The United States, as the self-proclaimed “shining light on the hill,” has always seen itself through apocalyptic eyes. Most Christians prior to the Civil War were postmillennialists, believing in a thousand years of peace before Christ returns. The only thing preventing this golden age ushering Christ’s second coming was the obscene sin of slavery.
Listen carefully to the words of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and you will hear this postmillennialist religious fervor.
The bloody carnage of the Civil War decimated the optimism of postmillennialism. Human nature’s capacity for depravity, illustrated on the battlefields, made any illusion of establishing a golden age of peace unachievable.
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