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Early Morman Millenarianism: Another Look

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Grant Underwood
Affiliation:
Director of theLatter-day Saints Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, California.

Extract

It is by no means insignificant that many of the specially funded Tanner Lectures delivered recently at the annual meetings of the Mormon History Association have dealt, to some degree or another, with early Mormon millenarianism. This occurrence is less surprising when it is relized that the lectures come in the wake of a decade that produced what one historian has called “a veritable blizzard of scholarly and popular writings in the often stormy field of millennialism.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1985

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References

1. Tanner Lectures discussing Mormon millenarianism include Wood, S., “Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,” New York History 61 (1980):359386;Google ScholarSmith, Timothy L., “The Book of Mormon in a Biblical Culture,” Journal of Mormon History 7 (1980);321;Google ScholarWilson, John F., “Some Comparative Perspectives on the Early Mormon Movement and the Church-State Question, 1830–1845,” Journal of Mormon History 8 (1981):6377;Google Scholar and Gager, John G., “Early Mormonism and Early Christianity: Some Parallels and Their Consequences For the Study of New Religions,” Journal of Mormon History 9 (1982):5360.Google Scholar

2. The recent literature in received in Leonard I. Sweet, , “Millennialism in America: Recent Studies,” Theological Studies 40 (1979):510531,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and in Schwartz, Hillel, “The End of the Beginning: Millenarian Studies, 1969–1975,” Religious Studies Review 2 (1976): 115.Google Scholar The quotation is from Sweet, p. 511.

3. Hansen, Klaus, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty (East Lansing, Mich., 1967).Google Scholar The master's theses are Reinwand, Louis G., “An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism During the Nineteenth Century with Emphasis on Millennial Development in Utah,” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1971);Google ScholarSwensen, Russell, “The Influence of the New Testament upon Latter-day Saint Eschatology from 1830–1845,” (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1931);Google Scholar and Underwood, Grant, “Early Mormon Millennialism: Another Look,” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1981).Google Scholar

4. See, for example, such standard surveys as Allen, James B. and Leonard, Glen M., The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, 1976);Google ScholarArrington, Leonard J. and Bitton, Davis, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York, 1979);Google Scholar and Poll, Richard D. et al. , eds., Utah's History (Provo, Utah, 1978).Google Scholar

5. Hansen, Klaus, “Mormonism and American Culture; Some Tentative Hypotheses,” in The Restoration Movement: Essays in Mormon History, by McKiernan, F. Mark et al. (Lawrence, Ks., 1973), pp 126;Google Scholar“The Millennium, the West and Race in the Antebellum Mind,” Western Historical Quarterly 3 (1973);371390;Google Scholar and Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago, 1981).Google Scholar

6. Sandeen, Ernest R., The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago, 1970), p. 302.Google Scholar

7. As in many fields, especially interdisciplinary ones like millennial studies, there is an unfortunate lack of consensus on nomenclature. Theologically oriented students tend toward terms like premillennialism, postmillenialism, and amillennialism, while social socientists talk of millenarian movements and literary critics describe the apocalyptic. Some historians have popularized an extra-dictionary distinction between the terms millennialism and millenarianism which makes millennialism interchangeable with the more cumbersome postmillennialism and millenarianism synonymous with premillennialism. I will follow this latter convention.

8. Clouse, Robert G., ed., The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (Downers Gove, Ill., 1977), p. 7.Google Scholar

9. Marsden, George, The Evangelical Mmd and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven, 1970), p. 185.Google Scholar Marsden also sheds valuable light on the subsequent history of millennial ideologies in Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York, 1980).Google ScholarSandeen, Ernest R., “Millennialism,” in The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Gaustad, Edwin S., (New York, 1974), p. 113;Google ScholarOliver, W. H., Prophets and Millennialists: The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England from the 1790s to the 1840s (Auckland, New Zealand 1978), pp. 1819.Google Scholar

10. Oliver, , Prophets and Millenialists, p. 21.Google Scholar

11. As only the most recent example, see Norman, Keith E., “How Long O Lord?: The Delay of the Parousia in Mormonism,” Sunstone 8 (01 1983):5965.Google Scholar The “transformation” of the Mormon “millennial vision” is approached from a different angle in Shipps, Jan, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religous Tradition (Urbana, Ill., 1985).Google Scholar

12. Hansen, , Quest for Empire, passim; Reinwand, “An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism,” pp. 153160, 4348,Google Scholar passim.

13. Morhead, James H., American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860–1869 (New Haven, 1978), p. 8.Google Scholar

14. See note 2 above.

15. Bercovitch, Sacvan, “The Typolgoy of America's Mission,” American Quartely 30 (1978): 137.Google Scholar

16. Garrett, Clarke, Respectable Foll: Millebnariabns and the French Revolution in France and England (Baltimore, 1975), p. 7.Google Scholar

17. Quoted in Davidson, James W., “Searching for the Millennium: Problems for the 1790s and the 1970s,” New England Quarterly 45 (1972): 252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Doctrine and Covenants (Salt Lake City, 1981), 88: 84, 8990.Google Scholar

19. Sweet, , “Millennialism in America,” p. 522;Google ScholarDavidson, James, The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth Century New England (New Haven, 1977) p. 277;Google ScholarMarsden, , The Evangelical Mind, pp. 193197,Google Scholar italics added; Davidson, , Logic of Millennial Thought, p. 277.Google Scholar

20. Sandeen, , Roots of Fundamentalism, see esp. pp. 183186;Google ScholarWeber, Timothy P., Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925 (New York, 1979), see esp. pp. 6581.Google Scholar

21. Weber, , Living in the Shadow, p. 67.Google Scholar

22. Quoted in Marsden, , The Evangelical Mind, p. 194.Google Scholar

23. Smith, David E., “Millenarian Scholarship in America,” American Quarterly 17 (1965):539;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWeber, , Living in the Shadow, pp. 69, 70;Google ScholarRigdon, Sidney, The Evening and the Morning Star 2 (1834):163.Google Scholar I have explored Mormon views on these matters at greater length in “Millenarianism and the Early Mormon Mind,” Journal of Mormon History 9 (1982):4151;Google Scholar and “‘Saved or Damned’: Tracing a Persistent Protestantism in Early Mormon Thought,” BYU Studies 25 (Winter 1985):Google Scholar forthcoming.

