From the time of the Puritans, America had harbored a sense of divine mission. So perhaps it was natural that the Civil War would come to be viewed as part of that providential plan. In the wake of the War, many Americans--both North and South--concluded that the war had been a punishment sent from God. Just as ancient Israel had been punished for her sins in the Old Testament, many now believed that a proud nation had been humiliated by God because it had not only tolerated slavery, but had allowed such a wicked institution to flourish.

But not everyone accepted this interpretation of God's providential plan. In some quarters, the war was viewed as something more than simply an occasion for punishment. Horace Bushnell and Phillip Schaff, two of the more influential Protestant clergy of their day, came to see it as a chance for national redemption and renewal. According to Bushnell and Schaff, the nation had undergone a "Baptism of Blood" that would wash way its sins.

On this point, both North and South were in general agreement. The phrase "baptism of blood" was common in the preaching of ministers in both regions during the war years, but the two differed on the nature of the sins for which they were atoning. In the North, there was a growing belief that the bloodshed taking place on the nation's battlefields was to atone for and to wash away the sin of slavery, and the wrongs done to black persons. The South, needless to say, saw things differently. Southerners came to believe that they were not just engaged in a battle to defend a way of life or an institution, they were in fact fighting in a Holy Crusade on behalf of God himself.

The Problem of Theodicy Strikes the South

During the Civil War, both sides prayed to same God for victory, and both were assured from their respective pulpits that their cause was righteous. Southerners were told, for instance, that South was fighting to preserve the divine economy and pure religion (Evangelicalism) in opposition to the North where churches had grown corrupt (Mormons), liberal (Unitarians) and denied the very word of God (Transcendentalists and Abolitionists). They saw themselves as "Christian soldiers marching off as to war," and few doubted that their's was a righteous cause.

And yet, in the war's aftermath, it appeared that God had been on side of the North all along. The judgement rendered at Appomattox would provoke a crisis of faith in the South. Why had such a terrible thing happened to such a religious people? Was God still on his throne? Or were the horrors of defeat the result of some sin on the part of the South.

The South was forced to confront the problem of theodicy in a way that was quite unexpected. Bishop Holland N. McTyeire described the crisis of faith facing the South in the aftermath of the Civil War this way: "Some people's faith has received a terrible shock on account of the way the war ended. They prayed for Confederate success, and thought they had received assurances of that success from God. Some went so far as to say they were as sure of this as they were that they were converted. They believed rightly that the success of Confederate arms was a proper subject of prayer, but forgot that the prayer was to be offered up with limitations and conditions. They had a right to pray, but no right to shut up God to the alternative that their prayer must be answered."

Slowly, a consensus formed as to why God had chosen not to answer the prayers of the South. The reason was the region's collective sin. But it was not the sin of slavery that they had in mind.

Spiritual Bulimia

In the pre-war years, Southerners had fashioned a doctrine they called the "spirituality of the church." John Holt Rice stated this doctrine succinctly when he wrote that the church should "confine itself to making good Christians and avoid speaking out on matters beyond its competence." That is to say, it should focus solely on issues of personal morality, rather than trying to address such social evils as slavery. And so it was that Southern Christianity turned a blind eye to the great sin in its midst. Sin--in the South--came to be defined largely in terms of personal piety: drinking, smoking, and cussing. People felt perfectly free to indulge in the conveniences of slavery during the week, and then purge their consciences on Sunday morning in an spiritual catharsis. This led to what I have referred to as a kind of spiritual bulimia, or to a binge-purge cycle in which individuals binge during the week on the fruits of sin, and then on Sunday purge themselves in an emotional outpouring.

(Unfortunately, spiritual bulimia remains one of the major characteristics of Christianity in the South. All Southerners are affected to one degree or another by this disease. I can say that because I grew up as a spiritual bulimic. At one point in my life, I was a card carrying member of something called the "No Smoke, No Drink Club." Raised in a sheltered Southern Baptist home, I was thoroughly convinced that smoking and drinking were two of the worst sins a person could commit. Like many Southerners, I viewed sin as largely a question of personal morality. If I didn't cuss, fuss, smoke or drink, I felt I was a good person. It never occurred to me that there were other sins of which I was guilty, sins that were such an intimate part of my environment that I was blind to their reality. I never questioned the dehumanization of segregation, nor did I appreciate the evil of my own racism. Both segregation and racism were so a part of who I was--and the society to which I belonged--that I was unable to see them for what they really were: social systems completely at odds with the will of God. I thought of myself as morally clean because I abstained from alcohol and tobacco, but the reality was very different. I was so thoroughly tainted by these social and moral abuses, that I was numb to their existence.)

As the course of the war turned against the South after 1863, and during the post war years, the South slowly came to believe that its defeat was the result of the prevalence of drunkenness, card playing, and dancing among Confederate troops and civilians. Such vices had brought the wrath of God down on their heads. No less an illustrious leader as Robert E. Lee gave this view currency. Confederate military set-backs had not been the result of overwhelming numbers of enemy troops, or any ill-advised strategic decisions by him and his generals. They were the result of "drinking, gambling and profanity."

