Apocalypse Now and Then

Students explore the meaning and lessons of the end times.

By Scott Huler

Jenny Knust stands in front of the dozenand-a-half students in her class in the Gray Building and asks each to pick one of the little cards she has prepared. That exercise sorts them into groups based on the seven churches of Asia, each of which received a letter at the instruction of Jesus, according to the biblical book of Revelation.

In their groups, the students discuss the topics of those letters—which basically tell the churches to hang on and keep the faith—and the us-versus-them mentality that suffuses the letters and the whole book of Revelation. Knust, professor of religious studies, points out the mysterious symbols throughout the book. Those symbols can be best interpreted, Knust says, by looking backward at the times the writer of the book has endured. “Which is funny,” she goes on, “because apocalyptic literature is really about the future.”

Welcome to Religion 361, “The End of the World: Apocalyptic Arguments From Antiquity to the Present Day,” a course looking at the past but very much focused on the present. The course was designed and planned, yes, during what may be the sixth great extinction, during the rapidly advancing climate crisis, and in year three of a tumultuous political era. But before, it’s worth mentioning, the coronavirus had made a name for itself. Apocalypse, that is, has only increased in our awareness since Knust got the idea for the course.

In fact, “that’s why I’m teaching the course,” she says. “Because I really don’t want to be it.” We may be going through an apocalypse or something that very much feels like one, but this is one Knust, along with her students, plans to understand, or at least put into context. “As opposed to one we’re going to just abandon to destruction and despair.” Does positing the end of the world make people more likely to act? Less likely to act?

The course looks at more than apocalyptic books of the Jewish and Christian bibles and the Quran—Revelation in the New Testament, for example, and Daniel in the Old. It embraces texts like Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring, about apocalyptic environmental degradation. It watches movies like Angels in America, about the AIDS crisis, and the searing Vietnam War story Apocalypse Now. It addresses end-times movements like the Shakers and Jonestown. And it engages with texts like The Future Birth of the Affective Fact, which discusses how the fear of what’s next can seem more important than whatever is actually happening. Which already seems like a great observation before you even read the beginning. That essay starts as follows: “ ‘The next pandemic,’ screams a 2005 headline in Quebec’s reputedly most sober newspaper, ‘does not exist yet.’ ”

Whoa: a little close to the present moment, but here we are.

In class the students write “My Weekly Apocalypse,” responses to the readings. The responses commonly include references to current events (a swastika painted on campus) and popular culture (regarding fear and violence, one student referred not just to the required reading but also to Yoda, a more contemporary mythological figure). The modern gaze never leaves their discussion. “Most of the time,” one student notes, “it’s pretty clear at the beginning of the movie who are going to be the one or two people who are going to live.”

Does positing the end of the world make people more likely to act?

Schuyler Nowicki, a junior majoring in religious studies, took the course because he’s always been interested in mythology, much of which includes apocalyptic stories. That gives him a perspective on our moment: “I see a pretty dark outlook on the future right now, but in some ways everyone from every society has always thought the world was ending,” he says. “But it hasn’t yet.”

That somewhat glass-possibly-half-full approach would cheer Knust. “I think apocalyptic arguments are terribly destructive,” she says. “I’m hoping to be convinced otherwise, but my gut feeling tells me they discourage people from acting.” She quotes one of her students, who said, “We spend way too much time on disaster preparedness and not enough on disaster aversion.”

Whether it’s an apocalyptic movie or a book of the Bible, the ending, the students agree, is that ultimately God—or at least the good guys—will win. But “the pleasure,” Knust says of apocalyptic literature, lies in “finding out how we get there.”