1998 Issue 3 - From Theocracy to Spirituality, The Southern Presbyterian Reversal on Church and State - Counsel of Chalcedon

8/12/2019 1998 Issue 3 - From Theocracy to Spirituality, The Southern Presbyterian Reversal on Church and State - Counsel

1/8

A Century Ago, and for long

afterward, the Presbyterian Church

in

the United States ( the Southern

Church ) made a complete isolation

ofthe

church from secular and

political concerns its distinctive

doctrine. Adherents ofthe

spirituality

or

non-secular

character of the church have

regarded it as

aU

old Presbyterian

tradition, and have attributed the

founding

of

a separate southern

church in

1861

to the national (Old

School) General Assembly's

adoption

of political resolutions

supporting

the Federal

war

effort in

1861.

Critics

of

the '

doctrine have at tribu ted i t

to an otherworldly

tendency

of southern

white

Protestantism

or

to fear of

national church

pronouncements on

slavery. Adherents have

insisted that the Southern

Church never wavered from strict

spirituality before

1900;

critics have

pointed

to proslavery and pro

Confederate pronouncements

during the Civil

War as

deviations

from the church's apolitical

professions. All writers have agreed,

however, tha t Southem

Presbyterians embraced the

spirituality of the church before

1861,

and that their great

theologian, James Henley Thornwell

of

South

Carolina, made it one of his

principal emphases.

It

is time to challenge that

generally-accepted premise.

Antebellum Southern

Presbyterianism did not teach

absolute separation of religion from

politics,

or

even church from state.

Most

of them

were proslavery social

activists who worked through

the

church to defend slavery and reform

its practice. Their Confederate

militance did not violate any

antebellum tradition of pietism.

Only

during Reconstruction,

in

drastically altered circumstances,

did they take up the cause

of

a non

secular church - borrowing it

from conservative Presbyterians in

the border states.

In nineteenth century America,

Presbyterian leaders upheld

separation of church and state in the

elementary sense that there should

be no established church.

Nevertheless they were theocrats

who considered Christianity the

national religion and (with a certain

amount

of

reserve) expressed .

Christian views of public policy,

from their pulpits Presbyterian '

ministers south of Virginia shared

fully in that tradition.

t

was a very

erroneous impression, James

A.

Lyon of Mississippi declared, that

religion is valuable only as

preparation for another world.'

Religion, the Deep South pulpit

orator Benjamin

M.

Palmer

preached, does not exclude, but

rather.

.

embraces, all the social

relations

of man

... Southern

Presbyterian churchmen emphasized

Christianity's role in improving

temporal society. In

the

Southern

Presbyterian

Review,

they applied

their theocratic analysis to po ilical,

social, and intellectual problems as

well strictly religious ones.

The southern theocrats gave the

church a role in strengthening civil

authority, declaring lawbreaking a

religiOUS

crime except when civil

, disobedience might be a religious

duty. Attacking New England

liberalism, they found theolOgical

and social heresies closely related.

'They attributed civil crises to divine

judgment , and used public fast-days,

to demand national repentance for

32 l THE OUNSEL

of

halcedon l

n ~ n l y 998

collective sins. The erudite

Charleston minister Thomas Smyth,

, wrote that the connectionbeeween

true religion and sound politics is

very intimate, and that instructing,

Christians

in

the Christianity of their

political relations was a ministerial

duty Lyon taught that m n s t ~ r s ,

must inculcate virtue and denounce

evil in all the actions of all men, .in

church and state. ' That religion,

ought to be ,carried into, politics,

the entral Presbyterian of Richmond

editorialized, .. has alw:aysbeen

held among

us.'

Presbyterian ministers Often

offered southerners

, guidance on moral issues.'

Theyspoke for or against

establishing public schools

and argued that public

institutions should give

religious instruction.

7

They

opposed Sunday mail

service and examine,d the

Mexican War in the light of

, Christian ethics. Presbyterian

weeklies carried cplumns of political

news, and the Southern Presbyterian

Review published appeals for public

education; mental-health facilities,

prison reform, and suppression of ,

duelling.' Southern Presbyterians

did \lot ban civil questions from

church courts.

In

1857

Concord

Presbytery in North Carolina askeel

the Old School General Assembly to

memorialize Congress against

Sunday mails.

o

Some southern .

commissioners asked the

1850 .

Assembly to address Congress about

the sectional crisis, and others, in

1852

and

1853,

supported a

memorial for treaty protection of

Americans' religiOUS rights abroadY

In

1860

the Syood

of

North

Carolina lost patience with the

respected minister Drury Lacy when

he asked, pleading ignorance of

politiCS,

to be excused from chairing

a committee on a memorial to

Congress. The moderator replied

that Lacy should inform himself


2/8

about

politics,

and

that committee

service would help him to do

so.

