In Pursuit of the Apocalypse
Christian apocalyptic literature and ecological predictions both anticipate the end of the world. Are they born of the same tradition, asks Jean-François Mouhot?
Does modern apocalyptic literature, announcing the imminent endtimes, fret about environmental problems? Are modern ecologists a reincarnation of the fanatics of the Apocalypse described by historian Norman Cohn in his classic work The Pursuit of the Millennium (1962), as some climate sceptics argue?
One might expect to find ecological themes in millenarian works. According to the Bible, as the end of times approaches, the waters will turn ‘bitter’, ocean-dwelling creatures will die and ‘on the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea’. The sun, the moon and the stars will be obscured and then the sun will heat up and burn mankind. It is not a stretch to interpret these passages as a presage of actual environmental problems: water pollution and air pollution that obscures the atmosphere (even photo pollution that impedes observation of the moon and stars), acidification of the oceans and the resultant destruction of coral reefs, global warming, rising sea levels. The passages emphasise human responsibility for environmental degradation and lay out the accompanying punishment: ‘The time has come … for destroying those who destroy the earth’ (Revelation 11:18). It comes as no surprise in such a context that the author of Revelation concludes the book with the prediction of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’. This puts some perspectives on recent declarations made by Republican Senator (and climate-sceptic) James Inhofe of Oklahoma.
However ecology is a rare subject in Christian apocalyptic literature after 1945; one of the best-selling American books of the 1970s (nearly 30 million copies sold), The Late, Great Planet Earth, concerns itself very little with environmental problems even if the author briefly mentions pollution and Paul Ehrlich’s pessimistic The Population Bomb. One could make the same claim about the series Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (16 volumes published between 1995 and 2007), a set of novels inspired by the book of Revelation that sold more than 65 million copies. In truth this is not at all surprising: conservative evangelical communities in the United States have long been suspicious of ecologists, whom they suspect to be Communist agents in disguise or converts of some wrongheaded eastern religion. This is why those who believe in the imminence of the Apocalypse so often find themselves among the opponents of ‘environmentalists’; James Watt, Secretary of the Interior for Ronald Reagan, made several controversial statements implying that the next coming of Jesus Christ would put an end to any worries about the fate of the planet. This attitude persists in certain evangelical communities today.