Messianism is an immense living force in the world today. Almost everywhere… there are messianic movements in the process of vigorous growth, continuing disintegration, or frequent renaissances of older structures. Though some are unquestionably religious, others are nontheistic systems of belief replacing theistic or supernatural doctrinal cores with some nontheistic, but still powerfully religious (or religion-like), doctrinal cores.
Vatro Murvar, a scholar working in the field Sociology of Religion, wrote that in 1972. It was part of a paper published by the American Behavioral Scientist (see full reference at the end). Murvar’s insights were relevant in 1972, and they are even more so today.
My purpose here is to make the case that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is exactly such a messianic movement, shot through with all the characteristics of such movements, and to describe the empirical tools developed by sociologists for identifying messianism no matter what particular expression it takes. MAGA is a church, without the theistic or supernatural core. It has a remarkable, and unexpected, affinity with (mostly-white) conservative-evangelical christianism – unexpected because christianism does have a theistic doctrinal core and MAGA does not. The affinity exists because both movements share the characteristics common to all messianic movements. And unfortunately, it is likely we will be seeing more, and more extreme, messianic movements as a result of the underlying social, political, and economic conditions that give rise to messianism.
“It seems apparent,” wrote Murvar, “that the messianic movements of various kinds are patterned responses to the need for social change.” The Church of MAGA is only one of a great many messianic movements in the process of vigorous growth, and that messianism makes these movements a far larger, and more dangerous, problem than many of us have imagined.
The need for global social, political, and economic change is arguably more urgent today than it was in 1972. Greater urgency tends to produce more, and more extreme, messianic movements. The particular “patterned responses” (or structures and functions) of messianic movements make them extremely resistant, if not immune, to reason or even to our regular social, cultural, and political processes. An understanding of the characteristics, the structures and functions, and the dynamics, of messianic movements will, I hope, make clear the magnitude of what we’re actually up against. Instead of railing against the doctrinal content of messianic movements, we can more effectively address the processes and dynamics of these movements, and more importantly, the conditions in which they arise and flourish.
Murvar and others used empirical data from the study of historical religious and revolutionary movements. All of the movements emerged out of conditions of desperate need for social change. The researchers identified seven clear characteristics common to all of the movements, regardless of their specific, and often radically different, ideological cores. The following list is summarized/partially quoted from Murvar’s essay.
- They claim to have the total truth, the one true faith, to answer all questions of meaning, purpose, and destiny of life. The one true faith “is binding on all human beings everywhere.”
- They are dogmatic, exclusivist, and intolerant, resulting in demands for doctrinal purity and consequent purges of the unorthodox and the dissenters.
- They are elitist, resulting in a ruling elite as well as a cult of leadership.
- They are totalistic – it’s all or nothing, the one true faith with its sacred body of beliefs must be accepted in its entirety, and all at once. Extreme means are justified.
- They demand an ascetic and absolute obedience to authority. Suffering is a sign of commitment, and martyrdom – sacrificing one’s own life in the holy war – is the highest form of loyalty.
- There is guilt and expiation, guilt and retribution, for the collective sins of those who came before. The evil is pervasive, and those responsible will be held accountable. Only extreme sacrifice will put things right again (or, make America great again).
- They have an apocalyptic vision. These are the end times, it’s now or never.
These characteristics, which can also be called religious/messianic patterned responses, or even messianic structures and functions (i.e., processes), are far more important than the doctrinal cores of these movements (i.e. content), which can and will inevitably be replaced by a different ideological cores as soon as the previous one self-destructs. For example, we might temporarily erode or even suppress the MAGA core ideology, but the messianism, most likely in increasingly more extreme forms, will endure as long as we’re in the global mess that we’re in. Messianism is a response to the urgency of need for social, political, and economic change.
Why is this distinction between process and content important? Why is this view of messianism as a response to a need for change significant?
Put bluntly, the system we created, in which we have been living, solved a lot of problems but created significant new ones, and those new problems have created the very conditions for messianic movements, like the Church of MAGA, to become immense living forces in the world today. The problems of postmodernism, late-stage capitalism, corporate greed, catastrophic climate change, enormous income inequality, creeping authoritarianism, and technology run amok (to name a few) are many and huge, we know what they are. These problems are the drivers of the messianic movements, pure and simple.
We (collectively, as a species) did this, and we will have to figure out a way to un-do it, move past it to something better, and going back to some golden age is not an option because there is no such thing. I’m not assigning blame. I am highlighting Peter Senge’s insight (in The Fifth Discipline): the system is working perfectly, it is producing the results it was designed to produce. If we want different results, we will need to redesign the system, or at least substantial parts of it. Redesign is at minimum a rational and incremental process – we don’t know what interventions are making a difference if we change too many things all at once. Messianism is the attempt to trash the entire system and replace it completely, all at once, with its own messianic ideology.
