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The Dream of the Millennium

1999; Queensland University of Technology; Volume: 2; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5204/mcj.1803

1441-2616

Henry Lawton,

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

As I write this it is late 1999, we are on the eve of the millennium, people are excited, anxious, scared, even paranoid, more so than usual. There is a sense of anticipation. Will there be a New Age or return to a past Golden Age? Will Christ come again to save the righteous and punish evil? Is the rise of antichrist just around the corner? Will the world fall into chaos and disorder because of the Y2K problem? Will the world be destroyed in some great apocalyptic cataclysm? Will life go on as usual? What will happen to us as we move ever closer to the great Millennium? What is it that we both long for and fear at the same time? The hope for the Millennium -- the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth ushered in by the Second Coming of the Messiah -- is perhaps the most powerful historical group fantasy in human history. It is a fantasy that has inspired and helped shape the history and self definition of many cultures, as well as political, religious, and social movements, large and small. The fantasy that a perfect world on earth, where all wants are satisfied, where there is peace and happiness for all, is possible and obtainable may be found in the traditions of many cultures. But it may have seen ultimate expression in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which in turn has merged with indigenous beliefs of non Judeo-Christian cultures in a variety of ways. The fantasy inspires not only individuals but also groups of every size imaginable. It has been the honest hope for a better world, nightmare and everything in-between; it has, at various times, been a force for violence and evil as well as peace and love. Millennial fantasy began as an essentially religious phenomenon and still endures as such, but over the centuries it has also become totally secularised. Thus it serves a tremendously varied and complex array of emotional needs for individuals, groups, and cultures. I have been interested in the millennium for the last 30 years, ever since I read Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium in my undergraduate days. It was my first experience with the history of what I later learned was shared group fantasy. I had never thought of feeling manifesting itself on the stage of history, thus it was a great revelation for me. This is one of a very small list of books that helped change my life. Thus my motives for offering this document for your consideration are both scholarly and emotional, perhaps it will help some of you who read this feel the same fascination and excitement of discovery that I have continued to feel with this material over the years. It should be no surprise that since we are talking about a rich, profoundly complex subject, the literature, serious and popular, on the millennium is huge. In Western culture, even though the inspiration for the millennium comes essentially from the bible, much of the relevant scholarly literature is relatively new. We shall need to look not only at religious material, but sources from anthropology, history, sociology, political science, psychoanalysis, and psychohistory. My hope here is not to provide a comprehensive guide (I doubt that would even be possible). I want to try and focus on useful material and point out interesting areas that psychohistorians might want to pursue further. If any of you wish to suggest sources that I have missed, I would be pleased to hear from you. If I get enough response I will put out an addendum. Hopefully this document will acquaint you with a subject of profound importance, that because of its complexity is still not as clearly known as it deserves and needs to be. Let me then begin with what for me was the beginning. Norman Cohn. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements. 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961. xvi, 481 pages. This book almost singlehandedly inaugurated the field of millennial studies. It has gone through four editions, but I like the second edition because it most explicitly makes the link with modern totalitarianism. In the later editions, Cohn shied away, wrongly in my opinion, from what was essentially a psychohistorical interpretation. Norman Cohn is one of my intellectual heroes and has produced what is for me one of the great scholarly books of our age. He is, perhaps without quite realising it or wanting to be, a true historian of group fantasy. To provide a concept of his argument I am going to give some extended quotes. The book describes a process by which traditional beliefs about a future golden age or messianic kingdom became, in certain situations of mass disorientation and anxiety, the ideologies of popular movements of a particularly anarchic kind (v). In each case it occurred under similar circumstances -- when population was increasing, industrialisation was getting under way, traditional social bonds were being weakened or shattered and the gap between rich and poor was becoming a chasm . . . a collective sense of impotence and anxiety and envy suddenly discharged itself in a frantic urge to smite the ungodly -- and by doing so to bring into being, out of suffering inflicted and suffering endured, that final Kingdom where the Saints, clustered around the great sheltering figure of the Messiah, were to enjoy ease and riches, security and power for all eternity. (32). The figure of the messianic leader combines characteristics of both the good father and the good son. He has all the attributes of an ideal father: he is perfectly wise, he perfectly just, he protects the weak. But on the other hand, he is also the son whose task it is to transform the