Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals. Millenarianism is a concept/theme that exists in many cultures and religions. Millennialism

Millennialism

Millennialism , or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state...

is a specific type of Millenarianism as it applies to Christianity.

Millennialism

One well-known form of millenarianism is the Christian concept of Millennialism. A core doctrine in Christian eschatology

Christian eschatology

Christian eschatology is a major branch of study within Christian theology. Eschatology, from two Greek words meaning last and study , is the study of the end of things, whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, or the end of the world...

 is the expectation of the Second Coming

Second Coming

In Christian doctrine, the Second Coming of Christ, the Second Advent, or the Parousia, is the anticipated return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, where he sits at the Right Hand of God, to Earth. This prophecy is found in the canonical gospels and in most Christian and Islamic eschatologies...

 and the establishment of a Kingdom of God

Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven is a foundational concept in the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.The term "Kingdom of God" is found in all four canonical gospels and in the Pauline epistles...

 on Earth. According to prophecies in the Revelation of John, this kingdom of God on Earth will last a thousand years or more (a millennium).

Although Christian Millennialism is the most well-known example of a millenarian belief system, the application of 1000-year cycles to the establishment or changing of the world has happened in many cultures and religions, and continues to this day, and is not relegated to the sects of only major world religions.

Theology

Millenarian groups claim that the current society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

 and its rulers are corrupt, unjust, or otherwise wrong. They therefore believe they will be destroyed soon by a powerful force. The harmful nature of the status quo is always considered intractable without the anticipated dramatic change.

However, others who held millenarian views such as those held by the earliest Christians were condemned in 1530 by the Lutherans.

In the modern world economic rules or vast conspiracies are seen as generating oppression

Oppression

Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...

. Only dramatic change will change the world and change will be brought about, or survived, by a group of the devout and dedicated. In most millenarian scenarios, the disaster or battle to come will be followed by a new, purified world in which the true believers will be rewarded.

While many millennial groups are pacifist, millenarian beliefs have been claimed as causes for people to ignore conventional rules of behavior, which can result in violence directed inwards (such as the Jonestown

Jonestown

Jonestown was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an intentional community in northwestern Guyana formed by the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones. It became internationally notorious when, on November 18, 1978, 918 people died in the settlement as well as in a nearby...

 mass suicide

Mass suicide

- Examples :Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious or cultic settings. Defeated groups may resort to mass suicide rather than being captured. Suicide pacts are a form of mass suicide unconnected to cults or war that are sometimes planned or carried out by small groups of frustrated people...

s) and/or outwards (such as the Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese new religious movement. The group was founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. The group gained international notoriety in 1995, when it carried out the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway....

 terrorist

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

 acts). It sometimes includes a belief in supernatural powers or predetermined victory. In some cases, millenarians withdraw from society to await the intervention of God .

Millenarian ideologies or religious sect

Sect

A sect is a group with distinctive religious, political or philosophical beliefs. Although in past it was mostly used to refer to religious groups, it has since expanded and in modern culture can refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and...

s sometimes appear in oppressed peoples, with prominent examples the 19th century Ghost Dance

Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times...

 movement, and the 19th and 20th century Cargo Cults.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the official text of the teachings of the Catholic Church. A provisional, "reference text" was issued by Pope John Paul II on October 11, 1992 — "the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council" — with his apostolic...

, paragraph 676, follows a discussion of the church's ultimate trial. "The Antichrist

Antichrist

The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...

's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism [underline added], especially the 'intrinsically perverse' political form of a secular messianism."

Movements

There have been many examples of millenarian groups, movements and writings over the years. While each is different, and not all of these adhere to a millennial pattern, they do ascribe to patterns of wide-scale change as described above:

• 2012 Doomsday Prediction
  2012 Doomsday prediction
  The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar...
  
  
• Boxer Rebellion
  Boxer Rebellion
  The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising by some historians or the Righteous Harmony Society Movement in northern China, was a proto-nationalist movement by the "Righteous Harmony Society" , or "Righteous Fists of Harmony" or "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" , in China between...
  
  
• Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University
  Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University
  Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University or Prajapita Brahma Kumaris Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya is a monastic, renunciate Millenarian new religious movement of Indian origin...
  
  
• Branch Davidian
  Branch Davidian
  The Branch Davidians are a Protestant sect that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists , a reform movement that began within the Seventh-day Adventist Church around 1930...
  
  s
• Christian Israelite Church
  Christian Israelite Church
  The Christian Israelite Church was founded in 1822 by the prophet John Wroe in England. From 1822 to 1831, the church had its headquarters in the town of Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, which the church wanted to turn into a "new Jerusalem". Wroe's followers intended to build a wall around the town...
  
  
• Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard
  Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard
  Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard is a term used to describe a group of 18th-century French religious pilgrims who exhibited convulsions and later constituted a religious sect and a political movement. This practice originated at the tomb of François de Pâris, a Jansenist deacon who was buried at...
  
  
• Dulcinian
  Dulcinian
  The Dulcinian movement was a religious sect of the Late Middle Ages, originating within the Apostolic Brethren. The Dulcinians, or Dulcinites, and Apostolics were inspired by Franciscan ideals and influenced by the Joachimites, but were considered heretical by the Catholic Church. Their name...
  
  ism
• Earth changes
  Earth changes
  The phrase "Earth Changes" was coined by the American psychic Edgar Cayce torefer to the belief that the world will soon enter on a series of cataclysmic events causing major alterations in human life on the planet....
  
