In both classes I am teaching this term, I heard matter-of-fact comments about how end-times theologies correlate with “fatalism”—which in turn seems to correlate with some flavor of politics that is Trumpian and/or Republican and/or shading off toward an "alt-right" so extreme that our resident criminal in the White House might partially disavow it.
Such claims about fatalism are extremely common in scholarship and media punditry—and I'm writing to insist that this has become a cliché, a substitute for thought, that is misleading more than half the time.
What has provoked me is how these comments from my students-- restating common wisdom-- came after they had read a section of my book (also reprinted here) that argues pointedly against these common clichés.
My point in these pieces was not to deny that many end-times devotees skew conservative. Everyone knows that. It was to insist, first, that we shouldn't lose track of major differences internal to conservative-trending end-times people: alt-right to centrist, flagrantly anti-Semitic to ostentatiously Zionist, policy-wonkish to individualistic and navel-gazing.
It was to press us, second, to remember that a sizable minority (with its own internal spectrum of articulations) does not lean rightward at all, and indeed includes venerated heroes of the left, such as Bob Marley for starters.
Third-- the main point at hand today-- was insisting that “fatalistic” is an imprecise way, at best, to characterize people who use end-times discourse on the right, center, or left.
Giving "Fatalism" (Pessimism?) its Due
I agree that fatalism is salient in some cases—although more commonly before 1970 (when the scholarly common wisdom took hold) than it is today. However, even in these earlier years, to accept that the self-proclaimed “apolitical” or “otherworldly-focused” rhetoric of many evangelicals was apolitical was largely misleading.
We can restate the defensible parts of such interpretation more precisely. White evangelicals were then more complacent about and disengaged from most status quo policy debates—a stance I would call a functional variant of conservative cultural politics—and were more hostile toward and/or pessimistic about the best-known forms of religious activism in the news. During these years religious activism was associated with civil rights, anti-nuclear protests, and opposition to the Vietnam War.
Thus it was not completely wrong to drift toward using the descriptor “fatalistic toward” as a rough synonym for the words “pessimistic about” something like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of an integrated and egalitarian future society.
(Along a parallel train of thought, we could pursue how being “fatalistic” about collective projects might drift toward a privatized neoliberal mode of living— a point that deserves more attention than I can give it today in a short reflection, since I've even been known to suggest that this image gets to the heart of the matter:
Insofar as this is paradigmatic, is it "fatalistic"? Perhaps that's not the best term. Let's stay with the political attitudes of other end-times people, where the question makes more sense.
From Fatalistic/Passive to Hostile/Engaged
If all the above is true, then the terms we need are “pessimistic about” (certain hopes for social change) and “hostile toward” (certain political visions). The supposed attitude of “fatalistic about” implies a sociopolitical stance often linked to a none-too-fatalistic praxis.
Did it make sense, around 1965, to call white evangelicals “fatalistic” about losing a religious-political battle with King’s coalition? They were already mobilizing.
By extension can we drift toward imagining them as still “defeatist” or “passive” today--after decades of New right organizing-- due to their supposed fatalism? Clearly this is an odd use of language—unless we manage to silo off end-times discourse, as if it were something unrelated to how evangelicals energetically built a network of private schools and made themselves central to Republican base from Nixon to Trump.
But this sort of siloing is not very helpful since-- although, noted, some evangelicals are more obsessed with the end-times than others-- all evangelicals think about the end-times at least now and then. Ever since the heyday of white evangelicals insisting that they had righteous “moral” values but lacked “political” praxis—a discourse that was still going strong when I began teaching in the 1980s, although already straining credibility by then—I have had less and less need, year after year, to persuade students that this discourse is politicized. People assume the politicization now, often too reductively.
Somehow, through all of this, a trope of end-times thinking as “fatalistic”—which seems to be some sort of default reflex learned from… well, where?—seems like an undead zombie.
