COMMENT:A detailed historical and psychological account of the rhetoric employed in two prophetic religious movements, Millerism of the 1840s (out of which sprang Seventh Day Adventism) and the Apocalypticism of Hal Lindsay and the New Christian Right of the 1980s. The book presents an analysis of the common rhetoric used in apocalyptic appeals, focusing on themes of time, evil, and authority, and the dramatic and argumentative forms used in prophetic discourse. The hunger for certainty, the need to fix dates so as to prove the prophecy, and the intellectual contortions devised to explain away the errors of scriptural chrono-calculus, are displayed with scholarly restraint. O'Leary argues that the appeal of such rhetoric is perennial, and not just amongst uneducated or rural classes. Closing with a chapter on "Waco and Beyond," the study provides a valuable frame for understanding the recurrent allure of apocalypticism as more than a niche market in the commerce of the transcendent.
DATE:19990916
KEYWORDS:prophecy psychology religion
MISC:314p.
PUBLISHER:Oxford University Press
TITLE:Arguing The Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric
