Prophecy and the near future: Thoughts on macroeconomic, evangelical, and punctuated time

Abstract

A view from 1950s and 1960s Britain suggests that the public culture of temporality in the United States has shifted from a consequential focus on reasoning toward the near future to a combination of response to immediate situations and orientation to a very long‐term horizon. This temporal perspective is most marked in the public rhetoric of macroeconomics, but it also corresponds in remarkable ways to evangelicals' views of time. In this article, I trace the optionality and consonance of this shift toward the relative evacuation of the near future in religion and economics by examining different theoretical positions within each domain. In conclusion, I suggest that the near future is being reinhabited by forms of punctuated time, such as the dated schedules of debt and other specific event‐driven temporal frames.

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“…Zapytaj, ile kosztuje, by śledzić, jak nam rośnie w siłę frank szwajcarski" 4 ). Osią debat wokół franka staje się kwestia ryzyka kursowego właściwego frankowym umowom, dominującą perspektywą jest jednak monetarystyczna perspektywa długiego okresu (Guyer 2007), która pozwalała sądzić, że właściwą strategią jest czekanie, bo w perspektywie trzech dekad zadłużenia, jak mówili eksperci w telewizji, "wszystko się wyrówna". Od wejścia w życie w 2010 roku ustawy o dochodzeniu roszczeń w postępowaniu grupowym, która wprowadziła instytucję pozwu zbiorowego, niektórzy kredytobiorcy próbują zmieniać swoją sytuację przez cywilne procesy z bankami.…”