The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

The Christian Century ^ | May 30, 2006 | Todd Shy

[CondoleezzaProtege]

…As the defining crisis in American history gathered momentum and became civil war, ministers North and South spoke with authority, even defiance, about the overriding purposes of God. The impact was sobering. Precisely at a time when Protestant influence on national values had no real rivals, America collapsed into a war over the decisive moral issue of the day.

The most astute theologian of the crisis, a layperson named Abraham Lincoln, framed the issue in simple terms: “Both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” And since they prayed for different outcomes, “the prayers of both could not be answered.”

In an environment like ours in which the role of religion in public life is energetically debated and values such as freedom are said not to be “America’s gift to the world” but instead “God’s gift to humanity,” the Civil War provides a cautionary tale about the limits of religious belief in guiding a democracy…

In Europe antiauthoritarian hopes were assumed to sound the death knell of religion, but in the United States republican ideals and Protestant evangelicalism shaped and reinforced each other. That the success of Jacksonian democracy coincided with the spread of Methodism and revivalism is no accident. And yet on the eve of the Civil War, Noll shows, this evangelical consensus became “divided against itself,” fueling the larger conflict. If democracy as practiced in the nation could not work, neither could the faith that shored up its legitimacy. The political crisis, in other words, was necessarily a theological one, because theology and republicanism shared the same rhetoric.

[Scrambler Bob]

“Both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” And since they prayed for different outcomes, “the prayers of both could not be answered.”
= = =

Maybe God would not answer the prayers of either.

James 4:1 1Where do [a]wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

2You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and [b]war. [c]Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

3You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

[freedomjusticeruleoflaw]

A. Lincoln is not a source of wisdom. He ruled over catastrophe and like a racist tyrant ignored the perdition he created. Read his 1st inaugural address. The 2nd arrived too late to save 500,000 plus souls.

[Captain Walker]

Ulysses Grant was quoted as saying that he believed the Civil War was Divine punishment for the Mexican -American War.

[DownInFlames]

Lincoln caused the war between the states, aka the war of northern aggression. Up until then, states had the right to secede from the Union. The WW change that. It was a war between evil on both sides, god stayed out of this one.

[Theophilus]

Maybe God would not answer the prayers of either.

Bingo! And maybe his answer was "no".

Also, individuals pray not "sides" and as individuals, we should pray like Jesus: for Gods will to be done and for the cup of judgement to pass.

[Theophilus]

Agree with Grant. And for a lot of other sins too

[one guy in new jersey]

America blew a huge chance circa 1786-88 to declare, confidently, definitively, that Christ is King.

Perhaps given subsequent domestic civil and spiritual calamities we might remedy that error?

[Ditto]

Lincoln caused the war between the states, aka the war of northern aggression. Up until then, states had the right to secede from the Union.

They did? Someone should have told Andy Jackson that. He was going to hang people for even suggesting it.

[chajin]

The theological issue is that two groups were reading the same Bible and coming to very different conclusions.

Pro-slavery Christians noted that there is no place in the Bible that says slavery is wrong, though there are numerous places that talk about treating slaves well, something which was generally lost on the pro-slavers.

Anti-slavery Christians inferred from numerous sources in the Gospels and Epistles that all Christians were equal before God, and so should be equally free before each other—and this concept caused Britain to abandon slavery peacefully, and could have caused America to do the same, except for the different readings of the Bible.

We see the same “different reading” divide today, between the denominations who read the Bible and see social justice via totalitarianism, and those who read the Bible and see limited government with social issues being defined by God rather than Caesar. That, if it happens, will be one of the main reasons for the next civil war.

[antceecee]

Please point out what is racist in his first address:
https://ia601605.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/33/items/GutenbergENzip/02.zip&file=Abraham%20Lincoln%27s%20First%20Inaugural%20Address%20-%20Abraham%20Lincoln%2C%201979%20%288p%29.pdf

[Jim W N]

Not sure the point of all of this, but one thing is for sure, while both sides of the Civil War of 1861-1865 believed in God, today, only one side acknowledges God while the other side ignores and/or despises Him.

[CharlesOConnell]

There have been underground rumblings that Margaret Sanger may have got her "duty to dispose of unwanted children" ethos through her Spiritualist, seance connection with the Hydesville NY Fox sisters beginnings in 1848 of the free-love practicing, abortionist Spiritualism religion that infected up to 4 million of the better classes in the ABOLITIONIST regions, (not among the majority of poor southerners who weren't slave-holders but who get blamed for the whole Civil War under our de facto Civil Right secular religion) in the decade leading up to the Civil War, this pro-abortion free love, domestic Carthaginian culture forming the moral other half cause of the 620,000 death toll. This according to World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky's 1992 "Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America".

[Wuli]

I think you could be right on principal - about the right to secede - but “the nation”, the whole of it was a demand of history that created it. Saving the nation whole was maybe of greater need and importance to the future of the nation than to respect the right to secede OVER SLAVERY.

[DownInFlames]

At the time, slavery was legal. I’m not saying it was moral, but at the time, states had more power than of today. On a legal basis, the southern syptates knew they were doomed to retain their slaves and rights. The CW created a new class of people who were ignorant due to no education and still are. Just look at the crime statistics where 13%ers commit over 50% of the crimes.

I’m all for the return of a limited federal government, repeal of the 14th, 16th, and 17th amendments. Repealing of the 19th will never happen.

[ckilmer]

The difference between the civil war and now is that at that time the people prayed to the same God.

Lincoln’s apt line does not hold today

People do not pray to the same God.

[Rockingham]

The problem was that both sides looked to theology and political principle and turned away from compromise. What might have been done? Call a national convention of both sides and all shades of opinion in between in order to try to find means to defuse the conflict and ameliorate the condition of the slaves.

Above all, get people talking and keep them talking. If a political conflict seems impossible to resolve, at least try to keep it from getting worse through a resort to violence. Even with compromise of any sort elusive, keep trying. Events or the passage of time may offer a peaceful solution. In the long term, slavery always passes away, and American slavery would have been undone in by the boll weevil and the resulting collapse of the South's cotton economy as the 19th century ended.

[Theophilus]

denominations who read the Bible and see social justice via totalitarianism

...are evaporating as they murder their own children

[Theophilus]

god stayed out of this one.

God was in the middle of it.

Psalm 121
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore

[aspasia]

The CW created a new class of people who were ignorant due to no education and still are.

REZ BAND: Civil Rights Lincoln's Train