Abstract
The expansion of evangelical millennialism continued into the later nineteenth century, in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the late Victorian crisis of faith, as evangelical writers on both sides of the Atlantic provided the momentum for the widespread and interdisciplinary development of a literature of social despair. Evangelicals reflected in theological terms upon the crisis of the protestant establishment imagination that was marked by the trenchant cultural criticism of Thomas Carlyle and the ‘possibilities of latter day belief’ explored in the developing literary Gothic.1 These publications undermined easy assumptions of national destiny, but pushed evangelicals into new and destabilizing contests of millennial belief.2
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Notes
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897; rpr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), xxxviii.
Robert K. Whalen, ‘Millenarianism and millennialism in America, 1790–1880’ (unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1972)
Douglas W. Frank, Less than conquerors: How evangelicals entered the twentieth century (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1986)
Timothy Weber, Living in the shadow of the second coming: American premillennialism, 1875–1982 (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1983)
Timothy E. Fulop, ‘“The future golden day of the race”: Millennialism and black Americans in the Nadir, 1877–1901,’ Harvard Theological Review 84:1 (1991), 75–99.
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American culture: The shaping of twentieth-century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980; new edition, 2006)
idem, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991)
idem, ‘Fundamentalism as an American phenomenon,’ in D.G. Hart (ed.), Reckoning with the past: Historical essays on American evangelicalism from the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 303–21.
Ray Ginger, Six days or forever? Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes (1958; rpr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).
See, for example, Virginia Lieson Brereton, Training God’s army: The American Bible School, 1880–1940 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990)
Marsden, George M. Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991)
Joseph H. Hall, ‘The controversy over Fundamentalism in the Christian Reformed Church, 1915–1966’ (unpublished ThD. thesis, Concordia Theological Seminary, 1974)
Michael G. Borgert, ‘Harry Bultema and the Maranatha controversy in the Christian Reformed Church,’ Calvin Theological Journal 42:1 (2007), 90–109.
Joel A. Carpenter, Revive us again: The reawakening of American Fundamentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
James H. Moorhead, ‘Between progress and apocalypse: A reassessment of millennialism in American religious thought, 1800–1880,’ Journal of American History 71:3 (1984), 541.
Jack Maddex, ‘Proslavery millennialism: Social eschatology in Antebellum Southern Calvinism,’ American Quarterly 31:1 (1979), 58.
James Spivey, ‘The millennium,’ in Paul Basden (ed.), Has our theology changed? Southern Baptist thought since 1845 (Nashville: B&H, 1994), 230–62.
Thomas J. Nettles, James Petigru Boyce: A Southern Baptist Statesman (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2009)
James Petigru Boyce, Abstract of systematic theology (1887; Cape Coral, FL: Founder Press, 2006), chapter forty.
David W. Shedden, ‘Presbyterian premillennialism and the Presbyterian Review’ (unpublished ThM thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2007).
Jon Zens, Dispensationalism: A Reformed inquiry into its leading figures and features (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1978), 10.
idem, World without end: Mainstream American protestant visions of the last things, 1880–1925 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000).
Mark A. Noll, A history of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 214–15.
The cultural and religious impact of the Civil War has been surveyed in a series of recent publications: Edward J. Blum, Reforging the white Republic: Race, religion, and American nationalism, 1865–1898 (2005)
Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a theological crisis (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
Harry S. Stout, Upon the altar of the nation: A moral history of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006).
Stout, Upon the altar of the nation, 93. Milton H. Stine, Studies on the religious problem of our country (York, PA: Lutheran Printing House, 1888), 161.
G.S. Smith, ‘West, Nathaniel (1826–1906),’ in D.G. Hart (ed.), Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition in America (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP, 1999), 273
Edward Dennett, The blessed hope (1879; rpr. Bromley, Kent: Wilson Foundation, 1969), 2.
Clarence Larkin, Dispensational truth (Glenside, PA: Clarence Larkin Estate, 1918)
Clarence Larkin, The book of Revelation (Glenside, PA: Clarence Larkin Estate, 1919), x.
D. Carter, ‘Joseph Agar Beet and the eschatological crisis,’ Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society (1998) 51:6, 197–216.
Joseph Agar Beet, The last things (1897; fifth edition, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1905), 83–100.
See, for example, The companion Bible, ed. E.W. Bullinger (1909–22; rpr. London: Lamp Press, n.d.), 162–3.
A. E. Knoch, The unveiling of Jesus Christ (Los Angeles: Concordant Publishing Concern, 1935).
T.K. McCrossan, The Bible: Its hell and its ages (Seattle, WA: privately published, 1941).