Can we kill off this cliché?: Mike Pompeo as Case Study
Perhaps it would help to look at an article in last weekend’s New York Times. Mike Pompeo (who, as the Secretary of State of a superpower, would seem deluded if he truly sees himself as “fatalistic” in a sense of lacking power or agency) is in the news cycle, trumpeting how end-times beliefs relate to US policy toward Israel. He has spoken about a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”
We could pause to ask how much Pompeo (or Trump, or megachurch pastors) may be pandering insincerely to constituents who are assumed to care about the rapture. That's a good question. But let’s move along until we arrive at whoever has sincere end-times concerns, since without them the pandering makes no sense. After we get a dialog between Pompeo and such people into focus, in what sense shall we call the result “fatalistic”?
My provisional response would be “hardly at all.”
But wait! Perhaps some would object that “fatalistic” background assumptions are in play—say, that no one could ever find any solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, short of Israel crushing all dissent and then killing it off once and for all. (Would that really be “pessimistic,” or more like a perverse form of utopian “optimism” from within their mindset?) Is someone “fatalistic” if they assume it's impossible to avoid cosmic war over Jerusalem— so why bother even trying for peace? OK, I’ll grant those points. The common wisdom about "fatalism" is not based on nothing whatsoever, it's more like a half-truth. And obviously this is not trivial if it increases the chances for a nuclear war.
Having said that, still Pompeo’s policy-making seems on balance something quite different than “fatalistic.” And this point is generalizable. As I argued in my chapter that my students supposedly had digested, there is no necessary contradiction—and in fact there are natural affinities—between working to “defeat God’s enemies” and believing that God is fighting on your side. Something similar is true if you don’t believe in God but believe in “History” instead, like certain Marxists and secular liberals impressed by the inexorable logic of capitalism. Such people still manage to set some priorities and exercise agency (possibly with improved morale) despite such structural considerations—and so can fundamentalists.
(By the way, for you theological wonks, please do not assume that I am running a standard—and, let’s say it, clichéd—distinction between pre- vs. post-millennialism. Nor am I worrying much about Dominion theology. I am talking about the de facto lived meanings of premillennial discourse, and implying that you should stop using the clichéd distinctions that cloud your view of this.
Pompeo projects a confident and optimistic sense of agency. What end-times resonances probably add, at least for some people, is extra confidence about God being on their side, a system of logic (to outsiders bizarre but to insiders carrying some authority) to bolster assumptions about who constitutes God’s friends and enemies, and a way of possibly reinforcing a network of people carrying such agency forward.
But here the weasel words in my last paragraph—“some people” and “possibly reinforcing”—are interesting. What if end-times arguments also sometimes erode or fragment, rather than reinforce, Pompeo's overall project? What if appeals like his to arguments based on a none-too-self-evident reading of the book of Daniel could, in practice, create fault lines within the wider assemblage of social forces moving his policies forward?
If so, by all means we should notice this. We need to understand all the salient modes—both “end-times” and “not-end-times”—of arguing for and motivating a policy. Might they work at cross-purposes? There is no doubt about the importance of thinking this through. It is just that “fatalism” doesn’t have much to do with it—at least not consistently or at the root. It might distract us.
Last Advice: Approach Case by Case Yes, Recycle Clichés No
Stated more positively, I suggest that whenever we encounter end-times discourses—which leads toward a far wider range of views just right-wing and of issues that just relations with Israel—we approach case by case. What are people “fatalistic” about” (or, usually better, what are they pessimistic about, and/or demonizing, and/or pursuing privatized solutions to)—in specific? If their ideas spur them to “fight Gods enemies” (whether “fatalistically” or with unrealistic expectations of success), exactly how do they operationalize the pesky word “fight”? What “enemies” do fight, specifically?
If we are disturbed by answers that we find—and certainly the Pompeo case is disturbing—then it is time to look for fault lines in the argument and try to widen them.
In all of this “fatalism” as a tool of analysis will be, at best, just one of several tools we need.