From the category archives:

Religion

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Update: Is Jackson’s dark complexion just an accident or is this an attempt to blur the racial line?

If you didn’t know any better one might think that Confederate leaders were at the forefront of the civil rights movement.  Case in point is the popular and misunderstood story of Stonewall Jackson’s black Sunday School which he established in Lexington, Virginia in 1855.  Most of the stories that you will come across Online or in non-academic books tend to wax poetic about the benefits of these classes for the areas free and enslaved blacks.  There is no shortage of stories of blacks praising Jackson or dedicating stained-glass windows long after his death and the end of the Civil War.  All of this is interesting, but rarely are we given anything that approaches analysis of how the school functioned in slaveholding Virginia in the period after Nat Turner’s insurrection.  Even James I. Robertson, who authored the most thorough biography of Jackson, fails to provide a sufficient analysis of the broader conditions that shaped Jackson’s Sunday School.  Robertson cites the widely held assumption that “the more uninformed a slave was about everything, the more docile he tended to be”, the Virginia code that forbade the teaching of slaves to read, and Jackson’s apparent defiance.  That’s about it. We are left with an image of a defiant Jackson who would not allow Virginia law to stand in his way of saving souls.  This view is pervasiveness throughout much of the popular literature.  Consider Rickey Pittman’s new book, Stonewall Jackson’s Black Sunday School:

In autumn 1855, slaves and free black men, women, and children first made their way to the Lexington Presbyterian Church to attend Sunday school. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, stood as the superintendent of this school. Although it was illegal under Virginia law to teach blacks to read and write, Jackson believed all men, regardless of race, should have the opportunity to receive an education. To these students, Professor Jackson was a leader and mentor who taught them more than just reading and writing. He instilled in them the word of God. Even after he left to join the Civil War, he prayed for his students and sent them money for Bibles and hymnals. Through Jackson’s leadership, many of his Sunday-school students went on to become community leaders, ministers, and educators. This lesser-known tale of the Confederate leader shows young readers another side of the man known in battle as “Stonewall.”

Earlier I referenced Nat Turner and I did so because it is crucial to understanding this story.  Charles Irons does a magnificent job of analyzing the degree of cooperation between white and black evangelicals in Virginia through the early 1830s.  He notes that by 1830 there one-quarter of black Virginians (115,000) had been converted to evangelical Christianity and thousands more practiced outside of the church.  In addition, Turner’s claims that God had inspired him to rise up against the white population worked to reinforce growing concerns among white evangelicals as to their ability to safely monitor black gatherings. Irons is instructive here:

Gripped by fear and mistrust for several months, white Virginians struggled to adjust to the sobering fact that converted slaves could unleash such savagery.  Some, particularly nonslaveholders from the western portion of the commonwealth, suggested that only a general emancipation could save the state from racial Armageddon and pushed for a constitutional convention to consider such a measure.  Others, including some white evangelicals still shocked by August’s carnage, favored simply denying slaves the privilege of religious expression.  Stark choices: emancipation or an end to evangelization.  Within tow years, however, white evangelicals had found a way to move forward without either destroying black religion or freeing their slaves.  No single ideologue emerged to articulate the new policy of constant white supervision right away; politicians and churchgoers independently stumbled toward the formula of aggressive oversight and proselytization. (p. 143)

Within this context, Jackson’s school makes perfect sense, though it should be pointed out that a school had been established in Lexington as early as 1843.  While our popular perceptions paint Jackson as some kind of liberator who was ahead of the curve, Irons’s analysis provides us with a clearer understanding of how the school reinforced slavery and white supremacy in Lexington and the Shenandoah Valley.  Jackson admitted as much himself when he noted that God had placed the black race in a subordinate position.  Constant oversight allowed Jackson and the rest of the white population to continue to proselytize and at the same time monitor his black students’ understanding of themselves in relationship to God and the white community.  One can only wonder what Jackson would have said to a student who put forward the notion that slavery stood in contradiction to God’s law.

Let me point out that the goal here is not to demonize Jackson.  I have no problem with people who choose to celebrate Jackson’s work within the black community.  As historians, however, our job is to understand how churches functioned in a slaveholding society and how those institutions evolved in response to various challenges.  As much as we need to be sensitive to Jackson’s personal motivation we must never forget that he did not operate in a vacuum.

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Battlefield Prayer, by John Paul StrainSome of my favorite posts over the past four years address themes of religion. While the last few years have produced an impressive amount of new scholarship on religion in the nineteenth-century our popular memory of the war continues to be mired in overly-simplistic and narrow assumptions about the subject. Much of it revolves around images of “Christian Cavaliers” in contrast with a godless North.

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Not too long ago I commented on a popular homeschooling textbook on the Civil War by John J. Dwyer, titled, The War Between the States: America’s Uncivil War.  This is the video promo for that textbook.  It is a truly remarkable modern day Lost Cause inspired account of the war.  It essentially pits a God-fearing South against a Godless and barbaric North that accomplished nothing during the war except for the terrorizing and destroying of southern homes and farms.  A wonderful example of mental child abuse pure and simple.

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All of this talk about nefarious academic historians has left my head spinning.  The commentary reminds me of the rhetoric from the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s.  Anyone and everyone is a target and no one who dares stand up in front of a classroom is safe.  Watch your tongue; keep your own views locked shut; and don’t let anyone see you reading the New York Times.  I want to send this post out to Chris Wehner who has done a fabulous job of exposing me for the radical that I am and to Richard Williams who, apparently, has never attended college, but has made it his life’s mission to expose the university as a bastion of anti-American ideologues.  Wonderful work gentlemen.

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One of my Facebook friends shared with me the following print by Jon McNaughton, titled, “One Nation Under God”.  Supposedly, the image is the result of a vision the artist had during the 2008 election.  Click here for the above image and run your cursor for descriptions of each individual.  I will leave it to you to interpret it, but I wanted to point out “The Professor”, who is positioned on the stairs just to Jesus’s left.  Notice that Satan himself is positioned close by.  The Professor holds a copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and if you run your cursor over him the following pop-up description appears:

He holds his “Origin of Species” book by Charles Darwin.  This represents the liberal lefts control of our educational system.  His smug expression describes the attitude of many of the educational elite.  There is no room for God in education.  There is contempt for any other viewpoints.  Humanism dominates the educational system of America and I believe that is wrong.  Notice that he is the only one sitting on the top step.  He tries to place himself on an equal footing with God, but he is still nothing next to the intelligence of the creator.

Yeah, I know plenty of people who fit this description.  In fact, I can’t wait to hang out with a bunch of them next month at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Louisville.  You gotta love it.

One final point.  Why is the Union soldier on the left crying?  Why isn’t he standing tall and proud as a symbol of the end of slavery?  I assume that is part of God’s plan for America.  Perhaps he could be positioned next to Frederick Douglass, who is barely visible in the back.

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I didn’t have much more to say about this issue until I read John Stoudt’s response to my last post.  [By the way, I love the fact that I can now link to your profile page if I want to single you out.]  Stoudt asks if the Biblical justifications of slavery by Thornton Stringfellow, James Henley Thornwell, Robert Dabney, Benjamin Palmer, and others should not count as examples of American Exceptionalism.  Well, that depends.  If our goal in teaching this concept is to impose our own assumptions about the significance of American history than perhaps not, but if the focus is on how Americans at different times understood their nation than it seems to fit in with the “City Upon a Hill”, “Manifest Destiny”, and the “White Man’s Burden” and Cold War ideology.

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