In 19th-Century America, Two Christian Nations Took Up Arms – Christianity Today

In his 2d inaugural address, delivered as the Civil Battle neared its stop, Abraham Lincoln grew to become now to now not politics nonetheless to theology.

“Both learn the an identical Bible and pray to the an identical God, and each invokes His aid in opposition to the opposite,” he seen, acknowledging the deep non secular divide that had fueled the war. As adverse to celebrating Union victory, Lincoln presented the war as a divine reckoning for the nation’s sin of slavery, declaring that “if God wills that it continue until the complete wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil will be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash will be paid by one other drawn with the sword,” then so be it. Quoting Psalm 19:9, he reminded his viewers that “the judgments of the Lord are ideally suited and righteous altogether.”

But Lincoln did now not near at this 2d of weighty non secular insight in a vacuum. As historian Richard Carwardine demonstrates in Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union, the president’s theological framing emerged within a broader non secular tradition that formed American citizens’ views of the war. What they seen used to be something larger than a political crisis or defense force war. It used to be a profound non secular reckoning.

Thru a sweeping examination of sermons, church schisms, and theological debates, Carwardine unearths how religion formed both Union and Accomplice identities, giving their clash a distinctly non secular personality. Though Christian nationalism has become a vague and in most cases politicized buzzword in contemporary discourse, Carwardine makes exhaust of the term with larger precision. He defines it as a “fusion of non secular motive and nationalist vision, the build non secular and nationwide identities now not simplest coexist nonetheless are mutually reinforcing.”

From the nation’s founding to the Civil Battle, he argues, religion supplied a sacred, even transcendent framework for defining America’s id and charting its course. In shaping both the moral reason within the relief of abolition and the Accomplice justification for secession, the Civil Battle used to be now not merely a contest over warring economic systems, cultural identities, or constitutional interpretations. As Righteous Strife masterfully presentations, it used to be additionally a fight between competing non secular nationalisms.

Carwardine expands the mature epic of the Civil Battle’s origins by emphasizing theological divisions over slavery and escalating schisms within Protestant churches. In his telling, the slavery debate did larger than fracture political alliances. It additionally divided non secular communities, reshaping denominational landscapes and fueling sectional tensions.

In America’s early years, a huge nationwide consensus tolerated Christian slave proudly owning (whether or now not approvingly, begrudgingly, or indifferently). By the 1830s and 1840s, nonetheless, this consensus had collapsed, giving technique to irreconcilable divisions that fractured evangelical churches along North-South traces. The break used to be especially pronounced amongst Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, whose nationwide organizations struggled to place cohesion within the face of deepening theological fault traces.

The Methodists divided in 1844 after their Long-established Convention demanded that a slave-proudly owning bishop, James O. Andrew, resign. Southerners interpreted this resolution as proof that abolitionist theology used to be corrupting their denomination. Equally, the Baptists split in 1845 due to the war about missionary organizations appointing slave householders ensuing within the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention​.

These theological divisions did now not stay interior the generation’s churches. They additionally performed out interior the ranks of the Whig and Democratic parties.

Constructing on his earlier classic work, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America, Carwardine observes that the Whigs, with their emphasis on moral development and societal reform, attracted Congregationalists, reformist Presbyterians, and Unitarians. Contributors of those teams tended to hold a study teach motion as a strategy of fostering virtuous citizenship. In dissimilarity, the Democratic Occasion appealed to those that viewed government-backed moral reform as a threat to both non secular and particular particular person liberty and a distortion of Christian test up on. Evangelicals who adverse Sabbatarian legal guidelines and temperance measures, along with many Roman Catholics and frontier Methodists, gravitated in opposition to Andrew Jackson’s vision of democracy, which championed laissez-faire governance while restful affirming Christianity’s very predominant function in American life.

As Carwardine illustrates, these competing visions was deeply embedded in receive collectively politics and beyond, intensifying sectionalism and atmosphere the stage for an eventual crisis of union. In his prognosis, the North’s reformist, postmillennialist outlook, rooted in evangelical Protestantism, envisioned America as an ethical agent, divinely tasked with advancing God’s kingdom through revolutionary social substitute. In dissimilarity, the South’s non secular tradition fused an honor-essentially essentially based ethos with a theological defense of slavery as divinely ordained. Southern ministers argued that slavery used to be sanctioned by Scripture and very predominant for holding Christian civilization, portraying abolitionism as a theological heresy​.

