Millenarianism
From the Latin millenaries and meaning “one who believes in the coming of the (Christian) millennium” the word millenarian dates back to the 1550’s. Its root word ‘mille’ means one thousand and is in reference to the thousand year reign of Christ on Earth after the ultimate conflict between good and evil at Armageddon as written in Revelation to John. The belief of the coming of a ‘new world’ is shared by many including Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. Millenarianism is now more broadly defined as a cross-cultural ideology, wherein expectation of the impending and final confrontation will result in believers exulting in a perfected temporal world rather than in the afterlife. Most see radical upheaval and revolt against sociopolitical authority as a means to achieve Heaven upon Earth.
Historical Significance
Millenarianism was the most accepted eschatological (the area of theology that pertains to death, judgement, and the final fate of the soul and humanity) thinking in the mid-1600’s in England. Debate and dialogue around millenarian views continued well into the 18th century with its spread to Continental Europe and North America. At this same time philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment were looking towards science and reason and away from autocratic politic policies and religious doctrine as the ideals for an improved and progressive society. This questioning of traditional values and beliefs was an impetus for political revolution and disorder. Historians have applied the theological principles of millenarianism to support revolutionary principles. The incitement of chaotic upheaval could thus be validated by divine mandate and situated within an apocalyptic timeline. Millenarian and apocalyptic concepts are seen to be synonymous with revolution. Contemporary scholars, acknowledging the connection historians have identified between millenarianism and democratic thought, look to millenarian principles in their attempt to better understand the ensuing social tensions that result when oppressed peoples, in their attempt to defend and regenerate their social identity, raise opposition, at times violent, towards their oppressors. Millenarianism based research has two separate lines of thinking. The first centres on millenarianism as a socially effective process while the second maintains it is a social pathology with central themes of dissident movements effecting social change through violence or war.
Key Historical Proponents
In the New Testament of the Bible, the Book of Revelations (Apocalypse of John) 20:1-10 tells of the first resurrection of the blessed who will reign with Christ for a thousand year and the Judgement of Satan. This is the original source on which millenarian scholars base their philosophies. In 1627 Johann Heinrich Aslted (1588-1638) published Diatribe de mille annos in Germany. In England, that same year, Joseph Mede (1586-1638) completed his book Clavis Apocalyptica. While Aslted went on to become one of the most prominent encyclopedists it was Mede’s thoughts on millenarianism that became most influential. His philosophies were supported by enlightened thinkers such as John Milton (1608-1674), Henry More (1614-1687), and Isaac Newton (1642-1726). Mede’s writings, premised on apocalyptic themes in the Bible, founded the original ideas as to the manifestation of millenarianism in English apocalyptic thinking. English philosopher David Hartley (1705-1757), an admirer of Newton and Locke, in particular Locke’s theory on the association of ideas, published Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duties, and His Expectations in 1749. Based on the theory of proto-psychology, Hartley explored the idea that the brain and the soul are one and the same and he believed that the final destiny of the immortal soul was directly connected with the nature of the brain. Both Mede and Hartley, in the true spirit of Enlightenment thinking, explored millenarianism beyond its theological limitations. Pankaj Mishra explores millenarianism in his book Age of Anger. He notes the concept of Heaven on Earth was created by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The French Revolution has often being studied in terms of a Second Coming and Mishra looks to Saint-Just (1767-1794), a zealous French Revolutionary, who passionately believed ‘“the idea of happiness was new to Europe”’ and Tocqueville (1805-1859) who compared it to “Islam in that it ‘flooded the earth with it soldiers, apostles, and martyrs’” as examples (Mishra 156). In true Mishra style he lists Herzen, Voltaire and Marx, Russian revolutionaries Belinsky and Bakunin, Chernyshevsky, Dobroliubov and Stalin, Italian revolutionaries Mazzini and Papini, and Islamist ideologues Al-e-Ahmad, Shariati, and Qutb, and India’s Savarkar as proponents of millenarian philosophies. Moving beyond the French Revolution many conflicts and ideologies have been researched within the apocalyptic timeline: Marxism, the Russian Revolution (1917), Islamic radicalism, Hindu nationalism, the Iranian revolution (1978-1979), the demolition of the Babri Masjid (1992), the Branch Davidian tragedy in Waco, Texas (1993), the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), among others.
Claire Kirkby
Bibliography
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Cole, Juan. “Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic Thought in the 19th Century.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, 1992, pp. 1–26. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/163759. Accessed 8-15 October 2017.
Jue, Jeffrey. “Heaven Upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586-1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism” International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol. 194, 2006, pp. 1-7 and 19-33. Springer and Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4293-0_4. Accessed 8-15 October 2017.
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Mishra, Pankaj. The Age of Anger: A History of the Present. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 2017. Print.
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