Many Southern Presbyterian

churchmen went far beyond the

norm in trying to impress

Christianity on their government.

The

North arolina Presbyterian

warned that the United States would

suffer from having carried

separation of church and state much

to

far 13

Leading Deep South

ministers wanted to correct the

excess,

Smyth thought t he state

must recognize God as ruler and

protect church prerogatives.

14

Charles Co cock Jones, the Georgia

missionary

to

slaves, considered the

state a morally-responsible corporate

person. He thought the government

should adapt its policy to Christian

precepts

and

restrain expression

of

antiChristian

views. S

Virginia

Presbyterians, on the contrary,

retained their tradition

of

church

state separation. In 1848, the

Richmond minister William S

Plumer defended Virginia's policy

against chartering religious. bodies.

The

Southern Presbyterian

Review

commended Plumer's display of

social responsibility,

but

criticized

the stand

he

took.

t

found his

denial that America was a Christian

nation tinged with Jeffersonian

separationist heresy.

Proslavery Presbyterians opposed

demands for antislavery General

Assembly deliverances, but they did

not want the church

to

be silent

on

slavery. Sure of the system's

rightness, they held that the church

should teach its moral legitimacy,

the mutual duties

of

masters and

slaves, and the evils of abolitionism.

They opposed the ambivalent

northern conservatives' policy of

church silence on slavery."

Southern presbyteries and synods

expounded Christian proslavery

doctrine

and

sought proslavery

Assembly

pronouncements.

Slavery, Lyon said, was "strictly a

pulpit theme. 19 The issue, Palmer

;

declared, was "in its origin a

question of morals and religions.""

The South Carolina theologian

John

B

Adger therefore found the African

slave trade issue "a religious as well

as a political question."" In the

slavery question, Abner A Porter

of

South Carolina wrote, "the duties of

the citizen and the duties of a

Christian blend," so that the

southern minister must defend the

southern cause.

n

Southern

Presbyterians' commitment

to

slavery did

not

deter them from

social activism

but

impelled

them

to

it.

Thornwell's views of church

government did not conflict with

that activism. Thornwell and Robert

J

Breckinridge of Kentucky led a

'Jure divino" school of Presbyterian

polity which made church courts

the basic mission agencies and

reqUired positive biblical mandate

for all their actions. They did

not

greatly constrict the church's scope,

because Thornwell by inference

found biblical mandates on a wide

range

of

topics." The did

not

claim

that the church must avoid all

political questions; thei r main policy

contentions concerned church

boards and the office of elder.

Thornwell did teach that basic social

institutions were

to

be accepted as

providential, and that the church, as

such an institution, should stand

aloof from "voluntary societies" to

promote causes. That policy,

however, left the church free to

address the state and to endorse

or

condemn societies

programs.

Thornwell did not separate religion

from politics. He drafted proslavery

church statements

and

endorsed

the

Assembly's 1847 utterance

on

peace

with Mexico." Preaching to his state

legislature, he warned against mass

democracy.26

He

promoted church

state cooperation in South Carolina

College, and advocated pUblic

schools with religiOUS instruction.

A state, he held, was morally a

person, obligated to acknowledge

God and

by

nature incapable

or

religiOUS

neutrality. Christianity,

he

taught, was the American "state

religion,"

and

officials were

bound

no to violate its precepts

in

pUblic

acts. He objected to established

churches (as

in

Scotland)

only

insofar as they

subverted church

independence."

Thornwell's undeserved

reputation as

champion of an

apolitical church resulted from a

chance incident at the

1859

Old

School General Assembly. A

proposal to endorse

the

American

Colonization Society

program

seemed sure of adoption, to

Thornwell's chagrin.

Palmer

suggested to

him

the idea

of an

ecclesiological objection. Hastily,

Thornwell improvised

an argument

that the church

should

have

"nothing to do

with the voluntary

association of men for various civil

and social purposes

that

were

outside of her pale" because

unwarranted by scripture.'o

He

admitted that his action involved

logical difficulties,

but

justified it as

necessary to avoid division

in the

church.

Some read into

his

impromptu action a

new

theory" of

a church silenced

on

social

questions.

32

Even in his

opportunistic deviation, however,

Thornwell did

not

take that step. He

apparently said that the

church

should

not

endorse particular

secular policies, but

he added

that it

should condemn evil policies.

He

affirmed the church's

duty

to

speak

on

slavery,

but not

to decide

which

social system

should

exist

in

a given

area

Thornwell's

southern

followers understood

that

he was

not

opposing church

pronouncements on political issues

of

moral

concem.3 oj Palmer,

expounding his speech,

made

clear

that the church

should rebuke

officials, condemn immoral policies,

and teach people the duties

of

their

JWleIJuly 998 THE COUNSEL

of

Chalcedon 33


3/8

social relations" In the 1860

Assembly, Southern Presbyterians

approved a pronouncement that

affirmed

the

church's duty to

approve right and oppose wrong

. wherever

it

found them. The 1859

aberration did not commit them to

an apolitical church doctrine.

