millennialism

“Let Your Lamps Be Ready”: Individual Destiny and Collective Identity in Eschatological Perspective (the Case of the Moscow Spiritist Circle)

The aim of this study is to highlight the links between eschatological ideas and social/ethical beliefs of the Moscow spiritist circle who viewed their fellowship as a religious eschatological community. Eschatological doctrine of the group could be characterized both as “catastrophic” and “progressive” millennialism. Eschatological social project suggested the elimination of the border between the earthly and heavenly realms and a shift towards egalitarian social model through a total renewal of the present world.

Reigning with Christ for a Thousand Years: Two Prophets of Russian Millennialism

The article explores the crossroads of two surviving groups of “old Russian sectarianism” — Molokan Jumpers and JehovistsIl’intsy — for whom the anticipation of the millennial kingdom on earth was a central doctrinal tenet. Researchers in the past, as well as modern scholars of religion, usually have not paid attention to the connection between the two movements, which was at one time quite substantial both in the doctrinal and the practical sense.