Civil War defeat drove southern evangelicals from postmillennialism to premillennialism
Evidence
After a humiliating and decisive Civil War defeat, however, such an optimistic vision of imminent political realization of Christian ideals held less attraction. By the late nineteenth century, the Lost Cause generation began to adopt a premillennialist theology that held the opposite: the present world represents the work of a sinful and fallen humanity, it will continue to decline, and it will be redeemed only by the second coming of Christ. This view was widely spread by the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible, which Reverend C. I. Scofield, a Confederate war veteran from Tennessee, first published with Oxford University Press in 1909.38 By the end of World War II, the Scofield Reference Bible had sold two million copies. Today it has been in print for more than a hundred years. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 264
Categorization
- CANDY: The Confederate veteran who replaced postmillennial optimism with premillennial doom in a Bible that sold millions is a vivid, tweetable irony.
- DEEPTHINKING: A military defeat reshaping a whole tradition’s theology of history — from working to build God’s kingdom to awaiting only divine rescue — is a dense, paradigm-shaping causal claim about how political humiliation bends eschatology.
- XREF: connects to: Southern whites faced defeat as a theodicy problem, not a political one — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 253; Clergy reframed Confederate defeat as a Christlike resurrection narrative promising eventual triumph — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 256; Civil War casualties shattered evangelical postmillennial optimism — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 51 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Civil War casualties shattered evangelical postmillennial optimism
#corroborates(0.85) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 51 - Nineteenth-century evangelicals adopted British premillennialism as a theology of social disengagement
#qualifies(0.75) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 54 - Premillennial theology insulated fundamentalists from the war’s disillusionment
#responds-to(0.70) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 48