Apocalyptic Politics
Dateline: December 22, 1999
Millenarianism is an obsession with apocalyptic visions and prophecies associated somehow with the "millennium" - the end of one, the beginning of one, or even just the progress of one. This is what a significant portion of the world has been experiencing over the past months and weeks. Usually, millenarianism appears to be religious in nature but more often than not, it is highly political. It is important to both understanding and dealing with such movements that we take into account these political dimensions. It's not that religion is being used as a mask to cover up political desires - rather, religion is giving structure and order to what are ultimately political concerns.
Millenarians are not insane, although they often appear to be. Millenarianism is mythic in structure, and like other myths it attempts to remove the insecurity from life and history by wrapping it up in a coherent human narrative. Who gets to wield worldly power and why? What is justice and why is it so often absent in what is supposed to be a godly world?
There are a lot of problems in the world which despite our best efforts don't seem to go away. Instead of simply accepting that the problems are a part of life, it is more appealing to try and explain it all as part of some grand plan - and of course part of this plan is that everything will be fixed in the end such that we will live happily ever after. It's also appealing to think that we are living in an age which will see this momentous change - after all, who wants to accept the idea that none of the evils will go away any time soon?
| Quote of the week: There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith. William E. H. Lecky, Irish Historian |
Patterns
It is important to remember that humans are fundamentally pattern-seeking animals. When circumstances appear chaotic or random in any way, we tend not to want to believe it and insist upon fitting events into some story. Society itself is perhaps one of the more chaotic and confusing systems we will encounter in our lives. Society's rules are supposed to help people find structure and order in their world. The problem is, society regularly takes odd turns down new, unpredictable paths which threaten traditional social, economic and moral bases of life. This is difficult for many people to understand at all, much less accept and adapt to. After all, people have enough trouble making sense of their world when things aren't changing dramatically.
In situations such as these, some turn to prophecy - in particular millennial prophecies in which all of the corruption, suffering and evil in the world are solved in one radical blow. Nothing less than divine intervention will serve to clean up the mess around us and restore matters to their earlier, golden nature. In this way the religious cloaking serves to legitimize the desires and hopes of millennial believers.
Millenarian apocalypticism is thus the effort of those who perceive themselves to be so profoundly marginalized- religiously, economically, socially, or otherwise - that nothing less than God's almighty help can turn things around.
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