Religion and Society in America Week 6 – Lecture 3 “Antislavery Reform, Secession, and Societal...

Religion and Society in America

Week 6 – Lecture 3“Antislavery Reform, Secession, and Societal

Divides” – Part II

Antislavery Reform, Secession, and Societal Divides

• “Unity” Among Protestant Evangelicals

• Rupturing the Benevolent Empire– Centrifugal forces turned Centripetal

• Rupturing the Benevolent Empire– An example of proslavery arguments

• War and the Kingdom of God

“Unity” Among Protestant Evangelicals

• Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians among other Protestant denominations all recognized the unity of the “universal” Church that transcended the apparent disunity of denominations

• Belief or identity of “the Church” for 19th Century Americans rooted in shared experience


• “Catholic” derived from Greek word katholikos meaning “universal”

• Acts1:6 – 8 “So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority…


• …But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

• Acts 11:15 - 18 “And as I began to speak the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered how the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit…


• If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’ When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

• Acts 11:26b “So it was that for an entire year they met with the church and taught a great many people and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians.’”


• Bedrock foundation of belief came in widespread belief that the American experience originated in providential design

• Each denomination understood as constituting a different “mode” of expressing the outward forms of worship and organization of the Church

Rupturing the Benevolent Empire

• Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces:

• Voluntary Societies

• Popular Persuasion

• “Heartfelt Religion”

• Antislavery


• Voluntary Societies: Three Functions in the Republic and Antebellum– Made turbulent democratic element into

respectable citizens– Pursue benevolent reform objectives in

society without involving centralized power– Provided identity and national unity


• Success of these activities carried forward on the principle of free association provided a major dimension of cultural cohesion in antebellum society

• It has been argued, “simply as a system of social organization the evangelical coalition helped to expand American consciousness from localism to nationalism”


• Given these factors, the question remains how did evangelicalism help to splinter the nation?

• By embracing more and more of the grassroots populace on the principle of popular persuasion, denominations were unwittingly jeopardizing their ability to function as disciplined communities of faith


• Winthrop Hudson, Religion in America – “Three emphases stimulated by revivalistic preaching would seem to have been of decisive importance in creating the climate of enthusiasm out of which new cults, sects, and communities emerged…”


• Revivalist demand for an immediate confrontation with God

• This demand often took the form or was expressed in ecstatic visions or mystical illumination

• Such experiences, in America’s loosely structured democratic society, could be interpreted as new revelation (e.g. Mormons)


• Increased stress on the possibility of perfect sanctification among individuals, not necessarily communities

• This aroused the desire or goal of holiness or a life free from sin

• Sanctification = “making holy” or “consecrating” – what is sanctified is removed from what is profane


• Exod.19:22-24 – “Even the priests who approach the Lord must consecrate themselves or the Lord will break out against them…”

• Lev.22:31-32 – “Thus you shall keep my commandments and observe them…that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel…”


• Matt. 5:48 – “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

• 2 Thess. 2:13 “…God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth.”


• Irony of Evangelical history in antebellum period – Sermon on the Mount and the “Beatitudes”

• Matt. 5:43 – “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

• Matt.6:1 – “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”


• Finally, the tendency of evangelicals to dwell on ancient millennial expectations of a golden age to come, was rooted in the belief that its inauguration was to be brought about by the individual in faith coming to Jesus or through the proclamation of the Gospel


762

5536

4495

1423

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

1850: Churches in the South forming theConfederacy

Other

Methodist

Baptist

Presbyterian


6.2

45.3

36.8

11.7

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1850: Percentage of Churches forming theConfederacy

Other

Methodist

Baptist

Presbyterian


• Antislavery and abolitionist vanguard based its attack on slavery specifically on the moral and religious values

• Southern defense must be based on these arguments

• An example of Southern pro-slavery arguments: Reverend George Armstrong


• George Armstrong’s The Christian Doctrine of Slavery (1857)

• Norfolk, Virginia• Final chapter of work, “God’s Work in God’s

Way” offered opened by describing slaves as “deeply degraded”

• He related this “anthropological argument” with the assertion, “In the case of a race of men in slavery, the work which God has appointed his Church…is to labor to secure in them a Christian life on earth and meetness for his heavenly kingdom.”


• “And the commission of the Church, ‘go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,’ sends her a messenger of glad tidings to him as truly as to men for above him in the scale of civilization.”

