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

by Daniel G. Hummel

He broke down barriers between white Christians—between denominations and confessions, between sections, between classes—which came at the expense of racial reform and integration. Judged by his sermons, the Black church lay outside Moody’s vision of reconciliation. As the most consequential religious leader in late nineteenth-century America, Moody played an outsized role in depoliticizing the Civil War and bridging divides between North and South during Reconstruction. But this program of forgiveness was narrow and narrowly conceived, premised on bracketing existing racism and discrimination, ignoring the rise of racial segregation regimes in the South, and rekindling fellowship and brotherhood with secessionists and advocates of Jim Crow. This deal was one that premillennialists not only tolerated but, in later decades, embraced. The benefits to shared missionary efforts and Christian unity were too important to pass up. These two implications of Moody’s ministry—the popularization and fusion of new premillennialism with revivalism—could hardly be separated. They worked together to form a potent and wildly successful message.