Religion and the American Civil

Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson. (New York: Oxford University Press, c. 1998. Pp. xiii, 422, ISBN 978-0-19-512129-2.)

Religion and the American Civil War is a collection of essays resulting from a conference. The key question of the conference and this collection of essays that emerged from it was, “What if anything, did religion have to do with the Civil War?” The question seems remarkably basic for a topic covered in such depth and breadth as the Civil War, but it revealed what participants considered a fairly large historiographical gap. By the time of publishing very few works had addressed religion’s influence on the Civil War beyond the personal beliefs of key religious leaders or prominent individuals like Lincoln, Jackson, or Lee. The collection of essays presents a variety of research across the spectrum of religion’s connection to the Civil War to greatly broaden the coverage, however, taken as a whole the collection points in a direction that should be rigorously explored rather than presenting a coherent thesis about what the profession will find when they get there.

The work is organized around three central themes: ideas, people, and places. This fairly rudimentary organization reveals the confused nature of the entire work. Rather than operate from a concise theoretical framework the collection meanders and tries to address the importance of a topic it does not seem to entirely understand. This most likely occurs out of an approach to the topic from the perspective of social history rather than religious history. “What did religion have to do the Civil War?” seems altogether too nebulous a question given the vast disparity between, and even within, the different denominations at the time. The resulting arguments center around the difference between proslavery apologists and abolitionist zealots, only a few key figures generally repeated throughout the various articles, and some disconcertingly poor translations of scripture. To this last point a number of articles analyze the untenable translation of the commandment “Thou shall not commit murder” into “Thou shall not kill” and then assess how it created a sort of cognitive dissonance within religious men going to war. This dissonance appears to stem from the authors’ misinterpretation of scripture rather than any real evidence concerning their subjects. The social history approach to the topic bleeds both the vitality and the nuance out of the influence of religion on the war.

Although the collection lacks a unifying theoretical framework, it does present interspersed insights concerning writers’ various specialties. One of the more interesting articles emphasized the importance of exegetical arguments in the discussion about slavery while simultaneously pointing to the relative weakness of American traditions in exegeting scripture. Such insights are incredibly helpful in understanding small parts of the conflict, but the collection lacks a unifying synthesis or consensus about the role of religion in the war. This may be in part due to the fact that religion, nation, and the war are all concepts too large to create consensus about a people with such varied approaches to their faith. It becomes difficult to describe how leaders, soldiers, and citizens acted out their faith during the war without differentiating their backgrounds from each other as well as the theoretical ideology underlying them from their pragmatic implementation.

Religion and the American Civil War says a great deal about the relationship between religion and the war, and the collection compels a more thorough dialogue in the future. Yet, the collection fails to lay a solid foundation for the achievement of any concrete goals. Simply more discussion, emphasis, or analysis seems altogether insufficient if the topic is as important as these authors claim.

Fort Worth, Texas Andrew L. Klooster

Religion and the American Civil War. By Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 422.)

Religion and the American Civil War is a compilation of essays that address the lack of religious history in Civil War scholarship. The idea for the book was conceived at a 1994 conference on religion and the Civil War at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary by asking the question, “what, if anything, did religion have to do with the Civil War?” (3). The editor’s main goal in publishing the book was to create a new dialogue in Civil War scholarship because they believed that religious studies had previously been ignored and should be included in historian’s research projects. While the book is not a comprehensive study on religion and the Civil War, it does challenge historians to use religious studies to analyze the non-military, cultural elements of a wartime society.

The book is divided into sixteen chapters with an introduction and afterword. The first chapter is an overview of the historiography of religion and the American Civil War and it gives the reader background information from which to review the main themes of the book. The book contains three parts: Ideas, People, and Places; each chapter contains adequate and useful endnotes. Each chapter is written by a different historian and the editors asked them to answer simple but broad questions: can religion be found in the historian’s field of study? Was it at the center of the popular perceptions of the Civil War or on the periphery? Did it lead the armies and home front, or simply follow? And finally, what, in the most general sense, did religion have to do with the Civil War? (4).

In the Ideas section of the book, the essay “Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount: The Second Inaugural” by Ronald C. White, Jr. analyzes President Lincoln’s inaugural addresses and highlights the religious elements in the second inaugural address. The second address consists of seven hundred words organized into four paragraphs and White states it is the second shortest inaugural address in American history. The address contains fourteen references to God, three references to prayers, and quotes Bible passages four times. Although several biographers and historians have dissected Lincoln’s religion and faith, White argues that Lincoln came to terms with a God that was bettering society during the war. Lincoln referenced the God of Calvinism—a God that worked on helping the country and God’s purpose was unknown and would be revealed with the passing of time.

While White reviewed Lincoln’s evolution of faith through his speeches and personal writings, Drew Gilpin Faust analyzed the religious changes that upper-class, white Southern women experienced during and after the war in her essay, “Without Pilot or Compass: Elite Women and Religion on the Civil War South.” The Civil War changed the way that elite, southern white women viewed their religious faith and shifted their roles in society. With the male clergy focused on serving the Confederate soldiers and serving in the war themselves, women had to fulfill traditionally male-dominated roles in the church. This led women to speak in public and enter the public sphere. With this new perspective, women took on the responsibilities as the heads of households by managing a family and as heads of the church by leading bible study classes and giving sermons. Faust states that the God women discussed and wrote about was the God of Job; a God of punishment, perseverance, and deliverance. By withstanding the hardships of war, the women would prove themselves worthy of God’s grace and love.

Compiling a book of essays that adequately examines and promotes a new perspective in Civil War scholarship is difficult but the editors did successfully achieve their goal. After reading Religion and the American Civil War, a reader will understand that religious-focused projects in Civil War studies are complex, intellectually stimulating, and intriguing. The book deserves a wide readership because the editors contributed to a popular field of history by re-framing cultural elements of the war into relatable and thought-provoking studies.