Nordhoff i960,133-34).

John Humphrey Noyes and Postmillennial Perfectionism Similar to the Shakers, the assumption that the Millennial Age had arrived also inspired John Humphrey Noyes (1811—86) to found his Christian communities at Putney, Vermont, in the 1830s, and at Oneida, New York, in the 1840s (see also chap¬ ter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, this volume). While the Shakers taught that Mother Ann had restored the true Church, and had thwarted the rule of Antichrist and his false religion (Rupp 1844, 660-61), Noyes held that Christ’s return had come within a generation after his ascension into heaven, or, more precisely, in the year 70

c.e.

Noyes taught that every Endtime prophecy in the Bible had already been fulfilled, including the last judgment, the punishment of sinners, and the rewarding of the saints. Noyes believed that because contemporary followers of Christ lived in a state of sinlessness, it remained only for social life to be organized in such a way as to actualize Christian perfection. Noyes established his communities in Putney and Oneida accordingly. In Noyes’s mind, these model Christian communities' were founded in answer to Jesus’s prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven” (Matt. 6:10). In his small book, Bible Communism (1848), Noyes examined the practical implications of Kingdom come. His main concern was not merely to elaborate a theory of society based on the Bible, but to lay out the social theory as presented by Christ and his Apostles. Noyes believed that while this divine theory was not revealed to Christians living during the “Times of the Gentiles,”3 its principles, or institu¬ tions, were open to Christians now living in the millennial age (Noyes 1966, 624). Lor Noyes, these institutions of the kingdom included communal living, abolition both of exclusive marriages and monogamous sexual intercourse, reforms and improvements in labor relations, and the elimination of sickness and death. As Noyes explained: “The true scheme of redemption begins with reconciliation with God, proceeds first to a restoration of true relations between the sexes, then a reform of the industrial system, and ends with victory over death. [... ] The sin-system, the marriage-system, the work-system, are all one, and must be abolished together.” Put

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directly, “First, we abolish sin; then shame; then the curse on woman of exhausting child-bearing; then the curse on man of exhausting labor; and so we arrive regularly at the tree of life” (Noyes 1966,630, 636). Noyes’s Christian Perfectionist experiment in communal living and its practice of open or “complex” marriage continued until the late 1870s, when persecution and threats of imprisonment forced Noyes to flee to Canada. What remained of the Oneida experiment was transformed into a business community that would drop Bible Communism and become known instead for its well-crafted metalware (Nordhoff i960,277-87; Holloway 1966,194-97).

Millennial Expectation in the Wake of Evangelical Revivalism During the early nineteenth century, a series of revivals and awakenings resulted in a groundswell of religious fervor that added thousands upon thousands of believers to the churches. In some quarters, revivalism drove Protestant evangelicals back to the Bible in hopes of finding in the New Testament the principles upon which to restore the Apostolic Church. Others leapt back to the pages of the Old Testament, believing that God’s will for his people could be ascertained from the lives of the Hebrew patriarchs and the laws of Moses. The former path to recovering the “ancient order” went through the Restorationists, which included the Disciples of Christ (Campbellites) and, most especially, the Latter-day Saints (Mormons). The latter path to the Kingdom went through the Millerites and their offspring, the Seventhday Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Alexander Campbell and Primitivist Protestantism In the first decades of the nineteenth century, interest by evangelical leaders in unit¬ ing Protestant churches on the frontier came when a number of Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist ministers on the borders of Kentucky, Virginia, and Ohio agreed to join together in their revivalistic efforts. Among these leaders was Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), who published his ecumenical vision in the pages of the journals he edited, the most notable of which he titled The Millennial Harbinger (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume). Campbell’s views were thoroughly postmillennial, but he drew a distinction between the eternal kingdom of God and the millennial kingdom of Christ. While Christians could work toward restoration of ancient Christianity in anticipation of the millennial king¬ dom, the everlasting kingdom of God remained beyond human influence. In fact, in the first issue of the Millennial Harbinger, which appeared in January 1830, Campbell declared that his new journal would be “devoted to the destruction of

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Sectarianism, Infidelity, and Antichristian doctrine and practice.” Furthermore, “it shall have for its object the developement [sic], and introduction of that political and religious order of society called THE MILLENNIUM, which will be the con¬ summation of that ultimate amelioration of society proposed in the Christian Scriptures” (quoted in Foster et al. 2004,304). A number of prominent individuals from Alexander Campbell’s growing Restorationist movement left to join with other primitivist and millennialist groups, such as the Shakers, the Millerites, and the Mormons (Foster et al. 2004, 305). Two of them, Sidney Rigdon and Parley Pratt, were to become instrumental leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church). With Campbell, both Rigdon and Pratt believed that Christ’s kingdom, the true Church, was being restored in their time. But with Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-44), and the other Saints, they held that the restoration of all things included not simply the reinstitution of the apostolic practices of plural democratic leadership, baptism by immersion, and communion in both kinds, but also the gifts of prophecy and revelation, as well as a restored Old Testament priesthood (see also chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft and chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, both in this volume). Whereas Campbell and his fellow ministers argued that the apostolic gifts of the Spirit had ceased and that the canon of the Holy Scriptures was closed, Joseph Smith and his supporters, per¬ suaded by Smith’s own revelatory experiences, believed that, in these latter days, God had raised up prophets and apostles with the authority to guide his Church (Smith 1880).

Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints As a critical component of their restoration project, Joseph Smith and his followers were not content to rely on the Bible alone. Given that the church of the apostles had been corrupted by the Church Fathers and, during that same time, a general apostasy of believers had taken place, how was one to be certain that the text of the Bible had not also suffered corruption? Was there no other divinely inspired source to provide witness to the authentic apostolic faith? Who among Christians had the authority—the “keys of the kingdom” (Matt. 16:19)—to reinstitute the ordinances of the Church? Was there no latter-day prophet through whom God would reveal his will for the saints? Joseph Smith and his followers believed that there was. Further, they believed that God and Christ, and specifically an angel named Moroni, had entrusted Smith with the gospel of Jesus for these latter days. To this end, Smith was given access to a new Bible—the Book of Mormon—and was then given author¬ ity to effect the Endtime restoration of the Church. The key to that restoration, and to the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom, Zion, was the recovery of the office of prophet and the prophet s critical role as the source of continuing revelation. Jn APril 1830, following the publication of the Book of Mormon, Smith founded the “Church of Christ” at Palmyra, New York, and began sending out missionaries to the various regions where religious revivals were taking place. By December, his

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church numbered almost 130 Saints. Because they were already suffering harass¬ ment for their beliefs, it became necessary for Smith to move his growing commu¬ nity of Saints westward, first to Ohio, and then to Missouri and Illinois. By 1838, after the Panic of 1837 had wiped out their financial holdings, the Mormons had relocated to Jackson County, Missouri, and had also founded the town of Nauvoo, Illinois. Sometime in 1843, the year before his death at the hands of a lynch mob, Joseph Smith provided a sketch of the millennial beliefs of the Latter-day Saints. He wrote: “We believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes. That Zion will be built upon this continent. That Christ will reign personally upon the earth, and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisal glory” (Rupp 1844, 410). For Smith, Zion was a physical place. This physical Zion con¬ formed to Smith’s conviction that the Kingdom of God was not merely a metaphor for the Church, but a place as tangible as God himself. This physical Zion, Smith revealed, would be built by the Saints in Jackson County, near Independence, Missouri (Hansen 1974,8-10; see also Hansen 1981, 66-68,132-36). Despite his millennial vision, it was not long before persecution, and greater than anticipated growth in membership, forced Smith to reconceive Zion. In his new vision, Smith came to see the LDS Church “as a gigantic tent supported by stakes.” Zion would be the center stake. “Radiating from this core, ‘Stakes of Zion’ could be erected as needed to support the ever growing tent of the Kingdom, until it would cover the entire North and South American continents, and finally the world” (Hansen 1974, 9). Once again, Zion would take on metaphysical meaning. This was possible because Smith’s notion of “materiality” could be adapted to include its spiritual as well as its physical qualities. As historian Klaus Hansen explains, “Zion was therefore not only bricks, mortar, and real estate; inevitably, it also had its seat in the hearts of the faithful. [... ] For when bricks and mortar crumbled under Gentile hands, there seemed but one place left where the ‘pure in heart’ could keep their Zion inviolate” (1974,9). After establishing a “stake of Zion” in Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith came increasingly to view the kingdom as possessing social and economic qualities, which could only be realized through the political independence of the Saints. Even greater persecu¬ tion pushed Smith and his fellow Mormon leaders to the point where, by early 1844, separation from the United States became a practical necessity (Hansen 1981,132). Once again, Smith conceived of Mormonism as a kingdom that would expand to fill the Earth, declaring that “a new Jerusalem, a new city of Zion, should be built on the North American continent [as] predicted in the Book of Mormon.” It would be Independence, Missouri, not Nauvoo, where “the center place” of Zion, the New Jerusalem, would be set (Hansen 1981,133). It is at this point that early premillennial expectation among Mormon followers was transformed into kingdom-building guasi-postmillennialism. With a living prophet providing continual revelation for God’s chosen people, the need for a physical return of Christ began to recede into the background of Mormon thought. Despite this, millennialist hopes among the Mormons did not dissolve into total postmillennial kingdom building. For instance, the year 1890 held great Endtime

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symbolism for Mormons. In a prophecy Smith received regarding the Second Coming, it was revealed that Smith would not reach the age of eighty-five before seeing God’s face. In the next passage of his prophecy, recorded in The Doctrine and Covenants, Smith mused to himself about its ambiguity: “I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millen¬ nium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face. I believe that the coming of the Son of Man will not be any sooner than that time” (Smith 1880,130:16-17). Members of the first generation of Mormons likewise held out hope of the Millennium arriving during their lifetimes. But as tensions between Mormons and the United States government increased, Mormon leaders, such as Brigham Young (1801-77) and Wilford Woodruff (1807-98), the second and fourth prophetpresidents of the LDS Church, began to make frequent reference to Christ’s return and the doom that would befall America before he appeared. Especially prevalent was the view that the Civil War was evidence of God’s coming judgment upon America (see Woodruff 1993,265-66). Young interpreted the war as America’s pun¬ ishment for having killed the Mormon prophet and for continuing to persecute the Saints (Hansen 1974,166-69). But, by war’s end, and with the movement totaling over sixty thousand members, Young and the Latter-day Saints turned their efforts toward building Zion along the shores of Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

William Miller and the Adventist Movement The Millerite excitement of the late 1830s and early 1840s occurred during the same period when the religious revivals that swept across America inspired the Campbellites, Mormons, Oneida Perfectionists, and all other manner of social and religious experimentation. One such person caught up in “the blaze of revival fires” was William Miller (1782—1849), a humble New England farmer and veteran of the War of 1812 (Doan 1987b, 119). Through intense study of the Bible, especially the numerical predictions in the books of Daniel and Revelation, Miller had concluded that Christ’s coming would be personal, visible, and soon, and would take place some time between March 21st, 1843, and March 21st, 1844, according to the Jewish mode of computation of time” (Rupp 1844,680). Although in 1818 Miller felt “imme¬ diately the duty to publish this doctrine, that the world might believe and get ready to meet the Judge and Bridegroom at his coming” (quoted in Judd 1987, 21), it was not until the 1830s that Miller was willing to devote his full attention to proclaiming Christ’s imminent return. In 1833 Miller published his calculations in a pamphlet entitled Evidences from the Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ about the Year a.d. 1843, and of His Personal Reign of 1000 Years. That same year, Miller also received a license to preach in Baptist churches, soon after gaining a small number of converts in the New England back country where he first presented his message. By 1839, when Miher was joined in preaching by Joshua Himes, the Northeast had become electri-

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fied by Miller’s prediction, and the Millerites were becoming a sizable movement. Through Himes, Miller was persuaded to bring his message not merely to those at camp meetings and evangelistic revivals, but into the cities as well. Miller also pub¬ lished a monthly journal, Signs of the Times, which, with Himes’s periodical, The Midnight Cry, became the main broadcasting arm of the movement. In addition, the publication of an article on Miller’s views by Horace Greeley on the front page of the New York Tribune lent unintended credence to Miller’s views and gave him the national exposure he sorely needed (Doan 1987a, 17-19; Rowe 1987,9; Rupp 1844, 669-70). However, after March 1844, ripples of disappointment and distress began to wash over the Millerites. Some in the movement retreated to the position that while Christ’s return remained imminent, only God himself would know its precise time. Others expressed their unease by offering their own “functional replacement for the date.” But all hope was not lost. Earlier in 1844, Samuel Snow, one of Miller’s associ¬ ates, had been reworking the calculations and then, in February, began preaching that Christ would arrive on the tenth day of the seventh Jewish month—that is, 22 October 1844 (Rowe 1987,4,8). Since shifts in the date had been announced with some regularity by Millerite leaders in sermons, lectures, and editorial updates, the new date was readily accepted and quickly revived hopes among rank-and-file Adventists (Doan 1987a, 46-50). By October 1844, estimates of the total number of expectant souls reached from 50,000 to nearly 100,000 (Stone 1997,58). This time, however, there was no consoling the Millerites. The disappointment that followed the passing of 22 October was indeed great. The Millerite movement was suddenly and unequivocally in disrepute. Miller and the Millerites were a laughingstock, so much so that date-setting and all other aspects of Miller’s teach¬ ings became heresy in the churches. Miller himself, though disheartened, reported that his faith was not altogether shaken. By the end of 1844, Miller published one last revision of the date for Christ’s coming. In the 5 December issue of The Midnight Cry, he wrote: “I have fixed my mind upon another time, and here I mean to stand until God gives me more light. And that is Today, TODAY, and TODAY, until he comes” (quoted in Judd 1987,33). Miller died in December 1849; his grave marker bears the cryptic inscription “At the time appointed the end shall be” (Doan 1987a, 203).

Hiram Edson, Ellen White, and the Resurrection of Adventism The more immediate response from those experiencing the Great Disappointment was disillusionment and despair. Perhaps Hiram Edson (1806-82), a Millerite lay preacher from Port Gibson, New York, who would later help resuscitate Adventist hopes, expressed it best when he wrote: “Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before. [...] We wept, and wept, till the day dawn” (quoted in Festinger, Riecken, and

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Schachter 1956, 22). Though public ridicule may have driven the Millerites into the shadows, disappointment did not spell the end of Adventist beliefs in Jesus’s imminent coming. While the majority of Millerites were resigned to return quietly to their churches, a good many of them were still convinced that some heavenly event had taken place. From the wreckage of the Great Disappointment arose a number of Adventist splinter groups, the most notable of which was the Seventhday Adventists, who found renewed hope through the post-Disappointment visions of Hiram Edson and the seventeen-year-old Ellen Harmon (later, Ellen G. White) (see chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, this volume). (On addressing prophetic failure in millennial movements, see chapter 8 by Lome Dawson, this volume.) In the wee hours of the morning after the Disappointment, Hiram Edson had been on his way to comfort fellow Adventists when he beheld a heavenly vision. Edson claimed to have seen Christ enter the heavenly sanctuary, “and that he had a work to perform in the Most Holy Place before coming to this earth” (quoted in Vance 1999,26). Clearly, then, something dramatic had taken place on 22 October as predicted, but not on Earth as Adventists had expected. Rather, Edson and his fol¬ lowers now believed that Christ must first cleanse the heavenly sanctuary before returning to Earth to cleanse the world. This preparatory event became known among Adventists as Christ’s “investigative judgment,” that is, “the investigation of the sins of God s people in preparation for the end of the world” to determine which souls were ready to enter the kingdom of God (Butler 1987, 200). Over and above Edson’s encouraging reinterpretation of Miller’s prediction, many Adventists were greatly inspired by the prophetic visions of Ellen Harmon (1827-1915), who had become a Millerite in 1842 and would marry James White, a fellow Adventist, in 1846. Scarcely a month or two after the Great Disappointment, Ellen received the first of many visions regarding the Second Coming. In this vision she saw that Miller’s calculations had been accurate and that those 144,000 Adventists who remained true to the millennial hope would be received into the kingdom of God. As White later wrote in The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan from Creation Down to the End Times (1858), “The people were not yet ready to meet their Lord. There was still a work of preparation to be accomplished among them” (quoted in Vance 1999, 27). About sixty Adventists in Portland, Maine, eagerly believed White’s reassuring visions. And thus, among her growing number of fol¬ lowers, White s authority as a latter-day prophetess became established. Though in frail health, she traveled from one Adventist gathering to another, encouraging “the scattered flock,” as White called the remnant of Miller’s following, to continue to wait upon the Lord’s coming. In addition to White’s numerous visions, it was in Adventist periodicals, such as the Second Advent Review and Herald of the Sabbath, where Adventist leaders worked out the details of their doctrines and debated various organizational policies, includ¬ ing the obligation to keep the Laws of Moses, particularly the dietary laws, and to observe the seventh day—Saturday—as the Christian Sabbath. The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) became formally established in i860, the name marking Adventists, according to Ellen White, as a “peculiar people,” a “standing rebuke to

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the Protestant world,” and as “drawing a line between the worshippers of God and those who worship the Beast and receive his mark” (quoted in Vance 1999,32). While after the Great Disappointment the main body of believers in the Second Advent consciously moved away from the practice of date-setting, interest in calcu¬ lating the time of Christ’s return was never completely abandoned. In fact, though millenarians openly discouraged specific predictions of Christ’s return, throughout the remainder of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, such predictions would be offered by one or another student of prophecy. Charles Taze Russell and his Millennial Dawn association represent one notable example.

Charles Taze Russell and the Beginnings of Jehovah’s Witnesses Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916) was born in Pittsburgh to Presbyterian parents. Though his mother had encouraged him to study for the ministry, after her untimely death, Russell’s father directed him into the family’s clothing business. By age fif¬ teen, Russell had become a partner with and purchasing agent for his father and helped expand the business throughout the Pittsburgh-Allegheny region. It was during this time that Russell’s faith began to waver. He joined a Congregationalist church, but continued to have doubts about many of the historic doctrines of Christianity, especially the concept of the Trinity and the notion of hell. Sometime in 1869 or 1870, while on business in Allegheny, Russell chanced to attend an Adventist meeting and heard Jonas Wendall expound on the Second Coming. “It was sufficient,” Russell later recalled, “to re-establish my wavering faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible” (quoted in Whalen 1962,27). Thereafter, Russell was committed to a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, soon gathering a small group of individuals for informal Bible study. In 1873 Russell published a pamphlet, The Object and Manner of Our Lord’s Return, in which he argued that Christ’s com¬ ing would take place in 1874—thirty years after Miller’s predicted date. He also argued that Christ’s return would be spiritual, not physical, offering as his proof the Greek word parousia, which he believed should be translated “presence,” rather than “coming” (Penton 1997,17-18,34on.i9). In 1875, while on business in Philadelphia, Russell happened to read an article in the Adventist magazine, The Herald of the Morning, edited by N. H. Barbour. In this article, Barbour espoused a view similar to Russell’s 1874 Second Advent date. Soon after, Russell sought out Barbour and they began a three-year collaboration, a venture largely financed by Russell’s growing wealth as a businessman. In 1877 Russell and Barbour published The Three Worlds or Plan of Redemption, a book in which they laid out their reasoning behind the 1874 date and argued that by 1914 the “Times of the Gentiles” would end. In addition, Russell and Barbour firmly expected that the Endtime harvest of souls would likely occur between the fall of 1874 and the spring of 1878, parallel in length to the three and a half years of Christ’s ministry on Earth (Penton 1997,17-23; Beckford 1975,1-2).4

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After Russell’s break with Barbour, he began publishing his own magazine, Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence. With access to Barbour’s sub¬ scriber lists and his own skill as a businessman, Russell soon outpaced his competi¬ tors in the sale and distribution of his Endtime literature. By 1890 Russell’s subscriptions numbered ten thousand; by 1907 that number had increased to fortyfive thousand (Beckford 1975,3-4). As Russell’s doctrines crystallized and his grow¬ ing readership became loyal followers, the beginnings of a new religious movement took greater shape. Soon Russell became known as “the Pastor” and his “Millennial Dawn

Bible students became known as “Russellites”—even by members from

within the movement (Whalen 1962, 31-32; Beckford 1975, 6). Over time Russell came to believe that he and his Bible study groups were a class of spiritual elites, who would be among the “saints” called by God to fulfill a central role in the age to come. Specifically, Russell believed that during the Millennium, Christ would reign from heaven with the 144,000 elect of the true church of Jehovah, an elect chosen exclusively from among the members of his movement.5 Accordingly, Russell began to organize his Bible study classes into local “ecclesias (from the Greek called out” or “the elect”). These semi-autonomous groups, over which Russell exercised doctrinal and liturgical control, became the chief means through which Russell’s books and magazines were distributed. Later, these ecclesias evolved into the present-day “Kingdom Halls,” where studying the writings of Russell came to replace study of the Bible (Beckford 1975, 8-9,15). By the time of Joseph Judge Rutherford (1869-1942), Russell’s chosen successor, the concept of the Kingdom Hall became linked to the Millennium, wherein these Kingdom Halls would serve as “city halls” from which Christ’s elect would govern the world (Simmons and Wilson 1993> 62). It was Rutherford who, in 1931, gave the movement its distinct name, Jehovah’s Witnesses,” after a passage in Isaiah 43:12. A gifted pro¬ moter, Rutherford also coined the slogan “Millions now living will never die” and published it widely on billboards, on rural barn-side posters, and in newspaper advertisements. This slogan would become the watchword for a new generation of expectant Witnesses (Whalen 1962,57,59; Beckford 1975,30). From 1916 until his death in 1942, Rutherford made a career of reinterpreting failed Endtime predictions, having taken his cue from Russell himself. Even during Russell s time failed predictions were being viewed merely as delayed confirmation, if not temporary reprieves in which further preparations in heaven and on Earth could be made. Delayed fulfillment gave Witnesses the added motivation to redou¬ ble their publishing and evangelistic efforts. Because “chosenness” was a given, no failed prophecy was devastating enough to shake that conviction. Moreover, each failure had a perfectly logical prophetic explanation, coming instead to mark a par¬ tial fulfillment that still pointed toward the Kingdom’s final arrival (Stone 2000, 12 14i see chapter 8 by Lome Dawson, this volume). Perhaps more than anything else, it was Russell’s attacks on central Christian doctrines, as well as his harsh criticism of the churches’ increasing departure from t e primacy of the Bible, that placed him increasingly outside the mainstream of merican Protestantism. During the latter decades of the nineteenth century,

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Russell condemned the churches’ growing interest in a socialized Christianity and the progressive conversion of neighborhood parishes into “social club churches,” in which church members “had to be attracted by the offer of such ancillary provisions as youth clubs, gymnasia and nurseries” (Beckford 1975,4,7). While, to be sure, the main ideological and programmatic thrusts of the churches were in the direction of social uplift, this growing emphasis on social and political causes was motivated largely by their own conviction that Christ’s millennial kingdom was just over the horizon. The Social Gospel would soon become one of the new forms in which mil¬ lennial beliefs would find their most dynamic American expression (see chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft, this volume).

“The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man”: the Millennial Gospel of Social Christianity “With the rise of the young republic and the equalitarian aspirations of the early nineteenth century,” observed C. Howard Hopkins, “the democratic ideal and the kingdom hope blended in a climate of opinion highly favorable to the germination of the modern social gospel.” The ebb of Calvinist influence in the mainstream churches, together with growing concern among Protestant clergymen over the misery that they were witnessing in the wake of urban industrialization, gave renewed impetus to a postmillennial interpretation of the kingdom of God “as an actuality realizable on earth.” While premillennialists might bid the Savior come, postmillennialists came to believe that “the ideal preached by Christ was a terres¬ trial, social kingdom” that redeemed humankind collectively (Hopkins 1940, 3-4, 19). Indeed, they believed that through their own efforts, Christ’s kingdom was beginning to appear.6 Among the first to carry forward the postmillennial banner were the Unitarians, who, in the early nineteenth century, had forsaken the beliefs of their Puritan fore¬ bears. Unitarian pronouncements of kingdom come were soon followed by main¬ stream Protestant efforts aimed at building the kingdom through social activism (Handy 1984, 139-41; Moorhead 1999, 98). Beginning in the 1870s, the earlier Unitarian creed, “We believe in The Fatherhood of God; The Brotherhood of Man; The Leadership of Jesus; Salvation by Character; The Progress of Mankind onward and upward forever,” was being incorporated into the emerging Social Gospel move¬ ment (Dorn 1967, 183). In 1874 theologian Samuel Harris (1814-99) of Andover Seminary published a series of twelve lectures entitled The Kingdom of Christ on Earth. In these lectures, Harris argued against the “pre-millennial coming of Christ,”

506

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in favor of “the Christianizing of civilization and the progress and universal preva¬ lence of Christ’s kingdom,” which inspires Christians “to hasten the deliverance of the world from its sin and misery” (1874, 228, 232). Nearly two decades later, Lewis French Stearns (1847-92), a professor at Bangor Seminary, echoed these postmillennial sentiments: We shall see that the kingdom comes not only in the addition of converts to the church and the building up of Christians in holy living, but in the establishment of better principles of business, in the equitable settlement of the relation between capital and labor, in the moral reforms by which deep-seated social vices or abuses are overcome, in the elevation of politics, in the advance of civilization, in the cessation of war, in improved sanitary arrangements in our cities, even in the prevention of cruelty to animals and the increasing sense of obligation to avoid waste and needless destruction in the use of products of material nature. (quoted in Moorhead 1999, 97)

As a term, Social Gospel” came into wider use in the early twentieth century. Before that time, it had been dubbed the “Kingdom movement” by some, and “social Christianity” or “applied Christianity” by others. Perhaps the best-known and most effective exponents of the Social Gospel from America’s pulpits were Washington Gladden (1836—1918) and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861—1918). Gladden, pastor of First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio, was among the most eloquent and influential social activists of his generation. It was in an 1894 address that Gladden linked the Social Gospel with postmillennial expectation: “The kingdom of heaven is here, he declared, just as the spring is here when the crocuses open and the violets and the spring beauties are first in evidence.” Similar to Stearns, Gladden saw God’s kingdom as existing even beyond the walls of the church. “Every department of human life the families, the schools, amusements, art, business, politics, industry, national policies, international relations—will be governed by the Christian law and controlled by Christian influences,” he enthused. “The complete Christianization of all life is what we pray for and work for, when we work and pray for the coming of the kingdom of heaven” (1966a, 104). More than a decade later, and in view of the progress that had been made, Gladden could proclaim: What the prophet [Isaiah] beholds in his vision is the kingdom of God, the reign of righteousness and truth and love in the earth. [... ] It is all coming true. It is no longer a dream, it is proving to be a reality. The city of God, the new Jerusalem, which the Revelator saw coming down from heaven, is beginning to materialize before our eyes. (1966b, 136,140)

With Gladden, and many of his postmillennial contemporaries, Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister working among the poor and laboring classes in New York City, came to believe that the kingdom of God and the Church were not one and the same! According to Rauschenbusch, “the church does not embrace all the forces of the king¬ dom and is but a means for the advancement of the Kingdom.” In fact, the kingdom of God “embraces all pure aspirations God-ward and all true hopes for the perfection of life” and “also means a growing perfection in the collective life of humanity, in our

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laws, in the customs of society, in the institutions for education, and for the adminis¬ tration of mercy; in public opinion, our literary and artistic ideals, in the pervasive¬ ness of the sense of duty, and in our readiness to give our life as a ransom for others” (1984a, 78-79). For Rauschenbusch, the only “adequate doctrinal basis for the social gospel” was “the doctrine of the Kingdom of God,” which itself is “the marrow of the gospel” (1945,131; see Hopkins 1940, 228-31). For, unlike the Church, the kingdom “embraces the whole of human life. It is the Christian transfiguration of the social order.” That is to say, the Church “is one social institution alongside of the family, the industrial organization of society, and the State. The Kingdom of God is in all these, and realizes itself through them all” (Rauschenbush 1945, 145). Indeed, all of Rauschenbusch’s writings—and those of many of his contemporaries—are filled with enthusiastic proclamations of a coming kingdom. But, for postmillennialists, this kingdom transcends Christ’s Church. It is, as Lewis French Stearns would contend, a kingdom “as wide as the world itself” (see Moorhead 1999,97-123). At the highpoint of postmillennial enthusiasm for the kingdom here and now, there suddenly erupted the Great War in Europe. The guns of August 1914, which unleashed four years of catastrophic horror unimaginable except in “apocalyptic” terms, effectively shattered the hopes of the Social Gospelers. For premillennialists, however, the First World War and its aftermath was yet another sign of the coming judgment. After this point in the history of American millennialism, the stage becomes almost completely dominated by the fundamentalist and conservative counteroffensive against socialist and modernist Christian influences in the churches, denominations, mission fields, colleges and seminaries, cooperative soci¬ eties, and publishing houses. The fundamentalist-modernist controversy was in no small way affected by the premillennialist/postmillennialist orientations of these two camps. For fundamentalists, modernist ideas were a diabolical attack on the Bible. Fundamentalists fought against modernism by declaring that the fulfillment of prophecy established once and for all the truth of the Bible (Sandeen 1970; Stone 1993,1997)-

Key Developments within Resurgent Premillennialism The year 1878 was a defining year in American millennialism. As we saw for Jehovah’s Witnesses, the year marked the close of the Endtime harvest of souls and signaled the impending fall of the Gentile powers. However, for postmillennialists, the year 1878 became the year in which labor strikes and growing urban decay inspired their efforts toward building the kingdom of God on Earth. But for the main body of millennialists inside and outside the mainstream churches, it was the year in which inchoate premillennialism became a formalized movement. It was the year that

508

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millennialists, attending their annual prophecy conference, published the Niagara Creed, which set forth a platform that would unite pre-millennialists and lead to the creation of a sizable Protestant subculture (Sandeen 1970, 145-58, 273-77; Weber 1987,160-61; Stone 1993,47-48)7 The prophecy conference movement began in the 1860s, when a small group of millenarians gathered informally in New York City to share their views on the Second Coming of Christ. Officially convened in 1868, and then held annually from 1875 to 1900, these gatherings of theologians and clergymen from nearly all the major Protestant denominations were at first called the Believers’ Meeting for Bible Study, and then later the Niagara Prophecy Conference. While the publication of the fourteen-point Niagara Creed articulated the fundamental doctrinal beliefs of those in attendance, it also served as a foundation upon which present and future generations of premillennialist conference speakers and writers would build their elaborate Endtime interpretations. But it was the fourteenth point, which summa¬ rized the movement’s premillennial beliefs, that would come to inspire the growth of a cottage industry of prophecy and prophecy-related literature (see Stone 1993). It stated: We believe that the world will not be converted during the present dispensation, but is fast ripening for judgment, while there will be a fearful apostasy in the professing Christian body; and hence that the Lord Jesus will come in person to introduce the millennial age, when Israel shall be restored to their own land, and the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord; and that this personal and premillennial advent is the blessed hope set before us in the Gospel for which we should be constantly looking. (Sandeen 1970, Appendix A, 276-77)

Most of the developments within American premillennialism during this period and into the present were in many ways merely variations on the clauses that com¬ prise this fourteenth point. By the 1890s differences arose over a signature doctrine of the emerging premil¬ lennial movement, namely over the “Rapture” of believers before Christ’s return. The concept of the Rapture had been adapted from John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), an Irish Brethren whose Dispensational-millenarian views were influential within American millennialist circles. Darby held that at the Rapture, which could occur at any moment, Christ would return for his saints. Then, at the end of the seven-year Tribulation period, Christ would return with his saints, to rule Israel and the Earth from the ancient city of Jerusalem. American premillennialists, such as Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921) and James H. Brookes (1830-97), began to see the Rapture as a key component in the Bible’s Endtime chronology, expecting it to occur within a generation after the end of the Times of the Gentiles (Sandeen 1970, 62-66, 210-12; Weber 1987,21-22,229-30; Stone 1993,34,50-52). During this same period, a dramatic shift in the understanding of the signs of the times and the eschatological role of the Church took place within premillennial thought. With the rise of Zionism in the 1860s, premillennialists came to view the return of the Jews to Palestine as the most significant development in the fiilfillment

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of Endtime prophecy. Israel’s eternal position as God’s chosen people superseded that of the Church. Indeed, for premillennialists, the Church came increasingly to be viewed as merely a two-thousand-year placeholder.8 Thus, at his Second Coming, Christ will return triumphant, the Jews will acknowledge him as their Messiah and king, and the House of David will be restored—all in accordance with prophecy (Stone 1993,65-67; Scofield 1916,161-68; see also chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck and chapter 34 by Yaakov Ariel, both in this volume). With the publication in 1878 of William E. Blackstone’s book Jesus Is Coming., the identification of Jewish nationalist aspirations as a sign of the approaching Millennium spread throughout millennialist circles. In it, Blackstone (1841-1935), a Methodist layman and champion of World Zionism, referred to Israel as “God’s sun-dial” and its restoration as “the red thread” that “runs through the whole Bible.” “If we want to know our place in chronology, our position in the march of events,” he wrote, “look at Israel.” “What a sign is this that the end of this dispensation is near[!]” (Blackstone 1898,171,172,177). Blackstone’s book influenced generations of premillennialists in the churches, selling millions of copies (in 1908 alone, 700,000 copies were printed), and “contributed significantly to the interest of Zionism among conservative Protestants” (Handy 1981,181; see also Stone 1993,242). Even to this day, Blackstone’s book remains in print. Over the next century, other premillennialists would identify the national resto¬ ration of Israel as the very linchpin of Endtime prophecy. “These prophecies,” wrote Samuel Kellogg in 1883, “make all else to culminate and terminate in the return of the scattered nation to the land of their fathers, and their conversion to the faith of the Pierced One as their promised Messiah” (1883,218-19). In 1910 I. M. Haldeman, pas¬ tor of the First Baptist Church in New York City, noted in his book The Signs of the Times: “Zion and Zionism are in the air.... But this Zionist Movement is a witness that the coming of the Lord to rule and reign as king is not far away” (quoted in Stone 1993,66). “It is pleasing to note,” E. H. Moseley confidently wrote in 1930, “that the present trend in history is to resettle Israel as a nation in Palestine. The enthron¬ ing of Christ as their King will likely soon follow” (quoted in Stone 1993,42). Similarly, in 1967, John Walvoord (1910-2002), president of Dallas Theological Seminary, believed that the Church would not be the main focus of divine interest in the Last Days. “From the standpoint of God’s divine election, Israel is instead the key, and through Israel God was to fulfill His purpose whether redemptive, political, or escha¬ tological” (quoted in Stone 1993, 52). Lastly, Hal Lindsey (b. 1929), whose The Late Great Planet Earth became the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s, summarized a century of premillennialist speculation. Like those before him, Lindsey believed that Israel was the “paramount prophetic sign” of the Endtime: “What has happened and what is happening right now to Israel is significant in the entire prophetic pic¬ ture” (1973,33,34). Lindsey was thoroughly convinced that “this restoration and spir¬ itual rebirth of the [Jewish] nation” signaled “the beginning of the everlasting kingdom which the Messiah is promised to bring” (50). What is more, for Lindsey and members of his generation, the countdown to “The Apocalypse” had begun with the founding of Israel as a nation in 1948. As

5io

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Lindsey wrote elsewhere, “Israel is literally the fuse of Armageddon—a prophetic name for the last war” (1981,53). Thus, within a generation, “within forty years or so of 1948, all these [Endtime events] could take place” (1973, 43). Once Israel became the centerpiece of Endtime prophecy and its restoration a sign of the approaching Millennium, all that remained for late twentieth-century premillennialists was to fill in the arcane details of the Bible’s Endtime picture (for a variety of examples, see Stone 1993,143-229). During this same period, premillennialist literature reflected a preoccupation with matching historical events with their corresponding Bible prophecies, espe¬ cially events in the Middle East and surrounding nations. Comments such as “according to the Bible, the Middle East crisis will continue to escalate until it threatens the peace of the whole world” (Lindsey 1973,140) and “such a phenomenal rise of a nation so godless and blasphemous [as Soviet Russia] must have some pro¬ phetic significance” (Walvoord 1967,104) became commonplace. Reading the Bible as if it were the daily newspaper came to typify premillennial activity. As with Kellogg, subsequent generations of premillennialists likewise believed that “proph¬ ecy is simply history written in advance” (Kellogg 1883, 90; cf. Scofield 1916, 9, and Lindsey 1973,7; see also chapter 7 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume).

Conclusion In this brief survey of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American millennialisms, one belief has remained constant from the time of the Puritans to the present: namely, the notion that the kingdom of God has arrived or will soon appear. While certainly there are apparent differences among millennialists, these differences have had more to do with varying interpretations of when Jesus will return to establish the promised kingdom and what shape that kingdom will take. To that end, millennialists have been closely attuned to the signs of the times and have responded in ways consistent with how those signs have fed their expectations. Some of the earliest millenarians responded by creating small communities in which to watch and wait for Jesus’s return. Others, such as the Shakers and Oneida Perfectionists, believed that the mil¬ lennial age had already dawned, and thus all that remained was for society to be organized according to biblical principles. Still others, such as Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith, vacillated between anticipating the coming kingdom and taking initiative in building the New Zion in the New World. And later postmillennialists, in their efforts to create the kingdom of God on Earth, eagerly embraced the new rev¬ elations of the emerging fields of the social and behavioral sciences. Premillennialists, for their part, responded by reasserting the primacy of the Bible. For these Protestants, the fulfillment of prophecy, especially regarding the return of the Jews to Palestine and the potential restoration of David’s kingdom, proved the Bible’s reliability and reinforced its relevance to modern life. Moreover!

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that God should punish a sinful world and purify it by fire and that the millennial age should arise from the ashes of “Jacob’s Trouble”9 was seen by premillennialists as the prophetically ordained means through which the literal reign of Christ would come to pass. Two world wars, followed by the Cold War and unending conflicts in the Middle East, lent credence to premillennialist interpretations of prophecy, while severely discrediting interpretations offered by postmillennialists—at least in the minds of conservative Protestants. But despite their differences, millennialists of all types have nourished the hope that, in the Last Days, the world will be redeemed, humankind returned to the Garden, and all of creation restored to its original per¬ fection—the dwelling place of God will be among humanity, “and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things [have] passed away” (Rev. 21:3,4).

NOTES 1. The most relevant chapters in the New Testament are Matthew 22-24; Mark 13; Luke 21; Acts 1-2; 1 Thessalonians 4; 2 Thessalonians 2; 2 Peter 3; and the entire book of Revelation. Revelation, or the Apocalypse (apocalypsis being Greek for “revelation”), records a series of visions concerning the Last Days, the Second Coming (parousia), and the millennial reign of Christ. Revelation ends with a vision of Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, descending to Earth, and the restoration of Paradise. 2. Protestant millennialists first distinguished the differences between pre- and postmillennialism in the mid-nineteenth century and came to use these terms to describe themselves vis-a-vis rival millenarians. For instance, see Samuel Harris (1874, 228), who is critical of “a pre-millennial coming of Christ,” and Walter Rauschenbusch (1984b, 90), who in 1896 criticized both “Pre-Millenarians” and “Post-Millenarians.” For additional primary source examples, see Stone 1993,41, 49,53, 60,100,101,106,107,116. To this day, these terms remain in use among American millennialists. 3. The phrase “Times of the Gentiles” is found in Luke 21:20-32 and is usually understood to mean the period in which the Jews are under the domination of Gentile nations, thought to have begun with the overthrow of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 b.c.e.

However, Charles Taze Russell, founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses, believed that this

period began in 607-606

b.c.e.,

when the first Babylonian incursions took place (Whalen

1962,30-31; Rogerson 1969,104-5). 4. This date was later extended to 1881, and then to 1914. After Russell’s death in 1916, the date was pushed back to 1918, then to 1925, and then again to 1975 (see Zygmunt 2000,

73-74). 5. This prophecy is found in Revelation 7:1-8 and 14:1-5. To reconcile the number of the elect with the growth of Jehovah’s Witnesses beyond 144,000 members, later leaders modified their interpretation. The 144,000 became known as the “Little Flock” (after Luke 12:32), and the remaining Jehovah’s Witnesses became identified with the “Great Company” (or Multitude) in Revelation 7:9-10 (see Beckford 1975,108-9). 6. Such postmillennial aspirations date from before the time of Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), who saw the Great Awakening (c. 1735-45) as a sign of the coming Millennium. Though Edwards

512

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did not expect to see the Millennium in his lifetime—he believed that it would not fully arrive until the year 2000—he interpreted the quickening of the churches as having set into motion “the most glorious renovation of the world” (Edwards 1968,58; see Bloch 1985,16-20). 7. As a movement, premillennialism has more or less been a loose collection of assorted conservative Protestants, clustered around a few key individuals, and held together by the belief that theirs were indeed the Last Days spoken about in the Bible. The main voices have included: C. I. Scofield, who founded the Philadelphia School of the Bible; Arno Gaebelein, who directed the Our Hope of Israel mission and edited its periodical, Our Hope-, William Erdman and James M. Gray of the Moody Bible Institute; R. A. Torrey, Lewis Talbot, and Charles Feinberg of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA); Lewis Sperry Chafer, Charles Ryrie, and John F. Walvoord of Dallas Theological Seminary; Wilbur Smith and George Eldon Ladd of Fuller Theological Seminary; an assortment of pastors and evangelists, such as Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday, Paul Rader, I. M. Haldeman, Aimee Semple McPherson, H. A. Ironside, William Bell Riley, W. A. Criswell, and Billy Graham; and countless authors and conference speakers, the best-known today being Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. 8. For premillenialists, the Church Age was seen as an intercalary period, or “Great Parenthesis,” in God’s prophetic time line. This view originated with Darby around 1832, was popularized decades later by C. H. Mackintosh, and then widely disseminated by C. I. Scofield in his 1909 Scofield Reference Bible (Weber 1987, 20-21; Stone 1993, 8-9,32-34, 67). 9. The phrase “Jacob’s Trouble” is found in Jeremiah 30:7 and is understood by premillennialists as a reference to the Tribulation period. As support for this interpretation, premillennialists point to similar warnings found in Daniel 12:1, Matthew 24:21, and Revelation 6:17 (see, for example, Lindsey 1973,33-34; Walvoord 1999,129-30).

REFERENCES Beckford, James A. 1975. The Trumpet of Prophecy: A Sociological Study of Jehovah’s Witnesses. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Blackstone, William E. 1898. Jesus Is Coming. Rev. ed. New York: Fleming H. Revell. Bloch, Ruth. 1985. Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press. Butler, Jonathan M. 1987. “The Making of a New Order: Millerism and the Origins of Seventh-day Adventism.” In The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler, 189—208. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Clouse, Robert G., ed. 1977. The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. Davidson, James West. 1972. The Logic of Millennial Thought. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Doan, Ruth Alden. 1987a. The Miller Heresy, Millennialism, and American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. -. 1987b. “Millerism and Evangelical Culture.” In The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler, 118-38. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dorn, Jacob Henry. 1967. Washington Gladden: Prophet of the Social Gospel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

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Edwards, Jonathan. 1968. The Works of President Edwards. Vol. 6. New York: B. Franklin. Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. 1956. When Prophecy Fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foster, Douglas A., Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams, eds. 2004. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans. Gladden, Washington. 1966a. “The Church and the Kingdom.” In The Social Gospel in America, 18/0—1920, edited by Robert T. Handy, 102—18. New York: Oxford University Press. . 1966b. “The Nation and the Kingdom.” In The Social Gospel in America, 18/0—1920, edited by Robert T. Handy, 135-53- New York: Oxford University Press. Handy, Robert T., ed. 1981. The Holy Land in American Protestant Life, 1800—1948: A Documentary History. New York: Arno. -. 1984. A Christian America. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Hansen, Klaus J. 1974. Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. -. 1981. Mormonism and the American Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harris, Samuel. 1874. The Kingdom of Christ on Earth. Andover, Mass.: Warren F. Draper. Holloway, Mark. 1966. Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880. New York: Dover. Hopkins, Charles H. 1940. The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Judd, Wayne R. 1987. “William Miller: Disappointed Prophet.” In The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler, 17-35. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kellogg, Samuel. 1883. The Jews, or Prediction and Fulfillment. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Company. Lindsey, Hal. 1973. The Late Great Planet Earth. New York: Bantam. -. 1981. The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon. King of Prussia, Penn.: Westgate. Moorhead, James H. 1999. World without End: Mainstream American Protestant Visions of the Last Things, 1880-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Moseley, E. H. 1930. The Jew and His Destiny. Edinburgh: J. K. Souter & Company. Nordhoff, Charles, i960 [1875]. The Communistic Societies of the United States: From Personal Visit and Observation. New York: Hillary House. Noyes, John Humphrey. 1966. Strange Cults and Utopias of 19th-Century America [published in 1870 as History of American Socialisms]. New York: Dover. Penton, M. James. 1997. Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses. 2d ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rauschenbusch, Walter. 1945. A Theology for the Social Gospel. New York: Abingdon. -. 1984a. “The Kingdom of God.” In Walter Rauschenbusch: Selected Writings, edited by Winthrop S. Hudson, 76-79. New York: Paulist Press. -. 1984b. “Our Attitude toward Millenarianism.” Walter Rauschenbusch: Selected Writings, edited by Winthrop S. Hudson, 79-94. New York: Paulist Press. Rogerson, Alan. 1969. Millions Now Living Will Never Die: A Study of Jehovah’s Witnesses. London: Constable & Company. Rowe, David L. 1987. “Millerites: A Shadow Portrait.” In The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler, 1-16. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Rupp, I. Daniel. 1844. He Pasa Ekklesia: An Original History of the Religious Denominations at the Present Existing in the United States. Philadelphia: J. Y. Humphreys. Sandeen, Ernest R. 1970. The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scofield, C. 1.1916. What Do the Prophets Say? Philadelphia: Sunday School Times. Simmons, John K., and Brian C. Wilson. 1993. Competing Visions of Paradise: The California Experience of 19th Century American Sectarianism. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Fithian. Smith, Joseph, Jr. 1880. The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Containing the Revelations Given to Joseph Smith, Junior, the Prophet, for the Building Up of the Kingdom of God in the Last Days. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co. Stone, Jon R. 1993. A Guide to the End of the World: Popular Eschatology in America. New York: Garland. -• !997- On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism. New York: St. Martins. Stone, Jon R„ ed. 2000. Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy. New York: Routledge. Tuveson, Ernest L. 1968. Redeemer Nation: The Idea of Americas Millennial Role. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vance, Laura. 1999. Seventh-day Adventism in Crisis: Gender and Sectarian Change in an Emerging Religion. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Walvoord, John F. 1967. The Nations in Prophecy. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. -. 1999- The Church in Prophecy: Exploring God’s Purpose for the Present Age. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel. Weber, Timothy P. 1987. Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1982. Enl. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Whalen, William J. 1962. Armageddon around the Corner. New York: John Day. Woodruff, Wilford. 1993. Waiting for World’s End: The Diaries ofWilford Woodruff, edited by Susan Staker. Salt Lake City: Signature Books. Zygmunt, Joseph F. 2000. “Prophetic Failure and Chiliastic Identity: The Case of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” In Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy, edited by Jon R. Stone, 65-85. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 26

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONALISM GLENN W. SHUCK

Dispensationalism, a philosophy of history that gives special attention to the purported forthcoming of the Endtime (and sometimes of the United States and Great Britain as its special agents), has gained much popularity in the United States during the past century. Of British origin, Dispensationalism can claim as many as 40 million American adherents, if not more, depending on which criteria one uses. One can even speak of distinct Dispensationalisms, as Dispensational belief ranges across a continuum from the baroque complexity of elaborate charts to a more simplified form one finds at the popular level. The lat¬ ter amounts to a few easy-to-remember precepts packaged in supermarket best¬ sellers. This chapter, however, will look at Dispensationalism in its broader, popular outlines, making note of other schemes, but staying with Dispensationalism as it is taught, understood, and acted upon by most conservative Dispensational believers.1 Christian

In a nutshell, Dispensationalism explains how God has dealt with humanity in six stages—number seven is prophesied to arrive shortly—and why the present, sixth dispensation, or Church Age (also known as the Age of Grace), is of penulti¬ mate significance. It allows professed prophets to promise the imminent arrival of the Endtime, without having to set a date—always a temptation and trap for erst¬ while prophets.2 Thus Dispensationalism allows believers to focus on the End with a sustained intensity that has continually defied predictions of its own imminent collapse.3

516

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Origins of Dispensationalism Like many ideas, Dispensationalism is not necessarily original in many of its tenets, although the packaging is unique. Throughout the history of Christianity prophets have divided history into unique phases, with the final phase inevitably coming soon. The most famous attempt to divide human history into distinct ages was car¬ ried out by a Calabrian prophet, Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202) (see chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft and chapter 15 by Rebecca Moore, both in this volume). Joachim divided history into three periods, corresponding to the reign of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Treading on heretical waters, especially after the early church father Augustine (354~43o) put a damper on apocalyptic fervor, Joachim did not carry his ideas through to their logical conclusions, since they would not have pleased his close neighbor, the pope, since apocalypticism has historically been associated with revolutionary thought. Nevertheless, Joachim followed the Trinitarian pattern and claimed that the Age of the Father, or Law, ended with the coming of Christ. Christ ushered in the Age of the Son, which emphasized Grace. Gradually arriving was the Age of the Spirit, in which those properly grounded in spiritual understanding of the scriptural sources would help those less gifted under¬ stand the true nature of the texts (Reeves and Gould 1987,1-8; Shuck 2005,32-33). Joachims ideas spurred on the so-called Spiritual Franciscans, who thought they were the gifted ones endowed with the true understanding of the Scriptures. It is significant to note, however, that Joachim’s ages were described as arriving gradu¬ ally. He did not set dates (Grundmann 1927, 57; Shuck 2005, 33). The reluctance to set dates would later be shared by the leading writers and spokespersons of Dispensationalism. The contemporary historian of ideas Paul S. Boyer, among others, further traces Dispensationalism to ideas that were floating around the British Isles as early as the sixteenth century and were transported to the colony of Massachusetts by the sev¬ enteenth century (Boyer 1992, 88; Wainwright 1993, 83). The idea of true believers escaping the sinful world for the realm of heaven had been anticipated in the writ¬ ings of the Puritan divine Increase Mather (1639-1723), for example, in the late sev¬ enteenth century. In addition, prophecy conferences in London during the early eighteenth century anticipated a number of the tenets of Dispensationalism. Central to Dispensational prophecy speculation was, and remains, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which states believers “shall meet the Lord in the air: and so shah we ever be with the Lord.” John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) took this verse, and found a number of verses in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and also in the Greek Bible (New Testament) that seemed to proof” each other, given sufficient liberty in interpretation, and developed a foundational tenet of Dispensationalism—the Rapture of the faithful (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). In addition, the notion that God makes covenants with his “chosen” people was not new, having roots deep in the Hebrew Bible. Nor was it an idea novel to Christianity, especially Protestantism, that God bases his dealings with humanity

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONALISM

517

through covenants—solemn promises put forward by God that retain their validity until the terms of the covenant are inevitably broken due to innate human sinful¬ ness. As we will see, this pattern of God making covenants and humans breaking them forms the structural underpinnings of Dispensational theology. Particularly important for Anglo-American Protestantism, however, especially the more Calvinist dissenting variety was the Reformation covenant theology developed by reformers such as Heinrich Bullinger (1504-75) in Zurich (MacCulloch 2003,176, 179; Ahlstrom 1972, 808). The fact that Dispensationalism emerged from within minds shaped by covenant theology largely explains its special appeal among con¬ servative Reformed, non-Lutheran Protestants.4 But it was up to later thinkers to synthesize all of these elements into what would become Dispensationalism. And the person most closely associated with its synthesis was the British dissenter, John Nelson Darby.

John Nelson Darby John Nelson Darby was born into a respectable family, as his father had amassed wealth selling munitions during the Napoleonic Wars. He graduated from Trinity College, and flirted with law at King’s Inn in Dublin before his religious interests steered him away from a career in law (Stunt 2000,164; Shuck 2005, 30). His theo¬ logical journey began with an Anglican ordination in 1825. He started his career at a small parish church in Calary, Ireland, before a theological disagreement with his archbishop (who seemed to equate Protestantism with loyalty to the king) led him toward dissenting circles (Stunt 2000,168-70). This willingness to buck tradition and authority would remain a part of Darby’s personality and theology. His move¬ ment always demanded separation from traditional denominations. He joined an organization of fellow travelers, the Plymouth Brethren, and became their preemi¬ nent spokesperson, using the platform to bring attention to his ideas of the Rapture—the heavenly airlift to safety of true believers. Darby decided in 1849 that the Plymouth Brethren, too, had become irreversibly tainted, and he bolted for another organization largely of his own design, the Exclusive Brethren. Darby was a dissenter in every sense of the term. Nevertheless, his hopes for a wider audience for his ideas and the Exclusive Brethren led him on many trips to the United States (Ahlstrom 1972, 808-9). Darby’s tours throughout the United States were not as successful as he had hoped, precisely because he could not find many people willing to leave their denominations to become “comer outers.” Americans, it seemed, loved their denom¬ inational affiliations. He nevertheless had a great deal of influence. Invited by James H. Brookes (1830-97) to speak at his church in St. Louis, and also by the evangelical giant Dwight L. Moody (1837-99) to preach in Chicago, Darby stirred interest in those who were more adept at spreading his message to American audiences. Brookes and Moody certainly played their parts, with Moody embracing Dispensationalism as he moved across the English-speaking world touring the great

518

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

cities with his revivalist message. Nevertheless, the most influential heir to Darby was Cyrus I. Scofield (see also chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume).

Cyrus I. Scofield Scofield (1843-1921) was certainly a man of many talents. His background was less than ideal for a pastor, as he had been a soldier, a lawyer, and a drunkard (not neces¬ sarily in that order) for many years, and was acquainted with fife inside prison walls (Boyer 1992, 97). But as so often happens in lives visited by greatness, Scofield took a radically different path as he languished in prison. Out of his sufferings he converted to evangelical Christianity, and furiously made up for the time he had lost in his unre¬ pentant life with a career as a pastor, evangelist, and, most important, the editor of the Scofield Reference Bible (King James Version). Boyer estimates that the Scofield Reference Bible has sold at least 10 million copies, making it edifying for the soul and wholesome for the coffers of Oxford University Press and Scofield’s estate (1992,98). Preparing the biblical text for readers who tended to interpret even the most outlandish portions of Scripture as literally as possible, Scofield inserted his copious notes alongside and below the actual biblical text, using a very similar font, with otherwise no great signal that his opinions were his own. As a result, readers con¬ fronted his text, first published in 1909, as a coherent narrative from beginning to end, which organized the passages in Scripture around the ideas of Dispensationalism and the coming End modified and embellished somewhat from Darby’s version. Scofield’s best-selling Bible made such an impact that one can still read and hear the jingle: “My hope is built on nothing less / Than Scofield’s notes and Moody Press” (Boyer 1992,98). Thus Dwight L. Moody and his publishing legacy, along with Cyrus I. Scofield’s thorough reimagination of the Scriptures, earned them an immortality of sorts in the Dispensational pantheon.

What is Dispensationalism? Dispensationalism, as noted above, imagines a scheme of varying complexity that divides the meaning of history—that is, the history of God’s dealings with human¬ ity—into seven distinct phases. The late church historian Sidney Ahlstrom provides the most concise understanding of the seven stages of Dispensationalism. As such, his summary deserves to be quoted at length: 1. Innocency: the Edenic covenant with Adam before the Fall 2. Conscience: the Adamic covenant, after man’s expulsion from the Garden 3. Human Government: the Noahic covenant, after the Deluge 4. Promise: the Abrahamic covenant with God’s chosen, Israel alone; all other peoples remain under Human Government

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONALISM

519

5. Law: the Mosaic covenant with Israel, extending through the ministry of Jesus to the Jews, until the crucifixion in which both Jew and Gentile participate 6. Grace: the covenant of grace in and through Christ, to Jews and Gentiles individually until Christ’s Second Coming. 7. The Fullness of Time, or the Kingdom: the Millennium when Christ shall restore the Davidic monarchy of Israel and rule for a thousand years. (Ahlstrom 1972,810) Scofield s imitation of King James-style prose enhances the eccentricity of his sum¬ mary but does not discourage further inquiry. It fits an almost monotonous pattern of God making a momentous covenant with his chosen people, only to see the cov¬ enant broken, ending with a catastrophe presumably of divine origin. All of this foregrounds a number of themes. First and foremost, it explains why the format is so convincing. As noted, conservative evangelicals, especially around the end of the nineteenth century, read the Bible literally. In fact, most Christians up until roughly the 1920s accorded the Bible a hefty, if not always literal status. But what does one mean by literal? Sophisticated, university-trained prophecy adher¬ ents leave themselves an out clause, suggesting that the text ought to be read literally in its original autographs. Nevertheless, what has been viewed as literal has changed based on the needs of the reader or writer and the verses chosen. We lack any nr-text, and must rely on tradition and occasional glimpses from earlier times, such as the textual discoveries at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. This answer allows believers to escape the difficult portions of potentially disconfirming Scripture. More often, however, believers use a simpler definition based on their readings of the notion of Common Sense Realism developed during the Scottish Enlightenment. In other words, if a word or a passage can be rendered literally, it must be read just as it is written. Likewise, if no literal interpretation makes “com¬ mon sense,” the passage must be understood as allegorical. It must be said, however, that Dispensational believers have exercised great imagination when reading the texts, and what is nonsensical to one generation becomes valuable to the next, including verses that can be read as pointing to a nuclear Armageddon, among many examples of possibilities that could not have been anticipated in an earlier era. Moreover, most believers at the popular level outright ignore the problems that translations introduce, assuming that Christ has guided the hands of translators (at least of certain versions), if they consider the problem at all. So when one reads that adherents take the Bible literally, a healthy skepticism is advised.5 Next we have the chronologies and meanings of the individual dispensations. The overall meaning is simple enough: God deals (dispenses) with humanity in dif¬ ferent ways in different eras. This helps believers understand why Jesus could heal the sick and produce loaves and fish for the masses, while such phenomena are the stuff of legend today. It also helps believers feel special. God may have dealt with the Jews in different periods, but during the Church Age or the Age of Grace, God is more concerned with his Church and its mechanisms—the spreading of the belief

520

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

in Jesus Christ as the suffering savior who atoned for the sins of humanity on the cross at Calvary. And, as each age has closed with a disaster, the sixth Dispensation will likewise conclude in a near-catastrophe. Scofield’s notes may make some sense up until this point, but interpreters, especially those of recent vintage, have placed much more value in the seventy weeks of the sixth age and especially its final seven

years than in the totality of what has happened before. It is to this controversial subject we now turn.

The Seventy Weeks of the Church Age The sixty-ninth week ends not with the crucifixion of Christ, but with the destruc¬ tion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70

c.e.

At this point God’s

attention shifts to bringing the evangelion (Good News) of Christ’s victory on the cross to Jews and especially Gentiles. Contemporary popularizers of prophecy belief refer to this period as the Church Age, as it is the time when God builds his Church on Earth. It is incumbent upon all Christians to spread the Good News to all people in all nations (from the Great Commission), as this is believed to be a crucial step that must occur before Christ returns. This belief has driven many into the mission field, most notably the armies of Charlemagne, the Portuguese and Spaniards of the sixteenth century, and, to a lesser degree, the French and British a century later. With the development of rapid transportation, and later television and radio, it became much easier to spread the Word. The Seventy Weeks period needs a closer explanation, however, as it is far from straightforward. The weeks are conceived as “weeks of years,” meaning each day equals one year. But God oddly suspends the prophetic stopwatch during the “Great Parenthesis,” as little of prophetic value occurs during the Church Age, save at the End (Boyer 1992, 87-88). Hence, believers must await “signs of the times” to alert them that time is short. This belief also reduces the temptation to set dates for the End, although, again, this has not stopped everyone. The “proof” texts for this Great Parenthesis and the introduction of the Church Age come from Scofield’s reading of Daniel 9:16: “And after threescore and two weeks shah Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined” (Scofield 1945, 915). Bible scholars typically view this verse as referring to the Hellenistic invasion of Judah by Antiochus IV Epiphanes during the middle part of the second century b.c.e. (see chapter 7 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 13 by James D. Tabor, both in this volume). Such a “preterist” reading (meaning that the prophecies in the Bible have already been fulfilled) will not do for Dispensationalists. For them, the apocalyptic verses in Daniel bear some resemblance to past events, but since such events did not fulfill the verses literally, the denouement remains. So how does one know that the End is near? Again, one watches and waits for signs of the times. Matthew 24, one of several portions of the Bible referred to as

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONALISM

521

“little apocalypses,” gives a few vague hints. When the disciples ask Christ how they shall know the End is near, Jesus indicates that there will be wars and rumors of wars, and all of the usual suspects. Needless to say, this could indicate any age, and believers throughout the years have assumed as much, but contemporary Dispensationalists know that it refers to the present. This leads us to the mysterious last week of the Church Age. Of this period Daniel 9:27 explains, referring here to the appearance of the Messiah’s nemesis, the Antichrist: And he [Antichrist] shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it [the rebuilt temple] desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

This leads us to that horrible, final week of the Church Age, the Tribulation.

The Tribulation In this section I will discuss the thought of three of the most prominent contempo¬ rary Dispensationalists: Jerry Jenkins (b. 1949), Tim LaHaye (b. 1926), and Hal Lindsey (b. 1929), along with the contributions of a few less prominent but still high-profile voices. I begin with Hal Lindsey (see also chapter 7 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, both in this volume).

Hal Lindsey Lindsey may have seemed an extremely unlikely candidate to perform the pro¬ methean task of taking Dispensationalism to the masses—at least from the view¬ point of his teachers. He was a less than ideal student at the University of Houston, to say the least. He moved on to the Dallas Theological Seminary, where he was likewise a mediocre student. Still, the teachings of this academic institution of Dispensational ideas made a deep impression on Lindsey. He graduated, translated his tremendous interpersonal skills into a successful campus ministry, and obtained a feel for what American youth of the 1960s needed. He published his mega-bestseller, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) with cowriter Carole C. Carlson, and made an instant and quite surprising splash on the Dispensational scene.6 Along with a movie narrated by Orson Welles and featuring monologues by Lindsey pro¬ duced several years after the book, Lindsey was hot. He claims to have met with Pentagon and other high government officials, and his message made its way into mainstream bookstores and even became a staple of supermarket spirituality (Shuck 2005,38).

522

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

The Late Great Planet Earth reads as a trendy prophecy manual. Lindsey makes no attempt to make it erudite; he does cite authorities, but none are too impressive. The book lays out the themes of the Rapture, the Tribulation (of which I will have much more to say below), the Antichrist, the “Mark of the Beast,” and a hint of the fulfillment and profound sense of personal meaning and comfort believers can expect in this life and the next. Lindsey’s other topics included his nemeses: secular humanism, one-world religion, one-world government, secret organizations that are actually running nation-states, and the rapid growth of technology. All of these themes signal the imminent return of Christ, including the seemingly miraculous rebirth of Israel in 1948 and its victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 (see also chapter 34 by Yaakov Ariel, this volume). Lindsey reads the little apocalypse of Matthew 24 and its mention of the fig tree regaining its leaves as pointing toward Israel, a com¬ mon assumption now among Dispensationalists. Of particular interest is how Lindsey ties many of these themes together with his ambivalent stance7 vis-a-vis technology: Do you believe it will be possible for people to be controlled economically? In our computerized society, where we are all “numbered” from birth to death, it seems completely plausible that some day in the near future the numbers racket will consolidate and we will have just one number for all our business, money, and credit transactions. Leading members of the business community are now planning that all money matters will be handled electronically. (Lindsey 1970,113)

In other words, a one-world system, or the “Beast System,” as many Dispensational writers call it, will provide the perfect opportunity to usher in the reign of the Antichrist. And Lindsey’s tone is urgent; that time is upon us now.

Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins, and the Fateful Seven Last Years If Hal Lindsey’s success was surprising, the success of the writing team of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins was even more so. For years Christian novelists had written fictional renderings of Lindsey’s Dispensational scenario. But with few exceptions, such as Christian financial adviser Larry Burkett’s 1991 effort, The Illuminati, and nurse Carol Balizet’s The Seven Last Years (1978), the genre did not seem promising. LaHaye and Jenkins changed all of that. Literary agent Rick Christian teamed the two together, and the resulting Left Behind series has enjoyed phenomenal success (see also chapter 34 by Yaakov Ariel, this volume). LaHaye pro¬ vided the theology, while Jenkins, a prolific writer, churned out the novels at an approximate pace of one every ten months. Jenkins did this even while carrying out side projects, including producing a juvenile version of Left Behind.

A huge part of their success owed to its marketing strategy. The publisher, Tyndale House, took quite a risk with large print runs that found their way into mainstream bookstores and even into Costco and Walmart. The novels, despite the commonplace prose, also succeeded because they apparently answered the ques¬ tions that have been on the minds of evangelicals for quite some time: “Who am I?”

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONALISM

523

“Who are we as the Christian community?” and “What does it mean to be a Christian? The authors pounded away at these themes, creating characters to which ordinary Americans could relate. Set in a quiet suburb of Chicago, the novels instantly tried to undermine the Sunbelt (or Bible Belt) assumptions that have per¬ sisted since H. L. Mencken’s caustic reportage of the Scopes Trial of 1925.8 The authors had several reasons to do this. First, evangelicals have indeed been moving out of the Sunbelt. Second, suburbs are often a battleground for competing reli¬ gious options, if one thinks about churches as franchises and churchgoers as con¬ sumers. As such, the Left Behind authors depict an evangelicalism that is quite marketable in suburbia (Shuck 2005,10-12). The plot, with the exception of the first few pages, tells the story of those left behind. That is, it follows a small group of characters that missed out on the Rapture—the sudden translation to heavenly bliss—and must face the powers of darkness at their fullest strength during the seven years of Tribulation. Secular com¬ mentators often claim that the Rapture begins the seven last years, but Dispensationalists such as LaHaye point out that the turning point is really the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the subsequent seven-year peace accord between the Antichrist and Israel. LaHaye and Jenkins’s Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia, fulfills all of the qualifica¬ tions required of the ultimate man of sin. He is a smart, handsome, smooth talker with a prodigious memory. He is also tied to the ancient Roman Empire via his Italian heritage and has all the devilish charm required to conquer the world on such short notice (LaHaye and Jenkins 1995). LaHaye and Jenkins depiction of the Endtime

differs

little

from

the

premillennial

formula

favored

by

most

Dispensationalists: Christ will return in a “secret Rapture” before the Tribulation; after which the Millennium will follow; God will spare believers the horrors of the Tribulation through the Rapture. A minority of Dispensationalists—often quite vocal with their views—hold to different views. Some believe the Rapture will occur early during the Tribulation, midway, late, or perhaps not at all. Such non-Rapturist views have one element in common: believers cannot expect an easy way out. They had better stock up on dry wheat, hard currency, and other products, because they will not be able to buy or sell during the coming Tribulation. But this survivalist view remains a minority perspective among Dispensationalists. The mainstream view—represented so prodigiously by LaHaye and Jenkins’s novels and commentaries—remove believers, after which (the time may be a few days or a few years), Antichrist signs the peace pact with Israel. Then, only then, the Tribulation begins. Once that occurs, peace appears to break out spontaneously across the world, but like most things of which Antichrist is capable, his peace is a false peace, a cruel deception. Slowly this world begins to crumble. Two figures, identified by LaHaye and Jenkins as Elijah and Moses, serve as the “Two Prophets” to remind people of Antichrist’s deception before it is too late.9 The appointed time comes at the midpoint of the Tribulation, when the Tribulation, filled as it is with locusts, blood, and all sorts of torments, becomes all the more insufferable. The Two Witnesses are struck down, only to be

524

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

resurrected through Gods power. Likewise, the Antichrist suffers a fatal head wound. Here Dispensational writers split a few more hairs. Commentator Robert Bragg, referring to Revelation 3:13, assures his readers that Antichrist will indeed be killed, as the verse states, “I saw one of his heads as it were, wounded to death” (Bragg 1977, 92). According to Bragg, there is no question he is clinically dead. This interpretation, literally, had Dispensational expounders waiting for President John R Kennedy to arise from his funeral bier in 1963. Arthur Bloomfield, author of How to Recognize the Antichrist, lets us know that among other things, we can recognize the Antichrist because his death will be mysterious, not in any obvious way such as battle (1975,31). Antichrist is in no mood to demonstrate his benevolence after his death and resurrection. Likewise, God ratchets up the intensity of the plagues and judgments, with sealed Jews and Christians protected, while the rest of the populace suffers a series of disasters. LaHaye and Jenkins offer a summary of the plagues and disasters yet to come: The first twenty-one months encompass what the Bible calls the seven Seal Judgments, or the Judgments of the Seven-Sealed Scroll. Then comes another twenty-one month period in which we will see the seven Trumpet judgments. In the last forty-two months of the seven years of tribulation, if [emphasis added] we have survived, we will endure the most severe tests, the seven Vial judgments. That last half of the seven years is called the Great Tribulation. (LaHaye and Jenkins 1999,145)

So begins the Great Tribulation. As Antichrist tightens his grip on global power, God s Endgame comes ever closer to fruition. Antichrist does have assistance, how¬ ever. As Antichrist, he must be the opposite of Christ in every sense. So he, too, has his trinity, in this case a false trinity: Antichrist himself, the False Prophet, and, of course, Satan. The difference between Satan and Antichrist becomes moot after the midpoint of the Tribulation—this latter part is known as the Great Tribulation. Satan “indwells” the body of Antichrist, so whatever humanity Antichrist may have had is infernally driven away by his body’s new occupant. The False Prophet is also an important figure. He, like Antichrist, is capable of all sorts of signs and wonders. Through his diabolical power to work miracles, he leads many away from Christ. Together, the diabolical false trinity tempt all those who follow the Beast System—or Antichrist’s one-world church, one-world currency, one-world every¬ thing. Those who support Antichrist are literally sealed with a mark, the Mark of the Beast, which is thought to be a microchip implanted into the hand or forehead. But once one receives it, it cannot be removed. In gruesome detail, “the bearer incorporates evil within his or her own body where it oozes and burns forever” (Shuck 2005,145). Whether one reads all of this as “Bible prophecy”—a roadmap to apocalypses ahead, or as futuristic visions of the present—Dispensationalism, has captured the hearts and minds (and dollars) of many, many millions of Americans. To put it untly, in a sense all of us are living in the time of the tribulations—according to

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONALISM

525

my interpretation of LaHaye and Jenkins’s intent—whether or not we use ancient symbolism to demonstrate it. The Lindsey/LaHaye and Jenkins models resemble not so much a time to come but a contemporary timescape that is laden with cen¬ turies of urgency—the decision is incumbent upon the believer now. It drags the ancient onto the landscape of a future, to influence the present.

The Future of Christian Dispensationalism The history of Dispensationalism has taught us that the movement will continue to defy its critics and reappear in emergent forms. In the contemporary period, Dispensationalists have influenced spiritual, cultural, and above all, political forms. This was no more apparent than in 2004, when Republican strategist Karl Rove managed to engineer the reelection of an unpopular president, George W. Bush, despite

daunting

odds,

with

overwhelming

evangelical

Christian

support.

Dispensationalism is, among other things, a powerful political force. But Dispensationalists have needed their political leaders to move the movement beyond single-issue concerns, that is, the pro-life position in the abortion debate. The world may not exist as it is for long, but believers have a self-motivated obligation to tidy it up while they may. Figures such as President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush helped widen Dispensationalists’ involvement in the world, even if their personal beliefs on the Endtime remain unknown with precision. Reagan’s 1983 “Evil Empire” speech, delivered to a gathering of Christian broadcasters, expressed his commitment to deal with any potential threat from the Soviet Union; and President George W. Bush in 2000 declared that Jesus was his favorite political phi¬ losopher in a presidential primary debate. By 2008, both presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, had to face the scrutiny of the highly influential evangelical pastor and author, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California. Even as these events unfolded, however, the political-cultural significance of Dispensationalist beliefs had morphed into something less than a mass movement than LaHaye and Jenkins envisioned and into smaller “values” issues. Every presi¬ dential candidate has had to be examined for his Christian faith, it seems, but the pungency of Dispensationalist beliefs had less impact on the nation’s actual world¬ views. Dispensational-driven evangelicalism had retreated a few steps. Dispensationalists have been waiting a relatively long time for God to settle matters in heaven and on Earth, but nothing has happened yet. In the meantime, Dispensationalist Christians have their business pages, bumper stickers, shelves in large bookstores. Perhaps the example LaHaye and Jenkins offer of an extended Tribulation (which seems to model contemporary American culture at large) expresses the problem. Beast System or no Beast System, mark or no mark, Dispensationalists have, by and large, bought into the status quo. Their efforts to

526

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

remain “in the world but not of the world,” or as part of contemporary culture, have led them to the ironic denouement that they are indeed a part of the world. To put it differently, Dispensationalists do not appear to be going anywhere otherworldly fast, and they have their Visa and MasterCard receipts to prove it. As of 2011 Dispensationalists are in a sort of interregnum. That is not to suggest they have become irrelevant—far from it—but some have instead applied their oth¬ erworldly concerns to newly discovered worldly causes: for instance, environmen¬ talism. What they may lack in terms of a charismatic leader, they have filled with earthbound concerns. It would be foolish to conclude that Dispensationalists will not return to their 1980s hawkishness. If this movement has proven anything, it is that it is vast and protean. It may shift courses at any moment. What we can say with certainty is that Dispensationalism, or some form of it, has been with us for millennia, and this on/ off cycle is not likely to end anytime soon.

Acknowledgment. Many thanks to my close friend Carter Jordan Wagner, who has kept me firmly “on the ground.” This one is for you, Carter.

