"A New Heaven and a New Earth": Considering Primitive Messianisms

Author(s): R. J. Zwi Werblowsky

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Summer, 1965), pp. 164-172
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1061808
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 _ _ ___ __
R. J. Zwi Werblowsky A NEW HEA VEN
AND A NEW EARTH:
CONSIDERING PRIMI-
TIVE MESSIANISMS

Dr. Sierksma has written a brilliant, exasperating, and at times

infuriating book1 on "messianic and eschatological movements and
ideas among primitive peoples" (thus the subtitle). The book is exas-
perating because, in this reviewer's opinion, it is easily one of the best,
and certainly the most exciting, study of a subject that has of recent
years inspired an increasing flood of literature. The days are past when
students of the subject were satisfied with detailed studies of individual
movements or circumscribed areas. At present the great synoptic and
all-embracing surveys of eschatological revivals are upon us. Unlike,
for example, Balandier or Worsley, whose illuminating discussions and
important insights were based on the close analysis of specific areas
(and in the case of Balandier on original field work as well), many recent
writers seem to feel that the time is now ripe for the great synoptic
survey of the whole field. Attempts range from Guariglia's meritorious
but inadequate "catalogue" of Heilserwartungsbewegungen (1959) to
Lanternari's overambitious and uneven Movimenti religiosi di liberta e
di salvezza dei popoli oppressi (1960). Miihlmann's great synthesis,
Chiliasmus und Nativismus: Studien zur Psychologie, Soziologie und
historischen Kasuistik der Umsturzbewegungen (1961), in spite of its
overelaborate, top-heavy, and pedestrian learning, ultimately fails to
give an anthropologically and sociologically satisfactory picture of the
1 Een nieuwe hemel en een nieuwe aarde ("A New Heaven and a New Earth")
(The Hague: Mouton, 1961), pp. 312.
164
dynamics involved. Margull's Aufbruch zur Zukunft (1962) has shown
that primitive messianisms too, like anything else in this world, can
be successfully interpreted (at least in the eyes of the interpreter) in
terms of modern German Protestant theology.
Dr. Sierksma, of the University of Leiden, has deftly evaded a good
many of the dangers besetting the ordinary, unfortunate, academic
author, by choosing to write a "popular book" for the "interested
layman." Whether the reasons alleged for this choice (p. 9) are valid
or not, need not concern us here. In any event they enabled Sierksma
to ride his scholarship as well as his considerable talents as a writer and
essayist on a loose rein, throwing out illuminating and provocative
statements without bothering to elaborate them in detail, and raising
exciting problems without encumbering his work with those two hall-
marks of pukka modern scholarship: a clumsy style and copious foot-
notes. Unfortunately, Sierksma clearly overestimates the erudition and
the memory of his colleagues when he suggests that the "expert
reader," after consulting the bibliography at the end of the volume, will
easily recognize which opinions are quoted from others and which are
the author's own. One reader at least would definitely have preferred
more specific guidance from Sierksma to the annoying necessity of
having to go to his card index for every detail that he wanted to follow
up. The experiment by a "well known researcher" showing that cats
with artificially induced neurosis took to alcohol, but refused strong
drink after being "de-neuroticized" is surely interesting enough to
deserve precise references. While this reviewer could only think of
Masserman's neurotic cats, Sierksma may have had in mind other
experimental work, and the reader is surely entitled to know about it.
The example of the neurotic cats has been chosen because of its
bearing on something that is fundamental to Sierksma's researches in
this as well as in his other publications. This is his square stand on
psychology. His procedure may be sheer heresy in the eyes of the con-
temporary great-grandsons of Durkheim, but the war cry sociologia
sociologice does not deter Sierksma from viewing culture as something
requiring not only a theory of society, but also a theory of man. And
a theory of man implies psychology, though the author's psychology is
not exactly of the familiar American cultural anthropology or psycho-
dynamics brand. It functions as the practical extension and empirical
application of a more fundamental philosophical anthropology that
takes account of biological as well as social dimensions (Plessner,
Gehlen, Portmann). Thus the aforementioned alcoholic cats are intro-
duced in connection with Horton's conclusion in a cross-cultural study
of the functions of alcohol in primitive societies to the effect that "in
every case acculturation is accompanied by extreme drinking."
