Reflections on the Civil War Conference
From Vincent Bacote, April 10, 2012
Dr. Vincent Bacote is an Associate Professor of Theology and the Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College. The author of The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper and the editor of Precepts for Living, Urban Ministries Inc.'s annual Bible commentary, he moderated the conference. His reflection, Trayvon Martin, Patience, and Self-Reflection, appeared on UrbanFaith.com.
From Jim Papandrea, March 21, 2012
Dr. Jim Papandrea is a teacher, author, speaker, and musician, and currently the Assistant Professor of Church History at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary at Northwestern University in Evanston and working as a freelance consultant in the area of adult formation. His works include Spiritual Blueprint: How We Live, Work, Love, Play, and Pray (2010), The Earliest Christologies: Trinitarian Orthodoxy Before Nicaea, Reading the Early Church Fathers, and Novatian of Rome: Theologian and Anti-Pope. His reflections were posted in his blog, Spiritual Blueprint: The Civil War: Then and Now.
From Suzanne Ross, March 19, 2012
Our Civil War and Sacred Ground conference at Wheaton College’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics is over, but the moral reflection it prompted in me and the fifty participants will be continuing for some time. My ideas about the causes of the Civil War, even about who the good guys and bad guys were, have been shaken to their core. I will be offering my reflections in more detail in the coming weeks, especially as the videos of the keynote addresses become available. For now, I’d like to offer the comments I made on Saturday morning as the conference was already underway and my moral certainty was wavering. Here’s what I said in response to Tracy McKenzie’s presentation the night before:
Welcome back to CACE and to the Saturday session of Civil War and Sacred Ground: Moral Reflections on War. I’m Suzanne Ross of the Raven Foundation, your co-host for the event with Vince Bacote of CACE. Before we get started, let’s take a look at today’s schedule. You will see that there are two small group discussion sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. These sessions are designed to engage you in reflection on the presentations. Tracy McKenzie set the context very well last night for reflecting on history responsibly. His hope was that we focus less on what he called moral judgment and focus instead on moral reflection, which he described as deeply introspective and involving a willingness to make ourselves vulnerable.
I’d like to add two key insights about violent conflict that guide our commentary at Raven Foundation that I hope will be helpful in making that move toward moral reflection that Tracy recommended.
First: Parties to any conflict always insist on telling a narrative of how completely different they are from their adversary, which really comes down to this: I’m right, you’re wrong; I’m good, you’re wicked. But the truth is that we don’t come into conflict because we are different, we come into conflict because we share the same desires. Tracy said something extraordinary last night, that soldiers on both sides of the conflict were fighting for the same thing – liberty, to preserve the legacy of the Revolutionary War, and strong feelings of patriotism. Shared desires can unite us by “the mystic chords” of friendship, but if we insist on sole possession, on being victorious over the other, shared desires can divide and destroy. The irony, to add to Tracy’s list of ironies, is that the thing that causes conflict contains the seed of its cure. So the claim of difference is what we call Myth because it falsely blames the conflict on differences when it’s really cause by what we have in common.
Second: to tell the truth about a conflict, you have to include the perspective of the victims, the ones whose story is not part of the good guy/ bad guy storyline but would reveal it for the lie it is. In other words, you have to find the dead bodies and let them speak. That’s where the Raven comes in – the Raven is a scavenger bird that has a way of finding the decaying carcass and cawing rather annoyingly about it. When we become convinced of our own goodness, we start to believe in the goodness of our violence as well, something our victims might beg to differ with, if we’d only pay attention to their perspective. So the two points about conflict are: Differences are a false narrative, a myth about the conflict, and the victims hold the key to the truth.
As I said last night, we normally don’t do history, but when I read Mark Noll’s book, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, I couldn’t help but think he was offering the Raven view on the Civil War. He wasn’t buying all the shouting about differences and he wasn’t turning away from the devastation of the war, but was allowing it to hover in the background as a painful, haunting question: How could a good, Christian nation have needed to shed so much blood to solve a moral and theological problem? I’m sure you’ve already noticed that at this conference you will not hear stories of bad guys with whom we have nothing in common.
Our distinguished presenters are bringing us stories about good, God-fearing, Bible believing Christians just like you and me who held racist beliefs and sanctified bloodshed without ever doubting our own goodness. I encourage all of us to hold on to our similarities with these historical figures, to not retreat into finding some difference that will allow us to condemn them for their failures while leaving our sense of goodness enhanced by comparison, what Tracy called moral judgment. Remembering the cawing of the Raven can help us resist the temptation to the easy comfort offered by myths of difference, enabling that journey into moral reflection during our small group discussions so that not only learning but personal transformation can take place.
