Pounding drums, jeers, and yelling reached a cacophonous pitch on the ship of state. In retrospect, it was inevitable that the slavery debate would end in catastrophe.
Historian Mark Noll states that before the Civil War, “the Bible, which almost everyone in the United States professed to honor … was the most widely read text of any kind in the whole country.” Abolition clergy and pro-slavery ministers each claimed that the Bible supported only their view.1
Law professor Mark Osler states:
For many religious conservatives, ‘the root of knowledge is a bedrock certainty of a literal reading of the Bible’ that encourages people of faith to view our world as being locked ‘in a battle between good and evil.’ Within such a perspective, ‘bending to the other side becomes unthinkable. A loss or even a compromise is something terrible — it is a victory for evil.’2
College professors Tim Muehlhoff and Richard Langer shed light on the slavery controversy by drawing upon Aristotle and communication theory. In their book Winsome Persuasion, Muelhoff and Langer explain argument scripts used by pro- and anti-slavery groups prior to the Civil War.
Argument scripts are “memorized routines … deeply influenced by our cultural surroundings … that guide our communication when we encounter those with whom we disagree.” Key elements include:
- Consideration equals condoning. The authors state, “When communities are entrenched in ideological positions, any serious consideration of an alternative perspective is seen as compromise.”
- Not merely disagreeing, but demonizing.3
Many Christians demonized their theological opponents. For example, the Brooklyn Presbyterian Henry Van Dyke in 1861 stated:
When the Abolitionist tells me that slave-holding is a sin, in the simplicity of my Faith in the Holy Scriptures, I point him to this sacred record and tell him in all candor, as my text does, that his teaching blasphemes the name of God and His doctrine.4
Abolitionists such as George Bourne could respond that every Christian slave-owner “is either an incurable idiot who cannot distinguish good from evil, or an obdurate sinner who resolutely defies every social, moral, and divine requisition.”5
The irreconcilable interpretations of Scripture, and the committed convictions of Americans on both sides, caused three major Protestant denominations to split (Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists). Demonizing opponents in politics and religion began to seem like a national pastime. Lacking political consensus, the nation experienced gridlock. The rising frustration and passions eventually spilled over into civil war.
The biblical writer James had counseled, “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.” It seems clear that many Christians, on both sides of the slavery debate, overused argument scripts and in so doing, ignored the warning of James.6
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Notes
- Noll, Mark, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 4.
- Muelhoff, Tim, and Langer, Richard, Winsome Persuasion: Christian Influence in a Post-Christian World (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017), p. 59.
- Muelhoff and Langer, pp. 55-56.
- Noll, p. 19.
- Bourne, George, The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable (Philadephia: M. Sanderson, 1815), quoted in Noll, pp. 40-41.
- James 1:26, King James Version of the Bible.