world, the Messiah who is to establish a new heaven and a new earth and who can say of himself: 'Behold, I make all things new!' And both as father and as son this figure is colossal, superhuman, omnipotent. This image bore no relation to the real nature and capacity of any human being who ever existed or could exist. It was nevertheless an image that could be projected onto a living man. ... Accounts of these messiahs of the poor commonly stress their eloquence, their commanding bearing and their personal magnetism. ... Even if some of these men may perhaps have been conscious impostors, most of them really saw themselves as incarnate gods or at least as vessels of divinity, they really believed that through their coming all things would be made new. ... They set themselves up as divinely appointed leaders in the Last Days ... even reincarnated Christs. No doubt some of these people were megalomaniacs and others were impostors and many were both at once -- but to all of them one thing is common: each claimed to be charged with the unique mission of bringing history to its preordained consummation. (69-70, 318) What of those who followed such individuals? They saw themselves as a holy people -- and holy just because of their unqualified submission to the saviour and their unqualified devotion to the eschatological mission as defined by him. They were his good children and as a reward they shared in his supernatural power. It was not only that the leader deployed his power for their benefit -- they themselves so long as they clung to him, partook in that power and thereby became more than human, Saints who could neither fail nor fall. They were the bright armies, 'clothed in white linen, white and clean.' Their final triumph was decreed from all eternity; and meanwhile their every deed, though it were robbery or rape or massacre, not only was guiltless but a holy act. (71) Opposite the forces of good, led by the messianic savior, there appears a host of demonic fathers and sons. The two opposing hosts, each the negative of the other, are held together in a strange asymmetrical pattern. As in the eschatological Messiah, so in the eschatological Enemy, Antichrist, the images of the son and the father are fused -- only here of course the images are those of the bad son and the bad father. Antichrist is in every way a demonic counterpart to the Son of God. It was his birth that was to usher in the Last Days. In his relation to human beings Antichrist is a father scarcely to be distinguished from Satan himself: a protecting father to his devilish brood, but to the Saints an atrocious father, deceitful, masking evil intentions with fair words, a cunning tyrant who when crossed becomes a cruel and murderous persecutor. Like the messianic leader, Antichrist is filled with supernatural power which enables him to work miracles; but this power comes from Satan. Like Satan he is a creature of darkness, he is the Beast who ascends out of the bottomless pit. Everything which was projected on to the imaginary figure of the Antichrist was also projected on to those 'outgroups' which were regarded as serving him. (71-2) Such movements promised followers a sense of salvation that was at once terrestrial and collective. The Heavenly City is to appear on this earth; and its joys are to crown not the peregrinations of individual souls but the epic exploits of a 'chosen people.' And such a revolutionary movement is of a peculiar kind in that its aims and promises are boundless. A social struggle is imagined as uniquely important, different in kind from all struggles known to history, a cataclysm from which the world is to emerge totally transformed and redeemed. (308) The New World is nothing less than the millennial Kingdom of God on earth. It will be ushered in by the triumph of the righteous against the forces of Antichrist in a great apocalyptic battle that will destroy most human beings, signal the end of history and the beginnings of Paradise on earth. Cohn shows how what was initially a religious/social group fantasy gradually became secularised in the English Revolution and went on to become a major animating fantasy in all modern totalitarian movements. Psychohistorians wishing to comprehend this complex area of study would do well to start with this book and branch out as interest dictates. We might now ask about where such fantasies come from. Cohn shows that they arose in the Middle Ages often among those on the margins of society, most vulnerable to any sort of social upheaval or disaster. Certainly a good portion of the inspiration for such fantasies, at least in Western cultures, comes from the Bible, especially the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, but it also stems from traditions of considerable antiquity. And here, we must turn to another work by Norman Cohn. Norman Cohn. Cosmos: Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. x, 271 pages. Cohn wrote this book because he increasingly wondered where the powerful beliefs/fantasies that he describes in The Pursuit of the Millennium came from. He goes back to look at the worldview of ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Indians and how they believed that once their Gods had created the world, the order of things was essentially immutable. But the natural order always seemed in danger, from disasters, plagues, defeats in war, deaths of leaders, etc., inflicted by demonic forces who revelled in the perpetuation of chaos. Various combat myths, evolving in many cultures, would tell how a divine warrior or group of warriors would emerge when needed to keep the world safe and preserve the order of things. They would keep the forces of chaos at bay so that the world as we know it could continue to survive. Around 1500 BC the Iranian prophet Zoroaster added a new innovation with his idea that the world was evolving toward an ultimately conflict-free (paradisiacal) state. There would be an ultimate battle sometime in the future where the forces of the supreme god would crush the forces of chaos, creating a perfect world. Cohn convincingly shows how these myths evolved into the shared fantasies he described in his first book. Thus the dream of the millennium is very ancient and has taken centuries to evolve into its present form. This is undoubtedly one on many reasons for the power it still enjoys in today's world. In the years since Cohn wrote, scholars have increasingly realised the incredible diversity of millennial thinking throughout world history and in many very diverse cultures. One of the first books to call attention to this issue was published as the proceedings of a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1960, three years after the first edition of The Pursuit of the Millennium. Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious Movements. Ed. Sylvia L. Thrupp. New York: Schocken, 1970. 228 pages. The editor notes in her introduction that 'the idea of the millennium has been one of humanity's great inventions. In a sense every prophet and leader of a movement has reinvented it ... he has leaned ... on a tradition that takes us back into ... antiquity' (25). The book lays out some of the varying schools of thought about why such movements occur and shows that they have emerged in a wide variety of cultures over the centuries. This book remains an excellent introductory text for this complex subject. Another book that covers many aspects of the topic has recently been published and merits mention here. The Year 2000: Essays on the End. Eds. Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn. New York: New York UP, 1997. ix, 342 pages. An excellent and very diverse collection of articles. The focus is more contemporary and more on America than Thrupp's book (listed above). There are a number of strong articles on radical right-wing thinking, and how millennial hopes have permeated into many aspects of American life. Catherine Keller. Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World. Boston: Beacon, 1996. xiv, 370 pages. Just what it says, offering some new ways to look at the subject. Certainly this is worth a look. There are a number of areas that we need to consider in attempting to study millennial movements (1). How has the idea of the millennium evolved over time? The ideas that Cohn describes seem relatively straightforward, but in the ensuing centuries they have become more elaborate and complex (2). If we accept the notion that modern totalitarianism is essentially a secularised millennial movement, we need to have some understanding of how this process might have occurred. Thus we have to have some comprehension of the historical evolution of these fantasies (3). Also it would help to have some comprehension of the various schools of thought about why these movements occur (4). I want to consider the emergence of millennial movements in diverse cultures (e.g., South Africa, China, Brazil, the south Pacific, etc) (5). Lastly, I want to offer material on the millennial dream in American culture, where it has become quite diverse and almost all pervasive. America is perhaps the great millennial experiment of world history. Historical Evolution of Millennialism into a Secularised Doctrine One can make a case for the idea that in Western culture the fantasy of the millennium started out as a religious idea that often animated movements of social protest and/or revolution. Between the period of the Puritan Revolution and the French Revolution, we see the rise of secular religion (i.e. religion without the trappings of religion). This has a lot to do with what allows for men like Hitler, and Mao to be perceived as messiahs who will, via revolution, usher in a new world, what amounts to God's Kingdom on earth known by other names. I should be clear that this is my interpretation, the sources I offer for your consideration do not particularly advance this view but might offer support for it. In addition, we also need to remember that while a secularising process was going on that the religious hope also remained alive and well, so that in today's world both exist side by side in a complex, often confusing, relationship. David S. Katz and Richard H. Popkin. Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. xxv, 303 pages. Eva Shaw. Eve of Destruction: Prophecies, Theories and Preparing for the End of the World. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1995. xvi, 238 pages. Here we have two general histories that unite a lot of diverse trends together, showing the evolution of these fantasies over the centuries. Katz & Popkin are definitely worth a look. Melvin J. Lasky. Utopia and Revolution: On the Origins of a Metaphor or Some Illustrations of the Problem of Political Temperament and Intellectual Climate and How Ideas, Ideals, and Ideologies Have Been Historically Related. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976. xiii, 726 pages. This is a vast tome on a vast subject, which offers extensive discussion, throughout the text, on the millennial underpinning of many revolutionary movements. Of the Puritans (discussed below), Lasky notes that 'the English revolutionaries who were to usher in the New Jerusalem would be worthy: their souls would have to be free of self-love and warring lusts, of pride, envy, wrath, and bitterness. The future state of better times required guardians of sterling, if not saintly, character (422). Lasky is definitely worthy of study. Bernard McGinn. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Tradition in the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. xxvii, 390 pages. This book presents excerpts of varying lengths from a large number of medieval texts strung together with authoritative discussion/commentary by the McGinn. This is a useful source, especially for its material on Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202), who was certainly the major apocalyptic thinker of his time and who has inspired countless others ever since (126-141, 158-167). Michael Walzer. