ON THE MOST GENERAL LEVEL, this book is an exercise in understanding how familiar people think strangely. The question I raise is, granting New Englanders' strange interest in Biblical prophecies about the end of time, how did eschatology influence the way they looked at the rest of the world? Did the Book of Revelation and the tradition of interpretation growing out of it have a logic of their own which disposed people to think or act in certain consistent ways?
In the end, the prophecies possessed a consistent social function: to serve as promises that God would deliver his church even though the faithful seemed overwhelmed in their war with Satan. Paradoxically, that reassurance also proved socially polarizing, for it turned opponents into conniving agents of the devil and the Antichrist, with whom no compromise was possible. |
“DAVIDSON BRINGS TO HIS TASK a penchant for clear prose, a good measure of wit, and a fine sense for the organization of ideas. This is an excellent study which exposes serious flaws in the prevailing notions concerning eschatology in early America and also proposes an instructive alternate view.”
--Journal of American History
--Journal of American History