By the 1850s, this proslavery theology had hardened into a discontinuance to-favorite doctrine, with many Southern clergy framing secession as a sacred responsibility to defend a godly society in opposition to Northern radicalism​. As Carwardine observes, “Both aspect used to be convinced of the righteousness of its hold reforming impulse and the contaminated morality of the opposite.” In short, this non secular divergence used to be now not merely a symptom of sectional tensions nonetheless a central catalyst of America’s bloodiest and most devastating war.

Carwardine is now not the first historian to hold a study the non secular dimensions of the Civil Battle. Value Noll has explored the theological fractures over slavery. Harry S. Abundant has analyzed the war’s moral justifications. James P. Byrd has examined the Bible’s influence on wartime rhetoric. And Drew Gilpin Faust has regarded as how the war reshaped American attitudes in opposition to loss of life and the afterlife.

Carwardine builds on this scholarship by centering the idea that of non secular nationalism, arguing that religion used to be now not merely a cultural backdrop nonetheless a decisive force in shaping political allegiance, nationwide id, and Lincoln’s evolving management. Within the stop, he gifts the Civil Battle as a profoundly non secular crisis, now not simplest in its theological debates over slavery nonetheless additionally in its competing visions of America’s divine motive, in particular as they urged analogies to Feeble Testament Israel. As Carwardine notes, such analogies decrease both ways: If likening America to Israel implied receiving God’s blessings, it additionally implied the doable for frightening his judgment. While the thought of America as a selected nation dates relief to its founding, the Civil Battle published deep fractures over what it truly intended to be chosen. Or, as Lincoln keep it, whether or now not the nation used to be an “nearly chosen other folks.”

Many earlier accounts of the Civil Battle are inclined to brush off presidential proclamations made by Lincoln and James Buchanan for a nationwide day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer. In these treatments, they seem as mere footnotes or political maneuvers. Carwardine, nonetheless, underscores their deep non secular significance for favorite American citizens, for whom these proclamations hold been larger than symbolic gestures. They spoke to favorite anxieties that had citizens turning to God, first to avert war after which to be obvious the Union’s survival.

Buchanan’s fleet day, even though intended to foster cohesion, ended up deepening sectional divisions. Some clergy interpreted it as a requirement nationwide repentance over slavery, while others seen it as a condemnation of Republican radicalism, all of which simplest fanned the flames of discord. Lincoln’s proclamations, in dissimilarity, carried larger institutional weight. His fleet day following the Union’s defeat at Bull Urge signaled now not simplest a 2d of nationwide crisis nonetheless additionally a perception that divine intervention used to be very predominant to sustaining the war effort.

No longer like Buchanan’s proclamation, which gave the impression determined and ineffectual, Lincoln’s name to prayer used to be widely embraced, helping to provoke public toughen for the Union. Extra tantalizing restful, by 1863, his proclamations had taken on a extra explicitly theological tone, framing the war as divine judgment for the nation’s sins and making nationwide repentance a prerequisite for victory. In gentle of this, Carwardine argues that these non secular appeals hold been now not mere political expedients nonetheless needed in shaping public sentiment, reinforcing the war’s moral stakes, and transforming Lincoln—at the starting build viewed with skepticism by evangelicals—into a leader who an increasing form of embodied the function of a providential statesman.

On the novel time we time and all any other time rob this note and not utilizing a consideration, with Lincoln constantly ranking excessive on lists of America’s finest presidents. On the time, nonetheless, he used to be a ways from an glaring hero for antislavery evangelicals. On the selling campaign slither, he faced a barrage of baseless accusations, including claims that he used to be a duelist, a drunkard, and a denier of Christ’s divinity. Even beyond these fabrications, his irregular church attendance and absence of formal membership in any denomination simplest deepened suspicions amongst non secular voters.

As Carwardine explains, Lincoln used to be acutely aware of those concerns and speedily learned to place his non secular views guarded, averting public declarations that can alienate doable supporters. But as the war improved, evangelicals learned their religion in him vindicated. They welcomed his an increasing form of providential rhetoric alongside his steadfast dedication to maintaining the Union.

