The Civil War Revivals
The American Civil War was a failure of Christianity
as much as anything else.
Over the past few years much attention has been drawn
to the "culture wars" over issues such as abortion, Christian
symbols in public places, and homosexual marriage. Millions
of Americans see their nation in a moral and political
decline, and many Christians see themselves as the true
custodians of American History, having the key to restoring
its greatness. According to many "born again" or "Evangelical" Christians,
America's true foundation is religious, but secular philosophies,
widespread irreligion, and immorality have all but eroded
it.
But was there ever an American "Golden Age" as they claim?
Was there ever a time when the children were obedient,
the cities safe, and Americans mostly "saved"? Well not
exactly, but there was a time when a fervent Protestant
faith dominated the American public life. But far from
producing a "Golden Age" it fired the fierce passions released
in the Civil War, inspiring hundreds of thousands of young
American men to kill their fellow citizens by the hundreds
of thousands. The fact that they could fight so passionately
on opposing sides, both calling on the same God, speaks
volumes of the true nature of that Christianity.
Even before the American Revolution, the English Colonies
of America experienced massive outpourings of religious
feelings, where thousands of ordinary citizens had strongly
emotional "born again" experiences. These outpourings of
emotion and conviction took place in public gatherings
called Revivals . Baptism and a morally changed
life usually followed.
After the founding of the US republic under the Constitution,
continual waves of such enthusiasm swept over the American
cultural landscape, shaping the American soul even until
today. They believed they would see the end of this age
in their lifetime, and that their society should prepare
for it. However, although the message both North and South
was characterized by the same impassioned preaching and
emotional responses, it produced vastly different effects.
Far from uniting American Christians, it accelerated
their growing divisions.
In the North, the revivals produced a desire for personal
change, which in turn produced a desire to organize change
in the large
r society. The modern missionary movement,
the temperance movement, and the moral reform crusade (a
movement to end prostitution, obscenity, and lewdness)
began through groups of determined Christians becoming
organized in order to secure their goal of a reformed society,
even working to change society by law. All these efforts
stemmed from the traditional Christian belief that the
truth of the Gospel of Christ should be brought to
all. And if they were unwilling to receive it,
it should be imposed on them.
In the South, the revivals had an equal or greater emotional
intensity, which often produced deep personal convictions
to live as better individuals and family members. The fierce
individualism of southern culture would hear nothing about
organizing into groups to effect larger social changes.
They drew strength from the simple elements of their society:
family, church, and local community. The Jeffersonian tradition
of strictly limited government was practically sacred writ
to them. The governmentally mandated social changes of
the North seemed dangerously subversive to that concept.
The institution of slavery, above all other issues, brought
to the surface the great division growing amongst American
born-again believers. As the North and South in general
took differing views of owning slaves, the Christians of
those regions typically took the extreme positions.
The great evangelical churches of the day -- Baptist, Methodist,
and Presbyterian, all born in the fires of revival to become
great national institutions -- could not overcome this growing
divide. Their annual conferences, the visible expression
of the Christian bonds tying together the sections of the
new nation, broke up one by one with bitterness and mutual
condemnation. In 1837, the Presbyterians split north and
south, with the passions greatly inflamed over the rightness
or wrongness of slavery. In 1844, the Methodists divided
north and south explicitly over slavery, followed in 1845
by the Baptists. They all claimed the same Christ as Savior,
by grace through faith. As Abraham Lincoln would put it, "Both
read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each
invokes His aid against the other."
Christians of the North began to talk of slavery being
the obstacle to God's purpose for America, that its existence
was preventing the earth being made ready for Christ's
return. Southern Christians defended slavery as being the
essential element of upholding their civilization, stating
that they promoted the Christian faith among their slaves.
Furthermore, they cared for those people in their charge,
while the North trapped them in wage slavery. The war,
they declared, was God's judgment on America for the Northern
toleration of ungodly social practices such as labor unions,
women's rights, and abolition of slavery.
The politicians found no way around these aroused passions.
When the three-way 1860 election gave Abraham Lincoln a
majority of electoral votes and a plurality of the popular
vote, South Carolina seceded. A flurry of last-minute maneuvers
got nowhere. While a number of voices looked for some compromise,
Northern and Southern moral outrage, inflamed by Christian
zeal, would not be pacified.
"When the cannons roared in Charleston harbor," American
religious scholar Sydney Ahlstrom wrote, "two divinely
authorized crusades were set in motion, each of them absolutizing
a given social and political order. The pulpits resounded
with a vehemence and absence of restraint never equaled
in American history." [1]
"To judge by the many hundreds of sermons and specially-composed
church prayers which have survived," historian Paul Johnson
wrote, "ministers were among the most fanatical on both
sides. The churches played a major role in the dividing
of the nation, and it is probably true that it was the
splits in the churches which made a final split in the
nation inevitable. In the North, such a charge was often
willingly accepted. The Northern Methodist Granville Moddy
said in 1861: 'We are charged with having brought about
the present contest. I believe it is true we did bring
it about, and I glory in it, for it is a wreath of glory
about our brow.'" [2]
Both sides understood, or thought they understood, God's
purpose for their side of the struggle. They saw themselves
engaged in a struggle that was paving the way for the return
of the Son of God. The Northern Christians were fired by
the faith expressed in the lines of the "Battle Hymn of
The Republic," by Julia Ward Howe:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ
was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that
transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy,
let us die to make men free.
