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

by Daniel G. Hummel

Carl F. H. Henry’s book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947),

Ladd sketched in his next books, especially The Gospel of the Kingdom (1959) and Jesus and the Kingdom (1964), an “already/not yet” kingdom theology, also called “inaugurated eschatology.”

Nor could it readily explain the precipitating decline of premillennialism in evangelicalism in the 2010s: its abandonment by seminaries and Christian colleges, denominational shifts like the decision by the Evangelical Free Church of America to declare premillennialism “nonessential” and remove it from its statement of faith, or the rapid growth of “network Christianity” teaching Pentecostal and charismatic postmillennialism.34 Of course, elite and institutional influence was only one measure of success. In the pulpits and pews, dispensational themes continued to resonate. To take one example, a 2015 volume resembling the 1994 Issues in Dispensationalism took a victory lap, claiming that “dispensationalism is an enduring and essential facet of the evangelical

landscape.” The volume exhibited some of the same insularities as twenty years earlier (seven of the ten 2015 contributors held appointments at Dallas Seminary, and all but one had earned a degree there), yet the volume had a point. The question was where the “facet” was located. “Dispensationalism is a popular, and populist, movement,” one of the editors wrote. “Dispensational teaching is so widespread that a lot of people read the Bible this way, even if they are unaware that their position is dispensational. For many of them, it is all they know.”35 Indeed, a general premillennial orientation toward world events and church apostasy could be found across evangelicalism, as could more specific teachings on the rapture and the special eschatological role of the State of Israel. In many cases, pastors trained at dispensational schools continued to teach the theology long after the schools themselves had moved on. In other cases, the confluence of media, culture, and pastoral influence reinforced pop-dispensational

eschatology. Pastors often drew from the deep historical wells of dispensational-influenced hymnody and visual culture, which kept at least s...

My hope is built on nothing less Than Scofield’s notes and Moody Press I dare not trust this Thompson’s chain But wholly lean on Scofield’s fame Anonymous