Born‐again Christian belief follows conversion, an inner transformation that quickens the supernatural imagination. Among fundamental Baptists, rhetoric, not ritual, is the primary vehicle of conversion. Witnesses “speak the gospel,” the ramifying discourse and narrative of Christ. Listeners “come under conviction” as they appropriate the gospel in their inner speech. At “the moment of salvation,” listeners become public speakers of the gospel. They “believe” in the sense of embracing a narrative tradition that rewords their experience in terms of a personal, triune Cod who intervenes in daily life and in history.
▪ Abstract Apocalypticism and millennialism are the dark and light sides of a historical sensibility transfixed by the possibility of imminent catastrophe, cosmic redemption, spiritual transformation, and a new world order. This essay briefly surveys work by anthropologists and like-minded scholars that focuses directly on endtime movements. It then reviews at more length a varied literature focusing on American apocalypticisms and millennialisms. Turning to contemporary America, we survey the ways in which an apocalyptic/millennial sensibility—as a mode of attention, mode of knowing, and voice—has come to inhabit and structure modern American life across a wide range of registers.
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