World Without End, livre ebook

How belief in spiritual and material progress supplanted the Apocalypse in the world view of mainstream American Protestantism.

"In this compelling intellectual and social history, Moorhead argues that for mainline Protestants in the late 19th century, time became endless, human-directed and without urgency. . . . Moorhead offers some brilliant observations about the legacy of postmillennialism and the human need for a definitive eschaton." —Publishers Weekly

In the 19th century American Protestants firmly believed that when progress had run its course, there would be a Second Coming of Christ, the world would come to a supernatural End, and the predictions in the Apocalypse would come to pass. During the years covered in James Moorhead's study, however, moderate and liberal mainstream Protestants transformed this postmillennialism into a hope that this world would be the scene for limitless spiritual improvement and temporal progress. The sense of an End vanished with the arrival of the new millennium.

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Postmillennial Tradition, 1800-1880
1. Prophecy, the Bible, and Millennialism
2. Millennial Dreams and Other Last Things
3. "A Summary Court in Perpetual Session"
4. "A Kingdom as Wide as the Earth Itself"
5. The Kingdom of God and the Efficiency Engineer
6. Efficiency and the Kingdom in a World at War
7. The Fundamentalist Controversy and Beyond
Epilogue