• Metaphorical interpretation of Galatians passage in Jesus “there is neither bond nor free” closely allied to sacrament of Lord’s Supper


• Armstrong went on to argue “slavery” as an institution was essentially the same world wide and throughout history

• Corrective to those such as Albert Barnes who sought to assert a distinguish between Jewish, Roman, and American slavery

• Suggested the apostle Paul never directly argued against slavery


• Denominational schisms erupt as the nation and its churches are debating the issue of slavery

• Important to see how issues surrounding the ethics or morality of slavery were debated in terms of church governance


• 1837 – Presbyterian Church divides along theological lines over issues ostensibly related to missions

• “New School” and “Old School”• New School interested in promoting “new

measures” of revivalism. Adherents also tend to be those espousing antislavery

• Most of the South becomes Old School Presbyterians and consequently staunch defenders of the Confederacy


• 1837 – William S. Plumer at a pre-Assembly caucus cautions “Should the Assembly…legislate and decide that slaveholding is a sin…the Southern churches would all feel themselves instructed by the Apostle Paul to ‘withdraw from such’ [1Tim. 6:5]

• Internal divisions over the issue of slavery persist between Old and New Schools until 1861


• “The question is not between the new and the old school—is not in relation to doctrinal errors; but it is slavery and antislavery. It is not the [doctrinal] standards which were protected, but the system of slavery.” Cincinnati Journal and Luminary (1837)


• After the war, Lyman Beecher suggested the Old School, “Got scared about abolition…John C. Calhoun was at the bottom of it. I know of his doing things—writing ministers, and telling them to do this and do that. The South finally took the Old School side. It was a cruel thing—it was an accursed thing, and ‘twas slavery that did it.”


• 1836 General Assembly it is rumored there are 150 abolitionists on the floor of the assembly

• Fears were unfounded

• Following year, Old School North and South agree to thwart any petition by New School Synods concerning issues of slavery


• Methodists and “The Plan of Separation”• 1836 – General Conference meeting in

Cincinnati rejects proposals for any new legislation on the matter of slavery and declares the delegates were “decidedly opposed to modern abolitionism, and wholly disclaimed any right, wish or intentions to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and slave as it exists in the slave-holding states of this Union.”


• “In the present state of the country we believe it to be of the utmost importance to the country itself, that the churches be kept together. Let the bonds be once severed which hold the churches of the North and South together, and the Union of these states will be more than endangered, it will presently be rent asunder.” Southern Christian Advocate (1837)


• May 1, 1844 – New York City, last General Conference of an undivided Methodist Church

• Moral issue of slavery debated through church polity or procedural matters of carrying out the church’s business

• The case of Bishop Andrew


• James O. Andrew, Georgia• 1832 elected to episcopacy • In a will, Andrew was bequeathed a slave by a

deceased family member• Argues to Conference Committee that he is an

“unwilling trustee” of a slave, who refused to migrate to a free state with her young child

• Methodist Discipline allowed ministers to own slaves in states were the law specifically forbade manumission


• Georgia state law prohibited manumission• Antislavery Methodists in North beg issue

by raising questions concerning the nature of the episcopacy

• Argued, bishops, as superintendent’s for the entire church, must represent their constituency on matters of morality

• Northerners propose limiting Andrew’s bishopric to the South


• Southern Methodist vehemently oppose this option

• In a resolution adopted 110 to 68, it was argued Bishop Andrew’s “connection” with slavery “will greatly embarrass the exercise of his office…if not in some places entirely prevent it.”


• Southern delegation makes immediate preparation to withdraw from the Church and form the Methodist Episcopal Church, South

• Elias Bowen, a representative of the Oneida Conference, replied to measures by stating, “We deprecate the idea of division, sir. We know that our great republic is connected together by the twofold ties of civil and ecclesiastical union.”


• “The prospect for peace and amicable relations, is infinitely better with a separation than under a forced and nominal union. And if so, the safety of the country is to a much greater extent bound up with a division of the church, than a continued union.” Southern Christian Advocate 1844

War and the Kingdom of God

• “The stability of free institutions is dependent upon the restraints which are thrown around them. But ‘the irrepressible conflict,’ which has recently been inaugurated is fast breaking down these restraints,” the Christian Observer commented in the fall of 1860


• The New York Freeman’s Journal which proclaimed in December, 1860, “this unholy and fratricidal war began with your hard-shell Reformed Presbyterians, and your soft-shell new-school Presbyterians, and with your Baptists, Methodists, and such like.” Taking Benevolent Empire to task, the article asserted, “you, Protestant religionists were the very first to begin this game of disunion…to meddle with other people’s business, and impose its notions, and its will, on people who do not freely accept them.”


• Addressing departing soldiers from Exeter, New Hampshire, Reverend Elias Nason suggested the “warlike temper” of Southerners was like a “loud mouthed cannon [had] opened on our fortresses” challenging the North’s trust in “the invisible and adorable God!”


• In 1861, Northern Catholics were told “the true way to regard this war is to regard it as a chastisement from the hand of Divine Providence, as a just judgment from God upon our nation for its manifold sins.” Such a judgment, it was suggested, was “designed not to destroy us, but to purify and save us.”

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