Dispensational Modernism

Dispensationalism emerged in the twentieth century as a hugely influential force in American religion and soon became one of America's most significant religious exports. By the close of the century it had developed into a global religious phenomenon claiming millions of adherents. As the most common form of contemporary prophecy belief, dispensationalism has played a major role in transforming religion, politics, and pop culture in the U.S. and throughout the world. Despite its importance and continuing appeal, scholars often reduce dispensationalism to an anti-modern, apocalyptic, and literalist branch of Protestant fundamentalism. In Dispensational Modernism, B. M. Pietsch argues that, on the contrary, the allure of dispensational thinking can best be understood through the lens of technological modernism. Pietsch shows that between 1870 and 1920 dispensationalism grew out of the popular fascination with applying engineering methods -- such as quantification and classification -- to the interpretation of texts and time. At the heart of this new network of texts, scholars, institutions, and practices was the lightning-rod Bible teacher C. I. Scofield, whose best-selling Scofield Reference Bible became the canonical formulation of dispensational thought. The first book to contextualize dispensationalism in this provocative way, Dispensational Modernism shows how mainstream Protestant clergy of this time developed new "scientific" methods for interpreting the Bible, and thus new grounds for confidence in religious understandings of time itself.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Taxonomic minds and the technological construction of confidence Chapter 2: The social construction of confidence Chapter 3: Competing sciences of biblical interpretation Chapter 4: Dispensational hermeneutics Chapter 5: Building the dispensations Chapter 6: Engineering time Chapter 7: The Scofield Reference Bible amidst a dispensational century Notes Index

About the Author :
B. M. Pietsch is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Nazarbayev University, in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Review :
"Pietsch has permanently altered the way we will understand dispensationalism. And for this we indeed owe him dearly."-- Timothy E. W. Gloege, Fides et Historia "Any scholar wishing to write anything about dispensationalism would do well to consult this book first, because B. M. Pietsch gives us the most developed and nuanced interpretation of dispensational ideas yet seen. In doing so, he problematizes much of what we often say about premillennialism, dispensationalism, fundamentalism, and modernism."--Barry Hankins, Journal of Religion "With humor and brilliant insight, B. M. Pietsch offers one of the most creative, innovative, and original books to appear in years. Dispensational Modernism challenges almost everything we think we know about American religious thought around the turn of the twentieth century. He has destroyed our categories and upended our historiography and I fear there is no going back." --Mathew Avery Sutton, author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism "B. M. Pietsch's Dispensational Modernism is a bold reinterpretation of an enormously important modern religious movement. Making use of an array of understudied original sources and recent scholarship, Pietsch skillfully argues that dispensationalists applied the technological methods and epistemologies of modernism. He traces the history of this movement through the late 19th and early 20th centuries and reveals the fascinating ways that its champions held 'thoroughly modernist assumptions.' Perhaps most importantly, Pietsch, with clear and fluid prose, links what had once been thought of as a disconnected sectarian movement with the vital intellectual and cultural currents of the age." --Randall J. Stephens, co-author of The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age "Dispensational Christians often appear in historical and polemical works as anti-intellectual yahoos who read their Bibles literally and turned their backs on modern science, technology, and biblical scholarship. In this unrelentingly revisionist book, the historian B. M. Pietsch brilliantly shatters these stereotypes, showing instead that the early dispensationalists warmly embraced scientific and technological methods and engaged in serious research. Dispensational Modernism is the freshest study of conservative American Christianity to appear in years." --Ronald L. Numbers, Hilldale Professor Emeritus of the History of Science and Medicine, University of Wisconsin