Much of what Strozier wrote in this week’s set of essays seemed to respond to my concern about how easily the “saved” characters in Glorious Appearing accept the punishment of the surrounding sinners. It is no less appalling to me that they could simply sit and watch, and even enjoy, the mass murder of most of the remaining population by Jesus – especially considering the gruesome manner in which the deaths were carried out. However, it is possible for me to understand (intellectually, if not emotionally) how they can perceive such violence as “ethically justifiable” (66). Agency also came up in his explanation, accounting for how a character who seems gentle and loving can witness such events without horror. As Strozier says, “It is easy and actually quite common for otherwise gentle and believing fundamentalists to revel in this world of violent and radical revenge against nonbelievers” because it is God who is wrathful, and carries out judgment, and not themselves (the “splitting of self” Strozier described reminded me of Voldemort, and I wonder if Ariana made the same connection) (116). Yet, there is still a difference between ethically justifiable and enjoyable, and it is this connection, and the lack of any accompanying sadness or empathy, that I still struggle with (117).
While I at first read Strozier’s statement that “Revelation is a story of biblical genocide, with God acting…as a Divine terrorist” as hyperbole, the scenes of mass murder in the second half of Glorious Appearing made me take this more seriously (68). However, I don’t know if I can agree with Strozier’s statements that “the fundamentalist world embraces evil” and “Revelation is a dangerous and ugly book” – especially when he starts the page with “There is much that is hopeful in the Book of Revelation” (117, 119). Certainly his assertion that fundamentalists are part of the “ruling class” can be seen in the claim of political strength made in Jesus Camp, evidenced by contemporary events. However, I think this oversimplifies the amount of power the fundamentalist movement has, especially at the individual level. When Strozier ended the chapter with the statement “We need to read [the Book of Revelation] closely to contain its violence on the page. It must break out,” I though of the radio show host. They both come across as every bit as dramatically urgent and dualistic as the fundamentalist movement itself, at least from what was shown in the film and this particular quotation (119). Through this statement Strozier is feeding an alternate paranoia, that of those who fear a violent fundamentalist takeover.
While Strozier’s discussion of violence helped me to understand the fundamentalist mindset, his discussion of time left me even more confused.* Endism seems inherently contradictory: if “they are defined…only by their relation to an imagined future,” how can they “escape history by destroying time” (113)? By imagining a future, “placing themselves in some future narrative,” they are inherently accepting “the certainty of time unfolding” – at least to a point (68, 112). The way that the Book of Revelation is handled in Glorious Appearing makes me think that endists wouldn’t know what to do with themselves once they reached this point. Many of the characters spend much of the novel looking forward to the future – seeing lost loved ones, having children, recounting stories of the Rapture and Armageddon. While they have one thousand years to do this, after that, time ends. As Raymond says, “We’ve only got a thousand years” (emphasis added) (394). The novel itself does not end with the end of time, but ends well in advance of it – there are still months until Christ’s thousand-year reign begins, and after that, Satan must be loosed for a while. The book avoids telling the story until the true end because without a future, endists have no way to define themselves. Until the very end of the novel, the characters continue to ask “What’s next?” While killing time (in the literal, not idiomatic sense) may be an expression of anxiety about personal death, the idea of a “second death” opens the door to further “deaths,” further levels. Endists must always have an end to anticipate, something to hope for, like the rest of us. The only difference is what they are hoping for would make their hope obsolete. How do they handle this contradiction?
*I was especially confused by the last paragraph on page 112 – I don’t think I understand the meaning of the work kairotic, at least as Strozier is using it. Perhaps someone can explain?
