November 23, 1999
Contact: Deb Graber, University Relations, (785) 864-8874.
LAWRENCE -- In the darkened religious studies library at the University of Kansas, images flash on a projection screen: aging clapboard churches in New England; piles of rubble at the Branch Davidian Texas compound; communal farmers in Vermont; a bunker cut into a Montana mountainside.
The images, religious studies professor Tim Miller tells his students, are a small sampling of past and present groups "steeped in millennialism," the belief that the end of the world is imminent.
This semester, with the end of the century approaching, Miller is teaching Millennialism in America, a wide-ranging, three-credit-hour religious studies seminar for undergraduates and graduate students. After the first few sessions, which Miller uses to present introductory material, students engage in extensive research projects and present them during class.
Miller took the slides he shows students. "I've visited hundreds of sites," he says, showing pictures of Branch Davidians at a one-year reunion of survivors of the 1993 gunfight with federal agents and the fire at the Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
"These groups are outreach-oriented. In most cases, people are very welcoming," he says, although he wasn't allowed to get close to the Montana bunker of the Church Universal and Triumphant.
The original definition of the millennium, Miller says, was the 1,000-year rule of Christ and the creation of "a new heaven and a new earth" referred to in Revelation. "In this course, we're looking at a broader definition. We're not just sticking to Christian visions. We're looking at all sorts of visions of the end of the world or of massive transformations of the world - either as a greatly anticipated hope or as a nightmare."
For example, he says, the Church Universal and Triumphant is not a conventional Christian group. Its several thousand members believe a cataclysmic war will wipe out much of civilization.
"Seven hundred of its members are holed up outside Yellowstone," Miller says. "They've stockpiled huge amounts of food and water and diesel fuel, and some people think they've got guns to keep the heathens out. Church members believe they'll survive the hard times that are coming."
In theory, Miller says, most Christian religions can be considered millennial because they look to some version of a Second Coming of Christ and a 1,000-year rule. In the United States, millennialism is largely a Protestant phenomenon, he says, and within Protestantism are two major schools of thought.
One, favored by mainline Protestant denominations such as Methodists, is that "we must work to make the world a better place, and when we have made it worthy of the Lord's return, then he will come back," Miller says.
"The far more flashy one, though" - a view held by evangelical Protestants such as Pentecostals, Miller says - "argues exactly the opposite, which is that the world is going downhill, social reform is pointless, and when things are utterly hopeless, then Jesus will return. It's a really catastrophic scenario."
Miller's course focuses on what he calls the "most spectacularly millennialist groups." In part, this is because of America's preoccupation with the more unusual groups, he says. Students in the course are working on studies of the Branch Davidians, the Twelve Tribes/Messianic Communities in Missouri, and environmental and agricultural disaster as a theme of the millennium.
Chris Lapine, Lawrence senior in printmaking, is researching the Antichrist as an icon in popular culture. He's also interested in looking at the millennium through the eyes of artists like Hieronymous Bosch, who painted religious subjects with an almost demonic imagery.
Some of the course's subject matter has been surprising, Lapine says. "I was really taken aback by the wild theories of some authors we're reading - real conspiracy-theory stuff, like bar codes being the mark of the devil," he says.
"Also, I think it's really interesting how people are freaking out about Y2K and Armageddon even though Jesus said, 'Nobody will know when I return.'"
Y2K has become a major focus of millennial thinking, Miller says. "You can't look at a daily newspaper without getting a dose of something millennial or reading stories about Y2K. People start thinking, 'If the worst Y2K scenarios are right, that the electrical power grid could shut down and cause other disasters, maybe that's God's way of doing it.'"
Although some religious scholars think millennialism is increasing as the end of the century nears, Miller sees millennialism as a persistent rather than escalating theme in American Protestantism. "I don't know how you could statistically demonstrate an increase," he says. "How could you go back 50 years and count the percentage of the population expecting an imminent end of the world and then compare it to today?"
Scholars and others who follow millennial activity play a "great and unreliable guessing game" predicting which of the more radical groups could explode, Miller says.
"I, unlike many people, knew something about the Branch Davidians before they became prominent in 1993. Had you asked me to pick out a group that would likely be involved in some sort of violent confrontation with the government, I wouldn't have picked them," he says. "I do think the government focused on them and victimized them."
Currently, many people are watching the Church Universal and Triumphant at its Royal Teton Ranch north of Yellowstone.
"I think they're getting undue attention," Miller says. "Their whole focus has been on survival. They think a nuclear war will kill hundreds of millions of people. But unless I'm out there trying to beat down the door of their underground shelter, I don't see them as threatening."