141. Burridge, Kenelm O.L. Mambu: A Melanesian Millennium. London: Methuen, 1960.

"Cargo ideology … is expressed in a 'myth-dream' [which is] a series of themes, propositions and problems which are found in myths, in dreams, in the half-light of conversation, and in the emotional responses to a variety of actions, and questions asked" (p. 148). The myth-dream explains present reality and future hope alike; the charismatic leader embodies the "new man" who will transcend present limitations and lead the people to a new cultural dispensation; while cult ritual expresses the myth-dream behaviorally."

Burridge has cargo cults depend on guilt: social inequality "must" be based on sin, as he supposes, therefore these movements amount to atonements for the moral conflicts experienced in the sudden and inexplicable loss of manhood entailed in acculturation, since whites (at least in the New Guinea context) demand moral surrender from the natives.

142. ---. "Review of Road Belong Cargo by Peter Lawrence." Man 65, 1965b: 96-97.

The problem cargoists face is to relate to Christian gods who control access to cargo. Traditional belief (except in Yali's movement, the most successful of those studied) is translated to Christian terms, not vice versa.

143. ---. New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities. New York: Schocken, 1969.

Lanternari, 1974 (item 407) finds fault with Burridge's attempt to overcome the distinctions rational-irrational and sacred-secular "on the basis of experience of faith" in terms of which the differences make no difference. Lanternari thinks this pays too little service to the symbolic value of redemption and gives it a reductionist interpretation, as religion also gets, since Burridge again downplays its symbolic importance. This book is of the greatest importance for its insistance on the crucial nature of symbolism in these movements, and the importance of cash as a measure of human worth. Its applicability is far greater than its province.

Millennialism recapitulates history in a theme of moral regeneration, in a search for new categories by reference to tradition [the basis of all creativity]. It arises in situations in which power asserts itself in such a way that new understandings of its sources and nature are required: 1) where it shows itself in an incomprehensible fashion (Berndt's (1953: see item 93) airplane incident); 2) the money situation, where moral, binary qualities must be made factorial and quantifiable; 3) where there is competition for and the need for passage from one category to another of known power and 4) where the defeat of a culture by another necessitates the construction of new assumptions. Problems in the control of money are the most frequent elicitors of millennial activity.

The millennium is equivalent to salvation and redemption. It points to absolute freedom, desire met and expunged, but it always mentions new rules. Millennialisms are transitions between these: destruction of the means of production symbolizes the millennium, in denying the means of incurring obligations. [Is all this a radical individualism, an asociality?] This split appears in myths of origin, where "beings" become human through knowledge of and subjection to rules-[socialization]. Burridge draws the van Gennep parallel: liminality. Old rules-no rules-new rules. Millennialism is a special transition: holistic, it recapitulates human history; in changing a whole society, all bets are off: the new rules can only be experimental. Sexual promiscuity in these movements is legitimate and sensible in these terms. These orgies occur after the new rules are roughly known. It also fits with the rigorism Knox (1950) noted. Orgies and idealism are opposites meeting in synthesis: no obligation. The phase of no rules is crucial: the prophet must impose order or fail himself.

The millennium means "a new situation and status which, providing the basis of a new integrity, will enable life to be lived more abundantly" (p. 171). It is based on synthetic action derived from loss of integrity and a vision of complete integrity: full humanity.

144. ---. "Millennialisms and the Re-creation of History." In Religion, Rebellion, Revolution edited by B. Lincoln. New York: St. Martin's, 1985.

Religion and politics are not separable. Millennial studies is exhausted after 35 years or so. The most interesting fact to emerge from this study is that millennialism is programmed into European culture, and no one is in fact neutral to the idea. Millennialism is sufficiently protean that it can be made to fit persuasively in any theory. Terms like charisma, alienation, anomie, and individualism are central to understanding our culture as a whole but also to understanding the millennium. The New Testament is in most respects the best description of such a movement that we have. No other society produces anything like our quantity of views of other societies. Our cosmology combines, uneasily, rationality and faith, and millennialism redresses the excesses of reason's rule, which cancels morality with money. A paradox: the idea exemplifies individuality (in the prophet) and seeks to create community (among the followers). If the millennium cannot compromise linear with circular time, it burns out.
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