24. Quoted in Johnson, Paul E., A Shopkeeper's Millennium (New York, 1978), pp. 34.Google Scholar

25. Stein, Stephen J., ed., The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol 5, Apocalyptic Writings (New Haven, 1977), pp. 378398.Google Scholar

26. Whalen, Robert K., “Millenarianism and Millennialism in America, 1790–1880” (Ph.D. diss., State University College of New York at Stony Brook, 1971), p. 134n.Google Scholar

27. The 1973 essay referred to is “Mormonism and American Culture: Some Tentative Hypotheses.”

28. See Hansen, , Quest for Empire, p. 230.Google Scholar For Schwartz and Sweet, see note 2 above.

29. Hansen, , Mormonism and the American Experience, pp. 115117.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., pp. 119–122. Such a clearly socioeconomic interpretation of millenarianism might have been bolstered by the insights and interpretive models of such historians and social scientists as E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawn, Vittorio Lanternari, Peter Worsley, and Christopher Hill, all of whom see millenarianism as a response to social or economic tensions but none of whom, interestingly enough, Hansen cites in either his text or his sources.

31. Sweet, , “Millennialism in America,” p. 513.Google Scholar

32. Lamont, William, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–1660 (New York, 1969);CrossRefGoogle ScholarLerner, Robert E., The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1972), p. 233;Google ScholarHarrison, John F. C., Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (New York, 1969)Google Scholar and The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780–1850 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1979);Google ScholarOliver, , Prophets and Millennialists, pp. 1418.Google Scholar

33. Talmon, Yonina, “Millenarian Movements,” European Journal of Sociology 7 (1966):190;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSchwartz, , “The End of the Beginning,” p. 7;Google ScholarBerkhofer, Robert F., “A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York, 1969);Google ScholarAberle, David F., “A Note on Relative Deprivation Theory as Applied to Millenarian and Other Cult Movements,” in Millennial Dreams in Action, ed. Thrupp, Sylvia L. (New York, 1970), p. 209.Google Scholar

34. Hill, Marvin, “The Rise of Mormonism in the Burned-over District: Another View,” New York History 61 (1980):421, 430.Google Scholar

35. Pillis, Mario De, “Bearding Leone and Others in the Heartland of Mormon Historiography,” Journal of Mormon History 8 (1981): 96.Google Scholar Thus far there have been two efforts in this direction: Yorgason, Laurence M., “Some Demographic Aspects of One Hundred Early Mormon Converts, 1830–1837” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1974);Google Scholar and Grandstaff, Mark R., “The Impact of the Mormon Migration on the Community of Kirtland, Ohio, 1830–1839” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1984).Google Scholar

36. As an initial attempt at applying Erich Auerbach's model of literary figuralism to early Mormonism, see Wilson, John F., “Some Comparative Perspectives,” pp. 6668.Google Scholar The quotation is Hebrews 11:26.

37. Talmon, , “Millenarian Movements,” p. 190;Google ScholarLeff, Gordon, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Manchester, 1967), 1:17, 6979;Google ScholarRowe, David L., “A New Perspective on the Burned-over District: The Millerites in Upstate New York,” Church History 47 (1978):408420,Google Scholar quote at p. 411—this is a distillation of his “Thunder and Trumpets: The Millerite Movement and Apocalyptic Thought in Upstate New York, 1800-–845,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974);Google ScholarHill, , “Rise of Mormonism,” p. 430.Google Scholar

38. For recent critiques of the “Kingdom School” interpretation of the Council of Fifty, see Quinn, D. Michael, “The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844–1945,” BYU Studies 20 (1980):163197;Google Scholar and Ehat, Andrew F., “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” BYU Studies 20 (1980): 253279.Google Scholar Also see Hill, Marvin, “Quest for Refuge: An Hypothesis as to the Social Origins and Nature of the Mormon Political Kingdom,” Journal of Mormon History 2 (1975): 320.Google Scholar

39. Foster, Quoted in Lawrence, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981), p. 17.Google Scholar

40. Oliver, , Prophets and Millennialists, pp. 1618.Google Scholar

41. Smith, , “The Book of Mormon,” pp. 1213.Google ScholarTuveson's, Ernest work is Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968). See esp. pp. 175186.Google Scholar

42. Smith, , “The Book of Mormon,” pp. 1718.Google Scholar

43. Wilson, , “Some Comparative Perspectives,” pp. 6869.Google Scholar

44. Harrison, , The Second Coming, pp. 182183.Google Scholar

45. Oliver, , Prophets and Millennialists, p. 238.Google Scholar

46. Gager, , “Early Mormonism and Early Christianity,” p. 56.Google Scholar

47. Sweet, , “Millennialism in America,” p. 531.Google Scholar