Recent Historiography on Religion and the Civil War by Bruce Gourley
(section 2 of 9)

Religion in General and the Civil War

In Broken Churches, Broken Nation (1985), C. C. Goen was among the first modern historians to place primacy upon the influence of religion as a significant factor of the Civil War.[8]  Goen examines the themes of unity and separation, arguing that Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist divisions along North and South lines in 1837, 1844 and 1845, respectively, over the issue of slavery, along with the ensuing activities of the three denominations prior to the Civil War, both signaled and sealed the inevitably of war.  According to Goen, the church splits broke the bond of national unity (as expressed in Protestant hegemony), established a model for sectional independence, reinforced alienation between sections via distorted images, and progressively elevated the level of moral outrage each section felt towards the other.  American churches’ overemphasis on individualism, inadequate social theory and world-rejecting ecclesiology, according to Goen, failed to provide adequate leadership on the question of slavery, thus leading the nation to turn to politics in an effort to confront the slavery issue, which in turn led to war.[9]

Richard J. Carwardine further examines the relationship between religion and politics in Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (1993).  Carwardine posits that evangelical Protestants were among the principle shapers of American political culture in the decades prior to the Civil War.  According to Carwardine, the waning of revivalist fervor led evangelical Protestants to ally with national political parties to further their social agendas.  The political parties, in turn, made concentrated efforts to win the evangelical Protestant vote.  Carwardine maintains that evangelical Protestants gave birth to ecclesiastical sectionalism, steered political discourse, and pressured politicians, thus leaving their mark on Whig and Republican politics.  Carwardine roots the Republican Party ethic in a moderated Calvinism (emerging from the Second Great Awakening), optimistic postmillennialism, and an urgent appeal to action.  The Republican Party drew heavily from evangelical Protestants of the North, even borrowing their language.  Southern evangelicals, however, resisted the infusion of religion into politics, and fearful of northern evangelical attempts to equate the Kingdom of God with the Republican Party, lent their support to the Confederacy, following the perception of Republican impositions upon the Southern states.  In short, Carwardine makes a compelling argument that religious language and imagery, as adopted by the nation’s political parties, contributed significantly to the coming of the Civil War.[10]

Marty G. Bell contributes to this interplay between religion and politics in “The Civil War: Presidents and Religion,” Baptist History and Heritage (July / October 1997), concluding that the Civil War led the nominally religious Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis both to offer individual certitudes of God’s divine favor, and led to their enshrinement as “mythic figures in the history of American religion.”[11]

Other scholars have also identified religion, as expressed in morality in particular, as a significant factor leading to the Civil War.  Phillip Shaw Paludan, contributor to the Religion and the American Civil War volume with an essay of the same name, examines the inability of American churches to collectively address the issue of slavery because of polarizing concepts of holiness (expressed in social action in the North and in personal piety in the South) as a significant factor leading to the war.  The Civil War, Paludan asserts, clothed in religious imagery, witnessed the sacrifice of death by both northerners and southerners to make men holy, even while the participants disagreed “over God’s views on making men free.”[12]

In “Religion in the Collapse of the American Union” (Religion and the American Civil War), Eugene D. Genovese takes a somewhat similar approach, positing the struggle to define Christian society and morals, and the cosmic scope attached to this struggle by Christian leaders, as crucial to understanding the Civil War.  The language of cosmic struggle was adapted by politicians and couched (by both North and South) in the terminology of the Kingdoms of Heaven and Satan warring with one another.  Each side appealed to the “Higher Law” for ultimate authority in defining the issue of slavery, language which in turn contributed to secession and war.[13]  Terrie D. Aamodt, in Righteous Armies, Holy Causes: Apocalyptic Imagery in the Civil War (2002), demonstrates how the theme of cosmic struggle was embraced by North and South, free and slave, conservative and liberal, and religious and secular, in an effort to legitimate their respective causes, slavery and otherwise.  Apocalyptic images were attached to the war’s horrors in song, poem, oral history, tracts and sermons.  After the war, however, expectations concerning the end of the world became increasingly divergent.[14]

            Finally, in “The Bible and Slavery” (Religion and the American Civil War), Mark Noll asserts that the availability and widespread, unhindered use of the Bible in a fragmented, individualistic society framed the conflict – slavery – that led to war.  Both North and South championed the Bible in answering the dilemma of slavery, but in radically opposite manners.  Northerners appealed to the spirit of the Bible (liberalism) in opposing slavery, whereas southerners appealed to the letter of the Bible (literalism) in defending slavery.  These competing biblical claims helped shape public perceptions that led to secession and war.[15]

Continue to Northern Religion and the Civil War