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Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium
Messianic Revolution Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium Author:David S. Katz, Richard H. Popkin Apocalyptic political movements--their attractions, their dangers. The idea for writing this book took shape on April 19, 1993, when at least seventy-four people lost their lives in the conflagration near Waco, Texas, and it became clear that the followers of David Koresh and the federal agents outside his compound inhabited two different conce... more »ptual worlds. Indeed, neither journalists nor law-enforcement experts nor the public seemed aware that there is a rich tradition of messianic, revolutionary politics behind groups like Koresh's, a history that stretches back unbroken to the Middle Ages. In this fascinating study, two historians explore and explain that tradition, showing how the beliefs of many fringe, distressed, disenfranchised, or purely mystical Christians have been transmitted across a millennium. Messianic Revolution offers a strong and lucid explanation of why and how this apocalyptic strain found especially fertile ground in the New World, and it throws new light on the many strands of biblical interpretation, both Jewish and Christian, that are woven into this complex, fascinating history.« less