When reading Strozier’s essays and the end of Glorious Appearing, I also found the theory of time very interesting and needed some time to mull it over. I interpret that kairotic version of time to represent the quality and value of time, as opposed to a unit of quantitative measurement. The kairotic analysis suggests that trauma is only truly experienced “if one grasps the way it inserts itself as a kairotic time in the self”. This does relate to the trauma presented in the Book of Revelation, which explains that nonbelievers are the targets of this self inflicted trauma; as a result their lack of faith and Christian practice, leads to their ultimate death and torture in Hell. I find it to be quite contradictory that according to Strozier, fundamentalists are trying to recreate time in the New World, but are actually approaching the end of time.This does seem to be a difficult concept to grasp, but we can see that the Apocalyptic fundamentalists live with the notion of kairotic time, mainly because how else can time function when you know it is running out? It becomes merely a marker of the past and present, by which to judge the impending future (or doom) of all. In that respect, time is by definition kairotic, because is is “disjointed” and “unpredictable”; what may be the end of time for some is the beginning of eternity for the other chosen ones.
It’s interesting that you recognized Strozier’s own use of creating a sense of paranoia in order to support his side of the argument. Though I don’t know if this was his intent in writing these essays, paranoia/fear of radical fundamentalist behavior is clearly generated through reading Strozier’s work.
In response to your question about dealing with the contradiction that arises in terms of hope ultimately ending hope, I don’t think that the Fundamentalist necessarily sees things this way. From what we’ve read about the Fundamentalist perspective their hope for the end an for all of the “levels” of death that follow, makes their own need for hope obsolete. As Strozier discusses, Fundamentalists live in a sense of time that overlaps itself many times over; so while it may be challenging to understand on an intellectual level how one rationalizes what appears to be a major and off-putting contradiction, if we look at this from a Fundamentalist perspective (challenging as I know this is), it becomes easier to understand that their is no contradiction at all because hope is only necessary as the Fundamentalist’s reaffirmation of their own faith in the end times. Once the end arrives, hope may be destroyed, but it is no longer necessary.
Also, as a note on kairotic time, I discussed with you before, but the way that I understand “kairos” comes from my personal experience of a retreat hosted by my Catholic high school called Kairos. On the retreat we were not allowed to use cell phones and there were no clocks around for the three days we were away. It was explained to us that we were on “God’s time,” meaning our conventional sense of time wouldn’t serve us in achieving any spiritual gains. Fully connecting with God means an abandonment of our personal sense of time because God doesn’t work the same way we do.
Thanks for your explanations of kairotic time. While I can certainly understand the idea of time as a qualitative, rather than quantitative method (which is why “God’s time” is different from our time), for me, it doesn’t explain their desire to “kill” time. I like your explanation Whitney, that this is not necessary “rational” given how I think about time. While I am still struggling with putting myself in the fundamentalist mindset about time, I think I can understand that fundamentalists don’t need to deal with this contradiction because of their “sense of time that overlaps itself many times over,” and perhaps they don’t even see the contradiction.
In terms of Stroizer’s argument about trauma, I’m going to have to take a look at that passage again. But I wonder if the opposite is also be true – in many cases, our memories have a way of lessening trauma and pain in the long-term.
I really enjoyed reading your perspective on the Fundamentalist concept of time because it is something that I was drawn to as well. I think you hit the contradiction spot on with your statement, “The way that the Book of Revelation is handled in Glorious Appearing makes me think that endists wouldn’t know what to do with themselves once they reached this point.” But the way I interpreted it was that endists are really only endists until the end that they are anticipating arrives. After that point, they ideally become members of the heavenly utopian society that they so fervently dream of and wish for. Similarly to what Whitney said in her comment above, endism may be just a present stage of Fundamentalism that validates their faith in the end of the world. I am also intrigued by your connection to the rebirth and second death. This idea presents the opportunity for them to start over in an imagined place and escaping death, just to anticipate it once again. And here is where the endists “escape history by destroying time.” Strozier explains that Fundamentalists free themselves “from an obligation to the actual past and present, that is, the world as we know it,” which allows for the fact that they “do not experience Israel as a real place” (113). Rather, these places only exist to them as they are described in the Bible (the “mystical past”), which they see as their “idealized future.” This weird, overlapping sense of time is the “kairotic” time that Strozier referred to, and results from the destruction of the chronological sense of time. Kairotic time reminds me of a quote from the show “Doctor Who” in which he describes non-linear time as “a big ball of wibbly wobbly, time-y wimey stuff.”