Book Review: The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Noll

Introduction

For antebellum Americans, trust in divine devotion and fidelity to Scripture gave their lives stability and purpose. However, according to Mark Noll's book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, religious leaders in the years just prior to the Civil War were not capable of providing a satisfactory answer to the most challenging question of that era: Does the Bible excuse or condemn slavery? Americans were also in conflict over the workings of a providential God, as both Southerners and Northerners struggled to understand the significance of the war and God's role in it. Drawing heavily on the writings of nineteenth-century theologians and other religious thinkers, Noll concludes that the conflicts over these two subjects exposed a theological crisis and marked a significant turning point in American religious thought (Dollar, 2006).

An extension of the Steven and Janice Brose Lectures that Noll delivered in 2003, his slim volume concentrates primarily on the question of slavery. He argues that a critical dispute existed over what the Bible had to say about slavery at the very moment when clashes over that institution were producing the most severe crisis in the nation's history. Southerners claimed that slavery was endorsed by Scripture, while opponents of the institution maintained that it was not. Noll notes that the advocates of slavery defied the spirit of the Bible. Those opposed to slavery further argued that Scripture condemned slavery as it existed in America, since the institution was riddled with abuses. Consequently, the country's most trusted sacred authority was, in Noll's view, "sounding an uncertain note" on this vital subject.

Book Review

In the opening pages, Noll clarifies that his objective is not simply to explain the causes or course of the conflict, but rather to illustrate why and how the cultural dispute that produced such catastrophe for the nation also constituted a theological crisis. That crisis centered on two questions: what Scripture had to say about slavery, and what the dispute seemed to imply about the providential design of God for the nation. Although both sides read the same Bible — as Lincoln famously observed in his Second Inaugural Address — both Southern and Northern Protestants came to realize that the Bible they had relied upon to establish and develop American civilization was not quite as naturally unifying for a deeply Christian population as they had initially assumed (Noll, 2006). Ultimately, it was not God's Word but the force of arms that would settle the sectional disagreement (Mackenzie, 2008).

Noll places the theological crisis brought on by the war within the framework of the "habits of mind" (Noll, 2006) that had prevailed in the United States since the nation's founding. Combining Christian faith with republican political ideals and Enlightenment epistemology, American Protestants were generally suspicious of religious authority and skeptical of academic elites; they regarded the Bible as a plain book readily understandable to anyone who opened its cover. Most likewise viewed God's ongoing activity in human affairs as equally straightforward to comprehend. Although the fusion of biblical faith and Enlightenment thinking certainly gave antebellum American Christianity much of its celebrated expansive energy and appeal, Noll argues that this mixture actually left evangelicals ill-equipped to resolve the sectional crisis or even to think deeply about its implications. He contends that one of the distinctive features of the American Civil War is the near-total absence of theological wisdom it produced among the Christians divided by it (Mackenzie, 2008).

Of the two main questions Noll addresses, he devotes considerably more attention to the contested relationship between slavery and the Bible. Proslavery Southerners read the Bible literally and found no explicit condemnation of slavery. When antislavery Northerners read the Bible literally, they often reached a similar conclusion — a realization that led a small minority to reject biblical authority altogether, while pushing a larger group toward appeals to the general "spirit" of Scripture, which their common sense told them was incompatible with human bondage. The latter frequently invoked "self-evident truths" central to the national ideology; however, the stronger the arguments grounded in ordinary humanitarian standards became, the weaker the Bible appeared in any traditional sense (Mackenzie, 2008).

Beyond the question of slavery, Noll argues that Americans were also divided over the workings of a providential God. Before the war, American theologians expressed confidence in their ability to interpret the meaning of worldly events. During the war, both sides claimed divine support for their cause, yet God's ways had grown obscure. At various moments, God seemed to act strikingly at odds with himself (Noll, 2006), particularly in the wake of battlefield defeats. This sense of "providential mystery" persisted into the postwar years, as many Americans abandoned the belief that earthly events were being directed by God. Noll dedicates only a single chapter to this topic, leaving the reader eager to learn more (Dollar, 2006).

According to Noll, there existed a third alternative for Christians opposed to slavery — one that would have preserved biblical authority by conceding that Scripture did not forbid slavery in the abstract, while arguing that it did condemn the racial form of slavery practiced in the United States. A few isolated voices attempted to advance such arguments, but they ultimately failed to gain traction (Noll, 2006).

Bibliography

Carwardine, R. (2007). The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (review). Muse, 413–415.

Dollar, K. T. (2006). Review of The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Journal of Southern Religion.

Mackenzie, R. T. (2008, March). "Both Read the Same Bible." Books and Culture. Retrieved from http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2008/marapr/18.45.html

Noll, M. A. (2006). The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. University of North Carolina Press.