Scan barcode
timhoiland's review against another edition
4.0
Among the books I read late last year was The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll, a historian of American religion at Notre Dame. It’s a truly illuminating book about the ways different groups of Christians in the mid-nineteenth century interpreted the Bible’s teachings about slavery, along with a whole host of interpretational implications for a range of issues related to public theology.
“From the historical record it is clear,” Noll writes, “that the American Civil War generated a first-order theological crisis over how to interpret the Bible, how to understand the work of God in the world, and how to exercise the authority of theology in a democratic society.”
What struck me while reading his account of that painful and pivotal time in our country’s history was the way that on the whole it was not the slaveholders but the abolitionists—among whose number I’d certainly like to think I would have belonged—who tended to be quick to dismiss or minimize the authority of the Bible, rather than doing the difficult work of interpreting its teaching for public life. Noll writes:
"The primary reason that the biblical defense of slavery remained so strong was that many biblical attacks on slavery were so weak. To oversimplify a complicated picture, the most direct biblical attacks on slavery were ones that relied on common sense, the broadly accepted moral intuitions of American national ideology, and the weight of “self-evident truth.” They were also the easiest to refute. More complicated, nuanced, and involved biblical attacks against slavery offered more formidable opposition. But because those arguments did not feature intuition, republican instinct, and common sense readings of individual texts, they were much less effective in a public arena that had been so strongly shaped by intuitive, republican, and commonsensical intellectual principles."
Ending slavery seemed like a matter of common sense to the abolitionists, and it seems like common sense to most of us today. We could list a number of issues of which that could be said. But as Noll observes, “common sense” arguments that stand or fall on the basis of intuition or instincts are easily dismissed, rightly or wrongly, by those whose instincts differ.
Noll makes another astute observation about the rather glaring blind spots of Christians on both sides of the slavery debate. For all the theological disagreement over the extent to which scriptural support for slavery exists, few called the country’s underlying racism into question at that time: “So seriously fixed in the minds of white Americans, including most abolitionists, was the certainty of black racial inferiority that it overwhelmed biblical testimony about race, even though most Protestant Americans claimed that Scripture was in fact their supreme authority in adjudicating such matters.”
Eventually, of course, the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished. But two issues of immense importance to public theology remained largely unaddressed. Those issues were race and economy.
As Noll puts it, systemic racism of course remained “as the great moral anomaly in a supposedly Christian America” and “theological incoherence in the face of modern economic realities has remained a major problem for Christian thinking ever since the Civil War.”
Public theology has always been a tricky thing, and we need all the help we can get. Faced with this ongoing challenge, the theological crisis that was the Civil War remains an instructive cautionary tale against interpreting the Bible haphazardly. The way we engage with scripture, after all, has enduring public consequences.
- See more at: http://timhoiland.com/2014/02/the-public-consequences-of-haphazard-theologies/
“From the historical record it is clear,” Noll writes, “that the American Civil War generated a first-order theological crisis over how to interpret the Bible, how to understand the work of God in the world, and how to exercise the authority of theology in a democratic society.”
What struck me while reading his account of that painful and pivotal time in our country’s history was the way that on the whole it was not the slaveholders but the abolitionists—among whose number I’d certainly like to think I would have belonged—who tended to be quick to dismiss or minimize the authority of the Bible, rather than doing the difficult work of interpreting its teaching for public life. Noll writes:
"The primary reason that the biblical defense of slavery remained so strong was that many biblical attacks on slavery were so weak. To oversimplify a complicated picture, the most direct biblical attacks on slavery were ones that relied on common sense, the broadly accepted moral intuitions of American national ideology, and the weight of “self-evident truth.” They were also the easiest to refute. More complicated, nuanced, and involved biblical attacks against slavery offered more formidable opposition. But because those arguments did not feature intuition, republican instinct, and common sense readings of individual texts, they were much less effective in a public arena that had been so strongly shaped by intuitive, republican, and commonsensical intellectual principles."
Ending slavery seemed like a matter of common sense to the abolitionists, and it seems like common sense to most of us today. We could list a number of issues of which that could be said. But as Noll observes, “common sense” arguments that stand or fall on the basis of intuition or instincts are easily dismissed, rightly or wrongly, by those whose instincts differ.
Noll makes another astute observation about the rather glaring blind spots of Christians on both sides of the slavery debate. For all the theological disagreement over the extent to which scriptural support for slavery exists, few called the country’s underlying racism into question at that time: “So seriously fixed in the minds of white Americans, including most abolitionists, was the certainty of black racial inferiority that it overwhelmed biblical testimony about race, even though most Protestant Americans claimed that Scripture was in fact their supreme authority in adjudicating such matters.”
