Today@Dal

From Friday's National Post:

For believers, an apocalypse is a time of hope and regeneration — a time when the evils of the world are battled down, messiah figure sets things right and the chosen few get to enjoy a utopia.

“If you’re in a society where you’re feeling oppressed, where you feel persecuted, where you feel you’re the odd person out, it certainly is appealing to think that things could change radically, very quickly and you could become [among] the chosen ones,” said Christopher Helland, a professor of the sociology of religion at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “It’s the idea that the social order could be radically reversed or that things could be so altered and transformed that you’re going to come out on top.”

Historically, apocalyptic beliefs were held by the poor and disadvantaged, Mr. Dawson said. But that’s changed in modern times —believers now represent a cross section of society, including middle class and even well educated people.

He suggests believers might be experiencing “relative-deprivation” —a sort of subjective unsettlement in which they aren’t doing too badly, but feel somehow worse off than others. Then, there are the anxieties that come with changing modern times.

“Traditional grounds for people to trust that the world is a safe and secure place, that it’s a place that has meaning, are being undermined by these processes of de-traditionalization, globalization and heightened individualism,” he said. “And so people are increasingly feeling at loss as to how to gain a secure foothold, a sense of meaning in the world, a way of interpreting things.”

Read the full article at the National Post's website.