The Two Reconstructions

Instead of seeing the nation's baptism of blood as a divine act sweeping away slavery, religious leaders in the region followed Lee's lead, and began to argue that defeat had really been an effort on the part of God to get the South's attention, and to bring it to its collective knees in repentance for the drunkenness, card-playing, and swearing that had gone on during the war years. God had allowed the South to taste defeat as part of a larger plan to purify the region, and to insure that its people were the most religious and its churches the purest anywhere. Their objective was little different from the one put forward by the Puritans: to reconstruct society along the lines of a Christian commonwealth.

At the same time the North was embarking on a process of reconstruction to bring the South back into the Union, there was also an effort on the part of the South to re-establish what many had come to believe was the divine order of the races. Under the system of slavery, the African-American had a clear place in the pecking order. He was "the bottom rail" in the social fence while the white planter was the "top rail." But to many Southerners, it seemed as if political reconstruction had inverted that social order, placing the newly freed slaves in positions of political and economic power, while disenfranchising the former Confederates. And so they searched desperately for a way to put African-Americans in their place.

One means for accomplishing this was the Klu Klux Klan, an organization founded by Nathan Bedford Forrest. Klan riders made every effort to intimidate blacks who had risen to positions of power in the Reconstruction governments, and to insure that every black knew their place in the larger society. Cross burnings, lynchings, and other such methods proved to be useful tools of social control in the hands of the Klan and they did not hesitate to use them.

A second means was the establishment of the institution of share-cropping in which the newly freed blacks worked for their old masters on the old plantations for a share of the crop. In such a system, a loan would be made at the beginning of the planting season for tools, seed, fertilizer, food and clothing. That loan had to be paid back when the sharecropper sold their crops. If there were profits, the sharecopper got to keep a share. The problem was that with the owner's creative financing and the high interest rates he charged, rarely would a sharecropper break even, much less earn a profit. Since the terms of their lease required them to work till any indebtedness was paid off, freedmen soon found themselves as bound to their former masters as they had been during the days of slavery.

Interestingly, segregation was not nearly as virulent as one might expect during this period. Whites and blacks used the same means of public transportation, and there was considerable interaction between the races. It would not be until the turn of the century that Jim Crow segregation would take such a terrible hold on the region.

The Religion of the Lost Cause

One result of this effort to reconstruct Southern society into a Christian commonwealth was a new wave of revivalism that sought to bring spiritual renewal to the region. The South quickly came to see itself as the new children of Israel--God's chosen people--a righteous remnant--who had been charged with the task of saving the nation from the immorality of the North. This belief came to be known as the Religion of the Lost Cause, and the saints of this variant of Christianity were those who fought and died for the Cause, as well as such living figures as Robert E. Lee who came to be the Christ figure for this new faith. (See the link underneath R.E. Lee's picture on the Religion 466 Course Page for a fuller discussion of Lee as a Christ-figure.) Like Jesus, Southern preachers argued, Lee had been tempted (when he was offered command of the Union army), he had suffered a crucifixion (defeat at Appomattox), and had been resurrected to new life (the Presidency of Washington and Lee). His conduct and person were flawless, and had it not been for the betrayal of his underlings (General Longstreet generally played the role of Judas in this Southern version of the Passion) he would have triumphed.

These saints of the South came to be memorialized in various ways. A statue of Robert E. Lee, for instance, can be found at Duke Chapel along with such other giants of the faith as Martin Luther and John Wesley. At St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, Lee can be seen in a stained glass window which serves to link the Confederacy with the stories of the Old Testament. Men such as Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson were said to epitomize the very best of Christian and Southern values (the two were thought to be synonymous). Lee's birthday (January 19) was celebrated throughout the South, and when the invitation was given to follow Christ at Southern revival meetings, men were invited to follow Lee and Jackson yet again.

Some Concluding Remarks

Why did Southerners succumb so readily to the Religion of the Lost Cause? For one reason, it gave the Southern denominations a reason to remain independent. Slavery, the original cause for denominational division, was now a dead issue. While the South had been forced by military might to return to the Union, there was no similar force compelling Southern Christians to reunite with their Northern co-religionists. While they had not obtained a separate nation, Southerners were able to gain their spiritual independence.

A second reason the South was attracted to the Religion of the Lost Cause, was the appeal of seeing themselves as God's chosen people. Their mission was defend this new Southern Zion--from the North's continuing heresy. The South, it was argued, would offer a pure and unadulterated Gospel free from the politically oriented religion of the North.

The principle point that I want to make, however, is that when hostilities concluded there was no agreement between the North and the South as to the meaning of the Civil War. Instead of the two regions growing closer, the chasm separating them had become wider. No longer were they divided over the issue of slavery. Now they were divided--Southerners believed--between the forces of Christ and the Anti-Christ.