Clergy strengthened this perception, drawing parallels between Lincoln and biblical figures who had implemented God’s will in cases of nationwide crisis. Some likened him to Moses, guiding the folk in opposition to liberation, while others seen a resemblance to David, chosen to uphold justice. A Wisconsin senator, James R. Doolittle, captured the depth of this non secular devotion in an 1864 assertion: “I mediate in God. Below Him, and, subsequent to Him, I mediate in Abraham Lincoln.”

Worthy relish white evangelicals, Murky American citizens at the starting build had deep reservations about Lincoln. But over time, many likewise came to stare him as a providential figure. His early statements prioritizing the Union’s survival over the rapid abolition of slavery met with disappointment. And his August 1862 meeting with Murky leaders, the build he urged colonization as a resolution to racial tensions, provoked outrage. Henry McNeal Turner, a renowned African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister, denounced him as a “presidential Pharaoh” who courted divine judgment by ignoring the cries of the enslaved.

But despite their frustrations, many Murky non secular leaders maintained religion that God used to be guiding ancient past. As Lincoln moved in opposition to emancipation, Murky leaders started revising their views, interpreting his actions as proof that he had been appointed God’s agent of deliverance.

By the tip of the war, many Murky American citizens regarded Lincoln as divinely chosen. His 1865 assassination, occurring on Correct Friday, simplest deepened this perception. Both Murky and white American citizens infused his tragic loss of life with non secular that methodology. But Carwardine presentations how their biblical interpretations hold been remarkably distinct.

Many white American citizens mourned Lincoln as a Christ figure, viewing his loss of life as a create of nationwide atonement. Murky American citizens extra in most cases when compared him to Moses. Fancy the Feeble Testament chief, Lincoln had introduced his other folks through a “crimson sea of blood to a Canaan of peace and freedom,” within the phrases of one Wisconsin settle, simplest to be stopped short of entering the Promised Land.

Before long, Murky churches started exhibiting his image, from pulpits and altar tables, as a logo of deliverance and divine justice. A Lengthy Island mass meeting of Murky citizens honored him as “God’s appointed instrument to figure out our salvation,” while an Illinois AME congregation mourned the loss of “a immense deliverer—an real benefactor.”

In loss of life, then, Lincoln was a sacred figure for Murky and white American citizens alike. And while he understandably looms neat in Righteous Strife, Carwardine broadens the epic by spotlighting a various solid of influential non secular figures who formed the war’s moral and theological battles.

Wisely-known names relish William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, and Frederick Douglass rob center stage, now not ideally suited as activists nonetheless as key avid gamers in defining the war’s non secular stakes. Alongside them are lesser-known figures relish Stephen Higginson Tyng, an Episcopal clergyman and staunch emancipationist, and Matthew Simpson, the influential Methodist bishop who solid the Union trigger as a divine mandate. Both performed pivotal roles in rallying non secular toughen for Lincoln’s policies.

On the opposing aspect, Richard Fuller and Nathan Lord defended the Confederacy’s proslavery theology, insisting that slavery used to be biblically sanctioned and racism God ordained. Meanwhile, figures relish William Gannaway Brownlow, a fiery Methodist preacher grew to become Unionist politician, impress how non secular fervor fueled now not simplest abolitionist activism nonetheless additionally fierce nationalist sentiment. By interweaving voices from in every single place in the nation, from abolitionist preachers to proslavery theologians to native clergy from both North and South, Carwardine unearths that the Civil Battle used to be waged nearly as fiercely in pulpits, prayer meetings, and pews as on battlefields.

At a time when fears of Christian nationalism dominate political discourse, Carwardine’s Righteous Strife offers a sturdy reminder that debates over the nation’s non secular id, the church’s function in public life, and the that methodology of the gospel in American politics are nothing fresh. While the fight over slavery has been settled, deeper struggles undergo, piquant by competing views on how Christians might restful declare to the nation and what form of nation (Christian or in every other case) America might restful embody. Schisms that as soon as resulted from slavery now erupt amid conflicts over speed, gender, sexuality, and political ideology, echoing the tensions that split denominations within the antebellum generation.

The Christians of Lincoln’s day will now not explore at the novel time’s debates, nonetheless they’ll surely explore the broader form of our war. America’s deepest struggles hold continually been, at their coronary heart, battles over perception.

Daniel N. Gullotta is a researcher at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Stare of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi.