The American Civil War and A Lesson for Today’s Church

Pastor Chris White

The American church of today needs to learn a lesson from the churches of the Civil War era.  Now 150+ years past, the conflict between the Blue and the Gray has softened around the edges a lot and we associate the ‘Stars and Bars’ more with the Dukes of Hazzard than the Confederacy.  But at the time, there was nothing quaint or homely or laughable about it.  It was not merely a war of political differences, it was truly a religious war in a 95% Protestant nation that led to fratricide en masse..  Both sides of the slavery issue had festered since the days of the Constitutional convention and long before the first shot was fired on Ft. Sumter, nearly every American church denomination had divided over the slave issue. 
 
In the Christian debate over the issue, both sides agreed that you could find slavery justified in scripture (and surprisingly, the law of Moses did cite a lot of laws regarding slaves).  The crux of the argument lay in whether the race-based chattel slavery of the South was anything akin to the slavery of the Bible.  Northern Christians said no, Southern Christians said yes.  The Black church of the day argued that Matthew 7:12 (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you), if taken seriously, really ends the discussion.  But as we all know, the Civil War, though spiritual, was settled militarily and for the most part “right” was settled by “might”.  All told, nearly 620,000 people lost their lives as a result of the war, more than any other in American history.  With casualties that numerous, nearly every family in America would have been grieving for a lost son. 
 
So what can the Christian Churches of today learn from this national tragedy?

1. Beware of entanglement with political causes.  The political causes of our nation

     should remain political and not be made religious crusades.  When we make them
     religious then logically those who disagree with us are not on God’s side and
     therefore, if our opponents are fellow Christians, we must break fellowship.  This
     is just where Satan wants us.  This is not to say religion shouldn’t inform our
     politics or efforts to reform the ills of society or create a more just society, but we
     need to give real care that politics never informs our religion.  Politics are restless,
     opportunistic, contradictory, complex and only temporal.  This should always
     remind us as Christians to approach politics with a healthy dose of skepticism and
     never as articles faith.  Someone once said that he who marries the spirit of the age
     (and politics is the embodiment of that spirit) will certainly find themselves a
     widow very quickly.

1. Beware of getting too wrapped up in any war.  Regardless of the fact that war is sometimes necessary (and it is) and that we should support our selfless troops (which we should), it is still not a good thing.  The churches of the North and South got so involved in the ‘cause’ that they were nothing but holy and righteous and the opposing side was nothing but the devil’s handmaiden.  The long view of history is that it’s never that way with any war.  Wars have context and good people, sometimes better than ourselves, can do some crazy things during a war.  Long after the Civil War was over and the nation had patched things up, the habit of conflict had remained in the churches and they never were reconciled (which is one reason why America has so many denominations)  Our cause is the gospel and the kingdom above all others.

 

1. Beware of thinking Government can ever change a “heart issue”.  Civil War over. Slavery Abolished.  13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments passed.  Job not finished.  The Church anxiously moved on to other causes and never really worked to make certain that the newly freed slaves were fully enfranchised as citizens.  It took another 100 years and Martin Luther King Jr. to wake the Church up again.  Governments can pass laws against discrimination, but it is only you who can make the choice to love your neighbor as yourself.  Don’t ever think if abortion is overturned by the Supreme Court and outlawed, that the work is done.  The work will have only started.