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70-23,267 WILT, Paul Clifford,1929- PREMILLENNIALISM IN AMERICA, 1865-1918, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIAL REFORM. The American University, Ph.D., 1970 History, modern University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREMILLENNIALISM IN AMERICA. 1865-1918 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIAL REFORM by Paul Clifford Wilt Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Signatures of Committee: Chairman.l: ^ U '—*<— UP *Ai~- ■*— ]>> • l * l ■' Dean of the College " - Date: b y , ! 9 T 1970 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY JU N 2 1970 The American University Washington* D. C. HXH Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE According to Elmer T. Clark, there were in 1949 in America between three and four million adherents to the eschatological view known as premillennialism. He finds these in forty or more sects who include it as "one of the central ideas in their doctrinal statement" and among the 1 Fundamentalists "who have not left their denominations." Clark's figure is undoubtedly too low because he has apparently not included the thou­ sands of independent or denominationally unaffiliated churches, large and small, which are found in every part of the United States, many of whom would profess premillennialism as an important part of their creed. Of even greater importance than the actual number of adherents, however, is the influence which premillennialists have exerted in American church history over the last century. Charles Ryrie, Professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary and an ardent exponent of pre­ millennialism, feels that their influence has been greater than their numbers, for among them are to be found many of the "ablest, most devoted 2 and scholarly men that the Church has produced." At any rate, pre­ millennialists have been for nearly a century, and are still today, a sizable minority among Protestants in this country. Critics of the premillennialists often charge them with a lack of social concern or an unduly pessimistic attitude toward human progress, brought about in large measure by the theological presuppositions which underlie premillennial thought. Many premillennialists do not attempt to deny the accuracy of these charges. Rather, they defend their attitude 1 Elmer T. Clark, The Small Sects in America, rev. ed. (New York, 1949), pp. 33, 34. 2 Ryrie, The Basis of the Premillennial Faith (New York, 1953), p. 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ii by an appeal to Scripture. They feel that Scripture requires them to take such a position, and they are willing to do so in spite of criticism. Other premillennialists contend that these charges are not substantiated or that such lack of social concern as is to be found among them is more closely related to factors other than premillennialism. This study focuses upon a select group of premillennialists who were active in a period of American church history when premillennialism was on the offensive. A resurgence of premillennial eschatology began soon after the Civil War. Militant premillennialists presented a challenge to the dominant postmillennialists of the immediate post-war generation. For several decades the premillennialists enjoyed a measure of success. However, by the end of the century the premillennialists realized that there were more important battles to be fought, especially against higher criticism and liberalism, for these movements denied the infallibility of Scripture— a cardinal truth of the premillennialists— and attacked ortho­ dox theology in a number of other areas as well. Meanwhile, the move­ ment known as the "Social Gospel" was also coming into being. The Social Gospel, usually based on a liberal theology, was one answer of a growing group of churchmen to the pressing social problems in America in the decades after the war. Those who espoused the Social Gospel were con­ cerned with such problems as temperance, the urban poor, labor-management relations, the freedman, etc. Could the premillennialists, given their pessimistic premises, support efforts for social reform? This study will demonstrate that several views prevailed among the premillennial­ ists and that many of them were deeply involved in programs aimed at lifting men at all levels of society into a fuller and better life. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission iii My attention was first drawn to a study of the attitudes of premil­ lennialists toward social reform by Mr. Thomas Askew, of the history faculty of Wheaton (111.) College, who suggested, during the course of an all-night train ride between Chicago and New York City, that a seri­ ous study of the socio-political views of the early premillennialists in America was needed. C. Norman Kraus has made some valuable suggestions, and the well-known writers on the history of fundamentalism have devoted 3 some time, however brief, to the topic, but no one has attempted to de­ tail the views of these men as oppressed in their words and deeds. This dissertation is intended aa a first step toward meeting this need. The premillennialists considered here fall into two broad classifi­ cations which I have termed the "first generation" and the "second gen­ eration." The first generation began to preach and teach about the time of the Civil War, and most of them were dead by 1900. The second gener­ ation lived and worked until the 1920's, and in a few cases the 1930's. For all practical purposes, however, 1918 is used as the terminal date for this study because World War X; with its horror and brutality, came as a shock to the Christian world, particularly to postmillennialists who had assumed that the world was getting better and better. The war seemed to indicate that the premillennialists were correct in their view which emphasized the decline of civilization in the last days, a decline 3 Kraus, Dispensationalism in America (Richmond, 1958); Stewart G. Cole, The History of Fundamentalism (New York, 1931); Norman Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, 1918-1931 (New Haven, 1954); Louis Gasper, The Fundamentalist Movement (The Hague, 1963), and especially Carroll E. Harrington's Ph. D. dissertation, "The Funda­ mentalist Movement in America, 1870-1920" (University of California, Berkeley, 1959). All of these studies approach fundamentalism neg­ atively. The fundamentalists themselves have written little history. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. which would be ended only by the glorious restoration at the return of Christ to establish His kingdom. But the war did not result in an increase in the ranks of the premillennialists. The movement tended to be swallowed up, on the one hand, in the enthusiasm fbr the better world which the end of the war was expected to bring and, on the other, by the controversies in the denominations which marked the decade of the 1920's. Furthermore, the literalism of the premillennialists, upon which their eschatology depends, was losing its appeal to an in­ creasing number of churchmen. In addition 1918 was the year of the last of a series of interdenominational prophetic conferences spon­ sored by the premillennialists. Thus the war, which seemed to justify their position, actually marked a significant decline of the premil- lennialist movement. Another prophetic conference was not held for twenty-five years. So that I could keep the subject manageable, certain criteria were established. One stipulation was that in order to be considered, the individual must have been born before 1860. This led to a certain amount of arbitrariness, for it meant that Henry W. Frost (b. 1858) and J. Wilbur Chapman (b. 1859) are included, but William B. Riley and Arno C. Gaebelein (both born in 1861, and important figures in premillennial thought) are not. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the conclusions would not be appreciably altered if they and scores of other premil­ lennialists were included. All of the points of view that developed among premillennialists are represented by those included in this study. I began with the twenty men who Issued the call for the 1886 prophetic with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission 4 conference. To this list I added others who were, prominent in the prophetic conferences or in the various summer conferences, until I reached what I felt was a representative group of, about\ forty pastors, evangelists and educators, representing the first and second generations in about equal numbers. These premillennialists became the nucleus around which the study was built. I then sought to find everything written or said by this group which had reference to social reform. As the body of the work will make clear, most of them did not speak fre­ quently on these issues, but occasionally they did. It is these com­ ments and their related activities that proved instructive and produced some unexpected results. It is difficult to conceive of a study of any segment of evan­ gelical Christianity in America in the last third of the nineteenth century which does not include a section on D. L. Moody, one of the dominant figures of the period. I have resisted the temptation to study Those who issued the call were: A. J. Gordon Pastor Baptist Boston William R. Nicholson Bishop Reformed Epis Philadelphia William G. Moorehead Professor United Presby Xenia, Ohio William W. Clarke Pastor Dutch Reformed Elijah R. Craven Pastor Presbyterian Newark W. J. Erdman Pastor Congregational Boston J. D. Herr Pastor Baptist Norwich,*. 9 Conn. J. M. Orrock Editor Adventist Boston William Nast Pastor German Methodist Cincinnati John F.

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