Featuring over 200 entries, numerous illustrations and valuable extracts of primary source material, this timely new work covers millennial movements throughout the world. The entries are written by some of the leading specialists in the field, and cover such issues as: * 666 * age of Mary * Ancient World * Antichrist * Apocalypse * Baha'i Faith * charismatic leadership * Chernobyl * Church Triumphant * Communism * Conversion * Demagogues * Demonization * Ecstasy * End of the World * Environmentalism * Fatalism * Fundamentalism * Ghost Dance * Heaven's Gate * Holocaust * Islam * Japan * Jehovah's Witnesses * Judaism * Literature * Media * Mormonism * Mysticism * Nazism * New Age * New World Order * Nuclear * Papal Reform * Peace of God * Persecution * Plague and Pestilence * Prophecy * Rastafarianism * * religious conversion * Sexuality * Stress * Totalitarianism * Ufo-ology * Violence * Witch Hunts * Women * Zionism * Zoroastrianism Special features: * Entries on many new or under-reported religious groups * Uses primary source material including newspaper accounts, drawings, maps, and letters Associate editors Michael Barkun, Syracuse University, USA Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates Michael Christensen, Drew University, USA Eugene Gallagher, Conneticut University, USA Catherine Wessinger, Loyola University, USA Robert Whalen, Chatham Township, USA
Richard Landes is a professor of medieval history at BU. His work focuses on the role of religion in shaping and transforming the relationships between elites and commoners in various cultures, in particular the impact of "demotic religiosity" which prizes equality before the law, dignity of manual labor, and access to sacred texts and divinity for all believers.
In addition to Heaven on Earth, he has co-edited a volume on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with Steven Katz: The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred Year Retrospective on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for which he wrote three chapters.
From 1996-2003, he directed the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.
Following the publication of Heaven on Earth, he is currently completing the book he set aside in order to write Heaven on Earth, that is, a study of the role of millennialism in the shaping of the first thousand years of Christian history: While God Tarried: Disappointed Millennialism from Jesus to the Peace of God, 33-1033. This year he is a visiting fellow at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany.
He has written and lectured widely on millennialism, especially in the medieval period, and more recently on the role of communications technology - from the invention of writing to modern media - in shaping public awareness and discussion, and, in some cases, in establishing and maintaining civil society. His work on the apocalyptic currents that built up during the approach to 2000 has led him to focus on Global Jihad as a) an apocalyptic millennial movement; and b) a new religious movement whose relationship to the internet may parallel that of Protestantism to printing.
In 2005 he launched a media-oversight project called The Second Draft in which he proposes to look at what the news media calls their "first draft of history." Since January 2005 he has been blogging at The Augean Stables, a name chosen to describe the current condition of the Mainstream Media in the West. When he has completed his book on medieval history he plans to write a Medievalist's Guide to the 21st Century.