NOTES 1. This is absolutely necessary if one is to make any sense of Dispensationalism. One must keep in mind the exceptions, however, and the complex and protean nature of the phenomenon. One could easily write a second article on believers who are more optimistic vis-a-vis “the World,” especially prior to, and even posterior to, the largely pessimistic moods that dominated twentiethcentury beliefs. 2. One thinks immediately here in the American context of the New York Baptist lay preacher William Miller (1782-1849). It is possible, especially in the more recent stages of its development, that Dispensationalism has learned something from Miller’s prophetic failures in 1843 and 1844 (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). Still, that does not prevent many prominent spokespersons of Dispensationalism from setting a date. 3. I make little mention here of post-Tribulationists, as these groups—at least since the prohibition of alcohol in America (1920-33)—have aligned themselves with more “patriot” or “nationahstic”-oriented groups (see chapter 33 by Michael Barkun, this volume). 4. Although one can find Dispensational belief among the laypersons of any Christian denomination, it tends to flourish among the Reformed groups because of their strongly evangeli¬ cal emphasis on a personal sense of salvation, along with a marked belief in a particular scheme for the Endtime. Missouri Synod Lutherans, for example, although they are evangelical in a number of ways, do not officially support any eschatology short of the assured knowledge of Christ s Second Coming and a Judgment Day, nor does the Southern Baptist Convention. Many Southern Baptist ministers, for example, try to steer away from the issue. Like Roman Catholics, they are thus amillennial at the official level—not in support of Dispensationalist notions of a coming Millennium. 5. I am reminded here of a conversation I had with a conservative Baptist minister, who was no great fan of Dispensationalism but had many people in the pews who were. The pastor

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONALISM

527

reported that one member of the congregation had dismissed his attempts to explain difficulties in translation by responding, almost automatically, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.” I have since heard similar stories from many other people. 6. One must not underestimate the contributions of Carole C. Carlson to Lindsey’s success. Although she was not listed as a coauthor on The Late Great Planet Earth, her contributions to this book and subsequent books were enormous. In addition, many industry analysts estimate that The Late Great Planet Earth was the best-selling nonfiction title of the 1970s. It remains in print after many, many editions. 7- It is ambivalent because Lindsey has benefited mightily from new technologies, especially television, which has allowed him to spread his message to a much wider audience via the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). 8. The Scopes Trial of 1925, staged in Dayton, Tennessee, was one of the trials of the century. At issue was whether a science teacher, John T. Scopes, had broken a new Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution. On this score he was clearly guilty, but the trial had larger ramifications. Drawing reporters from across the country, Clarence Darrow, fresh from the famous LeopoldLoeb death penalty debate—in which he successfully argued against the death penalty—faced off against a team of prosecutors including the “Great Commoner,” William Jennings Bryan. Bryan won the case, but lost in the court of public opinion, as he could not defend his own professed faith when called by Darrow to the witness stand—of Bryan’s own volition—as a witness. Bryan died a week later in Dayton, and his death was cruelly mocked by journalist H. L. Mencken. 9. Some Dispensational commentators mention that the Two Witnesses are none other than Enoch and Elijah, the two Hebrew Bible figures who never tasted death because they “walked with God.” LaHaye and Jenkins perhaps take literary liberties with the narrative here, at least according to non-pre-Tribulationist commentators.

REFERENCES Ahlstrom, Sidney E. 1972. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Bloomfield, Arthur. 1975. How to Recognize the Antichrist. Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship. Boyer, Paul S. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Bragg, Robert. 1977. Babylon Is Fallen. New York: Vantage. Grundmann, Herbert. 1927. Studien uber Joachim von Floris. Leipzig, Germany: G. B. Teubner. LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry B. Jenkins. 1995. Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale. -. 1999. Are We Living in the End Times? Current Events Foretold in Scripture and What They Mean. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale. Lindsey, Hal, with C. C. Carlson. 1970. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. 2003. The Reformation: A History. New York: Viking. Reeves, Marjorie, and Warwick Gould. 1987. Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Scofield, Cyrus I., ed. 1945. The Scofield Reference Bible: King James Version. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Shuck, Glenn W. 2005. Marks of the Beast: The “Left Behind” Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity. New York: New York University Press. Stunt, Timothy C. F. 2000. From Awakening to Succession: Radical Evangelicals in Switzerland and Britain (1815-1835). Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Wainwright, Arthur W. 1993. The Mysterious Apocalypse. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon.

CHAPTER 27

NATIONAL SOCIALIST MILLENNIALISM DAVID REDLES

Almost from its inception, adherents, detractors, and neutral observers alike noted

the pronounced religiosity of National Socialism. In February 1923 the Nation reporter Ludwell Denny attended a Hitler speech and described what he saw: “He is an extraordinary person. An artist turned popular prophet and savior, is the way members of the audience described him to me as we awaited for him to appear” (Denny 1923, 295). While the millennial content of National Socialism was often overlooked by contemporary observers, some scholars of the time at least reflected on the pronounced religiosity exhibited by the movement. Eric Voegelin, writing originally in the 1930s, saw a pseudo-religious impulse in National Socialism, as well as in fascism and communism, which he labeled forms of “political religion” (Voegelin 1999, 2000). A number of later scholars also found much religiosity in Nazi rhetoric and symbolism (Gamm 1962; Viereck 1965; Heer 1998/1968; Ach and Pentrop 1977; Tal 1978). The question of National Socialist millennialism was first clearly noted by Norman Cohn in his classic study The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957). While Cohn’s book is concerned with medieval millenarians, he perceptively noted, albeit in passing, the similarities in thought and action with the modern-day Nazis. This line of potential inquiry, however, was not developed to any extent until the 1980s. James Rhodes, in his important study The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (1980), analyzed both elite and minor Nazis and found a consistent mil¬ lenarian tone in their writings and speeches. Robert Wistrich (1985) likewise returned to an analysis of Nazi writings and speeches and found a decidedly apoca¬ lyptic tone, which he argues is a central component of Nazi anti-Semitism. More recently a number of German scholars, notably Michael Ley and Claus-Ekkehard

530

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Barsch, have returned to the notion of “political religion” in their study of the rheto¬ ric of Nazi elites, and both found a striking religiosity that is rich in apocalyptic, millennial, and messianic symbolism (Ley 1993,1997; Ley and Schoeps 1997; Barsch 1998). Karla Poewe and Richard Steigmann-Gall have found supporters of Nazism in a variety of new religious movements that appeared in Germany at this time, from paganists and occultists to those who called themselves “positive” Christians, a form of Christianity considered consistent with National Socialist ideals (Poewe 2006; Steigmann-Gall 2003). Finally, I have argued that the millennial, apocalyptic, and messianic aspects of the Nazi worldview are central not only to a deeper under¬ standing of the rise of Hitler and Nazism, but also to the world war and the Holocaust that they engendered (Redles 2005b).

The Millennial Moment: Racial Apocalypse or Racial Salvation Post-World War I Germany was characterized by political and social divisions approaching civil war, all reflected in a confusing and inefficient parliamentary democracy. That the Weimar Republic was crippled by a mostly disastrous economy hobbled it from the start. The modernist cultural background that all but defined Weimar, one that broke down traditional patterns of order in favor of shockingly new and chaotic forms, while enervating for many, seemed a mocking slide into cultural degeneracy to others. Weimar Germany therefore exhibited the kind of rapid and radical change that so often generates millennial movements (Peukert 1993)- It is not surprising, then, that many of those converted to National Socialism interpreted the Weimar period as a culture of apocalypse (Vondung 2000; Brokoff 2001; Redles 2005b, 14-45). This perception of total collapse in all realms (political, social, economic, and cultural) generated a sense of apocalypse, which in turn elicited feelings of hope¬ lessness and a subsequent search for salvation in a movement and a leader, which would remove the communist political threat, return a sense of community to a time marked by social divisiveness, restore the national economy, and return moral decency to the arts. For those who converted to the movement, Adolf Hitler and National Socialism provided that longed for salvation, as is clear in this statement by an early adherent: A new Germany appeared before our eyes and one felt the moral decline of a formerly strong nation. Marxist false teachings had caused the Volk, already in the broadest circles, to forget the concept of national honor. Then came the madness of the Marxist revolt of November 9,1918 and with it the final collapse of the German nation. Party quarrels and squabbles fragmented the people. Always standing upon a national basis, I made a spiritual search for an unknown power,

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which embodied the notion of a national and social Germany. Standing amidst the maddening struggle of self-sacrifice in a life of sales, this vision grew stronger and stronger. The faith was certain that only a strong personality could vanquish the hate and strife through a national and social greatness. (Redles 2005b, 42)

This mans conviction that salvation could only come through a savior who brought unity by combining nationalism and socialism is the crux of Nazi millennialism. It is also the driving force behind the dream of a coming Third and Final Reich.

Apocalyptic Dreams of a Millennial Reich The loss of World War I ended the Second Reich created by the wars of Bismarck. Almost immediately many Germans rejected the nascent Weimar Republic and dreamed of an imminent Third Reich that would replace it (Hermand 1992; Flanagan 1987)- Although he did not coin the term or the concept, perhaps the most signifi¬ cant description of the Third Reich can be found in the conservative Arthur Moeller van den Brucks Das Dritte Reich (The Third Kingdom), which originally appeared in the tumultuous year 1923. Building on the medieval millennialist Joachim de Fiore’s notion of a third and final status (usually translated in German as Reich) (see chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcraft and chapter 15 by Rebecca Moore, both in this volume), Moeller (1931, 6) described the Reich (kingdom or empire) this way: It is an old and great German conception. It arose from the collapse of our first Reich. It was fused early on with expectations of a millennial Reich. Yet always there lived within it a political conception which aimed to the future, not so much upon the end of times, but upon the beginning of a German epoch in which the German people will fulfill its destiny on earth.

According to Moeller, the Third and Final Reich (Endreich) would be the product of a new political movement that fused the nationalism of the conservatives with the socialism of the liberals. He even toyed with the term national Bolshevism. Moeller was convinced that the creation of such a “Third Way” was the divine mission of the German people: “It wants to preserve much more the German in the Becoming, in the process of creation in the revolutionary transforming upheavals of the ascend¬ ing New Age... to give the nation the consciousness that it has, because it is German, a task which no other people can assume” (Moeller 1931, 231). If Germany failed in this mission, apocalyptic destruction would result: “The reactionary does not know that the war of liberation, which approaches us, can only be led by the entire people. He does not know that each and everyone of us must prepare for it as if it is our last examination, which, if we do not pass it, can only bring the final collapse” (Moeller 1931,185). The idea of National Socialism, and the Third Reich that it was destined to accomplish, were from the start conceived as millennial conceptions (Redles 2009).

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Building on such notions, Hitler and his disciples believed that Germany— indeed, the world—had reached a turning point of world-historical importance. According to Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, the twentieth century was a time of “decline and rebirth,” and the great decision of the day between communism or National Socialism was not simply a choice of political philosophies but one that would, given the right choice, lead to a “new synthesis of life,” a spiritual transfor¬ mation of humanity. Rosenberg concluded: “Today we are all inwardly experiencing a collapse, and we have a deep longing for a new form of life” (Rosenberg 1924,3). Common to many millenarian movements, the Nazis envisioned the imminent dawn of a New Age or New Order that would emerge through the destruction of the dying older order as exemplified by Weimar Germany. While World War I had origi¬ nally been conceived as an eschatological struggle that would witness a certain German victory and the birth of a more spiritual Germanic age, its subsequent loss was now reimagined as providing a necessary cleansing function. The decadent and dying liberal world that emerged from the French Revolution—a world of egotistic individualism and a leveling mass politics—would be replaced by the New Order of the new man of community. Nazi Arno Belger dramatically expressed this vision: An overstrained, spiritually hollow age drew to its close, as antiquated and decaying liberalistic social orders and forms collapsed into themselves. Europe breathed with difficulty under the stifling nightmare of that Uncertain yet Inescapable which was summoned by the shot at Sarajevo as a purifying bath of steel closed upon the civilized world, and so produced the pre-condition for the evolution of the new man of community. (Redles 2005b, 47)

Catastrophic violence, by destroying the old and decayed, made room for new growth and, consequently, a national resurrection in the millennial Reich. Such vio¬ lence was therefore potentially redemptive. Hitler explained this to an early associate: That is precisely the most profound secret of the entire revolution we are living through and whose leadership it is our mission to seize: that there has to be overthrow, demolition, destruction by force! The destruction must be meaningful, not senseless as under Bolshevism. And it can only become meaningful if we have understood the goal, the purpose, the necessity. (Wagener 1985, 44-45)

Therefore, while Bolshevism represented a demonic force of meaningless chaos, Nazism was conceived as using violence to cleanse the world of its impurities— what was decrepit, degenerate, or evil. Nazism therefore could be seen as a form of revolutionary progressive millennialism, attempting to accelerate the perfection of humanity through violent means, including extermination (Ellwood 2000). In this way a new more beautiful world would be built from the rubble of the old. The Nazis’ mission was to bring forth the New Age. As Ernst Rohm, leader of the Nazi SA (Sturmabteilung, or Stormtroopers), exclaimed: “The time in which we live, in which a world has collapsed in a roar and a young world struggles for life and light, will be designated by later generations as the birth of a New Age” (Rhodes 1980,59)!

NATIONAL SOCIALIST MILLENNIALISM

533

It was the conversion of Germans into Nazis, and the resultant assumption of National Socialists into power in Germany, that would achieve the Millennium. As one Nazi Party member envisioned the coming Third Reich: Today I am proud, as a co-fighter under the gifted leadership of our Adolf Hitler, to have stepped over the threshold of a New Age. I am proud to have been able to co-fight in the shaping of German men into National Socialists and to have been able to assist in the achievement of a National Socialist Greater Germany of freedom, power and prosperity, which one day in the future will takeover the leadership of all people for the welfare of all humanity. That was my dream for all these long years and it will find its fulfillment. (Redles 2005b, 49)

Like many millenarians, the Nazis fervently believed that they were chosen by divine forces to create the future paradise. Throughout Mein Kampf Hitler continu¬ ally refers to a truly high mission” bestowed to Germany by what he variously terms the Almighty,” “Providence,” or “the Creator.” Discussing this special mission, Hitler explained: What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. (Hitler 1971, 214)

One of the factors that made Hitler such an effective leader was his ability to trans¬ fer his personal sense of divine mission, which was intimately tied to Germany’s fulfillment of its mission, to his listeners and followers. Those who followed Hitler had a mission not only to save Germany from Bolshevism and the Jews, but ulti¬ mately to save the world. As one member of the SS explained, “We were not merce¬ naries, but political soldiers, fighters for a new world view that should and must lead the entire people one day into a beautiful future. Only one stood before us: the Fiihrer” (Redles 2005b, 72). Similarly, another party member envisioned his role as one of the chosen elite whose divine mission, a cleansing or purification of the world, would bring forth the millennial Reich: Irresistibly time thrust forward. Meanwhile gigantic tasks are discharged by the Fiihrer. We had and will have in the future, more than ever, the mission to gain the confidence of our people with the good idea of National Socialism, and this goodness will lead to the ends of the earth.... This struggle means the complete health of the German soul. It should be cleansed from its foundation up and purified therewith to be entirely capable of absorbing it [the idea of National Socialism] for our epoch. We National Socialists know that this struggle is perhaps the most difficult, yet greatest ever, and we in these circles are the highest that the people knows, and we will lead [the people] in loyal discipieship to our Fiihrer Adolf Hitler, and with God’s help, to a joyous end. (Redles 2005b, 73)

Spreading the word of Hitler would lead to ever increasing conversions to the gospel of National Socialism, and this “good idea” would cleanse the people and

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

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generate the “joyous end,” the millennial Reich. Therefore, the conjoining of Hitler’s divine mission with that of his disciples created a powerful identification between the leader and the led. The disciples had found their Messiah. As one Nazi explained, “It is, however, an up-lifting feeling to have taken part in the holy struggle for Germany’s greatness under the Fiihrer and its savior Adolf Hitler” (Redles, 2005b, 71).

Hitler’s Messianism Part I: From Revelation to Legitimatization According to many of those closest to Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader exhibited a pro¬ found and, for some, disturbing belief of having a divinely ordained mission (Rissman 2001). A key event in the development of this messianic self-perception occurred when Hitler was a teenager. According to his childhood friend August Kubizek, it was a performance of Wagner’s opera Rienzi, which tells the story of a medieval Roman tribune who rises from the Italian people in an attempt to resur¬ rect the glory of ancient Rome, that triggered a revelatory experience for the young Hitler. A number of observers noted that Wagner’s music appeared to induce a trancelike state in Hitler. Kubizek described the effect: “As if intoxicated by some hypnotic agent, he slipped into a state of ecstasy, and willingly let himself be carried away into that mystical universe which was more real to him than the actual worka¬ day world” (Kubizek 2006,188). After the performance of Rienzi Hitler and Kubizek wandered up the Freinberg mountain outside Linz, Austria. Hitler, who up until that moment had been strangely silent, began to speak. Kubizek recalled: I was struck by something strange.... It was as if a second ego spoke from within him, and moved him as much as it did me. It was not the case of a speaker being carried away by his own words. On the contrary, I rather felt as though he himself listened with astonishment and emotion to what burst from him with elementary force. 7

According to Kubizek, Hitler no longer wanted to become an artist, but something higher: But now he was talking of a mandate which, one day, he would receive from the people, to lead them out of servitude to the heights of freedom.... He spoke of a special mission which one day would be entrusted to him.” Kubizek concluded that Wagner s music had induced a “state of complete ecstasy and rapture, in which he transferred the character of Rienzi, without even mentioning him as a model or example with visionary power, to the plane of his own ambitions” (Kubizek 2006 117-18). ’ Like other individuals with messianic delusions, Hitler identified with a messiah symbol—in this case, Rienzi. Wagner’s repetitive, trance-inducing music, combined

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with a libretto filled with messianic symbols, pushed Hitler into a trancelike state. Rather than project the messiah symbol outward and look for someone to save him from his largely directionless and meaningless life, Hitler identified with it, assum¬ ing it to be a divine calling. The psychologist George Atwood found that patients who felt themselves called by higher spiritual powers for sacred missions often used imagery that bore a “striking parallelism” with “all those saviors and recurring heroes” in “fairy tales, myths, and the literature of religions” (Atwood 1978, 85). Other psychologists and historians have found that such messianic delusions often originate during trancelike states (Burton-Bradley 1970, 126; Perry 1972, 192-93; Perez 1977,364; Tai 1983,84-85; Meissner 1984,91-111). Of course, at this time in his life Hitler’s chances of realizing this messianic fantasy were severely limited. After failing to gain admittance to the Vienna Academy of Arts a second time, Hitler abruptly left his friend Kubizek. His life made a decided turn downward. Hitler spent time in the men’s hostels of Vienna, painting postcards for tourists and living off his orphan’s pension. Gone were the nights at the opera, and so, it seemed, his dreams of future glory. However, this difficult period would come to end as the Great War approached. With the coming of World War I, Hitler left Vienna for Munich, and soon joined the German army. For Hitler the war was a great turning point in his life, writing in Mein Kampf. “To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful feelings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being per¬ mitted to live at this time” (Hitler 1971,161). It would not be, however, until after the war that an opportunity would arise that would provide Hitler with the chance to realize his “special mission.” While the war had given Hitler’s heretofore aimless life structure and meaning, the end of the war brought with it the possibility that his life would return to its directionless state. However, Hitler was fortunate to be chosen as a reeducation offi¬ cer after the collapse of the Bolshevik revolt in Munich in 1919. Hitler’s extraordinary skills as an extemporaneous orator began to find an audience. No longer was his audience a lone friend like Kubizek, or the captive and unreceptive fellows in the hostels in Vienna and in the trenches during the war. The soldiers Hitler spoke to after the war were more receptive, as one recalled, “especially Herr Hitler is, I should truly say, a born popular speaker, who by his fanaticism and his populist demeanor in a gathering compels the listener unconditionally to be attentive and to share his views” (Redles 2005b, 120). More importantly, Hitler’s rhetorical gifts were noticed by Anton Drexler, founder of the German Workers’ Party. Drexler convinced Hitler to join the struggling movement, which was actively seeking an orator who could attract a mass following. Through Hitler’s oratorical masterpieces, attendance at Nazi speech gatherings grew dramatically, as did party membership. Using his importance to the young movement as leverage, Hitler quickly pushed all other rivals aside and became the leader of the now renamed National Socialist German Workers’ Party. While early on Hitler played the role of “drummer” or “agitator,” for the move¬ ment, he was not averse to playing the role of Endtime prophet, his speeches filled

536

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with rhetorical passages describing the chaos of Weimar in apocalyptic terms and offering salvational hope through visions of the coming millennial Reich (Hammer 1979; Hesemann 2004). As his notoriety increased in 1923, the line between apoca¬ lyptic prophet and messianic savior began to blur. He stated in one speech at this time that he “felt the call to Germany’s salvation within him, and this role would fall to him, if not now, then later” (Tyrell 1975, 63). However, at this time Hitler still vacillated on his role, saying in a speech on 7 October 1923 that the leadership ques¬ tion must wait until “the weapon is created which the Ftihrer must possess.” When the millennial moment arrived, Hitler exclaimed, Germans should “pray to our Lord God that he give us the right Fiihrer” (Kershaw 1999,185). Hitler’s increasing notoriety seems to have caused his dormant messianism to reemerge and perhaps motivated him to begin the process of legitimizing it. With his growing popularity as Germany’s economy began to collapse in November 1923, Hitler seized the opportunity to launch his putsch against the Bavarian government in Munich. Its abject failure, ironically, seems to have provided Hitler with the national, indeed international, exposure that fully legitimated his messianic sense of self. Hitler’s rhetorical performance during his trial for treason made him a celeb¬ rity for some, and a savior for others. Joseph Goebbels, already a Nazi, had not been fully convinced that Hitler was his redeemer, although he had been longing for a personal savior for some time (Barsch 1995,193-209). Hitler’s words before the tri¬ bunal convinced Goebbels that he had found his redeemer. He wrote Hitler in Landsberg prison, saying, “What you said there is the catechism of a new political creed coming to birth in the midst of a collapsing, secularized world.... To you a god has given the tongue with which to express our sufferings. You formulated our agony in words that promise salvation” (Redles 2005b, 125). Many such letters poured into the prison, as Hitler began to dictate Mein Kampf presented as part autobiog¬ raphy, part prophetic revelation. It is perhaps not surprising that upon reading this work the now converted Goebbels wrote in this diary in October 1925: “Who is this man? Half plebian, half god! In fact Christ, or only St. John?” (Barsch 1995,93). For Hitler, the path from apocalyptic prophet to savior was now complete. Like other individuals with messianic pretensions, Hitler came to believe a higher power protected him so he could fulfill his divine mission. Hitler believed that he had a heightened sense of intuition, and what he termed his “inner voice” was in fact the unimpeachable word of the Almighty. He was fond of recalling an incident during World War I when this inner voice told him to leave a particular area of the trench in which he was eating with some comrades. According to Hitler: Hardly had I done so when a flash and deafening report came from the part of the trench I had just left. A stray shell had burst over the group in which I had been sit¬ ting and every member of it was killed.” Later close calls were likewise interpreted as the hand of fate. His escape from a hail of bullets during the ill-fated putsch, as Max von Scheubner-Richter, who marched arm in arm with Hitler, was shot dead, was also conceived this way. After another near-death experience in an automobile acci¬ dent m the early 1930s, Hitler told other passengers that they need not have worried, for in fact nothing could have happened to us. We have not yet completed our task”

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(Wagener 1985,174). Finally, the failure of the assassination attempt of 20 July 1944 was once again interpreted as God protecting a chosen one. Hitler explained this to a group of wounded survivors: This is the fourth time in this war that my opponents have sought after my life in order to eliminate me for good. However, they did not succeed a single time despite most favorable conditions... and now the Almighty has stayed their hands once again. Don’t you agree that I should consider it as a nod of fate that it intends to preserve me for my assigned task? Must I not recognize therein the governance of a higher power which protects me, so that I can lead the German people to victory? Providence has frustrated all attempts against me.... Consequently, the 20th of July can only confirm my recognition that Almighty God had called me to lead the German people—not to defeat, but to victory. (Redles 2005b, 130) Hitler’s increasingly public statements of personal mission after the putsch indicate that his messianic inclinations, which go back at least to the Rienzi episode, had been legitimated by his meteoric rise to national celebrity as he found himself leading a millennial movement whose professed mission was to save the world. Hitler now had found his mission, but a Messiah needs disciples to fulfill that task. Weimar Germany was an era where savior-figures abounded, but only one, Hitler, achieved political significance (Linse 1983; Schreiner 1998).

Hitler’s Messianism, Part II: Linking the Leader and the Led Hitler’s ability as a mass orator, both in terms of the millennial content of his speeches and the manner in which he spoke, seems to have played a large role in his legitimization as both prophet and messiah. Disciple and later apostate Nazi Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstangl noted: Far beyond his electrifying rhetoric, this man seemed to possess the uncanny gift of coupling the Gnostic yearning of the era for a strong leader-figure with his own missionary claim and to suggest in this merging that every conceivable hope and expectation was capable of fulfillment—an astonishing spectacle of suggestive influence of the mass psyche. (Kershaw 1999,187) British journalist George Ward Price described witnessing this effect of Hitler’s speaking style on both the rhetor and the listener this way: The susceptibility of the Chancellor’s mind to psychic influences is shown in his public oratory. At the outset of a speech his delivery is sometimes slow and halting. Only as the spiritual atmosphere engendered by a great audience takes possession of his mind does he develop that eloquence which acts on the German nation like a spell. For he responds to this metaphysical contact in such a way that

538

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each member of the multitude feels bound to him by an individual link of sympathy. (Price 1937,39)

This sympathetic linking of leader and led, as observed by a neutral observer, was experienced as a profound connection between savior and saved by those who actu¬ ally converted to Nazism. This can be seen in the conversion experience of Heinz Hermann Horn: I no longer knew what he spoke about. I only knew that I scarcely dared to breathe, I was completely seized in a spell by the person of the Fiihrer. And then when he had finished, again this jubilation, an enthusiasm like no one had ever been acquainted with before. This was fanatical veneration, like the will of complete devotion. (Redles 2005b, 156)

It is perhaps not surprising then that contemporary observers who witnessed Nazi speech gatherings interpreted them as a type of revivalism. As early as 1922, New York Times reporter Cyril Brown described a Hitler speech gathering, in which Hitler was hailed as a prophet and political economic savior,” as a “patri¬ otic revival meeting.” He noted further that Hitler “has the rare oratorical gift, at present unique in Germany, of spellbinding whole audiences regardless of politics or creed” (1922,18). While Hitlers oratorical talents could leave the masses spell¬ bound, the experience also served to legitimate his own messianic self-perception. Apostate Nazi Otto Strasser cogently described Hitler’s speaking style and effect: A clairvoyant, face-to-face with his public, he goes into a trance. That is his moment of real greatness, the moment when he is most genuinely himself. He believes what he says; carried away by a mystic force, he cannot doubt the genu¬ ineness of his mission

(Strasser 1940, 65-66). The relationship of orator and

audience was therefore reciprocal, with the audience finding its mission, and the orator legitimating his. Nazi mass rallies, where columns of uniformed SA men marched in perfect order, took this sense of revivalism even further. Using choreography, special light¬ ing, colorful banners and flags, and inspirational music, the Nazis created the per¬ fect setting to affect the consciousness of the participants (Vondung 1971; Behrenbeck 1996; Karow 1997). Alfons Heck, a former Hitler Youth member who experienced these rallies as a boy recalled that he was moved by the “pomp and mysticism” of the day, one that had an effect “very close in feeling to religious rituals.” It was, he found a gigantic revival meeting but without the repentance of one’s sins.... It was a jubi¬ lant Teutonic renaissance.” He elaborated that “no one who ever attended a Nuremberg Retchsparteitag can forget the similarity to religious mass fervor it exuded. Its intensity frightened neutral observers but it inflamed the believers” (Heck 1985,18,23). -Hk sense of unity or community that these rallies imparted was a crucial aspect of Nazi millenmahsm.as the perception of being part of something of world-historical importance was both intoxicating and revelatory. One party member explained that achieving national unity under Hitler would bring light to darkness, and ultimately, bring forth a thousand years of world peace:

NATIONAL SOCIALIST MILLENNIALISM

539

There is only one German Reich, one German Volk under one Fiihrer Adolf Hitler, who leads us out of darkness to the light, from misery to happiness. All of Germany strongly supports him and all know that this Third Reich that our Fiihrer created will stand for a millennium, and that after us the Hitler Youth will take this great Earth in their loyal hands and build strongly about it. Thus with a sense of the National Socialist world view as an eternal value and as God sent we will be able to hand over to the loyal hands of the coming Hitler Generation. And still I know one day that through Hitler and his worldview not only Germany, but the entire world will recover. Truth lights the road ahead and so one day the rest of the world will view us as the most harmonious people on Earth. (Redles 2005b, 98) It was this experience of community, as individuals lost themselves in the collective, that was interpreted as the true meaning of National Socialism, and consequently the sole path to world salvation. Hitler certainly agreed with the above disciple, arguing further that it was upon the conversion of the youth of Germany to the new faith of National Socialism that the millennial Reich would be built. As he explained to Otto Wagener: But when you see the masses streaming to join the SA, when you observe the enthusiasm of youth, when the cheerful hands of an innocent child reach for you, then you will sense the inner conversion; then you will realize the new faith is awakening out of the lethargy of a corrupt epoch and taking to the march—the faith in divine justice, in heavenly truth; the faith in an unworldly, paradisiacal future, where the lust for power, force, and enmity gives way to equality and fraternity, the spirit of sacrifice, love and loyalty, and the will to stand before the throne of the Almighty with the open heart of one ready to believe in God. (Wagener 1985,78-79)

Therefore the power of these mass rallies, and Hitler’s speeches for that matter, was a combination of deliberate technique and the genuine power of the millennial rhetoric and symbolism employed. This can be seen in the conversion experience of another man: In July [1932] the Fiihrer came to Tilsit. I saw him for the first time. About 40,000 people from near and far had gathered to greet him. I wore the brown shirt [of the SA] from the first time I heard his voice. His words went straight to the heart. From now on my life and efforts were dedicated to the Fiihrer. I wanted to be a true follower. The Fiihrer spoke of the threatened ruin of the nation and of the resurrection under the Third Reich. (Abel 1986, 298) This man converted to Nazism not only because of his immersion in the collective, but also through his devotion to the redeemer Hitler, whose millennial rhetoric of approaching apocalypse or resurrection in the coming Third Reich satisfied both his desire for community and the millennial longings brought on during the heights of the depression. He found his apocalyptic fears ameliorated through devotion to a savior and giving himself to a higher collective purpose. However, creation of the millennial Reich required more than German unity. It necessitated the final victory over the ultimate source of chaos, the so-called Jewish Bolshevik.

540

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Final War and Final Solution: World War

II

and the Holocaust as Apocalyptic Conceptions National Socialism presented a millennial interpretation of contemporary history, a worldview that spoke to, and attracted, many devoted followers. Interpreting the rapid and radical change of the postwar years in apocalyptic terms, the Nazis were able to replace the sense of hopelessness with a hopeful belief in the imminent dawn of a New Age—a millennial Reich that would witness a profound sense of racial unity in a land of peace and prosperity. Conversion to Nazism therefore gave the converts new senses of meaning, direction, and purpose, and ultimately, new identi¬ ties as saviors of the people (Redles 2010a, 2010b). Many new disciples spent much of their time and money attempting to convert others to Hitler’s “great idea” and consequently to help the Nazis achieve the political power necessary to realize the Reich. But from the inception of the movement there was a darker side to Nazi millennialism. For the Nazi leaders always preached that the apocalyptic chaos of Weimar was not simply the unfortunate result of a lost war and the resultant eco¬ nomic downturn, but had been deliberately caused, and in fact, had been planned for years. Early in 1919 a sensational book appeared edited by Ludwig von Hausen, writ¬ ing under the pseudonym Gottfried zur Beek. Entitled Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von Zion (The Secrets of the Wise Men of Zion), the book was based on the notori¬ ous hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had been concocted in the Russian empire, perhaps in Ukraine, around 1903 (De Michelis 2004,73-86). This hoax pur¬ ports to be the minutes of a secret meeting of Jewish elders at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, and there made detailed plans to take over the world using a combination of capitalism, communism, democracy, mass media, and other tools of modernity (Hagemeister 1998b). This work was seized upon by Sergei Nilus, who m 1905 attached it as an appendix to the second edition of his The Great in the Small: Anti-Christ Considered as an Imminent Political Possibility Nilus building on the prophecies of Serafim von Sarov and the conspiratorial writings of Vladimir Solovev, interpreted the Protocols as proof that the apocalypse was approaching and that the Jews were the minions of the Antichrist (Hagemeister 1996,1998a). When the Bolshevik revolution broke out in 1917, White Russian emi¬ gres carried copies of a later edition of Nilus’s book to Germany (Kellogg 2005 33-34, 68-77). The subsequent German edition of the Protocols was interpreted by many Nazis as an apocalyptic text and was all the documentation they needed to prove that the initiation of the war, its subsequent loss, and the communist revolu¬ tions m Russia and Germany, had been part of a larger Jewish messianic enterprise Therefore, as Nazi millennialism helped many Germans make sense of the chaos of the Weimar period by placing it within an eschatological framework, the Jewish

NATIONAL SOCIALIST MILLENNIALISM

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conspiracy purportedly revealed in the Protocols exposed the evil Other on whom to blame the apocalyptic collapse (Redles 2011). Dietrich Eckart, an anti-Semitic agitator and later mentor to a young Adolf Hitler, was now convinced that he knew the source of Germany’s, indeed the world’s, troubles. The German loss of World War I was now reinterpreted as a necessary stage in an ongoing, and soon culminating, apocalyptic struggle between the forces of order and chaos, light and darkness, good and evil, Aryan and Jew. In 1919 Eckart wrote: “This was a religious war, one can now see clearly; a war between light and darkness, truth and lies, Christ and anti-Christ.” This dualistic, apocalyptic mental¬ ity necessitated the victory of one side and the annihilation of the other, for “when light clashes with darkness, there is no coming to terms! Indeed there is only strug¬ gle for life and death, till the annihilation of one or the other” (Eckart 1919, 83-84). Apocalypse or salvation rested on the outcome of this eschatological struggle. Eckart continued his dualistic interpretation of world history in a posthu¬ mously published pamphlet entitled Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: Dialogue between Hitler and Me (1924). Although written by Eckart, this “conversation” between mentor and protege accurately portrays the views of both men. The discus¬ sion reinterprets history, and especially the history of the Jews, as a continuing attempt by Jewry to exterminate non-Jewish culture to fulfill the biblical covenant by securing not only the promised land, but in fact world domination. According to Eckart, wherever the Jews have become numerous, bloody revolutions and mass murders of non-Jews have occurred. The successful “Jewish Bolshevik” takeover in Russia in 1917, and the attempt in Bavaria in 1918, led Eckart and Hitler to conclude, as other Nazis would, that a turning point of eschatological significance had arrived. The pamphlet ends with Hitler revealing the true “final goal” of Jewry: Above and beyond world domination—annihilation of the world. He believes he must bring the entire world down to its knees before him in order to prepare a paradise on earth... .While he makes a pretense to elevate humanity, he torments it into despair, madness and ruin. If he is not commanded to stop he will annihilate all humanity. His nature compels him to that goal, even though he dimly realizes that he must therefore destroy himself... .To be obliged to try to annihilate us with all his might, but at the same time to suspect that this must lead irrevocably to his own destruction. Therein lies, if you will: the tragedy of Lucifer. (Eckart 1924,49-50) If these words had simply been put into the mouth of Hitler, but had not been an accurate reflection of his beliefs, then they would be of only marginal historical interest. However, when Eckart was compiling this pamphlet, Hitler was in Landsberg prison composing Mein Kampf. In this work, which is dedicated to Eckart, Hitler repeatedly refers to the covenant as a promise to the Jews of temporal rule here on Earth. This “final victory” of “world domination” according to Hitler would be achieved through the “Jewish doctrine of Marxism.” And if Jewish Bolshevism suc¬ cessfully achieved world domination, he concluded, it would mean apocalypse— the literal end of the humanity:

542

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

As a foundation of the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectually conceivable to man. And as, in this greatest of all recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such a law could be chaos, on earth it could only be destruction for the inhabitants of this planet. If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands [“millions” in later editions] of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men. (Hitler 1971, 65)

Hitler continued to argue that the Jewish Bolshevik rise to power would lead to an apocalyptic end of human life in this second and then unpublished book. Using the same argument found in Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin, he wrote: “Jewish domi¬ nation always ends with the decline of all culture and ultimately of the insanity of the Jew himself. Because he is a parasite on the peoples, and his victory means his own end just as much as the death of his victim” (Hitler 2003, 231). This metaphor of the parasite killing its host, and thereby ultimately killing itself, had more than rhetorical value for Hitler, as he truly believed that it applied to the eternal nature of the Jews (Bein 1963). Hitler used the metaphor of the gardener and the parasite, claiming that the expulsion of Jews from Babylonia, Egypt, Rome, England, and the Rhineland occurred because “in each of these a gardener was at work who was incorruptible and loved his people (Wagener 1985, 64). Hitler saw in the postwar period an increased Jewish parasitism: But since Weimar, you can once again see an enormous acceleration in the proliferation, the taking root, the stripping of corpses. Truly, if something does not happen soon, it may be too late!” (ibid.) With this apocalyptic warning, Hitler prophesied that this end must come: For it will repeat itself, it will always return, as long as people live on this earth. And the last ones, God help us, who will proliferate even when the end of man has come—that will be, in spite of everything, the Jews, until they breathe the last of their miserable parasite’s lives on the piled cadavers of their victims. (Ibid.) To forestall this apocalypse was the God-given mission of the Nazis: “To post¬ pone this point in time as far into the future as possible is our duty, our God-given mission—yes, it is the substance of Divine Creation altogether” (ibid.). Hitler and the Nazis then were conceived to be this Endtime gardener: “But the Jews are here, in the world, whether or not we deplore their vile, sadistic parasitism and their will to destroy and exterminate us....The gardener must intervene, and he must do so soon—as soon as possible!” (ibid., 65). Hitler therefore interpreted the millennial moment, this pivotal turning point m history, as either apocalyptic destruction under Jewish Bolshevism or salvation with National Socialism. The victory of one over the other could only end in exter¬ mination. In one of his most important speeches after leaving Landsberg prison in 1925, Hitler described the coming apocalyptic struggle: Clear and simple: Fight against the satanic power which has collapsed Germany into this misery; Fight Marxism, as well as the spiritual carrier of this world pest and epidemic, the Jews.... As we join ranks then in this new movement, we are

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clear to ourselves, that in this arena there are two possibilities; either the enemy walks over our corpse or we over theirs. (Redles 2005b, 65-67)

Considering the apocalyptic, millennial, and messianic rendering of history that inspired the Nazis, perhaps it is not surprising that on 30 January 1939, with Europe on the precipice of world war, Hitler gave a speech that included the following “prophecy”: Quite often in my life I have been known as a prophet and was mostly laughed at. In the time of my struggle for power it was primarily the Jewish people who responded to my prophecies with laughter.... I believe that the ringing laughter of Jewry in Germany is now stuck in their throats. I will today again be a prophet: if international finance Jewry within and without Europe should succeed in plunging the peoples yet once again in a world war, then it will result not in the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. (Redles 2005b,166-67)

Hitler would return to this chilling apocalyptic prophecy throughout the war, usu¬ ally misdating the date of its deliverance to 1 September 1939, the day the war actu¬ ally began, thereby linking his prophecy of the coming Final Solution (Endlosung) to the beginning of the Final War (Endkrieg), both concepts being conceived along eschatological lines. Indeed, as the German army marched deep into Poland, it was followed by Einsatzgruppen, special task forces whose responsibility it was to exter¬ minate communist leaders and Jews in fulfillment of this prophecy—hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered. The necessity of conflict in the West with England and France, however, caused a postponement of the prophesied Final War against the Jewish Bolsheviks. Two years later on the anniversary of his prophecy speech, with the war in the West seemingly won, Hitler turned back to his true apocalyptic enemy, the Jewish Bolshevik: And I would not want to forget the remark which I had already given at the time, on September 1,1939, in the German Reichstag. Namely, the remark that if the world would be plunged into an all-out war by Jewry, then collected Jewry will have played out its role in Europe! They might also still laugh about it today, as they had earlier regarding my prophecies. The coming months and years will demonstrate that I will be seen to have been correct here as well. (Redles 2005b, 167)

The talk of the “coming months and years” is significant, for Hitler appears to have already decided to invade Russia and induce the final apocalyptic showdown against the Jewish Bolsheviks first prophesied in the early 1920s (Redles 2005a). The immi¬ nent attack against the Soviet Union was linked to the coming extermination of the Jews. Meeting with his generals on 30 March 1941, Hitler made clear that the war in the East would be much different then the war in the West: “Struggle against Russia: extermination of the Bolshevistic Commissars and the communist intelligentsia...

544

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

the struggle must be waged against the poison of decomposition. That is not a ques¬ tion of the rules of war” (Redles 2005b, 169). The term poison of decomposition was a Nazi euphemism for the Jews. Thus Slavic communist leaders were to be killed, but so were all Jews. That the coming war in the East was conceived as an apocalyp¬ tic struggle is clear in the educational materials supplied to the troops. A pamphlet from 1941 entitled Germany in the Final Battle with the Jewish-Bolshevik MurderSystem told the troops who would meet the enemy that “as we at this time enter upon the greatest front in world history, then it takes place not only on the supposi¬ tion that it will produce the final settlement of the Great War... but rather to save the entire European civilization and culture.” The pamphlet made it clear that the battle against the Soviet Union was ultimately a battle against the Jews, describing Bolshevism in this way: This system of chaos, extermination, and terror was invented by Jews and is led by Jews. It is the action of the Jewish race. World Jewry attempts through subversion and propaganda to bring together the uprooted and lesser race elements to accomplish this war of extermination against everything positive, against nationality and nation, against religion and culture, against order and morality. The aim is the production of chaos through world revolution and the establishment of a world state under Jewish leadership. (Redles 2005b, 170)

Once again, as with Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin and any number of any other Nazi works, Jewry is linked to Bolshevism, which in turn is characterized as a satanic force of chaos. Remove the agent of destruction once and for all, and the eternal era of peace and prosperity, the millennial Reich, will be realized. In the first five months of the eastern war the Einsatzgruppen returned to their murderous work. An estimated 1.5 million Jews died at their hands. In the fall of 1941 the death camps would begin to be constructed and experiments with gassing the victims were undertaken to expedite the extermination of European Jews. Goebbels wrote in the periodical Das Reich on 16 November 1941, referring to Hitler’s prophecy and directly linked it to the ongoing murder of the Jews: We are experiencing the fulfillment of that prophecy, and it delivers the Jews to a fate which is perhaps severe, but which is more than deserved. Pity, even regret, is totally inappropriate. The Jews are a parasitical race, which is like a festering mold on the cultures of healthy nations. There is only one remedy: a swift incision, and done away with. (Graml 1992,186)

The infamous Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, where the decision to exter¬ minate all the Jews of Europe was announced to those who needed to know and where preliminary plans were openly discussed, was not when the decision was made, but when it was formalized. Ten days after Wannsee, Hitler returned to the podium of the Reichstag and made another anniversary speech. Once again he referred to his 1939 prophecy: We are clear to ourselves that the war can end only with either the Aryan peoples exterminated, or that Jewry will vanish from Europe. I have already spoken about

NATIONAL SOCIALIST MILLENNIALISM

545

it on September i, 1939, in the German Reichstag—and I am careful not to make rash prophecies—that this war will not go as the Jews envisage it, namely that the European Aryan peoples will be exterminated, rather that the result of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry. For the first time the true old Jewish law will be employed an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.... And the hour will come when the most evil world enemy of all time will have played out its role of the last millennium. (Redles 2005b, 184-85)

The millennial moment had arrived, the Final War was unfolding, and the Final Solution to the eternal struggle between Aryan and Jew was under way. Only one side could survive this racial Armageddon. The apocalyptic logic of Nazi millennialism mandated the extermination of one adversary or the other. This is not to say that the Nazis ever had a clear idea of how this final battle would play out, only that it would occur in their lifetimes. They fervently believed that an eschatological turn¬ ing point had arrived and that they were divinely chosen to realize the millennial Third and Final Reich. Exactly how this was to be achieved may have been impro¬ vised as events presented themselves, but the logic for its fulfillment, and the exter¬ mination that it mandated, was always there. The Nazis induced the apocalyptic event that from the inception of the movement had been an absolute article of their millennial faith.

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CHAPTER

28

MODERN CATHOLIC MILLENNIALISM MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

In July 2006 Emmanuel Milingo, the controversial Roman Catholic archbishop

from Zambia, was again on the front page of many world newspapers. In 2001 Milingo had made headlines by being married in New York by Reverend Sun Myung Moon to a member of the Unification Church, Dr. Maria Sung (see chapter 17 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume). Milingo then repented, left Dr. Sung, and was readmitted to Catholic ministry under Vatican surveillance. In the summer of 2006 he left Italy and spent several weeks discussing theology with Reverend Moon

in Korea. Milingo then resurfaced on 12 July in Washington, D.C., where in a press conference he declared that, although not persuaded to join the Unification Church, he was convinced that Catholic priests (including bishops) should not be forced to remain celibate. He was again living with Dr. Sung and was launching his own inter¬ national movement against mandatory priestly celibacy. A point completely lost in the Milingo saga, except perhaps to some Vatican authorities, is that the Zambian archbishop’s problems derived not only from comparatively common challenges with celibacy. Milingo, although very popular in Italy for his healing ministry, had been in trouble with the Church hierarchy for years because of his ideas about millennialism. Milingo’s fascination for Reverend Moon’s movement is unique among Catholic archbishops, but it can be explained by a study of his theology as it developed well before the 2001 incidents. In 1994, he had endorsed a book published by Father Martino Penasa (1994) claiming that Catholics could believe in an imminent “inter¬ mediate coming” of Jesus Christ on Earth to inaugurate a thousand-year reign of the saints prior to the final judgment (corresponding to Christ’s “final,” not be con¬ fused with his “intermediate,” coming). Although the terminology was different,

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Penasa’s ideas appeared to be more similar to classical evangelical Christian premillennalism (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone and chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, both in this volume) than to Roman Catholic orthodoxy. Milingo also participated in the activities of Father Nicholas Gruner, leader of the International Fatima Rosary Crusade (IFRC), a fringe millennialist Catholic group repeatedly denounced by Rome. At a conference organized by Gruner in 1996 (which he attended despite a Vatican prohibition), Milingo told the audience that Satanists had infiltrated the Roman Catholic Church at the highest level, a sure sign that humanity was approaching the last days (Milingo 1997,385). Because of his con¬ viction that the end of the world and the “intermediate coming” of Jesus Christ to inaugurate a millennial reign was imminent, Milingo believed that ordinary Church law could be derogated and a new Church of the latter days was about to arise. Millennialism, repeatedly condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, has con¬ tinuously resurfaced in fringe Catholic groups in the last one hundred years. Some of these groups, although forced to keep a low profile if not to operate secretly, have influenced important Roman Catholic intellectuals. As we shall see, quite surprisingly, an underground tradition of Catholic millennialism has also influenced, until recently, mainline Roman Catholic thinking on Islam.

The Catholic Hierarchy versus Millennialism The 1993 Catechism of the Catholic Church, having mentioned the Antichrist in §675, continues: The Antichrist s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism. (§676) Here, “intrinsically perverse” is actually a quote from a classic Catholic formula used to condemn Marxist communism (Pius XI1937, §58), and “secular messian¬ ism is best understood as secularized postmillennialism (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume, on postmillennialism and premillennialism; see chapter 27 by David Redles, this volume, for a discussion of National Socialism as a secularized progressive millennialism). Evangelical premillennialism, however, is declared to be equally unacceptable. The Catechism has no quarrel with “a final trial,” a great “per¬ secution,” or the appearance of “the Antichrist.” All these elements are explicitly mentioned in §675. What is condemned, however, is the idea of a literal kingdom of one thousand years, visibly headed by Jesus Christ.

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The few Catholic theologians who have adopted this view of the Millennium as a one-thousand-year earthly rule of Christ have usually found themselves in trouble with the hierarchy. Perhaps the most famous case involved the Chilean Jesuit Manuel Lacunza y Diaz (1731-1801), censored by the Vatican after his death in 1824. Not unlike Father Penasa, Reverend Lacunza taught that Jesus will return not once, but twice. The first return involved a sort of Rapture, where the saints would avoid the reign of the Antichrist. Ignored by Roman Catholics, Lacunza has been studied mostly by Seventh-day Adventists (such as Vaucher 1949) who consider him a fore¬ runner of their tradition (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, this volume). Father Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970), a popular Naples preacher regarded by many as a saint, was also censored and accused of holding views similar to Lacunza’s, labeled as “semi-millennialism” or “moderate millennialism.” He denied all charges of departure from Catholic orthodoxy, however, and submitted to censorship with¬ out protest (see his autobiography: Ruotolo 1973). Some in Naples still hope he will one day be canonized.

Terminology While discussions on terminology are endless, it has been argued that “apocalypti¬ cism” may be more appropriate than “millennialism” for most contemporary Catholic groups. Michael W. Cuneo uses “apocalypticism” when describing a peculiar North American tradition, based on Marian apparitions (particularly the 1917 apparition in Fatima, Portugal), anticommunism, and unacknowledged debts to “Protestant millenarianism” and “the conspiracy culture of America’s extreme political right” (Cuneo 1997,175-94; Cuneo 1996; on the Bayside, Queens, New York, apparitions, see chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, both in this volume). As a parallel to developments noted by Cuneo, it is worth mentioning that the extremely successful contemporary American evangelical Christian apocalyptic fic¬ tion genre (see chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, this volume) does have a Catholic audience, and makes great efforts not to offend it. While in most traditional forms of evangelical Christian millennialism the Church of Rome is the “whore of Babylon” and the pope the Antichrist, in the bestselling Left Behind series the pope is actually raptured before the Tribulation, a sure sign that he was a good Christian (LaHaye and Jenkins 1995). In turn, Catholic fiction mirroring evangelical Christian millen¬ nial novels, sans the Millennium, has been produced, particularly by Michael D. O’Brien (1996,1997,1998). Although occasionally skating on thin ice, O’Brien ably avoids possible accusation of millennialism and his novels are published by Ignatius Press, a Roman Catholic publishing house well known for its conservative approach to orthodoxy. While Cuneo’s model effectively captures an important wing of the North American fringe Catholic milieu, there is another and quite different wing (although

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the two obviously interact). What I would call “Catholic millennialism” (as opposed to Cuneo’s apocalypticism) relies on a tradition older than recent Marian appari¬ tions and prophecy, is not primarily concerned with communism, and ignores Protestant evangelical Christian sources. While Catholic millennialism in its most recent versions may have embraced and incorporated Fatima and anticommunism, its main concern is with sin in general. Social sin, in this tradition born largely in the nineteenth century, was represented chiefly by anticlerical (and politically liberal) bourgeois capitalism, hence the denunciation of the rich and the emphasis on the prophetic role of the poor. This is quite different from the unashamed apology for American free-market capitalism in the forms of apocalypticism studied by Cuneo. Secondly, although an approaching chastisement and a set of catastrophic events are often mentioned, the emphasis is much more on what will come next: a millen¬ nial kingdom of Mary in which the Church will flourish. Rather than on Cuneo’s apocalypticism, this article focuses on the tradition of Catholic millennialism from Grignion de Montfort to some contemporary groups, emphasizing the central role of one Marian apparition other than Fatima, which occurred in La Salette, France, in 1846.

The Rediscovery of Montfort Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716) was a French missionary preacher who achieved extraordinary popular success in northwestern France at the begin¬ ning of the eighteenth century. His vocal indictment of the sins of the rich and powerful also earned him a number of enemies, and he was banned from preaching in several cities. By the early nineteenth century, he was almost forgotten. In the heated climate of devotion to the Virgin Mary as an antidote to the ideas of the French Revolution dominating the French Catholic milieu in the 1840s, the discov¬ ery and 1842 publication of his treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin (Grignion de Montfort 1963) made Montfort a household name for Catholics all over Europe.

Although Montfort s militant approach to Marian devotion was occasionally criticized after Vatican II, things changed when John Paul II (1920-2005) was elected pope in 1978. An ardent supporter of Montfort, John Paul II took from him his pontifical motto Totus Tuus (“All Yours,” referring to the Virgin Mary), and repeat¬ edly recommended Montfort to the whole Church as a theological authority. John Paul II reported that he was “greatly helped” by True Devotion. The book, he con¬ ceded, could be a bit disconcerting, given its rather florid and baroque style, but the essential theological thoughts which it contains are undeniable. The author was an outstanding theologian. [... ] Such powerftil words! They express the deepest reality of the greatest events ever to take place in human history” (John Paul II1996,28-30). Grignion de Montfort had been beatified in 1888 and canonized in 1947, and under

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John Paul II his feast day, 20 July 1996, was incorporated into the Universal Roman Calendar. The pope’s reference to “the greatest events to take place in human history” was an implicit endorsement of Montfort’s view of the last days. Sandra Zimdars-Swartz notes that “Montfort’s idea of the last period or age of the world as an age of Mary, which would be peculiarly characterized by Mary’s interventions in history, has been the basis in recent years for a number of interpretations of recent events as evidence of the dawning of a Marian age” (1991,250-51). Thomas Kselman notes the influence of its “straightforward claims that the Second Coming of Christ and his reign on earth would be preceded by an age of Mary” (1983,90). French sociologist Jean Seguy’s study (1982) concluding that Montfort was indeed a “millennialist” (although with some qualifications) generated a number of protests among Catholic theologians (De Fiores 1986). In fact, during the canonization process, the Promoter of Faith (the officer popularly known as “the Devil’s advocate,” whose statutory office is to gather objections against a candidate’s sainthood) had already mentioned Montfort’s “millennialism,” or at least texts open to millenarian interpretation (De Fiores 1986,138). Had Montfort been recognized as a “millennialist” in the technical sense, he could not have been canonized. But the Vatican decided otherwise, and perhaps rightly so. What Montfort predicted was a four-stage sequence of events: the “reign of the Antichrist,” the “reign of Mary,” the “reign of Jesus Christ,” and the “Second Coming.” This model used early sources such as mystical authors Marie de Vallees (1590-1656) and John Eudes (1601-80, canonized in 1925), but was also considerably original. There is no coming of Jesus Christ between the reign of the Antichrist and the reign of Mary. The coming of the reign of Mary is a human work by the “apostles of the latter times,” although with extraordinary spiritual help by the Holy Spirit and by Mary herself. According to Montfort, the reign of Jesus Christ lies in a continuum with the reign of Mary and will see a still greater flourishing of the Church. Christ will not visibly come to Earth during this time, but only in the subsequent fourth stage, the Second Coming. Only the authors who have predicted a “preliminary” or “intermediate” coming of Christ to Earth (be it to rapture the saints or inaugurate the millennium), from Lacunza to Milingo, have been disciplined by the Vatican. Catholics do believe in the final Second Coming, and predicting an extraordinary outpouring of grace and happiness in the latter days (before the coming of the Antichrist, his defeat and the Second Coming) has not been regarded as less ortho¬ dox than predicting for the same period, as others have done, a time of widespread terror and apostasy. On the other hand, the canonization process appears to be a step in an ongoing process aimed at routinizing Montfort’s charisma. Prophecy is domesticated by interpretation. In an organization such as the Roman Catholic Church, the process should not be seen as merely political, since it is necessary also to universalize a prophetic message born in a peculiar local situation. In fact, Montfort’s ideas sur¬ rounding the “apostles of the latter times” would inspire both mainline enterprises and a vigorous stream of fringe and genuinely millennialist prophecy.

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La Salette and “Melanism” Melanie Calvat (1831-1904) was, with Maximin Giraud (1835-1875), one of the two shepherd children who in 1846 reported a Marian apparition at La Salette, in the French Alps. Eventually, La Salette became the first apparition officially “recognized” by the Catholic hierarchy. What the Church recognized was the so-called “public” message, predicting chastisements and “a great famine,” followed by great prosperity should the people convert. Unlike other visionaries, the children at La Salette did not die young, nor did they bury themselves in convents. For them the vision was a bur¬ den more than an asset, and both led tormented lives. Melanie, in particular, wan¬ dered from one religious order to another, and was manipulated by different groups of prophecy enthusiasts, some with political agendas. She died in Italy, where she had found a protector in Salvatore Luigi Zola (1822-98), the saintly Bishop of Lecce. Apart from the “public” message, both Maximin and Melanie claimed to have received “secrets” from the Virgin Mary. Melanie published her secret in 1879, with the approval of Bishop Zola (Calvat 1879), and actively promoted its authenticity right up to her death in 1904. The publication started a whole current (never orga¬ nized as a movement) among European Catholics. “Melanism” started publicly under the protection of the influential Bishop Zola, but had to continue under¬ ground after his death in 1898. It remained quite influential, if discreetly so, in the twentieth century. Melanies secret mentioned a great apostasy, particularly by priests who would become “cesspools of iniquity.” Jesus Christ would send great chastisement, followed by a short period of peace and happiness, thanks in particular to the “apostles of the last times. The Antichrist, to be birthed by a Jewish nun,” would eventually put an end to this peace until Christ s Second Coming would destroy the wicked. Melanie’s apostles were, obviously, Montfort’s “apostles of the latter times,” and she claimed it her mission to establish just such an order, to be called the Order of the Mother of God. Melanies anticlericalism” (Zimdars-Swartz 1991,183), date-setting, and apoca¬ lyptic details (including the imminent destruction of Paris and Marseilles) were per¬ ceived as too specific and prompted an institutional reaction. The published secret was banned in many French dioceses, and books promoting it were included in the Church’s “Index of Forbidden Books.” Finally, in 1915, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office ruled that “any publication relative to the so-called ‘Secret de La Salette’ is prohibited” (see Bassette 1965). In a legal sense, this decree may or may not now be m force and Catholic voices favoring the authenticity of Melanie’s secret are still occasionally heard. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the former Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office) remains hostile, however, as evidenced by the fact that in 1985 it reconfirmed its 1936 and 1951 decisions to “permanently forbid” any further pursuit of beatifying Bishop Zola. Although admittedly a saintly figure, t e is op was simply too involved in the controversy surrounding Melanie’s secret. n the other hand, a strong belief in Melanie’s secret has not prevented Father Pierre Semenenko (1814-86), founder of the Polish Order of the Resurrectionists

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and a leading Melanist, to be considered for beatification (Corteville 1987). More recently, the Diocese of Altamura, where Melanie died and is buried, is moving toward beatification of Melanie herself. Some leading Catholic academic scholars of Marian apparitions have entered the debate, defending the nonmillennialist and orthodox character of Melanie’s controversial secret (Corteville and Laurentin 2002). These scholars try to distinguish Melanie’s own “Melanism,” which they regard as not technically millennialist, and the Melanism subsequently developed by Leon Bloy (discussed below). The current pope, Benedict XVI, is considered very cautious when dealing with apparitions and prophecies, and a beatification of Melanie now seems less probable. The La Salette case was another example of domestication of charisma. Unlike Montfort’s case, this one took place while Melanie was still alive, and inevitably worked against her. For the La Salette movement to be received by and universalized in the Church, the fringe or apparently bizarre elements in Melanie’s writings had to be cut by carefully distinguishing between her genuine experiences as a young girl and her later utterances. The anti-Melanist documents of the Floly Office were always careful in affirming the reality of the 1846 apparition, duly recognized by the Church and not to be confused with Melanie’s later prophetic writings. After Melanie’s death, however, Melanism would have an independent career in Catholic intellectual and artistic circles thanks to a bizarre literary genius, Leon Bloy.

Leon Bloy

Leon Bloy (1846-1917) is one of the most well-known and controversial figures in the late nineteenth-century French-speaking Catholic literary milieu. At the end of the 1870s, apocalypticism became the core of his concerns. In his first published book, Le Revelateur du Globe, on the religious life of Christopher Columbus (14511506), Bloy wrote that “without being, strictly speaking, a millennialist, it is permit¬ ted to believe in a future triumph of the Holy Spirit... an imminent coming of the Kingdom of God” (1884, 57). The world, Bloy argued, is so marked by widespread apostasy, particularly in the oppression of the poor and the sins of the Catholic clergy, that the kingdom of the Holy Spirit can only be “imminent.” Columbus him¬ self was deeply interested in millennial prophecies and toward the end of his life tended to attribute a millennial meaning to his discoveries. Bloy was part of a move¬ ment that called for the canonization of Columbus as a saint. Bloy’s millennialism was, admittedly, strange. From 1878 to 1882 he relied on the prophetic utterances of his lover, Anne-Marie Roule (1846-1907), a prostitute whom he met in 1877 and converted to Catholicism in 1878. She was committed to a psy¬ chiatric hospital in 1882. While the Virgin Mary played no special apocalyptic role in Bloy’s first writings, things changed in 1879-80 with his pilgrimages to La Salette and increasing enthusiasm for Montfort. Gradually, Bloy became a fervent Melanist

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and in 1908 published the most famous apology for Melanie’s secret, Celle quipleure (Bloy 1908). In 1912 he wrote an introduction for, and published, Vie de Melanie

ecrite par elle-meme, a posthumous autobiography in which Melanie claimed to have been surrounded by the miraculous and the prophetic since early childhood, well before the 1846 apparition (Calvat 1912). One of the main features of Bloy’s literary style was its violent tone and use of invective. When the kingdom of the Holy Spirit became the kingdom of Mary, a primary feature would be vengeance. Before the glory, happiness, and peace, Mary would be revealed as “the Virgin of Vengeance.” The Crying Mother (Celle qui

pleure) would be, at the same time, the Laughing Mother, and Bloy took obvious pleasure in depicting her as a terrible icon of heaven’s laughing vengeance against corrupt clergy and those who unashamedly oppressed the poor. Born in 1846, the same year as the apparition at La Salette, Bloy was persuaded not only that the “apostles of the latter days” according to Montfort and Melanie would soon be established as an official Catholic order, but that he would be one of them. Although controversial, Bloy was taken quite seriously by the intellectual milieu of his time. Fascinated by his perspective of a millennial kingdom in which justice would triumph, quite a few literati converted to Catholicism, including the wellknown philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882—1973). Although Bloy’s virulent prose would seem almost impossible to sanitize, he is more often celebrated today as a great writer, and the spiritual father of a generation of Catholic intellectuals. His millennialism, if not forgotten, is thus forgiven. It is important to note that Maritain, who evolved from a conservative to a lead¬ ing liberal Catholic intellectual before closing his career in the 1970s as a neoconser¬ vative, remained a Melanist throughout his life, though he discussed the matter only with close friends and almost never in writing. When at the close of World War II Maritain was appointed the first ambassador of a liberated France to the Holy See, his first official (but not much publicized) gesture was to send a French flag to Altamura to honor Melanie’s grave. Maritain involved other leading French intel¬ lectuals in a somewhat clandestine Melanism (Griffiths 1966). He prevailed upon his close friend Pope Paul VI (1897-1978), a man not particularly enthusiastic about apparitions and prophecies, to take Melanism seriously, at least in private, and not to speak publicly against it. Maritain’s most important recruit to Melanism was Louis Massignon, regarded for several decades as the leading Catholic scholar of Islam.

Louis

Massignon and the Islamic Connection

Louis Massignon (1883-1962) had a crucial influence on both the Catholic vision of Islam and French foreign policy throughout the twentieth century. He was also a lifetime Melanist, due to the influence of another influential novelist, the French

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Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907), who through Melanism had converted from a decadent lifestyle to a very pious Catholicism. Huysmans was a friend of Massignon’s devout Catholic mother and freethinking artist father. Massignon followed his father’s ideas until he met the converted Huysmans. Huysmans’s branch of Melanism was closely connected to Naundorffism, a political movement claiming that Louis XVII, son of King Louis XVI (1754-1793) and Queen Marie Antoinette (1755-93), did not die in the Paris Temple jail in 1793 (as most historians believe) but survived and resurfaced as Louis Naundorff (17851845). Small Naundorffist parties survive to this day in France. Although Melanie herself was ambivalent in her relationship with Naundorffism, many Melanists were persuaded that the glorious French king destined to prepare the last days according to her prophecies had to be one of Naundorff’s descendants. Huysmans converted Massignon to both Melanism and Naundorffism, and Massignon remained a Naundorffist to the end of his life. A Western scholar erudite in things Islamic (he spoke fluently a half-dozen lan¬ guages of Islamic Asia, and his knowledge of Arabic classics astonished many Muslim scholars), Massignon regarded the persecution of Shi‘i Muslims and the descendants of their founder, ‘Ali (d. 661), by the dominant Sunnis as being parallel to the persecution of Louis XVI and his descendants (whom he believed to be rep¬ resented by the Naundorff family) by the French Revolution and the secular France of the twentieth century. Massignon was mystically oriented, more inclined to study mystical and heretical groups than mainline Islam, and concluded that the parallel martyr status of Ali and his sons and of Louis XVI was mysteriously predetermined by God, within the framework of a complicated plan preparing for the eventual conversions of Muslims to Christianity and the latter days. Rather than a humanmade religious innovation, Islam, according to Massignon, was predetermined by God in his blessing of the exiled Ishmael, son of Abraham and his Egyptian slave Hagar (reported in Genesis 21:13). Like many contemporary scholars, Massignon regarded Ishmael as the ancestor of the Arabs and concluded that he was also the mystical ancestor of Islam. Massignon was well aware that during its history Islam had acquired many fea¬ tures radically opposed to Christianity (Rocalve 1993). He remained a pious Catholic, but he believed that Islam was part of God’s plan: rather than being fought Islam should be approached with sympathy, because Muslims would be converted not by missionaries but by God himself in the latter days. Mystical souls in both Islam and Christianity might make all this happen earlier by offering themselves as “expiatory victims” to God and accepting extraordinary sorrows in a spirit of penance. (This is

the key idea of the Melanist movement, according to Griffiths 1966.) In Islam, Massignon favored the Shi‘i, whose penitentiary ceremonies are well known, and particularly the hyper-Shi‘i sects that separated from orthodox Islam by claiming that ‘Ali was not only the sole legitimate successor of Muhammad but a divine incarnation. Massignon was the only Western scholar to have access to the secret texts of one of the largest of these groups, the Alawite religion in Syria. He discovered an Alawite doctrine claiming that the Prophet Muhammad, ‘Ali, and

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Salman Pak (Muhammad’s private barber and counselor, and a popular “saint” in Shi‘i folklore) constitute a trinity of characters who, although not part of “God in essence” (as Jesus is for Christianity), are regarded as “part of God by participation” (Massignon 1934). Massignon’s appreciation of Syrian Alawite culture had decisive political consequences when he became a French diplomat whose role was crucial in determining the future assets of Syria. After World War II, the Alawites consti¬ tuted only 15 percent of the population of Syria, which maintains a Sunni majority; yet, with French support they dominated the newly constituted Syrian army. This eventually led the Alawite Asad family and its allies to institute an authoritar¬ ian regime, and the Alawite minority maintains a privileged position in Syria to this day. On the Catholic side, Massignon established a mystical brotherhood of “victim souls” known as the Badaliya (Arabic for “substitution”), who could offer their sor¬ rows in prayer for the latter-day conversion of Muslims. Its most famous member was Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montini, the future Pope Paul VI. The Badaliya kept a very low profile, and many admirers of Massignon’s prodigious erudition never knew of it, or of his Melanist and Naundorffist ideas. The relevant writings on these topics were published well after his death (Massignon 1997). With the publication of these writings, it became clear that Massignon, who (before converting to Catholicism) had a homosexual liaison with the Spanish writer and convert to Islam Luis de Cuadra (1877-1921), also had a millennial view of homosexuality (Destremau and Moncelon 1994). In approaching the latter days, the spread of homosexuality would correspond to an unconscious anticipation of a millennial kingdom where the sexual difference between male and female would disappear. Massignon’s millennial view of homosexuality had very little in common with the latter twentieth-century gay rights movement. To homosexuals, he preached abstinence, conversion to Catholicism, and the offering of sacrifices for hastening the latter days. (On other millennial views of gender roles and sexuality, see chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, this volume.) During his lifetime, Massignon s millennialism and his views on homosexuality and Melanism were disclosed only to a restricted circle of trusted friends, but they influenced his irenic approach to Islam, which dominated Catholic Islamic studies until the end of the twentieth century. His writings were never condemned, and other sympathetic authors who maintained that Islam was part of God’s plan of salvation

such as the Jesuit Jacques Dupuis (1923-2004)—were not reprimanded

until the tenure of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith under John Paul II. The decision of Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 to merge the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, a stronghold of the Massignon-style approach to Islam, into the Pontifical Council for Culture, and to demote its president, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a strong proponent of the irenic approach to Islam, to a minor position as Vatican nuncio m Egypt, was regarded by many as a consequence of a post-9/11 Vatican caution toward Islam. It may also have ended a long era in which Massignon’s ideas (whose millennialist roots remain, ironically, ignored by many) dominated the

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official Catholic approach to Islam. Although in September 2007 the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue became again an independent body, under the leadership of lean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, the irenism toward Islam of the Fitzgerald era remains largely a thing of the past.

The Amsterdam Apparitions and the Army of Mary Ida Peerdeman (1905-96), born in Alkmaar, the Netherlands, reported an encounter with the Virgin Mary at the age of twelve followed by miraculous visions of battles in Europe during World War II. From 1945 to 1959, she received fifty-five messages from the Virgin Mary. Although the first verdict of the local Catholic diocese was negative, a chapel was quietly built in the 1970s at the site of the Amsterdam appari¬ tion and dedicated to the “Lady of All Peoples.” Peerdeman’s prayer to the “Lady of All Peoples, who was once Mary,” and the messages she received gained widespread popularity throughout much of the Catholic world. They were interpreted as pre¬ dicting three different events: a crisis in the Church, Vatican II (seen as a rather positive development and as an antidote to the crisis), and a future millennial king¬ dom of the Holy Spirit and Mary. To usher in that kingdom Peerdeman called on the Church to proclaim offi¬ cially a new Marian dogma emphasizing Mary’s role as “Co-Redeemer.” The title has had a long tradition in Catholic Marian theology but has never been officially approved by the Vatican, most recently also due to ecumenical concerns: elevating Mary to a redemptive role would alienate non-Catholic Christians from ecumenical dialogue. On 31 May 1996, less than three months before Peerdeman’s death, Bishop Henrik Bomers (1936-98) of the Dutch diocese of Haarlem published a notification approving “the prayer and the public cult of Mary under the title of Lady of All Peoples,” while stating that “the Church cannot, for the moment, make a pronounce¬ ment on the supernatural character of the apparitions.” The bishop’s “notification” downplayed the millennial element of Peerdeman’s experience, emphasizing instead that the title “Lady of All Peoples” cast a “clear light on the universal motherhood of Mary” and on her “unique and feminine role in the Lord’s plan of salvation” (Bomers and Punt 1996). In 2002 Bomers’s successor as bishop of Haarlem, Jozef Marianus Punt, finally recognized “that the apparitions of the Lady of All Nations in Amsterdam consist of a supernatural origin.” Although Marian apparitions are recognized by local bishops rather than the Vatican, bishops are nonetheless supervised by the Vatican in this activity. Punt acknowledged that “naturally, the influence of the human element still exists” (Punt 2002), as in all apparitions, quoting on this point Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI. In fact, a theological dialogue is taking

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place between the Diocese of Haarlem and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith on the words “who was once Mary” included in the prayer revealed in the apparitions with reference to the Lady of All Peoples. Rome seems particularly concerned with the formula’s interpretation in a large Catholic movement recently repudiated by the hierarchy, the Army of Mary. A link connecting Melanism to the Amsterdam apparitions and the Army of Mary is Raoul Auclair (1906-97), born in Ambrault, France. Just as Leon Bloy was born in the year of La Salette, Auclair celebrated his First Communion on 13 May 1917, the day of the first apparition at Fatima. Like Bloy, whom he would come to call his spiritual father, Auclair regarded the coincidence as significant. A promising student, he abandoned his academic career to complete his military service in Morocco and then worked as a surgical materials salesman before finding more satisfactory employment in 1941 with French national radio. In the same year he had a mystical experience in Marseilles and was “transported outside time, as if plum¬ meted into the Divine Intelligence” (Peloquin 1997, 10-11). Besides working as a playwright for the radio, he became an increasingly successful author of books on Catholic prophecy and eschatology as well as Marian apparitions. By the 1960s he had at his disposal a rich collection of materials, since many new apparitions, some officially recognized by the Church, had followed La Salette and other nineteenthcentury cases. He also wrote a commentary on Melanie’s secret (Auclair 1981). Zimdars-Swartz notes the importance of Auclair as a representative of a Catholic millennialism, which (unlike the American apocalypticism studied by Cuneo) even¬ tually placed the “Second Vatican Council in a positive light.” Auclair tried to walk a middle course in the struggle over change. He saw the Roman Catholic Church as being menaced both by those who were frenetic for reform, whom he described as motivated by a “bad spirit,” and by the overly narrow traditionalists who were unwilling to allow the Holy Spirit to change the structures of the church (Zimdars-Swartz 1991, 256-57). Eventually, Auclair became the main apologist for Ida Peerdeman’s visions. In 1976 (the year his wife died), he joined the Army of Mary and moved permanently to Quebec, taking the habit of the related religious order, the Sons of Mary, in 1987. The Army of Mary was founded by Marie-Paule Giguere, born 14 September 1921 at Sainte-Germaine-du-Lac-Etchemin, a small rural town sixty miles from Quebec City, Quebec. Later, Lac-Etchemin (where a small Marian shrine was built in the 1950s) would acquire a peculiar significance in the Army of Mary’s millen¬ nial symbolism. A pious young girl, Marie-Paule considered religious life as a mis¬ sionary in Africa, but her poor health was interpreted by her spiritual advisors as a sign that the Lord was calling her to marriage. In 1944 she married Georges Cliche (1917-97), with whom she had five children between 1945 and 1952. But the mar¬ riage proved a nightmare, with Georges revealing himself to be prodigal, alcoholic, and adulterous. The Church, while opposed to divorce, accepted separation in extreme cases, and a number of priests suggested that Marie-Paule leave her hus¬ band. She did so, reluctantly, in i957> and later attempts at reconciliation proved unsuccessful.

