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

by Daniel G. Hummel

The logic of who selectively adopted Brethren teachings and when was complex, but one overriding factor was that both Brethren evangelization and American adoption were taking place in the years surrounding the American Civil War. The experience of white evangelicals in the border states, in particular, proved to be fertile ground for Brethren reception. The trauma of war made some Americans in the border states allergic to overtly nationalist conceptions of the church. This aversion was carried into the era of Reconstruction, when border-state Christians became some of the loudest proponents of sectional reconciliation between Northern and Southern whites. By 1870, the outlines of a new radical subculture emerged that combined the priority of sectional reconciliation with key Brethren teachings about the heavenly nature of the church and the premillennial arrival of the kingdom of God. These radicals created a new interpretive community—first in the border states and then beyond—with its own ways of talking about the Bible, salvation, the church, prophecies, and the future. They ditched the old premillennial methods of date setting, making a break with the long-standing premillennial tradition in America. They also rejected key aspects of Brethren teachings, including anticlericalism (most of the early new premillennialists were professional pastors), ecclesiastical separatism (most remained in their denominations), and the Brethren resistance to the holiness movement (mo...