Recommended Reading List
By our presenters.
Tracy McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2006).
Tracy McKenzie tells the story of Civil War Knoxville-a perpetually occupied, bitterly divided Southern town where neighbor fought against neighbor. Mining a treasure-trove of manuscript collections and civil and military records, McKenzie reveals the complex ways in which allegiance altered the daily routine of a town gripped in a civil war within the Civil War and explores the agonizing personal decisions that war made inescapable. Lincolnites and Rebels details in microcosm the conflict and paints a complex portrait of a border state, neither wholly North nor South.
Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (The University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
The Civil War was a major turning point in American religious thought, argues Mark A. Noll. Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war. By highlighting this theological conflict, Noll adds to our understanding of not only the origins but also the intensity of the Civil War.
Luke Harlow’s Recommendations
Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001).
This slim and clearly written volume shows overwhelmingly the role of slavery and white supremacy in driving the secessionist impulse. Dew also includes a number of primary sources for readers in his index.
Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).
Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in history, Foner has provided the new authoritative history of Lincoln’s evolving attitude toward slavery. Initially a colonizationist who opposed the extension of slavery—but not an abolitionist—Lincoln’s policy changed over the course of his presidency as a result of his contact with abolitionists.
Steven Hahn, The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
This short and provocative volume calls for a reframing of the political history African Americans, slavery, and abolition. Rather than two “emancipations” in American history (first in the era of the Revolution, second in the Civil War), Hahn argues that there was one protracted period of emancipation that climaxed in the “greatest slave rebellion in modern history”: the Civil War. This book draws from a series of lectures and follows Hahn’s Pulitzer-Prize winning A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003).
Charles F. Irons, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).
Instead of a proslavery Christianity that developed merely in response to abolitionist attacks, Irons shows a tradition with colonial southern roots. Irons argues that the proslavery gospel developed as a result of daily interactions between white and black believers, in the context of biracial Christian churches. White believers routinely misinterpreted the spiritual desires of enslaved people and misunderstood black Christians as affirming a white supremacist, paternalist gospel.
Molly Oshatz, Slavery and Sin: The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Oshatz shows how northern Protestants’ inability to find a direct condemnation of slavery in the biblical text led to theological innovation and the rise of notions of “moral progress.” Before American Protestants had taken the measure of Darwin, before they found themselves challenged by historicism and the higher criticism, and before they fully experienced the impact of the urban-industrial transformation upon society, they fought over slavery.
Tracy McKenzie’s Recommendations
David W. Blight, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011).
A riveting book that explores how Americans remembered the Civil War at the time of the Civil War centennial, it offers vignettes of the perspectives of Bruce Catton, the most popular Civil War historian of his generation; Robert Penn Warren, the prominent novelist and poet; Edmund Wilson, the era’s preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the renowned African-American essayist and activist.
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 2008).
A renowned historian (and current president of Harvard) examines the impact of the war’s enormous death toll from a myriad of angles—logistical, military, emotional, and moral, among others.
Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).
Perhaps the best single volume on what common soldiers North and South thought the war was about, and why so many believed that their cause was worth dying for.
George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
A comprehensive tour de force that explores the variety of ways in which Americans—North and South, soldiers and civilians—drew on religious faith to make sense of the pace, progress, and larger meaning of the war.
Harry Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006).
A narrative overview of the war by a leading historian, this book poses the question of whether the war was waged justly, paying special attention to the criteria of discrimination (did contending armies take care to differentiate between combatants and non-combatants) and proportionality (were the costs exacted by the war in some sense proportional to the benefits expected).
Mark Noll’s Recommendations
David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Davis sums up a life-time of studying slavery in the Western world with this accessible, yet very wide ranging volume. The emancipation of American slaves occupies only a small part of his narrative, but taking in the whole book gives readers a great understanding of where the American story fits into the much bigger picture. Because the book came from material first prepared for high school teachers, it communicates a complex story with unusual clarity.
George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen People: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
This big new book is encyclopedic. George Rable’s sources are the diaries and letters of participants, as well as thorough coverage of the era’s books, pamphlets, and newspapers. Virtually every dimension—from the service of chaplains and revivals in the camps to scoffers who disdained religion and true believers who valued it supremely, and much more—receives splendid treatment.
Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006).
