58. Chapter 53: The Civil War and Reconstruction Periods

CHAPTER 53 The Civil War and Reconstruction Periods

1. Anti-Slavery Sentiment Arises In colonial times slaveholding was general in America. Many of the foremost Congregationalist ministers, including Jonathan Ed­wards, were slave owners. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War there were 6,000 slaves in Massachusetts alone. But although slavery was a practice that was taken for granted, there were those who disapproved. As early as 1769 Samuel Hopkins, a minister at Newport, Rhode Island, preached strongly against slavery. Of all the colonial churches the Episcopal Church did the most in systematic work among the Negro slaves. But that church did not raise its voice against slavery. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and the Baptists were for the most part not of the wealthy class, and conse­quently did not own slaves. The Quakers were the only religious body in colonial times to take a definite stand against slavery.

Toward the end of the colonial period the general attitude of the people began to change. It was clear that slavery was in conflict with the American principle that "all men are created equal," and that "all men are by nature free and independent." In the South as well as in the North the feeling became widespread that slavery ought to be gradually abolished. The Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches passed strong resolutions against slavery.

2. The Churches Divide on the Slavery Question

Whitney’s invention of the cot­ton gin in 1792 and the invention of machinery for spinning and weaving cotton brought about a complete change of sentiment to­ward slavery in the South. Cotton became the most important Amer­ican product, and by 1830 southern leaders had become convinced that the welfare of the nation depended upon cotton. Furthermore, it was felt that cotton could not be raised profitably without Negro slave labor. At the same time a radical change in sentiment was taking place in the North. There the atti­tude of an ever increasing number of people against slavery became exceedingly intense and fierce. This was due in large measure to the eloquent preaching against slavery by Wendell Phillips, the anti-slav­ery poems of Whittier, and most of all the fiery anti-slavery propa­ganda of William Lloyd Garrison in his paper The Liberator. With steadily increasing boldness the Northerners demanded the im­mediate abolition of slavery.

Bitter antagonism between the North and the South developed over the slavery question, and the members of the churches in the two sections came to share those bitter feelings. This feeling of bit­terness went so far as to divide a number of the churches. The first separation came in the Baptist Church. In May, 1845, the Baptist Missionary Society, meet­ing in Augusta, Georgia, decided to discontinue its co-operation with the Baptists in the North, and or­ganized its own separate mission­ary society. In the same year the southern Methodist churches voted to separate from the northern churches, and adopted the name Methodist Episcopal Church, South. A similar break occurred among the Presbyterians. In 1861 the Episcopalians of the South separated from those in the North; but at the end of the war in 1865 the unity of this church was restored. This early reunion was made possible by the fact that the Protestant Episcopal Church never had taken sides on the slav­ery question. There was no bitter­ness to overcome. The churches both in the South and in the North gave all-out sup­port to their respective govern­ments during the war. They felt that great religious and moral principles were involved in slavery, in the Civil War, and in the prob­lems that faced the nation in the Reconstruction period.

3. The Churches Work among the Negroes In the South as well as in the North the churches felt their obli­gation to the Negroes who had been set free from the bonds of slavery. They opened schools for the freedmen and their children, and provided for their religious instruction and training. As time went on and this education took effect, the Negroes began to or­ganize their own churches. Of all the agencies devoted to the welfare of the colored people, these Negro churches have perhaps had the most important part not only in the religious and moral, but also in the social and intellectu­al progress of the Negro race in America.

4. The Westward Movement Con­tinues

Following the Civil War the westward trek was resumed. People crossed the Mississippi and the great plains, and penetrated the Rockies. The churches, partic­ularly the Baptist and Methodist, followed on the heels of the fron­tiersmen. The Methodists were especially helpful. They organized a Church Extension Society which by means of gifts made it possible for the settlers on the frontier to erect church buildings. They also established a loan fund. With the help of loans thousands of church buildings were erected.

During this period the Congre­gationalists experienced a new awareness of their own denomina­tion. At their national Convention held in Albany in 1852 they had abandoned the Plan of Union which for many years bound their churches to the Presbyterians. They were now once more inde­pendent in their organization and government. They established a seminary in Chicago, and with the other churches they advanced into the new prairie and Rocky Moun­tain states. True to their educa­tional tradition they founded many colleges in these new regions.

5. Immigrants Disregard the Puri­tan Sabbath

After the Civil War immigra­tion from Europe was resumed on a scale larger than ever before. From 1865 to 1884 more than seven million immigrants entered the United States. Nearly half of them came from Ireland and Ger­many. The Irish immigrants were practically all Roman Catholic. The German immigrants were Catholic, Lutheran, or Rationalistic.

