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4 The Fidelity of a “Handmaid” Genesis and Geology in the Presbyterian South At the same 1850 meeting of the Ameri­ can Association for the Advancement of Science in Charleston, Alexander Dallas Bache noted that the wave of opposition to geology that had swept over the North twenty years before was now sweeping over the South.1 Indeed, controversy concerning geology had been a fact of intellectual life in Britain and America for several decades . Many factors contributed to these controversies, not all of which directly involved religion. Disagreement over whether fire or water had been the leading agent of geological change, or whether forces presently observable or a series of ancient catastrophes better accounted for the present condition of the earth, or over the meaning of the fossilized remains of extinct creatures and their relationship with geologic strata—all of these could be quite technical questions. Such debates, when they did not directly involve religion, usually at least carried indirect implications for religion and biblical hermeneutics.2 James R. Moore has argued that this last issue—the interpretation of Genesis per se—in reality functioned for a more basic debate over professional jurisdiction among Victorian social groups. A newer generation of geologists teamed up with exegetes wielding newly acquired criti­ cal methods from German theology to defend their new claims to professional expertise. Both sought to free the interpretation of nature from the constraints of those biblical texts employed by amateur exegetes.3 Though postwar South­ ern Presbyterian ranks—like the postwar South generally— included relatively few of these newer, professionalizing geologists, those who would become leaders in the postbellum South­ern Presbyterian Church came of age theo­ logi­ cally while geology was coming of age professionally. Since theo­ logi­ cal training and the self-­ conception of antebellum South­ ern Presbyterian ministers stressed the intellectual defense of Christianity, these Genesis and Geology 87 preachers commenced their ministerial work fully aware of controversies concerning religion and geology. Their approach to such issues typically focused on the implications for biblical authority. A brief survey of the relationship between geology and religion in the decades prior to 1850 indicates that, though geological inquiry did not always proceed with reference to its biblical implications, such ramifications were rarely out of mind, either for the Anglo-­Ameri­ can pub­ lic or for most geologists.4 The South­ ern Presbyterian focus on the issue of the proper domains of revelation and reason, theology and science, developed within, and was in part conditioned by, this context. Geology and Genesis in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Anyone pondering the origin and history of the earth’s crust in the early nineteenth century had to come to terms with the debate between the disciples of Abraham Gottlob Werner and those of James Hutton.5 To be sure, neither of the founders of these two schools of thought was particularly concerned about the implications of his geologic theory on the credibility of Genesis. Werner, professor of mineralogy at the University of Frieburg, was a Deist. The Scot James Hutton openly sought to explain as much of earth’s crust as possible in terms of processes still in operation and without reference to the Bible. Indeed, from the perspective of Werner and Hutton, their most fundamental difference lay in their identification of the primary agent of geologic change: water versus fire. For Werner and his “Neptunist” followers, the entire ancient earth had been underwater, with the raw material of its future crust suspended in solution. The vari­ ous rock strata of the earth’s crust, classified on the basis of Werner’s mineralogical investigations, had precipitated in successive stages in the precise order of their specific gravity. “Primitive” rocks like granite and gneiss crystallized from the watery solution in the first stage. In the “transitional” stage, slate, shale, and greywacke precipitated and fish were created. During the third stage, in which mammals appeared, the waters repeatedly receded to expose dry land and then deluged it again. These successive inundations formed “sec­ ondary” rocks like limestone, sandstone, and chalk. Strong winds and torrents formed “alluvial” strata like clay, sand, and pebbles during the fourth stage. In the final stage, the waters receded to reveal the present continents, upon which volcanoes erupted to produce localized lava floes. Though Werner cared little for the theo­ logi­ cal ramifications of his system, it squared relatively well with Mosaic cosmogony in the eyes of many contemporaries. Its inundations sounded faintly like the biblical...

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