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from Part III - Millennial Hopes, Apocalyptic Disappointments
Introduction
Is millenarianism spreading or becoming marginalized in Western society? On the one hand, technological and social changes have lent new vitality to apocalyptic images of Antichrist, Armageddon and conspiracy, and have carved out fresh audiences for them. On the other, the malleability and detachability of these images points to a certain shallowness: apocalyptic theology is increasingly being turned into entertainment, thereby losing much of its social impact. This article will suggest that, by studying the marginalization of millenarian belief, we can better understand the effect of secularization on religious ideas in general. Modernity fragments the social support that millenarian prophecies require in order to remain plausible; and this helps explain why the dawn of the third Christian millennium, a moment supposedly pregnant with apocalyptic significance, passed so uneventfully.
Millenarianism, Charisma, and Subcultural Deviance
Scholars of millenarianism have tended to stress its remarkable ideological power. Norman Cohn, writing about the revolutionary millenarians of the later Middle Ages, describes the effect of apocalyptic prophets on the rootless and disorientated masses:
For what the propheta offered his followers was not simply a chance to improve their lot and escape from pressing anxieties—it was also, and above all, the prospect of carrying out a divinely ordained mission of stupendous, unique importance. This fantasy performed a real function for them, both as an escape from their isolated and atomized condition and as an emotional compensation for their abject status; so it quickly came to enthrall them in their turn.
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