When the armies marched, both sides took thought for their
eternal souls and moral strength. Both sides had well-known
generals who would not fight on Sunday if they could at
all help it, out of respect for the Christian Sabbath.
Veterans of both sides wrote later of victories or deliverances
that came about because of such acts of military faith.
The war's atmosphere of extreme tension and loneliness
in a cause promoted as the very cause of God resulted in
revival after revival on both sides, particularly on the
eve of the great battles. In 1864, in both Virginia and
Tennessee, Southern armies were swept by great waves of
revivals. According to J. William Jones, Confederate Chaplain
and author of one of the best documentaries of the Great
Revival, virtually every Confederate brigade was affected.
USCC records show that similar events were happening in
the North's principal eastern army, the Army of the Potomac,
at the same time. Brigade chapels were so full that many
men were frequently turned away. One Union general wrote
that he had never seen "a better state of feeling in religious
matters" as in the Army of Potomac.
In the Fall and Winter of 1863, the Union army in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, had been besieged by a strong Confederate force,
strongly entrenched in the mountains around the city. The
Union soldiers were deeply affected by the revival, and
many attributed their surprising victory over the Confederates
as "a visible interposition of God." Soon after their victory
at Chattanooga, the Union troops were pursuing their enemy
as they retreated towards Atlanta. The fires of revival
continued for them in Ringgold, Georgia, where hundreds
were baptized in Chickamauga Creek.
The Confederate's Army of the Tennessee, retreating towards
Atlanta, had also experienced the fires of the great revival.
During their retreat from Dalton, Georgia, Rev. C. W. Miller
tells of a Confederate brigade called together for worship
in a field. They read the Bible aloud, sang a song of praise,
and began to pray. While one of the soldiers was praying
aloud, and his comrades were kneeling in silence, they
all heard the distant report of artillery and were soon
greeted with the burst of a 32-pound cannon shell overhead.
More shells shrieked towards them, and shrapnel fell nearby,
but the men continued their prayers as if there was no
danger. Finally, the chaplain pronounced the benediction
and everyone calmly sought cover.
Ironically, the revivals continued with Sherman's troops
as they marched across Georgia and through the Carolinas.
When the soldiers stopped for the night, they frequently
assembled in local churches and worshipped. Yet Sherman's
troops were infamous for their unbridled destruction of
civilian property as part of a campaign to "make Georgia
howl." Somehow these men found it possible to "find Christ" while
laying waste to unarmed civilians' homes and businesses.
It is estimated that over 100,000 Confederate and somewhere
between 100,000 and 200,000 Union troops accepted Christ
during the Civil War -- roughly ten percent of the men engaged.
There are many accounts of the change that took place in
the men, both during the war and afterwards, as a result
of the many revivals. This may warm the heart of the sincere
Christian, but surely someone has to ask, "Would Christ
empower His followers to wage war against each other?"
The issues of the war were clear and the faith of the
born-again believers on both sides played a major role
in strengthening the resolve of each government. Only with
such wholehearted support could they continue to pay the
high cost of blood and destruction that each day of fighting
exacted. The reality is that the evangelical or born-again
Christians of that day could not see the contrast between
the words of the Son of God and the terrible demands of
war.
In his unpublished story, The War Prayer , Mark
Twain (Samuel Clemens) tried to express the horrible incongruity
of such a religion. In that story a typical war-time church
service was described with mention of the heartfelt prayer
of the pastor for the safety of one side's troops and victory
in their battles:
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like
of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful
language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever-merciful
and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble
young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in
their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty
hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the
bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them
and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory -
In the midst of the prayer, Twain imagines a heavenly
messenger appearing to the congregation and trying to help
them see what they were really praying for.
...O Lord our God, help us to tear
their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help
us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms
of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder
of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing
in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with
a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of
their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help
us to turn them out roofless with their little children
to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land
in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames
of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit,
worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the
grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord,
blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter
pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with
their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their
wounded feet! [3]
No one who saw the awful reality of the Civil War up close
would deny the truth of those words. Go to a Civil War
battlefield cemetery; note carefully the acres of neatly
arranged markers where the thousands of battlefield dead
were laid. They went to battle thinking they were obeying
Jesus Christ, and so did those who put them in their graves.
Was Christ really calling them to slaughter each other?
"Put your sword back into its place; for all those who
take up the sword shall perish by the sword," [4] was
the Savior's word to Peter in the moment of His arrest
in Gethsemane. Who of the North or South heard this word?
There was a time when a Samaritan village scornfully rejected
a visit by the Messiah. His disciples asked if they should
call down fire from heaven on them. His response was a
stinging rebuke: "You do not know what spirit you are of.
The Son of Man came not to destroy men's lives, but to
save them." [5] There
is a profound lesson here.
[1] Sidney Ahlstrom, A
Religious History of the American People , Yale
University Press
[2] Paul Johnson, A
History of Christianity , Macmillan Publishing Company,
1976, p. 438.
[3]Europe and Elsewhere ,
ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (Harper & Brothers, 1923)
[4] Matthew 26:52
[5] Luke 9:51-55
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