Up to this time strict Sunday observance was the rule in Amer­ica. All stores were closed, few trains ran, and all places of amuse­ment were closed. No picnics or outings were held on Sunday, and there was no "week-ending." The great majority of the American people went to church regularly on Sunday morning and again in the evening. Americans had inherited their strict Sunday observance from the Calvinistic or Puritan founders of New England.

Both Lutheran and Catholic Ger­mans brought with them the so-called "Continental Sabbath." Thousands of these Germans made their home in Chicago. When the newcomers made their influence felt, Chicago on Sunday was de­scribed by someone as "Berlin in the morning, and Paris in the af­ternoon and evening." This meant that people in Chicago went to church in the morning, and went out for pleasure the rest of the day. The new immigrants spoke derisively of the American way of Sunday observance; they called it the "Puritan Sabbath." Through­out the seventies ministers in all American churches preached against the tendency to forsake the traditional American way of observing Sunday. But this ten­dency has made steady progress to the present day.

6. The Gospel Is Carried to Those Outside the Church The immigrants to a very large extent settled in the cities. Most of them were poor. As a result there developed in the large cities vast tenement districts inhabited by "foreigners." A large propor­tion of these immigrants had no church connections. The Methodists, Baptists, Pres­byterians, and Congregationalists saw their need and began to bring them the Word of God. The Bap­tist Home Mission Society in 1867 had forty-nine ordained "foreign­ers" working among Germans, Hol­landers, Frenchmen, Welshmen, Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes. In three of their seminaries the Baptists introduced foreign lan­guage departments so that minis­ters could be trained for this kind of mission work. Today many de­nominations carry on a wide pro­gram of evangelization in the cities of the United States. The constantly advancing white man crowded the red man ever farther back. This resulted in sev­eral Indian wars, until finally the government adopted the policy of placing the Indians on reservations of available land. The churches carried on mission work among the natives of our country with in­creasing energy. At the present time 36 denominations are support­ing 833 missionaries among the Indians. Besides these, mission­aries are also sent out by independ­ent groups. It is estimated that there are 140,000 Indians attending Protestant services, 39,200 of whom are church members.

7. Dwight L. Moody — a Gifted Evangelist

Among those who carried on Christian work among the soldiers during the Civil War was Dwight Lyman Moody — a young man who had already made considerable progress in evangelistic work in Chicago.

Moody was born in East North­field, Massachusetts. His education was meager, for his father died when he was only four years old and his mother had all she could do to provide the necessary things for her children. When Dwight Moody was eight­een he confessed Christ as his Savior, and a year later he went west to Chicago, where he engaged in business. At Plymouth Church he rented extra pews and invited many young men to come to the service with him. He also opened a Sunday School in one of the poorer sections of the city, gathering the children in from the streets to tell them the truths found in the Scriptures.

Soon he gave up his business to devote all his time to Christian work. From 1865 to 1869 he was president of the Chicago Y.M.C.A. He collected money for the first Y.M.C.A. building in America. From 1871 on Moody conducted revival meetings in various places throughout the land. He also toured England and Scotland several times. Ira D. Sankey, a singer, assisted him in conducting the meetings. Sankey led the singing and introduced new hymns to the people. In his preaching Moody stressed the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. The simplicity of his language and the warmth and sin­cerity of his spirit attracted great numbers. Moody and Sankey be­came household names in America. As a result of their ministry thou­sands professed Christ as their Savior; no such scenes as attended the Moody-Sankey meetings had been witnessed since the days of Wesley and Whitefield (ch. 40, sec. 7).

Moody’s great ability for organ­izing was again shown in the Christian boarding schools he es­tablished in Massachusetts, and in the founding of the Chicago Bible Institute, later called the Moody Bible Institute. Much of his later life was devoted to building up this institution. He died in Northfield in 1899.

Moody’s success as a revivalist produced a large number of imita­tors. The professional evangelist has been peculiar to America; but revivalism seems now to be on the decline. It is possible that radio preaching is taking the place of re­vival meetings and roving evan­gelists.

8. Horace Bushnell Criticizes Re­vivalism In 1846 there appeared a small book entitled Christian Nurture. It was written by Horace Bushnell, a Congregational minister in Con­necticut. In this little book he sharply criticized the churches that believed in Revivalism. He denied that a person in becoming a Chris­tian must necessarily have a conscious emotional experience. He insisted that "a child is to grow up a Christian, and never know himself as being otherwise." He held that this would be possible if the home were truly Christian, and if the child were given his proper place in the church. This book was widely read and went through many editions. It was one of the strongest influences in leading the churches to give more attention to the training of their youth. The publication of Chris­tian Nurture was an important event in the history of the Church in America.

Bushnell was, however, far from orthodox. He published a great many other writings, and through them became the leader of the lib­eral movement in religion and the­ology. Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks, gifted and famous preachers, did a great deal to spread the ideas of Bushnell far and wide throughout the churches of America.