The

election

of

the antislavery

Lincoln administration in 1860

challenged proslavery Christian

activists to witness to their

convictions.

On

the pUblic fast-days

that

winter, Southern Presbyterian

ministers spoke out about the civil

crisis. Thornwell attributed the

Union s ruin to such national sins as

northern

limitations on slavery

expansion and southern

rnistreatment

of

slaves." Smyth

identified the "infidel" principles of

the Declaration oflndependence as

"the sin" that had brought "the

curse"

on

the

nation'

Palmer called

for a southern confederacy to carry

out the South's divine mission to

perpetuate and extend slavery."

Professor Robert L. Dabney

of

Union

Seminary in Virginia sought to

secure slavery'S position in the

Union,

but he

too called for

"carrying 'Christian conscience,

enlightened by God's Word', into

political duty as had not been done

hitherto .. The Synod of South

Caro'iina urged its people to act

boldly, and that ofVirginia's

appealed for patient deliberation.

Southern Presbyterian publications

devoted many columns to the crisis,

reflecting the tempers of their

respective locales. They shared the

conviction that Christian du ty

required proslavery political action.

The churchmen stated their

positions as biblically-based

expressions

of

Christian social ethics

as they unders tood them. They were

not sounding off casually

or

neglecting propriety. They were not

departing from a previous rejection

of

politically-related

pronouncements, because they had

never committed themselves to any

such rej ection.

Many southern presbyteries

decided not to send commissioners

to the Old School General Assembly

of 1861. Recognizing the church's

involvement in political relations,

southern churchmen argued that

Ecclesiastical connections

conform

to civil and political", and that

commissioners who clashed in civil

loyalties could not agree about

church business,' Lexington

Presbytery in Virginia withdrew

from the Assembly when warfare

broke out, and only one member

dissented from the political basis of

the action'" Some hoped that a

united Assembly, by overlooking the

conflict, might calm northern war

feelings - but the Assembly in May

confirmed the logic of separation

by

adopting Dr. Gardiner Spring's

Unionist resolutions. The few

southern commissioners, unable to

avow secessionism in Philadelphia,

joined northern conservatives in

their constitutional objections to

political" pronouncements. They

differentiated themselves, however,

by

refUSing to support the

conservatives' milder substitute

resolutions" Many of the minority

filed statements of dissent and

protest,

but

only one, a northerner,

spoke for absolute church

abstinence from political utterances.

The southern commissioners signed

Charles Hodge's protest, which

disavowed that idea but pointed out

that Presbyterians differed about

where their civil loyalty lay ...

Many Southern Presbyterians

upbraided their commissioners for

not defending the Confederacy in

their Assembly speeches'" Adger, in

the

Southern

resbyterian

Review,

rebuked the northern conservatives

for questioning the church's right to

make political decisions. That right,

he

held, was undeniable, because

"there are .. morals in politics, which

sometimes demand a testimony." He

34 THE COUNSEL

of

Chalcedon June{July 998

condemned the Spring resolutions

not because they spoke on a civil .

question but because they took the

wrong side. Southern church courts,

he thought, should assert the

Confederate cause's rightness. He

concluded that the Assembly action

showed the impossibility of Union

with Northern Presbyterians, and

called for church separation on the

grounds of Confederate

independence." Southern

Presbyterians denounced the Spring

resolutions and hegan to organize a

separate Confederate church, but

they differed in their rationales.

Some, like Adger, opposed the

Assembly's action as taking the

wrong side. Same raised doubt

about the Assembly's right to make

political deliverances. Most,

however, denied

only the right

to

decide the question of allegiance in a

civil conflict - to decide which was

the legitimate government. That

position - not a general abstention

from political concerns" prevailed at

a convention which met in Atlanta

in August to prepare for a southern

general assembly. The convention

did not question the church's right

to

speak

on

"any question of duty"

arising from Christians'''civil, social

and ecclesiastical" relations. It

recognized the Confederacy, called

churchmen to support the war

effort, and warned that Northern

Presbyterians harbored and "evil

intent" to undermine slavery.+'

In December, the General

Assembly of the new Presbyterian

Church in the Confederate States

of

America met at Augusta, Georgia,

and adopted Thomwell's "Address

to

All

the Churches ofJesus Christ

throughout the Earth" as its

manifesto.