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics. New York: Athenum, 1968. xi, 334 pages. Charles Webster. The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626-1660. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975. xvi, 630 pages. These books clearly show that the Puritan revolution and its goals of creating not only a new world, but new men, were importantly inspired by belief in the coming millennium. An underlying goal of the Puritan effort was clearly the creation of God's Kingdom on earth. Despite their intense religiosity Puritans were men of the world, they were not in some ivory tower but very much into changing the real world in accordance with their religious principles. It is in this period that we begin to see religion becoming secularised, thus allowing religious ideas to guide or influence all aspects of the secular, e.g. politics, science, education, etc. These sources are important for understanding the beginnings of this secularisation process of religion, hence they merit close study. Theories of Explanation Aside from the ideas of Norman Cohn, discussed above, there are a number of other theories about how millennial movements evolve. I want to offer material by some of the key thinkers on the subject for your consideration. Also, I am going to include some material on biblical prophecy beliefs to provide an idea of how the whole idea is put together in the minds of believers. Anthropological Weston La Barre. The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970. xvi, 677 pages. Weston La Barre was certainly one of the great psychoanalytic anthropologists. This book is his grand synthesis on the origin of religion. It appears to me truly encyclopedic in scope. Much of it is truly brilliant, but parts of it are, in my opinion, totally incomprehensible. Though he is not writing about millennialism, I include this source because he gives extensive information about legions of messianic figures from many cultures throughout history Weston La Barre. "Materials for a History of Studies of Crisis Cults: A Bibliographic Essay." Current Anthropology 12.1 (Feb. 1971): 3-44. La Barre offers concise discussions on millennial movements in many cultures as well as a nicely written section on the various theories of causation. There are seven pages of bibliographic references plus discussions of La Barre's by a wide array of anthropologists. Despite its age this remains a very useful article. Anthony F.C. Wallace. "Revitalization Movements." American Anthropologist 58 (Apr. 1956): 264-81. ---. "Mazeway Resynthesis: A Biocultural Theory of Religious Inspiration." Transactions: The New York Academy of Sciences Series 2, 18.7 (May 1956): 626-38. ---. "Mazeway Disintegration: The Individual's Perception of Socio-Cultural Disorganization." Human Organization 16.2 (Summer 1957): 23-7. Wallace presents a schema that, while perhaps unduly broad in focus for our purposes, is still useful for comprehending the dynamics and purposes of millennial movements. These ideas inform his important study of the Senaca Indians cited below. This material deserves close study. Psychological/Psychoanalytic George E. Atwood. "On the Origins and Dynamics of Messianic Salvation Fantasies." International Review of Psycho-Analysis 5, Part 1 (1978): 85-96. This is an important article. Read this one. Michael Barkun. Disaster and the Millennium. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse UP, 1986. x, 246 pages. Barkun suggests that millennial movements can be one of many psychological effects inherent in group responses to local disasters. In my view this is too narrow a view of causation, but Barkun is a first rate scholar and should not be ignored. Millennarian Change: Movements of Total Transformation. Ed. Michael Barkun. American Behavioural Scientist 16.2 (Nov./Dec. 1972). This is a special issue of this journal devoted to this subject edited by Barkun. Seven articles, mostly by sociologists and social psychologists, examine the many complexities of this important subject (perhaps the most powerful group fantasy in human history). Millennial thinking deserves much more attention from psychohistorians than it has so far received; it is my hope that bringing some of the relevant literature to greater attention might help to stimulate increased study of this fascinating topic. One article in the issue of special interest for psychohistorians would be George Rosen, "Social Change and Psychopathology in the Emotional Climate of Millennial Movements", 153-67. Robert S. Robins and Jerrold M. Post. Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred. New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1997. x, 366 pages. This looks at millennial movements in terms of Bion's basic assumption model, a useful idea that merits closer examination than the authors appear to provide. Biblical Prophecy Belief Here are some sources that shed light on the nature of beliefs about the millennium. I have chosen some written from the point of view of true believers in Christian biblical prophecy as well as by reputable scholars on aspects of the subject that I think might be of interest to psychohistorians. There is a huge literature in this area, but not much can be said in favor of the in-depth scholarship of true believers (this is understandable since we are dealing here with issues of faith). However the materials presented here seem to me lucid and clear presentations. As such, they can be useful in aiding our understanding of the meaning of complex beliefs and ideas over long periods of time. Grant R. Jeffrey, Armageddon: Appointment with Destiny. Revised and enlarged editon. Toronto: Frontier Research Publications, 1997. 