It is surprising that any African slave could experience the Protestantism practiced in pre-Civil War America and still have come to a faith in the Christian God. Henry Bibb, a former slave from Kentucky, laments how there is “no one to preach the gospel who is competent to expound the Scriptures, except slaveholders. And the slaves, with but few exceptions, have no confidence at all in their preaching, because they preach a pro-slavery doctrine.” In the same manner William Thomson, a Scottish weaver visiting South Carolina remarks that even though the African slaves were allowed to attend the church (or at least the upper galleries of the church) it was as if they did not even exist, “I was sorry to observe that the minister never turned his eye to the galleries…one would not have known there was an ignorant negro in the house, although there were five or six times as many black skins as white.”
Fredrick Douglass spoke on several occasions of how white preachers would twist any gospel passage in order to condone slavery and to throw out any passage that seems to oppose slavery. At one speech in Boston Douglass said, “It has been said here at the North, that the slaves have the gospel preached to them. But you will see what sort of a gospel it is: – a gospel which more than chains, or whips, or thumbscrews, gives perpetuity to this horrible system.”
In contrast, however, there were many advocates of slavery who believed that even slaves needed to be treated humanely. James Henley Thornwell of South Carolina was one such believer. Thornwell notes that the apostle Paul recognized that slaves possess conscience, reason and will and therefore have a moral character just as any slave owner has a moral character. However Thornwell does not draw this to conclude that slavery is immoral; on the contrary Thornwell notes that Paul also viewed slavery as normative. The thing which needed to be focused on, according to Thornwell, was the treatment of slaves by their masters. Though, by the providence of God, a man is born into slavery, that man still deserves to be treated with certain rights as a human. However, Thornwell would go on to say, that God places specific and unique duties on different individuals, if God chooses to place the duties of a slave on someone then that person should be the best slave they can be and their master should treat them as one of God’s children.
As can be seen from these examples churches had gone from shaping the culture to being shaped by the culture. The Bible was not the resource to which one went when trying to determine if slavery was right or wrong; rather, the Bible was the resource used (by both sides) to confirm previously held opinions.
On the abolitionist front a young printer from New England named William Lloyd Garrison was so opposed to slavery that he was willing to give up certain aspects of the Christianity if they could be construed as supporting slavery. Garrison believed that an individual should search out the scriptures and discard any parts which were judged to be untrue. He held truth to be the highest virtue when he wrote, “To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth.”
This view that scripture could be subjectively divided into the portions that are true and the portions that are false was ultimately self-defeating. If a person can decided for him or her self what parts of scripture to follow, then that person can construct an argument to support practically anything. Those who supported slavery could choose which scriptures to accept as true just as easily as those who opposed slavery.
Ultimately, the disagreement over slavery resulted in the American Civil War (1860-1865). The result of this war was the end of slavery in the United States; although it must be noted that the end of slavery did not mark the beginning of equal rights to persons of all colors. The Civil War was not wholly driven by the moral issues of slavery and the question of its morality. To a certain extent the Civil War can be seen as the natural growing pains of a young nation. Horace Bushnell, a Connecticut pastor spoke the following words at the Yale commencement exercises of 1865:
“in this blood our unity is cemented and forever sanctified. Something was gained for us here, at the beginning, by our sacrifices in the fields of our Revolution, – something, but not all. Had it not been for this common bleeding of the States in their common cause, it is doubtful whether our Constitution could ever have been carried…[yet we] had not bled enough , as yet, to merge our colonial distinctions and make us a proper nation.”
Bushnell believed that the nation could not have survived as a United body had it not been for this shedding of blood to bind her together.
Regardless of whether the war was necessary to bind the nation together it is disturbing to note how commonly both abolitionists and slavery advocates attempted to make religion heel to their social agenda. Each side sought to shape the religious morals of the day to match their agenda. Perhaps no statement so eloquently captured the futility of these actions than did Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address.
“Both [parties] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered – that of neither has been answered fully.”
Ultimately one wonders whether Protestantism had a greater influence on the American culture or American culture had a greater influence on Protestantism. In any era culture and religion will pull on one another trying to shape the world at large. It seems that in pre-Civil War America that tug-of-war ended in a draw with neither force overcoming the other.
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