World without End: Mainstream American Protestant Vision of the LastThings 1880-1925

"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.

James H. Moorhead is the Mary McIntosh Bridge Professor of American Church History at Princeton Theological Seminary. He previously taught at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The author of American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860-1869, Mr. Moorhead is also senior editor of The Journal of Presbyterian History.