Eventually, of course, the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished. But two issues of immense importance to public theology remained largely unaddressed. Those issues were race and economy.
As Noll puts it, systemic racism of course remained “as the great moral anomaly in a supposedly Christian America” and “theological incoherence in the face of modern economic realities has remained a major problem for Christian thinking ever since the Civil War.”
Public theology has always been a tricky thing, and we need all the help we can get. Faced with this ongoing challenge, the theological crisis that was the Civil War remains an instructive cautionary tale against interpreting the Bible haphazardly. The way we engage with scripture, after all, has enduring public consequences.
- See more at: http://timhoiland.com/2014/02/the-public-consequences-of-haphazard-theologies/
scottacorbin's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting look at the theological anxiety at play in the ante- and post-bellum periods. Most interesting of all was the issues related to biblical interpretation.
ivantable's review against another edition
5.0
Essential reading that offers explanatory power for America’s most vexing problem. The chapter on the evolving biblical interpretations, both for an against slavery, is fascinating if also sobering—a reminder that we bring more into the text from the culture around us than we’d care to admit. Reading books like these, rather than spending hours on inane and outrageous social media discourse, will actually help deepen our understanding.
jarreloliveira's review against another edition
5.0
This is the second book written by historian Mark Noll that I've had the privilege of reading. The first being "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" which helped me cope with a difficult season of my and my family life as we left a church we loved dearly but no longer felt comfortable or welcome there. This first book helped me understand the anti-intellectual drive that led to many of the sentiments I saw and experienced, furthering my understanding of why certain people who held the Bible and Christ as supreme letter and King over their life could behave in such dejected and Christless ways.
But in this other book, "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis" Mark Noll ventures onto the subject of why the American church at one point support chattel slavery, then felt that the bible was somewhat ambiguous on it, and later the body of American believers became schismatic over slavery in the abstract and slavery in practice in the American south.
Mark gives a report, a damning one, on how European scholars and theologians (from England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and France) and Canadian ministers wrote, extensively so, on the ills of American slavery, at first from a conscience stand-point, and later, backed by scripture.
Mark gives us a picture of how divided the United States was on the matter, at times, using scripture to support slavery more so than abolitionists did to condemn it. And a faulty hermeneutic in the American intellectual sphere is revealed when Southern slavery promoting and defending ministers ventured to protect the institution of slavery based on scripture located in the Pentateuch, (first five books of the bible), abolitionists, ventured to condemn it based on scriptures found in the new testament.
What American Southern ministers failed to comprehend at the time, Mark explains, is that the model of slavery that took place within the Old Testament narrative was limited, humane, and punishable by death if one were to become a slave trader, chaser, harmer, or slave killer. Southern ministers distorted the same scriptures they used to protect slavery as a means to sear their own conscience and those of their slave-owning congregants because there was too much capital to be made from the trade and too great a moral compass to consider if they were on the wrong side of this debate, scripturally speaking.
Mark also mentions the racism behind Southern efforts to maintain slavery as a divine institution. He states that abolitionists abroad and those in North American states pointed to the reality that in the Old Testament, slave owners were middle-eastern, and their slaves, also, middle-eastern. He also states that abolitionists criticized Southern support for slavery because they quoted the apostle Paul and his Pauline letters to various churches where slavery is mentioned and not condemned by the apostle but they fail to realize that in the Roman Empire, whites were slaves as well. Abolitionists put Southern racism on full display because they would never enslave a white man but used the bible, erroneously so, to enslave the 'negro race.'
All in all, Mark makes mention that the disdain for slavery grew over time not because of slavery in the abstract, in the distant past or slavery as indentured servitude as experienced in biblical times, but because of slavery in practice in the Americas. This disdain was first a conscience and emotional sentiment but only later, decades later did abolitionists decide to revisit the Bible to condemn slavery as a demonstrably disgraceful practice in the American Deep South but also slavery in general.
What hurts my heart most is that even though many abolitionists fought to end the slave trade many of them were still staunch racists (i.e., Abraham Lincoln) as they did not see a future where black people could socialize and congregate and integrate with whites. What began as a societal and political effort to demonize and abolish an evil institution turned into a theological war over what slavery was in the past, what it was in present times compared to the past, and why the institution should be abolished on the basis of Christian virtue. But even then, under this heartfelt sentiment of emancipating the negro, the same groups, Northern Americans and Southern Americans, did not see blacks as equals.
