The past large divided successful the religion occurred successful the 1840s, erstwhile the question of slavery opened a rift successful America’s large evangelical denominations. For years, the churches had successfully contained debates implicit the propriety of slavery. Denominational leaders, clergymen and parishioners mostly agreed to disagree. When the schism did yet come, galore observers disquieted that the inability of the churches to support unity portended thing acold much serious. And they were right.
Amid handwringing implicit the existent authorities of governmental polarization, it’s worthy revisiting the spiritual crackup of the 1840s. The United States is not apt staring down the tube astatine a 2nd civilian war, but successful the past, erstwhile churches divided implicit politics, it was a motion that state was accelerated coming isolated astatine the seams.
In the aboriginal 19th century, astir of the large evangelical denominations — Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians — formally opposed the “buying and selling of men, women, and children,” successful the words of the Methodist Book of Discipline, which from the church’s precise inception successful the 1790s took an unequivocal stance against slavery. The Presbyterian General Assembly echoed this sentiment successful 1818 erstwhile it held “the voluntary enslaving of 1 portion of the quality contention by another, arsenic a gross usurpation of the astir precious and ineffable rights of quality nature, arsenic utterly inconsistent with the instrumentality of God.” Baptists, the largest denomination successful the antebellum period, were a decentralized movement, but galore section bodies likewise condemned slaveholding.
None of these positions aligned the churches with the contiguous abolitionism that William Lloyd Garrison, the preeminent abolitionist paper editor, and his allies championed, but they placed the nation’s largest evangelical bodies squarely successful the mean antislavery campy — connected paper, astatine least.
Conviction soon ran up against the applicable request to placate slaveholders successful the South and borderline states, arsenic good arsenic Southern transplants to the Midwest. Competing fiercely for caller adherents, the large evangelical churches were loath to alienate existent oregon prospective members. It was 1 substance to reason slavery successful authoritative religion documents. It was different to authorisation enslaved owners oregon exclude them from Christian fellowship — a measurement that galore churchgoers considered some counterintuitive to the task of redeeming souls and much apt to alienate than transportation slaveholders. Thus successful 1836 the Presbyterian General Assembly rejected a solution to censure slaveholders, reasoning that specified a measurement “would thin to distract and divide” Christians of bully faith. The aforesaid year, the Methodist General Conference likewise voted down a connection to authorisation slaveholding religion members and adjacent took the further measurement of formally denouncing 2 abolitionist ministers for agitating against slavery astatine the conference.
In these years, spiritual abolitionists, who represented a tiny number of evangelical Christians, sometimes applied a “no fellowship with slaveholders” standard. If the churches would not expel enslaved owners, they would simply found their ain churches. A assortment of “come-outer” sects broke distant from the established evangelical churches successful the 1830s and 1840s, believing, successful the words of a normal that convened successful 1851 successful Putnam County, Illinois, that “the implicit divorcement of the religion and of missions from nationalist sins volition signifier a caller and glorious epoch successful her past — the precursor of Millennial blessedness.” Prominent abolitionists including James Birney, who ran for president successful 1840 and 1844 arsenic the nominee of the Liberty Party — a small, single-issue enactment dedicated to abolition — William Lloyd Garrison and William Goodell, the writer of Come-Outerism: The Duty of Secession from a Corrupt Church, openly encouraged Christians to permission their churches and marque fellowship with like-minded opponents of slavery. Come-outers nevertheless represented a minuscule fraction of organized Christianity. In the end, breaking fellowship with their coreligionists was a measurement excessively acold for each but a tiny fig of profoundly committed activists. Some churches were person to the antislavery origin than others.
The archetypal lightning bolt struck successful 1837, erstwhile the Presbyterian religion formally divided betwixt its New School and Old School factions. Technically the disagreement was implicit theological questions, with New School churches and synods adopting an “alleviated” signifier of Calvinism that rejected the harder tenets of predestination, portion Old School Presbyterians retained a accepted Calvinist interpretation. Most of the nation’s New School Presbyterians, numbering astir 100,000 communicants crossed 1,200 churches, lived successful Northern states. The Old School, with astir 127,000 members and 1,763 churches, was not strictly a Southern spiritual movement; it enjoyed pockets of spot successful Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Contemporaries nevertheless believed that the contention implicit slavery was firmly down the rupture. A twelvemonth earlier the ceremonial divorce, delegates to the General Assembly held abstracted caucuses — 1 successful the North, 1 successful the South. A Southern delegate observed that “it is the prevalent sentiment among southerners that we are to beryllium unchurched by a sizeable majority. If so, we tin discontinue southbound of Mason’s and Dixon’s enactment and … dwell successful bid and harmony.” The Cincinnati Journal and Luminary, a spiritual work that intimately followed the Presbyterian schism, concluded that the “question is not betwixt the caller and the aged schoolhouse — is not successful narration to doctrinal errors; but it is slavery and anti-slavery. It is not the [Westminster] standards which were to beryllium protected, but the strategy of slavery.”
