An April 2010 survey from the Pew Research Center found that 41 percent of Americans believe Jesus will return by the year 2050, with breakdowns according to faith tradition. The data were drawn from a wider Pew survey on the public’s expectations of what life will be like at midcentury.

Princeton University associate law professor Imani Perry wrote Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Duke University Press, 2004). She studies race, legal history and culture.

Read a March 6, 2011, story by CNN’s Jessica Ravitz about various end times scenarios and predictions.

The Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant is founder and pastor of the large Empowerment Temple, an AME church in Baltimore, and was previously director of the NAACP’s youth and college division. He co-authored The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation (Judson Press, 2007).

Read a March 23, 2011, story from Religion News Service (published in USA Today) about Harold Camping and his prediction that the world as we knew it would end on May 21, 2011.

Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. is an associate professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He leads a band, Dr. Guy’s MusiQologY, and has expertise in African-American and American music, jazz, cultural studies, popular music, film studies and historiography. He wrote Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (University of California Press, 2003).

Read an April 6, 2011, story at CNBC.com on the current wave of apocalypticism.

Darren A. Ferguson is founder and pastor of Luke 4:18 Ministries, an umbrella organization of hiphop ministers and services in New York, including the Soldiers of Praise hiphop choir and Friday Night FLAYVA (Freedom, Love and Abundant Youth Victory Alliance) worship. He is also youth director for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Ferguson calls his preaching style […]

Read an April 28, 2011, column at Religion Dispatches by Peter Laarman that compares religious and secular “end times” impulses.