Mark does not venture further into Post-Civil war theology in this book, but he does so in "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" with how Southern Christians lost the war and found other ways by which to deprive their black brothers and sisters in Christ of their God-given dignity and sanctity in the American sphere of life. Anti-intellectualism festered, poor or overtly erroneous bible hermeneutics evolved to promote a new form of disdain for black people in the south which, as it began in the church to promote slavery in the past, here, after the war, it continued in the church to damn and disgrace black people anywhere and everywhere.
What Mark teaches us in his writing is that in America, in particular, the Bible was used, erroneously so, to support a disastrous institution that was neither biblical nor moral. And this is a warning to us readers today as to how Americans continue, unashamedly so, to distort the words of God to promote all forms of disgraceful and regrettable behaviors. It begins with a moral lapse that is later supported (erroneously so) by scripture.
But in this other book, "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis" Mark Noll ventures onto the subject of why the American church at one point support chattel slavery, then felt that the bible was somewhat ambiguous on it, and later the body of American believers became schismatic over slavery in the abstract and slavery in practice in the American south.
Mark gives a report, a damning one, on how European scholars and theologians (from England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and France) and Canadian ministers wrote, extensively so, on the ills of American slavery, at first from a conscience stand-point, and later, backed by scripture.
Mark gives us a picture of how divided the United States was on the matter, at times, using scripture to support slavery more so than abolitionists did to condemn it. And a faulty hermeneutic in the American intellectual sphere is revealed when Southern slavery promoting and defending ministers ventured to protect the institution of slavery based on scripture located in the Pentateuch, (first five books of the bible), abolitionists, ventured to condemn it based on scriptures found in the new testament.
What American Southern ministers failed to comprehend at the time, Mark explains, is that the model of slavery that took place within the Old Testament narrative was limited, humane, and punishable by death if one were to become a slave trader, chaser, harmer, or slave killer. Southern ministers distorted the same scriptures they used to protect slavery as a means to sear their own conscience and those of their slave-owning congregants because there was too much capital to be made from the trade and too great a moral compass to consider if they were on the wrong side of this debate, scripturally speaking.
Mark also mentions the racism behind Southern efforts to maintain slavery as a divine institution. He states that abolitionists abroad and those in North American states pointed to the reality that in the Old Testament, slave owners were middle-eastern, and their slaves, also, middle-eastern. He also states that abolitionists criticized Southern support for slavery because they quoted the apostle Paul and his Pauline letters to various churches where slavery is mentioned and not condemned by the apostle but they fail to realize that in the Roman Empire, whites were slaves as well. Abolitionists put Southern racism on full display because they would never enslave a white man but used the bible, erroneously so, to enslave the 'negro race.'
All in all, Mark makes mention that the disdain for slavery grew over time not because of slavery in the abstract, in the distant past or slavery as indentured servitude as experienced in biblical times, but because of slavery in practice in the Americas. This disdain was first a conscience and emotional sentiment but only later, decades later did abolitionists decide to revisit the Bible to condemn slavery as a demonstrably disgraceful practice in the American Deep South but also slavery in general.
What hurts my heart most is that even though many abolitionists fought to end the slave trade many of them were still staunch racists (i.e., Abraham Lincoln) as they did not see a future where black people could socialize and congregate and integrate with whites. What began as a societal and political effort to demonize and abolish an evil institution turned into a theological war over what slavery was in the past, what it was in present times compared to the past, and why the institution should be abolished on the basis of Christian virtue. But even then, under this heartfelt sentiment of emancipating the negro, the same groups, Northern Americans and Southern Americans, did not see blacks as equals.
Mark does not venture further into Post-Civil war theology in this book, but he does so in "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" with how Southern Christians lost the war and found other ways by which to deprive their black brothers and sisters in Christ of their God-given dignity and sanctity in the American sphere of life. Anti-intellectualism festered, poor or overtly erroneous bible hermeneutics evolved to promote a new form of disdain for black people in the south which, as it began in the church to promote slavery in the past, here, after the war, it continued in the church to damn and disgrace black people anywhere and everywhere.
What Mark teaches us in his writing is that in America, in particular, the Bible was used, erroneously so, to support a disastrous institution that was neither biblical nor moral. And this is a warning to us readers today as to how Americans continue, unashamedly so, to distort the words of God to promote all forms of disgraceful and regrettable behaviors. It begins with a moral lapse that is later supported (erroneously so) by scripture.
socraticgadfly's review against another edition
2.0
Wrongly narrow focus, errors, undercut thesis of book
Noll makes a few errors, mainly, but not entirely, in setting the framework for this book.
