From the Broom-Cupboard of Sacred Narratives

From the Sketches in Messianism Series

Messianism is so many things; but among them all, messianism is a religious story. It wanders through religious tradition. Lots of religious traditions, in fact. It also wanders beyond categories of religion. This feels fitting in a time when religion is breaching itself and appearing outside its own walls in strange and unnamed forms. But in any case, religion is a good place to begin.

The Greek pantheon of Olympus, with its cast of imperfectly divine characters, paints a picture: life is a messy drama of different characters and vying interests, and so we will need the virtues of savvy, fortitude, bravery, wisdom and restraint and such, to prevail.

The territorial gods to whom sacrifices were made in hope of a good harvest paint another picture: that there is an order to things and that honour and tribute must be paid to wherever the power lies if one is to gain favour.

The imperial cult of Rome paints another picture: it showed that the gods invest themselves into the lives of political rulers, and so civil obedience is the condition of divine peace and prosperity.

In these sorts of ways, which are of course open to diverse interpretations, religious narratives tell us things about life and how to live it.

The messianic idea paints another picture still: it says that things are not as they long to be. The world experiences itself as a sort of imbalanced equation awaiting The Day when it will finally arrive at its wholeness and arightedness, even by some divine intervention.

There is a restlessness intrinsic to messianism that I have my own complicated relationship with. I am troubled by it, sometimes consoled and often energised. I like it. There is radical political energy humming through it, as Walter Benjamin and others saw so well.

I am also curious about its clunky relationship with the Christianities of Western Modernity.

Christianity would appear to be a messianic religion, since it hangs on a notable messiah figure. And yet, the Christianities I have known have tended to be centred on another story: that by religious faith a person can be assured of going to heaven when they die.

This is quite different to the messianic idea. One concerns the individual and the other, the whole community of all relations. One is commonly associated with an immaterial afterlife — and the other is fixed on the material and embodied life of the world we live in. One is private and personal and the other is public and political. For one, the earth has at times been considered disposable, irrelevant, a pile of ashes; for the other the earth and its life is the subject of redemption.

The prevailing Christianities of Modernity left messianism collecting dust in some broom-cupboard. They’re not the only ones who've stowed it away. It’s too dangerous to handle, if too sacred to discard altogether. On the other hand, messianism has a way of passing through walls. It appears in all kinds of garb, in unexpected spheres: religious, folkloric, political etc…

Are the two stories irreconcilable? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on many things. I also don’t assume that one is bad and the other is good. History tells me that both can lead to disaster. Messianism isn't an answer in itself but a frame within which different questions emerge. I cannot account for the questioners. In any case, the difference between these two religious narratives interests me. To which varying uses have they been put, and by whom? In which guises have they appeared on their respective journeys toward the back door of Modernity. In what manner do they now appear amid today's young ruins? To what do they beckon?