The New Apocalyptic (original) (raw)

Future Clash: Popular American Apocalyptic Religion and its Contradictions

http://futureswewant.net/, 2019

This piece was commissioned for futureswewant.net/ by its curator Prof. Dr. Markus Schulz (http://markus-s-schulz.net/about/), Professor at the New School for Social Research and a co-fellow with me at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. The title plays on Alvin Toffler's best selling 1970 book, *Future Shock* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future\_Shock), whose chief thesis is that we are living in a social situation of increasingly compressed time and disorientation produced by the advent of ever new technologies. The following essay takes up the apparent contradiction of best selling popular apocalyptic literature anticipating an imminent end producing massive sales and large fortunes for it creators who capitalize on the economic opportunities of a late industrial economy. The paradox is that belief in the swift return of Jesus is marketed in a way that participates in a neoliberal economy whose ideal is endless growth and production. The essay develops a lived religion approach to religious belief and practice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lived\_religion) in the analysis of popular apocalyptic expectations and draws on Michel de Certeau's notion of reading as a practice of daily life. Its chief thesis is that the consumption of popular apocalyptic literature by the American public serves a particular set of social settings in which it finds its salience, a salience otherwise absent under different social settings where readers also lead their lives. Future clash refers to the way we live in multiple anticipations of the future, in ways that are not always logically consistent with one another. As such the essay challenges the idea that people who consume apocalyptic popular literature are dupes of religious hucksters and argues that consumers use the literature for their own purposes which may not in fact have very much to do with belief about the end of the world or the intentions of those who produce it. The essay contains language that some may find offensive.

Understanding Apocalyptic Belief...or not

In the first century CE, significant parts of the Christian church expected Jesus to return in a triumphant fashion. Today in the United States, significant parts of the Christian church still expect the imminent return of Jesus. This paper explores the variety of explanations for the continuing popularity of apocalyptic ideas. Building on existing scholarship, I suggest a number of new reasons why apocalyptic thought continues to be part of Christianity. These reasons also help us understand why the roots of apocalyptic thought will never be fully explained.

Apocalypticism in America: The Argot of Premillennialism in Popular Culture

Prospects, 1986

On the evening of good friday, 1878, Charles Taze Russell and a handful of followers, all clad in white robes, gathered at the Sixth Street Bridge in Pittsburgh to await the Millennial Dawn, which would provide their translation into heaven. His study of the Scriptures had convinced Russell, a haberdasher from Allegheny, Pennsylvania, that Christ had returned invisibly in 1874 and that now, three-and-a-half years later, the kingdom of God would begin, and the faithful would be summoned to heaven. Russell later denied the incident—Pittsburgh newspapers insisted otherwise-and revised his theology to accommodate this disappointment. The Kingdom of Jehovah, he said, would begin in 1914, whereupon God and Satan would rule the world jointly until the Battle of Armageddon vanquished the forces of evil and inaugurated a theocratic millennium.

The Revolution of the Apocalyptic Myth

This paper critically examines J.J. Abrams’ post-apocalyptic television show Revolution from a mythic perspective. The television show’s plot displays a contrast between the traditional Christian apocalyptic myth and the myth of the “new wave apocalypse.” The “new wave apocalypse” is a catastrophe that is manmade rather than God sent and there is a belief that the apocalypse can be avoided. This mythic shift shows a hegemonic struggle between Christians who believe God caused the apocalypse because humans “created an electronic Tower of Babel,” and those who think that man created the apocalypse through his own devices (Secular Humanists). This power struggle is seen between religious and non-religious views throughout the show Revolution. This secular humanistic view argues that humankind is in control of its fate, and because of the hostility within the human race, the apocalypse is imminent, not because a higher power willed it to happen. This hegemonic struggle and evolution of the apocalyptic myth is reflected in Revolution as a result of the increase in atheism or non-religious views in American culture.

From Apocalyptic Demonization to Theological Responsibility

Streit-Kultur: Journal für Theologie , 2024

This essay is a response to an invitation by the journal Streit-Kultur to ponder the question: 'Which values should not guide us?' As the effects of climate change, political upheaval and ravaging war are palpable, apocalyptic images as well as the concept ‘apocalyptic’ are today regularly invoked in politics, popular culture and mass media. This essay ponders the potential dangers of the apocalyptic imaginary, especially its tendency to encourage idealization of one’s own community and demonization of the other. As carriers of this complex biblical legacy, it argues, Christian churches have a special responsibility. A major task for theology today is therefore to provide perspectives and tools that allow churches as well as other civil agents to interpret and understand the affective, deeply rooted, but largely unconscious ways in which apocalyptic tropes and images resurface in response to today’s cultural and political challenges.

The End of Historicism? Reflections on the Adventist Approach to Biblical Apocalyptic - Part One

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 2003

Introduction In Part One of this article I addressed significant issues related to historicism and its application to biblical apocalyptic.1 Historicism, as a method for interpreting biblical apocalyptic, sees in books like Daniel and Revelation sequences of history moving from the prophet’s time to the end of history.2 This way of reading biblical apocalyptic, widely practiced up until the 19 Century, has not only been marginalized in current scholarship,3 but is being increasingly challenged in one of its remaining bastions, the Seventh-day Adventist Church.4 Recent scholarship, however, has exhibited a renewed interest in ancient apocalyptic, both inside and outside the Bible. Significant work has been done to define apocalyptic as a literary genre produced in the context of ancient apocalyptic eschatology.5 Scholars have recognized that apocalyptic literature does not come in a single, crisply-defined form.

Apocalypticism as Political Theology

Special issue, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 2019

Open source: https://jcrt.org/archives/19.1/McCullough.pdf Essay #10 in “Thomas J. J. Altizer & Radical Theology,” special issue of Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 18, no. 4 (Winter 2019), guest edited by Lissa McCullough.