Apocalypse: To most, the word signifies destruction, death, the end of the world. But the literal definition is revelation or unveiling, the basis from which renowned theologian Rene Girard builds his own view of Biblical apocalypse. Properly understood, Girard explains, Biblical apocalypse has nothing to do with a wrathful or vengeful God punishing his unworthy children, and everything to do with a foretelling of what future humans are making for themselves now that they have devised the instruments of global self-destruction. In this volume, some of the major thinkers about the interpenetration of politics and religion - including Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt - are scrutinized by some of today’s most qualified scholars, all of whom are thoroughly versed in Girard’s groundbreaking work.Including an important new essay by Girard, this volume enters into a philosophical debate that challenges the bona fides of philosophy itself by examining three supremely important philosophers of the twentieth century. It asks how we might think about politics now that the attacks of 9/11 have shifted our intellectual foundations and what the outbreak of rabid religion might signify for international politics. Politics and Apocalypse is the inaugural issue of the Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture book series, which continues in the tradition of Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture . This journal follows the research agenda of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, an international association that draws inspiration from Rene Girard’s mimetic hypothesis on the relationship between violence and religion, elaborated in a stunning series of books he has written over the last forty years.