The Baptist Story by Anthony L. Chute & Dr. Nathan A. Finn & Michael A. G. Haykin

Author:Anthony L. Chute & Dr. Nathan A. Finn & Michael A. G. Haykin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Christianity/Baptist
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2015-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

The impact of Baptist chaplains and colporteurs (book distributors) was mixed. A popular book written by Baptist J. William Jones, entitled Christ in the Camp: Religion in Lee’s Army (1887), described individual conversions and group revivals that took place among the troops. Generals Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson were presented as model Christians; stories were told of soldiers who repented of their previously godless lifestyles after hearing sermons or reading tracts. Especially poignant were stories of deathbed conversions. George Rable’s work, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples (2010), presents a different perspective. Lee and Jackson’s public faith notwithstanding, Rable notes that numerous officers were distinctly irreligious and promoted vice rather than virtue. Attendance at religious services was strikingly low during the first two years of the war while consumption of alcohol, gambling, and sexual immorality trended upward. Moreover, despite the impact of “A Mother’s Parting Words,” soldiers often avoided practicing their faith openly lest they appear effeminate before their comrades. Still, reports of revival should not be entirely dismissed. Since soldiers experienced extended times of boredom between moments of fighting, a preacher visiting the troops could break up the monotony as easily as a bottle of ­alcohol.

Letters to family and minutes from church meetings provide insight into the effects of war on soldiers and citizens alike. Soldiers longed for a return to normalcy back home, and church meetings became strangely silent regarding the war. Southerners began to question whether God was against them. John Leadley Dagg, whose résumé included several pastorates, a college presidency, and the first systematic theology written by a Southern Baptist, vocalized the South’s thinking about the war. Still taking for granted that American slavery was justified, Dagg concluded that Southerners had not treated their slaves biblically, in particular by failing to evangelize them and by separating slaves from their spouses and families. The shift from certainty to self-examination became even more prominent among Southerners after the war, leading them to adopt what has been called the religion of the “lost cause.” The war was lost and slaves were free, but the South took a lesson from the war, namely, to distance itself from the Northern way of life, which Southerners characterized as immoral, secular, and theologically suspect.

Accepting this characterization of the North, Southern Baptists rebuffed suggestions by the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) that they should reunite with Northern Baptists. The ABHMS proposals appeared to be genuine—“If the Government is to be one, why should not the Baptist denomination be one?”—but reunion was complicated. In 1864, the ABHMS secured authorization from the War Department to take over abandoned Baptist churches in the South “in which a loyal minister of said church does not now officiate.” This authorization provided considerable opportunity for Northern Baptists to acquire property, which they claimed was done for purposes of preservation. Southern Baptists viewed the seizure of churches as unnecessarily aggressive and, worse, unbaptistic. Opponents of reunion also noted that the two bodies had different structures—convention versus society again—and that the SBC

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