|
|
Americans tend to study American history as if the U.S. is the only place in
the world. If we look at other places in the world, I suspect we will find
millennialism rampant there also. But millennialism has played a
special role in the discovery of this continent (Christopher Columbus believed
God had chosen him to find the new heaven and new earth predicted in the Book
of Revelation), and in the founding of the American colonies and the United
States. Daniel Wojcik's book, The End of the World As We Know It,
provides a good summary of how millennialism has influenced the United States,
and still does. The United States has been predominantly a Christian country,
and millennialism is part of Christian scripture and tradition. The freedom of
religion in the U.S. provides plenty of scope for millennial experiments.
As the medievalist of this bunch, I'll leave the detailed explanations to the
others on this question. I will, however offer an image: the French comic
strip "Asterix" tells the story of a small Gallic village that alone resists
the Romans because their druid makes a magic potion that makes them
supernaturally powerful and invulnerable. (This is, incidentally, a classic
example of nativist millennialism, what La Barre calls, generically "ghost
dance" crisis cults, in which the beleaguered natives are protected with magic
shirts that stop bullets, etc.)
In the story, there is a character named Obelix who does not need to drink the
potion, and who does not get the effect periodically, but is permanently
invulnerable, because he fell in the vat when he was a baby.
From the perspective of the millennial historian, America fell in the
millennial vat at birth, and, despite many efforts, has yet to get out of it.
Is this a good or bad thing? There we can have some disagreement. That
depends on how you feel about everything from neo-nazis to the 60s to cults to
religious creativity, to...
As far as the new question is concerned, permit me to waffle a bit. The
answer, it seems to me, is "yes and no." No -- because the more deeply we
dig, the more apocalyptic motifs we discover in other cultures, albeit
often in the hard to discover areas of popular religion and orally
transmitted beliefs. There is scarcely a region where such ideas cannot be
found. But, yes -- because millenarian expectations were linked to America
from the moment Europeans laid eyes on it. From Columbus, to the Puritans,to
the process of westward expansion, America was often portrayed (to Native
Americans' hurt) as empty, virgin, malleable, uncorrupted -- hence made
available by the deity or by the forces of history for a new start. That image,
present from the 15th century and confirmed in subsequent eras, invited an
American self-understanding in millennial terms.
The result has been twofold: First, a persistent millennial undercurrent.
Second, peaks of millenarian activity, every 40-60 years, usually in
response to some perceived crisis situation. One needn't buy into the
specifics of William McLoughlin's cyclical theory of American "awakenings" to
recognize that American history can be read as an alternation of millenarian
peaks and valleys.
|
 | |
puritan settlement in northampton, massachusetts
| |
One can offer several speculative reasons why Americans seem to have such an
affinity for apocalypticism. One would relate to images of America as a
specially favored nation, with a special divine destiny, that go back to the
very beginnings of European settlement. The Puritan leaders of New England
speculated freely that America might in fact be the New Zion, offering an
example to the world of a redeemed, purified, God-fearing social order. This
belief emerged strongly in the millennial strand of the great revival movements
of the 18th and early 19th centuries, in early Mormonism, in the expansionism
that comes at the end of the 19th century, and in the reform-minded Social
Gospel theology of the Progressive era.
In more secularlized form one can see it in President Woodrow Wilson's soaring
rhetoric of the World War I era, in which America becomes the instrument for
spreading democracy, freedom, and peace around the world. This kind of
thinking provided a fertile seedbed for millennialist and apocalyptic ideas.
When historical developments made it seem increasingly implausible that the
millennium would arrive in the present age, the apocalyptic strand in American
religious life turned more toward a "premillennial" rather than a
"postmillennial" eschatology, foreseeing increasing wickedness, war, and the
demonic rule of the Antichrist before Christ's millennial kingdom
arrives--through divine intervention rather than human reform effort.
Another way to explain the prevalence of apocalypticism in American
thought is to see it as simply one manifestation of evangelical,
traditionalist religion in general, which remains much more prevalent and
vital in America than in Western Europe, for example. This, in turn,
probably can be explained at least partially in terms of the structure of
American religious life. America has never had a state church or an
established religion. We have had a competitive, free-market form of
religious life, which encourages the rise of new religious groups,
charismatic religious leaders, and the use of extra-denominational
techniques to win a following, such as revivals, radio, television,
mass-market paperbacks, etc. All this has encouraged high levels of
religious activism in America in general, and a high level of interest in
biblical prophetic and apocalytic writings in particular.
I'd situate the apparent American fascination with apocalypticism in a broader
context, the role that the Bible has played in American culture from the
beginning. Paul Boyer rightly mentioned William Miller's "interpretive system"
that addressed central concerns of his time and also referred to Hal Lindsey's
"prophetic interpretation" of the Bible. In a culture soaked, to varying
depths, with biblical imagery, it becomes important for an apocalyptic group or
individual to address that common culture, at least tangentially, in order to
elicit the attention and comprehension of possible converts. In brief,
wherever the Bible is, there, potentially, is the apocalypse. Certain factors,
such as those discussed in the previous round, may contribute to the activation
of the biblical apocalyptic paradigm, but the paradigm is always there, waiting
to be seized upon by an inspired interpreter and embraced by an eager audience
as a way of establishing a proper moral order in society and the dignity and
value of believers..
Are Americans uniquely apocalyptic (different in kind), or more apocalyptic (in
degree) than other cultures?
My answer is yes to both these questions, for a variety of historical
reasons. Other panelists have already commented on the sense of millennial
destiny that originates with the Puritans, so I needn't stress that point
here. But we need to recognize that there are many currents of dissident
religion that have fed the American stream--the Puritans are only part of
the story. In short, one of the global functions of the American experiment
is to serve as a safety valve for the release of pressures that, in other
times and places, might have produced millennial movements. Example: think of
the Irish potato famine, a catastrophe by any measure, complete with all the
ingredients for an explosive millennial uprising: millions of deaths, a
colonial oppressor, a religion that promises future salvation....Why didn't
these ingredients produce radically millennial Catholic resistance movements?
In part, at least, because the Irish had somewhere to go to escape. My sister
is married to a Frenchman, and I once asked him about the current state of
millennial expectations in European society. His reply was: "We don't have
these people in Europe, or not so many of them, because we sent them to
America." (Of course, there is the odd case of the designer Paco Rabanne, whose
predictions for the August 11, 1999 eclipse--based on Nostradamus and
Revelation--may be the exception that prove the rule. Yet he seemed to have
attracted more ridicule than he did followers.)
Imagine a cosmic hand reaching down and shaking the European continent, jarring
loose all of the misfits and oddballs and folks who are dissatisfied with the
religious/political status quo...so that they, or their children, drift
westward, coming to America to work or to join religious groups and
voluntary associations, sometimes to ponder the prophecies and invent new
religions--such as Mormonism, a quintessentially American religious group. (The
westward drift still holds; I live in California, which seems to be the last
stop and end-of-the-line for many of these folks.) It seems to me that we have
focused a lot on the notion of apocalyptic time in our study of
millennialism, but that in understanding American movements of this ilk, we
need to pay attention as well to apocalyptic space, or millennial
geography...because of the simple fact that we, uniquely among Western
cultures, had the room to expand (once the natives were killed off or
subjugated) and places for these groups to set themselves up without
disturbance.
home ·
apocalypticism ·
book of revelation ·
antichrist ·
chronology ·
roundtable ·
primary sources ·
discussion
readings ·
video ·
glossary ·
links ·
synopsis
web site copyright WGBH educational foundation
|
