World Without End: Mainstream American Protestant Visions of the Last Things, 1880-1925 (Religion in North America)

"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.