Prophecy and progress: Christianity and dissent in modern America

Abstract

The categories of left and right, and the standard interpretive alignments of progressive Christianity with postmillennialism and of right-wing Protestantism with premillennialist fatalism in US historiography, are far from adequate. Prophetic politics, calling contemporary society to account for its ungodly ways, was widely dispersed among modern American Christians along the whole political spectrum. Moreover, there were many prophetic postmillennialists, who denounced society's iniquity while working to realize God's Kingdom, and there were reform premillennialists, who lamented a fallen world even as, paradoxically, they worked to make it more godly and less satanic.