he Civil War. The Un-civil War. The War Between the States. The War of Northern Aggression. The War for Southern Independence. What's it gonna be? Frankly, none of these titles for the Great American Unpleasantness of 1861-1865 really reflects the fact that the War was a product of the Second Great Awakening. It would be just as appropriate to call it the Unitarian-Baptist Shoot-Out.
Hold the phone just one cotton-pickin' minute! The Civil War a religious war? You've got to be kidding!
Not at all. First, both the intellectual leaders of the abolitionist movement and the stout defenders of the Southern status quo were predominantly clergymen, seminary professors, and theologians. Second, popular opinion on both sides of the battle regarded the event as a divinely authorized crusade. The Grand Army of the Republic had its hymns, as did the regiments of the Confederate States of America. Chaplains were busy in both armies, officers of both armies took care concerning the spiritual state of their men, and religious revivals of one sort or another occurred on both sides of the line. Third, by 1857 the three largest evangelical denominations, the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians had already fought their own civil wars on the slavery issue, divided into Northern and Southern camps, and gone their separate ways. In many respects the way these denominations resolved their differences on the issue of abolitionism paved the way for the final break in 1861.
Oh, I see. You're saying that a religious people fought the War, not that the War was fought over a religious issue.
No. I'm suggesting that both are true. The first conclusion should be apparent to anyone who has read about that period of our history. But to see the validity of the second conclusion, that is, to be able to refer to the War as the Unitarian-Baptist Shoot-Out we'll have to do some digging.
The Second Great Awakening was a series of religious revivals stretching from 1800 to the time of the Unitarian-Baptist . . . oops -- War Between the States. The various revivals and associated revivalism affected churches on the advancing western frontier as well as those east of the Appalachians. It was during this period that mainstream Christianity in the United States, regardless of geography, began to drift noticeably from its orthodox Protestant moorings. As the period opens, we see classical Reformed orthodoxy defending itself from the evangelical Arminian underdog. As the period closes, we see the evangelical Arminian orthodoxy defending itself from Unitarians and theistic humanists. For various reasons this general apostasy had made far greater progress in the North than in the South. It is not surprising then that the new evangelical doctrines of feminism, pacifism, abolitionism, and perfectionism should flourish in the churches, synods, and seminaries of the North. I refer to them as evangelical doctrines because they were, if not the direct offspring, at least the adopted children of American evangelicalism. The theological shift from a God-centered orientation to a man-centered one produced an explosion of "reform" movements. The abolition of slavery, the growth of state-sponsored schools, giving women the right to vote, and the founding of various utopian communities were all products, to a significant extent, of the Second Great Awakening. Throughout the United States of America, and on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line, the Christian religion was becoming a means to an end. What distinguished the northern reform movements, abolitionism included, was that the "ends" they had chosen were more obviously unbiblical than those being chosen in the South.
I'm not sure I understand the connection you're trying to make between the apostasy of American evangelicalism and the abolitionist movement.
Maybe this will help. In The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis literally plays the Devil's advocate in a series of letters from a senior tempter to a protege. In the passage which follows the senior devil is explaining just this point.
About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything -- even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest drug store. Fortunately, it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that "only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations." You see the little rift? "Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason." That's the game.
To the credit of Southern Christianity, its aspirations, the ends to which it bent its religion, were for the most part biblical. But whether laudable or no, the Lord of Hosts judged both parties in the conflict. He left the South to economic and social desolation, and He left the North to unchecked apostasy and spiritual barrenness. And those familiar with our current cultural landscape can see that the judgment of that war is not yet complete.
In 1861 a Unitarian writer and social activist named Julia Ward Howe wrote the poem "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." One line from that poem is quoted as the title for this article. Mrs. Howe had been born into a Reformed Protestant background. Like American evangelicalism, she had made the pilgrimage from classical Protestantism into theistic humanism, and in the process had gone after another God. Whatever Julia Ward Howe saw in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, it wasn't the Lord of Hosts.
