Ethiopianism conceptually shaped modern Africa. Perceivably, this has been deduced from distinguished events in Ethiopian history. This investigation explored Ethiopianism as a derivate of the multifaceted narrative of Ethiopian religious political dynamics. Ethiopianism has arguably been detached from the entirety of the Ethiopian Christian political establishment, being deduced separately from definitive events such as the Battle of Adwa 1896. This research reconnected Ethiopianism to a wholistic religious–political matrix of Ethiopia. Therefore, it offers an alternative interpretation of Ethiopianism, as a derivate (...) of Africanism and Apocalypticism, also correspondingly as a factor of Islamic Jihad and Jesuit Catholicism. The research was accomplished mainly through document analysis and compositely with cultural historiography. This study was a revisionist approach to Ethiopianism as a concept, deriving it from the chronological narrative of Ethiopian Christianity’s religious and political self-definition. Consequently, this realigned Ethiopianism as a derivate of multiple influences. Ethiopianism was possibly a convolution of the Donatist biblical appeal to the nativity, Judaic apocalypticism, Islamic attacks and Jesuit missionary diplomacy. Throughout the narrative of the Ethiopian Christian establishment, autonomy and independence are traceable; in addition, there is an entrenched enculturation of native Christianity and synergy with the political establishment. This formulates a basis for Ethiopianism as an ideology of African magnanimity. Parallel comparisons of Ethiopianism against Donatism and Zionism decode the nationalistic matrix of Ethiopia. Dually encultured native religious practice coupled with theocratic symbiosis of politics and religion fostered resistance from Islamisation and Jesuit Catholicisation. Further enquiry of Ethiopian Christianity as an index of the Ethiopian political establishment, from which Ethiopianism is derived, is qualified. (shrink)

The rediscovery of the force and scope of apocalypticism in primitive Christianity can help systematic theology to find new openings for thoughts of faith that have long languished in systems that obstruct their expression.

Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert’s 2010 collaborative work, The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, centers on a prophetic warning of impending apocalyptic collapse due to anthropogenic environmental destruction. An indigenous contribution to the contemporary burst of eco-apocalyptic writing and the search for a new ecological social order, The Falling Sky challenges the temporal vector of Euroamerican eco-apocalypticism. Instead of the teleological axis of anthropocentric temporality (the emergence of homo sapiens as the pinnacle of evolution), it refers us (...) to a temporality of terrestrial life, where homo sapiens is just one more living species in the web of life. (shrink)

In this article, I present a critique of Robert Geraci's Apocalyptic artificial intelligence (AI) discourse, drawing attention to certain shortcomings which become apparent when the analytical lens shifts from religion to the race–religion nexus. Building on earlier work, I explore the phenomenon of existential risk associated with Apocalyptic AI in relation to “White Crisis,” a modern racial phenomenon with premodern religious origins. Adopting a critical race theoretical and decolonial perspective, I argue that all three phenomena are entangled and they should (...) be understood as a strategy, albeit perhaps merely rhetorical, for maintaining white hegemony under nonwhite contestation. I further suggest that this claim can be shown to be supported by the disclosure of continuity through change in the long‐durée entanglement of race and religion associated with the establishment, maintenance, expansion, and refinement of the modern/colonial world system if and when such phenomena are understood as iterative shifts in a programmatic trajectory of domination which might usefully be framed as “algorithmic racism.”. (shrink)

Drawing on observations from on‐ and offline fieldwork among transhumanists and artificial superintelligence/singularity‐focused groups, this article will explore an anthropology of anxiety around the hoped for, or feared, posthuman future. It will lay out some of the varieties of existential hope and existential despair found in these discussions about predicted events such as the “end of the world” and place them within an anthropological theoretical framework. Two examples will be considered. First, the optimism observed at a transhumanist event will be (...) examined to emphasize the positive affective aspects of certain apocalypse scenarios, especially those with an implicit eschatological direction. Second, an online location where examples of existential despair can be noted will be explored further to demonstrate the kinds of negative responses to certain superintelligence/singularity ideas. These examples of existential hope and despair will demonstrate the intrinsic role of anxiety in ideas about a future artificial intelligence apocalypse. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Apocalypticism, which resulted from a conference hosted by the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM) in Bedford, UK. The introduction provides a brief history of scholarly work in the intersections of apocalypticism and artificial intelligence and of the emergence of CenSAMM from a millenarian religious community, the Panacea Society. It concludes by pointing toward the contributions of the symposium's essays.

Debates over whether QAnon is a “religion” or a “cult” lack theoretical grounding; they depend on unacknowledged definitions and classificatory schemes and ultimately don’t prove useful as an analytical framework for sociological/historical scholarship. Instead, this article suggests we explore the ways one contemporary religious movement helped make widespread acceptance of QAnon possible by weaving their theological commitments to apocalypticism, conspiracies and persecution narratives into the larger American culture.

