Religion and the Confederacy

Marc

Donor
...I may be reading this incorrectly, but you state the scriptural basis of slavery, and then say that the south would have been better if people had been truer to their faith, which implies that slavery was a good thing...

No, they hunted out passages that supported slavery as practiced in the South and ignoring such as: Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession. Which condemns slave trading.
Another: When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth. Which demands that slaves be treated with same reserve and respect given to the Free.

In the 18th century devout Southerners struggled with with the crisis that comes from owning fellow Christians. A few, notably some Quaker communities came to the conclusion that you couldn't own fellow Christians - so they freed them and left the South, which was making it almost impossible to manumit. (Another part of scripture ignored - many passages on freeing slaves).
 
Southern Churches were, barring a few very rare exceptions, either culpable or complicit in the horror of slavery.

"...slavery has set the seal of a complicit , guilty silence upon the most orthodox pulpits and the saintliest tongues..."

... the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.

If they had been true to their faith, the South would have had and resolved their existential crisis back during the Great Awakening in the 18th century. And would have become a finer, decent place and people.

That is just not true, the bible isn't particularly anti slavery, you can with effort make an anti slavery argument using it, but you can just as easily do the opposite. There was no particular feature of southern Christianity that ignored the scriptures to justify slavery that im aware of. Their churches just reflected the attitudes of the people and culture that they existed in, as is common to all religious institutions. Also people underestimate just how revolutionary abolitionism was, slavery had existed in almost every culture and place in the world for all of recorded history up until that point. With most people thinking it was an entirely moral thing. While we all think it is bad now, I don't think we can condemn people who didn't otherwise we would have to condemn the vast majority of people throughout history.
 
No, they hunted out passages that supported slavery as practiced in the South and ignoring such as: Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession. Which condemns slave trading.
Another: When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth. Which demands that slaves be treated with same reserve and respect given to the Free.

In the 18th century devout Southerners struggled with with the crisis that comes from owning fellow Christians. A few, notably some Quaker communities came to the conclusion that you couldn't own fellow Christians - so they freed them and left the South, which was making it almost impossible to manumit. (Another part of scripture ignored - many passages on freeing slaves).
Whilst im glad you dont suppory slavery, the passages there dont seem to indicate a religous conflict of christianity vs slavery as much as a call to arguably treat slaves better.
 
I kind of see it devolving to were Lebanon was in the 1970's and 80's. To many theocratic belief structures to keep it peaceful.
 

Philip

Donor
It did have a constitution that explicitly mentioned God in it.

And Elizabeth is by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, but few would call the UK a theocracy.
 

Philip

Donor
I never said it was theocratic, all I said was that it didn't have as clear a church/state separation.

Was that really that uncommon in Western nations in the 1860s?

Article 1, Section 9 , Paragraph 12 of the CSA constitution might sounds familiar:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That's a stronger guarantee than most Western countries of the time.
 
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Read Harry S Stout's Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. It's super good, and highly relevant to the OP question.
 

samcster94

Banned
Was that really that uncommon in Western nations in the 1860s?

Article 1, Section 9 , Paragraph 12 of the CSA constitution might sounds familiar:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That's a stronger guarantee than most Western countries of the time.
Relative to the U.S. is what I meant(our creator v. Almighty God). It did use religion to justify slavery.
 

Marc

Donor
All right. I'll try to be more clear about my thoughts:

The moral quandary that the South faced, especially with the Great Awakening starting around 1734, and the subsequent great revivals. This is the same crisis that led to the rise of the abolitionist movement in the North, and the British Empire.
Concisely:
Should Christians own other Christians?
If the answer is yes, how should brothers and sisters in Christ be treated by a believing owner.


The Bible has conflicting answers, although it fairly consistently implies that (through the concept of the Jubilee) that slavery shouldn't be an endless condition generation after generation for God's children.

Southern theologians and their churches, after some debate, accepted the idea that owning Christians wasn't immoral. An expediency that they finally regretted a couple of centuries later.
As for treatment of slaves. Many hoped that by example, slave owners would behave decently well to fellow brothers in Christ. Obviously, they didn't.
In fact, slavery became the great corrupter of morals and faith.
And as I first stated, the pulpits were silent, or enabling.

Now, a very intriguing alternate history would be for much more of the Southern churches, and their most respected leaders, to work for abolition, or at the very least widespread manumission. It could have happened. That it didn't, is the tragic flaw of the South.




 
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Right, but modern Germany is secular. How secular would the Confederacy(a nation that kept a third of its people in chains) likely have been???

It will certainly depend of the developments of this ATL. Still, there's a huge gap between simply mentioning god and creating a confessional state or a theocracy.
 
During early Christianity, there was slavery still. Didn't Paul say something about it? I once read in an anti-slavery comic that Christianity didn't mean that all slaves had to be liberated, and that Christian slaves had duties but no rights.
 
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