Religion in an independent CSA:

I was wondering what would happen to Jews in an independent Confederacy. If the Confederacy would turn out at all like the USA it'd probably start hagiographing its founders before the ink on the peace treaty is dry. Yet if one of the more important members of the ATL Confederate Founding Fathers is a Jew, that would perhaps encourage an official Confederate view of religion more partial to Jews and Judaism than that in the North.

Would an ATL Confederacy be more tolerant of Jews than an ATL USA if Judah Benjamin is among the Founders? What happens if ATL Imperial Russia begins the Pogroms?

Insofar as religion in the broader sense is concerned, what particular denomination ends up being the biggest in the Independent Confederacy? Would religion even be as central to a South sans the rest of the USA but winning a war around 1862-3 or would the Confederate leadership in the converse of the above paragraphs end up forming a Confederate version of Christianity that's rather more warlike than not?

What happens with religion and slavery? Would Christianity and Judaism in the Confederacy continue to justify slavery on Biblical and Talmudic grounds or would they end up eventually deciding to ignore all that they way they do in the unified USA IOTL?

Would both the Confederacy and the North end up sending proselytizers that end up competing with each other in the rest of the world? :eek: Imagine the confusion.....:eek::eek:

On another note, would the independent Confederacy end up ever developing a substantional irreligious movement? What exactly would Confederate irreligion end up looking like?
 
Would an ATL Confederacy be more tolerant of Jews than an ATL USA if Judah Benjamin is among the Founders? What happens if ATL Imperial Russia begins the Pogroms?

More tolerant than the USA? Doubtful. More tolerant than the South OTL? Yes (not that that's hard to do :rolleyes:). Pogroms? I can't see anyone caring.

Insofar as religion in the broader sense is concerned, what particular denomination ends up being the biggest in the Independent Confederacy? Would religion even be as central to a South sans the rest of the USA but winning a war around 1862-3 or would the Confederate leadership in the converse of the above paragraphs end up forming a Confederate version of Christianity that's rather more warlike than not?

Baptism? Methodism? I could see attempts to make a united Dixie Church opposed to the "Yankee churches," but I don't know much about this.

What happens with religion and slavery? Would Christianity and Judaism in the Confederacy continue to justify slavery on Biblical and Talmudic grounds or would they end up eventually deciding to ignore all that they way they do in the unified USA IOTL?

They would continue to justify it.

Would both the Confederacy and the North end up sending proselytizers that end up competing with each other in the rest of the world? :eek: Imagine the confusion.....:eek::eek:

Probably. The proselytized saw all whites as the same anyways, so it won't be that confusing at all.

On another note, would the independent Confederacy end up ever developing a substantional irreligious movement? What exactly would Confederate irreligion end up looking like?

I could see a religious right coming to rise earlier. Eventually the poor whites would realize religion is being used to suppress them. Of course the CSA may fall under the red flag before then (or because of this).
Stuff's up there.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Southern Baptism is going to be the largest denomination. Catholics have never had it all that easy in the South, but Texas and Louisiana will have significant Catholic populations.

Jews will probably stick to major urban centers, with Charleston and New Orleans likely having the largest concentrations. Given the fervent racism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism in the Deep South, Jews will probably avoid those regions. With regards to Benjamin, his legacy likely won't do much to better the Jews of the Confederacy; he'd likely be viewed as one of those "Good Jews" who are an exception to the rule.

Pogroms obviously won't stop in Russia and I highly doubt Jews are going to swap one racist country for another. They're going to head to the North, especially since the North is going to be far more tolerant of Jews' generally Leftist political tendencies than the South.

Slavery's always going to have Biblical justification; Southerners used them prior to the ACW, I see no reason why they'd abandon it afterwards. And when late 19th Century pseudo-science like phrenology and eugenics and the like, those are going to be used to justify it even more. You don't even need Talmudic justifications for slavery; all of them are found in the Old Testament anyways.

There won't be any "Southern version" of Christianity. Southern Baptism will likely exist just as in OTL and I can't imagine there'd be much deviation. If anybody sends proselytizers, it's going to be the North, and even then they'll likely just go into the Confederacy to preach against slavery.
 