In this study, Lynne Moss Bahr explores the concept of temporality as central to Jesus's proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Using insights from Continental philosophy on the messianic, which expose the false claim that time progresses in a linear continuum, Bahr presents these philosophical positions in critical dialogue with the sayings of Jesus regarding time and time's fulfillment. She shows how the Kingdom represents the possibilities of a disruption in time, one that reveals the intrinsic relation between God and (...) humanity. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to problematize Slavoj Žižek’s use of the apocalyptic tradition in his political philosophy, especially focusing on the consequences it has for his understanding of hope. Especially, I find his strong emphasis on the disjunction between the state before and after the radical event implies a radical discontinuity between the present state and the state of emancipation, that the possibility falls away of any kind of criteria for a useful distinction between authentic and inauthentic events. Such (...) a lack of a more developed hermeneutics of discernment opens up for a potential ‘decisionism’ in Žižek’s work despite itself; decisionism in the sense of the evental decision itself provides the criteria for what counts as a legitimate emancipation rather than any preconceived criteria. (shrink)

This new study of the “First” Crusade argues that “apocalyptic fervor” (p. 305) was the driving force of the expedition, as well as the Crusade movement. Previous studies, the author contends, have failed “to capture how precisely apocalyptic the First Crusade was” (p. xii). The remedy Rubenstein offers is a relentless focus on apocalypticism that ignores any weaknesses inherent in this approach and overlooks alternative explanations.

Apocalypticism has been widely denounced as a framework that devalues the world and its history, funding moral dualism. While this is certainly true of many forms of apocalypticism, it is not an accurate understanding of ancient apocalyptic texts. This article establishes a framework of theological virtue ethics drawn particularly from Herbert McCabe, in which human rationality and Christian morality are understood as political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental. From within this framework, Anathea Portier-Young’s work is considered, relating early (...) Jewish apocalyptic to trauma theory and describing how these texts narrated socio-political catastrophe in order to open up possibilities of resistance and hope. These considerations point us towards a constructive understanding of apocalyptic imagination and praxis within a political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental framework. Contemporary employments of Afro-pessimism in Black theology, particularly in J. Kameron Carter, then interrogate the proposed apocalyptic imagination, asking whether Christian apocalyptic praxis can cultivate hope in the face of the catastrophe of modern racism. (shrink)

This article investigates the eschatological expectations of apocalyptic and millenarian groups from a spirituality perspective. It first analyses various historical examples of such expectations with particular attention to their sociopolitical consequences. A second part discusses the negative perceptions of, and violent responses to such groups by those who hold them in contempt as lacking spirituality. This issue is then specifically analysed in more detail in terms of the siege of the Davidian group, an offshoot of Adventism, in Waco, Texas, by (...) law enforcement officials in 1993. An analysis of the group’s spirituality discusses their religious commitment, spiritual practices and use of the Bible as positive outcomes that they share with other millenarian groups. A concluding part spells out the negative characteristics and dynamics of their spirituality. (shrink)

This article identifies and examines the arguments put forward in the last decades by the proponents of a «non eschatological / non apocalyptic Jesus», in order to assess their explanatory value. It concludes that not one of them withstands critical examination because they are all built on arbitrary grounds and are refuted by extant literary evidence and/or by sound reasoning. Furthermore, the fact that this kind of untenable arguments reappears time and time again in the history of research powerfully suggests (...) that they are the result of an immunisation strategy, contrived by scholars who are embarrassed by the implications of an apocalyptic Jesus. (shrink)

One of the main points of interests in the apocalyptic literature is the salvation of God’s people. The topic is shown from a variety of perspectives. One of them is exceptional and very prominent in the apocalyptic genre – this is God’s victory. The theme of victory is a complex one. It consists of not only terminology and imagery of war, fight, rivalry, but also judgement, competition and kingdom. All of these motifs are being intertwined in the apocalyptic victory of (...) God. The problem of God’s victory can be seen as schematic, which is present in many texts from the apocalyptic genre. Altering variables inside this scheme results in a different outlook on the salvation. It is used to give the shape of the narrative in the text. From the variety of apocalyptic literature, an exceptional place is given to the Apocalypse of John. The theme of God’s victory there, although it uses the Jewish traditions, is rewritten and upgraded to a new unique form. The goal of this article is to investigate how the mentioned schematic realises through different examples of apocalyptic texts and how it is incorporated and redefined in the Book of Apocalypse. What is God’s victory? Who is being conquered? With what means? What does it all mean to the salvation of people? These are the questions, which the author will try to answer in the article. (shrink)

