Abstract
Turn on the news, read the opinion pages, and discuss world events with your friends: the end of the world is nigh. The UK has voted to leave the EU, Donald Trump has become president of the USA, the Syrian refugee crisis worsens, and climate change remains inadequately addressed by world powers.
To my ears, the echoes of Biblical apocalyptic language and ideas in discourse surrounding current events are inescapable (google ‘Trump’ and ‘end of the world’—the language can be found on all sides of politics). Apocalyptic language is not only found amongst the American right, well known to be heavily influenced by the language of the Bible, but within a secular left; and in more secular English-speaking countries such as Australia and I suspect elsewhere.
Discourse about a ‘new world order’, ‘end of an era’, or more overtly ‘the end of times’ all draw upon a theological concept of eschatology and biblical imagery of signs of the end times. And yet, at least from my own antipodean perspective, Biblical literacy is at an all-time low and the Bible is often considered an irrelevant relic from culture past.
In these contexts, talk of the end times is not a conscious application of Biblical prophecy—this Biblical concept is used because it is the language available to us to make sense of the world, to give current events a narrative shape. Our communities are drawing on language that originates from a text embedded in our cultural memories. The Bible may shape public policy and discourse less and less, it may not feature in public education, but, even still, it remains in the fabric of the narrative structures that we use to view the world, at least in the communities and cultures that I am familiar with. Its ideas still influence how many of us make sense of events and place them in a framework of meaning.
If our wider communities and cultures are using language originating from theology and the Bible to make sense of current events, perhaps these disciplines can also help our communities to navigate and respond well in these times. Theology and Biblical studies have relevance beyond the confines of our faith communities or narrow academic fields because our wider communities so often draw on its concepts, albeit unconsciously in an increasingly secular age in many parts of the world. The reality of our present day is that the Bible has lost its authority for most people, but I believe we can argue effectively for its enduring relevance in the public sphere.
Most importantly, we can offer a reading of the Bible that retains its nuanced voices, and that goes beyond the distorted or flattened version we find in our cultural memories. Within an end times narrative, we can restore to proper place the need to listen to prophetic voices for change; the possibility for hope; and the heightened responsibility for the vulnerable in the midst of impending disaster.