Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization

Sociologyof Religion2001, 62:4 415-441 2000 PresidentialAddress Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization JoseCasanova* NewSchool for Social Research It seemswe all havesurvived the passageof the millenniumwithout many visibletrials and tribulations.Actually, one couldcontend that Dionysius Exiguus,the monkwho around525A.D. came up with the A.D. calendar divisionnow in usearound the globe,miscalculated and postdated the birthof Jesusby at leastfour years, in whichcase our millennialcelebrations were actuallya few yearslate.1 Alternatively, one couldbelieve that Dionisius Exiguuswas misguided in choosingthe Incarnationrather than the Passionand Resurrectionof Christ as the annoDomini, in whichcase we werea fewdecades early.Or one mightfollow the Jewishcalendar, or the Islamicone, or the Chinese,the Aztec,whichever, in whichcase the B.C./A.D.convention is meaningless.Or one could be a strictseparationist and deem it unconstitutional to imbueour strictly secular calendar conventions with any particular denomi- nationalreligious meaning and, therefore one wouldcarefully lowercase the B.C./A.D.signs into the religiouslyneutral b.c.la.c., before and after "our com- mon era."Which, of course,only opensup the questionwho are the we? Commonto whom?Which era are we talkingabout? We couldcontinue this exercisead infinitumand ad absurdum. The fact is that mostChristian believers, whether pre-millennial, post- millennial,or simply a-millennial accept the fact that only the Fatherknows the hourand the dayand despite all numerology,it may be futileto tryto curtail God'sfreedom by tying the divineeschatological plans to our own secular calendarsand human deadlines. Sacred time and secular time arerelated, for sacredtime can onlyhappen within worldly time. But the relationshipis not objectiveor automatic, and therefore believers are compelled to searchfor God's *Directall correspondenceto: Dr. JoseCasanova, Sociology Department, New Schoolfor SocialResearch, 65 Fifth Avenue,New York,NY 10003.E-mail: [email protected]. 1 The BC dating was first introduced two centuries later around 731 by the Anglo-Saxon monk, the Venerable Bede. 415 416 SOCIOLOGYOF RELIGION signs in worldlyevents, with or withoutthe help of propheticrevelations. Very few Christianmillennialists, however, looked at the year 2000 as a significant event in God'scalendar. Most of the hooplaconnected with the year2000 was predominantlysecular in originand character. Indeed, looking at the year2000 preparations,anticipations, and celebrations a few strikingthings stand out. I am goingto selectfive: 1) The most strikingthing perhapsis how little millenarianthe turnof the secondmillennium has turnedout to be. This is the moresurprising given the manybuild-up signs anticipatingmuch greater outbursts of millenarianfervor aroundthe year 2000 (Clagett 1999;Strozier and Flynn 1997;Stearns 1996). The few well-publicizedincidents of apocalypticmayhem induced by millenar- ian doomsdaycults, beginning with the collectivesuicide of the PeoplesTemple in Jonestownin 1978, and followed by the apocalypticimmolation of the BranchDavidians in Waco, TX in 1993, by the ritualmurders and collective suicides of membersof the Orderof the Solar Temple in Switzerlandand Quebecbetween 1994 and 1997, culminatingin the 1997 masssuicide of the Heaven'sGate UFOcult in California,led manyexperts to anticipateincreasing eschatologicalmillenarian activity (Robbinsand Palmer1997). The fact that l'affaireTemple Solaire happened in francophoneEurope and Canadaand that it was contemporaneouswith the Aum Shinrikyosarin gas attacksin Japan,led some people to the conjecturethat apocalypticmillenarian movements were assuminga globalcharacter and wereno longerprimarily Christian or restricted to their traditionalbreeding ground in the United States (Hall and Schuyler 1997; Mullins 1997). Here in the United States, the public re-emergenceof ProtestantFundamentalism in the 1980s had exposed to public view this peculiarcultural survival of Anglo-AmericanProtestantism, dispensationalist pre-millennialism(Marsden 1980). Traditionalpre-millennialist images and beliefs,now filteredthrough the popularmedia of religiousradio, televangelism, and the best-selling books of Hal Lindseyhad entered the mainstreamof Americanmass culture and werenow routinelyexploited by secularHollywood (The Rapture,Armageddon), were strangelyinforming American geo-political debates,particularly on the MiddleEast, and were feeding the paranoidanxieties of extremistfringe groups from Catholic Marianapocalypticism to the right- wing militiasof Survivalistsand the ChristianIdentity movement (Boyer 1992; Benjamin1998; Wojcik 1997;Cuneo 1997;Lamy 1996). Not surprisingly,given suchan apocalypticcauldron, millennial outbursts were anticipated by academic expertsand sensationaljournalists alike. Alas! The fearedmillennial frenzy did not materialize. 