Any historians of modern Christian traditions around? There's a news article going around on social media about a Wisconsin company introducing implanted microchips that use RFID technology, for their employees to use as access codes. It's voluntary and evidently replaces company ID cards.
I have the relevant religious background to know how this story would be received by a particular Christian demographic, and the responses I have seen confirm it: this technology is being linked to Christian eschatology and causing some people a fair amount of alarm.
Anyway, it got me wondering. I have seen numerous similar responses from the Christian community over the past several decades in regards to various technologies relating to ID and electronic records. I've heard that social security cards and UPC bar codes triggered similar worries. Anecdotally I can confirm from personal experience that some Christian groups point to UPC barcodes as a precursor to the Mark and the rise of the Antichrist of Revelations. But I'm curious how far back this goes? Is it actually true that Christian groups or individuals associated social security numbers with the Mark of the Beast ? Or is it even earlier than that? I guess what I'm asking is, what have the cultural trends of this phenomenon been like over the past few decades, when did it actually begin, is it usually linked only with technology, or are there other factors involved?
Additionally, has any of this anxiety ever had a significant effect on the implementation--or not--of certain technologies?
I have not done any research on the topic concerning Christians, but I can tell you that in the late 1930s some black muslims believed that social security numbers were the mark of the beast. (See Dolinar's "negro in Illinois") I don't know how or whether that was related to white Christians doing the same thing, but I do know that at the time the Muslims were listening to white christian fundamentalist radio shows, with one of their favorite preachers being frank Norris, who had great contempt for the government (see beynon "voodoo cult").
Now, the emergence of this phenomenon among black people must have been different from that of whites since there was by that time already a minor trend in small sects to call whites 'beast' (i can trace examples back to the early 1900s) as well as 'devils' (examples recorded in late 1800s), and there was a strong emphasis on the apocalypse and the Book of Revelation--and it seems to have been from this that whites were linked to the beast. During the 1930s, when the soc system was introduced, millennial feelings intensified due to the difficulties of the great depression, and this apparently mixed with the older views about whites as the beast (see Mohammad, "sun rises in the east").