Popular discussion of utopian possibilities and apocalyptic risks from new technologies is sometimes dismissed as ungrounded millennial hysteria. In this essay I reflect on the various types of historic, pancultural millennialism. I then suggest how contemporary forms of secular techno-utopian and techno-apocalyptic discourse reflect these millennialist types and their characteristic biases to over- or under-estimate catastrophic risks, and adopt fatalistic or inappropriate stances toward risk reduction. Then I suggest that awareness of these characteristic millennialist cognitive biases help us separate grounded (...) assessments of catastrophic risks from their attendant psycho-cultural baggage. By carefully parsing our hopes and fears about the future from the characteristic dysfunctions of millennialism we can tap millennialism's energy without being led astray by it. (shrink)

Narratives of human-induced environmental effects such as climate change and biodiversity decline have long been dominated by narratives of loss in which humankind is concep­tualized as a destructive force. But in addition to narratives of loss, there is a narrative of gain and resilience in nonfiction books intended for a general audience. Books employing this narrative emphasize that nature is dynamic and that some species are adapting to and flourishing thanks to human-induced changes. This review essay discusses two new books (...) in this vein: Chris D. Thomas’s Inheritors of the Earth and Menno Schilthuizen’s Darwin Comes to Town. I argue that these two books, besides being interesting in their own right, are important contributions to the popular literature on climate change and the Anthropocene because they denaturalize dominant apocalyptic narratives of nature. However, they underestimate the severity of human effect on the biosphere and advocate a form of anthropocentrism that may be misguided if our goal is to maintain a functioning biosphere for the future. (shrink)

This guest column examines the historical fate of Russia in its catastrophic confrontation with Ukraine and the West. The piece considers the negative self-definitions of Russia that have arisen in the aftermath of the communist utopia and its virtual transformation into an anti-world — a society whose purpose is to undermine and destroy. Emerging Russian cults of war, death, and apocalypticism are stressed, as are the paradoxes and inversions by which Russia, in attempting to become stronger, becomes weaker and (...) indeed suicidal. (shrink)

Despite their purported demographic and institutional decline, White evangelical voters were instrumental in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and even more so in his 2020 loss. The story of Trump’s electoral successes among Christian voters in the last two elections is in large part the story of religious nationalism—and White Christian nationalism in particular—because Trump personifies the convergence of nationalism-infused forms of messianism and apocalypticism intrinsic to White evangelicalism, which culminate in QAnon cultic ideology. However, these same (...) ethnoreligious/nationalist patterns and logics extend much further back than Trump’s insurgent candidacy. This chapter traces the recurring, resurgent patterns of “zombie nationalism” among White evangelical Christians in the United States over the last half century that emerged in response to periods of significant societal change and certain recurring sociopolitical issues. In particular, alongside established elective affinities around ethnicity (whiteness) and religion (Christianity), this chapter makes the case for incorporating gender and sexual politics as key factors in the articulation and legitimation of religious nationalism in the United States. White Christian nationalism tends to reemerge as a salient political force during periods of rapid social change and diversification, driven by racialized religious grievances symptomatic of Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, or the paradoxical internalization and reprojection of a person’s or group’s perceived endangerment, victimhood, and/or suffering, in order to gain power. Drawing on examples of marriage equality and reproductive rights, this chapter demonstrates how an understanding of sexual politics is key to both apprehending and breaking the cyclical reanimation of White Christian nationalism. Escaping the nihilistic impulses driving these cycles will require White evangelicals to develop new hermeneutical tools capable of transforming the exclusionary patterns of racism, ethnocentrism, heteronormativity, and patriarchy that fuel the engine of ressentiment animating zombie nationalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"And They Sang A New Song":Reading John's Revelation From The Position Of The LambJ.A. Jackson (bio) and Allen H. Redmon (bio)Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and the seven seals." Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among (...) the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.—Revelation 5:5–6In an interview with Markus Müller, René Girard asserts the importance of taking into account the apocalypticism of Christianity. Apocalypse, Girard reminds us, "means revelation: apocalypto means to open up and to show the truth. But it also means absolute violence, so the apocalypse is a violent revelation and a revelation of violence" (Girard 1996). That the Revelation is a violent revelation has been well established. Despite textual evidence that would beg those who approach the text to do just the opposite, readers have fixated on the violence of the Revelation since its inception, finding in it God's final retribution against those who persecute the Church.1 Commentators such as Dennis E. Johnson, William Hendricksen, and George Elden Ladd have produced recent, full-length commentaries that champion the appearance of a Christ in Revelation ready to establish himself as a military champion and exact his revenge on those who persecute him (see, for example, Johnson 2001; Hendricksen 1998; and Ladd 1993). These accounts, and those that follow suit, are blinded by the violent revelation of John's apocalyptic narrative and fail to see the poem's revelation of violence—the other, prophetic half of what Girard rightly contends exists in Christian apocalypse.This error is understandable to some extent. Read in its own light and apart from the Gospel revelation as understood by those familiar with mimetic [End Page 99] theory, one has no hermeneutical principle for recognizing the end to which John is writing. The victims of the text can be ignored in the precise way that all victims are disregarded when the scapegoat mechanism functions properly. Such should not be the case in the Revelation, though, a text in which the scapegoat mechanism is exposed and pushed to its logical conclusions. John offers his reader a glimpse into the way this mechanism will function when all that is left is wall-to-wall violence, when one is left with only two alternatives: succumb to the mechanism and reciprocate its violence, or extricate oneself through nonreciprocation (and potentially die).In the margins of the violent revelation in John's apocalyptic vision, a revelation of violence emerges that can expose humankind's potential to annihilate itself and the mechanism with which it will do so. When read through the lens of mimetic theory, one discovers that John's narrative delivers a revelation of violence, an explicit naming and unmasking of the sacrificial mechanism that can capture for the reader not only the machinations of the sacrificial apparatus but one's own potential participation in it as well. As such, the poem can posit itself as a commandment (a Thou-shall-not-murder) that ultimately refuses the temptation to respond to violence in violence.The fact that John uses the apocalyptic to present this directive should not be surprising. Girard writes: "Only through the mediation of the scapegoat mechanism can violence become its own remedy, and the victimage mechanism can only be triggered by the frenetic paroxysm of the 'crisis.' This means that the violence, having lost its vitality and bite, will paradoxically be more terrible than before its decline. As the whole of humanity makes the vain effort to reinstate its reconciliatory and sacrificial virtues, this violence will without doubt tend to multiply its victims, just as happened in the time of the prophets" (Girard 1978, 195–96). While Girard's commentary on biblical eschatology and apocalypse refers mainly to the scapegoat mechanism as it applies to and is revealed in the Gospel texts, we see the immediacy and the frenzy of the apocalyptic and the ubiquitous violent mimetic appropriations also performed in John's Revelation.2 John captures... (shrink)