2) In this respect,the secondmillennium has turnedout to be not unlike the firstone. The visionsof millennialterror and frenzy around 1000A.D., most historians now admit, were concocted by 18th and 19th century rationalist or romantichistorians. Particularly,the great Frenchhistorian Jules Michelet wrote such a vivid and realistic narrative of the "Terrorsof the year 1000," that it 2000 PRESIDENTIALADDRESS: RELIGION, MILLENNIUM, & GLOBALIZATION417 becamea standardaccount (Bernstein1999). RichardLandes'(1997) recent revisionistattempt to reopenand give new life to the apocalypticatmosphere of the year1000 is unconvincing.People throughout Europe used different calendarsand were probably not muchaware of livingthrough 1000A.D. But Landes maybe moreright in arguingthat the period,albeit for reasonsthat mayhave little to do with millennialism,marks a turningpoint in WesternEuropean Christianity,preparing the groundfor all the reformmovements of the 11th century:the Peace of God, the Cluniac reform,the Papal reformation,the Crusades(Head and Landes1992). Indeed,one could even say that the period constitutesthe veryformative foundation of WesternChristendom as a civilization.We areaccustomed to thinkof WesternEuropean Christianity as a 2000 yearold civilization.As a systemof religiousbeliefs and practicesthis maybe the case, but sociologicallyspeaking the core institutions and social forms of WesternEuropean Christendom which formone of the foundationsof modern Westerncivilization are only 1000 yearsold: the first 500 yearsas Medieval EuropeanChristendom centered around the Papacyand the next 500 yearsas modernWestern Christianity in its post-Reformationmulti-denominational formsand in its expandedWestern colonial and post-colonialforms. Let's not forgetthat the coreof WesternChristendom, the Holy RomanEmpire with the Papacyas its spiritualhead, was only establishedin 962 andthat its internaland externalboundaries only becamefixed around1000, with the conversionof Norse and Vikings, Magyars,and Western and EasternSlavs and with the consolidationof the schismbetween Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054 with the excommunicationof the Patriarchof Constantinople.None of the other non-Westernforms of Christianity- Byzantine,Alexandrian-Coptic, Antiochian-Syrian-MiddleEastern, Armenian, etc., - which are mucholder and institutionallycloser to early Christianity,and thus one could say more primitivelyChristian, none of them has evinced the historicaldynamism of WesternChristianity in its Europeanand New Worldforms. As we areentering the thirdmillennium, however, we are witnessingthe end of hegemonicEuro- pean Christianitydue to a dual processof advancedsecularization in post- ChristianEurope and of the increasingglobalization of a de-territorializedand de-centeredChristianity. Thus, the one thousandyear old associationbetween Christianityand WesternEuropean civilization is comingto an end. Western Europeis less and less the core of Christiancivilization and Christianityin its mostdynamic forms today is lessand lessEuropean. 3) If the turnof the secondmillennium was not unlikethe firstin its lackof eschatologicalmillenarian fervor, the end of the 20thcentury was muchunlike the end of the 9thcentury. Last turn of the centurywas characterized by a dual atmosphereor spirit,by post-millennialprogressive fever and by fin de siecle anxiety(Briggs 1985; Schorske 1981; Weber 1986;Schwartz 1990). Both pro- gressivefever and anxiety have been manifestlyabsent from the year 2000 millennial celebrations, as well as from its much shorter anticipatory 418 SOCIOLOGYOF RELIGION preparations.Despite all the millennialmedia hype, the attitudehas been much moresubdued, even blase,than a centuryago.2 It is of coursetoo earlyto tell, and futurehistorians analyzing the spiritof ourown age mayor maynot confirm it, but it is my impressionthat we may be witnessing the end of post- millennialismas a progressivephilosophy of history. The view that modernprogressive and teleologicalphilosophies of historyas well as Enlightenmentrationalist beliefs in progresshave a Judeo-Christian originand maybe viewedas secularizedforms of Biblicalmillennialism, has an old pedigreeand has been stated in many differentforms, perhaps most per- suasivelyand systematicallyin KarlLowith's Meaning in History.The thesis founda forcefulrebuttal in HansBlumenberg's The Legitimacy of theModem Age. In an attemptto defendthe Enlightenmentand modernscientific rationalism fromNietzchean-based critiques, Blumenberg (1983) tracesequally convincingly the modernviews of historicalprogress and the self-confidentsense of superior- ity of "themoderns" over "the ancients"

Load more