The Civil War Revivals
The American Civil War was a failure of Christianity as much as anything else.
Over the past few years much attention has been drawn to the “culture wars” over issues such as abortion, Christian symbols in public places, and homosexual marriage. Millions of Americans see their nation in a moral and political decline, and many Christians see themselves as the true custodians of American History, having the key to restoring its greatness. According to many “born again” or “Evangelical” Christians, America’s true foundation is religious, but secular philosophies, widespread irreligion, and immorality have all but eroded it.
But was there ever an American “Golden Age” as they claim? Was there ever a time when the children were obedient, the cities safe, and Americans mostly “saved”? Well not exactly, but there was a time when a fervent Protestant faith dominated the American public life. But far from producing a “Golden Age” it fired the fierce passions released in the Civil War, inspiring hundreds of thousands of young American men to kill their fellow citizens by the hundreds of thousands. The fact that they could fight so passionately on opposing sides, both calling on the same God, speaks volumes of the true nature of that Christianity.
Even before the American Revolution, the English Colonies of America experienced massive outpourings of religious feelings, where thousands of ordinary citizens had strongly emotional “born again” experiences. These outpourings of emotion and conviction took place in public gatherings called Revivals. Baptism and a morally changed life usually followed.
After the founding of the US republic under the Constitution, continual waves of such enthusiasm swept over the American cultural landscape, shaping the American soul even until today. They believed they would see the end of this age in their lifetime, and that their society should prepare for it. However, although the message both North and South was characterized by the same impassioned preaching and emotional responses, it produced vastly different effects. Far from uniting American Christians, it accelerated their growing divisions.
In the North, the revivals produced a desire for personal change, which in turn produced a desire to organize change in the larger society. The modern missionary movement, the temperance movement, and the moral reform crusade (a movement to end prostitution, obscenity, and lewdness) began through groups of determined Christians becoming organized in order to secure their goal of a reformed society, even working to change society by law. All these efforts stemmed from the traditional Christian belief that the truth of the Gospel of Christ should be brought to all. And if they were unwilling to receive it, it should be imposed on them.
In the South, the revivals had an equal or greater emotional intensity, which often produced deep personal convictions to live as better individuals and family members. The fierce individualism of southern culture would hear nothing about organizing into groups to effect larger social changes. They drew strength from the simple elements of their society: family, church, and local community. The Jeffersonian tradition of strictly limited government was practically sacred writ to them. The governmentally mandated social changes of the North seemed dangerously subversive to that concept.
The institution of slavery, above all other issues, brought to the surface the great division growing amongst American born-again believers. As the North and South in general took differing views of owning slaves, the Christians of those regions typically took the extreme positions.
The great evangelical churches of the day — Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian, all born in the fires of revival to become great national institutions — could not overcome this growing divide. Their annual conferences, the visible expression of the Christian bonds tying together the sections of the new nation, broke up one by one with bitterness and mutual condemnation. In 1837, the Presbyterians split north and south, with the passions greatly inflamed over the rightness or wrongness of slavery. In 1844, the Methodists divided north and south explicitly over slavery, followed in 1845 by the Baptists. They all claimed the same Christ as Savior, by grace through faith. As Abraham Lincoln would put it, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.”
Christians of the North began to talk of slavery being the obstacle to God’s purpose for America, that its existence was preventing the earth being made ready for Christ’s return. Southern Christians defended slavery as being the essential element of upholding their civilization, stating that they promoted the Christian faith among their slaves. Furthermore, they cared for those people in their charge, while the North trapped them in wage slavery. The war, they declared, was God’s judgment on America for the Northern toleration of ungodly social practices such as labor unions, women’s rights, and abolition of slavery.
The politicians found no way around these aroused passions. When the three-way 1860 election gave Abraham Lincoln a majority of electoral votes and a plurality of the popular vote, South Carolina seceded. A flurry of last-minute maneuvers got nowhere. While a number of voices looked for some compromise, Northern and Southern moral outrage, inflamed by Christian zeal, would not be pacified.
“When the cannons roared in Charleston harbor,” American religious scholar Sydney Ahlstrom wrote, “two divinely authorized crusades were set in motion, each of them absolutizing a given social and political order. The pulpits resounded with a vehemence and absence of restraint never equaled in American history.” 1
“To judge by the many hundreds of sermons and specially-composed church prayers which have survived,” historian Paul Johnson wrote, “ministers were among the most fanatical on both sides. The churches played a major role in the dividing of the nation, and it is probably true that it was the splits in the churches which made a final split in the nation inevitable. In the North, such a charge was often willingly accepted. The Northern Methodist Granville Moddy said in 1861: ’We are charged with having brought about the present contest. I believe it is true we did bring it about, and I glory in it, for it is a wreath of glory about our brow.’” 2