Sierksma, for whom messianic movements are a special case of the wider
acculturative problem, analyzes "the neurotic character of the accul-
turative situation" (p. 83) on both individual and social levels. While
165
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"
most sociologists would shy away from the terminology of clinical
psychology and prefer to speak of anomy and the like, Sierksma un-
ashamedly says "neurosis," intending not "a more or less literary
metaphor, but an attempt to give an exact diagnosis" (p. 79). Did not
C. G. Jung once define neurosis as the state of mit sich selbst ent-zweit
sein? And is not every primitive society under the pressure of white
domination, economics, technology, and missionaries "divided within
itself"? It is not even necessary that the native have so lucid a con-
sciousness of the situation as had the Papuan who told Hogbin, "You
white man give us orders. We no longer give orders to ourselves....
The white man has come and tells us we must behave like his fathers.
Our own fathers, we must forget them" (quoted p. 66). In the circum-
stances it is, perhaps, not illegitimate to remind ourselves of Freud's
views on the subject of "fathers," bearing in mind not only the native's
tragic alienation from himself but also the iconoclastic violence with
which these same Papuans destroyed their cult places, bull roarers, and
other appurtenances of the world of their fathers. The author's psycho-
logical arguments may often seem problematical to the anthropologist,
but they are always suggestive and stimulating even when they move
in the dubious limbo between individual and society.
At times Sierksma's comparative audacity is a real asset. Williams,
in his account of the Vailala Madness, had commented on the Papuan's
"mental instability," that is, their proneness to ecstasy and loss of self-
control. Worsley objected to the use of such psychological, "subjective"
and, indeed, highly un-Marxist concepts. Sierksma (pp. 132-33) not
only accepts Williams' description of the Papuan "basic personality"
but also draws attention to its essentially "motor" pattern (ecstasy as
violent movement, etc.). This enables him to point out the contrast with
North American Indian messianic movements. Plains culture, for all its
sado-masochist excesses, was marked by equally excessive self-control.
The Papuan would sink "below" consciousness at the slightest provo-
cation. The Plains Indian had to "struggle" for unconsciousness and
trance, for example, in the excruciating pain of the Sun Dance. Even
the messianic Ghost Dancers usually needed the additional hypnotizing
assistance of the dance leaders to push them over the brink of conscious-
ness. Once unconscious, there was none of the motor violence of the
possessed, only the "contemplation of a vision or the revelation of a
song to which they listened in silence." The Navaho showed a remark-
able immunity to the Ghost Dance message both in 1870, when they
were utterly miserable and pauperized, and in 1890, when their
economic situation was fairly good. The well-known Navaho fear of
death and the dead is certainly insufficient as an explanation. The
neighboring Ute exhibited the same fear, yet they accepted the Ghost
Dance, merely changing some of its ideology to suit their cultural
pattern. Ultimately, psychological factors have to be taken into account
in order to provide a necessary complement to the more popular
166
economic and sociological explanations and to help us arrive at a fuller
understanding of the phenomenon (pp. 263-71).
There is immense erudition in Sierksma's study; in fact, the "expert
reader" will notice that there is far more of it than even the rich biblio-
graphy suggests. However, the author bears his mantle of learning
lightly and with an essayist's elegance, exploiting to the full the strategic
advantages of his chosen ground, that is, the "popular book." That this
can be exasperating to the academic reader has already been said. But
the method also has its positive sides. Thus the first chapter "Good-by
Hawaii" is devoted to the description of an exception that should help
to prove the rule. Hawaii presents a case of acculturation that resulted
in the total destruction of an indigenous culture but that produced no
large scale messianic reactions. Eighteenth-century European romantic-
ism discovered its Paradise Lost in the South Seas, yet the perspicacious
Captain Cook already noticed that the Polynesians reacted with feelings
of inferiority to the technical superiority of the white man. Kame-
hameha I soon realized that by using white advisers and the white man's
guns a Hawaiian prince could make himself sole ruler of a kingdom. In
due course it also became evident not only that guns were powerful but
that traditional taboos were far less dangerous than had been assumed
hitherto. His successor, Kamehameha II, encouraged by his mother (!)
and fortified by plenty of alcohol, proved his modernism by eating in
public with the female members of his family. There was wholesale
destruction of cultic images, and Princess Kapiolani in full regalia
ascended the top of a volcano in order to blaspheme and challenge the
goddess of the volcano, Pele. There were also "nativistic" reactions.
