Category Archives: Aparna Gokhale

Culture Wars

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Kirsch notes that throughout the history of apocalyptic belief, the Book of Revelation has often been at the forefront of what he calls ‘culture wars.’ John, when he wrote the Book of Revelation, was himself embroiled in a cultural war against the Roman Empire as well as other Christians, who he believed were not properly devout. Later, the Book of Revelation was used by both reformers within the church to criticize the church bureaucracy and by the papacy to denounce and persecute its critics. Revelation was also used to justify actual wars, ranging from the Crusades to the Civil War to World War I and II. The culture war that energizes current apocalyptic belief is fought ‘between fundamentalism and the modern world’ (219), where Christian fundamentalists imagine themselves to be at odds with an increasingly godless world. For true believers today, everything from feminism to the Masons to the United Nations is seen as a tool of the Antichrist and a portent of the end of the world (220).

I believe that the Book of Revelation, and apocalyptic belief as a whole, is particularly appealing to those that believe that they are involved in a cultural war. For the talk show evangelists that rail against everything from gay marriage and abortion to Barack Obama and big government, the black and white morality of Revelation is a convenient way to demonize their enemies. For conservative Americans who believe that their way of life is increasingly threatened, the language of persecution that John employs makes the Book of Revelation an effective propaganda tool. And for all those that perceive themselves as the victims of a changing political and social order, the lurid revenge fantasies of Revelation assure them that they won’t have to suffer the affronts of the modern world for long.

The fear and anxiety about the changing world is not limited to religious zealots. Kirsch describes the proliferation of ‘godless apocalypses’ in recent years, where the end of the world is a product of human folly; those that believe in these apocalyptic scenarios must also seem themselves fighting a culture war against forces such as globalization and the spread of new technologies. While technology is regarded with great suspicion by the religiously devout (in one reinterpretation of the Book of Revelation, barcodes are depicted as the ‘mark of the beast’), it is also often depicted as the enemy in ‘godless apocalypses.’ In these scenarios, human beings struggle against the threat of nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, robots, and supercomputers. One of the key aspects of globalization is the transnational movement of information, goods, and people, but this same movement can also lead to a global pandemic, another deep-rooted fear in current apocalypse scenarios. Finally, a recent article in the New York Times Book Review entitled ‘The State of Zombie Literature – An Autopsy‘ explored the recent popularity of zombie fiction, proposing that is driven by a ‘general anxiety, particularly in the West, about the planet’s dwindling resources,’ leading to the disturbing conclusion that “these nonhuman creatures…might be serving as metaphors for actual people – undocumented immigrants…or the entire populations of developing nations.”

One of the questions that Kirsch raises in his book is why, after 2000 years of the world resolutely not ending, that apocalyptic belief continues to be so popular. I think it taps into fears that afflict both the religious and the general populace, and the imagery contained within the Book of Revelation, of war and chaos and a final battle followed by triumphant peace, has gained broad cultural approval.

The Question of Legitimacy

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Kirsch credits the Book of Revelation as one of the primary texts that began the apocalyptic tradition in Western society. Even today, Christian fundamentalists maintain that Revelation is a truthful account of the events that will come to pass at the end of the world. For a text that has such a far-reaching effect on Western culture, I found it interesting that there is a surprising amount of doubt surrounding its legitimacy. As Kirsch mentions, when Revelation was first transcribed, it was “regarded with alarm and suspicion by some of the more cautious church authorities,” who did not want to acknowledge the work of an ordinary man that claimed to hear the voice of God. Furthermore, while it is traditionally maintained that John the Apostle wrote the Book of Revelation, some scholars point to evidence within the text and in historical records that proves the author was an entirely different John. I think the difference lies in the meaning of the word “legitimate” for a fundamentalist as opposed to someone like Kirsch.

Within the Book of Revelation, John takes great care to establish himself unquestionably as the true prophet of God. In Rev. 13, he introduces the character of the beast, a false prophet that is conjured up by Stan in order to deceive mankind. Men, enthralled by the miracles that the beast performs, create and worship an image of the beast, highlighting the power of images to deceive and lead men astray from the word of God. In contrast to the false prophet, there is John, who has heard the true “voice” of God. As much as his vision consists of him seeing the end of the world, much of the narrative also focuses on what he has “heard” from the voice of God. Therefore, throughout the text, he admonishes true believes to listen through the refrain of “he that hath an ear, let him hear” (and if in not those exact words, then with a similar sentiment). In conclusion, this is a rather convoluted way of saying that John establishes the primacy of speech as opposed to images as the medium of heavenly communication. This is particularly interesting when considering that originally Revelation was most probably a sermon and those that believed it were known as “hearers.”

If the sermon (or the text) and its communication are most important, then the identity of the individual author seems unnecessary to its interpretation. If the text is seen as the product of a higher being, where the author is merely the vehicle for divine inspiration, then it doesn’t really matter which John wrote the Book of Revelation, as long as the book was written. The importance of the identity of the author to the interpretation of the text seems to me to be the product of a more modern type of literary criticism. For Kirsch, who to some extent treats the Book of Revelation as a historical and literary text, it is important to evaluate the text in light of the author’s identity, as well as the biographical details that might have influenced its creation as well as its propagation. For a true believe, on the other hand, I think it would be heretical to even assume that the text holds the biases of a human author, as opposed to the prophetic warnings of a heavenly voice. As long as people believe that the author of the text is a true prophet, then there is no need to question its legitimacy.

As a quick aside, I don’t have a background in the Judeo-Christian tradition so I have to wonder what makes the Book of Revelation different from other apocryphal writing with questionable authenticity, which were excluded from the New Testament.