Discord implicit slavery soon dispersed to the different large denominations. In 1844 the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church convened successful New York for its yearly meeting. A twelvemonth earlier, dozens of Northern congregations representing astir 6,000 members broke with their genitor religion implicit its toleration of slavery, forming the come-outer Wesleyan Methodist Church. Recognizing the anticipation of further defections, religion officials hoped to motion astatine their absorption to slavery without afloat antagonizing achromatic Southern coreligionists.
The trial came erstwhile the league confronted the lawsuit of James O. Andrew, a bishop from Georgia who “became connected with slavery” erstwhile his archetypal woman died, leaving him successful possession of 2 enslaved radical whom she’d owned. The substance was compounded erstwhile Andrew’s 2nd woman inherited respective enslaved radical from her precocious husband. Bishop Andrew signed ineligible documents forswearing a spot narration to his 2nd wife’s slaves, but his antislavery peers would person thing of it, hoping to unit the contented astatine the General Conference.
By a ballot of 110 to 68, the assembly deemed that Andrew’s “connection” with slavery would “greatly embarrass the workout of his bureau … if not successful immoderate places wholly forestall it” and recovered that helium should measurement speech “so agelong arsenic this impediment remains.” In response, Southern Methodists withdrew from the religion and formed their ain denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. “The part of the Methodist Church volition show … that Southern forbearance has its limits,” wrote a enslaved proprietor for the Southern Christian Advocate, “and that a vigorous and agreed absorption volition beryllium made astatine each costs, to the dispersed of the pseudo-religious phrenzy called abolitionism.”
Leaders connected some sides negotiated an equitable organisation of assets and went their abstracted ways. Peter Cartwright, a Methodist curate and person who would tally unsuccessfully against Abraham Lincoln for Congress 2 years later, was contiguous astatine the conference. “I knew, if the Southern preachers failed to transportation the constituent they had fixed, namely, the tolerance of slaveholding successful episcopacy, that they would alert the track, and acceptable up for themselves,” helium aboriginal recalled. “And I the much profoundly regretted it due to the fact that immoderate abomination sanctioned by the priesthood, would instrumentality a firmer clasp connected the country, and that this precise condition would the longer perpetuate the evil of slavery, and possibly would beryllium the entering wedge to the dissolution of our glorious Union; and possibly the downfall of this large republic.”
Baptists experienced a akin schism, 1 that resulted successful a imperishable divided betwixt the movement’s bluish and confederate congregations. Meeting successful New York successful 1840, leaders of the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention warned that “we cannot and we situation not admit you arsenic accordant brethren successful Christ … and we cannot astatine the Lord’s table, cordially instrumentality that arsenic a brother’s hand, which plies the scourge connected woman’s bare flesh, — which thrusts a gag successful the rima of a man, — which rivets fetters connected the innocent, — and which shuts the Bible from quality eyes.” Southern Baptists, ever delicate to the motivation judgement of non-slaveholders, took discourtesy astatine “aspersions upon their character” and, contempt hand-wringing implicit the governmental consequences of disunion wrong the church, made bully connected their menace to chopped disconnected ties with their Northern churchmen. In 1845 they withdrew and formed the Southern Baptist Convention.
Ironically, these schisms freed Northern Protestants from the necessity of placating their Southern brothers and sisters. In the 1850s, arsenic slavery came to the forefront of nationalist politics, galore Northern congregations and laic organizations passed resolutions excluding enslaved owners from their fellowship and denouncing arsenic sinners those who held slaves. Such enactment was much prevalent successful New England and bluish parts of the Midwest. Border states and the little Midwest remained Southern successful root and much intimately tied to the instauration of slavery. In effect, events successful the 1850s — from the transition of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which efficaciously abrogated the Missouri Compromise and opened the occidental territories to slavery — radicalized Northern Christians successful a mode that fewer abolitionists could person predicted conscionable 10 years earlier.
The parallel betwixt past and present is not a cleanable one. Two 100 years ago, organized Protestant churches were arguably the astir influential nationalist institutions successful the United States. On the eve of the Civil War, the fig of progressive Methodist clergymen astir equaled the fig of postal workers nationwide (a important benchmark, arsenic earlier the war, the station bureau was the largest national bureau and the subdivision done which astir Americans experienced a nonstop narration with the national government). By immoderate estimates, the full receipts of each churches and spiritual organizations were astir adjacent to the national government’s yearly revenue. Among the country’s astir 400 colleges, astir each past 1 was affiliated with a church.
That’s nary longer the case. Mainline Protestant churches person agelong been connected a steep diminution successful the U.S., arsenic has religious observance and individuality much broadly. In the 1840s, mainline denominations were the astir important gathering artifact of civilian society; their breakdown was truthful acold much portentous than is the lawsuit today.
But the illustration is telling, nevertheless. For decades, the churches had proven deft — excessively deft — astatine absorbing the governmental and societal statement implicit slavery. Their inability to support that bid was a motion that the state had grown dangerously divided.
Today, mainline churches are bucking nether the strain of debates implicit sex, sex and civilization that bespeak America’s heavy partisan and ideological divide. In a state with a shrinking center, adjacent bonds of spiritual fellowship look excessively brittle to endure. If past is immoderate guide, it’s a motion of sharper polarization to come.
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