BROOKLINE, Mass. — If Richard Landes believed the world will end in 2000, he would be doing a lot of work for nothing.
Landes, a medieval historian at Boston University, is also the director of the Center for Millennial Studies, which is keeping a watchful eye on the innumerable manifestations of millennial fervor spiraling the world toward 2000, for many, the most important date in the last 1,000 years.
The center's major task is to archive the millennial expectations of a panoply of religious, New Age and secular groups as well as phenomena such as the so-called Y2K bug, which threatens to crash many computer systems that use only two digits to record the year in a date and will be unable to recognize a year after 1999.
According to center officials, this tracking of pre-millennial manifestations, made possible by the telecommunications advances and global technology unavailable 1,000 years ago, sets this millennium apart from previous periods of fervor. It allows the center to keep tabs on a cultural phenomenon that--as countless magazine covers and Internet sites attest--spans technological, religious, and business fields.
"It's the first time in history that the documentation has been recorded before the failure" of the millennial or apocalyptic expectation, said Beth Forrest, special projects coordinator for the group's small staff.
In many ways, the work of Landes and Forrest is built on what Landes sees as certain disappointment for those who believe the new millennium will mean the annihilation of the universe.
"If you conceive the end is imminent, you're going to be disappointed," said Landes, who with perfect confidence has scheduled for 2002 a conference entitled "Disappointed Millennialism and Cultural Mutation."
Despite this expectation, Landes, 49, believes millennial fervor has the potential to contribute great energy to social change.
In this regard, the scholar is careful to distinguish between "millennial" and "apocalyptic." He says millennialism anticipates a "radical transformation" that does not necessarily involve the imminent destruction of the world through an apocalyptic event.
"Millennialism is the radiation that creates social mutations," he said.
Landes characterizes himself as a religious person but not one who believes in a God who intervenes in history. This does not mean, however, he is without millennial expectations, though, he said, "I think secular people have a really hard time understanding this stuff."
