Belief in Christ’s imminent return absolved evangelicals of duty to reform society

Evidence

Darby’s interpretive scheme was called dispensationalism, or dispensational premillennialism, because it divided all of human history into ages, or dispensations. The consequence of Darby’s premillennialism (Jesus would return before the millennium) was to absolve evangelicals of responsibility for addressing social ills. If Jesus was going to return at any moment, why bother with making this transitory world a better place? — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 55

Categorization

• XREF: This is the heart of the book’s argument about how theology became a political flight-from-responsibility — connects to Balmer’s larger frame that the religious right’s raison d’etre was racial backlash, with premillennialism as the prior evacuation from social engagement. — connects to: Believing salvation guarantees future reward frees Christians from present moral responsibility — Chuck Missler, The Kingdom, Power and Glory: The…, 136; Premillennialism let even moderate evangelicals defer racial justice to the Second Coming — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 267; Expecting Christ’s imminent return made evangelical architecture deliberately functionalist — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 57 (+5 more)

Related

• Nineteenth-century evangelicals adopted British premillennialism as a theology of social disengagement (similarity 0.86)
• Expecting Christ’s imminent return made evangelical architecture deliberately functionalist (similarity 0.85)
• Evangelicals traded collective social redemption for individual salvation as liberalism embraced the Social Gospel (similarity 0.84)
• Expectation of Christ’s imminent return produced drab evangelical architecture (similarity 0.84)
• Premillennialism let even moderate evangelicals defer racial justice to the Second Coming (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Evangelicals abandoned social reform for individual conversion as proto-liberals embraced it #corroborates (0.90)
• Nineteenth-century evangelicals adopted British premillennialism as a theology of social disengagement #expands (0.90) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 54
• Expecting Christ’s imminent return made evangelical architecture deliberately functionalist #corroborates (0.85) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 57
• Expectation of Christ’s imminent return produced drab evangelical architecture #expands (0.80) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 56
• Premillennial theology insulated fundamentalists from the war’s disillusionment #qualifies (0.75) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 48