This volume brings together scholars working across the humanities to offer a comprehensive analysis of the environmental catastrophe as the modern-day apocalypse. An invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in the contributions of both apocalypticism and the humanities to contemporary ecological debates.

Pleistocene Park is a large-scale science experiment in Arctic Siberia in the form of a future-oriented rewilding project with the goal of mitigating climate change. The park’s creators hypothesize that introducing large herbivores into the area will slow the thawing of permafrost. Using the approach of multispecies ethnography in attending to the nonhuman agencies at work in the project, I argue that the park differs from other rewilding projects, which are usually ecocentric, in emerging as a survivalist project with a (...) distinct anthropocentric bent. Even so, the park’s survivalist goal for humans coexists with ontologies based on collaboration and mutual aid between humans and nonhumans and between organic and inorganic matter, with extensive agency assigned to nonhuman others. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within the frame of the park’s various genealogies, I trace the project’s underlying assumptions in equal measure to the history of Russian science and to the park’s lead scientists’ experience of sociopolitical rupture following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a case study, Pleistocene Park is especially suited to exploring issues of time and temporality, apocalypticism and redemption, and extinction and eternity, in addition to particular visions of the natural and the human. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo describes a postmodern Christian faith, centered upon love to the exclusion of dogma, that takes its orientation from Joachim’s practice of spiritual interpretation and his view of historical progress towards the age of the Spirit; however, he misconstrues Joachim on both counts. Whereas Vattimo supposes that Joachim's spiritual interpretation of scripture replaces literal readings, Joachim thinks they operate harmoniously together. Likewise, where Vattimo supposes that the Age of the Spirit replaces the ecclesial institutions that preceded it, Joachim is (...) clear that they will persist. Insofar as Joachim insists that profound change is consistent with persistent continuity, I argue that he articulates a relation between time and transformation that directs us beyond Vattimo's postmodern triumphalism, towards the arrival of what still outstrips our imagination. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to set forth conjectures that are likely to explain the inclusion of Plato and Hermes as heralds of Mani in the testimony of Ephrem of Syria. This incorporation should be set against the background of the Syrian religious milieu, which was influenced by both Hellenistic philosophy and Eastern religious traditions. Therefore, it would be better to seek a religious and philosophical environment wherein Plato and Hermes were associated. Keywords: Manichaeism, apocalypticism, theurgy, hermetism, Merkabah (...) mysticism, late platonism. (shrink)

The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī, and Beyond. By L. W. C. van Lit. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Apocalypticism and Eschatology, vol. 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Pp. viii + 278. $110, £75.