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Since her teenage years, Marie-Paule had “heard” the interior voices of the Lord and the Virgin Mary. These messages guided her through the trials of her life and eventually directed her to write a lengthy autobiography, Vie d’Amour (A Life of Love), of which thirteen volumes were published in 1979-80. Five volumes of

Appendices were added between 1992 and 1993 (Giguere 1992-93). Volumes 4 and 6 (about some of Marie-Paule’s early companions) followed in 1993 and 1994, bringing the total to more than six thousand pages (Giguere 1979-94). In 1954 Marie-Paule “heard” for the first time a reference to “the Army of Mary,” a “won¬ derful movement” she would later lead (Giguere 1979-94,1:174). Slowly, a small “Marian Group” was formed, including a couple of priests. On 28 August 1971, during a pilgrimage to the Lac-Etchemin shrine, the Army of Mary was officially inaugurated. Following a request by Bishop Jean-Pierre van Lierde (1907-1995), Vicar General of Vatican City and a supporter of Giguere, recognition of the Army of Mary as a “pious association” was obtained in 1975 from Maurice Cardinal Roy (1905-1985), Archbishop of Quebec City. In the meantime, the Army of Mary, with about one thousand members, had met with considerable success, due largely to the charismatic personality of Marie-Paule herself. The Army of Mary also reflected the needs of a sizeable section of Quebec’s Catholics. They were con¬ fused by post-Vatican II reforms in the Church and disoriented by Quebec’s “silent revolution” transforming its Catholic, agrarian society to a more secular, urban one. Yet a large majority still maintained loyalty to Rome and were unwill¬ ing to join one of the North American right-wing schismatic groups described by Cuneo. In fact, “fidelity to Rome and the Pope” has been a motto of the Army of Mary since its founding, and its members, the “Knights of Mary,” center their religious life around the “Triple White”—the eucharist, the Immaculate Mary, and the pope. The Army also proposes a Marian devotion along the lines of Montfort, Auclair, and Peerdeman (though when the Army of Mary became controversial the circle around Peerdeman advised the Dutch visionary to keep her distance). Between the late 1970s and late 1980s the Army of Mary gained several thousand members and expanded from Quebec to other Canadian provinces, the United States, and some European countries. It also generated a number of related organi¬ zations, the most ambitious being the Community of the Sons and Daughters of Mary, a group of male and female religious (including priests) established in 1981. Marie-Paule herself joined a religious order in 1997, after the death of her husband, and was subsequently elected Superior General of the Community of the Daughters of Mary. A larger “Family of the Sons and Daughters of Mary” includes that com¬ munity and a number of affiliated organizations. These traditional, conservative, dynamic, and ambitious Catholic groups repli¬ cated a number of similar enterprises throughout the Catholic world. What created substantial controversy, however, were the firm roots of the Army of Mary in the Catholic millennialist and Melanist tradition at a time when the Quebec Catholic hierarchy had little patience with it. A campaign against Marie-Paule gathered momentum in Quebec from at least the early 1980s, and in 1984 the new Archbishop

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of Quebec City, Louis-Albert Vachon (1912—2006), appointed a commission to investigate the Army of Mary. Vachon would later become cardinal. Church authorities eventually discovered speculations within the Army of Mary surrounding Marie-Paule’s personal role in the millennial plan of salvation. According to Auclair (1985), a mysterious being known as “CELLE” (She, in all capi¬ tals) existed before entering the person of the Virgin Mary, and still exists, having “once been Mary,” according to Auclair’s interpretation of the Amsterdam prayer (an interpretation not reflected in the literature officially approved by the Amsterdam shrine). It was not an inconceivable step for Auclair’s friends in the Army of Mary to conclude that, as she had already inhabited Mary once before, “CELLE” now mystically inhabited Marie-Paule, who was elevated to a sort of new incarnation of the Virgin Mary. In two books published in the 1980s, Marc Bosquart (1985, 1986), a Belgian member of the Army of Mary who had moved to Quebec, linked the incarnation of “CELLE” in Marie-Paule to a forthcoming Millennium. Bosquart’s books went beyond what the Quebec hierarchy and Rome were prepared to tolerate. On 4 May 1987, with the approval of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Paith, Cardinal Vachon revoked Cardinal Roy’s 1975 decree recognizing the Army of Mary as a pious association. The Army’s appeals and recourses to Rome, accompanied by the prom¬ ise not to further circulate Bosquart’s books, proved unsuccessful. The story of the confrontation between the Army of Mary and both the Vatican and Canadian Catholic hierarchy is long and complicated (see Introvigne 2001). Between 2000 and 2006, documents from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Paith and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops defined the Army of Mary as a non-Catholic reli¬ gious movement and repudiated what they regarded as the group’s millennialism. At the same time, the documents recognized the Army’s members as excellent Catholics except for their belief in unorthodox millennial prophecies. On 17 September 2006, however, the Army of Mary acclaimed one of its priests, Lather Pierre Mastropietro (whose French-Italian name, translated “Peter Master-Peter,” was regarded as a prophetic omen), as the new “Universal Father” of the “Church of John.” In the alternative tradition of Western Esotericism (see chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume), a charismatic and noninstitutional “Church of John” has often been opposed to the institutional “Church of Peter” (based on the idea that, among the apostles, Peter received from Jesus the “keys” of the institutional Church, but John remained the Lord’s most beloved disciple). The idea of a “Church of John,” however, has never been accepted by Catholic authorities. According to Marc Bosquart, who meanwhile had been restored as an influential lay theologian in the movement (see Bosquart 2010), and even crowned as “King Marc-Andre” in 2010 with a mysterious mission of restoring the cooperation between the Church and a Catholic monarchy, the latter-day Church of John would coexist for a long time with the Church of Peter and its head, Pope Benedict XVI. Accordingly, the Army of Mary claimed that its members could remain part of both the new Church of John and the Church of Peter—that is, the Roman Catholic Church. This was not, however, Rome’s view, particularly after the new Universal Father of the Church

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of John did several things in May-June 2007 that only a pope can do: among other things, he canonized Raoul Auclair a saint and proclaimed a new dogma designat¬ ing Marie-Paule Giguere “Co-Redeemer” of all. On 11 July 2007 the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith excommunicated all members of the Army of Mary, including priests and the Universal Father himself. The latter, however, went on, further distancing himself from Rome by canonizing Marie-Paule as a saint on 31 May 2009 (although she was still alive), and substituting reference to a divine “quinternity” (including the Virgin Mary and Marie-Paule herself) to the usual Christian Trinity. The Archdiocese of Quebec City announced, however, that it would not give up on dialogue with these “separated brethren,” and the Vatican itself may hope that reconciliation will become possible after the death of Marie-Paule. On the other hand, the Archdiocese has apparently endorsed a strong indictment of the Army of Mary (Martel 2010), which Marc Bosquart has countered with an even stronger refutation (Bosquart 2011).

Conclusions This essay has reconstructed the history and social significance of a Catholic millennialist tradition that predates and is different from the conspiratorial and primarily anticommunist neo-apocalypticism studied by Cuneo and others. Contemporary incarnations of Catholic millennialism such as the Army of Mary do not normally preach rejection of Vatican II nor open separation from Rome (although Rome may end up separating itself from them). Clearly, a similar approach appeals to a number of Catholics who regard themselves as conservative but not arch-conservative or radically right-wing, and who maintain a deep interest in prophetic speculations sur¬ rounding the Endtime, a topic seldom discussed by today’s average parish priest. Millennialism of this kind is a powerful underground current within the Roman Catholic Church, and attempts to eradicate it have never really succeeded. The Church hierarchy has normally preferred to rely on the routinization of charisma, and millennialism has been domesticated by carefully separating acceptable specu¬ lation about the Endtime (to be presented, precisely, as speculation rather than cer¬ tainty) from less acceptable instances of date-setting, borrowing from extra-Catholic millenarian traditions, or wild theological innovation. Since a living prophet is, by definition, unpredictable, the domestication often takes place after his or her death (on charismatic leadership see also chapter 6 by Lome Dawson, this volume). At this stage, unorthodox interpretations are discarded (perhaps surviving in separatist fringe groups), and ambiguous apocalyptic statements are reinterpreted as literary or symbolic metaphors. Undomesticated groups end up outside the fold of the Church or simply disappear. Where exactly the red line separating unorthodox Catholics from those wishing to remain in the fold should be traced is a perpetual and difficult problem for the

564

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Church. Nowhere was this more evident than in Uganda at the end of the twentieth century. Apparitions and prophetic manifestations in nearby Kibeho, Rwanda, between 1981 and 1989 had been approved by the local hierarchy, notwithstanding the suspicions of millennialism voiced by some theologians. The approval of Kibeho’s apparitions, however, started an epidemic of revelations in Rwanda and Uganda about the end of the world. The hierarchy was able to suppress most of these without significant resistance, but one group in Uganda, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, elected to separate itself from the Roman Catholic Church (see chapter 11 by John Walliss and chapter 20 by Rosalind I. J. Hackett, both in this volume). Co-led by Father Dominic Kataribabo (1967-2000), a United States-educated Ugandan Dominican priest who was eventually excommunicated, the movement went on with an increasingly non-orthodox millennialism, predicting the immi¬ nent end of the world. It was also responsible for one of the worst tragedies con¬ nected with new religious movements, an obscure combination of mass suicide and murder involving some eight hundred victims centered in the small town of Kanungu and discovered in March 2000. While the real reasons for what happened in Kanungu and other Ugandan towns may never be elucidated completely (see Mayer 2001; Walliss 2005; Vokes 2009), the tragedy of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, if anything, made the Roman Catholic hierarchy still more alert to the potential risks of millennialism. On the other hand, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ remains an integral part of Catholic doctrine, and the hierarchy is reluctant to discipline “millennialist” authors and movements that manifest only a cautious interest in the end of this world.

REFERENCES Auclair, Raoul. 1981. Le Secret de La Salette. Limoilou, Quebec: Editions Stella. -.1985- L’Homme total dans la Terre totale. Limoilou, Quebec: Editions Stella. Bassette, Louis. 1965. Le Fait de La Salette 1946-1854. 2d ed. Paris: Cerf. Bloy, Leon. 1884. Le Revelateur du globe, Christophe Colomb et sa beatification future. Paris: A. Sauton. -. 1908. Celle qui pleure. Paris: Mercure de France. Bomers, Henrik, and Jozef Marianus Punt. 1996. “Notification for the Catholic Faithful of the Diocese of Haarlem.” 31 May. www.de-vrouwe.net/english/d_May_ji_1996_ Approbation_of_the_Title262.htm. Bosquart, Marc. 1985. De la Trinite Divine a l Immaculee-Trinite. Elements pour servir a la Contemplation d’un mystere -1. Limoilou, Quebec: La Famille de Fils et Filles de Marie. —. 1986. Le Redempteur et la Co-Redemptrice. Elements pour servir a la Contemplation d'un mystere - II. Limoilou, Quebec: La Famille des Fils et Filles de Marie.

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-. 2010. Qui est Marie-Paule? (au del etsur la Terre). Lac-Etchemin, Quebec: Les Editions du Nouveau Monde. -. 2011. Une veritable Imposture! Lac-Etchemin, Quebec: Les Editions du Nouveau

Monde. Calvat, Melanie. 1879. VApparition de la tres sainte vierge sur la montagne de la Salette le 19 septembre 1846, publieepar la bergere de la Salette avec imprimatur de VEveque de Lecce.

Lecce: Melanie Calvat. -.1912. Vie de Melanie, bergere de la Salette, ecritepar elle-meme en 1900, son enfance (1831-1846), edited by Leon Bloy. Paris: Mercure de France. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 1993. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Corteville, Fernand. 1987. Pie IX, le pere Pierre Semenenko et les defenseurs du message de Notre Dame deLa Salette. Paris: Association Les Enfants de Notre-Dame de La Salette et Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. Corteville, Michel, and Rene Laurentin. 2002. Decouverte du secret de La Salette: Au-dela des polemiques, la verite sur Vapparition et ses voyants. Paris: Fayard. Cuneo, Michael W. 1996. The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 1997. “The Vengeful Virgin: Case Studies in Contemporary American Catholic Apocalypticism.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan Palmer, 175-94. New York: Routledge. De Fiores, Stefano. 1986. “Le Saint-Esprit et Marie dans les Derniers Temps selon Grignion de Montfort.” Etudes Mariales 43:131-71. Destremau, Christian, and Jean Moncelon. 1994. Louis Massignon. Paris: Plon. Giguere, Marie-Paule. 1979-94. Vie dAmour. 15 vols. Limoilou, Quebec: Vie d’Amour. -. 1992-93. Vie dAmour—Appendice. 5 vols. Limoilou, Quebec: Marie-Paule Vie

d’Amour. Griffiths, Richard. 1966. The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature 18/0-1914. London: Constable. Grignion de Montfort, Louis-Marie. 1963. True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Translated by Malachy Gerard Carroll. Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House. Introvigne, Massimo. 2001. “En Route to the Marian Kingdom: Catholic Apocalypticism and the Army of Mary.” In Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco, edited by Stephen Hunt, 149-65. London: Hurst & Company. John Paul II. 1996. Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination. New York: Doubleday. Kselman, Thomas A. 1983. Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry B. Jenkins. 1995. Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House. Mayer, Jean Francis. 2001. “Field Notes: The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.” Nova Religio 5, no. 1 (October): 203-10. Martel, Raymond. 2010. La Face cachee de I’Armee de Marie. Montreal: Fides. Massignon, Louis. 1934. Salman Pdk et lespremices spirituelles de I’lslam iranien. Tours: Societe des Etudes Iraniennes et de Fart persan. -. 1997. Les trois Prieres d’Abraham. Paris: Cerf. Milingo, Emmanuel. 1997. “Three Dimensions of Evil.” Appendix to Francis Alban, Fatima Priest. Priest, Prophecy and Peril... The Vatican Key to Peace and Terror, 383-89. Pound Ridge, N.Y.: Good Counsel Publications. O’Brien, Michael D. 1996. Father Elijah: An Apocalypse. San Francisco: Ignatius.

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-. 1997. Strangers and Sojourners: A Novel. San Francisco: Ignatius. -. 1998. Eclipse of the Sun. San Francisco: Ignatius. Peloquin, Maurice. 1997. “La vie familiale de Raoul Auclair.” Le Royaume 115 (February): 10-11. Penasa, Martino. 1994. Viene Gesu! La venuta intermedia del Signore. Udine, Italy: Edizioni Segno. Pius XI. 1937. Divini Redemptoris: Encyclical on Atheistic Communism. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Punt, Jozef Marianus. 2002. “In Response to Inquiries Concerning the Lady of All Nations Apparitions.” Declaration of 31 May. www.cesnur.0rg/2002/punt.htm. Rocalve, Pierre. 1993. Louis Massignon et Vlslam. Damascus: Institut Fra^ais de Damas. Ruotolo, Dolindo. 1973. Fui chiamato Dolindo che significa dolore... Pagine d’autobiografia e di scritti di carattere autobiografico. Naples: Apostolato Stampa. Seguy, Jean. 1982. “Millenarisme et ‘Ordres Adventistes’: Grignion de Montfort et les Apotres des derniers temps.” Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions 53: 23-38. Vaucher, Alfred-Felix. 1949. Lacunziana: Essais sur les propheties bibliques. Collonges-sousSaleve, France: Fides. Vokes, Richard. 2009. Ghosts ofKanungu: Fertility, Secrecy and Exchange in the Great Lakes of East Africa. Rochester, N.Y.: James Currey. Walliss, John. 2005. “Making Sense of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.” Nova Religio 9, no. 1 (August): 49-66. Zimdars-Swartz, Sandra L. 1991. Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 29

NEW AGE MILLENNIALISM PHILLIP CHARLES LUCAS

If, as Catherine Wessinger suggests, millennialism is the “belief in an imminent

transition” to a “collective salvation, either earthly or heavenly” (2000, 7), then the New Age movement of the late twentieth century is a textbook case. Although the glowing optimism of this movement’s millennial vision has faded into the shadows of the contemporary “war on terror” and the global warming crisis (see chapter 32 by Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, this volume), the lifestyle and worldview it engen¬ dered lives on in what West Coast marketers call Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS). LOHAS adherents are estimated to be 17 percent of the American popu¬ lation—and likely an even larger percent of the Northern European population. The LOHAS subculture embraces such New Age values and concerns as (1) dedica¬ tion to both personal and planetary healing—often through alternative medical sys¬ tems and spiritual practices, such as yoga, meditation, and other body/mind “awareness” techniques; (2) an ecofriendly lifestyle; and (3) a personally transfor¬ mative spirituality that avoids conventional religious organizations and draws from a wide array of both Eastern and Western teachings (Waldman and Reiss 2006,10). This article examines the history and general characteristics of the New Age movement, then traces the development of its millennial visions between i960 and 2000.1 argue that New Age millennial visions were fluid and shifting phenomena that included both catastrophic and progressive versions. Unlike most millenarian movements, the New Age subculture had no central authority structure, little orga¬ nization, no unifying scripture or teachings, and no consensus on what the coming world would look like. Like adherents of all late twentieth-century millenarian visions, however, New Agers were forced to confront the disconfirming reality of contemporary political and social events and consequently to refine their visions as the century came to an end. Today New Age is more a scholarly—and publishing industry—shorthand for a lifestyle and way of being in the world than a millennial

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movement per se. Most, if not all, of the movement’s prominent prophets are silent today or have focused their energies on more modest transformational goals and agendas.

Origins and Development As Wouter J. Hanegraaff (1996, 384-403) and J. Gordon Melton (1990, xxiii) have observed, the New Age movement emerged from a long-standing Western Esoteric tradition whose roots go back to the Neoplatonism and hermeticism of Late Antiquity. This tradition’s worldview was completely reshaped and secularized dur¬ ing the scientific and industrial revolutions of the early modern period, which, to a large extent, disenchanted a world that had been seen as organized and unified by divine purpose and intelligence (Hanegraaff 1996, 422). The traditional Esotericist worldview understood God as a personal Creator whose creation operated in holis¬ tic fashion according to unseen networks of correspondences—all permeated by divine power. The secularized Esotericism of the nineteenth century—popularized in Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, and New Thought— translated this earlier view into the emerging scientific discourse of impersonal laws—still understood as “spiritual”—that governed the universe and that could be mastered (or attuned to) in order to bring about health, wealth, and expanded spiri¬ tual capacities. In addition, nineteenth-century Esoteric circles adopted a version of the popular theory of evolution. This version posited a process of spiritual evolu¬ tion whereby humanity progressed to higher and higher levels of intelligence and capability. As Hanegraaff argues, the Spiritualist, Theosophical, Rosicrucian, and New Thought purveyors of this secularized (or scientific) Esotericism helped foster an international “cubic milieu” whose members mingled and traded beliefs and practices well into the twentieth century. It was out of this milieu—especially its British and North American branches—that the New Age movement would emerge in the early 1960s (Hanegraaff 2005, 6495-96; Campbell 1972,119-36). Another important development in the nineteenth century was the translation into Western languages of Asian scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, and the inauguration at European universities of the comparative study of world religions. Although this early comparative study was arguably influ¬ enced by colonialist and imperialist agendas, it nevertheless provided a conduit for the transmission of Eastern religious ideas into Western Esoteric groups. Out of these groups—especially the Theosophical Society founded by Helena P. Blavatsky (1831-91) and Henry S. Olcott (1832-1907)—Eastern concepts such as karma, rein¬ carnation, dharma, avatars, and enlightenment began to permeate the Western cultic milieu. This subcultures respect for Eastern wisdom and embrace of Eastern spiritual practices would become a commonplace of New Age spirituality (Hanegraaff 1996, 479-82).

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Theosophist leaders Annie Besant (1847-1933) and Charles W. Leadbeater (1854-1934) made a crucial contribution to what would later become a major strain of New Age millennialism. Drawing on Blavatsky’s idea of “Root Races” and spiri¬ tual evolution, Besant and Leadbetter taught that a “World Teacher” would soon appear as a herald and exemplar of a coming sixth subrace of the Fifth Root Race, out of which the Sixth Root Race would evolve. Members of this new Root Race would have an awakened “buddhic” faculty, allowing them to perceive the unity underlying the cosmos (Wessinger 1993,57-58). The World Teacher’s mission was to “deliver a message which would become the basis of a New Religion which would lead the world into the New Civilization” (Wessinger 1993,57). Besant and Leadbeater combined Christian and Buddhist millennial expectations by teaching that the Lord Maitreya, the World Teacher living in the Himalayas, held the office of “Christ” but needed a trained physical vehicle through which to manifest. Besant created the Order of the Star of the East to promote Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) as the World Teacher’s physical vehicle in the world outside his remote retreat in the Himalayas. Ultimately, Krishnamurti distanced himself from the concept of the World Teacher and dissolved the Order, but never disavowed his identity as the World Teacher. He spent the rest of his career teaching a “choice-less awareness” that quieted normal thought processes and allowed one to experience cosmic unity. Besant’s and Leadbeater’s progressive, messianic millennialism would have a signifi¬ cant impact on later New Age forerunner Alice Bailey (1880-1949) and on New Age prophet Benjamin Creme (b. 1922) (Wessinger 1993, 62-63; 1988). A final nineteenth-century intellectual current that transformed traditional Esotericism was the development of modern psychology. Although on their face hostile to religion, psychological discourses on the functioning of the human psyche—especially those advanced by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Carl Jung (18751961), and Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974) during the early twentieth century—were used within the cultic milieu to articulate Esoteric doctrines of spiritual develop¬ ment and malaise. The subsequent emergence of modern psychical research and parapsychology helped legitimate “scientific” metaphysical thought and provided the seedbed from which humanistic/transpersonal psychology blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s. The blending of Esotericism and transpersonal psychology that became a mainstay of New Age spirituality has its roots in these early developments (Melton 1990, xxvii; Hanegraaff 1996, 482-513). During the 1930s and 1940s, two metaphysical groups emerged that would provide key elements of later New Age millennial visions. The first was the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), which was incorporated in 1931 to publish the psychic readings of Edgar Cayce (1877-1945). Cayce had devel¬ oped the ability to enter a deep trance state from which he gave “life readings” that discussed the trajectory of individual souls over many incarnations. In some read¬ ings Cayce gave prophecies concerning natural catastrophes that would occur between 1958 and 1999. Included in these events were massive earthquakes in Japan and California, volcanic eruptions, and a “pole shift” that would reposition the Earth’s magnetic poles and occasion massive inundations of land around the

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world. In some of the life readings, Cayce indicated that scientists from the lost continent of Atlantis—whose experiments had brought about the legendary con¬ tinent’s destruction—were reincarnating in the twentieth century. They faced the same test they had failed in the past—whether to use their advanced scientific knowledge for constructive or destructive purposes (Furst 1970, 348-50). Cayce was influential in two ways: (1) he popularized the idea of catastrophic “Earth changes” that would accompany a coming world transformation; (2) his story of Atlantis provided New Agers with an allegory concerning both the promise and danger posed by scientific research into, among other areas, atomic energy, clon¬ ing, and genetic manipulation. A second significant group from this period was the Arcane School, founded in 1923 by Alice and Foster Bailey (1888-1977) to distribute messages from a master teacher called the Tibetan. The Baileys, former members of the Theosophical Society in America, embraced Annie Besant’s prophecy of a coming World Teacher who would inaugurate a new era of spiritual enlightenment. They began to speak of this era as the “New Age” and the “Age of Aquarius.” Arcane School students used Bailey’s “Great Invocation” to call for the World Teacher’s appearance, and Bailey published her vision of this cosmic event in a pamphlet entitled, The Reappearance of the Christ (1948). An influential segment of the New Age movement would adopt the notion of a coming world avatar, and the recitation of the “Great Invocation” would become a commonplace at New Age gatherings during the 1970s and 1980s (Melton 1990, xvii, xviii). During the late 1940s and 1950s, alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) spawned study groups in North America and Europe, some of which viewed UFOs as evidence of the arrival of advanced space aliens on Earth to inaugurate a new era of spiritual transformation and scientific achievement (see chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume). Some UFO groups envisioned massive human resistance to the alien mission, a resistance that would necessitate global catastrophes—some natural, some human-made—to clear away the old social and political orders and make room for the millennial kingdom. Members of UFO groups would be rescued from these catastrophes and become the pioneers of the new world (Hanegraaff 2005,6495). UFO groups (and certain Esoteric groups) with an astrological bent called this millennial era the Age of Aquarius, following the astronomical phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes. According to precession, the twelve constella¬ tions constituting the Zodiac rotate around the Earth in such a manner that each zodiacal sign rises over the eastern horizon (at sunrise) on the vernal equinox (21 March) for a period of about 2,160 years during every 26,000-year cycle. Although there was no agreement as to when the Aquarian Age would actually start (the sign Aquarius will not rise over the eastern horizon at sunrise on the vernal equinox until 2501 c.e.), it became customary in New Age circles to speak of the Aquarian Age as an imminent event. The principle themes of this age would be scientific achievement, universal brother- and sisterhood, global cooperation, spiritual enlightenment, altruism, and societal attunement to universal laws.

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The 1960s was a period during which the millenarian visions of UFO and Esoteric/metaphysical groups became the focus of many communal experiments throughout Western Europe and North America. The most significant of these communities for the subsequent development of New Age millennialism was the Findhorn community in Scotland. The pioneers of this community, Peter and Eileen Caddy, Dorothy Maclean, and David Spangler, were influenced by an informal fel¬ lowship of visionaries called the Universal Link. The Link and its founder Richard Grave fostered communities attuned to the new patterns of social, political, and spiritual life they believed were emerging in the New Age. The Caddys and Spangler saw Findhorn as one such “light center” in the Link’s global network of Aquarian Age communities. Among other communities that participated in the Universal Link were the Lorian Association (founded in Wisconsin by Spangler), the Abode of the Message (a Sufi-directed community in upstate New York), the Ananda Community (founded by a former disciple of Yogananda in California), Sunrise Ranch (the Colorado headquarters of the Emissaries of Divine Light), and Auroville (founded near Pondicherry, India, by disciples of Sri Aurobindo) (Caddy 1976; Melton 1990,125). The millennial visions of these New Age communities were opti¬ mistic about the potential of humans to avert global catastrophes. This attitude differed from the UFO groups of the 1950s, whose millennial scenarios often assumed that humans must await an apocalyptic destruction of the old order with passive resignation (Hanegraaff 2005,6495). The New Age movement as a self-conscious phenomenon cannot be sepa¬ rated from the social upheavals of the 1960s and from the counterculture that emerged during that time. This period witnessed a legitimation crisis for norma¬ tive institutions and opened the door to various teachers, prophets, and gurus who offered idiosyncratic utopian visions and alternative modes of spiritual transformation. In 1971 the first issue of the East West Journal (later New Age Journal) appeared. This magazine would become a clearinghouse for New Age visions, along with such periodicals as New Realities, New Directions, and Yoga Journal. In 1972 the characteristic organizational form of New Age, “networking,” became conscious of itself with the publication of the Spiritual Community Guide and Ira Friedlander’s The Year One Catalogue. These annual directories of New Age groups and networks would become a key index of the bewildering array of organizations, therapies, and seminars that would fall under the New Age umbrella (Melton 1990, xxii). New religious movements such as Mark Age and Church Universal and Triumphant consciously embraced the New Age label in their pub¬ lic self-representations during this period. Each of these groups understood its mission to be the promulgation of teachings designed to prepare humanity for the New Age’s imminent arrival. By the end of the 1970s, the New Age movement was fully self-conscious. In many ways it is best understood as a discourse community, a loose grouping of people who spoke a distinctive language that expressed a coherent worldview. Although independent and characteristically suspicious of authoritarian organiza¬ tions, New Agers shared key characteristics and values.

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First, they believed that humanity was on the verge of a profound spiritual transformation. Although there were differing versions of this transformation, most New Agers agreed that it entailed a dawning awareness of the oneness of the human family and the intimate relationship between the human species and the entire fab¬ ric of the natural and metaphysical worlds (Lucas 1992, 192). Art historian Jose Argiielles, to cite one prominent example, used ancient Mayan prophecies to pre¬ dict a powerful shift in human consciousness that peaked on 16-17 August 1987. This collective transformation, dubbed the Harmonic Convergence, was envisioned as an epic turning point in history that would lead to demilitarization, environmental healing, awakened parapsychological powers, and the triumph of solar power. Humanity, Argiielles claimed, was beginning an epochal move from “tribal con¬ sciousness to planetary consciousness, from separation to unity, from fear to love, and from conflict to cooperation” (Melton 1990, 204-5). Inspired by Argiielles’s vision, large groups of New Agers gathered at spiritual “power spots” (such as Machu Picchu in Peru and Mount Shasta in California) on 16-17 August for the Convergence. The event included group visualization to facilitate the “Earth’s safe passage into the year 2012, the final stage of [planetary] transformation” (Melton 1990, 28-29; Argiielles 1987; see also chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume). New Agers also believed that through their individual and collective efforts, they would be the vanguard of this planetary transformation. Author Marilyn Ferguson christened this “leaderless but powerful network” the “Aquarian Conspiracy” (Ferguson 1980, 23). Second, New Agers adopted an ethic of self-empowerment that focused on self¬ realization/actualization as a prelude to planetary transformation. Paul Heelas terms this orientation self-spirituality and says it includes three phases: (1) a recognition that one’s current life is mired in “unnatural, deterministic, and misguided routines” (1996,18); (2) a realization that one must move beyond the “ego,” the “lower self,” or the intellect to encounter the realm of authentic being; (3) the embrace of specific spiritual disciplines—often termed “processes” or “psychotechnologies”—to over¬ come the ego’s hold and conditioning, and to liberate the greater Self (1996,19-20). Third, New Agers sought to reconcile religion and science in a higher synthesis that enhanced the human condition both spiritually and materially. They adopted the discourses of quantum physics, environmental biology, and astronomy to artic¬ ulate their vision of the world as a living organism pulsating with subtle energies and connected to larger cosmic processes. Books like The Tao of Physics (Capra 1975) and The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Zukov 1979) argued that modern scientists were beginning to arrive at the same conclusions concerning the nature of reality as those articulated by Eastern mystics. New Agers posited a symbiotic relationship between spirituality and science, mind and body, and matter and spirit. They sought to heal the modernist rift between these realms and forge a mutually beneficial working relationship (Lucas 1992,192). Fourth, New Agers adopted an ethic of religious tolerance and the notion of a universal spirituality that lies at the heart of all the world’s authentic religions. This underlying truth tradition rendered religious conflict and competition unnecessary.

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Each tradition had its own mission, wisdom, and integrity. In practice, this allowed for New Agers to study many spiritual traditions and to adopt elements of these tradi¬ tions as part of their own spirituality. This eclectic approach extended into the realm of alternative healing therapies. Here New Agers agreed on a holistic conception of physical, emotional, and mental health that entailed, among other notions, the idea of a universal energy that could be stimulated and used for healing (Lucas 1992,192). Hanegraaff contends that the New Age movement devolved during the 1980s from a “high-minded idealism and an ethic of service to humanity” into an “increas¬ ingly commercialized ‘spiritual marketplace’ catering to the tastes and whims of an individualistic clientele” (Hanegraaff 2005,6496). He argues that the movement lost direction during the late 1980s and 1990s and downplayed its earlier expectation of planetary transformation in favor of personal spiritual growth. Representatives of this trend, he observes, are actress Shirley MacLaine’s two autobiographies, Out on a Limb (1983) and Dancing in the Light (1985) and James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy (1994). There is certainly some truth in these observations, but New Age millennialism continued as a force in the cultic milieu of the West well into the 1990s, as the following examples show.

Representatives of Progressive Millennialism in the New Age Movement We turn now to spokespersons and groups who exemplify the progressive and cata¬ strophic versions of New Age millennialism. Much of New Age millennialism was, in fact, progressive in tenor. That is, it was characterized by a belief that human civi¬ lization is progressing toward a time of spiritual enlightenment and harmony between nations. This wing of the New Age movement accepted scientific achieve¬ ments as positive developments and focused on promising trends in the realms of health care, politics, economics, space exploration, education, and spirituality. Unlike the catastrophic wing of the New Age movement, progressive millenarians believed that the emerging new world did not necessarily require cataclysmic events and wide-scale destruction of human populations. This section focuses on four exemplars of this progressive millennial vision in the New Age movement: Mark Age, David Spangler, the Holy Order of MANS, and Benjamin Creme.

Mark Age Mark Age is a spiritual-educational organization that was founded in i960 by Pauline Sharpe and Charles Gentzel. Drawing on Arcane School and ufology notions, the group claimed to be under the direction of the Hierarchical Board on

574

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Earth, the “spiritual governing body of this solar system” (Mark Age 1976, 36). Headed by Archangel Michael and Lord Maitreya, the board includes Sananda (for¬ merly Jesus of Nazareth), who is now the spiritual ruler of Earth. For Mark Age the present era is the “harvest time, the transition cycle between the ending of the old, materialistic age and the New Age of Aquarius, now dawning” (Mark Age [2006]). Mark Age’s self-proclaimed mission was to “externalize the Hierarchical Board on Earth in preparation for the Second Coming in its dual meaning: 1) Second Coming of each one’s I Am Self, expressed through the mortal personality; and 2) Second Coming of Sananda/Jesus the Christ, Prince of Earth, in his resurrected, light body around the year 2000” (Mark Age 1976, 28). The group accomplished its mission by receiving and publishing teachings from the Hierarchy, demonstrating proper spiritual lifestyles, and cooperating with other groups similarly under the Hierarchy’s guidance. Nada-Yolanda (Sharpe) received “interdimensional commu¬ nications” from higher planes of awareness, which made up the vast majority of Mark Age’s teachings and publications (Mark Age 1976, 28-29). Mark Age’s complex millennial vision began with the proclamation of the Mark Age period (1960-2000). During this transitional era, humans would witness the “beginning of new birth, new consciousness, new demonstration of the highest pos¬ sible consciousness for the particular frequency vibration known as Earth. In addi¬ tion to this, it must be the end of that frequency vibration in order to bring forth a new frequency vibration that is and shall be known as the fourth dimensional con¬ sciousness, Christ consciousness outside of physical sensation” (Mark Age 1964a). Humanity, according to Mark Age teachings, must make a “conscious decision to proceed with their spiritual evolution... in this solar system or be removed to another place” (Mark Age 1976, 29). The New Age will emerge in the Mark Age vision with the rending of seven “veils” that keep humans unaware of higher realms of being. The rending of the seventh veil brings about realization of the I Am Self and of that Self’s profound spiritual connection with all creation and all of human¬ ity (Mark Age 1964b). The birthing of the New Age entails upheavals in the political, economic, scientific, and social realms. The forty-year Mark Age period would not, however, result in the complete destruction of the Earth. Rather, there would be a gentle cleansing of old forms and recalcitrant souls so that the New Age could begin. In keeping with the Theosophical tradition’s expectation of a World Teacher, Mark Age predicted that Jesus would return (as Sananda) by the year 2000 “to demon¬ strate man s eternal life and ‘to institute the spiritual government of the Hierarchical Board for Earth” (Mark Age 1976, 66-67). Mark Age students were admonished to “ask sincerely that the Messiah come to Earth,” for only when a sufficient number of people desired to have a “spiritual life, a spiritual government, and a spiritual leader could the Second Coming manifest” (Mark Age 1976, 69-70). It would take a minimum of 144,000 light workers “in order to transmute the entire mass consciousness...of Earth into fourth dimensional consciousness” (Mark Age 1976,

73). The light workers’ mission was to “herald the New Age, to prepare for the Latter Days, and to keep the vigil for the masses who are unenlightened, so they can be carried along into the new vibrational frequencies” (Mark Age 1976, 80).

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Humanity must not look upon the Second Coming as “an event to be feared or having dire consequences,” but rather as a blessed event that would “establish spiri¬ tual order and harmony on Earth” and lead humankind to a higher level of evolu¬ tion (Mark Age 1976, 68). The biblical battle of Armageddon, the group taught, referred to individual human battles between good and evil spiritual forces rather than a literal world war in Israel. The law of karma was speeding up—shortening time for the sake of the elect—and the number of light workers was few. But the Earth was not to be destroyed, and the prophesied shifting of the Earth’s poles (by Cayce) would not occur until the distant future (Mark Age 1976,135). The motto for the New Age would be “love in action,” meaning action emanating from the Christ Self. During the two-thousand-year Aquarian Age, the “light body,” (another name for the etheric or Christ body), would be fully brought forth in humanity, allowing all humans to “demonstrate full Christ powers” (Mark Age 1976, 80,100). This transformation was unstoppable: “Earth and everything upon it are being transmuted gradually, at an increasing rate, into the fourth dimensional frequency, regardless of whether or not humanity rises into spiritual consciousness” (Mark Age 1976,131,135). Mark Age recently published a pamphlet laying out seventy-two prophecies for the period 2000-4000

c.e.

These include the predictions that politically led states

will gradually disappear and be “replaced by a unified T Am’ world.” A few of the pamphlet’s prophecies are more apocalyptic in tone than the general tenor of the group’s pronouncements up to 2000. Two examples include: “A devastating earth¬ quake will destroy New York City, shattering its grip as the capital of power for finances and media” and “In 12 to 20 years the army of light shall win this last great battle of Armageddon. Sananda/Jesus the Christ has given the go signal for an allout assault” (Mark Age [2006]). Whether Mark Age is moving beyond its progres¬ sive millennial stance into a more catastrophic millennial vision remains to be seen. Mark Age’s progressive millennial vision laid out significant themes that later New Age teachers such as David Spangler (b. 1945), Earl W. Blighton (1904-74) (founder of the Holy Order of MANS), Benjamin Creme, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939-2009) would echo. These included: (1) the notion of an invisible spiritual hierarchy directing an elite group of New Age pioneers; (2) the necessity for light bearers to work actively to bring about the new world; (3) a gnostic vision of spiritual transformation positing a higher Self that must supersede the limited egoic self; and (4) a vision of a transformed world that would not necessarily require severe cataclysms.

Holy Order of MANS (HOOM) The Holy Order of MANS (HOOM) emerged out of the 1960s counterculture in San Francisco. The group’s founder, Earl W. Blighton, was strongly influenced by Spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, UFO study groups, and Theosophy. He organized a

576

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

nonsectarian order in 1968 that saw itself as a purveyor of Esoteric Christianity for the dawning New Age. HOOM’s membership grew to about three thousand by 1977 and was spread throughout centers in over sixty American cities and seven coun¬ tries. Following Blighton’s death in 1974 and the Jonestown events of 1978 (see chap¬ ter 11 by John Walliss, this volume), the order reconfigured its public face to deflect increasing criticism from anticultists and the popular media. This reconfiguration began a search by the group for its historic Christian roots, and an eventual trans¬ formation into an Eastern Orthodox brotherhood (Lucas 2004,32-33). In its founding era, HOOM embraced a hopeful vision of imminent planetary spiritual awakening. Messages received by Blighton from the “Master Jesus” claimed that HOOM members had incarnated to serve as spiritual handmaidens for the dawning New Age. Earth’s psychospiritual atmosphere was being “super¬ charged with both the physical (solar) and the spiritual light of Christ.” This radi¬ ation bath produced “an alchemical regeneration of both the Earth and the human body at the molecular level” (Lucas 1997,123). For those resistant to the Aquarian dispensation, the New Age would be experienced as a time of suffering and removal to a less evolved planetary system. This was not damnation to eternal suffering, however, but rather a temporary setback on an inexorable trajectory toward union with the Divine (Lucas 1997,123). Blighton foresaw the disappear¬ ance of the exclusivistic, tribal religions of the past and the appearance of a global culture characterized by a universal religion and the restoration of women’s spiri¬ tual equality with men. He also proclaimed the coming of a world avatar who would “be born free from relationships with any organization, sect, religion, dogma, or movement (Lucas 1997,131). This figure would teach a universal path that transcended parochial political and religious divisions and engendered world peace” (Lucas 1997,124). Order members saw themselves as the leaven who would raise the priesthoods of Earth so that they could serve as teachers in the Aquarian Age. The millennial human would be a “new creature” with a transformed “Body of Light” capable of functioning in the higher Aquarian frequencies that were illuminating the planet (Lucas 1997,124). Advanced order initiates underwent the rending of the veil sur¬ rounding their “God-Selves.” They were then free to function as fully “Christed” beings. For these advanced souls the Second Coming had already occurred. Between 1969 and 1974 the order s members went out on missionary journeys to create a “grid of spiritual energy” around the body of the Earth. In nightly visualizations, missionaries saw light radiating from their center throughout the city” and around the planet. They understood this exercise as a “psychic rewiring of the planet’s cir¬ cuits in preparation for the quantum leap in vibratory energy that would take place when the Earth was lifted to its illumined state (Lucas 1997,125). Blighton s millennial vision began to shift in 1973 as Watergate, the denouement of Vietnam, and the Mideast oil embargo tempered the optimism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. These events were reinforced at the local level by the firebombing of an Order center in San Francisco, death threats against Blighton, and an unflatter¬ ing portrait of the Order that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. Blighton

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began to warn of dark forces becoming active in the world and of a future tinged with sorrow, confusion, and economic breakdown. Although a New Age was dawning, the darkness before the dawn now received more attention in his pronounce¬ ments (Lucas 1997,125-26). Blighton’s successor, Andrew Rossi, initially maintained the Order’s New Age vision. Christians were called, he claimed, to follow Christ “beyond Christianity, beyond religion...beyond even Jesus himself, there to meet, soul to soul, soul to spirit in the “Father-Mother God” (Lucas 1997,126). The Order’s mission was to destroy the barriers that separated humanity, “especially the barriers that had been erected in Christ’s name” (Lucas 1997,126). Rossi experienced a personal conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy in the early 1980s and began to convert Order members to his new perspective. He organized the movement into large Christian communities whose new mission was to preserve the cultural traditions of ancient Christianity and to provide an “ark of safety” in a corrupt world that was heading toward apoca¬ lypse. In a circular letter to Order members, Rossi described nuclear weapons as the “abomination of desolation” that threatened the very survival of the planet’s bil¬ lion-year-old biosphere (Lucas 1997,126-27). Subsequent pronouncements clearly indicated that the Order had jettisoned its optimistic New Age millenarianism and substituted a darkly apocalyptic view that resonated with extremist strains of Russian Orthodox monasticism. In 1983 the Order’s journal, Epiphany, warned that behind the beneficent facade of the com¬ puter revolution, humanity was being seduced into “banal and meaningless pur¬ suits and creating a technological centralization that could result in unimaginable tyranny”(Lucas 1997,127). In subsequent pronouncements, Rossi thundered against the anti-Christian bias of the postmodern world and particularly indicted New Age philosophy for its promotion of “pluralism, individualism, evolutionism, relativ¬ ism, rationalism, and humanism” (Lucas 1997,127). The New Age’s pseudo-spiritu¬ ality, he now claimed, was preparing the way for the Antichrist, who would promise humanity a “perfect millennial kingdom in the material world” (Lucas 1997,128). The Order’s millennial vision became an implicit rejection of Blighton’s original vision of ecumenical harmony, one world culture, and an Aquarian avatar. The end of the old world was fast approaching, but it would be characterized by tribulation and catastrophe. Only after a planetary conflagration would the new heaven and new Earth appear. The belief that they had been unwitting participants in the Antichrist’s deceptive plan for a “New World Order” made HOOM’s members zeal¬ ous proponents of this new apocalyptic vision (Lucas 1997,129). The case of the Holy Order of MANS (later Christ the Savior Brotherhood) demonstrates that New Age millennial visions were fluid constructions subject to refinement and alteration in response to larger cultural conditions. The group’s his¬ tory also shows that progressive visions that emerge in a time of cultural optimism and hope can quickly turn catastrophic when the societal Zeitgeist changes. As we will see below with Church Universal and Triumphant, visions of apocalyptic catas¬ trophe can also turn hopeful and progressive when prophesied cataclysms fail to materialize.

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David Spangler The writings of American-born David Spangler have been among the most influen¬ tial statements of the progressive New Age vision. Spangler arrived at the Findhorn community in 1970 after gaining a reputation as a channel for teachings from higher spiritual realms. During his three years as Findhorn’s codirector, he received mes¬ sages from a being calling itself Limitless Love and Truth. These messages formed the core of his book, Revelation (1976), which became a touchstone text for many progressive New Age millennialists. The theme of Revelation is “the birth of a New Age.” According to Spangler’s higher source, this birth coincides with an emerging human consciousness that, “when acted upon with skill and wisdom, can create the forms of a new planetary civilization” (Spangler 1976,38). The New Age is an organic unfoldment that takes place within individuals and communities who have cleared their “internal and external space” by embracing change, growth, and openness (Spangler 1976, 39). The hallmarks of New Age consciousness include: “a new animism that can relate to levels of intelligence and being beyond the human”; consciousness of synergy, “where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts but where neither the part nor the whole grows...to the disadvantage of the other”; “a consciousness attuned to the laws of organic expression... the processes and rhythms of being”; working with spiritual dimensions “not through worship and awe but through understanding and co-creativity”; and a “consciousness of oneness and of the world that can be built to demonstrate oneness” (Spangler 1976, 44). For Spangler, the New Age is a present reality in an alternative dimension, a “spirit within us, a vision, a seed, a presence that is beyond time and able to enter us now if we will permit it” (Spangler 1976, 44)-

The notion of light centers played a large role in Spangler’s millennial vision. He regarded Findhorn, for example, as a central hub for New Age energies that radi¬ ated out into the world, nourishing other intentional communities. Using the char¬ acteristic New Age discourse of “higher frequencies,” “vibrations,” and “energy bodies, he claimed that Findhorn was building “an etheric center within the body of Earth, a body through which a group Being” would manifest in a global net¬ work of light centers (Spangler 1976, 55). The action of this Being (the Cosmic Christ) was to “prepare the wiring’ to receive a new outflow of current from the universal mains’” (Spangler 1976,142). Spangler’s progressive vision eschewed aggression against the old order. Rather, consciousness must perceive only the new and build toward it” (Spangler 1976,76). By aligning one’s awareness with the transcendent Christ consciousness, one would work in harmony with Cosmic Being, allowing old patterns and forms to fade away in organic fashion. Furthermore, a complete break with the past was counterpro¬ ductive since it would deprive New Agers of valuable spiritual and material resources (Spangler 1976,76-77). Revelation s realized eschatology was articulated as an antidote to the “passive waiting” of conventional Christian millenarianism: “If you would be of me,

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understand that I have revealed myself. Do not wait. Do not hold any activity in abeyance, feeling that I may yet come.... You must not wait but act, knowing that I AM revealed and they may begin to build the new heaven and the new Earth” (Spangler 1976,78). For Spangler, the old world was fading out while the new was becoming stronger and clearer. It was up to human effort and choice to determine whether the new world would manifest with a greater or lesser degree of chaos and suffering. In short, the New Age was not a “spectator sport” (Spangler 1976, t75). As Sarah Pike has observed, this vision is utopian in that it is hopeful about the potential for humanity to access higher spiritual resources and to transform the world through collective effort (Pike 2004,152). Like most progressive New Age millennialists, Spangler emphasized that the new world emerged first in consciousness, at the level of “true Being” (Spangler 1976,128). It was a revolution that began, not with outer strife and protest, but with profound inner “attunement” to the Cosmic Christ and the Earth Logos. These higher beings were now pouring out their inspiration and love upon humanity. All that was necessary was to act on their guidance in the affairs of daily life. The Second Coming was not a person, but rather “a life which quickens a comparable Christ life within each of us, revealing itself through group activity and a greater love flow within individuals” (Spangler 176,141). The Christ was arising in each individual “in response to his arising in the macrocosm of our planetary environment” (Spangler 1976,141). Thus, the Second Coming was “a universal experience, not confined to any one person or group of people” (Spangler 1976,142). In subsequent writings, Spangler has continued to emphasize an activist and constructive attitude and to reject fatalistic warnings of apocalypse (1986, 34-35). He has also criticized the belief in a sudden appearance of the New Age, arguing that this belief can disempower individuals, who may simply await the inevitable rather than actively participate in societal transformation. Spangler holds to a vision of the New Age as a gradual shift in awareness accompanied by greater individual freedom and “a greater awareness of our participation in larger wholes, from our families” to humanity and beyond “to the community of planetary and cosmic life itself” (Pike 2004,151-52; Nelson 1997,174). The broad themes expressed in Revelation, including cocreating a planetary civilization with higher beings, synergy, attunement, light centers, education, manifestation, and holistic consciousness, influenced subse¬ quent progressive New Age thinkers such as Barbara Marx Hubbard (b. 1929), Marilyn Ferguson (1938-2008), Jose Argiielles (1939-2011), and James Redfield (b. 1950).

Benjamin Creme The case of Benjamin Creme is another example of the messianic faction of pro¬ gressive New Age millenarianism. Creme is a Scottish artist who participated in the cultic milieu of England between 1945 and 1970. He was particularly influenced by Theosophy and the writings of Alice Bailey. Bailey’s suggestion that the time was

580

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

fast approaching for the appearance of a World Teacher was confirmed in spiritual messages Creme began receiving in 1959. These messages proclaimed that Lord Maitreya, the head of the spiritual hierarchy responsible for human evolution, was about to reappear and that Creme would play a role in his emergence on the world scene. In 1974 Creme was “overshadowed” by Maitreya, who ordered Creme to alert the world to his appearance (Melton 1990,136). In 1977 Maitreya announced (through Creme) that his “body of manifestation” was complete and that he had arrived at a “point of focus” to begin his mission. Creme began to speak for Maitreya in public forums throughout Western Europe and North America and published Messages from Maitreya the Christ in 1980. These public sessions drew large crowds of New Agers, who were familiar with the Bailey prophecies and the Great Invocation. Creme would typically sit on stage and begin making pronouncements in Maitreya’s name. These messages included predictions of global nuclear disarmament, the establishment of one-world government, and reconciliation between ethnic and religious groups. They also stressed the humani¬ tarian, nonsectarian, and apolitical tenor of Maitreya’s dawning mission. These public appearances reached a fever pitch in 1982, when Creme announced in fullpage ads in major newspapers that “The Christ Is Now Here.” It was the responsibil¬ ity of the press to locate this humble humanitarian, who was of Pakistani origin and living in London’s Brick Lane district. When no one was able to locate Maitreya, Creme blamed the press and continued to predict the World Teacher’s imminent appearance (Melton 1990,135-37). Creme’s Share International Foundation articulates Maitreya’s mission in pro¬ gressive millenarian terms: Maitreya has not come as a religious leader, or to found a new religion, but as a teacher and guide for people of every religion and those of no religion. At this time of great political, economic and social crisis Maitreya will inspire humanity to see itself as one family, and create a civilization based on sharing, economic and social justice, and global cooperation. He will launch a call to action to save the millions of people who starve to death every year in a world of plenty. Among Maitreya’s recommendations will be a shift in social priorities so that adequate food, housing, clothing, education, and medical care become universal rights. (Share International [2006]) In keeping with New Age thinkers such as Spangler and Ferguson, Creme empha¬ sizes the key role humanity will play in bringing the New Age into being: Maitreya is not enunciating divine fiats nor seeing into the future by clairvoyance, divine or otherwise. He is showing that our actions, if pursued, eventuate through the Law of Cause and Effect, in specific events. However, humanity has free will and at any time can change the course of those events, for better or worse. Under the Law of Free Will, Maitreya may not interfere and impose solutions... .The energies of Aquarius, synthesis and brotherhood, and Maitreya’s energy of Love have inspired men and women to bring about the changes in the world, which He forecast. ([Share International 2006])

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It should be noted that many New Agers avoid predictions of messianic figures altogether, focusing instead on the Second Coming as an inner, spiritual event, and on the Christ as a collective “consciousness” shared by New Age pioneers.

Catastrophic Millennialism in the New Age Given that much of New Age thinking revolves around a perception of global crisis and a hope for spiritual transformation, it is not surprising that some New Age mil¬ lennial visions exhibit more catastrophic themes (Hanegraaff 1996, 344). A domi¬ nant “root idea” for these visions is the notion of “Earth changes,” massive natural disasters caused by human abuse of the Earth’s living body. As mentioned earlier, this notion was articulated in the Edgar Cayce readings of the 1930s and 1940s, which predicted earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and a pole shift between 1958 and 1999. A number of New Age psychics and channelers influenced by the Cayce tradi¬ tion appeared during the 1970s and 1980s. They fleshed out the details of the coming Earth changes, some even publishing maps of a postcatastrophic United States. These maps usually incorporated (1) a radically altered West Coastline (including the breakup of California caused by massive earthquakes); (2) an inundated Mississippi basin from Louisiana to Missouri; and (3) the disappearance of South Florida (Survival Center [2006]). Many New Agers see themselves as a “remnant” of advanced souls who will survive these global catastrophes and repopulate a trans¬ formed Earth. They have moved to “safe” areas around the planet, stockpiled food and emergency supplies, and built shelters to withstand everything from nuclear warfare to massive windstorms. Other New Agers imagine a period of “cleansing” or purification prior to the new world appearing. These visions draw on Native American prophecies (see chapter 23 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee and chapter 32 by Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, both in this volume) as filtered through such New Age teachers as the Ojibwa Indian Sun Bear (1929-92). In his book Black Dawn, Bright Day, Sun Bear articu¬ lated a catastrophic millennial scenario that included urban chaos, pandemics, earthquakes and “great destruction to the Earth” (1990, 29). Sun Bear believed that a violent purification of the planet was necessary because “too many humans have become out of balance on the Earth” (1990,221). The “wise”—those who have stud¬ ied Indian prophecies and learned to listen to nature—would take the necessary steps to survive into the next cycle (1990,29; Pike 2004,148). Another theme in New Age catastrophic visions is the tale of two worlds: the first, the old world that is passing away; and the second, the new world that is being born. Neale Donald Walsh (b. 1943), for example, sees the coming period in terms that would be recognizable to evangelical “Rapture” Christians. For him, only those with right hope and belief will survive into the Aquarian future. New Age author Marianne Williamson (b. 1952) predicts that only those who have awakened to their

582

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

“inner space” will have the capacity to heal their minds and escape the horrors of the end days. We saw similar themes in the teachings of Mark Age and the HOOM. By separating the world into spiritual “haves” and “have-nots,” New Agers “affirm their unique role in history and their place in the future” (Pike 2004,150). Even more optimistic New Age authors such as Marilyn Ferguson, Matthew Fox (b. 1940), and Starhawk (b. 1951) have expressed doubts about humankind’s ultimate survival. While recognizing that natural catastrophes may loom in humankind’s future, they focus more on cataclysms brought about by human agency. Ferguson wrote of the “Black Moment” and the “White Moment,” literary devices that signify, respectively, a final rescue just when all seems lost, and a sud¬ den rush of optimism before inevitable disaster (Hanegraaff 1996,345). She won¬ dered whether the “Aquarian Conspiracy, with its hope of a last-minute turnabout, was only a White Moment in Earth’s history; a brave, desperate try that would be eclipsed by tragedy—ecological, totalitarian, nuclear” (Ferguson 1980, 42). Matthew Fox writes of nightmares that witness the death of Earth and of “all human and spiritual values” (1983, 12-15). Starhawk shares her angst-ridden visions of nuclear holocaust, human decline, and ecological disaster in her book Dreaming the Dark (1982).

The Ramala Revelations Two examples of New Age catastrophic millennialism will have to suffice for the present essay. The first appears in a channeled work entitled The Revelation of Ramala (Ramala Centre 1978). The messages in this book were received by an anon¬ ymous English couple beginning in the 1960s. In the early 1970s the couple began to give public channelings that dealt with various topics, including coming Earth changes. Transcripts of these sessions, which were edited and published in The Revelation, became influential in both European and North American New Age circles (Hanegraaff 1996,39-40). The millenarian vision offered in The Revelation describes an evolutionary pro¬ cess whereby the planets in our “Solar Body” begin to quicken in vibration in the present era. Due to human disharmony, the Earth has become a dissonant note in this cosmic process and is losing spiritual momentum. “Great Beings” have hatched a remedial plan that involves an artificial lifting of Earth’s vibratory level. This lift¬ ing is accompanied by large-scale confusion and disruption” (Ramala Centre 1978, 163). The manifestations of this disruption include the usual natural disasters— earthquakes, floods, famines, and insect invasions—as well as seven great plagues. The first of these plagues is AIDS—the result of “sexual perversion”—with others of even greater destructive impact still to come. As the old order disappears, Atlantis reappears, space beings communicate with humanity, and a transformed world is born (Hanegraaff 1996, 354; Ramala Centre 231—36). Ramala’s catastrophic millenarianism resonates with that of such other apocalyptic New Age groups as the Order of the Solar Temple, Aum Shinrikyo, and Heaven’s Gate (see chapter 11 by John Walliss and chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, both in this volume).

NEW AGE MILLENNIALISM

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Church Universal and Triumphant A second example of catastrophic millennialism is the New Age group, Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), founded as the Summit Lighthouse in 1958 by Mark L. Prophet (1918-73) (see chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, chapter 8 by Lome Dawson, and chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, all in this volume). Prophet and his wife, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, claimed they were messengers for the “Ascended Masters” in the emerging New Age.1 The church represented itself as the sacred assembly of the Ascended Masters Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ, with an indispensable role in the dawning Aquarian Age (Lucas 2004,38). CUT’s teachings had always featured apocalyptic warnings, especially with regard to the former Soviet Union. During the early 1970s, the church began to stockpile weapons, food, and hard currency in hidden redoubts in Montana and Idaho as a hedge against global catastrophe. In 1980 the church published Prophecy for the 1980s: The Handwriting on the Wall. This transcription of an Elizabeth Clare Prophet address predicted Soviet military campaigns in the Middle East, religious riots, swarms of locusts, and the peak in an eight-hundred-year cycle of drought, famine, and warfare (1980,119-23). As the nuclear standoff with the “Evil Empire” reached a fever pitch during the Reagan era, CUT purchased the 28,000-acre Malcolm Forbes ranch in southern Montana and moved its headquarters there (Lucas 2004,38). The “dictations” Prophet received from the Ascended Masters became increas¬ ingly apocalyptic in tone during the late 1980s. In 1986 the Masters announced the likelihood of a Soviet nuclear strike on the United States between October 1987 and October 1989. CUT members took these warnings very seriously and built sophisti¬ cated fallout shelters on the ranch and on nearby CUT-affiliated properties in Paradise Valley. Prophet announced that these shelters were located in the physical space corresponding to the “Western Shambhala,” the “etheric retreat” of the Ascended Masters. Faithful members would be able to survive a nuclear conflagra¬ tion while sheltered in this sacred space. Church adherents around the world sold their homes and businesses and moved to Paradise Valley in 1990, spurred by dicta¬ tions announcing continued danger of nuclear holocaust into 1991. The climax of this apocalyptic fervor occurred on 15 March 1990, when thousands of members spent a night in their newly completed shelters fully expecting nuclear war to begin (only to be told the following morning that the exercise was a “test drill”). Within weeks, dazed members began to experience “catastrophe fatigue” and a general sense of malaise. The church would lose one-third of its members between 1990 and 1996 (Lucas 2004,39). As part of its subsequent strategy for survival, CUT moved away from its catas¬ trophic millennial teachings and emphasized instead a softer vision of New Age transformation that no longer viewed global catastrophe as a given. The future, CUT’s publications proclaimed, would see a New Age of “peace, freedom, and enlightenment wherein 51 percent of the planet’s population” would become “Christed Ones” (Lucas 2004, 43). Today, CUT has shifted its primary focus to the

584

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publication and transmission (via satellite and Internet) of the Ascended Masters’ teachings (Lucas 2004,40). CUT’s history, like that of HOOM, demonstrates the fluid nature of New Age millennial visions. While HOOM’s vision of the future went from progressive to catastrophic, CUT’s vision went from catastrophic to progressive. There were unique internal and external forces at work in both these developments, but they show that millennial visions are living phenomena, continually undergoing refinement and revision as group dynamics and outer events change.

Conclusion The New Age phenomenon has largely passed in the strict sense. Still, as outlined earlier, elements of its vision have permeated mainstream culture as Green poli¬ tics, human rights activism, the burgeoning of alternative medicine, the growing popularity of “self-spirituality,” and an emerging transnational awareness. Ironically, it is the progressive and catastrophic millennialism of the New Age vision that has largely faded from the contemporary scene, although pockets still remain in the Mayan prophecy subculture and in certain UFO and neoshamanic groups (Sitler 2006, 24-38). The New Age movement can best be conceived as a cultural moment when global social, political, and religious upheavals combined with widespread optimism concerning the imminent future of humankind to produce a distinctive subculture and worldview. As the cultural moment faded, a new realism asserted itself that grounded the inflated millennial expectations of those who once constituted this discourse community. Still, the postmodern spir¬ itual marketplace is wide open, with increasing numbers of people dissatisfied with the conventional metanarratives provided by science and religion. Perspectives such as New Age, with its focus on personal spiritual experience, a synthesis of science and spirituality, ecological awareness, and an optimistic view of human potential, will continue to attract significant attention well into the future (Hanegraaff 2005, 6499).

NOTE 1. The Masters” of the Theosophical Society are viewed as men living in human bodies who are able to bilocate, send telepathic messages, and manifest letters because of t eir advanced spiritual development. They are seen as guiding evolution on Earth The concept of “Ascended Masters” began with Guy Ballard (1878-1939) and the I AM Activity in the 1930s and was picked up by Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet. These Masters are believed to work from higher spiritual planes.

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WORKS CITED Argiielles, Jose. 1987. The Mayan Factor: The Path beyond Technology. Santa Fe: Bear & Company. Bailey, Alice. 1962 [1948]. The Reappearance of the Christ. New York: Lucis. Caddy, Eileen. 1976. The Spirit of Findhorn. New York: Harper & Row. Campbell, Colin. 1972. “The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization.” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5:119-36. Capra, Fritjof. 1975. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala. Creme, Benjamin. 1980. Messages from Maitreya the Christ. London: Tara. Ferguson, Marilyn. 1980. The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s. Los Angeles: J. R Tarcher. Fox, Matthew. 1983. Original Blessing. Santa Fe, N.M.: Bear & Co. Furst, Jeffrey. 1970. Edgar Cayce’s Story of Jesus. New York: Coward-McCann. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: Brill. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 2005. “New Age Movement.” In Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Lindsay Jones, 10:6495-500. 2d ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference. Heelas, Paul. 1996. The New Age Movement. Oxford: Blackwell. Lucas, Phillip C. 1992. “The New Age Movement and the Pentecostal/Charismatic Revival: Distinct Yet Parallel Phases of a Fourth Great Awakening?” In Perspectives on the New Age, edited by James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, 189-211. Albany: State University of New York Press. -. 1997. “Shifting Millennial Visions in New Religious Movements.” In The Year 2000: Essays on the End, edited by Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn, 121-32. New York: New York University Press. -. 2004. “New Religious Movements and the Acids’ of Postmodernity.” Nova Religio 8, no. 2 (November): 28-47. MacLaine, Shirley. 1983. Out on a Limb. New York: Bantam. -. 1985. Dancing in the Light. New York: Bantam. Mark Age. 1964a. “The Ending Is the Beginning.” Channeled message from Sananda/Jesus, 12 February. Available at www.thenewearth.org/reappear.rtf. -. 1964b. “Rock of Faith Bridges Dimensions.” Channeled message from Peter, 19 February, http://www.thenewearth.org/reappear.rtf. -. 1976.1000 Keys to the Truth. Miami: Mark Age. -. [2006]. www.thenewearth.org/mahtprof.html. Accessed 8 August 2006. Melton, J. Gordon. 1990. New Age Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale. Nelson, John, ed. 1997. Solstice Shift: Magical Blend’s Synergistic Guide to the Coming Age. Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton. Pike, Sarah. 2004. New Age and Neopagan Religions in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. 1980. Prophecy for the 1980s: The Handwriting on the Wall. Los Angeles: Summit University Press. Ramala Centre. 1978. The Revelation of Ramala. St. Helier, Jersey: Neville Spearman. Redfield, James. 1994. The Celestine Prophecy. London: Bantam. Share International. [2006]. “Who Is Maitreya?” www.shareintl.org/maitreya/Ma_main.htm; and “Maitreya’s Forecasts (1988-1993),” www.shareintl.org/maitreya/Ma_fcst.htm. Accessed 11 September 2006.

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Sitler, Robert. 2006. “The 2012 Phenomenon: New Age Appropriation of an Ancient Mayan Calendar.” Nova Religio 9, no. 3 (February): 24-38. Spangler, David. 1976. Revelation: The Birth of a New Age. Belmont, Calif.: Lorian. -. 1986. Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred. New York: Dell. Starhawk. 1982. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics. Boston: Beacon. Sun Bear with Wabun Wind. 1990. Black Dawn, Bright Day: Indian Prophecies for the Millennium That Reveal the Fate of the Earth. Spokane, Wash.: Bear Tribe. Survival Center. [2006]. “Future Map of North America.” www.survivalcenter.com/scallion.html. Accessed 11 September 2006. Waldman, Steven, and Valerie Reiss. 2006. “Are You Lohasian?” Newsweek (5 June): 10. Wessinger, Catherine. 1988. Annie Besant and Progressive Messianism. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen. -. 1993. “Annie Besant’s Millennial Movement: Its History, Impact, and Implications Concerning Authority.” Syzygy: Journal of Alternative Religion and Cuture 2, nos. 1-2 (Winter/Spring): 55-70. -. 2000. “Introduction: The Interacting Dynamics of Millennial Beliefs, Persecution, and Violence.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 3-61. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Zukov, Gary. 1979. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. New York: William Morrow 8c Co.

CHAPTER 30

UFOs, ETs, AND THE MILLENNIAL IMAGINATION ROBERT PEARSON FLAHERTY

Ufos (unidentified flying objects) and ETs (extraterrestrials) figure prominently in many New Age soteriologies (see chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume). Absent hard evidence of ET visitation to Earth, belief in UFOs and ETs has a strongly religious aspect.1 Whereas ETs and UFOs are of central importance to the soteriologies of UFO religions, they also relate to secondary themes in many new religious move¬ ments. Mikael Rothstein describes the “marginal incorporation” of UFO beliefs by such diverse religions as the Church of Scientology, Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (Mormons), International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and the Baha’i Faith (2003a).2 This chapter focuses on UFO religions proper. Norman Cohn’s seminal definition of “millennialism” extends to any religion moti¬ vated “by fantasy of salvation conceived to be (a) collective, (b) terrestrial, (c) imminent, and (d) total” (1970,15). Catherine Wessinger further extends the term to “belief in an imminent transition to a collective salvation consisting of total well-being (salvation), which may be either earthly or heavenly” (2000, 5). Daniel Wojcik describes well the apocalypticism and millenarianism so often characteristic of American UFO religions (2003). Andreas Griinschloss (2003a, 2003b, 2004) distinguishes between apocalyptic UFOism and non-apocalyptic UFOism (quoted in Saliba 2006,107). E. B. Tylor’s minimal definition of religion as “the belief in Spiritual Beings” (1979/1873) was refined by Melford Spiro to belief in “any beings believed to possess power greater than man, who can work good and/or evil on man” (1966, 91). The term messiah has been extended to refer to the agent(s) of future salvation. “It seems scientifically correct,” Vittorio Lanternari wrote, “to broaden the meaning of this word ‘Messianism’ so that we may include in it a series of manifestations which are homogeneous in their function.... We should use the term ‘messiah’ to designate any

588

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being singular or plural, more or less anthropomorphic, expected by a community as the future savior” (1962,52). “In some cases,” Yonina Talmon observed, “the messianic agency is nonpersonal and nonhuman. The role of mechanical contrivances, such as the flying saucers, as triggering off agencies of the millennium, is a case in point” (1966,169). As a number of folklorists and mythologists have noted, the ETs of con¬ temporary lore are the gods, angels, and demons of traditional religion(s) euhemerized as humanoid, albeit superhuman, extraterrestrials (see, for example, Flaherty 1990; Thompson 1991; Peebles 1994). As Catherine Wessinger observes, “Increasingly in new religions, extraterrestrials and space aliens are the superhuman agents that act in the roles previously filled by God, gods, angels, and devils” (2000,16). Evangelical Christians often regard ETs as agents of Satan seeking to lead humanity astray in the final days before the return of Christ (Saliba 1995a; Partridge 2004). As Christian Dispensationalist author Hal Lindsey (see also chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone and chap¬ ter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, both in this volume) asserts: It’s my opinion that there will be a proved “close encounter of the third kind” soon. And I believe that the source of this phenomenon is some type of alien being of great intelligence and power. According to the Bible, a demon is a spiritual personality in a state of war with God. Prophecy tells us that demons will be allowed to use their powers of deception in a grand way during the last days of history (II Thessalonians 2:8-12). I believe these demons will stage a spacecraft landing on Earth. They will claim to be from an advanced culture in another galaxy. (1980,34)

This distrust is deeply rooted in the millennial imagination. Christopher Partridge describes the roots of malevolent ETs in traditional Christian demonology (2004), but in this chapter “UFO myth” refers to the religious valorization of UFOs and ETs as world saviors and agents of millennial transformation.

The Saucer and the Bomb While predicated in part upon earlier traditions of superhuman, otherworldly beings, the UFO myth has been nourished by Cold War tensions and formed in compensatory opposition to the threat of nuclear devastation, although other global threats are readily assimilated (Flaherty 1990). Since 1945 the nuclear threat has been, according to Robert Jay Lifton, “the context for our lives, a shadow that per¬ sistently intrudes upon our mental ecology” (Lifton and Falk 1982, 3). Derrick de Kerckhove of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology describes nuclear weapons as the helpless consequence of a grotesque disproportion between the legitimate development of technology and the fairly primitive level of our social development” (quoted in Rowe 1985, ix). Flying saucer religionists frequently assert t at the space people are more technologically and spiritually advanced than we are. As Russian-Swiss folklorist Sergius Golowin observes, they are “die Gotter der Atomzeit,” the gods of the atomic age (1967).

UFOS, ETS, AND THE MILLENNIAL IMAGINATION

The

“ET

589

Hypothesis”

Flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington state on 24 June 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold (1915—84) beheld nine shining flying objects making a wob¬ bling motion he compared to a saucer skipping over water, a description from which the press coined the term flying saucer. Parenthetically, Arnold described not flying discs but boomerang-shaped objects that he believed were not spaceships but unconventional aircraft being developed by the U.S. military. Initial rumors favored the development of a secret weapon by Germany or the Soviet Union, but flying saucers were soon rumored to be of extraterrestrial origin. Retired Marine Corps Major Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988) was an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. After his 1950 article “The Flying Saucers Are Real” in True Magazine, he wrote a book of the same title. He maintained: 1. The earth has been under periodic observation from another planet, or other planets, for at least two centuries. 2. This observation suddenly increased in 1947, following the series of A-bomb explosions begun in 1945. 3. The observation, now intermittent, is part of a long-range survey and will continue indefinitely. No immediate attempt to contact the earth seems evident. There may be some unknown block to making contact, but it is more probable that the spacemen’s plans are not complete. (1950,174) The U.S. Air Force introduced unidentified flying object (UFO) as a term devoid of the connotation of “extraterrestrial spaceship,” but UFO soon acquired the ET con¬ notation associated with “flying saucer,” reflecting the tremendous appeal of belief in extraterrestrial visitors. As Carl Gustav Jung observed in his seminal booklet Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, “Anything that looks technological goes down without difficulty with modern man. The possibility of space travel makes the unpopular idea of metaphysical intervention more acceptable” (1959,22-23).

George Adamski George Adamski (1891-1965) of Vista, California, was the first to allege contact with ETs, or the Space Brothers, as they came to be called (Melton 1986, 2-4). Adamski claimed to have encountered a flying saucer in California’s Mojave Desert on 20 November 1952. Its occupant—Orthon of Venus—telepathically communicated to him the space people’s grave concern over the development of nuclear weapons, which could initiate a chain reaction spreading well beyond Earth and endangering the entire universe (Leslie and Adamski 1977/1953,213-14). Filmmaker Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (see chapter 31 by Douglas

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

590

E. Cowan, this volume), about an extraterrestrial come to Earth to enforce nuclear disarmament, had been released in 1951. This theme became widespread in flying saucer lore. Born in Poland in 1891, Adamski moved to California with his parents in 1893. His interest in so-called “cosmic philosophy” was well established in 1936 when he founded the Royal Order of Tibet. In the 1940s he took a job at the Palomar Observatory in northern San Diego County, and in 1947 he claimed to have seen 184 flying saucers in formation. Writing with British Theosophist Desmond Leslie (1921-2001) after the alleged 1952 Orthon encounter, Adamski published Flying Saucers Have Landed (Leslie and Adamski 1977/1953). In Inside the Space Ships (1955), Adamski claimed that there are twelve planets in the solar system, rather than the seven recognized by astronomers, and that the dark side of the moon is fertile and inhabited. In the wake of Flying Saucers Have Landed, others soon claimed contact with the Space Brothers, idealized ET humans who, like Adamski’s Orthon, were trou¬ bled by nuclear weapons on Earth. J. Gordon Melton and George Eberhart (Melton 1995; Melton and Eberhart 1995) and John Saliba (1995a) have provided excellent surveys of the UFO contactee movement. The contactees were, accord¬ ing to David Jacobs, “operating within a common fear of the i95o’s—the inevita¬ bility of nuclear war” (1975, 115). While laying asphalt in the Mojave Desert, Truman Bethurum (1898-1969) allegedly encountered Aura Rhanes from the planet Clarion, who instructed him to warn humanity of the danger of nuclear war. Daniel Fry (1908-92) of Alamogordo, New Mexico, claimed to have encoun¬ tered an ET named A-lan in White Sands (a few miles from the Trinity site where the first atomic bomb was tested on 16 July 1945) and likewise was charged with warning humanity. Orfeo Angelucci (1912—93)—the contactee made famous by Carl Jung (1959)—claimed that an extraterrestrial whom he called Neptune told him: The days that are to come upon earth are well known to me, but they are as yet mercifully veiled from you and your fellows. This I can tell you: the hour of the tragedy is close upon the earth. In history it will be known as “the Great Accident.” Wide devastation, suffering and the death of many will result from it. Perhaps you can guess how man will himself be the cause of “the Great Accident.” If the horror of the War of the End of an Age shall come, our multitudes are at hand to aid all of those not spiritually arrayed against us. (1955,123-24)

Flying Saucers and the Bible Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was prominent among twentieth-century Christian theologians who opposed the literal interpretation of biblical eschatology. He advo¬ cated

demythologizing” Christianity while retaining the message (kerygma) of

UFOS, ETS, AND THE MILLENNIAL IMAGINATION

591

Jesus that had been cloaked in myth (1958). Bultmann found especially troubling the acceptance of miraculous biblical events and biblical eschatology as literally true. UFO mythology is a rationalization of such elements. Flying saucers become the pillars of cloud and fire that guided the Israelites to the Promised Land, the fiery chariots that bore Elijah and Enoch to Heaven, the Star of Bethlehem that led the wise men to the Christ child, the vehicle of Christ’s ascension, and the cloudlike vehicle of Christ’s return. References to biblical eschatology abound in primary UFO literature (see, for example, Downing 1968). Morris K. Jessup (1900—1959) read Matthew 24:29-31 as follows: The great and powerful mother-ship will appear among the clouds and the Master will dispatch his assistants in smaller craft, and will gather from all parts of the earth those who have survived the brunt of the cataclysm and have reached temporary places of safety and particularly those whom the Shepherd Race deems suitable for the propagation and resurgence of humanity in a new racial generation, and these will be taken to live for awhile in the celestial regions where are the homes of the UFOs in space. (1956,102)

Flying Saucers and Theosophy About the same time that Donald Keyhoe published Flying Saucers Are Real, Theosophically oriented UFO enthusiasts such as George Adamski, Desmond Leslie, and George Hunt Williamson (1926-86) (who was with Adamski at the alleged Orthon encounter)3 published a number of books portraying flying saucers in light of the teachings of Helena P. Blavatsky (1831-91), who in 1875 cofounded the Theosophical Society (see chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume). Blavatsky’s major work, The Secret Doctrine (1888), is a commentary on seven stan¬ zas of the purported Book of Dzyan, which, she claimed, antedated the Vedas. Although translated into Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit, all the original stanzas had been written in Senzar, Blavatsky maintained, from which Sanskrit was derived, and which had been brought from Venus by Sanat Kumara and the Lords of the Flame (1888).4 Theosophists believe that the planets of our solar system and Earth’s moon are inhabited by superhuman beings. Of greatest importance are the inhabitants of Venus (Lords of the Flame), who direct humanity’s physical and spiritual evolu¬ tion (Leadbeater 1912,131). The Theosophical pantheon also includes Masters and Mahatmas, the Elder Brothers of humanity who live on Earth (Besant 1912,60-63). As David Stupple (1984) notes, whereas the idea of extraterrestrials was epiphenomenal to Theosophy, the Elder Brothers, Mahatmas, and Ascended Masters became the benevolent Space Brothers of Theosophically oriented flying saucer enthusiasts.

