Longing for the End: A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization - Hardcover

Baumgartner, Frederic J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312210922 ISBN 13: 9780312210922

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Synopsis

A history of millennialist thought analyzes the religious and philosophical threads behind the belief, and hope, that the world will end in the year 2000, identifying the role such thinking may have played in the Crusades, Columbus's voyages, Marxism, and the Third Reich.

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Reviews

Historian Baumgartner (France in the Sixteenth Century, etc.) chronologically charts how millennialism snakes through the ages, from early Christianity right on up to Jonestown and Waco and beyond. Historically, writes Baumgartner, people have always longed for the Day of Doom. Millennial cults and sects, from Jesus and his disciples to the 19th-century English millennialist John Wroe and David Koresh, have inextricably been tied up with religion, and Baumgartner limits his book to "Christian groups and those heavily influenced by Christianity." Baumgartner's most interesting passages illustrate how millennialism comes to the fore during times of revolution and crisis: the French, American and Russian revolutions, as well as the bomb-crazed Cold War. While Baumgartner for the most part avoids overarching hypotheses about what all this millennial brouhaha might mean, he gives readers a concise survey of the end of the worldAas it has been imagined and, sometimes, actively pursued. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312210922
• ISBN 13: 9780312210922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286