In my view, we will get nowhere fighting these movements head on if we do not change the underlying social, political, and economic conditions giving rise to them. Because they are messianic movements, even if we could put an end to a particular expression (like the Church of MAGA), if we do not change the underlying conditions that produced the messianism in the first place, more will inevitably arise. Messianism is patterned response to the need for social, political, and economic change. If the need persists, messianism will persist, and the more urgent the need for change, the more extreme the forms of messianism will be. Conversely, the rise of messianism is a clear, and now empirical, indication that there is an urgent need for social, political, and economic change, and the more extreme the messianism, the more urgent the need for change.
We have to redesign the system to address the conditions that need to be addressed. The system cannot be redesigned by messianic movements because, by definition, they are revolutionary, totalistic, exclusive, elite, all-or-nothing, intolerant, and engaged in a cosmic fight to death between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In these days of nuclear weapons, that approach would move us back to oblivion.
The pressing question here is hermeneutical: so what? How might this understanding of messianism and its causes help to move everything forward? Here I am venturing some opinions.
1. We can identify messianism by the empirical tools listed above. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
In other words, it does not matter if the doctrinal core is the Church of MAGA, or the Church of the Most Progressive Movement Imaginable, if it matches the characteristics of messianism it is messianism, and it is going to get the same results that messianism produces regardless of the doctrinal core: more holy war.
2. As a result of #1 above, we can stop arguing with the doctrinal cores of these messianic movements, and concentrate our best creative energies on addressing the underlying conditions that have given rise to them. This is where support of community programs, local ethical businesses, employee-owned and cooperative companies, regenerative living and Permaculture (Gardening Toad consistently posts many useful links), great suggestions for political action (the Good News Roundups), and the many Daily Kos support an advocacy groups immediately come to mind.
3. Dig deeper into everything we read and hear. Look for the a priori assumptions and go at them hammer and tongs to see if they hold up. That’s how empirical science works: not by proving that anything is true (especially not the whole truth to address all questions of life). Empirical science begins with a plausible but tentative hypothesis to explain something, and then works to prove that it is in error, and where the errors are. If there is anything left in that crucible it is put into that rare category of “provisionally true.” Messianism (theistic and non-theistic religious and revolutionary movements) begins with a set of sacred doctrines, and then goes at reality with hammer and tongs to conform it to the pre-ordained ideology.
4. The grand cure is, of course, education. Go for education over indoctrination every time. Education tips every one of the characteristics of messianism on its head:
Education does not claim to have the total truth to answer all questions of meaning, purpose, and destiny of life. It teaches, above all through all the specific course content, a way of looking, avenues of inquiry, and the skills of critical thinking.
Education is not dogmatic, exclusivist, and intolerant. Rather, it encourages critical thinking, and openness to consideration of different perspectives.
Education is not elitist, it reaches out to all persons, and lifts them out of ignorance. That’s what the Latin root of “education” means: to “lead out.” Education moves our embrace from “me” to “us” to “all of us” to “care for the whole created order.”
Education is not totalistic, it does not insist on definitive and sacred beliefs that must be accepted in their entirety. It draws persons deeper into the wonder and complexity of real life, into new ways of thinking, of looking at the world. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” said Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Education does not demand asceticism and martyrdom.
Education does not demand extreme sacrifice because it is not engaged in a holy war, it only strives to shine a light into the shadows of ignorance, and it is not afraid to shine that light.
Education has an expansive and open-ended vision. Learning is lifelong, it’s now and ever.
As Murvar concludes in his essay:
[This model] with its seven characteristics appears to be an urgently needed conceptual tool. If accepted and used by others, it could potentially make a meaningful and predictive scientific order out of the chaos of numerous messianic phenomena in diverse cultural contexts... The impact of messianism in relation to the ubiquitous social change could be better understood and perhaps become more precisely measured and analyzed.
I have attempted to use Vatro Murvar’s tool to deepen our understanding of the Church of MAGA as messianism, and as such, the particular, and significant, threats MAGA and its successors pose to USAmerica as we move inexorably into the future.
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Vatro Murvar, “Nontheistic Systems of Beliefs: an urgently needed conceptual tool” in American Behavioral Scientist, 1972
messianism:
1. Belief in a messiah.
2. Belief that a particular cause or movement is destined to triumph or save the world.
3. Zealous devotion to a leader, cause, or movement.
(from the American Heritage Dictionary)
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The above essay copyright 2024, Bodymindspiritworks LLC
It is the second essay in a series published here with the goal of deepening the discussion of current populist movements. The first essay is what I am, what I am not: the religious politics of self-deception (19 January 2024).