148. Butler, Jonathan M. "Adventism and the American Experience." In The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America edited by Edwin Scott Gaustad. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

America and Americanism are centrally rooted in (post)millennialism. However, premillennialists have also been of importance, especially since the Civil War; though "logically" apolitical and pessimistic, they have been ardent, even jingoistic, supporters of Americanism. In the 1850's there were grave doubts about America's mission, which the Civil War did little to assuage. It was during this epoch that Seventh-day Adventism emerged. Initially apolitical in their apocalyptic, by the 1870's they were denouncing the nation, and in the '80's they began to prophetically sustain the Republic. Thus premillennialism needs a more subtle analysis.

149. ---. "The Making of a New Order: Millerism and the Origins of Seventh-Day Adventism." In The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univ. Press, 1987: 189-208.

The transition from Millerism to Seventh-Day Adventism illustrates a cultural paradigm shift occurring in the 1850's. The change marked a transition from a period of relative normlessness to one of a reestablishment of control. Miller's preaching is seen as emblematic of a general spirit of limitlessness, of unbounded possibility.

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