Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Donald E. Morse: The End of the World in American History and Fantasy: The Trumpet of the Last Judgement

At the end of the twentieth century, as at the end of the nineteenth, a significant number of Americans still expected a new Age to dawn and many believed the New Age would coincide with the new century and the new millennium. The current Age of Agony would then be over "by God's victorious intervention on behalf of His saints, when He comes, or sends His Representative to come, to set things right" (Burkitt 7). The early "Christians expected the visible return of their lord to judge the nations: they received instead the Roman Empire itself' (Burkitt 13).

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6 Other, more current, expectations such as the "Rapture" depicted in LaHayne and Jenkins have also been thwarted. Those who, at the end of the nineteenth century, expected Apocalypse to coincide with the arrival of the new century, received instead World War I and the twentieth century of wars. What do the current crop of millenarians, estimated at over ten million Americans, expect? Popular culture, popular religion, popular cults, and the morning newspaper all give answers: besides The Rapture, there is also Childhood's End, The Age of Aquarius, Jonesville, Waco, and/or children slaughtering other children with automatic weapons on school playgrounds. Separating fantasy from reality often proves difficult. Looking back to the nineteenth century Millerite movement from a twenty-first century vantage point, for instance, the outstanding characteristic appears to be the participants' religious commitment, rather than their foolishness. Although speaking of a vastly different experience, Thoreau describes exactly the Millerites: Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. (

Waiden 118) In time, many Millerites found themselves, realized they were still in the world of reality and not of the fantastic and so reached an accommodation with what had failed to occur. The physical non-event now known as the Great Disappointment was slowly, painfully 1

6 So certain were many of the early Christians of Christ's eminent return that they, like Paul, never bothered to date their letters. 231