Other than a semi-coda chapter on Catholic opinions, he tries to make the "theological crisis" about Protestant Christianity, and more specifically, Reformed Protestant Christianity.
Well, until the Jacksonian Revolution, Episcopalianism supplied much of the national-level political leadership, very much the state-level Southern leadership, and a fair amount of Middle Atlantic states' leadership.
Second, while Methodism in the US might be more influenced by Reformed thought than in the UK, it's not a "Reformed" denomination.
Third, Lutherans had been in American in non-minuscule numbers for a full century before the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian splits. Of course, both they and Episcopalians didn't have the same take on "divine providence," or, in general, attempts to read America as the new Israel, as did the three aforementioned denominations. So, it wasn't the same type of crisis, if much of any, for them, or for Catholics.
And, Noll, as a scholar and academic, knows all this.
Per a one-star reviewer, but with a different focus on my part, I would say that he's showing deliberate theological bias.
He also has sociological and economic ignorance, or bias, take your pick. As modern historians like Edward Baptist have shown, the antebellum South was both a full part of the emerging capitalist trade system and, in many ways, was the greatest fuel for that — not New England — as far as American participation in the system. Therefore, his first bullet point on page 74, about a Southern charge that individualistic capitalism was economically dangerous is some mix of naive, ill-informed and biased — not to mention that, per his own attempts to distinguish southern and northern Protestants' appeals to sola scriptura vs. appeals to customary sense, is wrong, because other than "give unto Caesar," the bible says zip about economics.
Finally, per that last sentence above, Noll's use of the phrase "common sense" for what's really "customary sense" is off-putting.
So, unless you're a conservative evangelical Christian today expecting some "confirmation" of your views of the development of American Xianity through the Civil War, take a pass on this book.
Noll makes a few errors, mainly, but not entirely, in setting the framework for this book.
Other than a semi-coda chapter on Catholic opinions, he tries to make the "theological crisis" about Protestant Christianity, and more specifically, Reformed Protestant Christianity.
Well, until the Jacksonian Revolution, Episcopalianism supplied much of the national-level political leadership, very much the state-level Southern leadership, and a fair amount of Middle Atlantic states' leadership.
Second, while Methodism in the US might be more influenced by Reformed thought than in the UK, it's not a "Reformed" denomination.
Third, Lutherans had been in American in non-minuscule numbers for a full century before the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian splits. Of course, both they and Episcopalians didn't have the same take on "divine providence," or, in general, attempts to read America as the new Israel, as did the three aforementioned denominations. So, it wasn't the same type of crisis, if much of any, for them, or for Catholics.
And, Noll, as a scholar and academic, knows all this.
Per a one-star reviewer, but with a different focus on my part, I would say that he's showing deliberate theological bias.
He also has sociological and economic ignorance, or bias, take your pick. As modern historians like Edward Baptist have shown, the antebellum South was both a full part of the emerging capitalist trade system and, in many ways, was the greatest fuel for that — not New England — as far as American participation in the system. Therefore, his first bullet point on page 74, about a Southern charge that individualistic capitalism was economically dangerous is some mix of naive, ill-informed and biased — not to mention that, per his own attempts to distinguish southern and northern Protestants' appeals to sola scriptura vs. appeals to customary sense, is wrong, because other than "give unto Caesar," the bible says zip about economics.
Finally, per that last sentence above, Noll's use of the phrase "common sense" for what's really "customary sense" is off-putting.
So, unless you're a conservative evangelical Christian today expecting some "confirmation" of your views of the development of American Xianity through the Civil War, take a pass on this book.
shaney_swift's review against another edition
Too academic for my preferences, did not hold my attention.
mscoutj's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting enough, but it was either 150 pages too long or 150 pages too short. The gist of it is this: the Civil War was a theological crisis because the US's religious freedom allowed anyone to interpret the Bible in any manner they wished. If I can explain that in one sentence, then I don't need 200 pages. There were lost of examples of how different people used the Bible to reinforce their position regarding slavery, but we already knew that, didn't we?
ddeanne's review against another edition
3.0
A solid academic book that does what is says on the tin.
smessmores's review against another edition
3.0
I'm not sure quite what I was hoping for from the book but what I got wasn't it, hence the three stars. It was informative, but I think I was expecting more drawing out applications and future patterns rather than merely cataloging statements. One of the things I really appreciated was the connection between religion and the growth of what American republicanism meant. I was surprised that European writers were able to clearly see the slavery/race connection so strongly, since I've never studied European views of American slavery before.