Analyses radical popular religious movements that envisage an apocalyptic end to the world and its transformation into a perfect new age or a revised golden age. Attempts to explain the causation of such movements in widely diverse human societies. The propensity of such millenarian movements to oscillate between extremes of 'rigorist' puritanism and anti-nomian permissiveness is also investigated. Finally, theories explaining millenarian phenomena and the relationship between millenarian and orthodox religion are reviewed.

Note: This course may be counted towards a major sequence in the School of History and Philosophy of Science.