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

592

ETs,

Channeling, and the Ashtar Command

Adamski’s claim of telepathic communication with Orthon became the template for a tradition of channeled ET communications.5 On 12 September 1952 George Van Tassel (1910-78) of Giant Rock, California, allegedly received the following message: I am Ashtar. Our Center has requested that I advance to you mortal beings of Shan (Earth) the following information. Over your past several months our ventlas have discharged several thousand light beings in certain remote areas upon your planet. These individuals serving the cause of Universal Law are recording numerous occurrences taking place within the people of Shan. It would be advisable to instruct any mortal being who by chance should approach any of our light intelligences to do so with a thought projection of peace, “I am friendly.” Any approach in any other frame of thought will meet with instant defensive conditions. Only under individual protective measures shall we do anything other than retreat. In the records obtained by these beings... we shall determine what actions to take in the very near future. My love remains with you. I am Ashtar. (Quoted in Williamson 1953,337-38)

Van Tassel was the first to claim contact with Ashtar.6 Subsequently, his former associate Robert Short founded a group called Ashtar Command, and since then numerous individuals have channeled Ashtar Sheran (as he is also known), Supreme Commander of the Free Federation of Planets, who lives in a vast mother ship in space. Ashtar’s followers stress that Ashtar is not a fallen angel but rather one of the Herald Angels (Tuella 1985). The Herald Angels did not take part in the heavenly rebellion and are preparing Earth for the return of Sananda (Christ). The A.shtar Command is the Airborne Division of the Great Brother/Sisterhood of Light: Composed of millions of starships and personnel from civilizations, we are here to assist the Earth through the current cycle of planetary cleansing and polar realignment. We serve like midwives in the birthing of humanity from densephysical to physical-etheric bodies of light, capable of ascending into the fifth dimension along with the Earth. (Ashtar Command [2008])

Ashtar is second in importance only to Sananda (or Sananda-Jesus, as he is sometimes called).7 Ashtar and Sananda are not the exclusive property of any one religious organization, but the common property of a diffuse New Age Spiritualist milieu. Tuella (Thelma B. Terrell) is a well-known channel of the Ashtar Command (Tuella 1985). Sister Thedra (1900-1992) (“Mrs. Keech” in When Prophecy Fails) channeled Sananda (Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter 1964).8 Ashtar, Sananda, Aetherius (of Venus), Aura Rhanes (of Clarion), Monka (of Mars), and a host of godlike ETs communicate through trance mediums, many of whom also channel the Theosophical Masters. Jamie Sans channels Leah, a Venusian from two thousand years in the future. Darryl Anka channels Bashar from the planet Essassani. Don Elkins, Jim McCarty, and Carla Rueckert channel

UFOS, ETS, AND THE MILLENNIAL IMAGINATION

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Ra, a unified group of extraterrestrials. Lyssa Royal has channeled ETs Raydia and Harone.

Walk-ins and Wanderers Space intelligences are also said to possess human bodies. ET-possessed individuals are referred to as “Walk-ins” or “Blends.” A Walk-in, according to New Age psychic Ruth Montgomery (1913-2001), originates when a person loses the will to live and an ET replaces the human soul. Displaced souls are being sent to vast spaceships until they can return to a renewed and transformed world. Bodies inhabited by space intelligences are being used to prepare for the New Age (1985,148). In addition to Walk-ins, numerous ETs have voluntarily incarnated on Earth as human beings to assist in preparations for the New Age. Adamski’s friend George Hunt Williamson wrote in 1953 of 144,000 Lesser Avatars, or Wanderers, who arrived with the Elder Brother, the Son of Thought Incarnate.9 Since then the number of Wanderers has grown considerably. According to the Ra group, in 1981 there were approximately 65 million Wanderers (quoted in Mandelker 1995,2). “If we calculate further,” says transpersonal psychologist Scott Mandelker (an ET-Wanderer believer), “we can assume that the number is much higher today, almost fifteen years later, amidst the ongoing flux of souls coming to help in the transition to the New Age” (1995,2).

Organized

UFO

Religions

Sociologist Bryan Wilson observed that the term movement implies a coherence greater than that of collective behavior (1973,3-4). Belief in UFOs and ETs has never been limited to organized religious movements, but formulated in and diffused through popular media and the folk/popular religious milieu. The flying saucer club ideology described by Leon Festinger and his colleagues “was not invented, not created de novo, purely in Mrs. Keech’s mind. Almost all her conceptions of the universe, the spiritual world, interplanetary communication and travel, and the dread possibilities of total atomic warfare can be found, in analogue or identity, in popular magazines, sensational books, and even columns of daily papers” (1964,54). Nonetheless, a number of contactees have organized religious movements based on their revelations. The Aetherius Society, the Unarius Foundation, Heaven’s Gate (see also chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 11 by John Walliss, both in this volume), Chen Tao, and the Raelian Movement are examined here as representative.

594

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS- CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

The Aetherius Society The Aetherius Society was founded in 1954 in Britain by George King (1919-97), who claimed telepathic contact with Aetherius, who, like Jesus, was a Cosmic Master from the planet Venus. Roy Wallis (1975) studied the group extensively in the 1970s. More recently, Simon Smith (2003), Scott Scribner and Gregory Wheeler (2003), Mikael Rothstein (2003b), and John Saliba (2003) have written about the group. As Wallis notes, the Theosophical Society’s teachings on the Masters are the clear basis of King’s alleged revelations (1975,30). The solar system, according to the Aetherius Society, is governed by a Cosmic Hierarchy or Interplanetary Parliament responsi¬ ble for its evolution. Whereas Jesus, Buddha, and Aetherius come from Venus, Krishna comes from Saturn, home of the Interplanetary Parliament. The Cosmic Masters have come to Earth to help humanity prepare for the New World and to bring about a great millennium of peace. A few of these Masters now live on Earth and “shortly” another will come. It has been revealed through Doctor George King that this Master’s “magic will be greater than any upon Earth—greater than the combined materialistic might of all the armies. And they who will not heed His words shall be removed from the Earth.” Jesus came in mystery, but this next Master will come openly in a “Flying Saucer” and the whole world will know of His coming. (Aetherius Society 1981)

The Unarius Foundation Ernest (1904 71) and Ruth Norman (1900—1993) founded the Unarius Foundation in 1954. Sociologist Diana Tumminia has studied the group extensively (2003, 2005; Tumminia and Kirkpatrick 1995). After Ernest died, Ruth continued to promote their teachings until her death. The Unarians predict that thirty-three spacecraft will descend to Earth and fuse electronically—the largest ship at base, the smallest on top to form a 2.5-mile-high academy housing technicians who will advise humans in the science of Unarius. The Space Brothers will construct a second tower, a 2,000-foot-high Power Tower of gold and crystal that will draw energy from Earth and the cosmos to sup¬ ply all of Earth s energy needs. Unarians claim that a previous attempt to construct such a tower was made by Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), inventor of the Tesla coil. In fact, in 1901 Tesla did erect a 187-foot tower on Long Island as a component of what he hoped would become a world wireless system, but it was demolished in 1917 (Tesla 1982). The Unarians describe Tesla as “he who could cause electricity to travel across the country or underground with no wires, invent electronic equipment to revolu¬ tionize the world; that he could (and does now, freed of the limiting physical) gen¬ erate such Power that it will change not only this world, but the many worlds”

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(Unarius Foundation 1974,5). Whereas Ruth Norman is held by Unarians to be the incarnation of the Archangel Uriel, and her late husband Ernest that of the Archangel Raphiel (sic), Tesla is regarded as the incarnation of the Archangel Michiel (sic). Unarians are not alone in their admiration for Tesla, who is widely revered by flying saucer enthusiasts.

Heaven’s Gate In September 1975 Marshall Flerff Applewhite (1931-97) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (1927—85)—known as the Two, or Him and Her, as well as Bo and Peep—gave a public lecture about UFOs in Waldport, Oregon. Styling themselves the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11, their group would ultimately become known as Heaven’s Gate, whose thirty-nine members in 1997 committed group suicide, poisoning themselves at their residence in Rancho Santa Fe, California (Lewis 2003b; Peters 2003). The son of a Presbyterian minister from Texas, Applewhite studied for the ministry but changed his major to music. Throughout Applewhite’s life “Christian material permeated his thought” (Zeller 2006, 77). Applewhite eventually pro¬ claimed that he was “in the same position in today’s society as was the One that was in Jesus” (1997). When Nettles met Applewhite she had long been immersed in New Age religion and Theosophy, and Heaven’s Gate soteriology became a syncretism of New Age beliefs and Christian elements (Zeller 2006). Several days after the 1975 Oregon lecture more than thirty people disappeared with Him and Her. News services described people who had given up everything— families, friends, jobs, their homes—to follow the Two, who claimed to be extrater¬ restrials, in hopes of being taken in flying saucers to a higher plane of existence. Little was heard of the group until it resurfaced in 1993, reinvented as Total Overcomers Anonymous. Sociologist Robert Balch studied the group extensively for decades (1982,1985, 1995; Balch and Taylor 2003). While the group’s general beliefs had changed little during their underground years, Balch notes that their 1993 full-page ad in USA Today “had an apocalyptic tone that was much more dramatic than anything I heard in 1975” (1995,163). In 1997 the thirty-nine members of Applewhite’s group, now renamed Heaven’s Gate, ended their lives in the belief that the comet Hale-Bopp, visible during the spring of 1997, was “the marker we’ve been waiting for” (Applewhite 1997). In 1996 Chuck Schramek, an amateur astronomer from Texas, telephoned Art Bell’s radio program Coast to Coast to report he had seen a “Saturn-like object” traveling with Hale-Bopp. Subsequently, Courtney Brown, a professor of political science at Emory University, and novelist/UFO enthusiast Whitley Strieber (b. 1945) appeared on Bell’s program to announce that an extraterrestrial spaceship was trail¬ ing Hale-Bopp. Like many UFO enthusiasts that year, Applewhite believed that a huge spaceship was approaching Earth, concealed from view by the comet.

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CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

“Planet Earth,” said Applewhite (now known as Do), was about to be recycled. “Your only chance to survive: Leave with us” (1997). Nettles (now known as Ti) had died in 1985, after which Applewhite’s millennialism had become increasingly cata¬ strophic (Zeller 2006,85). Heaven’s Gate left a note saying, “We came from the level above human in distant space.” Having completed their work, it was time to shed their bodies and return home. Do (Applewhite) now taught that Ti (Nettles) would take them in the spaceship to the next level, The Level Above Human (TELAH). Applewhite posted a message on the group’s website hinting at their impending suicide. “Hale-Bopp brings closure to Heaven’s Gate.” Whether Hale-Bopp has a “companion” or not is irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us at “Heaven’s Gate.” The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the “Kingdom of Heaven”) has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp’s approach is the “marker” we’ve been waiting for—the time of the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to “Their World”—in the literal Heavens. Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to a conclusion— “graduation” from the Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily prepared to leave “this world” and go with Ti’s crew. (1997)

As Yonina Talmon observed, millenarian movements range from the relatively pas¬ sive, in which adherents are encouraged to purify themselves and watch for signs of the Millennium, to extremely activist, aggressive, and sometimes violent move¬ ments (Talmon 1966,179—80). As in the case of Heaven’s Gate, a group might introject its aggression and commit suicide. Mass suicide, psychoanalyst A. M. Joost Meerloo wrote, “is more than a passive surrender to fate because of a guilt reaction; it is also a primitive, mystical means of escaping into the comfort of death, in order to find a new and better life” (1968/1949, 95). Catherine Wessinger (2000, 229-46) describes Heaven’s Gate as a fragile mil¬ lennial movement whose members reacted to internal stresses caused by the threat to their ultimate concern (the transformation of their finite human bodies into eternal, neuter extraterrestrial bodies) prompted by the death of Ti in 1985 and Do s anticipation of his own imminent death, as well as perceived opposition in the form of negative media attention and reactions to their message on the Internet in 1997.

Chen Tao Needless to say, not all millenarian UFO religions are suicidal. In 1998 Chen Tao, also known as God’s Salvation Church and as God Saves the Earth Flying Saucer Association, predicted that the United States would be spared in a 1999 nuclear war in which four-fifths of humanity would perish (Wessinger 2000,253-63). Chen Tao was based on the teachings of Chen Hon-ming (b. 1955), a former sociology professor

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from Taiwan, who brought his followers to the United States to escape nuclear holo¬ caust. Initially they lived in San Dimas, California, but they moved to Garland, Texas, because Chen thought Garland sounded like God’s Land. Apart from a cen¬ tral belief in God’s flying saucers, Chen Tao was a syncretism of Buddhism, Christianity, and Taiwanese folk religion (Wessinger 2000, 255). Teacher Chen (as he was known) predicted that God would appear on televi¬ sion worldwide on 19 March 1998, and then in person on 31 March, when, according to the Chen Tao manual of religion (God’s Descending in Clouds [Flying Saucers] on Earth to Save People), God would descend in a flying saucer and assume the form of Teacher Chen, at which time there would be two Chens. Teacher Chen also made predictions for the following year: in January, China would invade Taiwan; in February, war would break out on the Korean peninsula; on 25 March, followers would rendezvous with flying saucers in Gary, Indiana, on the shores of Lake Michigan (where in 1997 they had performed a purification ceremony) and be borne first to Mars and then to Fleaven; in June and July East Asia would suffer economic collapse; in August, three nuclear power plants would explode in Taiwan; and in October nuclear war would begin in the Middle East. According to Chen Tao, Earth had experienced four previous cataclysmic nuclear wars, and God’s chosen had been removed by flying saucers, returning after war and living underground until safe to return to the surface (CESNUR [2008]). When God failed to make his scheduled TV appearance on 19 March, rather than committing mass suicide (as the public had feared, given the demise of Heaven’s Gate the year before), Teacher Chen told the press: “Because we did not see God’s image on television tonight, my predictions of March 31 can be consid¬ ered nonsense” (CNN Reports 1998). Nevertheless, people gathered in Chen’s front yard to see if God would appear as predicted. Teacher Chen and his followers sub¬ sequently left Garland, and a number of members returned to Taiwan (Wessinger 2000, 262).

The Raelian Movement Perhaps the most successful organized UFO religion is the Raelian Movement (Palmer 1995, 2004). Raelianism is based on the teachings of Claude Vorilhon (b. 1946)—a.k.a. Rael, Light of the Elohim—who on 13 December 1973 saw a flying saucer descend near the volcanoes of Clermont-Ferrand in central France. A door opened in the craft and a human-looking being emerged whom Vorilhon first thought was a child. Although small, the being was adult and one of the Elohim, extraterrestrial scientists who created all living things on Earth. Rael’s Elohim are not gods but human beings, albeit of an elder race and our creators. In fact, accord¬ ing to Rael there is no God, and the church is useful only insofar as it will enable the Elohim to be recognized as our creators when they return.

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Rael: Light of the Elohim The Elohim, Vorilhon claims, had been watching him all his life and had prepared him as the Prophet of the Age of Apocalypse. Initially the movement was called MADECH—Mouvement pour l’accueil des Elohim createurs de l’humanite (Movement for the Welcome of the Elohim Creators of Humanity) or Moise a devance Elie et le Christ (Moses Preceded Elijah and Christ)—but in 1975 the Elohim authorized that the name should be changed to the Raelian Movement (Rael 1986, 119). Until the 1980s Raelianism diffused primarily through the international French community. Under the influence of Japanese Raelians, English translations of Rael’s books were first published in 1986.

The Embassy According to Rael, the mid-i940s development of nuclear weapons signaled to the Elohim that humanity was ready for reestablished contact with their creators. The beginning of the Aquarian Age, according to Vorilhon, coincided with the establish¬ ment of the State of Israel in 1946, the year Vorilhon was born.10 Of course, Raelians are not alone in their enthusiasm for the Jewish state. The Jews’ return to Palestine has long been heralded by Christian Dispensationalists and many Jewish Zionists as a prerequisite to the Messianic Age (Weber 1987, 204-26; see also chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck and chapter 34 by Yaakov Ariel, both in this volume). Rael claims the Elohim instructed him to build an embassy near Jerusalem where they will offi¬ cially meet with the political leaders of Earth. Raelians are encouraged to contribute at least 3 percent of their income to help build the embassy, which should be “the only preoccupation of true Raelians” (Rael 1989, 51). Rael’s embassy is the clear reflex of the rebuilt (third) Temple in Jerusalem, regarded by many Christians as necessary for the Second Coming and by many Zionists as requisite for the Messianic Age.

Cloning, Immortality, and Resurrection Rael claims to have been taken in a flying saucer in 1975 to the Elohim home planet and to the smaller nearby Planet of the Eternals, where he met Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad, as well as Yahweh, who rules the Elohim home planet and presides over the Planet of the Eternals. On the latter, humans live some seven hundred years and at death are re-created—cloned from a single cell taken from their old body prior to death. On the Planet of the Eternals, Yahweh and Jesus told Rael that his father was Yahweh, who also fathered Jesus by impregnating an Earth woman aboard an Elohim spaceship. After the explosion at Hiroshima, we decided that the time had come for us to send a new messenger on Earth. He would be the last prophet, but the first one to address mankind asking them to understand and not to believe. We then selected

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a woman, as we had done in the time of Jesus. This woman was taken aboard one of our ships and inseminated as we had done with the mother of Jesus. Then she was freed after we had totally erased from her memory all traces of what had happened. (Rael 1989, 23)

144,000: Sealed in the Forehead Only those individuals who have had their “cellular plan” transmitted to Rael or a designated Raelian Guide will be re-created (cloned) on the Planet of the Eternals. This will be accomplished by being “sealed in the forehead...by manual contact between our prophet and their frontal bone, which contains the purest and the exact genetic code. The total of those who will be ‘sealed in the forehead’ will be close to one hundred and forty-four thousand” (Rael 1989,125-26), in fulfillment of Revelation 7:1-8 and 14:1,3-5, where it is prophesied that 144,000 chosen ones who bear the seal of the living God on their foreheads will reign with God.

Clonaid Humanity, according to Rael, is on the threshold of a biological revolution in which we will be able to create life as the Elohim created us. In 1997 the Raelian Movement established Clonaid, whose director, Brigitte Boisselier (b. 1956), a Raelian bishop with a doctorate in biomolecular chemistry, announced in 2002 that a cloned baby girl had been born, whom they named Eve. Rael teaches that we must show our Elohim creators that we are proud of having been created in their image by one day being able to create human beings in our image.

The

ET

Sons of God

Rael is not the first to claim that the biblical Elohim were the ET creators of human¬ ity. Many UFO enthusiasts believe that “Elohim” refers to a race of godlike ETs, pointing (like Rael) to Genesis 6 for evidence that ETs interbred with early humans or an early hominid to produce hybrid offspring: When men had begun to become plentiful on the earth, and daughters had been born to them, the sons of God, looking at the daughters of men, saw that they were pleasing, so they married as many as they chose. Yaweh said, “My spirit must not forever be disgraced in man, for he is but flesh; his life shall last no more than a hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth at that time (and even afterward) when the sons of God resorted to the daughters of man, and had children by them. These are the heroes of days gone by, the famous men. (Genesis 6:1-6, Jerusalem Bible)

6oo

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Whereas in Genesis Elohim speaks in the plural—“Let us make mankind in our image and likeness” (1:27)—biblical scholars generally see this not as a plurality of gods arising from a biblical subsoil of Mesopotamian myth, but as a plural of maj¬ esty or as Elohim addressing his angels. The Elohim of UFO myth are the bene ha’elohim, the sons of God of Genesis 6. The Ethiopic Book of Enoch portrays them not as the creators of life on Earth but as the Watchers, guardians of terrestrial cre¬ ation. Led by Semjasa and Azazel, two hundred descended to Earth on Mount Hermon (Enoch 6:6-8), where Syria, Lebanon, and Israel now meet. Not only did the Watchers interbreed with human women (Enoch 6:1-6), they also imparted the arts of civilization to humanity (Enoch 8:1-3). Swiss contactee Eduard “Billy” Meier (b. 1937) claims regular contact since 1975 with Semjase, an idealized ET human from the planet Erra in the Pleiades. Meier’s Semjase is the euhemerized reflex, it would seem, of the Angel Watcher Semjasa (a.k.a. Samiasa, Samyaza, Shamyaza, Semihazah, Shemihazah, Shemyazaz, etc.), leader of the bene ha elohim. Contending that Adam was created not by Yahweh but by Semjase, Meier collected Semjase’s teachings into book form, Contact Notes, over eighteen hundred pages detailing cosmogenesis, the history of the universe, human life on other planets, humanity’s place in the cosmos, reincarnation, Earth’s history dating back some 22 million years, the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu, Pleiadean beamship technology, Jesus, God, and Semjase (Kinder 1987).11 Christian myth, of course, divides angels into those loyal to God and those loyal to Satan. George Hunt Williamson distinguished between two groups of Space Intelligences, those originating from the Pleiades and those from Orion. Whereas the Pleiadeans are our space friends, the latter (the Intruders) are hostile to human¬ ity (i953> 387> 399)- On the basis of the Book of Enoch, Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939-2009), cofounder with her husband Mark Prophet (1918-73) of Summit Lighthouse and the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), describes ET fallen angels who seek humanity s ruin (2000).12 As Evangelical Christians John Weldon and Zola Levitt write: Not all “sons of God” are positive spirits, obviously, and the generally accepted theological interpretation of this passage is that the “sons” are the angels who rebelled against God. Christ referred to them as unclean spirits and demons. As such, their coming down from the sky to intermingle with men is reasonable in the Biblical orientation. The devil himself is spoken of as a heavenly rebel, deriving his supernatural powers from his original position as one of God’s angels. Is it surprising, then, many civilizations noted in their literature and artifacts the presence of supernatural beings, usually emanating from the skies? It is perfectly reasonable, from a Biblical point of view, to expect that the UFOs represent demonic activity. Contact with them will grieve God, as it did in Genesis 6, and he will remonstrate with man in a disastrous way. (1975, 22-23)

Zecharia Sitchin (b. 1922) equates the Annunaki, the gods of the Babylonian Enuma Elish, with the bene ha’elohim, the sons of God of Genesis 6, and asserts that Nephilim properly refers not to the hybrid offspring but to the godlike ETs them¬ selves, who came to Earth from an undiscovered twelfth planet in the solar system

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(recall that George Adamski also described twelve planets), which Sitchin calls Nibiru or Marduk (Nibiru is generally thought to have been Jupiter, the fifth planet of our solar system, and was associated by the Babylonians with the god Marduk). In the Enuma Elish, Marduk created the first humans from the blood of the slain Kingu to serve the Annunaki. Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiensis), according to Sitchin, were laborers created by the Nephilim through genetic manipulation of Homo erectus, the mythic prototype being Enkidu of the Epic of Gilgamesh (1976, 357).

New Age religionists and longtime flying saucer enthusiasts Brad and Francie Steiger refer to the ET ancestors as the “Starsowers” and to the Nephilim-dominant descendants of ET-human hybridization as the “StarseedsRather than directly intervening in humanity’s affairs (landing en masse), the Starsowers have interacted with us genetically, encoding their spiritual knowledge and teachings in DNA infor¬ mation packets that are being disinhibited in the Nephilim-dominant descendants as the New Age dawns (Steiger and Steiger 1981).

Ongoing ET-Human Hybridization ET-human hybridization is not restricted to prehistory, according to many UFO enthusiasts, but is ongoing. From the alleged 1961 alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill (1919-2004; 1923-69) (Fuller 1966) and the 1967 abduction of Betty Andreasson (Fowler 1979) emerged the template for a tradition of abduction, exam¬ ination, revelation, and return to the world forgetful of experiences subsequently recalled through hypnosis. John Whitmore (1995) and Christopher Partridge (2003b) have described the religious dimension of this abduction tradition. In the 1980s and 1990s this tradition was influenced by novelist and UFO enthu¬ siast Whitley Strieber’s immensely popular book series: Communion (1987), Transformation: The Breakthrough (1988), Breakthrough: The Next Step (1995), and The Secret School: Preparation for Contact (1997). Strieber describes his repeated abduction by small, gray-skinned humanoids (“Visitors”) resembling those described since Betty and Barney Hill’s report. Rather than engage in mass landings and open contact, the Visitors repress human memories of their existence that will be released into conscious awareness as the New Age dawns, when the Visitors’ exis¬ tence and purpose will seem perfectly familiar and nonthreatening. Like Rael’s Elohim, the ETs of current lore are very interested in human repro¬ duction; like the sons of God in Genesis 6 and Angel Watchers in the Book of Enoch, they are intent on creating a hybrid race. According to historian David Jacobs, who has become a UFO believer, “one of the purposes for which UFOs travel to Earth is to abduct humans to help aliens to produce other Beings.... The focus of the abduc¬ tion is the production of children” (1992, 305-6). Psychiatrist John E. Mack (1929-2004), who also became a UFO believer, writes on the basis of hypnotherapy

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sessions with self-identified UFO abductees: “My own impression is that we may be witnessing... an awkward joining of two species, engineered by an intelligence we are unable to fathom, for a purpose that serves both of our goals.... I base this view on the evidence presented by the abductees themselves” (i994> 4i3_14)- The current hybridization project, according to evangelical Christian UFO watch groups, is what Jesus meant when he said that in the final days it will be “as it was in the days of Noah” (Luke 17:26). According to Watcher Website: By genetically manipulating human genetics, whether through the guise of “alien abduction” or by supplying willing mortal accomplices with the proper technology... there is currently being created humanoid hybrids who are notquite-human. These genetically altered humans are no longer Sons of Adam, and no longer able to be saved by the Kinsman Redeemer. (Watcher Website [2008]) Many New Age ET/UFO religionists, on the other hand, see hybridization as a con¬ vergence of opposites heralding the New Age (Flaherty 1990). Raydia, reputedly a fifth-dimensional being from Arcturus, was channeled by Lyssa Royal (1988) as saying: Now, in relation to the hybrids.. .‘Tis not just for the purpose of creating another race. ‘Tis also for you and them to integrate the polarities of the self. As you interact with them on a soul level, you will begin to integrate the idea of individuality within a collective group, and they will learn individuality.... It is a blending, it is a sharing, it is representing that the time has come for both of your civilizations to embrace the other polarity that it has been hiding. That is what communion is all about. It is a very strong spiritual communion, a communion that will rattle the universe.

Ufos and Harmonic Convergence In early 1987 Jose Arguelles announced that on 16 August 1987 Earth would enter a twenty-five-year Mark Age preceding the New Age, which would begin in 2012 with Earth’s admission to the Galactic Federation (Arguelles 1987; see also chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume).13 Humans would be given the choice between the New Age or global destruction, the latter being averted only if 144,000 people gathered at sacred places around the world. That event was known as the Harmonic Convergence. The gatherings were to create trust and a deepening relationship with ET intel¬ ligences. The Mayan calendar, according to Arguelles, is a “galactic calling-card” left by the Maya, who were extraterrestrials. Arguelles credits their seemingly sudden disappearance (long a matter of debate among archaeologists) to having been called home.” Why haven’t the ETs made open contact with humanity yet? Arguelles responded to the Los Angeles Times: “They haven’t been asked. Moreover, they don’t

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trust us. Would you? One of the reasons for harmonic convergence is to establish a field of trust” (“Resonating” 1987). While the present cycle of the Mayan calendar began in 3114 b.c.e. and ends in 2012 c.e., there is no indication that the Maya believed the twenty-five-year period prior to the calendar’s end to be a period of spiritual preparation. Needless to say, the Maya were not ETs, and more recent archeological evidence indicates that they simply abandoned their ceremonial centers. Reason aside, heightened UFO reli¬ gious enthusiasm and greater New Age millenarian fervor can be anticipated around the year 2012 (Sitler 2006).

Conclusion: ET Saviors, UFOs, and the Historical Moment Sigmund Freud observed that religion is born of “the need to make tolerable the helplessness of man” (1957, 29). UFO religion is no exception. Celestial deities, according to Mircea Eliade, are invoked “in cases of extreme distress... especially in cases of disaster proceeding from the sky” (1959,126). Israeli folklorist Raphael Patai notes that belief in flying saucers is nourished by a desire for planetary escape (1972, 319). A belief in ET saviors who will avert nuclear holocaust (see chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, this volume), evacuate a chosen people, or help a surviving remnant restore Earth after nuclear disaster is a rationalization of the biblical myth of the Rapture and Apocalypse, and a compensatory mythological response to the threat of nuclear destruction (Flaherty 1990). Other global crises are also subject to compensatory resolution in soteriological myths of extraterrestrial intervention (see chapter 32 by Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, this volume).14 “Information about ecological disaster with powerful apoca¬ lyptic imagery,” according to John Mack, “is also commonly described as being transmitted by the aliens to human subjects” (1994,52). In the 1980s Whitley Strieber alleged to have received information from the Visitors regarding eco-disaster: in particular, ozone depletion and increased ultraviolet radiation of Earth. In the early twenty-first century the perceived threat is not so much ozone depletion as global warming. In 2007 a former Canadian defense minister was quoted as saying that ET technology holds the key to solving the crisis: “Climate change is the No. 1 problem facing the world today. I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation... that could be a way to save our planet” (Lackner 2007). While one may grant, as Carl Jung quipped, that it is good for us to believe in angels (1969,11),15 the danger of UFO religion and New Age ET soteriology is one of religion in general: that a literal interpretation of myth will confirm believers in

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their helplessness and in their imagined dependence on superhuman beings reified in tradition and the popular imagination.16

NOTES 1. See, for example, Lewis 1995,2003a; Partridge 2003a; Palmer 2004; Saliba 1995b; Tumminia 2005, 2007. Robert Ellwood refers to the religious valorization of UFOs as “UFOism” (Ellwood 1995). 2. Belief in UFOs is even reported to have played a peripheral role in the mythology of Shoko Ashara’s Aum Shinrikyo—the group responsible for releasing sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995—which was reported in Japan (I was in Japan when Asahara was arrested) but not, as far as I know, by Western news media. 3. In 1956 George Hunt Williamson moved to Peru, where he established the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays. In 1961, writing as Brother Philip, he published The Secret of the Andes, a classic of New Age spirituality. 4. In the Hindu Puranas, Sanat Kumara is one of the four kumaras—Sanat Kumara, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana—the eternally youthful, mind-born sons of the god Brahma. The Theosophical Sanat Kumara is the Ancient of Days and the Eternal Youth, the Lord of the World who rules from Shambhala on the etheric plane above what is now the Gobi Desert. Charles W. Leadbeater dated the arrival on Earth of Sanat Kumara to 18,500,000 Before Present (1925). A. E. Powell dated the arrival to 16.5 million years ago (1930, 216-17). 5. Trance channeling and possession have characterized shamanism and ecstatic religion throughout history. Prefiguring the contemporary ET-channeling tradition, Swiss psychiatrist Theodor Flournoy in 1894 met Helene Smith, a spirit medium who channeled a number of distinct Martian personalities (Flournoy 1900,10). Theosophists have described communications from the Theosophical Masters since the society was cofounded by Helena P. Blavatsky. A former Spiritualist and medium, she “taught that unconscious mediumship was inadvisable and contacted only lower order beings; hence, communications from Theosophical higher beings are usually described as occurring through the overshadowing of a fully conscious student” (Catherine Wessinger, personal communication, 2008). Both UFOism and Spiritualism, Robert Ellwood writes, presuppose an order of spiritually significant beings between the human and ultimate reality, with which one can have conversational and disciplic relationships. Whether spirits or space brothers, interaction with them opens up a sense of expanded consciousness and cosmic wonder” (1995,394). 6. Van Tassel likely derived the name Ashtar from Ashtar, often spelled Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and consort of the god Marduk. Phoenicians worshipped her as Ashtarte, Moabites as Ashtar-Chemosh. In Arabia she became the male deity, Athtar, worshiped in Abyssinia as Ashtar. In the Bible the name was corrupted to Ashtoreth. 7. Sananda, like Sanat Kumara, is one of the Kumaras (mind-born sons of Brahma), who in Theosophy became the Lords of the Flame. For some, Sananda is the name of the ascended Jesus; for others, the reincarnated Jesus. 8. Dorothy Martin, known as Sister Thedra (“Mrs. Keech” in When Prophecy Fails), c aimed to have been healed of cancer by Sananda in Mexico in 1954 and instructed by

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Sananda to go to Peru, where she lived at George Hunt Williamson’s Abbey of the Seven Rays until 1961, when she returned to the United States and established the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara in 1965. She died in 1992 at age ninety-two. 9. The 144,000 anointed ones of God are mentioned in Revelation 7:3-8 and 14:1,3-5. Christians variously hold that 144,000 is a symbolic reference to God’s perfected Church or a literal reference to 144,000 saints who will reign with Christ on (an earthly or heavenly) Mount Zion. The 144,000 chosen ones are a feature of a number of New Age religions as well. 10. The United Nations approved a plan to partition Palestine into two states, Israel and Palestine, in 1947. Israel declared itself an independent state on 14 May 1948. 11. Pleiadian civilization, Semjase allegedly told Meier, originated not in the Pleiades but in the constellation Lyra. The Lyran home planet was destroyed in a world war, but some Lyrans escaped to the Pleiades and the Hyades (Kinder 1987,98). The exploded planet has been a feature of the UFO myth since the 1950s, a Warnfikt (cautionary fiction) of the danger of nuclear war and world destruction, a fate we of Earth can avoid with the assistance of the space people. The Unarius Foundation maintains the existence of an exploded planet in the constellation Orion. The group that Leon Festinger and his colleagues described held that the planet Car was destroyed in a war between Lucifer-led “scientists” and Christ-led “people who followed the Light” (1964,53). Often the exploded planet is not in a remote galaxy but in our own solar system, its debris forming the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The exploded planet has also been called Clarion, Masar, Lucifer, and Maldek. 12. For in-depth analysis of Prophet’s teachings and the Church Universal and Triumphant see Lewis and Melton 1994. 13. The quarantine of Earth and its eventual (re)admission to the galactic federation has been a widespread feature of UFO/ET myth since the 1950s contactee movement and is central to the Urantia Book (1955), the massive channeled/revealed classic of American religion. 14. In director Scott Derrickson’s (2008) remake of Robert Wise’s classic (1951) film about ET intervention, the threat to Earth is no longer nuclear devastation, but environmental degradation. 15. “L’ange n’existe pas, mais il est bon pour votre sante que vous y croyiez” (Angels do not exist, but it is good for your health that you believe they do). 16. Stephen Gaskin (b. 1935), spiritual leader of The Farm, an intentional community in Tennessee, remarked: “Look, the flying saucer people are not going to come and pick up your mess, you dig that? There ain’t nobody going to pick it up but you, and if you don’t pick it up it ain’t going to get picked up” (1974).

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Gate May Be Entered. Phoenix, Ariz.: TELAH Services, www.wave.net/upg/gate/. Accessed 25 May 25 2008. Argiielles, Jose. 1987. The Mayan Factor: Path beyond Technology. Santa Fe: Bear & Company. Ashtar Command: The Airborne Division of the Great White Brotherhood. [2008]. Official website, ashtar.galactic2.net/. Accessed 19 May 2008. Balch, Robert W. 1982. “Bo and Peep: A Case Study of the Origins of Messianic Leadership.” In Millennialism and Charisma, edited by Roy Wallis, 13-71. Belfast: Queens University. -. 1985. “When the Light Goes Out, Darkness Comes: A Study of Defection from a Totalistic Cult.” In Religious Movements: Genesis, Exodus and Numbers, edited by Rodney Stark, 11-63. New York: Paragon House. -. 1995. “Waiting for the Ships: Disillusionment and Revitalization of Faith in Bo and Peep’s UFO Cult.” In The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, edited by James R. Lewis, 137-66. Albany: State University of New York Press. Balch, Robert W., and David Taylor. 2003. “Heaven’s Gate: Implications for the Study of Commitment in New Religions.” In Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions” edited by James R. Lewis, 211-38. Amherst: Prometheus. Besant, Annie. 1912. The Masters. Adyar, India: Office of The Theosophist. Blavatsky, H. P. 1888. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. London: Theosophical Publishing House. The Book of Enoch. 2007. Translated by R. H. Charles. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover. Bultmann, Rudolf. 1958. Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Scribner. CESNUR (Center for the Study of New Religions). [2008.] CESNUR’s Watch Page of Chen Tao—God’s Salvation Church. www.cesnur.org/testi/Chen.htm. Accessed 18 May 2008. CNN Report. 1998. “My Predictions Can Be Considered Nonsense: UFO Cult Calm as God Misses Predicted TV Appearance.” 25 March. CNN.com/US/9803/25/saucer.cult.folo/ index.html. Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press. Downing, Barry H. 1968. The Bible and Flying Saucers. New York: Avon. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ellwood, Robert S. 1995. UFO Religious Movements.” In America’s Alternative Religions, edited by Timothy Miller, 393~99- Albany: State University of New York Press. Festinger, Leon, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. 1964. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. New York: Harper & Row. Flaherty, Robert Pearson. 1990. “Flying Saucers and the New Angelology: Mythic Projection of the Cold War and the Convergence of Opposites.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Flournoy, Theodor. 1900. From India to the Planet Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism with Glossolalia. New York: Harper & Brothers. Fowler, Raymond E. 1979. The Andreasson Affair. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Freud, Sigmund. 1957. The Future of an Illusion. New York: Anchor. Fuller, John. 1966. The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours “Aboard a Flying Saucer.” New York: Dial. Gaskin, Stephen. 1974. Hey Beatnik! This Is the Farm Book. Summertown, Tenn.: Book Publishing Company. Golowin, Sergius. 1967. Cotter der Atomzeit: Moderne Sagenbildung urn Raumschiffe und Sternenmenschen. Bern: Francke Verlag.

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Griinschloss, Andreas. 2003a. UFO Faith and Ufological Discourses in Germany. In UFO Religions, edited by Christopher Partridge, 179-93. London: Routledge. . 2003b. “When We Enter into My Father’s Spacecraft: Cargoistic Hopes and Millenarian Cosmologies in New Religious UFO Movements.” In Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions, edited by James R. Lewis, 7-42. Amherst: Prometheus. -. 2004. “Waiting for the ‘Big Beam’: UFO Religions and ‘Ufological’ Themes in New Religious Movements.” In The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, edited by James R. Lewis, 419—44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jacobs, David Michael. 1975. The UFO Controversy in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. -. 1992. Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon & Schuster. Jerusalem Bible: Reader’s Edition. 1966. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company. Jessup, Morris K. 1956. UFOs and the Bible. New York: Citadel. Jung, Carl Gustav. 1959. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. -. 1969. “Address to Second Colloquium of the Alliance Mondiale des Religions.” Quoted in Anges, demons et etre intermediares. Alliance Mondiale des Religions. Labergerie, France: Editions Labergerie. Keyhoe, Donald E. 1950. The Flying Saucers Are Real. New York: Fawcett. Kinder, Gary. Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier. 1987. New York: Simon & Schuster. Lackner, Chris. 2007. “Alien Technology the Best Hope to ‘Save our Planet’: Ex-Defence Boss.” Ottawa Citizen. 28 February. Available at www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/ Story.html?id=3e57926c-bfeb-4ff3-acf6-5oc575ee996c. Lanternari, Vittorio. 1962. “Messianism: Its Historical Origin and Morphology.” Journal of the History of Religions 2, no. 1: 52-72. Leadbeater, Charles. 1912. A Textbook of Theosophy. Adyar, India: Office of The Theosophist. -. 1925. The Masters and the Path: A Treatise on the Path to Perfection with Its Initiations and Ultimate Goal from a Theosophical Viewpoint. Adyar, India: Theosophical Publishing House. Leslie, Desmond, and George Adamski. 1977 [1953]. Flying Saucers Have Landed. New York: British Book Centre. Lewis, James R„ ed. 1995. The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State University of New York Press. -, ed. 2003a. Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions. Amherst: Prometheus. -, 2003b. “Legitimating Suicide: Heaven’s Gate and New Age Ideology.” In UFO Religions, edited by Christopher Partridge, 103-28. London: Routledge. Lewis, James R., and J. Gordon Melton, eds. 1994. Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholarly Perspective. Stanford, Calif.: Center for Academic Publication. Lifton, Robert Jay, and Richard Falk. 1982. Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case against Nuclear ism. New York: Basic. Lindsey, Hal. 1980. The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon. King of Prussia, Pa.: Westgate. Mack, John E. 1994. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. Rev. ed. New York: Ballantine. Mandelker, Scott. 1995. From Elsewhere: BeingE.T. in America. New York: Dell. Meerloo, Joost Abraham Maurits. 1968 [1949]. “Mass Suicide and Atomic Fear.” Delusion and Mass Delusion: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, no. 79. New York: Johnson Reprinting. Melton, J. Gordon. 1986. Biographical Dictionary of American Cult and Sect Leaders. New York: Garland.

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Amherst: Prometheus. -2006. “The Study of UFO Religions: Review Essay.” Nova Religio 10, no. 2 (November): 103-23.

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CHAPTER 31

MILLENNIUM, APOCALYPSE, AND AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE DOUGLAS E. COWAN

We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the Columbia Broadcasting System. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. Orson Welles, The War of The Worlds (1938)

The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too. “Sarah Connor,” Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

On Earth there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see paradise. “Benjamin Sisko,” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994) For hundreds of thousands of Americans, the world as they knew it ended on

Sunday, 30 October 1938, sometime between 8:00 and 9:00

p.m.

Eastern Standard

Time. Earlier that evening, terrifying invaders from Mars had landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, and begun laying waste to the countryside with a deadly heat ray and clouds of poisonous black smoke. According to what they believed was a real radio news broadcast, communication lines in the area were disrupted and military

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action against the Martian machines had proved useless. All along the eastern seaboard, highways were clogged with “frantic human traffic” (Welles 1938,23), and, in a desperate attempt to respond to the panic, martial law had been declared throughout New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. Fearful that the end had come, some of those allegedly interviewed during the broadcast were already seeking ref¬ uge in sewers, underground vaults and storerooms, railway tunnels, and subways— places to live once “the Martians own the earth” (Welles 1938,39). Of course, as was well known to anyone who listened to the entire broadcast, the Martians had not invaded that night, and New Jersey was safe. There was no heat ray, no poison gas; there were no indestructible alien war machines. Indeed, four times during the Mercury Theatre of the Air performance, CBS announcers assured listeners across the network that this was only a radio play adapted from H.G. Wells’s classic novel The War of the Worlds (2005/1898), and that no actual attack was under way. They repeated those assurances three more times throughout the late evening. Yet as Princeton psychologist Hadley Cantril and his colleagues pointed out in their study of the panic that ensued during the broadcast, well over a million people across the country were frightened enough to believe at some point that the end of the world was upon them. Telephone traffic in New Jersey increased significantly both during the broadcast and in the hours immediately following. CBS and its network affiliates received mail volume in some cases exceeding 500 percent of normal. Newspaper reporting, commentary, and op-ed pieces continued for nearly three weeks after the event (Cantril, Gaudet, and Herzog 1940,57-63). Arguably, however, the world did end that night—or, at least, the world as those who listened to the program, or who became caught up in the media commentary following, knew it. The War of the Worlds broadcast fused apocalyptic imagination and popular culture in a way unprecedented in human history, and if the nature of that relationship since then is any indication, we have not looked at the permanence of our world the same way since. Whether through radio, pulp fiction and comic books, cinema, television, and now video games and the Internet, mass entertainment products (as well as those who consume them, and the structural and functional relationships between the two—which, put broadly, is one way of defining “popular culture”) have proven a remarkably potent vehicle for representing the end of the world as we know it, for speculating on the various scenarios through which humanity might survive such a catastrophe (or not), and for reinforcing popular understandings about what that end would mean. At no point in history, in fact, have so many different visions of the apocalypse vied for our attention. Only with the advent of a mass-produced, mass-mediated, and multivalent popular culture has this variety of millennial dreams and apocalyptic nightmares become commonly available. Millennialism, writes Catherine Wessinger (2000, 6), “is an expression of the human hope for the achievement of permanent well-being, in other words, salvation”—although she is careful to point out that millennialism comes in differ¬ ent forms, some with progressive expectations and others with catastrophic expec¬ tations of the transition to that collective well-being (2000,16-17). Although the

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landscape of pop cultural eschatology does reveal some pockets of hope for a brighter future, some occasional dreams of “permanent well-being,” more often than not those dreams come wrapped in a wide range of nightmares. For every paradise envisioned by Star Trek, there are a multitude of postapocalyptic waste¬ lands; for every putative alien savior—from Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still, to the beneficent occupants of the mother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind—there are any number of invaders from outer (or inner) space.

Sociophobics and the Spectrum of Eschatology in American Popular Culture

Why was the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast so successful, or at least so effective at convincing many hundreds of thousands of listeners that the world as they knew it was coming to an end? Three reasons suggest themselves: (1) the primacy of story; (2) the confusion of narrative genres; and (3) the sociophobics of the American radio audience. First, there is the primacy of story as a means of communicating cultural mythologies and reinforcing cultural fears and prejudices. We are storytelling crea¬ tures, both individually and socially, and when we want to communicate something important, whether we consider it fiction or fact, we most often do so by means of a story. We use stories to educate and socialize our children. Writers “tell” stories through their novels, screenplays, and short fiction. Rather than treat the news like a stock market report and simply recite seemingly disconnected bits of information, journalists “have the story” or “report the story.” Indeed, reporters in all media learned very early that audiences are more easily captivated by information framed as narrative, and the more interesting and engaging the narrative frame the more likely audience members are to remain tuned to a particular station or reading a particular newspaper. Second, because stories are used to communicate both entertainment and information, and Orson Welles used the conventions of the latter to provide the thrills of the former, his listeners were caught in a profound confusion of narrative genres. Rather than the narrative and sound effect cues usually connected with radio drama, listeners heard the cues they normally associated with broadcast news—cutaways to different reporters, interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors, and broadcast interruptions for “special bulletins” on the situation. This confusion of radio theatre and broadcast journalism presaged the more intentional ambiguity between entertainment and information that marks a significant amount of televi¬ sion programming today. It augurs the kind of secondary media products that spe¬ cifically combine entertainment with information and speculation and support the plausibility of certain apocalyptic scenarios for particular target audiences.

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Third, and arguably most significant, through other forms of popular culture, segments of the American audiences at the time were already primed to resonate with the idea of an alien invasion. It was already part of the sociophobics of CBS’s listener demographics. Rather than treat fear as a psychological issue—which it cer¬ tainly is, but to which it is all too often restricted (see Hendershot 1999; Lucanio 1987)—the concept of sociophobics approaches both the nature of fear and the sub¬ stance of what we are conditioned to fear as primarily social phenomena. “It is impossible to understand fully what human fearing is,” writes David Scruton in his initial delineation of the topic, how fears happen in the individual, how they are expressed both to self and to others, how they are received and reacted to by others in the community, and what their function in our lives is unless we treat fearing as a function of cultural experience, which people participate in because they are members of specific societies at particular times. (Scruton 1986, 9; cf. Cowan 2008; Tudor 2003)

That listeners to the Mercury Theatre of the Air would be caught up in the idea of an alien invasion is not so difficult to understand when compared to the litany of other culturally reinforced fears, often labeled “urban legends,” that have been col¬ lected and catalogued by folklorists, sociologists, and anthropologists for many years (see, for example, Brunvard 1981; Glassner 1999; Victor 2003). In twentieth-century popular culture, the apocalypse was often imminent and the Millennium rarely secure. Indeed, for more than a decade prior to Welles’s broadcast, the “pulps”—cheap magazines featuring fantasy, speculative fiction, and later science fiction—offered the reading public a steady diet of potential catastro¬ phe. Weird Tales, for example, which was published between 1923 and 1951, intro¬ duced such authors as H. G. Wells, Sax Rohmer, H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Robert E. Howard to an American audience that devoured their stories and waited impatiently for each new issue (Smith 2000). Many of the apocalyptic themes that filmmakers would explore in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were presaged in the pages of Weird Tales and its pulp competitors. The cover story for the December 1926 issue, for example, was Edmond Hamilton’s “The Metal Giants,” a tale of technology gone out of control. Looking forward to films such as The Terminator (1984), Joseph Doolin’s cover art featured a giant robot (of the trash can” variety—torso, head, and limbs made from a variety of metal cylinders) smashing its way through a city as terrified humans ran away. In i927> the August issue of Amazing Stories, one of Weird Tales’ principal competitors, brought the specter of an alien invasion to its readers with an abridged version of The War of the Worlds.” Frank R. Paul’s cover painting depicted the Martian war machines much as Wells described them—gigantic tripods striding over the ground, laying waste with their deadly heat rays, and snatching up men and women from among the throngs fleeing before them. While the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs had already primed pop cultural audiences for the possibility of a civilization on the red planet (see Orth 1986), stories of an alien invasion appeared regularly in the pulps. From “Monsters of Mars” (Astounding Stories, April 1931) and “Doom from

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Planet 4” (Astounding Stories, July 1931) to “The Invaders” (Astounding Stories, June 1935), “The Raid from Mars” (Amazing Stories, March 1939), and “After World’s End” {Marvel Science Stories, February 1939), the threat of an alien invasion was already part of the pop cultural milieu upon which Welles drew and into which he broadcasted. Alien invasion, however, was only one doomsday scenario explored in the pulps. In Frank R. Paul s cover art for the January 1929 issue of Amazing Stories, for exam¬ ple, what appears at first as a giant tsunami breaking over the skyscrapers of New York is, in fact, an advancing glacier heralding the advent of a new ice age. Fess than two years later, the November 1930 issue of Weird Tales featured Katherine Metcalf Roof s A Million Years After,” the cover art for which depicted a monstrous dino¬ saur stalking the ruins of a deserted city, its giant foot poised to crush a white clap¬ board church. Feo Morey’s cover art for Garrett Serviss’s “The Second Deluge” {Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1933) portrayed those same New York buildings all but submerged. And, finally, presaging any number of mass extinction narra¬ tives, the cover art for Nathaniel Salisbury’s “The Moon Doom” {Wonder Stories, February 1933) featured the moon about to crash into New York—obviously the pulp quintessence of civilization—as massive lunar tidal waves destroy the city. There are a variety of ways to typologize pop cultural understandings of the end of the world as we know it. On the one hand, looking from pessimism to opti¬ mism, from the fear of apocalyptic catastrophe to the promise of millennial para¬ dise, we can organize the pop cultural spectrum of eschatology according to their humanistic teleologies, their respective visions of how things end for us. Since rela¬ tively few of these products end with the actual destruction of the Earth or the end of civilization—chilling exceptions being the final sequences in Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach (1959), Ted Post’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), and John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A. (1996)—“apocalypse” comes to means the threat of destruction and how that is resolved (see also chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, this vol¬ ume), and “post-apocalypse” the aftermath, the ways in which humanity has sur¬ vived and adapted following a less-than-complete catastrophe (see Mitchell 2001). On the other hand, we can catalogue the various end of the world scenarios accord¬ ing to the etiology of each particular apocalypse. Is it religious or supernatural in nature? Is the threat (or the hope) extraterrestrial, but not supernatural? Is it a product of human science that has passed beyond the limits of our moral or tech¬ nological control? Is it a naturally occurring apocalypse, a rhythmic purging, per¬ haps, that brings the planet back into balance? For much of this essay, since it relates more directly to the sociophobics of par¬ ticular audiences, I have chosen to concentrate on these four etiological themes, these four horsemen of the pop cultural apocalypse. Though use of this phrase may seem little more than a cheap pun here, it serves to remind us that in late modern popular culture the language of biblical apocalypticism has been deliberately disembedded from its religious context, and deployed as a free-floating signifier for the end of the world as we know it. Recent films such as Armageddon (1998), about a “global killer” asteroid on its way to Earth, and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004),

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about a bioweapon that threatens to destroy the human race, indicate how words with explicitly religious origins have been disengaged from their etymological and historical contexts and applied to more general global disasters. Rather than a mythological battle in the biblical book of Revelation or a technical term for a par¬ ticular genre of Jewish and Christian literature, they have been turned into advertis¬ ing catchphrases for catastrophic destruction.

Religious Eschatology: Apocalypse and Supernature Whether in cinema, popular literature, comic books, or even video games, reli¬ giously oriented eschatology relies on the inclusion of some supernatural agency as a principal constituent of the apocalyptic narrative. Since chapter 26 by Glenn Shuck in this volume deals extensively with evangelical apocalypticism, most nota¬ bly the Left Behind series of novels, films, websites, and so forth, I will concentrate on other visions of the supernaturally oriented end of the world, particularly those found in horror films and popular fiction. Once again, in the realm of popular cul¬ ture, there are relatively few examples of the peaceful “Age of Aquarius” ushering in the millennial dream, and far more cases of an apocalyptic nightmare that both reflects and reinforces the socially constructed fears on which those narratives are based. Like all apocalyptic narratives, those that rely on supernatural agency are predicated on an overthrow of the dominant order. Broadly put, this overthrow occurs in two ways: invasion or inversion—destruction from without or from within. One of the authors to whom the pulps introduced American audiences was H. R Lovecraft (1890-1937), who became one of the most influential horror writers of the twentieth century. Lovecraft’s prolific output of short fiction has spawned a plethora of films, comic books, music, art, fan conventions, role-playing and video games, shared world popular fiction, and even nascent new religions (see Cowan 2011). Many of Lovecraft’s stories—notably “Dagon” (1923), “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928), and The Dunwich Horror” (1929), the story for which he is arguably best known concern the Old Ones, a pantheon of elder gods who were forced aside by the advent of the biblical God and who wait impatiently for their chance to return and rule as once they did. In the context of a supernatural apocalypse, they constitute one example of the “invasive other.” Aided by shadowy cults and powerhungry magicians, these elder gods are constantly trying to force their way back to dominance. Although there is no altogether coherent world presented in Lovecraft’s fiction, there is enough coherence that enthusiasts have built on his stories and based worldviews of their own on them. Within the larger orbit of contemporary Paganism, for example, there are a number of emergent “Lovecraftian traditions” organized around the magical worldview contained in his work and the “shared world fiction that has followed. One of the central props in Lovecraft’s stories, the means by which the supernatural apocalypse would manifest and the Old Ones return, is The Necronomicon, an ancient book of evil spells and dark wisdom. Despite its entirely fictitious nature (see Cowan 2011; Harms and Gonce 2003), mass market

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copies of a book reputing to be The Necronomicon have appeared, and those who purport to practice Lovecraftian magic use it in their rituals. Contrary to the invasive other, which threatens the world as we know it from the outside, supernatural inversion overturns the dominant religious order from within. In North American popular culture, this dominant order is most often— though not exclusively—represented by Christianity. From films such as The Prophecy (1995), which tells the story of a “second war in heaven,” one led this time by the angel Gabriel, and The Omen series (1976), which some consider The Exorcist for Protestants, to more recent entries in the field such as Lost Souls (2000), The Order (2003), and even Arnold Schwartzenegger’s End of Days (1999), inversion narratives present the possibility of a new, satanic era rising to displace the Christian Church and usher in a reign of terror and darkness. Many of these films draw on and reflect popular conspiracy theories about the Roman Catholic Church. “They had their two thousand years,” says Father James, for example, in Janusz Kaminski’s Lost Souls; “Now it’s our turn.” Of particular interest here is the fact that Father James has posed his entire life as a Catholic priest, and that he and his satanic followers oper¬ ate from within the Roman Catholic Church itself, a fifth column for the coming of the Antichrist. Hardly a trope drawn in a cultural vacuum, the notion of a satanic conspiracy operating within the Church has been a staple of anti-Catholic propa¬ ganda since the Reformation, and continues today among both fundamentalist Protestants and some disgruntled Catholics angered at post-Vatican II reforms in the Church (see, for example, Martin 1996). Whether invasive or invertive, supernatural aspects of apocalyptic horror are often dismissed by critics as evidence of an increasing social secularization that trivializes and thereby denigrates “true” or “authentic” religious belief and practice (see, for example, Stone 2001). As I have suggested elsewhere, however, what this profusion of supernaturally oriented apocalypticism actually discloses is not the rejection of religion, but “an overwhelming ambivalence toward the religious tradi¬ tions, beliefs, practices, and mythistories by which we are confronted, in which we are often still deeply invested, which we are distinctly unwilling to relinquish, and which we just as often only minimally understand” (Cowan 2008,51).

Extraterrestrial Eschatology: Alien Apocalypse While some may consider aliens “gods from outer space,” in a very real way first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence will be the end of the world as we know it. Putting to rest forever debates about whether we are alone in the universe, the day after first contact can never look quite the same as the day just before. While there are examples in which alien contact is neither a blessing nor a curse, but merely an interstellar version of cultural interaction, three motifs have tended to dominate the pop cultural version of extraterrestrial eschatology: alien contact as a millennial event; as an apocalyptic event; and as a bridge between the two (see also chapter 30 by Robert Pearson Flaherty, this volume).

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In popular cinema and television, the advent of benevolent extraterrestrials has ranged from Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951; see Etherden 2005; Ruppersberg 1990), and BBC’s Dr. Who, the longest-running science fiction series in television history (since 1963), to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T., the Extraterrestrial (1982), from Ron Howard’s Cocoon (1985) to Robert Zemeckis’s Contact (1997); and from Peter Hyams’s 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) to the director’s cut of James Cameron’s The Abyss (1993). That benevolence, however, has come in a variety of forms. Though angelic-looking beings do invite Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) into the mother ship at the conclu¬ sion of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the nature of their beneficence is never made clear in the film. Similarly ambiguous is the initial encounter between Elbe Arroway (Jodie Foster) and the extraterrestrials in Contact. The overall experience of both films, however, leaves the audience hopeful, optimistic that first contact cannot but make the world a better place. Films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, on the other hand, and The Abyss, straddle the divide between Millennium and apocalypse. In these narratives, millen¬ nial hope comes only at the expense of apocalyptic threat. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, which won the 1952 Golden Globe award as the best film for “Promoting International Understanding,” the alien ambassador, Klaatu, solemnly warns human¬ kind that its appetite for aggression and self-destruction will not be tolerated in the galactic community. How we govern ourselves is inconsequential, he tells the assem¬ bled dignitaries in his final speech, but if our aggressive tendencies threaten other planets, “this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration” (Wise 1951). Similarly, in The Abyss, aliens who have been living in a marine abyssal trench demonstrate their power to end the world somewhat more dramatically. Also concerned that humankind’s rampant aggression will destroy itself (and them), they propagate global tidal waves of biblical proportion, then stop them just moments before they break on land. To all who witness the impending disaster, the warning is clear: this could have been the end, and it will be if things don’t change. In pulp science fiction, comic books, popular cinema, and now video games, threat of an alien apocalypse—the other side of the abyss, as it were—is far more prevalent than either of these other two motifs. As I pointed out above, from the 1920s to the 1950s scores of pulp science fiction stories presented the end of the world through alien invasion, and dozens of films followed suit. Just as the 1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast terrified hundreds of thousands of CBS listeners, George Pal’s 1953 production of The War of the Worlds shocked theatergoers who, caught in the paranoia of the early Cold War, were already wondering when death would rain from the sky. Since then, alien invasion has been a staple of pop culture. Like the supernaturally oriented apocalypse, alien invasion narratives can be cate¬ gorized in two ways: explicit and implicit. Explicit invasion narratives present Earth as the target of a coordinated, inten¬ tional attack by extraterrestrial forces, and the object of determined defense by a group of humans, who are either organized for that purpose or who come together

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on an ad hoc resistance basis. In addition to dozens of films premised on an explicit alien invasion, this motif has also translated well to television. In the BBC’s UFO series, for example, which ran for twenty-six episodes in 1970, Earth is threatened by aliens intent on harvesting humans for our body parts, and defended by a secret organization called SHADO (Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defense Organization). The American 1983 miniseries V (for the “Visitors”) played on the interrelated themes of invasion, collaboration, and resistance. Ys initial success led to a second miniseries and a television series, as well as a series of popular novels based on the premise of resistance to alien invasion. A decade later, Gene Roddenberry’s series Earth: Final Conflict (1997-2002) presented a similar, though considerably more nuanced invasion-collaboration-resistance narrative. Though it built up a loyal fan base, for multidimensional pop cultural impact Roddenberry’s series could not begin to compete with the phenomenal success of Chris Carter’s The X-Files, which ran for nine seasons from 1993 to 2003 (see Lavery, Hague, and Cartwright 1996). Clearly, the fears of invasion, colonization, and collaboration—especially when these are combined with suspicion over government collusion with extraterrestri¬ als, which is seen most clearly in The X-Files and its many imitators: Roswell (19992002), The 4400 (2004—2007), Taken (2002), Invasion (2005)—have never really absented themselves from the sociophobics of Western audiences. Implicit invasions occur almost accidentally, the extraterrestrial threat arriving less as an overt aggressor than an inadvertent intruder. If explicit invasion narratives probe the sociophobics of overwhelming force, implicit narratives focus on our individual fragility in the face of a singular foe. Though not as numerous as explicit invasion narratives, a number of these have become pop cultural icons. Edward Cahn’s It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), for example, tells the story of an alien who stows away aboard a spaceship sent to rescue the only survivor of the first Mars expedition. On the way to Earth, it gradually eliminates most of the crew, implicitly threatening the entire planet if it is not destroyed. While few might recog¬ nize it, this same story was the genesis of the enormously popular Alien franchise, which originated when the movie debuted two decades later and, like so many other pop cultural products, has grown to include comic books and graphic novels, popu¬ lar fiction, as well as model kits, toys, and video games. Designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger, this “alien” could not be more different than either E.T. or the mothership occupants in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Graphically representing the difference between the Millennium and the apocalypse, Giger’s creation has become synonymous with the dark menace from space. As Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) tells a corporate board of inquiry when they refuse to believe her concerns about the threat in Aliens: “God damn it, that’s not all! Because if one of those things gets down here then that will be all, then all this—this bullshit that you think is so impor¬ tant, you can just kiss all that goodbye” (Cameron 1986). Both explicitly and implicitly, the alien apocalypse has also been played for laughs in popular culture. Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (1980), for example, which became an enormously popular BBC series on both radio and television (though it translated less successfully to the large screen in 2005),

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begins with the destruction of Earth to make way for a new interstellar expressway. Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! (1996), on the other hand, is an homage to the alien inva¬ sion films of the 1950s. Videogames such as Destroy All Humans! (2005) are a similar homage, but one in which the gamer plays the role of an invading alien rather than an intrepid “man (or woman) in black” tasked with protecting the planet.

Scientific Eschatology: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” Whatever motif they follow, most alien invasion narratives feature science as one of the principal lines of defense against the alien apocalypse. Other narratives, how¬ ever, hold science—often in collusion with the military—either implicitly or explic¬ itly responsible for the end of the world as we know it. From computers that either threaten to or do take over the world (Colossus: The Forbin Project [1970]; The Terminator [1984]; The Matrix [1999]) to bioengineered plague and bioweaponry, (e.g., The Andromeda Strain [1971]; Outbreak [1995]; Resident Evil: Apocalypse), our ability to explore the world around us scientifically has come only at the price of potentially destroying that very world. No scientific threat, however, has been replayed so often in the popular culture of apocalypse as that of nuclear destruc¬ tion, whether as an accident (The China Syndrome [1979]; War Games [1983]), or as an act of war (On the Beach; Twilight’s Last Gleaming [1977]; The Day After [1983]; By Dawns Early Light [1990]). With the advent of nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War, sci¬ ence came into its own as the midwife of apocalypse. For the first time in its history, humankind had the ability to destroy itself utterly, and few in the technologized nations were left unaware of that fact. Shortly after the war, while some of the sci¬ ence fiction pulps touted the benefits of nuclear energy, others clearly feared its darker power. Meant for the short story “No Place to Go,” for example, Ed Valigursky’s cover art for the July 1953 issue of Amazing Stories is chilling. As a group of astro¬ nauts conduct scientific research on the moon, they look up in horror as the Earth blows up in the black sky above them. The epicenter is clearly over the Soviet Union and Communist China, and the entire continent is ripped away by the blast. Valigursky’s cover for the November 1957 issue shows the skyscrapers of Manhattan blowing up in similar fashion. Alex Schomburg’s cover for the August 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe Science Fiction depicts the head of the Statue of Liberty protrud¬ ing from a desert, as a group of flying saucers orbit the site. He reprised this image for the February 1964 issue of Amazing Stories, as did Howard Purcell for the cover art of the December 1966 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Though the cause of the world s destruction in each of these instances is left unclear, Franklin Schaffner’s use of the image in Planet of the Apes (1968) left no doubt. Throughout the film, astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) believes he is on a planet far distant from Earth, but in the final scene he discovers the awful truth. Finding the remains of the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand of a beach, he realizes

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that Earth is the planet of the apes and that humankind’s appetite for destruction was, indeed, its undoing. It is in these narratives that we often see explored the dis¬ tinction between “apocalypse” and “post-apocalypse,” the difference between the threat of destruction and the aftermath. While the plausibility of either a supernatural or extraterrestrial apocalypse is limited to particular segments of the population, the importance of the scientific apocalypse in popular culture is that the means by which it could manifest already exist. The United States alone possesses several hundred times the amount of nuclear weapons required to destroy life as we know it. Since the intimate relationships that exist between national governments, the scientific community, and the military are also well established, these apocalyptic scenarios require considerably less “willing suspension of disbelief” when presented to an audience. Although there is arguably little that can be done about either a supernatural or extraterrestrial apocalypse, these pop culture products serve as morality tales, warning us either implicitly or explicitly that we stand poised on the abyss.

Natural Eschatology: Mass Extinction Events In many pop cultural visions of the end of the world, science plays its most millen¬ nial role when faced with a natural apocalypse, a mass extinction event over which we have no control. From a rogue asteroid or large comet on collision course with Earth (When Worlds Collide; Armageddon; Deep Impact [1998]) to our own sun going Supernova (2004), and from catastrophic climate change (The Day after Tomorrow [2004]) to massive tectonic plate shift (20.5 [2004]), in these narratives science plays the roles of harbinger and hero. Scientists are generally the first to detect the threat and warn the authorities—warnings that, in many cases, go unheeded until the situation is critical—and the ones tasked to respond to the threat once its gravity has been realized. Contrary to the roles science often plays in the previous category, when faced with mass extinction events, science is presented as humankind’s last, best hope. Like the various scientific eschatologies discussed in the previous section, mass extinction events are also supported by a variety of scientific data and life experi¬ ences that increases their apocalyptic value for target audiences. Not only are some of these scenarios plausible; many scientists assure us they are inevitable (see also chapter 32 by Robin Globus and Bron Taylor, this volume). A common theory accounting for the extinction of the dinosaurs, of course, is cometary or asteroidal impact, the crater for which many scientists believe formed the Gulf of Mexico. Human production of greenhouse gases, combined with depletion of the ozone layer, is a factor in global warming, something many climatologists believe will eventually contribute to a catastrophic climate shift. As we have seen, through the pulps all of these scenarios have been part of popular culture for decades. Indeed, in October 1974, Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact, one of the few pulps to survive the popular advent of mass market paperback novels, devoted an entire issue to the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky (1950), whose work took literally ancient accounts of

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cataclysmic destruction but reinterpreted them as natural phenomena—specifically, the introduction of Venus into our solar system some thirty-five hundred years ago. While his ideas have been ridiculed by the scientific establishment since he first proposed them in the early 1950s, they have never gone completely out of vogue. More than any other, the mass extinction scenario reveals the underlying pur¬ pose behind the pop cultural apocalypse. Although disaster movies now regularly spend tens of millions of dollars on special effects alone, and these are obviously deemed part of a film’s success at the box office, it is important to remember that these kind of pop cultural representations of the apocalypse and the Millennium are only secondarily about the event itself. Primarily, they are about exploring the range of social responses to those scenarios. How do people react when faced with the end of the world? In Supernova, for example, Dr. Austin Shepherd (Peter Fonda), the scientist who discovers that our sun is about to explode, sends his data to a young colleague, then catches a plane for the South Seas, to spend the declining days of the planet surfing and drinking. In Deep Impact, on the other hand, while some characters seek to reconcile shattered relationships in the face of oblivion, others plan (however vainly) for humanity’s survival by building enormous underground shelters and then choosing who will live and who will die. Despite the sheer scale of devastation on which films in this category are based—they are, after all, mass extinction events—these are also among the most hopeful, the most millennial of the four categories. That is, with few exceptions (e.g., When Worlds Collide), Earth does survive and humanity does continue. Through the selfless efforts of the main characters, the asteroids in both Armageddon and Deep Impact are diverted and the Earth is saved; though solar ejecta do cause widespread destruction in Supernova, a flaw in the original scientific data demon¬ strates at the end that the sun will not explode—at least not now; the massive cli¬ mate shift in The Day after Tomorrow may have reshaped civilization as we know it, but the implication at the end of the film is that a global threat has brought about a new sense of global community and cooperation. Because their narratives are not based on the inherent suspicion that informs each of the other categories, natural eschatology allows for the emergence of a millennial dream from the apocalyptic nightmare.

“The End of the World as We Show It”: Delivering the Apocalypse Though hardly an ideal typology, these four categories do survey the landscape of apocalypse and Millennium in Western popular culture in a basic way. It is impor¬ tant to note, however, that, like all pop cultural products and phenomena, each scenario does not appeal equally across the audience spectrum. While many

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evangelical Christians are firmly attached to Dispensationalist millennialism, they just as firmly reject the possibility of alien contact, believing that human beings are alone and unique in the universe. Rather, each category has its own pop cultural niche. Each has an audience with which it resonates and on whose cultural stock of knowledge it draws. Thus, in addition to describing the range of pop cultural fears and hopes, individual categories describe the sociophobics (or sociospera, i.e., cul¬ turally constructed hopes [Cowan 2010]) of that particular audience. Finally, each has its own array of ancillary support structures that reinforce the appeal of a cer¬ tain scenario for a particular audience. Evangelical Christians reading Left Behind novels, for example, are rarely in any doubt about the outcome of apocalyptic narratives. Indeed, the entire realm of Christian Dispensational pop culture is not designed so much to explore the apoca¬ lypse and the Millennium but to reinforce preexisting evangelical and fundamental¬ ist Christian beliefs about them. From prophecy-oriented televangelism to a variety of Christian Endtime films, and from “prophecy Bibles” and study materials to online Left Behind discussion groups and video games—all of these products become part of the ongoing and mutually reinforcing cultural conversation that Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966) contend is crucial to the maintenance of plausibility structures that are not immediately obvious to an entire population. On the other hand, those for whom the idea of an alien apocalypse appeals have a similar ancillary support structure, a range of pop cultural products that implic¬ itly and explicitly blur the boundary between information and entertainment. The 1950s alien invasion narratives, for example, have often been interpreted as meta¬ phors for the American fear of communist invasion—either Russian or Chinese. Since, as we have seen, however, the motif far pre-dates the rise of the Cold War, it is difficult to argue for a strict interpretative equivalence. In the post-1947 UFO age—that is, in the decades following Ken Arnold’s sighting of nine “flying saucers” near Mount Ranier, and the alleged crash of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico—for millions of people the alien apocalypse has gradually changed from a metaphor for something else to a deeply held cultural fear of the thing itself. Though audiences recognize that Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996) is a fictional narrative, a number of secondary media products have emerged that reinforce the sociopho¬ bics of an alien invasion. The Internet, for example, has proven fertile ground for the propagation of conspiracy theories about alien contact and government coverups. Works of speculative nonfiction appear on bookstore shelves each year. And, in a confusion of genres similar to that experienced by CBS listeners in 1938, infotain¬ ment television of the “Unsolved Mystery” variety is delivered weekly on channels such as Arts and Entertainment, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel, and ranges from serious investigations of the UFO phenomena in all its aspects to shows that feign journalistic intent but do little more than hold UFO believers up to ridicule. While these kinds of mass media products are obviously not corroborating evidence for the reality of an alien invasion, they render its possibility more plausi¬ ble in the minds of pop culture consumers, who are already predisposed to believe that aliens are visiting our planet for nefarious purposes.

