Radical Prophet: The Mystics, Subversives and Visionaries Who Foretold the End of the World

Christianity began with the conviction that the old order was finished. The mysterious, elusive and charismatic figure of Jesus proclaimed that a new era, the Kingdom of God, was dawning. Yet despite its success, and the conversion of the empire which had executed its founder, the religion he inspired was soon domesticated, its counter-cultural radicalism tamed, as the Church attempted to control both its doctrines and its followers. Christopher Rowland here shows that this was never the whole story. At the margins, around the edges, sometimes off the religious map, the apocalyptic flame of the New Testament continued to burn. In 1649 the Diggers occupied St George's Hill to put the egalitarianism of Christ into practice. 'You must break these men or they will break you', Oliver Cromwell declared of the 'lunaticks'.

This book argues that such revolutionaries had divined the true intent of the enigma who threw over the tables of the money-changers: to summon a new epoch – strange, iconoclastic, uncomfortable and otherworldly. It gives full weight to a remarkable strain of radical religion that simply refuses to die.