In January, 1820, a battle was fought between Kamehameha's modern-
ists and the conservatives (the latter were defeated), and in 1824 the
goddess Pele announced through a prophetess that there would be a
terrible punishment unless the people returned to the ancient ways.
But restorative movements had no chance; they arose among the
people while the aristocracy, spellbound by the lure of the white man's
culture, refused to give leadership (p. 24). Subsequent nativistic move-
ments produced useless revolts, syncretistic cults, or pathetic gestures
of nostalgia. Sierksma seems to be the first author to recognize the
extraordinary and exemplary significance of David Malo's Hawaiian
Antiquities for a psychological study of acculturation.
The iconoclastic outbreak and the battle between Kamehameha II
and Kekuaokalani occurred before the arrival of the missionaries on
Hawaii (p. 22). This fact is important for a proper assessment of the
white man's culture and the way it put the native's world out of joint.
Missionaries have exercised a tremendous influence on Hawaiian
history in the nineteenth century. They came to Hawaii to do good, and
many of them-as a cynic once remarked-did very well. The missions
have come in for much criticism from the anthropologists, but Sierksma
neither accuses nor justifies. He tries to understand the missionaries as
167
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"

exponents of certain aspects of Western civilization and, in this con-

nection, makes some of his most penetrating and, at the same time,
most debatable observations. The author argues that if the history of
an acculturative process (or crisis) is that of the contact between two
cultures, then the nature of both cultures has to be understood. And if
the writer who tries to understand happens to be a white man, then his
attempt at interpreting the essential features of the highly differentiated
and varied phenomenon called "Western civilization" will involve not
only much dangerous generalization but also a great deal of soul-
searching and of subjective, "existential" self-analysis.
Sierksma is aware of all this (pp. 33 ff.) but believes that a writer on
primitive messianic movements cannot afford to shirk the risk. After
all, the technical superiority by which the white man imposed himself
on others was itself an aspect of something more fundamental than
technology, namely, a mentality. The author suggests that the Western
culture pattern (or the "spirit" of Western civilization) is characterized
by an extreme development of certain essential human traits which, he
claims, have nowhere else assumed such radical form. Western man is
insatiable in every respect, and this includes metaphysical passion for
the absolute, lust for power and expansion, and an urge for restless
activity, change, and progress. The essential split in human existence
(about which philosophical anthropology and existential phenomenology
have had so much to say) is constitutive of Western culture and finds its
religious institutionalization in Christianity with its "double morality."
The expression may sound harsh, but Sierksma merely means to say
that as long as Western civilization has not formally repudiated the
Sermon on the Mount, the split is essential. This radical and "consti-
tutive" character of the split is at the other end of the continuum which
begins with Redfield's "homogeneous," primitive cultures. Against this
largely weltanschauliche background, Sierksma tries to arrive at a better
evaluation of the missionary impact and some of its disintegrative
effects on native civilizations. Of course the "missions themselves often
competed with all the ferocity of South Sea head hunters" (Keesing,
quoted p. 59), and missionaries frequently identified themselves with
their respective colonial powers. (Sierksma could have added to his
examples the case of Charles de Foucauld, who combined the life of a
genuine saint with the vocation of an agent for his beloved patrie). But
this is only one of several aspects of a many-sided phenomenon. For
while, from a theological angle, bringing the gospel is the discharge of a
divine commission, from a cultural point of view it can be described as
that manifestation of Western life in colonial areas in which the white
man tries to obey the demands of the Kingdom of God but proves him-
self-in that very activity-to be but the product of his own civilization
with its inner split and its double morality (p. 57).
The above summary will suffice to illustrate the author's approach to
his subject and his habit of moving into territory where the ordinary
168
 anthropologist may be loath to follow him and where the theologian and
philosopher may want to oppose him. But when applying his general
observations on acculturation (and on colonial acculturation in parti-
cular) to the special problems of religion, Sierksma has some very per-
tinent things to say, for example, regarding syncretism, the nature of
religious conversion among primitives, and (with an eye on the essential-
ly symbolic character of religion) on the relation of "form" and "con-
tents" in religious change (cf. the illuminating references, p. 97, to
Danielsson's study of Raroia and Vogt's study of Navaho veterans).
