154 - Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1925

Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming:
American Premillennialism, 1875-1925
By Timothy P. Weber
New York, Oxford University Press, 1979. 232 pp. $14.95.

Historiography tends to be a reflection of cultural trends to some degree, and the recent explosion of literature on millennialism in church history is in part a product of the apocalyptic mood of American society. Weber's book is a constructive and useful survey of the emergence of premillennialism in American Protestantism, a movement which remains strong and vital today. He details how premillennialism became allied with dispensationalism and fundamentalist views of biblical authority during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but he also tries to show how premillennialism actually affected behavior.

Despite a pessimistic view of human history, premillennialists turned aggressively toward missionary activity in an attempt to save as many souls as possible before the end of the world. Politically, they often assumed extremely conservative, if not reactionary positions, believing that any reform of the social order was obstructing the power of God in bringing history to its conclusion. At the same time, they began to construct a subculture of publishing houses, schools, churches, and media programming that has assumed mammoth proportions in our own time. All the while, they were fighting-with each other over the timing of the tribulation and the rapture and other arcane points of premillennialist doctrine, and with others who rejected the presuppositions of premillennialism. The air of acrimony hangs heavily over its history.

Weber's treatment is marred by an excessively broad definition of those who were premillennialists. This excess tends to make the movement appear more inclusive than it actually was or is. Weber also finds in premillennialism at least the potential for a radical critique of society, despite its evident worldliness. Yet, in light of American church history, such an evaluation must be phrased in terms of an expectation, rather than a description; perhaps that is the way Weber intends it.

John M. Mulder
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, N.J.