The Civil War and Sacred Ground: Moral Reflections on War
On March 16 and 17, 2012, the Raven Foundation partnered with the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College on a conference that explored the questions of Biblical interpretation that led to the Civil War and how they continue to impact American culture today. The conference included lectures, dramatic readings, Q&A, and small group discussion. Posted here are the keynote lectures recorded in Blanchard Hall at Wheaton College by the Media Technology Team. Enjoy these thoughtful reflections on and recommended reading list from the conference.
Conference Presenters: Back row (left to right): Suzanne Ross, Keith Ross, Luke Harlow, Laura Rominger Porter
Front row (left to right): Mark Noll, Tracy McKenzie (Not pictured is Vincent Bacote)
“And the War Came”: Moral Reflection and the Causes of the Conflict
Tracy McKenzie, Professor and Chair of the Department of History, Wheaton College
A dramatic reading of a letter from Major Sullivan Ballou. Read by Letitia Guillaud.
Major Ballou, of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers, wrote to his wife one week before the first major battle of the Civil War, the First Battle of Bull Run, in which he was mortally wounded. She received the letter after his death.
Q&A with moderated by Vincent Bacote, CACE
View the video of Tracy McKenzie's presentation.
“Both Pray to the Same God”, a look at Divine Providence
Mark A. Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, Notre Dame University
Dramatic readings of excerpts from two Civil War-era sermons:
Welcome to the ransomed, or, Duties of the colored inhabitants of the District of Columbia
Daniel A. Payne, African Methodist Episcopal Church, District of Columbia.
Read by Glenn Harston.
God’s Providence in War
Rev. J.W. Tucker, Methodist Minister, Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Read by R.J. Coleman
Q&A with moderated by Vincent Bacote, CACE
View the video of Mark Noll's presentation.
Religion, Race, and the Significance of Civil War-Era Kentucky
Luke Harlow, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Oakland University
The Problem of ‘Sin’ in the Civil War-Era Upper South
Laura Rominger Porter, Ph. D. candidate in history, Notre Dame University
Q&A with moderated by Vincent Bacote, CACE
View the video of Luke Harlow's and Laura Rominger Porter's presentations.
Speaker Bios
Mark Noll was a member of the Wheaton College history department for twenty-seven years before becoming the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. His books include The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford University Press, 2002). With Luke Harlow he edited Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2007). His articles on the religion of Abraham Lincoln have appeared in the Journal of Presbyterian History and the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Patton Dodd of Patheos recently conducted this interview of Mark Noll.
Photo used by permission of William Koechling
Tracy McKenzie taught for twenty-two years at the University of Washington, where he held the Donald Logan Chair in American History, was a fellow in the UW Teaching Academy, and a recipient of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2010 he joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he serves as professor and chair of the Department of History. A specialist in the history of the American Civil War, he is the author, most recently, of Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War, the 2007 recipient of the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award for best non-fiction work on the Civil War.
Luke Harlow (Ph.D., Rice University) is Assistant Professor of History at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He is co-editor, with Mark Noll, of Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2007). He has published scholarly articles on slavery, emancipation, and the Civil War era in Slavery and Abolition, Ohio Valley History, and the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (forthcoming), and he serves as co-editor of the Journal of Southern Religion. He is completing a book manuscript, Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830–1880, under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Laura Rominger Porter is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Notre Dame. Her research examines links between evangelical church discipline, civil jurisprudence, and the politics of moral regulation in the nineteenth-century upper South, and how these interconnections related to theological debates over church jurisdiction and prerogative in the slaveholding states. Her dissertation, Church, State, and Moral Regulation in the Upper South, 1830-1880, demonstrates how evangelical churches and civil courts at first cooperated, and later diverged, on matters of moral regulation in the nineteenth-century upper South, and connects this differentiation of church and state functions to the subsequent political mobilization of white southern evangelicals for moral legislation.
Playing for Keeps with Professor Mark Noll: God, Satan, and the Civil War
Adam and Bob were delighted to welcome acclaimed Civil War historian Professor Mark A. Noll to the program. We talked with Mark about the startling thesis in his book, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. He writes that in the years leading up to the American Civil War, theologians, preachers and devout churches argued about what the bible said about slavery. They couldn't agree on whether God was for or against the South's "peculiar institution." In his book, Mark says that "the remedy that finally solved the question of how to interpret the Bible was recourse to arms." Listen in as Adam and Bob discuss with Professor Noll how the dynamics of the Civil War continue to influence our lives today.
Adam and Bob start the conversation by discussing one of Adam's latest blogs, "The Spiritual Warfare of Lent: Jesus, Satan, and Rick Santorum." To read the blog, click here.
Click on the arrow below to listen to the conversation.
Slave Rebellion, Fear, and the Civil War
The Civil War: Shaken Assurance
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the first shot fired in the American Civil War. It’s a difficult thing to try to make meaning out of an event of violence and brutality in which 620,000 Americans, more than 2% of the population, died from war wounds or disease. It’s more than difficult; when it comes to violence it’s dangerous because we tend to cling to meaningful things rather than let them fade away. When we say that the dying of some made freedom possible for others, the tragedy hardens into a necessity. What is better thought of as a catastrophe to have been avoided, becomes inspiring heroism to be imitated. Today in Charleston, South Carolina, Civil War re-enactors gathered at dawn to fire a starburst shell from an antebellum cannon over Charleston Harbor in effect, as the author Edward Ball remarks, “bombing Fort Sumter a second time.” At the same hour, sitting beneath nearby oaks, the Charleston Symphony played among other songs, “When Jesus Wept.” Perhaps he has not stopped weeping yet.
The Civil War is an ambivalent event and we human beings tend to shy away from ambivalence. We prefer surety, to know whether something was good or bad, to know for certain who the patriots and who the traitors were, who to honor and who to vilify. It’s a natural enough instinct, but I encourage you today to promise yourself that rather than run from the ambivalence, you will dare to step toward it. Perhaps I can recommend a place to start. There are three books I have read over the last several years that have shaped my attitudes and shaken my assurances. The first is a novel called The Night Inspector by Frederick Busch about a Union sniper whose face is so badly damaged in the war that he wears a mask as he haunts the streets of New York City. The second is a biography of Walt Whitman and his brothers, Now The Drum of War, by Robert Roper which is set in New York City and Washington, D.C. and allows us to glimpse the trials faced by this typical and exemplary American family.
Finally I recommend the insightful analysis of the causes of the war by Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Prof. Noll brings to light the religious dimensions of the conflict in a way that resonates with contemporary politics and international conflicts. The Raven Foundation is delighted to be partnering with the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton Theological Seminary for a conference on March 16 and 17, 2012 with Prof. Noll and Prof. Tracy McKenzie, a historian of the Civil War at Wheaton. As we mark the start of the four year national nightmare that was our civil war, I hope that we can journey together out of meaning-making and toward what comes next, something more honest perhaps, more courageous than anything we can yet imagine.