When Jesus Did Not Return: The Evangelical Crisis of 1843

The “Second Great Awakening,” an explosion of evangelical revivalism in the young United States, set out to convert individuals in such numbers that the entire nation would be redeemed. This lecture analyzes why and with what consequences people felt that promise to be failing from 1840 on. The most notorious instance involved William Miller who prophesied that the second coming of Christ would occur sometime between the spring equinoxes of 1843 and 1844. Just as telling were the ways that Charles Finney, the era’s champion revivalist, altered his theology to address disappointing realities and that Angelina Grimké and Theodore Weld, Finney’s prize convert, turned away from the abolitionist crusading that made their fame to find a separate peace. These cases exposed fateful premises in the evangelical program that still bedevil the movement today.