313 pages. This is a clearly written overview, from a leading teacher of biblical prophecy. David Haggith. End-Time Prophecies of the Bible. New York: Putnam's, 1999. 546 pages. For anyone wishing a guide to all the texts in the Bible dealing with this subject this book seems a most helpful source, despite the author's religious orientation. Rapture Watch. Archives on the World Wide Web at <http://home.inreach.com/dov/rapturea.htm>. Here is a publication that purports to give indication of when the rapture and tribulation is coming. The items selected tend to be quite amazing and must be seen to be believed. The archive lists issues from June 1997 to April 1999. It is striking that the people who put this publication out do not identify themselves in any of the issues that I looked at. Check it out. R.H. Charles. Eschatology -- The Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel: Judaism and Christianity: A Critical History. New York: Schocken, 1963. xxx, 482 pages. Originally published in 1899, this remains on of the standard scholarly works on the subject. If we are to understand the underlying psychohistorical issues inherent in such beliefs, we need to understand their nature -- this book is most helpful in that sense. E.R. Chamberlin. Antichrist and the Millennium. New York: Saturday Review Press/Dutton, 1975. xii, 244 pages. Robert Fuller. Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. vii, 232 pages. The antichrist (in essence the evil double of Jesus, the son of Satan) is barely mentioned in the Bible, but has received an increasingly major role in contemporary thinking about the millennium and how it will occur. These books seem to be useful guides to understanding an important aspect of our subject. They are more scholarly in tone than we would expect from purveyors of prophetic beliefs/fantasy (but, of course, the focus is different). Millennial Movements Across Cultures We see such movements in a wide variety of cultures, and not just among tribal and Third World peoples. Before considering a number of specific cultures, I want to mention a general synthesis that was attempted a number of years ago. Bryan R. Wilson. Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third World Peoples. New York: Harper and Row, 1973. xi, 547 pages. This is quite extensive in scope despite its age. American Indians The Indian population of America was, over a period of several centuries, driven by the whites from its ancestral lands, decimated and increasingly dispossessed. Thus it might be logical to assume that these cultures would be fertile ground for messianic movements aiming to magically restore what they believed themselves to have lost at the hands of the whites. Indeed this is the case... James Mooney. The Ghost-Dance Religion and Wounded Knee. New York: Dover, 1973. 591 pages. This book is an unabridged reprint of the Bureau of Ethnology Report XIV, part 2, originally entitled The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, published in 1896 by the US Government Printing Office. Pagination in the book (645-1136) is from the original edition. Since the 1896 edition is not readily available to scholars, Dover has done a real service by publishing this reprint. Wishing to discover the reasons behind the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, Mooney investigated and found that it had been inspired by the Ghost Dance religion. In essence, this was a messianic movement that believed the Indian dead would be resurrected and the Whites would be driven from the land. The Indians in their desperation hoped for the establishment of an earthly paradise. Mooney found that the Ghost Dance was the culmination of a number of similar movements among Indians in response to overwhelming oppression and hopelessness. He finds parallels to the Ghost Dance in the Shakers, and various radical sects of Puritans among others. This is an important source worth close study. Anthony F.C. Wallace. The Death and Rebirth of the Senaca. New York: Vantage, 1972. xii, 384 pages. Wallace is an anthropologist and views messianic movements in terms of cultural revitalisation as opposed to explicit revolution being a main goal of what they try to achieve. Handsome Lake was a great prophet among the Senaca in the late 18th century, and created a religion still practiced today that helped revitalise a culture beset by defeat and disaster. Wallace is able to present an interdisciplinary thesis in favor of his argument, bolstered by history, psychoanalysis, anthropology, etc., that is very strong. This book is a model of what interdisciplinary scholarship should be, can be, and rarely is. All psychohistorians, irrespective of their interest in the subject, can learn much from Wallace's methods. H.G. Barnett. Indian Shakers: A Messianic Cult in the Pacific Northwest. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois UP, 1972. 378 pages. This cult was founded in 1881 and still persists among Indians of the Pacific Northwest. A useful study, worth consulting. Jews The longing for the true messiah is a well-known aspect of Jewish belief and culture, and has a long history. Certainly the Jews have, over the centuries, been subjected to more than their share of persecution. Thus it should not be surprising that various self-styled messiahs would come forward, especially in times of cultural chaos, pain and persecution. Gershom S. Scholem. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676. Trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1973. xxvii, 1000 pages. Bollingen Series XCIII. The Sabbatian movement was 'the most important movement in Judaism since the destruction of the Second Temple' (ix). This book is apparently the first major study of Sabbatai, what he was about, and why he was important. The movement he inspired swept through the entire Jewish Diaspora. When it had reached a fever pitch, Sabbatai suddenly recanted an