Commendation for Benjamin J. Baker
The inaugural Center for Adventist Research Article Prize is awarded to Benjamin J. Baker for his pathbreaking article, “ ‘The Year of Jubilee is Come’: Black Millerites and the Politics of Christian Apocalypticism,” published by the prestigious journal, Church History, in 2023.
Baker’s cutting-edge work intervenes in three major fields of study: Adventist, apocalyptic, and Black studies. Baker’s pioneering article is the first analytical history of Black Millerites in the antebellum United States. Previous historians had virtually ignored Black Millerites. A survey of the historiography reveals that only eight Black Millerites had been identified in published sources and, with exception of some studies on Sojourner Truth, the Millerite faith of these men and women was only mentioned anecdotally across a variety of scattered works. Therefore, before Baker could offer his preeminent analysis of Black Millerism he first had to undertake the laborious task of recovery history.
Baker also made a significant contribution to apocalyptic studies. The so-called premillennial/postmillennial binary has long dominated research on apocalypticism, asserting that Christian premillennialists avoid politics and social engagement. Historians who have recognized that Black apocalypticists in the nineteenth century were highly active, have either assumed that these men and women were postmillennialists (an eschatology incorrectly linked with progressive politics) or refused to interrogate their eschatological beliefs. However, Baker is among a notable group of avant-garde historians who are challenging near consensus views on apocalypticism by demonstrating that premillennialism can fuel progressive politics in America and that postmillennialists did not necessarily take on this role.
Baker’s prescient work on Black Millerites finally reveals that apocalypticism was a powerful force that helped untold thousands make sense of the Black experience in antebellum America. As Baker argues, “Black Millerites used the apocalyptic for coping with perpetual oppression, individual betterment, greater confidence in activism, instantiating egalitarianism, corporate visioning, and reinvigorating the struggle for freedom—all to hasten their eventual emancipation and expand democracy in America.” On this score, Baker challenges historians to take apocalypticism seriously, rather than dismiss groups like the Millerites as crazy or misguided, because these movements unmask “the dysfunction and injustice in society and people’s response to it.”
Baker’s article on Black Millerism has been assigned as required reading in both undergraduate and graduate courses on American and American religious history since its publication. This work has already made an indelible mark on the historiography and for these reasons this work receives our highest commendation, and we are proud to award Benjamin J. Baker the 2025 Center for Adventist Research Article Prize.
Author: Center for Adventist Research Prize Committee