Premillennial Evangelical Politics

Randall Balmer, who’s an Episcopalian from an evangelical background, posted this interesting piece at Sojourners tracing how conservative Protestantism became politically pessimistic as it shifted from postmillennial to premillennial. He concludes:

The doctrine of premillennialism — Jesus will return imminently — effectively absolved American evangelicals of responsibility to reform society and redirected their energies toward individual regeneration. With very few exceptions, evangelicals remained outside the political fray in the final decades of the 19th century and well into the 20th.

Balmer omits other theological currents in this transition. Mainline Protestantism by late 19th century if not earlier was so culturally paramount that it was overly confident. It virtually assumed that it could steer America, and ultimately the world, into the Millennium. At the same time it was adopting theological Modernism, minimizing or rejecting the need for personal salvation. Christianity, especially through the Social Gospel, was a code of ethics for building God’s Kingdom on earth through political and social action.

Fundamentalists who later became mostly known as Evangelicals rejected this heterodoxy and earthly optimism by often shifting hard in the opposite direction. They remained active citizens, but the institutional church withdrew from active political witness, instead focusing on evangelism. They widely adopted not only premillennialism but also Dispensationalism, with its focus on impending End-times, especially the Great Tribulation, before which faithful saints are raptured.

Many Evangelicals after WWII became more politically active and optimistic under the influence of Billy Graham and Carl Henry, among others. America’s post war global leadership offered enhanced opportunity both for wider evangelism and redemptive political influence. They also remained premillennial and mostly Dispensationalist, with the founding of modern Israel a validation to many of the End-times calendar.

This relatively sunny premillennialism was displaced by darker moods in the 1970s, with greater stress on the End-times apocalypse thanks to literature from Hal Lindsey (The Late, Great Planet Earth) and Tim LaHaye, (Left Behind) among others, who foresaw the Rapture as almost imminent. These cataclysmic commentaries, films and novels, read and watched by tens of millions, universalized Evangelical Dispensationalism into American culture. Even secular novels and films, like The Omen and The Exorcist, echoed concerns about satanic evil, amid a prevailing atmosphere of increased pessimism and anxiety.

It cannot be over stressed that this Dispensationalist pessimism, through its entrance into popular culture, deeply influenced America as a whole, not just Evangelicals. Recently on Twitter a Notre Dame professor assured me that Catholics have no use for Dispensationalism. Official Catholic doctrine of course does not. But millions of American Catholics, along with many non religious Americans, are still exposed to its themes and however unconsciously are shaped by them.

Oddly, in the 1980s, evangelical Dispensationalists at least partly set aside their pessimism to organize the Religious Right, which has shaped American politics for the last 40 years. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were Dispensationalist Baptists, but the thinker who provided their intellectual architecture was Francis Schaeffer, a premillennial Presbyterian who was not Dispensationalist. He rejected the Rapture and believed the church would suffer the Great Tribulation. As a Calvinist, he believed in the church’s ability and duty to shape culture and postpone divine judgment.

Religious conservative activism today remains a mixture of Dispensationalist pessimism and Schaefferian hope for delayed Apocalypse through activism for a godly society, or at least a society where godliness can exist. Perhaps the bigger story is that Dispensationalist pessimism has permeated wider American conservative thought, religious or not, so that Apocalypse is foreseen as nearly imminent, depending on contemporary political choices.

Ironically, specific fidelity by USA Evangelicalism to the details of Dispensationalist theology is probably declining, as Balmer notes. Yet the pessimism and anticipation of potential apocalypse have metastisized throughout American culture and political thinking. Innate American optimism was rooted in Protestant hopeful postmillennialism about partnering with God for an always better future, and it long outlasted specific adherence to its theological specifics. The same now seems true for Dispensationalism, with its gloom and fears outlasting the theological specifics.

Gloom and fear cannot sustain long term cultural renewal. An effective and faithful Christian public witness must avoid the overconfidence of earlier postmillennialism while also embracing hope that divine redemption is for individuals and societies. Balmer exaggerates the supposed political indifference of earlier Dispensationalists. And in his haste to deride them, even blames them for ugly church architecture! Evangelical apathy about the aesthetic is likely the real culprit.

Dispensationalists rightly challenged the Social Gospel’s frequent indifference to personal redemption. And they rightly understood that Christians should live in constant anticipation of Christ’s return and judgment. But their theological certitudes, based on 19th century insights, offered their own overconfidence and inhibited the church from redeeming society with confident hope.

Schaeffer, in sync with historic Christianity, understood the Body of Christ is sufficiently multifaceted to proclaim personal salvation and reform civilization. Both depend on the Holy Spirit and preclude human arrogance. Hopefully American Evangelicals, with other Christians, can rediscover this teaching and espouse a public theology of human humility and divine confidence.