Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem
Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements
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- $57.99
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- $57.99
Publisher Description
As we approach the Millennium, apocalyptic expectations are rising in North America and throughout the world. Beyond the symbolic aura of the millennium, this excitation is fed by currents of unsettling social and cultural change. The millennial myth ingrained in American culture is continually generating new movements, which draw upon the myth and also reshape and reconstruct it. Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem examines many types of apocalypticism such as economic, racialist, environmental, feminist, as well as those erupting from established churches. Many of these movements are volatile and potentially explosive.
Millennium,Messiahs, and Mayhem brings together scholars of apocalyptic and millennial groups to explore aspects of the contemporary apocalyptic fervor in all orginal contributions. Opening with a discussion of various theories of apocalypticism, the editors then analyze how millennialist movements have gained ground in largely secular societal circles. Section three discusses the links between apocalypticism and established churches, while the final part of the book looks at examples of violence and confrontation, from Waco to Solar Temple to the Aum Shinri Kyo subway disaster in Japan.
Contributors: James Aho, Dick Anthony, Robert Balch, Michael Barkun, John Bozeman, David Bromley, Michael Cuneo, John Dimitrovich, John Hall, Massimo Introvigne, Philip Lamy, Ronald Lawson, Martha Lee, Barbara Lynn Mahnke, Vanessa Morrison, Mark Mullins, Ansun Shupe, Susan Palmer, Thomas Robbins, Philip Schuyler and Catherine Wessinger.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the year 2000 approaches, both popular culture and popular religion have painted pictures of what the end times might look like. Robbins and Palmer have gathered a number of essays that take a sober look at the phenomenon of apocalypticism in the modern world. In a first section, authors like David Bromley (religion, VCU) and James Aho (sociology, Idaho State) challenge traditional theories of apocalypse and show that apocalyptic thinking may be found beyond the borders of linear Western thinking. A second section examines the ways in which apocalypticism has been secularized in movements like the Christian militia movements. In a third section, writers examine the ways in which apocalypticism has been promulgated among organized religions. A final section explores the violence and confrontational stances of apocalyptic movements like the Christian Identity Movement, David Koresh's Branch Davidians and Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult whose members loosed sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. In all of the essays, the authors attempt to show how apocalyptic groups may be defined by their attention to the signs of the millennium and the signs of a messiah, a figure who will draw to a close one epoch and usher in a new one, and the ways in which these dual beliefs often lead to mayhem.