Philip Mauro, The gospel of the kingdom: An examination of modern dispensationalism (Swengel, PA: Bible Truth Depot, 1927), 5.
C.A. Chader, God’s plan through the ages (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1938), viii, dust cover.
G.H. Pember, The great prophecies of the centuries concerning Israel, the Gentiles, and the Church of God (London: Oliphants, 1941), vii.
William J. Rowlands, Our Lord cometh (London: Privately published, 1930)
Alexander Reese, The approaching advent of Christ: An examination of the teaching of J.N. Darby and his followers (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1937), xi.
C.F. Hogg and W.E. Vine, The church and the tribulation: A review of the book entitled ‘The Approaching advent of Christ’ (London: Pickering and Inglis, 1938), 9.
William Edward Biederwolf, The millennium Bible (privately published, 1924), 5.
Warfield outlined his reading of Revelation 20:1–10 in ‘The millennium and the apocalypse,’ in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, 10 vols (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), 2: 643–4.
Mark Sweetnam, ‘Tensions in dispensational eschatology,’ in Kenneth G.C. Newport and Crawford Gribben (eds), Expecting the end: Millennialism in social and historical context (Baylor, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), 173–92.
Shirley Jackson Case, The millennial hope: A phase of war-time thinking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918), 208.
R.H. Charles, A critical and exegetical commentary on the Revelation of St. John, International Critical Commentary, 2 volumes (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1920), 1: ix, 2: 437.
Charles G. Trumball, The life story of C.I. Scofield (New York: Oxford University Press, 1920)
Joseph M. Canfield, The incredible Scofield and his book (Vallecito, California: Ross House Books, 1988)
The term was sufficiently popularized for Harry Emerson Fosdick to use it in the title of his famous sermon, ‘Shall the fundamentalists win?’ (1922), in The Riverside Preachers, ed. Paul H. Sherry (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1978), 27–38.
The fundamentals: A testimony to the truth, ed. ‘Two Christian Laymen’ (Chicago: Testimony Publishing Company, 1910–1915), 1: Foreword.
Nick Railton, ‘Gog and Magog: The history of a symbol,’ Evangelical Quarterly 75:1 (2003), 23–43.
For accounts of the history of Christian Zionism, see Wilkinson, For Zion’s sake, and Donald M. Lewis, The origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical support for a Jewish homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Leonard Sale-Harrison, The remarkable Jew: God’s great timepiece (Harrisburg, PA: Evangelical Press Glasgow: Pickering & Inglis, 1934), 5.
Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The story of American Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic theology, 8 vols (1948; reprinted Dallas: Dallas Theological Seminary, 1975)
Jeffery John Richards, ‘The eschatology of Lewis Sperry Chafer: His contribution to a systematization of dispensational premillennialism’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Drew University, 1985).
Ed Hindson, End times, the middle east, and the New World Order (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1991), 28.
See, for a general discussion of the crisis in the mainstream denominations, Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and moderates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Daniel W. Draney, When streams diverge: John Murdock MacInnis and the origins of protestant Fundamentalism in Los Angeles, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2008), 189.
R. Todd Mangum, The dispensational-covenantal rift: The fissuring of American evangelical theology from 1936 to 1944, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007).
W.J. Grier, The momentous event: A discussion of Scripture teaching on the second advent (1945; reprinted Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970).
Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the church (1945; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1974).
Archibald Hughes, A new heaven and a new earth (Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1958)
Herman Ridderbos, The coming of the kingdom (Philadelphia, PA: P&R, 1962).
Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The fight of faith, 1939–1981 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1990)
John Brencher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) and twentieth-century evangelicalism, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2002).
Paul Boyer, By the bomb’s early light: American thought and culture at the dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985)
A.G. Mojtabai, Blessed assurance: At home with the bomb in Amarillo, Texas (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1986).
Billy Graham, World aflame (Tadworth, Surrey: The World’s Work, 1965), 13.
John F. Walvoord, The return of the Lord (1955; rpr. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), 9.
Arthur W. Kac, The rebirth of the State of Israel — Is it of God or of men? (Edinburgh: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1958), 8.
J. Dwight Pentecost, Prophecy for today: The middle east crisis and the future of the world (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1961), 16.
Frederick A. Tatford, Five minutes to midnight (London: Victory Press, 1970)
idem, It’s never been so late before (Belfast: Ambassador, 1986).
George M. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the new Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987).
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© 2011 Crawford Gribben
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Gribben, C. (2011). The Contest of Evangelical Millennialism, 1880–1970. In: Evangelical Millennialism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230304611_6
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