CHRIST-APP by philtierneyblog

One More Story: The Civil War

America’s Great Awakenings

Most American Christians may not know that there have been several “Great Awakenings” in America over the centuries. A Great Awakening is a Christian revival that has been widespread, relatively long-lasting and has had effects on wider society. There have been three and some would say four Great Awakenings throughout American history.

Spiritually speaking, when people undergo a conversion to faith in Christ or a revival of it, they have been compelled to act upon it in meaningful ways. The actions may sometimes take the shape of reforms in their own personal lives or reforms of some identified ills in their communities and sometimes both. In the course of each Great Awakening, Christians were led to solve some identified problem in American society that persisted at the time. Sometimes those reform movements were successful. Sometimes they failed. And sometimes there were grave consequences.

During the First Great Awakening (1730-1755) illiteracy and ignorance were discerned to be the problems that needed to be addressed. The initial goal was simply to teach individuals to read the Bible in services of their own ongoing spiritual growth. The vision expanded, though. Christians of that time believed that God was calling them educate all colonists to read and write. Those whose faith was revived in the Awakening organized a movement to educate the public throughout the colonies. Colleges and universities were founded. Mandatory public education became far more widespread. Literacy among American colonists was greatly expanded by those reforms.

Converts of the other Great Awakenings identified different social ills that seemed most pressing in their times. Leaders and converts of the Second Great Awakening (1795-1840) felt called by God to abolish slavery. Those involved in the Third Great Awakening (1855-1920) identified alcohol abuse as the main contributor to poverty and domestic violence in America. They felt called by God to prohibit the manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages.

In fact, two different reform movements were inspired during the Third Great Awakening. Some dedicated themselves to the Prohibition Movement to defeat “demon rum” and remediate its consequences. Others had a grander vision, especially those inspired to enter ordained ministry or public service. They organized the “Social Gospel” movement. That movement sought to apply Jesus’s teachings and example to society. They created government programs to help those in various kinds of need within America and international organizations to prevent the rise of other ills throughout the world. It was the Social Gospel Movement, for example, that inspired Woodrow Wilson to found the League of Nations to mitigate international conflicts and Franklin Roosevelt to develop the New Deal to counteract the impact of the Great Depression.

Second Awakening: Division and Warfare:

Of these three American Awakenings, perhaps the most devastating consequences came in the wake of the Second Great Awakening. Revivalists had seen massive numbers of African slaves converted to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The authenticity of their conversions was incontrovertible. Christian revivalists concluded that Africans slaves must be humans, after all.  They came to believe that if Africans were human they were created in God’s image as children of God. They further concluded that, since the Bible said that children of the Covenant should not be enslaved, slavery should be abolished altogether in America as it had been by Britain. That gave birth to the Abolition Movement in America.

The Abolition Movement spread during the ensuing decades in the Northern states, where the Awakening began. Preachers, legislators and journalists increasingly decried slavery and called for it to be banned. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the daughter of a prominent revivalist, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The popularity of that particular book intensified the feelings of urgency and passion for outlawing slavery.

That sentiment was not shared elsewhere in the nation, though. As the intensity of convictions against slavery grew in the North, resistance to abolitionism grew in the South. Those opposing views had significant religious ramifications. American Christians in the South barred northern evangelists from preaching in Southern states. They banned northern evangelists from preaching to slaves, altogether.

Christians Divide

Two different versions of the Second Great Awakening emerged. Southern slave owners saw that Black converts were more compliant, obedient and hard-working, and so they sent Southern evangelists to preach the Gospel to slaves. They taught them that following Christ involved obeying their masters. But they did not encourage them to learn to read the Bible because they were afraid it would instill greater aspirations for freedom. In point of fact, the Southern Awakening emphasized the importance of personal moral reform after conversion, but rejected social reforms completely.

Southern and Northern Christians became increasingly set in their ways and polarized. Every Christian denomination, but the Episcopal and Catholic Churches, broke away from each other, and many remain separate to this day. Each criticized the other for heresy and immorality. Southern churches castigated their counterparts in the North for their embrace of the Social Gospel and those in the North abhorred Southern churches active support of slavery.

