The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation

by Daniel G. Hummel

Second, a focus on dispensationalism illuminates contemporary trends toward polarization that have plagued evangelicalism in recent decades. These trends, I contend, are deeply intertwined with the “rise and fall” narrative of dispensationalism. While it was never the only theological tradition among fundamentalists or evangelicals, dispensationalism supplied at least four generations of white conservative Protestants, stretching from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, with a theological framework to read the Bible and understand the world. Insiders and outsiders differed over how accurate or helpful dispensationalism was, but its teachings supplied a reference point to millions of Christians all the same. With the fall of dispensationalism as a formal theological system in the 1990s, the white conservative Protestant community has deepened an ongoing crisis in theological identity, with many outside observers now questioning whether theology has much to do with evangelicalism at all. Rather than treat the current state of affairs as normative, a study of dispensationalism reveals the historical development of a theologically thin, while politically robust, popular evangelical culture. Conservative white Protestantism has always had other theological contenders, but the inherited theological tradition of dispensationalism, which now has fewer living theological proponents, played a significant role in shaping the “evangelical mind” until very recently.