Harry Stout wanted to have this book make celebration of the war’s sesquicentennial more realistic. His extensive treatment of the way that conduct of the war, even by revered figures like Abraham Lincoln, may have violated traditional Christian standards of “just war” makes this a most thought-provoking study.
Stewart Winger, Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).
This is one of the very best books on the perennially difficult subject of Abraham Lincoln and religion. It excels at positioning Lincoln in the political and intellectual history of his own day. Winger’s stress on Lincoln’s foundational commitment to Whig political principles opens the door to explain how Lincoln could be so familiar with evangelical Protestant themes and language and yet not be a committed church participant himself.
Robert J. Miller, Both Prayed to the Same God: Religion and Faith in the American Civil War, introduction by James McPherson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007)
Robert Miller is a Catholic priest and a long-time participant in Civil War roundtables. In this excellent book for those seeking a quick overview of the subject, he brings to bear expertly both his wide knowledge of the war and the religious sensitivity of his vocation.
Laura Rominger Porter’s Recommendations
Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Ford offers a sweeping analysis of the white South’s debates over slavery from the early national period through the 1840s. He is especially insightful on the connections between ideology and economics, which he uses to highlight the lower and upper Souths’ divergent views on slavery. The result is a nuanced treatment of how different economic regions of the slaveholding South came to terms with the institution in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways.
Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
This political history of the upper South states of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee examines the fate of conditional Unionists—or “reluctant Confederates”—from the late antebellum period through the last wave of secession after Lincoln’s call for troops in April 1861. It is a seminal work in the literature on southern Unionism that highlights the regional variations among white southern views of secession.
Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
This classic treatment of how major religious denominations and leaders regarded southern separatism begins with the abolitionist campaign of the 1830s and continues through the formation of Confederate nationalism during the Civil War. It argues for the significance of religion as a sectionalizing force within antebellum southern political culture, particularly by lending moral force and providential meaning to the secessionist movement.
Daniel W. Stowell, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Stowell examines how different interpretations of the war’s outcome among three parties—northern white missionaries, African-American Christians, and white southern Protestants—guided their distinct approaches to religious reconstruction. Tracking Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists in Tennessee and Georgia, he explores how social and political conflicts arising from the war continued to shape southern religious institutions long after its end.
Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).
This history of white America’s postwar reunion argues that white religious leaders embraced and promoted a vision of national reconciliation founded on ideals of white nationalism. As Blum argues, religious notions of forgiveness sanctified the rhetoric of white national unity, persuading northern whites to concede the ideals of racial justice that had taken root among many northern Protestants during the war and imputed moral meaning to the sacrifices of Union soldiers. White Americans thus overcame their sectional divisions, but at the moral cost of racial segregation and imperialism.
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.
I am Trayvon and I am George
Good people across our nation are trying to find answers to the following questions: Was Trayvon Martin’s death a racially motivated murder or something else, an act of self-defense or a tragic accident? Is George Zimmerman a racist or something else, a decent man or emotionally ill? Is President Obama’s response measured and appropriate or something else, too timid a challenge to racism or too dismissive of concerns for safety and security? Is this incident unique or something else, a symptom of culture-wide racism, of too many guns in civilian hands or not enough?
Strident voices are shouting at each other from all sides, confident that they are in the right and that anyone who disagrees with them is willfully, undeniably wrong. As the conflict polarizes and we are forced to take sides, it becomes harder and harder to believe in the goodness of those taking opposing views. Here is the eerie thing about all this for me: it is sadly reminiscent of old, tired patterns of debating moral issues that go back to the Civil War. Let me explain.
When an issue is morally charged, good people take sides. That’s what’s happening here – the death of a young person from gun violence is a moral issue, and this death has become even more morally complicated by the charge of racism. Racist violence, unarguably a moral wrong, has a long history in this country: the violence of slavery, of white race riots and lynch mobs, and the institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. One of the tragedies of the Civil War, and there are many, is the way in which the North was able to hide from its own racism both before and after the war by shifting all the blame onto the South. Christian rhetoric from North and South provided cover. Pro-union sermons claimed God’s divine support for the union; pro-secession sermons claimed God’s divine support for secession. Each side believed they were fighting for God, liberty, patriotism and to claim their place as the true heirs to the Revolution. As Abraham Lincoln said, God cannot be for and against the same thing, so at a minimum one side is wrong. As if that were not enough of a minority position, Lincoln nearly became a minority of one when he dared to suggest that God’s purposes might be something neither side had yet imagined.