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Diversification and Audience in Popular Culture: The Case of JEon Flux In addition to infotainment television, some apocalyptic narratives are diversified across pop culture in different ways. The Resident Evil films, for example—which combine cultural fears of computers over which we have lost control, the imper¬ sonal power of transnational corporations, the threat of bioweapons research, and the millennia-old sociophobics of dying and not remaining dead—are based on a series of video games originally designed for the Sony PlayStation. In addition to the films, they have spawned a series of shared-world novels and comic books. Another dystopian plague narrative that has gone through a variety of pop cul¬ tural iterations is Mon Flux, one of a number of recent apocalyptic storylines that feature a beautiful, violent female savior figure. This particular example is instruc¬ tive for the polyvalent way in which its creators have diversified their product to appeal to a range of different consumers. Building on the sociophobics of pan¬ demic, the basic storyline for Mon Flux is that in 2011 c.e., a horrific plague, the “industrial disease,” wiped out 99 percent of the world’s population and that the remaining few million live in the walled city of Bregna, the last city on Earth. A scientist, Trevor Goodchild, is alleged to have developed a cure for the disease, but instead has ruled Bregna as a dynasty for four centuries. Ostensibly, Bregna is a paradise, but others see it as a gilded cage, and a resistance movement has risen to challenge the Goodchild empire. /Eon Flux is that movement’s top operative. Though Mon Flux was most recently made into a big-budget feature film (2005), it began as a ten-episode animated series for MTV that aired originally in 1995. Building on its popularity among the MTV viewer demographic, a graphic novel was released to accompany the series and fill in much of the backstory. When the feature film was released a decade later, it was accompanied by a video game and closely followed by another graphic novel. Two things are important to note about this pop cultural trajectory. First, as it moves from MTV shorts to a feature film, there is a distinct change in the overall narrative to conform to more traditional apocalyptic styles. Much more postmodern in its style and presentation, the origi¬ nal leaves the notion of apocalypse-resistance-resolution somewhat loose, telling Mon Flux’s story in an episodic, disconnected fashion. This matched the often dis¬ junctive performance style of rock videos on which a generation of MTV viewers have been raised. Hoping to appeal to a broader audience, as a film its narrative is more linear. It moves from apocalyptic problem to the possibility (though not the certainty) of millennial resolution in a fairly straightforward manner. Second, rather than simply offer viewers the chance to be entertained by the narrative of Mon Flux, through the tie-in video game they can participate in the salvation of the world as ^Fon Flux. Although the precise connections between these different forms of pop¬ ular culture remain to be explored and explicated, it is worth noting that they exist. In popular culture, the apocalypse is no longer monolithic, linked to a single cul¬ tural form, but is now polyvalent, reaching out to wider range of potential consumers.

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Finding Dreams in the Midst of Nightmares: Popular Culture and Apocalyptic Response The pop cultural apocalypse offers us four basic categories of resolution: millennial hopes are realized and a beneficent future unfolds; apocalypse is denied and we return to normalcy; apocalypse is delayed and we move to a state of heightened or renewed watchfulness; or, apocalypse is realized, and we face the possibility either of extinction or of life in a post-apocalyptic nightmare. If, as I contend, popular culture presents our apocalyptic nightmares far more often than our millennial dreams, one of the central questions researchers must explore further is, Why? Aside from the mass media axiom that “If it bleeds, it leads,” why do we seem so much more fasci¬ nated with threat than with promise? Is there a supply-side answer—apocalypse pre¬ vails because media producers overemphasize the negative—or a demand-side reason—media producers only give the audience what past experience shows them consumers want? While either argument alone is a fallacy of limited alternatives, I suggest that—however much we may try to deny them, minimize them, or privilege one over another—three basic principles underpin our approach to the future. First, we understand that human life is fragile. We are vulnerable and, as indi¬ viduals, remarkably easy to kill. We depend on our science, our weaponry, and not infrequently our gods, to survive in the most rudimentary situations. Indeed, we are not well equipped for survival apart from the tools we create to help us survive. Thus, our relationship to the future, both individually and collectively, is ambiva¬ lent at best. We want to hope for the best, but those hopes are always conditioned by the reality of our vulnerability—and our awareness of that reality. Second, we understand that human technology is fickle. It is a double-edged sword, and we know that, too. While not infrequently suitable for cutting down those who threaten our survival, it can quickly turn into that which threatens our survival. Each new technological age forges its own version of the double edge: nuclear energy brings both cancer treatment and radiation poisoning, while com¬ puter technology offers increased precision at the expense of human control. In each case, the brains that separate us from other animals also threaten to tear us apart. Third, we believe that the human spirit is strong, according to some narratives, indomitable. In apocalyptic narratives, this spirit is most obviously represented in the heroes and heroines on whom we are urged to focus and with whom we are encouraged to identify. Sometimes superheroes, sometimes saviors, we call upon them to rescue us from destruction, to turn the certainty of apocalypse into the pos¬ sibility of survival, if not necessarily Millennium. Though the nightmare seems more popular, it does hold dreams within it. In popular culture, since so few apocalyptic scenarios actually end in total destruction, this speaks to an underpinning belief in the possibility of the future.

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REFERENCES Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on

the Sociology of Knowledge. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin. Brunvard, Jan Harold. 1981. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their

Meanings. New York: W. W. Norton. Cameron, James, dir. 1986. Aliens. Written by James Cameron. Twentieth Century Fox. Cantril, Hadley, with Hazel Gaudet and Herta Herzog. 1940. The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Cowan, Douglas E. 2008. Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen. Waco: Baylor University Press. -. 2010. Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and

Television. Waco: Baylor University Press. -. 2011. “Dealing a New Religion: Material Culture, Divination, and Hyper-religious Innovation.” In The Brill Handbook of Hyper-real Religions, edited by Adam Possamai. Leiden: Brill. Etherden, Matthew. 2005. “‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’: 1950’s Sci-Fi, Religion and the Alien Messiah.” Journal of Religion and Film 9, no. 2; available at www.unomaha.edu/ jrf/Vol9No2/EtherdenEarthStill.htm. Accessed 21 March 2011. Glassner, Barry. 1999. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York: Basic. Harms, Daniel, and John Wisdom Gonce, III. 2003. The Necronomicon Files: The Truth

behind the Legend. Rev. ed. Boston: Weiser. Hendershot, Cyndy. 1999. Paranoia, the Bomb, and 1950s Science Fiction Films. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press. Lavery, David, Angela Hague, and Marla Cartwright, eds. 1996. Deny All Knowledge:

Reading The X-Files. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Lucanio, Patrick. 1987. Them or Us: Archetypal Interpretations of the Fifties Alien Invasion

Films. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Martin, Malachi. 1996. Windswept House: A Vatican Novel. New York: Doubleday. Mitchell, Charles P. 2001. A Guide to Apocalyptic Cinema. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. Orth, Michael. 1986. “Utopia in the Pulps: The Apocalyptic Pastoralism of Edgar Rice Burroughs.” Extrapolation 27, no. 3: 221-33. Ruppersberg, Hugh. 1990. “The Alien Messiah.” In Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and

Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, edited by Annette Kuhn, 32-38. London: Verso. Scruton, David L. 1986. “The Anthropology of an Emotion.” In Sociophobics: The

Anthropology of Fear, edited by David L. Scruton, 7-49. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. Smith, Erin A. 2000. “How the Other Half Read: Advertising, Working-Class Readers, and Pulp Magazines.” Book History 3: 204-30. Stone, Bryan. 2001. “The Sanctification of Fear: Images of the Religious in Horror Films.”

Journal of Religion and Film 5, no. 2; available at www.unomaha/jrf/sanctifi.htm. Accessed 21 March 2011. Tudor, Andrew. 2003. A (Macro) Sociology of Fear?” Sociological Review 51, no. 2: 238—56. Velikovsky, Immanuel. 1950. Worlds in Collision. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Victor, Jeffrey S. 1993. Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. Chicago:

Open Court. Welles, Orson, dir. 1938. The War of the Worlds. Mercury Theatre of the Air, written by Howard Koch. Radioplay in Hadley Cantril, Hazel Gaudet, and Herta Herzog, The

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Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic, 4-43. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Wells, H. G. 2005 [1898]. The War of the Worlds. Edited by Patrick Parrinder. London: Penguin. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000. “Introduction: The Interacting Dynamics of Millennial Beliefs, Persecution, and Violence.” In Millenialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 3—39. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Wise, Robert, dir. 1951. The Day the Earth Stood Still. Written by Edmund H. North. Twentieth Century Fox.

CHAPTER 32

ENVIRONMENTAL MILLENNIALISM ROBIN GLOBUS BRON TAYLOR

Environmental millennialism is not a native category—pessimistic environmen¬

talists may describe themselves as apocalyptic, but the term millennial or millennial¬ ism is generally restricted to scholarly analyses of the movement (e.g., Killingsworth and Palmer 1996; Taylor 2000a, 2000b; Lee 1995, 1997). Nevertheless, the term millennialism in its current scholarly usage can be applied meaningfully to aspects of the environmental movement. In its broadest sense, millennialism refers to a set of beliefs about the imminent future, foretelling either a dramatic improvement (redemptive or progressive millen¬ nialism) or a dramatic worsening (apocalypticism or catastrophic millennialism) of current conditions (Wessinger 1997,2000; see also chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 3 by W. Michael Ashcroft, both in this volume). Similarly, while environ¬ mental concern is premised on the study of Earth’s past and present, it is also deeply concerned about its future. Indeed, since the birth of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s, many environmentalists have warned that human-initiated damage to Earth’s living systems threatens to bring about a catastrophic end to the world as we know it,” a period that could include widespread human die-off, soci¬ etal or ecosystem collapses, and/or overwhelming onslaughts of natural disasters. Such predictions have spurred both pessimistic “doomster” prognostications, as well as strongly optimistic, utopian visions of an eco-friendly future, creating a phenom¬ enon that combines elements of both progressive and catastrophic millennialism.1 Because of environmentalism’s parallels with other forms of millennialism, it has often been included in studies of millennialism and apocalypticism (e.g., Barkun

ENVIRONMENTAL MILLENNIALISM

629

1983; Daniels 1999; Kyle 1998; Lee 1997; Taylor 2000b; Wojcik 1997).. However, few studies have explored what place its unique combination of scientific influences and religious elements gives it among millennial movements at large.2 Is it primarily a secular movement in a historically religious genre, or is it more closely related to religious millennial movements with only superficially secular elements? In this arti¬ cle, we argue against attempting to force environmental millennialism into either category, finding instead that the wide variety of cultural production associated with the movement is better understood as spanning a broad continuum from secular to religious. This perspective gives a fuller picture of environmental millennialism’s continuities with as well as its divergences from other forms of millennialism.

History

Origins and Development In the West people have feared environmental catastrophe and decay since ancient times, but it has only been in the twentieth century that evidence of detrimental anthropogenic environmental impact has mounted. Thus, while it is possible to trace environment-related fears back many centuries, the story of environmental millen¬ nialism is best told not only as a history of catastrophic speculation, but also as a history of changes to the Earth and a gradually growing awareness of the potentially dire implications of these changes. Apocalyptic themes may be as old as time, that is, but the specific factors driving the environmental millennialism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are unique to the era from which they derive. Early fears related to the environment focused on decay and senescence in nature, yet while human sin was sometimes thought to be causing natural decline, humans themselves were not thought to be direct agents of this deterioration. In truth, Europeans had vastly altered their ecosystems (Hughes 2001), but the rate and scale of these changes was minor in comparison with those of the industrial and postindustrial eras (Ecosystems and Human Well-being 2005,26). Thus it is not sur¬ prising that, up until the 1800s, anthropogenic environmental changes were rarely perceived to be detrimental or dangerous. In the early nineteenth century, advances in science and technology led to the rise of the idea of progress, which encouraged dominance of nature for human benefit. At the same time, evidence was beginning to mount of large-scale environ¬ mental destruction, and some Romantics of the period argued that overweening faith in humankinds mastery over nature would lead to catastrophe. Popular dur¬ ing this era were so-called “last man” novels, which portrayed human extinction as a result of destroying nature’s balance (Lewis 1992,316). In the United States, authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

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were particularly strident critics of industrialism and its destructive forces. Linking nature to positive values such as vitality and American identity and nationhood, they began to agitate for its preservation (Nash 1967). Emerson and Thoreau were also pivotal in the development of a new strand of nature-focused religiosity, a theological endeavor that was to deeply influence many environmental millennialists of the late twentieth century. Until this point, environment-related fears had not yet been established scien¬ tifically, nor causally linked to human action. The first work to make this connec¬ tion, and thus truly to fit into the category of environmental millennialism, was George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature (2003/1864), which warned that human actions were catastrophically and irreversibly damaging the environment, and that such damage could have disastrous consequences for civilization. Linking the fall of the Roman Empire to incautious use of natural resources, and observing the many ways in which Americans were similarly altering their natural environment, Marsh warned that “we are, even now, breaking up the floor and wainscoting and doors and window frames of our dwelling, for fuel to warm our bodies and seethe our potage, and the world cannot afford to wait till the slow and sure progress of exact science has taught it a better economy” (Marsh 2003/1864, 52). Whereas naturerelated apocalypticism before Marsh did not blame humans for environmental decline, Marsh marked a growing awareness of human impact on the natural world, as well as a growing concern that controlling this impact was the only way human life could continue. In a conditional style that was to be borrowed by millennialists of the century to come, he concluded, “If man is destined to inhabit the earth much longer... he will learn to put a wiser estimate on the works of creation” (2003/1864, 112, emphasis added). The era of environmental millennialism had begun.

The Birth of the Environmental Movement In the hundred years between the publication of Man and Nature and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a number of books with environmentally apocalyptic themes appeared. Yet, for a number of reasons, none of these books came close to the alarm-raising success of Silent Spring, which virtually exploded onto the scene in 1962 and spurred the birth of the political and social movement now known as environmentalism.3 Silent Spring's principal aim was to warn Americans of the potentially cata¬ strophic side effects of pesticides, which had become a booming industry in the post-World War II era. Employing apocalyptic language from the outset, the book opened by quoting Albert Schweitzer’s warning “Man has lost the capacity to fore¬ see and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth” (Carson 2002/1962). It then proceeded with a post-apocalyptic fable of a world in which birds and all living things had been silenced. Calling pesticides “the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life

(2002/1962, 6), Carson argued that the chemical industry’s “war against

nature” was bringing humankind to the brink of self-destruction. Like the

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Romantics, Carson believed hubris and arrogance were root causes of environ¬ mental degradation, and she urgently advocated moving away from chemicals and toward “biological” solutions that would work with, rather than against, natural ecological process. Like Marsh and the environmental millennialists who followed her, Carson gathered a great deal of scientific evidence to support her claims. However, it was not just scientific evidence that made Carson’s work credible and disturbing. Significantly, by linking nuclear and chemical contamination, Carson was able to transfer some of the momentum created by Cold War fears of nuclear apocalypse to the new environmental movement. Indeed, her book was popular not only because Carson was an eloquent and well-known writer, but also because it “tapped into...the public’s growing uneasiness over science and the military in the Cold War Era, when the threat of Armageddon seemed ever more real” (Killingsworth and Palmer 1996, 27). Much of the apocalypticism associated with the nuclear era also bled into the environmental fears of the time, such that nuclear and environ¬ mental apocalypticism have often been considered together as examples of a more general secular apocalypticism of the era (e.g., Barkun 1983; Bull 1995; Daniels 1999)Environmentalism of the 1960s inherited the mantle of the early twentiethcentury conservationists and preservationists who had fought to protect wilderness. While it was similarly concerned with nature, however, it included a stronger apoca¬ lyptic element and a much broader range of concerns than simply preserving wild areas. Whereas conservationists had argued that wilderness preservation was neces¬ sary for spiritual and mental health and aesthetic pleasure, environmentalists were much more likely to claim that humans were degrading ecosystems and the bio¬ sphere in ways that could put human survival itself at risk. For example, one of the best-known apocalyptic books of the era, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), argued that “the birthrate must be brought into balance with the death rate or man¬ kind will breed itself into oblivion” (xi). At a more general level, environmentalists’ tendency to focus on the threat ecological destruction posed to human life—which was also what led observers to begin to label it “apocalyptic”—was one of the prin¬ cipal reasons it gained a mainstream audience. Only a minority of people had been concerned about wilderness, whereas a much larger number were concerned about human survival. Another best-selling apocalyptic book of the era was The Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972), which attempted to understand the long¬ term trajectory of a number of global trends relating to human health and well¬ being, including industrialization, population growth, malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment. Its disturbing conclu¬ sion was that if trends continued, the world’s economic and social systems would collapse sometime during the twenty-first century.4 Like The Population Bomb, The Limits to Growth was deeply concerned with the cumulative effects and long-term impact of human actions on the entire planet. Both of these books thus marked a shift toward a more global concern in environmental discourse.

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Similar to other millennial movements, environmental millennialists’ warnings about imminent catastrophe were often accompanied by calls for social transfor¬ mation. Building on widespread concern about population issues, Garrett Hardin argued in “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968) that strong societal control— “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon”—was the only way to prevent humans from squandering the earth’s natural resources. Even more controversially, he artic¬ ulated a “Lifeboat Ethics” (1974), arguing that nations should refuse to provide aid to countries that failed to reduce human numbers. The field of social ecology, which blamed ecological problems on authoritarian, hierarchical, and exploitative institu¬ tions, also contributed to the growing body of environment-based social critique (Clark 2005,1569). Although the mood was often starkly pessimistic during this time, some pro¬ gressive millennial thinking existed as well. Ernest Callenbach’s best-selling novel Ecotopia (1975) envisioned a radically restructured utopian society based on eco¬ logical principles. Progressive millennial themes were also reflected to some degree in the “Back to the Land” and commune movements of the 1960s and 1970s. With a number of apocalyptic works in print and the mainstream media increasingly covering a range of environmental problems, environmental millennialism began to gain numerous converts, whose beliefs and commitments were to evolve into an enduring cultural phenomenon in the decades to come.

The Growth of Nature-Related Religiosity The 1960s were watershed years for nature-related religiosity (Pike 2004). In an era of rapid cultural change, many members of the counterculture blended nonWestern and occult traditions with psychedelic experimentation, free love, and self-inquiry. Such experimentation deeply shaped the emerging environmental movement and the spirituality associated with it. The turn toward non-Western religious traditions was further encouraged by the work of Lynn White, Jr., a histo¬ rian who famously blamed Christianity for sanctioning the exploitation of nature (White 1967). In response, many environmentally concerned individuals of the era began to turn to non-Western religions such as Buddhism or Daoism, which were considered to be more nature-friendly. Others left organized religion altogether in favor of evolving nature-friendly spiritualities such as New Age religion (see chap¬ ter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume) and Paganism.5 Many practitioners within these emerging traditions attempted to emulate Native Americans religious practices and lifeways, in light of the latter’s perceived harmony with nature (Pike 2004, 82). Premised on environment-related fears, the religiosity of the 1960s and 1970s included both hopeful and pessimistic narratives, and practitioners conceived of their religious activities and Earth-honoring lifeways as playing an important role in the quest to avoid catastrophe. These decades were thus not only important for the development of apocalyptic environmentalism, but also for the birth and revi¬ talization of religiosity that took ecology and the environmental crisis seriously.

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Apocalyptic Backlash and the Spread of Environmentalism During the 1980s tensions increased in the United States with Ronald Reagan’s elec¬ tion to the presidency, for he and his allies dismissed “alarmist” predictions about the earth’s fragile ecology and were therefore widely viewed as anti-environmental. A significant portion of the anti-environmental rhetoric advanced in the public sphere during this period attempted to portray environmental predictions as forms of religious prophecy, a strategy that relied on the public’s general association of millennial thinking with failed predictions, delusional thinking, violence, and anti¬ social behavior. By the end of the 1970s, according to one study, environmentalists were “regularly and extravagantly vilified as pathological crisis-mongers, Chicken Littles, apocalypse abusers, false prophets, puritanical doomsters, chic-apocalyptic primitives, sufferers from an Armageddon complex, and toxic terrorists” (Buell 2003,20). Outside of scholarly analysis, then, terms relating to millennialism played an active role in structuring how the movement was perceived by the public. The year 1980 also marked the founding of the best-known branch of the radical environmental movement Earth First! Deeply concerned about species extinction and the loss of wilderness, Earth Firstlers experimented with a number of direct action techniques to resist environmental degradation, such as “tree sitting,” road blockades, and—most controversially—“ecotage” or environmental sabotage. Though its con¬ cerns were based on scientific evidence of environmental decline, the movement also had a number of recognizably religious elements, including affirmations of the Earth’s sacrality and the interconnectedness of all life, various forms of Pagan, New Age, or Native American-influenced ritualization, and an apocalyptic eschatology (Taylor 1991,1994). While sometimes serving as a polarizing influence, the movement’s highprofile activities nevertheless succeeded in raising public awareness and in expanding the range of debate over environmental issues. During the second half of the twentieth century, environmentalism continued to spread through American culture. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. At the international level the Brundtland Report was published in 1987, and a series of envi¬ ronmental meetings under the auspices of the United Nations took place, including the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. Such meetings demonstrated growing international con¬ cern about environmental problems, a concern often couched in apocalyptic lan¬ guage. The Brundtland Report, for example, warned of “urgent but complex problems bearing on our very survival” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, xi), implying that the human species might be at risk of extinc¬ tion due to environmental degradation. As this wording suggests, millennialism was becoming a common rhetorical device in environmental discourse.

Climate Change and the Deteriorating Global Environment Starting in the late 1980s, fears of dramatic anthropogenic climate change began to ascend as a central environmental concern. In his widely read The End of Nature (1989), the environmental writer Bill McKibben argued that with the advent of

634

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global warming nature was no longer autonomous from humankind, a change that had potentially catastrophic implications: This is, I suppose, the victory we have been pointing to at least since the eviction from Eden—the domination some have always dreamed of. But... the power looks nothing like what we thought it would.... We are able to wreak violence with great efficiency and to destroy all that is good and worthwhile, but not to exercise power to any real end. And, ultimately, that violence threatens us. (1989: 84)

While the general public remained confused about the science behind it, climate change became increasingly well-known and widely feared in subsequent years. In 2006 Americans ranked global warming as the worst environmental problem the world faced, and 35 percent thought it would pose a threat in their lifetimes (Nisbet and Myers 2007,456). Such fears among the public were heavily influenced by media portrayals of the situation (e.g., Boykoff 2007). In 2007, after decades of debate on the topic, the United Nation’s Inter¬ governmental Panel on Climate Change finally unequivocally affirmed the scientific consensus that climate change was real and human caused. Later that same year, this consensus apocalypticism spread further when the panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize with A1 Gore, the former U.S. vice president and long-term prophet of climate crisis. For the first time in history an apocalyptic fear, grounded in consensus sci¬ ence, had gained international visibility and legitimacy. Although sometimes overshadowed by climate change, evidence for many of the other impending disasters early environmentalists had identified continued to mount. Echoing some of the conclusions of The Limits to Growth, for example, grave concern over “peak oil,” the point after which world oil production will decline, rose sharply in the 2000s among both scientists and laypeople (Savinar 2008; Silverman 2004). Additionally, in 2005 a United Nations-sponsored study known as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which was researched and com¬ piled by over two thousand scientists and reviewers worldwide, observed that humans are fundamentally, and to a significant extent irreversibly, changing the diversity of life on earth (Ecosystems and Human Well-Being 2005, 4). Additional detrimental impacts the report identified included “increased risk of nonlinear changes as well as the loss of ecosystem services and increased poverty for some groups (Ecosystems and Human Well-Being 2005,1). Other studies have projected millions of human refugees and an increased risk of extinction for 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species as sea levels rise (IPCC 2007,7, u), as well as increased potential for conflict over diminishing resources resulting from anthropogenic environmental change (Schneider et al. 2007,787). After many years of debate, these studies finally demonstrated near-consensus among scientists worldwide that human beings were causing environmental changes so profound that they were rapidly ending the world as modern humans had known it. Originally a philosophical concern with little hard evidence, fears of environ¬ mental catastrophe had thus become a global preoccupation, engaging some of the best scientific minds of the era and engendering a broad stream of cultural produc¬ tion with both secular and religious millennial elements.

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Characteristics of Environmental Millennialism What features do environmental millennialists have in common? The kinds of cul¬ tural expressions that have resulted from evidence of imminent, catastrophic envi¬ ronmental decline are highly varied. Yet there are common themes across this diversity. In this section we attempt to make some general comments about the characteristics of environmental millennialism, while also recognizing that indi¬ vidual cases do not necessarily contain all such characteristics. Rather than being exhaustive, this section highlights some of the salient features of environmental millennialism, while also showing how it parallels and diverges from other forms of millennialism. Environmental millennialists are united in the belief that we are in the midst of an anthropogenic environmental crisis. While different forms of environmental millennialism conceive of the crisis in different terms, two characteristics are com¬ mon across the continuum: the use of the scientific method to understand the pros¬ pect of apocalypse and belief in an indeterminate future. Additionally, there are two major narratives regarding the inevitability of catastrophe. In the first, human agency is affirmed and averting disaster is considered to be an obligation of para¬ mount importance. In the second, more common among some radical environ¬ mentalists, New Agers and Pagans, catastrophe is seen as necessary before healing can take place (Pike 2004,147; Taylor 1994,201). These characteristics form the basis of environmental millennialism and also help distinguish it from other millennial expressions.

The Scientific Method Many millennialists draw their ideas of imminent apocalypse from prophecy or the interpretation of sacred texts. Most environmental millennialists, by contrast, rely primarily on predictions made using scientific methods. Additionally, while some scholars have argued that millennialism is a result of group psychology (e.g., Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter 1956), such theories cannot explain environmen¬ tal millennialism. Scientific studies have not only documented the extensive humanwrought changes to Earth’s biotic and abiotic systems, but they have also shown that many of the changes have increased since the Industrial Revolution and that the rate of increase has accelerated even more during the past fifty years (Ecosystems and Human Well-being 2005,26), a time line that coincides roughly with the rise of environmental millennialism. Environmental millennialism is thus tied to, and based upon, physical changes to the Earth’s systems as described by science, a pri¬ mary distinction between it and other forms of millennialism. Scientific information is important not only to secular environmental millen¬ nialists, but to their religious counterparts as well. For example, according to the prominent Pagan writer and activist Starhawk (2007), “Pagans have no trouble

636

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believing what all reputable scientists are telling us: Human activity has altered the carbon balance of the atmosphere, and unless we make major changes very soon...we will suffer unimaginable losses.” Religious millennialists often combine such scientific evidence with nonscientific sources. As Starhawk continued, “We already see changes in our local weather, and the messages we receive in meditation, in prayer, and in dreams are telling us the same thing.” Information from nonscien¬ tific sources thus blends with scientific evidence to form a single catastrophic pic¬ ture. In a similar vein, the ecologically minded New Age gardener and author Machaelle Small Wright ([2008]) has supported her claims of a coming global health crisis by linking to “The Charlie Rose Science Series,” the World Health Organization, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on her website. Both secular and religious environmentalists are thus attentive to scientific infor¬ mation about Earths changing systems, although the relative importance they place on such sources varies.

The Indeterminate Future While in many forms of millennialism believers hold that a particular future is inevitable because it has been foretold, environmental millennialists—even very pessimistic ones—are much more likely to believe in an indeterminate future. As Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote, “Even at this late date, there remains a chance that civilization can alter its headlong rush toward the brink, that Earth can be healed, and that our descendants could live lives of plenty, dignity, and peace” (1991, xiv). Others worry that in light of current trajectories catastrophe is inevitable, yet, as one such author put it, Our best bet is to act as if we believed we have already over¬ shot [the Earths ecological limits].... If a crash should prove to be avoidable after all, a global strategy of trying to moderate the expected crash is the strategy most likely to avert it (Catton 1982,266). Thus even for those who are convinced collapse is imminent, the future is (in theory at least) alterable. Some religious environmental millennialists believe in prophecy, which sug¬ gests an element of determinism. However, such prophecy is often stated in con¬ ditional rather than absolute terms. For example, a group of indigenous women elders called the Grandmothers, known through their book Grandmothers Counsel the World (2006) and through presentations at the prominent environmental

activist event known as the Bioneers Conference (2007), has been active in syn¬ thesizing environmental concerns with religious belief (see chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik and chapter 23 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee, both in this volume). In their words, the Hopi...call our times the Purification Times, and prophecies speak about the cleansing of the Earth. Some of the worldwide environmental changes that have been foretold in native prophecy have already come to pass: the greenhouse effect, changes in the seasons and in the weather, famine, disease, the disappearance of wildlife, and the hole in the ozone layer. (Schaefer 2006,119)

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Rather than arguing that catastrophe was therefore inevitable, the Grandmothers indicated that humanity had a choice: “All the Grandmothers believe we must develop a different relationship with Creation itself, or else humanity will continue in a fragmented and dangerous direction, and there will be no hope for turning our troubles around” (Schaefer 2006,121). Despite the threat of environmental catastro¬ phe, for the Grandmothers the future remained open, awaiting humanity’s next steps. This interpretation of the future is common because most environmentalists blame humans for the environmental crisis, and thus conclude that catastrophe may be avoided if humans learn to behave properly.

Narratives of Catastrophe Because environmentalists believe that humans have precipitated the environmen¬ tal crisis, most believe that they are also morally responsible for arresting and revers¬ ing it. The activist impulse is thus a strong theme, whether it is expressed in eco-friendly lifestyle choices, voting preferences, direct action campaigns, spiritual¬ ity, or any number of other environmental activities, including ecological restora¬ tion projects. For such environmentalists catastrophe can be avoided if humans make a concerted effort to change their behavior. As the lead author of The Limits to Growth, Donella Meadows, put it: There are real wolves out there. I happen to believe my computer model when it says that the End-Of-The-World-As-We-Know-It is not only a possibility, but a high probability. I think we are headed for disaster. But that thought does not thrill me.... Rather it energizes me to work toward a vision of a World-ThatWorks-For-Everyone.... The worst wolves, really, are the imaginary ones inside our own heads.

(Meadows 1999/2000,111) In this “activist” narrative, environmental problems are potentially catastrophic, but humans, if they can conquer their fear and apathy, may rise to the occasion and solve them. The activist narrative contrasts markedly with the typical millennial vision in which the anticipated “end” is the object of great excitement. Indeed, activist environmentalists foresee little benefit to environmental catastrophe, and cer¬ tainly not one of redemptive justice. Not only could it lead to the irreversible reduction of Earth’s biodiversity (already under way), but it would also likely harm those who have contributed least to environmental problems, such as the many millions of the world’s poor who live in coastal communities threatened by rising sea levels. While an activist vision guides many environmentalists, some radical environ¬ mentalists, Pagans, and New Agers adopt a more fatalistic attitude. For them, it is either too late to solve the Earth’s problems no matter what humans do, or humans are too greedy and short-sighted to make the necessary changes in time. When dis¬ cussing the problem of “overpopulation,” for example, which he saw as the root of

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environmental problems, Earth First! activist James Barnes argued: “As usual, we can expect greed and chaos to turn a bad situation into sheer hell.... There are those who think that human-population collapse cannot happen. That’s wishful think¬ ing” (1997,13).6 In this narrative, the future—the collapse of industrial civilization and “dieback” to sustainable population levels—looks undeniably bleak. For others, however, catastrophe could be a good thing. As Edward Abbey, the southwestern writer whose works inspired many radical environmentalists, once wrote: I predict that the military-industrial state will disappear from the surface of the earth within a century. That belief is the basis of my inherent optimism, the source of my hope for the restoration of a higher civilization: scattered human populations modest in number that live by fishing, hunting, food gathering, small-scale farming and ranching. (1978,28)

In contrast to the activist narrative, this “catastrophist” narrative parallels non-environmental forms of millennialism more closely by happily anticipating a kind of post-apocalyptic “redemption” in the form of revitalized, Earth-friendly human societies and restored ecological health. Many New Agers and Neopagans also share the belief that a catastrophe—often described as a cleansing or purification—is necessary before more Earth-friendly lifeways can be established (see chapter 29 by Phillip Charles Lucas, this volume). According to the New Age teacher and Ojibwa Indian Sun Bear (1929-92): There will come a time of great destruction of the Earth. The wise people will know what to do and will move in a sacred manner to make the changes necessary for their own survival and for the survival of others. Those who do survive will be the people who have studied prophecies and who have learned how to hear the earth. (Quoted in Pike 2004,147-48)

The cleansing is necessary because “too many humans have become out of balance on the Earth Mother,” Sun Bear maintains, adding that those who remain afterward will have to “relearn the language of nature” (Pike 2004,148). Many Pagans also believe that cataclysm is necessary to make way for the cre¬ ation of more Earth-honoring societies. For example, during field research among Wiccans (Wicca, more popularly called Witchcraft, is a form of Paganism), Shawn Arthur found that his contacts “shared a common perspective of the Earth Goddess Gaia causing natural disasters as an intervention on behalf of‘life itself’ in order to save those living things—including environmentally concerned Wiccans—which intuitively reflect natural balances and tendencies’” (2008,205). In this catastroph¬ ist narrative, also reflected in Sun Bear s vision, not only is disaster necessary, but those who honor and respect the Earth are the ones who are expected to survive the cataclysm. This narrative thus parallels those forms of millennialism that expect believers to be rewarded after the sinful world has been destroyed. Environmental millennialism clearly has some similarities with other forms of millennialism, yet, as this section has revealed, its differences are also substantial. Perhaps most significantly, its scientific basis and secular premises have enabled it

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to be credible to the secular mainstream. Environmental millennialism is thus unique in being a response not of the politically oppressed, but of the ecologically well-informed.

Forms of Environmental Millennialism While environmental millennialism shares certain features across its many forms, it also contains a great deal of diversity. Because one of the principal ways in which it varies is in the extent to which religious resources are used, this section more closely examines three examples of millennialism that vary along this continuum. Doing so will give a better sense of the ways in which environmental millennialism straddles the secular-religious divide, for unlike most non-environmental forms of millen¬ nialism, it is not rooted in adherence to a particular religious or secular worldview, but rather united by the common perception of impending this-worldly ecological disaster. The ways in which people have responded to this perception of danger have thus, naturally, been as varied as are the people themselves.

James Lovelock’s Secular Apocalypticism James Lovelock (b. 1919) is best known for codeveloping the Gaia Hypothesis, the theory that the Earth is a self-regulating system whose goal is to maintain condi¬ tions favorable for life (2006, 162). Since its articulation in the early 1970s, the hypothesis has been popular among those New Agers, Pagans, and nature mystics who have taken it to imply scientific grounding for their intuitions that the Earth is a single living entity (Monaghan 2005, 679). In his book The Revenge of Gaia Lovelock uses this notion to dramatize his apocalyptic beliefs about the Earth’s future in light of climate change: It is not pushing the metaphor too far to consider anything alive as either healthy or diseased.... The climate centers around the world, which are the equivalent of pathology labs in hospitals, have reported the Earth’s physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as intimate members of the Earth’s family, that civilization is in grave danger. (2006, xiii)

He has, however, repeatedly reminded readers that he does not ascribe to a literal interpretation of Gaia as a deity: “You will notice I am continuing to use the meta¬ phor of‘the living Earth’ for Gaia, but do not assume that I am thinking of the Earth as alive in a sentient way” (2006,16). Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that Lovelock appreciates the importance of religious belief. Indeed, when examining his conception of Gaia more closely, it seems that he may think of it as having religious (or equivalent to religious) value:

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“I am a scientist and think in terms of probabilities not certainties and so I am an agnostic. But there is a deep need in all of us for trust in something larger than our¬ selves, and I put my trust in Gaia” (2006,148). For him, such belief is not “religious,” yet he frequently implies that it plays a similar role: “In its time the Bible set the constraints for behavior and for health. We need a new book like the Bible that would serve in the same way but acknowledge science” (2006,158). Moreover, when considering the role of deep ecology, a stream of philosophy arguing that nature has intrinsic worth, he suggests that, “just as civilization ultimately benefited in the ear¬ lier dark ages from the example of those with faith in God, so we might benefit from those brave deep ecologists with trust in Gaia” (2006,154). It seems, thus, that the notion of Gaia serves a religious or quasi-religious role in Lovelock’s thought. At the core of his interest in religion is an appreciation for its role in encourag¬ ing more ecologically beneficent behavior. “Those with faith,” he recommends, “should look again at our Earthly home and see it as a holy place, part of God’s creation, but something that we have desecrated” (2006, 2-3). As for those not per¬ suaded by religion, Gaia theory can encourage pro-environmental behavior while also remaining scientifically credible: “As a scientist I know that Gaia theory is pro¬ visional and likely to be displaced by a larger and more complete view of the Earth. But for now I see it as the seed from which an instinctive environmentalism can grow; one that would instantly reveal planetary health or disease and help sustain a healthy world” (2006,139). Thus, while advocating this-worldly solutions (such as a turn toward nuclear energy), Lovelock also emphasizes the importance of attaining an Earth-centered worldview that will guide people’s behavior in a proenvironmental direction.7 As an agnostic and a scientist, Lovelock’s own environmental millennialism is secular. However, as an apocalyptic ascribing to an “activist” narrative of catastro¬ phe, he recognizes that religious or quasi-religious belief systems may play a role in averting catastrophe. His work thus demonstrates one way in which the secular and the religious may mingle in environmental millennial discourse.

Al Gore’s Spiritual Solution A1 Gore (b. 1948) had become widely known around the world for raising public awareness about the potentially disastrous consequences of climate change well before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. His 2006 Academy Award¬ winning documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, details the science behind climate change and lays out a strong case for immediate, concerted action to reduce global carbon emissions. Less widely known are his beliefs, most fully elaborated in his best-selling book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (1992), about what role religion may play in the quest to solve this looming planetary crisis. Throughout the book, Gore demonstrates deep concern not just about climate change, but about the suite of environmental problems that plague the modern world. In his words, Modern industrial civilization... is colliding violently with our

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planet’s ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on the earth is breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them (1992, 269). In contemplating how these problems arose, however, Gore does not merely recount the history of human-wrought environmental change. Rather, he seeks deeper causes of such problems, ultimately locating them within the sphere of religious belief: I have... come to believe that the world’s ecological balance depends on more than just our ability to restore a balance between civilization’s ravenous appetite for resources and the fragile equilibrium of the earth’s environment; it depends on more, even, than our ability to restore a balance between ourselves as individuals and the civilization we aspire to create and sustain.... The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual... .What other word describes the collection of values and assumptions that determine our basic understanding of how we fit into the universe? (1992,12)

Gore then devotes a full chapter to “environmentalism of the spirit.” In a detailed and sensitive examination of the relationship between religions and environmental behavior, he argues that, ultimately, “in order to change, we have to address some fundamental questions about our purpose in life, our capacity to direct the power¬ ful inner forces that have created this crisis, and who we are....These questions are not for the mind or the body but the spirit” (1992, 238-39). As Gore recounts, his personal religious views had been deeply shaped by his Baptist upbringing, yet he argues that a variety of religious responses, even those based in scientific world¬ views, can help avert the crisis: “If we understand our own connection to the earth— all the earth—we might recognize the danger of destroying so many living species and disrupting the climate balance” (1992,264). What is important about Gore’s apocalypticism is that while not overtly espous¬ ing a particular religion, he advances a significant theological claim by arguing that environmental history should be interpreted as a story of moral—“spiritual”— progress if environmental catastrophe is to be averted (see chapter 4 by Daniel Wojcik, this volume). Like Lovelock, Gore’s environmental millennialism is primar¬ ily grounded in science, yet unlike Lovelock he holds a religious interpretation of the crisis. In Gore’s case, religious belief (broadly conceived) is thus inextricably linked to the quest to resolve the crisis.

New Age and Pagan Apocalypticism For New Age and Pagan environmental apocalypticists, all religions are not equal when it comes to solving the environmental crisis. Rather, practitioners of these religions tend to view their own practices as particularly important if not pivotal in this effort. According to Sarah Pike, “[Pagans] and New Agers often speak as though they are in the vanguard, an elite who will trigger the shift into an Aquarian Age

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through personal revolutions in consciousness” (2004, 149)- Accomplishing this shift has to do not only with improving one’s personal attitudes but with spreading the environmental consciousness that is so central to Paganism and New Age reli¬ gion. As Pike has observed, “In their own homes as well as at festivals, many New Agers and [Pagans] put in practice their environmentalist vision of the future. In a broad sense the goal is ‘planetary consciousness’ shared by a community in har¬ mony with the natural world” (2004,201). Additionally, noting that some New Agers have been involved in activist efforts, from the Sierra Club to Greenpeace, American religions scholar Catherine Albanese states (with some exaggeration): “the New Age social ethic has been an environmental ethic” (1999,364). New Age and Pagan reli¬ gious practitioners thus tend to see their religious beliefs and practices as vitally important in light of potential environmental catastrophe. For Pagans and New Agers, the perception of impending disaster—arrived at through a variety of means, including intuition, prophecy, exposure to scientific reports, and firsthand experiences of environmental degradation—is interpreted primarily through a religious lens. For Pagans, it is viewed as the revenge of an angry deity. Shawn Arthur’s contacts, for example, paid close attention to news arti¬ cles about environmental degradation, severe weather problems, and natural disas¬ ters, all of which were interpreted as signs that “the Earth Goddess was upset with human disrespect for Her, and She was preparing to retaliate by disrupting human society” (2008,203). For New Agers, disaster is viewed as part of a necessary cycle of cleansing and purification, as Sun Bear claimed, or an impetus for humans to clarify their purpose and achieve higher spiritual learning (Pike 2004,148). According to author David Spangler (b. 1945), who was an important spiritual leader at a wellknown New Age gardening community in Findhorn, Scotland: The theme of the Findhorn garden—the cooperation of humanity with the kingdom of nature...—has great significance in reorienting our consciousness toward the more holistic and transmaterial outlook which planetary survival would seem to require of us. The importance of the garden.. .lies in demonstrating the processes of the organic nature of consciousness attuned to the center and oneness of all life. (1975,178)

In Spangler s view, ecological crisis impels a kind of spiritual awakening toward a perception of the unity of life. Machaelle Small Wright has also concurred with this view. In meditative communication with a nature spirit, she reported receiving a message that man can no longer afford to look at what exists outside himself as nothing more than form

in most cases, lifeless form_[Communication with

nature spirits] is but one tool designed to aid you humans in expanding your aware¬ ness. The time is now. The shift is crucial” (1987,149)- Similar to Spangler, Wright interprets imminent ecological catastrophe as requiring a religious shift to higher consciousness. In their use of spiritual resources to understand and interpret the crisis, Pagans and New Agers represent the extreme religious end of the continuum of environ¬ mental millennialism, in which scientific information plays perhaps the least (but

ENVIRONMENTAL MILLENNIALISM

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still fundamentally necessary) role in understanding the crisis. New Age and Pagan environmental millennialism thus comes closest to the kinds of (religious) millennialism usually described in scholarship on the subject, even while its basis in the perception of environmental decline marks it distinctively as a form of environ¬ mental millennialism.

Conclusion Environmental millennialism has not only dramatically shifted secular society but has also deeply influenced the elaboration of religion, particularly nature-friendly religions, in the United States since the 1960s. It is both persistent and pervasive, as apocalyptic rhetoric has permeated environmental discourse worldwide, while also at times being elusive and contradictory, as its adherents are part of many different groups with only partially overlapping beliefs. Additionally, unlike most other forms of millennialism, its concerns have moved beyond its countercultural origins and increasingly into the mainstreams of cultures around the world. Despite its similari¬ ties to the apocalyptic speculations that have gripped the human imagination for millennia, environmental millennialism is thus in many ways a phenomenon unique unto itself. With millennialism increasingly informed by scientific evidence, the future of millennialism (in particular) and religion (in general) may well be forever altered. For environmental decline is a kind of catastrophe that modern minds can find plausible, and that modern people, as people everywhere do, will continue to seek to integrate into a meaningful understanding of the world. Thus, if current drivers of environmental degradation persist, as expected, it is likely that both secular and religious forms of environmental millennialism will proliferate and become increas¬ ingly important in a variety of cultural contestations. Moreover, if the scientific consensus about climate change and the escalation of environmental degradation proves true, we can expect that environmental millennialism will play an increasingly prominent role in the ever-shifting tableaux of millennial movements worldwide.

NOTES 1. To avoid confusion over whether the term millennialism refers to the progressive or catastrophic form, we have generally chosen to use the term apocalyptic (and cognates) when referring to the latter. 2. Taylor (1991,1994) are exceptions to this lacuna. Both analyze the religious elements of radical environmentalism, including its apocalyptic eschatology. Barkun (1983) also

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gives a good summary of the differences between secular millennialism (including environmental millennialism) and Christian premillennialism. 3. For further elaboration on the reasons behind Silent Spring’s success, see Waddell (2000). 4. Graham Turner (2008) well describes the debates over the report as well as demonstrates how accurate (and thus all the more chilling) it looks, based on observed data. 5. When referring to the modern phenomenon, the term “Neopagan” is often substituted. For simplicity’s sake, we use the term “Pagan” throughout. 6. Technically speaking, Earth is “over” populated because Homo sapiens has exceeded its “carrying capacity.” In environmental literature and subcultures, “overpopulation” is the trope most commonly used as a proxy or shorthand for this ecological principle. 7. For evidence that just such a naturalistic nature religion is emerging, namely, one that does not presume the existence of non-material divine beings of any sort, see Taylor (2010).

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Schneider, S. H., S. Semenov, A. Patwardhan, I. Burton, C. H. D. Magadza, M. Oppenheimer, A. B. Pittock, A. Rahman, J. B. Smith, A. Suarez, and F. Yamin. 2007. “Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risk from Climate Change.” In Climate Change 200j: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by O. F. Canzini, M. L. Parry, J. P. Palutikof, P. J. van der Linden, and C. E. Hanson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverman, Mark. 2004. “Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage.” Review of Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage by Kenneth S. Deffeyes. American Journal of Physics 72, no. 1 (January): 126-27. Spangler, David. 1975. Afterword to The Findhorn Garden: Pioneering a New Vision of Man and Nature in Cooperation, edited by The Findhorn Community, 178-80. New York: Harper 8c Row. Starhawk. 2007. “Climate Change: A Moral Imperative to Act.” Newsweek and Washingtonpost.com. 9 February, newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/ starhawk/2007/02/chmate_change_a_moral_irnperat.html. Sun Bear. 1992. Black Dawn, Bright Day. New York: Simon 8c Schuster. Taylor, Bron. 1991. “The Religion and Politics of Earth First!” Ecologist 21, no. 6 (November/ December): 258-66. -. 1994. “Earth First!’s Religious Radicalism.” In Ecological Prospects: Scientific, Religious, and Aesthetic Perspectives, edited by Christopher Chappie, 185-209. Albany: State University of New York. -. 2000a. “Earth First!” In Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, edited by Richard Landes, 130-33. New York: Routledge. -. 2000b. “Environmentalism.” In Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, edited by Richard Landes, 140-44. New York: Routledge. -. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. Berkeley: University of California Press. Turner, Graham M. 2008. “A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 Years of Reality.” Global Environmental Change 18 (2008): 397-411. Waddell, Craig, ed. 2000. And No Birds Sing: Rhetorical Analyses of Rachel Carsons “Silent Spring.” Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges. -. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan Palmer, 47-59. New York: Routledge. White, Lynn. 1967. The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155, no. 3767 (March): 1203-7. Wojcik, Daniel. 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism and Apocalypse in America. New York: New York University Press. World Commission on Environment and Development, ed. 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, Machaelle Small. 1987. Behaving as If the God in All Life Mattered: A New Age Ecology. Jeffersonton, Va.: Perelandra. . [2008]. www.perelandra-ltd.com. Accessed 28 August 2008.

Millennialism and Contemporary National and International Conflicts

'

CHAPTER 33

MILLENNIALISM ON THE RADICAL RIGHT IN AMERICA MICHAEL BARKUN

There is

surely no shortage of millennialism in contemporary American society, as

other chapters in this volume demonstrate (see especially chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone and chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, both in this volume). The decades since the 1960s have witnessed the most intense burst of millennialism in American history. It has exceeded even the period of the Second Great Awakening prior to the Civil War, when movements such as Millerite Adventism drew tens of thousands of adherents with its promise of an imminent Second Coming. Present-day millenni¬ alism in America is made up of multiple strands, extending into popular culture (see chapter 31 by Douglas E. Cowan, this volume) and politics (see chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, this volume) as well as religion. However, the dominant tendencies in contemporary American millennialism have had little direct effect, other than in a negative sense, on extremist movements, whether religious or secular. Racists and anti-Semites have often been millennialists, but they have rarely drawn upon the Dispensational premillennialism that dominates Endtime thinking among so many Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists. Indeed, they have scorned it for its alleged philo-Semitism, its supposed unwillingness to confront physically the forces of evil, and (in the view of opponents of revealed religion) for its supernaturalism. Nonetheless, the millennialism of American racists grows out of the same apoc¬ alyptic subculture that nurtures, and is nurtured by, more mainstream chiliasts. Even those at the margins of American religion have been shaped, however unwill¬ ingly, by forces that emanate from the religious center. The racist Right has not been immune from the influence of this eschatological moment. The pervasive cultural consciousness that one may be living near the end of history has exerted a force even upon marginal groups. At the same time, the millennialism of contemporary

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racists has not been uniform. Extremists themselves have been a fractious lot, torn by feuds and rivalries; so their millennialist propensities, too, have differed radically, dividing along the same lines as their major differences in orientations. American racial extremism exhibits three distinct religious tendencies. The first is Christian Identity, the sectarian racist outgrowth of British-Israelism. The Christian Identity movement created a theology that demonized Jews and made racial separatism part of the divine design. The second consists of nonsupernatural racial religions, which are as hostile to Christianity as they are to Judaism. There are two exemplars: the Church of the Creator founded by Ben Klassen (1918-93), and renamed after his death; and the Cosmotheist Community Church of the late William Pierce (1933-2002). Finally, there is Neopaganism in the form of attempts to reconstruct pre-Christian Norse religion. These reconstructions have appeared in both racist and nonracist forms. These three religious tendencies, it should be noted, cut across other distinctions in the racist milieu: for example, they may appear among Neo-Nazis, Klan groups, and skinheads. While some of these distinc¬ tions may reflect ideology, as in the case of some Neo-Nazis, they are better under¬ stood as stylistic differences, more reflective of dress, personal adornment, music, and lifestyles than belief systems. The size of these religious movements is impossible to determine with genuine reliability. With the exception of the nonsupernatural religions, both of which have been centrally directed, racist religions are organizationally fragmented—made up of autonomous local churches, study groups, and coteries without external control or supervision. No coordinating bodies exist that might collect membership data. Even where a central administration exists, material produced by it is almost always unreliable concerning issues of size. Leaders, anxious to aggrandize themselves, often make absurdly inflated membership claims. The belief systems themselves fail to register in even the largest surveys of religious affiliation (e.g., the American Religious Identification Survey [ARIS 2001]), both because of their relatively small size and because adherents are often reluctant to disclose affiliations to outsiders. Most believers are deeply hostile to the government, and tend to be secretive and suspicious toward outsiders. So-called watchdog organizations, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, maintain lists of “hate group” organizations and websites. While they normally separate out Christian Identity groups, they do not do so for other religious tendencies on the extreme Right, such as Neopagan Odinists. As has already been indicated, religious tendencies often spread across many different kinds of radical Right groups, so that a group’s apparent character is often a poor indicator of its members religious proclivities. In any case, it is difficult to translate reliably the number of groups that exist into numbers of individual members. Estimates of active Christian Identity believers when the movement was at its peak in the mid-1980s ranged from as few as 2,000 to as many as 100,000, although in all cases these amounted essentially to educated guesses (Barkun 1997, x, 119). What can be said with more certainty is that all the belief systems have risen and fallen in popularity. Thus racist Neopaganism has clearly become increasingly prominent during the past twenty years (Gardell 2003, i)> while Christian Identity has become

MILLENNIALISM ON THE RADICAL RIGHT IN AMERICA

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less significant. What is less clear is whether believers have left the latter for the former, or whether they have tapped different reservoirs of recruits at different times. As with millennialists of all stripes, white racialists find it far easier to describe the flawed present they despise than the perfect future they desire. Most of the farRight millenarian literature, therefore, consists of lurid descriptions of the alleged crimes, sins, plots, and defects of racial enemies. Most of the attention is focused on Jews, who are judged to be the leaders of the nonwhite forces, and correspondingly less attention is given to people of color. In the anthropology of contemporary racialism, Jews are invariably discussed in racial rather than ethnic or religious terms as a people biologically defined with heritable traits. People of color become, as it were, their pawns and foot soldiers. The other major strand in this literature consists of descriptions of the coming racial Armageddon, in which whites will defeat their adversaries once and for all. Their subsequent Millennium of an allwhite, Aryan future is sketched in only the most general way—predestined and ordained but never described in detail. The role of violence in this transformation is sometimes cloaked in ambiguity. This is due less to any moral scruples on the part of the millenarians than it is to their concern for the legal implications of violent rhetoric. As far as criminal liabil¬ ity is concerned, even inflammatory language is often protected by the First Amendment, so long as it cannot be shown to lead to “imminent lawless action” (■Brandenberg v. Ohio 1969, 447). However, since 1986, litigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center has established the principle that organizations that employ such rhetoric may be held civilly liable for money damages if it can be shown that their expression served as the stimulus for violent acts by individual members. Large judgments have been won against WAR (White Aryan Resistance), the United Klans of America, and Aryan Nations (Southern Poverty Law Center 2000). Consequently, organizations devoted to a racial Millennium must take care that they do not employ language that might stimulate followers to undertake criminal acts, for victims or their families might then bankrupt them through civil law suits, surely a danger few past millenarian groups have ever faced. Of all the religious expressions of white racialism, Identity has the clearest mil¬ lennial character by virtue of its Christian origins, even though in its details it varies substantially from Dispensational premillennialism(see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone, and chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, both in this volume). The prevalent Dispensationalist reading of the Bible makes the Second Coming dependent on the ingather¬ ing of Jews to Palestine and, as a result, evangelical Christians who hold Dispensational beliefs have become staunch supporters of the State of Israel (Weber 1983; Boyer 1992)—a position anathema to anti-Semites, such as those in Identity churches and organizations who regard evangelicals as race-traitors. Identity paradoxically, there¬ fore, has imbibed the general millenarian tone of contemporary conservative Protestantism while methodically rejecting its theological details. The degree to which nonsupernaturalists and Neopagans may also legitimately be considered millennialist is less clear. To be sure, they, too, have some concept of a desired collective

652

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

end-state, but that may be found in most belief systems, millenarian and nonmillenarian alike. Surely a goal by itself makes for a highly diluted and problematic millennialism, an issue to be explored later in this essay.

Christian Identity Christian Identity is an American outgrowth of British-Israelism (sometimes referred to as Anglo-Israelism). British-Israelism developed in the mid-nineteenth century as a form of revisionist religious history, according to which the so-called “lost tribes of Israel” were said to have migrated westward out of the Middle East into Europe (this and the subsequent description of Christian Identity’s history summarize the detailed account in Barkun 1997). On the basis of fanciful etymo¬ logical, archaeological, and biblical interpretations, Anglo-Israelites claimed that the inhabitants of the British Isles were none other than the descendants of these wandering Israelite tribes. Thus “Saxons” was said to have been derived from “Isaac’s sons.” As British-Israelism developed, alternative versions also gave Israelite origins to many of the other peoples of Northern and Western Europe, and all the tribes of Israel were said by some to have had Western or Northern European progeny. British-Israelism never became a separate religious denomination. It remained a small, eccentric tendency among some British Protestants, but it nonetheless attracted a few wealthy and influential patrons from among the aristocracy and the military, doubtless because it offered a theological justification for imperial expan¬ sion; if, after all, the British were lineal inheritors of biblical blessings, then their conquests were divinely blessed and ordained. Anglo-Israelism was originally also strongly philo-Semitic, since British-Israelites saw Jews as “cousins” with whom they would one day reunite in the Holy Land in a final millenarian consummation. That day seemed vividly at hand when, in 1917, General Allenby’s British forces entered Jerusalem and, shortly after, Britain assumed the status of mandatory power over Palestine. British-Israelism, with its umbrella body, the British-Israel World Federation, established outposts throughout the empire and the rest of the English-speaking world. Although there was a British-Israel presence in America as early as the 1870s, its heyday came in the 1930s with the creation of the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America. As its name implies, the Anglo-Saxon Federation exhibited nativist traits less evident in the parent movement. Under the leadership of a Massachusetts law¬ yer, Howard Rand (1889-1991), the Anglo-Saxon Federation spread rapidly during the Great Depression (1929-37)- Rand had two messages. One was that America was now to take up Britain’s God-ordained role, a concept which of course fit well with established conceptions of American exceptionalism and national mission. The other message was increasing suspicion of Jewish power.

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This shift from philo- to anti-Semitism was facilitated by the other principal leader of the Anglo-Saxon Federation, an executive of the Ford Motor Company, William J. Cameron (1878-1955). Cameron not only handled all of Henry Fords media relations, he was the editor of Ford’s weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which in the early 1920s published a notorious series of anti-Semitic articles that popularized The Protocols of the Elders of Zion1 in America (see also chapter 27 by David Redles, this volume). Many of these articles appear to have been written by Cameron himself, and he infused the Federation with some of the same concepts of a world Jewish conspiracy. By the late 1940s, with the end of the Second World War, the broader British-Israel movement also shifted to a more anti-Semitic position. It did so as a result of the realization that the Jewish community in Palestine had no desire to remain under British rule. Thus the millennial vision of BritishJewish comity in the Holy Land faded into bitter feelings of betrayal. This, then, was the background out of which Christian Identity sprang. Identity itself was created in southern California in the 1940s and 1950s by a trio of ministers, Wesley Swift (1913-70), William Potter Gale (1917-88), and Bertrand Comparet (1901-83). Southern California had been one of the Anglo-Saxon Federation’s strongholds, as well as an area already hospitable to a variety of fringe religions, Klan groups, and paramilitary organizations. It was also then the headquarters of Gerald L. K. Smith (1898-1976), the leading anti-Semitic organizer in America (Jeansonne 1988), in whose orbit Swift, Gale, and Comparet all found themselves at one time or another. Christian Identity’s principal departure from classical British-Israelism was the addition of what has come to be known as “two-seed theology.” According to it, the primal sin in the Garden of Eden was Eve’s copulation with Satan. The offspring of this liaison was Cain, fathered by the Devil, not by Adam. For Identity, therefore, two seedlines exist, those that are Satan’s progeny and those that are Adam’s, through his son, Seth. Identity traces the Jews to the mating of Eve and Satan, so that Jews are literally “the Devil’s spawn,” while the white race, and only the white race, was fathered by Adam. Nonwhite races are deemed to have had separate, later creations in which Adam played no role. Two-seed theory leads to an apocalyptic conclusion, for the seedlines are said to have been continually at war. Indeed, Wesley Swift traced the conflict back before the creation of the Earth, to Satan’s rebellion against God in Heaven. Eventually, in Identity’s millennial vision the war between Jews and their nonwhite allies on one side and whites on the other will reach a final stage, in a climactic battle— Armageddon as race war. Since whites are said to be from, and fight for, God, they cannot lose. Like millenarians of many kinds, Identity believers found themselves caught between determinism and activism. As has already been mentioned, the prevalent DispensationaJ millennialism in conservative Protestant circles was deemed utterly unacceptable. One of its Endtime requirements was the re-creation of a Jewish state within boundaries similar to those of the biblical Davidic kingdom, while another was the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and a return to the High Priest’s sacrificial practices (Boyer

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1992,193-99; see also chapter 34 by Yaakov Ariel, this volume). Neither, of course, was remotely tolerable to those committed to an inflexibly anti-Semitic theology. Like other millennialists, Identity believers were also committed to the inevitability of a divine design that counseled patience and waiting on God’s timetable, but the pull of the Endtime led some to try to become instruments of eschatological accel¬ eration. However, unlike Dispensationalists, in Identity’s case, there would be no Rapture to spare the saved from the sufferings of the struggle against the forces of Antichrist. Instead, the saved would have to stay on Earth to endure the rigors of Satan’s attacks, hunkering down to fight the final battle. Not surprisingly, therefore, the worlds of Christian Identity and that of survivalists—those who forsake the larger society to live self-sufficient, backwoods lives “off the grid”—often overlap in areas such as the Ozark mountain country, stretching westward from southern Missouri through Arkansas to parts of Oklahoma and Kansas, and other lightly populated rural areas. The urge to speed the inevitable day of battle was especially strong during Identity’s high tide in the 1970s and early 1980s. Numbers were growing, and the movement was doubtless affected by the general surge in millenarian speculation among evangelical Protestants despite Identity’s rejection of Dispensationalism. Two emblematic cases were the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord (CSA) and The Order.

Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord CSA was a survivalist commune in the Arkansas Ozarks originally established in the mid-1970s as a born-again Protestant community, the Zarephath-Horeb Community Church. By 1980, however, it had switched from Dispensational premillennialism to Christian Identity under its charismatic leader, James Ellison, and in 1981 the name, too, was changed (Noble 1998, 92,100). Ellison believed that an imminent race war would thrust hoards of marauding nonwhites out into the countryside, and he designed CSA as a militarized outpost prepared to repel the invasion. Its outer reaches were fortified and mined, and its residents trained in guerrilla warfare. Although the community itself made no forays beyond its own perimeter, several of its members committed acts of sabotage and violence. The community disbanded in April 1985 as a result of an FBI raid.

The Order The Order was perhaps the paradigmatic case of mobilized white supremacist activ¬ ism. Its membership was split between Identity believers and Neopagan Odinists, with one-fourth of its members drawn from the Christian Identity Aryan Nations community in Idaho (Flynn and Gerhardt 1989, 8). Unlike CSA, the Order did not withdraw behind fortifications. Rather, its aim was to ignite race-based violence in order to topple the government in the hope of installing a white racist regime, following the model of insurgency laid out in the novel The Turner Diaries (1980)!

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by Andrew Macdonald, a.k.a. William Pierce, discussed below. In a campaign of robberies, bombings, assassinations, and counterfeiting in the western states in 1983—19$4> The Order began what was envisioned as a guerrilla campaign. The Order was eventually dismantled by federal and state law enforcement through a combi¬ nation of arrests, surrenders, and a dramatic gun battle on Whidbey Island, Washington. While acts of racist violence continued, the dissolution of The Order marked the effective end of any organized violent efforts by either Identity followers or racist Neopagans to destabilize the American polity.

Leaderless Resistance Nonetheless, there have been continuing sporadic acts of violence by those who subscribe to the “leaderless resistance” philosophy of the Identity strategist, Louis Beam (b. 1946), first advanced in 1992, three years before the Oklahoma City bombing (Beam 1992/1983). Beam argued that the effectiveness of government surveil¬ lance and infiltration made any form of covert organization impossible, but he suggested that individuals who saw opportunities to advance the white racialist cause by individual acts of violence should take advantage of them at times and places of their own choosing. He speculated that if enough individuals acted spon¬ taneously, the cumulative effect would equal that of organized violence, and that, in any case, such individual actions would be detectable only after the fact.

Decline of Christian Identity Despite spasms of such leaderless resistance, for all practical purposes, Identity went into decline by the late 1980s. Its existence as a movement depended not merely on the acts of individuals but upon the existence of an organizational infrastructure. That infrastructure decayed as a result of not only aggressive government action, but also due to an increasing leadership vacuum and endemic factionalism. Richard Girnt Butler (1918-2004), the founder of Aryan Nations and the associated Church of fesus Christ Christian, who saw himself as Wesley Swiff’s successor, died in 2004, although he had ceased to function as an effective leader long before. The Church of Israel in Schell City, Missouri, led by Dan Gayman (b. 1937), one of the more theologically adept Identity preachers, was weakened by a factional split. Gayman now leads the Watchman Outreach Ministries, while his rivals have organized the Reformed Church of Israel. Of the major Christian Identity organizations, Pete Peters s Colorado-based Church of La Porte and the associated Scriptures for America is one of the very few that appears to have continued with relative vigor. A recent survey of “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center tells the story. Of 803 such groups, both religious and secular, active in 2005, the center found only 35 (fewer than 5 percent) that were Christian Identity, a stunning decline given that a quarter of a century earlier, Identity had been the dominant religious orientation on the radical Right (Southern Poverty Law Center 2006,2007).

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Nonsupernatural Racist Religions The eschatological content of nonsupernatural religions is intentionally ambigu¬ ous, since their founders deliberately cast aside precisely those characteristics that facilitated the millennial character of conventional religion: divine intervention in history and revealed truth about history’s direction. Both were held in contempt by the two principal exponents of nonsupernatural racist religion, Ben Klassen and William Pierce.

The Creativity Movement Ben Klassen founded the Church of the Creator in 1973 and headed it as its “Pontifex Maximus” until his suicide in 1993. It was subsequently renamed the World Church of the Creator and, still later, the Creativity Movement. Klassen’s prolific writings were disproportionately devoted to describing the evils of Jews, the defects of non¬ whites, and the superiority of whites. He seemed relatively uninterested in the white utopia that was the manifest goal of the Church and therefore its Millennium, and only occasionally offered any description of it. The fullest picture is of a world in which men and women will look like movie stars, IQs of 150 will be commonplace, and the arts will flourish on a level surpassing ancient Greece and Rome. As for material life, “every White family will be able to afford a beautiful large home in attractive, clean surroundings. It will be possible to have all the fine clothes, books, good food, and whatever else they desire, entirely within their reach and at their disposal” (Klassen 1973,504). Klassen’s Millennium is most noteworthy for nothing so much as its banality.

National Alliance and Cosmotheism William Pierce presents a far more complex picture. He is far better known for his nonreligious organization, the National Alliance, established in 1974, than for his religious affiliate, the obscure Cosmotheist Community Church. Better known than either is his pseudonymously published racist novel, The Turner Diaries, said to have been a favorite of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (1968-2001). The National Alliance has suffered significant leadership disputes since Pierce’s death in 2002, and it is unclear whether the Cosmotheist Community Church, originally based in Pierce’s remote West Virginia property, is still functioning. However, the Cosmotheist Community Church maintains a website that directs the curious to a post office box in Charleston, West Virginia (Cosmotheist Community Church [2006]). From the standpoint of millennialism, the complexities go beyond organiza¬ tional structure. While Pierce disdained revealed religion, holding Christian Identity in particular contempt, he did give Cosmotheism a kind of naturalistic theology. According to Pierce, it was the destiny of members of the white race to achieve

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godhood through “oneness with the Creator” (Whitsel 1995, 129; Whitsel 1998, 186). This was a preordained goal that would be achieved through an evolutionary process, facilitated by the natural superiority that Pierce believed the white race possessed. This suggests a kind of postmillennial quietism in which believers would wait, confident that an inevitable design was unfolding. Although Pierce presented these views in his religious writings, they were not his only or bestknown words on the subject. Pierce s evolutionism was clearly in conflict with a scarcely suppressed champi¬ oning of violence clearly evident in his other writings, notably The Turner Diaries. While he had an ideal end-state in mind and in principle believed its achievement was inevitable, in some other part of his mind contrary ideas were obviously at work, notably, frustration that progress was so slow and fear that the enemy’s power was increasing. This is a tendency commonly found among millenarians, whose dualistic picture of the world introduces a powerful source of instability. If the world is divided between powers of light and darkness that must fight a final, cos¬ mic battle, what if darkness becomes strong enough to prevail? Despite Pierce’s claim to a progressive evolutionary worldview, he clearly cham¬ pioned violent revolution in the short term. As he wrote in 1971, “We do not need to reason with the monster; we need to put a bullet into its brain and hammer a stake through its heart.” He went on to say that might mean fighting “from house to house in burning cities throughout our land” (quoted in Whitsel 1995,132). A few years later, his eponymous hero, Earl Turner, dies leading a genocidal world revolu¬ tion, which turns the Earth into a planet from which Jews and nonwhites have either been expunged or enslaved. This is presumably Pierce’s Millennium, but of evolu¬ tion we hear nothing.

Neopagan Racist Millennialism The Neopagan face of the contemporary racist movement consists of “Odinism,” an umbrella term for attempts to resuscitate pre-Christian Norse religion. Depending on one’s point of view, these efforts might be viewed either as historical reconstruc¬ tions or as inventions masquerading as reconstructions. In any case, the earliest attempts were made in Central Europe in the first four decades of the twentieth century (Goodrick-Clarke 2002, 257-58), along with other strands of Aryan and proto-Nazi ideology. However, the fullest development occurred in America in the post-World War II era. It should also be noted that there exists nonracist Norse Neopaganism as well, often under the rubric “Asatru” (Kaplan 1997, 69). At one level, millennialism fits somewhat uneasily within the Odinist world¬ view, since time is seen as moving cyclically rather than linearly. Thus the world goes through multiple sequences of birth, death, and renewal, unlike the Western/ Christian model, in which history moves along a single path from Creation to the

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Last Judgment (Gardell 2003,155—56). The Norse (and, by extension, the Odinist) vision of world-death occurs in the Ragnarok, an Armageddon-like battle where the gods’ army meets giants and monsters in a battle that destroys both the combatants and the very ground on which they fight, after which “ [a] new earth emerges, green, beautiful, fertile as never before, purified of all suffering” (Eliade 1982,169). While this dynamic is to be played out countless times in a universe of endless cycles, it becomes millennialist for those who choose to concentrate only upon one such cycle. It is precisely such a focus that has turned some Odinists into millenarians. The death-and-rebirth imagery of Odinism means that its perfect future is often conceptualized as the return to a perfect past. This conflating of perfect past and perfect future means that the Millennium to come often resembles nothing so much as the lost golden age like that which obsessed such classical writers as Hesiod and Virgil. A number of Odinists in fact speak of the imminence of a new golden age. The new golden age is coming, they argue, because the Earth is dying. Wyatt Kaldenberg and Ron McVan attribute its death to “Jiidaeo-Christianity” (Gardell 2003,179,209). They see Odinism and the Aryans as the seeds of the new Earth that will emerge.

Robert Mathews A significant if somewhat ambiguous figure in the Odinist milieu is the late Robert Mathews (1953-84), leader of The Order, the armed organization that sought to touch off an antigovernment insurrection. It was Mathews who died in the November 1984 Whidbey Island gun battle with the FBI. The Order’s goal was to establish a white racial society, and the organization was clearly modeled after the secret society of the same name described in The Turner Diaries. At least a fourth of the actual Order’s members were Identity believers. However, Mathews’s own reli¬ gious convictions are less clear. Mattias Gardell argues persuasively that he was an Odinist and that The Order’s initiation ceremony was explicitly based on Norse symbolism (Gardell 2003, 197). However, as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2002, 245-46) points out, Mathews also maintained numerous Identity associations and only became openly Odinist late in his brief career, although Flynn and Gerhardt (1989,120) suggest that Mathews’s gestures toward Identity were conscious attempts to mask his true Odinist beliefs. Whatever the precise nature of Mathews’s religious biography, its ambiguity is emblematic of the shadings and overlaps that have always characterized religion on the racist Right. It is also unclear precisely what The Order aimed to create in the extremely unlikely event that it overthrew the federal government. The group issued a “Declaration of War” drafted by Mathews, although the document was unknown beyond a very limited circle within the movement. After asserting that “the land is dying” and calling upon the “Aryan yeomanry” to rise up, the declaration stated as its goal “a territorial imperative which will consist of the entire North American continent north of Mexico” (Kaplan 2000, 522-25). This is the most ambitious of many radical Right separatist demands, most of which concentrate on the Pacific

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Northwest. While the declaration is the most sweeping in its territorial aims, it says nothing about the social or political organization it envisions in the conquered ter¬ ritory, not to mention the fate of the population presently living there.

Millenarians and the State As the foregoing suggests, white racist millenarians of every stripe have been vague about the precise nature of the perfect world they anticipate. This is a vagueness shared with millennialists of every religious and ideological persuasion, for it is far easier to describe and condemn present evil, which is visible at least in the eyes of the beholder, than it is to describe a perfection that can only be imagined. Nonetheless, in one particular respect, racist millenarians have had clear and spe¬ cific ideas about the shape of a perfect future, and that concerns the distribution of power and the role—or lack of it—of the state. On the one hand, the Millennium may be associated with absolute power concentrated in the hands of the redeemed, who may then reshape the social order according to their will. In such a case, the Millennium is a state cleansed of all impurities. On the other hand, for some mil¬ lenarians, the state itself may be the problem; for them, the Millennium is a condi¬ tion of statelessness. Their vision is of a complete dispersion of power. The most famous racist millenarian tract, The Turner Diaries (see also chapter 7 by Eugene V. Gallagher, this volume), seems unambiguously statist. Although the bulk of the novel consists of the hero’s diaries, the frame narrative is written from the viewpoint of the distant future, after Turner’s death and after the final victory of the racist forces. Pierce’s narrator sketches the story of a successful world conquest engineered by “The Organization” and its inner core, “The Order,” the cabal of white racist insurrectionists to which Turner belonged. They “effectively sterilize” all of Asia—16 million square miles—by chemical, biological, and radiological means, presumably slaughtering virtually the entire population in the process in order to make white colonization possible. The novel concludes: “The Order would spread its wise and benevolent rule over the earth for all time to come” (Macdonald 1980,211). Yet William Pierce’s picture of a global racist dictatorship, influential though it has been among racists of many religious persuasions, is an anomaly, even in the subculture where The Turner Diaries circulates. For the millennial visions of racial extremists have also harbored a powerful strain of antistatism. In part, this derives from the American radical Right’s hostility to the federal government, and its fear of a coming dictatorial “New World Order.”

