Bloch’s Münzer and the Horizons of History

This essay springs from my current project, namely an introduction to and translation of Ernst Bloch ’ s Thomas Münzer: Theologian of the Revolution funded by CenSAMM, the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements. The essay here will focus mainly on history and community, after a bit of background. Importantly, the issues raised here are only addressed within a small Western context. Christianity in its various forms plays very different roles in non-Anglo/European countries, and class struggle as it is thought of in this essay is also very limited to small centers of former empires and is not meant in its global anti-imperialist context. This is primarily due to the material itself. My own overarching interest in various texts from different periods of the past, is the sense of history and what governs our understanding of it. This is something I have been working with in different ways over the past years, looking at both Francis Fukuyama ’ s essay on 1989 as the end of history, New Testament understandings of class struggle as history, and also the meaning of history and the questions we are urged to ask, and which ones we are urged to avoid.