Millennium: A view from Australia: Introduction (Academic religious studies and apocalypticism at the turn of the century)

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue of the "Journal of Religious History" with the theme: Millennium. The papers for this issue were first presented at the inaugural conference of the Religious History Society at the University of Sydney on 7 July 1998. The introduction begins with some definitions of the territory covered by the issue, including the year 1000, millennium, millennialism or millenarism, and apocalypticism. It goes on to consider why Australia, the host country of the Millennium meeting, has not been the site for significant millennial movements, unlike certain European settler and colonized societies in the United States, Africa, and Melanesia.