Southern Baptism is going to be the largest denomination. Catholics have never had it all that easy in the South, but Texas and Louisiana will have significant Catholic populations.

Jews will probably stick to major urban centers, with Charleston and New Orleans likely having the largest concentrations. Given the fervent racism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism in the Deep South, Jews will probably avoid those regions. With regards to Benjamin, his legacy likely won't do much to better the Jews of the Confederacy; he'd likely be viewed as one of those "Good Jews" who are an exception to the rule.

Pogroms obviously won't stop in Russia and I highly doubt Jews are going to swap one racist country for another. They're going to head to the North, especially since the North is going to be far more tolerant of Jews' generally Leftist political tendencies than the South.

Slavery's always going to have Biblical justification; Southerners used them prior to the ACW, I see no reason why they'd abandon it afterwards. And when late 19th Century pseudo-science like phrenology and eugenics and the like, those are going to be used to justify it even more. You don't even need Talmudic justifications for slavery; all of them are found in the Old Testament anyways.

There won't be any "Southern version" of Christianity. Southern Baptism will likely exist just as in OTL and I can't imagine there'd be much deviation. If anybody sends proselytizers, it's going to be the North, and even then they'll likely just go into the Confederacy to preach against slavery.

I'm reading Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats by Paul Varg and IOTL Southern and Northern Methodist, Episcopalian and Baptist churches all had competing missionary branches operating in China in the period immediately preceding the war.

IOTL Southerners were VERY active in the China missions in the 1890s until the 1910s. And there was a huge outpouring of financial support from congregations in the South funding these missions.

Now with a POD in the 1860s its possible China will not be a major destination for missionaries, but I don't think the enthusiasm for spreading the gospel IOTL would be much affected by the CSA. In fact, it might increase this enthusiasm.
 
Perhaps there would be a "Yankee" church-backed anti-slavery movement, thus giving an eventual abolitionist cause in the South a more religious dimension?
 
Actually the South was never particularly anti-Semitic. There were loads of Jewish planters, politicians, and Confederate veterans, and at the worst I doubt many Jews had it much worse than, say, Irish in the North.

There are exceptions like the Leo Frank trial and of course the Klan, but on the whole Jews had it far better in the South than almost anywhere in Europe in the period, and about as well as in the North.
 
Baring in mind that their were strong ties(financial and otherwise) between Southern churches and the slave owners, expect the Southern church to preach the most abhorrent bigotry possible. I wouldn't be half surprised if an interpretation of Christianity resembling Christian Identity*(presumably without the antisemitism, given what mikegold said about it's relative mildness in the South) becomes the mainstream one amongst the Southerners. Hell, a lot of that era's Christianity throughout the Western world wasn't far off from Christian Identity as it was.

As for the black populace, I suspect that black liberation theology will be dominant. The only way to curtail it is for the whites to actively suppress it, but if that suppression ever stops the backlash against mainstream Christianity would be even stronger. Hell, maybe even a "Nation of Islam" or Rastafarian sect could become dominant amongst the black community.
 
Baring in mind that their were strong ties(financial and otherwise) between Southern churches and the slave owners, expect the Southern church to preach the most abhorrent bigotry possible. I wouldn't be half surprised if an interpretation of Christianity resembling Christian Identity*(presumably without the antisemitism, given what mikegold said about it's relative mildness in the South) becomes the mainstream one amongst the Southerners. Hell, a lot of that era's Christianity throughout the Western world wasn't far off from Christian Identity as it was.
Ja - look at how the local version of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa evolved.
 

Art

Monthly Donor
There's a great article on project Gutenberg called " Is Slavery prohibited in the Bible?". It basically says why not. Look up jubilee.
 
So you'd get two religions basically based on class - Episcopalian (Catholic in Texas/Louisiana) is the choice of the upper class and Baptist/Evangelical movements as the lower classes. That would certainly set the stage for some interesting social clashes, especially if/when there is some social mobility/growth of the middle class due to industrialization
 
Top