The Place of Religion in Antebellum America

My second North Dakota winter is coming to a close, and I must say that this one has been much better than the first.  Days with a high below 20 have been relatively rare this year.  Last year, days with a high about 20 were rare.  I'm not complaining.

I'm also about to the end of my second year as a doctoral student and working on reading for my comprehensive exams, while teaching a class and taking a couple of classes on top of that load.  The current book I'm working through is Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought, which takes its title from the first message sent over the telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse, himself an evangelical Christian.

What Hath God Wrought is a volume in Oxford University Press's series that covers the history of the United States.  The volume spans the period between the end of the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.  Like many historians, Howe focuses his account on change over time, specifically revolutions in communications and transportation.  This emphasis disputes Charles Grier Sellers' argument that it was a market revolution that dominated this period of antebellum American history.

I am not quite finished with the book, but in the eleven or so chapters that I've worked through thus far, three of them deal specifically with religion as their main topic.  Chapters on the Second Great Awakening, millennarianism, and the intersection between religion and reason/science have been prevalent.  The Second  Great Awakening has often been tied to the emphasis on reform/temperance/abolitionism, as well as the democratization of American religion that resulted in the splintering of the major denominations--although it can also be argued that this last point was just a continuation of a trend started with the original Great Awakening.

Howe focuses his chapter regarding the millennarian movements upon such groups as the Millerites who believed Christ would return at some point in 1843-1844 and the Mormons, in addition to various utopian socialist groups (most of which failed pretty quickly and miserably).  He also points out that a belief in intelligent design was the default position in the nineteenth century, even among those who intimated at evolution before Darwin.  While I'm sure these points have been debated, one thing is obvious--it is impossible to tell the story of American history without understanding that Protestant Christianity had a major role in shaping what the nation would become.  Some people overemphasize the Christianity of the founding fathers.  Some people emphasize the lack of Christianity in the founding fathers.  This topic is an ongoing debate.  What cannot be debated is that the majority of people tended to adhere at least nominally to some form of Christianity (even today the number of professed Christians in America stands at over 80%).  Then, as now, many failed to live up to the ideal, but the ideal nonetheless impacted the formative years of the American republic. 

Regardless, the early nineteenth century is an interesting period in American church history.

It's the End of the World as We Know It...Or Is It?

Did the world end, and we just missed it?  October 21 was the date set by radio minister Harold Camping.  Many people had their eyes on May 21 this year as the day that the rapture would happen.  Camping, a 90-ish radio Bible teacher, claimed to have cracked the code as to when Jesus would return.  May 21 came and went--no rapture.  Camping claimed that his calculations were off, much as they were previously when he made a similar prediction in the 1980s, and that the big day would actually occur five months later, on October 21.

In case you haven't noticed, October 21 has come and gone, and the world continues, much as it did on October 20, and October 19, etc.  Camping is not the first to have made such bold predictions.  I remember a book in the 1980s titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. Edgar Whisenant, the author of 88 Reasons was just as wrong as Camping.  Neither Camping nor Whisenant is the biggest flop in terms of failed predictions of the end.

The original Great Disappointment occurred in 1844.  Baptist minister William Miller predicted that Jesus would return in 1843.  When 1843 came and went, Miller then predicted sometime between March 21 and April 21, 1844, although he would not give a specific date.  Those dates came and went.  Samuel Snow then predicted at a camp meeting that the true date would be October 22, 1844--the date of the official Great Disappointment.

Many people scoffed at the Millerites, as many scoff at Camping's predictions.  I'm pretty sure that the whole "thief in the night" and "at an hour you think not" preclude anyone actually getting a date for Christ's return.  I don't doubt that He will return, I'm just betting that no one will get the exact date straight.  These people tend to arouse scoffers through their errors.  I guess the next big date will be December 21, 2012.  I'm not expecting much that day, either.