The “New World Order” By the beginning of the 1990s, it became part of the “conventional wisdom” on the extreme Right that malevolent forces were about to seize power in the United States

66 o

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as part of a larger plan to take control of the planet. The standard nomenclature for this effort was the “New World Order” (Barkun 1996; Durham 1996). Both the con¬ cept and the terminology were shared by religionists and secularists across a range of far-Right positions, from the fringes of mainstream respectable discourse to paramilitary militia groups and to the millennialists discussed here. Thus Pat Robertson (b. 1930), then the best-known politically active evangelical Christian, authored a widely circulated paperback entitled The New World Order (1991), which predicted imminent, calamitous political events associated with attempts to impose a global tyranny. Notwithstanding the “ecumenical” nature of the New World Order construct, it appeared in a variety of forms. Among some religionists, its moving force was said to be the Antichrist. Among secularists, a variety of malign string-pullers were identified—the Illuminati, the United Nations, the Rockefeller family, Jewish inter¬ national bankers—although these villains also played at least supporting roles in the religious versions as well, serving as the Antichrist’s minions. The religious and secular versions thus differed little in fundamental structure, since religious conser¬ vatives had long associated Antichrist not only with an individual but also with malevolent institutions, whether the League of Nations in the 1920s or the United Nations after World War II (Fuller 1995,161-63). There might be debates about who was allied with whom, and who sat at the top of the pyramid of conspirators, but all variations on the New World Order had certain characteristics in common: They all agreed that the plotters had become increasingly brazen, that the forces of evil were becoming ever more powerful, that the conspiracy had either gained control of the United States government or was about to do so, and that New World Order forces were about to make a final push to establish a global dictatorship. As the 1990s came to a close, therefore, forces across the extreme Right held a common view of the near-term future. It was apocalyptic and, therefore, uncommonly pessimistic, for by itself it seemed to hold out little hope that the victory of the New World Order could be averted. This was a view held by millenarians and nonmillenarians alike. For millenarians, the New World Order ideas that circulated in what might be termed a fin-de-siecle cultural milieu posed a particular problem, for it accentuated an instability already referred to—namely, the tendency in dualistic thinking to accentuate the power attributed to the forces of evil. At one level, this played to mil¬ lenarians’ antistatism, for the federal government could now be portrayed as the vehicle for cosmic evil. At another level, however, the magnitude of this evil seemed to reduce the chances of victory. The machinery of government appeared to be irreversibly in the hands of the enemy.

David Lane’s “Tribal Socialism” There was, however, another very powerful source of millenarian symbolism that was not dependent upon control of the levers of governmental power. This was the nostalgic vision of a lost golden age of harmony said to have existed before

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the state came into being. This was the position of David Lane (1938-2007), a central figure in the real-world Order modeled on Pierce’s fictitious group and, after his incarceration, a major Odinist writer. His future is built around a “tribal socialism,” with power vested in the smallest local communities. Gardell observes of Lane’s position: “Autonomous tribes may cooperate voluntarily with other independent tribes in matters of mutual concern, but there should be no central government, lest tyranny again grow” (Gardell 2003, 201). Lane, therefore, con¬ flates the Right’s extreme suspicion of central government power with a dreamy, romanticized history of agrarian tribes interacting in a sparsely populated, pre¬ industrial past.

The Nehemiah Township Charter Lane’s hostility to the state is by no means limited to Neopagans. It may be found throughout the white racist milieu. A key document is the “Nehemiah Township Charter and Common Law Contract,” filed with the Kootenai County, Idaho, clerk of court in 1982. Its twenty-eight signatories include several future members of The Order, including Lane, as well as prominent Christian Identity figures. Among the latter was Richard Girnt Butler, founder of Aryan Nations and pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, both then located in a Hayden Lake, Idaho compound. The charter’s conspicuous use of Identity religious language apparently did not, however, dissuade many non-identity figures from signing it. While the charter purports to establish a new governmental unit, there is no evidence that it ever had other than a paper existence. Indeed, its stated structure strongly suggests that it was a millenarian design, intended to describe an ideal society. The document’s stated goal is to “return to the organic Life-Law of our Race as given by our Father and God, Yahweh, YASHUA, JESUS THE CHRIST, the only rightful originator of Law,” in order to create a government both “theocratic” and “republican” for the “suste¬ nance of our Aryan Race” (Barkun 2001,197). Nehemiah Township’s institutions claimed the power to veto any laws or deci¬ sions made by other governmental bodies, whether state or federal. The township was also empowered to create both a militia and a posse comitatus2 as coercive arms to put down internal opposition and repel external enemies, although the docu¬ ment does not explain how either could overpower law enforcement agencies or the national military establishment. Even more curious and significant is the deliberate archaism of the charter’s language, which is studded with terms lifted from Anglo-Saxon and early English law and history: freemen, high sheriff, wergild, socage, scutage, shire, and the like—all supposedly to be transposed to northern Idaho (see also chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld, this volume). They demonstrated not the drafters’ erudition, for most were autodidacts, but their fixation on an idealized Anglo-Saxon past they desper¬ ately wished to recover, an imagined world of small, self-sufficient settlements pop¬ ulated by stalwart yeomen. This egalitarian natural democracy allegedly preceded

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the imposition of the “Norman yoke.” It was an imagined, perfect world, a world before the state, when localities could allegedly pursue their untrammeled dreams without interference from the center. This strain of thought, which I have termed “radical localism” (Barkun i997> 217-23), has been a powerful current in radical right-wing thinking. It has often emerged as a corollary to legal arguments that purport to delegitimize the federal government. One common variant asserts that the county is the largest valid gov¬ ernmental unit, and that both state and national governments have aggrandized themselves at the expense of localities. Most of the time radical localism is simply a rallying cry directed against big government, without explicitly millenarian associa¬ tions. But in the form found in a document such as the Nehemiah Township Charter, radical localism takes on a different coloration and goes far beyond mere opposi¬ tion to Washington. The state itself, already seen as a satanic instrumentality associated with the coming New World Order, is juxtaposed to the charter’s ideal world of small, insu¬ lar, self-sufficient communities. The racially inferior or impure have been oppressed, annihilated, or expelled, so that the communal culture reflects only “Aryan values.” There need be no machinery for legislation, for the only law is God’s law known to God’s people, because it is, as it were, in their very blood, manifested by some intui¬ tive process. Tribe and race have thus been conflated in the minds of racist millenarians, so that the mythic settlements of preconquest Anglo-Saxon tribes, unsullied by state organization, much less by the industrialization that was to follow, become the perfect past that is now the template of a perfect future. Although the Nehemiah Township Charter was never put into practice and was clearly politically infeasible, it is among the earliest attempts to envision white sepa¬ ratism in a detailed fashion. Earlier efforts were little more than map-drawing exer¬ cises, in which racists laid claim to huge tracts of the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. The charter was in many ways the opposite of such grandiose schemes, both in its evocation of rural life and in its attempt to spell out a set of institutional arrangements. In both respects, it seems an evil twin of nineteenth-century utopian experiments. While one tends to think of American communal settlements as egali¬ tarian, in the manner of the Shakers, for example, that has never precluded the existence of a dark side to communalism as well. The society envisioned in the Nehemiah Township Charter was most closely approximated in a series of “Christian covenant communities” initiated near Kamiah, Idaho, beginning in 1994. The central figure in the enterprise was James “Bo” Gritz (b. 1939), a much-decorated former Green Beret said to have been the model for Rambo and later a controversial, publicity-seeking luminary on the radical Right. Gritz’s religious beliefs are unclear. He is a Mormon convert (said by some to have been excommunicated) who has had significant Christian Identity ties, particularly with Pete Peters (Barkun 1997, 211). His website is not clearly Identity, however, but does betray Identity influences, referring to Jesus as Yashua and urging observance of Passover and the seventh-day Sabbath (Gritz [2006]).

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Gritz, together with Jerry Gillespie, a former Arizona state legislator, and Jack McLamb, a widely known conspiracy theorist with militia associations, bought large tracts of land near Kamiah. Gritz named his two-hundred-acre section Almost Heaven, intended as a refuge for “Christian patriots” seeking escape from coming apocalyptic events. As Gritz put it: “I observed a pouring out of virtuous people from the metropolitan centers into the hinterlands. I beheld covenant communities standing separate from a tyrannical government— It was Armageddon. Millions of massed soldiers—both men and women—were slaughtered, but the homeland was spared” (Pitcavage 1996). The community would be law-abiding, Gritz assured local residents, “unless [the laws] go against the laws of God and common sense” (Pitcavage 1996). Gritz’s vision apparently resonated with an end-of-the-millennium culture infused with apocalyptic expectations, antigovernment militancy, and fears of a Y2K computer meltdown. Home sites sold quickly at Almost Heaven, as well as at the adjoining property of Shenendoah, joined later by the Doves of the Valley devel¬ opment. However, few individuals actually moved there. Those who did found Gritz insufficiently zealous in fighting what they saw as a tyrannical government; he, in turn, saw them as troublemakers. Indeed, once there were settlers in the covenant communities, Gritz’s view of Armageddon appears to have changed: “There were about six individuals who were looking for Armageddon, and if it didn’t come, they were going to cause it” (Boone 2004). By the late 1990s, Gritz seems to have withdrawn from Almost Heaven. Some who had settled in or near the communities symbolically or behaviorally took themselves out of the legal system. They did so symbolically by renouncing American citizenship, filing documents (such as the Nehemiah Township Charter itself) at the county courthouse asserting that they were “sovereigns” of the “Idaho State Republic.” A militia group formed and was later accused of plotting to kill a federal judge. A former resident of Almost Heaven pleaded guilty to bomb-making. Jack McLamb claimed in 2004 that the various covenant communities held 350 residents, but that may be an inflated figure (Boone 2004). These social experiments appear to have had no governing structure, although Gritz sometimes spoke vaguely of “oversight committees.” However, the covenant communities were marketed in a way that attracted a homogeneous, self-selected population of white, religiously and politically conservative Christians, prone to see politics in conspiracist terms, and history moving toward an Endtime consumma¬ tion. In retrospect, it is clear that Gritz had clients rather than followers and that he had little taste for the demands of community leadership. It is unclear, for example, whether he ever moved to Almost Heaven himself. In any case, the fact that such real estate developments were at least successfully marketed suggests that the separatist agenda proposed by the drafters of the Nehemiah Township Charter spoke to a larger audience. That audience appears to have been driven by a millenarian vision of pristine, rural, white, Christian communities that could not be touched by com¬ ing Endtime violence.

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Conclusion The miilennialism of the radical Right is clearly different from that associated with conservative Christianity generally. The centrality of racism and anti-Semitism in the former and its dramatic reduction, if not absence, in the latter is, of course, one striking difference. But another, less obvious difference is in the level of theological sophistication. Conservative Christianity generally arises out of an institutional context, which includes not only churches but also seminaries, religious publishing houses, traditions of Bible studies, and the like. These extend back at least into the late nineteenth century, when the split between liberal and conservative wings of Protestantism began. The movements described here, however, have not been the beneficiaries of any long and intellectually elaborated tradition. Christian Identity, as the historical description above indicated, has the longest history. Yet its central figures had little if any formal theological training. Their writ¬ ings were often pastiches of material drawn from multiple sources ranging from the religious to the occult, with no common intellectual discipline as a way of holding ideas together. The nonsupernatural racial religions, as the creations of single indi¬ viduals, bear the expected marks of personal eccentricity. Racial Neopaganism, while it claims ancient roots, is a modern creation, cobbled together out of mytho¬ logical materials, often by autodidacts, so that it, too, comes with little in the way of intellectual provenance. The implications for miilennialism are substantial. There is a clear millenarian sensibility without well-articulated millenarian visions. Contemporary racists have been relatively uninterested in issues that have often perplexed other millenarians, such as date-setting and biblical exegesis. Their forays into biblical texts have gener¬ ally been brief and simplistic. Instead, intellectual complexity and subtlety have been replaced by an obsessive concentration on the evil enemy as a simplifying principle. Joined to New World Order conspiracy theories, it has energized the radi¬ cal Right to battle. This substitution of a battle against a satanic foe for conceptualization of the mil¬ lennial process reflects not only intellectual shallowness, but also raises the question of how millennial” racists actually are. This is particularly true of the nonsuper¬ naturalists and Neopagans, who have a preferred, ideal end-state, but little else that marks belief systems apart as distinctively millenarian. By concentrating on the clash between light and darkness, racists can evade sustained discussion of the Millennium itself. The battle becomes everything, as opposed, for example, to the traditional con¬ ception of the battle of Armageddon, which in many Christian Endtime scenarios becomes merely one phase in a lengthy process of God’s defeat of evil. The struggle imagery also has latent functions in the racist ideologies. In addi¬ tion to avoiding complex issues involved in conceptualizing the Millennium, emphasizing the battle with the enemy has two immediate advantages: First, it builds the morale of followers, who can concentrate on immediate objectives that require their action, rather than on more distant events set in motion by transcen-

MILLENNIALISM ON THE RADICAL RIGHT IN AMERICA

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dent forces. Second, if there are defeats, additional, subsequent battles may be pro¬ jected, delaying the final day of reckoning. Paradoxically, it becomes useful therefore for racists to build up the power of their adversaries, making the end of history not an imminent Millennium, but a seemingly endless conflict stretching forward into the future.

NOTES 1. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most important anti-Semitic text of the twentieth century, was forged in the late 1890s by the czarist secret police, working with a pastiche of French sources. Purporting to describe a Jewish plan for world domination, it first appeared in Russian in 1903. An English translation was published in Great Britain in 1920, but the forgery was exposed the following year. Henry Ford’s newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, became the major medium for spreading The Protocols’ contents in America. 2. Posse comitatus groups were paramilitary organizations that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the West and Great Plains. According to posse ideology, the highest legal authority in the country is the sheriff’s posse, defined as the county’s armed adult males. Posse groups formed spontaneously, without higher governmental authority or notification, and members often intimidated local residents and officials, especially in sparsely populated areas. Posse members were also involved in a number of violent confrontations with law enforcement authorities whose mandates they refused to recognize.

REFERENCES AJRIS. 2001. American Religious Identification Survey. Principal Investigators: Barry A. Kosmin and Egon Mayer; Study Director: Ariela Keysar. Graduate Center of City University of New York, www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/aris_index.htm. Accessed 15 August 2003. Barkun, Michael. 1996. “Religion, Militias and Oklahoma City: The Mind of Conspiratorialists.” Terrorism and Political Violence 8, no. 1 (Spring): 50—64. _. 1997. Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. Rev. ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. _. 2001. “Violence in the Name of Democracy: Justifications for Separatism on the Radical Right.” In The Democratic Experience and Political Violence, edited by David C. Rapoport and Leonard Weinberg, 193-208. Portland: Frank Cass. Beam, Louis. 1992 [1983].“Leaderless Resistance.” Seditionist 12 (February). Final edition. www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm. Accessed 23 March 2009. Boone, Rebecca. 2004. “Almost Heaven Almost Gone? ‘Patriot’ Haven Silent a Decade Later.” Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune. 27 August, www.casperstartribune.net/ articles/2004/o8/27/news/regional/. Boyer, Paul. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Brandenberg v. Ohio. 1969.395 U.S. 444. Cosmotheist Community Church. [2006.] Cosmotheism: Our Destiny Is Godhood. www.cosmotheism.net/. Accessed 2 July. Durham, Martin. 1996. “Preparing for Armageddon: Citizen Militias, the Patriot Movement and the Oklahoma City Bombing.” Terrorism and Political Violence 8, no. 1 (Spring): 65-79. Eliade, Mircea. 1982. A History of Religious Ideas: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Flynn, Kevin, and Gary Gerhardt. 1989. The Silent Brotherhood: Inside Americas Racist Underground. New York: Free Press. Fuller, Robert C. 1995. Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession. New York: Oxford University Press. Gardell, Mattias. 2003. Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. 2002. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York: New York University Press. Gritz, Colonel Bo. [2006].“Colonel Bo Gritz.” www.bogritz.com/. Accessed 22 September. Jeansonne, Glen. 1988. Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Kaplan, Jeffrey, r997. Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. -, ed. 2000. Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira. Klassen, Ben. 1973. Nature’s Eternal Religion. Otto, N.C.: Church of the Creator. Macdonald, Andrew (pseud. William Pierce). 1980. The Turner Diaries. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: National Alliance. Noble, Kerry. 1998. Tabernacle of Hate: Why They Bombed Oklahoma City. Prescott, Ontario: Voyageur. Pitcavage, Mark. 1996. “Patriot Purgatory: Bo Gritz and Almost Heaven.” www.adl.org/ mwd/gritz.asp. Accessed 29 October 1999. Robertson, Pat. 1991. The New World Order. Dallas: Word. Southern Poverty Law Center. 2000. “Aryan Nations Hit with $6 Million Verdict.” SPLC Report 30, no. 3 (September): 1. -. 2006. “Hate Groups Active in the Year 2005.” Intelligence Report, no. 12 (Spring): 52-58. -. 2007. “Hate Groups Active in the Year 2006.” Intelligence Report, no. 125 (Spring): 52-58. Weber, Timothy P. 1983. Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism 1875-1982. Enl. ed. Grand Rapids: Academic. Whitsel, Brad. 1995. “Aryan Visions for the Future in the West Virginia Mountains.” Terrorism and Political Violence 7, no. 4 (Winter): 117-39. -. 1998. “The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce’s Theology of Revolution.” Nova Religio 2, no. 1 (April): 183-97.

CHAPTER 34

RADICAL MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY JUDAISM IN ISRAEL YAAKOV ARIEL

In the mid-1980s Israelis were shocked to hear about the arrest of lewish settlers in

the former West Bank of Iordan and the Golan Heights who had created an under¬ ground movement, stocked weapons and explosives, and carried out attacks against Palestinians. A decade later Israelis were again dumbfounded when a small group of students in a major Israeli university planned the murder of Israel’s prime min¬ ister, Yitzhak Rabin, in an attempt to halt the eventual withdrawal of Israel from the territories it had conquered in 1967* While only a small minority of nationalist lews resorted to such extreme actions, they signified an unexpected change in the Israeli religious and political culture from the pre-1967 decades. They demon¬ strated the rise of radical religious-political Jewish groups that adhered to catastrophic millennial beliefs and expected the near realization of universal and national redemption. During the 1970s through the 2000s, Israeli society and the Jewish tradition in general have moved, at least partially, from progressive millen¬ nial ideologies to catastrophic millennial faiths. The resurfacing of catastrophic millennialism in Judaism in the latter decades of the twentieth century corre¬ sponded with larger cultural and political developments. Since the 1960s a Jewish “counter-reformation” has worked to diminish much of the impact of the Enlightenment on Jewish thought and practice. The ongoing wars between Israel and its neighbors, the terrorist activities carried out against the

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

668

Israeli population, and long-rooted Jewish feelings of vulnerability contributed to a move toward belief in catastrophic millennial solutions to what Jews have come to see as nonsolvable political and cultural realities. More than other occurrences, the Six-Day War in June 1967 and the Israeli takeover of historical Jerusalem have brought to surface Jewish catastrophic millennial hopes. Another influence has been the new interaction between Charismatic Christians and Orthodox Jews, which has resulted in Charismatic Christians providing Jews with financial and moral support, as well as with contemporary examples of direct communication with the divine. This essay explores the cultural, social, and political forces that have given rise to radical Jewish groups and point to the developments that have brought about the resurgence of long-suppressed catastrophic millennial beliefs and political radical¬ ism within the Jewish tradition. It sheds light on the relation between radical reli¬ gious movements in contemporary Judaism and other political, cultural, and religious groups with which they interact, and from which, at times, they receive encouragement. Studying the rise of radical Jewish groups can teach us a great deal about the social and cultural developments that promote certain brands of millen¬ nial thinking over and against other types, and the dynamics that occur as different millennial groups compete with and oppose each other. It can therefore enlarge our knowledge on radical religious groups and the atmosphere in which they operate.

Judaism Turns Away from Radical Thinking From the second century

c.e.

until the twentieth century the Jewish tradition dis¬

couraged political radicalism as well as catastrophic millennial belief. Radical cata¬ strophic millennial groups had operated during the Second Temple Period (515 b. c.e.—

70

c.e.).

Some of them were organized in separatist communities that set

rigid standards of day-to-day piety. The Dead Sea Scrolls have given voice to the Essenes, who possessed a dualistic worldview and saw themselves as a unit in the army of the Lord. One of their major tracts, The War Scroll, offers a vivid description of the Apocalypse and the future battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Vermes 1997; see also chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 13 by James Tabor, both in this volume). Stirred by radical catastrophic mil¬ lennial groups, the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 70

c.e.

resulted in the destruc¬

tion of Jerusalem and the Temple. Another major revolt of Palestinian Jews, in the second century

c.e.,

spearheaded by a messianic leader, also resulted in defeat and

destruction. Wishing to survive as a dispersed people in the Roman and Persian Empires, Jews had to re-create their religious tradition as a docile, exilic community. Rebellions of the kind launched against the Romans in the first and second centuries c. e.

did not repeat themselves. The Talmudic ruling “Dina de Malhuta dina,” “the

Law of realm is abiding as if it is Divine Law,” guided the Jews for long centuries.

669

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

Keeping together an international religious community without a center, a temple, or an authoritative priesthood was a challenge for Jews. Until its destruc¬ tion, the Temple in Jerusalem was the ultimate spiritual center and a unifying sym¬ bol. Significantly, Jews have related to different periods in their history in terms of the Temple: the First Temple Period (1006-586 (516 B.c.E-70

c.e.);

b.c.e.);

the Second Temple Period

and the postdestruction (of the Temple) period. For the exiled

Jews, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem symbolized a breach in a harmoni¬ ous relationship, which they believed had existed in ancient times between God and his people, and which they wished to restore in the fullness of time. Throughout long centuries, however, Jews developed new institutions and mechanisms of coping with the loss of their spiritual and national center. Instead of a Temple, Jews focused on sacred texts, turning themselves into “People of the Book.” Texts could be transferred from place to place and their meanings could be negotiated throughout long periods of time. Synagogues, which came about during the Second Temple Period, developed after the Temple’s destruction into the Jewish houses of worship and learning par excellence. Jewish homes had also become mini¬ temples, with ordinary Jews performing priestly rites, such as differentiating between sacred and profane time, and consecrating wine and bread. Instead of a physical temple, Judaism promoted a “temple in time,” a weekly holy day, similar in sanctity to a holy place (Heschel 1951; Ariel 2005). Divine revelation and prophecy were considered to have ceased, and no further texts could be added to the sacred Hebrew Scriptures. The rabbis emerged after the destruction of the Second Temple as the legitimate interpreters of the texts. In the Judaism that they developed there was no room for prophecy. Prophecy would have upset the quest for unity, uniformity and communal survival and cause fragmenta¬ tion and factions. Always a dangerous endeavor, which could put social and reli¬ gious institutions in jeopardy, prophecy had a particularly destructive potential for an exilic religion. Prophets could appear in different locales, provide conflicting messages, and unsettle longstanding institutions. The rabbinical tradition declared an end to prophecy. “Following the destruction of the Temple, prophecy was given only to fools and infants,” Rabbi Yohanan declared (Babylonian Talmud 1925,126; see also chapter 13 by James D. Tabor, this volume). However, yearning for global and national redemption did not disappear and Jews prayed to see Jerusalem and the Temple rebuilt and the people of Israel reset¬ tled in their ancient homeland. Rabbis spent much time in the generations after the destruction of the Temple discussing issues relating to the Temple, its dimensions, its sacrificial system, and the alms and donations presented to it (Mishna, Kelim, 1, 8, in “Har HaBayit” 1975, 575-92). However, the messianic time and the fulfillment of biblical prophecy were postponed to an unspecified, almost theoretical future. Maimonides (1135-1204), an authoritative Jewish philosopher who labored in Egypt at the turn of the thirteenth century, mentioned belief in the coming of the Messiah in his list of thirteen principles of Judaism. But the wording of the clause leaves no doubt as to his progressive millennial interpretation of the messianic time (Maimonides 1926, Introduction to Tractate Sanhedrin).

670

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

In spite of the attempts of the intellectual elite to suppress political radicalism and catastrophic millennialism, Jewish communities, or parts of them, followed at times messiahs or prophets. The largest and most comprehensive Jewish messianic movement was stirred in the 1660s by Shabbatai Zvi (1626—possibly 1676), a Jewish mystic who lived and worked among the Ladino-speaking population of the Ottoman Empire (see chapter 15 by Rebecca Moore, this volume). Zvi presented himself as the Messiah, while his impresario, Nathan of Gaza (1643-80), claimed to be a prophet. Scholars of Jewish messianic movements have noted that millennial aspirations had run under the surface of mainstream Judaism like a subterranean stream (Scholem 1995). The messianic hope offered Jews a more dignified future than their current reality as a vulnerable minority in Muslim and Christian lands, and at certain moments they embraced it enthusiastically. When Shabbatai Zvi con¬ verted to Islam and Nathan of Gaza’s prophecy seemed to have failed, the opposi¬ tion of the Jewish elite to millennial movements that proclaimed the imminent arrival of the Messiah hardened even more. The Jewish encounter with the European Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and with modernity in the nineteenth century would further diminish the role of catastrophic millennialism in Jewish life.

Progressive Millennialism Takes Over For hundreds of years Jews had put their yearnings for the Messiah on hold, but they continued to view biblical prophecies as destined to be fulfilled figuratively in a remote future. This changed dramatically in the wake of the Jewish encounter with the ideas of the European Enlightenment. Jewish thinkers, such as Benedictus Spinoza (1632-77), contributed to the rise of a skeptical attitude toward traditional Jewish and Christian modes of interpreting biblical prophetic texts. One of the first openly secular Jews, Spinoza dedicated the first chapters of his seminal Tractus Theologico-Politicus to prophecy. In line with his philosophical system, Spinoza dis¬ tinguished between philosophy and faith. He rej ected the perspective of Maimonides and doubted the authenticity of biblical texts (Spinoza 1670; Yovel 1988; Goldstein 2005). Starting with a small group of intellectuals, in the latter decades of the eigh¬ teenth century and the early decades of nineteenth century, Western and Central European Jews went through a process of liberalizing their tradition and seculariz¬ ing their day-to-day lives. This process took place against the background of politi¬ cal emancipation and the gaining of citizenship as well as the rise of secular nationalism, democracy, and demands for social reform (Meyer 1988). Secularized or liberal Jews were, by the mid-nineteenth century, a majority in Western and Central Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century, secularization was making significant inroads into Jewish communities in Eastern Europe as well. These developments transformed Jewish life and practices, with Jews giving up on

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

671

what they considered to be irrational elements of their faith (Katz 1998). Jewish reformers, or secular thinkers reinterpreted the biblical texts in light of humanistic values, as well as in light of what they considered to be rational and scientific stan¬ dards of thinking (Meyer 1988). They eliminated long-held popular concepts such as “heaven” and “hell,” or belief in a personal, universal and national redemption brought about by an actual human messiah. Liberal and secular Jews embraced the idea of progress, believing that human beings could build, through education, political, and social reforms and the advancement of technology, a better world (Bartal 2006). Progressive millennial beliefs accompanied liberal forms of Judaism, both religious and secular, up until the late twentieth century, at which time the Jewish counter-reformation had seriously eroded, especially in Israel, the influence of such notions. Zionists, too, embraced the idea of progress, and, adjusting it to their national goals, assumed that they could form a utopian European commonwealth on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean (Herzl 2000/1902). The Zionist immigration of the first third of the twentieth century created a mostly secular Jewish community in Palestine, which, at least in principle, was committed to the ideas of the Enlightenment and to a society divorced from the supernatural. Viewing themselves as representing a new brand of Judaism, loyal both to the Jewish past and to univer¬ sal values, their millennial convictions were secular and progressive, centering on the building of a new nation, through education, science, the arts, and Western modes of government. This is not to say that Zionists ignored the Jewish historical ethos. They embraced the Jewish biblical narratives, offering them what they con¬ sidered to be secular rational interpretations. Zionist leaders and thinkers, such as Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion (1886-1973), embraced the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, enthusiastically, viewing it as a historical source that attested to the early history of the nation of Israel and to its long relation to Zion. Ben Gurion and other leaders assumed a prophetic role, interpreting the building of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies (Ben Gurion 1954,1972). Not all Zionists held to the same vision. Members of HaShomer HaTsair were socialists; those of Mapai were social democrats, while the General Zionists were liberal democrats. The Revisionists were nationalists, while HaMizrahi advocated modernized Orthodoxy. But they were all progressive millennialists who empha¬ sized the building of a new commonwealth through human efforts; none of them promoted a catastrophic millennial outlook. A number of radical Zionist groups became active in the 1920s through the 1950s, promoting extreme versions of progressive millennial ideologies. The Canaanites were a small but influential group of artists and writers who came together in the 1930s. They viewed current Palestinian Jews to be the forerunners of a new Hebrew nation, which they believed should divorce itself from the exilicoriented Jews in the Diaspora and their beliefs and rites (Shavit 1987; Porath 1989). Influenced by the American model, the Canaanites suggested an inclusive attitude toward citizenship, not based on previous religious or ethnic affiliations, but on the

672

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

sharing of the same territory and language (Diamond 1986). One can argue that the Canaanites radicalized ideas, which in milder forms were promoted by the secular Jewish mainstream in Palestine of the 1920S-1950S. Leaping over eighteen hundred years of rabbinical tradition and diaspora experience, Zionists looked back with pride at a past of independence in Zion. Even socialist Israelis taught their children Tanach as building blocks of national identity (Kuzar 2001). Biblical archaeology became a particularly important tool for the reinforcement of new national self¬ perceptions, attracting generals and politicians whose findings fascinated the public (Yadin 1966). Until the 1960s secular progressive millennialists were the leading voices in the Jewish state. Following in the footsteps of their more innovative secular brethren, Orthodox Jews played a secondary role; for the most part, their practice of Judaism was mild and accommodating. The majority of Israel’s intellectual, literary, scien¬ tific, artistic, military, political, and diplomatic elite were overwhelmingly nonob¬ servant and understood Judaism in nonreligious terms. The country was devoid, at least on the surface, of mystical elements, with no significant groups embracing the supernatural or advocating catastrophic forms of millennialism (Weiner 1961). Not much yearning for the supernatural was seen in Israel, and very few people pro¬ claimed the imminent arrival of the Messiah. The traditionalist Ultra-Orthodox, including the Hasidic wing, seemed to be almost extinct in the aftermath of World War II (Friedman 1990). But a series of political, social, and cultural developments worked to change this reality and create an atmosphere congenial to the rise of more radical groups, who would embrace the supernatural and the idea of immi¬ nent catastrophic messianic developments.

A Prophetic Moment: The Six-Day War and Its Effect One of the major developments that worked to reverse the tide and bring about the return of the supernatural into Jewish religious and national life was the Six-Day War in June 1967. In the weeks preceding the war many Jews were afraid that Israel would face a long and bloody war or be destroyed altogether. The swift and unex¬ pected Israeli victory seemed to them to have significance far beyond a military success (Oren 2002). Many Israelis offered messianic interpretations of the outcome of the war, claiming that it proved that the Zionist vision of creating a permanent commonwealth for the Jews in their ancestral homeland was no dream. It was in that euphoric atmosphere that Hatnua Leman Eretz Israel Hashlema, the Movement for Greater Israel, was born. A small group within the Israeli secular elite began advocating the annexation of the conquered territories to Israel. Among them were such figures as Yitzhak

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

673

Tabenkin (1888-1971), the ideological leader of one of the major kibbutz move¬ ments, and Nathan Alterman (1910-70), whose poetry during the 1940S-50S repre¬ sented the anguish and aspirations of large sections of the secular Jewish population in Palestine. These people did not settle in the conquered territories and within a few years the group disbanded. A much larger and more persistent movement, this time of Orthodox national¬ ists, made it its goal to settle the conquered lands. The Settlers movement, which began in 1968, was motivated by the resurfacing of long-suppressed elements of catastrophic millennialism within Judaism (Aran 1986). A mixture of messianic fer¬ vor and political frustration enhanced the radicalization of the Orthodox national¬ ists and turned many of them into adherents of the belief in the imminent arrival of the Messiah. The atmosphere created in 1967 seemed to them to indicate the immi¬ nent creation of a restored Davidic kingdom in the Land of Israel. However, the obstacles toward the realization of that dream seemed insurmountable, except through messianic intervention. First and foremost among these obstacles was the existence of a large Arab population in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which, as a rule, viewed Jewish settlements in their midst as an intrusion, and the creation of a Greater Israel as a theft. At that time the Israeli government prohibited the settle¬ ment of Jews in the occupied territories and opposed any changes to the status quo on the Temple Mount. In 1977 the Likud government lifted the ban on Jewish settle¬ ments, but continued to oppose all Jewish attempts to gain a foothold on the Temple Mount. When Israelis took over East Jerusalem in 1967, the Temple Mount was a holy Muslim site called al-Haram ash-Sharif (Sacred Noble Sanctuary), containing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. The Israeli government chose to protect the Muslim status on the mountain, insisting on maintaining the status quo antebellum on the Temple Mount as well as in other Muslim and Christian holy sites. While the Israeli government wished to avoid a regional, if not international, conflict, the pol¬ icy also represented a lack of interest among most Jews in rebuilding the Temple. Judaism had moved such a long way since the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e., that by 1967 most Jews had no wish to rebuild the Temple in any immediate way, viewing the building of the Temple as either postponed to a remote future or as totally irrelevant. In the wake of the 1967 war, Jewish rabbinical authorities declared that Jews were forbidden to enter the Temple Mount. However, the mood in Israel changed after the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Settlers and Temple Builders Paradoxically, external threats to Israel’s territorial gains, whether through war or peace negotiations, have inspired Jewish religious nationalists to take a more proac¬ tive and radical stand. They became determined more than before to see the new

674

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

territories turn into Jewish domain and the Temple rebuilt (Inbari 2005). If neces¬ sary they would initiate divine intervention and help bring about the apocalypse. Internal political developments worked to their advantage. While the Six-Day War of June 1967 created a united front in Israeli public life and strengthened the goverrn ment’s power, this was hardly the case after the surprise Syrian and Egyptian attack on Israel in October 1973. The authority of the Labour leadership and its secular progressive millennial ideology weakened considerably. Ironically, it was in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War that the messianic excitement that followed the Six-Day War came to the surface in Israeli public life in more pronounced terms. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, a psychologist of religion who has studied the history of religious groups in Israel, suggests that fears over the future of the Zionist endeavor encouraged the rise of supernatural solutions to contemporary issues and thus of catastrophic millennial faiths. He points out that the messianic groups that devel¬ oped in Israel after 1973 have emphasized public salvation instead of personal salva¬ tion (Beit-Hallahmi 1993, 69-70). The Orthodox Zionist camp, which before 1967 was a junior and peaceful part of Israeli society, became, especially after 1973, radical and aggressive (Ravitzky 1993). In October 1974, during the Jewish feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles), thousands of young people, mostly veterans of Orthodox Zionist youth movements, left their homes in the center of Israel, settling temporarily or permanently in Judea and Samaria, the former West Bank of Jordan (Aran 1997; Sagi and Stern 2005). At this stage the Settlers’ activities were illegal, in defiance of the government’s orders. Israeli television broadcasted unprecedented scenes of Israeli soldiers and police officers trying to stop Settlers from entering sites of settlements and engaging in verbal and physical clashes with them. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government, however, proved itself incapable of stopping the zealous Settlers completely. By 1974 this segment of Israeli society considered God’s commands to settle the Land of Israel to stand above the laws of the Jewish state (Sprinzak 1991). The ideological leader of the new Settlers movement, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891—1982), was the head of a Zionist-oriented yeshiva (rabbinical academy) in Jerusalem, which his father had founded half a century earlier. The father, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865-1935), a humanitarian Orthodox mystic, who served as chief rabbi of Palestine between 1920 and 1937, considered the Zionist endeavor to be a preparation of the ground for an eventual, progressively built, messianic age (Ish-Shalom 1993)- Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the son, developed a very different view of the process of redemption, which resembled that of catastrophic millennial Christians. Looking upon history as a deterministic course, he believed that humans could deduce God’s plans for humanity. He further asserted that the imminent messianic age was putting demands on God’s followers. “We do not has¬ ten the End Times,” he claimed. “It hastens us” (Kook 1996,148). Strengthened by a proactive millennial theology, Rabbi Kook’s disciples orga¬ nized in 1974 as Gush Emunim, the Bloc of the Faithful, to settle the former West Bank of Jordan and the Golan Heights. The Gush leaders saw their mission as

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

675

taking part in a divine plan, thus causing a rift in Israeli society over the nation’s goals and values. Gush Emunira’s controversial program of settling in the midst of dense Palestinian populations enjoyed, however, the sympathy of nationalist Jews who remained in the heart of Israel, and after the Likud rise to power in 1977, the settlement program began receiving direct governmental support and grew considerably. While many secular Israelis resented the ideology and agenda of Gush Emunim, they were even more concerned over Jewish attempts to build the Temple. Not sur¬ prisingly, many of the Settlers of the West Bank are also Temple Builders, and the two movements share a great deal theologically (Aran 1997; Sprinzak 1991). After 1973 a number of groups of Temple Builders came on the scene. These groups rein¬ terpreted Jewish texts and concluded that the ban on entering the Temple Mount was based on erroneous interpretation of talmudic texts (Inbari 2006). Moreover, they rejected the long-held belief that the building of the Temple should be left for the Messiah to accomplish at the fullness of time. The first visible group of Temple Builders was the Temple Mount Faithful. Led by Gershon Salomon, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran and a Jerusalemite lawyer, the Temple Mount Faithful gave voice at its inception to a large variety of Jews interested in the building of the Temple. They included Orthodox and secular Jews, Labour supporters and Free Market advocates. The group’s aborted attempts to enter the Temple Mount and organize prayers there have enjoyed much media coverage. But even this rather small group could not stick together for very long, and factions and dissent reigned. Far from the eyes of the cameras, new groups began congregating, studying texts, and publishing newsletters. Some of these groups went a step further than the Temple Mount Faithful and began preparing for the reinstatement of the sacrificial system in a rebuilt Temple (Sprinzak 1991, 264-69,279-88). In the late

1980s

Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, a leader of Gush Emunim, established

an institute for the halachic study of the Temple and its rebuilding. In a series of publications he has pointed to what he considered to be the redeeming merits of the Temple and the sacrifices therein, which he has viewed as essential for recon¬ ciling God and humanity, as well as for bringing about the messianic age (BinNun n.d.). Other groups of Temple Builders that congregated during the 1980S-2000S

have included: Jerusalem First (Reshit-Yerushaliim), an academy for

studying Jerusalem and the Temple; the Movement for the Building of the Temple (Ha Tnuaa Lekinun ha Mikdash); the Temple-Laws Yeshivah (Yeshivat Torat HaByit); Unto the Mountain of the Lord (El Har Adonai); the Movement for the Liberation of the Temple Mount (Ha Tnuaa LeShihrur Har HaBayit); and The Priests’ Crown Yeshivah (Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim), to name a few of the groups (Ibane HaMikdash

1979;

Shragai

1998).

The proliferation of groups of Temple

Builders came about in the wake of a Jewish movement of counter-reformation, which brought with it a yearning for the supernatural and for the arrival of the messianic times.

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

676

The Jewish Counter-Reformation Large-scale cultural changes made catastrophic millennialism and direct commu¬ nication with the divine acceptable to large segments of the Israeli population as well as to many American Jews. Until the 1960s, the Israeli elite, composed mostly of European-born secular social democrats, took pride in “rational” thinking, and looked upon the building of a Jewish home in Palestine as a progressive messianic endeavor. Their sons and daughters did not find the goal of building a Zionist utopia fulfilling anymore. Israel was already a fait accompli, and it was not the utopian community that the first generations of Jewish settlers there dreamed of building. During the 1970S-1980S thousands of Israeli baby-boomers began embracing the supernatural and searching for spirituality in their lives (BeitHalahmi 1993). Much of the Jewish movement of Return to Tradition arrived in Israel from the United States, brought over by American Jewish baby-boomers who had settled in the country or visited it for lengthy periods of time (Danziger 1989; Ellwood 1994; Oppenheimer 2003). What started as an American Jewish hippie movement turned into an Israeli phenomenon. While previously it seemed that the tide was running only in one direction, from observance and tradition to secular or liberal ways of thinking and living, now the tide reversed, as thousands of young, secular Israelis chose tradition and adherence to a more mystical and supernatural outlook on life (Beit-Hallahmi 1993). Hasidic groups such as Chabad and Breslav recruited thou¬ sands of young liberal Jews. Non-Hasidic Orthodox groups, such as Eish HaTorah, also began to engage in outreach, and likewise earned the loyalty of thousands of new returnees to tradition. Israelis were not only taken by the charm of their own ancient tradition. Throughout the 1970s—2000s, thousands of Israelis joined non-Jewish new reli¬ gious movements, ranging from the Unification Church to Transcendental Meditation (Beit-Hallahmi 1993). Thousands became Messianic Jews, amalgamat¬ ing Jewish identity with evangelical, often Charismatic Christianity (Rausch 1982; Feher 1998; Harris-Shapiro 1999). In the 1980S-2000S, Sephardic and Mizrahi Israeli outreach leaders carried their own campaigns of return to tradition. Under the banner of taking pride in their roots, many Asian and African Jews rejected the secularization program of their European brethren and openly reembraced the supernatural. They relegitimized visits to the tombs of saints or to the courts of live tzadikim, who are believed to serve as intermediaries between God and humans. During the 1980s, the home of Baba Sali (1890—1984) in Netivot in southern Israel became the largest such center, with tens of thousands of people coming annually to ask the tzadik for help with marital or health problems. During the 1990s, another major tzadik came on the scene, the Jerusalemite mekubal (mystic), Rabbi Nisim Kaduri. Kaduri became so sought after for his supernatural powers that many secular Israelis, by now much less committed to modern notions of rational¬ ism, came to obtain his blessings. Among them were leading politicians and high-

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

677

ranking army officers. By that time the idea that some persons had a direct contact with God became more acceptable in mainstream Israeli society than a generation earlier. Soothsayers, too, became fashionable. Not only astrology, but other means of predicting the future, such as numerology or reading Tarot cards, which were previ¬ ously unheard of in Israeli culture, became popular. Shops opened in Israeli cities catering to the new spiritual needs of the population by selling amulets to protect homes or cars against the evil eye, or photographs of tzadikim, whose supernatural powers can also provide much needed protection. A renewed interest in Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition, has also taken place in Israel and America. Popularizing Kabbalah and making it accessible to people without previous Jewish education, Rabbi Philip Berg established centers and published numerous tracts to teach Kabbalah to anyone interested, both Jews and non-Jews. While in previous genera¬ tions Jewish leaders and activists had wished to present Judaism as a rational tradi¬ tion, compatible with the ideals of the Enlightenment, now Judaism’s mystical and nonrational side was presented (Odenheimer 1999). A visible return of the supernatural to Jewish life was the open campaign of the Chabad Hasidic movement that aimed at promoting awareness among Jews (and non-Jews, too) of the imminent arrival of the Messiah. Under the guidance of its sixth and seventh Rebbes (spiritual leaders), Chabad has developed a millennial outlook that can be defined as catastrophic, coupled with some progressive ele¬ ments. In the 1950s through the 1980s Chabad turned itself into a global Jewish outreach movement. In a manner reminiscent of Christian evangelists, the Chabad leadership wished to prepare the scene for the arrival of the Messiah. The sixth and seventh Rebbes saw in the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry “the Time of Jacob’s Trouble” (Jer. 30:7) that was to precede the Messianic Age (Ravitzky 1993)- The group’s duty, the seventh Rebbe believed, was to bring Jews to fulfill at least some mitzvot (commandments), as well as to promote awareness among the Gentiles of the need to follow the Noahic laws. While the Rebbe encouraged his followers to work hard toward bringing the Messiah, whose arrival now depended on their efforts, in the

1980S-90S,

a more

radical messianic group came about within his own movement. The seventh and last Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson

(1902-1994)

had no children. The Rebbe

lost his siblings in the Holocaust, and so he had neither a son nor son-in-law, not even a nephew or a nephew-in-law acceptable to his movement, to inherit his posi¬ tion and carry on his work. In the

1980s

it became evident to his followers that the

Rebbe had no heirs and that with his death the group would remain without a leader. Some members of the group began to speculate that the Rebbe might not die and would soon reveal himself to be the Messiah. In their admiration for their Rebbe the followers were convinced that their charismatic leader was fully deserving of that role. A group developed within the Chabad movement, openly advocating the messiahship of the Rebbe, who died in

1994.

Some non-Hasidic Jews were scandal¬

ized by the rise of a messianic movement that presented a contemporary personal¬ ity as the Messiah (Berger

2001).

But the Chabad millennial movement persisted

678

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

(see also chapter 8 by Lome Dawson and chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, both in this volume). In the atmosphere that developed in Judaism of the later decades of the twenti¬ eth century, the secular progressive millennial ideology found itself seriously dimin¬ ished (Shahar 1983). The door was opened for radical catastrophic millennial movements to make their mark on Israel.

Christians and Contemporary Israeli Radicalism Christians contributed to the return of the supernatural to contemporary Judaism, to the rise of Jewish movements holding to catastrophic millennial faith, and to the groups’ proactive programs in their attempts to bring about the Messianic Age. In other times and places the relationship that developed between evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews would have been considered to be in the realm of the imaginary. Many evangelical and Charismatic Christians have shared the hopes of Orthodox Jewish nationalists to create a Jewish commonwealth in “the Greater Land of Israel” and rebuild the Temple. Since the 1970s, conservative Protestants have provided a morale boost, as well as financial support, to Jewish messianic groups. The idea that the Jews would fulfill a central role in the Messianic Age, and should go back to Palestine and rebuild a Jewish commonwealth there, became predominant among pietist, Puritan, and evangelical Christian groups in the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. A school of Christian messianic hope that has assigned the Jews a particu¬ larly important role in its theology is Dispensationalism (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone and chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, both in this volume). This eschatological faith and philosophy of history became part of the conservative evangelical Christian worldview in the twentieth century, meshing well with its pessimistic outlook on contemporary culture. Dispensationalist Christians view the Jews as historical Israel, destined to play a prominent role in the events leading to the messianic king¬ dom, as well as in the Messianic Age itself. In this school of catastrophic millennialism, the Holy Land, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount serve as the arena in which the central events of the Apocalypse are expected to unfold (Ariel 1991). Conservative evangelical Protestants have responded enthusiastically to the rise of the Zionist movement, the building of Jewish towns and villages in Palestine, and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Such events have reinforced their messianic hopes, convincing them that they had read the Bible correctly and that prophecy was unfolding according to the predictions of their eschatological faith (Davis 1931)- More than any other moment, the Six-Day War in June 1967 stirred the Christian messianic imagination. The unexpected Israeli victory, the accompanying territorial gains, and most importantly, the Israeli takeover of the historical parts of

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

679

Jerusalem, strengthened the evangelical Christian conviction that Israel was created for an important mission in history and was to play a vital role in the events that were to precede the Messiah’s arrival (Bell 1967). Following the war, interest in Israeli life and politics increased immensely among conservative Protestants. Evangelical Christians holding to the Messianic faith became more active in their support of Israel, with leading evangelists such as Billy Graham (b. 1918), Hal Lindsey (b. 1929), Jerry Falwell (1933-2007) and Pat Robertson (b. 1930) expressing their opinions that Israel was vital for the fulfillment of prophecy (Lindsey 1973). Dozens of Christian pro-Israel organizations sprang up in the United States and elsewhere, with conser¬ vative evangelical Christians turning into Israel’s most ardent supporters in America, as well as in other parts of the globe (Lienesch 1993). During the 1970s through the 2000s, millions of conservative evangelicals came to Israel as tourists, volunteers to kibbutzim or archaeological digs, and some even settled in the country, evangeliz¬ ing among the Jews or waiting for the apocalyptic events to begin (Ariel 1996). Especially during the 1960s and 1970s prophecy became an acceptable expression of evangelical Charismatic Christian faith; now it was imported to Israel. Paradoxically, it would be Orthodox Jews, Settlers, and Temple Builders, who would encounter Christians who communicated directly with God and would adopt some of their practices. No aspect of Israeli religious, cultural, or political life fascinated evangelical Christian proponents of the Second Coming more than the prospect that the Jews would rebuild the Temple, and thus start the unfolding of the Apocalypse (Cox 1968; Couch 1973). The blocked rebuilding of the Temple seemed to evangelical Christians to be the one development standing between this era and the next (Lindsey 1973). In the 1970s evangelical Christians discovered to their great joy that groups of nationalist Orthodox Jews were interested in rebuilding the Temple. An unprecedented measure of cooperation began taking place between evangelical, mostly Charismatic Christians and Jews eager to rebuild the Temple. Since the 1970s, a number of Christian groups and individuals have openly pro¬ moted the building of the Temple through a variety of activities, most of them centered on helping Jews prepare for the construction of the Temple. Some of these Jews were studying the Temple architectural measurements and rituals, manufac¬ turing utensils to be used for sacrificial purposes according to biblical or talmudic specifications, or have been trying to breed a new brand of red heifers, whose ashes would purify Jews and allow them to enter the Temple Mount. Christians were encouraged by the Jewish preparations. Such activities have served to sustain their faith that “the Rapture of the Saints” and the events of the Endtime were about to take place. If Jews were preparing themselves to carry out the Temple’s work, the Messiah must be coming soon (Stewart and Missler 1991a, 157—70; Ice and Price 1992). In the early 1980s Chuck Smith (b. 1927), a noted minister and evangelist whose Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, has been one of the largest and most dynamic Charismatic churches in America, invited Stanley Goldfoot (d. 2006), a leader of a Temple Builders group from Jerusalem, to lecture in his church. Smith’s

68o

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

followers helped to finance Goldfoot’s activity, including the exploration of the exact site of the Temple. Lambert Dolphin, an associate of Smith, who directed a research group called the Science and Archeology Team, was ready to use sophisti¬ cated technological devices and methods, such as wall-penetrating radar and seis¬ mic sounding, in his search for the ruins of the Temples. In bringing his instruments into Israel and preparing to explore the Temple Mount, Dolphin worked in coop¬ eration with and received help from Jewish Temple Builders. However, facing Muslim opposition, the Israeli police refused to allow the use of such technological devices on or near the Temple Mount. Christian proponents of building the Temple have also searched for the lost Ark of the Covenant, adding a touch of adventure and mystery to a messianic prophetic endeavor (Wead, Lewis and Donaldson n.d.). The search for the “lost Ark” has inspired a number of novels and a movie based, in part, on a real-life Charismatic Christian archaeologist. He and other Christians have also searched for the ashes of the Red Heifer, which are necessary, according to the Jewish law, to allow Jews to enter the Temple Mount. Other Christians have supported Jewish attempts at breed¬ ing red heifers or began breeding such heifers on their own (Wright 1998). A new interest has arisen in evangelical and Charismatic Christian circles in the interior plan of the Temple, its sacrificial works, and the priestly garments and utensils (Stewart and Missler 1991b; Ice and Price 1992; Sleming n.d.). The rebuilt Temple has played an important role in evangelical novels. The most popular of them have been the Left Behind series, which was published in the late 1990s and early 2000s and sold tens of millions of copies (see chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, this volume). The novels’ plots describe the struggles and travails of non-Christians during the Great Tribulation, the period between this era and the Messianic Age. One of their major challenges is the rise to power of the Antichrist. The series describes one of the Antichrist’s “achievements” as orchestrating the removal of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque from Temple Mount to New Babylon (LaHaye and Jenkins 1995). According to the series, while initially many Jews will be misled by the Antichrist, many of them will turn into Antichrist’s ene¬ mies and help create an underground Christian opposition. In the novels, the Wailing Wall (Western Wall) in Jerusalem becomes the site of miraculous preaching of the Gospel on the part of Jews. The movie version includes scenes in which an old Jewish prophet proclaims, in our time, the Word of God (Sarin 2004). The Left Behind novels point to a new development. While Christians and Jews had initially cooperated with each other on a give and take basis, they have eventu¬ ally come to appreciate each other. The close relationship between Christian and Jewish proponents of building the Temple has brought some Christians to modify their understanding of the role of the Jews in their vision of the Endtime. Initially, the Temple in Christian evangelical eschatological hopes was supposed to be the creation of the Antichrist and had no real value from a Christian point of view, except as a stepping stone toward the arrival of the Messiah. However, as Jewish activists working toward the rebuilding of the Temple began discussing the details of the Endtime with their Christian friends, the Christians reassured them that they

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

68l

expected the Temple to survive the rule of Antichrist and to function gloriously in the millennial kingdom and not only in the period that precedes it (Ice and Price 1992). In the Left Behind series, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have taken a revolu¬ tionary step and changed the traditional Dispensationalist understanding of the Antichrist. In their novels, Antichrist is no longer a Jewish leader, but they also do not return to the more historical Protestant understanding of the Antichrist as the pope. Instead LaHaye and Jenkins have moved to what seems to most readers of the novels as a neutral option. Their Antichrist is a Romanian Greek Orthodox; Roman, perhaps, but neither a Roman Catholic nor a Jew. The Left Behind series improves in general on the popular conservative evangelical Christian image of the Jews. In the novels, Jews are depicted as misguided but well-meaning people, who eventually realize the truth and take the proper action (Ariel 2004). Jewish Settlers and Temple Builders have also changed their opinion of Christians. Jews have been impressed by the keen Christian interest and support. Those Christians, they concluded, were more enthusiastic over the prospect of rebuilding the Temple than most Jews. Jewish Settlers’ magazines began publishing sympathetic and appreciative essays on Christians (Luria 1989). Moreover, the theology and messages of leaders of Jewish millennial groups, such as Gershon Salomon, have become increasingly more universalistic, at least in the sense that they have come to include Christians as important participants in the divine drama of salvation. In a manner reminiscent of the attitudes of the contem¬ porary Chabad Hasidic group, Salomon has put a great premium on the traditional Jewish idea of the Noahide covenant. According to that thinking, since the days of Noah, all of humanity is in covenant with God and is commended to follow ele¬ mentary laws, such as “Thou shall not kill.” Jews such as Salomon now claim that Christians, like Jews, have to work hard toward the advancement of the Messianic Time (Kaplan 1997,100-126). Helping Jewish groups such as his own is therefore a sacred duty for Christians. In the late 1980s, Pat Robertson, the renowned minister of the 700 Club televi¬ sion program, began offering his support to the Temple Mount Faithful and its leader, Gershon Salomon. In August 1991, the 700 Club aired an interview with Salomon. Robertson described Salomon’s group as struggling to gain the rightful place of Jews on the Temple Mount. Salomon, for his part, described his mission as embodying a promise for a universal redemption: “It’s not just a struggle for the Temple Mount, it’s a struggle for the... redemption of the world” (Friedman 1992, 144-45)Amazingly, but tellingly, in the early twenty-first century, the website of the Temple Mount Faithful is entirely in English, as are all the group’s publications (Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement [2008]). Its readership is com¬ posed mainly of English-speaking Christians. More importantly, Salomon’s lan¬ guage has become reminiscent of that of Charismatic Christians. Jews have been praying for the return of the Prophet Elijah, who would precede the arrival of, or accompany, the Messiah, Son of David. While not declaring himself to be Elijah, Salomon has begun claiming direct channels of communication with God. His

682

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

descriptions of such divine encounters are reminiscent of those of Charismatic Christians. Moreover, in building his arguments, Salomon relies on the Tanakh and especially on biblical prophecy, paying little attention to postbiblical texts. He is closer to his Christian friends than to many Orthodox Jews (Inbari 2006,166).

Can Millennial Hopes Bring the Apocalypse? Unlike liberal Jews and Christians, who have taken part in interfaith dialogues and have come to respect many religious expressions, Christian Dispensationalists and Jewish Settlers are committed to fulfilling God’s commands, as they understand them, regardless of the feelings of adherents of other faiths. Both Christian Dispensationalists and Jewish Settlers perceive Islam as a hostile faith, at least as far as preparations for the Messianic Time are concerned, and see Muslim and Arab opposition as an obstacle to the fulfillment of ancient prophecies (Elson 1991; Ariel 1997). These Christian and Jewish groups look upon the Temple Mount, the Muslim al-Haram ash-Sharif, as the Mountain of the Lord, the place where the Temple is to be rebuilt. The presence of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque seem to be a mere technicality that needs to be overcome. Ironically, just as something of a sym¬ biosis developed between Charismatic Christians and Orthodox Jews who wish to see the Temple rebuilt and the Messiah arrive, so has an adversarial symbiosis devel¬ oped between Muslims, and Jewish and Christian Temple Builders. The latter have stirred strong negative reactions among the former, offering them a focal point to galvanize for protest (Zilberman 2001; Wasserstein 2001; Reiter 2001). Paradoxically, the Muslim opposition to the building of the Temple, as well as the decision of mainstream Israeli society to block the construction of this symbol of the coming Messianic Time, enhanced a more proactive catastrophic millennial approach on the part of Christian and Jewish Temple Builders. In one extreme case, an evangelical Dispensationalist who had divine revelation decided to prepare the ground physically for the building of the Temple (Ariel 2001). Dennis Michael Rohan (b. 1941) was aware of the insurmountable obstacles that stood in the way of building the Temple. After spending some time as a volunteer in an Israeli kibbutz, the young Australian Dispensationalist visited Jerusalem in July 1969 and there, convinced that God had designated him for the task, set fire to the al-Aqsa Mosque. The mosque was damaged and Arabs in Jerusalem rioted. Rohan was arrested, put to trial, found insane, and sent to Australia to spend the rest of his life in an asylum. Protecting the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque became a priority for the Israeli security services (Inbari 2005,3)- In the mid-1980s a number of Jewish and Jewish-Christian groups were caught planning to blow up the shrine and the mosque. This included the Jewish underground, which became known as Ha

MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL

683

Mahteret ha Yehudit, a group consisting of religious nationalist Settlers inspired by the teachings and messianic beliefs of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (Aran 1997). The group collected arms and explosives, to serve as the Judean Army, in case of an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Its plans to blow up the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque were intertwined with the group’s larger messi¬ anic vision. In 1984 the Israeli police arrested another catastrophic millennial group that had planned to bomb the shrine and the mosque, the “Lifta Gang.” Israeli news¬ papers described a commune on the outskirts of Jerusalem, led by a leader who was blessed with prophetic visions. According to one source, the group was associated with, and received assistance from, Charismatic Christians in America (Ledeen and Ledeen 1984). The activities of other Messianic groups have had at times also vola¬ tile and explosive consequences. The Temple Mount Faithful have made it their habit to try to enter the Temple Mount on Jewish festivals in order to conduct prayers. On Sukkot, October 1990, the Temple Mount Faithful planned to lay a cornerstone for the future Temple. However, the police would not allow them to enter the Temple Mount and they left. But Muslim worshippers on the Mount felt threatened and, incited by the muezzin, threw rocks at Jewish worshippers at the Wailing Wall, down below the western wall of al-Haram ash-Sharif compound. Muslim demonstrators chased the small police unit off of the mountain, and units of Israeli anti-riot police stormed the area a short while later. Dozens of demonstrators and police officers were killed or wounded. The volatile consequences of even an aborted attempt of a symbolic preparation of the ground for the arrival of the Messiah became painfully clear.

Conclusion The Jewish tradition has a long history of yearnings for universal and national redemption. However, throughout long centuries, Jewish rabbinical and communal leaders have suppressed as best they could catastrophic millennial hopes, turning Judaism into a tradition that postponed the arrival of the Messiah indefinitely. The encounter of Judaism with the Enlightenment and modernity gave rise to progres¬ sive millennial Jewish movements, which contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel. The emergence of openly catastrophic millennial movements in con¬ temporary Judaism, therefore, constitutes a breach with Jewish millennial thinking as it developed throughout long centuries, and corresponds with the rise of radical political views and dualistic thinking. The rise of Temple Builders and prophets on the Israeli scene demonstrates larger developments in Israeli political and cultural history. A major development has been the counter-reformation that has taken place in contemporary Judaism, which created an atmosphere congenial to the resurfacing of catastrophic millen¬ nial faiths as well as belief in direct contact with God in defiance of secularist norms

684

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

of rational thinking. Not only Orthodox nationalist Jews, but the Israeli populace in general, have come to accept what previously had been considered irrational beliefs and behavior. In a society where ordinary people as well as the elites consult with soothsayers, prophecy is merely an additional step. The Six-Day War of 1967, which many had seen as the unfolding of a messianic moment, stirred both Jewish and Christian imaginations. The inability and unwill¬ ingness of Israel to rebuild the Temple frustrated Orthodox nationalists, some of whom have tried to “hasten the End.” The relationship that developed between Charismatic and evangelical Christians and observant Jews in recent decades has also contributed to the rise of prophecy and millennial expectations in contempo¬ rary Judaism. Unexpectedly conservative Christians have become the patrons and supporters of Jewish millennial groups. The fascination of catastrophic millennial Christians with Jewish groups of Temple Builders has transcended the familiar his¬ torical dynamics of Jewish-Christian interactions. What started as a marriage of convenience, turned along the way into a more affectionate relationship, with both groups modifying their understanding of each other and coming to appreciate each other’s efforts. Some observers, however, have been troubled by the volatile poten¬ tial of the new Christian-Jewish cooperation. While most Christians and Jews hold¬ ing to catastrophic millennial faiths are law-abiding, the millennial excitement has also given rise to groups that answer to divine authority instead of to what they consider to be the short-sighted policies and regulations of humans. Jewish and Christian groups and individuals have resorted at times to terrorist tactics concentrated mostly on attempts to change the existing reality on the Temple Mount, with the aim of bringing about the Messianic Age. Such activities have, at times, added fuel to Palestinian and Israeli misunderstandings, radicalizing existing conflicts.

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Ice, Thomas, and Randall Price. 1992. Ready to Rebuild: The Imminent Plan to Rebuild the Last Days Temple. Eugene, Ore.: Harvest House. Inbari, Motti. 2005. “The Oslo Accords and the Temple Mount, A Case Study: The Movement for the Establishment of the Temple.” HUCA 74:1-45. -. 2006. “King, Sanhedrin, and Temple: Contemporary Movements Seeking to Rebuild the Third Temple and to Establish a ‘Torah State,’ 1984-2004.” Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ish-Shalom, Benjamin. 1993. Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kaplan, Jeffrey. 1997. Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Katz, Jacob. 1998. Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Kook, Tzvi Yehuda HaCohen. 1996. ToratEretz Israel: The Teachings ofHaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaCohen Kook, edited by David Samson and Tzvi Fishman. Jerusalem: Torat Eretz Yisrael. Kuzar, Ron. 2001. Hebrew and Zionism: A Discourse Analytic Cultural Study. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry B. Jenkins. 1995. Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House. Ledeen, Barbara, and Michael Ledeen. 1984. “The Temple Mount Plot.” New Republic 190, no. 24 (18 June): 20-23. Lienesch, Michael. 1993. Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lindsey, Hal. 1973. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. Luria, Tzipora. 1989. “Without Inhibitions: Christians Committed to Judea and Samaria.” Nekuda 128 (March): 28-32. Maimonides (Moshe Ben Maimon). 1926. Mishne Tora. Berlin: Horev. Meyer, Michael A. 1988. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press. Odenheimer, Micha. 1999- Kabbalah Goes Mainstream.” Jerusalem Report, 8 November, 12-17. Oppenheimer, Mark. 2003. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Oren, Michael B. 2002. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press. Porath, Yehoshua. 1989. Shelah ve-et be-yado: Sipur Hayav Shel Uri’el Shelah. Tel Aviv: Mahbarot LeSifrut. Rausch, David A. 1982. Messianic Judaism: Its History, Theology, and Polity. New York: Edwin Mellen. Ravitzky, Aviezer. 1993. Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism. Tel Aviv: Am Oved. Reiter, Yitzhak. 2001. “Third in Sanctity, First in Politics: The Haram al-Sharif for Muslims.” In Sovereignty of God and Man: Sanctity and Political Centrality on the Temple Mount, edited by Yitzhak Reiter, 155-80. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Sagi, Avi, and Yedidia Stern. 2005. “The Gap between the Halacha and Reality Had Never Been So Large. HaAretz, 12 December, www.haaretz.co.il. Archive no. 1228911. Sarin, Vic, dir. 2004. Left Behind. Cloud Ten Pictures in association with Namesake Entertainment.

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Scholem, Gershon. 1995. The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and Other Ideas in Jewish Spirituality. New York: Schocken. Shahar, David. 1983. NinGal. Tel Aviv: Am Oved. Shavit, Jacob. 1987. The New Hebrew Nation: A Study in Israeli Heresy and Fantasy. Jerusalem: Keter. Shragai, Nadav. 1998. “To Bring God Home.” HaAretz, 17 September, B2. Spinoza, Benedictus. 1670. Tractatus Theologico Politicus. Hamburg. Sprinzak, Ehud. 1991. The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right. New York: Oxford University Press. Stewart, Don, and Chuck Missler. 1991a. The Coming Temple: Center Stage for the Final Countdown. Orange, Calif.: Dart. .—. 1991b. In Search of the Lost Ark. Orange, Calif.: Dart. Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement—Jerusalem. [2008]. www.templemountfaithful.org/. Accessed 15 September. Vermes, Geza. 1997. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. New York: Allen Lane. Wasserstein, Bernard. 2001. Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Wead, Doug, David Lewis, and Hal Donaldson. N.d. Where Is the Lost Ark? Minneapolis: Bethany House. Weiner, Herbert. 1961. The Wild Goats of Ein Gedi: A Journal of Religious Encounters in the Holy Land. New York: Doubleday. Wright, Lawrence. 1998. “Forcing the End.” New Yorker 74, no. 20 (20 July): 42-53. Yadin, Yigael. 1966. Masada: In Those Days, in Our Time. Tel Aviv: Maariv. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. 1988. Spinoza and Other Heretics. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Zilberman, Yiftah. 2001. “The Struggle over Mosque/Temple in Jerusalem and Ayodhya.” In Sovereignty of God and Man: Sanctity and Political Centrality on the Temple Mount, edited by Yitzhak Reiter, 241-68. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

CHAPTER 35

MILLENNIALISM AND RADICAL ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS JEFFREY T. KENNEY

Radical

Islamist movements (RIMs) are part of the larger phenomenon of politi¬

cal Islam that emerged in a variety of Muslim societies, beginning in the first half of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first. Islamism has become almost as difficult to define as fundamentalism, and for some of the same reasons: it is not a single movement with a coherent social, political, and religious agenda; it is constantly in flux; and scholarly and popular attempts to understand it have been influenced by domestic and international political concerns about the relationship between religion and politics (Kenney 2005). Islamism is often simply rendered as political Islam, but not all political religion in the Muslim world can be attributed to Islamists. An Islamist, following Graham E. Fuller’s definition, is someone “who believes that Islam as a body of faith has something important to say about how politics and society should be ordered in the contemporary Muslim [wjorld and who seeks to implement this idea in some fashion” (2003, xi). The “-ism” of Islamism, then, designates a certain ideological approach toward the Islamic tradition and its relevance to the modern condition. Islamist movements can be found throughout the Muslim world, and compet¬ ing Islamist movements operate in the same country. Many observers categorize Islamist movements as either moderate or radical, but this simple dyad fails to cap¬ ture the range of views and methods expressed by the various organizations. More importantly, it overlooks the dynamic nature of Islamist movements within their given environments. Islamists draw on traditional Islamic ideas and institutional forms to interpret modernity, reorient society, and lay claim to power. Among

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MILLENNIALISM AND RADICAL ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS

Islamists, the exact meaning of these ideas and the necessary shape of these institu¬ tional forms are contested, and so, too, are their compatibility with patterns of modernization. Scholars have shown a great deal of interest in Islamism, moderate and radical, but they have, with few exceptions, refrained from analyzing it in terms of millennialism. Of course, characterizations of Islamists as “millennialist,” “millenarian,” or “apocalyptic” can be found in popular publications, but these examples seem more intended for dramatic effect, hinting at irrational beliefs and violent actions, rather than examining a type of religio-political movement. The analytic field on which RIMs and millennialism meet is that of reform or revitalization movements, and the political violence that sometimes follows from them. A brief word about millen¬ nialism in early Islam will help set the stage for understanding the modern associa¬ tion between millennialism and RIMs (see also chapter 14 by David Cook, this volume). Millennial ideas have a long history in the Sunni and Shii Islamic traditions. The Qur’an contains explicit references to a cataclysmic Endtime scenario, when the world’s natural order will be turned upside down, the dead will be resurrected, both communities and individuals will be judged, and the saved will receive their just reward. Classical works, drawing on ideas in the Qur’an and Sunna,1 also devel¬ oped an elaborate story (actually, stories) of a future cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil—the antichrist Dajjal, the destructive creatures Yajuj and Majuj (biblical Gog and Magog) and the messianic figure of the Mahdi—(the Guided One)—at the end of which peace, justice, and divine truth will reign (Smith and Haddad 1981). This same tradition gave rise to a golden-age idyllic theme, one that glorified the first four Sunni caliphs as the Rightly Guided ones, in an effort to critique the corruption of later leaders of the empire and call them back to Islam’s pure origins. Among the Shia, millennial expectations centered around the return of the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who is believed to have gone into occultation or a hidden state in the mid-ninth century

c.e.

His return marks the

beginning of the end of time and a period of divinely ordained just rule. Although these Sunni and Shii ideas have taken on a life of their own in classical and modern literature (Cook 2005), they have commonly been linked to movements for social and political change throughout Islamic history. The political potential of millennial ideas is well established (Wessinger 2000, 8). It is this same potential that makes ideas otherwise viewed as benign, because they are part of a repertoire of passively held beliefs, take on a radical hue. Movements for change, whether informed by millennial ideas or not, challenge the status quo. Such movements also typically lead the powers-that-be to raise the specter of radi¬ cal (read: illegitimate) revolt. Ultimately, however, the “radicalism” of a movement is determined, in large part, by its success or failure. The teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, for example, expressed millenarian views common among messianic figures in Late Antiquity (Robinson 2000, 117). But Islam’s ascendancy ensured a different image of Muhammad in the official narrative and a more compromising attitude toward implementing his message of social harmony and perfection. This

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follows a common pattern in revitalization movements: a movement that comes to power with the promise of salvation—in this life or the next—only maintains power by routinizing its salvific plan and establishing a new social and political status quo (Wallace 1956). Put differently, the very power of millennialism to bring about radi¬ cal change also contains the seeds of its undoing, because life lived as continuous revolution or imminent salvation is difficult to sustain. Any discussion of RIMs must acknowledge the political uncertainty of the cur¬ rent historical moment in many Muslim-majority nations—an uncertainty signaled by both dramatic acts of Islamist violence and public debates about their meaning and causes (Kenney 2006). To get at that uncertainty and the violence that sur¬ rounds it, the remainder of this essay will draw on Catherine Wessinger’s useful distinction between progressive and catastrophic millennialism (1997).

The Society of Muslim Brothers The origin of Islamism traces back to the Society of Muslim Brothers (hereafter the Brotherhood), founded by Hasan al-Banna, in 1928, in Egypt. Al-Banna came of age in an Egypt dominated by British colonialism, the struggle for independence, and political contestation about the nation’s way forward. He found an answer to each of these problems in Islam. More precisely, he shaped an Islam that combined the modernist thinking of earlier Muslim reformers (Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdu, and Rashid Rida) with the activism and organization found in the nationalist movement of the time. For most Egyptians, Islam was a natural part of the fight for national independence. It provided a discourse of cultural authen¬ ticity, which unified the people and defined them over and against the occupiers. For al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood, however, Islam was much more than convenient cultural glue. It was the ideological force that infused (or ought to) every aspect of modern Muslim identity and society. In fact, al-Banna regarded national¬ ism, along with other Western “-isms,” such as socialism and communism, as incom¬ patible with Islam, although he accepted it as a necessary stepping stone toward his larger goal, the emergence of an Islamic order (al-nizam al-islami), manifested in an Islamic state that institutes Islamic law (shuri ‘a) and adopts the Qur’an as its con¬ stitution (Mitchell 1969,234-41). To accomplish this goal, the Muslim Brotherhood worked to win over Egyptian hearts and minds, and did so by becoming a full-service organization. Preaching and teaching were essential to the Brotherhood’s outreach efforts, and these were given practical expressions through the publication of magazines and books and the build¬ ing of mosques and schools. The Brotherhood engaged in traditional charitable work, operating health clinics and food distribution centers; and it also formed small businesses to provide jobs and job training. Behind the scenes lay a highly structured and secretive bureaucracy, which oversaw daily affairs and maintained discipline

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within the ranks. Training and organization had symbolic and real parallels to the military, and an armed “secret apparatus” was eventually formed to defend the Brotherhood from increasing government pressure. At the peak of its activities in the 1940s, the Muslim Brotherhood seemed more like a mini-state within a state than a movement. It was the Brotherhood’s idealistic vision of an Islamic order that made it a mil¬ lennial movement. This order entailed the recreation of a pure Muslim society, one that demonstrated the successful characteristics of secular political and economic systems, and that protected Muslim identity and culture from the ravages of moder¬ nity. It was the Brotherhood’s approach to realizing this ideal that made it an exam¬ ple of progressive millennialism. “When a group is relatively comfortable in society and they achieve some success in building their millennial kingdom, progressive themes may be highlighted. When disaster, opposition, or persecution is encoun¬ tered, catastrophic themes will receive prominence” (Wessinger 2000, 8). Egypt’s relative political openness during the 1930s and 1940s, a product of the so-called “liberal experiment” (al-Sayyid Marsot 1977), encouraged the Brotherhood to believe that civic activism was both feasible and worthwhile; and the movement’s public success seemed to confirm its “progressive” approach. But the experiment proved temporary as the country descended into widespread political violence over the direction of the national movement and its leadership. The Brotherhood con¬ tributed to this descent, but, as Richard R Mitchell has pointed out, “violence for the Brother [hood].. .was in many respects a response to the situation in Egypt and had much in common with the violence of other Egyptians” (Mitchell 1969,320). The 1952 revolution resolved the crisis over national leadership, but it also led to the creation of an authoritarian state that has, with variations only in degree of severity, continued to this day (Kassem 2004).2 Gamal Abdul Nasser emerged as the power behind the revolution. He set in motion a state-driven plan for development, nationalizing banks, industry, and transportation, and pushing through reforms in land ownership, education, and labor. These policies received popular support from the masses, as did Nasser’s success at forcing the British to withdraw from Egypt. On the international scene, Nasser became a major spokesman for Third World coun¬ tries and a thorn in the side of Western governments. On the domestic scene, there was a price to be paid for Nasser’s populist politics: severe restrictions on civil soci¬ ety and political freedom to ensure the efficiency of one-party rule, and dramatic growth of internal security and increase in political prisoners to control dissent. The victims of Nasser’s authoritarian rule cut across political lines, but the Brotherhood, as the most persistent public critic of his regime, suffered the most. The initial crackdown on the Brotherhood followed an assassination attempt on Nasser in 1954, carried out by a Brother associated with the secret apparatus. Although the incident raised suspicions about government involvement, and is still much debated, it provided Nasser with a pretext for eliminating the political threat posed by the Brotherhood’s extensive social network (Gordon 1992,175-84). Over the next decade, thousands of Brothers were arrested and held without trial, and the Brotherhood was declared an illegal organization and forced underground.