While positing a "parallelism, both historical and structural, between
general cultural and [the more specifically] religious aspects of the
acculturative situation" (p. 107), the author denies the possibility of
a purely religious conflict ever leading to acculturative neurosis. The
author's argument here really amounts to a major thesis of paramount
interest to the student of religion. Religion being an essentially sym-
bolic affair, the usual defense and adjustment mechanisms of selection
and re-interpretation "which are never completely sufficient to avoid
disintegration and conflict in the technical, economic, social and
political spheres, are always adequate in the religious sphere" (p. 109).
Having dealt with acculturation as the soil in which messianic
movements can grow, and having analyzed some of its more specifically
religious aspects, the author devotes five chapters (pp. 124-241) to a
discussion of several "sample" eschatological movements: the Vailala
Madness, Plains messianism, the "static messianism" of the Yaruro,
the non-messianic eschatology of the Australian Unambal, and the
evolution from messianism to politics on Manus. Africa is mentioned
only in passing (pp. 211-12) and there is an intriguingly brief reference
to "eschatological movements in China" (p. 283). A few words on the
latter subject would have been of special interest in view of the asser-
tion, not infrequently made, that the Chinese cultural tradition in-
hibited the growth of eschatological concepts and ideologies. One would
welcome, therefore, more information on millenarian movements in
China that were not indebted (as the Taiping rebellion was) to Christian
influences. Whereas the Vailala Madness and the Ghost Dance exempli-
fy "active messianism," the Yaruro of Venezuela present the picture
of a group whose "desire to live and to continue has died" (Petrullo).
Their religion is a purely other-worldly messianism: waiting for the end
of this world when the Yaruro would, at last, enter the blessed land of
Kuma. It is, indeed, a case of a quietist eschatological stance and not
of a movement at all. The Kurangara cult of the Unambal, on the other
hand, presents the unique case of a group that not merely expects the
"twilight of the gods," but actually engages in active (magical) efforts
to bring it about and, with it, the end of everything.
The author introduces his concluding summary by a brief account of
the Hopi of Oraibi, illustrating thereby the difference between escha-
tology (as a representation collective) and messianism (as collective
169
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"

behavior). The latter need not appear at all, even where the former exists
of old or as a new importation. In this connection, Sierksma reminds his
readers of Tikopia where, according to Firth, cargo rumors were rife
without, however, precipitating a movement. Mythological traditions
concerning future "messianic" changes are important conditioning
factors, no doubt, but their importance should not be exaggerated.
Cortes was welcomed in South America as a returning white god, and
something very similar happened to Captain Cook. This surely poses
interesting problems for comparative mythology. Yet Titiev gave it as
his considered opinion that the Oraibi notion of the returning white
Bahana was a secondary mythological explanation of the fact that white
men had arrived. "The ideological starting point of a messianic move-
ment can thus be supplied by native traditions, by Christian ideas, or
by notions that are born under the pressure of circumstance" (p. 250).
Conversely, eschatological ideas may lie dormant until activated by a
crisis. The author is certainly right in insisting that a stable culture has
its center of gravity in the mythological Urzeit from which it lives and
moves and has its being. The idea of an Endzeit is marginal; indeed, it
need not exist at all. But when a culture is thrown out of gear and has
lost the backing of (or rather its grounding in) a validating Urzeit, then
the Endzeit moves into the center to provide the "life-giving myth."
Sierksma is less interested in the typological cataloguing game
(nativism, revivalism, adventism, millenarianism, etc.), which seems
to be a favorite pastime with some writers on messianic movements,
than in a more general framework which would permit a better func-
tional and structural understanding of messianism by placing it in the
wider context of "movements of social unrest." In fact, this is precisely
what most sociological and anthropological students of religion have
been doing for a long time. Sierksma's way of putting the matter can be
summarized thus: Acculturation produces socially disintegrating and
individually neuroticizing effects. The resulting movements of social
unrest are of diverse character. One type of movement (i.e., the
"messianic" sensu stricto) expects the end of the old and the beginning
of a new world as an event that is basically independent of man; at best
man can prepare its advent by religious, namely, symbolic, activity.