But wasn’t there a clear right side, an assuredly Godly side, when it came to slavery just as there must be a clear right side with Trayvon and George? Some must think so, especially the ones wearing the “I am Trayvon” t-shirts or speaking publicly in defense of George. But what seems clear at first often gets blurred on closer examination. Take slavery – talk about a clear moral issue! How could it be possible not to condemn the side that would fight to preserve it? The problem with framing the Civil War that way is that the Civil War was not about slavery. Look at that list of causes mentioned in the sermons – nothing about slavery there at all. It is a deafening silence that casts shame on our entire nation. The moral issue that divided the nation was the idea of the nation itself, a sacred cause that justified the killing and the dying. That we did kill and die in unprecedented numbers was taken as proof of our nation’s goodness. Bloodletting always creates hallowed ground. When the war ended and slavery was abolished – a clear moral good – we swept aside the shameful truth that slavery was made possible by a deep-seated racism in the North as well as the South. War erupted, raged and ended without Americans ever openly acknowledging and repenting of racism as a national moral failing. This misunderstanding at the heart of our national memory about the war continues to force the issue of racism underground.
And then it resurfaces in Florida and we take sides again thinking for sure we know what the moral issue is and for sure we are on the right side of it. But what if the real moral issue is something else? What if it has to do with the moral failure of thinking we are right? We all know that feeling of righteous rage, or moral indignation when we are sure we have the devil by the tail. Both sides of the Trayvon case are feeling it passionately right now. Maybe that night Trayvon and George were both feeling right, sure the other was wrong. I don’t know, and I don’t want to shift blame from a truly guilty person, especially in a murder case. I think that it is vitally important that the investigation proceed to determine why Trayvon was killed. But I raised the example of the Civil War because the bloodshed was largely due to everyone thinking they were right. Racism continues to rear its ugly head because we have persisted in refusing to share responsibility for what was and continues to be wrong with our nation. Shared responsibility means sharing being wrong, not forcing all the wrong on someone else. The insistence on being right and on accusing others of being wrong allows us to justify our own hatred and violence, the very thing we denounce in others.
As we deal with the tragedy of Trayvon’s death, perhaps we might step back from our accusations and self-righteousness to ask some difficult questions: Can I find the grace to listen to, maybe even to learn from, the ones I think are wrong? Can I give up my need to be right and be honest with myself about where I am wrong? Am I strong enough to gaze upon everyone who is suffering, even the ones whose suffering I have ignored or even celebrated? Do I care more about being right than I do about ending racism and making our communities safe for all our members? Can I seek the good in a spirit of forgiveness?
I’d like to leave you with the thought that the real obstacle to ending racism may be our need to take sides. It is 150 years overdue, but maybe we can find the grace to stop needing so desperately to be right so that we can embrace both Trayvon and George, an embrace that is generous and large enough to include the good and the wicked, the innocent and the guilty, the right and the wrong. Perhaps peace will have a chance if we can say together, “I am Trayvon and I am George.”
Peace Building Opportunity: If you’d like to learn how to give peace a chance in our schools, speak directly with Ted Wachtel on Friday, March 30 on our web radio show, Playing for Keeps. Ted is the president of the world's first graduate school devoted entirely to the teaching, research and dissemination of restorative practices.
When Fear Takes Hold: What we can learn from the Southern defense of slavery
Why did Southern states secede from the union? Between Lincoln’s election on Nov. 6, 1860 and his inauguration on March 4, 1861 seven states seceded, giving support to the theory that the South objected strongly to Lincoln and his Republican party. But in the 150 years since the war, the debate about the cause has hardly been settled. Added to Lincoln’s election, prime contenders are tariffs, states’ rights, and slavery. But one reason for secession is rarely on the list: security.
It seems odd to go to war – a risky endeavor involving death and destruction – to make yourself more secure, but it happens all the time. Security is why we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, of course. We wanted to make ourselves safe by attacking terrorists on foreign soil, taking the war to them, as the reasoning went ten years ago. But the Southern states, by seceding, tempted an invasion. The war would be fought on their own soil, not in some far away land. How could security have factored into their thinking?
I’ve been reading a special issue of the monthly magazine The Atlantic called The Civil War. If you are interested in the Civil War it is well worth purchasing. It is a collection of articles that were originally published in The Atlantic during the 1850s and 1860s, before, during and after the war. There is nothing like cutting through 150 years of commentary to let the people of the time speak for themselves. One of the articles is titled Charleston Under Arms and it was written by John William De Forest, a Connecticut-born journalist. It recounts his visit to Charleston in January 1861. You may remember that though South Carolina had seceded on December 20, federal forces still held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This is where the first shots of the Civil War would be fired on April 12. De Forest recounts conversations he had with residents of Charleston during this tense and uncertain time before the war began.