It

d'stinguished church

and state roles in conventional

terms. "When the State makes

wicked laws," it affirmed, '''

.

the

Church is at liberty to testify against

them and humbly

to

petition that

they may be repealed ... [Ilf the


4/8

Church becomes seditious and a

disturber of the peace, the State has

a right to abate the nuisance.

t

r e o g n i ~ e d possibilities of conflict

where moral duty is conditioned on

a political quest ion. The

Philadelphia Assembly's error, it

held, Was its usurping power to

decide the allegiance question for

southerners. That action alone did

not require separation, but it

showed that differences on

allegiance

and

slavery made

continued

union

impossible. A

binational assembly could survive

only by avoiding those topics. We

cannot condemn a

man in

one

breath, the Assembly said, as

unfaithful to the most solemn

earthly interests, his country and his

race, and commend him

in

the

next

as a loyal

and

faithful servant of his

God. Confederate independence,

it asserted, warranted a separate

church. The Assembly stated a

thorough defense of the moral

legitimacy of slavery, and upheld

slavery and the Confederacy

as

functioning southern institutions. It

did not contemplate a rigidly non

secular church.

Palmer,

in

the Assembly's

opening sermon, declared that the

Southern Church must dedicate the

new Confederacy to Christianity.'o

The Assembly offered prayer for

the

Confederate cause, and considered

a host of pronouncements to its

government. It requested fair

distribution of appointments among

denominations. t debated a

proposal on chaplains'

compensation, considered one to

write Christianity into the

Confederate Constitution, and

showed interest in reforming slave

laws. t considered asking the

Congress to charter the church, but

turned instead to states - including

Virginia, which had always opposed

such charters. No one questioned

the church's right to address the

state. Judge].W. Swayne of South

Carolina did propose amending

the

church constitution to forbid

judicatories to indulge

in

the

discussion of questions of State or

party politics, or controverted

questions pertaining to civil

government

and

polity. The

Assembly received the suggestion

without comment.

ater

assemblies,

correcting

an error in the

minutes,

made

it

clear that the amendment

had no legal standing in the

Southern Church, and no one

renewed the proposal. The Virginia

minister Arnold W. Miller pointed

out that it was almost impossible to

exclude politics from any subject

before the Assembly

Confederate Presbyterians,

cherishing slavery as divinely

approved, did no t try to separate

religion from politics. The

war

was

religiOUS in nature, Smyth wrote,

because We have crossed swords

with the Northern confederacy over

the Bible. Pastors often preached

on the conflict, and fast-days related

religiOUS and political themes.

Ministers prayed for victory; Smyth

composed a prayer explaining to

God that his blessing on slavery

committed him t vindicate the

Confederacy Confederate

Presbyterians did not fear church

state interaction. The danger,

warned the South Carolina minister

James

B.

Hillhouse, was in

neglecting

to

relate the two divine

institutions. 55 Lyon, the moderator

of the 1863 General Assembly,

considered separation of religion

and politics a novel heresy.

Teaching that the church

must

evangelize politics,

he

urged

southern Christians to press for

many specified changes of laws.

Thornwell

went

even farther. He

asked the 1861 Assembly to propose

an amendment to the Confederate

Constitution to recognize Jesus

Christ as King of kings and ordain

that no law shall be passed by

Congress . .inconsistent with the will

of God, as revealed in

the

Holy

Scriptures . The Union,

he

argued,

had failed because

it

had been a

secular nation;

the

Confederacy

should

be

an officially Christian

country. Non- Christians

might

hold

office, but official actions

must

not

violate biblical

commands'S

Many

commissioners, perhaps a majority,

supported the proposal, but some

Virginians expressed doubts.

Lacking time and desiring

unanimity, Thornwell agreed to

bring

up his proposal at a later

Assembly. After his death

in

1862,

followers kept alive his views.

Palmer preached them to the

Georgia legislature. O

The

1863

Assembly adopted a Sunday-mail

resolution based on the Christian

state idea, and discussed

the

amendment again. As before many

endorsed

it

but Virginians prevented

action. Most

Southern

Presbyterians seemed to approve the

Christian-state view. Even in

Virginia, church leaders supported

it. 62

Some took the intermediate

position that the state should

enforce the Ten Commandments as

God's revealed law. Union

Seminary professor Thomas E. Peck

led the opposition to identifying the

state as Christian. Even he

conceded, however, that

it

must

recognize God and do nothing

which the Bible forbade.

Confederate Presbyterian church

courts frequently dealt with civil

topics.

The

General Assembly often

voiced support of the Confederate

cause - in 1862, declaring it a

struggle for religion, for the

Church, for

the

gospel,

and

for

existence itself... The 1864

Assembly state that it is the peculiar

mission of the southern Church to

conseIVe the institution of slavery,

and to make

it

a blessing both to

master

and

slave. Lyon, as a

chairman of

an

Assembly

committee, prepared a detailed

program for humane reform of slave

June July

998 lHE

COUNSEL

of

Chalcedon

35


5/8

codes.