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Sayyid Qutb and the Radical Shift Millennialism is born in a context. The progressive millennialism of the Brotherhood emerged in the context of Egypt’s liberal experiment; the movement’s darker mil¬ lennial dreams were nurtured in Nasser’s prisons. Sayyid Qutb, a literary critic turned Brotherhood ideologue, gave voice to the catastrophic millennial themes that have come to define Islamism for many critics. Arrested in the 1954 crackdown on the Brotherhood, Qutb received a twenty-five-year prison sentence. He was released in 1965; several months later he was rearrested in connection with a plot to assassinate public officials and charged with terrorism and sedition. Following a show trial he was executed in 1966. While in prison Qutb shared a fate similar to that of his fellow Islamists: torture and humiliation. He also wrote numerous books, one of which, Milestones, captured the Islamist complaint against modern secular gov¬ ernments and inspired several generations of radicals (Kepel 1986). Qutb developed several ideas in Milestones that made violent confrontation a more likely, if not a necessary, part of the Islamist program of action. First, he defined the current Muslim society, of which he and the Brotherhood were a part, as jahiliyya, a word meaning “ignorance” and connected in tradition to the sinful, polytheis¬ tic period of pre-Islamic Arabia (Qutb 1993, 8-10).3 Even at this stage in Islamism’s development, the transnational impact of ideas was evident. Jahiliyya, for Qutb, was a transhistorical condition into which society fell from time to time; and modern Muslims had reverted to jahiliyya beliefs and practices because they had adopted new gods, the secular gods of capitalism, socialism, communism, and democracy. These Western ideologies, Qutb argued in Milestones, represented false gods, false sovereigns; the only true sovereignty (hakimiyya), which Muslims must recognize, and to which they must submit in this life and the next, was Allah’s (Qutb 1993).

Qutb’s solution to the crisis of jahiliyya and sovereignty in Muslim society was jihad or holy war. Just as the Prophet Muhammad resorted to jihad in order to cleanse Arabia of polytheism and return it to monotheistic purity, so too, according to Qutb, modern society must be cleansed and purified. And it was the vanguard (tali a) of Muslims, Qutbian shorthand for truly committed Muslim activists (i.e.,

the Brotherhood), which was responsible for carrying out this task. The first step entailed inviting people—so-called Muslims who possessed Muslim names and identity cards—to return to Islam. If these neopagans rejected the invitation, jihad must be waged against them (43-62). In Milestones, Qutb presented a very different face of Islamism than his prede¬ cessor, Hasan al-Banna. Instead of viewing the Brotherhood as part of the larger society, Qutb adopted a more elitist vision, one that cast the Brotherhood as the ideal community of the saved. Instead of embracing society as essentially good but in need of reform, Qutb declared it jahiliyya and in desperate need of salvation. Instead of regarding fellow Muslims as equals striving in the path of God, Qutb saw the majority of them as unbelievers, enemies of Islam. Instead of adopting the methods of teaching and community outreach, Qutb opted for confrontation and jihad. Of course, al-Banna did not deny the importance of jihad and the need to

MILLENNIALISM AND RADICAL ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS

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sacrifice for the cause, but he had not highlighted these points as Qutb did. Qutb redrew the classical divide between the Muslim world and its enemies—the abode of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the abode of war (dar al-harb)—establishing its con¬ tours as a line separating good Muslims from bad Muslims. And good Muslims had every reason to be fearful, as Qutb made clear in the final chapter of Milestones, where he evoked the quranic image of a fiery pit in which believers were tortured (Sura 85, The Constellation). This same fiery fate, Qutb warned, awaited any believer who witnessed to the truth of his faith, but there was valor in such an end: “The highest form of triumph is the victory of soul over matter, the victory of belief over pain, and the victory of faith over persecution” (131). This apocalyptic vision of the Islamist life stands in stark contrast to the hopeful¬ ness of the early Brotherhood, of al-Banna’s teaching, and even of the early writings of Qutb himself (Shepard 1996, xxiii-lv). The transformation—from peaceful to mili¬ tant activism—occurred in Nasser’s prisons, which for many Islamists came to sym¬ bolize the evil of the modern secular state. It was in these same prisons that Islamists debated their future political options and split into contesting camps: the moderates who rejected violence and agreed to work within the restrictions imposed by the authoritarian state, and the radicals who decided that state and society had become so corrupt they could only be changed through violent means (Kepel 1986,27-35).

Patterns of Islamist Radicalism This prison split generated a wave of minor and major radical organizations throughout the 1970s and 1980s in Egypt. The Jihad Organization was the most infamous, because of its assassination in 1981 of President Anwar Sadat, Nasser’s successor. But each of the groups contributed to the level of political violence and the radical discourse that justified it. The history of each also testified to the fact that millennial thought alone was not the cause of violence. Interaction with the surround¬ ing society and the state played a major role.

Society of Muslims Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Society of Muslims, more popu¬ larly known in the Egyptian press as Excommunication and Emigration (al-Takfir wa’l-Hijra). The group itself was the product of a prison debate among more mili¬ tant Islamists about the best means of transforming jahiliyya society. One faction fostered the idea of spiritual detachment from the society in which they lived; the other, which later formed into the Society of Muslims, believed that physical separa¬ tion from society was required. Both maintained that Egyptian society had fallen into a state of unbelief and thus deserved to be excommunicated (Kepel 1986,74-75). Led by a contributor to the prison debates, Shukri Mustafa, the Society of Muslims

694

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

formed in late 1971 in the region of Asyut, gathering members from neighboring vil¬ lages. At its peak in the late 1970s, after spreading to the suburbs of Cairo, the organi¬ zation had “between three and five thousand active members” (Ibrahim 1980,425). The story of the Society of Muslims is one of increasing public attention and confrontation with the government. The very existence of the group put it on the radar of local police alert to any public gatherings. The Egyptian state under Anwar Sadat may have been more tolerant of Islamist activities than the previous regime, but vigilance was still the order of the day, and Islamists were expected to abide by the tacit agreement that had won their release from prison: preaching and social outreach were permitted, but direct attacks upon the state, discursive or otherwise, were not. The group initially gained public scrutiny when families complained of young girls being lured to become members’ “wives.” In 1974, after another Islamist group attempted to spark a revolt at a military school on the outskirts of Cairo, a national newspaper ran a story on Shukri and his followers’ countercultural lifestyle. In 1976 a public fight with a competing Islamist group over members led to a number of arrests and Shukri was forced underground. When it became clear that Shukri would not be able to negotiate an end to the confrontation, he authorized the abduction of Sheikh Muhammad al-Dhahabi, an ex-government minister of religious endowments who had published a critical assessment of the group. When efforts to use the Sheikh as a bargaining chip for the release of imprisoned members failed, he was executed. The subsequent arrests and trial resulted in five executions from among the group’s lead¬ ership and lengthy prison sentences for other members. Although the Society of Muslims held many of the same radical views that informed Qutb’s catastrophic millennialism, the organization did not act on these views. Indeed, it kept to a rigorous form of isolation that verged on passivity. This became clear at Shukri’s trial when he was asked what the Society of Muslims would do if Israel invaded Egypt: “If the Jews or anyone else came, our movement ought not to fight in the ranks of the Egyptian army, but on the contrary ought to flee to a secure position. In general, our line is to flee before the external and internal enemy alike, and not to resist him” (quoted in Kepel 1986, 84). Shukri refused to defend Egypt because Egypt, for him and his followers, in its then current state of jahiliyya was not worth defending. His was a total rejection of the foundations of the modern state and the institutions that lent it authority and power: law, educa¬ tion, the military, and the religious establishment. Thus Shukri believed that a revo¬ lution was in order, but he realized that the Islamist movement was too weak to bring about such a dramatic transformation. In this time of weakness, he opted to create a utopian counter-society in which Islamists could live according to the ideals that mainstream society refused to uphold. The violence that the Society of Muslims came to commit was not part of its master plan for building a true Muslim society. In fact, the group had no master plan. Its utopian existence was always fragile, since its survival continued to depend on the very jahiliyya society that it condemned—for members, money, and its raison d etre. The Society of Muslims no doubt hoped for a revolution, but its goal was to survive the revolution, not fight it. Like some modern-day community of Essenes (see chapter 13 by James Tabor, this volume), Shukri and his followers took

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to the desert, intending to maintain their purity and use it to reestablish a new soci¬ ety out of the wreckage of the old. Was a confrontation inevitable, given the Society of Muslims’ antagonistic atti¬ tude toward mainstream society and the state? Perhaps. But the evidence shows that Shukri was slowly drawn into a showdown with the government, after his experi¬ mental counter-society was threatened, after the government-controlled media began to attack the group, and after the government intervened to root out devi¬ ance. Moreover, this showdown benefited the state, which sought to undermine Islamism by linking the movement with alternative lifestyles and alternative expres¬ sions of Islam that ran counter to Muslim popular opinion. Put differently, Shukri did not become a revolutionary intent on bringing about a catastrophic confronta¬ tion; he was confronted by a system that used notions of religious deviance to con¬ trol political dissent, and he responded. A confrontation, then, was in some sense inevitable between the Society of Muslims and the state, but only because of the latent tension in Egypt’s modern politics. Egypt’s postindependence state was corporatist and authoritarian, intent on dominating the political field and eliminating meaningful competition. Islamism as a kind of reli¬ giously infused counter-nationalism challenged the legitimacy and practical benefits of the modern secular state. For the state, the only tolerable Islamism was one that empha¬ sized social reform and rejected political involvement. Most Islamists played the state’s game, reluctantly, waiting for an opening in the system and a chance to demonstrate their capacity to rule. Such a chance might come through revolution, a natural collapse of the system, working in the limited civil society or even democracy—options that correspond to the preferred methods of change found along the radical-to-moderate range of Islamists. In this political context, confrontation can be managed or negotiated but not avoided, a point that holds true for the entire modern history of state-Islamist relations in Egypt and other Muslim-majority nations where the legitimacy of modern politics is contested. The Egyptian state entered into negotiations with Islamists, both moderate and radical, because of the inherent political weakness of a corporatist system that claims absolute power but lacks popular legitimacy. That radical Islamists, such as the Jihad Organization, were willing to enter into negotiations with the state points to the pragmatic political concerns that informed, and at times tempered, even the most revolutionary millennial worldview.

Jihad Organization Unlike the latent radicalism of the Society of Muslims, the Jihad Organization embraced violence as the primary means of achieving its goal of establishing an Islamic state in Egypt. Indeed, those who planned and carried out the assassination of Anwar Sadat critiqued their fellow Islamists who argued that emigration to the des¬ ert was a viable Muslim response to the “house of unbelief” that was Egypt. Sadat s assassins also rejected moderate attempts to change society by working at the grass¬ roots level as political activists, civic leaders, or educators. The only true way of building an Islamic state, according to the so-called creed of Sadat’s assassins, was to

696

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follow the example established by the Prophet Muhammad and adopt jihad or fighting in the pathway of God (Jansen 1986,161-62,182-90). The Jihad Organization was convinced that jihad was the duty of every Muslim, and that the sinfulness and corruption into which Muslim society had fallen were the direct result of neglecting the duty to fight—hence the title of the creed, published in the aftermath of the assassination, that inspired the group, The Neglected Duty. The author of The Neglected Duty, Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj, made a case for the importance of jihad throughout Islamic history, but he located the modern battlefield, as had Qutb, within Muslim society: “To fight an enemy who is near is more important than to fight an enemy who is far” (Jansen 1986,192). For Faraj, however, the near enemy was not the entire Muslim community, a community that had fallen into jahiliyya, but rather “infidel leaders” who had led people astray and failed to ensure that Islamic law was enforced. Sadat was such an infidel leader, according to Faraj, and his betrayal of the Islamic cause by making peace with Israel provided sufficient reason to kill him.4 Although Faraj never mentioned Sadat by name, readers were sure to make the logical connection, especially in the aftermath of the assassination. For all the details Faraj provided about why jihad was necessary and how it should be implemented, he was surprisingly silent about what would follow once jihad ended. In fact, he denied any need to think beyond the birth pangs of an Islamic state’s found¬ ing: “an Islamic state is the execution of a divine Command. We are not responsible for its results” (Jansen 1986,201). And when Faraj did imagine the future of this state, he resorted to the kind of vague optimism for which Islamists were often criticized: “when the Rule of the Infidel has fallen everything will be in the hands of Muslims, whereupon the downfall of the Islamic state will become inconceivable... the Laws of God are all justice and will be welcomed by everyone, even by people who do not know Islam” (Jansen 1986,202). Here the millennial ideal takes the form of a state-ofnature politics, one that reconnects Muslims, and all humans, with a divine order in which people live in perfect harmony and contentment. The only thing standing in the way of realizing this goal is the secular, infidel government that has made a fetish of its own political power. The messianic logic driving this situation is that Godordained violence, often a single act of it, can somehow liberate Muslims from politics altogether (Rapoport 1988, 197). Once the leader—symbol of all that is sinful and corrupt is dead, government in its current oppressive and ineffective form will dis¬ appear, as will political parties with their divisiveness and wrangling.

The Interactive Context of Moderate and Radical Islamism One of the marks, then, of a certain type of radical Islamism is that it has given up on normal politics, counter-society radicals like the Society of Muslims try to escape politics, while violence-prone radicals like the members of the Jihad Organization

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want to destroy politics. Both of these options stand in stark contrast to the moder¬ ates who embrace the transformative potential of politics, even as they acknowledge its limitations. And whereas radicals, because they have given up on politics, tend to disregard the everyday problems that plague people’s lives, moderates approach these problems as religious duties. Moderates also tend to link their vision of an Islamic state or order with improvement in social and economic conditions, thus presenting Islamism as a theology of liberation. Radicals, by contrast, locate libera¬ tion in isolation, violence and death. While these patterns have been replicated in other Muslim countries (Sivan 1990; Kepel 2002), it is also the case that individuals and groups shift between them, and that the patterns themselves are malleable. Here again, circumstances make the defining difference. Scholars have identified a number of factors that push away from radicalism and pull toward it. The three main push factors are state violence and repression, popular moral backlash against acts of radical violence, and internal dissension within radical groups. The three main pull factors are political discontent, state repression, and socioeconomic frustration. All of these factors interact in dynamic environments, and so, too, do attitudes toward millennial thought and action. Where states are strong and strong-handed, as in Egypt, Syria, and Algeria, rad¬ ical Islamist groups have experienced great difficulty in sustaining their institutional integrity and gaining popular support. In Egypt, many Muslim Brothers in the 1960s rejected radicalism as a result of their prison experiences. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Jihad Organization and the Islamic Group found themselves under government siege and plagued by leadership disputes over the benefits of violence. As a result, factions emerged from both groups, which recanted their previous violent paths and advocated more tolerant attitudes toward the established order and its institu¬ tions (Auda 1994). In the Syrian city of Hama in 1982, a Muslim Brother rebellion led President Hafiz al-Assad to call for an all-out siege against the city. Government troops bombarded Hama for a week, leaving some fifteen thousand dead and pro¬ viding a forceful demonstration of the risks of Islamist militancy. RIMs, then, have shown a capacity to learn from their contexts and thus to adapt. When radicalism seems to have failed, some groups have shifted to more peaceful means of protest—a pattern that Ian Reader has labeled “the pragmatics of failure” (cited in Wessinger 2000,14). It is important to note, however, that the prag¬ matics of failure moves in two directions—from radical to peaceful and from peace¬ ful to radical—and some groups, like the Muslim Brothers, have over time experienced shifts in both directions. Indeed, the history of Islamism could be writ¬ ten from a pragmatics of failure perspective because success has been hard to sus¬ tain or measure, as the following two country studies indicate.

Algeria The case of Algeria is important because it highlights the political failures that transform moderate Islamists into radicals, and that link Islamist violence with state violence. Algeria’s problem with radical Islamism began after, of all things, the

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nations most open and free election. Riding a wave of popular discontent with the historic ruling party’s corruption and inability to deliver on its promises, moderate members of an Islamist group, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), won a convincing victory in early balloting for parliamentary elections in late 1991. Surprised by the results, and claiming that an Islamist government would roll back democratic prog¬ ress, the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) stepped in, annulled the election results, dissolved FIS, and appointed officials of their own choosing. The country descended into a five-year bloodletting, from 1992 through 1997, which resulted in 100,000 deaths. The fighting began with Islamist attacks on the military and ruling party politi¬ cians, those who had stolen the election from the rightful winners. Divisions among Islamists led to internecine conflict and a ratcheting up of the level of brutality (Burgat 2003,102-16). One faction, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), targeted civil¬ ians, particularly journalists, unveiled women and foreigners, who were thought to represent Algeria’s secular political culture. A truce was eventually brokered, which granted amnesty to Islamists who were prepared to acknowledge the authority of the government (Kepel 2002, 274). In the aftermath of the civil war, Algeria became a study in conflicting lessons to be learned. For authoritarian leaders, like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Algeria con¬ firmed the dangers of allowing Islamists to participate in democratic elections: since the Islamists might win, it is better to pay lip service to democracy but avoid its institutional requirements. For many Islamists and others suspicious of Western silence in the face of the annulled elections, Algeria proved that democracy is a cor¬ rupt political system manipulated by the West. For those critical of Islamism, Algeria demonstrated that Islamists were untrustworthy, volatile, and bloodthirsty terror¬ ists. A more nuanced lesson is that the civil war was a case of “double terrorism,” in which state terrorism “consciously nurtured” Islamist terrorism and “then helped it to develop” (Burgat 2003,110).

Palestine Algerian Islamists lost the battle for the hearts and minds of their fellow citizens by descending into a frenzy of self-destructive violence. Islamists in Palestine, by con¬ trast, have recently managed to win public office by arguing that the state terrorism of Israel must be met in kind. In certain circumstances, then, terrorism or revolu¬ tionary violence can appear a rational choice, perhaps the only choice. The circumstances in Palestine surround an ongoing fight for an independent nation-state and an end to an occupation that has exhibited many of the oppressive features of Western colonialism, but none of its “civilizing mission.” Zionism and Jewish immigration to Palestine provided the impetus for the rise of Palestinian nationalism. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 solidified Arab opposition and led to a succession of wars between the newly formed state and surrounding Arab nations.

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Palestinian resistance to Israel took many forms, often falling under the direc¬ tion of regional Arab supporters, but it came into its own with the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. Yasir Arafat was chosen to lead the PLO in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war—a stunning defeat for the Arabs with significant territorial losses, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Palestinians claimed as part of their national homeland. The Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its acronym Hamas, emerged in a later phase of the national struggle in late 1987 as a Muslim Brother response to the intifada, or uprising. It was a time “of disillusionment with the Palestinian secular political movements and with the frustrated hope of achieving salvation from the Israeli occupation through them” (Abu-Amr 1994, 66). Founded by Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, Hamas framed the Palestinian struggle in strict Islamist terms and defined itself over and against the PLO’s plan to establish a secular state and to rely on Western intermediaries to negotiate with Israel. Palestinians, according to Hamas, had to take control of their political destiny, and this would happen only if their society relied on Islamic values and if they responded to the occupation with the kind of force it deserved, namely jihad. Of course, the jihad advocated by Hamas differed dramatically from that of Sayyid Qutb and other radical Islamists. Hamas understood its recourse to jihad as politics by other means, a legitimate expression of Palestinian self-defense and self-determination against an enemy that only understood force (Abu-Amr 1994,79). Thus jihad, for Hamas, was part of a national struggle for survival, not part of “an expansionist war in order to spread Islam” (Niisse 1998,70). What makes Hamas unique is its capacity to fuse progressive and catastrophic millennialism. For at the same time that Hamas promoted and engaged in violence to achieve its ideal of an Islamic state, it also built up an extensive charitable net¬ work to address the practical needs of Palestinians. Some have argued that Hamas’s charitable activity served merely as a safe public cover for jihad, the real agenda of the movement (Levitt 2006), but such criticism overlooks the adaptive nature of millennial movements. Unlike Islamists in Egypt or Algeria, Hamas established itself in the context of a seemingly unending occupation, where the state was weak, ineffectual, and corrupt. A movement combining Islamic ideology, armed struggle, and charity had natural appeal among a population in need of an authentic identity of resistance and social services. It was this appeal that brought Hamas victory in democratically held elections in january 2006. Victory at the polls, however, proved ineffective at winning Hamas wider legiti¬ macy. Its political rival, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), regarded itself as the historic voice of the Palestinian people and its governing body, the Palestinian Authority (PA), as the sole negotiator of any peace agreement with Israel. After failed attempts at power-sharing with the PA, Hamas, in June 2007, took control of Gaza and proceeded to establish its own government. In response, the so-called Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations) and Israel, with the connivance of the PA and Egypt, adopted a policy of isolation toward Hamas-controlled Gaza, hindering cross-border traffic and the

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shipment of vital supplies. An economically depressed and suffering Gaza, so the policy rationale went, would undermine support for Hamas’s radical politics among Palestinians and bolster the pragmatic approach to peace adopted by the PA. This policy not only failed; it backfired. Isolation allowed Hamas to entrench itself completely into the institutional life of Gaza. While Gazans certainly suffered under the imposed sanctions, it was Israel, the United States and a compromised PA that received the blame. The peace process stagnated, and rocket fire from Gaza continued to threaten the safety of Israeli towns (International Crisis Group 2008). As one student of political Islam has noted, “We get the Islamists that we deserve” (Burgat 2003, 65). This statement conveys the importance of regional and international actors in shaping Islamist movements, in inclining them toward pro¬ gressive or catastrophic millennialism. If the past failure of these actors to resolve the Palestinian crises contributed to the radical Islamism that is Hamas, then how these actors decide to work with a democratically elected Hamas will certainly have an impact on the movement’s future shape.5

Political and Revolutionary Shiism The RIMs explored thus far were the product of Sunni Muslim societies. Although Islamism is often associated exclusively with the Sunni world, Shii societies have also witnessed a politicization and radicalization of religion. And there has been some cross-fertilization of radical ideas and actions, especially as a result of the Iranian revolution.

The Iranian Islamic Revolution The political quietism that defined Shiism in the modern era was shattered by the 1979 Iranian revolution and its aftermath. The event sent shock waves through the Middle East, especially Sunni capitals where political leaders worried they might share the same fate of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi if homegrown Islamists proved successful. Western states, already concerned about the political and economic dan¬ gers of the Arab-Israeli conflict, were embarrassed by their failure to detect the undercurrent of discontent in Iran and forced to rethink their policies in the region. Moreover, the very fact that a “religious revolution” could take place in the last quar¬ ter of the twentieth century added to an already growing interest in academic circles and beyond about the rise of fundamentalism, and about the supposed link between modernity and secularization (Kenney 2005). The Islamic revolution in Iran seemed to confirm the worldwide resurgence of religion in general and political potential of Islam in particular. It also demonstrated, in dramatic fashion, the power of millen¬ nialism to influence modern thought and change the course of history.

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The architect of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, burst suddenly onto the public scene in the early 1960s during protests against the shahs land reform policies and the expansion of voting rights to women, both of which were opposed by religious scholars. These policies were part of a larger state-spon¬ sored modernization program imposed by the shah after his restoration to the Pahlavi throne in 1953—a restoration that took the form of a coup, which overthrew a democratically elected prime minister, Muhammad Mossadegh, and was secretly backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The modernization program, known as the White Revolution, instituted far-reaching social and economic changes and centralized the state’s control over all sectors of society. It created a stratum of educated, Western-oriented workers, but it also alienated segments of society— leftists, religious scholars, merchants, and artisans—that would later coalesce into a revolutionary force. Khomeini emerged as a high-profile critic of the government, challenging the shah’s reforms, his authoritarian style of rule, and his cozy relationship to the West (the United States in particular). The shah responded by first arresting Khomeini and then sending him into exile. From his residence in Najaf, Iraq, Khomeini con¬ tinued his attacks on the shah and formulated his theory of Islamic government. According to this theory, known as velayat-e faqih or guardianship of the jurist, sovereignty rested in the hands of clerical leaders or fuqaha (singular of faqih) whose political-legal authority traced back to the Twelve Imams and the Prophet Muhammad.6 As manifestations of God’s will, these clerics were divinely entrusted with overseeing all human affairs, including political governance (Khomeini 1981, 83-88). Claiming rightful political rule for clerics was a revolutionary act, both in terms of challenging the shah and reinterpreting Shii history (Arjomand 1988, 177-83). Revolutionary, too, was Khomeini’s willingness to tap into Shiism’s millenarian expectations and tacitly assume the persona of the (Hidden) Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi or rightly guided one, whose long-awaited return was to mark the rebirth of Islam and the establishment of divine justice. Although Khomeini never claimed to be the Mahdi, he allowed others to foster the notion, which enhanced his popular cachet and lent him political authority (Arjomand 1988, 100-102). Through his writings and audiotaped messages, which were smuggled back to Iran and widely distributed, Khomeini cast Islam, not just Shiism, as the answer to Iran’s political crises and himself as the seminal voice of Islam. Of course, Khomeini’s was not the only voice of opposition to the shah; nor was he the only person who used Islam/Shiism as a vehicle of protest. One of the betterknown advocates of Shii cultural authenticity was Ali Shariati, who blended Islamic modernism and Marxist ideas. Schooled in Iran as a sociologist, not a cleric, Shariati went on to earn a doctorate in Paris, where he was deeply influenced by the political thought and activism of figures such as Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre. Shariati’s writings and teaching looked to the glorious Shii past, especially the lives of Ali and Husayn, to foster a dynamic identity in the face of Western colonialism. His untimely death in 1977 left a void in the nonclerical intellectual culture, but “he did the most to prepare Iranian youth for revolutionary upheaval” (Keddie 1981,215).

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It was Khomeini, however, with his impeccable religious credentials and sym¬ bolically charged charisma, who came to represent Shii authenticity. His willingness to speak out against the injustices of the shah’s government and put his life at risk demonstrated his leadership abilities, even to those disinclined to regard him as the Imam of the Age. Most Iranians pinned their hopes on Khomeini, and bought into the discourse of his revolutionary progressive millennialism, for pragmatic reasons: to evict the shah, to improve the economic condition, to eliminate corruption, and to restore the nation’s cultural identity. These were much the same reasons that made Khomeinism and the revolution popular throughout the Third World where people were looking for ways to transform their societies and modernize without sacrificing tradition to Westernization. The success of the revolution and Khomeini’s firm control over the newly formed Islamic Republic provided the perfect opportu¬ nity to prove the benefits and superiority of Islamic rule. Khomeini, like his Sunni Islamist brethren, took seriously the idea that politics and society had to be Islamized, and signs of this seriousness were evident following the revolution. The Islamic Republic terminated the reformist Family Protection Law, revamped the education system, instituted Islamic law, imposed restrictions on women, and banned alcohol, gambling and Western-style music. Whether these changes were actually Islamic is debatable; they were, however, consistent with views Khomeini had expressed prior to the revolution (Keddie 1981, 266). Clerical rule, with Khomeini at the apex of the hierarchy (vali-e faqih), came to define Iranian politics in the postrevolutionary period, and so too did political formulas that seemed to blend existing Western systems with reinvented Islamic tradition. The Iranian Republic, for example, adopted a Western-style constitution and main¬ tained the parliament structure begun under the shah, though a newly formed Council of (Clerical) Guardians had ultimate control over it. Purges of Westernized personnel from government ministries cleared the way for the appointment of cler¬ ics and other supporters of the revolution (Arjomand 1988,143-44). Institutionalizing the revolution and translating its Islamic ideals into reality proved difficult. As one historian of the Middle East has pointed out: “Rather than Islamizing the nation, it might be argued that the revolution nationalized religion” (Gelvin 2005,287). Religion, for the clerics, became an ideological tool used to con¬ trol the nation, justify their own rule and eliminate opposition. And criticism did flow freely once the hoped-for social, economic, and political improvements did not materialize. In Iran and the Muslim world, popularity for the revolution faded because of what were seen as dictatorial excesses in human rights, the Iran-Iraq war, the treatment of women and some ethnic and religious minorities” (Cole and Keddie 1986,22). In theory, Khomeini’s revolutionary vision encompassed not just the Shia of Iran, whose history made them the perfect symbol of the oppressed, but all the Earth’s downtrodden, who were to rise up and overthrow their masters. The resulting global community of awakened people was to be held together by religion, not Marxist theory (Zonis and Brumberg 1987, 56-59). In practice, the new leaders of the Iranian Republic found exporting the revolution as problematic as institution-

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alizing it at home. A lack of ideological consistency and a failure to agree on the proper methods of outreach hindered attempts to spread the revolution (Ramazani 1990). The idea of the revolution did inspire both Shii and Sunni communities—in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—but inspiration occurred in national contexts with particular political and historical conditions (Cole and Keddie 1986). And it was these conditions—not the Iranian revolution—that led Muslims to adopt radical ideas and practices. The Iranian Republic’s greatest foreign policy success came in Lebanon, where a weak state and a demographically expanding Shii community created an opportu¬ nity for intervention. But even in Lebanon, local politics have triumphed over the vagaries of a universal revolutionary Shiism, as the case of Hizbullah demonstrates.

Hizbullah Hizbullah, or the Party of God, is the most recent and militant Shii political move¬ ment to emerge in Lebanon’s turbulent modern history. The proto-origins of the group trace back to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Lrustrated by Palestinian cross-border attacks and determined to end them, Israel entered southern Lebanon in June and pushed on to the outskirts of the capital, Beirut, punishing the PLO along the way. The south was the historic heartland of Lebanon’s Shia, though a pattern of migration north had brought significant numbers to the urban area sur¬ rounding Beirut. Even before the invasion, Shii-Palestinian relations had begun to deteriorate: “Not only were the Shia weary of being caught in the Israeli-Palestinian cross fire, but they increasingly viewed the Palestinians as an occupying force prone to high-handedness and brutality” (Norton 2007, 22). As a result, the Shia quietly welcomed Israeli efforts to eliminate PLO dominance in the region. By the next year, however, a new Shii force, then known as the Islamic Resistance but later referred to as Hizbullah, began attacking Israeli and Western targets. This new Shii force was the product of fractured Shii politics in Lebanon, the foreign intervention of Syria and Iran, and growing anger over the Israeli occupa¬ tion. Lebanon’s most powerful Shii party, Amal (Hope), had first been formed as a militia under the leadership of Musa Sadr, an Iranian cleric who had immigrated to Lebanon in 1959. Trained in Qom, Sadr came from a distinguished clerical lineage. His arrival in Lebanon coincided with a demographic shift that would eventually transform the Shia into the largest minority in Lebanon’s multisectarian polity. Based on population statistics at the time of national independence, 1943, Maronite Christians and Sunnis constituted the majority sects, which meant that the Shia were accorded the smallest piece of the political pie. Changing demographics failed to produce a readjustment of political power and the economic and social benefits that flowed from it, and the Shia grew tired of accepting third-best. Musa Sadr’s rise to leadership, then, converged with a historic change in the nation’s sectarian poli¬ tics: “the Shia of Lebanon were elaborating a religiopolitical culture of their own, bringing it out of the hinterland into the center of things” (Ajami 1986,119).

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Sadr’s authority, like Khomeini’s in Iran, benefited from the popular expecta¬ tions that his followers placed upon him, and these expectations were inflected by Shii millenarian hope for a future leader who would set the community on the right path. Sadr was given the honorific title of “Imam” as a sign of that hope (Ajami 1986, 120—22). His unexpected disappearance on a trip to Libya in 1978 created the sym¬ bolic context to identify him with the Hidden Imam and, by spiritual extension, to sacralize the endeavors of Amal and the Lebanese Shia (Norton 1987, 55-56). Thus what Khomeini accomplished for his followers by reappearing out of exile, Sadr accomplished by disappearing. Amal eventually wound up in the hands of a secular-style leader, Nabih Berri, but splits within the movement threw up a more radicalized faction that turned away from Berri’s mainstream politics. This faction began to train with a contingent of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that had been deployed to Lebanon for the purpose of spreading the revolution. Syria facilitated the deployment to strengthen its own political influence in Lebanon, which had historically been part of Syria, and the region, which Israel and the United States increasingly dominated. To the process of radicalization at work among Lebanese Shia, then, was added the destabilizing political machinations of Iran and Syria. The mix was deadly. Militants embarked on a series of dramatic and bloody suicide attacks—a tactic developed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war and “cultivated.. .to perfection” by Hizbullah, which renamed the actions “martyrdom operations” (Reuter 2004,12). The Israeli army bore the brunt of these attacks, but a multinational contingent of troops from the United States, France, and Italy were also targeted. By 1985, all for¬ eign troops had withdrawn from Lebanon, and the Israeli army had pulled its forces back from Beirut to a defensive strip along the border. With its enemies in retreat, and its capacity to take on major military powers clearly demonstrated, Hizbullah made its official founding declaration, announcing its intentions in a public letter addressed to the “downtrodden in Lebanon and the world” (Norton 1987,167-87). Clearly influenced by Iran’s revolutionary fervor, the document blamed the West and East (the Soviet Union) for exploiting and subju¬ gating peoples around the world, especially Muslims. The United States constituted the biggest threat to the downtrodden, but Israel and France were proxy oppressors in the region. Citing Khomeini’s example in Iran and Hizbullah’s in Lebanon, the document urged the oppressed to rise up and resist their oppressors and to do so under the banner of Islam. The letter specifically called for the elimination of all foreign influences in Lebanon, except for Iran, the need to erase Israel from the map, and the adoption of a militant uncompromising stance toward the imperialist West. Muslims and the oppressed could only take charge of their future if they fought Western attempts to divide them economically and politically. Hizbullah’s ultimate victory came in 2000, when Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon entirely, except for a small salient of land known as Shebaa Farms. Without an Israeli occupation to give the movement’s radicalism immediate pur¬ pose, critics questioned how Hizbullah would define itself and fit into Lebanese society (International Crisis Group 2003). From its foundation, however, Hizbullah

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has integrated itself into the life of the people, the Shia, whom it claimed to defend, providing much needed social services and working to improve living conditions. The movement had begun to run candidates in parliamentary and municipal elec¬ tions in the early 1990s, and its campaigns tended to focus on bread-and-butter issues, not religious ideology (Norton 2007, 97-112). Indeed, surveys of Lebanese Shia indicate that “deep religiosity and strong support of Islamic goals were not significant as a determinant of popular support for Hizbullah” (Harik 2004,109). Although Western powers, particularly the United States, continue to regard Hizbullah as a terrorist organization, many commentators have come to see this label as a dangerous mischaracterization that prevents a clear understanding of the movement’s popularity in the context of Lebanon (Norton 2007; Harik 2004; Shatz 2004). Hizbullah, like Hamas, has gained a following by acting—sometimes militantly, sometimes not—on behalf of a people who desperately want to change their social, political, and economic situations. The millennial language resorted to by the movement may strike fear in those outside the community, conjuring up images of a returning Mahdi and an impending Shii Armageddon, but for insiders it has an inspirational message of a better tomorrow. For Hasan Nasrallah, the current leader of Hizbullah, that tomorrow is rooted in Lebanon, not a pan-Shii or pan-Islamic state. Despite his traditional training in Shii seminaries in Iraq and Iran, Nasrallah “is a modern Lebanese politician, and the language he speaks is that of nationalism, albeit one saturated with the elements of Shii theology that emphasize resistance and martyrdom” (Shatz 2004,42). In both Shii and Sunni countries, radical Islamist movements inspired by uni¬ versal millennial ideas have given rise to mundane political forms—nationalism and nation-states—that differ from their Western counterparts more in cultural style than political structure. This is in keeping with the anticolonialist identity politics that has informed Islamism from its inception. Above all, the history of Islamism has been a search for an authentic, non-Western way of being modern. That search has relied on reinventing tradition in national contexts. With the rise of al-Qaeda, however, the search has taken a new direction (see also chapter 5 by Jean E. Rosenfeld, this volume).

Al-Qaeda and the Global Islamist Threat Al-Qaeda, which means “the base” in Arabic, is not the first international terrorist organization, but the coincidence of its rise and the demise of the Soviet Union has lent the organization a symbolic importance that it might otherwise not possess. Even before al-Qaeda and its founder, Osama bin Laden, became household names, there was talk of Islam or Islamic fundamentalism being the “next threat” to the West in the post-Cold War era and of a coming “clash of civilizations” with the Muslim world (Lewis 1990; Huntington 1993). The events of 11 September 2001

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

7 06

made the danger posed by Islam to the West seem all too real, and the author of the deadly attack, bin Laden, confirmed that Muslims were (or should be) in an all-out jihad or holy war against the West—a war intended to restore Muslim honor and recover Islam’s lost power.7 The modern battle lines for the emergent global jihad were initially drawn in Afghanistan, where the 1979 Soviet invasion produced a perfect storm of Afghan national resistance, worldwide Muslim opposition, regional political concern, and great power rivalry. The Soviets invaded to shore up a communist govern¬ ment threatened by both internal divisions and an anticommunist uprising that drew inspiration from the Iranian Revolution. Led by an Afghan army captain, Ismail Khan, the uprising began in Herat but quickly spread to other cities. By invading, the Soviets hoped to buy time for communist revolutionary thinking to take hold—in a country where a coup had only brought communists to power the year before—and to signal the United States to steer clear of the region. Instead, it emboldened Afghan resistance and convinced the United States of the need to intervene. For the United States, the Afghan jihad against the Soviet occupation provided an opportunity to challenge its Cold War rival close to home and to draw the Soviets into a Vietnam-like experience (Coll 2004, 38-52). The United States’ strategy worked surprisingly well: by 1989 the Soviets were forced to retreat from Afghanistan, suffering a bitter defeat, and two years later the Soviet Union collapsed. The decade-long war was fought primarily by Afghan nationals dedicated to liberating their country, but a smaller contingent of foreign jihadists committed to a more global Islamist worldview played a prominent role. According to one estimate, “some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their bap¬ tism under fire” in Afghanistan (Rashid 2001, 130). Many of these radicals were recruited by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and then received military training in camps along Pakistan’s northern border with Afghanistan. The United States and Saudi Arabia secretly funded the operation, and the CIA provided the overall strategy. The foreign jihadists, bin Laden among them, had initially been radicalized in their home countries, where governments often regarded Islamist activism—radical or not—as a threat to political stability. In Afghanistan radical Islamists from around the world found support for their activism and a clear-cut enemy to fight, while regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere viewed Afghanistan as a convenient dumping-ground for Islamist troublemakers. Neither these regimes nor the United States seemed to have contemplated the future threat of battle-hardened Islamists flush with victory in Afghanistan and determined to continue the jihad. Bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan soon after the Soviet invasion and set to work surveying how he might best contribute to the war. With a background in construc¬ tion and business, bin Laden gravitated toward organizational efforts; and with a significant family fortune at his disposal, his assistance was welcomed by radical leaders on the ground. One such leader was Dr. Abdullah Azzam, a Jordanian

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Palestinian academic whose jihad-centered theology (derived from Sayyid Qutb) bin Laden had imbibed in classes at Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 1984 bin Laden and Azzam established the Bureau of Services (MAK), which recruited and trained volunteers, and they later went on to build a training camp of their own in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border (Gunaratna 2003,21-25). Toward the end of the war, bin Laden and Azzam founded al-Qaeda to maintain the momen¬ tum of the jihad and expand its reach. While bin Laden wanted to take the jihad to other Islamic countries and beyond, Azzam preferred to secure a firm Islamist pres¬ ence in Afghanistan and then move on to supporting the Palestinian cause. The dispute over al-Qaeda’s direction was settled after Azzam, along with two of his sons, was killed in bomb blast in 1989 (Coll 2004,203-4; The 9/11 Commission Report n.d.,5 6). The early years of al-Qaeda were shaped by bin Laden’s “vision of himself as head of an international jihad confederation” (The 9/11 Commission Report n.d., 58). He made contact with Islamist groups in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, estab¬ lishing an ideological basis for future operations and lending financial support when needed. Bin Laden’s name has been linked—either through direct evidence or suspicion—to a number of terrorist attacks in the 1990s: the downing of U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Somalia in 1993; the bombing of the World Trade Center in the same year; a car bomb explosion near a training center for the Saudi National Guard in 1995; a car bomb attack on a United States Air Force military residence (Khobar Towers) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996 (The 9/11 Commission Report n.d., 9-60). Al-Qaeda’s first full-fledged operation took place in East Africa in 1998 with the suicide truck bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar alSalaam, Tanzania. In 2000 al-Qaeda struck at another symbol of U.S. power: a navy guided-missile destroyer, the USS Cole, anchored in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, was severely damaged in a suicide boat attack. One year later, on 11 September 2001, Islamist radicals, with al-Qaeda financing and logistical support, carried out the most dramatic terrorist attack on American soil, destroying the World Trade Center in New York City and inflicting serious damage on the Pentagon. Terrorism, for bin Laden, was no mere “technique of protest and resistance”; it was “a global instrument with which to compete with and challenge Western influ¬ ence in the Muslim world” (Gunaratna 2003,1). Indeed, in his public statements, bin Laden cast terrorism as the currency of international politics and thus a neces¬ sary means of defending Muslims: “So, as they kill us, without a doubt we have to kill them, until we obtain a balance of terror.... So America and Israel practice illadvised terrorism, and we practice good terrorism, because it deters those from killing our children in Palestine and other places” (Lawrence 2005,114,120). Muslim terrorism against the West is good, according to bin Laden, because of the West’s history of interference in and undermining of Muslim societies; the West has weak¬ ened and humiliated Muslims, and the only way to respond to these injustices and settle the historical score is through jihad. Those Muslims who strike back at the West, bin Laden claims, help eliminate the burden of shame pressing on the Muslim community and restore its pride (74).

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Like leaders of other RIMs, bin Laden surrounds his call for dramatic action with dramatic millennial images. United under their struggle to oppose Western hegemony, Muslims will, he writes, “establish the righteous caliphate” as prophesized in Islamic tradition, and bring about the return of the “righteous caliph” (121). His goal for Islam’s political future is nothing less than the reordering of world his¬ tory and the reestablishment of perfect rule. Of course, even bin Laden seems to recognize these are distant goals, and he mixes his rhetoric of resistance with an unmistakable air of millennial fatalism. Thus at the same time that he encourages Muslims to punish the West for its criminal policies in the Muslim world, he also reminds them of the illusory nature of this life; at the same time that he demands that Muslims depose the tyrants who rule over them—in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Jordan—he also reminds them that the Day of Judgment is coming and that “the end of the world is not as bad as the murder of a Muslim” (267). Beneath all the motivational language, then, bin Laden’s more somber message to believers is to prepare for continual jihad and a better life in the hereafter. Such a bleak outlook is unlikely to inspire jihadist fervor among the Muslim masses, most of whom hope for immediate improvements in their daily living condi¬ tions. Bin Laden has, however, become something of a heroic figure around the Muslim world, with his picture appearing on T-shirts, buttons, and protest signs. On a national level, bin Laden’s image is used to symbolize a failure of politics, for his public persona—a man of integrity who lives a simple, pious life—contrasts sharply with the behavior of current Muslim leaders known for corruption and deference to Western powers (Lawrence 2005, xvii-xviii). On an international level, his image is used to represent the potential of Muslims to retaliate for decades of Western arrogance and aggression. In a very real sense, Muslims have played on Western fears of bin Laden’s violent millennialism to express their own fear of Western global dominance, which has been communicated, intentionally or not, in evocative mil¬ lennial language like Crusade, Operation Infinite Justice, New World Order, and Clash of Civilizations.8 The strength of al-Qaeda post-9/11 has proven difficult to gauge. The United States-led invasion of Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda enjoyed the protection of the Taliban regime, eliminated the organization’s base of operations and forced bin Laden and his associates underground. But instead of retreating from the global battlefield, bin Laden fell back on his international Islamist credentials and rein¬ vented al-Qaeda as a terrorist brand name. In North Africa, for example, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, founded in 1998, was designated al-Qaeda’s representative in the region; several months later the group rechristened itself al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In Iraq, following the American invasion and occupation, a radicalized Sunni group emerged under the name of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which Western experts typically describe as a band of homegrown Sunni Arab extremists led by foreigners. But, in truth, the exact nature of the connection between these regional groups and al-Qaeda remains uncertain, it may be operational, financial, propagandistic, opportunistic, or all of the above.

MILLENNIALISM AND RADICAL ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS

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The New Radical Playing Field What seems clear is that the emergence of a global RIM, especially one so effective at instilling terror, has created a slippage in radical Islamist identity and purpose. It has also led to new formations that have little in common with traditional Islamist movements. Islamism, from its inception, has expressed transnational political aspirations, but it has done so within the framework of the modern nation-state. Indeed, despite universal political claims, Islamists have consistently tried to dem¬ onstrate the practical strength of Islam as a modern system of governance through national networks of social services. Once Islamism succeeded nationally, so the Islamist narrative went, the basis for a broader unification of the Muslim umma (community) would be possible. Even the violence that came to mark certain RIMs, such as the lihad Organization, Hamas, and Hizbullah, emerged in national con¬ texts where political power was being contested. It is ironic, then, that the first global Islamist movement, al-Qaeda, can be traced not to the success of national Islamist movements but their failure. Islamism went global because Islamist movements within nations were never allowed to participate meaningfully in the political sys¬ tem. The result is a global Islamist radicalism that lies beyond the moderating effects of any political system, and for which jihad has become an end in itself. Global jihad subverts more traditional Islamist movements, removing radical¬ ism from an “instrumental politics” of “local causes” and shifting it to an ethical realm, which transcends the “politics of control” (Devji 2005, 2-3). In such a disar¬ ticulated political context, al-Qaeda “attracts diverse volunteers for equally diverse reasons,” making it difficult to determine the coherence of the movement (20). Signs of the fraying of RIM coherence were already apparent prior to 9/11 in the motiva¬ tions of suicide bombers in Palestine and elsewhere (Reuter 2004). Radical identity became more tenuous following 9/11 as otherwise organizationally unaffiliated and, often, unobservant Muslims—living in places as far removed as Karachi, Casablanca, and London—were drawn to the global jihad. This trend has received popular treat¬ ment in Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, in which a Westernized, highly successful Pakistani immigrant turns against an America that, post-9/11, has lost sight of its own ideals as it struggles to maintain its imagined superiority. The new global playing field of radical Islamism has made it easier to pursue the Millennium, but more difficult to explain. Paroxysms of Islamist violence in the Muslim world and the West make it seem as though the jihad has taken root every¬ where. This violence, however, reflects the “globalization of psychotic discontent” (Fuller 2003,94), not the plan of a master strategist. One of the distinctive features of bin Laden’s leadership style has been his willingness to “allow the global... jihad network to evolve spontaneously and naturally,” which in turn has made it “more militant and global for internal and external reasons” (Sageman 2004, 172). Bin Laden may provide a general ideological banner for waging global jihad, but Muslims are filling in the specific reasons on their own, and those reasons are tied

7io

CROSS-HISTORICAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

to grievances—real and perceived—at the national and international levels. These grievances and the violence that flows from them are “fundamentally about life, not the afterlife (Devji 2005,147), which means that, with the right political will and wisdom, they can be addressed. This is a hopeful sign for those who wish to steer the current war on terror away from catastrophic millennial themes and toward pro¬ gressive ones.

NOTES 1. Sunna refers to established practices and norms, which are based on sayings and deeds attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. 2. By the last stages of prepublication editing in spring 2011, Egypt and Tunisia had experienced popular uprisings that forced authoritarian regimes from power and created a democratic opening in the region. The organizers of these uprisings were young, secular professionals familiar with web-based communication. The future of these nations, along with others whose populations have subsequently taken to the streets (Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Bahrain), still remains to be written, but new forms of millennialist rhetoric are already evident in the street politics, especially between Islamist and secularist factions who are vying for power in this new, seemingly democratic, era. 3. This claim was not original to Qutb. He borrowed it, along with other ways of thinking, from Mawlana Mawdudi (1903-79), the father of Islamism in Pakistan (Kepel 1986,47-49; Moussahi 1992,19,36). 4. Sadat’s peace initiative toward Israel began in 1977 when he flew to Jerusalem and spoke before the Israeli Parliament. He signed the Camp David Accord with his Israeli counterpart, Menachem Begin, in 1978. 5. In the last week of 2008, Israel embarked on an extensive bombing campaign in Gaza, targeting rocket launchers, rocket manufacturing shops, smuggling tunnels and Hamas infrastructure. Israel’s stated objective was to end the rocket attacks and secure the safety of its citizens, along with teaching Hamas a lesson about the limits of Israeli patience. The United States declared its support of Israel’s right to self-defense, and the PA and neighboring Arab governments remained largely silent. Arabs took to the street to challenge their governments to react, as Hamas reasserted its traditional defiant stance, promising to repay Israeli aggression. Progress appeared nowhere on the near horizon; the catastrophic results of failed politics were everywhere to be seen. 6. In Shii Islam, Imam, as one of the Twelve Imams, refers to a God-designated leader who possesses special spiritual insight and, as a result, political legitimacy. Shii factions differ over the number of Imams in the founding lineage. Thus there are Twelvers, Seveners, and Fivers. 7. Bin Laden s personal jihad came to an abrupt and surprising end on 2 May 2011, when he fell victim to a United States-sponsored assassination squad operating in Abbottabad, Pakistan. While many observers in the West, particularly in the United States, have hailed his death as a victory in the war on terror, the underlying causes of radicalization in Muslim societies remain. At the time of the final editing of this volume in May 2011, observers are warning of a radical Islamist backlash.

MILLENNIALISM AND RADICAL ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS

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8. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush referred to the coming American response to Islamist terrorism as a “crusade,” an unfortunate term that in the Muslim world evoked still-vivid memories of the violence inflicted by European Christians in the medieval crusades to “liberate” the Holy Land from Muslim control. The subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by American troops was initially named Operation Infinite Justice, reinforcing for Muslims that this was a religiously motivated war against Islam. The term New World Order, used in President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 speech after the defeat of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, elicits among conspiracy theorists a fear of a plot to bring the entire world under the control of a conspiring elite, often identified as Jews. “Clash of civilizations” refers to a theory proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (1993).

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-. 2008. “Ruling Palestine I: Gaza under Hamas.” Middle East Report No. 73 (19 March). www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=i0968d=i. Jansen, Johannes J. G. 1986. The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and the Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East. New York: Macmillan. Kassem, Maye. 2004. Egyptian Politics: The Dynamics of Authoritarian Rule. London: Lynne Rienner. Keddie, Nikki R. 1981. Roots of the Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Kenney, Jeffrey T. 2005. “Fundamentalism.” In New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by Maryanne Cline Horowitz, 846-50. Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons. -. 2006. Muslim Rebels: Kharijites and the Politics of Extremism in Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press. Kepel, Gilles. 1986. Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharoah. Translated by John Rothschild. Berkeley: University of California Press. -. 2002. Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam. Translated by Anthony F. Roberts. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Khomeini, Ruhollah. 1981. Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini. Translated by Hamid Algar. Berkeley, Calif.: Mizan. Lawrence, Bruce, ed. 2005. Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden. Translated by James Howarth. London: Verso. Levitt, Matthew. 2006. Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Lewis, Bernard. 1990. “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” Atlantic Monthly 226, no. 3 (September): 47-60. Mitchell, Richard P. 1969. The Society of Muslim Brothers. London: Oxford University Press. Moussalli, Ahmad S. 1992. Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse ofSayyid Qutb. Beirut: American University of Beirut. Norton, Augustus Richard. 1987. Amal and the ShTa: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon. Austin: University of Texas Press. -. 2007. Hezbollah. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ntisse, Andrea. 1998. Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic. Qutb, Sayyid. 1993. Milestones. Indianapolis: American Trust. Ramazani, R. K. 1990. “Iran’s Export of the Revolution: Politics, Ends, and Means.” In The Iranian Revolution, edited by John L. Esposito, 40-62. Miami: Florida International University Press. Rapoport, David C. 1988. “Messianic Sanctions for Terror.” Comparative Politics 20, no. 2 (January): 195-213. Rashid, Ahmed. 2001. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Reuter, Christoph. 2004. My Life Is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing. Translated by Helena Ragg-Kirkby. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Robinson, Chase. 2000. Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sageman, Marc. 2004. Understanding Terror Networks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. al-Sayyid Marsot, Afaf Lutfi. 1977. Egypt’s Liberal Experiment. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shatz, Adam. 2004. “In Search of Hezbollah.” New York Review of Books (29 April): 41-44.

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Shepard, William E. 1996. Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of “Social Justice in Islam.” Leiden: E. J. Brill. Sivan, Emmanuel. 1990. Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Enl. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Smith, Jane Idleman, and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad. 1981. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection. New York: State University of New York Press. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1956. “Revitalization Movements.” American Anthropologist 58: 264-81. Wessinger, Catherine. 1997. “Millennialism with and without the Mayhem.” In Millennialism, Messiahs, and Mayhem, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer, 47-59. New York: Routledge. ———. 2000. “The Interacting Dynamics of Millennial Beliefs, Persecution, and Violence.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 3-39. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Zonis, Marvin, and Daniel Brumberg. 1987. “Shi’ism as Interpreted by Khomeini: An Ideology of Revolutionary Violence.” In Shi’ism, Resistance, and Revolution, edited by Martin Kramer, 47-66. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.

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PART V

GLOSSARY AND INDEXES

CHAPTER 36

MILLENNIAL GLOSSARY COMPILED BY CATHERINE WESSINGER

amillennialism: Perspective of Augustine of Hippo (354-430) that there will not be a future Millennium. The Christian Church is equivalent to the millennial kingdom.

Antichrist: This term is found only in the biblical texts of 1 John 2:18,22,4:1-3, and 2 John 7. Second Thessalonians 2:1-12 refers to a “lawless one”; Mark 13:21-22, Matthew 24:23-24, and Revelation 19:20 refer to false prophets. These references led Christians to understand the Antichrist as the embodiment of evil, especially in an apostate church, who will be defeated when Jesus Christ returns. The Islamic equiv¬ alent is the al-Masih ad-Dajjal (the False Messiah).

apocalypticism: In Christianity “apocalypse” refers to biblical literature that char¬ acteristically reveals the end of the world as we know it, usually in catastrophic terms. In popular language, apocalypse has become synonymous with the expected catastrophe,

therefore

millennialism” (see

“apocalypticism”

is

synonymous

with

“catastrophic

catastrophic millennialism).

assaulted millennial groups: An assaulted millennial group is assaulted by persons in mainstream society, because the members’ religious views and actions are misun¬ derstood, feared, and despised. The group is assaulted because it is viewed as being dangerous to society. The group’s members are not viewed as practicing a valid religion worthy of respect. The group might be assaulted by law enforcement agents or civilians. Today, such a group is likely to be labeled with the pejorative term cult. While some assaulted groups bear part of the responsibility for the violence that engulfs them, the primary responsibility for the violence rests upon those in main¬ stream society who assault them.

avertive apocalypticism: The belief that imminent this-worldly catastrophe can be averted by taking steps to return to harmony with the divine or superhuman agent,

718

MILLENNIAL GLOSSARY

through spiritual or ritual activities, or, in the case of secular movements, by practi¬ cal actions to correct looming problems. avertive millennialism: Avertive apocalyptic ideas combined with progressive millennial expectations. If the coming apocalyptic destruction can be averted through spiritual practices and disciplines, faith, and/or the help of superhuman powers, the collective salvation will be accomplished in a new and perfect age. cargo cults: Efforts of Pacific Islanders to obtain goods by imitating the “magic” that appears to provide cargo to representatives of colonial cultures possessing more advanced technology. Cargo cults are not millennial movements unless there is also belief in the imminent arrival of a hero or savior, and/or the ancestors, bringing cargo to effect a collective salvation. catastrophic millennialism: Catastrophic millennialism is the most commonly studied millennial religious pattern. In catastrophic millennialism there is belief in an imminent and catastrophic transition to the millennial kingdom. Catastrophic millennialism involves a pessimistic view of human nature and society. Humans are regarded as being so evil and corrupt that the old order has to be destroyed violently to make way for the perfect millennial kingdom. Catastrophic millennialism involves a radically dualistic worldview (see radical dualism). Reality is seen as involving the opposition of good versus evil, and this easily translates into an “us versus them” outlook. charisma: Both prophets and messiahs have “charisma”—in other words, access to an unseen divine or superhuman source of authority. An individual who possesses charismatic authority is believed to have access to divine or superhuman gifts (the unseen source of authority), and it is those gifts that underlie the authority. Charismatic authority is socially constructed. An individual will not possess cha¬ risma unless people believe her or his claim to that authority. Charisma as under¬ stood by social scientists and religion scholars has no relationship to the popular use of the term. charismatization process: The interactive socialization process in which believers attribute “charisma” (access to an unseen divine or superhuman source of authority) to a leader, and correspondingly socialize the leader to conform to the expected role of someone possessing charismatic authority, thus producing a charismatic leader who is considered worthy of devotion and obedience (Barker 1993). cognitive dissonance: Category offered by Leon Festinger in his seminal study with Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (1956), to describe the discomfort experienced by believers when a fervently held belief, such as a predicted transition to a collective salvation, fails to be confirmed by physical events. conditional apocalypticism: The belief that human beings can take actions to avert or forestall imminent destruction of the world as we know it, if they act in accordance with spiritual principles or a superhuman plan (see avertive apocalypticism).

MILLENNIAL GLOSSARY

719

cool millennialism: The vision of the collective salvation is seen as happening in an indeterminate future; the Millennium is not imminent. demotic millennialism: Millennial movements, originating from people on the grassroots level of society, which are expressive of desires for justice, equality, and well-being (Landes 2006). Endtime, or Endtimes: A term used to refer to the expected period of turmoil and tribulations leading to the catastrophic end of the world as we know it. environmental millennialism: Refers to beliefs, grounded primarily in the envi¬ ronmental sciences, that by damaging the planet’s natural systems human beings are likely to end the world as we know it. After the collapse of environmental sys¬ tems and/or the societies that depend on them, some expect a new age of ecological harmony to dawn; others expect only catastrophe. Environmental millennialism is sometimes fused to religious beliefs about nonmaterial divine beings, while other times it is entirely naturalistic. It generally retains a hope that, if we recognize the dangers, the worst of the unfolding catastrophe can be averted. eschatology: Term related to the Greek eschatos (“last things”). Eschatology is the study of last things, either concerning individual destiny (death) or doctrines about the end of the world. fanaticism: There are varying degrees of fanatic activity; the most extreme involve violence either in killing others or deliberately placing oneself and others in harm’s way. Critical scholars tend to use this term sparingly as it conveys a value judgment: one person’s fanatic is another’s hero, patriot, saint, or martyr. The cognitive com¬ ponents of fanaticism include • absolute confidence that one has the “Truth” and that others are wrong and evil; • no openness to considering other points of view; • radical dualism—a conviction that there is a battle between good versus evil, “us versus them” (see radical dualism); • a conviction that the end justifies the means; a willingness to resort to any method—even harmful, illegal ones—to achieve the ultimate goal. When one believes that the goal justifies the use of any means, one becomes willing to kill others or die for the ultimate concern (see ultimate concern). fragile millennial groups: Fragile millennial groups initiate violence either due to internal factors or, more commonly, due to internal factors and stresses combined with the experience of opposition from outside society, which collectively endanger the group’s ultimate concern (see ultimate concern). Members of a fragile millen¬ nial group initiate violence to preserve the ultimate concern. The violence may be directed toward group members, or toward perceived enemies external to the group, or both. fundamentalism: This term has been extrapolated by historians of religions from the Christian use of the term, notably in the 1910s and throughout the twentieth

720

MILLENNIAL GLOSSARY

century, and applied to a variety of worldviews. Fundamentalism involves the belief that one has access to an infallible source of authority, either a text, a tradition, a leader, or a combination of these. Fundamentalism is a mind-set that is certain of the “Truth” and that locates this Truth in an idealized past expression of religious life. If the fundamentalist knows the Truth, then other perspectives are wrong and evil; there is no openness to alternative perspectives. If the true religion lies in an idealized past, then fundamentalism involves great resistance to modernity, even while utilizing contemporary technology to achieve its aim—the reestablishment of true religious life.

hierarchical millennialism: Millennial ideas promoted by a ruler or a dynasty to legitimate its reign. It is a realized millennialism or a realized messianism. Also termed “imperial millennialism” (Landes 2006).

hot millennialism: The collective salvation is imminent, and its arrival can be has¬ tened by strenuous human effort.

managed millennialism: Millennial beliefs remain in a tradition and its scriptures, but the expected transition to a collective salvation is no longer believed to be imminent. Intense millennial beliefs have been relegated to the background, but they remain they remain in the scriptures and can be foregrounded by future new millennial movements (Stone 2000, 277-79).

messiah: An individual who is believed to possess the power to create the millennial kingdom. A messiah is also a “prophet.”

millenniahsm (synonym, millenarianism): An academic term to refer to belief in an imminent transition to a collective salvation, in which the faithful will experi¬ ence well-being and the unpleasant limitations of the human condition will be eliminated (see salvation). The collective salvation is often considered to be earthly, but it can also be heavenly. The collective salvation will be accomplished either by a divine or superhuman agent alone, or with the assistance of humans working according to the divine or superhuman will and plan. The terms millennialism or millenarianism derive from Christianity, because the New Testament book of Revelation states that the kingdom of God will exist on Earth for one thousand years (a millennium). Millennialism is a term that is applied to religious patterns found in a variety of religious traditions.

Millennium: The collective salvation expected by millennialists. Many millennial expressions have described the collective salvation as lasting one thousand years (a millennium). nativist millennial movement: A nativist millennial movement consists of peo¬ ple who feel under attack by a foreign colonizing government that is destroying their traditional way of life and is removing them from their land. Nativists long for a return to an idealized past golden age. Many nativists have identified them¬ selves with the oppressions and deliverance of the Israelites as described in the Christian Old Testament. Nativist millennialism can take the form of either catastrophic millennialism or progressive millennialism (see catastrophic mil-

MILLENNIAL GLOSSARY

7 21

lennialism, progressive millennialism). Nativist catastrophic millennialists may await divine intervention to remove their oppressors and establish the mil¬ lennial kingdom, or they may be revolutionaries who fight to eliminate their oppressors. passive millennialism: Catastrophic millennialists awaiting divine intervention to effect the transition to the collective salvation. postmillennialism: The Christian belief that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the judgment will occur after the establishment of the one-thousand-year king¬ dom by Christians working for social and political reform according to God’s plan. The postmillennial outlook involves belief in progress into the collective salvation. After the conclusion of the one thousand years of the kingdom, Jesus Christ will return to destroy the world as we know it, resurrect the dead, and carry out judgment. pragmatics of failure: When particular methods to achieve a millennial goal have been met with failure, believers shift to other methods (Ian Reader quoted in Wessinger 2000,14) rather than give up their ultimate concern (see ultimate concern). premillennialism (also premillenarianism): The Christian belief that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of his one-thousand-year kingdom on Earth will precede the final collective salvation. It is based on the catastrophic scenario described in the Bible, especially in the New Testament book of Revelation (Apocalypse), in which the world as we know it is destroyed, the dead are resur¬ rected, Jesus Christ defeats evil and those aligned with evil, and Christ rules on Earth for one thousand years. At the end of the one-thousand-year kingdom the final judgment occurs, sinners are cast into hell, and creation is restored to perfec¬ tion. The premillennial outlook is pessimistic about human nature and society. Humans are so depraved that God must judge humanity and destroy the present creation in order to establish a purified humanity and creation, progressive millennialism: Progressive millennialism is a perspective that is opti¬ mistic about human nature and the possibility of imperfect human society to improve. Progressive millennialism is the belief that the imminent transition to the collective salvation will occur through improvement in society. The belief is that humans working in harmony with a divine or superhuman plan will create the mil¬ lennial kingdom. Humans can create the collective salvation if they cooperate with the guidance of the divine or superhuman agent. prophet: Someone who receives revelation from a normally unseen source of authority. Prophets are not necessarily messiahs. radical dualism: A perspective found to various degrees in catastrophic millennial movements of all types and to an extreme degree in revolutionary progressive mil¬ lennial movements. It is a rigid belief in irreconcilable forces of good versus evil, translated into a sense of “us versus them.” realized millennialism: The belief that a millennial kingdom, the collective salva¬ tion, has been accomplished.

MILLENNIAL GLOSSARY

722

realized messianism: The claim that a messiah has arrived and established the mil¬ lennial kingdom. religion: Religion involves having an ultimate concern, which is defined as being the most important thing in the world to either the group or the individual (Baird 1971,18). An ultimate concern is the goal that believers wish to achieve within the context of a worldview possessing a cosmology and views of human nature. Believers will practice methods to achieve their ultimate goal. Ultimate concerns are always about obtaining a condition of permanent well-being. Millennialists expect an imminent transition to a collective salvation, a condition of permanent well-being for a group of people (see salvation). revolutionary millennial movements: Revolutionary millennial movements possess ideologies or theologies that motivate believers to commit violent acts to overthrow the old order to create the millennial kingdom. The participants in revolutionary millen¬ nial movements believe that revolutionary violence is necessary to become liberated from their persecutors and to set up the righteous government and society. Revolutionary millennialists believe their violence is mandated by a divine or superhuman plan. Revolutionary millennial movements are numerous, and when dominant, they cause death, suffering, and destruction on a massive scale. When a revolutionary millennial movement is not dominant in society, its members resort to terrorism. Revolutionary millennialists resort to violence often because they are convinced they have been per¬ secuted. In committing violent acts they become persecutors. Revolutionary millennialism involves a radical dualistic perspective of good bat¬ tling evil, which involves a sense of “us versus them” (see radical dualism). This radi¬ cal dualism dehumanizes and demonizes the Other so that it is seen as being legitimate and imperative to kill them. Radical dualism legitimates murder and warfare. Revolutionary millennialism may be either an expression of catastrophic mil¬ lennialism or progressive millennialism (see catastrophic millennialism, progres¬ sive millennialism). salvation: A condition of permanent well-being. Millennialism offers that salvation to collectivities of people, not just to individuals. ultimate concern: A term used originally by theologian Paul Tillich for defining religion. Historian of religions Robert D. Baird (1971,18) stipulates a definition for “ultimate concern” as being the most important thing to an individual, group, or movement. In a religion the ultimate concern is the goal pursued by the believers. An ultimate concern is located within a worldview consisting of a cosmology and views of human nature. The religious system will promote methods to achieve the goal. Millennial ultimate concerns are about the accomplishment of a collective salvation. Ultimate concerns may change over time and in response to circum¬ stances, but they are always about a desired state of well-being (see salvation). unconditional apocalypticism: A non-avertive catastrophic millennial outlook, involving the fatalistic conviction that the world cannot be saved from destruction by human effort and the imminent cataclysm cannot be averted.

723

MILLENNIAL GLOSSARY

vaticinia ex eventu: The strategy of making “predictions” about events that have already happened, “foretelling after the event.” This has been used as a propaganda device to legitimate the reign of a ruler or dynasty by texts “predicting” a coming period of difficulties followed by deliverance by a strong ruler, who defeats enemies and establishes a collective salvation in the form of a realized Millennium.

WORKS CITED Baird, Robert D. 1971. Category Formation and the History of Religions. The Hague: Mouton. Barker, Eileen. 1993. “Charismatization: The Social Production of‘an Ethos Propitious to the Mobilisation of Sentiments.”’ In Secularization, Rationalism and Sectarianism: Essays in Honour of Bryan R. Wilson, edited by Eileen Barker, James A. Beckford, and Karel Dobbelaere, 181-201. Oxford: Clarendon. Festinger, Leon, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter. 1956. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. New York: Harper and Row. Landes, Richard. 2006. “Millenarianism and the Dynamics of Apocalyptic Time.” In Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context, edited by Kenneth G. C. Newport and Crawford Gribben, 1-23. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Stone, Jacqueline. 2000. “Japanese Lotus Millennialism: From Militant Nationalism to Contemporary Peace Movements.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 261-80. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 2000. “Introduction: The Interacting Dynamics of Millennial Beliefs, Persecution, and Violence.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, edited by Catherine Wessinger, 3-39. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.

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Index of Millennial Groups and Movements

‘Abbasid dynasty, 269,272-74,276,278, 295, 296 Abode of the Message, The, 571

Canaanites, 671-72 cargo cults, 13,14,90,92-93,94,98-100,104,318,

Aetherius Society, 72-73,593-94 African Reform Church, 425-26 Almohads, or al-Muwahhidun, 295

351-52,437-45,447,449, 450n.4, n.5,718 Catholic millennialism, 17,549-66 Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim, 153,156-57,162-63, 1670.3,181-82,188, 677-78, 681 Chalcedon Foundation, 57 Charismatic Christianity, 57-58, 68, 668, 676,

Almost Heaven, 663 Amal, 703-4 Ananda Community, 571 Anglo-Israelism. See British-Israelism. Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, 652-53 Antonians, 391 Anushilan Samiti, 375 Arathi movement, 391-92 Arcane School, 570,573 Armed Islamic Group (GIA), 693 Army of Mary, 17,559-63 Aryan Nations, 186, 651,654-55, 661 Ashtar Command, 73-741592 Assemblies of God, 68 Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.), 569 Aum Shinrikyo, 13, 29,39-4I1 42,42n.2, 69,125, 209, 214,350,365-66,582, 6o4n.2 Auroville, 377,571

Babi movement, 15,474-82, 486 Back-to-Africa (Garvey), 422-23 Badaliya, 558 Baha’i Faith, 15, 587,474-91 Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant, 153, 159,163,488n.11 Baptists, 50-51, 500, 506, 509, 526n.2, 641 Bayside movement. See Our Lady of the Roses Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA), 5i2n.7 Bioneers conferences, 77 Black Church, 395-96 Bobo Shanti, 424,428 Branch Davidians, 8, 22n.4,125,175-76,179, 187, i88n.i, n.2,192, 202-10,2io-un.5, 2im.6, 214, 223,403, 405 British-Israelism, 96,650, 652-53 British-Israel World Federation, 652 Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, 401-2

Calvary Chapel, 679 Campbellites. See Disciples of Christ

678-84 Chen Tao, 593,596-97 Cheondogyo, 333-34,336,343 Cherokee movement, 458,462 Children of God. See The Family Chinese Communist Party, 318 Choma, 405 Christian Dispensationalism, 16,20, 68-69,71, 341-42, 588,598,508-10, 515-28, 623, 649, 651, 653-54, 678-82, 684 Christian Identity, 19, 96-97, i88n.4, 223, 650-56, 658, 661—62, 664 Christian Perfectionists. See Oneida Perfectionists Christian Patriots, 96-97 Christian Reconstructionism, 56-58 Christian Restorationism, 52-53 Christians, early, 8,10,142, i67n.3,172-73, 252-53, 255, 258-59, 261-65 Christ the Savior Brotherhood, 17. See also Holy Order of MANS. Church of Israel, 655 Church of Jesus Christ Christian, 655,661 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 8,14, 52,158,178-80,182,183,187,446,492, 497-500,587 Church of John, 17,562-63 Church of La Porte, 655 Church of the Creator. See Creativity Movement Church of the Nazarene, 68 Church of the True Word, 154-55 Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), 17—18, 67, 80-83,154,156-57,159,164, 571,577, 583-84, 600 Common Law movement. See Freemen Community of the Sons and Daughters of Mary, 561 Congregationalists, 50-51 Congregation of the Poor, 448 Coptic Theocratic Temple. See Bobo Shanti Cosmotheist Community Church, 650,656

726

INDEX OF MILLENNIAL GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS

Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA), 654 Creativity Movement, 650,656 Crusades, 101,287,289,294,7im.8

Flagellants, 288 Florentine Republic, 296-97 Franciscans, spiritual, 45-46,289,516 Fraticelli, 289

Daesunjillihoe, 335-36,338,343

Freemen, 90, 92-93. 94.95-98,104, 661-63 Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS Church), 179-80

Dallas Theological Seminary, 509,5i2n.7,521 Davidians, 152-53,163,165, i68n.io, n.11,175, 202, 204-5 Dead Sea Scrolls community, 257,260-61,263-64. See also Qumran. Delaware movement, 461

Golden Age Foundation, 38in.2 Guardian Action International, 73-74 Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), 20, 674-75

Dhonghak Awakening, 330-32,335-37.342-43 Dhonghak Revolution, 12,332,334,340,343 Dianic Witchcraft, 184-85,188 Dibunda dia Mpeve a Nlongo (DMN), 395 Diggers, 299 Disciples of Christ, 52,492,494,497-98, 500 Dispensationalism. See Christian Dispensationalism Dreads, 430-31

Ghost Dance movement. See Spirit Dance movement

Ha Mahteret ha Yehudit, 682-83 Hamas, 101, 699-700,705,709,7ion.5 Handsome Lake movement, 461 Hatnu Leman Eretz Israel Hashlema (Movement for Greater Israel), 672-73 Heaven’s Gate, 22n.3, 29,37-39, 40, 42, 69,72, i67n.2,209, 214-15, 405, 582,593,595-96 hippies, 56-57 Hizbullah, 101, 703-5,709

Earth First! 633, 638 Eastern Lightning, 310,322 Edwardsian School of Theology, 49-50,51 Eejanaika (Anything goes!) movement, 361 Egyptian millennialism, 236-37,241-43 L’Eglise de Jesus Christ sur la terre par Son Envoys Special Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK), 395,401 Emissaries of Divine Light, 571 environmental millennialism, 18-19, 69,76,77, 80, 85, 469, 603, 628-46,719 Ephratans, 495 Essenes, 260,668,694-95 est, 56 Ethiopia African Black International Congress. See Bobo Shanti Ethiopian World Federation, 425 Euro-American nativist millennial movement, 19-20,95-98,185-86,649-66 evangelical Christians, 68,171-72,309-10,316,342, 494.