South Carolinians were committed to their right to secede. They felt they had done nothing wrong, unpatriotic or illegal. They were clearly upset about Lincoln’s election and distrusted the Republican platform, though De Forest could not understand why. The platform, he explained to one dubious citizen, was “not adverse to slavery in the States; it only objects to its entrance into the Territories; it is not an Abolition platform.” Yet this South Carolinian wasn’t buying it. He replied, “We believe that [the Republican platform] is an incomplete expression of the party creed, — that it suppresses more than it utters. The spirit which keeps the Republicans together is enmity to slavery, and that spirit will never be satisfied until the system is extinct.”
Of course, the South had a great deal to lose economically if slavery were abolished. I am no economist, but it is not hard to imagine the wealth that could be lost and how desperately some might resist such a reversal of their fortunes. Yet the Southern gentleman had a reputation of being indifferent to money. It is one of the ways that the North and South had diverged culturally. Mark Noll in The Civil War as a Theological Crisis explains that the North was experiencing “the expansion of consumer capitalism, in which unprecedented opportunities to create wealth were matched by large-scale alienation and considerable poverty in both urban and rural America.” The reputation of the Southern gentleman, on the other hand, was as an aristocratic man of honor who was above the base pursuit of money for its own sake. A rivalry emerged in which each was contemptuous and yet secretly admiring of the other, contributing to a climate of distrust and resentment that found its full expression in the argument over the future of slavery in the United States.
But it was not a defense of Southern wealth that lay at the bottom of one South Carolinian’s concern regarding the Republican determination to end slavery. I will quote directly from the article:
When I [De Forest] asked one gentleman what the South expected to gain by going out, he replied, “First safety. Our slaves have heard of Lincoln,—that he is a black man, or black Republican, or black something, —that he is to become ruler of this country the fourth of March, —that he is a friend of theirs, and will free them. We must establish our independence in order to make them believe that they are beyond his help”…
My impression is, that a prevalent, though not a universal fear, existed lest the negroes should rise in partial insurrections on or about the fourth of March.
Above all this man expressed a fear of a violent slave revolt that would threaten the safety and security of his community. First safety. His fear was not unfounded. Slave revolts had taken place in which whites and blacks alike were killed. You will remember from your American History classes the names of John Brown and Nat Turner. These revolts caused fear and concern in the South. What we find in this quotation is that during the brief time between Lincoln’s election and the beginning of war, the threat of slave insurrections felt more real and imminent than any threat that might come from an invading Union army. Blinded by fear, the South would risk war to defend an evil institution.
What can we learn from this glimpse into Southern fears? Too often we view history a bit smugly, as if we have the perfect vantage point to understand motives, discern causes, and judge the right from the wrong, the wicked from the good. Used this way, history is not about the truth of another time or place, but is a part of the story we are telling about our own goodness. To avoid this pitfall, rather than sit in judgment of Southern fears, we might learn from them instead by asking a difficult question: Is it possible that our own fears are blinding us, too, preventing us from seeing some uncomfortable truth about ourselves?
Even more to the point, though slavery is long abolished, racism has been harder to eradicate. Are there ways in which we are as blind as South Carolinian slave holders to the continued suffering of the black community? Might a contemporary fear of loss of safety have a hold on us? I ask only because of the continuing presence of segregation in our schools and communities; I ask because according to Michelle Alexander, law professor at Ohio State and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began”; I ask because of lingering issues of voting rights discriminations and the undertones and sometimes overtones of racism in some attempts to delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency.
Look, my point is not to make people feel bad. I know that for white America to admit it still harbors racist fears and delusions of racial supremacy is a really uncomfortable place to go. But sometimes allowing ourselves to feel bad is the only way to be truly good. Instead of running from our fear and pretending everything is okay, feeling bad opens the door for change. The Civil War ended almost 150 years ago but the battle for racial equality is far from over. I hope you won’t be afraid to learn more about the fears and struggles of the past. Perhaps you can join the Raven Foundation as we look at the struggles for integration in the 1940s when baseball led the way forward in the Lookingglass production of “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting.” We are also offering an opportunity to explore new research into the theological arguments for and against slavery that were taking place before the Civil War, arguments that have left powerful handprints on our public life today. Raven is partnering with the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College to bring you leading Civil War scholars on March 16-17 for this historical and relevant conversation. Don’t miss these great opportunities to look together at our shared history – it might even feel good!