7

The Assembly emphasized

army chaplaincies on terms in which

church and sate bodies shared

functions.

68

In

1862 it asked

PresidentJefferson Davis to provide

Sunday rest for the army and

considered asking

him

to proclaim a

fast-day.

n

1863 it urged the

Congress to

ban

Sunday mail service

and eulogized General Stonewall

Jackson for his service

to

the

Confederacy.7o In 1864 it made its

state charter part

of

the

constitutional basis for union with

the

(New

School) United Synod of

the South. The former Kentuckian

John

H.

Rice found that nine-tenths

of the commissioners could not

comprehend

his

church/state

objections to the action.

Confederate Presbyterians knew

nothing of a rigidly non-secular

church.

It was not

in the Confederacy

but in the border slave states

of

the

Union that the

spirituality

of

the

church idea flourished during the

War. The contentious Kentucky

minis ter Stuar t Robinson stood out

among antebellum Presbyterian

leaders for

his

non-theocratic views

on religion and politics. Praising

Jefferson's separationist policy,

Robinson denied that the state had a

moral personality or should

acknowledge Christian revelation.

He taught

that

church and state

could not

recognize each other, or

each other's officers, as such. He

approved Virginia's refusal to

incorporate church, and excused

Sunday laws and chaplaincies only

as the form in which citizens, as

citizens, desired government

services. Although Robinson

accepted

most

tenets of pro-slavery

theology, he apparently wanted

church

silence on the subject

n

His

pietistic form of Presbyterianism,

alien to northern and southern

theocrats, suited border-state

Presbyterians who were uncertain

and divided

about

slavery and

Unionism.

The War brought stormy times

for conservative Presbyterians who

questioned their church's increasing

commitment to emancipation and

Unionist civil religion.

In

the North,

the Brooklyn minister Henry

].

Van

Dyke sounded the call for the

spirituality

of

the church, and

William S Plumer lost his chair

at

Western Theological Seminary for

refusing to pray for military

victories. In the border states,

serious conflicts arose. In Missouri,

patriotic churchmen persuaded

military authorities to bar Samuel].

McPheeters from his St. Louis pulpit

and require a loyalty oath of

participants in church courts. Many

ministers refused the oath in protest.

In

Kentucky, Breckinridge's

aggressive Unionism alienated

many, and Robinson published the

weekly True Presbyterian to rally

conservatives to his

Ilnon-secular

policy. A few of the border-state

exponents of spirituality were

Confederate sympathizers, but many

more were ambivalent in loyalty and

most were conservative Unionists A

considerable number were of

northern or foreign origin, and very

few came from south of Virginia or

were graduates of southern

seminaries.

t

The

Missouri

protesters sympathized with

southerners' wartime sufferings, the

St. Louis minISter James H. Brookes

reported,

but

none performed a

disloyal act, and some spoke against

secession and preached the duty

of

10yalty 75

Robinson, one

of

the most

pro-southern, nevertheless followed

Kentucky's decision for the Union.

When

threatened with military

arrest, he

went

to Canada and

scrupulously avoided pro

Confederate words and deeds.

Most of the protesters believed in

biblical sanction for slavery

but few

held intensely southern attitudes to

the system. In 1864 the Synod of

Kenmcky criticized an antislavery

Assembly pronouncement as

inexpedient - but only four

36

THE

COUNSEL

o

Chalcedon Juneauly 1998

members protested that it was also

wrong ii principle. The advdcates

of an apolitical church were

uncomfortable with southern

politics

as

well as northern.

Consequently, they readily

embraced Robinson's complete

divorce of religion from politics and

sought a church insulated from

secular society. The

True

Presbyterian

unlike other

Presbyterian weeklies, carried no

secular news. It insisted that church

and state could not interact in any

way, and repudiated the tenets

which northern and southern

theocrats shared. Robinson blamed

the church's errors on

the Christian

nation theory that prevailed at

Princeton (and Columbia), and

branded the desire for a Christian

constitution utterly heretical. 7. His

faction insisted that the church

could never address the state.

Louisville Presbytery resolved that

Ecclesiastical bodies, as such,

coming to ask favors the State, are

bodies which the state does not

legally and politically know, and

therefore have no right to grantwhat

there is no right to

ask.

The

border-staters rejected Hodge's (and

southerners') claim that the

allegiance question was more

improper for church

pronouncements than other civil

ones.

so

They criticized state

appOinted fast-days, prayers for the

president, chaplaincies, and all the

paraphernalia of wartime civil

religion.

