From natural to political catastrophism

The co-hosts, Anglican Miles Smith, Lutheran Korey Maas, and Presbyterian D. G. Hart return after a long semester to talk about eschatology among Lutherans, Anglicans, and Presbyterians. Some listeners may be surprised to learn that amillennialism is the ho-hum mainstream view among Lutherans (compared to Presbyterians where it generates much excitement and zealous adherence). Among Protestants of British descent, Anglicans and Presbyterians, attitudes toward the conversion of Jews and the creation of Israel may explain the pre- and post-mill variants.

Later in the conversation the topic shifts to the eschatology of Christian Nationalists thanks to an article from forty years ago that compared the apocalyptic pre-millennialism of Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth to the rise of a catastrophism among environmentalists. That article by Michael Barkun, appeared in the Fall 1983 issue of Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal under the title, "Divided Apocalypse: Thinking about the End in Contemporary America." In the article, when Barkun describes two strategies among secular apocalypticists, he could have been describing tendencies among today's Christian nationalists. He wrote:

"The human desire for a morally ordered world is powerful; when apparently unmerited suffering occurs, explanations are generated which presuppose that the suffering has moral significance. . . . In the absence of a coherent explanation for unmerited suffering, secular apocalular apocalypticists tend to adopt two strategies. On the one hand, they may ascribe the suffering to the machinations of small but powerful groups, whose control of economic, military, or other resources permits them to place the fate of others in jeopardy.... On the other hand, world destruction may be viewed as the unintended consequence of human actions that are ill-informed, ill-timed, or inept. According to this view, the victims of world destruction are at least partially to blame for their fate, since had they behaved differently, they might have prevented it."

It is a fascinating article if only because it took the temperature of Christian and secular millennialism from forty years ago. The other reason for reading it is to consider Christian nationalism, not from whether it's amill or post-mill. The real question is the degree to which Chrisitan nationalism implicitly traffics in the catastrophism that has pervaded American activism, journalism, and social media for the last decade.