On Racial Newt-rality
We live much of our lives in fear. We fear being exposed as frauds. We project to the world an image of ourselves that’s not entirely true in an attempt to gain the approval of others. We conceal the bad, dirty, and ugly parts of ourselves and project other parts of ourselves that we think people will perceive as good, clean, and beautiful.
But there is another aspect of this self-deceptive pattern that is even more devious. We have a tendency to project onto others the bad, dirty, and ugly parts of ourselves. To paraphrase René Girard, “We are most indignant at the evil of others by which we ourselves are consumed” (Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 73).
Few of us are immune from this pattern of self-deception. It’s an infectious social disease that permeates human culture and it is on full national display during political season as we inspect and scrutinize candidates. We saw it televised on Monday night at the Republican national debate.
The 24 hour news channels have been running the highlight of that debate since Monday evening. (You can see the video below.) It started when Fox News moderator Juan Williams asked Newt Gringrich a question about a claim Gingrich made while campaigning in Iowa. Gingrich stated last November that "Black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps." He also claimed that “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”
Williams asked, “Can’t you see that this is viewed at a minimum as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?”
As Gingrich replied, “No, I don’t see that,” the audience erupted in approval. Williams then asked if the comments were “intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities.”
“First of all, Juan,” Gingrich rather belittlingly responded, “the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. Now, I know among the politically correct you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.” He went on to claim that liberal “elites despise earning money” and that he wants to help people “learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job and learn someday to own the job.” The all white audience loved the confrontation and enthusiastically cheered for Gingrich. After the debate Gingrich explained the enthusiasm by stating, “There was a spontaneous sense that somebody finally had the courage to just tell the truth about how we’ve got to go about helping people…”
The point I’d like to emphasize here is Williams’ term “racial minorities.” Williams has been criticized by many on the right for asking a racially loaded question, while many on the left praise him for stating the obvious and then accuse Gingrich of being a racist. Now, I don’t know if Gingrich is a racist, but Williams did ask a racially loaded question and race was an obvious issue at the debate. Williams was the only black person in the room, and I specifically mention “the all white audience” because the incident exposed an uncomfortable truth about American self-deception when it comes to race and racism.
It has been said that slavery is America’s original sin, but America’s original sin is deeper than slavery, for only black people were enslaved. The end of slavery did not end racism, nor did it end its counterpart, white supremacy. Both continued through the practice of lynching and segregation. It is a bad, dirty, and ugly part of American history that we would rather sweep under our cultural rug by ignoring its impact on modern American society. “We don’t have race issues anymore,” many argue. “We have economic issues.” There is some truth in that statement. Poverty doesn’t discriminate between races. But my personal experience, which is confirmed by the experience of Monday’s debate, is that racism still plays a huge role in our culture. If we are ever going to move beyond racism in our country, we need an honest discussion about how it continues to infect our lives.
So, let’s be honest. I’m infected with racism. Like the all white audience at the debate in South Carolina, I live in a mostly white world. I can go throughout my day without ever seeing a black person. My neighborhood is an all white suburb just north of Chicago, my church is 95% white, and when I shop I see white faces. The only time when I see black people is when I venture to Chicago, where many neighborhoods are all black.
Segregation is illegal, but don’t be deceived – whether you live in the North or the South, the United States continues to be segregated. We have an implicitly segregated society, and segregation, whether explicit or implicit, fosters racist attitudes. And here’s the ugly truth we don’t want to admit: we like it that way. Because of our self-deception, we would rather not deal with the bad, dirty, and ugly truth of racism that continues to infect our nation. We would rather show our indignation toward those racists out there than deal with the racism that infects us.
Is Newt infected by the evil pattern of racism? Probably. But so am I. When it comes to racism, we cannot afford to be neutral. Any accusations of racism that I levy against Newt will be an attempt to conceal my own pattern of racism. That pattern needs to be transformed by a different pattern: the pattern of intentional acts of solidarity with people of other races. Those intentional acts might include advocating for and participating in local intercultural events, seeking friendships with people of other races, and moving to a more diverse neighborhood. These intentional acts, and others like them, are our only hope for overcoming America’s implicit segregation and continued racism. Until we have the courage to live in the pattern of solidarity, segregation and racism will continue to infect American culture.