(The growth of this "classical" form of messianism in Israel has been
studied mainly by biblical scholars, but some of their findings could
easily be translated into the language of cultural anthropology). The
history of messianic protests in Hawaii, terminating in the thoroughly
unmessianic ritual of David Malo's esoteric lodge, is paralleled by the
similar endings (Peyote Cult, Shakerism, Handsome Lake's Longhouse
religion) of North American messianism. The latter is "regressive" in
the sense that it reacts away from the white man's culture, selective
adaptation notwithstanding, while most cargo cults are "progressive"
in the sense of seeking a maximum assimilation of that culture. (Some
readers would no doubt prefer a different pair of terms to designate the
170
scale along which the possible relationships acculturation/messianism
are to be plotted). The Yaruro stand halfway between messianism and
individual eschatology. The Unambal present the rare case of a
"negative messianism."
The book concludes with a brief phenomenological summary from
which the following points deserve to be mentioned: Almost all move-
ments have individual founders. The Yaruro exception proves the rule,
since their messianism is "static" (i.e., there is no "movement"). The
generally neurotic character of the founder is significant because his
neurotic conflict has "exemplary" intensity: his vision expresses the
collective neurosis. The messianic dream world, and the concomitant
behavior and "collective autisms" may be unrealistic, but they perform
a double function. By their expressive value they provide symbolic and
temporary solutions, and in the long run they may serve as indirect
routes to more realistic forms of adaptation. The founder's vision results
in a "message" whose contents may include reformation of manners
(often in the sense of a return to the ancient ways), the end of the
world, and new cult forms and songs. The message proclaims not only
imminent salvation but also the way to it. The eschatological Endzeit
notion may be an adaptation from Christianity or a projection of the
founder's psychological Weltuntergangserlebnis, that is, his own break-
down in consequence of the disintegration of his previous world.
Eschatological messages certainly cannot be classified among the self-
fulfilling prophecies. Hence the need for signs and miracles, which also
raises the problem of suggestibility in individuals and groups. In
practically every movement an "organizer" appears at the side of the
founder-prophet (cf. Barnett's metaphor of the "inventor and sales-
man"). Messianic movements exhibit a missionary tendency (the social
and, indeed, political functions of which have not been sufficiently
underlined by the author) and generally include, among their major
forms of expression, the suspension of the routine of ordinary life: the
reality of the past aion with all its frustrations exists no more. Instead,
there is much ritual activity in preparation for the decisive escha-
tological event, which is frequently believed to require a preceding
tabula rasa. Hence also the destructive features of much "messianic"
behavior. Both the new ritual activities and the destruction of elements
of traditional culture have syncretistic aspects, bearing out the rule
that syncretism is a form of adaptation even in the most "regressive"
and nativistic contexts. The Ghost Dance, it will be remembered, was
known among some Indian tribes as "Jesus Dance," and Dockstader
(The Kachina and the White Man, 1954) has shown in great detail how
the Hopi, in their splendid conservatism, succeeded in isolating them-
selves from the major aspects of Western culture by adapting them-
selves to it in ever so many little things.
There are many interesting observations on what happens to an
eschatological movement when the future has become past and there
171
 "A New Heaven and a New Earth"
has been no fulfilment. (Here Sierksma makes no reference to Festinger
et al., When Prophecy Fails, 1956). Failure can be "explained," that is,
theologically rationalized; the messianic dynamism can coagulate in the
forms of a new institutionalized religion; and the Endzeit myth can be
integrated into the present as past history. In the latter case the
messianic myth moves into the past and can even function as a kind of
new Urzeit. Williams' essay "The Vailala Madness in Retrospect"
(1934) still remains one of the classical contributions to the study of this
phenomenon in primitive messianisms, but Sierksma is not unaware of
the relevance of this problem to the history of early Christianity and to
the movement centering around the seventeenth-century Jewish
pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Sevi.
It is scarcely possible to discuss in detail the wealth of stimulating
suggestions scattered throughout the pages of this book, for instance,
on the question of leadership in eschatological movements (pp. 133-34)
or on the relation of frustration to aggression turned inward (pp. 152 if.).
Some serious lacunae in Sierksma's discussion are due, perhaps, to the
fact that he takes for granted the "expert reader's" familiarity with
the work of Balandier, Worsley, and others. It goes without saying that
there are many major and minor points on which disagreement is
possible. But as long as the work under discussion is accessible to com-
paratively few readers only, this reviewer believes a general presenta-
tion of its contents to be of greater value than technical arguments on
controversial points of psychology and anthropology. A translation
from Dutch into English of this important and suggestive study is highly
desirable.

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