  
• Fifth Monarchy Men
• Ghost Dance
  Ghost Dance
  The Ghost Dance was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times...
  
  
• The Heaven's Gate cult
• Hojjatieh
  Hojjatieh
  Hojjatieh — also called Hojjatieh Society — is a semi-clandestine traditionalist Shia organization founded in Iran in 1953 by Shaikh Mahmoud Halabi with permission of Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi...
  
  
• Jehovah's Witnesses
  Jehovah's Witnesses
  Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
  
  
• Lorber-bewegung
• Joachimites
  Joachimites
  Joachimites, also known as Joachites were a millenarian group that arose from the Franciscans in the thirteenth century. They based their ideas on the works of Joachim of Flora...
  
  
• Judaism
  Judaism
  Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
  
  
• The Living Church of God
  Living Church of God
  The Living Church of God is one of the church groups formed by followers of the teachings of the late Herbert W. Armstrong. It was formed as a series of major doctrinal changes were introduced in the Worldwide Church of God after Armstrong's death in 1986...
  
  
• Lord Our Righteousness Church
  Lord Our Righteousness Church
  The Lord Our Righteousness Church, sometimes called Strong City, is a religious community near Travesser Park, Union County, New Mexico. It originated with a group of about eighty adherents who migrated to the area from Sandpoint, Idaho in 2000. In 2008, the community consisted of approximately...
  
  
• The Lord's Resistance Army
  Lord's Resistance Army
  The Lord's Resistance Army insurgency is an ongoing guerrilla campaign waged since 1987 by the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group, operating mainly in northern Uganda, but also in South Sudan and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo...
  
  
• The Mahdist Movement
• Millerism
• Nostradamus
  Nostradamus
  Michel de Nostredame , usually Latinised to Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties , the first edition of which appeared in 1555...
  
  
• Plymouth Brethren
  Plymouth Brethren
  The Plymouth Brethren is a conservative, Evangelical Christian movement, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. Although the group is notable for not taking any official "church name" to itself, and not having an official clergy or liturgy, the title "The Brethren," is...
  
  
• Rastafari movement
  Rastafari movement
  The Rastafari movement or Rasta is a new religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, which at the time was a country with a predominantly Christian culture where 98% of the people were the black descendants of slaves. Its adherents worship Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia , as God...
  
  
• Shakers
  Shakers
  The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, known as the Shakers, is a religious sect originally thought to be a development of the Religious Society of Friends...
  
  
• Taiping Rebellion
  Taiping Rebellion
  The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who, having received visions, maintained that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, against the ruling Manchu-led Qing Dynasty...
  
  
• Tepehuán Revolt
  Tepehuán Revolt
  The Tepehuán Revolt broke out in Mexico in 1616. The Tepehuán Indians attempted to break free from Spanish rule. The revolt was crushed by 1620 after a large loss of life on both sides.-The Tepehuán People:...
  
  
• The Turner Diaries
• Yellow Turbans

Transhumanism

Transhumanism

Transhumanism, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human...

 and singularitarianism

Singularitarianism

Singularitarianism is a technocentric ideology and social movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of a superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the Singularity benefits...

 may be considered millenarian movements in a looser sense, because they anticipate changes in the established biological and therefore social orders, although neither group considers these changes to be thoroughly inevitable, merely likely. Furthermore, neither group maintains a belief in the evilness or wrongness of the current order, only in the notion that we should desire to change the order for humanistic and humanitarian reasons, and as such, both groups are thoroughly dedicated to ensuring that the changes involved are decidedly non-violent, entirely optional, and beneficial to as many people as possible.

In politics, millenarianism is often, but by no means always, linked to radical ideologies that share a similar belief in a transformation of society. These can be based in secular or religious ideas. In this way millenarianism is closely linked to Apocalypticism

Apocalypticism

Apocalypticism is the religious belief that there will be an apocalypse, a term which originally referred to a revelation of God's will, but now usually refers to belief that the world will come to an end time very soon, even within one's own lifetime...

.

Further reading

• Burridge, Kenelm. "New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities" (Basil Blackwell. Original printing 1969, three reprints 1972, 1980, 1986) ISBN 0-631-11950-7 pb. ISBN 0-8052-3175-7 hb.
• Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium
  The Pursuit of the Millennium
  , is Norman Cohn's study of millenarian cult movements.Covering a wide span of time, Cohn's book discusses topics such as anti-Semitism and the Crusades, in addition to such sects as the Brethren of the Free Spirit, flagellants, the Anabaptists, and the Ranters...
  
  : Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, revised and expanded (New York: Oxford University Press, [1957] 1970). (revised and expanded 1990) ISBN 0-19-500456-6
• Gray, John. Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (London: Penguin Books, [2007] 2008) ISBN 978-0-14102-598-8
• Kaplan, Jeffrey. Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997). ISBN 0-8156-2687-8 ISBN 0-8156-0396-7
• Katz, David S. and Richard H. Popkin. Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999) ISBN 0-8090-6885-0.Review on H-Net
• Mühling, Markus. "Grundwissen Eschatologie. Systematische Theologie aus der Perspektive der Hoffnung" (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2007), 198–220

External links

• List of links sorted by group type. Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.
• Lemman, Nicholas. "Amateur Hour: Journalism without Journalists", The New Yorker, August 7, 2006.
• ."Catechism of Catholic Church, paragraph 676"