Despite Unionist efforts to

connect them, Thornwell's followers

in the Confederacy and Robinson's

in the border states shared nothing

except their common enemies. In

1861 Robinson criticized southern

judicatories for their political

actions and urged them to stay in

the national church and protest the

Spring resolutions as political' The

Synod of Kentucky condemned the

CSA

church's founding as a


6/8

deplorable schism productive of

incalculable evil. Lacking real

contact With the Presbyterian in the

Confederacy, the

True

Presbyterian

claimed not to know whether

southern churches were guilty of

political involvement. It

condemned some southern cases

of

involvement that came

to

its

attention. You do not know that

you could unite with the Southern

churches, Robinson warned his

followers, for you do not know that

they .. may not have given way to

Erastian errors also. 86 His

admonition was well founded.

Confederate Presbyterians

showed a similar ambivalence

toward conservative border-state

Presbyterians, since the latter were

not secessionists. They saw little

merit in opposition

to

church

political deliverances as such. It

mattered little that Hodge opposed

the Spring resolutions, the Southern

Presbyterian

of Columbia observed,

since as a citizen he supported the

Union war effort.

s

, The paper

deplored Kentucky Presbyterians'

temporizing with their General

Assembly and questioning only the

propriety

of

its slavery

pronouncement.

s

Some

criticized

the border-state martyrs for not

avowing the Confederate cause

Pursuing their proslavery social

activism, Confederate Presbyterians

paid little attention to Robinson's

spirituality crusade until

1865.

It was the overthrow of the

Confederacy and slavery which

turned

Southern Presbyterians

to

belief in a wholly non-secular

church. Social activists whose cause

had perished then retreated to

pietism as their defense against

encroachments by Unionist civil

religion. We ... made the

Confederacy our idol, confessed the

North Carolina minister Henry

B.

Pratt, and God's chastening

judgment had left us neither name,

nor country, nor inheritance among

men. IlO

Now is

the time to

work

for

Christ and his Church, remarked

the

Presbyterian

Index of Mobile.

There are no earthly interests to

enlist or employ the energies of the

Lord's people. '1 The young

theologian William E. Boggs came to

see the heavy hand of an unfriendly

government

as

what saved

Southern Presbyterians from

idolizing the State. Palmer vowed

to

put

the past behind

him

and

speak only

as

an humble servant of

God. The Southern Church's

General Assembly of

1865

drew the

lesson that only as a spiritual

kingdom independent of politics

could the church survive the

fall

of

earthly regimes

Smarting under northern

accusations that they had formed a

political alliance with slavery,

Southern Presbyterians assumed an

apolitical stance. Turning from

social and political concerns, they

concentrated on personal piety and

church organization. Presbyterian

publicqt'ons paid little notice to

Reconstruction events,

but

made

their ecclesiastical rivalry with

Northern Presbyterians a surrogate

for politics. Initially, Southern

Presbyterians lacked a coherent

theory of church-state relations to

replace their former activism. What

is the Relation of the State to the

Church, is the great unsolved

problem of the age, wrote the

Mississippi minister Richard S.

Gladney. There seems, indeed,

some inherent perplexity in this

subject..., Adger admitted.

B.T.W., a learned layman,

observed that southern churches,

while opposing northern civil

religiol1,.were still unsure of the

relative roles of church and state

The General Assembly of

1865,

while emphasizing separation of

church and state spheres, confined

itself to its

1861

principle: that the

church taught obedience to the de

facto government and could not

decide which of two claimants was

the lawful government. The

Alabama minister Frederick A. Ross

denied even that, and claimed

unlimited church power to speak

even on the allegiance question.

IOO

While Southern Presbyterians

groped uncertainly, the border-state

spirituality exponents carried their

struggle to its climax. Samuel

R

Wilson, a ministerial newcomer

from the North, took the lead of the

non-secular bloc in Kentucky.

Consulting with Van Dyke and other

conservatives, he issued a defiant

eclaration

and Testimony against his

church's political acts since

1861.

Louisville Presbytery adopted the

document and many ministers and

elders signed it. Opponents saw the

dissidents as rebels, but they

replied that there were not a dozen

proslavery

men

or ardent

sympathizers with the South among

them.

lOl

Winning more support than

ever from undeniable Unionists,

they nevertheless incurred the wrath

of the

1866

General Assembly.

Excluding Louisville Presbytery

from its session, the Assembly

provided for judicial process against

eclaration and

Testimony

signers

and barred them from church courts

pending action. In the ensuing

conflict, most Kentucky

and

Missouri Presbyterians formed

independent synods, hoping

eventually to reunite northern and

southern Presbyterians under their

spirituality

of

the church slogan.

lOl

Initially, only a few of them desired

to join the Southern ( US ) Church

even as a step

to

that goal,l3

and

Southern Presbyterians did not

expect affiliation. However,

conselVative

northern and border-

state Presbyterians provided the

Southern Church with crucial

financial aid in the aftermath of the

War,

and

Southern Presbyterian

fundraisers couched appeals in

terms of the donors' policies.1'

Border-state Presbyterians welcomed

June ]uly

1998 THE COUNSEL

of Chalcedon 37


7/8

the 1865 US Assembly's words

about the church and polities. They

defended the Southern Church

against

nortnem

accusations

although some felt its Wartime

record

was

tainted with polities.

lo

,

Southern Presbyterians approved

the border-staters' cause, but were

puzzled

by

the strategy and

constitutional theory

of

their conflict

with the Northern ( USN)

Assembly.'06

Even

under

border-state

inspiration, Sou them Presbyterians.

changed their views of religion and

polities only gradually. Gladney and

the Florida minister Aaron W.

