The millennial-messianistic movements in social sciences

Abstract

The study aims at presenting a brief overview of a particular field of research within religious social movements, namely the millennial-messianistic movements. The starting point is the overview of the Hungarian research regarding religion and religious movements. Researchers do not recognize the weight and the importance of the millennial phenomenon. There was no mental-conceptual apparatus in Hungarian for capturing the phenomenon. The Hungarian social research dealt with these religious movements in the context of other important fields (saints) of research, which goes along the millennial movement of 1949 in Satu Mare (Máréfalva), described in my PhD thesis.</p> <p>After presenting the brief history of the researched movements, I turn to the historical, sociological and anthropological literature of millennial movements, and I also present a few general aspects of social movements. Finally, I write about the importance of Victor Turner’s communitas-structure in the understanding of the researched phenomenon