The
War over slavery in USA split almost every church. Some have suggested that the church splits
drove the split in the nation. Only the
Lutherans, Episcopalians and Catholics seemed to have escaped without
schism. How so?
Enthusiasts on both sides were
powered by moral rather than economic or political motives. Southern
Presbyterians split away and accused the Northerners of “calculated
malice”. Notherners accused their
brethren of “being in league with hell.” Granville Moody, a northern Methodist
reveled in being charged with bringing about the conflict, “for it is a wreath
of glory round our brow.” (Whoa! The South started the War.)Southern Methodists
talked about “making a secessionist state of mind.” Congregationalist
theologian Thornton Munger said McClellan’s much-criticized vacillations were
“an example of God’s masterful cunning.” Longer war means,“the South will be
much more punished in the end.”
But Catholics swore allegiance to
Rome and Episcopalians to Canterbury; it is said—superseding local politics. Nonetheless, feelings were elevated. The Episcopal Bishop of New Orleans, Leonidas
Polk, joined the Confederate Army as a general. “It is for constitutional
liberty, which seems to have fled to us for refuge, for it is our hearthstones
and our altars that we fight.” Meanwhile Bishop of Rhode Island, Thomas March,
preached to the state’s militia, “It is a holy and righteous cause in which you
enlist…God is with us.”
So what happened with the Lutherans?
They were founders of Delaware, a border state full of slaves, and prominent in
MO, TX, dominant around the Great Lakes. Lutherans value systematic
theology. Anyone can be led down an odd
way of thinking by a verse or two combined with prejudicial assumptions. That seems to be what split many Calvinists
and Arminians. The greatest schism was
among the Baptists who practice “soul liberty’ (each person forms a personal
theology—so to speak). The split between
Northern Baptists (American Baptists) and Southern Baptists still lingers over
other issues to the present day.
Lutheran systematic theology meant that the whole Bible is examined to
promote a case for any generalizations.
Indeed, Jesus did this in arriving at his teaching. He spoke of Grace as a first principle of God
where others had missed it while beset with legalism over parsing the Law. The “Breath of God” that indwelled people in
the Old Testament, meant the Holy Spirit and that God could come to earth. “Each
man must pay for his own sins,” ascertains faith as a personal matter, and the
reaching out to all nations alluded to by the Prophets, adds up to a Universal
Faith (God isn’t limited to Jews and God will judge all people). Luther and Augustin argued for Two Kingdoms,
that we live both in this world’s kingdom and in God’s kingdom. Thus in order to make a pronouncement about
slavery, you would have to fit that into your views of everything else. And the conclusion was that Faith Matters Most. If you are part of a slave society and born
to a master, then live a life of faith within that system. Yet God points to an ideal that we are all
free and adopted as children of our Heavenly Father. The theology was not fence-straddling or
retreat to theory. This was not trying
to enforce silence on the issue (as Presbyterians tried unsuccessfully to
do). This was an overarching view of
life that unified Lutherans. And it
allowed them to join either side while admitting they were probably stirred by
their own mortal opinions. In fact, more
Swedes volunteered for the Union than any other minority. Stunning, since their culture had been
pacifist!
Meanwhile the propaganda wore
on. Both sides claimed vast numbers of
‘conversions’ among their troops and a tremendous increase in church-going and
‘prayerfulness’ as a result of the fighting.
In the South, there were much-quoted texts on negro inferiority, patriarchal
and Mosaic acceptance of servitude and
of course St. Paul on obedience to masters.
In the north, Henry Ward Beecher preached that ‘Southern leaders would
be hurled aloft and plunged down forever and forever in an endless
retribution.’ Sadly, the racial component of Southern religious arguments stuck
for a long time after the war. That
racism has been more troublesome for USA than for other parts of the world
where Africans were imported as slaves.
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