Clisby still wanted the state

to

adopt

revealed religion.

lo

Miller

expounded that

view as late as

1870,

even suggesting political

disabilities for non-Christians.

I 8

Adger popularized Scottish

arguments for church-state

cooperation.

109

At the 1868

Assembly the retiring moderator,

Union Seminary professor Thomas

V. Moore, reasserted the belief that

the church

should work to

Christianize all social institutionsYo

Some continue to understand

spirituality as meaning only the

church's inability to decide which

government was legitimate, and

many continue to regard the

permissibility of slavery as a

revealed truth. The

Southern

resbyterian denied that the

spirituality idea meant that the

church

has nothing to do with social

questions,

and

that she should

n e v e r ~ t o u c h

what is ... secular. It is

undoubtedly

one

of

the duties

of

the

Church to reform society, even in

respect to some matters which are

not purely spiritual. lll B.T.W.

could find no clear distinction

between moral and political

questions,

but

he uniquely argued

that

church courts could not decide

any

moral question abou t which

Christians might ever differ.ll2 In

revising their view of the church's

scope, Southern Presbyterians drew

guidance from Robinson's

writings 113 and eventually adopted

his doctrine. They reached that

conclusion, however, only after

several years of wrestling with the

problem.

In the transition, Southern

Presbyterians referred to their

previous practice only to reply to

northern accusations. Some

contented themselves with general

denials, but other constructed

innocuous interpretations of specific

wartime pronouncements, B.T.W:

admitted some truth in the assertion

that southern churchmen had not

discovered the spirituality

principle until they had suffered

from its supposed violation.llf

At

first, Southern Presbyterian

apologists used defmitions drawn

from their old convictions. It was

not political preaching, Adger

explained, to teach the divine

sanction of slavery, or rally

Confederates in their war effort, or

identity the northern cause as

radical infidelity and seek God's

aid against it. B.T.W: defined

political preaching only as

preaching polities

that

were

controversial within the audience.

He and Adger admitted, however,

that some Confederate preaching

had exceeded even their broad

standards, not

to

mention

Robinson's.l15

The SOUthern General Assembly

moved slowly in adopting the new

doctrine. In November,

1866,

it

ruled

that

state-appointed fast-days,

which Confederate Presbyterians

had kept fervently, were only

personal suggestions and their

observance was option l. ll' Upon

no one subject is the mind of this

Assembly more clearly ascertained,

the body declared, ... than the non

secular and non-political chatacter

of the Church ofJesus Christ. m

The Assembly's position

nevertheless remained undefined, so

8 THE COUNSEL of ChalcedonHumauly 998

it set up a committee

to

draft a

defmitive pronouncement oli the

subject. The committee prepared no

statement and the next Assembly

dissolved

it

at its ow request.

us

While the Southern Assembly

hesitated, border-state conservatives

formulated spirituality statements

for it. Considering joining the US

church, they insisted that it must

adopt their doctrine

as

the basis of

union. JosephJ. Bullock,leader of a

Maryland secession from the

USA

church, sought and received from

US

church official E. Thompson

Baird and acceptable interpretation

of

the Southern Church's wartime

pronouncements.u

9

In

November

1867, the Marylanders stated their

non-secular position to the

US

Assembly and applied to join it. The

Assembly admitted them and

included their statement in itS

minutes.

l2O

The synod of Kentucky,

consIdering union, assured the

Assembly of its belief' that the

Southern Church was in a good

degree sound. It boasted, however,

of having taken no position

on

secession, the War,

or

slavery. The

synod insisted, as precondition of

union, that the

US

church adopt as a

definitely expressed statute

testimony a long manifesto by

Robinson

on

the wholly non-secular

character of the church.l2l The

commissioners desired union but

wanted to avoid blanket

commitment. The North Carolina

minister Robert B Chapman

attacked the Kentucky belief in the

non-responsibility of the State to the

Lord Jesus ...

122

The Assembly

printed the manifesto as an

appendix to its minutes, withheld

judgment on the synod's clash with

the

USA

church, and voiced

substantial agreement

with

its

church/state views.123 As the

Southern Presbyterian explained,

different persons would have

different opinions as to what is

meant by substantial agreement. l,.


