601. Schwartz, Hillel. "The End of the Beginning: Millenarian Studies 1969-1975." Religious Studies Review 02, July 1976: 1-15.
There have been two "generations" of scholarship in millennial activities; the first was essentially pathologically oriented in seeing millennial movements as forms of either personal or social "disease" [and Schwartz argues convincingly for relative deprivation theory as an example of this type of thought.] The second generation takes an interest in traditions of millennialism, seeing it as "an arsenal of world-sustaining forces" and the ultimate source of all belief. He calls for more study to fill in the historical gaps in this tradition and to set the context for movements other than "violent" ones. Schwartz traces [sketchily] what is known of the tradition's continuity and its influence. He describes the easy and frequent assumption that "primitive" millenarianism is the result of missionary contact, where the influence is seen as exclusively unilateral. Recent studies show indigenous traditions that can account for these "native" movements.
602. ———. "Millenarianism: An Overview." In Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade, editor in chief, vol. 9, New York and London: Macmillan, 1987: 521-32.
Millenarianism is the belief that the End is near and will lead to a new world which will be "fertile, harmonious, sanctified and just" (p. 521). It may be catastrophic or utopian in tone. "Chiliasm," derived from Greek, means the same. In Christian systems the idea derives from the Book of Revelation, which foretells a one thousand-year reign of the messiah on earth between the End and the final defeat of Satan, the final judgement of souls and a new heaven on earth. All of this is not always included nor is "messianic presence or a saintly elite."
"A speculative poetic enterprise," millenarianism scrutinizes the present for signs of the fulfillment of prophecy and, when it finds them, offers prescriptions for salvation. The view may be restorative or retributive, but in any case "images of a fortunate future are primed with nostalgia" [necessarily, due to the limits on prediction]. In these ideas, time is not completely either circular or linear. Thought is metaphorical and numerological, based on "faith in aesthetic wholeness of the world-historical process." There is "[discernment] of a pattern of historical ages [promising] completion and recapitulation" (p. 522).
They are explained either by relative deprivation (their leaders often come from displaced elites) or by culture contact. "Culture contact is the sociology for which deprivation is the psychology" (p. 527). Relative deprivation is unsatisfactory, being "slackly predictive," and needing the further explanatory principle of the "charismatic prophet." (The great numbers of female leaders have not been accounted for; in male hegemonies, why this female charisma?)
Culture contact is likewise not much use [being more descriptive than explanatory]; many millenarian myths can be shown to predate it in any case. The "customary structure of discourse" is seen to be a crucial difference between, say, Polynesia, where there were few such movements, and Melanesia, where they are common. Millenarian movements are unlikely among those totally constrained or with complete freedom: aristocracies, prisoners, slaves, the sick and the autistic. Cultural kinesthetic differences may influence local variability in types of social movement. Precipitating events may include evangelism reordering cultures, sudden displacements, confusion about landholdings, and intergenerational distortion of transfer of loyalties and authority. These movements flourish at the temporal edges of empires--in their expansion and near their collapse.
603. ———. Century's End: A Cultural History of the Fin de Sicle from the 990's through the 1990's. New York: Doubleday, 1990.
A breathless rush through ten centuries of thought on the ends of centuries, concentrating on the belief that these occasions mark important shifts in society and culture. Given the ambition of the work, it is small wonder that it is superficial; however, Schwartz includes an immense bibliography.
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