The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 23: Eschatology

Many religions have teachings about the “last things”—what happens after death, and, in some traditions, how history itself will end. This broader subject is called eschatology. What concerns me most here is apocalyptic belief, the idea that history is moving toward a dramatic divine climax. In some communities there is an almost excited anticipation of the world’s ending, paired with the idea of a glorious ascent of the worthy up to heaven—what many Christians call “The Rapture.” Those who hold this view usually assume, of course, that they will be among the worthy.

In one form of apocalyptic belief, the world is expected to deteriorate before it can be redeemed. This can foster a passive resignation about the world’s problems: these are the “end times,” so why bother? Why repair a house already slated for demolition?

Another form is more hopeful: a reforming attitude that reads history as something to be improved, even perfected, in preparation for what is to come. This has fuelled movements of real moral energy—the abolitionists and social reformers of the nineteenth century, the Social Gospel, the liberation theologies, the cadences of the American civil-rights movement with its confidence that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.

Eschatology, in short, is not one thing. It can foster withdrawal or it can foster engagement; my concern in this chapter is with the first.

A 2022 Pew survey found that 39% of U.S. adults said humanity is “living in the end times,” and that this belief tracked with lower concern about climate change: those who thought we were living in the end times were less likely than others to call climate change an extremely or very serious problem (51% versus 62%), and among those holding the more catastrophic, premillennial view—that the world will deteriorate until Jesus returns—the figure fell to 40%. While some of this effect is due to political leaning rather than religious belief, the political scientists David Barker and David Bearce found that belief in Christian end-times theology independently predicted weaker support for action on global warming, even after political partisanship was accounted for—an effect they attribute to a shortened “shadow of the future,” the sense that there is little point in bearing present costs for a long-term benefit, since they believe that the world won’t be around to enjoy such long-term benefits anyway.

At its rare and lurid extreme, apocalyptic conviction can turn lethal. Heaven’s Gate, a fringe new religious movement that fused Christianity with UFO mythology, ended in the mass suicide of 39 of its members near San Diego in March 1997, timed to the passage of the Hale-Bopp comet, which they took for the sign of a spacecraft come to carry them to the “Next Level.” Such episodes are mercifully rare, and it would be unfair to let a doomsday cult stand in for the millions of ordinary believers who hold some version of end-times expectation and lead quiet, decent, engaged lives. The graver harm is not the spectacular one but the quiet one: letting the world itself deteriorate—a destabilizing climate, a fraying environment—and handing the damage to the generations that follow. It is like leaving your campsite fouled and your fire smouldering on the reasoning that the whole forest will soon burn down anyway—forgetting that the blaze may never come, and that the next people to pitch their tents are left to live in the mess you made.

Even if the world were ending, there would be something profoundly dishonourable in greeting it with passive resignation—or worse, with a quiet flicker of comfort—rather than with help. It would be like watching a building burn and making no attempt to reach the people trapped inside, while smiling inwardly at the thought that heaven is getting closer. The most beautiful actions we are capable of are surely those directed at improving a situation precisely when it looks bleakest, even hopeless. And here I return to a thread from the previous chapter. A truly admirable person does not do good in order to get into heaven; they do good because it’s the right thing to do—for the intrinsic worth of the act and the welfare of others, not for the prize you might earn after death. That was Rabia’s insight, set against the whole economy of reward and punishment, and it applies with equal force to the end of a single life and to the imagined end of the world. To labour for a world one will not live to see, or that one believes will not last, is not futility. It may be the purest form the moral impulse can take.

 

References

Barker, D. C., & Bearce, D. H. (2013). End-times theology, the shadow of the future, and public resistance to addressing global climate change. Political Research Quarterly, 66(2), 267–279. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912912442243

— A multivariate analysis finding that Americans who hold Christian end-times beliefs are less supportive of governmental action on climate change, even after controlling for party, ideology, and other factors. The authors attribute the effect to a shortened “shadow of the future”—a reluctance to bear present costs for benefits one does not expect to see realised.

 

Cohn, N. (1970). The pursuit of the millennium: Revolutionary millenarians and mystical anarchists of the Middle Ages (Rev. ed.). Oxford University Press.

— The classic history of medieval apocalyptic movements, which shows that the expectation of an imminent end has more often produced upheaval and violence than passive withdrawal. A reminder that eschatological fervour is volatile and that its social effects depend heavily on the form the belief takes.

 

Pew Research Center. (2022). How religion intersects with Americans’ views on the environment. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/17/how-religion-intersects-with-americans-views-on-the-environment/

— The source of the survey figures cited here, including that 39% of U.S. adults believe humanity is living in the end times and that this belief is associated with modestly lower concern about climate change. The report is careful to note that the association is heavily entangled with political partisanship.

 

Zeller, B. E. (2014). Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO religion. New York University Press.

— The standard scholarly account of the Heaven’s Gate movement, its synthesis of Christian millenarianism and ufology, and the 1997 mass suicide of its 39 members. Zeller situates the group within the wider landscape of American new religious movements rather than treating it as a mere aberration.

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