The death of Hal Lindsey on Nov. 25 symbolically brings to a close a chapter of evangelical theology that was popular for more than a century and has had an outsize effect on American politics.
Born in Texas, Lindsey graduated from the University of Houston and then from Dallas Theological Seminary, with a master’s degree in theology. He worked for Campus Crusade for Christ in Southern California and then, cribbing from his seminary notes, wrote what became one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the 1970s, “The Late Great Planet Earth.” (Whether the book qualifies as nonfiction is a conversation for another day.)
Lindsey’s book popularized an approach to biblical interpretation called premillennialism, which posits that the world as we know it will come imminently to an end, as predicted in both the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible and in the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament.
Christians through the centuries have tried to make sense of these prophetic writings, especially Revelation with its filigreed imagery of multiheaded dragons and vials of judgment, the antichrist and the numerals 666. A key bone of contention is whether Jesus will return to Earth before (premillennialism) or after (postmillennialism) the 1,000 years of righteousness predicted in Revelation 20.
The difference might be dismissed as theological nitpicking, the equivalent of counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. But evangelical understandings of premillennialism and postmillennialism have had a profound effect on American history.
In the early decades of the 19th century, evangelicals by and large were postmillennialists — that is, they believed that Jesus would return after the faithful had reformed society according to the norms of godliness. This doctrine in turn animated a variety of social reforms — peace crusades, public schooling (called common schools in the 1800s), prison reform, women’s equality, opposition to slavery (in the North) — all aimed at bringing about the kingdom of God on Earth, and more particularly in America. The Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, the most influential evangelical — a Presbyterian, by the way — of the era excoriated free-market capitalism because commerce elevated avarice over altruism.
By the late 1800s, however, evangelicals were becoming disillusioned. The carnage of Civil War battlefields and the squalid tenements in Lower Manhattan, teeming with labor unrest, hardly resembled the precincts of Zion that evangelicals had so confidently predicted earlier in the century.
To the rescue came a theologian from Britain, John Nelson Darby. He told American evangelicals that they had it all wrong. Jesus would return before not after Revelation’s thousand-year utopia kicked in.
As Darby’s interpretation became popular, American evangelicals’ attitudes toward society changed radically. They had been activists trying to reform society, to make the world a better place. But if Jesus was going to return at any moment, why bother? This world was doomed and transitory, they believed, so why worry about social amelioration?
Theologically, the emphasis shifted from social reform to an individual reckoning — accepting Jesus as your personal savior. Premillennialism stoked political apathy; it absolved evangelical Christians of the task of social reform.
In many ways, Lindsey’s “Late Great” book represented the culmination of that sentiment. The churches and believers considered to be evangelical lost a fixation on the Sermon on the Mount (“blessed are the peacemakers”) and Matthew 25 (care for “the least of these”), and gained one on salvation and prophecy, especially the ways Israel figured into that prophecy.
Lindsey sought to interpret current events — the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, for example, or the 1967 Six-Day War — through references to the apocalyptic passages of the Bible. The takeaway was that Jesus would return imminently, collect the faithful (read: evangelicals) and rain judgment on anyone “left behind.”
But times and fixations shifted again. As white evangelicals became politically organized late in the 1970s, initially in defense of racial segregation at evangelical institutions and later in opposition to abortion, they concentrated on specific politicians and electoral outcomes. Following a string of such political successes — beginning with Ronald Reagan’s election over a progressive evangelical, Jimmy Carter — white evangelicals were no longer premillennialists (though many still claim to be).
They were seeking to influence and remake the world again, like their 19th century forebears — but with one important difference: Whereas evangelicals of the earlier era overwhelmingly directed their efforts toward those on the margins of society — the less fortunate, people of color, women — white evangelicals since the rise of the religious right have embraced an agenda that exalts capitalism and cares little for “the least of these.”
Lindsey’s premillennialism represents the culmination of nearly a century of evangelical social indifference in the U.S. But as that era gave way to the Christian religious right, it has resulted, ironically, in political activism largely indifferent to the teachings of Jesus.
Randall Balmer is a religion professor at Dartmouth College and the author of “Mine Eyes have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America.”
