Empathy For The Millerites

A new century can be interpreted in many ways. Some see it as hurtling toward the future, while others see a blank slate or a sprawling expanse of opportunity. Others, apparently, see the end of times looming ever closer. 

Such was the case with the Millerite Movement, a sweeping cultural phenomenon that originated amidst the Second Great Awakening. Historians have discussed what happened with the Millerites – from abandoning their livelihoods to the Great Disappointment that followed – in detail, but the driving forces behind the movement are much less obvious. 

 I posit that the new century created a sense of heretofore-unexperienced urgency for Americans in their young nation. American national identity was at the forefront of many of the greatest changes of the 1800s. Urbanization allowed unprecedented freedoms for previously-marginalized groups, immigration led to the imagery of the ‘melting pot’, and industrialization created both a wealth of economic opportunities and a level of inequality that had been unfathomable a century prior. In addition to this, schools of art were being developed alongside the growth of the United States’ territory and the concept of Manifest Destiny. All of this occurred on a backdrop of religious reform and an upheaval of the way faith had been practiced; a movement that became known at the Great Awakening. The nineteenth century was clearly an era that felt unprecedented, transitory, and impermanent in all aspects of life, from gender norms to relationships with faith to even the concept of being citizens of a democracy rather than subjects of a monarch. 

With all this churning in the minds of the American people, I find it understandable that the teachings of William Miller were able to spread like floodwaters. The prospect of an ultimate and impending Second Coming, which would in turn end the unstable upheaval of 1800s America, likely had as intoxicating a quality as Miller’s teachings and Hime’s publications. Not only did Miller’s idea of rapture tie in with and capitalize on the momentum of the Second Great Awakening’s democratization of religion, but it also promised to be easy and simple. All you had to do was believe. 

In a century where nothing felt quite stable enough to trust in on Earth, I imagine putting one’s faith in the Almighty was tempting. After all, when they were proven wrong, it was called the Great Disappointment, not the Great Embarrassment. People put their faith in the idea that a world full of change and unpredictability might soon become simpler. I believe that anyone who has lived through the year 2020 can understand the appeal of a predictable future.