Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America - Softcover

Strozier, Charles B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807012270 ISBN 13: 9780807012277

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 1995

Synopsis

Book by Strozier, Charles B.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Psychoanalyst Strozier (History/John Jay College/CUNY; Lincoln's Quest for Union--not reviewed) probes the minds of ``end- time believers'' to investigate a growing religious trend that he sees as one response to a widespread sense of ultimate threat. Over one quarter of the American people believe that God will cleanse the earth in a fiery destruction, send Jesus back to rule for 1,000 years, give the saints victory over death, and cast everyone else forever into a lake of fire. Strozier bases his study on five years as a participant/observer at four New York City churches and on interviews with church members. He finds that fundamentalist discourse is permeated with images of violence and circles around the problems of guilt and shame. Strozier takes care not to caricature his informants or to treat their beliefs as pathological. In some cases, he sees them as leading towards a greater engagement with life, e.g., the Reverend Charles and his Harlem congregation, for whom the apocalyptic vision is an urgent call to greater awareness and social action. Typically, however, he notes a profound split separating believers from an ever more rotten world, and their own sinful past from their present perceived purity. Human beings can bring nothing to their redemption, according to this view, and there is a dissociative shift in agency toward an angry God who dooms sinners to a genocidal cleansing. Strozier offers some penetrating insights along the way, but many readers will find it odd that a study of American religiosity is confined to New York City. In his historical survey, Strozier does not refer to the apocalyptic excesses of some early Puritan groups, and he makes no attempt to show how apocalyptic beliefs stand in relation to traditional Christian doctrine and what this might imply psychologically. Nor does he address the obvious question: Why are such ideas more popular in this country than elsewhere? A timely study that, as the author says, offers more interesting questions than simple answers. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

The liberal arts today stress "cross-disciplinary" research. Both professor of history and psychoanalyst, Strozier takes the injunction to heart. He has taught himself the art of participant observation--the method synonymous with traditional social anthropology; he can also analyze popular culture; and somewhere along the line, he has become something of a Bible scholar. The research skills he cultivated in these several pursuits inform this book on those Christian denominations that are united by a belief in the impending end of human history. Strozier joined several fundamentalist churches in New York City in order to observe their practices and to arrange the interviews that constitute the book's first half and which he analyzes psychologically, as if the interviewees had come to him for help. The second half of the book places contemporary fin-de-si{Š}ecle fundamentalism in the context of American history and to a lesser extent contrasts it with fundamentalism elsewhere. There's something uncomfortable about Strozier's relation to fundamentalism--intimations of condescension, perhaps, and of an exploitation that he frequently repudiates. But the discomfort makes for good reading, as does Strozier's effortless style. Roland Wulbert

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0807012270
• ISBN 13: 9780807012277
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328