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30 Chapter Two Survival Strategies Prophets, Preachers, and Paradigms The Camisards gathered in their fervent, covert nightly assemblies to hear the prophetic and apocalyptic pronouncements issuing from the mouths of wool carders, shepherds, chestnut gatherers, and day laborers, calling for an end to the Antichrist and Babylon (Rome), foreseeing the Day of the Lord, claiming the right to worship as they pleased, and inspiring scores with the desire to defend their faith.1 “After 1700 prophesying was widely experienced among dispersed Protestant communities in the Cévennes. It was a force which sustained the inhabitants of these communities during a time of violent religious persecution . . . The principal characteristic of the [prophecies] is their immediacy: the voices . . . reach us directly . . . reveal[ing] the various manifestations of prophesying and how this phenomenon was experienced by people in the contexts in which it had occurred.”2 Camisard prophecy, occurring in a “pressured” or peripheral social context, conforms to the typology developed by Robert Wilson in his study Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel. Wilson’s typology may serve as a lens through which to view the distinctive characteristics of the Camisards’ experiences and perspectives. The Camisards fit Wilson’s category of “peripheral”: they were on the margins of Reformed society by virtue of their straitened socioeconomic situation, and they rejected the normative Roman Catholic theology espoused by the French theocracy.3 However, a subgroup of Camisards, those who became prophets, became central to the Camisard community. These prophets filled the preeminent function of developing a “working theology”—even a militant one—in very specific circumstances of strife and persecution. For one thing, the fact that illiterate Camisards made their prophecies in “the King’s French” shifted them, at least in their own minds, in from the periphery—by either a miracle or a strategically subversive use of the idiom of the very state that was attempting to deny them existence—to a more central position.4 The prophecies, taken as divinely inspired, allowed the Camisards to reposition themselves in a theologically legitimate place: they believed that they constituted the true church. Survival Strategies • 31 Thus, the Camisards derived their strength of purpose, unity, and conviction of legitimacy from their prophets. The prophesyings were usually public performances during assemblies at which lay preachers shared the vast amount of scripture they had memorized. Only a very few Camisards, generally taught by their pastors, could read, but they all were familiar with Reformed doctrine, which stated that any individual believer could interpret the Bible for himself. The primary source for the vocabulary and content of their pronouncements was the Bible. Their utterances were not symbolic, but rather were meant to be taken literally. Scripture created the “horizon of expectation” in the listeners or “social support group,” to use Wilson’s term, of the Camisard prophets.5 Drawing on Old Testament models of prophecy, such as the book of Joel, and influenced by New Testament paradigms of inspiration, such as the gifts of the Holy Spirit received at Pentecost in the book of Acts, and especially from apocalyptic literature like the book of Revelation, the Camisards began to articulate a theological stance that arose directly out of the social crisis in which they found themselves, yet that also situated them in reference to the early Christian church—whose oppression by imperial Rome served a prototype for the persecutions that the Camisards were currently enduring. On the whole, Old Testament models of prophecy motivated the function and role of Camisard prophecy, while New Testament apocalyptic writing provided most of its content. In these models of prophecy, the Camisards discerned a process by which individuals might speak both for God and for the community, as well as the means to authenticate prophecy; further, the energies and abilities of the prophets could be channeled into structures essential to the preservation of the Camisard subculture. While a potent charisma attached to prophets, making them seem powerful in themselves, the Camisard community actually used the prophets to perpetuate itself. The “Support Group” and Its Significance Robert Wilson’s model of prophecy contributes to an understanding of the Camisard experience through his emphasis on social context and community. No prophet arises in isolation, he observes, and once one does appear, the “social support group” provides important functions of recognizing, validating, enabling, and sustaining the prophet.6 Camisard prophets received messages that offered reassurance to the subculture, stating what the community wanted and needed to hear. This aspect is typical of prophecy acting within...

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