Harriet Livermore - Theological Beliefs

Theological Beliefs

Early in her preaching career, "Livermore focussed on a traditional Protestant message of conversion, repentance, and salvation."

However, by 1831, Livermore was convinced that the Millennium was at hand. She was apparently influenced by a published letter in which Joseph Wolff, a converted Jew, wrote of his belief that the Lord "would come in the clouds of heaven,and stand upon the Mount of Olives, in A.D. 1847." So taken by Wolff's work was Livermore, that she had two thousand copies of his letter published as Millennial Tidings, no. 1. in 1831.

It was probably from Wolff also, that Livermore took her belief in the lost ten tribes of Israel. Unlike Wolff however, Livermore became convinced that the American Indians were the lost tribes, and in 1832 she set out alone to evangelize them. She faced stiff opposition by government officials at Fort Leavenworth but spent enough time there that the Osage Indians named her Wahconda's Wakko (God's woman).

Again from Wolff, Livermore seems to have accepted the idea of the literal, premillennial return of Jesus Christ to earth in 1847. In this date she differed from the Millerites, who predicted Christ's return first in 1843, then in 1844. Livermore recorded her millennial beliefs in verse:

"Millennium! the days are near,

When wicked ones shall quake with fear,

and in consuming fire wail.

That they did Joseph's peace assail."

Also contrary to the teachings of the Millerites, Livermore believed that the site of Christ's return would be the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem; and in 1837 she made the first of five journeys there.

Her changing and increasingly radical beliefs increasingly ostracised her from mainstream Christianity and even from fringe groups such as the Millerites and Mormons.

1. Elizabeth F. Hoxie, "Harriet Livermore: 'Vixen and Devotee'", The New England Quarterly, 18:1. (1945), 40.
2. Catherine A. Brekus, "Harriet Livermore, the Pilgrim Stranger: Female Preaching and Biblical Feminism in Early-Nineteenth-Century America", Church History 65:3 (1996), 392.
3. Harriet Livermore, A Narration of Religious Experience (Concord, NH: 1826), 15-16.
4. "Harriet Livermore", The Essex Antiquarian (Salem, Mass.), V (1901), 7-9.
5. Samuel T. Livermore, Harriet Livermore, the "Pilgrim Stranger" (Hartford, CT: 1884).