8/8

After the Synod of Kentucky

joined it in 1869, the US church

became more explicit. Its 1870

General Assembly based its refusal

of

fraternal relations with the US

church on the latter's political

utterances and its alleged slanders

on

the

CS

church's political record.

The assembly minimized its wartime

declarations as allusions to the

historical reality of the War and an

incidental pledge to stand by

slavery as an institution of the

country. ll5 The church published a

compendium of its

Distinctive

Principles arranging its

pronouncements (including the

Kentucky manifesto) to feature the

spirituality

of

the church as its chief

tenet. Baird added a commentary

to

reconcile

the wartime

utterances

wit that tenet.

126

Southern Presbyterian apologists

reinterpreted the church's history,

adjusting the past record to their

newer doctrine and adapting

Thomwell quotations to illustrate it.

They conceded that We were

all

secessionists and pro-slavery

men, '

but

claimed that their social

views had

not

influenced General

Assembly pronouncements- and

they ignored other expressions of

pre-1865 church opinion. Most now

depicted the Southern Church's

separation as an apolitical protest

against the political character of the

Spring resolutions. ApologiSts

quoted the 1861 Address's

conventional remarks

on

church

and state, its strictures on the Spring

resolutions, and its claim of a sort of

neutrality on slavery. Boggs knew

that the interpretation

put

upon the

words is much more severely strict

than the men of 1861 could have

accepted, S but most read the new

doctrine into the old words. They

overlooked the Address's statements

on

the Cbnfederacy, incompatibility

of North and South, legitimate

church-state interaction, and

defense of slavery. Apologists cited

their interpretations of the Address

to show that later Assembly

pronouncements were not

really

political. They dismissed the pro

Confederate utterances as mere

acknowledgment of the de facto

government. Some gave

up

the 1864

statement about conserving slavery

as

utterly at war with the church's

principles and tried

to

deny its

validity .' Others argued that it only

denied that slaveholding was a sin,

or contemplated improving

treatment of slaves. Its author, the

Georgia minister David Wills,

invoked such an interpretation but

did

not

refer

to

his contemporary

intent. 130

Some 'spirituality adherents still

doubted the US church's record.

The Synod

of

Missouri in 1870

declared itself satisfied by the

church's recent formal

deliverances of its current

soundness.

l l

Because of unrepealed

past deliverances, however, the

synod hesitated to join either the

US or

the US church. The pro

Southern majority argued that the

latter's recent statements repealed its

wartime political actions. The

church, one said, had awakened as

if from a terrible delirium and

hurled . .from its embrace the

treacherous principle [which]

had .. stealthily insinuated itself into

its bosom ..

132

A large minority

remained skeptical. In 1874, the

synod voted to join the US church,

increasing the border-state influence

to make its spirituality witness

consistent.

In 1875, therefore, the US

General Assembly appointed three

Virginia ministers to study whether

its records contained statements.

inadvertently admitted, which

impaired its testimony to a non

secular church.' The committee

concluded that the church had

taught the doctrine since 1861 - but

to do so, narrowed it to the old

principle that the church had no

authority to establish, change or

control governments or social

systems

l

t

claimed the church

had defended slavery only as a

possible application for the time

being of the general principle of

social authority.' Harmoniz ing

where they could, the Virginians

admitted that

the 1862 Assembly

had erred by saying which side was

right

in

the war. They charitably

regarded seven other cases

of

the

same error as semantic carelessness.

Finding difficulties in the conserve

slavery statement, they argued that

. an 1865 pronouncement had in

effect repealed it

l 6

On

Robinson's

motion, the 1876 Assembly affirmed

that the Southern Church had

always held the spirituality doctrine

and officially disavowed the past

pronouncements which were

inconsistent

with

it.

D7

The church had changed- but,

true to Presbyterian custom, it did

not admit having changed. It read

new meanings into its old

pronouncements and rewrote

its

history in conformity with its new

conviction that the church could

take no cognizance of civil concerns.

In expounding the spirituality

of

the church, Southern Presbyterian

theologians explicitly attacked

Thornwell's Christian-state

doctrine.

'38

They insisted

nevertheless on ascribing their

doctrine to Thornwell- or at least to

Dr. Thornwell and the Missouri

and Kentucky divines. ' Attaching

Thornwell's name to Robinson's

doctrine, they blotted

out

the

remembrance of the proslavery and

the social activism which the Old

South theocrats had taught. n

Dr.

Maddex s amember of

the

history department of the University of

Oregon.

Due

to the

shortage of

space

we

were unable

to include the

footnotes

for

this

arrticle. Anyone

interested

in a

copy please write us. - Editor

u n ~ u l y 998 TIlE COUNSEL of Chalcedou

39

Documents

1998 Issue 3 - From Theocracy to Spirituality, The Southern Presbyterian Reversal on Church and State - Counsel of Chalcedon