515-28,550-52, 588, 600, 602, 616, 623, 649, 651, 654, 660, 676, 678-82, 684

Excommunication and Emigration. See Society of Muslims Exclusive Brethren, 517

Holy Order of MANS (HOOM), 17,125,573, 575-77,582,584. See also Christ the Savior Brotherhood. Holy Spirit movement, 400 Hopi Traditionalist Movements, 79 Household of God Church, 405 House of Yahweh, 402 Hutterites, 297 Hwarangdo, 328 Hyu-geo (Rapture) movement, 327,340-43

“I AM” Religious Activity, 81, 584ml Indian Mutiny of 1857,280 Indian Shakers, 469 Institute for Christian Economics, 57 Integral Yoga, 376-77 International Fatima Rosary Crusade (IFRC), 550 International Jihad. See al-Qaeda Iranian Islamic Revolution, 700-3,706 Islam, early, 8,10-11, 267-76, 689 Islamic Group, 697 Islamic Resistance. See Hizbullah Islamic Resistance Movement. See Hamas Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), 698

Falun Dafa. See Falun Gong

Islamism, radical, 19, 20-21,100-4,688-713 Isma‘ili Shi'a dynasty, 290

Falun Gong, 12,320-22,32411.17, n.18, n.19, n.20, n.21 The Family, 8,118,123,124,192,197-202, 208-10

Israelites (black) at Bulhoek, South Africa, 8,388-89

Family of the Sons and Daughters of Mary, 561 Fatimids, 278,290,293,295-96 Fifth Monarchists, 299

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 153-54,158-59,163,165,392,

Findhorn, 571,578, 642 Five Pecks (or Bushels) of Rice movement, 310-11,317

394,4un.io, 492,497,503-5,507,5iin.3, n.4, n.5 Jerusalem First (Reshit-Yerushaliim), 675 JeungSanBeopJeong-gyo, 338

JeungSanDo, 335-38,343,344n.i

INDEX OF MILLENNIAL GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS

JeungSan-gyo, 334-35 Jewish millennialism/apocalypticism, 243-46,

Mireuk Bulgyo, 338 Mission de FEspirit Saint, 152,163-65,

252-66 Jihadist movement, 20-21. See also Islamism,

168n.11 Mission for the Coming Days. See Tami-gyo

radical. Jihad Organization, 693,695-97,709

Mohamedan movement, 398-99

Joachism, 289 Jonestown, 17, 214, 225, 403, 405, 576. See also Peoples Temple. Jugantar, 375

Kathambi, 390 Khmer Rouge, 9 Kimbanguist Church. See L’Eglise de Jesus Christ

727

Montanists, 142-43 Moody Bible Institute, 5i2n.7 Mormons. See Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Mormon Transhumanist Association, 59 Morrisites, 158 Mother Earth movement, 431-32 Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, 405 Mourners of Zion, 292 Movement for the Building of the Temple (Ta

Kimbangu (EJCSK) Kingdom Movement. See Social Gospel

Tnuaa Lekinun ha Mikdash), 675 Movement for the Liberation of the Temple Mount (Ha Tnuaa LeShihrur Har

King Movement, 447 King of Kings Mission, 423 Kiyang-yang movement, 399-400

HaBayit), 675 Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, 13,1670.2,215,385,

Kofuku no Kagaku, 350,365

402-5, 4120.17, n.18,564 Mugeuk-do. See Taegeuk-do Muggletonians, 298

sur la terre par Son Envoye Special Simon

Kongo Prophetism, 395-97 Ku Klux Klan, 186, 650, 653

Mughals, 278-79,280 Mumboism, 389-90 Latter-day Saints. See Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Latter Rain, 58 Levellers, 298 Lifta Gang, 683 LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability),

Munda uprising, 369,373-74 Mungiki, 385,399,4120.15 Munster, 298 Muslim Brotherhood. See Society of Muslim Brothers Mwana Lesa movement, 393-94

567 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 13,385,400-1,404 Lorian Association, 571 Lubavitch Hasidim. See Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim. Lumpa Church, 396-97 Lumpa Rising. See Lumpa Church

Namhak, 333-36,342-43,344H.1 National Alliance, 145, 656-57 National Socialism, 9,16, 20, 44,58, 84,264,320, 529-48, 550 Nation of Islam, 29,36-37,186-87, i88n.5 Native American geopolitical and georestorative

movements, 15, 67,78-80,89,457-73,581, Madawi movement, 279 Maitatsine movement, 385,407-8,4i2n.2i Maji Maji, 389.398,443 Mao Zedong Thought, 12,317-20,323,323-2411.12, 324n.i4, n.15 Maranatha Mission, 342

Mark Age, 571,573-75.582 Marxism, 12,58,309,318,320, 494,530,541-42,

636-37 Naundorffism, 557-58 Nazis. See National Socialism Neo-Nazis, 19, 650 Neopaganism, 650-51,657-59,664. See also Paganism. New Age movement, 17-18,46,56,67,74-78,79, 337, 567-86, 587, 592-93,595, 601-3, 6050.9,

550,701-2 Masowe Apostles, 402

632-33,635-39, 641-43 New Divinity School of Theology. See Edwardsian

Mau Mau, 390-91, 406 Melanism, 554-58,560 Mennonites, 297 Mesopotamian millennialism, 237-41

New Thought, 568 Niagara Prophecy Conference, 508

Messianic Jews, 676 Methodists, 50-51 Millerite movement, 15-16,69,174.483,492, 497-98,500-2,526n.2,649

School of Theology

Nichiren Buddhism, 355-56,363-65 Nongmin Bonggi (Farmers’ Rebellion). See Dhonghak Revolution Nuipana Madness, 447 Nyabinghi House, 427,428

728

INDEX OF MILLENNIAL GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS

Odinists, 19, 650, 654, 661 Omoto, 350,362,366

Ringatu, 447 Rosicrucianism, 568, 575

Oneida Perfectionists, 183-84,187,492,496-97, 500,510

Russellites. See Jehovah’s Witnesses

Order, The, 19, 654-55, 657-59, 661 Order of the Solar Temple. See Solar Temple Order of the Star in the East, 569 Ottomans, 277-78,290,294,296 Our Hope Israel, 5i2n.7 Our Lady of the Roses, 29,34-36,37,41,70-72,73

Paganism, 616, 633, 635-39, 641-43, 644n.5. See also Neopaganism. Pai Marire (Hauhau), 89-90,93,94,98-100,104,447 Papua New Guinea movements, 143—44, H7 Peasants’ War, 297 Pentecostalism, 13, 58, 68,394,405-7, 409, 4120.19 Peoples Temple, 214,225. See also Jonestown. Philadelphia School of the Bible, 5i2n.7 Piagnoni, 297 Pietists, 495 Pikarts (Pikarti) or Bohemian Adamites, 296 Plymouth Brethren, 517 Pocheon-gyo, 335 Presbyterians, 50-51 Priests’ Crown Yeshivah (Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim), The, 675

Sabbateans, 300 Sa'dids, 277-78 Safavid brotherhood, 297 Safavids, 277-78 Satiru Rebellion, 397-98 School of Vision, 429—30 Scriptures for America, 655 “Seekers,” 151,153,155,16711.3, n.4 Settlers, 673-75, 679, 681-83 Seven Church, 448 Seventh-day Adventists, 86n.3, i67n.3,173-75,182, 187,202, 204-5,2ion.4,214,394,402,446,492, 497.501-3,551 Shakers, 52,177-78,182,183,187,492,495-96,498, 510,662 Share International Foundation, 580 Shawnee movement, 461-62 Shaybanids, 27-78 Shaykhi movement, 475-78 Shi'ite Islam, 269-76,278,281-82,301,474-76, 478-79,481,484,4870.4,557-58 skinheads, 650 Social Gospel, 16,54,61,505—7

Prophecy Conference movement, 507-8 Protestant Revival movement (Korea), 340 Pure Land Buddhism, 328

Society of Muslims, 693-96

Puritans, 15,46-48, 54, 57,298, 492,494, 505,510, 516, 678

Society of the Universal Friend, 173,177, 182,187

Society of Muslim Brothers, 100,101, 690-93, 697, 699

Soka Gakkai, 13,363-65 Solar Temple, 22n.3,125,1670.2,214,225,582 Qadiriya Brotherhood, 398 al-Qaeda, 6,21,90,92-93,94,100-5,705-9, 7ion.7,7iin.8

Southern Baptist Convention, 68,526n.4 Spirit Dance movement, 15, 69,78,89-90,93, 94-95,100,104, io6n.8,441, 457,463-66

al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, 708 al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, 708 Qatani movement, 274-76

Spiritual Franciscans. See Franciscans, spiritual. Spiritualism, 52,350,568,575, 592, 6o4n.5 Sufyani movements, 274-76

Qumran, 32-33,37,39,42. See also Dead Sea Scrolls community.

Summit Lighthouse. See Church Universal and Triumphant Sunni Islam, 268-82,483,557-58 Sunrise Ranch, 571

Radical Right in America, 19-20,185-86, 649-66 Raelian Movement, 593,597-99

Swedenborgianism, 568 Swiss Brethren, 297

Rainbow Family of Living Light, 80 Ranters, 298 Rastafari, 14,138-40,144,422-29,432 Redeemed Christian Church of God, 405 Redstick movement, 462 Reformed Church of Israel, 655 Remeyite Baha’is, 485-86 Remnant Church, 448-49 Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. See Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God Restorationists, 58,497-98

Taberah World Mission, 342 Taborites, 296 TaeEul-gyo, 335,338 Taegeuk-do, 335-36 Taiping Dao (Way of Great Peace) (Yellow Turbans), 310 Taiping Revolution or Rebellion, 9,11—12,310,315—17 Taliban, 708 Tami-gyo, 342 Temple Builders, 675, 679-84

INDEX OF MILLENNIAL GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS

Temple-Laws Yeshivah (Yeshivat Torat

729

Vineyard churches, 58

HaBayit), 675 Temple Mount Faithful, 675,681,683 Tenrikyo, 350 Tensho Kotai Jingukyo, 350,363,366 Theosophical Society, 56,568-69,570,591,594,604n.5 Theosophy, 81, 568,574,575.579. 590 59L 595. 6o4n.4, n.5, n.7 theurgic Kabbalah (practical Kabbalah), 299

Watchman Outreach Ministries, 655 Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. See Jehovah’s Witnesses Watchtower movement, 392-97,4iin.9, n.10 White Aryan Resistance (W.A.R.), 651 White Lotus movements, 312-14

Third Wave movement, 58 Tiandihui (Heaven and Earth Society), 314-15 Tongil-gyo. See Unification Church Tongil Silla (Unified Silla) dynasty, 328-31

White Roots of Peace, 468 white supremacy movements, 185-86,649-66. See

Tree of Peace, 468—69 Triads. See Tiandihui Tuka movement, 99 Twelver Shi'ites, 269,474-75 Twelve Tribes, 8,192-97,202,208-10 Twelve Tribes of Israel (Jamaica), 428

Wicca, 67,76,638 Woman in the Wilderness, 495

also Euro-American nativist millennial movements, and Radical Right in America.

Won Bulgyo, 338-40,343-44 World Church of the Creator. See Creativity Movement World Message Last Warning Church, 405 World Transhumanist Association, 59

“UFO Center,” 158 UFO movements, 18, 67,72-74, 86n.2,153,158,

Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement, 387-88,4iin.6

570-71, 573-75,582,584,587-610, 617-20, 623 Ummayad caliphate, 296 Unarius Foundation, 593-95,605n.11 Unification Church (Tongil-gyo), 126,180-81,187

Yearning for Zion Ranch, 179-80 Yonghwa-hyangdo. See Hwarangdo

327,341,343,549, 676 Unitarians, 505 United Klans of America, 651 United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. See Shakers Universal Link, 571 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 422, 423,4iin.i2 Unto the Mountain of the Lord (El Har Adonai), 675

Youth Black Faith, 424

Zarephath-Horeb Community Church. See Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord Zionism, 20, 264, 508-9, 598, 671-72, 674, 676, 678, 698 Zionism, Christian, 16,20,508-11, 522, 651,668, 678-82, 684 Zoroastrianism, 10,246-49,309,483

Index

1000 C.E., 287 1032 C.E., 287 1033 C.E., 287 IO96 C.E., 289

2012 prophecies, 18,74,76,572,602-3 144,000,141,196, 203, 502,504,51111.5, 574.593.599. 602, 60511.9 6000 (year), 287

amillennialism, 16,45,83,286,493-94,5260.4,717 Amin, Idi, 404 al-Amin, Muhammad, 274 Amitabha Buddha, 312,353 Amsterdam, Peter, 197 Andreasson, Betty, 601 Andromeda Strain (movie), 620 Angelucci, Orfeo, 590 An Inconvenient Truth (movie), 70,640 An Un-san, Super Master, 335

al-‘Abbas, 273-74 ‘Abbas I, Shah, 278 Abbey, Edward, 638 ‘Abdu, Muhammad, 690 ‘Abdu’l-Baha, 482, 484-86

Anka, Darryl, 592 Annunaki, 600 Anthony B, 425,431 Antichrist, 10,49,50,97,98,141,198-99,225,268,

‘Abdullahi, 281 Abravanel, Isaac, 290

475, 493-94,496, 521-24,540-41,550-51, 553-54, 577, 617, 654, 660, 680-81, 689,717 Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 30-31,136-37,140, 254-56, 261, 264, 520 anti-Semitism, 16,19, 58,97,102,134,145,529, 539-45, 649-54, 656-57, 660, 664, 665ml,

Abyss (movie), 618 Adams, Douglas, 619 Adamski, George, 589-93,601 Adeboye, E. A., 405 Admonitions oflpu-Wer, 236-37 Aemilius Sura, 249-50 Mon Flux, 624 Aetherius, 72,592,594 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 690 Age of Aquarius, 17,570-71.573.575-77.580-81, 583, 598, 616, 641-42 Ahmad, Ghulam, 271,277 Ahmad, Shaykh, 398 al-Ahsa’i, Ahmad, Shaykh, 475 Akbar, 279 Akira (movie), 364 Akkadian Prophecies, 237,240-41 A-lan, 590 Alcatrez Island occupation, 467 Alexander IV, Pope, 289 Alexander the Great, 239,240, 241-42, 247-48,254, 255, 267,269,272,275, 475,557,701 Alien movies, 619 Alroy, David, 292 Alsted, John Heinrich, 290 Alterman, Nathan, 673 Amaterasu, 13,358 Amazing Stories, 614-15,620 Amen-em-het I, Pharaoh, 237 Amenhotep, 242 American Horse, 465

288-89,293-94,301,340-42,405,408,429,

7im.8 apocalypse, 68,308-9 Apocalypse ofAsclepius, 243 apocalypticism, definition of, 230.5, 68,551, 615,717 Apocrypha, 2650.2 Apollinarius of Laodicea, 137 Apology of the Potter to King Amenhotep. See Potter’s Oracle. Applewhite, Marshall Herff, 37_39, 595_96 al-Aqsa Mosque, 20, 293, 673, 680, 682-83 Aquarian Conspiracy, 572,582 Aquinas, Thomas, 301 Arafat, Yasir, 699 Ardakshit, King, 248 Arda VirafNameh, 248 Arguelles, Jose, 572,579,602-3 Arjuna, 376 Ark of the Covenant, 680 Armageddon, 19,39-4°, 42, 83,97,164,171,194,199, 2ion.5, 213,341,406,484-85,510,519,545,575, 631, 633,651,653, 663-64,705 Armageddon (movie), 615,621-22 Arnold, Kenneth, 589,623 Arses, 240 Asahara Shoko, 13,39-41,42ml, 125,365-66, 604m 2

732

INDEX

Ashtar, or Ashtar Sheran (extraterrestrial), 73, 592,60411.6 Ashurbanipal, 238,240 al-Assad, Hafiz, 697

Barnes, James, 638 Baruch, 2,259 al-Barzanji, 271 Bashar, 592

Assagioli, Roberto, 569

BATF. See Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Bayan, 476

assaulted millennial groups, 8,15,22,175-76, 203-8,224,463,466,480,717 ATR See Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Atlantis, 570,582, 600 Auclair, Raoul, 560-63 Augsburg Confession, 298 Augustine of Hippo, 16,45,142-43,144, 214, 262, 286,494,516 Augustus, Caesar, 242, 263 Auma, Alice, 400-1 Aura Rhanes, 590,592 Aurobindo. See Chose, Aurobindo. avatara, 13,370-72,374-77, 379~8i, 568,570, 576-77,593 avertive apocalypticism, 6,12,16,18, 66-88,164, 171-72,184,187,460,467,468-69, 635, 637, 640-42,712-18 avertive millennialism, 6,15, 66, 84,184,718 Azal, 478, 481-82 Azazel, 600 Azzam, Abdullah, 102-3, io6n.i8,706-7

Bab, 15, 476-78, 483 b. Aballah b. Yazid b. Mu‘awiya, Ziyad, 276 Babur, 278-79 Babylon, 238, 240-41, 244-45, 248-50, 254, 286, 291, 406

Beam, Louis, 655 beast, of book of Revelation, 141,144,213,261,264, 294,429) 433H.7 beasts, four, of book of Daniel, 136,141, 255. 264 Beast, Mark of the, 448-49,503,522,524-25 beast, number of the, 141,144 Beast System, 522,524-25 Beatrice, Dona. See Vita, Kimpa. Bedward, Alexander, 421 Begin, Menachem, 7ion.4 Bekeer, Hendrik. See Stuurman, Klaas. Beldigao, 448 Belger, Arno, 532 Bell, Art, 76,595 Bellamy, Edward, 54 Benedict of Nursia, 46,288 Benedict XVI, Pope, 555,558-59,562 ben Eliezer ha-Levi, Abraham, Rabbi, 290 bene ha’elohim, 600—1 Ben-Gurion, David, 20,671 ben Israel, Manasseh, Rabbi, 299 Benjamin of Tudela, 292 Berg, David Brandt. See Berg, David Moses. Berg, David Moses, 116,118,123,124, 197-201 Berg, Philip, Rabbi, 677 Berri, Nabih, 704

Babylon (as metaphor), 34,36,138-40,141,175, 203, 205-8, 223,427,430, 431, 680 Babylon, whore of, 141,213,431,551 Bad, Douglas, 448

Bethurum, Truman, 590 Beukels, John, 298

bada’ (changeability of God’s will), 476, 478 Badaouni, 279

Bhagavata Purana, 370-71 biblicizing reality, 133

Besant, Annie, 569-700

Baha’u’llah, 15,481-87

al-Bidaya wa-l-nihaya, 271

Bailey, Alice, 56,569-70,579-80 Bailey, Foster, 570 Bakr, Abu, 271

b. Hammad al-Marwazi, Nu'aym, 270 bin Laden, Najwa, io6n.i8

Bakunin, Mikhail, 102 Balizet, Carol, 522 Ballard, Edna, 81 Ballard, Guy, 81,584 al-Banna, Hasan, 690,692-93 Banyacya, Thomas, 79-80,468-69 bao juan (precious volumes), 313 Baptiste, Jeanette. See Mother Earth. Baraghani, Muhammad-Taqi, Haji Mulla, 477 Barane, 446 Barbour, N. H., 503-4 b. al-Hanafiya, Muhammad, 272 bar Kochba. See bar Kosiba, Simon. bar Kosiba, Simon, 291,295 Barnabas, 258

bin Laden, Osama, 92,100,102-4, io6n.i6, n.18, 11.19,705-9.7ion.7 Bin-Nun, Yoel, Rabbi, 675 Birsa Munda, 373-74 Black Elk, 95 Black Star Line, 422,425, 427,4330.3 Blackstone, William E„ 509 Blavatsky, Helena, P., 56, 568-69, 591, 6o4n.5 Blends. See Walk-ins. Blighton, Earl W., 125,575—77 Bloomfield, Arthur, 524 Bloy, Leon, 555-56,560 Bocchoris, Pharaoh, 242 Boisselier, Brigitte, 599 Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: Dialogue between Hitler and Me, 541-42

733

INDEX

Bomers, Henrik, Bishop, 559 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 122

74-75.78,80, 83-84,172-76,187,216, 224,257,

Book of Mormon, 498-99

343,373-74, 46°, 464-65, 480, 484-86,488n.11,

Booth, Joseph, 392-93 Bosquart, Marc, 562-63

493-94, 520,567,569-71, 573,575,577, 581-84,

Bostrom, Nick, 59 Boyle, Robert, 299 Bragg, Robert, 524 Breault, Marc, 206 Brookes, James H., 508,517 Brown, Courtney, 595 Brown, Cyril, 538 Brown, Dennis, 428 Brown, Ras Sam, 139 Bryan, William Jennings, 527n.8 Budapest, Zsuzsanna, 184-85,187 Buddha, Shakyamuni, 11,327-28,349, 352-53.355. 378,598

al-Bukhari, 270 Builinger, Heinrich, 517 Bultman, Rudolf, 590-91 Bundahishn, 247 Bunds, Robyn, 205 Bunds, Shaun, 205 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 175,206 Burkett, Larry, 522 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 614 Burton, Tim, 620 Bush, George H. W., 7iin.8 Bush, George W., 525,7im.8 Bushara, Wilson, 405 Bushru’i, Husayn, Mulla, 476 -77 Buthelezi, Wellington, 4iin.i2 Butler, Richard Girnt, 655, 661

Caddy, Eileen, 571 Caddy, Peter, 571 Cahn, Edward, 619 Caleba, 439 Callenbach, Ernest, 632 Calvat, Melanie, 17, 554-57 Calvin, John, 57 Cameron, James, 618 Cameron, William J., 653 Campbell, Alexander, 53,497-9®, 51° Campbell, Thomas, 53 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), 215 Capleton, 425,431 cargoism, 440-41 Carlson, Carole C., 521,52711.6 Carpenter, John, 615 Carrion, Joseph, 466 Carson, Rachel, 630-31 Carter, Chris, 619 Castro, Fidel, 121, 426 catastrophic millennialism, 5,6,7,12,13,14,17,18, 21,230.5,27-43,44,48,50,66-69,70,72,73,

262, 267-68, 285,308-9,315,32311.8,326-27,

596,612-13,628, 643ml, 667-68, 670-74, 676-78, 682-84, 690, 692, 694-95, 699-700, 710,717,718,720-22

Catechism of the Catholic Church,

550

Cayce, Edgar, 17,337, 569-70,575,581 Celestine Prophecy, 573 CELLE, 562 Cha Gyeong-seok, 335 Chafer, Lewis Sperry, 51211.7 Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, 371-72 Chandraprabha. See Moonlight Bodhisattva. charisma,

7, 8,113-32,161,164,165,168n.11,197,

203-5, 207,216-18, 220,225, 226,272, 281,319, 402,480-81,486,702,718

as falling in love, 125 and inner circle, 127 domestication of, 17,555,563 of text,

7

routinization of, 15, 22,114,118,217-18,486, 553, 563

charismatic bond, 116,119 charismatic leaders, characteristics of,

116-17

charismatic groups, 219 charismatization, 124-27,1290.4,718 Charlemagne,

287,289,295,520

Charles I, 298 Charles V, 298 Charles VIII, 287-88,297 Hon-ming, 596-97 Cheondogyo Kyeongjeon, 333

Chen

Cheonggamnok, 326,330-31,333,34«, 342-43 Cheong Toryeong, 326-27,329-31,340,343-44 Cheonjigongsa (Reconstruction of the Universe), 334,336-37

Cheonju-nim (Heavenly God). See Sangje. children in millennial movements, 7-8,176,178, 179-82,183-84,185-87, i88n.2,192,195-96, 200-1, 204-6, 208, 209-10, 2iin.6,332, 358-60, 495, 601 Chilembwe, John, 393, 411n.11 chiliasm, 252,287 Cho Cheol-je, 335-36 Cho Yeong-rae, 335 Choe Je-u, 330-34,336,343 Choe Si-Yeong, 332-33,336 Christian, Rick, 522 Chuang tzu. See Zhuangzi. Chu Hsi, 337 Church Age, 520-21 Churchill, Winston, 120-21 Church of the Holy Sepulcher, 293-95 Church of the Nativity, 293 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 701,706 City of God, 45,142-43,262 civil millennialism, 50,51

INDEX

734

Clark, Edwin, 98 clash of civilizations, 705,708,7iin.8 Clement of Alexandria, 137-38, 262 Clement VII, Pope, 297 Cliche, Georges, 560 Clonaid, 599

Day of the Lord, 244-46 Day the Earth Stood Still (movie), 589-90,613,618 Dead Sea Scrolls, 257,260-61,263-64,519,668 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” 102

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (movie), 613,618 Cocoon (movie), 618

de Cuadra, Luis, 558 Dedi and King Khufu, 243

cognitive dissonance, 7,151-53,155,166, i67n.5, n.9,718

Deep Impact (movie), 622 Deguchi Nao, 350,362 Deguchi Onisaburo, 350,362

Cohn, Norman, 4,91,94,135,214,4io-nn.2,342, 529,587 Columbus, Christopher, 420,555 combat myth, 141-42 Common Sense Realism, 519 Comparet, Bertrand, 653 conditional apocalypticism. See avertive apocalypticism. Constantine, Emperor, 286 Constantine IX Monomachus, Emperor, 293 Contact (movie), 618 cool millennialism, 12,719 Cottier, Belva, 467 Cotton, John, 48 Council of Arles, 289 Council of Clermont, 294 Cowan, Gideon, 97 Crime, Benjamin, 569,573, 575,579-81 Criswell, W. A., 5i2n.7 Cromwell, Oliver, 298-99 Crowdy, William, 388 “cult” (as pejorative term), 17,313,320, 323n.4,717 cultural opposition, 8,220-22,224-26 Cultural Revolution, 318-19 culture clash movements, 6,239-43 cyclical concepts of time and millennialism, 11,61, 93,311-12,327,348-49,369-71,657-58 Cyrus, 203,240,297

demonological messianic paradigm, 314-15 Demotic Chronicle, 241-42 demotic millennialism, 11,285,295,297,719 Denny, Ludwell, 529 deprogramming, 195,200, 220,221 de Vallees, Marie, 553 deviance amplification, 223 al-Dhahabi, Muhammad, 694 dialectical materialism, 318 Dick, Captain, 465 Di Mambro, Emmanuelle, 225 Di Mambro, Joseph, 125,225 Dionysius Exiguus, 287 divine messianism, 177-82 Do. See Applewhite, Marshall Herff. Doctrine and Covenants, 500 Dolphin, Lambert, 680 Dome of the Rock, 20,101, 293-95, 673, 680 682-83 dominionism, 57 Doolin, Joseph, 614 Dowie, John Alexander, 4i2n.i2 Dragon Flower World, 12,328-29,338,340,343 dragon, in book of Revelation, 141-42,213,322 dramatic denouement, 8,192, 221-22 Dread Act (1974), 430 dreadlocks, 424,430,432 dreadtalk, 424 Dream of Nectanebos, 243 Drexler, Anton, 535

Dajjal, 10,268,270,274,293,408,689,717 Dakoa, 445 Dan Fodio, Shehu Usaman, 280-81 Daniel, book of, 10,28,30-31,134,135-41,144, 238,241,245-46,248-50,255-57,260 261, 263-65,285 290-91, 294,299,500,5120.9, 520-21 dan Makafo, Saybu, 281 dar al-harb (abode of war), 693

Dr. Who (television show), 618 dualism, 9,22,38,75,84, 216,222—23,224,321, 323n.8, 541-45, 657, 660, 664-65, 668, 683, 718-19,721-22 Dunkley, Archibald, 423 Dupuis, Jacques, S.J., Father, 558 Duvall, Marsha Ann, 193 Dwight, Timothy, 51 Dynastic Prophecy, 237,240-41

dar al-Islam (abode of Islam), 693 Darby, John Nelson, 508,5i2n.8,516-18 Darius III, 240 Darrow, Clarence, 527n.8 Das Dritte Reich, 531 Datong (Great Harmony), 310 Dawes General Allotment Act (1887), 459, 47111.3, n.4 Day of Doom, 10

Earth changes, 17,74,337,569-70,581-82 Earth Day, 633 Earth: Final Conflict (series), 619 Eckart, Dietrich, 541 Ecotopia, 632 Edson, Hiram, 501-2 Edwards, Jonathan, 48-49,51,5ii-i2n.6

735

INDEX

Edwards, Prince Emmanuel, 424-25,428

flirty fishing, 199, 200-1

Ehrlich, Anne, 636 Ehrlich, Paul, 631,636

Ford, Henry, 653,665ml Fox, Catherine, 52 Fox, Margaret, 52 Fox, Matthew, 582 fragile millennial movements, 8, 22,40-41, 212-30,

Einsatzgruppen, 543-44 Elijah, 523, 527n.9, 591, 681 Eliyyahu, Rabbi, 260 Elkins, Don, 592 Elliott. See Kamwana, Kenan. Ellison, James, 654 Elohim (extraterrestrials), 597-601 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 629 Emmerich, Roland, 623 Emperor of the Last Days, 287, 289 End of Nature, 663—64 Engels, Friedrich, 58,182,318 Enoch, 527n.9,591 Enoch, 1 (Ethiopic), 246,257,600-1 Enoch, 2 (Slavonic), 258 Epiphanius, 142 Erdman, William, 5i2n.7 Esarhaddon, 242 eschatology, definition, 10,236,252,719 Esdras, 2,259,265n.3 Esfandiary, Fereidoun, 59 Eternal Ancient Mother. See Eternal Mother.

224-26,596, 693-95,719 Francis of Assisi, 46 Frederick I, Emperor, 289 Frederick II, Emperor, 289 Freud, Sigmund, 569,603 Frost, Robert, 91 Frum, John, 443 Fry, Daniel, 590 Fujiwara Michinaga, 355 fundamentalism, definition, 719-20

Gabriel, angel, 137 Gad, Prophet, 428 Gaebelein, Arno, 5120.7 Gaia, 76,638-40 Gaia Hypothesis, 639-40 Gale, William Potter, 653 Gandhi, Mohandas (Mahatma), 116,120-21

Eternal Mother, 313,321 E.T., the Extraterrestrial (movie), 618

Gang Il-sun, 334-38,343,344n.i

Eudes, John, 553 Eusebius of Caesarea, 137,262,286

Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 113 Garvey, Marcus Mosiah, 4iin.i2,421-22,423,

evil cult. See xie jiao. Evil Empire, 525 Ezekiel, book of, 36,134,245,291

428,429 Gashweseoma, Martin, 468-69

Fagan, Dermott, 429-30 fallen angels, 38, 600 Falwell, Jerry, 171-72,187, 679 fanaticism, definition of, 9,719 Fanon, Frantz, 701 Faraj, Muhammad Abd al-Salam, 696 Fard, W. D., 36,186 fa rectification, 321,324n.2i Farrakhan, Louis, 187, i88n.5 Fatah (Palestinian National Liberation Movement), 699 fatalism, 68-69 Fatima, 269,272,475 FBI, 96-98,175-76, i88n.i, 206-8, 210,210-IH1.5, 215, 422, 654 Federal Bureau of Investigation. See FBI. Feinberg, Charles, 5i2n.7 Ferguson, Marilyn, 572,579-80,582 Festinger, Leon, 7,86n.2,150—58,166,257,334, 592—93, 604-50.8,605n.11,718 Final Solution, 543 fire, 203,43L 433n-7 Fisher, Edna, 425 Fish Lake Joe. See Wodziwob. Fitzgerald, Michael, Archbishop, 558-59

Gang Sun-im, 338

Gaskin, Stephen, 6o5n.i6 Gayman, Dan, 655 gematria, 289-90 Gentzel, Charles, 573 Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, 46,289 Geumsan-sa Temple, 338 al-Ghazali, 277 Ghenghis Khan, 278 Ghose, Aurobindo, 61,375-77.571 ghost shirts, 465-66 Giguere, Marie-Paule, 17,560-63 Gillespie, Jerry, 663 Giraud, Maximin, 554 Gladden, Washington, 506 God’s End-Time Militia, 406 GOD TV, 410 Goebbels, Joseph, 536,544 Gog and Magog, 11, 2ion.3, 268, 270, 689 Goldfoot, Stanley, 679-80 Gore, Al, 634,640-41 Goryeo dynasty, 329-30 Graham, Billy, 5120.7, 679 Gran, Ahmad, 278 Grandmothers Counsel the World, 77,636—37 Grave, Richard, 571 Gray, James M., 5120.7 Great Awakening, First, 49,5iin.6,649 Great Awakening, Second, 50-51

736

INDEX

Great Controversy between Christ and Satan from Creation Down to the End Times, 502

Himes, Joshua, 500-1 Hinds, Robert, 423

Great Disappointment, 174,501-3 Great Invocation, 570,580 Great Law of Peace, 468

Hippolytus, 137 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 619-20 Hitler, Adolf, 16, 84,116,120-21,264,529-30,

Great Leap Forward, 12,58-59,318-19 Great Opening of the First Heaven, 326,336 Great Opening of the Later Heaven, 326,331-32, 334-36,343 Great Parenthesis, 5i2n.8,520 Greeley, Horace, 501 Grey, George, 388

Grignion de Montfort, Louis-Marie, 17, 552-56,561 Gritz, James “Bo,” 662-63 Gruner, Nicholas, Father, 550 Gujarati, Mustafa, 279 Gulpaygani, Mirza Abu’l-Fadl, 4870.8 Gump, Forrest, 449

Ha Bang-ha, 342 al-Hadi, Musa, 274 Hadrian, Emperor, 261,291 Hainuwele, 93 al-Hakim, 293 hakimiyya, 102,692 Hakoris, Pharaoh, 241 Haldeman, I. M., 509,5120.7 Hale-Bopp Comet, 37,39,158,215,595-96 Halley’s Comet, 39,388

Hill, Betty, 601

532-45

Holocaust, 530,532,539-45. 677 Hong Kyung-nae, 330 Hong Xiuquan, 315-17 Hopi prophecies, 468-71 Horn, Heinz Hermann, 538 hot millennialism, 12,318,720 Houteff, Florence, 163,165, i68n.io, 175,202 Houteff, Victor, i68n.io, 175,202 Howard, Oliver O., Gen., 463 Howard, Ron, 618 Howell, Leonard, 423 Howell, Vernon. See Koresh, David. Hubbard, Barbara Marx, 579 Hubbard, L. Ron, 122 Hu-cheon GaeByeok. See Great Opening of the Later Heaven. human messianism, 177,182-85 Hus, Jan, 296 Husayn. See al-Husayn. al-Husayn, 272, 275,475, 479, 483,701 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 557 Hyam, Peter, 618

Ibn Kathir, 270—71

Hama, Syria massacre, 697 Hamilton, Edmond, 614 Handsome Lake, 90,93

Ibn al-Munadi, 270 Ibn Rushd, 301

Haneunim (Heavenly God). See Sangje. Hanfstangl, Ernst “Putzi,” 537

ibn Tumart, Muhammad, 295

Ibn Taymiyya, 101, 271 I Ching, 326,330-34.337.343 Il-bu. See Kim Hang.

al-Haram ash-Sharif, 20, 673,680, 682-83. See also Temple Mount. Harb, Abu, 276 Hardin, Garrett, 632

Il-Won-San, 338—39

Harmonic Convergence, 74-75,76, 572, 602-3 Harone, 593

Independence Day (movie), 623 Independence, Missouri, 499

Harris, Samuel, 505,5101.2 Hasan. See al-Hasan. al-Hasan, 272 Hashim, 273

Indian Citizenship Act (1924), 466-67 Ines of Herrara, 299

Hasmoneans, 255,263 Hawina, Daniel, 444-45 Hawkins, Yisrayl, 402 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 629 Heck, Alfons, 538 Henry, Claudius, 425-26 Herod the Great, 263 Hesiod, 249 Hibbert, Joseph, 423 hierarchical millennialism, 11,285,295,720 Hildegard of Bingen, 124, i28n.i Hill, Barney, 601

Imam, in Shi'ite Islam, 475,478,701-2,704, 7ion.6

Innocent III, Pope, 294 investigative judgment, 502 Ipu-Wer. See Admonitions oflpu-Wer. Irenaeus, 262 Ironside, H. A., 5i2n.7 Isaiah, 10,203,244-46,254,263,292,295, 297, 504,506 Isaiah, Second, 245 Isaiah, Third, 245,285 Ise shrines, 358-61,366m al-Isha a li-ashrat al-sa‘a, 271 Islamism, definition, 688 Island Pond, Vermont, raid at, 196-97 Isma'il I, Shah, 278

737

INDEX

Israel, in Christian prophecy, 48,508-10,519, 522-23,651,653-54,678-82 in prophecy, 16,32-33,243-46,255,263,264,285, 292,295,494,598 nation of, 254,263,286 state of, 19, 20, lot, 203, 598, 605n.io, 651, 667-87, 696,698-700,703-4.7lon-4, n.5 Israelites (self-understood), 13,14,93,96,100, 139-40,178-79.193-97.298,388-89,428, 447-49,652,720 Mormon understanding of, 178 I-Toegye, 337 It! The Terror from Beyond Space (movie), 619

Jacobs, David, 601 Jacob’s Trouble, 5i2n.9, 677 jahiliyya (ignorance), 101,692-94,696 Jah Rastafari. See Selassie, Hailie. Jaunpuri, Sayyid Muhammad, 279 Jean, Kinene, 395-96 Jenkins, Jerry B., 16,521-25,527n.9,681 Jensen, Leland, 488n.11 Jeon Bong-jun, 332 Jeremiah, 137,677 Jeremiah, book of, 138,140,245,263,5120.9 Jerome, 137,139,143,144,214 Jerusalem, 11,20,29-31,101,137, 244-45, 256,263, 264,284-87,289-95,300,341,406,494,508, 5iin.3, 598, 652, 668, 674, 678-80, 682—83, 7ion.4, n.7 Jerusalem, New, 41,45,46,48,141,142,213,293,296, 298,340,401,499,5im.i Jerusalem temple, first, 669,680 Jerusalem temple, second, 30-31,136,137,140,254, 256,259,261,263,286,291,293,520-21, 668-69, 673, 680 Jerusalem temple, third, 16,20,138,292,300,523, 598,653-54,669,673-75,678-82, 684 Jessup, Morris K., 591 Jesus, Baha’i Faith views of, 483 Christian views of, 15-16,17, 20, 29-32, 45-46, 48, 49, 53, 54,57-58, 86n.3,92,143,173-74,177, 178,180,183,187,193-94,197-99, 241, 246, 252—53, 261, 263-64, 285, 287, 290, 292-99,322, 327,340-44,348,371,391,396,402-4,407, 492-94,496-511,51m.1, n.2,516,519-22, 524-25,5260.4, 526-270.5, 549-51, 553-54, 558, 564, 602, 6050.9, 649, 651, 661, 679, 717,721.

Jewell, Kiri, i88n.2 jihad, 101-4, 278, 281, 294,397, 4«7, 692-93,695-96, 699,706-9 jihad of the sword, 350,358

476,

479-8o,

Jikigyo Miroku, 350,358 Joachim of Fiore, 5,45-46,288-89,291,516,53i Joel, book of, 245 John, Kim, 431 John, letters of, 288 John Paul II, Pope, 17,552-53,558 Jonah, 83 Jones, Jim, 225 Jones, Michele, i88n.2 Jones, Rachel, i88n.2,204 Joseon dynasty, 326,328-32,334,337,340,342 Joseph, Chief, 463 Joseph of Arimathea, 54 Josephus, 263-64 Jouret, Luc, 225 Joyu Fumihiro, 42ml Judah, 243-46 Julian, Emperor, 292 Julius Africanus, 137 Jung, Carl Gustav, 569,589-90, 603 Justin Martyr, 262 Justus Township, 96-97

Ka’bah, 293 Kabir, Amir, 478 al-Kadar, Abd. See al-Qadir, ‘Abd. Kaduri, Nisim, Rabbi, 676-77 Kalanerekowa. See Great Law of Peace. Kaldenberg, Wyatt, 658 Kali, 375,377,38m.3 kali yuga, 370-74,380,38in.3 Kalki Bhagavan, 38in.2 Kalkin, 370-71,379,38m.2 kalpa, 11,12,311-12,348-49 kamikaze, 355 Kaminski, Janusz, 617 kamunagi, 351-52 Kamwana, Kenan, 392 Karbala, Iraq, 475-76,478-79 Kashaku, Paul, 403 al-Kashf‘an mujawazat hadhihi al-umma al-alf, 271 al-Kashmiri, Muhammad Anwarshah, 271 Kataribabo, Dominic, 403,564 Kattina, Rabbi, 260 Keech, Marion (pseudonym). See Martin, Dorothy.

See also Yahshua. Heaven’s Gate view of, 37-38 Muslim views of, 10,268-71,274,286, 293,398

Kellogg, Samuel, 509-10

New Age views of, 81,574-81,583 Oceania movements views of, 441,447-48

Khan, Ismail, 706 Kheiralla, Ibrahim, 485

sociological view of, 122,123,160

khilafa, 6,21,93,102 Khomeini, Ruhollah, Ayatollah, 277,407,701-2,704

Taiping Rebellion view of, 316 UFO religions views of, 72,591-92,594-95, 598-600,6040.7,605n.11.

Kennedy, John F., 91,524 Keyhoe, Donald E., Major, 589,591

Kibwetere, Joseph, 403-4 Kicking Bear, 89,95

738

INDEX

Kilibob, 440,443

Leslie, Desmond, 590-91 Lesser Peace, 484-85,487n.ro

Kil Seon-ju, 327,340-43 Kimbangu, Simon, 391,395, 401

Kim Hang, 333~34,337> 343.344n.i Kim Hyeong-yeol, 335

King, George, 72,74,594 BCing, Matthew, 79 BCingdom Halls, 504 Kingdom of Christ on Earth, 505-6 Kingdom Now theology, 57-58 king of the north, 136 Kitab al-fitan, 270 Kitab al-malahim, 270 Kitab-i-Aqdas (Most Holy Book), 482 Kitamura Sayo, 350,363 BQaatu, 613,618 BQassen, Ben, 650,656 Kogyoku, Empress, 351 Koimanrea, Francis, 445 Komeito, 364 Kook, Abraham Isaac HaCohen, Rabbi, 674 Kook, Zvi Yehuda, Rabbi, 674, 683 Kony, Joseph, 400-1 Koresh, David, 125,175-76, i88n.i, n.2, n.3, 202-8, 210, 223 Kramer, Stanley, 615 Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 569 Kubizek, August, 534-35 Kublai Khan, 355 Kukai, 349,354

liberation theology, 494 Li Dazhao, 318 Li Hongzhi, 320-21 Likud, 20,673,675 Lindsey, Hal, 16,134,139,509-10,51207,521-22, 525, 52706, n.7,588, 679 literalistic reading of scriptures, 16,519 Little Isaianic Apocalypse (Isaiah 24-27), 245-46 little apocalypses (New Testament), Mark chapter 13,29-32,137,140,261, 288,51m.1,717 Matthew chapter 24,137,140,264, 288, 591, 51101,51209,520-22,717 Little BCing of Light, 317 livity, 424 Loaniceva, Sekaia, 448 Logan, Beeman, 468 Lords of the Flame, 591,60407 Louis XVII, 557 Lovecraft, H. P., 614,616-17 Lovelock, James, 639-41 Luciferians, 38 Luke, gospel of, 206,296,51101, n.3,05 Lukoya, Severino, 400

Kung-ye, 330 Kurzweil, Ray, 59

Maccabean revolt, 136,254-55 Maccabee, Judas, 254-55 Maccabees, 261,263

Kushro, King, 248 Kuyper, Abraham, 56

MacDonald, Andrew. See Pierce, William. Macintosh, C. H., 51208 Mack, John E., 601-3

Labashi-Marduk, 240 Lactantius, 247-48 Lacunza y Diaz, Manuel, S.J., Father, 551,553 Ladd, George Eldon, 5i2n.7 Lady of All Peoples, 559-60,562 LaHaye, Tim, 16,5i2n.7,521-25,5270.9,681 Lakwena. See Auma, Alice, Lamb of God, 141,203-4,207,365,496 Lamb to Bocchoris, 242 Lane, David, 660-61 Large Hadron Collider, 76 Last Emperor. See Emperor of the Last Days. Latter Days of the Dharma. See mappo. Law of Love, 199 Leadbeater, Charles W., 569, leaderless resistance, 655 Leah (extraterrestrial), Lee, Ann, 116,177-78. Lee Jang-rim, 342 Lee, J. M., Capt., 465

Leuken, Veronica, 34-35,70-71 Levitt, Zola, 600 Lewis, Arthur, 426

6040.4

592

447.495~96

Left Behind, 16,133,406,522-25,551,616,623,680-81 Lenin, Vladimir, 122 Lenshina Mulenga Mubisha, Alice, 396-97

MacLaine, Shirley, 573 Maclean, Dorothy, 571 Mahdi, 10-11,268-73,275-76,280-82,286,290, 295 689 al-Mahdi (Abbasid caliph), 274,295 in Africa, 280-81, 290, 295,397-99, 407-8 in Babi movement, 476-79 in Iran, 15,701 Shi ite, 269, 272,295,475-76, 689,701,705 Sunni, 104,268-69,272-73,279,290,689 al-Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, 277 al-Mahdiwas, Muhammad Ahmad, 280-81 Mahmud of Basakhwan, 279 Makeda, 422 Makiguchi Tsunesaburo, 364 Maikaho, ‘Isa, 281

Maikaho, Malam, 281 Maimonides, 289,301,669-70 Maitatsine, 407-8 Maitreya, views of in China, 11,309-10,312-13,321,353 views of in India, 11,309,352-53 Maitreya, views of in Japan. See Miroku.

739

INDEX

Maitreya, views of in Korea. See Mireuk. Maitreya, Lord, 81, 569,574,580 Maitreya Sutra, 327-28,338 Maloat, Paliau, 444 al-Ma’mum, ‘Abdallah, 274 managed millennialism, 720 Man and Nature, 630 Manarmakeri, 443-44 Mandate of Heaven, 307 Mandela, Nelson, 121 Mandelker, Scott, 593 Manifestations of God (Baha’i), 482-84 Manitonquat, 79 Mansren, 93, 99 al-Mansur, 274,293 Man-yuzhiruhullah (He Whom God Shall Make Manifest), 479, 481, 483 Mao Zedong, 58,122,317-20,323,323-240.12, 3240.14, n. 15, n.16

McCarty, Jim, 592 McKibben, BUI, 633-64 McLamb, Jack, 663 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 5i2n.7 McVan, Ron, 658 McVeigh, Timothy, 19, 27, 28,33,37,39. 4b 42, 145. 656 Meadows, Donella, 637

“Mecca Letter,” 398 Meier, Eduard “Billy,” 600, 605n.11 Mein Kampf, 533, 535-36,541-42 Melanchthon, PhUip, 298 Mencken, H. L., 523,5270.8 Menufeur, Angganita, 443 messiah, definition of, 3, 285, 587-88, 720 Mgijima, Enoch, 388-89 Mhlakaza, 388 Michiel, Archangel (sic), 595 Michael, Archangel, 142,285,574

mappo, 12,349,354-55 Marcus Aurelius, 261 Marduk, 238, 601, 6o4n.6 Marduk Prophetic Speech, 237-38 Maria (The Family), 124,197,201

Midnight Cry, 501 Milestones, 101,692-93 MUingo, Emmanuel, Archbishop, 549-5°, 553 Millennial Harbinger, 53,497-98 millennialism, definition of, 3,4-5, 253, 262, 285,

Maritain, Jacques, 556 Mark Age (25-year period), 573-75. 602 Mark, gospel of, 29-32,33,34,35,41,137.140,183,

287,309,386,436-37,567,587, 628,720 Millennium, definition of, 5, 44-45,252, 257-58,

261,264,288,5iin.i, 717 Marley, Bob, 427,428 Marshall, John, Chief Justice, 47in.2 Martin, Dorothy, 86n.2,153, i67n.6, 592-93. 604-50.8 Martin, Sheila, 2im.6 martyrdom operations, 704 Marwa, Muhammadu. See Maitatsine. Mary, age of (kingdom of), 552, 553, 556,559 apparitions of, 16-17,29,34-36,67, 69,70-72,74, 403-4,4120.17, n.8,551-52,554-56,559-64 as Co-Redeemer, 559,563 in Catholic millennialism, 17, 552-56, 559-63 Marx, Karl, 54,58,318 Masowe, Johane, 402 al-Masri, Abu al-Hasan, 100, io6n.i6 Mass Attacks! (movie), 620 Massignon, Louis, 556-59 Masters, Ascended, 81-83, 583, 5840.1,591, 594 Masters, of Theosophy, 81,570,5840.1,591—92,594, 6040.5. See also Masters, Ascended.

262,436, 612-13,720 millennium, instant, 393,404 MUler, William, 174, 483,500-1, 526n.2 Ming dynasty, 309,313 minjung, 12,329-30,332,342 Mireuk, 12,326-30,336-40,343-44,345n-3 Mireuk-sa, 12 Miroku, 12,349-5°, 352-57,361-62,366 Miroku, on Mount Fuji. See Jikigyo Miroku. Miroku’s ship, 12-13 Mission to Africa, 426-27 Mithridates VI, King, 249 Moeller van den Bruck, Arthur, 531 Molkho, Shlomo, 297-98 Monka, 592 Montgomery, Ruth, 337,593 Montanus, 142 Montini, Giovanni Battista, Cardinal. See Paul VI, Pope. Moody, Dwight L., 5120.7,517-18 Moonlight Bodhisattva, 312 Moon Sun Myung. See Mun Sun-myeong.

Mather, Increase, 48,516

Moravec, Hans, 59 Morey, Leo, 615

Mathijs, John, 298 Mathisen, Keith, 57

Moroni, 498 Moseley, E. H., 509

Mathews, Robert, 658 Matthew, gospel of, 137,140. i99> 2°3> 288, 291,296, 498,5iin.i, 5120.9, 520-22,591,717

Moses, 483, 495, 497, 5°2, 523, 598 Mossadegh, Muhammad, 701 Most Great Peace, 484,486-87,4870.10

Matrix (movie), 620 Mawdudi, Mawlana, 7ion.3

Mother Earth, 431-32

Mastropietro, Pierre, Father, 562

Maximilla, 142 McCain, John, 525

Mount Fuji, 357-58 Mount Herman, 600 Mount Zion, 175,203, 284,286,291,294,6050.9

740

INDEX

Mu, BCing, 12 Muawiya, 275-76,293 Mubarak, Hosni, 698 Muhammad, 10,101,122,247,267-69,271-75 277-79.282,

286,293-94,398,408,475,483, 555-58,598, 689, 692,696,701,710 Muhammad, Clara, 186-87, i88n.5 Muhammad, Elijah, 29,36-37,41,186-87, i88n.5 Muhammad, Sayyid Ali. See Bab. Muhammad Shah, 476-77 Muhammed, Warith Deen, i88n.5 mujaddid, 277,407 mujahidin, 103 Mun Mun

Gong-sin,

335

Sun-myeong, 116,125-26,180-81,327,341,

343.549

Ng’ang’a, Joseph, 391 Niagara Creed, 508 Nibiru, 601 Nichiren, 12,13,122,349-50,355 Nilus, Sergei, 540 Nirmala Devi, Sri Mataji, 126 Noahide covenant, 677, 681 Nongqawuse, 387-88 Nontetha, 389 Norman, Ernest, 594-95 Norman, Ruth, 594-95 North American Indian Unity Caravan, 468 North, Gary, 57 Nostradamus, 13,337,350,364 Noyes, John Humphrey, 183-84,496-97 Ntombikte, 399-400

Miintzer, Thomas, 116,297 Mupumani, 393

Nuri, Mirza Husayn-‘Ali. See Baha’u’llah. Nxele, 4iin.8

Muslim, Abu, 273—74 Mustafa, Shukri, 693-95 al-Mutawakkil, 274

Nyirenda, Tomo, 393-94

Mwana Lesa. See Nyirenda, Tomo. Mwerinde, Credonia, 403,4120.17

Obama, Barack, 525

Nabonidus, 240 Nabopolassar, 240 Nada-Yolanda. See Sharpe, Pauline. Munetada, 355 Nam Sa-go, 330,343 Napier, John, 299 Nakamikado

Nasiru’d-din Shah, 477 Nasrallah, Hasan, 705 Nassar, Gamal Abdul, 100-1, 691-93 Nathan of Gaza, 300, 670 nativist millennial movements, 6,10,13,14,15,16, 19,78, 89-109,172,185-87,188, 239-40,318, 330,387.457-66,470-71,720-21

Naundorff, Louis, 557 Nauvoo, Illinois, 179,499 Ndonye wa Kauti, 390 Nebuchadnezzar 1,238 Nebuchadnezzar II, 136, 238, 240,5110.3 Nectanebos II, 241

Object and Manner of Our Lord’s Return, 503 Obote, Milton, 404 O’Brien, Michael D., 551 Obu, Olumba Olumba, 402 Ofube no Oshi, 351 okage mairi, 358-61 OkhwangSangJe. See Sangje. Okimoto, Dana, 205,2im.6 Okimoto, Scooter, 205 Okimoto, Sky, 205 Okotie, Kxis, 405 Oklahoma City bombing, 19, 27,145, 655-56 Olcott, Henry Steel, 56,568 Olukoya, D. K., 405 Omen (movie), 617 On the Beach (movie), 615,620 Oracles ofHystaspas, 248-49 organic Constitution, 98, io6n.i2 Origen, 137,214,262 Orthon, 589-92 Osho. See Rajneesh. Owuor, David, 406

Neferti. See Prophecy ofNeferti. Neglected Duty, 696 Nehemiah Township Charter, 661-63 Neolin, 461 Nepherites, Pharaoh, 241 Nephilim (extraterrestrials), 599-601 Neriglissar, 240 Nettles, Bonnie Lu, 37-39,595-96 new heaven and new earth, 28,35,258,405,577,579 Newton, Isaac, 263,290-91,299 New World Order (book), 660 new world order, Baha’i concept of, 4870.10 conspiracy view of, 19,97,522,524,577,659-60, 662, 664,7im.8 President George H. W. Bush, 708,7iin.8

Pahlavi, Muhammad Reza Shah, 700—2 Pak Par

Chung-bin. See Sotaesan Taejongsa. Gong-u, 335

Pak Hang-yeong, 335-36 Pak, Salman, 558 Pal, George, 618

Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 699,703 Papias, 262 passive millennialism, definition, 721 Paul, 172,178,264,285 Paul, Frank R., 614-15 Paul VI, Pope, 556,558 Paulk, Earl, 57-58

741

INDEX

blame others for, 160,319,446,580 human error explanation, 160 rationalization of, 160,164-65,502,504

Peacemaker, 468 Pearce, David, 59 Pedro IV, 391 Peerdeman, Ida, 559-61

reaffirmation of, 160 reaffirmation by rituals, 160 spiritualization of, 160,163,164,166,174,502

Penasa, Martino, Father, 549-50 Perkins, George, 630 Peshyotan, 248-49 Peter the Hermit, 294 Peters, Pete, 655,662 Philip, Brother. See Williamson, George Hunt. Philip, Francis, 431 philo-Semitism, 649,652-53 Pierce, William, 19,145-47. 650, 654, 656-57, 661

Prophecy ofNeferti, 236-37 Prophecy Rock, 80 prophecy, side bets, 164,597 prophet, definition of, 3,721 Prophet, Elizabeth Clare, 17, 81-83,116,154,575, 583,584ml, 600 Prophet, Mark L., 81, 583, 584ml, 600

Piho, Apii, 447 Planet of the Apes (movie), 620

prophetic milieu, 7,157,162-64 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 19-20,134,540-41,

Planno, Mortimo, 138-39,426

653,665ml Psalms, 96,136,203,254,257,261,287,291

pole shift, 336-37. 569,575,581 political apocalypticism, 286

Psemut, Pharaoh, 241 Pseudo-Methodius, 287,294 Ptolemy I Soter, 241 Ptolemy IV Philopater, 241 Publick Universal Friend. See Wilkinson, Jemima.

political astrology, 290 political religion, 529-30 Pompey, 255 Pontiac, 461 popular culture, 18,612 Population Bomb, 631 Porcupine, 464

Punt, Jozef Marianus, Bishop, 559 Purcell, Howard, 620

Porter, Tom, 468 posse comitatus, 661,665m2

al-Qaddafi, Muammar, 408

Post, Ted, 615 postmillennialism, 5,16,45,51,52,54, 57,58,193, 409,493-94,497, 499, 505-7, 510-11,5iin.2, n.6,550,657,721 post-Tribulationists, 5260.3 Potter’s Oracle, 242 Powell, A. E., 6040.4 pragmatics of failure, 22, 697,721 Pratt, Parley, 498 premillenarianism. See premillennialism. premiUennialism, 5,15—16,45,52,54,68,71,340, 342-43,409,493-94,499,505,507-n, 51m-2, 5i2n.7, n.8, n.9,523,550,651,654,721 preterist, 520 Price, George Ward, 537

al-Qadir, Abd, 280 Qahtani, 274-75 al-Qahtani, Muhammad, 275 Qa’im, 269 Qing dynasty, 309,313-14,316 Quetzalcoatl, 75 quiet title, 98, io6n.i3 al-Qurtubi, 270 Qutb, Sayyid, 101-2,692-93,699,707, 7ion.3

Ra (extraterrestrial group), 593 Rabin, Yitzhak, 667, 674

Prisca, 141 progress, idea of, 5,20,51,52,55,59,61,75,629,657,

Rader, Paul, 5i2n.7 radical dualism. See dualism, radical localism, 19,662

671,721 progressive millennialism, 5,6,7,12,13,14,15,17, 20,21,44-65,66-67,72,73,74-75,81,83-84, 172,176-85,187-88,196,285,299,318,326-27,

Rael, 597-99 Ragnarok, 658 raj‘a (return), 479 Rajneesh (Osho), 370,377~8o

339,343,363-65,377, 483-87,493, 505~7, 532-34, 567,569,571, 573-8i, 583-84, 612-13, 628, 632, 657, 667, 669-72, 674, 676-78, 683, 690-92, 699-700,702,710,718, 720-22

Ramakrishna, 372

prophecies, Hopi. See Hopi prophecies.

Ramala, 582 Rand, Howard, 652 Raphiel (sic), Archangel, 595 Rapture, 16,199,327,340-43,405-6,508,516-17,

Prophecy (movie), 617 prophecy, democratization of, 201 prophecy, failure of, 7,67, 82-83, 86n.2,150-70,

secret, 523 Rapture (movie), 405-6

174-75, 256-57, 260-61,334,342,362,388, 403, 444-45,446, 501-2,504, as test of faith, 160,583

532,

583,

597

522-23,551,603,654,679

al-Rashid, Harun, 274 Ras Tafari Makonnen. See Selassie, Haile. Rashti, Sayyid Kazim, 475 -76

742

Ratzinger, Joseph, Cardinal, 558-59. See also Benedict XVI, Pope. Rauschenbusch, Walter, 54,506-7,5iin.2 Rawlings, J. J„ 406 Raydia, 593,602 Raymond of Aguilers, 294 Reagan, Ronald, 429,525, 583, 633 religion, definition, 722 realized messianism, 11,273-74, 278, 286, 720,722 realized millennialism, 11,12,52, 496,578-79, 720-21,723 Reappearance of the Christ, 570 reasoning (Rastafari), 140 Redfield, James, 573,579 Red Heifer, 679-80 reggae, 427,430 relative deprivation, 120, 442 Relfe, Mary Stewart, 144 Remey, Charles Mason, 488n.11 Reno, Janet, 176 Resident Evil (movie), 615-16,620, 624 resurrection, 10,31,44,49, 89, 92,140,141,142-43, 175, 203-4, 208, 210, 247, 248, 256, 259, 262, 289, 292, 299,388, 41m.8,475,478,496, 524, 532> 574.721 Reubeni, David, 292,297

Revelation, book of, 13,28,34,37,39,44-45,49,54, 92,134,135,140-44,154,175,194,196, 202-8, 213-14, 252, 258-59, 261-62, 264, 285-86, 288-90, 293-94,309.316,350,37i» 379> 406, 429,431, 433n.7, 493,500,511,5im.i, n.5, 5i2n.9, 524, 595, 599, 6050.9, 616, 717,720-21

INDEX

Rosenberg, Alfred, 532 Rossi, Andrew, 577 Roszak, Theodore, 55 Rothmann, Bernard, 298 Roule, Anne-Marie, 555 Rove, Karl, 525 Roy, Maurice, Cardinal, 561-62 Royal, Lyssa, 593, 602 Rua Kenana, 91,92,100,447 Rueckert, Carla, 592 Rumazila, 398 Ruotolo, Dolindo, Father, 551 Rushdoony, Rousas John, 56-57 Russell, Charles Taze, 392,503-5,51U1.3, n.4 Rutherford, Joseph “Judge,” 504 Ryrie, Charles, 5120.7

al-Sadat, Anwar, 101, 693-96,7ion.4 Sadr, Musa, 703-4 al-Saffah, Abu al-‘Abbas, 274 Safi al-Din, 297 Sakamoto Tsutsumi, 365

Saladin, 101,294 Salisbury, Nathaniel, 615 Salomon, Gershon, 675,681-82 salvation, definition, 720,722 Samara, Iraq, 475 Sananda, 574~75> 592, 6040.4, n.7, 604-50.8 Sanat Kumara, 591, 6040.4, 604-50.8 Sangje, 326,331,334-38,343-44 SangJeNim. See Sangje. Sans, Jamie, 592

revolutionary millennial movements, 8-9,12,16, 21, 22, 84,222, 224,308,310,313-14,315-20,

Saoshyans, 248

322,330,332,340,343,369,373-76,480,532-34, 657, 695, 698-703, 721-22 Richard, Mira (“the Mother”), 376-77 Richer, Eugene, 164

Sathya Sai Baba, 370,379-80,38in.2 saved sect, 103

Ricketts, John, 423-24 Ricks, Bob, 2io-nn.5 Rida, Rashid, 690 rider on a white horse, 203,371,379 Rienzi, 16,534,537 Rigdon, Sidney, 498 Riley, William Bell, 5i2n.7 Rimi, Abubakar, 408 Robertson, Pat, 171-72, 660, 679, 681 Robitaille, Emmanuel, 164-65 Robitaille, Gustav, 164 Roddenberry, Gene, 619 Roden, Ben, 175,202 Roden, George, 175,202 Roden, Lois, 175,202,203 Rohan, Dennis Michael, 682 Rohm, Ernst, 532 Roof, Katherine Metcalf, 615 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 120

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 701

Savonarola, Girolamo, 116,288,296-97 Scallion, George Michael, 337 Schell, Jonathan, 69 Schneerson, Menachem Mendel, Rabbi, 162-63, 182,677 Schomburg, Alex, 620 Schramek, Chuck, 595 Schwartzenegger, Arnold, 617 Schweitzer, Albert, 630 Schweitzer, LeRoy M., 98 Scofield, Cyrus I., 508,5120.7, n.8,518-20 Scofield Reference Bible, 5i2n.8,518 Scopes, John T„ 5270.8 Scopes trial, 523, 52711.8 Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness. See War Scroll, secular utopianism, 92 Selassie, Haile, 14,139-40,422-23,424,426,427, 428,429,430,431 self spirituality, 572 Seleucus I Nicator, 240

743

INDEX

Semenenko, Pierre, Father, 554—55

Spriggs, Elbert Eugene, Jr., 193-95,197

Semjase, 600,605n.11 Sengen Daibosatsu, 358

stakes of Zion, 499 Standerin, Abraham, 495 Starhawk, 582, 635-36

Sennacherib, 244 Seon-cheon GaeByeok. See Great Opening of the Serviss, Garrett, 615 Seven Seals, 141,175,203-4,206-8,524

Starseeds, 601 Starsowers, 601 Star Trek, 611,613 Stearns, Lewis French, 506-7

Seventh Angel, 203,207 Seventh Generation, 469 Seventy Weeks of the Church Age, 520-21

Stedman, Ray, 133 Steiger, Brad, 601 Steiger, Francie, 601

Sewall, Samuel, 48

Stone, Barton W„ 52 Story of Mycerinus, 243

First Heaven.

al-Shaf i, 277 Shah Bahrain, 483 shakti, 375-76, 379-8o Shambhala, 41,42 Shariati, Ali, 701 Sharpe, Pauline, 573-74 shari‘a, 20-21,100-1,476,690,702 Shirdi Sai Baba, 379 Shoghi Effendi, 482-86,4870.10,488n.11

Strasser, Otto, 538 Strieber, Whitley, 595, 601, 603 Strong, Josiah, 54-55 Stuurman, Klaas, 4101.7 Subh-i Azal. See Azal. Sufyan, Abu, 275-76 Sufyani, 269,274-76,281 Sulayman the Magnificent (Suleyman I), 278,295

Short, Robert, 592 Shotoku, Prince, 354 Shulgi Prophetic Speech, 238

Sun Bear, 80, 581, 638, 642

Sibylline Oracle III, 241 Sibylline Oracle IV, 249-50

Sung, Maria, 549 Supernova (movie), 622 survivalism, 523, 52603, 654, 622-63 al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Din, 271, 277

Signs of the Times, 501 al-Sijistani, Abu Da’ud, 277 Silent Spring, 69,630-31, 6440.3 Simon-Pierre, Mpadi, 395

Sunday, Billy, 51207 Sundown, Corbett, 460

Swamp, Jake, 468-69 Swift, Wesley, 653,655

“Sinful Messiah” series, 206 Singina, Yali, 444 singularity, 59 Sirhindi, Ahmad, 277 Sitchin, Zecharia, 600-1 Sitting Bull, 465-66 Six-Day War (1967), 20,522,668,672-74,678,684,699 Sizzla, 431 Slocum, John, 459 Smith, Chuck, 679-80 Smith, Gerald L. K., 653 Smith, Helene, 6040.5 Smith, Joseph, Jr., 116,123, i78-79> 498-500,510

Tabarsi, Shaykh, 477 Tabenkin, Yitzhak, 672-73 Tachos, 241 al-Tadhkirafi ahwal al-mawta wa-l-umur al-akhira, 270-71 TaeMoNim, 335-36 Taesan, Master, 339 Tagarab, 440,443 Tahirih, 477,48706 Taiping Tianguo (Heavenly Kingdom of the Great Peace), 11,310,316

Smith, Wilbur, 5120.7

Talbot, Lewis, 51207

Smohalla, 459,463 Snefru, Pharaoh, 237 Snow, Samuel, 501

Tang dynasty, 317,32411.13 taqiyya (pious dissimulation), 478 Tauran, Jean-Louis, Cardinal, 559 technological millennialism, 59-60

Solomon, 422 Son Byeong-hui, 333-34 Son of Man, 261 Son Seok-u, 337

Song dynasty, 312 Song-kyu, JeungSan, 339 Sotaesan Taejongsa, 338-40,343-44 Southcott, Joanna, 116 Spangler, David, 571,573,575,578-80, 642 Spielberg, Steven, 618 Spinoza, Benedictus, 670

Tecumseh, 461 Tegheta, 447 TELAH (The Evolutionary Level Above Human), 37—39) 596 temple, in Jerusalem. See Jerusalem temple. Temple Mount, 20,673,675,678-84. See also

al-Haram ash-Sharif. Tenskwatawa, 461-62 Terminator (movies), 611,614,620 Terrell, Thelma. See Tuella.

744

INDEX

terrorism and millennialism, 9,20,21,102-3, 375-76,

684,705-10,7iin.8,722 suicide terrorism, 704,707,709 terrorism, double, 698 Tertullian, 137,142 Tesla, Nikola, 594-95 Te Ua Haumene, 93,99-100,104 Thedra, Sister. See Martin, Dorothy theodicy, 254,256 Thessalonians,

1

and

2,140,288,341,588,5im.i,

516,717

Third Reich, 16, 58, 84,531-34, 536,539-40, 545 Thoreau, Henry David, 629 Ti. See Nettles, Bonnie Lu. Tiberius, 263 Tigrett, Isaac, 380 Times of the Gentiles, 51U1.3 Timms, Moira, 76-77 Tipler, Frank, 59 Titus, 30-31,137 Toda Josei, 364 Torrey, R. A., 5i2n.7 totalism, 8,216, 218-20 transhumanism, 59 Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), Treaty of Paris (1783), 461 Tribulation,

al-‘Utaybi, Juhayman, 275 ‘Uthman, 275 ‘Uthman (Sufyani claimant), 276

V, 619 Vachon, Louis-Albert, Cardinal, 561-62 Valigursky, Ed, 620 Valleius Paterculus, 249 van Lierde, Jean-Pierre, Bishop, 561 Van Tassel, George, 592,6o4n.6 Van Til, Cornelius, 56 vaticinia ex eventu, 10,235-36,241,723 velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist), 701 Velikovsky, Immanuel, 621-22 Victoria, Queen, 373-74,425 violence and millennialism, 8-9,12-13,U, 16, 19-22, 27, 32-33, 40-41, 42, 58-59, 67, 78, 84, 97,100-5,145—47; 158,175-76,179> 212-30, 285,308, 315-20,322, 3230.8,332,365-66, 373-76,

385, 387, 389,393-94, 396-405, 407-9, 443-44, 446-47, 463, 466, 476-80, 484, 532-34, 595-96, 651, 654-55, 656-58, 663, 667-68, 682-84, 690-700, 703-10, 711m8, 461

16, 97,199, 261, 270,327,340-43,405,

493,508,5i2n.9,521-25,55F 577, 680

Trinity Broadcasting Network, Triple White, 561 Truck, 439 Tsali, 462 Tuella, 592

52jn.y

Turner Diaries, 19,145-47,654-59 Twelfth Imam, 15,475-76,689,701-2,704 twenty-four elders, 205 two seed theology, 653

719, 722 Viraf, 248 Vishnu, 13,370

Vishtasp, King, 248 Vita, Kimpa, 391 Vivekananda, Swami, 372 Voegelin, Eric, 529 von Hausen, Ludwig, 540 von Sarov, Serafim, 540 von Scheubner-Richter, Max, 536 Vorilhon, Claude. See Rael.

Two Witnesses, 37,141,595,523-24,527n.9

Wagener, Otto, 539 Walk-ins, 593

Ubayd Allah, 295 Udilei, 439

Walvoord, John F., 509,5i2n.7 Wanderers, 593

Walsh, Neale Donald, 581

UFOs, 18,36,37-39,72-74,430,570-7 UFO series, 619 Ukpabio, Helen, 405-6 ultimate concern, 3,8,22n.i, 85,90-92,93,95,98, 104-5,224,458,470,719,721-22 Umar ibn al-Khattab, 293-94 ‘Umar II, 277 umma, 6,21,105,709 unconditional apocalypticism, 68,722 Universal House of Justice, 482,484,486 Urantia Book, 6050.13 Urban II, Pope, 294 Urekit, Koriam, 445

Wang

Lun,

323n.6

Wannsee Conference, 544 Ward, Gloria Teneuvial, 97—98 Wardley, James, 495 Wardley, Jane, 495 War of the Worlds, Warren, Rick, 525

611-14, 618

War Scroll, 29,32-33,35, 668 Washington, George, 121 Watarai Hironori, Watchers, 600,602

358—59

Weber, Max, 7,114-20,123,127, 217-18

Uriel, Archangel, 595

Weimar Republic, 530-32,536-37,540,542 Weird Tales, 614-15

Uruk Prophecy, 237,240 Ushitora Koniin, 362

Weldon, John, 600 Welles, Orson,

521, 611,613-15,618

745

INDEX

Wells, H. G., 612,614 Wen, Beig, 447-48 Wendall, Jonas, 503 When Prophecy Fails. See Festinger, Leon. White, Ellen Harmon, 174-75, 501-3 White, Frank, 466 White, James, 175,502 White, Lynn, Jr., 632 Whitefield, George, 49 “White Lotus,” as pejorative term, 313 White Revolution, 701 Wilkinson, Jemima, 173 Williamson, George Hunt, 591, 593, 600, 6o4n.3, 604-5^8

Williamson, Marianne, 581-82

Y2K, 663 Yahshua, 194,196-97,661-62 Yahya, Mirza. See Azal. Yaledona, Vila, 448 Yali, 447 Yaliwan, Matias, 444 Yasin, Ahmad, Sheikh, 699 Yazid, 275 Yohanan, Rabbi, 669 Yom Kippur War (1973), 673-74 yonaori (world mending), 361 yonaoshi (rectification of the world), 350,361 Yoneq. See Spriggs, Elbert Eugene, Jr. Young, Brigham, 500 yugas, 370-71,373-74

Winnemucca, Sarah, 95 Winstanley, Gerrard, 299 Wise, Robert, 589, 618 Wodziwob, 89,94, 463 woman clothed with the sun, 141-42 women’s roles in millennial movements, 7-8,17, 34-36,37-39, 52, 56,70-72,77, 80-83, 97-98, 126,151,154,163, i68n.io, n.11,171-90,197-201, 202-6, 208,332-33,350-51,362-63,376-77, 477, 484, 495-97,501-2, 551-63,575-76, 624, 636-37,701-2 wonhan, 336 Woodruff, Wilford, 179,500 “World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders,” 102 World Teacher, 569-70,574,580 Wounded Knee massacre, 8,15,78,95,463,466 Wovoka, 89,94,464-65 Wright, Machaelle Small, 636, 642 Wusheng Laomu. See Eternal Ancient Mother.

Zaddik, 162 al-Zakiyya, Muhammad al-Nafs, 269, 272,274 Zamasp, 249 Zamasp-Namak, 249 Zand-i Vohuman Yasn, 247,250 al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 102-3 Zechariah, 245, 263, 285 Zechariah, Second, 245 Zechariah, Third, 245 Zemecki, Robert, 618 Zerby, Karen. See Maria (The Family). Zhuangzi, 310 Zhu Yuanzhang, 317 Zion, 285. See also Mount Zion. Zion, as metaphor for salvation, 100, 427, 494, 498-500,510,5iin.i Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s

xiejiao (“evil cult”), 3230.4

Presence, 504 Zola, Salvatore Luigi, Bishop, 554 Zoroaster, 247-49 zur Beek, Gottfried. See von Hausen, Ludwig.

X-Files, 619

Zvi, Shabbatai, 116,1670.3,271,299-300,670

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