A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era by April E. Holm (review)

April E. Holm has produced a work of lasting significance to scholars of the nineteenth century. Holm “uses religion as a critical lens through which to analyze sectionalism, war, and reunion” (1). She considers shifting sectional identity in what became the border region, the ways in which evangelicals there understood the sectional crisis and Civil War, and explains how border ideology became significant later in the century. Far from being peripheral players, Holm demonstrates that evangelical border moderates played a major role in their denominations and helped define a distinctive regional identity that was neither southern nor northern.

Before the Ohio Valley was thought of as the border, it was the West. During the Second Great Awakening, evangelicals believed it was their divine errand to bring Christianity to the region, where they built strong institutions and competed fiercely for converts. Once established, “Evangelicals in the West . . . argued that the people of their region had spiritual needs that differed from those of the East and these needs warranted separate regional institutions” (36–37). These new institutions helped forge regional identity. But as slavery became increasingly divisive, the West found itself trapped in the middle. The slavery debate spilled into the religious realm, dividing Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists into sectional branches. For their part, border evangelicals “viewed themselves as intermediaries between irrational actors in the North and the South” (40). Moderates prized denominational unity and felt that abolitionism posed a far greater danger than slavery. This religious tension helped transform the West into a new border region.

Denominational schisms marked the beginning—not end—of intense factionalism in the border region. Throughout the 1850s, churches urged border Christians to take sides and worked to secure their loyalty. Moderates, on the other hand, demanded religious leaders leave politics out of religion and asserted that slavery was political in nature. As southern denominations embraced the Confederacy and their northern brethren took up the banner of the Union, border preachers articulated the philosophy known as the spirituality of the church, meaning that religious organizations served a spiritual purpose and political discussion was off-limits. In the end, neutrality alienated both sides. Holm compellingly describes how state actors insinuated themselves into this religious struggle. Army officers maintained that neutrality was treason and coerced Christians along the border to actively pray for the Union, frequently requiring ministers to take loyalty oaths and display flags or face imprisonment and banishment. Edwin M. Stanton even ordered northern officers to place southern Methodist pulpits into the hands of loyal ministers from the northern Methodist church.

Confederate defeat escalated religious conflict. In places like Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia, neutral moderates who remained loyal to northern denominations now seemed suspect. The middle ground they hoped to occupy vanished when northern churches openly embraced abolitionism and the Republican Party at the end of the war. Under pressure to take a political stand, many defected to southern churches, seen as less radical by comparison. Southerners enthusiastically welcomed them and co-opted their culture of political neutrality. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church became an article of faith for southern evangelicals, which made them feel superior to northern evangelicals, while they still supported the racial status quo. Later in the century, polemicists produced histories of schisms and war which aired old grievances and declared their rivals to be apostates. In an era of reconciliation, denominations kept sectionalism strong.

A Kingdom Divided is based on excellent primary sources, including newspapers, letters, diaries, contemporary accounts, government documents, and denominational records. Holm provides an illuminating history of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, a key idea in southern religious history. The perspective of the border further shows that sectional religious conflict played out across the nineteenth century and did not subside even when conciliation was in full swing. Scholars of particular denominations will quibble over minor points and the author’s treatment of the...