John Brown

John Brown

While legislators in Congress fought over opposing bills, some abolitionists had become radicalized. John Brown was probably the most famous of the radical abolitionist revivalists. He became convinced that slavery was so evil that it had to be ended by violent insurrection. Brown’s strategy began with raiding slave holding plantations and releasing slaves. Brown and his “Raiders” expanded their strategy, though. They had a new plan. They attacked the United States Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Their plan was to take guns from the armory, there, and distribute them to slaves. Their vision was to inspire and enable a widespread slave rebellion. The plan failed.

John Brown and his raiders were either killed or captured in the attack. After Brown was hanged, he became a martyr for the cause of abolition. Brown was demonized in the South, but abolitionist sentiments only intensified in the North. Notice how the words of this famous hymn fused faith and violent action at that time:

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.

CHORUS: Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on.

He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
His soul goes marching on. — CHORUS

John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back,
John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back,
John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back,
His soul goes marching on. — CHORUS

John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
His soul goes marching on. — CHORUS

The stars above in Heaven now are looking kindly down,
The stars above in Heaven now are looking kindly down,
The stars above in Heaven now are looking kindly down,
His soul goes marching on. — CHORUS

Faith and War

The American Civil War began two years after John Brown was executed. The total number casualties of that war have been estimated at more than one million Americans. More than 600,000 soldiers were killed. Rephrased, more than 600,000 Christians killed each other during that war.

You may be tempted to think that the Civil War was not inspired by Christian convictions. You may be tempted to imagine that it was not the result of a fusion between Church and State, between Christianity and politics on both sides of the Mason Dixon line.  You may want to think that Christians don’t choose to kill each other over differences.  And yet a different tale was told by one very prominent hymn of that time.  Consider the words and ponder their meaning.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps
I have read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on

Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
His Truth is marching on

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish’d rows of steel
As ye deal with my contempters so with you my grace shall deal
Let the hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul to answer him be jubilant, my feet
Our God is marching on

Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
His Truth is marching on
His Truth is marching on

The Point

The truth is that people of shared biblical faith have been killing each other throughout history. They have always done it the firm belief that God called them to do it for the sake of their faith and or for their moral convictions.

The truth is, throughout world history to the present, many times more Christians from so-called “Christian nations” have killed or been killed by other Christians from so-called “Christian nations” than by any others.

What is the point of these stories, Brothers and Sisters?

The point is that Jesus, as we know Him through the Gospels, would never have sanctioned any of it. Nevertheless, Christians have deceived themselves to think that Jesus calls for dominance, control and even violence, warfare and the removal of other people in His name and to serve God’s Kingdom on Earth. That is a delusion.

It has always followed a pattern. Christians, for one reason or another, turn to dominance, control, violence and warfare to impose their ways on others. Christians fixate some form of heresy, idolatry, paganism, unfaithfulness, immorality or differences of belief and practice. Christians come to conceive of the ones they label as such as objects of threat or impurity that must be opposed. They judge such people as not real Christians and eventually consider them less than human, less than God’s children. Christian leaders or influencers designate their opponents as enemies of God. Then they demonize them, claiming that they are under the influence of the devil or actual demons. They tell their followers that God wants them to be overcome or destroyed. And so, they persuade their Christian followers to believe that God wants them to vanquish their enemies and kill them for God’s sake, in the name of Jesus. Warfare ensues and people are killed. That is opposed to Jesus’s way.

That pattern is being reenacted in America, right now, Brothers and Sisters. If American Christians do not resist this deception, it will play out as it has so often in the past. Do not be deceived. This is opposed to everything that Jesus taught and modelled. Jesus does not approve of this pattern, and no cause would change that truth. As Jesus said to Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, “’Put your sword back in its place, ‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?’” (Matthew 26: 52-53)

At the very least, God, the Creator of all that is and the almighty One, is able to take care of Himself. God is able to accomplish His will in His own good time. Christians who think that God needs them to make happen what they consider to be His will on Earth by using political power or violence, are deluded by their own pride. Do not be deceived by such thinking.