![]() ![]() On the eve of the Civil War, the number of active Methodist clergymen roughly equaled the number of postal workers nationwide (a significant benchmark, as before the war, the post office was the largest federal agency and the branch through which most Americans experienced a direct relationship with the federal government). Tract societies and evangelical newspapers became key staples of public culture.īy numbers alone, organized Protestant churches were arguably the most influential public institutions in the United States. Church membership exploded in these years. Millions of Americans flocked to new evangelical churches, which held that through belief, repentance and a personal relationship with Christ, individuals could find grace in this life and the next. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, America experienced an intense period of religious revivalism - what historians call the Second Great Awakening. It was a watershed moment that continues to define our political culture and render it distinct from other western democracies. Never again would ministers and lay leaders be reticent about mixing religion and state. Even as he remained privately doubtful that God was on the Union’s side, he encouraged Christian leaders to bring their faith into the public sphere in a way that had lasting implications on American society. Lincoln, ever the iconoclast, never shared the certitude of his fellow Christians, but he recognized the power and influence of the evangelical united front. Breaking with decades of tradition that respected a wall between religion and politics, the largest evangelical churches engaged fully in politics, coming over the course of the war to champion not only the war effort, but particular policies (notably, abolition and total war) and, by 1864, the Republican Party. With Lincoln’s active encouragement, the Northern churches mobilized in full force behind the war effort, firm in the belief that theirs was a holy writ. The Union was on God’s side, and God was on the Union’s. But where Lincoln grappled with the question of which side God had chosen, most Northern religious leaders - lay and clergy alike - were certain. Like many of his religious supporters, Lincoln believed that God had willed the Civil War, and, in time, the president would echo popular jeremiads that cast the suffering imposed on the nation as divine retribution for the sin of slavery. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. ![]() By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. “I am almost ready to say this is probably true,” Lincoln continued, “that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.
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