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Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes

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Abstract

Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times believers. In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States.

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Notes

  1. As clarification, when I use the term “American” in this paper, I am referring specifically to United States Americans.

  2. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Christian denominations in the United States alone. I have chosen to condense them into one entity here, but I acknowledge that there is almost certainly a great deal of variability in how followers of different Christian denominations relate to end-times theology. Furthermore, the subject of how these beliefs align with intersectional identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation) is a subject worthy of much more analysis. For the sake of simplicity in this paper, however, I treat Christians as a somewhat monolithic entity, with the caveat that there is a great deal of nuance left to unpack within that label.

  3. “Millennial” as used in this paper refers to believers in end-times theology, specifically as it related to their anticipation of the “Millennium” or Golden Age that would accompany Christ’s return to Earth. I use it here simply to describe individuals or groups that subscribed to Christian end-times theology. The term should not be confused with the so-called millennial generation born between the 1980s and early 2000s, though, given the current ubiquity of end-times beliefs in the United States today, this may be a connection ready for additional inquiry.

  4. It should be made clear that though Young and his followers looked at the Great Basin and saw only a vacant wilderness ripe for settlement, the landscape had been home to indigenous peoples—Paiute, Ute, Shoshone, and others—for thousands of years. The Mormons caused unspeakable damage to these groups. All three of the religious movements discussed here were implicated in the displacement and destruction of Native American peoples and lifeways.

  5. For discussions of the relationship between environmentalism and evangelical Protestantism (see Shaiko 1987; Eckberg and Blocker 1989; Curry-Roper 1990; Guth et al. 1993, 1995; Schultz et al. 2000; Larsen 2001; Sherkat and Ellison 2007; Prelli and Winters 2009; Wardekker et al. 2009; Dowland and Gasaway 2010; McDuff 2010; Wilkinson 2012; Danielsen 2013; Smith and Leiserowitz 2013; Webster 2013; Chaudoin et al. 2014; Clements et al. 2014; Peifer et al. 2014; Schwadel and Johnson 2017).

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Acknowledgements

This manuscript was prepared while I was supported by a Rackham Merit Fellowship from the University of Michigan. I am grateful to the University of Michigan Department of Anthropology and Museum of Anthropological Archaeology for their continuing support. I thank the Amana Heritage Society and the Communal Societies Collection of Hamilton College for allowing me to use images from their archives. The final version of this paper was improved by the helpful comments of the editor and two anonymous reviewers. All errors that may remain are, of course, my own.

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    Chelsea Fisher

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Fisher, C. Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes. Agric Hum Values 35, 791–807 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-018-9874-4

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